good enough for rock & roll.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2006-03-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone who reads this (by which I mean "Hey Scott and Anne"):

I am moving my blog over to Wordpress so that I can password protect things. Check me out! It isn't all tricked out yet (as if I ever truly trick anything out) but I can write with relative privacy when I want to, which makes me very happy. Anyway, update yr quote-unquote BLOGROLLS, y'all.

My five-word Gravity's Rainbow synopsis:

2006-02-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

Death is really, really sexy.

I am the worst blogger ever

2006-02-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

Why do I feel so boring? Nobody knows.

Happy Holidays!

2005-11-24T13:43:00.000-08:00

I Hate Talking at Concerts

2005-11-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

Will and I went to see My Morning Jacket & Saul Williams at the Aladdin last night and, while the show was great, I have renewed my hatred for people talking during concerts. For some reason, we happened to be sitting next to about twenty couples on first dates, all of whom were having totally insipid conversations at high volume during the whole show. I mean, it makes sense if you're at a low-dough show at Dante's or something and just wandered in, but for a fucking $25 show, you knew there would be a band, you knew people would want to hear them, and still you decided that would be a great time to get to know each other. Fuck that.

In other news, Will has a blog, which is very awesome and should be enjoyed by all. He also has the best url on the internet in my book - bobloblawsmom.blogspot.com. Say it aloud, it is great. I don't know if y'all watch Arrested Development, which is where he got the Bob Loblaw part, but it is great and should also be enjoyed by all. Bob Loblaw. Comedy genius.

My new job is pretty great so far, I love working downtown even if I feel like a total fraud around all the serious businesspeople. I especially love eating at Happy Bowl for lunch. The other day I was enjoying my Happy Bowl and all of a sudden an anti-war protest comes out of nowhere, all marching and yelling all over the place. The cops apparently started giving someone a ticket, then all the protesters started yelling "LET HIM GO! LET HIM GO!" and when they let him go, they yelled "YAY!", to which some aging besuited men behind me started yelling "BOO! BOO!". I love when old men yell "BOO!" because it usually means something I approve of is happening.

Anyway, back to work tomorrow, typing title insurance policies in the Congress Center. As unexcited as I am to get up hella early tomorrow, the dread I feel about it, as compared to my old job, is less intense by orders of magnitude. The only thing is I still haven't stopped hearing KISN (oldies) songs in my head all day every day. I woke up with Neil Diamond stuck in my head today. Every night I pray that this ends soon.

I Start

2005-10-31T20:09:00.000-08:00

...my new job tomorrow. I'm going to be a Word Processor for a national title company. They are going to pay me well and I am going to like it. I am ever so glad I quit my old job, it's been a total blessing this last week not to deal with the shit I had been dealing with before. I get to work downtown in a very tall building and take the Max to work every day and wear Professional Clothing. I remember seeing downtown Portland as a little kid, seeing everybody striding around in their nice clothes with a Sense of Purpose and trying to imagine what that might be like. I mean, I'm certainly not going to start walking around like I have a purpose or anything, because Christ knows I don't, but it feels strangely adult. I don't know if I like that or not, but it does.

Anyway, that's my big news. I am actually really impressed with myself this time; instead of moping around unemployed for six months, I got my shit together, hit the pavement, and not only got to quit my previous horrible job (I will try to post some stories from there later, since I couldn't before, and a lot of them are totally unbelievable) but I also ended up with a freakin' $4 raise. Sweet.

Oh, and just for the record, my Halloween costume ended up being pretty cool. I dressed up as Meg White (a White Stripe, if you will) and Will dressed up as a Red Stripe beer. It was universally hailed as "very clever", which I'm not sure if that was a good thing or not but it was fun to drunkenly try to remember the drumsticks I had in my back pocket all night.

I Quit

2005-10-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

I quit my job on Thursday and it was extraordinarily satisfying. I haven't posted much about my former workplace because they are vindictive and horrible, but those of you who have heard much about the place probably understand. The last straw was being interrogated about "scheming" just because the owner's son happened to see me talking to a fellow employee in the parking lot - not even bitching about work, we were just chatting on our lunch break. I have never met such paranoid, Machiavellian people in my life. So thank god I'm done with that.

I figured that if I stayed much longer, I'd be there through the holidays since it's damn hard to quit a job when you need to deal with Christmas presents and whatnot. That would leave me in the early spring with a job I hate and nobody hiring, whereas right now practically everybody is hiring for the holidays. So I have lowered my standards and am hoping to find a less psychically torturous place to work, even if it's Target or some crap. The pay difference will probably be negligible anyway. And then maybe I can work on getting back into school somewhere.

So anyway, I am happy about it.

I don't know from poetry, Brendon

2005-10-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

God, I miss Home Movies. I'm just sitting here at work, printing
Paypal invoices like it's going out of style (which it totally is),
and all of a sudden I'm hit with this total longing to see a new
episode of Home Movies. I would give half of my next paycheck to see
some new Home Movies. I mean, granted, that's only like $2, but I
would totally make out a check to those dudes. Note that I did not say
I would make out with them, though I almost certainly would do that as
well.

On a completely unrelated note, I swear if I have to spend one more
week of my life listening to oldies for 9 hours a day, I am going to
set myself on fire in the parking lot.

Assuming I make it without resorting to oldies-instigated violence,
what should Will and I be for Halloween? We were thinking Ferris
Bueller and Sloane Peterson, but it'll be hard to find white leather
fringe this time of year. Any suggestions?

In Which I Stumble Upon Self-Help Truisms, or Learning From Mistakes: Duh

2005-10-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I started learning how to knit. I figured that I have a
good collection of traits for future knitting success: irrepressible
and incessant hand-fidgeting, a propensity to go crazy and start
high-fiving my fellow womenfolk when I'm drunk and "She's Crafty"
comes on the jukebox, and the habit of spending huge, self-indulgent
blocks of my time watching baseball & basketball on TV, time in which
I tend to feel restless, like I should be doing something productive,
but am too wrapped up in the semi-artificial drama of Sports to tear
myself away and read or clean or do whatever the hell it is I feel I'm
supposed to do during that time.

But so anyway, learning to knit. So far it's going pretty well - I am
just practicing the same two things (casting on and garter stitch)
over and over, but I've really been enjoying it. Since I'm mostly
teaching myself from videos and tutorials online, most of the
challenge has been finding the right way to hold my hands, the right
tension to hold the yarn with, etc. These things will come with
practice, and so I am being patient with myself for letting stitches
fall off because I'm not holding the needles tightly enough or
bisecting the strand of yarn with my needle.

However, as I've known since I was about 7 years old, I am not very
good at being patient with myself. This tendency to be really
self-critical wouldn't be so bad in this case except that I still
haven't learned how to fix these little mistakes I make, have no clue
how to slip six stitches back onto my needles once they've slid off,
and so when I find a loop I can't stitch through, my only recourse is
to unravel the whole thing and start over. I figure that there has to
be a way to fix these little misknits or else the incidence of
knitting-related suicide would be sky-high, with half-raveled sweaters
on tombstones and really colorful, fuzzy nooses hanging from the
rafters everywhere. It would be depressing, but also quite warm and
snuggly.

But so instead of expending my energy on self-loathing for making
little errors, just for this one little symbolic project, I am instead
going to try to learn how to fix those mistakes on the fly and not
totally lose my shit about screwing up. Because in both symbolic and
real senses, it is unnecessarily frustrating to have to unravel
everything you've done just because one little piece is out of place.

The Screaming Fantods

2005-10-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

I completely want to make out with the multnomah county library. They have a tremendously useful and shiny online hold system that basically allows me to shop for books on amazon and then borrow them for free without even having to track them down at the 47 libraries throughout Portland. They tell me when my books are ready and then I go pick them up at the library of my choosing. This is revolutionary for me because I don't remember such luxuries growing up in Corvallis, only virtually neverending sessions at the library wherein my mom and I would fill a little crate full of books and then lug it to the van, requiring all four of our arms to heft it. I remember going through all these random kicks based on whatever caught my eye, like the time I checked out 15 books about virology (and read them, I think, though I do not remember hardly any of it, because I was like 13 and really how can you expect a 13 year old to really get virology for chrissake, really it was just that it was so fun to be interested in stuff) or the time I managed to check out every single Kurt Vonnegut book in one go.

Mostly I have just been reading like a total madman lately because I have been riding the bus since my car broke down a month or two ago. What happened with my car is that Will and I were about to go on vacation for Labor Day, about to drive up to the Gorge and see Pearl Jam (which was Awesome) and then camping, then to Seattle to see Kerne, basically about to be doing a whole king-hell ton of driving around the Pacific Northwest, so we decided that it might be a good idea to get the ol' car checked before we headed out. The morning we were supposed to leave, I took my car into Les Schwab, the preferred tire specialists of the NW because the mechanic boys run out to your car as you idle there completely mystified by some crazy thing your car is doing, and they make reassuring noises and guide you into a pleasant waiting room while they ascertain that yes, your car is absolutely unsafe to even drive off the lot, and that yes, it is going to cost you more money than you owe in student loans to fix. Apparently my brakes were at 10% of whatever their normal brake-state is, and one of my front tires had radial belts actually sticking out of it, and also something called a drive axle had apparently been cracked and mangled. After getting a quote for the work it needed, I promptly gave the car up for dead (at least until I cared enough to fix it) and bought a bus pass. As for the vacation, we took my mom's car and had a perfectly fantastic time.

But so the point is that I don't have a car at my disposal anymore and have been taking the bus, which I actually find infinitely more pleasant, even when I forget an umbrella and it rains on me for 45 straight minutes and I show up at work and they act like I just disembarked from the fucking Ark. Riding the bus means lots and lots of additional reading time. I am currently working on Infinite Jest, which I started when I was in like 10th grade and completely didn't get at the time, because - like the virology - how's a 10th grader, at least my sheltered Corvallis ass, supposed to understand some of these themes? I mean, you can't write a 1,000 page book and not have some relatively heavy, incomprehensible-to-10th-graders Issues to work out.

So I've been having a great time going back and reading all of these books that I read but did not grok at the time, of which Infinite Jest might be the crowning jewel because I so completely didn't understand it that it wasn't even interesting to me, whereas now I am enjoying it immensely and am only disappointed he didn't publish the book in three or four bus-and-walking-size chunks, because damn that book is unwieldy. But awesome. My favorite non-reread this library go-round was The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, which I somehow managed to overlook when it won the Pulitzer a few years ago. I am not good at exhorting people to read books, unless those people are Will, because I feel pushy and don't want to be looked down upon or blamed if someone doesn't happen to like the book, but I am very tempted to exhort you to read this one. Really, incredibly tempted.

Oh, and here's what I believe I actually wanted to say when I started writing this: David Foster Wallace uses a phrase in Infinite Jest that I would be very happy to hear others say, and I need your help to make that happen. When something is uncomfortable, tense, or just incredibly irritating, D.F.W. (forgive me) likes to say that it gives a person the "screaming fantods", sometimes with a different adjective, e.g. "howling fantods". Apparently "fantod" is actually a word, meaning a state of irritability and tension or an emotional outburst. But so I think it is a great word and a very fun thing to say - "that guy's incessant overly demonstrative cough is giving me the raving fantods" - and though I know that saying it to coworkers will probably earn you at least five minutes of explaining what the hell it is you just said, I hope that you will join me in using this word. Because otherwise I am going to look like a fucking lunatic, mumbling to myself about the fantods.

Another reason to love Germans...

2005-10-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

... is that their language has a word, Torschlusspanik, for the "fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older". From this article.

Dave Chappelle Live in .. Eugene?

2005-09-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

So last week I had the privilege (and pleasure) of seeing Dave
Chappelle perform in Eugene. I guess for this tour he's doing almost
no publicity (at least there was none in Portland) and playing
strictly smallish college towns. In fact, we wouldn't even have known
about the show if Will wasn't such an unrepentant craigslist tickets
junkie. But thankfully, he is, and we bought our tickets and made
arrangements to leave work a couple hours early.

Anyway, it was a good thing we left as early as we did (3:30 for a
7:30 show) because good lord did we get lost in Eugene. For some
reason, the U of O site lists the address of Mac Court, the chosen
venue, as simply "University Street". I figured, since it sounds like
a smallish college street, that directions to anywhere on the street
would be fine. Well, after an hour of driving around on bizarro curvy
hill streets cursing the name of U of O, we asked for directions a
couple of times and finally found our way to the court. So despite our
Eugeneward journey having been a complete and total abortion, we made
it in time for the show.

So of course, Dave Chappelle was hilarious. He did a number of
fantastic political bits, any of which Will and I would happily, and
with hearty gesticulation, act out for you if you were here with us.
Will might even do a couple of voices, if you were lucky. But since I
am limited by my medium, I'll just say that you ought to go see Dave
Chappelle if he comes anywhere near you, and failing that, you should
see Will recite a few bits, because he is hilarious and charming and
you might fall in love with him immediately like I do every time I see
him recite bits.

Noticeably not falling into the category of hilarious and
charming, however, was the audience at the show. They may have just
been drunken college students, but to me they were everything that is
wrong with the concept of celebrity in America. Every five minutes
someone yelling "Do Rick James, bitch!", despite the fact that I don't
think Dave has done that since Rick James, y'know, died, or "Make
season three!" and all sorts of stupid imperative statements.
Everybody yelling at him at once, everybody yelling like he was there
strictly for their amusement, like a whole basketball stadium full of
that guy, that "Play Free Bird!" guy.

I can't imagine what that would be like, to stand onstage and listen
to 200 people shouting orders at you, people who ostensibly enjoy your
work, all people with very different conceptions of you and what
you're about (this was especially apparent what with Dave's South
Africa sojourn, which he mostly glossed over and which thus remained a
little mysterious), all thinking they know you.

It must be one of the strangest feelings in the world. I imagine you
get used to it, but man, I wonder how a person can take it, 24 hours a
day somebody wants something from you, and they think you're an
asshole if you don't give them what they want, because what does it
take from you to give an autograph or do Rick James, anyway? It's a
messier issue with entertainment, because the performer is not giving
away anything tangible, the number of times he can do Rick James is
technically unlimited, so why should he hold out on anyone?

I have a hunch that the reason we do this to our celebrities, make
them dance for our amusement and laugh at pictures of them eating
doughnuts and whatnot, is that we (as culture consumers) feel jealous
or envious of the power that we willingly give them over us.
Relatively speaking, we feel powerless in our own little lives where
we might touch 50 people deeply if we're lucky, when these people get
to go on TV or a movie and they can move millions to tears or laughter
(and, incidentally, make amounts of money that are absolutely
incomprehensible to your average TV-watcher). We as consumers think
that we are the ones that give them that power, as without us, us who
buy their DVDs or go to the theater or watch their show and drive up
their advertising revenue, without us where would our celebrities be?
Working shitty day jobs like the rest of us, paycheck to paycheck?
This is the jealousy that I think drives our relationship to celebrity
- since we feel like we create them, we feel like we should have power
over what they do after we've given them the gift of Celebrity (which,
we think, we also have the power to take away). This is, of course,
Fucked Up.

Or maybe the yelling kids were just drunk.

Out of Ideas

2005-09-11T16:29:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to say right now for some reason, but in the meantime here's a list, courtesy McSweeney's, of Things Hagrid the Half-Giant Would Say If He Served Jesus Instead of Harry Potter.

Just curious

2005-08-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

So here's a morbid question. When Alex Trebek dies, god rest his soul
etc etc, will they play the Jeopardy! song at his funeral?

Will and I thought that they probably would, but we couldn't think of
when. Would they play the final jeopardy song as everyone walked in?
As they lowered the casket? How about the daily double jingle?

I am sick. I guess, when compared to the gravity of death, anything on
television seems sick and trivial. But Alan Alda could be buried to
the MASH song with a little bit of dignity. Even the bass riff from
Seinfeld would not be horrible, it could sound poignant if used at the
right moment. But Jeopardy - I just don't think there's a right time
to play the jeopardy theme song at a funeral.

What if...

2005-08-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

...Lord of the Rings was performed by early 90s alternative stars, as
cast by me and Will?

Frodo Baggins - Thom Yorke
Samwise Gamgee - Dave Grohl
Aragorn - Eddie Vedder
Merry & Pippin - Tenacious D
Legolas - Evan Dando
Gimli of Gloin - Frank Black
Gollum - Courtney Love
Gandalf - Michael Stipe
Saruman - J Mascis
Boromir - Chris Cornell (for betraying the cause)
Tom Bombadil - Steve Malkmus
Arwen - Bjork
Eowyn - Liz Phair

What would you add? Also, should I be shot where I stand for
conceiving of this monstrosity in the first place?

[no subject]

2005-08-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

[insert meaningful human connection here]

Getting Things Done

2005-08-04T12:51:00.000-07:00

You know, I love these new "productivity blogs" (lifehacker, 43 folders, etc), but I just can't get over the judgemental attitude that seems inherent in the whole deal. 43 folders doesn't do this so much because it focuses on the systematizing of getting your life together, but some of the other ones, the ones that deal with content - What You Need To Fix About Your Ineffective and Worthless Life - they about drive me up the wall sometimes.

For example, this newcomer that just got linked over at metafilter, lifehut. I looked at three articles and each one made me angry and spiteful. For example, the how to properly lose weight and diet article is a bunch of bullshit. I mean, I suppose it might be marginally helpful if one had absolutely no idea that one's food intake and activity level directly affect one's weight, but to anyone with even half a brain in their head, this is worthless advice. Will power? They simply recommend will power? Well, if I had will power, I'd probably be out jogging and eating a salad at the same time, not sitting on my ass in front of a computer reading about how to lose weight. Whoever wrote it makes no attempt to inspire me as a reader - in fact, the writer actually discourages the shit out of me, basically saying that there's no point in taking baby steps unless I'm going to quit smoking, give up coffee, and presumably do yoga 14 hours a day. Here's their quote on coffee, in fact: " Coffee - yes, I know its hard, but what's more important, spending time with your family or spending some time in a coffin?" Seriously. Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. You didn't even tell me why coffee will kill me! I know why it makes me angry and jittery, ruins my teeth, and probably fucks up my heart rate, but I have no idea why you believe it's an express lane to death.

This is not helpful, practical advice.

Another of their articles is about how to not cheat on your partner. I am not even going to link to the page, it bothered me so much. For one, if you have to read a fucking FAQ to know how to not sleep with strangers, you need more than "Life Hacks", my friend. For another, even if one did have a legitimate need to take advice from strangers on this subject, again, we get horrible, abusive advice. For even considering cheating on your SO, they call you "weak and cowardly". I don't really disagree, per se, but does this actually help anyone achieve their goal of not cheating? If it were me reading it for serious advice, by the time I'd finished reading it I'd feel like it was such a foregone conclusion that I was a total shitheel that I'd probably go ahead and cheat.

Really, whoever they have writing for them is so judgemental that it makes me want to go right out and do the opposite of everything they say. I'm even going to drink an extra cup of coffee just because I hate sharing this planet with people like this so much. I mean, as disorganized as it always makes me feel, 43 folders never calls me a horrible person for not using Quicksilver, right?

Hey! Various friends whose blogs I read!

2005-08-03T23:19:00.000-07:00

Why don't you guys publish RSS feeds? It makes me cry every time I realize I have to actually go to your website to check and see if you've updated instead of being alerted when you have posted. You see, this transforms my going-to-your-blog experience into one of frequent disappointment - as oftentimes, as all people do, you have neglected your entertaining-me responsibility and not left some pithy words for me to enjoy. However, if you published an RSS feed, instead of disappointment there would be pleasantly surprising Alerts! every time you wrote something. It would be a joy to visit because I'd know I wouldn't go away empty handed, and every time I promise I would think really kind things about you and contemplate how great it is that you exist and recollect some fond memories that feature you prominently. I'm just sayin'.

New look?

2005-08-02T23:28:00.000-07:00

So I redesigned this damn thing yet again, the other one was just getting too pink. I wish I had some good reason for sinking time into this (other than being home sick from work) but I don't.

I'm going to California for Will's family reunion this weekend. I'm trying not to talk myself into being nervous. This is the first time I've gone to someone else's family reunion, and I remember how much my family tormented those SO's who dared to interlope on our territory. I am honored to have been invited, however, and I'm certainly looking forward to getting out of town for the weekend. Besides, as I should well know by now, my family is a Special Case.

I finished the new Harry Potter last week. I can't wait for the last one to come out so that I can have myself a weeklong Harry Potter orgy (oh, I can't wait to see the google traffic I get for that one) and read all seven in a row, stopping only to sleep, eat, or refresh my bathwater. It will be glorious, I tell you. Maybe after that I'll just give up and have me a Lord of the Rings marathon and just resign myself to never again being fit for decent company.

Have I mentioned how much I love Jeopardy to each and every one of my faithful readers yet? Because I fucking love Jeopardy.

Just so you know.

a terrible dilemma

2005-08-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

So I and my roommates, Will and Scott, were just having a lively discussion on the relative merits of bologna vs. wine. We tried strenuously to think of any possible situation in which one would be forced to choose between the two, but all we could come up with is that it sounds like some twisted Old Testament parable in which some poor fucker has to choose between something awesome - but EVIL - and something grody - but NOBLE.

In fact, we could scarcely think of any situation in which bologna would be preferable to almost any neutral object of comparison. Bologna and a chaise lounge? Bologna and a charcoal briquet? Bologna and a single peanut? The only exception might be within bologna's subset itself - processed lunch meats. I really would prefer bologna to pimiento loaf.

testing

2005-07-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

I am testing Blogger's email-to-post feature. If it works, maybe I will blog more often. Won't we all be pleased!

1000 posts later: still self-centered

2005-07-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

Holy shit, I noticed when I just logged onto Blogger that I have made slightly over 1000 posts to this blog. This alarms me greatly. However, I think as long as the combined total of Blog Posts + Metafilter Posts is not greater than the number of times I have had sex in my life, I don't have to totally give up and just start playing Magic cards and Soul Caliber or talking about "usability" all the time. Fucking > Blogging, and that's how it should stay.

Oh, and if you even know where my blog is now hosted, Noah, I got your letter, you have my address right, and you should also watch your mailbox, as you should receive a communique in return one of these days.

I have been Thinking a lot these days, what with my almost comically stupid job. As an example of the kind of time I have on my hands for thinking: the other day, I had to help in what is termed "The Mail Room", which is really just a room full of broken or in-the-process-of-breaking copiers, mail meters, and folding machines. My charge on this occasion was a quickly failing envelope printer which needed a bit of assistance. My job was to help the copier feed envelopes into its innards so that it could print ugly crap on them, and I was to do this by - for six hours, mind you - holding my thumb on top of the stack of envelopes. I peformed my duty in the same way I might have helped a 90 year old eat his last meal - gently and with patience, but with my mind on other things, like What It Means To Get Old, or How Fleeting Our Sad Existence is, and of course my old stand-by, Just What The Fuck Am I Supposed To Accomplish Before I Leave This Plane Of Being And How Exactly Am I Supposed To Do This What With All The Goings-On.

So basically, I have positively oodles of time for idle speculation and recursive self-talk. I try to think about things that I would be proud of having thought about, like Art or Meaning, rather than things that I would be somewhat ashamed to admit to anyone I respected, like Why Is Tom Cruise So Batshit Crazy, And Moreover Why Am I Thinking About Tom Cruise, or I Wonder What Is Happening On MetaTalk Right Now. These days, though, I've had a hard time drowning out those overwhelmingly negative thoughts that percolate up to my consciousness before I even see them coming. One moment I'll be contemplating which Pitchfork reviewer I would most like to torture Vogon-poetry-style, and before I even know what's going on, I've convinced myself that I really, truly deserve to spend the rest of my life holding my thumb on top of that stack of envelopes, since I apparently can't accomplish anything else with the time and resources that I have been given.

And while I have gotten far better about discerning when my brain is just flat-out lying to me, which it does fairly often, I wonder if that's enough to keep me functional. While certainly it helps to be able to tell your own brain that it is wrong and would just keep its thoughts to itself if it knew what was good for it, I wonder if there isn't something inherently detrimental about hearing any of these things at all, much less over and over. I know that even when I'm not particularly depressed, these thoughts come up almost out of habit. I know that in a way I would be very scared of completely ridding myself of this side of me; I would fear that I would lose whatever modicum of humility I've gleaned from all this Falling From Grace over and over. I know that there's a part of me that wouldn't even like myself if I were Healthy and Functional and Sane, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe that part of me is just as sick, if not sicker, than the voice (figurative voice, don't worry) that tells me that there's really no point at all.

The point is that I feel like I've gotten so used to riding these waves of Crazy that were the waves to stop, to stretch the metaphor, I would be so seasick, so unaccustomed to being on stable ground, that I would be even less functional than I am now, at least for awhile. That is what is scary about becoming Healthy or Productive to me. It's not really that I think I'm More Creative or More Inspired when I'm out of whack, it's just that I really feel like were I to become more mentally stable, I would have to really drastically change my internal identity. And for some reason, no matter how much I tell myself that I don't like that identity anyway, that scares the living shit out of me.

Anyway, enough about this. When I think about it this much I start to convince myself that I'm not really crazy anyway, just neurotic and lazy, and so it's best for me to keep a light touch with these issues. But with so much uninterrupted pondering time, it becomes hard. I must Stay Busy, Occupied. Maybe move my thumb around a little, rock the envelopes into the feeder like a baby in a cradle, establish a rhythm. Maybe if I can just stay engaged with whatever my task is, whether it's pressing on envelopes or getting back into school or being a good girlfriend, if I can just forget about Identity and Purpose and whatnot for even a few hours of my day, maybe I can do these things that seem to be so effortless for others.

superfantastic

2005-06-28T21:41:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest threads of all time anywhere on the internet: great album covers ripped off by evil corporations, inspired by the recent Nike/Minor Threat folderol. via defective yeti.

an open letter to the guy who stole my car stereo

2005-06-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dearest Thief,

I hope you enjoyed your journey through the innards of my car! Apparently you got pretty excited by all the cool shit in there, because you left all my stereo wires caught in the door when you made your ignominious getaway. I really appreciate your attention to detail and hope that your future car burglaries go as well as this one. I am sorry to tell you, though, that in your understandably overjoyed state, you forgot to steal my 6 disc changer located under the seat. O, hindsight! Would that I could leave it on the curb for you to pick up at your earliest convenience!

I also hope that the sum total of 20 dollars that you might be able to get for what is so obviously a stolen car stereo enriches your life beyond your wildest dreams. Why, the myriad things that one can purchase for 20 dollars - it just boggles the mind! How will you decide what to spend it on? You might buy a stunning haircut, or 2 weeks worth of cell phone service, or maybe even a few bags of Chee-Tos!

Gosh, now I feel like the stupid one - here I was, enjoying my music day in and day out while driving to and from my low-paying, shitty job, which I must keep because I don't steal things, when I could have just sold that damn stereo and lived like a KING! Imagine, me with twenty dollars! Maybe I could finally afford love!

I also noticed that you left a bunch of Carl's Jr trash in my yard. How I envy your gourmet cosmopolitan tastes! Perhaps if I had sold that stereo, that damnable ball and chain, I could have purchased as many as four meals from that honorable establishment! I hope that those double western cheeseburgers tasted like they were made by God himself! I also appreciate the artistic manner in which you strew your garbage around my yard. It really made a statement about how great it must be to steal car stereos. Reflecting upon your art, I could actually feel - within my very heart and bones! - the joy and self-respect you must have felt about your noble actions. It really spoke to me, and I thank you for leaving me that gift.

Oh, and another incredibly attractive thing about you as a human being: your total lack of class consciousness. Too many people have qualms about stealing from a person as demonstrably poor as I am. To hell with that, I say! I don't like being pitied! Thank you for treating me as if I had the means to replace that car stereo, even though I know you could tell from the rusted gash in the side of my car that I don't. It made me feel a little bit ... richer.

Really, too many people say to steal from the rich, or those who could even possibly hope to replace their treasured belongings. I say let's all us poor people just keep stealing the same four car stereos back and forth. It would be great! Maybe, God willing, I could lose my job and be forced by necessity to steal your car stereo! What a fun little game it would be, constantly undercutting each others' chances of financial success to the advantage of the bourgeiousie! As I always say, what the lower class needs is more infighting and self-destruction!

So anyway, keep on fighting the good fight! I applaud your brave actions. You've liberated me from the living hell that is music, converting the instrument of my hated slavery into something so beautiful and pure as money. Perhaps one day, I too might taste the sweet fruits of 20 dollars and a job well done.

Thanks for everything,
Bridget

PS: I hope my car stereo bought you a few more precious days of blissful ignorance before you are forced - as you will be eventually, believe me - to reexamine your life. Have fun!

giving up on hosting

2005-06-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

I am just too poor to pay for hosting anymore, but I was really missing blogging somehow (god knows why, I hardly ever say anything anyway), so here I am on blogspot. I have my doubts that anyone will find it again anyway, but so be it.

Life is ok. I have a terrible job that I don't like very much (for myriad reasons which will probably be enumerated at a later date). I'm still living with Will and my mom and Scott B.

Of course, now that I have this up, I have nothing to say again. I'll update again when I have something more substantial. For now, I believe I may try to redesign this sucker.

Fan Death

2005-03-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

Apparently, in South Korea, it is widely known that if you sleep in a completely sealed room with a fan on, you run the risk of becoming a victim of fan death.

brilliant

2005-03-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

So I just realized that my sadpanda.org domain has stopped forwarding my sadpanda.org email to me, and thus I haven't gotten anything anyone's emailed me (to the sadpanda.org address) in a while. If you are trying to email me and it's bouncing, try bridgie AT gmail DOT com and it will work.

Not that anyone's trying to email me. But just in case!

Here's a question: do y'all like it when I post a ton of random links to stuff I found on the web? I have been reticent to do it, because my blog has been mostly personal in nature, but these days I can't seem to nut up to say anything particularly personal in here. It's a side effect of the late-onset shyness that so many people from high school would be astonished to see in action.

So I thought I'd ask anyone who still reads this - when you're reading blogs, do lots of random links and such distract you from longer entries? I've found that if I read a blog for its good links, I tend to ignore the longer, more thoughtful posts. Does the personal signal get lost in the impersonal noise of links? Let me know. I spend a lot of time online these days and I sometimes find some really neat stuff, but I don't want to overload my blog with noise.

Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about:

How to get a free ipod*
*Note: All freeipod.com links from this point forth use my referrer link. Because I want a free ipod too. In the interests of full disclosure and all.

Google for "free ipod conga line"
Select a conga line that doesn't have a million people on it but still seems to be active (to wit, try the links on, say, the third page of search results - still active but not incredibly popular/visible)
Follow the instructions for the conga line you've selected. Usually, this means using the top person's referrer link to sign up at freeipods.com, completing an offer (see below), and emailing the administrator of the conga line with your name, email, referrer link, etc.
Some tips for the sign-up process at freeipods.com:
- Use a throwaway email address that you can check (clearly, your information will be sold) but definitely use your real physical address so that they can ship your ipod.
- Check out ratetheoffers.com to evaluate your offer choices and choose the offer with the lowest cost and easiest cancellation method.
- Do all of this (ALL OF IT) in Internet Explorer - some people report that their offers are not recorded when they sign up in firefox, et al.
- If you have real friends that you can refer and thus don't have to rely on the conga line for all of your referrals, make sure that the people you get to sign up DON'T sign up from your computer or the same IP address. They will think you are trying to scam them and you will not get your free stuff.
Check to make sure you get credit for your offer. Some offers take up to 15 days to give credit - be wary of this if the thing you sign up for has a 14-day free trial.
Check back with your conga line page and ensure that they have your referrer link. Make sure you are following all of the administrator's instructions (some conga lines require you to send a screenshot of your status page every so often to make sure that people are cycled off the list in a timely manner. Don't get disqualified just because you didn't follow the rules). Check your status page on freeipods.com to see if/when the people you have referred complete their offers.
Be prepared to wait forever for your free ipod - some people report up to a 5 month wait, but hell, isn't it worth it for a free (or almost-free, if you forget to cancel an offer) ipod?

jury duty

2005-02-28T23:58:00.000-08:00

I spent Thursday and most of today in jury duty, and I think since my trial is over I'm allowed to rant about the behavior of the jury with which I deliberated. The setting: we're the jury in a criminal case, specifically a theft case, and have been sent into the jury room to deliberate.

First thing that shocked me: we voted before we even discussed the case. No making sure everyone understood the facts at hand, no discussing possible discrepancies, nothing. This scared the crap out of me, personally, because we were only one vote away from conviction (only 10 jurors had to find him guilty to convict) on the first vote. If someone else hadn't been unsure, we would have convicted him without even discussing the issues at hand. A few people made comments about getting out of there for the afternoon, getting it over with quickly, etc. This is not shocking, really, but disappointing. I would definitely want better if it was my ass on the line, and I assume all of these nice people would too. Everyone was so nice but so sure of themselves, not even willing to entertain doubt for a moment; once they had made up their minds, they became advocates for the other side and they treated those who were against instant conviction like they were advocates for the defendant, all "Do you really think he didn't do it? How could you think that? Don't you want to get out of here?"

Second thing that shocked me: two older ladies were talking about the three strikes, you're out sentencing laws and whether they were in effect in Oregon. One old lady says to the other, "you know, I really think that three strikes you're out should only apply to drug cases" and the other lady wholeheartedly agreed. Un.fucking.believable. I wanted to get up and yell Bill Hicks routines from the high heavens, from the top of the courthouse. I wanted to say "Shut up and smoke this. It's the Law!" But most of all I wanted to explain to these ladies how destructive their thinking is to a person's potential recovery and to the justice system as a whole, and even how destructive it is to them personally in terms of the money spent on nonviolent drug sentences that could have been used for schools or health care or what have you.

And finally, the thing that knocked my socks off and made me want to rip the blindfold off of ol' lady justice and scream "SEE, DAMN YOU! SEE!": there was a lawyer on the jury, just happened to be selected, right? And so we're deliberating and I say that I don't think we can find him guilty on one of the counts because the state never proved it to my satisfaction. They didn't prove the timeframe that they were required to, and their proof of that particular count was even less than circumstantial. So I say that, and add a reminder that we don't have to come up with an alternate timeline if we don't think the prosecution's case is unproved, we just have to have reasonable doubt that the prosecution's story explains every count fully. I say that really, the defense could simply rest its case when called upon and the defendant could still be found not guilty.

And the lawyer lady turns to me and says, in this incredibly disdainful tone: "What about burden of defense, huh?" and then proceeds to explain that because the man was clearly lying when he testified, that that automatically makes him guilty (which makes sense emotionally but CERTAINLY does not address the "burden of proof" which, last time I checked my juror instruction sheet, was on the PROSECUTION). Really, it was the "burden of defense" crap that killed me. God, this woman is a lawyer! She presumably passed the Bar! Do they not even put that on the test anymore? "In criminal cases, a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. True or False?"

So every twenty minutes tonight, I have been shaking my head and muttering "burden of defense" to myself like a crazy person. I just couldn't believe it.

At the end of the trial, we delivered our verdict of guilty. The defense polled the jury, which made me happy because I wanted to be able to say my "No, I don't agree with the verdict" publicly, to somehow exonerate myself from what I felt was a misapplication of justice. It was mundane and it was small and nobody was guilty of more than wanting to leave the courthouse before rush hour traffic, but I felt guilty myself while they read the decision; I didn't feel enough consideration was given to the facts and that we rushed out as soon as we had 10 ready to convict.

Which I guess is the very problem with any kind of strictly majority-rule system: when you know you have a majority, you don't have to debate anymore. You don't have to examine issues anymore. All you need is to maintain that majority.

And people are really easy to fool.

uno, dos, tres ... quatorze?

2005-02-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

The eleven worst songs of 2004. Someone hates U2 as much as I do! [via scott]

daily show slash fiction!!!!

2005-02-18T15:30:00.000-08:00

This is a livejournal community devoted to slash/fanfics of the Daily Show! Apparently it's mostly Jon/Stephen colbert, but I'm actually kind of impressed with the writing, especially considering the usual quality of fanfics. I absolutely LOVE that so many of the stories involve Stephen "taking care" of Jon, all nursing him through the flu and stuff. Us women are hilarious. Also, one of the stories posits that Ed Helms eats Lunchables by the case.

h2g2

2005-02-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

Hey look! It's a real trailer for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie coming out in April!

I may just be a HHG fanatic, but this looks pretty good to me. Granted, the trailer is still very Hollywood and such, what with the CGI and serious music edited in when Earth gets destroyed, but I still think the important part of the books is the character interaction, no matter the setting. I really like Martin Freeman in general, and as Arthur he seems to be a perfect fit. I couldn't tell how good Mos Def is as Ford Prefect from the trailer, but I already know he could never live up to David Dixon's Ford from the BBC miniseries. He is the Form of Ford, as far as I'm concerned. I hope Mos Def can pull off the most important physical characteristic of Ford, namely:
There was something very slightly odd about him, but it was difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes didn't seem to blink often enough and when you talked to him for any length of time your eyes began involuntarily to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was about to go for their neck.
David Dixon did the unblinking-manic-smile thing perfectly, and I really hope Mos Def does the same.

Just watching the trailer has made me very nostalgic for the ol' HHG, so it's at least good for that. I keep remembering all these fantastic little parts in the book that I really hope make it into the movie. Like the "time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so" line, or Ford's internal monologue about why people say the most obvious things all the time (because if they didn't talk, their brains would start working), the whale and the petunias and "oh no, not again" (though that might not make sense because the rest of that joke isn't explained until far later in the series), the bit about digital watches and moving little green pieces of paper around which is odd because, on the whole, it wasn't the little green pieces of paper who were unhappy, etc.

God though, I remember when Sarah and Jess and Isaac and I tried to make a HHG film for 8th grade english class and how impossible it was to pare down. Every fucking line is so great it's uncuttable, and pretty much the only thing we got right was the yellow bathrobe (WHICH I NOTICED WAS MISSING IN THE TRAILER, BOO).

Basically, I am impossible to please entirely, but as long as the movie keeps the repartee and remains character-based, rather than becoming a bloated CGI adventure story, I will be very happy to see this. And I'm very excited to get to talk about HHG at length to anyone who will tolerate it.

In other hugely nerdy news, I just noticed that They Might Be Giants' new kids album, "Here Come the ABCs", is the top seller on Amazon today. I saw 'em on Conan last night, singing an alphabet song about different countries, and it was pretty much what you'd expect. It made me long for the alphabet song from Animaniacs, though (anyone remember that?). TMBG on the top sellers list, HHG in the theaters... nerdy 7th grade me was clearly ahead of her time.

something's gonna change my world!

2005-02-14T01:23:00.000-08:00

So I watched the Grammys tonight, god help me. Some notes:

1. They did this ludicrous "Tsunami Relief"* star singalong thingy, wherein Bono, Billie Joe (Green Day), Tim McGraw, Steven Tyler, Norah Jones, Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone, Scott Weiland (looking more haggard and Bowie-esque with each passing day), and I don't know, probably a few other douchebags got up and sang "Across the Universe" by the Beatles. And the lyric goes "nothing's gonna change my world", right? At the end of this craptacular "benefit song", they changed the lyric to "something's gonna change my world", which I thought was simply inexcusable. It was cheesy enough without changing the fantastic lyric, which is only repeated about 17,000 consecutive times, to something totally counter to the idea of the song. Also, Billie Joe, while seemingly recovering from being really mediocre for the last couple of albums they've put out (before American Idiot and all), CANNOT SING THIS SONG. No matter what. You put him up there with fucking Alicia Keys singing harmony and think he's going to sound good?

2. The RIAA director, or the director of the Academy or whatever figurehead guy made the speech about donating to the tsunami victims and whatnot, inserted this huge lecture about filesharing into the middle of his tribute to Ray Charles. He obliquely referenced the upcoming Supreme Court case MGM v. Grokster and tried to be really sly about the whole thing, never saying "filesharing" by name or anything. I'm not sure what side I come down on in the whole morality/legality-of-file-sharing debate, but I know I don't like being lectured by a guy who ostensibly had some involvement in the triple-nomination for Hoobastank.

3. Did I mention that? Hoobastank was nominated at least three times, including for Best Song.

4. Wilco won for Best Alternative Rock Album, which made me quite happy. They beat Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand and Bjork and whatnot, and I was overjoyed to see their name in 9-point font at the very bottom of my tv screen in the middle of Maroon 5's acceptance speech for Best New Artist.

5. They did this Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute thing with Gretchen Wilson (I think that's her name), that "I'm a Redneck and I'm Proud of it!" lady, Tim McGraw, and some other southern rock guys. It lasted like 20 minutes and didn't have nearly enough fiddle for my liking. Thumbs down.

6. All snarkiness aside, and ignoring the tsunami singalong that ruined a great song, the Grammys weren't altogether too bad this year. Hoobastank, while nominated three times, did I mention, didn't win anything, and even though U2 was as ubquitous as ever, at least they didn't play that fucking Vertigo song (though I heard it about ten times in different ads throughout the program). Queen Latifah did a great version of some old jazzy standard, J-Lo kept her clothes on, and John Mayer didn't actively seduce 13-year old girls during his performance. Bonnie Raitt even got to play. And Wilco won (also for Best Packaging, which I found hilarious - Tool also won this award at some point, I am told).

However, I am contractually obligated to add that the Grammys are still a collective cocksucking party for corporate rock acts that suck all the fun and joy out of music. Hoobastank?

* I have come to really hate the phrase "tsunami relief effort". I applaud the cause and I am glad people are still talking about it, but it drives me crazy that people are so unimaginative on TV that they repeat the phrase like, three times in the same sentence. "In an admirable effort for tsunami relief, the tsunami relief effort presses on, even as the media turns away and tsunami relief efforts are the most critical". Hire. Some. English. Majors.

me neither, ray

2005-02-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

it's not my birthday

2005-02-09T00:39:00.000-08:00

happy birthday, will!

mefi: redeemed!

2005-02-04T01:00:00.000-08:00

This is one of the absolute best Ask.Mefi threads I've ever seen, and I might go so far as to say it's one of the best conversations I've ever seen, too. Fascinating stuff.

contrecoup

2005-02-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

Any TMBG fans in the house should listen to Contrecoup (mp3), a song by John Linnell. He wrote it to answer a challenge from a radio show called The Next Big Thing. His assignment was to use three words that an "activist lexicographer" feared were in danger of dying out for lack of use. The words were contrecoup, craniosophic, and limerent (definitions and some interesting background from the always fascinating language hat can be found here).

It's a great idea, and as always, John Linnell proves himself to be a fantastic songwriter, despite the fact that new TMBG material has been pretty lackluster (I'd say since about Factory Showroom. Anyone want to argue about it? It would be nerdy fun!). I think TMBG are at their best when they're presented with some sort of challenge, like when they wrote all those songs for ABC's Brave New World. My theory is that they have built their cult empire on their "quirky" (I almost want to put that in double scare quotes, I hate that word so much) senses of humor, but that their real talent has always been integrating dry, boring or nerdy things into fun pop songs that somehow don't sound forced (this is probably mostly Linnell's work). Take Mammal, for instance - it actually helped me on a test in AP Bio in high school, and the lyrics are exclusively educational - barely a wasted syllable in the song - but despite having a bridge that consists entirely of naming off various phyla of mammal, it's a fun song and I enjoy listening to it even when I'm not studying biology. And they have a whole lot of songs like this, describing either dry detail or depicting abstract concepts in song (Dinner Bell / Pavlov's Dog, No One Knows My Plan / Plato's Cave, etc).

A lot of their stuff is more silly, but I think one of my favorite parts of listening to Them is that I always feel challenged to figure out just what in the fuck they are talking about this time. So while I love that their most recent challenge to themselves has been making children's music, and I think they are fantastic for kids to listen to because they never, ever underestimate their audience's intelligence, I wish they still challenged me a little more.

Here are the lyrics to Contrecoup, in case anyone is curious:

you know what's wrong with me
you know phrenology
you saw my injury
you can tell just by looking at my skull

contrecoup on the rebound
contrecoup hurt me again
and the second was worse by far than the first
'cause it made me limerent

when my head was hit
I bounced away from it
or as someone who is craniosophic would say
the brain went the opposite way

contrecoup on the rebound
contrecoup hurt me again
and the second was worse by far than the first
cause the first just left me feeling inert
but the contrecoup woke my feelings for you
and it left me limerent

filesharing

2005-02-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

I'm trying out eXeem and, while it seems to work just fine, I am having trouble finding things I actually want to waste hard drive space on. So here's my question: when will someone implement loose tags (like del.icio.us) for filesharing? If I could just search for "elephantsix" or "indie" or "covers" or whatever, it would make it a lot more fun to browse for files.

apologies

2005-02-01T06:50:00.000-08:00

Many sorries about the outage. Hosting is expensive; I am poor. You fill in the blanks; 6.2 percent.

Mostly I am apologizing to Scott (actually both Scotts) because his stuff was down without any warning. Sorry Scott(s).

women's studies

2005-01-20T03:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, I don't know my official feminist dogma here, but I went to a Blazer game tonight and, as usual, was vaguely unsettled by the unceasing gyrations of the Blazer Dancers. I'm not sure how to characterize my distate, though -- I wasn't so much bothered because "Oh my god, women are being used as objects of the male fantasy" or whatever, as by the fact that every time they performed, I was forcibly reminded that I was a woman at a sporting event, and that that made me an outsider there.

The other thing I dislike about their presence at games is that whenever they appear I inevitably hear more than a few leering comments of varying offensiveness, ranging in degree from 'generally OK but I wouldn't want my hypothetical little girl to hear it' to 'that comment makes me want to not be a woman anymore'. So the practice of using the dancers (whose general style is about two steps away from stripping, although they are very talented at what they do) for timeout entertainment would generally seem alienating to women, who may be mildly amused by the spectacle but are certainly not really "entertained" as the men are, and to families, in that their dancing seems to initiate much of the rude or offensive behavior that takes place at games.

I did a google search for any criticism of having sexually suggestive dancers at basketball games and I didn't find a single result. So I'm a little worried that I'm having some sort of kneejerk response to it that could probably be explained by an intro to women's studies class or a lot of expensive therapy. Is this a hypersensitive response? Am I buying into puritan attitudes about sex that cloud my idea of what it Really Is To Be A Woman And Express Yourself For Who You Are, Sister?

All of this thinking reminds me of a piece in David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which I love, in which a few men are discussing the question of What Today's Woman Really Wants. One of the characters posits the theory that Today's Woman is trapped in an impossible double-bind of perceived sexual responsibility: on one hand, she believes that women should be unrepressed sexual agents just as men are, and that sex should be "by mutual consensus and desire between two autonomous equals who are each equally responsible for their own sexuality and its expression". On the other hand, she's still conscious of the virgin/slut dichotomy and knows that some girls "still let themselves be used sexually out of a basic lack of self-respect, and she still recoils ... of being seen as this pathetic roundheel sort of woman". And of course, as science classes taught me, females are programmed to think about sex differently because they bear children and it is an evolutionary advantage to have a man around to help take care of them. So this double-bind leaves Today's Woman just awash in this sea of conflicting imagery (Cosmo magazine: be liberated and get yourself a husband at the same time!) with few tools for getting themselves out of this paradox of simultaneously having two sets of entirely conflicting sets of obligations to fulfill.

This character then goes on to say that, once we understand that, what Today's Woman wants is to find an escape hatch from this contradiction -- she wants a back door out of both sets of responsibilities. "Hence the timeless importance of: passion. What they want is to experience a passion so huge, overwhelming, powerful and irresistable that it obliterates any guilt or tension or culpability they might feel about betraying their perceived responsibilities."

I'm not sure what I think about all that. On one hand, the double-bind he speaks of rings very true for me, and the fact that women would want to either escape from those responsibilities or to somehow reconcile them makes perfect sense. On the other hand, I'm not sure I like the implication that there is no way out of those opposite sexual codes without a man to come and sweep you off your feet. I suppose you could look at it as an example of why people need other people -- to get close enough to someone that the abstract moral and social codes that guide you become mostly irrelevant, to give oneself an escape hatch from all of those codes. I suppose you could look at friends that way, too; I don't have to worry much about Saying The Wrong Thing around my friends and those who love me. But I'm not sure that's a good enough basis of thought on which to base such an assumption (i.e. that women need men [or other women!] to sweep them passionately off their feet in order to feel relieved of societal, historical, and genetic pressures on their behavior).

Oh my, I've written a lot. Did anyone read this? Does anyone have an opinion? I'm really curious about this one.

call me crazy

2005-01-20T01:22:00.000-08:00

i really want one of these - spheres you can hang in the forest and then inhabit, should you so choose.

2005-01-18T16:33:00.000-08:00

pitchfork brings me much decemberists news: rachel, the drummer, has left the band, to be replaced with john moen who played with sm + the jicks and the minus five. the super-hot petra haden will also be joining them on violin. they are releasing an ep of morrisey covers and will be putting out their new album, picaresque, three days after my birthday.

supporting them on their album tour will be: okkervil river! oh man that is some awesome news.

i just spent like a million years organizing my photos in google's new picasa photo organization system. i have some very stupid images on my hard drive. my favorite thing is that i found the gay porn image that looks EXACTLY like colin. IT LIVES!

also, since i'm screwing around with images, i will share with you a picture of my grandma when she was a little girl that looks a whole lot like me.

basically like treasure

2005-01-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

now you know what it is, to have death inside you..

think i could work that phrase into at least one conversation a day for a week without landing myself in therapy?

job search futility

2005-01-14T14:42:00.000-08:00

oh, and a quick observation as i scour all the online job search engines: the most common job opening i've found so far is bill collector/collections officer. pretty depressing.

some good news

2005-01-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

tmbg tribute album! featuring steve burns, the wrens, self, frank black, possible reel big fish. spread the love.

in other news, metafilter is just killing me lately. the front page has been kottke remaindered links and boingboing seconds for a couple weeks or so now, and the discussion no longer seems to keep things interesting. every thread that doesn't end with jonmc shooting off some anti-intellectual "you smart liberals are the reason nobody voted for kerry! i am a Regular Guy!" bullshit is killed by inanity and repetition. the proverbial "boyzone" stuff has gotten out of hand too - there was a whole thread of vaguely unsettling toasts on askme the other day, stuff like "panties: not the best thing in the world, but close to it". i've said it before (albeit onsite) but while these individual instances don't bother me too much, the trend of seeing threads that you just plain can't really participate in because you're a woman is pretty effin' lame. there was another one yesterday where someone linked to an axe.com flash "game" where your objective is to tickle a half-naked girl.

and you know, i LOVE tickling half-naked girls. so what's the problem? the problem is that there is no possible interesting discussion that would come from that post. luckily it was so clearly stupid that most of the commentary is simply saying how dumb the link was, but had the first few comments said something snarky and/or woman-objectifying, i guarantee you the rest of the thread would follow suit. and maybe that's what bothers me the most - whoever gets to the thread first sets the tone and everyone follows from there. and usually, the tone they set is Stupid. and yet! even though everyone commented about how bad the link was, the thread remains!

blah, maybe i'm just pissed because there have been apple posts every single day, it's inane flash friday (including that amazing flash game where you throw paper into the garbage can! OMG TECHNOLOGY IS TEH R0X0R), there's a jennifer aniston link up today, a link i saw on memepool like, three weeks ago, and every active metatalk thread right now is about how matt needs to give people more latitude to chat. the ironic thing is, i would have been in favor of more chattiness ..... back when i liked most of the members. too many users seem like the kids in high school who would co-opt other peoples' inside jokes and repeat them until they were not funny ... and then still continue to use them.

like menaced by elves. i remember when being menaced by elves was still funny. sarah and i were the arbiters of what and what was not currently being menaced by elves, and that was Right. but then some of *those people* got hold of it, see? and then EVERYTHING was menaced by elves. they'd leave a cookie on the table and publicly announce "boy! i hope this cookie does not, at some future time, undergo menacing by elves!" "did someone lose a mitten? i bet they were menaced by elves!" "oh! you know what i hate? being menaced by elves!" until it was dead to me. dead dead dead. and every time they said it after that was a cold, cruel reminder of how i had once loved being menaced by elves but now had to come up with other inside jokes to fill the vacuum. and being on metafilter feels strangely similar to being menaced by elves against my will.

the death of punk rock?

2005-01-14T03:03:00.000-08:00

this is a great old article in the morning news about the death of rock and roll shock in america.

a quote: "We’re left with 100-pound weaklings like Eminem kicking sand in our faces. In his latest single, ‘Without Me,’ the wild rapper hits controversial targets like TRL, techno music, and Saddam Hussein. Oh shit – did he just slam Iraq? White boy crazy."

does anybody want to hire me for anything?

highlights

2005-01-12T01:11:00.000-08:00

i just wasted a lot of time reading my old blog entries, since i made the archives work again, and i thought i would share with you some of the stuff i had forgotten:

pam mathews superstar!
touching the salesman
mike: mr. jackson, it's not nice to make fun of peter just because he's homeless.
this great billy corgan quote:
"let's rock one more time. not for you [the crowd], because you get it. let's rock one more time for all those people who don't get it, who don't understand that music overcomes all this fucking bullshit."
"i still believe in the Alternative Nation, even if mtv doesn't run the program anymore. i will stand for that, i will speak for that. if i'm your whipping boy or poster child, fine. but the one thing you can't take away from me is i was there. our band was there. we fucking lived it."
mcsweeney's: i am worried about the new york times magazine
from tristan's journal: "And why do I even care if Bridget is or is not hopelessly addicted to E, munching and crunching tab after tab, constantly grinding her little teeth in to painfully blood red, root and nerve exposed stumps?"
on music: "while radiohead is like dying at the climax of the best sex you've ever had, wilco is like being gently smothered by a big comfy pillow right as you're slipping into a beautiful dream."
"in my rage cage"

and also this great picture of noah:

repairs

2005-01-11T15:52:00.000-08:00

so i finally got my archives and permalinks working, for what it's worth. now, should you feel so inspired, you can see what a self-centered brat i was in high school. honestly. i was funnier, but i was also a jerk. if it makes anyone judge me less harshly, i have more than paid penance for my arrogance with several years of crippling self-doubt!

whereas the world needs more people like this

2005-01-11T01:46:00.000-08:00

emperor norton i of san francisco. this is one of the coolest things i have ever read about. the trick in life is not to become sane; it is to become so likably insane that nobody can help but love you.

i missed it!

2005-01-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

damn! i missed fuck you friday! i would have had a fantastic fuck you friday.

i'm killing some time while will watches the football. we drove down to oregon city to get free coffee (dutch brothers gives out free drinks whenever they open a new coffee stand) and, while waiting in line to the accompaniment of the beastie boys, will busted out a rhyme (which i will not attempt to recreate because it would not be nearly as funny) to tell me that after we got coffee, we would go back to his house and he would watch football and i would sit quietly like a good woman should. it was hilarious. also, the dutch brothers people were giving out free balloons. when we got there, i could see about five blue balloons floating up into the Great Unknown, and it made me kind of sad, and so when they asked if i wanted a balloon, i said no and mumbled something about the balloons in the sky. being good hippies, they were all "oh! do you disapprove of our environmental impact? blah blah!" and then they kept teasing me about not wanting a balloon. it was odd to feel like a joyless pariah just because i didn't want to carry a balloon around. which reminds me, will took one and now there's a balloon in my car that will probably stay there until it gets all withered and pathetic.

which reminds me: oh boy am i in trouble if i can find more than one way to be depressed by balloons.

why i love the internet

2005-01-06T01:07:00.000-08:00

i've been doing basically nothing lately. i have been applying for jobs, but getting no answers. there are a few things i need to do and am dragging my ass on, but nothing horrifically serious.

anyway, all of this leads to a lot of daydreaming. what i love about the internet is how much easier it makes daydreaming. and there are a million things to daydream about on the internet: what would it be like to homeschool kids? what would it be like to join a commune? what would it be like to plan a wedding? what would it be like to teach in alaska? what would it be like to be a stripper? what would it be like to be a homemaker? what would it be like to be a librarian? while i can imagine most of these on my own, the internet gives me context that i wouldn't have had otherwise. for example, being a homemaker sounds way cooler when i look at all the different awesome crafty stuff one could do if one had no agenda but to make a house look great. homeschooling kids sounds a lot cooler when i can look at lesson plans and imagine what i wish i'd learned (and when!) as a kid. it's a great tool for adding supporting details to an otherwise lackluster daydream.

i've been having an especially good time looking at all the awesome ideas people have had for arts and crafts (i wish that had a different name. in keeping with enoch root's rant about athena in cryptonomicon, maybe i'll call it techne), such as this team zissou hat (from the life aquatic), this cheese grater lamp, this paint chip wallet, this microfiche wallet, rad kitchen magnets, frosted/etched glassware (actually really easy), etc etc. needless to say there are endless projects, particularly at craftster (which i just linked to about a thousand times). readymag is also pretty rad.

keepin' busy, keepin' busy.

best of 2005

2005-01-03T01:16:00.000-08:00

while everybody's blowing their wads on "best of 2004" lists, i decided to compile some of the best moments of 2005.

best book i read: happy baby, by stephen elliot (thanks scott!)
best night i stayed up really fucking late: playing original zelda on will's nes
best movie i saw: the life aquatic
best round of trivial pursuit played: me vs. my mom and will [i won]
best unexpected development: free downtown parking on new year's day
best nerd moment: TIE: trying to explain natural logarithms and derivatives; trying to convince family how "cool" math really is [note: these actually may end up being the nerdiest moments of 2005]
best bar i went to: belmont inn

fun with anagrams

2004-12-26T04:18:00.000-08:00

this site is great.
therefore, here are some great anagrams for variants of my name (note that i am up late so if not all of these are funny, or they're kind of head-scratching funny in the way that all anagrams are, then i apologize):

bridget indulger. i CANNOT BELIEVE i didn't realize this before!! THIS CHANGES MY WHOLE LIFE YOU GUYS
triggered dublin. sounds like a sex act i would like to learn how to perform.
it gurgled inbred.
turgid inbred gel.
blind duet rigger.
bird gender guilt. man, do birds have to feel gender guilt too? that would be a very sad children's book. "the bird who felt gender guilt"
beret guild grind.
turbid bilge nerd.
gerbil died. grunt. fuck that gerbil.
trig bungler died. mr whitney would totally have called me a trig bungler, if he was ten times cooler.
dirt-ringed bulge.
grind-glued biter.
butler did ginger.
didn't rigger lube.
gin-griddle tuber. this sounds like something jonmc from mefi would eat.
rigid blunt edger. that sounds a little bit hot and a little bit like a person who is very particular about the art of bluntology.
rub grendel digit.
big urgent riddle. i like this one a lot. i am totally a big urgent riddle.

death and the holidays

2004-12-25T14:36:00.000-08:00

scott's friend kelly died today. she had cancer and had been sick for awhile - she was in hospice, couldn't get up to use the bathroom without sleeping for hours to recuperate - and she died this morning around 8 am.

i only met kelly once, and while i really liked her and she was great fun to be with (we talked about punk rock music at escape from new york pizza, i think, and then i found her some pot because it helped her nausea), i won't even try to eulogize her or anything. but i do have a couple of stories about death and the holidays.

my mom's brother, mike, killed himself on valentine's day. he was away at college during the vietnam war, and no one really ever found out exactly what was wrong, but he tried to check himself into a mental hospital. even though he had referrals and everything, the secretary at the front desk refused to admit him because she thought he was just trying to dodge the draft. so he went home, began to feel a little better, and then just when everyone had let their guard down, he shot himself with the only bullet in the only gun in the house. my uncle jim found his body, and a week later jim got his draft notice. my mom was sixteen or so.

mike was a great poet, a great gymnast, and a fantastic writer. he wrote one of my favorite stories ever, called "me an' poke", about him and my uncle steve sharing a paper route when they were kids. he used to keep a dictionary on his bedside table, and every morning when he woke up, he'd open to a random page, pick a random word, and try to live that word that day. if he got ebullient, then goddamn it, he would be ebullient. my mom has some of his old notebooks, and one part that sticks out is that one night he woke up and scrawled, "emily dickinson is the finest woman i've ever slept with!" and promptly went back to sleep. and i really wish that mike was still alive. obviously i never met him, but maybe simply because of his death, i feel a strange kindred spirit connection to him and sometimes i just about cry thinking about how neat it would be to have him around to talk to.

so my mom got married on valentine's day. not for sappy romantic reasons, but so that she would have something good to remember on valentine's day, to offset the dark cloud of her brother's suicide.

my grandma eileen was a wonderful woman. she had been a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, then once my grandpa came back from world war 2 (he helped develop radar and, upon his return, started a hugely successful radio shack franchise in albert lea, minnesota), she became a sunday school teacher. i remember going to sunday school with her whenever we visited them in minnesota, and those might be the only positive church experiences i remember. we would sing "i'm unique and unrepeatable!" and i never quite understood the lyrics, so i would sing "i'm unique and i'm repeatable!" we always did the dishes together, and she would paint with me and read with me, and she'd always lay on the couch just-so and i would snuggle up in the space between her curled legs and her body and she would read to me. she wrote a little story about a pink elephant and painted illustrations for it and it is still one of my absolute most treasured memories. i don't remember the plot but i remember the elephant, and it calms me down just to picture it.

i was in sixth grade, and it was a couple of days before my birthday. my grandma had been on a vacation in texas with my grandpa johnny, and all of a sudden we got a call that she was in the hospital and she had cancer. no one knew she was sick, and she went really quickly. i remember trying to talk to her on the phone from oregon, and i could barely understand what she was saying. i felt terrible - i couldn't think of anything to say, i felt like i was a horrible person for not being able to understand her at a time when it was so important . i didn't cry for a long time, and i felt bad about that, too. the day before my birthday, it looked like she was about to die and my dad was on his way to texas to see her one last time and play polkas with his brother in her hospital room. i was sitting on the couch and finally i just burst into tears. i felt so selfish because the only reason i was crying was that i didn't want her to die on my birthday, i didn't want to have to remember something so sad every time i thought about the day i was born. i was barely able to choke the words out when my mom asked me what was wrong, and she just sat and held me for an hour. my grandma died the day after my birthday, and every march 20th i remember how much i miss her, while every march 19th i am thankful that she was so strong to hold out just for me (because in my personal mythology, that's how it happened).

my heart goes out to kelly's children, friends, and family.

tis the season

2004-12-24T14:55:00.000-08:00

happy chanakwanzasolstichrist, everyone!

arcade fire + wilco = 2004

2004-12-23T04:37:00.000-08:00

i was going to post something about the best music of 2004, since apparently pitchfork making a list begins list-season, but i realized i hadn't paid nearly enough attention to new music this year (because of being broke and without broadband for much of it) and so i will only say that i loved the new wilco and the arcade fire the best. they are the best albums of 2004 as far as i am concerned.

and since i should actually have some content, i will remind you of achewood, still the best webcomic around. remember when it got kind of unfunny because of the ray-becoming-popular-recording-artist storyline? it's done doing that now, and there's more roast beef. also, the character blogs are icing on the cake. today's best quote: "OH I AM YOUR MOM AND I JUST TOOK YOU TO SCHOOL IN THE CAR OF PAIN. SAY IT"

drunken quote

2004-12-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

"why, of course! tragic beauty is always invited!"

my seven jeopardy categories

2004-12-15T08:12:00.000-08:00

1. super mario brothers 3
2. george w. bush is a douchebag
3. smoking
4. they might be giants
5. u.s. government
6. financial irresponsibility
7. metafilter

how dare you?

2004-12-10T15:22:00.000-08:00

whee, i'm currently involved in a flamewar with the author of this shitty article. i thought i'd share it with all of you.

my email to him:
"'Most of the mainstream media has opposed the war from the beginning. They do everything they can do to destroy the morale of the American people and the military. The ultimate result of their efforts will be that more people will die.'

Unbelievable. You believe that more people will die because the media asks questions like these? You think asking tough questions only "destroys morale"? You apparently didn't see the response of the other soldiers in the theater with Rumsfeld. The place erupted into cheers. Attitudes like yours are as much a threat to a free society as institutions like the Taliban. Without the freedom to ask the tough questions of our administration, demoocracy doesn't work."

his reply:
"Yes, morale is correlated to casualties. That you do not know this indicates your ignorance.

Yes encouraging the enemy does cause more people to die. If you cannot understand that then you are the threat to democracy.

Just because you hate Bush does not mean no one can question your motives. Nor does it mean that it mean that you can say or do anything you want.

I have demonstrated that the answer to the reporter's question - it was not the soldier's - was already available. This question was done purely to make Rumsfeld look like a fool and to advance the reporter's career. Exploiting a soldier for purely personal reasons is unconscionable.

Unfortunately, hate-filled, totalitarian people like you are determined to destroy anyone or anybody that does not think as you."

i thought i'd alert all of you to what a hate-filled, totalitarian person i am. also, i thought i'd share michael tremoglie's hate-filled totalitarian email address, just in case anyone else found his editorializing in a news story as offensive as i did.

manic monday & some crazy talk

2004-12-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

woke up feeling the urge today, woke up with everything on my mind and nothing to do about it. woke up thinking about people. woke up thinking about love. woke up thinking about expression. i have these days, and i am thankful for them even though i should be wary, i should be ashamed, i should be more careful of my thoughts. being bipolar and staying functional without meds requires a staggering (and unattainable) amount of self-awareness and self-censorship. some days i can't do it.

i listened to a girl on the bus tell a stranger about her suicide attempt, her abusive boyfriend, her struggles with the oregon welfare system, her friend's suicide. i felt so strange listening in, though i had no choice in the closed system of the bus, and i pictured a me that would have the strength to tell strangers about my life and have faith that they would understand my version of human experience. there is a paradox there - i feel that when other people speak about themselves it is a strength, and when i do it it's a weakness. i have mentally painted myself into a box, in a way - to speak of my struggle is weakness, to hide in its anonymity is weakness. i have so many abstract expectations for myself and i am so bad at translating those abstracts into concrete actions in order to satisfy myself, so i feel like i am constantly underperforming, always neglecting to do that Something that would make me feel like i've lived up to my own promises.

today, i am supposed to be finishing a portfolio for this freshman class. it's like if there had been a class in high school dedicated only to passing the CIM - that's what this class is. it's remedial jokework and while i like some of the people in the class and i like the professor a lot, i can't take it seriously and it's certainly not something that will satisfy that Drive, the old Urge, even though objectively if i just hunker down and do it it will help my grade and my standing and my ability to do other things that will allow me to Get There. i know that, but my heart isn't in it, and i know i won't get it done, at least not today. i'll put it off and email my professor and make up some more lame excuses and i'll feel bad about it for a week. because it's the academic equivalent of eating peeps on easter. because it's like reading harry potter books to kill time. because it's like watching seinfeld reruns. except that all of those things are pleasant, where this is pulling teeth for no emotional reward.

and that's how i feel about most things in my life - they are important to my continued ability to control my life and meet goals eventually, but they don't Satisfy The Urge so i don't do them until it's basically too late. like paying bills, like cleaning my house, like doing assignments where i know i already have the skills they're trying to teach. i'm terrible at playing by the rules, and i go through these cycles, as some of you have seen, where everything that doesn't satisfy that Urge is left by the wayside and i cease to see the long-term importance of such mundanities.

i wish i could better characterize the drive i'm talking about. it's not success, it's not getting an A, it's not getting paid well - it's entirely internal and very hard to even think about, much less talk about and define. i should look at the things which do satisfy it -- writing papers, learning new things, getting outraged about politics, making collages, making webpages, writing in general, playing guitar, having meaningful conversations with people i care about, doting on my cat, etc. i know i am beginning to cycle when that urge, which as i look at the list is largely creative and focused around Ideas and Connections, completely takes over my life and i am unmotivated and basically unable to do those things that need to be done but do not satisfy that drive. if i'm really far into it, i see those responsibilities that don't do anything for me, that don't relieve the unbearable pressure, as fascist tools used to keep me in line, as purposeful roadblocks to my peace. so those are the times when i end up unemployed, living at home, reading voraciously, making collages, writing long diatribes, making webpages for no reason, participating at metafilter, smoking cartons of cigarettes, getting frustrated with everyone around me because they won't give themselves over to the Connection that should be paramount in any conversation between people. i become exhausting to be around because i am not satisfied unless i am looking into your soul and you are looking into mine.

the cycle is complete when i realize that, rather than wanting external validation for my existence, i'm looking for something that will dissolve my Self. the only way i can really describe that is through allusion to the Evangelion series - i want instrumentality and i want it now. i reach the end of the cycle when i find myself wishing every single moment that i could just stop being Me and you could stop being You, that the invisible wall (AT field) could be dissolved and real Connection would be possible. which is essentially wishing for death.

i believe that everyone feels these things to some extent - nobody feels emotionally satisfied after they pay the bills or whatever - and most of the time the Urge is just a subtle underpinning of the things i do in my life. but sometimes it spirals out of my control and the only motor i have to get through my life is the hope of True Absolute Connection, which is impossible. i can get close but i can never, ever get There. and neither can you.

the perverse thing about mental illness that very few people like to talk about is that you get addicted to that drive, you get addicted to feeling the way you do, and even though i objectively know that being crazy is an enormous hindrance to my ability to live in society, i like feeling this way, i love feeling overwhelmed, and somehow i even like being depressed. my mental illness is self-justifying - i feel like those yearnings i become overwhelmed by are actually the underpinnings of existence, the only things that make life worth living - and so i value my mental illness above all else, i feel like that's what makes me who i am, that the drive to get rid of my Self is the only thing that characterizes me in this existence. it is so insidious in its importance to my belief and value system that i have absolutely no idea how i would function as a human being without it.

so there's a snapshot into how i'm thinking today. if i could turn comments off for this post, i might do it. no worrying about me allowed.

on torture

2004-12-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

"We certainly don't think it's torture," General Myers said before delivering a speech to the Economic Club of Indianapolis, according to the Web site of The Indianapolis Star. "Let's not forget the kind of people we have down there," he said. "These are the people that don't know any moral values."

the red cross is headed to washington to press the bush administration on its "interrogation tactics" at guantanamo bay. rumsfeld is facing war crimes prosecution in germany. lawyers in canada plan to file war crimes charges against president bush while he visits the country.

here are some detainee accounts of the treatment they received in u.s. custody. these things are happening in my name and in your name. i am glad to see people shedding some light on an issue that has been largely forgotten (especially in the campaign) since abu ghraib.

lists

2004-11-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

because i love when other people post lists.

five people i dislike at my school

history class morrissey
blonde repetitious american-dream believer
girl whose parents are conservatives
modest mouse hater
rhetoric-spewing liberal

three names my parents have said they could have given me

dieter
mergatroyd
shannon

five names i have said i would give my children and why

zero: loved the smashing pumpkins
fuck: just to watch people come up with nicknames
morgan: loved that character in the sword of shannara
jay: never met a jay that wasn't awesome; would also like child's life to mirror that of jay gatsby
leaf or peace: because i would hate to see self-indulgent hippie names die out in future generations

forgetful

2004-11-29T00:14:00.000-08:00

ah, with another forgotten assignment, another long night begins.

i had a pretty good thanksgiving. did you? i went with will to his parents' place in the dalles. it was good but i was horribly unproductive all weekend and am regretting my numerous efforts at wasting time, including trivial pursuit and watching the end of ice age while waiting for the simpsons to start. so it looks like i'll be up late yet again, much to my chagrin (but not surprise).

hooray the blazers beat the nets today!

a reminder from clearchannel

2004-11-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

here's another horrifying billboard for y'all.

class warfare and the american dream

2004-11-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

i just had a relatively interesting discussion with my (mostly silly) freshman inquiry class. we have been reading about charles darwin and emily dickinson, most notably their approaches to life and their backgrounds. so today i had to ask The Discussion Question, and i mostly pointed out that both of them came from very rich, high-status families, and their work marginalized them to a certain extent. i pointed out that their brilliance could almost never have been achieved without the background of means that they came from. in 19th century new england, emily dickinson absolutely could never have lived alone and unmarried, withdrawn from society (thus enabling her to write wonderful poetry) unless she came from a family of means that was willing to take care of her worldly needs. darwin, similarly, was just a regular adequate student, but given the opportunity to travel the world, he developed a theory of amazing impact on society.

these people were both marginalized for the way they lived or the radical quality of their work, and my hypothesis is that, without the independent wealth that benefited them, they would not have had the freedom to push the envelope of society standards.

so then my class got into an argument about whether or not the American Dream still applies in today's society, which is great because it's a subject i've been wondering about for like, 5 years now. some people had really interesting comments to make - how it's not even so much that you can't get ahead "if you really try", but that society discourages you from doing that by sending the implicit message, over and over, that you probably won't succeed in changing your status significantly. these days, going to college doesn't really get you "ahead" in any way - it is more like someone who doesn't go to college is instantly marginalized because so many people have college degrees. which, by the way, is total bullshit. college used to be a vehicle for social mobility, and now it seems to be simply a benchmark for success (i.e. being able to send your kids to college).

what really amazed me, though, were the number of students who continued to parrot the lessons they learned in fucking kindergarten - "if you work hard, you will succeed! rah rah AMERICA FUCK YEAH!" and it surprised me. it reminded me of a study i saw somewhere that found most americans - no matter what social stratum they actually occupy - think that they're simply "middle class". people who are high-upper-middle class think that they're average; people who are just a family illness above the poverty line also think that they're average. one of the basic tenets of knowing anything about your environment is knowing exactly where you stand in it at all times. when i walk into a room, i orient myself to know exactly where i fit into the room and where i am headed. people don't do that within overall society. they know where they fit in their communities, but when they look at the whole country, about 70% of them say "i am middle class and an ideological moderate". what makes people so oblivious to society around them? is it something imposed from without, some social conditioning that keeps us happy knowing about our little communities? or is it some more innate facet of humanity that, if we concerned ourselves with our place in the state, the country, the world, we would be overwhelmed?

i have no idea why this is, and to be honest, i have no idea where i would fall on the class ranks either - probably lower-middle class, but for all i know, i'm simply lower-class. this lack of class consciousness in america - even in diehard liberals like myself - leads people to sometimes ignore things that go on around them. for example, the person who would actually qualify as "upper middle class" thinks of themselves as middle class, and thus every news report they see on economic differences is moved down a notch. when someone mentions "the middle class" and intends to mean people a couple of steps below this person on the social ladder, the person in question, assuming themselves middle class, assumes that their problems are the problems of the middle class, rather than the problems of the upper class. this moves everything a few notches down the ladder in that person's perception, if that makes sense, and makes everything seem far less stratified than it actually is.

also, people who are lower class and believe themselves to be middle class are faced with many challenges as well. believing yourself to be part of an economic group that you are actually too poor to qualify for leads you - and especially your kids - to expect a lot more from life than you can actually give them. people know their own finances, and don't expect that they can buy a new big-screen tv, but they expect other things from middle class status - college education, a decent job, and opportunities - all of which are things increasingly denied the lower-middle class people who still believe that they can get ahead in life because they don't have an accurate perception of their own place in society. they have no class consciousness.

i went to crescent valley, a really rich and high-achieving high school in corvallis. i was in the corvallis high district, but chose to go to CV because i thought i would get a better education there. i'm not sure if i did, though i'm QUITE happy with the education i got in high school, but i know that it also made me think really highly of myself to be around people of means and ability all the time. here were kids i knew going to harvard - maybe i could go too! stuff like that. and i think that throughout my time in high school, i thought that my options in life were wide open. i could achieve whatever my heart desired. flash forward a few years, and i know that isn't true. i am not sure how much of my expectations were shaped by the school and my fellow students and how much were shaped by my personal ambitions, but i know that there were kids surrounded by the "you can do whatever you want" claptrap who got shot down and had to reassess what they actually could achieve within their means.

if i had felt any kind of class consciousness while i was at CV, i think i would have been less likely to try to achieve great things, but i also would have been less disappointed when i found out that all things are not equal. i'm not sure if this all makes sense, and i have to go to politics class now, but i wonder if the lack of class consciousness in america is part of what keeps people from realizing how inequitable the system is - and to compensate for their blind belief that america is a meritocracy, whenever they fail, they blame themselves. instead of the credit card companies or the government for not providing enough of a safety net and opportunity to better yourself. social mobility these days can only be achieved by winning a reality show, and i think that's why people like them so goddamn much.

-edit: i watched the frontline special on credit cards last night and i just now made the connection that maybe, just maybe, people feel like they're "middle class" because they can afford, through credit, to live beyond their means and artificially occupy a higher stratum of society. just another part of the overwhelming evil perpetrated by credit cards.

2004-11-22T22:22:00.000-08:00

click on that picture. as far as i can tell it's legitimate. it was paid for by clearchannel.

shit. i'll see y'all in room 101, kids! anyone want some gin? it's the drink of the proletariat!

angry and jittery

2004-11-22T09:45:00.000-08:00

ugh, i am having a horrible day so far and for no apparent reason. i'm feeling incredibly pissy this morning and i hope i can get over it quickly.

okay, i have a question that may make me look like a jackass. is it wrong for me to be mortally offended (and really hurt) at numerous suggestions from people that i go to community college because i can't afford PSU? it is really hurting my feelings to no end, and i'm not sure if it's because i'm an elitist bastard or if it's because i already feel SO unchallenged by PSU that going to community college would drive me insane. am i missing something here? i mean, i don't want to get angry with these people who tell me to do it, i know they mean well, but i find i can't help feeling like it's an indictment against my mental capabilities. perhaps if i hadn't started at a private college i wouldn't have this prejudice, but i'm trying to think my way through it and i can't seem to make it very far without having to reevaluate my whole identity, which is based this whole elitist "well-regarded private schools are the only way to get an education that befits you" paradigm. i've had to stuff that in my hat going to PSU, and now i find that i can't even afford this and may have to actually take a step down. this is hurting my already-fragile intellectual self-esteem.

i guess what's really irritating is that when i say "i'm planning on applying to reed college, actually", i get this reaction like i'm digging myself into a hole and/or thinking too highly of myself. i don't know if that is a reaction against me or against reed, or even just my skewed perception of that reaction, but i'm really having a tougher time dealing with the reactions i've gotten from people than dealing with the actual financial disappointment (though that fucking kills me too). it all just makes me want to cry, honestly.

so yeah. tough day, tough week, tough month. my internal monologue is trying to say "tough shit, buck up and deal with it" but i'm just so tired, and i'm so sick getting my hopes up and 3 months later getting dashed on the rocks. i know it won't always be this way and i know i have a million things to be thankful for, but the only options i can seem to see for framing this whole situation in my mind are "i am too stupid/lazy/irresponsible/etc to get anything done on my own and to effect the change i desire", or "i am persecuted because the whole world is out to get me because i don't have any money and i don't have the record i feel i deserve". i can't find a balance between self-flagellation and arrogance.

i am not asking for flattery or praise or anything like that - i am not fishing - and i know that i'm being quite melodramatic (it comes with the bipolar territory, sorry guys) but i am really desperate for another perspective because both of my perceived options are eating me alive. i vacillate between the two and it's way too close to rapid-cycling manic depression for my comfort. either i am the shit of the world or i am the king, and for once i'd like to find a coping mechanism that doesn't require me to believe that i'm either of those.

best kids tv show ever

2004-11-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

check this out! it's a clip from a (presumably british) kids tv show from the seventies. fucking hilarious.

welfare

2004-11-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

have any studies been done on the percentage of social service outlays that are spent on administration costs?

a poor person has to apply to numerous separate sources to receive aid: unemployment or welfare, food stamps, oregon health plan, section 8 housing, etc. not only does this make the process far more burdensome for someone seeking aid, it costs far, far more to process each separate application. this administration cost could be far better used feeding someone who can't afford food, or helping someone make rent, or, for the compassionate conservatives among you (and i'm sure there are just thousands who read my blog), on job training and placement. either way, spending this money on administration is not only a waste but it makes the process more daunting to people in need and increases the chances that they would not be aware of a type of aid from which they could greatly benefit.

what we need is to reform our social services in oregon so that there is simply an assistance department. a person would be able to go down to the assistance department with whatever financial information they have and apply for aid. all one would need to do is write a program that would parse the numbers against existing requirements and formulas. this program would then tell you what the person is eligible for (in all social services - each field office should be able to do this for federal, state and if applicable, county programs) and sign that person up for those programs. programs would be administered by one department only and would simply become different types of help you can get from the assistance department. only the assistance department, not twenty different agencies, would have to monitor the person's growth or earnings and presumably greater oversight power would hinder the ability to defraud the system. it would also give them more authority to require job training or to help a person get back into school to become competitive again. moreover, it would tie the experience of receiving any kind of aid more concretely to the idea of improving your position in life through whatever means possible, and it would hopefully make improvement easier to achieve.

this plan would not only make funds available to actually help people, but i think it would help people in need to feel like there are actually people who care about them, ready to help them go through the process in whatever way it legally can. preferably, people would be given a particular case worker who would monitor their progress. applicants could also be given a definitive guide to other sources of assistance, like shelters, rehabilitation, low-cost counseling, and missions in the area. instead of treating people in need as objects of passive pity, why not make the process itself more active, enouraging activity and engagement in them?

i would have a few fears about this plan. the service one gets at such a department would have to be SO different than at the DMV. it's hard to keep government bureaucracy friendly, but i believe it is important that these people NOT take the attitude that any potential applicant is "ripping off" the state (you know, the surly cashier attitude that implies you're ripping them off directly out of their paycheck). i would hope that these administrators would tend to build rapport with the applicants as advocates for their well-being, rather than dispensers of checks. perhaps if a person genuinely felt gratitude for the people administering it, rather than resentment at the faceless government, he or she would be more inspired to want to repay that gratitude and would feel more empowered to get a job.

this is all off the top of my head, thought of it today in politics. what do y'all think? should i just give up now and move to a socialist state? how much potential for abuse do you think there would be in this system?

crap

2004-11-19T15:04:00.000-08:00

i just lost the game.

every time you close your eyes (lies, lies)

2004-11-18T17:07:00.000-08:00

questioning authority, by david livingstone smith.

Yes, lying to oneself promotes psychological well-being. Research shows that depressed people deceive themselves less than those who are mentally healthy. Frankly, if we did not deceive ourselves, I think we would go mad from distress. For example, the simple fact that we're all going to die, that there are various people in the world out to get us, that a good deal of the world lives in unrelenting misery and hunger-it's all enough to drive everyone bonkers. Unless we are capable of shielding ourselves from that, we would be constantly disturbed. It's why we worry more about missing our favorite TV show than about a dirty bomb going off in a terrorist attack.

Also, self-deception relieves us from a sense that we're constantly living in contradiction. We each have a set of values that we constantly violate. When you're aware of transgressing one of those values that you hold dear, you tend to feel bad about yourself. In deceiving ourselves, we relieve ourselves of that burden, making life a lot easier and lot more pleasant for ourselves. It's quite wonderful.

for every ten minutes of conversation, there are an average of three lies told.

the puritan dilemma

2004-11-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

the puritan dilemma, by edmund s. morgan, seems quite appropriate for the post-election questions being raised in liberal circles. in essence, the dilemma for john winthrop, the major founder of the massachusetts puritan colony, was "how do i strive to be a good and godly person without separating myself entirely from the evil world?" winthrop struggles heavily against separatism in this book, and it's a struggle i can't help but relate to right now. while winthrop is by no means a great american hero (unless you're vehemently anti-witch), i get the general impression that he was like the gary bauer or alan keyes (legislate against gays and they will go to hell) to greater puritanism's jim phelps (kill gays and they will go to hell a lot faster). gary bauer is still a really sucky person to be, but i would still be quite interested in what keeps gary from becoming jim phelps. if that metaphor makes sense.

anyway, the separatism element is what really intrigues me about the book - what choices a person has when they don't believe in or condone their surrounding political/religious climate in any way, and yet are bound by a sense of duty (for winthrop, it was christian duty to help those in need of salvation and a command from God to continue to live in the world, because to not do so would be to reject God's gift of life on earth; for liberals, i suppose it boils down to wanting to help our fellow americans* or some sappy thing) to remain in the environment that we disagree with. because we feel the environment is toxic, we also believe that we have a responsibility to at least stick around and try to fix it, simply because if we really care so much about what happens to the poor in this country, how could we ever think of just leaving them to the wolves? leaving politically defenseless people to fend for themselves in this clusterfuck? that would be just as wrong as allowing them to live in such misery in the first place.

for winthrop, the solution to the problem of separatism was the american colonies. he was still a subject of home sweet england, so he wasn't "abandoning" his neighbors and countrymen; in fact, massachusetts was one of the first colonies to be a success from the very start because they imported whole families, a whole population, to colonize the land. spanish and french colonists, horrible and culture-raping as they were, only sent influential or enterprising single men to colonize new lands. as a result, ties between those colonies and the mother country were "cemented" by familial relations (for example, the 60% mestizo population in south america following spanish cultural invasion) which tended to achieve at least some token blending of cultures. american colonists, by contrast, imported their whole families, their whole cultural paradigm, to these great and holy shores, and they came over with the undeniable air of a group who is OWED this land, who is OWED the right to be free from indian "insurgency", and is OWED every single thing they got in england.

anyway, back to winthrop. he and some puritan backers were able to charter land to create a haven for "God's People", and, having been a minor legislator in england, winthrop was granted an almost exclusive license on government control of the new colony of massachusetts, but he chose to delegate that power to the people he aimed to control through the overwhelming police power vested in the church. he set up democratic elections and abdicated much of the power granted to him to a popularly elected legislature (subordinate to church officials), planting seeds for the town hall meetings that would serve massachusetts until the english revoked their right to hold such meetings as part of the intolerable (or coercive) acts.

he managed to silence and exile roger williams, co-founder of rhode island who argued that american colonists' treatment of the indian population was not godly at all; he managed to exile anne hutchinson, a headstrong woman with an unmatched mind for religious rhetoric and debate but also a woman who believed that god spoke through her (heresy in winthrop's eyes). i believe anne's husband, thomas, went on to found new hampshire. in other words, he gave away much of his political power but retained his personal power over the agenda of the church, which in turn had enormous influence over acts of governance. church magistrates made most of the important decisions; the popular assembly he brought into being only had the power to say no to legislation from the magistrates, and they had to have the support of magistrates to pass any legislation on their own behalf.

anyway, what is interesting to me about all of this is that by trying to strike a rare compromise between the side that wants to separate and the side that wants to stay and slog it out, winthrop seems to have stumbled on the building blocks of the very compromises that make our government what it is: federalism balanced with republicanism, popular election of representatives (and a strong bill of rights) balanced with the electoral college (and the legislature's appointment of senators until 1913) kept the elite from controlling every aspect of government, but also kept the masses from overindulging their more separatist, partisan, argumentative impulses for the sake of society as a whole.

i'm not sure exactly what my conclusion should be from all of this in relation to the struggle that liberals face right now; on one hand, if we care about the poor and the disenfranchised at all we cannot just leave them to lose their jobs and have no safety net nor political clout. if we try and fail, then at least we tried. but if we abandon ship, every single thought i have about human rights being fundamentally important would become unbelievably hypocritical.

i suppose i'm wondering if there is any compromise for us, like there was for john winthrop. he left his homeland (and effectively its government) behind and remained an english subject until the revolution, giving him a chance to not only create a new life for himself and his followers in the colonies, but to found a haven for like-minded folk back in england to consider as an alternative to the catholic wickedness they saw in the crown's religious waver. is there any way we could achieve that effect - governed separately from the US government but without malice towards it, without renouncing the people we love, with open borders to US citizens and a safety net for everyone?

or would the separatism get the best of us? would we resent people who stayed with the US and suddenly needed the safety net we would provide? i guess that's the kind of moral issue i'm really worried about in the liberal left. are we willing to accept these people back into our ranks, whether we're separate from the US or not, once they really start to feel the burn and remember why we need social services? or do my fellow liberals just say "fuck them"? truthfully, i have no idea where i would stand on that. i have no answers, but i would like to thank you for reading this long, if anyone actually did. tell me if you finished it, i'm curious.

*note: not that conservatives do not want to help their fellow man. i don't believe (yet) that the majority of conservatives - even conservative politicians - just flat-out think poor people can "rot in their section 8 housing and let them eat mcdonald's, those lazy fucks". but they believe in a different kind of democracy than social liberals; conservatives tend to believe in procedural democracy leading to equality of opportunity, whereas liberals tend to believe in substantive democracy leading to equality of outcome. i still think liberals are right, but sadly there are more pithy idioms infused with the "teach a man to fish blah blah" equality of opportunity message than there are "HELP THE FUCKING POOR YOU GREEDY FUCK" idioms. unless you, say, read the new testament. which, these days, apparently people just look at for anti-homosexual references. much like children look up dirty words in the dictionary.

quickie

2004-11-17T14:14:00.000-08:00

the greatest funeral ever.
[you should still read my post below, even though i have posted a newer one since then]

accelerando

2004-11-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

i do not want to be a liberal fearmonger, but i have quite a laundry list of news stories that scare the living shit out of me right now, and i'd like to share it with you.

spring, texas pilots a program that would track all students with RFID technology, allowing them to be located at all times. [nyt, if you don't want to register you can use username:bridgietherease/pwd:newyorktimes]
diebold wins the contract to safeguard the constitution. i thought this was just a metaphor, but apparently it's fact!
students in a talent show are investigated by the secret service for performing "masters of war" by bob dylan. why aren't the secret service investigating pearl jam? they played this the night of the republican national convention on david letterman.
high school bans "cross-dressing day", which had been a tradition during homecoming. this isn't so disturbing in and of itself, but the increasing frequency with which i see stories like this is starting to freak me out. the range of things that people consider part of "the gay agenda" is expanding like crazy because these people are BATSHIT.
privatization of public higher education institutions [via travis] i am certainly feeling the effects of this one. not only can't i afford to go to school, they won't give me loans or grants and i have to drop out after the end of this term. just found out this weekend. i'm hiding that in here so that i don't have to get too melodramatic about it, but suffice it to say i'm certainly feeling melodramatic. another symptom of this privatization is how psu has privatized our financial aid and student id cards to a company called higher one. the new id card functions as a debit card; by default, your financial aid is deposited into the higher one account, which has 75% higher fees than local banks and absolutely no benefits. higher one has only two atms on the west coast (both of them on psu campus), no local branches (only an 800 number that operates on eastern business hours), and charges 50 cents for every pin transaction. they entered into this contract without telling students and now my student records are more tied to my credit than ever before. activation of the card is mandatory, regardless of your financial aid status. thanks, guys!
new laws: mandatory mental health screening in america. this is the scariest thing i've seen out of bush so far, as far as civil liberties are concerned. for children, this screening will be done in schools and will not only follow them as part of their permanent record, but will also be attached to all of their medical files. many schools have policies that if a child is diagnosed ADHD, they won't let that kid back into school until he's medicated. can anyone say BIG FUCKING PAYOFF for the drug companies? can anyone say big brother? i hate to invoke the 1984 lightly, but jesus christ, a computerized mandatory mental health screening?! i cannot believe this is happening to my country.

i think i am so concerned with politics lately because it's something that i can care about very easily. these days, in most other areas of my life, it takes concerted effort to care at all about much of anything. my pet theory: i look for things to immerse myself in because it is a way for me to drown out my Self; to put it into a skewed context that allows me to not only ignore everything going on in my own life, but to dissolve myself into it and no longer feel like there is anything else going on in my own life. i am not sure if this is very normal, and is the sort of thing that makes drinking so enjoyable for everyone, or if this sort of thing would get me tagged as "needs medication" in my upcoming Mandatory Mental Health Screening. either way, that's my explanation for all the political blather i've been spewing lately. i believe they call it "escapism", although i wish there was a term for it that captured the all-consuming element of it as well.

"smart" missiles vs. hypermissiles

2004-11-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

are you disturbed by the idea that america's defense system would take upwards of 24 hours to bomb the living shit out of things? worry no more, and make that less than two hours! one great quote: "If someone is messing with us - or Britain - from far away, we could whack them straight away!"

and an example of how this new technology will be used: "Current cruise missile have to be carried on a B52 bomber. That involves planning and takes at least 24 hours. The military want a quick solution, so if they knew bin Laden was sipping coffee at a cafe they could get a bomb on target in two hours." GREAT! just great! i'm so glad we can bomb cafes at the drop of a hat! please, barista! keep that man drinking coffee for the next two hours so that we can decimate your whole neighborhood! it's for FREEDOM!

why why WHY will someone explain to me WHY america thinks it can continue building up incredible military might and yet somehow continue to have the right to stop any other countries from developing weapons? you know, the weapons that they might feel are necessary to protect themselves from, say, HYPERMISSILES?

moreover, i sure could have used some of that hypermissile money to continue attending college, but i guess i'll just have to show some RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM* thanks to the bush administration's LAISSEZ-FAIRE domestic policy!

*note: rugged individualism doctrine applies only to nation's poor; ruling elite need not apply

breaking news! heroes sell out!

2004-11-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

oh man. did anyone else see modest mouse on saturday night live last night? i was deeply saddened. they had backup singers. supershort guitar solos. and i don't think isaac brock touched his trademark pedals more than once in the whole two songs. something about the backup singers killed me the most - it looked like they paid the cast of friends to come yell "we all float on ok" at the top of their nice-haircut-having, cocktail dress-wearing, shoe-shining lungs.

a sad day for me. despite being very young, this kind of thing makes me feel SO OLD.

just because i wanted to...

2004-11-12T19:22:00.000-08:00

...i switched to one of the basic blogger templates. i was tired of such a small space to write in, as i've become more and more predisposed to post lengthy rants here. i like the white. i like the blankness. maybe i'll come up with something better soon, but for now, tabula rasa, baby.

2004-11-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

america! fuck yeah!
(just because it's stuck in my head)

2004-11-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

just for kerne, and anyone else who loves the rss feed:

it took me a little while because i guess when i switched servers, i didn't change the permissions on my xml file. of course, it took hours of dicking around to figure that out, but now it is done, and now i am more familiar with sweet, sweet syndication. hooray for all!

today's mission: write an article about the disenfranchisement of felons; make a mix to psych me up when i get scared of the world (i.e. a lot of smiths songs).

wilco was SO GREAT last night. they closed with "don't fear the reaper". jeff tweedy looks like he's about to keel over and die, but he seemed much happier than i'd seen him before. he skipped around the stage during hummingbird, for god's sake. and he didn't snarl or grimace once!

2004-11-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

whew. i seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.

i've been sick for a couple of weeks, i just moved back in with my mom, and i'm still trying to absorb the utter horror of the elections last week. as much as i would love to leave the country, i don't think it would be very good for me, as i feel like i'm socially awkward enough without language and culture barriers. i also don't like the idea that, wherever i go, i wouldn't really have a political voice. because having a political voice is one of the illusions i still cling to in this country, i'm not sure i could give it up very easily. it's a very effective way for me to obliterate my self; if i'm more concerned with the well-being of everyone, i don't have to be concerned with my own. so i'm loathe to give up on it as a coping mechanism, more than anything.

but i still don't know what to do to harness all the anger i feel over all of this. i wish there was a secession movement that i could get behind, but it seems like all that's left in portland is depression and "protest with a permit", which clearly has almost no impact on anything except alienating those "moderate" voters we're supposed to kowtow to. so does anyone have any ideas? what are you all doing to handle this?

life for me (and for everyone, i'm sure) continues to be a series of changes i didn't really ask for but have to deal with all the same. i feel like i've been in a continual state of transition since march, and i hope that i can level out soon and feel more secure and at home in my "new life".

2004-11-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

oh. my. god.

i don't know if i've ever been so ashamed to be an american. not to mention an oregonian. oregon, for those of you not in this great state, just banned gay marriage and eliminated land use restrictions for property owners who would be "economically hurt" by any land regulations that have been put into effect since they bought their property. meaning that as long as your family is old and white and has owned property for awhile, either the government can compensate you for whatever economic "loss" you've "incurred as a result of not being able to, say, sell your property to walmart, or they can choose to just let you build the walmart, no matter where your property is located. of course, since oregon government doesn't even have enough money to keep a full school year, property owners can now do basically whatever was legal at the time they bought the property.

anyway, this is an amazing victory for white protestants. i hope they are relishing it. i plan to protest tonight in pioneer square. not necessarily because i believe the election wasn't fair (though the differential between exit polls and actual votes bears some investigation), but because i want to show bush and every single one of those fucking flyover states (and no, i don't care about alienating them from the democrats - fuck the democrats) exactly what i think of their hypocritical legislated morality AT THE SAME TIME as they support legislated brutality to people who aren't as fucking WHITE and CHRISTIAN as them.

i'm too depressed to burn the city down, but i think if there were a few other people starting shit, i would probably join them.

the scariest thing i saw last night was on cnn - they had a couple of al-jazeera correspondents talking about how al-quaeda was possibly waiting for the election to see if the american people were really "innocent" in the imperialistic bullshit bush has perpetrated. the way they were talking, 9/11 was supposed to be a wake-up call to america to more closely examine the actions of its leaders.

well, they were saying that since we just gave bush a mandate, terrorists are less likely to think that the american people as a whole are innocent. we are now aiding and abetting the horrible actions of our government and, with a republican house, senate, and a soon to be neoconservative supreme court, the opposition has lost much of its voice. TOM FUCKING DASCHLE lost, for god's sake. we barely have the representation necessary in the senate to continue a filibuster on justice appointments, and since so many democrats are WEAK SPINELESS BASTARDS, god knows a few of them will switch over after a couple hours of ted kennedy reading the phone book. fuck. the republicans basically have all the senate support they need to close debate on EVERYTHING, if they want. the second democrats become "obstructionist", all they'll have to do is talk a few red-state democrat senators into joining their call for cloture.

you know what would be wonderful? if canada granted some immigrational amnesty to people trying to leave the us. because i would be so gone it isn't even funny. i plan on spending the afternoon researching immigration alternatives. anyone who has any good ideas, let me know. i can't live in a fucking country where discrimination and aggression get mandates.

2004-11-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

wow. you should read the full text of osama bin laden's newest tape. i'm not sure if the whole text has been reported in the american media or not, but dollars to donuts it's been skewed one way or another.

man, reading that really made me want to cry, right here in the computer lab. i am so fucking tired of kerry and bush and everyone asserting that we must "hunt down and kill" the terrorists. no one in any position of power seems to understand that these terrorist actions are, at heart, political actions, and that in order to stop the terrorist actions, their political goals must be at least addressed. our government and the media repeatedly tell us that to even listen to the concerns of terrorists is to be unamerican, that they took thousands of innocent lives and therefore are not fit to live in this world.

well, at least 14,000 innocent civilians have been killed in iraq just in the last 2 years. is it unamerican to listen to our own government? (hint: yes.) the political message of the terrorist actions is, and i believe has always been, that america must stop its crusade against the muslim people, that america's arrogance and military might are not completely infallible, and to make the american people think about what their government does in their name. all of which americans have almost uniformly failed to think about when they consider terrorism and the 9/11 tragedy. this is not to say that i support the 9/11 killings, only that i do not support any killings. including those in iraq - the very same sorts of killings that lend credence to terrorist recruiters, that raise the ire of even moderates in islamic countries.

it makes me sick to my stomach to think that even john kerry, who seems to have a rich legacy of healing wounds and forging alliances (nicaragua & vietnam), is unwilling to even consider the political point that al-quaeda was trying to make. i hope that's mostly just election rhetoric. i wish that someone would consider for a moment the methods of political expression available to muslim people who disagree with american policy that interferes with (or takes) their lives. what, are they supposed to have a sit-in? maybe apply for a permit to protest? what else do we expect people to do when they are consistently targeted by american military might? they do not have any conventional methods of political expression or behavior at their disposal. no conventional action by foreigners, especially those not backed by a nation-state, will affect massive change in american foreign policy. if they want to have an impact, that leaves them with unconventional behavior, the ugliest (but also most desperate) of which is terrorism.

i know that this tape is propaganda, just the same as any george bush speech, and i know that bin laden's particular objectives are also politically charged to keep
islamic regimes like that in saudi arabia in power. i do not know enough about the regimes he supports to make a value judgment on them one way or another. if you believe in the unstoppable spread of democracy, you might be able to make an argument for our interventions. but didn't we take down a democracy in iran because we didn't like how they voted? how is that for fucking democracy? is the qu'ran an "unacceptable" constitution? who the fuck are we to tell them what their constitution should say? and how would america react if a mightier power came along and told us how our democracy should run? wouldn't we react by taking violent action because we love our country and our way of life?

it would all be pretty clean and easy to pin all of our arguments for war and regime change on human rights violations, which i think is the only way to justify the way we treat most of the rest of the world. clean and easy, that is, if we didn't violate human rights all the time. not only in other countries, where we kill civilians in order to "shock and awe" them, but in our own country. for example, america will not join the international court system because we would be prosecuted for human rights violations. not only could soldiers in wartime be prosecuted for violating human rights (abu ghraib, guantanamo bay, anyone?), but our own government could also be taken to task for the barbaric and racially & socioeconomically biased death penalty that somehow persists in our country.

until we wholeheartedly support and practice human rights in our own country, i don't think we will be able to justify going to war for the cause of human rights except in cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing. but hey, we're not invading sudan, right? apparently "weapons-related program activities" constitutes a human rights violation worth doing something about, whereas genocide in darfur is not important enough to spend american lives on. our priorities in this country are SO FAR UP OUR OWN ASSES that it's hard to see straight sometimes.

anyway, to sum up my "anti-american" sentiment: terrorists kill people. americans kill people. in order to make any sort of coherent policy, we must look at the reasons why both "sides" kill people. we kill people, apparently, to gain oil and political influence over the middle east and to support israel. they kill people to cripple and bankrupt america. they want to cripple america because it has crippled them and the way of life they would like to pursue, even if it is a fundamentalist regime. we justify killing them because they violate the human rights of civilians. america also violates human rights. until we 1) stop violating human rights, 2) consider the political aims and human reasons that people join terrorist movements, and 3) drastically change our foreign policy to stop imposing our "democratic" (and pro-american) will on people, we will have problems with terrorism. regardless of which candidate wins, and regardless of whether he manages to "hunt down and kill" osama bin laden.

all that said, have fun with election coverage! i feel a little dirty that i'm as excited as i am to watch the spectacular theater of american politics unfold before me, but i am quite excited, and even as i write about how fucked american foreign policy is, i still love america enough to watch the election with bated breath. i still love america enough to believe it will make some difference if kerry wins, even if that difference will only be in regard to domestic policy. hey, at least i might end up with health insurance.

2004-10-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

OOH OOH OOH

december 10th, portland, oregon, bossanova ballroom: the arcade fire & the weakerthans!!!

super sweet.

2004-10-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

things i currently hate with the passion of a million burning suns:

the psu financial aid office
The Homeland
the annual autumn cough&cold
powerpoint presentations
money
capitalism
phone calls about the election (two kerry calls within 20 minutes last night!)

come on, join in the hate! what is currently making you want to kill or cry?

2004-10-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

for anyone who missed jon stewart calling out the media on crossfire, you can find the streaming filehere. i recommend it, as ever, to all free-thinking peoples.

2004-10-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

it's been a rough weekend in its own way. i missed mac G on saturday because i woke up with a panic attack, just freaking out about having to go and talk to people about myself. it was really strange and yet familiar at the same time, and i am pretty pissed at myself about it but what can you do, you know? is it better to drop it or to show up crying and shaking and completely unable to speak to strangers? i need to start setting more realistic limits on myself for what i am able to do. i feel like i keep making commitments and then just running away from them, which is probably pretty true. in order to avoid doing that i need to be realistic about what i can take and how many new social situations i can deal with at a time. last week was really busy and social, i had a job interview to write for the rearguard (and i got the job!), i had a lot of group work going on in my freshman inquiry class, appointments with my professors, a midterm, thinking about where to live and how to do it ... and i got pretty overloaded, i think.

it's strange because, at least in the school world, i'm used to being able to handle whatever i can fit into my schedule. not so anymore - i need to be really careful with my mental energy because it goes a lot faster these days. know thyself, right? i'm working on the "limitations" portion of that.

once i managed to calm down about that and kind of stop beating myself up for it, i had an ok weekend. read a bunch about politics and the media, read the puritan dilemma (about john winthrop - guess who's related to him? john kerry!), watched the red sox get their asses handed to them last night (dude, 19-8. that is NOT a respectable baseball score), and will and i watched some more neon genesis evangelion, which i fervently recommend to all free-thinking peoples.

today is for schoolwork and dave eggers tonight, and i am going to do the things i can do and i am not going to worry so much about the rest of it because it just makes it worse. i wish i could put a chip in my brain that would actually prevent me from thinking about my responsibilities more than, say, two hours before i am supposed to do whatever it is i'm worried about. it would have an override option for writing papers and such, but it would generally make my life a lot easier. actually, if there was just a specific part of my brain that did all the worrying, and i could just actually remove that part, i would pledge my firstborn child to whoever could do the surgery.

2004-10-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

jon stewart absolutely hammers the guys on crossfire. i don't know if i've ever loved a media figure more.

2004-10-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

this thread is exactly why i love ask metafilter. this is a discussion of phrases or sentiments that aren't easily expressed in english. fascinating. also, ask.mefi now has an option allowing you to post questions anonymously! i think this is great and i expect a huge increase in questions about sex and other dirty things that people don't want their names on. hooray!

from that thread: in norwegian, limerence is translated as "pre-love" and implies the euphoria that goes with the beginning of falling in love. that is a GREAT concept. also norwegian, janteloven somehow implies the concept that no one should think that they're better than anyone else. i heart both language and limerence.

scott said something on his blog that i just noticed and would like to share with anyone that reads mine but does not read his (which may be as many as two people, since scott is one of the three or four people who still read mine anyway). scott says this: "Nothing is trite or cloying or childish if you sincerely mean it. Everyone should understand this. It casts a wide shadow, and must be believed, or else I will have no where to go." if everyone understood this, would it be easier to "remove the veil" (where "veil" is a symbol for the fundamental distance between persons no matter how intimate they are or have been)? or is the difficulty in expression itself more of a roadblock than the reception (or worries about the reception) of that expression?

anyone paying attention to all the election fraud the republicans are committing? there was a case at PSU this week where people were asking students to sign these cards that "turned out to be" (do people not look at what they fill out anymore?) voter registration cards which would automatically register them republican. see also issues in nevada where republican registrars were destroying reg cards for all non-republicans. boy, i hope the democrats can find a whole bunch of dead people to vote in this election!

2004-10-10T23:29:00.000-07:00

spent pretty much all weekend reading rick moody's memoir, the black veil. he is quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite authors. the neatest bit in this book so far (among a plethora of really, really neat bits) is the way he describes the distances between people as unalterable, the way he evokes the yearning left after nearly every conversation, always wanting more meaningful contact but unable to find any words to ask for it. this theme runs through the whole book (so far anyway) and it's a really fascinating thing to cogitate on for so long, even if it makes me real lonely.

so that's what i did this weekend. and now i'm tired and i want to go to sleep but i have to write a two page essay on My First Two Weeks In College, which makes me feel pretty old and disconnected, i gotta say. i am inordinately tempted to just Make Things Up, but i'm not feeling terribly creative and i fear that anything i made up would really just be depressing.

so i guess it's time to "humble up" and write this dumb thing. maybe tomorrow in class we'll get to make dioramas and recite poems from free to be you and me.

wait, that would actually kick ass.

2004-10-04T00:05:00.000-07:00

i was trying to go to the site for the magazine the economist and ended up here. alan greenspan's ego knows no bounds! he is a 1337 h4x0r with a vanity domain! anyway, this website pleases me in its simplicity. also, if you like simplicity and watched the presidential debates on thursday (or the subsequent daily show coverage), check out you forgot poland.

2004-10-02T00:44:00.000-07:00

ichiro did it!!!! i heart ichiro. he was "the most emotional [he's] ever gotten in [his] life" after breaking george sisler's 84-year record. this is even more amazing in light of the fact that during his playing time in japan, he had 1,278 hits, which is no small feat in and of itself. far be it from me to nostalgize sports, but it's pretty neat that baseball, one of the few truly american traditions, is so important to this man, and that competing (and, to use the parlance of our times, ownx0ring) among the best america has to offer is the most emotional thing he's ever experienced. i really wish i had cable so i could have seen the look on his face. i can't imagine how that victory felt, not even for a moment, but it's crystal clear that the tradition of baseball is incredibly important to him, and i'm ecstatic that he gets to take his place among the pantheon of greats. the sense of triumph has to be completely overwhelming. it's certainly my favorite sports story of the year*.

*for fair comparison, last year my favorite story was the dude in chicago (i think) that clubbed the sausage racer. jesus fucking christ that was the funniest thing i've ever seen on tv.

2004-10-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

if anyone missed the debate last night, there's a neat application here that will let you a) look at the full text, and b) search the debate text for specific terms. try "enemy" and "offense" or "mixed messages". after the debate, i watched pearl jam on david letterman. some of you may remember my harsh words and extended mockery of pearl jam in the past, but i was really impressed with them - they played masters of war by bob dylan. you should check out the lyrics. i find it pretty courageous that they got on tv and basically implied that 1) they want george bush to die soon, and 2) even jesus will never forgive him. i love it.

so while i was watching the daily show last night, i saw a really strange commercial for the center for consumer freedom, featuring the soup nazi from seinfeld telling fat people they couldn't eat anymore. i was really fucking confused, so i went to their website. it appears to "debunk" claims that fast food and soda make you fat, whine about "trial lawyers", and mock peta. there are warnings that there's a "prohibition resurgence" going on, and warns people that the evil government will soon put into effect a "fat tax" on high-calorie, high-fat foods. i googled it and found the disinfopedia entry on them. it turns out the center was started with philip morris money in order to lobby for fast food, soda, restaurants, alcohol companies, and tobacco companies. it's a front group for berman & co., a lobbying group that defended cancer-causing pesticides, opposed and lobbied against the americans with disabilities act, and paid newt gingrich $25,000 to teach a class at kennesaw state college that confirmed the claims of his own employment policy institute, a front group for service-industry employers. the EPI, for example run livingwage.com, a bitter affront to gainfully employed people who can't make enough to get by, calling the living wage a "welfare state mentality".

anyway, i just wanted anyone who sees those ads to understand where they are coming from and why they think you should get more indignant about the "food cops" that are apparently all around us.

2004-09-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

here's an article about antonin scalia's recent speech at harvard.

it's a short article, and you should read it even if you anticipate being bored by it, because i GUARANTEE there is a sentence in there that will make you spit out your soda because it is so hilarious. and i don't mean depressing-hilarious, which is quickly becoming my most practiced form of humor. just read it. tell me about your triple-take.

2004-09-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

a new album i love: arcade fire, funeral. it took me a few listens, as i am So Poor and couldn't purchase it but instead obtained it through Illicit Means, to understand the lyrics and therefore identify a little closer with it. this album sounds like a sweeping combination of most of the albums i've liked in the last five years. there are walkmen moments, unicorns moments, modest mouse moments, bjork moments, beatles moments, etc. and the guitars on a lot of the tracks sound like u2, which was hard for me to get over because, as some of you well know, i hate u2.

no matter what you say about how seminal they were, or how they used to be great. all i know is that they released discotheque, and i don't know if i've ever hated a song as much as i hate that song, and everyone's allowed at least one irrational music grudge, aren't they? so mine is u2. i know people who hate rem like i hate u2. they acknowledge that rem is important, that they changed alternative rock for the better, but they still hate rem. just like i hate u2: with a passion that burns as brightly as any sun.

i start school on monday. i'm taking us politics, us government, us history, and a freshman seminar on "meaning and madness at the margins". i'm really excited to be taking politics and government at such an important time (just as i was in ap government during the 2000 election), and i really hope it doesn't make me want to die all the time. because watching this election so closely really does kind of make me give up the will to live.

i mean, it's really hard to feel like a Member of Society when everything is so fucked up. i'm sure people have been experiencing this alienation for years and years and years (and on and on), but it doesn't make my personal alienation feel any less legitimate. for example, i was watching the daily show the other day (which usually makes me feel less alone in the world) and they had the director of the bush/cheney campaign as their guest. jon stewart, as always, is the Greatest Interviewer The Media (fake or real) Has, and pressed him on issues, actually interrupted him to say "what?!" when he said that the bush campaign has been "overwhelmingly positive", etc. but so then jon stewart makes a very plaintive comment about "hey, i sure wish we'd had a plan going into iraq, you know? that would have been really reassuring." and the republican asshole actually has the fucking nerve to say that "the human experience varies wildly, and it's very difficult to predict...", basically saying that the basic inconsistency of human behavior is A TOTALLY GOOD REASON for not having ANY IDEA what we're doing in ANOTHER COUNTRY that WE TOOK THE INITIATIVE to INVADE.

my head about exploded. jon stewart, ever my hero, simply said, "you're blowing my mind right now" and ended the interview. but honestly! not only that they think they can get away with that CRAP (imagine if bush had tried to float that in his speech at the u.n.!) (god, for all i know, he did) but that they think they can get away with it on the DAILY SHOW, for chrissake, with probably the most informed or at least most progressive audience of any fake or real news show, just makes me want to hide. they don't understand me, they don't even care to pretend that they understand me and what i want, they just keep smiling and refuse to acknowledge any weakness and, for some reason, THAT WORKS.

why do people love confidence so much? i hate confidence. i have no confidence. frankly, the whole thing makes me miss al gore, in a strange way. i related to him - he never seemed 100% sure that anything would work, that he could really get away with saying things he knew weren't true in their every nuance. i feel like that all the time. and i really think it's a trait i'd rather have in a leader than blustery self-congratulation. of course, it was nothing compared to clinton's brilliance (either as a leader or as a speaker, whichever you think is more appropriate, but you surely must agree that clinton was Brilliant in some form or another), but i related to it.

the reason that i get so scared for this country is that i see absolutely nothing of myself in the current administration. i feel like they are the exact antithesis to everything i am - not just in their unabashedly horrible policies and general lack of compassion for those in need, but in their very personalities. that's what takes this from the political to the personal realm for me. these people are alien invaders. they do not seem to share a single value or character trait with me. they might as well be money-making robots as far as i am concerned. and that's why sometimes this election keeps me up at night. because - and here's a bit of a secret - i'm not sure i relate to kerry at all either. john edwards is the lone hope in this whole charade, as far as i can tell, and all i can say is thank god for things like the daily show, or moveon (even if they are a bit ... too much for me), or dennis kucinich - for letting me feel even a little bit of a personal connection to politics in this country. because without that personal connection, people stop caring at all because it's all academic, and fuckheads like bush get elected. all they have to do is alienate us until we don't really feel like citizens of our own country and they feed on that very indifference.

don't let them win.

2004-08-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

this is, without question, my new favorite website. it's text only, but might not be safe for work. if i know anyone who still works, anyway.

2004-08-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

apparently, the folks over at the crass spectacle of the olympics want you to write them a request for permission before you link to their website. as a result, it seems that people are doing a bit of creative googlebombing.

the bucket o' cocks at the ioc clearly have absolutely no idea how the internet works - and there is absolutely no way something like this could be held up in court - and it just makes it clearer to me that all they care about is image and information control. fuck.

2004-08-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

i am home from winnesconsin, as greg so eloquently called it. i had a fairly good visit - a lot of strange or uncomfortable moments, and far more drama than i would have asked for, but i think it really did me a lot of good to go, so i have no regrets at all.

however, i am so so so glad to be home in my beautiful portland, where i see john kerry signs every five minutes, where egregious mall / shopping complexes are relegated to the suburbs, where there are hills and evergreens. it is lovely and i am so happy to be home.

i'm reading a book about jacques lacan right now, and it's rocking my little perspective. i don't really have the educational context to give any real analysis of it, but i think it's fascinating, if only metaphorically.

busy end of the week for me - i must get back into school by fall. this is my mission.

2004-08-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

i'm leaving for minnesota/wisconsin tomorrow night and, while there are many things i must do before i leave, still i sit here at my computer, trying to find some reason to keep doing these things that, for some reason, must be done.

perhaps the internet is not the place to look for inspiration.

i have been having a Very bad week, for reasons i can't even really explain. i suppose being broke and unemployed has something to do with it, but really, i've been plenty happy with absolutely nothing to do before. the only real advantage to all this downtime and deadness is that i have gotten a bit more on top of my application to psu, and hopefully i'll be taking classes (!) in the fall. it's strange - i've been out of school for more than two years now. where did those years go? eaten up working and loving people, mostly. those are the only two things i can really point to and say hey, that's what i've been doing all this time.

working was, of course, barely worthwhile, and only in the way that eating is worthwhile - it keeps you alive but goddamn, you have to do it again in a few hours anyway. i'm wondering if loving people is kind of the same deal (but in the best way-if that makes sense). in any case, i find it much more rewarding than eating or working or, apparently, getting into school or doing anything with my life.

i don't know. lately i've been trying to think of something, anything, that i could do to get away from America - not the country but the state of mind, the saturation, the mindfuckery that feels like it hits me every single day. is it worth it to live like this, constantly bombarded with How I Should Be and What I Should Buy, just so that i never have to worry about not being able to find a convenience store? just so that i can drive my car around and nothing is ever out of my reach unless i can't afford it?

it's a hell of a trade-off, america. but i don't know what else could please me. i suppose if i did, i'd be out of here like a shot. i know it is possible to live in america and live whatever kind of life i want to, but it seems like it's always such an effort - always having to actively reject the images i see on the street, on billboards, people in giant cars, etc. it seems like it's really hard to just ignore these things - one must either implicitly buy into all of it or reject it outright, and i don't have the energy anymore to do either.

anyway, just a little morning ranting for y'all. i hope everyone else is having better luck assimilating themselves into this culture than i am.

2004-08-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

apparently, many suvs are illegal for street driving in california! this intrigues me because it seems like a great way to get people to stop fucking driving those things. sometimes i'll sit and watch the cars go by my porch and sometimes not a single car goes by that could possibly get more than 20 miles to the gallon. if they enforced this shit, perhaps things could change.

oh wait, what am i talking about, the people who own those gigantor trucks are generally the ones with money and lawyers and a history of voting.

sometimes i wonder how people my age are going to justify bringing more kids into this world.

2004-08-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

this study claims that thinking about death makes a person more likely to choose a charismatic leader. you should read it. and then make sure you're thinking about "watching tv" when you vote.

2004-07-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

so um, i quit my job a little while ago. it was breaking my spirit, pig in a cage on antibiotics-stylee. so now i am looking for work. i have already been hired by the young voter project to go to bars and concerts and ask young people if they will sign a pledge to vote in the election. i am pretty psyched-up to do it, so psyched up apparently that i didn't even ask what i'd be paid for such a job. i start tomorrow night and it will be a little nervewracking for a little while, but will then probably be pretty neat.

what's interesting, though, is that even though all they do is sign people up to vote & make sure their registration's current (and call and remind them to vote and all that), they overtly endorse kerry. it took me a little while to decide if that seemed weird to me or not, and eventually i decided that pretending to have objectivity in a thing like that is not terrifically important as long as you perform the same services for people who say they want to vote for bush (which they do). so i have no more hesitations about it and am looking forward to haranguing non-voters.

i had high hopes for this office supply shipping job i had sort of applied for, but after my fourth (!) unfruitful trip there (some guy that was supposed to be there was never there, and his assistant said each time "ohmigod! i should have called you. i'm sorry! can you come back in two hours?" and i was on the bus today, going back in two hours isn't even enough bus time to get home and back. so then she FINALLY tells me that the position they want is really only working 12 to 2 on weekdays, and i'm guessing would scarcely pay more than 10 an hour. it would be impossible for me to get along like that - there's no way i could even take any other job to bolster that with if i was working 2 measly hours smack-dab in the middle of my day. so sadly i had to say no, even though from the looks of things i could have shown up to work in my pajamas and never be questioned, which is always a plus in my world.

anyway, so i've found a couple of links for you. enjoy the first one at least.

the best weblog post i've seen in a long time. defective yeti
reviews of lord of the rings from 50 years ago
top 100 this-and-thats of the 20th century