Cubits and Handbreadths and Charismatic Megafauna, Oh My

Down With Charismatic Megafaunism!

I have been in student mode lately, learning a new job, and learning (relearning) elementary algebra.

My favorite new term I learned this past week in my job is "Charismatic Megafauna," commonly referring to the WWF panda and its ilk (lions, tigers, bears, baby seals, oracas, and sometimes whales), being the means by which most people find a way to give a hoot about the expiration of the planet.

As in, "we could have saved that watershed if it had any charismatic megafauna, but all it had was salmon."

There is a great deal of sublimated hostility toward the charismatic-megafaunistic approach to environmental protection. In someone's office here I once saw the crossbar & circle "no" symbol photoshopped over a WWF panda logo.

In my spare time when I'm not protecting the petulant microfauna, I'm currently trying to get a comfortable grip on linear equations.

It's about time someone took the Phonecians' side.

Looking for some on-line assistance with the order of operations in solving linear equations, I found this neat little corner of the math world evaluating the Phonecian understanding of Pi, as expressed in cubits and handbreadths.

I'm not sure why the author is so sensitive about finding some mathematical truth in the Bible, or why s/he thinks (or s/he thinks someone thinks) it's so awful to connect the Phonecians with the Jews, but clearly s/he's writing in defense of the Phonecians. With some passion, I might add. It's about time...?

Make Goals Not War

From the Global Development Briefing this week:

LAST WEEK, we noted that a most unusual soccer game is set to take place in Haiti. Brazil, which deployed 1,200 peacekeeping troops in the troubled Caribbean island nation in June to replace outgoing U.S. troops, has already handed out 1,000 free footballs. Next month, the Brazilian national team is scheduled to play a "friendly" against Haiti. We asked what the price of admission to the football match will be and what Brazil hopes to achieve. Answer: the price of admission is handing over a weapon and Brazil hopes to help disarm rival Haitian militas, relieve tension and ultimately help prepare the country for elections by 2005. As reader Jim Anderson notes, Haitian interim Prime Minister Latortue has said that a few Brazilian soccer stars could do more to disarm warring militias than thousands of peacekeeping troops.

This has got to be one of the most creative solutions I've ever heard to the problem of gun proliferation.

Here's some more information on the upcoming match from Sports Illustrated.

Don't you think they could do something like this to disarm Oakland with a "friendly" between the Raiders and 49ers?

Going Back to Bukhara

The poor young journalist/ government critic - Ruslan Sharipov - for whom I used to professionally advocate - on Friday went to his mother's home town Bukhara to do "community service" and relinquish 25% of his nonexistent salary. This is in exchange for his freedom from serving a 4 year sentence on false charges under the Uzbekistan anti-sodomy laws.

He should have been unconditionally released from all charges, since they have no evidence, and he has refugee status and intends to leave the country as soon as he can. They want to get him to stop organizing people in Uzbekistan-- they should just let him go! He sent his mother away (she sold her apartment in Bukhara and packed up her one son remaining at home and moved to Sacramento, California this past December) because he feared for her life. The government threatened to kill her, and tortured him. So I don't think he wants to stay.

I can only imagine what their vision of "community service" might be.

Here
is the Reporters Without Borders press release that just came out today announcing his "community service" sentence.

Here is a June 15th "Advocate" article based on a phone interview with Ruslan from his most recent prison in Tashkent.

If anyone wants to write letters for him you can find addresses here.

Still Stalking

I'm sorry, stalkettes, for being so slack on my stalking of late. Since January I have been robbed twice, and since April I've gone to Russia (where I got robbed a third time, btw), got laid off (losing my health insurance), got my identity stolen, had my adopted grandmother die and *her* property stolen, got a new job, and since I got notice I didn't make it into grad school, I've gotten myself into an algebra course to try and prepare for another stab at the GRE. I am still bellydancing (and performing), managing a spoken-word production series, and learning Latin with a tutor. I'm also stalking the Giants and the A's, and trying to take part in the "Pride" festivities that come swinging at your head ever year in June. If that wasn't enough, I have a girlfriend, and a tabbycat, and they both demand time. So, you see, stalking for your sake, dear reader, has been limited. The goslings have gone neglected too, so don't feel singled-out for neglect.

The good news is that I now have ANOTHER job which accommodates stalking, i.e. has DSL and research opportunities. I'm managing two websites: ECA Watch, keeping track of Export Credit Agencies and their nefarious deeds and (I just found out yesterday) also the Bering Sea Forum. It is nice to finally learn how to spell "Bering."

I'm also working on stalking corporate puppets who use ill-gotten credit from places like ECAs to fund nasssssty projects like Sakhalin 2, a natural gas and oil plant that is still being built, but which is already causing a long litany of woes for the locals (a 22-point list, written by someone who used to support the plant, which I translated last week).

The new manager of the plant is someone who was *just* hired, and who has now had this waaay over-budget (by 30%) mess of a project, with overtones of illegality, dumped in his ickle British lap. The he sits, on a cold, Russian island-- a dark, isolated, fragile, seismically active, cold Russian island-- with the salmon choking in the debris from underwater drilling, the whales running for their lives, the locals blockading roads...

Anyhoo, I'm supposed to try to get a high seed for the web page describing him and his messy project on Google searches for "Ian Craig." I forget what this is called. It's got a name.

Well, I need to do it to this poor Ian Craig guy, formerly of Shell Oil Malaysia, formerly of Shell Oil UK, where he formerly worked for Enterprise Oil, a friendly little offshore oil corporation that got bought up by big bully Shell... and so he, with the face of a constipated croquet player, was led down the dark path to Sakhalin Energy.

So, if you want to help push the page with Ian's list of crimes up on the Google search results, please click here ("Ian Craig") or paste this URL:

http://www.eca-watch.org/problems/russia/iancraig.html

...into a link somewhere on your own web page.

Thanks for helping incite the sedition. You know -- as your mother use to say-- it's not going to incite itself!

In Memorium: Valentina Mikhailovna Dezelin (neé Stakhova)

b. February 23, 1899, the Crimea under the Empire of Russia
d. May 24, 2004, California under the United States

She lived four lifetimes by the standards of her time. She lived on three continents. She lost three husbands. She changed nationality three times. She survived at least four wars. She spoke at least four languages. She never left the church (Russian Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox), but the church often left her, including during the years a crooked, charming priest took her power of attorney and what money he could get from her, and nobody stopped him. The church also abandoned her when she went in a nursing home, never sending help, visitors, or comforting cards; most hurtful to me, after her death, a long-absent acquaintance from her most recent church scheduled her memorial and burial without consulting with me or waiting for me, her adopted great-granddaughter, and the person most and longest involved in her ongoing care. I returned from Russia on Thursday, and she was buried on Friday morning. I found out about the burial through constant phone calling, and made it to the church in time to place a kiss on her cheek before they closed the coffin, screwed the box into the hearse, and then lowered her into a Serbian Orthodox Cemetary hole while a nearby cement truck engine chugged an unrepentant proletarian drumroll.

Here's a memorial to you, and your namesake, Martyr Valentina.

You will always be remembered, you classy, tough, smart, amazing old lady.

Privet from Sir Novgorod the Great-- Russia

Pobloguju... I'm writing a little blog entry from Novgorod, Russia - Velikii Novgorod now. I have just reviewed with my good friend Sergei two years of his finds on the local WW2 battlefields with his friends, shovels, and GPS. Of late he's been researching the wartime aerodromes and airplane wrecks through interviews and photography around the area in the small ... I mean extinct... little villages around the battlefields. It is just amazing what he's found... including a German pilot, complete with rosary and glasses. The stories of the non-heroic behavior by Soviet soldiers, and the crazy methods they used to operate in the battlefields, as retold by old men who were 12 years old, hiding in the bushes around the aerodromes. He's been researching and digging up tanks and things since 1989, and boy does he have a collection...

Anyway, the jet lag and ongoing marathon of chai and blinni and vino and balzam and on top of that catching up with everyone has gotten me hollow-eyed and slightly dizzy with overwhelm. I haven't even made it to the local kremlin, for the full nostalgaic effect. My English is also slipping, but never mind, I had a double degree, I don't need that English degree... the Russian degree is serving me very well.

What's amazing besides what changes in 10 years since I lived here is what doesn't change. Someone puts on a little weight, but the personality stays the same. Someone else breaks his leg and turns into a person with a handicap (an "invalid" here) but he still has the same old drinking problem. Another gets uterine cancer and lives with a colostomy bag but she still works through all my grammatical errors and makes sure I understand why I need to correct that accent...

And the konjushnja, the horse stable where I rode here, has moved so that it is right next to where I'm staying... and the young people there are still jumping huge fences on huge gorgeous horses...

Don't worry, those of you who still read this and wonder where I am and if I'm coming home, I still have a return ticket and I intend to use it. I'm just very, very, very far away from San Francisco.

Poka,
SS

Good God Goslings!

The lake by my house -- the unique brackish urban estuary of Lake Merritt -- is presently gosling-rich.

There are three families of two adults with goslings in the number of 5, 9 (the eldest clan, almost showing adult feather color in their tails), and the youngest clan-- 19. 19-uplets. Today the 19 formed the shape of the shadow of an elegant old lantern-style streetlight that is at the southern edge of the lake. It was very hot. They were squished so compactly into the shape of the shadow that if the sun had gone behind a cloud (yeah, I know, California-- what cloud?!) there would have been an Installation of Streetlight-Shaped Pile of Goslings there on the beach.

I stood there staring trying to wrap my brain around this cuteness like a mushu pancake around a pile of filling when someone thought it was a good idea to run to the lake to drink a little brackish afternoon tea. The entire flock of 19 flapped its useless sets of wings and ran after the first thirsty one and then the installation was destroyed, and everyone was standing in the water a little stunned to be in the sun again. The parent geese didn't say a WORD. They were tired. They were hot. They walked aimlessly around at some several yards distance, watching me. If the kids wanted to run in a panic into the lake, that was fine with them. If I wanted to chase them in, so much the better.

Now, for some gosling research. I want to know how long they are little flightless balls of grey cuteness.

Here is where my stalking will begin: Coalition to Prevent the Destruction of Canada Geese

Ah, how the fall migration of geese will hurt this year...

Back in the Saddle and Stalking Again: Paul Reps' Arabic Name

I am finally recovering from the shock(s) of being laid off, having my car vandalized and burgled, and my checkbook used for $2300 worth of fraud. I'm revving the engines to go back to school, work, and Russia.

And Tassajara Monestary, for another workshop with Jane Hirshfield. She asks the participants to read a poem aloud to the group every day, and last time (two years ago) I read from the Zen poet I adore, Paul Reps. She thanked me for bringing Reps back to Tassajara. This time I want to bring some new, maybe rare Reps books so as to impress her even more.

Well, my e-bay stalking has produced a rare find: a 1938 text by him that is * in * sane * -- he is analyzing the meaning of names based on their * sounds *. It is new age before the start of the new age. He was 42 when he wrote it. What was he smoking in California in 1938? Had they invented stoner lifestyle yet?

So, he signed it "Saladin Reps" - and I assumed it was not him, but maybe a child of his or something. No, it was him. He wrote under the name Saladin Reps as well as Paul Reps. I have a whole new frontier of stalking! Unfortunately the only book I've found so far by Saladin Reps is $250.

Googling this mysterious name this is what I found:

Art and Buddhism: the Paul Reps Papers -- held in Los Angeles, where he died in 1990, at the age of 95.

Shine on you crazy Saladin...

Drowning My Sorrows in Light Beer and Baseball

The baseball season is arriving to seize me like the lifeguard in the breach. I've been floundering with my lost job and therefore lost financial security (two days ago), lost personal security due to repeated car break-ins (most recently a month ago, the third within four months), and a professional criminal contacting me in the guise of a police officer to confirm my personal information, and then taking my checkbook out on the town for fun and --apparently-- health foods and beauty supplies (Whole Foods and Sally's Beauty two recent targets of victims she's been defrauding for over two weeks now).

So, thank the gods for schmaltzy old movies about baseball. Especially "A League of Their Own." Here's a cool page with some of the real facts behind the movie:
Rockford Peaches - A League of Their Own

Their link to the baseball players charm school handbook is broken-- I'll go stalk it now.

Here it is... ...on the AAGPBL website!

I'm SO Moving to Slovenia Someday

Some early news from Geneva, where the UN Commission on Human Rights delegates are meeting March 15 to April 23 to discuss the world's human rights, including a proposal by the Brazil delegation to condemn discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Statement by His Excellency Dr. Dimitrij Rupel, Slovenia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressing the UN Commission on Human Rights, 16 March 2004

"One of the core human rights principles is equal treatment of individuals and prohibition of discrimination of any kind. It is through this principle that members of specific groups, which often find themselves in a precarious situation, enjoy protection of their rights. In every day situations, it is precisely those individual who need most help. The scope of specific groups comprises migrants, children, women, disabled persons, asylum seekers, refugees, ethnic and religious groups, individuals with different sexual orientation, conscientious objectors, people infected with diseases such as HIV/AIDS and many others. It is of the utmost importance to remedy their situation so that they do not suffer consequences due to their distinct status. The competent authorities should establish fair procedures, which would impede abusive and stigmatic treatment of any kind, and adopt measures which would protect their human dignity."

Now pardon me while I look around at the Slovenian Foreign Ministry's website looking for ways to improve my country...

Lifestyles of the People Among Whom I Was Raised
-- or, when "talking about their marriage" went terribly wrong.

This is a choice article clipped from the Watertown Daily Times this past summer by my parents and sent to me as part of a pre-Easter care package which included striped bunny socks that say "Make the stupid people shut up." As far as local Crime News clippings go, my parents specialize in husband-beatings, 25-cent petit larcenies, and "refused to stop yelling outside" charges.

Woman Faces Charge of Hitting Her Husband

DEXTER* [i.e. Northern New York, see my note] -- A woman who allegedly backhanded her husband in the chest was charged July 8 by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department with second-degree harassment.

Deputies said Deborah J. Gross, 41, of 21018 Stone Road**, struck her husband, Allen L., 44, while at home at about 6:30 p.m. July 8.

Two days earlier, Mr. Gross accused his wife of trying to threaten him with a hammer and beating him with a pair of jeans. He said the two were talking about their marriage when she grabbed a hammer. He said he "lovingly" took the hammer away from her.

He told deputies that she then grabbed a pair of jeans and hit him about the head and arms with them.

* These touching events took place in Dexter, New York, about an hour's drive north of "Upstate," -- and
** at an address
10 minutes' drive west of where I'm from, which I affectionately call North Nosebleed

...Per City-data.com: the Dexter area is significantly lower than the state average in percent of people with more than a high school diploma, and even that is only 80%. As I sit here waiting anxiously to find out if I got into UC Berkeley's public policy institute, I'm enjoying a rousing/ vertiginous look back (down) at whence I've come. (Russians ask "otkuda ty?" -- "whence you?" -- and I say "neotkuda" -- "no-whence.")

Pretty much keeping out of jail puts me on par with some of our highest achievers. Like our journalists.

You gotta love 'em, they give the perp's full name and address. I mean, look at the place on the yahoo-maps link! It's got to be the only house for miles. I'm surprised they don't add the house color and significant lawn ornaments you might recognize. "Oh yeah, that's that pig-silhouette house!"

An Update: Resolution 137 Cancelled, Iraqi Women Breathe a Sigh of Relief

According to the Women Living Under Muslim Laws International Solidarity Network (WLUML), the introduction of the anti-woman Sharia (Islamic law) into the new Iraqi constitution was halted on February 27th by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC, formed by the Paul Bremer-led Coalition Provisional Authority [CPA]).

Here is part of the March 3rd WLUML announcement's text:

A proposal to the IGC was submitted by Ms. Raja al Khazaai, an IGC member which demanded the cancellation of the resolution. Mr. Adnan Pachachi led the issue to a vote. The meeting was attended by 20 out of 25 of the IGC members. 15 voted to cancel resolution 137 and 5 members voted against, including one woman. Four members angrily left the meeting and went to discuss the matter with Mr Bremer.

It is important to note that the resolution never came into effect because
it had not been ratified by Bremer.

Ms. Raja al Khazaai, had submitted the proposal to the IGC following the
recommendation of the founding conference of the association that she had established called 'The National Council for Iraqi Women'. The IGC did not consider the second part of the conference recommendation that demanded that '40% of the seats in all institutions such as the Parliament,
government, etc. be held by women'

They go on to say that these details are not available in English-language press as of yet, so the WLUML site can only cite links to Arabic-language information sources like Aman, the Arab Regional Resource Centre on Violence Against Women.

Some Early Signs of the Apocalypse, and / or Signs of the Hopefulness of Humanity
...depending on your state of mind.

I think that the fact that Holiday Inn hasn't bulldozed this place and rebuilt something that doesn't make you want to roll around on the ground moaning is a sign of something... probably some high-level manager's denial of the end of the 1970's. But perhaps also someone's love for the ugly, dedication to preserving the flawed architectural choices of our forebears, someone with a quirky sense of humor... ... and keep in mind that the photo depicts its FLATTERING angle. Its BACKSIDE. The view from the street-- the main entrance-- the facade, if you will, is a huge one-story slab of corrugated aluminum with a big orange swoopy "girl-handwriting" style HOLIDAY INN bolted to it.

Another sign of something: the postal worker who sold me stamps this morning had taped to the top of her scale-- with numerous swaths of clear packing tape-- a small Valentine chocolate heart still partially in its purple foil "smiley faced heart" wrapper. It is hermetically sealed to her metal scale. A future generation will be able to dig up that scale from the earthquake rubble and eat that chocolate with no fear of spoilage.

It is my guess that one of her children gave it to her. I wonder about her relationship with her children, and if it's a good one. So, I consider this heart affixation as a sign of parental hope. That if she keeps that chocolate heart from being eaten, her children's hearts will be good, and available to her, even through the "but I'll DIE if you cancel HBO" years.

The last sign of something that I'd like everyone to consider is this: a very old woman about to get a pedicure with an extreme expression of delight on her face. This was seen in one of those typical manicure/ pedicure places that REEKS of chemicals. The workers in these places, all seemingly tiny seemingly Chinese women, usually wear white dust filtration masks. But no, not these workers! And their place is always full of customers, so they must get a LOT of exposure to chemicals. But this elderly white lady was not thinking about the chemicals. She was rubbing her bare feet together in plain view of the world, sitting right inside the plate glass window in the storefront. She looked right at me.. or was it through me? She was like a mannikin from a Twilight Zone episode, come to life and not yet fully clothed, plotting her next move as she waited for the chemically-resistant Chinese women to apply their Pedicure-from-Beyond. There was something renewing and yet oddly off-putting about this big white woman's wide anticipatory smile.

OK, back to the daily grind of waiting for the organization where I work to finally die.

My New Favorite Weirdness From The Land of the Rising Sun

I was shopping for a Hello Kitty tampon sorter (pencil cup, that is) as is my wont when I find myself in Chinatown-- this time in Oakland, where "China-town" is mostly Vietnamese and Korean people with plenty of Chinese and Japanese plastic oddities for sale, and what before my wondering eyes should appear but the merchandise promoting...

Pucca the tomboy and her eternal love Garu.

Of course I mistook Garu (the boyish one) for Pucca and assumed it was the story of a little butch dyke pursuing a little femme dyke. I swear you could not have convinced me that "Garu" was a "ninja." Or that the little girlie girl "Pucca" was a "tomboy."

Oh well, the sensation is over, but I still like the idea of the merchandising of a dyke-romance/ stalking situation. I mean every piece of Pucca/ Garu product says "A Funny Lovestory." What's funnier than a little cartoon butch carrying a sword stalking a little cartoon femme bathing herself in a jacuzzi (as is shown on one of the two tampon sorters-- uh, pencil cups-- that I bought for $2.75 each)?

Does Anyone Else Know That Iraq Passed an ERA and Ratified CEDAW? I Mean, Before the US Has?

I knew there was a reason I stopped listening to Laura Flanders' show on KALW in the morning--- it gets me all riled up before I'm even at my computer.

Today the amazing Ms. Flanders covered the issue of women's rights in Iraq.

I learned that years ago Iraq surpassed the US for supporting women's equal rights, at least on paper. In 1959 they passed a family law (Personal Status Law) considered one of the most progressive in the Middle East. It...

...protected women, favoring the woman as children's guardian in divorce cases. It also conditioned polygamy on the agreement of the first wife.

(according to Truthout.org.)

In other reading I see that it also protected the women from being divorced simply by the husband announcing three times that they were divorced. Also, women, if divorced, could stay in the house where they were living, and the husband would have to leave.


And now the US is helping them build a new constitution... and sift out the rights of women their old constitution protected. Women currently comprise 65% of the population (no doubt partly as a result of Hussein's external wars and internal security campaigns, expending the lives of more men than women). And while the two women appointed (by US officials) to the new Iraqi Interim Governing Council were out of the room, the council passed Resolution 137, a resolution which puts the slippery Islamic code of laws Sharia into force in place of previous family law, and so a resolution which...

...could give self-appointed religious clerics the authority to inflict grave human rights violations on Iraqi women, including denial of the rights to education, employment, freedom of movement and travel, property inheritance and custody of their children. Forced early marriage, polygamy, compulsory religious dress, wife beating, execution by stoning as punishment for female adultery and public flogging of women for disobeying religious rules could all be sanctioned if the Resolution is upheld.

...So says the NGO Madre in their statement opposing Resolution 137.

One of the people interviewed on the show was Yanar Mohammed, the founder of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, who is currently receiving death threats for her public opposition to Resolution 137.

For some reason I can't find the Madre call for letters demanding her protection on the Madre website-- get the address for the US administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and a sample letter here at the Occupation Watch website. You can also sign petitions in support of Yanar and against Resolution 137 here at the Iraqi Women's Rights Coalition website.

Now what is CEDAW and what does it mean that Iraq ratified CEDAW and the US didn't (and probably won't)? Iraq ratified CEDAW-- the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, also called the International Treaty for the Rights of Women-- in 1986. They were one of the first countries to ratify it. The US has not and does not intend to ratify it. There are currently 175 ratifying states. CEDAW is not a panacea, but the fact that the US doesn't even want to show INTENTION of supporting global equal rights for women is truly shameful. We are the control freaks of the world, unwilling to sign any treaty or convention that might allow our citizens any rights above those supposedly guaranteed in our own national constitution. Now, it's not like Iraq was some haven of lavender-tinted feminist perfection, but according to Human Rights Watch, historically, Iraqi women and girls have enjoyed relatively more rights than many of their counterparts in the Middle East. And more rights, constitutionally, than women in the US! HRW continues-- "The Iraqi Provisional Constitution (drafted in 1970) formally guaranteed equal rights to women..."

Now where did we put our Equal Rights Amendment...? I remember seeing it around here somewhere...

The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, is still not part of the U.S. Constitution. 

(...says equalrightsamendment.org.)

Ah, yes, that's where we left it.

OK, So I Was Wrong--- There Wasn't Anything In There About Giving Up Your First-Born to Gavin Newsom

Here they are, in their officially scripted glory:

San Francisco City and County Marriage Vows
February 12, 2004

We are gathered herein the presence of witnesses for the purpose of uniting in
matrimony___________ and ________________

The contract of marriage is most solemn and is not to be entered into lightly, but thoughtfully and seriously with a deep realization of its obligations and responsibilities.

Please remember that love, loyalty and understanding are the foundations of a happy and enduring home.

No other human ties are more tender and no other vows more important than those you are about to pledge.

Please face each other and join hands.

Do you_____, take____________, to be your spouse for life?

Do you promise to love and comfort each other, honor and keep each other in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for better or for worse and to be faithful to each as long as you both shall live?

Ring Ceremony

Place the ring on his/her finger and repeat after me to him/her.

I give you this ring in token and pledge of my constant faith and abiding love.

With this ring, I Thee wed (repeat)

Now that you have joined yourselves in matrimony, may you strive all your lives to meet this commitment with the same love and devotion that you now possess.

By virtue of the authority vested in me by the State of California, I now pronounce you,
spouses for life.

In All the Confusion...

A newlywed just posted this to a queer women's mailing list:

Was anyone on this list a deputy marriage commissioner at City Hall this past weekend, or does anyone know anyone who might have the text of the vows that were read during the ceremonies in City Hall? As we recapped this weekend, we realized that we can't remember them and we're wondering exactly what we agreed to!!

I suppose you didn't catch that part about giving the city your firstborn child, did you?

If You Want to Marry Your Dog, Please Keep It on the QT

I have made more notes on the big marriage fandango happening here in SF, but I can't remember where I put them at the moment... so I'll just share one thing: the stupidest anti-same-sex-marriage sign I have seen.

It was a photo on Yahoo News, a guy hiding his face behind the sign "I Want to Marry My Dog." (Oops-- they moved the photo.) First of all, who doesn't? And second of all, why are you telling us? Isn't that a little personal to share with the class?

In 1975 when a Boulder county clerk Clela Rorex issued a month's worth of marriage licenses to same-sex couples, someone else had the same overdisclosing impulse:

One outraged man came into town with his mare, Dolly, and asked Rorex to marry them. Her answer was no - at 8 years old, the horse was under age, she said.

That's from a nice interview with Clela in the SF Chronicle, by Suzanne Herel (Feb. 14, 2004).

Again, I say, who doesn't want to marry their horse-- honest, faithful, quiet, uncomplicated-- but really, people, it is oversharing to take your horse to the county clerk's office in hopes of a license.

Meanwhile, one of the weekend's best photographic depictions of gay newlywed joy: a bouncy butch on the city hall steps (Oops-- they moved the photo.).

And a few other stray thoughts while perusing the pictures of married people
If monogamous is being involved with only one woman, and you theoretically are in a negotiated/ open involvement, are you monogaflexible?

Good god in heaven, someone has devised a Tampon Angel Pattern.

I'm not sure what the effects of long-term unemployment might be on the craft-oriented individual: but for the grace of the gods, there may go I... to the feminine hygiene stash to get craft ideas...

The Funnest Civil Disobedience Ever

These are some scattered notes I made after returning from presiding over my friends' wedding (real wedding, legal, married, the whole 9) down at San Francisco city hall today.

---

Friday. I wear to work the velour leisure suit and plaid shirt: the mayor legalized marriage yesterday, why is THIS the day they call me to help preside over their (second) ceremony-- and their white and silver dresses make them a focus for the press-- I carry the train to cover my outfit

the injunction is denied across the street says the radio news reporter

lines of people like at the queer film festival-- cruising the line for friends-- down a long hall, through the rotunda area, over into the cafeteria, almost to the the back door into Civic Center-- red velvet rope-lined crowds of the merrily civil-disobedient

young and old, children in strollers

two men, 60-somethings, grey-haired & blurry-eyed, looked like they survived a lot / not expecting to survive to see this, no preparation, just "I do" and "I do" with a grey-bearded judge in black robes asking them to love and protect eachother as long as they both shall live, pronouncing them spouses for life under the top of the rotunda of city hall, hardly any witnesses, but everyone who saw in tears

the mayor throwing a reception for the whole city full of newlyweds. An enterprising chocolatier is handing out boxes of chocolate to the newlyweds as they came down the stairs, little red taffeta bags of chocolate to the attendings-- "you probably didn't have time to get a cake"

standing in line at the registrar's office -- someone jokes "what are you here for?" to the two women in matching white wedding dresses carrying bouquets-- I replied "where are the tax forms?"

Molly -- my old sexkitten acquaintance from the Coco Club/ Fairy Butch early days-- now a lawyer and marriage rights activist-- finally got to wear her dress for something other than a protest or a "domestic partnership" ceremony-- she and her little formal butch partner all over the front pages of every local paper (Phyl and Del not the most photogenic after 51 years together)

the Japanese mother on one knee adjusting her daughter's train, gilt on white, breathtakingly ornate, like an outtake of a scene in the Japanese Tea Garden under pink cherry blossoms, but instead in a swirl of people in city hall-- a heteronormative moment-- finally sensing within myself that "this is normal." I find myself cruising dress fashion and hairstyles.

a straight woman attending got on her cell to her mother-in-law, a dyke, to get down there and get married (they are open tomorrow for Valentine's Day)

the white 30-something short-haired woman hurrying barefoot across the shiny floor in a simple, short brown silk dress, carrying a bouquet of red rose buds, a child running behind her carrying a pair of high-heeled open-toed shoes

I see the butch bride standing for pictures is the drummer from the punk band "Frozen Chicken Patty," one of their attendings is a famous dominatrix... a dyke community moment on the steps of city hall, amidst reporters interviewing kids whose parents finally could get married

------ Other Unrelated Thoughts As I Perused the Gay Married People----
If heteroflexible are people not always just sleeping with other straight people, then are:
homoflexible- people not always sleeping with other homosexuals, and
biflexible- people not always sleeping with other bisexuals, and
transflexible- people not always identifying as other than their doctor-assigned-at-birth-gender?

My Latest Scheme for Self-Employment

Introducing:

Slam-o-Grams
"...for those not lucky enough to be dating a poet." (-- my girlfriend's idea, that slogan. Har har.)

Featuring...

Sinister performance poetry brought to your door to make your loved one's special day unforgettable.

Optional Features include...

A silent film in the background (i.e. a war documentary, or a Charlie Chaplin movie)

A conga drummer

Freestyling on the topic of your choice from our menu:
-- homelessness
-- methamphetamine addiction
-- public transport
-- codependency
-- sexual exploitation
-- high school reunions

    Have a Slam-o-riffic Day!

Please don't confuse my services with the valuable but VERY DIFFERENT Giantess Adrena's Slam-o-grams...

...where she wrestles the birthday boy (or girl) to the ground. [Says Adrena,] “I’m all dressed up in my wrestling suit. I turn my music on, grab the guy and belly bop him and I stuff his face in my boobs and I slam him with my pelvic pile-driver and knocker locker and then I put him on the floor and slam him. The finale is that I put them on the ground and sit on them and I spank their butt. I sit on their face, forwards or backwards. Then I put them in a headlock and hand the whip to their significant other.”

OK, There Wasn't Supposed to Be a Bra Under That Breast-Cup Thing

Teatgate takes another convoluted twist...

A Groovy Close-up of the Janet Jackson Panel of Shame

And Our Superbowl Champion is... Wait, it's a Photo Finish! It's Janet Jackson, By a Nipple!

No, really, it was a good game. I was so angry last year when I finally had a home team (the Raiders) going to the Superbowl and they acted like... well... I'm speechless, it was so shameful. It's like their mothers had all yelled at them that morning. Their hearts weren't in it. They handed the ball to Tampa Bay and curled up in the fetal position. But this year, the teams really struggled, and even the losers had oodles of fabulous (record-setting!) plays, like those super-hero-esque vertical leaps-- once even floating into a gazelle-like run/ touchdown. The teams were humble, they were earnest, they were playing good football.

The entire opening ceremony, and half-time show, however, were sickening stews of rancid Americana, with only one shining-- like a sun!-- moment. The tasteless cameo of Janet Jackson's fantastic nipple piercing. And then the commentators straining to not comment on it, since it was illegal for us to have seen what we so most certainly did see.

Boy do I prefer European TV... they don't pretend like the human female breast is all that. They have totally inured the poplace to the effect, grinding boobies into your face in the middle of morning yoga programs. They would rather shock you with the newest news about the US government breaking with UN protocol and then toppling other governments for breaking with UN protocol. That's the stuff Europeans think should be illegal.

OK, So Why This Reaction to the Word 'Velour,' People?

First of all, I don't know much about the word, or (ahem) how to spell it, apparently. But now my laserbeam of curiosity has been drawn to it. I have to know why all these negative semantics have been glued to the hapless word 'velour.'

Yes, it is a cheap knock-off of velvet. But so is velveteen, and you don't see people screwing up their faces when you say you've bought a velveteen leisure suit, now do you?

Just because I'm 46 work days away from a date with my green comfy chair and a navy blue velour leisure suit doesn't mean I'm going to turn into Archie Bunker.

(An aside: you want to know what Google spit up as one of the top-seeded hits for the search "archie bunker" + velour? "Jesus?: The Only 2000 Year Old Whore", a lovely little page by Thefucksociety.com.)

I notice that "velour leisure suit" is noted as a "funky trend" by a seller on eBay. It is a trend being accessorized by some of the most tasteful designers in the biz, too. Check out this hat, described by its creator-- "No leisure suit would be complete without this soft and funky lid."

So maybe it's not the word "velour" that sets people's teeth on edge. Maybe it's the combination of the cognitively-dissonant words "leisure" and "suit." Velour just tops it off, like the word "secret" in the phrase "secret army intelligence."

Speaking of army intelligence, I can't believe the genius that is Jon Stewart (of the Daily Show on Comedy Central). Last night he had Richard Pearle, a Gulf War II apologist (author of "How to Win the War on Terror"), on the show, and when he asked him if he thought we'd have gone to war even if we hadn't had faulty intelligence of WMD, Mr. Pearle said that we would have, since Hussein was operating in direct violation of UN directives. Jon LAUGHED OUT LOUD in HIS FACE. I have never seen him do that. Poor Pearle was so taken off guard that he started chuckling too, which was really creepy, like he was in on it that the excuse was a farce and wasn't it kind of funny. Jon laughed into the rhetorical question "*WHO* was in violation of UN directives? It's like saying we had to violate the UN's laws to protect it from the guy who violated its laws!" (my faulty memory's paraphrasing... but he said nearly exactly that) -- and then he started off in another direction of inquiry before the guy could get his footing. Wow, what a kung fu talk show moment. He had Richard Pearle KO'd in under four minutes. He stood and almost bolted off the set as soon as the music came up to end his interview.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm a little giddy about Jon Stewart today: my girlfriend, who refers to Jon as "my boyfriend," last night just gave me a pillowcase with Jon's face (downloaded from the graphic on his Comedy Central website) ironed-on to it (thanks to some eBay wingnut who sells custom iron-ons). Then I dreamt that he had me over to he and his wife's house and we bonded over having happy childhoods. It was a good night all around, in other words.

Now for you other Jon Stewart fans, here's a Daily Show commentary blog-- it's a safe space just for you and me.

How I'm Preparing for Unemployment

1. Building my meditation endurance up from 3 minutes-- for time-killing on those days when looking for a new job consists of watching the interminable construction going on in the alley I can see from my armchair to see if they need any help. And building the cat's endurance for future all-day laser-pointer marathons.

2. Stocking up on the staples: soup, aspirin, catnip.

3. Assessing the value of personal items for future sale on eBay.

4. Scheduling future volunteer time at a local kids' tutoring center (so I can get free access to DSL, a fax and photocopier).

5. Shopping for new radical hair color(s) at local slacker coffee shops.

6. Conditioning my cat to wake me up AFTER 9 am.

7. Stealing office supplies from my future ex-employer. (I mean more than usual.)

8. Renewing relations with sex worker friends who sometimes have interesting day-laborer opportunities.

9. Mapping out a daytime TV schedule of MASH, Law and Order and ER reruns.

10. Finally getting my first valour leisure suit. (Yes!)

Wait, I think this is a spoof...

But it did take me a minute to realize this isn't the blog of the Prime Minister of Australia.

This was the tip off:

Australia is like the place to be seen now. Like, not only is the President of the world George Bush coming here, so is the President of China, Hu Jintao. They have heaps in common, like they're both Presidents and neither were actually elected. So I rang up George to tell him, and I'm all, "Dude, Hu is coming here!" And he's all, "I give up, who's comin'?" And I'm all, "No, HU is coming!" and he goes, "I said I don't know, who's comin'?" And I go "Hu!" And he goes, "Yeah, I said I don't know, who?" And I go, "Hu's coming!" And he goes, "What? Who is coming? Ya'll gonna tell me?" And I go, "Hu Jintao, the President of China!" And he goes, "Who?"

George is such a kidder. Smart AND a sense of humor. He's so dreamy.

Lord of the Rings Fans Take Heed

I've been slacking on my blog lately due to Real Life Stress, but I always have time for LoTR Gay Slash Art, and LoTR characters' Very Secret Diaries, including that of Ringwraith Number 5, who saeth therein:

Day 1,001,107

V. close to nabbing Ringbearer tonight, but head Nazgul suffered attack of giggles while observing excessive cuddliness of Ringbearer and his three “companions.”

The Global Development Briefing Summary on Bam

IRAN: The oil-rich Gulf states Dec. 29 earmarked $400 million in aid for victims of Iran's earthquake, hours after the United Nations appealed for more money as it began assessing the damage. In Riyadh, Kuwaiti Finance Minister Mahmud Abdel Khaleq al-Nuri said the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states had agreed to send the aid. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has pledged to rebuild the historic city of Bam, devastated by an earthquake Dec. 26, reports BBC online. The ayatollah visited the Silk Route city to tell people the Iranian leadership shared their sorrow at the deaths of some 22,000 people. Iranian authorities say tens of thousands of people are desperately in need of food, water and shelter after the most lethal quake in more than a decade. Up to 40,000 people may have been killed, 30,000 injured and 100,000 left homeless, according to a preliminary assessment. Up to 90 percent of all buildings in the city were significantly or totally damaged, a joint U.N. assessment team in Bam on Dec. 27 reported. With temperatures in the area falling below freezing at night, donations of tents and blankets were seen as essential to provide immediate relief.

Click here for the gritty details on the relief efforts from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) is the place to send your donations. E-mail bamdonate@rcs.ir for more information on donating to the work of the IRCS in Bam.

Stalking (and Swilling) Absinthe

I'm typing with some difficulty because of cuts on my fingers from driving my car after the driver's side windows had been broken in (the second break-in within as many months)-- glass and the perp's blood were all over the inside of the car, ew-- but also I'm typing with trouble because of...

Absinthe Distillee "Un Emile" from Pontarlier, France
68% alc. by vol., plus distilled wormwood and green anise.

Here are the descriptions from Absinthe Online:

Plain "Emile 68"-- "Emile Pernot 68 is a premium 68% abv absinthe traditionally made to a 19th century recipe by steeping Grand wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), green anise, fennel and other plants in alcohol and distilling the macerated charge in an absinthe still. "

Sapin-- (slightly greener/ more opaque than the plain) "As with Un Emile 68, this absinthe is made traditionally by steeping Grand wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), green anise, fennel and other plants in alcohol and distilling the macerated charge in an absinthe still. The colour is achieved naturally by soaking plants in the distillate. No oils or artificial colouring have been used and no star anise has been used to enhance the louche."

La Blanche-- "Un Emile 68 'La Blanche' is a clear absinthe made in the style of a Swiss La Bleue. La Bleue is highly sought after and is produced in clandestine stills throughout the Neuchatel region of Switzerland. Unfortunately, because of the illicit nature of the product, the quality and consistency cannot be guaranteed. Un Emile 68 'La Blanche' is the first la Bleue to be made commercially available."

Read "Drinkboy's" article on absinthe, with a link to an article on the history of the drink.

Your Agony

I know this is probably a really well-intentioned person-- and by the looks of his links list probably a refugee from the Islamic World working on getting sexual orientation-based asylum in Canada-- but you just can't imagine the restraint it is taking not to submit some wise-ass question on his "agony form."

Please go here and click on the link to YOUR AGONY (and the ever-lovin' graphic he attached to that thought). Let's see how YOUR self-restraint holds up.

He also has a "Gay & lesbian form" which I'm restraining myself from using.

On a Lighter Note

Reading Dave Barry's blog has many rewards, including a bad poetry conspiracy he launched before his 2003 summer vacation:

the Freemont poetry scheme begins, and


Poetry.com responds.

Bam, Gone

I am grateful to the earthquake that took 20,000 lives and 70,000 homeless only for this: my dear friend M. had already left Bam, two and a half weeks ago. He told me that the place he stayed when he visited Bam was highly recommended on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree message board, because the proprieter Akbar always took people into his guest house as though they were part of his family.

His guest house was destroyed, he lost his son, and reportedly 18 other members of his family. One British tourist died in the guest house. The Bam citadel, carefully restored over the last thirty years, whose tourists were the basis of the local economy, is gone. This rural city, the first inside the border with Pakistan in a wide expanse of desert, has to rebuild from the dust.

Here is Lonely Planet's "The Thorn Tree" news about Akbar in Bam.

The Slacker Stalker Review of "Cowboy Bebop" (2003 theater release)

Well, my late night hours watching Adult Swim and the advice of a slacker friend has led to the renting of "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" on DVD. Here are my thoughts:

Subtitles versus Overdub
I was advised-- on good authority-- to watch it with the English subtitles. At one point in the movie two characters tell the same story in two different conversations, alternating. In overdubbing, the one guy telling the story has a Middle Eastern accent. This is completely lost with the two (to me monotone and almost identical) Japanese voices telling the story, and the subtitles do not convey this artistic device at all-- they totally lost me. There are other places where the subtitles are sketchy, and even one place where I'm convinced they made a mistake, mixing up the names of two characters (Vincent for Spike, i.e. the antagonist and protagonist, a little confusing, yes?). So I'm forced to endorse the low-brow alternative to subtitles: the overdubbing not only gives you more plot information, but the jokes are culturally fine-tuned to actually be a little bit funny. And they deleted the villain's hokey Shakespeare misquote ("to die perchance to dream"), thank god.

Now, the usual breakdown:

The Lesbian Movie Standard (LMS)
Well, sadly, Electra and Faye, the sexy babes in the movie, don't have a scene together. They don't actually even MEET. But the wonderful androgyne hacker girl Edward has a few scenes with Faye where they are discussing (well, as much as Edward can "discuss" in her insane chirp-sing-talk) the facts of the case. This movie exceeds the minimum for the LMS: at least one conversation between two female characters about something other than a man-- a minimum that most US blockbuster movies (ahem, Lord of the Rings, ahem) don't even come close to meeting. This movie is definitely lesbian-friendly. And this lesbionic type can't stop wondering what the hell is holding up Faye's short-shorts-- are those suspenders? And if so, what are they attached to on top? Her nipples?

The Jesus Figure
Of course, Spike Spiegel, the protagonist. But interestingly, also our chaotic ex-army girl Electra! Spike has his near-death experience in the river and some confusing non-plot-promoting pseudo-Native-American weirdness is clearly supposed to be a spiritual enlightenment redemption thingy, making him want to live to be a better person or something. He then seems to "owe a favor" to the antagonist (he repays that favor... by trying to kill him later--?). So that's our one Jesus. But at the climax, Electra is prepared to sacrifice her life to save the world from the dastardliness that is the anti-hero Vincent, and he spares her. She is redeemed. He remembers loving her and says that their time together was the only time he was alive. We have our two Jesuses.

The moral of the story is revealed by Vincent: reality is subjective, and only love makes life real, really really real. Wasn't this the moral of The Matrix too? Oh well, at least the characters are original. OK, Edward is original. Ein, the intelligent (but thankfully NON-TALKING) Welsh Corgi is also original. I love Ein.

OK, this leads us to... (drumroll)...

The Gay Figure
The winner is: Jet! The big-burly-partly-synthetic henchman type who lives in the Bebop, makes sure everyone is fed, and tries to impart wifely/motherly wisdom to Spike (whom he clearly loves - um- like Samwise loves Frodo, if you know what I mean). He is so gay. Gay gay gay. His only action scene (after the opening convenience store heist) is when he yells at Ein for moving a chess piece. Ein whines a little and lowers his head: Jet pets him gently, showing deep remorse for scaring his cute little dog. Gay! The scenes with Jet and Ein and Edward are my favorites.

Except for that neat little bondage sequence with Faye... while she rolls around I could almost see whence those suspenders and what they suspend... but the movie has an R rating and not an NC-17 rating-- the tiny yellow shirt miraculously clings like butter where it touches her skin, and not one suspender button is revealed.

Oh, and a special mention for the opening credits sequence of cityscapes: that could be its own movie, it is so exquisitely rendered and set to music.


Read more about "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" at Metacritic.

More from Dave Barry's Blog

I can't believe this is real, it is so fabulous.

"Barbie would ... be tired of Microsoft's licensing bullshit."

A Light at the End of the Tunnel: Dave Barry Has a Blog

And you can read it HERE. He is also a Blogspot/ Blogger patron, like me.

I am finding this a comfort after a couple of difficult weeks, being continuously sick with a cold I picked up at the end of November, and now treating myself to a $4 Marie Callender's turkey/ cranberry frozen dinner, only to discover that it really is "cranberry," as in ONE CRANBERRY, sliced into thirds, with a lot of instant potatoes and some turkey.

I look forward to taking out my aggressions on wrapping presents tonight.

Haven't You Ever Wondered Who Invented Clumping Cat Litter?

I have. I thought to myself: "this invention has improved my and my cat's life immeasurably, and I think it has been invented in my lifetime!" And I was right, since it was invented in 1976.

So who invented it? William Mallow, about whom I found the following tidbit:

2002 Honorary Unsubscribe Recipients: "4 August 2002's honorary unsubscribe went to William A. Mallow. A polymer chemist at the Southwest Research Institute, Mallow enjoyed working on practical problems. He showed M&M-Mars how to keep peanut butter from gunking up the molds at M&M candy factories. He helped Bette Nesmith Graham (mother of 'The Monkees' guitarist Michael Nesmith) perfect the formula for her invention, 'Liquid Paper'. He consulted on projects from Space Shuttle protective tiles to fake dinosaur skin -- and invented clumping cat litter. Mallow retired from SwRI in 1998, but continued to dabble in materials: most recently, he worked on the 'Mobility Denial System' -- a slippery spray that could be used to disable enemy troops without injuries or deaths. He died July 30 in San Antonio from leukemia. He was 72. "

I, for one, would love to see the videotapes of the practice sessions with the "Mobility Denial System."

According to the CBS News obit the "Mobility Denial" gel spray was due for introduction into use by the US military this year. Why don't we see this kind of footage on CNN? Is the enemy laughing too hard in those shots, as US tanks spin out on their own anti-mobility gel?

All This And Newsom Too

Well, I am almost back to health, and my cat is starting to express her affection in a less clingy way. That's the good news. The bad news is that Gavin Newsom is now mayor of San Francisco, the organization where I work is falling apart (3 people left of the 15 or so we had a year ago), I'm still horribly jetlagged from the two week gallop through the Balkans, I've had about $1500 in unexpected expenses on my car in the last few weeks (a parking ticket, a break-in, a brake & CV joint job), the vacuum cleaner's motor belt broke, and did I mention that Gavin Newsom won the mayorship of the city where I spend most of my time? San Francisco is in for a doozy of a time. That slick, two-faced Republocrat is going to make Willie Brown look like a regular mayor-of-by-for-the-people.

Meanwhile, I have read that the Greeks have the opinion that Macedonians are "violent, boorish, and great drinkers." I had SUCH a bad time with the Greeks, who were at LEAST boorish, while the Macedonians I met were all perfectly reasonable. They have a very, very wrecked economy, and everyone apparently carries guns because the country is so unsafe, but I *STILL* felt Macedonia was more friendly than Greece, to me. Something happened to the Greeks. I think it was the Turks.

Greetings from Sarajevo

I'm sick and really not wanting to be sick. In Sarajevo. The person sitting next to me on the bus was a survivor of the war and told me in Serbian (of which I understood 50%, thankfully not more, it was gruesome) about what she went through. Pointed out where Srebrenica is, where other towns were destroyed (now being rebuilt). I saw some evidence of the destruction still around... bullet holes in house masonry for example. Other than the artillery marks left in the landscape the shape of plain old poverty and war is pretty much the same.

The bus trip took 9 hours instead of the usual 4 1/2 because we rearended a little car and took out its rear windshield just that side of the Serb/ B&H border. It was a long boring event, really.

The bombing mess left by NATO is still untouched/ unreconstructed in Belgrade. It is unnerving to see buildings looking almost as fucked-up as the WTC but fucked up by our bombs and our allies' bombs. One bomb landed near the house I stayed in last night. However, when it fell my friend wasn't awoken. But the Chinese embassy bombing further away woke him. Apparently the Chinese didn't move anything out of the old building into their new building, rumor has it because of the bad feng shui. Accidental bombing-- that's some bad feng shui! They REALLY shouldn't have gotten that extra carp tank.

I leave on a madcap funpacked road trip in a stick shift sedan with four other people down the Montenegrin coast and over to Macedonia via Kosova in two days. Send your SlackerStalker all the safe travel energy you have, stalksters!

Oh, and Slovenija is still a place I will stalk. I ran up to it and gave it a kiss on the cheek this time-- going night swimming at the Portoroz Adriatic seawater spa and sleeping in gorgeous little architectural jewel Piran for one night. The Slovenes are the well-adjusted Slavs. Just imagine it. They are happy people and they are Slavs. If Slav nations were dogs, Slovenes would all be Border Collies. The taxi driver (apparently straight, on his way home to his wife and kids) who took me from the airport in Ljubljana volunteered right after I said I love Slovenija and want to move there that "Slovenija isn't nationalistic or homophobic like other nations." That out-tha-blue comment alone was worth the $35 he charged me for the ride.

OK, off to try and steam this cold out of my head where it got firmly and painfully jammed by the steep mountain ascent I endured today.

The Anal Sandpaper That is a Dissolving Company

So I have been remiss in posting because I've been cramming for the GRE (710 verbal, 630 math, not bad), trying to get ready to be laid off (job fairs, applying for positions, etc.), preparing for this gonzo work-related two-week tour of the Balkans that I'm leaving for in a few hours (Prague, Portoroz/ Piran, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Skopje, Athens), and watching my co-workers one by one get laid off unceremoniously.

I had a strong intuition slap me over the head that my horrible boss will lay off the rest of our office for Christmas, despite her pledge to keep us on until March, because she doesn't want to pay our (mandatory, by personnel policy) time-off between Christmas and New Year's, pay that doesn't come out of earned vacation or personal time. A former boss realized we tended not to take vacations as a staff, so she forced a short vacation every year at the winter holidays. This boss will lay us off rather than pay for three people to rest for four days. She just laid off a friend and co-worker earlier than she had said because she wanted to avoid him earning an extra vacation day in his last few weeks.

So, amidst this painful situation, I have to now go abroad to tout my organization's virtues. Which are mostly the people on staff who are mostly all gone now.

While I'm on the road to these seven different nations I will be checking my blog a little.

Here are some things I might need while I'm racing through the Balkan peninsula:

The Universal Currency Converter
Today the dollar is worth:

26.7 (CZK) koruny in the Czech Republic
198.75 (SIT) tolars in Slovenija
6.444 (HRK) kuna in Croatia
57.607 (YUM)new dinars in Serbia and Montenegro
1.64 (BAM) in convertible marka Bosnia and Hercegovina
51.20 (MKD) denar in Macedonia
and, speaking of anal sandpaper...
0.839 (EUR) Euros in Greece

The Weather Underground/ Wunderground EU Map

The Meeting Planner at Timeanddate.com
(Pacific Time is 9 hours behind Central European Time, although CET TV stations are only now playing Xena reruns that we saw two years ago on Oxygen)

The CNN regional country summary for Bosnia-Hercegovina (with drop-down menu to other local countries)
You remember that war they had there? You should read this summary and see if YOU can figure out how they make any decisions. Conservatives, some whose campaigns were funded by US Republicans, are making gains all over the former republics of Yugoslavija. Pfeah.

See you in December!

Transgender Youths Dress Up Like Prostitutes and Pretend to Be Undercover Vice Cops... Makes Me Almost Love the US Again

"You couldn't put this in a book -- nobody would
believe it."

--New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Nov. 7 after
five transgender students from the Harvey Milk gay
high school were arrested for impersonating undercover
vice cops dressed as female prostitutes and demanding
money, credit cards, ATM cards and PIN codes to let
their victims go free.

(From Rex Wockner's "Quote / Unquote" column)

I'm recovering from my fear of a frozen death-by-mini-ice-age and/or the decline of literacy due to global warming. Now I'm back to just fearing the president.

The ambassador and the general were briefing me
on the—the vast majority of Iraqis want to live
in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people
and we will bring them to justice.

George W. Bush Oct. 27, 2003

You want to know where you can read this quote in its original context-- online? The goddamn US State Department website's transcript of the speech "Progress in Iraq." Read it now before the infamous Bush transcript doctors get to it.

I found it in the sig file of my friend Mamaliz and she's a reliable source. But the State Department had the balls to post the quote, as spoken, and that's extra special.

As Though We Needed Something Else to Worry About

It's been brought to my attention that, although inevitably the earth will be consumed by the sun, and in the meantime lots of crazy space debris is lined up to hit us and cause catastrophic climate change, we have something else to worry about: the sun losing its freckles and giving us an ice age.

Mini though it was, the mini-ice-age from 1645 to 1715 did occur (coinciding with a time when there were hardly any sunspots), and the English Channel did apparently freeze over.

Read more about the Little Ice Age (LIA) known also as (or - for the skeptics- merely coinciding with) the Maunder Minimum, the name given to that period with almost no sunspots. Volcanos also might have been awarded part of the blame, for the ice age, not the missing sun spots. I would prefer to worry about something we have no way of predicting, i.e. the disappearance of sunspots. It's just that much more goth.

I would love to know how the Little Ice Age influenced the emergence of popular English literature in the 18th century. And that, my friends, is why I'm studying for the GRE to go get a practical degree in policy analysis, a degree to keep me off the streets where I would be stalking rare books on the correlation between rare deadly environmental phenomena and social trends, menacing small children with my theories relating the decline of culture and global warming.

Bangkok Beauty

I love the Global Development Briefing, if only for its occasionally priceless quotes.

"We recognize that there are some difficult decisions that have to be made in hosting a conference of this type."

— An unidentified U.S. official, speaking to The Washington Post on measures taken by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to cleanup and secure Bangkok ahead of its hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which started Oct. 21. The government barred thousands of street vendors from the central city, shipped 10,000 homeless people to army camps and banned more than 500 human rights activists from entering the country. About 600 Cambodian beggars, mostly women and children, were rounded up and airlifted back home on C-130 Hercules military aircraft. About 3,000 stray dogs were caught and shipped to the countryside. And a banner four stories high and a quarter-mile long, displaying an image of the Grand Palace royal compound, was erected to conceal a slum.

(Bolds and italics mine.)

So You Think You're Articulate

Try saying "I was born on a pirate ship."

Now hold your tounge while saying it.

Ponder with me now how many sheets a sheet slitter could slit if a sheet slitter could slit sheets at the world's largest multilingual collection of tongue-twisters.

A Break in the Struggle to Understand California

...to marvel at the authors of the City of Oakland website.

"What do I do about rundown and abandoned property?" asks the official City of Oakland website, to which it answers itself with a more specific subcategory of problems:

Code Violations, Lack of Maintenance,
Weeds and Overgrown Vegetarian

...about which I am shocked there is not more concern. I had no idea vegetarians were getting out of control in Oakland. Isn't Berkeley big enough for these people?

Pitch to Barry

Now that the postseason has rolled on without my local teams, the A's and the Giants both, I thought it was strange that a friend left a "Pitch To Barry" t-shirt on my chair as a gift. I mean, sure, he'll be playing next spring, but until then, what does this shirt mean?

It means give a fair challenge to the overachiever. There is nothing more frustrating for an overachiever to be given a half-assed or mangled and mis-managed challenge.

I know whereof I speak.

And then you ask, why do these mis-managers get appointed/ hired/ elected to frustrate the overachievers who after all only want to do their very best for the team?

Because people love an optimistic bully, and moreover they want THAT guy to lead us, and at BEST they want the fatalistic nerd who believes in the sanctity of fair challenges to be a sidekick or some other humiliating post, like vice-president.

This is coming from the middle of the long (ok, not long, but long for slow readers, i.e. me) Al Gore chapter in Sarah Vowell's Partly Cloudy Patriot, where she muses on the both every day real and mythological/ archetypal nature of the Nerd Versus Jock Struggle.

This is the struggle of my life, and it certainly is not behind me. I think this is one of the reasons the recall election has depressed me so soundly. The biggest, most optimistic, and most Nazi-esque candidate for governor won, in part because of a vote from the person I'm dating, who believed this cartoon-character bully couldn't be worse than what we have already, who is a pessimistic dweeb. This person I'm dating is, like me, a still-recovering-from-high-school nerd. I'm really interested in her use of her vote in that horrible election.

Is there something in us nerds that sometimes longs to, for once, be on the winning team? To just walk away from the "right" and the "wrong" of the #2 pencil blue and white test form, and just go with the "flo"? Even when the "flo" is running us over a waterfall into a morass of poverty, denied rights to minority/ marginalized parts of the community, and infrastructure failure?

I am not speaking ill of our new Gubernator, who hasn't even taken office yet, I'm just trying to get inside the head of a very intelligent person who maybe is prone- as I believe I also am- to seduction by the prospective dark fun of dirty dealing, mangled command, the overachievers being thwarted and bullies running amok.

This is the side of us nerds that watches the Sopranos, the side that dresses up as pirates for Halloween, the side that wants to learn how to properly shoot a gun. It's a fantasy that we will somehow win if we side with the bullies who inevitably seem to prevail.

But will the mis-managers take notice of our loyalty when the time comes? Will we finally be spared our regular humiliations as brainiacs who just want a fair challenge, or will we once again get a painful lesson in democracy, which is that life is not fair and democracy is MUCH more unfair? Won't we, the overachieving nerds, even the nerds who helped elect an anti-nerd to office, despite our better knowledge, keep expecting people to play fair, stepping up the plate and praying for a nice, clean pitch?

After Some Contemplation..."Kicking Our Own Bicycles," An Anology for the Recall Fiasco

Sometimes everything breaks down, and we call it a fiasco. This recall election was a total breakdown of the democratic process, and it was so massive a breakdown that we could even call it an attack on democracy. It was like the electorate was taking out its frustrations on the electoral process.

I had a boyfriend once who was a nerd, and had always been one. Riding his bike home from school he would often be cornered and beaten up, and/ or his bike would be wrecked or stolen. One time, I think after three bikes had been stolen, he was cornered, and he just got off his bike and started beating the crap out of the damn bike. The bullies fled.

This is the electorate, feeling like politicos have stolen our government (whatever that means... it's just a general feeling of not having power or representation in government), and now an election rolls around that gives the electorate a little opening to express itself rather freely. It gets off its bicycle democracy, turns on it in the middle of a circling swarm of perceived politicos, and hauls off and elects a joke for a governor. It's more than self-deprecation, more than self-loathing-- it's a self-preservation urge gone twisted and desperate, lashing out at a PROCESS, a means to an end, as guiltless as a bicycle. It's so lacking in faith that you have any power in a situation that you just turn on an innocent object and tear it apart, alternately cynical and mindless and scared.

Speaking of tearing things apart, my tabby girlcat is raptly watching with me "The Lion Queen" on the National Geographic Channel. The lioness "Scarface" is our favorite character.

A not-very-bright dyke femme bully (diva?) has a one-woman costume drama in my face, the Giants and the A's play their way into a load of first class tickets to their own private World Series viewing from their COUCHES, my boss Captain Bligh gives me a couple of extra jobs and a six-month termination notice, and now a Nazi-reared brainfart of a man is holding the highest office in California, no doubt preparing to execute a series of gruesome 180's on a lot of great, if only recently passed laws, like the very seriously good domestic partner bill AB 205, so I will now ponder...

The Virtues of Parsley

I have recently changed from loving basil the best to loving parsley. It goes on everything I make that involves cheese or tomatoes. Which is a lot of what I make. Parsley has thiamine.

Googling, you will find parsley has a home in the titles of a number of blogs.

It also has a great and glorious place in antiquity (from Botanical.com):

The Greeks held Parsley in high esteem, crowning the victors with chaplets of Parsley at the Isthmian games, and making with it wreaths for adorning the tombs of their dead. The herb was never brought to table of old, being held sacred to oblivion and to the dead. It was reputed to have sprung from the blood of a Greek hero, Archemorus, the forerunner of death, and Homer relates that chariot horses were fed by warriors with the leaves.

I love antiquity, too. Now, having blogged, I will go translate some pages of the Aeneid and think about the ablative absolute. Calm, cold, comforting ablative absolutes. Far from the terrible, terrible reality I now live in.

Gaak, a Role Model for Those of Us Feeling a Little Set Up for Futility at Work

This is a very old news article from June 2002 that apparently some people didn't see at the time. I've been thinking about this robot's reaction to the "survival of the fittest" tests it was being put through at work every day.

Robot on the Run from Theage.com.au.

Apparently this learning and science center - for kids!- designed robots which could learn from their mistakes, programmed them as "predator" and "prey" and had them fight it out for a paying audience. Didn't anyone read their Isaac Asimov? Well, the Predator and Prey Robot Shows "have now reached the end of their show period." After Gaak ran away I wonder if they had other jailbreaks. I wonder if their nice English neighborhood has a wild "Predator" robot out there competing in the job market.

I'm not saying the nonprofit NGO work world is like a robot gladiator spectacle, really I'm not. I just have my Gaak moments at work these days.

Some Things I've Noticed Recently, Apropos of Very Little

I finally have a taste for baseball and get myself a favorite player (and a sugar daddy to get me his baseball card and brilliant behind-home-place seats for one of the season closer games) and he fucking BARELY EVER plays these days. He's a creaky old man.

Please don't retire before I get to see you play, J.T. Snow.

I've also noticed that the Equinox brought about the phenomenon of my cat actually regularly oversleeping. She has a nook in my closet which she has wombified with layers of tabby hair, and I get the "huzzawhazzawho?" look from her when I wake her up to tell her I'm going to work, without my morning lap-sit thank you very much. It has freed up my morning to allow more (any) time for breakfast, but our little lap dance ritual has been a comfort for me in my widowhood. Maybe I'll go to bed with her food bowl empty on purpose so she'll wake me up with the usual bladder-stomp and earnest stare.

Everything has to come in threes, so what else have I noticed... hmmm... Sarah Vowell's 2002 book The Partly Cloudy Patriot is rocking my world. She manages to make me misty-eyed about intellectualist loners and their struggle in a democratic society. I'm almost writing a stalker-esque passion-filled fan letter every day now.

(Yes. I know. It's a short book. I'm a slow reader.)

Oh look I've noticed something else. She's represented by the same agency as my beloved favorite living poet Jane Hirshfield. I wrote a stalker-esque passion-filled fan letter to Jane once via her agency and she wrote right back the same day. Someday I'm sure I will be at the agency winter holiday party rubbing elbows with Sarah and Jane and we'll all bond over having a great company to represent us all. And about my Pulitzer and so on. (Memo to self: remember to submit poetry somewhere... Or maybe I could pay Barclay to pretend I'm on their roster just long enough to have me at one of their winter holiday parties...)

This is For All You Jews Out There

...who are suffering a reduction in entertaining internet forwards from your newly-dumped-by-Jews-and-therefore-newly-anti-Semitic friends. I'm not Jewish but my name is Sara and my father's name is David (in Russian I'm Sara Davidovna, which is like saying "please put me in the concentration camp first," so it's never given to REAL Jews in Slavic nations, only to goyim in the safer/ more ethnically cleansed reaches of the rural USA), so I understand some of what it means to suffer as a Jew.

Now, I know most of you won't know what the hell you're reading in that paragraph up there, but your confusion is worth it for the sly evil chuckle it is sure to elicit from a certain Banjostani person trapped in Boise.

Here are links for my personal reference, pages from which I have become accustomed to receiving the daily highlights. I'll just have to spam myself now.

The Yahoo news photo slideshow.

Metafilter.

Smoking Gun. "Paving the Paper Trail."

And of course blogs...

Sweat Flavored Gummi.

and...

Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me -- the home of the daily news from the office of the Dictator for Life of Greater Banjostan, a place that is temporarily unfriendly to the Jews, or maybe really just one particular Jew, who is not me, being that I am not really a Jew.

Arrrrgh

I know Talk Like a Pirate Day is over, but I have to Arrrrgh. My boss Captain Bligh has just accepted her second resignation in a week, when her first mate and my close friend and coworker Mr. Millicent the Innocent jumped ship (ok, he gave a generous TEN weeks' notice). I'm now looking at the craigslist.org nonprofit job listings. Again thus I've opened and had to close the window on applying to a cool job because I have an ex who is in the management of the organization.

Why, oh why, did I have to have bad break ups (or bad after-break-up friendship-break-ups) with people in the management of:

ACORN - empowering communities to create the change the want to see, for and by themselves;

and

Pacific Environment - formerly PERC, Pacific Environment Resource Center, empowering environmental activists of all sorts all around the Pacific Rim, including the Far East and Eastern Siberia.

Thank the gods I'm dating someone who works for the goddamn government, for whom I NEVER intend to work.

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day! Celebrate with mutinous abandon!

Well, my coworker Mr. Woody has taken Captain Bligh's cherry, being the first to resign on her. We will all, slowly, one by one, leave her on this ship to sink alone, burned out and ravaged by responsibilities she is heaping on herself by driving us all away.

Unless, of course, she quits and *I* become captain, a course suggested by my results from the Talk Like A Pirate Day website's Pirate Personality Test.

You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

Now that we're all Friendsters...

...I feel the need for other ways of making community.

Nemester

Do you have fantasies of stabbing someone regularly, but you suspect they may have the illusion that all is well between you? You can make sure your enemies know you hate them. I think it's good to have a list of enemies, and it would be even better to have a public place to show it. I would put Captain Bligh (my boss) and the President of Uzbekistan on that list. Among many others. Props to Mr. Woody who had the idea for Hatester, which I stole.

Annoyister

You know, brainless and overpaid celebrities with huge empty homes? Independently wealthy people who dress out of the Community Thrift reject pile for their street cred? Annoying. And the neighbors who have screaming fights in the morning, or *vacuum* every night at midnight? And then there are the journalists and politicians who grind their axes on the community's hardest-working (or broken) backs, demonizing immigrants and sick people and the homeless. Let people know that they are not hate-worthy, just extremely annoying.

Slutster

A grand way to let people know you wouldn't kick them out of your bed, should they happen to end up there. I think the Friendster community really needs this way to break through the pretension of being friends(ters) when you're really just all about connecting-the-dots with their freckles and your tongue.

Drinkster

Let people know you don't really want to be their friend, you don't really want to sleep with them, but you really, really enjoy getting drunk with them. Maybe you'd go to a ballgame with them, hell maybe you'd even sleep with them, but mainly you'd like them to know that you'd trust them to hold your hair/ jacket/ gun while you barf.

Spouster

Obviously, a great way to let someone know that you would marry them. I would Spouster Angelina Jolie first. If she wasn't ready to make that bold move at this point in her career, or turned out to be a femme bottom like me, then we could laugh it off and stay Friends(ters), and I would Spouster Jon Stewart (from the Daily Show). Then, since he is a straight man with a wife who is probably smart enough to ignore a marriage proposal from a lesbian, I would Spouster Lucy Lawless, who said on a late night talk show (to a question about whether she'd swing with the ladeez) that she's up for anything after drinking 12 white russians. I bet Spouster would have the best "testimonials" of them all.

Stalkster

The politest way to tell someone you are stalking them. Then again, I'm not sure Friendster isn't just a cover for some malicious hoarde of stalkers...

Exster

Now, as those dozen or so people who follow my blog know, I recently had a person I considered an ex call me at work to tell me s/he is not my ex and to please stop spreading around that information. So, I think it would be useful to have a service like Exster, where you can let people know that they are in fact an "ex" (exfuckbuddy, exgirlfriend, whatever), just so that there are no nasty surprises on either end, like someone thinking you never dated, for example. Or that you are still dating, heaven forbid.

My Boss Is a Fiasco

I just listened to the Fiasco show from the "favorites" collection in the archives of This American Life, and I have finally reached the point of Zen acceptance that my boss is a fiasco.

I will call her Captain Bligh. Captain Bligh's incompetence is so extreme that it has become funny, all office protocol has been scratched, and we are all {} THIS CLOSE to starting a real office betting pool as to what date she's going to lay us all off.

Today's additions to the fiasco unfolding are her apparent accidental deletion of the record in our database of our organization's most important contact at the United Nations (we're a gay human rights agency, which needs all the friends in high places we can get). I can't prove that she deleted it, but who else, I tell you, when she's been working closely with the dude, and hasn't let anyone train her on ANY of our systems. Then she put a letter in the box of letters to be mailed... sans postage... and the letter looks like it's the contract for our newest and most important (next to Captian Bligh) employee. I saved it, but I have had to put a pointed sign on the mail out box that letters that are intended to be mailed should have postage on them.

In the mean time, another This American Life show from the archives, Music Lessons, features David Sedaris singing the Oscar Mayer Wiener song in the style (done with chilling accuracy) of none other than Billie Holiday. I ask you.

So I naturally was drawn to doing some research on the famous song... from which you will now all benefit.

Here's a page from Kissthisguy.com, with an instance of the wiener song's lyrics misheard.

Ya know, I think sometimes we all wish we were an octopuss' wiener.

Top Signs Your New Lezzie Romance May Be PoMo

I define PoMo here as post-modern/ post-industrial, showing characteristics of a micospecialized lifestyle or society, celebrating performativity and self-consciousness in the fragmented public narrative. I don't know what motivated me to make this list, I just haven't dated in a long time and it's like an anthropological experiment for me. Join me on this jungle ride... watch the strange new lezzie dating practices, but keep your fingers inside the car...

Your new lezzie romance may be PoMo if:

1. You met on Craigslist, or another anonymous mochepit of sex-starved people with 56k dial-up service.

2. You Google to confirm points of fact... while on dates.

3. You shop for your novelties and lingerie on eBay... while on dates.

4. You have a porn star encounter clause in your fidelity agreement. (There are so many of them now. Porn stars, I mean. But there are lots of different fidelity agreements out there too, aren't there?)

5. You have a list of urban straight hotspots where you intend to have sex using remote-controlled vibrators.

6. You share feedback about your preferred sexual practices on your blog.

7. Each date's preparation involves doing your nails, packing a toothbrush and change of underwear, selecting a costume and buying a soundtrack CD.

8. The date's degree of distance from internet connection is directly proportional to the numbers of cameras involved in documenting the date.

9. Friends e-mail you to see if you're having sex at that moment... and you e-mail back that you are.

10. You mark your one month anniversary with an appointment at a tattoo parlor.

Presenting People For the Unethical Treatment of Fireflies

The Pagan comic for Pagans and the people who love them, or used to love them.

PETA in this strip refers to "People for the Eternal Torment of Animals."

Where I grew up the only "out" Pagans were pretty scary folks, and they liked it that way-- their reputation kept the Xtians out of their hair. They had a sign on their porch "We shoot every third Christian who knocks on this door." I even heard that they used some rest stop on Route 177 (a major trucking road) to do a pig sacrifice. Now, that skeezed me out. But lately I've been getting into eating pork again and, in reflection, I'm betting they put on a nice barbeque for those truckers, and some State Trooper had to go blow the whistle... turning it into just another "animal sacrifice."