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."

Ah, The Secret Spells Triad is Complete. Soon I Will Conquer the World.

Meet Secret Spells Kayla's best friend Secret Spells Barbie.

School girls by day, "by night they turn into magical enchantresses." No wonder it is out of stock. That dirty old man market is a surefire sell. Do they really send "edible poisons," do you think? Do you think they meant poissons? That they will send you some dried salmon jerky with every order?

And oh my god you can order their best friend Secret Spells Christie "in African American." This ad's blurb explains that they are sending sugar-based mixtures that you can drink, i.e. mystical Kool-Aid. Getting the little African American girls ready for Jonestown, are we? I know, I know, that was inappropriate. Shame on me.

Lookit What I Found: The Geekcorps

VERY COOL as benificient Developed World send-us-your-tired-masses-and-we'll-send-you-our-grad-students patron projects go, but they have GOT to get a better logo. Or the Happy Computer should be using both hands to hold the world. He looks rather cavalier, like he's playing volleyball. And is that his keyboard or is he just happy to see me?

Well, There Goes My Solution to All My Problems

I should've been tipped off by the web site describing it as a "fictional reality show."

Thanks for everyone who wrote lovely recommendations on my behalf. Just so you know, the application did not in fact ask for your gender identity. I bet a lot of other girls applied. But they only apologize to the men. Like my feelings wouldn't be hurt.

Dear Lapdance Island applicant

I would like to apologise unreservedly to the tens of thousands of men who
recently applied online to take part in E4's new reality show Lapdance Island
at http://www.channel4.com/lapdanceisland

The show promised to take ten hot blooded male contestants to a deserted
tropical island and have forty lapdancers gyrate around them 24 hours a day.

The truth is there are no lapdancers. There is no island. There is no show.

We made it up to promote The Pilot Show, a genuine series starting on September 8 at 10.30pm on E4. The Pilot Show hilariously dupes unsuspecting celebrities and members of the public into appearing in bogus TV shows.

Sorry about the lapdancers but, as compensation, you can laugh as other people get taken for a ride on The Pilot Show by watching the special preview clips at http://www.channel4.com/pilotshow.

Yours faithfully,

K Andrews
Managing Director, E4

Wiccans Finally Break the Mattel-Plastic Ceiling

I actually have a witch friend by this name-- she's a little older, has a career in linguistics and is a bit more professorial than this babe-alicious witchipoo...

Secret Spells Kayla at KBtoys.com

I suppose if they're going to have action figure Jesuses and Moseses on the market, it's time to have a mainstream witch action figure, I mean doll.

Has Anyone Else Noticed...

That the temperature in the mouth is lower after an orgasm?

Really! Feel your tongue afterwards. It is almost cold.

That pretty much sums up the sum total of my revelations from this weekend, except that I don't look as bad as I though I would in pink. Yes, I've reached that stage of femmehood. I have reclaimed pink.

The Stalker Reveals Herself a Little Tonight- Woohoo!

Here's a crumb for my own slacker stalkers:

Here is my fifteen-day-old tattoo! Doesn't it look innocent when it's sleeping? Yes, it matches my Wedgwood china.

And yes, that graphic is posted on Friendster, and yes, this Slacker Stalker has no friendster friends at this time. Will you be my friendster?

In further revelations, I have to post a poem. I'm committed to NOT putting my original poetry up on this blog. But this is a pertinent follow-up to the ex=ex blog entry, so please forgive this indiscretion. I wrote it almost three years ago in the wake of a break-up with someone who was termino-phobic about the word girlfriend.

San Francisco Replacement Terminology for the word ‘Girlfriend’

A thing
A fling
A fuckable friend
A crush
A flirt
A bendable bend
A Frisco disco
  Swingable girl
   A bubble bath elbow kiss
   Titclamp tilt-a-whirl

A pounding mound
A rebound to a rebound
   A tie me up / tie me down

An easy-bake cake
An mm-hm! earthquake morning roll, a low-fat schmear
   A "you know I hate
   to drive home this late / you can stay here"

A futon footsie tongue twister date
A polypolyamorous play-mate
A mental whack-a-mole
A sleepless queer
  Give her a name and
She'll disappear

Thank you for your indulgence. You will now be returned to your regular poetry-free stalkage.

Ya Know, Sometimes the Russians Scare Me a Little

I spent yesterday evening schmoozing with some wonderful civil society organizers working on cultural tolerance trainings in St. Petersburg and Kazan, Russia. One of the organizers is this salt-o-the-earth veteran, who is also Jewish, and who is a grandfather who brings up his grandkids within minutes of starting any conversation about whatever. We bonded and had a great time. There was this other person there, though, who specifically had wanted to meet some LGBT community organizers, and to whom I was specifically introduced as such. He's a polkovnik (a colonel, a high position) in the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs), and apparently not clear on the concept of lesbian. It never fails. I get asked if I'm married, I say no, and then clueless straight man who knows I'm lesbionic for some reason gets very happy. Now since my partner Kris went and got cancer and killed herself I get to use the beautiful Russian word vdova (widow), and change the subject to that of the prevalence of cancer in the US. But really, this guy is a leader in the cultural tolerance movement? Scary!

Meanwhile, I got a posting on my Slavic Pagans mailing list that led me to the Propoganda section of the site of The Union of Slavic Tribes: The Slavic Native Faith -- this makes me a little scared of the new Slavic Pagan movement. It looks like a Soviet Russian cultural imperialist war-god-driven "let's trample the natives" (or trample the Catholics, Jews and Muslims) kind of project.

Check out this item from the Propoganda section:

Caption: We Are Russians! What an Ecstasy! The glyph associated with the Slavic god of skies and thunder, Perun, is photoshopped onto the side of the plane.

Bosnian Muslims and Croat Catholics, run for the hills! The Pagan Russians are in ecstasy! And they've got fighter planes to give you the money shot!

Shudder. It just hasn't been long enough since the latest Yugoslav war for that kind of propoganda. It will never be long enough...