Geez -- I'm only halfway through the Bowies, although if I can finish him (4 more to go), I only have David Byrne to do before the Cs, which begin with Johnny Cash (Cake is in my local music section).
I want to go out looking around the town for vintage lingerie, but I feel bound to the computer. Of course, I also have to wait for my UPS delivery of knobs today.
Turns out that my pitas, hummus, etc, are still delicious. --K
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Ranting
I woke up a little early today, so I actually sat at the little coffee shop where I normally get my muffin for a while. I have a good rapport with the people there -- I always say good morning and whatnot, but I rarely stay there and take up a table. More often than not, to my shame, I eat my muffin in the car, plucking crumbs from inside the bag.
But today, I sat down, mixed three packets of Equal into my travel mug of Ethiopian Sidamo, and got out the newspaper. Well, almost as soon as I sat down, I heard three elderly men, the regulars, talking. I eavesdropped, as I am wont to do, and the first thing I heard was "If you whack your kid on the bottom, you'll get in all kinds of trouble with law enforcement, Child Protective Society [sic] and whatever else . . . " I could tell they were comparing corporal punishment to something else, but I couldn't tell what just yet. It didn't matter, though, because at that moment I was fighting the urge to say "Oh, what a load of bullshit!" Child Protective Services doesn't remove children from the household unless they're in pretty immediate, obvious danger of death (and right here River City, they just left a kid with a mom who admitted to hearing demon voices telling her they were going to kill her baby -- where did I hear about this? In the newspaper account of the infanticide). I personally don't believe in spanking children ("Hitting is wrong!" Whack "Don't hit"), and I know a lot of other people don't either, but generally the cops don't get involved over a spanking. You might get dirty looks in the grocery store, but a gentle, reminder whack on the butt is still not seen as a cause for intervention. So already I was a little on edge, when I caught the topic they were really on . . . the Supreme Court's ruling against a law that regulates internet pornography that might be "harmful to minors." Well, that seems fair, I'm against child pornography too, except, oh wait, that's not what it is about. The law considers all sorts of things possibly harmful to minors, like photographers' web sites that included a picture of a "post-pubescent female breast." Oh, gods, the horror! Do you mean to say we're not going to shut down web sites with artistic representations of breasts on them???? But, but our children might see!!!
I started thinking to myself, so this guy, this elderly guy at the coffee shop, says that if his child looked at pornography on the web, he'd be ticked and would "put a padlock" on the computer (I chuckled). But he thinks hitting kids is none of anybody's business. Breasts = bad, hitting = good. I think I'm glad I don't live in his world.
Then I took it a little further (probably further than necessary), and started thinking about those folks that protest against Planned Parenthood in junior high and high schools, but have no problem with the Pro-Life faction holding up signs of aborted fetuses outside of (sometimes) elementary schools. Cucumber with a condom on it = bad, bloody aborted fetus = good.
Ugh, I have to pay attention to my class now (their test is over), but rest assured, I'm fairly disgusted at the priorities evident in some conservative factions.
But today, I sat down, mixed three packets of Equal into my travel mug of Ethiopian Sidamo, and got out the newspaper. Well, almost as soon as I sat down, I heard three elderly men, the regulars, talking. I eavesdropped, as I am wont to do, and the first thing I heard was "If you whack your kid on the bottom, you'll get in all kinds of trouble with law enforcement, Child Protective Society [sic] and whatever else . . . " I could tell they were comparing corporal punishment to something else, but I couldn't tell what just yet. It didn't matter, though, because at that moment I was fighting the urge to say "Oh, what a load of bullshit!" Child Protective Services doesn't remove children from the household unless they're in pretty immediate, obvious danger of death (and right here River City, they just left a kid with a mom who admitted to hearing demon voices telling her they were going to kill her baby -- where did I hear about this? In the newspaper account of the infanticide). I personally don't believe in spanking children ("Hitting is wrong!" Whack "Don't hit"), and I know a lot of other people don't either, but generally the cops don't get involved over a spanking. You might get dirty looks in the grocery store, but a gentle, reminder whack on the butt is still not seen as a cause for intervention. So already I was a little on edge, when I caught the topic they were really on . . . the Supreme Court's ruling against a law that regulates internet pornography that might be "harmful to minors." Well, that seems fair, I'm against child pornography too, except, oh wait, that's not what it is about. The law considers all sorts of things possibly harmful to minors, like photographers' web sites that included a picture of a "post-pubescent female breast." Oh, gods, the horror! Do you mean to say we're not going to shut down web sites with artistic representations of breasts on them???? But, but our children might see!!!
I started thinking to myself, so this guy, this elderly guy at the coffee shop, says that if his child looked at pornography on the web, he'd be ticked and would "put a padlock" on the computer (I chuckled). But he thinks hitting kids is none of anybody's business. Breasts = bad, hitting = good. I think I'm glad I don't live in his world.
Then I took it a little further (probably further than necessary), and started thinking about those folks that protest against Planned Parenthood in junior high and high schools, but have no problem with the Pro-Life faction holding up signs of aborted fetuses outside of (sometimes) elementary schools. Cucumber with a condom on it = bad, bloody aborted fetus = good.
Ugh, I have to pay attention to my class now (their test is over), but rest assured, I'm fairly disgusted at the priorities evident in some conservative factions.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
The evening
Okay, so a recap, since I'm in here anyway. I got partway through the Bs (finished B-52s, Bauhaus, Beatles, Beck, next is Bigod 20, Bjork, Bowie . . .) I found out that the bike carrier I bought for my hatchback fits on my CRV. Yay! I thought it was a loss. I also squashed down the recycling as best I could -- you know, I have the pint-sized version of the garbage bin, and I never fill it, but my recycling is always brimming over. It's frustrating, because I'm trying to be an upright citizen and whatnot, and I end up with bags of recycling hanging out in my kitchen, waiting for pickup day. While I was cutting up cardboard, I ran across the world's biggest black widow. I swear to god, the spider from the other week pales in comparison. This spider was the size of a Japanese lantern, and its hourglass was done in flourescent lights which I could hear buzzing from ten feet away (which is where I was standing about a millisecond after spotting it). Ultimately I pummeled it with a broom handle, but not before screaming like a girl and scraping my ankle on the sprinkler head. I was very cautious with the rest of the cardboard -- there were about ten bee carcasses all cocooned up. Blech!
Then I chatted with sweetie for a while, who's not feeling well. I then decided to make dinner (I'd flirted with the idea of going out for Indian food, but decided against it), so I heated up some soybean succotash from Trader Joes while I baked a Butternut squash. I hung out in the hammock listening to my iPod while waiting for the squash to cook, and the neighbors were (from what I could sense) vaccuuming, using Febreze, and smoking cigarettes at the same time. Incidentally, my neighbors have listed their house for sale, and I went over the other day because they were having an open house. I was supposed to have band practice, so I wanted to know what time it was over so I wouldn't fuck up any possibility of a sale ("And this is the den, from which you can hear the strains of local punk rock band the Gynas every Wednesday and Sunday.") Anyway, out of curiousity I picked up the flier while I was there. Okay, so in Sacramento, there are definitely areas where houses of moderate size are going for half a million bucks regularly. In my area, however, they're going for closer to $200,000. In fact, I've been watching the paper and it is only recently that that figure has been showing up more often. My house, two years ago, was significantly less than that. Well, I think my neighbors may have accidentally transposed some figures, because they're asking $324,000!!! Dude, okay, they've built on to the back, including adding a bathroom, which certainly raises the value marginally, but it also ate up the backyard, and there is nothing but a tiny strip of outdoors left. Additionally, their house smells very, very strongly of cigarette smoke (hence the Febreze, I would guess) and the walls are discolored because of it. Also, their home was decorated at roughly the same time mine was, which means lots of dark wood paneling and basically totally out of date color schemes, etc. I have no idea what's up -- either they're totally delusional or they really don't have any desire to sell it.
Rant over. I ate my butternut squash with a dollop of Patak's curry and a glass of viognier that I opened Saturday -- it went surprisingly well. I've been reading Zadie Smith's new novel "The Autograph Man," and relaly enjoying it, but at the moment, as you no doubt can tell, I've been sucked back to the computer. Soon, though, oh, so soon, I will be watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It's a secret vice. I can't wait -- I'd better get another glass of wine!
Then I chatted with sweetie for a while, who's not feeling well. I then decided to make dinner (I'd flirted with the idea of going out for Indian food, but decided against it), so I heated up some soybean succotash from Trader Joes while I baked a Butternut squash. I hung out in the hammock listening to my iPod while waiting for the squash to cook, and the neighbors were (from what I could sense) vaccuuming, using Febreze, and smoking cigarettes at the same time. Incidentally, my neighbors have listed their house for sale, and I went over the other day because they were having an open house. I was supposed to have band practice, so I wanted to know what time it was over so I wouldn't fuck up any possibility of a sale ("And this is the den, from which you can hear the strains of local punk rock band the Gynas every Wednesday and Sunday.") Anyway, out of curiousity I picked up the flier while I was there. Okay, so in Sacramento, there are definitely areas where houses of moderate size are going for half a million bucks regularly. In my area, however, they're going for closer to $200,000. In fact, I've been watching the paper and it is only recently that that figure has been showing up more often. My house, two years ago, was significantly less than that. Well, I think my neighbors may have accidentally transposed some figures, because they're asking $324,000!!! Dude, okay, they've built on to the back, including adding a bathroom, which certainly raises the value marginally, but it also ate up the backyard, and there is nothing but a tiny strip of outdoors left. Additionally, their house smells very, very strongly of cigarette smoke (hence the Febreze, I would guess) and the walls are discolored because of it. Also, their home was decorated at roughly the same time mine was, which means lots of dark wood paneling and basically totally out of date color schemes, etc. I have no idea what's up -- either they're totally delusional or they really don't have any desire to sell it.
Rant over. I ate my butternut squash with a dollop of Patak's curry and a glass of viognier that I opened Saturday -- it went surprisingly well. I've been reading Zadie Smith's new novel "The Autograph Man," and relaly enjoying it, but at the moment, as you no doubt can tell, I've been sucked back to the computer. Soon, though, oh, so soon, I will be watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It's a secret vice. I can't wait -- I'd better get another glass of wine!
On the CD project
Having skipped a few Laurie Andersons and apparently misplaced ACDC and Fiona Apple, I'm officially through the As and into the B52s (I skipped the version of "San Franciscan Nights" on my Best of the Animals CD which is radically different than the one I gew up with -- so different as to be totally repellent to me.)
I'm so good at pleasing myself!
Don't be dirty! Have you ever gone grocery shopping and picked up, say, pasta and marinara sauce, then spent all week avoiding eating that because it doesn't sound good to you? Well, I had just the opposite experience this week -- I predicted that I would want pitas, hummus, feta, tzaziki, cucumber, and baby tomatoes, and I was right! They were delicious . . .
Since everyone else is blogging about Michael Moore, I will too. The part that totally took me by surprise in terms of my emotional reaction to it was the part with the soldiers discussing the songs they played while killing civilians, bombing cities, etc. I've always had a strong response to music -- I have exercising music, house cleaning music, relaxing music, sexy music -- so I understand how music can get you pumped up. I could empathize with them at the same time as being repulsed and horrified. Yes, the sodiers signed up voluntarily (although as I think Moore showed effectively, many of them don't seem to have a lot of other choices), but to imagine these very young men (a couple of them were probably only a few years older than my students) being irrevocably changed by their experiences saddened me completely. I mean, already some of them seemed inured to the horrors around them, and even to revel in the destruction (the "burn motherfucker burn" kid is the most striking example). I wanted to reach out and shake him, tell him he's not playing a video game. I worry for the first time it occurs to him what he's really a part of . . . Of course the other scenes affected my as well, like the Iraqi woman saying they'd had five funerals already, and invoking god's wrath on the enemy. And although I was prepared for the Lila Lipscomb scenes (I'd read a ton about the movie), it still got to me. I have heard Moore criticized for capitalizing on her grief, using the close-up scenes of her crying for his own purposes, but that's exactly what I think the mainstream media has been lacking in, the personal face of tragedy and loss. Like, this is all okay if we refer to the boys being killed as "troops" and their deaths as "casualties." The numbers simply cannot relay what's going on. As for the Saudi money, Bush's motives, etc., I have felt/known from the start that he was corrupt, morally reprehensible, and basically an idiot. I love that he was caught on film kissing up to the "have mores," but that's something that I didn't need to see to believe. The idea that kept running through my head is "what would Bush's reaction to this film be?" You know, would he, privately in his den or whatever, chuckle and be like "he caught me!" Or would he be outraged at what he considered the vicious lies? Just a thought.
I have been loving my iPod lately. I need to load some more music onto it, but I'm still working on getting some CDs onto the G4 first. So the other day, I was walking through the mall and I had the iPod on shuffle. I was daydreaming that other people could, like, telepathically know what I was listening to. And when something like Bjork or the Beastie Boys came on, I thought -- yeah, I probably look like that's the type of music I would listen to. But then something unusual came on, like Hector Zazou, Dead Can Dance, or something older like Patti Smith or MC5, and I'd think "yeah, I'm cool, I'm cutting edge, I'm different -- didn't think I was listening to something off the wall, did you?" And then something horrible would come on, like "Everybody Dance Now" by C&C Music Factory, and I'd feel like a lurking pervert, hoping no one could actually overhear me listening to something so unhip. When "Blaze of Glory" came on, I just snickered to myself in the middle of Virgin Records.
I'm now 6/11 done with summer school. Second period was okay today, but first period was crazy talkative. I almost had an aneurysm. I have been catching up on the secret bits of a friend's journal, and I'm so happy for her!!!! Let's just say that things are going well after several months of not so much.
Since everyone else is blogging about Michael Moore, I will too. The part that totally took me by surprise in terms of my emotional reaction to it was the part with the soldiers discussing the songs they played while killing civilians, bombing cities, etc. I've always had a strong response to music -- I have exercising music, house cleaning music, relaxing music, sexy music -- so I understand how music can get you pumped up. I could empathize with them at the same time as being repulsed and horrified. Yes, the sodiers signed up voluntarily (although as I think Moore showed effectively, many of them don't seem to have a lot of other choices), but to imagine these very young men (a couple of them were probably only a few years older than my students) being irrevocably changed by their experiences saddened me completely. I mean, already some of them seemed inured to the horrors around them, and even to revel in the destruction (the "burn motherfucker burn" kid is the most striking example). I wanted to reach out and shake him, tell him he's not playing a video game. I worry for the first time it occurs to him what he's really a part of . . . Of course the other scenes affected my as well, like the Iraqi woman saying they'd had five funerals already, and invoking god's wrath on the enemy. And although I was prepared for the Lila Lipscomb scenes (I'd read a ton about the movie), it still got to me. I have heard Moore criticized for capitalizing on her grief, using the close-up scenes of her crying for his own purposes, but that's exactly what I think the mainstream media has been lacking in, the personal face of tragedy and loss. Like, this is all okay if we refer to the boys being killed as "troops" and their deaths as "casualties." The numbers simply cannot relay what's going on. As for the Saudi money, Bush's motives, etc., I have felt/known from the start that he was corrupt, morally reprehensible, and basically an idiot. I love that he was caught on film kissing up to the "have mores," but that's something that I didn't need to see to believe. The idea that kept running through my head is "what would Bush's reaction to this film be?" You know, would he, privately in his den or whatever, chuckle and be like "he caught me!" Or would he be outraged at what he considered the vicious lies? Just a thought.
I have been loving my iPod lately. I need to load some more music onto it, but I'm still working on getting some CDs onto the G4 first. So the other day, I was walking through the mall and I had the iPod on shuffle. I was daydreaming that other people could, like, telepathically know what I was listening to. And when something like Bjork or the Beastie Boys came on, I thought -- yeah, I probably look like that's the type of music I would listen to. But then something unusual came on, like Hector Zazou, Dead Can Dance, or something older like Patti Smith or MC5, and I'd think "yeah, I'm cool, I'm cutting edge, I'm different -- didn't think I was listening to something off the wall, did you?" And then something horrible would come on, like "Everybody Dance Now" by C&C Music Factory, and I'd feel like a lurking pervert, hoping no one could actually overhear me listening to something so unhip. When "Blaze of Glory" came on, I just snickered to myself in the middle of Virgin Records.
I'm now 6/11 done with summer school. Second period was okay today, but first period was crazy talkative. I almost had an aneurysm. I have been catching up on the secret bits of a friend's journal, and I'm so happy for her!!!! Let's just say that things are going well after several months of not so much.
Monday, June 28, 2004
Well, fine then.
Since everyone else uses a real blog instead of a jury-rigged web page, I'll join your filthy crowd. I kind of like the comments option. If you want to see all my old garbage and ramblings (and really, that's what it is), you can still go to www.home.earthlink.net/~yourmama916
I think I'm also going to have to get a livejournal account, so I can read all the rated R parts of my friend Cat's journal (I'm getting the PG version now, but I hear there are secret bits). Huff. Why do I allow my luddite self to get dragged into the information age?!?!?!?!
I think I'm also going to have to get a livejournal account, so I can read all the rated R parts of my friend Cat's journal (I'm getting the PG version now, but I hear there are secret bits). Huff. Why do I allow my luddite self to get dragged into the information age?!?!?!?!
Friday, June 11, 2004
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