you know, "racists."

i've been wanting to put up a post about stereotyping and society for awhile. i want to put up that post right now, in spite of the fact that i feel unable to string three coherent sentences together. so what this lacks in cohesive persuasion, i hope it makes up for in awesome and informational linkage.

so. i think there are three main points i want to make here. they are simply this:

1) we are all racists and misogynists and homophobes.
2) we cannot exactly help it.
3) this does not have to constitute the end of the world as we know it.

(i should qualify point number three - it could constitute such a thing, if we don't wise up about it already.)

now, admittedly, people tend to - to put it mildly - fucking lose it when accused of one of the big three prejudices above. i assume that this is because, in this day and age, to be called a "racist" conjures up images of the ku klux klan and those guys you see in grainy 1950s film reel with pomade hair and cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of their undershirts. you know, "racists." racist means unabashedly, unapologetically against considering black people as equal. and while it's interesting that i can't come up with an equivalent cultural image for "misogynist" or "homophobe" (anti-abortion protesters? ted haggard? i'm stumped), the same extreme brush applies. racists and misogynists are those awful people, over there, doing and saying all those horrible things. certainly not us.

but really, if it's just those fringe wackjobs and hysterical protesters "over there," being and doing racist, misogynist, homophobic things, how exactly do these bigotries survive? how is this shit perpetuated so steadily, so ceaselessly, for generations and generations? because - obvious answer alert - it's bigger than that. it's a system. it's in everything, it's everywhere. and that means none of us are above it.

one of the best encapsulations of the enemy that feminism faces i've ever heard is this: "patriarchy is a culture, not a conspiracy." these prejudices are a culture that we are steeped in, that our parents were steeped in, their parents were steeped in, etc etc and so on. no one gets a pass; no one somehow arrives at adulthood magically untouched, untainted. all of us, based on the societal soup in which we've been cooking since day one, have both the capacity and inclination for racist, misogynist, and homophobic thought and behavior.

i think that just stating such a thing, of accepting and owning one's complicity (willing or not!) in the system is a critical starting point. the revolution starts at home, right? awareness is the first step.

i hope i've kept you reading til now, because if you haven't read about Project Implicit, i highly recommend checking it out. malcolm gladwell's Blink highlights this Harvard study about unconscious prejudice; much journalistic ink has been spilled about it as well:

Gladwell has some fascinating insights into this dark side [of rapid cognition], and his section on the implicit association test -- a psychological tool that determines your unconscious, "automatic" preferences for certain kinds of people by measuring how long it takes you to assign words and faces to categories -- is the best part of the book. You can take the IAT here, but be careful. The unconscious is a mysterious thing, and don't be surprised if your test shows you to have an automatic preference for white people over black people, or for thin people over fat people, or for young people over old people. I grew up in apartheid South Africa and consider myself, as most people do, exceedingly egalitarian in how I treat people, but, I'm ashamed to say, my test showed an automatic preference for whites over blacks. Gladwell, who is half-black, found a similar preference when he took the test. Indeed, he notes, of the 50,000 African-Americans who've taken the race IAT, half show an automatic preference for whites.

subsequent use of the IAT through Project Implicit has illustrated the way these unconscious prejudices noiselessly and unobtrusively influence areas like health care, politics, andhuman resources. from the Post article:

In perhaps the most dramatic real-world correlate of the bias tests, economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago recently sent out 5,000 résumés to 1,250 employers who had help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston. The résumés were culled from Internet Web sites and mailed out with one crucial change: Some applicants were given stereotypically white-sounding names such as Greg; others were given black-sounding names such as Tyrone.

Interviews beforehand with human resources managers at many companies in Boston and Chicago had led the economists to believe that black applicants would be more likely to get interview calls: Employers said they were hungry for qualified minorities and were aggressively seeking diversity. Every employer got four résumés: an average white applicant, an average black applicant, a highly skilled white applicant and a highly skilled black applicant...

To the economists' surprise, the résumés with white-sounding names triggered 50 percent more callbacks than résumés with black-sounding names. Furthermore, the researchers found that the high-quality black résumés drew no more calls than the average black résumés. Highly skilled candidates with white names got more calls than average white candidates, but lower-skilled candidates with white names got many more callbacks than even highly skilled black applicants.

now, i'm sure these human resources managers are just like people we all know - decent, hard working, well meaning. they aren't white supremacists or guys who drive around with the stars and bars on their pickups. but they, like all of us, unconsciously and unfortunately perpetuate systems of unfair oppression every day. the sooner we realize this to be true, and noteworthy, and important to acknowledge, the sooner we could actually, maybe make a little progress.

jim crow, circa 2007.

hey.

heard about the Jena 6?

if not, read and learn. then please think about donating. their parents have had to sell their homes and risk their entire livelihoods to fight blatantly racially motivated injustice - a nakedly hateful and reactionary abuse of the system.

"I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"

friday cat blogging, the badass edition.

CatCat says:






suckas.

hmmmmm. they are kind of saying the same thing, no?

Citizens in this nation fear challenging patriarchy even as they lack overt awareness that they are fearful, so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious are the rules of patriarchy...if we were to go door-­to-door asking if we should end male violence against women, most people would give their unequivocal sup­port. Then if you told them we can only stop male violence against women by ending male domination, by eradicating patriarchy, they would begin to hesitate, to change their position. Despite the many gains of contemporary femi­nist movement - greater equality for women in the work­force, more tolerance for the relinquishing of rigid gender roles - patriarchy as a system remains intact, and many people continue to believe that it is needed if humans are to survive as a species.

-bell hooks

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

-john lennon

your wednesday one-liner.

according to everything i read on Overheard in New York, they are really not paying these guys enough.*

Police dispatch: Mister Nipple is at it again, Midtown.

--Chinatown

*well, that's not exactly true. they pay them pretty darn well. of the list of new york municipal employees who are underpaid, i don't think cops are too high up there. not that they don't do a great public service when they subdue mister nipple, of course...

sailing to byzantium.

stepping outside at 6:30 a.m., the humidity hits me like something material - like a wet sheet on a line. i am surprised by it, and grimace as i make my way down the front steps and onto the street. the sun not even above the horizon, and the city already blanketed in what feels like the beginning of suffocation.

i walk towards independence avenue. labor day come and gone, and the stench of a decaying summer on every corner. all is overripe, groaning under the weight of three months' flowering and fecundity. the pungency of the front yards' vegetation - overreaching in its verdant bloom even by june - now borders on noxious, and i dodge the drooping branches, scattered and hung low, along the sidewalk. my feet move over their discarded bounty - berries burst at the seams, purple stains leaking into the concrete creases.

i reach the edge of the national mall, and pass the security guards, already glistening faintly in their thick cotton uniforms and heavy boots, as they scan the underside of an idling van with mirrors. the dog from the K-9 unit, ensconced in the air conditioning of his squad car, eyes me as i slide past. from somewhere, the smell of old, cooked breakfast hangs in the air - solidifying bacon fat, congealing grease.

the cicadas are singing.

by the time i reach 14th street and turn around, nearly two miles in, my hair is soaked through. i push ahead, back the way i came, trying to propel myself forward through the stagnant air, trying forget that in truth i am only going in circles. the capitol building looms into view, the rising sun a dull, brutal orange as it crests the side of the dome. like a postcard, but seen through a foggy window - the city, the seat of the nation, through the dirty glass of old oven door.

i am slick with september sweat, and everywhere, the bloom is off the rose.

running update.

so, one month down and one month to go until my 5K run at the annual AIDS Walk here in DC. i like to think that i'm doing pretty well, because a) i've actually been getting my lazy ass out of bed in the morning at least two to three times a week to run, and b) because i can now actually run the 3.1 miles straight through without deciding, at some point, that "this seems like a good time to walk a little." now i'm going to spend the next few weeks really trying to push myself to improve my time - at this point, i'm really only able to keep up with the septuagenarians shuffling along the mall. (sadly, i'm only somewhat exaggerating here - it's definitely not just the army recruits and serious runners out there who are overtaking me. many an old man with pulled-up knee socks has breezed past during my morning outings.)

what i need - MomCat, as a pretty regular runner herself, has told me this repeatedly - is a cheap digital watch in order to start really keeping track of my time. up until now, i've either ignored the fact completely (hey i finished! i have no idea when i started, or when i stopped, but wheeee, who cares??) or used the clock on my iPod as a half-ass calculation of how well i did. i'm going to try to improve upon these two (admittedly lacking) techniques soon.

i would tell you what my iPod says my time is, but it's too embarrassing. however, i do promise to tell you all my official finishing time from the actual run in october. deal? deal.

and don't forget: if you are so inclined, you can follow this link to visit my AIDS Walk web page and help me in my efforts to support the whitman-walker clinic. thank you so much to everyone who has already donated - it truly does help to know that everyone is behind me when that blasted alarm goes off at 6:30 am and i have to lace up my sneakers and get out there again.

goin to the game.

gonna see dice-k pitch. leaving right now. yessssss.

go sox.

friday cat blogging, turning japanese edition.

is that song racist? i don't really know any other lyrics than "i think i'm turning japanese," but on that alone i'd probably have to lean towards yes. however, i cannot deny the slightly asian appearance that CatCat's eyes take on in this picture, and so i'm going to risk using offensive one-hit wonders to convey it. but of course i don't intend it offensively. because she's a cat! she can't be asian! (well, um, unless she was a siamese cat, i guess? or from india, like my friend's cat, who as such is technically an asian cat. hmmmm. my arguments, they disintegrate.) anyway, whatever, she's cute in that "i might be an international assassin" way, ain't she?



confidential to SisterCat (and chi chi, if she reads this!): at least i'm not a random dude from indiana calling her "china face" right?

forget amusement. this is dangerously close to "breaking the good china" territory.

via tart (in turn via shakes) comes today's stress headache inducer of the day.

on the right is america ferrera (better known these days as "ugly betty") at an awards show last month; on the left is her glamour magazine cover this month:



excuse me while i choke on the irony. on all this irony.

and you know, it isn't just about the drumbeat of "Get Thin! Be Thin!! Stay Thin!!!" that we, as women, hear as the background noise of every goddamn waking moment of our lives. this is an affront: a slap in the face, a twist of the arm. because god forbid we drink too much of that self-acceptance kool-aid, right? the crazy-ass idea that we might be okay as we are is evidently far too threatening. so the media has to hit back - has to say to us:

hey ladies, please remember - no matter how many awards you win or lives you change or good work you do, you still need to be copiously "corrected" via photoshop before we can allow people to look at you. you still need fixing. you will always need fixing. you are never good enough.

glamour magazine thinks it's ok to brazenly erase a good portion of a woman. glamour magazine thinks that the ridiculously obvious nature of this erasure is mediated by the idea that this is how women "should" look, anyway. that women take this kind of shit lying down, all day, every day. well, you know what i say? fuck that. i'm going to tell glamour where they could stick their airbrush. you should too. (edited to add: oh, isn't that precious! their commenting function isn't working! rest easy, i'll certainly let you know when it's up and running again...)

and remember - real women have curves:

more amusement!

so today? at costco? wanna know what i encountered?

a giant reindeer made of christmas lights. and a giant snowman made of lights. and a christmas song, emanating from some strange apparatus nearby.

amusing. in a hands clasped over your ears, "why god why??" kind of way.

the day's amusement.

i find it amusing that the DC city library uses the Dewey Decimal System instead of the Library of Congress System for classification.

i also find it amusing that the actual, literal Library of Congress is mere blocks away, where i can find stacks upon stacks of books classified in the system to which i'm much more partial (six years of higher education will do weird things to you, like give you a preference in regards to library catalogs) - but i, a mere mortal citizen, cannot check out books from said building.

amusing, for certain. in that intensely irritating sort of way.

labor is dead - long live labor!

so many things i wanted to write about this weekend. so many ways in which i did not write about them.

on this lovely labor day weekend, i tried to keep the actual labor to a dull roar. i was middlingly successful. there was that three-hour trip to uhaul to help a friend pick up a moving truck, and the subsequent packing of said truck, which (and poor, relocating nadia will attest to this) was laborious indeed. then there was the visiting of BoyCat family and its newest addition, an angelic three-month old baby who really did not cry. that much. (plus - dudes - i held her for a number of minutes - like four or five of them, i'd say - and managed to get her to stop crying once she decided it was time for some waterworks. baby handling success!) then we had a nice little weekend barbecue which was, other than deciding whether to have more macaroni and cheese or pasta salad, was not laborious at all.

and today? today is the day where labor goes to die. so i'm going to finish this glass of wine. then maybe have another. because really, the thinking and the persuading and the pontificating? they do not fit into my Total Lack of Labor schedule. where's that tv remote?

friday cat blogging, the "en garde!" edition.

here is CatCat, defending the premises against all manner of invader, infidel, and general asshole.



you have to be vigilant, you know? creeps of all types and stripes are roaming around this here planet. like, for instance, the sick fuck who found my blog by googling worst forced cunt punishment. a prize winner of the pulitzer or nobel character, to be sure.

and now, i'm not gonna say for sure what kind of punishment CatCat would inflict on this person if she had the chance - being the feline possessor of an elevated sense of poetic justice, ten functioning claws, and the persistent will to use them - but we can speculate.

and that speculation, it is enjoyable.

your incredibly unsurprising headline of the day.

get this!

Boyfriends Do More Housework Than Husbands

shocked and awed, i am.

Married men do less housework than live-in boyfriends, finds an international survey. But married women do more housework than their live-in counterparts...

Couples who viewed men and women as equals were more likely to divvy up chores equally. But even in "egalitarian households," married men still contributed less to household chores than did their wives. "It's consistent with prior research, which has shown that the roles of wives and husbands are very powerful," Marks told LiveScience. "In a cohabiting relationship there aren't such strongly prescribed social norms, which trickle down to things like housework."

social roles...very powerful...you don't say. wonders really DO never cease.

your wednesday one-liner.

there are no funny wednesday one-liners this week. seriously - i checked.

and this was before i went to the Fox and Hound and had two vodka tonics after work - DC people, you know about the Fox and their happy hour. but really, in spite of the six shots of vodka i've thus ingested, there are honestly no funny on-liners.

it's really kinda depressing. what kind of week has it been when no one in new york city has uttered a laugh-out-loud one-liner? what kind of world is this, anyhow?

sigh.

(i just typed "sight." except i meant "sigh." you know.)

in defense of male-bashing.

hackles up! got 'em up? good.

of course i kid - i'm not actually here to defend male-bashing in the strawfeminist boogeyman sense. you know, the one where all the hairy-legged lesbian separatists talk about how men are Teh Enemy and won't it be great when we get the means of artificial production so their entire sex will just die off? i'm not here to defend bashing men simply for being men. i think the percentage of feminists who have ever actually engaged in such sweeping denunciations have numbered in the dozens, but you wouldn't know it from the media backlash - you'd think this was our bread and butter. well, that and killin' babies. so, just to be clear, that's not what i'm talking about.

my last post raised some questions and comments about the nature of generalization, on which i've been chewing on ever since in the comment thread, emails, and subsequent conversations. what was needling me, i realized, was this statement from toast in comments:

It's not an indictment of generalization per se, it's an indictment of unfair and/or unsupportable generalization. [emphasis his]

so i got to thinking. what if we are generalizing based on experience when it comes to (admittedly inflammatory) statements like "men are pigs"? metaphorical nature aside, is there anything unsupportable about the idea that, over the millennia of human history, men have collectively treated women like crap? that we have a few solid centuries of overwhelming evidence to support such a claim, and that sadly, men not behaving like pigs in some way or another has usually been the exception and not the rule?

when you step back and look at the big picture, it's not pretty:

- the leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder.

- one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.

- 73% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knew — 38% were a friend or acquaintance of the victim, 28% were an intimate and 7% were another relative.

- one in four girls is sexually abused before the age of 18.

- it took until 1900 for every state in america to repeal coverture - the legal precedent that made a wife property of a husband.

this is just a small sampling of the situation in which women have historically found themselves when it comes to relating to, and with, men. i have to ask if, in this light, it's any wonder that we regard the entire gender with something of a jaundiced eye. if it's not entirely fair - or, dare i even say, reasonable - for us to approach interactions with the male gender with no small amount of wariness or suspicion. history kinda bears us out here.

a question, in all honesty: why should i give every man i meet the benefit of the doubt? how does that serve me, in a practical sense? as i pointed out in an email conversation about this, "in my general experience, it's hard not to generalize in practice about men - i have to hold myself a certain way when i walk down the street because i have no fucking idea which ones are nice guys and which ones are going to leer and hiss at me. and, beyond that, that the world doesn't divide neatly into those two categories, either." so, while i don't advocate retreating to a hermit's life in the woods based on the odds that men are going to mistreat you, or actively mistreating any man you meet in a bizarro pre-emptive strike, i also see how a lot of women's generalized distrust and distaste about men is not based on ephemeral ideas, but on cold, hard reality.

now, in my conversations with BoyCat about this issue, he raised a very good point that may ultimately (hopefully) be a way out of this deep, dark pit of anger and acrimony. it is essentially this: once we take all this frustration about gender, race, and sexuality-based discrimination and degradation and reframe it within a class-based critique, we could actually be able to move forward. because (sociology 101 alert!!) they are all intertwined. and in this culture of go-go capitalism and consumer worship, it's not men or white people or straight people who rule with impunity: money is king. and while (as i kept agitatedly pointing out during our discussion) this doesn't mean that sexuality, race, or gender-based abuse and hate aren't real or damaging, BoyCat makes the point that the only way to move from injured howling to some type of change is by making society a more just, equitable, enjoyable place for everyone to live. you do that not only by addressing racism, sexism, and homophobia, but by then identifying how these particular systems of oppression function in the service of a broader context, which is the well-oiled functioning of the capitalist machine. i thought that was a really trenchant point. and, ok, i hoped that by ending on it, you all wouldn't end up flagellating me too badly.

again, i kid. i love being flagellated. which reminds me - up next is a post about how we are, in fact, our worst enemy. until then, feel free to pontificate/castigate/interrogate in comments. (hey, this means you - you, right there. of course toast and i could just tussle about this for a few more days, but i want to hear all you lovely readers and your opinions. this is not to say that we'll end up agreeing with each other either, but that's half the fun, right?)

new and improved.

i encourage you to check out twisty on dizzy, because she always manages to be sharper and funnier than just about any other feminist blogger out there. certainly more so than me, because this is what i was talking about.

i know some of my friends and readers see this as somewhat overly reactionary - as dangerously close to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, in terms of ever getting anywhere with feminism. however, i think two important things to consider here are:

1) as men reading about feminist frustration, it's very useful to try to avoid the immediate reaction of "but wait, you say 'men,' but i'm not like that! you're indicting me by association and that's not fair!" please take a step back and cut us some slack - yes, sometimes we resort to these generalities, but it's because a) of all, we're frustrated and pounding out a blog post, not a term paper, and b) of all, if we took care to actually nuance out all the overviewing in our observations, every post would be laden with a page of footnotes.

2) generalization aside, there are a shocking number of men who behave this way. i know - i've talked with them. there is validity to this frustration, and it bears out a resulting cynicism about whether we actually will ever "get anywhere" at all. you can only talk to so many sexist asshats, hear so many women casually referred to as "dumbass shit-eating cunts", see so many articles about judges fining wife-beating doctors chump change because of their "good character" and so on and so on and so on before you start to despair about their being any point to talking to anyone about feminism again, ever. when women are so consistently denigrated and reviled by a majority of society, the fact that there are a few decent-minded people interested in change out there hardly seems to mitigate the sad-sack reality that so many are not.

friday hair blogging.

i told you it was short.



and the front, you might be able to tell from this pic, tapers forward a bit to chin length. it's been three days, and i officially like it.

also, overzealous flash aside, i am indeed quite pale. i know.

also also, why yes that is wally the green monster perched in his adirondack chair out in the living room, perched high above my head. how nice of you to recognize him!

your wednesday one-liner.

ah, harry potter. you truly never will die, will you? it's the "overheard by," though, that really makes this one (courtesy of Overheard in New York, as always):

Conductor: This is Prince Street. Not Half-blood Prince Street, but Prince Street.

--N train

Overheard by: she later invited the passengers to debate whether snape was a criminal or a hero

toddlers and scissors. and no, i'm not in jail for homicide (miraculously).

i'm back.

my streak of good flying luck ended abruptly last night, as we sat on a plane at manchester airport, out on the runway, engines going, when the pilot informed us that there was a ground stop in baltimore - we'd have to wait.

two hours, one trip back to the gate, one minuscule packet of peanuts, and an uncountable number of manic, high-decibel recitations of The ABCs (with concomitant kicking of the seats) by the toddlers behind us later, we were actually taking off.

and they didn't even offer us complimentary booze. fuck you too, southwest.

but we made it. crashed into bed soon after ascertaining that CatCat was still alive and kicking, got up in the morning, and went back to work.

then, nine hours later, i went to the salon and chopped all my hair off. what?? yes. and i have (um, i mean had) a lot of hair. a good 10 or so inches are being shipped off to Beautiful Lengths, a charity sponsored by Pantene that provides wigs free of charge to women with cancer.

and now, my neck, it is free! i've got myself a nice little deconstructed bob, if i do say so myself. i wish the front pieces were a tad longer, but my hair grows fast, so i just need to give it, oh, ten days or so to come around. SisterCat had a number of philosophical qualms with the shearing of so much hair, but such is life. she can't be right all the time (at least, according to me she can't)! and anyway, there's something cathartic about shucking off all that dead weight. if only all those other kinds of burdens came off as easily between the blades of some silver scissors.

but for now, i'll take it.

peace out.

tomorrow, BoyCat and i are hopping a plane and heading back to the Cat compound for some much needed rest and relaxation. of course we pick the one unseasonably cool august weekend in DC since like, ever, but hey - it's going to be even more unseasonably cool in new england! and given tomorrow's humidity-drenched predicted high of 98 degrees here in the district, i'm positively giddy with excitement over the weekend's low 70s forecast for massachusetts.

also, i am 27 years old today. as i said to jaynie k the other day, that is only mildly to moderately old. i ran this morning, i went to work, i got flowers, i drank a margarita. life, it is pretty good. (also, for those of you keeping track - i'm still thinking. maybe i should give myself 'til 30?)

enjoy yourselves over the next five days, everyone. if you need me, i'll be on the deck, with my feet in the pool and a drink in my hand.

because if it makes me guffaw, i've got to link it.

well, i guess that's not true, otherwise this entire site would be lolcats. but in this instance, i had to share, because this post from dizzy is a great blend of feminist outrage and dry humor. if you're someone who holds opinions when it comes to men, women, and society that are shall we say, atypical, you're going to identify with her frustration over how even the nature of argument can somehow get stacked against you. it's tiring, this notion you are somehow required to engage people (and these people are usually men) who want their anti-feminist position "acknowledged" and "validated" in order for you not be labeled an unreasonable idiot.

well, as dizzy pretty much says, fuck that.

I am happy, or at the very least willing, to debate whether or not a certain act, behavior, word, or belief is inherently sexist or misogynistic. I am not, however, willing to debate the importance or necessity of feminism. Honestly, if you really truly think feminism is wrong, or that women just have it made these days and that we should suck it up and be grateful for the rights men have already granted us, then you’re a complete fucking tool. Period. No discussion necessary.

then she manages to summarize every conversation i've ever had with those smarmy, sanctimonious men - and they've been men of all ages, stripes, political affiliations and purported intellect levels - who think feminism is kind of passé but really want to, you know, discuss it.

I know it must be hard to fathom that a girl doesn’t care what a smart man thinks about the thing that she cares most about in the world, or that there’s a movement that exists that doesn’t much take into consideration what men have to say on the topic. I know I’m supposed to 1) nod thoughtfully as I process your wisdom, asking clarifying questions about your points just in case I don’t immediately understand something you say, and then 2) offer up some powerful and intelligent argument on why feminism is important, and then 3) try to prove my point with examples from women in politics and a few stories about my grandmother, but of course, in the end, 4) concede that yes, you have some very good points that I will certainly think about, and thank you for educating me about feminism and correcting me on those things I didn’t fully understand about women and the world.

Well, that conversation has been had before and is a bullshit boring ass waste of time that does absolutely nothing for anyone.

bullshit boring ass waste of time. thank you. it took me a good ten years, i'd say, to realize that i was under no obligation to dialogue like this! i actually don't have to engage dismissers of feminism at all if i don't feel like it! such a small realization, and yet such a big rush of power. you really, honestly interested in learning about why feminism is not only still relevant, but still necessary? well, go get a public library card, head for Section HQ1101, and bring some stenopads. i've got better things to do.

brain oddities.

some time last week (last weekend, even? i don't exactly remember), i turned on the tv, pulled up the comcast guide, and started scrolling through the listings to see what was on. the tv had been left tuned to one of the pbs stations, and they were running one of those weird music shows where a pop artist plays with a big ol' orchestra, you know? (and i'm not talking about austin city limits here, which is a fine upstanding show whose character is not to be so wantonly maligned with statements like "one of those weird music shows.") and so, based on this happenstance of channel positioning, in the upper right hand corner of the guide screen is jewel, singing with some odd orchestral accompaniment. i give this about two seconds of notice before i continue on my merry guide-scrolling way.

however, something lodged itself in my mind at that exact moment, and it has been pestering me incessantly ever since. it's that song from her first album, "who will save your soul" - you know, where she kinda sounds like kermit the frog? yeah, that one. it wasn't even the song she was singing on pbs while i flipped through the guide, but there it was, in my brain. i found myself humming it off and on for the rest of the day. and then here and there the next day. etcetera and so on, until tonight, when i found myself sitting in front of iTunes downloading the damn thing!

why? i honestly don't know! i mean, i will admit that i've always kinda liked the song - frog-like warblings and all. however, i haven't actually heard it in, oh, at least half a decade, probably more. yet while i let the track play on iTunes, i found i still knew every word, every little inflection of the entire three minutes.

what's up with my brain and the mid-90s jewel? why is it a steel trap for that, and not, say, random details of thermodynamics? or even when to take a tylenol instead of an advil? (i drive SisterCat crazy with that one. i probably call her up to ask her this pressing question an average of three or four times a year.) and yet here i am, effortlessly recalling folk song renditions to the letter for no apparent reason whatsoever.

hey, at least it's another song for my iPod. everything old is new again.

more signs of the impending apocalypse.

as if the jelly shoes weren't bad enough!

this morning, i shuddered to find myself not hating the entirety of something kathleen parker had written. this op-ed on the whole "Fill-in-the-Candidate Girl" viral video phenomenon lacked any point with which i could stridently disagree.

i almost did not know what to do. my brain started to spark and sizzle - there was a dangerous short in there somewhere. but honestly, i find it hard to argue with observations like this:

Once discovered on YouTube, of course, it's a short shimmy to the news shows, where producers are so bereft of actual news -- or so convinced that bumper sticker America can't concentrate long without a sex infusion -- that a hottie helps fill the gaps left vacant by retired generals lulled to sleep by the sound of their own voices.

or, though it dangerously skirts a blame-it-on-the-young-sluts rationale, this:

As these new forms of communication continue to emerge, we will continue to be deluged by every hot new thing. But some of us miss every old thing -- the quieter lessons of adults delivered without a rhythmic thump, and a moment or two free of libidinous tease...The attention-seeking, self-important desperation that drives today's virtual world is boundless and, apparently, boundary-less.

i have to say - and god, how it literally pains me to do so - the woman has a point. this shit is embarrassing. obama girl, a woman found on an internet modeling site, singing and dancing at the behest of marketing dudes whose "political humor" enterprises are hoping to be the "next big thing" because...well...who doesn't want to be the next big thing? and, upon grabbing such a consummately postmodern brass ring, who doesn't subsequently run that shit into the ground? as much as i disliked obama girl, when i heard about obama girl vs. giuliani girl hard on its heels i nearly cried from frustration - the WaPo succinctly describes the cognitive dissonance thusly: "the girls engaging in this political debate are also having a pillow fight, choreography that causes them to twist every which way in their tight tees, short shorts and high heels."

political commentary? beer commercial? who knows - who cares!

people: this shit is old. old. i am honestly at a loss as to how a 32-year-old "digital strategist" can put a pretty girl in a bikini on film and end up having his efforts heralded as innovative cultural discourse. in fact, it is the least innovative marketing tactic i can imagine. what should be more surprising, i guess, is that it took until 2007 to explicitly sexualize a political campaign.

me and kathleen parker stand here, brows furrowed. mine doubly so, due to her puzzling presence on my side of the fence. file it under You Know Things Are Bad When...

oh dear.

i knew this day would come.

it was only a matter of time before the biggest monster of all my 80s fashion nightmares rose up and reared its ugly head in the light of day. or dim artificial light of night, as it were.

last night, we were out at the black cat celebrating a friend's birthday. we were standing there, watching the band, having a fine time, until i saw them. on a woman standing about 20 feet to my right. i attempted to surreptitiously look closer, wondering if what i thought i was seeing was in fact true. could she really be wearing? are those really?

yes.

jelly shoes.




and in the bathroom twenty minutes later, i saw another woman wearing them.

god help us all.

"what's wrong with america?"

this question, posed by retired steel worker Steve Skvara at the afl-cio forum on tuesday, made me tear up. if you didn't catch it that night or in any of the forum recaps since then, watch it now - it certainly deserved the only standing ovation of the evening:



it evokes a very similar, and nearly instantly iconic, query made by Fannie Lou Hamer at the Democratic National Convention in 1964 (this piece, put together by two 12-year-old girls in california, is a great concise history of one of this country's most important and yet neglected civil rights figures - listen to the sound byte from her convention speak at minute 6:00, and take ten minutes to check out the whole thing when you have time):



why is it that the most simple questions are also the most difficult to answer? why are they the ones we are so afraid to try to answer?

we now interrupt our regularly scheduled rambling.

what are blogs good for, if not to spread the word about your upcoming superhuman feat (or something like it), and why your loyal readers should support your superhuman-ness? so, below is an email that i sent out to friends and family last night - i wanted to post it here in the hopes that some of your might be moved to help me out. thanks in advance for taking the time to read and consider. (and if you're one of the aforementioned friends and family seeing this for the second time, well, sorry for the redundancy!)



i rarely send mass emails. in fact, i can't remember the last time i sent out a single email to more than half a dozen people! so you know that i wouldn't be monopolizing a few minutes of your day without good reason. (well, that's not true - i wantonly monopolize many of your minutes with abandon - but you'll have to trust me on this one.)

in just under two months, i'll be running a timed 5K at DC's annual AIDS Walk. this will surprise some of you. hell, it still kinda surprises me. but over the last six months or so, i've started running more regularly (read: more than once in a blue moon), and presently i'm going out and pounding the pavement about two or three times a week. i'm still not very good at it - i don't run regularly enough to really see strong improvement in my distance or my time - but hey, it's something. and i've found i kinda enjoy it. who knew??

so, even though the last (and only) 5K that i ran was back in 2001, i've decided to do another one. the AIDS Walk 5K is in just under two months - October 6, 2007 - and i'm hoping to train often and decently enough so i can complete it without passing out at the finish line. and you can help ensure a faint-free finish! how? well, as a registered participant in the run, i'm also a fundraiser - i've set a fairly ambitious goal (for me, at least) of raising $500 in support of my 5K against AIDS. your support will certainly help motivate me to run the best 3.1 miles that i can come race day.

there are two reasons that it's really important to me to try to raise a lot of money for this event, and i'd like to tell you about them really quickly.

first, the beneficiary of the AIDS Walk is not some mega non-profit advocacy and awareness group, where your money will just end up helping finance the Executive Director's travel budget. the money from this run goes directly to the Whitman-Walker clinic ( www.wwc. org ), a local institution here in the district that runs a ton of fabulous programs and provides great service to the community. i should know - my primary care doctor is actually based there! it's an amazing place - the type of truly community-based enterprise that you rarely ever see these days - and they deserve every penny they can get.

second, AIDS is not an abstraction to me. i've lost someone to AIDS, and even though he died over a decade ago, i still wake up at night sometimes with a pain that makes my breath catch. and while i understand that AIDS is a shockingly complex disease, and that a "cure" is not something we're going to come by easily (if ever), i am a person with a hole in her life because of it. and so i want to help people living with AIDS, dealing with AIDS, or even just grieving over AIDS, to get the services and support that they need.

i think i have officially taken up enough of your time. at the bottom of this email, there should be a link to my personal AIDS Walk webpage, where you can make a secure donation towards my fundraising goal if you'd like. If you're not inclined towards online contributions, please just send me an email to let me know, and i'll be in touch with information on how to send me a check via regular mail. you can keep tabs on my progress via that webpage - who knows, maybe i'll even start posting time and distance training updates!

thanks for listening, everyone.

-kate

Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support Whitman-Walker Clinic

******************************************************************
Some email systems do not support the use of links and therefore this link
may not appear to work. If so, copy and paste the following into your browser: http://www.aidswalkwashington.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&
amp;amp;i=229120&u=229120-183742543&e=1197029009
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i'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Tuesday, Aug 7

High: 98 °F RealFeel®: 108 °F

Wednesday, Aug 8

High: 97 °F RealFeel®: 106 °F

Thursday, Aug 9

High: 92 °F RealFeel®: 105 °F

just kill me now.

check it.

as cara at The Curvature notes, we really love allies:

National Organization for Men Against Sexism

i clicked through her post and poked around their site - looks like they've been at this a long time, and do a variety of good stuff, like an annual "Men and Masculinity" conference that looks critically and constructively at issues of gender, social justice, and community. also, looking at their site reminded me of a great group that i used to volunteer for back in amherst:

The Men's Resource Center for Change

they've been around for ages, and i was glad to see they're still doing a ton of great work on men's issues - particularly addressing violence, domestic abuse, and male sexuality - both in western massachusetts and beyond.

this is the kind of stuff i really like to see.

meme time.

amy tagged me with this meme earlier this week. ask, and ye shall receive.

The Rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.
5. 8 is a magic number. Not three.

all righty then. eight is actually my favorite number (is it weird that people have favorite numbers? most definitely. it's not like eight is lucky for me or anything. i just...like it.). so, eight obscure things about me:

1. i had a fish tank in my dorm room when i was a sophomore in college. i (shockingly) eventually got tired of cleaning it, and it wound up back at my parents house. the fish had baby fish, but then they eventually all died.

2. i only have one scar. when i was in the first grade, as i was running around the playground (which, for catholic school, was a big no-no) i collided with another girl, skidded face first on the pavement, and scraped my chin pretty wide open. the nuns chastised me, tried to clean me up, and sent me back to class, but i made such a fuss that they eventually called my mother. turns out i needed stitches – i still have a tiny scar just under the tip of my chin from it.

3. i despise sour cream. and pickles. and jello.

4. i word a leopard print dress to my senior prom. it sounds ridiculous, but i’m telling you, i was a full year ahead of the animal print trend of the late 90s. i am, somewhat perversely, proud of this. (i am not as proud of the fact that my date went on to work for mitt romney and george w. bush.)

5. i can’t stand the feeling of velvet. can’t stand it. like, i physically recoil from it.

6. even though i’m a confirmed bibliophile, i only actually own one first edition - Breakfast of Champions by kurt vonnegut – and it’s one of the most thoughtful gifts anyone has ever given me.

7. i keep rosary beads that my grandmother gave me in the glove compartment of our car.

8. i wore the wrong bra size until i was 25 years old. so, when they say “go get measured,” and you think, “eh – i’m fine,” go get measured anyway. seriously.


now, i'm not so much one for tagging, but feel free to lift this one if you so desire! viva obscure personal trivia!

friday cat blogging, cutest kitty in the world competition edition.

stop the presses, folks - i think we have a winner.

a dialogue.

note: this is verbatim.


everyone who has ever lived in DC: august is the worst.

me, two days into the month: you're right.

do you know what is awesome?

i'll tell you.

what's awesome is going to throw out the trash before work, and encountering in the trash area a small three-drawer bedroom piece from IKEA that exactly matches the wardrobe from there that you have in your apartment. and it's in perfect condition. just sitting there. by the trash.

i fucking love consumer excess that results in people leaving perfectly good furniture out for the garbagemen! especially when it benefits me!

your wednesday one-liner.

courtesy of overheard of new york, via the endless supply of clueless tourists:

Tourist pointing to chairs in Rockefeller Center: I don't know - they must be having an event or something, because usually you can ice skate here all year long!

--Rockefeller Center

ah hahaha. we actually swung through rockefeller center two weekends ago, and i was commenting to my mom that i had never actually been there in the summer, and thus never seen what they do with the rink in the warm weather.

and see, i'm not so much begrudging big city tourists some general ignorance. that's to be expected and understood. this however, 1) falls under general stupidity, and 2) i believe that anyone who cannot control the verbalization of their own stupid thoughts deserves some mocking for them. we all have stupid thoughts! hell, i have at least half a dozen per day! but luckily, 95% of them don't see the light of day, because i catch myself before i utter them. if i encounter a situation that confuses me, i take five or ten seconds to try to figure it out within the confines of my brain before saying anything out loud.

so tourists, please - take a page from mr. lincoln, who once wisely advised that "it is better to keep one's mouth shut, and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt."

the thing about tornadoes.

last week, i read a post over at This Fish where she took a male commenter to task for implying that a woman checking her closets and under her bed before she goes to sleep at night must mean that she's seen too many "Lifetime Movies of the Week." Fish schools him with both a real life anecdote and some stats, mainly that:

Over her lifetime, one in four women will be the victim of sexual assault. One in four of those will be assaulted by a total stranger. Often in her own home. The problem is, you don't get to choose not to be the one in four. Or the one in sixteen. And that's enough to convince me that checking under my bed and in my closets is not, in the least bit, irrational.

this post generated 101 comments. i would wager that close to 50% of them were women with stories: stories of being one in four, or one in sixteen, or having come perilously close to being put in one of those categories. a small sampling:

I actually had something similar happen to me. I was visiting a friend who had a creepy neighbor living on the floor above him. In the middle of the night, I woke up to find the guy standing in my friend's living room, touching me on the leg.

When I lived alone, in a great neighborhood in NC, I had a HUGE lab...I woke up in the middle of the night to him barking ferociously at the window. I screamed at him, told him to shut up and finally he did. The next morning I went to walk him (in fresh snow from the night before) and there were footprints by my window and my screens were slashed.

Quite a few years ago now, I was happily living alone in a sweet Victorian apartment when a pervert broke in one night and strangled me while I slept. Long story short, he did not accomplish his supposed goal of raping me because I fought him off...

I lived in an apartment with my lab, Willa. One night I woke to her barking wildly at the back door. She's usually a mild-tempered dog, but something had her completely protective. From my bed I could hear someone yanking on my back door - luckily I had the deadbolt locked! I called the police, and when they showed up they found that the back door knob had been completely ripped out.

I'm also a 1 in 4 and a 1 in 16. I was 8 the 1st time. I fought off the stranger when I was 15. He took fright for no obvious reason and fled.

I am a 1 in 4 x2. The first time was in daylight at a mall parking lot when I was 17 and I scared the guy away by screaming and swinging a large flashlight frantically. The 2nd time was 14 yrs later in my own home...

I am one of 4 and one of 16. Keep checking under the bed and in the closets. And if anyone feels the need to make fun of you for it, have them talk to someone like me who didn't check closely enough.

there are more.

my only contribution to the discussion was to point out that as horrifying as the prevalence of sexual assault by strangers may be, the even greater prevalence of sexual assault is the kind perpetrated by someone the victim knows (and very possibly trusts). if one out of four women who are sexually assaulted don't know their attacker, that means three out of four do.

upon reflection, i realized that what really amazed me about Fish's post and subsequent comment thread was how women, if they are in a space where they feel generally safe and supported, will tell you about their lives. they'll tell you what has happened to them. Fish's site is not feminism or politics oriented (it's hosted by iVillage's Love and Sex page, for chrissakes!), and she doesn't use it for a soapbox or a debating arena. and yet here were scores of women, unprodded for disclosure about their experiences, that all stood up and said "me. that was me, too."

the problem is, the revelations of these spaces don't often translate into the media cacophony at large. they are most often generally ignored, if not outright shamed, discredited, or dismissed. and society proceeds merrily on its way, convinced that because charges were dropped against those four "nice boys" from Duke, all must generally be right with the world.

it's not, though. it's far from right. on the train to NY last weekend i was reading a book of Katha Pollitt's articles. in one of them, "Violence in a Man's World," she says:

We live, I am trying to say, in an epidemic of male violence against women.

that struck me: an epidemic. something so big that it should be causing alarm bells, and breathless news reports, and Twelve Point Plans of redress. i'd wager it's even bigger than an epidemic, because an epidemic has a beginning and an end. i'm not sure there's a word for the scale upon which male violence against women exists. what was it that shulamith firestone wrote about radical feminism in the 60s? "If there were a word more all-embracing that revolution, we would use it."

if there were a word possibly all-embracing enough to encompass the nature of violence against women, i would certainly use it here. but i'd take "epidemic" as a mainstream media start. instead we get the sensational, salacious, fear-mongering news coverage of CNN and "entertainment" of Law & Order: SVU. you'd think the mere existence of a spin-off crime drama, which has been running episodes about sexualized violence for eight solid years, might have tipped society off to the fact that there's something big going on here. but somehow, it doesn't translate. as Pollitt points out, men who perpetrate these crimes are most often pigeon-holed into one of two categories - "guy who made a mistake" or "monster" - and that this is misleading and outright harmful in so many ways (this is a long-ish excerpt, but it's spot-on):

A good guy who makes a mistake may seem poles apart from a monster, but at bottom both categories have the same effect - they distance violence against women from the fabric of daily experience by making it seem unfathomable, bizarre and rare when really it is none of those things. Detach the act from the man by labeling it an anomaly (or a "tragedy")...when that's impossible, because the act is too gory, or has been repeated too often, detach the man from the male half of humanity by labeling him inhuman...This kind of thinking gets us worse than nowhere. What we should be asking is not how the most sensational crimes against women are different from run-of-the-mill threats, rapes, bashings and murders but how they are the same. We need to stop thinking of male violence as some kind of freak of nature, like a tornado. Because the thing about tornadoes is, you can't do anything about them. The onus is all on potential victims to accommodate themselves or stay out of the way (what was she wearing? why was she out so late? why didn't she flee/scream/fight back/stay calm?)...Could it be, for example, that defining [someone] as a monster is mostly a way of not having to think about how he resembles the millions of men who hit but don't kill? That those good guys who astonish everyone when they make a "mistake" only passed for good because we don't take seriously the casual hostility to women such men usually display long before they rape or kill?

one in four. and the threat of it, always, hanging over our heads, intoned over ominous music on cable news or dramatized on TNT to give us something to watch while we're eating dinner. unless, of course, you prefer the Lifetime Movie of the Week.

why.

why why why.

why do i have the theme song from Perfect Strangers stuck in my head?

between this, and the interminable sore throat thing, i am beginning to wonder if there is some cosmic conspiracy to drive me mad. if so, congratulations, time-space continuum - it's working.

thing #2.

so, i've added a little section to my sidebar. under Elsewhere, you'll find other places where i be. that are not here. hence the "elsewhere." get it?

i knew you would.

the first is babes and books, of which you are all aware. i'm halfway to our goal, and given that we all wised up and realized that the end of summer isn't technically until september 22nd, i think i just might make it. and we've already got our next little challenge planned for the fall, so it looks like this will be an ongoing thing. so if you ever feel like hearing about babes who read things, well, you know where to go.

the second is feminist review, which is a site dedicated to reviewing a variety of products - music, movies, books, home goods, beauty products, art shows, concerts, you name it - from a feminist perspective. every month or so i do a little review over there (and i get to keep whatever i review! i am definitely not old or well off enough to be able to stifle my excitement about free stuff!), so feel free to check it out from time to time.

thing #1.

ok, so when you have a wicked sore throat for two and a half days, but you're not running a fever and you don't have those telltale white spots in the back of your mouth...

...what the hell is wrong with you?

i am cranky. i don't do well with pain in general, nevermind pain that won't go away and has no clear explanation. my throat refuses to adequately address my philosophical confusion on this matter - why, throat, why do you hurt me so?

i do not know.*


*SisterCat and MomCat, a nursing scholar and walking encyclopedia of medicinal knowledge respectively, both posited that in fact, i had..."a sore throat." sigh. not that i don't trust their diagnostic ability, but still, you know. waaaah.

so.

waging a living. rent it. marvel at the cesspool of hypocrisy, malfeasance, and backward priorities that is american society.

yesterday, i got up at 12:30 in the afternoon. today, i dragged myself out of bed at 11:20 am. this seems to indicate that i am, in fact, very tired. so tired that, regardless of the copious amounts of sleep i had amassed in two nights, i still persisted in lolling about pathetically ("my sore throat, it is hurting me!") until about 3:00 pm this afternoon, when i miraculously managed to take a shower.

my throat still hurts. but at least i am clean.

friday cat blogging, say what? edition.

CatCat has just read this article from thursday's LA Times, in which we are informed that the Democrats' inclusion of an initiative called "Reducing the Need for Abortions" in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill indicates that they "have begun to adopt some of the language and policy goals of the antiabortion movement" in order to "appeal to religious voters."

"say what?"

i know, CatCat, i know. it doesn't make any sense. except that it does.

hold on.

the thing is, by name alone, the "Reducing the Need for Abortion" initiative is actually a minor coup for pro-choice advocates, because it used to be the "Reducing the Number of Abortions" initiative. and we're not really down with reducing the number of abortions as an end goal, because well hey, if you outlaw 'em you can reduce that number right down to zero! helping women avoid ever having to get an abortion in the first place - now we're talking. this is progress.

except that the bulk of the language and policy that's actually in this initiative harks back to its "number" days - i.e., it's pretty much all about figuring how to support and encourage women to carry to term once they're pregnant. not that there's anything wrong with that! but if you do that at the expense of also supporting and encouraging the choice of abortion, then there's a problem. and if Dems continue to fall all over themselves to try to find "alternatives" to abortion rather than re-frame the debate into a (ahem, real-life) scenario where abortion is merely one of a variety of viable choices, well, then that's a BIG problem.

so are Dems trying to get into bed with religion and the right to life? i don't think so. but are they dangerously close to completely scuttling their chance to actually change the parameters of the discussion, to start realigning the whole reproductive rights paradigm after 30+ years of conservative framing? absolutely.

CatCat says, it's positively Pavlovian.

this is a first.

now, i never do these quiz things. ever. just because...you know. i don't.

but i saw this one over at k8's place and laughed out loud. because that's what lolcats do - they make you laugh, and not in a silent way.*

so, given that my entire week has consisted solely of a) going to my day job and editing shit, and the b) coming home to my nights and weekends gig and editing shit, i thought it would be the perfect time to share some insight with you all about my lolcat self. the results of my lolcat inventory should surprise, oh, exactly no one.

Your Score: Serious Cat

34% Affectionate, 34% Excitable, 57% Hungry

Hungry for knowledge in any internet forum, you demand decorum. Any off-topic remarks, absurd statements, or tomfoolery on the interweb is deeply frowned upon by you. Truth has no room for drollery.

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

my favorite part of the whole process? the invitation on the front page:

"LET ME SHOW YOU MY NINE QUESTIONS.
My nine questions.
Let me show you them."

your wednesday one-liner.

courtesy of......me.*

Girl 1: Come ON!!
Girl 2: Shut up! I just peed my pants!

-a crosswalk in Times Square, 7th Ave. and 46th St.

*BoyCat claims that she said "i think i just peed my pants," but i recall no such qualifiers on the situation.

when allergies attack.

it's worse than animals. seriously. can you die from sneezing? i'm starting to think so.

while i wait for the actifed to kick in and for sweet, sweet sleep to overtake me, i'll tell you about my little new york city trip this weekend.

we took the train up to manhattan, just for the night, to meet up with the Cat family and traipse about town. MomCat grew up in midtown manhattan and hadn't been back in about 20 years, so it was high time for a group outing in the bestest borough (sorry, all you BK-o-philes).

i was really looking forward to this trip, because it enabled me to cross off not one, but two things from my Life's To-Do List. they are both encapsulated in this picture:



(yes that is BoyCat with the big black circle for a head. funny how he shows up like that in all my blog-posted pictures! and yes, he is a longterm item on my Life's To-Do list. ha.)

but i digress - to the crossing off!

1) lunch at The Algonquin Hotel

really, what english major wouldn't jump at the chance to emulate one of the most famous literary phenomenons of the 20th century? being generally enamored with the 1920s in general, and with the literary work and personalities of the decade in particular, "the gonk" always seemed like a great destination. i just never got around to actually going there. until they posted an amazing room rate, and bam - we were on our way to eat and sleep there!

lunching, however, was the critical piece of my agenda. lunching, as a verb. and lunch we did. we even had a round table - shocking, that they would have so many in there now, right? and while we all certainly didn't attempt to over-exert ourselves in the wittiness department for the occasion (i should say it's because it would've seemed tacky and overwrought, but in reality i suspect it's just because SisterCat and i didn't have enough liquor in us yet), we still had a great time. for the record, i had french onion soup, and it was delicious.

2) hail a yellow cab in manhattan

any new yorkers that read this will think, seriously? a life goal? i've hailed 26,489 yellow cabs in my life! i know. but i hadn't hailed any. ever. and for some reason, i felt a burning desire to accomplish this relatively menial feat. and so i did.

not well, mind you, but i did. (those five-person cabs are hard to come by! and it's hard to see whether their lights are on during the day! but i make excuses. truthfully, i am a bad cab hailer.)

here are some other pics from the trip:

central park carousel

strawberry fields, central park

strawberry fields, close up

the new york public library. is this patience, or fortitude? you be the judge.

this, most definitely, is matilda, the gonk's resident cat. she just chills in the lobby all day. that is her chaise. yup.

this is a somewhat blurry and illicitly taken picture of the chapel at the back of st. patrick's on fifth ave. this is where my grandparents got married. well, married for the second time. it's a long story.

ok, it's time for medicinally-induced slumber. my favorite kind...

hi.

alive. two days of stuffity-stuff (mainly vodka drinking, sushi eating, and harry potter watching), followed by two days of manhattan. the borough, not the drink.

very tired. pictures and more forthcoming.

stuff you should see.

two linkeys i think you should clicky:

1) go take a look at Nothing But Red, an initiative started in response to joss whedon's call to action after dua khalil's murder (which, as you probably remember, moved me to put my thoughts together on the matter as well). they're accepting submissions for all kinds of art for the project.

2) check out planned parenthood action fund's videos of the Big 3 dem candidates as they preach to the alleged* choir on reproductive rights yesterday. (unfortunately, i've just discovered these are only minute long clips from the speeches - which is a woefully inadequate amount of information, but probably worth clicking on anyway. if just to give PP the traffic.) i didn't get a chance to go to any of them - no free time during the workday and no discretionary income will do that to you - but my bosses did, and you know i'll be picking their brains about ALL the details soon. i'll report back.



*i say alleged because i'm not aware of any feminist choir that likes to say things like "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare - and i mean rare!" in political speeches. i'm just sayin'.

your wednesday one-liner.

overheard in new york observes an interaction that could be a metaphor for my life:

Concerned suit to large, inflatable chicken: Hello? Hello? Is there someone in there? Can you hear me? Hello?

--45th & 3rd

the thing is, i'm not sure if i'm the suit or the chicken.

this just in.

camden yards is beautiful.

RFK stadium is not.

i've checked two new (at least, new to me) major league ballparks of the "to visit" list in the last three days! what fun! this brings my grand total to a whopping....um, five. ahem.

anyway.

business ensues later this week...i know i said i wouldn't toss up this stupid filler posts anymore, but what can i say - i should be writing more (not necessarily for my few readers - you dirty ingrates - but because more writing means more better writing skillz), and the fact that i'm not makes me feel guilty. hence, the half-assed posting about baseball stadiums that pleases no one.

also, i don't not have the time or energy to really post something with, like, thesis statements in it because i'm getting up early to run tomorrow. i've been pretty good, running 2-3 miles about 3 times a week. i can almost do it without dying, and i'm trying to get up to more like 4 times a week. hence, the 6:30 am alarm in the morning.

that is also really of no interest to you.

so, i will commence with the shutting of the up.

(oh, wait - this just in as well - if you hate humidity, stay away from DC tomorrow. and the next day. and the day after that. don't say i didn't warn you.)

friday cat blogging, shop til you drop edition.

every time we move, CatCat likes to find a new little spot in while to nestle. in the chicago apartment, it was the back of the closet. in alexandria, it was underneath small shelving. and here in the district, it's...an ikea bag.





apparently, something about this pile of blue plastic shoved between the couch and the window called out to her, "sit on me! sit on me all the time! we will be best friends forever!"

CatCat and synthetic material: they speak-a the same language. the language of looooooove.

(i should leave out the post script where we finally clean up the apartment and put the bag away, leaving CatCat bereft and adrift in a sea of bag-less-ness. oops. i just told you anyway.)

the thing.

"Well I was there when they
dropped the bomb
You know I
remember the bomb
And I
still hear the bomb
And I
still fight the bomb

You know I still fear the bomb
You know I still hate the bomb

Sometimes I
still get the call."

cheating.

so i've been reading a lot. which, combined with the working and the eating and the sleeping and whatnot, means that i don't have a lot of ammunition for posting. except about books.

and wouldn't you know it, there's this other place where i'm doing that!

so check it out, if you miss the sound of my voice or something.

(by the way - do any of you still have that childish predisposition to pick at bug bites? because apparently, i do. i have five bites on my left arm leftover from vacation that are, at this rate, going end up as hideously garish scars, given the intensity and regularity with which i pick at them. and yet i can't stop! it's embarrassing, actually.)

(oh, and one other thing. the hotness? not nearly as bad today as it was yesterday. yesterday was pretty swampy, but today - at least the 8:00 am hour and the 6:00 pm hour, when i was actually outside - just felt like regular old summer. hot town, sure, but not wheezing like a bus stop, you know?)

inanity.

it is hot here. so hot that it's likely all that you'll hear from me over the next three days is:

it's hot.

haaaaaaaaaawt.

waaaaah. *whimper*

hot.

well, i guess since i just covered the extent of my thought processes for the near future, i can refrain from posting for half a week! but hopefully i'll come up with something considerably more interesting to say in that time. i was so busy being all kinds of productive this weekend - running! petsmart! target! costco! - that i didn't even come close to formulating a worthwhile original thought.

(well, other than when, upon waking on saturday morning, i very perceptively pyschoanalyzed my previous night's dream about pulling a big splinter out of a gaping wound in my foot as being about childbirth anxiety. that was a good one.)

i'm doing pretty well on my little 20 book challenge, too - just finished up book #7. of course there's still no way in hell i'll get through another 13 by the end of august, but i'm going to try! valiance in the face of certain failure, that's what i say!

except when it comes to the heat. then i say screw valiance, just whine as much as possible.

friday cat blogging, guest kitty edition.

CatCat is currently busy gorging herself, and she cannot find the energy or inclination to amuse you with her likeness right now. she had her lovely little steroid shot while she was at the vet last week, which means that she'll spend about half a month completely obsessed with food before reverting back to her standard, kitty-gingivitis state of not really giving a rat's ass about food.

but for now, it's the gorging.

so, for your weekend entertainment, please consult the below picture, courtesy of i can has cheezburger?, which seriously cracked my shit up at work today.

"thank you, thank you. i'm here every night, twice on sundays. please, try the veal."

simile time.

do you remember that video game pitfall? the one where you had to navigate your way through the jungle, swinging on vines and avoiding quicksand and such?

sometimes, i feel like getting through a day in this city is like a game of pitfall.

today's adventure included:

- uncomfortable shoes

- oppressive humidity

- lugging five books to work in my bag

- lugging five books from work to the library, and coming out an hour later with seven

- not having a bag that fits seven books and all my other crap, which results in beng weighed down with a huge bag on one arm and three books in the other

- running the gauntlet (twice! once coming, and once going) of homeless or otherwise indigent men*, who gather in groups and staaaaaaaaare at you for the length of the block

- running for a blue line train carrying what begins to feel like a few slabs of concrete

- sitting down next to a middle-aged white guy on the train who shows you his copy of the onion and says, in all seriousness, "did you know that this is a fake newspaper??"

- walking up the hill to your apartment, sweaty, blistered, weighed down like a pack mule, exasperated with humanity and exhausted with yourself, and having to pass all the happy people drinking margaritas at the mexican place on the corner.


why i am not drinking a margarita right now is beyond me, actually. (oh right - we don't have an ice maker, or any disposable income this week!) the funny thing is, none of this is out of the ordinary. there are just some days where it all conspires to make you feel like a guy in a safari hat, sweeping precariously through the urban jungle.



*in general, i appreciate the unfortunate situation most of these men are in. i don't begrudge them a place to go and not get harassed by business owners and/or cops. but regardless, a dozen or more pairs of eyes on you - especially when they belong to scruffy, potentially mentally ill people, is not an enjoyable experience.

your wednesday one-liner.

courtesy of overheard in new york, we learn that "plastics!" are no longer the materially-minded's lecture subject of choice (and that the lectures start earlier and earlier these days):

Dad to baby in stroller: Did you know that the price of copper is becoming irrelevant?!

--31st & Ditmars, Astoria

half-dark.

it was half-dark when i woke, and as i swam up out of sleep, i couldn't quite tell from where, exactly, the light was coming. i had been there less than 24 hours - the house was still largely a stranger to me.

i lay still, and through one slightly open eye i took stock. the bathroom? no. the hallway around the corner? no. i swiveled my heavy head, hair twisted in the remnant's of the previous day's ponytail, to my right, towards the windows. there. that was it.

it was the sun.

the clock on the nightstand read 5:14 am. i swung my feet out from under the blanket, slid off the edge of the mattress as quietly as i could. i watched the gauzy green curtains billow lightly towards me, propelled by a breeze through the screen. how long had it been since i'd slept in a room with open windows? i did not know. the city, though melodious in its own way, is usually not conducive to such things.

here, now, there was quiet. a bird somewhere chirped rhythmically, but other than that, nothing moved, nothing sounded out. i spread the curtains with my hands.

over the bay's inlet, behind a grove of trees, the sun was rising. itself a dark, burnt orange, its light was red, diffuse and spreading, over the water and across the lawn. though it had not graduated to brightness, i still squinted in the face of it - i saw the latent heat in its density, in its reach. but still, nothing moved.

i crawled back into bed, trying not to disturb him. the back of his legs, the small tower of his shoulders were warm, and i moved towards them to counter the cool remnants of night air. then i slept - soundly, effortlessly.