Oh, hey, I have a blog? July 8, 2008

I haven’t updated for a long time, obviously. Before, I had a legitimate excuse. I was working 30 hours a week, taking 15 credits of writing intensive work and still trying to keep my house from looking like Grey Gardens.

(Speaking of Grey Gardens, I just finally saw it for the first time last night and now I kind of want to watch it over and over and read everything I can about the Edies.)

Anyhow, school has been out of session for a month now, so my legitimate excuse for not blogging is about as expired as 60% of the contents of my fridge. A comment from a fellow reader at MamaPop reminded me of this blog, which reminded me that I am a writer and that writers should write.

The tragedy is that I had so much good shit to write about while I was immersed in classes about social theory, but it’s all congealed into a gross theory slurry in my brain by now. I must make a concerted effort to process what I’m working through in school and reassemble the bits that bang around my brainpan, and what better place to do it than in my blog for all seven of my readers?

I’ve noted a change in my personality over the last few months, a confidence in my ideals that has translated into an unwillingness to hide them. I am not unashamed of my political views or my feminism. I never have been, really, but I’ve grown into them, grown more aware of my worldview and how to articulate it, and I’ve grown much more vocal as a result. This crops up from time to time at work. I simply refuse to apologize for or shield others from my novel perspective that women are people and voters and breadwinners and deserve equal representation in society, government and the workplace.

As a result, I have gotten a bad reputation, I think, as a humorless bitch. Which is hilarious, because it’s pretty much like, “uh…I’m saying?” The fact that you think that is precisely why I refuse to laugh at your misogynist jokes and, furthermore, call you out for them!

I am currently five and a half weeks away from my last day here, at which time I will take on a horrifically low-salary job on campus as the LGBTA Coordinator. Not that I’m counting. I am looking forward to working in a field I am passionate about and actually making a difference, even if on the surface my job looks like party planning. My two largest projects are planning a Drag Show and a Queer Prom, after all. However, I will also be educating queer and straight students about LGBTQ issues, providing resources and referrals for counseling and other forms of assistance, and will help build a campus coalition of queer students, faculty and allies, who see LGBTQ issues as human issues we must all deal with.

The fact that I have a job I care so much about lined up immediately after one I am so flagrantly dispassionate about, is a dangerous thing indeed. As my termination date grows closer, I find it harder and harder to punch the clock.

Dear Info-tainment America: February 28, 2008

Please stop calling it a “baby bump”. Really, please stop. Stop obsessing about pregnant celebrities and stop, in the name of all that is holy, calling it a baby bump.  It makes me want to claw my eyes out.

I have to pee. February 11, 2008

So I went ahead and checked the list of things I would like to get up at 6 a.m. to do, and I’m pretty sure “drink a fuck-ton of water and then not pee” is not on it.

I’ve been having a weird pain in my ovary so I have to get a pelvic ultrasound. I would just like to ask where I can donate money to a foundation for creating a method of looking at female reproductive organs that doesn’t require women to do the potty dance for a couple hours. Can you hook me up with those guys? Because I want to write them a check.

It’s 2008. I want hover cars, Air McFly’s and an ultrasound that doesn’t require inflating the bladder with water.

Yes we can. February 9, 2008

Today I participated in the most ridiculously chaotic civic process I have ever encountered. A caucus. Where I grew up, people voted on paper in little booths, like civilized human beings. In Washington, however, the Democratic primary doesn’t actually count, though the state spends millions of dollars on ballots for one anyway.

So today I met at a tiny Episcopalian elementary school kitchen with almost 150 of my neighbors to elect delegates to our county convention.  Our precinct had a heavy swing toward Senator Obama, with 9 of our 11 delegates going to Barack. And I am one of them.

I chose to volunteer myself as a delegate for Obama because, for the first time since I have been old enough to vote, a candidate I believe in has a real chance at being president.

I am not going to go into all the reasons why I want Barack Obama to be president. I don’t really want to get into a political discussion. I just want to say that, of the candidates in this race, only Barack Obama could make me sit in a tiny kitchen with 150 people for two hours to convince undecided voters that he should be our president, and I am proud to have the position to stand up for him on April 5th at my county convention with my fellow Obama supporters and say, “yes we can.”

Sick Day Part Deux: Kitchen Nightmares January 15, 2008

After battling a persistent sore throat, body aches and on again off again fever for four days, I dragged myself to the doctor this morning, who had to look at my throat for about five seconds before announcing, “Oh, that’s strep. I don’t even have to do a test. I mean, I can if you want, but that’s textbook strep.”

I was oddly proud that my pharynx looked like a textbook picture for strep throat. Is that weird? Anyway, he did the test, and now I have a handy bottle of amoxicillin, some Ben and Jerry’s sorbet and an intense case of the boredom. I went home sick yesterday after trucking through three hours of work, so this is day two.  I actually feel better today than I did yesterday, which I feel speaks volumes about how good my immune system is without penicillins, and I am so over sitting at home already. Work actually sounds fun after two days of daytime television and trashy celebrity “news” rags. Hey, did you know that Brittney Spears is crazy now?

Frankly, the only reason I didn’t go to work today is because, you know, what kind of asshole goes to work after the doctor says, “Strep”? Hi coworkers, I love you so much, so here’s a nasty throat infection!

The only time I realize I’m sick is when I try to accomplish a simple task like lunch and discover that my faculties are extremely dampened, as I end up covering every inch of my kitchen in coffee grounds—including the skillet where I was preparing my grilled cheese and on the sandwich itself— and follow up with a triumphant encore wherein I ignite a paper towel on the stove as I attempt to clean up my mess.  I can now, however, declare with 100% certainty that grilled cheese and coarse-ground Kenyan coffee is not the scintillating taste sensation it sounds like it should be, so no need to try that one out if you’re curious.

Blah blah. January 11, 2008

This morning, I had my admissions interview with Fairhaven College, the school for interdisciplinary studies at WWU. I decided to not dress like a slob like I usually do on Fridays, and wore a skirt, heels and took the time to apply makeup. My interviewer, however, had bedhead and wore an oversized mens dress shirt over a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers so I felt severely overdressed.

Every time I wear makeup, which is rougly 4 times a year, everyone seems to think it’s a marked improvement on my usual appearance, and it makes me feel like shit. “Wow, you look pretty today!” Meh. Am I such a hideous chud without makeup? I’m not even sure why I felt compelled to wear it, frankly.

They let me know there are only 15 open spots for the spring quarter, which wasn’t fantastic news, but the good news is that I can attend WWU and take classes that will apply to my “degree program” (not that I, like, have one yet) with Fairhaven, and then apply to Fairhaven again in the fall or summer, which is apparently a lot more open for new students.

I think I’m getting sick again and I can’t help but wonder if it has anything to do with the bacteria we worked with in my lab last night. I might just be a horrible hypochondriac.

Winter Break Blahs December 23, 2007

I have had absolutely no Christmas joy this year, and I hate to admit it, but it’s because I have not gone shopping. I can’t really afford to. While I will spend time with my family, which is the most important part, I feel a little guilty that I haven’t bought tokens of my affection for my husband, sister and parents. I know that I have good reasons—things like tuition and car repairs come first, and everyone is very understanding—but that doesn’t stop me from being pretty bummed about the whole thing.

Andrew did buy me a CD yesterday, the soundtrack to I’m Not There, which I am currently enjoying with coffee at the coffee shop down the street. I have developed a Sunday ritual since the middle of the quarter, where I go to a coffee shop other than the one I always hang out in and where everyone knows me, and enjoy some time alone, listening to music and either working (during the school term) or reading. I have read three books since the quarter ended, and have three more waiting for me on the nightstand. I forgot how wonderful it feels to read for pleasure, and I hope to make time for it during the next quarter, though that’s probably a futile thing to hope for. I’m taking 12 credits, working somewhere between 20-30 hours and probably volunteering for DVSAS (Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services) of Whatcom County.

This break isn’t actually much of a period of rest, either. I am working full time during the school break, and brushing up on pre-calculus so I can pass the math assessment test and prove my mediocre grasp of college-level algebra, or else I will be sentenced to the purgatory of Math 99 before I get my transfer degree, which would be tragedy. Also, I still have three essays to write for my application to WWU and my supplementary application to the school’s interdisciplinary studies college, Fairhaven College. On top of it, there are the holidays and my sister’s visit. Spending this Sunday lazing in solitude feels all the more necessary in light of all that, yet I can’t help feeling I should maybe work on a couple math lessons or an essay.

I think maybe my New Years Resolution will be to drop the guilt complex thing. It’s pretty tired.

I interrupt this homework-filled weekend to bring you these brief messages. December 9, 2007

Work on LOUD.ROBOT is going well. I have a new review up and the first of what I hope to be many submissions. The project has really grown on me, and I want to keep it up even after my grades are submitted. I am a little frustrated with my partner on the project, who has contributed content but still hasn’t sent the final artwork I expected about three weeks ago. At this point, I don’t even really feel like changing what I put up for the time being with whatever he’s working on, but it’s his project too, I guess.

In political news, Mike Huckabee boils my blood. In addition to reading about his plan in 1992 to quarantine AIDS patients and votes against AIDS research, Huckabee’s justifications for excluding gays from marriage rights are a joke. From a recent interview in GQ:

I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that’s important. You have to have a basic family structure. There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survive[d]. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business. But when you want to redefine what family means or what marriage means, then that’s an issue that should require some serious and significant debate in the public square. And if you look at states that have had it on the ballot—I know in our state it was a 70-percent-against issue. Most states are similar to that. [emphasis mine]

The fact that this kind of faulty logic actually works on some people is boggling. For one, even if what Huckabee says is true, the argument that because there is no evidence of something (like a society that has successfully redefined marriage or family), it is not viable, is an argument from ignorance: “there is no evidence for p; therefore, not p.” Even someone who got a C in introductory logic can spot the fallacy. Furthermore, he seems to be insinuating that there were societies who redefined marriage and family and did not survive, and if so, he’s committed a formal fallacy - affirming the consequent.

But even if the argument itself wasn’t fallacious, it relies on false premises. Marriage and family structure have changed dramatically over the course of human history. Marriage used to be a purely economic arrangement that benefited the family (which, by the way, didn’t resemble Huckabee’s “traditional” nuclear family). Marriage for romantic love is, in historic terms, an extremely young convention. And anti-miscegenation laws existed in this country until made unconstitutional in the 60s by the Supreme Court. Perhaps Huckabee thinks we should reinstate anti-miscegenation laws, or while we’re preserving “traditional” marriage, perhaps we should bring back dowries and limit the right to divorce. Oh wait, we know he at least would like to do the latter.

The fact is, marriage traditions have changed drastically over the last few centuries, as have families. The nuclear family so revered by the right is less than two centuries old, and still society hasn’t crumbled. And I think if you ask a Canadian, Belgian, or Netherlander if their societies are on the verge of toppling for permitting same sex marriages, you’d probably get a chuckle from most.

I just wish people like Huckabee would be honest and give the real reasons why they make these arguments: because they’re homophobes and they want to appeal to other homophobes who will focus on that issue and forget for a minute about the complete clusterfuck in Iraq or the other mishandlings the current administration and the Republican party are responsible for. I honestly would respect them more for not trying to paint over the hate and manipulation with bad logic and a shitty understanding of history.

I don’t know what’s more infuriating, the argument itself, or the fact that it gets thrown up like a smoke bomb every time an election is on the horizon and gone as soon as the votes are counted. When will Republicans stop playing the gay-fear card, and when will stupid redneck homophobes stop falling for it?

Yeah, I’ll be over here holding my breath.

L O U D R O B O T December 4, 2007

o hai, I has a new blog.

But this one is for a grade. 35% of my grade, to be exact.

Thus, I shall shamelessly pimp to you, my regular readers, the music blog that will determine whether I get to keep my A in English 201 or fail miserably. You may read and comment on posts by me and other contributors at http://loudrobot.wordpress.com.

Also, if you would like to participate in the fun, all you have to do is set up a WordPress account if you do not already have one, and then send me an email at loudrobotmusicmedia @ gmail.com, and I’ll get you set up as a contributor.

What are we looking for? Features on all types of music, really. Show reviews, album and single critiques, top ten lists, interviews, you name it. The only real requisite is that you can write passionately (and articulately) about music.

And, I don’t want to beg or anything, but please remember, this is 35% of my grade, and a large part of that grade is successfully creating a community of writing, which I can’t do if I’m the only one writing! [/shameless plug]

To those of you who have this feed on your LJ friends list as well as my own LJ, I apologize profusely for the spamming.

NaBloPoMo - Last Day November 30, 2007

Well, I made it. I managed to blog 30 days straight, and though there are definitely some throw-away posts (this one being one of them), it was a good exercise and has really helped me with my writing in other forums.

I am relieved, however, to eliminate the self-imposed pressure to post something every day, at least as I finish the last two hellish weeks of the quarter.

I am sort of dreading Winter quarter and it’s caused me to reconsider my plans to enroll for 12 credits. It’s only two courses, and I’d really love to finish it and be done, but I’m thinking it might be best to stretch it out over winter and spring quarter, since I still may have to take a math course if I don’t test out with a high enough score on the placement exam. I’m also beginning to feel it might be less stressful to start big girl school in the fall rather than the spring and have the summer off. I think I’ll have a better idea of what I want to do when I talk to Andrew about it tonight.

Now that this NaBloPoMo thing is over, I hope to post less crap - quality over quantity and all.