this one seems different

Gaza Braces for War

Maybe I'm simply more aware of things going on in the world, but the latest happenings in Gaza have that stench of intense, drawn-out war.

It feels different, more serious, but familiar at the same time. I remember this feeling of dread within my heart while watching US troops roll their way into Baghdad - dread mixed with a little bit of fear, and a lot of helplessness. Worried for my friends in the military, and the potential humanitarian problems.

There's so much swirling about right now, I'm not sure that I can fully articulate everything.

matthew alexander explains why torture is counterproductive in interrogating terrorists

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Matthew Alexander

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

"Valentine for Ernest Mann"

by Naomi Shihab Nye



You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of the skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

keith olberman on proposition 8

best-selling books of the last 15 years

Go here to see the list.

Not surprisingly I've read a lot of what's on this list. Well, except for the John Grisham and What to Expect series.

When all this crap started coming out about Sarah Palin, I felt a little sorry for her. That didn't last very long, though. Now she knows what it feels like to have outrageous accusations made against her.

on proposition 8

Seriously, California, WTF. I'm really quite surprised that Prop. 8 even got passed - especially in California. I think a lot of people were surprised.

Seriously, though, I really don't understand why some groups of people really care who else is getting married. A big argument coming from that side is that they are protecting the "sanctity" of marriage. There are so many things wrong with that argument that I don't even know where to begin.

There's the whole thing where, historically (and we're talking from ancient times up through 16th-18th centuries, and to some extent into the 19th), marriages were simply a matter of business. Daughters were married off to create alliances, bring money or prestige into a household, or ease the burden of feeding so many children. The religious community does not own a monopoly on the title of "marriage." In fact, I think I could argue that marriage did not even originate as a religious practice.

Then there's the matter of America's divorce rate. I believe it's still hovering somewhere around 50%. Apparently, the LBGT community will "destroy" marriages. I'm not sure about you, but a 50% divorce rate says to me that there are flaws in the reasons people are getting married and/or the ways people think about marriage.

That whole slippery slope thing? The one where if LBGT start getting married, then people will want to marry pets and children and appliances and whatever else they want to get their hands on? Just wow. How is that even a logical step?




So yeah, we'll see how this whole proposition 8 thing in California pans out. It's been reported that San Francisco's Mayor Newsom has said that he will continue granting licenses until he is sued to stop. That is so freaking awesome.

yes we can

I finally had the time to sit down and watch Obama's speech from November 4th. Wow. I will not deny that I teared up a couple of times.

yes we did.

Obama, 2008.

it's finally here

I'm not gonna tell you to go vote, because I'm fairly certain you know what today is if you read my blog. Let me just say that the long lines at the polls shouldn't be something you dread, it is something about which you should be incredibly proud. I've always been interested in politics, but to see so many young people wanting to vote...

...it just makes my heart sing.

combining a Star Wars reference with feminism

Do you ever think you REALLY know someone, and then they say something like "McCain 08!" or "Go-Bama!" or "I hate puppies!" and it totally turns your world upside down?

These past few months ago have been SO saturated with election news, that even I'm almost tired of it. Well, really, I'm way tired of silly allegations - like being friends with a well-known Palestinian some how means that you (and you alone!) are going to destroy the state of Israel. I'm also way tired of Joe the Plummer. I'm fairly certain McCain has to be really desperate if he has Joe the Plummer on the campaign trail for him.

Then there is Sarah Palin. Her existence has caused a great disturbance in my feminist force. I think that a lot of what she does only reinforces that glass ceiling that she claimed to bust through (well, and Hillary loosened it for her, right?), but then I can't help but be disgusted when I hear comments about her clothes or her as a mother. I completely disagree on every one of her policies, but I can not escape the fact that Sarah Palin is being subjected to the same sort of sexist nasties that Hillary experienced (and probably was part of Hillary's failure to obtain the Democratic nomination).

Sucks for her, but I'm still voting Obama. There's no way that I'd vote for someone because I feel she's getting the raw end of a sexist argument.

bibliophile

I say this every semester, but I am so incredibly tired of reading things for school. I don't have the time or the energy to read things that I want. My 'to read' list just keeps getting longer, and longer, and longer.....

I can't even go near places like Barnes and Noble or Half Price Books because it causes me such inner anguish.

barack and roll

from my photoblog...



I've never had so much riding on this one election. I feel like my ability to continue living within the United States is dependent on November 4th. It isn't just that I couldn't stand living 4 more years under the intolerance, fear, and war mongering of certain Republicans, it's also that there is such a balanced and intelligent leader on the other side. There has been so much talk about what a historical race this has been, and that isn't untrue. I would be completely thrilled to see the first African-American elected to the presidential office.

I *would* be thrilled that there is a female vice-presidential candidate, but, you see, I don't vote with my ovaries. There was so much criticism of Hillary supporters - claims that they were really only voting for her because she was a woman. If that were true, you could count my vote for McCain/Palin, only I refuse to vote for that atrocious woman.

obama is a witch

whoa.

It's been over a month since I posted over here. Very irresponsible of me, I know. If it makes you feel any better, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I pledge to write at least once a day for the entire month of November. Oh! And and...photographs over on my photoblog, too.

new age boombox

Rather than walk around with a boombox on your shoulder listening to Run DMC, you walk around with your lap top under your arm listening to Dave Matthews Band.

so true.

obama chose biden

I'm sure you've heard the news by now.

I have to admit, I'm a little saddened by the news. I will concede that Biden is a wise choice, but here we are again without a woman in the race.

I think I've lost a bit of that hope for change.

friday night

There's something poetically hilarious about a table of elderly relatives looking bored as "YMCA" blares from speakers.

decided to shake things up a bit...

I suppose this is where I say that maintaining a website is difficult work, but I wouldn't know as I didn't really update mine that much. Besides, the way I had it laid out didn't really give me an opportunity to display the day-to-day things a I photograph.

So I took a hint from Cayce and made a photography blog. It will be where I showcase all of my photographs from now on.

This link will take you there...

a quandary

There comes a time in a feminist's life where they must make a decision...

I ride public transportation. It isn't bad, really. In fact, it's a great place to watch people, or just a place to be anonymous if you feel like it. If you're from a small town, you know the luxury of feeling anonymous.

I ride public transportation every morning. As a woman, there have been a couple of times where individuals of the male persuasion have offered me their seats. My initial response is 'no, thank you. I am fine.' After all, I'm in my twenties and I sit in class all day. Standing is a welcome respite. Usually, their response is a shrug of the shoulders and they return to their seat.

It's when those individuals insist when things get ugly.

One time a man got down on his knees in the middle of the moving bus, pleading for me to take his seat. At that point, I refused out of spite. Today, the poor guy was so polite and really just wanted to be nice. You could tell his mother instilled him with manners. I took the seat, but as I sat there, my blood started to boil.

While this guy just wanted to be nice, the whole idea of offering a seat to a woman is due to the belief of the weaker female sex. Should I just play into the subtle (albeit unintentional) sexism? Or do I make a scene on the bus?

I'll have to think on this one for next time. You may read about me in the papers...

4th of july

our backyard

...Where I lay under the green-black leaves.

meet gus

You might remember him from this post. That is water, not mud, he is laying in. I think. At least it USED to be water.

what I'd like to call karma

Let's say you are playing Scrabble with a friend. Let's say you could lay down the word 'declared' - not only would you get a 50 point bonus, but it would fall on a triple word score square. Now, depending on how hardcore you are about scoring, that word could get you anywhere from almost 100 or 300 points. Then, let's say your friend blocks 'declared' with the word 'art.'

That's when you call her a dirty bitch.



A couple of words later, the Scrabble gods dealt her a healthy blow of karma. These are the letters she pulled after she passed two rounds to trade in two other i's.

rowdy and gus

One of our new neighbors brought over giant Rottweiler, Gus, to play with Rowdy this morning. After a couple of hours, Rowdy was literally gray with dirt and mud. I rinsed him off before bringing him inside to bathe...

late afternoon

The sky is starting to turn orange, and a flock of birds wheel far up in the peachy blue. Maybe they are feeding on insects, or maybe they are swooping just because they can. I can't tell.

They are too far away.

Long after they moved on to their nests or another patch of sky, a lonely feather cascaded through the tree branches, and found a new home in the damp grass.

night

The wind slips through leaves and tickles my ears like fresh cool sheets slide through my fingers.

hilarious.

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

more home thoughts

the view from our bus stop




Even though day time temps reach about 100 degrees, night time is not half bad...as long as there is a breeze. I like to lay on our brick patio, underneath the green-black leaves of our shade tree, and watch things float across our tiny patch of night-sky.

disgusting.

The following is a video compiled by The Women's Media Center. The WMC is an organization that "strives to make women visible and powerful in the media." The video's intent is to showcase "the pervasive nature of sexism in the media's coverage." See the WMC homepage here and more about the video, 'Sexism Sells, But I'm Not Buying it' here.




Favorite parts = Gloria Steinem's quote at 2:15, men 'allowing' women to 'take over the world' at 3:40, and the official petition by the WMC which reads as follows:

"Media companies may think that sexism sells, but I'm not buying it! Together with the Women's Media Center, I call on the national broadcast news outlets (CNN, FNC, MSNBC and NBC) to stop treating women as a joke; to stop using inherently gendered language as an insult or criticism; and to ensure that women's voices are present and accounted for in the national political dialogue. Sexism isn't a partisan issue. We're not going to let anyone hit the snooze button on this important issue!"

fine.

I just received this comment on my correctly attributed post about the poetry of Sandra Cisneros:

I work for the agency Susan Bergholz Literary Services, agent for Sandra Cisneros, and we insist that this excerpt, 'Mariela' from MY WICKED WICKED WAYS be taken down as it violates the author's copyright. Please spare us having to send an official letter to the host of your blog.

With sincere thanks,
Melanie Fleishman
asst to Susan Bergholz


I removed it for now, but let's just say I'm not very pleased. How many times have I included excerpts from books (always with author's name, publication name, and usually a link or two) and haven't received comments about THOSE books.

Sandra, I love your work, but find some literary agents that aren't so uptight. Thanks, April.

5508 roosevelt

On our first night in the new house, we ate Subway sandwiches at our desk. We listened to Frank Sinatra until Mike pointed out that Frankie and his Cold Cut Trio didn't really go together. We finished our dinner to the sounds of Kevin Smith's smodcast.


The streetlights across the street lends our house a ghastly glow.


...and someone is enjoying his new backyard.

bollocks.

I took some really fantastic night time shots in an attempt to photograph some fireflies. Too bad I already packed up my camera cord.

By the way, we got the keys for the house yesterday, and I'm so glad. While Mike might only see it as a roof over our heads, I really do love that little house.

poetry for the not so poetry inclined.

I admit it, I used to REALLY. HATE. poetry. If someone wanted me to know something, why didn't they just write it in a normal f-ing sentence, rather than breaking the words up across an entire page and using metaphors that were way too complex.

And then I realized I was just reading the wrong kind of poetry.

Turns out Romantic era poetry is not my cup of tea.

Without further ado, I present to you a poem by Sandra Cisneros. Her book, My Wicked Wicked Ways (not to be confused with Errol Flynn's autobiography of the same name) is her first collection of short-ish poems published in '87. I love all of them (the poems) in their own way, but this one, my friends, is one of my favorites.


***Unfortunately Mariela was removed. See this post.***

momentarily out of order

I hate moving. I really do.

gays everywhere!

I've only been a gender studies major for a short while, but I don't think I've taken a gender studies class without a section on homophobia or gay rights.

Honestly, I really do try to listen to others' arguments and try to understand why they think a certain way. Unfortunately, I simply can not wrap my brain around the arguments against gay marriage...


Next thing you know, people are going to want to marry their dogs.

Then people are going to want to marry children.

The government should not deny a child a mother and a father.


These 'arguments' are so inane, I don't even know where to start. It's really a little infuriating.


Even though Jon Stewart hosts a 'comedy show,' he really is rather intelligent. He sums up a lot of my feelings in the following interview with Bill Bennett from two years ago.

Please, PLEASE, watch this.

Part one


Part Two

this warms my heart...

California State Supreme Court Overturns Marriage Ban

bar owner compares Obama to a monkey

Sir (and I use that term loosely), if the sign outside your bar advertises free meals for Border Patrol agents, I'm fairly certain you were saying something more than Obama's hairline and ears resemble Curious George's.

Click here to see the video.

ATTENTION:

The spring semester officially ended today. I will now remove my pants. They will be donned again in two weeks time. Let the lounging in underwear commence.

That is all.

another good one from CNN

CNN needs to think about hiring new photo editors

This was the photo used to illustrate the main story on CNN's front page yesterday. Obama has cut Hillary's superdelegate lead down to 2.


I added my own artistic interpretations of the candidates' emotions.




I can totally envision the thought process used to choose this set oh photographs.

'This news bodes ill for Hillary. Let's find a photograph where she looks like a disgruntled old man. Obama should look like he's on a roller coaster...of love.'

I know it is pretty much a terrible source for news, but sometimes I really can't help watching the train wreck known as CNN.com.

extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world

Just thought I'd share a recent playlist that is on constant rotation in my apartment. I like to call it 'the ethereal mix.'




I'm pretty dang terrible at html, otherwise I'd edit this to look a bit nicer. Learning html sounds like a nice summer project. I doubt it will happen.

i love eddie izzard

What it would have been like when Darth Vader visited the Death Star cafeteria...

losing things is not always unfortunate

Two years ago, I lived with a rather close friend who had pack rat tendencies similar to my own. I say that without a hint of derision, I promise. I just like to keep things - funny things, old things, things with story, things that are pretty. Needless to say, we had a bunch of STUFF.

My relationship to my stuff has always been bittersweet. I like to look at them, but I've always looked enviously at those homes in decorator magazines/blogs where they only have one or two things adorning their mantel, not 15.

No joke, I have 15 things on my mantel. Fifteen things that are supposed to be there, anyway. There are a few things up there that should be somewhere else.

Needless to say, I aspire to be one of those people who do not collect substantial amounts of STUFF.

This sounds incredibly cheesy, but finding myself moving in with Mike has really given me a great opportunity to limit the amount of STUFF I haul around. I took 4 shoppings bags and a clothes basket worth of STUFF to Goodwill a couple of weeks ago, and I only packed up part of my closet. I see great potential here.

cracks me up every time I look at it

Telepopmusik - Breathe

Ignore all the blatant hedonism and the baby wearing make-up.

part of a future project

She has been a maid, an inventor's daughter, a mermaid, Japanese, generic Middle Eastern, but really she is just the same Girl, in various candy shells.

I can not count how many times I have seen Her, all cute hips and perky tits. I let Her into my life. I thought she knew me.

That's just what he wanted me to think.

updates (a.k.a. recent complaints)

Kelly Ripa makes me want to stab my eardrums with a screwdriver.

I stuck my arm in a nettle bush. Ouch.

After 3 hours spent writing a paper on the computer, my eye started twitching. Lame.

Language text books are too expensive for my taste.

before there was color*

Now that Mike and I were approved to lease a house, I've gone into decorating mode. I'm not really the Suzy Homemaker, super-Martha-Stewart-y type, but I like color, composition, and dabble in some crafts.

Color is usually the main focus of my photographs and drawings. I love interesting combinations of colors, and have a huge folder on my computer named "color inspiration." Then I found this blog.

Wear Palettes is a blog that posts innarestin' color combinations from photos posted on The Sartorialist (which is a NY fashion blog).**

You can go by day, or search by color. Not only are the combos great for planning outfits, but I've pretty much already planned the paint and furniture in every room of my new house.

Dang, I love color.



*a Halou song

** I know, I know. Not the most original of methods, but hey, it works for them.

to my unborn male child

I know am damning you to an adolescence filled with ridicule from your male contemporaries - that is unless gender relations change drastically within the next ten years (I am not exactly hopeful in that regard).

I am apologizing to you now, little egg.

I know your childhood will be difficult because your mother instructed you ow to be sensitive and thoughtful of emotions - whether they be anger, aggression, sadness or helplessness; aware of your actions on others; aware of others actions upon you.

It will be difficult because your mother will teach to value every human life, be it male or female, gay or straight or something in between, white, yellow, red, black, or brown.

I write this now, knowing my thoughts might not be as lucid twenty years from now.

I will keep it close to my heart when I reassure my son that the other little boys are simply afraid of their own inadequacies - even if they pushed YOU to your knees and called you a fag.

I will offer you my journal when you call me from college, accusing me of raising you too nice - she left you for the boy who bashes peoples' heads on scholarship.

Just remember, after the boys who pushed you have long grown bald and resigned to selling used cars in their hometowns, you will be teaching your own daughters how to be strong, irrepressible women.

and then Rowdy flashed his boobs and received some beads.

There was an explosion in Times Square early this morning.


Bombs and explosions give me the heebie jeebies. Not for the potential for loss of human life (although I do worry about that) but because of the subsequent backlash. People talk about strengthening the Patriot Act and increasing "security."

That and they are so quick to blame those god damn A-rabs.

From Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff




"By early November of 2001, there is no need to look to the past for our daily dose of tawdry. While the rest of the country has wrapped itself in the flag and emerged newly patriotic and bellicose, New York scarcely two months after September 11 has tempered the jingoism by rising like a drunken, horny phoenix from its ashes. The city is electric with the renewed crackle of filth. Chalk it up to that old market-theory chestnut about the rising hemline in the plummeting economy, or that people simply don't want to spend their nights alone. The media have coined a term for the transitory love-in-wartime clutches they claim are happening everywhere: Terror Sex."

- On Penis Puppetry
"Even though the temple on stage has a Latin designation, it feels quite Greek in here. I mean Greek in that binge-drinky, Daliesque-arcs-of-airborne-vomit, ripe-with-incipient-danger-of-date-rape, college fraternity sense of the word, as opposed to the Aegean birthplace of democracy."

- On crowds standing outside a Today Show taping
"The contact sought with 'HI GRANDMA AND GRANDPA I MISS YOU. LOVE PRINCESS GABBY' is intimate. Watching [the] Today [show], even in public, is a very personal pursuit. The members of the crowd are not doing this for what could be characterized as the typical reality-television kind of attention: that disinhibited, oversexualized, bereft-of-pride behavior that makes people - whose parents are presumably still alive - allow themselves to be filmed having catfights while wearing thongs, or tucking into heaping plates of beef rectums (while wearing thongs). The simple act of standing, clothed, in the street with naught but a homemade sign seems almost Louisa May Alcott-sweet by comparison."

- On The Log Cabin, a gay Republican group:
"As someone who can still barely comprehend the concept of Jewish conservatives, despite their shaming and undeniable existence, I know I am a naive throwback to a time when both visible and invisible minorities largely allied themselves with progressive politics. Having only arrived in D.C. on an overcast day in October 2003 for my first direct encounter with gay Republicans, I am a veritable Darwin in the Galapagos, slack-jawed in the presence of this confounding genus, a creature that seems to invite its own devouring; the cow helpfully outlining its tastiest cuts on its side with chalk, while happily pouring the A-1 sauce over its own head."


"To briefly rant about The Swan, the television show that takes depressed female contestants - all of whom seem to need little more than to change out of their sweat suits and get some therapy - and makes them all over to look like the same trannie hooker: what makes The Swan truly vile is that for the months that these women are being carved up like so much processed poultry, all the mirrors in their lives are covered over. Such willing abrogation of any say or agency in how they will be transformed BY DEFINITION means that in the real world, they would not be candidates for surgery. It is the very sleaziest of all the plastic surgery makeover shows - quite a distinction, that; like being voted the Osbourne child with the fewest interests."


"It can be hard to remember what one's anticipatory image of something was once you're on the other side. I'm no longer sure exactly what it was I was waiting for, but I do know that it was something wholly unfamiliar and thrilling. Like a new color. Not a mixture, no trace of blue or yellow or red. What would that look like? I have some basic understanding about light - how it can only be broken down and refracted into its seven constituent hues - and even though I know that the physical world makes the existence of such a thing basically impossible, I'd still really like to see that."

too much, too soon

School started on the 14th. Syllabi always seem so long in the beginning - so many things to do before May. By the time March or April comes, there's just too little time to get it all finished.

I will never advise someone to have a long distance relationship.

I hate moving.




That is all

From Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not runs off screaming into the woods?'"


"...the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides."


"That's the great American disease, we forget. We watch the disasters parade by on TV, and every time we say: ' Forget it. This is somebody else's problem.'"


"Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity after their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand."

I'm not really surprised I got sick a couple of days in to my new routine. That's just my luck. It's been really hard to avoid things like broccoli and cheese soup with a huge chunk of thick, crusty bread - all I want to do is curl up in bed and eat soup all day. Not to mention it's rather difficult to motivate yourself to exercise when you can only half-breathe out of one nostril. Rather than throw out the routine all-together and pick it up once this cold passes, I've been running on a half-routine. Still eating healthier, but allowing myself to give in to a cookie every once in a while.

My biggest challenge, so far, has been portion control. Rather than just eating until I am full, I am forcing myself to make a conscious decision as to when I am finished eating. It's weird sitting down to a meal and not feeling totally stuffed. Well, it's weird, yet it's nice. I can eat a meal and not feel like I need to lay down for a couple hours afterwards while my body digests the ball of pasta rolling around in my stomach.

At first I still felt hungry after my designated portion. I've found, however, that if I give myself 20 minutes and then decide whether I'd like to eat something else. Most of the time, I am not.

I've also started writing everything down that I eat. It helps to give you a more visceral image of what you are putting into your body every day. This little freeware is awesome. Just another little way to give myself a better idea as to just exactly what I am eating every day.

I'm dying.

It's true. I can only breathe out of one nostril, and my eyeballs feel hot. I'm pretty sure I have a fever.

At the actual stroke of midnight, we were dancing to "Billie Jean"