Stepping Out

My whole body hurts.

I tried on my suit jacket in preparation for the Denver trip. I haven't touched it in months. When I pulled it on, I was surprised to find that it seemed to have a tighter fit than I remembered, which was physically impossible, I thought, because I've dropped two sizes in the last year.

It zipped up fine.

The problem was the shoulders.

Of course. Spend two or three days a week beating the shit out of something, and work with 30lb free weights five mornings a week, and you get broad in the shoulders. I was already broad in the shoulders.

Such irony. I've spent my whole life wishing I was smaller, and here I am, getting bigger, taking up more space.

I've been issued a company laptop, a corporate card. Rumor has it I'll be traveling to Dallas, New York, maybe Fresno this year. I'll be talking with my new boss about what they can offer me in Denver.

I'll be 25 next week.

I went jogging tonight. I'm not sure why, because I was prepared to pack all my jogging clothes for Denver (my hotel has a gym), but I was full of this nervous energy that I couldn't get rid of, so I pulled on my Hurley hoodie (I was so gleeful to find that "Hurley" was an actual clothing brand) and hit the pavement.

By the time I got to the park, the wind was up, coming in from over the lake, and it was snowing.

I picked a sport I like - boxing - that requires the one exercise I have hated the whole of my entire life with a blazing passion - jogging - in order to be in any way effective.

I hate jogging. I have always hated it. I can't say why. Maybe memories of those truly awful fitness days in PE when you all got clocked on doing your mile, and I always seemed to be lagging behind back there with the other fat kids. Mostly, I think, I didn't like the idea of running much because, well, I gained about 30lbs during puberty, and all of the sudden there was a lot more extra flesh to jiggle around and attract attention, and I hated drawing attention, because I never looked on any of it as good.

So for whatever reason, I hate jogging, but here I am, knowing I have to be up by 3:30am to catch my flight, knowing I should be sleeping, but too edgy to sit still.

I've learned to pace myself, which took awhile to figure out. Now, whenever I start moving too fast, I remind myself that it's better to feel like I'm trotting out the duration than to have to stop because I'm gasping. The breathing thing took forever to figure out, too. All from the diaphram. If you lose the breathing part, you're finished, and that's what I'm paying attention to the whole time, that and my music.

I'm just about to reach the place where I usually stop for my hundred-yard walk (usually my halfway and turn-around point), but there's a good song on (Snow Patrol: Run), and I keep going, and you know, just past where I usually stop, the path is way better lighted, and you know, there's some bike riders out here tonight, hey is that another female jogger? Hell, I'll keep going.

Past the skating park, cool, why aren't I tired? Another good song (Velvet Underground: These Days), put it on repeat, keep going.

I'm not sure why I'm not tired. It's like I've given my brain leave to gnaw on all the bullshit I've been tossing and turning about in bed, and it's taking the opportunity to hash it out while I run.

I'm worried about this job, worried about sticking with it, because I'm so damn terrified of sticking with anything for more than two years (yea, about the time it took for my last actual relastionship to go from blandly sour to freakshow. I'll be the first to bang that one on the head).

But what did I always want? A job where I got opportunities to travel, that gave me time to write (if I only work 6-9 months a year when projects are going, guess what I'm doing the rest of the time?), a job that paid off my student loans, because until I get out from under the burden of all this debt, I'm going to feel leashed.

I can see the tennis courts now, and I've mapped this route before. To the tennis courts and back is over 4 miles.

The snow's coming down thick now. My fingers are numb.

Train: Ordinary (repeat)

I jog past the tennis courts, take my 100 yard half-way point walk, turn around, and head back.

I'm facing more into the wind now, and the snow's like sleet against my face.

This is stupid. Why am I doing this?

I'm tired, but I can't stop now because to stop and walk means to frickin' freeze my ass off.

I just don't want to do this. I hate this. Skip, go back to Snow Patrol (repeat). Keep going.

The last mile and a half is a blistering bitch.

I tell myself I'll let myself walk at least under the tunnel. Just a breather, just a...

And I headed into the tunnel, and I realized there was no one waiting on the other side of it.

I told a buddy of mine once that I always felt like I was running away from something, and he said, "Are you sure you weren't running *toward* something?"

Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, but tonight, the only person behind me was me, the only person ahead of me was me.

I was running away from somebody I was, and running toward somebody I wanted to be.

I had this litany running through my head, "You've got three degrees. You've trekked 160 km into rural Africa. You've written eight books (no, they aren't very good, but I fucking finished them). You can run four miles. This is the last of your shit that you need to get together. Fit and strong. That's it. You'll be there."

I've been looking for somebody to fight my whole life, when the only person I've got to fight is myself.

But it's like once you start running, you can't stop.

For better or worse, I'm stuck with myself.

May as well be a better self.

But goddamn, it's a bitch to get there.

What I Got For Christmas

...from my buddy Stephanie was a notebook with this on the cover:



The best part about knowing somebody for over a decade is that they totally have you pegged. She apparently picked it up months ago, it seemed so appropriate.

I'm so easy.

Why Are You Here Reading This Instead of Trolling CNN?

Steve Gillard's got some cool thoughts up about the history of media, the reasons behind the collapse of the dot.coms, and the growing attraction of blogs.

My short answer: I like having a bigger sandbox, where the sand stretches into the sea.

The Blue Place

If, like me, you have a lot of trouble finding books with kick-ass female protagonists, I'm currently re-reading Nicola Griffith's crime thriller The Blue Place, and damn, I'd almost forgotten how good it is. If you don't mind that about two thirds of the way through, there's a short Norway travelogue, you'll love it.

How's this for an opening:

"An April night in Atlanta between thunderstoms: dark and warm and wet, sidewalks shiny with rain and slick with torn leaves and fallen azalea blossoms. Nearly midnight. I had been walking for over an hour, covering four or five miles. I wasn't tired. I wasn't sleepy.

You would think that my bad dreams would be of the first man I had killed, thirteen years ago. Or if not him, then maybe the teenager who had burned to death in front of me because I was to slow to get the man with the match. But no, when I turn out the lights at ten o'clock and can't keep still, can't even bear to sit down in my Lake Claire house, it's because I see again the first body I hadn't killed."

And you might learn a few things, too:

"It's the simplest thing. If you walk tight around a corner, you can be surprised by anyone who is waiting on the other side. It's like sitting with your back to the door, like chambering a round and leaving the safety off, wearing a dress that will restrict your legs, or walking with your hands in your pockets: stupid. But so many people do it. Every now and again I go into a school to teach self-defence classes to young women. I ask: How many of you know which way to look before crossing a busy street? and every single hand will go up. So then I ask: Who knows the fire drill? And most of the hands stay up. Even if I ask who knows CPR, or what to do if you smell gas, there are a lot of hands. But if I ask how many know how to walk around a corner properly - or escape a stranglehold, or find out if the man behind you really is following you - they lower their hands in confusion. Yet these are all sensible precautions. It's just that women are taught not to think about the danger they are often in, or how to prevent it. We're taught to feel fear, but not what to do about it."

Great stuff, there. Particularly that last line.

Busy Morning

Lots going on this morning, I'll have more later. Looks like we're going to sign for something in New York. I've never been to New York. Might be cool.

Off to Denver tomorrow, etc.

I'll have lots to say about this later. My first thought was to wonder if this was the same guy who was terrorizing my neighborhood a few months ago. He may have just switched beats. That's what ya get, fucker.

Just One of Those Days

Yea, it's just one of those days.

I'm going to go home, go to bed, and start all over again tomorrow.

Fuck the Fucking Fuckers

Blogger ate my goddamn post.

Die Blogger! Die!

I think this was blogger's way of saying, "Kameron, you're done for the day. Really. Relax. Take a chill pill. You don't have to be pissed at everyone today."

To which I reply: ARGGGGGGHH, you Fucker!

Episode 15: In Which I Try to Figure Out What the Hell it is I Do Here

The problem with having a new boss who's out of Denver and has about a zillion things he's responsible for is that I get no feedback whatsoever.

Now, really, this is nothing new for me. For the first three weeks I worked here, I didn't even know what the hell it was we did.

In fact, I have a feeling Blaine didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do either, and he was my boss. So, we were even.

As I've said before, Blaine is like a big puppydog. He's a big former football player, with a football player's distrust of his own intellect, a sweetheart, but sort of all over the place. He says thank you all the time, watches where he puts his hands, and has gone out of his way on numerous occasions to praise what I do. Even when he's busy, I'll at least get a, "Yes. This is good" or "This is good, but can you change this?"

In fact, he just called me into his office to read a line from an e-mail he couldn't understand to see if it was, and I quote, "Smart person lingo that you'd know" or "industry lingo."

I told him I didn't know it, so it must be industry lingo.

I feel so appreciated for being a geek.

And from Piper I'm getting zero reaction. I sent him oodles of crap I'd been compiling that I'll be using to, you know, do document controls work. The only reponse, "Can you make one of these up for X project too?"

Uh. Sure.

Today it's: "Make this look more professional, send it back to me."

Sure. I do so, he says, "Actually, that was the wrong thing I sent you, here's the right one."

OK. I do that one.

Radio silence.

Now it's "Convert this other document, we'll do this thing later. I'll call you tomorrow."

Right-o.

No "Thanks," no "This is great," or even "This frickin' sucks, you should go back to cleaning dog kennels."

In the grand scheme of things, of course, the formatting of documents for kick-off meetings shouldn't matter, but I've worked a year now with Ned the regional VP occasionally leaning over my shoulder, and that guy's a frickin' perfectionist. I reprinted Thank-You cards four times because he found crap he didn't like in them (thank god he wasn't around when I was doing audit packages).

I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that 1) Blaine is younger than Piper by well over a decade 2) Blaine actually shares the same office with me, whereas Piper's only met me once.

I think there's a generational difference in management styles going on.

That, or I've just gotten very, very cozy with all this overpraise, and I'm about to take a nosedive into Corporate Hell.

Getting a raise really sucks.

I just want to write books.

Damn, I'm Sore

Did 3.5 miles yesterday, which I didn't think would be a lot until I actually did it. When you're used to jogging 2.6 or 2.7 miles, jumping to 3.5 is a fucking bitch.

I just didn't realize how much until I stood up just now.

Damn. I've got kickboxing tonight, too.

It's Because Only Stupid Women Get Married, Obviously.

LONDON (AFP) - A high IQ is a hindrance for women wanting to get married while it is an asset for men, according to a study by four British universities published in The Sunday Times newspaper.

...for girls, there is a 40-percent drop [in marriage] for each 16-point rise [in IQ], according to the survey by the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Smart women are just too smart to get married. They cohabitate and fuck around like any good, normal, sane person. Obviously.

"A chap with a high IQ is going to get a demanding job that is going to take up a lot of his energy and time. In many ways he wants a woman who is an old-fashioned wife and looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way."

Then let him go fuck his mother.

Midnight Cowboy

I watched Midnight Cowboy last night, and for some reason, I've had this insatiable desire for Dentyne gum all day...

Sisterly Love

Somebody else has purportedly got Lynne Cheney's lesbian romance up.

I sure wish my last name was Cheney. The opening paragraph to a book I wrote when I was fourteen sounded just like this:

"On every side, there was emptiness. On every side, the prairie stretched on and on, unbroken to the horizon. Even the dome of sky was a naked stretch, swept bare of clouds by the unceasing wind. In all its vast blueness, the only interruption was the inescapable sun. She felt its heat. She saw the shadow it made, her shadow, a startling darkness in the bright and infinite loneliness."

Looks like it's a real deep, penetrating read.

Yum.

Welcome to Chicago

It's quarter to seven. I'm heading to the train station, splashing through dark puddles on the pavement. The sky's that purple-black color that city skies get just before dawn. At this time of the morning, the smell of fried Thai food from the restaurants lining the street is more stink than smell, and my stomach heaves at the idea of consuming anything non-liquid at this time of the morning.

I'm listening to a Live cd, and thinking that you know, Live sounds pretty good until you actually listen to the lyrics, and then you start listening and you realize the lyrics are shit. Luckily, I'm in no state to actually listen to what the hell anybody's saying this morning.

I arrive at the top of the train platform just in time to see the ass-end of a train heading toward the loop.

Wait around for the next one, dreary day, rain, Chicago, the sound of garbage trucks. A northbound train clatters by. Somebody's smoking and eating a McDonald's breakfast sandwich. Heave.

Maybe I'm getting sick with something.

On the train, the only empty seat is full of gnawed chicken bones. I wait until a woman moves herself, her stroller, and her 3-year-old to a vacated seat, and then I take theirs, hoping they aren't moving because the kid pissed on the seat.

I doze and watch the rain on the windowpanes. Past Wrigley Field (Addison - amazing when the Cubs were in the playoffs, it was like Disneyland), past Boys' Town (Belmont - there's an army surplus store there I keep meaning to get to), past De Paul University (Fullerton - maybe I should go to law school?).

We pass underground, and at Washington I prepare to alight from the wrong side of the train - that's how out of it I am. When the doors open on the other side, I do an about-face and stumble onto the platform, heading toward the blue line tunnel. I follow after the same little old woman almost every morning. She usually wears a lime green coat, but today it's gray featherdown.

At the blue line platform, familiar faces, but no violin player, no man crooning alongside bad tape recordings of cheesy songs. The street performers appear to have taken the day off.

Step onto the blue line, sharing the train with people and luggage, bound for O'Hare. I get off before O'Hare, trundle up the escalators with a bazillion other commuters, click, click of high heels and good men's shoes.

Twelve minute walk, past the mini-skyscrapers of this cozy little office complex (look, mom, I have a real job!), under the parking garage, follow the sidewalk, cross at the blinking light, there across the street I can see Cyllia the secretary's van already parked out front. Another day, another dollar.

Push inside, turn off the Live album, Blaine's office light is on, Blaine's in early... Cyllia's greeting, "Happy new year," dump my crap in my cubicle behind Cyllia, fish out my chicken and broccoli, stow it in the breakroom. Nobody else is in this early, we're all a bunch of slackers...

Blaine is on a conference call or something, Cyllia's listening to some funny ditty somebody forwarded to her.

I take my seat, CD collection at my left elbow, open up the computer, change the password (my old one: "Tragic!"), check my g-mail, nothing, check my work e-mail, nothing but "read by" receipts (if I "work" the work comes in by e-mail, unless Blaine tells me to print something, which has been my default position for the last six months - printer of Blaine's RFPs), blow me, blogging time, get some coffee, sitemeter, hotmail, random bullshit.

Another day, another dollar.

The printer next to me jams. Cyllia comes over, and one of the lead architects appears to retrieve his jammed document, tells me I should have told him I needed a car - he just sold "a real chick magnet" (there's a running bet in the office on the nature of my sexuality, as I never talk about a boyfriend. I've preferred to remain ambiguous. Who I take to bed or don't isn't their business. Their bafflement amuses me).

The accountant who took off so suddenly and was summarily fired is back, and chatting with the lead architect. She's apparently so good with Oracle that she can flake out, fly out, and abandon her key card and her job for three months and then burst back in without a salary penalty.

Must be great to be her.

Blaine bumbles in for said dictionary, discusses how he and his fiance suffered from stomach flu over New Year's.

Way to ring it in.

Cyllia comes by, whispers the usual lament against the injustices of the HR manager.

There are no messages on my phone. I could be in bed right now.

I can't believe I get paid for this shit.

Whose Book Would You Rather Read?

Sad, sad.

On the upside, I find something gleeful in the juxtaposition. I don't know what, but it's there. A symptom of sleep deprevation, no doubt.

Cooffffffffeeeeee

Is good.

Quote of the Day

Blaine, my former boss and head of regional business development for North America, comes in and goes, "I need a dictionary. What the hell does burgeoning mean? I've been reading it everywhere."

I love these guys.

Blogging For Feminism, and Other Flights of Fancy

Media girl has up a poll about what feminist priorities should be for 2005.

My favorite was using blogs to reach people. But as much as I love the idea of blogging as being a bit like consciousness-raising groups ("You mean it's not just me?"), there's a big problem with it:

The internet isn't free. It's not in everybody's home, and unless you have broadband or wireless internet, reading or creating blogs is pretty much a hopeless cause. You'll never be able to keep up. If you're savvy, you might create your own newsfeed of favs so you don't have to visit each every morning, but that means a couple of Saturdays spent with a sloooooooowwww dial-up connection trying to find blogs (probably initially starting with google and moving on to blogrolls from there). You've gotta have the leisure time, which means people who work 12 hours a day (not at a cooshy office job like mine where I can screw off) and then put in a second shift with kids and housework aren't going to have the time to do it.

I'm a big proponent of free wifi, though as someone who works in telecommunications, I can tell you that all the telephone and wireless companies are fighting like SOBs to keep wifi private - and as long as you can surf around for porn, you're going to see this administration protecting private businesses by preaching that tax payer dollars shouldn't go toward paying for teenagers to surf for porn.

And it means most of the red states go radio silent.

Yea! The Obligatory Holiday Weight Woes Article!

Look at CNN covering that hard news on your after-holiday Monday morning!

Blow it out your ass, CNN.

I *lost* weight over the holiday. Fuck off.

Insomnia

Currently functioning on 0 hours of sleep. That's right, 0, for no good reason. This is highly erratic. I don't have trouble sleeping. I love sleeping.

I was in bed by 9pm so I could make my 5:15am alarm, and tossed and turned, got a massive headache, checked e-mail and blogs, went back to bed, tossed and turned for hours and hours, got up again, couldn't find any painkiller in the house except Midol, went back to bed, wishing my brain would just stop thinking...

Yes, brain, it's going to be a busy week. Yes, Denver trip, going back to MA classes, diet and exercise, yes, you're way behind on your books, no you haven't written anything substantial in months, yes, all of your latest stories have bounced, Jenn will be back, you need to go to those Saturday writing meetings, and you have 0, count them, 0 stories currently in the mail, and no, you currently *can't* afford to go to Glasgow in August, and you need to write a letter to that agent who's got the 50 pages, cause it looks like you're SOL on that threadbare hope, too, and oh, my damn head hurts...

I'm still feeling strangely wired, though I expect this to turn into total collapse by 3pm. I look like hell.

Oh, goodness, it's gonna be one of those days.

Bleeding Onto Pages

I'm supposed to have another draft novel by March. Sheeeeiiiiitttt.

Back to work.



"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous roman cables exploding like spiders across the stars."
- Jack Kerouac

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
- Nietzsche

"Life isn't about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself."
- unknown

Madness Du Jour

I have a confession: I'm pretty nonplussed about the tsunami. 150,000 people dead, yea, so, 2 million died in Rwanda and nobody gave a fucking shit. 1 in 3 people in Southern Africa has HIV or AIDS, and the US is pushing abstinence-only programs there instead of condoms.

Whoop-dee-doo 150K dead.

Oh. Yea. That’s right. White tourists were there! Poor white tourists, their cozy vacations were ruined!

Let me tell you a story, because I had to pull out this story to put it all back into perspective for me. Before I was writing here at Brutal Women, I was sending "updates" to my writing buddies a couple times a month. I dug this one out this morning, about one of the times me and some of the other U of Natal academics went to a neat little bar in Durban called Bean Bag for B’s going-away-to-an-American-university party. So, let me channel my 22-year-old self and share:

Madness Du Jour 12 Sept, 2002

What I like about Bean Bag, among other things, is that there are actually women mooning over other women here. That may sound sorta stupid, but mainly, among J & co., I'll meet lots of girls, their boyfriends, and men who flirt with men - couples and singles. Sometimes I despair that there's no one in the world who finds women attractive enough to flirt with.

It's safe to bet that all of the male waiters at Bean Bag are more interested in your date than you are, and the guy-couples are usually sexual pairings, and the handful of guys interested in women are there with girlfriends. As a girl, you don't go to Bean Bag to pick up on guys, you go there to look fabulous and hang out with fabulous people and have fabulous people see how fabulous and bohemian you look. It feels like everybody's in drag: everybody's trying to look good and impress people. There are some non-beautiful people here, sure, but they're actively trying to be "cool" if not beautiful. They're trying to Look Like Somebody.

I meet a Zulu couple who are sitting next to one of my fellow grad students, Stephen. The man is a friend of B's, and his wife or girlfriend sits at his side. She's quite beautiful, has an aura of quiet intelligence about her, and I like her immediately. She's a physically big woman. Not tall, but big - not fat - big. I once lamented to J about being from a country of obese people and feeling so totally out of place in South Africa. He pointed out that it's not that there aren't fat people in Durban. Almost all of the older Zulu women you see are heavy, or at the very least, have exaggerated curves. I sometimes wonder where the hell they buy jeans that have enough room in the butt and hips. So it's not that there aren't big people here: they just don't carry it like it's shameful, or something to hide. And it's not like they want for men. The two or three times I've been hit on here, it' been by Zulu-speaking guys.

She turns out to be a teacher from Kwa Mashu, one of the big townships outside of Durban. She teaches a class of 85 children. All of the teachers there do. It was a rather awkward conversation, because I started out in my classically American way, saying I thought it was really cool of her to do that, how good-works it was to teach all of these kids who otherwise wouldn't really have teachers, and she said;

"You know, when you come from being taught in a classroom of 85 children and have to teach a class of 85 children, really, all you're thinking about is how you're going to get out of there. How you're going to keep getting more education so you can teach somewhere else, have a better career."

This was a blow to my Assumption of Privilege American "save the children, sacrifice yourself" ideal of the happy martyr, something I wasn't aware that I toted around until she said this. She *wanted* to get the fuck out of the township and get a better job in a better area. Duh. She wasn't doing it because she was into self-sacrifice. She was doing it to survive. Because until she had more schooling, it was the only teaching position she could get.

"How do you not lose hope, I mean, teaching kids who don't believe education will help them?" I said.

She sighed. "You assign homework, and the next day, you ask who did the homework. And the five children who have done the homework come up to the front of the class, and you teach those five children."

"But don't they realize that education will help them get better jobs?"

Looking back on it, she was really nice to me and all my stupid American questions.

She shook her head. "There are no jobs. This is what people don't understand. You can got to university and get your honours degree, but when you come out, there will still be no jobs for you. You're talking to children who are from families where no one is formally employed. They would rather learn how to be streetwise. That's all they know. That's how their families survive, being streetwise. Why should they learn all of this book learning when there aren't any jobs it could get them?"

The conversation peters out, mainly because I can see this hopeless chasm yawning out before me. I understand South African cynicism.

I spent the most comfortable part of the night talking to Stephen the post-grad, a 25-year-old frumpy bookstore employee and his boyfriend at the "non-fabulous" table, and later on, B, as we couldn't all fit at one table. I think I was just avoiding the fabulous table, which included J, the flirty A, and some rather lovely looking kid who couldn't have been much past 20 who I assumed was the former geek from high school that J said had become a model, some cleanly pretty guy with a shaved head, B's girlfriend, et al.

I preferred to be at the all-but-me-male, non-fabulous table. We had some interesting topics of conversation, mainly centered around ways the government has failed to support its population and how it could create sustainable communities, and the benefit or drawback of university education for the "masses", and etc. Mostly, I got from everyone a big dose of South African cynicism and hopelessness. Not hopeless in the sense that they didn't have ideas, or didn't know how to do it, but because no one would listen, and the people in power have enough money that they really don't give a shit about how much of the population has to die of AIDS. After all, if they’re all dead, you don’t have to worry about getting them jobs or medical or helping them form sustainable communities, do you?

Talking about President Thabo Mbeki, AIDS, and the purging of 30% of South Africa’s population by simply “letting them die” always makes me want to vomit.

Eventually, as more people wandered away, the tables merged, and I ended up sitting next to J. A was sitting on his other side, the 20 year old model was sitting on A’s other side, B’s girlfriend and a bunch of new people were across the table, and B, Stephen, and the boy couple took up the other end of the table.

I don’t remember much of the conversation. I remember J was drinking martinis. I had only been able to afford 3 rum & cokes, and wasn’t even feeling fuzzy, which I resented. I’ve said that I can only enjoy Bean Bag for 2 hours – that’s 2 hours if I’m sober. If I’m drunk my self-reflecting mechanism turns off, and I don’t care about all the beautiful fabulous people drinking and fucking while 36% of the people in the province die of AIDS and live in squatter camps. Because it’s never just, “Gosh, sucks not to be one of the beautiful people.” It’s getting to all that by passing through abject poverty. Literally.

We drove through bits of downtown Durban to get to Bean Bag (not my usual route, but one B chose or accidentally stumbled onto, for some reason). I’m still thinking of the teacher in Kwa Mashu as I’m watching A cheek-kiss all the acquaintances of his who’ve wandered over to the table. Durban is a small town in the sense that there are very few places that people who have money can go, so no matter where you are, you’re always running into someone you know.

There was a part of me watching people fluttering in and out as I smoked cigarettes and stared into J’s empty martini class that wanted to shout: “None of this shit is fucking important! None of this matters! You know what matters? People. Just people. Not the fucking sneakers you’re wearing! Not what kind of cigarettes you’re smoking! And all these fucking people are dying and all these fucking kids in Kwa Mashu are going to starve or start their own rape gangs and nobody cares!”

I went outside to get some air and get away from the fabulous A and B’s drunken girlfriend and the joint being passed around.

I eventually got myself a table inside, both because it was cold outside, and because I just couldn’t stand sitting with the gang any longer. I got a glass of water and thought about Alaska. Were things really so romantically different there? I always had this idea that it didn’t matter what you looked like there. People assessed you by where you’d been and how much you knew. At least, I thought they did. I know I learned to.

If I’d ever had anything against physically imperfect people, or socially imperfect people, I had to get over it really fucking fast in AK, because *everyone* was physically and socially fucking poor. No, not squatter camp poor, but it was fucking cold outside, we couldn’t afford new clothes, it was dark all the time; a big night out was to pile into the stolen van that didn’t have a heater, wrapped up in our tatty clothes, and go out to buy salmon chowder and fresh-baked bread at the chowder house across from the movie theatre: it was good, cheap food. Everybody dressed in bulky, crap clothes, nobody had a tan, everyone had that extra layer of subcutaneous fat, and nobody really cared, because when it’s fucking cold outside, all you give a shit about is whether or not your bed partner is warm.

J wandered in after me, apparently because B was asking where I was. I tried to articulate some of this stuff to him, about the superficiality of this place, about how this was so outside the realm of my experience, about how this place and these people were different from everything I’ve ever know. But I don’t think I said it very well.

Finally, all I could say was, “This just really isn’t my milieu.”

B drove us home soon after, and I got to say goodbye to him, as I wouldn’t see him again before he flew out.

Mostly, I spent the night not being able to sleep. I was thinking about being beautiful and being alive and being a teacher in Kwa Mashu. And thinking about madness.

I always feel thumped on the head with the idea that female madness is the result of being female, of not being able to accept your place in the world. Sure, you can blame some of this on oppression, yea, but how long can you sit around and blame oppression for your inability to interact with the world?

But that night, after sitting in Bean Bag, wishing I was drunk but too poor to afford to be, talking about 30% of the country dying, just dying, and not even dying, but being left to die, and the impossible poverty, and teachers who teach to survive and help 5 kids in 85, and street kids who beg for money until they’re too old to be cute and then start stealing cars and raping women, and car guards groping at you for money, and beautiful people fluttering over martinis and talking about expensive sneakers… It was just too much for me. It was too much for me to know that I was one of them, that I wasn’t doing anything to help anybody. I was just consuming alcohol and feeling faintly ill about it.

And I thought, god, what’s wrong with me? Why do I care about a bunch of people dying in a third world country? They’re poor. So what? People are poor. People die. That’s life. Birth, poverty, death. That’s all. Why do I care?

I care because these are the people who walk next to me every day. These are the people next to you on the bus. These are the people you walk past downtown on the way to the beach. When I did an interview with P, a former MK (the militant arm of the ANC) affiliate, I was introduced to Dludlu, the woman who comes in to clean her house once a week. Dludlu was a nice, polite, smiling woman in a clean pink domestic worker’s dress and apron. Over coffee, P told me that Dludlu lives in a squatter camp. During the heavy spring rain we’d had a few days before, her bed, which was just a mattress on the ground, had finally gotten so soaked that it had fallen apart, and P had her take out one of her old mattresses, and told Dludlu to use bricks to keep it off the ground.

These are the people in my life, however, peripheral. And they’re living in squatter camps and subsisting on mealie-meal and dying of AIDS.

This is not fucking National Geographic.

Talking to P about her involvement with the ANC and the liberation struggle, you can hear her hope, and also her bitterness about how it turned out.

“All that happened was they just changed the people who were in power,” she said. “We were so poor. We were in such poverty. These men, I remember bringing these men home from prison, and having to buy underpants for them, and they were thin, and they stank, and they couldn’t even afford to buy their own clothes after coming out of prison. And now they get paid R250,000 a year and pay their domestic workers R400 a month. They think they deserve it, but they have forgotten what we fought for. Sometimes I hope I’ll die soon. This world is too much glitz and glamour for me. I’m not from an important family. We lived in poverty. I ate dal and rice for three years when I went to university and drank water at night. That was how we lived, that was how they lived, and they have forgotten.”

When I first arrived to do the interview, P was still showering, so I had some time to read and look at everything on the walls of her flat, the ANC posters, the free Mandela posters, the pictures of fellow comrades, the banners, the flyers, the flags, the funeral notices for the deaths of her sons, and you know, I started to cry. I got all weepy and had to wipe the tears away before she got out of the bathroom. So many people died for this, for this, and nothing has changed except that all the rich white people who could leave, left, and all the black people who fought or their families or supporters filled all those positions. And 80% of the population is still poor, and everyone is dying.

I really thought there was something wrong with me for getting all emotional over this.

Which brings me back to madness. Are we really mad? Is this madness, to weep for people who died and are dying so a handful of people can pay their domestic servants R400 a month?

What I realized, lying awake, unable to sleep, was that it’s not women who are crazy, it’s not women who are mad:

It’s the world that’s fucked up.

There’s a reason that in every story you read, the first time a character is exposed to violence - bloody, gory, real violence - their initial reaction is to be violently ill. That’s the natural reaction.

If violence is “natural” to human behavior as people say it is, why does it make so many people sick? Why do soldiers have to be so rigorously trained and hyper-masculinized in order to face it?

I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t stand on-screen violence in movies anymore, after living here for six months. Watching one woman get knifed with a pair of scissors and another get repeatedly drown throughout the whole of Minority Report made me ill. And now, thinking of my reaction to teaching children in Kwa Mashu, and Dludlu’s mattress in her shack being inundated with water, I’m starting to think that if I *didn’t* have such an alarmed, emotional response to it, there would be something wrong with me.

That’s when I’d be really crazy.

I remember the first time I killed something beautiful.

Not like an ant or a spider or a bee, or something that seemed more like annoying dust, but something big, something substantial, and something that, in all my giddy girlishness, I loved.

Me and my cousin used to run around my grandmother’s garden in the summer and try to catch flying grasshoppers, the big ones. I guess they’re actually called locusts, but we called them flying grasshoppers. I was only four or five, so they seemed terribly big to me. One of them was nearly the length of my palm.

The problem was that they were really fast. They saw you long before you could grab them, and they would hop up and spread their beautiful wings – some had black wings lined in yellow or white, and those were the best. Later, I’d become fascinated with dragonflies for the same reason: they were just so beautiful.

I finally caught one of the locusts, a big beautiful one with black wings with yellow fringes. My cousin always said that I wouldn’t be able to catch one, but I had, and I decided I would keep it in a jar and feed it leaves, and then I would let it go the next day.

I poked holes in the lid of the jar, which my cousin had taught me to do so the locust wouldn’t die, and I put the big locust inside and gave it some wet leaves and things.

I walked out into the front yard behind some trees and set the jar down next to some bushes. I talked to the locust and told him how pretty he was, and I told him I would let him go tomorrow, but I just wanted to look at him for awhile.

Then my parents arrived back from work to pick us up from my grandmother’s place and take us home for the night, and I said goodbye to my locust.

The next day, I arrived back from school to discover that my locust was dead.

I had left the jar in the sun.

I wasn’t so much heartbroken as horrified. I couldn’t believe I had killed this beautiful thing. Because as soon as I saw that the afternoon sun had eliminated the shadows of the trees, I knew what I had done. I knew even then that you can’t leave animals inside a car in summer with the windows rolled up. I knew better.

I opened up the jar and let the big dead locust slide out, and I cried over him, because he was really pretty, and he was dead. And it was my fault.

You’re supposed to believe that dead things: squirrels, mice, cats, dogs, rats, don’t die the same way people do, that what you’re looking at isn’t what you’ll be when you’re dead. You’re supposed to believe that people are different.

This isn’t true.

I remember working at the vet clinic on weekends, and there was this beautiful little brown dog who was really sick, and I tried to get him to go outside for a walk with me, but he just looked up at me with these really big brown eyes like, “Honey, it ain’t gonna happen.” And I patted his head and fed him, but he didn’t eat, just gazed at me.

I stood up, and the dog died in from of me. Just died. Just leaned his head back and gave a sort of cough, and the last breath left his body, and he was dead.

Why is it so much more terrible when it’s something so beautiful?

If we don’t even care about the woman starving to death on our front stoop, who gives a fuck about a dog?

You get people to kill things, or not care about things, by making them ugly. By convincing people that they’re looking at something Other, something inferior, different. This is how men get “trained” into killing each other. This is why men hurt women. Not because rape and torture and mutilation is “natural,” but because they’ve been taught that women or black or gays or whites or Indians or poor people or diseased people or Americans or Russians are somehow ugly. Are somehow monstrous. We are told that we must hurt them before they prey on us.

You learn to look at the world as ugly and beautiful. You learn what the world believes is ugly and beautiful, but the world is fucked up. It’s not real.

But how can you live if you try to give a shit about every starving woman on your stoop?

You’d go mad.

There is a little gray-haired man who haunts my block. He wears the same blue sports coat with a red handkerchief sticking out of one pocket. The sleeves are too long, and they nearly cover his hands. The coat reaches his knees. The too-long ends of his trousers pool around his too-big shoes. He has never asked me for money. Maybe this is because I’ve never sat through his entire spiel.

Instead, what he wants to tell me is all the love Jesus has for me. He wants to tell me how I am one of God’s children, and I am loved. He wants to tell me that everyone is loved, everyone is beautiful.

I usually ignore him. He’s fruity as a loop, but harmless.

Fruity, but sometimes the fruity have bits and pieces in the right places.

The world is not full of ugly people. It’s full of beautiful people, but not the kind of beautiful you see on MTV.

What happens to the world when you pull off the veil and see that everyone is beautiful, that everyone is you? What happens when you realize it’s not just the locusts you’ve been killing, but people? What happens to you then?

Because there’s no such thing as the Beautiful People. I keep thinking there is. I keep stepping into it and thinking, god, where the fuck am I? But it’s better to see it as the drag show it is, a veil, hiding real beauty behind booze and expensive shoes.

We’re trying so hard to separate Us and Them. There’s got to be a reason We go home to houses with indoor plumbing and drive around in our white cars. It has to be that we’re Beautiful. Or brilliant. Or both. Because if it’s not because we’re beautiful, if everyone’s beautiful, and beautiful people are dying of AIDS in squatter camps and getting raped and beaten, if that’s happened to the beautiful people, then there’s something wrong with the world. You can’t pretend anymore. The veil comes loose.

And you’ll go nuts thinking about it.

Because sometimes, when I’m not careful, I’ll look up and I’ll see it. I’ll look up and into all of these faces, and they’re all so heartbreakingly beautiful. And it isn’t what they’re wearing, and it’s not where they live, it’s just in their faces, in the fact that they’re alive, that they’ve survived to be here, that they share this place with me, and when I look up, I see that B is beautiful, and P is beautiful, and J, and B’s girlfriend, and Dludlu, and Stephen and the teacher from Kwa Mashu and even bitchy A is beautiful in his own way, and yes, even me in my denim and boots, smoking cigarettes and contemplating Alaska at a table by myself, even I’m beautiful, and it’s not because we’re so different from everybody else, it’s because we’re the same.

And in our madness, and in our drag show, we forget that. We forget and we become really superficial, and drunk because we’re not sure what’s wrong, we’re not sure what we’re trying to do except be Beautiful, because everyone knows that no one kills Beautiful People, and Beautiful People don’t live in squatter camps. Beautiful people don’t die.

But they do. And it’s us. And it’s madness pretending it’s not, every day. Not just today.

Every damn day.

Gotcha

Woke up this morning with a title and a plot for my painter story.

It's about damn time.

That's what good media gluttony and blog reading at midnight will get you.

Here's to another `05 here in uptown (and, possibly, Denver)



My front stoop



Where it all goes down...

Things to Do Tomorrow

1) go jogging

2) write a story that Ellen Datlow will buy

3) start reading Susan Bordo's The Male Body

4) lounge around and drink coffee

5) be thankful for this life, cause it frickin rocks

Media Dump

Note: there really needs to be another person in this house to eat the rest of this Thai food. Any volunteers?

Napoleon Dynamite:

I'd heard how wonderfully funny this movie was, so I was surprised that it wasn't so much laugh-out-loud funny as it was quietly amusing. As my buddy Stephanie said, "It's just like highschool... you feel like a dork the whole time, you want the wrong girl who doesn't like you and end up with the more sensible girl..."

Though I would have preferred the sensible girl to keep her dorky off-kilter ponytail even there at the end. My favorite scenes: when the cow gets shot (I'm from a rural town, after all), when Napoleon does his dance, and "Pedro offers you his protection."

Bourne Supremacy:

I've always had a thing for Matt Damon (my dad's officially said that if I dated Matt Damon, that would be OK. This is a big step for my dad), so as someone who's watching it as an action movie about Matt Damon, it was OK. As usual, I was irritated that people keep casting Julia Styles in lackluster nothing roles. If you want to see her shine, watch her and Stockard Channing in The Business of Strangers.

They killed Franka Potente, but honestly, the only thing she's ever had me swooning about was Run Lola Run. She just hasn't gotten anything powerful since, at least that I've seen.

Rambo II:

Ah. The 80s. When men were men and the Russians were Evil. Such a simpler time. And it's got a script co-written by James Cameron, so there's a chick with a gun; but the other co-writer was Sly Stallone, so she had to talk like "Me love you long time" and die. Because it's a masculinity movie. Not that there's anything wrong with masculinity movies about saving your buddies and fighting for what you believe in. In fact, that's what the good masculinity movies are all about. Hence, the reason I watch them.

I've also been playing Myst IV, Revelation, which is neat-o. As expected. This was a good thing, cause Uru kinda sucked, as I'm not really into multi-player interactive games, and frankly, not having any digitized people in it was a real turn off for me. There's something about these Myst worlds that I really adore. I don't play any other computer games (except Cossaks, but that's Jenn's fault), so whenever the Myst games come out, I pounce on them. I also take about a year to actually beat them, so I get my money's worth.

It's good practice in patience, which, as many know, I really need.

Tonight's Vintage

Is a Rancho Zabaco zinfandel (2002). Unlike most zinfandel's I was familiar with, this one's actually a deep, meaty red. Quite tasty. Not only that, but you can get yourself a bottle for $10.

Went bike riding today, and went wandering around the ice floes at the beach. I love living near water.

In case you can't tell, yes, I'm rather bored out of my mind, which is why I'm sitting here at the computer, waiting for some brilliant story idea to come over me so I can afford to go to Glasgow in August.

Brilliance remains illusive.

It's going to be a long weekend. Bear with me.

Clean Up

Cleaned up my blogroll and deleted all the blogs that I just don't get to regularly. My blogroll doesn't neccessarily serve as a "read this" list, but an "I read this" list. I also added a bunch that I've been swinging over to more recently. A couple of these - Echidne of the Snakes and Bitch Ph.D. - were a long time overdue, and I'm sure that most of my regular readers are familiar with them.

I've also added the LJ Feminist Forum. Where are the all the women bloggers? Well, there's a shitload of people on LJ who don't get any props, either.

Finally, I decided to add a couple of guys who I keep up with regularly but never added to the blogroll. They're more personal blogs written by liberal-leaning twenty-somethings, and they don't update very often, but if I keep going over there all the time, it's dumb not to add them to my bloglist.

Brendan of These Days is a pschology major living in Brooklyn (in addition to being a fanatic sports fan, he's also done some intern work with NOW, as I recall), and Simon Owens is an English major at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and a slipstream writer. He's got a link portal called LitHaven that showcases great speculative fiction/slipstream stories and articles.

Finally, I've added Jason Kuznicki, a history graduate student, an atheist, and a libertarian. His site, Positive Liberty, has got some cool stuff up worth thinking about.

Gleeful

I'm going through my blogs, and I checked out the Big Fat Blog cafe press store. They've got these stickers and a tote bag that say, "The average American woman is a size 14."

And it occurred to me that what I really wanted was a tote/bumper sticker that said:

"The average American woman is a size 14... and she can kick your ass."

I'm easily amused this morning.

No, Sir, I Love My SUV

Holy crap, it's 56 degrees outside.

In Chicago.

On New Year's Eve.

Global warmings great as long as you don't live on the coast!

Ha.

Yes, I've just rolled out of bed. I think I'm still on PST. I knew I was still asleep when I tried to dump my protein powder into my coffee grinder. WTF, they're all in the same cupboard.

It's going to be one of those kinds of days.

News from on the Ground

I just got an e-mail from Ginmar, a self-described "blue-collar feminist" currently serving in Iraq. I'd found her lj sometime back through - of all channels - the science fiction circles, where TNH of Making Light re-posted one of her combat posts, and a huge comments controversy ensued (a woman couldn't have been under fire, women aren't soldiers in Iraq. Yea. Serious blah blah bullshit).

And I realized I didn't have Ginmar on my blogroll.

Bah.

Check out her lj.

Confessions of a Binge Eater

At 3pm, I broke out the Belgian chocolates.

I should have been eating my 3pm protein bar, but there was that whole box of Belgian chocolates, and the HR manager and my new boss were trying to figure out who the hell was in charge of getting me to Denver (my credit card is maxed out and can't be used even if it's later company reimbursed), and I was filling out applications for my own corporate credit card (limit: $3500), and I'd been doing some paperwork for my new boss and getting weird reactions, and then he e-mailed someone else to take care of my travel info, and said I was going to be doing even more traveling to oversee document controls at other locations, and oh, Belgian chocolates...

I ate four of them before forcing myself to close the box, and it was an immensely sad moment, because I knew in that moment that I'd have to throw them all away now. And I'd have to throw away the rest of the brownies at the house. I tried to figure out how to keep them in the house until Jenn got home on the 5th. I hate wasting food, and my only out for these treats was to have her take them to her fellow Ph.D. candidates when she got back. I thought I could tie them up in a garbage sack and hide them under her bed... no. No, that won't work.

Believe me. I know.

I've mentioned several times in this blog that I'm a binge eater, but I don't know that I ever really discussed what that means for me.

My buddy Jenn knows that when I go out to buy some sort of treat I'm craving and eat my fill of it, whatever remains - whether it's the other 11 cookies in the dozen box, or the remaining 1/4 lb of the 1/2 lb of gingerbread - either has to get thrown away (and, if it's a *really* bad day, I actually have to take the garbage out to the street - yea, I'm one of *those* binge eaters), or she has to take it in to her fellow students, or she has to hoard it for herself in her room (she's an amazing hoarder).

I can't have it in the house.

Because when I feel out of control, when my confidence starts to break, when I despair, I go straight for all the processed crap food I can find. And if I get a taste of it and there's more to eat and I'm in freak-out mode, I'll start shaking like some sort of strung-out drug addict. The physical need for that entire box of chocolates becomes overwhelming.

When I finally made the decision to get my shit together (again) last January, I remember how difficult it was to walk past the shit-food stand by the train station where I'd allowed myself to pocket crap once a week. I mean, hey, I was doing my two or three days a week on the elliptical machine, and some free weights in the morning, so what did it matter, right?

Well, it did and does matter, because sharp increases in glucose are immediately followed by really shitty depressing lows - the old, binge eat and then lie around feeling like you want to kill yourself afterward because you've been so "bad." I realized that if I really wanted to get control over my mood, I had to start controlling what I was eating. That didn't mean being a Nazi: I go out to dinner, have a sweet and coffee on Sundays. But it means no binge eating. No stocking-up. No more highs and lows.

In South Africa, I was a chronic stressball. 1) I was truly living on my own for the first time (outside a dorm) 2) I was going to grad school 3) I was living in a 3rd world foreign country.

I must have eaten enough food for a family of four, smoked enough cigarettes for an army, and downed enough wine to put any alcoholic in my family to shame.

And I told myself when I was there: this is how I'm going to get through this. If I have to eat too much and drink too much and smoke too much, so be it. But when I leave, it's done.

The smoking was easy to kick, but the eating, being a lifelong way of dealing with stress (and something you have to do to survive, at a basic level), was a lot harder. And I struggle with it now and will for the rest of my life.

I think I always hoped, growing up, that one day I would just get it all figured out. For three years - in Alaska and a year just before it - I really thought I'd figured out the fat girl thing. I was eating well and exercising and staying at a good weight in a strong body... I loved being outside. I biked everywhere. I lived mainly on eggs and rice during the week and some pizza and coffee treats on the weekends. But I forgot that being better is something that you have to consciously reaffirm every morning. I forgot that if I'm left to my own devices, I'll fall back on my old ways to deal with stress and uncertainty, and that involves overeating.

In my mind, if all else goes to hell, I know it'll all be OK as long as I've got food, as long as I can eat.

And today at work I was starting to realize what was going to be asked of me in this new job, and I seriously doubted myself.

"What if I can't do this? What if I totally fuck this up?"

I thought of how many millions of dollars these projects are worth, and how being in charge of getting all that documentation means I decide when we get paid, and I thought how easily I could lose my job.... and I started shaking, and needed chocolate.

I got as far as the train station after work before I had to dump the chocolates. It was painful to do. I hate throwing away perfectly good food. I hate being wasteful.

But when those chocolates were in the garbage and I was on the train with an empty box, I felt incredibly light. I felt like somebody'd been pushing down on my shoulders since 3pm, and they finally got off.

I went home and dumped the brownies, too.

And I thought about my job.

And I thought:

What's the worst that can happen?

I can fuck up and get publicly humilated and laughed at in a meeting where I am then fired, and people throw things at me, call me fat and stupid and totally ignorant and unworthy of love, and then toss me out on my ass and refuse to give me a positive reference for my next job.

And I was like, "Oh, is that all?"

Because really, that's the worst that can happen. And somehow, imagining the absolute worst that can happen really frees you up to just take what comes.

So I went home, ate some sushi and had a cup of hot cocoa, rented a bunch of movies (Bourne Supremacy, Napoleon Dynamite, Rambo & Midnight Cowboy - how's that for eclectic taste?) then went out and bought a 2005 wolves calendar, a copy of Bitch magazine, and the extended edition of Return of the King.

And I am prepared for a good, long, weekend of media excess.

You get up every morning, and you start again.

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Yes. I should be writing. You should be too.



"I worshipped dead men for their strength,
Forgetting I was strong."
- Vita Sackville-West

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
- John-Paul Sartre

"As long as there are entrenched social and political distinctions between sexes, races or classes, there will be forms of science whose main fucntion is to rationalise and legitimize these distinctions."
- Elizabeth Fee

"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."
- Gloria Steinman

Fixing Up the Fighting Life

So, I'll be 25 this year.

So, I have a lot to do.

The idea is to go on a deep-burn: that is, three days a week of fighting classes, two days a week of jogging. I've got the three days of fighting classes down fine - it's the damn jogging routine that I need to get into.

I'm also fiddling with my diet again, because I'm so incredibly sick of protein bars, and because they're damn expensive. I'm moving to meat & vegetables, relying more on mixed-nuts and veggies for snacking, cutting out my week-long rice and whole-wheat pita routine and moving those "treats" to the weekends (with the Thai food), and getting rid of some of my sillier craziness, like macaroni & cheese and white bread.

In April, when the weather's better, I'd also like to start biking to work at least once a week. In June, I'll need to decide if I want to stay at my MA school or move to another gym that offers boxing and rock climbing classes (it's also closer to my house). We'll see what sort of shape I'm in by then.

Pick somebody you want to be. Be that.

Dusting Off the Old Books

Liberated a copy of Gloria Steinem's Revolution From Within from my mom's bookshelf. I don't relate to all the inner child stuff because, well, I really do have fantastic parents, and I didn't have to deal with childhood abuse, but she's got some really fascinating stuff in here about self-esteem and how teaching people self-worth can acutally topple empires (Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement did great things for black South Africans. Her biggest example was Ghandi and the liberation of India).

The idea being that when you're told you're not worthy, you're at the bottom of the pile, when you don't see yourself represented as smart, as worthwhile, you're more likely to act like a loser.

What I found interesting was when Steinem compared the women she'd gone to college with who *then* either got a job, got married, had kids, to the women who'd stayed in her home town, got married, and raised kids. She felt that the women who *didn't* have the higher-end education learned *over time* to have a greater sense of self-worth than the women who'd gone to college.

Her thoughts on why?

College women:

"- Being taught to rever "the classics" of Western civilization, most of which patronize, distort, denigrate, or express hatred for the female half of the human race.

- Learning systems of philosophy that depend on gender dualisms at best and female inferiority at worst; surveying a tradition of art in which women are rarely artists and often objects; studying biology that focuses more on human differences than on human possibilities; [my emphasis] absorbing ethical standards that assume masculine values; and learning theologies that assume all-male dieties.

- Reading history books in which almost all power and agency is assigned to men and being graded for memorizing male accomplishments - with the deep message that we can learn what others do, but never do it ourselves.

- Seeing fewer and fewer females in authority as we climb the education ladder: fewer as faculty, fewer still as deans and presidents, and fewest of all in the fields of science, engineering, poiltics, business, foreign policy, or other specialities valued by the world at large. And if we are of the "wrong" race or class or sexuality, perhaps seeing no one we identify with at all.

- Finally, being isolated from other women - perhaps respended by them - because we are educated like men."

Some interesting stuff to chew on.

Just Work For Free

Can you believe this?

What's Education About, Again?

Poor repressed conservative students. Forced to read the Quran. Having liberal teachers "suggest" that homosexuality might have to do with our biological makeup. Might. Ha.

You know what one of the books we used in one of my women's history courses was? The Bible. Did I start screaming and crying that I was being indoctrinated by conservative professors?

No. I didn't. Why? Cause I was in school to learn stuff. Stuff that I would never have been exposed to outside of college life. Are colleges liberal leaning? That is, do most colleges preach inclusiveness and tell people that hating other people based on their beliefs is bad?

Sure they do.

You run into problems when you get people whose beliefs say that I have to die because I don't believe what they do. If I can tolerate people who think I'm going to hell, why can't they tolerate me?

Oh, that's right:

Because their strength of belief isn't quite so strong as they'd hoped.

If you've got faith: REALLY got faith, learning about what other people think isn't going to be dangerous to you and yours. In fact, it might help you get along better with others. And isn't that the whole point of reaching outside your comfort zone anyway?

The Worklife

I'm back in the office today, and I discovered a box of Belgium chocolates on my desk from one of my male coworkers.

No, not from Yellow. It's never from the one you'd like it to be from.

They're from the most annoying guy in the office, the workaholic who doesn't date because he's at work all the time (in fact, I think he's a 7 on the sliding sexuality scale, but he's got a picture of George and Laura Bush in his office, so I feel he may be sexually repressed in his leanings toward boys).

In any case, I'm really, really, hoping he got *everybody* in the office some Belgium chocolates. Or, knowing him, all of the *women* in the office some Belgium chocolates.

I'm just trying to figure out what the hell to do with these things. I guess I'll put it in the "food items that can't live in my house so Jenn will take them over to her colleagues" pile.

I've also gotten a summons to Denver for next week: I'll be in meetings there the 5-6th and again for a daytrip on the 12th (happy birthday to me) for the project "kickoff."

Wow. Working for a living is really gonna suck.

Home

Oh. It's. So. Good. To. Be. Home.

Praise be to wirless internet.

Falling into my own bed now. G'night.

Some Random Shout-Outs

I do want to mention that I'm really proud of the people of the Ukraine. That's the power of the people.

And a bowing-out to Susan Sontag, who fucking rocked the house.

And for those living in and around Portland, OR there are two copies of Jeff Vandermeer's Veniss Underground and two copies of Secret Life over at Powell's bookstore. Pick `um up. Also, KJ Bishop's The Etched City is now out in mainstream paperback from Spectra. She's got some wicked thoughts.

And start harassing Amazing Stories about buying the third installment of my buddy Patrick's boy-talks-to-sword stories. They're damn funny, and the third one's a hilarious parody of cliched warrior women in fantasy... I'll let you know when it's up, cause you *must* get yourselves a copy of that issue...

Jiggety-Jig

The weather's finally gotten sunny here in lovely rural BG, I've been jogging a couple times (one more time tomorrow, and I'll hit my three-times-this-week-goal), the three-days-of-eating fest is over and I'm back to omelettes (oh, thank goodness), had dinner last night with my parents and my brother at Portland City Grill for my soon-arriving-birthday (quarter century, baby), and now it's off for some holiday gift-card spending.

All said, I'll be happy to get back home on Wednesday and get back into my old routine. This has been the perfect sort of break for me: I needed to gear myself up for a really busy year, and I think the events of the week have been a great motivator.

My favorite bit of dialogue at last night's dinner. My family owns a pizza franchise where everybody works, and the dialogue went something like this:

Dad: I know, I treat them like crap. They drive me nuts.

Brother: You should. They deserve it. They're such losers.

Me: How can you treat your employees like that? No wonder you have trouble getting good people.

Brother: Oh, we're not talking about the employees. We're talking about the customers.

I love my family.

Done

Well. Thank goodness that's over.

Anyhow, via my brother, France is adding anti-gay and anti-women remarks to its anti-racist and anti-semetic remarks list of "things people can say that'll encourage us to send them to jail."

Free speech crosses the line when you threaten violence against somebody else, but you know... I'm glad I live in a country with a first amendment.

Now I understand why the French just don't get stand-up comedy. What would they be allowed to say?

Jet Plane

I'm about to get on a jet plane to the West Coast, but stay tuned:

Tomorrow I'll be ranting a lot about sex, and delivering my much-promised scream-fest about the sexist assumptions of an author's hope-filled matriarchy-cum-S&M-child molestation-rape fest.

Fun.

My Brain's Gonna Explode

Bah. What a frickin' long day.

I'm getting on a jet plane tomorrow afternoon. Got the place all packed up and all is ready to go, and you know what? I'm going to bed. Bed... bed...

I'm so exhausted.

Who Cares?

You know what my response is to the "men want to form long-term relationships with subordinate women because it's biologically good for men" thing is?

Who cares?

And who the hell is asking these questions? Did anyone ask how biologically useful it was for women to be weak and malnourished and grow up hating their bodies? Did anyone ask the guys if they found the idea of being ridiculed by their peers for being "pussy whipped" a factor in their dating choices? Did anyone ask what biological advantage women have for going out with men who enjoy beating the crap out of them?

Why, no. No one asked this. Cause this is about men and what men like.

Who cares about the women?

To which I reply, then why should I care about men?

It's studies like these that try and make it up that men and women should hate each other, that men will always "naturally" be assholes and women will always "naturally" be victims. And these are dangerous images to go selling people.

Blow me.

Fuck the Fucking Fuckers

Boring, boring meeting. Now I know why all the managers are fucking insane.

Corporate says: How many people do you need to do the job?

We say: we need this many people to do the job.

Corporate says: you lie! That's not what we budgeted!

We say: if you're only going to give us what we budgeted, why are we having this conversation?

Corporate says: fuck you, you fucking fuckers!

Anyway, I met Piper today, my new boss, and it looks like I'll be taking on all of document controls. I really want to stay top dog on this particular aspect, and I made it clear I can handle it. So I'm now a Document Controls Manager, with a part-time sort-of staff and at least one full-time staff member who'll we'll pick up in Denver.

Unfortunately, in order to keep this position (and get the right compensation for it), I need to really wow them with how I handle this huge influx of work. It ain't gonna be pretty. In fact, it's gonna suck. The sheer amount of shit they're going to funnel at me is phenomenal.

And yes, I want to do it, cause I HATE being a lowly admin. Document Controls is a slightly less gender-obvious position (which means it involves a lot more "you fucked this up and now everything went to hell" responsibility, and as such, it's better paid). There's also some murmuring about flying me out to Denver for the occasional trip, or relocating me to Denver at a later date, which I don't mind. I'm young and free: now's the time to do it.

I'd really rather I sold a book or something, but if nobody's buying the books, I've gotta figure out how to get what I want the old fashioned way, until something finally hits for me.

Bah. Fuckers.

Gotta Love Lunch

I've got a couple posts up at Alas, A Blog.

Come join the fun.

Somedays, I Work for a Living

Stuck in corp. meetings all day. More tonight.

Guest Blogging at Alas, A Blog

Starting tomorrow, I will be guest blogging over at the always-amazing Alas, A Blog. My partner-in-guest-blogging crime will be Lauren of Feministe.

I'll be doing some crossposting; hopefully producing a good post a day over at Alas in addition to my usual mixed bag of goodness over here.

Should be fun. Hope to see you all there.

One for the Road

Philobiblon has a post up about unisex sport/women in sport (one can't have an interest in women in war and not keep one eye on women in sport), which I'll be addressing tomorrow.

In the mean time, I've got a painter story I need to work on. Today's story reject was from an editor who found one of my women & war stories too "didactic."

::snicker::

Well, I'm just screwed, then.

Someday, when I write better stories, I'll actually get paid for what I write.

Until then, it's bugs, painting, violent women, and a love affair at the end of the world in my latest must-get-it-into-the-mail story, which I need to be working on... right now.

See you all tomorrow.

If I Wasn't at Work, I Would SCREAM

Must. Contain. Myself.

(why the fuck does Jenn send me these links? Satire? Or not? Want to wage a guess?)

The Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair is a fair that promotes children's interest in science from a Creationist perspective.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Of course, I thought, nodding happily along, we must include all views of...

And then I saw the "science experiments" that the children engaged in, using thier powers of deductive reasoning:

Elementary School Level

1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"

Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.

2nd Place: "Pine Cones Are Complicated"

David Block and Trevor Murry (grades 4) showed how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God's design in nature.

And... wait for it.... Here it is!!

Middle School Level

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"

Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

I AM IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY!! PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME COME BACK!

[EDIT NOTE: I have since been informed that this site is SATIRE. The scariest part about that, is, though... it fooled me. There are enough wingnuts in the world that you just can't go over the top enough to prove a point]

A Short Shout-Out

Thanks to all those coming in via Alas, A Blog (thanks for blogrolling me, Amp) and Pharyngula. And, as usual, hello to everybody reading offsite at the LJ feminist forums and friends' lists.

Good to have you here.

Dream

Had a nightmare last night that Yellow found this blog.

Really must rein in my work posts. I have a history of prescient dreaming.

Revenge of the Wingnuts

I've been keeping up with Jeff Jarvis over at buzzmachine and his research into complaints about television programming, FCC censorship, and the like. What's interested me about it is just how few crazies it takes to freak out networks, sponsers, and get television shows slapped with FCC fines.

Just how few does it take?

In a country of about 260 million, about 23.

His latest rant is about wingnuts and religion in America:

There is a debate supposedly emerging -- even raging -- in this country:

One side says that religion is under attack in America.

Another side says America is under attack from religion.

Jeff goes on to say that too much is being made out of a few wingnuts. They're getting too much screen time with the media and bloggers are spending too much time screaming about them. It makes the nutty crazies in the country look like a majority.

My worry? That the nutty crazies will scream so long and so loud that they start to look normal. In response, I'd like to remain screaming loud and long on my own end, as a sort of counterweight.

I think that's fair.

Writing & the Word

John Rickards, "making a shameless bid for linkage again" posted some thoughts on why writers write. Being someone who makes a living writing crime novels, he went straight for the jugular:

To quote 'Fight Club', "You're not your job". And that, when it comes down to it, is what writing professionally is. It's a job. It's fun, it's interesting and it's varied, but it's basically a cool way of earning a living. That's all.

"Looking at it that way, sure, but what about the whole 'writing as a calling?' aspect?" Sarah said in the original backblogs. "Art vs. livelihood. I mean, I'd love to make a living writing, but even if I couldn't, I'd still do it because at least when it comes to fiction, my brain would probably explode if I didn't find a way to write about it."

To which I say, for most writers, bullshit. We're no more 'called' to it than that mechanic. We enjoy it, we get a great deal of fun from it, but that's all.

I always seize up with I read these "you frickin' pansy-ass writers" things, cause I'm an elitist snob just as much as the next word hack, and sure, money is great for a writer who can get money that way, and if you're not making money (like me), you're sure as hell looking to *get* money by writing... but no more than anybody else looking to get money for doing something they like...

And... and...

Well. Then you read something like this, and all of that cynicism just sort of bleeds away.

You write because there's a power in the telling of stories. The rest is just details.

A Lady in the House

I was channel surfing last night and saw a familiar-looking room getting decorated for the holidays. I paused and realized where it was -- First Lady Laura Bush appeared on screen looking perfectly coiffed and dainty, hands folded demurely in her lap.

Ah. Yes. The Lady's House.

I had found HGTV's special on the decorating of the White House for the holidays, an apparently immense affair that filled Laura will no small amount of joy, this being a chief first lady duty this time of year.

And it got me to thinking about what a perfect first lady Laura Bush is. She's just got it all down: stay in the background, push appropriately lady-like programs like the education of the young (yes, there's a devaluation of "women's work" - note our American incompetence when it comes to education). Give substanceless but uplifting speeches about women being able to vote in Afghanistan. Smile. Wear heels and knee-length skirts. Never, under any circumstances, raise your voice. Host tea parties.

She's a brilliant woman, I've gotta give her her props. You won't find Laura heading a committee on healthcare reform and getting lambested the way Hillary was. You won't find her raising her voice like Hillary. And you sure as hell won't ever hear her tell somebody to "shove it" like the admirable Teresa Heinz Kerry.

So what's wrong with this image of the first lady as cookie-baker and White House decorator? What's wrong with the image of Laura in her proper wifely role as nurturer and house-beautifier? After all, Martha Stewart made an entire industry of her own out of it.

I was watching Laura Bush smiling warmly and speaking about all of the Christmas displays, the "vingettes," and coyly implying how clever she was to put the vingette of "I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus" underneath the portrait of former first lady Barbara Bush, and I thought, "This is all fake."

All of it? No, of course not. But it's fake in the way it matters. That house has been full of ballsy women, from Eleanor Roosevelt to the amazing Abigail Adams, to Nancy Reagan (who ruled the White House for better or worse), to Hillary "I don't bake cookies" Clinton. And I just don't buy that all of them are real keen on giving teas. Hilary was the first one to actually say so. Laura, though, Laura knows her place. She knows the part she has to play, she knows *she* wasn't elected, just her husband, and she's happy to play the lady and be America's wifely role model.

But you know, I believe in the power of images. Seeing Laura give her little speech about the holiday decorations, I wondered what else she would rather be doing than supervising the decorating of the White House, which is likely down to a science by now and doesn't really need her to direct it anyway. I know that if I was First Lady (oh, let's be realistic - I'd be president before I'd be first lady), I'd have other stuff to do around the holidays than talk to HGTV about what a perfect homemaker I was, but I'd have to tow that line, I'd have to mince around and hold a bunch of White House teas, cause that's what First Ladies do, and if I didn't do them, then I'd be the antichrist, like Hillary Clinton.

You know who I wanted to march around playing First Lady in the White House? Teresa Heinz Kerry. I liked her better than her husband. Teresa's the sort of woman I'd love to go out and get drunk with. She'd be table dancing by 2am, and we'd flirt with outrageously younger men and do tequila shots and fall out of our limos onto the sidewalks in front of our respective houses sometime around 5am, and wake up the next morning with hazy snatches of memory that included the smeared visage of some hot guy named Enrique. I wouldn't be able to find my shoes, I'd have some bruises from falling off the table, and I'd call up Teresa sometime that afternoon and ask when we were going out to party again.

And she wouldn't say something like, "I have to decorate the White House today, sorry." She'd say something like, "I'd love to, but we're planning on passing a universal health care bill today, and I need to be on the floor. Also, I'm flying off to Zimbabwe with the Secretary of State to talk about election reform."

I'd turn on C-Span, and there she'd be, ushering in a universal health care bill before flying off to Zimbabwe while I was still nursing my hangover. She'd be wearing a sensible pair of pants and a floppy hat and good shoes. Maybe she'd say something in French just before she left, to really piss people off.

Images are powerful things. Halle Berry knew this, which was among the many reasons she broke into such hysterics when she was the first black woman to win an academy award for best actress. Sure, you know, rationally, that this is a possiblity: you know that there's no *legal* reason a black woman can't win, but you've never actually seen it done. And it was a huge deal for her to show black women: See. Look at me. It can be done.

And when I look at the images of First Ladies that they feed to us - however truthful or not they are - I think, nobody realizes how different it could be. Everybody sees these women sipping their tea and pretends not to notice how important they really are, the power they may have, because we have to hide behind all these feminine accoutrements that make people think that this is the only way women can be. And we think that because we haven't seen anything else. All we know is First Lady tea parties and holiday decorating tips, and because such women's work has been so derided, we look at these First Ladies and assume that this is it: this is the pinnacle of womanhood, and no, really, see, she doesn't have any power! She bakes cookies, for goodness sake! As if baking cookies eclipses the fact that she's got the ear (and a lot more) of the President.

And it pisses me off. Everybody knows that she's got to be an image, a symbol, and it's gotta be played the happy hetero-Christian patriarchy way.

I wish people would have left Hillary alone. I wish they'd just let First Ladies be powerful. Not behind the scenes, but right there, in your face.

If they're powerful, let them be powerful.

I want an anti-First Lady.

And Then My Heart Got...

Breaks my damn heart.

(via Empire o' Dirt)

All I Want For Christmas...

Is a damn non-stick wok. There's enough chicken satay on the bottom of this thing to feed a small midwestern town.

Anyway. My photo page is up. Proof of my life-long debauchery.

I'll be ranting about Laura Bush & Yuletide cheer tomorrow. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's my very late build-your-own-superhero:



Perfect.

Movies, Movies

[Spoilers]

Million Dollar Baby

Clint Eastwood is an old, cynical man. Don't expect this to be a happy movie. And if you walk in wanting this to be about the fighter, you'll likely be disappointed. Swank does a great job, but this is definately about the old guys and their issues.

The first 3/4 are pretty good, and it wins for the best line I've heard delivered by a priest this year: "There are no demigods, you fucking pagan!"

Swank wasn't bad, but she's no Michelle Rodreguiz. Maybe it was all that smiling she does. I don't know. She just wasn't scary in the ring. And even though they play her white trash, which is cool (I have a fondness for white trash characters, being not so far removed from white trash myself), I just didn't get that she wanted it bad enough. But then, in the end, the movie wasn't so much a happy underdog story, so...

And you know, any movie that ends up turning a strong fighting woman into a vegetable through marriage malaise/abusive relationship/or accident just isn't going to be something I want to pick up on DVD. Granted, I don't think I'd enjoy watching a male protagonist get turned into a vegetable either.

Leave at the beginning of the third round with the female prostitute. Trust me.

To be fair, it's a movie more about choosing how you live and how you die, and it had a bit to say about it, stuff I agree with. But that wasn't the movie I wanted to watch.

It shoved in some fun fights, though, before it all went to hell.

House of Flying Daggers

Beautiful people. Beautiful scenery. Beautiful clothes. Sweet-ass fantasy fight scenes, with lots of projectiles.

Zhang Ziyi of Crounching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, who's a dancer by training, gets to do some dancing in this one, which is cool. They're Tiger-like fight scenes, lots of flying shit, a brothel, enough turncoats & backstabbing for three movies, a number of scenes where people are rolling around in the grass half naked, and some really cooly dressed female guerilla fighters with neat hats.

Oh, and there's this great love triangle scene at the end, with lots of blood and snow.

In proper Chinese-romance-movie fashion, everyone dies at the end.

It's great.

Tiger is still better, though.

Movin' On Up

So, before the holiday party, Blaine took me aside in his office and closed the door, which I knew meant that we were going to talk about the restructuring of my role in the office.

"You've heard we're going to be getting a lot of work?" he said.

"Yea," I said. "Mosh already talked to me about it. He said I'll be better integrated with the Wireless team, so I'll be reporting to Piper."

Blaine went on to say how great I was, how much work we were going to get (double what we did last year), and said, "Anyway, I'll get right to the good news. Usually, at year end, if all goes well, we get 3% pay increases, but I did some haggling with corporate, and they're pushing your salary up 4.5%."

I suppose I was supposed to look really surprised and grateful. I was calculating what 4.5% of my base salary was. I'm not great at math, but I'm not totally incompetent, either. It wasn't a great raise, so far as I was concerned. It meant another couple hundred dollars a month, which makes the Glasgow trip in August more feasible, but it wasn't on par with what him and Mosh had been talking about regarding the sort of role I'm going to be playing in the company.

"Nobody knows how to do what you do," Blaine went on (he's very, very good at flattery, which is why everyone likes him and why he's been moved into Business Development. He's like a big happy puppydog. You just can't dislike him). "You're going to be asked to take on a *lot* more responsibility, and you'll need to learn how to replicate yourself."

"Mosh said he'd be interested in hiring on some temps I can supervise," I said, "because if we're doing twice what we did last year..." I was working nine or ten hour days and doing some weekend time and fielding work to the accountant and the secretary, and we still barely pulled it all off.

He intends to give me a shitload more responsibility, a staff, and a 4.5% raise that won't even allow me to be able to afford a car, let alone a cellphone? (the lack of staff with cellphones in our office is one of our biggest jokes).

"I tried to get Mosh and Piper to understand what a great resource they're getting," he said.

"Don't worry," I said. "I intend to sit down with Piper next week and impress upon him exactly what I can do. All they need to do is put something in front of me, and I can do it." I've been bitching to Blaine all year about what an under-utlized resource I am.

I think it was during his speech about how he was trying to convince Mosh & co. how great I was that I realized Mosh and Piper just don't get what I can do, hence the 4.5% raise. They think they're getting an admin, not a Project Support Manager with a Master's degree.

Ah. Of course.

4.5% my ass.

At meeting's end, Blaine still seemed troubled at my lack of enthusiasm. I wanted to stomp around and throw things. 4.5% raise my ass! I want to hop up a position pay scale. Lowly admin my ass! Freakin' fucktards!

But really, it wasn't so much worth it to bitch to Blaine. I was going to have to convince my new supervisors that I'm worth a 10K pay raise, not an extra $200 a month.

I'm going to have to really wow these fuckers.

And insist on proper compensation.

4.5% my ass.

When Was the Last Time I Was Drunk at 4 o'clock in the Afternoon?

College, I think.

In any case, we had our office Christmas luncheon today, and I ended up getting one of the lead architect's beers because he'd gotten an extra manhatten, and then I just sort of threw my whole, "I should only have two beers cause it's an office Xmas party" thing out the window, and four or five beers later, everyone became terribly funny.

I purposely sat at the dorky kids table - I'm consistently amazed that even though I've gotten older, there's still a "cool kids" table and a "dorky kids" table - mainly because I didn't want to sit at the same table as Yellow, who was looking really fucking hot even though he's gained some weight in the month or so since I last saw him in the office. In fact, I spent much of the luncheon pretending I wasn't totally checking out Yellow the whole damn time.

Arg! Damn me and my "I can't do casual sex" thing. I've seriously got to reform. If I can't do relationships, I better figure out casual sex, cause casual sex sounds oh-so-great, especially during the holidays.

But I missed my chance with Yellow a long time ago by not responding to his persistent adolescent-like jibes about my granola hippie-dom, and I realize exactly why I shrugged off his friendliness and continue to sit at different tables than he is and ignoring him unless he says "hi" first - cause I'm attracted to him, but we have nothing in common. He doesn't read books! What the hell am I gonna talk to somebody about when he doesn't read books!

OK, yea, he rides motorcycles, I mean, races them, pseudo-professionally, and there's nothing hotter than a guy with a passion, and I've had daydreams about riding motorcycles in Rome with Yellow, but long term? Realistically? He'd rather be attached at the hip to a tall, thin, blond. I'm tall, but I don't fit the bill for the rest. So, basically, we'd both be "settling" and maybe getting some damn fine sex out of the deal.

Dammit, what's wrong with that?? Damn my aversion to casual sex! I must fix this! Must overcome!

Spent the afternoon getting increasingly drunk along with everyone else (still am, and looking forward to breaking open the red wine here at the house) and talking about the stupid forwarded e-mail from Health & Safety about holiday pounds with the guys, who thought it was equally as condescending and stupid.

"The hell," the lead architect said, "do they think we're fourteen or something?"

This was followed by another martini.

We had some grab bag fun, and I traded the aromatherapy kit I'd pulled for a table fountain that one of the architects got. I also got one of the "door" raffle prizes, which was one of the many misc. food products sent to Blaine by well-meaning contractors. I won the brownies that I'd been eyeing in the refrigerator for the last three days. Unfortunatley, such things cannot live in my house, and I'll end up eating one and throwing the rest of the box away.

So sad, to be an acknowledged binge eater who just can't have such things in the house.

Arg.

Was dropped off at the train station by the HR manager, and managed to stumble home, still drunk, and bumble around the house. All of the clocks are blinking and have to be reset, so I guess the landlady's been doing some work. She changed the back door lock, and left a message on the machine about where she'd left the new key.

Ha ha I thought, I could give a shit.

I thought about how hot Yellow looked.

Oh, man, I hate the holidays.

I'm going to get another drink and watch THX 1138.

I Hate These Things

CNN tells us how many calories the "average" man and woman should be consuming over the holidays. It's so great that they're so inclusive!:

First, some basics. Health experts say women and older adults should eat about 1,600 calories a day. Children and men should add 400 calories to that, while teenage boys and very active men get to eat a total of 2,800.

Uh... what about very active women?

Ah, yes, that's right. There's no such thing as active women. They spend their days knitting and rocking the baby's cradle with thier idle feet.

This shit is just so much filler.