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Postings are in chronological order, with the most recent entry at the top.
Jan. 2002
Yo people! If you're the type to get in touch with your congresspersons, this would be a good time for that. I mean, I know with the war and all it's definitely a good time, but here's something else to keep your eyes on:
The Federal Trade Commission is an agency that most Americans never deal with. But it has anti-trust jurisdiction over merger-happy American corporations, including the media companies that deliver content to millions of people.
...It's no secret the Bush White House wants to please its corporate constituents. Look at the tax cuts in the House-passed economics stimulus plan. Look at what’s about to unfold before the Federal Communications Commission, where Bush’s appointed chairman, Micheal Powell, is poised to deregulate media ownership restrictions, on the one hand, while adopting new regulations giving cable companies permission to limit Web surfers’ "open access" to the Internet.
You can read the whole article here: click here
It's that bit at the bottom about open access to the internet that's got my interest. I've been using Verizon lately and let me tell you - they're about as interested in hosting web pages for their regular accounts as they are in owning Enron stock. And my guess is, the minute one of these corporate entities thinks they can create their own sealed and designed network (a tv channel you can't turn off), they'll try it. Will it be the end of the world? Probably not, but do you think you'd find the Xenaverse and Brulee on that channel? Doubt it.
If you think deregulation has been a smashing success (I know the bandits, I mean, board members over at Enron think it's just super!), then y'all can just ignore this turn of events.
I think my new computer is haunted. My old computer had crickets in it, so the ghostly whir noise of the new one shouldn't bother me too much. It's only that, I was kind of fond of the crickets. The background noise of my youth.
You know how a bull runs at a red bit of cloth being waved around by a matador? Personally, I think the bull's probably pissed off by some nut wearing sparkly coolots and thinkin' they're all that. Who's the one who should have the arrows and prickers stickin' out of their butt in that scenario? I'd be pissed too. But that bull can't resist that cloth. And so, I can't resist mentioning a site... It's like someone stabbed me in the ass and waved a red dishrag in my face.
The site (advertised often on my local NPR station...): http://www.goodgenes.com
It calls itself Good Genes: An Institute of Higher Pairing. It's a dating service for graduates of Ivy League schools... Here's an exerpt from the site:
The following is a list of colleges and universities that we have so far. If your school is not on this list and you think it should be, please send us an email that includes the name of the school as well as the city and state in which the school is located.
Yeah, that's appropriately exclusive... Just like how they admit people to exclusive clubs and stuff. "Well, we haven't heard of you because you're not twice related to anyone who's got enough money to be in this club, but if you apply and your money balances out any untoward aspects of your person... Then maybe we'll consider it. You're not Jewish, are you? No? Oh hell, come on in anyway." Yeah, that's how that goes every time. Which explains why exclusive clubs tend to be full of people of color and Jews and homosexuals... not.
In case you were worried about whether or not you should apply to Good Genes:
Good Genes is an exclusive introduction network. We provide opportunities for single graduates and faculty of specific universities and colleges to meet well-educated members of the opposite sex.
As we all know, there are no queers in the Ivy Leagues, so they didn't bother to include us in there. This site is about breeding with the appropriate GENES, not finding a compatible mate (let's say it together boys and girls... e-u-genics...). They're thinking, "What the hell do a couple of queers need with good genes anyway?" Like my father, they probably haven't figured out and don't want to consider the fact that queers can breed too. Not that I'm lobbying for inclusion here. They can keep their creepy service. Breeding all kinds of scary concepts over at that site. Ew.
Maybe I should start up a site: BentGenes.com: An Institute for the Breeding Impaired... Damaged genes, on the cheap... Providing raw material for the bent...
Of course, a little perspective on what's scary is always good. All manner of scary stuff in the news this week.
Thousands of Enron employees without benefits and all kinds of people making like bandits and shredding documents (I think that's also called destroying evidence...) faster than a flea jumps off a burning cat. All of the politicians whose names seem to be cropping up in the process, that's... well, just plain pathetic, typical, sad and scary as well...
I read these two articles and they got the little hairs at the back of my neck doing the prickly dance too:
Older news that still has bite: click here
Newer stuff that's got my dyslexic learning style all a-stir: click here
I feel like scary news is akin to a fractal shape this week. The more you look, the more you'll find. Which is its own lesson in perspective, I suppose.
Came across this quote and liked the last sentence.
"The Amateur Spirit" from Living Philosophies
by Daniel Boorstin
"I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever."
There was once an experiment involving beetles. They were being kept in beetle container type environments in a lab. The beetles were not reproducing (this was a problem for the scientists involved who had expected a little procreation in the course of their experiment). Being scientists, they investigated the reason for this lack of romantic doings on the part of their beetle subjects. Turns out that the beetles were not maturing to the age where beetles generally need to mature, to get in the mood to do the things what beetles are want to do when they're of an age to do it. Seems there was something disrupting their hormonal chemistry. Something environmental. The researchers were puzzled. They hadn't exactly been putting the beetles up in the Ritz, their environment was rather simple: A container with some shredded paper towels...
So when I'm patting the chicken dry at the sink and Ume happens by and mistakes a bit of muscle tissue for a bit of paper towel that's been left on the bird - I get to hear about the role that chemicals in paper towels play in hormone disruption and beetle romance.
I'm sure that this is the kind of ammunition that Rightwing Christian groups spend hours digging up to prove how unnatural and perverse we homosexuals really are.
I've posted a blip that's really a tarted up link intro for a wonderful site: click here
When your mind reaches the consistency of partially dried paste - it's time to admit that there is a possibility, however slight... that you may be tired.
The kind of consistency I hope for in a mind is the logical kind. Ya know, ideas coalescing in a more or less regular fashion. But hey, if dried paste is your thing, I'm your gal this week.
Speaking of work... I remember the day that I went to get my social security number. I was an industrious young Brulee and signed up at the first opportunity afforded to me (by the state and it's child labor laws) as a teenager. Had I realized then, that I would spend the next 50 or 60 years toiling away, I may not have been quite so gung-ho. But at that time, it represented a smidgen of freedom and independence, so I leapt at it.
This week, I look back at the moment when I got my social security card in the mail and wonder if I'd waited a week or a month - if I would have needed a nap so badly today.
On Wednesday, over a million people gathered in downtown Boston to cheer the Patriots football team for having beaten the Rams in the Super Bowl. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of cheer. We needed it. Los Angeles has plenty of cheer - they're always smiling and whatnot in L.A. We New Englanders are always grumpy. You would be too if you had to live with the lack of signage we do. My personal theory as to why Boston has few to no street signs: We're still afraid of the British. It's true! We're afraid they're gonna come back and try to invade - but there will be no street signs so they won't be able to find anything and will give up out of sheer frustration.
And "The Big Dig" people are always talking about? The largest highway project in history being perpetrated, I mean, taking place in Boston? That's no tunnel they're digging. It's a big hole (for Federal dollars...) - for when the British give up. We'll lead 'em in there and close it. It's the master plan for the defense of Boston. Yup. They say that generals are always fighting the last war...
No offense meant to any present day British folk who happen to read this bit of absurdia. We have no real intention of trapping you in our mammoth highway project. I make no promises for not trapping you in the traffic it's created... nor for getting you unlost once you lose your way due to the giant game of musical exits they're playing downtown (constructing and deconstructing whole on and off ramps to the highway that cuts through downtown seemingly overnight... at random...). Like I told you before, once you're downtown, there's no signage to navigate yourself out - so prepare to be grumpy like the rest of us.
Okay, this is one of those things that's too cool for me to describe so I won't try. Only, I'm telling you that this is a powerful piece of work. If you have a problem with Real Player stuff I'd say that this is beyond worth the effort of getting over them. This is extraordinary. I think this woman deserves whatever award there is going for this kind of work. I got tingles up my spine listening to it. You might say that my opinion is somewhat colored by my orientation, but I'd have to argue with you. Hey! Barbra Gittings is mentioned in it too!
Click on the link below and scroll down on the page a touch, look in the table for the show called "81 Words" - sit back and listen:
http://thislife.org/pages/archive02.html
Ow! Ow,ow,ow!
Brain cramp.
I managed to keep the darting hummingbird that is my mind focused enough to finish reading, "Sexing the Body" by Anne Fausto-Sterling. It was certainly interesting. Lots of cool information in there about sex and gender and the history of ideas about sexuality over the last couple of hundred years. Totally fascinating stuff.
It's a monumental task that the author undertook in writing this book. And I'm kind of sorry to say that I found the information that she provided around her point to be more interesting than what the book is actually important for - but that's me all over, isn't it? It's worth a read. Even if I didn't understand bits and pieces of it or feel comfortable with her arguments in places, I'd recommend it. How could anyone undertake such a huge task and please everybody?
Another good interview with Ahmed Rashid on Teri Gross' show Fresh Air. He talks about militant Islamic groups in Central Asia:
Click Here
I see where Jeanette Winterson took a high moral tone in one of her recent site entries, but I'm gonna give it a break because I did that last week. Remember last week? I was highly toned all over the place. No need this week - the press is feeding on the Enron scandal and turning up all manner of unsavory whatnot - like Ralph Reed (hiss, hiss, hiss).
Here's Ms. Winterson's address - it's well worth the time:
http://www.jeanettewinterson.com
Ms. Winterson has said that she's unapologetically high art. She's unapologetically a lot of stuff which is a pretty feisty stance to take with the world and so I appreciate it. I like that she's so highbrow too - someone should be.
What does it mean then, that such a highbrow kind of gal as this posts a link to a major Slash site on her links page? Does it mean that we slashers are highbrow all of a sudden? They do say that there's a certain amount of guilt by association... I don't see why it shouldn't go both ways.
Thanks to the little bird who dropped me this link.
Number of personal injuries involving toilets in the US 1996: 43,687
Number involving sharks: 18
Number of cases of Polygamy Porter sold by a Utah brewery since October : 1,000
Number of Pop-Tarts dropped on Afghanistan as part of U.S. airborne food aid in the first month of bombing : 2,400,000
Number of knee bends that a 59-year-old Ukrainian woman performed last fall to protest U.S. attacks on Afghanistan : 1,101
You've gotta love the Harper's Index! I find the ones at the bottom to be more fun - it's like they stayed up late to find all of these wacky facts and by the end of it they were punch drunk and threw in a few wackier ones.
http://harpers.org/harpers-index/
Don't run with scissors.
Very bad, that.
Yo people! If you're the type to get in touch with your congresspersons, this would be a good time for that. I mean, I know with the war and all it's definitely a good time, but here's something else to keep your eyes on:
The Federal Trade Commission is an agency that most Americans never deal with. But it has anti-trust jurisdiction over merger-happy American corporations, including the media companies that deliver content to millions of people.
...It's no secret the Bush White House wants to please its corporate constituents. Look at the tax cuts in the House-passed economics stimulus plan. Look at what’s about to unfold before the Federal Communications Commission, where Bush’s appointed chairman, Micheal Powell, is poised to deregulate media ownership restrictions, on the one hand, while adopting new regulations giving cable companies permission to limit Web surfers’ "open access" to the Internet.
You can read the whole article here: click here
It's that bit at the bottom about open access to the internet that's got my interest. I've been using Verizon lately and let me tell you - they're about as interested in hosting web pages for their regular accounts as they are in owning Enron stock. And my guess is, the minute one of these corporate entities thinks they can create their own sealed and designed network (a tv channel you can't turn off), they'll try it. Will it be the end of the world? Probably not, but do you think you'd find the Xenaverse and Brulee on that channel? Doubt it.
If you think deregulation has been a smashing success (I know the bandits, I mean, board members over at Enron think it's just super!), then y'all can just ignore this turn of events.
I think my new computer is haunted. My old computer had crickets in it, so the ghostly whir noise of the new one shouldn't bother me too much. It's only that, I was kind of fond of the crickets. The background noise of my youth.
You know how a bull runs at a red bit of cloth being waved around by a matador? Personally, I think the bull's probably pissed off by some nut wearing sparkly coolots and thinkin' they're all that. Who's the one who should have the arrows and prickers stickin' out of their butt in that scenario? I'd be pissed too. But that bull can't resist that cloth. And so, I can't resist mentioning a site... It's like someone stabbed me in the ass and waved a red dishrag in my face.
The site (advertised often on my local NPR station...): http://www.goodgenes.com
It calls itself Good Genes: An Institute of Higher Pairing. It's a dating service for graduates of Ivy League schools... Here's an exerpt from the site:
The following is a list of colleges and universities that we have so far. If your school is not on this list and you think it should be, please send us an email that includes the name of the school as well as the city and state in which the school is located.
Yeah, that's appropriately exclusive... Just like how they admit people to exclusive clubs and stuff. "Well, we haven't heard of you because you're not twice related to anyone who's got enough money to be in this club, but if you apply and your money balances out any untoward aspects of your person... Then maybe we'll consider it. You're not Jewish, are you? No? Oh hell, come on in anyway." Yeah, that's how that goes every time. Which explains why exclusive clubs tend to be full of people of color and Jews and homosexuals... not.
In case you were worried about whether or not you should apply to Good Genes:
Good Genes is an exclusive introduction network. We provide opportunities for single graduates and faculty of specific universities and colleges to meet well-educated members of the opposite sex.
As we all know, there are no queers in the Ivy Leagues, so they didn't bother to include us in there. This site is about breeding with the appropriate GENES, not finding a compatible mate (let's say it together boys and girls... e-u-genics...). They're thinking, "What the hell do a couple of queers need with good genes anyway?" Like my father, they probably haven't figured out and don't want to consider the fact that queers can breed too. Not that I'm lobbying for inclusion here. They can keep their creepy service. Breeding all kinds of scary concepts over at that site. Ew.
Maybe I should start up a site: BentGenes.com: An Institute for the Breeding Impaired... Damaged genes, on the cheap... Providing raw material for the bent...
Of course, a little perspective on what's scary is always good. All manner of scary stuff in the news this week.
Thousands of Enron employees without benefits and all kinds of people making like bandits and shredding documents (I think that's also called destroying evidence...) faster than a flea jumps off a burning cat. All of the politicians whose names seem to be cropping up in the process, that's... well, just plain pathetic, typical, sad and scary as well...
I read these two articles and they got the little hairs at the back of my neck doing the prickly dance too:
Older news that still has bite: click here
Newer stuff that's got my dyslexic learning style all a-stir: click here
I feel like scary news is akin to a fractal shape this week. The more you look, the more you'll find. Which is its own lesson in perspective, I suppose.
Came across this quote and liked the last sentence.
"The Amateur Spirit" from Living Philosophies
by Daniel Boorstin
"I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever."
There was once an experiment involving beetles. They were being kept in beetle container type environments in a lab. The beetles were not reproducing (this was a problem for the scientists involved who had expected a little procreation in the course of their experiment). Being scientists, they investigated the reason for this lack of romantic doings on the part of their beetle subjects. Turns out that the beetles were not maturing to the age where beetles generally need to mature, to get in the mood to do the things what beetles are want to do when they're of an age to do it. Seems there was something disrupting their hormonal chemistry. Something environmental. The researchers were puzzled. They hadn't exactly been putting the beetles up in the Ritz, their environment was rather simple: A container with some shredded paper towels...
So when I'm patting the chicken dry at the sink and Ume happens by and mistakes a bit of muscle tissue for a bit of paper towel that's been left on the bird - I get to hear about the role that chemicals in paper towels play in hormone disruption and beetle romance.
I'm sure that this is the kind of ammunition that Rightwing Christian groups spend hours digging up to prove how unnatural and perverse we homosexuals really are.
I've posted a blip that's really a tarted up link intro for a wonderful site: click here
And now, for something completely different...
"may i feel said he"
by e. e. cummings
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
it is love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh nn said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
Interview with Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the The American Civil Liberties Union (1.11.02): Fighting for Civil liberties post Sept. 11
It's a Real Player thing.
Click here
Random flashback...
Pimento and cheese sandwiches in my brown paper lunch bag.
I suggest that my flashback has something to do with hearing George Bush on the radio, sounding so much like his daddy and those cold war folk who sound the same now as they did in my childhood. I keep thinking that I'm in some weird playback loop every time I listen to them on the news.
My liberal soul is taking such a beating this week. I'm disheartened and sad. Mostly because I can see how very well positioned people I'd rather weren't, are.
One little liberal happy dance this week: Robert Reich is going to join the race for Governor in Massachusetts. Now, this ought to be fun.
If I went to a "faith based" aid organization because I needed help, could I be an out homosexual and still get assistance? Could I be an out Atheist? Would being a feminist get me into trouble?
I think I'd have to go to the Unitarian faith based aid group.
Ooh! Ooh! Treat!
I was listening to a book on tape, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan. It's abridged and I don't usually get those, but Ume picked this one out and said I'd probably like it, so I gave it a whirl (desperate for something remotely cheerful) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Totally recommend it. By the end I was thinking - someone must have been thinking movie when they wrote this... I don't know if that's so, but I see on her website where a studio has bought the option on her memoir - excellent!
The book site is cool - you can see what it's like to get swept up in the whole media thing as they're keeping track of it on the site.
http://www.theprizewinner.com/
I thought this article was interesting. Written by the author's partner, it describes how people who'd prefer to be left alone cope with the necessity of media interaction in selling a book:
http://www.theprizewinner.com/holt_229.html
You're sitting at home, or wherever (possibly a cramped cubicle), and you're wondering, "What has Brulee been up to?"
Aside from the usual disorienting tumult that is my life - not much, really. We rented "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and enjoyed it. I'm not big on jumpy timelines, but I thought this made such good use of one. My favorite scene is when s/he's playing in the oven. I related quite well to it. I don't understand the ending, so if any of you do, would you do me the favor of enlightening me? Not getting the last scene doesn't get in the way of enjoying the film - it's just a closing shot.
Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson
from "Two Fat Ladies"
Also saw a couple of installments of, "Two Fat Ladies" (pictured above)- a British cooking show. So sue me if you have cable and have seen them on the Food Channel already - I'm not getting cable, I have enough problems with time management as it is. Anyway, it's hysterical. Listening to these two gripe about Vegetarians and how they're more or less responsible for the lamentable condition of modern cuisine and most likely undermined the Empire - it's a gas. Very tongue in cheek - silly stuff. You'll love the motorcycle and sidecar they toot about in. Me? I love the fact that the picnic basket attached to the back of it seems to hold an inexhaustible supply of wine and butter (or lard if that's what's called for in the moment) - the magic of telly!
If you want to see their web page, click here.
http://twofatladies.c1tv.com/Pages/galery.html
Ume just finished a book she enjoyed quite a bit by Glen David Gold called, Carter Beats the Devil. She says it was terrifically researched and well written, so the story about a magician in turn of the century San Francisco comes to life. Sounds like a lot of fun. I was ignored for several nights running while she was caught up in it.
Well, well... 2002. We shall see.
Happy Birthday M!
Went to the nurse practitioner on Tuesday - she said, "You're definitely looking Fluish."
If I looked Fluish on Tuesday, I'm looking Flemish today.
I'm sick. Sexy, huh? I'm looking at it as blowing the crap from last year out my nose, while starting the New Year with an appreciation of good health. Truly, I'm thankful to not be looking Streppish, which is what I was feeling I looked like. Few things get me to a doctor without a good fight (okay, get me to a doctor without a good whine at Ume, whatever), but I don't mess with anything strep-like (had a bad experience that way once).
Let's sit back and enjoy "A Nice Cup of Tea" by George Orwell (such a pithy guy):
Click here
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