Nobody who's not an anti-racist, don't not raise your hand!
Did you pass?
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Writing the hell out of racism
I am one of those people who think that words can change the world, especially words that are made of electricity and that are written by encouragable energy-balls who have over-mastered the use of the gamepad and the exclamation mark.August 6 through 12 is International Blog Against Racism Week. What you need to do is:
- Get yourself a blog.
- Write something in your blog about racism for a week.
- Sit back and watch racism get pwned.
- Smile because you totally did it!!!!!!!! LOLOLOL
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Emotional meteorology
Warning: This post contains brain violence and emotional nudity. Also, it is ridiculous.
Last night, I was taking a mercury bath and had a thought, maybe. I don't remember. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I knew how to talk good about my feelings. Like, I want to be able to go from feeling a feeling, to noticing that I am feeling it, to figuring out what feeling it is, to deciding whether or not I like feeling the feeling, to being able to make the words with my brain that would stick to the feeling and make it so that when someone asks me what I'm feeling I can say something that makes sense like, 'hungry' or, 'my heart hurts because I missed the Golden Girls on the TV box.'
That was a bad example. I should come up with a point before bringing forth the examples.
See, I wish I knew how to make points. They told me in school that it was like whittling an arrowhead from a piece of obsidian. Not a big clumpy piece like one you would find buried in a river bed but the nice flat smooth pieces you find in cowboy skeletons that were once part of the circle of life on ocean floors 50 hundred million years ago.* Case in point: I was having a conversation on (in?) the subway and a dude came up to me and told me to get to the point. It was none of his business, so I was like, 'why don't you get to the point?' Really. I wasn't talking to him or to anyone in that car so it was none of any of their businesses. I was having a great conversation nevertheless. Mobile phones don't work in (on?) the subway.
So I gave him the old Garrison Keillor, 'No, no, it's a different story, about a pontoon boat.' And then my studio audience laughed. With me, not at me. 'Ha ha' and not 'hee hee,' as it were.
So to get back to what I was talking about before: some people have what those same people like to call 'emotional intelligence.' As far as I can tell, it's like the force, except it is missing some forcey things the most lamentable of which are levitation and deadly (but peace-loving) skill with a hybrid light saber.
Sometimes I wish I were able to identify the things that I know I must be feeling and to describe them in the same way that I can describe other things that I like such as juice. (Oh my gosh have you had it? It's delicious.) People who have this emotional intelligence feature are ever-aware of their own emotional climate--and they can sense the emotional meteorology of others.
Even though it sounds like a load of goat cud, I wanted to raise my 'emotional IQ,' as it were. One of my good friends claims that he is one of these feeling Jedis. Let's call him 'Linda.' I thought that, since I've been calling him by a girl's name, this might have something to do with why he's so good at keeping in touch with himself. (Don't even.)
So for two weeks, he called me 'Janet' at my request. We would go out for sushi, and I'd say, 'Hey Linda, pass the wasabi.' Then he'd say, 'Janet, I think you're being passive aggressive.'
'Can you shut up and grab me that white tuna** from the conveyor belt? You always get the good seat you bastard, where you get to see what's coming upstream while I have to keep asking you to feed me like a fessacchione. Ooh, wait, is that a $4.00 plate? Forget it. By the way, that's active aggression, right? How'm I doing? Good?'
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I had wider shoulders so that I could wear a double-breasted pea coat without people thinking that Manute Bol had an albino midget son with a homeostasis problem.
* Note: this is not true at all.
** My second favorite variety of sushi in the world, after eel kabayaki nigiri.
Last night, I was taking a mercury bath and had a thought, maybe. I don't remember. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I knew how to talk good about my feelings. Like, I want to be able to go from feeling a feeling, to noticing that I am feeling it, to figuring out what feeling it is, to deciding whether or not I like feeling the feeling, to being able to make the words with my brain that would stick to the feeling and make it so that when someone asks me what I'm feeling I can say something that makes sense like, 'hungry' or, 'my heart hurts because I missed the Golden Girls on the TV box.'
That was a bad example. I should come up with a point before bringing forth the examples.
See, I wish I knew how to make points. They told me in school that it was like whittling an arrowhead from a piece of obsidian. Not a big clumpy piece like one you would find buried in a river bed but the nice flat smooth pieces you find in cowboy skeletons that were once part of the circle of life on ocean floors 50 hundred million years ago.* Case in point: I was having a conversation on (in?) the subway and a dude came up to me and told me to get to the point. It was none of his business, so I was like, 'why don't you get to the point?' Really. I wasn't talking to him or to anyone in that car so it was none of any of their businesses. I was having a great conversation nevertheless. Mobile phones don't work in (on?) the subway.
So I gave him the old Garrison Keillor, 'No, no, it's a different story, about a pontoon boat.' And then my studio audience laughed. With me, not at me. 'Ha ha' and not 'hee hee,' as it were.
So to get back to what I was talking about before: some people have what those same people like to call 'emotional intelligence.' As far as I can tell, it's like the force, except it is missing some forcey things the most lamentable of which are levitation and deadly (but peace-loving) skill with a hybrid light saber.
Sometimes I wish I were able to identify the things that I know I must be feeling and to describe them in the same way that I can describe other things that I like such as juice. (Oh my gosh have you had it? It's delicious.) People who have this emotional intelligence feature are ever-aware of their own emotional climate--and they can sense the emotional meteorology of others.
Even though it sounds like a load of goat cud, I wanted to raise my 'emotional IQ,' as it were. One of my good friends claims that he is one of these feeling Jedis. Let's call him 'Linda.' I thought that, since I've been calling him by a girl's name, this might have something to do with why he's so good at keeping in touch with himself. (Don't even.)
So for two weeks, he called me 'Janet' at my request. We would go out for sushi, and I'd say, 'Hey Linda, pass the wasabi.' Then he'd say, 'Janet, I think you're being passive aggressive.'
'Can you shut up and grab me that white tuna** from the conveyor belt? You always get the good seat you bastard, where you get to see what's coming upstream while I have to keep asking you to feed me like a fessacchione. Ooh, wait, is that a $4.00 plate? Forget it. By the way, that's active aggression, right? How'm I doing? Good?'
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I wish I had wider shoulders so that I could wear a double-breasted pea coat without people thinking that Manute Bol had an albino midget son with a homeostasis problem.
* Note: this is not true at all.
** My second favorite variety of sushi in the world, after eel kabayaki nigiri.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Ireland, Part V
Tuesday, 13 April
I slept for so long last night; I was extremely tired. I woke up, had a small breakfast, and then went across the street with my clothes from the weekend’s hike to get them washed at the laundromat. Including my shoes. A while later, I’d changed into the more comfortable (and now clean and dry) pair and was able to walk around much less painfully. In fact, after an hour or so, the blisters weren’t bothering me in the slightest. I decided to visit Trinity College, since I’d only walked around the edge of it the last time I was in Dublin. Once inside the campus, I was surprised that I was still in the same city. It’s not a huge campus, but one that is pleasantly spacious in that everything’s not crowded together. There were lawns everywhere, rows of trees, flower beds, benches, people kicking a ball around, and the buildings themselves were beautiful. The library, a relatively massive structure with shelves twenty feet high and tracked ladders to match was most impressive. Again, this could just be my reaction to something so starkly different from what I’ve been getting used to living in London, LSE’s campus being a claustrophobic maze of dirt-caked behemoths lining a narrow street that effectively limits the sun’s reach.
Speaking of sunlight, there was plenty of it, and I decided to try and lose myself in the city for a while, thinking of what to do next, both in the short and long terms. I did get lost, but I only noticed when I found myself at the port. I guessed I’d been walking for more than I’d noticed, taking random turns here and there. It was a lot more difficult finding out where I was than I’d thought it would be.
This is mainly because of Dublin’s deliberately confusing street naming and numbering 'convention.' Streets change names every one or two blocks in Dublin, and the numbering goes up along one side, and down along the other. So while I might have thought I’d be on Dame Street, for example, five minutes later, I’d be on College Street. Personally, I can never remember whether or not I’d accidentally turned somewhere, and the fact that the street name just changes on me like that doesn’t help me find my bearings (which are more often than not misplaced). So it was the better part of half an hour that I spent toiling over my map and asking people what this street was called further down that way. Of course, this being perfectly normal for them, people were amused that I was confused by it. But they don’t know that I could get lost sitting on a park bench.
Anyway, I did find my way back from wherever it was I’d ended up. But I got to see a lot of Dublin, and I did notice that I was still south of the Liffey, the river that runs through the city (I’ve been known to cross rivers without noticing). I made a mental note of some buildings and other things I’d be likely to come back and photograph, depending on whether or not I could find my way back here.
I'm sitting at St. Steven’s Green, since I’ve managed to lose sight of my planning for tomorrow, or even tonight for that matter. I think I'll go to Sheep’s Head peninsula. No, maybe Cork? No, I’ll go to the Dingle peninsula and bike around there. No. It’s going to be Sheep’s Head. Oh, it depends on when the bus leaves. No, no. There must be a bus that leaves quite early to each place. Why don’t I go and find out? Tomorrow morning there will be time.
For now, I was able to catch the museum before it closed (oddly enough for a museum of Celtic heritage, they still couldn’t resist including a sizeable Ancient Egyptian exhibit). More interesting was the Natural History museum, with an immense collection of many known (and stuffed) species of fauna running around Ireland. Later, I walked around Temple Bar, went into a café, and sat and read more of The Wasp Factory.
To be continued.
I slept for so long last night; I was extremely tired. I woke up, had a small breakfast, and then went across the street with my clothes from the weekend’s hike to get them washed at the laundromat. Including my shoes. A while later, I’d changed into the more comfortable (and now clean and dry) pair and was able to walk around much less painfully. In fact, after an hour or so, the blisters weren’t bothering me in the slightest. I decided to visit Trinity College, since I’d only walked around the edge of it the last time I was in Dublin. Once inside the campus, I was surprised that I was still in the same city. It’s not a huge campus, but one that is pleasantly spacious in that everything’s not crowded together. There were lawns everywhere, rows of trees, flower beds, benches, people kicking a ball around, and the buildings themselves were beautiful. The library, a relatively massive structure with shelves twenty feet high and tracked ladders to match was most impressive. Again, this could just be my reaction to something so starkly different from what I’ve been getting used to living in London, LSE’s campus being a claustrophobic maze of dirt-caked behemoths lining a narrow street that effectively limits the sun’s reach.
Speaking of sunlight, there was plenty of it, and I decided to try and lose myself in the city for a while, thinking of what to do next, both in the short and long terms. I did get lost, but I only noticed when I found myself at the port. I guessed I’d been walking for more than I’d noticed, taking random turns here and there. It was a lot more difficult finding out where I was than I’d thought it would be.
This is mainly because of Dublin’s deliberately confusing street naming and numbering 'convention.' Streets change names every one or two blocks in Dublin, and the numbering goes up along one side, and down along the other. So while I might have thought I’d be on Dame Street, for example, five minutes later, I’d be on College Street. Personally, I can never remember whether or not I’d accidentally turned somewhere, and the fact that the street name just changes on me like that doesn’t help me find my bearings (which are more often than not misplaced). So it was the better part of half an hour that I spent toiling over my map and asking people what this street was called further down that way. Of course, this being perfectly normal for them, people were amused that I was confused by it. But they don’t know that I could get lost sitting on a park bench.
Anyway, I did find my way back from wherever it was I’d ended up. But I got to see a lot of Dublin, and I did notice that I was still south of the Liffey, the river that runs through the city (I’ve been known to cross rivers without noticing). I made a mental note of some buildings and other things I’d be likely to come back and photograph, depending on whether or not I could find my way back here.
I'm sitting at St. Steven’s Green, since I’ve managed to lose sight of my planning for tomorrow, or even tonight for that matter. I think I'll go to Sheep’s Head peninsula. No, maybe Cork? No, I’ll go to the Dingle peninsula and bike around there. No. It’s going to be Sheep’s Head. Oh, it depends on when the bus leaves. No, no. There must be a bus that leaves quite early to each place. Why don’t I go and find out? Tomorrow morning there will be time.
For now, I was able to catch the museum before it closed (oddly enough for a museum of Celtic heritage, they still couldn’t resist including a sizeable Ancient Egyptian exhibit). More interesting was the Natural History museum, with an immense collection of many known (and stuffed) species of fauna running around Ireland. Later, I walked around Temple Bar, went into a café, and sat and read more of The Wasp Factory.
To be continued.
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