fever 103

Checking In

2006-08-19T02:32:00.000-05:00

Geez, has it really been six days since my last post? It's gone by pretty quickly, well, except for yesterday. The night before last we went to a tapas bar with some friends from out of town and Indulged with a capital I. There were 5 of us, 4 of us over drinking age, and we went through 2 pitchers of sangria and a ton of extra good, extra olive oily food. I probably had 5 or so highball-sized glasses of sangria and 10 or 15 pieces of fruit. I could feel the alcohol, but I didn't feel drunk, just tipsy. I also had all this over a period of about 3 hours and I drank a lot of water, too. Alas, it was not enough to keep me from the hangover from hell. I usually have malt beverages when I drink, so I guess I just couldn't handle that much wine or something. I think I was hung over until about 7 last night, and I'd been at work since noon.

School is starting in a few days for me and I'm excited. I've gotten most of my books, except my Latin books, which have not even been ordered from the bookstore yet, apparently. I hope it's an oversight, or that they're preparing a reading packet for us, because there's no way in hell I'm carrying around the intolerably huge and clunky Wheelock's Latin for another semester. No way. I had to carry it 5 days a week last semester, and I'm so sick of that book. Besides, I took my copy out back and shot it...I mean...took it to the recycling center, right after school was over.

I've also begun pringing out my syllabi and flagging my readings and printing out supplimentary material. You see, over the past few semesters, I've becomes an organization freak when it comes to school, and it didn't take long to realize that I use preparation and organization as a means for procrastination. Ohh...that was a nice sounding sentence. So, I figure if I get a lot of my obsessive organization done now, I'll be forced to do more work later. Here's hoping. At any rate, I'll write more later.

And no, I'm not PMSing right now.

2006-08-13T12:09:00.001-05:00

I just found this great post on The Happy Feminist. And oldie but goodie. I'm so glad that someone else was annoyed by this. Men often use second-hand information the menstrual cycle to exoticise and "explain" women. I usually do feel some side effects before I get my period: about three days of mild depression and some preliminary cramps. However, once I figured out that this monthly depression was the cause of PMS, I was just able to say, "OK, it's hormones. Now that I know that, I'll move on." So much attention is paid to PMS that most women probably know what symptoms they can expect from PMS and how to deal with them.

The really annoying thing, however, is when you're just pissed off or frustrated and men just assume that you're PMSing. I remember this happened one time in high school when I was at play practice. Anyone who's ever been in any kind of play or production requiring a lot of rehearsal time knows how frustrating it is. Group work on a large scale, especially with a group of people who are not professionals, is REALLY frustrating. So one time I was on stage practicing and something went wrong or somebody said something that annoyed me and I said something angry. My instructor then said, in front of everyone, while I was standing on stage, "Geez! Can you say PMS?" I remember that my mouth dropped open because I was so surprised to hear that from a grown man. I was on stage in front of everyone, so what was I supposed to do? Say "I just got off my period last week." I can't remember, but I think I said aloud, "That is the most immature thing I've ever heard." I know I thought it, at least, but looking back, I hope I said it aloud.

This is the problem: whenever a woman gets angry, men can just say, "She's PMSing," thereby eliminating any responsibility they may have towards the situation, blaming it all on her cycle and leaving it at that. But what if she's not PMSing? What if she's pissed off for a legitimate reason or she's in a frustrating situation (and believe me, nothing is more frustrating that a high school play)? Any grown woman is going to know she's PMSing. She knows the symptoms, she knows the time of month, and she doesn't need to use it as an excuse.

The comments on THF's blog were mostly annoying. There were a few men who were bringing science into it as a ruse for saying that hormonal women are irrational and are in no place to judge whether they're irrational or not. It's true, I only know as much about human genetics and anatomy as Biology 101 and 102 will teach, but I do know that not treating people like shit and taking them seriously was around WAY before modern biology was, and so were hormonal fluctuations. Everybody has them and so it's shameful for anybody to judge other people on normal hormonal fluctuations. Since PMS has supposedly been demystified, everyone, especially people who have never experienced it, uses it to explain away women's anger, depression, frustration, and all those other nasty emotions that she has no reason to feel. (I mean, after all, I didn't piss her off or anything, did I?)

Men do go through some sort of cycle, too, but since these, I guess, are just part of guys being guys, they're not used to explain away stuff. My manager at work, a guy in his early 50's, goes through some sort of cycle. He'll be normal most of the time, say, for 9 months out of the year, but then all of a sudden, he'll just go through three months where he's a total asshole, jumping down everybody's throat for everything. At least one person quits during these times. I stay on because I know that they're temporary and that as long as I just do what he says, don't give him any shit, and try to distract him from whatever's bothering him, he'll put up with me. I guess I should also mention that he and I are really good friends. But am I like, "Oh, he's on his hormonal kick again. I guess I shouldn't take anything he says or does seriously"? No. The stuff he's pissed off about is actually legitimate stuff, it's just that he's more frustrated by it than he normally would be.

At the end of the day, he's still my friend who's a nice guy nine months of the year and a pain in the neck for three months. I don't dismiss him, I don't pick and choose what times of the year or month that I'm his friend, I'm not all like, "I like him, except when he's PMSing," you know? If he's my friend, I have to embrace him completely.

Hmmm....well, I did drink a little last night...

2006-08-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

Late this morning, I had a dream that I was Christina Rossetti and that D. G. (who looked nothing like the real Dante Rossetti) gave me this big parcel as a gift. Mark you, this was taking place in present times in my parents' house and I went to my bedroom, which looked like it did when I was 14, and opened it. It was full of those old lady cute-kitten-in-a-watering-can t-shirts and some really cheap, ugly jewlrey, you know, the kind you'd order from Avon 15 years ago? And I was totally delighted by these gifts.

And on top of all of that, I woke up with the Beach Boys' rendition of "Sloop John B" stuck in my head. Who knows?

Schopenhauer

2006-08-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

The other day at a used bookstore, I picked up a book called History of Ideas on Woman. It contains the thoughts, mostly of philosophers, about women down to '70s. Most of the stuff in it didn't surprise me. The first entry is from the book of Genesis, a.k.a. the death knell for women's rights and dignity for the next 2,000 years. Pre-Biblical entries include Plato, Plutarch, and Aristotle. Plato said that women should be included in society too, and that keeping them in the home isn't doing anyone any good. Too bad nobody took him seriously. Plutarch just backs up the whole "your place is in the house" thing, while Aristotle posits that women are just mutilated, and therefore inferior, versions of men that just happen to give birth.

One essay that I'd never heard of before because I've stopped really reading western philosophy at this point, was Schopenhauer's essay about women. Now, I don't know anything about Schopenhauer, but I do know that western philosophers rise to prominence because they have something new or different to say. Ah, yes, let me expound my new system to you, and then when it comes time to talk about women, I'm going to defend every status quo observation about them since recorded history.

Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long.

Like I haven't heard that one before. Well here's one that people still haven't gotten over the centuries: if you don't don't allow people to be educated, they'll be stupid. If you train them to be frivolous, they will be. If you make them spend all their time around children, they'll be childlike.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulses that could give the name of the fair sex to that under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race; for the whole beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse.

Oh, yeah, I TOTALLY heard that making sweeping generalizations about the appearance of a group of people and then using that as a basis for calling them inferior was a well thought out, philosophical way to prove your point. Good one, Art.

In our part of the world where monogamy is the rule, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

Exactly! Just like my mom has worked 40 hours a week and done all the housework and cooking and child-raising and bill-paying for the last 25 years, while my dad just works, does laundry once a week, and mows the lawn sometimes! Oh! And he keeps a separate checking account that he just spends on himself! Now you're getting it!

OK, I'm done. You get my point. This is why I shy away from established philosophies or religions, most of which are misogynistic. These guys can say all they want about new social contracts, ways of perceiving the universe, etc. I don't care. If you can't wrap your mind around the fact that if you oppress people the bad qualities they have are there only because of your oppression, then I'm not going to have any respect for your damn philosophy.

Several Things

2006-08-05T09:40:00.000-05:00

OK, firstly, I must level: most of my posts have been way too angry over the past couple of months. I think this has something to do with reading up on racism and sexism and poverty and seeing just how screwed up things are in this country, not to even start on others. But aside from that, I think I've just been a much more angry person, and I think a lot of this has to do with going back to work at the bookstore. At any crappy job, the amount of negative psychological residue that builds up in someone's brain can reach levels of toxicity in a short period of time. If someone tells me that they don't like their latte, their complaint is immediately compounded with every other person who has done that. I came back to work refreshed, but it didn't take long for things to snowball back into the same old mental grind, perhaps even worse. I'll have been at the cafe for three years in October and I think it's about time to start looking for another job.

Anyway, I've always definitely had a longer fuse than a lot of people, and for me, ranting about something on my blog and flying off the handle about something in a visible way are two different things. But right now I have limited outlets for my thoughts. I've been blogging more and writing less, and usually my writing is about literature, whereas my blogging is about social issues and day to day stuff, and since those piss me off far worse than literature, this blog comes off as angry, I think. However, I'm not off the hook in the least. As my friend Sarah L. pointed out in a comment, there's not enough compassion in this world. It's totally true. I believe that most of the world's ills come from ignorance by itself or compounded with something else. Lack of compassion not only shows ignorance about how the world actually works, but it also shows ignorance towards whoever you're not being compassionate to, i. e. that spider bit me and I'm angry at it, but, really, it was only trying to protect its egg sack or the babies on its back, and if someone threatened my children, I'd probably bite them too.

Lesson duly noted. Fortunately, school is starting soon and I'll have varied positive outlets for my energy.

Let's see...what's been going on? Well, I read the 20th Carnival of Feminists, which totally blew me away. I loved the posts on women in poverty, women caught in the crossfire of war, the alienating aspect of academic feminism, and reproductive rights. To me, these are the more important issues of feminism. While I don't think anyone in the feminist blogosphere right now is really giving much thought to last name changing and other common "petty" points of feminism, but there are probably a lot of people like Twisty who point out the enduring and covert signs of oppressive patriarchal notions that still pervade society. I'm not saying that this is unimportant. I'm a regular reader of I Blame the Patriarchy, but to me, being able to sit down and point this stuff out and think about it is a luxury which many American women and most of the women around the world do not have. I remember that someone commented on IBTP, during the whole blowjob debate, that American women are among the most oppressed women in the world, and that we don't even know it because we love our oppression so much. While it is true that people who would otherwise be rebellious can usually be bought out pretty easily, whenever I think about that comment, I know that it probably excludes poor American women because their oppression doesn't entail liking blowjobs, but putting up with domestic violence, harassment and humiliation from their employers and the government. This makes me realize how wrong-headed a lot of mainstream academic feminism is. We're the most oppressed? At least we have time and energy and the ability to create a weblog and talk about feminism with other women without having to worry about answering to a man or to the government or our religious leader. And furthermore, "loving" blowjobs is nothing compared to..say...desperately wanting to have yourself and your daughters circumsized so that you won't be ostracized.

At any rate, the carnival was really powerful and inspirational and the writings of so many kickass women cause me to assess and reassess my own humanity and my own power.

The domestic front, Thom and I have taken up the task of keeping strict track of our finances. We try to live as if we didn't have any money invested and I'm beginning to realize how fortunate I am to have a safety net. We don't live an extravagant life and our hobbies are pretty inexpensive for the most part, but things have been expensive lately. All told, my dental work will be around $2,000, while we just dropped another $700 on Thom's Jeep, all of this being money that we would have to put on credit cards and pay off slavishly, we can pay off all at once. We have lived together for a year now and we've never set a budget, which is something that I think we need to do by the time we get married, get a joint checking account, my car and health insurance gets added to the expenses, and we start filing jointly for taxes. Currently, we're spending way too much money on eating out. We pay for most stuff with credit cards, but when you get your credit card statement, there is is, someone's already done the math for you, and all you do is glance at it, say, "I could have spent less" and put it in the file.

To my mind, there's only one way to be aware of how much money you spend: painfully. I bought one of those old-fashioned budgeting books, which makes it necessary to keep receipts for everything we buy and sit down with a pencil, enter them by category, and add them up at the end of the day. The amount of money we've spent on eating out in the past four days has been nauseating enough. When I showed him the figure, I think it killed both our appetites.

As for reading, I've been doing a lot of reading about Wordsworth still. I've also been trying to draw the lines between Gray, Cowper and early WW, only to find that he owed them so much at the beginning of his career, yet hated them so much. I guess it's like the way that I might owe current or recent poets a lot, but yet want to separate myself from them. I got this book of WW's "critical opinions" from the library, which is total crap. OK, first let me give a brief layout of WW's life. He lived from 1770-1850 and began writing poetry around 1785 and, by most accounts, had written most of his good stuff by 1807. As a young man, like many naive English intellectuals, he fervently supported the French Revolution and actually spent time in France and had a child by a French woman. For English people, though, supporting the revolution was a radical and leftist thing to do because it implied that the English king should be dethroned, also. WW also took a radical turn in poetry and began writing really stripped down, good, unprecedented stuff. As he grew older though, he grew more conservative, and he became poet laureate in 1836, I think, when Walter Scott died. Poet laureate never has been and never will be a measure of a poet's worth. Let me think of all the good British and American poet laureates:

John Dryden
Wordsworth
Tennyson
Robert Frost
Ted Hughes

Yeah, that's about it. It's a political appointment more than anything else, and often someone like Colley Cibber or Walter Scott, who did not write poetry predominantly, but only dabbled in it and published a little, were made poets laureate on account of the fact that they were famous writers who were willing to write bullshit poetry in flattery of the government. After 1807, WW still wrote a LOT of poetry, but very little of it gets read because it's so boring and mediocre. The older, conservative WW was more interested in the decency of authors and their moral value than he was with how good their work was. When you look up his critical "opinions" on Byron, all WW has to say is that he thought Byron was insane. This has no value but an anecdotal one, and why anyone would go out of his way to collect this and much less interesting "opinions" is beyond me. I'm only interested in his pre-1807 opinions, when he was still trying to fight for something, work for something, and had something to say about those who came before him.

That's about that for now. I have to go eat lunch.

Small Rant

2006-08-03T14:11:00.000-05:00

I really don't have that much to write about. The day before last I spent 2 1/2 hours in the dentist's chair making preparations for a crown I'll get in a couple of weeks.

Next semester I'm taking a class called "Literary Perversion," which will be taught by my friend. I've been gathering all the books together for it: Don Juan (Moliere), Don Juan (Byron), The Story of O, Venus in Furs, Fanny Hill, Lolita and some other stuff. It should be a pretty interesting class, needless to say.

On a trip to the mall this morning, I did see one thing worth ranting about. In the window of a consignment shop today, I saw a huge set of newlymade "folk art" serving ware painted with blackface-like depictions, but whereas the older stuff is all in darker hues, this stuff was in varying hues, from very light to black, set against a white background. This is something that is not only racist, but also bugs me on an aestetic levelt. I'm not talking about folk art MADE by black people, but stuff like this that old white lady folk art collectors think is cool (note that it's a pin cushion, of all things).

Firstly, this stuff is just ugly. No human being has ever had a dark black face, big cartoon eyes and huge, oversized white lips.

Secondly, it takes about five seconds to see through this "American Folk Art" trend. As Oscar Wilde said, "America is the first country to go from barbarism to decadence with no civilization in between." Obviously, you have to take that with a grain of salt, but America has never had a huge, legitimate folk art tradition except on things like quilts (or pincushions) that get used and worn out. I'm convinced (and I come from Amish country, where you can't spit without hitting a craft store, so I know) that most American folk art always has been made to be sold to tourists. The thought of some white people making "black" folk art to sell to other people because it's "quaint" or "soulful" or whatever you want to call it, is pretty appalling. The reason people buy folk art is because of its nostalgic properties. What kind of message are white people sending by making and buying this stuff? "Ahh...for the good ol' days when there was a mammy in every white kitchen."

Look, it's not cute, it's not cool, and while they may seem like the good ol' days to you, that's not how everyone sees it.
I'm all for preserving the history of black oppression in this country. When white people don't see it, they forget about it, and then you have people saying stuff like, "There isn't any racism in this country anymore. Get over it." Preserving something like that pincushion is important (although it should probably be in a museum instead of an online store), but making or buying stuff like that is not the same as keeping around a grim reminder of black oppression, it's putting a happy face on it.

So that's my gripe for the day. Hopefully I'll have something else to write about soon, perhaps more about Wordsworth.

Beauty II

2006-07-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

Ok, more bitching about work before I get on to the real post. Today, I worked only a 5 1/2 shift, one of those hours being before opening and 45 minutes of it being on break, that means I only had contact with customers for 3 hours and 45 minutes. Perhaps there was something in the air, I don't know. First, I was bitched at because the Member's card is a "con." Whenever I sell, or even try to sell a member's card, I ALWAYS tell people that it's only good if you spend $21 or more in the store. You have to spend at least $250 a year to start to save money. It's SO easy to rack up $250 a year in books and starbucks coffee. But I was told that "nowhere does it say you have to spend $250 a year to save money." No, it doesn't. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out though. People will come in and drop $100 at a time like nothing.

At any rate, then I was bitched at for our prices being too high. A grande iced coffee is $2.35 because the coffee is double brewed and sweetened and prepared food tax in this city is 9.5%. I was told "That's criminal! Why is it so expensive?!" and as I tried to explain, "Just give me a tall coffee!"

The greatest, however, was yet to come. A man, probably in his 50's came in, and was very nice and polite and asked for two cookies. As I got them, he went to the counter and saw a small stack of the Dixie Chicks' newest album sitting there. I gave him his two cookies, and, I'd like to be making this up but I'm not, all of a sudden he became very mean and said (as I took his money) "I shouldn't be supporting this store. This store is horrible for selling the Dixie Chicks CD after what they said about our president. He's a great man. He can do no wrong. You tell your manager about my unhappiness." He went from a very easygoing manner to a very stilted, robotic tone, you know, the kind when you know a person is just repeating the same thing they've heard and repeated a million times before. At first I thought he was joking because what he was saying was so exptreme (Bush himself wouldn't have agreed with any of it) and he sounded so fake, but no. At this point it's always best to not make eye contact, say "have a nice day" and get them out of your face as soon as possible.

Aside from the last one, which was just plain scary, these were things we get all the time. I mean, if someone were REALLY upset, they wouldn't be talking to me. They would be talking to my manager directly or writing a letter to the corporation. Consumer indignity is a pretty feeble disguise for taking out your anger on a total stranger just because you can. Most of the time, if people bitch the booksellers for something, they don't go and gripe at the managers, too. However, what am I supposed to do, keep a little log book of every time someone complains to me about the high prices or the fact that we can't take Starbuck's cards. Oh, yes, your server has the power to change everything. Let me get on the phone with the CEOs of Starbucks and Barnes and Noble and have them merge their accounting systems so you can use your gift card. It should be done before your latte is up. Why should I waste my and my manager's time to tell them that somebody about something that neither of us can change?

If you really have a complaint, complain to someone who can do something about it or keep it to yourself.

WELL, after that's over, I wanted to add to my post on beauty.

Firstly, I know that I have the power not to conform to normalized beauty because A) I'm not ugly or overweight and don't need to do things like wear makeup to make me feel comfortable in my own skin B) I have a choice not to buy expensive clothes, but I could if I wanted to and C) I will not be marginalized or discriminated against for not conforming because of my place in society.

That being said, there are many other women in my position who still feel compelled to dress up, dump tons of money down the drain, and spend a huge amount of time preoccupied with what other people are doing, wearing and thinking. Some people just like to dress up and it's their passion or their hobby. But for every person like that, there are many others who, I feel, are going into autopilot and dressing because they think they have to.

Normative beauty is exactly what it sounds like: normative. It's not there because it's the age-old idea of beauty, nor is it able to include everyone (hence all the trouble so many black people have to go through with their hair just to be able to style it like white hair). Normative beauty is there to keep everyone secure. It's comfort. I mean, we all like to gripe about the 15 teenage girls we saw at the mall all wearing slight variations of the same thing. It makes us feel good about ourselves. We Americans like to believe that we're rugged individualists, but we can't see the bigger picture. Normative beauty means wearing sweats to the grocery store, dressing up in a business suit, dying your hair red...things like that, but when someone shaves their head or wears clothes from their ethnic culture, or wears something that betrays their religion, it begins to make people really uncomfortable.

This is why it's good that people think about the politics of hair. White people can wear their hair almost any way now (you see mohawks on TV commercials, sorry, it's been assimilated) but to get a job, black people can only wear their hair a certain way. If you think discrimination on the basis of hair alone doesn't exist, then I'll tell you about one of my black friends who was offered a job on the condition that the cut his dreds. Fortunately, he called bullshit to his interviewer's face and walked out.

If we want to spend an hour every morning doing your hair and makeup and dress up and give the fashion industry all your money, that's fine. But first think about why. Is is because you truly like it, or is it because you want to make yourself secure in the knowledge that nobody feels unsafe or offended by your looks?

Is Your Heart Bleeding for that Cow's Heart Your'e Eating?

2006-07-29T05:43:00.000-05:00

This post has actually only a little to do with the title. I just liked it.

When I had just discovered the feminist and antiracist blogospheres, this had come up. I didn't have the wherewithal to blog about it then, but I saw a link to it at the Shrub.com Blog and was unhappily reminded.

So: yes, I will call Kos and whoever else resides over at that sight bleeding-heart liberals. To me, part of being a flaming liberal (whereas I just smolder) is feeding the flames with your ego. So, a guy calls himself Kos and then decides to call his website "The Daily Kos." Yes, we need you to say something every day. We NEED it. And no, we will never expect that your huge website and meticulously recorded traffic is just there for your ego.

Here's what annoys me: bleeding-heart liberals who do not follow up on their shit. What do I mean by this? Well, you got liberal somehow, probably by not wanting to have to put up with Christian/family values/imperialist bullshit. Needless to say, human rights are a large part of liberalism (I would say animal rights fall in there too, but steak-eating bleeding hearts, as well as anybody else, start getting REAL pissed when you tell them how much that cow suffered, not to mention the low-wage workers who will suffer severe long-term injuries from the kind of work they're made to do at inhuman speeds, just to put that steak on your plate, and look ma! no health insurance! Out of sight, out of mind, eh?). Well, personally, I think it's pretty fucking sad that someone probably knows (and therefore cares) more about the different Muslim sects in Iraq than he or she does about the racism, sexism, and poverty in his or her own country. YES, we know that Bush and Cheney are evil and incompetent. YES we know that the Middle East is a clusterfuck (it was that way before you were born, and it will be that way for a long time, barring a nuclear apocalypse), YES we know that the current administration is corrupt. I'm not downplaying the part of foreign relations at all. It's incredibly important to look at our history of involvement with ~~Vietnam~~ other countries, and those countries' histories and relationships with other countries, if we're to avoid shit like this. But by reading blogs that only deal with shit like that, people learn nothing but more facts to back up their arguments that have been set in stone since after 9/11. The conservatives who read it aren't going to agree. I'm sorry, I've got to say it: not much is going to get accomplished by websites like Daily Kos.

OK, now on to the critique of the flaming sexism of the article. Personally, I wouldn't have written in about the pie-fight ad. I mean, yes, it's pretty lame for him of all people to have it up, and I have a feeling that people weren't like "That ad is burning at my waiting-until-marriage eyeballs!" but more like, "Dude, you of all freakin' people are making money off of skank hos on reality TV? Come on!" I, however, would rather point out something like that to someone I was watching TV with or walking down the street with, instead of talking to web ego I don't even know. If I can put an earwig...in the ear...of one person I know personally, that's worth 100 Kos'.

But here's where it gets ugly: he responded by saying that "Women's Studies people" are far too fussy and need to get over it. Then, after a deluge of comments, he "realized" that perhaps implying, nay, saying, that the study of women is completely unimportant, he apologized only to people who have ever taken a women's studies class. But me? I'm just a plain ol' feminist, and an English major, so I guess if I get offended, I should just take it to my director of undergraduate studies. Or what about people who are too poor to go to college? Do their feminist opinions also not matter? I guess not. I was really hoping this guy was still in college, because then I could kind of forgive his use of majors to categorize people. (All women who don't agree with their beer-swilling abusive boyfriend's attitude are "women's studies people," and all black people who can't take a little ~~racism~~ joke are "African-American studies people." Note my well-behaved used of the word "people" instead of some kind of demeaning and now useless word...like "woman.")

I think that you (my few and brave readers) get the point. If your heart's gonna bleed, let it bleed for everyone equally.

I think I'll post more on "Beauty" later today.

Beauty

2006-07-28T11:26:00.000-05:00

Wow, I have to say that the most enjoyable internet read I've had in a while is the Politics of Hair Carnival. I really knew almost nothing about black hair before going through the carnival. You see, I was born in a 100% white community, and lived in that sort of isolation until I was 13. My three grandfathers were overtly racist, using nothing but the n-word when talking about a black person (which was more often than you'd think, even though, again, they didn't know any black people.) I was taught from a very early age that racism is wrong, and that you shouldn't dislike someone just because of the color of their skin. The n-word was incredibly abrasive even to my sister and I, and we were relieved a tiny bit when my grandfathers graduated to the word "colored." At any rate, I think we often take it for granted that there are so many isolated pockets of white people around the country, which is why white normativeness reigns supreme. After all, since I'd met a total of 2 black people during my childhood, only saw black people like the Cosbys on television, and was told that racism was only a matter of hating someone only because of their skin color, how was I to assume that black people were culturally and physiologically different? Therefore, the whole "good hair" and "lighter skin is better" phenomena were total news to me.

The post that resonated with me most was With My Nappy Headed Ass's:

I had been raised in the tradition of black women who "care" about their looks, that this was a necessity. It was considered a downright tragedy if you ever left the house with your hair or yourself looking less than 100% beautiful.

Lately I've been thinking about the women in my own family. I have a family of four: my dad, my mom, my sister and me. My sister inherited the genes from my mom's side of the family: usually shorter (although my sister is not), a little big-boned, HUGE boobs, etc., whereas I got the genes from my dad's side: usually taller (again, I'm not really tall, just average), small boobs, thin, etc. I'm around 120lbs with an A cup, while they are around 150 or 160lbs with DD cups. Perhaps it's this physical difference that started driving the wedge between my my mom and sister and I about "caring" about our looks.

Around when I was 12-15, we had a subscription to Seventeen magazine, which was really my sister's, and which I would read after she was finished. At that time, I tried to dress "cool," but since I didn't have my own income, I relied on my mom to buy me stuff, and she would of course never shell out $60 for a pair of Jnco jeans, so I never was cool. I probably used some lip gloss, foundation, mascara, etc, but never wore all that much makeup because I wasn't good at putting it on and I was horrified that I might screw it up. Whenever I would read the on-hand issue of Seventeen, I would go into the bathroom afterwards and gather all the makeup, and raid my closet trying to come up with something cool. I would also feel terrible about myself, think I was too fat and ugly. It wasn't until I realized that there was a correlation between fashion magazines and hating myself that I stopped reading them. My sister just kept plugging away at "looking good" while I stopped wearing makeup and doing my hair all together.

Before my last year of high school, as an experiment, I bought nothing but dress clothes: skirts, slacks, sweaters, oxford shirts, knee socks and the like. I wore dress clothes to school every day of the year, simply to see what people would have to say. My mom liked it because I had always worn jeans, but I don't think she realized how little "looking good" entered into the equation. I mean, I did look good, and even in my Velma-esque outfits, I never got made fun of, not once, but again, that was part of the experiment. After I got out of high school, I cut my plain, straight brown hair, grew it back, cut it again, grew it again, cut it again, cut it shorter and shorter and shorter until finally I just didn't feel like fucking with it anymore and asked to have a boy's haircut.

My mom keeps her hair kind of short, because it's the middle-aged-lady kind of short haircut, while my sister keeps hers long enough that she can "do things with it." Now that I have short hair, I'm very disinclined to grow it back out. I'm also disinclined to wear makeup, something that my mom and sister don't dream of. If they're not going to wear makeup, it's because they know they're not going anywhere farther than the mailbox that day. I don't know how many times my mom dragged me up the street to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk while she hid in the car because "she just got off work" and she doesn't look good. May I ask who you are going to see in the dairy aisle of a bum-fuck-nowhere Food Lion? Oprah? The queen of some (non-existent) local social circle? Last time I checked, Food Lion was filled with many other people who just got off work.

My sister is not as timid as my mom about stuff like that, but she's more of a stickler for "dressing up." It's true that, as kids, she loved wearing dresses and I hated them, and it is true that every once in a while, I wear a skirt or something, but my sister (who is training as an opera singer right now, btw) plays dress-up whenever she's not at work it seems. We went shopping a few weeks ago at the aforementioned dreaded indoor mall, where she told me that she goes to Anne Taylor once a week. This was a huge surprise for me. Every time I see her, she's got some new clothes and jewelry, which makes me think that she blows about $300 or so a month on clothes, where I probably spend $500 a year on them.

I'm not saying that I don't care about my looks. However, I like the way I look. I guess I should mention now that both my mom and my sister are beautiful women. They should like the way they look all the time, but they only do so after putting on makeup and pretty clothes. I like the way I look, meaning I like the way I really look. Without makeup, in jeans and a t-shirt, before, during and after work, any day of the week. I have been told by other people that what makes me appealing, aside from my baseline not-ugliness, is that I look alive, alert, attentive, curious, like I actually give a crap about life. I don't think I could ever look in a mirror and ascertain that for myself, so I'll have to accept their judgment.

To me, the saddest thing about my mom and sister is their hatred of their own bodies. Like I said a couple of posts down, my mom was more visibly disturbed at finding that I use washable pads than at finding out that her son-in-law is 4 years older than her. I talked to my sister about it, who totally agreed with her. "When I throw away a pad, I don't want to think about it anymore. The last thing I would want to do is wash it." !!! Oh my god, people! This is your own body! This is something that happens to 52% of the human population on a monthly basis! I mean, if I were my mom and I'd given birth to two kids out of my vagina, I'd treat it with a little more respect than something that needs to be hidden. Not that I'm saying we should hang pictures of our vaginas on our walls, but acting like soaking a pad and running it through the washing machine is like the equivalent of throwing shit on the walls is ridiculous. I'm glad that With My Nappy Headed Ass has decided to break the cycle of "caring" about her looks, aka, caring about what is considered beautiful by a bunch of people who have nothing to do with her and could not give a shit about her. I also feel similar to how Blackamazon feels whenever I see a woman my age with short hair or no makeup:

A sister with curls or dreds or naps or bald or a twa ( I remember that one) sees me on the street and there seems to be some sort of unspoken understanding for themost part . That no matter what we do to it we are doings omething amazing by stepping away from the amonium

Fuck normalized beauty.

Ramblings on Wordsworth

2006-07-27T19:07:00.000-05:00

OK, I'm in a bad mood today, PMSing and all though a terrible day at work. (Seriously, the last day of work I wrote about was a cakewalk compared to today, but I won't gripe about it.) So, that means it's time to write about something that I like.

When I first started reading poetry, I began with Dickinson, Poe and Frost. Shortly afterward was added Wordsworth. I was 13 or 14 when I bought Six Centuries of Great Poetry, which I nitpicked my way though, since I couldn't understand half of it. What I did truly discover in there was Wordsworth. I know that the book at least had "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "The Solitary Reaper," which I liked the best. Now here I am again, 8 years later, re-evaluating Wordsworth again, which I'm sure is going to be a lifetime process. I never stopped liking him. How could I?

However, the best thing about WW's (that's what I always call him when I write) poetry is that, as far as I know, it's public domain, and therefore, websites like this exist. I mean, I still prefer reading books, but what a great reference!

Strangely, the most Wordsworth I've ever kept around the house is a little Dover edition with 40 poems or so. I decided to buy the re-issued Essential Wordsworth at work last week and I've been reading a lot of it ever since. Seamus Heaney collected it, and the poem I wished he would have included was "Simon Lee", which, in my opinion, is WW's best ballad-type poem, but he included a lot of other pieces that I didn't know.

The first poem in the book is called "Written in Very Early Youth" (I can't find a date for it, but I'm thinking it's in the 1785-90 range, meaning he would have been 15-20 years old) and it goes like this:

Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
Dark is the ground; a slumber seems to steal
O'er vale, and mountain, and the starless sky.
Now, in this blank of things, a harmony,
Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal
That grief for which the sense still supply
Fresh food; for only then, when memory
Is hushed, am I at rest, My Friends! restrain
Those busy cares that would ally my pain;
Oh! leave me to myself, nor let me feel
the officious touch that makes me droop again.

I'd never read anything from WW's "early youth" so I was very surprised by this poem. What I have to say about it isn't groundbreaking, but just an exercise for myself, really.

OK. WW grew up in what is often called the Age of Johnson, a literary age dominated by Dr. Johnson himself. Everything was balanced an symmetrical, reason ruled supreme, and there wasn't a whole lot of what WW would call "passion" in poetry. Poetry was definitely being taken over by new voices. In 1751, Gray published his Elegy, which is much more of a lyric poem than what the Augustans were writing. Very moody, very personal, dominated by something other than reason. Reading the poem above, one can see so much of the Elegy in it. It is set in the countryside at dusk and begins by recording the evening time activities of various animals. It also has a similar sullen tone.

The language is also reminiscent of Gray and a number of other writers, at least at the beginning. I think Gray is on record as saying that "the language of poetry is not the language of the age," meaning that it shouldn't be colloquial. Well, seeing WW use "kine" is an eye-opener, though by the time he came to be a mature poet, his thoughts about colloquial language in poetry would be the opposite of Gray's.

The form of this poem is interesting, also. A word about the poetry of the 18^th century. Sometimes, when reading 18th century poetry, it feels like EVERY SINGGLE FRIGGIN' POEM in English was written in couplets. The couplet is the poetic equivalent of the Augustan balanced sentence, and actually, if you're really good, even both your lines inside the couplet will be balanced. "To err is human, to forgive divine." I mean, do you see how balanced that is? Pope was totally the master. This effort of WW's, however is not balanced. Most couplets do not contain a complete thought, as the traditional Augustan "closed couplet" did. Here's the interesting thing about this poem, though: it's a sonnet. Nobody, NOBODY who was anybody in the 18th century wrote sonnets. It just wasn't done. And since this is a sonnet in couplets, it doesn't follow the traditional rules of the sonnet, either.

The most crucial thing about this poem, though, is that it is uncategorized, as far as the subject matter is concerned. We must understand that our idea of an original work probably originated around the time of the Romantics. We praise people for being original, now. In fact, originality seems to be the most important thing when we appraise a work of art, but it didn't start out that way. Think back to Homer. Did he make up the stories of the Iliad and Odyssey? Did Ovid make up the stories in the Metamorphoses? Did Chaucer make up the stories in the Canterbury Tales? Did Shakespeare make up the stories for his plays? The answer is no. These writers deliberately pilfered already-known stories to make their own versions. By the 1800's, we took this a step farther. Aside from Augustan, the period is also called Neo-Classical, because of its reliance on classic literature for a model. Out of ancient Greece and Rome, only so many kinds of literature came: elegies, epics, tragedies, comedies, lyrics, satires, epistles, etc. Therefore, the Augustans believed that you should only write in the forms set by the ancients. And you could only mix genres under certain circumstances. For instance, it was thought that the epic should be reserved for heroic tales. Alexander Pope caught a lot of shit for using the epic as a vehicle for satire in the Dunciad. Most people thought that it just wasn't done. Well, at any rate, since the sonnet didn't come about until the middle ages, the Augustans weren't keen on using it, which is what makes WW's poem interesting.

However, the best thing about this poem is the subject matter, because it's totally WW's. "My Friends! Restrain / those busy cares that would allay my pain." This is not an easily pre-categorized sentiment, but it's totally Wordsworth. It reminds me of the "vacant or pensive mood" of "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" or the

Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.

of "Simon Lee." This quality, the expression of true, forceful, awkward emotion is what I like best about WW, and I'm glad to see it in his poetry so early.

Crema

2006-07-26T09:03:00.000-05:00

This post is a bunch of whining about nothing important. If you have better things to do, I suggest you go do them.

Well, I survived my "visit" yesterday at work. OK, let me give you a little background:

I have a feeling that Barnes & Noble has more employment tiers than most companies. I mean, in my store, there are harmless drudges like me (Booksellers, with a capital B, we're called), leads, managers, assistant managers, and the store manager. above the store manager is the district manager. Now, even though all managers are forcibly trained in the cafe, most of them don't know crap about it, so to assist the district manager is the district cafe manager, who is the one who actually knows how to make drinks, serve food, etc. I don't know how large a "district" is supposed to be, or if it's measure by miles or stores, but our district is about half the state, with a few stores from neighboring states. At any rate, you must understand, it is the job of the district manager and the district cafe manager to 1. nitpick and 2. intimidate us. Really, it's true. When they come to the store for a visit, they HAVE to find something wrong. I guess it's assumed that the people in the store can run the store correctly, so when they come, it's their only job to find minor adjustments and talk about them as if they were the end of the world.

So, this is what happened yesterday. The district manager and district cafe manager arrived around 9AM and were still going strong when I left at 4:30. The first thing they did was talk about the physical appearance of the cafe. Every time the cafe guy comes, he rearranges the counter. Let me say that our counter is probably 10-12 feet long. On it, as the permanent fixtures, the register and the espresso machines. We don't have a lot of counter space because our registers are these huge hulking computers that run on Windows '95. I mean, the program we use for the register is a DOS program. And the two espresso machines take up about 2 1/2 or 3 feet of room. Then, we must fit a place big enough to hold three coffee pots right beside the register, and a place at the very end big enough to hold all the drinks and food for customers. Beside the espresso machines, we have a place with a dipper well and two pumps, one for chocolate and one for chai. Sounding pretty crowded? Well, add to that a gift card spinner, a basket filled with cookies, a display of 12 bags of coffee, a rack for mints, a rack for candy bars, a little rack filled with CDs, a rack as wide as the register, filled with tins of tea, and two big jars for biscotti, and you get the picture.

Yes, we have to keep all that crap on the counter, and of course it looks bad and cluttered. Every time the cafe guy comes, he rearranges it. The funny thing is, every time he comes, he assumes that WE'RE the ones who put it that way, and wants to change it around, when, no, he was the one who put it that way about 6 months before. After spending about two hours doing that, while wasting the time of 3 of my store managers, then they go to lunch, not inviting my cafe manager. BWAH! The entire visit has nothing to do with anything but the cafe!! After they return, they start in on the displays in and around the cafe. By the time they're done with that, it's about 3:30. What have the cafe servers been doing all this time? Oh, business as usual, with a few extra things so that we don't get busted for doing something bad. Then the cry goes up, "Who is supposed to be the barista today? Let's see how you guys make drinks." I, of course, am the barista, and there I go, in front of 6 people, to make drinks.

Firstly, let me state that although it is the job of these people to intimidate, I was not the least stressed out all day. I don't know why. I complied to a T with their every bullshit whim not out of intimidation, but for my cafe manager, who looked like he was going to have a nervous breakdown, throttle the cafe guy, or both. "Let's just go basic," he said, "make me a latte and a cappuccino." I assumed that he wanted me to make them separately, so that's what I did, cappuccino first, latte second. We passed them around everyone so they could feel the difference between the latte and the cappuccino (cappuccinos are lighter.) And then he proceeded to give me a few "tips," such as *gasp* making two drinks a the same time and pulling cappuccino foam out with a spatula. I mean, I acted as if I were receiving the 10 commandments on the mountaintop, but looking back on it, he didn't tell me anything that I don't already know. I make two and three drinks from the same pitcher all the time and I always use the spatula if I'm making anything else with a cappuccino, or if I'm making a dry cappuccino.

And then he drilled my friend Jen on frappuccinos, which you could tell he knew infinitely less about (by the way, did I mention that during my trial, he said, "I've been making drinks for 20 years," "I've been making drinks for a really long time. I mean a REALLY long time" and "I've been making drinks so long, I won't even TELL you how long." He also thanked me 4 times for making the drinks, not out of profuseness, but because he forgot he'd already said it). His only criticism of her? (By the way, I went along with his "tips" so much because there IS an art to making espresso drinks. I like being a barista and when I make a good drink, I take pride in that. But let's just say that the process of making blended coffee drinks has become so streamlined and idiot-proofed that if the fine art of barista-ing is like writing with a calligraphy pen, the art of frappuccinos is like writing with a crayon.) That she put the pitchers in the refrigerator too much!! That's right, after taking pains to go out of our ways and refrigerate the pitchers after every use, he told us to leave them on the counter, which is what we do anyway!! Of course, we couldn't SAY we did it anyway.

At any rate, right before I was about to leave, the district manager, and not the cafe guy, told me that she'd like to buy me a drink because she'd been watching me all day and I'd worked so hard and so well. (Being bought a drink by a manager, by the way, is the ultimate stamp of approval for lower employees in the B&N universe.) Well, there you go. I knew there was a reason why I like our district manager, she actually cares about employees as people, not just Barista #23.

Ahhh. And I have today off.

So...Dangeresque

2006-07-24T18:48:00.000-05:00

My new $12 B. Moss "Dangeresque" shades, complete with rhinestones.

Well, for whatever reason, after I "made" a layout (a.ka. modified the crap out fo the Minima layout), Blogger decided to cut about 3/4 of the code off after a few days. I'm about to freaking give up here.

The past couple of days have been somewhat difficult. At the beginning of June, I spent a week or two in the most heavy depression I've experienced so far in life. Going back to work has helped, in that it provides a stimulus that does not make me feel bored and useless. It doesn't take a whole lot, however, to push me back into it, and I think I'm PMSing right now, so the danger is much higher. I feel much better now, but the last couple of nights have been rough on me and Thom. While, as I said, my job helps, it's not the ideal stimulus. At the end of the day, it's still working at the Barnes & Noble cafe. They've been seriously cutting back hours because sales have been "hurting" (like the kind of hurting you could cure with a First Aid kit and some Tylenol) and the precious higher-ups are running to defend their salaries.

Though, it could be worse. I've been reading The Betrayal of Work on my 15-minute breaks, which has pointed out to me that many people in my wage-range are adults with families and that many employers do not allow "luxuries" like bathroom breaks. I'm serious. In poultry processing plants, if there's no one to cover you on your job for 5 minutes (and you better not be gone one second over five minutes, let me tell you) you have to stand there and hold it. To me, this is so pathetic. People talk all this shit about the American Dream, and about how, if you just work hard, you'll be able to get good wages. BULLSHIT. I'm not saying that (all) "higher-skilled" jobs aren't difficult, but there's a difference between sitting at a desk all day and doing what you were trained to do in college and working in a factory grabbing live chickens (a the rate of 1 chicken per 2 seconds or something like that) by the feet, being pecked and scratched, and hanging them upside down in a machine so that their heads can be cut off, and getting paid $6.50 an hour for it, with no benefits...and no bathroom breaks. I realize now that I'm very lucky for working for a company, as large and faceless as it is, that offers affordable health insurance to people working at least 20 hrs a week, gives me breaks, and lets me go to the bathroom as often as I need to.

At any rate, work has been stressful because of under-staffing and, oh joy of all joys, the district cafe manager is coming tomorrow for a full business day of breathing-down-our-necks fun. In the words of my manager and dear friend, "I don't care if you paint a fucking clown smile on your face, Emily, we're not going to lose certification because he's an asshole." And I wasn't being sarcastic about the "dear friend" part, I love my manager, he's just a bit...how do you say...on the edge sometimes.

Yesterday I went shopping to the dreaded mall with my mom. My town has two malls, an indoor one and an outdoor one. The outdoor one is a hangout for rich people and homeless people alike. Most of the shops are for rich people. Today I patronized one and blew $35 on a freakin' pencil. But then again, that money is not added to spending on cosmetics, DVDs, video games, stereo equipment, car payments, and other crap that people usually spend a lot of money one. Nope, books and school supplies are definitely my two main luxury expenditures, with clothes in there too. And yes, I consider my spending on clothes to be "luxury" spending, if for anything for keeping myself from throwing out the cosmic insult to the millions of people in the world who can't just go to Old Navy and drop $20 on a pair of pants. And now that I look at the website, I even got my overpriced pencil for $5 less than what the company sells it for, plus a 10% discount because it was on sale. OK, I'll stop trying to assuage my own guilt now.

At any rate, the indoor mall is the "regular" one. You know, owned by that Simon thing, containing all the usual supects: JCPenny's, Sears, American Eagle, Gap, Victoria Secret, and several jewelry, piercing, and watch stands in the middle. It's also frequented by a much different crowd. Let me just say that there are a lot of REALLY rich people around where I live, not just the upper-middle-class/lower-upper-class people that everyone sees blowing $300 at Nine West without thinking about it. These really rich people have no use for the mall, because there are so many other stores in the area willing to sell them a $500 camisole for their fox hunting yacht cruise...thing. So the indoor mall is crowded with mostly lower-middle-class families and their screaming kids and pack-hunting teenagers just chomping at the bit to spend their $20 monthly allowance between Smoothie King and Claire's. Needless to say, the mall is not the place for people like me, who avoid over-stimulation like the plague. At least it gives me yet another excuse to never set foot in Abercrombie and Fitch (1. being their racist asshole ways and 2. being their lame taste in clothes.) Even a 20-minute trip to Best Buy the other night was about to make our brains ooze out of our ears. After going for a long time with no TV, being present while 10 surround sound systems play The Lord of the Rings at full volume, while another 10 play a baseball game is just not. cool.

Here is the coup de grace of the day, though: I told my mom that I'm using reusable pads. She was seriously more visibly disturbed than when I told her that her soon to be son-in-law is four years her senior. "Isn't that kind of...gross?" "Why? You just use them, soak them, and put them in the wash." "Where do you soak them, in the SINK?" "No, in a little container that I use for it." I guess she's finally started to figure out that yes, her daughter is quite "different."

Oot Canal

2006-07-20T15:17:00.000-05:00

This guy's got his chompers intact. Actually, I don't think daddy longlegs chomp, but rather crush their food into their mouths, or something like that.

So, I just finished a root canal about three hours ago. The last one I had was done in two parts, so the full effect of sitting there for about an hour and 45 minutes with my mouth wide open was lost. The whole side of my mouth and head still aches, and I haven't even bothered feeling around there with my tongue yet. I really don't want to. Thom is out right now getting me some soup and ice cream. All I've had to eat today was some iced tea and a smoothie.

So, when it comes to my teeth, I'm a freak, I'm told. Usually, teeth have up to 4 "canals." I had 5 in the first tooth I got root canal'd, and 6 in this one. My dentist told me that only .4% of the population has that. Woah. I knew there was something special about me. At any rate, I'm going to go eat some soup and ice cream now.

Random Thought

2006-07-18T15:34:00.000-05:00

You know, I think that if I were to keep any kind of buggy thing (spiders included) as a pet, I think I would keep some sort of scarab beetle. I mean, firstly, beetles are so plentiful. All you have to do is turn on your porch light, and bam, you'll get a beetle. In fact, 1 our of every 5 animals on the planet is a beetle. They make up the largest order of species. Period. I can't speak for the rest of beetledom, but I do know from recent experience that scarab beetles (june bugs, Japanese beetles, and the like) are so well behaved. I mean, talk about bugs that not only can't bite, but don't even try. They don't get all fluttery and panicky like a moth or butterfly, they don't sting, and they don't release chemicals (well, I'm sure that some do. It's a big family.) Sure, the larvae are incredibly desctructive, and sometimes the adults can be, but these beetles are just hard-wired to chill out. Not to mention how beautiful they are. And look at that face. Awww. Once I get them, I will put up some totally cool pictures we've taken lately: moths, and asassin bug, and daddy long legs.

Flat Broke with Children

2006-07-16T11:26:00.001-05:00

Not that my ranting about this will ever do any good, but then again, neither will my ranting about any of the other stuff I write about. So here goes.

We've all been taught from a young age that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I mean, we learn all about the feudal system in school, and then about how the British were taxing the Americans (of course, what we don't learn, is that the tax load Americans were paying was lighter than the rest of the British empire), and then about slavery. I mean, European and American history is just one long history of the rich keeping the poor down.

But wait, now that America has entered the modern age, everything that is fucked up with governments and the class system doesn't apply. I mean, the rich and the laws aren't keeping them poor people down. If they REALLY want to be rich, or at least middle class, they would be, because that's how America is. Ah, yes, America. The only country in the world where being born into poverty means nothing, and where taking responsibility for your own future means everything.

As you might surmise, this is a rant about welfare. Lately, I've been reading Flat Broke with Children, which is a pretty enlightening book. Especially for me, since I was 11 when the welfare reform happened and I didn't even know there was one. I come from a lower-middle middle class background, and also from a very small community, so either there were no welfare recipients at all, or they were hidden, which was probably the case. I guess I do remember my mom talking about the new people at the factory, who were brought in by agencies and only kept their jobs 3 or 6 months, but that's about it.

At any rate, what I AM familiar with is the stereotype of the welfare cheat, which persists until this very day. I mean, you hear about it all the time: those people who are sitting back and soaking up our tax dollars because they're too lazy to work. When I heard this as a kid and a teenager, I never gave it second thought. I mean, I didn't know any of these people, so why should I care? Also, I just assumed that when people said this, they were talking about people whose bills were covered, who could actually live off of welfare. Of the 14 million people on welfare at its peak, I'm sure that there were some cheats, probably a lot of them, but not all 14 million were.

At any rate, people don't seem to understand that the welfare reform was designed to kick the cheats off the rolls and to help the people who weren't cheating. While there may still be a few cheats out there, it's really not likely, because the new welfare system makes it so complicated and unpalatable to cheat, that I can't imagine they would do it.

Once you set foot in the welfare office, you are probed and prodded. It takes them about 3 hours to make sure that you're eligible. You have to PROVE that you are making less than half the poverty line wage, that is, less than around $7,000. Once you're deemed eligible, you have to either be on a job, looking for a job, or training for a job. Period. If you don't do things like put in 40 job applications in in 30 days, you'll be sanctioned. If you miss an appointment with your caseworker, you'll be sanctioned. If you don't come to "life skills" classes, you'll be sanctioned, even if you didn't come because you couldn't find child care for your children. A sanction means that the first time you go for a month without benefits, second time, two months, etc. They make you jump through so many hoops of bullshit that only a person who desperately needed the money would do it.

Not to mention the intrusiveness of welfare into people's lives. May I point out that 90% of adults on welfare are single mothers? So let's say that you have a child when applying for welfare. To receive any benefits, you must work with the welfare office to track the father down if he isn't paying child support. What if you got raped and don't know who the father was? Sorry, you can't receive benefits. What if you don't want to bring and abusive or murderous man back into your life? Sorry, you can't receive benefits.

Oh, not to mention the effort to control a woman's fertility. If a woman is on welfare and she gets pregnant, that child is called a "capped child," that is, that child won't get any welfare benefits. You and all your other children will, but not that child. And the benefits aren't just monetary, either. Welfare gives new mothers time off to care for their newborn children, that is, if the children receive benefits. If you have a capped child, you have to work, even if it is under six months old. This is the government's way of "controlling" fertility, by making women "think twice" about having sex. The only way the government attempts to control pregnancies among welfare mothers is promotion of abstinence, or punishment for not abstaining. That's right. We hand out free condoms at high school, at colleges, in India, and Africa, but nobody thought it would be a good idea to give condoms to welfare mothers, who, like those in Africa and India, can't afford to buy them, even if they know to use them.

On of the points that Kurt Vonnegut drives home in Breakfast of Champions is that this country blames the poor for poverty, and as a result, the poor blame themselves too. Contrary to what politicians say, no matter how much you hate being poor, that won't get you a GED or job skills or child care. You'd think that by the very existence of welfare, people would realize that. But apparently not, since the stereotype of ALL people on welfare as lazy immoral cheats is still alive. But when stereotyping welfare recipients, people forget two things: 1. a welfare check is usually around $400 a month, which BARELY makes ends meet when combined with a minimum wage job and 2. NOBODY WANTS TO BE THAT POOR. I'm sorry to drop the bomb, but we've got to realize that it's true. Think about it. Why would a mother deliberately have more children just to get $50 a month each for them? Why would a homeless man spend the night on a park bench in the middle of winter? This is a society where you have to work to be accepted. Even filthy rich people work, and not having any work experience apparently doesn't matter. I can't imagine that anyone would CHOOSE not having to work over the hardships and humiliation of being poor. And, besides, it's not a choice anymore: if you're on welfare, you have to work. This is a fact that is still largely ignored, I guess. I mean, check out this review of Flat Broke with Children from amazon.com:

This book critiques welfare reform by giving the reader a teary eyed story about people who have no money and have lots of kids to raise. Yet this argument simply ignores the facts. First of all this book ignores personal responsibility. How bout people on welfare taking responsibility for having unprotected sex and having ten kids without ever bothering to get married. How bout taking responsibility for not having a job. People that don't have jobs and can never find work are in that situation because they actually work to not find work. Most people that are unemployed love being unemployed and they love living off the government dole and being lazy. And this book simply ignores this fact. This book tries to make everyone feel so bad for people that are basically in a situation they themselves caused. Rather then trying to exhort these people to learn a new skill and not have as many kids instead this book blames the government because the government has dared to say `if you don't find a job in five years we might decrease your stipends'. Amazingly enough in countries that don't have welfare people manage to find work. If welfare ended tomorrow all these people would go get jobs, in fact it is welfare that pays them not to work and discourages them from having a honest job.

Now, we all know that you can find many a stupid thing said on amazon.com, however, this guy is a "Top 100" reviewer. I'm not sure what the criteria for being a Top 100 reviewer are, but I'm sure that one of them is actually reading, watching, or using a product before you review it, and it's obvious that this guy didn't. If he actually knew anything about the reform, he would know that it makes people work. He would also know how hard the lives of these people are, and how hard it is to cheat welfare, although it's still possible, but you still have to be pretty poor. Even if this guy is an intelligent person, on issues like welfare, or taxes, or abortion, or the war, some people just automatically go into conservative auto-pilot mode. I mean, he's just lumping a bunch of arguments together that are popular amongst conservatives, not even checking to see if they're outdated or not, or if they're even correct. And the part about people living in other countries? EXCUSE ME? Most nations that don't have a welfare system are poor nations with tons of homeless people. If you consider "begging" or "rifling through landfills" or "prostitution" to be careers, perhaps you need a reality check. Also, this guy, if he read the book, ignored the fact that a lot of women on welfare were simply having a hard time, they got sick, or had an accident and lost their jobs, and they knew welfare was only going to be a temporary thing for them. They just needed some help. In fact, this guy ignored the fact that most of the women interviewed in the book were ashamed of being on welfare and were trying to make the distinction between themselves and the welfare cheats, whom they may or may not have met.

Why can't these people keep jobs? Hmm...well, for starters, 44% of welfare recipients have a disability, either mental or physical, that keeps them from keeping a job. Perhaps others were born into poor or abusive households, where something like drugs is the only answer. Or perhaps the fact that discrimination against non-whites and women, gasp, yes, still exists in the workplace and in housing. Not to mention that about 60% of welfare mothers have been victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives, and many are on welfare because they ran from abusive situations. Mr. Amazon.com also ignored the fact (that is, if he even read the book) that many of these women got pregnant with men they were engaged to or already married to. We forget how much context matters. If you are born poor, you will probably stay poor. Perhaps one in a million can rise from poverty to middle or upper class status. The factors working against people living in poverty are too great.

Of course, the greatest thing overlooked is that our society, just like the welfare system, is structured to keep the poor placated but desperate. That is, we need someone to make our fast food, clean our toilets, ring our groceries, and the like. But as long as they're not homeless, as long as we don't have to see them on the street, it's OK.

New Moth Triumph

2006-07-12T21:38:00.000-05:00

While Thom took the last photos I posted, I myself took these. These are definitely the best pictures I've taken so far. I have no idea what kind of moths these are, and they are two different species, even though they look a lot alike.

Thom and I picked up a magnificent and well-behaved beetle on the mall today. We were fascinated by how beautiful and how docile it was. He suggested that we find another one (they're pretty common now) and bring it home as a pet, at least for a little while, to photograph it.

I promise that I'll post something of substance soon. I stumbled across Ally Work this morning, which promises to be very though provoking and helpful for me.

Score!

2006-07-08T16:56:00.000-05:00

I have no idea what kind of moth this little guy is, but I just put these pictures on the computer and they look great. I wish we could have gotten a little more detail (seeing the mouth parts would have been nice) but I think these are our best moth pics yet.

Evangelo-Vision

2006-07-08T09:22:00.000-05:00

Last night, I worked the oft-too-worked 3:30-midnight shift, but instead of being in the cafe, I was in books. I have no idea what happened to make the schedule so tight last night that they felt that it would be a good idea for me to close on the book side all alone, but so it went: me at the main info desk, another girl in the kid's section, two cashiers, a manager, and two cafe people. The absolute MINIMUM of closers like, on a weekday. So I pretty much ran around non-stop for eight hours last night, finding people books on the shelf, ordering them to the store, and most of all, picking up books and magazines that people left lying around. For anyone who wants to know: BARNES AND NOBLE EMPLOYEES ARE NOT MAIDS. THEY ACTUALLY HAVE DUTIES ASIDE FROM CLEANING UP AFTER YOUR ASS. Thank you.

I've never been chewed out by someone at the info desk because customers actually take you remotely seriously when they need your help to find a book. It's amazing how people who are polite at info can become monsters when the go to the cash registers, or to the cafe. As soon as they enter an area where they fathom they can do your job better than you can, they change their tune pretty quickly. Like a guy I helped a couple of weeks ago. He ordered a grande latte with just one shot, so, surprise, I made him a grande latte with one shot. Now, our espresso machines are in such a place that they invite really annoying customers to stand right next to you and breath down your neck while you're making their drink. Well, after careful scrutiny on this guy's part, when I finished his latte and I was about to put the lid on it, he said, "You were supposed to make me a grande LATTE with just ONE shot." Much earlier in my barista career, I might have been confused, and then apologetic, but now I'm just used to it, and looked him in the eye and said, "That's what this is." I mean, any dumbass who assumes that he knows how to make espresso drinks better than me could see that I was steaming milk and pouring it into a cup with some espresso, the shade of the drink being a little lighter than usual. Why this guy chose to correct me when it's quite obvious that he doesn't know how to make espresso drinks is beyond me.

At any rate, this is all leading up to probably the most annoying customer I've served since I've been back, who was at info last night, instead of the cafe. So, this white guy, obviously a local by his accent, who looks to be in his late 50's comes up. "I want you to look up a book for me. It's a book I've already read, but that was a library book, and now I want to buy it." So I looked it up for him, and it was a book about the rise of the conservative Christian Right. I can't remember the title of the book, and I really don't care at this point. It was in our current affairs section. "Oh, I've been looking in the wrong section!" he says. Bang, it's a book with a positive portrayal of the conservative Christian Right, which is currently tanking, and I can tell because the the only other place this book would be is the Christianity section. (I just figured that any book with "conservative Christian Right" as a subtitle would be a NEGATIVE portrayal. Don't they usually have more positive-sounding appellations for themselves? "The rise of the family values lovers and freedom fighters.") So I take him up to current affairs. Barnes & Noble has a policy: if you find a customer's book, put the book in their hand, because if they're holding the book they'll be more likely to buy it (no, they'll be more likely to leave it lying around the store.)

So the guy stands there while I go through the authors alphabetically and...I'm not sure that he's really stopped talking since he first opened his mouth. "I bet you been to wonderland with them shoes" he says, being the 40th person that night to make some Wizard of Oz comment about my shoes, which were red-sequined harem slippers, the only shoes I have that meet the dress code and won't kill my feet, "You just tap your heels and you come back home." (All of this in the ambiguous past tense that exists in some parts of the country.)

This annoyed me greatly, but I just pretended to ignore him, found his book, handed it to him, watched as he pulled the other copy off the shelf, and started walking back to the info desk. "I'm going to get the second one for my kids. Can you think of a better present?" Again, I pretended to ignore him. And then he drops the bomb on me: "You're withholding judgment. I can tell." I made the mistake of looking up at him, with a look that was somewhere between, "confused," "annoyed," and "I couldn't take you seriously if I tried," only to see him squinting at me, no doubt applying his Conservative Christian X-Ray Vision, with which he will be able to see into my soul with god's permission so as to better stereotype and convert me. I guess that I probably fell somewhere in the category of "lamb who has fallen off the path" or something.

withholding judgment? Firstly, he was wrong there. Withholding my opinion, maybe. Although I'd never read the book, I thought of about a million things that would make better presents. And, of course, he never would have guessed that my problem with him started out because he was a total stranger commenting freely on my physical appearance when (or because) I was in a position where I had to put up with it. Geez. I HATE it when religious people act as though they can see right through you and know all about your relationship with god. Since standard operating procedure in this country is to assume that everyone is a Christian who isn't wearing some sort of head dress, weird robe or goth clothes, I know that it's just assumed that I'm some sort of Christian, and if I don't seem all gung-ho about Jesus, then my faith needs a little tune-up. My biggest problem with people like this is that they cannot fathom a normal-looking and acting person who does not believe in god, or a major world religion that flatly denies the existence of any creator god. I am so far from the Christian headspace that this guy will never be able to use his Evangelo-Vision and figure out what's going on in my mind.

Oh, well. Rant over.

Cheap as Free Capitalism

2006-07-07T11:30:00.000-05:00

I sighted my first mayfly today, it was sitting on the window outside of Old Navy, but I didn't have my camera with me. Oh, well. So I came home about a half an hour ago to find a package sitting on my front porch from homestarrunner.com. Thom got me a really, really late Christmas present. I called him up to ask what it was, and he told me that most of what was in the package was for me: a cool tapes tshirt , what looks like the Strong Bad Overkill combo, and some freebee figurines so, that was a cool surprise. Now that we actually have a DVD player on my computer, we can watch SBemails with no internet connection!!! I promise that I'll make an entry with substance later. Probably tomorrow. I've been trying to get together some thoughts about Elizabeth Bishop.

Patriot

2006-07-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been quite a while.

Updates: the books that I talked about in the last post still haven't come in the mail. Oh, well. I've worked a lot. In fact, I truly haven't had a day off in...8 days, and it will be 10 before I do. I say that I TRULY haven't had a day off because I did have one day off: the day that I came into work with excruciating dental pain and left early to go to the dentist. That's right, it's root canal time again. I'm not going to detail my dental miseries. They're far too numerous. I DO have all my teeth and a good smile, but my molars are the problem. So, with any luck, I'll be going in for a root canal on Thursday. Oh, and the final update: I'm typing this entry from my new laptop.

It became apparent at the end of the semester, as it does at the end of every semester, that a laptop would be incredibly helpful for me. Having to type a bajillion papers and having no place to do it on campus because everyone else is typing a bajillion papers is very annoying. I don't do my best schoolwork at home, I never have, and now I'll be able to do it anywhere that my battery power allows.

I snateched my lappy as the last one from my local Circut City on the last day of its rebate. This was three days ago. Yesterday, when I came home from work, Thom had connected it to the internet and I proceeded to install: ZoneAlarm, AVG Antivirus, Spybot, AdAware, OpenOffice, Firefox, and Winamp. You can imagine that, by the seventh program, I was just a zombie, "Yes, I accept the terms, next next next finished." Oh, and I didn't pay a single dime for any of them, thus giving a big F-you to Microsoft office, Windows Media Player, Norton AntiVirus (the biggest recepient of the F-you) Internet Explorer...and a bunch of overpriced spyware programs that I don't know about.

Things are going just fine, and I'm settling into the Lappy quite well.

Now for the part of the post where I actually think about stuff.

Well, being against this whole war, the Bush administration, and the white supremecists patriarchy that gave rise to them, I have tended to pretty much ignore every July 4th since September 11th. I've also had shitty food service jobs, so I've worked every one, too. Tonight, we closed at 9 instead of 11, and we closed quickly and got out before 9:30. Thom is still at work, so I had nobody to view the fireworks wtih, but I had to view them, since I live about 4 blocks from where they're set off. So I parked my car and walked up the street and stood around watching them surrounded by many other Americans and listened to everyone offer their critiques of the fireworks and thought about this all as I stood there.

Nietzsche once said that the patriot is the enemy of mankind, or something like that. I totally believe that. However, the anti-patriot is probably the enemy of mankind, too. As I stood around with perfect strangers, I realized that hating America, or Americans as a whole, is pretty stupid. Firstly, "America" as a unified entity doesn't exist. It never did, and it never will, so why hate it? Secondly, just like in America, every other place has it's unfortunately high ratio of self-righteous assholes, so it's pointless to hate Americans because they're Americans. It's true, we're the assholes with the most power, which makes us dangerous. But believing that there's some village out there in Vietnam or something where assholes don't exist is an equally pointless dream that many Americans who are ashamed of their fellow countrymen believe in.

I say this: if I want to practice all this shit I talk about love and compassion, I'll have to practice it on Americans, because there's no one else around me. Thom is an American, and my mom, who is really the most down to earth, saintly, real people person I've ever known, is also an American. Everyone I love is an American, so is everyone I hate. The patriot IS the enemy of mankind because he loves something that doesn't exist and hates everyone else for not loving it like he does. I'll be the opposite. I'll love all the people, and start with Americans because they're what I have to work with.

So, with that, for the first time it, what, 4 years: Happy 4th of July.

Practical Entomology

2006-06-29T21:30:00.000-05:00

Today started out as the suckiest day imaginable, but it's gotten better. I was pretty much guilt-tripped into coming into work this morning (today was to be my day off with Thom) because the new district manager wanted to come in and "certify" our cafe, and whoever made the schedule screwed up and scheduled too few people. So, I got up at 6:30, went in at 7:15, and left at 11:15. I had gotten four hours of sleep, was PMSing, hadn't had sex in a week, and was not very happy at all about being there. The plan was that the district manager was going to come at eight, certify the cafe, and be done by 9 or 9:30. Instead, she got there at 8:30, and didn't come down to the cafe until 11:15. Thankfully, my manager and good friend Jon saw that I was about to come unglued, so he let me go.

When I got home, I took a short nap, and woke up feeling like shit. I still do. I've got a toothache, slight fever, headache, body ache, etc. Most of which was simply brought on by psychological stress. I was talking to Thom about that today. I seem to be the only person I know who can get so physically sick over stress. It doesn't happen all the time, and it usually happens when I'm least expecting it, except for today. It's not like I make it up or anything, it's just that my body can only handle so much bullshit stress. There are certain types of stress that I never cave under, like school, for instance, but I think the cafe affects me at a deeper and much more harmful psychological level than school ever will.

At any rate, Thom has been really sweet. We went to lunch, came back here, rested for a bit. After that, I ordered a couple of books off of ABE, the Peterson guide to insects and a book called The Practical Entomologist. Later, went to his friend Rick's house, looked at laptops at Circut City, went to Whole Foods, and went home. There have been some cool insects around, and Thom has taken some great pictures of them. (I would, but I can't work our digital camera for shit.)

I like this washed-out ladybug. If there were ever a bug on the front of a My Bloody Valentine record, this would be it.

Just got this one tonight. I identified it on the first try as a lacewing (perhaps the lacy wings gave it away??) although that's the first one I've ever seen.

This little guy seems to be some sort of unidentified plant hopper. He was peering at Thom from the side of our computer desk.

And on an excited and giddy note...

2006-06-26T23:15:00.000-05:00

Go to whatsthatbug.com and scroll down the main page until you see a mating pair of Millipedes. You know who that Emily is? That's MEEEE!!! And that's the side of my cottage!!!

Shopping Trip

2006-06-26T21:57:00.000-05:00

On Mondays Thom has to work 4-midnight. At around 3:30 today, he left, and I went out right after him. It was raining pretty hard outside, and so I thought that it would be the best time to find street parking for our outdoor mall. I was right. The outdoor mall in our town has a high quotient of used bookstores (5 in the space of about 5 blocks) and I went searching for a used insect field guide. It was funny watching how people reacted differently to the rain. Many people (even ones with umbrellas) huddled inside doorways, others walked slowly and casually with no umbrella or hood, while others ran through the rain, giggling and having fun. I just walked like I usually do, except holding an umbrella. I don't understand those people who were afraid of the rain even when they had umbrellas. I mean, I got a little wet, but it wasn't bad at all. I've found that there's a dearth of insect guides, apparently. But I did find a used (but you wouldn't know it) Audubona field guide to the weather and a cheap copy of the feminist writings of JS Mill and Harriet Taylor. Score.

After getting lunch, I left downtown and went to the health food grocery, where, after a few...minutes...of deliberation, I picked up a couple of reusable menstrual pads. I've never used anything like that before, but when I think of all the non-biodegradable waste that comes from using over-packaged maxi-pads, it makes me shudder. If I try these things and they work, I'll be saving myself money in the long run and making another advance in my Try Not to Fuck Shit Up mission. Also, there is something that is very "Ewww...it's icky! Throw it away!" about modern sanitary products. I used to get lecture after lecture from my mom and sister about pads in the trash can. Apparently, it's not enough to wrap your pad in the wrapper. What if the wrapper comes unstuck? What if your mother and your sister (and no one else) accidentally catch a glimpse of your menstrual blood? Oh my god! The horror! The only thing to do is wrap them in wads and wads of toilet paper so that way the fact that you menstruate can be concealed from two women, one of whom gave birth to you out of her very vagina!

OK, you get the point. Thom, on the other hand, is far less squeamish about periods than my mom or sister. To him, it only makes sense that something that 52% of the world's population goes through every month isn't weird or repulsive. To him, it's just a matter of, "Oh, Emily forgot to flush her tampon down the toilet. I've always wondered what one looked like, and hey! she saved water." I'd mentioned getting the reusable pads to Thom earlier today and he was totally down with the idea. Anything that saves us money or helps the environment or both is fine by him.

After that, I went and got a haircut...and an earcut, too. The razor the stylist used to finish off my hair actually nicked my ear. Oh well. It only hurt a little bit, and stopped bleeding after a couple of minutes. Anything to keep me from that ever-encroaching mullet that was beginning to develop.

After the hair cut, I went to the dreaded Best Buy to look at laptops. Yeesh. Working in a place would drive me crazy, and this is coming from someone who works in a place where there is a beeping oven, a microwave that just has one long beeeeep that won't stop, a timer that goes off every 15 minutes to remind us to clean tables, a timer to tell us when to take stuff off the grill, and a timer on each and every coffee pot to remind us to throw it out after two hours. There were about a hundred televisions all playing the same baseball game, it seemed. I hate going into places like that, but it's really inadvisable to buy a laptop without knowing what one actually feels like in your hands. We'll probably get one pretty soon. We could buy one online to get a better deal, or just pick it up at Best Buy and take it right home, but I have to get one soon so that I'm fully conversant with it and all the kinks are worked out of it by the time school starts. Thom told me today that he pulled some money out of investments for me to get one. We had too many shares of Bank of America, anyways. After feeling what the laptops felt like, I concluded that I should not get one that weighs over six pounds. I'm really reluctant to buy a Gateway, because of terrible past experiences with them, or a Dell, because they're losers, or a Sony, because they fuck you over on warranties, so that pretty much leaves me with HP, Toshiba, and Acer. I guess we'll see.

That's all for now. I've got an American Buddhist Manifesto in the works, but it may be a few days before it appears.

Wow.

2006-06-26T03:13:00.000-05:00

Pretty much every white American needs to read this article.

Ahh...Dinner

2006-06-24T19:14:00.000-05:00

Well, after being a huge bitch (at least to my mind) over the past few days, it's nice for Thom and I to spend a little quality time together. We just finished eating a concoction he whipped up: bok choy, red onion, garlic, roasted red pepper flakes, and even liquid smoke, all cooked in peanut oil, with a dish of cold soba noodles on the side, with various condiments (brown rice vinegar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, Japanese salad dressing.)

As for my bitchitude, last night I got angry for the first time in months. I'm not a saint, I just inherited my mom's long fuse. At any rate, closing the cafe down totally sucked last night, since my only assistant was a guy, close to my age, who is a sweetheart, although imcompetent and somewhat lazy. It was a Friday night, it rained (freaking poured, actually, flash flood warnings and all) and it got busy. Not only that, but I'm staffed with Mister Well-There-Are-No-Customers-So-I-Guess-That-Means-I-Can-Stand-Around-and-Do-Nothing. The store closed at 11, and by 11:30, I only had half of what I should have had done. The book side finished early, and some people came over and helped me without even thinking about it, while others whined about how they wanted to go home. If it were midnight (and, by the way, every closer is scheduled to end their shift at midnight, but we often finish earlier) and I were still working, I could see. But there's no excuse for bitching like that at 11:30! And besides, we got out of there at 11:50 or so.

So, I got home and went to bed soon after. At around 2:45 or 3, I woke up, and couldn't get back to sleep until 6, and then I had to wake up at eight, go to work at 9, and work till 5. I'm amazed at how long it's taking my body to get used to working so much. It used to be that I could do 40 hours per week like nothing. Now I'm feeling pain at 30.

At any rate, on a much lighter note, I thought I'd put up a couple of pictures. The other night there was this really cool moth in our house. Usually, we just get the little ones, that look like triangles when at rest, but this one was quite glorious, being big, having fuzzy antennae, and being polite enough to hold still for several pictures.