yay! flickr is back online!
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
View From Our Window
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
Our Walkway to the Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
Emily0 on Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Monday, January 31, 2005
The Boston Blizzard of 2005 -- Yet More Photos
oh dear, i see my cat's future
this description reminds me of my cat. which is disturbing.
highlights:
Taylor is a weird cat. Always has been. He's strangely anti-social, but then will hang out in a room and stare at everyone. [snip] The Cat Who Hates To Be Touchedi'll post a picture of my shredded forearms and hands if i can get emily1 to hold the camera. just in case you doubt that a cat can box like mike tyson. i'm missing an ear, i tell you, and it's not because my surname is van Gogh.[snip] I do not want to zonk my kitty, because I refuse to let Taylor move to Los Angeles and develop a drug habit, like so many cats do on these mean streets. So I administered my own Wonder Killer home remedy: I'm loading him up on catnip. Once a night I pour some 'nip near their favorite scratching box, and the three cats have a weed orgy and love me and you and love love and life and oh! isn't everything just divine?
[snip] [H]e still swats at us with the same amount of Mike Tyson-like power.
[W]e're worried that Taylor's hit the sad part of puberty. Soon he'll lock himself up in the bedroom and update his LiveJournal all night long and won't want to hang out with us anymore because we're so stupid and lame and we totally won't let him stay up all night at Julie's party, just because there are going to be boys there. Gah.spanky, darling... are drugs in your future? because this is the road you're on, and i know you read this website at night when the emilys are sleeping. momma zilch loves you. stop hurting momma zilch or she's going to lock you in the bathroom again.The vet rubbed Taylor's head and said, "There's nothing wrong with Taylor. He's healthy. He's just not very happy right now. He doesn't like something about how he's living. You just figure out WHAT YOU'VE DONE WRONG TO FUCK UP YOUR CAT WITH YOUR SELFISH, SELFISH LIFE. WHY DON'T YOU GO OUT OF TOWN AGAIN, PAM? WHY DON'T YOU RUN OFF TO ASPEN FOR A WEEK? THAT'LL MAKE TAYLOR FEEL REALLY LOVED AND WANTED. WHY NOT INVITE THIRTY-SEVEN PEOPLE OVER TO YOUR HOUSE OR FILL IT WITH BOXES SO TAYLOR ALWAYS THINKS HE'S ABOUT TO MOVE? OH, THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING SINCE YOU MOVED A FEW MONTHS AGO? WELL, THEN, I DON'T KNOW WHY TAYLOR WOULD BE ACTING FUNNY. SEEMS LIKE YOU'RE BEING THE PERFECT PARENT."
Or maybe that's just what I heard.
[snip] Other than that I just keep petting him, which he really hates but also loves, because he hates how much he loves us.
incidentally, my cat is an emily, not a henry like Taylor, and her issue isn't licking, it is scratching in the poo-box. she'll go in there and dig and dig and dig and dig. i've seen her dig for 45 minutes, though these days after about two i grab the squirtgun and start spraying. damn that is annoying.
and there may not be a more ornery cat on the planet. spanky is named for her trenchant need to spank everyone who tries to pet her, show her love, or just enter the house. yet ignore her for five minutes and she climbs right into your lap, where you sit in terror until she decides to move because if you try to pet her or move at all, SCREECH! WHAM! a car accident in the form of a mexican tuxedo kitten, and it's happening to you.
about that 'parody' post banning vermont...
there's one quote in it that is real. here's the original AOL News article from whence it came, with the quote the parody lifted straight from the speech of Big Brother's Bitch in bold (most of the way down):
CWA Applauds Education Secretary Spellings for Busting 'Buster'; Group Urges Constituents to Voice Support for Her Action Against PBSnota bene: if "an animated rabbit taking a tour of Vermont during the early spring" constitutes a destruction of children's innocence, what does CWA think of the Iraqi children who get to see their parents murdered and exploded into showers of guts in front of them?WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Concerned Bitches for America (CWA) applauds Department of Education (DOE) Secretary Margaret Spellings for her bold move during her first week in office to admonish the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) for using federal money to create an episode of Postcards from Buster that promotes homosexuality.
In a letter to Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of PBS, Secretary Spellings wrote: "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode."
"For years, PBS has been slipping pro-homosexual messages into its programming," said Robert Knight, director of CWA's Culture & Family Institute. "And the federal bureaucracy and their client, the education establishment, have done their share to destroy children's innocence using the cover of 'diversity.' Along comes Secretary Spellings, who takes action as a servant of the people instead of a timid, go-along bureaucrat. Good for her."
The yet-to-be-aired episode of Postcards from Buster, titled "Sugartime," features an animated rabbit taking a tour of Vermont during the early spring. Along with farm life and maple sugaring, the episode explores Vermont's same-sex "civil unions" by featuring two lesbian couples.
oh, i forgot: them's AY-rabs.
"Congress' and the Department's purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television," Spellings added, requesting that a funding grant be returned and that the Department of Education be removed as a backer of the segment.yes, children, we are entering a dictatorship of the feeble-minded. oh, no! a cartoon on PBS that shows real-life legal relationships as sanctioned by law!"Parents don't want their children homosexualized in the name of 'education,'" Knight said. "Mrs. Spellings has given notice that left-wing lobbies will have to find other ways to peddle their pansexual propaganda. Let's hope that other leaders in federal and state agencies find a backbone thanks to her courageous example."
Concerned Women for America urged its constituents today to thank Secretary Spellings for her conscientious decision.
Concerned Women for America is the nation's largest public policy women's organization.usnewswire.com
Contact: Rebecca S. Jones of Concerned Bitches for America, 202-488-7000 ext. 126
unclefuckers. i hereby challenge Sekriterry Spellings to a good, ol'-fashioned, 'merKKKan barfight for being such a fucktard. that is, if she has time in her busy schedule as Sekriterry of Ejimikation given all the children's televisions shows she has to watch every day while tapping her SMITE! button like it was her clit.
up next: bunny vibrators blasted by Sekriterry Spellings, CWA applauds.
CWA, i fucking hate you. and i question your claim that you are "the nation's largest public policy women's organization". um, evah heard of NOW, bitches?
from the u.s. secretary of education: "ban vermont!"
if this is satire, it is brilliant. if it isn't, it's just plain scary.
three things, however:
1) she forgot massachusetts, those selfish hedonists!
2) buster bunny? who the eff is buster bunny? i can understand going after barney and sponge bob, because they are "famous" - but these people are going after b-level animated creatures on pbs! couldn't they have least gone after bugs bunny?
3) okay, obviously it is a joke, but the fact that i had second thoughts indicates that the truth in this case isn't very far from fantasy.
deeyamn
it cold.
like, IT COLD.
like, WHY ISN'T MY RADIATOR WORKING?!
i'm going to go turn my oven on for warmth.
cuz it cold.
outage
no, i'm not talking "condi caught in closet with lynne cheney". i'm talking the new-fangled kind, like "as far as i can tell, the photon emitter was damaged by the subspace storm we passed through. i'll have to rebuild the whole thing - it could take days before we're back online." that kind.
so, many expensive purchases later, we're back.
and scotty - you're fired!
by the way, there's an ungodly amount of snow on the ground. gods.
Friday, January 28, 2005
gripes
most of the time i try to block out really unpleasant things, because allowing all negativity to enter your head and then allowing yourself to ruminate about these things can make you into an angry person. and i don't like being an angry person.
but these couple of weeks have been full of images of bigoted asshattery. first, let's state the obvious: the 60th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz was yesterday. now, i've never fully grasped the full horrific scope of the holocaust, for a few reasons. one, i saw a documentary of the killing fields under pol pot's regime as a young teen, and i had nightmares and panic attacks for a month. it was simply the most repugnant, nightmarish, and horrific thing i have ever seen - and i couldn't just say "oh, it was only a movie" - BECAUSE IT ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED. now take the killing fields and multiply that several times over. it's simply incomprehensible and deeply upsetting. like, how could a few bigoted asshats murder all these people and people just stood by and let it happen for so long? ack!!! two, i've watched friends suffer from having one close loved one pass away. i've seen the anguish of friends and loved ones when *one* hostage is threatened in iraq. now multiply the amount of pain and suffering by millions. it's just, again, beyond anything i can grasp. and if i tried to grasp it, i'd probably go nuts. i am aware that it happened decades ago, but still, the images are simply exhausting to watch.
so as i was watching footage from the 60th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz yesterday, the thought crossed my mind: could this happen again? to another group of people? has the human race learned from this abomination? then i thought about kosovo, the kurds, sudan... and i realized just how weak and malleable human beings can be - that in certain circumstances sanctioning such evil is within our nature. and no, we really haven't changed much. so if we don't watch it and keep bigotry in check, this stuff can happen again. and again. and again. so i'm foaming and frothing but attempting to maintain some composure, because i'm at my girlfriend's house, and i didn't really feel like launching into a tirade. plus, since her family had direct experience with the holocaust, i felt it wasn't a topic that should be breached in polite company. (i hope she didn't think my lack of response to the footage was that of indifference, but really, i couldn't think of anything to say except something similar to "fuck motherfucker fuck fuck asshat evil valdemort satan," which doesn't really make any sense, so i decided just to foam and froth in silence.)
update: asshattery on the subject [via andrew sullivan]
anyhow, earlier this week a few bigoted and insensitive asshats wrote a song about "chinks" and "chinamen" dying in the tsunami, mothers dying, and children getting sold into child slavery - and played it on the air in the most well known urban radio station in new york. of course, the more civilized members of the new york city community complained. so many, in fact, that in response, the disc jockeys felt compelled to play that song over and over again to spite everyone, with one of the deejays mentioning that he would "start shooting asians." and the lone asian-american disc jockey was abused and berated by the other disc jockeys. on air. WHAT?! finally, the news began to spread, and the station was inundated with complaints. their advertisers and shareholders were targeted, and many pulled out. finally the show was suspended. and an asian american new york city councilman is leading a protest today.
as aside: to all you asian americans out there, disregard your parents when they tell you you have to be a doctor. go into law, politics, media, and journalism. i hate to point this out, but the only two prominent people who stood up and challenged this program were asian-american - the ruff ryders rapper jin and councilman john liu. expect that no one else will come to your aid (see below). sorry for being cynical, but it is really how the world works. but once you get into these pivotal positions, remember to protect everyone equally and help stop bigotry against anyone. don't stoop to hypocritical lefty nonsense... see following paragraph. (and don't turn into a right-wing asshat, but that goes without saying... frankly, i don't see much of a difference between the left and the right - both wings are populated by countless asshats)
another aside: "expect that no one else will come to your aid." ya know who i really can't stand? lefties who preach about social justice but are only out for their own kind. they see all other groups as the enemy, and they will rarely reach out to another disadvantaged group or even when an "advantaged" group is unfairly discriminated against or defamed - one principle of liberalism is "equal protection" not "i should get more at the expense of your kind." if you consider yourself a liberal, you should be willing to condemn bigotry against anyone. also people i can't stand: people who appear to be bleeding heart liberals but are only so behind the keyboard and who have don't nothing to actually *help another person*. look, i'm broke as fuck, and i was still able to shell out money to tsunami victims - even though i'm not southeast asian or south asian. i donated canned food for the winter food drive. go put your money and time where your mouth is. i don't give much, because i don't have that much, but i contribute when i can... and really, when i do get rich, expect to see me at fundraisers. and if you are really really broke and really really busy, just write one-line emails to your congressman: "hey, i think the FMA is really fucked up." and here's a special task: reach other to people who are not like yourself -- can ya do that for once? anyhow, i think a lot of lefty psychology is really messed - like always standing behind the underdog no matter how FUCKED UP the underdog may be, but i might get into that later.
i also can't stand people who profess to be your friend but won't stand by you when your race is being attacked. or your sexuality. or you personally. those aren't your friends. and they're not worth your time.
and this morning i rolled into the path station, which is located right in the middle of ground zero. talk about the icing on the cake.
so i gave to the anti defamation league this morning, because all of this asshattery is making me mad - see their section on "extremism" - they even cover extremist animal rights groups, who i consider to be a bunch of asshats (definitely not as bad as neo-nazis but dipshits in their own right).
asshattery must be stopped!
*okay, gets off soapbox*
Thursday, January 27, 2005
breasts are bad and should be banned, but making fun of 300,000 dead is okay
here is a petition against the airing of a song aired on hot97 in new york city that mocked tsunami victims while using racial slurs. the story is on the page. fcc complaints were filed. no response. the station suspended the deejays, however.
meanwhile, networks are pixellating CARTOON rear ends for fear that they will be fined by the fcc.
basically, showing quick clips of naked body parts are evil, while making fun of hundreds of thousands dead and mentioning that one wants to "shoot asians" is perfectly fine.
someone needs to fine the fcc for being a bunch of dolts.
also, if anyone can dig up dirt on eharmony.com, that would be great. i discovered that they were founded by a focus on the family nutjob. their online matching service is patented. this means that no one is allowed to use it without their permission. eharmony doesn't allow same sex pairings on their site. however, they mentioned it in their patent - basically, what i am getting at is that they can block sites that want to pair same sex couples if they employ the same method, and the method is pretty broad.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
conda-lies-a-lies-a-lot
look out for the number zero and the "truth" v. "what you said" graph.
yes, dems get lampooned too, but i laughed my ass off.
another perspective...
an article on quotas for asian americans in college admissions. since 1978, race-based quotas for college admissions have been unconstitutional, although colleges may employ a fuzzy term called "critical mass" (which in my opinion is just a euphemism for "quota"). and this is the only time you will see me agreeing with scalia, so take note of this. it is a milestone.
really, whatever happened to "equal treatment"?
anyhow, let me go on a small tangent here. i think that a lot of asian american kids have pretty crappy childhoods compared to their peers - from the perspective of a reasonable prudent kid at least. forced piano lessons, extra tutoring, homework review sessions, endless hours of REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW, groundings and corporal punishment for bad grades, and other things that generally make kids frown. leisure time (i.e. playtime!) is a waste of time. and all of this knowing that your neighbors get to play outside when you are home doing commercial reading comprehension exercises because you're scoring 88% instead of 99% in your age group. et cetera. sometimes, these kids just aren't allowed to be kids.
so really, getting punished for your skin color despite getting good grades partially brought about by militaristic and unpleasant household indoctrination is adding insult to injury. and putting such "quotas" into place will simply encourage even more psychotic parental behavior, because their offspring will not be competing with "everyone else," they will be competing with kids from similarly situated psychotic households. what a crock of shit!
these kids should get restitution for their suffering in the form of grade inflation and leisure time from harvard and stanford!
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
news flash!
a subway fire caused by a homeless man who ignited a shopping cart full of refuse has crippled the C line of the manhattan subway system for up to five years.
this last subway mishap - caused by a man "armed" with scary things like a shopping cart, some matches, and a few wooden bricks and newpapers - will take longer to repair than the damage to the subway from 9/11, when two large commercial jets barreled into the world trade center at full speed, taking out the cortlandt street station and the new jersey path station.
something about this is just a little twisted.
things i like
by emily0
1. lattes, which i make at home with an italian caffeteria.
2. cafés, which make my lattes for me and have lovely emilys in them. caffeination and eye-candy: a wonderful combination.
3. lovely lesbians, which make my life happy to see. butch, femme, punk, genderbending: lesbians is all good.
4. my toes, because i can use them to pick up objects and when i sleep i hold the end of the sheets between them. (i'm a primate, deal with it. so are you, oh my upright hairless readers.)
5. cats, because they have bacteria in them that cause animals they infect it with to love them, even mice, so we can't help it. (besides, i'm a dyke.)
6. my body, which is a pleasure and a pain. i wake up in the morning and think, "all praise the six-titted mother of the tcho-tcho - i have breasts!" this is another thing that most emilys don't do, but i like to count my blessings.
7. joanna russ, james tiptree jr. & ursula leguin and all the other emilist writers who make my brain pleased.
8. horror, which makes life fun again.
9. frida kahlo, who makes me feel like being a freakshow is normal and beautiful.
10. carnivàle, which makes me feel that you can live your life with other people and they don't care if you are a bearded lady, can raise the dead, are a rroma who dances with snakes, are a lesbian stripper or an omnisexual butch fortuneteller and work-crew member.
those are my top ten choices for today. i'm sure there'll be much more later or tomorrow. i just thought ten was a nice, square number.
Krauthammer Was Full Of Shit, Part Two
the fundies are just a myth. they really don't have any power. stop paying attention to the fundies. america is free. free goddammit! free as a bird!!! see those wings go flap flap flap like a symbol of freedom?!!!!
Middle America, Wake The Fuck Up
your precious teenaged offspring will be up for grabs, if they're stupid enough to do this.
eureka!
like the phantom WMDs, people thought the "homosexual agenda" would never be discovered.
however, it appears that a copy of the homosexual agenda has been found!
Monday, January 24, 2005
Nobody Knows What Winning A War Looks Like, Because It Has Never Happened
There is an image of a little girl, crouching on the ground, and it is an image of war. Or an instant of war; a blameless moment, an unavoidable horror. It was dark. Perhaps her father did not see the uniforms, and only saw the guns. Perhaps she and her brothers and sisters were playing too loudly in the back seat, and why couldn't they be quiet (don't make me come back there, I told you before) and he couldn't hear the shouting outside the car, and then it was loud, and now it is quiet.more ...
And she looks like my daughter. Same face, same nose, same hair. The spitting image. Same tiny hands, same wailing face. The same face my daughter gets when a favorite toy breaks, but this time her father is dead, her mother is dead, their blood is everywhere.
More Photos of the Boston Blizzard of 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
Franklin Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
Hancock Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
[emily0 is the person wearing the pink hat. the person struggling down the middle of the street is our roommate, jane.]
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
Hancock Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
[emily0 is also in this photo. we hadn't run into jane yet.]
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
Intersection of Western Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
A Bicycle on Green Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Again, No Comment
a vote for bush was a vote for this. i swear on all that's good that i will rip out the eyes and tongue of the next person who utters the phrases 'just blowing off some steam' or 'just some frat boy hazing' in reference to abu ghraib. as a female, i don't find that comforting because women are drugged and raped at frat parties all the fucking time. please, spare me your tortured reasoning for why you support this. the next person to say, 'this always happens in war' will earn my undying hatred and contempt. care to explain how knowing exactly what would happen during this war makes it 'okay'? fuck you. fuck you. fuck you. fuck you.
[link via suburban guerrilla]
Sunday, January 23, 2005
"blizzard" 2005 nyc
i put "blizzard" in quotes, because, contrary to the hysterical doomsday reports conveyed by various news organizations, the "furious blinding snowstorm" amounted to nothing more than a few hours of powder falling from the sky. the really dangerous stuff is freezing rain and sleet. powder turns to slush quickly and is plowed away easily. i was walking around the east village yesterday, and shopkeepers were shoveling sidewalks. there was even a guy moseying along with a snowblower. the northeast is prepared for this stuff, people. i don't see the big fuss about a few inches of snow. nebraska gets hail, sleet and tornadoes - i don't see why a few fluffy snowflakes caused so much hysteria.
there was a photo on cnn.com earlier today of a man walking out of the union square subway stop. there appeared to be a mountain of snow outside of the entrance. i walked by the same entrance earlier today, and i realizd that it was a photographer's trick. the entrance had been shoveled clear. the "mountain" of snow was in fact the remnants of show that was on the street and that had been plowed onto the curb. the photographer took the picture while kneeling behind said mound of snow to make it look higher than it was. the entrance was, in fact, clear of all obstructions. how funny.
but here are some fun pictures anyway.
The Boston Blizzard of 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
View From Anna's Window
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
View From Our Bathroom Window
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Central Square: The Blizzard of 2005
View From Anna's Other Window
Cambridge, Massachusetts
January 23th, 2005
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
real FARKinations
these are from the FARK site - it's the rejected NASCAR products FARK contest. since the pics go down frequently, i thought i'd post the choicest here.
NASCAR Lovely Lips
the NASCAR Home Divorce Kit
NASCAR pantyhose
the Dale Earnhart #3 Back-Shaving Kit (Stencil Included).
ewwwwwwwwww.
friday cat blogging
today's selection is twofold:
this is warren ellis' cat.
this is mittens, our fat bastard.
nova scotia rocks.
those canadians are always inhead of us (as we inhabitants of the northeastern atlantic coast of north america say) when it comes to queerdom. even nova scotians - the inbred, gaelic-speaking, hard-drinking ig'nant fisherfolk (yay, dad!) of canadia - understand gay rights. you can get married as a queer couple in nova scotia.
and now they prove that nova scotia should be my home, as i have suspected from my travels in the arse-end of said region: nova scotia boasts a bicoloured bisexed lobster.
A lobster with two different colours – and two different genders – has been caught in Nova Scotia, and fishermen say they've never seen anything like it.thanks, queer day.The lobster is split right down the middle: half blue, half greenish-brown, half male, half female.
Murray Townsend caught the lobster off Cape Sable Island in mid-December.
random musings on the military and minorities
what really kicks me in the ass about emily2's post on crucially-needed military linguists being fired for being gay was this statement:
"I got about $2,200-per-month in take-home pay. That includes all of the entitlements, such as a housing allowance. If you are the best linguist in the Army, you make an extra $200-per-month, as I did. I made about $36,000 annually."
that's right. $36K if you are a multilingually-fluent and crucially-needed intelligence personnel during a war.
in the private sector, you'd make six figures without blinking. but the army has it all ass-backwards in every way, not just about the homosexuality. you know how hard it is to study fårsi? it's nigh-near impossible to even find a decent textbook in english - trust me, i studied it. my fårsi teacher even told me, "you should work for the army, they're desperate".
i guess she didn't realise the army here discriminates against ITBLG folks - after all, iran has authorised sex changes since the beginning of the ayatollah khomeini's reign in 1979 and he also insisted that women had every right to serve in combat like men do. iran is the only country that authorises women to serve with complete equality with men in the armed forces, including in his personal élite bodyguard units. he claimed it was a qur'ânic mandate that sexism was inappropriate. (yes, they have to cover their hair, but with special coverings so as not to compromise their effectiveness in their duties.)
unfortunately, things aren't so enlightened here. women aren't authorised to serve in combat, though they come under fire all the time. it's typical hypocrisy - you aren't authorised to serve in combat zones because women are inferior and unable to fight but they are armed and expected to engage in combat if attacked. what kind of fucked-up logic is that?
my da - special forces, green beret, ranger, paratrooper, holding the rank of second captain - always held that these were strict attempts to keep out undesirables: women aren't permitted to shave their heads in basic training, they have stupid uniforms, they are kept separate. these make them outsiders in a world where identity is forged out of the unit, out of erasing difference.
like all cults, the military starts by dehumanising you, removing all individuality. this helps forge a military identity, an iron-clad group identity. attack of the clones. it's a tried and true method for creating a group able to suffer serious stress, and the old guard naturally feels that homos and women are members of the outgroup. that's how they were trained - with insults about how they were faggots and women and cunts and every other negative, demasculinising term (according to military history, anyway).
the outgroup must remain out. this is why the first women at the citadel knew they had to continue to shave their heads despite the brutal punishment this behaviour incurred. they had to be part of the faceless masses: so long as they were individualised, they were not part of the 'real' military.
it's fucked up, innit? women are forced to remain femmed-up so they can't assimilate, so they continue to be treated differently after their training. enforced behavioural and attitudinal estrangement, when all the military has to do to fix this problem is adjust their own attitude and permit everyone to participate as nondividuals equally. there'd be no problem with gays if the training didn't create one. there'd be no problem with women either. that's the point of training - to erase and reprogram the soldiers, and the military leadership is who needs to stop fucking around and fucking up our armed forces.
not that i want to serve, but equality is what this fucking country is supposed to be about, and establishing it in the military is just as crucial as establishing it everywhere else.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
malkin was right!
well, ever since CHiPS received a warning from an illegal running the Mexican border what four chinamen was comin' cross too because they had gone to méxico to obtain nucular oxide and were gonna slip into These Here States an' blast boston off the map, we've bin on high alert about a possible 'dirty bomb'.
quick, round up the chinks! malkin, you go first - c'mon, you think ethnic concentration camps are justifiable, right? i mean, when there's a credible threat? and this is sure credible. there might be yellow-skins with nucular oxide on their way to boston! because lord knows that during the preznidential Re-Oathening in the District of Columbia, the best way to effectively attack Mer'KKKa is to go to Boston and set off a dirty bomb there. during the time that all the important politicos and governmental officials in the entire united states are in DC. within four square miles.
whew, i bet they make up a new colour for the alert chart for this one. i mean, nucular oxide! that's so rare i can't even find out what it is!
n.b. the story i told above is true: that's how they got the tip. i heard it on NPR's 'Morning Edition'. and yes, there is no such thing as nucular oxide. clearly the cali police was On Top Of Things again. fucking pigs. i've seen those bitches do every kind of illegal and rule-bending shit around, but this takes the idiot award.
'doctor laura, sit on my face'
okay, i'm not just being provocative. that's the name of an essay in a book i'm waiting to get, that's revolting! queer strategies for resisting assimilation. it has a wicked good review from bear's reviews at butchDykeBoy, a boston-based trans/genderqueer collective website that also sponsors a monthly get-together, genderCrash! (apparently we queers like! exclamation! points!) in fact, genderCrash just celebrated its fifth anniversary this month, though i didn't make it to the evening.
anyway, i was reading bear's review, which has a great quote:
I was also glad [...] to get a new favorite quote from Rocko Bulldagger's instant classic essay[,] "Dr. Laura, Sit On My Face," which sums up much of what I like about many of my favorite people: "Being a threat is sexy."if you are curious about the book but can't be arsed to hit the link, here's what the book's description says:
As the gay mainstream prioritizes the attainment of straight privilege over all else, it drains queer identity of any meaning, relevance, or cultural value, writes Matt Bernstein Sycamore, aka Mattilda, editor of That's Revolting! This timely collection of essays by writers such as Patrick Califia, Kate Bornstein, Carol Queen, Charlie Anders, Benjamin Shepard, and others shows what the new queer resistance looks like.wicked good, as i said above. that's what we say here in boston, and it's a damn sight less annoying than that frikken word hella, which will earn you a beating 'round the ears if you say it around me.Intended as a fistful of rocks to throw at the glass house of Gaylandia, the book challenges the commercialized, commoditized, and hyperobjectified view of gay/queer identity projected by the mainstream (straight and gay) media by exploring queer struggles to transform gender, revolutionize sexuality, and build community/family outside of traditional models. Essays include "Dr. Laura, Sit on My Face," "Gay Art Guerrillas," "Legalized Sodomy Is Political Foreplay," and "Queer Parents: An Oxymoron or Just Plain Moronic?"
goddamn california hippies.
insanity
yeah, um... so they're looking for a few alleged terrorists in boston. wait a minute... hey, malkin... these suspects don't look very much like ay-rabs to me. the source is also pretty vague. why four chemists need to be smuggled over the border is beyond me. the entire story is sketch sketch sketch.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Boredom
yes, dear readers, i am aware that i am a boring blogger right now. after chimpy mcpretzel won another four years, i just don't have much to say. there's only so much mileage one can get out of making up names to call the president. my classes haven't started and work is going well. i have nothing whatsoever to complain about. except the weather, and that's trite. plus, i've already complained about it. i've blogged every cat in my house and then some, much to the annoyance of emily0 and emily2.
so, yeah. i have no life.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
just a little sign of the times?
man oh man, you can't buy publicity this bad.
McDonald's Corp said Charlie Bell, who stepped down as the fast-food chain's chief executive in November to focus on his battle with cancer, died on Monday in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. [snip]yep, kids, that's right: he started at the bottom at age 15 and worked his way to CEO. he also ate mcdonald's most days and was proud of their food and that he ate it on a daily basis.A charismatic leader who said he ate a McDonald's product most days, Bell was diagnosed with colorectal cancer just weeks after being named to the company's top job in April.
he lasted six months as CEO, and the entire time he was fighting a losing battle with colorectal cancer.
and now he's dead. at 44.
the piece ends on an interesting note:
McDonald's paid about $300,000 to fly Bell and his family back to Australia in a special medically equipped aircraft, the company said in a regulatory filing in December. McDonald's also agreed to buy Bell's U.S. home, ship the family's belongings to Australia, and cover any tax liability resulting from the arrangement.wonder why?
hello hello.
i'm going to go on a mini-rant.
okay, i admit i have said (and probably will say) some ignorant things in my life, but if i am kindly instructed on the error of my ways, i tend to stop making myself look like a butthead and correct myself.
i emphasized the word kindly, because if someone barks back at me "damn, you're a moron," i tend to get defensive and obstinant, and i really don't give a fuck if i'm wrong... YOU IS GOING DOWN, BIOTCH!
and this is why i sometimes bite my tongue when i think people are saying ignorant things until i can log onto blogger and let loose a shitstorm, because it is a lot more productive than yelling at the offending parties that "really, you are a bunch of ignorant fools, and OH MY GOD, how can people so educated be so fucking stupid?!"
to all the lesbians out there, i need y'all to holla back.
how many of you have ever been asked, "is the reason why you don't like penises because you were raped/molested by a man? i mean, it's just so weird that you would be so averse to it!"
well, gee... then the reason why i always hated that show "full house" must have been because i was beaten to an inch of my life by the olsen twins. and i dislike country music, because one of the dixie chicks must have punched me in the face. oh yeah... and the reason why i hate pine nuts is not because i don't like the taste... it must be because i had a horrible dream about the jolly green giant's lesser known nemesis, the pine nut from hades, and oh my god, the pine nut from hades chased me all over new york threatening to chop my head off! and the reason why i despise horses is not because they are stupid and smell and are always surrounded by flies (which also disgust me) but because one of them tried to bite my ear off mike tyson style and tried to trample me into a bloody pulp?
ever think that people JUST DON'T LIKE SOMETHING JUST BECAUSE THEY JUST DON'T LIKE SOMETHING? not because of some prior trauma but because they are wired that way. and that there isn't something wrong with them. and sometimes, people have differing opinions on what is "fun" or "enjoyable" or "icky" or "offensive."
de gustibus non est disputandum. aiight?
so the next person who asks me that question will not get spared by a run to blogger, he/she will cry tears of acid after i'm done with him/her.
thank you, and good night.
Monday, January 17, 2005
Feeding The Trolls
gordon the magnificent trolled the eschaton today. as he attempted to bait eschatonians with mixed success, a discussion raged about methods of comment authentication to combat name-stealing trolls. one of these trolls (gordon perhaps?) has engaged in persistent, frequent attacks on the eschaton and david neiwert's blog over the past several months. he delighted in stealing the name of an old regular at the eschaton, and a poster at first-draft -- tena. sometimes he'd steal a couple of names and write a fake conversation between them.
the regulars at the eschaton share pictures of their pets all the time. tena has a gorgeous orange tomcat. recently, the name-stealing troll posted a comment under her name telling everyone that the cat was dead. she got a flurry of emails from other commentors and readers offering condolences for her cat. when i read about this today, i burst out laughing. i'm still snickering over it. i love animals. i love my pets. but, there's still something incredibly funny about this.
it's official. i'm going straight to hell.
No More, Please No More
i _despise_ january and february. hate hate hate hate them.
life-sucking cold. snow. cold. freeze. rain. cold. cold. cold.
more cold.
wind chill factor and cold.
cold.
freezing.
cold.
i absolutely fucking hate all of this with every last fiber in my soul.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
miéville analysis & criticism:
a critical orgy
crooked timber has a running article on the works of China Miéville:
China Miéville is one of the most interesting people writing in the field of science fiction and fantasy. His first novel, King Rat, riffs on drum’n’bass, Max Ernst, Robert Irwin and contemporary London. His second, Perdido Street Station, took the genre by storm; an urban fantasy written with vigour, wit and ferocious intelligence. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. As Michael Swanwick said in the Washington Post in 2002, “It’s a little cheeky of me to declare as classic a book that only came out two years ago, but I think I’m on safe ground here.” His third novel, The Scar, received equal acclaim. He’s an official member of the salon des refusés of Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” list.wicked.China is also active in socialist politics - he ran for Parliament in the last election. His book, Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory Of International Law, based on his Ph.D. thesis, is being published this month by Brill.
China’s most recent novel, Iron Council, was published in August. Michael Dirda of the Washington Post describes it as “a work of both passionate conviction and the highest artistry.”
A few months ago, the Miéville Fraktion within CT decided that it might be fun to put together a mini-seminar around Iron Council, and to ask China to respond. He very decently said yes; you see the result before you. We’ve invited two non-CT regulars to participate in the mini-seminar. Matt Cheney blogs on literature and science fiction at The Mumpsimus; he also writes for Locus magazine and SFSite. Miriam Elizabeth Burstein blogs at The Little Professor, and teaches Victorian literature at SUNY Brockport. Miriam very kindly agreed to join the project in its later stages, revising a long comment/review that she had already written (and that China had independently cited to).
The essays are posted in the order that they are mentioned in China’s response (people who haven’t read Iron Council yet should be aware that spoilers abound). John Holbo begins his essay with comments on the relationship between Miéville and Tolkien; he goes on to use Bruno Schulz’s discussion of escape and the fecundity of inanimate matter to argue that Miéville can’t decide whether he prefers political economy or Expressionist puppetry as modes of expression. Belle Waring complains that the unrelenting grimness of Miéville’s urban settings and characters’ fates is a little formulaic; he should let his characters get somewhere and perhaps even succeed in something. Matt Cheney partly revises an earlier essay where he argued that Miéville needed to represent his villains a little more realistically; he discusses some of the reasons why Mieville might have done this, and talks about how Miéville reconciles pulp and avant-garde literature in his work. My essay compares Miéville’s reworking of history, myth and revolution with Walter Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history. Miriam Elizabeth Burstein examines how Miéville reworks ideas of martyrdom and messianism through the figure of Judah Low. Finally, John Quiggin talks about Iron Council in historical context, arguing that just as the eponymous train of the novel becomes a myth that may return to ‘save’ us, so too the revolutionary traditions of the nineteenth century that are celebrated in Iron Council may continue to inspire.
China’s response, which speaks to all the above, and more, is here.
We’re opening up all of the essays, and China’s response, to comments. We expect that the main conversation will take place in the comments section to China’s essay; however, if you have specific points that you want to address in the individual essays, feel free to comment there. Note that offensive or inappropriate comments will likely be deleted - as always, we’re more interested in conversation than flamewar.
This seminar is being made available for distribution under a Creative Commons license, without any prejudice to the ownership of any material quoted under standard ‘fair use’ principles from Iron Council or from John Curran Davis’ translation of Bruno Schulz’ Cinammon Shops. For those who would prefer to read on paper than computer screen, we enclose a PDF of the discussion.
battlestar galactica
well, the new battlestar galactica series kicked off last night with two hair-raising suspense episodes, 33 and water, and ohmigod they were amazing. this show is kicking my ass hardcore.
oh, boomer, that's fucked up. and oh starbuck, how sweet a chunk of ass-kicking brawler you are. i love women in uniform.
33 was just brutal to watch. i could feel the relentlessness. this series grabs you by the short hairs and makes your neck hairs prickle. you are on the edge of your seat - what horrible fucking thing is going to happen now? and water was my favourite kind of story - the what the hell happened to me and where am i now and oh shit this is bad. blackouts, missing time; i love me an amnesia story.
Battle Of The Sexes
take a look at the latest, all-important man of the year award.
[link via ang's weird ideas]
Friday, January 14, 2005
The Plant: In The Kitchen To Be Cleaned This Weekend
it must be kept out of reach of my fat bastard cats because they think it's a salad bar.
The Kitchen: To Be Cleaned This Weekend
we don't have much space in our kitchen and we have no cabinets. therefore, we have to use every spare inch of horizontal surface. ladies and gentlemen, i present to you, our stove. to be more precise, the shelf on the back of our stove.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
January Is The Cruelest Month
i took my life into my own hands driving home tonight. a stephen king kind of fog lingered the entire day. by nightfall, every dip and hollow was blanketed with a dense mist. when i drove to work this morning, it lifted my mood. it reminded me of spring. then i remembered a post i wrote last year after a particularly brutal winter. although we've had a mild winter, i feel just as sick for summer.
a post from a now-defunct blog, written spring 2003, titled "What I Am Dreaming Of":
beach days and sand too hot for walking barefoot...
i want tall, sweating glasses of cold drinks at sidewalk cafes after sundown. i want fat, ripe fruit in the supermarkets, especially strawberries. i want trees decked out in their best foliage, and ice cream trucks roaming the streets.
t-shirts. for the love of god, i want to see the caps, gloves, and scarves replaced by t-shirts, tank tops, and halter tops. i want to see fat baby humans feeding fat baby squirrels in the boston common. i most certainly want the soft padded sound of sneakers and the muffled thumps of boots to be replaced by the reassuring slap of sandals on baking pavement.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
faked coroner's shots
yick. and wow.
i've always bin a fan of coarsette, and her post today is amazing - amazingly repellent & truly grotesque.
it's all cranberry sauce and oatmeal and suchlike, but nonetheless her art project for her class is faked coroner's pics. she's bin working on it for a while and couldn't resist a few gratuitous digicam shots for us to enjoy (her project is all polaroids - where does she find the film?).
appallingly fabulous. reminds me of the work from ginger snaps - you can see the similar pics they do in the beginning of the trailer.
Monday, January 10, 2005
the trials and tribulations of being in a relationship...
there was one thing that my ex and i had in common...
>From: emily2
>To: ex girlfriend
>hey so what is up with this no-pooping thing? i can't poop around my girlfriend! like she'll be
>here for a week and i can't poop! did you ever get over the "i can't poop around my girlfriend"
>thing, or am i doomed to have poisoned insides for a very long time?
>
>please discuss.>
>thanks.
>
>emily2
reply from my ex:
sorry, no. you are fucked. it took me for-ev-er to poop around my girlfriend...dood, your intestines are doomed. she used to be very regular and she'd poop in the mornings but i noticed she would occasionally make these lame-ass excuses to go home some mornings (conveniently after a night of salsa and beer) LMAO! and as for me, i just plain didn't poop for a week or more at a time! but eventually, we talked and joked about it so much that it became so funny when one of our butts was stinky. don't worry, you'll poop again someday. but i wouldn't hold your breath. literally. you'll give yourself an aneurysm.
list of ethnic slurs
from wikipedia
my favorites: casper the unfriendly ghost, sticky rice, elvis (ha ha ha ha!!!!), and whopper
warning: some of them really *are* offensive though.
oh the irony...
two of the most popular searches in my friendster network:
"private school rankings" and "hipster quiz"
well *that* cuts through the veil of anti-elitist elitism, doesn't it? c'mon, former whrbies and those "slummin" it somewhere in williamsburg, i *know* you check the u.s. news and world report rankings too, and i *know* part of you cares. ;)
so rats can do it
but 'mer'cans can't?
if i had a nickel for every time someone couldn't identify what language i was speaking when it was, say, french or spanish, i'd be fucking rich. and it ain't my pronunciation neither.
Rats Can Tell Human Languages Apart, Study Showsit also shows how much of a xenophobic cluster of asses americans are.
Science - Reuters, 20050109WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rats can use the rhythm of human language to tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese, researchers in Spain reported Sunday.
Their study suggests that animals, especially mammals, evolved some of the skills underlying the use and development of language long before language itself ever evolved, the researchers said.
It is the first time an animal other than a human or monkey has been shown to have this skill.
"These findings have remarkable parallels with data from human adults, human newborns, and cotton-top tamarins," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
For their study neuroscientists Juan Toro and colleagues at Barcelona's Scientific Park tested 64 adult male rats.
They used Dutch and Japanese because these languages were used in earlier, similar tests, and because they are very different from one another in use of words, rhythm and structure.
The rats were trained to respond to either Dutch or Japanese using food as a reward.
Then they were separated into four groups -- one that heard each language spoken by a native, one that heard synthesized speech, one that heard sentences read in either language by different speakers and a fourth that heard the languages played backwards.
Rats rewarded for responding to Japanese did not respond to Dutch and rats trained to recognize Dutch did not respond the spoken Japanese.
The rats could not tell apart Japanese or Dutch played backwards.
"Results showed that rats could discriminate natural sentences when uttered by a single speaker and not when uttered by different ones, nor could they distinguish the languages when spoken by different people," the researchers wrote.
Human newborns have the same problem, although tamarins can easily tell languages apart even when spoken by different people, the researchers said.
"It was striking to find that rats can track certain information that seems to be so important in language development in humans," Toro said in a statement.
The study shows "which abilities that humans use for language are shared with other animals, and which are uniquely human. It also suggests what sort of evolutionary precursors language might have," he added.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
for asshattery...
click here and just read the headline - no need to read the body of the column; it's written by ann coulter.
On Government
oh shizzle, dizzle!
i'm also rufus wainwright! which is awesome, because he's my god.
Congrats, you've got a little Rufus in you! Raised on opera and his mother's show-biz sensibility, Rufus is a master songwriter and performer. Though prone to excess and moodiness, his off-kilter sense of humor and fashion and his radiant presence make him a joy to be around.Who's Your Inner Gay Man?Don't be ashamed; if this still small voice speaks up within you (with a bit of a slur and a lisp), listen up! He could make you a star.
brought to you by Quizilla
unfortunately, i have his voice timbre as well - but without the singing ability. not such a good attribute for a dyke, izzit?
My Inner Gay Man Is Named Rufus
Congrats, you've got a little Rufus in you! Raised on opera and his mother's show-biz sensibility, Rufus is a master songwriter and performer. Though prone to excess and moodiness, his off-kilter sense of humor and fashion and his radiant presence make him a joy to be around. Don't be ashamed; if this still small voice speaks up within you (with a bit of a slur and a lisp), listen up! He could make you a star.take the quiz here.
[link via @%#$&!!! wash my mouth out with soap]
Saturday, January 08, 2005
See, I Drink Lattes
after discovering that some people define an espresso macchiato as a drink with unmixed layers of espresso and steamed milk, i burned with a desire to make such a drink myself. i was successful after a couple of attempts.
the procedure isn't really that complicated. just pour in the milk and foam first, and very slowly pour the espresso into the glass.
Friday, January 07, 2005
Parents, Gifts, and French Presses
the topic of coffee seems to have caught a wave around here.
cigar jack attests to the good qualities of the french press. it completely changed his taste in coffee. emily0 gave her dad a french press, forever altering his habitual method of brewing his coffee. these are indeed weighty testimonials.
the french press is definitely good. i like to use the one that i gave to my parents as a christmas gift the year i worked at starbucks. i was broke as one always is when one's wage is a grand $6.44/hour. that reflects the 12 cents raise i got six months in -- the max was a quarter. star bucks had a christmas sale. the 30 percent employee discount applied to the sale price.
my good sense for a bargain price was not matched with good sense in choosing a gift for the parental units. they _never_ use it. my parents are also creatures of habit. they like to drink coffee made with a standard drip coffee brewer. that's how they've done it for as long as i can remember. my mom recently mailed me a magic chef espresso maker that she bought several years ago and didn't use. i dusted off the french press while i was there, and i confirm that it is indeed, a damned fine way to brew coffee.
so, i guess i got myself a christmas gift in a way. i have an easy, quick way to make a really strong, full-bodied cup of coffee when i go home for the holidays. even so, a starbucks opened there within the last year. the topless mermaid company is taking over the country. soon, red-staters won't be able to get all self-righteous about people who drink lattes. unless they drink coffee the way i do. but that's not a red state/blue state thing. that's a strength of palate thing.
so i was standing on the corner...
...minding my own business, when...
so elsewhere i noted
*************
ann coulter's latest comments (29 december) on abu ghraib:
On the basis solely of media coverage, Abu Ghraib was the biggest story of 2004, maybe the biggest story ever. And for good reason: An American soldier was caught on film not only humiliating Iraqi prisoners -- but smoking!what. the fuck. abu ghraib is about as offensive as a movie? the brass fucking balls on that one, i can't believe...The New York Times even had to drop its coverage of Augusta National Golf Course to give Abu Ghraib due prominence. Only the Rumsfeld autopen scandal was big enough to knock Abu Ghraib off the front page.
I personally haven't been so singularly disturbed by an atrocity since I had to sit through all of "The Matrix: Reloaded."
no, i can't even pretend i'm surprised.
*************
and someone posted (anonymously, of course) that
No... her point is that the overly enthusiastic MEDIA had an orgasm over the story, 3 months worth. A bit much, compared to the beheadings during that same time period, don't you think?i can't understand human beings.
i think it's perfectly justified coverage, myself. people who torture and maim people, hold them without trial or evidence - those are the people we went to war against. we strut about our great american principles, but then we have shit like my lai in vietnam and abu ghraib and guantánamo now.
only my lai was some batfuck-crazy soldiers, and they got spanked hard.
these are systemic implementations of torture, and the torturers did it for a very long time, and the pentagon knew what kind of insane thuggery was happening there and ignored it.
the media frenzy should be all about abu ghraib and guantánamo. beheadings make the news just fine - shouldn't we be intensely vigilant about horrific actions taken by our own troops? the point is that we cannot stand on arrogant self-righteousness. we have to hold ourselves to the laws by which we are governed, or all that fucking flag-waving is no better than an empty gesture. gonzales aside, america doesn't sanction torture. period.
we follow the geneva protocols because we are a civilised nation with an orderly and proud military, at least in spirit. we might miss our goals and fuck things up, but we try to have honour and fairness despite the asshole commanders and legalisers who screw queers and women, or skip screwing them and just kill them. these are fuckups. we don't idealise the fuckups. we set a code that is supposed to be represent the ideals of our country, and that's the bottom line. (sweet six-titted mother of the tcho-tcho, i'm defending the u.s. military!)
if my grandfather was alive, he'd prolly spit on the ground. he fought at okinawa and lived - one of many native americans to fight proudly in the service despite the shit he lived with growing up - he once said to me of his life in the south, "the only thing worse there than being a nigger is being indian," but that didn't stop him from fighting for the ideals he saw - and for a way out of the south and total poverty.
my (scottish/irish-american) father is alive, and he was special forces, green beret, ranger. and he spits on the ground for this kind of crap. there's a lot of servicemembers who feel the same way, people who served in hinky wars like vietnam and saw Very Bad Things. they think this is horrific, that these activities are going on and we are excusing them and the now-revealed torture sessions at guantanamo because they 'aren't on u.s. soil'. bullshit, i say. bull-shit.
my dad's coffee
this was a comment i made to one of emily1's posts, but it seemed worthy of its own entry, so i repeat it here.
my dad has been an intense coffee-drinker for his whole life. he never changes his method. it's the one routine in my life i count on: how my father boils the water in a kettle, puts a whole lot of grinds in the same glass measuring cup he's used since i were a child, adds boiling water, waits a few minutes, then pours the brewed stuff through an honest-to-god paper-lined plastic filter that sits on top of his cup. it's as low-tech as coffee gets and strong as hell.
only he got a french press for christmas. and i showed him how to use it. and he tried it. and now he only makes his coffee like that.
so for the last, say, thirty years, my dad has made three to six cups of coffee each day using the same utensils, the same coffee - everything. but since xmas, he's using high-grade espresso beans and a french press. it's more than a mite disturbing for me.
i guess that's his midlife crisis. coulda bin worse. coulda gotten into stupid cars. instead, he changed his ingrained coffee routine and started collecting miniature soldiers offa eBay. (that's another story.)
oh...
i like my coffee in four forms:
1) from delis / gas stations with enough cream and sugar to raise atkins from the dead
2) at one brazilian restaurant in midtown new york, black, a tad of sugar
3) at this one restaurant near the south street seaport, espresso, some sugar
4) at emily1 and emily0's house, emily0 style (sorry emily1 - if i drink coffee your style i feel like the caffeine user equivalent of a crackhead =P).
and thankfully, i have no cats to take pictures of. they (literally) give me hives. on my eyeballs in fact, which is quite attractive. emily1 has run out with me at 1am several times to purchase benadryl.
maybe someone was slipping the jurors crack...
a man sentenced to just four months in prison for killing his wife, after a jury concluded he acted in a blind fury, drew a 15-year term for wounding her boyfriend.
i can't even comment.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Coffee (Black Please! Cardamom Welcome) and Offensive Language: An Exegesis
on my perfect relationship with unadulterated espresso:
i started drinking coffee in earnest after i started working for starbucks oh so many years ago when i was young and innocent. every new initiate has to undergo the good old 'bucks boot camp. 20 hours of intensive training in the starbucks 'process'. if i remember correctly, a shot couldn't be used unless it finished between 18 and 23 seconds. it was a good system because the shots were always thick, sweet, and creamy -- good by themselves, and great for cappuccinos and lattes.
we had to learn a lot of terminology. in addition to the thousands of people who had simple tastes, there were a few dozen regulars who liked the obscure drinks. espresso with a dash of steamed milk foam for instance -- the espresso macchiato, a drink ordered infrequently. in fact, almost never ordered. except for one guy who worked at or attended a nearby university. tragically, starbucks restricted the definition of this drink. unmixed layers of cream, foam, and espresso sounds like a much more delish concoction.
during 'bucks boot camp, we had to drink a shitload of coffee. espresso by itself. foam by itself. steamed milk by itself. lattes, cappuccinos, mochas, americanos (yum!), coffee made with a french press, and different roasts made with their industrial drip brewers -- kenyan (not my favorite), french roast (yum!), italian (yum!), sumatran (yum!), etc.. ( ... yum ... ). obviously, we didn't have enough time to try everything during the 20 hours of 'bucks boot camp.
they had a bunch of other things they wanted to teach us. the starbucks system was that of a well-oiled retail machine. they must have spent buckets of cash figuring it out. so, we were relentlessly encouraged to try _everything_ at some point. all drinks on the job were free. every employee got one free pound of coffee a week. we got a 30% discount on all starbucks merchandise.
basically they were corporate crack dealers. i was a full-time student with no real marketable skills or work experience when i joined the starbuckians for a nine-month tour.
_holy shit_.
opening shifts started at 5:00am. sweet part was that my working day was over by noon usually. sometimes i had shifts for the full eight and a half hours. i still got out at 1:30. i must say this, however -- when i had to start my shift at five in the morning, my ass was dead-tired. some days it felt like my ass might fall back to sleep and get left behind while the rest of me stumbled unconsciously to work before getting dressed or brushing my teeth. or putting on my glasses. actually, i'd always remember to put those on. if i couldn't find them, i'd just get lost in my own apartment while looking for them.
obviously, i needed a pick-me-up. within an hour and a half, i 'd be sweating in front of a huge espresso machine with a line of addicts straight out the damned door. bitching and moaning. looking at their watches. tapping their feet. being bitchy. by the end, if i hadn't had my fix yet and i had five seconds to spare before that chattering mob of locust-pods from mars came crashing through the door demanding their double tall lattes, i'd have locked myself in the bathroom and mainlined a shot on the spot and snorted the grinds even.
time was of the essence. all the pastries had to be set out. all the equipment had to be assembled and set up. we were done (almost always) by the time the store opened. barely. the easiest way to get what i needed was to pack away as many shots as possible while we got things ready. triple espresso usually did the trick. i worked that espresso machine like a god afterwards.
after a while i needed it just to get through the day. people's lives were at stake.
emily0 is right that poverty once played a factor in my choice of unadulterated coffee as my preferred beverage of choice. milk is mighty expensive when you have to work for half an hour to earn it. this is not the case now. i drink plenty of milk. it's just that i am creature of habit and prefer to drink coffee without milk or sugar because i learned to love it like that. i like cappuccinos and lattes. i even like emily0's coffee-flavored hot milk sometimes. but my favorite is and shall always be pure coffee.
i feel like one can't appreciate the true beauty of the bean when mixing its flavor with other things.
on the other subject that i would write more about if this post weren't already too long:
i say things like the p-word in jest in the company of friends because i'm sure they'll understand that i'm using it ironically.
make me coffee
caution: this post is not about kittens. (yay!)
today's lesson is about coffee, although in many ways it is actually about the careful self-deprecation and insults used between friends and among members of the same minority groups (i.e. both kinds).
emily1 and myself, we are caffeine addicts. we have a caffeteria, an italian stovetop espresso maker - not an espresso machine, the boil-on-stove thing. and we drink coffee all the time, though properly it's european coffee, not that watery shit americans think is coffee. we like to drink coffee that could be substituted for rocket fuel in case of an oil shortage, and which in fact resembles crude oil. only it smells really, really good.
but there can be no peace between perfectionist-addicts.
so a war ensues, a war of humourous insults concerning the ability to imbibe and preferred preparation of our respective caffè.
let it be clear:
emily1 prepares her coffee by pouring the scalding, boiling espresso into a glass, then placing said glass to her lips and drinking it: a triple or quadruple espresso.
emily0 prepares her coffee by heating up milk, then adding a shot or two of aforementioned hot espresso: a latte, single or double.
my own concoction is the cause of much amusing insult from ms. one, mostly along the lines of wuss coffee, swamp yankee watered-down shit, pussy coffee, homo coffee, NPR coffee. and in return, she gets the that explains the hair on your breasts, southern comfort, red state mud, white trash coffee, too-cheap-to-buy-milk coffee, übercoolpeople muck sort of line. and both of us use these phrases - i use insults about my coffee to describe it - "i'm making some of my pussy coffee, you want some?"
i also have a tendency to demand, "bitch, make me coffee!" which usually gets the response, *slowly raised fist then slowly raised middle finger*.
now, these are exactly the kind of insults what are dire tween people, but tween friends somehow you can say these things. there's nothing i hate more than the use of the word pussy as an insult - "you are a vagina!" somehow bothers me, can't imagine why - but i use the word myself. it's a self-loathing thing, i think, or a reclamation. i dunno, i don't really think about my reasons for it, but i'd never use it in front of people i don't know.
which is why i thought to write this post. what things do we say when we are in private? it makes for solidarity in some peculiar way, but somehow this isn't exactly 'using the master's tools to tear down the master's house'.
i don't have much more of a point, except that i hope you now imagine us insulting each other's "gay" or "kentucky" coffee. it must be funny to watch, but i guess no-one gets to.
besides the cats.
ha! i lied. this post mentions cats.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
punisher v. batman
so our henry warren ellis has pointed out a maxim interview with the new authors of the punisher, namely garth ennis and jimmy palmiotti. it's a great read through-and-through, but i have to admit my favourite bit is when they are asked:
What character would you like to see Frank Castle end?if you need to refresh your memory about garth ennis, here's a list. hint: preacher is one of his series, and if you haven't read it you've seriously, seriously missed out on some wonderfully fucked up shit. like when they drop the 600-pound anti-pope on his head out of a helicopter in flight ("... and all of the king's horses and all the king's men ...").PALMIOTTI: Batman would be fun, 'cause no one ever shoots him in the head. And he's the only flesh-and-bone character.
ENNIS: Probably Batman. You're fucking Robin. I know you're fucking Robin. You can't not be fucking Robin. Child molester.
They've Come Sniffing Around
so, i got a call from army recruiters. i think it must be my fantastic 20/20 vision, my big strapping frame, and my reknowned respect for authority that caught their attention. then again, maybe i'm just another warm body that's good for stopping a bullet and filling a coffin.
actually, they probably called because they got my name and telephone number from umass. i'm a candidate for a computer science degree. the military needs people with technical skills. great. i wonder when they'll decide to start drafting people. i don't suppose it really matters. if i were drafted, i'd just refuse to go.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
pssht!
if you have a problem with adopted kids from a same-sex household going to your friggin' catholic school, then put your kids in another school or homeschool your kids. but 10% of your kids are going to end up queer anyway regardless of their upbringing, so give it up. you people live in la la land. really. (and not the warm and fuzzy la la land i was referring to in the previous post. your la la land is the one so far removed from reality that it makes the land of oz seem real.)
Monday, January 03, 2005
good morning
hello, i've been in la-la land for the last week and a half, so pardon my lack of posting.
some people had a crappy holiday season, like those in south and southeast asia, so here is the american red cross donation form. they take donations as little as $5. it's not a lot, but it's something.
i am going to go rummage around for food now.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Battle For The Window
hi. my name is toby, and i love the window.
hi, my name is spanky, and i want to look out of the window too.
bitch! you mussed my fur. i spent all day making it pretty before you came along!
Saturday, January 01, 2005
UAE learns its lesson for selling petrochemicals
have you ever been to the united arab emirates? it's one damn hot country. i got off a plane in abu dhabi where it was about 112 fahrenheit - mind you, planes are kept at a meat-locker 60 degrees or so. several people passed out from heat exhaustion in the terminal shortly thereafter.
so now we learn how much fun damage we've done to the environment: check this out:
UAE sees snow for first time ever
AFP, 2004,1230DUBAI (AFP) - Snow has fallen over the United Arab Emirates for the first time ever, leaving a white blanket over the mountains of Ras al-Khaimah as the desert country experienced a cold spell and above-average rainfall.
Dubai airport's meteorology department told AFP that snow fell over the Al-Jees mountain range in Ras al-Khaimah, which is the most northerly member of the UAE federation.
The English-language Gulf News reported that the mountain cluster, 5,700 feet (1,737 metres) above sea level, "had heavy night-time snowfall for the past two days as a result of temperatures dropping to as low as minus five Celsius (23 Fahrenheit)" and stunning the emirate's residents.
On Monday, 12.6 millimetres (half an inch) of rain fell on the desert emirate of Dubai, where it hardly ever rains, as police reported 500 accidents on its roads in 24 hours, including one fatality, as a result of a three-day downpour.
A cold spell has hit the country this week, with the mercury plunging to 12 degrees Celsius (53.6 Fahrenheit) in Dubai on Wednesday night.
The meteorology department, however, said the chilly weather in Dubai, where summer temperatures reach 50 Celcius (122 Fahrenheit), will probably end by next week.
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