Monday, March 31, 2003
Let's all report each other
Oh, look, how useful!
How to report suspicious activity to the FBI
Name: Badgerbag
Please describe your information:
Dear FBI guys, please investigate the Bush family. They live down the street from me on Pennsylvania Avenue in a big white house. I think they've done some really suspicious things! And I think they do drugs, too! They encourage people to be violent and they give money to paramilitary forces! Please keep America safe for me and my family by putting these freaks under surveillance!
posted by badgerbag 3/31/2003 09:16:00 PM comment
Oddly cheering
Okay, maybe somebody's noticing that Bush & Co. are utterly mad. This is just a little bit encouraging.
Advisers split as War Unfolds - from the Washington Post.
Oh, wait, I forgot, isn't it unpatriotic, evil, and a sign of being brainwashed by terrorists, merely to question that our government's assholes doesn't smell like roses and apple pie?
posted by badgerbag 3/31/2003 08:49:00 PM comment
Aaaaaaaagh!
Meanwhile, actual horrible things are happening. As opposed to the scary but in comparison trivially horrifying things happening here like artists being followed by rabid crazy spies.
Descriptions from the field where people are actually dying.
posted by badgerbag 3/31/2003 07:28:00 PM comment
Thought crimes again!
Oh, great, it's happening already: Anti-war hip hop band members tracked by government agents. What do they do but track his every move and contact his family, telling them their son is part of "the resistance".
They had pictures of us performing the day before at the rally, they had pictures of us performing at some of our annual concerts that we put on that are in support of peace and human rights. They had his flight records for the past several months, they had the names of everybody who works in my office, our management office Guerilla Management. They had his checking account records. They asked his mother a lot of questions about where he was, what he was doing in this place, why he was going here. They confiscated his sibling's CD collection that they had brought over to listen to while they were in the Gulf, and basically were intimidating ? told her which members of the press she could talk to and which members of the press she should not speak to.
My mind boggles that anyone would actually believe that some sort of terrorist organization is funding a bunch of musicians who play at peace rallies. Give me a break. I suppose that in their minds, Yassir Arafat is sending me fat checks to pay me for writing this blog that about 5 people ever read. Do "they" really believe it? Or do they just think that ideas and words are dangerous in themselves, and if their fascist state is to come to fruition, the idea-makers have to be intimidated starting now? When will we start "disappearing"?
I guess all you oldsters out there are laughing at me, as the political climate was so much crazier than this with McCarthy and the civil rights movement and Vietnam, but I didn't live through all that, nor have I ever learned much about it! I am a child of the kindly late 70s! I thought that feminism and the hippies had fixed everything and there was no more racism or sexism until I was 12 or 13! Reagan seemed like an ugly blot on the face of the universe, not like a normal part of America!
Someone recommend some good books for me on Vietnam and McCarthy. Was it really worse then? It might have been, but right now this country has a lot of potential to go straight to hell.
I must add just now as I cruise AlterNet -- how much I love Jim Hightower, that trash-talking Texan!
posted by badgerbag 3/31/2003 07:23:00 PM comment
dam rumor
Earlier this morning I read a rumor on debka.com that the Iraqi army had opened or breached the dam on the Tigris/Euphrates to flood out U.S. troops on the way to Baghdad. I can't find any other confirmation of this.
Can't believe now Powell is making it sound like we're about to invade Syria and Iran both. WTF.
Salam Pax, I think of you and all the people in your city, almost constantly, sick at heart to think of the destruction and suffering.
posted by badgerbag 3/31/2003 03:54:00 PM comment
Saturday, March 29, 2003
Lincoln's example of dissent
From There Will Absolutely Be No Dissension, by Stanley I. Kutler:
Challenging President James Polk's dubious response to alleged Mexican aggression against the United States, Congressman Lincoln voted to censure the president in 1848--while the war against Mexico still raged. He contended that the president's justification for war was "from beginning to end the sheerest deception." Polk would have "gone further with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him." Lincoln threw down the gauntlet: "Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. ... Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation." Lincoln more than suspected that the president was "deeply conscious of being in the wrong."
posted by badgerbag 3/29/2003 04:24:00 PM comment
Penalty
Corrupt sons of bitches... this makes my blood boil. You libertarians who think that big companies will just nicely regulate themselves because it's in their best interests, take note.
And I will be sending out my legions of grim toddlers on scooty toys, my paramilitary squirt gun squads, to go beat up these guys any day now. Oh, whoops, was that a terrorist threat? Better surveil me, Patriot dickweeds and energy company executives!The claims of evidence destruction and collusion were in addition to a broad array of documents alleging widespread use of now-infamous Enron-type strategies. Those tactics often involved filing false information to state electric grid operators or creating bogus congestion on power lines.
The California parties sought to bolster their case that suppliers understood they were engaging in prohibited behavior by providing a telephone transcript of a Reliant employee describing the conditions under which he would respect market rules.
"You know when we might follow the rules?" the employee says, according to the transcript. "If there's some sort of penalty."
-- Craig D. Rose, San Diego Union-Tribune
posted by badgerbag 3/29/2003 03:06:00 PM comment
Friday, March 28, 2003
Police state legislation underway
Okay, this is maybe even scarier. Take a look at the ACLU's analysis of the draft of the 2nd 'Patriot Act'. Most of it is scary. Keep in mind that if it passes, civil disobedience itself could be considered 'terrorism'.
How about this:Using an overbroad definition of terrorism that could cover tactics used by some protest groups as a predicate for criminal wiretapping and other surveillance...The draft bill extends the predicate even further, to cover offenses that are not defined as terrorism crimes under federal law, but do fit the definition of either international or domestic terrorism, i.e., they involve acts that are a violation of federal or state law, are committed with the intent of affecting government policy, and are potentially dangerous.Or here's a good one:Terminating court-approved limits on police spying designed to prevent McCarthy-style law enforcement persecution based on political or religious affiliation (Section 312). *** Police spying on political and religious activity is not a relic of some distant past. Recently, citizens in Denver, Colorado, were shocked to learn that the Denver Police Department had kept approximately 3,048 illegal files on peaceful protest groups including Amnesty International and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning American Friends Service Committee. The file on the American Friends Service Committee labeled them a ?criminal extremist? group. The files pre-dated September 11, 2001, and were not collected as a response to the terrorist attacks.
Also note section 107, "Further expanding pen register and trap and trace authority for intelligence surveillance of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents beyond terrorism investigations": this means your web surfing and email and addresses of people you email can be recorded, on the testimony of any government official who believes your information might be important to some ongoing investigation. You don't have to be suspected of terrorism by anyone to be tapped and made part of the CARNIVORE-style database to track our thought crimes.
Time to break out a glass of wine and pry my fingers off this computer screen, I can't take this anymore tonight... What good is it doing me, all this information I'm sucking up and all this outrage I'm building up? Does it do any good to be a seeing person in this country of the blind?
posted by badgerbag 3/28/2003 10:48:00 PM comment
World War lurches closer
Holy fuck, did I just hallucinate this, or did our government just threaten to invade more countries?
posted by badgerbag 3/28/2003 06:16:00 PM comment
bloated and pithy!
When the bug-eyed former senator and current New School prez got word that the New York Times was about to publish an article asserting his involvement in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians in 1969, he came forward a few days ahead of time to give his own version of the story?and was immediately applauded for his courage in facing up to his "painful" past despite the fact that 1) he?d sat on the story for 32 years and 2) the real pain was on the other side of the machine gun. Kerrey is the face of that bloated, self-centered, delusional America that somehow still manages to see itself as the victim in Vietnam - as though its pseudo-literary "loss of innocence" and, in this case, ruined political prospects, somehow compare to two million actual dead people and a mine-strewn countryside of ravaged moonscapes.
posted by badgerbag 3/28/2003 05:38:00 PM comment
The new Blogocratic party
Gary Hart has started a blog. Gossip is powerful; politicians know this. I've been thinking about how the mainstream media has started reporting on the blogosphere lately, and wondering how long it will take politicians and really famous people and big corporations to catch up with this information revolution.
Will Hart let it all hang out on this blog?"It's 2 am here in the Des Moines Hilton. My feet hurt and my face is frozen in a hideous permanent politician's grin. Can't relax! I don't want to be a pill popper like Shrub. All I can do is blog until sleep seems nigh. Should I call Donna? No, wait, that didn't go too well last time. Well, while I'm still awake, let me explain my 12-point economic plan for tax reform..."Well, maybe not quite like that.
Yo, Hart, can we please have a real Democrat and not a middle of the roader, for once? You always seemed like one of the intelligent ones. The blog thing seems like a good sign, I will be watching with interest.
posted by badgerbag 3/28/2003 05:07:00 PM comment
Back to Iraq
The independent reporter and blogger Christopher Allbritton is on his way, nearly to the border of Northern Iraq. I donated money and I encourage other people to support his efforts - paypal him !
For example, where else do we get this point of view:Aykut said that if I went out and asked the people on the street, half would say the United States committed 9/11 so it could go after Iraq. (Interestingly, almost half of Americans - 45 percent - believe Saddam was personally behind 9/11.) Turkey is also rippling with an anti-Bush sentiment. Turks like Americans and sometimes, even America. But more than 90 percent oppose this war and a similar percentage absolutely loathe George W. Bush. Aykut sheepishly admitted he hoped the war would go badly so Bush would lose in 2004. I made him feel bad when I reminded him that many Iraqis and Americans would die if it went too badly.Now, this is an interesting counterpoint to that Daniel Pepper article about talking to an Iraqi cab driver. Oddly, I have gotten several different spam-like versions of simliar stories. The Iraqi is always a cab driver, and always talking to a protester going home from a rally, but the other details vary. Highly suspicious. And while it is a valid argument to try to justify violating a country's sovereignity because of its human rights violations, anecdotes are not a good way to argue the case.
Another reason Pepper's article had me suspicious: Is it really likely that he'd go to Iraq for this reason, without the human rights argument ever occurring to him? Like he just never thought about it at all? And then one guy says, "Hey guess what, the Iraqi people don't want Hussein in power and do want Americans to come kick him out," and Pepper has a giant lightbulb-over-the-head epiphany that changes all his politics? Yah, right! If it's true, what a maroon!
posted by badgerbag 3/28/2003 11:21:00 AM comment
Thursday, March 27, 2003
lamps going out
Put a collar on me and call me mehitabel, but I love this guy archie:
I hope we all had a chance to look around last Wednesday and etch the world, as it existed then, into our collective memory. There is a very good chance that Wednesday was the last day of the world we grew up in. For the last week or so I have had a quote banging around in my head. As the British Parliment votes to go to war in 1914, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, is supposed to have commented to a friend, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." I know how he felt.
I usually hate that kind of hyperbole. But I think that in a historical sense, Wednesday really will go down as one of those days when the old world was so badly fractured that no amount of policy-reversal, counter-revolution, good will, healing, or forceful reaction will ever bring it back. It was possibly the August 1, 1914 or the July 14, 1789 of the twenty-first century. Wednesday was certainly more of an irreversible moment than 9/11 or the Supreme Court electing Bush, Jr. president. When Bush got to have his war on his terms, the diplomatic and international order of the last half of the twentieth century died. It is not the war itself that did the damage; it is the course by which the Busheviks brought us to the war that did the damage.
posted by badgerbag 3/27/2003 11:10:00 AM comment
new slogan
Salam Pax for President!
Of the U.S., silly. What were you thinking I meant?
Okay, we have to wait a few years for him to be old enough. And we must do some birth certificate faking, but hey, that's got to be easier than what happened in Nov. 2000. Hmmph.
posted by badgerbag 3/27/2003 08:45:00 AM comment
Card carrying member of ACLU
Here's a pretty good article on the FBI investigations of anyone who even vaguely might maybe be subversive and the arbitrariness of their application of secret police power.
posted by badgerbag 3/27/2003 08:31:00 AM comment
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
Americans cover up massacre in Afghanistan
Guardian article and clips from the film and here's the site for Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death
Must go hide head in sand for a while.
I should have stuck with reading about the different positions that sloths sleep in and the ethograms for domestic cats.
Will I be able to sleep tonight?
I can't even watch the video clips just now. Tomorrow in the daylight. It was like this when I was reading all that stuff from the Argentinian 'Dirty War'.
Again, I am cynical enough to think that this kind of horrific thing happens all the time; human evil is happening now, and now, and now... Yet I am able to function, all those times, knowing that. It's knowing the specific instances that keeps me awake all night.
posted by badgerbag 3/26/2003 10:53:00 PM comment
lesbian chimpanzees
Okay, my sister has me reading the ethogram codes for elephants now - it's all her fault. Ethograms are codes that you use, a sort of shorthand to write down descriptions of the behaviors of animals. I remember my friend Anna telling me about doing this for a class she took on primates, things like 'MT' for mount and 'PH' for panting hoot. She said she couldn't stop thinking about it at parties; WA, watch/stare, FOR, forage, SOL, sexual solicitation.
Anyway, as I looked at the chimp ethograms, I noticed this code:
Genital rub (GEN): Female rubs her genitalia against another female's genitaliaNice to know that chimpanzees are dykey enough to need a separate category for this behavior!
But will it get them arrested in Texas?
posted by badgerbag 3/26/2003 10:22:00 PM comment
And then crush you
I wish people who talk smack about the peace rallies and how they are either wild-eyed bomb-throwing socialists or unwitting dupes of 'terrorist groups' like A.N.S.W.E.R. (!) would read about the history of our own country and the FBI and COINTELPRO. And the phrase "police provocateur" didn't just come out of nowhere.
Over the years, FBI provocateurs have repeatedly urged and initiated violent acts, including forceful disruptions of meetings and demonstrations, attacks on police, bombings, and so on, following an old strategy of Tsarist police director TC Zubatov: "We shall provoke you to acts of terror and then crush you."
In 1989-91 when I was involved in student activism and attempts to build leftist coalitions, many of us were aware of this history. Its tactics were actually applied to me. Files on all of us were kept by the Young Conservatives of Texas, a particularly poisonous group of fanatics. Their members, or maybe even the FBI, got ahold of our permanent addresses and other confidential information on us through the university's official records. Anonymous letters that were extremely damaging to us were sent to our families. I was also simultaneously accused, by people in my own group, of being an infiltrator!
So all you peace activists out there keep this in mind and steel yourselves. I wasn't doing anything more radical than some kinda silly ACT UP and Queer Nation style guerrilla theater on campus. Ah, Lizzie Latex, where are you now?
No, wait, I take it back, there were all that research and those articles I wrote as part of a loosely associated group called "The Howlers" about Freeport McMoran, a big mining company and its atrocities in Louisiana and West Papua (Irian Jaya, Indonesia) and lies and ties to various conservative think tanks, foundations, and our university board of directors. I guess that pissed someone off. Jim Bob Moffett, for sure!
Most of the police in San Francisco don't seem hostile towards the protesters, except to the black block guys. But that could change. And once they start calling out the National Guard to help suppress these rallies it will for sure change.
I think the government underestimated the public reaction here as well as overseas and they weren't prepared. But they know what to do. Keep that in mind in the coming months as you read the press coverage of anti-war protests.
Keep in mind I have my reasons for being paranoid!
Okay, I got off the subject here, but take a look at this article speculating on how the worldwide peace rallies may have influenced the way the war is being fought.
posted by badgerbag 3/26/2003 08:22:00 PM comment
Sunday, March 23, 2003
Where the future is
After all my frantic writing and pursuing of news this weekend, a little quiet reading and absorbing. Reading that some might think depressing - but to me it's dipping into an abyss and coming out refreshed and whole and strong. Taking the plunge wholeheartedly renews; edging around nervously trying not to fall in is stressful.Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself - as I know you already have - in dark places, alone, and afraid.
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.
...
In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean - the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can't play doctor, only nurse; can't be warriors, only civilians; can't be chiefs, only indians.
...
I hope you are never victims, but I hope that you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Left-handed Commencement Address
I was happy when Octavio Paz finally won the Nobel; when Le Guin wins it I'll be a hundred times happier.
posted by badgerbag 3/23/2003 02:43:00 PM comment
mood
...O that I had never drank the wine nor eat the breadThe blues - an answer to despair. Blake knows how to sing it.
Of dark mortality nor cast my view into futurity nor turnd
My back darkning the present, clouding with a cloud,
And building arches high & cities turrets & towers & domes
Whose smoke destroyd the pleasant garden, & whose running Kennels
Chokd the bright rivers burdening with my Ships the angry deep...
posted by badgerbag 3/23/2003 09:56:00 AM comment
Saturday, March 22, 2003
birthday
It's M.'s birthday. We had cupcakes, tinkertoys, playdoh, fingerpaint, and stuffed animals. Official party next week, that should be more festive. He seemed very pleased and caught a little bit of the frenzy.
A bit hard to work myself up into cheerfulness for this sort of thing. I mean, unjust things happen all the time, and our country's government does a fair amount of them. I mean, ALL THE TIME. But this seems so much worse. Maybe it is that I do have a shred of nationalism. If I didn't, I would feel no shame for my country. Say, if my parents did something awful and evil, sure, it would be bad. But if they did it before the eyes of the entire world, how much worse is that?
Also perhaps that I value the idea of the social contract more than someone who grew up accepting it as a matter of course. Joshua Norton, you might understand this: If you grow up as something of a criminal sociopath, but then decide consciously NOT to be one, then law looks very important, and what is RIGHT looks even better. And international law looks pretty good to me. And my country just bitch-slapped the U.N., stole its lunch money, and fucked it up the ass.
I am edgy and depressed, still coughing and sick and exhausted. My feet are doing the thing where they swell up and ache. Phlegm still on Orange Alert despite all the antibiotics, steaming with head in sink, pounding on back, coughing, drinking of foul guifenesin syrup.
Oh, yeah, Hooray! I finished the paper on narrative theory and Green Eggs and Ham, thanks to jhk's taking over parent duty for the day. It's hard to say anything worth saying in only 5 pages. I have a million thoughts and good ideas - to support them in a methodical way is the hard part. My lovely epiphany of "the reader IS the narrator" was somewhat muted - I got really waffly over whether the reader was the narrator, or the implied author, or just something else totally outside of the whole framework that I began with. It was greatly satisfying to formally cite The Tawny Scrawny Lion along with Narrative Discourse Revisited.
Maybe later tonight I will post some juicy quotes from Conan, the Warrior. It must be seen to be believed, and even then, you won't believe it.
posted by badgerbag 3/22/2003 09:26:00 PM comment
The good guys
Well, this really lets us find out who the good guys are. Take a look at Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Now there is a brave guy speaking up in public. Take a look at what he said last year, "An Irresponsible Exercise in Political Chicanery". And his March 11th speech to the Senate, "America the Peacemaker becomes America the Warmonger". I am comforted that there are SOME politicians who are intelligent and sane. Also I want to include the full text of his article from today:
Today I weep for my country
Senator Robert C Byrd
I believe in the United States. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans have understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength.
But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.
Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.
We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat U.N. Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.
The case the Bush administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.
There is no credible information to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The twin towers fell because a world-wide terrorist group, al-Qaida, with cells in over 60 nations, struck at our wealth and our influence by turning our own planes into missiles, one of which would likely have slammed into the dome of the beautiful Capitol except for the brave sacrifice of the passengers on board.
The brutality seen on Sept 11 and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of Western values upon their cultures. That is what we fight. It is a force not confined to borders. It is a shadowy entity with many faces, many names, and many addresses.
But this administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon toward a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But he is the wrong villain. And this is the wrong war. We will drive Saddam Hussein from power. But the zeal of our friends to assist our global war on terrorism may have already taken flight.
The general unease surrounding this war is not just due to "orange alert." There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered. How long will we be in Iraq? What will be the cost? What is the ultimate mission? How great is the danger at home? A pall has fallen over the Senate chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.
What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?
Why can this president not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?
I along with millions of Americans pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, for the security of our homeland and that we may somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.
March 23, 2003
posted by badgerbag 3/22/2003 09:01:00 PM comment
philosophy of war
I like what Aziz has to say about the way this war is happening:I did not and do not support this war, because I reject the rationales given by the administration (I have yet to complete my writing on this, it''s coming), and because I object to the way it was pursued. I do think that all the desired outcomes which we will see - Iraqi liberation, removal of Hussein, etc. - could have been achieved without the attempted marginalization of the UN and the suspect foreign policy fantasies of the neocons as baggage, and I do believe that the way we got here will cause problems down the line.
posted by badgerbag 3/22/2003 04:36:00 PM comment
Friday, March 21, 2003
Bad Moms, sad moms, frothing at the mouth rabid moms
The Moms' Club has been lit up in flames here in RWC. Emails from j. taking a firm anti-war position and calling to action - explaining why it's important to her as a mom to take a stance. Then weird name-calling email from another mom, who got j.'s name wrong and thought she was E. from canada and freaks out about lack of patriotism; somehow hitler gets into it. E. writes back supporting j. I write with details of peace marches past and upcoming. S.R. writes a sarcastic and witty fake reply to friends (as we often do, giggling somewhat affectionately about the crazy club that can talk all day about how to clean the mineral stains off one's shower door, or what kind of green food to make for St. Patrick's Day)
Uh-oh, S.R. accidentally sent sarcastic response "Reply to all". More flames follow! Many moms write conciliatory messages along the lines of "Oh, can't we all just get along and agree that we disagree and get back to talking about our scrapbooking projects?" Also a few people saying "My friend/cousin/niece's husband is in the Army and we are praying for him and his family."
Rabid mom accuses us all of not caring about our children's security. HER daycare at her church has police and private security guard patrols since Sept. 11th. But godless commies like us don't care about our children's safety. And peace marches, she tells me in public and private mail, are all socialists and communists such as A.N.S.W.E.R..
Oh yah, riiight, your suburban baptist 'house of worship' nursery school is priority one for those bomb-throwing terrorists that are all over RW-fucking-City. And some rent a cop is going to save your child! No, I think the only 'dirty bombs' that will ever come near your little Zebediah, or Jordan, or whatever his name is, are the ones in his own diapers.
Hell, MY kid's preschool surgically implanted satellite-trackable
microchips under his skin! And thank God, Jesus, and Shrub that they installed that "thought crime detector" thingie in my skull! That way, whenever the godless pinko commie socialists like Gandhi beam me a message telling me to go to a nonviolent protest, I get zapped!
And I know fuck-all about ANSWER - though I know that lefty coalitions can squick me nearly as much as the right-wing ones. But I can tolerate a few wild eyed Maoists and their newspapers, no problem. As long as they aren't running the show. But I did just notice the abysmally horrible "history of the anti-war movement" slide show from the Washington Post. It seems to be on the same wavelength as Rabid Mom.
Moms' club head now talking about how their Board will vote on whether to allow political discussions on our email list. Ha. What are they going to do, spank me? Kick me out? Please, Moms' Club, make the list safe for our twice a week emails on craft projects and housecleaning! Of course having a nice scrapbook photo album is what's really crucial to parenthood - not icky man things like war, or politics, or how our country is incredibly fucked in the head.
posted by badgerbag 3/21/2003 11:25:00 PM comment
Said tells it like it is
This article, The Other America, by Edward Said, expresses many of the things I've been saying and thinking. I was happily reading this article and then it just keeps going and covering everything important, nationalism, culture, religion, history - pulling no punches and admirably coherent and comprehensive.
I could maybe print the whole article REALLY SMALL and make it a bumper sticker.
posted by badgerbag 3/21/2003 10:59:00 PM comment
You make me dizzy Miss L---
Am writing this from bed. I felt a bit lightheaded earlier today but then tonight this turned into full-out vertigo with the room spinning. This happened to me last year and I was throwing up - ended up in emergency room where they talked about nystagmus and shot me full of tranquilizers. It's happened a couple of times since then, but I just pop an anti-motion-sickness pill and go to bed for a while, which works okay. Maybe some kind of inner ear infection problem...? This time it's weirder. It started out as vertigo. I popped a meclizine. Vertigo better, but I still feel off-balance, so when I stand up or try to walk, I keep leaning to the left and fall over. It is very disturbing! The hypochondriac in me fears MS. The rational person goes "my inner ear is fucked up, it's just another small irritating periodic health problem".
6 months ago I was worrying about the weird cancerous lumps in my throat but those turned out to be something very common and very disgusting called tonsiloliths, where 'crypts' or pits in your tonsils trap some food, like, a piece of rice, and then gunk like tooth plaque forms around it until it's like a little rock in there, and eventually it gets infected and pustulent and bursts and you cough it up and go, "What the fuck just came out of my throat?". The ENT told me to gargle often, which, amazingly, works great. I also always wondered why people used to get their tonsils out, and why old people gargle. Now I know, and perhaps to your eternal dismay, you know too.
posted by badgerbag 3/21/2003 10:59:00 PM comment
Thursday, March 20, 2003
History quickly re-written
Well, the San Francisco Chronicle has now re-written that article on the day of protests. I wrote them an angry letter around 2pm and I'm sure that wasn't the only feedback they heard. And as the day went on they must have realized they couldn't get away with blatant lies - too many people actually witnessed the day's events, and with over 1000 people arrested they can't exactly claim the protest was only scattered groups of a few dozen people! Wish I had a copy of that first article.
What is interesting is looking at national media's reporting of protests in various cities. The SF paper reported something like 100 people gathering in Union Square in New York, but mentioned no other activity. The New York Times reported 5000 in Times Square, but didn't mention San Francisco. The BBC reported that Broadway was blocked all day. CNN slanted their article to emphasize San Fran: 350 protesters in Union Square in NYC, 2000 war supporters in Mississippi, and almost no protests in Washington:In Washington, dozens of activists temporarily shut down inbound lanes of a Potomac River crossing, holding up the morning commute. Outside the White House, about 50 stood in chilly rain and shouted, "No blood for oil!" "
It would be very interesting to track what numbers are reported for protests across the country, and who's reporting them. Weird that CNN seems the most balanced -- or were they just trying to make it look like "Of course those wackos in San Francisco were out in full force, but the rest of the country is normal"??? It didn't read that way to me.
I am so glad I went downtown today and so can feel that I saw some part of the reality of what happened.
It sounds like later in the afternoon, and maybe earlier in the morning, there were a lot of scary confrontations and arrests. There were some very, very organized and dedicated people out there - like the people who chained themselves together with metal pipe all the way across the intersection, so that they could not be separated except with blowtorches. Now that is effective passive resistance.
L. and I later went to the evening march in Palo Alto. I estimated about 500 people, maybe a bit more than that. Speeches, folk songs, assloads of very rich looking aging hippies ("Thank god Palo Alto has all these rich aging hippies! That's why there are all these good restaurants!" we commented.) These wise old veterans of the peace marches of days of yore didn't need our dorky "addresses of the senators" flyer. They've done that already. Stanford must have had its own on-campus protest, because there were barely any students.
M. has a fever. I may have to keep him home from preschool tomorrow. Will I ever finish my paper on Green Eggs and Ham?
posted by badgerbag 3/20/2003 09:57:00 PM comment
But officer, my pants always wiggle like that...
http://www.dailybreeze.com/content/bln/nmmonkey9.html
In entering his plea, Robert John Cusack, 45, of Palm Springs, acknowledged that he carried the monkeys, called lesser slow lorises, in the crotch area of his underwear on a Korean Air flight June 13.
posted by badgerbag 3/20/2003 04:17:00 PM comment
San Francisco shutdown
I was at the SF protest this morning. There were thousands of people - a whole section of Market Street was shut down, not just a few intersections. At the north end near Embarcadero there were hundreds of police with riot gear - some on dirt bikes (?!) and some on horses or motorcycles.
The SF Chronicle article makes it sound like a couple of hundred people in small groups making trouble. But it wasn't like that! There were a huge amount of people. Less than the tens of thousands at Saturday's march, but certainly in the thousands. It was a mass protest, not some "out of town" professional activists. Arrrgh!
The people getting arrested, at least the few I saw, appeared to be ready to be arrested, with wrists taped to protect their skin from the plastic handcuffs. I was not ready to be arrested and in fact was chicken, chicken, chicken. Plus we had to be back by 2 to pick up M. from school.
We handed out flyers that were a little bit dorky - at least I felt dorky and establishment compared to the black flag crowd - anyway, flyers that just had the addresses for senators and the white house and advising people to send snail mail letters against the war. I actually like the extremists and the guerrilla theater people and have done a fair amount of that stuff - it is important. But the middle and the moderates need to be seen too. The security guards, liquor store clerks, and street vendors that I gave the "write your government" flyer were about 95% thanking me very politely and seemed actually surprised to be noticed in any capacity other than "gimme my pack of cigarettes and my change and don't chat".
My absolute least favorite thing about any kind of activism or rally is the dumb chants. There is no way I am going to shout "Arab Americans under attack, what do we do, act up fight back!", pep rally style, over and over. How insulting to the intelligence! Speeches, well, okay, but remember in your speeches you're mostly preaching to the converted, so don't be all freaking strident about it as if you were haranguing Jerry Falwell, the Shrub, and the devil himself.
And let me just say again that the VAST MAJORITY of people downtown were walking peacefully on the sidewalk with anti-war tshirts, posters or flyers, not blocking traffic. Half of Civic Center plaza was taken up with Buddhists sitting on the grass and meditating.
posted by badgerbag 3/20/2003 03:26:00 PM comment
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
I needed that
Ah, http://www.whitehouse.org.
posted by badgerbag 3/19/2003 09:14:00 PM comment
Or not to panic
I am keeping this firmly in mind:
The September 11th attacks have dramatically illustrated that public reactions to disasters vary enormously compared with the "objective" destruction, as measured by loss-of-life and property. America and the world are still reeling from attacks that killed only 3000 people, compared with the estimated 20,000 victims earlier in 2001 from an earthquake in India, which barely registered in western news media after the first day. Media coverage of anthrax attacks, which killed half-a-dozen people later in the autumn of 2001, overwhelmed efforts by the Centers for Disease Control to prevent (by publicizing vaccination programs for the susceptible) many of the over 30,000 deaths that would occur from the flu during the ensuing winter.
--- (NASA article on likelihood of meteor impacts)
posted by badgerbag 3/19/2003 03:16:00 PM comment
Is that your Fifth Column or are you just happy to see me?
And what can I say about David Horowitz and these other jingos who would probably put me up against the wall and shoot me, harmless as I am? According to them I'm a traitor and a fifth columnist. Or at best, an unwitting dupe of the treasonable conspirators who are the "so-called peace movement".
In college when I read all that stuff about the Dirty War in Argentina I used to have nightmares every night. I did a little too much reading about the psychology of how easy it is to train people to become torturers. My nightmare was always the same - a knock on the door in the night and then the door broken down.
Is this what our country will come to? Wait, what am I saying, our country has already come to that point, detaining people with no regard to national or international law.
What if you personally were accused of being a traitor? What if someone you knew was arrested and taken away? What would you do, shut up and keep your head down? Or try to do something even at risk to yourself and your family? Where will you stand? I know where I've stood despite my awareness of various forms of injustice - on the "keep head down, nose clean" side. How much is too much? When is the line crossed? I wondered if I were being foolish just by going to an anti-war rally - I have bad asthma and tear gas would probably kill me and I am also toting a little kid who has no choice whether to be there or not. Even this very minor risk had me thinking, had me ready to stay home from fear. I think my mom would consider my taking M. to an anti-war march as practially criminal.
How will I face even more risk and fear?
In other news, I have no cavities, but dislike my new dentist. I grocery shopped, tried to clean the house for the landlord's mortgage refinance appraisal, watched 'Spirited Away', and worked on my paper on the narrative structure of role-playing games.
As my life happens I feel like I am walking around in a fragile dream world. How can everything continue to appear so normal and safe?
Could I ever be as brave as Salam? Here I can say whatever I want and be 99.9% sure I am at no risk from the state or police. At least this month. Maybe after they arrest all the anarchy boys in black bandanas and Paul Krugman, I'll have to worry. Salam, you are braver than I'll ever be.
I have always thought of my 30 years of peaceful, privileged, white suburban existence as a historical fluke built on a house of cards.
posted by badgerbag 3/19/2003 10:56:00 AM comment
Afraid to know what side you're on
I have been speaking out frankly about being anti-war to anyone and everyone I know. Everyone who agrees with me is so depressed about it they don't even know what to say. The cynical are seeing their worst fears about the country confirmed.
I notice mostly a deafening silence though. I think people are afraid to appear to be taking sides. They are afraid their disagreements with friends and family will run so deep, it will become impossible to maintain normal relationships.
The people I haven't discussed this with are my parents. Since the disastrous election I haven't discussed anything political with them, because I can't bear to hear them sounding like ignorant hicks and bigots. They know what I think, and I have a feeling I know what they'll say. My mom will parrot whatever has been on TV or in the conservative Texas newspapers, and talk about how she likes Bush. I will want to sink into the floor with shame, and wonder if it's possible that we share the same DNA.
My dad will harrumph and say that, like Vietnam, our government has no right to be there and the world is crazy, but it is still his duty to back up his country, right or wrong. Also he usually thinks that anything that stabilizes a country enough for the appearance of order, and be good for American businesses to go in and rip money out of the country, is good. So for example, he supported Fujimori in Peru.
This makes me nuts. How can he be so smart and so blind? It's not like I love the fucking Shining Path either. But having faith in businesses as "stabilizing" is very short-sighted. Sucking the wealth out of some country into the vaults of giant multinationals would seem to destabilize things in the long run! And how could my dad support Fujimori, who shut down Congress and the Supreme Court, and then be against Chávez because he did the same basic thing? (Not like I love Chávez either!)
Anyway, I'll bring it up, like an idiot, and see if my predictions are right.
posted by badgerbag 3/19/2003 10:04:00 AM comment
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Taking liberties
This affirmation of civil liberties by New Mexico is a sign of the kind of side-taking that's going to be happening here.
posted by badgerbag 3/16/2003 11:39:00 PM comment
war
Looks like war tomorrow. I am sick to my stomach at it all. Despair.
posted by badgerbag 3/16/2003 11:33:00 PM comment
A snowy egret isn't the only thing with yellow legs
Funny - my sister is reading to M. again from her bird identification book. It makes my day hearing my 3 year old lisping "Dat's a gwebe! Dat's a gweater egwet! It goes squawk."
His nursery school teachers have been commenting on his knowledge of different kinds of animals - if only they knew that he knows what a cinnamon teal is...
Another Bad Moms' Club incident after a morning of grueling potty training. I'm talking hours of sitting on the bathroom floor and when we weren't sitting in there, we were trying to persuade M. to go in there, or comforting him when he wet his pants for the bazillionth time. "I can see that you have to go potty... Let's go to the bathroom!" "No! I no hafta go potty. Go away!" - says M., desperately crossing legs, clutching entire crotch, eyes bugging out with effort - then 2 minutes later, wets pants with cataclysmic force and starts to cry)
But none of that is the Bad part - that's when I was trying to explain how to wipe and get him to do it himself, and finally said, "More than two shakes and it's a wank!" I started giggling insanely.
"I'm going to hell!" I yell to jhk. "I'm losing it! It's your turn!"
He is much more patient with this whole thing.
Tomorrow, I send M. to preschool with like 6 pairs of pants.
What gets me is the way that everyone in our parents' generation acts like we are idiots. "YOU were totally toilet trained when you were one and a half," my mom claims. In-laws also acting like we have missed the boat. Can this be? What did they do, use cattle prods on us? Already I feel like a monster for deliberately saying things "I bet you're REALLY EMBARRASSED that you WET YOUR PANTS LIKE A BABY." It seems so rude and so cruel. I just started saying things like that, this week, and don't know if it's a big mistake or not. But then I remember that hegemony is when you have the gun inside your head. Eh? And in this case that gun is basically shame... I do make sure to follow up with "We love you and want to help you keep your pants dry." Or if he manages, "I bet you must feel really proud".
Did our parents just forget that it was difficult? Are all the other parents I know also going through minor hell?
At some point last year I did realize that many people SAY "Oh my kid learned in three days!" but if you dig a little deeper, there are a lot of exceptions.
People seem to fall into two camps. One thinks it's ridiculous that anyone isn't potty trained by age 2. The other says "No pressure on the kid at all, no kid goes to kindergarten in diapers, they'll do it when they're ready." I was squarely in the laissez-faire camp until recently, when it seemed like everyone I know started giving me grief about it.
posted by badgerbag 3/16/2003 10:32:00 PM comment
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posted by badgerbag 3/16/2003 07:31:00 PM comment
Drop in the bucket
We went to the anti-war march in San Francisco on Sunday. I bumped into several people I know. It was oddly comforting to see the thousands of people who don't want this war to happen. Yet I still feel hopeless and helpless to do anything.
The streets were crowded and an amazing number of people thronged by us. An hour or two later we ended up in Jefferson Park and then took a short cut back to U.N. Plaza. People were still gathering and setting out from the starting point of the march. So even the SF Chronicle's aerial photo and head count would be the low estimate of numbers - new people kept showing up.
M. slept through most of it in the stroller. I wonder if he will remember it? Or the next one we go to? This rally felt remarkably safe compared to the ones I remember from 1991, from the Gulf War. Then, I always felt like I was about to be arrested or tear gassed or some cop in riot gear was about to pounce on me and administer those plastic handcuffs that look like cable ties and kick my teeth in. This time the cops were almost benevolently smiling upon us - that is, when they weren't videotaping us, and assuming that 'us' doesn't include what I always call 'the anarchy boys'.
My friend J. just wrote an article essentially asking "And at what point do we move out of this country?" Good question. And "how long will it take before it's like the Great Depression?"
If you are thinking about the lack of independent media coverage of the war, take a look at the back to iraq site. Christopher Allbritton is going not as an "embedded" reporter but as an independent agent, funded by people who read his blog and Paypal him. I contributed... it seems like the least I can do since I'm not willing to go risk my own life for my ideals.
posted by badgerbag 3/16/2003 04:05:00 PM comment
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Reading Seneca. Also some lame mystery novel with Jane Austen as the detective. Also "Redburn", a funny and squalid Melville book, good if you like stories about cabin boys and words like "crinkum-crankum". Why do people talk such crap about Melville - he writes so trashily and is often really hilarious.
I spent all morning trying to write a serious academic paper on heterodiagetic vs. homodiagetic narratives and "Green Eggs and Ham". Managed to confuse myself greatly, but wrote a few pages of rambling stuff.
I can't manage to leave myself out of it with proper academic formality; instead having fascinating long thoughts about how cool it would be to have various comic book artists re-illustrate the story in gritty film noir style, so that when Sam-I-am finally persuades the other creature to taste the G.E.&H., it is because he is holding a gun to his head. I leave the fox, the box, the dark, and the goat to your imagination.
Then instead of getting serious I took jim's idea about Levi-Strauss and the raw and the cooked, and just ran with it. The eggs are sunny-side up; ham is not actually cooked but smoked; the green-ness is partly vegetal, partly raw; Sam-I-am and the other guy are not human, not any recognizable animal. Smack in the middle between nature and culture!
After hours and pages of rambling crap about narrators, focalization, and implied authors, I had this happy feeling of a lightning flash of genius, realizing that in G.E.&H., the reader IS the narrator. "The Reader IS the Narrator!!!!!" I write excitedly in my notebook. About 2 seconds later the genius part of it eluded me. Paper still unwritten. Still not king.
I'm too muddle headed to make a good academic. Fortunately just found out that for my masters I can just do some giant translation and small essay - thank god, that means I can graduate. Maybe I could do the other 2 versions of Florentino and then the part of Martín Fierro that would go with them.
Back to Seneca, always comforting.
posted by badgerbag 3/13/2003 09:59:00 PM comment
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
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posted by badgerbag 3/12/2003 06:43:00 PM comment
Danger, books!
"In a letter to an inquiring senator, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Bryant said Americans who borrow or buy books surrender their right of privacy. "
Am wondering which books send up the red flag to the FBI.
Supposedly it doesn't work that way: when the govt. decides you're a terrorist, they track your reading to look for clues as to what your nefarious plans might be.
"Cropdusting in Florida Made Easy" or maybe "Aerial Views of New York City's Historic Buildings"? "A Traveler's Guide to Vegas Strip Clubs"? Or what? "How to Launder Money for Fun and Profit" ? The latest John le Carre? Lemony Snicket?
Back in 1988 or so when I worked in a library at the University of Texas, the FBI actually did come sniffing around to ask for records. The head of the library refused.
I am unclear what our actual constitutional rights are.
Spent an idyllic afternoon with M, e., s., and J. in the sandbox and wading pool. We also painted and made sand-and-flower ice cream cones and sold them for shell "money" to each other. Otter pops were eaten. Underwear was shown off by the newly almost-potty-trained.
I taught e. how to single crochet a piece of yarn with her fingers... she then sewed it into a basket. She learned at lightning speed. I like passing down my few girly skills; two kinds of finger-crochet, how to sing "Miss Susie", and how to do the "missing thumb" trick.
posted by badgerbag 3/12/2003 06:43:00 PM comment
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
The cultural politics of semiotic sea monkeys
Bored in class for 1st time since 1991. This whole teaching technique of "everyone go around the room and 'respond' to the book" is not working out for me. It was okay the first couple of times, but 6 classes later it's like being forced to play an 'icebreaker' party game for days on end.
By now I can predict what everyone will say: the one guy who knows nothing except about Nazi Germany will talk about Germany or Ayn Rand even though it's a Latin American Studies class; either the Bulgarian girl or the Turkish girl will say something really intelligent but no one listens and the prof cuts her off; the sorority girl from Dallas will be enthusiastic and say something feminist with some light semiotics thrown in; our steely jawed prof will call whatever the sorority girl says "very provocative" while grinning like a pirahna at her barely restrained boobs.
(I love the sorority girl. She'll say something blindingly abstract and academic, but with a giant grin and the golden aura of Cameron Diaz in the Charlie's Angels movie saying "I LOVE tickets!" And her tight dresses with the buttons about to burst off! She makes me miss Texas a little.)
Half these people couldn't even point Uruguay out on a map - I don't want to hear them debate about stuff they're ignorant about... At least the books are good. I even suspect the prof might have interesting knowledge to impart, but he doesn't unclench his ass and let it out. Instead we get this weird dumbed-down everyone participate thing, where prof frames discourse annoyingly narrowly and then sits back to watch us babble like we're his own personal tank full of semi-literate talking sea monkeys.
No one even seems to know jack about history. How can you drivel on and on about mestizaje or who in the book is white or indio or creating culture from the margins without knowing the history of the country with said mestizos? Damn! Maybe it's just the bronchitis.
Still not king.
posted by badgerbag 3/11/2003 12:43:00 PM comment
Thanks for comments, y'all.
No she didn't pay me to do this, it is my project....
Ergh! I did G.H.'s book the same way and don't regret it. Otherwise it would never get published and no one would see it because G.H. periodially burns his poems.... freakazoid!
Am attempting to emulate poet/translator/publisher heroes, W.S. Merwin, Cid Corman, and Robert Bly, idealistic magazine starters and publishers of their own and other people's books in small cheap booklet form. Web sites don't leave permanent artifacts though they get more readers short-term. Books are better.
posted by badgerbag 3/11/2003 12:43:00 PM comment
Monday, March 10, 2003
On the Poetry Front
In other news I am upset about an email from e., a poet whose book I reprinted. She had been selling the expensive hand made letterpress copies for something like 60 bucks each. I liked the work and told her I could print it Xeroxed but with a nice paper jacket, for maybe 2 bucks a copy. (I had done this for my friend Greg's book and Rhiannon's and some of my own stuff). Anyway, the books all look really nice, I might have spent more like 3 bucks a copy on them though, and it was a lot of work to fold and staple (or in this last case, sew) the bindings and glue on labels. The upshot of it is, I have only made maybe 50 copies of e.'s book. the rest are languishing in a cardboard box, half-finished: folded and stapled but without their jackets or labels, and they've been there since, what, last May?
So she's pissed and says she feels disrespected and betrayed and then questioned how many books I had made and sold - I think implying that I'm making a profit and hiding it.
This is so nuts, I can't even express it.
I see my efforts to publish other people's poetry, as well as my work in translating poetry, as noble - noble and largely thankless. Any credit I get from doing it is merely a nod to my good taste.
And money? Ha! I haven't made back even the money I spent on fancy paper. Not even considering the time I spent to type all her poems, do the layout, sneak the copies from my unnamed source of free copies, go buy the fancy paper, cut it, fold it, etc. etc. etc.
Yes, I am a flake, and haven't finished the project, but the money thing is just crazy. I have been crying all night about it, I am a bit embarrassed to admit.
And another thing, the letterpress that ripped e. off with the first edition, to the tune of I think 7000 bucks, for 100 copies, I wish them heartily in hell. I didn't tell e. that she had been ripped off, out of an attempt at tact.
Is this what I have to look forward to in life? Surrounded by egotistical jerkwater poets who suck the lifeblood out of other poets, insulting them and then charging them a thousand bucks to come to some workshop, and then, I spend my own money in promoting people who are the Good Poets, whose work is neglected by the local magazines, and then get this response. Damn...
And then what will happen with my other ambitions, which are partly noble (Me, the chivalrous knight rescuing J. de Ibarb from literary oblivion) and partly just ambitious (Me, the skilled translator and poet whose work gets published) -- what will happen there?
I can tell you what. I'll spend two MORE years of my life translating her and then the government of Uruguay will try to charge me like 10,000 bucks for the rights to publish it in English.
Despite feeling a little bitter tonight it's clear I'm not going to develop a hard heart about any of this. As always, will continue idealistic foolishness, periodic weeping. Badgerbag out.
posted by badgerbag 3/10/2003 10:38:00 PM comment
Still haven't found the text of the whole speech, but there are many more articles. A couple of sources, like the Washington Post, downplay the speech, but most agree that Bush Sr. is appalled at Shrub's bad diplomacy.
Maureen Dowd's take on it is that Cheney proposed this whole mad scheme in 1992 when he was Defense Secretary, but Bush Sr. rejected it.
posted by badgerbag 3/10/2003 10:38:00 PM comment
Never thought I'd praise Bush Sr.
I never thought I'd have much good to say about Bush Sr. but take a look at this article about his public speech about the importance of not ignoring the U.N..
He even said he understands why Shrub's opponents would not have faith in the "case against Saddam Hussein" (presumably, he is not convinced that we need to fight this war for these reasons). Am going asurf (new word?) now to find the text of Bush Sr.'s speech at Tufts University.
posted by badgerbag 3/10/2003 10:39:00 AM comment
Letters to senators and underwear fetishism
Spent the weekend hawking up orange gunk and writing anti-war letters to politicians.
I read Lies My Teacher Told Me and enjoyed it. From there branched out to watch A Class Divided, a documentary about a exercise of dividing a classroom by eye color. I also hauled out my "Oxford History of the American People" to see how Samuel Eliot Morison talked about native americans and disease epidemics. Alas. Morison's language is so deeply racist I was shocked (both at him and at myself for not really noticing this in earlier readings). I still love his books - Admiral of the Ocean Sea, and the one about Champlain, and the European Discovery of America...
Also obsessively surfed news from all over the world. All U.S. news sources refer to "the war" as if it had already started. Other countries don't.
I am so sick... it is frustrating. I can walk around and do stuff but it's exhausting and my chest hurts from coughing.
I did not do homework, I did not write my paper, I did not contribute much to M.'s "toilet learning" process. His new school doesn't call it "potty training", of course. I suppose "training" is demeaning... Usually "learning" in the higher sense doesn't involve shitting into a pot and getting an M & M as a reward, but hey, if they want to delude themselves that talking about how big boys wear dry underwear isn't intrinsically demeaning to all involved, fine.
"No wanna wear unnerwear. Want a diaper. (Throws underwear across room)"
"Hmm, but I have underwear. See? I have red underwear." (I flash my boxers)
"Oh, wow, what cool underwear you have!" says jhk. "Guess what?"
"What?"
"I have underwear too! It has penguins on it!"
"That's so cool! You don't have diapers!"
"Because I'm not a baby!"
"Can I see your cool underwear?"
"Yes, look, see? My underwear has penguins on it."
"Oh, cool! Wow! Underwear is great! "
"All the cool people wear underwear!"
"I wish I had some cool Blues Clues underwear with pawprints on it! "
(M., jumping on bandwagon finally:) "Say please I wanna blues clues unnerwear wif a pawprint..."
posted by badgerbag 3/10/2003 10:39:00 AM comment
Friday, March 07, 2003
red balloons
Woke up from my nap with the song "99 Luftballons" going through my head.
This made me think of my old suitemate "jack" at the 21st St. Co-op. When Jack's door closed and you heard the Nina Hagen start to blast, you knew what was about to happen. 3 minutes or so later the song would stop and Jack would nip into the bathroom clad only in a towel. You'd hear him wash up in the sink and then he'd come out, get dressed and go to class.
Always the same song!
Next to his bed he had a sleazy poster of Lita Ford in her underwear, sideways so it looked like she was lying next to him.
Man, why must I remember things like this?
posted by badgerbag 3/07/2003 10:55:00 AM comment
day of sloth
Another day of slothful illness coming up. Phlegm now orange. I think I must get the fastest sinus infections in the west.
I need a book!
Yesterday and the day before I read all of Kristin Lavransdatter. (For like the 3rd time...) There are still parts where I have no idea what just happened. They'll have some heartrending cryptic conversation and then refer to some political events of 1316... "You mean...?" "Yes, Sigurd Thorbarfsson's huscarl Assmundi Assliefsson threw in his lot with the Haaverssons." "How could you tell me this, knowing what you know about my past and my kin, shaming me before our guests, not remembering it was you who led me into sin so long ago..." [ale quaffed, petulant fits thrown, swords drawn, blood spilled]
I need to make a bunch of geneological charts for this book and good explanations of what's going on, with a timeline. It needs footnotes!
The cheesy pseudo-medieval English of this translation is also making me go around saying things like "it is not meet that you should ask this of me, husband, and I a seemly, notable housewife". (Lies!)
Have strange urge to go weave something, or churn, or polish my silver goblets, or maybe go screw a husky huscarl in the storage room loft and then whip myself while praying to the virgin mary.
All silliness aside, it's a great book and I think of it as being like Middlemarch, one of the few actual books for grownups. But it's way better than Middlemarch.
posted by badgerbag 3/07/2003 10:54:00 AM comment
Thursday, March 06, 2003
Have rapidly developed a cold. Sinuses have backed up into ears - hideously painful.
jhk is making me watch the "Cartoon Crazies: War" DVD of old Tex Avery and Daffy Duck World War II cartoons. Okay, this is NOT cheering me up. The one with the "Win the War Express" versus the "Defeatist Limited Hot Air Special" trains was especially eerie.
As was the jingle:
"Get behind the president,
the president, the president!
Get behind the president,
if you want to win the war!"
Defeatists and wreckers, beware.
Am sick at heart.
Will make a round of futile calls to senators and congresspeople tomorrow...
Barbara Boxer 202-224-3553
Diane Feinstein 202-224-3841
Anna Eshoo 202-225-8104
posted by badgerbag 3/06/2003 11:05:00 PM comment
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
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posted by badgerbag 3/05/2003 04:15:00 PM comment
And one more thing, how about that guy who, because he was wearing a "Give Peace a Chance" t-shirt, was told to leave the Crossgates Mall in New York and then was arrested? Come on! Arrested for wearing a "peace" t-shirt.
This really yanked my chain. If you want to call this mall and complain, their office number is (518) 869-9565 and be sure to tell them you will never shop at their mall again. (It's not like they had to know I live in California...) The Guilderland Police Department, who made the arrest: (518)356-1980.
posted by badgerbag 3/05/2003 04:14:00 PM comment
Spy games
And does no newspaper in the U.S. care about this embarrassing spy game ?
posted by badgerbag 3/05/2003 03:58:00 PM comment
Gathering storm
I hestitate to say anything about the world and politics but...
Every day I look at the news and my stomach just sinks even further into a queasy knot. Why does the world have to go nuts just now? I read plenty of history, and figured world war had a good chance of happening during my lifetime. For years and years during any crisis or war I predict doom and world war. This time it looks like it's going to be true.
My other prediction, or observation, is that this country is becoming more and more similar to Latin American countries: rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, erosion of civil liberties, corruption getting more corrupt and more accepted as 'just the way things are'.
When they start shooting journalists and poets in this country, then I'll know my prediction has come true. Till then, let's all blog away blithely.
But why shoot 'em when you can frame them and send them to jail? Our journalists won't be up against the wall - for one, they're mostly corporate shills or cowards. The ones that aren't can easily have a bag of pot planted on them and whoosh, off to jail to join the aging Black Panthers and communists who were put away in the 70s.
Reading my translation mailing list makes me feel especially bitter and embarrassed to be part of this crappy hypocritical bible thumping bigoted war mongering corporate bloodsucking world-exploiting country.
posted by badgerbag 3/05/2003 03:58:00 PM comment
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Another quick introvert link
introvert vs. extravert
Introverts are naturally cautious, reserved and reflective. They need time and space to themselves. They prefer to work with people individually rather than in large groups. Introverts tend not to learn by trial and error. They will observe, take in information and perhaps ask a few clarifying questions. They will not frequently interrupt with questions and comments as most extraverts are prone to do. Introverts need time to consider and reflect before answering questions or engaging in activities. Introversion is perfectly normal and does not need "curing". We should not try to turn introverts into extraverts.
Well said!
posted by badgerbag 3/04/2003 11:37:00 PM comment
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posted by badgerbag 3/04/2003 11:37:00 PM comment
Introversion and gender and kids, extended bitch session
I keep thinking about this article on understanding introverts (relating to L., to myself a little in certain moods, and now to M.
He may be only 3 but he is already taking flak for being an introvert. "Oh, he's shy? Don't worry, he'll get over it." And I'm thinking, Okay, why would he WANT to talk to you, total stranger who is probably boring?
Lately he has been making his stuffed animals shake hands. They meet, say hi, say their names, make a polite comment on their own or the other's appearance, shake hands, say "Let's be friends", propose a game, and go off to play it together. He's never done any of this in talking to a strange person. I think of him as practicing for that moment someday when he meets someone he actually likes.
And that person would probably be someone who doesn't fucking get all in his face within 3 seconds of their first meeting.
Really, this is irritating to see, can't he just be accepted for how he is?
People are also annoying when they try to establish him in some proper gender context. Like they try to come up with ways that he is being "boyish" as a sort of compliment or comfort to me, as if I might be worrying about his lack of boyishness.
This is so pathological. They can be 2 month old squirming blobs but everyone is concerned that they are seen as the right gender. Must dress them in blue, or pierce their ears, or whatever. But more than the clothing color, must always talk about them as boys, as boyish, or as girls, and girlish.
One of my most unfavorite things is to be stuck talking to some dumbass wench who when I admit to having a kid, says instantly, "Boy or girl?" And they're not just saying it so they know what pronoun to use. They go on to say "Oh, a boy! He sure must be a handful!" Or "I had brothers, I know what boys are like! " The assumption seems to be that we share a rueful acceptance of these little wild beast-like male creatures, who are like tiny godzillas on missions to destroy everything, throw footballs in the house, and hit people. "Oh, I have it easy, I have girls" as if girls, even when toddlers, could safely be assumed to be sweet and docile. They think they are being un-sexist because they buy their girl some trucks and helicopters and let it wear jeans, but they still talk like this.
Or even worse, if I don't escape in time, this conversation turns into something like this: "Oh, well, but, of course when they're teenagers, it's easier to have a boy" And why is this the case, you might ask, in the dumb suburban cow-land of parenthood ? Apparently because you must spend a lot of energy controlling the teenage girl's sexuality, while the boy can be given a car and turned loose on the world.
In these situations, which somehow happen almost every day, I barely manage to control myself. People say this stuff - I'm talking about total strangers at the park or cafe or doctor's office - right in front of my kid. I might just say "Hmmm...", make a funny face, and try to slip away. Or I might say something a bit noncommittal about how I really don't think of things that way and change the subject. If at all pressed, of course, I will start ranting.
My husband never seems to be accosted by people who bludgeon him with these weird attempts at reifying gender roles... Maybe because I look funny, people are trying to suss out if I am really freaky in how I raise my kid ? Maybe they're trying to help me because they can see I don't look like a proper girl? Maybe moms just always talk about this stuff?
What would actually be a comforting compliment to me is "how free of dumb gender categories you have raised your kid to be, congratulations!"
If he grows up to play football and be really macho, fine.
m.m.m. my ex husband at some point during our marriage said that he worried that if I did have a boy, I would raise it to hate itself or hate its own masculinity or I would raise it to be gay. This was such a horrible accusation - if he really thought this, why would he marry me?
Except for the being gay part - to that, I told him he was partly right, I would certainly try to raise my kids to think gay straight or bi was just fine.
Actually that whole accusation was pretty hilarious coming from someone (him) who was often mistaken for a total flaming queer. The pink embroidered vests? The constant nelly-like talking about gourmet cooking? Come on!
But back to the random Stepford wives-on-the-street who assure me that someday, my little M. will love soccer, yell loudly, break things, and become obsessed with construction machines and fire engines.
The funny thing, as I get to know them --- And in moments of lonely desperation to have someone to talk to while nursing, or just out of the sick curiosity of the aspiring novelist in search of character, I have gotten to know them --- I realize that they actually DO hate men, or think of them as a different species. They talk about their husbands like they are idiots or infants and not wholly human. In that same slightly rueful yet still proud and loving tone. "Well MY husband never remembers to... " "You wouldn't believe what MY husband did when he was trying to help me by giving little Sonora a bath!"
The sort of person who, earlier in life, would have gone around saying how they could never fall in love with a guy they thought of as a friend... Oh no, they only "fall in love" with the Aliens.
I will never understand it...
I wish there wasn't any such thing as gender, but I guess if there wasn't we'd all still go around acting like idiots because some of us are star bellied sneeches or whatever.
posted by badgerbag 3/04/2003 11:19:00 PM comment
Sunday, March 02, 2003
Peeps
Not the technicolor marshmellow chickens - but The Pepys Diary, a great idea and great effort. It's not just the entry a day thing, it's the fabulous annotation and hyperlinking of all the people's names - it's just brilliant and it's fabulous scholarship. This is the fulfillment of my fantasy of what the web should be.
I should do the same thing with something like "The Faerie Queene". But I am leaning more towards keeping a record of my translation efforts and problems.
Or Patrick O'Brian. That would be my dream job - making the online annotated thingie of the Master and Commander series.
Or the Mahabharata - anyone remember my "Hindu myth" database, started and abandoned - it would be a good project - just so that when reading the Mahabharata you can find out quickly who the epithets refer to - things like "wielder of Sudarsana".
Why, why, why, can't I have infinite time to dabble in everything and learn everything and read everything?
posted by badgerbag 3/02/2003 10:15:00 AM comment
Saturday, March 01, 2003
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posted by badgerbag 3/01/2003 11:32:00 PM comment
Donner Party - the sim game
Could I write a simulation game where you get to play the members of the Donner Party?
Catch me going on a long journey over the mountains without knowing how to make snowshoes or a rabbit snare or what plants are edible. Dumbasses!
Am reading the C.F. McGlashan book about the Donner Party - it avoids many gory details and romanticizes nearly everything that happens.
"In Argentina babies are starting to starve to death," I tell jhk pleasantly at dinner, eating my chicken tikka masala with the book propped up in front of me.
"Okay..." he says.
"LIke, getting kwashoriwhatever and beri-beri. And these Donners - what idiots!"
"Well, they wouldn't have written the book about a bunch of non-idiots because they wouldn't have starved."
Me: Well, you can feel secure, because when the big economic crash comes I will know all the edible plants and plus I can start a business selling compost and earthworms because everyone will have to make their yards into gardens or starve and I also know how to leach the tannins out of acorns."
jhk: [incredulousness]
Me: Hey, Argentina was really middle class too! And now look! They didn't think it could happen!
posted by badgerbag 3/01/2003 11:32:00 PM comment
Sandbox
With 6 pieces of wood and 16 nails I have made a fabulous sturdy sandbox! A work of genius!
It is made of 2 x 8s, a box frame and then two pieces nailed across the frame to make bench seats. M. played in it for a couple of hours and had to be dragged inside for a nap.
I just keep gazing at it proudly through the window. Yay!
posted by badgerbag 3/01/2003 03:19:00 PM comment
the funniest role playing game ever!
Nicotine Girls
Characters are all teenage girls, motivated by hope and fear, and with various powers at their command: "Sex, Money, Cry, and Smoke".
posted by badgerbag 3/01/2003 03:19:00 PM comment
