Badger bag - messy, surly, full of books

"She has been called, and rightly so, the Boswell of the Octopus."
Dastardly Dan needs help, he is back from the "big house" and if you can spare a little cash for him give it to me and I will pass it on.

Monday, June 30, 2003

Charlie's Angels movie was fucking great.

posted by badgerbag 6/30/2003 06:18:00 PM comment

Saturday, June 28, 2003

gay little scooter

When the Segway came out I was quick to mock it and to laugh at the Onion's "gay little scooter" infographic. I mean, like we need more motivation not to walk around? Like I'm not fat enough and must go even further out of shape? This dorkomatic object is going to transform all civilization - NOT. And 12 miles an hour? Wimpy. Why not just ride a bike? Sarcasm won out over my basic technophilia.

Today I got to ride on one for about a minute and it was incredibly fun. It was the closest thing I have experienced to being like some science fiction chick who has been dissected and attached to a spaceship. I felt like a total bionic cyberhuman. Lean forward or back and it follows your body, speeds up, stops. It felt like I just had to think, and I'd move around.

Okay... okay... I can think and my legs move.. but I really like that "brain in a jar" feeling. I would happily be Seria Mau. Actually riding it was a notch below having a personal jet-pack that actually works. Also, the tech museum people had it set to beginner mode, so it couldn't go more than 5 mph. I leaned way forward and it felt out of control fast. I think 8 mph or 12 would take some getting used to, but then it would be great. Supposedly they are also thinking about making a faster one for bike lane use. I do love riding a bike and feel a bit cybernetically enhanced while on one, but I'm also wimpy, lazy, and half-crippled.

The Segway's motion was super smooth. I felt like a part of a well tuned, slick machine. Brain ---> action with no annoying, clunky body in between.

In those SF stories of being the brain in jar attached to spaceship, or exoskeleton or whatever, there are big moments of pathos where the bionicky person regrets smelling a flower or physical touch or eating a sandwich. That's just lame. As a spaceship human you would have even more information coming into your brain. You might not get the rose smell like you used to have it, but instead you'd get a million times more data input and maybe it would have great nuances... I mean, a rose never smells the same twice anyway... sign me up for robot-hood.

posted by badgerbag 6/28/2003 03:56:00 PM comment

Thursday, June 26, 2003

For a moment I will merge blogs with Davee because I started to go off at length in the comments to his post on this tibetan word "shenpa", introduced to him from a Pema, a buddhist teacher of some sort. The essay is very interesting - that shenpa place of just realizing the hooked-ness is where I start to write poetry. The poetry is in order to interrupt the shenpa.

As a translator I notice that Pema uses translation and untranslatability as an interruption. "Here is this word, there is no exact equivalent to it in English, but a lot of almosts and explanations. " The leap of mind required to learn the word jolts your thinking out of its ruts. A Tibetan might be equally jolted by studying some English word that is important philosophically that has no equivalent in the Tibetan language. The last few weeks I have been translating from Hebrew, or helping a poet translate from Hebrew to English, and I don't know any Hebrew, or didn't when I started. To sit and listen to her explain the connections between two or three words in the poem - their similiarites in sound, their etymologies and nuances of meaning - it was a strangely ecstatic experience. I would note this is also a good thing about science fiction. People complain about jargon, but invented language does accomplish some level of idea-evolution or idea invention or shifted awareness.

Since the ALTA conference last year and especially since Stephen White's seminar on something called ecotranslation or ecopoetry, I have been way more aware of the issue of foreignizing vs. domesticating in translation. By this I think translators mean the decision to come up with an approximation of meaning that will be familiar to the reader in the target language.

For example, in 2000 when I translated "F---. and the Devil" I chose roughly equivalent birds for many of the birds mentioned in the poem, like making "tarotaro" into "mockingbird" or something. Now, I would lean towards just saying "tarotaro" and letting the American reader wonder - or making it possible for them to turn to footnotes - or assuming that the curious will just google it. The effortlessness of answering reference questions on the net, I think, means that translators can be more bold in their foreignizing.

posted by badgerbag 6/26/2003 09:36:00 PM comment

Hmm. Can't figure out how to re-publish archives with this new blogger version...

posted by badgerbag 6/26/2003 04:51:00 PM comment

culture wars

Yesterday in my truck I was listening to an old tape of Sweet Honey in the Rock and on the song about Robert Bork I burst into tears foolishly. "The bitter battle over Bork is over, the bitter battle over Bork is done, the bitter battle over Bork is history, and OUR SIDE WON!" "That Reagan era liberal optimism which was so pathetic then - from my point of view in all-republican Houston - it looks like nirvana now," I thought. "Here I am in the promised land of Califa and yet the world has gone mad. Wonder what Sweet Honey girls thought about fuck-o Clarence Thomas. No wait, actually, I don't have to wonder."

The "Are my hands clean?" song brought another flood to me. Who knows anything now about "the blood soaked fields of El Salvador" or realizes what our country did to their country. Creía que a mí no me gusta mi patria pero este vergüenza ya me muestra que sí. If I weren't a nationalist and a patriot I wouldn't be ashamed.

Then this morning I get this:
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "[the men] are entitled to respect for their private lives...  The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime."

Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stehpen Breyer agreed with Kennedy in full.  Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed with the outcome, but not all of Kennedy's thinking.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.  Scalia wrote for the three, "The court has largely signed onto the so-called 'homosexual agenda.'... The court has taken sides in the culture war... nothing against homosexuals." 
It's just a tiny bit encouraging.

posted by badgerbag 6/26/2003 01:48:00 PM comment

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

reading
Still reading like mad.

Read We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. I recommend it highly!

Read a book about autism, Let Me Hear Your Voice, by Catherine Maurice. It was excellent and interesting. I'm in the middle of "Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder", which has some good points but is mostly striking me as a bit nutty. Maybe in 20 years we'll all be aghast at the cow's milk we have been drinking, and it does seem reasonable to associate gastrointestinal problems with autism, and I do believe lots of people have gluten and milk allergies, but.... still... ending up at homeopathic teas did not help convince me. From my armchair: after reading this book, about 2% of me wanted to eat nothing but raw carrots and rice; all my health problems will be solved... maybe that's the magic bullet... I'll be svelte as a model... I'll gain 20 IQ points and my house will be cleaner and more organized. Other 98% of me is way more skeptical of this mountain of anecdotal evidence and emotional appeals. Besides the homeopathic tea, the allure of the miracle clean house and model figure that Seroussi gained by going on this very restricted diet herself, I'd say the least convincing moments of this book were the parts where it was clear the author thinks everyone would benefit - that moms who feed their infants cow's milk are almost dangerously criminal and are in need of being saved - her horror at the cheese flavored fish crackers fed to autistic kids as rewards in "Let me hear your voice" style therapy - not considering that maybe some kids have variants of autism that don't involve gastrointestinal problems... It is a big warning flag to me when people are convinced that they have found the magic formula of diet or vitamin to fix everything.

That said, if my kid were autistic, I would try anything that looked promising, even feeding him nothing but gluten-free vitamins, rice, and boiled white fish. Heck. Maybe I'll go on that diet and have to eat my words. I feel bad mocking Seroussi's book but can't help it. I'm certainly glad her kid got better and she was able to help people. But I find the book suspect anyway in its fervent attachment to dietary solutions to every problem.

I am in the middle of School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for the Masculinist Discourse on jhk's recommendation. He criticizes this long report for its failure to take into account any possibility of a positive non-sexist "masculinist" discourse. I have not finished the report, but so far I have to agree with a lot of what it says. They do equate "masculinists" with misogynists to some degree and it seems wrong of the report to make this so absolute. Though, what if that's just reflecting what they saw? Maybe they didn't see any non-misogynist articles about gender differences - likely enough. jhk points out in that case, they could have at least provided a category for it and rated it at 0%. I guess when they say there are masculinist misinformation campaigns, and this misinformation campaigns should be fought, I'm with them. Where is the "good" men's movement? I haven't found it. I have only found individual nice guys. They should all be having consciousness-raising groups like 70s feminists. Like Max's bachelor party...

All this serious reading !

Meanwhile, between paragraphs, spent the day working on those lame-ass grants, having coffee with Bad Moms Club, working more on grants. Because these poetry center people can't get their head out of their collective ass, I spent 5 hours looking up phone numbers and addresses and bios and publication lists for the proposed grant recipients. Now, since the board already invited them, they must ALREADY have this information somewhere. Everyone I ask points at someone else. No one knows. No one has this basic info. Why? WTF? Am I wasting my time? When I drove all the way down there, NO INFO that I had requested, but instead I spent my precious time setting up a computer and showing someone how to use Filemaker.

"We've been paying someone to do this.. I don't know if it's possible but... what I'd really like to do is..."

"You want to print address labels?"

"Yes! Yes, exactly! How did you know?"

"Uh... what you have here is a list of 200 names and addresses, it's not rocket science."

"You are a gem! You're so confident!"

Jesus H. Christ. What I'm not confident about is these people's ability to survive as an organization. Also why am I helping them? They're cluelessly racist, they're incompetent, they're old fashioned, they just lost their biggest funding source, they don't seem interested in me as a poet. Nice enough otherwise though... Am I really going to learn anything here?

Spent most of the afternoon playing "house" for the first time with M. Before, he would play "baby" but this time he said the whole thing, like "You be the mommy and I be the daddy and this (a toy dinosaur) is the baby." He switched off being mommy and daddy. Both involved a lot of going to the store in a car, with keys. Then feeding the crying "baby", changing its diaper, putting baby to bed with a blanket and a kiss and a bottle. It was a nice game to play. Did not cook or clean (beyond mac n cheese). Did not earn any money. Did not work on school project.

posted by badgerbag 6/25/2003 12:09:00 AM comment

Saturday, June 21, 2003

nyah nyah!

Just got back from Harry Potter bookstore party at Keplers - it was insane - little kids and grownups and blase-acting teenagers all dressed up in robes and glasses and lightning scars. I think several people were nearly trampled as it neared midnight!

Off to read H.P. in the bathtub and find out who died. Tomorrow will be a super-hamtaro morning for little M. because I plan to read until I finish the book.

posted by badgerbag 6/21/2003 12:28:00 AM comment

Friday, June 20, 2003

lost in translation

I spent the last 2 days grooving on Yehudit's poetry. She made literal translations of her poetry, often with long lists of possible words like this: biography (chronicles curriculum vitae history annals) . By some miracle we felt that we were on the same wavelength and I was able to grok what was going on in this long mythical poem-cycle. Over the hours our conversations got nuttier and nuttier. "So the thorn, the yud, is the first word, the first letter of YWH or YHWH or whatever, and the thorn pierces my tongue..." "Ah, like the logos, the word phallus, in the beginning was the Word, order piercing chaos, your tongue is forked like the serpent and..." "Exactly! The tongue is pierced and the lion crouching over the violin is the flame of the Holy of Holies. The fire is the inspiration of the Axis Mundi the mandala spins around." "Oh okay, you don't actually have the lion here but it's the implied lion." "Right, I never actually say 'lion' but you see the lion." "And Arke, she is the messenger running out, but also Arche of Thales." "So here why don't we say "the yud-thorn piercing... rather than just 'the thorn' because no one will get it otherwise and they might not get it anyway but at least they'll know there's something there not to get."

This made complete sense to us.

We had the funny picture of me as co-translator being like the poetic handmaiden in her lap between her legs, with a huge dick-tionary (logos/phallus/birth) between my legs. This also made sense, I suspect only to us in the heat of the moment.

Anyway, I am having a great time with it. Poetry is nuts. Good poetry has to be.


posted by badgerbag 6/20/2003 10:43:00 AM comment

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

That blows

Actually it should be called the "Blow me boost". "I'll have a Mango-a-go-go with a Blow me Boost please. To go. "


posted by badgerbag 6/18/2003 05:13:00 PM comment

I'd love to meet their product testing department

U.S. Patent No. 6,485,773 - Semen taste-enhancement dietary supplement.

I am picturing the funny products that will come out - will guys go to Jamba Juice and order the "Strawberry Jizz Boost"? Fucking nasty!!! Will there be commercials (cummercials?) on TV where there are a bunch of macho football players in a bar and some big haired girls in miniskirts, and then one of the macho guys orders a "Jizz Lite" beer and the girls all look at him and go "Hmmm, think I'll pick that one to blow!" Or what? They need some serious marketing chutzpah. Screw just having it in dingy health food vitamin stores that smell like asparagus pee.

And why limit oneself to just "neutralizing the salty, bitter taste"? Why not flavor it?

And where is the girls' version? Actually I think the girl version might just be to eat a lot of garlic. Seriously now though, it's only a matter of time before they have some pill you take that makes your pussy have some nauseating artificial banana flavor. Progress - I love it.

posted by badgerbag 6/18/2003 03:55:00 PM comment

Monday, June 16, 2003

reading this week

I read Light by M. John Harrison. It was okay but not mind-blowingly great. Read book 3 of the "Series of Unfortunate Events". Finished Mary Kingsley; unfortunately the book fell apart as I was reading it. Read most of boring and out of date book about Ancient Peru; "The Ancient Civilizations of Peru" by J. Alden Mason. I keep reading it because it's interesting to look up stuff and see how wrong it was. Reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Read the first three Tom Swift novels, and will probably continue to consume them - how did I miss this series? I think when I saw it as a kid, I only had access to the 2nd series and they weren't as good as the 1st. Tom Swift and his Motor-Boat was just fabulous, like the Bobbsey Twins with wrenches and gasoline. Read Across the Acheron (Virgil, non) by Monique Wittig. Read "Gunner Cade" by C.M. Kornbluth and Judith Merril, and it was awful. Read The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling and it was almost as bad as those "Teddy Bear Stuffers" pictured below. One more coy reference to Flashman and I will personally fly out to Arizona and smack Stirling upside the head. It's so fucking lame when people are supposedly trying not to be all sexist but then they pull a "Podkayne of Mars" equivalent out of their asses. Why is it that guys write these alternate histories and they just happen to turn out to be yet another just-happens-to-be-all-sexist world? What gives? When women analyze gender it's called "dystopian" or "radical feminist" or whatever the new polite non-freudian word for "castrating bitch" is. When men do it it's called alternate history. I think I have bitched about this before but I've had it with just-happens-to-be-all-nazis-and-confederates-world creators. I can forgive Merril and Kornbluth more easily for their dorky romance novel sexism. Stirling gets a virtual slap.

Speaking of non radical non feminists, I went last week to hear Margaret Atwood talk at Kepler's books; wondering all the while, "Why am I doing this?" Am maybe looking for a little of that "writers have green sparks whizzing around their heads" mystique - or maybe that they don't. Atwood trotted out some pat answers and anecdotes, pitching herself like a politician as a simple woman raised in the backwoods of canada with no flush toilet, gutting fish with aplomb, yet she was still girly in her very macho family because she knew how to knit. Whatever. It must be really dreary to tell those stories over and over. Claims never to have thought about whether she is feminist or not. Grrrrreat. That'll make you popular! Another elitist success story, another token, "I just made it because I worked hard" person. If this seems feminist to people then I hate to think how they were brought up.

dude. In general what passes for radical is so, so, so lame. I am not radical, and yet I might as well have had a metaphorical dirty bomb strapped to my belly if Atwood is considered even mildly challenging to the status quo.

Would rather read Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon than even think anymore about Atwood. I liked her early poetry, anyway. But hearing the media laud Handmaid's Tale made me fairly nauseous. There is so much better stuff out there. I guess I should be talking about that good stuff instead of snarling ineffectively and unconvincingly about more famous people.

But for a moment, back to Tom Swift. The awfulness of its racism is so blatant that it is eye-rollingly funny - maybe only from where I am sitting in my whiteness though. But I wouldn't be able to, say, let M. read these in future without pointing out the racism. I wouldn't edit out Bumpo from Dr. Doolittle as was done in the 80s, but I would also not be able to read him picture books like "Little Black Sambo" or that one about Epaminondas - books that my grandmother and probably my parents read to me as a toddler. I don't remember them turning a hair over it, but I like to think they'd notice the racism of those today and that they'd be uncomfortable. I shudder to say that I can still hear my grandma doing the voice of Epaminondas's Auntie. I hope to god that 20 years from now, most of the books and movies we bombard ourselves with will look just as fucking stupid. Maybe 50 years from now it'll be funny and campy to watch a disney movie's weird concept of gender, just as I am open mouthed with disbelief at "Eradicate Sampson and his balky mule Boomerang" in Tom Swift. "Laws a massy Master Tom" Eradicate says, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands. "I spect to b'lieve I'se strong as Sampson hisself". Silly Eradicate, he doesn't realize he can lift up the Giant Airship because it's already buoyant with whatever gas it's full of... he goes and tries to lift up his old mule and can't! Doh! Let's hope that the prehensile hair and eyelash batting of the Little Mermaid will look just as fucked up to future generations as the stereotype-creating-and-reinforcing racist caricatures of Eradicate or Delilah the Cook (bobbseys) or Aunt Chloe (Elsie Dinsmore's mammy" look to us. Sometimes I feel very alone in being bothered by it all.

posted by badgerbag 6/16/2003 08:59:00 PM comment

unbearable

This is so wrong, but I must inflict it upon you:







Doesn't "Teddy Bear Stuffers" sound like the title of a horrible porn story?
And those... those THINGS... like Cthuloid horrors with evil faces and octopus suckers where hands and feet should be. They would be good to stick all over the outside of someone's bedroom window for a prank. They open the blinds and... AAAAAAHHH!

posted by badgerbag 6/16/2003 01:05:00 PM comment

fruit of the "no typing" weekend

jhk's thoughts on X2 to follow. He thinks in a nice organized way - I envy it, but my flying off on tangents has its good points too. Brilliant observation on the "actually it's his fault" line from Pyro to Bobby's dad.

****************************************

X2 and Wolverine's Search for Male Identity

         This is a collection of my thoughts on the movie X2. As far as I have seen, reviews have focussed on shallow aspects of the movie: the powers, plot differences from the comic, and so forth. However, I have seen little analysis of the film on a deeper level.

         Certainly, the movie is centered on Wolverine. He begins as an old male archetype: a cigar-smoking, beer-drinking, motorcycle-riding tough guy. However, he is searching for his identity. He begins by searching in his past, but over the course of the film he comes to reject his past and accept a new role as nurturer. This theme finds its power in the problems of modern masculinity. The traditional role of masculinity often relies on violence as well as treating women as objects to be coveted, protected, and won. In most films, the male hero finds fulfillment in killing the bad guy and/or getting the girl. In X2, Wolverine instead finds fulfillment as a caregiver.

         From the start of the film, it sets up the dilemma:

After the teaser, we start with Wolverine wandering through a seemingly abandoned base in Canada. This symbolizes his search for meaning in his past: he finds it empty, just as the modern man finds macho images of the past empty.

We then cut to the museum exhibit on Neanderthals, and note in particular the bloody fangs of a stuffed wolf. As a technical point the Neanderthals relate to evolution and the eventual role of mutants. However, as cultural imagery, the Neanderthal refers to the primitive, animalistic man -- i.e. Wolverine.

Back at the school, his arrival interrupts Bobby (Iceman) and Marie (Rogue). His relationship with Rogue is perilous in that it borders on romantic, but it is carefully constructed to reject that. He has three female relationships over the film: Rogue, Jean Grey, and Mystique -- but none of them turn into romance.

         Throughout the film, the action revolves around this search. In the first act, Wolverine is given the role as caregiver, to watch after the children. However, he doesn't realize the importance of it at the time. He then faces a father-figure in Colonel Stryker, who claims to hold the secret of his past. Upon first meeting, he desires to find identity there, but he holds to his duty to the children. After escaping, though, he then returns to his past, which while empty on the surface holds secrets underground. There he confronts Stryker and fights a female counterpart to himself. In the end, though, he rejects the past for meaning, and holds to his new role as nurturer.

         By saying that Wolverine is at the center, I do not mean to say that it focusses on him over all the other characters. Indeed, I think that it divides time among a large number of characters -- and their stories touch on many issues besides male identity. However, they all also touch on the dilemma of male identity as expressed in Wolverine.

What's in a Name?

         One of the very interesting aspects of the film was how it really used names as a device. To many films, nicknames like Cyclops, Storm, and so forth are a holdover that is ill-fitted for the film medium. Here, the use of names is very telling to the story. To personal friends, characters will use first names like Eric (for Magneto) or Logan (for Wolverine). The mutant nickname is often a sign of dehumanization for some. However, it is also adopted proudly at times by those who use it.

         For example, early in the film Senator Kelly (really Mystique in disguise) asks Colonel Stryker about Eric Lehnsherr. Stryker responds by confusion, then remembering him as "Magneto". Much later on, Magneto asks John what his "real name" is -- to which he answers "Pyro". Far from being a comic-book holdover to apologize for, I feel that the film has worked in the names and the use of names deeply into the story.

         Wolverine certainly is a case in point. He is accused of being an animal, and is often through imagery compared to an animal -- such as the bloody-fanged wolf in the museum. His dog-tags bearing this name are a key symbol in his quest.

The Role of Women

         Though I would argue that the film is centered on masculine identity, this requires an identification of the role of women. On the one hand, it is vital to the meaning that Wolverine not find fulfillment solely via relationship to a woman, as is so commonly found in films. On the other hand, any valid construction of masculine identity requires differentiating from an equally-valid feminine.

         X2 simultaneously constructs a feminine which has both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, there are Rogue, Jean Grey, and Ororo (Storm). On the negative side, there are Mystique and Lady Deathstrike (i.e. Stryker's female bodyguard).

         Lady Deathstrike is particularly notable as the female counterpart or mirror image to Wolverine. The film portrays negative femininity not as lack of strength, but lack of faith -- lack of positive identity. Deathstrike is a powerful woman, but she is still a tool of the patriarchal Colonel Stryker. It is also interesting to note that Stryker's son Jason appears in his own illusion as a girl, using that projected vulnerability to deceive Professor Xavier.

         The film is very carefully constructed, I think, in that it wants to construct gender rather than confusing gender. It rejects old stereotypes, but also rejects simplistic reversal. Deathstrike is a powerful woman who acts in a male role as soldier. Jason is a man who acts in a female role as seducer and deceiver. Both of these are shown to be ultimately destructive and tools of the patriarchal Stryker.

         Mystique is a more interesting case. In some ways she acts as henchman to Magneto, but she makes clear that she has her own drive for her actions. She takes on both male and female identities using her power, and also takes on both male and female roles (as soldier and as seducer). Ultimately, though, her power is stereotypically feminine: manipulator of appearance and social chameleon. I think that she is shown more sympathetically than Deathstrike or Jason, but ultimately her approach is shown as flawed.

         The positive women are Rogue, Storm, and Jean Grey. Each of them shows some search for identity as well. Indeed, the feminine search for identity is clearly required if the old archetypes. However, I think that their stories are incomplete -- hopefully to be dealt with more in the sequel.

         Rogue is a naive parallel to Mystique. Her power is to take the identity and powers of others -- through closeness. Hers is thus a distinctly feminine power, which is metaphorical for emotional and physical closeness. However, she regards it as a curse and tries to avoid taking advantage of others -- while Mystique uses her power frequently to her own advantage.

         Storm is dealt with much more briefly, but powerfully nonetheless. Her story is about dealing with her rage at being treated differently, certainly a parallel to an angry modern feminist woman. This is touched on in her brief talk with Kurt (Nightcrawler), but also shown in her abrupt attack when they capture him and in her use as a "weapon" in the aircraft battle. She finds an answer for this when she comes to trust Nightcrawler to carry her, and indeed to save them all. She calls this faith, which I think is true enough.

         Jean Grey is clearly the one given the most attention. If Wolverine begins as an old male archetype, Jean Grey begins as an old female archetype. She is the typical woman: a healer and schoolteacher, an inferior (she believes) to Professor Xavier, and a loyal partner to her man Scott. She even deprecatingly refers to this, saying "Girls flirt with the dangerous guy, Logan. They don't take him home". She feels that she lacks strength. Her story is about her sacrifice, of rejecting the safety of her old feminine role to find her own power.

Family and Nurturing

         The theme of family is touched on in many ways in the film. As with gender in general, it is about the rejection of older ways -- but in an effort to construct new understanding.

         Again, at the very negative end we have Colonel Stryker. He has both a biological son in Jason and figurative children in Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike. His role as the commanding father is shown in his meeting with Wolverine. He is backlit and hard to see, and he shows that he knows Wolverine even though Wolverine does not know him. Wolverine wishes to speak with him, but as he approaches, a wall of ice separates the two of them. Wolverine sees Styker's silhouette through the ice and holds up his hand to the shadow of Stryker's hand. However, his duty to the children draws him away.

         Stryker is the ultimate patriarchal evil, however. This is brought home particularly as he leans in to his son Jason's ear as he orders him to kill all of his own kind -- saying "Make me proud." Jason follows these orders unquestioningly, and when in the end he is thwarted, he (as his girl image) pouts "Oh, he's going to be so mad."

         Bobby Drake's family is not nearly this dysfunctional, but we still see it's flaws. Without even any words between them, we see the raging jealousy of Ronny for his "gifted" brother Bobby. We see it in how the parents refuse to accept Bobby's uniqueness, in a blatantly metaphorical scene where his mother asks "Can you just try to... not be a mutant?" The key answer here is given by Pyro, who places the blame for it on the father. This is a very funny line, but like many funny lines it also cuts to the heart of the matter. The film does blame the father. It finds fault with the traditional patriarchal identity, and demands the search for a new one.

         John (Pyro) is himself a great example. He says not one word about his past or his family, but we can see his lack of a father quite clearly. We see him look at the family pictures in Bobby's house, and we see his rage. Without knowing a thing, though, we can see the lack of father. He immediately latches onto Magneto when he meets him, and leaves with him in the end.

Art and Faith

         Certainly what I think makes the film all the more powerful is that it is not insular in its issues. While I feel that Wolverine and his search for identity are at the center, there are many other stories and many other issues in the film. I do not think of this as weakening of diluting that search, however. Gender identity is not some sectioned off portion of our lives which is dealt with by itself. It is an integral part of career, politics, religion, and expression. Every scene in the film touches on and addresses this theme, which makes it all the more powerful.

         The issue of faith is brought in through Nightcrawler, which I thought was rather telling. Nightcrawler at the start of the film is used as a tool by Stryker. However, it also constructs a positive role for his faith. I think this is quite important in that while the film rejects many traditions as wrong, it explicitly keeps faith and specifically Christian faith as positive.

  In one scene, Bobby's mother asks Wolverine what he is professor of. This itself is extremely telling, as well as being a setup for a great joke. What gives the joke its power, though, is the truth. What does Wolverine know that he can pass on to these children? What is he good for? This sums up his whole problem of identity. However, he does have an answer: "Art". It is amazingly fitting, without a simple explanation of why. From the rest of the movie, though, I can say that art is important.

posted by badgerbag 6/16/2003 12:48:00 AM comment

Sunday, June 15, 2003

X2 x 2

X2 was even better the second time.

Instead of just being annoying, vanilla and puzzlingly cloying, the Jean Grey / Scott relationship came across as incredibly meaningful. It was like some classic simone de beauvoir reading 70s feminist who realizes she has it all, fabulous career and nice preppy husband who is genuinely nice, but she still has to leave. He never does anything totally awful, but he is overly protective, and when he says "I love you" it seems to mean "I love you when you are weak because then I can help you". When she "leaves him" as my hypothetical 70s feminist left her safe marriage, everything falls apart. Her fight with evil violent "Scott controlled by Col. Hegemony, I mean Col. Stryker" jolts Scott out of evilness, but also destroys everything around them - the whole structure they are in is shaken and begins to crumble. Her coming into her own power means she must leave and be reborn. Clearly one must do this by joining some hippie lesbian goat farm commune - or by becoming a being made of pure energy.

Personally I feel like I got my escaping from gender role prisons mostly over with by being a bad girl early on. My friend J. from bad moms club was describing the book "Reviving Ophelia" to me, and I haven't read it, but J. noted that its author seems to think that being that bad girl is always actually bad, an individual cry for help, a fucking up. What if it isn't? I think of it as a good sign - risky, but the only way to get the fuck out of one's predestined role. Someone else on my feminist science fiction list was recently talking about being a teenage bad girl, being fat, getting pregnant at 16 and dropping out, or whatever, as avoidance mechanisms for the fate society has in store for you. If you do that and survive, then you retain your creative power in a way you wouldn't have otherwise.

So that's what I'm thinking here regarding Jean Grey and Dark Phoenix.

I also especially noticed, as I did the first time, the wall of ice arising uncontrollably between Wolverine and his abusive father Stryker, when they are trying to communicate. They can no longer hear each other, though both of them want to talk - then we get that moment of their hands trying to touch on opposite sides of the ice. Stryker's shadow flickers and looms suddenly huge, reminding me of the way my dad's shadow used to loom (benevolently, but characteristically masculine-seeming) as a huge silhouette in the doorway of my room at night, against the backlit hallway. Stryker is the abusive ex-military father who tortures the son to toughen him up, create him as a perfect invulnerable being. I said this to jhk and as soon as I said "father figure" and "wall of ice" he was like "Oh my god! yes!" and though I express myself badly, how nice to know that he knows what I saw and mean.

I'm no guy, but I do think about my father and grandfathers as being influenced by their military experiences, and it had repercussions for how I was treated by them - the whole ethic of "I will teach you how to suffer so that you will be tough" or "people are assholes, so don't expect anything, don't be close to anyone". My dad's military experience, drafted for Vietnam but never going overseas, or grandfather's which I think was mostly being a driver for some general in Sicily and North Africa, a non-combatant, is very minor compared to guys who actually were in combat. But I think it is still crucial to their identities. Just as torturers are made very deliberately by being forced to undergo torture and torture their friends (COINTELPRO style) the experience of boot camp and even non-wartime military life is a way to make torturers. The things many guys have told me about growing up male, being beaten up in the locker room or whatever, sound like mini-boot camp; having some coach scream in your face and all that is just one more recipe for boxing "masculinity" inside a rather horrible shell or mask.

Jason was also excellent - as a character and as an actor. I liked the face-off moments with Professor X - both in wheelchairs, physically helpless but powerful mentally.

jhk also pointed out that the xrays in the "adamantium room" were of Yuriko and Wolverine side by side. I had not noticed that the first time but instead had been thinking "okay, enough shots of the x-rays already." Wolverine having to fight his feminine self - he can't become her or merge with her or love her. There is no jungian merging of anima/animus; instead a radical feminist/Iron John style of defining the self as independent from "opposition to other gender". The opposition, the struggle of Wolverine against Yuriko, or the leaving, like Jean battles and then leaves Scott, has to take place, but that is not what defines the person. It is a necessary step - a gender battle and separation before the self-actualization is able to happen.

In fact what Scott would like to do to Jean is what Neo does to Trinity in Matrix Reloaded. There, Neo does what plots often make the male characters do. I say on purpose "what Scott would like to do to Jean". He is so very Not neo. I also just saw "High Noon" for the first time and Neo is so very Gary Cooper. Will Kane (LOVE the names!), it's all about him. Helen was the only other character not made of cardboard.

Also noticed that all the other actors were subtly acting like Mystique acting like themselves. And the ways that the girl in the nightdress and Jason were matching up very well - not just eye color but their expressions and i guess lighting and camera angles made it so clear they were the same person. Nightdress girl made me think of the movie "Poltergeist" which I saw bits of on someone else's HBO in the 80s; the little girl in the white gown, traditional victim of horror who has become the channel for the horror if not the actual horror. I should look up this kid's name and note it here.

jhk saying just a minute ago while I was in the bathtub and saying he couldn't see what the movie was about if it wasn't about gender and "masculine identity". All the reviews seem to focus around the patriotism/terrorism/ fear of the different/ race/ethnicity theme. His point that gender is not in isolation; it is not just some private internal matter; it is political. I do strongly feel that if you are going to ask the questions "who am I, what can I do, what skills do I have, and what should I do with them" then gender figures very strongly into those questions, especially "who am I". As a girl, I didn't want to be a girl, nor did I want to be a boy. I wished the categories would just go away, or that switching back and forth were relatively effortless, painless and reversible. But I had to grow up female and deal with the limits this gave me. And I'm not talking about physical limitations but about the ways people see and interact with me based on this femaleness. I'll know sexism is on the road to being fixed when people quit asking what gender the baby is as if it's the most important thing to know.

Then in the car I was thinking of ways that feminist science fiction novels have teams rather than protagonists. A perfect example would be the novels of Jo Clayton - they are kind of cheesy, and always a bit the same with their very egalitarian teams. The story also has the soap opera type of long-story arc structure. Jo Clayton and (hate to say it but... Kim Stanley Robinson and many others) try to do this, and do it well, but it comes off a bit flat and dull and wholesome, like whole grain bread or chinese commune novels of the 50s --- Xmen, at least in this movie, did it better, more excitingly, more elementally. A good role-playing game also has this structure, where every PC has something they do well, and they use their skills in a way essential to the plot, and they all have some way that their characters develop. I realized suddenly that the mythical archetypes of the Xmen are the Justice League are the Iliad are the Outlaws of the Marsh are the Mahabharata.

jhk is now rather disturbingly in love with Pyro, smoldering James Dean of the mutants.

"Is everyone blind? Are we the only ones who see how good it is? Do stupid people still get something out of this?" he asks me. I don't know... I imagine a lot of people come away with nothing much more than "Mystique is fucking hot and kicks ass", but maybe some goodness seeps through their pornographic fetishization of women's anger and competence.

Oh and did I mention that Mystique is fucking hot and kicks ass and it's really sexy how she can do everything and is godlike?

I wish they had brought out a little bit of mom-child dynamic between her and Nightcrawler, it would be cool if she knew he was her kid, and just didn't tell him and had her own very cerebral take on the situation and the non-relationship. I can't really talk here because I haven't read the comic books... As for Nightcrawler, I was bouncing in my fluffy seat when he was going "Heilige maria, mutter gottes" it sounded so cool to hear "mother goddess" in there.

Wolverine is "a hero" and you can see the story as being about him or centered around him and his identity search (which I see as heavily involved with but not "about" gender). But he is no Will Kane (see my previous notes about X2). For some reason here I also think of Gene Wolfe and the Shadow/claw series. Severian is very Will Kane and very Neo (really, Neo is very Severian).

jhk just came in from where presumably he was frantically writing some crazed essay on gender, Iron John, and X2, and said sheepishly, "All right, I guess it's not a no-typing weekend, we can't keep it up". No duh! He is so cute.

Hope someone has comments on all this (other than L's "you are a pompous ass and everything is not about gender" which I feel might be coming. )

posted by badgerbag 6/15/2003 10:28:00 PM comment

moment of brilliance

"I live every day like my master plan is to suck." -- plain layne

Today... got another cache on the way to infant/child CPR class. The park was sort of scummy but good in an urban vacant lot sort of way.

CPR class creepy. Thank god j.p. was there, otherwise I would have been lost in a world of scary, somewhat unfriendly moms. It was amazing how much the instructions for first aid have changed since the last time I took the class. The teacher encouraged us to imagine disaster regularly, as "practice". Like I don't perform emergency tracheotomies with ballpoint pens all the time already? Come on!

Then, looking at the creepy mannequins's open mouths, the words "just like pedophile blow-up dolls!" came to my lips unbidden. Fortunately I kept my lips zipped and did not allow these words to escape.

Home to do a bunch of puzzles; noah's ark, another noah's ark, ocean creatures, pets, farm animals, dinosaurs with volcano. Then L. and I made a new cache at the skate park. Fun! In the hardware store, in search of magnets, black spray paint, and super glue for our altoids tin cache boxes, the guy behind the counter freaked out joyously over my red "Duncan Butterfly" yo-yo (vintage 1976). Then another guy - mustached, junkie-prison tattoos, prison muscles, hair slicked back - came up, "I used to be in competitions when i was a kid!" I hand the yo-yo to him and he does tricks with style and grace. L. and I giggling madly.

Home again to play middle earth RPG. The plot is slow. I spent 2 hours of it decoding the rune message on the dragon horn artifact. I hadn't expected it to be anything other than letter substitution but it turns out to be very subtle and difficult, with everything that could be a dipthong, dipthongized, and the silent "e" left out. Once I figured out that the 1 letter words couldn't be "I" or "a" and that there was no obvious "e" anywhere in the message - the 3 letter words that should have had "the", "and", or "who" in there, didn't. Therefore that 1 letter word was probably "the". Joy, that worked. The code-maker was beyond shocked that I got it. "You weren't supposed to get it!" Uh, why make it then? Did he think I was just jacking off during that 2 hours on the couch with pen and paper? My youth was not misspent doing puzzle books for naught.

M. ended up sobbing in existential despair over the plight of Gonzo in "Muppets in Space". He has watched it many times, but perhaps this time got the idea that Gonzo's family went away. Very sad! I felt bad that I had been so involved in the cryptogram that I hadn't really checked on him in his room during the movie. Then he asked for a lot of baby books that we haven't read in a while, as if it were comforting to him to hear "oh my oh my oh dinosaurs" and "baby beluga" as an antidote to his sadness. But every once in a while I'd be in the middle of "dinosaurs big, dinosaurs tiny" and his face would screw up horrribly and huge tears gush out instantly and he's sobbing again "Gonzo wa wa wa wo wo". "Honey, Gonzo was sad, but then went back to live with his friends in their big house, with Kermit, with Luis the King Prawn, and Rizzo the Rat, and his friends loved him and they had a great time." "Wa wah wo wo Gonzo wa Gonzo no Kermit wa wa wa." (Huh?) "I'm sorry honey. You can sit on my lap..." "Waaaaaaa Gonzo and the wa wa wa his wo wo wa!!!!!!" (erg, no dramatic movie next game night!)

posted by badgerbag 6/15/2003 12:36:00 AM comment

Friday, June 13, 2003

meanwhile

Meanwhile, suddenly got off my ass, cooked dinner, did errands, found another cache at the train station next to grocery store, and washed some dishes. I considered busting out the Tilex and spraying the mildew off the bathroom ceiling, but then decided that Louisa May Alcott could suck my dick. Back to slacking off and Mary Kingsley. She just climbed a muddy, freezing, jungly, rocky, waterless mountain completely unprepared in the middle of several tornadoes, and when she got to the bottom again, wished she could go up again the next day.
" ' Why did I come to Africa?' thought I. Why! who would not come to its twin brother hell itself for all the beauty and the charm of it!"

That's so inspirational... I think I'll go get back in bed and read some more under my warm velvety blankets while reclining on fluffy white lace-covered pillows, kleenex box and chocolate bar handily within reach. Am considering starting a new custom - whenever I get in bed to read I'll mutter, "The adventure begins!"

posted by badgerbag 6/13/2003 11:52:00 PM comment

Gee whiz!

Here's project gutenberg or e-texts of kids' books just in case you need to refresh your memory about Daddy Bobbsey's mission to cut down all the last big trees of america, or you wonder what the Circus Boys have been up to lately... I can't wait to read "The Eskimo Twins", "The Belgian Twins", etc. ad nauseum.

posted by badgerbag 6/13/2003 05:00:00 PM comment

Imaginary places

I love to hear my kid say "Dude, that's grody to the max". This would theoretically contribute to the big scroll listing my sins that they'll read to me in hell, but L. taught it to him.

Went to another cache today. The obsession continues.

Everything is on hold. I am on little kid time. It's day 2 of the no diapers or pants wetting era. 4 days of this life seems very long. It's not like it's bad - I'm having fun. But it is wearing. jhk suggested a no-typing weekend. I tried to imagine a no-computer, no-book weekend. All reality, all the time. Is that the key here? Not gender, or child care, but just being tuned in to "real life"? I have always liked imaginary places. Even in a real place that I'm enjoying I'm imagining the history or geology or the garden that I could make if I had some sort of landscaping superpowers or the fort I would have made there if I were still a kid. It seems pretty clear that constant reading is an escape, but I've always figured, "So what?" If you had my allergies, you would want to escape your body too. What's so great about real life? Would any reasonable person not prefer to be reading Mary Kingsley as she meanders through west african swamps, says heinously racist things, eats snakes, hits crocodiles with her paddle, and makes coy victorian reference to her "lower extremities" and "garments" that she would rather die than wear ??

Meanwhile my kid is forced to play by himself because I tune in only long enough to make him a sandwich and open the play dough container for him. I do play with him, and there are always clean clothes, but in the back of my mind there is the mother in "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" - as I recall, she was always reading a book and neglecting her children and thus Rebecca or her sister had to do everything and they lived in squalor. Had Rebecca's mom not been reading Ivanhoe all the time, some kind of magic thing would have happened so that her life wouldn't have fucking sucked, or so the book implied. Then she would get to be like Mrs. Pepper in the Five Little Peppers, sewing sacks by the light of one dim candle and eating burned crusts of bread while guilt-tripping her children, until some millionaire, impressed by her honest industry and house that is neat as a pin, realizes he's her long lost cousin. Uh, I am not sure what my point is here, but I have definitely been scarred by those girls' books. Even Anne of Green Gables magically keeps a neat house. but she might have had a servant or something later in life so she could go around drivelling about fairies in the moonlight.

Sometimes I realize I'm walking around with a book in my hand in a somewhat odd way, as if the mere carrying of the book were some kind of magic shield. I go out to the garage to move the laundry onwards, and am carrying a book. This makes sense if you might have to wait for something, or stand in line at the bank - when to be caught without a book would be horrible - but when washing dishes or doing laundry? It was only a few years ago that I stopped carrying a book everywhere. I still carry a notebook everywhere and it does come in handy - when bored, instead of reading, I write something.

Anyway i was considering that the reason our house is so cruddy and messy is because I just am not paying attention to it. Then when I do take a look at it and pay attention, it's really gross. That is usually not an incentive to clean it - it's an incentive to go read and ignore it some more.

Then for some reason I was thinking about when I left m.m.m.II and how I had no stuff. At first I had only 500 bucks and a few boxes of clothes and my blanket and 20 CDs and a tiny cd player. I scavenged a bed. I had maybe 2 boxes of books - it was all one carload. Then I rented that apartment in the high rise and moved my one truckload of junk into it. Then jhk's parents gave us some furniture ... we lived in one room... it worked out okay... It seems like things were simpler... My real stuff, crappy furniture, maybe 6 large booshelves of books were all in storage still (that was a big mistake) Now we are in this house, 2 bedrooms and space for office/library and a yard and a garage all full of unorganized crap. I can't pass up a garage sale. But I have so much stuff I can't find anything. On the other hand, I may not be hugely happier in a day-to-day experience sort of way, but I am way more productive and happier with that. But something has to change - I have to change how I do things - for example a certain level of organization is necessary to get a kid to school on time every day, which if I fuck up, doesn't matter in preschool, but will matter in real school. and if I keep buying books they have to go somewhere and I can't seem to stop buying them and haven't been getting rid of them either. Hmmmmmmmm. the prospect of living in one room again seems impossible, but really, it isn't.

Here's that quote from Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm about the mother (who later dies in bed, weeping that housework has weighed down her soul but grateful that
Rebecca got to go to school): "Her love of books she inherited chiefly from her mother, who found it hard to sweep or cook or sew when there was a novel in the house. Fortunately books were scarce, or the children might sometimes have gone ragged and hungry. "

posted by badgerbag 6/13/2003 04:26:00 PM comment

Thursday, June 12, 2003

Anklebiter's Delight

Today was much better. I was cheered by seeing some kind of giant crane - not a heron - at Bixby Park in Palo Alto, where I not only found a cache with a cheerful non-whining kid in tow, but found a travel bug.... They are strangely thrilling. Could that giant bird have been just an avocet? But it seemed more like the size of a great blue heron. I'm not sure. Note: underwear was worn. And not just by me.

Then off to the duck pond, where I practiced patience and did whatever M. wanted to do. Including watching him climb on a little wall of wooden pilings for nearly half an hour. Fed ducks, saw baby ducks, ate our picnic. Home. Potty. Playdough. Potty. Puzzles. Hamtaro. Potty. Snacks. Off to the park with the Bad Moms Club. Got book of imaginary places from J. - very cool expanded edition. Puzzling preschool moms were there and said hi but I didn't know what to say... "Hi, you have helmet hair, here's my scruffy-ass, bad attitude friends, I am wet, barefoot, and covered in sand, o you moms who wear sleek nordstroms pantsuits to the playground and name your kids after dead presidents of the wrong gender".

Am very grateful to have nice mom friends.



posted by badgerbag 6/12/2003 06:40:00 PM comment

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

moody

Finished the fellowship application and sent it off. "Fear of rejection" doesn't begin to cover what is going on in my head. Stomach wrenching terror, maybe. I feel like I have made a prize idiot of myself by even applying. Much less writing that lame cover letter. The people who win these things, last year they were all sleek greyhounds of academia, groomed, outfitted, leather-portfolio sporting, articulate, self-possessed greyhounds.

Picked up M. and took him to the park. There was much strange whining. It's like he purses his lips and refuses to open them, but is still trying to talk. It turned out he wanted to go home. I felt exasperated beyond my capacity to endure, and yelled at him several times, I am sure to the horror of the cool, calm, collected yupsters gathered at the park with little fertility-drug spawn Brendons and Briannas in their matching Ralph Lauren sunsuits and hats. "I don't understand your whining, just talk in a normal voice, or else I will get mad and lecture you!" "Wa wanna wu wa wuuuus, wa waawa wo wome" in a tiny howl. "Your whining is pissing me off! If you want something just ask!" Uh-oh, I just said "pissing" in front of Nice Neighborhood Park Mommies Jennifer and Tiffany, and they are looking daggers at me.

At home M. was still being irritating, then pooped in his pants. Goddamn it, clearly he was whining to go home because he needed the bathroom, but I didn't get it. Of course there was a bathroom right there at the park. I have no patience today.... I've had it with the potty training idiocy... Meanwhile, those moms club emails about how lovely it is to nobly sacrifice oneself to be a good wife and mother haunt me. Next wench who spouts off about this, I'm gonna pop a cap in her ass.

The greyhounds of Stanford do NOT swear filthily on the playground.... they are sitting at their Ikea desks with glasses of wine and expensive fountain pens. Sweat does not know their name. Their bellies do not bulge out. They are coiffed. They do not go to bed and eat a giant toblerone chocolate bar and read Monique Wittig while ignoring their children, who were all completely potty trained by age 2.

*sigh*

posted by badgerbag 6/11/2003 03:18:00 PM comment

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Opoponax

I just read The Opoponax (Monique Wittig). It blew me away! It was great!

posted by badgerbag 6/10/2003 06:00:00 PM comment

Monday, June 09, 2003

more books, purple ambition

I recently read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. (Anyone recognize Rem Koolhaas in "Hubertus Bigend"? I google the two names... apparently not.)

I also read vol. 1 of Anatomy of Melancholy - (funny reviews of Burton here). Reading Mary Kingsley's Travels in West Africa. Reading Across the Acheron by Monique Wittig.

Is it so bad to just want to lie in bed reading all day? I have so many projects. I could be out earning some money somehow. It is bad of me. But lately I've been so driven and tense. Last night I felt like, "Ahhh, this is what I had worked for, and wanted, and now I have it and it's good, though I'd really rather be reading in a quiet corner." I knew the reading would be sort of big, and have relatively well known translators... I did not imagine the belly dancers or the DJs or the general air of "big city" that was there. I watched o.s. who started that magazine years ago, and admired her, and realized that when she started the magazine, she was pretty much like me - however, also realized that I can't or won't do what she did, I couldn't be so ambitious, or businesslike, or organized, or social. jhk patiently put up with my pre-event freaking, self analysis, worrying over the inherent dorkiness of my poem. I need not have feared. The other readers did not do it poetry-slam style; there was little or no hipness; comfortingly, there were many dorky, vague, metaphysical poems about flowers and vegetables. j.o.s. was very nice and I dug his translations of gonzalo rojas - actually I just sat there for a while perched on a wall digging Gonzalo Rojas, especially "Hermosas" and Carbón. I talked briefly to j.f. the stanford guy, who acted like he didn't remember me and was polite but super condescending. It helped me like him better to think of him as r.r.'s old friend; "a little bit prissy", but still a good human being. As I listened to him ramble on I thought, not unkindly, "Dude, you were born to write only about other people's footnootes." As for me, clearly I was born to write footnotes. I re-swear never to be as pompous as j.f. Sorry but getting a job at stanford is no excuse to act like other people don't register until they pay 100K for a phd and waste their time kissing ass for 20 years, then maybe they get to be minor blips on the radar....

The actual reading went well - I was nervous as fuck, but at the last minute, got that childhood piano recital magic invulnerabilty shield. (rather than the heart pounding panic attack dry mouth that sometimes happens). I didn't mangle the spanish, or stutter, I read with at least some expression, and was mildly funny answering the radio announcer guy's questions... I managed not to rock back and forth or pick my nose while on stage. Good job, dorky self!

Afterwards, on the ride home, I decided that my ambitions were okay, and I can do this, and I resolved to work harder. *kick self in ass* *bargain with self* How about at least 1 hour working on the fellowship application, then do some more Wittig research.

Then pick up M. and home again for him to chill out. I do some more Wittiging. Then off to playgroup and Bad Moms' Club.

posted by badgerbag 6/09/2003 11:57:00 AM comment

happy day

Remembering that fabulous feeling from childhood, of one day when it was Saturday, with all its glory of cartoons and morning-long sloth; it was also my birthday, and my mom made pancakes, and I got my allowance (at this point maybe 50 cents).

I thought I was hallucinating this morning when I woke up smelling pancakes but there was jhk flipping them calmly. my coffee cup was clean and there was coffee. no cockroach had drowned in the coffee. Oh joy!

There should be a "frying pancakes" perfume. Actually, why don't they make air freshener thingies that smell like actual delicious food? Instead of toxic-waste-pine or cloying-fake-strawberry, there should be something that makes your house smell like frying garlic. Well, okay, there IS that thing and it is called "a frying pan and some actual garlic". That would be too easy. I demand some "frying garlic smell" environment-destroying aerosol spray can decorated with cartoons of happy dancing garlic cloves.


posted by badgerbag 6/09/2003 12:36:00 AM comment

Saturday, June 07, 2003

in the deeps

Spent much of yesterday in a hollow tree - a burnt out redwood with a cave the size of my bathroom. The floor of the cave was about 4 feet below the ground outside, so I had to clamber down into the hole. Inside, the spooky quiet and coolness made the world seem far away. It smelled like basements, and a little like newly cut grass and watermelon. Just like the first time I was in there, I had the nearly unbearable feeling of swimming in a lake of unknown depth, where something might come up from underneath and suck me down.

Mostly I sat in there listening to birds and having inane fantasies of being sort of like the Boxcar Children, having to live there in survivalist mode, furnishing it with whatever junk I could scavenge. "My shelf would go here, and here I would make my bed so that I could look out the hole in the top where the tree is split in half... and there would be a hook over here..."

Then I practiced reading out loud in Spanish into a tape recorder, feeling a bit like I was desecrating the place, and hoping no one would come by. No one did!

The tree is in Sam MacDonald park in La Honda. No one else is ever there.

Hid a geocache nearby in Heritage Grove.




posted by badgerbag 6/07/2003 02:32:00 PM comment

Friday, June 06, 2003

marines

Read Jarhead by Anthony Swofford.
Couldn't put it down.

posted by badgerbag 6/06/2003 04:08:00 PM comment

Thursday, June 05, 2003

middle of the night

I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep again, thinking of all the things I want to do, and the time passing.

today must:

grocery shop
cook (and bring extra dinner to some random new mom from moms club)
glue some more labels on those goddamn poetry books
fellowship application - pick the poems (done)
*must type the spanish for several of these poems
make CV for it (done)
*write the cover letter (agonizingly not done)
pick up M. at 2. amuse him while I cook. No TV, as he will watch TV later during...
Vinland RPG at 7
get babysitting for Sat. night and Sun. night.
email to translation list about june 29th event (*do this later at home)

vague suspicion that M. might be getting an ear infection? cranky, waking up sweating several times a night? Hmmm. Call dr. to see if I can bring him in this afternoon.

I don't know what possessed me to volunteer to cook someone dinner. What if they hate it? I should leave that stuff to the chicks who are good at it.

Tomorrow: finish fellowship application for good and fucking mail it off.


posted by badgerbag 6/05/2003 01:35:00 PM comment

translation blog
Gail Armstrong's translation blog. Useful links, thoughts on starting an online journal or forum. Something like The Forge's setup, with threaded discussion forums, would be very nice.

posted by badgerbag 6/05/2003 12:45:00 PM comment

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

geek test

I am proud to report that my is 57.00197% - Extreme Geek. Alas that it is not higher! If only I still had that microscope, and remembered what "GURPS" meant.

posted by badgerbag 6/04/2003 10:36:00 PM comment

and he has his own kitten, too!

This article on Salam bugs me. The tone is like "And I showed him a picture of a duck, and he made the signs for "water" and "bird"! Goddamned condescension.... "my interpreter" indeed. And he listens to the Cranberries. How precious! Are you sure he wasn't holding that copy of "Man in the High Castle" upside down? Jesus H. Christ!

Salam Pax for President! No, not of Iraq, the U.S.....

posted by badgerbag 6/04/2003 06:28:00 PM comment

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

to do lists, flakiness, haring off after new things

Today:
sent mom a present
sent her photos
emailed Sepúlveda's agent to ask if I can have the rights to publish my translation of his poem
found xeroxable originals of J. de I. booklet
mailed other poem to that girl from the webzine who asked me for work
got allergy shots
bought junk at Target

Then instead of doing the other stuff on my list, I

fooled around reading news and blogs
read a whole bunch of M. John Harrison book ("Light")
suddenly realized which other poems of mine I want to make a book out of, and fooled around at Kinko's preparing that book and grokking it
suddenly becoming very obsessed with Metamorphoses by Emily Short and started taking notes and then writing a whole giant essay while playing it

Metamorphoses is SO GREAT. I am a multiple epiphany kind of girl, but the m.e.'s I've been having all day as I desperately wrench the computer from the sweaty hands of my child... I swear, all he wants to do is play the "baby banger" game that jhk's cousin wrote.... where does he get this from, I ask you? Anyway, the game is great. I want to grab everyone and make them play it. I'll post the essay on it here, but it has many spoilers so be warned.

"Um, excuse me, what are you doing, mama?"
"I'm using these LETTERS to write some WORDS on the computer. See? Here's an 'a'."
"Oh, yeah! I see! Good job, Mama!" (tone of total insincerity)
"Um, so, I'm, uh, working. Mama is working on the computer."
"Excuse me mama, can I SHARE it with you?"
"You want to share it with me?"
"Yes, I want to share the computer. It's my turn. Mama, it's my turn. It's MY turn. "
[goddamn it!]

Other activities of the day:

- read what felt like one MILLION picture books such as "Because a little bug went Ka-choo"
- sat in bathroom discussing potty, pee-pee, poop, wiping, and flushing (repeat as needed)
- sat in bathroom accepting cups of "coffee" from kid playing in sink ( times 1 million)
- sat in sandbox accepting more "coffee", "milk", "sugar", "cake", and "smackaroni and cheese" (times 1 billion)
- pretended to be cats, squirrels, tigger and pooh, tigger and rabbit, tigger and owl, tigger and christopher robin, tigger and roo, steve and blue, steve and mailbox.




posted by badgerbag 6/03/2003 08:33:00 PM comment

Monday, June 02, 2003

XXX2

jhk just came in and said, "I keep thinking about how Rogue and Bobby seemed to totally lack creativity. Even considering they're teenagers."

Me: "Oh, you mean like, just fly the plane over, don't think about freezing all the water in the lake or something..."

jhk: "No, no, no, I mean, why not... "

Me: "Ohhh! Saran Wrap, yeah..."
jhk: "... condoms? Or just dry humping, for god's sake!"

Ahhh, genius at work.


posted by badgerbag 6/02/2003 10:18:00 PM comment

my underwear

It's too hot for underwear today.

In honor of the 100 degree weather, I invented a GRRRREAT butt-scratching disco-dance vaguely reminiscent of the cartoon of Carol Burnett scratching her ass after sweeping the floor or whatever she was doing. Correctly marketed, this dance would clearly make me one MILLION dollars. I think L. can testify to this.

At the Bad Moms Club, Z. was running around in her underwear saying "Guess what, my nail polish gives me SUPERPOWERS!" I was so inspired by this! It will become one of my many mantras!

Later I convinced this kid that I am a werewolf, and at the full moon, I turn into a wolf with purple fur.

It's the butt-scratching dance that gives me these superpowers...


posted by badgerbag 6/02/2003 10:08:00 PM comment

More on Wittig

jhk is making the cgi and database for my Wittig project. I should be able to tinker with it from whatever he comes up with.

At this point it's been 2 years since I've done any Perl coding at all - a depressing thought. Still, think of all the translation I've done. Not to mention the mom-ing.

And the poetry writing. The 9 months of unemployment money, full time babysitting, flaky driving around to parks and beaches and book sales, and writing pages and pages of poetry every day makes me feel guilty about blowing our money, but finally, my muscles were fully flexed. I was charged up. Since this January, it's all been classes and translation, but once in a while I get a poem. Last year's "leisure" was the hardest I've ever worked and I broke through many barriers - rhythm, "ending too soon", public speaking shyness, critical essay writing. I wrote a whole book of very short poems. I wrote all those bird poems. I wrote several very long poems - "Woodbird Jazzophone" and "Kissing Nadine in the Rain" were the best. Out of the hundreds of poems from last year, I feel certain that a few, maybe 3, were Very Good - that I will not become dissatisfied with them over time - that when I read them again, I won't hear a false note.

I am thinking of posting those essays on poetry. There are a bunch, and I started making them into a book called "Hot Air".

Other projects for the summer - get my old mud areas online again. The Dream of Red Mansions one was so good! The Mahabharata one was not great - I didn't work on the landscape at all - but like the Red Mansions area, if you play it for a bit, you really get to know the characters' characteristics. Once you have battled Karna a few times and looted his corpse, you for sure remember his chariot, and his earrings, and his breastplate, and his association with the Sun and Kunti. You get to know who is on which side of the battle. It could be fun for anyone trying to learn or remember the basics of the Mahabharata. I could finish my Inferno area - it was only done down to the 7th level of hell.

Lalala, none of this is about Wittig. I meant to write about L.T.D.'s tribute to Wittig - it got me all hot and bothered and raring to read The Straight Mind, a collection of Wittig's essays.

posted by badgerbag 6/02/2003 10:01:00 PM comment

Sunday, June 01, 2003

Mars, Xpeople

Reading Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton. It is excellent! I enjoyed the analysis of the sort of ideological history of Mars mapping and paintings of Mars and the idea of going there.

X2 was a great movie - the actors acted, and I especially noticed the lack of sexism. Why does it seem to be so impossible for other movies and books to achieve this? It was especially apparent from the nauseating preview of the "Sinbad" animated movie, where the girl (note: The Girl, as of course there is only one) is taunted and it's assumed everyone's sexist and then The Girl does something competent and says "Now do you still think a ship is no place for a girl?" Meanwhile, Xmen and Xwoms (Ywoms? Ymen? heh) exhibit no such bullshit. Stupid game designers should watch this movie about a million times until the basic lack of gender bias is burned into their brains. The men were interesting - jhk and I were talking about how the movie avoided many stupid cliches of masculinity such as

- lack of affect, hollowness, emotionlessness a la Keanu in Matrix
- guy solves all problems by killing revenge
- guy solves all problems by "getting the girl"
- guy becomes hypermacho by watching wife and children die (ideally should be on
knees at least once, screaming "Nooooo!" and shaking fist at god)
- guy has male "buddy" and they show their friendship only by taunting each other

Yay for Wolverine and his cigar-smoking, brooding macho, whose commandeering attempts to kiss a la romance novel do not work, and who does not go "hot damn, a girl in my bed" a la vin diesel and who faces archenemy while holding a pre-teen boy in his arms, obviously following therapy advice of "protecting and nurturing his inner child".

Heh. I also got very excited at the lake thing and was bouncing around going "Oh no! The subconscious is about to burst forth!" until jhk shot me a look of "shut up or die".

As always, Picard was good.

There were many scenes with no dialogue that conveyed tons of information. (John/Pyro looking at Iceman's family photos for example)

Politics and morality also good - the flags everywhere - the soldiers and police somehow all made to seem very... human... not cardboard grunts... so when they die it is shocking and disturbing. The scary fascism potential of the government. Not only did I go nuts praising the literariness of this movie, by which I guess I mean intelligent depth of metaphor, but I also think it sums up the time and place of this country really well (in a scary way)



posted by badgerbag 6/01/2003 10:06:00 PM comment

IF

Emily Short's interactive fiction. Have I heard her name before? On some RPG discussion board? The games and writing are very good.

posted by badgerbag 6/01/2003 01:44:00 AM comment

outrageous theories

This jibes so well with what I think about nearly any kind of theorizing.
The more clearly the immensely speculative nature of geological science is recognized, the easier it becomes to remodel our concepts of any inferred terrestrial conditions and processes in order to make outrages upon them not outrageous.
- William Morris Davis, "The Value of Outrageous Geological Hypotheses"

For the words "geological science" go ahead and substitute "narrative theory" or "feminism" or "gender theory" or "utopia".... whatever... I was saying the same thing even before writing The Slut Manifesto - we need all kinds of theory to push back the margins of the outrageous and the possible. I don't have to believe The SCUM Manifesto to get something out of it. I read all sorts of extreme philosophies and utopias and crackpot conspiracy theories. They are dangerous, yes, not only because of the people who believe them unquestioningly, but because it is possible to read more than one and realize fully the need for skepticism and outrageousness applied everywhere.

Hope that makes sense, midnite sleeping pill is kicking into effect here so I kind of forget the beginning of the sentence before I've finished it to the end....

posted by badgerbag 6/01/2003 12:17:00 AM comment

adventure

My dad telling the story of how, every morning, he prepares his breakfast and lunch in exactly 2 minutes. I don't know the details, but the punchline is that he opens the fridge and with his eyes closed, grabs a random container of yogurt and puts it in the lunch bag, while murmuring the words "Thus the adventure begins." (or something like that - L, what were the exact words?)


posted by badgerbag 6/01/2003 12:10:00 AM comment

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Ranting, complaining, speculating, confessing from Badgerbag in an extended Crossing the Line ceremony.

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