Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Closed

I don't update this blog any more. I'm kind of out of the personal-style blogging for awhile. That said, there is this blog. That one gets updated quite a bit. However, if you are not into typewriters and stuff like that, you might not find it that interesting.

That is all.

Monday, April 07, 2008

I'm having a thrisis

This made me laugh, especially the line: "There are angsty moments, of course, when you come to terms with the harsh reality of living in a grown-up world and having far less time to sit around eating Pot Noodle and watching Neighbours."

Sunday, March 23, 2008

White Privilege? Check.

I came across a link to this essay, "White Privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack" while reading one of my favorite blogs (Uppercase Woman). Although it is written in an unfortunately academic style, which dilutes its understandability (I *hate* academic writing) it's quite illuminating to read. I'm white, and have clearly enjoyed the privileges listed in the essay for that reason. I've always tried to make this same argument about male privilege, while not looking at my own racial privilege with the same scrutiny.

I think what struck me about it most was, that it is in fact a privilege to decide you don't want to talk about racism, a topic that I, like a lot of white liberal types, generally avoid. I think the essay is really worth reading and thinking about.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

I was a straw-hat nincompoop

At the risk of revealing my political persuasion to the untrustworthy interwebs, I participated in my local Democratic caucus for the first time in my inauspicious voting career.

I am not sure prior to 2008 I could have explained to you exactly what a caucus was. Bad American! Go to your room! But I have set things right this time by taking my proper place in this handy chart, in the bottom-most, squashed looking rectangle that represents The People's Will:


After perusing the official documentation ostensibly explaining the caucus process, and nowhere finding details about what actually occurs onsite, I turned to a local blog for the rundown. According to this source, there'd be a couple of hastily scribbled, open-air votes made by people not required to show proof of voter registration or party affiliation, between which one might see heated, rambling 1-minute candidate endorsements from one's nutty neighbors. Sounded pretty scientific to me. Sign me up!

I reported to exactly the location you might expect for such an affair: a sneaker-scented junior high school gym with the pall of 25 years of adolescent angst hanging in the rapidly heating air as frantic, hope-seeking Obamaniacs packed themselves in. A stray Clinton supporter, I bravely slapped on a perky Hillary! sticker handed to me by a resolute-looking twelve year old boy. As I was soon to discover, this would not be our day.

Jittery crowds rushed the rickety cafeteria benches, swarming out any prayer of reading one's precinct number on modest little tri-fold placards. God help you if you came unarmed with this number in advance: a map containing only wiggly lines and no street names was taped on a far, inaccessible wall of the gym, with precinct numbers scribbled upon it in an unsteady hand.

Somehow I found my table, and located a strewn pile of half-completed signup sheets. OBAMA. OBAMA. OBAMA, they read. I furtively scribbled a rogue vote for CLINTON, and tossed my sheet back into the unattended stack, dubious of its fate.

Just then, a pasty boy-man MC in an oversized suit stood up on a table, and shouted into the din. He was completely inaudible over the cacophany of Starbucks-clutching hope-mongers, who heckled him to speak up. His voice eventually rose to a barely audible level, and he proceeded to issue confusing instructions regarding whether it was necessary to stay for the second vote.

Now, I seemed to recall reading that the purpose of the second vote was for a) those flip-floppers who allowed their carefully-considered candidate choice, recorded a scant 30 minutes ago, to be changed on a dime by pushy neighbors high on lattes, or b) if you wanted to ascend to the next level of the above-mentioned graphic as a precinct captain or uber delegate or some such matter. Neither situation applied in my case, and so, desperate for air not superheated by the lungs of hyper Democrats, I headed for the exit.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO PREPARE FOR IT TODAY, scolded Malcolm X from the grave, by way of an engraved stone staircase just outside. Comforting words for those of us who wriggled our way into the lowest rung of democracy on a cold Saturday afternoon, that is, until learning the next morning that one's candidate was trounced by a 70% margin statewide.

But it was still caucus day, and I had hope. I walked the two-block road home with my Hillary! sticker bravely affixed. "Clinton sucks!" shouted a slurring teen from the rolled-down window of a beater hatchback. Well, at least he didn't use her first name.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Flashback: Sauce Packet Writers

In the heyday of Tiny Dog, I was given to produce many a strange side-project, such as this packet-by-packet analysis of Taco Bell marketing slogans.

I am reading it now, and I am not sure it makes any sense.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Late breakfast at the Black Bear cafe

I guess the disembodied voice that warned me against going inside should have been my first clue that this establishment might not be the best choice for a late-morning weekday breakfast.

"Are you going in there?" it hissed, as I unloaded a certain toddler I know from her cracker-dusted car seat. I turned around and a Lincoln Town Car idled behind me in the parking lot, manned by an elderly couple sharing a sour expression.

"Uh, yeah?" I said. Theoretically, this was a work day for me, but as anyone who associates with toddlers knows, sometimes these critters can, on short notice, cause your plans to change. "Heat's broken in there," scolded the wife. Now, I was sort of feeling a little uncreative at the moment, and couldn't really think of anywhere else serving mid-morning meals easily handled by persons under the age of two that was within immediate driving distance, and so to my way of thinking, a little chill was not the end of the world. This seemed a little rude of a matter to explain to my new friends, however, who clearly expected me to move on.

"Ah, sounds... cold," I said.

"We didn't think the baby would like that," she nodded, case closed. Their window then rolled up, and they cruised slowly away, eyeing me expectantly. I waited until they were out of sight, and then proceeded past the 7-foot carved bear statue through the front doors.

Inside, the nearly empty, cavernous interior had a foreboding, cool stillness I remember from last winter's blackout days. Feeble midwinter sunlight crept in through frilly bear curtains. A dispirited kitchen worker in a greasy apron lead me to a u-shaped booth in a forgotten corner, flinging some crayons in front of the baby. There didn't appear to be any actual waitresses in the place.

While waiting to give our our order, we listened to patrons grumble about the cold. "The fans are stuck on!" they whined. "Cold air is blowing right on my plate!" The baby and I kept our coats on. "Hung-ry!" the baby insisted, dropping the hard "g" sound as she does, and I nodded. "We'll get you waffles," I said.

"Ah- no waffles," the kitchen guy muttered, minutes later. "Waffle machine is broken."

"Orange juice," I kept going, hopefully.

"Uh--"

"The orange juice machine is broken," I said.

"Yes." The baby looked at us expectantly. "French toast," I said. Was that my breath I saw? "Bacon."

"Down!" the baby said. She wanted out of her high chair. I lifted her out, wiggly and surprisingly heavier every day, or perhaps I'm just a day older each time I go to pick her up. Earlier that morning she'd fallen and scratched her face, this combined with my uncombed hair gave us the unhinged air of a single mother and her waif living in the back of a Buick, an impression I may have seen reflected in the disapproving looks of fellow cafe patrons as I walked the restless baby around the black bear knickknacks, statues, and paw print placards in the dining room.

Back in our seat, the food arrived. High chair refused, we moved on to a booster seat, whatever kept the wiggling in check. The baby began loading in French toast slices at wood-chipper speed. I looked out the window into the gray intersection, at the bus unloading cold-looking people onto the street. Does anything make you feel grown up quite like eating in a diner alone with your kid?

She'd never tried bacon, partially my fault, it seems so sinewy and unhealthy for a toddler, to me. I snapped off the tiniest flake and set it before her. She reached past this cautious offering, grabbing the entire fat-marbled slice, and poking it into a cup of syrup. "Dip!" she shouted. I blinked, and the bacon was gone.

"...and then I sat next to her bedside for weeks watching her waste away, watching the life literally drain out of her, and let me tell you, if anything will depress the holy Christ out of you, it is that." My booth neighbor concluded the story of his mother's demise, and his companion nodded grimly over her scrambled eggs.

"It's been five friggin minutes, and I'm still waiting for my coffee," said my neighbor on the other side, standing in a huff and stomping past the stone-faced kitchen-waitstaff guy. This latest bear-themed incarnation of the old steep-roofed 1960's diner building, formerly a smoke-filled Coco's, was clearly not long for this world. I put my arm around the little kid in her booster seat, now putting eggs into her face two hands at a time, and thought about these early years of her life, of which she wouldn't remember a single detail.

"Mama!" she grinned up at me. "Egg!"

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Number twenty

20) This web site was/is an epic and incoherent love letter to something that no longer exists. You know how as you move through life, you lose things? Important things? Friends, people you loved, places you lived? Interests that seemed to define who you were? This site is kind of a big, scratched up suitcase full of this sort of baggage, that I've been lugging all over the internet for eight years. I may keep lugging it around, I really don't know. It's just that there isn't a lot of room left in there at the moment.