Tag: celesteh

Errands in The Hague

Ok, I like some things about The Hague. It reminds me a lot of Middletown, Connecticut, but has many more things going for it. And the music and school communities are both really great. I know a lot of people, I have friends. It’s a good time. And it’s less than an hour to Amsterdam, but in many ways it’s also a small town.

All the sales are going on now. I keep seeing goretex shoes for sale. Some of them are adequately formal to replace my current everyday shoes, which are leaky. So I went into a shoe shop and asked about the shoes I had seen in the window. The shop keeper lead me to the women’s shoes, which were clearly not what I had indicated. I said I preferred men’s shoes. She said that they were often too wide for women’s feet. “I have wide feet.” She took me to the men’s shoes and gave me no information whatsoever about which were waterproof and kept brining me women’s shoes. “How about these?”
I feigned being late to an appointment and escaped. She wasn’t hostile, but she was employing passive resistance. I was not going to succeed in finding what I wanted and lack of respect for my identity gets old really fast. This is the second Sunday in a row in which I’ve failed to run an errand because service employees don’t want to give me access to gendered-male stuff.
On the way to the park with my dog, I noticed an underwear store had a poster up of a woman in boxer briefs shaving her face. She was topless and had long hair and was extremely sexualized in a feminine manner. You know, in case there was any question about whether biology is destiny. Clothes might make the man but feminine is female is inescapable.
I got a bunch of shrink stuff in the mail yesterday. It’s got pamphlets explaining something or other. I can probably guess at what they say, but they’re in Dutch. I could ask somebody to translate them for me, but I’d rather hide under my bed, thanks. I don’t know how this is going to help cure my anxiety, since the paperwork is making me want to flee. Cola says that if I disappear and then call her from a pay phone at a North American airport, she’s keeping the dog. She’s fiendish. I guess flight response isn’t the way to go with this one. Maybe I’ll fight the letter. Or the doctor. That would go over well.
In completely unrelated news, I’ve volunteered to start doing sound FX for a Dutch fan-produced Star Trek. I’m a huge geek. I’ve been wanting to work more with video and this will give me experience. I never thought of myself as a trekkie before, just a viewer, but uh yeah. Lately, I’ve been looking at where my life has taken me (and is taking me) and thinking “How did I get here exactly? Which way is this train going?” I swear if somebody appeared to me ten years ago and said “in ten years time, you will live in Holland, whine about shoe stores to your blog, and be a trekkie.” I would have said, “What’s a ‘blog’?”

Shrink

Before I begin, I want to clarify that the Dutch are actually pretty ok as far as restroom etiquette goes. Best are the French, then the Dutch, then a tie between Californians and Germans (I think CA might be a teeny bit better) and at the very bottom is Spain. (Also: waa, waa, waa, nobody understands me.) Ok, so on to our story.

I went to see a Dutch shrink on wednesday. Over the summer, I got a book that said that therapy can cure anxiety. Zoloft can also cure anxiety, but it stops working if I stop taking it. Also, it has not been stellar for my concentration. I haven’t written much music since being on it. So a long-term cure that leaves me able to think would be very good.
“Why do you think you are anxious?”
If I knew the answer to that question, I would have a solution already. I dunno. I think there’s something bugging me that I’m not thinking about. When I have something that is really bothering me and I try to ignore it, I tend to have panic attacks. Maybe that’s the cause of all my panic attacks. I don’t know. Lyme disease was pretty stressful. Lack of sunlight might be a problem. I dunno.
I said “I dunno” a lot. She took copious notes and asked extremely open-ended questions. One of them was “how is your identity?” Ok, this was not out of the blue, since I was sort of without one right after I got divorced, but how does one answer such a query?
“Is there anything else?” she asked.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
She noted that it was open ended.
I took a deep breath. “I have a lot of friends who are transexual. And it’s something I’ve been thinking about.”
She started a new page of notes. “You know people who have had The Operation?”
Gah!!! The Operation. What operation would that be, exactly? Would it be the operation where folks take T (or E, since I’ve known folks going both ways) until they pass? Would it be top surgery? Would it be a hysterectomy? Would that be a medioplasty? A phalloplasty?
“Um, I know a guy who had a hysto?”
Did you mother know? Did your ex-wife know? Does your girlfriend know? How long has this been going on?
no. sorta, not really. yes. I dunno, a few years. You know, I’m not at all sure about this.
So you think you are denying your real self and that’s making you anxious and maybe having The Operation would fix that?
What?!! No, I don’t know! Augh!
Would you like to speak with gender specialists in The Hague?
“I don’t know.” I’m all wary now. Outside the window, a gigantic orange cat has climbed to the very top of a barren tree. It’s among the empty branches, looking around. It’s not acting uncertain, but I wonder if it must be stuck, up so high in the tree. Why did it go up there?
“You don’t have to make any decisions. It’s your life, you know. You can just talk about it. It’s an emotionally safe place to talk.”
That’s easy for you to say. I looked at the bookshelf behind her head. It was red and in the shape of a first-aid cross. “Um.”
“They can also help you with anxiety.”
“Ok, I’ll talk to them.”
“Your friends who have had The Operation- are they happy?”
“Um, as far as I know. I dunno.”
“Well, I think we’ve probably covered enough for this session. How do you feel now? Relieved to get everything out?”
No, that’s not exactly how I would describe my mood at all. How does it make me feel to talk about anxiety? It makes me feel fucking anxious!!
I speak virtually no Dutch. Her English skills are probably not high enough to be doing therapy sessions in English. No, I was not relieved. I left and went to class where I was all jumpy.
On the way out, I tried unsuccessfully to explain to the desk person that while I was happy to provide any insurance info they wanted, my insurance specifically excluded treatment for anxiety and regardless, they just reimbursed me for things, so it would be really better if I just paid cash now. The desk person went to ask a supervisor. Out the window behind her, I saw the orange cat running along the top of the fence, like it was on a mission, had a plan, had a place to be.

Complainments

Ok, it’s true that I play the tuba. And I bike around town with a sousaphone attached to my bike. While wearing men’s clothes. And I got to clothing stores to buy these clothes which requires trying them on. Despite all of these things that might lead one to a contrary conclusion, I do not enjoy being stared at. When I am trying to bike home in in the icy wind with a tuba attached to my bike via octopi (aka: bungee cords), and I hear the word “tuba” followed by squeals of laughter, it just annoys me. I’m grumpy that way. Other places I don’t like getting stared at: public restrooms. If you wouldn’t call me “sir” on the street, at a café or use male pronouns when describing the person you saw biking past with a tuba, then what on earth posses you to adopt them when I’m in the women’s room? Oh, but you’re Dutch, so you don’t say anything about my obvious out-of-placeness, you just stare. Well, stop it already. Sheesh.

What I really want to complain about this evening is Pat. I’ve been thinking a lot about Pat lately. This isn’t a person, it’s a Saturday Night Live skit that was broadcast while I was in high school. SNL was a measure of coolness when I was a kid. It signified many things including being allowed by your parents to stay up late enough to watch it, since it started at something like 23:00 on Saturdays. So, therefore, you could talk about how funny the skits on it were at school on Monday, and everybody would know that you were allowed to stay up late enough to watch them. (If you complained about how the band’s second song sucked (it always sucked for some reason. I think the sound engineers fell asleep by then), then you were super awesome because that part didn’t come on until after midnight.)
So there existed a skit about a character named “Pat.” I was trying to remember the theme song of the recurring skit, but I couldn’t quite piece it all together. The internet was no help, but it did give me a few plot synopsi. Anyway, as best as I can recall, it went, “Is it a he or a she? A him or a her? Um, excuse me ma’am, um sir?. . . It’s time for androgyny, here comes Pat!”
The one I remember best involved Pat going to a drug store and trying to buy personal items of a gradually more intimate nature. The druggist is desperately trying to figure out Pat’s physical sex. Would you like T-Gel shampoo or VO5? Pert Plus, Pat says. Speed stick deodorant or Secret? Which is cheaper? Finally, Pat asks for condoms. The audience howls. The druggist asks Pat to chose between extra-sensitive or ribbed. The punch-line is when Pat says “I’m a very sexual being.” The studio audience responds with an echoing, “Ewwwwwww.”
Pat is repulsive. Ugly. Toad-like. Wears unattractive, unflattering clothes. Unkempt hair. Snorts through hir nose when zie laughs. Who on earth would have sex with such a thing.
One plot synopsis, found on the internet, had somebody who became so confused by Pat’s gender that they committed suicide by jumping out of a window. Yes, violence is the correct response to gender ambiguity. But who makes a better target? Self-inflicted, or the person ‘causing’ this desperation?
Did I mention this was on TV when I was in secondary school, on an enormously popular program that conveyed status to those who watched it? The year I graduated, it was made into a movie, which, thank gods, was a major bomb. IMDB refers to the titular character with the pronoun “it.”
I’ve known a fair number of genderqueer and trans people in my time. On average, those folks are about as attractive as the population at large. Many are sexy, some are not. This is in no way linked with their transition status. They’re just people, obviously. Pat is an ugly caricature, with no basis in reality. but zie lives in my head. Even if it’s clearly not true that trans people are ugly and horrible, well, there’s Pat in my head.
So let’s end this complainment with some true statements. Somebody like Pat doesn’t ’cause’ other people to commit violence, whether self-inflicted or hate crime. I don’t cause people to stare at me in bathrooms. Other people’s problems belong to other people, not to Pat and not to me.

but . . .

I was trying to buy a tweed jacket today and I went to the tweediest store I could find. Many of the stores here are kind of butcher than the same store is in Paris. Zara is way less twinky, for example. I’ve noticed that when I dress more casually, people don’t respond to me as well, so I’m going back to dressing like a swanky Parisian man. Anyway, I was in my casual Dutch hooded jacket, trying to find classier jacket and becoming paranoid. There’s that moment when people looking at me in the store realize that I’m looking for men’s clothes for me. This is Holland. nobody says anything. Probably nobody thinks anything of it, once the connection is made. Or not very much of it, anyway. But I’m paranoid and when the shop clerk volunteers that he thinks I’m a size 14, which they don’t carry, I don’t know if he’s being helpful in telling me the things I’m trying on don’t really fit, or if he’s trying to get me to leave his smart, tweedy shop. There’s really no way that I can know which it is.
When I was in France, for the first time in my life, I enjoyed clothes shopping. But now it’s gone back to filling me with dread. Things have returned to normal.

Blog For Choice Day

So I’m blogging for choice. As I see it, the anti-choice arguments that are stated tend to fall into a couple of camps. One is “accepting consequences for your actions” So if you accidentally cut yourself and don’t wash it and it gets infected, you should be denied medical treatment because it’s the consequence of your actions? Or does this just mean that unwanted pregnancy is a punishment for having sex? Babies aren’t punishment! Or at least, they shouldn’t be. Also, medical care is a good thing. Being able to interviene in the course to change the outcome of an earlier action is a good thing.

Another argument states that fetuses are people with certain rights. There are actually two halves of this argument, the first of which centers on the personhood of a fetus. Whether or not a fetus is human is absolutely not a question. But being a person is more of a philosophical issue. In the past, even babies weren’t really people and it was ok to leave them out to die of exposure. Now, I think we’re all pretty much agreed that babies are people and therefore have the rights of people. Some want to extend personhood back before birth. But how much before? In it’s article on the Immaculate Conception (of Mary), the Catholic Encyclopedia states,

The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents. Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body.

Personhood occurs with the creation of a soul. This occurs after fertilisation. In a reversal of course, Catholics have since decided that it happens at the same time as physical conception. More than 75% of conceptions do not make it to term. They imagine an afterlife full of “people” who never lived. Who never even got past a few cell divisions. This seems strange to me. Furthermore, if every conception does indeed create a person, then the rhythm method of birth control kills many, many people. It tends to result in conceptions that are either to early or too late in a cycle to survive. It’s one of the most zygote-killing methods of birth control. Given that, the church can’t possibly both believe, honestly, that personhood is conveyed at the moment of physical fertilization AND that the rhythm method is the only moral method of birth control.
At no point during a pregnancy is a fetus treated as a person by the church. No name. No ceremony. No recognition of death (by miscarriage). If they really thought it was a person, baptisms (necessary for admission to heaven – the unbaptised can only get to Limbo) would be given at the first positive pregnancy test. The church does not in any way act as if fetuses are people.
I’m inclined to argue that a fetus is not a person. Personhood occurs at birth. But this is moot, given the second half of the personhood argument, which is that fetuses, if they are people, have certain rights.
People who argue that fetuses have rights are not arguing that fetuses have the same rights as other (actually born) people, they want to argue that fetuses have a great deal more rights. Specifically, fetuses have the right, in this argument, to compel their mothers to provide them with use of her body and organs.
(the following argument is borrowed) Imagine that you’ve been kidnapped. You wake up in a strange place to find yourself hooked up to a lot of medical machinery. Lying in another bed next to yours is another person. That person is also hooked up to a bunch of equipment. Your captors explain that this other person has no liver and will die without access to a matching liver. Yours matches. Therefore, they have attached your liver to him through the medical equipment. You must remain that way until a liver donor can be found for him and he is able to survive on his own. they expect the wait to be nine months.
If the sick man is unhooked from you, he will die. Are you therefore morally obligated to provide him with use of your liver for nine months?
Some will point out that the kidnap victim had no agency in her situation and thus this differs from somebody who is accidentally pregnant. However, then the argument is no longer about the rights of persons, but rather is about accepting “responsibility” for actions and was addressed in the first argument. Legally and morally, no other person can force you to provide use of your liver. If fetuses had that right, they would have more rights than other people and their rights would drastically decrease upon birth. They would have far more rights than their mothers, who are unarguably people. Fetuses would not be people, they would be super people. This is obviously in error.
What could be the motivation that people might have in trying to confer fetuses greater rights and personhood than their mothers? One obvious answer is to seek to control sexuality. This again ties back into the “consequences for actions” argument. However, I think it’s only a subset of the answer.
There are those who firmly believe that people do not “own” their own bodies. In this belief system, (some) body modifications are a moral evil. Biology should be destiny. This world-view is strongly associated with sexism. If biology is destiny and pregnant women lose rights to their person, then male superiority is implied. Furthermore, people who use their bodies to do thing like have same sex encounters are defying their biological destiny and are thus also committing a moral evil. As are transgender people, crossdressers and especially transsexuals. Thus supporting choice and the body ownership it implies is essential for queers. If pregnant women don’t own their bodies, neither do we. None of us. Even straight men with very minor kinks or who have “illicit” sex are committing the “evil” of acting as if they own themselves.
Choice benefits everyone.
Finally, those who reject biology as destiny are people and should be treated as such. Rights to medical care. Rights to just try to get a damn haircut without being stared at. Etc. I’ll march for choice so my pregnancy-prone sisters can safeguard their rights and mine that are implicitly threatened too. Will they stand up for me?

Not manly enough

Every day, I walk past a barber shop. It was established in 1940 and probably was meant to look old-fashioned then. They have not altered the look since, as far as I can tell. Barber chairs, green tiles, big mirrors, it radiates masculinity like the scent of aftershave. The prices are posted outside for hair cuts, cur and wash, cut wash and shave, etc. A cut is just 15€. “I’m going to get my hair cut there.” I announced to Cola as we walked the dog by a few days ago, “but I’m going to wait until I can take a shower first.”

Mole removal has meant that for four days or so, I could not take a shower. But today I could. Huzzah. Right afterwards, I took the dog for her morning walk and then headed to the barber shop.
“Kann ik dir helpe?” asked the barber.
“I’d like a hair cut.”
“Only herr.”
“What if I get a man’s cut?”
A woman sitting in a chair getting her very young son for a clip intervened to translate. “They only cut men’s hair.”
“I want a man’s haircut.”
She and the barber conferred. All the barber shop was looking at me, some smiling at the clueless foreigner. “No, they only do men’s hair.”
I did not push the point that there’s no actual difference between my hair and a man’s hair (or at least a young teen boy’s hair. I said “ok” and left, feeling pissed off.
If I can’t use the women’s restroom without stares and hostility, I should be allowed access to barber shops, damnit.

Severe Weather

Oh my gods, the wind is intense today. When I was home for xmas, I went biking in a major storm in CA. But what the Bay Area calls a major storm, The Hague calls “Tuesday.” The milder the climate, the wimpier the bicyclists. In Sweden, people go out in freezing rain on cobblestones. Although, practice helps with that. I can barely ride with a passenger on the back (normal here), let alone while holding an umbrella, in the wind (also normal here – yikes).

When I start feeling whiny about the wind, I remind myself that without the wind, there would be no Holland. A long time ago, somebody got the crazy idea to drain the sea and turn it into farm land. They went out in boats and just dumped sand bags overboard until they built up something of a levee. Then they put windmills up and pumped out the inland side. No windmills, no Netherlands. No wind, no windmills. Also, it’s a great source of alternative energy. So, it’s quite windy a lot of the time, but I try not to complain since they results have been good me.
Today, though, is kind of spectacular. While I was walking the dog this morning, roof tiles were blowing off the top of a nearby building. On the way to school, I felt like Mary Poppins. whee! The way back, the wind was against me and thus not so fun. Some of the other students reported that the trains were noticeably swaying in the wind and that when the storm peaked, the trains would probably stop running. On the way home, I was stopped at a red light and the wind overpowered my breaks. I’ve nearly been blown off my bike before, but never has it started rolling on it’s own. I got blown in front of a stopped car. I ended up sitting on the hood of it and pushing my bike out of the wind-tunnel-like area. The driver looked alarmed, but I was kind of amused. Anyway, the tall buildings around there were intensifying the gusts. Apparently, Xena got hailed on while out for her afternoon walk. Nicole says that the flag pole in the center is broken and may fall(!).
The peak of the storm was supposed to be right now, but I think it came and went with the hail. In other (possibly related) news, there was a weird smell around here this morning which the record shop owner said was gas. She closed her shop, saying the whole block might explode. Why was the gas company doing nothing??!! Uh, yeah. So I told Nicole to leave and went to school. The smell is gone now, so I guess it’s all ok.

Edit

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070118/ap_on_re_eu/northern_europe_storm_1

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Hurricane-force winds and rain lashed northern Europe on Thursday, disrupting air, rail and sea travel for thousands, toppling trees and construction cranes, and killing 11 people, including a 2-year-old boy crushed by a collapsed wall in London.
. . .
The Dutch traffic ministry urged motorists to avoid travel unless absolutely necessary, and several key routes were closed due to damage or floods. Those who ventured out on bicycles were knocked over by the winds — or in some cases, pushed backward.
. . .
A ship came loose from its moorings near Rotterdam and smashed an oil pipeline. The stench of oil reached The Hague, 20 miles away, Dutch media said.

Well, it wasn’t just me being blown around on the bike, although most of the bicyclists near me were doing much better than I was. Also, this explains why the energy company didn’t send any trucks or repair folks around. When I was in Connecticut, there was a hurricane centered to the south of the state. I could see the arms of the hurricane spiral spinning quickly overhead. There was intense wind and rain. It was less intense than today’s storm. Maybe this has something to do with the network outage at school. Amazingly, though, all the power is on (afaik).
Finally, global warming is scary.

Adventures in Healthcare

Over break, I noticed a strange and itchy mole on my back. Since I’m at very high risk for skin cancer, I just got it removed for testing. In case anybody cares, I will compare and contrast my experiences with a previous mole removal in the US.

So several years ago, when I had a weird mole, I went to a dermatologist in California to get it removed. He had some sort of student with him, also male, whom he addressed instead of me. He explained to the student what was going to happen when the mole got removed. Also, he went on to note how he would eventually remove the (queer-themed) tattoo on my back. “I like my tattoo.” I protested. He still not address me, but explained to the student that I would one day grow up and come to my senses.
I can’t recall about anesthetic. I have a recollection of the procedure being uncomfortable. He used a round gouging tool which popped the mole out pretty quickly. Then, he stitched it up. I came back some time later to get the stitches removed and to get my lab results which showed that the mole was nothing. Which is good because he didn’t get the whole thing when he took it out.
This time, I went to a general practitioner in the Netherlands instead of a dermatologist. She only had me pull up my shirt instead of remove it, so she never saw my tattoo. Also, there was nobody in the room to talk to but me. We chatted a bit. She used a ton of anesthetic, so I didn’t feel anything at all, which is good because it took much longer. I didn’t look or anything, but I suspect that she used scissors instead of a tool. It took several minutes to remove.
She gave me two stitches which will come out in a week. Lab results come back in two weeks. My back itches even more than before now, but doesn’t hurt. Augh, the itching.
Thanks to the dermatologist from a few years ago and other medical experiences, I’m always pleasantly surprised when a doctor treats me as a human. Yeah, I’m gender non-normative and queer, but I’m still a person.

Idea: Am I Trumpet or Not?

Jean-Calude Risset, while he was at Bell Labs, derived the overtone structure for trumpet attack timbres. Then, he made a catalog of available synthesized trumpet sounds. This was in the 60’s I think. There were already hundreds of computer models for trumpets. The number has undoubtedly grown. His catalog is a tape of him saying the number, followed by the sound. But this is a problem. Some of those trumpet sounds are subjectively better than others. But who has time to listen to the thousands of sounds available just to pick one?

The solution: an internet ratings site! People hear a trumpet sound and give it a score. (Or, it could be a contest where two trumpet sounds are pitted against each other.) Soon, one rises to the top of the heap. This is the best trumpet sound! Hooray!
The site should also offer the synthesis algorithm and sample code in C sound or whatever the sound is coded in. Risset’s catalog thus becomes useful to synthesis geeks.
I’m too lazy to do this, but I think it’s a good idea. Also, I can host it.

Freedom Machine

Last night, over dinner, the subject of bicycles came up. Who invented them? “It was the Dutch, certainly” asserted the Dutch woman. “No, I think it was the British” said the Brit. Nicole thought it was Americans. I thought it might be the French, given the large section on bicycles in the Musée d’Arts et Metiers.

After reading the wikipedia article, well, it’s not so straightforward, but it seems like Nicole and I were both right. I remembered this morning that there’s a plaque in New Haven, Connecticut which says the bike was invented there. What’s more interesting though, is the bike’s feminist import.
The big wheel bicycles were considered inappropriate for women (and were also very dangerous), but in the 1880’s, an English inventor came up with a “safety bicycle” which had pedals, a chain, small tires: the modern bike. “It was the first bicycle that was suitable for women, and as such the ‘freedom machine’ (as American feminist Susan B. Anthony called it) was taken up by women in large numbers.” The wikipedia article goes on to state,

The impact of the bicycle on female emancipation should not be underestimated. The diamond-frame safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their larger participation in the lives of Western nations. As bicycles became safer and cheaper, more women had access to the personal freedom they embodied, and so the bicycle came to symbolise the New Woman of the late nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States. Feminists and suffragists recognised its transformative power. Susan B. Anthony said: “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” In 1895 Frances Willard, the tightly-laced president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, wrote a book called How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, in which she praised the bicycle she learned to ride late in life, and which she named “Gladys”, for its “gladdening effect” on her health and political optimism. Willard used a cycling metaphor to urge other suffragists to action, proclaiming, “I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.”

And then, alas, bikes fell out of favor in the US, replaced by cars, and the status of women dropped. But then, “In the late 1960s . . . bicycling enjoyed another boom. Sales doubled between 1960 and 1970, and doubled again between 1970 and 1972.” And continued to grow while the second wave of feminism was also getting going. Coincidence? A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Take that bike away from the fish and give it to the woman, it’s her freedom machine.
Um, seriously, biking has a number of leftist benefits, but perhaps among them is some sort of inherently democratic, egalitarian nature. Bikes to do not seek to dominate and control in the manner of cars. They are self-propelled and thus reliant only on the rider for power, but at the same time, close to the terrain. Power without dominance. Maybe bikes are inherently feminist.

Repeating Playlists

I live over a record shop. I’m lucky to have the apartment. A vocalist had first dibs, but she decided the record shop’s music would drive her nuts. I had no such qualms. They stock music I like. I don’t mind overhearing music. It’s kind of nice, actually. There’s always some background tones.

Over Christmas they started repeating the same play list over and over and it included Christmas songs and was driving me insane. I came back from break and there was something new on. Huzzah! But it’s still on. The same CD. On repeat. Every day. For five hours a day. Coming through my floor. The same seven songs. Loudly. Over and over. Every day.
So I was coming into my apartment and heard the same CD again, so I went into the shop. The shop owner was arguing with a customer over something involving receipts. She asked me what I wanted. I said, “I’m your upstairs neighbor. I don’t mind that I can hear your music through my floor. It’s kind of nice, actually. But you’ve been playing this same CD over and over again and it’s starting to drive me nuts.”
I’m happy to report that the shop owner was a total asshole. “This is what I like” she said. “In a few months, I’m gone from here. There’s absolutely nothing else I can play. All the new stuff coming in is shit.” I’m looking surprised and looking over her shoulder at the Nirvana box set, at Kraftwerk, at Ladytron, and Peaches and shelves and shelves of CDs.
“There’s nothing else?” My eyes were on the shelves and shelves of CDs. “Do you want to borrow my ipod?”
“No, there is nothing else but soon I am gone. I’m with a customer.” she gestured at the man with the receipts and her angry eyes dismissed me.
Well, in a few months I’m gone too. She acted like I was being totally unreasonable. She’s been listening to the same CD for over a week. I’ve been listening to her same CD for a week. I could try to drown her out, but I know from experience she would just turn up louder. (I asked her once if my music was bleeding through and bothering her. She said it was not. (This was not snarky on my part, sound design is very important for a record store.))
In other news about me going crazy, I have an appointment with a shrink scheduled. Yay me. All the shrinks in the Netherlands that deal with gender issues are at a university hospital in Amsterdam. I do not have an appointment with such a shrink.
Finally, while I tag my old posts, some RSS readers like bloglines and livejournal are publishing old posts as if they are new. This is a bug, because they are ignoring the post date in the feed. (Safari does not have this bug.) Those of you being annoyed by this should consider filing bug reports.

Edit

She’s been playing this same CD from before. This is the one that was driving me crazy before Christmas. It’s been a month. jldgsfljgsdfgSLJDF

Edit 2

The record shop owner just knocked on my door and explained that she was pissed off at the customer, not me and that she has a cold and can’t hear and she switched the CD and turned it down and explained their marketting policy about their playlists. So it’s all ok now.