Tag: politics

There are people who are not normal, who have a confusion in their head, and they think they’re a man even though they look like a woman.

SAVAGE: Portland, Oregon, [caller], KXL, you’re on The Savage Nation.

CALLER: My wife was sitting on the couch with our 7-year-old daughter when Etheridge got up and did her piece thanking her wife and four kids, and our daughter looked over at our — at Mom and said: “Was that a man?” And how do we answer our kids when we’re forced to [sic] — this homosexuality upon us?

SAVAGE: I will tell you how you answer it: You say there are people who are sexually confused, who think that they’re men when they’re women. They’re not normal. Normal people are not like that. Normal people are like Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy are normal. There are people who are not normal, who have a confusion in their head, and they think they’re a man even though they look like a woman. That’s what you have to say to them otherwise the child will grow up confused.

Previously on the same broadcast:

ETHERIDGE: I have to thank my incredible wife, Tammy, and our four children, Becky and Bailey and Johnnie Rose and Miller, and everyone —

SAVAGE: Turn it off. Get her off my show. I don’t care what her name is. I don’t like a woman married to a woman. It makes me want to puke. How’s that? I want to vomit when I hear it. I think it’s child abuse. That’s my opinion — one man’s opinion. If it’s illegal, tell me it’s illegal to have an opinion in America. Maybe I can be excommunicated for having an opinion.

I want to puke when I hear about a woman married to a woman raising children because, frankly, I think that it’s child abuse to do that to children without their permission. What does a child know? Ask them when they’re 16 whether they want to be raised by two lesbians or two men. What are the two men doing behind the other wall? You think the children don’t hear it?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200702270015
It’s fair to wonder why I am reprinting hateful garbage on my blog. Before I answer that, I’m going to add even more hateful garbage:
“The only thought that pops in ur head when u think ‘feminist’ is a fat, manly, tall lesbian who wants to take control over everything….” http://forum.armenianclub.com/archive/index.php/t-1386.html
” I don’t want this blog to be about the fact that I’m NOT one of those angry, hairy, lesbian feminists.” http://happyfeminist.typepad.com/happyfeminist/2006/01/index.html
“Maybe she had some notion that feminists are all lesbians, have hairy legs, and hate men.” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/22/20500/1686
“Despite how ‘feminists’ have been portrayed, most of us don’t hate men. We aren’t hairy, unwashed, bosom sagging, shrill harpies who want to destroy families.” http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/woman/entries/2006/10/12/is_third_wave_f.html

Well, that was fun

Not that there’s anything wrong with being a hairy-legged lesbian.
What’s the common thread here? Gender normativity. Lesbians want to be men. Feminist are lesbians and want to be men. None of these people are conforming enough to gender stereotypes. I’m not going to go dig up comments on the other side of this, but it wouldn’t be hard to find examples of men getting called “fags” regardless of their sexual orientation, but because the speaker feels they insufficiently conform to gender stereotypes. Men are men and women are women and people who seeks to redefine or expand those roles clearly want to change their sex and that’s a bad thing.

What started this

I heard the Michael Savage rant and I winced. Yeah, there are lesbian-IDed folks who do want to be men. Augh, it’s all true! But then, I thought of the lavender menace. Some feminists really are lesbians. Augh, it’s all true!
The problem isn’t that some feminists are lesbians or that some lesbians are ftm or anything like that. The problem is the insistence that there’s something wrong with this. The insistence that gender normativity is right and good and natural and all transgressors, no matter how small or minor their transgression are unnatural and bad and wrong.
Lest this all be too obvious to justify the mad amount of quoted text, I want to go on to address radfeminists. (Doesn’t it sound like it should be the “fun” kind of feminism what with “rad” and all. It’s not.) Some straight women thought the way to address the charge that all feminists were lesbians was to throw them out of their groups. The lavender menace had to go. Not that there was anything wrong with lesbians, just their experiences and socialization was so different, they should respect the space needed for straight women and butt out. This is why lesbians are not allowed access into the Michigan Women’s Music Festival.
The same reasoning is used to exclude mtfs from women’s spaces right now. When you classify trans people as their assigned-at-birth sex, you’re agreeing with Mr Savage. Because you are denying the legitimacy of transition. Saying that mtfs are men who want to be women is awfully similar to saying that lesbians want to be men. In both cases, the possibility of successful, intention transition is dismissed. In both cases, transition is condemned. In both cases, gender is seen as essential. And really, when Michael Savage and radfeminists are agreeing on something, there’s is something going woefully wrong. This guy makes Rush Limbaugh look moderate. I used to joke that if Reagan said that oxygen was important for breathing, I would start demanding definite evidence for the oxygen thing, because he’s wrong so much of the time. I can’t agree w/ him on anything. Double that for Savage.

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?

yanni

So I met somebody the other day who said she liked Yanni, and I realized that I’d never actually heard anything by him, despite his being a staple of pledge-drive season public television in the bay area. I asked Tom and he said, “Yanni’s great! I actually really like him.” But tom used these same words of praise on Britney Spears, so I thought I should investigate this for myself.

The offical Yanni website only offers 33 and 36 second previews of his work, so I can only talk about his introductions, of which I just downloaded a few. And listened to them while Xena stared at me with a confused and disapproving expression, the dog version of “wtf?” It sounds like an instrumental version of Celine Dion, but performed on Casio Tones.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Casio tones. And I don’t know what year’s music I was listening to. Perhaps it was recorded in the heyday of Casio tones. anyway, someplace, I have one, I think. I’m fond of it. It’s a midi controller and the accordian sound is really nifty when passed through an overdriven low pass filter. Actually, it’s Christi‘s casio tone, so perhaps I will never see it again, since i’m not sure where it has gotten itself off to.
I feel like there may be a strong asthetic connection between Yanni, Thomas Kinkade and Chicken Soup for the Soul. It feels like it is strongly rooted in the middle class, perhaps distinctly American (except that Yanni is Greek and Celine Dion is Canadian). It’s something born in the last decade? Perhaps earlier? The middle class is the backbone of our society. the silent majority who tromps off to work every day, pays taxes (most taxes? the rich aren’t paying anymore) and sees little benefit except in public education. Without the middle class, the US would decend into chaos and open class warfare, or at least chaos, since open class warfare is already being waged in many places. The middle class, locked into debt, is locked into non-radicalism. they have the most to lose and the most fear of losing it. the cultural values that they embrace define us a society, as they are consumers, so the rich pander to them while ignoring the poor.
Therefore, the middle class asthetic is safe. the middle class is up to it’s eyeballs in student debt, credit card debt and morgage debt, they can’t afford to rock the boat. the asthetic is comforting. while existing a few paychecks or one serious illness away from bankruptcy, the need for comfort is strong. And it allows them dreams of togtherness, unity and a social safety net. While isolated in the suburbs, with no real community around them, who wouldn’t desire to look at pictures of cohesive village social structures?
Or maybe I’m readin too much into this
I have a CD with an interview with a Dadaist on it and he’s talking about how the thing to do seemed to be to attack the bourgeois, as apparently they were unaware that it had been done to death. then they did some investigation and found out that they were all bourgeois.
“Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. Carry on, my children, humanity, kind bourgeois and journalist virgins . . . ” (http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/English104/tzara.html)
I want to write a manifesto for an art movement. analyzing capitalist systems and Yanni is optional

Kucinich in the news

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/12/MNG57485GR1.DTL
I got email from his campaign a couple of days ago asking if I and others on his list would call people in Iowa. There was a link to click for a phone list and another link for a phone script. This guy is seriously grassroots. everything he does, he does with the support of people. Not plutocrats or mega corps, but dedicated people who rally to his message of peace and hope. It’s rare that a politician gives a reason for hope. Rarely do they have the honesty. Nader’s got it (hearing him speak is incredible) and Kucinich has got it.

Some dems hate Nader because it’s easier to blame him than widespread election fraud. Those Nader-haters should love Kucinich because he can draw all the traitorous leftists back to the party. A huge number of people didn’t bother to vote last cycle. Gore failed to sufficiently differentiate himself from Bush and many folks concluded that it didn’t matter which of the two evils that they voted for. And, of course, voting for a third party would be “throwing away” a vote. Well, here’s a guy that has a real difference who can bring back disaffected voters and who, as a major party guy, is not a throw-away vote.
Kucinich is the best hope for progressives and the best hope for the Democratic party and a real pacifist, the best hope for the world. We owe it to the world and future generations and to ourselves to at least try to get a progressive into office. Kucinich can win, more than Dean can win or any other dem can win. Kucinich is our best hope.

Looking Forward/Looking Backwards

Party Report

At the party were: Esperanto Ed & Sandy (who left before midnight), Sarah Dotie + cousin Kareem and Brother Bob (who had to leave before too late so Sarah could go relocate mating Salamnders to a new pool as part of an abatement program or something), and Polly and Paul. And Ellen and I, of course. It was a small group. I made a mountain of gaucamole. I told Ellen that Californians eat tons of gaucamole and that you couldn’t make too much of it for a party. So last night, I ate a bunch of leftover gauc. Anyway, we chatted and ate food and totally missed the countdown. I looked at my watch at 12:02 and ordered Sarah to call popcorn to see it was after midnight. It was. So we toasted the New Year a bit late. One of my resolutions was better time management, alas. I started the New Year late, but at least it was under five minutes late.

We had several six packs of beer for the party. Of which four beers were consumed. Two by Ellen and two by me. Then I switched and had a glass of Compari + OJ, thus making me the heavist drinker at the party. It makes me nervous when I notice that I’m drinking more than everyone else, but fully half of the people there were non-drinkers and some folks who might normally drink were obstaining so they could go do things like interrupt salamander mating.
I thought it was oodles of fun. So did Ellen. She was impressed by the complete nerdiness of my social circle. Yes, I am a nerd. Most of my friends are nerds. I think she was worried that a bunch of really hip people were going to come over. Maybe I seem hip? That would be exciting. Do nerds suspect me of hipness?
I was very releived when Polly started talking about the decline of Santa Cruz. I had been concerned that it had always been uncool and for some reason I hadn’t noticed before. But no, Polly verifies that Herland did used to be an extremely hip hangout and the Saturn was awesome, etc. She said that less than five years ago, scruz was colonized by valley yuppies. alas. woe for the world. The homoginization of amerika is spreading even to liberal enclaves.
after the party, I played Ellen some MP3s of Polly’s flute playing. Ellen said it was the best, most interresting flute playing that she’d heard in her life. Earlier, she had been talking about how the flute was completely boring and I had argued that cool extended techniques existed. and indeed they do and Polly knows them.

A New Day, A New Year

Woke up early yesterday and full of energy and optimism. Had two cups of coffee and then felt even more energetic and optomistic. Thanks to the hard work of Ellen, I am now addicted to coffee. I woke up yesterday thinking, “If I get up now, I could have coffee!” I’m up to two cups in the morning. I think I will try to stay at that level. coffee makes me so awake and so smart and la la la. anyway.
We went to Half Moon Bay to try beachiness again. the sand there is a lovely yellow color. But it was cold, cold, cold, so I did not walk barefoot in the waves and ran up the beach a few times to keep my feet from getting wet. Ellen, however, got wet feet as she failed to successfully dodge the waves a few times. But she was laughing so much afterwards, I suspect it may have been somewhat on purpose.
the rains caused the streams that run to the ocean to swell. Torrents of muddy freshwater were rushing out to the sea. We walked down a sandy penninsula as deep, fast freshwater raced on our right and the ocean crashed to our left. I feel some sort of mystical connection to the earth and the sea when I’m surrounded by so much water. The ocean makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself. I feel the presence of a mother earth when I feel the salt and hear the crashing waves. It was quite lovely
As we drove further up highway 1, I was reminded of a trip I took there in 2002 with my parents and Christi. Sometime after brain surgery, when my mother could communicate, she indicated that she wanted to go to a restaurant in Moss Landing called the Distillery. She liked fish and the restaurant is purported to be haunted. She loved ghost stories and haunting and so the Distillery was one of her favorite restaurants as far as I know. My dad and her ordered crab cakes. I remember being impressed about the discretion of the waiter. I was worried about things like that then. On the way there, we drove through the farms of Half Moon Bay. We passed the Christmas tree farms, the pumpkin farms and the horses. My mom used to ride and show horses. I had the idea that she might like to do horseback riding and was looking to get her into a program for adults with disabilities. I asked her if she was interesting in having a horse. She said, “oh yeah. Maybe someday. Not now.” Her memory wasn’t good. We told her she didn’t have time left, but she couldn’t remember or didn’t want to. The word “someday” broke my heart. There was no someday. there is no someday.
Yesterday, Ellen and I drove past the distillery and stopped at a second beach a bit north of there. We looked at the sandy cliffs and more water rushing to finally again meet the ocean. I thought of the future. There is no someday. There is no control of fate. Take things as they come. Look for opportunities. Do my best. I might die tomorrow as my life rushes back towards the sea and the earth, but I cannot know. this is a kind of optimism. I will do my best. I will accept things as they happen. I will change what I can. I will accept what I cannot change. I am a part of the universe and I belong to the world.

Jean’s ritual

We came back to the East Bay and went to Jean’s New Year Ritual. there I discovered that my attempts at serentiy and new age hippy-dippy spirituality do not extend to political discussions. I cannot change some people’s minds, but damnit, I’ll try anyway. someone there thought that Kucinich was a Nader-like spoiler who must be stopped. For the record, Nader did not lose Gore’s election. Gore lost it. Because he’s as uncompelling as Gray Davis and because of massive voting fraud in Florida and probably other states with electronic ballotting systems, the same systems that are now all over the country. Made by Diebold, the completely partison republican voting machine company who does not release their source code and runs our elections for profit.
Simply, I would not have voted for Gore. I will not vote for anyone that wants to throw queer or poor folks or people of color or the third world to the wolves to protect corporate profits. The excuse cited is that a progressive would be unacceptable to middle america. but let’s pause for a minute and think of the massive role that corporate money plays in campaigns. Are candidates that think the country ought to be run for the benfit of the people rather than profits really unacceptable to middle america or are they unacceptable to the plutocrats that pay for campaigns? Kucinich has major labor support. the majority of americans agree with his platform. If you think that that you can’t vote you’re conscience because it will lose, then you’ve already lost. there’s no hope. You might was well go to work for Haliburton.
Jean’s ritual consists of list making. this year it was three lists. This ritual is a prayer more than it is making resolutions. the first list is things you want to leave behind in the passing year. I listed angst, procrastination and war. The second list is things you want to draw to yourself in the new year. I listed self-reliance, confidence, widsom, knowledge and skills. The third list is new this year and it is things that you are grateful for. Jean says that if she focusses on what she’s grateful for, she feels better about the world.
Jean passed out envelopes, which we self addressed and then sealed in our lists of things to draw in and things we’re grateful for. In the middle of next December, she will stamp the envelopes and mail them to us. For the list of things to leave behind, we went out to a small fire pit in the back yard and burned the lists. In years past, there’s been singing at this point, but this year there was only a little singing by a few people. I am guilty of non-participation. Jean asked me to hum the MIDI thingee I posted to my blog in mid-December, but I couldn’t remember it. I had forgotten about the pice, thinking it wasn’t worth working on.
For the last few months, I’ve been noticing a dearth of music. My stereo was mostly silent in Middletown and I noticed most other people’s were as well. I was thinking this was because I was at music school. We spend all day studying music and listening to pieces to analyze them and write papers or whatever and so don’t put on background music. But now I’m wondering if this is everywhere. Have people stopped wanting to sing? If we don’t have music in our lives, if we don’t listen, if we don’t sing, how can we live? How can we resist evil? How can we fight for good? How can we remember what is beautiful? How can we call for justice if we cannot sing?
So I’m adding a resolution to sing more. My voice is out of practice. Some Californians may recall my willingness to start singing at the drop of a hat, but lately, I’ve been more restrained. This restaint is not a good thing. (well, moderation is a good thing.)
One of the things that I like Ellen is that she sings. she sings to the cats. She sings to me. We should all sing to each other.
I saw Danica at the ritual. I asked what pronoun to use and the reply was “they.” It makes me feel silly to use it, but silliness is a good thing. they seemed very together and happy. I hope to see them again while I’m in town.
We came home from the ritual and I played the MIDI file that Jean liked for Ellen. Ellen liked it too. So I’ll work on it when I get back to my desktop computer where my notation software lives.
comments appear to be working again.

Universal Healthcare

Dean is right. Universal healthcare is a moral imparative.

Well, he didn’t actually say it that way. In fact, when he was asked about UHC, he said he’s “not your guy.” His “position paper,” (which is actually just a flyer and has a larger picture of him than a discussion of any issues) says his plan will offer healthcare to every unisures American for cheaper. that doesn’t mean “healthcare for everybody.” That means, “buy your own.”
I really don’t want to turn this into a Dean-bashing blog. Dean would still be better than Bush. Hell, the stuff growing in my fridge would be better than Bush. the only thing worse than bush would be Joe Lieberman. but if you think Dean’s going to get you UHC, well, he’s not. He doesn’t want to. and if you think he’s going to be pro- freedom to marry, well, he’s not. He says “civil unions” (he won’t even go as far as marriage) are a states rights issue. That’s like saying that integration is a states rights issue.
I’m not saying he never did anything for gay people. Civil unions are a nice little seperate but equal system. It is seperate. It is equal. And the “but” still applies, as it doesn’t have the nice federal rights or mobility of real marriage. and I’m sure his healthcare system is better than Bush’s. But it’s not UHC and it’s not equal rights.

Errata

I said that Mass was the first and only state to rule that dscriminating against the marriage rights of same sex couples was unconstitutional. Yahoo news says that Hawaii decided that first. Actually, I was in Hawaii in 1998 when all of this was happening. christi, I and her parents went, hoping that we would be able to get married. while the case was pending, Hawaiians voted to amend their constitution to specifically discrminate against same sex couples. So any court decision was automatically moot and iirc, the later court decisision just said as much.

Alaska also amended it’s constitution, I believe also in the face of a pending court decision, but I don’t remember as much about this one. The Hawaii one really went down to the wire. It wasn’t certain how they would vote and there was the possibility of a ruling coming at any time and then being reversed only a few days later after the election. Alaska’s situation must not have been so close, or it would have been on my radar.
Yahoo says that Mass can’t amend it’s constitution until 2006. The Mass legislature, however is unhappy.
It is important that the pro-freedom to marry viewpoint is as visible as possible. I’m going to look into possibilities for direct action in Mass. Other things that can be done include writing letters to the editor of your newspaper supporting the Mass court ruling. That is an extremely useful thing to do. Also, posting approval other places, such as your blog or wherever. you could use the same letter for both. I highly encourage you to do this. this is the first civil rights struggle of the 21st century. writing a few paragraphs and emailing it off to your newspaper (and posting it on your blog) seems to me to be the best way for a non-citizen of Mass who lives far away to affect the process in a positive way. If you have other ideas, I’d like to hear them.

Xtain Pacifists

So right before fall break, I happened upon a very small peace vigil in “downtown” Middletown. It was a few old guys with peace signs standing in front of the episcopal church. So I stood with them for a while, holding a sign with a pro-peace message on it and decided to come back the next monday after fall break. Being active is important. Maybe more so in tiny towns than in big cities where everyone expects you to be.

today I came back and it was raining, not hard but apparently enough to make the ink run on their signs, so they were standing in the church door, instead of down on the sidewalk. They were all fired up about the march on Washington, which they had gone to, but I did not. I stuck my bike in the vestibule and went to stand with them. Only one guy was holding a sign and it said “Jesus is the Prince of Peace.” I picked up some sign about the administration lying and we stood in the church door while they stood around and dissed the Green party. The Greens in CT are apparently less together than they are in CA and are apparently looking to get some of the peace crowd to join the party. These guys were tired of the Greens trying to convert them, especially since they’re so inneffective (because they have so few members) blah blah blah. Uh, yeah. I’m a Green. they’ve been tremendously successful in Germany. then the subject switched to SUVs. A woman there was talking about how tiny women drive SUVs. tiny women! They have no buisiness driving that kind of car! they get in accidents!
I switched the subject to SUVs as a symptom of class warfare, lest I start defending the right of tiny women to drive any car they damn well please. and it went around for a while until the Quaker woman standing next to me said that she was uncomfortable with the Jesus sign. I pointed out that it was impossible to tell whether the guy holding it was a pacifist or a bible thumper. He got adamant about how this was a religious peace group and he was not taking Jesus out of it. It was bad enough that they had to quit carrying the pro-Palestine signs because the local Rabbi had complained. and then the subject wended around to Jews.
It’s a small town. folks in a small town might not know the difference between Zionists and Jewish people as a group. The problem with Jews . . .. Oh but that one guy that spoke at the march was Jewish . . . blah blah blah. yikes. So I ran away.
As I was retrieving my bike, they seem to have come back to their religious (Christian) identity. “We’re a religious group!” the guy with the Jesus sign was saying. Quakers. Catholics. etc. “Actually, I’m an atheist.” I said as I snapped on my helmet. yes really. maybe, indeed I would turn to God on my deathbed, who can know the future?
they want me to come back next week, maybe so they can convert me back to being catholic, or maybe so I can convert them all to being Green.
I reported all of this to Aaron, my housemate, and he said, “wow. Greens. Women. Athesists. you’re lucky they didn’t start talking about gay people.”
indeed. I need a new peace group.

christi is here

Which is really nice for many reasons. yay christi. i have a bad cold though. but i’m reading a book about Lou Harrison and it’s making me homesick. he was an east bay kind of guy, even after he moved to aptos, he regularly commuted to Mills. there’s a chart in the book about the tuning syetm on the Mills gamelan (which he designed). and apparently, he wrote the graduation processional played by the mills gamelan at graduations. they played that at my graduation, but i can’t remember it.
Mills was quite the happening place in the 30’s. they did these summer session where they had up-and-coming artists, musicians, dancers, etc come and teach short classes. Lou wrote a score for a Mills Drama dept production. It was commissioned. these days there isn’t even a drama department and certainly no money for a summer session. The college president then understood that such events added to the presitge of the school and thus paid for themselves eventually. Mills is still banking on the the afterglow of what it did in the 30s. But what is it doing now? Alas, mills is a shadow of her former self. If only we could bring Rheinhardt back from the grave and re-install her as college president.
But i have a new school affiliation now and new academic politics to bemoan. it’s against the rules to write messages in chalk on campus. this is the biggest political issue. this was a stroke of genious on the part of the admin. every other student issue is subsumed by the chalking debate. they’ve stopped all other criticism. it’s brilliant.
I was checking my home email account and i didn’t unsubscribe from all my lists, so I got email from the Berkeley Socialists about an upcoming event where they will explain why revolution is necessary. and the annual Anarchist vs. Communist soccer match is looking for a pep band. and things seem to be still going well on the left coast. the brass liberation orchestra is continuing it’s debate on politics vs. muscianship. on the right coast, well, we’re worrying about whether or not it would get you in trouble to chalk “i love wesleyan” or “i love president bennet” in front of the president’s house. duh. yeah. and you can’t buy beer on sunday. for real. i went to the supermarket and tried to buy beer today. you can’t buy beer after 8:00 either. people here think of californians as backwards wackos, but at least we can go into a store and buy beer at normal times.
somebody told me that somebody tunred the us on it’s side and shook it and all the oddballs rattled down to california. great. i don’t disagree entirely with this assesment. everyone running for governor should return to their home state. anyway.
so i’m not doing anything political but reading Chomsky books and getting email from the Kucinich campaign. they mesh well together. chomsky says that if there’s a progressive candidate (like a real progressive, not backed-by-buisiness Dean) on a major ballot, then progressives have already won. the Kucinich meetups are during my Gamelan class though. And i might skip class to go sit in or protest something, but i’m not skipping class to discuss fundraising strategies. sure, i’ll got hit up impoverished grad students for donations. the undergrads actually have cash, but i think they should organize themselves to fundraise it. i don’t want to have a Kucinich house party to get cash out of undergrads, for example. the power balance seems wrong.
anyway, lou harrison was the quintissential california composer. he was highly political and fought the good fight. he built his own instruments (ca people do that. somebody once attributed it to the weather). the east coast and he did not get along. so he returned to relatively rural isolation, but was still connected to a university-type community. east coasters didn’t take ca-types seriously. ca composers had to go to the east if they were “serious.” people tried to get famous enough to new york. then, if they were famous there, they could come back and THEN the bay area would take them seriously, but not before. yeah, things have sure changed in the last 60 years…
weather here: 85 degrees F and humid enough to rain rain rain. i can’t wait till i get famous enough to move back home. i’m starting a band with a clarinetist, angela, and my housemate aaron, who plays drums and is from nyc and heck, maybe we’ll get some gigs.

Update

I went to the first night of the SF Electronic Music Festival. It was really groovy. I was going to post a detailed review and then go to all the other nights, but alas. I had a prior engagement the second night. I looked up the third night listings and it included a piece called “Bukkake Clown” for “synthesizer mouth and face.” Ah. So I stayed home. And on the fourth night, sailing went later than planned. such is the nature of sailing. We replaced all the standing rigging on Mitch’s boat. “Standing rigging” means all the steel cables that stay in place and are not changed mid-sail via lever or pulley or any other means. In order to replace all of this rigging, the mast must slowly be lowered. have all the old cables detached, which includes plyering the hell out of some pins, have new cables reattached and then slowly reattach the mast. The mast is long and heavy and several of us were standing on the unbolted side of it, which is like standing downwind or a tree that you’re sawing, except with more cables. It nearly hit Jenny in the head, but disaster was averted. It did not smash down and sink Mitch’s boat or a boat across from Mitch as that slip was vacant.
Then we went on a sunset sail. The wind gets mighty gusty right after the sunsets, creating big waves which splash over you ad then don’t dry out, cuz there’s no sun. Brr.
Then the next day was brunch with nervous family members. Coversation was neutral. The occasion was Christi’s and my engagement, which was only mentioned twice: once during the blessing and the second time in a gag gift from soneone not present. We were given bridal body detergent. “Now eliminates second thoughts!” Some friends were also present. One significant other said she was going to vote for Arriana Huffington. Nevous silence decended. Actually nervous silence decended several times. If I were going to do this over again (next time I get married to Christi . . . ), I’d serve champagne more agressively than the massive amounts of coffee that folks were drinking.
Then band practice, which went well. We’re working on playing five minute long songs instead of two hour long songs so the audience on thursday will feel happier. And then it was already too late for the last night of the SFEMF, so we went to Fogardy’s for dinner.
Today, I went to work with Christi and was unable to get Quicktime Streaming server to stream an mp3. On a mac with a mac client, it refused to stream. arg. Then I saw the Weather Underground movie with Cola and Andra and then we went out to dinner. It’s nice seeing old friends. I wish I had more tie to rekindle friendships before moving away.

You must register to vote! You must vote in the recall election

Ward Connerly’s initiative will also be on the ballot. This guy is the anti-affirmative action guy who is also the UC regent. He is trying to destory all affirmative action in the world, which of course has been disasterous. The UC law school used to be integrated, but last year there were zero African American men in the program. None. He chased them all away. Of course, this looks bad, so he has a solution: quit counting. This initiative ought to be called the Bury our Crimes Initiative. He wants to stop counting race in any government tabulations.

Having a problem with too many black men going to jail? Is it making your justice system look racist? Stop counting! Are police officers stoppiing people for Driving While Black and making your justice system look biased? Stop counting! Are resources being unequally distributed and making your education system look segregated? Stop counting! Is your law school no longer attracting minority candidates because you made them want to aply elsewhere and it’s embarassing? Stop counting!
The NEW Bury our Crimies Initiative can help stop the public from being aware of racial profiling, racism and segregation. It can also make it darn near impossible to fix or redress persistent racial problems! Bring back the good old days and hide the consequences with the Bury our Crimes Initiative!

You must vote against this. Since you’re voting anyway, why not run for governor? It only takes 65 signatures to get on the ballot for the recall election. Anyone who can vote (YOU! If you register!), can run. There is no primary. There is no runoff. Whoever wins, wins. Even if less than 10% of voters approve them. Heck it could be 1%. Whoever gets the most votes, wins. It could be you! Just contact your county registrar of voters for forms.

I will back your campaign!

If you (yes, YOU) run for governor, I personally pledge to help you get signatures to get your name on the ballot. I will help design your website. I will sign any petition to get anyone on the ballot. I encourage you to also sign any petition that you come across. Signing a petition is not an agreement to vote for someone, so you can sign as many petitions as you want, you just have to be registered to vote. Help each other out! Sign your friends’ petitions!
If enlisted in your campaign (I will help out any candidate, even strangers whose platforms I disagree with), I promise to stand in front of fourth street buisinesses with your petition and solicit signatures. All you have to do is be willing to actually go through with it. You must write a blurb for the sample ballot and be willing to have a website and talk to the press or at least issue a statement of some kind.
Seriously.
Really
You should
I’ll help