nerdmeyr & K

(for a much better and wholly more worthwhile movie review, see K’s takedown of Knowing.)

I can clearly remember a warm spring day in grade school when I walked down 117th Street to catch the school bus, and had James Brown’s _I Got You (I Feel Good)_ stuck in my head. It was stuck in my head because it is an song that in both composition and performance is unalterably, undeniably, and unaffectedly more catchy than white dog fur on a black peacoat. At that time, fresh in the world, James Brown was a revelation to me.  Now, in my tender mid-thirties, it takes a long week and a serious Manhattan or two before Mr. Brown’s voice can move me in such a way. It is not just me growing old and calcified, it is the natural progression of de-sensitization. Over the course of my relatively short life, I have imbibed James Brown not just on the way home from the library in the back of my parent’s car, but in doctor’s offices, grocery stores, and wedding receptions.  It is not James Brown’s fault that he no longer moves me… he has no opportunity for extemporaneous  re-imaginings and re-workings of the iconical.

I imagine that if James Cameron were cowering before me, and I were wielding a jug of syrup and a bucket of fire ants, the one thing that might save his sorry, sorry and tembling ass would be him exclaiming, “I started that movie ten years ago!”

Perhaps it is not James Cameron’s fault that I found Avatar boring at best, completely reprehensible at worst. Perhaps it is that I have seen Contact, Requiem for a Dream, Girl Interrupted, and one of the Harry Potty serials. In other words, James, it’s not you. It’s me.

Avatar - food for the sewer rats

Now that I have done my due diligence in excusing Mr. Cameron, I let loose with my barrage of cutty-shark word complaints about my new favorite worst movie of the world, Avatar. There are those who argue that Avatar relies upon unfortunate-to-unforgivable racist elements . There are those who argue that Avatar represents an unfortunate re-hashing of a messiah complex. Yes, I agree. My biggest beef with Avatar, however, can be summarized thusly:

If you lack all imagination but can corral 2,500 CGI horses, make Avatar.

Aliens from a completely different universe? planetary system? whatever.  Anyway, oh, wow, you came up with four-limbed, two-eyed, vertically symmetrical athletic carbon-based beauty-aliens that look like a cross between Keane Big Eyed kids, Tayshaun Prince of the Detroit Pistons, and the stilt-walking hippie who panhandles down on Pacific Ave.  And who simultaneously perform their lives according to 21st century middle-class American standards of binary genders, heterosexuality, and ethnic eco-consciousness. Wow! That’s really out there!  What??? You say you’re giving them braided hair with beads, iridescent facial tattoos, ear plugs, and bare feet???!?  Waaait a minute… I feel like I’ve seen those features somewhere… oh yeah, like EVERY FREAKING DAY! On the bus, no less (now THERE’S an intergalactic space mission for you Mr. Cameron!) Oh, and they talk all mystical and wise and shit?  Really???   And there are trees on this faraway distant space planet that look suspiciously like every giant-ass oak tree I’ve ever seen?  And the military is all stompy and racist and act like tools for The Man, and anthropologists are all elitist and smug and clueless-about-real-life?  But there’s this One Guy?  Who’s Reluctant??! But Different? And (somehow) Special? Amazing! That’s…… so…….. unique………….

The bottom line for me is that this movie says absolutely nothing about race, class, colonialism, disability, liberalism, conservatism, agency, citizenship, or ANYTHING of interest. It can’t possibly, because its too busy farting and burping unicorns in the form of CGI effects. It relies upon every other action and space-alien movie ever made to make any sort of impact at all. I cannot abide laziness, truculence, or incuriousity, and this movie reeked of all three.  This is a movie made by a sheltered man-child who substitutes trope and cliche and firework for inventiveness, uncertainty and nuance.  Sometimes I dislike a movie; sure, whatever, OK.  Then there are the movies which make me feel like their very popularity is a clarion call for Zeus to descend and incinerate all of us, because if this is what we produce in all of our wealth and glory and comfort, we deserve to be incinerated. This is that movie.

A strange day of rain.  The rain itself was not strange; its geophysical dropping is what made it strange, as this is by far the mildest winter I have ever experienced. (Today, case in point, is bright, sunny, and about 60 degrees).  I know that when Californians talk about the weather in wintertime it is usually destined to receive:

a1) good-natured ribbing

b2) outright scorn

c3) barely-disguised jealousy

from almost everyone north of 39 degrees latitude, but I don’t bring up the weather for any of these purposes. Rather I bring it up to inflect and inform the rest of the story, which is actually shorter than my discussion of the weather (and if _that_ isn’t midwestern, I don’t know what is.)

Anyway, I took advantage of a break in the rain to walk down to the local grocery store, which is a cross between high-falutin’ (I assume for the summer tourists), fancy (for the corporate raiders who can afford to buy up here now), and average (for everyone else). I was purchasing ingredients with which to make chili, which, although it always contains the same ingredients, always turns out differently from the time before.

At any rate, I had my standard moment of indecision when faced with joining a checkout line. 2 checkers, one line decidedly longer than the other. The shorter line had Chatty Checker, a younger woman who has the knack for launching into random conversation with every customer. Tossing my lot in with luck, I joined Chatty Checker’s line, only to patiently witness a conversation between her, Customer John, and another checker about how long they’ve all known each and the best way to broil eggplant and tomatoes.  I finally ascended to the front, only to somehow become ensconced in a conversation with Chatty Cathy about a movie. _I_ thought she was talking about the movie ‘Up’, which, if I had had a second to think about it, would be weird because it’s been out for quite awhile (but which was fresh in my mind, having just seen it via Netflix the night before).  I said, “Oh, yes, I would’ve figured that kids would be totally bored by it, but the animations were pretty incredible.” She cocked her head like a spaniel being addressed by its owner through a thick wooden door, and said, “Well, I thought George Clooney did a pretty good job….”  Oh, right, that _other_ movie called ‘Up in the Air’, that’s actually out right now and thus a reasonable subject for random stranger conversation. For some reason, I couldn’t explain my momentary confusion, so now Chatty Checker thinks I’m a certifiable nutter.

Oh, well.

Sitting in a waiting area under the hum of flourescent lights.

Carefully crossed legs, focused on keeping back straight but arms and shoulders  relaxed (but not too!), face pleasant and calm (but not too!  Have to look a little hungry, a little go-getter-y!). Surreptitiously warming the hands for the initial meet and greet (is a firm handshake with cold hands worse than a limp handshake with warm hands?)  Silently reviewing names and program acronyms so as to appear knowledgeable about the organization.  Silently practicing positive, confident self-talk. Simultaneously trying to imagine myself spending many waking hours under those fluorescent lights.

I glance down,  checking to make sure no lint hath dared to encroach upon the suit. I end up looking at the ring on my hand, which is no longer round, but oval and oblong and somewhat uncomfortable to wear. I think about the fact that I bent it wood-chopping the infernal live oak, which cannot be split by axe, but rather must be pounded into submission with a sledgehammer and wedge.  I think about the fact that even the wedge, a six-pound triangle of forged steel, now has a misshapen and jagged head from the repeated blows of the sledgehammer. I think about how sometimes if you take the bark off first, the wood seems to resist the wedge less when you set it.  How an axe is not at all the same as a splitting maul, and how you should always aim  for the edge of a round and not the center. I think about the sound the wood makes as it slowly cracks apart and how there’s always a few stray sinews valiantly attempting to hold together what the wedge has split asunder.

I look up, stand up as my face arranges itself into a confident (but not over-confident!) smile, and apply what I hope is a firm and warm handshake to the people facing me. I go with the people to a conference room, where I spend the next hour and half making eye contact and talking about many things I have done and can do, but, somehow, the subject of wood splitting never comes up. That is for me to know and keep under the suit.

It is just after 6am on a Friday. K is in the bathroom, drying her hair. She is taking the early bus to make an 8am meeting in the city. I am one of those people who find it difficult to sleep through noise and light, so I am up as well. I can hear that the scrub jays and woodpeckers are already bickering over choice acorns. Even though I’m tired, I can get up easily because I don’t have to plan an outfit or calculate which leftovers are still good to bring for lunch. I work from home, am one of those shadowy creatures of the workworld known as a telecommuter.

We are living in what feels like a monestary, a half-acre gated off from the world for a dog. All three of us humans living here make our living in occupations that, for the moment anyway, afford us the option to make the house our place of business. I leave the gates to bike into town for groceries, or to go with M. to the farmer’s market, but, on the whole, I am mostly breathing within this one half-acre. Below us and across the valley are redwoods; not the redwoods so enormous that it is possible to drive a car through them, but towering, svelte redwoods that grow in clusters and whose bark sometimes slowly spirals up in a counter-clockwise fashion. Further up the hill, the ground turns to sand and the manzanita, knobcone pine, and madrone take over where the redwoods won’t go.

i think back to all the other times i have moved away. away from my dad’s house, away from milwaukee, away from the twin cities, away from portland. i, sentimental and prone to reverie, think about relocation this way: not as _to_, but, as if i arrived here by walking backwards, keeping my eye trained on the things i know, _away_.

I do not wake in panic and disarray, as I have in the past when i wake up in a new place. I do not generally feel anxious or as if I Have To Do Something, even though circumstances dictate that it might be motivational to feel such things. I do not feel inspired to write letters, join organizations, or make birthday cards. I feel as though leaving Indiana was like stepping off a cliff, anchored by a bungee cord, and I’ve been slowly, slowly falling ever since. The bungee cord is still unfurling and seems to have some length to it; I expect that when it is played out, I will come back up.

…a sign that you might want to rethink an issue is that Dick Cheney …err….comes out and agrees with you on it.

Cheney backs gay marriage, calls it a state issue

I guess the gay daughter card finally got played. Or maybe Cheney’s having some sort of delusional episode? He also says he still thinks that Gitmo is housing criminals so dangerous, they would blow up the entire united states (yes, even wyoming! and alaska! and hawaii!) if they were allowed to step foot on our soil.

Ostensibly, MSNBC’s Olbermann is a left-wing-nut, super friendly to progressives in general and gays in particular. In the below YouTube clip, Olbermann attempts to take down  RNC Chair Michael Steele over Steele’s assertion that gay marriage should be opposed not on moral grounds, but rather on economic grounds. Steele’s theory? That once gays have legal egress to get married, they will apply for health care benefits through their new spouse’s employer and thereby cost the employer way too much money.

Olbermann refutes the conclusion of Steele’s argument but not the assumptions that make such an argument possible in the first place.  In brief, Olbermann spends the bulk of his time listing all the ways gays would spend money if they were legally allowed to get married, via dresses/suits, catering, photographers, hotels, stationery, rings, honeymoons, etc. etc., to the tune of 6 billion dollars a year.

I hate Hate HATE HATE HATE Olbermann’s argument, and its presence and traction impugns the aims of the entire “gay marriage” project as its been shoved down our throats.

1. Steele’s argument and Olbermann’s refutation both position gays solely as consumers, not as citizens who deserve rights because they’re citizens. Steele criticizes gay marriage because of his assumption about our shopping habits within the medical industry; Olbermann lauds us because of his assumptions about our shopping habits at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
2. Speaking of assumptions, Olbermann’s clearly assumes that gays getting married will behave exactly like straights getting married (e.g., spending a shit ton of money, “bridezillas”, destination weddings, etc.) is obnoxious, offensive, and depressing. Obnoxious and offensive because it assumes queers want to act like straights as much as they want the legal/social benefits of marriage. Depressing because it says to me that even left-wing-nuts like Olbermann say, “We’ll give you gay marriage as long as you assimilate into straight culture and behave as we do, accept our mores and modes of behavior, and so on.”  A false, terrible bargain to be had, gay people…wise up!!!
3. As usual, straights like Olbermann support the gays when we’re reaffirming the desirability of their unsustainable, messed-up, broken-ass habits (e.g., the general unworkableness of modern marriage as its currently defined, death-to-us-part, etc. AS WELL AS solving our economic difficulties through endlessly increasing consumptive habits). We’re only going to get to have a national conversation about how individuals establish legal rights/responsibilities with other individuals once in a  generation. The gays  are WASTING it on trying to keep up with the straight-Joneses.  Helllllo, peeps – the Joneses are living off Natty Ice in a crumbling dilapidated house with sewage running down the middle of the yard… and the best we can come up with is that we want that, too?

Alright, alright. I know- the above points are a lot to expect from a talking head.  But even if Olbermann wanted to have a conversation about the economic impact of health care for a subset of the population, he could have done it differently. What he should have argued is that if we just had government-sponsored health care for everyone, then health care costs would no longer be an issue for any small, medium, or large business owner, regardless of the marital status of their employees, straight or queer. Nor would health insurance be an issue for the 46 million Americans, straight and queer, who don’t have health insurance at all right now. And I don’t have statistics to back this up, but I would guess 90% of childless gay couples already have both people working outside the home, which means that very few will be hopping on to their partner’s health insurance anyway.

Olbermann, you are no friend to the queers.  Screw you – we have a lot more to offer you and straight society than our over-extended credit cards.

Doing the gamer geek steez….on your keyboard, press (fairly quickly, and using your arrow keys):

up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A

and watch the easter egg magicks fill up the screen with each additional arrow key press.

…. but better because they don’t even know they’re miserable.

Now that my hair is a giantess (bring on the humidity of summer!), sometimes I need things around me that remind me that even though I feel semi-awkward in long hair, it could be worse.

the dog does not want to be seen in public with them...

Meow! on the tiger beat

YOU-ESS-A! YOU-ESS-A! those acid wash jeans are a harbinger of disasters to come..

Somehow, this video makes me think of all of us Americans, writ-large.  We can imagine with our own eyes the beneficient happiness of the rope toy, or the squeaking duck, and yet we just cannot imagine how to actually get these things, given the fact that we’re in Economic Noocuuulur Meltdown of 2009!

There are pockets of relative economic happiness scattered all over (well, except for poor Michigan, California, and S.Carolina) …. but look at those doughty great plainsers, esp. bumpuck WY with 1.9%  and below. I guess that means out of the 50 people in that county, only ol’ drunkard Lee can’t find another local bank presidency position.

The weird thing about this map is that its exactly the part of the country that kinda really shouldn’t have any population or development at all other than retirement homes for buffalo (see Cadillac Desert ). But they seem to be making a go of it, at least as long as the water lasts….