Lunamania

The U.S. Census. I know that much like the Mars Rover, the Census can be applied for evil things. But I'm mesmerised by the random things I can calculate. For example, did you know they can tell you the average commute time for census respondents in your neighborhood? Or the number of respondents between the age of 5 and 18 who speak Farsi at home and English "very well' (census speak) in Alameda county? Amazing.
Designing a photoblog. So many choices, such limited coding knowledge. I'm working on a mock-up for pics. It should be live in about a week--I think. Then I want to have a plug-in that will link to this blog and Tony's blog. Oh, and I guess I'll have to post pictures.
My new beta tester gmail account. My friend Chris somehow managed to get an account and passed one along to me. 1000MB of free email storage and being the envy of techies bidding $150 and up on ebay or offering to swap weekend getaways in Baja for a tester account! Oh joy of geekdom.

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Summer is quickly approaching. Look forward to hoardes of cicadas on the East Coast, even more sun on the West Coast and bundles of money handed over to summer movies all over the country!
I was compiling the movies I want to see and once again fully embraced that I am a not so secret Hollywood tool. So yes, I want to see Troy, Shrek 2, Spiderman 2 (despite their poor taste attempt to plaster Spidey all over the bases at ball games over 4th of July weekend) and Harry Potter. There are non-Hollywood movies on my list too. Super Size Me and Farenheit 9/11.
While we're on the movie tip, I've told lots of peoples already, but if you get a chance, go see Control Room. It's a documentary on the Al-Jazeera network and coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That seems like an understatement though...The filmakers were "embedded" with Al-Jazeera during the weeks preceding and the first 2 weeks of the invasion last year. They also somehow got full access to U.S. Central Command. I think that I'm a somewhat critical reader of news and other media, but this movie really made me realize how easily I let the orchestrated U.S. media cycle shape my understanding of the world. Not the most eloquent review, but hey this is a blog, not the New Yorker. The website is pretty incredible and also has a listing of showings in different cities.

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Whoa (cue Keanu). It's been long time no blog. I suppose that's what working 9-5, drinking mojitos in the evening, and parental visits will do.
It's been a whirlwind of events this past week, but due to more pressing horticultural concerns, I won't go into those details.
APB--If you've been stealing plants in downtown Oakland, GIVE THEM BACK! Between you me and all of cyberspace, if someone is desperate enough to steal our sorry plants, I'm inclined to just hand the dying things over. However, my Monkey Half is upset because she's had this one umbrella plant for 8 years! On a self-interested note, if plants keep disappearing, I will never be relieved of garden duty and will continue spending inordinate amounts of time at the Home Despot.
Home Despot: (n) 1) warehouse of ridiculous proportions that will mislead lay people into thinking they can fix anything in their home, or if they can't fix it, they can build a brand new replacement home; 2) A.D.D. inducing, poorly laid out store where one cannot find any product without first hunting down ever elusive staff person in Orange Apron. Once hunted, Orange Apron I will inevitably refer you to Orange Apron II in some department on the other side of the 3000 acre store because this is not Orange Apron I's department. This despite having "I'm Orange Apron I, I can help you in any department" embroidered on their chest.

Sigh of relief, CA bar results came out last Friday. I passed. Nice.

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Lisa Asagi and R.Z. Linmark's reading last night was great. Asagi read from her Hatchery Diaries. It is a journal/memoir/lots of fun piece chronicling her life and experiences at her family's chicken hatchery. It's written as a series of journal entries so there's something kind of roaming and intimate about the whole thing. She has this mesmerizing cadence to her voice that made me all relaxed. This was interspersed w/Linmark's theatrical haiku explorations and excerpts from his sequel to Rolling the R's. I learned that both writers are/will be shopping their work for publication soon so I'm really looking forward to their books--must finish Middlesex before then.

The world continues to inspire outrage and sadness. There are the ongoing revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib. I'm finding that I'm dedicating a lot of brain time processing the whole thing. Unfortunately, I have nothing that hasn't already been said better by someone.

My friend Omar gave me heads up that Brenda Fassie passed this weekend. He turned me on to her voice and brand of South African pop/dance/just plain fun music a couple of years ago. Check out Memeza and if you're not happy after listening to Vuli Ndela then you are clinically depressed. Get thee on some Prozac. When I started listening to her stuff I dug around a bit and learned that she's family! And she had a kind of "so what, fuck you" attitude about it. Nice. I guess her lesbian drama was fodder for the tabloids and some say contributed to her substance abuse and blah blah. Yea, yea, blame it on the queer factor. It's sad to lose such a joyous voice.

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Thankfully, not in the Kanye West sense. But like the scene where Tom Cruise is runnning around a labyrinth skyscraper while screaming "TECH SUPPORT!!" Lunamania was closed for 3 days due to the evil machinations of www.ipowerweb.com, aka my web host. It was a "learning moment" in the fine art of accessing web tech support. I tried by email (7 total), online live chat (2 sessions for a total of ~20 useless minutes), and two phone sessions (total on-hold time to exceed 1hr.) If they would only put the resources they spend on creating mulitple means of lodging a complaint to actually fixing the problem...

Anyway, if you've tried to send me email, it's been bounced back so please re-send. Thanks!

Wanderings--I'm going to hear Lisa Asagi and R.Z.Linmark read tonight. Asagi is reading something on "chickens, eggs, and memory." Lindmark will hopefully regale with poetry and memories of (or ongoing) fascinations with Scott Baio.
On the literary tip, I've decided that I'm not enjoying Middlesex. I don't do well with Epics. The first couple of pages reveals a ~100 year chronological gap between the narrator and his grandparents. Methinkeths, "No! Too many generations, characters and storylines to follow." My reaction could be a product of being on a short story/essay kick. Now that I've started though, I feel like I must finish...

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US torture of Iraqi prisoners. The US government is an endless font of outrageous behavior. Those pictures have been haunting me. My co-worker's response, "well, that's soldiers acting like...soldiers." He's right. But I've been trying to name why those images feel so personal and threatening to me. I realized it's because what's captured there is the essence of my queer woman of color nightmare. The physical violence coupled with sexual humiliation while isolated from any community--all at the hands of a band of white militia-soldiers. One politician likened the behavior to "frat hazing." As if that made it OK. Frat boys are part of my nightmare scenario too. It's one of those many moments when I realize how different my sense of belonging and safety is as a queer POC.

On a lighter note, many thanks to the folks who've emailed with nice things to say about the blog. I'm glad you like it and hope you'll keep visiting. And don't be shy about the commenting function.

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The API scaries and the Christian right are coming together to strike fear in my heart. They (who is "they"?) organized an enormous march against same-sex marriage. The institution of marriage bothers me, but the thought of 7,000 Asians wearing
"Marriage is a union of 1 woman and 1 man" t-shirts pisses me off.
And here's coverage fromthe SF Chronicle

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Today was my first day back at a 9-5 job. I spent the day pretending to be lawyerly. What do I have to show for myself? I now know how to check my voicemail--both from my office and from outside.
I'm now a staff attorney at the Law Center for Families. I'm supposed to be the go-to person for language access issseeeeuuues. Soon I will police government agencies to ensure that limited English proficient (LEP) peoples can access social services. With budget cuts and the Bush administration, we'll be lucky if LEP peoples aren't just all locked up someplace and sentenced to sew clothes for the Gap.

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So many things in life are overrated, but here are some things that are all that and a bag of chips:
The weather in Oakland. Everyone who moves to the East Bay gloats about the sunshine and absence of fog. It's true peoples--the weather is perfect over here.
Beat Street Records, Brooklyn, NY--hands down the best contemporary hip-hop and R&B record store in NY. I made a pilgrimage there last weekend. Walking past all the gold and diamonds and into the bass heavy basement is to taste a piece of DJ heaven.
Peter Luger's steakhouse. Alba, Elaine, Yukari, Joannie and I partook in their porterhouse steaks, german po-tates, creamed spinach and chocolate sundaes--mmm...the anti-lite cuisine! Fugghedaboutit--nothing life a slab of meat bigger than your head to put things in perspective.
Grappas. Some ridiculous Croatian moonshine liquor. It must have been brewed in a bathtub. I had half a shot glass and passed out in 10 minutes. I'm just grateful that my eyesight is intact.
David Quammen. This guy makes me want to write fan mail. For real. I ration reading his essays to make them last longer. He loves animals, doesn't take himself too seriously, has funnies and writes beautifully. What more could I ask for?
MTA. Even with the fare hike last year, you can still get from Yankee stadium to Coney Island for $2.00. The only public transit sytem in the world to run 24 hours! I love MTA.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. 'nuff said.

Posted by at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)