6 Gender Genie!

Try the Gender Genie!

5 ELF v. SUVs

A faction of the Earth Liberation Front destroyed twenty new H2s, worth about $50K apiece, on 22 August in West Covina. I like the fact that the dealer responded by saying that driving a Hummer was patriotic and that twenty-odd Hummer Club nuts showed up for a "gas-guzzle-in" to protest the ELF's actions.

Um, people, this ain't a discrimination issue. Driving SUVs in protest isn't terribly convincing, especially when the pilots are fat-cat Hummer Geeks. "Ooh, now I'm convinced they were wrong."

I don't condone domestic terrorism -

Who am I kidding? I wouldn't have burned them because it's not my thing, but I won't say I don't wriggle with glee at the visual image of the SUVs roasting. I live in So Cal: half of it is unlivable because of the pollution and H2s are so big they don't fall into existing vehicle classifications so they don't have to be 'smogged'. That's right, eight to ten miles to the gallon, no smog controls, in the Air Pollution Capitol of North America.

Guys, when So Cal governments recommend people not go outside during daytime hours without breathers for some 40-odd days of the first 69 days of the year, I gotta say I have a serious problem with H2s and with autos in general.

I know, let's solve our growing transportation problems by building more highways instead of trying to force people into using public transit!

You laugh, but the above statement is EXACTLY the response of the same governments to the smog problem. Don't worry: the solution is at hand. The same thing happened in Britain during the early Industrial revolution. The air got increasingly foul and no one would do anything about it. Then, on one fateful week, the air became too poisonous to breathe and all these people died. Suddenly, England's coal pollution problem cleared up really, really fast - say, practically overnight.

Toothbrush Wars, DICT Client, Labour Day, Catharism in Sci Fi

Toothbrush Wars, Day 3:

After this Longest Day, I'd like to report that I have taken the Beach. I mean the toothbrush. After days of searching, I finally located that bastard. The cat must have put it there on purpose for taking two weeks' vacation. But no worries, with some R&R things will be okay.

On a different note, if you haven't yet obtained a dictionary client, your ship is in. I highly recommend the fabulous DICT Client from David Caldwell's Porkrind-Dot-Org. The non-Mac version is available at the DICT Development Group.

There are bilingual dictionaries available from the DICT Development Group, but I haven't figured out how to port them into Porkrind's DICT Client for OS X. Mostly because I haven't tried, so I may report in tomorrow.

On yet another computer note, if anyone can tell me how to add a commentary section so people can make fun of my posts, please let me know. Otherwise it may be some time before I can get it online: I'm lazy and stupid, as I may have mentioned before.

Right now I'm annoyed at the tv options. I like to watch tv at night & there ain't nothing on. I did get to see Dead Like Me, which is good, but there is nothing else on. Probably because other people have social lives and it is Saturday; also it is Labour Day Weekend, for whatever that means. National fucking holiday, innit? Only in America, where we think wealth equates to value as a person and the good life means making the most money.

Oy, lissen to me. What a marroon.

Instead, I jacked up the stereo - ours is in the living room and hitched up to the television - and put on Cowboy Bebop: Heavy Metal Queen. That is making things a little nicer, as is the presence of another, um, whatcha call it? Ok, a sentient being includes the cat and the dog, but what do you call a person? A speaker?

Not that I don't love Spanky the Wonder Muffin, but hey. Someone who can speak is different, right?

Been rereading the Aleutian series by Gwyneth Jones. I spoke to her once over email about the one I'm rereading, Phoenix Café� (the third book), because it fascinated me; I highly recommend it. Anyway, I was interested in the references to the Cathars, a medieval 'heresy' that preceded Protestantism but which matches many fundamental arguments of the Protestant movement. In the 10-12th CE, it flourished in Languedoc - that's southern France, where they speak the langue d'oc, Proven�çale - and nothern Italy, and was subject to one of the early Crusades. That is how it was wiped out.

Anyway, in PC one of the characters, Agathe Uwilingiyimane, is referred to as a Perfect; she allegedly does not engage in any sexual activity, including the ever-popular 'autoerotic exhilaration' sort. This is a Catharist term and, as far as I know, ONLY a Catharist one. In the terms of the book, there are no real Cathars; it is set in our future after long occupation and de facto rule by hermaphroditic aliens. (Stick with me, here.) Therefore, in the book's setting, all politics are Gender Politics; Traditionalist (Male) and Reformer (Female) are political parties that no longer correspond to the gender & sex divisions they once did. Human beings just aren't sexed like they used to be; hundreds of years of genetic engineering has created an H. sapiens whose males and females aren't much distinguishable even when naked. There are even a third group, called the Half-Caste, whose members somatically mimic the aliens by being genetically engineered as embryos and whose culture mimics alien culture - as humans understand it, anyway.

It's a great ride and an interesting series. Honestly, I started with this third book; while some of the details were confusing, I enjoyed number three better than number one. I can't really remember number two because it's been a long time. Och. Library time - that is, if I've got the ducats to pay the overdue fines I've saved up. Och indeed.

Back to the grindstone. I mean futon. (I forgot I was a shiftless, jobless bum for a minute there.)

3 Toothbrush Wars

Toothbrush Wars, Day 2, cont.:

As of 1100h, my toothbrush remains as elusive as ever. I will catch this wily foe; of that, I have no doubt. But for tonight, I once again fall back onto the small comfort of the hand-propelled brush.

Note to self: never, ever watch "Gangland" again.

2 Toothbrush Wars, The Bodhisattva Malibubarbie et al.

Yeah, well, time for an update for real. I used to blog irregularly and it's time to step up and get a half-decent account. So here's for you.

Toothbrush Wars, Day 2:

My toothbrush is still missing. I have obtained a backup brush for basic cleansing needs, but my expensive, fabulous, lovely sonic toothbrush is missing and I want that "teeth like glass, breath like kissing" feeling back again. Once you go sonic, you never have bad oral hygiene chronic. [Insert better slogan here].

I was reviewing "Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists" (LEYLAND Winston Ed. 1998/2000, Gay Sunshine Press SF) and ran into the highly amusing "A Brief Practice of the Bodhisattva Malibubarbie" for the second time. Since this is a New Blog, I feel totally free to blather on about it as much as I'd ever like. While the entire book is a wonderful resource and full of poetry, short fiction, interviews with people who have the prefix "H. H. the..." prefixed to their name (i.e. His Highness), history, textual analysis & religious studies by famous scholars, I find that the one jewel which always brightens my day is this sadhana.

A sadhana is a ritual text that gives instructions on how to worship. Well, it's not worship per se: Buddhists are not theists in the way that outsiders understand, but the sadhana is meant to allow the practitioner to visualise a perfected being (buddha or other "divine being") and then merge their own self with the imaginary image. It's a way to practice consciousness awareness by invoking a separate image and then becoming this image.

So this sadhana, which is both a brilliant parody and somehow strangely moving, rocks my world.

In other notes, my cat is returning to normal. Two weeks of me being away made her a little unsane. My roomie reports she was crazy pissed: she shat on my bed, tore my room up, knocked all the books off the shelves etc. He had monitored her and my room while I was gone so it was clean when I got home but she was clearly direly distressed by my visit back to Rhode Island.

Since then she has been surgically attached to me, which is sweet. I feel bad she suffered when I was away but to take her with me would have been impossible for me and infinitely more traumatic for her. I'm trying to keep her as minimally neurotic as possible. She hasn't even made much of an effort to escape out the door; she sticks around where I am even when I leave the door open.

My neighbor is being an assmonkey. He is fucking nuts. He wrote this note in chalk on the ground about cigarette butts, which made my roommate berserk since the neighbor's stairs are covered with all kinds of stupid, garbage-y things: dead plants, old sponges, random junk: you get the idea. Meanwhile, my roomie, who smokes, places his butts carefully next to our door on our stairwell and then throws all of them away at once.

Not to mention that the neighbor is halftime really chatty and friendly: a big queen, bigger even than my roomie. So when he goes and switches onto superbitch and leaves weird notes, it's like, WHAT THE FUCK? What, is his meow broken? He could just say something if there is some real issue. Maybe he thinks some other butts are ours, but hey: there are a lot of people living in this large complex.

Man, on a final random note: fucking Neko Case, holy damn. Such a great voice. Beefheart Records, I believe.

WHERE IS MY BLOODY TOOTHBRUSH! The cat took it. I don't have an under-my-bed, so it can't be there. I didn't go out yesterday except to drop off my roomie at the airport and my friend was with me to attest that all I took with was my license and a dollar bill: he held them for me. It's not that big of an apartment, so where the hell is my toothbrush?

Gotta figure out about how to post pics. Maybe I'll get an account elsewhere with links.

First Post

First post on a new blog. How intimidating.