Sarah's Bloglet - Monday 21 April 2003

Oh dear. Deep deep burrito-related coma. _
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04:51:08 PM, Monday 21 April 2003

"You see what happens, Larry? This is what happens! This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" _
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10:02:33 PM, Sunday 20 April 2003

I've been so busy spitting fire lately that I've forgotten about one of the few useful features of this thing, namely recommending movies and whatnot. So here goes:

-Cowboy Bebop: Saw this with my brother and Joanna on Thursday. The animation was great (esp. the way it mimiced a camera -- although that could get old fast, I suppose) but this was more action movie than noir, and as Dave said, "The philosophical element was just a veneer of depth, not actually deep." Still probably better than most everything else.

-Double Indemnity: Noir as noir. Sweet Zombie Jesus! The user comments from the IMDB are amusing too: "[it] was released September 6, 1944, well before the death of God and hope." _
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10:39:07 PM, Saturday 19 April 2003

Today has been absurdly cute. I went to garage sales this morning and spent some time on College Avenue, which is the most quaintly adorable street for miles. Then I bought some shitty lemonade from a little kid who was selling it in front of his house. He was yelling, "Lemonade for sale!" at the top of his wee darlin' lungs. _
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08:13:51 PM, Saturday 19 April 2003

Plastic frilled lizard is my boyfriend. (Not a good picture of him, by the way.) _
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01:23:19 PM, Friday 18 April 2003

Every time I answer the phone at work I have to stop myself from saying, "California HIV/AIDS Hotline, how can I help you?" I wonder what would happen if I did say it one day. _
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11:49:27 AM, Friday 18 April 2003

I so did not expect today to be so dramatic. Maybe I should go read some Epictetus. _
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07:25:23 PM, Thursday 17 April 2003

Darn SF Chronicle. Teasing me with "GIs FIND TERRORIST COMPLEX IN IRAQ" headline and delivering this. _
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11:27:40 AM, Thursday 17 April 2003

"Oh no! Some guy checked me out! However will I live!"

That's not the point. The idea is, little things are part of the same system as big things. So, yeah, maybe it is worth making a big deal about little things when they're part of a larger structure. Did nobody else pay attention during the '70's? _
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11:23:10 AM, Thursday 17 April 2003

Pardon me while I fail to lighten up and have a sense of humor about this shit. You know we feminists can't take a joke.

My roommate Joanna and I were talking about sexual power dynamics, particularly men's sexual objectification of strange women. (This is hard to express, and I don't have a thorough theoretical basis for it -- maybe I should read about the "male gaze" that those French people talk about.) She was telling me about how after she shaved her head she noticed that men weren't checking her out anymore. (She presumes that they concluded from her appearance that she was not sexually available.) Before this she had never noticed that she was being continually evaluated as a sexual object, and she wishes that every woman could have this experience and realize what the routine is.

I've felt bemused or flattered when random guys complimneted my appearance. I would like their comments, and my response, to be politically neutral, but in our societal context it's not.

Someone I used to know told me a story that illustrates this. She was working at a job that drove her crazy, and on a particularly bad day she went for a walk in downtown DC to clear her head. After walking for a few minutes, she passed a man in a business suit and realized that she wanted him to check her out -- she said she was waiting for some guy to do that so that she would feel powerful.

Why does she derive a sense of her own power from this? Because that's what she, or some part of her, believes is her primary source of power -- her sexual attractiveness. This is what I'm buying into when I feel that way, and what your mom's buying into when she says, "don't complain about guys who catcall, someday you'll be old and then you'll miss it." I think it's natural, and at least not bad, to feel good when someone who you want to fuck wants to fuck you back. But why should it matter to me when my desires aren't involved?

To paraphrase Joanna some more, since our conversation was pretty fruitful for me -- when a woman feels good because some guy checked her out, or bad because some guy didn't, she's tacitly accepting that she should care what he thinks of her. The option of not caring at all doesn't even seem to come up. _
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03:15:25 AM, Thursday 17 April 2003

lost, left, last. doubleplus uncool. _
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07:18:37 PM, Wednesday 16 April 2003

My bro hooked me up with this one: 'In a bid for leniency, Carlssin has reportedly offered to divulge "historical facts" such as the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS. All he wants is to be allowed to return to the future in his "time craft."' _
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04:53:13 PM, Wednesday 16 April 2003

Stupid labor. My existence should be government-subsidized. _
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04:15:44 PM, Wednesday 16 April 2003

I don't know what genre this band would be in, but here's the name: Shit Slime. _
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01:06:57 PM, Wednesday 16 April 2003

Hey ladies! Sick of getting hollered at when you walk down the street? Ever wonder what to say when people claim you're too uptight about it? Here's something for you: the Street Harassment Project. _
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05:19:24 PM, Tuesday 15 April 2003

Sriracha HOT chili sauce, how I love thee
You season my food so deliciously
Your red and green bottle rocks it all night long
From the Streets of Bangkok to the remote Mekong!
_
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03:00:35 PM, Tuesday 15 April 2003

Thank you, thank you. The identity of that television show has indeed been confirmed, and now the "Telefrancais" theme song is stuck in my head. C'est dommage! _
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11:54:30 AM, Tuesday 15 April 2003

I find it almost impossible to talk about the things that mean the most to me. _
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07:44:36 PM, Monday 14 April 2003

In my eighth-grade French class we were forced to watch this Canadian children's show which aimed at teaching la langue francaise a les petits anglophones. It was horrible. It featured a megalomaniacal pineapple puppet and two wee moppets who spoke very simple French. Also it had a house band, a bunch of skeleton puppets who performed under the name "les Squelettes". Their repertoire included "Nous Nous Apellons les Squelettes" (sort of like their "Hey Hey We're the Monkeys", although nobody would say that les Squelettes squeletter-around. That would be silly) and "Ou est la Radio?" (a question for the ages).

Anyway, I can't remember the name of this show. Sumana might, though. I think we bonded over the pain it caused us. _
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06:05:08 PM, Monday 14 April 2003

Saw a hummingbird on my way to work this morning. Hadn't seen one since the false spring in January. _
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11:36:09 AM, Monday 14 April 2003

Another WD rap. _
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11:31:53 AM, Monday 14 April 2003

Just in case anyone hasn't seen the Watership Down rapping. _
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11:30:29 AM, Monday 14 April 2003

Adorable cat trick:

One of the cats at my parents' (sp?) house ate an entire stalk of steamed asparagus last night. Then she and the other felines did catnip and rolled around the living room.

Whenever someone calls me at my parents' house the only thing I can talk about are their cats. One day I'll have my own and be completely unbearable. _
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08:10:28 PM, Sunday 13 April 2003

Vegan poetry: Like Mr. T, "I pity the Fool"/ Who chooses flesh instead of tofu.

Commence pointing and laughing.
_
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11:11:05 PM, Saturday 12 April 2003

Found at the Lodi Public Library Book Sale:
A record called "Young" by Ralph Carmichael and the Young People.

Sample text from the back:

YOU CAN DISCOVER A NEW KIND OF MUSIC
THAT TALKS YOUR KIND OF LANGUAGE
THAT HAS A BEAT
THAT HAS A SOUND
THAT KNOWS WHAT'S GOING ON
AND MEETS IT HEAD-ON
JUST LIKE YOU DO!
...AND ANXIOUS TO LIVE IN THE SEVENTIES!

Sample song titles:

"It's the Young Life"
"Natural High"
"He's Everything to Me"
"The New 23rd"

Published by Light Records, Waco Texas (a division of Lexicon Music, Incorporated). Stereophonic.
_
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10:55:21 PM, Saturday 12 April 2003

Things your boy/girlfriend gets automatic dibs on:

-shotgun in your car;
-your leftover prescription painkillers;
-your blowbacks (although that might not count because nobody else wants them anyway);
-leftover food in your fridge;
-the last beer.

Anything else? _
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05:07:41 PM, Friday 11 April 2003

Things I saw on my lunch break today:

-hella homeless people (big surprise);
-an adorable prepped-out punk rock girl (neck tattoos and everything) in the Gap (I think this was a post- or an-ironic kinda thing, contrary to what you might expect);
-a bunch of dudes whose smug-ass faces I wanted to punch in (I was walking near Union Square -- pretty much explains it);
-palm trees.

Things I heard on my lunch break today:

-this little girl with her mom and sister who had the most awful husky new york voice i ever heard on a ten year-old;
-two elderly and wacked-out homeless people having an argument. This was amusing because they said nasty things to each other, but with hardly any vigor behind it. And their argument made no sense.

Now listening to Django Reinhardt, which should make things better. _
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04:04:20 PM, Friday 11 April 2003

Just learned the term "emomotional" from this person. The word is perfect. I found out about this person (whose livejournal is wonderful, and who I never ever want to meet) from Sumana, who termed it "really sarcastic" and "foulmouthed". Apt, very apt. As usual. _
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02:40:56 PM, Friday 11 April 2003

Re-code -- see it before it's offline!

Found via this Salon article -- you know how to do the day pass thing, right? _
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01:53:56 PM, Friday 11 April 2003

I am so the child of a medical professional. Recently I've been trying to restructure my diet to avoid trans fatty acids (which are bad). So I bought natural peanut butter (which I dislike) instead of hydrogenated, and decided to start avoiding the little packets of Famous Amos cookies. Not that I'm very successful at the latter. _
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07:19:19 PM, Thursday 10 April 2003

Today's mix at work: NPR, the Avalanches, Palestrina, and Wesley Willis.

Yesssssss... _
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05:42:21 PM, Thursday 10 April 2003

So beautiful, and so true. _
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03:00:09 PM, Thursday 10 April 2003

Things I saw on the way to work:

I didn't see the blind guy who is usually waiting for the bus when I pass by. Maybe I was late. Or maybe he teaches at Cal and is on spring break. He looks like a professor, but it could just be the beard, and I imagine that if I were a blind dude I wouldn't bother to shave either. _
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12:06:53 PM, Thursday 10 April 2003

So I didn't watch the news last night, but I still got my fill of American jingoistic warmongering and Saddam Hussein being a dickwad. How, you ask? I saw the South Park movie last night. But I can't decide on my favorite part. Was it the video for the rap version of "Uncle Fucka"? Big Gay Al's song and dance? The "mole" character? Saddam Hussein breakdancing?

Man that movie was good. _
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05:04:42 PM, Wednesday 9 April 2003

::cough::

My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is Abraham Teapot, Yo.
What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.

_
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02:50:25 PM, Wednesday 9 April 2003

"There are very few things more insulting than the appropriation of leftist slogans by people who are trying to sell things."

Re: Madonna's use (see the album cover pictured there) of that Che Guevara image to advertise her new video and album.

Thanks to Lizzie for the link. _
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01:31:28 PM, Wednesday 9 April 2003

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