Calculated Iconography

Cool Flickr Group: Fashion's Past

2007-03-08T21:21:00.000-08:00

Hobbit Socks

2007-01-29T00:37:00.000-08:00

Mostly because of this site here,

www.thingsmyboyfriendsays.com

(sorry, my linky-thing isn't working)

I'm going to be posting more of Phil's behaviors and ramblings I find funny. Sometimes it's more annoyance than humor, but c'est la vie.

Yesterday he "invented" hobbit socks. This needs background. Phil is keen on picking up random pieces of clothing and proclaiming them other pieces of clothing with the confidence of a veteran couture designer. One of my T-shirts? A hat! A long wool sweater? A dress for boys! A pair of my underwear wrapped around his wrist? Why, a wrist-cuff, of course! So, what might socks with holes in the toes be when the toe portion is chopped off with Tawny's do-not-touch-them-they-are-my-good-sewing-scissors? Hobbit socks. No exclamation point, as I'm not amused, but repulsed. This also needs background.

Phil's toes exist because I am gracious and kind. They assault me with their presence. They chase me out of rooms. Don't ask me why. I can't explain it in any rational fashion. I read today on a woman's blog that her daughter developed such a distaste for other people's feet that she literally would not walk past a pair of bare feet. I'm with her. We could be friends. I hate feet in general and Phil's toes just push me over the proverbial edge.

So, what does he do? He chops of the toes of an old pair of socks and decides that these socks are the love of his life. He walks around ALL EVENING in them and then, when I ask if he really thinks he's getting in bed with those monstrosities on his feet, he answers all chatty-like, "they are sooooo warm!" Right, with the toes chopped off, shoes are warmer too.

All of this is really just the backdrop for his conversation this evening with his brother, who, apparently, has also done this to his socks. Of course. But what really takes the cake; what really assures me that, yes, they are related is what Roger said next: "Dude! I'm a ninja with my feet. You have no idea what I can do with my feet!"

It's the Baird way.

Overheard on the Bus

2007-01-25T10:03:00.000-08:00

ditzy girl: "Damn! I really need to pee, but I'm wearing new leggings so I can't pee my pants!"

.....um.....as opposed to all those times you had on old leggings and just peed away on the bus?

-----------------------------

boys talking excitedly: "So, you know, South African girls will give it up soooo easy."
"Oh man, but Venezuelan girls are all sluts!"
other boy, visibly annoyed: "Could you guys whisper so those of us with SOULS don't have to hear you?!?"

-----------------------------

lady: So, where do you live?
spaced out man: I live...near a cactus.

-----------------------------

I don't quite know how to incorporate this into the above examples of utter genius, but once, on the bus, a bunch of theater students got on and got everyone singing Bohemian Rhapsody within a few minutes. Even the driver.

Listen

2006-06-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

to the Jeanette Winterson audio clip. Tears, tears, tears.

After the Baby Arrived:

2006-06-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

(she has a camera! built in! Oh, the narcissism that will ensue!)

So, I got me a Macbook with the $ I made at a recent show and although I have deemed it a girl, I refuse to name her and join the ranks of Macfanatics whose eyes glaze over at the site of their babies glowing on the tabletop. I'll go that far, but no further.

Anyways, the other day these words, which would have been blasphemous just one year ago, were exchanged in hushed tones:

P: (silently starting the Mac after she was barely free from her packaging)
T: .....Phil?......
P: yes?
T: .....Um.....Are Macs.....um....better...than....um....PC's?
P: .......
T: .......
P: ....yes. Yes they are.
T: *blink* *blink*blink*blink* Oh.

Ear Update

2006-06-02T17:39:00.000-07:00

See more about the above picture here. Unless you can tell what's going on all by yourself, but I doubt you can. I can't either.

Phil is improving every day. His ear is still gross and imposing and his face is becoming increasingly lopsided...and we don't quite know what to do about that. We keep saying "It's just the swelling!" but there is the possibility that it may never go back to normal. I've been in various stages of a nervous breakdown as Phil's medical stuff, huge school deadlines, and a significant ($3000) deduction in my grant money per quarter has all occurred in quick and vicious succession. Phil has been very sweet, albeit heavily medicated; he even scratches my back sometimes to calm me down despite the fact that I think it's causing some minor pain.

He sleeps a lot and dreams of things sexual in nature. So do I.

The Ear Chronicles

2006-05-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Phil is home and well-pieced together! I'll be updating with pictures of the progress and anything funny he does while on major doses of Vallium. He was the perfect hospital patient, charming the nurses with his wit, scooting around in his open-backed gown and booties, and deciding that he likes the headband because, well, you know: karate kid. He had a tympanoplasty (gross picture here, nice drawing here) and mastoidectomy all because of a goddam cholesteatoma. The surgery was actually much more time-consuming and scary than they had originally thought. The cholesteatoma was very advanced and mandated the removal of portions of his ear canal, his hearing bones, and huge portions of his mastoid. Most importantly, they found that part of his brain was slowly collapsing into his ear cavity and a wall had to be erected and reinforced in order to keep his brain in the right spot (!!! here is where the wife starts loosing it!!!). I have pictures of all of this (did you know they totally bring you pictures of your spouse's insides afterwards?!) and I'll post them tomorrow. He got himself a new eardrum stretched (yes, they can do that) and faux hearing bones put in for the time being. Luckily, his surgeon is a badass lady who just returned from maternity leave to continue her cholesteatoma-ass-kicking job. She was very cool and calm as she told me about the amazing wandering brain and the fact that we won't be able to have sex for 6 weeks (I'm not even kidding, so don't laugh: it's not funny).
Here is Phil home from the hospital thinking about 6 weeks without sexual activity of any kind:

This is what his ear looks like. I've mentioned it once to him, but I'm not sure he realizes just how crooked his ears are now, in relation to one another, I mean. More pics to come.
This is what happens when he's left alone for an hour. They say THIS IS NORMAL so don't accuse me of bad caretaking just yet:
I asked Phil if he wanted me to tell anyone anything and since he can't really talk right now he just waved, so "Hi!" from Phil. He's doing ok at the moment, but I'll post all the gorey details as time passes...I mean, can you even WAIT to see all the packing that has to come out in 3 weeks?!? I can't.

Of Boys and Bowels

2006-05-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

So, is it just me or do men spend inordinate amounts of time in the bathroom? My first issue is that if it's taking that long, then something is horribly and irrevocably wrong with your body. Your health is in serious jeopardy if an hour and a half is required to do the business that needs to be done. It's just not right and you probably need help; help that would require an enema and a camera in places you never thought cameras could go.

Second, I thought we had finally gotten to the point in our holy union where I no longer accuse Phil of camping out in there every time he hears the word "relationship" or "dishes." Now I'm just sure he's making something extraordinary in there, like a detailed reproduction of the Sistine Chapel hidden behind the mirror or building a miniature model of the Parthenon out of Q-tips and toothpaste. Whatever it is, I'm confident that it is fantastic, because it has been the most time-consuming venture in his life.

Epistemic Violence

2006-05-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

In response to the proposed vaccine for the human papilloma virus (link):

"I personally object to vaccinating children when they don't need vaccinations, particularly against a disease that is one hundred per cent preventable with proper sexual behavior," Leslee J. Unruh, the founder and president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, said.

Because HPV is a cancer-causing virus, we hear the uproar about life and death and our need to react to the Bush Administration's archaic relationship to any science that might make premarital sex less risky. WHY IS IT that we need the word "cancer" inserted to make us fidgety with anger? STD's don't need to fall into some "other" category of ailments simply because a conservative political presence deems premarital sex improper. I like this article's complexity and message, but I want HPV to be on our radar without the rhetorical device of "cancer" to legitimize it.

I think we need a new instantiation of the bumper sticker "Just say no to sex with pro-lifers."

How about "Just say no to sex with anti-science pricks who think that just because no one wanted to screw them premaritally, we all need to hunker down and keep our panties on until heteronormative property-exchanges doth put the fire of the Lord into our loins."

2006-04-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

"Soltero and several other students walked out of DeAnza Middle School on March 28 to protest the immigration bill, which includes harsh penalties for illegal immigrants.

On March 30, the boy was called into a school administrator's office, where he was told he could go to jail for three years for his involvement in the protests, said Samuel R. Paz, the family's attorney. The administrator also said the boy could be barred from graduation activities and his mother could be fined, Paz said.

Soltero reportedly called his mother, Louise Corales, and told her what the administrator said. By the time she got home from work, he had shot himself with what police said was a small-caliber rifle. Corales called police just after 3 p.m."

Link

The Quarter Thus Far (Ok, I'm one week in)

2006-04-06T22:16:00.000-07:00

Anthropology of Religion
I'm taking this to fulfill a Feminist Studies requirement and although it's in my field of study, it sucks ass. It's one of those classes full of psych and philosophy majors--the uncool kind, not like Brian--and all they want to do is talk about how cool reincarnation is and how altered states of consciousness are vital to a holistic spiritual experience blah blah chakras blah blah blah incense blah blah drum circles. I want to take them by their oily heads and shake them into anthropology majors who get that this isn't Celebrating and Essentializing Eastern Religions 101.
Documenting Culture
This should be good. I get to devote a whole quarter to a project of my choosing: the interviewing/recording/photographing of returned ex-mormon missionaries and (hopefully) some missionaries in the field. I may be taking the easy way out as Phil will be my primary informant, but y'all know how I loves me some Hot Ex-Mormon Ass, so how could I pass this up?
Racial and Gender Formations in the U.S.
This used to be called "Women of Color in the US," and why now this new business about formations? Because my instructor is a bona fide badass and she knows what's up. She cracks us up and makes us all crush on her like crazy. Quote of the day: "I'd love to be the one who outs Condoleezza Rice...Cause you know she's playing on the team. We just don't want her on the team."
Mexican Folk Dancing
Lots of stomping around in heels. I love it. My dancing partner is girl who always insists I "let her be my man" and since the girl dancer gets to swish around her skirt, who am I to argue?

Charmed, I'm Not So Sure

2006-03-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

"Do you still want to go see that movie?"
"Well, if I'm going anywhere I need to put on some makeup."
"Don't worry, it's dark out."

Minus 300 points. And you all know what those points are for.

This Is Only A Test. Of Confidence. My Confidence.

2006-03-21T10:51:00.000-08:00

Foucault and the Transgender Body
Introduction

The body is a site of struggle over power, identity, and intelligibility. The body has also been constructed within the social sciences as that which is always, already there—the common denominator for all humans despite their cultural differences.[1] In terms of gender, the assumption seems to be that biological sex is a concrete and immutable fact of life and that gender is the cultural interpretation of that reality; gender does not necessarily follow from sex. While this disconnect appears to allow a certain degree of flexibility and openness in anthropological gender studies, I would argue that this model for understanding gender leaves many questions unanswered while assuming far too much. By identifying a particular site of bodily struggle—ultimately a particular body—and providing a Foucaultian analysis of that struggle within the context of power, science, and the soul, the sex/gender disconnect, as it has been understood, can be complicated.

The Transgender Body as a Site of Struggle

According to Virginia State law, a transgender person wishing to amend their birth certificate to reflect their correct gender may do so when they have undergone a series of medical and legal procedures. In 2001 a transgender male[2] attempted to modify his birth certificate after having completed the complex and time-consuming state-mandated requirements and was turned away because he had not undergone phalloplastic surgery. Although the individual had received a hysterectomy, double mastectomy, and hormone therapy, the Virginia Office of Vital Records deemed his body unacceptably female, despite their lack of legal authority to do so (Lambda Legal, see attached article). Although this was resolved before the issue was brought to court and the individual was able to amend his birth certificate successfully, this struggle exemplifies the interconnected nature of power, knowledge, science, and state control. Furthermore, according to Foucault, we cannot imagine these phenomena as being separate from one another. Rather, power, knowledge, science, and state control implicate and co-constitute one another in the effort to make bodies knowable and therefore subjects of discipline (1977: 354).

Lambda Legal, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender legal advocacy group, published this story in an effort to raise awareness concerning the negotiating one might be required to do in order to amend their birth certificate as a post-operative transgender individual. While this publication is surely helpful and meaningful to its intended audience, there is much left unsaid beyond the initial outrage over the requirement of a penis to be considered male under the law or by society at large. It seems that this question could be expanded to include a critique of the other legal and medical requirements for gender legitimacy as well as the legal and cultural implications of a system of “birth certification” which necessarily includes one’s designated sex and therefore, one’s assumed gender.

The Invention of the Body

Our bodies become marked and organized in various sexed, raced, and classed ways from the moment we enter the world. Judith Butler describes these sexual classificatory markings as “conditions of intelligibility” or the “primary conditions of personhood”. For example, when a baby is born in the United States the first question posed is, “is it a girl or a boy?” Therefore, upon entering the world, one’s first prerequisite for knowability is one’s sex (Butler 1990: 16-17). Instead of naturalizing this primary condition of intelligibility as a biological fact one is merely subjected to, an attention to the constructed-ness of the seemingly obvious body is necessary. Furthermore, if it is generally assumed that biological sex and gender are disconnected insofar as gender does not depend upon sex, why is it that sex has gone unquestioned as that which is outside of the realm of the constructed? Butler asks the question; “what if it was always already gender?” in which case “it would make no sense…to define gender as the cultural interpretation of sex, if sex itself is a gendered category” (1990: 7). If this is true of the most identifiable and seemingly basic aspect of the body, sex, what does this mean for the body as a whole?

The body, asserts Foucault, has been invented as a knowable object through historical processes and for specific ends (1990:139). He claims “historical processes were involved in what might seem to be the purely biological base of existence” (1977: 353). Additionally, the invention of the body has not been a neutral process—it carries with it the power to punish, know, and exclude.

Disciplining the Body

In “The Body of the Condemned,” Foucault elaborates upon the relationship between power and knowledge within the scientifico-legal complex. In short, the body is constructed as a scientifically knowable entity and as a result, power can be exercised upon it within the framework of legality, science, and what we might call “enculturative” practices (Foucault 1977: 354). Foucault also notes that in modern prison systems it is not the body being worked upon by systems of legitimated power as much as it is the soul being molded in order to discipline the body more “humanely” (1977: 353). This is not to say that the body is not being highly regimented, but that the soul, as the subject of education, psychology, and humanistic claims, is the way “into” the body (1977: 355-56). Nor is it to say that these notions apply only within the context of prisons, but rather that the prison might serve as an analogy for more pervasive, epistemic systems of power and domination. This idea is especially salient in terms of the transgender Virginian’s attempt to subvert that which had been written, filed, and made official concerning his body.

As with all individuals, the transgender Virginian’s body and soul have been the subjects of scientific knowledge and classification. Therefore, we might apply the widely used sex/gender disconnect to the transgender body in terms of its relationship to the soul. Just as one’s sex is understood as being caught up in the materiality of the body, one’s gender is assumed to be part of the soul. It could then be reasoned that the disciplining of the body’s sex is performed through the disciplining of the soul’s gender, which turns the previously held sex/gender disconnect on its head.

Before one can even begin the medical, bodily procedures to undergo a sex change, one must prove one’s self, or soul, to be in need of a transformed body: a body that accurately reflects the soul. What seems to be presupposed all along is that the body and the soul must somehow match up, and not only match up, but do so in an intelligible fashion. In other words, a binary opposition is being employed in both the heteronormative and transgender body—a male body must be paired with a male soul, meaning that the body must be reconstructed to “fall in line” with the soul. While the transgender body may appear to us as highly transcendent and somehow breaking free from cultural constraints, could it be that the transgender body is still equally subjected to systems of gender binaries and scientifico-legal control? Even when a body may seek to escape the disciplining forces it has been subjected to, “there is no recourse to a “person,” and “sex,” or a “sexuality” that escapes the matrix of power and discursive relations that effectively produce and regulate those concepts for us…” (Butler 1990: 32).

Producing the Normal

It is important to understand the seemingly isolated dispute between the transgender Virginian and his state’s legal process as an event that is not only concerned with his body, but all bodies. Because gender is relational, in that male depends upon female and “normal” depends upon “deviant” in order to exist at all, the punishment of one body by illegitimating it in the eyes of the law does not only mark that body as deviant, but literally produces unmarked bodies as always already normal (Foucault 1977: 353-54). Modern science has claimed to “know” biological sex in such a way that even the transgender soul can look to science to make the body knowably transgendered. But what kinds of knowledges have been disqualified[3] in the making of transgender possibilities? Why is it that we have no cultural space for a third gender, especially seeing as it has been done many times over in other cultural contexts (Herdt 1993)? Foucault might answer this question by calling attention to the productive aspects of exclusion and punishment—it is as if all were deemed normal, no one would be. He reminds us that “the body is…directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it: they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it…force it to emit signs” (1977: 353). In other words, the body is never neutral and it has been invented in such a way that knowledge has power over its movement, intelligibility, and very existence.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New

York: Routledge.

Douglas, Mary. (2004) “External Boundaries” in Anthropological Theory. McGee, R. Jon

and Warms, Richard L., eds. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Foucault, Michel. (1977) “The Body of the Condemned” in Discipline and Punish: The

Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin Books.

Foucault, Michel. (1990) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume One. New

York: Vintage.

Foucault, Michel. (1980) “Two Lectures” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and

Other Writings 1972-1977. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Herdt, Gilbert, ed. (1993) Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in

Culture and History. New York: Zone Books.

Lambda Legal. Amending Birth Certificates to Reflect Your Correct Sex. Lambda Legal

Defense and Education Fund. 3-11-06

[1] I am referring here in particular to Mary Douglas’ work “External Boundaries.” In it, she complicates the body politic, yet assumes the body as immutably biological—ultimately non-constructed—and focuses her attention upon the ways the body has been used as a symbol of society (Douglas 2004: 526-27) .

[2] In the interest of anonymity, the article cited did not specify a name.

[3] I am referring here to Foucault’s notion of “disqualified knowledges:” those experiences, memories, and “facts” which have been deemed unreliable, inadequate, and unscientific (1980: 418).

I Should be Writing my Paper on Foucault, But I Had to Share...

2006-03-15T22:22:00.000-08:00

To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or "Life was always there', and be done with it. --Richard Dawkins

Science at Its Best and Worst

2006-03-14T16:40:00.000-08:00

Link

Human Quadrupeds. The implications of their behaviors are so vast and potentially ground-breaking, but what are the consequences of placing this family under the gaze of scientific inquiry? What was once to these individuals a mere method for moving through space is now a genetic "disorder" and stands in contrast to our "fully evolved" selves. I love the incessant inquiries of science, but as I watch this video I feel like a voyeur of the worst kind.

I Used To Be A Badass

2006-03-13T15:56:00.000-08:00

Now I'm just an ass.
Isn't it supposed to work the other way around? Aren't you supposed to gain confidence and poise as you grow older instead of becoming more and more insecure? Somebody is lying. High School was awful, don't get me wrong....but why do I feel like the present is so much worse?

I Recommend:

2006-03-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

POSTAL SEANCE: A Scientific Investigation into the Possibility of a Postlife Postal Existence

Click on the link and check out the beauty. The authors made fantastically inspired postcards and sent them to folks in the afterlife. A list of some recipients and their addresses:

Albert Einstein, Mr. Smartypants: Up High Playing Dice With God.
Anais Nin, Diarist: Sprawled Tenuously Floating, Above Sexus.
Roy Cohn, Closet Homosexual and Conservative Power Broker of the Right Wing: Coat Check Guy, Hypocrisy Closet, Eternity.
Moa Tse-Tung: In the Poppy Fields of Ideology.
Vlad the Impaler: Head Nurse, Blood Donation Tent, Helliwood.
And my favorite:
R. Buckminster Fuller: With Annie.*

*Apparently, Buckminster Fuller promised his wife, Annie, that he would die before her so he could greet her on the other side. When he was away on a lecture tour he learned she was on her death bed and promptly flew home to California. He died within 36 hours of her.

The afterlife, though I believe in no such thing, is like a story I love to tell myself, a poem I could read over and over.

A Fork In The Road

2006-03-10T12:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm going to write this post without quoting Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, even thought I did recite this very poem at a 6th grade event and realized as I got up to the front of the class that my fly was down, exposing patterned panties; a road I should never have been down seeing as I cite that incident as the definitive reason I cannot successfully make and keep friends. But that is another story entirely, and should focus on one grievance at a time. My current stress is wrapped up in my future and however cliche it is, I don't know what the post-bachelors-degrees-in- Feminist-Studies-and-Cultural-Anthropology world will hold for me. If I were merely choosing between the Peace Corps and graduate school, my decision making skills wouldn't be so paralyzed. I had to go and throw small business ownership and fashion design school in the mix. So, consider the comments page of this post a suggestion box...tell me I'm crazy for thinking about passing up grad school, tell me I'm crazy for sewing my life into oblivion.

I Love This Poem

2006-02-22T14:59:00.000-08:00

The Planned Child
by Sharon Olds

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had taken
a cardboard out of his shirt from the laundry
as if sliding the backbone up out of his body,
and made a chart of the month and put
her temperature on it, rising and falling,
to know the day to make me--I would have
liked to have been conceived in heat,
in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,
not on cardboard, the little x on the
rising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wine
and said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,
I took the wine against my lips
as if my mouth were moving along
that valved wall in my mother's body, she was
bearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and then
bearing down, pressing me out into
the world that was not enough for her without me in it,
not the moon, the sun, Orion
cartwheeling across the dark, not
the earth, the sea--none of it
was enough, for her, without me.

The Gays

2006-02-21T17:02:00.000-08:00

Getting undressed in my house is an event, mostly because I haven't become fully accustomed to Phil's need to drop everything and anything, be it web surfing, doing dishes, or brushing his teeth, and watch me get naked. Too much information? Trust me, it's going somewhere other than my bare bum.

Without bowing to standard narratives of men "just naturally" being more visual or more sexual or more aggressively, visually sexual, I want to understand this. I know it can't be that exciting, especially knowing the show gets worse with every decision to stay in and eat creme brulee instead of running around the block. Besides the curves that are just getting curvier, there is also not much of a change from day to day. These are my boobs. They don't change color or radically increase in size when you stare at them. I love Phil, and do so without my pupils dilating at the sight of exposed flesh. I mean, don't get me wrong, the sexy beast of a man in my house gets visual attention, but it is more of an are-you-really-wearing-THAT? flavor.

So, with this weighing heavy on my mind, Phil embarked upon a staring spree last night as I most un-gracefully changed pants and I said:

"you know, when you do that it makes me think of all the feminist scholarship on The GAZE."

Phil heard:

"you know, when you do that it makes me think of all the feminist scholarship on The GAYS."

What began with a fit of laughing and a very wide-eyed and confused Phil ended with:

"What? You think I'm immaculately dressed and well-groomed?"

Lists! Lists! Lists! AKA "I don't have any well-constructed declarative sentences left after my week of paper-writing"

2006-02-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

Top 5 Songs in My Life Right Now:

1. Lovely Head......Goldfrapp
2. Moses......Patty Griffin
3. Elephant Woman......Blonde Redhead
4. La Foule.......Edith Piaf
5. Daniel......Elton John

Top 5 Books in My Life Right Now:

1. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig (I'm having a very promiscuous love affair with Taussig and Marx right now....I think they both would understand.)
2. What's Love Got To Do With It?: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic by Denise Brennan
3. Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology by Kate Crehan
4. The Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
5. NOT My Friend Leonard by James Frey.....When all this stuff broke out, I couldn't bring myself to finish this book. Ick.

Top 5 Random Phenomena in My Life Right Now:

1. Style.com's new LOOKBOOK function.
2. New Cydwoqs. Ebay is my bitch.
3. Not freaking out over the fact that I may not get an A in my Primate Behavioral Ecology class. It may happen, and I'm prepared, sort of.
4. Seeing the Violent Femmes tonight.
5. The following conversation:

P: You need to stay warm...you need lederhosen! (he pronounced it LEEderhosen)

T: No, Lederhosen are shorts and shorts aren't warm...and besides, it's "LAYderhosen," not "LEEderhosen."
P: Well....(long pause)....I say it LEEderhosen, 'cause I'm the LEADER of the household! And you say LAYderhosen because you're a LADY!

Hmmmm, you say to-may-toe and I say to-mau-toe, let's call the whole thing "using gender inequalities to weasel your way out of BEING WRONG."

Don't get any ideas, now....

2006-01-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

Did I ever spew rainbows all over this page and gab about Pacific Ave. on Halloween afternoon!?! I forgot to, probably because of the gushing that will ensue. Our cute little beach town blocks off Pacific Ave. on Halloween afternoon for the kiddies. Phil had to take pictures for the magazine, so I tagged along. All I can say is it was hard to put the condom on that night. I mean, did you all know how cute kids are!?! Sometimes I forget when I see them screaming in the grocery line. There were, however, adorable children galore at this event and I think the whole thing was some kind of government-sponsored initiative to get the straight people breeding at a higher, more fanatical rate. No one can look at that cuteness and not think "Hmmmm, I could make one of those."

Reading......Listening........

2006-01-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

My Friend Leonard by James Frey

Paul Simon, American Tune

This is How Far I've Fallen

2005-12-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

When I was little and in love with Jesus my life was very different. I was "the informant" on the playground who boldly told all unsaved children that they were, in fact, going to Hell with Satan if they did not ask Jesus into their hearts. I bet their poor agnostic mothers were fielding questions for weeks. I also believed in The Power Of Prayer. I would shut my eyes and plead with God to make me Barbie-sized so I could wear all her clothes. I would cling to my favorite art supplies as I fell asleep just in case the rapture happened; I believed that only what one was holding would go to heaven with them and I had no faith in there being Rainbow Bright marking pens at Jesus' house in the sky. But, like all God-fearing folks, I doubted sometimes too. I would tell God that I would only believe in him if he would grant me big breasts when I grew up. Now you can all understand my disbelief.

I wish my little 15-year run-in with religion was this simple and therefore easy to brush off. When people I know give me that little "Religion was a great part of my childhood, why can't you get over it" crap, I hold my tongue. But, inside I'm thinking--Wait, some of us carry guilt and betrayal and abuse that cannot be extricated from the religious-ness of our early lives. It wasn't all Barbie clothes and freckle-faced kids doing exorcisms underneath the monkey bars. Some of it was horrible. So, excuse me while I pout about it and I might forgive you for your assumption that Jesus rocked everyone's world.

When I Relayed this Story to Phil, I Could Hear His Heart Break

2005-12-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

I was driving my brother to work while on one of my many visits to the land-of-sin-and-parties: Modesto and we were listening to one of my famous mixed CD's. If you ask real nice, I might make one for you. Just be prepared to fall in love with me after you've listened to it. On this CD was Tori Amos covering The Cure's "Lovesong". It's a mediocre recording sound-wise, but why would that stop me or any other red-blooded twenty-something? My brother Aaron is listening along and stops and says "hey, I know this song. She's covering 311."

We think maybe he's getting some CD's for Christmas. All pre-1995.

And for everyone else, we were thinking this, maybe. Too risky? Too in-your-face? We were hoping so.

A Fairly Standard Evening Conversation

2005-12-04T21:52:00.000-08:00

"Ow! You poked my boob!"
"You don't have boobs."
"Well, you poked my nipple....and besides...men can lactate."
"What!?!"
"They can!--Google it!"
"Um, I'm totally blogging this, like, right now."

How we go from a friendly evening tickling match to male mammary glands is beyond me.

Because I know you're dying to know

2005-12-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

The grade got changed.

95%. Not 85%. Now I can breath.

Shiver Shiver

2005-11-30T09:43:00.000-08:00

If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied,
And illuminate the "no's" on their vacancy signs,
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark.

new death cab

OK, Now that I've Stopped Hyperventilating

2005-11-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

I think Phil is totally going to divorce me because I am a MOTHERFUCKING MANIAC when it comes to school. Today we were supposed to get our papers back for my Peoples and Cultures of Africa class. It turns out that like 7 of us had our midterms graded by this phantom "guest TA" who hasn't been to all the lectures and OBVIOUSLY cannot grade efficiently or get our goddamn papers back to us on the right day. She just sent over a list of our grades in her absence. A list of grades that showed mine as being an 85%.

This is so not happening.

I'm going to sound like a stuck up bitch here, but I've earned my bragging rights for school and if you can't tell everyone about your 4.0 GPA, then what is it for, really?!? I swear I haven't seen a B on a non-math-related paper in like 4 years. I took one look at the B and walked right out of the room. I walked about 50 paces and turned on my heel while holding back tears. I went to our lovely, witty, fair-grading regular TA who was actually PRESENT and asked whom I needed to talk to about my grade from the phantom TA. She said; "You're Tawny, right?" and I said "Yes, the Tawny you gave a 97% to on the first exam. The Tawny who gets A's, always. The Tawny who only sees 8's on her paper if they follow a 9 and precede a percent sign. Yes, that's me." And in her infinite goodness she said "Don't worry, she doesn't know how to grade. I remember you from your last paper and you're going to need to breath right now, OK? We'll fix this, just come to my office next week and we'll change that grade because I know it's bogus. OK, take a deep breath, and have a good weekend."

You'd think that this would be enough to calm someone down. A normal someone, yes. An anal retentive school nerd with a 4.0 GPA to defend, no. I held back my tears all the way home on the bus and down the street until I came into the door and saw Phil playing THIS GAME.*** I went over to the bed and started to sob and just recently got my ass under control.

I'm such a dork right now.

***When this game ruins our marriage (if my temper tantrums over B's don't do us in first) I want you all to remember that as he was signing up online I repeatedly said; "NO GOOD CAN COME OF THIS! TURN BACK NOW!" and he didn't heed my warnings. So, don't blame me when it happens.

Memories

2005-11-14T21:14:00.000-08:00

Elliot: So, I've been doing Pilates. I got a DVD.

Tawny: Cool, what are some of the moves--er--positions?

E: Well, there's this one (Elliot sits on her bum with her upper-body and legs lifted while she pumps her arms, which are parallel to the ground, up and down).

T: Um, cool, any others?

E: Well, we do--

T: --Wait. We? Who are you doing Pilates with?

E: Um, the other people on the DVD. hehe.

How Dare They!?!

2005-11-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

How dare the video store people tell us that disc 5 in the LOST series is CHECKED OUT? We're done with 4, cannot just SKIP to 6, and NEED TO KNOW what happens next. I don't care who has it, you need to call them and ask that they bring it back. Now.

If He Only Knew

2005-11-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

Blogging is my own special form of procrastination. Every time I sit down to write a paper on Maasai gender relations or the Zapatista rebellion I think, "hmmm, the internet needs to hear about my weight issues and it cannot wait until after Villa and Zapata. This is more important." So, you can be sure that if there is a post here there is also a paper deadline looming over my head and a husband being mislead by the sound of typing effectively conveying to him that I am a good student.

The Julie Post

2005-11-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

Hi Julie!

OK, so things about Julie I find endearing and sometimes, somewhat unbelievable:

Julie is the kind of woman you sometimes just need to hate for a few minutes. Let me explain. When you randomly stop by her IMMACULATELY CLEAN house you want to think that this is how your house would look if someone just stopped by. But really, if you weren't expecting a guest and someone just (unthinkably) CAME BY you would pop your head out the door and try to end the conversation on the front porch because GOD FORBID they see your underwear strewn across the living room and your fast food bag sitting greasily on the coffee table. Julie, on the other hand, gracefully opens the door and in a 1950's-sitcom-way invites you in to smell the fresh flowers she's picked from her garden and PLEASE have a taste of the homemade organic apricot tart.

Let's all take a moment to hate Julie. In a loving way.

Julie is also the kind of woman who will, in response to any comment about almost anything remotely cool in her house, say "Oh that, I made it." The beautiful hammock? "I made it." The skirt you have on? "I made it." The adorable journal on the mosaic table? "I made it. And the table."

Let's all take another moment.

Julie is also very strangely selective about the information she volunteers in conversations. I don't know the name of her High School. I don't know her favorite food or movie. I don't know her weight (but I think that if I did I would be REALLY afraid to fall on her for fear that someone twice her weight would effectively crush her). I don't know her middle name. But I do know what kind of ear wax she has. I know she doesn't wear deodorant. I know about and once witnessed the panty-liners protecting the armpits of her sweaters. I know that, like myself, her menstrual periods are painful and accompanied by the feeling of needing to poop without actually needing to poop. Do you notice a theme here? Yep, you guessed it, BODILY FUNCTIONS. Get this girl started and you'll be trading scab stories for hours.

When Julie has a kid, NO THEY AREN'T PREGNANT, SIT BACK DOWN, she will probably be such a good Mom that all other mothers will have to steer clear of her for fear of having to hate Julie for her impeccable mothering skills. I myself have decide to stick around Julie in hopes that some of her together-ness will rub off on me like powdered sugar from her homemade doughnuts. Plus, she's nice and, well, I like her.

I Know I'm Still Young...

2005-11-08T22:04:00.000-08:00

...But sometimes Santa Cruz takes me waaay back.

Back to the days when my hair would get pooped on if I didn't hold onto it as I sat down on the toilet. Not that I ever pooped on it, I just always assumed that it was so hippy-liciously long that it would fall into the toilet if I didn't consciously keep it from doing so.

Back to the days when my closet contained more tags that said "Gunnie Sax" than should be allowed.

Back to the days when I would wear more than one ring on each hand and think "Wow man, this totally compliments my John Lennon glasses and my Birkinstocks."

Back to the days when I thought it was possible for a guy to simultaneously live in his psychedelic-ly-painted van and be sexy. You know, at the same time.

Overheard in Class

2005-11-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

"I have a hope for my generation that gender roles will be reversed and men will GET TO stay at home and cook and women will HAVE TO go out and see what it's like to work and run the world."

Um, riiiiiiight. 'Cause women who cook and clean and raise children and enable their partners to simultaneously have children and work a full time job aren't WORKING, they just do that for the fun of it. When someone who's NOT your mother or wife washes your clothes or cooks your dinner or babysits your kids you pay them. When it's your wife, while you're not paying her you tell her she should be grateful she isn't subject to personal autonomy and cultural and economic power. Don't you just LOVE having your labor illegitimized by frat boys!

Things that Make Me Go "Arghhh"

2005-11-01T13:26:00.000-08:00

When people act like science is supposed to make claims about God and supposedly Supernatural phenomena.
There's an "intelligent design" conference on campus, yes that's the UCSC campus, and "creation scientists" (an oxy-moron if you ask me) are coming to gather to say things like "The world is so complex and so beyond our own understanding that there MUST be an intelligent creator." Here's part of the problem: why is it that we expect science to be one thing for us sometimes and another thing entirely at other times? For example, would you trust a medical researcher who said "Well, this disease is really hard to comprehend, we can't really know what's behind it, we have a lot to learn, so it MUST be a supernatural phenomena." You'd laugh and say "Very funny, so when will y'all be developing medicines to combat this thing?" We EXPECT medical science to use the scientific method and stay within the world of the knowable, the concrete. Why does this suddenly go out the window when we talk about further understanding the origins of the universe? Sure, I see why some people have a HUGE spiritual investment in making "just so" stories about the beginnings of time, but THAT'S NOT SCIENCE, SO DON"T CALL IT SCIENCE....I'll be the first person to say that science is not above reproach, I mean, Karen Barad, is on my top-ten Science Studies reading list. I don't think that we should blindly follow science as though it were a religion, which is hard to do seeing as science is self-correcting, but I don't think science should become obsolete when a person's faith is in jeopardy. If you insist on dragging science into lala land to make yourself feel better about Genesis, I'm cool staying where I am: in a natural world wherein knowlege about that world is held to standards of, you know, ACCURACY and PROCESS. (imagine!)

The Elasticity of Words

2005-10-28T21:23:00.000-07:00

Bush said (speaking of I.-Lewis-in-deep-shit-Libby), "In our system, each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial."

I think he meant to end that statement with "unless you live here."

WHAT WEIGHT ISSUES?!?

2005-10-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

Bus strike. Over a month now. Am rendered immobile except for bike, feet, and the occasional car. People don't understand that when I say "I walked to school today" it means I CLIMBED A FUCKING MOUNTAIN, MUTHERFUCKER. If I don't slim down to a svelte size 6 after all of this, I'm giving up and eating cake batter for lunch EVERY DAY and my pilates DVD (yes Elliot, it's true) is going to become a coaster for my tall, tall glasses of half and half.

Evil Twins

2005-10-04T21:14:00.000-07:00

DSC_9093.jpg
Originally uploaded by angryf.

We're practicing our "sexy faces" and Allen just happened to be there to snap a photo.

Just Saw...

2005-10-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

Everything is Illuminated

Highly, highly recommend. I'm taking a class right now entitled "The Anthropology of Jews and Jewishness". Anyone who knows me well knows that Jewishness is one of my obsessions. This movie merely served to feed this unhealthy preocupation. I have to admit here and now that if I looked more Jewish....I would have a hard time not telling people that I am. But I am, of course, not.

Sorry to Disappoint you

2005-09-30T18:18:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things to overhear:

"I just took this Women's Studies class, and like, OH MY GOD, it was the hardest thing I've ever done."

One of my favorite professors said to my Feminist Theories Class that Women's Studies should be just as hard as brain surgery. "Why," she said "do we associate the ultimate in mental rigor with brain science? We always hear 'well, it can't be that hard, you know, it's not brain surgery or anything!' My brother got a degree in medicine and is a brain surgeon....and that's lovely, but it took me two years longer to get my degree in Women's Studies."

This bolstered my enthusiasm for the major because, after all, it was true that the most difficult, dense reading I'd done had been for those classes. It was in these classes that I would fear getting B's.

What I also find fascinating about the major is that what goes on in a Women's Studies classroom appears to be an utter secret to those who have never actually sat through one whole lecture. In a History class we expect that, although we may not be there to see it, they must be teaching, well, you know: History. We think the same thing about Math and Literature and Astrophysics. But never in my life have I heard such tall tales as those told by people relaying what they are SURE must go on in a Women's Studies classroom. I've heard everything from man-hating pop quizzes to pagan rituals. I think that if these folks knew the truth, they would be profoundly disappointed. Not only do we NOT sacrifice babies to the Earth Mother or sit around and talk about how we would all just be so much happier as lesbians, we actually come prepared for discussion having read some of the most brilliant yet mind-bending articles ever written. We go home at night and have stress dreams about upcoming essay tests and cry with each other in study groups when no one understands how to apply the concept of intersectionality to the "So-and-so v. So-and-so" case of 1985. We loose points for not coming to class. Our papers are rife with red markings and 3-paragraph commentary at the bottom. We walk away from our computers after having written a paper on The Politics of Breastfeeding as though we are walking away from a brain surgery we ourselves have performed.

Just Saw...

2005-09-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Apsci

They opened with her singing opera and him beatboxing over it. I wanted more Italian and less screaming, but in the end they were lovely.

BLACKALICIOUS

Gift of Gab was like an adidas jacket-ed Buddha telling us to either be still or sing the alphabet with him. Astounding and wordful. Phil said "I think he just spoke more words than I do in a week." Gift of Gab indeed.

We are finally "to that place" in our marriage

2005-09-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

While picking up fabric scraps from the bed:

T: "I always cut things on the bed."

P: "I know...I only cut one thing on the bed."

T: "......what?"

P: "The CHEEEEZE!!!"

Are your Saturday Nights THIS fun???

2005-09-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

Are your Saturday Nights THIS fun???
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

This is how we do it in the Bairdholt household. Why go out and party when you can stay in and put on blush???

Do it, I dare you

2005-09-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

Tell me it's not about race. Do it.
Listen to first-hand accounts of Katrina survivors. And tell me.

All I Ever Wanted

2005-09-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

tawny post-photoshoot.
Originally uploaded by th3ph17.

So, Allen was ummmm "browsing" this raunchy website and came upon this picture of me. Apparently they pull photos from flickr and compile them in one soft-core-porn-esque location. Classy.

Just Saw...

2005-09-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

The Like

These girls were too cool for school. I mean that in the most adoring way possible. They wore mini skirts with gogo boots and sang with their eyes half closed. I'm in love.

The Ditty Bops

A joy. If they aren't shimmying on stage while playing a washboard, they're singing sultry songs from the 1930's underneath fedora hats. Our second time seeing them. Won't be the last.

Tori Amos

I don't have the vocabulary to say much other than Oh my fucking God, she is too good for this earth. A very intense, solo set. No drums, no guitar, just Tori and her piano. She was wearing (I'm almost ashamed to say I know this) a beautiful Prada dress and her hair was down to her waist and we all just sat there stunned. Highlight of the set: "I'm going to play this because this song has been blacklisted" and then she played Imagine and we all just wept.

The Perils of Prayerlessness

2005-09-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

So, with all the destruction going on in the South, I've come upon a new predicament when it comes to letting people know you're hoping the best for them. On more than one occasion I have started to say "you're in our prayers" and stopped myself. I don't pray and don't want to lie and say I do, but what I do feels as strong and heart-felt as a prayer, but it's more like hoping...Do I say "you're in our hopes"? "You're in our thoughts" just seems to mediocre. I guess there's lots of ways to say it, I just feel like the pray-ers have a monopoly on exchanges of sympathy. What's an atheist to do?

I swear, I don't make this stuff up

2005-09-02T18:56:00.000-07:00

These continuing and hopefully regular entries will henceforth be referred to as Philisms.

Spoken in reference to Dick Cheney and his... um, "ideas": "He probably masturbates to pictures of things dying."

In reference to a shirt I was wearing that has quickly become a family favorite: "Your, um, nipples, they are...well, they are making a line form across the shirt...It's like a clothesline...between your breasts...um, I just...well, I just like that."

In reference to an issue or matter that has completely escaped our memories: "I'm like real that hasn't been made yet."

One of my personal favorites: While we were both singing along to Frampton's "Ooooo, baby I love your way, everyday" I realized that Phil fancies the song a question-and-answer event that goes; "Ooooo baby I love you when?" at which point the person to whom the question is being asked answers, "everyday!" Even after correcting him, on more than one occasion he has said goodbye to me and just before I shut the door he says "Oooo baby I love you when?... and I always turn and humor him with a hearty "Everyday!" What can I say? We're keeping the fire burning.

Me and My Brother Who's turning 20 next month.

2005-08-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

Me and My Brother Who's turning 20 next month.
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

kickin' it sailor-style.

The Most Romantic Poem I Know Of

2005-08-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

THE QUIET WORLD
by Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it in to my ear
Without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

Feminism encourages women to "kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

2005-08-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

From Pat Roberton's lips to the ears of god.

More fun news.

hmmmm, if the religous right has any sense at all.....wait, well, let me re-phrase that....if they have any detectable brain activity whatsoever, they'd get a new spokesperson. You know, one who doesn't call for the murder of a foreign leader and then point out that " I don't think any oil shipments will stop." Brilliant.

Hair Cut!

2005-08-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

DSC_6661
Originally uploaded by angryf.

The Ten Most Illuminated Moments of the Past Week

2005-08-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

10-Dressing Lluvy for a photoshoot and seeing our clothing on a woman so gorgeous I was waiting for her immaculate finish to crack.
9-Having Greg tell me I was dressed like I should be in a video for a popular early-90's techno song...."Now I couldn't dance with another"....just the look I was going for. kind of.
8-Listening to Matt name an article of our clothing "the cat-in-the-hat sweater". I think we need to hire him to be our professional name-thinker-upper.
7-Seeing a person get outrageously excited about receiving a bike accessory for her berfday. Elliot, safety first, use that light!
6-Looking through the pictures Matt took and being stunned into speechlessness. I've realized that there are few things I like more than dressing up beautiful girls and asking them to hang out in front of a camera.
5-Talking with garriet 'bout black and white movies and being convinced that, maybe, I might watch one someday.
4-Finding out one of my friends is out to his Christian parents and they haven't disowned him. Oh how I adore social evolution.
3-Seeing Julie be "fancy" as she put it.
2-Discovering Trader Joe's Tuna in Yellow Curry Sauce. There are few things more delicious.
1-Seeing Phil after we'd been apart for more than 5 days. Thank the lord for birth control, or I'd totally be pregnant three times over by now.

Things said by my husband in the last two days

2005-08-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

in reference to our attempt to simultaneously conjure the same color on the insides of our eyelids:"Wait! I'm not to yellow yet!!!"

"Hey! Do you want to have a family cheer?"

"I'm not whining, I'm slooowww beatboxing."

in reference to a PJ Harvey song to which he does not know the words:"Is she saying 'I have no time for anal love'?" I said; "no, she's saying I have no time for hate or love."

"You can believe that you came from a rock, or you can believe that a loving God created you for a purpose"

2005-08-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

My New One-Stop Science Information Site

Wow, I didn't realize it was such slim pickin's. Rock or Loving God. Rock or Loving God.

I'm going with Rock.

Oh How I Used to Make Fun of Other Peoples' Diary-Like Entries...Oh How I Now Have No Room to Talk.

2005-08-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

So, when I've had friendship fallouts in the past there usually comes the day when I'm not angry anymore. It happens when I'm looking through pictures or singing songs we used to sing together. I can feel my heart melt, and then all of the anger just leaves. I had a friend in high school who found Jesus and then thought me too pagan to stay friendly with (no, it was not the other way around, I loved her with or without Jesus takin' up permanent residence behind her two top left ribs). I was so angry with her for so long and now I can't remember what it was to dislike her. When I think of her I only smile. She is still the song I sing to myself when I'm alone.

I keep waiting for this to happen in my life today. I feel at peace about my actions and my past, but you know how they say "absence makes the heart grow fonder"? It feels as though absence is making clear so many things that are feeling more and more like betrayal. Instead of slowly replacing anger with love, it's going the other way around.

At the risk of sounding like I've been reading self-help books, I'm wondering what the cost of resolution really is. Is it always possible? Do the things people have done to you and the things you have done to them really matter when held up to the light of the present?

Pump up the Jam

2005-08-02T23:11:00.000-07:00

ebbs 122
Originally uploaded by angryf.

I want to be DJ Femme something fierce. See? I already have my name picked out.

America the Beautiful

2005-08-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

So, the news of the week is that a "Hispanic" family has moved onto my mother-in-law's block and this is, apparently, some of the worst possible news a middle-class, uber-white neighborhood can receive. Her neighbor actually called her to have a pity party and discuss WHAT COULD BE DONE about this evil of all evils. It's like everyone's whiteness is collective and one non-white family waters down the whole block's whitey-whiteness. And do you know what that means? Besides the fact that they will NOT be invited to weekly KKK meetings, they will also be excluded from Parcheezi Thursdays and Brady Bunch Marathon Tuesdays.

"they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps just to prove they got no manners, no mercy, and no sense." a.d.

The Pope in Hell

2005-07-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Reading: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

This book is especially relevant because as he recounts moments of terror and error in his French class, I can wipe away tears and nod my head, saying "yeah...sniff...I know what he means" because being in an 8-week, 15-unit intensive Spanish class, I do. Highlights in the book include his list of examples of the creative ways one pieces words and phrases together in order to communicate with a small, infantile vocabulary, in a foreign, unmastered language. I feel as though after every attempt at speaking an entire sentence in Spanish, I should, in English, apologize and say "really, I'm quite eloquent in English, I promise."

I feel as though I should be doing better seeing as I have a wonderful teacher who has us talk about paintings and poetry and abstract social problems. While examining two paintings of Pope Innocent, one by Bacon and one by Velasquez, I decided to lend my two cents to the conversation and proceeded to speak blasphemous, horrible words. The thing is, while I have a tendency towards irreverence, I wasn't trying to be mean or rude, I was just happy that I, for once, had the vocabulary to say what I thought. So, referring to the Bacon Piece, I said "Me think this be a picture of Pope Innocent in the Hell because, you know, he did many things bad and evil and the Inquisition was a thing in the past that was not good, you know,... the Pope in Hell."

The entire room gasped and my teacher looked at me with wide eyes and corrected my verb tenses. Apparently, my class is full of Catholics or people who think Hell is a silly place to put a Pope. Either way, I offended everyone and spent the next few minutes being very solemn and pious-looking.

I often complain to Phil that I have trouble making friends in college because I don't want to go to keggers and well, I'm just not a super outgoing person. But now, I can no longer complain. I mean, how does one make friends if one is condemning the Pope?

Me think this not a place to start good.

All my dreams can commence coming true

2005-07-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

Tori Amos is touring with Imogen Heap and The Ditty Bops.

I am married to this man

2005-07-22T17:24:00.000-07:00

I am married to this man
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

He loooooves making ice.

The Anatomy of Mercy

2005-07-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

My grandma is very stylish. Every time I see her, her earrings match her blouse, which matches her socks and purse. Besides her impeccable taste in fashion, she has mercy, among many, many other things. This is one of my favorite words…Mercy…and despite the fact that religious folk seem to have a monopoly on its use, I try to sneak it in whenever possible. I realized the extent and anatomy of her mercy last weekend.

She has taken care of a relative of ours for years and it has driven her bonkers. This particular relative is a fixture in my childhood memories and is usually the one in the background saying “Be careful of black people, you know, just be careful” or “How dare James Taylor wear jeans on stage…he’s rich and just doesn’t want to show it”. You can imagine how well we got along, whatwithall the respect I happen to have for black people and James Taylor. This relative has made my grandma’s life a struggle and her presence is a burden. Secretly, I hated her for the duration of my childhood. So did my mother seeing as she too has memories containing the phrase “my dog is smarter than you are”.

No one understood why my grandma put up with her nagging and laziness and bitterness for literally 60+ years. On Sunday, I found out.

Apparently, this relative lost her father at 13 and her stepfather proceeded to molest and abuse her until she left home. She pleaded with her mother to intervene, but she refused to. When her mother was dying she asked that my grandma take care of her daughter. My grandma kept this promise in a real and palpable way. Suddenly the visions I had of my annoying relative locked up in her room with her books and her dog seemed pale and sad instead of lazy and maniacal. The mercy required of my grandma to build her life around a person who seemed to have no heart is haunting and deep.

What’s more—she never told any of us why. She let us think she was silly and strange for putting up with this relative when in fact, she was keeping a promise she made to a dead, cruel women. She was emptying herself of the things of the self and this equals mercy.

she does pilates

2005-07-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

elliot's evening job
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

If I had the money, Id hire her to be my full-time living dress-form and muse.

The Beautiful Lila

2005-07-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

lila-downs-sc 033
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

I should be studying for my Spanish final, but I can't get last night's show out of my head. We saw Lila Downs at the Rio Theatre. I was not prepared to experience her presence. She was so proud and fluid and elegantly sustained. I've never seen a show where the performer beatboxed to a traditional Mexican folksong, sang in the indigenous Mayan language, danced like her life was beginning and ending all at once, and made me cry cry cry even though I didn't understand half of what she was saying.

Click on the beauty for more pics.

2005-07-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

The Corporation

Go rent it. It's very well done in that it has interviews with both the critics of modern capitalism and the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. (one reviewer said "Better manners and longer fuse than Fahrenheit 9/11") Doubles as an economics lesson. Point of greatest impact and interest to me: The functions and attributes of a corporation have been judicially constructed (meaning they have not always been this way, they may not alwayss be this way, they could have been otherwise, etc.) and yet they have been naturalized as being always, already present in our understanding of economics. Thesis of the documentary: Seeing as a corporation has legal protections and responsibilities under the law as though the corporation is a person (this phenomenon could be called "14th amendment abuse"), if we were to diagnose the psychological well-being of any corporation as a person we would find that most would be diagnosed as being psychotic.

Listening to...

2005-07-10T22:33:00.000-07:00

...M.I.A.

so so good

She is my latest Sri Lankan crush. Yes, I've had more than one.

When I Talk to God She Seems Distracted

2005-07-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

BRIGHT EYES LYRICS

"When The President Talks To God"

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women’s' rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends

When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

Home for the Holidays

2005-07-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

Our Holidays (that means "holy-days" for all you heathens) in Santa Cruz have been other-worldly. Santa Cruz is, in many ways, somewhat extraterrestrial at times and the Holidays in SC are no exception.

New Years

On January 1, I drank so much (homemade wine, smirnoff raspberry drinkything, and heffeveisen) that I threw up twice. The first time, Phil (this is how I know he loves me) cleaned it up. It was PURPLE and CHUNKY and the man CLEANED IT UP. And while it can't be compared to this story, I was and am very impressed. The second time, I was outside a restaurant trying to procure breakfast with a group of people I didn't know very well. Oh the memories.

The night before (that's New Years Eve for all you prudes) we drug a Christmas (that's CHRIST mass) tree through the streets and onto the beach, over a river, and through the woods, until we reached the tree's final resting place. We lit that motherfucker on fire and watched it burn. To this day (yes, 6 WHOLE MONTHS LATER) Phil claims that he will never be in the same room as a Christmas tree, ever again. It was charred and smoldering after a few short minutes of burning which entailed flames shooting 15 feet into the air and a roaring sound that seemed to be coming from the vast, angry ocean or my alcohol drenched belly--a toss-up. As it glowed we sang patriotic songs and got weepy. Don't let anyone tell you I'm unAmerican.

Independence Day

Apparently, in SC, there is a city ordinance which requires every human and humanoid to leave their home, get drunk in the streets, and stumble to the beach to watch THE MOST FUCKING INSANE DISPLAY OF DISPOSABLE INCOME EVER. We literally saw tens of thousands of dollars in illegal fireworks go off for over two hours, directly above our heads. It was unreal. These were like, movie-quality fireworks; twinkly, erratic, glowing, effervescence, luminescent bursts of sound and spark. The entire beach and all of the beaches as far as we could see (which wasn't far because of the smoke) were filled with Americans in desperate need of an excuse to party.

We all looked up and across the water, past the boats hovering on the shore and the falling embers, towards the other beaches where people just like us did the same thing. We were all so entertained by the sounds of war. Don't let anyone tell you I'm unAmerican.

No She DI-INT

2005-06-27T16:24:00.000-07:00

"I don't know about you but I love watching the Chinese army march around in thier teeny tiny little red suits! It's hilarious....almost as funny as watching the North Koreans traipse about in thier silly little stances..."

I don't know 'bout y'all, but I think standards of political discourse are at an all-time high.

thePhil

2005-06-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

thePhil
Originally uploaded by ethernectar.

See!?! See what I mean! How adorable is he!?

This is my One Sappy Post, I Promise

2005-06-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

I had this dream last night that Phil and I were planning our 5th anniversary party (must be because Greg and Julie are currently planning their 10th). This was one of my classic stress dreams because nothing was going right; no one showed up, none of the food ever arrived and we couldn't figure out what to wear. We did, however, have an inordinate amount of pictures of ourselves (as Phil and I do in real life, it's embarrassing, really) strewn about the room, so we cuddled together in an overstuffed chair and looked them over in total contentment. In my dream they were all real pictures that we'd taken on our first picnic together, our first trip to twin peaks, and pictures of us in New York.

Here's the thing:

When Phil's late home from work I get myself all worked up over whether or not he's been killed in a car accident and on most occasions I work myself into tears. I try to act cool and nonchalant when he unlocks the door, but inside I'm so relieved I almost pee my pants.

When I'm home sick I scavenge for one of Phil's shirts and I take it to bed and bury my face in it because it smells like him. His smell is so distinct to me that when I catch a whiff of a passerby who uses the same aftershave, he seems like a total fake and I'm angry at him for being a Phil imposter.

I used to constantly say that we were NOT HAVING CHILDREN and when I see a screaming child in a grocery store I still say it, but having spent 4 years getting to know Phil, I'm excited to have a child because I want someone on the planet to be blessed with a father like Phil. I'm even willing to go through labor (the scarriest word in the world to me) in order to make that happen--this is coming from a woman who has pre-pardom depression.

In short:

To say that I'm in love with him seems faint and silly when compared to these things. Love is less and less a sufficient word, and more and more something we say around my house.

Party Girls

2005-06-20T16:35:00.000-07:00

flapper17
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

I had the most amazing 1920's themed party this weekend. Thanks to everyone who came and everyone who helped! I felt so blessed to be surrounded by so many bow ties and garter belts. Click on the ladies to see more pics! Cheers!

tawny on the stockton bridge

2005-06-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

tawny on the stockton bridge
Originally uploaded by th3ph17.

This is an incriminating photo. I'm wearing a shirt I should return to Elliot if I have a moral bone in my body. Seeing as I do not, I'm holding it for ransom; ransom being the shirt she said she'd make me.

I Feel A Deep Need To Tell This Story

2005-06-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

Being one who rarely thinks about the supernatural world, seeing as I am one who doesn't believe there is such a thing, I was quite surprised by the following events.

This story is in no way new, in fact I've told it so many times that when I repeat it my friends will cut me off three seconds into it and say, "yes, we know about the spider and how you saved Phil from it... more tea?" I think I hold onto the story as if it is a sign that yes, I am Phil's personal Jesus and he better love me for it. This is how the story goes.

We were sleeping. Soundly. The soundness of our sleeping is key here. I woke with a start (notice how most of the excitement that takes place in the BairdHolt brigade is at night, usually in the vicinity of the bed...see this and this if you don't believe me) and I was immediately panicked and felt some deep, primal need to protect Phil. My eyes shot through the dark and focused on a massive spider dangling just above Phil's head. JUST ABOVE IT. He had like, 3 seconds and 6 inches. Ok, that came out wrong. Nevertheless, I shoved him awake and we flew off of the bed going two opposite directions-the directions both being away from the spider of death. We turned on the lights and the fat, round creature plopped audibly onto Phil's pillow right where his head had been.

What is still so remarkable to me is that I was instantly looking at the spider when I awoke. It was so instinctual and otherworldly it was as though I had a sixth spider sense. And while it didn't restore my faith in the baby Jebus, it did make me question that whole water into wine shpeal. There are some things I could get into.

This is my One Complaint

2005-06-14T09:32:00.000-07:00

Despite what the rest of this post might convey, Phil and I do love Santa Cruz. We love Westcliff, we adore Asian Rose (the yummiest Sri Lankan food), and we can't get enough of the monthly antique fair. BUT, we apparently moved to the noisyest cross-street in all of California. The funny thing is, when we go outside, the noise stops, or, it seems to. We hear drilling, drum circles, Semi trucks revving their macho engines, and people going through heroine withdrawals ALL AT ONCE. Every Night. Yet, in the mornings, we timidly exit our abode and find...nothing. It's all cleared out by morning. Phil is convinced that there are two very small but very powerful speakers attached to our windows pointing in. These speakers are activated every night by sensors that can tell when we're tired. Our yawning triggers the speakers and they blast heroine addiction noises into our home. Freakin EVERY NIGHT. I have learned to sleep through it, but find that my dreams are increasingly staged in the 1970's. It must be the drum circles.

Just Saw...

2005-06-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

Mad Hot Ballroom

Go see it. Right now.

The Coincidences Commence

2005-06-02T00:37:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Phil and I spent time with our friends in Modesto. I was helping with Hand Born and he was supporting me in my helping. He knows that I would spontaneously cumbust were I to have nothing to stress out about, so he pretends that I'm not as insane as I am in thinking I can DO EVERYTHING, ALL AT ONCE, IN PERFECT UNISON. As it were, this particular weekend gave birth to myriad coincidences, most of which were sexual in nature. Let me elaborate.

Greg, Julie, Elliot, Andrew, Phil, and Myself went to Thai food one night. We proceeded to offend half the restaurant and cry our little bloodshot eyes out in bouts of uncontrollable laughter and general raucousness. I think it all started with Julie and I imitating "the popsicle suck" which, strangely enough, mirrored a certain sexual act. This was all nicely under wraps until Elliot chimed in with "yeah, and you just cup the balls." Just as we thought this inappropriateness was coming to a close, Julie passed her minty chapstick to me and says "this is good for things." I bet it is.

Coincidence number two is slightly less sexual in nature...depending on what you're into. We were all munching away on our Thainess when Phil begins one of his songs. If you know Phil, you know that at some point in the duration of time you spend with him, he will make up a song about you, your pet, or your mama. You think I'm kidding. In this particular song he needed a word that rhymed with "soup." I suggested "poop" at which point Phil took it upon himself to plop a poop-like mushroom into my soup and smile devilishly at me, destroying my appetite for coconut soup and sending me into another fit of tears.

In case this isn't enough hilarity for one reading (I know our humor is exceeding mature, but bear with me) there was indeed a coincidence number three. Greg and Julie had a barbecue and invited all the cool kids in town. Greg and Julie have a baby, his name is Wyatt. Wyatt gets excited and he shows everyone his "lipstick." For those out of the know, Wyatt is their dog and he gets BONERS that look INSANE. Speaking of boners, Phil and I had indulged in a little marital bliss earlier in the evening and as a result, I had a bit of a stain on my incredibly cute layered black skirt. Do it. Call me Monica. I dare you. While at the barbecue, the spinach dip on Phil's bread (I'm being serious) dropped ever-so-cum-like on my skirt, thus creating a NEW stain. I rushed into the kitchen to show Julie and Elliot and OH THE LOOK OF HORROR IN JULIE'S EYES. She thought I had been holding Wyatt and that he had lost a bit of his manhood on my skirt.

Humor at its finest...depending on what you're into.

Just Saw..

2005-05-26T13:18:00.000-07:00

..The documentary Grey Gardens. Little Edie is a trip and she's quoted in Rufus Wainwright's song called "Grey Gardens".

"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present."

She says this decked out in one of her "costumes". Brilliant. She's my new fashion hero. Assuming I had one before her. I thinks it's all in the sweater wrapped around the waist over the stockings. Or maybe in the renegade turban. Could be either, really.

elliot the model

2005-05-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

fashion
Originally uploaded by th3ph17.

Elliot is a fantastic model, however, she doesn't get up for less than 10,000 dollars. Needless to say, Julie and I have A LOT of clothes to make and sell as we are now in hopeless debt. But, at least we got THE model of the moment. We wouldn't settle for less.

Wuv, Twue Wuv

2005-05-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I went with Phil to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If anyone knows me they know that this was an act of true love. We walked home after the movie (walking is The Way) and my feet were hurting so horribly from the most horribly adorable shoes that Phil offered me his. While Phil HAS tried on a pair of my shoes, just to see how masochistic women really are (gender stereotype, I know, I have to balance out hyper-feminist-consciousness on campus with ignorant belligerence off), he was unwilling to put his feet in my death-traps-for-shoes to walk home. So, he walked home in his socked feet. This is our way of balancing out the universe; you see a movie you know you'll hate, I'll walk home in socks. It's like an hour of Kurosawa for an hour of Bertolucci.

Ode To Birds

2005-05-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

Birds have been attacking people in Santa Cruz. I was one of them. I was walking home from Longs and I apparently came too close to somebody's love nest and was scratched on the top of my head by an evil bird. I have a history with evil birds. Let me elaborate.

The sleeping conditions one lives in when one sleeps in the same room as Phil and Tawny are less than stellar. We talk in our sleep, walk in our sleep, elbow each other, and encounter spiders dangling above our heads (I'll tell that story soon, it's a doosey). We also see evil doves. Or, at least, I do. I did. Once.

I was sleeping soundly when a stirring woke me up. I awoke to find an Evil Dove staring me right in the eyes. It was perched on the side of the bed, arching its little evil head towards me; watching me while I slept and plotting to pluck my eyes out. I immediately scrambled to the foot of the bed and hit Phil's legs until he woke up to find me balanced on my tip toes and my fingers, still on the bed, still staring at the Evil Dove as I shook like a leaf. Phil began to try to comfort me and coax me down from my perch-ed state when I heard a low, guttural moan coming from the depths of the dove's evilness. I was convinced that it was a battle cry. I was convinced that an Evil Dove had made its way into my home to terrorize me. I CANNOT EXPRESS TO YOU HOW REAL THESE FEELINGS WERE, HOW TERRIFIED I REALLY WAS.

SO, turns out that the Evil Dove was really a water bottle sitting on the nightstand, very near the bed. The cap was the Evil Dove's head and the body was the plastic bottle. The low guttural moan was a car revving its engine outside our apartment complex. Yeah, all that drama for nothing. Needless to say, I now have a special relationship with birds and the attack on Sunday was just the icing on the cake, the cherry on the Sunday, the cap on the bottle. Quick, Quick! Name one pet I will never have!!

Boobies

2005-05-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

So, apparently when one wears a cotton shirt, bra-less in the morning cool on Pacific Ave. one might as well put a sign on one's chest that says; "Go ahead, berate me! I want you to! I love being ogled and called honey-lips!" I mean, don't we all? It's not that I'm some kind of beauty queen; I'm a little too intelligent to think they're struck by my ravishing beauty, rather, I think they just like making someone feel small and ashamed.

I remember being completely flabbergasted when men started cat-calling to me in public when I was around 12 (I was tall for my age). It was my first inkling of feminist consciousness; I realized what it was to have a body that was not wholly my own--men seemed to have access to it verbally as if I was a pair of shoes or a necktie--"nice shoes, where'd you get them?" "hey baby, nice ass, you gonna share with me?"

Besides, what's the deal? Do they think I'm going to say "YES! FINALLY! A man who knows how to talk to me! Let me run home and dump my husband so I can shack up with you!!!"?

Madly juggling my marriage and career (don't I sound fancy)

2005-05-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

This Sunday is Craftalicious! I haven't spoken to Phil for days because I've been hovering above my sewing machine and sifting through vintage buttons while stamping away furiously with my new Armour sans Anguish stamp--it's been going on everything. I'm surprised I didn't send Phil out the door this morning (hey, I'm a good housewife, bite me) with a beautifully font-ed "Armour sans Anguish" right across his forehead. Good advertising, you know.

elliot

2005-05-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

DSC_8123
Originally uploaded by graphics84.

Elliot was and is the original AsA muse. Apparently Southern California has swallowed her up, but I still think of her when I'm sewing or trying to speak Spanish. She is absolutely the reason I started sewing. She was like "ok, we've started a clothing company" like she was deciding to have tofutti for dessert, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I totally love her for that. I love that she's more interested in saving the world than making clothes and I love that she was cool with me making clothes as a way to save the world one sweatshop-free tutu at a time. I love that things worked out this way because Julie and I hooked up under AsA and things are a-rockin'. A picture of Elliot is on my fridge and she's wearing the shirt she made that says "paz con una pistola en la mano es guerra." It inspires me every day.

On getting Hitched

2005-05-01T19:00:00.000-07:00

On the list entitled "The Most Trying Experiences Of My Life", right below "learning how to be a beatbox master" and right above "unlearning everything the Bible taught me" lies "learning how to be one half of a marriage." It fully freaks me out sometimes; the planning, the baby talk (oh, I'm starting mad rumors), the fighting. Phil and I don't really fight as much as we discuss things intermittently at elevated volumes. I take the volume thing back, I've actually never heard Phil yell. I'm the yeller. Just me. We're both pouters, we pout like crazy at each other over things like which movie to rent from Cedar Street Video where the video guy looks and acts just like Philip Seymore Hoffman. We both love him--ahh, agreement. We pout over what to eat for dinner because Phil would rather put his head in a meat grinder than utter a declarative sentence. We pout over the construction of www.armoursansanguish.com, seeing as it is a collaborative effort and we are artists (who call themselves "artists"...oh LORD) who have things called "visions." Our visions are bullshit excuses for arguments and disagreements because sometimes I think we secretly thrive on some good old-fashioned bickering. One thing we do not pout about is politics. This is key. My new mantra is "I want PEACE in my home!" and I shout this very unpeacefully at anyone who thinks it's passe that a person's political persuasion is reason enough to date (or not date) that person. I'm all for pre-nuptial political screening. I say we should strap our significant others to political-affiliation-detection machines and make sure that the future will not hold political pouting matches. Especially when you have dinner to argue about.

These Very Words Were Once Said to Me

2005-04-26T17:31:00.000-07:00

"You know, Tawny, when you post something on the internet...anyone can read it."

Having not been previously privy to this information, you can image how surprised I was to find out.

studentbody

2005-04-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

studentbody
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

I was so hard core. What? Can't you tell?

I Loves Me Some Stage Makeup

2005-04-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

My obsession with Cirque Du Soleil has become officially unhealthy. I am currently willing to go into a silly amount of debt to make it to the next performance within 500 miles. And DID YOU KNOW there is a DVD SERIES documenting the trials and tribulations of the performers as they perfect their backbends and handstands?!? I feel like I've found religion all over again, and this time, I intend to remain a devout follower.

katia

2005-04-21T21:27:00.000-07:00

katia
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

Fashion Shmashion

2005-04-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Julie and I and our little baby of a clothing company, Armour sans Anguish, participated in a local fashion show. We had the loveliest of all lovely models and it went so well! The turnout was amazing and Julie and I almost cried with joy and exhaustion when we heard everyone clapping and cheering. Emily, the designer whose home this took place at and the creator of the label Filly, was so gracious and kind. It was an incredible boost to my confidence, and besides, I got to spend the weekend with pretty girls. A success.

Click on the picture of Katia for more shots taken by my Phil.

Lawd, I've Seen The Light

2005-04-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, I mean, two minutes ago I was a total feminist, but these guys changed my mind. Whew! To think I almost turned out to be an empowered individual! Close call.

They made a statue of Us

2005-04-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

14a
Originally uploaded by tawnillia.

And put it on a mountain top.

This One Is For The Haters

2005-04-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

I love this woman's blog. She makes cool things and is witty and edgy. I mostly like her because she posts stuff about hate mail. So does Dooce and many other bloggers, seeing as blogging kind of opens you up to the hate, makes you susceptible to it, etc. I will admit that once, when I was a cyberspace novice, I posted "hate" mail on someone's comment board. It was really more like "exasperation" mail, but it made her VERY angry with me. If anyone else with half a brain would have read her nonsense about feminism being shitty because, after all, "men made things like washing machines and vacuums to cut down on the time women had to spend doing their god-given chores, therefore allowing women to WATCH MORE SOAP OPERAS" (I'm so not kidding) they would have written her a bit o' hatred too. I mostly just gave her links to historical sites concerning who actually invented these appliances and also to some reputable feminist scholarly work. She, I'm assuming, didn't read it.

I, on the other hand have read a particular piece of hate mail quite a few times. I had made the HUGE and apparently DEADLY mistake of emailing a group of former comrades a link to an article concerning a particular matter of concern. This matter of concern is definitely not some self-proclaimed area of expertise for me, I just find it interesting. When some responses refuting the article I had sent out began FLOWING in, I decided that before I wrote back, I would do more research. Thus, it took only 3 or 4 days before someone had decided that I was a coward and was never going to write back. The thing is, I'm married. I had a full-time job and was going to school at the time. My brother was sick. My husband's father was sick. I was busy. My life was not such that I could spend every evening playing video games and talking shit about people I don't really know, as this particular hater had the privilege of doing. Below is the email he sent me, a portion of it.

I was going to wait for you to respond to J's post, but it's clear that your "source" and I used that term loosely has been proven wrong, and you're not going to respond.

I look over your "source" and I wondered two things:

1) Who is this guy and why should I believe him?

2) Why is there no links, sources, or anything that remotely looks like evidence?

This is why I take everything you say with a BAG of salt. That's like the opposite of the scientific method.

1) I have a conclusion (Microsoft is an evil multi-national corp, with greedy executives)

2) I look for "evidence" to support my conclusion.

3) I dismiss all evidence no matter how factual that disagrees with me.

4) I tell the world that I'm right using my BS sources and if you disagree, you're probably racist, sexist, greedy, or something else bad.

Liberal Logic.....the anti-logic

J furnished you with a source, and gave you the insight of a business owner........but he disagrees with you, so he must be wrong........don't you go to College. I think he meant to put a question mark here.

Maybe you need to grow up a little. I have had many political talks with J and when I'm wrong, I admit it, and he does the same. And at no time do we get so butt hurt that we avoid each other.

To paraphrase from your BLOG:

How many political discussion have you got in and had your feelings hurt: To many to count.

How many people don't get to hang out with your husband anymore because of their political views: At least 3 from my count.

I found your blog and it's cute, but maybe you should be honest with yourself.

I guess that is a good way to be right in your own mind all the time.......Divorce and or push away people if they don't think the same way you do.

The End.

Yeah, he must be right. I mean, don't you all seek scientific journals as conversation starters in your circle of friends? The truth is, I had about 16 or 17 "sources" with this matter of concern in it. I chose one, literally at random. This is a mistake when the male version of Ann Coulter is on the other end of your email. The funniest thing, at least to me, is that I honestly don't know this person well enough to write a huge email about the nature of their evilness. Why he thought he knew me that well has been explained to me (a little bird used him as a complaints-about-Tawny receptor), but seeing as he GOES TO COLLEGE (which is the ultimate test of intellectual rigor, obviously) he should've known, heresy isn't reliable. Especially when the little bird is a drama queen. If he had waited a few more days (after I had had a meeting with a professor whose specialty is this certain matter of concern, done more of my own research, and found someone who could decipher the ambiguous "source" that had been sent to me by J), he would have gotten a lengthy response. The moral of this story? This is what an adult would have written:

Hey Tawny, I was waiting for your response to J's email. Were you going to respond?

See? Now, wasn't that easy? that's what grown-ups do, they wait patiently and don't flip out because they have nothing better to do with themselves.

Why write about this almost 1 year after the acquisition of this email o' hate? Its cheaper than therapy and easier on the eyes than actually looking at the hater.

2005-04-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

You are LaFawnduh. Why are you so sweaty?

Which Napoleon Dynamite character are you?
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Living Life W.C.

2005-04-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

For three days Phil and I had no computer. Put simply, we were living life W.C. (without computer). After we realized that it had gotten sick, Phil took it to the doctor. The next passage is an actual adult conversation taking place between two childless grown-ups.

T: SO?!? What did the doctor say???
P: *sigh* It's too soon to tell.
T: Oh My God! I hope everything is OK!!
P: All we can do is hope. Hope and Pray.

Apart from the praying business, that's pretty much accurate. I didn't realize that living W.C. would be so terrifying. I had no idea what Dooce's baby Leta was up to. I had to look out of the window to check the weather. I had to HAND WRITE a paper for my Auto Ethnography class (don't ask, I thought I was signing up for "Topics In Ethnography"). Because our computer is also our DVD player, I had THREE DAYS without Kiefer Southerland in 24. I'm amazed we survived what with all the free time spent on actual conversation and midday shagging.

yummy husband man

2005-04-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

DSC_7449
Originally uploaded by graphics84.

This is Phil.

I know! I know!

2005-04-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

If there were some way we could persuade the entire Iraqi population to go on life support or do really convincing fetus imitations, they would ALL BE SAVED!!! Welfare mom? Get a feeding tube! Instead of whining about your desire to raise your kids at home, the Right will not only feed you when you're hungry, they'll feed you when you're not!

Behold, I Give You Thai Chi: Metahistorical Soul-Massage.

2005-03-30T12:01:00.000-08:00

On Monday I started my academic quarter with a “what?” followed by excessive eye rolling and nose scrunching. Let me explain. I took a Thai Chi Chuan class in Modesto with Julie and we rocked the class. We were so enamored with our skills that late one night in downtown Modesto, right outside of Fuzios, we embarrassed our husbands by making them watch us do our set in plain, public view. What can I say? We were centered in our centeredness and we were energy-balanced gals, and why keep that to yourself? Master N, our instructor, would belt out CHI!!!! in a guttural and imposing voice and that meant “begin.” I think he insisted on the belting for effect. He was cool, I liked him and in my brain’s puniness I assumed that all Thai Chi instructors would have the same vibe.

I paid for this assumption with almost two hours of abject boredom and simultaneous disbelief that I was attending a Thai Chi Chuan course at The University of California. The guru was a total crackpot. If he wasn’t butchering the English language by asking the class if he should use the word “metaphysical” or “metahistorical” to describe the way Thai Chi feels in your soul, he was telling us that he isn’t a Thai Chi Scholar; he is a Thai Chi half-scholar. Of course, a half-scholar. Exactly. It was even more shocking that half of the class was nodding in that “yeah man, I catch your drift” kind of way. Were they all high? Um, never mind.

I think my reputation has been one of anti-religion in my circle of friends and that’s true in many ways, however, I’m not the kind of person who says “I just have a problem with organized religion” because, give me a break, show me a religion that isn’t organized. Religion, by definition, demands some kind of order or pattern and that is organization. I will scrunch my nose equally at a far-right fanatic and a practicing pagan. I think its all mumbo-jumbo, albeit beautiful, fascinating, and functional mumbo jumbo. Monday’s class, however, produced some of the most un-beautiful mumbo jumbo I’ve ever heard and I have no patience for sentences like “You know, the energy of Pung is like a cornflake and the mixture of the cornflake and your inner center creates a kind of cornstalk of love.” I think the only time I’ve prayed in 8 years was in that class, I was asking God to save me from Thai Chi.

The Incredible Weight Of Being

2005-03-29T20:02:00.000-08:00

More photos to cry to.