Fucking insects

Turns out that the horrid itchy dry skin I've had for a month is scabies. Why won't the insects leave me alone?!

I really hope that this is my cosmic quota of annoying bugs. Two within a year! Honestly! That's quite enough, thank you. My guess is that the exboyfriend must have picked up the little wonders in South America while he was there over the holidays--buggy sheets, one would assume. Ack.

What sucks about this is that, although I am currently covered in pesticide (because the thought of that isn't bad enough) is that the rash can stay up to two weeks more! Ugh. I've had just about enough itching, thank you very much.

And now you're all really itchy. But, don't worry, unless you've had sustained skin-to-skin contact with me, you're fine.

Because I'm such an efficient procrastinator...

I just took the OkCupid! Politics Test. (click the link) Turns out I'm a socialist. I am both a social and economic liberal and I exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.

Duh.

I should really just write this paper so that I can write the next one. And then the one after that. And then the one after that.

Because after I do that, I'll have two take home finals and a real final...and then I'll be DONE WITH UNIVERSITY (not) FOREVER!

It's odd, actually, how this semester has no sense of finality to it for me. I'm just sort of plugging along. I'll be happy when it's over--and as I keep saying, I'm very much looking forward to the time off. But I have no sense of 'This is it. Off into the real world with you. Kiss your beloved academe good bye!'

I guess that's because I know I shall return...just like the Jedi...mwahahaha! (I guess a Jedi wouldn't really laugh maniacally like that.)

On a side note, after going to Easter Mass yesterday, I came home and took one of those 'What religion best suits you' tests (http://beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html) and of the 27 religions that it compares you against, Roman Catholic was at the very bottom. I've taken a few of these tests before and it's always been at the bottom. Apparently I'd make a better Mormon or Orthodox Jew than I would a Catholic. Go figure. Usually my top religion comes up as Unitarian Universalist. This time, though, that was number two. My top was actually Neo-Pagan. Go figure again. I blame my hippy roommates. ;-) The top five were rounded out by Mahayana Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism and Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestantism.

Just in case you were curious.

Okay. The Book of the Courtier. Masculinity. The Renaissance. GO TEAM!

Michigan preparing to let doctors refuse to treat gays

Maybe it's a good thing I didn't get into Michigan.... I can't believe this. I also read an article this morning about a growing trend of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions that they feel are against their personal beliefs--i.e., no, you can't have this birth control pill because I believe that contraception is a sin. I don't care if you have a note from your doctor.

Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

The Republican dominated House passed the measure as dozens of Catholics looked on from the gallery. The Michigan Catholic Conference, which pushed for the bills, hosted a legislative day for Catholics on Wednesday at the state Capitol.

The bills now go the Senate, which also is controlled by Republicans.

The Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow health care providers to assert their objection within 24 hours of when they receive notice of a patient or procedure with which they don't agree. However, it would prohibit emergency treatment to be refused.

Three other three bills that could affect LGBT health care were also passed by the House Wednesday which would exempt a health insurer or health facility from providing or covering a health care procedure that violated ethical, moral or religious principles reflected in their bylaws or mission statement.

Opponents of the bills said they're worried they would allow providers to refuse service for any reason. For example, they said an emergency medical technicians could refuse to answer a call from the residence of gay couple because they don't approve of homosexuality.

Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) the first openly gay legislator in Michigan, pointed out that while the legislation prohibits racial discrimination by health care providers, it doesn't ban discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.

'Are you telling me that a health care provider can deny me medical treatment because of my sexual orientation? I hope not,' he said.

'I think it's a terrible slippery slope upon which we embark,' said Rep. Jack Minore (D-Flint) before voting against the bill.

Paul A. Long, vice president for public policy for the Michigan Catholic Conference, said the bills promote the constitutional right to religious freedom.

'Individual and institutional health care providers can and should maintain their mission and their services without compromising faith-based teaching,' he said in a written statement.

SO excited for 19th May!

So I'm going to be a total 16 year old boy here for a moment.

I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE STAR WARS EPISODE THREE!! I JUST WATCHED THE TRAILER AND IT LOOKS SOOOOOOOO GOOD! OH MY GOD! IT'S GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN TO WATCH!

Ahem.

I'm finished now.

(But I'm going to go watch the trailer a second time.)

The Culture of Strife

In what ought to be immortal words of Jon Stewart to the mainstream media in the US: 'Stop hurting America.'

This man really ought to be canonised. Which isn't to say that I want him to die. Because I don't. But after he has enjoyed what I hope will be a very long life, he ought to be canonised.

Some semblance of sanity...

...seems to remain in that crazy birth-nation of mine. I'm happy that poor Terri Schiavo is going to be allowed to die. Of course, it would be oh so much more humane if they'd euthanise her. But euthanasia is, of course, bad.

I really wish they'd make a big deal about 'the culture of life' and 'erring on the side of life' when they go to execute a criminal. Or that they'd seriously take this whole culture of life thing absolutely seriously and promote life for every US citizen...by providing them all with universal health care, thereby ensuring that they can enjoy the best culture of life possible.

dumb

4 degrees does not sandal wearing weather make.

Thoughts from the road II

'I hope you have enjoyed your stay in Germany, Mister…Bradshaw. And that you'll return again soon.'
'It's not very likely.'
'You did not find our country beautiful?'
'Yes. I found it beautiful.'
'A good journey, sir.'
'There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies, and there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world. I was dancing with Sally Bowles. And we were both fast asleep.'

Every time I leave the States, I think of these lines from the end of Cabaret. It becomes more strange every time I return. This time, what I noticed most of all were all of the magnetic yellow ribbons on cars. Either yellow or red, white and blue. Most of them said, 'Support our troops.' Some of them said, 'God bless America,'

I've never been really comfortable with such ostentatious patriotism. It troubles me greatly the assumption necessary to assume, as Ben Folds so eloquently puts it in his song 'All U Can Eat', 'Well, God made us number one because he loves us the best.' Of course, the next line in the song is, 'Maybe he should go bless someone else for a while and give us a rest.'

There were four people walking through little downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont, today, holding signs protesting against the war in Iraq. They were all clearly of retirement age. '2 Years + 2 Many Lives = 4 What?' (Today being the two year anniversary of the start of the war.)

It occurred to me that perhaps the reason that Americans are so willing to present a belligerent face to the world perhaps has ntohing to do with an overwhelming superiority of strength. In general, it seems that wars don't worry the American public. Vietnam is perhaps an exception, but it was many, many years before Vietnam became a strongly divisive issue that the majority of Americans were against. The reason that Americans have no problem with wars is because they are never fought at home. Yes, we had that War for Independence and that Civil War (oh, and let's not forget the War of 1812, when the Canadians burnt the White House). In general, though, wars are fought elsewhere--besides the fact that those three wars are so far in the past as to be part of myth more than anything, at least for the average person.

Europe, on the other hand, has had more than its share of wars fought in its own backyard. Indeed, for most of the twentieth century, Europe either was a battleground or a potential battleground. When you fight two horrendously destructive wars within a generation of each other, and then spend the rest of the century poised rather uncomofortably between two enemies who are staring down the barrels of their nukes at each other, well, I suspect that you don't enter into war lightly.

For Americans, though, war has always happened somewhere else. It's never really come home. September 11 was supposedly the day that war came home. But it wasn't really. Since then the American public has been further dumbed-down into a suspicious and jumpy collectivity. For a nation built by immigrants, there is such suspicion of foreigners now that bodes rather ill for the future--not that there isn't plenty of other to bode ill for the future of the nation.

Shortly after the election, I bought a Canadian flag to sew onto my knapsack. Mostly because I was so deeply ashamed by and saddened for my country. This week was the first time that I've been back since the election. I never perceived Bostonians as an unfriendly bunch. Granted, being on the subway with my enormous luggage and knapsack probably was a bit annoying. Damn thing was heavy, crammed with books and not very easy to manoeuvre. Such glares I got.

Yet I can't help but wonder if it had anything to do with that Maple Leaf proudly sewn to my knapsack.

I'm on the bus home, somewhere between St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Montréal. It will be wonderful to be back. Yet the end is so close. Montréal has been a wonderful home for the past four and a half years. It will be hard to leave, especially to return to the Empire to the South. But life seems to be leading me straight into the heart of the storm.

My friend who I'll be living with in Portland this summer told me that she wept the night of the election. I remember being to shocked to do much of anything.

Spring is coming, though. The snow is melting. Soon, things will begin to blossom. Life always renews itself.

I think I'm finally ready to admit that I can no longer call myself staunchly anti-American. While I very much disagree with the current government and the current state of the nation, I have come to realise that the United States of America was founded on great promises. I love Canada very deeply and, who knows, I may some day return to stay. But I was born American for a reason. I can't just run away from that. I have to do what I can to turn the country around.

The iceberg is clearly there and large ships are not easy to turn quickly. But, as Harvey Milk once said, 'without hope, life is not worth living.'

Maine - Vacationland

Couldn't they come up with a better nickname for themselves?

In any event, as of today, I am planning my summer towards spending it in Portland. Woo! (and that's not a sarcastic woo, that's an actually excited woo).

My friend who is living there now will be leaving in September to go live in the Bahamas for a bit (bitch!) but I guess I'll see what I'm feeling at the end of the summer. Maybe I'll stay. Maybe I'll go. The possibilities are endless. Or something.

I'm tired and have to go walk my dad's dog before I go to bed.

Blah.

How interesting...

My mother last night was talking to my stepfather, telling him about a friend of the family whose daughter (my age) is pregnant. She's not married...and the father is black. There was clear uncomfortableness and criticism implied, thought not directly stated.

I just walked into my little brother's room. He's a sports fanatic, very much in basketball. So he has posters and figurines of basketball players all around his room. All of his heroes are black.

The moral of the story: it's okay to idolise them, just don't love them. Maybe. Perhaps I'm missing something...

Thoughts from the road

Whenever I travel through Vermont, the historian in me comes out. there's still so much open land, visible even from the highway (even if a lot of it is farmland now) that I can only imagine what explorers/colonists must have felt. Coming from a Europe that placed so much importance on land-ownership and where, consequently, land was a precious, precious commodity they must have been having muliple orgasms at the crest of every hill seeing more and more and more open land, theirs for the taking, seemingly. Those 'savages' didn't really matter, right? They weren't improving the land after all, and if you don't improve the land it's pretty clear that you shouldn't be allowed to won the land. (cf. Locke) Besides, the Europeans were 'clearly' more superior and better at doing things, especially with the land. In any event, the Europeans had guns and the Native Americans didn't. It's hard to defend your way of life when looking down a musket barrel. Of course, they got guns eventually, but we'd given them smallpox by that point, and other fun diseases. It somehow doesn't seem to have been a very fair match. I wonder what the world would be like if things had gone the other way round. If the Americans had 'discovered' the Europeans. Just a thought.

--

Clearly, this is a bit of a disjointed post, since I'm just typing thoughts as they come to me. A glimpse into the way my mind works? Scary, isn't it?

In any event, I'm thinking I might spend my summer in Maine. In Portland. (Have I mentioned this yet?) I have a friend living there who can probably help get me set up and, with any luck, help me get a job. I figure I'll wait tables. Why not? I'm guessing that a place like Portland has more than enough summer tourists to let me fairly easily make enough money to live off of. I don't expect to be rolling in riches, of course, but if I have enough to pay the bills and my student loan, I'm happy with that. It would be absolutely brilliant if I could make enough to pay off my Royal Bank Visa--I really need to phone them and figure out how that works. I want to cancel it but obviously indeed still to pay it off. I can't imagine that they'd have too much of a problem sending my bills to the States. They tried to talk me into transferring my chequing account to their US service when I go back already so it seems to me that I should be able to work something out. Even if it's a matter of... oh, what do you care? How horribly mundane is this?

I suppose I'll go read for a bit.

But before I do, actually, here's the theme song for the trip, I think. I've been listening to it a lot, anyway. The music itself is very right and I think that the lyrics fit fairly well, too. If not directly to the funeral, just in general for my life right now. Which isn't to say that I'm feeling defeated, but I do maybe have a little bit of a sense of being lost, not entirely sure where my life is headed right now ('There's no indication / Of what we were meant to be / Sucking up to strangers / Throwing wishes at the sea'). It's a bit uncomofrtable, but I'm okay with it. I mean, I'm going out to face the big bad world all by myself again. But for real this time. I'm sure I'll do quite okay. I just have to finish up the semester and figure out what to do next.

'It Can't Come Quickly Enough' by the Scissor Sisters

Sailling through the tunnels
In the morning by yourself
There's a very special feeling
True sensation all is well
If you stand and reach your arms out wide
Close your eyes and try to fly
It's an underground illusion
Tricking you from side to side

We knew all the answers
And we shouted them like anthems
Anxious and suspicious
That God knew how much we cheated

It can't come quickly enough
And now you've spent your life
Waiting for this moment
And when you finally saw it come
It passed you by and left you so defeated

Skyscrapers rise between us
Keeping me from finding you
If the concrete architecture
Dissapeared there'd be so few
Of us left to navigate and
Defend ourselves from the tide
It's an underground illusion
Tricking you from side to side

There's no indication of
What we were meant to be
Sucking up to strangers
Throwing wishes to the sea

It can't come quickly enough
And now you've spent your life
Waiting for this moment
And when you finally saw it come
It passed you by and
Left you so defeated

--

Just after the Manchester, NH tolls...new construction. Cookie cutter houses built right up against the highway. No doubt absolutely dependent ont he SUV's that their owners drive for access to anything. (Actually, the first thing I noticed after the tolls was a hovering sign for an unwholly trinity of box stores: Target, Kohl's and BJ's.)

I simply cannot comprehend why anyone would choose to live in these houses far larger than anyone needs and that look virtually identical to their neighbours', and that sit on these tiny little lots. And then, if you want a slice of 99¢ pizza at two in the morning, what do you do? To be fair, a lot of apartments in Montreal look exactly the same--as do a lot of apartments in other cities. And yet there's something that is so gut-wrenching to me about suburbia. It's not the same as living the country. I would never want to live there personally, but I don't mind visiting--I'm definitely a city boy.

I think my biggest problem with suburbia is the faux-community. This sense that people seem to have about the suburbs that by living in these subdivisions will allow them to get to know their neighbours in a way not possible in the city or in the country. In the country, your neighbours are probably too far away--but socially you'd be more likely to meet them in town anyway, out of necessity. In the city, there's such a hectic pace of life, sometimes, and you're much more like to be filling up your social schedule with other contacts from work/school/etc than your immediate neighbours necessarily since it's quite easy to create and maintain social contacts across a large city. Suburbia, though, is between the two. Theoretically, you ought to get to know your neighbours quite well. They're right there after all. You still have to go 'into town' as it were out of necessity for food and such, but suburban super markets are too large to realistically expect to run into people you know or to make friends for that matter. At the same time, because suburbs are so car-centred, it's also quite easy to make and to preserve social contacts across distances. Thus, you still don't know your neighbours as you might not in a city, but you're also less likely, I think, to ever run into them. You don't share a staircase or a driveway, even. Only when you find out that their fence is on your property line or your dog starts digging up their garden to you ever get to know 'those people next door.'

--

Another random thing: when I collect called home from White River Junction, Vermont, I had the option of automated assistance in English, Spanish...and Japanese. How odd.

--

SO...MANY...SINGLE OCCUPENT SUV'S! GAH! AND THE DRIVERS ON THEIR CELL PHONES NOLESS!

1914-2005

My Papa passed away this morning. Almost 90 and a half years is, I think, I pretty good run. Since it was expected, I'm not really that distraught yet. Of course, if we consult our Kübler-Ross, I'm only in the first stage of grief, denial. Maybe. I don't think so. I deny that I am in denial. I haven't fully grieved yet, of course, but more than anything I'm angry with my family for being so dumb and for my mother refusing to speak to the rest of her family and refusing to go the funeral. As if this week wasn't stressful enough, it's going to be all the more fun, I think, next week. I shall do my best to remain above the fray. And hopefully I'll be able to get some work done while I'm away. Always the school work. It's a distraction, I guess.

It's too bad I don't have a scanner. Otherwise I'd post a photo of me (as a baby) with my Papa.

The post-grad reading list begins..

...in no particular order...

Re-read Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm, maybe The Road to Wigan Pier)

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the Rest of the World - Will Hutton
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World - J. R. McNeill
A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England - John Tosh
Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family and Empire - John Tosh
Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
Undoing Gender - Judith Butler
The History of Sexuality (Vols I-III) - Michel Foucault
The Epistemology of the Closet - Eve Kosofosky Sedgwick
A New England? Peace and War, 1886-1918 - G. R. Searle

Another song

I've been posting a lot of song lyrics recently. Deal with it. My life tends to have a soundtrack, especially when I'm feeling a bit down/stressed out.

I woke up with this song in my head this morning. Literally. I woke up a little bit before my alarm and it was the first thing I thought of as I leaned over to pet Sudra who decided to sleep on my bed with me last night. She does seem finally to be getting better. We're still force feeding her because of the ulcer on her tongue since she's not eating herself, but she's getting better. She had some tuna juice yesterday, so that's a step in the right direction. In any event, the song... it sums up a lot of things I've been thinking about over the past week, grad school and otherwise. I knew from when I applied that I might not get in to any of the schools, and I said I was okay with it. I'm disappointed to be sure, but I'm still okay with it. Time off will definitely be a good thing. I've been in school going on nineteen years. It'll be a good chance to clear my head, to try something completely different, and to catch up on reading that I want to do. And make some filthy lucre! Not really probably. Heh. In any event there are a lot of books that I want to catch up on reading. And I really want to learn Spanish. Among other things. Going back to the States will be a big change. It won't necessarily be better than Montréal, but it's where my life feels headed at this point, and I have to take it as it comes.

'Promised Land' by Bruce Springsteen

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I�m just killing time
Working all day in my daddy�'s garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'�m gonna take charge

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy no I�'m a man
And I believe in a promised land

I�'ve done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this old town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy no I�'m a man
And I believe in a promised land

There'�s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I�'m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain'�t got the faith to stand it�s ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and broken-hearted

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy no I�'m a man
And I believe in a promised land
And I believe in a promised land
And I believe in a promised land

'We regret to inform you...'

that Anthony will not be attending grad school in September.

To make matters more stressful, my great-grandfather is not expected to live through the weekend. Woo.

Rejection number 3

...from Michigan.

At this point, hell needs to freeze over for me to go to grad school because I think it's so very unlikely I'll get into Columbia.

I'm open to ideas about what to do with myself for the next year or two.

The End of my California Dreaming

Well, I got my rejection letter from Berkeley today.

At least they spent the 60¢ to actually send me a real letter and not a cheap-o email.

Overheard in the Architecture Café

'Books that are rectangles piss me off.'

Perfect

This Alanis Morissette song was one of my teenage theme songs. I haven't listened to it in ages. It just came up on random. It some how feels right at the moment.

Sometimes is never quite enough
If you’re flawless, then you’ll win my love
Don’t forget to win first place
Don’t forget to keep that smile on your face

Be a good boy
Try a little harder
You’ve got to measure up
And make me prouder

How long before you screw it up
How many times do I have to tell you to hurry up
With everything I do for you
The least you can do is keep quiet

Be a good girl
You’ve gotta try a little harder
That simply wasn’t good enough
To make us proud

I’ll live through you
I’ll make you what I never was
If you’re the best, then maybe so am i
Compared to him compared to her
I’m doing this for your own damn good
You’ll make up for what I blew
What’s the problem... why are you crying?

Be a good boy
Push a little farther now
That wasn’t fast enough
To make us happy
We’ll love you just the way you are if you’re perfect

Extra points for subtlety

On the phone today, my mother says to me, 'I wanted to let you know that Papa is dying,' in an off-hand kind of way, as if it were sandwiched in between items on a grocery list. Cheese, bread, dying great-grandfather, milk, beans.

She then went on to let me know that I wasn't going to be expected to come home for the funeral since they weren't going to go because of an on-going quarrel with the rest of the family.

In my last years of high school my mother stopped working so she could take care of my great-grandparents. It was a wonderful thing to do--except that it very quickly gave her a reason to begin to construct her martyrdom. All the sacrifice that she made and all the hard work she took on. She's absolutely right: she did sacrifice and she did take on a lot of hard work. But she did it voluntarily, which, as far as I'm concerned, gives her no right to complain about it. The roots of the fight with the rest of the family stem from this. The rest of the family wanted to find an assisted living home for my great-grandparents and eventually a nursing home, once they needed it. Certainly not ideal--I think that nursing homes are vile and essentially are garbage dumps for old people. I'll have no problem consigning my mother to one for various reasons, but I'll do everything I can to keep my father out of one. (On a side note, I saw Il n'y a plus rien, a play by Robert Gravel on Thursday night--it dealt with nursing homes. It was comedically depressing.)

Back to the story.

My mother, however, didn't want to put them into assisted living and offered to build an addition onto our house--to be paid for by the sale of my great-grandparents' home--so that they could still be on their own but also be close by if they needed help. The old house was just too big with too many stairs. My great-uncle in particular thought that this wasn't such a good idea, because it seemed that my mother would be benefiting from it in the long run: double the size of the house but don't pay for it. I'm rather inclined to agree.

Of course, I don't know the full story. She claims that they didn't want to help at all. Point finale. Maybe. I don't know. In any event, we now have an in-law addition on our house which was only ever half-inhabited since my great-grandmother had to go into a nursing home before it was finished--Alzheimer's. A horrible, horrible disease. I pray I never get it. Some days when I've gone to visit her when I'm home she's fine and knows just who I am--although is usually a bit fuzzy beyond that. Other times, she has no idea who I am. But she's always as friendly and caring as she's always been. At least some things don't change.

On top of all this, my mother has decided that she wants to move to Florida. She's sick of the winter and the snow. She complains that her $30,000 pool is useless for half the year. That's too bad, I guess. I'll be $22,000 in debt when I finish school next month. I realise that I have two little brothers who will need to go to university at some point in the future, too. And obviously that pool that we used to have, which seemed to work just fine for me was just not good enough for them. And she just had to have that Eddie Bauer edition Ford Expedition. SUV's are the New American Dream. She feels safer in it, she tells me. She doesn't support Bush and doesn't support the war in Iraq. I've not asked her how she feels about Social Security. But she supports SUV's which, as far as I'm concerned, is the same as supporting Bush and the war. But SUV's are just symptomatic of a much larger problem in American society and this post isn't about that, so I'll stop here on that topic.

When she said that I didn't have to come home, I told her of course I would. She pointed out that we would have a private wake for about an hour, so as to avoid the rest of the family to whom she doesn't speak. She said that she'd have a mass said for him at Church--mind you, she never goes herself, but you have to do these things. But we won't go to the funeral.

I didn't correct her because it's not worth arguing about before the fact.

They won't go to the funeral. But I will.

I have no quarrel with the rest of my family, no matter how crazy she claims they are. I've not even lived in the country for the past five years, so I can't be implicated in any way. I have a right to go to my great-grandfather's funeral and if it means starting World War III, as she seems to imply, then so be it.

As for them moving to Florida, well, it'll give me less of a reason to have to go visit them. Everyone else I care about will still be in Massachusetts, family-wise. It's kind of funny, considering that when I was a year old my father and mother moved to Florida and my mother hated it--it eventually led to their divorce, although there were certainly a number of other problems in that relationship. Now she wants to move back. Apparently my 13-year old brother is also sick of the snow (because he never goes out and plays in it...because he's too busy sitting in front of the TV playing video games and eating pork rinds or something horrible like that--I'm not making this up. He really does eat pork rinds) and my 8-year old brother is looking forward to getting a dog (apparently you can't have those in Massachusetts--and don't get me started on the family track record with dogs).

Look out FLA USA.

Remembering the 80s (1980-1989)

Party at my place. Next month. Once I'm done with school stuff. This will be the theme. Sort of a long over due Irish funeral for that decade we all love so dearly.

At it will beat the pants off Jupiter Room's 80s night guaranteed.

Family values, anyone?

I just read this BBC News article about a Mexican pop singer who has relaunched her career after spending time in jail on rape and kidnapping charges.

BBC always have related internet links. For this story, they direct you to Gloria Trevi's unofficial website, http://www.trevi.com, which brings you to a page on a different site all together with a picture of Gloria Trevi with the caption 'El Angel Censurado', flanked with banners for Bush/Cheney '04 and another saying 'Viva Bush!' with a link to the Bush campaign's Hispanic voters page. There's also a message saying that trevi.com is coming soon.

I was puzzled by all of this, so I kind of stared at it for about a minute. After that, though, you automatically get redirected to the GOP's official website!

How very, very odd.

House keeping

I've removed the tag-board as it was little used and often caused stupid delays in site loading. I'll get around to updating my daily reads and connecting the blogosphere sometime soon-ish. Maybe.

Oooooooooh!

New York Public Library Digital Gallery

My Free Will Astrology horoscope this week

'The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand one hundred miles,' says science writer James Trefil. The work you've been doing on yourself these past two years, Cancerian, must sometimes have seemed as maddeningly gradual. The good news is that you are now in the last few months of this slow-motion, long-term project. If you can sustain your focus, you'll finish up around your birthday, having created such a strong inner sense of sanctuary that you will forever after be able to feel at home in the world no matter where you are.

I like the sound of this.

Okay. Focus. School work. Focus. Go team!

Oh...my...god...

...literally.

I may go hide in a corner now so I never have to go back to that country.

Kitty health update

Tiggy is much better. She still on her meds--and she really hates the eye cream that we have to put in her eyes for the conjunctivitus. But she knows that she gets yummy food after that.

Sudra is slowly getting better. She still a bit under the weather and she's only eating once a day, but she hissed at me yesterday when I picked her up to give her her meds, so she's getting back to her old regal bitchy self.

As for me, I've been slowly sliding into more and more sickness. Blah. Because I have time to be sick right now.

Yay!

Sudra is eating again! :)

She's still sick, but she went to the vet today and got some meds. And I finally got her to eat something. Mmm...tuna fish.

Of course, now there are specks of tuna in my bed. Ew.

Fuch Bush! Ugh!

(I just noticed my typo in the title: I think I'll leave it)

From the Guardian

The Bush administration was accused yesterday of trying to roll back efforts to improve the status of the world's women by demanding that the UN publicly renounce abortion rights.

merica's demand overshadowed the opening yesterday of a conference intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the Beijing conference on the status of women, an event seen as a landmark in efforts to promote global cooperation on women's equality.

The US stand was also widely seen as further evidence of the sweeping policy change in Washington under the Bush presidency. The last four years have seen a steady erosion of government support for international population projects, due to the administration's opposition to abortion.

The UN's commission on the status of women had drafted a brief declaration reaffirming support for the Beijing declaration, and calling for further effort to implement its recommendations.

Organisers had hoped that informal discussions last week would reach a consensus on the draft, leaving the next fortnight clear for government officials and women's activists to hold more substantive talks on advancing economic equality and political participation, and fighting violence against women.

But those hopes were crushed in a closed-door session late last week when Washington demanded the declaration reaffirm its support for the declarations made in Beijing 10 years ago only if "they do not include the right to abortion", says a copy of the US text obtained by the Guardian.

Why are feminists so afraid of masculinity?

My discourse on sex and gender, it turns out, is a discourse on power, identity, lineage, paternal right, and patriarchal might. Needless to say, as it moves from procreation without a genitor and without sex, to sex without identity, and from there to sex without procreation, it is also a discourse on anxiety and decay, on faddish medical interventions and on gender-biased philosophical cover-ups, on the disorder that manufactured and fantasized sexual parts create, on the panic that fear of castration and metamorphosis engenders, and on the regulatory regimes of sexuality that are put in place to keep behaviors on track. Thus it is thoroughly and always a discourse on women.

from Valeria Finucci, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity and Castration in the Italian Renaissance, 35-6.

Why can't a book on masculinity simply be a book on masculinity? I'm okay with the fact that masculinity obviously will have implications on feminimity (and vice-versa for that matter, especially when feminimity is being constructed by men). But if you're going to write a book on masculinity, why not let masculinity speak for itself? Men are just as entitled to their own history as women are. Neither can be understood in isolation from each other.

One of my big problems, though, with feminist history--at least that I've read--is that it tends to focus too much on 'rescuing' women's history from the evil patriarchy of the past in order to assert that women do, indeed, have their own history that is just as valid as the general historical story. No academic worth his or her salt at this point denies this. Women had a specific historical experience that was defined by their gender. Yes. But so did men. Yes, men were the dominant sex, but that doesn't mean that they weren't restricted and forced into little socially-constructed costumes, just like women were. Men too, in a lot of ways, were just as much victims of socially-constructed expectations. No doubt it sucked being a woman in the past. It's difficult to make the argument that it sucked equally as much to be a man since clearly it didn't, but that doesn't mean that it was always a walk in the park.

I guess I'm just frustrated because I don't see how her discourse is 'thoroughly and always' on women. I simply do not see that as logically following from what she outlines in this paragraph, or any of what she outlines in rest of her introductory chapter. Why does a book about the social and literary construction of masculinity in the Italian Renaissance have to be, at its base, according to this, a book about women?