Les said, the better II

I’ve just been plowing through the NYFA grant and scholarship listings. It seems that there is exactly one scholarship that I have not missed the application deadline for, as it has none. It gives priorities to people who want to study Rag Time music. Ok, so my music is not closely linked with Rag Time . . .. I like Rag Time. It’s nifty. I don’t think there are many people currently composing in this style, but I could be wrong. I heard a newish Rag composition when I was in Yosemite last winter. And free improvisation is a descendant of Rag . . .

I seem to recall there being a lot more things listed when I last looked at this. Jessica helped me then. Jessica is the queen of scaring up grants and money. I think I’ll go through the list again. Yeah, I should have applied before now. My advisor encouraged me to spend more time writing my thesis than to apply for stuff for next year. C’est la vie. Maybe I could write some algorithmic rag. I don’t want to be insulting, though.
My grandmother’s piano is coming over this evening. I will need to find somebody to be here when it comes, because I’m hoping to be someplace else.
Tag: Celesteh

I went down to the southbay yesterday to see the house I grew up in. My dad just sold it. It has new paint and new carpets and new landscaping, but looks pretty much the same. The color scheme is unchanged. My dad sold it furnished, which means the buyers get 30 year old sofas with a dog urine stain on the middle cushion. Makes sense for my dad, but I can’t think why the buyer would be interested. Apparently, they don’t own much furniture. I get the piano. It’s a Ludwig brand baby grand piano from around the turn of the century. Probably made in Buffalo, NY. There’s not much information about these on the net, although they turn up sometimes on ebay. It needs some work. Where “some” means “a lot.”

So, I guess I should be sad that the house is being sold, but I’m not feeling it. Theoretically, I could feel sad that I can never run “home” again in case of crisis. But “home” just would mean somebody who would shelter me in case of crisis and is not a physical location. Maybe I’ll feel upset about this later. Right now, it’s just like my dad is losing an albatross and I’m happy for him. My mom died in the living room there. It would be hard to confront that every morning with your cheerios.
My dad is going today to get his motorcycle. He’s getting a fancy BMW touring bike in a light yellow color. With a CB radio and a GPS. He’s going to have a whole lotta freedom. It’s exciting. He’s also started a blog, which links to mine. (I may cut back on wonkette-inspired humor. No more jokes about William S. Burroughs.) My dad is so much hippier than I am. I will live vicariously through him. Glad he’s got a blog.

and now for something completely different

We’re all very happy that Newsweek and other MSM are making rules for anonymous sources. No more lies about WMD coming from unattributed White House sources. Can we all back up for a minute though and appreciate that there’s a huge difference between an Administration flunkie supporting the White House but speaking off the record and an administration person speaking off the record in opposition to the white house. Wouldn’t their new “standards” preclude the Watergate investigation? Can’t anyone in the media see the difference here? Also, wasn’t the Koran story also covered by Human Rights Watch long before Newsweek got ahold of it? Yes. Yes it was. Do detainee accounts constitute anonymous sources or are they suspect because they are the enemies of freedom? Newsweek is not apologizing for using anonymous sources as much as it is apologizing for contradicting the official reports of the Pentagon. Oh joy. We’re doomed.
Tag: Celesteh

The movie is the highly compelling tale of how a whiny, entitled brat turned to evil. “Why haven’t they made me the youngest Jedi master in history yet?? They must hate me! I will turn to the Dark Side!” said Aniken. Yoda replied, “Stilted the dialog is. Violent the movie is. Script writers to the dark side have also tuned. Stopped they must be. If anything to say about it I have.” (ok, that last sentence is an actual Yoda quote.)
Moral of the story: don’t leave your former pupil for dead while he’s one fire with has arms and legs cut off, cuz medical technology might be able to save him. It cannot however, save a woman who has lost the will to live because she is Ophelia and weak and must die. Also, prozac had not been invented yet a long time ago in galaxies far away. Secondary morals: excruciating levels of violence (including against children) is perfectly fine kiddie fare as long as the romantic subplot involves nothing more than hand holding. Sex is dirty. Violence is problem solving. Also: don’t trust clones. And the troubled young warriors who occasionally slay unarmed prisoners and entire villages may have issues that ought to be a bit more apparent to their mentors.
The best part of the movie is when a lightening bolt strikes Darth Sidious’ secret laboratory and his monster rises, breaking free of his restraints and smashing everything. “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Sidious screams. The second best part of the movie is when the black knight is de-limbed and clawing at the side of the volcano, screaming “I hate you! Come back! I’ll bite your legs off!” Obi Wan says, “What are you going to do? Bleed on me?” Mysteriously, none of the folks whose limbs are amputated by light sabers bleed. It must somehow cauterize the wound as it slices. There were much better arms conventions back in the day, far far away.
but seriously, Darth Vader is calm, cool and badass. He’s hateful, but more in a Dick Cheney sort of way than an angry, drunken teenager sort of way. Aniken Skywalker is not Darth Vader. He’s the prissy rich kid whose parents sent him to boarding school after he crashed their third new Mercedes at age 15. He’s the kid with the cocaine hookup who pays other people to do his homework for him and complains his teachers hate him. Those kids don’t grow up to that kind of power. (President maybe. Supercool super villain. no.) Darth Vader should have been a misguided youth in his day, but in an institutional way. He was in the Hitler Youth and the luftwaffe, but claims to have deserted before he started climbing the ranks of his religious organization. That kind of evil. Not the drunk and passed out on the railroad tracks, feels entitled to own the world kind of evil.
Tags: Star Wars, Celesteh

Tuesday morning, my car’s new airflow meter had come in and after a brief trip to the supermarket, I was off again! Yay! Traveling at great speeds across the American West. I crossed the continental divide. I was in Wyoming. That state is barren. There’s nothing for miles and miles and miles. It was in one of these great empty stretches, while I was trying to go 85 mph uphill, that my engine lost some power and the check engine light came on. AUGHHHHH!!!!!

The closest VW dealership to the middle of Wyoming is in a suburb of Salt Lake City. My car was still running, even if not at 100%. If I stop at a mechanic and they need a part, they’re going to have to ask a dealership to send it. Probably one in the Salt Lake region. So I slowed down and kept driving for many many hours until I got to the designated suburb of Salt Lake. In the morning, I called the dealer. They gave me a 3:00 appointment. I checked out of my motel at the last possible moment and then went to a supermarket to get some lunch. At the deli counter, they were selling pistachio salad. I did not buy any, but I must launch into a tangent.
My mom used to make this sweet dessert that she called pistachio pudding. It was a tub of coolwhip mixed with pistachio-flavored jello pudding, mixed with walnuts and miniature marshmallows. I loved it when I was a kid, although my enthusiasm for it declined over time. For years I’ve wondered who could have come up with such a monstrosity. Apparently, it’s the Mormons. I can also give you a fun office decorating tip from Utah. If you have people who might need to fill out paperwork, you can decorate the pens! Get a flower pot and fill it with beans. Then get a bunch of cheapo pens, some green tape and some fake flowers. Tape the flowers to the pend and wind the tape down the whole length of then pen so it looks like a stem. Then stick all the pens in the flower pot so it looks like a lovely bouquet and confuses out-of-towners when you tell them to sign something but give them no pen. (Every single business I frequented was doing this. Every single one.)
Back to our story . . . So with nothing whatsoever to do in a suburb so boring that they put modesty shields on the magazine racks so you don’t accidentally see a swimsuit, I showed up 2.5 hours early to the dealership. While I was on my way, the check engine light turned off. *Frustration level high* They got me in early. I have an intermittent problem with a valve in my intake manifold. This means I can lose power, but the car won’t die. Also, further experience shows that I only encounter this problem while trying to go 80+mph over the rockies or Sierras. Right.
So I left the dealer at 3:00 and drove all the way home, including through a pouring rain on the western side of the Sierras. California has the worst maintained section of 80. The road was torn to shreds, I couldn’t see the lane markings at all because they were also torn up. Grrr.
But seriously, why do people like road trips? That sucked. I had a lot more time going the other direction, cuz I stopped at casinos and did a few things, but unfortunately, I also stopped to get married. Alas. Anyway, even if you stop and check out the burbs and the smallish towns in Nebraska: road trips suck. Suck.
That seemed so much longer than a week.
Tag: Celesteh

My air intake controller or some air-related thing was the culprit. The car comes in tomorrow. After speaking with Mitch yesterday, I strongly suspected an air-related problem. It wasn’t burning fuel efficiently, but man, was it burning it. And no fuel leak. Therefore: not a problem with the fuel system. Next likely problem: air. The repair place in town looks like a normal car repair shop. They even have a computer diagnostic thingee which will actually tell them what my car’s computer logged as the problem. This is much more efficient than the trial and error approach used otherwise. I was explaining to the owner blah blah “intermittent problem” “not in the fuel system” “maybe check the air filter.” He said, “is the check engine light still on?” Yeah, computers are replacing the fine art of problem solving.

Today I walked Xena down to the university in town. It was much too far for her. She was staggering by the time we got back to the hotel. And she got stickers in her feet. When she wakes up, I’m going to wash at least her feet and maybe give her a bath. Nobody can tell me if it’s uncouth to give the dog a bath in the hotel and she smells ghastly and her feet need to be cleaned off at least, so there.
As to the university campus: Matthew Merzbacher, one of my favorite professors at Mills, used to tell a story about his graduate school prospective student days. He and a friend were visiting a large number of universities on the west coast. They would get to a campus in their car and not go find a campus map. Instead, they would drive around looking for the ugliest building on campus and inside it, they would find the computer science department.
I have no idea which building at UN Kearney might hold the CS program. I saw two buildings that definitely don’t. There is nothing else to report. I think I have sucked up everything interesting in this town already. Honestly though, as I explained to the cashier at Taco Hell, if I were stranded in Vegas, I would still be unhappy. I want to be home. Also, I’m not a huge fan of Vegas. And I get bored easily in general. I see all the art museums and then I just want to leave or make friends and stay forever. Extended visits are not my thing, except maybe a few cities would stay interesting for a long time: NYC, Paris, Amsterdam, London are four like that I’ve been to. Neither San Francisco or Los Angeles make that list, but, obviously, I would move to SF, make friends and stay forever. Tourist San Francisco, however, kind of sucks. T-shirt shops, bridge, prison, dangerous ill-maintained transit line and that’s it. yawn.
I’m all whiny today. I’m starting to feel sorry for myself. I should have been home by now. I left school early because I was anxious to be home and it was for naught. Although, I think this car break down was pretty much unavoidable. Getting in to this town at 5:00 on saturday, though, was the worst possible time as far as wait goes. It’s like just missing a traffic light.
Tag: Celesteh

If you make an ASSUMPTION, you make an ASS out of U and MPTION
Wednesday night, my last night in Middletown, Andrew told me that I was the only California he knew who actually left CA except to go to NYC. He said that Californians call the rest of the country “flyover states.” He was offended by this. Alas, I have something of this prejudice in me. I said something about Chicago and Michigan being nifty. He told me that Minneapolis was way more progressive than any costal city in having more co-ops, etc. I nodded and spent the last few days thinking about this while driving out westward as quickly as possible.
I acknowledged as I drove that the big cities of the midwest are indeed impressive and worthwhile. If one can judge by radio (I think you can), then some of the midwestern cities are more culturally enlightened than San Francisco which has only one extremely crappy classical station.
I also thought a lot about why Californians are dismissive about the middle of the country. I’ll post these ideas later. But, I read an article someplace recently, maybe in The Nation, maybe in Salon.com about how the plains are de-populating. And I was thinking about how very red state they were. And about Lynne Cheney’s dreadful novel Sisters and Wyoming. And I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that eastern inland states were probably much more interesting and worthwhile than western inland states. And then my car broke down in the great plains. When I make uninformed assumptions, sometimes providence steps in to correct them.
Ok, so I had angst about whether Saturday’s mechanic would have been nice to me if I had been obviously gay. My brain has been harmed by bad roadfood. To wit:

• I look butch
• I have facial piercings
• there is a bumper sticker on my car which says “biodiesel dyke“

earth to celeste . . .
The town I have been staying in these last two days is a university town. It is bigger than Middletown, but without the nearness of other towns. The downtown is charming. There are good lattes available downtown. The town is hip, despite being small and isolated.
Tonight, I went and got dinner at a chain restaurant next to my hotel. They gave me two pizzas for reasons that are beyond my understanding. So I gave the extra one to the guy sitting next to me at the bar. I then got included in the conversation going on next to me for a few moments. It was two guys and a woman. She was checking out another woman in the bar area. The woman near me had a pony tail and eye shadow. I have no gaydar whatsoever. Neither does she. She told a story about pulling up next to a woman at a stoplight in Texas and hitting on her. The target got upset and peeled out when the light turned green. The guy next to me said, “Well, it’s Texas. It’s the bible belt down there.” I almost burst out laughing. But I did not. I said, “You just hit on random chicks?” She said, “Well, she was hot!” I opened my mouth to get my mack on. “Well, you’re pretty hot yourself!” I almost said. Then I remembered that I have a girlfriend and closed my mouth again. I was then excluded from the conversation, having merely looked incredulous for the last few moments. Maybe they thought I was a homophobe.
I sat next to a Nebraskan who made a comment about Texas being not as liberal. I hope that my car gets fixed tomorrow, because I think I have learned a valuable lesson about regionalism. I get it now, I hope. I thank providence for the opportunity to be disabused and I hope providence releases me to a westward fate.
also: I could have totally scored.
Tag: Celesteh

I’m going to be in Kearney Nebraska until Monday or maybe even Tuesday, who knows? Did you know that the University of NE faculty art show goes until tomorrow? I’m going to go check it out. It’s probably a few miles to walk it, but what they hey?

Ok, for those of who driven across the country: you know that giant arch over 80 in Nebraska that’s attached to the tourist trap looking thing with the teepees and the log fort? That’s Kearney. I’m probably not going to see the arch thingee because that would be a rather long walk.
all this talk of walking!
So I didn’t get my car serviced before I left Connecticut. I couldn’t find anybody to work on it aside from the dealership and they’ve been much less than stellar. I called them though, told them the milage and asked if it would probably ok to drive across the country without getting it serviced first. They looked up my service record and said sure. I asked about my brakes (they were squeaking) and they said those were due for replacement. So I got my back breaks replaced (and my front breaks oiled, since they were actually the ones squeaking) right before I left. And I was off. As close as Danbury, I noticed that I was pushing the pedal to the floor but wasn’t accelerating on the hills. Wow, my tuba and stuff must weigh more than I thought! I stopped for a while when I finally got on 80, and then the hills and stuff were fine. I guess 80 must be at a shallower grade (it doesn’t look like it, but whatever.) Yesterday, I noticed that my car seemed sluggish after a couple hours of driving. It picked back up again after giving it a rest though. Something must be wrong. Maybe my brakes are dragging. They seem ok, though. Geez. Well, I’ll have my mechanic look at it when I get home.
So today, maybe a hundred miles past Omaha, the engine seemed to run out of oomph. I stopped for a little bit, walked the dog, worried and got back in the car. A few minutes later, it really crapped out. I was flooring it and going maybe 60. This was sudden. The check engine light came on. Oy. I drove it to a gas station. The very nice attendants called every car service place in town. One was open. I drove my cart there. They suspected it needed a new fuel filter. It took a couple of hours at least to find one. The mechanics were really nice. One of them was talking to another guy about selling calves. I’m a vegetarian, city dwelling lesbian. They’re not my people. Would they be so nice if they knew? I was thinking about an article I read in Salon a while ago about a guy talking about how people can seem like the nicest folks in the world, but when you tell them that you’re gay or a jew or whatever, game over. I didn’t want to make assumptions. One of the guys came over and started talking about how he used to live in Anaheim. The gooks have taken over that town, he explained. Alas. My sleeping bag is sitting on top of my “Stop Racism NOW” sign I brought back from the anti-RNC protest.
They were nice to me, as long as I kept quiet. I don’t see why those gay folks have to be so in your face all the time. I didn’t want to object to this man’s racism or say anything really because there I am in a state so red it would make Reagan’s corpse blush and my car is broken and they’re going way out of their way to find parts for me on a saturday. Because I’m white. Because I didn’t shave my head before I left. Because because because. I feel bad about the whole exchange in some ways, even though I feel extremely grateful. I gave them a CD when I left. “It’s kind of weird.” I said. The head mechanic thanked me. He had just test driven my car. No problems going 80 mph, he said. (The speed limit on the interstate is 75)
The hood release lever broke off inside my car that morning. The engine had troubles for the first time ever. But whatever, I’m on my way.
Not long after, the problem reoccurred. I called up the shop I was just at, they told me to drive on the next 30 miles to Kearney. They said they had no idea what else might be wrong. Also, maybe they had listened to my CD. heh heh. sigh
I put my pedal to the floor, got up to 60 mph and burned up a couple of gallons of gas and got to the next big town.
So I’m in lovely Kearney, where there is a foreign car shop. (The autodealerships here: fork, chevy, buick) It opens on Monday. Hopefully, they have a computer which can download data from my car’s computer and thus can figure out what the heck is going on. The check engine light keeps a log of error codes.
I was hoping to get back sunday night. I drove 1600 miles in two days and had 1600 miles to go. At least I am stealing free wifi from somebody (who?) at the Motel 6
Tag: Celesteh

free wifi at rest stop about an hour from Des Moines! Spent last night in Toledo, Ohio. Tonight, I’ll probably catch dinner in Des Moines and try to find a hotel way on the outskirts of town where it will be cheap. Spent a couple hours today in the middle of Chicago after making a series of wrong turns. Do not eat Cinnabon for breakfast or you may become disoriented by sugar and transfats. Ok, off again! Dinner plans are Denny’s. If I can find one. w00t.

Tag: Celesteh

See you in a few days. Cola will be posting periodically as to my whereabouts.

Tag: Celesteh

I’m replying to a comment in another blog and feel strongly enough to want to post it here.
I preface it here by saying that this argument is not new. Whites argued during Jim Crow that integration would unfairly abridge their right to discriminate. Rights must be balanced based upon real-world outcomes. It really does violate a restauranteur’s rights of freedom of association to say that he must serve all races. The supreme court decided that rights violations endured by african americans was greater than rights violations pushed upon racists. As was once written, the right to swing your arms in the street ends at another person’s nose.

Forgive me for saying so, but it’s quite obvious from your reasoning that you have never experienced the sort of discrimination that befalls minority groups.

There are people in the world who do not appreciate being told that anti-semitism is wrong and there are people in the world who do not appreciate being the only Jew in their school and hearing every day about how they are going to hell and about how the holocaust was just fine and dandy.

There are people who don’t appreciate being told that homophobia is wrong and there are people who don’t appreciate being utterly isolated and enduring daily threats of physical violence, general social ostracism and ongoing sexual harassment.

Conflicts between minority groups and majority groups are not meetings of equals. Discrimination implies power inequality. Children exhibiting racism are hurting the object of their ire in a way in which racists would not be hurt by having their beliefs altered.

You may think it possible for somebody to believe that an individual is sick and disordered and going to hell and destroying society and to still treat their object of contempt with respect, however, I find this to be very unlikely even with sophisticated adults. Certainly not with kids.

It may violate some sort of dubious rights to force people to confront their prejudices and help them overcome them, but it very definitely violates the rights of minority groups to force them to “tolerate” harassment. You say forcing tolerance of difference is bad, but this explicitly allows tolerance of racism. In the first case, you are forcing an oppressor to tolerate a group they see as beneath them and which, likely, they have some social power over. In the second case, you are forcing a victim to tolerate abuse.

A classroom discussion wherein one student who is in a privileged position says something negative (perhaps hypothetical or theoretical) about a minority group, is directly harmful to the members of the minority group. Hypothetically, you think all gays are objectively disordered. Joe in the corner is gay. Joe just heard somebody in class say that HE (Joe) is objectively disordered and the teacher said nothing to counter it. Joe takes this personally and the teacher implicitly endorses this judgement.

What about freedom of speech? Well, freedom of speech does not include sexual harassment. Freedom of speech does not include bullying or teasing. Freedom of speech should not include making disparaging remarks that apply to other members of the community based on immutable characteristics without those remarks being challenged. Challenging the remarks is challenging the belief that spawned them.

You argue for some sort of freedom of thought. What is thought without speech? You can think that gays are evil and disgusting, but you can never let anyone know what you think? Is your right to hate gay people greater than the right of gay people to be able to go to school? Since gay people are targets of discrimination, to say that those rights are equal is to say that gay people do not have rights.

To say that whites have the right to be racist is to say that blacks should not be able to frequent all businesses and apply for all jobs and got to all schools. Speech is a form of action. If I put up a sign in a restaurant which says “whites only” I have taken a definite action through my words.

You got over your queerphobia because your friend came out. In cases where homophobia is unchallenged and allowed to continue unchecked, it is much more difficult for gay people to come out. If some social changes (whether in general society or by a conscious decision by your school to fight homophobia) had not occurred, Nyssa might have stayed in the closet, or, like ONE THIRD of gay kids in 80’s she might have tried to killed herself.

I was the first out person in the history of my catholic highschool. Teachers did not challenge homophobic statements made by students because of some sort of “morality” issue. I got beat on in gym class. I got sexually harassed continually in some of my other classes. I took is very personally when people said “[all] gay people are (sick|wrong|perverts|child molesters|…).” This is not hypothetical. This is a deeply hostile classroom environment which makes it very difficult to learn, which lead me to contemplate suicide, which lead at least one of my friends to attempt suicide.

Letting individuals grow in whatever direction they find satisfactory may or may not be a noble goal (I’m not sure that it is. There are cultural memes like “reason” that should be propagated), but we live in the real world and need to think about how these ideals would be realized in the ugly, dirty worlds of high school and junior high.

errata

One third of gay teens in the 80’s attempted suicide. Some lower number were successful. A very high percentage contemplated it.
Tag: Celesteh