Les said, the better II

This year seems to be especially bad for allergies. I’m not suffering (yet), but I’ve been collecting people’s remedies. Sure, you could just take pills for it, but think of what they may or may not be doing to your liver! Here are the remedies I’ve heard of.

Remedy	Does it work?	How?	Negatives	Summary
Eating local honey	I dunno	the bees collect pollen from local plants and use it for honey. somehow this is supposed to help	none, unless you’re allergic to honey, a really hardcore vegan or mistakenly hate carbs. Honey is healthier than refined sugar.	Honey in tea is yummy
Taking vitamin C	Anna, Jamilla’s wife, swears by it	got me	Taking too much vitamin C over a long periodof time is supposedly bad for you. But hey, it’s water-soluable and you’ll piss it out.	I’d try it
Air purifier	some do	removes allergens from air	Probably incompatible with open windows, increases electricity usage.	this works really well in cars with high-quality air filters installed.
Nessie pot: pouring (sea)salt water in one nostril and letting it run out the other.	Seems to	clears gunk like pollen and dander out of your sinuses. A good way to start your day.	Feels like getting water up your nose. Especially annoying the first few times you do it (that burning means it’s working.) Remember to keep your mouth open while you do it.	I’ve done this. It helped

Tags: Allergies, Celesteh

I went over to Mitch’s house yesterday to brew biodiesel. Actually, Mitch brewed and I watched. There is a minimal amount of danger involved and I wanted to see it before accidentally doing something wrong with a semi-dangerous chemical. It really is easy enough to brew in your own garage, but messy enough that a garage is the only place i’d want to do it. I don’t think I’ll have my own setup any time soon. The second best thing about hobbies like this is the silly jargon you get to use. The bucket/vessel in which you mix all the ingredients together is not merely a bucket, it is a “reactor.” Mitch’s reactor is extra fancy in that he has an agitator/pump thingee attached to it that does the mixing for him. The carboy that you leave the fuel in, waiting for the precipitate to drop out is called a “separation chamber.” The worry you experience while awaiting this part of the process to complete is called “separation anxiety.”

The best thing about brewing your own fuel out of waste oil that you get for free from a local restaurant is, of course, the rebellious nature of it. Take that, oil war! I can brew the fuel I need for a week in a saturday afternoon while hanging out with my friends! I don’t need your dirty petroleum . . . except for the methanol that gets used in the process. Mitch claims that his homebrew is higher quality than the biodiesel which is currently commercially available. Data seems to support this claim. Alas. Poor quality control at the biodiesel plant is gumming up fuel filters and causing customers (including the city of Berkeley) to switch back to dinosaur based fuel. Berkeley and some anarchists and peacenics will come back, but the average user doesn’t want hassle getting fuel. One workaround to this problem is to replace your fuel filter frequently. Worth it for the good karma. The other is to run a tank of dinodiesel every 4 or 5 tanks to dilute glycerol in the filter. (Glycerol is the precipitate that drops out in the separation chamber. It’s the byproduct of making biodiesel. Other people know it by the less geeky name, “soap.”)
Biodiesel lives per gallon? Zero. Petroleum lives per gallon? Bad, says a recent Amnesty International report. The Bush administration is dismissing the report, which documents abuses at Gitmo (including the Koran story which caused riots and which Newsweek retracted, despite its being true). What do administration people say about the Amenesty report? Well, obviously it’s wrong. I mean, everybody who reports having been abused is an ex-prisoner and thus is totally untrustworthy. Did you know that all the inmates at Gitmo are suspected of disliking America? Of course they would lie. It makes perfect sense to dismiss everything they say out of hand because we once thought they were guilty of a crime, even though later we let them go for a total lack of evidence. Sure, they were innocent and arrested in error, but we once thought they were guilty and that’s enough evidence to completely disregard anything they say about Gitmo. In fact, it proves they were really terrorists all along and ought to be grounds for re-arresting them. Can you believe that Amnesty would take the word of a large body of political prisoners over the word of the US government? They have completely forgotten their stated mission, which is to take the word of political prisoners when they say bad things about governments that we don’t like! Not us! Sheesh. And there are other countries out there that are much worse, so they should go concentrate on something else, certainly not the most powerful country in the world. It would make more sense just to ignore us. So let’s just dismiss this report and go buy a Hummer. Wouldn’t you rather daydream about yourself in a Hummer (you could just drive over annoying little cars in your way!) than contemplate people raped and beaten to death in US-run prisons? Just relax. We’re on your side. What me worry?
Tag: Celesteh

one nice largish papizan w/ a blue cushion. one glass-topped coffee table (matching end table optionally included). You come get it in berkeley or i drop it off if you’re not far.

Tag: Celesteh

Ok, so the latest trends in women’s fashions are unbearably girly. What to do? Mills alum Breonna Cole and her gf Aisha Pew have launched a butch fashion line called Studded. (Press) They have nice looking stuff on the website, but don’t have a store. They will however do “private fittings.” And they will do group private fittings on weekends.

Please let me know if you are interested in participating in a fashion event. They need to know your size (men’s or women’s) and a few of the clothes that you are interested in. Let’s mix gender roles up! I’m thinking a saturday or sunday afternoon. Please nominate a day that will work for you. The location can be my house.
clothes make the woman.
This is cross-posted to LJ
Tags: Butch, Clothes, Celesteh

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