...more on weblogs and internet democracy:

i read about technorati in an older utne. as i recall, the article i read described how technorati produces news in a more democratic fashion than our Friendly Major News Outlets. i'm a little fuzzy on the details, but Technorati essentially ranks news articles based on the number of links generated to them in weblogs--hundreds of thousands of weblogs, in fact. so, instead of news deemed important by Editors, you get the news thousands upon thousands of bloggers feel is important--not a perfect sample of the population, of course, but wider in perspective than said Editors. interesting what you find...

you can also check to see who has posted a link to your own blog URL. i find this kindof neat because i can see what the two people who've ever linked to my weblog have responded to; it's a way to promote communication among bloggers, in my view. plus, i'm nosy.

and when folks respond to something i've written, it makes me feel more like a freakin' human being. i'm not quite sure how that all works in my mushy little head, but it does.
- posted by clare @ 16:07

 
i'm hungry today. starved. famished. look at me--i'm wasting away. what is it that makes one day empty out my stomach faster than another?

last night, the military airplanes were buzzing overhead like bugs as i was driving into my current hometown. stars were stuck in the sky, flies squished on some massively dark ceiling. everything is reminding me of bugs these days--from Rahne's posting on pests to this rather disturbing FDA document about which levels of "food defects" (read: insect parts, mold, and the like) are acceptable in a variety of ingestible items.

makes me want to modify the showtune "Everything's Coming Up Roses" as sung by Bette Midler to the following:

"I had a dream
a dream about bugs, baby,
and spiders and slugs, baby,
all over your rugs and, baby...

You'll be ill! You'll be sick!
Better clean out your cabinets, and quick!
Starting here, starting now,
Honey, everything's coming up buggy..."

but maybe i'm just a little obsessed.

What is it about bugs that gives me the willies, anyway? I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, which explains bugs in a rather favorable light (among other things), but I just can't deal with them in my house.

i take no prisoners when it comes to bugs. spiders are the "good" ones--i know, i know! but i figure they have a death wish if they make themselves visible, and i feel i'm making it easier for them to escape the current state of affairs (what with this administration's approval rating, among all of the wonderful, imperialist tendencies of mr. bushie and his cronies, who wouldn't want to make like these spiders and ask for the Great Eternal Squishing? but i digress) by flattening them as quickly as possible.

the bugs have a right to live, don't they? is it the colonizing ancestry of my white forbears, my american-ness coming out? my need to possess, to claim, to defend? is it a sin?

or do bugs just give me
the damn
willies?


there's something about a dirty house that smacks of moral turpitude. having a clean house is equated with wealth, power, and righteousness--at least, according to the TV commercials, which we all know represent Truth, anyway. having bugs in your house signals some kind of moral--even religious ("cleanliness is next to godliness") failure in the great glassy eyes of a TV jury.

guilty!

having a bug infestation is perhaps the worst kind of violation. an infestation points toward what is perhaps the most egregious, grave of all distinctly american sins:

poverty.

but how do i negotiate an awareness of this fact, the need to prevent allergic reactions to various and sundry dirt-related items in my domain, and my revulsion of--even fear and loathing of--bugs?

perhaps i could introduce a gecko into the ecosystem that is my house. but then i'd have a gecko in my house, and that, friends, is hardly better than bugs... my cats aren't doing their job, either.

i guess my *real* question is: what part of me causes the "eww!" reaction when i see a bug? is it purely cultural? is it guttural, biological? is it similar to the "eww!" reaction i have when i learn of foods that don't fit into the neat little american box of processed foods?

mmm... foods. looks like i've come full circle.
- posted by clare @ 10:44

 
to quote a little comment made by ani difranco, found on her reckoning cd between the songs "grey" and "subdivision," "i'm feeling a little... unfocused.
the problem is meeeee!"

hey, who needs to speak for themselves? i could quote folks all day instead of trying to be articulate...

"Traffic in the city turns my head around.
No, no, no, no, no.
Backed up on the freeway, backed up in the church,
Ev'rywhere you look there's a frown, frown..."--Creedence, "Commotion"

"And I'm wondering what it will take for my city to rise.
First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes.
The ghost of old buildings are haunting parking lots in the city of good neighbors that history forgot..." --Difranco, "Subdivision"

"Got a sky that looks like heaven
Got an earth that looks like shit
And it’s getting hard to tell where
What I am ends
And what they’re making me begins..." --Eels, "Climbing to the Moon"

"They broke all the windows and they
took all the doorknobs and they
hauled it away in a couple of days.
Now, someone yelled 'timber!'
take off your hats
'cause we're all fallin down
here on the ground
We're falling down.
You're falling down...." --Holly Cole, "Falling Down," song & lyrics by Tom Waits

"get on up" --Roy Ayers, "Get On Up, Get On Down"

"I've got a floor to dance on
and I've got a phone to laugh in
and I've got a tub to cry in
and I've got a bed to hide in...
but everything I need is right here in my hands
right here in my hands
right here in my hands..." --Melissa Ferrick, "Everything I Need"

"Gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail
learn how to use my hands
not just my head, I'll think myself into jail.
Now, I know a refuge never grows
from a pen in a hand and a book of prose.
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose..." --Indigo Girls, "Hammer and Nail"
- posted by clare @ 09:38

 
the second day of rain in the morning. but this morning's different: we have no bugs in our cabinets today.

we--and by "we" i mean "mel"--was boiling water for oatmeal last night, our plan being to consume a quick and easy dinner of oatmeal and the grapefruit that's been chillin in the fridge for a bit too long. i didn't hear a shriek. i didn't hear a yell. what i didn't hear was anything because i was in the basement, fighting with what i thought was a handy new sifting litter box for our kitties that did everything but sift--including distribute the litter across the basement floor. what i heard was this:

"clare, we have a problem."

i could tell by the tone of voice and the certainty with which she made this assertion that we did, indeed, have a problem.

"what's the problem?" i think i squawked at her, still cursing at the litter box.

"we have bugs."

i think i stopped my fussing at this point, allowing the full consequences of this statement to seep into my addled, kitty litter-encrusted brain.

"what kind of bugs?" i asked hesitantly, not sure i actually wanted to know.

"crawly ones," replied mel with a shudder.

melanie, one of (if not the) most vocal anti-bug lobbyists i know, had grabbed the can of oatmeal from its shelf and, water boiling merrily away on the stove, proceeded to open the can and discover...

you guessed it...

AN OATMEAL CANISTER TEEMING WITH LIFE!!!

not only was there "life" in the oatmeal canister, "life" was all in the lazy susan in which we store our pasta and other items-in-cardboard-boxes. i gather that it was like the dawn of creation, so much life was munching on our (and this deserves emphasis, our) food.

it's not so much that i'm particularly against sharing per se, but i'm an american, damn it, and as such, i assume that the food for which i trade my hard-earned cash in a somewhat larger box known in these parts as a "grocery store," in fact, belongs to me, and will be consumed by me, unless i authorize otherwise.

these bugs weren't in need of our hard-fought and hard-won food. we had battled not only forces in our workplace to obtain said cash, but we had to duke it out with the crazies in the grocery store. people always stealing my fantastic big soups and drew's salsa.

but i'm getting away from myself.

long story short: mel got the willies and proceeded almost single-handedly to clear out the lazy susan, then our other food-storage shelves, under the stove, behind the blender, and inside the toaster, carefully washing each shelf and fumigating these spaces with our minty-smelling non-toxic bug spray. i stood around dumbly, muttering something about "helping," as i am oft wont to do.
- posted by clare @ 08:54

 
all those who are not functional today--raise your hand half-heartedly.
- posted by clare @ 08:37

 
i've been mulling... i mulled this morning while i was raking leaves. i mulled while reading for my intense little class. i'm sure i mulled during the brief nap i managed to eek out after i finished my reading.

i recently deleted my tripod website after discovering that a little piece of the code read: "category=adult;!category=sexualovertones"--and i was, needless to say, a wee bit pissed off. what, just because i have a link to a queer-oriented page, just because i use the words "lesbian" or "gay" somewhere on my webpage, my content is deemed "adult" with "sexual overtones"??? bite me, tripod/lycos. it's just another example of how queer folks are sexualized just for being queer.

the rage i'm feeling toward tripod right now is akin to the exasperation i felt upon learning that our local McVideoRentalStore(1) had eliminated its "gay and lesbian" video section(2), shifting all of said videos to a newly-created "Mature" section(3) because, according to the manager, these videos had to do with "sexuality"--unlike all of the videos that featured straight folks having no sexuality of their own. riiiiiiight. i noticed that American Pie hadn't magically migrated to the "Mature" section, and that movie contains a lot more "sexuality" than, say, The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love. GAAAA!

so, as we did then, i'm flexing my significant consumer muscle(4) and hitting the delete key on my piss-poor website.

which got me thinking--hey, why do i really need this website all to myself, anyway? what could i possibly have to contribute to the hurly-burly that is the internet that hasn't already been said or will be said better in the future? hell, why even bother with the weblog, for that matter? the only folks who read it are my family, and i talk to them on the phone on a semi-regular basis, anyway. maybe it is a somewhat selfish proposition on my part--reaching out and claiming a sliver of bandwidth, thrusting myself upon the world, except that the world couldn't really care less. i mean, i know it--no one's reading this stuff, so why do it? why not just keep to the journal no one but me will read?

i sense that i'm not the first to consider the uselessness of this little endeavor. it has to do with privilege--the fact that i have access to and knowledge of how to use a computer at all, much less how to create my own little webpage (however awkward and primitive). it has to do with american individualism--this is MY little space. mine mine mine. i'm entitled to it, and what i have to say is unique to me. plus, i'm feeling guilty after reading this article in our local sunday paper, which states that weblogs are "The ultimate self-indulgence in our self-involved world." that, plus the criticisms of bubble tea were enough to piss me right off. but maybe they're right about the weblogs. my partner likes to tease me about my weblog, about how useless and, well, small it is. i guess the only redeeming question i can ask myself is: what do i have to contribute to this mess that would be useful to someone, somewhere?

still mulling...

(1)ha! take THAT, Macdo! but you sure do know how to spend your slave money.
(2)now, i have some issues with a separate "gay and lesbian" video section to begin with. where's the "B" and the "T" and the "Q" in there, in the first place? Furthermore, it seems to me to be a way of keeping TLBQG folk *out* of the mainstream. however, the (former) existence of such a clearly-delineated section in an ostensibly popular video rental store, given the context of my local community, outweigh(ed) the issues i had with the section in the first place. in other words, the section seemed to say, in effect, "we're here, we're queer, get over it." i won't get into the rather narrow portrayal of BTLGQ lives on film (what? there are queer folks who have to struggle to pay the bills? there are gay men *without* fashion sense? there are lesbians of color? there are trans folk...anywhere?)...
(3)vs. the "adult" section, which is walled off at the back of the store.
(4)as opposed to my *actual* muscle, which is more on the order of miniscule... as i discovered after my raking adventures sunday + this morning.
- posted by clare @ 16:41

 
was fortunate enough to see Jenny Boylan give a reading of her memoir, She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders.

loved:
--the fact that the auditorium was packed
--the way she talked about her experiences
--the standing ovation she received at the end
--her sense of humor
--her accessibility
--her sense of humor

was uncomfortable with:
--the way she simplified gender into a biological fact, not a social construct
--the subsequent nodding of many of the folks in the audience, as if to say "aha! i knew it! it's based in biology! now, maybe we can cure these crazies, or at least pathologize them..."
--the fact that she didn't really mention that her experiences aren't those of every transgendered (or even transsexual) person

all things considered, though, it was very moving to see a diverse audience (for bo-bo, anyway; diverse in terms of age, gender, race, and [i'm guessing here] sexual orientation and identity) and to hear about how Jenny's experiences were largely positive.

maybe there is hope.

and for those who are totally confused by terminology, there's hope for you, too! check out these definitions.
- posted by clare @ 16:58

 
cracking myself up

or

god bless the University of Maryland

fear the turtle.
- posted by clare @ 09:30