Free-Range Psychos

For anybody that might care, I was sorta attacked on Wednesday afternoon. Broad daylight, nice neighborhood, birds chirping, all that.

I had just ridden one of the Boeing Field metro buses back up to downtown, hopped off at the downtown library and was hoofin' it up between Virginia Mason and Harborview Medical Center when this 6'2" black guy with pupils the size of dinner plates came pogoing down the sidewalk.

Got two inches from my nose, started screaming at me, shoved me, yes, it was great fun. Fortunately I had my ear buds in and was listening to my mp3 player so I missed half of the "GONNA FUCK U UP WHITE BITCH" comments. Apparently my wearing sunglasses set him off, tho, probably just the mere fact I was 1) female and 2) a pedestrian would have been enough.

Anyhoo, after a few minutes of "GONNA FUCK U UP!" he bounded down the sidewalk screaming over his shoulder at me.

I was gonna call the Seattle P.D. but as they have the same Catch-n-Release policy as the Portland P.D. I just blew it off.

Irony was I had my stun gun with me, in my freakin' hoodie pocket the whole time. It's this ridiculous dildo-looking thing, 'stun baton' I think the box said.

I just kept flashing on these videos I'd seen on YouTube of idiot drunk kids playing with stun guns. They'd down a shot of tequila, zap themselves and then giggle. I was seriously concerned that Batshit Psycho would have done the same thing since he was obviously flying on the Seattle meth-heroin-cocaine-PCP cocktail so loved by our colorful street people.

Yes, in the Pacific Northwest we don't have mental hospitals anymore. Why that would require actually have a national health plan and an infrastructure for social services and we ain't even got that. Yep, round here all our violent crazies are FREE RANGE -- like the chicken farms only more thrilling.

Geek World

It's official. I've attended my first computer convention. I don't know if that makes me a geek tho'. I still can't write XML for shit and I don't know that I ever want to learn Javascript. The only script I wanna write is the kind for movies.



Saturday, April 28th I caught a free charter bus ride courtesy Pogolinux to Bellingham, Wash., the City of Subdued Excitement. Bellingham is 15 miles south of Vancouver, B.C. and the air was filled with the sounds of 'oh geez' and 'aye'. There was also rabid talk about MySQL. I just kept wondering: Sequel to what?

Anyhoo, I found the outdoor sculptures at Bellingham Technical College more interesting than endless pics of true geeks standing behind their various tables gushing geekspeak and drooling over the latest Linux distro. ('Distro' = OS or platform).

And I won't talk about how I spent five hours camped out back in RE Lectronics room coercing three Linux geeks into helping me get that damn, cursed Toshiba laptop working. Suffice it to say, in the end, I donated it to RE Lectronics for parts and they are now supposed to set me up with a trade in.

Tho', I think this will involve me renting a car Memorial Day weekend and driving up there to further coerce them into dusting off an old Dell or Compaq laptop and installing Ubuntu on it for me.

My life is so much more care-free and efficient now that computers are in it. I can just smell the chip sets smoking.

Here's some legit pics from Brian Lane of the various vendors/sponsors and ubergeeks.

"Rob & Bob have the same job!"

This week has been weird ... and also a goofy testament to everything you've ever heard about the so-called Perfect Resume (like The Perfect Cheer maybe?). I got a contract gig with Boeing this morning.



It's down in that dusty, swampy, kinda sleazy area known as Boeing Field. The Field is home to several top-secret federal offices (seriously, don't tell anyone), frogs, a few eagles, one or two great horned owls and homeless guys that live in the weeds by the Duwamish and are so dirty they're blacker than that terrifying homeless person in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.

Anyhoozle, this was weird because literally within a half hour of accepting the gig, I got five query emails from other headhunters for tech writing/DTP jobs.

Suddenly, inexplicably my resume no longer has virtual B.O.

Go figure. Saturn has stopped sitting on my astrological southwest node ... errr something.

And the goofy title of this post is a direct quote from my ditzy headhunter: "I'm not sure who's doing the intake paperwork this week. Rob and Bob have the same job. Hey that rhymes! Ta-heee!"

Honey, I don’t want your Bubba

Several years ago, one of my reporter friends wrote an article about a brothel in Battle Mountain. While interviewing one of the madams, he asked her what one of the biggest misconceptions was about hooking in a Nevada backwater like B.M. She said small town women universally believe hookers want to ‘steal’ their husbands away. The sweetest quote was: “Honey, I don’t want your Bubba.” I love that.

What’s weird is, I’ve found a disproportionate number of young Smug Marrieds (thanks Helen Fielding) seem to adopt a similar mentality toward all single women every where. Course this isn’t new.

It started in, oh, 1985. I was working a crap landscaping job in Sacramento. I had a co-worker who was a weekend mechanic and I had a question about my disintegrating Chevy Nova. I kept asking my cousin – who was his supervisor – to talk to the grease monkey for me. When she finally cornered him and asked him the question (having to do with the water pump) he blurted out: “I’m MARRIED, ya know!”

Um, that’s great. My question was about my freakin’ car, not your weenie, you dick.

In 2004, a (gasp) married co-worker agree to stop by to try and fix something on my computer. He showed up in a winter jacket, looking extra sweaty and nervous. It was July. The whole time he was in my studio apartment (about 7 ½ minutes) he kept glancing nervously at my bed (it’s a studio, you can’t miss it), my dirty laundry and me. Either the aroma of dirty laundry and the sight of a floppy, used bed is more seductive than a bucket of Calvin Klein perfume or I’m inhabiting a Guy Lair and no one ever told me.

What does go on in their tiny guy minds, I wonder? Do they jack off to fantasies of me (or insert ANY single woman) answering the door in a crouchless teddy with enough makeup on to make John Waters envious?

Fast forward to today and once again I’m dealing with this same weird, pointlessly awkward shit. Recently I had to meet a fellow student to go over a group project that was due in a few days. When my co-student showed up he brought his wife and their brand-new baby. His wife immediately sized me up. WTF? Even if we hypothesized for a second that this guy was single, he’s … just … not … my … type. He’s twitchy, doesn’t wash his hair and we have as much chemistry as a couple of flat sodas.

First thing they do upon arriving at our agreed coffee shop of choice? She plops the baby down in the middle of the table. It’s like: SEE? WE BREED! Yeah, so? You and every Yuppie from here to Ashland, Oregon. And he introduced her to me like three times before she reluctantly disappeared with baby on board to run errands. It was like someone saying to me at a party (in a bar, at a seminar, insert social event here): Hi, I’m MARRIED! This is MY SPOUSE! Did I mention we're MARRIED?!

So I’m hoping some married men, or their wives, can clue me in on what exactly is going on here. The second the ring gets jammed painfully onto his finger do all single women like me everywhere magically, miraculously transform into Kim Baysinger or Britney Spears look-alikes? Does answering the door in baggy sweats and a t-shirt send a secret signal of wild, rampant sexual promiscuity only married men can sense, kinda like whistles only dogs can hear? Do moldering piles of dirty laundry offer a whiff of untold lustful romps yet to come?

I don’t want your Bubba.

The Mullet Vs. RuPaul

I saw '300' the other evening. It's based on Frank Miller's black-and-white-and-homophobic-all-over comic books.

Miller is the misogynistic author/graphic novelist who wrote the inspiration for 'Sin City'. In 'Sin City', Mickey Rourke looked more Republican than usual and I saw Jessica Alba's camel toe more times than I wanted to. Plus Toby Maguire was a serial amputator of broad's gams. I know, funny. Toby Maguire as a serial killer. Heehee.

(Free back rubs for hot Greek men!)

So in Miller's vision of the Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas is a raging hetero who only yearns for his skinny-as-a-boy wife. Yeah, right. The Greeks loved young, Abercrombie&Fitch-ish punks. I mean loved them. But Miller and director Zack Snyder were havin' none of that! So they made Persian King Xerxes a gold-lame drag queen. Which is weird given Xerxes had a full beard, was about 50 and had a hundred wives, twice as many concubines and rugrats runnin' all over Asia minor.

But the kicker is one of the New People on 'Lost' played Xerxes. Brazilian Rodrigo Santoro who rocks a mullet on 'Lost' is flamin' mo' Xerxes in Snyder/Miller's version of this story. Imagine that. A Brazilian soap opera star playing an ancient Persian emperor ... and playing him gay! VIVA CARNIVALE!

Oh well, Dan Savage said it way better than I just did but then his tolerance for ganja is much greater than mine.

Peace out and bring on the rippling abs!

For Your Edification

Gawd, I should be posting something deep, thoughtful and edifying. But after that last phone call from another asshat IT headhunter I just wanna beat my head against the wall. And then go to Candy Mountain ...

Literal Shitstorm

About five days ago, when Seattle was having a nice warm spell (55 F!) I went for a jog down at Myrtle Edwards Park along the water. As usual, the wind coming across from the Olympic Peninsula was fierce but at least not really cold.

On my way back home, I walked under some young cottonwoods at the north end of the park. Amid the wind and sideways rain I didn't realize that about 50 starlings were sitting in the trees. All of the sudden I was caught in a literal shitstorm. First one foul glob of guano hit the shoulder of my fleece hoodie (I'd JUST washed it) then I got some in my hair and finally one wad of bird shit hit the side of my glasses and my face.



Gasping with grossness and cussing the birds out, I staggered behind a short, stubby fir tree and cleaned the worst of the shit off. I got home and promptly took a shower. My fleece hoodie went back into the dirty laundry pile and I forgot about it and went to class.

Wednesday night, coming home from class, I started coughing. It felt like an asthma cough. Thursday morning I was feeling pretty bad. Friday, I was in such bad shape I had to have someone fill in for me at the yoga studio on custodian detail. Yesterday, I stupidly went to yoga and tried to workout and then clean. I nearly blacked out I was so dizzy. When I took my temp last night at 7:30pm, it was 101.6 F.

While groggily coughing up phlegm in the shower this a.m., I remember the shitstorm of a few days ago. Did that cause this?!

But then again, I'm reading a lot in one of my holistic MySpace groups about the dangers of dairy products, how they weaken our immune system and how Starbuck's now sells more milk than coffee.

I am sooo all done with lattes. Never fucking again.

A Fellow Yogi

I knew Rick Linville only in passing. And I passed him a lot coming and going from the Bikram yoga studio up in CapHill.


He was a tall, ghostly-pale, unassuming guy. He was famous for freaking newcomers out with his noisy deep breathing during the beginning posture and he repeatedly dazzled 20-yr-old athletes with his deft ability to do "doubles", as in doing one hot yoga class right after another. That's like going into a 98-degree room at 4:40pm, doing the exercises and then staying for a second round to finally leave at 8:40pm.

I went to a small memorial at the studio for him last night. There were a lot of candles and flowers, one of the studio owners set up a small shrine in Rick's old position on the floor complete with a basketball and a bottle of his favorite soda. Rick had insulin diabetes (which he monitored with the occasional soda) and end-stage hepatitis which was destroying his liver. He had been coming religiously to the Sweatbox for four years straight and credited it with extending his life.

It was an awesome memorial. We did a 'silent' workout and got to listen to Brian Eno CDs, who Rick liked and it was perfect tunes for the event.

I'm certain Rick is enjoying perfect workouts now in a much nicer studio complete with cosmic sunlight.

Namaste

I ... Must ... Emulate

I'm supposed to emulate this guy's writing for my White Papers class.

I still feel kinda sleazy and dirty when I write marketing or ad drivel. It's like a Ganette-Urinal flashback or something and that daft shit, Sloane, is leering down at me asking me how the advertorials for the car dealership insert are coming. Ewww.

Oh well, if things go right, in a couple months I'll be writing for either a place that does genetic mutations or Gates of Borg out at the assimilation center in Redmond.

I'll try and post the link to my white paper when it's done so all of you (all two of you) can point at it and laugh.

S.A.M. ... sudden art malaise?

Here's what they've done to my backyard. I'm not thrilled about it. Yeah, yeah at least not another 10-story condo but still. An eraser?!

Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park

Jesus, the Communist! (Like the musical only with more red)

About three months ago I saw an ad for an anti-Bush/anti-war group meeting. The Seattle chapter of the World Can't Wait had about a dozen members, including a half dozen core members. WCW was mostly middle-aged women and a smattering of idealistic, twenty something college guys. You know the kind -- they make their own punk clothes, are vegan, and write poetry worse than mine when they aren't reading Abbie Hoffman.

The big rally happened right after that first meeting on Oct. 5th. The WCW paid for a permit to meet in a Capital Hill park, had a string of not-terribly-good guest speakers and then we marched downtown. By the time we got downtown, there were about 1,000 people in the group. It was a gorgeous day and the whole thing was fairly successful; aside with WCW being a little pushy with the collection buckets at the rally in the park. They had me and several others wander through the crowd three times to beg for money presumably so WCW could pay for the rally. At least I think that's what the money was for. I've never heard a solid figure on how much was raised that day or what the total cost of the event was.

Afterwards, I went to their weekly meetings every Sunday in a very pretty and very drafty church in Ballard. They were usually two-hour bitchfests about the Bush Regime. Later, I went out in storms to put fliers up on phone poles, light poles, bulletin boards, etc.

The group got some members to fork over for some orange jumpsuits ala Gitmo style and started doing Thursday night vigils in the brutal cold in downtown Seattle. We were there to remind the holiday shoppers that hundreds of foreign nationals were being held illegally in Guantanamo by the Bush Regime and that the Military Commissions Act was an illegal trick that defied every known international law. Fair enough. I went to one of those and held a sign with a 70-year-old woman who had left another activist group because she said: "They were just all about the salmon and protecting the salmon habitat and I was just sick of fish activism." She was a nice lady but I'm not sure she should have been standing outside in the cold when she looked frail enough to blow away.

Things started to get weird. First I had to listen to a very authoritarian twenty something member scold myself and another meeting attendee for 'showing up late'. Well, shit. It's Sunday. It's awful weather out and we're here. (Citizen Alert was always grateful when anybody showed up.)

Then I found out that most of the 'core members' were also communists. That's fine. But they're members of a national organization called the Revolutionary Communist Party. I did a little reading on this group -- and it wasn't easy finding anything on them. The covertness of the RCP weirded me out to no end. I'd met tons of socialists when I was in the UK and especially Australia. Their socialist leanings were no big secret. They wanted national healthcare (the continuation of it) and more corporate accountability. What's wrong with that?!

Every time I asked one of the RCP members what they were about, why they were in WCW, I ran head first into the dreaded Smug Smile. If you've never experienced this, you've never been anywhere near Utah where the Mormons invented and perfected the Smug Smile. The Smug Smile basically sez: "You're wrong, I'm right. You're a sad, misguided unbeliever and you're going to hell. I, however, am going to heaven when I die. My own, personal heaven ... since we've already got most of Idaho by proxy."

I was getting that vibe from the RCP. So I did more reading and finally stumbled upon some truly creepy stuff. Like, for example, the RCP has founded numerous anti-war/anti-establishment groups since the 1980s. Most of these groups steam along for a few years and then just cease to exist. The websites come down, the meetings stop. No explanation. Coming from an environmentalist background I was shocked. The group I was in off and on from 1992-2002, had been in around since the late 1970s when it was founded to stop the MX missile system from being brought into Nevada by the Reagan administration.

I asked a couple of the 'core members' of the RCP what they were doing in the WCW. They assured me that they weren't looking for fresh communist recruits and that they only wanted to work with democrats, republicans, whoever to stop the Bush regime. But every single time I asked them WHAT their best-case scenario was they got cagey. I'd get the Smug Smile. What did the RCP want? A multi-party system? An abolishment of the electoral college? A few seats along side some libertarians and greens in the Senate? They always got super vague and would say things like 'well, that's the first step'. First step to what?

In December I went to a WCW meeting and one of the 'core group' (and RCP member!) announced that he was starting a Seattle chapter of a communist youth brigade. He was looking for members. He was doing exactly what the other RCP folks had told me they would never, do -- using WCW as a place to fish for new members for the RCP. This terribly idealistic kid wanted myself and the half dozen present to start working on fund raising so he and some other 'core group' members (RCP members too!) could fly to NYC and attend a meeting at WCW's national headquarters. I'm just wondering how close the WCW's New York office is to the RCP's national office ...?

I visited the website this guy had put up for the little youth brigade. It has rifles and bayonets as part of the motif.

Because politics -- any version of it -- always has a complicated history, I did a little more research. I learned that Mao, the former 'benevolent dictator' of communist China, was one of the RCP's favorite philosophers and they quote him a lot. I also learned he killed an estimated 15 million Chinese during his Great Upward Movement which was basically a food-for-bombs exchange with the Soviet Union. Chinese starved to death so Mao could arm his 'People's Army' against any real or imagined internal threats ... to him. Like Tibet, for example. A country where today it's illegal to teach the Tibetan language, they have 60% unemployment, thousands of ethnic Chinese were forced to moved there in the 70s and take over Tibetan farms and businesses. Oh yeah, and under Mao, hundreds of thousands of Tibetan Buddhists were executed or imprisoned because 'religion is poison.' And this guy is their rock star.

Then I discovered that the RCP has also founded NION (Not In Our Name), and they've been linked to ANSWER (Act Now Stop War End Racism). So why so many anti-war groups? Why can't the RCP just march under their own banner?

I learned RCP was founded by a 70s activist, Bob Avakian, who has been 'in exile' from the U.S. for decades and gives lectures on the pros of communism via an undisclosed location ala Cheney. He's supposedly an eloquent speaker. Personally, I can barely sit through a six minute lecture let alone a six hour DVD of one. If Mao is the Old Testament god to the RCP, then Avakian is their Jesus Christ. When they talk about him their eyes get real glassy and they get dreamy little grins. (Imagine that politics is your poison ... err drug.)

Finally, I found a couple of websites alleging that the RCP is the only communist party in America that continues to call for the 'violent over throw of the government.' That's right. Rifles and bayonets! Molotov cocktails hitting cop cars. They don't want any seats in Congress. They want to burn Congress to the ground.

Some would argue they're not above using scapegoats to get what they want. What's especially alarming about the RCP is that other, extreme Leftist groups are afraid of them. Anarchists hate the RCP and any of it's off shoots like the WCW with a purple passion. I've had several tell me that the RCP 'sets them up' at protests to get 'taken down by the cops.' An event some what like this occurred on Oct. 5th right here in Rain City. I wrote angry letters to feckless TV reporters over it because of their shoddy coverage of it. Afterwards, I read in a local weekly newspaper that the cops 'received an anonymous tip' that Anarchists were going to be joining the Oct. 5th rally. Hmmm ... wonder who called them???

So I'm done with the World Can't Wait, comrades. I'm all for the removal of the zit that is BushCo from America's ass but I support our democracy, however shabby it's looking, because I am a member of a democracy-by-representation society, not a displaced worker from the Hunan Province looking to re-educate my wayward Tibetan neighbors by forcing them to read the Little Red Book at gunpoint.

Heureux Nouveau Année ... eh?

Maybe it's because I'm stuck on the Dole while I'm waiting for my worker retraining classes to kick in, but I've been staring a lot more wistfully north these days. I don't know ... is the moss really greener on the other side?



I've just got this nagging curiousity about Our Neighbors to the North, those Molson Drinkers ...

I Found Him!

I finally found that nude painter I'd seen in a book at Tez's flat in 2003.



He's a UK painter and his stuff is pretty provacative, like his personal life. According to Wikipedia, he's got 40(!) illegitimate children. I wonder how he found the time to paint ...

Bareback ... Doctor?

Is it just my imagination or do these two make a hot couple?



I mean, I know Bryan Singer is queer, which is fine. But, ummm, is it just me or have House and Wilson been the secret gay odd couple since at least last season? For chrisstake, Wilson COOKED for House last season. He's clearly the bitch and House is the top. Who cares what these shut-ins say!

It's Not Who, It's When

I was just watching a tape of Real Time with Bill Maher. This is from a November 3, 2006 airdate on HBO. I was so effing shocked by what one of his panel guests said, I had to sorta take dictation and now I'm gonna post the excerpt here.

BILL MAHER: “We’ve had this national debt for 215 years. It was $4 trillion when Bush took office, now it’s doubled. It’s $8 trillion. I know they like to say ‘Democrats are gonna raise your taxes’ but doesn’t SOMEBODY have to pay for this because when the deficit goes up, when the debt goes up -- it’s not who, it’s when. I don’t have kids so I don’t care, but if you do have kids, I would think you’d care?”

ALEC BALDWIN: “What this administration has tried to do is to increase the debt and to spend money on funding this war. And the money has gone into the hands of many, many private contractors and it’s been a big engine in the economy. Many of the people in this country are not enjoying the benefits of this economy but the Dow is up above 12,000. A lot of it has to do with spending on the war. Now this administration doesn’t wanna raise people’s taxes, they wanna shift that debt burden onto the people, so that the service of the debt prevents certain social spending in years to come --“

MAHER: “They wanna starve the people.”

BALDWIN: “Exactly. They wanna disenfranchise Democratic constituents by saying ‘we don’t have the money to pay for your problems because we have to service this huge debt.’ Literally that is their goal.”

MAHER: (to Rep. Jack Kingston R-Georgia) “Is that true?! Are you gonna admit to that one too?”

Comments?

Did you say 'cheap wine'?!

I went to one of these last night at this place. It was a gas but I only stayed to hear the first three poets (there were like 20 signed up to read!) because I was tired, frozen and hungry after holding a protest banner for World Can't Wait for two hours downtown.



I was gonna post a rough, un-edited poem inspired by last night's reading but my order from Campmor just got here and, damnit, I have backpacks, yoga tops and thermal underwear to go play with now. WooT!!!

What the Rocky Mtn. State is All About (sing it)!

When I was in Grand Junction, Colorado in Summer 2003 I went into a grocery store in search of some Odwalla juice. You know what I'm talkin' about -- that frothy, flash-frozen goodness that us non-juice machine people live by. When I couldn't find the juice, I asked an employee. He was about 60 years old, white haired and bug-eyed with one of those pretend twangy accents that Coloradians put on to make themselves sound extra inbred.

When I described the product, he said: "Oh-wallah?! Sounds like sometin' tha have in Cale-fornYah or other foreign countries."

I wasn't in the mood to remind this village idiot that California is a STATE, not a foreign country, and has a GNP so large its tax revenues partly fund Colorado's vast federal parks.

That said, here's a ditty to the un-realest state in the union, right next door to (and just a Tabernacle shy of) the State of the Cult where polygamization of child brides in the name of the one true religion still goes on. METH & MAN ASS!

One Small Step ...

In an effort to curb my rampant net surfing via this CPU (central procrastinating unit), I killed my MySpace account. This is good. I needed a mental health vacation.

I'm not sure which was worse -- having that creepy chick from one of the feminist groups virtually 'stalk' me because I disagreed with her asshat comments about pornography or spending 15 minutes out of every hour of the day in one of the "Lost" newsgroups arguing about the significance of the Dharma Initiative's logo. Ah, yes now onto the MicroSoft training modules and less time wasted on MySpazz with my head up my ass.

Or maybe I could try working on one of my unfinished novels once in a while,

-- Mz M.

Anarchy Courtesy Uncle Sam

One of the best damn You Tube vids I've watched in a while. Totally explains the 1999 WTO riots. Fuckin' scary and just in time for Halloween.



-- Mz M.

Petite Blonde/Giant Cajones & a TGILF !

My peoples,

Give it up for this little lady. Applaud. Send food. Send Band-Aids for the blisters. Sing her praises far and wide. Damn, that takes balls. Like I said in the Comments section, my overall impression of Los Angeles in January 2002 (sunny, 73 degrees) was: Wow! What a great place to live if it weren't for all these FUCKING CARS.

In other, less globally ecological news, I've got a new celeb crush.



David Krumholtz is sooo fifteen minutes ago! Not only has this theatre geek worked opposite Kevin Spacey on Broadway, nailed an Emmy on a sloppy, stupid David Kelley show but, NO, wait! There's MORE. He also used to be a comic book illustrator and has done the books-on-tape thingie for one of Neil Gaiman's stories. (Gasp!) I'm all a twitter. Ah, but of course, he's married to some blonde bimbo from the South, a mutant Reese-Witherspoon-meets-Cameron-Diaz freak.

I can't wait till we get the back story/history arc on his character on Lost. Oh why do I always fall for the emotionally unbalanced/serial murderer types? Why?!


-- Mz M.