Little Things

Driving down 880 - well, I was going North, so up, but whatever - reminds me that Oakland is not just a place with a bunch of houses and facilities named after famous African Americans, it is often a big craphole.

Driving my Taurus makes me feel like a little old lady, and reminds me of how well we normalize bad situations. After being in my shiny new toy that runs on sunshine and farts, the green car is just that much worse.

I also cannot figure out magnets yet, cuz the only people that ever tell me about them are scientists, and those m^$*@%#&%*ers make me pissed.

Nothing Not to Like

After a nice dinner at the Green Papaya, we saw this:

I may swing by after hiking to see if I really can earn $20 AND protest with kitties. I guess my participation will depend on what they are protesting.

Counter Protests

One of the most heartening things for this empiricist is the prevalence of fellow empiricists speaking out against the massively mean and stupid elements of our society. One aspect is the growing effectiveness of the members of SANE at Berkeley. Another is the way more and more people are learning how to effectively counter the misinformation thrown out by certain "entertainers." But specific to this post, I have two links to videos of counter protests to the presence of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Turning the presence of the WBC into a big diversity festival

Using the opportunity to help people make donations to organizations that help LGBT populations and anti-AIDS groups in honor of Fred Phelps and the WBC.

Nostalgia for the Ventura Years?

He may have really low popularity, due to the furthering the anti-tax stance of this state, but still promising utopia. The same state where a couple of the primary industries pay incredibly low wages for all of the jobs they create and most others are either office-type or low skill service jobs.

Still, I will miss the Governator.

We Can Haz Progressive Tax Structure?

The top marginal tax rate for income over $400,000 in the 1950's wonderland that conservatives try to emulate was about 91%. These days, the top rate for income over about $310,000 is 35%.

Colorado Springs is turning off a third of the streetlights, trash services in parks, and other services because they don't have the budget.

And tonight, I heard about another idea some states are pushing - a 4-day school week. Now, I don't have kids myself, but I both was one once and know people that have them (shocking, I know), and my instant reaction to this idea was a bunch of swear words. Like it or not, working parents rely on school to watch their kids while they are at their jobs, making the money to feed those kids. I can't tell you the numbers, but my guess is that about at least half of families need to have two incomes, most of which are earned during the traditional work week.

The school districts that stand to "gain" the most from this idea are those that have large transportation costs. I use the quotes around gain because the only members of the school districts that gain are the ones pushing the paper around. Parents not only gain nothing, but may lose a significant amount of money from lost wages or extra childcare costs. Furthermore, areas where transportation is needed are often the rural areas, where the houses are far apart, and it isn't as easy to just "drop a kid off with the neighbor".

The radio program focuses on the lost learning time with this 4-day week, but that, to me, is a non-issue compared with the insult to working parents that this idea presents.

But, schools are hurting, just like the rest of our public sector. California students and other residents took to the streets highway on Thursday to protest the state's cuts to education. They walked right out onto 880 during rush hour, which made me really glad that I never, ever have to take that highway to get where I need to be. Just like the takeover of Wheeler Hall last year, nothing much will come of this - or, at least if we say that, anything that does happen will be a pleasant surprise - because the state is bleeding money. Of course, if we heeded Glen Beck's advice and seceded from the Union, we would have all that Federal tax money back to, but that's neither here nor there.

What we need to do, in reality, is stop being greedy hoarders and pay for our society already. We have ample evidence that giving rich people money does not work because they just use it to make more money for themselves. We know that raising the minimum wage allows people on the low end of the economic scale to spend more and live better, and we know that spending on public programs makes our towns better places to live. I'm hoping that we can some day act on evidence rather than ideology, but with the stupid Quiverfulls pumping out more idiots to be brainwashed with young earth creationism, I don't know how optimistic I get to be.

Late Night BART

I just got home around 4 or so after riding the BART from Powell. My friend and I got to Powell, camped out on the floor, then consumed ourselves untangling his Mardi Gras beads. Some girls near us caught his attention too and one was dressed as the raisin lady. He only noticed that after staring at the raisin box she gave him for a while. At 4 minutes to the train for Con-cord, people stood up. My friend got up when it about one minute. The group convened near the black tabs and I worried that someone might fall off into the train. When the train neared, we cheered and then we began to pack the train. I was wedged around a bunch of guys, one bald-headed white guy was drunk and also seemed to have wandering hands twice. He also accidentally slapped me on the tunnel, which I found pretty amusing.

We stopped at Embarcadero, but we had been packed at Powell. The conductor was not very patient with us, but at the same time, the people in the middle of the cars could have gotten closer. I looked around and saw nothing but passed out heads with arms clinging to the bars. Halloween zombies hanging from the handrails on the train who were not moving. I made room where I could, and the conductor threatened to take the train out of service if the doors could not close. We started, stopped instantly, then started again. And we were on our way under the bay. That tunnel took forever this time, and we had to wait until 12th Oakland to stop.

People, including me and my friend, poured out of the Con-cord bound train and I followed my friend onto an almost empty car going up through Berkeley to Richmond. We had to wait for a second train from San Francisco, but then we were off on the Richmond bound train - well, El Cerrito del Norte bound. We were to stop at MacArthur, Downtown Berkeley and El Cerrito del Norte. I guess the BART thought, "screw Richmond."

A couple of times during the night I got to note on our being a part of SF history with our BART ride. The Halloween Party Commute, 2009.

Flower Time

I call this "Potential" or something like that, then I cut the flower part off.

Just kidding, lol.







Here was a purple flower as seen through our fall foliage.

How I'm Surviving the Second Bay Bridge Closure of 2009

I don't know if any of you watch the national news. I only see it at the gym, but I did get to see that the Bay Area made national news a couple times. The big one is big, and might just complete our trifecta of transportation issues this year. A few weeks before Labor Day, we had the threat of the BART strike. The night before it was due to start, the state and the union reached a deal and trains ran on schedule. Disaster averted. A couple of weeks later, the Bay Bridge was shut down and we all forgot about the BART issue.

It is an El Niño year this year, and this last week has been hella windy. Tuesday night must have been really incredible. I didn't hear the traffic reports that evening, but somehow, by the next morning, I knew full well that pieces of the new Bay Bridge had been blown apart during rush hour on Tuesday. A few cars were damaged, one person was insignificantly (I think) injured, and the Bay Bridge was shut down. Not for repairs - no. It was so the engineers could figure out how to fix it.

The San Francisco Bay Area lives and breathes by its bridges, and the Bay Bridge is like shutting down the aorta of our traffic flow, carrying most of the East Bay out of the MacArthur Maze and into the city. Since the bridge went out on Tuesday night, the BART has been running longer trains and they even added a second ferry across the bay. However the other bridges are packed.

Its nice because there is no back-up to the one east bound lane of the Caldecott tunnel, but the traffic on 680 negates any time saved. I run right into all the Martinez, Pittsburg, and Concord people that usually take 24 to the Bay Bridge all rushing down 680 to get to the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges before... well, before nothing cuz those are clogged and we made national news.

I don't know how things were after the Loma Prieta quake, but the recent 20 year observances made it clear to me that all hell did break loose during that time. The traffic issues with the Bay Bridge were likely dwarfed by the chaos that engulfed the area. They may also have been just as bad, but people were probably so shell shocked by the 15 second nightmare that caused it to barely care.

I'm lucky that my only concerns with this shutdown are not knowing which ways are the best anymore and that I don't work in the city. Some of my co-workers live in the city and commute out to San Ramon, but I don't know what they are doing. If it was me, I might think about packing a bag and staying with a friend that lives near-by instead of trying that commute. I don't work tomorrow, but I am not sure if it is a Furlough Friday or not. I hope it is - or maybe the state should trade them. I can only imagine the money our state doesn't have that's being spent. I wonder if the money lost on those tolls is being made up on other bridges, ferry fees, and BART tickets. I also wonder if the BART will run 24 hours in order to have some kind of traffic along that vessel.

Just Don't

I love you, Energy 92. You give me the high bpm I need. You have Greg and Fernando, but wtf is up with playing the dance remixes of Pink songs? Who the hell is making those in the first place? No one wants to dance to her song about her dead friend, or her crumbling marriage. None of her other songs are fast enough for dance beats either. And let's not even mention Katy Perry, ugh! Are you trying to make her sound slow and retarded? Just stop - if I want to hear those songs, I'll listen to my CDs.

A Comic for Me

toothpastefordinner.com

I miss severe weather

Lookie What I Found!

It's a big ol' bug, just hanging out by my apartment.


What kind of bug is this?

And here is a video with my shoe in there for perspective. My shoe is a size 10 hiking shoe cuz of my ginormous feet.

Is This My Birthday?

Ok, so first, I see the article about Crist, but I skip past it, and decide to read what my dear leader was saying:

Governor Sanford says that he does not want to take the money, the federal stimulus package money. And I want to say to him: 'I'll take it.' I'm more than happy to take his money or any other governor in this country that doesn't want to take this money, I take it, because we in California need it. ... You know, you've got to go beyond just the principles. You've got to go and say, 'What is right for the country right now?'

-Gov. Schwarzenegger (R-CA), "GOP Civil War: Schwarzenegger Slams GOP Govs' Stimulus Refusal"

The visual of Ahnold calling their bluff was pretty amusing and a good pick-me up. The title is pretty corny though. Scrolling doesn, I next saw an article called "Poor Bush: Websites Mocking W. Rank Higher Than His Own Presidential Library Site". It was a nice little 'feel good' piece that served to satisfy our national need for schadenfreude.

The next one down, however, got me thinking about international women's rights and strategies to be effective in more ways than just raising awareness. Those thought processes can get very depressing or frustrating pretty fast. The emotional response can become similar to the kinds of feelings I have when I am worried about my friends and loved ones. So, after I came to a conclusion to the thought process, I really wanted to see actual good things happening instead of work to be done. I decided to go back up top to read what Crist was saying:

The people elected him. And I'm willing to give him a good shot and try to help make this work. We're in a tough time, as we talked about before. I think we do need to be bipartisan. We need to be, in fact, nonpartisan.

-Gov. Crist (R-FL), "There's Only One National Leader, 'His Name Is President Obama'"

And I was shocked. I read the whole post and returned to that phrase in the article. His utterance of 'nonpartisan' reminded me of an awesome Pandagon article that I was unable to locate so I cannot supply a link. It has been a good birthday morning today.

Spiders in the Rain

I have always disliked spiders, but as I age, the fear gets dimmer. When I was 14, there was a huge spider in my bedroom which I ran from and made my parents kill. I wasn't able to sleep in my room for days. Some time passed and I told my first therapist about my fear. A few months after that, I saw a garden spider on my ceiling, which was about 4 or 5 feet from the bed I was lying on at the time. I grabbed a shoe, killed the thing, and went back to bed.

When I first moved to San Ramon, I noticed that massive webs with "big ol'" spiders seemed to be pretty normal. As long as there is enough distance or a window between me and the spider, I love staring at them in the atriums of the buildings at work. In my old apartment, there was a time when I killed a massive spider at least once a week, but this apartment doesn't have as many. Earlier this month, I saw a smaller, but still pretty large spider crawling on my bed while I was getting ready for work. It was too big to smush with my hands, so I grabbed a TV remote and managed to smack it. Call me the Spider Killer, I guess, but its only when they come into my dwelling.

This spider was on a light pole outside my place last week. That was when I decided that I want to document my 8-legged finds. I hope you'll enjoy the series. My morbid fascination with spiders definitely aids in overcoming the somewhat irrational fear.

There Were NO 'No on 8' Offices in My Area Code

In response to the victory of hate, figuring out just where the fuck we went wrong, in response to this, a comment on a Pandagon post that I needed to share with other people, here is my observation: I was at SF Pride, bawling my eyes out because I just happened to see two men get married. The happiness in me (and some booze) was that great. I saw the “vote no on the marriage ban” at that time. In the interim, I slowly saw this thing gain ground. Seeing a commercial on TV at the gym once, then a sign here and there (I remember the first time I saw that yellow sign, it was so foreign that I said to myself, “what is 8? why should I vote for it?” before I connected it with that thing that I didn’t think any decent person could support), then last week, it exploded.

Sunday night, I saw signs popping up in the middle of the night. I checked to find my local No on 8 office, and the closest I could get was Berkeley or Oakland. There were no offices with numbers from my area code (925). Monday morning, I made the mistake of taking the road to the highway to get to work and found myself in what I call “The Gauntlet of Hate”. Yes on 8 signs three feet apart for MILES, people guarding them, then there were the people WITH the signs. My rage was palpable, and the only thing I could do was give dirty looks and the finger. One of the people with signs looked sad when we made eye contact. That was my solace.

How could so many people be so arrogant?

I had sent a message to the No on 8 campaign the night before, asking for assistance, giving them my daytime phone number. I did not get a call back on Monday. I do not know how overworked or staffed the office was. I had been wanting a sign against 8 for my car for months, but the closest I got was a bumper sticker that I had wanted to tape inside my car, but I got effing lazy. I finally got my sign, found on the ground at UC Berkeley on Tuesday night, but it was too late. One person that saw me holding it that night approached me to give me the sad news. I already knew and just wanted to enjoy the return of rational US government to our planet, so I was more discrete with the sign, so as to avoid mourning for now. But I still wanted my sign, if only as a way to remind myself and everyone else that no, I was not a bigot.

Last night, some of my friends went to the SF protest and came back with a sign. I remarked at how badly I had wanted one but hadn’t gotten one until now. My friend said the same thing. We are all guilty in some way for this loss. We’re doing the same thing that Republicans are now doing about McCain. Only, instead of infighting and blaming those that didn’t vote with us, we need to figure out how to dispel the myths around Prop 8. Anyone that listens to KQED (or other CA NPR, probably) has heard that man who said that he supported gay people and their right to marry, but stopped short at it “being taught in the schools”, and that was why “of course” he voted yes on 8.

In other words, undoubtedly, many of those 52% that voted yes that did so because of the outright LIES told by the Prop 8 supporters. We needed to dispel these lies even more vigorously (myself included, don’t think I’m not as pissed at myself as anyone else) - no, we STILL need to. We need to remind people that this is a civil rights issue, and just like those people that protested school desegregation, the Yes on 8 crowd will find itself on the wrong and embarrassing side of history.

Note to Self

• Buying Sudafed, Affrin, and Saline Nasal Spray isn't enough, you need to use it, then you won't get this sinus pressure.


• But the only time I ever feel it is when I am near the Caldecott


• Didn't you feel it another time on Tuesday?


• Maybe, I thought that was on the BART approach to that tunnel


• You didn't take the BART through the tunnel, you parked at MacArthur that night


• Duh. Haven't the last few days been totally awesome?


• Totally, especially that little dose of weekend on Tuesday night


• That was so enjoyable, I really should move to the city


• Yeah, but you'll have to wait another 9 months until that lease is up


• Not to mention the moving and commute considerations


• No kidding

¿Dónde está la Sociedad del Futuro?

When I want to know where my [South Indian] friend is, I text "donde?" When I asked a new friend if her last name was Hmong, I prefaced it with "pregunta sobre tu nombre". In California, I assume everyone has some knowledge of Spanish. (Even if mine is a little jacked)

I found a fun Spanish language station out here, La Kalle, tu ritmo Latino, and I love listening to the DJs chatter seamlessly between Spanish and English. Comida is practically a synonym for food, hola is another way to say hi.

Who is it that wants to be around white people all the time? My "White Population in California" blog post gets a lot of traffic, I don't know why. Maybe it is a few deluded white people thinking that diversity isn't amazing.

Oh, the People You'll Meet

The telecom supervisor that told me about how much more he used to make as a contractor, the 22-year-old that never turns off cruise control so driving is more like a video game, the male feminist and agnostic Columbia law student living in Chinatown, raised by Southern Baptists in Utah, the street vendor who lengthened that necklace for me, on the spot, the airplane repair project controller from Carson City, participating in the AIDS Walk with Team Gap with her teenage daughter that works there and her daughter's boyfriend, the NOLA native that danced in several Mardi Gras parades along with another co-worker from Baton Rouge, the former crack addict whose life was saved by the gay southerner who had lived everywhere, tried everything, and now does fundraising drag shows all over the bay area, and culminating with the homeless hippie kids who hitchhike to new places every few weeks [separately, they had just met up a few days ago themselves], find food, shelter, and showers wherever they might be, and live just to live.

This world is so full of people, experiences, and incredible wonderment.

Just a Farm Girl from the Middle of Nowhere

I spent the day analyzing information, then I stopped by a local bar and had a shot of Patrón, an early birthday gift from the co-worker that invited me out. After some socializing, I set out for home to get ready to go dancing in the city. I missed the 9:20 train by just a few moments, but I wasn't very late to the club. After running across the street, I waited in the short line, then showed the bouncers my ID. The normal $20 cover was waived because I was on the guest list, and I made my way inside.

The video isn't that great, but I wanted to show one outing option for visitors :D

There were three dance floors, one electronic, one hip hop, and the other kind of a mix. I liked them all, because I just like to move, but my friend was partial to the electronic floor. That floor was a little more friendly and fun, and I had a great time. My friend told me this was the most upscale club he'd been to, and it was pretty nice, but I knew it was hot when I saw the guy with the mullet. If you don't know, much to my chagrin, mullets are all OVER Europe right now. I thought for sure this was a group of kids from Europe - Italy, Spain, maybe southern France, but when I asked the guy where he was from, he said "Texas"! I was shocked, the told him that the mullet, essentially (I gestured to his hair), was all over Europe and that he looked omg so hip.

I love clubbing - I may not be the best dancer, the drinks might be overpriced, I may get slightly skeevy guys trying to dance up on me (and sometimes slightly cute guys too), and I might get really sweaty by the end of the night, but I love it all. I think my favorite part is when I think about where I'm from and where I am right now, and then how much more awesome life will get. The SATC girls taught me that life definitely does not end at 30 or even beyond, so I look forward to years of good times, laughter, and dance. The past 5 weeks of New Urs have been the best of my life, and I'm glad I get to share the experience with you, dear readers. You're very welcome to partake in the fun.

Stonewall

39 years ago today, in New York City, there was a spark that started it all. Sure, there had been activists before, bringing people together and shedding light on the subject. However, it wasn't until that last raid at the Stonewall Inn in the early morning hours that the forces brewing in America burst onto the stage.

But LGBT rights are not my fight, I know that. I am not in danger of losing my job, my family, my friends because of the person that I love. Furthermore, I can be assured that when I marry, I will be able to visit my spouse in the hospital, extend my health insurance to him (or vice versa), and be allowed all of the other rights that married couples receive in America. So really, there is no need for me to care. My stake in gay rights is second hand, but as MLK once said, "a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

But really, my stake in LGBT rights goes beyond just my desire to see all people treated with dignity and respect. The struggle for LGBT rights and the visibility of non-heterosexual people and couples throws a wrench into gender norms and male-female relationships. They show the world that manhood and womanhood are not predicated on their relationship with eachother, but on their own merit. A man is not a man because he controls a woman that has "his" children, and a woman is not worthless if she does not marry [or devote her life to the church]. LGBT rights affirms the humanity of us all. Tomorrow, I will be proudly attending the San Francisco Gay Pride events, LGBT Rights=Human Rights.

Northern California Wildfires

So it seems that while I've been frolicking in Alaska, holy hell has been breaking loose in California. I knew there were fires, and I knew there was a lot of smoke, but I've been more focused on work, working out, uploading videos and pictures, playing in the city, and fixing my flat tire to pay much attention. Even last night, as I sat in traffic on 680 N to Walnut Creek, I noticed the smoke, but I didn't think that the whole area was just "on fire".

Holy damn. And just in time for legalized gay marriage and Pride weekend..... Oh, the televangelists must be happy today. Yes, right wing policies of underfunding infrastructure, sending the National Guard to war, and ignoring the human impact on climate change all converged to make a tinderbox. But it was the gays being able to legally visit their dying partner that made the dry lightening.