A Libertine for the New Day

I am alive

2009-06-26T00:50:41Z

I am alive. It's just reading LJ has started to make me angry. I'm angry at the lack of actual face to face, over the phone or even personal email communication. Hell, IM works too. I want to be a person again and have personal communication. So, in the spirit of personal communication I'm inviting you all over for a party. Or if you don't mind adult content, and pictures of my ass you can find me on twitter.

work work work

2009-05-27T03:59:20Z

Work has been crazy. I can't remember the last time I read my FL here so if something interesting is going on please call or email me directly. I'm half tempted to just delete my LJ, but I might want it again in the future so I won't. I most likely won't be using LJ much. I just have too much work and things happening in real life. I've been twittering, but I don't really have the time or patience for any more than 140 characters these days.

There actually are some nice people in this building

2009-05-23T18:57:22Z

Yesterday I got a call from the temp agency saying that my paycheck had been sent back to them. I went over to pick it up and someone in my building had wrote return to sender on the envelope. So far, 2 out of 3 neighbors that I've met here have been horrible people, so this only made me more upset. I wrote a sign to post up above the building mailboxes that said, "Dear neighbors, common courtesy is putting my paycheck back in here or leaving it under my door instead of sending it back." Well, this morning someone wrote a little apology note and stuck it up there with my angry note. They may be stupid but at least they're polite enough to apologize. Now if only I could figure out who built the huge burningmanbullshit wind chimes in my garden. I can't pull my weeds without hitting my head on these 8 foot tall wind chimes. They just might get a nasty note too.

Name that Bird

2009-05-21T17:30:20Z

Instead of bugging drkaos every time I see a cool looking bird, I thought maybe I would share with the whole interwebs of bird lovers and people who might be more inclined than I am to google these things.

Name that bird, please! I was sitting at a gas station in West Oakland and I saw two crows chasing off a huge bird that may have been some sort of falcon. It was twice the size of the crows. It had a pale cream colored underside, and the top was a light brown color. The wing and tail feather tips were black. It was a really pretty bird, what is it??

And I hear the raven on the roof again!!

DMV trouble

2009-05-13T16:13:39Z

My plates expired in April and I didn't notice this until last week. I haven't been parking on the street so that I don't tempt fate. I never received the form to renew. I called Lash to see if it was sent to that address but no luck. I have the form for my motorcycle but not the car. I have no clue what I'm supposed to do. Has anyone had to deal with this? I guess I have to go down to the DMV and cry.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

We Shall Remain

2009-05-07T05:59:02Z

This is so cool!! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/ a show on PBS about Native American history as told by Native people themselves using Native languages and actors. So far I've seen the Cherokee episode and I see that I have the Geronimo episode on DVR. I hope they show the first two episodes again because I'd really like to see them.

I'm busy damnit

2009-05-06T01:38:52Z

I haven't read LJ in about a month or so, and you might have noticed that I've only been posting youtube videos with little or no commentary. Sorry folks, unless I'm connected to you some other way I have no clue what is going on in your life right now. I've been so busy with work and with living the good life that I don't realistically have time for online only friends. I'm spending slightly more time on twitter, and the various ning sites that some of you are also on. BUT mostly I'm spending time on email and on the phone. There are a number of you that live close to me, have my phone number and email. If something is up please make a real human connection instead of making a general public announcement. I want to be involved in my friends' lives and I want to hear from you all more often and go out for drinks or tea or whatever. Let's tell our funny stories and random thoughts when we're face to face. I don't know how much time and energy I'll be spending on LJ while I'm so busy with everything else. This week though, I'm totally booked. I'm heading out of town, so don't try calling until Monday.

Argentinian bank wants you to be accepting and tolerant of transfolk

2009-05-03T04:53:51Z

...and I guess they're marketing to the trans community in Argentina?

Berkeley cafe

2009-04-26T22:35:44Z

Dear lazywebs,

Please recommend a cafe in Berkeley that will be open after 9pm tonight where I can hook up my laptop and work. Hopefully I will be done with work by then but just in case.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Russian Prison Tattoos

2009-04-25T04:14:19Z

From The Mark of Cain

The Blues

2009-04-23T01:42:12Z

wanna go!

2009-04-22T03:57:35Z

SPARRING WITH BEATNIK GHOSTS - ROUND II
Wednesday, April 22nd at 7 PM - FREE

The first time this event was held at Li Po’s Lounge, the place was packed. Now, Round II will be held amongst the original Subterraneans at The Beat Museum!

Featuring:
Jazz Poet CHARLES CURTIS BLACKWELL
Performance Artist STEVE ARNTSON
San Francisco Poets JENNIFER BARONE
CRAIG EASLEY
ANA ELSNER
GAIL MITCHELL
Mission Poet ALFONSO TEXIDOR
The Poetic Sounds of LUNATION with CLARA HSU and BILL MERCER
Music by BLACK EARTH & THE LAUGHING CHILDE
Produced/Hosted by BOB BOOKER AND DANIEL YARYAN

Link to Flyer:
http://www.thebeatmuseum.org/events.htm

Coilhouse mystery

2009-04-21T19:08:07Z

Yesterday I received a copy of Coilhouse magazine in the mail. If someone reading this sent it to me, thank you very much! I have no clue where it came from or why. I haven't ordered any magazines since I've moved here, and it's addressed to my personal name rather than my legal name, business name or anything like that. And I suspect it was ordered from ebay.

The Poles

2009-04-20T02:17:58Z

This came from an email going around and it's so true!!! being Polish is awesome.

Ah, to be Polish!

Uncanny how many of these are true for us. But I think we're the last generation for whom they will be true; I guess the kids are becoming more "Americanized". But those Polish weddings, polkas and highballs
were fun!!

If you come from Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland, Rochester, Detroit or Milwaukee there is a large church called "Saint Stanislaus," or "Saint Hedwig," within one block of your childhood home (that is, unless you're
one of those suburban exiles, in which case the church is within one block of your babcia's house!)

You wear red on St. Patrick's Day.

Your knowledge of the Polish language is limited to 'naughty' words ie:., dupa, gowno, kurwa, etc, names for food ie: pierogi, kapusta, etc, and drinking toasts ie: na zdrowie , sto lat, etc.

You call your grandma "babcia" or "busia" and your grandpa "dziadzia."

You know how to dance the polka, but you only do it at weddings after kicking back a few generous shots of vodka.

When frustrated, you slap your forehead, shake your head, and say "O Jezu Marija!" (ouch!)

You have one grandma that wears a babushka and galoshes every single day of the year and another grandma that wears a lot of jewelry and too much make-up.

You have at least one uncle named "Stan," or "Stas."

Your relatives have strong devotion to saints, the Blessed Virgin, the Pope, the Democratic Party, the U.S. Steelworkers, etc.

Your grandma has a shrine complete with votive candles and a picture of "Our Lady of Czestochowa" or "Infant of Prague."

Your parents have at least one crucifix or religious picture mounted on a wall in their house with palms tucked behind it.

You get your food blessed at Easter and your house blessed at Christmas time.

Your family has a wigilia meal on Christmas Eve at which you share oplatki and kiss everyone.

You always prefer rye bread to white or wheat. Your dad has forced you to eat horseradish, claiming that it will "put hair on your chest", even If you're a female!

You know the words to "Sto Lat" and sing it at all birthday parties.

You can out drink all of your friends.

You have waited in line at a church or bakery to buy pierogi or paczki.

Words like kiszka, kielbasa, and kolaczki actually mean something to you.

You actually know who Kosciuszko and Pulaski are, and why they're important.

You have at least one relative who plays the Accordion.

You're completely overdressed for every occasion.

Your idea of "healthy" is boiled pierogi then fried in butter w/onions, light beer, and filtered cigarettes.

You have at least one bar in your house - usually in the basement.

Your family always has an excuse to hold a "poprawinie" - e.g., when someone dies, or when someone gets married.

You've never been to Poland , but you have mysterious relatives there to whom you send gifts and money every Christmas.

You collect "prayer cards" from funerals.

You often visit cemeteries ( light votive candles for dead relatives and generally spend an unhealthy amount of time obsessing about death.

People often have trouble pronouncing your last name.

You think having a "highball" is high society. Ah, to be Polish!

blech

2009-04-15T23:40:43Z

Had a migraine and all sorts of ick today so I didn't go to work. I slept all day. I feel totally guilty. I keep thinking there's more of something I can do to prevent this, but I'm not sure what. I get to go to work tomorrow instead, which means no staying out late at the clubs tonight.

movies

2009-04-14T03:37:23Z

More movies that I need to write reviews for
Number Seventeen (1937 Hitchcock)
Chan is Missing
Sanshiro Sugata (1942 Kurosawa)

Work is killing me, seriously this time. And the worst part of it is that It's just a matter of me sitting here and babysitting the various video programs as they render and convert files, and I can't wander too far because I have to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Stupid hipsters

2009-04-06T06:37:01Z

More than fifty Bay Area Native American rights activists converged on the historic East Oakland property at 9:30 p.m. to ensure the shutdown of popular Burning Man group Visionary Village's "Go Native!" party. The fired-up Hopis, Kiowas and other tribal members spent more than four hours lecturing the handful of white, college-class Burners about cultural sensitivity until some of them simply broke down crying.

Which includes some priceless gems like, But for every apology, the group often inserted a foot into its mouth. Some Burners said they'd been trained by shamans to build altars, others sang racist childhood songs, or noted the lack of Native Americans at Burning Man (which occurs on an Indian reservation). Others asked for Indian help with their Burning Man projects, prompting a Hopi woman to go off.

"I'm trying to articulate my feelings as best I can without completely losing it," she said. "What we do is not an artistic expression. And you don't have artistic license to take little pieces here and there and do what you want with it. That's something you people don't understand, probably never will understand.

"Name your little villages whatever you want, but don't ever associate it with Native Americans. Call it the Crystal Ranch or something. Call it the Mars Ranch. If you want to be spiritual — go be a Druid or something."

Ha! trained by "shamans" to build altars. And yes as a matter of fact there is a distinct lack of POC at Burningman. These are the same people that move into less wealthy and often POC neighborhoods and then bitch about the awful effects of gentrification, as if unpacking their boxes makes them integrated into these communities. When I was at BM the star of the camp I was in was a white South African woman because she was so exotic. They really hated me because I didn't buy into all their rich "hippie" nonsense and I almost puked when they were all gathered around her as she talked about her exotic adventures as a white woman in South Africa. And then they wonder why POC aren't interested in going to Burningman!? The real hippies fought for civil rights.

pixiesnakes @ 2009-04-04T19:45:00

2009-04-05T02:45:34Z

I'm not allowed to go grocery shopping when I have the flu and am hungry. I've had a hell of a week, been sick in bed most of the week. I haven't been able to eat much, but now that I'm starving I have a bunch of odds and ends that I have no energy to prepare. My eating habits have been awful for the past two months mostly because my appetite is totally gone and I've been forgetting to eat. I've completely gotten out of the habit of cooking. It's no wonder I've been so sick and stressed. I decided to pick up some easy things at the grocery store to hopefully jump start my cooking at home. Things like veggie burgers and hummus that can be combined with the veggies and things I have at home. Except I'm in no condition to think, so I ended up with a bag full of candles and hummus and hot dog buns and cookies and not much else. So I guess I'm having hummus and spinach on hot dog buns tonight. No light bulbs either so I don't have light over the stove anyway.

And I'm cat sitting Jason's gorgeous cat. The first thing she did was climb into the ceiling beams. I've been able to coax her down and she's been eating and using the cat box, but I really wish she'd cuddle with me instead of watching me sleep from the ceiling.

pixiesnakes @ 2009-04-02T20:57:00

2009-04-03T03:57:47Z

http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/
Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno 2 is up with sea creatures!

pixiesnakes @ 2009-03-29T21:34:00

2009-03-30T04:34:47Z

This song is exceptionally cheesy, but about half of it was filmed at the Armory and features various friendly local pornstars and sex writer Violet Blue. The man dancing around in robes before stripping down to a thong is the perpetually dorky millionaire Peter Ackworth of kink dot com standing on top of the Armory of course.

Catching up

2009-03-29T18:44:08Z

It's been a hell of a week, but there are some good signs that business going to pick up soon. My clients are starting to call me again and I actually was able to see two of them. I also had a dream last night about looking at my ATM receipt and having a lot more money in the bank than I expected.

It seems like I've only been home long enough to sleep. I haven't been home to eat or cook, and the lights above my stove have been burned out for at least a week. I called Lash to see if he could come over and do it for me, because the light fixture is a bit tricky to get open. He insisted that I could do it myself and one week later I have the tools on my desk but have made no effort to try. I might just call up the building manager because I suspect that there might be an electrical problem. When I moved in last August the old fixture was making popping noises so I had them replace it and put new bulbs in. I'm really suspicious about the bulbs burning out so quickly. I'm pretty sure they used those new long lasting bulbs, and no other lightbulbs in the studio have burned out.

So that's the excitement in my life, lightbulbs.

"What do you do?"

2009-03-24T20:35:17Z

Once upon a midnight dreary, I dated a guy that worked at a tantric retreat center. I honestly have no idea what he did because I never asked. I only found out because while at Burningman one of his friends told someone else that this guy works at a tantric retreat center. They were all sort of woo woo cool hippie stuff, and my response was something like, "well he could be the janitor or answer the phone," shattering whatever illusions people have about the glamour of tantra. Not only do I not have these same sort of illusions about tantra, but I also didn't care for that whole, "what do you do?" ritual. At that time I was a stripper. I had just left a job in shipping and receiving. Before that I held jobs in food service and housekeeping. The jobs that people generally look down on. Though honestly, the housekeeping jobs were really some of the best jobs I've ever had.

But anyway, this whole, "what do you do?" thing is really just a ritual to size up people's socio-economic class standing. We all want to think it's just about making small talk and learning about people's personalities, but it's not really. How many of you feel that your job is in any way representative of your personality? When someone says they're a doctor or a long haul trucker you get certain ideas about them and their place in this world. They could both be intelligent attractive people completely out of their work environment and uniform that you met someplace related to shared interests, but once the topic of "what do you do?" comes up we know something about them. And that something is their class status. People may argue about what class status is and who fits in what class, but we all know when someone is our class and not our class. What would you think about someone who said they were a doctor or long haul trucker? Which one is more like the people you know? I have personally gotten burned by this because I am working class trying to pass among middle and higher class people. I learned pretty early that telling your college classmates you spent the summer cleaning hotel rooms doesn't win you any points. In fact they will ignore you for no other obvious reason.

These days when people ask, I tell them that I don't like working or I say something as vague as possible about my work. I also have one of those jobs that people have strange ideas about and I don't really want them to get strange ideas about me so I don't really talk about it. Actually when I told a guy that I didn't like working he said something about how women always like money. I responded that I don't really care about money and I'm from Neptune. He then invited me to ride his spaceship :S

West Oakland memories

2009-03-18T02:24:53Z

This is the place that kept me awake all night with metal noises and that may have set off my sleep disorders and who made me associate the smell of burning metal with home.

In a West Oakland residential community, a metal smelter and scrap yard called CASS (Custom Alloy Scrap Sales) has violated regulations and ignored pleas from the residents to investigate the serious health risks they inflict on the neighboring community. Since, there have been dozens of air tests that have linked CASS as the major polluter. One test showed fifty-four times the safe amount of dioxin, a chemical that emits from burning objects, including all the metal melted at the facility. The kids in West Oakland are seven times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma. CASS is located three blocks away from a public high school and a playground.

This event will raise money for air monitoring equipment for the West Oakland Air Monitors. The one-night auction and art show will be held at Excel High School in West Oakland on Friday March 20th, 2009 from 5-8:30 pm.

Your donation of artwork to this auction will make a measurable impact on the community's effort to stop pollution. All donations are welcome.

Please contact David Joseph-Goteiner at djosephgoteiner@coro.org with questions and he will help you find a way to get involved with this event.

FYI

2009-03-18T01:54:19Z

Just so you all know, one of the prescriptions I take makes my eye dilate. The doctor says it's not a problem. So, if you see me and my eyes seem a little too dilated for normal, don't jump to conclusions.

I ate stuff from the garden!!

2009-03-15T05:16:33Z

I had a studio full of people at a massive photo shoot today, and then I had a film production class in stupid stinky Berkeley. After the class I decided to take a stroll through the garden to check on the plants. Someone CUT DOWN THE MONSTER FENNEL!!! I almost jumped for joy. I'm assuming that it was the landscaping guys because it appeared that someone just took a weed whacker to the thing. Thank Goddess. I ran inside to grab inflectionpoint's shovel to dig up the delicious fennel root. Well apparently this thing was either older than the dinosaurs or not the type of fennel with a tasty root, because all I got was a bunch of woody stuff that went really deep. I went ahead and did some weeding and planted the heather. Then I noticed a giant dandelion in the more populated plot so I dug it up, root and all. It looked like a dandelion and it tasted like a dandelion, so I fried the leaves up and ate them. And I'm still alive. Down the block there is an EPA clean up site. Welcome to the industrial frontier. I might very well die of some rare form of cancer some day, but I won't eat the dandelion root. I'm letting it dry while I figure out what else I might be able to do with it. I'm open to suggestions. Maybe I should actually test the soil for toxins. Other people garden here and eat the food, so it can't be too toxic. Though now that I think about I have accidentally spilled a good amount of antifreeze not far from the garden.