why i will never listen to or read joe.my.god or dan savage

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2010/10/predictable-navel-gazing-over.html

the above is a link to one of the most repulsive, essentializing posts i have ever read. dear joe and dan...you (and your listeners/readers) are advocating for the same kind of violence that you claim to be "fighting" against. it is your way or nothing....there is no critical inquiry or conversation regarding your white male "ideas" or about how to "fix" something...and when, goddess forbid, someone does actually want to put your ideas into relief with others you simply go on attack mode...again...how white, male of you. does it really get better? or is this a rehashing of the myth of "the american dream"? if you work hard enough you can get whatever you want....because if you don't get what you want then you didn't work hard enough and therefore you are a failure? turn it around, the "it gets better" videos, as femmephane points out in this post:

http://tempcontretemps.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/why-i-dont-like-dan-savages-it-gets-better-project-as-a-response-to-bullying/

are created mostly by white, privileged gay men...and when you get to the bottom of this issue it doesn't address gay teen suicide at all it addresses a personal experience of "overcoming" that is universalized and repurposed as a truth. what happens then is the self-serving motivation that constructs these videos, as objects of truth claims, create an unchallenged and anitintellectual (much like the tea party is doing) violent and reactionary atmosphere wherein a teen who does commit suicide is going to be seen as a failure instead of the tragedy that it most certainly is. dan and joe...gay teen suicide is NOT about you or your lives...it is about hopelessness and oppression...it is about trauma and the loss of voice. if you really want to "make a difference" why don't you listen instead of throwing your lives up on a video and telling people to just stick it out or rather "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps kids" because "if you don't get through this difficult time then you have missed the point and you are a failure because you did this to yourself"...joe and dan....in your attempt to embrace this problem, to bring it closer to yourselves you (and i think inadvertently) are abjecting the very bodies that you want to speak to. we need dialogue not two guys (among many) who have tricked themselves into pretending to be self-absorbed mother teresas, and, btw, calling queer theorists "navel gazers" doesn't help your cause...at all...you're just name calling...something i'm sure that gay teens are all too familiar with. if you can't listen to other types of narratives, critiques, and standpoints then how in HELL are you going to be able to listen to bodies that feel hopeless, oppressed, and violently abjected into the periphery? ultimately this is about power...who has it...who doesn't...how it is moving through language. i don't see empowerment in these videos...i see a reinscription of a hegemonic struggle enunciating itself through privileged bodies who, in turn, are firming up their always and already privileged standpoints.

early morning poem...because i can't sleep

i can't sleep...even when i read poems....poems aren't comforting to me, they cut deep, they resonate on a level where sleep is impossible and impossibility is where i expect it to be...sitting next to me on my bed, whispering to me all of the secrets that i thought could never be mine...in a song without meter, melody, or key signature.

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
by Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

BJORK live HYPERBALLAD

i go through all this before you wake...

Nouvelle Vague - killing moon - Piotr Kamler Coeur de Secours

why day friday

why do undergraduate white males (assuming that they're straight as well) think they're cool because they are reading 1) ayn rand 2) kerouac 3) burroughs 4) ginsberg ? seriously, this gives you license to be smug?

why do these same white males think that they can pick up women by reading gay/bisexual authors?

why did summer take so long to get here and then turn around and leave?

why is glenn beck given any kind of platform? seriously, he's an idiot

why do i constantly feel the need to run?

why does it always feel like i am under water when i do run?

why can't keith olbermann run the universe?

why do i see so many people with tattoos now? (not that there's anything wrong with it)

adventures in dating

the "writing" of the self as rhetorical image

i have an online journal on a social networking site called okcupid
it's an ok site...especially since it is free. i like to write in the journal there because ideas and topics come to me quickly when i read people's profiles and how they choose to present themselves to their online audience...so this is what i wrote today:

i haven't written in this thing for awhile...i think the reason revolves around the role that writing plays in my life. i am researching and writing for a living and sometimes it's just nice to just read. so i have been reading when i'm on this site. of course what i have been reading are the various profiles. it's interesting to see what people write (and consequently don't address) when they are constructing an online persona. some are really nice...well written...expressive...obviously offering up to the reader the very best of what or who they think they are. of course many are really, really sad. so look oriented, so age oriented, so much is focused on the body but a completely unoriginal and yet static abstraction of what they expect, so specific, so much like themselves or what they are striving to be. i think that the beauty principal (especially within the gay male community) is grotesque and yet pervasive and insidious. what happens, i think, are a couple of things. 1) there is the "idea" of what we want that will never live up to the second point...the materiality of this "idea." how do you fall in love with an impossibility. for instance here's and example of what i mean:



"Preferably within +/- 5 years of me but not a deal breaker
'Ripped' muscular which means not only does he work out and doesn’t smoke, but clear progress has been made. [insert my note: what does this mean, exactly?]
Honest
Intelligent
Patient
Giving
Sports minded, or sports open minded
Somewhat humble but definitely not arrogant, or narcissistic
Goal oriented
Sense of humor
Emotionally secure enough so as to not need a party every night or someone to entertain them and knows the difference between uncomfortable and comfortable silence
Clean – neat as well as free of bugs and diseases.
Likes music – all kinds but a bias toward alternative rock is ideal. (If classical music is the one and only station because of the snob effect, and ditto for jazz then that fish should swim out to sea.)
Likes all kinds of art (painting, sculpture, photography, theatre, books, architecture, etc.)
Thinks old car are “kewl” and even some new ones but not just because they’re new
Spiritual but not necessarily with an established religion
Not obsessed with money or social status.
Maybe has chest hair and a tattoo or two (or even a couple more)
Knows what LTR stands for.
Can write an inquiry email more than one line long that describes themselves and how they fit the list." [seriously? i don't even think that jesus christ (or whatever messiah you happen to believe in) could live up to all of these expectations]


clearly, as stipulated by the final sentence...this has nothing to do with any one person "applying" for this man's affection but rather this is how this person sees himself. narcissism at its finest. so specific and so "obsessive" and yet to be obsessed is something that this person doesn't want (except, perhaps in the attention that they pay to their body?). and i would like to know his definition of LTR. what does that mean. i study language...i am a rhetorician...so definitions and expectations within language systems intrigue me. does his definition encompass someone in a wheelchair? probably not...is this a search for love or for an ideal? who knows...but it is sad and pathetic and one of the main reasons why i feel no solidarity with the gay community.

James - One of the Three

on the verge of a daydream

i'm on the verge of daydream...between starting something and procrastinating about it. i find myself doing this a lot lately...i write here because for some reason writing in this journal doesn't count for me...it is probably not even read by anyone except me anyway...but does that make it any less real? language and reality are so entangled that we become shocked at the concept of sexuality, gender, race, etc. being social constructions and not naturally occurring phenomena. but as i was getting ready to work my mind shifted to how i actually gather information when i am researching. in this age of technological advancement...computers and the act or acts of composing being framed in a type of word processing that tells you when you missspelll a wrod by little red squiggly lines...i am still a hand writer. i usually write my notes and my research out by hand before i start actually composing...for some reason the quotes that i pick and the connections that i am trying to make between concepts or, even, the premises that i am either trying to further or deconstruct don't count because they haven't been placed in a more formal discourse...no one will read these words except me and for some reason i find comfort with this. i can be exposed without judgment like taking a photo without being posed or airbrushed or photo-shopped, etc. my words are beyond the scrutiny of others and my paranoia surrounding my self-perception as a writer and thinker is abated. i think that in a previous life i was one of those monks that copied manuscript in a gothic monastery...for reasons far beyond any understanding of myself...i find this comforting. setting language to page, filling negative space by candlelight and the smell of incense. i guess that's a daydream for another day.

just a thought: a monday morning free-write

i am sitting here this morning watching the world wake up. i have always been a morning person...i think i inherited that from my father...who was born and reared on a farm. the mornings are when i "think" my best. my mind seems really alert, especially after a good night's rest. but it is also troubling as well...i have so much that i have to get done and it all seems so impossible for me, at the moment. i try to take things one step at a time but my mind likes to move ahead...creating future narratives of what my life may lead to. it's kind of scary. i go on the job market this september and i really don't have any high hopes for myself...it's not about getting a job...i can get a job doing almost anything...it's about finding and doing what i love. i love my research and i love working with these really cool ideas...writing is a little bit more torturous because it requires me to put these abstract ideas in a written, concrete form that always loses shape when taken out of the mind and placed into material existence...it is also open to scrutiny and dismissal. i think that i can handle the latter but i am having trouble with the former. ugh. but the best i can do is to try and work every single day...to take a very deep breath before plunging myself underwater to move ever so slowly against the currents of life.

sunday poem, because i'm procrastinating and yet always thinking about my dissertation

Spelling
Margaret Atwood

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,

learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

ò

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

ò

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

ò

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

ò

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

ò

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

adventures in writing a dissertation while in vegas

i have never been to vegas until two of my friends decided to have their wedding at the flamingo. until i ventured to vegas the past week, i never ever thought about mixing academia and alcohol and i did just that...shamelessly, over and over and over again. bloody mary's to be precise. i naively thought, since i didn't gamble, it would be a relatively cheap vacation...i was wrong. this place is in a very pure sense: capitalism at its most insidious....seriously, it is the decadence and underbelly of the free market sitting side-by-side. i walked off of the plane and that place took twenty dollars. i had to take out a small loan to buy drinks...however, unlike gambling and losing a butt-load of money...i lost a lot but at least i was buzzed. the people at my credit card company called me the moment i put something on it...and when i say immediately it was before i walked away from the cashier (i was buying a toothbrush and yes in vegas putting a toothbrush on a credit card is completely and reasonably appropriate). the best part was my friend j. telling me about watching this older woman, dressed in a really nice bathing suite cover-up and perfectly styled hair puking in one of the lobby's trashcans while holding, out and to the side, her coach purse (which, again, made complete sense to me)...definitely a ftw moment i'm just disappointed that i missed it. oh well, there's always next year...not.

so, i worked on my dissertation with a buzz, listened to my ipod, people watched, and in between those times, i attended the wedding (which went off without a hitch). most of my friends hung out by the pool...which was impressive i must admit (the pool not my friends although i'm sure they would beg to differ) but i was born and grew up in florida...around palm trees, beaches, and pools so those things meant nothing to me.

i did walk around outside a bit...which, btw, dry heat sucks. i went to "the palace," and i trekked on over to "paris." i guess what freaked me out about these places in general is the illusion of history that they present to their "readers." i study rhetoric and these rhetorical situations where anything but interesting. i mean vegas has all of these copies with no original...i know that a number of philosopher/theorists have written about this complex (and yet straightforward) cultural intersection but reading and experiencing are two very different things. even the palm trees (which i don't think are indigenous to the area) that surrounded the waterfalls (which i know aren't natural) created this site of "meaning" that made no sense at all. flat, schizophrenic (as f. jameson would say), without a history, and copying off of an original that does not exist nor has it ever existed. too weird...no wonder i needed a drink.

further adventures in dissertating

i try to feel excited about writing this diss because it symbolizes for me some kind of light at the end of a very, very, very, very long and dark tunnel. this diss is kind of like a boyfriend or sig. other that you love and hate at the same time...an intersection of total paradox where love and fear exist in the same moment. it takes a while to get used to that feeling. but it never stops though....as if after i'm done and i get a job there's tenure to worry about...there's publishing to worry about...there's the possible locations that you might be moving to that may or may not be better than where you are in the present. i have this urge to just drive to chicago and take my chances...i mean seriously we basically are born and then we die...i need to keep it interesting between those two points.

every intention

today is hot, i need to work, so the logical outcome is to write a blog post and procrastinate. i did get an ipod to help me stop the annoying and, of course, intrusive habit of eavesdropping on peoples' conversations while at the coffee shop. it seriously was a sad tactic of procrastinating...i would listen to anything...from how "judy's" work day went to "mark's" melancholy revolving around his lack of a dating life and how he will probably never, ever find anyoneblahblahblahblah...ahh sweet youth...(i must say that i am glad i have nipped (or has steve jobs done it) this bad habit in the bud...i was sinking low with no bottom in sight

some days i think that i have this dissertation under control and then all of a sudden it is too big for me to wrap my head around...again...it makes me want to cry but i don't have the energy. telling my parents and friends that i will be graduating in may 2011 has put the pressure on and at first it was a positive stress but now it is just eating me up...especially when my mom is saving to make the trip...oh well, back to dracula...meh

why day friday

ok i'm starting it back up:

why does johnny depp not age? seriously..it's kind of creepy

why does the old dude at the coffee shop not see the uncomfortable facial expressions of the women that he is hitting on? and fyi dude tuck in your shirt or don't but please for the love of god stop with the half tucked look

why do i feel panicked all of the time?

why do i look better on paper? i mean, really, a guy will ask me out on a date and then i never hear from him again

why can't i just feel comfortable with myself, books, poetry, and writing to keep me company?

why is enough really never enough?

why are my thumbs twitching as if there is something wicked coming?

growing older

i think that i am getting older...i have been thinking a lot about relationships and the high probability that i will be single for the rest of my life. that used to scare me a lot...i mean, really scare me like a smiths or morrissey lyric---or something. but for no particular reason that i can think of, i woke up this morning thinking about my future...not next week "future" but 20-30 years from now (assuming that i make it that far) and i "feel" like i am going to be just fine. i've never really had this feeling without the typical undercurrent of panic. maybe it's maturity or perhaps something else...something deeply rooted like serenity or hopeless resignation...throwing my hands up in the air and sighing an "oh well." i'm not sure exactly "what" this is and i'm not sure if i want to figure it out. i think that i will just keep on the road that i am on right now...leaving myself open for any thing (good or bad) to happen...any horrible or wonderful thing. maybe i am understanding how the world works---or not. i just hope that if there is an afterlife it will be written by francesca lia block. i could spend eternity in fairy wings, eyeliner, ebony-purple hair, shiny lip gloss, and glitter...yeah, that would be pretty sweet.

and you ain't there...

And everyone in Balencia gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

should i?

to blog or not to blog...now that is a question...

i mean...it's kind of like talking/writing to myself or talking/writing into the void only this void is on the internetz

maybe i should finish writing my dissertation on this blog...that would kind of cool

or not.