Scifi Channel's The Tin Man

I'm really looking forward to SciFi Channel's The Tin Man, coming soon to a basic cable packaged television near you. Personally, I'm going to try rigging the set in my Boise corporate apartment to record it for me as I'll be teaching and then back in SF on the days of the first airing. Of course, past experience with attempting to get VCRs to record leads me to really bank on SciFi airing this miniseries again on days when I will be around.

What is so compelling about Dorothy Gail's story? Is it the metaphor of the tornado? Is it the reinterpretation of the real world in terms of fantasy that we understand on a deeper level? Is it the framing of the stories and the wizard himself? I completely geeked out over the website for The Tin Man which literally dives into the Russian doll framing of the story-within-a-story, world-within-a-world. I recommend using the lever on the upper left corner to go full speed and then reverse it all!

I also HIGHLY and capitally recommend Geoff Ryman's novel WAS for a wonderful explosion of the entire world of OZ and L Frank Baum's novel and the Hollywood version and the effects of it on people in a "real" world and a very different perspective of what Dorothy's life might have been like. If you know Kansas you might also really enjoy this as Ryman uses excerpts from Kansas settler's dairies, memoirs, historical record to reconstruct the landscape itself. Even more than any of the sort of straight versions of the story, Ryman brings out that capability in all of us of letting the world get ripped to shreds in our pursuit of the magic, safety, or just plain quiet that might await us in the eye of the tornado.

Home is Where Your Car is

Yesterday, was the day that I did the Dance of Unfettered Joy all the way up the street, eight-count triple-stepping past the guards at the Federal Mint, and moved my car on up. Yes, after 4 years of living in the city, having a car off and on again and never once coming at all close to have a garage or parking space...*rolls the drum*....I finally got my residential parking permit! The dieties behind the double-paned bullet proof glass at the Department of Parking & Transit have finally deigned to grant me the chance of finding viable parking near my home. It's been a long wait. So, when the shiny blue sticker came in the mail, I ripped it open and shamelessly tore out of the house to move my car into the open space right outside my front door! Yes, I practically skipped the last few steps to my car singing, "Home at last, thank god almighty, Home at last."

That was Wednesday, and you'll note in the photo that street sweeping won't happen again until NEXT WEDNESDAY at 8:00am. Which means that I can fly away to Boise and come back Tuesday evening with plenty of time to move my car. And if I can't find a space, no sweat--literally. I can roll out of bed at 7:50 on Wednesday morning throw on some shoes and slouch down stairs to clear out before the sweepers come by. That's my apartment, just to the right of the tree. So, no jogging frantically up several blocks only to find that they came a little early and I owe another $50.00 to The Man.

Oh, how I have seriously paid my dues during my time here! Not only have I spent hundreds of dollars on parking tickets, for everything from the classics--street sweeping and over-extending the time limit--to the occasional emergency indiscretions--expired meter, parking in a loading zone, parking in a tow-away zone. In my defense, the last one was only a tow-away zone during certain rush hour times of the day and I got there to move only 5 minutes late. That ticket was seriously $60.00 and it was on Halloween (a holiday for which most San Franciscans get in a festive mood), but the woman was writing the ticket as I ran up and absolutely refused to stop. Anyway, I've done quite a bit of community service to pay down some of the debts that I haven't had the cash to cover.

So, why didn't I just get a permit right away? This is a simple question with a very complicated answer that has changed depending on whatever situation I have found myself in during my time here. What it comes down to is that, even though San Francisco is the place in which I have felt the most comfortable and found the most kindred spirits, it hasn't been until just this year that I have finally found myself truly at home.

In February of this year, I moved into my girlfriend's two bedroom apartment right in the middle of the city--not in the downtown part, but right in the geographical center of San Francisco. I really did not want to move into this neighborhood after living in a quieter one for the last year. Also, I had serious doubts about moving in with a Significant Other after past experiences that ended in metaphorical flames. But before agreeing on the move, we worked really hard to establish the ground rules and workshop the fears and possible icky scenarios, so that when I came, we shook up the space really well and served the re-furnished, re-painted, re-vitalized rooms up with a dash of her taste and twist of mine. It worked really well. In fact, people who have known her during her entire 5 year stint in this apartment have commented on the fact that they not only like what I've brought to the place, but that they feel for the first time that this HER space, too. Her past series of roommates all had a temporary or utilitarian way of living in the apartment, but she and I have managed to build a little nest that is comfortable and welcoming and just the right amount of wacky.

It's been a great few months. Not completely conflict-free, but the way that we've worked through the few confrontations that we've had has been reassuring. As with all matters of the heart, there is a possibility that flames will end this, too; but, if so, I think that they will be the cleansing kind that remove all the impurities and leave the true core of you shining solidly among the ashes.

So, now that my home-life has been registered and validated by the parking gods, one of the complications was that I was asked to go work in Idaho for several weeks straight. I found myself unable to accept the full teaching run, despite the intense need to get away from the painfully paradoxical job situation. Since last October, I have been spending 40 hours a week in a somewhat isolated office at odd times in the day doing mostly solitary work. And the business that has cloistered me: TOURISM! Yes, it's a perfect example of the doctor's sick wife or the cobbler's barefoot son. Anyway, I had started craving the dynamic social atmosphere of the classroom almost immediately after signing on with the company a year ago and, after watching almost every other co-worker go off on long extended backpacking trips to other continents, I've just needed to get out of there. Nevertheless, my heart is now in San Francisco, so I instead took the option of commuting via air once a week until the middle of December. It's the best of both worlds: I'm traveling, teaching, seeing a new place, and on Tuesdays I get to come back home to my books, my kitchen, my couch, my collection of tacky knick-knacks, and my insightful, passionate, solidly grounded sweetheart.

Oakland Pootie Awks

Despite a measly 4 hours of sleep for the past two nights in a row, my lids refuse to flutter down over my dry, itchy eyeballs and zonk me out, leaving tourists to wander the streets of San Francisco in search of the eco-friendly van that was supposed to whisk them away to one national park or another. Nope, I'm wide awake and openly taking reservations for points of common interest near and far.

And what is the source of this stunning commitment to wine tasters, giant sequoia seekers and Grand Canyon caravaners everywhere? You might well ask this, especially if we are personally acquainted and you have been kind enough to lend an ear to my workplace woes this summer. I might just as well tell you that I've been to the well. It wouldn't just be a corny joke, either. Last night was the Grand Opening of the The Sacred Well, near Lake Merrit in Oakland. The store has been a long time in the works for a friend of mine and his business partner, so the opening was an exciting event. The store is like the Scooby Gang's Magic Box, except that instead of a martial arts studio in the basement, there is a snugly saronged room tucked away in the back for giving astrological readings. As far as I could tell, there were no strangulating ancient mummy hands or even an eye of newt bulk bin, so it's not completely like the Magic Box; but it is warmly beautiful, with plenty of wooden structures full of all sorts of wicked / winged things.* In fact, the logo for the store has these neat little birds flapping around on it that remind me of this artist I found online awhile ago and then lost. Anyway, the shadows of birds are very sweet images these days.

Other sweet things at Well:

• Alt Life Merch!
• People who told me about the tattoos they've seen featuring the form of the Morton Salt Girl, a version of which I was wearing on my shirt.
• Grapes on the appetizer plate that an eight year old patron highly recommended.
  
• Old friends, new friends and freaky fairy folk.
• Crystals, stones, minerals and the people who imbue them with mysticism. I poked around the display cases, bowls, and way cool library cataloging unit, and came away with the 2 pieces featured in the picture to the left, which I am very excited about!
  

Up to now, I've never done much more than admire "pootie awks," as my cousin used to call them when he was little and had a speech impediment. Awks were pootie entirely on their own merits, but even more so when my little sister and said cousin presented us with stones from the yard that they'd transformed into full on works of art, complete with paint, glitter, feathers, and even rhinestones and lace if mom was around to wield the glue gun. So, there hasn't been much more than that and the index of refraction associated with crystals in my personal experience.

Last night whilst browsing politely, a weird little bubble of green with black flecks caught my eye and I thought, That rock looks like an alien spider. If the light from a laser pointer fell on just the right spot during an electrical storm, it would activate and start spinning webs that spelled out science fiction stories. Before I got to decide who was going to be Zuckerman's famous pig in this scenario, I found myself talking to a couple of clairvoyant cats (man variety) who'd acquired a fairly large chunk of stalagmite-looking rock that turned out to be a catcher's mitt for angels! One could see right off how the angels would get stuck in the labyrinthine turns of soft heavenly blue gemstone crawling out of a craggy gray shell. Then one of them put a periwinkle piece into my palm that had been smoothed and flattened like a river rock. There's an outlandish story about the first and only discovery of this type of stone in a Peruvian mountain. While it was in the telling, I glimpsed the alien spiders in the dish again and decided that they were going to help me write my science fiction nanowrimo novel. So, I consulted a reference book the store keeps on hand and found out that it's called prehnite and is an inspirational rock that aids in prophesy, visualization and the remembrance of dreams! Kismet!

Here are a few descriptions of the prehnite (prehinite, prehenite, alt sp?) that I found online, though neither of these are nearly as good as the mystical one in the book at the Well.

From CrystalsandJewelry.com:

Prehnite is a very protective stone and can protect one on all levels. It strengthens the life force and generally increases and stimulates energy [. . .]. It aids spirit communication through meditation or visualization, out-of-body travel, and is a powerful dream stone. Prehnite is also known as a stone of prophesy which stimulates inner-knowing. Physically, prehnite is helpful in the healing of gout, anemia, and kidney problems.

Although I don't have the conditions listed here, my thyroid needs all the energy-boosting help it can get.

From Neatstuff.net:

PREHNITE (zeolite) Metaphysical Properties- 4th and 6th chakras. [Huh?] Prehnite used to multiply energy, good for using in crystal grids. [. . .] Some like to call Prehnite 'prophecy stones' for they give one the ability to see into the future. This is a good choice to use in dream work, it allows you to not only remember your dreams, but it also will inspire you to remember long ago thoughts which may be helpful in personal growth. Also inspires one in every aspect of life.

Numerology- Vibrates to the number 7. [(Huh?) x 2]

Gemological Properties- Zeolites are a popular group of minerals for collectors and an important group of minerals for industrial and healing purposes. [. . .] Typically forming in the cavities, or vesicles, of volcanic rocks "basalt", zeolites are the result of very low grade metamorphism. Some form from just subtle amounts of heat and pressure and can just barely be called metamorphic while others are found in obviously metamorphic regimes. [(Huh?) x 3] Zeolite crystals have been grown on board the space shuttle and are undergoing extensive research into their formation and unique properties. An example of the most common zeolites include: Prehnite, apophyllite, gyrolite, okenite, natrolite. Heulandite, Chabazite. Mesolite, and Stilbite.

In sum, I've now got my little alien spider muse sitting near my computer (and a really cool Optical Calcite cut into a rhombohedron for more visual aid), percolating ideas, getting me ready to put my hand back to yarn spindle, and even keeping me awake at work. I'm jazzed! If you're strolling around Lake Merritt, I highly recommend stopping by The Sacred Well right across Grand Avenue. As their slogan says: Magic happens every day.

*Going to see Sunset Rubdown play tomorrow night and intend to make it there on time so that I might actually see the show, unlike last time! This song is from their new album called Random Spirit Lover.

Doris Lessing Won the Nobel Today!

After being on the short list for 40 years, Doris Lessing was finally awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for being an “epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” Though I still haven't read The Golden Notebook, her most well-known and important feminist work, I'm delighted to see that the Academy are willing to recognize someone with (gasp) science fiction as part of her repertoire! By the way (of using gendered pronouns), the NY Times reports that Lessing is the 11th woman to win the prize. That's right, only the 11th!! It's appalling, considering that the award has been given out almost every year since 1900! Yep, out of a total of 103 awards, just 11 women. I'm finding it difficult to let that really sink in.

You can see pictures of all literature prize laureates on the Nobel Prize site here, with head shots of each author and the summary of what merited their award. These are the 11 women:
2007-Doris Lessing, American
2004-Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian
1996-Wislawa Szymborska, Polish
1993-Toni Morrison, American
1991-Nadine Gordimer, South African
1966-Nelly Sachs (1/2 prize), Swedish
1945-Gabriela Mistral, Spanish
1938-Pearl Buck, American
1928-Sigrid Undset, Norwegian
1926-Grazia Deledda, Italian
1909-Selma Lagerlof, Swedish

Such a strange demographic: more Americans than any other country; a few men-only decades--1980s, 1970s, 1950s, and 1910s. What does this say Sweden's academic climate and world view? Since half of them were given in the past 20 years, maybe the efforts of de-canonization in literature course curriculum has paid off? Maybe those second wave feminists have finally gotten old enough to gain some recognition at having withstood the test of time? Maybe. The results are still disturbing.

One common retort to the protest of traditionally male-dominated book awards is that there just aren't as many woman writers as there are men. This, gentle reader, amounts to nothing more than a pile of ill-informed bull-honky. Despite having odds stacked against them due to second-class citizenship, disenfranchisement, relegation to the domestic sphere, and intensely gendered upbringings, women have been finding ways to write throughout history. They have been published under male pseudonyms, as mere women's writing, stuck in genre ghettos, looked down upon as being of lesser value, edged out of public discourse, but they've been there nevertheless and are there, whether we see them in Norton's anthology or not, like ghosts wandering the corridors of Hemingway Hall, looking for A Room of One's Own, or screeching what sounds like hysterical nonsense to the Academy like the Madwoman in the Attic.

After all that, I must say that touting Doris Lessing as a feminist or really even as a science fiction writer are dubious claims at best. Although Lessing has openly admired sf and has attended a con or two as guest of honor, she called her sf pieces, like Canopus, "space fiction," which gives you an idea of the goings on in the books. More importantly, Lessing herself has denied affiliation with the term "feminist," being from an older generation than the second wavers. From the scathing review that Ursula LeGuin (all hail the mistress of fem/sf) gave Lessing's last novel, The Cleft, it seems that the simple presence of strong, realistic female characters, which was the major element that made Lessing's early work so revolutionary, has been overshadowed by a third wave feminist expectation of deeper philosophical human equality regardless of gender. Still, I need to scold myself one more time in this entry for never having read The Golden Notebook.


An interesting factoid I didn't know until today is that Lessing was raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). This is one of those weird synchronicity things that seems to happen whenever I learn something new. Just two weeks ago I learned about Rhodesia for the very first time when I picked up a book called Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. This skillfully written autobiography describes Fuller's life growing up in Rhodesia. It's just the way of the ether that a defunct country name will continue to pop up in random places for the rest of the month now that it is in my consciousness. Or maybe it's just another kind of voodoo since it turns out that though Fuller was raised in Rhodesia, she is white, British by birth, and now lives in America--just like Doris Lessing! (That calls for queuing the Kids: "Don't Tell Me That!!")

From the SFBikeC Newsletter this week...

Save our Streets from Auto-geddon! Donate Now to No on H!
The campaign against Proposition H desperately needs your financial support. Prop H is widely understood to be the most radical anti-environmental, anti-sustainable transportation measure ever put on the San Francisco ballot. We are asking all SFBC members -- people who care about livable streets, global warming, and safe bicycling -- to donate $25, $100, $1,000, or whatever you can afford, to the No on H campaign. Polling shows than when people are educated about Prop H, support drops like a stone -- the money you donate will go directly to education about No on H.

Prop H would quintuple parking in the city, jamming our already congested streets, slowing public transit, and endangering bicycle and pedestrian routes. Save our city's streets!

The Joy of Sake

Tonight my girlfriend and I will host a sushi party in honor of our friend's birthday. Sounds gracious, right? The catch, other than the one we'll purchase by the pound, is that he will have to make all the rolls himself. After slaving away at the large quantity of sticky rice, the finely sliced vegetables, fruits and pickles, exacto-knifing the raw fish, rolling it all together and feeding all the hungry seals, er, friends, he'll finally sit down to his own roll stuffed with the last scraggly bits and probably find that he's not even hungry anymore, having taste-tested everything along the way. Happy Birthday, indeed! In my defense, I would not have been so gracious as to invite him to do this if he himself hadn't requested it. The birthday boy is actually one of the most strategically adept people I know. There are still hand prints on my bottom from the last time he thoroughly spanked me on the chess board. I know he's also savvy to the karmic principles of giving and receiving and could probably graph out the many happy returns the universe will have in store for him after tonight.

Meanwhile, I'm hard at work blogging and the gf's gone out to by the myriad ingredients we've committed to buying in order to pull this off. Here's the bb's wish list of items so far:

Staples:

Rice (botan or calrose)

Soy Sauce

Nori
Wasabi
Pickled ginger

Fish:
Salmon
Tuna
Fake crab (or real crab is someone's feeling generous)

Fruits, Veggies, etc:
Asparagus
Mango
Sesame seeds (kuro -n- shiro goma)
Cream cheese
Bell peppers of various colors
Cucumber
Green Onion
Mushrooms (shitake preferred)
Spinach
Tomago
Snow Peas

Living across the street from a major supermarket and a bike ride away from Bi-Rite--the upscale health food market near Dolores Park which spawned the dreamy Bi-Rite Creamery (warning: flavor list may cause sudden salivation)--shopping won't be too hard. The difficult part will be finding sushi-grade fish that is also wild rather than farmed.

Finding a good sake is also a challenge. In my experience you can never judge by how cute or sexy the bottle might be. Generally, I find it safer to go with an unfiltered, milky sake rather than the clear type. Two resources I'd like to tap in this regard are:

1. Sushi Zone: A great little sushi restaurant in our 'hood. Not the best ever and it's running way behind on the customer service beat (see Yelp! reviews from folks who seem to know their sushi better than I), but their oyster appetizer and low prices are well worth the 2 hour wait time you are likely to experience. And the unfiltered sake we had there a few weeks ago was deemed by a dinner comrade as, "the best sake I've ever drinken." Since said comrade & spouse are moving in right down Pearl Street, only a few houses down from the Zone next week, I'll have plenty of opportunity to pop in there and find out what type of sake they serve.

2. The Joy of Sake: A convention happening at the Hilton Hotel next weekend. There will be 300 of the best sakes that will be laid out in their prime quaffability, plus plenty of delectable bites to clear the palate. Would anyone like to take me to this cost-prohibitive, but plenty posh party?

Gays in the Military?

I came across this hilarious video on Brave New Films after watching 5 minutes of the Republican presidential candidate debate, in which the panel of 10 white men, including Giuliani & McCain, attempted to individually avoid the question of whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military until finally the CNN questioner (Scott Spradling?) asked for anyone on the panel to take the floor if they thought that the ban should be lifted and the seconds tick by in silence. So, after that depressing moment, I found this video to cheer me up and ended up writing such a long comment, that I thought I'd repost it here:



Besides the Republican line of the hour, "Lifting the ban is a social experiment that would be irresponsibly dangerous to indulge in at this critical time of war," what is Mark Smith trying to convey here?

First, he wants to make it clear that Mark Smith (or insert other generic white male name here) has a rampant heterosexuality that is uncontrollable to the extent that he cannot even focus on his own impending death when there are women in short shorts around. The female body as an unfailingly sexy object of desire is also important to protect the macho image of the virile male. If he can't get it up for a couple of Hooter's girls having a pillow fight on the front line of combat, he is probably not good for anything.

By the same coin, the ultimate macho man ends up taking the place of the Hooter's waitress when he is the sex object for the gay soldier. Thrown into a troop of (scantily clad?) Mark Smiths, the gay serviceman must be helplessly drawn to Mark Smiths unquestionable manliness. He MUST! If he doesn't, well that must mean that there is something wrong with Mark Smith's pristine masculinity! Yikes! How can Mark Smith even think of subjecting the troops to that kind of identity crisis, especially when we're in the middle of waging an ideological war?!

Furthermore, if Mark Smith can't face the fact that every gay male on the planet would not fall for him immediately, regardless of what he might actually be doing on the ground in Iraq (i.e. dressed from head to toe in camo, carrying upwards of 50 pounds of gear not including firearms, fighting for his life, trying to communicate with desperate people who speak another language, surviving attacks and dust storms, or other NON-SEXY things), then our manly troops couldn't handle it either.

What the Republican party in general is saying with this line (see the above-mentioned GOP debate for multiple repetitions of said line) is that they need to protect the masculine ego of a uniformly hetero, male military.

But wait a second... What about all those women we've allowed into the ranks? Aren't the good old boys going crazy trying to keep in line when bananas appear in their pockets every time G.I. Jane marches next to them? Oh, well, maybe it's just understood that the women in the military are those "rough" "tomboy" types anyway. So, the GOP would be okay with assuming they are all lesbians, as long as they keep their mouths shut about it and, indeed, about anything else other than patriotic sloganage.

This is a tough topic. Like many other political debates, I find myself torn by the disconnect between conceptual perspectives and practical realities. I'm hesitant to shout, "Gays in the Military!" at a protest rally, because I don't believe that war should be waged at all. I am a pacifist and cannot see any war as justifiable. Having complete peace imposed on the warmongers--THAT would be the real social experiment, and that is probably not possible right now, if it ever will be. Furthermore, our government's treatment of the troops is morally questionable and fiscally irresponsible. (See Aztlan y Vietnam for accounts of racist & classist draft practices during the 1960s. See Fahrenheit 9/11 for documentation on military recruiters in action.) Why would I want to fight a political battle so that my queer family can go and fight wars that only serve to keep old white men in power? Those are my main objections. That said, the reality is that there are queer people who want and are able to serve in the military, but are disallowed or fired for being honest.

Unequivocally, I feel that the government should not be charged with policing self-image and identity. Those are personal things that should not concern public policy. What the goverment should be doing is supporting those people who are strong enough to choose this violent, traumatizing way of giving back to their communities. The government should be serving those people to the best of their ability, not forcing them to subscribe to a certain perspective on sexuality, or to lie about who they are to the people they work with. This policy does nothing but demean the professionalism of all troops, gay or straight, and results in the thinning of their ranks with intent only to punish the existence of human diversity. It's reprehensible and should be stopped.

Go to Lift The Ban for more info on what can be done.

A Breath of Fresh Air

This is my second attempt at blogging. I plan to use this space to develop some good writing habits, and rid myself of a few bad ones, by publishing those inner monologues I care to remember here and, in case of actual intellectual content, juice up the roots of any ideas that have potential.

I'm also going to continue developing the art of the run-on sentence, because, after all, if it's good enough for William Faulkner, it's good enough for me.

That mofo knew how to make a sentence breathe!
Just imagine the expert flow through those nostrils:
sucking in surrounding particulate matter of all kind without prejudice,
until the color itself drains from the photo,
presenting us with the issue of blacks, whites and all the grays facing off between them,
making arbitrary definitions painful and fatal,
filling us up with all the space inside that olfactory orifice
until we cannot bear the sight of a sniffer swollen with such ugly history,
and, finally, exhausting these subjects in one prolonged, ghostly stream,
which raggedly flutters the wiley mustache hairs of dead white men,
in whom we have ceased to trust
and who can no longer betray our trust
unless we forget the whiskey stained nose of the writer who let it all out,
that last sigh,
frozen in time,
alternately indicting and exonerating
the perfect hypocrisy of a free life.

I have a defunct livejournal that I started in college and to which I have been sorely unfaithful. My purpose there was not so different as it is here, but I expect this one to flourish, since gmail makes everything in life so much more convenient. But maybe I'll just write this one entry and never come back. It's certainly a possibility, though not necessarily a tragedy. It could also be possible that if I don't spend any time blogging here at all, I'll become a speech writer instead and write some terribly underhanded speeches for the next GOh!P presidential candidate in which Shermanesque oaths are made under a veil of irony and sent out to the press 24 hours in advance. Throwing monkey wrenches into the belly of the beast sounds like an erstwhile activity, that would certainly benefit the world far more than web reminders to myself of how to clean one's bike chain.

Seems that I am setting myself up for failure either way, but there can be no success without failure. So really, what I'm looking at here, is clearly unavoidable success.