Recent Entries

a shout-out to my energy-aware pagan worshippy friends

I need a serious heavy-duty cleansing ritual for my office before I will be able to return to work there. Anybody out there able to/interested in helping me do this?

any leads?

Does anybody know about any September sublets down in JP? Just asking. Any info would help me out a lot.

Wanting to clear something up here

I am not a straight woman. Please don't make the assumption that I am even more into boys than into girls, because you will be wrong. Anything that may have given you the impression that I am straight is purely situational, and may also be based on my choosing to let you assume things to make my life feel easier and safer.

Michigan bound

I am going to be unreachable until August 13th, except for possible periodic pay phone check-ins. Adventure! Excitement! Womyn! Train-travel! Music!
Please hope for me to have a nice time, and for the rain-fly of my tent to remain sound and firmly attached.
Until the 13th, ta!

my favorite magazine

Print media is a long way from dead. That said, Bitch Magazine, a feminist response to pop culture, now has these, two of my favorite articles ever on their online site:

Written by someone who Belmonte knows IRL, a guide for seeing through articles about "science":

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/mad-science

Written by someone I have no known personal connection to, "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Feminism But Were Afraid to Ask". For reference, please know the information presented by this article if you want to talk about women with me.

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/everything-about-feminism

to borrow?

Does anyone nearby have 1-2 large duffel bags or rolly-bags that I could borrow? Starting to gather things for Michfest, I realize that I lack large luggage. Can anybody help me out? Because of the outdoorsy nature of my trip, I can't promise to be able to return them in mint condition cleanliness-wise, but maybe they will gain a certain well-travelled adventurous-type patina? I would be most appreciative to anybody who can help me out.

anybody?

I need to shred a stack of papers. Does anybody local have a shredder I could borrow for a weekend?

a distinction I'd like to keep in my mind so I'm putting it here

"It’s important –even kind of exhilarating – for women to embrace their inner bitch, but the point should be to expand our sense of human possibility, not to enshrine aggression as a virtue."

- Barbara Ehrenreich

(no subject)

What are your plans for this coming Labor Day weekend? Specifically, what are you doing Monday September 1st? Jake & I will be moving! Want to share this life transition with us as we move out to a place of our own, and get a serious workout at the same time? Information will be provided by the on-staff massage therapist about how to reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness and also how to lift with your knees not your back! We will be moving to a location that is dangerously close to the Wine & Cheese Cask and also Thai Hut* and moving help will be rewarded!

*The more observant among you may observe that this will also put us close to Dali, but that is largely academic to me given lifestyle/earning-type issues.

an announcement

Please, unless you are MY FRIEND BUT NOT JAKE'S, please ask HIM how his job search is doing, even if you see me more often than you see him. I am officially retiring from all PR duties because I'm sick of talking and thinking about it. His email address is easy to find or maybe you already know it. Updates, as they pertain to my life and amuse me to make, may be posted here, but only if I feel like doing it.

HOUSE

Many of you may know that our communal living situation has decided to break up at the end of our lease cycle (Sept.) which is sad, but also nice, since Jake & I will get a chance to see how much truth there is to all the sentences that start with "When we get our own place...". I have confirmation that we ARE in fact a landlord's wet dream from the owner of our teeny tiny dream house, which we will be signing the lease on later this week. I have been crossing my fingers since Friday night. So excited!!!

(no subject)

Thank you to

elements and her housemate (whose lj username I have forgotten) for hosting a truly excellent clothing swap. I have so much new clothing! I have an insane 70s purple maxi-dress and nowhere to wear it! I have the option to dress up as

damselfrog for halloween if I want to! I tried on everything at home with a more critical eye and more time in front of the mirror and I think that there are only two things that I came home with but won't really ever wear. Now, who is going to host a dress-like-phyllis-diller party? My dress needs an event.

Revolution Girl Style Then

I just started reading The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, and it's another of these why-did-I-wait-so-long moments. Her writing is full of beans, in the good way, quoting widely from Jackie Collins to Ibsen, full of freshness and jokes and revolutionary fervor. Admittedly, in 1970 in Australia and then in London, the revolution seems to have looked pretty middle-class and white and had some pretty full-of-shit ideas about homosexual and trans realities, but I don't like to throw the baby out with the bathwater, feminism-wise. Tiptoeing around the bullshit, this book is fun feminism (I don't mean fun-feminism tee emm, you know) and blunt truths about subjects and objects and sex and who wants what and questions about the crappy things we've all been taught. At 40-ish years old this book shows how some things have changed and some are exactly the same.

Short version: I dig it, you might too.

Alice means truth.

Reading Alice Munro: It gives me strength and hope to face the future. How could Dance of the Happy Shades have been published in 1968? How have I reached 29 years of age before reading it? Clearly the world currently holds an untold number of things that will fucking blow my mind just as soon as I discover them. Just think, these things are just out there waiting. Your friend says "what? you mean you don't know about ___ yet?" and everything changes. These stories are powerful stuff, stories about coming-of-age and girlhood and they encompass perfect timeless moments in prose that would make Hemingway shrug and decide to give up writing permanently in favor of alcoholism. I am on my second library renewal of Dance of the Happy Shades not because it is hard reading, but because I am savoring this book in small slivers like something expensive to eat. Some delicate understanding, hard to convey in nonfiction prose is captured in these stories. I read them and think "yes! that is what I mean!" as she writes about girlhood and womanhood and states in between in rural 50-years-ago Canada, so far from my experience with fox breeders and housedresses, death and cloakrooms.
Anyway, thanks Canada! That's two of my top-5 favorite all-time writers you've produced. Keep up the good work!

Today I met John Kerry

And I didn't say "my friend works with your daughter and says she's really nice", nor did I say "if reelected, what would you do that you haven't done in the past 18 years?", which were the two things I came up with to say. There was a meet-the-candidate gathering at Mt. Vernon restaurant for delegates to the state convention, and it was fun, and I got some good time meeting the city committee's new chair, kate chang, and got to catch up with some folks. Adam Sweeting, who I just found out is a Humanities professor at BU, and who was very sympathetic about Jake's job search, and who is on Ward 3 school committee says that I should tell my friends who have concerns about Somerville Public Schools to call or email him. Contact information can be found here: http://www.somerville.k12.ma.us/education/dept/dept.php?sectiondetailid=6062

Denise Provost has her braces off (unimportant except to her) and is gathering signatures for reelection (important for many). If you're in the district and would like to sign, plan to run into me sometime, ok?

I have now personally met and all of my elected representatives except for George Bush. I'm happy to keep it like that.

Also,

chenoameg, I have two ideas for ways that we could combine forces for the power of Good. Let's chat sometime.

The kids these days and their slang...

Am I getting old or something? Who can tell me what ENOPANTS means? I really have no idea.

this week's weather

I just noticed that it is, in all likelihood, going to be a truly awesome cross-country ski week. Anybody want to head out with me sometime?

To Good Homes

I culled my book collection and came up with a stack that while I enjoyed them or found them useful or hilarious, doesn't need to belong to me anymore. Any takers?

NEVERWHERE by Neil Gaiman
The BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS OF THE CENTURY ed. by Joyce Carol Oates
Mortal Companion by Patrick Califia
Best Women's Erotica
Best Women's Erotica 2002
BLIZZARD OF ONE by Mark Strand
The Successful Business Handbook (issued by the ABMP for bodyworkers/massage therapists with their own business. I accidentally have two copies)
(these next few are interesting from a socio-historical 70s cultural perspective on women in America)
COLOR ME BEAUTIFUL by Carole Jackson
SUPERWOMAN by Shirley Conran
YOUR ERRONEOUS ZONES by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
1976 "WOMEN ON WHEELS" distributed by the Service & Parts Sales Division of the Chrysler Corporation to explain to women how their cars work

Also, if I borrowed one of these from you a long time ago and have forgotten it isn't mine, now would be a great time to claim it.

help me my friends!

If I needed a space to have a party with around 100 people in February, where do you think I could have it? I'd like to avoid super-expensive options, but I'm saving up for something cool. If the Dilboy VFW was half it's size, it'd be perfect.

a slightly quaint need

maybe one of you can help me with this. I need someone who has darkroom access to make a contact sheet for me. Cameras Inc. in Davis Square can't just make me one because they don't print that way anymore, and I'm not a good negative-looker. If you can help me, some small culinary or massage-based reward could be in your future!