Track Mangoes

I was introduced to Lady Gaga, the New York honey with a degree from Tisch, by a friend of mine who is just Enamoured with her. Her ability to entrance him gave me faith. I felt that if this boy is just as if not more in love with Gaga to the extent I am in love with Madonna then maybe we have something to talk about and maybe I should watch Gaga's rise to pop-stardom. Her ability to completely consume her watchers, like my friend, with a hypnotic force seemed to override the looming fact that her work is a little tacky…and all the more wonderful for it.

The first video he showed me was "Poker Face," which I have attatched below. From the album, "The Fame," a theme of which "Poker Face" doesn't really seem to touch, departs from Gaga's usual style, but I foudn the thing entertaining, as a giddy little gay boy nonetheless.

The video opens with the lady herself rising out of a pool of dark water. She is covered in black rubber and metallics. The weather around her, a hazardous autumnal mix of lightning and thunderclouds, pathetic fallacy no doubt, casts an apocalyptic tenor to her entrance.




The beginning is an overt reference to the Greek conception of hell, and Gaga, clad in black rubber and spikey shoulder pads, is Persephone. She rises out of the depths, masked as the goddess of the underworld. The entrance is guarded by Cerebus, the three headed dog of Hades, or, in the case-Gaga, two reclining black and white great danes. Gaga as hell goddess crouches down in an animalistic squat and then, metamorphosing into the fertile goddess-daughter of Demeter, she casts off her former self, embodied through the casting off her mask.

It’s no mistake that her mask is made of mirrors or that mirrors constitute a large consitutency of the video's visual effect. A reoccurring theme in the video, and Gaga's work, is/are the eyes. Her makeup, for one, accentuates them, whether that makeup be a Smokey liner or a pearlescent shadow. But also the obstruction of eyes: Gaga is known, in this video and outside, for her ostentatious choice of sun glasses. In “Poker Face” she hints at this by gesturing toward the eyes through mirrors but also by encircling her right eye with her fingers, in an OK gesture, like a monocle. The effect is two fold: in the first place it reminds the audience that “Looks are not what they seem," but at the same time it functions a salutory wink, a naughty rejoinder, to say "Looks are not what they seem, but looks are all we have.”

The metaphor seems fitting for the story of the song: a girl who, with her romantic tomfoolery, her amorous trickery, her “Poker Face,” fools a man into loving her so that she can jump his bones (Ring a bell? “Oops I Did It Again” anybody?). Persephone was the embodiment of the Earth's fertility. Addled with sexuality, the Persephone persona seems...appropriate...for Gaga.


The video eventually cuts to Gaga actually playing poker. They metaphor has materialized At Long Last! What are they doing in this scene? They surely aren’t playing poker! The chips flying randomly, the cards falling at inappropriate intervals…what exactly is going on here? At one point Gaga, clad in a separate persona, supposedly the persona of which the lyrics make reference, the one that bites cards, eew, turns over two aces and placed them next to the five cards, two of which are the other aces. Yet, no one else has cards on the table. Regardless everyone says “Oh Gaga! You won again! How unfortunate for us!” It then becomes apparent that the crew is playing Strip Poker, the losers are stripping left and right after Gaga puts down her aces, in which case, WHY ARE THERE EVEN CHIPS ON THE TABLE TO BEGIN WITH?!

But I digress.

Gaga never goes back to where she came from, the pool, which would solidify the Persephone metaphor. Instead she ends the video dancing around in her various characters. It’s as if Persephone/Gaga has Avoided hell by confusing the man who’s got her in chains, Hades/male patriarchy. The Poker Face, then, is her method of escape, her key to the outerworld. The irony of the video, perhaps, is, contrary to her contention, we, the audience, can see right through her poker face, just as her boy-toy can (why else would he look so depressed? He knows that her affection is an empty vessel) and, in fact, her poker face works on nobody besides herself. Gaga's character deludes herself with myriad personae such that she can no longer exist in a singular locality, a material body, but rather in a multifarious, liquid, hyper-sexual, power driven, existence. Gaga is a ghost of her own fabulousness, and a hungry one, who needs to consume for fear of being consumed.

Male patriarchy is, for her, inescapeable, but so is the alternative. We can’t call her a slut, because she’s not that, we can’t call her a liberated woman, because she’s not that either, we can’t call her glamorous because she’s a little scary, she dominant, but she’s submissive, she’s free and in chains. What are we to make of you Gaga?! Are these contradictions a sign of artistry or just dumb luck? Is Gaga liberated? A slut? or Should We Even Care?

I wanted Gaga to fill Madonna's shoes, something which, I am sad to say, I doubt she will be able to do. Madonna's prowess came from a simplicity of image, a single idea, a concept that changed with the time. Gaga has many concepts which do not change one bit. Madonna and Gaga are, in effect, polar opposites, and this, I fear, forcasts Gaga's sucess in the music business. Gaga tries to straddle the line between glamour and substance, something only Madonna has since acheived, but I fear she cannot reconcile them both AND be GOOD.

Why should I care about Gaga? Because since Madonna, who has made a lot of mistakes in the recent past, pop culture is seriously missing a diva who can redefine sexual personae using the very language of sexual hegemony and hollywood. Feminist idols like Ani DiFranco have failed to rise to the level of pop stardom because they constantly combat Hollywood image tropes. "They're just masks!" these ladies say, "Empty masks! They Don't Mean Anything!" Madonna on the other hand said, "Yes, these stereotypes ARE masks, but Masks are All We Have." Some see this as ceeding, I see it as a very smart business move, something the leftish underground doesn't really hold as one its high values.

There's always more money to be made in Shit. Everyonceinawhile someone comes along and puts a gold leaf on that shit. Time will tell but, for now, my guess is that work poor miss Gaga will just be shit without the goldleaf.

A ranty post with very little evidence

In Yiddish, the word "macher" means "one who arranges, fixes, has connections; a big wheel; an operator. It is often used to describe someone who is active in an organization or community. Now, the American man will read the word and doubtlessly hear the word "mocker" or one who mocks.

To the American soul, thinking in Anglo-Germanic locutions, the two concepts are inseparable. One cannot do without mockery, that is, a sense of humor.

It seems to me that the machers of the liberal arts college campuses have lost their sense of humor. And is it their fault? Or do we blame professors? The sixties stood for individualism. What is most disgusting about current political correctness on campus is that its proponents have managed to convince students and media that they are authentic Sixties radicals. The idea is preposterous. Political correctness, with its fascist speech codes and puritanical sexual regulations, is a travesty of Sixties progressive values.

I want to stand for the kind of crack-pot-amazonianism that the ecclectic sixties emblematized. We are told that disagreement is healthy, and yet myriad "groups" of college campuses demand allegence. The silencing of authentic debate among feminists, queer theorists, race theorists, and their allies just helps the rise of the far right. When the media gets locked in their Northeastern ghetto and become slaves of the feminist/queer/brown/liberal establishment and fanatical special interests, the American audience ends up looking to conservative voices for common sense.

Practicality seems like the radical on campuses today.

This tyranny of political correctness is self defeating.

I was watching the Laramie Project at a highschool close to my house and I was struck by the fact that the play was boring, poorly written, poorly acted, and uninteresting. However, with any and all works of art which revolve, not around characters, but around "issues," like the Laramie Project, that audience is faced with a choice: you either like the play or you HATE gay people.

It's a doctrine of liberal infallibility. This is madness! The idea that somehow one cannot critique liberalism from the left. How can people be so stupid? Liberal arts college students are completely removed from the reality of street life beyond their missionary-istic volunteer sites. When I speak to working-class induviduals in my neighborhood, even though they are left-leaning they are so sick of being bullied by these sanctimonious puritans who call themselves feminists/queer activits/and race theorists.

I'm a feminist, a queer activist, and a race activits, but who are these other-than-self "radicals" who have a death grip on college politics now, who are antiporn, anti-women, anti-freedom, and so on.

College's main problem for the last twenty years has been that it is incapable of appreciating art, okay? There is no aesthetics in feminism, or queer thoery, or race theory. All there is, is a social agenda. Art is made a servant to a prefab social agenda. Classical art of any kind is seen as part of a long line of injustices made by white men conspiring to control the earth. How reductive! How snobby! How un-fun!

The gay activist establishment has been stupid and narrow in the way it has conducted its civil rights campaign...Shrilly self-interested and doctrinaire, gay activism is completely lacking in philosophical perspective. Its sorrow became the only sorrow, its disease the only disease

As machers of mockery we can only have a healthy sense of humor and a desire to stir the pot. It's our job. When it comes to blood and bone, liberals don't know their foot from their elbows.

TO SAVE A PAINTING FROM MOLD
Acrylic on canvas















'


This was how I found the painting. As you can see, the "archival" paper backing was melded to the actual cloth painting itself. The painting was suffering from mildew stains and severe fogging.

First Thing's First: you need to get that icky backing off the painting because it is causing the problems in the first place.




In order to remove the backing you need to soak the whole unit in a hot acid bath. I used lemon juice. After awhile the paper backing should peel right off the cloth. There was tape melded to the cloth too, so you need to be careful with that if it is there.

Wear a mask. Mold spores hurt the lungs.

Next thing you want to do is discard the culprit, in this case the archived backing. Then take a softbrush.

I used a toothbrush, and brush away the mold. It should come off and you can feel the slimey places you missed.

Give it lots of love. It needs it.

After you're done brushing you need to drain out the water that is now infected with spores. Clean out your basin and rinse the painting in another acid bath. FRESH water man.




Dry the painting on a flat surface. I used a hairdryer and check for spots of mold that you've missed.








The end result was pretty nifty. The mold stains went away for the most part, but are still there. Just faintly. The painting dried relatively flat and hopefully it will be as nice looking as this for another 10 years.

Exegesis on a poem by Hughes--

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

That which lesbians and straight women have in common, I feel, are those things which, I also feel, code female behavioral patterns most adeptly. Women, then, are like bakers when it comes to relationships. They like to spin a pastry of community and keep it warm.

Women are capable of a kind of intimacy that only gay men can even come close to understanding. It's an intimacy that revolves around chatting and polydrama. Their stunningly honed perceptive tools, a result of the fact that they Are smarter than men, become self defeating, often, leading to this pastry syndrome. The bun gets stickier, warmer, sweeter, until its frosted and dripping.

In "A Dream Deferred" Hughes reaches out to the male reader, a fellow suffering of the female travail. "What happens to a dream deferred?" he asks the reader in a mellow yet direct tone. In this way, the narrator winks at the reader with a male gaze as if to say You Know Just What Dream I Mean. It's the dream of love while maintaining autonomy. It's the dream of making two things, both incompatible, functional.

The narrator then begins to compare this dream to food items. Perhaps the dream looses all it's substance and possibility leaving behind the pathetic carcass of a "raisin in the sun." This desire, this dream, perhaps it freezes, more like sweet that crystallizes, dusted of dirt and gnats. Or perhaps it simply begins to go sour and stink. Either way the dream gets older and as it does it beings to deteriorate.

Time, for the narrator, increases the impossibility of the dream. The dream is self defeating, self destructive, like a maze with no exit.

And like a maze with no exit the poem ends exactly how it had started: with a question. The poem is cyclical, in that way, yet the final word cuts the reader off. The abruptness of the final word makes the last question mark feel like a slap in the face after one has been starring at something for an extended period of time. SLAP and then back to the begging. Men are Sisyphus and women are the rock that they must push up the hill, but women are also that force that makes his foot slip, the inertia that rolls the rock down the hill and the open sore after the rock has trampled the reader all together.

The contiguous desires for individuality and and the need for outside support In Order To achieve such autonomy negate one another. The poem circles around and at the beggining the reader realizes just what exactly Happens to that Dream Deffered: that is, the more it is deffered, which is all that can be done with it, the more it must Be deffered.

Maple syrup, when it gets old, crystallizes. It crusts over with sweetness. Women spin pastries of home and house and men are the raisins of these pastries, dried up in the dampness of the very womb from whence they came and where they desire to return.

I never really expect ESPN to be politically correct. In fact, I look to them as a platform on which I can flex my CRT muscles. But this story, I feel, pushes my buttons, and not for the obvious reason, that being my zeal for nit-pikin' at ESPN; no, but much more for what that story evokes in regard to that sense of alienation, not from mainstream culture, but from the CRT underground.

Of course ESPN makes it seem like its every little Indian's dream to make it on a baseball team in America because a few thousand people came out for a reality TV show, a few thousand out of a country that is home to nearly a (edit: sixth) of the world's population. And the thing that kills me the most is that, growing up around Nepalese/Indian adolescents, some of whom lived in the motherland, actually do want that. And what am I to say?

Not to mention the whole ordeal stinks of old British snobbery. When did we forget that India can kick the UK's ass in cricket Any Day? Why, I ask, would this story even interest ESPN's contingent audience?

I think the shot of the man on the pitcher's mound playing a sitar pretty much sums up everything wrong with this story.

But I can't worry too much, nobody watches baseball anymore Anyway.

This afternoon I spent all day in the campus center working on papers and studying. When I returned to my room this evening there was a very strange note tacked to my door. It read as follows.

This is an official notice from the Ottoman Empire that you are hereby excommunicated until further notice. PERPETRATOR: Jens Tamang.

The note was signed by three guys who live down the hall from me.

Now, before I post my response, I must mention that the guys who live down the hall and I have a little inside joke about the Ottoman Empire that has, I feel, now gotten way of hand. They have one ottoman (the foot stool kind) in their room. It's a little gray one. One day I walked into their room and there was magically, not one, but two gray ottomans. I declared that, from that moment on, the room would be known as the Ottoman empire.

Apparently I have offended the Ottomans. (Yeah what else is new: first the CA's are on me for saying that maybe women should take a little more sexual responsibility in college, then it's the ARC for saying that the Action Awareness Week points were classist, then it's the Queer Theoristas who wanted me to go to rehab for using the word 'fag', then it's every pig-headed-Mac-faux-liberal who's up in arms that someone would even suggest that Sarah Palin had anything to offer to the politcal discourse...why should I be surprised that the sultans from a distant past want it out with me. Oi.)

In rh here is my response to the Ottomans:

Dear Ottoman Empire,

What the heck?! I feel really hurt by the note you left on my door. That was really rude! I mean I have been really busy and, I mean, it's not my fault, OK? I really did like you, Ottoman Empire. Why couldn't we make this work? I'm SORRY. That said the choice to "excommunicate" me was yours to make and there wasn't anything I could do about it. I guess I support you in that decision, just like I support you in all your decisions. I hope that we can still be friends without having it be awkward.

But, you know, Ottoman Empire, during my time in exile I've met some really cool people. I think you guys actually know each other: Murad Bey, Ahmed Riza, Damad Mahmud Pasha and Prince Sabaheddin. I think they have Facebooks; I told you they were cool! lolz

Damad and Sabaheddin are especially cool. And you know what? You won't believe this! They're actually defectors from your Sultan's own royal fucking family.

Now I can take a joke and I can take "excommunication" but I think you really hurt these guys' feelings. If I were you, Ottoman Empire, I would watch my back. You wouldn't want a coup, would you? Because word on the street is that these guys are gonna start some shit called Young Turk Revolution. I'm not sure I want to join, but, you know, I have to be honest, I don't know what choice you've left me with.

What's it gonna be Ottoman Empire?

Sincerely yours
-the Nationalists

P.S. I don't like to start gossip but I heard that Austria wants get with your girl Bosnia-Herzegovina. You best keep an eye on her. Colonies aint' nothin but hos and tricks.

I guess Bosnia-Herza and I would get a long swimmingly: we both like getting annexed from behind.

Christmas has never had a singular cultural consequence. Historians have long speculated that the holiday’s origins have been largely, if not entirely, socially conditioned.

The Bible provides very few clues as to the actual date of Jesus’ birth. So, the 25th of December seems like an arbitrary choice; that is, unless you takes into account its proximity to the Roman festival of Saturnalia, the winter solstice, and the Natalis Solis Invincti.

The Saturnalia was a weeklong segment of a larger celebration occurring in late December. Hijinks including feasting, infirmity, a slave/master role reversal, and public nudity/orgies ruled these festivals. Christmas, some argue, may have been created to distract gentiles from this pagan party-time.

Natalis Solis Invincti, which roughly translates to "Birthday of the Invincible Sun God," (making it the coolest holiday name evar!) allowed citizens to worship several deities at the same time—Elah-Gabal, the Syrian sun god; Sol, the god of Emperor Aurelian; and Mithras, a god of Persian origin.



The earliest reference to the celebration of Christmas on December 25 is found in ancient Roman manuscripts dating back to 345 A.D. From there on out Christmas enjoyed multiple manifestations. It was seen as the revival of Catholicism in 378, the feast of Constantinople in 379, the "forty days of St. Martin" during the middle ages (otherwise known as “Advent”), and, in 1647, England's Puritan rulers banned Christmas because of its Catholic origins, or as they aptly put it, “popery.”

Today, Christmas has taken a new cultural consequence: money. No longer the religious fest it once was, December 25th has become a kind of economic milepost for big and small name retailers. Black Friday refers to the day when retailers move from the “Red” (losing profits) to the “Black” (making profits). Not surprisingly, the majority of retailers make the bulk of their income during the Christmas season.

Christmas has never had any sort of corollary because it has never had a unilateral definition. Or, if it has, if it has, then Christmas has stood for that which we cannot define in the moment, a palimpsestic holiday. With no sense of its current significance (what does Christmas mean in light of, say, Cyber Monday and the Techno-culture?) all we can do is name its idiosyncrasies: family, gift exchange, and charity etc. Like a social Polaroid that takes a hundred years to develop, Christmas provides an impression of the holiday zeitgeist while constantly escaping those who experience the phenomenon as it happens.

As a gay heathen, growing up in Portland, I could not help feeling like an outsider on Christmas. For me, the holiday, by definition, excludes those who have no family, money, or do not desire to participate in the mainstream culture. I can’t speak for all marginalized groups, (for fear of Matt Won) but I will say that ever since Christmas adopted a gentile overtone it did discountenance to the group whose origins are distinctly pagan: gay boys!

Just like the Saturnalia, gay boys are intrinsically connected to Earth Cult: the mysterious, bubbling, Chthonian mystery of pleasure. Feminists (the new Puritans), liberals (the new Catholics), and bourgeois academics (the new Romans) are all a continuation of Earth Cult’s nemesis: Sky Cult—the cool, centralized, joyless Apollonianism of “reason.”

Are queers the historical residue of paganism?

Perhaps I should frame the question in the form of a request: this season, bring Christmas back down to earth. Don’t get your friends Ipods—give them blowjobs. And if you can’t, it might behoove you to ask why not. Sex with someone you love, is, after all, the Magi’s greatest gift.
Happy Holidays.
.

Did you know the Iphone has a feature that prevents douche bags from taking pictures of panties?
Neither did I

For the first half of this movie I tried to appreciate what it was doing for it's nuance. Then I remembered that I was in the MoA where they feed nuance to the sting rays that have to swim round and round in circles for all the Minnesotans to see. I would hate being a sting ray. I never took the James Bond series as the kind that liked to dabble in post-modernism, but they must be, because this newest flick had no plot. Yet, as I was sitting in my chair in an empty theater, I couldn't help but feel enthralled by the boat scene, the car scene, and yes, that Haitian chick was Sass-y. Perhaps this evidences a move in cinema to finally admit what we have all known all along: it doesn't really matter if mainstream hollywood pix have a plot of not, we just want titties/fire/boom! Quantum of Solace: no plot, no problem, we'll still rock your socks. And who was that Bolivian dictator supposed to be? You know, the one who can't stop raping all the women and children? I think there's a metaphor in there somewhere; maybe one of the writers is bitter...and a lesbian. Stand back, I now have control of the worlds supply of water, or was it oil, no it was water, I remember now. At least there's always the dame Judy.

Sarah Palin is a talented politician whose moment has not yet come; that she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.

If one defines feminism as the liberal dogma, spoon-fed to academics, then no, Palin is a not a “feminist” in that sense of the word. Palin’s contribution to feminism comes from her ability to destabilize those firmly held convictions so characteristic of the liberal feminist establishment. I discuss this contribution, for this reason, in terms of “persona”; it has more to do with American sexual symbolism than it does with policy reform.

My first article, published in the Sept. 26th edition of the Mac Weekly, suggested that those who cannot see the nuance of the Palin nom are trapped in their own narrow parochialism. Unfortunately, I did little to define the parameters of such parochialism.

I could care less if Palin is a “feminist." I am more interested in examining the implications of mainstream feminism (MF) for those exiled from it. Using the Palin nom to elucidate this, I’ve learned, is pointless at Mac. (Most liberals can’t see past their own pigheaded political stalwartness.) So, instead of asking why MF has abandoned Palin, let me ask my largely liberal audience why MF has abandoned Michelle Obama, an/Other dissident of sorts.

How does one reconcile the storm of press following Hilary’s “Iron My Shirt” fiasco, and the silence from the press when the LA times “honored” Obama with a column about her "politics of fashion," a slide show of her in 10 different outfits, and a poll inquiring whether she’s too frumpy, matronly, flawless, or sexy?

MF’s silence in matters Obama indicates its preoccupation with the freedom of rich, white, liberal, women. (However, this isn’t surprising: MF has never cared about race struggle. In the seventies MF urged white women to get out of the kitchen and into the workforce, thereby disregarding the women of color already in the workforce, who did not see labor as a means of liberation.)

MF turned its back on Obama for the same reason it turned its back on Palin: it does not perfectly mesh with any persona that directly challenges it. Any body-politic that casts a light on the holes inherant in MF must be, as it were, squealched or extinguished, or in some cases, simply ignored.

Why is it permissable, I ask, to perpetuate sexist norms against the Palin nom (read sexy bikini pictures) through aggressive attack and passive defense? It is, it would seem, because we are well meaning liberals with "good hearts" who mean no harm but in jest have fun. When progressive cultural figures, like Margaret Cho, reduce Palin to her fuckability (or lack thereof), MF remains silent in defense but asks the quesiton "why can't you take a joke?"

Sexism functions on a more superficial level and is more easily rooted out than most feminists would have you belive. Most feminst assertions of male-hegemony's war against women is rooted in Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis, two disciplines which have since been largely discredited. For liberals, hegemony exists on a liquid level of irreducible semioticity. For conservatives, it surfaces through tropic inter-species companion exchange. One's too broad the other's too narrow. However, the particular neurotic tendancy of liberals to see ills everywhere (coercion, coercion everywhere but not a drop to drink) does discountenance to the kind of agency that is, ironically, afforded to the statist right.

Only an outsider has enough perspective to expose establishment-dogma for what it is. Real reform begins on the outside too. Mormonism, for example, has long been seen as misogynistic when it was the almost exclusively the Mormon Utah territory that pioneered women’s suffrage nearly half a century before east coast elites.

The first woman who makes it to the presidency will not be a liberal-feminist, but a feminist who can synthesize liberal-conservative polarities, as well as masculine-feminine personae. Women like Gloria Stienem, Susan Faludi, Noami Wolf, and the Clinton’s Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, have failed to provide practical personae for the presidency. More tenable presidential personae models come from intelligent conservative women like Ann Richards and Janet Reno.

While mannerisms alone do not a VP make, we ought to be looking at conservative women like Palin to understand what the new face of feminism will look like, not to understand what the new face of feminism is. Palin’s moose-shootin’ persona, like that of her baby cradling husband, evidences an unequivocally huge step forward in American sexual symbolism.

Should we, for Palin, forgo the scrutiny we apply to any cultural figure? Of course not. But we shouldn’t deny that Palin has contributed something to feminism. What that something is I cannot entirely say. She has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. Who’s to say that won’t affect future feminisms?

Obama’s opening statement won over McCain’s, and set the precedent for most of the evening. His several points on the financial crisis, particularly on oversight and the possibility of future market returns, felt personally reassuring. Up until he began calling McCain the Bush incarnate,

Obama’s cool mannerisms seemed like a vast improvement from his fumbling performances in the primaries.

A discussion of the financial crisis ensued. It was obvious neither candidate knew what to do. McCain sang his “evil earmarks” song, while Obama tried myriad subjects from health care to corporations-this and corporations-that. Is it just me, or does the back and forth seem pointless in light of their agreement on the bailout? The topic died, but not before McCain could make an ill comment about the badness of bear DNA. (Has he forgotten that Palin, my favorite feminist, once endeavored to study the genetic makeup of Alaskan seals?)

Neither candidate could think of ways the crisis would affect their presidency. Lehrer: “Neither one of you is suggesting any major changes.” Obama avoided committing to anything, ceding that he might consider giving up parts of his energy policy (phooey!). McCain suggested a spending freeze (double phooey!). Lehrer reiterated: Will either candidate even “acknowledge” the effects of the crisis on their respective presidencies? Apparently not.

So, on to the Middle East! McCain’s assertion that he knows the difference between a strategy and a tactic came off as petulant, as did Obama’s unconvincing “I do too” rebuttal. Obama continued to fall on his face when he reprimanded McCain for belligerency (“singing songs” ‘bout bombin’ North Korea) and also flouted his bad idea about launching strikes into Pakistan without their permission.

McCain framed his Iran policy almost exclusively around Israel and preventing a second Holocaust. As for Obama, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative noted that Obama worked on his “anti-Iranian hawkish pander, claiming (falsely) that he has always supported labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.” Also, McCain can’t pronounce “Ahmadinejad.”

The Iran debate spiraled downward. Obama: Kissinger encouraged meetings with Iran, McCain: Obama “legitimizes” terrorism Obama: McCain won’t meet with Spain for god’s sake. McCain: Kissinger is my friend. Why are we still talking about Kissinger?

Post-debate, I assessed that Obama managed to avoid his old habit either disjointed elitism or folksy tones and locutions. However, he didn’t come off aggressive enough. “Sen. McCain is absolutely right" was Obama’s mantra. If Obama wants to distance himself from the elite he ought not say things like “al Qaeda are attacking our troops in a brazen fashion, they feel emboldened." Michael Crowley of the New Republic wrote that it was academic language for something he should feel “visceral” and “passionate” about, adding “It reminds me of John Kerry.”

McCain ought to continue distancing himself from his reputation as a beady-eyed curmudgeon. Telling stories about the two letters Eisenhower wrote after D-Day won’t help.

Don’t listen to what Macalester liberals tell you, they are probably the worst judges; Obama did not win by a large margin, if at all. Juvenility tinted the evening, (I actually laughed when Obama declared, “I too have a bracelet”) making it unnecessary to declare a winner. This won’t be a particularly memorable debate.

In the coming weeks I predict that McCain’s attempts to belittle Obama will surface as his biggest fault. It’s precisely the approach Hillary took. Stressing Obama's inexperience will also make the GOP look silly when Palin (who lives next to Russia, doncha-know) goes up against Biden. A debate I wouldn’t miss for the world.

COMING SOON: PALIN STEAM ROLLS BIDEN! or does she?
.

MACALESTER COLLEGE — The Left faces a very real, slightly complex, problem in Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. According to Anne Ream of the Chicago Tribune, Palin’s nomination banked on “the idea that mainstream female voters would embrace [her].” Luckily for Democrats, Palin isn’t popular with women anymore. According to a CBS/NYT poll Palin’s popularity among white women has fallen nearly 11% in this week alone.

Though the poll doesn’t specify it, I sense that Palin’s approval amongst white, conservative males will continue to rise. With nearly a quarter of Hillary’s supporters going red and with replenished campaign funds (8.8 million collected only after a two day span with her on the ticket), can Democrats really afford to write Palin off as a cheeky mistake? Or is she, at this point, too much of a threat?

If she wasn’t a threat, CNN might curtail its fascination with Bristol’s fecundity. Take it as a sign, notes Ann Coulter of the Universal Press Syndicate: “When liberals start acting like they’re opposed to pre-marital sex, you know McCain’s vice presidential choice has knocked them back on their heels.”

At the RNC, Palin, always poised, spoke through technical difficulties and protestors without skipping a beat. She also roused working-class people in a way I’ve yet to see from B. Hussein Obama. “In small towns,” she said with a evil smirk, “we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they’re listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.” Give em’ hell, girl! Never have I seen naughty jokes effectively reduce a candidate to his own arctic memoirs and “Styrofoam Greek columns.”

Could this tough-as-nails persona also heal a wounded feminist movement?

Youbetcha! Palin resurrected the radical feminist spirit of the sixties and molded it into her brand of muscled, can-do, Americanism. She hasn’t the time to blame the world’s ill on male hegemony; she’s too busy cutting spending and gutting deer.

She reminds me of the women I grew up around in rural Oregon. My great-aunt, whose family worked in the timer industry, single-handedly ran her dead husband’s estate, raised seven children, and still scrubbed clothes with board and basin each morning. She channeled the frontier spirit of Wyoming women, who acquired the right to vote nearly fifty years prior to the corseted socialites of the eastern seaboard.

Today, bourgeois academe rules the feminist fife. Having been fractured throughout the seventies and eighties by the debate on abortion, the movement got cleaved across party lines. And, this anger against Palin is symptomatic of that cleave; it evidences that feminism no longer focuses on the success and achievement of women, but the particular politic to which those women subscribe.

The same feminists who applaud Catherine MacKinnon for trying to criminalize pornography rebuke Palin for Puritan extremism. Isn’t that precisely the kind of careless reasoning the Right used to justify B. Hussein Obama’s black-theology anti-patriotism?

But, what of her pro-life stance? Palin’s darn-tootin-moose-shootin’ persona does not, alas, excuse her egregious list of…conservative peculiarities. I confess, her attempt to ban books, among other peccadilloes, did not perfectly mesh with my own brand of libertarianism. But it’s her persona that’s revolutionary, not her politics.

If nothing else, Palin’s religious fervor might pressure Democrats to stop dropping verses from a book they pretend to care about. The squirming is really unattractive, Democrats. I want to see meatier issues tackled. So, until my dreams of a revamped feminism come to fruition, someone has got to ask that woman about dinosaurs.

Kankles

Curves are in, except around the feet. Kate Moss couldn't make them sexy, but she could cover them up with leg warmers. Boots? Kate would get creative.

Flossing

Have you ever watched yourself in the mirror?

Not Knowing What Sushi Is

A ditz can be loved, but having no taste is unacceptable.

Poopy Panties

Any other bodily fluid is fine by me, but there's nothing like waking up next to your lover only to step into her crusty underwear, coiled on the floor like a snake.

Oversized Bongs

I know that several magazines attempted to make them sexy, but I fear they must remain a boy thing.

Boogers

Hi. My name's Jens. And I am an ex-nose-picker. *Hi Jens!* Does anyone have a place for me to stay?

The Annoyingly Drunk Person at the Party

"Did I just smoke the wrong end of my cigarette?"
"Wanna see my piece?"

Panchos

E, Gads.

Chlamydia

That dusty old clap trap.

Pen Marks on Your Face

How do these get here? One can never tell. But they're always plaguing someone you know. Carelessness was never sexual, only provocative.

In No Particular Order


The Graduate, (1967)
The emblem of adolescence. When Benjamin's father asks him, "don't you think that idea is a little half baked," Ben replies:

Network, (1976)
Max says his final goodbyes to a trope of the modern ecological system:


Gone with the Wind (1939)
Tearing down her mother's green velvet drapes, Scarlett O'Hara declares:


Vertigo, (1958)
Kim Novak as the false Madeleine points her gloved finger at the growth rings of an ancient sequoia:


The Wizare of Oz, (1939)
The gayest classic of them all. And in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, it still lingers as an eerie ambassador of gay past, gay present, and gay future.


Mommie Dearest, (1981)
And perhaps my favorite. Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) casts off utilitarianism:

A Short Portrait

No matter what time of year, Job always wore cutoffs. Even in the gelid months, when his Addidas got soaked to the sole, he stood on the sidewalk, underneath the glowing sign that read “The Escape Nighclub” and chatted with the people waiting to get to get in.

In addition to his booty shorts, Job wore a black tank top, bedizened with plastic rhinestones, and a string of fake pearls that hung limply around his neck. His face had been elaborately painted with MAC producs and craft glitter from Micheal’s. He smelled sickly sweet, like potpourri. He shared a cigarette with a short girl in a black leather miniskirt.

The Escape Nightclub opened its doors in on New Years Eve of 2003 under somewhat woolly circumstances. The venue itself, situated a few hundred feet from Portland’s Park blocks, had undergone eight changes in management in the past twenty-eight years. Mildred’s Palace, Metropolis, The City Nightclub, Evolution, The Rage, Misifit’s Café, The Edge and Klub-Z were The Escape’s former manifestations. All failed; all were unprofitable.

“It’s just easier to call it ‘the club’ since it keeps changing,” Job said. “I’ve been going here since it was The Edge. The Edge never served alcohol at the bar, The Rage might have; the license was too expensive, you know.” I told him that the crowd seemed bibulous nonetheless, pointing out a group of girls who were attempting to hide an Aquafina bottles filled with whiskey in their purses. “It’s a cruel joke: they surround you with insecure people and then ask you not to get drunk before you come.” He leaned in closer. “Hell. I’m a little smashed.” The short girl in the miniskirt laughed and snatched the cigarette from his fingers. “The club has definitely gone downhill,” he continued. “It’s not like Klub-Z. Klub-Z was where it was at. That was kind of the hay day.”

“Fuck yes it was,” the girl said.

“We had a pole back then.”

“Fuck yes we did.”

“Way more fags came to Klub-Z.” The way he used the word, fag, I could tell he meant it endearingly.

“Remember the floor back then?” the girl asked.

“Oh. Oh. And the pole.”

“You already…”

“Oh. Oh. And remember those hot guys that would come down from Seattle every other week.” Job fanned himself with limp wrists. “It was sexy back then. And. And. And everyone was fucking everything. And every weekend it was like a maze, and everyone was connected to everyone else by some body part.” Job sighed. “Everyone looked forward to the weekend. It was an excuse to get fucked and fabulous.”

“But then Ziggy got caught,” the girl said, stamping the cigarette out on the sidewalk.

Zig Tognetti founded Klub-Z in the summer of 2000. He was the club’s eighth owner. From the venue’s founding as Midlred’s Palace in 1980, shortly preceding the American AIDS crisis, the club had offered what some might call a ‘safe haven’ for gay boys and lesbians, generally from the surrounding suburbs. The club came out from the underground when the owner of The City Nightclub purchased the rights to the “Rosebud and Thorn Pageant,” a regionally famous drag competition, today the oldest running teen drag competition in the world. Tognetti’s performance manager, Thomas Christiansen, insisted that “If you need a place to be who you truly are, whether it is gay, straight or somewhere in between, Klub Z provides a dance floor where you can be anything you want.” Others, and perhaps Job was one of them, used less saccharine adjectives when describing that ‘haven’.

“Oh, don’t you know what happened to Ziggy?” Job asked. The girl had disappeared. It began to rain softly, a slight drizzle. “I thought he was pedophile. I knew that he was having sex with the club kids, and I heard something about kiddy porn a few years back too. They arrested him for peddling E and cocaine, though. It would have been funnier if they bagged him for the pedophile thing. Well, I think it would have been funnier. He would hit on the kids too, I remember, this one time, I think I was sixteen or seventeen, I was standing outside the club, and he came up makin’ some comment about how I would be hot in a threesome with him and his boy toy of the moment.” Job looked up at the sign, buzzing above us. He exhaled deeply. His breath fogged and curled upwards. I looked down and noticed his forearms were covered in goose bumps.

Shortly before Tognetti’s arrest, and subsequent closure of Klub-Z, he had fired his DJ, Scooter, over an altercation. Veteran club-goers such as Christensen, Job, and the club’s current performance manager, Jerrick Hoffer, have canonized the content of the bout as part of the establishment’s behind-the-scenes arcana. Job insists, however, the bout was about “doing coke in the office,” while Hoffer claims Scooter left, frustrated by the fact that “half the staff would be gacked out and not doing their jobs.”

After Klub-Z was shut down the venue remained empty for several months. It was not the only venue have it’s windows boarded up either. All along the Stark Street, an avenue lovingly referred to as “The Gay Villa” by some, working class dance halls were beginning to close. The Fish Grotto handed management over to The Red Star Brewing company, Scandal’s nixed its primary watering hole, and two blocks away Panorama, a 21+ techno hall was shut down (later to be renovated as an upscale cinema/bar, playing the finest in independent films, serving the finest of Oregon’s wines). Klub-Z had apparently met a similar fate until Scooter, along with the club’s former doorman, Robby, took out the building’s lease at a price higher than what Tognetti had paid for it.

Despite his infamous reputation as a lecherous anathema the way Job spoke of Tognetti and his club seemed to voice a melancholic nostalgia.

Eventually, Job announced that he was “fuckin’ freezin’ his fuckin’ guddam nips off.” So he lead me inside the club. I followed him to the bar where he sat down and ordered two cans of Red Bull. The music was so loud, so percussive, that I missed his interaction with the bartender altogether. With the music nearly deafening, I attempted to listen Job’s persiflage about the price of purses at Sak’s Fifth Avenue. Half way into a rant about how “the Louis Vuitton cherry thing was gross” my attention wandered to the multifarious collage on the wall behind the bar. A paper fish. Lava lamp. A plastic clock. Spray painted records with the faces of famous drag queens and slogans like “Nobody Listens to Techno.” It was metro pastiche.

Job and I sat at the bar, sipping Red Bull, watching the crowd dance atop a light-up floor. I asked Job why the girls outnumbered the boys. He took a swig, setting his can down on the bar and sighed. He flipped his blonde hair out of his eyes and turned to face me.

“That’s what I’m talking about. That’s why I liked Klub-Z. Klub-Z was a gay club. When the fag-hags learned that they could come on their own, when they learned they didn’t have to bring their gay friends, they went…I don’t know, they went nuts or something I guess. I don’t know!” The bartender came by and picked up Job’s empty can. “And then, then,” he continued. “When the jocks from Lincoln High School figured out that the club was full of desperate straight girls accompanying repressed gay boys, well, well. I don’t know. I guess they…” He stopped and rubbed his forehead. “Look. Look: I don’t know.” Job got up off he bar stool and headed outside, saying “I’m hot,” as I followed in his wake.

Several underage clubs popped up on the Portland club circuit from the early nineties to the early 2000’s. Among them was The Quest, a hip-hop disco; The Metro, a hookah bar gone pizza parlor; Backspace, a café for live Indie music; and the Meow Meow, a teenage punk palace. Most of these venues either careened sideways, away from their original mission statement, or shut down altogether. (Today Backspace is a cyber café, boasting interactive x-box dens and a plethora of arcade machines, while The Quest has fallen off the map and out of the memory of the kids from my generation). Strangely, The Escape, Klub-Z, The Edge, or, if you prefer, “The Club,” has strolled down a steady path in providing gay teenagers with a place to dance for the past twenty-five years.

But, sometimes, when Job speaks of the club there is a trembling in his voice. He becomes visibly frustrated when describing the new crowd of déclassé degenerates who flooded the floor of The Escape. They’re loud, they’re drunk, but perhaps most disturbingly for Job, they’re straight.

It was raining harder outside. Most of the people who were in line had either ran to cafés down the street or had been admitted inside. Before exiting the club, Job had grabbed a grey garment bag from the coat check. He held it close to his chest. Inside was a wool business suit, an overcoat and a pair of women’s underwear.
“Do you ever get harassed standing out here?” I asked Job. He flipped his hair again and laughed, rearranging the bag in his arms.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Duh.” Job started rattling off the litany of injustices he had experienced standing underneath the buzzing Escape sign. He seemed oddly nonchalant about the incidences, as if they were practical jokes a frat brother might play on his housemates. “A few weeks ago,” he told me, “I was standing out here waiting, and a bunch of white fucks in an SUV pelted me with an egg. Left a fuck ugly bruise and got egg poo up and down the back of my leg. It was gross. Really fucking gross.”

It was about one A.M. when the cab arrived to pick Job up. I bid him farewell and watched as he tossed his garment bag into the back of the cab. He hopped in, waved goodbye, and as he shut the door, he sank into the seat, faineant in repose. For a moment my impression of him, the slack posture, the “aw-hell-nah” mannerisms and catty rejoinders, the club kid clout, the pomposity and rodomontade, seemed to melt away. Collapsed in the backseat of the cab, he reminded me of some of the young men I knew going to high school. Sincere. Cute. Optimistic.

And then the cab sped off: down the road to a hotel where Job would meet a client of his, a regular.

Earlier that night I had asked about the contents of Job’s garment bag. He informed me it was for his job. It was “part the deal.” “It’s really kind of easy,” he had said. “Like. Ridiculously easy. He sends me these thongs and I have to wear them under the suit. I go to the hotel. He takes me out sometimes and plays footsie with me under the table. I make 3000 dollars a night. So, it’s pretty good.”
“What do you spend the money on?” I had asked.

“Purses,” he said matter-of-fact’ly. "Gucci purses."

Job assured me that there were other boys in his line of work who hung around the club. But, when I asked him to point them out, he shied away, blaming their poor attendance on the rain.

"Medals are more important than times."

-Micheal Phelps, the morning of August 14th 2008, semifinals, being interviewed by Ann whatever her name is.

I suppose you can be a "fish in the water," but then you have to be prepared to smell like a vagina.

But enough about Phelps already. It was a boring day in Beijing for the male gymnasts. Yang Wei did well, like he do, and everyone else kept screwing up royally. Sasha Artemov gave us a few treats on the high bar, an event usually dominated by Horton, but thwarted his hopes of a medal in floor exercise. (And, if he turns to the camera to thank National television for all their support I will snap his pretty little nose off.) I really can't decide what was more disappointing: everyone falling, or the fact that I was missing season two of "Mad Men" to watch Yang Wei kick butt.

OF all the instruments in the gym, I am enamored with the pommel horse. There is something about the constant spinning, the incredible balance, upper body strength, and focus that makes this instrument fascinating to watch. The mistakes look so similar to the successes on this beast. Perhaps I admire that which I cannot understand. Pommel horse routines can be terribly yawning for most people, but I can't help gritting my teeth at the wobbly arms.

Maybe that's why I love watching this guy:

"A woman who grew to be 7 feet, 7 inches tall and was recognized as the world's tallest female died early Wednesday, a friend said. She was 53."

But more importantly...

"Coincidentally, Allen lived in the same nursing home, Heritage House Convalescent Center, as 115-year-old Edna Parker, whom Guinness has recognized as the world's oldest person since August 2007."

This leads me to believe that our country is purposefully storing all of our "unique" Guinness world record holders in the same nursing home so as to keep them from their adoring public.

And who knows what this alleged "nursing home" is really like.

Yesterday, Tuesday the 12th, 2008, I and millions of Americans, in a vain attempt to retain consciousness at work and appear busy, fled to the internet. We were greeted by a large headline on the MSN homepage which read, in large, bold letters, "Should we punish Russia?" Morbid curiosity led me to read the corresponding MSNBC article (found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26159742/?GT1=43001/). At the bottom of the page, after reading the article, I saw in the "more from msnbc" section another appauling headline: Images: Swimmers smooch, gymnast heartbreak. (Jens, do you want the url?) These are grossly sensationalistic headlines. However onto more pressing matters, what the article on Russia revealed was, to put it lightly, discouraging. The introduction paragraph reads:

"WASHINGTON - Scrambling to find ways to punish Russia for its invasion of pro-Western Georgia, the United States and its allies are considering expelling Moscow from an exclusive club of powerful nations and canceling an upcoming joint NATO-Russia military exercise, Bush administration officials said Tuesday."

Bravo MSNBC! Everything is forgiven. In one paragraph you have provided a succinct summary of all of the issues at stake, and even hinted at hidden significances that lie festering beneath your sensational journalism. All our glorious western power has been reduced, essentially, to kicking Russia out of an exclusive club. They go on to say, "Washington and its friends have been forced to face the uncomfortable reality that their options are limited to mainly symbolic measures, such as boycotting Russian-hosted meetings and events, that may have little or no long-term impact on Russia’s behavior, the officials said." The is all in direct contradiction with what president Bush told a crowd in Georgia in 2005, "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone. Americans respect your courageous choice for liberty. And as you build a free and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you." Apparently we will only stand with them symbolically.

Above all, this headline prompted me to write this post today in lieu of checking the headlines. I'm sure it was a better use of my time.

The Olympics are in My Uterus: reflections on women’s gymnastics, Kerri Walsh, Misty May, Amy Winehouse, and a word on Michael Phelps’ Affair with a Mollusk


“If it’s not bleeding you shouldn’t put a BandAid on it,” my sister said, laying down on the sofa. I rubbed the finger I had sliced earlier that day at the café chopping almonds. The gash ran across my pointer, from on side of the knuckle to the other. It looked like a smile.

She sat up and rubbed the flesh blow her navel. Groaning and using the coffee table to hoist herself up she walked into the kitchen where she prepared herself a hot pack. When she returned, she collapsed on the sofa and laid the pack across her belly.

“Visiting the ruby city?” I asked

She noded.

***

When the female body undergoes muscular trauma, caused by exertion, the body begins to use what nutrients it can. Fat stores shrivel, including fat around the breasts and thighs. Muscle falls off the bone, including the pelvic floor, which allows a woman to expel a fetus from the body without internal tearing. The digestive system eats away at the walls of the uterine cavity, making women unable to menstruate. If the female body exercise in excess it sends a message to the brain, “Hey. We can’t deliver no babies.”

I think it’s safe to say the female gymnasts of the US and China won’t be cycling this month. (What would Lance Armstrong say?) Unable to bear children, breastless, and practically uterus-less, it’s hard to call these little gymnasts “women,” even though most of them are 16, 17, 18. But, oh oh oh, the gold is so close.

It’s a girl thing.

So, I digress for a moment. I think it’s safe to say the Olympics have been drained of its playfulness. Government, commercially subsidized athletes and steroids have obscured what it means to become an Olympic hero. Yet we don’t really bat a lash and still expect everyone to break world records. After all, personal life isn’t what the Olympics is about, right? It shouldn’t matter if their heads fall off after the uneven bars, so long as they win the gold. The kind of cold, single mindedness, of athletes like Phelps and Yang Wei are simply symptomatic of the larger Olympic downfall (ala Frankfurt School). So, it’s really not their fault. Really.

I can get over the death of my own romanticized, man against all odds, attitude towards the Olympic games. But I still can’t help feeling…well, creeped out. I don’t know how anyone can watch the broadcast from Tiananmen square and not feel uneasy. There are some things that creep you out for good reason: (When a professor comes up to another professor and says “How close can I get with a student before it becomes sexual harassment,” it feels a little creepy). Not only is it unclear who “ought” to win the gold medal, but it’s unclear who ought to ought to want this persona win the gold over that person. It’s the triumph of the “little guy” that’s inspiring. But it’s not clear who the “little guy” is anymore. Privilege has skewed it. I can watch Alicia Sacramone do well on the floor exercise, but when we know she’s lived a relatively comfortable life in Massachusetts’s pomp, attending Brown University on a scholarship she, financially, doesn’t deserve, I can’t help but wonder what dishwasher in New York could have done a better job.

The same thing is happening in the art world. We could watch Ella Fitzgerald sing and forget the fact she was a whore, but, for some reason, we can’t do the same for Amy Winehouse.

***

“You’re feet smell awful,” I told my sister, who has since abandoned her hot pack and moved on to belly massage.

She reached down and rubbed her fingers on the soles of her feet. She sniffed her fingers.

“Yummy.”

“I think my finger is infected,” I told her.

“Good. I hope it falls off. That way you won’t be able to blame anyone for anything anymore.”

***

Michael Phelps is a cocky sea cucumber. When asked “What does winning all these medals mean to you?” he replied “I’m almost at loss of words [sic]…to win the most gold medals is unbelievable…I don’t know what to say…I feel…incredible.” He had more to say about his goggles falling off in the 200 fly.

Phelps is at his best when he’s been beaten. In 2004, watching him grit his teeth at Thorpe and Van Den Hoogenband was enthralling. Phelps openly admits that, sometimes, his practice is fueled by anger and desire for revenge. In response to Thrope’s schoolyard taunts, made before the 2008 games in the Australian tabloids, Phelps said “I welcome comments. They fuel me.” And, he said it with an eerie calmness. It felt like a Star Wars Movie, with Coach Bowman as the Sith Lord and Phelps as Darth Vadar. (I feel your anger. It gives you power. Makes you strongah!)

I don’t believe in Evil, but I do believe in blinding hatred. When Phelps came on the scene in Sydney he was fresh. Now he’s a rolled up ball of athletic magma. He’s like a protein shake that makes you poop uncontrollably: you kind of like it but it’s also sort of…unpleasant.

Now, Thrope and Hoogenband are running away with their tails between their legs and Phelps crashes through the Olympic villa like a bovine Goliath. What. A. Snooze.

***

My sister listened to her voicemail on speakerphone.

“Hey Kashi it’s Sonya. I’m just sittin here watching TV and eating a lobster. I used a lot of butter. It tastes SUPER DUPER delicious. Call me!”

I wondered if “Lobster” was a euphemism.

“Dilly?” I muttered.

“Yeah,” my sister replied. “She’s a fat lesbian.”

Thank god, I can sleep now.

***

A reader brought up an interesting point. “Jens. If you hate Phelps sooo much because he wins all the time, how come you don’t feel the same way about the volleyball giants Kerri Walsh and Misty May?” Put quite plainly, Walsh and May are women. Phelps is a boy. It’s second wave feminism 101 as per bell hooks and Gloria Steinem. You go girls!
Walsh and May are also a unit that move with artistry rather than force. By themselves they are good, but together they make a harmonious pair. Watching them play ball is on par with watching the great Tai Chi masters move through space with grace and ease. Their sets and spikes are meditative.

So, in short, it’s a girl thing.

***

Another message.

“Hey Kashi, It’s Sonya. I’m just sitting here watching TV and eating some chicken. HAHA. Still waiting for your call girl. Toodles.”

It’s hard for me to enjoy anyone who uses the word “toodles.”

***

I’ll leave you with another comment from a reader. He writes: “Jens, I know you and would be unsurprised to learn your contrarian dismissal of Phelps had [sic] something to do with you wanting badly to suck his cock.”

Reader, where would we be without our sexual frustration?

Of all the Olympic athletes to perform thus far, the one I admire the most is Laure Manadou, the young swimmer from France. She gleefully pranced into Athens’ 2004 games, when, at the delicate age of 17, she brought home France's first swimming gold since Jean Boiteux in 1952. France christened its darling “La Sirèn,” or The Mermaid. She took a world record and sat, it would have seemed, at the top of the world.


But two years after Athens Manaudou embarked on furtive tryst with Italian swimmer Luca Marin, one that would end in rubble. Shortly after meeting Marin, Manaudou eloped to Italy, leaving her longtime coach, and opting to train in Turin. "Between Italy and France," she declared, "I have chosen Luca Marin, the love of my life. I want to live with him and have a baby." She kept her childlike optimism up until the Turin club expelled her for what they deemed a lazy attitude. Her vaporizing relationship with Marin culminated in a dramatic poolside display, when she threw the ring Marin had given her into the water. He followed her into the changing rooms and she formally broke off the relationship that day. Within hours, nude photos and a private video of Manaudou had appeared on the internet. I still can’t decide who’s more immature. To add insult to injury, Marin began dating Federica Pellegrini—a swimmer who now trains with Manaudou’s former coach.

At the start of the 2008 games Manaudou maintained her dignity. "Anything I achieve here is a bonus," Manaudou said last week. "If it goes well, great. If it doesn't go well, it's not the end of the world. I'm not going to die as a result." But after being a brutally beaten by Pellegrini—who stole Manaudou’s world record in her own event—Manaudou is considering quitting. "I'm asking myself if it's worth continuing. I don't even have the desire to swim anymore," Manaudou told France-2 television Tuesday after placing seventh in the 100-meter backstroke. "It's tough finishing seventh or eighth."

La Sirèn de la France has become nothing more than a fish flopping on the carpet. And I love her for it. With not much left to her name but an outdated world record and a sex-tape, shoving her head in the sand seems like the only option. She’s a pop star with muscles and chlorine damaged hair. But then, isn’t that what excites us about the Olympics? The prospect of death? When I watch the mechanical Chinese gymnasts I feel no real sense of excitement because I know they will win the gold. They’re the new Russians: cold, precise, and unflinching. (Just like their government!) But when I watch the childish and cow like American gymnasts, stealing the Bronze medal from the Germans, attending their first Olympic games, my blood begins to boil. With the fall of the Hamm brothers, placing in the top five it would have been a miracle. And yet, when they clinched that medal, the rejoicing feels just that much. And death still lingers, even for young hopefuls. We know it’s over for Raj, that Justin Spring’s knees will give out soon, that Haggarty is too old, and that Sasha Artemov ultimately disappointed his father, despite his enthralling performance on the pommel horse.

The Olympics are just life expedited. Youth, beauty, and grace are valued above wisdom and sagesse. Stars are born and die within a twelve year period. “Legends” quickly fade unless they are nothing short of god coming down from the heavens and giving you a handjob. (We may recall Nadia, but can we really recall any Olympic champions pre-World War II?) And there is also something distinctly American about enjoying the Olympics. Regardless of marketing incentives, America doesn’t endorse its athletes in the same way Russia and China do. China wins because they must (pressure from the government, I can imagine, is unbearably heavy, not to mention the Olympic village was practically built for the gymnastics team). America wins because it can. What’s even more exciting is the little swimmers from Kenya, Cuba and Japan those who fight tooth and nail for the honor of swimming in the final heats, even if they know they will finish dead last.

Oh, but America has some machines of its own. What more is Michael Phelps? His “eat, sleep, swim” tenor and self-aware egotism is well oiled and seasoned for nothing else but pumping out gold medals. He openly admits he does little more than swim and play video games. At least Laure had a boyfriend. Phelps’ sweep, thus far, of 9 medals is perfectly of indicative of fat American gluttony. All eat, no flavor. Manaudou’s story is the tragic, where Phelps is the melodrame. He totes himself on par with Mark Spitz, but how can he when his face repeatedly pops up in that repulsive Visa commercial? Phelps doesn’t have to live a life outside of swimming, and chooses not to. He’s inhuman. This is, perhaps, why I can watch him make Olympic history and not bat a lash. I would be happier if a baby seal won the gold medal.

But, Laure Manadou brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my lips. When faced with the prospect pummeling Pellegrini in the pool, she failed. Tried as she did, she could not swim fast enough, hard enough, to redeem herself. How like life. How French. And now she grapples an existential question: to quit or not to quit. She’s the Hamlet of Bejing.

As far as I am concerned, death awaits her when the torch burns out. Will she oust herself or…wait? Death is so near. It’s loss that makes the gold sweet. But it’s also loss that puts gold medals in perspective. After all, it’s just swimming.

This is a response that got out of hand to a message that Steph sent me, which included the clause: “I wiki-ed this before.”

Speaking of morphology, let's investigate the morphology of the newly verbed neologism 'wikipedia' that you so cleverly brought up. Given that it is a neologism, it should take a regular suffix 'd' or '-ed' in both its preterite and past participle forms. Now, this presents no problem in speech: I have never heard, nor do I expect to, any past form of wikipedia or wiki that does not sound like /,wɪki'piːdiəd/ or /'wɪkid/. The only real issue is one of spelling; it's not a terribly important issue, because no form of the word is likely to be misunderstood (except, perhaps, 'wikid,' which might be mistaken for a hip new spelling of the ever popular adverb (Boston) and adjective (Britain)). But the instinct towards standardization carries us forward, because no one wants to be wrong.

There are two main contenders for the preterite and past participle form of ‘wikipedia.’ The first, ‘wikipediaed,’ is currently the form listed on Wiktionary, while the other, ‘wikipedia’d,’ seems to be in broader usage. ‘Wikipediaed’ is a fairly regular spelling, but it doesn’t seem to have caught on. The explanation of this phenomenon is complex, relating to unspoken—except by linguists—rules of English orthography and the troubled and ambiguous relationship the English language has with the apostrophe.

First of all: what’s wrong with ‘wikipediaed?’ It’s regular, and I doubt many people would have trouble figuring out its pronunciation. But it looks funny. Well, it’s a letter problem. First of all: ‘ae’. Formerly a ligature, this combination of letters has gradually been eliminated from American English. Paediatrics became pediatrics, encyclopaedia (how coincidental!) became encyclopedia, and aesthetic is now sometimes spelled esthetic, though the first is still more common. Few English verbs end in ‘a’, so this problem doesn’t usually occur. To start adding in ‘ae’s where none were before is to swim against the current of linguistic movement—and this time you don’t have the grammarians on your side.

The problem with ‘wikipedia’d’ is the apostrophe, sure to get any sticklers hackle’s up. Apostrophes are among the most commonly misused aspects of English. In their correct usage they may denote possession or omission. However, in exceptions they can also be used in the plurals of initialisms, as in NGO’s, and numerals, as in 1970’s, or in cases where the regular plural would be ambiguous, as with lower case letters. Furthermore, in the near past (17th through 19th centuries) it was common practice to use an apostrophe in the plurals of loanwords that end in vowels, as in kangaroo’s. It seems to me that all these exceptional cases of apostrophe usage serve the purpose of isolating nonlinguistic or foreign elements from the regular morphology of English. ‘Wikipedia’d’ thus continues this tradition, as its clunkiness as a verb makes it a kind of unnatural element to be isolated. Furthermore, there is a direct line from cases such as NGO’s and kangaroo’s to Wikipedia’d, because the apostrophe-d construction does have precedent in the verb forms of certain initialisms such as KO’d or PO’d and in loanwords such as pajama’d (from Hindi roots) or, more recently, ninja’d.

The use of the apostrophe in ‘wikipedia’ is seemingly justified by the rationale that the apostrophe stands for the omission of the ‘e’ in ‘wikipediaed,’ which looks wrong. But if my theory of isolation is correct, the apostrophe in fact omits nothing at all, but rather serves as a barrier between the unnatural word and its conjugation. There is, of course, a simpler explanation, which is that English, having no verbs ending in ‘a,’ (if you find a common one please tell me) simply doesn’t know what to do with them. My guess is that it is somewhere between the two. The apostrophe-d construction only appears in words ending in ‘a,’ but the use of the apostrophe is drawn from the tradition of isolating the foreign or unnatural; in this case, it is the final ‘a’ that is truly unnatural.

The abbreviation, ‘wiki’d,’ retains its validity even though it doesn’t end in ‘a’ because verbs ending in ‘i’ are almost as rare, and because in this case the apostrophe actually is omitting something—the rest of the word.

Note that all this trouble results not from the context of the word’s verbing, but from the ending of the word itself. Neologisms of a similar vintage and origin, such as ‘photoshopped,’ have no such problem.

And, sorry Steph, I don’t think there is a case to be made for the hyphen. It seems to serve the same isolating function as the apostrophe, but has less precedent. As an alternative solution to avoid the issue, you can always go old school and exclusively use the separate 'did,' so you would instead say 'I did wiki this before for some reason.' This doesn’t, however, solve the problem of the past participle form, and it is probably misleading for modern listeners who expect 'did' to be used for emphasis, or in interrogative and negative clauses. Or you could say ‘I looked it up on Wikipedia.’


Epilogue:

A separate issue is the usage of ‘wiki’ as an abbreviation of Wikipedia. Wiki is it’s own word, predating Wikipedia, but the latter has largely subsumed the original meaning. Whether this event will be helpful or destructive depends on whether wikis (or is it wiki’s?) other than Wikipedia begin to rival it in the public consciousness. But, of course, if they do, the original meaning of the word will likely reëmerge, if you will forgive my playful use of the now sadly defunct dieresis. Such is the strength of language’s flexibility; I’m no prescripitivist.

When discussing Affirmative Action (AA), I have often been led to believe that the process under examination is nothing more than a tiebreaker. It is a good thing, given this country’s racial history, that in a situation in which two candidates, of equal ability, apply for a admission into a school that the admission be given to the candidate whose skin color is something other-than-white. This is a good thing, and a healthy thing. But, if this were what AA was, a tip of the scale, then the entire debate on AA would be quite petty.

Very few people deny the racist history of America. Some deny the racist present of America. I deny neither while still recognizing that the dichotomized tip-of-the-scale scenario is a simplified version of what AA really is. In discussing AA we have to discuss a range of factors and qualifications, quotas, standardized testing, and the merit of the applicant. Very seldom do we engage in an examination of these kinds of qualifications. We simply don’t want to.

Being an opponent of AA is not part of a sinister conservative agenda. Being an opponent of AA is to acknowledge the problem of racial injustice and posit that AA may not be the best way to solve it; and do it fearless of what liberal Twinkies might think of you.

Data, some of which I will present here, suggests that AA has not worked since the late 80s. I agree with the liberal contention that race is not talked about enough in higher education, but I argue that AA's existence is a symptom of that lack of discourse.

The language that liberals use when talking about AA has some rhetorical power that, above all else, has a sort of polarizing tenor. Words like “inequality,” “re-segregation,” “white privilege,” “systemic,” “racist,” and “power,” without being very specific, induce anxiety and guilt. The language itself casts a shadow over any classroom. This kind of language may distract us from the actual logic of the case, distract us from the data.

Another trick that many Queer Theorists have employed, and AA supporters have appropriated, is the usage of narrative in the place of argument. Hampshire’s own faculty panel kicked off with an array of testaments from students about the school’s myriad injustices. This kind of narrative has a populist persuasion, not a cool headed academic rigor. “I am a black lesbian and someone called me a nigger and I was hurt,” someone will say. The audience will gasp. “When I finally found another black lesbian we got together and we were the only black lesbian couple on campus and I was discriminated against.” The audience will gasp again, not really knowing why. (I chuckle at the comment, in awe that people actually believe that at a school where the student body is less than 2000 there should be more than one black lesbian couple. Please). So, whenever I hear someone say “Where I’m coming from…” or “In my experience…” or worse yet “don’t fuck with my story,” I know indeed that person has nothing to say at all. “I was raped” “White people are evil” “I can’t marry the woman I love.” This person hides behind pathos, the emotional appeal, because he/she can’t construct a logical argument, or he/she can but wishes not to. The logical argument he/she can posit has not the rhetorical power of the narrative, the narrative which causes an entire audience to feel like they cannot oppose AA, anti-discrimination legislation, and gay marriage without “offending” a black lesbian.

The combination of polarizing vocabulary and the glib use of narrative feeds into a larger rhetorical tool deemed the Doctrine of Liberal Infallibility. Liberals can say whatever they want because their entire mode of discourse entails sticking their fingers at conservatives. "My husband died in the twin towers," turns into "look at what America has done to me." A conservative can say “historically free-market economy has been good for developing countries” while a liberal will in turn say “CAPITALIST PIG!” Such acrobatics have no place in the academic world. They cause us overlook important data. Data that we know is significant but are afraid to address.

But how, I ask, can data be offensive?

How is it offensive that, in 1991, in terms of all the students who were admitted to a particular selective law schools in CA, that there were 421 black students, 24 of whom were admitted according to what the qualification for white and Asian students were, meaning that the rest, if it had not been for AA, would not have made it in? Is that statistic offensive in and of itself? The bleeding heart liberal will take my simple comment and say “yes! He is suggesting that black students are not as smart as white students!” but this is not the case. I simply mean to outline the degree to which racial preference operates in the admissions process.

At UC Berkley after 1988, attrition rate ran in lockstep with SAT scores for black students meaning that the lower the SAT score the higher the chance the student had of dropping out. Now, I respect the assertion that standardized tests might not mean anything. But, if anything, in the case of UC Berkley, SAT scores over-predicted the degree to which black students graduated. Richard Sander has noted that with black students in over 163 law schools, because so many of them were admitted for a commitment to diversity and not on the basis of merit, that over half of them failed the Bar Examination.

In 1998 proposition 209 banned the use of racial preference in university admissions in California. In what the liberal media called the “aftermath” of proposition 209, black students saw a 20% increase in the number of students who, not only graduated, but went on to receive PhD’s. Is this a bad thing? According to a liberal, any situation in which AA has been removed is a bad one, irrespective of the outcome: read, higher matriculation.

Proponents of AA noted that in the “aftermath” hundreds of minority students with 4.0 GPAs and high SAT scores were not admitted. They correlated this “injustice” to proposition 209. But they completely neglected the even higher percentage of white students with equal GPA and SAT scores who were not admitted because of the rising number of total college applicants. Who is cookin' the books now?

Race-Blind/colorblind ideology has failed in personal discourse (it's silly to think that we will solve small pox by being small pox blind), but it may be what we need for university admissions. Race-Blind admissions exposed minority students to a level standard across the board that, yes I’ll admit it, put them at a disadvantage for entrance into elite, I repeat, elite schools. But with a higher number of minority students funneling into UC San Diego rather than UC Berkely, graduation rates increased, grades increased, MA’s increased, and (as previously noted) PhDs increased for minority students. Yet, the liberals whine that because they are being excluded from the “best” institutions, racism is still rampant. Can we, in good faith, really pin proposition 209 on racist plots?

I’m not arguing for re-segregation. Nor am I arguing for the abolition of civil rights laws. Nor am I arguing that we should “keep all those Negroes over there with all the other black people.” But, staying true to my Libertarianism, I am arguing that AA has provided yet another example of how the federal government has tried to ameliorate society through legislation and failed. Privatization has historically been good for the economy, and it has also been good for Education.

AA began as a way to combat open racism in higher education. Then it became a way to promote diversity. But today, AA has become a way to admit unqualified students into elite schools. Open racism is waning these days. Diversity is bunk. Can preferential policies deliver on the promise of AA?

Take the case of the sciences. Not many minority students go on to take on a degree in the sciences. 5.3% of the country’s science degrees come from black students, while they make up approximately 9% of the polytechnic college enrollment. Minority students aren’t less interested in science (in fact minority students were, on average, more interested in majoring in the sciences than whites were). So we must assume that something else is at play. In a study done by Rogers Elliot, it was found that at four different elite schools the mean SAT math score for black students admitted was 2.6 standard deviations below the mean for white students (to give you perspective, if you haven't taken STAT, 3 standard deviations would be about the difference from the mean score to 0).

Of course, liberals, with their stripped pants and flowered shirts, will fall back on the argument that SAT scores do not reflect academic ability. (Okay okay. Calm down.) My basic assumption for this argument is that grades and SAT scores predict, to some modicum of a degree, students’ performance. I think we can agree that, while SAT scores might not mean everything, they mean "something." It may be safe to say that if schools admit students with low grades on the basis of racial preference, they will, on the average, receive equally low grades in college. And indeed, in Elliot’s study, he found that at these four elite schools black students interested in science had, on the average, a full GPA lower than their white counterparts. Such a performance gap makes it difficult for a student to find the motivation to continue a degree in science. This is why, Elliot found, at these schools one a third of the students who started a degree in science actually finished a degree in science, a rate twice the that of whites.

What I wish to illustrate here is not that black students are incapable of receiving a degree in science, but that, statistically speaking, the total value of your SAT score has less to do with your future performance than the relative value of your SAT score in junction with your other classmates. If this is true, then preferential policy, by definition, does not work, and in the case of these four elite schools, has not worked.

Upon examining the number of MA’s and PhD’s in science given out by historically black universities, you would find that an alarmingly higher number of students go on to peruse and receive these degrees than they do in the 4 elite institutions in Elliot’s study. The situation AA has created is, then, that elite schools that have the pick of the best performing students of color are getting them, even though these elite schools have the poorest track record for maintaining students of color. On the other hand, universities that have the best track record for graduating students of color are getting the middling students. AA has ruined a system of privatized education by socializing equality. As has been proved again and again, socializing equality does not work.

Racial diversity is a trope that takes attention away from socioeconomic diversity, something which an institution by its nature can never achieve. The fact is, no matter how you jigger the statistics, skin color does not correlate to economic status the way it did in the 50’s, and, as such, cannot merit preference by itself. Of the 257 African American freshman who entered UC Berkeley in the last class before proposition 209, only 83 had parents whose total yearly income was $30,000 a year or less. No less than 174 of the 257 came from homes where the parents’ income was at least $40,000, and usually much more. Is this what liberals mean when they talk about diversity? A bunch of rich black people going to school with a bunch of rich white snobs? Diversity indeed.

Liberal hoho’s argue that "Diversity is beneficial for education." Is it? Really? How? Such a correlation is difficult to prove. A commitment to diversity alone is not enough to sustain preferential policy (not to mention it is, by definition, racist). So far our "commitment to diversity" has done harm than good.

I defy liberal mollies to ask themselves, what does it mean to be “disadvantaged?” What do we mean when we say “under-privileged?” In the Hampshire teach-in, when a girl with an alternative learning style, got up to ask a question, I saw proponents of Action-Awareness Week snickering at her odd choice of attire. What is this, I ask, but ableism? When a child says he is happy, and a liberal ding-dong tells him he ought not be so for the injustices of the world are great upon him, what is this but ageism?

We are all of us "oppressed." Whatever that means. We all ask for more. Whatever that means. And, we are usually told that we are asking "too much, too soon." This is something pertinent to, but not unique to, people of color. What we choose to do with such adversity is another matter. Personally I do not enjoy the idea of the government having the final say in my agency and I prefer to have the responsibility in my own hands.

Finally, the unsettling “whiteness” of the AA debate suggests to me that grievance is at work here, not discourse. This kind of discourse, addled with ideological tissues, cry-fests, and namby-pamby civil rights jargon, we must remember, is devoted not to action but to guilt-tripping and the power it breeds.

We are not cosmically disadvantaged. And even if we are, what good does it do to superimpose federal regulations to ameliorate said disadvantages? And here is my opinion, completely void of any evidence, but only replete with a hunch: but our adversity, our struggle, our hardship and strife is directly propionate to our genius. I have written on the genius of gay men, here I speak to the genius of people of color. We are better than white people because we must be in order to even survive. But this is no predicament, it is, to me, a gift from the highest corners of heaven.

Victim-centered ideology has failed for feminists in the same way it has failed for African Americans in the same way it has failed for Queers. We can say that women make x percent less than men on the dollar, but if 40% of NYC’s streets have potholes, we do not deem it illegal to drive over twenty miles per hour anywhere in the city. We can, however, take it upon ourselves to learn how to be better drivers and, as a result, the roads are safer. For people with communist tendencies, Liberals have little faith in the human race.