Completely Unnecessary

Sometimes I didn’t spend so much time reading the news. It’d be easier to be annoyed by rising food costs at the Vic Market, if I hadn’t read this story in the Guardian today:

Haiti: Mud cakes become staple diet as cost of food soars beyond a family’s reach

Even the cost of mud cakes is rising beyond what people can afford.

This is a good article that actually goes into some depth on a crisis, something often lacking in such reporting. Haiti’s land is stripped of nutrients from slash and burn farming (numerous people have documented the stark visual contrasts between Haiti and the DR, which share an island).

Haiti’s gotten from all sides for years:

The woes were compounded by a decision in the 1980s to lift tariffs, when international prices were lower, and flood the country with cheap imported rice and vegetables. Consumers gained and the IMF applauded but domestic farmers went bankrupt and the Artibonite valley, the country’s breadbasket, atrophied.

And now food prices are higher, so…

I haven’t read Aids and Accusation - Paul Farmer’s ethnography about AIDS in Haiti - in years, but I remember a particularly disturbing story that I’m almost certain came from it. The United States, concerned about ‘Africanized’ pig flu in Haiti, which never really came to fruition, talked Haiti into killing all of its pigs, which would be replaced with US pig stock.

Except that the pigs we sent down there were Iowa hogs, which didn’t have a chance of surviving in the hot, sunny Haitian climate (North American pigs get sunburned easily). So they all died, and when Haiti complained we were like, “Well, you should have taken better care of them.” So, they just had no more pigs. (These two sites have some background, but I can’t vouch for them - or my retelling of the story for that matter.)

Anyway, the Guardian article is definitely worth a read, but it is a sobering one.

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Given the fact that I’m routinely told that people’s first impression of me is ‘terrifying’ (and here I am just a snugly little panda), I am sometimes amazed by the things people to whom I haven’t even been introduced will say to me.

Will it surprise you to find out that there’s an example?

Perhaps it’s my penchant for dodgy karaoke bars, but here is an actual interaction I had last night:

Some Guy: Can I ask you a question?

Me: Sure.

Some Guy: You’re a pretty girl with nice boobies.

Me: That is… not a question.

Some Guy: Oh yeah. Can I try that again?

Me: By all means.

Some Guy: There’s a beautiful girl here with nice boobies.

Me: Yeah, still not a question.

He later informed me that I had a ‘nice ass’. It was also not in the form of a question.

A girl could want for a larger pool of adjectives.

I can’t decide if I’m a good feminist or a bad feminist for thinking this was a hilarious interaction. (I was more annoyed by the random who decided to play with my hair at one point - because, no touching).

So here’s the question - why do I appear to frighten those who wind up becoming my friends, whilst people I would never associate feel totally at ease with me?

Are you guys just masochists?

It’s my nice boobies, isn’t it? They’re so nice, it’s scary.

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Or not me.

Chris sends me a link to this video today, with instructions to watch the Chicago section at 2:25:

I’ve watched the girl in the center like a hundred times now. That’s fucking got to be you.

Chris’ filthy mouth aside, he’s almost right. The girl, standing a little bit in front of the crowd making an ostentatious fool of herself ought to be me.

But it’s not.

An edited version of our conversation says more about how my friends view me (and how I view myself) than just about anything else:

Me: That’s not me - though I grant that her spastic movements might lead you to think that.

Chris: It’s a combination of things. The glasses and hair are reminiscent of yours, as is the “I’m being funny right now” facial expression. And the black tank top/cropped pants combo seems like a plausible outfit for you. I feel like if you were to replace whoever that is, the difference in grainy internet footage would be pretty much indistinguishable.

Me: Yeah, it’s really the mouth-open facial gesture during the ’sexy bit’ that makes it seem like me. If she’s from Chicago maybe it’s just something they taught us in public school.

Between this and the girl from Iowa, I’m not as unique and precious a flower as I’ve always assumed.

Though I am disappointed that Chris thinks I would wear those shoes.

(Btw: To Matt, the creator of the film - why such short shrift to Melbourne? We get half a second of Fed Square at 0:56 and that’s it!)

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…for not posting.

I mean, it does. I know that more than one of you check this blog regularly for new and (ahem) insightful content.

But I can’t control your poor life choices.

So I’ve been tempted this week to blog about the lovely and soul-inspiring weddings of biddies - because obviously that’s awesome.

I think if you can’t be happy for 80+-year-old women getting married you don’t really understand what life is about. There’s fundamental level at which you don’t understand happiness.

[Ed. note - Um, Firefox 3, vaguely appealing though it is, does not seem to have incorporated spellcheck in a timely manner. This is absolutely disastrous for your editor, who can't spell her way out of a very small shoebox.] [Oh thank crap, it kicked back in; I had spelled disastrous wrong. I'm more of a big picture kind of girl.]

Anyway, I’ve been sick and also working/marking/watching Angel, so it’s really a grab bag of reasons why I’ve lacked the wherewithal to fulfill the blogging duties that - I will remind you - come with little to no financial reward.

I had something to say. I think it was this:

I know the Administration only has a short number of months (yay!) left in office, but this doesn’t mean that they should drive down their game.

It will potentially frighten several of you to learn that my father is a Republican. Not of the truly alarming variety - he just believes in lower taxes, etc, etc. (whereas I believe in stealing from the rich, etc., etc.).

Anyway, he sends me an article last week in which George Will (displaying the youngest picture GenXers have ever seen of George Will) is all about drilling in ANWAR and everywhere offshore because the Chinese are already doing it.

Eh, they’re not.

But, if the story gets repeated enough times, it looks like good enough impetus for Bush to advocate drilling off all our coastlines a few days later. The NYT, however, is not so impressed with that, considering it won’t lower gas prices until 2030.

But hey - talking points trotted out in the press ten days before they become ‘policy’ is just typical. Could these guys try anymore? I mean, where are those bold policy suggestions of yore? Isn’t there a country we should think about invading?

Oh, or is it just that we’ve gotten lazy, considering the oil contracts with one that we’ve already invaded?

Personally, I’m happier thinking about old ladies getting married.

Congrats to them and everyone taking the plunge (especially to Elissa and Keith, who I love with all my heart… even though they’re not gay. It’s not, like, a definite criteria for my support of your union).

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I am many things, but - as anyone who has watched me move can attest - graceful is not one of them.

Charming stories of my disastrous exploits can be found here, here (with picture) and here.

My inherent calamity-proneness is why black table tops against black carpeting in dark bars are a terrible, terrible idea. And, the use of marble is also a no-no.

That part that looks yellow? That’s all a bruise (exacerbated by the fact that I slipped on the bathmat the other day and slammed that area straight into the tub. Nice.)

Anyway, so I clearly walked into a table at the bar. Fair enough.

But it was also raining that night. And as I rode home, my bike slipped riding over the tram tracks and my tire went straight in the groove. Off I went, managing - amazingly - not to damage parts I’d already damaged:

I’m happy to say that my right leg bore the brunt of the insanity, including that amazing bruise on the inside/back of my right knee. That, my friends, is a difficult place to bruise.

I think it’s worth a 9.7 from the Russian judge.

Also notice the lumpage on the knee in the bruise picture. Awesome. (The left knee also took a hit, but the left shin stayed out of it, thank god. It does not feel good as it is.)

Anyway, all these pics are four days later and my tire needs some serious truing.

To be fair though, by bike took what should have been an obscene disaster and turned it into only a few bruises and a bit of a banged knee. I still have the utmost confidence in her.

Black marble tabletops, however, are on my shit list.

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I don’t really have anything to blog about. I know this will come as a fatal blow to some, but, realistically, you really shouldn’t be hitching your cart to my tiny intellectual pony. It’s for the best.

My thesis is done, which comes as a shock to the both of us. It’s finished two days before the due date, which is new. The fact that I’m not jotting down notes on the way to turning it in is truly a first.

Though I’d really like never to discuss it again, possibly the most interesting thing I found in my sample set is that, aside from advisers, all the people interviewed in regard to Clinton were women.* It’s not necessarily relevant to what I’m about to say, but it’s interesting and, really, what on this blog has ever proved relevant anyway?

Here’s The Age’s assessment of Obama’s potential running mates:

Many people in the party would like to see the two senators on the same ticket. Other names floated as possible running mates for Senator Obama include former Virginia governor Mark Warner, Virginia senator Jim Webb, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Senator Joe Biden.

Missing from this list are Janet Napolitano, the Governor of Arizona, and Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas’ bipartisan governor.

Granted Brian Schweitzer, the Montana governor’s whose name has also been floated prominently, is also missing, but… seriously - no one thinks it’s going to be Biden. As much as I love him, Biden offers the prospect of a double-Senator ticket with only the support of a small, blue state in exchange. Smart money’s on the governor of a redish state.

Interesting that Napolitano and Sebelius keep getting left out of the mainstream media’s lists, though they appear everywhere on the lefty blogosphere - and, ostensibly, in the Obama campaign.

Truth be told, I hope not to talk about women, gender, politics and the media for quite some time. If we run into each other at the bar, I know lots about puppies, the Congo and gossip. I have lots and lots of non-political dirt that I’m absolutely bursting to share. Let’s talk about that instead!

* - Notice that awkward, overly long sentence structure? It appears throughout my thesis as well.

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For reasons left unsaid, 2am on a Friday night appears to be a particularly good time to recount yet another family story.

The problem with me is that, while holding onto only a tiny modicum of morality, I was raised with a goodly amount of cultural Catholic guilt. Not the kind of guilt that comes from god, but the kind of guilt that comes from a uniquely Roman Catholics milieu.

To the story - it involves Manuel, the server for years untold at Abril, my family’s Mexican restaurant of choice since I was small. (Abril has since closed and remained, as far as I am able to tell from afar, a blank pariah on the corner of Kedzie and Logan.)

When I say since I was small, I mean biweekly visits since the age of four. The staff knew my gringa tinyness and then not so tinyness. And I always ordered strawberry milkshakes - because Abril made the best milkshakes ever to grace the face of the Earth.

Anyway, in the years of my not-so-tinyness, say about 16, Manuel made up my shake as usual. He placed on the top a maraschino cherry, an extra bonus to the strawberryey-milky wonderness.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been a fan of maraschino cherries.

I turned to my mother and asked, “Do you want this?” I perhaps, in my ignorance and youthful intolerance, made a face.

My mother looked up and indicated that Manuel - the lovely man who had taken me to the pinata when I was four - had seen my distaste for his cherry.

I nearly died.

I have had a similar feeling every time I think of the horrible moment in which I realized he’d seen my lack of appreciation. And disdain.

I’m not kidding. Perhaps a decade hence and the restaurant gone, I routinely think of Manuel’s face in the moment that I utterly ruined the nice thing he tried to do for me.

This caliber of small stuff ups still affect my psyche in a way that completely overstates their probable importance to those afflicted.

Let’s just say I haven’t changed.

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Right now there’s a maelstrom of debate in my head over whether I should come back to the States in July or somehow scam/visa/marry my way into at least one more term at UniMelb.

I quite enjoy my jobs at the moment, and comparing the pay and hours to my last ’serious’ work makes me want to ring them up and giggle maniacally. (Remembering working there makes me not want to ring.)

But, obviously, I need to keep my ear to the ground for other possibilities.

Mostly, I think I missed my calling as a 19th century lady of leisure. I could deal with the corsets and sexism with excesses of snuff and ponies. I am exceptionally good at doing nothing for long periods of time. And reading literature.

Other careers I would accept include:

• searching for a film in which Tom Wilkinson gives a bad performance.
• professional cougar hugger
• crotchety old man that sits at the pub and chats to you while you’re ordering

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They consist of capers, Bacardi Gold (god love you, Shawn), Michael Clayton (maybe, haven’t watched it yet), and George Orwell. They are all I’m doing tonight, and for a good portion of tomorrow.

And sleep.

Everyone always jokes about the grad school lifestyle - we’re always so tired, ha ha ha. It’s funny because it’s not really true. Grad school isn’t that hard. Mostly we drink at the Corkman a lot.

But for the last two weeks, I have lived the dream. Violeta had a question while we were coding today, and I laid down on the floor while we rehashed whether or not ‘boat people’ counted as members of the public (or some such thing). I fell asleep and missed half the question. Then I fell asleep at the desk timing John Howard speaking, stopwatch in hand.

So then I did that for about six more hours and then worked on things that were due yesterday for another four. One drink at the bar pretty much sufficed.

This weekend = no study, no gender, and certainly no goddamn media theory. My students are suffering - they have essays due on Monday - but I am taking the weekend off on their behalf. My bear blanket has never looked so good.

I’m a history loser, so my free time will be spent rereading Homage to Catalonia (which, if you haven’t read, is amazing - George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War), but I plan on doing nothing productive.

Nothing.

For those of you who read this blog for news - and I seriously question your judgment - here’s a remake of Clinton’s 3am ad at which my spiteful and mean sense of humor (or perhaps fatigue) had me crying with laughter today:

I still really like the ’something’s happening in the world,’ but also wonder who on Earth at MSNBC taped her for so long?

Video via Wonkette

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Looks like Chelsea Clinton is all grown up:

The softballs come gently, lobbed by voters who support her mother and are thrilled to see that the awkward duckling of the Clinton administration has become a glamorous swan.

That’s the opening line of a LA Times profile of Clinton daughter turned surrogate. Let see which ‘women politicians in the media’ boxes we can tick:

Her hair is long and highlighted blond. Her black flared jeans are tight, and her gray blazer nips at her small waist. She has a boyfriend, her own apartment and a terrier named Soren. (After the philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.)

Hair, clothes, and martial status - check!

Mostly, her voice is low, slightly raspy like her dad’s, and curiously monotone.

Tone of voice - check! Though, also curiously, she’s being criticized for not being shrill. That’s new(ish).

…despite her poise occasionally slips into adolescent cadence, ending a statement with a question mark…

Subtle undermining of her competence - check!

Bonus points for checking the Hillary-Clinton-box of extremely unflattering photo!

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a leading political media scholar, said in response to a different LA Times question: ‘I don’t think adult daughters are held to a different standard.’

Yeah, neither do I. And I bet Jamieson is annoyed that she was quoted in a story that reaffirmed so many of the double binds faced by women in the public sphere.

Via Jezebel

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