I’ve been reading about the anthology Yes Means Yes on Bitch PhD. I think, despite the fact that just yesterday I started (but did not finish) a blog post about my large stack of unfinished projects and books, that I need a copy of this book pronto. I almost ordered it online last night but then decided maybe I should use my purchasing power to actually support a physical bookstore in my community and so I put off the purchase with the intention of popping over to Vroman’s for it at some point. Then this morning while I was stuck in traffic on Sepulveda I thought “Oh, I should just stop by a bookstore in Westwood during lunch and pick it up there.” The logic in my brain was 1) Westwood is the neighborhood adjacent to UCLA 2) UCLA is a University 3) Universities are surrounded by bookstores 4) Thus Westwood has bookstores. While point 3 might be true in a sort of vague general sense, it is not true of UCLA. Here we have the UCLA bookstore (which doesn’t have Yes Means Yes, I checked), a mystery bookstore (and while it might be a mystery to me why female sexuality is so fraught with BS in our society, I don’t think the bookstore in question would see it as part of the genre), and a Borders far enough down Westwood Blvd that I’d either have to take a really long lunch or drive there (and really if I’m going to support Borders I might as well order online from an independent bookstore somewhere else). I guess I’ll be making a pilgrimage to Vroman’s some night this week after all. Here’s hoping that the women’s studies section is far enough from the gardening and crochet sections that I am not lured into their grips. I think their gardening section must have some sort of gravitational field going or something, as it’s very hard not to get pulled in.

Meanwhile (and somewhat related to the book in question) I’m listening to the Taj Mahal album my mother owned while I was in high school. At the time I absolutely hated this album, not due to the musical style, but because of the song “Big Legged Mamas are Back in Style Again.” At 14 or 15 years old I was seriously offended by this objectification of fat women (I felt the same way about “Baby Got Back” for what that’s worth; but that at least I didn’t have to encourage my mother not to play at home). Of course, looking back, it’s absolutely hilarious that I thought of myself as being part of the mentioned demographic since at my heaviest I think I was 145 pounds (which at almost 5′10″ would have put me on the slightly low side of normal weight). Moreover, fifteen years or so later, I have to agree with my mother that whatever problems one might have with songs objectifying women, extending some appreciation to non-stick-figures is a very very good thing indeed.

I frequently let Rhapsody decide what I should listen to based on what it knows about what I’ve listened to recently. This doesn’t always result in playlists I actually like but it does at least relieve me of the burden of trying to decide what I want to hear while I work. And this is how I happened to hear Katy Perry’s “I kissed a girl.” At first I wasn’t paying much attention and assumed it was a remake of Jill Sobule’s song of the same title. But after having heard a few references to Perry’s song in particular I decided to go back and compare. Definitely NOT the same song. This, at least, appeases my annoyance that Perry is getting a lot of attention for this song as if it were original since the song itself is original to her. But the sentiments annoy me. A lot.

In particular I am annoyed by “I kissed a girl just to try it // I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.” I grew up in a pretty homophobic community so I was a little shocked when I came to college and discovered the degree to which lesbians are fetishized by many straight men. Not real lesbians of course, but the fantasy kind. The kind of girls who kiss other girls while drunk out at the club. Given that, I’m willing to be that Perry’s boyfriend didn’t mind.

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Ok, if you know me, you may very well know that I hate valentine’s day. I have always hated valentines day.* In high school I used to try to get my friends to join me in wearing black on February 14th to demonstrate our disdain for the whole concept.  They, however, shared neither my hatred of the day nor my love for wearing black, so that never actually worked out.

This year I am finding myself particularly annoyed as the day approaches and I’m not sure why.  I mean the reasons not to like the holiday are pretty obvious:

1. pink.  I really really do NOT do pink.  I’m cool with red, but not when it’s paired with pink.
2. bitterness.  I admit it, my early feelings about valentines day were heavily influenced by my failures in the romantic realm.  If you’re single it’s hard not to hate a holiday that celebrates the very state of couplehood.
3. unrealistic expectations.  Even when one is in a relationship, the hype of a day where your significant other is supposed to express the depth of his or her feelings for you with a gift, is just asking for trouble.
4. gender stereotypes.  This is a holiday that by its very design reinforces countless gender stereotypes.  Don’t believe me?  See point 1.

All of these are, in my opinion, perfectly reasonable reasons to not be a fan of the day but I will admit that the sensible thing to do, really, is just ignore it altogether.  To a certain extent I do this, but this year, with just under two weeks to go before I can forget it completely, I’m already sick to death of valentines day.  Of course the magazines I read for their food and gardening content (Sunset and Better Homes and Gardens) are full of articles keyed to the holiday.  I’m sure some of the baked goods and other ideas are worth looking at but I frustratedly flipped through the many pages of pink and red without a second glance on Friday night when I decided I was going to chill out in the bathtub with the current magazine offerings.  Too much pink!  Seriously.

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A mention of government cheese in another context sent me flipping back through old livejournal entries looking for something I wrote years ago about memory and food.

I didn’t find the entry in question but I did find a link to The Surrealism Compliment Generator.  The fact that this site still exists six or so years after I first encountered it totally delights me.  It probably has something to do with the fact that my brain has turned to goo as a result of trying to figure out some statistical models that make no sense.  Or maybe it’s just that finding silliness still alive right where you left it helps make up for the fact that medianstrip seems doomed to perhaps never have interesting content again.

People sometimes ask me what it is that I like about living in L.A. (usually in conversation where I have just admitted that I thought I’d hate it here when I moved but quickly came to love it). Of course there is one obvious answer. It’s about 68 degrees today and while it is hotter in the summertime than some other places in the country it’s also less humid. So when you sweat it actually evaporates and cools your body off the way it’s supposed to.

There’s more to love about LA than just weather but it’s sometimes hard to convey. I have long likened feelings for cities to romantic relationships. Along those lines one might describe LA as the brilliant, interesting, and kind boyfriend who somehow can never hold down a job and is always leaving his underwear on your floor and his dishes in your sink. Your friends can’t understand why you don’t kick him to the curb but you can’t imagine how you’d live without him. Sure things would be cleaner and you’d have more money if he were gone, but life would be less interesting and exciting.

This analogy came to me a week or so ago as I was coming home from work, sitting in stop and go traffic on the 405 coming out of Westwood into the valley. The 405 is one of those freeways that you can pretty much guarantee will throw a monkey wrench into your commute. It’s the metaphoric equivalent of a moldy bowl that probably once contained cereal festering in your sink. Usually I forego the freeway in favor of the slightly less direct—but often faster—Sepulveda Boulevard. Sepulveda is a lovely drive in its own right, meandering slightly with hills rising off to one side. The 405, though, is a beautiful sight, if you can just let go of your frustrations with traffic long enough to appreciate it. One of the reasons this particular stretch of freeway is so crowded is that it’s one of the few routes through the Santa Monica Mountains. At 4:30 in the afternoon in January that means golden light of a sun about to set lighting up the hills rising on either side of you as you creep toward the top. And when you finally crest the hill you are greeted by the spreading vista of the San Fernando Valley.

I have heard people complain that Los Angeles isn’t green. I will acknowledge that this is probably somewhat true of the less prosperous neighborhoods but in general I find that my complaints tend to run the other way (too much of the city is falsely green due to heroic efforts to keep turf-grass healthy in an environment not suited to lawns in the least). Aside from my ire about the constant use of sprinklers, though, I have to say there is something magical to me about the view from freeways (or the view from a landing plane) of city stretching out in all directions until it is checked by the hills. The city is nestled within the confines of the geography, having started as a small pueblo along the LA river (which I am lead to believe once actually contained water before it was lined with concrete and fell victim to the water needs of the city). No one in their right mind would have planned such a large city on such unfriendly terrain. But yet here we are.

And I think sometimes what I love most about LA is the improbability of the whole thing. It is a city built on shifting ground, punctuated by two mountain ranges (and plenty of other hills), with very little fresh water and almost zero precipitation for seven months of the year. At the same time it is a city where you can hear three languages while waiting for a bus or standing in line at the grocery store, a city where you can find food from almost anywhere in the world (though I’m still on the hunt for authentic Puerto Rican, having gotten a taste of what I’m missing on the east coast a few years back).

I think it is fair to say that Los Angeles embodies everything that is wrong with our society: the lack of foresight; the careless assumptions of human superiority and invincibility; the divisions among the haves, the have-less, and the have-nots; the tendency toward selfish individualism. But at the same time the city is a monument to the hope, ingenuity, and folly that characterizes our species. I think what I love most about LA is the way that it constantly reminds me how small we are, and how big we are, all at once.

This morning, while driving through the Sepulveda Pass, I looked up to see what looked like a baby dragon flying overhead.  Big wings, long thin tail.  I suppose, given that this is LA afterall, it is possible that I was looking at some sort of movie prop.  But given the lack of the normal annoyances that come with filming (namely blocked off roads and sidewalks; seriously don’t even get me started on how much I hate that aspect of hollywood) I’m going to guess that it’s more likely that I was looking at a large bird with a snake in its claws.

This immediately reminded me of the Laurie Anderson song from which this post takes its title.  Of course about half a mile later (what? you don’t measure time in miles?) I realized that song was about an eagle and a weasel.  But in a city this big I’ll let my wildlife song references have a little leeway.

Like in that Annie Dillard book
Where she sees that eagle
With the skull of a weasel
Hanging from its neck
And here`s how it happened, listen.
Eagle bites the weasel.
Weasel bites back They fly up to nowhere.
Weasel keeps hangin` on.
Together forever.

Someone in the office likes signs.  Signs stating the obvious.

In the women’s bathroom there’s a sign saying “don’t forget to flush.”  I suspect that in reality the problem is not that people forget to flush but that they forget to check that flushing accomplished its intended goal (sometimes it takes a second try).

Today there is a sign on one of the cabinets in the kitchen.  The door to said cabinet is hanging at a funny angle and very clearly not attached in all the places it’s supposed to be.  The sign says “Caution: this door is unhinged.”

It sort of makes me want to hang a sign somewhere in the hallway saying “You are here.”

Earlier this week I had what I, upon waking, immediately characterized as a nightmare.  In the dream I woke up and looked out my bedroom window to see a backyard lightly covered in white flecks.  Snow.   Overnight temperatures below freezing.  Somehow in the dream the front of the house and the back were different microclimates because while it had only snowed in back, in front there was snow and freezing rain.  It was a day when I had to go to work so you might think that the nightmarish part of this dream would be driving across the city in freezing rain (which sounds practically suicidal to my wide-awake self since around here just regular rain makes for a stupidly treacherous commute).  But it wasn’t the danger of death by SUV-driver who’s never seen an icy road that left me crying hysterically in this dream.  No it was the fact that I hadn’t known it was going to snow and hadn’t covered the peppers I’m overwintering or brought in my potted tomatoes.  My entire garden was ruined!  I sobbed and sobbed over the death of all those plants.

Of course it is always possible that my garden might succumb to a sort of similar fate.  A few years ago we actually did have nightime temperatures low enough to result in frost and Earl kitty’s water dish freezing (he was still an outdoor cat at the time).  If it gets that cold, though, I can probably save the potted plants by moving them into the garage.  I’d probably also try to save the peppers by way of protective blankets.  But even if everything currently in the ground died it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I definitely don’t miss cold winters.  And you couldn’t pay me enough to drive across L.A. in freezing rain.  But I think awake-me has a better grip on what constitutes real tragedy than dream-me does.  Of course if those tomato plants were actually strong producers instead of borderline failures I might feel differently.

A couple of days ago a web acquaintance pointed out this shirt on thinkgeek. It has a drumset decal on the front that’s hooked up to a battery pack and speaker so that it actually plays when you tap it. Cool idea, right?  Well, yes, but….  My first thought on seeing it was “oooh, that’s neat” but that thought was quickly followed by “but clearly it was designed by a man for men.”

I’ll admit that I’m a bit weird when it comes to physical contact, but I’m pretty sure my desire not to turn my breasts into a drumset does not result from the unfortunate experiences I had in high school (which still, after all these years, leave me hyper-sensitive to the dynamics of casual touch in social situations).  I mean, in theory, even if you do have a working drumset decal plastered across your chest random you’d still have ultimate control over who actually tapped on said drum set.  But I’m not one to trust theory when it comes to control over my own personal space (and bodily contact).  So someone let me know when I can get a shirt with the musical instruments on the sleeves.  I mean come on, the ad copy even writes itself then.

Five years ago I wrote the following lines in a poem:

The Santa Ana winds
always leave me reeling in fever
unable to sleep.

This might explain why today I feel as if I spent last night partying despite having really had a quiet evening watching TV and folding laundry. I keep slipping into a zombified haze of reflection, despite attempts to actually be productive and make progress on one of my current projects.  Of course it isn’t just the winds.  Air quality is also lousy as a result of various fires and my throat is dry and scratchy.  Lately the phone conversations with my mother start out “so are the current fires anywhere near you?”

Last week I started a job which involves a commute to UCLA three days a week.  I’m still figuring out the best time to make the commute within the constraints of a normal workday.  Meanwhile I have realized that it has been way too long since I swapped the CDs in my car for something new.  Most of what is there is from a hard time in my life and brings with it interesting memories.

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