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I believe in productination. It’s when you procrastinate while being productive. Cleaning, for example, when you should be doing other things (like reading or writing or assembling my new desk or doing website work for a client).

Today I cleaned the bathroom and the fridge. I just moved into an apartment in Houston that I share with two roommates, who have been living here for a while. The bathroom, let me tell you, was disgusting. Apparently they were holding out to see who could go the longest before breaking down and cleaning. They went pretty far. Finally, one cleaned the tub because he knew I’d otherwise flip out and kill people when I arrived.

But the toilet and the sink and the floor? Filthy. So I cleaned today. Went to the store and bought a mop. Got on my knees and scrubbed. I scoured. Multiple brushes and sponges were used. Even an old toothbrush. I broke out the Comet after the Scrubbing Bubbles failed (and they never fail). I conquered the bathroom, made it clear that the new kid in town meant business.

(I will spare you the “before” picture)

I also decided to clean the fridge. This is because the groceries I bought for myself this morning did not fit. After I threw out the expired foods and reorganized things a little, I had room for my stuff and theirs with room to spare.

(Pretty.)

I’m making chiles rellenos for dinner tonight. Poblanos were seventy-nine cents a pound, the ground sirloin and calabasitas were on sale too. My food looks great in the fridge.

So, yes, dear Houston, I am arrived. My clothes are hung in the closet. I am going to assemble myself a desk. My food is in the fridge. And chiles are on the menu for dinner.

Soon productination will become productivity. Right now, it’s temporarily shifted into procrastination. I am, after all, sitting here, updating the blog.

I got offended at this website. I believed it was true. Turns out it’s satire. Although I am breathing a deep sigh of relief, the realization that I can’t tell the difference between satire and possible reality scares me.

From Neatorama:

Marry Our Daughter is an introduction service assisting families to arrange marriages for their daughters. Kyra A, a 14 year-old who hails from the southeast and loves the outdoors, comes with a bride price of USD 27, 995.

The site has gotten 20 million page views in the last two weeks and gets around a thousand (mostly angry) emails a day. The site’s creator (and active nudist), John Ordover, has revealed that the site is indeed a prank.

Mr. Ordover quickly conceded the page was a parody aimed at drawing attention to inconsistencies in state marriage laws. States consider it a crime for adults to have sex with minors, but they allow kids as young as 12 to get married with parental and sometime judicial permission.

There is a part of me that totally thinks people are capable of such a thing. I can imagine a parent, desperate by finances and the luck of the draw, selling their child to get out of the trailer home. I recognize the movie-of-the-week value of my last statement, and I recognize that the scenario sounds much more absurd and impossible once it’s been stated, but do I fundamentally believe that people are incapable of such a thing?? Nope.

Human beings are scary. Human beings slaughter each other all the time. I know women who push their daughters to be plastic and perfect so they can attract the right man and escape their caste. I went to high school with several girls whose goals included “marry rich guy.” I knew two girls who sold fellatio to the rich boys. Perhaps I thought, initially, that MarryOurDaughter was tacky but honest. Making a public commodity out of something that exists in a virtual gray market already. Sometimes women marry men they abhor: I suppose it’s not prostitution when you exchange a lifetime of sex for financial security. (This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of happily married and loving folk, this is just to say that there are people with more selfish motives, and these are the people I believe capable of selling their daughters on the internet.)

I’m glad it’s not real. I’m not glad that I think such a thing could be.

We’ve gotten so bad, that parody has become difficult and nuanced. We do not recognize the joke until it slaps us in the face. Satire only works if the joke is slightly absurd. We are so capable of absurdity that we’ve demystified the word. True absurdity is no longer possible.

I won’t say “that’s absurd” at the risk of sounding redundant. But we all know that when we’re resorting to the meta-level, it’s because all our other tools have failed us.

I’ve been buried in work. It is examine week at Pitt and I just ate a whole personal sized pizza.  Turned in a 21 page paper, went to the doctor, took a long nap. Now I’m writing about torture and I’m avoiding Microsoft Word. Tomorrow, at noon, the showdown is over. Doctor says I’m allergic to the sun. She gave me lotion for my skin. Doctor says my ankle is healing (it was the size of a grapefruit for a while). I wore heels last weekend anyway. The sun is out. I’m inside.

Walt Whitman hated Mexicans. That’s okay. I still love him.

Recently, Gawker linked to the ad below:

Now, we can all agree that the ad is charming and funny, seeing how it plays off of people’s expectations, etc. Of course, the ad implies that somehow, the dude in bed forgot that he had slept with a woman the night before. Unless they were drinking or on some kind memory-inhibiting drug (which is possible, I don’t know?), or they fell asleep before consummating their passion, or something. This part confuses me. As does the weird “homophobia as a weapon for women” tactic. Please forgive me for reading too much into this, I am in an English department.The real question, though, concerns the object that is being advertised. Is this a practical object, really? Women’s restrooms do not contain urinals, not all purses can accommodate such an object (which questions the portability of such), and the cleanliness/bacterial potential is unexplained. And, really, would anyone use this?

Is being able to urinate standing up that awesome? Did I miss the memo on this?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the risqué. I just don’t quite see the pragmatism that this pee-funnel facilitates. What problem is being solved??

Everyone’s excited about Colombia these days. I am too.

Colombian film (’Paraiso Travel’) plays at Tribeca. John Leguizamo is in it; hopefully he’ll do a better job than his last Colombian adventure.

Author of Lonely Planet Colombia admits he never went there. His girlfriend, an “intern at the Colombian consulate,” filled him in. Reminds me of a story my mother tells. Some girl from her high school told people she went to all these exotic locations, when all she did was read guidebooks and watch documentaries. She got busted one summer she said she was in Jamaica, when some friends from school were selling raffle tickets and she answered the door. In pajamas. While she was watching a film on Jamaica. All this happened in Colombia. Bet there’s some Jamaican claiming he’s been to Seattle, just to make the circle complete.

Colombian deliveryman in Chelsea writes book about experiences. No one in US cares.

Arianna Huffington (the devil herself) weighs in on the Colombian-Clinton connection. Escandalo!

I met with my adviser today about my manuscript, which is on Colombia. She liked it. I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

Today the weather sings like Julie Andrews and dances like Baryshnikov. Today the sky is cerulean like James Colburn like In Like Flint like peepers. We played at identifying flowers today, on a long walk uphill to the picture show—my city in celluloid. I thought every plant was Japonica. The dinosaur celebrated the lack of snow by pretending he was a rainbow.

Charlton Heston died today. My mother really liked him the The Ten Commandments. So, apparently, did the LA Times.

I’m always amazed by how the dead are represented. Which picture gets picked? Especially with someone like Chuck Heston. His oeuvre is spectacular in its range and imagery, so which image becomes the definitive one: Moses? Planet of the Apes guy? Ben Hur? Sir Thomas More? Robert Thorne in Soilent Green? The “Good Actor” in Wayne’s World 2? The list goes on; the man made over one hundred and twenty (120) films.

Obviously, thought the LA Times, we must run the Crazy-Moses picture. Obviously. Nothing else says Charlton Heston quite like disheveled and judgy prophet of God.

What about the New York Times, you say?

They went with “classy portrait of respected actor,” no iconic character, but instead a non-disheveled, non-judgy smiling man that is a little more “godly” than “prophet of god”- like.

The Washington Post decided to go a little more West Coast:

Holy Moses! The man looks terrifying. Wow, Washington Post, I didn’t think Charlton could get any more judgmental, self-righteous, and holier than the LA Times pic, but you really took the cake. The man looks like a nut job.The Washington Post wanted the world to remember Chuck at his most eyebrow-ed.

Variety and Hollywood Reporter look tame in comparison:

As you can see, they leaned in the “George Hamilton” direction: tann-ed older man looking suspicious.

Seriously though, this guy looks way suspicious:

I read an article in which a women in mexico was quoted as saying “there will be no gadding about for me” is there even a word for gadding in spanish? Or perhaps was that the closest approximation the author could reach? - Winky

I’m not sure if there is a word for “gadding about” in Spanish, but I know there is a word for “gadabout” (”a person who gads about”): “azotacalles,” which literally translates to “street loafer” or “idler of the streets.”

I just used a lot of quotation marks.

A man at a bar called me a “dirty spic” this weekend.

Earlier this week, I was hanging out with some brown folk and a friend dropped in on us. “Who invited the white girl?” someone asked when my friend C went to go get herself a drink. Everyone at the table laughed.

This weekend, at the bar, when the man said that, I considered hitting him. I’m 5′3″ (with shoes on), I’m not a very big person. I have never actually punched someone. I debated whether or not to slap him. I settled with just yelling at him.

The guy was drunk. And he was clearly just being mean for the sake of mean. He almost got beat up at least two other times that evening. People pulled him away and took him outside. He continued making a scene outside.

He wore a Confederate Tshirt.

(The shirt doesn’t offend me. The guy wearing it did.)

In the car, on my way home, I kept trying to make sense of my anger. The man was not talking to me directly, he didn’t know me, in fact, he was just responding to his own ignorance.

“Calm down, Ese,” my friend had said when Confederate was about to fight another guy.

“Don’t call me an a**hole,” Confederate said back.

“I didn’t. I said ‘Ese,’ dude.”

“I’m not a f**king spic.”

And that’s when I got mad. “I’m a spic! What of it?”

“Shut up, you dirty spic.”

I am not angry, I told Brad in the car. I am not angry at this ignorant sad man. I am ashamed that I got so upset in the moment. I let those words have power. I let those words cinch my throat. I let this violent language in. I was complicit to his language.

It’s hard not to let that affect you.

“Who invited the white girl?” my friends had said earlier in the week. I raised my hand slowly. “I guess I did.”
And everyone laughed.

Stephen Colbert says he doesn’t see color. I don’t think I do either, I don’t define myself primarily against whiteness. I am not not white, but I’m not white. It’s complicated. But as I explained the comment to my White US American boyfriend Pete on the phone this morning, I couldn’t help but say “you don’t understand” when he compared the situation to bullying and name-calling. It’s not just name-calling. It’s reinforcing systematic and institutionalized racism. It’s delineating the difference between me and you; outlining that subconsciously, you are better, but you’re better because your skin color and your race.

I believe that we live in a world with publicly unacknowledged castes, I think socio-economics and race have privileged some and not others. But I do not think that privilege enables superiority. I think that those with privilege should use it to the betterment of others. You can’t really believe that you’re superior to someone else because they come from a different place than you. It’s just too arbitrary to actually warrant truth.

“I’m not a f**king spic,” the man said.

“Who invited the white girl,” they said.

I need to escape this dichotomy. This oppressor-oppressed either-here-or-there thing. I don’t want to be trapped in a Nietzschean cycle of being master or slave. I want to say, “just be.” But we define ourselves as victims.

“You just don’t understand,” I said to Pete on the phone. “You just don’t understand,” I said to Brad in the car. I have been victim tonight, I have been hurt by this man’s words. Why do I think they cannot understand? Because they’re not “spics”?

Yet, yet it was the “white girl,” that same girl from the earlier incident, C, who stormed into the bar to confront the man in the Confederate tshirt. She’s the one who stood up and thought it was worth extracting an apology. I held her back, I told her there was no need for violence, and provoking a violent man is provoking violence. I told her that we should just walk away. And she did. But I noticed that while C stormed in, Brad, my friend, and the other Rockabilly boys outside just watched the thing unfold. No one said anything. No one told Confederate he was ignorant and racist. No one tried to make him apologize.

That’s all I wanted really. Didn’t actually think I could take him in a fight. Didn’t actually think anyone should have.
Although, it was Rockabilly night at the bar. I’m sure his hair was flammable.

I always carry a lighter, you know.

Take a look at this image:

I think it’s one of the prettiest CGI things I’ve ever seen. And Bjork looks great. Says Mahalo:

The video [for “Wanderlust” from the new Bjork album, “Volta”] uses a combination of live action, miniatures, puppeteering, and computer generated animation to achieve its unique look.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe there’s some claymation in there as well. What do you think?

link to video