Thursday, June 29, 2006

8:01 PM - Tony plays with tools.

female domestic slavery

Today I installed my air conditioner for the third time. The first time I discovered it dripping water back into the window (which became an evil pool of standing water) and then the second time, after I tipped the air conditioner out the window so that it would drip outside like it is supposed to.... well... there was another, smaller, evil pool of standing water.

So.

Today I went to the hardware store and have now rigged my air conditioner with its very own bedpan. The bedpan is self-emptying and will only drip outside. There's also a suicide strap so that the air conditioner cannot try to escape its bedpan. The whole contraption is sealed with purple duct tape.

Did I mention that we had thunderstorms and hail in Brattleboro today?

The other chore I accomplished was a hanging of the lanterns. Since I've also moved my work table into the bedroom with my air conditioner, I can now enjoy a summer evening of latern-light, air conditioning, and fresh limeade (or ginger lemonade) while working on my computer. This is an absolute must for my summer schedule; since I'm training circus most days and working half-time at my new job (yay!), only my evenings are left for web design and other creative projects.

Speaking of other creative projects, there's one I'm working on for July 7. Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is having a contest to spoof the Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest trailer with a Puzzle Piratey theme. The prize is $500, and cash prizes for Puzzle Pirate contests are completely unprecedented. I could use that money for aerial rigging (my very own fabric, yay!) and I believe I have an unusually keen sense of spoof, so I am putting a lot of heart into my efforts. I'm not going to reveal anything yet, except for my maddening obsession with finding the correct fonts. A preliminary result:

Saturday, June 24, 2006

9:39 PM - it's a small town after all...

mini-Pride

I almost convinced myself to slither down to NYC to celebrate Pride, but the thought of oppressive heat and stench overcame my desire for sparkles, pretty boys, and community. I stayed in Brattleboro, but luckily, someone decided to coordinate Vermont's first Rural Gay Film Festival. It actually turned out to be pretty interesting... There was a neat piece on Laramie (which we passed through on the way out here) and it was really interesting to see how the people there talked about their queer community and their place within their own town. It gave me a lot to think about in terms of my own local rural community.

The other neat piece was a short music video to Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful," which I've actually considered using for a performance piece. There were all kinds of gay guys with different looks and body types, acting out personal body image issues while lip syncing to the music. Extremely hairy bearded guy rolling around seductively in satin sheets atop 20 Princess-and-the-Pea mattresses. For example. The piece was pretty clever and meaningful and hilarious all at once.

I enjoyed the organizer's efforts to bring people together in an environment where queer people are mostly invisible. It was a noble goal, at least until he put me and my friends on the spot by introducing us to the whole audience as "the new people who just moved here from San Francisco." Amateur sauce, dude. (Internally, I find myself fascinated that I like performing aerials for an audience, but I don't like being put on the spot.)

The S key on my keyboard is really bothering me. I think I am going to have to arrange for yet another service appointment on my laptop. Crikey.

Friday, June 23, 2006

1:35 PM - Hello, I'll be your new roommate....

karmic jail

This year was an unusual birthday, but then again, it was an unusual year. I don't think I've made a secret of the fact that living in Brattleboro has been difficult for me; I miss San Francisco and I also feel out of place here in Brattleboro. Somewhere along the line I turned into a city boy, but I was the last to find out. For my birthday this year, I decided to pamper myself a bit early in the month, and I had a much-needed massage along with a couple of summer necessities: an air conditioner and a blender. The vichysoisse is chilling as I type. On the day of my birthday itself, I decided to drive south to Massachusetts and search for clothes that suited my tastes, a yummy lunch, and a visit to the warehouse-sized Osgood Fabric Store. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. By contrast, I go shopping.

My first stop was at the Whole Foods an hour south of here. I was hoping they would have my favorite Wildwood Organic Baked Tofu (the Savory flavor is just delicious in a mixed green salad with strawberries, blanched red onions, black pepper and a blush wine vinaigrette), but sadly Whole Foods did not. In fact, it was in a new shopping center with high mutant curbs and a WalMart. And that's where the day's trouble started: I pulled forward a bit far and onto the curb, and when I backed up, the curb pulled my bumper off on one side. Eep! Of course I live in Vermont, and I'm almost an hour from home, and I have some birthday shopping to do, and I left my cell phone at home because I wanted a day "just to me." Well. At the 50 cent pay phone, I called the closest Saturn dealer, which happens to be in Springfield, an hour from my home but in the same town as the fabric store. It seemed like a happy coincidence until the representative couldn't give me a service appointment until 8am on July 1.

Determined not to spend my birthday sulking in a Whole Foods that didn't even carry my tofu, I ventured into WalMart and put my car back together with plastic zip ties and purple duct tape. I continued on for some bland vintage clothing shopping, a tasty Thai lunch, and arrived at the fabric store two hours before closing. Two hours before closing, and it's a fabric store like I have never seen in my life; I could have spent days in there. Days. I became so overwhelmed with possibilities for the costume for my new fabric piece that (after filling my cart with 3 rolls of different kinds of white spandex) I decided to put everything back. Since I'll be back in Springfield with some time to kill on July 1, guess where I will be.

In the end, the only things I bought for my grand birthday shopping extravaganza were the zip ties and purple duct tape I used to repair my car when its bumper fell off. I still had a fun day, with plenty of possibilities for the costume and my return shopping trip, and I topped the day off with some excellent strawberry-rhubarb pie, which a baker friend made for me during a baking lesson at her house.

As for a tough time in Brattleboro.... I realized that I am struggling here because I still don't feel settled, and I wish I was making even more progress as an aerialist. I never felt "happy" on a daily basis in China either, and China was probably the biggest growing and learning period in my life so far. Hopefully I am also learning and growing and evolving through my experience in Brattleboro, too. For some better news-- yesterday I was hired for a new job! I'm looking forward to that for a sense of stability and community here.

Secret message to Fenny: the benefits include a Vision package, so I am going to get my eyes checked. Hooray!

Monday, June 19, 2006

9:16 PM - the magical fruit

a pre-tooting of the horn

Normally I don't do this, but I wanted to post a quick birthday story that's happened in the first.... 12.... minutes of my birthday. Usually I wait until afterward to post about it in my blog but hey, CC said that I get a free hall pass this week. So nyah.

I was logged into Puzzle Pirates to see if K was online, because she'd sent me a present and I wanted to open it "in her presence," in an online way. Well, she wasn't online so I opened the present and there was a turtle-shaped, organic lavender eye pillow who's just the cutest wittle thing ever! So I get a super-restful night of sleep before the big day I have planned... and oh, the plans.

In any case, as I logged off, I noticed how many Pieces of Eight (aka Money) Shantybones has:



What a coincidence!! That's right, today I turn 29 thousand 292 years old. What are the odds? Ok, I'm off to lavender-filled dreamland!

Monday, June 12, 2006

12:38 PM - It's like rain on your wedding day!

What does "post-ironic" mean?

I realized today that I have no idea what this phrase means, and I used it in my mind today in reference to the shirt I was wearing. I am starting to wonder if the term is something like "Web 2.0", a nebulous term that doesn't actually mean anything and so therefore I'm destined not to actually understand it. A buzzword, if you will.

Anyway, please enlighten me.

In other news, Saturday's student mini-recital was fine, very low key and uneventful. Hopefully I'll put together a "real" fabric piece over the summer and have something worthwhile to show. Also, by a complete random accident, I tried flying trapeze for the first time on Sunday. It's incredibly fun, jumping off the board is terrifying, and I'm glad my first try was in a semi-private environment surrounded by friends. Jumping off is really scary, but swinging back and forth is really fun and worth it.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

7:07 PM - keep on truckin'

car update

The car is back from the shop and it's working well again. Battery and windshield replaced, oil changed, woohoo! Apparently there's trouble in the muffler and I need to go to a Saturn dealership to have them replace the part. The closest Saturn dealerships are an hour away in Massachusetts... which explains why so few people here drive Saturns.

I'm doing a quick group piece with the fabric class on Saturday. It's not terribly momentous, but it's my first performance ever on fabric. Student demo for the parents of the kids' classes. Yay.

Also, I have a phone interview tomorrow for a part-time position here in Brattleboro. There isn't much here to suppot people with technical skills, so I hope things go well. Wish me luck!

Monday, June 05, 2006

4:46 PM - Can we please have some public education? Please?

grr.

Yesterday I went outside to my car to go to the studio and train. The battery in my car was dead and my car wouldn't start. One totally awesome person came from the studio to pick me up and another totally awesome person came to my house to jumpstart my car. I drove it all around to recharge the battery with the alternator. I went to use my car today and.... the battery is dead again.

This tops off a fabulous day in which I woke up to read the news to see that people in the government are again trying to create a federal amendment against same-sex marriages, even though they know they cannot win. Thank you, idiots, for repeatedly humiliating and degrading a group of people to increase your own political capital. Just once, I'd like to wake up in a world where I don't have to hear words like "fag" on the street or see people reinforcing American cultures hurtful stereotypes and expectations of hypermasculinity or where politicians and comedians aren't boosting their careers at the expense of our dignity. I have talked to a surprising number of queer people who don't even want same-sex marriages to become legal for reasons like "not wanting to replicate the structure of heterosexual marriage" or "marriage used to be about property" or other circular, illogical arguments... I feel like so many of us are beat down to the point, so comfortable in the abuses piled upon us every day, that they are blind to even being able to admit what the situation is. Some of us even turn it back on ourselves. As an example....

I am slightly horrified that I have a Myspace profile. But I have it, and it's mostly empty, and I try to only have "Friends" who are actually my... you know... friends. So I got a friend request a couple of days ago from some random attractive guy in San Francisco, and so of course I read his profile and saw, "Who I want to meet: People who aren't fags." So my indignant college-aged activist persona gets all self-righteous and asks him why he sent a friend request to some gay dude in a unicorn costume. I was surprised that he actually wrote back: "hey.. i didnt mean 'fags' as in gay poeple... i mean poeple who are lacking in intellegence and personality.. we probably just phrase things differently.. no offense bro"

Using "gay" (or by extension, clever words like "fag" or "faggot" or "fairy princess") as a synonym for "bad" (or in this case, "poeple who are lacking in intellegence and personality") is inherently homophobic and hurtful. And yet this dude doesn't realize it at all, he just throws the word around and tries to fill up his friendlist with hot chicks and random tall dudes.

In any case, maybe college-aged activist persona opened his eyelids a little bit; he's since changed his profile to "Who I want to meet: anyone". And just think-- no one would have gotten to read about this if my car battery would bother to stay charged. I need to find a mechanic.