Foodie.

Sometimes, I eat food worth mentioning.

Vegan soul food platter at Stuff I Eat in Inglewood. Mac and cheese, corn bread muffins, kale greens, salad, tofu, beans, potato salad. Everything was delicious, but I would go back for the mac and cheese alone because it was SO good. I split it with a friend and we had enough food leftover that we both took some home. Get it.

Pulled pork, asparagus, sweet potato fries and cornbread with Golden Ticket Baltic Porter at Beachwood BBQ in Seal Beach. This place was packed on a Thursday night, but it was worth the wait. Anywhere I can get good food AND good beer is a win for me, and I had leftovers! I recommend the spicy bbq sauce if you want just a little kick, but mostly bbq flavor.

Shakey’s Special and Fosters at Shakey’s in Torrance. This was my first time at a Shakeys, hahaha, so I’m mentioning it.

Chicken parmasean sandwich and cheese pizza from Papa Guido’s in Redondo Beach. I get Papa Guido’s almost once a week because it’s about a block from my house. Everything I’ve ever gotten there is good and their prices are outstanding–especially for the sandwiches.

Three Bean Euphoria at Chili Addiction in Hollywood. It was pretty good–beanie, as to be expected. But, my friend got their other vegan chili that day; the Hom-onious Chorizo and it was AMAZING. I made the foolish mistake of not getting some to go before we left and haven’t stopped regretting it.

Did you know it takes 24 hours to get from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles?

Maybe that’s only if you’re me. Here’s what happened to me between noon on Sunday and noon on Monday.

After spending a crazy weekend in Santa Cruz for our friend Bridgette’s wedding, five friends and I piled back into the van we drove up in on Friday and headed back home. Everything was going awesome and party van round two seemed to be underway until we got a few miles outside of Watsonville.

That’s when the transmission went out.

Suddenly, the van wouldn’t shift into third. We were quickly  approaching (well, coasting at 35mph or so) the absolute middle of nowhere until Kahlie, the driver of her mom’s van we had borrowed, made an executive decision and turned us back towards town. We ended up stopping at a gas station/market in Aromas where Kahlie, Robert and I checked the transmission fluid and other obvious quick fixes but to no avail. We briefly toyed with the notion of just coasting down the 101, but anyone who’s made that drive before knows it’s all smooth sailing until you hit the big hill in Camarillo. There’s no way we’d make it even halfway up; and it’d probably be best not to drive an obviously busted van 400 miles. We also thought about towing the van to Paso Robles where Kahlie and I both have family and where someone might be inclined to drive from LA and pick us all up. Upon review, that seemed completely impractical and very expensive.

So, phase one: get the van and everyone in it back to Bridgette’s house in Santa Cruz.

We obviously had to tow the van, but it’s illegal for us to be in the van while it’s being towed and tow trucks don’t tend to seat seven. We lucked out that Ashley had AAA+ which offers 100 free tow miles, so getting it all the way back to Santa Cruz wasn’t such a huge deal, financially. Taylor got on the phone with her friend Dave and was able to convince him to come pick up a couple people and drive them back to Santa Cruz and then Ashley told AAA we needed someone with a big enough cab to seat the rest of us. After about an hour and a half or so killing time in Aromas we were on our way back to the party.

Since we first broke down I had been on my iPhone trying to figure out the best way to get everyone back to LA; Amtrak, Greyhound, flying, etc. Taylor had gotten ahold of her friend Phil who was in Oakland and also heading back to LA that day and was able to secure rides for herself and Bianka and the four of us remaining (Ashley, Kahlie, Robert and myself) vowed to stick together. We resolved to catch the Greyhound leaving at 10:30 that night that would get us into Downtown LA around 7am. Not ideal, but it was really our only option.

So, phase two: get everyone tickets for the bus in hand and then get on the bus and on our way.

I’m familiar with Greyhound travel and know it can be pretty shady sometimes so I wanted to get everything as secure as possible as soon as possible. The second we got back to Bridgette’s I asked to borrow a computer and double checked the prices and schedules. We could purchase tickets online, but we’d have to print them out at home; or we could walk down to the bus station that was closing in 45 minutes and buy tickets there. When Bridgette told me she didn’t have a printer, I convinced Ashley and Kahlie to hustle down to the station with me so we could just get everything out of the way. The bus wasn’t leaving for another six hours, but I was taking no chances.

However, when we reached the station at 4:30pm, we found a sign that looked like this:

on a door that looked like this.

None of this boded well at all. Not only was the bus station (looking abandoned, as bus stations often do) closed when the sign on the door said it should be open, but as far as we could tell there was no such bus to LA leaving at 10:30 that night. [It was later discovered that the route to LA goes through San Jose, north of Santa Cruz, so that part of the sign did make sense.] Well, crap.

After a few minutes of aimless wandering and restrained panic we resolved to head back to the house and regroup. By now it was 5pm, so if we were getting tickets for that bus it would be online anyways.

We passed a FedEx Kinkos on the way and decided to just duck in and handle it there; that way we could get the tickets printed and could “relax” at the house with everyone watching the Superbowl.

The three of us sat down at a terminal and I put my card in the thing. I got all the way to the ticket purchasing screen before I realized, duh, my card was in the thing. Ashley bought her ticket, then Kahlie went ahead and got tickets for her and Robert. I ejected my card and Kahlie put hers in so I could hop back on and get my ticket. When I got to the fare selection screen there was a notice that said online ticketing was no longer available for that fare (or, as it turned out, any fare).

Um.

WHAT?!

After several refreshes it became clear I might be fucked. I immediately hopped on the phone with Greyhound hoping to purchase a ticket over the phone. After the most superfluous key pad menu maze I’ve ever experienced I was thrust on hold for nearly half an hour listening to music from a silent movie before I was able to finally speak to a human.

I told her my situation, that my friends had all just purchased tickets online and that it was imperative I be on that bus with them. She put me back on hold to “check” for me. Check what, exactly? Check that the bus in question exists? That I’m not lying about the website? We’ll never know, because after a few more minutes on hold I was disconnected.

I felt myself slipping. I flung my phone onto the table, shot up out of my chair and took a moment. Regroup. Try again. Breaking something won’t get me on a bus.

I sat back down, picked my phone back up and redialed. Went through the menu again and I was back on hold. Luckily, I was only on hold for about ten minutes. Unfortunately, this new woman had nothing but bad and/or nonsensical news for me.

I told her what happened and she told me I could purchase a ticket over the phone. Eureka! It would cost more because it was over the phone. Lame. I asked her if I would be able to receive my ticket via email like the online tickets so I could print it out and she said no. I asked her how I’m supposed to acquire my phone-purchased ticket if the station is closed and she told me I couldn’t. Um? She said it was up to the discretion of the bus driver whether or not I would be let on after pleading my case. I double checked the facts: I can purchase a ticket over the phone that is impossible to pick up and after paying more money to do so there was no guarantee whatsoever, and from the sound of it not even a very good chance that I would actually be let on the bus? No deal! Over the course of our discussion she had taken a tone with me as if I was the stupid one for asking all these ridiculous questions about the simple acts of purchasing a ticket, receiving it and using it to get on a bus. So, I snapped. I told her she was useless when she said she hoped she was helpful, told her I would never choose Greyhound again after she asked that I do, and hung up defeated.

I then called Greyhound’s online support number. Already disillusioned with every customer [dis]service Greyhound had offered me so far, my expectations were fairly low; but nothing could have prepared me for what I heard on the other end of that line. My spirits raised a little when I was barely kept on hold, but then shattered when I discovered the person on the other side was one of the adults from Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies.

WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH.

Um, hello?

WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH.

I can’t understand you, could you adjust your mouthpiece?

-Silence-

Uh, hello?

WAH WAH.

I felt myself losing it again. I told Kahlie and Ashley what I experienced and Ashley gave it a go with identical results. FUCK. I guess that’s that.

When we left Bridgette’s it was sunny out; expecting a quick trip I hadn’t bothered with a jacket. Now it was a couple hours later, dark out and fucking freezing outside. Ashley and Kahlie took turns trying to keep me warm, but between being freezing and still without a ride home I was starting to get pretty verklempt. When we got back to the house I grabbed a beer and went out back for a moment alone while Ashley and Kahlie filled everyone in. I called my best friend and talked it out.

I was starting to think something was trying to keep from going home and maybe it was time to take it as the sign it clearly was and just try again the next day. But, there was still one more thing I could do.

I texted Taylor and asked her if there was any way at all I could ride bitch in Phil’s car. I had plenty of money for gas and didn’t mind the snug ride. About half an hour went by before Taylor called to tell me Phil wasn’t going to leave anyone behind in Santa Cruz and I was in as long as I had some money for gas and I could give Bianka a ride home when we got to the city. Thank fucking christ! Goin home!

Phil wasn’t planning to head back to LA until after midnight so I had a few hours to kill. I hung out in the living room with everyone, watching tv and drifting in and out of a much needed nap. He and his friend Mike arrived around 12:30 and the five of us piled into his Camry. I volunteered to ride bitch, being the smallest and the latecomer. It wasn’t comfortable, but it would only be for five hours and then at least I’d be home.

We started out heading south according to Mike’s directions. Phil was blasting a Meatloaf album to keep himself awake. This, also, was not ideal, but I had no intention of complaining. We were driving for almost an hour and got all the way to Seaside before we realized we were going the wrong fucking direction if we intended to take the 5 home.

On the drive back towards Castroville it came out that Phil had apparently taken some Xanax. Xanax is the furthest thing from a good idea for someone who’s already tired and responsible for driving four people from one side of a state to the other in the middle of the night. We didn’t make it to the 5 before Phil pulled off the road near a cliff in the middle of nowhere to take a power nap.

His power nap lasted an hour and a half before I was able to rouse anyone else in the car enough to suggest maybe someone else drive for a while. I offered, but Phil wouldn’t hear it. I’d spent the last almost two hours feeling claustrophobic and like I was suffocating in the small stuffy car unable to move my legs and the ability to keep my cool was rapidly decreasing with this nonsense. Bianka let me out and I got some freezing air; she switched spots with me and I felt better already knowing I’d be able to wiggle my feet for at least the next leg of the trip. Mike bullied Phil into getting us moving again and we were back on the road.

We made it to 5, but not quite to Fresno before he pulled off again. If I had to stay trapped in the backseat of a Camry in the middle of nowhere for two hours again, I was likely to kill someone. Probably Phil. By now it was five in the morning, we were nowhere near home, and at this rate we were going to hit rush hour traffic before we even got anywhere near LA. When I passed on this information to Taylor she laid a smackdown. She would be driving while Phil got the sleep he obviously needed in the backseat.

I emailed my boss from my phone to tell her I may or may not be at work.

With Taylor driving I was able to relax enough to doze off for a while. When I regained full awareness the sun was out, we were around Van Nuys, and we weren’t moving. Traffic. I went back to sleep.

Over the next FEW HOURS we trudged through traffic, dropped off Bianka in LA, went to Phil’s house (which, as it turns out, is right around the corner from my house), transferred to Mike’s car, and drove to San Pedro to Kahlie’s mom’s house where my car was. Then, I dropped off Taylor at her place in Downtown LB and finally made my way home after grabbing some Mexican food by my place. I got home at 12:30pm.

The trip back wasn’t the party van part two we had all been looking forward to, but we made the best of it. If I was going to be trapped in the middle of nowhere with some crazies, I’m glad it was them.

Nazi lunch.

On Saturday, I had lunch with a Nazi. Here’s what happened.

My best friend Brittany had been dying to take me to Mattern Deli (Orange, CA) because she knows how much I love sandwiches. Unfortunately, because Mattern is a small German market/deli, they’re not always open. On top of that, when they are open, they’re really busy. At one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, they were fuckin packed. When we couldn’t find parking, Brittany had me hop out and go inside to grab a number.

I pulled number 27.

They were serving number 6.

If you peruse the small market, you quickly come upon a cooler full of German (and bad domestic) beer. We realized we had a lot of time to kill, so we decided to have a beer while we waited to order. Our original plan had been to grab sandwiches and take them to another bar nearby anyway, so why not go ahead and get started? This seemed common practice, as there was a bottle opener hanging from a string tied to the number dispenser and a request to bring empties to the cash register when we were done.

Brittany and managed to score two of the only available seats in the establishment, adjacent to a group of older gentlemen. They were obviously regulars, and obviously all at least part German. Apparently they were obviously racist as well; Brittany was sending me worried glances, the kind reserved for potentially awkward situations leading to one of my “outbursts”, but I didn’t hear anything, at first. Or, I knew enough about my surroundings to just try to block it out subconsciously. I’m not in the business or pleasure of confronting old men in their 70s about their politics, or anything, really. Old people make me super nervous for reasons unknown. As we dug into the sandwiches we’d be been waiting over an hour for, they grilled us about our ages, our schooling, and told us to take a look at Miss California (who’s apparently quite the looker this year).

All was fine and dandy (more or less) until I was asked to slide over to make room for “Doc”, a latecomer and definitely the oldest of the group of friends with the thickest German accent. Doc immediately struck up conversation with me and Bri, as he was pretty much sitting at our table. Unfortunately, I only really remember the “highlights”. Imagine me, sitting next to a very old man, listening to all of the following statements, as he looks at Brittany who’s watching my face.

First, his friend said, “That guy at UCI, Chemerinksy, he’s a straight out communist!”

Then, among the chatter, these came out of Doc’s mouth:

“You know how I feel about Obama? I see him as the new Hitler. Just another pain the ass we need to get rid of.”

“I’m an ex-Nazi. I fought on the good side in WWII, the German side. I was born in Berlin.”

“I feel sorry for you kids today in school. Too many liberal teachers rotting your brains.”

Those are the only statements I absolutely remember, but certainly not all that was said. Looking back at those statements, this doesn’t seem like that jarring of an experience. But, as time went on I became more and more uncomfortable as I began to realize with every statement that while Doc supposedly shed his Nazi affiliation, he maintained their ideologies.

While Brittany looks like a WASP, I look like a big dykey feminist. This tends to insulate me from overtly conservative conversations en masse, especially homophobic ones. Occasionally, I get sucked into racist discourse, but I’m quick to inform my company that, not only do I not share their opinion, but if they continue espousing their views, I’m likely to fly off the handle (because very rarely do they care to engage in any sort of intelligent dialogue). Anyway, finding myself in such an unabashedly anti-liberal conversation over my roast beef sandwich was not ideal, to say the least. And the more I began reflecting on what was being said and contextualizing what was happening, I began to panic.

In retrospect, I probably should have engaged Doc in more intellectual way (or at all). I stood to learn a lot from someone unlike anyone I’ve ever come in contact with before, and will not likely run across again. But, I was drunk, and kind of hot, and flashing back to learning about the Holocaust in fifth grade and everything I think I know about what happened and I just shut down.

But, the sandwich was damn good, so, maybe next time.

Testing new WordPress iPhone app!

Because I need more ways to [micro]blog from my phone.

Paninis from Panera Bread.

Paninis from Panera Bread are the most dangerous of all food items, baring those that are expired and/or poisoned.

The crust on all of Panera’s breads is crispy and delicious, so long as it remains in baguette form. However, once these breads are sliced, what was once a perfect, not-too-chewy, not-too-hard crust becomes a razor specifically designed to annihilate the roof of your mouth. Not unlike Captain Crunch. While eating a cold sandwich, the doughy inside of the bread provides relief, or at least pause on the assault. However, with a panini, the entire outside of the sandwich takes on almost immalleable properties during the heating process, resulting in a constant onslaught of pain bite after bite.

But, there is good news. Immediately after you’ve Ginsu’d your soft mouth flesh, your new wounds are cauterized by the molten ingredients encased in the bread. Not unlike a Hot Pocket. If you’re lucky, the extreme heat will sear you to such a degree that you’re rendered anesthetized for the entire consumption process. And, at least you’re not hungry anymore.

Feminisms and Intersectionalities Conference.

Yesterday, Roger and I attended the Feminisms and Intersectionalities Conference at UC Riverside. We left a little later than planned, but thanks to FastTrack and the tendency for things to start fifteen minutes late, we made perfect time. The conference was organized around panels comprised of one main presenter, three discussants and a moderator. The audience appeared to be mostly professors and graduate students, only a couple hundred people and some other undergrads as well. We saw HLT Quan and Crystal Griffith, whose rough cut of “The Angela Davis Project” was screened at UCI the other day.

The first session was entitled “Undoing Academia: Creativity, Dissidence, and Feminism” and the presentation was mostly the life experience of an amazing woman, Nawal El-Saadawi. El-Saadawi, a long-time educator, physician, writer and political activist from a poor, Muslim Egyptian family, spoke candidly about the importance of being fearless (of unemployment, poverty, imprisonment, death, hell) and maintaining creativity, particularly in academia. She made a lot of excellent points about how everything is political, and what that means. She said religion cannot be depoliticized and that all wars are economic wars. She illustrated the ways in which colonialist discourse continues to inform language and rhetoric, even in academic circles (maybe especially in academic circles). She cited the regionalization of the “Middle East” as a relic of European imperialism and problemitized the framework of “post-colonial”, substituting instead, “neo-colonial” demarking the fact that colonialist practice is on-going.  All of this was part of wider discussion on how processes of learning in modern, Western academia stifle creativity and dissidence in favor of politics of fear and illusory democracy. She expressed that we need to be aware that ideological formations (such as religions) come out of specific political, economic, social and historical conditions. Her candor was inspiring and her words were profoundly resonant of things I’ve heard, read, and experienced.

Jeff Sacks, a UCR professor of Comp. Lit. shared excerpts from an email he recently received from his chancellor’s office that we assume was sent to his entire department. The email stated that UCR faculty were “blessed to have the privilege of free speech”. At a public institution. In America. HOLY CRAP. He also said some interesting stuff about how the university needs to be re-thought, so as to become an institution of knowledge production for its own sake.

Yenna Wu, another UCR Comp. Lit. professor, citing examples of different ways in which Buddhism has been practiced in Taiwan, posed that religion and secularism is a false dichotomy and spoke about the spiritual movement. El Saadawi problemitized this notion of “spiritual” by claiming it reinforces a mind/body dualism, as well as a division between the self and the other. She said creativity abolishes the line between the self and the other.

The discussion about religious and secular segued into the audience discussion, where things got a little heated. Among what appeared to be the other undergraduates in the room, were several Muslim students, many of whom were veiled. El Saadawi had more or less implied that the way to see through ideology, whatever it may be, is to go back to common sense. By this, she meant acknowledging that due to the myriad interpretations of religious texts, we can assume that they’re not all “correct”, and that in fact (most likely), none of them may be correct, as they arise out of these historical, social, political conditions.

However, her invocation of “common sense” seemed to rub some people the wrong way. One of the veiled students challenged El Saadawi on the grounds that “common sense” isn’t very particularly “common” at all, meaning it isn’t necessarily shared among everyone. Different things inform different people’s formations of common sense. For example, the student’s common sense is informed by her reading of Islam. Here, El Saadawi kind of said religion isn’t common sense, and told the student that she changed the terms of the conversation. This back-and-forth went on for about ten minutes.

I see the point on both sides. Obviously, someone’s religious beliefs are going to impact the way they think about the world. It’s simultaneously ideological and common sensible. But, not being religious, I can’t help but personally side with El Saadawi. Watching this near-argument, which oftentimes became a debate about the function(s) or dysfunction(s) of the veil, I was reminded of what arguing with people about homosexuality is like. When debating with people about Prop 8, for example, and speaking from a position not informed by religion, but rather by what I consider the common sense that everyone deserves the same rights, it’s frustrating when people revert to the familiar rhetorical script, “my religion says homosexuality is wrong, therefore I believe it is wrong”. Realizing that is some people’s “common sense”, whatever that means, I attempt to shift the terms of the debate back to politics and away from religion. I incite separation of church of state. I remind them that their religious beliefs should not be writing my secular laws; that civil marriage has been made a property contract, not a religious institution that it may have been before. Somehow, this never works. Frustrating.

The conference allowed two and a half hours for lunch. Roger and I made our way to Del Taco where we ate and studied for a while. We were some of the first ones back to the conference. Probably less than a hundred people attended the second session, and Roger and I were certainly two of the only undergraduates. Among the audience was Laura Kang and Lilith Mahmud from the UCI Women’s Studies department, but we didn’t say hi to them until after.

The second session was entitled “Archive, Affect, and the Everyday: Queer Diasporic Revisions”. Roger and I both took Queer History Making last quarter, so I went into this presentation thinking a lot of it would be familiar. The presenter, Gayatri Gopinath, compared the work of two queer diasporic visual artists (Allan deSouza and Chitra Ganesh) with Saidiya Hartman’s [apparently] heteronormative memoir, Lose Your Mother in order to give it a queer reading. She drew on some work that we were familiar with, particularly Jose Muñoz and Judith Halberstam.

Her analysis opened up a lot of discussions about what queer theory means, where it diverges from post-colonial studies, and a bunch of other things that kind of went over our heads/I don’t know how to paraphrase, hahaha.

She drew some interesting connections using the idea of “waste”, particularly waste as generative; how queer archives are made up of the “waste” (and ephemera) or excessive material of mainstream history that’s rendered irrelevant. She used this concept of waste in her analysis of deSouza (who superimposed actual human waste on his pictures) and Ganesh (who animated her representations of mug shots with “warm data”, or the information about people not extracted through interrogation—“cold hard facts”). All of this was about “lives that have lost the luxury of the mundane”. It was all really interesting.

Someone in the audience drew our attention to thinking about affect as a hegemonic mode of feeling, which could potentially be really, really interesting.

After the second session there was an hour break before performance artist Monica Palacios. Roger and I went outside and sat at a table where Keith Harris, one of the discussants, and several other audience members joined us. It was cool to converse with these professors about what we’d just seen, as well as the other sessions of the conference. Some seemed surprised we were from UCI, and especially that we were undergraduates.

Lilith Mahmud introduced me to Dr. Kang, who I’d never actually met, but she already knew of me from Prof. Terry, apparently. I’m still geeking out over that. Inside, Roger introduced himself to them both and we all talked more. It was really nice.

Monica Palacios’ performance wasn’t bad. She made me say “lover quesadilla” in front of a roomful of professional academics.

As an aside, the moderator of the second session was Jane Ward, who I recognized right away as being a presenter at the 2007 Pacific Sociological Association Conference that I attended in Oakland. Ward’s presentation on the [in]visiblity of lesbian femininities in non-queer space was one of the first time I start thinking about bodies as text in any sort of academic way. Very cool.

Overall, the conference was incredibly fulfilling and engaging. I look forward to attending more such events in the future.

DISNEYLAND!

so, as many of you already know, I drive Blake to and fro Disneyland every friday. as a thank you, she bought me a ticket about a month ago. before yesterday I had only been to Disneyland three times; the first time was a very awkward trip with Serena when she was engaged to Robert and right after I started dating Alex. the other two times were with my sister and my nephews.

Blake pretty much knows everything there is to know about Disneyland, so I knew I was going to be getting the most possible out of my day. we got there around eleven and stayed until 12.04am. due to fatigue and sensory overload, I was a little woozy for the first couple hours, but I didn’t let that slow us down. I tend to fare none too well at theme parks, as a rule. normally I’m tired because I woke up early, it’s entirely too much movement for me, and the unusual smells and close contact with a TON of random people and hustle n’ bustle usually throw my body into shock until I adjust. I’ve been known to faint.

anywho, besides having a fuckin AWESOME time, a few interesting things happened to me/us while we were there.

upon our first trip to bathroom, I encountered a creeper. I was in my stall, doing my thing, when all of a sudden a camera appears from under the wall between my stall and the one next to mine! holy inappropriate batman! since I noticed it right away, I had time to make a stern face at it before it disappeared. thinking the person next door would see that I was onto them, I assumed that would be the end of that ridiculousness. however, the camera reappeared! so I made another stern face! by then I was done, so as I was collecting myself I hear from the offending stall, “wtf?! *random name* where are you?!” then, from the stall on the other side of me I hear, “I’m over here!” then, from the first stall, “are you in the stall right next to mine?” this is when I interject, “NOPE!” and walk out to wash my hands. RIDICULOUS!

when we were on the Monsters Inc ride in California Adventure (which I hadn’t been on and is way cute and fun!) I got called “young man” and then my hair was insulted by the person occupying the Roz position at the end of the ride. silly.

the geniuses of Disneyland had the wherewithal to capitalize on swine flu by bottling what I presume to be generic hand sanitizer in “Disneyland” bottles and selling them for what I can only imagine is a ridiculous price. we saw them everywhere on the belt loops of children and the knapsacks of their panicky parents. as a precaution, Blake and I did wash our hands slightly more than usual, and every time someone sneezed I couldn’t help but whisper “swine flu!” faux-alarmingly.

while we were in line for Thunder Mountain was probably the most colorful part of the day (despite the fireworks!). we had been in line for at least fifteen minutes, moderately canoodling throughout, nothing too heavy. I’m not into uber pda in front of strangers (as we all know, I have no such issue in front of people that I do know, which is why most of my friends have heard me having sex). anywho, as Blake and I were closing a quite sizable gap that had been created in line when the large choir group in front of us moved up, I felt a forceful hand on my shoulder yanking me backwards. I assumed that this was the result of someone in a dire situation trying to get somewhere with the quickness, so I did not resist. however, as I turned towards the grasp, I was met with a middle-aged white man who began yelling “hey! hey!” in the general direction of Blake, who stopped moving upon realization that someone was yelling and I was not right behind her. once he decided he had our full attention, he not-so-kindly removed his hand from my shoulder and began yelling, “look, I realize you guys are ‘together’ or whatever, but NOT in front of my kids!” his “kids” were in fact two 13ish year-old boys who couldn’t look more disinterested in what was happening. at this point, I interrupted his rant about our impropriety and informed him that his homophobia was absolutely not my problem. as he continued on his tirade, I began to think about how unbelievable it was that he dared to lay his hands on me. then, I got really mad. I took a firm step towards him, reminded him again that his homophobia was not my problem and informed him that he needed to get away from me and that it is completely unacceptable that he touched me, and that he’d better not to do it again. I did all of this without swearing and barely raising my voice. upon realizing that I was not a teenager and that I was not even remotely afraid of him, he retreated. I made sure Blake was ok (which she was) and then she informed the kind Disneyland worker that the guy behind us in line had just grabbed me and started yelling at us. the Disney employee apologized to us profusely and moved us into the fastpass line. wooow. what really blows my mind is that someone thought it was even slightly okay to put his hands on someone else. let alone to start yelling. excuse me. tap me on the shoulder to get my attention. tell me politely that you disapprove of my “lifestyle” and ask me to knock it off with your kids around (to which I would politely reply that your homophobia is not my problem, but because you were polite, I would make an effort to be “less outwardly gay” for the rest of the line). DO NOT grab me, with some sort of self-appointed authority and begin yelling at me with any air self-righteousness. competely unacceptable. he was really lucky to have caught me at one of the peaks of happiness of my day, otherwise there may have been both swearing and yelling accompaning one of my rage blackouts. but, I mostly found him ridiculous, and a poor excuse for a decent human being. so I continue to laugh it off.

I made the conscious decision to suspend my critical awareness for most of the day so that I might enjoy the park and so as not to drive Blake completely insane. however, an exception was made for It’s A Small World, because it’s just too much! I had to ride it because they made new additions that Blake insisted I see, so I told her there was going to have to be commentary afterwards and she agreed to the terms. I try not to overload Blake with my “cynacism” as a general rule; especially while we’re in her happy place. since most of the earlier rooms of the ride were for the most part unchanged (the “European”, “Asian”, “Arctic”, and “Central and South American” areas) I didn’t pay much attention to them and instead focused on the newness of the “African” room and the last two rooms (Blake remarked afterward that she was going to show me something in the room right before the Africa room but I was “all over Africa already” with my critical outrage face on). whereas most of the aforementioned rooms were represented overwhelmingly by puppets of people, the “African” room was not. rather, a man on a camel and some others denoted Northern Africa. where one would imagine to see people from Central Africa, there were instead puppets of animals; jungle and savannah animals. towards the end of the room, there was a circle of dancing African women, darker than the fellow on the camel on the beginning of the room, but very few men of the same color. hm. the second to last room depicts what one immediately recognizes as “cowboys and indians”. presumably, this is a room for the United States. one side has a big red barn with three white farm boys and a blond girl sitting on a haystack. the other side, has a white man on a horse wearing a cowboy hat and a row of standing Native Americans, almost entirely women. the final room has everyone “represented” in the same clothes we saw them in earlier, only now everyone is dressed in white. in fact, the entire room is white. the entire world has come together peacefully under a cover of pure whiteness. wooow.

it was surprisingly humid and overcast all day. which was kind of nice because I didn’t get sunburned, but simultaneously kept me in constant fear of getting cold. a little after 8pm, roughly an hour before the fireworks extravaganza was expected to begin, it started to drizzle! there had been a slight breeze all day, so we were already a little worried about the likelihood of the fireworks going on and when it started to almost rain, we got really worried. when we started making our way towards a primo fireworks viewing position, Blake asked a kind Disney fellow what the likelihood was, in light of the slight rain. he told us that the rain was actually no factor whatsoever and the only thing to worry about was the wind. he said there was an 87% chance the fireworks were a go. we waited for the announcements. fifteen minutes to scheduled firework time, the fireworks might not happen announcement came on. expecting to hear this announcement again ten minutes later, instead we heard the fireworks are happening announcement! knowing they would at least start them, we were immediately pleased. the rain stopped, and the air stilled, and the fireworks went off without a hitch. magical.

we rode everything we intended to, and even got another pass at Big Thunder Mountain, this time sans [overt] homophobes. although, apparently the teenaged boys in front of us kept looking back at us. I told Blake they were probably just looking at her boobs. when I kept getting curious looks from youngsters all day Blake told me it was because I was wearing cool sunglasses.

Blake took me on the subs for the first time because I love fishies! it was easily our longest wait, and I had to close my eyes for the jellyfish part, but it was excellent!

all in all we had a fantastic day. exhaustive, but wonderful. I don’t know how she does that every friday.

nuisance.

I love finding myself at gatherings with people completely unprepared to encounter someone like me. particularly when the people at these gatherings are the sort of people that think everyone else feels the same as they do about everything, by assuming everyone has the same or less life experience as them.

I ended up going over to a friend of a friend’s  house last night where I watched a Napoleon-complexed racist spend his entire evening trying (to absolutely no avail) to get into my bestfriend’s pants.

here, are some highlights:

stupid guy: yeah, I’m not racist. I have a lot of contact with black people. guess where I work. what’s the worst neighborhood in LA you can think of?
Brittany: Lennox.
me: *rolls my eyes* Watts. [I don't know why I played this game. too much wine.]
stupid guy: Compton!
Brittany & I: uh…
stupid guy: yeah, I know, scary right?
Brittany & I: uh…
stupid guy: yeah, luckily enough my old truck was a piece of shit. I don’t want you to think my uncle is racist or anything, but he said my truck was so beat up “not even a nigger would steal it!”
Brittany: *shocked gaspy sound*
me: how is that not racist?
…
Brittany: ya know, D’s black [that's me, and that's a lie].
stupid guy: what? really? how black? you look Irish to me.
me: am I only allowed to be not-racist if I’m part black? are people only allowed to be black if they look black?

there was a lot more, but I can’t remember them. but, you get the idea. it’s the best kind of racism; when they think they’re not racist, and then they attempt to impress you with how not racist they are… by being racist.

paranoia, paranoia.

so, for the last several days I’ve been experiencing a heightened anxiety about:

1. my car being towed
2. my car being broken into
3. getting jumped (often while walking to/fro my car)

what. the. eff.

you might be thinking, “hm. finals perhaps? are you overcaffeinated?” no sir. if anything I’ve been undercaffeinated!

perhaps I’m channeling all the worries I should be [but, as yet, am not] having about finishing all my finals on time into this uncharacteristic paranoia about the immediate safety and security of my self and my things.

well, I’d like it to stop.

also, I came ridiculously close to being hit by a car last night. how close? I leapt out of the way, and had I not, I would have been very hit, very hard. I venture to guess that the driver was pretty drunk, as he swerved quite a while after what could have been our point of impact, then slammed on his breaks. holy slow reaction time batman. lucky for me, I was not drunk and have the reflexes of a cat!

Rants have moved.

This blog used to be called “rant rant rant”. That angry sociopolitical commentary -ish blog has moved to rantrantranting.wordpress.com.

Henceforth, this blog will be for my more silly adventures. Or something.

You can also find me blogging with my fellow soon-to-be-displaced women’s studies folks here.

Thanks for reading about what happens to me in this passive account of my goings-on.