The place of employment was uncharacteristically quiet, with the occasional drunk, and a few bored conspiracy theorists. I should've taken the day off to spend it outside, since it was beautiful when I got out, and since the buses were backed up, me and one of my coworkers started walking downtown, encountering an increasing amount of drunks in various shades of green and varying states of wastedness.
I'm already feeling like I'm getting old even if my boomer overlords party harder than I do. I was glad I had someone with me who's also a fast walker so we could get past the stumblers and stragglers as bottles rolled past us from patios and the noise was deafening. Everyone looked half dead with their faces streaked in green paint and their red eyes. "It's like zombies," she says, "we've just got to get past them to get home and not make eye contact."
We got to the square and it was total chaos, and it was clear that something had gone down but we couldn't tell what. There was this tension in the air, the way that everyone was acting, I've never seen so many cops, so many cruisers and paddy wagons and after spending the afternoon reading about the Balkans and being jittery about massive displays of authority and the mentality of large drunken crowds it made me a little more than nervous but some weird survival instinct kicks in and I just move faster.
I couldn't process it completely, everything going on around us. The sound of yelling and sirens everywhere, masses of people swirling, cops in various states of uniform, cars trying to cut across, people getting belligerent, gang colors standing out from the green (like no one's gonna notice you head to toe in red if everyone else is themed different), new black panther types in berets and combat boots, way too many people looking for trouble in one place and we not-garishly clad white girls were able to dash across the street before the light changed, only to encounter more cops telling us that Tower City was closed and we had to go around past drunk girls crying on the phone, kids hanging out looking pissed off and menacing.
The entrance from the back was strangely quiet but when we got down to the platform it was cordoned off with what looked like bike racks and there were more cops in bulletproof gear with DHS prominently displayed, as drunk kids in Iron Maiden t-shirts who'd written "F--k Cops" on their knuckles with markers told us about how drunk they were and how awesome all this was.
People were standing around, trying to figure out which way to go, a girl was drinking a Budweiser on the platform and we caught the first train out which smelled like beer and weed as the bros who must never ever ride public transit ever were like "Dude! We're on a big bridge!" and were hitting on Puerto Rican chicks and calling people honkeys which was bearable and almost hilarious because this was more expected and I only had about five minutes before I'd get off at my stop. I was still so tense when I got to my stop and finally chilled out with the aid of tunes in the car and the weather being totally gorgeous.
So I get to my parents' and it's chill, and I'm home now, drinking tea and listening to Trees (yay for left-field Brit folkies) reading about what was about three hours of brawling and such in the square, which must have been what was going down when we were trying to get through.
Oh Cleveland.
Showing posts with label crazy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crazy. Show all posts
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
week end.
So the first week of the new year ends with a sense of hope, even though I have no clue what the future holds and after the absurdity of the past 3 years of joy, depression, laughter and constant misadventure, I have just accepted that God with His infinite sense of humor has plenty more curveballs coming my way.
It looks like I'll be employed a little longer, and it makes the daily grind seem almost like a beautiful thing, though having coworkers that I actually enjoy, non-soul-stealing work to do, not having to wear a power suit, and lunch breaks replete with free classes, food and good music that I missed the first time around.
Looking forward to a weekend of unknown factors, except that I get to celebrate Ethiopian Christmas on Sunday, which I'm looking forward to immensely.
Where I'll be hanging out, there's at least three cultural groups represented there... Amhara, Tigrey, Oromo, two countries at political odds with each other. It seems like everyone has stories about getting beaten up by police, spending time in prison under dictatorship, their relatives jailed or stoned to death in villages.
The language isn't that far removed from Aramaic, the music is hypnotic and beautiful and I get this sense of ancientness and timelessness that's incredible. I wish I understood Amharic so I could understand the sermons, though people do translate for me and I'm grateful for it.
All the talking heads on TV who talk about 'The War on Christmas' don't have to worry about, well, getting blown up while attempting to worship together.
Stories like these are rare but they give me something resembling hope.
It's very easy to get Americentric when it comes to Christianity, to frame everything in partisan terms related to political parties and schools of thoughts, when there's a whole lot of other believers all over the world who have way bigger things to worry about and history way older than ours who see things very differently. .
I don't bother with New Year's resolutions anymore because I start a lot of things I can't finish, but if all goes well I'll be adventuring in Boston a few days in the week before Easter (already have tickets and a fellow traveler), and hopefully road tripping to Buffalo for a few days when the snow melts to visit people I enjoy way too much to only see them once a year.
I've also got a nephew on the way in about 4 months, which is so crazy to think about. With my sister's blessing, I bought him an awesomely illustrated hardback version of Charles & Mary Lamb's Shakespeare stories even though he's still in utero and won't appreciate it for another ten years at least. He's got a pair of brilliant and wonderful parents who aren't going to give their kids annoying toys that make noise and have batteries and hopefully I will play the part of Lovable Eccentric Auntie well.
And the creative juices have been flowing, and I just have to go with it when it's like that, whether it's concocting color schemes with glaze and experimenting with form, goofy Photoshop shenanigans, the endless possibilities of printmaking, or collages that mix together my twin obsessions of early Christian and medieval art and abstracted graffiti forms.
The pigeons have been making their presence (no pun intended) known and we've been enjoying the comedy of nature vs the urban landscape. Mad props to the good people of Adobe for making entertainment possible.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
It looks like I'll be employed a little longer, and it makes the daily grind seem almost like a beautiful thing, though having coworkers that I actually enjoy, non-soul-stealing work to do, not having to wear a power suit, and lunch breaks replete with free classes, food and good music that I missed the first time around.
Looking forward to a weekend of unknown factors, except that I get to celebrate Ethiopian Christmas on Sunday, which I'm looking forward to immensely.
Where I'll be hanging out, there's at least three cultural groups represented there... Amhara, Tigrey, Oromo, two countries at political odds with each other. It seems like everyone has stories about getting beaten up by police, spending time in prison under dictatorship, their relatives jailed or stoned to death in villages.
The language isn't that far removed from Aramaic, the music is hypnotic and beautiful and I get this sense of ancientness and timelessness that's incredible. I wish I understood Amharic so I could understand the sermons, though people do translate for me and I'm grateful for it.
All the talking heads on TV who talk about 'The War on Christmas' don't have to worry about, well, getting blown up while attempting to worship together.
Stories like these are rare but they give me something resembling hope.
It's very easy to get Americentric when it comes to Christianity, to frame everything in partisan terms related to political parties and schools of thoughts, when there's a whole lot of other believers all over the world who have way bigger things to worry about and history way older than ours who see things very differently. .
I don't bother with New Year's resolutions anymore because I start a lot of things I can't finish, but if all goes well I'll be adventuring in Boston a few days in the week before Easter (already have tickets and a fellow traveler), and hopefully road tripping to Buffalo for a few days when the snow melts to visit people I enjoy way too much to only see them once a year.
I've also got a nephew on the way in about 4 months, which is so crazy to think about. With my sister's blessing, I bought him an awesomely illustrated hardback version of Charles & Mary Lamb's Shakespeare stories even though he's still in utero and won't appreciate it for another ten years at least. He's got a pair of brilliant and wonderful parents who aren't going to give their kids annoying toys that make noise and have batteries and hopefully I will play the part of Lovable Eccentric Auntie well.
And the creative juices have been flowing, and I just have to go with it when it's like that, whether it's concocting color schemes with glaze and experimenting with form, goofy Photoshop shenanigans, the endless possibilities of printmaking, or collages that mix together my twin obsessions of early Christian and medieval art and abstracted graffiti forms.
The pigeons have been making their presence (no pun intended) known and we've been enjoying the comedy of nature vs the urban landscape. Mad props to the good people of Adobe for making entertainment possible.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
Friday, December 3, 2010
so I'm probably totally on a watchlist now...
... based on my Internet consumption.
We've been having a lot of fun with the newest batch of Wikileaks files due to our amusement regarding the antics of grown men and women with lots of money and power talking smack about each other.
For someone like me who prefers to follow the antics of Hugo Chavez, Silvio Berlusconi and his "bunga bunga parties", Muammar Gaddafi's fabulous wardrobe choices and long speeches, and Vladimir Putin's PR campaign of manly manliness, this stuff is pure comedy gold in a gossipy "did you hear what so-and-so said?" kind of way. And headlines like this are awesome.
It's like a gigantic geopolitical high school notebook passed around in class where everyone's dishing dirt on the cool kids and the weirdos and no one's holding anything back and there's much more at stake and Hillary Clinton evidently types in capital letters ALL THE TIME. As regional as this little outpost on the Internets is, I love reading about places that I really don't know much about especially since I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to travel to Kazakhstan.
For all this hope and change talk we get from our Kindler Gentler Machine Gun Hand, the same shit different day approach to foreign policy and national security makes me really glad I voted third party in 2008, what with the TSA molestations and new checkpoints and Gitmo and the School of the Americas (renamed the very reassuring Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) being still open and us being in Afghanistan even longer than the Russians.
Besides, U.S. Government, you're depriving me of some damn good reading material here about Central Asian weddings involving men with golden guns and "jet-skiing under the influence."
It's infinitely more interesting than celebrities who are dying digitally by quitting Facebook and Twitter to tell us that AIDS kills people. No duh. Also, Janelle Monae, you are way too awesome to be a part of this ridiculousness. And L7 beat you all to it anyway.
It must be nice to feel like you've really given up a part of your life for a cause by just not being on the Internet for a few days. Way to really sacrifice. Aung San Suu Kyi would be so proud of you.
We've been having a lot of fun with the newest batch of Wikileaks files due to our amusement regarding the antics of grown men and women with lots of money and power talking smack about each other.
For someone like me who prefers to follow the antics of Hugo Chavez, Silvio Berlusconi and his "bunga bunga parties", Muammar Gaddafi's fabulous wardrobe choices and long speeches, and Vladimir Putin's PR campaign of manly manliness, this stuff is pure comedy gold in a gossipy "did you hear what so-and-so said?" kind of way. And headlines like this are awesome.
It's like a gigantic geopolitical high school notebook passed around in class where everyone's dishing dirt on the cool kids and the weirdos and no one's holding anything back and there's much more at stake and Hillary Clinton evidently types in capital letters ALL THE TIME. As regional as this little outpost on the Internets is, I love reading about places that I really don't know much about especially since I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to travel to Kazakhstan.
For all this hope and change talk we get from our Kindler Gentler Machine Gun Hand, the same shit different day approach to foreign policy and national security makes me really glad I voted third party in 2008, what with the TSA molestations and new checkpoints and Gitmo and the School of the Americas (renamed the very reassuring Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) being still open and us being in Afghanistan even longer than the Russians.
Besides, U.S. Government, you're depriving me of some damn good reading material here about Central Asian weddings involving men with golden guns and "jet-skiing under the influence."
It's infinitely more interesting than celebrities who are dying digitally by quitting Facebook and Twitter to tell us that AIDS kills people. No duh. Also, Janelle Monae, you are way too awesome to be a part of this ridiculousness. And L7 beat you all to it anyway.
It must be nice to feel like you've really given up a part of your life for a cause by just not being on the Internet for a few days. Way to really sacrifice. Aung San Suu Kyi would be so proud of you.
Friday, November 5, 2010
i can't stand it, i know you planned it...
One of our regulars at my place of employment has some paranoid tendencies, and is constantly trying to uncover proof of conspiracies and such everywhere even though it's obvious to anyone that rich, mostly white, people run the world. It's not that much of a secret. And of course, these people have one agenda or another and the means by which to propagate it, whether it's Koch or Soros or Bin Laden or whoever.
Some unclaimed printouts that we found when we came in a few weeks ago had a list of a whole lot of militias in the United States, articles about the Hutaree, and a place that sold HGH and other steroids online but suggested that you should "Buy Now!" because they might get banned soon and supplies won't last.
Some of the names of these groups who love freedom, the American Way, and guns, were pretty much to be expected, though others sounded like the products of some 10-year-olds playing with GI Joes and Playmobils(Fort Eagle) or someone who's watched way too much old TV (Roger's Rangers, which is actually named after a group of colonial fighters who fought with the British, so I don't even get where the patriotism thing comes in here). Another group described themselves as "All the Innocent Americans the Government Hasn't Thrown in Prison," which would presumably be a lot of people.
Another website told its adherents not to boycott their French's mustard along with the freedom fries, because it wasn't actually made in France. For the record, most of these people still had Geocities and Angelfire pages, which made me think of being in high school and those annoying banner ads that seemed to be EVERYWHERE.
Good times.
But lest we think that the righties of the US of A are the only ones susceptible to this, these are just a few of the Greek anarchist groups that were active in the last year. Unlike the anarchists I knew when I was at Kent, who seemed to spend more time eating vegan food, stealing copies of "Fight Club" from Borders and pens from the Cashier's Office to "throw a wrench in the system," and not bathing because hygiene is "fascist," these people actually blow things up.
Summer Entropy Commandos
Summer Tranquility Disturbance
Non-Patriot Saboteurs - Cores for the Spreading Insecurity
Fire Shadows
Comandos Husscheyn Zhachyndhoul Jhachanghir / Revolutionary Intelligence Agency
Antisexist Group
Immediate Intervention Hood-wearers
Wild Wolves
Conspiracists for the realization of insecurity
Immoral City De-Structuralists
Revolutionary Cores Alliance - Speedy Arsonist Agency
Fire Cores Conspiracy / Nihilist Commandos
Destroyers of whatever is left of social peace
Consciousness Gangs
Happy Sleep's Apostates
Arsonists' Millennium Cooperation
Organizers of Night Entertainment
CHAOS: Chaotic Groups of Sabotage
Carnivalists in the tune
Nikola Tesla Commandos
Maybe some of these sound more awesome in Greek or whatever, but having been around people on both loony ends on the political spectrum, I find it interesting as anything to see how people define themselves and their enemies.
Some unclaimed printouts that we found when we came in a few weeks ago had a list of a whole lot of militias in the United States, articles about the Hutaree, and a place that sold HGH and other steroids online but suggested that you should "Buy Now!" because they might get banned soon and supplies won't last.
Some of the names of these groups who love freedom, the American Way, and guns, were pretty much to be expected, though others sounded like the products of some 10-year-olds playing with GI Joes and Playmobils(Fort Eagle) or someone who's watched way too much old TV (Roger's Rangers, which is actually named after a group of colonial fighters who fought with the British, so I don't even get where the patriotism thing comes in here). Another group described themselves as "All the Innocent Americans the Government Hasn't Thrown in Prison," which would presumably be a lot of people.
Another website told its adherents not to boycott their French's mustard along with the freedom fries, because it wasn't actually made in France. For the record, most of these people still had Geocities and Angelfire pages, which made me think of being in high school and those annoying banner ads that seemed to be EVERYWHERE.
Good times.
But lest we think that the righties of the US of A are the only ones susceptible to this, these are just a few of the Greek anarchist groups that were active in the last year. Unlike the anarchists I knew when I was at Kent, who seemed to spend more time eating vegan food, stealing copies of "Fight Club" from Borders and pens from the Cashier's Office to "throw a wrench in the system," and not bathing because hygiene is "fascist," these people actually blow things up.
Summer Entropy Commandos
Summer Tranquility Disturbance
Non-Patriot Saboteurs - Cores for the Spreading Insecurity
Fire Shadows
Comandos Husscheyn Zhachyndhoul Jhachanghir / Revolutionary Intelligence Agency
Antisexist Group
Immediate Intervention Hood-wearers
Wild Wolves
Conspiracists for the realization of insecurity
Immoral City De-Structuralists
Revolutionary Cores Alliance - Speedy Arsonist Agency
Fire Cores Conspiracy / Nihilist Commandos
Destroyers of whatever is left of social peace
Consciousness Gangs
Happy Sleep's Apostates
Arsonists' Millennium Cooperation
Organizers of Night Entertainment
CHAOS: Chaotic Groups of Sabotage
Carnivalists in the tune
Nikola Tesla Commandos
Maybe some of these sound more awesome in Greek or whatever, but having been around people on both loony ends on the political spectrum, I find it interesting as anything to see how people define themselves and their enemies.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
haterific
There are many times when someone is angry at you for a legit reason, like you not using your turn signal or giving them the wrong change, or forgetting something important.
And then there are other times when it is just so absurd that even my occasional tendency to shoot my mouth off doesn't even happen because the accusations are so crazy I'd only be lowering myself to respond to them.
And this has been happening a lot, mostly involving grown adults old enough to be my parents acting like children or teenagers, embodied in the form of meddling parents, catty colleagues, bitter customers who know they can be nasty and get away with it because we know we'll get written up if we talk back, or those who just have nothing better to do than spread the hate.
And then I'm coming home up my street when the lady driving the SUV in front of me stops suddenly and gets out screaming that I never learned to drive and that what I'm doing "isn't funny" and I don't know what I did at all and it seems like she's just trying to pick a fight and I look confused enough that she eventually gets back in her car and drives away. I don't want her to see that I live there so I cut down an alley and of course see her at the stoplight a block over where she proceeds to give me more dirty looks and my friend who's in the car with me is just as confused as I am.
I'm just glad she and these other people don't own guns because this world just seems to be getting more crazy. And it just makes me laugh because it's so absurd. Can't make this stuff up.
And then there are other times when it is just so absurd that even my occasional tendency to shoot my mouth off doesn't even happen because the accusations are so crazy I'd only be lowering myself to respond to them.
And this has been happening a lot, mostly involving grown adults old enough to be my parents acting like children or teenagers, embodied in the form of meddling parents, catty colleagues, bitter customers who know they can be nasty and get away with it because we know we'll get written up if we talk back, or those who just have nothing better to do than spread the hate.
And then I'm coming home up my street when the lady driving the SUV in front of me stops suddenly and gets out screaming that I never learned to drive and that what I'm doing "isn't funny" and I don't know what I did at all and it seems like she's just trying to pick a fight and I look confused enough that she eventually gets back in her car and drives away. I don't want her to see that I live there so I cut down an alley and of course see her at the stoplight a block over where she proceeds to give me more dirty looks and my friend who's in the car with me is just as confused as I am.
I'm just glad she and these other people don't own guns because this world just seems to be getting more crazy. And it just makes me laugh because it's so absurd. Can't make this stuff up.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
forgive us our trespasses...
I was not so fortunate as my friend in court on Tuesday. The public defender did his best "This is crazy that she's even here. All she's trying to do is make beauty out of the blight!," but this judge could have cared less about anyone's circumstances that caused them to be there and despite the officers not showing up, evidently that didn't matter to her. She wasn't throwing anything out and was even making jokes about our "contributions to the City of Cleveland."
Awesome.
Me being an artist with no prior criminal history whatsoever didn't buy me anything either and I doubt it would have mattered if he was there too. I'm sitting outside with a couple friends who came along for the ride and people are coming up to me saying "This is totally crazy. I can't believe you're in trouble for this. All you were doing was taking pictures and making art, what's wrong with that?"
And I explain that my crime was not so much what I was doing as who I was with and what that appeared to be to an officer with certain ideas of who white girls should be hanging around with.
I'm thankful at least that he's off free, though he doesn't see it that way... "This isn't fair! How do you get in trouble and I don't? You're a white girl, you're supposed to get away with it. I'm a black man, they're looking for any chance to throw my ass in jail."
It is what it is I guess...
So I sat around an hour waiting to go to the probation office, and then I sat for another hour waiting there as ESPN droned on and on about Brett Favre and I was glad I had a volume of T.S. Eliot poetry in my bag to keep me company and texting him while getting hit on by men old enough to be my father. Sure, I'm going to give my phone number to chronic offenders I meet in the probation office who won't even tell me what they're in there for, that's really smart.
I can't lie, this song was in my head the whole time...
I got my photo taken, had to give up all sorts of personal information about any distinguishing marks, tattoos or piercings, what languages I speak, my income level, my education level, where I work, where I went to school, my religion, if my parents are still alive, if I live alone or with roommates, how much I pay in rent and so on. I thought of that page with all the sex offenders on it that live in my neighborhood and this is the same information that they have to volunteer as well.
I signed an agreement saying that I'll report to a probation officer once a month for the next 90 days, that I cannot leave the state of Ohio without permission, that I can only associate with "law abiding citizens."
And there's a part of me that is still laughing at the Kafka-meets-rust belt absurdity of all this, laughing because I am powerless to do anything else except call it as I see it and because laughter is always more healthy than bitterness. I may not go to certain places that I've gone to but that doesn't mean that I will bend under the weight of institutional racism and stop hanging out with who I hang out with because the powers that be don't care for it, and it doesn't mean that I will stop creating or loving this place.
And I think about those who've come before me who've been unjustly accused, who've done the right thing and lost decades of their lives, who've spent time in prison for crimes they didn't commit, who got on the bad side of powers far more ruthless than the ones that I exist under. I'm not Jesus or Joseph or Gandhi or Martin Luther King. I'm not Aung San Suu Kyi or Nelson Mandela. What I'm dealing with isn't quite so bad.
I am thankful that God is a God of not just justice, but also mercy, that He doesn't discriminate and that we are all equal in His sight and that while we're all guilty, if we confess what we've done, we're forgiven and it's like it never happened. That doesn't exist in this life. It's all until you screw up again and even then an expungement isn't quite erased.
To think of the embodiment of all that going into a political and religious system that was profoundly corrupt, bloated, and generally wrong humbles me. It's hard for me to feel superior when I see everyone as guilty of something... me for my indiscretion, those in power that take bribes and throw their weight around and harass those they are in theory supposed to protect and serve, the apathetic bureaucrats that create statistics, all of us who've screwed up somehow and gotten caught.
Awesome.
Me being an artist with no prior criminal history whatsoever didn't buy me anything either and I doubt it would have mattered if he was there too. I'm sitting outside with a couple friends who came along for the ride and people are coming up to me saying "This is totally crazy. I can't believe you're in trouble for this. All you were doing was taking pictures and making art, what's wrong with that?"
And I explain that my crime was not so much what I was doing as who I was with and what that appeared to be to an officer with certain ideas of who white girls should be hanging around with.
I'm thankful at least that he's off free, though he doesn't see it that way... "This isn't fair! How do you get in trouble and I don't? You're a white girl, you're supposed to get away with it. I'm a black man, they're looking for any chance to throw my ass in jail."
It is what it is I guess...
So I sat around an hour waiting to go to the probation office, and then I sat for another hour waiting there as ESPN droned on and on about Brett Favre and I was glad I had a volume of T.S. Eliot poetry in my bag to keep me company and texting him while getting hit on by men old enough to be my father. Sure, I'm going to give my phone number to chronic offenders I meet in the probation office who won't even tell me what they're in there for, that's really smart.
I can't lie, this song was in my head the whole time...
I got my photo taken, had to give up all sorts of personal information about any distinguishing marks, tattoos or piercings, what languages I speak, my income level, my education level, where I work, where I went to school, my religion, if my parents are still alive, if I live alone or with roommates, how much I pay in rent and so on. I thought of that page with all the sex offenders on it that live in my neighborhood and this is the same information that they have to volunteer as well.
I signed an agreement saying that I'll report to a probation officer once a month for the next 90 days, that I cannot leave the state of Ohio without permission, that I can only associate with "law abiding citizens."
And there's a part of me that is still laughing at the Kafka-meets-rust belt absurdity of all this, laughing because I am powerless to do anything else except call it as I see it and because laughter is always more healthy than bitterness. I may not go to certain places that I've gone to but that doesn't mean that I will bend under the weight of institutional racism and stop hanging out with who I hang out with because the powers that be don't care for it, and it doesn't mean that I will stop creating or loving this place.
And I think about those who've come before me who've been unjustly accused, who've done the right thing and lost decades of their lives, who've spent time in prison for crimes they didn't commit, who got on the bad side of powers far more ruthless than the ones that I exist under. I'm not Jesus or Joseph or Gandhi or Martin Luther King. I'm not Aung San Suu Kyi or Nelson Mandela. What I'm dealing with isn't quite so bad.
I am thankful that God is a God of not just justice, but also mercy, that He doesn't discriminate and that we are all equal in His sight and that while we're all guilty, if we confess what we've done, we're forgiven and it's like it never happened. That doesn't exist in this life. It's all until you screw up again and even then an expungement isn't quite erased.
To think of the embodiment of all that going into a political and religious system that was profoundly corrupt, bloated, and generally wrong humbles me. It's hard for me to feel superior when I see everyone as guilty of something... me for my indiscretion, those in power that take bribes and throw their weight around and harass those they are in theory supposed to protect and serve, the apathetic bureaucrats that create statistics, all of us who've screwed up somehow and gotten caught.
Monday, January 4, 2010
fevered
Like I said, I had no New Year's plans this years, no parties, no clubs, no shows, nothing.
Ended up calling up Lindsay for what turned out to be a trip to Akron for fireworks and festivities, picked up Kent & Muk and went to IHOP at 2am, ended up crashing on the east side after staying up til 6am, watched some Twilight Zone, went to the Rockefeller Greenhouse with Muk and came home with grapefruit-sized lemons, hung out with the family, said goodbye to the family dog, who also died this weekend.
And now I'm at home with a sore throat and a fever drinking tea and eating oranges. thankful that the house is mine again... so relieved.
Ended up calling up Lindsay for what turned out to be a trip to Akron for fireworks and festivities, picked up Kent & Muk and went to IHOP at 2am, ended up crashing on the east side after staying up til 6am, watched some Twilight Zone, went to the Rockefeller Greenhouse with Muk and came home with grapefruit-sized lemons, hung out with the family, said goodbye to the family dog, who also died this weekend.
And now I'm at home with a sore throat and a fever drinking tea and eating oranges. thankful that the house is mine again... so relieved.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
just because you're paranoid... doesn't mean they're after you
In my line of work, I see a lot of these people coming in and out who have very interesting ideas about the world and the powers that be. You can sometimes tell which ones think that The Man is out to get them, and then others seem pretty normal and then start asking for books written by crackpot professors out west where the only copy is somewhere in Kansas and evidently the government is trying to destroy it because THEY don't want us to know the TRUTH.
So I google the guy that our patron was talking about and evidently he's into that whole Western Civilization/ethnic purity thing (figures that he got his college degree in apartheid era South Africa)
Sometimes it's so hard to keep a straight face, especially when people seem like they've watched National Treasure 2 a few too many times.
And I've heard so many of these things and it just gets me how there's so much craziness in the world, why do you have to add to it?
So I google the guy that our patron was talking about and evidently he's into that whole Western Civilization/ethnic purity thing (figures that he got his college degree in apartheid era South Africa)
Sometimes it's so hard to keep a straight face, especially when people seem like they've watched National Treasure 2 a few too many times.
And I've heard so many of these things and it just gets me how there's so much craziness in the world, why do you have to add to it?
Monday, June 29, 2009
defining normal
Friday night, I got home and was so tired I crashed. I'm still sore from the accident but the pain is finally starting to leave me. It still hurts when I laugh really hard. I still get nervous when I'm driving. My time is up on the rental car so I'll be utilizing my bus pass and I got a fill-in for my show tomorrow.
My roommate came back, and we went up to Edgewater to walk along the beach and watch the sunset from the pier. This has become our ritual when we need to chill and there's nothing better for that than water, waves, and the best people-watching ever.
There's been a lot in the way of parties and showers and people getting married and it's only getting to be moreso. It's hard to be single during wedding season, when the weather's gorgeous and all these girls younger than you are flashing their diamond rings and talking about interior decorating and wedding colors and cake flavors. When you get snubbed with some weddings and wonder if you can get out of going to others. I was always bored with the idea of planning an event that may or may not happen, and often speculated more on what happens when you get old and hoping that you're not bored with whoever you tied your life to.
I don't mind being single 95% of the time because I've got a great crew of people to hang out with and there's so much good stuff going on right now. I'm grateful that there's no pressure and that I can take this time to really do something wholeheartedly because I don't have many other obligations. I can pour myself into the lives of the kids and the families I work with, hang out with a lot of different people without worrying about making a boyfriend jealous, work on my music and my art, immerse myself in other languages and cultures.
And I visited a friend of mine this weekend who called me from the mental ward at Lutheran. I've never been to a place like that and we sat there and played board games and tried to act as normal as possible. I wonder what everyone's story is as they shuffle by and ask me and the roommate questions and talk about their kids and their goals and what they used to be when they weren't in there and you wonder how much of it is true and what everyone's stories are. And how true anyone's stories are in general.
My roommate came back, and we went up to Edgewater to walk along the beach and watch the sunset from the pier. This has become our ritual when we need to chill and there's nothing better for that than water, waves, and the best people-watching ever.
There's been a lot in the way of parties and showers and people getting married and it's only getting to be moreso. It's hard to be single during wedding season, when the weather's gorgeous and all these girls younger than you are flashing their diamond rings and talking about interior decorating and wedding colors and cake flavors. When you get snubbed with some weddings and wonder if you can get out of going to others. I was always bored with the idea of planning an event that may or may not happen, and often speculated more on what happens when you get old and hoping that you're not bored with whoever you tied your life to.
I don't mind being single 95% of the time because I've got a great crew of people to hang out with and there's so much good stuff going on right now. I'm grateful that there's no pressure and that I can take this time to really do something wholeheartedly because I don't have many other obligations. I can pour myself into the lives of the kids and the families I work with, hang out with a lot of different people without worrying about making a boyfriend jealous, work on my music and my art, immerse myself in other languages and cultures.
And I visited a friend of mine this weekend who called me from the mental ward at Lutheran. I've never been to a place like that and we sat there and played board games and tried to act as normal as possible. I wonder what everyone's story is as they shuffle by and ask me and the roommate questions and talk about their kids and their goals and what they used to be when they weren't in there and you wonder how much of it is true and what everyone's stories are. And how true anyone's stories are in general.
Monday, April 27, 2009
trust fund slum
I was laughing this morning when I saw the link to this article
I lived on that street for a year because I had friends looking for roommates and it was a short walk from campus and downtown.
It was more or less a slum for rich white kids who wanted to have their own "Animal House" with old homes that were literally falling apart and yards that were littered with old kegs and red plastic cups. There was broken glass everywhere and blackened pieces of old couches that had been burned in the middle of the street. I get really mad when I hear people in suburban Cleveland talking about any group of "other" people bringing down the neighborhood, because their own kids would do a damn good job of it.
The city council called it a "blighted neighborhood" for good reason. And Peter Frampton's daughter lived a couple houses down from me. I was living there when the first College Fest went down, and while there were no riots with tear gas and pepper spray, it looked almost exactly like this. Really, it looked like this pretty much all the time.
We didn't have keys to the front door, just deadbolts for our rooms and it wasn't uncommon to come home and find a drunk high school kid standing in your living room wondering where the party's at and trying to tell you that he's 23 or someone you've never seen before passed out on the couch. The girls upstairs used to throw water balloons off the roof at people walking home from the bars. One time three strippers showed up at my door looking for Jimmy and I sent them elsewhere.
The year after I moved to more quiet and less expensive environs, kids from Akron used to come up and rob and pistol-whip people walking home from the bars because the combination of stupidity, alcohol, and money was just too easy of a target.
I got to hang out with my old roommate this weekend, and it says a lot about dorm life that living here was better, but also that we wondered how we ended up there, and how we thought that life was actually normal.
I lived on that street for a year because I had friends looking for roommates and it was a short walk from campus and downtown.
It was more or less a slum for rich white kids who wanted to have their own "Animal House" with old homes that were literally falling apart and yards that were littered with old kegs and red plastic cups. There was broken glass everywhere and blackened pieces of old couches that had been burned in the middle of the street. I get really mad when I hear people in suburban Cleveland talking about any group of "other" people bringing down the neighborhood, because their own kids would do a damn good job of it.
The city council called it a "blighted neighborhood" for good reason. And Peter Frampton's daughter lived a couple houses down from me. I was living there when the first College Fest went down, and while there were no riots with tear gas and pepper spray, it looked almost exactly like this. Really, it looked like this pretty much all the time.
We didn't have keys to the front door, just deadbolts for our rooms and it wasn't uncommon to come home and find a drunk high school kid standing in your living room wondering where the party's at and trying to tell you that he's 23 or someone you've never seen before passed out on the couch. The girls upstairs used to throw water balloons off the roof at people walking home from the bars. One time three strippers showed up at my door looking for Jimmy and I sent them elsewhere.
The year after I moved to more quiet and less expensive environs, kids from Akron used to come up and rob and pistol-whip people walking home from the bars because the combination of stupidity, alcohol, and money was just too easy of a target.
I got to hang out with my old roommate this weekend, and it says a lot about dorm life that living here was better, but also that we wondered how we ended up there, and how we thought that life was actually normal.
Monday, August 11, 2008
miscellaneous
In other news...
My first fill-in show didn't go so well. The playlist was decent but the sequencing was awful. I was already exhausted by the time I got there and it showed. Such is life.
My new roommate has moved in. She is awesome.
So is Sweethearts Cafe over in Chinatown. No other place in Cleveland where you can drink green tea and watch the olympics to the soundtrack of slow jams and crunk hits. It's weird but for some reason it kind of works.
My family's dog isn't doing so well either. She's 14 years old so she's had a good life but the thought of her dying still makes me sad.
I went to the Ethiopian service at church yesterday with my roommate because she knows everyone there. They were all really nice, the music was on a pentatonic scale, and I loved seeing how they do things, especially considering that their traditions of Christianity predate most of Europe's and the country was never colonized by anyone.
We hung out with the kids downstairs last night and they were dancing in the rain and put a talent show on for us mostly involving new dances and the secret handshake from the cheetah girls. They came upstairs for some orange pop and I only had two cans so I had some small glasses I'd gotten from my great uncle and poured it in there to make it go further.
It didn't occur to me that three elementary school kids would be clued in that these were shot glasses and they proceeded to do shots with the orange pop, slamming the glass down on the table and telling me to "POUR ANOTHER ONE, BABY!!!"
saying they learned how to do this from Granny and the TV.
My first fill-in show didn't go so well. The playlist was decent but the sequencing was awful. I was already exhausted by the time I got there and it showed. Such is life.
My new roommate has moved in. She is awesome.
So is Sweethearts Cafe over in Chinatown. No other place in Cleveland where you can drink green tea and watch the olympics to the soundtrack of slow jams and crunk hits. It's weird but for some reason it kind of works.
My family's dog isn't doing so well either. She's 14 years old so she's had a good life but the thought of her dying still makes me sad.
I went to the Ethiopian service at church yesterday with my roommate because she knows everyone there. They were all really nice, the music was on a pentatonic scale, and I loved seeing how they do things, especially considering that their traditions of Christianity predate most of Europe's and the country was never colonized by anyone.
We hung out with the kids downstairs last night and they were dancing in the rain and put a talent show on for us mostly involving new dances and the secret handshake from the cheetah girls. They came upstairs for some orange pop and I only had two cans so I had some small glasses I'd gotten from my great uncle and poured it in there to make it go further.
It didn't occur to me that three elementary school kids would be clued in that these were shot glasses and they proceeded to do shots with the orange pop, slamming the glass down on the table and telling me to "POUR ANOTHER ONE, BABY!!!"
saying they learned how to do this from Granny and the TV.
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