chef taggeroni
Current mood: working
Category: Life
Well I havent listened to being tagged in quite sometime, but when someone I actually like to read their blogs I tags me, its time to get off my lazy ass and produce 10 unusual things you normally wouldn't know about me...again....
and since Im waaay to lazy to go through my blogs and keep pushing the "older" button till I get to last year, I apologize if any of these are repeats, but Ill try to think up stuff thats new and applies to life more recently.
I also feel entirely inadequate for having a pictureless blog, but with my mac refusing to let me see weather or not Ive got the right html code, Im sort of SOL anyways, besides Im lazy, doing laundry, supposed to be doing writing for my research thesis, and Im nursing a baby and we're out of diapers right now. but hey welcome to my life, it's called multi-tasking.
Ok so ten things I'd want someone to know about me besides the fact that you can't see long pauses while I stop and think as I write.
ok 1.I have a tattoo on my foot of a lizard skeleton. It is there to remind me that just like every other living thing I walk on this earth and one day I'll end up returning to it. I have it on my foot because this is the part of my body that tends to be closest to the ground, and is also the part of the body that supports the rest of me. Feet have always been really important to me, they represent my connection to the world. Perhaps it doesnt make sense, but in the recess of my brain, I dont ever want to forget these things.
2. I come from a long line of doormats. My father was a doormat, my grandfather was a doormat and beyond that I don't know. For much of my life I've been a doormat. I give too much and then get hurt and sorry formyself when my friends and lovers have abused me. Its only in the past couple of years that Ive realized this, taken some responsibility and made the decision to stop enabling people, that it really doen't help them and that I dont need anyone to need me. I'm done.
3. When I was 13 one of the housemates in the house me and my mother lived in went off his psych meds and decided that me and my mother were both vampires. He chased me around the house and ended up stabing my mother in the side with a round cylindrical knife sharpener thingy. When the police took him to the happy psych ward, I went into my room. Because I was freaked and wouldnt come out of my room for three days, my mom sent me to spend time in the Herrick Hospital unit 3 teen psych ward which was next to the Herrick Hospital unit 4. psych ward where they guy who tried to kill us was staying. It made me feel much better to be so close (sarcasm). I also loved that the happy psych ward people locked up my toothbrush so I wouldn't hurt myself with it, and then my breath was gross.
4. My father, who hated my mom, decided to take pity on the poor guy who tried to kill us. He went to visit him regularly and later they became good friends. My father started loaning the guy who tried to kill us money. At the same time he wouldn't give me any money because he was afraid I'd spend it on drugs.
5. A couple years later, the happy psych med guy decides my father is too messed up for befriending him after he tried to kill me. He tells my dad he doesnt want to be friends anymore. My father calls me to complain that this guy doesn't want to be his friend. I feel really sorry for my dad, he can't seem to keep to many friends.
6.My step mother hit on my husband's employer in front of his wife at my wedding. Then she complained that my husbands father was too flirtatious and tried to tell her a dirty joke. Everyone drooled on my bellydancing friend, people were hitting on each other, and the person who's only responsibility to push "play" on the CD was too distracted by a pretty girl to do that. Plus there was a hand print from my drunk and pill popping step mother in the wedding cake. Similarly to giving birth, the experience of getting married in my family was as if no one noticed that me or my husband was even there.
7. I knew it was a bad idea when my parents wanted to get the whole family together for dinner for my college graduation. My sister ended up punching my step mother for calling my sister an "uptight bitch". She called my sister this because my sister wouldn't let her drive the grand-kids while drunk and high. My step mother then called the police, who came into the restaurant where we were eating and took statement. My father then spent the whole time begging me to talk some sense into my sister who was sitting right next to me refusing to speak. He wanted me to understand that he couldn't handle it if she stopped talking to him again. It made the food taste much better.
8. I'm actually really happy about my restrictive diet. I cant have wheat, gluten, corn, cane or beet sugar, chocolate, coffee, milk/cream and a whole bunch of other stuff. but on the other hand, I don't shit blood 20 times a day 'till I have very little blood or fluids left...therefore, I like my diet.
9. I've been obsessed with studying herbology and magic spells from all over the world for as long as I can remember being old enough to get to a library. I've been trying to grow and gone on walks to search for herbs on my own since I was 8 or 9. When I first returned to college, I wanted to learn bio-chemistry and get a job traveling the world to find new herbs to be tested by pharmaceutical companies.I continued to study spells and eventually graduated from b/s wiccan herbal spells to hoodoo, which FYI is much more hardcore. I still love studying spells although I haven't exactly tried to do one for almost four years. I still love to read and think about them. I think its all part of a sub conscious need to put a spell on the entire planet to make everyone shut the fuck up...even me.
10. Even though I would never want to join a military of any kind, I love to wear camouflage because olive drab is one of my favorite colors. I also like cammo because I like the idea of blending in to my environment. My fundamental problem with culture and society is that we all believe we are ruler, controlers of the world as opposed to part of it. This is the reason for all of our environmental problems, our population problems, our war problems etc etc. it all comes down to this simple distinction "the world is not ours, we are the world's" it is for this reason that I try to wear the colors of the trees and the earth in my natural surroundings, to remind me that i belong to it.
I hope my blatherings haven't scared anyone away, but if they have, oh well. I may well be crazy, it wouldnt be the first time anyone said so. I don't always know whats worth saying and what isn.t As my uncle in law says "I was born retarded with the incredible gift to hide it."
Currently
listening
:
A Retrospective
By
KRS-One
Release date: 2000-08-22
This ones a girl, lets call her Pam
Category: Music
we all try to be proud of where we come from. I'm a gypsy of sorts and I have no one town Ive resided in for life. But the longest I've ever lived in any town has been Oakland, CalifornIA
this whole hyphy movement thing though makes it sort of difficult to be proud. I mean what has Oakland really offered the culture of this fine nation? Ghost riding the whip? sexist ass Too Short? The Raiders? The A'?
Theres not much to be proud of that the rest of the nation sees. A reputation for a high murder rate and corrupt cops...
Musashi did point out that east Oakland has recently started a new fad of "scraper bikes" made out of recycled materials, which are cool
But fuck that! I dont need that that be proud. All I need is to brag about Pam the Funktress from the Coup being able to scratch a record with her tities. Who can beat that? tell me who? fuck that shit Oakland mofos, the O, oaktown!
Since I am teching US history this year, I needed to colect accurate historical information. Luckily one of my best freind Collete's boyfriend Lore, makes these very helpful commentaries to help me out.
sexist language for George
Current mood: bitchy
Category: Writing and Poetry
Recently I've been told I act "like a dude." I was told this is because I tend to react to things angrily and wanting to fight (verbally, sneakily or in extreme circumstances, physically) I suppose this is more "masculine, where as a "feminine" reaction would be a more emotionally helpless type of crying, giggling or perhaps as my friend Fed Marx would say, playing the part of "long-suffering so-and-so. Well I suppose I'm masculine because none of those things are like me. I've been told I'm masculine in many ways, especially in my use of language. I also know that part of getting told this is because I tend to speak up and try to tell jokes more than I try to be pretty.
My existential quandary as of late concerns my sailor's mouth vs. my distain for sexism. I believe in absolute freedom of speech, however freedom of speech also includes people right to criticize words that can be hurtful or damaging.
Since I was very young I've always had a sailor's mouth. I'm not sure where I got it from, perhaps my deep seeded anger for who knows what, the state of the world I suppose. Perhaps I just obsessed over too many George Carlin and Eddie Murphy comedy specials. When I was younger, I was sure that Carlin had created his "fuck can be used in any part of speech" lecture based on listening to me talk to my friends. "Fuck the fucking fuckers" was like my theme sentence.
Anywhoo, I'm supposed to grown now and one would think I would have grown out of the sailor's mouth politically incorrect word list. Still sometimes I can't help using such words partially out of habit but also because I love them. Even and especially the horrible ones. In my poem about poems I insult poems and express my anger at them by calling them douchebags. I know that is sexist. "Douchebag" is one of a vast number of vaginal references used to assert phallic superiority and vaginal abhorence. But I just love the word. It just roles off the tongue : "douchebag" it sounds French in a disgusting sort of way and ends in "bag" which shows its disposability. Its just so beautiful…Yet it pains me, the whole concepts of douching s creepy anyways but I won't go into that.
I severely detest most insulting vaginal references, such as pussy, twat, cunt, jelly hole, mound, , stank hole, ho, box etc. Basically as far as I'm concerned them's is fightin' words. In opposition to words for the male member: dick, cock, schlong, short arm, other head, Johnson, Jake the one eyed snake, Willie etc, the words for the male member are cute and affectionate. Whearas the words for vagina all sound gross. Lets just get one thing straight once and for all; penises are damnded funny looking and weird protruding appendages and Im glad I don't have one. Vulva might not be much less strange but at least they are not so vulnerable, making this particular female glad she has one as opposed to the other.
Sexism really comes out in words for man-whore: there are few, gigolo, or perhaps a "player" A female can be a tramp, brazen hussy, hooker, harlot, slut, tart, trollop, whore…and those are just the 200 year old words…we won't talk about chicken-head and breezy and the like.
I find it equally insulting when girls call each other or themselves "bitch" because that just tells everyone else that its okay to call them, and by default me, a bitch. Why is bitch insulting, being that it just means "female dog" well I find the same thing people say about the "N" word. They say that the "n " word just means "ignorant person." But when you look at how people actually use it, that's not what it means. Its one of those words that over time has a negative psychological impact by associating us girls with beasts, implying that we have a basal lack of logic and rational and furthermore that we function merely on basal needs and hormones. I can thank society , for making me feel like I shouldn't be capable of making sense when comlex logic is needed. That's my new excuse and lots of women use it. Somw of us would rather simply live up to your expectations.
Too Short of "biooootch" fame from my lovely hometown of Oakland California, always advised that if we females objected to his calling us bitches to simply not respond, that when someone yells "bitch!" at you just don't turn around. Actually I wish more of us would heed his advice, but its hard. The word is far too commonplace at this point, and besides why give up the opportunity to strike back? Obviously there is no masculine version of "bitch." There just isn't one. You can say a guy is a "jerk" or an "asshole" or a "prick" but these terms can also be applied to females and what does prick ean anyways? None of these imply that a man is no better or smarter than a dog.... So there you go……
Now comes the part where someone always adds insult to injury by saying "I call my guy friends pussys, bitches and douchebags all the time." But really what is happening is it becomes and insult to call a male "feminine" or "vaginal" or" woman-like." This is even funnier when us girls do it, the worst insult we can come up with is "you are like me!" It's just a little self defeating to insult men by calling them women when you're a woman. The same is true with calling guys "gay" homo" and "fag" as an insult, that's where homophobia and sexism come together, gay men are seen as "feminine" (even though many aren't) and to call a man gay, even if he is, is to insult him by feminizing him.
I know there are few insults specific to males, or calling a female masculine but frankly I'm glad. It allows us to be so much more creative and call y'all like "overgrown fetuses" or "plague ridden man-whores" or just plain dingleberrys. Its these disadvantages which force us ladies and gay guys to be so much more creative than y'all regular type man-whoring jerk-wads.
I admit I'll laugh at many stereotyping jokes. I liked it when Carlin said "If a man speaks in a forest and there's no woman there to hear him is he still wrong?" Most women I know simply immediately answer "yes." But no joke any comedian has ever told about any female has ever been as funny as my girl Angelique doing her imitation of our nasally neighbor, Phil saying: "I told Jenny not to eat them Resse's peanut butter cups but she won't listen" You know there are a few great things in life. There is delicious food, orgasmic orgasms, amazing dreams, but one thing that makes like for sure worth living is lounging with my girls talking a gang of shit and then laughing till our sides split. Basically I don't think I'd trade those moments for anything. Many women have split personallities, they are professional eyelash batters when men are around and funny as hell as soon as they leave the room I have society's sexism to thank, if it wasn't so sexist, racist and fucked the hell up as it is, then girls wouldn't be so godamn funny they make me cry. If only the rest of you knew.
Once again I don't believe in censorship of speech, but ladies, we need to invent some new payback words to balance out the score here, especially for me cuz' I can't stop cussing and don't want to give up calling folks douchebags (ddooouuuccchheee…doesn't that sound fresh) I mean we are funny as hell, but how come we mostly do that when guys aren't around?
So after this meandering and senseless rant, what I suppose is going to have to happen is that we are going to have to (in commemoration of Carlin) create new and better cuss words……any ideas?
Currently
reading
:
Tuff: A Novel
By
Paul Beatty
Release date: 2001-08-21
Im trying to quit added sugar and eat only honey to see if my health will improve, but I cant escape. Sugar is added to everything and in many plaes you don't expect it. Here is a list of things that ive runn across that are messing up my sugarless plan
cold cuts (turkey, roast beef, ham etc) mayo mustard pickles salad dressings (all unless homemade) pre-prepaired soups tamato paste canned tomatoes steak sauce teryiaki sauce broth (chicken, beef, vegetable) toothpaste sandwitch bread wasabi pickled ginger breakfast cereal (all) soymilk (all unless specified as unsweetened) rice milk almond milk any other kind of sauce or marinade prepaired tofu dried fruits (especially cranberry and coconut) roasted nuts chipoltles in adobo sauce spanish rice v8 the majority of odwallas chi tea
"american" cheese or processed cheese ketchup vanilla extract any other "extracts" any kind of chips or snack mix flavored rice cakes or corn cakes olives!
and basically anything that makes anything edible....why do they have to add sugar to EVERYTHING? its just mean sort of isn't it? How can I possibly avoid sugar without quitting my job and moving to a farm where I would have 24/7 to grow and cook my own food?
I hardly watch videos anymore. Most of them are boring. They all have stop motion angles of "preety" people doing nothing. When I was a wee sprout back in the early 80's music gennerally sucked, but videos used to have a plot, which made them interesting. Serj Tankian, and/or whoever created and designed this video has started to bring that feeling back. The last best ideo I saw before this one was ice cude's "gangsta rap made me do it" this one also has really great symbolism
which videos do you think have great meaning?
Currently
listening
:
Empty Walls
By
Serj Tankian
Release date: 2008-01-13
Im sorry I failed you. I didn't know who to be or what my goals should have been with you. No one drew any lines or boarders for you not to cross and now you are not sure what you've done and you don't know how to be responsible for your own actions, only to hate yourself.
I didn't know who I was supposed to be for you or how to act. When I saw no one else was doing anything for you, I wanted to step up to the plate, but I still felt wrong, awkward, innappropriate like I had no right to say or do anything.
I don't want you out there all on your own. I don't think you're ready. Maybe you are I don't know, I don't know you. I reacted to quickly without thinking when i asked you to leave. I've spent so long trying to rebuild my life after living around abuse, addiction, manipulation, and lies. I got that feeling in my gut like old times were comming back. I don't want to be nosy or invade nto your private life, but I also can't let you do things that endanger yourself and us all. Whats even worse is that you say we are all always in danger, so it didn't make any difference to you. I don't know what the right thing to do is.
I should have tried to draw lines between what is ok and what isn't ok from the start. I should have given you more of a chance to get it together, told you what your options were before asking you to leave. I felt like you wouldn't budge and that whatever I did wouldn't work so maybe the best thing to do was throw you in the water to see if you would sink or swim. I hope its not babtism by fire. Life sucks, the world is a shitty place, but I can't keep you from it forever.
I never knew I was applying for this job
Current mood: disappointed
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers
"hey officer can you help us, isn't to serve and protect your job?" "right now my job is eating these here doughnuts, wait a minute aren't you...." BANG, BANG, BANG.... "yup."
so goes the bodycount song I used to listen to in 1992. After my friend Jolese got pulled across the riot lines, beaten on film, and lost her court case against the officers who did it, I even went to copwatch meetings and began monitoring thepopolice. This was all before Rodney king even.
I always sid that my kids would rebel against me and become cops but thats no what happened, I rebelled against myself and now I'm the cop.
I told myself I wanted to be a parent because I love children, they are something to live for. I told myself I wanted to be a teacher because I prefer the company of teens to adults. But I' not a parent or a teacher but rather I'm a cop. My job is to make rules and enforce them. My job is to explain rules, boundries and limits. My job is to confiscate drugs and grind them into the groung with my heel. My job is to give students little slips of paper to inform them they have a violation. My job is to detain them.
I am the cop, and I hate it
I should havewent to law school, or stuck with pet stores, lanscape construction anything....
there are moments when I love my job, but there are more moments when I hate who I have to be to do my job. I thought I did this because I love kids. I guess I do......I certainly deserve this I suppose but dang
I never even knew the real job for which I was applying and for which I was recieving training. Cops sure get paid a hellofa lot more too. Course I don't have to wear the uniform...sigh....
Currently
listening
:
Body Count
By
Body Count
Release date: 1992-10-06
musings on a distorted perception
Current mood: fermented
Hating myself screwed up my life more than drugs, bad relationships, negligent parents, traumatic events, mean teachers, crappy schools, and this shitty world. The thing that's been holding me back forever is me.
I know that it didn't all begin with that afternoon that I stood too long in the shower crying, knowing inside I could never clean off how disgusting I felt. I could never clean off the hate the fear and the pathetic powerlessness. I was just a young girl of thirteen, but I thought I was responsible for what happened to me. I know there was about a thousand other factors that made me hate myself before that day, but what happened didn't help.
After that I constantly wanted, needed, went seeking reassurance to make me feel better about myself but even on the rare occasions I got it, it never helped. I mostly loved and appreciated the people who showed me tough love. The day the Ms. Wethers-Coles, a six-foot tall, fifty year old African-Haitian dance teacher grabbed my face and lifted up my chin is punctuated in my mind.
Her tall muscled brown body dressed all in white loomed over me, able to squish my physical, mental and spiritual being with a single motion or word. The slender gold hoops wavered back and forth on her ears and all the bracelets jingled on her arm as she pointed at me.
"I'm sick of you looking down at the ground when you dance, what's that all about?" She demanded. She could tell all my problems just by the way I held my head when I didn't say a word. Her eyes told me she'd endured decades of pain while keeping her head up. What nerve, what excuse did I have not to be proud, not to love myself after all she'd been through still loving herself?
If anyone should have made me move on and get over it she should have. She knew what she was doing, knew how to say things right. She wasn't trying to fix me, she was telling me to get off my ass and fix myself like she knew I could. I should have realized it then, I should have begun on the road to recovery but I didn't. Its taken me all this time just to realize everything she was trying to tell me, just to do step one, acknowledging that you have a problem and that only you can fix it.
"I am humble" I kept telling myself, "I do not want to be selfish, conceited like so many are, so many people who have hurt me." Inside though I was seething with hate and fear. I couldn't look at my own face and when I did, all I saw was a grotesque fun house mirror face. I told myself that I looked at the ground all the time because I was well grounded,earthy, besides you never know what you might find. What if someone dropped their money, or a good ground score in the cracks in the sidewalk?
The truth was I didn't feel worthy to look anyone in the eye, I couldn't love someone so ugly, useless, and dumb, as myself so no one should love me. And here I was living in a perfectly adequate, able body.
I never let myself succeed at anything, I didn't think I deserved it. I didn't peruse my dreams because I was never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough. So now twenty years later this all comes to fruition and I see the damage its done. I see my own selfishness and my own fear of rejection. I see a dozen careers I have backed out of and a lot of unsympathetic people who have their own hurt to deal with and certainly don't need to be tormented with mine. So now I know I have to begin the process of being comfortable, relaxed and realistic towards myself it's a long process and it's hit me very hard but what hit me the hardest is him.
When he came to live with me a few years ago I could see the wounded look in his young pre-teen eyes and I heard the constant apologetic tone. I did everything I could to try to help but how I could I have when I was still there myself. My goodness, I don't want to teach him its ok to be like me. It makes me crazy with sadness to see a such a bright young person act like him.
Now he's 18, drawing hilarious cartoons, playing a gorgeous Buckethead guitar solo with his own twist and then trading the strings in for drum sticks just to make the baby dance- he sits there and tells me in his perfect language, in his advanced vocabulary- that he can't do what others can do because "they are better than me" he says. I want to evoke the spirit of Ms. Wethers-Coles, I want to grab his chin and say "Look up at me right now dammit, listen to me, no one, I mean NO ONE is fucking better than you, EVER. Do you hear me?" And my eyes will tell him what happened that day I tried to scrub the disgusting filth off that would never come off.
But I don't do or say that. Instead my back hurts in the place where I fell when I was running away that day, almost twenty years ago now. I look him in the eyes and say "you know that's not true. No one is better than you. You are young, intelligent, talented, attractive, and the only thing holding you back is you." But I know he won't get it until he's ready to.
And I still need to be really telling that to myself, but I guess that now, I have an even better reason: living a life in a body you hate is hard to go through, watching someone you love go through it is like going through it all over again only this time, there's really nothing you can do which just highlights the fact that yes,back then there was something you could have done, but you didn't know how and you weren't ready.
working
accomplished
thirsty
bitchy
angry
blank
ashamed
disappointed
fermented
