hédonisme libertaire

Ambiguous Heterotopia?

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:30:08 GMT

As part of my project to work my way through Samuel R. Delany's "Modular Calculus" stories, I'm now about halfway through the novel (vs. the metafictional epilogue) part of Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia.

I'll be able to talk about it in more depth later (and yeah, I'm going to be working some thesis action on Delany), but I think I might be starting to understand heterosexual men better than I had before. That's not actually right, though -- I think I'm understanding how to make sense of heterosexual men in a particular set of ways that I hadn't before. Of course, given how involved this novel is with how language and representation relate to desire, it'll take quite a bit more reading and discussion to really come up with a better way to phrase that. In any case, there are things about heterosexual-male-ness that I think could only be passed from one gay man to another. I know there are things about race and class that I'm only partially comprehending here, too, as someone much whiter and less man-identified than Delany...

Fic recs requested...

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:02:10 GMT

So, on the recommendations of a few friends (hi hauen!), I'm working my way through Babylon 5 on Hulu. Now, yeah, a lot of the writing is cheesetastic and I had to skip the patronizing militarist quasi-anti-union episode, but I have one major impression so far (I'm towards the beginning of season 1, episode 17):

I need some Ivanova/Winters.

Yeah, yeah, normally I'm all for the male/male, but these are the two characters who piss me off the least, the two I actually care about (OK, the doctor has his moments, but for some reason I can't picture him as straight and I have nobody to slash him with but Lennier; I'm not even going to go into Londo/G'Kar until a later season, though they're already slashtastic). After the first episode I was hoping for much more of the evolution of the dynamics between them (and they led to the passing of the Bechdel Test in the first episode, which not many TV series -- let a lone SF series with Harlan Ellison as an advisor -- manage in the first season if ever), but I've been sadly disappointed. (At least Ivanova has gotten a good bit of screen time, some attention as a character, and more depth and development than anyone else in the cast up until this point.) Now, it looks like they'll start to get some interaction in episode 17, but I'm afraid that it's going to be made of sexism and fail, so I'm putting out a pre-emptive request:

I need some femmeslash here.

About that distance thing...

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:42:25 GMT

So, I've been a "free subscriber" to compatiblepartners.net (i.e. the site that eHarmony was required to open as part of their discrimination-law settlement) for a couple of months now. And they did manage to connect me to a guy who's absolutely what I've been looking for, except for one thing:

He's in Singapore.

So, we've been talking on Skype for a month or so, but it's pretty clear that neither of us is likely to be moving closer than 10k miles in the foreseeable future; so we're still talking, but it's pretty clear that we're pretty much going to stay "just friends" at this point.

What it amounts to is that I'm back on the market. And I'm in that "awkward phase" -- I'm 28, so I'm no longer desirable on the gay scene due to twinkiness (and have the love handles to prove my lack of eligibility), and I'm not yet eligible for daddiness due to broke-college-student-ism (and that won't change for another 6-7 years, and while at that point I'll be quite capable of playing the "I have money, therefore I'm dateable" card, I don't particularly want to wait that long (and wouldn't like the type of men that attracts anyway)).

The net result? I'm officially reactivating the Knights of the Order of M. Y'all know who you are. For the non-members: probationary members have all been given the same quest: find M a boyfriend, preferably long-term. All knight-initiates have, up to this point, failed miserably. Anyone fulfilling the probationary quest will, of course, be accorded honors as first full Knight of the Order of M. Consider this an open application phase. Candidates may be located anywhere in the multiverse, but the proffered man-meat should be in California, no further north than the Bay Area.

Day of Decision -- Tuesday, May 26

Fri, 22 May 2009 19:46:13 GMT

There will be either a celebration or a protest when the California Supreme Court issues their ruling on the "Proposition h8 vs. the Equal Protection Clause" case next Tuesday, May 26, at 10am. I have three classes with required attendance, so I won't be able to make it down to L.A. -- but given the signals sent by the SC during oral arguments, it looks like I'll be preparing a "R.I.P. Equal Protection Clause" memorial for somewhere on campus at AVC.

Space-opera rock-opera, part 1

Wed, 13 May 2009 04:40:06 GMT

So, the Brass Orchids may currently only consist of two people, but we're already working on two rock operas. One, The Tide Journals, is a bit more abstract (and is based on one of the novels I keep poking at), if also fairly comfortable in the "urban fantasy" category (complete with quasi-time-travel, alterations in the past, etc.). The second, though, is full-on, camp-happy, space-opera rock-opera with a plot which is looking like the unholy spawn of hard-boiled private-detective film noir and cyberpunk. Features include the fedora-and-trench-coat-wearing drag-king private detective (and her drag-queen femme fatale client), aliens with the voice of a saxophone run through a vocoder (who speak in jazz riffs), a malignant artificial intelligence created as a performance-art piece, narration by the guy whose death is being investigated, and a space-station police force consisting entirely of dominatrixes and leather daddies (their theme song? "Hot Space Station Justice".).

California initiative process?

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:16:51 GMT

How does one go about getting an initiative or Constitutional amendment on the ballot here in California?

Since the California Supreme Court appears to have decided that Constitutional guarantees of rights may be amended, eliminated or made specific to one group of people by a simple majority vote, there are a few other changes I'd like to put before the voting public:

-"Only marriages between two persons with a shared initial letter of their given names are valid or recognized in California." Once the California Supreme Court rules, it will be established law that we the people of the state have the right to control access to any given legal right such as marriage in any way that 50% +1 of those of us who vote in any given election see fit.

-"Only religions which recognize the supremacy of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and profess to be touched by His Noodly Appendage are valid or recognized in California." This would make it clear that we respect religious freedom, but that we the people of California have exercised our sovereign right to define what we mean by "religion".

-"Only claims of property made by people between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 11 inches in height are valid or recognized in California." After all, it's the inalienable right of the People to amend our Constitution to specify who may have access to any right guaranteed by the state government.

-"Anyone who voted for Prop 8, as well as all California Supreme Court 'justices' who voted to uphold it, shall from this day forward be referred to publicly and in all official and legal capacities exclusively as 'Douchey MacDouche of the clan MacDouche'."

Passing on good advice I received...

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:18:52 GMT

In one of my creative writing classes, my prof gave me the same piece of advice twice. Yesterday, I got to pass that advice on to one of my own students (OK, so I'm not his teacher, but tutors can be writing coaches too!).

I'm not entirely clear on what the assignment was, but it involved stories a few pages long, mostly involving climbing mountains. One of the students in my group decided to go all-out with his suspense-novel imagination, and had a climber stranded for months, taking shelter in a pile of the frozen corpses of the rest of his climbing party.

Now, this was definitely a rough draft by a ninth-grader (who'd been told by previous teachers to cut down on detail and story length...quite wrongly!), but it had piles of ~~frozen corpses~~ potential. I had to give him the same advice that my professor had given me, though:

"It needs to be more brutal."

The poor guy clearly knew that for his story to have the impact that it demanded, it would have to devolve into cannibalism -- slowly and with great detail, as the lone, starving survivor finds the idea of taking advantage of all that frozen meat just a little bit less unthinkable with each cold and miserable day. Unfortunately, a fear (probably well-founded) of having his story labeled "disturbing" kept him from giving himself permission to give his own writing the respect it deserved. Blah -- I miss my creative writing professor.

Aria for an audition...

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:59:28 GMT

I have an audition on Thursday. For this audition, I need two arias prepped (neither from the opera the college is putting on, and for which I'm auditioning). One is "Ombra Mai Fu," which I already know (and got quite comfortable with last semester).

The second aria is "Va l'error mio palesa". Due to not finding out about the audition until yesterday, I have 48 hours to learn it.

Needless to say, I have Brian Asawa's version on repeat in iTunes, and I'm following along with the sheet music. By tomorrow I should be working with the accompaniment track, and hopefully on Thursday I'll manage not to make a complete ass of myself.

Of course, given that there aren't any countertenor roles in The Magic Flute (well...the "three spirits" could be cast any number of ways), it still might not make a difference.

Fallout 3:

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:49:52 GMT

What other game will let you roam through a retro-futuristic post-nuclear wasteland, slaughtering slavers with Abraham Lincoln's rifle (and/or while wearing Abraham Lincoln's hat) while listening to the Ink Spots?

I survive!

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:03:52 GMT

My last two finals were this evening -- the second one (AutoCAD) quick and easy, the first (Linear Algebra) horrendously brutal. Seriously, there were people giving up in despair/disgust and walking out on the linear algebra final within 15 minutes.

I was actually able to finish all but one of the problems on the linear algebra final. On the last phase of the last question I realized that no, I didn't remember what combination of things led the graph of a two-variable quadratic equation to be two intersecting lines. (In my defense, it has been about thirteen years since I went over that in a math class). The rest of the test was just the usual fucking heinously insane for a lower-division class stuff with eigenvalues, orthogonal diagonalization, basis-shifted quadratic equations...

And next semester I get to tutor this stuff!

For tonight, though, I'm celebrating with chicken noodle soup and cold meds. Blargh.

Up and running.

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 16:14:29 GMT

Windows (Vista 64) is up and running, all the motherboard updates (well, those that can be done offline) have been finished, graphics card drivers are up and Avast is operational. The rest will have to wait until I'm online with the new comp -- which means waiting until someone who has the password written down gets up.

It's alive!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:42:33 GMT

CPU was delivered today by UPS while I was at work. I came home for lunch, broke out the thermal compound and contact cleaner, installed it, installed the oversized CPU cooler that came earlier in the week, and held my breath for the power-on.

Everything's hooked up, the CPU fan goes on as it should, and the system posts. Now I just need to track down my source for an OS. That may take a little while, since the guy keeps a weird schedule (and I'll be in Lancaster until late tonight) and is usually either asleep or gaming, but I should be able to get up and running either tonight or tomorrow morning. No more tripling of my time spent on CAD homework due to each command taking a few seconds to even start processing!

Film of the day!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:13:53 GMT

We have here a film of a short community-theatre-style musical...

...featuring Neil Patrick Harris, Margaret Cho, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, John C. Reilly.

And Jack Black as Jesus.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

A day of progress!

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:29:39 GMT

Parts for my comp showed up today; got started on assembly, only missing one part, but more on that later.

The most significant-feeling moment of the day was helping with one of the tutorials at work. The question involved the differences between Japan and China WRT European influence and trade/development/etc., and (as is the standard policy for this form of tutorial) I mostly let the students provide the ideas, analysis, etc. My job is to keep the discussion moving with little questions here and there; today, I got a very satisfying reaction when one point being made involved describing the actions of a country as not being collectively taken by all residents/citizens ("China did X" or "Japan did Y" or "Japan's goal was Z") but as the actions of specific people or groups of people within countries whose interests may be something other than "the national interest". It seems like a pretty basic concept, but it's disappointing how many adults -- even highly-educated adults -- just don't get it. The closest you get to a country taking an action is when a popular movement and/or the state takes some action; but even those cases involve groups of individual people with individual motives acting in ways which really don't add up to "actions by the country". I'll consider it a job well done if this group of students is just a little bit less vulnerable to propaganda and bullshit in the future.

I also talked to one of the other tutors -- it turned out that she'd done one of the NASA internships that I'm trying to land. She loved it -- even though she's not staying in the AV (I can easily understand why anyone who grew up here would want to leave ASAP), she's sticking with NASA and hoping to work at either Ames or the Jet Propulsion Lab when she finishes her B.S. And the bit I hadn't known -- a student who gets a co-op position (paid by NASA, alternating coursework and on-the-job training with enough grunt work to quasi-justify the salary) is gaining seniority and building up a retirement fund before even finishing college.

Finally, on the new-comp front. After a few hours before work and a few hours after classes fiddling around with parts, triple-checking all the manuals and slowly developing a mark from the anti-static wrist band, I have the thing in "just add CPU" form.

Unfortunately, the missing part that I mentioned earlier?

The CPU.

So, the motherboard is in, the RAM is in, the power supply is in, the parts from the old comp (hard drive, DVD drive, wireless card, graphics card) are in, all the cords are connected and double- and triple-checked, and all eight chassis fans are installed and wired. When the CPU shows up, I just need to throw that in, add the much-bigger-than-it-looked-in-the-picture CPU cooler and make sure it's powered (and try not to get thermal compound all over everything), and then take it to the roomie who actually knows how not to screw things up on the software side of the fence. If I'm lucky, I'll have a fully-functioning, not-complete-garbage and highly upgradeable (this was more of a priority than power right now) desktop on which I won't have to wait for the comp to catch up after every command in my AutoCAD homework.

Reunited with Cat #1...

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:40:15 GMT

This evening I brought Snake home.

I wasn't expecting to be able to do this so soon; but after the last rainstorm, I decided I'd had quite enough of sleeping under a leaky skylight, and grabbed the unoccupied bedroom at the house I'd been parked just outside. Now that I'm getting paid for tutoring, I can afford it -- and it's a pet-friendly house.

Shnookums screamed for the entire ride over (the poor thing hates cars), but she's now drifting between freaking out at being in a new and unfamiliar place and celebrating the fact that a) there are no other cats here (so my room is her territory -- she's had to share space for awhile), and b) I'm here more than just once in awhile. I've arranged things so that she can easily get to the two highest places in the room -- the top of my bookcase and the high shelf in my closet.

I'm having to reevaluate how I'm going to arrange the room when I get a second bookshelf; Snake will never be happy until she has a way to get to the top of it. There isn't enough room next to the current bookcase, but if I put the new one (when I get it -- another month or two) next to my "dresser" (read: "stack of plastic crates in a frame"), she'll be able to get to the top of the shelves without too much of a leap.

Tonight I expect to wake up more than once with a cat on my face.

Spring schedule...

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:51:18 GMT

So after taking 12 units this semester, it looks like this spring I'll have 18.5 instead. Physics, chemistry, math (ordinary differential equations), and a couple of music ensembles (master chorale and rock band -- great combination). It looks much more do-able if I don't think about the number of hours spent in a classroom and think more about how the physics and chemistry are both mostly things I've done before. (My physics class this spring is the one I'd be able to skip if my high-school counselor had actually signed me up for the electromagnetism section of the AP Physics C exam -- which I'd studied for -- way back 10 years ago.)

I'll also be taking 7 units during the intersession -- which is four weeks long. This looks like the equivalent of doing 28 units during a semester, but the short-term classes have always been easier for me (and in this case they're both lower-division general-ed classes that I should have taken years ago).

In the summer and fall, then, I move on to pretty much just engineering classes, with one math and one physics class thrown in. 24 more units (after this spring -- so just summer session and fall semester) and I'll have exhausted the math, physics and engineering departments at AVC completely -- and then it's a matter of figuring out where I can go next.

AV moviegoers...(and elsewhere)

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:27:48 GMT

The CEO of Cinemark donated $10k to the yes on Prop 8 campaign.

Between this and their ridiculously unethical anti-union b.s., I think it's about time to avoid that movie-theater chain...but we seem to have a shortage of other options here in A.V.

Prop 8 flyers, phase 2

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:44:36 GMT

In Phase 1, I put snarky and sarcastic "congratulations -- you've trashed 'equal protection'" flyers on the windshields of people with pro-8 bumper stickers.

In Phase 2, it's thank-you notes for people with no-on-8 stickers.

(My students have actually made me much more optimistic. Several of them very seriously checked to make sure I'd voted no on 8 -- and this from students who didn't ask about any of my other votes. I would have politely evaded most of those, anyway -- when asked about my vote for President, I just told them "I voted for the candidate I agree with the most," which is quite true.)

The new roomie...

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:33:32 GMT

So, the new guy (in the room vacated by Endearingly Eccentric German Lady, not the one that used to house Fucking Arrogant Fundie Couple, which has been taken over by Cool Colorado Guy) is a bit of a techie and a gamer, so I figured we'd get along. We'll still manage to be civil, I'm sure, but in our conversation yesterday it came up that:

a) he watches Naruto because he likes the "realism" of the ninjutsu-related hand-gestures and such
b) he does RP gaming, but he's a raging munchkin (not that he'd know what I meant by that), and
c) he loves talking about politics, but he's one of the type that treats foreign policy as a cock-waving contest. The "we've been attacked, so if we don't slaughter somebody then everyone will think we're weak" type.

So, while unlike with FAFC I'll actually be able to carry on a decent conversation with the guy, he's not exactly My People.

Votes and subjection...

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:58:32 GMT

I think I have another crit-theory essay in the works, this time involving California Propositions 8 and 9.

There's actually a creepy sort of parallel here -- along with Prop 4, though that one (fortunately) failed.

For those outside California -- Proposition 9 is another rather alarming attack on legal ethics. It makes victims of crimes (and their families) a party to the prosecution and sentencing of people blamed for those crimes in ways beyond they have in the past. Victims and victims' families are given more access to the judges passing sentence, and are to be made a part of the parole process.

The common thread between Props 4, 8, and 9 is how they make visible the process by which the state produces the subject/anti-subject structure. In 8, heterosexuals and participants in the civil-marriage process are interpellated as legal subjects by the marking of non-heterosexuals as anti-subjects; 9 makes the same distinction between "victims" and "perpetrators". In each case, the presence of the asserted subject is made meaningful by its juxtaposition with the related anti-subject.

Prop 4 is, in a sense, even creepier, as it establishes the "minor" as a body occupied by the "guardian" subject in a way which I can only read as somehow continuous with sexual exploitation. It's embodiment gone bad -- and while 8 and 9 aren't horrifying in quite the same way, the logic is the same. The asserted subject is given agency not through its own recognition but through its position of state-designated (and, of course, violence-backed) dominance with respect to the designated anti-subject. The state is now in the business of extending embodied subjectivity of its preferred subjects into the bodies of its anti-subjects.

What could happen when 8 returns to the CA Supreme Court?

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 06:56:35 GMT

I started thinking about this today, now that the legal challenge to Prop 8 is a reality rather than a backup plan.

Really, though what might happen? From my position of little-to-no expertise (IANAL!), here's what I gather:

If the CA Supreme Court rules that an exception to the "equal protection" rule is a "revision" by definition, this could be even better than if 8 had simply failed at the polls -- and not only in terms of marriage equality. Passing a revision to the state constitution is much more difficult than passing an amendment. A ruling that, as "equal protection under the law" is a fundamental part of the California constitution (and really, just on ethical grounds, equal protection should be a fundamental part of any legal system) means that depriving any group of any right guaranteed by the state constitution becomes much more difficult. An ordinary failure of 8 at the polls would have let the theocrats bring an identical "amendment" next year (or during the next election where a conservative-slanted turnout is expected, as they did with the Knight Initiative). A smackdown by the California Supreme Court, though, could end the question permanently -- the reactionary homophobes do not, and probably will not at any point in the foreseeable future, be able to put together the kind of support needed to pass a constitutional revision. And any similar measures in the future, whether aimed at LGBT people or another easy-to-pick-on group, would no longer be able to take advantage of the initiative system to put rights up to the vote of a simple majority.

Of course, this is a best-case scenario, and I could be completely wrong about how the whole thing works. Maybe we need to work on a constitutional revision to get a stronger equal-protection cause in place -- which would certainly be a worthwhile project.

Note to California:

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:17:57 GMT

So, it seems the count might take awhile on That One Issue. Really, though, if y'all don't start backpedalling pretty damn quickly?

Fuck you all, I'm leaving.

(*"you all" in this case should not be interpreted to include no-on-8 voters, which should be every California voter on my flist.)

Because it's not just marriage, though being so flatly insulted by half the electorate does add insult to injury. It's about the principle of equal protection, which is part of why even homophobes should've had the presence of mind to reject 8. Because if "equal protection under the law" can be cancelled with a bare majority vote, then no rights are safe for anybody. Yeah, there's still the U.S. Constitution -- but once you allow the California constitution to make exceptions to the really broad ethical principles, how long do you think you'll be safe?

Alas, poor RAM slot...

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 22:48:45 GMT

Found the problem that was keeping my desktop comp from starting up.

One of the RAM slots had gone bad. Actually, two of the comp's four RAM slots (one in each dual-channel-compatible pair) seem to have died. Fortunately, I don't need dual-channel, so I'm back up and running with my usual 2x1GB, but it looks like my motherboard might not be long for this world.

If it goes (or if I replace it before it has a chance to do so), I might replace the case at the same time -- my current (HP-supplied) one makes it nearly impossible to reach the RAM. (Given that I had to try a few different combinations to figure out what was wrong and how to make it right, this was pretty horrendously frustrating).

Plan B...

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:29:18 GMT

I ended up abandoning the 24-hour NaNoWriMo kickoff.

At first I was just going to run off for a nap; I was already sleep-deprived by midnight, so once I'd gotten about a 2k-word start I went home for a bit. Today I caught up with the group for a couple of hours and made more progress, then went to lunch with friends.

After that, though, I was realy starting to worry about how much rain was coming down. Not enough to worry about under normal circumstances, but definitely enough that I wanted to take a crack at patching up my skylight before something sensitive and electrical got wet.

This turned out to be a good thing -- if I'd waited until tonight, one whole end of my bed would have been soaked and well on its way to mildewville.

So I'm still going to spend awhile writing, but I'll also be checking regularly to see if my duct-tape patch is holding up. (Tomorrow I'll probably borrow a ladder so I can cover the skylight with plastic from the outside; water is currently still getting trapped between the layers of window plastic, which isn't something I really want to see continuing to happen.)

At least The Snake and the Crocus is off to a decent start -- I now have more sense of the plot (not to mention how I'll be using the title as a recurring pair of symbols).

NaNoWriMo countdown!

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:13:29 GMT

10 hours, 49 minutes to go.

This time, to get NaNoWriMo off to a good start (as opposed to "barely getting started at all" or "not getting started at all", I'm joining up with a writeup this year. We're meeting up at 11:30 tonight, starting writing at midnight, and continuing for the next 24 hours.

Considering that I was woken up at 6 this morning (after 5 hours of sleep) by a leaky skylight dripping directly on my forehead (though woo-hoo! rain!), this could get...interesting. The first few chapters of The Snake and the Crocus might be a bit more surreal than I'd originally intended.