I’ll report back.
Archives for posts with tag: rants
Of late, my web host Globat of several years has several times outraged me with forced opt-out automatic upgrades for garbage I don’t want or need, cleverly disguised as regular emails I would normally immediately delete. I never got screwed, but I refuse to continue subscribing to unscrupulous sales and marketing extortion tactics.
As a result, deepsicks and its many tentacles will be moving to a new host, with hope this weekend. I also hope it will be completed this weekend, but I suspect it may take more time than I’d like.
Thus, should you visit in the near future and find a 404 wasteland, never fear: d6 is in deep training, getting tough and terrible.
I’m also moving in the real world, a pleasant face on eviction because my neighborhood has not been gentrified enough. The notice said lady we said white and rich. My kickass apartment will be converted into a loft with a ratcheted rent, a racket, a ripoff. Fernwood, I barely knew ya. Probably just as well, I’m tired as hell of everything being described as “funky.”
For continuity’s sake—I don’t think I’ve said it explicitly here—yeah, I’m still living in Victoria. My four-month internship turned into a yearlong affair. I’ll be back in Van January ’09 to finish my library degree. I’s a bit sore, seeing my friends graduate (I was supposed to be done this May myself) but I’m getting great work experience, punching out debt and oh I suppose, what’s the rush anyway.
I finished a journal last week—another volume in the life of megh, bringing with it a sense of accomplishment “I did it!” did what? and the ominous intimidation of a brand new blank book waiting (though my journaling is sporadic, I already have another one gilded flowery). The last one took me about a year, late July to August. Strange to attach ending and starting over to a life continuous—forcing meaning on the last page, looking forward on the blank of the next, and the most curious impulse to control, to censor myself in the unknown, fear-grudging the judgment of my future selves.
Not having re-signed the lease at my Prospect Park home of two years, I don’t know where I’ll be in September. As of last week, Minneapolis was settled for me, having landed a job in a library at the university. I applied elsewhere—everywhere, countrywide—to no avail. I know how I feel about this.
Last Wednesday morning I decided to drive to my internship to avoid bikemuck on my back riding in the rain. I opened my car door and oops, what’s the ashtray doing in the footwell? Eye wander. Aw hell. Yes. My first car stereo heist. The thief busted the lock on the passenger side door permanently damaging it, cracked the console and rifled hrough my CDs… but didn’t take any, despite their full case and insert resell viability. I should be thankful for that, but really, all I feel is ignominy that the inconsiderate asshole who stole my stereo also thinks my taste in music sucks. What violation. What crude discrimination. I keep reaching for a volume knob that isn’t there, a blind hand pushing through the wire-creeping hole, the technobeating heart torn out of my vehicle, and t’s the least of present worries, really, it is, but constantly announcing itself with its silence.
(Mars Volta’s much me-lauded Frances the Mute was in the player at the time—many thanks to Fake for replacing it for me.)
In other news, a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of tagging along to Lake Tahoe with my friend Colin and various other cats. Colin won airfare and nine nights accommodation at a million dollar condo. Yep. And he invited us all along, because he rules (I visited for only the second half, but it was plenty). We stayed in luxury in Incline Village, Nevada, and did loads of not a damn thing at all, swimming, kayaking, hiking, sunsoaking, saunaing, Reno gambling, grilling and general merrymaking. I’m tanner now than I’ve been in years with freckles I haven’t seen since I was twelve. Viddy the evidence.
Regular visitors have likely noticed a lack of updated news. Hard in coming it is these days, and I suspect it shall be worse with an intensified work schedule and the possibility of no home internets, at least for awhile. I love you, deepsicks. But I want to love other things too.
Coming home from work Wednesday, pulling off downhill parallel parking with ease, some ten-year-olds on cool bikes accost me as I get out of my car. “Do you want to buy a C-Book so we can buy a new teacher?” “A new teacher?!” “Yeah, and we don’t have any gym stuff, either.” “Huh. What’s a C-Book? Can I see one?” One of them digs into his backpack and shows me a sample coupon book for restaurants I don’t eat at and places I don’t shop, entertainment I don’t find entertaining and services I don’t need. “How much?” “Twelve dollars.” I wonder how much of that will go toward the cost of an educator and basketballs. “What school you from?” I know very little about the Minneapolis school system, but one of ‘em says something ending in Montessori. Now… having done a little research, apparently there are public Montessori schools in the Twin Cities, but I didn’t see one that sounded like what he said in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, and I doubted these kids trucked in from the ‘burbs on their bikes. Which makes me think “private school.” Which makes me think WTF are private school kids doing fundraising the second week of class for a new teacher? Argh. Or even public school students, should that be the case.
I know education suffers everywhere, but turning kids into sales reps while making money for third parties is appalling. I wouldn’t even be buying a product—I’d be purchasing the opportunity to feel compelled to buy other products. If I could give them money directly, I would have considered it. But my own memories of shoving glossy magazines of overpriced chocolate in front of people who couldn’t afford it and didn’t want any chocolate haunts. Or how my brother playing football in fourth grade was required to sell $200 worth of similar coupon books (at $20 apiece), this after an activity and equipment fee of at least $40 and I’m sure much more. Or how I was expected to sell $5 West Fargo Packer window stickers for varsity basketball, propagating a class spirit I found hollow and jingoistic (and by not selling the stickers, I was a poor sport, a bad team player and all-around lazy—did I think I was better than everyone else, or what?). So how are kids supposed to raise money for these programs? both the extracurricular and should-be-established? I don’t know. Maybe funding education through taxes in the first place? Oh, but that would be a burden, wouldn’t it.
I told the boys I didn’t have the right change, which was true. I lied and said I didn’t have a checkbook. One of them suggested we go down to the gas station a couple blocks away and I said I didn’t feel like it. Their crushed yet smart enough to be skeptical faces sunk and sneered as they pedaled away. Then I felt guilty, went into my apartment, and immediately fired up my computer. Upon receiving an email from Howard Dean asking me to donate money to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who is currently the target of a massive Republican smear campaign in ever-the-neighbor South Dakota, I did. And I do this a lot—I donate money over the Internet to progressive politics and friends raising money for neat causes. I don’t have money to throw around, truly I don’t. And I’m not pulling a “check me out in all my righteous fund-giving despite crushing debt” handclap. I just wonder what it means. Just simply that? A wondering what it will mean if everyone who is “poor” like “me” shuts up, sucks it up, and drops $7 here, $25 there? Or if it only means what it is, which is me feeling helpless in the shadow of Big Problems but too shy to volunteer time (which usually involves telephone work or canvassing people for money in person, neither of which I could ever do) so I give of myself what I can. Or what it means to do this impersonally. Over the Internet. To not see the light shine in these kids’ eyes, to feel guilty and had to feel good about myself (it’s guilty-making either way) then throw away the C-Book five minutes later.
Huh.
msp.evidence has gotten positive feedback, including a link on Peter S. Scholtes’ TC Old-School Hip Hop Page, a fine (and growing) compilation of local hip hop photos, fliers and stories throughout the decades. I feel pretty cool. And speaking of such things, coming up on Riverside from the 19th Avenue bridge, deep in the brutal-brilliant mess of DJ Shadow’s “Blood on the Motorway,” I saw this and my heart screamed (shot from standing in the middle of the busy street—warning: is big. Here’s the close-up only).
I moved to four tens at work. Working seven to five Monday through Thursday ain’t easy—I have between five and six hours to myself after work before going to bed. That’s not much. But the three-day weekends are seductive superfine—a tradeoff I may find well worth the weekday drag. Yep.
Lastly, a show flier outside the Hard Times Cafe. I’ll probably go to hell for liking it… but it’s my dad’s birthday today, too (Happy B-day, Pa!), so it made me smile.
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