in the machine

2008-09-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

Photos from the past few weeks. Wedding Brunch, "ironing party", and Giovanni the beautiful shepherd below. how ridiculously cute is he?! so cute. perhaps the doggie socks were not appropriate. sue me. it was a quick photo op.

it is true that three of us ladies (emilie, mabel, and I) can't iron so well and thus alex is left to do the [wo]man's work. luckily i have other skills. such as saying "please" and "thank you."

2008-09-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

2008-06-28T00:56:00.000-07:00

i can't sleep (surprise, surprise, eh?)

been thinking about work. i just started teaching at the SF juvenile hall this week. i don't know what to do - i love it. i absolutely love it. this has been the most amazing week in a long time, work-wise. that isn't entirely true. working at my previous school site was pretty great, too. it's just that i feel so damn useful, so damn NEEDED here, at juvenile hall. bonds have formed quickly. i have one class of girls. i love my girls. they are incredible. the boys, or young men of 17 and 18, take your pick, are amusing and brilliant for the most part. a few are a bit sleazy, but i don't take it personally. hello!! i am old enough to be your mother in some circles.. anyway, i am perplexed by career indecision. should i continue teaching at a fairly prestigious middle school (a 9 out of a 9, to be precise) or make a permanent switch to the so-called dark side? i don't think i "got into" this work to teach at a 9/9. humph. but i needn't unnecessarily "martyr-ize" myself either. all this in my mind logged next to yesterday's cover of the NYT. babies and broken bones. goddamn zimbabwe. not sleeping, but i've entertained myself by eating pretezels in bed and watching dvds as alex is away and he normally get's hyper frazzled at the mere mentioning of eating in bed. not only have i mentioned it, princess, but i've actually done it! what else in this long-ass hiatus? yes, well, trying to help my sister kick the royal ass of cancer. there are both good and bad days. all I say is this: if you are a woman and you find yourself being denied a mammogram by some cost-saving merciless prick doctor because you are a few years short of the conventional mammogram-receiving age of 35, DEMAND SOMETHING IN WRITING.

2008-02-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

A graphic which I stole from the site of one of my favorite bloggers, http://thegirlwho.squarespace.com/

2008-01-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

i haven't posted anything in a long while. i plan to, shortly. in the meantime, since i am missing Christmas so much, since Christmas should be everyday, all day, and all the time, i will post photos of casa leygones during this fine, festive holiday.

2007-09-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

morrissey is at the fillmore for four nights this week! if you are rolling your eyes, you just don't understand. it's morrissey! how many musical legends are alive and playing? not a lot, and my princess alex and I will be with morrissey tomorrow night. just us three together (ok and a crapload of other people crammed into the fillmore venue).

why do i feel like i have to state that I am not an all-black wearing misanthrope who carries a lunchbox to work? i shouldn't feel the need to offer such a disclaimer. i never understood why a master of british pop music was perceived with such misery and bleakness by american ears.

he's not that depressing, really! it's pop music married to notoriously original, bizarre, narrative, or soulful lyrics.

let me give you a lyrical sampling:

"If you're so clever, why are you on your owwwwwnnn tonight, if you're so very entertaining, then why are you on your oowwwnnn tooonight..."

"little lamb, on the hill, run as fast as you can, good Christians they want to kill you but your life has not even begun, you're just like me, you're just like me. . . ."

"i would go out tonight, but i haven't got a stich to weaaaaaarrr..."

OK, my lyrical sampling is not so great, but these songs are beautiful, fun, and i get to see morrissey tomorrow night!

so elated. i attended a concert of his before, at UCI. alex has never had the honor. this will be a special night for us, paying the ridiculous ticket cost to get in, lining up with other fans, and singing and dancing late into the night before a school day. morrissey is special for us because we don't know anyone else who digs his music. it's sort of "our thing." not the most romantic thing, but still.

2007-08-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

we are looking to buy a new dining table for our humble little abode because the current bar-height table and chairs is useless and uninviting. we never sit there and eat a proper dinner. it's basically a purse rest. and wallet rest. and junk mail rest, mailbox key rest, box-of-dental-floss rest, essentially just a spot for anything other than a plate or a person eating.

naturally, i go to the craigslist furniture listings. i live and die by craigs. maybe not live and die, maybe more like purchase and snoop. "Casual Encounters"?

so anyway, there is a lot of handsome furniture out there. there is also a lot of shit! consider the horrendous chair above. who the hell owns something like that? more importantly, who would want to purchase that chair today, in 2007? two decades after asymmetrical tops with extra-large shoulder pads and black laquer furniture-filled homes in the Hollywood Hills with hallways full of Nagels?

Dear dumbass craigslist poster: no one wants to buy your ugly ass chair.

2007-08-04T04:12:00.000-07:00

my skin is softer than a baby's ass.

i can't stop sniffing myself thanks to two particular Lush products. the top image is "Karma Soap" (orange, patchouli, and lemongrass). the item on the bottom is a body bar of black currant buttery goodness and cherry-scented macadamia nut oil called "You Snap the Whip".

scrub down with Karma Soap before exfoliating with You Snap the Whip. take your time, there ain't no hurry. try not to faint from the deliciousness!

2007-07-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

why is it that americans have no problem eating meat all day long (um, hello? last time i checked, eating meat involves killing animals), and yet want to take this moral high ground with michael vick? i understand why so much of the world hates americans. we are masters of hypocrisy.

if this man is guilty of these crimes, then i would be one of the many dog-lovers who would feel compelled to kick him in the face, but somewhere in the process, mid-kick, i would glance down at my own leather shoes and recoil from shame.

don't even get me started on hunting. . .

he should be legally and criminally responsible for the crime, but he shouldn't have to bear the brunt of our collective moral and spiritual responsibility for the degredation of [animal] life.

2007-07-13T01:46:00.000-07:00

this is the most horrific and fascinating video i have seen in a while. i've watched it stunned, amazed, at least 2.5 times. if you turn the sound off and watch it's particularly creepy! i dare you to turn the sound completely off and watch the whole thing.

dear courtney, i have said it before, but the "live through this" Hole album was genius. i love you for that album, but you are making it difficut. like a man who loves a sheep or dog or a cadaver, or something else inappropriate, you are making me feel like a woman who loves an animal. an unhealthy skeleton-esque animal at that. i want to fall in love with appropriate things, people, stuff. you make it so hard!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuENIvksarI

2007-06-15T02:26:00.000-07:00

alex and i spent wednesday night with the faculty of my former school. it was so great to see everyone. i love them! it felt so comfortable to be back in their presence. they are a tight crew and much closer than my current school's faculty. there is so much i wanted to tell them - particularly about how incredibly underrated alum rock's role in education is here in the bay area. this relatively small district, or at least a hell of a lot smaller than SFUSD, is so much more advanced in both progressive instructional strategies and in educational technology. the technology part is predictable, i guess, being in the silicon valley and all, but i never imagined that this glorious, multicultural, leftist city of san francisco would have a school district, or at least a middle school culture, that is so regressive, so whole class instruction-based, so superficially "academic" and developmentally inappropriate.

so what i really wanted to write about tonight was the collective urging and encouragement that alex and i faced regarding returning to teach in east san jose. i can't blame them, my old colleagues. they must think we are crazy. to live in a tiny apartment and to take enormous pay cuts all just to live in san francisco. maybe it is crazy. alex and i are discussing the possibility of living in SF, but working in san jose after next year. we could live in soma, like maggie, and take CALTRANS. i don't trust myself to wake-up at 6am everyday. i need a partner, or rather a sufferer, in crime.

so life is not all about money. i know this. (crap, i perversely love having a smaller house because no matter how messy it gets, and it sure can get messy 'round these parts, it is all beautifyable in two hours or less.) it would be nice to get those alum rock wages. to live large. to smile and order dessert, even at Cafe Gratitude, because holy shit you can afford it without feeling guilty afterwards.

we were also discussing leaving san francisco all together and i couldn't help but be annoyed that alex is so unwilling. he talks about the culture and diversity of SF, then inevitably stumbles. see, his real joy is being able to walk home drunk from a bar in the mission district after a night out with friends.

"you're 35 years old for chrissakes!" which is, naturally or unnaturally, depending on your position, my reply.

alex didn't have a drink until he was 25 years old. i guess he has catching up to do. now, i've never been much of a drinker, but having an older sister enabled me to experience the thrilling world (smirk) of bars and clubs at a significantly earlier age. much earlier than voting age.

i consider myself a veteran of a world that i never really entered. two dozen or so nights spanning the ages of 16-19 spent among orange county's drunken and lascivious underclass were enough. i am, effectively, over it.

for my dearest princess alex, it is quite different. male bonding? watching sports on a big screen while being served a pitcher of Guinness by a well-endowed and tattooed blonde? what is it? is it enough to warrant living in a shoebox forever?

the truth is that i love san francisco for different reasons. i love that you occasionally can't tell the difference between a homeless lunatic and a regular person just by looking. san francisco blurs lines that san jose spends millions (think santana row) to maintain. of course i love that.

but it's one thing to sacrifice creature or material comforts for culture, politics, the environment, but FOR EASY PROXIMITY TO STUMBLE HOME DRUNK FROM A BAR? sweet jesus, i didn't marry a frat boy! or did I? (just kidding, princess)

strangely enough, this brings me to bay to breakers. "this" being the discussion of drinking, not frat boys. the event didn't appeal to me this year. bay to breakers ain't that great if you are not

A) drunk
B) running

and i wasn't planning to do either. alex was so excited about it. i guess i'm not interested, at the present time, to engage in events that require me to change my state of consciousness, that is, to get drunk, to enjoy them. shouldn't the value of an event be assessed by your ability to swallow it, no pun intended, sober? have i effectively turned into a buzz kill? i just don't understand having to get drunk in order to enjoy something. should i just officially change my name now? buzz kill momeny?

2007-06-06T01:28:00.000-07:00

we are approaching the last week. i always get somewhat emotional during this time. there is the emotion of unprecedented relief and excitement (yay - summer vacation) and inevitable sadness. my kids! i love them! next year they will not be in my class. i always have this incredible urge to give all of them an enormous bear hug. i want to say, "You are so great!" and not because it's a lie, but because most of them, if not all of them, really are great. i don't know how much of this is due to their objective and respective greatness and how much of it is due to the fact that there are aspects of my identity that fit rather perfectly into the seventh grade psyche. my crew! my crew and I are parting ways!

2007-05-27T10:14:00.001-07:00

everyone makes fun of me for driving back to san jose every three or four weeks to have my eyebrows tweezed. it is probably one of the most economically damaging decisions a girl could make. one hour each way! plenty of gasoline used in the process. the alexandria salon in san jose, on the alameda, has the best eyebrow lady ever. she understands me. she understands what "i prefer thick brows" means. she is patient enough to tweeze my brows, and avoid waxing as i have sensitive skin and i am no fan of the pain involved in that damn wax.

i moved out of san jose in july of last year, but i kept traveling back to Sima, my persian eyebrow master, rather often. and was always rather generous tip-wise, too. i finally admitted that this long-distance and expensive vanity was stupid and i decided, on a whim, to make an appointment at Eyebrows to Die For, much hyped on Yelp, on Van Ness.

Lady! I said "thick, thick, thick." I know all things are a matter of taste. Maybe I am wrong to prefer thickness over thinness and cleanliness, but I can't help it. Persians are supposed to be hella hairy and I'm not terribly hairy on my arms, etc, so I must want to maintain a sense of cultural pride on my eyebrows? I don't know. I can't figure it out.

All I know is that now I feel like I have a baby's bare ass above my eyes. Such vastness. such space. What gives, lady?

She spent the whole time yapping, too. In her judgemental, annoying voice blabbing on and on about how her friends who wear fake eyelashes on a daily basis are morons, blabbing about how the Asian-owned nail salons in the city don't know jack about eyebrow sculpting, blabbing about the weather, the lower Haight, American Idol, etc etc.

I don't care! Just leave me be in silence. I love Sima. She's sweet and gracious and well-skilled, but she's not a talker. She seems to dislike small talk as much as I.

The reason I don't like it when estheticians blab the whole time is because I think they should concentrate on what they are doing. They get so carried away with their stupid salon gossip or random blab that you feel that they are rapidly plucking away with adandon.

And it cost 40 bucks, too! I tipped her seven dollars. Is that considered a good tip or a crappy tip? i don't even know the protocol when you're unsatisfied with the results. I felt it was an average tip. A "thanks, but no thanks" tip.

I can't wait for these suckers to grow! Then I will go back to the Alexandria, where Sima awaits. If Al Gore has to take chartered flights around the world, then dammit, i have to drive 100 miles (round trip) for vanity.

I'll just make sure that I have a whole lotta other errands or things to do in the South Bay. Like visiting Alex's family! Or going to an art show at MACLA in downtown. Or scavenging around for deals at the Great Mall, or running bureacratic red-tape nightmare errands at that waste of a teacher credentialing institution commonly referred to as San Jose State University.

Take that, Al Gore!

2007-05-25T22:13:00.000-07:00

the top ten best things about san francisco, in no particular order:

1. Golden Gate Park
2. 826 Valencia
3. YouthSpeaks
4. the view at the top of Bernal hill at sunset
5. the tea leaf salad at Burma Superstar on Clement
6. Dolores Park
7. San Francisco City College! (cheap, accessible, stimulating personal development)
8. the raw ice cream at Cafe Gratitude
9. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
10.the bridge. oh, merciless, beautiful, mystical bridge shrouded in a sea of fog

i haven't lived here that long. i'm probably missing so much. what am i missing?

2007-05-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

i think i'm in love. am i in love with something excessive or ultimately unncessary, in the grand scheme of things? perhaps.

http://www.luxelink.com/catalog/index.html

but if you the see the way my whole body squirms in disgust every time I am forced to place my favorite bag on the dreaded bar-room (or taqueria) floor, then you will understand.

2007-05-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Q: Hey, inthemachine, what are some of your favorite blogs?

(no one asked me this. i'm just being stupid.)

1. http://www.thegirlwho.net/
2. http://www.dooce.com/

2007-05-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

my fun classes are quickly coming to a close. the fashion styling class has been such a disappointment. there is so much talk in this class about celebrities and their fashion habits. who the hell cares? look, I’m the first girl to confess a wide-eyed adoration with actors such as al pacino and charlize theron (good lord did you see her in Monster?!), but i could care less about lindsay lohan’s exposed handbag or designer crotch. or vice versa.

there ought to be a way to enjoy the beauty and creativity of fashion and style without engaging in the celebrity-obsession.

after college I had an internship at a fashion-related magazine in los angeles. i should have known that the industry there would be saturated by show-biz. going to an entertainment-industry related party and interviewing female television stars about maybelline mascara for a woman’s magazine wasn’t even fun the first time, let alone the third or fourth time. i sucked at it. my heart wasn’t in it. one time I was asked to pose questions about nails, pedicures, something stupid, to this young emerging actress (i can’t remember her name), but we spent the whole time talking about philosophy (our majors in college), and bashing los angeles. she was super smart and taught me a lot in that short hour. she trashed a lot of my stereotypes in a wonderful way. it didn't occur to me to ask her about nails until i was in my car driving home. whoops!

(i can’t say that the superstar west coast editor at the magazine was actually sad to see me go at the conclusion of my internship. she was probably like “what are you DOING here, anyway, loser?!” haha!)

fast forward years later and i decide to take a fashion styling course just for fun, to learn, and to be immersed in this creative field that i appreciate so. naturally I’m thinking that there will be essential differences in a class such as this in San Francisco, compared to LA. Not true.

the professor tells me that the whole west coast fashion styling world is deeply entrenched in the world of celebrity and celebrity-styling. he says the east coast is different, more arts and editorial related, he says it in a manner that is both confessional and obvious. I should have known.

i’m not really trying to leave the field of education, i love what i do. it just would be nice to be around people in this class who think similarly: celebrities are beautiful, of course they are, and thus a bit mesmerizing because of their beauty, but a concern over their whereabouts and habits and paparazzi-snapped images is best kept under wraps, or better yet, not kept at all.

i’ll admit, i think angelina jolie is SUPER great. i do (but more for her humanitarian politics than for the ratio of flesh on her upper lip compared to her lower lip). do I admit my fondness normally? liberally? hell no. i’m somewhat ashamed of it. there is something so vulgar about celebrity obsession, something so let-them-eat-cake-ish.

and we are the ones consuming this media-cake, this sugary distraction from the War in Iraq, from the crisis in Darfur, from our own domestic battles in education and healthcare, etc.

to make a long story short, this fashion-styling class has reaffirmed my incompatibility with the conventional fashion world, but it has also taught me an exemplified respect for the somewhat recent voices who’ve entered this world on their own terms, such as the super young industrious woman behind coutorture and almost girl. (see below) what an inspiration!

so anyway, our next assignment for the class is to create a look for a celebrity museum representing a style ICON. i feel like being passive aggressive and just going to Target and buying a large plastic clock and throwing it on baggy clothing and saying that i’m presenting Flavor Flav.

http://almostgirl.coffeespoons.org/
http://coutorture.com/

and because the eyes need candy, beauty, and wonder:
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

2007-05-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

my sugar plum and i got married last july, so we are approaching our one-year anniversary. how exciting. it's been a long, strange trip so far. you learn so much about yourself in these things, what are they called, eternal unions, something?

about two months into it, the reality of being together twenty-four hours a day (two teachers on a summertime schedule) crept in. sharing a small space with another, for the first time, was starting to drive each of us a little loco. we got in many mini-fights back then. i have no recollection of what caused these fights, but we had never fought once prior to getting married. all of a sudden, everything in our lives was over-determined by pride and stubbornness.

THEN, only then, did nearly everyone we knew begin telling us that the first year of marriage was typically the hardest. geez, thanks, no one uttered a syllable of this before! what an enormous and soothing secret for two dorks in the mission district who thought we were going bananas. things we've learned: pride is a beast, keep it in check. sounds so obvious, doesn't it?

the other day I was deleting text messages on my cell and i came across this one, that I kept out of a mixture of sweetness and nostalgia, from August 1:

I don't know what I did to make you feel sad. I'm sorry. I know I can't seem to do anything right, but I'm trying.

Awwwww. i love the humility married to affection in the last sentence. That's all a sista' wants really.

anyhoo, note to all of you who may find yourself in a big fat fight after thirty measily days of marriage: it will get better!

(listen to me giving out advice after only one almost-year of being married. . . )

2007-05-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

i've had the pleasure of meeting many incredible people on this lovely planet. saul williams, paul wellstone, robert bly, kayhan kahlor, barbara boxer, to name a few.

other people, i haven't met, but i've been seperated from by six degrees, or if you care to dispute the universality of the six, i will assent to seven or eight or nine degrees. the filmmaker of The Lost Boys of Sudan? check. The former Shah of Iran? check. June Jordan? check. bell hooks? check. Sandra Cisneros? check. the list goes on.

but did you know that i am also connected to the cutest baby in the whole world? did you know? did you know?

i will not state her name or whereabouts, for privacy reasons. her momma knows who she is! she's so adorable. look at the frosting all over her face! so cute. look at those eyelashes! sweet jesus, the eyelashes!

2007-05-11T21:30:00.001-07:00

i miss the family dogs! see how giovanni, who is next to me, has ears that appear to be larger than my whole head?! and see how pashy is such a precious, furry little thing? you'd never know she was such a vicious bastard. i miss them so very much. i miss how giovanni scurries away, full of fear, from anything living--from a spider to a lady bug to a backyard lizard.

i forget that dogs are in my life. not in my daily life, no, but still. i believe that a trip down south is in order.

2007-05-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

emilie, alex, and I went to Little Star (delicious!) on Sunday night and I couldn't help but notice that everyone in the restaurant had the same exhausted look and cherry-hued cheeks, visible even under the dim lights. this past weekend was beautiful and glorious and full of sunshine, more than the usual san francisco sunshine, it was actual heat.

on sunday morning we woke up early to play tennis in dolores park. this is always a crowded experience full of waiting on sidelines for other people's games to end, but not if you wake up hella early on sunday morning, no sir! we got there by 9am, and were delighted to find both the basketball court and adjacent tennis court empty! holy jesus!

we played tennis, interspersed with basketball, for four hours. i guess i have a greedy side. let's play more! more! more! we can't leave! we have a court! we can't!

i didn't occur to me once during those four hours that i am incredibly out of shape. i woke up monday morning with my entire body in a miserable type of pain. back sore, ribs and stomach writhing in hurt when i laughed, coughed, reached, or moved.
greediness has a price.

tonight, we went back to d. park, but it was packed. men of all shapes and sizes with too much testosterone covered the court. i suck at basketball, but i'm working on my game--i'm developing--still alex preferred to play with the dweebs on the court. the huffing and puffing hairy lot of men of various ages make better competition than me? really?! but i'm getting so good! see, i can make two shots in a row!

truth is, he's created a mini-monster of sorts. me, a girl who always yawned at the sight of that round, leather, orange thing, now, all of a sudden, loves to play. i'm learning how to shoot, how to do a lay-up, how not to scream and claw and foul others (e.g. my husband) at every instant. it's such a fun sport and it just lends itself to trash-talking (which i love, naturally. . .)

2007-05-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

alex and i are going to vietnam in august and morocco in december. yay! neither one of us knows anything about vietnam, or much about morocco. let the research and haphazard flipping of "Let's Go!" and "Lonely Planet" (in the Barnes and Noble cafe) begin. since there were moments in belfast and dublin wherein i wanted to strangle him with my own two tiny hands, i am a bit nervous. i am an optimist by nature, but if your husband had the ability to transform from his normally cheerful and energetic self into a sixteen-year-old little bitch on foreign land, then you'd be cautious, too.

2007-05-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

my dear friend emilie recommended a book to me a while ago. the book was "on beauty" by zadie smith.

i kept it in the back of my mind, through various readings for my evening classes, through skimming a book on dyslexia in between bites of bean and cheese burritos in the faculty lunchroom, and through pages and pages of re-reading and editing my own shitilious poetry at 1 in the morning. (really, though, poetry workshop classes just take all the fun out of writing sometimes, don't they?)

ANYWAY, i ended up reading the book, stuck to the book, in fact, like glue. it was so well-written. i am actually angry now because the experience is over. has been over for two months i believe. characters waltz in and out of our lives like no one's business. where is the sequel? where is on beauty part II, III, and IV?

dear zadie, dear supermodel, graceful, talented zadie, stop staring at your lovely cheekbones in the handheld mirror and get off your lazy bicultural ass and write the damn sequel already. wait, you haven't written it already, have you? is there something i don't know? emilie, help!

2007-04-23T00:27:00.000-07:00

Things I have learned this weekend:

1. Calling your husband "an Asian Uncle Tom" is not a good idea.

2. It's really not a good idea.

Alex and I were discussing the film Rush Hour. I haven't seen it, nor do I have any interest to do so. I said that the film is probably racist in that it probably utilizes the typical tropes of Asian-man-as-inarticulate-and--accented douche bag, big ol' nerd, hapless with the ladies, walking encylopediac geek, and so on.

Alex couldn't fathom the notion of calling a film racist without seeing it first.

I've seen the previews, yo. The previews are enough.

The main point of the discussion was this: I told Alex I wanted to raise a warrior-child. A kid, half-filipino, half-Iranian (lest we adopt), who won't take anyone's shit as far as race and culture are concerned, particularly Hollywood's shit. The way I see it is this: I'm not going to support films like "300" or "Rush Hour." Hell no. I'm not going to put dollas in the pockets of the people who create these films.

And is it so wrong to attempt to raise a kid to be of similar convictions? What about self-respect? Cultural and political pride? Alex didn't see it that way.

Insert Asian Uncle Tom comment. Followed by looks of disbelief, a few select huffs and puffs, empassioned shouting, and a "you don't understand Asians."

He has a point. A few points, really. Perhaps it is silly to criticize a film without seeing it. But that's a minor point, the other issue is about how do Asians, the "typical Asians" respond to issues like racism in the media: Alex says that they don't bitch or complain or whine. They succeed as individuals and thus have the last laugh.

That's problematic to me. Surely there is way to have the last laugh AND resist, resist, resist--to engage in the both the public and private sphere.

2007-04-10T00:27:00.000-07:00

very strange things are occuring over here near valencia street in the mission district. i won't give you my exact address and unit number. if you're reading this, you most likely already know it.

strange too, that i don't often think of this as a 'hood. i suppose it is, although not the hoodiest of places one could imagine inside this great state of california. we have mainly drug addicts and homeless people, not little charlie mansons running around.

so i head downstairs to do my laundry last night. very, very late last night. i carry the large woven basket down the fire escape-like stairs in the back of the building, stairs that alex and i use multiple times a day as our primary route of travel. inside my apartment, moments before leaving, i sense a feeling of oncoming shadiness. a very subtle feeling, but i just know that some crazy shit is lurking out there. without doubting my decision to do laundry at 1 am in the morning, i open my apartment door to see what awaits me. i don't have the best vision, particularly at night, and as i near the ground floor and exit the stairs, i have my eyes glued to the left corner of the parking lot structure/backyard area of our building.

what is that? a piece of trash? a bird? scraps of a tire?

sure enough two figures emerge from the rubble of discarded trash and industrial materials, from old hoses and rusty metal storage boxes and god knows what else the landlord keeps there.

i've never seen these people before, so I'm like “Hey, what's up?” whatever, maybe they live here. maybe they just parked their car in a space and are heading upstairs. the man says "happy easter" and I happily chort along "happy easter to you, too!"

i don't know why i wasn't more suspicious. i HAD anxious feelings before leaving the damn apartment. for some reason, naivete kicks in full gear and i completely have my guard down. those two could have dragged me into the laundry room by my ear, then rapped and murdered me.

it wasn't until AFTER i had carelessly walked past the two trespassers to throw in my whites and head back to my apartment that I realized, holy shit, that guy had a can of beer in his hand, and his eyes looked alarmingly red, and the white woman he was with wasn't even wearing shoes! just dirty socks. they don't live here! come to think of it, their clothes looked rather disheveled and their bodies appeared to be unwashed, too. i've been had! those bastards walked past me in my own complex and dished out small-talk just to placate me.

now i was officially freaked out. after 40 or so minutes passed i ran downstairs and threw the clothes in the dryer. 40 minutes after that, i ran down again and threw the now-clean clothes back into the basket and grabbed it. i ran up the stairs and into the apartment, slammed the door and double locked it. you can't take me alive! i won! i won! i won!

fast forward to tonight. 11 pm, i head downstairs to do another load of laundry. 11 pm should be a safe hour, a wiser hour.

again! these two figures emerge, only this time the man quickly scurries to the side near a batch of parked cars and appears to be zipping up his pants. the woman is wearing shoes now, but she's all up in my shit about wanting to buy this old, beat-up car that belongs to the landlord. A horribly obvious attempt at distraction. The car is a classic of sorts, although it’s become a gigantic trash receptacle and looks like someone could buy it off Ebay for a hundred bucks.

She’s shaky and nervous and clearly trying to avert my interrogation. I smile and interrupt, much like how I react after spotting a student in class sneaking earphones under the hood of a sweatshirt or secretly chewing gum, “Do you guys live here?”

She stutters something about how they came to visit someone. Finally the sound of zipping concludes. The man seems disgruntled and out right pissed off. No more “happy easter” mister? What gives? Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your pathetic attempt at squatting. Isn’t that what they call it? Isn’t that something that’s supposed to happen inside vacant buildings?

I continue asking her questions, but in an ultra-sugary voice. They are trying to move away from me, but I continue to engage her about how much potential the car has. (It’s no lie, the folks at Pimp My Ride could beautify the fucker.) They keep trying to move away. I read once that you should look intimidating people on the street straight in the eye, even engage them if you see fit. Ok, maybe I made that last part up, but I felt compelled to get very close to this woman and talk to her as if we were two girlies in a salon getting our nails done together. She kept lying about who she was here to see and how the person ended up not being home. (Yeah, right, hussy, then who buzzed you unto the building?? Hummmm?)

They left. I noticed they left the same way they left last night. Not out of the unit, just down another flight of stairs. They must think I’m dumber than dirt. I know they’re here, somewhere on this property doing god knows what. My reaction wasn’t really about averting a murder. I don’t think drug users actually kill. Drug dealers, perhaps, but that’s another issue.

For me, this was just about facing my fears. I ain’t gonna lie, walking outside in your thin, cotton pjs and being confronted with strangers, particularly a tall, strong, middle-aged man with piercing eyes and baggie ass pants who is zipping up his pants and giving me angry looks at 11 o’clock at night isn’t exactly the warmest and fuzziest experience I ever had. I didn’t have the balls to intimidate him, so I intimidated him through his hooker friend. This was a case of “killing ‘em with kindness.”

Me? I’m in my apartment again, doors double-locked, mentally weighing the risk-benefit analysis of freaking myself out again versus just collecting undried mildew-scented laundry at 7 in the morning, that is, tomorrow morning.

in the bigger scheme, should i do anything about this? should i call the landlord, a very cool guy, and let him know? should i leave it alone, because after all, i shouldn't be doing laundry in the middle of the night anyway, and because squatters need a place to squat? and who am i to interrupt in the historic and rather romantic art of squattification? whad'do I care? she may be turning tricks. she may be an addict. what if scavenging around the halls of this building at 2, 3, or 4 in the morning gives these people ease or enjoyment? is that so bad?

2007-04-08T06:18:00.001-07:00

ma' sweet pea is coming back in a few days. he went to spain. i sat 'round here. went hiking, walked the dark, littered streets of san francisco like a lady of the night. nah, not really, but it makes my spring break sound more interesting, eh?

i did hike. hiking alone is very, very enjoyable, but not as enjoyable as hiking with alex in silence. not in that "i hate you, don't talk to me right now" silence, but the "oh shit, the earth is so glorious" silence.

i also did A LOT of work for my classes. particularly the poetry workshop. i ran a ridiculous amount of errands. not that you give a shit.

but really, if i do things such as go to the DMV, go to the Toyota dealership for a repair, stop off at the post office to mail a gift, pay all my bills on time, take out the trash, make a slew of emails about summer school teaching positions, etc etc (all things i did this past week), well, i feel like someone ought to give me a medal.

why is that? these are the normal day-to-day functions of a human life. these things are expected. i'm so easily pleased with myself.

"i went to the DMV, was there for hours." it's as if I'm boasting about climbing mt. everest.

i must have been pampered too much as a child. or adolescent. or early adult. or wife. i'm recalling an actual conversation that occured a short while ago:

me: (beaming ) Alex, I took out the trash!!

alex: (begins to beam himeself) I think I just fell in love again.

(Again? whuh you mean "again" homie?)

2007-04-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

i went to Cafe Gratitude today. normally this establishment is one of my favorite restaurants in the city, but i've been experiencing a particularly joy-free bout of pms and i was in no mood for their annoying entree titles.

raw vegan cheeseburger? no. at Cafe Gratitude it's referred to as something insane like "I Am Giving." dairy-free chocolate cake? "I am Bountiful" or "I am Vivacious" -- I can't recall which. Raw pizza? "I Am Sensational."

These cutsey, self-help monikers are all fun and games when you're drunk or cheery, but this was not the day. There's no dignity in ordering meals like this. Yes, yes, I am sensational and worthy and beautiful and vivacious and blessed. Me and every other idiot in San Francisco who is willing to spend $30 on a raw, organic lunch in an uppity, boutique restaurant on a corner in SOMA. The waiters and waitresses were so annoying today, too.

I order my take-out and wait patiently. how long does the uncooked take to "cook" anyway?
I notice that the raw chefs are skillfully and promptly placing take-out items on the bar. one after another. no waiters or waitresses take note of this. ordinarily, I would insert something sweet and dumb like "Oh, I think that's mine, wait, I don't know, should we check?" and flirt unirritatedly at the boy-man or girl-woman server. today, I was mesmerized by their incompetence.

one dude was busy dancing around in his vintage bright blue Levis, checking out glances of his newly tanned reflection in the restaurant cutlery. some other girl, a hostess or waitress i could not decipher which, was busily describing her "reiki master" to another employee. sweet jesus! get over yourselves already!

after twelve minutes of waiting, watching my order sit on the bar (who cares? there's no such thing as a hot plate on that menu anyway) I finally headed to the bar, behind the counter, and quietly grabbed my lunch and rolled my eyes at a fellow customer who was waiting equally patiently behind me.

"Ohh! Yes, Le--yyla? Your I Am Vivacious is ready. . ." the hostess-waitress girl said in a gleeful voice.

Uhm, no shit. Without giving her eye contact, I grabbed a handful of recycled napkins and muttered 'I am self-obsessed" before walking out the door.

2007-03-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

can i just say that i hate H&M? quality is horrendous. why are adult women purchasing this crap in droves? i get why a teenager with a mall rat persona or bubble-gum income would do so, but why are adult women in their 20's, 30's, or 40's, buying polyester, poorly-sewn knock-offs that disintegrate after the third washing? how do i know these women buy this clothing? it's not like i was in the store or anything, walking around on this beautiful Saturday morning in my darling San Francisco.

you can't prove a thing! (let me go trash that receipt before princess alex comes home and calls me a hypocrite. . .)

2007-03-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

on John Edwards.

why don't people realize, or do they?, that he's totally gonna fuck things up? we are in a time of unprecedented disatisfaction with george bush, distrust and anguish over the war, and a healthy suspicion of this administration and all of their stupid scandals. the time is RIPE for the first non-white male to get elected to the goddamn presidency. talk about being in the right place in the right time. if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen NOW. and what does edwards do? he goes and inserts himself into the equation. selfish bastard! can you please realize that an event such as this is something revolutionary and beautiful and interesting, even to the most disinterested and politically apathetic folk? it would be a first for our country. this is not about you and your desire to be president. this is bigger. check it. get it. and get the hell out of the race for the nomination.

(clearly the more adventurous of the citizen-democrats will either vote for the nomination of hilary or barack, and in a perverse and morbid "accidental" sense of divide-and-conquer, edwards will get the nomination.)

2007-03-12T02:45:00.000-07:00

Today was a great day. I read some pieces from "Let Me Tell You Where I've Been" (the recent anthology of Iranian-American women's poetry and fiction that two of my poems are in) at a reading in San Mateo. I also read two other pieces that are newer. Everyone I meet was so great.

It's strange to have people genuinely interested in your work. I've been to many readings that inspired me and I've read many poems that've inspired me. I reread them over and over again. I shout-out names of poems at readings, as if it's a block party on a street corner in 1982, in my attempt to urge the poet to read that one, my favorite poem, the one that haunts me on the street, in the shower, and even in the classroom.

Now, I don't claim that anything I've written has had that kind of effect on anyone, but it's still strange to be "on the other end" of the affection. It wasn't the first time I've participated in a reading, but it felt so different. To be embraced by Iranian-Americans or Persians (take your pick of the lingo) felt so damn good because some of my pieces are critical of our culture. My brothers and sisters in Northern California and the Bay seem to be more willing to embrace the tolerance of the criticism. It isn't that I've had tomatoes hurled at me in Los Angeles, but the only warm fuzzies I felt after readings there emanated from the non-Iranian grad student lot, and that didn't count, for some reason.

There was a book signing at the end of the reading and we had an opportunity to meet everyone that came to the event. I'm excited to connect with these people again. Email addresses and cell numbers were exchanged... it's so close I can smell it.. late night semi-drunken debates at bars in the Mission District or in Oakland with my sisters, about the fate U.S.-Iran relations, the Palestinian question, and race in America. I'm so excited! Never claimed that I wasn't a complete dweeb-ass dork, no-sir.

The other very beautiful part of the day was coming home and resting and getting take-out for dinner and doing laundry and taking a shower and changing the sheets. Is there anything better than listening to miles davis at 2 in the morning on freshly washed sheets, in a freshly washed body? I think not.

2007-02-28T23:15:00.000-08:00

Alex has all of a sudden become superteacher. his ELD students watched one of the best documentaries of all time (The Lost Boys of Sudan) and wrote response to "literature" essays afterwards. The essays, from 6th - 8th graders, are excellent. I'm initially really pissed and damn angry. Because I'm an idiot. After a few moments, I become my optimal self and am proud and thrilled to have students who can write like that in such a low, low, damn low income school (because there not the ones that are supposed to be able to do it) just a few miles away from our own apartment. Yes! I believe in children of the future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess insiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidddddddddddddddde....."

DAMN. Why can't my kids write like that? Cuz I'm a loser? or because they are so-called "learning impaired"? Maybe i'm teaching-impaired. He says that his kids have made such gains in writing because they "are ELD and have the motivation." whatever. alex is a superteacher asshole. He's reminding me of tom cruise right now - without the Dianetics or scientology. but with all of the uber-cheery, subtly self-congratulatory pride and moderate sense of righteousness masked by an artificial humility. and i'm damn bitter!

2007-02-23T22:43:00.000-08:00

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

- Steve Jobs (comments delivered at a school-reform conference in Texas)

Predictably, the American Federation of Teachers and various teacher unions are upset over these comments. They issued a reply about the importance of their work and their commitment to students and education, and then they got to the good stuff: Apple's unwillingness to allow workers, many of whom where Latino, to unionize, blah blah, oh yes, this was after appropriating Cesar Chavez's image on their enormous "Think Different" campaign. Blah blah.. interesting contradictions to think about.

BUT, of course he's correct about the "off-the-charts" craziness of this so-called lifetime employment. Teachers are often accused of holding low-expectations, consciously or not, for their students. Similarily, the union holds low expectations for their own teachers. Exploring things like merit pay and merit-based rehiring and promotion aren't horrible if you believe that your teacher-members have the potential and capacity to perform. merit-pay ought to take a whole lotta things into account and it cannot be a one-sized fits all analysis. But, if accomodations in the assessment of student growth rates ARE made, then why is it so bad?

Teachers often complain that society doesn't value their work. They (I) point to their salaries or to the lack of respect given to them by [some] students or [some] parents. I often wonder if the union's own "representation" of teachers (protection of crappy-ass teaches who have long burned out) is equally damaging or demeaning.

Of course the union is absolutely necessary for us teachers, but crap, can't we all admit that a person ought to be competent at a job in order to continue to hold that job? Or at least that the person ought to display sincere, actual, and meaningful attempts at becoming competent or revitalized (e.g. professional development, observations, etc)?

2007-02-13T12:04:00.000-08:00

today, for the zillionth time, someone told me that they "never really got into" Led Zeppelin. now, i have a million things to do. I have a full-time job, and four evening classes and Valentine's Day gifts to buy, and errands to run, but because I believe in this topic so strongly, I'm going to take a few minutes out of my day to Led Zep-ucate. (That's the kinda girl I Am.)

If you are one of the people who never understood the hype, perhaps you're a hip hop head, or a jazz geek, or you just don't like, or rather, you don't think you like this amazing band, then stay away from the over-hyped songs like "Black Dog" or "Stairway to Heaven."

Stay away from their songs that remind you of schools dances in the late 80's - early 90's wherein girls with long blonde hair and skin-tight jeans would suggestively dance together in a pseudo-surfer girl huddle under a cloud of cheap cigarette smoke. (Or was that just my friends?!)

Stay away from all that, and run, don't walk, to your nearest CD store or online music theft encounter and listen to:

1) The Rain Song
2) Going to California
3) Tangerine
4) That's the Way
5) Ramble On

Listen to these songs and i dare you, i double-triple dog DARE YOU to dislike Led Zeppelin.

If I had more time to spend, I would tell you how supremely beautiful their lyrics are. I would tell you that they created utterly timeless music. Not just timeless, but utterly timeless. (Because it's different.) And I would tell you that Led Zeppelin can kick John Mayer's ass. Matchbox 20's ass. Korn's ass. Nickleback's ass. And a whole lotta other asses.

2007-02-06T20:38:00.000-08:00

"clean and articulate"

of course, everyone in the world, or at least in my most immediate surroundings at work, deems the above referenced incident/comment offensive and/or problematic. everyone other than my sugar plum, my princess, the self-declared king of a milpitas thug-life upbringing.

i'm hearing Ice-T's lyrics for the Colors soundtrack. "We don't die, we just multiply. . . " (in alex's case, the colors referred less to gang warfare and more to the various shades of bright greens and reds that were employed by his high school sneaker collection. but that's another matter.)

he really, really doesn't find any problem with referring to Obama as "clean and articulate" because he says that he would refer to bill clinton or gavin newsom in a similar vein. alex also says that obama's articulateness (take that!) is a refreshing antidote to two terms of bushisms.

i suppose i do respect alex's opinion. i do. in some small, microscopic sense of respect. but, REALLY, c'mon! "clean and articulate"?!

you mean not a dirty, crack-pipe toting, ebonics-ite?

Now, in a completely opposite vein, and to stick a foot, no, more like a whole fleet of feet, in my mouth, there IS a sad discrepancy in college admissions and graduation rates amongst various groups. do african-americans graduate or attend college at the same rates as others? no. is this an unfair point because 'articulate' needn't only signify mastery of expression according to the arbitrary codes of the dominant, college-degree-holding structure? can't 50 Cent express himself, too?

No No No. We can't pretend that learning and embracing a LARGER (not "better", but larger) vocabulary WON'T help us in matters of expression. Do you need to be a college graduate to embrace a larger vocabulary, and thus a larger scope of possibility for expression? Hell no. But is that typically the case? Yes.

I'm going to share this thought with my coworkers tomorrow so that they can show me where I've erred.

2007-01-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

ok. i lost the bet. it started with these two items (moisturizer and blush) and went downhill from there. what can i say? i needed cosmetics.

2007-01-17T22:29:00.000-08:00

(A poem or Why I Want to Name My Future Dog William Carlos):

The Young Housewife

At ten A.M. the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car.

Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.

The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

William Carlos Williams
1883-1963

so much in poetry is about perception. about things of beauty. the poet, purveyor of male gaze everywhere, catches a glimpse of this young woman as he passes. in this split second she appears both girlish and seductive--shyly tucking wisps of hair behind her ears, going about her womanly duties, a life full of mundane exercises in milk deliveries and loads of laundry. she feels disheveled and imperfect, but the old man [who reveres youth and innocence] will find her startlingly beautiful.

ultimately, youth fades. we are left with the dryness of dead leaves and old age. but in that moment, she was beautiful. so much depends on her. on the wheelbarrow. on all of the shit that i miss throughout my day because i don't see things like an old, perverted man. or because i don't perceive things poetically. or poetically enough.

or is what bothers me the fact that i DO see the beauty? that the poem isn't just a misogynistic piece of trash? that it isn't just about objectifying a passive, nubile thing? IS she objectively beautiful? as close to objective as we can get?

somewhere along these lines there is also a fact to be made about the ultimate perversity of marriage. husband and wife are lovers. my favorite line in beat poetry is "sex made the salvation army" by gregory corso--yes, we americans live boring, predictable lives wherein daily life is not a matter of life or death, or even risk, but we're living [procreating] nonetheless.

2007-01-06T12:43:00.000-08:00

alex and i are taking separate vacations during spring break. it's not a bad thing. nor is it something born out of disagreement or hatred. he wants to extend his vacation and take extra days off. this is my first year at my school site and i already extended thanksgiving break by one day, so i don't think it prudent to make a habit of this self-extended vacay thing.

another reason we are traveling separately is because i have always wanted to. i haven't experienced traveling outside of the U.S. solo. most people have and they have both glorious and tragic things to say about it. i want to be lost in an alley in budapest or tokyo with only a backpack, a water bottle, and a few choice translated phrases of the natives scribbled inside my copy of "Let's Go!"

(i am occasionally confused and perplexed about my whereabouts in san franciso. why not take this party overseas?)

traveling solo is obviously a soul-building exercise. i'm eager to have a beautiful time somewhere exotic. this doesn't signify my boredom or hatred of my sweet pea. in fact, i love him more because he is supportive. are we so strange?

he was having drinks with co-workers last night and the ladies seem to think it strange that i am "letting" him travel alone after only six months of marriage. they were so so surprised that i'm letting him. i didn't think anything of it. he is going to spain to visit dear friends and i am going whoknowswhere.

since i'm willing to learn and to listen to the advice of my elders, or at least to the soul-sisters of my gender, i wonder if i, or we, are making a mistake. instead of responding with something like "oh, they're conservative idiots" after he tells me about their reactions, i instead think "shit, am i wrong here?"

this is also how i feel about vegetarianism. i fear that i'll wake up one day at sixty or seventy years of precious age and feel like shit due to some lifelong red meat protein deficiency. sure, many nutrionists are cheering on my choices NOW, but what if i wake up one day and learn that the joke was on me the whole time? that my self-guinea-pigging in the face of centuries of the carniverous diet was a big mistake?

don't get me wrong, i'm not talking about a shaking-in-my-boots fear, but a little fear nonetheless.

i hope that i'm not making a mistake by "letting" alex travel to spain alone.

i believe that i you love someone, you ought to set them as free as possible. perhaps a few steps of freedom short of proscribing to an open relationship. alex, in his Tang and Sunny Delight-chugging childhood wholesomeness, would never dream of THAT.

(which is fine, really, because that's a whole new level of existential self-guinea-pigging and i don't have to embrace pidgom in EVERY realm.)

2007-01-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

i went to a special screening of The Freedom Writers on thursday night with a whole bunch of teachers from San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. the film was inspiring, but unavoidably cheesy during individual moments, at least as perceived by my cold, cynical heart.

one particular moment of the film struck a cord: erin gruwell's husband is expressing his unhappiness with her constant absence. she's working two extra jobs in order to pay for special projects, books, and learning materials for her teaching job. he didn't anticipate these hours. he's not a happy husband. he says something like "i didn't sign up for this."

man, i totally feel you. when alex watches six hours of basketball a day, i totally totally feel you. i didn't sign up for THIS.

grrr. . .

2006-11-20T08:35:00.000-08:00

Alex Claus surprised me with a laptop this weekend. I've tenatively named her Lappy, my first and very own laptop. I'm so excited!

She belongs to me! She's not on loan from a school district! Yee-haw! Let the rampant downloading of porn begin!

(kidding)

2006-11-09T19:32:00.000-08:00

i have a student who jumped from "below basic" to "advanced" in one year on the ELA.
he's very, very bright and very, very lazy. no, it's not so much that he's lazy. (and i don't resist the label of laziness out of political correctness here, i have no problem attributing it to students who act accordingly) he's more like "bored as hell" and he's never learned that we must persist even through boredom. wish i knew how to help him in a meanginful non-lectury way in that arena. i also just don't want to acknowledge that yes, indeed, some of his teachers are in fact boring during my visits.

on another note - it's probably sacrilege for a Resource teacher to say, but i can't stand Behaviorism in the classroom. this "i'll give you a sticker if you take your seat" crap. students are not pavlovian dogs. or are they? or is it that i just don't want to be pavlov?

2006-11-08T14:35:00.000-08:00

i suggest that people start hosting "donald rumsfeld resigns" parties all over the universe. if my apartment was larger than the spinal cord of a mouse, i'd host my own. i'd order a cake and ask the baker to immortalize his stupid words "there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns" with pretty pink frosting.

i don't typically believe in evil, but i believe that donald rumsfeld is pretty darn close to it. it's as if he lacks any sense of humility. or he lacks any sense of reverence for the beauty of nature or of the universe or in the collective wisdom of people.

i'm sure this is just a political game. bush can claim something positive or he can avert blame now, whatever, the point is that the devil incarnate resigned! yeehaw!

2006-10-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

alex has been a very distraught little bunny lately. we've had an ongoing disagreement about the compatibility or incompatibility--depending on your position--of television and child-bearing. for various reasons, i am and was an opponent of parking the infamous wasteland in my nuclear family room.

first of all, i, regrettably and unfortunately, hail from a family of ADD/ADHD sufferers. mainly we make the people around us suffer--teachers, friends, random passerbys--by our inability to focus. alex has intimate knowledge of this. he has observed my father and sister and I engage in certain behaviors and activities that are characteristic of this behavioral malady. i won't explain the behaviors in detail here, but let me just say that alex doesn't need to be convinced of the genetic prominence of ADD in the momeny family. he's seen it.

second of all, ADD children + television = disaster.

third of all, there is nothing more clear to me, after four years of teaching, than this: parents who are unwilling to make sacrifices for their kids are lower than the days-old, germ-infested blood of the squished fleas who feed of pond scum in the dirtiest alleys in America. allow me to differentiate between being UNABLE to make sacrifices for your kids and being UNWILLING to do so.

sure, i love television, too. the sights and sounds of programs like Charlie Rose and CNN remind me of hanging out at home in my late teen--early adulthood years and watching the news with my father. my sister and I were also raised on a steady diet of MTV and sitcoms. at this point in my life, I watch project runway and top chef like nobody's business. particularly in moments of stress or post-work day exhaustion, there is little more comforting than curling up with alex and watching a show that we love. but the point is this, i am willing to sacrifice this sense of relaxation and pleasure for the best interest of a child.

what is the real problem, you ask? alex LOVES basketball. for so long I associated his love of basketball with a love of PLAYING it, but it seems that this affection is just as unwavering and empassioned for the "sport" of spectatorship: he likes to watch. in our discussions about television, there is a point wherein he starts mumbling in frustration with a slightly raised voice about college basketball and tradition and months like March and April and about how, not only do we need to have a television at that time, but we need to have TWO. days later he comes home in a semi-drunk state from being out with "his boys" (not his term, but society's) with thiny veiled accusations that I am "trying to change him."

no shit! i am trying to change me, too. it's called sacrificing creature comforts for the betterment of your children. you know, those human beings that you bring into the world and who we will be responsible for.

the thing is that alex's friends don't really see what we see. they don't see kids who have the attention span of gnats. they don't see the problems that this causes. and they haven't seen my father go 70 miles an hour on the freeway while adjusting the radio with one hand and poking digits into his palm pilot with another, before reaching into his glove compartment to grab a condiment-size bottle of colonge for a quick dabbing before his exit. they don't understand the severity of ADD and ADHD and the associated difficulties such as risk-taking behavior, problems with self discipline, and difficulties in organization.

alex is right to point out my doom-and-gloom take on this. perhaps i am being extreme, but it seems to me that the best bet would be to minimize problematic environmental factors, such as television and the addictive nature of media, in general.

in one sense, i also love the idea of little hippy children who have long-hair parted in the middle and paint stains on their fingers. kids who run barefoot in the sunshine at Free Mumia rallies. i'm a dork. i'm not afraid to admit it. i just don't want to raise another set of consumers. another set of kids who think, dress, and act like everyone else. are television and media not the great unifiers in american taste and desire?

the truth is that one of the freest and happiest times in my life was immediately after college, when i lived alone in a cottage apartment in los angeles without television or internet or even a phone. i suppose i do have a secret unabomber within. it wasn't the sense of aloneness that i loved, but the freedom from advertising and images and societal expectation. it seems fairly innocent to want to protect your kids from that.

alex, perhaps rightly so, has said that this is about moderation. about establishing limits for what and when kids can watch.
i guess there is a hint of rationality in that. but, let the records show that i am compromising myself here. if it was all up to me, i would throw the t.v. out long before the kid comes. i would, in affect, change even myself.

2006-10-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

rush limbaugh is a disgusting pig. the people who are defending his attack on michael j. fox are equally disgusting. in a similiar vein, who are these idiots who claim to be religious or christian while simultaneously being limbaugh supporters? how can they condone this type of cruelty? and stephanie miller said it best (in reference to limbaugh's accusations that fox deliberately skipped his medication for political purposes): "He's probably not the best person to be talking about other people's drug problems."

2006-10-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

alex is so interesting. he will place a gourmet chocolate bar in the side door of the refrigerator. it will stay there for weeks, chilled and untouched. it will stay there when he opens the door for soymilk in the morning, when he heads for an afternoon snack of wilbur (ok, salami) and cheese, when he grabs mushrooms and peppers and bread and countless other ingredients for preparing our dinner. he passes the chocolate like a breeze, with disinterest and forgetfulness. one day, he'll finally decide to tear it's paper packaging and take a bite. he would find it delicious and creamy and sweet, then he would fold the paper shut and put the rectangular brown narcotic back to it's semi-frozen state, back inside the fridge door.

now, i don't eat much chocolate anymore, but if i did, it would go something like this: peruse the organic chocolate bar labels at my nearest Whole Foods. pick one, buy it, eat the whole thing on the way home.

the question is: am i crazy or is he?

2006-10-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

things i may do one day:

1. get botox (doubtful, but not impossible)
2. get a boob-lift
3. get a personal trainer

things, of a different vein, that i also want to do:

1. engage in a consistent yoga practice of ashtanga or vinyasa flow
2. learn how to dj
3. travel around the world

is the happiness of tight glutes and perky boobies in your forties the same kind of happiness of international travel and meditative practice? why ask the question? of course not. there is a fulfillment that the first list can't even touch.

is this because the second list is inherently more valuable or is it because we live in a culture that propagates the idea of the spiritual inferiority of the first list?

(i really think i would make a kick-ass dj. i've always wanted to go dancing to a club that would play fela, common, bob marley, zap mama, guru, jurassic 5, jill scott, and mark farina all in one session. i have looked, far and wide, from the best clubs in LA to spots in San Francisco, and i have not found this club.)

2006-10-09T22:04:00.000-07:00

i went out to dinner on friday night after work with co-workers and i can't say that i was surprised to find out that i am not the only teacher at my school who is already contemplating switching schools next year. the experience at my current school is reminding me everyday of how relatively great my admin was at my previous school. my RSP students created the school paper there one year. i took kids hiking. alex and I took my students to several spoken-word readings, including the Youth Speaks slam in SF. i initiated an informal information session for general ed. teachers about RSP there. my students organized "fear factor" during cougar day and served marinated roaches from overseas for one of our challenges. i list these things because i miss having an administration that was very supportive of the occasional straying from the norm. my old admin was generally supportive of innovation and teacher's initiative. there is a trust missing at my current school. oscar and tereasa were great at ocala. they allowed you to do things. it is peculiar for me to use the word "allowed" as i hadn't typically thought of these things in terms of what is or isn't permitted. the idea of an admininstrator as someone who can prohibit you from initiating a program or prohibit you from inventing a little educational wheel in your classroom, should you choose to invent it, is wholly foreign to me.

unfortunately, it is becoming less foreign. i have been introduced, kicking and screaming, to a curious authoritarian archetype in professional culture: the micro-manager. i am my father's daughter; i can't stand being told what to do, particularly when it's an ornamental telling, a power-tripping, a lust for superficial influence.

2006-10-08T02:09:00.000-07:00

happy birthday, ms. varlet!

(it's 2:00 am, technically sunday, but i'm considering this still saturday night)

2006-10-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

there is so much that i don't understand.

2006-09-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

a bad day. experienced record lows in the classroom. this thought came to me not once, but twice: i wish that the U.S. gov't would use my tax dollars to drop and distribute millions and millions of free condoms in the ghetto via a low-flying helicopter.
at first glance, this seems like a horrendous and racist thought. it is not. children need attention and guidance. children in any particular society need parental figures who can arm them with the basic social and psychological skills required in order to succeed in that given society, with it's requisite, although often arbitrary, norms and procedures. if you are wealthy and white, then you may be able to change the rules before you willingly learn how to "play the game" because it could be your very role in wealth and [cultural] whiteness that defines the whole goddamn game. if you are poor and black, you are generally incapable of changing the rules before you've mastered the game. society, that beast of judgment married to power, will not permit it. every man, or 8th grade boy, is not an island. yes, at your house, it might be cool to use a 3-mile voice with a class aide who's ears are four and half inches away from your mouth. throughout much of California, and perhaps most of the U.S., it is really fucking abnormal to do that. UGH.

*update: ok, it is racist and horrendous. i leave it there, however, because there is a sense in which things can be ethnographic: the human experience of life as a teacher may yield ugly remarks. the remarks are born from an experience and ultimately a sense of frustration. (It is too easy to condemn something like police brutality without engaging in an ethnographic psycho-social gaze of a policeman's life in the big city.) Besides, we need to know how teachers typically react if we want to teach them and train them well. Study me.

As the song says "I'm just a rat in a cage."

2006-09-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

so alex FINALLY found an opponent at Dolores Park who he deems worthy of his deep-rooted filipino athleticism. every week, day after day, he comes home complaining about the inability of city-folk to play competitive ball. the boys or men are too arrogant and showy while lacking basic skills, according to Mr. Algones.

today he calls me, full of excitement and that post-basketball breathlessness, to tell me of a new friend who can play. not only can he play, he's taller and much better than alex. "cool. did you get his name?" i ask. (a normal question methinks.) no. "did you ask him what times or days he plays?" no. why the hell not? get his name, his digits, his whereabouts. make basketball dates with him then go home and get snacks and braid each other's hair.

turns out alex knows nothing of this dunking, dribbling mirage. just another tall black man in the city. what gives? men are so socially maladjusted.

2006-09-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

my students love love love the Flavor of Love. they are always talking about it. they are shocked that i've seen it before. i am shocked that their parents allow them to watch it, week after week, show after show. they tell me that their parents watch it with them.

me: Do you think that these women would be interested in befriending (the word of the day) Flav if he worked as a janitor or teacher or mailman?

student: huh?

me: Would they be interested in befriending him if he wasn't rich and famous?

student: yeah! He's Flavor Flav!

(oh jesus)

2006-09-11T00:27:00.001-07:00

the blogosphere, or at least my four or five readers within it, will be disgusted to know some things about me that alex has already learned. namely, my appreciation and ability to eat all sorts of decadent, creamy foods with a spoon. breadless.
hummus, almond butter, cashew butter, peanut butter, goat cheese. alex is wholly perplexed by my "hummus is just thicker soup" worldview. i can't help it. i love creamy, gooey, fattening things. i could even eat spoonfuls of nutella! (but somehow that feels like a straight ticket to hell so i don't go there.) i don't know how bad these habits are for my body. they're not the worst foods on the planet. it can't be good for the soul, though. i'm a teacher, i can't be a glutton.

2006-08-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

In the interest of self-defense:

There's some rubbish on Alex's site about his latest 3:00am online purchase: Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.

Yeah, that's right, he bought that book. Along with the other 50 million bon-bon popping, grocery cart charging, largely female contingent of D.A.M.R (that's Distressed Americans in Monogamous Relationships for the uninitiated).

All I want to say is this: Alex is a mutant of some kind because he is actually the one "from Venus." Every paragraph in the book needs a pronoun swap in order to apply to us as he is the more "womanly" according to John Gray.

I am a healthy skeptic. I am weary of some book that claims to be able to help every man and woman in the free world while being simultaneously capable of dealing with the intricacies and particularities of my individual relationship. It isn't that I want or need to feel special or different. Or is it?

Married life, while mutually unemployed (two teachers during the summer), is no easy thing. We are both so indepedent. I imagine that the ideal relationship for stubborn individualists would be Jean-Paul Sartre's and Simone de Beauvoir's sense of togetherness (committed whole-heartedly yet living in separate quarters).

But I shouldn't make married life to be more difficult than it is. Most of the time, it's really really great. And we know that everything will be kosher when we are both working and busy.

That said, every morcel of gibberish you read on that man's website is probably bullshit if it portrays me in a light dimmer than the creator's perfection.

haha.

2006-08-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

I spent the past five days at curriculum training for SF Unified. The days were committed to their Language Arts program -- Prentice Hall (it looks a bit more difficult than Holt). It was mostly enjoyable! I know that isn't cool to say - particularly if you're a Teach for America kinda gal. TFA teachers earn their cred by their ability to juggle various tasks during trainings and to brag about this later. Checking email, balancing that check book, researching law schools, grading papers -- it's almost a contest of who can be the rudest. (Thanks for the line, Ms. Difranco.)

I had a relatively good time because most of the teachers in the room were upbeat, positive, and achievement-oriented. Generally-speaking, SFUSD veteran teachers seem to share the vision of TFA for the lowest income children, but they don't share our arrogance. I loved the wacky people I met too. For the first time, I wasn't the only shmuck who brought her own lunch of raw fruits and veggies and rice cakes. I also wasn't the one who got militant about the lack of proper recycling at the facility.
I could've sworn that there was some kind of letter-writing campaign to the district by the end of the week. I also sensed a solid number of gay and lesbian teachers who didn't seem to take great lengths to hide or conceal their orientation in the workplace.

This place just seems healthier. Alex and I took pay CUTS, but as the bumper sticker or bible or whatever says: Man does not live by bread alone.

No, he needs the gays!

2006-08-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

i got a job in San Francisco! The pros: it's RSP in a "push-in" program, the school is 76 years old!, both the principal and assistant principal are women, the building is absolutely beautiful, it's a very diverse school (majority Asian-American and African-American with some White and Latino students as well)

cons: I, like Alex, took a substanial pay-cut to teach in San Francisco.

What is it with this place? This city wants to propogate the illusion of it's "liberalism"

In fact, how progressive of a community are we, or are they, when public school teachers are poorly paid relative to similar districts in the bay area?

Let's turn this con into something positive: San Jose's appreciation of teachers is a healthy thing.

Also, I won't pretend that I'm not excited to teach in a more middle class school. My new school does have 60% reduced lunch, but the other 40% is solidly middle class. I want this exposure because I want to examine what the differences are. I am also excited at the prospect of having a student who gets into a fight having to go home at the end of the day to parents who are angry and disappointed as opposed to a parental figure who says something like: "You should have given him an upper cut!!"
blah blah blah.

Was that politically correct? No. Kill me.

2006-08-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

"Americans are pragmatists and word choice is often based on the shortest route from here to there. Iranians are poets and tend to use language as though it were paint, to be spread out, blended, swirled. Words can be presented as pieces in a puzzle, pieces that may or may not fit together neatly." ("The Fine Art of Hiding What You Mean to Say," an article in August 6 NYT.)

Hum. Clearly I have to work on my ability to spread and blend and paint words.

2006-07-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

2006-07-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

Behold the Wedding Post! July 1st came and went much like any other day. That isn't entirely true. Hehe. Alex and I craved an informal and spontaneous wedding. We got what we wanted. At times it was too spontaneous for my taste as my father deemed it necessary to change the dinner time fifteen minutes into the beginning of the wedding. (Gotta love dads. And gotta love caterers who don't feel the need to behead them when they act unruly.)

Dad: "We're Persian. Persians don't get anywhere on time. They don't eat dinner early either."

(Meanwhile the bellies of all of the non-Persians are grumbling.) I like the fact that the cultural dissonance present on my wedding day wasn't due to my iranianness married to alex's filipinoness, but rather to a genetic predisposition to party late and to dine even later.

It was so awesome to have friends from the Bay Area and Los Angeles there. In alex's immortal and constant words, "it ain't easy" to come down from San Francisco and I fully appreciated and loved seeing the pretty faces of Bay Area folk.

I had a lot of fun. The Persian wedding ceremony, the aghd, was fun, too. A lot of my non-Iranian (or non-Persian, whatever) friends didn't know that the ceremony doesn't intend to function like an American or Western-style ceremony in that complete silence and "all eyes on you" are not required. You are encouraged to let your eyes wander and to have side conversations during the aghd. I don't know if it was the desire to be respectful or just rampant curiousity, but you couldn't hear any White or Black or Latino or Asian American breathe in that room. The ceremony was pretty beautiful to me. I didn't know what to expect exactly in the realm of words uttered or messages expressed by the officiant. My mom wanted me to be surprised and she was right: the messages were ethical and profound, not overly sentimental or religious in the least.

At one point, the bride is asked by the officiant if she will accept the marriage. She is supposed to not answer until the third time she is asked. I was planning on carrying out this little tradition of passivity in the interest of cultural relativism everywhere, but during the moment, I just couldn't do it.

Officiant: "Do you take the hand of. . . . ."

(he doesn't expect me to answer the first time)

Leyla: "I'm a feminist, so I'm going to say 'Yes' now."

I don't think the guests knew what the heck was going on. Haha. In any event, Alex and I loved it. Things were rushed due to my pops dinner antics, but I think it was all good. The caterer wanted me to take pictures cutting the cake before she sliced and distributed it, but I was all "Naaah, I'd rather dance. I don't really care about taking pictures next to a cake."

Aha! The cake. The baker,unknown to me, ending up being my best friend Beatriz's uncle! How strange is that! Beatriz tells me that she just saw her uncle at the party and blah blah. . a small world for Salvadoreans.

Thanks to everyone who came! We love you lots! More pictures to follow. Hopefully incriminating ones with Alex and the belly dancer.

2006-06-21T01:52:00.000-07:00

Alex and I went to City Hall for our civil marriage ceremony on Monday. City Hall is beautiful. More pictures, better pictures to follow shortly. That is my intention. We're married!

2006-06-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

i found a dress. it was too tight on saturday and slightly, slightly big now. something is terribly off. dear metabolism, get yourself in order please.

i am sorta bummed out that some people can't make it to the wedding. on the one hand, i realize that orange county isn't exactly five seconds away. i also realize that accomodations in orange county near the 4th of july aren't exactly economical. still, there are some special people that won't be there. alex says to forget about it and concentrate on the individuals who do want to come. or more accurately, who can come. that is clearly the better response.

i am sure that everyone will connect and hang out again in the early fall anyway, so june is by no means that last time i will see these people. it's all good, i know that trying to organize attendance to something like this while having all of these other summer travel and work plans isn't easy for people and i have to be understanding. and rationally and intellectually, i do completely understand.

2006-06-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

my mom's in town! she just returned from Iran and came up to visit from southern california. she took a self-guided tour of my backyard and proceeded to tell me about all of the exoticish-looking plants back there while collecting baby plums with one hand and sweet lemons with the other. all of this before entering the house and putting down her stuff. moms are hilarious. we went to the farmer's market and bought basil and mint and parsley and all that other good stuff that makes the house smell damn good. today we started the wedding dress shopping ass-backwards. that is, by shopping for shoes first. this very nice woman was going to make my dress, one that i designed myself, but she told me that she ultimately couldn't do it because she was too busy. i tried on several dresses. many were halloween-costume esque. who decided that heavy satin was a good idea for the human body? and who decided that Speedos-like racer backs (criss-cross) would make a pretty evening dress? who is making all of these decisions!?

2006-06-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

After a very stressful week, I am feeling back to normal and excited for the wedding again. I found a kickass DJ too, who can and wants to play music like Common, Thievery Corporation, Digable Planets, Tribe, Jill Scott, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye, etc.

That's one thing that I love about Orange County - it's proximity to all the great DJs in LA! Ha!

I hope he's as good in real life as he seems on paper. He posed an interesting question: What do I do if one of your guests requests 50 Cent or The Pussycat Dolls?

My Persianness said, "Play what they want, they're the guests!" (But don't think that I wouldn't prefer a "My dog ate my Pussycat Dolls cd" reply from him.)

2006-05-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

only a few days left to RSVP for july 1st. after that, there's a fee. a really BIG fee.

(alexandleyla@gmail.com)

2006-05-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

we just officially commenced our engagement with the ever-so-humbling san francisco rental search. sure, we were going to buy a place. but in truth neither one of us is interested in spending the first half of our lives knee deep in a type of 415 area code-induced buyer's remorse.

renting is preferred. throwing large sums of money away every month just seems more tolerable than owning a house. besides, i've always sworn that i will never become one of those young homeowners who can't talk about anything unless it involves the various shades of hardwood flooring or the peskiness of the As-Is sale and those damn termites. homeowners, with the exception of Mabel, are so annoying.

perusing the craigslist rental listings leaves me with just one question: who do you have to rob or steal from to live in Pacific Heights? listen to it: "pacific heights." it even sounds rolex-encrusted.

My heart is in the Mission. My persian-cultural indoctrination and it's appreciation of clean streets and pretty cafes is in North Beach. My two years of college spent in backless cotton peasant tops and repeated utterances of "the revolution" is in the Haight. My desire to be thug life was in Hunter's Point until I realized that breathing properly and limited exposure to a SuperFund site was important. (Isn't it funny how people assert their identities through the communities that they choose, particularly in San Francisco?)

How does the world feel about two individuals inhabiting a studio? I personally have lived in places that were smaller than your average studio. Why is it that when we grow older we think we need something larger or nicer? Sure, I can no longer fit into my vintage levis from college, but my ass hasn't expanded to the size of requiring more square footage.

Why don't our tastes become increasingly more humble as we age, instead of the inverse?

I have remained disinterested in studios because I want the option to be anti-social.

Alex can invite a friend over to do weird cultish things, like watch basketball, while I kick it in the bedroom. A studio would force constant pleasantry. I have this self-imposed pressure to entertain and engage. It's sad.

ANYWAY, a studio for two - possible or no?

2006-05-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

conversations with the caterer:

her: How many guests do you expect will attend?

me: Interesting question. You need to know that, yes, of course.

her: Do you have a figure of approximate estimation?

me: A what?

her: How many did you invite?

me: 70, or 65, something like that.

her: (rolls her eyes over the phone, i swear it)

2006-05-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

this morning on CNN: "Iranians are very skillful negotiators."

You Heard It Here.

2006-05-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

the da vinci code film is really quite stupid. i didn't read the book, but there were at least three instances in the film wherein i was tempted to laugh. i suppressed this urge only twice.

i also don't understand what, exactly, is so threatening about the perception of jesus christ as something other than a celibate man. is it because jesus was supposed to have transgressed these base impulses? or is it because if jesus did it, then that implies that god was not opposed to it? or is it something else entirely?

2006-05-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

telephonica:

alex: "I'm going to New York for Thanksgiving. You can come if you want."

leyla: "umm. . ."

(I don't think the Bradys made holiday travel plans like this.)

2006-05-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

Things I Would Like to See Before I Die or
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Frank Gehry)

A building can be designed to satisfy "by the month" with the regularity of a provider. Or it can give satisfaction in a very different way, "by the moment," with the fraction of a second, with the thrill of a lover - richard neutra

2006-05-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

my students are creating blogs this week. i'm so excited! i love tearing them away from the ridiculousness of myspace (which does nothing other than foster the narcissism of the youth, of course). myspace is ugly as hell and archaic-looking. silly me with a standardized blogspot prefab format shouldn't have shit to say about the lack of fantabulous visuals on myspace, but alas, i do.

2006-05-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

traffic court this morning. i was there. ready. to defend. can't say that i dressed in my red power suit. or any suit for that matter. my case was dismissed! turns out that the policemen who helped me last time via impromptu consultation ended up talking to the cop who gave me the ticket and the cop ended up dismissing it himself. they knew! they knew i was right. the truth, and the light, cannot be suppressed: there is no speed limit sign on the 87 freeway from the julian entrance to the beginning of the 280 south. (the speed limit on the 87, even though it remains unposted, IS actually 55. but can you imagine how much road rage this will contribute to? they ought to post it because the blood of the ignorant drivers will boil when they find themselves driving amid a sea of slowpokes.)

2006-05-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

1. i ate a yellow bell pepper for lunch and a vat of coffee ice cream for dinner. something is terribly off balance.

2. a very nice man in the TFA once told me that i used approximately 1500.00 of my Americorps funds for "certification costs." I have no idea what he is talking about, but he is a very responsible and credible person. Someone please help. What the hell are certification costs other than tuition fees at your particular university!? (because I paid those out of pocket.)

3. i have a job interview next week for a job in san francisco. i am not 100% qualified, but i am something like 85% qualified. these are my numbers. i just made them up wish me luck.

4. i would really love to work with high school kids again. or the little tater tots in kindergarten. i don't know if i would be an effective kindergarten teacher because i don't have that ultra girly squealy voice that responds with wonderment and awe at every damn thing in the world.

5. this just felt like it needed a number 5.

2006-05-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

i have a ridiculous amount of work to do for friday for my credentialing class. i find myself sitting here in ultimate procrastination. suddenly i am obsessed with locating an old friend named chris quiroz. my subconscious has chosen correctly: there are probably 20 million people in the world with the last name quiroz. or something like that. now back to the creation of a behavior plan. i did one of these behavior plans two years ago and put it in my portfolio for SJSU last year. what did i do with my portfolio you ask? i threw it away. naturally.

2006-05-12T01:54:00.000-07:00

(long blog entry)

California High School Exit Exam Drama:

Lou Dobbs--who apparently has a deep affection for using the term "illegal aliens"--is "interviewing" Arturo Gonzalez on CNN right now. Gonzalez is an attorney suing on behalf of ten students who cannot pass the high school exit exam. The judge seems to be convinced of their position which is essentially this: the students attended crappy schools, they weren't taught the skills which were covered on the test, the quality of the teachers was poor, and other related disparities. (Out of all states, California is ranked in the late 40's for student scores and achievement. We are also ranked in the late 40's for 4-year college admissions following high school.)

No discussion should occur about the high school exam rates unless we specify the types of schools and communities we are talking about. I can't stand how people utter "high school students in California" as if they are all one, happy homogenous family. Garfield High School cannot be compared to the high school I went to in Mission Viejo. It's not that the students who attend Garfield were born with a genetic deficiency making them ineligible for comparison to the almighty blue-eyed hunnies in Mission Viejo. I'm not a determinist per se, but how the hell do we conduct this discussion without verbally ushering in economical and (c)ultural differences? Imagine having a conversation about the state of the world without terms like "first world" and "third world." There ought to be a consistent and accurate representation of reality!

Lou Dobbs to the state bureaucrat in charge of Education: What are you doing out there in California? Sixty-percent of the middle school teachers in low-income schools are non-credentialeded!?!

bureacrat: We need to compensate them.

Lou Dobbs: Compensate them? I'm supportive of compensating them if they're competent!
Is the problem that you guys have so many illegal aliens in your schools?

bureacrat: It's not that simple.

Lou Dobbs: These unqualified teachers. . . how can this be going on in a state as rich as California?!!

But notice that the bureaucrat, who is an elected politician in training, can't say that parental involvement is one of the most important things in determining success. He can't say that the most qualified teachers choose not to teach in the "ghetto" for a possible range and variety of reasons: safety issues, behavior of kids, incompetence of districts, salaries and benefits.
Mentioning safety draws attention to the reality of our inner-city slums. Channeling parental involvement blames the victims and betrays bed-wetting liberal sensibilities. He is sandwiched in censorship from both the right and the left.

If Lou Dobbs interviewed me I would say this: Look, yes, many teachers suck. I myself sucked last Wednesday in a lesson on verb tense. But the problem is that most teachers are not going to leave relatively well-behaved schools to teach in the ghetto. They would rather teach than babysit! Teachers don't love being disciplinarians. Listen, Lou, asking my student why he didn't bring a pencil to school for the millionth time makes me break out in a rash. I don't want to be anybody's mommy. Have I failed to motivate three of my students to bring materials on consistent basis. Yes, yes, I have. The problem with low-income schools is an absence of an overall, community-wide culture of achievement. It's cooler to be thug-like than book-like. This is how communities destroy themselves. A teacher is not going to bend over backwards helping kids who act like they don't want to learn. (Anyone who actually believes that they authentically don't want to learn is nuts.) I consider this the community destroying itself because other communities excel through competition or cooperation, while "our" communities
fall deeper in marginalization. It's the students in other schools who grow up to achieve economic or political power, while you idiots are deeply entrenched in the engaging theatrics of claiming red or blue. I know the parents are exhausted. The last thing that I would ever want to do would be to blame a single mother or something for failing to keep it perfectly together. But isn't the point that if she doesn't do it, then NO ONE ELSE WILL. It's not in anyone else's interest. I don't care what ideals you have when you're 22. As people grow up, they tend to pursue the policies that are in their specific economic and political interest. The poor in the U.S. can't, and perhaps don't want to be, liberated or educated by any other group. The solution has to come from within. Yes, poverty sucks. Yes, it's not fair, but that realization alone won't do anything to empower you. American style capitalism isn't going anywhere as far as I can tell. The system is the system. Why can't average, everyday families in low-income schools realize this and decide to fight back with their success?!!?

March on May Day. Great. But what are you going to do to confront alcoholism among Mexican-American males? Pregnancy in your teens? Poor achievement in school? The unchecked and constant consumption of bitches and hoes pop culture by your kids?

I guess this is question of shallowness. In suburbia, shallow people can survive in life by: eating, shopping, living, loving, working, consuming, partying and going to church on Sunday without seeking something deeper or more profound in the worlds or art or politics or philosophy. (Any way, who needs the magic of Descartes or Sylvia Plath when you've experienced the magic of something like childbirth?)

In the inner-city, shallowness might amount to living and working and loving and eating and dancing and partying and consuming and shopping and going to church on Sunday without seeking a creative solution to eradicating the suffering surrounding you. (Or is the suffering so normal, so accepted, and expected that one doesn't think to resist it? Or is it not a matter of "regional shallowness" and more an issue of courage and self-esteem?)

The consequences of shallowness are much more dangerous in one of those communities. I for one believe that the unexamined life IS worth living, but a life wherein you watch your own Spanish-speaking kids attempt to hurt other Spanish-speaking kids, or rampant alcoholism, or poor health, or poor family structures, or physical and sexual abuse. . . and you don't seek to do anything about it?!!!? Surely that is no life worth living.

Meanwhile McDonald's and MTV and Nike and Taco Bell have perfected the art of marketing to "the minority."

Do I sound cynical? Perhaps I am. It's not so much a cynicism, but more of a desire to scream:
"No one can change this but YOU!" at the corner of King and Story roads.

I shouldn't be so arrogant to assume that that needs to be screamed. I doubt that any of my students really believe or think that the white man (or Iranian-American woman in her twenties) can "save them."

I can't be the only person who thinks about this shit, right? I hope my colleagues, both in and out of TFA, are kept up at night by Lou fucking Dobbs.

2006-05-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

re: godiva's belgian dark chocolate ice cream with peppermint swirl

Dear Godiva,

I bought this because it was on sale, but now I am wondering if your executives sat around a board room one morning and devised a plan to create crack-cocaine. what are you doing?! you're killing me. literally. this stuff, this belgian dark chocolate with mint stuff is TOOOO damn good. I hate you. my normally clog-free arteries are suffering. I hate you.

LM

2006-05-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

i love www.veganlunchbox.blogspot.com

i realized that this love is not just a fascination with the healthy lunches that this mom prepares for her kid. there's this other fascination i have with remembering the safety and coziness of childhood. look at her perfectly packed little lunches! the orderliness of the compartments, the portions fitting exactly in each container, the way the food is always facing out, toward the lucky little face who gets to open it everyday at noon. this is Leave it to Beaver on patchouli.

i love it. i don't know if this mom is OCD or what, but just looking at the site makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and safe. can the world, mom, really be as perfect as your lunches?

no surprise that my favorite artist is andrea zittel. i find veganlunchbox so relatable to her work. you might spend an eternity trying to recreate the structure and safety of childhood, but it is a usless task. adulthood necessarily invites ambiguity, indecision, growing up. the memory of an innocent and free childhood, if indeed you were lucky enough to have one, is a fleeting thing.

(if it IS true that everything is a copy of a copy, then it isn't so much the actual experience of this type of childhood that triggers longing, but just the enslavement to its ideals.)

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/zittel/index.html

(and she claims that her work is not about control! ha!)

2006-05-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

let's just hope that the general public doesn't prefer this day without mexicans, or immigrants, to the day after or the day before.

in related news, doesn't anyone in the mexican community in california think that illegal immigrantion decreases wages for all mexicans in the manual labor or service industries? one of my students told me that people who don't want california to land back into the hands of the mexican government are "racist." i didn't have much to say. my policy, a policy that i think i indirectly learned from chris weber, is just to listen, listen, listen, and nod accordingly with full eye contact. seriously, most our kids don't have an adult who can shut up and listen to them for longer than five minutes.

the only thing i said, after a good twenty minutes, was to point out the white teachers at our school who are strongly supportive of their community and their future. (the discussion has snowballed into "why do all white people hate us?")

i also let then know that there is this thing called the bible belt and middle america and the south and etc., and thus that california isn't THE WORST place for a mexican-american kid to grow up. they seemed to understand that.

shit. i guess i DID end up talking a little. next time, no words. listening is so important.

2006-04-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

i think that alex has a problem. i probably shouldn't mention it in such a public sphere, but, see, he has sort of an addiction problem.

he's addicted to watching basketball on television. EVERY DAY! all day - he could watch it. it doesn't seem healthy.

if a fourteen year old was watching Pimp My Ride or TRL with this ferocity, you'd sit them aside and talk to him/her. what do we do when the addict in question is 34?

it never stops!! basketballs everywhere! those stupid bells and whistles and annoying sounds during the game (how can any player concentrate in that circus?!), the serious glares on the faces of the coaches, the polyester outfits of the players. . . and so much more. it's all too much..

an intervention ought to be scheduled.

2006-04-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

update: saw the movie. it's not about a cowboy-esque lust for power - just the human instinct for survival. i'm an idiot.

i'm excited to see flight 93. the postmodernists say that everything is a copy of a copy. there is no original, no first image, no original representation or leader or history book or twinkie or girl scout or niagra falls or even john wayne (even though american culture is held hostage to him and his lust for rebellion and power), but were the widely perceived heros of that flight channeling the cowboy culture, the Oh no you don't! ness of what it means to be an american male? maybe there is no original, but there is irrepressible duplication.

2006-04-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

i just got a call from my landlord. we are on a month-to-month lease and it seems that he is interested in renting the house out to a family. starting june 1st. this is horrendous news for teachers who don't end the year until mid-june. and for people attempting to plan a wedding for july 1st. and for people who just like to nap after work, instead of pack. horrible news. but i sit here calmly and i type. there are pigeons of some kind outside my classroom door. the sun is shining. students are dribbling a basketball on the court one hundred feet away. a ripe afternoon for a nervous breakdown.

2006-04-27T15:19:00.000-07:00

someone's life is changing. . .

www.posthipchick.blogspot.com

Olivia Phoenix Johnson

(the lovely Nicole had her baby)

2006-04-22T10:10:00.000-07:00

if it wasn't already obvious, this business of planning a wedding was never particularly enjoyable to me. i've observed other brides (at work and in SJSU classes) giggle with excitement and eagerness about the planning of their 'magical day'. i tried to emulate them, i really did.

the notion itself of a 'bride' as a form of identity is totally insane to me, and yet, so many adopt that label as their identity for a short time in their lives. unfortunately, some women (lesbians) are prevented from adopting it in the strictest legal or societal sense. maybe it is a fact that i am taking for granted, but i just couldn't get excited about it.

i tried to convince alex to elope, but he wasn't completely interested. so here i find myself trying to plan something in southern california from san jose, with a lot of other worries on my mind, some job-related, some medical-related. flying down to orange county to taste the caterer's moroccan dishes doesn't seem particularly enjoyable. who cares? my taste buds are out of whack with other people anyway. hell, i could eat a bowl full of twenty-seven kiwis for dinner and be content.

it seems so self-centered - to organize "your" wedding day. a whole day that is supposed to revolve around us? i have no problem being extroverted in discussions or arguments or parties or inside bars, but for some reason, the notion of orchestrating an entire evening around an event (a marriage) in my life seems childish. am i right or am i right?

but, somewhere along the line, someone said this: don't think of it as a party for you, think of it as a party you are throwing for your friends and family to celebrate the fact that you're getting married.

it was a subtle distinction, not the world's grandest epiphany, but it made a difference. the paradigm was shifted. i actually love having people over for dinner or drinks or hanging out.
small get-togethers are my life blood. it was so much easier to think of it in this way!

i am still not particularly interested in the minute details, but hey, at least i don't feel like a bridezilla dweebess.

the unfortunate thing is that in my desire to avoid self-obsession and neuroses, i have done just the opposite, on this blog here. i promise, no more posting about dang weddings.

there is a whole world out there! check it.

2006-04-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

three summers ago i was stuffing all of my stuff in a backpack and traveling back and forth from rasht to tehran to esfahan to shiraz with my mom in iran. the summer after that i took all of my worthwhile possessions to live in a dorm at USC for teacher training. last summer i stuffed an ungodly amount of crap in another backpack and went to ireland and italy with alex. during every one of those adventures, there was a time when i thought to myself "shit, i can't wait to be back home in the safety of my bed with steaming hot chocolate to drink or a fresh green apple to bite into, with cellphones and TVs and favorite cds and laptops nearby. . "

I couldn't wait to pull my underwear and socks out of a proper drawer instead of a damn knapsack. in iran, i was so eager to take off my roosari and knee-length overcoat to reveal my americanness and blue jeans that i stripped on the return flight before the pilot even started the engine. i was kindly reminded that we were still on iranian soil by a friendly german stewardess. muslim fanatics and nazis on my back! i just wanted to be home, sleeping, safely.

back home, if indeed san jose can even be referred to as "home," i find myself wanting to travel and itching to live out of a suitcase or backpack once again.

there is something about doing your taxes while eating dreyer's ice cream on a sunday night that just seems so damn boring. i crave adventure! i even miss hostels. particularly the one in dublin that was right next to the train station. the twelve-bedded room, the belligerent british teens and smelly unshaven americans.

i miss all of that! but, alex and i are also getting too old for hostels. what do we do? grow old gracefully and resign ourselves to air-conditioned hotel rooms?

this summer will be a busy time. i have to get a minor surgery. we're getting married. alex is going to costa rica with his brother. we have to find our own apartment in san francisco. i have to find a new job. i want to take a couple of classes at a local university.

i hope that we can take a short trip together, too. i have been somewhat quiet about this desire to alex as the last time we traveled, we nearly broke up, but i really can't wait to go somewhere.

during christmas, we're going to morocco to discover just how much authenticity and culture we shat on in our version of a moroccan wedding. i'm sure it will be humbling.

2006-04-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

watermelon juice and snot-encrusted tissues. tylenol and chicken-free chicken soup. i'm sick. feeling like crap. alex is preparing said soup downstairs. nothing exciting to report. alex and chau and I did go out to a moroccan restaurant the other night. i realized that we're planning a moroccan wedding, but we hadn't tried moroccan food in ages. i've been to dah maghreb in los angeles, which i always remembered as ridiculously over-priced. but the other night we went to el menara in san jose. it was physically attractive, but the food was relatively disgusting. i decided that their chicken was dry and the food flavorless because it was a random wednesday evening (and they probably save their best food for friday and saturday night). moroccan food is always expensive and somewhat gross. why would taste buds crave the unification of meat and powdered sugar? i'm going to smuggle mangos and pretzels into my own wedding for my dinner. the poor guests though! haha

2006-04-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

after reading about recent events at Duke University involving the Lacrosse team and a female student, I can't help but think about UCLA. People keep mentioning that Duke is such an expensive university and therefore the segregation between ethnicities is strong. the truth is that UCLA, a public university, is also very self-segregated.

living on Gayley (frat row) and even spending one year living inside of a frat house (long story), offered me a significant amount of observation time. everything they say about Duke also seems true at UCLA: the divide between a privileged, leisure class (straight down to the daily attire in the greek culture of hawaiian shirts or t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops, even in the damn rain, and a similarily consistent " yo dude" vernacular) and a less-privileged black and brown underclass.

of course, there were many people in between that divide. there were normal, down-to-earth middle class kids or humble rich kids, but for various reasons, the arrogant, loud, beer-guzzling, and developmentally-challenged-in-politeness-and-social-graces greek culture were the most memorable. a lot of economic and political power was disguised behind the illusion of leisure.

it was almost as if the economic and political power enabled the casualness and the easy-going my-parents-will-get-me-out-of-this demeanor. there is an archetype of a spoiled, rich kid who carelessly crashes her car or steps on the four-hundred dollar dress in her closet. there's also an archetype of a gang member who only wears crisp white t-shirts and irons his dickies to the point of absolute perfection. i don't know if it's about pride or about appreciating what you have, but there is a relevance in the different archetypes.

maybe it was only a matter of time before "the elite, drunk, and violent" culture of privilege conflicted with a less privileged group or culture. i mention privilege because the rape-victim's choice of occupation may have had something to do with the exorbitant tuition costs at her university.

2006-04-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

i went to court today to contest a speeding ticket. i got a ticket one morning for going 65 on the 87 freeway. the speed limit, as far as i know, is freakin' 65! isn't it? for whatever reason, it is virtually impossible to find this information. internet, CHP, San Jose Police Department, etc, no one knows.

you would think that i could just use my own two eyes, but i can't seem to locate a damn speed limit sign on the 87 (at least nowhere near the part of it that i drive on to get to the 280 south toward east san jose).

i had to plead "not guilty" today. of course, i had questions, problems, hesitation.

"Your honor, I'd like to plead "guilty" for driving 65, but "not guilty" for breaking the speed limit."

Seems reasonable to me, but I sensed a collective sigh of annoyance from the judge and a few others. Whoops. I'm sorry that I don't know the exact protocol for this crap. Would you rather revert back to the insurance-less driving deadbeat dad who spoke of his scheduling conflict with child support court? He seemed to know his way around here just fine.

One thing is clear: policemen in court are so nice and helpful. They offered advice and told me that I have a good case. I've always wanted to be a lawyer. Can't wait for the court date! Bring it on! The angel, or fairy, whatever, of justice.

I'm waiting!

2006-03-28T23:57:00.000-08:00

i found out this week that my grandmother, who lived in iran, passed away. i feel horrible for my mother. my mom adored my grandma and she's always carried a residual guilt for leaving her when we left Iran over 20 years ago. my mom is flying to iran tomorrow and i don't know when she will return. this is altering the july 1, 2006 wedding plans too.

2006-03-25T10:29:00.000-08:00

last night i dreamt that i was eating a vanilla cup of yogurt, the kind in a small plastic cup. when i got to the bottom of the cup and it was empty, i saw a speck of yogurt morph into a white worm and it started wiggling or worm-walking in my yogurt. i checked the expiration date on the bottom of the cup and it said may 2008. what the hell! what does this mean?

2006-03-23T15:22:00.000-08:00

www.posthipchick.blogspot.com

the lovely nicole is having a baby! any day now! wow. i love the idea of young parents who move to the city instead of away from it when they are expecting. that's the kind of thing that restores your faith in humanity. i'm easily pleased these days.

2006-03-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

looking for lactic acid? it's in my quads. all of the lactic acid in the world is having a party in my quads. i haven't worked out in weeks and i went to the gym on saturday for two hours! because i am very stupid, i decided to do 60 lunges with six pound weights in each hand. i can still barely move. "that's build up of lactic acid." it actually feels like a ton of bricks. i look like frankenstein when i'm walking down a flight of stairs--arms erect, no bending in the knees. poor alex had to endure my constant utterances of "ohh, ah, ouch, ah! ughh, eek.." while we were walking around berkeley last night to a 'masters of persian classical" music concert. somehow vocalizing the pain makes it easier to endure. and i could barely walk around school today, too. strangely enough, for the first time i think i know what it feels like to waddle, pregnancy or daffy duck style waddle.

2006-03-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

I am a supporter of KIPP schools. There, I said it. I admitted it. I can relax now.

I know that there is a lot of intelligent and thoughtful critique of these schools on blogs, inside faculty rooms, and inside university lecture halls. BUT, the question remains, if leyla jr. was of middle school age in a low-income district, where would i send her? I'd send her to KIPP without guilt.

If I could afford it, i'd send her to some leftist hippie school where the students finger paint their math answers on recycled hemp grass under a wondrous, shining sun. I'd send her to a place with a deep intellectual and artistic culture where her peers would have names like Moonbeam and Malcolm and Che.

But the fact is that if I live in San Francisco, I will probably live in a low-income area such as the Mission or even Bayview (if they could just clean up the damn air). I have no guilt (no, really) in saying that I'd enroll her in a KIPP-like school. I don't care that they aren't public in the truest sense or in any sense. I don't care that they select the best students. I don't care that they might not be in the business of creating career teachers because the hours are insane and therefore nobody can maintain that schedule for a career lifespan. Notice that I do not celebrate these aspects of KIPP, but my unhappiness with those essential facts is not enough to trigger total disinterest in their system. (Aside: It should be criminal to compare the test scores of public schools--who are forced to take all kids--with KIPP schools. What a wholly unfair comparison!)

Most low-income schools in SF or Oakland or wherever struggle because of all of the so-called "bad kids," the gang issues, the machismo, the fighting, etc. (I don't actually think that they are "bad kids" of course, but they are too high maintenance. They suck up so much energy and their academic or behavioral fate in May or June, after the said sucking-up of educators' and administrators' energy, is rarely pleasant or hopeful.)

If you were a parent, wouldn't you deliberately attempt to remove your child from that type of environment? I would. It isn't enough to have a theoretical or academic distaste for KIPP. One must imagine being a parent in that community. What would you do?

And I, for one, don't have a fetishistic love of public education. I grew up in South Orange County, a place with some of the best performing public schools in the state, and I watched them churn out generations of BMW-driving, latte-sipping, corporate ladder-climbing consumer types. True, that is more a fact about Orange County than public schools, but why be so mystical about public education? The mysticism and the beauty should lie in their working--in their productive functionality--not in the mere fact of their existence. Most people applaud public schools, true public schools, for a willingness to educate--or babysit--all students, but it is that very same willingness that might be signaling their demise.

At my school, we have an amazing faculty who are so well-skilled and knowledgeable about teaching. The problems are not with our school, but with all of the larger issues of poverty and parental irrelevance (truly, I think some parents are irrelevant when it comes to disciplining their own kids). Hence the state of emergency: academic language acquisition to class to culture to single-parent families to poor diets to lack of respect for women to thug-life hiphop to behavior problems to etc., well, how many public schools can accept all of this with open arms and succeed? Somedays I wish that my school was a KIPP-like environment capable of pleasantly dismissing or expelling students. The removal of some students would only serve to improve the quality of life and education for the "good kids." Why aren't the parents of the "good kids" irate?

There are so many hindrances to success: from culture to poverty to poor parenting to noncredentialied teachers (like ME, sorry). The genders should probably be segregated in middle schools, particularly in my district. A close to no-tolerance policy ought to be adopted for fighting or defiance. I never believed in these things as a college student; it is only after 2.5 years teaching here that I find myself searching for stricter discipline, more structure, and a heightened state of parental responsibility. We are teaching in states of emergency. Eighth graders reading at the fourth grade level? We are screwed.

Now, since it is a state of emergency, since the ship is sinking, isn't it tolerable to take the kids and parents who have displayed eagerness and motivation and create a special environment for them such as KIPP? Our devotion should not be to systems or bureaucracies, but to the students and families of the community. How will these communities change if it isn't from within? Consider all of these low-income schools, across grade levels, across the city, the state, the nation, and think about how much attention kids who essentially don't want to be there get for their defiance or behavior? This time and energy spent on these kids only serves to screw the entire community in instructional time and intellectual development. Oh look, what's that? It's just a middle school student from Saratoga or Marin who wrote a thesis paper on inter-cultural disputes among the Maori in New Zealand. Allow me to get back to "lecturing-with-love" to Jose and the importance of why it's not actually cool to grab a girl's ass in PE.

I'm exaggerating I know. I will probably disagree with all of this tomorrow morning. Yeah, I know that behavior isn't perfect at KIPP (or in Marin), but I cannot help but think about how many minutes and hour are wasted in behavior management in low-income inner-city schools.
That would be a good Math problem for kids to figure out.

I'm impatient. I don't want these kids and these communities to be at the bottom of the political, social, or economic structure for ever.

Oh, that other thing. Structure. Equality. Intelligence. I can't believe I'm admitting this: I don't think people are equal in intelligence. I'm sorry. I don't. Please don't call me Rush Limbaugh because I really don't want to be associated with him, or that. The veteran teachers at my school have helped me realize that you really can't "get" to all the kids: that all kids are not college-bound. That sounds cruel. Why does that sound so cruel? It shouldn't. Is there anything inherently degrading about being a house painter or a mechanic? No. Is there anything morally superior about being a real estate agent or a stock broker or a small businesswoman? No.

Perhaps KIPP schools will lead the way to a system where the most capable (yeah I said it, kids aren't equal in intelligence, ok?) and motivated students are tracked into academic achievement and the other students are tracked toward trade schools. Would that be so horrible--to work with the hands? Would it? Am I supposed to pretend that an 8th grader who is reading at the 3rd grade level can be accepted into, and do well, in college? Will they graduate? Will they transfer from the community college two miles down the road from their parent's apartment? God knows that I don't think it's that important if they actually transfer: life should be about the possibility, the pursuit, the journey. I just can't help but think that this illusion that everyone can do it, or that every 'ghetto school' across the land could morph in a Mathson, is actually going to hurt the most capable kids, instead of uplifting everyone together as the latter is virtually impossible in life. Yes, kids are cleaner slates during first of second grade, but by the time you are fourteen, how likely is it that you will do a complete turnaround? How often does that happen? How often does a student who was four years behind grade level end up graduating from college? If it isn't often enough, then other alternatives ought to be explored.

Do you hate me now?

I feel myself searching for someone to blame. George Bush? Adam Smith? Osama? Who? What color code signifies the emergency of our education system? What is the remedy for this[un]natural disaster? My father always tells me that blame is a useless enterprise. He's probably right.

I admit that the discipline strategies, all in the name of creating a culture of academic achievement, in KIPP offend my bleeding-heart liberal sensibilities. But do they actually offend the people in the low-income communities? Assertiveness and demands don't make me feel warm and fuzzy, but they might work inside a "ghetto culture" where there is less patience for ambiguity and nicety.

2006-03-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

dear santa, i know that it's not technically christmas. in fact, i know that i'm not even a 'registered' christian, but can you please buy me one of these www.dyson.com?

hello?

2006-03-06T07:32:00.000-08:00

heard on NPR this morning: by 2010, half of the children in North and South America will be overweight, holy crap!

2006-03-05T00:03:00.000-08:00

alex is sick. luckily his temperature went from 99.2 to 96.4 in two hours. but is that something to celebrate? what an odd and quick temperature change. he must be chewing on ice.

he lives in this so-called "railroad style" apartment in north beach. you enter the place and are faced with the world's longest hallway. the bathroom is one of the first rooms "off the 'road" and his bedroom is at the very end. i always complain, at least under my own breath, about the difficulties associated with this distance, when you are buzzed off alcohol or just plain exhausted at two, three, or four a.m. and the urge to pee hits your body like a jolt of lightening. incidentally, i also complain about living in a house in san jose wherein i am required to walk all the way down the stairs to use the bathroom. talk about teeth brushing neglect on friday or saturday nights!

i always tell alex that the bathroom has to be a breath away in our future pad in SF. i want to wake up in the morning and get out of bed and roll a green pea or a grape from the foot of the bed and have it land into the bathroom. THAT close, yesir. alex just sort of nods when i mention things like that and a part of me thinks that he isn't even listening.

this morning we woke up to go to Trader Joe's and to move my car (because, after all, a life in san francisco is occasionally little more than a game of musical cars). he didn't feel well, but he bundled himself up and we trudged on. after the shopping, he passed out in his bed. hooded sweatshirt over his ears, hooded jacket over this, bundled up inside a bedroom that was at least 70 degrees. he woke up hours later, apparently needing to pee, and whispered/mumbled: "The bathroom needs to be close. The bathroom needs to be close." I could barely hear him and it took me at least ten minutes to figure out that he was talking about our future apartment. it was very hilarious.

2006-02-26T21:51:00.000-08:00

alex and I are immersed in this fine little business of wedding planning. this is stressful business. i used to chuckle to myself when people would describe their wedding planning as stressful. "what's the big deal?!!" i wondered. i don't know what the big deal is now, but there are just so many details, so many opinions, so many concerns.

we want a moroccan wedding at my parent's house in orange county. something cheap and comfortable, but intimate and dark and decadent in a red-hued moroccan way. his parents want a catholic wedding inside a church. my parents want some big, fancy, typical persian-girl monstrosity of a celebration in a shi-shi hotel (yawn).

alex thinks that we can ask his mother to sew 200 pillows, instead of buying them. i tell him that third world women are sacred. that our mothers are not sweatshop workers. that it's a form of exploitation.

"No.. she likes it."

Um, right. We ended up compromising, buy some, make some, blah blah blah.

In a strange way, I feel like a bridezilla of a different sort--not the kind who wants things nicer and bigger and prettier and fancier, but the kind who wants less, less, less. . .in the face of my parent's vision.

But both bridezillas are annoying. Both are based on a "me, me, me"-ness. There are aspects of persian culture that I can't change. The showiness, the pretension, the desire for something like classical beauty, not an orientalized, blue-moroccan candles flickering in the wind, people eating-with-their-hands kind of beauty. I feel like the Other craving the Other. The exotic craving the exotic. Something is wrong here. And understandably, my parents are left wondering what their friends will think about their daughter's nutso-bohemian extravaganza.

Ah, and the food. It's expensive.

And the registry. We are thinking about selecting five or six non-profits and "registering" with them, asking guests to donate an amount of their choice to one of the non-profits. Groups like Doctors without Borders or the Free Mumia people. At the same time, we know that not everyone (such as older family members and adults or our more conservative friends) will appreciate this. And hey, I could register for material possessions like everybody else. I want to Free Mumia, but I could also use a new juicer. The struggle between who we are and who we want to be is ever present.

Eloping never sounded better.

2006-02-22T20:16:00.000-08:00

the bungalow in the woods was so beautiful. i even entered a "hot tub" (something I previously associated only with the nascar-watching, beer-guzzling underclass), but hot dawg, I love hot tubs!

the property owner kept referring to it as a "jacuzzi," but i don't know, is it the same thing? what's the difference?

I went hiking-walking, ate, watched DVD'S, took bubble baths, and hung out with some Watsonville locals who prompted Alex to buy the "delicious!" sausages at the famous Corralitos market.

one curious thing: our 3.5 mile walking route to the market down Buzzard Lagoon put us into contact with "Big Skye Ranch" and their ginormous freaking confederate flag hanging out front. I was both repulsed and attracted; what kinds of people live here?! how bizarre!

we heard that there was also a buddhist monastery inside those same woods. i wondered if the two camps ever mingled.

this bungalow was so amazing though. you can't beat seclusion and cleanliness matched with wireless internet, a big screen television, an IPod hook-up, satellite jazz stations, and a man-made deck high up in a cluster of redwood trees.

there was one incident wherein we noticed the absence of a dial tone on the telephone. of course, of course, this was only because a psychotic charles manson-esque killer had clearly cut off our phone lines in preparation for killing us. of course.

an aside, and a feverish sigh of relief: Alex has no expectation or interest in asking me to change my name! yay! I'd hate to let somebody down if they were really into that. He doesn't care! I can't imagine loosing or modifying Momeny. it just seems so contrived. I know I know, what's in a name? a rose by any other name blah blah blah, but somewhere along the line, in my relativism married to nihilism married to existentialism, changing my name became synonymous with cutting off my arm.

2006-02-19T11:24:00.000-08:00

my princess, otherwise known as alex, asked me to marry him last night! i said yes!

we also called our parents.

his mom: what? what?!

my dad: uhhhhh. . . uh. . .

my mom (who had slightly more time to process this information): what are you going to wear? do you want to have the aghd* at our house? do you want me to decorate? i can do beautiful decorations. you know that. can you have a baby for me? when will you have a baby?

his mom: hum, ok, ok.. wow. will you have a baby? will you have a baby?

my dad, calling back, coming to his senses and consciousness: we are very happy for you. congratulations. congratulate alex. kiss yourselves for me.

i never would have imagined this two years ago--when i met alex at my middle school. he briefly taught there before heading over to Pala Middle School. sure, we spoke a few times, but that is all. he was in a committed relationship with a lovely woman from Spain and I was knee deep in this new thing called IEPS. "IEPS, what's that?!"

our first date was one year ago (give or take a few days, neither one of us is precisely sure). he came over to watch a brazilian documentary about a hostage crisis on a bus.

now there are so many questions: when will the wedding celebration be? will we elope? how many kids? when will we have kids? will we allow them to watch commerical television? will they be vegetarian or not? (Alex: NOT!!) where will we live? will I continue teaching or will I attempt to fulfill my latest quasi-dream of becoming a therapist? can we invite everyone we know? will it be inside a church? (probably no) and etc etc etc.

i think we'll lay off the questions and just enjoy the experience. things have a way of figuring themselves out. (spoken by a true first-worlder who never had the horrific experience of being dragged away to a refugee camp or makeshift prison in the desert.)

*traditional persian wedding ceremony

2006-02-15T07:21:00.000-08:00

ski week could be renamed overpriced-yet-lovely-cottage-in-the-redwoods-week. except that we can't afford the entire week, so 48 hours will do. notice the theme of "unaffordability" on this blog lately? from houses to cabins to mortgages, relative poverty must be a theme on teacher blogs all across America.

so the man at the management company for the glorious cabin was sure to point out the wireless internet and the plasma television and the super deluxe DVD player which doubles as a back scratcher and espresso maker during it's OFF time, but i'm just like "Is there a HEATER? Is there a heater? Huh, is there?!"

Luckily there is. And a grand piano! And a cute, small kitchen for Alex's culinary delights and Leyla's strategic microwave button-pushing.

2006-02-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

from BBC News

A leading Iranian newspaper has launched a competition asking people to submit cartoons about the Holocaust. The Hamshahri Daily says the competition is to test the boundaries of free speech for Westerners.

Nik Kosar, a former cartoonist for Hamshahri, said he thought the competition was the wrong approach. "It's a bad reaction to a bad action coming from the Danish newspaper," he told the BBC.

this is so ridiculous! if these morons in power would spend time in actual public service to their people, then life for Iranians might actually get better. this contest is so passive-aggressive, so wasteful, and it reveals a total enslavement to the West. postmodernism and post-structuralism taught us that everything is relative, everything is in flux, everything is a construction, everything carries a sense of arbitrariness, contingency, and power. ok, great, we get it, next? why be so obsessed with pointing out contradictions in the west? there is no one else in the world that you have to convince! any thinking person doesn't actually believe George Bush or Bill Clinton when they talk about morality or justice or fairness, but that's what goverments and politicans do! sweet jesus, governments always claim morality and justice on their side. we all know that they are not actually just. it's called PR. move on. do something for your people, provide services, resources, jobs, freedom. SHIT.

2006-02-12T11:26:00.000-08:00

scene: alex watching basketball on television. five minutes pass. ten minutes pass. fifteen minutes pass. sea lions on television. i return: "I thought you were watching basketball."

alex: yeahhh, but the sea lions are dying.

(whimper, whimper)