Madrid Dia Uno

Lessons learned:

Do not, after spending an entire day moving all your worldly possessions TWICE, do NOT try and save money on a hotel by picking one an hour walk from the metro.

Do not attempt to use a wheely suitcase...without wheels.

Do not, after getting a better suitcase, throw out the broken suitcase without checking that you've taken everything out of it.  You might be missing something important.  Like your goddamn passport.

Sitting in the middle of the middle row of seats on a 7 hour flight SUCKS.

Related: If you find yourself in that situation, take TWO tylenol PMs.  Because unconsciousness makes everything better.

But I'm here.  I'm jetlagged, a little sick and a lot confused, but I'm here.  It's a really beautiful city.  Things that surprised me were how different the city looks from anything I've encountered before.  It definitely has an old feel, with narrow streets and cobblestones and all that retro crap.  Also, people in Madrid either don't speak English or don't want to speak English, so you either gesture frantically or spout broken Spanish at them.  Or both.  It's both for me.

I ordered something called a tosta which I can't even really describe.  It's essentially toast, smeared with sauce and covered with something.  In this case, a big heaping slab of cured ham.

Oh, one more lesson: Asking for tylenol will get you a confused look.  Asking for "Tee-len-ol" will get you what you want.  

Work with me, Spain, come on.

Esta cambiando

I'm still bad at blogging.  But this time I have an excuse.  Well, four excuses.

Number one: My job ended.  Well, I guess I ended my job.  I hate to say "I quit my job" because that implies a sort of romanticism that just isn't there.  I'm not riding off into the sunset.  Unless that sun in setting in Baltimore and involves a $60,000 debt.

Number two: I moved out of my house.  Nothing too exciting there, just kind of weird to think how quickly everything moves in life.

Number three: I signed a lease on a house in Baltimore.  It's not great.  I might even have been able to do better, but honestly, having everything set up and just being able to move in and start school...kind of worth it to me.

Number four: I'm in Madrid.

Que sopresa, eh? Aqui estas, leyendo mi blog y BAM! Este esta escrito en Espana!

So, for the next month or so I'm going to be updating about my trip.  Because, honestly, there aren't enough travel blogs in the world.  For that matter, there's not enough writer blogs in the world.  For that matter, there's not enough politically motivated soapboxy exhortation blogs in the world.

I'm like a pioneer of cliche.

Hasta luego!

Rollback

So today's my second to last day at work (it would be my third to last if I weren't a lazy bastard taking tomorrow off.)

In times like this, little things take on meaning.  Little things like deleting stuff off my desktop.  You know, both my digital desktop and my analog desktop.  I look at the files I have scattered around and unearth months of work.  I dig out the roots I've set in and I want to watch the gap I leave heal itself.  Watch the machinery turn on regardless.

These things happen.
And they happen without ceremony.

We are always accelerating, entrenching ourselves and digging ourselves out.  My files are scattered all over the hard drive now.  It's the last days work to pack them into bundles, zip them up and copy them over.  What needs to be saved is saved.  The surplus spills out, gets lost in trashcans.  Somewhere there is a pile of shredded paper with bits of my name on it.

The B of a research credentialing document.
The E of a IRB memo.
The N of an unfinished poem.

Our paper trails are our threads of Fate,
We spool them out until our packet runs dry.
The printer beeps beeps beeps.
Waits to be reloaded.  Restart.  Renew.

I'm bad at blog.

I was doing so good there for a while.  Had some regular writing shit, some regular political shit, sprinkled some nonsensical mspaint and randomness.  And now? A whole week without an update? What kind of immoral, heartless monster am I?

I guess I just assumed the rapture was coming.  There's no blogs in Heaven.  Or maybe it's like the Islam thing with 72 virgins.  Except it's 72 blogs.

Or 72 sturgeons.

Actually, because I have too much time on my hands, I looked up the whole 72 virgins thing.  Apparently it refers to the "Houri" which are described as virgins with "swelling breasts" that "do not sag" and that they that are "delightfully passionate" with their husbands.

Also, there's an interpretation that suggests that, rather than 72 virgins, virtuous Muslims are promised 72 delicious raisins.

Well, that was a quality post.  Job well done.

Fun with pseudoscience

This is why people distrust science.

Now to be fair, Psychology Today isn't exactly the foremost authority on the science.  They've featured such rigorous scientific studies as "Interacting with Women Makes Men Stupid" and "Why Politicians Get Laid More".  But honestly, you'd think there'd be one person on the editor's staff that would raise the red flag at "Why are Black Women Less Attractive?"

I'm all for pop science.  Stuff like Malcolm Gladwell and Jonah Lehrer make for great reads that are both fascinating and accessible.  But dumbing down science into sensational, completely misleading snippets of kinda-facts? That's just playing into the media's view that the American public is a bunch of slack-jawed yokels.

This article is particularly damaging because it further emphasizes the stigma that psychology has the interest of Great White Father in mind.  The National Alliance on Mental Illness rattles off a list of how African Americans under-utilize and are under-served by mental health services.  And these shmucks at Psychology Today go off running an article by some asshole who'd already gotten in hot water over saying that people are poor because they're stupid and advocating nuclear holocaust against the Middle East.

Come on.  There are people proving memory isn't written in permanent ink.  Others proving that all it takes to improve your condition is to breathe differently.  Others working on solutions to our deepest and most fundamental psychological issues.

And you're talking about whether people really do, in fact, like big butts?

How to heckle a poet

This is a fun word:

Poetaster - An inferior poet.

It's like Poet + Disaster.  Poetaster.

That's right, from now on, every time you hear a bad poet, you stand up and say "Give it up, Poetaster!"

Or, "What a poetaster!"
Your rhymes are a tragedy!
Your rhythm a travesty!
You're the Chernobyl of pith,
The Hindenberg of myth,
You're on stage in your underwear,
While your wife's off having an affair!

Or something like that.  It'd actually be really hilarious if someone came up to me and called me this. 

And by hilarious, I mean traumatizing.

Gettin' Slammed

So last night was the Beltway Grand Slam! Ten poets went in.  Four poets came out.  Followed by the other six, who were somewhat disappointed.

Congrats to the new team, Joseph LMS, Chris August, Twain Dooley and Drew Law.  They all earned it!

As for me, I came in 8th, which isn't terrible, but I really wish I had done better.  I definitely went much too fast with my first piece and managed to redeem myself somewhat with the second.  But oh well, next time! Back with a vengeance!

How a Republican deals with obvious public disapproval

So there was this.  Where Republicans (And at least one Democrat) proposed a bill that would only allow funding for abortion in cases of "forcible rape".  Meaning that a woman would only be able to get health care funding for abortion if they were raped forcibly.  So no funding for any of that friendly rape, where someone playfully has sex with a woman against her will.

Of course, women in general rose up against that bullshit and it got removed.  One of the Democrats sponsoring the bill said: "The language of H.R. 3 was not intended to change existing law regarding taxpayer funding for abortion in cases of rape, nor is it expected that it would do so."

Which is the political equivalent of "Oh, well, we didn't really want it anyway."

Now, having faced a powerful public outcry, you'd think the Republicans would back down from this issue and try and go another route towards turning women into chattel.  But then you'd be overestimating Republican resourcefulness (and intelligence).

Yesterday, Republicans (and 16 anti-choice Democrats) passed a bill that redefines rape coverage for "forcible rape", imposes higher taxes on women, creates "abortion audits" in the IRS and bans DC-funded abortions.

I'm trying to think of a way I can write the sound that this made come out of me.  It was a combination of "Whaaaaat?!" and "AGH!!" and "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?"

Something like WhaaaarggghhARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!

I'm not exactly sure what Republicans (and 16 Democrats) are trying to do with this.  I feel the need, by the way, to add the Democrats part, because these 16 should be immediately impeached and chased out of their state with fire and pitchforks.  That may sound extreme, but SO IS THIS FUCKING BILL.

It's just confusing.  Republicans have shown a strange dedication to doing exactly what the majority of people are against.  Not that this is surprising, but they seem so focused on digging themselves a hole it's surprising that they even bothered getting elected.

These people?
They are the enemy of women.
Ever since they came out of one,
They've been divided,
Raised in households where MAN WAS KING
WOMAN COOK DINNER
MAKE SEX
RAISE BABIES.
It's a tragedy
Watching them get educated
Watching them get jobs
Do them better
And make more money,
What a twisted world we live in.

These succubi shred our moral fabric
As they shatter glass ceilings,
They wear the tattered fragments as bikinis
Show a body they are no longer ashamed of,
While these men fashion legislative burqas,
Yearn for the days when women processed anxiety disorders
Into delicious homemade pies.
Left them cooling on windowsills
So they could check on Billy and Sally,
Who play house in the backyard,
Billy beats Sally silly,
While she collects the broken fragments of what used to make her human.

No, Sally,
You are no human
You are woman.

These people?
They are afraid of women.
They see vaginas with fangs,
Framed by unshaven legs,
Unbound breasts.
They create perfumes to mask that humanity,
The smell that, yes,
They're human.
More than human, they are mothers.
They hold within them the spark of all life,
And for all mankind's Parliaments and Presidencies,
Man will always just be seed
A woman is the Earth.

So they flounder,
Throw law when it works,
Punches when it doesn't,
But the Earth is a hard thing to escape.

Besides.  Liberated women are better in bed.

Let's get together and celebrate someone dying.

So Osama is dead.


LET'S PARTY!!! WHOOO!

I don't really get it.  Someone's gonna need to explain it to me.  We spend something like $400 billion in Afghanistan, lose a little over 2,000 soldiers, kill about 20,000 Afghani people and we're celebrating that, whew, what a relief, we killed some 54-year-old religious nutbag?

This is not a time for celebration.  This is time for solemn reflection on what we've lost and a reevaluation of if, in fact, this was worth it.  What message did we send to al Qaeda with this? A former CIA agent said back in 2010 al Qaeda is stronger now than before 9-11.  Whatever lesson we think we're teaching al Qaeda might be lost behind the lines of new recruits streaming in.

But what really gets to me is all those images of people partying in DC and NYC like someone's death is something to celebrate.  Our nation ended a life last night, and I'm hard-pressed to understand why that's worth celebrating.  I mean, I can understand why people want to celebrate.  We've been at war for 10 years, spending billions while a huge portion of us can barely afford medicine and rather than progress, we've just seen the progressive decay of both countries we invaded under corrupt and ineffectual governments.  We need something to celebrate, just like we needed something to celebrate when Bush pulled one of these:

But that doesn't make it right.

Death is terrible.  It is the end of us, it is where we become powerless and are reduced to little more than the wood, earth and stone we regard as tools.  Our agency is gone and everything that makes us, us has vanished and will never return.  Osama was not a good person, but he was a human being.  And that we can celebrate having put at end to his being human just shows that something's gone wrong in these ten years.  Something that resulted in the kill teams in Afghanistan.  The Abu Ghraib torture in Iraq.  The My Lai massacre in Vietnam.  The Japanese internment camps on our own soil.

War is unnatural.  It is an abomination.  And it causes what we're seeing all around us.  Poverty, mental illness, injury, death.  And after 10 years, it's taken a toll on our psyche as a nation.  So here we are.  Celebrating someone dying.

We lost this war a while ago.  Now I'm just wondering else what else we're going to lose.