What What?

I had kind of a weird day. It was one of those days where I had to return graded papers to my students, so of course that meant I was up until 6am frantically finishing them after not having budgeted my time appropriately over the past several days. Lack of sleep had me fighting through my day all tired and foggy and nauseous and I accidentally went to pick up some equipment from Classroom Support Services that I'm actually not supposed to check out until next Tuesday (it's written in my planner! And I still went on the wrong day! The CSS people were like, "Um...we have on our records that you are coming to pick up the DVD player for that class on the 27th?" And I whip out my planner and am all, "Ooohhhhhhh yeahhhhhh. You're right. See you next week!" Whoops). Then I committed an academic faux pas later in the day that I don't want to go into right now. It's totally fine now, but I felt like a jackass at the time.

Anyway, here are some things that reached through my fog and made my day:

• The weather was gorgeous AND I saw my first cherry blossoms of the season.


• I caught myself getting cranky with a poster hanging in the student union building and totally cracked myself up. The poster was for some recycling program and said in big letters, "Get in the game!" and before I even realized I was looking at the poster or what it was about, I thought, "YOU get in the game," and then I realized what I was doing and started laughing. I have no problem with recycling! Or games! It was such a needlessly cranky thought that I couldn't help but be amused!


• I spent my (student-free, for today) office hours catching up with Television Without Pity and The Stranger, both of which had me laughing to the point of tears.

And, of course, there's this:

Just try not to laugh. I dare you.

Out With You, Moody Dispair!

I have been inexplicably sad this week and I'm sick of it. There is just no reason for that kind of thing (unless it's some sort of retribution from the universe for that last entry I posted...sorry universe!). I was so deep in my blues yesterday that I cried for an hour! And nothing was really wrong! What a waste of energy!

Anyway, I picked up the latest copy of The Stranger (love!) and was elated to see my horoscope. Here's what it said:

PISCES: (Feb 19-March 20): I believe you're climbing up of the primordial ooze for the last time. You're done! Never again will you be fully immersed in the stinky depths of hell on earth! Never again will moody despair comprise more than 49 percent of your worldview. From now on, you will be smarter about how to avoid unnecessary pain and misery. You will also be a better escape artist. Now go buy yourself a graduation present.

How exciting is that? Now I just have to decide whether to buy:

• a pony.
• a new house with exposed beams where I can hang a trapeze.
• the world a Coke, OR
• some performance-related self-esteem.

Hooray for learning to avoid pain and misery! It's a brand new day!

An Unholy Alliance?

I just finished watching an episode of Primetime about polygamy in Centennial Park, Arizona. Like the infamous FLDS enclave of Colorado City, Arizona, Centennial Park is a small community in the middle of nowhere where all of the families practice polygamy. Unlike Colorado City, however, Centennial Park isn't wrapped up in corruption and child abuse scandals. In fact, to illustrate the difference, the Primetime piece began with some footage taken in Colorado City. Or at least it was attempted footage, as almost all of the clips they showed were of angry sheriffs and residents hurling insults at the interviewers and literally slapping the cameras away.

In contrast, the Centennial Park residents welcomed the cameras and were all about showing the world that they are happy and well adjusted, that the children are not abused, and that the wives are not oppressed. Most of the families live in huge McMansions, funded with the help of low-interest loans from church leaders and voluntarily put together by members of the community. The kids go to technologically up-to-date schools, the families watch television, and even their weird Little-House-on-the-Prairie clothing isn't quite as prairie-ish as one might expect. The high school kids all go to dances and listen to hiphop, but none of them are (or at least admit to being) interested in premarital sex. The wives note that they are "placed" with husbands, but they are free to back out if they do not wish to marry the men they are placed with. They are also free to leave the community if they no longer feel it's the best thing for them.

Now, one can absolutely argue (as I often will) that oppressed women who have never experienced any other reality are not likely to reject their oppression. And it is a tenet of FLDS that women must live under the rule of their husbands, they can't wear pants, they're meant to stay at home and raise the children, etc., so one could definitely argue that they're not exactly the most empowered women you'll ever meet. But then again, just as it shouldn't necessarily be the business of wealthy American feminists to go over to Africa and tell tribal women they are doing something wrong in the way they live their lives just because they aren't like "us", maybe we should leave polygamists alone to do their thing too. One of the high school students made a really good point. She said something like, "In the rest of the country, men cheat on their wives and have illegitimate children so often that it's almost normal. Here, men have relationships with multiple women, but they stay with those women and take care of them and the children that those relationships produce. And that's against the law?"

That's not to say I totally approve of everything the FLDS church is about. Their views on race, for example, are appalling. Apparently there is a passage in the Book of Mormon that is interpreted (even still) as follows: "the blacks" are descendants of Cain. Their dark skin is a curse that has been laid upon them as punishment for Cain's murder of Abel. To this I say, "Whaaaa???" Because really, for all these people think they know about Jesus (that he was married...to multiple wives, for example), you'd think they would have realized by now that he was, most likely, black. And if Cain and Abel ever really did exist, they were probably black too. Both of them. It's about geography and melanin. I'm just saying.

But back to what I was getting at. Sure, cults are scary, and FLDS comes off as kind of cultish, and I absolutely think Colorado City should be evacuated and destroyed for all of it's child bride-raping and corruption. But in places like Centennial Park, where people are happy and children are well fed and not abused and women are choosing (or feel that they are choosing) to live this way, is it really anyone's place to stop them? I mean, freedom of religion, right?

Apparently the government does feel it's their place to stop them. Polygamists, if caught, can receive prison sentences for their transgressions. Many polygamists, as anyone who watches Big Love can tell you, get around this limitation by making only their first marriages legal, while having subsequent marriages blessed by the church without getting any legal or judicial bodies involved. Still, that loophole doesn't take away from the fact that plural marriage is very much illegal in this country. In fact, many FLDS followers argue that the one reason the LDS church renounced polygamy 100 years ago is because the rejection of that particular tenet was a requirement for Utah to gain statehood. Since then, the LDS church has become more and more vocal about their separation from FLDS and in their condemnation of polygamy.

Meanwhile, a group of women in Centennial Park have begun organizing as activists for the legalization of plural marriage. They argue that it's their choice and that it's unconstitutional for the government to be involved in a private matter like marriage anyway.

Let's take a moment to think about how familiar that sounds...

They even have marches in DC where they chant things like, "Freedom to Choose" and "Love Makes a Family."

Hmmm...

So here's my batshit crazy idea. What if the gay and lesbian community and the polygamist community joined forces just this once to fight for marriage legalization? I mean, why might the powers that be reject the legalization of polygamy anyway? Because "we" have to protect the "sanctity of marriage"? Because marriage should be between a man and a woman? Because of something to do with the transfer of property from one generation to the next? Because children should be raised by one male and one female? These are the same arguments they use against legalizing marriage for us (gay people), and we already know these reasons are bullshit.

Of course, in order for this to work, the FLDS community would have to get over whatever atrocious lies they believe the Bible or Book of Mormon tells them about homosexual depravity. But at the same time, gays and lesbians would have to get over their assumptions about the depravity and backwardness of polygamists. I have to say, I can't see many of my radical feminist lesbian sisters jumping up to share their rainbow flags with FLDS women and their "sisterwives" (a term that still gives me the willies).

Still, it just might be crazy enough to work, right?

I'm so weirded out by myself right now, I can't even come up with a list to go with this post! Instead, here's a visual to keep you up nights:

YOU Shut Up

Comebacks That Just Don't Have the Same Power Anymore:

• I know you are but what am I?
• Then why don't you marry it?
• I don't shut up, I grow up (and when I look at you I throw up...etc.).
• You're a stupidhead.
• I'm telling.

Please feel free to add more in the comments section!

Things I Think But Don't Say: Grocery Store Edition

Some of you may know that I have some food issues. I have had said issues for as long as I can remember. I want to think they started when my parents put me on the first of many diets when I was 8 years old, but it's possible the issues began in utero, considering how weird my mother is about eating anything that isn't lettuce.

Anyhoo, food makes my anxiety climb that little scale from 1-10 they tell you to use when you're in therapy. Eating in front of people is particularly awful, but the awfulness depends on my eating companion(s). If I'm eating with Chrissymine, I'll be at about a 3 (and it took at least a year of living with her to get down to that level). If it's Pickolas, maybe a 2. My parents? 10. People I barely know and/or strangers? 8. And when it comes to people I don't know super well but whom I have some sort of affinity for and/or want to impress (aerial friends, for example), you can go ahead and crank it to 11.

Food shopping is another issue for me. I would just rather not have to do it. I lived many years of my life thinking it was not okay to ever admit hunger, so grocery shopping now seems like a huge transgression--the ultimate admission not only that I'm hungry, but that I ate enough of what I bought last time to need more.

Don't get me wrong, the food shopping thing (unlike the eating in front of people thing) has gotten better as I've grown older. As long as I am in total control of when I go to the store, as long as I shop alone, and as long as I go to the same store every time, I can pretty much handle it. I even look forward to it occasionally. But it would be much easier if I could be invisible for that hour or so every week.

I'm pretty much a machine when I get into the store. That's how I get through it. I'm totally focused, I know exactly what I need and where to find everything, and I'm gonna' get in, get out, and go home as quickly as possible. This method of shopping can, however, cause problems when I happen to show up to shop at the same moment when everyone else in Seattle has decided they need to shop too. The aisles get clogged, children cry, people get annoyed because my need to get around them causes them to lose track of what they were talking to their friends about on their cellphones, etc. It's on these trips that I become an absolutely vicious bitch from hell. But no one would know it because I'm only this way in my head, thank goodness.

Silent Rants at the Grocery Store

• "Look, it's really super that you and your entire sorority came to do your food shopping together, but do you all have to walk around in a huge, impermeable, giggling mass so that everyone else has to wait ten minutes while you discuss, vote on, and then ultimately decide against purchasing that particular brand of cookie dough before we can all get around you? I know a grocery store is like a foreign country to most of you, seeing as how you don't eat, but take a photo or something and move ALONG."

• "Um, ma'am? Excuse me? Do you see your child? Yeah, he's real cute or whatever, but he's LICKING the organic broccoli. No, it's not adorable. Excuse me while I go vomit."

• "Look, cashier person, I used to be a supermarket checker, so I know how it is. You're supposed to make conversation with the customers, make them feel valued, yadda yadda. But could you please REFRAIN from making comments about my purchases? I don't need you to draw attention to the fact that I'm buying several frozen dinners. I know I am! Did you think it was a mistake that they found their way into my cart? I hate to cook! I'm a terrible person! Just ring them up and let me get the hell out of here!"

• "Sorry, cashier person, one more thing. If you unpack my cart any slower? I'm gonna' shove you out of the way so I can do it myself. It's not rocket science, it's basic motor skills. Get with the program."

• "Your turn, bagger. Most of the time you all are great, but did you happen to notice that you just packed my eggs in a bag with three one-liter bottles of water? Didja? Do you think that's a good idea? And while we're at it, do you think you could take my sandwich out of the bag with the Clorox and the Drano? Call me crazy, but that just makes me a little nervous."

• (And finally, the thought that is on repeat the entire time I'm in the store on many occasions): "Holy fuck. You've gotta' watch where you're going, aimlessly-wandering-while-talking-on-the-phone shopper. Contrary to what you may believe, I don't personally think it's everyone else's job to dodge you, and I swear upon all that is good and holy, even though it's not polite and not the Seattle thing to do, I will refuse to move one of these days, and my cart will slam into yours so hard, you won't even remember you had a phone."

Grand Opening!

Welcome to my new home, bitches!

I started this blog about a week ago after unceremoniously leaving my former blog host, and I've kept it under wraps so far because I was feeling it out, making sure I had enough to say to warrant an attempt to get people to read it, moving my stuff in, doing some interior decorating...you know, the usual.

Now I'm all settled and I think I really like it here. So enjoy! Pull up a chair! Help yourselves to whatever's in the fridge! Hang out as long as you'd like!

Don't worry! I'm not usually this liberal with exclamation points!

While you're looking around, take a gander at this list!

What Did I Almost Call This Blog? (Dude, don't judge)

• Listapalooza
• Welcome to the Gunshow
• Tink's List-O-Rama
• ..........plink..........
• You are all out of control. Thank you.
• WHAM!
• Lists...it's what's for dinner.
• Lists...the other white meat.

...anyway...

I'm VERY happy with what I settled on, considering the above alternatives (ugh). The list thing, you should know, is a button I'll be pushing with every post, hence the references to them in many of the names I considered (okay, seriously? I'm not that much of a dork. I considered those names for, like, five seconds). The lists will be something to hang your hats on, if you will.

Yay new blog! I hope you like it a whole lot!

So What is This About a Circus? In Your Pocket?

I suppose I should explain.

I have been involved in circus arts in various ways for twelve years. It all began when my parents took my brother (Pickolas) and me to Club Med Eleuthra (I know, I know, it sounds like "urethra"...shut up) where I tried the flying trapeze for the first time. It was all over after that. Since then I have studied acrobatics, static aerials, and flying trapeze (among other things) at the San Francisco Circus Center, I trained and worked at Club Med Sandpiper for a little while after college, I am the director of circus arts at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the summers (this summer will be my seventh in the circus department and my fourth as director), and I am also involved in aerials here in Seattle (I take lessons and classes from Darty, a local aerialist, circus founder, budding scientist, broke philanthropist, and altogether lovely person).

Aside from my own participation in aerial arts, I consider myself a student of The Circus in other ways as well. I will watch, read about, or listen to anything that has anything to do with circus, whether that means dragging my partner (Chrissymine) to Vegas to spend a stupid amount of money I don't have just to see Cirque du Soleil again, or pouring over human interest pieces from obscure newspapers that people send me, knowing how much I like that stuff (the latest was a piece about a woman in St. Louis who celebrated her 80th birthday by performing an aerial hoop routine for her friends and family--rock on, old lady!).

Anyway, since that summer when I was 16 and I first tried the flying trapeze, I've been thoroughly smitten with the circus. It's brought me more joy than anything else, anywhere, ever. I carry that joy around with me (in my pocket?) all the time. And I suppose I'm coming to the realization that "circusing" should be a bigger part of my life than perhaps I've allowed it to be.

Over the past year (since I got back into circus hardcore), I've been throwing around ideas about starting a circus school. At first I was playing it off as a joke, but...um...I really want to do it. I don't know when or where this would happen, but it doesn't really matter because there aren't enough circus schools in the U.S. anyway. This would all take money and some sort of business sense, not to mention a coaching staff...and...yeah, I don't have any of those things. So it's at the level of a pipe dream for now. But it's still exciting.

Ready for today's list?

Ideas for my circus school:

1) We would definitely have flying trapeze classes. If my school was mainly a flying trapeze school, in fact, I could do it here in Seattle without stepping on the toes of Darty or SANCA (the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts) or anybody else. I can't believe there isn't a fly rig anywhere near here already, by the way. There's gotta' be a market for it, considering how Seattlites seem to be always looking for new and interesting (or dangerous) ways to be active.

2) There would be programs for kids and adults.

3) There would be special programs too, like "circus for weight loss" workshops for women (that was Chrissymine's idea), a kid's troupe, little camps for kids during school holidays, and free or cheap workshops for certain populations (special needs and/or at-risk kids, victims of domestic violence, etc.).

4) A lot of circus schools have tried and failed, but I would like, eventually, to start a multi-year professional development program that would offer students comprehensive training geared toward making them marketable to the big circuses, or to giving them the tools to start their own troupes.

5) How would I do all of this? By myself? No. My dream would fizzle without a terrific coaching staff. Even if it were just a flying trapeze school, I would be useless as a teacher once students got through the basics. Besides, I can't pull lines and work the board and catch at the same time! I'd have to figure out a way to recruit amazing people to be a part of this endeavor.

6) I want the school to be a fun place to hang out. I picture a large building with people up in the air and upsidedown on the floor and juggling stuff, and the parents of the troupers hanging out chatting while their kids rehearse, and first time flying trapeze students freaking out about being up so high while reminding their friends on the ground to take the lens cap off of the digital camera...the picture is a lot like other circus schools at which I've been a student, only somehow warmer.

Look, don't get me wrong. I get that this is wildly optimistic. I get that it's an almost-surely unattainable dream. But we all have to have dreams, right? Something has to keep me sane while I toil away for two and a half more years of graduate school.

Now to think of a name...Pocket Circus? Eh, that's a list for another time.

All Hopped Up on Caffeine and Bitterness

I got only 90 minutes of sleep last night. 90 MINUTES! Grading papers is hard! But allow me to back up for a moment...

I am a fifth year graduate student pursuing my PhD in Women Studies so I can go on to be a...professional feminist or something. I have plenty to say about being a graduate student (ask anyone who has said so much as, "How are you?" to me since September and they'll tell you how un-fond of school I am right now), but that's for later. First I want to talk about my job.

You see, I fund my grand academic marathon-of-punishment-that-has-no-end by serving as a TA within my department. This is a job I generally love and for which I get paid and have my tuition waived, so you know, it's pretty sweet.

Usually, for me, TAing (which is a term we all use as if it even makes sense as a verb when it totally doesn't...Teaching Assistant-ing? Yeah, not so much with the making of sense, but I have to move on or we'll never get anywhere with this, so bear with me and my linguistic idiosyncrasies), means attending whatever class the professor I'm hired to assist is teaching that quarter, grading papers, and sometimes teaching discussion sections once or twice a week. I looooove the teaching part. I don't so much love the grading part. Which means this quarter I have the kind of appointment I dread, in that I am only a grader, pretty much (I don't have any sections to teach this time around). I get the yucky part of the job without the fun part. Boo!

So my students turned in their first papers of the quarter about a week and a half ago, and I then began the task of: 1) Figuring out what the hell it was they were supposed to write; and 2) Actually grading the papers.

Just for some context, I had 55 papers to grade, and the page limit for this assignment was 6 pages.

Here's where the bitterness comes in. First of all, a few of my students managed to write six pages SINGLE SPACED. Who does that? That's ridiculous! Everyone knows at this level of education that single spaced papers are a bitch and a half to read and that assignments not specifying spacing are to be ASSUMED as requiring double spaced pages. (I feel like Napoleon Dynamite, all, "GOSH!").

Then there are the other annoyances I have to deal with. Behaviors that include: not using paragraphs (I know, right?), totally fucking around with MLA (which is just completely not okay in the presence of English degree-holding style-worshippers like yours truly), confusing the words "women" and "woman" (hold on, I'm still crying about this), and choosing not to make a discernible point at any moment in the paper.

Needless to say, it took a long time to wade through the mess. By yesterday, the day before the papers were due back in my students' eager little hands (okay, they're mostly 20 year-olds so that's kind of unfair, but I'm cranky so go with it), I still had a mountain of papers left to grade. At around noon this mountain began valiantly competing with an equally high mountain of panic, building somewhere on or about my sternum, around the very real possibility that I would never finish on time. I had to be a machine in order to get it all done.

Which brings us to today's list.

Yesterday, while simultaneously grading papers, I:

1) Consumed 2 liters of water (yay! I finally met my daily water goal for once!), one Diet Mountain Dew, and one Diet Cherry Coke.

2) Entertained my dog.

3) Hated life.

4) Iced my elbow.

5) Watched (well, listened to) ten minutes of an old episode of CSI: NY.

6) Hated life some more.

7) Mentioned something to Chrissymine about wanting to smack several of my students. Hard. In the face.

8) Kissed Chrissymine.

9) Rehearsed a hypothetical speech meant for my students about how rude and lazy it is for college students in a 300-level class to not PROOFREAD their MOTHERFUCKING PAPERS before I have to SLOG THROUGH THEIR RIDICULOUS MISSPELLINGS to try to figure out what the HELL they are TALKING ABOUT.

10) Took a bath. While grading. Seriously.

Now I'm in my office waiting out my office hours and trying to stay awake. The papers were successfully handed back in class this morning, and I've been here for forty minutes already without even one irate student coming by to issue death threats over his or her grade.

Things are looking up.