living with respect for all animals

i have always been consistently and fervently pro-fauna. i'm not sure where this way of thinking and acting originated, but i've always tried to do my best not to harm other beings by my own existence. maybe it was learning about Native American and indigenous peoples and their practices of hunting, a way of life lost on us now, a way of honoring and respecting animals while still occasionally eating them (which is how i still justify eating meat on occasion - my understanding of being a "good" human is eating what i need, not being wasteful, and not consuming in excess. i definitely don't hunt for sport, and when i fish, i practice catch-and-release. i also limit or avoid pork, beef, and even chicken (those being the more "feeling" or sentient animals), sticking mostly to fish that i know are fresh water varieties that i could have fished myself, or that were farmed. of course, farm fisheries may have a host of their own ethical problems, but they seem far less terrible than the wide-cast nets they use to catch deep sea shrimp and bycatch. this is also how i justify wearing leather shoes and buying leather bags - because Native American tribes used "the whole" animal and didn't let anything go to waste. also, because leather shoes last longer and are probably better for the environment in the long-run than PVC/plastic shoes that come with cancer warnings and carry shorter use-lives). of course, if animals were hunted rather than "cultivated" in factories, the way they are now, i don't think i'd really have to make this justification. basically, i emulate a way of life that is pre-industrial and pre-modern convenience, the way i imagine life might have been like before we determined a way to industrialize everything, before humans became insane cancers on the environment and decided we owned everything. what might that be called, "transcendental-aspirational"? "a-world-without-humans ecological philosophy"? so, when i say i'm "pro-fauna," that's shorthand for me saying that i aspire to live in a way that respects animals and nature in a non-human-centered way.

so, i'm seriously stressed out right now because my workplace has discovered we have a mice problem, in that they are finding their way into drawers of people's desks and eating food. i was visited by some mice myself, i opened up my drawer and noticed some droppings and when i started cleaning out my drawer, discovered that a pack of flaxseed crackers in a thin plastic wrapper were broken into. clever buggers! i tossed the crackers and put everything else in plastic boxes, and haven't had a problem since. others in the office were so freaked out though, that they set up traps. a few hours later, people in the office were squealing and screaming at the sight of mice. here's what really bothers me about this:

1) these traps are possibly the worst thing ever. they're the sticky film traps, the kind you might use to trap flies, only this time, it's little furry mice, with tails, and whiskers. they get stuck on the film in the most helpless positions, their whiskers glued down, their bodies bent in unnatural positions, their tails whipping around, their paws stuck under their bellies. they squirm and blink for help. and everytime i go to check on them, my stomach fills with guilt and dread, because i feel like it's partially my fault, i irresponsibly stored my snacks andthey invited themselves to a small meal, and now they're suffering in the most terrible ways.

2) mice are very easily and humanely preventable. if you store food more securely (glass jars, plastic storage boxes with high sides and slippery surfaces) and dispose of food properly, you won't have a mice problem. also, peppermint oil is a nice-smelling, easily available, cheap, and harmless alternative to traps. there are also catch-and-release style traps that allow mice to be transported to more mice-friendly places (there is a large field right behind our office building - if they were released there and people got rid of their poorly stored snacks, we wouldn't have a problem).

3) "every animal serves a purpose." my co-worker and cubicle neighbor said that when we were talking and i thought that was really wise and something very few people realize or think about. mice eat the crumbs and tiny scraps that drop behind the desk in those little crevices that are too small to be cleaned, or easily forgotten. they don't actively go after your food unless you aren't smart enough to seal or protect it better. mice would never hurt you or bite you, because they are far more scared of you than you are of them. this idea that "every animal serves a purpose" is important because it gets at the reason why i adopt a "pro-fauna" approach, and also why this sometimes results in an "anti-human" way of thinking: so few humans realize the importance of coexisting with animals. furthermore, this is in direct correlation a direct cause of most humans' belief that they own everything. "it's our office building/kitchen/pantry/food so we have a right to kill creatures that intrude into our space!" actually, the field/forest/farmland that was destroyed so you could build your office building/condo/neighbhorhood was here first, so the animals you displaced kinda have a right to mess up your comfortable little existence if they can, so suck it.

all this to say i am really stressed out from debating what to do about the mice traps in the office (should i free the mice? what if i mangle them when trying to get them free from the sticky paper? should i sabotage the traps or try to throw them away before mice get caught in them and thereby cause my company to endlessly pour resources into traps? should i try to kill the mice humanely, before HR or whoever comes by to collect the traps and just "throw them away" to die slow deaths? should i start setting human traps in retaliation? - debilitating laxative in the coffee pot was my first inclination, but i'm open to suggestions). i still want to live my life in a "pro-fauna" way, but it means, in this case, talking to a lot of stubbornly cruel and human-centric people.

rabbit habits

my roommate found a domestic rabbit the other day, and has been keeping it outside under a laundry hamper with a phone book on top. i didn't find out about it until this morning, but i'm concerned for its health and safety - there are stray cats in our neighborhood - and i'm wondering if its quality of life isn't what it should be.

the moment i heard she had found, and was keeping, a rabbit, i got scared, remembering the wild baby birds my brother and i used to find as kids and try to keep as pets - tried to "save" - only to have them die within a a night or two. i suspect wild animals, or any animal for that matter, knows when it's being held captive in an unnatural state. i think domestic animals are less aware, though, because of their upbringing and ways of life and force of habit. habits are something we impose on our animals that would be against their nature and better interests, for habits are something that are evolutionarily disadvantaging. (habits make us comfortable in otherwise potentially adverse situations and give us the illusion of control over situations, they dull our awareness to changes in our environment and make us assume constancy in our lives that doesn't exist.) i even suspect that animals can get depressed and will themselves to die when they find themselves in such situations of captivity. when my brother and i tried to rescue a baby robin that had fallen out of its nest, we gave it a large box with a cloth and dry grass bed, and lots of water and birdseed, but it died the next day. i remember feeling sick to my stomach when my parents explained it needed its mom, and thinking that maybe if we'd left it outside, the mom wouldn't have been scared away and returned for her baby. i was maybe 6 or 7 at the time, but i remember thinking to myself that i'd learned an important lesson, that i think still influences me to this day: that nature can take care of itself, if humans can prevent themselves from interfering. basically, i think the world and all its animals would be better off if humans had never made efforts to control and dominate and use it, and endeavored instead to coexist in it.

so i'm conflicted. this little rabbit is trapped and i don't know how to free her. what does freedom mean for a domestic rabbit? while i can't just let her go in the woods - i suspect she'd be eaten by coyotes or an owl within a few days - i can't just let her stay in what can only be called a death trap, waiting for a flood or a carbon monoxide leak (my roommate wants to keep her in the garage!) or a stray cat to come and kill her. i want her to have the best quality of life possible, but i don't know how to give that to her, and what that means.

furthermore, it's really distressing to me because of the symbolic importance i've placed on this rabbit in the last few hours. i think about all the wild animals killed by human (in)action and interference (the animals i see everyday on the roads, the beautiful red fox i saw the other day, the first red fox i'd ever seen in my life so close, its tail blowing up in the wind, for a moment it looked like it could have just been sleeping, i had to pull my car over and call ben to cry, i was so upset), and think about the animals i've tried to save without success (the baby birds, the mauled chipmunk i should have just let die by the paws of a menacing neighbor's cat), and i think to myself, if i could just save this one animal, just this one, i could make it all better. i could stop having nightmares and feel some relief.

also, i sympathize with her. living in cramped quarters, with little view of the outside world, and in vulnerability of predators is a shitty way to live. my life has felt that way lately, like a trap, and i think that, deep down, i'd like to save this rabbit so i can feel a little saved myself.

UPDATE: and then, of course, this had to happen today in Ohio. (some idiot who had been keeping 50 exotic animals in his yard, decided to set them loose before committing suicide. local law enforcement decided it was the "right thing to do" to hunt them all down, and kill them. freakin' ridiculous. fyi, i believe in cosmic justice, and i hope that every human who hunts animals for sport spends their afterlife as a factory chicken. have i mentioned i'm unwaveringly pro-fauna?)

at fingertips

for those of you who're kind enough to have bookmarked my blog, you'll notice a small design change: the new "favicon" for the blog, taken from this picture below:

this photo was snapped by ben on our recent trip to LA. we witnessed this amazing moment in nature. and what was so amazing about it was how unnatural it seemed: there were hundreds of these pigeons, on the beach at sunset, flying in these sweeping arcs, over and over above our heads. it was so conspicuous that we stopped, many people stopped, to look up and wonder at their movements. they flew in this gigantic, menacing swarm, gradually descending lower to the ground, so low that at one point, standing on the boardwalk, i could reach my hand up and feel the beating of hundreds of wings, so close to my fingertips.

cluster flock from stephan!e lee on Vimeo.

everyone asking why? why are they doing this? where did all these pigeons come from? there was a man on the shore, wearing a fishing vest and a hat, who we noticed was moving his hand in a certain way. "he's throwing seeds," was ben's observation. could it be possible? were these pigeons performing for food? i noticed later, after the pigeons eventually landed, that the man had a large net, like one used for fishing. could it be possible that he, too, was performing for food (i noticed him lift it menacingly from time to time)?

how strange, the sudden behaviors and togetherness of swarms (both bird and human swarms, in this case). how strange, the choreography in nature and the ways in which forces of nature interact, and the eery beauty that results from nature being manipulated against its will.

it reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite films, All The Real Girls. the movie as a whole has some quietly insightful writing, including the following scene, about nature (skip to about 2:12 in the clip if you want to get to the point):

"have you ever seen a mistake in nature? have you ever seen an animal make a mistake?" there's a beautiful truth to that statement. humans are known as the only animal with "will power" and "intelligence" and somehow we conceptualize humanity as above animals, above nature, and thus able to control and manipulate it. but nature is perfect and seamless and remarkable, and humans, despite our self-importance, must pause in awe and wonder of that perfect splendor.

true story

Groundhog Day could be viewed as a commentary on the nature of modern celebrity. A cute, hairy creature has become famous for doing something with minimal accuracy because he is surrounded by men in funny hats. Subtract two legs and a tail and that's the Justin Bieber narrative all over.

-from here.

furry toes

i wanna be your otter

HOLY. CUTE.

from Wikipedia [emphasis added]:
"To keep from drifting apart, sea otters may sleep HOLDING PAWS. Note the high buoyancy of the animals' bodies."

JESUS FLIPPING CHRISTMAS!



and what did my partner have to say about that?

"wha? they just float there? no wonder they're endangered. they're FLOATING MEAT. [shakes head] evolution failed them."

i feel like i hardly knew you.

MORE OTTER FACTSSS!!!!
did you know that otters spend most of their time floating around in the water grooming their fur? they comb it with their paws and BLOW AIR INTO IT! they catch fish with their paws! (agile! dexterous!) and they possess pockets for keeping those fish for later!
and a group of otters is called a raft! (i want to float around in the ocean suspended in water only by a bunch of bustling otter bodies, holding their paws and nuzzling my face into their clean furry bodies...)

also: the only reason otters are endangered is because humans once hunted them for their furs. what heartless beasts are we?

sweet justice

sea world: 2. humans: 0. this has not been a good week in the battle between man vs. nature.
an aquarium in the Dubai mall containing 2 million gallons of water and some 33,000 marine animals is beginning to crack. shark attack!

also, last week a 12,000 pound orca whale named Telly "dragged a trainer into the pool by her ponytail" and effectively killed her. in 1999, a man, who snuck past Seaworld security, and "either jumped, fell, or was pulled into the water" also died, possibly from hypothermia, though his body was found "draped" over Telly's head. the Seaworld PR people are now trying to keep blame away from Telly:

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Chuck Tompkins, Sea World’s head of animal training, insisted that the orca was getting a bad rap, saying, “those two incidents really don’t have anything to do with this and to mark him as a killer is very unfair.” [via]

damn right it's unfair! look, we're talking about a giant swimming KILLING MACHINE. have we forgotten that orca whales, in nature (where they NATURALLY BELONG) are huge, swift, powerful, blood-thirsty BEASTS who hunt BABY SEALS and EAT them? i'm guessing these deaths are due to a number of things (like, THEIR MOTHER FUCKING NATURE TO LEAP OUT OF WATER, SOMETIMES THROUGH ICE, TO BITE AND KILL AND EAT THINGS), none of which amount to "revenge," which is what the media is (ridiculously) trying to call it ("there was no reason to believe that the orca had turned on its trainer out of anger").
i'm sorry, but when it comes to animals and humans, i'm almost uncompromisingly pro-fauna. if you put a bunch of fucking SHARKS in a tank with a tunnel thru it in the mother-fucking MALL for the sake of spectacle/thrill/etc. you deserve to lose your shit once that tank starts cracking and leaking water. and if you put an orca whale in a pool, feed it nothing but little fish and expect it to learn tricks for your amusement, you're damned right it's gonna leap out and eat you if you're not looking. it's not revenge, it's poetic justice.
it infuriates me how often the media covers these animal encounter stories and side unequivocally with the humans. i mean, i know it's common practice to be anthropomorphic, but dang, can't we just get over ourselves from time to time and see from another perspective? it seems that for the supposedly "most intelligent" animal, and the only one granted with reason, that we can be extremely unreasonable and myopic.
sheeyit.

alligators in the sewers

i know, it's been a long time since i've posted, and shame on me for letting this fall by the wayside. before i forget, HAPPY 2010!(it's going to rock so much harder than 2009, don't you agree?) and also, a recollection of a dream i had last night:

my friend Dave who incidentally goes to grad school at UCLA (but who i haven't seen in months despite living just blocks away from each other) asked me to come over to check out this crazy-looking condo he was thinking about renting for him and his new girlfriend, who may or may not have been pregnant. when i got there, my immediate thoughts, i remember, were "sweet dang! how much money does a grad student at UCLA make?!" – because the place featured impressive (albeit confusing) post-modern architecture and, the real point of interest for me, an expansive lagoon/swamp/"koi pond" underneath the deck. this is what i felt most obligated to check out for my friend. i tip-toed closer to the water, and observed the alien-looking marine plant life, as well as some strange movements on the surface. i saw some kind of mechanical alligator head, which looked like a wind-up toy, but then i couldn't be sure, so i got creeped out and discouraged from venturing a toe into the water. i searched the depths, murky and deceptively deep, looking for fish and now, alligators.* i informed my friend that i believed water of unknown depths to be dangerous.

we moved further along the deck and i observed fins skimming the water. i looked on closely, tensely, awaiting dolphins or sharks. first, dolphins, and i thought about friendly swims with porpoises. but shortly after, sharks emerged too, and i thought of thrashing water and sharp bites on the ankles. i delicately lowered a shoe'd toe beyond the level of the deck, offering it up to the depths below to see how eager and hungry the marine ecosystem below me was, but Dave snatched me up before the sharks and alligators did.

we moved inside as my friend told me how much his new investment was going to be, "$500, 000 for rent." rent?!! i gasped. you can buy a house in kentucky for that much! ah yes, but he reasoned that he really wanted a nice place for his gf and "baby?" to live, and i concurred that, despite the potentially dangerous lagoon in his backyard, living with danger and a body of water nearby could be a pretty satisfying experience, albeit a uniquely LA one (and already attainable, at a much cheaper price – ah, the glories of private property ownership!)

we moved inside to his artfully minimalist living room and sat on his firm couch, and his dog came up to me and wrestled with my leg. i then remarked on how impressively wide and large his dog's head was, and told him what he had here wasn't a dog, but a polar bear. i cautiously played with it, then watched as the dog and another animal my friend seemed to be domesticating (an otter? a fox? a bear cub? i don't know, just that it had a red body and a furry face) started making out.

---

in the dream before that, i believe i was wandering around the city of chicago, looking for a place to stay while i was there for a conference. i had a map, but the lines showing streets were gone or faded and all i could see were the names of streets floating on a page, guessing at their intersections. my parents came and met me at a corner bakery where we talked to some business man in a suit and tie about staying in one of his many properties in the city but he seemed unconvinced i shouldn't just be homeless and continue wandering the city for the entire weekend.

---

earlier this week (or last week, as today is monday) i had another dream where my family was trying to swim across a river. i made it across and was looking down into the water, watching alligators swimming up to the shore, bellies up and skimming the surface, then flipping off the bank and catching things in their arms and legs. my dad was the last to swim across the river and i watched as he got closer to the bank of the river, at the same time an alligator came near enough to flip off the bank and onto my dad, its body sinking him into the water and swimming away with him. i woke up terrified and gasping, as if i too had been drug under water.

---

i looked up the symbolism of alligators in dreams, and Bella, "the voice of women" writes:

alligators and crocodiles in dreams can signify 'hidden danger'--a situation that you are aware of on an intuitive level but are not acknowledging in your conscious mind. This can be a simmering situation at work, a untrustworthy person, or sadly, anything that you can't really see coming but which strikes out of the blue and without mercy.

i don't listen too much to psychoanalysts, even tho i once wanted to be one. i don't read too much into my dreams either (i have a record of outlandish, vivid dreams that are more exhilarating than they are revelatory) – i have at least one intensely vivid dream a night (that i can remember).

that is to say, i don't write about this for any truth-seeking reason, but merely as an exercise in recording. and, writing. and also: because they are fun to remember. (but, since i mentioned it: stressed thinking about school (applying, attending, working at) and possible future lives, the dwindling winter break and how much i miss being home and particularly in this house, with my family, and the fragility of life and how delicate each moment is but how destructive we can be with each other in spite of life's fragile moments...)

much to think about, and it's almost time to sleep.
-stef


*once when i was very young (maybe 10?) my family went to vacation in south carolina. my dad, recently returned from a business trip to florida, brought me and my brother matching mickey mouse hats (my brother's was blue and green, and mine was red) and we wore them out onto this long wooden deck where the locals dangled pieces of chicken meat on metal hooks, in order to catch crabs. crabbing was an intricate process, from skewering the chicken bits just so on the hook so that the skin and fat would dangle off the bone enough to dance enticingly in the water, to sensing the slightest bit of tension on the rope, signifying the crab's eager tugging on the bait (you had to time it just right so that the crabs had enough of a taste to want more, and then slowly hoist them out of the water so you could slip a net under them), and we enjoyed it for hours on that wooden deck. until suddenly, i felt a sharp tug on my line, and looking down, ready to bring my catch up, realized i had baited an alligator. it was thrashing and tossing its head around, the rope coming out from between its teeth and leading up to the deck, where i had tied it just in front of me. terrified, i yelled for my dad, who came rushing to my rescue to wrestle the rope still enough so he could cut it. i remember feeling like the whole deck was going to come crashing down into those alligator-infested waters. in the excitement, my hat got knocked off my head, and i watched in horror as it fell down into the water.
that night, lying in bed, feeling i had just survived an alligator attack/ avoided an alligator eating, i imagined my hat, the hat my dad gave me, lying at the bottom of the swamp, alligators swimming around it, mickey mouse winking up at the surface, forever suspended in time.

the way we do

i can't help but think that if this were "the wild," baby squirrel would have been eaten by an owl or a fox or a baby raccoon by now.

but, seeing as how this occurred in LA, my argument is invalid. Angelinos are all about preserving unnatural ways of life (we live in the middle of a fecking desert for feck's sake.)

bold [sic] hate - ha ha

shield yr eyes!

(or keep em peeled! this shit changes real-time, bitches. so you can witness my minute-by-minute struggles with this jackass mother fucker. and warn me of broken links cuz this shit is wired to hit the fan...)

i have been up since 7 am working on this stupid piece of shit for my grad class, the last two hours spent trying to figure out how to format the fucking tables in the rubric section so it's not all bold.

fucking google docs.

nothing like a webquest to make you hate google, the internet, and life.

also: no food, no company, no time. low sleep, dirty hair, and my muscles wanna go for a ruuuuuuunn nn n n na nun.

there was so much else i could have done but instead this. and more.

still one unit plan, one lesson plan, and a fieldwork journal to write.

and i'm wondering about the state of nature and (hu)man. if the birds, cows, monkeys, and fleas all want to kill us, and the pigs now too, i think it's proof my hero was right:

"Your planet's immune system is trying to get rid of you."

fly high, fly straight. into the sun?
-stef

spirit animals

i dreamt last night that my boyfriend came home from Turkey to live with me in New York City (i think Brooklyn, but i really can't be sure) but had a terrible accident or illness and died, and the rest of the dream i was searching for ways to bring him back to life, while working a street-side fruit stand outside a bakery. one day i observed a wild ferret caught outside the bakery and a wise, dreadlocked and snaggle-toothed homeless man with burnt rust skin philosophized that animals, unlike humans, know when death is imminent, and surrender to fate without much thought for other alternatives. they do not worry about the outcomes of their souls because they know they will return again.

i think the ferret was my boyfriend. i like to think we could return from the dead, reincarnated as our spirit animals.

---

the funny thing is that growing up, my mom continually refused to allow me a pet. she claimed to be afraid of dogs and allergic to cats, and anything much smaller didn't interest me. the only animal she ever considered adopting was a ferret. i have memories of going to the pet store every weekend and picking out hypothetical ferrets to take home: "this one's feisty... this one's sleepy... this one stinks..."

squirrel nuts

the aforementioned squirrel encounter.


squirrel nuts from stephan!e lee on Vimeo.

animal encounters

i don't know what it is about today, but i'm having all sorts of wild encounters with nature. maybe it's the change of time; humans and animals are crossing paths in ways we shouldn't b/c of mass confusion. too many creatures scurrying about their business on overlapped schedules...

as i was leaving the school parking lot, two large crows were hopping the fence around the cars, snapping at each other and using their beaks to pluck at a tangled yard of police tape.

at grad school, in a lecture hall after library hours, i encounter a cantankerous squirrel who apparently decided grading papers was a far less interesting use of time than running around between rows of seats and fending off rabies with a 5 foot metal pole. (video forthcoming...)

after returning home, finally, i am stalked to my apartment door by a large feral cat/ possum who shines her electric eyes at me before jumping off the banister. whoa!

and then there's the post-adolescent male humanoid, lumbering out from his cavernous dwelling to forage for food. he scratches himself, squinting in the kitchen light, and, lacking the necessary implements (pot and spoon), resorts to its typical diet: microwaveable hotdogs and white bread. food he can hold in his hands. behold, the urban male.

fascinating discoveries in this jungle!
-stephan!e

callousness

teaching special ed in south central LA is an extremely trying task. (as i type this, i'm thinking, 'that is the understatement of the century!' there are no words in the english language – any language – to describe the anguish and frustration that accompany my job. in fact, those emotions are perhaps better expressed and communicated by the animal kingdom, where the guttural and primitive sounds of pain and distress found in feral animals are more appropriate for my sense of life-threatening anxiety.)

anyway, the point is that my job is difficult. and as with most things potentially stressful or dangerous, one must find ways to adapt, methods and strategies by which to adjust to your surroundings. in the name of survival, you do what you can to change your surroundings, and when your surroundings don't change, you change yourself. adaptation. evolution. selection. you pick and choose what to process, what to act on, you filter your thoughts, you let some things roll off so you can keep rolling on.

my recent environment-induced adaptations have included: reclusiveness, watching TV, eating a lot of ice cream, superstitions, a nagging urge to start smoking, and increased emotional numbing.

the last is the most troubling b/c it is at once the most necessary and the most regrettable. i think that the trouble with the school environment is that it tends to bleach everyone of their humanity. in order to get thru my day, i have to be able to tune out the 1,000+ insults and slurs i hear my students tossing around. i tried at the beginning to reprimand and deliver a lecture for every "stupid" "retarded" "faggot" "homo" "nigger" etc. i heard, but that soon became a herculean task. it would hurt every time i heard such hateful words used, so i had to deaden my sensitivity to such things. if i stopped class every time i heard someone call me or another student a bitch, we would never get through all the standards we need to by May.

adaptation, selection, you pick and choose your battles because there's no time or energy for everything.

it feels strange, but not surprising, to open a science book and see that a student wrote "Fuck you Ms. Lee. You are a chinese bitch" on the plate tectonics vocabulary and not really care, shrug my shoulders, get a black marker pen and cross it out so that the next student doesn't get more excited by the graffiti than the part about the San Andreas fault. if i let it get to me, i wouldn't be ready for the next group of students coming in for their math lesson, and i have to be ready to teach them how to solve a one-step linear algebraic equation.

what bothers me most, however, is that this callousness, this thick skin i grow to get through my day, also prevents me from feeling the gratitude and relief i should feel when, while picking up trash left on the floor, i come across a desk with pencil markings on the tabletop. the graffiti reads, "Ms. Lee is a nice teacher. you should respect her." or the one on the other desk, which says, in big block letters with swirly lines around it, "Ms. Lee: good teacher 4 lyfe." these things should cause me to smile and feel lucky, but i shrug, move the desk back into its row, and wish my kids would stop marking up the furniture.

later, i think back on the day i had: a student accused me of racism, saying, "chinese ppl hate black ppl." another one climbed up on a table and tried to jump out an open window, all for a little attention and the laughs of his peers. 2 students were sent to the dean's office, and i caught another one for ditching class. it's February and i still can't get this class to sit still or be attentive long enough to teach them to multiply decimals and fractions.

if i hadn't grown these emotional callouses, i shudder to think about the emotions i'd be feeling right now.

instead, what i feel: relief that the day is done, and a slight smile in remembering that a certain someone is coming back to visit me today. i'm hoping that some time away will help me remember what it's like to laugh again, and be a kid myself. hopefully this recovers my humanity. hopefully i'm not completely dead yet.

hopefully there is still time to save this vestigial sense of feeling.

-stephan!e

PUPPIES!!!!!

i realized that my blog has been somewhat of a downer lately (like, the last 4 months...), so, i thought i'd post something different for a change:





aaaaawww... furry faces!!

I WANT.
-stef

p.s. i like to think that new visitors might see the hot pink, the confetti, and the puppies and come to the conclusion that i am a 12 year old girl, not realizing that just below this are posts struggling with teaching, authority, identity, grad school, etc. it's a great moment for my online persona, don't you think?

dessicating + de-sexing

from the pages of a notebook, which i sought to represent as closely to the original hand-written version:

i've noticed a weird vibe about the ppl here. i'm struck by how attractive everyone is:

tall, leggy blondes; thin, well-spoken women with perfect bone structure in skirts and stilettos all the time

but what's remarkable about it is there is nothing really attracting about any of them.
none! and it occurs to me: they're too perfect, they're almost eery

it reminds me of Vonnegut's short story "Welcome to the Monkey House" and the suicide mistresses (/waitresses?) and how they were required to dress in skin tight body stockings and knee-hi boots, but no one was attracted to them & they weren't sexual beings themselves b/c ppl were doped up on these numbing pills [that made them lose all sexual urges]

and it seems to me it's the same way with [the women here]. everyone is so obsessively focused on [a] "mission" that they're blind, deprived of their basic humanism, dried up and numb

i feel like since i got here i'm feeling myself become... a prude/ dried up/ sapped of sexual urgency/ desire or spontaneity or fervor... it's hard to say

but you get closer to what i'm thinking if you think about it this way: sex as a ferile desire/ need/ a wild passion/ an urgency/ an animal veracity/ferocity that grips you, right? something a little depraved, perhaps a little messy, a little too animal and a little too human

= too much reality and rawness for this environment, which is drying up all our sexual/human urges

i think of corporate suckers, how those poor bastards spend so much goddamn time in suits, in meetings, in these glass facade buildings [spending all day repressing their human needs and desires] so that all they wanna do when they get back to their posh hotel rooms is don a pair of lady's stockings and fuck each other doggy style.

or, i think of school teachers we've all had, those crusty old spinsters who we pitied on some level as kids b/c we knew they were [probly] terribly alone and had probably never known a night of real passion in their lives.

and i wonder: is that what i'm getting into?

-stephanie

(as i wrote this i listened to "the twist" by Frightened Rabbit, off their album Midnight Organ Fight and one quote kept recurring at exactly the right moments: "i need human heat."

i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. ...)

life is stupidity!

as i was cleaning my room today, i read through some of the random notes i wrote to myself in the past year and didn't get a chance to do anything with yet. many of them were intended for blog posts but for some reason or other (SR PROJ), i never got around to sharing them.

anyway, here comes one of those now. but since it's been so long, i can't remember the context, other than to say that i was on a shuttle from the Denver airport to my hotel, where a bunch of people and their dogs were incidentally taking up residence. i was there for the weekend for a Students as Colleagues conference presentation, but everyone else in Denver was there for the dogs. (regrettably, i had taken pictures of the experience, but have since lost them in my harddrive death. no, i'm not over it yet.)

written on the back of my ticket stub, a conversation i was overhearing between 3 or 4 business people:
"We could get a salad @ Chili's, put it on ice for our trip to L.A."
"You could get Quizno's @ Phoenix. Or Schlotsky's... Quizno's though... Mm-mm good!" (--> isn't that another fastfood chain's slogan?)
"We could get Sonic breakfast..." (they proceed to talk about ice. they discuss the iced drinks they've tried.)
"Papasito's Burritos, you should get the avocado salad dressing. Ranch blended with avocado. Good fat!"

(i think my thoughts at the time were: "wow, do they know how impossibly ridiculous they sound?" who knew there existed a special sub-breed of human that prides itself on being fastfood aficionados? i pray to god i never become a person who spends so much time at work and/or in airports that i forget the joy of actual food and conversation. i try my best to focus my attention on those mountains i've heard so much about...)

on the other side of the ticket stub, written in different ink, i observe an interaction between a pair of dogs and their owners in the lobby of the hotel. i think i'm in line to buy a muffin. it goes like this:
small voluptuous woman in a visor and spandex pants with a bit of a waddle walk. dog is large and slender, shaggy. dog encounters a small, boxy terrier(?) with an old man-looking beard. bearded dog's owner is a tall woman with a shiny long face. slender dog sniffs up beard dog. barking and attempted mounting ensues.
owners tug at dogs' collars. walk in opposite directions. banter:
curvy little woman: "She wants more of him!" (looks down at her dog, speaks to it as if to remind her:) "No puppies!" (they continue walking, dogs look longingly back at each other) "Oh, she wants more... She likes what she sees..."

at that moment i remembered Best in Show and the way the film satirizes the subculture, and particularly the absurdity of dogs shows' tendencies to simultaneously suppress and heighten sexual tension.



wow, so sometimes the movies really do get it right.

i'm sure i'll have more of the same tomorrow,
stephanie

p.s. the blog post title was under suggestion of my past self. i guess i had a blog post in mind when i took these notes. or, had a title ready, at least. [edit: now that i think about it, i recall that it might have actually been a quote from the first conversation... wow.]

BE LIKE THE BUFFALO

just goes to show that we can always challenge the existing relationships of power and domination, even those we assume to be "natural."

-stephan!e

"i shall name one Marvin, and i will train him to go directly for the testicles!"

that piece of carrot is really the remainder of a disembodied finger...
but where's the body? HE ATE IT.

wtf? you ask. intrigued? that is a quote from a conversation with my dear friend Brandon (read on...)

you see, senior project does some horrible things to people. mostly, there's a feeling of disempowerment, overwhelming depression, occasional health problems and feelings of self-unworth. there are also, in extreme cases, feelings of surprising hatred and violence. as Brandon put it, senior project "makes me want to commit heinous acts!" (you're not alone, B. you're not alone...)

the salve for such tough times? flesh-hungry hamsters. that's right. rodents with the insatiable taste for mammal blood.

Brandon: [sr proj] makes me want to commit heinous acts. and that is all i have to say about that!

me: INDEED

11:59 AM did u finally turn in sr proj?

Brandon: yeah, and bill apparently wrote back within three hours. i made the stupid mistake of just opening it and reading what he had to say

me: oh no

Brandon: which was basically 'get rid of your first 25 pages and then we'll talk'

me: how is it he read the whole thing in 3 hours?

WTF?

12:00 PM

what's wrong with yr first 25 pages??

he can't just say that, wtf

Brandon: sooooo i dont even know

im going to try not to dwell on it though. i was quite pleased with my paper, actually. something i wasnt expecting

12:01 PM me: well that's good, as long as you like it

did he send back comments?

Brandon: yeah

i could actually hear him yelling them as he was typing them. they weren't just little fixes and whatever. they were things that you could easily tell were being yelled in all their glory

12:02 PM me: oh geez, that's how his comments to my first 30 were...

yep, he's a yeller...

12:03 PM he should be put down ... like Old Yeller

take him out back to the shed...

12:04 PM Brandon: there is one part where he actually sounds kind of dumb though...in my intro at the end when im talking about what's going to be in each chapter, i didn't really go into detail on the chapters i hadn't started yet, i just wrote sentences that were place holders like "in this chapter i'm going to talk about blah blah and blah' and he wrote this really nasty comment about how paragraphs can't be one sentence long as if i didnt already know that

we should feed him to a bear

12:06 PM me: i hate those stupid comments he makes

like, he really thinks we're children

12:07 PM that we haven't learned that paragraphs aren't one sentence long, or that we don't know how to use spell check (something he actually accused me of)

i mean, we're college students, give us a LITTLE credit

12:08 PM he inspires violent urges in me

12:09 PM Brandon: seriously. one of my favorites is there is something grammatically that i was doing wrong, and it happened like 3 or 4 times in my paper. the first time he just pointed it out and im like okay, i'll fix that but then for the other times it happens he gets like more and more violent with his responses, as if i heard him while he made his first comment and was too stupid to do anything about them at the time

me: HA

yeah, definitely seen that before

12:10 PM

i want to unleash flesh-hungry hamsters on him

12:11 PM Brandon: flesh hungry hamsters would be QUITE delightful!

me: maybe i'll do that instead of writing my paper then... it seems a more worthy use of time

12:12 PM

if i got some hamsters now, and gave them a taste for mammal blood, they'd be raring to go by the time school started again

Brandon: this is a good point you make

12:15 PM me:

12:16 PM i'll spend some time making harnesses for them too, so i can unleash them en masse

swarming, like a flesh-hungry twitching rodent blanket

doesn't that sound delightful??

Brandon: yes. a living blanket of flesh eating fuzz

12:17 PM with eyes only for Bill

me: wow, suddenly i'm much more excited about the school year beginning again

12:18 PM Brandon: ahhh!! and then bill has the audacity to end his email with 'good luck' ooooooh go fuck yourself bill

[15 minutes later...]

me: alas, back to the project...

enjoy boston

glad to see u made it safely

Brandon: thank you! and good luck with all the shit

me: it was a pleasure dreaming of flesh-hungry hamsters with you!

Brandon: inDEED!

i look forward to the day

me: mmhmm

12:26 PM i shall name one marvin, and i will train him to go directly for the testicles!

Brandon: yes please!!

me: oh, poor marvin...

Brandon: it's a worthy sacrifice

me: indeed

12:27 PM tho it may be too late, as i believe the seed of his loins has already been sewn

Brandon: really?

me: how, you ask? MAGIC

Brandon: thats not something i want to be picturing

me: i don't believe it's human, it can't be

it's at least half EVIL

Brandon: probbaly at least 3/4 evil

12:28 PM because bill just has that much to give

what's a girl to do?

thank you, dear readers who sent me kind and lovely birthday wishes. i was the happiest reluctant 22 year old on the planet! i really don't know how i came to deserve such wonderful ppl in my life. thank you.

it was a pleasant Xmas and birthday. i've been enjoying the time at home with my family, and they're a delightful lot. i don't recall laughing this hard or this frequently since i first discovered Arrested Development, of which there's been some time to revisit as well.

i've also been making some slight progress on my thesis, but at the cost of utter isolation and perhaps some bad personal health choices (no breakfast until i have one solid paragraph written, reduced appetite, poor posture due to my unconventional work habits, failing eyesight due to staring at a screen for 80-90% of the day, messing up my body temperature b/c i've moved a space heater into my room b/c i decided i like the sound of its whirring right next to my head, not using my vocal chords in a long time, not thinking about much else besides democracy and education and thus not being able to have normal conversations with other human beings... the list goes on but i'll spare you.)

the current progress report: a decent introductory page and half, which must now transition into a convincing discussion of democratic theory, why schools must carry the democratic promise, and basically outline the remainder of the thesis, setting the tone and approach. oy! it's gonna be a long haul to Jan 1, when my first 30 pages are due...

anyway, i don't mean to bore you with all that. my real reason for posting today is to share this terrifically spooky video, of one of my recent musical findings, Bat for Lashes:



i'm in love with the animal masks on bikes. delightful! some of my favorite bands, i'm realizing now, have animals in the name: Animal Collective (and Panda Bear), Wolf Parade, Band of Horses, Cat Power, Grizzly Bear, Caribou, Andrew Bird... or, at the very least, employ an animal energy and imagery.

fangs and claws,
stephanie