wanted to say...

Belated Happy Channuka, and Merry New Year!
me? you ask, I'm busy living in SF still, not working and going back to school, and attempting right now to drink my weight in champagne!!!


wishing you luck, love and lots of fun for 2006!!!

I've been fish-hooked...

You ever notice that when you least expect it, you find that you get hooked into whatever the popular meme is for the day?

I have prided myself on trying so damned hard not being part of the main-stream, simply because I have never been considered, nor could ever really be accepted as part of the american mainstream...regardless, what I mean to say is that I'm getting swept up in the whole shebang just as much as the next person.

Sure I couldn't be happier that lewis "scotter" libby has been indicted.(although we'll have to have a discussion why a grown man would insist on being called "scooter") And I should be doing backflips about the fact that the republican party is in a backslide...and believe me I'm chuffed... but what I can't escape is this purely San Franciscian mind-set of "its too expensive to live here-syndrome"

At this rate all the radicals will be chased out, and we'll be left with Sans Colored-Folk-isco. its depressing. what was once a town where "people" lived is quickly becoming a sanitized version of itself. I miss the Market/Polk street night-time strip of hookers, trannies, pushers and pimps. I miss the fact that on the weekend the city belonged to the working class folk who had to stay nearby to where they worked simply because they didn't have transportation.

its not the same now. I want it all back. but I can't have it. I've been looking into buying a home. That once was a possibilty...maybe for my mother, but most certianly NOT for me. There is no chance in hell that this market will ever slow down, there is simply only so much you can build on in a 7x7 square mile area. What is really killing me is the fact that I might be forced to move to surburbia simply because its what I can afford, not because I want to escape the vaguaries of the city. I love the dingy-ness, the reality, the general slime that is san francisco (although that is quickly depeleting as well.)

Another thing...(and I know that I've ranted about this before, but your fault for reading) The median income in san francisco to qualify for Assistance for a first time home buyer is approximately $113k a year. Can you believe that bullshit?

its enough to make a girl scream. And the worst part about it, I shouldn't even be thinking about this bullshit. but I am because someone somewhere put this damned bug in my ear about buying a home and somehow it's managed to get stuck. There isn't much that I can do now but pine. or whine..or both.

shit.

LESBIANISM 'BOUT TO TAKE OVER | from | MetaFilter

You are going to laugh simply because the Re. Willie Wilson said this IN church on a sunday morning...

“My son in high school last year, trying to go to the prom, he said, ‘Dad, I ain’t got nobody to take to the prom because all the girls in my class are gay. And ain’t but two of them straight and both of them ugly.” — July 3

And he goes on to talk about..."women fallin' down on one another, strappin somethin on...Anytime you gotta slap some grease on your behind....You Butt ain't made for dat!"

Good god. I'm crying so hard it hurts.

got cut.

again.

it's unbelieveable. these past two weeks have been just that - strangely unreal. It seems like I can't break through the 2 year celing. I'm not really mad, but I still wanted to be the one to say "Fuck you" and then walk off in a huff, rather than it being the other way around. I know tht its hypocritical to say all of this considering that I have been looking for work since this past friday (last week) and that I've got interviews lined up, but its still something that kinda hurts.

you feel slighted. like the ugly one in high-school again. like no one likes you, or that maybe you've done something to make the popular kids turn against you.

and it sucks.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that they're okay after they just get laid off/fired/let go. It still hurts. It won't ever not hurt. I'm beginning to get convinced that maybe this isn't the profession for me. I've got shell shock now from all of the blows that keep coming my way. Every 3 months I get scared...I back everything up. Print all that I can out. Take immediate stock of all of the items that are within my reach that aren't nailed down...every time. And it always seems to happen right about the time that I get complacent. I get comfortable. It has never failed. Every time.

Its not that I liked the job. I couldn't stand it. It is soul crushing. It was daily torture, and with retrospect I'll be happy for the time and opportunity to go back to school that it gave me. Yet in the grander scheme of it all - this was a huge back-step and an emotional slap down that didn't need to happen. Now that I think of it...when I took this job I had another one lined up as well. They were ready to make an offer to me...its just that this job got to me first.

damn.

I want to cry, but I cant. There isn't anything to cry about. I think... No, I know that the ONLY thing that I'll miss are my co-workers. A great lot of people. They are what sustained me and made it bearable to go into that hell. Funny and caring...they were friends. and its rare that I get the opportunity to say that about an office.

fuck. now what.

My Favorite Quote...

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. April 4^th,1976 Address to the Riverside Congregation, NYC.

Firefighters are being missused in the hurricane effor

Goddamnit! you've got the people there - now fucking use them, PROPERLY!!!

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA......"They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet.".....Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

taken from the Salt Lake City Tribune

what in the hell...

I have only one word. disgraceful.

Update:

What makes this worse:

As noted here two days ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s decision to ask evacuees to call (800) 621-3362 or browse to www.fema.gov to start the process of filing a claim for disaster assistance.... It turns out, according to the [American Red Cross] worker, who like the other aid workers spoke on condition of anonymity, that the call to the FEMA number does not open a claim; it results in a package containing the claim form being mailed to the address of the evacuee.

Since the evacuee is in a shelter, mail service has been suspended in many of the hardest hit areas and some of the homes are likely still under water, it seems clear that those claim forms won’t be mailed back any time soon.

Taken from Katrina Blog on MSNBC.Com

WTF!?!?!

Give what you can

American Redcross The grandaddy of donation organizations

Acorn is : Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities

A Network for Good includes a list of other local organziations who could use your help

And even more info from The Blogsphere: The Fug Ladies...


p.s. all family accounted for...its been a long week. My faith in humanity is renewed, and we shall all pull through this.

God hates Parties, i guess.

According to the website repentamerica.com - god hates parties
"Just days before "Southern Decadence", an annual homosexual celebration attracting tens of thousands of people to the French Quarters section of New Orleans, an act of God destroys the city."

okay... I'd almost believe it, if it weren't already the fact that that god has had it out for san francisco for the longest time, if not longer, and we're still here.

yeah.

pure tripe.

Presidential Job Approval

Bush v. History: But don't count Bush out—he thrives on being told a goal is beyond his reach. The president is an intense competitor and stacks up well against the historical competition:

* Reagan was old and amiable; Bush is young, vigorous, and has a smirk in reserve.
* Both Carter and Bush 41 were one-term, rookie presidents with no clear plan to gain disfavor and who had to rely entirely on external events going south. Bush 43's chances don't depend on luck: He has a proven strategy to fail at home and abroad.
* Nixon had to achieve his disapproval ratings almost entirely through scandal, with little help from the economy or world events. The Bush White House is much more versatile: They won't let scandal distract them from screwing up foreign and domestic policy. Already, 62 percent of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction—the highest level in a decade—even before the Bush scandals have begun to take a toll.
* Truman might seem tough to beat, because Bush has no popular generals to fire. But Truman had several historic achievements under his belt that kept his unpopularity down, such as winning World War II and presiding over the postwar boom. Bush's record is free of any such ballast. In a pinch, the Bush camp can also make a good case that polling on Truman was notoriously unreliable, and that Bush deserves a share of the modern-day record if he reaches Nixon's level.


good to know that we're headed to the bottom at a historically unkown pace.

way-to go.

Great Internet Fuckwad theory

Stagger on, weary Titan

I read this article, and although I've been saying this really since the midterm elections (well about 2003 really) this sums up what I belive to be the liberal pathos regarding our current political and militaristic state of being:

"If you want to know what London was like in 1905, come to Washington in 2005. Imperial gravitas and massive self-importance. That sense of being the centre of the world, and of needing to know what happens in every corner of the world because you might be called on - or at least feel called upon - to intervene there. Hyperpower. Top dog. And yet, gnawing away beneath the surface, the nagging fear that your global supremacy is not half so secure as you would wish."

Taken from the Guardian.

The article goes on to talk about the historical similarities between the British empire of the Belle Epoch (and the Boer War) and the Modern Day American tentacle-ized military machine(and our current conflict in the middle East). Its as my grand pappy always said,

"if you don't know about where you been, then you'll have to do it again yourself."

or rather more eloquently put bySantayana:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemed to repeat it."

Strange how your grandparents tend to be more right than you want to give them credit for.

Its more than a little scary. Which one is supposed to be the bastion of coture, fashion and all that is hip?

Paris Hilton, (or what I like to refer to as the denegration of all that the enlightened people of the world thought was beautiful.) is supposed to be the one we are to emulate, right? Or has this strange doppleganger finally revealed the truth about her untimely demise?

I've seen this movie, 'Party Monster' and it is an interesting tale of a normal kid, (from Ohio, or some other 'normal' state)who gets sucked into the New York Club Kid culture of the late 90's, goes to parties, does the drugs du-jour, contracts AIDS (i think), and inveitably kills the dealer.

If this should be the inevitable outcome of our lovely ms. hilton... well, I'm wondering if they'll sell tickets to that show. I'd want to be in the first row.

sunset against the hills

sunset against the hills
Originally uploaded by kizzy.

Sunset by the campsite at Eagle Lake. The rest wasn't that picturesque, but this most certianly was. It was the last night we were there, and honestly it made up for some of the misadventures that we had to undergo.

just looking at it makes me feel serene...

ahhhhhhhhh.

Santa's Tombstone

Santa's Tombstone
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

awwwww...

i'm going on vacation.

Not that it should matter to YOU that much, but this weekend is a much deserved respite from the daily torture that I have to endure, called "my professional carrer" (pathetic as it may seem)
I've finished my classes for the seimester and am using the time that I have to enjoy something that I haven't in awhile.

The absence of electronic noise.

no electricity, no cell phones, no laptops, nothing requiring a battery. (except my car)

I forget from time to time how much I am plugged in and am so engulfed with living in a virtual world that I need to be reminded of why and how I AM supposed to live. So Off I go - to the wilderness. To be 'one' with nature, and to shit in the woods like a real woman. Don't worry kiddies, I should be back in about a weeks time... not that I've been updating this page a lot lately anyhow.

I'll have lots and lots of new pictures and stories to tell. I'll be certian to keep them all in order, and on point. (I'm going to go buy a moleskein today!)

happy travels.