Studying

I'm at the coffee shop trying to study but I hit the point where I ingested too much coffee and I would rather run around screaming Black Flag songs at the top of my lungs than do my work. I actually would always rather run around screaming Black Flag though.
Anyway I spent 45 minutes trying to find the Ezra Pound poem for the last post and 10 minutes actually doing the take home exam I'm working on. Awesome efficiency quotient.
I finished my job yesterday. I am now unemployed. I estimate that it will be Monday morning before someone from work emails me with an assignment. Things like finals and being out of town never stopped them from giving me work, why would something silly like not being in their employ cause even a slight hesitation.
I took some textbooks home yesterday. It was time to break the "No Textbooks in The House" rule. They make an impressive pile on the corner of my couch. I hope to actually look in one sometime before finals are over. I'm leaning towards my sub crim book, butit might be biz ass. I don't think I'll buy textbooks next year. They seem like a waste of money.
I haven't seen any exciting flash games b/c I'm not to that level of studying yet. That should be late Monday.
I went and saw Hitchhicker's Guide To the Galaxy last night. It was much better than I thought it would be. It diverged from the book quite a bit so it felt like a totally different movie. There were whole new subplots. I really appreciated that because I'm going to have to deal with the disappointment over the new Star Wars movie in a couple of weeks, and both those back to back would have crushed my tender spirit.
I saw this on Fark. What better indication than it's finals time.

Timely Music?

Finals is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Coffee drips and staineth lips
And how the stapler slam!
Sing: Goddamm.
Outlineth muss and causeth fuss
An fading as I cram.
Chapter skimmer, turns to blither
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, tis now exams,
Goddamm.
So ‘gainst the curver’s balm

Sing Goddmm, damm, sing Goddamm
Sing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,
DAMM.

Summer's coming

I hit the grocery store, I'm totally stocked. I've got so much stuff I'm going to have to bury it in special containers like all the Y2K nuts did. I can dig it up late at night when I'm hankerin' for some queso dip or something to snack on. I also did all my laundry. I cleaned my apartment. I'm ready for finals, except for the studying and knowing stuff part.
Lexis keeps reminding us to renew our password over the summer. They have this graphic of someone, a female in soft focus, barefoot with her legs up working on her laptop. You get the impression she's on a beach. I could see why Lexis would be pushing this image, but come on. The only people I know who are going to be barefoot and reading lexis this summer are going to be the law clerks at legal aid. Just have some respect for us. Don't sugar coat it. We all know what extending our password means. It means being holed up in a cubicle in the library or some windowless closet of an office set aside for law clerks while the sun gleams outside. If I went anywhere near a beach lexis would be the last thing I was thinking about.
I fucked up some beans tonight. I thought I would try making beans in the crockpot. They could cook while I sleep and then I'll have beans with almost no work. I have never made beans in the crockpot before and I was thinking about how much liquid to add and what temp and for how long. I was considering all this and accidently added the salt. Anyone who has ever cooked dry beans knows you never add the salt until the beans are cooked. If you add the salt first you get tough beans. I can't believe I did that. I guess I could have rinsed off the beans but I didn't think about that until right now. I'm going to get kicked out of the Chicano race for this. NCLR is already sending me a letter, "Mr. Gonzalez, Because you are unable to cook beans you are unworthy of your status as a pocho. We considered demoting you to chilango but this was too great a transgression. We regret to inform you that you may no longer use the term Latino or Hispanic to describe yourself. Please return any Edward James Olmos movies you may have rented from Blockbuster and handover your autographed Cruz Bustamante headshot. Thank you"

P.S. Does anyone know if it's true that Lalo Alcatraz died?

Adult behavior followed by a temper tantrum

I wanted to address Daily Texican's comments in my post real quick b/c they're good questions. I hadn't thought about the term "Negro" b/c I don't know if there is a term similar to African American in Spanish and I'm not sure how relevant the term "African American" is except in explaining a cultural component of the U.S. culture. The term I was thinking about was "negrito" b/c it may be evocative of the term "boy". Latino's aren't part of the era where "boy" was used but I think it should be something we are sensitive too. There was also a great article in the Times about how Latinos and Blacks have joined together in LA to exercise their political might. My problem with "chino" was covered pretty well by CindyLu.

It's that time of the year when I have to hit the grocery store to stock up for finals. I don't want to have to go to the grocery store at all for 3 weeks. I also don't want to have to put in a lot of effort cooking. This means my cart will have a lot of ramen, stuff to make a big ass pot of beans, a big thing of enchiladas, a big thing of chile verde, a bunch of microwavable food, and totino's frozen pizza(They're toxic but tasty!). I also need stuff I can snack on. That means a lot of granola, dried mangos and papaya, chips and salsa, and chorizo and eggs. Does anyone recommend anything that tastes good, won't make me feel like I ate at McDonalds, and can be cooked in 5 minutes or less?

Last, I'd like to rant for a second. The muthafucka who stole the microfiche tapes for the Oregon House Committee Meeting Minutes from 1977 I hope you get syphilis and die. You bastard. Your children's eyes will be too closely set. Now I have to go to the courthouse library which is totally sketchy b/c the methheads wander around looking for people's stuff to steal. Why didn't you just pay the fucking ten cents a copy for the crap you need and put it in a 3 ring binder and save it. You can obviously afford it b/c you must have a fucking microfiche reader or the tapes would be no use to you. You deserve the West Nile Virus, you son of a bitch. If I ever catch you stealing those tapes in the library, and I know it's got to be an attorney b/c who else would want those and have a microfiche reader, I will report you to the bar and write a letter to every professional organization you belong to and make sure they know that you are a no good stupid thief. If you stole it to make another attorney's job harder then you are a sad sack of dumb shit b/c if that's what you need to win your case it won't be very long before you go down. Your mother never really loved you!
And to the bastards who mix up the Oregon Laws with the Senate and House Journals, read the fucking spine. How hard is it? The name is in big letters, just put them on the right shelf, preferably where they go by date. I hope you people get really bad hangnails in your big toe.

Machismo

I was reading El Mas Chingon's blog and he had a thing about "Man Dating" via The Daily Texican. My first reaction was, "That's gay. No way will you catch me on a 'Man Date'". Later in the day I came across this article about Spanish radio stations taking advantage of language issues to vent homophobic garbage. I realized a couple things. First, I have some issues with being a hypocrite that I need to work on. Second and more importantly is that Latinos need to knock this stuff off right now.
There is a whole range of reasons why this kind of behavior is wrong. You can start off with the obvious ones like, it's wrong to degrade another human being or what entitles us to judge another person in a solely private matter. Besides the "don't be a jerk" and "mind your own business" reasons there is a more practical reason.
After 9/11 I remember thinking "On the upside maybe they'll lay off the Latinos and profile the Arabs." Once again, that’s not a wonderful thing to think and more than a touch hypocritical. Hoping to avoid prejudice and discrimination by substituting another group may be the American way, but it's not a good way. The reason it's not good is because if you rely on displaced racism it's only so long before it boomerangs back at you.
Well it's been boomeranging. There is the Real ID act in the Senate (While you're at MALDEF's site check out the announcement about Corky Gonzales. I should have mentioned it but I didn't know what was properly respectful. Here is a link to Yo Soy Joaquin.), which is basically an anti Latino piece of legislation. There are proposed laws to increase legal penalties for involvement in a gang(In Oregon it's HB 2313). I think we all know that being in a gang means having more than 1 friend from your neighborhood if you come from a lower economic class or wearing the same t shirt when the cop stops you if your a minority. There has also been the minutemen protest in Arizona that has now grown another branch.
As Latinos we are currently seen as outsiders. We are all potential illegal foreigners. We are all perceived as criminals. How far are we really from ending up like Jose Padilla? Is this hyperbole? It could be, but should we risk it? Ask the few surviving Japanese Americans who suffered the internment if we should be worried.
What do we, as Latinos, need right now? We need strong allies who have a proven history of successfully fighting bigotry and hatred. We need to turn to people like the Jewish Anti-defamation League, the Catholic Church, the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. We also need solidarity with other groups who are finding themselves in similar straights. This means teaming up with the Arab right's groups, south Asian rights groups, and groups that work to protect and ensure homosexual rights.
How can we make allies when we use terms like "joto", "maricon"(if I spelled it wrong I figure you still know what I'm talking about), or even "negrito" and "chino". No matter how many differences we think we can find between "us" and "them" we have a lot more in common. Is the name calling for cheap laughs worth losing a friend? It's time Latinos grow up.

learning this fancy hello/blogger/picasa thing part II the return of the grease stained hoody 

Learning this fancy hello/blogger/picasa thing 

News that warms the heart

I came across this article the other day. A white girl was sent home for wearing cornrows. They allow black children to wear the haircut out of respect for their cultural heritage. The white kids aren't allowed to wear the hair b/c the school doesn't want street culture brought in. Well, in that case... Oh wait, that's me they're talking about.
So I got a whole bunch of stuff done this weekend. Some of it was even homework. Finals are in a couple of weeks. Now is the time to really perfect my procrastination skills.
I washed my bathtub out, scouring powder and everything. It looks great. Every time I go into the bathroom I can admire it's shiny white finish. It only took me about ten minutes though. I give this 2 stars out of four for procrastination.
I cleaned the rest of the bathroom after I did the tub. This was nice because it took a little bit longer. I also could enjoy the clean bathroom smell, Pine-Sol, all the way into the hallway. The upside of the bathroom as a whole compared to just the bathtub is that the bathroom will get dirty again in a couple days. I will still have this procrastination option open to me when finals start. 3 stars.
I removed all the shelves from my refrigerator and washed those shelves. This is a great procrastination technique b/c it reinforces the "look in the fridge every five minutes" procrastination technique. Every Time you open that door to have another Trader Joe's Jalepeno Stuffed Olive(TM) you notice how clean your fridge is. It's great. I give this one 4 stars.
I cleaned out the airhose on my vacuum cleaner. This gets 1 star. It was both nasty and scary. There was shit in there that I had no business knowing about.
I tried to decipher the whole story on The Streets' "A Grand Don't Come For Free" CD. It's pretty interesting. I like how the whole CD is a story. I was kind of unimpressed at first but now I realize it's a much more ambitious CD. I give this activity 5 stars. It takes at least 45 minutes and it's endlessly repeatable plus you can leave a word document with part of an outline open and some papers scattered around and act like your doing homework. This one is very easy to justify.
Playing with the cat is also an option. I'm not sure how viable though. Usually this last for about ten minutes and I get a nice sharp claw to the inner arm or some equally tender piece of skin. This is .25 stars.
Last is the walk up to the coffee shop. This is far and away the most enjoyable procrastination technique. It is also very justifiable. Either you need the coffee to stay awake, or to concentrate, or as a reward. You can listen to your mp3 player on the way to the coffee shop. You can also choose the coffee shop that's 2 miles away so you can sort your outline out in your head while walking there. If you went to the coffee shop around the corner you wouldn't be able to do much planning. The only problem with the coffee shop technique is that it lends itself to abuse. Too many trips to the coffee shop and you could end up with severe jitters. 4.5 stars.

Interviews, Papers, Outlines, and Professional Reputations

I finished cross indexing my outlines and adding color tabs today. That's three weeks before finals. I put them in brand new three ring binders which I had professionally embossed in raised gold lettering. Okay, maybe not. I did finish my reading for Monday...
for at least one class.
I'm entering the last few days of house sitting. I've been sleeping in a twin bed. I'm freakin' huge. My feet hang at least six inches off the end of the bed. My shoulders are about 3 inches narrower than the bed. Soon I'll be able to sleep on my own bed. It's a grown up bed.
They've got two cats. I don't know the cats names. I named them Mongo and Tardo. I'm P.C. like that. Both cats are fierce droolers. Mongo blows spit bubbles. Tardo drools like Niagra Falls. I woke up the other day with Tardo on my shoulder and my cheek sopping wet.
So will I miss all this? Yes. They have the nicest set of cast iron skillets I've ever seen. There's a gas stove so I don't have to jerry rig some trivet to cook tortillas. I've got several rooms and chairs to choose from when I do my homework. It's clean. Best of all the teenage boy who lives here has friends. They tell me awesome things. One told me to let him know if anyone does anything stupid. I almost asked "Besides what you just said?" Teenagers are slapstick, unless they're yours.

Civilized?

From the "You people live like animals!" files, I cannot find a pair of channel locks in this house (I'm still house sitting) and they have a leaky sink. I guess it makes sense that their sink is leaking if they don't have any channel locks. Their toilets were also running but you can use a butter knife to fix that.
The first time I realized that some people actually choose to live like animals was when I realized I had done it myself. I even thought I preferred it to living a genteel civilized existence. When I first moved to Oregon I was a bit put off by the fact that you are not allowed to pump your own gas. I wondered what pack of idiots would pass a law preventing me from pumping my own gas. I was at least 5 or 6 years older than the kids pumping the gas and had much more experience handling a gas pump than they did. I thought the law made no sense.
The first Oregon winter hit and suddenly the law made sense to the kid from Texas. Why in the hell would I want to get out of my car in 40 degree weather to get rained on while inhaling gas fumes? Only the worst kind of ignorant fool would want to do that. So the people at the state legislature made the wise decision to force the gas stations to hire teenagers to stand in the miserable weather and pump gas. I've never looked back.
I visited my folks in Utah that Thanksgiving and remembered how silly they were to get out of their car in even colder, more miserable weather and pump gas. They lived like animals. I told my old man that Utah should pass a law and he said he didn't want some stupid teenager messing around with his car. Sure I wouldn't want a teenager recoiling my alternator but they can surely work a gas cap and pump. That was just an excuse on my dad's part to toil in the muck. I couldn't believe it.
Tomorrow I will go get my toolbox and fix the sink so I don't have to listen to it drip anymore. These people are really blessed that they selected such a civilized and well informed person to house sit for them. Hopefully they will go out and by their own channel locks.

Thuggin' Out in Salem

I was thrown out of the State Archive today. Yeah, you know you're a hardcore O.G. 2L when the archivist's posse has to come and get up in your face. They tried to enforce, but I stopped them short. They can't front on this! (I do that tuff guy thing where you puff up your shoulders real fast to make the other guy flinch at this moment.)
I had been in the archive for about 6 hours copying committee exhibits and minutes and bill tracings and stuff while simultaneously (There is no way I spelled this word right. Blogger probably won't even have a suggestion I'm so far off. [I got it right, that's why I thought it was spelled wrong.]) taping committee meeting minutes. This was from back in 1979 before the equipment was really very good. I would criticize D.J. State Archivist's mix as being too muddy but I understand the technological limitations at that time.
Anyway, I'm trying to tape these minutes off an old reel to reel onto a cassette. Because of the wonky set up I can't use the high speed dubbing function and they won't let me use two tape recorders at once. (This place has a crapload and a half of rules. I felt like I was reading the Oregon Administrative Code when I signed in. You can't take in a pen or your backpack, you're not supposed to take anything home with you [you mean I'm not at the library?] or deface anything and so on and so forth. They barely let me use my own headphones on the tape recorders. This probably should have been it's own paragraph along with the bitch about the quarter copies.) That means I have to slowly tape about 7 hours of minutes before they close, while doing all my other stuff. (I would also like to mention at this point that the receptionist was a jerk. She wouldn't give me change for the freakin' meter so I had to walk a couple blocks down to the Dept. Of Veteran Affairs. They have a change machine. Those Vet. Affairs folks know how to treat a tax paying citizen.)
I wasn't going to use this post to bitch but it seems like I am anyway so I'm just going to keep it up. I also have a problem with the price of copies. The state legislature set the price at a quarter a copy. I spent $99.50 on freakin' copies. I accidentally loaded some copies in upside down and before I could fix it I had spent $4. Christ, if the money were going to the schools I wouldn't mind, but it's going to the damned receptionist who won't give me any fucking change for the parking meter. It's not technically their fault b/c the legislature set the price. So because the price is set by the legislature I guess they're not full fledged bastards but only state mandated bastards...
They are bastards nonetheless.
So where was I? Oh yeah, I'm trying to tape the last committee meeting, I'm about halfway done and it's quickly approaching closing time. I organize everything I possibly can so that I'm ready to go immediately. At 4:44 PM the state mandated bastard (SMB) walks over and unplugs the recorder and says "You're done, we're closed."
What pissed me off was that the SMB used exactly the same tone of voice I used to use when I used to 86 people from my bar for being too drunk and obnoxious. If I'm taping some minutes have a heart. I hate being in Salem and at the Archive as much, if not more (I would contend more b/c my heart is not two sizes too small!), than you do. Let me get the last five minutes.
In conclusion, to summarize, my legislative history skillz are mad dangerous. I'm a researchin' thug and the SMB's at the Archivist better watch out b/c next week I'm coming for some bill filings.
And one more thing. When I first walked in to ask a question one of the SMBs threw a form in my face and said "You can't be here without one of these." I would have had one of those if the receptionist had mentioned it when I signed in. I'm pretty sure that being a jerk wasn't state mandated.