October 31, 2005

I just spent too long trying to set up Ubuntu just so. Which means I didn't get a chance to set the permissions on my new wiki just so.

...and in the end I couldn't figure out why my browser wouldn't do a bunch of key things like for example; let me log in to this blog..

Reminder, the time I spend failing at tasks is just as much about learning as the times in which I am successful.

Ran into Patrick who mentioned that he is hard at work re-templating his blog for CSS Reboot

What a freaking cool-looking event that I have missed, next year...watch out Patrick.. ; ).

In other news, oh wait there is no other news.

Oh wait there *is* other news.. The awesome ladiezzz who brought you Blogher '05 have kindly asked me to be part of their planning team for '06.

wicked wicked wicked...

So now here's the ish, I have to have the money come summer to pay my taxes for two years, pay for any scholastic program I may get into in September '06 and get to Europe and back in time for Blogher '06 in July.

Peice of cake.

Does anyone want to buy a slightly damaged kidney? I owe Jane 20 bucks so she's gonna get some of the money but whatever.

October 30, 2005

I bought an amazing book yesterday: Yentle the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer, illustrated by Antonio Frasconi.

Great inspiration for my own project.

The story forms the basis for the movie of the same title, it's short and tightly written and excitingly queer-centric.

I am not sure what the movie is like, but in the book Yentl, a Jewish girl who feels transgender due to her love of Torah study, never really resolves the issues that prevent her from accessing mainstream gender roles. I think the fact that there is no resolution of the central characters dilemma makes the story truthful and also pretty revolutionary considering that Singer was writing in 1962 about a community with strict laws governing gender norms.

Can you tell the last time I wrote literary criticism was in my grade 9 book report on The Day of the Triffids?

" Yentl knew she wasn't cut out for a woman's life. She couldn't sew, she couldn't knit. She let the food burn and the milk boil over; her Sabbath pudding never turned out right, and her hallah dough didn't rise. Yentl much preferred men's activities to women's. Her father, Reb Todros, may he rest in peace, during many bedridden years had studied Torah with his daughter as if she were a son. He told Yentl to lock the doors and drape the windows, then together they pored over the Pentatteuch, the Mishnah, the Gemarrah and the Commentaries.

She had proved so apt a pupil that her father used to say;

"Yentl - you have the soul of a man."

"So why was I born a woman?"

"Even heaven makes mistakes." "

The famous scene from the movie, is one in which Yentl/Anshel the yeshiva boy has to share a bed with his best friend and also love object Avigdor. Yentl ends up revealing his identity to Avigdor and the two talk about how to fix the situation, since Yentl/Anshel has married a local girl to keep up the illusion that he is a man, and now must break his vows.

Gradually the two went back to their Talmudic conversation. It seemed strange at first to Avigdor to be disputing holy writ with a woman, yet before long the Torah had reunited them. Though their bodies were different, their souls were of one kind. Anshel spoke with a singsong, gesticulated with her thumb, clutched at her sidelocks, plucked at her beardles chin, made all the customary gestures of a yeshiva student. In the heat of the argument, she even seized Avigdor by the lapel and called him stupid. A great love for Anshel took hold of Avigdor, mixed with shame, remorse, anxiety. If only he had known this before, he said to himself. In his thoughts he likened Anshel(or Yentl) to Bruria, the wife of Reb Meir, and to Yalta, the wife of Reb Nachman. For the first time he saw clearly that this was what he had always wanted: A wife whose mind was not taken up with material things.. His desire for Hadass was gone now, and he knew he would long for Yentl, but he dared not say so. He felt hot and knew that his face was burning. He could no longer meet Anshels eyes. he began to enumerate Anshel's sins and saw that he too was implicated, for he had sat next to Yentl and touched her during her unclean days. Nu,and what could be said to her marriage to Hadass? What a multitude of transgressions there! Willful deception, false vows, misrepresentation - Heaven knows what else.

He asked suddenly: " Tell the truth, are you a heretic?"

"God forbid!"

"Then how could you bring yourself to do such a thing?"

The longer Anshel talked, the less Avigdor understood. All Anshels explanations seemed to point to one thing: She had the soul of a man and the body of a woman. Anshel said she had married Hadass only to be near to Avigdor.

"You could have married me," Avigdor said.

"I wanted to study the Gemara and Commentaries with you, not darn your socks!"

Good stuff. Especially smart is the switching between the pronouns and the use of the names to indicate Avigdors own state of mind regarding Anshel/Yentls gender and his relationship to that gender.

Speaking of gender, Lauren gave me a *sweet* black leather motercycle jacket. So I no longer have to wear the one which is primarily holes surrounded by chunky zippers anymore.

The reason she gave it to me is that on her it looks oddly ugly and innapropriately masculine, and on me, (not to brag..) it looks incredibly good and kind of butchy, wider sholders tight around the waist with these awesome tapered sleeves that flare out at the wrist.

Lauren and I are both short-ish with short -ish hair and glasses. We have evolved efficiently enough over the past 6 years to have similiar bodies and share jeans shirts hoodies etc.. But there are some areas where we just can't overlap. And it's mostly because somehow even if we are both wearing jeans, hoodies, tee-shirts and running shoes as we were last night, Lauren is a femme and I am not...

It's weird I don't really understand it. Yet I know that if I took some of Laurens good "going out " clothes and tried on her (soon to be purchased) white ankle boots, everyone would say oh look it's dyke in drag and if Lauren put on my (awesome) leather jacket and her motercycle boots people would say look at that girl trying to get up all tough..

Sorry that's a bit of a ramble.

October 26, 2005

Yippeee.. all this random talk of her, "working on her blog" and finally when I had almost given up hope I find much less info.

#1 what the hell is up with those uber realistic tissue papers dude? How did you do that? I almost went to brush my screen off. I am picturing you scanning tiny pieces of kleenex and then feathering the edges for hours to make it just right. C'est incroyable.

PS: for all of you who know her, her blogging sounds just like her talking , she even writes "such that" ....

sigh. I love technology.

PS: in the interests of not cluttering up your cyberspace my dear - I tried to keep this post under 500 mots but I think I failed.

This morning in the park in the everloving rain she was running around like someone had just handed her a million dollars and a truck full off raw hamburger - I was stumbling around blind with a mug of coffee muttering to myself about deadlines and bad haircuts.

She's 12. That's the dog equivalent of really really old. I am a mere wisp of a 28 year old but I sound like I am about to bite the dust slumped over a copy of retirement living.

Okay I have to go catch another bus... Here's an idea, let's all go to the mountain and have a rain dance or the opposite of a rain dance. Let's have a snow dance or a falling leaf dance or a hail dance, anything but this (insert copious swear marks) rain....