Monday Night Purgatory

I wanted to go to Weeds tonight for the open mike poetry because it was the annual Erotica Valentine's reading but I'm feeling decidely UN-erotic. I've never been very good at writing erotica, either. My work goes quickly pornographic and it doesn't take long to turn completely hardcore. Then Gregorio sent out a message that there would be filming and we should dress up and then possibly fall in love with someone. The pressure was mounting. Then I got my period (see what I mean about the suddenly hardcore) and had to drive to the far south side to visit someone in the hospital. Also, whenever I go to Weeds I end up drinking a bunch of tequilas and the next thing I know it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm getting thrown out of the Old Town Ale House. I wouldn't feel right tomorrow morning asking the patients how much they've been drinking while tequila and lime seep out of my pores and the seven dwarves sing "heigh ho" in my skull while driving sledgehammers against my temples.

I hate working in the mornings. It is decidedly not erotic.

Vets 4 Peace

Today, about half a dozen veterans climbed a fence and hung a sign on the national archive -- the building which houses the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

"We take this action as a last resort," their statement added। "For years we have pursued every avenue open to good, vigilant citizens to bring these men to justice, to re-establish the rule of law, and to restore the balance of power described in our Constitution। We are not disturbing the peace; we are attempting to restore the peace। We are not conducting ourselves in a disorderly manner; our action is well-ordered and well-considered. We are not trespassing; we have come to the home of our Constitution to honor our oath to defend it."

-- Veterans for Peace

Mi amor, mi chingador ... te conoceré en el infierno

Four hundred eighty-eight years ago today Cuitláhuac led the Aztecs against Hernán Cortés and his Spanish merceneries, driving them out of Tenochtítlan.

Cuitláhuac was dead of small pox within a few months. (Bioterrorism was created by the Western man.)

Cortés had been greeted by the Aztecs as a god. They believed him to be an incarnation of Huitzilopochtli, god of war and patron of Mexico. This was because Cortés' lover la Malinche told him how to act in order to best the Aztecs. and so Cortés ended up lucky in love and money.
According to legend, Malinche was sold into slavery by her Aztec mother after her mom remarried and wished to leave her land to children by her 2nd marriage. (Aztec inheritance was matrilineal). Malinche was in the way and so she was placed on the auction block.

She passed through many tribes and ended up translating for Cortés because she knew so many languages. He was a conquistador thousands of miles from his wife, so he lived up to his name and conquered Malinche and with her help (the Spanish never would have succeeded without her) he conquered the Aztecs.

According to other legends, Malinche had several children by Cortés and when he left Malinche in order to return to Spain and his European family, she was so heartbroken that she drowned her children and herself.

Malinche was doomed by all of the gods in all of the heavens of all of the religions to search the earth for the souls of her children and not to return to the gates of heaven until she finds them. Her dead children of course, are hiding from her, seeing as she drowned them. So she tears at her hair and she keens and moans in her grief and that cry will turn your blood to ice in your veins and because of that cry, the ghost of Malinche is called La Llorona.

And to this day La Llorona snatches little children from the shore and drowns them. Perhaps she mistakes them for her own, she has been searching so long. Perhaps, she hopes to trick the gatekeepers and sneak into heaven with someone else's child.

Today, in Mexican spanish, a malinche is an unforgivable traitor. and La Llorona is a folk song and a cautionary tale used by parents to warn children away from the water.

Today, Tenochtitlan is el D.F. (Distrito Federal) or Mexico City as we call it in english-speaking countries. The city's residents speak spanish, not nuahtl.

The wheel turns.

Circular Thinking

It is estimated that the occupation of Iraq has cost US taxpayers about $536 billion by the end of today, Wednesday, May 21st.

But today the Executive Idiot vetoed a farm bill because farmers "are making too much money" because the cost of food has gone up so much.

Of course, the cost of food has gone up because the cost of oil has gone up -- and the only people making money off that are Bush's friends, like the bigwigs at Halliburton and the Al Saud family.

I'm not friends with the Halliburton board of directors, or the Al Saud family (rumored to be supporting the insurgency in Iraq). I do have friends who are farmers and they are having a tough year because the price of oil is so high and frankly a disproportionate amount of people from rural areas are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan -- their kids are fighting the insurgents who are subject to and financially supported by the Al Saud family.

And meanwhile, our surplus food reserves are drying up. The food pantries and soup kitchens are receiving less food, just as more people are forced by the economy to use them.

So the Executive Idiot thinks the answer is to deny funding to farmers -- most of whom work another full time job to "support their farming habit" as my friend Jaybird says.

So more family farmers are forced out of business trying to pay for diesel fuel...

further depleting food reserves...

which more Americans need because everything is so expensive because of the high cost of oil and the weak dollar....

which was weakened by Bush's policies favoring his big business alliances...

which is why we are spending $750 million dollars a day to occupy Iraq...

which is why the Al Saud family sends so-called insurgents into Iraq to fight US military...

which is why Cheney and Bush threaten to attack Iran...

which is why hundreds of thousands of human beings die for oil...

which is reaping record profits for big business, Bush and his cronies...

....which worried the cat that chased the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Bush built.

Stuff and Nonsense

I need a new job kids! I've elevated workplace daydreaming to an unparalleled level and I still can't figure out what I want to be when I grow up. People are going to start noticing pretty soon that I'm way too far out in my very own imaginary ozone to be productive.

I wasn't meant for this modern reality. I'm a nice person with some trivial talents and I'm great in a crisis, but I'm just not sure I understand the priorities of this modern world. All of this voluntary solitude and obsession with stuff and nonsense like helmet laws and mass marketing. Can't we just cook Sunday dinners and stop pretending like emotional withdrawal is some kind of grown-up and noble response to living in a society that's less-than-perfect?

I'm willing to compromise, but I'm sick of myself and also everybody else's boring anxieties. My tolerance is waning, but it's probably just the weather.

I'm tired of everything and I'm tired of me. I want to feel the sunshine. I want to run off to sea. I want to become Pirate Jenny.

Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you say, "Who's that kicking up a row?"
And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda
And you say, "What's she got to stare at now?"
I'll tell ya.
There's a ship
The Black Freighter
turns around in the harbor
shootin' guns from her bow

Seriously, someone throw me a life preserver or let me swim far, far away. January sucks at 41 and a half degrees North. It's been spongy-gloomy-cloudy for days on weeks on months on end and I'm just feeling oh-so-very SAD.


(Image by Farrizada.)

I Have Bad Gas

OK, would someone please explain a couple of things to me???

1. Why is it that socialized medicine is reputed to be bad because it eliminates consumer choice and the free market laissez-faire economy will sort itself out, with the best competitors/ companies rising to the top like cream or whatever BUT private utility companies are given government subsidies and monopolies in different municipalities? In other words, the government closes the free market to favor for-profit natural gas companies such as People's Energy or oil companies such as Halliburton or mercenary companies like Blackwater-- but that's okay and not threatening to undermine all that capitalism purports to stand for? Why and how?


2. Why is it that now that our Democratic Republic has been converted to a Corporatocracy -- primary product oil -- half the people I know no longer can afford luxuries like natural gas for hot water and heat?


3. Is it true that People's Energy can now turn off your heat in the winter if you haven't paid you bill? If so, why should they get government subsidies within a non-competitive market?


4. Among other things, are our tax dollars now going to be used to:

• Steal oil from the Iraqis for American-owned private corporations?


• Fight wars for oil companies -- who have made record profits the last 3 years running.


• Give no-bid government contracts to oil companies, who make record profits, disappear billions of dollars and then move to Dubai?


• Build warming centers (read homeless shelters) for people who have homes, but who have had their heat shut off in the dead of winter because of the astronomical increases in the cost of energy and 6 years of economic depression?*** With all of this oil our government is killing for, we can't even get some heat?

If we're going to have a mixed economy -- and you have to if your nation can be found anywhere on a map of reality -- why can't we face the fact that social welfare will ALWAYS have to exist to prevent rioting and starvation and maintain social stability. (Oh, and it's also THE RIGHT THING TO DO, but I digress.) We justify and allow corporate welfare at a much greater cost. And with corporate welfare -- such as government grants and subsidies or when the feds let corporations off the hook for things like taxes or environmental, health and safety regulations -- the citizenry has to foot the bill at least twice.

• Once, to provide government contracts to large, for-profit companies. (example: Halliburton's multi-billion dollar contracts in Iraq)
• Twice, to clean up the fall out. (Another 150 billion dollars to prolong this endless quagmire -- a quagmire that was exacerbated by poor policy planning after the invasion in 2003, policy enacted by companies like Halliburton, for example.)
• If -- for example -- Halliburton makes record profits from this invasion which just keeps going, will Halliburton be footing the bill for the health care of the vets who come home with chronic and severe health problems while fighting this war for oil profits? Perhaps when hell freezes over?

I don't think that capitalism is the healthiest way to run and sustain a society as large and as heterogeneous as ours, however since that is the system we are using, shouldn't we stick to its basic principles -- like a free market, no corporate subsidies, tariffs on goods manufactured in other countries, etc., etc.? Or if we are going to support a system of corporate welfare, why can't we also support a system of civic welfare and institute socialized medicine, support for sustainable (and affordable) energy sources, childcare programs, etc., atc., etc.?

Am I missing something?

***(This is the City of Chicago's current solution to the disconnected heat situation -- send those without heat to warming centers. How about, cut off all contracts for People's Energy if they can't use their exclusive regional contract to help heat the community?)

Anne

Someone tagged me with a meme, which I hope to craft in E-Prime, a writing discipline Paula described here. I feel some ambivalence regarding it. On the one hand, I may improve my writing style by using the passive voice less frequently. This might make me less passive in deed as well as in thought. On the other hand, this imposition makes writing more difficult, and perhaps more awkward, as I wish not to devolve from the subject of my story to its object.

Back to the meme... You must talk about your middle name and my parents dubbed me Jennifer Anne. Next, they* would insist I post the meme rules. I care very little for rules created by others, so I choose to skip that part -- actually, I choose to skip all of it, except the part where I write about some famous women who bore this name of Anne.

Anne Bonny Ah, piracy!!!

Anne Bonny's father knocked up her mother while paying her -- for maid services, not made services. To avoid scandal, they moved from Ireland to Charleston, South Carolina, not yet USA, a notiorious pirate city in that era.

Anne married James Bonny, moved to present-day Nassau, grew bored with Lame James, put on men's clothing and asked for a position on Calico Jack Rackam's ship. (Calico Jack created the Jolly Roger.) Anne killed a shipmate when he discovered her secret -- although later, she discovered Mary Read's secret -- Jack's ship housed two cross-dressing women!

OR -- Anne grew tired of Lame James and took up with Calico Jack. The two comandeered a ship with a lot of her pirate buddies. Somewhere in the Bahamas, Mary Read joined the crew.

THEN -- One day, the Jamaican government cornered Bonny, Rackham, Read and crew in their sloop. All of the men decided they could never successfully take or fight the ship attacking them and went down into the hold to drink until captured. Mary and Anne alone tried to fight off their attackers.

The Jamaican government found the whole lot of them guilty of piracy and sentenced them to hang. Anne and Mary "plead their bellies". (Suprisingly, dozens of men managed to impregnate the only 2 women on the ship.) Their executions stayed, Anne finagled an escape and disappeared from the historical record. (Mary Read seems to have died of fever in prison.) Some stories say she married another and returned to piracy. Other stories have her returning to South Carolina where she remarried and founded a plantation with her husband. In any case, Anne Bonny's life remains the stuff of legends.

Anne Boleyn: Enter the queen.


Shunted off to France to Louis XII's court when still a very young girl, Anne learned to speak and read French. She also developed a taste for French food, literature and clothing and stayed until about age 19 in the court of Henry's sister Queen Mary before returning to Britian in the court of Queen Catherine -- daughter of Queen Isabella. It seems Anne was contracted to marry a couple of noblemen at a couple of points.

Anne, the more-famous Boleyn (King Henry VIII bedded and begat two children on her sister Mary) ** eventually and with much effort seems to have attracted the eye and favor of the king through intelligence and sex appeal. He put aside his wife Catherine of Aragon (who had provided him with no living heir and grew older, much like Henry) by having their marriage declared invalid via adultery, as his brother had left her a virgin widow before Henry married Catherine.

Henry and Anne married when she informed him of her pregnancy. Not wanting to cast shadows on the birth of a potential heir, Anne's ambitions finally saw fulfillment. Of course, 16th century Europe assumed an heir came with a penis -- kind of a ready-made scepter. Like many women, Elizabeth I entered this world on a tide of blood and disappointment. Of course, she grew and evolved into one of England's most powerful and influential rulers.

After failing to produce a male heir and helping Henry and England to see that a marriage did not equal permanence, rumors and danger increased around Anne Boleyn. Henry accused her of adultery and incest (with her brother). She lost her marriage, crown and head in May of 1536.

St. Anne: The Mother of Our Lady

In a religion that often reviles the sacred role of women, St. Anne's existence in the canon instructs us that:

1. We need mothers and grandmothers. Even the zealous born-again autocrats and the pedophiliac followers of Paul of Tsarsus -- who ruined Christianity (in my opinion).

2. The Catholic Church had to create a shadow of a matriarchy in order to convert those who followed the earth religions.

St. Anne seems created from archetypes -- but so what? The Mother of the Mother and the grandmother of Christ, St. Anne's mystery weaves itself from the sacred feminine.

(This image by DaVinci depicts St. Anne.)

*Someone once told me, "they" are the ones who do not love you. Think about it. Everytime you refer to "they" or "them", they certainly tend to act like haters, rather than lovers.

**{Note to the feminist sisterhood: E-Prime challenges me yet again by making Mary Boleyn the object of procreation, rather than the subject -- a woman's actual role in pregnancy and childbirth. However, in the case of copulating with Henry VIII, I postulate that a woman received the King and prayed to god he tossed her a Y chromosome so she could keep her head and her bed.}

Arrr!!!

Avast me hearties!!!

It is I, Black Jenny Bonny, fresh from pillagin' and sailin' some rivers. (Feminist Pirates don't rape, but we can give you a stare that'll shiver your timbers.)

Methinks you find this pirate bit tiresome, but there has been on ongoing Pirate undercurrent in my life these past couple weeks, and Sirenas love to dive headfirst into an undercurrent.

If you want your own customized pirate name, you need to go to http://www.fidius.org/quiz/pirate/
because it's fun and takes about 3.5 minutes.

Also, I just bought Pussy, King of the Pirates by Kathy Acker. (This was also performed as a sort-of performance art opera with the Mekons in 1997.)

There are actually a whole bunch more Pirates popping up awry and everywhere in my life right now -- but I am sworn to confidentiality and can't post them. However, if you buy me a mojito, or some other delicious rum concoction, I might be persuaded to spill.

Overture

As I lay beached on my couch last night, unable to swim through the flotsam and jetsam of my apartment, a lightning bolt of understanding jolted me in the vicinity of my right forearm -- which immediately became numb and tingly. (Yeah, I was laying on my side; it fell asleep.)

If you're trying to teach the law of entropy to your 11th grade science class, I suggest you plan a field trip to my apartment. Seriously. The flotsam and jetsam (read: empty cigarette packs, books, plastic shopping bags, papers, tools, laundry arranged in various baskets according to degrees of cleanliness, CDs, DVDs, magazines, mail) has increased to a point in which no work can occur within the closed system that is my apartment.

That's when I realized that I am actually a mermaid, who has recreated her ocean floor existence above sea level in a midwestern city on the second floor of a 6 flat. Eeesh. This would be the lightning bolt I referred to in paragraph one. It seems that one upon a time I was a happy little be-gilled and beguiling sirena who washed ashore and met a pirate. Enamored by his gauzy shirt, bottle of rum and foul mouth, I agreed to exchange my tail and gills for a life of poor air and above-board existence -- after which, the pirate left me for a long, hot summer of romance with the first mate and a manatee. I naturally repressed this memory, and wandered around in post-traumatic stress disordered state. It wasn't until last night, looking around my trashy apartment and feeling quite at home, that everything came back to me with said lightning bolt.

I think I'm going to throw a party so that I'm forced to clean my place. I'll be making a rum and horchata punch. Details to follow.