screwing up the Jumble caper · 2 December 2009, 14:04
I have death dreams once a year or so – dreams where someone I care about is dead and I can really feel what it would be like to have them gone and I really have no idea that I’m dreaming. They’re very hard to shake after I wake up, too, because even though nobody is dead now, eventually someday they will be, and think what that will be like! Terrible, that’s what! Last night I dreamed a dear bike-dance cohort died and then, as if my brain decided that didn’t make me sad enough, I dreamed my sister died too. I woke up crying at 5am and texted her asking her please not to die (what if she was going to OMG I must send this RIGHT NOW and stop it!), and walked into a door trying to get a glass of water to calm myself down, and decided that I believe in an afterlife, because otherwise people are just gone and how bad is that? Terrible, that’s how bad!
Seriously, though, I consider myself an atheist more because I just ain’t got religion no matter how hard I try, not so much because I don’t think there are things in the universe that are beyond my ken and perhaps in some way spiritual, so I don’t really see a vague belief/desire to believe in an afterlife as all that much of a contradiction. It’s a nondenominational afterlife, where you get do cool stuff and hang out with your friends, probably sort of influenced by the Elysian Fields sketched out in the D’Aulaires Greek myth books I read as a child (dear fundies: you’re right, your children’s books are corrupting them for life!). The D’Aulaires’ Hades was much more detailed – every unhappy afterlife is unhappy in its own way – but I’m pretty sure I’m not interested in eternal rock-wrangling or whatever, and since I live in California, I’m entitled to the afterlife of my exact specifications. (It’s in the state constitution – look it up.) So next time I’m asked for my religious affiliation on a form, I’m checking “vague Elysium.” You can too! That’s what makes it so great!
(I got a text from my sister a few hours later reassuring me that she’s not dead. Huzzah!)
— Hannah Mae
I get my omega-3s from Swedish Fish · 18 November 2009, 12:46
Something bothered me the other day, and it’s stayed on my mind, and I thought I would tell you about it.
I was walking down the street with some people and this woman with an awesome eccentric outfit came out of a store right in front of us – striped leggings, boxers over them with a geometric panda face printed on the ass, cropped tweed Sherlock Holmes coat. Immediately a few members of my party started talking about her – “hey, it’s the cat in the hat! is that a panda on her ass? is she homeless or something?” A bunch of older, conservatively dressed businessmen mocking a solo younger woman, out loud, in her presence. I was completely appalled, and in retrospect, I should’ve just busted out exactly the reason I was completely appalled: dude she is RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. You know she can hear you, right?
Instead my brain just started churning about conformity and judging women on appearances and in-groups and out-groups and enforcing societal bullshit with snark. I did say that I thought her outfit was awesome and that I would wear it all, which sort of shut them up – although I think, rather than making them think differently their behavior, it made them think differently about me. It made me think differently about them, that’s for sure – I don’t, alas, own panda-ass anything, but I’m not exactly wearing khakis every day. What do they say about me when I’m not around?
I wanted to run up to her and walk with her instead and say “sorry for my associates; just try to take comfort in the fact that their close-mindedness will eventually give them ulcers, even if they are all middle-aged white businessmen and thus the rulers of us all. Where did you get your smashing coat?”
So because I couldn’t say it in the words I wanted then, now I say to you, people with no tolerance for eccentricity: fuck you. Eccentric people made just about everything you’ve ever loved,1 everything that’s ever truly moved you, and if there was a Freaks Union, we’d refuse to sell you a lick more music, art, writing, movies, television, food or credibility until you – well, ever. You are boring and stunted and inimical to human possibility and the world as you rule it is morally and creatively bankrupt – and the funny thing is, you know it too: there’s a reason nobody has a midlife crisis and runs away from home to join management.2
And, dear lady of the sidewalk: shine on, you crazy diamond! We’re having a clothing swap at my house on Sunday and you are extra invited.
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1. except the Dave Matthews Band.
2. not to ruin my nice indignant ending or anything, but I feel I should disclaim: some of my favorite people are not at all eccentric, and some of them even went to business school. I’m not hating, except on the haters. I judge only the judgy. I request eyes only for eyes! Anyhow.
— Hannah Mae
party like a rock star, party like a rock star, party like a rock star, totally dude · 3 November 2009, 16:59
To-do number one: hey San Francisco, go to the polls today! I know it’s not as exciting as last November, but do go vote no on electronic-ad-district-creating Prop D, which would make walking down Market from 5th to 7th like a thousand pokes in the eye. Instead of a few hundred pokes in the eye like now. And remember, they still give you a sticker! I wanted to get two, but my polling place clearly already thinks I get too excited about them. Or maybe they were afraid I would use the second one to fraudulently sticker a non-voter. It’s probably a federal crime.
To-do number two: go to your nearest Korean food products source, get yourself a tub of the Korean chili paste called gochujang, and make bibimbap! It is not as hard as you think – basically the only strict requirements are rice and chili sauce made with gochujang (don’t fudge this part; gochujang has magical properties not contained in sambal oelek or harissa or nam prik pao or your other chili pastes) (side note: is it not wonderful that the world contains so many chili pastes?); all the other ingredients (spinach, scallion, carrot, tofu, cucumber, squash, egg, tofu, beef, great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts, Mother’s pink and white animal cookies, whatever you want, you looney tunes) are between you and your refrigerator. And if you really want to be efficient and cosmopolitan, make double the sauce-holding ingredients, and do the other half as gado-gado, with peanut sauce. I am a new convert to the bibimbap cause and I am infused with missionary zeal! Rice! and! stuff! Rice! and! stuff!
— Hannah Mae
if you end up wearing its livery, you do so by accident · 2 November 2009, 13:29
Selling out when The Man don’t want what you’re selling, part one:
http://atem.metameat.net/archive/triptych.php3?0910#14_1716
Selling out when The Man don’t want what you’re selling, part two:
http://www.lyricstime.com/quasi-a-fable-with-no-moral-lyrics.html
I very much apologize for that second link being a stupid teeth-whitening ad lyrics site, instead of a proper way to listen to the song, but Quasi appears to have fallen into the gulf (1988-1997) between “classic and therefore perpetually available” (or its older but functionally identical cousin “hella old and presumed unowned”) and “internet-age and therefore perpetually available.” That, or they’re litigious, which, given the subject of the song, would be pretty funny, at least if you’re me. Take four minutes to read the lyrics, and sing wah-wah guitar to yourself for about three more at the end.
Now is the time for shouts out to projects I have something to do with! Behold
Radical Women, at which venerable establishment yours truly will be delivering a lecture, in December, on the visual stylings of the turn-of-the-century British suffrage movement, and then trying to shanghai the whole room into a perpetual banner-making project (oh they’re going to be so pretty! you’re totally in!),
The Derailleurs, purveyors of the bicycle dance,
Still Crapulent, a fine food blog str8 outta Montreal (Jonah Campbell, prop.), for which I have not done a damn thing yet (unless you count watching the Julia Child video posted 10.10.09 a million times), but perhaps this public announcement that I will occasionally be writing a thing there will make me fuckin write a thing there,
and let’s not forget the aforementioned but still awesome Scenic Route, which will get you from here to there (in San Francisco, anyway) in fine and interesting slowness.
...
reading: Alex Ross, Mervyn Peake, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen II
eating: hwhatabout… an omelette?
looking at: a phalanx of hazmat-suited minions towing three giant puffballs up 16th st.
listening to: unabashedly bombastic Deutschpop! oh Nena! Did this come out in the Indiana Jones era or do you just like archaeology?
making: oh god please ask me about the secret plan; I can’t post it on the internet yet but it is the happiest thing and I’m going crazy keeping a lid on it
— Hannah Mae
me and my black metal friends · 29 October 2009, 10:53
Here is a song for today, with apologies to Atom and His Package:
Up in Norway!
Where it is very cold!
There’s nothing to do but kill each other,
and play guitars in the snow!
And steal my bank card number
to pay your light bill
and buy plane tickets to Germany, the Netherlands, and Ireland!
The good news is, if I get the money back, I have more money than I thought. This is always a pleasant feeling, but I am still going to find the perpetrators and remove all their teeth, one at a time. It shouldn’t be too hard to track them down, given that I know their travel schedule. Who wants to go to Norway?
Question, though: do I have the stupidest thieves in history, or are they crazy like a fox? They really paid their actual light bill, which presumably has an address attached to it, and they bought a ton of plane tickets which presumably have their names on them, and which will presumably be invalidated by now, since I called my bank last night. Are they sooooo good that they don’t have to worry about little things like the police knowing where they live and where they’re going, or are they just barely smart enough to steal a credit card number?
(Confidential to Norway: Colorado has like two feet of snow right now and they are still finding ways to amuse themselves that don’t involve my bank account. Take up Scrabble or something! Hell, if you promise to leave me alone, I’ll even buy you a set! Maybe I already did!)
I assumed that all this happened because someone on The Internets stole my digits, but the bank guy on the phone told me a story about how his number got stolen – it ended up being a waiter at a restaurant, who had written the info down when he went to run the card. Whoa! So now I’m nervous about bank cards on the internet and about bank cards in real life and fucking goddamn maybe I should just walk around with my pockets stuffed with cash instead! And then I can worry about getting mugged!
(I probably don’t have to worry about mugging with this new haircut, though – I did it last night, in the bathroom, with the electric razor and a hand mirror the size of a postage stamp. It’s cute, but it doesn’t exactly scream “loaded.” Er, not “loaded with money,” anyway.)
I’m actually feeling pretty chipper about the whole thing, surprisingly – a fun change from the usual routine, and it’s possible that it’ll end with no money lost for me. Of course, it’s also possible that it will end in money lost for me,1 in which case watch this space for way more cuss words and shit-talking about my bank, but for now the bank is being very nice about it. Further updates as events warrant!
1 or in an international sting operation, or in a dramatic pontoon-plane chase, or a song and dance number, or the sudden heat death of the universe, or a nice brunch party! The possibilities are literally endless even if only two of them are even slightly likely! I mean think about it!
...
eating: oatmeal with poached quinces, which is like something Marie Antoinette would’ve eaten when she was pretending to be a shepherdess
reading: The Rest Is Noise, by my famous imaginary boyfriend Alex Ross, classical music critic of the New Yorker
listening to: Rakim, “I Know You Got Soul” a bunch of times in a row
looking at: the endless FTC page about What To Do If You Are A Victim of Identity Theft
making: a statement to the police, just like every Thursday morning (ha ha, mom, not really)
— Hannah Mae