Fuck the Police or All Dirt Roads Lead to Glendale

So Andy and I finally got our day in court over the whole misdemeanor driving an out-of-state car debacle. See “Wheels of Justice, My Ass” FMI.

To make a long story short, we spent 4 hours sitting in court before the public defender could meet with us. She took one look at the charges and nearly laughed herself silly. “This officer doesn’t know what he’s talking about! There’s no law that says students must register in-state.”

So after FOUR FUCKING WASTED HOURS, the DA moved to dismiss the case.

So basically the lesson learned from all this is that the Glendale Police are - in the words of our public defender - “Nazis.”

Goddamn stupid fucking cops!

Things I Thought I’d Never Hear from Lauren

“If I had to choose between sleeping with President Bush and Dick Cheney, I guess I’d have to pick Bush. He was a party boy in his youth, so he probably knows what he’s doing.”

…nuff said!

More Penile Humour in Claremont

Now if only we could get that strapped to Prometheus…

Fuck Vanity, Make Monsters

Yes, I am a vain person. I’m not shy or secretive about the fact that my face and body turned out to mesh with our society’s standards of beauty. It is fun, however, to play with that standard - I learned to make monsters from ZeFrank’s Amazing Monster Site. What you do is take a photograph, split it at the half, invert one of the sides, and then stick it together to form a symmetrical but eerie creation.

I used digital photos taken by Michael Rosenberg who I intend to use as my wedding photographer.

Here, in no particular order, are the results of my computerized graphics experimentations.

I call this one “Dog Monster” because it looks like my grandmother’s Yorkshire Terrier.

If you can’t figure out why this one is called “Elf Monster,” there’s something wrong with you.

“Fish Monster” is also pretty self explanitory.

“Glow Worm Monster” reminds me of the glow worm I had as a kid. My mother used to sing me that song about glow worms…Shammer Shammer…

It’s interesting to look at my body like this. I think it looks a little like a pretty white tube grub, hence “Grub Monster.”

“Perfect Monster” has a fucked up body, but the face is what I would look like if I were perfectly symmetrical. Creepy.

I think this woman looks like a Romany witch or some other very powerful, sinister woman from the old country. Hence “Strega Baba Monster.”

The mane and the broadness of the face earned this one the moniker “Wild Cat Monster.”

She looks like a Latina witch, maybe even that mujer, La Llorona that my mother used to scare the shit out of me with. She is my “Witch Monster.”

Let the Poor Woman Die Already!

The only cruel thing going on here is the continual reattachment of Terri Schiavo’s feeing tube after days of letting her starve. She can still stuffer from hunger and thirst, yes - but her suffering is being prolonged terribly by repeatedly removing and then reattaching that feeding tube to pointlessly continue her life - if you can call it that.

Terri Schiavo’s mind is already dead. Her parents need to accept that and let her body die as well so that she can go to God and be whole again. If I were in this kind of a situation, that’s what I would want. That’s what Terri told her husband she wanted.

Moving Along with Life

This has been a really incredible week in my life. I don’t really want to say more on my blog because I want to talk to people in person, but my love life, my future as a career woman, and my vision of myself as an adult person are all taking shape in a fantastic way. Even though I can’t possibly know everything that the future holds, my vision of what it will look like is starting to unfog itself…and I like what I see.

Cute New Haircut

There are two people in the universe who I will trust with my hair. They both work at 13 Boston Salon on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. Sherri is the salon owner and usually has a three month waiting list. Her protegee David is equally talented, humble enough to learn from the master, and one can usually make an appointment with him within a couple weeks.

I was lucky enough to get in on a cancellation for Sherri this past weekend. Every time I come to her, she does marvelous things to me, and this time was no exception. I brought her a picture of Carmen (Sara Shahi) from The L Word. I told her I wanted that choppy, aggressive, sexy as hell hair without the mullet look. She took one look at the picture, and then transformed me like the badass artiste she is.

Sherri, I love you! It is always worth it to fly to see you instead of trusting some idiot in Hollywood with my tresses.

You can call 13 Boston at (206) 282-3377. Tell them Teresa sent you.

On Audre Lorde and Abraham Maslow

A paper for my Queer Theory class:

There is a lot of chatter in pop psychology about “self-actualization.” It is a buzzword that has come to be synonymous with healthy self-esteem and well-adjusted adult behavior. This is a very rough approximation of what Abraham Maslow meant when he first conceived the concept. He researched the lives and behavior of prominent historical and public figures and several contemporaries. Almost all were white males. Their personalities held common threads to which he attributed their great success as human beings.

Self-actualizing individuals – as he wrote in his 1954 book Motivation and Personality – are perfectly in touch with reality. They readily accept human nature without desiring to change it. They “tend to be good animals, hearty in their appetites and enjoying themselves without regret, shame or apology” (156). Self-actualizers rarely feel irrational shame, guilt or anxiety except about “discrepancies between what is and what might very well be or ought to be” (157). That is, they only worry themselves over issues of great importance, and do not allow cultural concepts of normal behavior to dictate these feelings. The self-actualizing person is, “aware of his own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general” (158), and he “infrequently allows convention to hamper him or inhibit him from doing anything he considers important or basic” (157).

He contrasts self-actualizing individuals with the, “average, normal, well-adjusted adult [who] often has not the slightest idea of what he wants [or] of what his own opinions are” (159). In further contrast to self-actualizers, “neurotic” individuals are often paralyzed by their own guilt, shame, and anxiety because they are so hopelessly out of touch with reality. They rely on cultural concepts of normalcy and morality to self-evaluate, and their inability to conform completely to social norms causes them suffering. “The neurotic is not emotionally sick,” Maslow posits, “he is cognitively wrong [emphasis in original]” (153).

Audre Lorde taps into this same concept in her 1978 essay The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. She names this power of the erotic as a “deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed and unrecognized feeling.” A central tenet of this eroticism is its distinctness from pornography, which society tells us is the only context in which the erotic exists. She argues that pornography divorces feeling from sensation, exploiting only sexual sensation without true meaning. “The [true] erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.”

Lorde asserts that the oppressive force that keeps women subservient in our society relies in part on this forced schism between feeling and sensation. When this powerful force is extracted from women’s sexuality, the remainder is relegated to the role of immoral temptation. We are taught to fear the fullness of our erotic feeling because to embrace it is to embrace our power to name and enumerate our desires. It charges us with “a grave responsibility projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.” The ability to articulate desire that starts with sexual self-actualization eventually grows to proportions that cannot be contained by the bedroom.

Maslow’s self-actualizers are similarly put off by sensation without feeling. “Self-actualizing individuals,” says Maslow, “tend on the whole not to seek sex for its own sake, or to be satisfied with it alone when it comes. ” (187). It is not social convention that leads them to limit their sexual activity for the most part to loving relationships – it is a desire for a connection, for something more than the simple sensation of orgasm. As a result of this union of sensation and feeling, “sexual pleasures are found in their most intense and ecstatic perfection in self-actualizing people. If love is the yearning for the perfect and for complete fusion, then the orgasm as sometimes reported by self-actualizing people becomes the attainment of it ” (187).

Lorde writes, “to share the power of each other’s feelings is different from using another’s feelings as we would a Kleenex. When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse [emphasis added]”. Maslow reported that “sex and love can be, and most often are more perfectly fused with each other in healthy [self-actualizing] people” (187), but he also found that self-actualizers are more likely than the average person to engage in light sadomasochism and intense role-playing during sex (190). “There can be joy in being used, in subjection and passivity, even in accepting pain, in being exploited” (190).

He goes on to write of a self-actualized fifty-something woman he studied who, having separated from her husband many years ago, was quite promiscuous. Maslow stresses her unabashed enjoyment of her sexuality, and her lack of anxiety or loneliness. He concedes that, “the tendency to monogamy [in self-actualized people] is not the same as the tendency to chastity, or a rejection of sexuality. It is just that the more profoundly satisfying the love relationship, the less necessity there is…for sex affairs” (189).

Self-actualized individuals tend to be secure in their gender identity and not threatened by assuming roles traditionally attributed to the other sex (189). Self-actualizing men are excited rather than threatened by strength and intelligence in women. Self-actualizing women tend to seek out a man who can nurture, communicate, and provide emotional support. This is in congruence with Lorde’s assertion that, “In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.” She is unwilling to accept that which is thrust upon her by the patriarchy, just as the self-actualized woman will not accept social demands that she subscribe to the “supplied states” that Lorde references.

I am deeply excited by this intersection of thought. Maslow and Lorde are so different as thinkers, and as writers. Maslow’s writing is technical, rich in detail and nuance, but structured and preplanned. Lorde’s prose is more evocative. She writes as a poet even when she’s not writing poetry. Her ideas about the erotic are based primarily on anecdotal evidence, whereas Maslow’s methodology adheres closely to the scientific. His concept of sexuality and love between self-actualized individuals does not even begin to extend to homosexuals. Lorde is a black lesbian, a theorist, novelist and activist. If she ever encountered Maslow’s work, she probably thought of it in whole or in part as a tentacle of white patriarchy.

Yet their ideas on sexuality and its place in the scheme of larger human fulfillment intersect so beautifully. I can conclude only that they both stem from the same universal source. Lorde’s erotic infuses every aspect of life with a desire for fulfillment and purpose – for self-actualization. Maslow’s self-actualizers are acutely in touch with their erotic desires. They do not allow convention to dictate what they enjoy or find meaningful. Their lives are far from “the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, or the merely safe.” They thrive, as does Lorde, in their own uniqueness.

When Carl Jung examined the mythologies of different human civilizations, he discovered common threads that led him to believe in the existence of a collective unconscious – a pool of common, primitive symbols that are the guiding models for all of human understanding. I get a similar sense from the intersection of Lorde and Maslow’s thinking. If these two distinct individuals can identify the same concept, then it must be basic in some sense. This is a problem in and of itself, for the concept they both define is a primarily individualistic one. Self-actualization probably takes an extremely different form in Chicano culture, where communidad y familia are much more important than individual desires.

Indeed, this concept would be foreign to members of any collectivist culture – and though Maslow writes that self-actualized individuals are beyond adhering to the behavioral conventions of culture, he uses examples from only Western, primarily white male culture to make his point. The intersection of Lorde’s thinking to his is promising because her perspective varies so widely from his – but even Lorde spent the majority of her life in the United States. She and Maslow shared at least some exposure to the same set of individualistic values that are staples of American life. What is needed here is more research into non-American perspectives on this obviously real phenomenon. I wonder what the erotic looks like in China, or self-actualization in Brazil. This is a topic worthy of further study.

Kettles

I love conversations with my girlfriends. Michelle, Nissa, Susanne and I are always able to figure out, and then laugh at one another’s lame jokes. Now if that’s not love, I don’t know what is

Me: Love isn’t always a kettle of f - I mean, a bowl of cherries.
Susanne: Were you about to call it a kettle of fish?
Nissa: What’s a kettle of fish?
Me: A kafoffel.
Nissa looks puzzled.
Me: A bad situation, a mix up, a mess.
Nissa: Oh. Could a thesis be a kettle of fish?
Michelle: Yes, but in your case it would be a kettle of rocks.
Me: I have a kettle of children.
Michelle: I have a kettle of flies, that’s not so bad.
Nissa: Susanne has a kettle of irony.
Susanne: Or an irony kettle.

Disappearing Posts!

So anyway, I took down a few selected posts from the archives. I feel like maybe, just maybe it’s a bad idea to say certain things on this blog now that I’m out in the real world looking for jobs. After all, prospective employers do Google you these days, and TeresaCentric is the first thing that shows up when you Google me.

It’s not that I’ve done anything that would really and truly horrify prospective employers, mind you. There has been no bad behavior beyond the normal things everyone does in college: drink too much, experiment with sex, shop a little too much and maybe slack off just a little from time to time.

Still, I want to give prospective employers a little bit of perspective should they happen upon this, my blog:

Please don’t judge me as a professional by the comments I have posted on my personal life. I’m sure that each and every one of you has bits of your life that you disclose to close friends and family that you would never disclose at work. This does not make you a bad employee or an irresponsible person, it makes you a human being. The fact that my generation blogs our personal lives is a generational quirk like many others.

So judge me by my resume, by my recommendations, and by the fact that I have skills, a fantastic education, and a real desire to work hard for a living. Enjoy the blog if you must, but please try to keep it in context. Thanks!

An Interesting Take on the Lefkow Murders

The following is a reprint of Andy Martin’s Syndicated Column Contraian Commentary from March 6, 2005.

Truth is often the first casualty of tragedy. That appears to be the case in the Lefkow murders. Two members of a Chicago federal judge’s family were senselessly murdered in Chicago last week. In a very large sense, however, federal prosecutors and the FBI may have inadvertently engineered these killings. The potential complicity of federal officials is an unpleasant truth that we dare not ignore, but that is too explosive to be published in so-called “mainstream media.”

The minister at the Lefkow funeral preached that there had been an “assault on the principles of American democracy and openness.” Unfortunately, I take a contrarian view. The greatest enemies of the American people are not “extremists,” who are mostly a motley collection of malcontents. The greatest enemies of the people have become the federal government and the federal judicial system. How can I make these charges? Let me explain. I speak from personal experience.

Unnamed federal officials have identified “followers of Matthew Hale” (Chicago Tribune, March 6) as perpetrators of the Lefkow murders.

Who is Hale and why would his “supporters” want to kill a federal judge or harm the judge’s family?

Hale achieved some notoriety years ago by claiming he was a “white supremacist” from Tazewell County, Illinois. But Hale is in large part a creation of the media, the Illinois Supreme Court and federal prosecutors. These institutions are in the process of creating a martyr.

Hale graduated from law school and passed the bar examination. He was denied a license to practice law because of his malignant political beliefs. In essence, he was persecuted for holding wrong thoughts although he never did anything wrongful in a courtroom to justify such punishment. The Illinois Supreme Court persecuted me 35 years ago because I was an opponent of the Viet-Nam War. This same court persecuted George Anastaplo in the 1950’s because he cited the Declaration of Independence as a source of law. Anastaplo lost a 5-4 vote on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If Hale had been admitted to the law he would likely have become an obscure lawyer. By politicizing his bar admission the court lit the fuse on Hole’s burgeoning notoriety.

Hale has been held incommunicado in a federal prison for almost a year. Federal prisons hold all sorts of dangerous people without employing such restrictions. Is Hale a terrorist? He is being treated like one. Unfortunately, it appears that however distasteful it may be for polite society to face reality, Hale is the victim of overzealous federal prosecutors and FBI agents. I know all about that too.

Hale was “convicted” of threatening the life of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow, a year ago. He has not yet been sentenced. He has been held both in limbo and incommunicado, obvious violations of basic human rights.

Did Hale take any steps to endanger Judge Lefkow? Actually no. It was an FBI “informant” who concocted a threat to the judge, and then got Hale to mumble inconclusively about the whole “plan” or “scheme” (choose your word). There is no evidence that Hale ever planned anything or ever took any steps to harm the judge. The FBI essentially concocted a crime and then saw to it that Hale was prosecuted and persecuted for this government-inspired scheme.

All of this information is in the court records but the media, etc. are conveniently ignoring it. It is much easier to utter the words “white supremacists,” as though such people forfeit their constitutional rights by holding ideas that almost all of us hold to be abhorrent. Despite condemning their views I will nevertheless defend the right of “bad” people, of any people, to due process of law.

So, Hale’s “supporters” have been targeted as the perpetrators because their hero was denied a law license based on his political beliefs, and because he was prosecuted for a “crime” that was largely invented by the FBI. The only thing that makes this unusual is that the federal government is focusing on a “white supremacist” in Hale’s case. Federal prosecutors and the FBI are mercilessly targeting Muslims and Arabs with similar abuses every day.

So what really happened? We don’t know yet. But if you accept the government’s theorists at face value, people who saw democracy raped and the judicial system manipulated and abused, decided they had to take the law into their own hands, and two innocent people are dead. I don’t condone violent actions; on the contrary I join in their condemnation. But it is a denial of reality to claim that people just up and attacked a judge’s family without provocation.

Our “democracy” is in danger of disappearing as a democracy and it is no longer “open,” despite a priest’s claims to the contrary. Our courts have become imperial courts, where imperial judges impose punishments for crimes manufactured by the government, and issue lists of proscription just as arrogant and corrupt as those of any Roman emperor. People at the fringes of American society (and there are more and more of them) are increasingly being driven to extremism because of the arrogance and corruption of the judicial process.

If the federal government had ignored Matthew Hale, he would have faded into obscurity. If the Illinois Supreme Court had allowed Hale to practice law, Hale would probably be writing wills and defending drunk driving cases or (heaven forefend) handling divorces. Instead, the judicial system repeatedly ratcheted Hale higher and higher into victim status and possibly in the future into a political martyr’s pantheon.

The final irony is that whoever killed Mike Lefkow killed one of the “good guys.” Lefkow devoted his life to fighting corruption in Chicago and Cook County’s courts, and to representing “little guys.” The murderers, if they really were Hale’s people, hit the wrong target.

The unpleasant and unpalatable truth is that as we delve into the Lefkow murders, tragic as they are, the deeper truths and realities are that federal agents had an unseen hand in provoking these senseless killings. But we are not prepared to admit these facts because of what it says about our society and about our “democracy.” As for our courts, forget it.

Oh Michelle!

Michelle cracks me up so much!

We’re driving around L.A. when “Since U Been Gone” comes on the radio. We start singing at the top of our lungs. After the song is over:

Me: That’s what I love about you Michelle.
Michelle: What?
Me: One of the sucky things about having a good voice is that people won’t sing along with you when you’re singing in the car. I love that you do that!
Michelle: Just as long as you don’t harmonize with me. It throws me off.

Later that evening, Michelle and I are plotting Drinking Jenga. She’s worried about the whole “fake an orgasm” rule.

Me: If you get that one, I’ll fake it with you, so you won’t feel weird.
Michelle: Just as long as you don’t harmonize with me. You’ll throw me off.
Me: Laughing so hard I’m not making any noise and my stomach hurts.

Penis!

When Andy and I were first going out, I tried to get him to join me for The Vagina Monologues on Valentine’s Day. His response: “Women talk too much with their mouths already, now they have to talk with their vaginas too?”

But the truth is that we talk about penises a lot more than we talk about vaginas. It doesn’t take long to find grafitti penises on Walker Wall. Every time anyone looks at the Prometheus painting in the dining hall the first thing they notice is his missing manhood.

Last semester, this prompted some students to purchase giant inflatable penises and suspend them using helium balloons from the ceiling above the painting and post a poem that included the memorable stanza:

“They didn’t want the chicks to see
Our good friend P’s anatomy,
Because they thought girls couldn’t deal
With cock while at our evening meal.”

Conversations about penises aren’t limited to prank-critiques of campus fine art. I had a fantastic conversation last night with Andy, Debbie and Jeff about jacking off into sweat socks:

Jeff: I broke my hand jacking it.
Debbie: So you did a lot of that driving across the country?
Jeff: Yeah, one hand on the wheel, the other hand in my pants.
Me: What did you do with it when you were done, throw it out the window?
Jeff: No, I just did it in a sweat sock.
Debbie & Me: Ahahahahahaha! Cock sock!
Andy: You didn’t know about that? It’s in American Pie.
Me: I’m so glad I don’t make a big mess when I have an orgasm.

Another two people who shall remain nameless were overheard having a conversation that went something like this:

Person A: He’s out of the picture now.
Person B: Why? He’s a good guy!
Person A: She doesn’t like his penis.
Person B: Are you serious?!?!? What’s wrong with it?
Person A: It’s uncircumcised and has a scraggly bush.
Person B: Ahahahahahahahaha!

At the oral sex workshop put on by the HEO last month, I got the chance to fulfill my lifelong dream of screaming “cock!” in a room full of people.

References to cocks, pricks, dicks, dongs, tallywhackers, and John Thomases (Trey from SATC anyone?) are constantly bandied about. This includes the “so five years ago” song Detachable Penis by King Missile that is now a major player on my iTunes playlist.

So really I should say to the Andy of two years ago who refused to go see women talk about their vaginas for two hours, “dude, it’s equal time!”

On the Lefkow Murders

I don’t know Laura Lefkow well. Pomona College isn’t so small that everyone knows everyone else - but everyone is connected within three degrees of separation. Laura and I share a mentor in Joelle Greene. We probably have more acquanitances in common than either of us are aware of.

My heart goes out to her family in the same way that everyone’s heart goes out. I am not arrogant enough to think that my sympathy or support will give anyone any added measure of comfort - but I offer them as a member of her community, as a fellow human being, and as someone who loves justice.

These murders are of the most despicable sort. They go beyond a nervous gunshot in the heat of a robbery, beyond vengeance or passion or anything even remotely attributable to human frailty. They are premeditated, sadistic acts designed to hurt and intimidate Joan Lefkow - a woman who has bravely stood up to the most dangerous elements of our society.

I read in the newspaper that the Lefkows used to stroll through their neighborhood hand in hand in the evenings, despite the death threats levied against her by gangsters and white supremacists. That is the kind of courage we have come to expect, and continue to expect from our judges, district attorneys and - despite their bureaucratic pettiness and attack dog mentality - our police officers. We must not allow them to be intimidated by the violent elements of our society.

So we support the Lefkow family not simply for their tragic loss. Our hearts go out not only as human beings, but as fellow seekers of justice. We support them because to support them is to say to those who did this, “your thuggery will not go unpunished. We as a society continue to stand for the rule of law. You cannot subvert it with intimidation and murder. We will find you. And whether or not you understand the justice of your punishment, we will make you pay.”

Must. Kill. Stupid. People.

I don’t deal well with stupid people. Unfortunately, I have to deal with them, because stupid people inhabit all those jobs working with the public that nobody else will take. They work at Kinko’s. They wait tables at moderately priced restaurants. They answer the phones at the 1-800 customer service numbers for every company in America. They work in mall security, at Jiffy Lube, and at the local Starbucks.

Sometimes, one of them slips through into your local pharmacy. Sometimes they’re even in law enforcement, although those people are more often officious nincompoops who like having power over other people. Sometimes they own their own businesses. Heaven help us all when this happens.

Today, one of them wasted 45 minutes of my time on the phone before telling me that she couldn’t help me enroll my mother’s credit card for online banking because she needed to talk to my mother to verify her credit card information.

“Why didn’t you tell me this 45 minutes ago?” I asked impatiently.

“I didn’t?”

“Would I still be on the phone if I’d known that fact?”

“Oh.”

Do you see what I’m up against here? They’re out to ruin me!

Someday, when I am the Karl Rove of the Democratic Party, I will manipulate the stupid people. I will tell them to vote for my candidates and support my policies. They will obey me.

Then I will tell them all to jump off a cliff.

Wheels of Justice My Ass!

Yesterday, Andy was driving my car to his internship when some idiot cop pulled him over. Was he speeding? No. Did he make an illegal U-Turn? No. Did he have drugs in the car or look suspicious? No.

So why did he get pulled over?

Because my car has out of state lisence plates!

GASP!

The officer told him that students in California with out of state plates MUST register their cars in state. Then he told Andy that he was under arrest (he didn’t actually arrest him, he was just trying to intimidate him.) He wouldn’t let him get anything out of the car, not even my $250 iPod mini.

Then he impounded the car and my poor dad and I get to go through 110 yards of fucking red-tape bullshit to get my fucking car back!

Motherfucking cops! Don’t they have better things to do? Shouldn’t they be out busting murderers and rapists? When I spoke to him on the phone and gave him my word that I would register the car in California, he told me that “the wheels of justice [were] already in motion.” The wheels of “justice” my ass! The only wheels in motion should be those of my sweet little Toyota Camry XLE, which is now in prison.

Justice is the US Constitution and that lady with the exposed boobs and the scale that Jonny Ashcroft disliked so terribly. Justice is not impounding a student’s car.