goddesscafe

Thursday, August 16, 2001 :::

inspired by the co-housing story, i stumbled upon a bunch of people trying to start communes, over at "hippyland"... the site was amusing. especially the wallpaper. not that i'm anti-hippie, of course; it just all seemed so anachronistic and self-conscious.

also found a number of american co-housing communities -- including ones in seattle and boston looking for applicants.

excellent prophet raymond and "this to that" links, btw...

::: posted by kevin seal at 4:32 PM

re: city-picks: Was reading about co-housing this morning on BART. Apparently they're popular in Denmark. Basically like a condo area, with shared community spaces, sometimes shared child-care. Economically wise because you share power tools, large appliances, etc. Everyone has to be committed to the idea of community to take part in it.

re: where is home: I used to think that home had to be a place like SF. Hence I did not move to Ithaca, thinking I could only find my ideal career and people like me out here. Now I figure home is mostly where the people you love are, so I'm open to more options than I was before. I learned last night that my desire for novelty and adventure while at the same time having relationship-security (with someone who wants to explore the same thing) is apparently because I'm a 32/5, according to my roommate's life-purpose book. (all digits in your b-day added up, like 1.2.7.1.9.7.5 for me = 32, and 3+2=5. There's 37 possible combos. Strangely, me and my brother are the same, as are Kevin and his brother)

re: communication/language: OK, I'm all for body language and intuition and energy and limbic system attunement, but come ON, don't dis words! I mean, you can pick up moods and feelings, but what about flat-out discussion of ideas? You can't just gaze all googly-eyed at someone and stay silent and communicate much of anything other than feeling mutually mushy, right? Which is fine, but what about laying in the dark and talking for hours, just feeding off of words and mental activity? For me, words are definitely more than 7% (most likely related to me generally not looking people in the eye, often because it distracts me from processing what they're saying), and I could probably never be too intimate with someone who was not incredibly facile with the English language. Is this all because I'm a girl?

elissarita: at your repeated insistence, I bought Bust today. We'll see if my opinion of the mag as "girl power/do-me feminism" will change with this "Single Girl" issue.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 12:43 PM

Here's some overlooked correspondence for you. It's not terribly interesting, but I thought I'd post it anyway:

Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 11:09:05 PDT [Show full headers]
From: "Mark@FindYourSpot" [Add to Address Book]
To: xxxxxx@excite.com
Subject: Re: Wisconsin

Well...I suppose it depends on what you're looking for. For some, Wisconsin
is beyond great, it's perfect. For others, they would prefer the warmer
climes and major metropolis of a city like Houston. Isn't that the great
thing about FindYourSpot.com. We don't have the gall of some best places
list to tell you what the one-size-fits-all best place is, but rather find
one that fits you... and yes, that even includes some great spots in
Wisconsin!

----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 11:42 AM
Subject: Wisconsin

If you're intent on staying in the Bay Area, don't forget to repent your sins, "For everything in San Francisco is dirty, is filthy, and is an abomination to Me," so sayeth the Lord.
And keep an eye out for some kind of boat. HEAR Jesus Christ speaking through the Prophet Raymond (in Real Audio). (This introduces a whole new criteria for city shopping... how does the city fit into God's plan for the end days?)

::: posted by the boot at 9:47 AM

That words are only 7% of communication does explain a lot about how I can have a nicely communicative relationship with a non-native speaker of English, though at times I just giggle over the unabashed cuteness of Sweitzedeutsch. She admits it, though, and not unwillingly either.

Kevin, your revelation is a complement to mine! I used to sit in my car in line on Canal street to get back to Newark after a night of clubbing, and when I heard the same term here on the left coast I was surprised. It applies more easily to cities that are on islands or peninsulae; what of places like Chicago? I think being in line at those tunnels easily convinced me to live in SF when I moved here, too.

To continue this verbose blog, Laura, what if home IS the bay area? How do you move home then? At some time in one's life, one becomes finally away from home enough that there is no basis back there, and you can only "move on" instead of "move home" anyway, if you want to move on, and then you question why you're moving on.

I know a lot of people who've moved from SF/Sillycon Valley to Colorado because they bought a nicer house, having ca$hed in and "moved away" instead of fleeing.

Wednesday, August 15, 2001 :::

Laura, your conversation with Rodrigo reminds me of a line from "Ghost World" - "I can't relate to 99% of humanity!" Everyone should go see that film - it's about the same issues you're addressing, and also about growing up different. Probably most of us can relate in some way. It doesn't offer any answers, though.

I'm not sure that there are any answers, frankly. I've concluded that the best thing for all of us to do is just live lives of principle as best we know how, and follow our guts.

::: posted by Mark Gabel at 11:50 AM

Tuesday, August 14, 2001 :::

Sorry, Mr. Seal. "Bridge and Tunnel" is a NYC thing referring to residents of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and New Jersey. You don't hear it much anymore, real estate being what it is and Manhattan being what IT is.

::: posted by the boot at 8:38 PM

Just went and sat by the piers for an hour with Rodrigo, a friend of Mark's who works next door. I was talking about Bay Area people flipping out and moving back home (I found out this morning that a friend's girlfriend who got laid off a few months ago and can't find work is considering that) and he said something about this city just beats people over the head. He said it's why he left NYC -- "People there aren't thriving, they're just surviving." With NYC and SF being urban and hip, you don't notice it for a while, but eventually you realize almost all of your time/energy is just going towards managing to pay bills each month. We discussed how corporations (who, honestly, are really the ones running the gov't and making policy) and the entertainment industry are all about keeping us either so busy with work or so distracted with TV and sports that America is just one big ignorant mass of people who aren't politically engaged or active. Yes, you say, DUH. Well, what the hell are we supposed to do about it?!?

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 1:55 PM

i thought only New Yorkers could be accused of a location-centric, geographically solipsistic attitude. but, alas, i have found myself guilty of just that -- i always thought that "bridge-and-tunnel" was bay area slang, referring to walnut creek, concord, etc. didn't realize it was universally understood to mean "suburbanite." oops.

interesting village voice article, mademoisellura. there was a certain cynicism to it, though: that "bombshells" were only attracted to the gay scene for the upward mobility, and that so much of the post-straight condition consisted of working out, wearing tight jeans, and being physically attractive. sure, some of it early on referred to the emotional components of listening and understanding the lustful male gaze, but a lot of it hinged on fashion and musculature.

and, signor strain, thanks for letting us know that supergreg is actually a marketing scheme. i'm relieved to find out now, lest i start telling people about the site and feeding their branding agenda. i hate it when i'm duped into spreading a viral marketing campaign.

as for the attraction question, i was looking for jonathan's theory of equine body language as pick-up strategy. no luck yet, but i did find a reference to Professor Albert Mehrabian's research, in which he finds that words make up only 7 percent of communication.

::: posted by kevin seal at 1:27 PM

ass I was saying about mawidge ("mawidge is a dweam wiffin a dweam...a dweam of evahwasting wuv..."*), Bush's ass't secretary for family support (what kind of position is that, anyway?) wants to give $5000 cash bonuses (over 5 yrs) to poor women who have their first child while married, and who stay married. W.Va. already gives out bonuses. The Gov. of Okla. says his state has to cut their divorce rate by a third by 2010. Louisiana couples can now do a "covenant marriage" (although less than 5% currently do), where they're required to stay married for life (except in cases of abuse or adultery), and 20 other states want to implement it. Fla. schools require "marriage skills" in their curriculum. Why is this the gov't's business, anyway?

And speaking of relationship skills, this poet/author guy is adding to the general whine that nice guys lose by offering what I think is some pretty lame advice for them. (halfway down the page) What do bloggers think are successful methods of snaring a squeeze? Village Voice advises being post-straight.

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 11:19 AM

Incidentally - Super Greg (as mentioned earlier) - is part of a branding campaign for "The Buddy Lee Challenge" produced by Fallon/Minneapolis for Lee Dungarees (it won a gold pencil award - that's the only reason I noticed the post and thought it worth mentioning.) - the same team that put together the "Jukka Brothers" for MTV and "Dick" for Miller Light. Super Greg and several other fake web sites were designed to drive traffic and back up their other spots... too bad, I would have liked to have met him.

::: posted by Rogue Designer at 8:10 AM

Monday, August 13, 2001 :::

After I posted my note this morning taking exception to the choices that findyourspot had made for me in its wisdom, I went back and looked at the remaining 18 picks, the included in no particular order: La Crosse, Oshkosh, Racine, Eau Claire, Green Bay, and Kenosha. In case you're not familiar with some of these names, they are ALL in Wisconsin and, except for Green Bay (as if...), they all have a population under 80,000. Let it be known that one of the criteria was that I wanted to live in a big, big, urban place. So, I agree with what Kevin has astutely posited: the game is rigged (no doubt a decision made by Tommy Thompson's administration). Or maybe it was put together by cabal of realtors from Connecticut and Wisconsin.

::: posted by the boot at 9:42 PM

women who flick off poorly-endowed old men in sports cars have a greater chance of making history.

::: posted by kevin seal at 7:11 PM

re: alura's ceremony
darling, i'd blow bubbles and flower petals all over you, your suitcase, and your traveling partner if you had such a ceremony. but i'd get you something way cooler than a blender. though it might make a similar whirring sound when plugged in.

re: bumper stickers in NY that read "GO HOME HILLARY"
generally the materialistic folk of Long Island won't taint their status-mobiles with bumper stickers, but some seem to be making an exception just to be mean with these anti-Hil ones. i noticed one today while in a pretty shitty mood on my way home from work. i pulled up next to the driver of this babe-magnet red sports car, smiled, he smiled back, (must have thought i was flirting because don't all beautiful women want fat, old men with little red sports cars?), gave him the finger, and drove off, giving him a chance to read my current bumper adornment, which reads, "Well-behaved women rarely make history."

meanness begets meanness. (even in typically anti-mean women, women who think Hillary is doing a fine job, women who don't have stickers on their cars that read "FUCK OFF, GEORGE!", even though they might very strongly agree with such a sentiment.)

::: posted by elissarita at 6:10 PM

bored and playing with the scanner at work...set it to scan film negatives, expecting to come up with something like this but it gave me this instead. (first pic inverted in photoshop) I always thought those Tori Amos Choirgirl Hotel photos looked like she was laying on a scanner. (elissa, take note, your girl cut off her hair and dyed it...she must be trying to look like my girl Liz) :p

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 5:00 PM

States paying for placement? And here I was convinced that Louisiana was clearly my dreamland. Elissa mentioned the book Jobs in Paradise last night on the phone. I'm kinda with kseal for now (although not the belching part)...although I was never planning on running away and joining the circus before my credit card was paid off, anyway -- we're talking long-range community plans here. I think I'd be happier here if I could leave more often, though. Can't I sublet my castle bedroom and go check out paradise, or Paris cafes, for a bit?

As for robot journalists...someone has to provide the original content for them to pick through, right? It's kinda like increasingly relying on wire services -- you can only do that up to a point. Who populates the wires? I mean, besides the freakin' PR agencies with their barely-rewritten press releases. I do fear for the state of news in this country, though. We're not only under-informed, but actively misled. I want to teach media-crit to teens. Maybe blondie and I should hit up rich guy for a grant from his foundation? We'd just have to find a school that would take us.

Reading editorials on gay marriage, thinking about the recent conservative moans about "hooking up" on college campuses, how women aren't training men to "wait" and make them associate sex with love (and therefore become more marriage-minded). I swear, conservatives and evo-psychos paint men in the ugliest light, always promiscuous predators with no desire for responsibility or emotional connection -- would these same right-wing writers say that they themselves behaved like this until prissy women showed them the error of their ways? Did it change their true nature? And Bush continues to cut funding for birth control coverage and sex education, in hopes that everyone will simply stop having sex. Why this obsession with controlling sex and "preserving" marriage? I don't get marriage anyway. I'd rather have someone committed to exploring a million things with me, stability in a suitcase. Can I make a ceremony of that concept someday? "Do you, Mr. X, promise to travel with Alura, share lots of good books and not settle into a stifling existence?" Not until death, just until the point where we fear being bored to death, which could take a week or never. teehee. Think I'd get silverware and toaster ovens for that?

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 3:22 PM

I hadn't seen Alex's message when I posted -- methinks FindYourSpot is getting paid off by the Chambers of Commerce in Connecticut.

Looks like we journalist-types better prepare for the re-education camps... I, for one, have little doubt that my job could indeed by handled quite adequately by a robot.

::: posted by kevin seal at 12:56 PM

Huh. FindYourSpot seems to think I should head east: Providence, Hartford, New Haven, Boston. Little Rock was in my top ten as well, which leads me to believe that cities pay to be recommended. Connecticut landed 6 cities in my list of 24 (hunh?), and Wisconsin also figured in, with LaCrosse and Milwaukee.

Overall, though, I think Tad's right. I do have the aforementioned ants in my pants and twitches in my britches, but I'm also lucky enough to still be in this area, and still have a job and an apartment. I think we should ride out the storm, kids. The Bay Area's pretty frickin' rad. (lifts beer into the air, clinks bottle with neighbor's bottle, belches and swigs)

Also...
#1. ANECDOTE. Armand, the suave, French-Armenian sales guy who wears a lot of cologne and works a few cubes down from me, was just in NYC, and happened to stay in the room next door to Tommy Lee's suite at the ho-tel. Having heard a noise late at night, Armand walked into the hall, only to see a shirtless Mr. Lee talking on a cell phone. On his arm was a blond woman wearing only a T-shirt (not Ms. Anderson-Lee). Conversation that ensued:

TL: "i have a meeting in the afternoon with my criminal defense attorney."
Female: "oh, i don't think i'll be with you for that."
TL: "what? what. are you mad at me?"

#3. CONFLICTED. Okay, Ron's Hunting Page is fairly unpleasant, but check out that rippling-lake effect. Groovy use of animated GIF.

::: posted by kevin seal at 11:09 AM

Alura, this thing is CRACKED. I tried it and came up with the following list: 1. Providence, 2. Hartford, 3. New Haven, 4. Milwaukee, 5. Boston, and 6. Sheboygan. Sheboygan??? Hartford??? New Haven??? What the hell?

::: posted by the boot at 10:40 AM

An even better site for finding your ideal city - FindYourSpot, where you answer a bunch of questions on weather and culture and such. For me, it came up with New Orleans, Little Rock, Sacramento, Orange County and Honolulu. I probably priced myself out of hipper cities, in addition to the preference for warmth. ;) It gives you 24 cities, I think...unsure whether it's in any order...lots of CA (including Oakland) and Louisiana for me...

::: posted by Alura Allumeuse at 10:17 AM