Oh Shit, Osheaga

I have this thing where I like to talk about how I may be approaching 40 but I still feel like a 20-something inside. Like, I still dress the way I did in college and I like the same things (video games, rock music, drinking) that I did in college. That's what I kept telling myself as I traipsed through Parc Jean-Drapeau this past weekend surrounded by girls in bikini tops, cut-off shorts that left their ass-cheeks hanging out, shirtless bros, tank-top bros, and tons of other people who looked like they'd been transported from the set of some MTV Spring Break show. The unfortunate truth though, was that age gets you. Despite how "young" you feel inside, shit changes and it's often in a really surreptitious way. Suddenly you find yourself annoyed by shit that the carefree, young person you think you are wouldn't be. Bros and bras pushing their way to the front of the crowd as if the rest of you aren't there to see the same thing. Lack of toilet paper in the port-o-potty. That kind of thing.

It sucks to realize you're old in the middle of something like Osheaga. I think if I had had that realization earlier, I would have adjusted my expectations and my subsequent actions. I would not, for example, have attempted to roll deep into the crowd for some shows. I would have been that person with a blanket sitting on the hill far enough away to avoid the crowd but close enough to see the performer on the screens and hear the music. Maybe.

On the other hand, there is such a thing as too young though. I saw peeps there with their newborns, and toddler-aged kids, and I was like, "...the fuck, dude?" I kinda get it. My kid is 4 and I remember schlepping her to restaurants and stuff like that hell bent on proving that having a kid doesn't in fact mean the end of You. Except, it kinda does. You can put hearing protection on your kid (kudos to the ones who did that btw) but you can't block their nasal passages from inhaling tons of second-hand smoke from Senior Tobacco and his whacky cousin, Tobacco Loco, both of which were in abundance and pretty unavoidable if you were anywhere near a crowd of people listening to music.

So, what was Osehaga?

It was fun in that I got to experience a bunch of bands that I either would not have gone to see on my own or that I had simply never heard of. For example, I'd have to be mental to even attempt to see Tyler the Creator (and also I simply wouldn't pay a lot of money for that shit), but I got to see him at Osheaga from a safe distance. I've missed Father John Misty when he came through town and thought nothing of it, even though a friend recommended him. I saw him at Osheaga and damned if I'm not a believer. I hate St. Vincent's music, but I saw her stage performance because one my buddies is in love with her and it was actually interesting and entertaining. She's an amazing guitarist (but I still hate her music).

It was frustrating at the marks of entrance and exit, because there were sooooo many people there. Trying to get in and out of that place was an exercise in supreme patience...which a lot of people lacked. During the day people entered the festival in waves, so while there was ALWAYS a mob getting onto the train, trying to squeeze through the station exits, through the security checkpoints and finally into the festival, when it was time to leave it was pretty much everyone doing this at once. It was miserable. We shuffled shoulder to shoulder, ass to front like a wave of drunken, tired zombies. At least some of us did. Others of us thought that we deserved to get to the front no matter what and just tried to shove our way through.

This leads nicely into my biggest issue (and why I probs wouldn't go again)...

Holy entitled white girls, Batman!

Ahem. Sorry. But look man...you know who I'm talking about. If you've ever been to a concert and seen the girls dancing and sashaying their way through the crowd, drink held aloft and "woooos" emitting from their mouths like some sort of It Girl siren, you know them. Or maybe you met their slightly lower key sisters, the ones who come plowing through the crowd with their hands firmly clasped together saying, "My friends are up there." What do you call them? Bras? Broettes? Bro sisters?

Whatever the term, those bitches suck.

It's really annoying to be standing in a tightly-packed crowd watching a show, and having people continuously shoving past you searching for that mythical "extra" space ahead. It disrupts your enjoyment of the show and for me, fills me with a white hot rage at the notion that they think the tickets they purchased somehow hold a larger cosmic value than mine. They're the kind of girls who would look me up and down and say some low value shit like, "Whatever, you're just mad because you're fat and I'm hotter than you." Well sure, being fat and unattractive makes me mad, but it doesn't somehow absolve you of the fact that you're a bitch. The two don't cancel each other out or anything. It's cool that you're hot (or that you believe you are), but how about using your powers for good instead of evil?

Some of the dudes were just as bad with that crowd-shoving shit, and harder to stop. The chicks are counting on their looks to stop people from saying anything —which works because Bros were like, "No problem" and actually stepping on people around them to make non-existent space because Hope— and Bros were counting on no one wanting to get stomped. I went to a couple of shows that I was sure would be Bro-free zones, but there they were. Florence and the Machine?! Why are Bros at Florence and the Machine? Surrounded by Bros and Bras alike no one catches the irony when St. Vincent says something like, "Hello to all the freaks and artists and queers and dominants and submissives", essentially giving a shout-out to the Others. Like...notice she didn't say "Hey Kappa Gamma Alpha Epsilon!" Or, "Hey gurrrllll!"

Whatever. I kept my cool and stayed at the back of the crowd. I drank away my old-person hang-ups about being pushed and shoved. That worked, except at the end of the second night when I tried to see Kendrick Lamar. That's gonna have to be a separate post though, because that shit was serious for me and I've tried to keep this on a light note.

Ultimately, Osheaga was fun and I'm glad I did it at least once. I got to see some awesome bands that I knew and others that I'd never heard of. I got to do the kind of thing I would have liked to have done when I was younger but was too broke to do. Although there were plenty of Bros and Bras, there were also smaller segments of hippie chicks and stoners and grown-ups and hip-hop heads and gay dudes and lesbians and other counter-culture types. We were just in smaller supply. Would I do it again?

Who's playing?

The Truth About the Backlash Against Rachel Dolezal

Rachel Dolezal, for those who have avoided the internet over the last week or so, is the head of Spokane chapter of the NAACP. Rather, she was. She just resigned. She resigned because rumor has it she was born a white woman but has been living her life as a black woman for the last 10 years. I say rumor has it because what we have to go on right now is:

1. Silence from Rachel Dolezal herself
2. Statements from her parents regarding her heritage
3. Countless blogs, articles, and random people who've purchased tickets for the Indictment Train

The silence from Dolezal herself is telling. I mean, let's be honest here: if there was no truth to this, she'd out in front fighting. That's what I believe. So, her silence is damning in and of itself and seems to hold up the contention that yes, she is indeed a woman who was born white and passed as black for years. Her parents? While I don't really believe they're lying (see my previous assertion) the fact that their relationship with their daughter is "strained" at best makes me wonder why they've chosen to come forth now to unmask her. What's their motivation? It's certainly not to mend any fences with her because this act is sure to alienate her further. There's some legal action happening between them; maybe they hope to discredit her for some sort of advantage in whatever legal proceedings are happening. Parents who would go out of their way to "expose" and embarrass their child though? They get a huge question mark in both the motivation and character categories from me. 

And lastly there are the people with pitchforks, ready to call down hellfire and damnation upon Dolezal's head. Let's get this straight, right here and right now: I have no problem with what Rachel Dolezal did. Not a one. The only things I have questions/concerns about are a) did she use "being black" as a leg up in some way (for example, let's get more info about her Howard scholarship), and b) did she do good works for the community in her role as NCAAP President? That's all that matters as far as I'm concerned. 

There are some in the community (and by some I mean the majority it seems) who are eager to throw around words like "appropriation" and "exploitation", etc. Any word that ends in "ation". I fail to see it. You know what I do see? I see the real reason black folk are upset about this. If anyone actually read this blog I'd get a ton of shit about what I'm about to say, but since no one does, I'mma have a cup of Feel Free and tell you why I think black people are really pissed off about Rachel Dolezal.

Traditionally marginalized groups say that we're fighting for equality and inclusion. At the same time though we take a certain pride in our otherness. We like the fact that there are certain qualities attributed to us that seem out of reach of "outsiders". We make these comparisons jokingly, but there's an underlying pride and truth in it. Dolezal knocked on the "Black Door" and gained entrance, and that pisses some of us off. She managed to become "one of us" and stepped right into so many things that we think of as intrinsically "Black". That's what has people tripping so hard. 

Go to Twitter. The #AskRachel hashtag was focused solely on her ability to fake "black knowledge". Do you know the theme song from "A Different World"? Can you tell us how many 'leven times the Yin Yang Twins been to the club (that one made me laugh)? Stupid shit like that. Testing her cultural literacy–her "black" cultural literacy. Never mind that the woman teaches Africana Studies; can you tell us what you do after you stop and drop*? On Facebook people are all aflutter about the fact that she had a small business doing black hair. How could she do black hair?! She's white! 

She knocked on the secret black door, got let in, and did "black" things—well enough to fit in! But—gasp—black things are for black people! If everyone is able to do them, well...we lose what makes us black. Y'know, because we define blackness by stuff like sitcoms and lyrics instead of ideology and roots. So when a white woman is able to mimic, replicate the things that we think make us inherently black (she rocked the shit out of those braids) it's threatening. It's the same reason people give so much shit to rappers like Iggy Azalea. It's not necessarily that she sucks–although I'm not particularly a fan—but it's more that this white, Australian woman has the audacity to try and take part in something that belongs to black people. 

Two weeks ago folks were falling all over themselves to congratulate Caitlyn Jenner on having the courage to be herself, to let her outside reflect who she is on the outside. People were also quick to attack anyone who thought differently about that. Now, work with me here for a moment. If we live in a time and society where we're attempting to understand and accept that people can be born into bodies that don't match who they are on the inside in regards to sex...is it not possible that people may also feel they weren't born into their proper bodies on a racial spectrum? I know, it sounds crazy, but if you had said to me 5 years ago that there were people who thought they were really the opposite sex I'd have said the same thing. Obviously I have no idea what Racel Dolezal's internal working are, or what her motivation for the last 10 years has been. I like to give her the benefit of the doubt and think that she felt no connection to her parents but a great affinity to black people and our community and simply wanted to be a part of it; in essence, that she felt "black inside". I don't understand why a journey to match your sex up with how you feel is more lauded and acceptable than a journey to match your race up with how you feel inside. It's all about finding ourselves, right, you hypocrites? 

So, an argument I've read as to why this is so "harmful" and "disingenuous" is that because she's white she has the ability to shake her black persona and reclaim the privilege of being white whenever she wants, and black people can't do that. I object to that simply because it's a gross oversimplification. We have historical accounts of light-skinned black people who could and did pass as white as the need arose, and could therefore move between cultures just as Dolezal can. Just because I, as a chocolate-skinned black woman, could never be mistaken for a white woman, doesn't mean there are not black people who can and are. So let's not pretend that that doesn't exist and that she has cornered the market on being able to pass. 

I finally got all of that off my chest. Y'all need to let Rachel Dolezal be. You have no idea what she's done, why she's done it...nothing. You've already tried and convicted her in the court of public opinion and it's stupid. Some of you are just mad because she's done more in her 10 years as a "black woman" to help/give back to the community than you have in your life. Others of you are, again, just mad because she gained entrance into a club that you thought had special requirements, but she can watch The Cookout with the best of us. 

Rachel, I ain't mad at you. 

*Shut 'em down, open up shop - Ruff Ryder's Anthem

Teflon Man

He's everywhere. Everyone who's had a job has probably run into this guy, and maybe been as frustrated as I am with his amazing abilities to deflect all responsibility.

Let me tell you of my latest run in with this Super Non-Hero.

I work in tech. We have a platform on which we process log lines from a web server. They go through a product called syslog, which in turn writes those logs to a central storage unit. All of our environments (Development, Staging, Production) go through this syslog server and writes to our storage. Teflon Man decided that this was affecting our production environment, slowing things down because accessing the storage was getting slow, so he had a plan to change the syslog service to send all environment log lines —except production — to another storage server.

During the work day he changed the configuration file for the syslog server, essentially stopping it from processing anything except the production log lines. He did not however turn off the services writing those log lines from the other environments, so they were still writing log lines to syslog; syslog just wasn't processing them. This meant that the syslog server was creating a queue of those files.

That evening he went in and created new storage areas for the other environments. He then turned syslog back on with a configuration change pointing those log lines to the new storage. Syslog started to process all of the backed up log lines, while also trying to process the current incoming production log lines. We started falling behind in processing because syslog couldn't keep up. The thing is, no one knew that he'd done this evening work. He didn't call anyone, didn't send out an email, nothing.

I was on-call, so I got an alert about the lag. I checked a bunch of system logs to see if I could figure out what the issue was. We were clearly having problems, but it was none of the usual suspects. Eventually I called Teflon Man and he said, "Oh, I did this thing." He explained what he did (see the previous paragraph) and I told him to go back and change it because it was fucking up production. He did so.

Here's where the accountability issue comes in. This morning I spoke with him and identified 3 things that I thought were problems:

1. That we did not have monitoring that helped us quickly pinpoint the problem. This was a team issue, not his problem, but I thought it was something we should work on because time to resolution was pretty long. This was a no-blame point. All of my team are on notice when it's a monitoring failure. 
2. That a production change was made at night without a head's up to anyone. 
3. That he didn't monitor after his change to verify that everything was working smoothly. 

He was able to agree with the first point because it was a team issue. He didn't have to take any personal responsibility for this failure. The other 2 points though? Oh, he had answers for those and at no point accepted that he may have done something wrong. Regarding making a production change at night he said, "Well, it wasn't a production change really. I was only changing Staging and Dev." The change was made on a production box; what part of that means it wasn't production? 

On the third point he had the same argument. He had checked to make sure syslog came back up after he restarted it (which was necessary for the configuration change to take effect) and that was it because, again, he didn't think he was affecting production. Ummm...you had to restart a service that pulls production log lines. How is that not affecting production?! 

Ultimately he blamed it on the technology. Syslog isn't robust; syslog couldn't keep up. It also turned out that after he restarted syslog it was still backed up with the logs from the other environments because the permissions on the new mounts weren't correct, so it couldn't write to the new storage location. Who do you think created the new storage locations? He did. You'd think he'd have checked to make sure they were writing where they were supposed to be, but no. 

He had excuses for everything: excuses for why he hadn't monitored production after making the change to make sure we were still processing properly; excuses for syslog wasn't working; excuses for why he hadn't checked the permissions. At no point did he accept responsibility for his part in the problem. I'm not saying some sort of groveling thing; I mean a simple, "My bad." I make mistakes and I own up to them. This dude? Nope. The email he sent this morning was like this:

It appears that syslog was behind transferring production logs due to issues with processing the dev, qa and staging logs. After disabling the non production environments in syslog the production files started transferring normally and the pipeline is now catching up and lag is now decreasing.

Nice generic email that at no point explains that it was his fault. My emails, when I fuck something up, say things like, "I did x and this happened. I fixed it."

Lest you should think I'm not a team player, let me assure you that that is not the case. When I gave a post-mortem to my boss this morning I didn't say, "Teflon Man did this." I said, "We made changes yesterday" and "last night the config was changed". I kept it vague, I kept it team. No one is trying to throw anyone under the bus. But within the team, when you've caused the on-call person grief, you say, "Whoops, my bad" and own up to your shit.

Not Teflon Man.

This is especially grating this week because I've had a shitty week which started off with a botched firewall deployment which was my fault, and I got grief about it. Direct grief, not vague team grief. I owned up to it with the boss and my team. But this freaking guy right here? Nope. And my boss won't hold him accountable in any way. He found out that Teflon Man made the changes and his response was, "I'm concerned that we didn't troubleshoot it correctly, that it took us longer than I'd have liked to figure out what the problem was." Really? That's what you've got? Someone made a change to the production system sans warning, sans input from others, and you're focusing on how long it took us to figure it out? That's all you've got? Not maybe that if we'd known about the change that would be the first thing we'd have investigated?

Ugh.

Car Trouble

We drive a 1998 Honda Accord, manual transmission. It's been a good, reliable car (as Hondas tend to be) but it's starting to show its age. The driver-side back door doesn't open from the outside any more; you have to reach around from the inside to open it. There's a very embarrassing clicking sound when you turn the wheel. I liken it to the sound you get when you put a playing card in the spokes of your bike—cute on a bike, not so cute on a car.

Wifey and I have different priorities for a car. It's the story of our lives really, so we have to work hard at compromise. For me, power and sexiness was key. I wanted a car that looked good and had plenty of pickup for those times I wanted to zoom around that fucking Prius that's in the wrong lane to be going the speed limit. Wifey is more concerned about fuel economy. She wants a hybrid ideally, but I'm kinda staunchly against the Prius so that cuts down our options. Have I mentioned I hate Prius drivers? Not for their ideology, but for the way they drive. They suck. I'd buy a Tesla in a heartbeat though, as would Wifey, but at $60k it's not happening any time soon.

We came up with a compromise list. About the only thing we could definitely agree on were that we wanted a manual transmission again (because they're fun to drive and damn sexy), and a moonroof. Essentially, we wanted what we currently have but in a newer car. The cars we settled on trying out were:

• Honda Accord EX, manual
• Honda Accord Hybrid
• Mazda 6

We struck out with every. single. one. We weren't asking for much: manual transmission, cloth seats (because Wifey is a vegetarian), and a moonroof. The exact same things that we have in our current Accord. 

We started out with the Mazda because it's a sexy car, has awesome ratings and customer satisfaction, and it's just something different than the Honda. The Mazda comes in 3 trims: Sport, i Touring, and Grand Touring. The Sport lacked a moonroof. The i Touring also lacked a moonroof, and it was only available in leatherette, which Wifey wasn't thrilled about even though it wasn't real leather. The Grand Touring would have, admittedly, gotten us everything we wanted—but it only came with leather seats. 

We moved on to the Honda. Safe, boring Honda. They've done a few things to the Honda since we got ours though, and the Accord is actually kinda sporty looking, and has a nice stick shift—a sporty, short one. It felt really good to drive. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the Hybrid was also a nice drive, despite the fact that it was a hybrid and automatic. Wifey was obviously very excited about the Hybrid too. The downsides to it? No moonroof, no manual transmission, and no trunk space. We were willing to overlook the transmission type, and even considered leaving the moonroof. The trunk space was the killer though. It's only about 12.7 cubic feet, which is simply not big enough. The back seats also don't fold down at all, so you only get that 12 feet—not a bit more. I'm a musician and have to haul gear around sometimes. It would be pretty tight to get my amp and guitar into a trunk that size. There's also the occasional Home Depot trip, trips to the Vineyard where we pack our lives up for a weekend, long road trips to Cleveland...you get the picture. 

The Accord EX was the only car we looked at that offered all the features we wanted. The only downside was that it came in all of two colors: light grey and dark grey. We were fine with this though. If we could get everything else we were more than willing to have our color prospects limited. We went through our local dealer who located two cars. We thought we were finally at the end of our journey, but those two were already spoken for and the dealer couldn't find anyone else in the area who had that exact model with those exact specs. 

We had struck out three times. 

Now we're kind've circling the wagons again, trying to figure our our next steps. We're extending our search to some other areas that we travel to from time to time. The Hybrid is still out, but we're hoping we can find the EX manual somewhere. The Mazda is likely out because not only does it only come in leatherette, it has no moonroof. 

Honestly, I don't get how fucked up these trim levels are. It's super frustrating. 

Streaming's Got Me Steaming

Friday night and I'm at home with The Kid because Wifey has a social engagement. I dig our Troublesome Twosome evenings because it's a nice bonding opportunity for the two of us, and often what I'll do is set up a movie night since we generally don't allow her a lot of screen time. We do it up: fun "junky dinner" (like hot dogs are something), popcorn, ice cream. The works. That night she asked to watch The Lion King. You remember The Lion King, right? "I just cant wait to be king"? "Kakuna Matata"? Came out in 1994?

So we hit the tv room and I prepare to search for it online. I'm used to this dance, y'know? It happens every time we want to watch something. I start off with Netflix and usually strike out because Netflix has zilch for movies. Then I move on to FiOS On-Demand because why not? Usually I can stop right there and get on with my evening. Not this night, my friends. Not this night. FiOS didn't have The Lion King. I move on to XBox and start searching their various video offerings for it, including Amazon Prime. Nothing. At this point I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong. I can find Big Hero 6, which was out not that long ago, but I can't find a decades old movie?  It didn't make sense to me. Unfortunately no amount of searching yielded the ability to stream The Lion King. So, we had to watch Bob the Builder episodes. A bunch of them. I fucking hate Bob the Builder. All of those construction vehicle characters have entirely too much hubris.

Later that night after the little one was asleep, I figured I'd treat myself to a little movie viewing. I had a desire to watch some super hero action/adventure, and I was kinda craving Robert Downey Jr. so I decided to look for a little Avengers. I followed much the same route as earlier (with the exception of the XBox Video because by this time I was laying in bed with my iPad). I started with Netflix, went on to Amazon Prime. Not available to stream. Netflix has some cute Avengers cartoons, but I didn't want cute cartoons. Okay, how about Iron Man? I'll even take the first one. Nope. At this point I wanted to throw something. So much content, so many services, and we still have really shitty selection. I honestly don't get what makes it so that I can't stream any of the Fast and Furious movies, or Spiderman or even Taken, but I can get Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Robocop? I can get something old as shit like The Fifth Element, but not The Lion King? Why can I stream Dirty Dancing but not Mannequin?!

I know, I know, there are complicated forces behind these things, legions of dark-suited media pimps haggling and bargaining across the biggest solid oak table you've ever seen. It just seems crazy to me that everything is not available to stream by now—especially the old stuff! Like, I thought Netflix was the Last Stand for some of these old movies. Who does it benefit to keep this stuff vaulted up? Surely you'd make more money letting a service offer all of this old stuff so that people like me can go traipsing down memory lane than by letting it rot in a vault? How about the fact that Age of Ultron is coming out soon? I can't be the only person who wanted to reacquaint myself with The Avengers so that I would be up-to-date when the movie releases soon.

I get that "they'd" much rather have you buy the DVD/BlueRay disc/whatever but surely there's a dropoff time where you reckon if someone hasn't bought it by then, they're not gonna. I haven't purchased Michael Keaton-era Batman; I doubt that's going to change now. So just freaking stream it!

I wound up watching Voltron that night. Voltron! I love Voltron, but c'mon. You have Voltron and you don't have Short Circuit?

Ugh.

The Oddity of Banking Security

I stopped into 7-Eleven today to buy a few things. I swiped my debit card and it said "declined". I tried it again. Declined. I checked my statement right there from my phone and it said I had plenty of money to make the purchase. I had also just bought a cup of coffee (medium french vanilla, cream and sugar if you ever want to buy one for me) and I seriously doubted $2.12 had drained my account. I feared my account had been compromised in some way so after handing back my purchases and slinking away in embarrassment I called my bank.

About my bank: I'd been using ING Direct for a long time. I loved their service. Even if there was no brick and mortar place for me to do stuff like deposit physical checks or whatever I never needed one, and since I use my debit card for most transactions I wasn't even put out by the occasional fee to withdraw from someone else's ATM. ING Direct got bought by Capital One and so now I have a Capital One 360 account. I thought it would be shitty because Capital One, but so far the differences have been pretty transparent

The customer service rep was really nice and I didn't even have to wait on hold for long. She looked up my info and saw the declines. Every decline gives them a code that tells them why it was declined so she was able to drill down and let me know what the problem was and fix it pretty quickly. According to her there was a suspicious transaction on my card that had caused a freeze to be put on my account. The suspicious activity was a $20 charge from Audiokite, a service that allows musicians to upload their songs and get it reviewed by x number of anonymous users. It's a pretty cool service and a valuable tool for musicians if you don't have the means/exposure to get official reviews from the press.

I totally get the need for security, and in general I'm happy that my bank is looking out for me (I mean, not actually looking out for me really but protecting their own reputation and interests, but it benefits me so I'm not going to quibble about their reasons), but the way they did this one baffles me.

First of all, Audiokite is based in the states, in New York I believe. I spent a week in the Dominican Republic and used my card to charge things and even to withdraw pesos from an ATM. At no time did they flag my account, contact me to report that my buying pattern had turned suspicious, or anything of that nature. I was in another country! Yet a transaction from a US company aroused their suspicion? What's with that?

Second, I asked the rep if they should have contacted me to let me know that they had frozen my account for suspicious activity. She said they should have, and a check of the record showed that they'd initiated an automated call to let me know. Well, in fact they did call me. Earlier this morning I received an automated call from a 1-800 number that went something along the lines of "We're contacting you about suspicious activity with your banking institution." I listened to that generic message, made from a number that did not match the one on the back of my card, and assumed it was some sort of scam or phishing expedition. I mean, you can't be too careful about that stuff and I get spam calls to my cell all the time. I told her as much and she chuckled and admitted that yeah, their calls do sound like scam calls. So...you know, would it hurt to say the name of the bank in the message, and maybe to specify to call the number on the back of your card for assistance so that you're not skeezed out by some random 800 number? Maybe?

Anyway, I got it cleared up but I went ahead and withdrew some cash because I didn't want to go back into 7-Eleven and try it again. Their eyes were so...judging.

Rollin' in Pesos --- But I Won't Be Back

I just spent a week in the Dominican Republic with Wifey and Princess Jr. We were staying with some friends who've been living there for a few years now. I'm about to tell you about that stay, and I want to acknowledge two things:

1. I realize that I can never really complain about being someplace where the weather is in the 80s and above all the time when the alternative was for me to be in Boston getting snowed on. 
2. I am about to speak from a place of extreme privilege, specifically American privilege. I find it ironic that can go to another country and feel privileged because of my American-ness, but I don't feel privileged in my own country even though I don't stop being American when I'm at home. That's another post for another day though. 

So, let me quickly note the things that were enjoyable about the DR:

• Our friends were there, and we like them, so yay. 
• Beaches. Lots of beaches. If you like beaches, another yay. I happen to enjoy beaches so that worked for me. 
• Some neat natural wonders that weren't hidden behind miles of rope. We visited Los Tres Ojos the day before we left, and it is amazing. Underground caves and lakes, and not a single security guard or rope or anything. You could dip your toes into the water, you could touch the stones and stalagmites—essentially you could interact with it in a way that you usually can't with US places of this nature. 

The reason you can run all over the place here is kind've the heart of the DR though: No hay reglas. There are no rules. It's like some kind of Mad Max world. That's probably why, as a person who kind've likes rules and order, I didn't dig it. 

Herein begins the rant. 

The country is filthy. I have never seen litter like in the DR. Seriously, I get pissed off at home when I see a candy wrapper or crushed beer can chilling in the grass because we've gotten to the point where litter is no longer the norm. They didn't get the memo in the DR. Shit is gross. You drive along the highway and there's this beautiful coastline with sandy beaches and grass, and you see all of this white shit dotting the grass and you're like, What's that? And then you realize it's styrofoam containers and bottles and plastic bags and all kinds of crap. And no, this isn't tourist detritus. These are people who freaking live here!! They give zero fucks about it. Remember how I said there were beaches everywhere? Well, with your white sands and blue water you're likely to also find someone's dinner remains. Zero. Fucks. 

Now, you can probably go to one of their all-inclusive resorts and have some pretty nice clean beaches. By far one of the best beaches we visited was Playa Coson, largely because it didn't lie right next to any major throughway or streets. Pretty much it looked like only tourists frequented it. It was removed enough that it was "unspoiled". The beaches that were more in the heart of things like at Las Terrenas or the beaches at Boca Chica though? Nope. I saw a dude walk right up to the shore on one beach and empty his pockets and walk away. No one gave him a second glance. He was a local. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the beaches the locals frequent, which were the ones we usually went to because they were closest to Santo Domingo, were the dirtiest ones. I actually found an interesting website with forum posts about the trash problem there after I Googled to see what kind of waste management system they have in place. In a nutshell: none. 

If you ever visit the DR and don't stay in an all-inclusive, i.e a place you won't have to leave, do yourself a favor and hire a taxi. Do not attempt to drive. I always thought Boston drivers were kind've lawless, pulling all kinds of stunts like creating lanes where there are none, cutting people off...just generally being Mass-holes. You've seen nothing until you've been in Santo Domingo-area traffic. There are no rules. It's a free-for-all, and as a result there is a lot of honking, a lot of standoffs, and a lot of crappy-looking cars. They're called Frankenstein cars because they're made from all kinds of random parts, put together and barely running. They break down so much that there are literally DR-equivalent AAA trucks just waiting around every few miles on the highway. Even the rental car we got from the airport was missing the original radio. It was some after-factory thing held in place in part by a piece of wood, and the oil cap was missing. I've seen bootleg cars; I grew up in the poor part of a major city. Some of family members are currently driving cars that should not be on the road. But I've never seen anything like this. 

People here are on the take. Everyone. Everywhere you go, they are trying to sell you a service or a thing or whatever. Wifey and our friends called them "entrepreneurs". I call them annoying and con artists. Dudes put on fake but official-looking vests with nametags and offer you services. You have to watch out for that shit. We parked at a restaurant on the beach at Boca Chica. We were literally less than 50 feet from our car and could see it perfectly. Dude offered to watch our car for money. I said no. We finished up, went to our car, and he approached us for payment. I was like, "No. I didn't ask you to watch it. I told you I didn't want you to watch it." He was pissed. Fuck him. I was at the end of my rope anyway. At that same beach we had people approaching us every 5 minutes, seriously, trying to sell us shit. "Want me to braid your daughter's hair?" "Want a massage?" "Want some of this fresh seafood I just caught today?" "Want a cd?" "Want some sunglasses?" "How about an inflatable ballooon for the nina?" And on and on and on. That can really put a cramp in a "relaxing" day at the beach. 

You go to a tourist attraction like Los Tres Ojos or the Colonial Zone and "tour guides" will offer their services to you. You don't need a tour guide for a building with one room and placards explaining everything. You don't need a tour guide for an attraction that comes with headphones and an audio tour. You wouldn't give some random guy off the street money to give you a tour of Anne Frank's house, but in the DR dudes disguise themselves you think they're official and part of the attraction. Language barriers aid that misconception, and they know it. I'm lucky I saw this in the guide book or I would likely have fell for it. 

At the airport for our flight back I attempted to get a cart to haul our luggage inside. The carts are free. Some dudes though, who I'm pretty sure are not actually employed by the airport, are standing around outside with carts and they claim you. They roll up to the side of your car as you pull up, they wait until you start unloading your luggage, and they start taking it from you and telling you that they'll help you. I asked our friend if I should let them or go get my own cart and she said, "Sure, but they'll expect a tip". She slipped a few pesos into my hand for him, hugged us goodbye, and left. The dude rolled the cart through the sliding doors right up to the checkin line...which was literally a few feet from the door. He then unloaded our bags in the line and looked at me expectantly. I was disgusted. I put the coins in his hand, he looked at them, and then he was disgusted. I have no idea how much she gave me, but I felt fine about him feeling stiffed because what kind of tip did he want for rolling our luggage cart 20 feet!? I could have carried all of our shit in there myself! Entrepreneurial my ass. 

I don't know if it's obvious to you, but this was by far the most annoying part of this country for me. 

The food sucks. It's bland and tasteless. The only dish I had that was delicious was something called boca chica, which is essentially deep fried whole fish. The best I had it was at a place called Soya Azul, which was another beachside restaurant that was maybe the second nicest beach we'd gone to. Only complaint I have about that beach were the rocks (ouch!) and a lot of seaweed. By the way, I had to Google the name of this place to make sure I had the right beach, and one of the results was a page of Instagram photos. This chick

was literally right in front of us on the beach while she was taking these. We laughed about it because you see pics like these all the time, and you think, Who are these people in bikinis making duck faces? And then there she was, literally doing it right in front of us. Good times. I have to show Wifey. She'll get a kick out of this. 

Other than that though Dominican food was pretty horrible. It's like the existence of salt hasn't made itself known over there. They really like Italian food though. You can find pasta dishes everywhere. Those aren't bad, but it's kind of weird to go to a country and eat another country's food, you know? Like, it's a rule of mine not to go to another country and eat some American chain food (although I was sorely tempted at one point). 

Also, beer. Would you like Presidente? No? How about Presidente Light? No? Welllll...maybe we have Corona. You'd rather do that than drink water from the tap in a country where maybe 49% of the water has been treated, and even then you can't be sure of the water treatment system itself. You can drink bottled water...but where was it bottled? Presidente is sounding good, huh? In the bottle. No hielo.  

Couple of other notes that are not vacation gripes but just general observations. People over there seem to either be really poor, or really "rich". I say "rich" because I don't know what rich translates to in pesos. Like, we went into a mall with a L'Occitane in it and that was supposed to be a place where "rich" Dominicans go to hang, but airports have L'Occitanes in them too. Any random mall over here could have one. My friends were like, "Yeah, you can go to that mall if you want to spend like 1000 pesos on a shirt." 1000 pesos roughly translates to almost $100 or something US, and there are definitely people I know who would spend that kind of money on a shirt, and I wouldn't consider them rich. I think DR "rich" is actually middle class, and they look rich simply because there is such a huge contrast between them and the lower classes. Like, there's a huge difference between driving a brand new shiny Mazda and a Frankenstein car, right? I drive a '98 Accord that has seen better days because I'm cheap, but I'm still in the same income bracket as someone driving a new Volkswagen. That doesn't seem to be the case in the DR. I saw most of this disparity outside of the city proper, along the highways. 

Dudes with guns. Lots of dudes with guns. Everywhere. At toll booths, at the entrance to apartment complexes, in strip malls. Big guns too. They looked like sawed-off shotguns, but I didn't exactly stare at them. They were in military fatigues and looked to be official, but it was difficult to tell if they were private security firms or members of the police force or army or what. Now look, I know that the police force around me in the States are obviously armed. The Bank of America building I walk past to work sometimes has an armed guard at the door. This is not news to me. Maybe it's the size of the guns, that they're so blatant about it. Maybe it's the casual nature in which they hold them. Maybe it's because they're everywhere. I've never driven through a toll booth on the Pike and seen armed guards hanging out there, protecting...something. Never had to walk past an armed guard on the way back from the swimming pool in a private building either. I mentioned this to my friend, and she said, rightly, "Would you rather you couldn't see them?". It made me very nervous though, especially after reading warnings on the US Department's website about dudes posing as officers to shake you down, and actual police officers pulling you over to extort you. I'll admit, visiting that site was not the best thing to do for an already nervous traveler. It made it seem like the DR was full of criminals waiting to snatch your bag, follow you to your hotel and then snatch your bag, or follow you to your hotel, rape you, and then snatch your bag. 

Also, just throwing this out there, but a black woman with short hair and more masculine traits (i.e. shorts, t-shorts, no make-up, baseball cap) traveling with a much more feminine white woman and a clearly mixed-race child? That gets attention, and not the positive kind. I can't tell you how many stares I got. Lots of eyeballs moving between me and Wifey trying to figure shit out. Homosexuality is not illegal in the DR, but they don't exactly like it. 

In short, if I were to ever return to the DR, I would stay in a resort. Fuck trying to experience the local culture. I did it and found it lacking. I'm ready to seclude myself in a safe, clean resort. 

Bathroom Tales 1

So I walked into the women's room and it was...fragrant. No big. That's what it's for. There was a woman standing at the sink, no one else there, and I assumed it was her. Again, no big. I did what anyone with bathroom etiquette would do and avoided eye contact and went quickly into a stall to do my business.

But then she left.

I immediately panicked, realizing that of course anyone who came in after me would think I had bombed the place and I wanted no part of that. It was a race against time to finish my business and get the hell out of there.

I made it.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what it's like to have bathroom anxiety.

Sexual Discovery: What Are You Obligated to Tell?

Things that happened this morning:

- We almost got t-boned by a huge pickup truck when Wifey turned left at an intersection. The truck was sitting in the middle of the intersection opposite us with his blinker on signaling that he was turning left as well. Should of worked out except that when we started to turn he apparently changed his mind and started straight for us.

- I was almost for driven off the road by some bitch in a minivan who decided she didn't want to stay in her lane while we turned a corner. Had the nerve to curse at me and honk her horn. I caught up to her and blew a raspberry because I'm vicious.

- I almost got t-boned by another driver who was turning left while I was going straight.

But the thing that prompted this post was my favorite local sports radio show. Yes, again. Not in a negative way this time though. It just gave me something to think about and I thought I'd share those thoughts with my readers (or, reader. Hi Jeff!). They were talking about Michael Phelps and the stories circulating online that his girlfriend is transgender, a man, or whatever. Different "articles" use different terminology in their headlines. I'm trying to find a link that doesn't look like it came from the Enquirer. Let me see...I can't find anything, so here it is.

The story, in a word, is "Yuck". Not that she was born intersex and had the surgery and all that jazz, but that she's more than likely not at all involved with Michael Phelps and is using this for some sort of weird publicity. Bleh. The radio show this morning was also very positive and not at all disrespectful about the process and her history. The question they raised though, was this: "What, if any, obligation does a person have to tell their partner about their past?"

In this case it was clearly bullshit that if she did indeed have some sort of relationship with him she opted to go to the media with the revelation of her surgery and such without telling her alleged boyfriend first. That's a no-brainer and a clear money-grab move. Hence one of the reasons I call shenanigans (not to mention the lack of photos of the two of them together, etc.). Let's move beyond that to the generic. If you are a transgender woman/man, or were born intersex and got some things removed, whatever...do you have to tell your partner? And if so, when?

My short answer is this: if you're having a hook-up, kind've one-night-stand style, and everything looks "fine" down there (i.e. they're not going to find something they weren't expecting), I don't think you do. It's a one-time deal and I think there's some safety concerns involved. You don't know the other person all that well yet in the case of a hook-up, and trusting them with that kind of detail means you're opening yourself up for some potentially psycho behavior. I mean, do you tell them at the bar when you guys are getting cosy and heading "that way", allowing for the possibility of them making a scene to save face in front of their friends or something? Do you tell them when you're alone and about to get personal, introducing the risk of personal harm if they flip out? Have you ever seen "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"?

Personally, I've never met/seen a transgender person who didn't ping something. I'm sorry, I know this will probably offend some transgender folks, but I've never seen one that didn't make me think "That used to be a man" or "That used to be a woman". I just don't know how you could miss it. Even this chick, the one claiming to be with Michael Phelps—she's clearly had some surgery done and went the whole nine to realize her inner woman, but her face man. Her face would make me pause and ask some questions before we got too close. It still has masculine angles. But, if some hot woman managed to slip past my radar and we hooked up, I figure what I don't know won't hurt me. This is clearly not the case with STDs, but being transgender is not transmittable, so...play on! (All of the above is also clearly hypothetical since I'm both married and not likely to attract a hot woman other than my wife.)

If you're in a relationship though, if it's getting serious—yeah, you need to fess up. Getting serious is the line, you know, where it's time to come clean about everything because it's about building a relationship, and trust is a cornerstone there, if I may be cheesy. It shouldn't (hopefully wouldn't) change anything if you're with the right person, whereas if it came out somehow later on from another source it could threaten the stability of your relationship.

My two cents on a totally irrelevant subject.

Adrian Peterson Suspended? Good!

Time to write so that this poison in my heart can get out and I can get on with my day.

I heard some chatter on my local sports radio station this morning that almost made me break my texting while driving rule. I wanted to Tweet, Facebook, call in (and I never call in). Seriously.

So Adrian Peterson has been suspended for the rest of the season. You can read about it here and here, plus a bunch of other places. The show hosts, Toucher and Rich, along with their invited guest Greg Bedard (about whom I will say right now, "Eff that guy"), expressed outrage at the suspension. I heard a lot of "What AP did was wrong, but..." and "I don't condone this practice, but..." "Maybe he went overboard, but..." etc. If you agree that he was wrong, and that he needs to be punished, then what's the big fucking deal about him getting suspended for the remaining 6 games?

Oh. You're pissed at Goodell in general. Anything the dude does is automatically wrong, evil, insert adjective here.

Let me try and enumerate and respond to not only the arguments I heard on this show (which I normally love but pissed me off beyond belief today) but also in the comments on that ESPN article. I know, never read the comments, but sometimes there's this masochistic part of me that wants to test whether or not people are as shitty as I typically think they are. They are.

Goodell is only doing this because of public perception. He screwed up on the Ray Rice case so he's making up for it and going overboard. 
And? Yeah, he messed up with the Ray Rice shit storm. He's making sure he doesn't fall into the same thing with Adrian Peterson. He doesn't want to be accused of giving this dude a slap on the wrist and letting him off easy. AP was suspended 6 games already—WITH PAY! He missed out on actual play time —which I understand would be a big deal for a competitive athlete— but he still got paid. What a luxury. You're getting punished for violating an agreement with your employer, but you're still getting paid. Now he gets suspended 6 more games without pay. That's too much though, right? Going overboard. Tell me—what is the proper punishment for beating a kid these days?

But look at all the other NFL players that do/did heinous things? Murder, manslaughter, abuse, drugs, drunk driving, you name it. The NFL never gave a fuck before and now they suddenly do?
Better late than never I say. What kind of argument is this anyway? "They never did anything about it before so they should probably keep on keepin' on. Too late now." How does continuing to not do anything help anything?

Goodell's making shit up as he goes. He's catering to public pressure. 
Duh. He has a brand. His brand has had a shitty year in regards to reputation. Now more than ever the league seems full of unstable, bully-type agro dudes, and the cover is being pulled back on the league's implicit support and how they sweep these incidents under the rug. He'd be being irresponsible to his organization if he didn't take public perception into account and try to manage that. I reckon the folks most upset about this are the ones who want their business-as-usual football, hold the personal accountability please. "Yeah, yeah, beating bad, blah blah blah. Will he be back in in time to help us make a post-season run?"

But still, Goodell suspended Stallworth for the entire season in 2009 for killing a pedestrian while driving. Does AP deserve the same punishment as a dude convicted of DUI manslaughter? Isn't that a bit much? 
There are people who would argue that Stallworth should have gotten worse than that. Did Goodell set a precedent that means that any other crime lesser than murder requires less time? Is the league not allowed to adjust as time goes on?

AP's actions were a product of his background/upbringing/race, whatever. He didn't think he was doing wrong, and plenty of people spank their kids. 
Go fuck yourself if you can't tell the difference and you justify abuse with that tired-ass argument. I was raised being "whooped". I don't hit my kid. Argument nullified.

But Goodell is evil. Goodell is a coward. Goodell is a joke. Goodell is the antichrist. I'm never watching football again until Goodell is gone. Goodell is ruining the league. 
So, let me get this straight. You're real problem is with Goodell. You don't actually care about what the players do. You'd have been happier if AP beating his kid had never come to light. You'd have been happier if that Ray Rice video had never surfaced. Because now the general public, not just the people who live and breathe football, know what's going on and are weighing in and putting pressure on Goodell to hold these dudes accountable and it's just fucking everything up. And you guys have some sort of bug up your ass about Goodell specifically. When he doesn't punish Rice enough, he's awful. When he punishes him more, later, he's awful. When he punishes AP, he's awful. He's just awful and there's nothing you can say to change my mind. Meh.

Speculation is that Goodell will be out. Fine. I hope he makes a lot of player's lives more difficult before he does. I hope he says, "Fuck it, I've been too lenient too long. Let me make up for this shit right now." I hope he starts throwing the book at everybody and stops the trend of NFL players being exempt when they fail the tests of basic human decency. Turn it into a survival game show: Who's Can Stay in the NFL? When there's a real threat to those 6-digit checks and not being able to participate in something you love maybe we'll see real change. 

I'm not unreasonable though. I get that part of the pique is about a lack of guidelines. How do you know what you can get away with if there are no regulations clearly outlining the possible punishments? 

The Cost of Recording

I'm a musician...sort've. I don't make any money off of it, but I play in a band and I launched a solo project about a month ago. I have a website with a blog and all that jazz and I would normally post this kind of music-related biznazz there. The thing is, this little rant is going to be about someone local, someone known, and I don't want to burn any bridges before I've built them, you know what I mean? So I'm just gonna go ahead and separate this out so I can get it off my chest but still maintain relations in case I need them again in the future. In the short term I have no intention of working with him again, but you never know what's going to happen.

When I decided to launch this new music project I had this great idea. I was going to release a single month. It would be a good way to keep people engaged, prevent them from burning out on the same old tune and losing interest. I happened to have a bunch of professionally recorded tracks that I'd done a couple of years ago. Wifey got me some studio time with a friend of ours who has a studio in town, and I went in with my guitar and laid down rhythm and vocals, had the dude from my band come in and play bass, and then had some local college kid do drums. I recorded like 6 or 7 songs during this time. They were essentially done and all I needed was some lead guitar work. I had asked a friend of mine to do it and he agreed, but he kept putting me off and finally the whole project just languished. When I re-committed myself to a solo project I thought, Cool, I have a bunch of pro tracks to start off with. I'll just play the leads myself. I planned to do a combination of releasing the professionally recorded ones and home-recorded demos of new songs.

There was a small snag in my plan though. Upon re-listening to the previously recorded tracks, it became clear that the dude with whom I'd initially recorded either had a tin ear (which I feel like he didn't because his other shit sounds pretty good), or just didn't really give a damn. The guitar was so badly out of tune it made me wince to go back and listen. I remember recording an EP with my band, using this guy (let's call him Scarf, because he wore a scarf one time) who has a studio in the same building as our practice space and having him flat out replace my guitar with one of his own to play because it didn't sound very good. That's a producer, and it makes sense. It's what I'd expect. I'm going to release these recordings and tell everyone that you recorded and produced them. It's in your best interest to make them sound good. For whatever reason that didn't happen with my initial recordings. I never told the dude either because I have no backbone. At any rate, I now found myself in a position of having to re-record all of the guitar, and some of the vocals too.

I decided to work with Scarf. He was a known, I liked the work he did on our EP, and he was conveniently located. No-brainer. I sent him the tracks I had and said, "Tell me what I need to do to make these sound good." His assessment? That much of it was unusable. He didn't think the drums were mic'd very well and therefore they lacked good levels, and he agreed that my guitar was out of tune. He said it would cost me more money to have him try and massage all of that into something listenable (and it still wouldn't be great) than it would be for us to start over. He would use what he could, but in the interest of quality replace whatever didn't rate.

Camp Belvidere: My Half-Assed Review

In my last post I mentioned a movie I'd seen recently called Camp Belvidere, and I threatened to talk about it. So, I'm gonna talk about it. It's a 38-minute short only available for rental via Vimeo. I find that incredibly disappointing because a) the movie's been out since April I think, and b) I could go broke renting it. I liked it that much.

I don't typically go in with high expectations when it comes to shorts. It's a challenging way to make a movie. You have a limited window in which to tell your story, and that often results in movies that are purposefully vague (re: "artsy") to avoid having to adhere to standard storytelling tactics which might not work well; movies with a lot of short scenes and quick camera changes, resulting in a frenetic feeling; or movies that just don't get to tell the whole story and leave the audience feeling disconnected and lost. Camp Belvidere rather masterfully avoids all of those pitfalls and leaves me feeling like I just watched a complete movie. A short one, but complete.

Ahem...there may be spoilers from here on out because I can't censor myself. You've been warned. I'll even make a little jump link for you.

Lesbian-related Media Thought of the Day: Soap Operas

I've just completed a binge re-watching of All My Children's Bianca/Marissa storyline. It's been a little light in new lesbian media these days (although I did just watch in interesting little short called Camp Belvidere; more on that in another post maybe) and when that happens I tend to go back to my old standbys for my girl-on-girl fix. Re-watching AMC is one of those standbys. As always, watching those clips made me start thinking about how odd the state of lesbian affairs is in the daytime soap world, so I thought this time I'd write it down and maybe not have to think about it the next time. Doubtful, but hey, no harm.

I don't know how many lesbians there've been in the history of US soaps. I'm not an avid soap watcher, although when I was a teen I tuned in to Days of Our Lives, Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World whenever I had a chance. I of course didn't realize that tuning in to Another World simply because I was enthralled with Anne Heche, or that I really, really liked As the World Turns's Shannon O'Hara played by Margaret Reed might mean something...else. Like, it wasn't because of the stellar acting.

I became reacquainted with soaps by watching clips of Maggie and Bianca on AMC. I had heard about Lena Kundera but honestly, she wasn't all that attractive to me so I didn't really fancy going back to see any of that. It's kind've the way I pretend Callie and Erica didn't happen on Grey's Anatomy. I enjoyed the BAM storyline even though it just didn't make sense a good deal of the time, and it seemed that the writers were doing everything they could to keep them from having to actually do anything about the attraction between the two characters. It was so weird because they had already established this lesbian character in Bianca Montgomery, and that was such a big deal, and they'd given her a relationship already (two actually because there was Frankie I guess), but for some reason they were really balking about fully committing to Maggie and Bianca. Who the hell knows why? They kissed a total of I think 3 times during the series, and for all but the last time it wasn't mutual. You have the Maggie snogged Bianca while Bianca was with someone else kiss: http://youtu.be/Ery5wWUTgX4. I'd embed it but the user disabled that functionality. It's at the 3:40 mark.

The next time is the other way around. Maggie's in an abusive relationship with some dude and Bianca kisses her: http://youtu.be/ZYO-DcQcFc0. Same deal with the video, but this person seems to be the only one with any BAM vids on YouTube.

And the last kiss: http://youtu.be/LTmJLs4tgYk. It was still a sort've non-mutual kiss; it was a break-up kiss. They actually talked to each other and said out loud that they were lovers...right before Elizabeth Hendrickson left the show. I guess better late than never.

Your Bodies, Your Selves...Naked Celebrity Pics

I've read a lot of articles about the latest naked celebrity photo leak: Facebook, Gawker, Jezebel, Slate...well, hell, everyone has something to say about it. Welp, here's my two cents.

First, I'd like to address the way people are calling the theft of these photos a "sex crime". Lena Dunham was one of the first people I saw use that term to refer to this incident. I tried to find a standard definition of a sex crime, and in the majority of cases the definition always involved a physical component. From http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/sex-crimes.html

A number of different offenses fall into the sex crimes category, but they generally involve illegal or coerced sexual conduct against another individual. Every state has laws against prohibiting the various types of sex crimes, such as rape and sexual assault, and each state has its own time limit (or “statute of limitations”) in which victims of sex crimes may file a lawsuit against the alleged offender. 

 The website http://sex-crimes.laws.com/ lists a number of offenses including child pornography, molestation, statutory rape. It does not list distributing personal photographs without consent. I found a rather broad definition of "sex offense" from fbi.gov:

Sex offenses (except forcible rape, prostitution, and commercialized vice)—Offenses against chastity, common decency, morals, and the like.  Incest, indecent exposure, and statutory rape are included.  Attempts are included.

I don't know what an "offense against chastity" would even look like, but none of these say to me that this was a sex crime.

Now, I'm not saying that this was not a crime. It certainly falls under the criminalization of hacking in general, a breach of personal data that should be handled with the same levity as any data breach. The person(s) responsible, if found, should be prosecuted, along the same lines as Christopher Chaney. I can't imagine how violated and embarrassed the victims must feel. If it were me I'm not sure how I could show my face in public. It sucks.

But. But. It is not a sex crime, and frankly the unwillingness of some circles to acknowledge the other side of this —the responsibility on the part of the actresses in question—is perplexing and just plain stupid. People do foolish things, they make foolish mistakes. It makes you feel bad for them, but it does not negate their part in what happens to them. And this is the second thing I want to address, and it's an opinion that will get you flooded with accusations that you are victim-blaming, supporting rape culture, etc. GTFO.

Listen, you have every right to take selfies, naked or otherwise. Do you. Congratulations on feeling so secure in your body and yourself that you want to express it in that way. Don't be naive though. Know that just as hackers can grab credit card data from Target and Home Depot, your online data is vulnerable as well, and if you put that shit online you are assuming risk. It kills me when people do risky shit and then act all surprised when it goes pear-shaped, especially since this isn't the first time this has happened. Did no one pay attention when this happened to Scarlett Johansson? Christina Aguilera? Jessica Alba? Vanessa Hudgens? I mean, damn man. You'd have to be living under a rock to not have some reticence about uploading your naked pics to the cloud.

Okay, so maybe they didn't do it on purpose. Maybe they had some sort of automatic upload enabled through the iCloud service. Is ignorance an excuse? In many other circumstances we'd be quick to say no, it's not an excuse, but here we're willing to give them a complete pass and dissolve them of all personal responsibility. Again I say: GTFO.

I hope they prosecute the guy who did this. I applaud sites like Reddit that have been working vigilantly to remove links to the photos and shut down discussions about it. I hope the victims are able to recover from this and don't suffer too much emotionally or professionally. I hope they delete all of their nude selfies and refrain from uploading them without taking proper precautions (like stronger passwords, two-factor authentication, encryption, etc.). I hope others, celebrities and mere mortals alike, learn from this and do the same.

On Mike Brown

When I heard about Mike Brown's death, I didn't care. I saw the headline and thought very little of it. Very little of it. Do you understand that? An 18 year-old man-child was killed and I barely batted an eyelash. It seems that hearing about black people being killed —by police, by neighborhood watchmen and other self-appointed vigilantes, by paranoid people, by other black people —has become so commonplace, it's no longer worth noticing. Kind've like mass shootings. It's all part of the American landscape now. And you know what? It sucks. It sucks to be in a place in our "evolution" where we barely blink at death any more. We make the required noises, but it doesn't affect us. These things don't shock us anymore, and they should.

Ferguson is what made me start paying attention to this one. The protests, the riots, the images of neighborhoods covered in thick clouds of tear gas, of a police force that more resembled a Michael Bay movie than any police I've ever seen in real life. This got my attention, and so I started paying attention. I paid attention to the news coverage, Twitter feeds, and to what my own Facefriends were saying. What I've seen has gotten to me, and prompted me to write this. I had to write this because all of these feelings were bubbling up and taking away my concentration, making me angry, making it hard for me to move on.

Facebook is not helping matters. I've always prided myself on the diversity of my Facefriends. We have a tendency to surround ourselves (or try to surround ourselves) with likeminded people. It starts with the kind of school we go to, right? Conservative Christians don't typically enroll in Oberlin or Hampshire, and the more liberal-minded of us are not about to matriculate into Liberty University or Brigham Young. So you amass a cohort of people who tend to believe the same things as you, and then you graduate and maybe you turn towards cities that reflect your thinking. And within the cities you migrate towards neighborhoods or nearby towns that are populated by others like you. Sometimes you even gravitate towards professions/businesses that are in keeping with your social and political leanings. I missed the boat on this last one. I went into tech, which is dominated by white guys, and a pretty large number of them have mostly turned out to be conservatives/tea partiers/libertarians because, well...white guys.

There are of course exceptions to absolutely everything I just said because the world isn't black and white and doesn't neatly divide itself. It's messy and the universe is a trickster and contrarian and is always waiting to prove you wrong.

My Facefriends reflect a social and political diversity that is difficult to reproduce in real life, especially real life with a toddler and a demanding job. This wasn't done on purpose. I friended people with whom I worked, people with whom I have never engaged in a political conversation. They know me, we chat and joke and get along, we friend each other online...and then you find out what they think about "things". Things like gun control and immigration and social services.

People like Mike Brown.

And I start to wonder if maintaining this diversity—which admittedly fuels my ego and makes me think I'm so enlightened and egalitarian—is worth the assault to my sensibilities. For every gun control rant that has a few salient and valid points that I can admit to, there are more posts that make me cringe, and comments from their friends that make me wonder who exactly I'm dealing with.

Yesterday one such Facefriend posted a photo of Mike Brown. It showed him sitting at a table, pointing a gun at the camera, a bottle of Hawaiian Punch on the table and what looks like the neck of a liquor bottle just out of frame. Behind him sits another black male, and smoke is curling around him. I'm not going to repost it here. My Facefriend captioned it with: Here's the image of Michael Brown that the news doesn't want you to see. I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.

Oh boy.

WeightWatchers

Weightwatchers is the best of times and the worst of times. It's the best because I honestly do lose weight when I do it. How could you not? The simple act of paying attention to what you're eating is enough to get you pointed in the right direction. That's pretty much its plus point (see what I did there, fellow WW subscribers?).

The downside to WW...well, jeez, where do I begin? How about finding out that everything you thought you knew about eating just doesn't matter when you start the plan? This is my second time doing it and I was still shocked when I started. I got up in the morning and prepared to pour my standard bowl of cereal and milk. We're not talking Reese's Puffs and whole milk, people. We're talking Kash GoLean and unsweetened soy milk. A nice healthy, well-rounded way to start my day I thought. Nuh-uh, not according to WW. They generously allotted me 27 points per day to start, and that bowl of cereal and soy milk? A solid 7 points. 7 out of 27. And that's only if I actually follow the serving sizes listed on the products. Do you know what a serving of cereal is? 3/4 of a cup. Have you ever poured exactly 3/4 cup of cereal into a bowl? It looks pathetic. Like, surely there's more, right? Nope.

I can't decide if this is an issue with the serving sizes reported by manufacturers or if we simply make our bowls too big, but this is the way of the world when you join WW. You start to realize that you can no longer eat the portions you used to eat, even if you didn't think you were overeating. It will break your spirit when you learn that a serving of pasta is actually only 2 oz and you see what 2 oz of dried pasta looks like in your hand—and that it will cost you 5 points. That's before you add olive oil, or pesto or red sauce or whatever you like on your pasta. You pretty much decide right then and there that it's not worth eating pasta any more because how depressing is that?

And hunger. If you try to eat the things you ate before but simply adhere to the serving sizes listed, you will never feel sated again. When I ate what was, for me, a normal serving of cereal in the morning I was usually hungry by mid-morning. What was going to happen when I ate even less than that? It's an impossible strategy, until you learn what WW is actually trying to do.

See, they fool you a little. Their literature and ads spend a fair amount of time reassuring you that you don't have to give up on the things you love. Yes, you can still eat cake or pie or a hotdog or whatever! The word "diet" brings thoughts of deprivation and denial. Deny yourself the things you like to eat. Everyone knows this eventually backfires and can often lead to bouts of binge-eating. But WW says, "Hey, no, we're not asking you to do that. That's silly. We just want you to think about what you eat, plan it a little. That's all. No big."

The things is, you absolutely can continue to eat pasta and pizza and cake or whatever, if that's your thing. Just know that if you eat a piece of cake, it'd better be the tiniest sliver known to man or you'd better plan to not eat anything else for the rest of the day. Go ahead, have a bowl of pasta. Same rules though. You have 27 points. You can spend it on whatever you want, but that's all you get so choose wisely. To be fair, they do also give you these extra weekly points that you can use, so technically you could go over your daily allotment, but I get the feeling that doing that a lot doesn't yield the same kind of results.

You eventually get the hang of it. You realize, okay, I want some pasta. It's 5 points. 2 oz of pasta is not going to fill me up. So, I'd better make it count. I don't want to be hungry in an hour after using 5 points (and then some unless you eat just plain pasta). So you layer your pasta with a shit ton of vegetables. Lots and lots of vegetables. Conveniently, most vegetables and fruits cost no points. You can literally eat a lb of grapes and WW will say, "Cool. Good for you." You learn to pile these foods on to actually get full, and you learn to live off of these if you plan to splurge and have that piece of cake.

This is a nice, clever way to get vegetable-adverse people to eat more of them. I get it. But a person like me, whose meals largely consisted of vegetables and tofu and brown rice and other shit that I thought was healthy? It's just frustrating. I'm not trying to eat cake. I'm not trying to eat fried chicken. I just want a bowl of fucking cereal and some fucking soy milk. Now I either have to accept that I'm going to never feel satisfied by breakfast again, start piling a bunch of berries on my cereal (whether I want to or not) and hope they help fill me up, or change my breakfast eating all together and decide I can only have cereal and milk as a treat to myself every now and then. That...that just pisses me off. Who uses milk and cereal as a treat?!

You know what started this rant? My company provided sushi for lunch for us today as a reward for good financial performance. I had four pieces of sushi—not fried, no tempura, just stuff like spicy tuna and squid nigiri and a california roll—and some edamame, and it cost me 20 points. 20 points for lunch. A small lunch even. I'm hungry again already. To add insult to injury, because I lost weight WW decreased my daily point allotment. I went from 27 points to 26. It's one point, but if you do the program you'll realize how precious one point is. I'm hungry and I have 6 points to use for the rest of the day. Dinner should be creative. Maybe I'll dive into some of those extra points.

But hey, I'm losing weight, right? And that's why no matter how much it sucks I will continue to do it. The reality of WW though? Shitty, shitty reality. I'm gonna go gnaw on some cardboard now.

Dream

Last night I dreamed that one of my hot coworkers got me a pair of shoes. Well, it started out that we were actually doing a Yankee Swap type of thing and I'd just happened to get her gift. They were Crocs. But then we started talking about the size and it seemed more like she had bought them for me. She asked if they were the right size. They were 6 1/2, and I told her I probably needed size 6 because they were a little loose. She said she wore a size 1.

Maybe I ought to play the lottery today.

How Warehouse 13 Did Me Wrong

Time for today's tv rant. It's late I know, seeing as how WH13 has been off the air for a good 2 months now. For some reason this morning's shower mental meanderings took me back to it though. At the time of the finale all I could muster was an outraged tweet. I suppose I've pouted and ruminated enough now to use more than 140 characters.

There's nothing new under the sun in tv and movies. Whenever someone thinks they've done something new and inventive, it's really taking an existing framework and implementing it in perhaps a different way. WH13 was no different. Their framework was the oft-used male/female duo solving mysteries and fighting the good fight. If I thought about it hard enough I could probably come up with a few shows from every decade since tv came into existence that uses this. Off the top of my head: Hart to Hart, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Father Dowling Mysteries, and Moonlighting for historical fare (is my age showing yet?); Bones and X-Files for something a little more current (probably reaching with X-Files, but my tv-watching dropped off with adulthood). Anyone remember Friday the 13th, the Series, which WH13 has been compared with on many occasions?

With a few exceptions (because yuck, Father Dowling Mysteries), this framework has been put to use to tell the story of partners working together and ultimately becoming "partners" in every sense of the word—even if it took several seasons (hi, X-Files!). Having attractive female and male co-stars whose characters don't eventually get it on? That's simply not done. It's become a given, something you can predict immediately. The crimes and mysteries may vary—and that's how the studios convince themselves that they're doing something "different"—but the romantic aspect is pretty much a done deal. This is why I was initially so impressed with WH13. In addition to being a funny show with a neat little plot (despite its resemblance to Ft13th), I didn't feel like the whole thing was just a mask for a romantic plotline. I enjoyed the sibling-like relationship between Pete and Myka. It was fun, it was funny. It worked.

And then the final episodes. They went and ruined everything by buying in to the played out romantic subplot between the two main characters. What made it extra ridiculous and frustrating was that it didn't even flow! Watching Pete and Myka kiss didn't feel like, "Aaahhh, finally; the romantic and sexual tension has been resolved." There was no sense of coming home, of closure, of meant-to-be. It felt like "Eeeewwwww" with a side of "What the fuck?!". It certainly didn't feel like this was something the show runners had intended to happen all along. If it was, then they either have zero skills in casting people or zero skills in creating romantic or flirtatious undertones.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that despite whatever their shortcomings in writing or casting they had—with little to no work on their end—an awesome alternative to doing the guy/girl partner/romance trope. Jaime Murray and Joanne Kelly had more chemistry in a handful of episodes than Kelly and Eddie McClintock had in 3 seasons.

You know what? Let's just lay the cards out on the table. If HG Wells had been realized as a male, and an actor had been cast that had the same chemistry with Kelly that Murray had...well, we would have seen another well-used plot device employed. How about the age old "good guy falls for the bad guy" story arc? Good guy tries to redeem the bad guy, maybe sees something in her that no one else does, sees potential for good? Or hell, maybe the bad guy is still a bad guy but the good guy really, really digs her? We probably wouldn't get a happily ever after, but we'd get some maintext, right? Yeah, except Jaime Murray is a woman, and they didn't expect the two of them to zing quite like they did. And rather than flesh that zing out, let it drive the creative process a little, give that chemistry a voice, the show runners decided to take the safe road. They used the chemistry to titillate, to draw in the fans, but never delivered, never committed, and in the end shored up the standard heteronormative story we've come to expect. And Jack Kenny is gay! I mean...that's not to say that every gay person has to put gay themes or characters in their creative work. But if the bug is biting and you swat it away? Feh on you. He had an interview with Collider.com where the question was asked: "How do you approach writing for this cast, to keep the great chemistry they have?" His response?

"We write them like family members. We write them like brothers and sisters, and daughters and sons. Everybody can relate to family.  Everybody has a mother or father, or a brother or sister that drives them crazy."

Sure, sure. Makes sense. Until you read this SciFi Vision interview that has him saying that Pete and Myka were endgame from the beginning. He describes a "dynamic between the two of them that there was a will-they-or-won't-they kind of tension". I'm beginning to think I was on the money with the theory that they don't actually know how to write romantic tension, because that there that he's describing? I've seen that dynamic done expertly on many tv shows, and this wasn't one of them. Actually, I'm starting to think that maybe he didn't watch his own show. He goes on to say that it was never going to be about Myka and HG setting up house together...but that was apparently good enough to have Pete and Myka do in the end? He even directly contradicts the actresses themselves: "If you seriously sat down with Jaime or Joanne they would say, 'Well no, they're not going to go set up house somewhere.'". Murray and Kelly have been pretty vocal in their support of and openness to a Berings and Wells "partnership". And somehow putting them together would have been "trivializing" their friendship, but not so with Pete and Myka. Ugh.

I kind of want to put together snippets from his own interviews and email them to him like "What the fuck, man? Do you even know what you're saying?"

I didn't expect a Myka/HG sunset. I was hoping that they'd get some respect, that we might get to see some maintext, that the show would be brave and different. A torrid romantic affair between the troubled villain and the quirky hero for a short while would have been pretty rad. Instead they play into the same tired themes that  Kenny himself acknowledges in that interview. As he said in regards to the Pete/Myka pairing: "...it's not like we're breaking any new ground here". And that is the biggest shame of all. When you hear a creative person admit, almost cynically, that they were just following the formula. How disappointing.

More Lesbian-ish TV That I Missed: Mistresses

I've mentioned before that I'm not on real time when it comes to watching tv. I usually don't find the time or energy to get into a show until it's long been available for streaming or something. I was just made fun of on Facebook for being on S1E3 of Game of Thrones. It's my thing though. I hate delayed gratification. I made the mistake of starting to watch Faking It in real time, and now I have to wait with this huge, ugly cliffhanger until MTV does season 2, however long that will be. 

In the meantime, I take to Youtube to find out if I've been missing anything, and I came across this show called Mistresses—in particular the storyline of Joss and Alex. Joss is a real estate agent who is hired to help Alex and her wife find a house. Now, if you've watched any television at all you can pretty much write the storyline out yourself. Whenever a show introduces a lesbian character, especially if they're not part of the cast, it generally means they're about to send one of their main female characters (notice I didn't say lead) on a temporary trip to Sappho Island. I say temporary because while there are an increasing number of shows willing to take one of their main characters and send them on that journey, it's usually for a short time. There are exceptions of course, but there are far more OCs (Alex/Marissa) and Mistresses than there are Buffys (Willow/Tara) or Rookie Blues (Gail/Holly). 

I'm gonna rip on Mistresses for its predictability, but I'll start off with a bit of praise and an admission. Admission: I know that this is based on the UK version of the same name (it's a trend to just copy someone else's show these days), and I've never seen that version. I don't know how much of what happens on this show is sticking strictly to the story as it existed originally and how much is being embellished upon, added, or subtracted. So it may be that what I'm about to say about this show is out of their control, although I don't think so. While they may not be able to keep Alex and Joss together in the interest of staying true to the source, I'm sure they way they do things is open to interpretation and artistic license.  

On to the praise. One of the things that I did like about this storyline was the way they introduced the lesbian character and how they handled her sexuality. There was no big reveal—we didn't see Joss and Alex hanging out and becoming friends and then suddenly find out, oh hey, Alex is a lesbian. Joss and Alex become friends and there's no weirdness. You don't see Joss have to affirm her heterosexuality to Alex or warn her that she's not into women (because we know every lesbian really wants to bang straight women). It's all so very...human. Two women meet, have things in common, get along, and hang out. They go jogging together, drinking together, they talk about their lives and their relationships. It was beautiful. 

Then we fall into the Well of Tropes. Alex is attracted to Joss. Alex and Joss sleep together. Alex has feelings for Joss. Joss really values Alex. They give a relationship a go. Joss actually isn't a lesbian. They break up. Here's where I start ripping into the show. 

I don't have a problem with them getting together and breaking up. I have a problem with the reason for the breakup. What did her brother-in-law say? "You're not a lesbian." And that was sort've the shows way of summing up why Joss cheated on Alex and slept with her boss. She's such a hetero that she was missing the peen like crazy and couldn't help herself. One minute they have her sitting with this same dude telling him how her friendship with Alex was "the single most important thing in my life right now", and the next they show her getting all hot and bothered by this dude's mere presence. He's so steamy and dreamy, right? Suddenly. 

Here's the thing. We've long ago established that Joss is her own woman and not into the whole relationship thing. It's an integral part of her character and likely the thing that's going to be her development as the show goes on. I can't tell you how many times I heard reference to her flighty, free-spirited, no-commitments ways in the few episodes that I watched. It's her thing. And that thing would have been enough to explain why she was not going to work with Alex in the long term. It would have been more true to the storyline, to her character, and more organic. No one expects the woman who has a series of casual engagements to actually have a long-term relationship. 

Instead, they hang it on a definition of her sexuality, and a narrow one at that. So she's not a lesbian. Maybe she's bisexual. Are you saying a bisexual woman can't have a long-term relationship with a woman who identifies as lesbian? The way they've defined Joss actually leans more towards the possibility that she could be involved/in love with anyone. She even mentions that she had a threesome once before. She doesn't come across as a woman who would let a little thing like a label get in her way. Hell, she seems like the kind of woman who would actually bristle at being labeled. Why choose a hard-line definition of sexuality as the way to dissolve a relationship instead of using her inherent character traits? It's perfectly fine if she misses dudes and needs to get her hetero on. Again, it doesn't have to be at the expense of making such a hardline statement. A bisexual woman can miss men too. A bisexual, comittment-phobic woman could, say, enter a relationship with a woman, and then decide she needs to sleep with dudes again and that unless they can have an open relationship, they have to break up. This is all in keeping with the character.

Also, the whole "not a lesbian" thing as a reason doesn't jive with the way they've portrayed the relationship between these two women. Joss doesn't seem to have a problem with the whole "female" part of the relationship. One of my favorite scenes is this one:

Did that look like a woman for whom her partner's sex was a problem?

I wasn't surprised by what they did, but I was disappointed. It was just so easy and dismissive, and they started off so well. One day I'll be able to watch a show and see a girl-on-girl storyline developing and instead of feeling cautiously pessimistic I can be cautiously optimistic. Come on Rookie Blue Season 5!