There's a 40% chance that my underwear is on inside out.

Well, my Celta course is over. It was tough, mostly because i had to deal with two rather insane people: one a 65 year-old white dude and another a borderline schizophrenic 42 year-old white woman.  I cried more in those 4 weeks than in the four months prior, but thankfully the tutors were supportive and caring foreigners.  

I´m now in Mazatlan.  You´d think I´d be able to type that correctly, but foreign keyboards almost always get to me.  I have no idea what time it is (ok, apparently only 11:30) but jesus fucking christ, it is hotter than sin here.  And it´s humid.  I made the mistake of attempting to walk to this internet cafe so i could see how little money i have to spend on anything cool, and I now have puddles of sweat collecting in my draws.  Seriously, I don´t remember being this disgustingly sweating in Philly when it was humid.  How did i ever get ass?

Yesterday, I ate ceviche with octopus in it.  

So, my original Mazatlan plan was to rent a hammock on some craptacular part of the beach (where UNICEF runs a school) but that freaked my mother out, and i sort of chickened out on that, so I´m staying in some resort type hotel at my mom´s expense (thanks mom!).  My problem, though, is that it´s miles away from the old city where at least some of the historical touristy stuff is, and the hotel is not forthcoming with info that´s not one of their tours (they keep attempting to sell me a condo, except I´m not old enough to own one).  Obviously, it is hot as sin right now, and I´m not feeling very motivated to get on a bus and go explore.  I´m only feeling motivated enough to get back to my hotel and lay next to their pool and drink an expensive drink (note to self: buy your own damn booze).

Anyway, we all know how broke I am, so I may not have any fun adventures for you.  But I´m going to try my hardest to stay cool and not die of heat exhaustion!

Aire

Well, I have made my appointment for the IUD and my insurance will not cover it unless i've met my deductible.  So, it's 585, plus my co-pay.  Still going for it, though. 

The moral of the story?  If you can get an FSA, you should try to sock away at least the amount of your deductible in a year. 

Camille Paglia is publishing a monthly article at Salon.com again. Ugh. Ugh. UGH!!!

Blergh.

C. Paglia is misogyny wrapped up in cute lil' same-sexed-partnered, "feisty," and amazingly VAPID paper.

Now, I'm going to talk about the column posted yesterday at Salon. I'm not linking it, but it might be helpful if you meandered over to there and read it.

First, Salon's editors introduce the Pag (pronounced PAHG) as "proto-blogger" and I have to say, they're not far off the mark. The blogger, as the current stereotype goes, feels empowered by the web to both analyze politics half-assedly and remark upon his or her tangential (in)significance to any and all current events. The blogger is usually spewing shit. Well, the Pag is the embodiment of this stereotype. (okay, I'm going to quote some of this. Beware.)

The Pag on her return:

The Web, in my view, has its own crisp idiom -- a fusion of the verbal with the visual. The computer screen, as a development of the TV monitor, doesn't favor the elaborate, self-interrupting, endlessly qualifying syntax devised for books and still aped by pretentiously big-think glossy magazines. (I chronicled the stylistic evolution of my Salon column, in response to new technology, in "Dispatches From the New Frontier: Writing for the Internet," an essay in "Communication and Cyberspace," co-edited by Lance Strate.) ....
My place in the Salon family, which dates from my contribution to Salon's inaugural issue in 1995, has its roots in the San Francisco Examiner, where David Talbot was the progressive arts and culture editor and an early supporter of my work after I burst on the national scene in 1990 with the publication of "Sexual Personae."

My question to you is could there be more shameless self-referencing and aggrandizement? Really, it's NOT okay to describe yourself as "bursting on to the scene". That's a cliche only others can apply to you.

Her column continues like this and so I can stop the ad hominem attacks directed at her self-promotion.  The low light of her piece is when she waxes rhapsodic about the lost talent of Anna Nicole Smith.  Yeah, I'm not making that shit up.   

The really frustrating part about the Pag is that her name has become conflated with feminism somehow.  Camille Paglia is not a feminist.  She's a sophist, and a vainglorious one at that (look at that.  Her style is invading my prose!  Get the fuck out of here!).  Paglia does not advocate for equality between the sexes.  Her analysis of gender is couched in the dichotomy of "separate and inherently, essentially unequal".  Yeah, that bitch is an essentialist.

The only reason why she has cache is because she appeals to the closed-mouthed, hidden-fisted misogyny of the modern, "educated" white male.  She's truly a token.  "Oh, look at you, wanting to comment on pop culture and date women and be smart and listened to.  You're not like those other feminists, who are telling us about the atrocity that our system" (patriarchy, in case you've been missing a few episodes) "is harmful in the extreme to white women, people of color, people with physical disabilities, gays, lesbians, and even white men." the RWGs said when they saw the Pag beginning to think critically.  "No--you don't accuse of us of oppression and you don't question that the distinctions we created are natural.  So, we think we'll let you in our club and give you a platform for your ego."

In an e-mail I wrote to a friend regarding the Pag's revival at Salon, I described her as being idolized by "misogynist gay men." (and misogynist heterosexual ones, too!)  There's probably a tinge of some homophobic hate speech in that comment, none of which I actually feel.  You see, the Pag is also what is known in some circles as a "fag hag."  She's into the camp (she wrote a book entitled "Vamps and Tramps") and you know what? So are a lot of completely awesome feminists. Where this become problematic is that she (to my knowledge) doesn't speak to the oppression of the GLTBQ community in her examination.  If anyone knows better, please correct me.  

Folks, if you want to read some self-important hack come all over herself in writing, go ahead and read the Pag's monthly column.  If you do so, be forewarned.  Also, know that the Pag does not speak for any mode of feminism, lest that be "straw-feminism."  Know that true feminists seek to end the oppressions of all peoples, be they black men or brown women or white women and even (!!) white men.  Feminism is not about gender; it's about freedom. 

You and the dead Roland Barthes are sitting in a movie theater.  The screen is lit with kisses spliced from nearly every film that ever had a kiss of the romantic kind.

"How long do we have left?" You ask.

"Ten hours."  Barthes lights up a cigarrette.  You ask for one.

Famous faces flicker endlessly on the screen, camera moving in to hug the couples as lips meet.  You feel oddly as if you've been watching a slideshow of novelty photos taken on amusment rides.  The scenes merge into one,  the kisses lose meaning, and then you wonder,

"Where do I know you from?"

Barthes slurps on the cigarette, "Mary Schmelzer's office."

"S/Z."  You recall the book sitting on her shelf, it's orange and white cover, it's paperback-ness. 

"You didn't read it."  Smoke dances in the light from the projection.

"No.  But I do remember the basic premise of it: the text is a place wehre the author loses authority over the meaning, and the reader is the sole arbitor of meaning and intrepetation of the work, right?  Key phrases were something like, 'implosion of meaning'?"  Barthes moves his shoulders in a shrug.  You read the excerpts from the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Its pages were onion-thin, written and marked upon like that of a pastor's Bible.  "I think I did read a personal essay you wrote, though.  Something about going to the cinema."

"No, you didn't.  You didn't finish that or the Walter Benjamin essay."

You raise your hand with the cigarette in it to your scalp and scratch.  "Funny, you're right.  But I loved Benjamin!"  A Julia Roberts-Richard Gere kiss appears on the screen.  "Oh, yuck!" An ember from the cigarette falls and burns your hair and scalp.

"Jesus Christ!"


Every once and a while, my thesis comes back to me in dreams.