2012

I am now at the 2,012th reason as to why I hate living here. Coming home this morning, I was on the train eyeing three different people who I think will most likely hurl in a subway car full of other people, because, you know that's how they fucking roll here. So anyway, there was this dude sitting in the corner seat who has been coughing like crazy next to another guy who looked like Anderson Cooper. I smelled some vomit but looked at the floor and didn't see anything. Anderson Cooper gets up and walks towards the car door looking like he's trying to hold it in. Coughing Guy is now off my list because he's just slumped in the corner going to sleep. Because that's how they fucking roll here. All the while this is happening, there's this trio of a guy and two women. The guy is practically chanting, “Mexico Numero Uno” while giving one of the women high fives. The other woman – the fucking menace, is swaying to and fro, holding on the the pole. We finally get to our stop and Pole hugger lets it rip right onto the floor like it's totally ok. Because, you know, that's how they roll here.

Happy New Year.

Only Begotten Daughter

Only Begotten Daughter

“Only Begotten Daughter” is a Science Fiction novel written by James Morrow. The story is about a young woman named Julie Katz who some would consider to be the second coming of the Christian Messiah despite the fact that she is a woman and is Jewish (the Christian doctrine of the Messiah dictates that the second coming will consists of Jesus Christ resurrected and coming back to Earth).
Her birth is a “virgin birth” of sorts (like Jesus) or rather she comes from a coupling consisting of one mortal parent and the parentage of a spiritual being. Her father, Murray Katz, is alone and short on money. He decides to be a sperm donor to a fertilization bank for needed cash. It turns out later that one of his “deposits” has fertilized itself somehow and the Zygote grows in an Ectogenesis tube, or artificial womb that the sperm bank happens to possess. Murray decides to steal the ectogenesis tube and he brings it home with the intention to raise his child. Murray is not a Christian and doesn’t at this point, see a connection between his child’s extraordinary conception and the conception of Jesus Christ, or any other religious connections until that is, his lesbian friend, Georgina Sparks tells him that his child just may be the new messiah and sister of Jesus Christ.
Murray immerses himself in Christian doctrines and the New Testament and although he does not wholly believe that his daughter (who is now a little girl and demonstrating abilities akin to Jesus such as walking on water, and bringing dead things to life) is the daughter of G-d and a messiah, Murray has decided that Julie must keep
her identity and abilities secret or else her enemies will crucify her as what happened
to Jesus.
The plot of the book goes on with many twists and turns and the story is funny and bitter sweet with Morrow painting images as dark and beautiful with his words. But one of the issues in the book that I immediately saw and what stuck with me was Julie’s scientific understanding of our world and the universe and seeing it as seamless with G-d’s very identity and existence.
In one of our subjects in the SF class, Professor Ugoretz presented the struggle between religion and science in Science Fiction storytelling. He posed the following questions to the class: do people ever feel a conflict between science and faith or knowledge and religion? In Morrow’s book, Julie Katz doesn’t seem to be at odds with this conflict as much as the people around her. Her father in not religious, yet could not present a single scientific explanation of his own daughter’s birth. Murray also had to fight to get to the sperm bank due to religious protesters who oppose artificial insemination knowing that those who use the bank may be either lesbians who want to raise children or parents who seek genetic selection in the breeding of their progeny instead of the natural way that G-d wills.
Here we see the religious opposing the science of humans exercising self-determinationism in the procreation of children. Also, Satan himself who has a large role in the story as Julie’s tempter and tormentor prefers the earthly ways of humans such as making money and the use of technology rather than the ways of the spiritual world. He runs a casino in Atlantic City.
But what about Julie? Besides having to hide her abilities out of respect for Murray her father, Julie is trying to understand her supreme-being of a parent who in the book is identified as Julie’s ‘mother’ and is referred to as a woman throughout the book. Julie, like most people always asks the existentialist question, who am I and why am I here?
As a messiah, she wants to heal the sick, raise the dead, and fight the evil, but most of all she seeks communication with her mother, G-d. But what I found most interesting was that Julie seems to have come to the understanding who G-d is at least despite the fact that Julie cannot talk to her. Julie’s understanding of the supreme being and creator of the universe, as the stuff of mathematic equations and physics; the stuff of science. This becomes evident upon Julie’s college years whn she meets a her second lover, Howard Lieberman who happens to be strictly a believer in the scientific faith; the world of physics and laws. All truth of the universe lies in science to him. But not to Julie. As I wrote before, Julie saw the scientific world and the mystic world as one and the same, a product of G-d and intentionally a result of physics. As Morrow writes:
What Julie found through science was not so much an atheist universe as one from which God, after the act of creation, had reluctantly but necessarily excluded herself. The universe was stuff. Energy, particles, time, gravity, electromagnetism, space: stuff all. So how could a being of spirit enter a wholly physical domain? She couldn’t. The God of physics was obliged to inhabit only the unknown, the universe beyond the universe, a place the human mind would never reach before everything expired in heat-death and whimpering hydrogen. The God of physics might smuggle an occasional egg or spermatozoan into the Milky Way, but not her incorporeal essence. She could bring forth children, but never herself (Morrow 87). 1
Here we see that unlike the world around Julie of black and white where science and faith is seen as an “either/or” dynamic, Julie is not suffering this conflict between faith and science. But I do see the answer to the question that Julie has as to why her mother’s eternal silence dogs her. Morrow describes G-d, Julie’s mother the “God of physics”; an incorporeal being lacking a physical or material nature but relating to or affecting a body. Perhaps Morrow meant that G-d’s own non-physical self cannot occupy the physical-material world she created. Therefore, no face, body, or hands, or voice that Julie can sense.
Julie as a messiah is extremely different from the messianic role of Jesus. In light of Julie’s perspective of science and religion, Julie takes a different approach to bringing G-d’s words and wisdom to the masses. As an adult, Julie Katz finally decides to preach the gospel by writing a column in a tabloid. Instead of prayers and biblical quotes, or channeling G-d’s words, Julie gives advice that is not unlike the advice of psychotherapists (a scientific practice), or a bartender. From her perspective, her advices are sound ideas just like Jesus’ sermons on the mount; practical wisdom in this practical, material world. Julie seeks to divine by way of science, she balances it with faith.
As pointed out by my Professor, Joseph Ugoretz on the conflict of religion and science:
…..Some people say that science, for much of our society, has taken the place of religion. Where we used to pray, or dance, for rain, we now look to barometers and thermometers and a meteorologist with satellite images . Instead of priests or shamans, many people see physicians to heal their bodies. Even spirits (minds and emotions) are seen to be the business of psychology, rather than theology. 2
And so in “Only Begotten Daughter”, we see Julie Katz, the messiah conceived in a sperm bank where humans use the science of artificial insemination for self determination of the genetic outcome of their offspring and the ideal of Immaculate Conception, a religious concept of spiritual conception between mortal and Supreme Being. Both concepts are intertwined to give the setting for Julie’s entrance into the world. No struggle between genetic determinationism and Immaculate Conception the two just are and co-exist.
In an online discussion on the issue of Religion and Science conflict, my classmate, Miyoshi Martell had this to say regarding the balance between the two worlds as opposed to conflict:
“…Maybe God uses science to accomplish things and help people learn about their world. Can that be the compromise, science and religion being somehow connected?
They do explore the same things. Religion is about creation and miracles. Science explores these both. You can use science to create miracles. You can heal a deathly ill person with medication or you can say it was faith. I say it is a combination of the two.”3
My other classmate, Marysabel Vargas also added:
…There is a conflict between science and faith because (at least in my religion) we think God made everything. We believe God made the universe the world, animals, us; and science has answers and theories that prove religion wrong. For example science says the universe was created by the big bang. Religion says God made it. Science says we evolved from the monkeys. Religion says God made us from his image. Who is right and who is wrong? I think there should be a balance in what we believe in…4
I have written on the subject of the faith/science conflict and I later concluded I that faith and science can coexist. Julie sees no difference between the cosmos created by God and the cosmos studied by and theorized by physicists. In other words, the universe is made up of mathematic equations that humans decipher as science, but that universe is made up of G-d itself.
Julie did not turn herself away from faith because of her love of science, but her faith in G-d’s existence is strengthened by it.
Sources

1. Morrow, James. Only Begotten Daughter New York: Harcourt publishing, Inc., 1990
2. Ugoretz, Joseph. Science and Faith: Religion in SF, [WWW Document]
3. Martell, Miyoshi, “The conflict, Faith/Religion,” Science and Faith forum (June, 29 2006) [WWW Document].
4. Vargas, Marysabel, “The conflict, Faith/Religion,” Science and Faith forum (June, 29 2006) [WWW Document]

Xtube and Relationships

So I was watching Xtube (AGAIN) instead of studying and a thought crossed my mind; I'm looking at my favorites mostly consisting of couples and I can't help but wonder what happens to an Xtube couple when they break up. You see, I still feel this begrudging tug deep inside that the women in some of these voyeuristic couples may have been coerced. Maybe they did not have a problem video taping their sex, but actually putting it out there on the Internet for all eternity is whole other ball of wax. Did they do it because they they are truly voyeurs or where they more strongly encouraged by their partners because the women were in a relationship? We can guess however when some of the xtube couples do break up because we won't see the video anymore.

Anyway, my question is, if shoving a carrot up your man's ass after riding him into the ground for a creampie shot doesn't hold your relationship together, what can? How secure would one feel in their relationship to be ready to put their faces out there in a homemade porn movie and does making such films ensure you guys will stay together?

Rivka Little - Why can’t I just be happy that Obama is president?

Yesterday, election day, we gained our first African American president. The weight of this in its historical context and what it means for our future as a country is as great for me as for everyone else. My mother marched through snow and heat and knocked on doors to register voters. My best friend’s mother saw her friend tarred and feathered in Virginia. And my step grandfather – an African American engineer who worked at a major television manufacturer – was killed when his employer asked him, with his PhD and all, to come out in the middle of the night to “clean up” a nuclear spill. I get it. Change has occurred.

But today I am experiencing a real resistance to shrieking for joy like many of friends, coworkers and my dang civil rights-era mother.

Obama’s presidency won’t, in fact, stop an NYPD officer from turning a gun on a black man and letting off 50 bullets. It won’t stop white teachers (and frankly those of other races too) from criminalizing kids of color in school and assuming that one act of bad behavior is a sign of a Hannibal Lecter to come. My guess is that at the end of Obama’s first four-year term social scientists will still be able to do the 30-year-old baby doll test and get the same results – little black girls and little white ones will reach for the white doll when asked which one is more beautiful. Doctors will still resist researching why African American men die at greater rates from medicine-resistant hypertension, stroke and heart attack.

And all of that means that my children can’t, in fact, be whatever they want to be because white people and black people alike organized to get my beloved Obama elected.

Now, I am not a complete doomsayer (yes Brucie, that word is for you. It’s the cousin of misanthrope). I believe that maybe after two Obama terms, or after a decade, the results of that baby doll test may begin to slowly shift. And it’s possible that the psychological effects of having a black president could trickle slowly into the minds of officers and teachers, doctors and employers of all kinds. But Obama stressed one word last night that so many seemed to overlook. That word was BEGINNING. This is the beginning of more change, not the end or even the middle. And while it is so much more likely that our children can be president in the future, I refuse to pull the fleece over my kid’s head that easily.

I am not one to give her or anybody an out because of race. But to tell her that things are suddenly cleared up, the road is wide open and she can fly without obstacle is unfair and undue pressure. This is the time to say to her: “This is the beginning. Take on a life of service. You can be whatever you want to be if you continue to work against the obstacles. It is your job to help Obama move and shift these obstacles. Speak out. Never remain silent. Work hard. And stay tough when these harsh realities are thrown in your face. And they will be. And I know you can be strong.”

Now, I can say hooray for two little sweet girls and their press ‘n curls in the White House.

My Needs are Small

Woke up this morning knowing exactly what I would want out of life if a genie where to grant me a list of wishes:

1. To have a job for life where I cannot get fired - this means I can body slam stupid-ass CUNY co-workers who need shit from me.

2. Immunity from jail - so I can stab mobsters in the neck, beat the fuck out of cops, kick bosses in the balls, and push Barbie look-alikes down some stairs when they flash me that fake-ass smile (you don't know me, Mary Ann and don't want to know me. So keep that fake smile to yourself).

3. Bullet proof skin - so I can stab mobsters in the neck, beat the fuck out of cops, kick bosses in the balls....

4. Have telekinesis - The power to move objects with my mind

5. To uncover every dirty truth and secret done to oppressed people of color

6. The power to raise a ghost army as my defense force- I will resurrect fallen Panthers, people who died on the trip crossing the Atlantic and everyone who died due to internalized racism. That will be a big assed army to say the least.

Do You Know the Way to Santa Fe?

Never heard my generation referred to in this way or even so named, but coming across the "Generation X" wiki page, I came across this sub-category which supposedly puts me closer to the Baby Buster generation. Apparently those who were born between '58-'68 were part of a down-ward shift in the U.S. and Canadian birth rates.

The wiki goes on to say:
...Owning an early childhood flooded with televised images of protest, rapidly variegating morality, tragedy, and scandal, they have no recollection of a world in which authority was not constantly questioned but they were not old enough to affect changes like the true Boomers. By the time the Busters reached adolescence, Watergate had ended unquestioned authority; individuality was the new conformity, and hedonism the cultural ideal. Many were the first children of Boomers. They were also the first grade school students formally taught by the newly graduated Boomers from activist college campuses during the 1960s.....

This part is so true. I remember posting about my own education and how so many of my teachers were these young, hippy girls and Afro mammas straight out of college. They of course turned out to be my first crushes.....

Anyway, just wanted to share.

Kitchen Music

As I read emails and brush up on my Spanish for "The Class that May Kick My Ass" this semester, I hear the lame crap that brays from the speakers of the school cafeteria behind me. Yeah, I hear the usual lame stuff of today's charts like Pink, or some American Idol winner, or whatever, but to make things worse I have to hear Phil fucking Collins circa '86 with Susudio. I came to a conclusion that all kitchen crews in order to get through the shift of slipping and sliding on greasy hole-filled mats (where the holes themselves are filled with stepped-on tater-tots - cooked or frozen or both), and yelling dumbasses waiting for their cheesy fries, they have to listen to simple minded pap.
I should know because from spring of '85 to February 1990, I worked in a sports bar/family restaurant known as Dirty's.
While I definitely had class and language privilege over the Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants who REALLY were trapped in the kitchen for survival (I seriously doubt that my mother would have thrown me out for not working after my 18th birthday as she threatened) I can at least say that I shared the need to have "Diamond" David Lee Roth blasting as white noise to get through the night.
I was 18 when my classmate Billy Perry offered to talk to his manger at Dirty's about getting the prep cook gig there after I told him I didn't have money to buy any of the music he and I used to talk about all the time that we were in class (yes, instead of doing our remedial math, we talked about Savage Dogs, the Slits, and Circle Jerks). Along with our friend Rosemary Lucero, we found some kindred thread in being people of color who liked hardcore and punk. In the back of my mind after telling Billy about my money situation, I also thought back to momma's threat that if I didn't kick-in to the bills and rent, I was out on the street. Which her stress was understandable since she really couldn't afford to support two older teens by herself with either one of us making plans to move on either to college or out of the house.
Dirty's was located on the corner of Richmond Ave. and Chimney Rock. This was the mid-eighties when the Richmond Strip of bars, restaurants, and clubs was in its infancy.
Within a week I got the gig and about a week later, Billy quit (something about wanting to smoke more weed and hang out with his then 17 y/o girlfriend more. Billy was 21 at the time).
The manager who hired me quit too as if leaving me to fend for myself in a shitty place that I swore I would quit within a month for something 'better'.
As the years wore on, with my dropping out of high school, eating anything that was fried, being a slacker full of dreams and shit, I remember the one constant was that the kitchen took on a sort of schizophrenic persona through the music that was being played on a daily basis. During the day shift it was all soul and R&B. The day kitchen which was headed up by Rose Berry, a sixty something year old black woman who could cook her ass off and was quick to share her sexual exploits with anyone who would listen, well she had the rights to the radio. All head cooks or shift leaders had the "right" or call on what radio station the rest of the kitchen had to listen to. So Rose had it on Majic 102.
At 3 when my crew came in, our shift leader (when I first started) was Ramon, and he would put it on 104, the pop/rock station at the time. Ramon wanted to listen to Los Tigres, but the Kitchen God would not allow for a clear signal. However Ramon didn't want to listen to Prince, so Diamond Dave it was. :-(.
Ramon found something better and quit (something about working at Sam's Boat on the Richmond strip which at that time was cocaine central). So I bought a small blaster with a cassette deck from Walgreens so everybody can play whatever they wanted.
After my second year, I met these two metal heads whose names escape me. They were hired as prep cooks and I was moved to fry cook. My belly still hasn't forgiven me of my trespasses during this dark period. Neither have my brain cells. You see, the two metal heads turned me on to two things; Thrash (or speed metal) and acid. Ok, they were hippyish metal heads. While I would trip in class during my last year in school before dropping out, I sat at my desk gripped with the fear of becoming a big stupid loser like all the dumbasses that hung at Dirty's bar at night; burn-outs with coked-out waitress girlfriends getting high throughout their 20s, 30s, and early 40s only to clean up just enough to become a restaurant or bar manager of Dirty's. Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting down the service industry jobs or the people that hold them, I'm talkin' 'bout the peeps who worked Dirty's and places like Dirty's.
Of course this was '86-'87. I didn't get my shit together until I became political and read Malcolm X - the radical equivalent of cleaning up to become born-again.

When I became shift leader, the two metal heads disappeared and our kitchen staff became all Latino except for me at night. The music changed slightly better in that it was no longer in English, but it didn't matter because I always had lyrics like these in my head:

Blind Man’s Penis (Peace & Love)
By John Trubee

I got high last night on LSD
My mind was beautiful, and I was free
Warts loved my nipples because they are pink
Vomit on me, baby
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

A blind man's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he's blind
A blind man's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he is blind

Let's make love under the stars
And watch for UFOs
And if little baby Martians
Come out of the UFOs
You can fuck them
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona's titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill
To kill everyone.

A blind man's penis is erect because he's blind

I realized I needed to do something about myself and went to electronics school where I got my Associates. I didn't put that knowledge to use of course until way later in my life, but I knew I had some choices. I quit by reducing my hours to part-time while I spent my week days at the SHAPE Center doing political work or hawking the Militant newspaper. I finally left to work for a company that made truck beds for HL&P, Houston's old electric and Power Company.
My coworkers in the kitchen had families and went on to raise them, when Dirty's was bought out by a guy who used to run Brown's Chicken, a small chain like Church's Chicken, he "cleaned house" at Dirty's, getting rid of all the cokehead waitresses (some of them, I later found out even sold the punani for $. Too bad I did not have that knowledge at the times when I was young and under-sexed. But knowing them, they probably had "No Kitchen Help" policy when it came to their chosen clientele. I guess being Norm or Cliff Clavin of the sports bar underworld does have its own rewards and I guess even coke whores have standards.