season of the bitch

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I put my car up for sale on Craigslist today. I’m moving to New York City and it’s just not practical. Yet it’s probably the hardest part of this whole move for me.

I love driving. I mean LOVE. When gas was cheap I used to just drive (stop looking at me like that, environmentalists!) for hours. When I wrote music reviews every week, my favorite place to absorb an album that I needed to review was in the car.

The last time I lived without a car was my freshman year in college. I had a car when I was in high school–mostly because my parents were working full time and if I had a car it was less work for them. When I was 17, it turned up–a 1992 Acura Integra, flame-red. We called it the Bitchmobile.

I moved out of the dorms sophomore year and brought my car to New Orleans with me. At that point, I was driving a maroon 1990 Ford Probe, nicknamed “Betty” (I am so witty, Betty Ford, eh?). When a guy ran a stop light and totaled that car, I replaced it with a Toyota Corolla named Norma Jeane. I drove that car from 2001 until last year, when it too was wrecked, this time when parked.

The car I have now is called Lulu. She’s a Volkswagen Golf, and I love her. She’s a 2000, not the prettiest thing on the road, but she’s a great little car with good gas mileage and she’s tiny and easy to park. Writing the Craigslist ad was hard.

In addition to my tendency to get emotionally attached to inanimate objects (the shoes I will not throw out, the dresses that I will never wear again), I’ve seen my car for so long as freedom. I could get in at any time and escape whatever was bothering me. I’ve driven pretty much all the way across the country–moving from New Orleans to Denver, driving to California from Denver (to LA then San Jose and then back down) and used road trips as a way to clear my head, to get over breakups or to decide to break up with someone.

I’ll save a bunch of money without a car, and yes, I’ll be greener or something. I don’t need a car in NYC, and I actually look forward to spending more time on foot and coming into contact with people. Cars isolate us to some degree, and living alone I’m already pretty isolated. Still, sometimes I need that space and time to myself.

I’ve already gotten one email about the car–haven’t even given her a bath and cleaned out the inside yet. I’m sad about leaving my apartment and my sister and my friends and professors and students and even my low-paying but often excellent job. But the car? That really hurts.

According to my email from Planned Parenthood this morning, it’s National Condom Week. They sent out a link to their playlist of their favorite condom videos on YouTube, but I found something even better:

This is from Neil Gaiman’s “Death Talks About Life,” a PSA comic about HIV and condom use, from 1994. It’s out of print now, but was collected in Death: The High Cost of Living, which was one of the first comics I ever bought. Or you can read the whole thing at that link. (Also will soon be in an Absolute Death from Vertigo, so for those of you who are fangirls like me, rejoice!)

While I’m referencing holidays and comics writers, it is my duty to repost the sentiments of the wicked Warren Ellis:

Happy Valentine’s Day to all. And to those who hate the day, I say this: Valentine’s Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens.

OK, that title doesn’t have much to do with anything. I just need a little mental purge right now–been staring at communications research all day, and can’t handle it anymore. Well, I did a bit of editing on a couple of pieces I’m sending off for (possible) publication, read some blogs, caught up with the news (progressive women of color on Obama’s economic team! yay! Larry Summers still his chief economic adviser! boo!), and yes, watched a little Buffy.

I had a lovely girly weekend with a friend who needed to escape her life and gave me an excuse to escape my research as well. And we drank wine and ate sushi and pretended that the economy wasn’t on the verge of collapse.

I tend to binge on things. Lately, of course, it’s been Obama-binge. It was jumping back in with both feet to canvassing right before the election, along with my stories for GlobalComment and, y’know, blogging. I’ve been obsessively watching TV news because, well, TV news is fun to watch again.

This summer my life revolved around comics and BUST. And while I still love comics and BUST, I’ve turned my attention away from them and toward the government. There have been times where my main amusement and attention-suck was hockey, other times when it was movies, still others when it was good old rock’n'roll.

I think I go so wholeheartedly into things that I cannot sustain it forever. I see myself doing this in relationships, too–diving in headfirst and then getting to a point where I can’t keep it up. I fall too hard and then have to pick myself up off the ground, wipe off the dirt, sometimes clean up the scrapes (and they always seem to heal with some of the mess still in there) and move on, alone.

(anyone who wanted to date me now would have a hard time coming between me and my laptop)

Spending too much time working and I know I can’t maintain this level. Christmas break is coming–the end of the tunnel is in sight–but I’ve got mountainous papers to write and keep coming up with new things I need to comment on, because, well, I cannot allow major events to happen without commentary.

I am no good at cutting myself slack.

Also, I am in terrible shape. I cannot walk up three flights of stairs without panting, and my arms are getting weak. I did ten push-ups and it hurt. This requires work. Cold rain prevents good morning dog-walking.

Things I love currently:

1. the video in the post below. John and Exene are so damn pretty.

2. my pink lip gloss. specifically, maybelline shiny-licious in strawberry tart. /shill

3. my new pink scarf.

4. the dog, of course.

Finally, I leave  you with a suggestion: If the government is going to bail out CitiGroup, all of us taxpayers should have our credit card debt and student loans forgiven. Especially if they’re seriously going to turn around and pay millions for the naming rights to a new baseball stadium. Assholes.

In the midst of the rampant speculation and debate about policies, I’ve tried to stop a few times in the last couple of weeks and remember a few women who were killed recently because they were transgender.

The sad fact remains that this happens all too often.

A few others have put this far better than I can.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is not a once-a-year deal. You don’t show up for services, murmur “lest we forget” and then promptly forget for the rest of the year. Today lives within us, because we cannot afford to forget.

Still. Today most of all, we remember those who were killed. Because we die violently, unmemorialised, and are mocked after our deaths.

Because the world sees us disposable, less than human (and who can mourn that?). Many of the dead lost their lives because they were trans women of colour, doubly disposable.

Who would mourn a thing, a that, an it?

-queen emily

The Day of Remembrance is ours, and it is sacred. It is the one day we set aside to honor those in our community, overwhelmingly poor trans women of color, who were killed due to bigotry and hatred. It is a single day in the year where we make certain that the names of the murdered are heard and held up, so we can all remember that these people mattered, were real, were loved, and are missed. It’s a day to gather the community together and call attention to the violence directed against us and the caring we have for each other. It came from us. It was built by us. It was never supposed to be flashy or glitzy. It is a solemn mourning for the dead, a place to hold hands, and a promise to those who violence took away from us that we who are still living will hold together, take care of each other, and push forward together into a world where that violence is only a painful memory.

–little light

I will never understand what motivates someone to kill another human being when their life is not in danger. I will never understand what it is inside someone that makes them pick up a weapon instead of simply walking away. I will never understand how human life can have so little value to some people. But I know that there are people in this world, far too many people, who can kill. Who can pick up a gun or a knife or a rock and strike out. For what? Because someone doesn’t meet your expectations? Because they live their life in a way you don’t approve of? Which god tells you that you can do that? Which god gives you permission? And how can the world, how can so many otherwise decent people, simply nod and say ‘well, what did you expect? Not guilty!’?

–Butterfly Cauldron

I don’t mind Obama choosing Cabinet members who will argue and disagree with him; I do hope that he chooses people who will challenge him from the left as well as the right.

cat&hedgehog

Originally uploaded by seasonofthebitch

My mother called me today to tell me they had to put my cat to sleep.

I left my cat with them when we moved here. My ex wanted a dog, and like I did on many things, I gave in to him when I knew better. I still have the dog, don’t have the boyfriend, and my cat ran away for a bit and now I feel bad, that I left him behind. My mother found the cat at the local humane society, and brought him home and spoiled him rotten.

I know he had a good life with them, and that he’d had a good life with me. I adopted him when he was two or so, from a family of goths who were moving and didn’t want to lug the cat across the country. I changed his name from Armand to Doc Holiday, and took him with me from New Orleans to Denver to Hilton Head. He yowled all the way, no matter how many kitty sedatives he was prescribed.

In Denver, he’d run off outside and then sneak back into my room from the roof of our back porch. In Hilton Head he lived at the bike shop and climbed on the desk while I did paperwork, or sat in my lap during the rainy winters when I had nothing to do but read or write.

I’m not sure exactly how old he was, because I’m not sure how old he was when I got him. That was 1999, in the fall, right before Christmas. He was probably 10 or 11, not young, but not old. Still, he had kidney failure and they tried everything they could.

I feel guilty that I left him behind, wonder if maybe the time he spent on the street when he ran away contributed to him being sick. But mostly I just wish I’d been there. Poor kitty.

Denise has a story that will break your heart.

(link fixed and story back up)

And I am back from the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to.

Not because of the surroundings, though you could hardly do better than the Maine coast in summer, or the expense they went to, because it was simple. Because the bride was a really close friend of mine, and because I had seen their relationship evolve from a friendship to that kind of love that makes even cynical me believe in something.

When asked, I usually say I don’t want to get married or even that I don’t believe in marriage, but really it’s a bit more complicated.

I am selfish and jealous of my time. I overthink and overanalyze and take care not to give the other person more than I think they are giving me. I am beginning to think that my baggage is overwhelming right now and that I have nothing to offer another person except long-winded rants about the state of the world.

I can’t just let go and let things happen without building walls, and I think I am most comfortable in my own head.

Yet when I see my friends happy like this, I know that somewhere down in the slim undamaged core there’s a piece of me that I still have to give.