Grief, Souls, Questions

When do children become beings which we can mourn?
Why am I so sure that yesterday's lost one has a soul?
What is a soul and how do we get one again?
How does all of this match up with my politics?
What would it mean to be a person of faith? Am I capable of that series of acts?

I'm grateful to the world this morning, for my friend B. , who lets these questions be unanswered in my heart, while feeding me chocolate and manzanilla te and rubbing my feet. I hope she will do that kind of thing for always, even when she is my minister.

Crazy Week Wrap-Up

1. TP is flying into town tonight... I'm bursting at the seams with excitement, nearly waltzed out of the office tonight, and am now hunkered down with a "Jumping Cow Amber Ale", a pile of dirty laundry, and pop music. Tomorrow we are driving to my father's house in NewEnglandState, and spending a few days with him before heading to my mother's. Hopefully at my father's the sleeping spaces will be first come first serve because then TP and I will get the one with, you know, the *door that closes*. I might be making some coffee soon to be able to stay up.
   
2. GM, this will be of particular interest. Last Saturday my housemates and I hosted 20 people for a Thanksgiving feast. It was *amazing*. I really don't think that any one event that I've hosted has ever made me this happy. It was a fun blend of people, who didn't know each other beforehand. The food was also amazing. Cornbread hazelnut stuffing, and the pumpkin chiffon pie were my personal highlights, though the turkey was also amazing.
   
3. Check out this Apple ad, click on the Better Results TV ad. As we all know, usually I love Apple, and I admit that I find their computers sexy. But this is a little bit too much like "First we will objectify the woman, then we will objectify the fake woman who is a work in progress, and of whom its creator is ashamed." Am I crazy that this is a little screwy?

Things to Know about My Life:

1.I left my computer charger in ELACTown last weekend, my amazing friend is mailing it to me, but for now, I'm living off of carefully rationed battery life. Go MacBook battery, go!

2. I'm writing a story about a coroner in a city that is experiencing a spell of (as yet) unexplained violence. What does this mean in the life of Corinne? I've running a google image search on the word "atrocities" and downloading JPGs for ideas. I've also created a powerpoint slideshow out of them so that I can watch them at my leisure. Is this is a sign of any diagnosable disorder than anyone is aware of? Nevermind, don't answer that.

3. 7 word music review: "Hello Love" - The Be Good Tanyas = **fantastic**

Dear Co-Worker,

It is not that I want to fuck you. It is that when I see you walking down the hall in your janitor's outfit, talking hard with the boys in Spanish, I want to strip you down to your bra and boxers, run my hands through your hair, tilt your head, draw a fine line across the back of your neck, and give you a haircut. You are almost butch, almost sexy, but your hair touches your ears, and spikes in unexpected lengths from the top of your head, and I could fix that. Give me a Sunday night in summer on a backporch, I'll wear a short skirt and brandish a beer, scissors and clippers. I will keep everything symmetrical as I dance around the chair I have sat you in, asking you to hold still while I straddle you to get to the awkward spots. I will not give you a mirror until the end. Just let me strip you down, give me access to the soft curve of your cranium, to the space between ear and hairline, to your girlish neck and I will make other girls' head turn in your direction. Guaranteed.
Love,
A Fascist Femme

Election Version 1.0

F*ck you Rick Santorum. Watching CNN, there is a BlogParty -- teehee. I can't imagine sitting in a room full of bloggers, while blogging.
Official languages suck. Boo Arizona. Go Bernie! All eyes on VA.

Holy Sh*tMonster

Blogging from my new bloggerwidget. This is hotness, as defined by MacBook and Google. I'm such a tech slut.

Blogging at Dinner: An Economics of Race/Culture Post

So, I'm sitting in my favorite burrito place gnoshing on my chicken burrito with mango and hot sauce and sipping on a nutella smoothie, and thinking about my hot brainstorm yesterday. I mean, really people, does it get much better? No.

So, I'm actually going to blog about my work. Radical, I know.
Hmm. How to write about this without writing about it. So, several of the projects that I'm dealing with right now are about race. Actually, they all are. But, that aside, they talk about how people of different races react differently under different situations, and they all talk about it as though the effect were cultural (people with bad eyesight place a high cultural value on carrots) or an in group effect (so, for example, people who have bad eyesight will give more carrots away to people, not because they themselves have ever needed a carrot, but because they can imagine themselves or people like them needing a carrot (thanks, Weezy). But none of them talk about the contexts or different social experiences that different groups have. Maybe Blacks react differently not because they *are* different, but because of, you know, that whole set of experiences with racism in white America that they and their ancestors have had to deal with -- something that's hard to quantify.

The trick: Find two groups of people are the same now, but for one group their ancestors were white when the immigrated to the US and for the other group they were not white. Like cohorts of whiteness. Then you could show that they react differently based on the different "minority experiences" they had instead of some other dimension. Think about the history of immigration and whiteness.

That was my hot brainstorm yesterday.