Category: Uncategorized

Mom called at 7:18a to let me know that dad is in Kuwait, the first step to his return home, and one which lowers his risk level dramatically. I am glad to hear the news, and strongly considering shutting my phone off when I go to bed in the future. =)

This afternoon/evening has been ennui rich. Perhaps it is related to my inconsistent diet, distinct lack of sleep, frequent self-confinement in underground chambers, where I sit and listen, and do nothing else.

Or perhaps it’s that I’m not really into this transportation policy as a profession stuff (I’ve been more consistently engaged by energy policy conference material). Cool as everyone has been, I’m ready to be back home, I think.

Also I am sad for my student loans have not arrived yet (not even to my student account, let alone to my checking account), so no replacement laptop for scu just yet…

It probably also didn’t hurt that there was an slpp ra thing this evening, and I experienced my typical failure to engage in any significant way.

I think some sleep and making the time to work out tomorrow would make for a much less melancholy me. Hmmm. No wednesday morning sessions at trb for me. Check.

So, having recieved a thoughtful, detailed reply to my perhaps somewhat flippantly phrased question to regarding his politics, it seems appropriate to me that I should do the same. So, I’m committing to posting something of a similar form but containing the issues that are important to me (plus my thoughts on gun control, because that seems like a point of interest for ).

And I typically find the “this is what I did today” style posts rather lame. Though with all the cool stuff I’m doing while in a different town, I’m making myself an exception.

Oh yeah. I’m pretty set on making my book club plans work. All three. Progressive politics (see also mt earlier listing of desirable items), homo (maybe starting with life outside, dated though it may be), and workplace democracies (no idea about the reading list on this one. As much for my education as anyone’s).

Almost as much of a bitch as keeping up with the reading for these will be promoting the suckers. No, actually, promotion will probably actually be more of a bitch.

Finally, I’m tempted by a completely open lj invitation by an attractive, politically agreeable blogger who lives in atlanta for his bday party. Said blogger is taken, and way too young even if he weren’t. Plus, I have no one to stay with down there. I will not do crazy ass shit. Mantra of the moment.

Got a late start yesterday due to a late friday night (trust me, you will be noticing a trend this trip). Also losing sense of the days. But on the Saturday that felt like sunday, I slept through frontrunners, and went to ‘s housecooling and games party. I played several games, some new. brought Puerto Rico! Yay! , , and I played a round. has never played before, but absorbed the rules and complexity with more ease than I’ve seen from anyone else. He also got the same number of victory points as me at the end game. (I won on tie breakers). We also played phase 10 (I didn’t do too badly), 10 days in africa (I bit on that one. hard. and not in the good way. =) and scrabble. I won the scrabble, but had we been playing strip scrabble, would have retained more clothing than I. I grabbed some howard zinn, the first in the matrix and lord of the rings series (the only ones worth grabbing from either series, imho. I almost felt bad about leaving the worst (#2) of both trilogies there, but not quite), and Life Outside by michelangelo signorile.

Afterwards, I headed off to Blowoff, where I saw for the first time this trip. Also saw I sampled pumpkin beer, honey beer, and a very tasty, no-alcohol-flavor raspberry something-or-other. It would be highly recommended if I could remember the name. I think it contained “framboise” in there somewhere. I wasn’t as think as I wanted them to drunk I was. I’ve made the occasional bitchy comment about hot shirtless guys making out on the dance floor in the past. Probably jealousy. It certainly didn’t stop me this time. =) I left so I could make it to the morning session of the trb meeting.

Then today I got a late start due to a late saturday night (also note the time stamp on this post. I encourage you to start a betting pool on when I actually drag my ass out of bed tomorrow, err, today. You know what I mean). I went to neither the obesity and transportation infrastructure, nor the international street design workshops that I’d intended to attend, but instead caught parts of the congestion pricing floor show). Talked briefly with Frank, the youngest research fellow in slpp. Nice guy. Had a decent, if overpriced, Eritrean lunch, with uninspiring samboosa’s, but injera as good as axum’s. Ran into Stephanie, a fellow first year and slpp RA when I got back to the hotel. She was headed off to a public participation workshop. We talked about my (and many of my classmates’) disappointment with the public participation course I took last semester. I should ask her how the workshop went.

Went to “so you want to be a transportation professional” workshop. More geared to engineers than polwonks, but still entertaining. The state employee and the (cute) contractor did not entertain nearly as much as the academic. He was a good lecturer, informative, and funny. He played a very entertaining martyr (we bleed for your enjoyment). Broke my schedule yet again to go back to the subsubcommittee meeting (not yet official) for brt and pricing (what I’m supposed to write a paper on at some point. *le sigh*). It’s good to know that the professionals fumble with the same sort of intellectually masturbatory silliness that volunteers do. It was eventually decided to rename it “the multimodal pricing implementation committee” and make it an official group in july.

This made me late for the “new and young attendees reception”. Hung out around there for awhile. Snagged some fruit. Chatted with an slpp ra (who I didn’t know was a fellow ra prior to the reception, told him about a couple ra events during the conference). Drifted around. Settled into a comfortable conversation with a friendly latino employee of the federal highway administration. I later found out that he was an ex-employee as of about 2 days ago, but shhh, his mom doesn’t know yet. He is a former dc resident. And a former minnesota resident. And the way the conversation was going, I think he’s a homo, but I’m not quite sure. We’ll be sharing the luch break tomorrow.

Metro out to prince george’s plaza, where Liz and Craig snag me away to gorge me on south indian (yay Dosai & idli & medu vada). I don’t think that Liz and I have found that special rapport nearly so well in years. Much talk of family. And politics (I have yet to have a conversation in dc that doesn’t involve politics. I mean even more than usual for me.) And my now deceased great aunt’s view of straight men having some basis for having their masculinity threatened by gay men because she’s seen gay porn, and she’s never seen men who look like that anywhere else. =)

Plans made with for tomorrow evening. Liz & craig drove us to Cosi (we parked in front of the Brookings Institution, which was cooler to me than the Washington monument (tourist trap)). Liz played with fire & marshmallows, I had green tea, and we stayed til the started putting the chairs up. Then back here to le chateau de and . Quick recap of the day for them. LJ entry for my subscribers. & Soon sleep. =)

Well, last night I went out and “hit the town”. I had plans to hang with later in the evening, and see the twenties group which recommended. Took the bus from & ‘s place to grab some dinner. I was strolling down 17th street when I coincidentally ran into . We chatted for a bit, he re-oriented me towards another set of destinations, and I went off in search of food. =) Found a nice italian joint where I managed to blow $30. I’ll have to practice more conservative spending for this trip…

Then the twenties group. It reminded me of a few other gay discussion groups I’ve been to. Especially Express 20’s out of the Pacific Center in Berkeley (only about 1/4 the size, and much less racially diverse). The conversation topic was “what does the gay community mean to you?” I restrained my inner eyeroll, and took the first comment challenging the notion of “the gay community” as an inaccurate, misleading, and generally counterproductive meme. It went from there. I hope I’m not just stroking my ego when I say that I feel like I got a few people off their scripts and out of their mental ruts. My commentary was full of thoughts I’d previously mentioned or expressed here: we don’t raise our next generation, there are several gay communities, culture is distinct from community, race and sexuality have distinct parallels and distinct differences, pursuing legal rights when you desire cultural change may not accomplish your ultimate goal (see also racial segregation in the US now v pre-Brown v Board). And I owe a distinct intellectual debt to many different sources, including Dan Savage, the orientation lecture I didn’t attend but kept hearing about, Andrew Sullivan, etc. And it was fun. Though I could easily see the group falling into a rut were I to attend regularly. A different rut, to be sure, but a rut nonetheless.

Afterwards, I called up and we went on a little tour of the local bars, including JR’s, Cobalt, and finally the eagle. Where I met Don (I think that’s his name), an entertaining conversationalist in his own right, who provided transportation for the evening, including dropping me off back at my base of operations. =) bought me three beers, and I begin to understand beer elitism. I think I may be acquiring a taste for such. I managed to spill my third, after I’d thought I’d finished it. Probably a good sign that I’d had enough. Now off for the events of today.

http://marnanel.org/joule?user=cheerfulchaotic&mode=chart

A racial profile of my “friends list” goes something like:

white, white, white, white, philipino, white, white, white, indian, white, white, white, white, taiwanese, white, white, white, etc.

So, vast majority white americans, with a scattering of asian americans, and at least one foreign-born, foreign-resident guy (who lived in the US for awhile, and has a US born & bred life partner), hi

Nope, nope, no echo chamber here. Not that this is in anyway surprising.

Last night on the bus from National-I-mean-Dulles to the metro, there was a large (7-15) group of black folks at the back of the bus having a party loud enough for everyone on the bus to enjoy. The reason this sticks in my mind is that right before the stop I got off at, their conversation had taken a turn for the morality of sex.

Dude #1: Man, you going to hell! You had sex in a church! In a church, man!
Dude #2: I only did it once!
…
Dude #2: Yeah, but them faggots, they’re going straight to hell!

(The … was a lapse in my memory of or attention to their conversation, not in their continuous banter).

The going to hell for sex in a church thing was eyerolling material for me. The scapegoating of homos to draw attention away from his own socially disapproved behavior was chilling. I started thinking about how every minority needs someone to look down on, so that they can assure themselves that, even if they can’t convince themselves they’re at the top of the heap, they’re not at the bottom. Poor sots. And I immediately noticed that I had fallen into the same trap. Not that I have any real notion as to what the “right” response is.

As an interesting sidenote, let’s talk about blacks and disruptive behavior on public transportation. If you ever doubt that a town has racial minorities in it, ride the bus. Not an express bus, just a bus. The correlation between the poor and the black is marked, and obvious, particularly there. Public transportation also brings a bunch of people with annoying habits. Conversation through shouting, continually singing, cranking their headphones up so loud that people sitting nearby get to share in their musical experience, whether or not they share musical tastes. Disproportionately, in my observation, the people with the annoying habits have been black. They’re a tiny minority of transit riders, and also a distinct minority of black transit riders. Of the truly rare occasion that someone tells one of these disruptive people to shut up, turn down the music, or drop the volume, it’s usually another black transit rider. I’ve also seen some spectacular examples of obnoxious white people on transit (no examples come to mind of obnoxious other-racial-group transit riders). What’s my point here? I’m not sure. I used to regard it as racism to take note of another person’s skin color, let alone correlate that with anything. I don’t feel that way anymore (I wonder if I have any black folks reading this blog. Ah the echo chamber). I do wonder if I’m just documenting my own biases.

A couple days ago, at a bus-stop in downtown minneapolis, we had a black continual rapper at the bus stop. His sense of rhythtm and key were good. He didn’t seem to be wearing headphones as I recall. It still irked me. Another black guy walked up to me, shaking his head, giving exhasperated looks at our bus stop musician. He started up conversation with me, based on the “some people’s children” theme. I was game, nothing better to do, after all. And three sentences into it, he asked if I had a dollar. I said no, and wished him luck, and he immediately left. I’m a bit surprised that I was surprised by his request, but I was, and there you have it.

I also remember once while living in berkeley, taking BART back from SF, wearing a tie, and a nice shirt (probably wrinkled, but this is me we’re talking about). Two black guys, one loud and aggressive, got on in downtown sf. I pretended to sleep in my seat, while he belittled and mocked me (he called me “exec” most frequently). When I got up to get off at the downtown oakland station for a transfer, loud, obnoxious guy jumped up, and yelled something like “you ain’t pushing us to the back of the line no more” then barreled on past me and through the door.

I don’t think I’m prejudiced, in the direct definition of the term. I don’t prejudge based on race. But it seems to me that African Americans show a higher incidence of flaming assholes than most other American subcultures. Or maybe it’s poverty. I dunno. But I don’t think pretending it doesn’t exist helps anything.

Some people are under the impression that I’m smart. I’m not quite sure how they got this notion, but I have a counter example

I decided I was going to fly into national, and it wasn’t worth checking the other airports, so, when booking the flight or orbitz, I just used the airport code: IAD. I didn’t catch my error until I got to the airport this afternoon. Duh, whoops. Dulles isn’t so bad. They do have an affordable bus that takes you right to the L’Enfant metro station … if you don’t get off early at a different metro station which results in higher fares and longer travel times.

Still, I made it, I’m here. And will take time to formulate more coherent plans tomorrow, whilst my charming hosts, and are at work. =) Plan my schedule for the conference. Let my sister know I’m in town. Also plan my upcoming first week of classes. All good goals.

this is an awesome sounding job, if only I were remotely capable of filling the shoes:

Job description for eco-science department head type person