Surreptitious Opinionation

A cut & pasted comment from a protected entry in a friend’s journal.

How do you feel about the fetishization of asian, latino, not asian, anything-but-black, etc? Racial preferences? Whatever. I think that race has an effect on aesthetics, but culture is where it’s really at.

The question of cultural identity is huge. I think my (probably upper class) Burkina Faso classmate rocks. I think (a particular) African American classmate is annoying. And I know it’s a cultural thing. This makes me feel really sorry for the people in the African American underclass. Caucasian Americans leave them behind, and many Africans who emigrated voluntarily view them with disdain. You generally don’t choose your culture. It’s more voluntary than sexual orientation, but not generally a deliberate choice people make.

Latin American machismo irks me. You don’t have that, as far as I can tell, because you are not of that culture [despite being ‘affiliated’ by race]. I don’t think I’m racist to any significant degree, though I think I’m culturist. Since culture and race are highly correlated, the two types of discrimination are easily confused. And I do think racism is alive, and lurking in the shadows.

So, I caved in, I went to the game store to purchase WoW. And they were out! The loser behind the counter recommended guild wars instead. I thanked him for the recommendation, but declined. When I got home, I checked out the game’s website. I’m glad I made the decision I did. The graphics appear flat out superior, but the game play sounds like it would suck doodee.

Is it unusual that nearly a third of my lj subscribers met me before I started using lj? That doesn’t even include the ones that I met after starting my lj but before I became aware of (or helped them create) their journal, let alone the ones I’ve met after reading their lj. I’ve at least talked to 158 out of my 199 subscriptions in person at some point. 157/196 if you exclude a couple deleted and redundant accounts. That’s an 80% hit rate. How odd is that?

[My initial suspicion is that the ljers I know from cmu will largely adhere to the demographic I posted, and will in fact, know their subscription lists better than I do, and that the homo-segment of my population won’t know their subscription lists as well. This has been mostly born out so far. For the nonhomo, noncmu folk among you, I have no predictions. =)]

The GAO, as part of a standard criminal background check wants my past 10 years of housing history. I do not remember any of the addresses exactly, except for where I’m currently living, two that I could find documents for, and all the addresses I’ve shared with (an amusing coincidence). Presented here primarily for your amusement is everything I could come up with. And if any of you can help me eliminate some of the ?’s, that’d be great too.

Dates
From	To	Address	Mail/Residence
09/2004	present	3145 Dupont Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55408
07/2004	08/2004	2438? Delaware St SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414
08/2003	06/2004	1590 LeRoy Ave, Berkeley, CA 94708
09/2002	07/2003	547A 66th St, Oakland, CA 94609
08/2001	07/2002	Apt 1a? 5838? Darlington Rd, Pittsburgh, PA 15217	R
08/2001	07/2002	Box 117? 4902 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213	M
05/2001	07/2001	Apt 2A 5457 Blackstone Ave, Chicago, IL 60615
01/2001	04/2001	Apt 1G? 1648 W Greenleaf Ave, Chicago, IL 60626
11/2000	12/2001	1117 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL 60622
09/2000	11/2000	Apt128? 1931? Prairie Sq, Schaumburg, IL 60173
08/2000	09/2000	Apt 2S? 3233? Clark St, Chicago, IL 60657
12/1995	08/2000	Box 249? 4902 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213	M
06/2000	08/2000	5706 Phillips Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15217	R
08/1999	08/2000	Apt 2? 714? Ivy St, Pittsburgh, PA 15232	R
06/1999	08/1999	5706 Phillips Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15217	R
06/1998	06/1999	1314 Wightman St, Pittsburgh, PA 15217	R
05/1997	05/1998	5848? Shady-Forbes Terrace, Pittsburgh, PA 15217	R
08/1996	05/1997	Apt 1? 301 N Neville St, Pittsburgh, PA 15213	R
04/1996	08/1996	Apt ?? 5838 Alderson St, Pittsburgh, PA 15217	R
08/1995	12/1995	5134? Margaret Morrison St, Pittsburgh, PA 15213	R
05/1995	08/1995	Room 305? 1091 Morewood Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213	R

Brought to you by a walk home in the rain at rush hour.

So, I get out of the grocery store and it starts to rain. Not a downpower, but not a light shower either. I head towards the bus shelter, only to see that a gaggle of smoking bitches have taken up residence, accelerating the progress of their lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease, while making the bus shelter a semi-open air gas chamber, rather than a public convenience. I decide to walk to the next shelter, and catch any bus that happens by at the right time. Turns out the next shelter is 80% of the way to my house (more than a mile away), and no buses come by in the time it takes me to walk there. All of this takes place on a noisy, smelly, congested street, of course. Shortly after spotting the nasty nicotine nuisances, some jackass decides that he should pull most of the way through the intersection, instead of allowing me to walk in front of him. This brilliant manuever gains him a two foot headstart when the light finally does change (after I’m on the opposing curb) because there’s no spot for him in the cross traffic because it’s rush hour, moron. Well, he also got the bird from me. After that, it’s a wet, but uneventful trudge for the next mile or so. As it turns out, had I waited for the bus, I might have made it home two minutes sooner, if that. On the home stretch, not one, but two twenty-something assholes in sports cars decided taking their opportunity was more important than obeying pedestrian right of way. The look of contempt and rage I shot one of them got him to stop in the middle of a left turn before my foot left the curb. It’s nice to know that in a pinch, I can succeed on an intimidate check. The other leadfoot noticed me when he was about halfway through the intersection and swerved to the other side of the street to avoid me. Napalm is a versatile solution to many problems.

Ya know, my GAO anxiety has led me to question, yet again, what is it that makes various jobs work for me.

I’ve really liked most of my tutoring experiences. Particularly the small groups of cooperative, interested people.

My computer jobs mostly blew. Somehow my work with Ro didn’t match this. It could be partially the utter informality of the job. It was undoubtedly partially the intense interaction between the two of us. The part time nature of the work.

Motorola blew in a big way. I think the cube farm made it harder for me to hide from my misery. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready to settle down into a desk job.

My CMU computing services jobs were only a little more appealing than the motorola job, but the office arrangements made it more possible to pass this over. And my coworkers contained some truly rocking people. There’s only one of my coworkers at Motorola that I even really liked at all, and I had no deep bonds of affection with him. (Not counting people I didn’t interact with on a daily basis). I wish I could have made one of those two jobs work for me. If I’d liked what I’d been doing, motorola would have had to have offered me far more to peel me away, if they could have done so at all. Don’t get me started on the commute.

So, work has to be compatible with the rest of my life. Work has to involve interpersonal interaction. Office arrangements neither make nor break a job. But what makes work tick for me is still a mystery. I ought to remember that my best programming work experience was doing military drone research. Learn to relax a little, stop worrying so much about saving the world. Stop worrying about doing shit right (by which I mean perfectly).

Enh. No real insights here.

Our project had a group lunch today. We went to a local diner. I had fries, onion rings, and cheeseless pizza with mushrooms and olives. I like cheeseless pizza with mushrooms and olives, but having had it two days in a row now, it’s getting a bit old. =)

Also, I had my first carbonated, caffeinated beverage in what I think has been years. It was a coke with raspberry syrup. Blue raspberry syrup. It was kinda cool, but I think it’ll be years before I have a CCB again.

Now I want to nap. I so need to workout so that I don’t gain 10 lbs from that greasefest, but I’m not doing it for a few hours at least, maybe tomorrow morning. I miss how the gym made me feel.

In response to a comment in .

Nothing new here, just another articulation of my politics

Given my difficulty staying awake (or staying asleep) this morning, I had three dreams that I can recall. First I had a dream of hanging out with and her family at her house (though the house in my dream much more closely resembled the house I grew up in. I don’t even remember what we were talking about. This is actually the second dream _this week_ to follow that basic outline. I don’t recall ever having had a dream involving Laura before. It’s kinda weird.

The second dream involved gymnastics. I was at a gymnastics practice, doing things I’d probably break my neck if I tried to do in real life. I wanted to leave early but the instructor basically told everyone to stay and listen to this gymnast from another country talk about something or other, it’s gone now.

The third dream was composed of disjointed scenes. One involved me at a party which was at ‘s house. This one was a better match to my economic development prof’s house (he had all his students over for a party, it was kind of entertaining). Somehow, on my way out of the house, I lost my shirt and pants. Another scene involved me trying to lead a bunch of pagans to a party from the house I used to live in for ages 5-13. Somehow we had a plane, well, to be more precise, I had a plane, but I wasn’t the pilot. There were several of us in it. I was giving directions, saying we could walk there, and that the plane wasn’t going to get us there. The pagans were making agreeable noises at me, but simultaneously discussing this great pagan hoo-ha being held somewhere far away. The pilot seemed to be paying me no mind. When (s)he got the (fairly sizeable) plane into the neighbor’s field to take off, I indicated that I didn’t know where s(he) was taking the plane, and would she please let us out. I was given the most scathing “Why do you hurt me like this, don’t you understand?” look, but it mostly rolled off my back. She let me out & everyone else got out too. The final scene took place after the party’s at Tom’s place. Somehow I ended up at a professor’s house. And this professor was providing us with the opportunity to clean ourselves up. I was in her bathroom, and having taken care of the basics, I started rooting around for stuff, while the door’s latch kept coming undone.

I think I need a better bed. =)

So, I checked in on the whole “moving my stuff to chicago for the summer” plan. The words “fat fucking chance” spring immediately to mind. Door-to-Door, which for some reason I expected to be cheaper than U-Haul turns out to be slightly more than twice the cost. Uhaul would cost about 400, including gas and basic rental costs. Each way. So that’s $800. If I sublet my place, I save $1200. If I rough it, and leave my shit here, I eat a potential $400 by leaving the place unsublet-able, but I save myself a massive headache. Like having to get a license pronto, or a friend to go with. Not to mention actually finding a sublessor. Well, and then there’s the $40 each way to get to chicago by bus.

I think I’m coming down on the side of paying the ~$480 convenience fee as Totally Worth It.

In other terrible news, the IRS never saw my income tax return, so the calvary I’ve been expecting any day now will likely be delayed quite a bit. I’ve already called mom. Grrsigh.