It was only a dream.

In case you were left hangin'

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:59:19 -0700

A goodbye’s as important as anything. Basically, life’s too uncertain/awesome for me to keep fretting about schedules and Berkeley’s oddities and sophomore year and boring crap like careers and stuff, and writing about that stuff in here. I’m just kinda waking up and living. Hopefully this blog will be helpful to incoming freshmen, at least. Otherwise if you’d like to know what’s up with me and all the topsy turvy turns my life is taking, feel free to break into my room and steal my diary.

Lots o’ love,

Ellie

Back to School Back to School

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:16:00 -0700

I’m rusty, bear with me.

Summer came and went like one of those giant waves at the beach that looks huge from far away, but diminishes and breaks before it even reaches you. That’s not to say summer wasn’t great, because it was. It all (AIDS/LifeCycle, Bulgaria) just looked so scary in the distance and now it feels like it never happened at all.

On to the good stuff. This year is gearing up to present me with some interesting new fronts, including a mystery application I can’t stop talking about, a Greek Affairs Liaison gig in the Office of the President, living in Chi O, recruitment and big sisterdom, volunteering, smiling at strangers, becoming something of a UGH (hopefully not too much lamer) and a whole lot of math. For a second there I thought I wrote meth. Hehe

Here’s what I’m taking…I think.

Math 16A: This is a math class. Why am I taking it? That depends on how I feel after it’s over.

Math 16B (wait-list): This is a math class. I’m taking two at the same time because Chem 1A is easier in the spring, and I needed to fill its very large spot with something also…prerequisite-y.

English 45B: I read on RateMyProfessor that the professor’s so great he has groupies outside his office hours.

English 117S: Another well-known fella. The class is entirely on Shakespeare and I actually am excited for it.

L & S C101: Edible Education: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement. Taught by The Michael Pollan, taken with Sarah Dorf. And it’s P/NP, so we can’t possibly screw this up.

Here’s to a cUrAaAzY new year!

How's your Brain Feeling?

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:45:34 -0700

“But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness, which has given rise to the “discontents” of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up. We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise…Reforms by advances, that is, by new methods or gadgets, are of course impressive at first, but in the long run they are dubious and in any case dearly paid for. They by no means increase the contentment or happiness of people on the whole. Mostly, they are deceptive sweetenings of existence, like speedier communications which unpleasantly accelerate the tempo of life and leave us with less time than ever before.” (236)

- Carl Jung “Memories Dreams Reflections” (1963)

P.S. Yes, this may or may not be what I’ve been doing for the past two days here in the BG. It’s hot out, okay?!

Bulgarifornication

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 05:26:50 -0700

On Monday I’ll be heading off to Bulgaria on a solo trip straight to my roots. I’ll be staying with my grandmother on my mom’s side and other family members, so it’s not like I’m backpacking or hostel-hopping, but it’ll be pretty wild all the same. I have a few friends who visit the country of their birth or where their family is from every few summers, but this is not normal for me.

My parents and I left Bulgaria, after every generation in both families was born in the same country when I was three years old. My brother and sister were the first to be born outside the country (Mission Viejo, holla) and I, being the oldest, was that funny in-between kid. Bulgarian was my first language, but English as taught by the Disney Channel started the Americanization process young.

Probably similar to a lot of other immigrant families, Americanization was encouraged in our house. We didn’t leave Bulgaria on the best of terms - my father was a Protestant pastor in a post-Communist orthodox country, where religious tolerance was an idea used only as a joke during arrest. He was arrested a few times, and we were robbed, and my little babylife was threatened. (This is getting me really excited about going back to this place..) So we got American. But that didn’t mean I looked like it.

My entire life, people have thought I’m either Hispanic or Persian. Nothing against people who are either of those ethnicities, but when you get the same two guesses for the vast majority of your life, it starts to get a little (so) annoying. So I’m really excited. I’m about to go somewhere where they know where I’m from. I’m one of them!

That’s why this reconnection with the random country I was born in is so important to me, as is learning about my lineage/parents. Then it’s actually visiting Bulgarian landmarks and tourist spots. Bulgaria’s glory days may have been during the 1100s, but I’m about to see the revival.

Of Love and Other Demons

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:45:00 -0700

The story takes place in a South American port town, on the day that 12-year old Sierva María de Todos los Ángeles is bitten by a rabid dog. Sierva María is already a remarkable, if not strange child:

“She could dance with more grace and fire than the Africans, sing in voices different from her own in the various languages of Africa, agitate the birds and animals when she imitated their voices…(The slave girls) hung Santería necklaces over her baptism scapular and looked after her hair, which had never been cut and would have interfered with her walking if they had not braided into loops…Frightened by her nature, her mother had hung a cowbell around the girl’s wrist so she would not lose track of her in the shadows of the house.” (12)

When you mix all that with mental disturbances rabies can cause, you’ve got one demon-possessed pre-teen!

The first half was a sleepier version of One Hundred Years of Solitude. The girl’s father and mother vaguely hate each other, but no one dies (yet). A woman gets struck by lightning on a cloudless day, but it isn’t as big of a deal. But kudos to Márquez for allowing characters to have rowdy hammock sex in more than one book. Anyone getting the urge to visit South America?

The story finally takes off when Sierva María’s father sends her to a convent in order to be exorcised, the (apparently lengthy) process of which Father Cayetano Delaura, the convent librarian, must oversee. Until he falls in love, that is.

Quotez:

“It is not that the girl is unfit for everything, it is that she is not of this world.” (44)

“The Marquis wiped his perspiring hands on his trousers, walked through the door, and found himself under a canopy of yellow bellflowers and hanging ferns on an outdoor terrace that overlooked all the church towers, the red tile roofs of the principal houses, the dovecotes drowsing in the heat, the military fortifications outlined against the glass sky, the burning sea.” (53)

“It was very simple. Delaura had dreamed that Sierva María sat at a window overlooking a snow-covered field, eating grapes one by one form a cluster she held in her lap. Each grape she pulled off grew back again on the cluster. In the dream it was evident the girl had spent many years at that infinite window trying to finish the cluster, and was in no hurry to do so because she knew that in the last grape lay death.” (75)

“It was the ritual of a prisoner condemned to death. They dragged her to the trough, wet her down with buckets of water, tore off her necklaces, and dressed her in the brutal shift worn by heretics. A gardener nun cut off her hair at the nape of the neck with four bites of her pruning shears, and threw it into the nun burning in the courtyard.” (128)

“Abrenuncio tried to dissuade him. He said that love was an emotion contra natura that condemned two strangers to a base and unhealthy dependence, and the more intense it was, the more ephemeral. But Cayetano did not hear him.” (145)

“…she dreamed again of the window looking out on a snow-covered field from which Cayetano Delaura was absent and to which he would never return. In her lap she held a cluster of golden grapes that grew back as soon as she ate them. But this time she pulled them off not one by one but two by two, hardly breathing in her longing to strip the cluster of its last grape.” (147)

My only desire after reading this book is to read the rest of Gabriel García Márquez’s work in Spanish. Here’s to hoping AP Spanish and the preceding four years of torture actually do me some good.

Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:19:00 -0700

So, I’ve never seen Fight Club. It’s the film adaptation of Chuck’s (Palahniuk’s too difficult) work of the same name. Going into Diary, I guess I was expecting a witty, modern diary-related deal. It was those things, but it was also a rather bizarre story. It was almost R.L. Stine-y, actually.

The frame: a diary, naturally. It’s a “coma diary” kept by Misty Tracy Wilmot while her husband Peter is in the hospital, unconscious after a suicide attempt. The book is written almost entirely in 2nd person, as if the diary is talking to Peter, and not very kindly. “Just for the record” and “Just so you know” is the sarcastic beginning of many a paragraph. This is the normal part.

Misty started out a trailer park daydreamer, drawing pictures of grand homes and dreamy landscapes she thought existed only in her childish imagination. She goes to art school, where she meets Peter, a guy everyone considers a flirtatious, old-brooch-wearing creep. He encourages her to paint. They get married. They move to Waytansea Island, Peter and the entire Wilmot family’s home. Misty stops painting, but is soon encouraged by nearly everyone on the island to pick up that brush again.

After Peter slips into his self-induced coma, Misty starts getting weird calls from folks that have had their homes renovated by Peter. Closets and entire kitchens are missing, boarded up and painted over with menacing messages about the island and Misty herself, with Peter’s signature on them.

Then things get weird. It’s not that Misty should start painting again, she has to. She’s part of the plan, and she’s not the first of her kind. The island has had previous famous female artists, and Misty’s been finding their messages everywhere she goes. And the islanders will stop at nothing, from faking injuries to poison pills to faking deaths to get their masterpiece.

Quotez:

“Can you feel this?”

“What you don’t understand, you can make mean anything.”

“Before we go any further, you might want to put on some extra clothes. You might want to stock up on some extra B vitamins. Maybe some extra brain cells. If you’re reading this in public, stop until you’re wearing your best good underwear.” (18)

“And just in case you forgot, you’re one chicken-shit piece of work. You’re a selfish, half-assed, lazy, spineless piece of crap. In case you don’t remember, you ran the fucking car in the fucking garage and tried to suffocate your sorry ass with exhaust fumes, but no, you couldn’t even do that right. It helps if you start with a full gas tank.” (40)

“Just in case you don’t remember, every time she comes to visit you, she wears one of those old junk jewelry brooches you gave her. Misty takes it off her coat and opens the pin of it…She pokes the pin of the hairy old brooch - real, real slow - through the meat of your hand or your foot or arm. Until she hits a bone or it pokes out the other side. When there’s any blood, Misty cleans it up. It’s so nostalgic.” (41)

“You’ll need to suffer to make any real art.” (47)

“The mentalis, the corrugator, all those little muscles of the face, those are the first things you learn in art school anatomy. After that, you can tell a fake smile because the risorius and platysma muscles pull the lower lip down and out, squaring it and eposing the lower teeth. Just for the record, knowing when people are only pretending to like you isn’t such a great skill to have.” (62)

“Michelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist…You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifida that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O’Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.” (65)

“Grace turns back a couple pages and says, “Oh dear. My mistake. You won’t have that terrible headache until the day after tomorrow.” (96)

- “You might be more careful, Mother. We don’t need you anymore.”

- “I loved you a lot more when you were dead.” (225)

The plot was a bit strange, but Chuck’s messages about art and self-expression were striking. The author also seems to know a lot (or researched a lot) about random things like the muscles in your face and paint toxicity. It was downright educational. And I liked the book enough to get stoked for Palahniuk’s newest one, Damned, coming out later this year. (It sounds hilarious?)

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:13:00 -0700

A book The King started writing in 1976 and picked up again over 30 years later. It asks the question: what if a small town is physically cut off from the rest of the world? Related questions are also, who the hell is doing this? What if the town leader is a nutbag who’s considering killing his own son? Where’s our propane? Is that a meth lab over there?

I really enjoyed this book. But at 1,074 pages, it’s too hard to summarize. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that the book allows the reader a bird’s-eye (and sometimes very, very up close) view of humans destroying themselves, whether they are actively bringing about their own demise or not realizing the powerholder actually finds life under the Dome quite pleasant, thus becoming the subtlest tyrant ever known. He’s almost Manson-like, and I’m not talking about Marilyn.

While the humans are doing a great job killing each other and themselves, one can’t forget that someone…or something, has placed this strange dome over the town. Is it the US Government? Is it aliens? Is it that clustermug-causer, Jim Rennie? Regardless of who’s running the show (or holding the magnifying class over the ant hill, so to speak…hint theme hint) corruption runs deep and personal freedoms are taken away until the Dome’s inhabitants can’t even, well, breathe.

One thing I appreciated was that King made sure the book was current. That is, he expressed some anti-war sentiment as well as support for the Obama Administration and gave religious hypocrisy a (deserved) skewering. But despite these beliefs, the heros end up being an Iraq veteran and a Republican journalist, which I liked. Also, the poetry references. I had a great time. Stephen, were you in my 45C class?

Quotez:

“It’s a small town. We all support the team.”

“An explosion. Maybe Chuck Thompson’s fancy little airplane had crashed after all. It wasn’t impossible; on a day when you set out just to shout at someone - read them the riot act a little, no more than that - and she ended up making you kill her, anything was possible.” (26)

“It occurred to him that he was still on a roll - the roll of all rolls. Today he had killed two girls he’d known since childhood. Tomorrow he was going to be a town cop.” (139)

“The Lord spake unto him again, saying, “Did you get up on the stupid side of the bed today, Lester?” (162)

“Scarecrow Joe began sending emails by the dawn’s early light…No doubt The Man would shut down the Internet soon, as He had with the phones, but for now it was Joe’s weapon, the weapon of the people. It was time to fight the power.” (180)

“The Constitution’s been canceled in The Mill.” (187)

“The family that slays together stays together…” (459)

“He might be seen on any given day cruising around in his Porsche, with its bumper sticker reading MY OTHER CAR IS ALSO A PORSCHE!” (519)

“…my temper got the best of me. Again. My religious teaching suggests You put that short fuse in me to begin with, and its my job to deal with it, but I hate that idea…And you know what’s worse? If You’re Not-There, I can’t shove even a little of the blame off on You. What does that leave? Fucking genetics?” (563-564)

- “What you say about meth is correct. Selling it is wrong. An affront. Making it, though - that is God’s will.”

- “Do you think so? Because I’m not sure that can be right.”

- “Have you ever had any?” (670)

“So let us go then, you and I, while the evening spreads out agaisnt the sky like a patient etherized upon a table. Let us go while the first discolored stars begin to show overhead. This is the only town in a four-state area where they’re out tonight. Rain has overspread northern New England, and cable-news viewers will soon be treated to some remarkable satellite photographs showing a hole in the clouds that exactly mimics the sock-shape of Chester’s Mill. Here the stars shine down, but now they’re dirty stars because the dome is dirty.” (801)

“Their heads snapped around, but for a moment they froze, neither trying to raise their weapons nor scatter. They weren’t cops at all, Chef saw; just birds on the ground too dumb to fly.” (974)

“She strikes Carla Venziano, who is fleeing with her infant in her arms. Velma feels the truck jounce as it passes over their bodies, and resolutely blocks her ears to Carla’s shrieks as her back is broken and baby Steven is crushed to death beneath her. All Velma knows is that she has to get out of here. Somehow, she has to get out.” (984)

“A reddish moon finally clears the accumulated filth on the eastern wall of the Dome and shines down its bloody light. this is the end of October and in Chester’s Mill, October is the cruelest month, mixing memory with desire. There are no lilacs in this dead land. no lilacs, no trees, no grass. The moon looks down on ruination and little else.” (1035)

“She is a cat with a burning tail, an ant under a microscope, a fly about to lose its wings to the curious plucking fingers of a third-grader on a rainy day, a game for bored children with no bodies and the whole universe at their feet.” (1062)

“Welcome back to the world.” (1065)

I Love Stephen King (pseudo-review)

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:38:03 -0700

When I was in 6th grade, my teacher did something that probably could’ve gotten her fired if enough parents freaked out. She, after finding the book in our book alcove, challenged those willing to read Stephen King’s The Stand within the final three weeks of the school year. In case you didn’t notice, I’m a competitive kiss-ass/book nerd, so naturally my hand shot up. Due to parents more concerned than mine finding out, the only other kid who wanted to try it as well had to drop out of our little competition, leaving me alone at the starting gate.

So began my initiation into the world and works of Stephen King. The first cuss word I ever read in a book was in The Stand’s introduction, and it was some colorful phrase involving “motherfucker”. The book was the dirtiest, most graphic, violent book I’ve read to this day. And (not counting The Bible) at around 2,000 pages, is the longest book I’ve ever read.

I wasn’t sure how to feel when I was done (within two weeks, booyah), but I knew I wasn’t done with this author. Since then I’ve read Desperation, It, Rose Madder, Carrie, The Dark Half, Cujo, The Tommyknockers, Insomnia, the personally vital On Writing and I’m currently working on/will be yammering about a more recent one, titled Under the Dome. (P.S. I like Wikipedia.) Not sure why I haven’t read The Shining, but it’ll happen. I’ve also never touched the Dark Tower series, mostly because I seem to have every book in the set (garage sale find) except book 1 in my possession.

People have actually made fun of me for considering myself serious about English and listing King as one of my favorite authors. Of course, these are the people who have never read King’s work and so compare it to teen slasher films. I think Stephen King is a genius, and y’all are missing out.

His books usually take place somewhere in Maine and the characters are as human as it gets. Except when they’re not, of course. Even though his novels usually have something otherworldly going on, one realistic/exciting element is that people and places from different books sometimes bump into one another or are mentioned in passing, as if they’re real! But forget for a moment the (awesome, always somewhat gruesome) plot, I still don’t understand how he can think up and develop so many characters. So. Many. And the theme is rarely grandiose and the speech is always in vernacular. What can I say? I love the man. Look at me! I’m so rich!

AIDS/LifeCycle Wrap Up - I'll Shut Up Now

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:55:00 -0700

There is so much I’ve failed to describe about this experience, and there’s even more I’ve failed to capture in a picture. Looking through my pictures, the AIDS/LifeCycle ride pretty much looks like pretty views and pretty queens, but that’s only the surface. There were the roadies - directing traffic, in charge of bike parking, serving food, working gear trucks and keeping a sense of humor, doing millions of things I probably didn’t even notice; basically working harder than the riders do. There was Ginger Brewlay, former rider Ric Uggen’s drag queen persona. Ric can’t do the ride anymore because of his 27-year personal battle with AIDS, so instead she (he) dresses up in her finest and cheers riders on at the top of the hardest hill. There was the infamous Chicken Lady, who placed a plastic egg on every single bicycle seat with a lifesaver and kind words inside. There was Lori-Jean’s “HELLOOOO RIIIIIIDERS,” and Neil’s awkward poetically-driven speech conclusions. There were strangers in every city, young and old, ringing cowbells and handing us treats as we rode by, and even a couple who had coffee and donuts out by the side of the rode for us.

I took on this challenge because that’s what it was - a shit-this-sounds-crazy challenge that I could look back on and feel like a champ; like I can do anything. The event does do that, but (now that I done drank the Kool-Aid) honestly? Riding a bicycle is not what AIDS/LifeCycle is about. If we jogged across California the story would be the same: spreading awareness, taking care of each other, smiling at strangers, boosting the local economy, wearing the red ribbon proudly.

Note on the bicycle: I went into this thinking my bike would be something of an embarrassment. I mean, it’s a solid 30 years old. But as it turns out (given the fact that the bicycle worked and got me to the finish line), riding a Centurion mixte was like rolling into a car show in a 60s Corvette, it’s got its vintage charm and if it works after all those years, hell, it has its merits. In the beginning more older riders noticed the bike (one gave me a high five hehe), but eventually others began to notice its manual gear shift and steel frame. The bike tech guy got pretty excited to see it “after all these years”, so I’ve become pretty proud of the thing. But it’s still damn heavy and if (when) I do the ride again, it’ll be on a new bike. Then I’ll be passing the old ladies, dammit.

Favorite quote:

“I think this is the methamphetamine stop so it should get a lot easier after this.”

I actually spent most of the ride thinking of things to write about, but I’ve forgotten most of it since then. Guess you’ll just have to do it yourself to see what it’s really like. :) ‘Til then, this is a pretty great summary: http://www.youtube.com/user/AidsLifecycle#p/u/1/JVjrgTizpEE!

ALC Day 7: LA Baby, 61.5 miles

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:55:03 -0700

I don’t mean for this post to sound so negative, but I’m afraid it does. This was a stressful day. Since we took team pictures at 7 am and the route had been open since 6 am, I hit major traffic along the way. Lines for everything from food to porta-potties at rest stops were huge. I wasn’t worried I wouldn’t make it to the finish line on time, but I was worried about LA traffic and general unpleasantness. I don’t even like driving in LA, so riding a bicycle seems downright stupid.

One problem was freeway-turned-beach parking. The road and ocean looked very similar to Santa Cruz, only now there were cars and campers parked all along the side of the road. One ill-timed car door opening and you could be a mid-traffic pinball. But other than the stress and attention required, it was okay. For some reason the ceremonies were really underwhelming for me, possibly because it took my family forever to get there so I was pretty much by myself. I think it was also because I felt like I hadn’t captured or even experienced all of what AIDS/LifeCycle had to offer. It’s definitely an event you come back to over and over again.

The Jane Lynch speech was cool though!

Roadkill: Coyote, pelican. Zoinks.

Elevation: Nothing too frightening other than a very sharp turn that sent us into a steep hill. It was labeled as the “last hill!!!#@!#$” but it wasn’t quite.

ALC Day 6: Ventura, 85.5 miles

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:54:00 -0700

There’s my beach again! For some reason this day made me pretty emotional. Everything started hitting home. Every local who cheered on the side of the street, every Santa Barbara bum who revealed a toothless smile, every “thank you for riding!” and especially Paradise Pit, which I thought was the nicest thing ever to do just for us, made me realize how much of an impact we’d made everywhere we went. It was the “I’m actually doing this” moment for me. The culmination of over six months of obsessing, fundraising and training.

At camp we participated in a special tradition: the beachside candelight vigil. After dark everyone received a lit candle and we sat in a huge rectangle on the sand. No one introduced the ceremony or said a word, really. It was a time for everyone to think about why they were there and maybe who they’ve lost; who they’re riding for. I thought about John, the speaker with AIDS who visited my FemSex class and who floored me with his unshakeable happiness and about David, the man I met during the Opening Ceremonies with whom I just sort of felt I was best friends (grossly grammatical?). I thought about how much harder their lives are than mine, and how hard anyone’s life is if they’ve lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles in particular since the 1980s. How many friends and relatives they have lost to the same disease, once described as a strange flu targeting gay men.

Roadkill: Skunk, snake, seagull. Somewhere around this time I find out there’s a volunteer ALC roadkill crew that wakes up at 5 am to clear the road of dead things. Having been perversely entertained by the variety of roadkill I’d seen thus far, this upset me.

Elevation: You’re by the beach. Stop complaining.

[Thanks Devin for the vigil picture!]

ALC Day 5: Lompoc, 40.2 miles

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:53:00 -0700

Red Dress Day, baby. This was the shortest mileage day and with good reason: a great RDD outfit is high maintenance! I don’t think I’ve seen so many fake boobs in my life. Between the red boas sailing behind speeding ten-speeds, sequined riding shoes and helmets and the lipstick-ed queens, this day was definitely the most fun. It was also the turning point in the ride - we were getting nostalgic already. And on no other day did rest stop roadies tell us to slow down dammit, or we’d be done with the day before camp even opened!

Red Dress Day was originally (according to the stories) Dress in Red Day, a special day in which the route becomes particularly winding and hilly. Participants dressed all in red create the effect of a living AIDS ribbon when seen from the sky. Then of course, someone decided to have some fun with it. The route sheet made everything seem pretty manageable, but this was one of the hilliest days on the ride. Like, fairly ridiculous. Luckily it was cold and I for some reason decided to forego a jacket to show off my outfit (read: real boobs) so I was freezing and the hills helped.

Once we arrived in Lompoc (a name which I still can’t pronounce), some ladies from the Cal team and I attempted to take a shuttle into town for dinner. We ended up hitchhiking and had a Lompoc-authentic meal. At Jack in the Box.

[Thanks Joanne for the picture…even though I didn’t ask!]

ALC Day 4: Santa Maria, 97.7 Miles

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:52:00 -0700

The mileage intimidated me, as did the hills. The Evil Twins, they call ‘em, pave the way to the infamous “Halfway to LA” midpoint. After a rather gorgeous/spooky morning ride through misty vineyards, I reached the first rest stop, after which I’d be introduced to the Twins. I found myself looking for reasons to skip out on riding, from heading over to the Medical Tent for a Mylar blanket to thinking my front tire was going to blow out. [In line for the bike tech, I met a guy named Kenny and we started talking about piercings, since he had one on his eyebrow. Later that night during camp announcements a video was presented showing none other than Kenny himself, calling his mom during the ride to tell her he’s HIV positive. Everyone’s got a story.]

Still shivering, I gave up on giving up and continued the ride. A bunch of people both at the rest stop and the day before told me that a lot of “fakeout” hills you think are the Evil Twins precede the real thing. The hills were definitely there, but I kept going. I reached what I thought was the end of Evil Twin #1 and took a little stretching break (Chiropractic to me the day before: “Even if you finish this ride without any pain, your legs’ll be tight for a month after this.” Too sweet). Then I rode around a corner to a cheering crowd. I asked if Evil Twin #2 was next and was told that lolz, no, I was done! I had ridden up both hills without even realizing. Not so evil, I guess.

Then was the HALFWAY2LA fun. Huge lines of cyclists formed in front of various signs proclaiming our halfwayness. This is where I discovered just how heavy my bicycle is. I nearly tumbled down the cliff behind me. Camp in Santa Maria was probably the most out-there spot we camped. It looked like a Knott’s but with no rides…

Roadkill: A deer :(

Elevation: 1,762 ft but plenty of other hills the route sheet made look like bumps in the road.

[Thanks Joanne for the Frontier picture…even though I didn’t ask!]

ALC Day 3: Paso Robles, 66.7 Miles

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:51:00 -0700

For such a short day, it sure felt like a long day. This was the day of Quadbuster, a steep one-mile climb that happened early on in the day. Seasoned riders said this hill is no big deal, and maybe on a bike that doesn’t weigh as much as the Titanic, it is. Not complaining, could’ve trained more. I even saw some riders going back to the bottom of the hill to do it again. Anyway.

Highway 1 on this segment of the route was a joke. The rode at this point was so bumpy and broken that my wheel dipped in what I can only described as trenches. So I got a flat. As two very nice cyclists were helping a sister out, the sweep vehicle pulled over behind us. I told them I was fine, but they wouldn’t budge. The driver told me she could see my wheel wobbling (A-FUCKING-GAIN) and couldn’t let me finish the last four miles to the rest stop. So I was againstmywill-ly driven in to the stop, which was at Mission San Miguel. The theme was jazzercise, and it could not have been more hilariously inappropriate.

I got my bike fixed and continued on my way. Lunch was in Bradley, CA, a town of less than 200 people whose elementary school children helped serve us a BBQ lunch as part of their school fundraiser. Us passing through their town, from what I’ve heard, funds some of their programs for the rest of the year. This is AIDS/LifeCycle at its finest.

Roadkill: A snake and a bluejay, which was beautiful even as roadkill.

Elevation: Total of about 1,500 feet with the Quadbuster climb. But there were other hills too, dammit!

ALC Day 2: King City, 106.1 Miles

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:50:00 -0700

Yeah, I rode a Century the day after an 80-mile ride. No big deal, really. Actually it wasn’t that big of a deal. This day was tricky and got the best of a lot of riders, but the terrain was relatively flat (…and boring. My god, the farmland). We were told that traffic out of Santa Cruz is insane, so we’d better get on the route as early as possible. My lovely tentmate and I heeded this information and woke up at 4 am to prepare for the route’s 6:30 am opening.

We were on the route by 6:40 am and managed to get out of Santa Cruz within the hour. We were the very lucky ones. From what I heard, ALC started traffic control at 7 am, essentially closing the route and only allowing small groups of cyclists out at a time to minimize traffic and avoid pissing off Santa Cruz officials, who apparently want to pull ALC’s permit for the event. Yikes. This means that it took most cyclists 2-3 hours to travel the seven miles out of the city. On a 100+ mile day, you don’t have time for that shit. I also heard a lot of cyclists got swept (picked up in cars and taken to the next stop) or SAGged (arrived in the next stop and decided to take the bus into camp).

Even though I didn’t get trapped by the route, I had my own bad mood day. For one, the scenery was seriously bothering me. Strawberry farms, artichoke farms, cactus farms. Come on, California. This sounds like a silly complaint, but with no music and few other riders around, this was my brush with insanity!

I also had my own hold-up: 1 1/2 hours at lunch, to be exact. A few riders had seen my rear wheel a-wobblin’ and told me to get it checked at the bike mechanic tent at lunch. It turns out a few of my spokes had broken, and the mechanic also decided I needed a new chain so I could shift to more gears or something…whatever. It cost me time and money, but at least it was fixable.

The route was getting more draining with every stop, but the ALC folks knew that and had the solution: crazy rest stops. The most boring-looking spot on the ride was listed as a water stop and turned out to be otter pop-induced mayhem. I feel bad for the riders that skipped it. After getting my sugar high on, I rode out feeling like new.

Roadkill: Three skunks, two snakes, two kitties ( :( ), one seagull and possibly a man-eating raccoon. I’m not kidding about these.

Elevation: None that I can recall. Strawberry fields forever.

ALC Day 1: SF to Santa Cruz, 82.5 Miles

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:49:00 -0700

First I’m going to talk about the night before. I was a wreck. I know they say, “Do something that scares you every day,” but I may have of curled into a ball in the corner of my aunt and uncle’s house and hyperventilated. Doing that on a daily basis would be very draining.

But I did manage to get a good two hours of shuteye in and was at Cow Palace (which is actually in Daly City, not San Francisco. We’re such liars) at the scheduled time, 5 am. The Opening Ceremonies took place about an hour later, and they were beautiful. I made my first friend there, a Positive Peddler named David. I wish I could’ve gotten a picture with him.

I was on the route at about 7 am. The ride out was extremely slow because of cyclist traffic, so I was inches away from falling over at any moment. There were cheering crowds, but my brain blocked as much out as possible. And so we rode.

Other than the gorgeous views of the ocean and NorCal foliage, there were a lot of random sights to see on this day which made me sad I couldn’t stop more and take pictures. I saw a giant plastic gorilla holding up two haystacks in a farm, I saw a petting zoo/circus on the side of the rode in Half Moon Bay. And of course, I saw weirdo Santa Cruz with its “You Do It” Car Wash and Younglove Avenue. I rode into camp within an hour of the route’s closure, but I made it. And as it turns out, after riding a bicycle for 11 hours, you don’t mind sleeping on the ground so much.

Roadkill: Rattlesnake and what I’m going to say was a beaver.

Elevation: Something like a 6 mi climb to Half Moon Bay. I don’t wanna talk about it.

Too Much Love

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:30:00 -0700

Lesbian partner 1: If I see another earwig I'm going to scream like a little girl.
Lesbian partner 2: I'm going to punch you in the mouth.

8 am Adrenaline Kick

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:30:15 -0700

AIDS was first reported on June 5, 1981. 30 years later to the day, I’ll be riding my bicycle from San Francisco to Santa Cruz. And that’s only the beginning - I’ll have 462.5 more miles to go in six more days of riding (greater than the distance between my house and Berkeley, whatta commute). I think I share something in common with everyone participating in this event, and it’s that we’ll do it happily. Even if it means wanting to die at the mere thought of waking up at 5 am, even if it means copious amounts of butt cream, even if it means wanting to give up and go home. We have it relatively easy. According to the ALC site, someone is infected with HIV every 9 ½ minutes in the U.S. 30 years into the epidemic, nearly 1 in 5 people in people who are infected with HIV are unaware of their status. About 3,000 people are participating in this ride, whether they’re riders or roadies, to kick some ass, take in the scenery and raise awareness and funds for a disease that has been life-threateningly stigmatized.

What an honor to be a part of something so big, that’s working to benefit so many people who are in need of critical HIV/AIDS services. Rise and shine indeed.

For more information on the route: http://www.aidslifecycle.org/life-on-the-event/route/

To donate: http://bit.ly/ijOFke

P.S. Did I mention Day 5 is Red Dress Day? Aww yee.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:29:57 -0700

Man, I love the name Aldous. A note on the book posts: I hate book reviews. I never read them, and definitely never let them tell me what books to read. Assuming that others feel similarly, my posts on books are really more for me to remember what I’ve read and what it was like than for others to get much out of them. You’d be surprised at how much you forget about books you’ve read, movies you’ve seen, even things you’ve experienced. Or maybe it’s just me…

On to the book: it’s a classic so there’s no real like/dislike factor. Because it’s a book read in many classrooms, I naturally dislike it to a certain degree. The title is from The Tempest and boy, the Shakespeare doesn’t end there! Reminded me too much of high school English. Study guide questions were just begging to be asked.

It’s about a future the author thought would soon come to pass: everything synthetic; jobs and class predetermined; no familial structure or even an idea of exclusive relationships; promiscuity is absolutely promoted to prevent attachment or emotions; emotions are muted with a drug called soma; all children are essentially test tube babies (“mother” is considered an obscenity, since no one has one); children undergo hypnopaedia or sleep learning, through which they are conditioned to view their world as the only way to live. Various characters repeat phrases they’ve heard in their sleep as if they are their own. Every character does, other than the sort-of protagonist Bernard (so whiny. So Hamlet-y) and John the Savage. There’s a lot more to be described, so just read it or something.

What interested me most was the class structure. From the time they are embryos, individuals are either allowed to develop fully or are stunted in a way so that they can make up the lower classes. Classes are Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Gammas and Epsilons and children are even conditioned based on their class to love their own position and know not to interact with individuals from too different a class.

The other fun kick that instead of speaking of God or saying “my God” or anything, the characters use the name Ford. The name refers to Henry Ford, the founder of Ford automobiles and also at the same time to Freud, whose ideas are present in the story. This has some deep meaning which I have chosen to ignore, but here’s the quote: “Our Ford - or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters - Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. The world was full of fathers - was therefore full of misery; full of mothers - therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts - full of madness and suicide.” (39)

Quotez:

“Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks - already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.” (21-22)

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.” (221)

The (counter-cultural, you could certainly say) Savage vs. Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller of their region (Western Europe/London):

-“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

-“In fact, you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

-“All right then, I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

-“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”

-“I claim them all.” (240)

Bottom line: The ideas were interesting, but the novel was booorring. I mean, it must’ve gone over my head with its brilliance. But I do plan to read Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. Gotta love a writer who embraces psychedelics.

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:29:00 -0700

This book is a relief. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that’s just a story, that wants to be read. I had a great time.

Recently widowed food journalist named Maggie is called to China to settle a paternity claim on her husband made by some random Chinese chick. Oops. While collecting a DNA sample from the child, Maggie is also interviewing a Chinese-American chef named Sam Liang. Sam’s got an old-school cooking technique that directly counters all of China’s innovation and progression. He has entered into a national competition to have his style recognized and to bring honor to his family (I love Mulan, therefore this is not offensive). Sam’s lineage is actually dominated by famous and historically honored chefs. He’s also that caring, emotionally open hunky type.

The story isn’t as appealing as the frame in which it moves. Throughout the book, excerpts appear from a fictional book titled The Last Chinese Chef (get it? The book and the fake book have the same name! What could this mean?!)*, written by Liang Wei (Sam’s grandfather or great-grandfather) on the topic of food, naturally. But it’s actually about how food is so much more than food. The book explores the Chinese culture’s intersection between food, community, literature and its companion, history. A single dish can even be a literary reference or controversial reminder of the past.

“To cook xiao wo tou (simple corn cakes), to serve it, even to refer to it, was to speak of China’s Marie Antoinette. Ci Xi cared nothing for her people. Her reign brought a system that had endured thousands of years to its end. Father taught us that when we made xiao wo tou we were making reference to the worst kind of imperial disregard for the common people, and so we must be extraordinarily careful where and when we served them. Delightful and rustic mouthfuls, they were also powerful political statements and could bring about a chef’s downfall.” (186-187)

And it looks like it’s an accurate portrayal of these intersections, since the author lived in China for 18 years. Related to food is the idea of guanxi, or connectedness/influence/relationships, where food becomes the binding agent of relationships. And bind it does.

Very Eat, Pray, Love: lots of food (and probably the best descriptions of it I’ve ever read), happy ending, easy read. A great palate cleanser (lolz get it) before returning to Big Deal Books.

*Just the thought of analyzing any piece of literature beyond, “Oh, that’s nice” makes me want to buy a typewriter just to throw it at the next English professor I see. This book is also chock full of free indirect discourse (where the author gradually dips into the characters’ brains). This is extremely unimportant. It helps move the story along, y’all. Don’t need a degree to see that. [End rant.]