intellectual properties

holding down the power button

have you tried turning it off and on again?

i need a reset button.  i realized a while ago, that for 2004-2008, i had a weeklong rebooting procedure that took place in the middle of the desert where i drank a gallon of water every day and ate very little and rode my bike for miles and danced for hours every day.  some people go to burning man and toxify themselves;  i was always detoxing.  some people go to yoga retreats in bali to do this kind of thing, to eat sparingly and meditate and flush and cleanse.  for 5 years i did it at burning man. and this year, i did not have that.  my mind was ok with it, the not going, because i had europe instead! but i don’t think my body was.  and traveling around europe for a month instead was the opposite, physically, drinking wine at all hours and smoking cigarettes and hookahs and eating all kinds of rich creamy fattening foods because there was nothing else and yes walking but not in the hot sun and not for all night and sleeping 10-12 hours a day is not exercise.  and i think that this is true, and if there’s anything i now regret about not going to burning man this year it is that i did not get this physical reboot.

and yes now, not to keep going on about it, but my body hurts. and i need TIME to find some other way to reboot.  and my boss, he is so kind, he today agreed that i should be at work less, sitting in my chair less, and that i can cut the number of hours my butt is in this chair and it will be fine.  and also that i can have someone build me a standing desk configuration, so that the hours i am here will be better.  and while it didn’t take the pain away, at least i think i’ll have more time to Focus On My Body now, more time for therapy appointments and yoga and walking and things, and less time sitting. this is good news.

on to other topics, for the rest of 2009 it looks like a lot of low-key hibernatory activities, although we are going to Tahoe for Christmas (yay!) and so i will actually see some snow this year. the chain of christmas holiday parties starts this friday night and lasts until around 1/1 (i don’t have any plans for NYE yet and i don’t plan on making any either). i haven’t had a drink in 9 days (i sound like an alcoholic but this is for cleansing/healing reasons, not addiction reasons, i swear) and i intend to stay sober until around sunset on 12/31. this makes holiday parties slightly less fun, but not a big deal. lack of hangovers makes up for it.

and while i’ve been bitching and moaning (literally) a lot these past few weeks (and to those of you who have had to put up with it IRL, please be kind enough to forgive any snappy retorts, evil eyes, or frustrated outbursts you may have been the recipient of or been witness to; i swear i am not really like this), today i feel optimistic, and am once again counting my blessings instead of curses. most of those blessings are people, and i am most thankful for the lot of wonderful humans in my life who make this whole l-i-v-i-n thing bearable.

carry on.

(aside: for the full first episode of The IT Crowd, quoted and linked in the first line, click here. awesome sauce.)

december readjustment

if you don’t follow my twitter feed or aren’t my friend on facebook, it might seem like not a lot has been happening in my online world, but i am here.  it seems i’m less inclined to write here than in those two places, and so this blog is left for the things that don’t go there.

i’ll not repeat too much, but the most dominant recent personal item is that i declared December “Focus on My Body Month”, as it is now going on 4 straight weeks that i’ve been experiencing non-stop back, neck and shoulder pain, and i’m doing everything i can to a) soothe (saunas, hottubs, massages), b) correct (chiro) and c) prevent (cleaner living, more exercise, etc).  and it’s not so much that these are huge adjustments for me in my life, i’m already a pretty healthy person who eats well and exercises and all that, but the mental space it has been taking up to ACTIVELY observe and correct my physical posture and habits has been incredibly unexpected.  it’s also been hard to gather and weigh all the advice, online and offline, from friends and doctors, as on paper it SEEMS to me that i am already doing all of the things anyone might suggest to correct such a problem, yet it is not going away.  chiro. massage. exercise. ergonomic adjustments. supplements. therapies. doing them. ALL.  and so then there’s the mental space taken up by depressed thoughts that this might be a condition i suffer for the rest of my life, although everyone assures me it is reversible/curable, but as i said, i have been DOING ALL THE RIGHT THINGS and not a lot is changing, so this is hard to accept and sometimes i will admit i am despondent. and then this leads to more chain linked thoughts about aging, etc. and the mood just spirals from there.

so for the past 10 days or more i’ve upped all my physical regimens and i’ve been getting deep massages and seeing the chiro and making doctor appointments and going to the gym daily and eating an almost perfectly vegan whole food diet and abstaining from alcohol etc., and all of these things, combined with the aforementioned mental energy just THINKING about all of these things, has left very little room to think or do much else, not to mention that i have been irritable, grumpy, and not in the best of moods because of the constant chronic pain, lack of sleep due to pain/discomfort, and oh also THE DARKNESS outside.  and i am tired of it.  tired of thinking about it, talking about it, doing things about it. so i am focusing as best as i can at resolving this for 1 month. i can take this for one month.  but if i spend all this time and energy focusing on this and nothing changes i don’t know what the hell i’m going to do in 2010.

back to the land & a reporter’s eyes

i love the way this writer writes so visually, and i think you will enjoy it too.
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/#

also, in other NYT related bits, tonight i went to see an advance screening of the upcoming HBO documentary on Nicholas Kristof, “Reporter“.  i would recommend it when it comes out if you have HBO.

lighten up

last night at a taqueria in The People’s Republic of Berkeley, jay and i noted that almost all of the flyers posted on the bulletin board had something to do with meditation/hypnosis/manifestation/consciousness/peace action, some in such abstract language you couldn’t even tell exactly WTF the flyer was trying to get you to buy/do (if there are so many people trying to create peace in the world, why does it seem like nothing ever changes? jay said after scanning the wall of flyers. they’re doing it wrong, i snarkily replied.). some of my friends recently had a long discussion/debate about the merits of a very popular west coast “life coaching” program, and then someone else recently shared her experience with an irritating hypnobirthing counselor. the discussions of all of these things pretty much boiled down to this same idea:

at certain points in our lives, many of us we learn/discover/admit we need help with something – relationships, addictions, behaviors, difficult experiences. however, many times, the vehicles for getting that help, particularly on the Left Coast, are presented in formats/within ideologies that many of our personalities have habitually rejected: new-ageism, group therapy, structured coaching. for many people, the BIGGEST PART of the help/therapy came from being able to get past the presentation, look at the information, and apply and absorb it as needed. because, really: this is a new whole way of dealing with the world for some of us snarky haters who walk out of anything that superficially seems to oppose our aesthetic sensibilities, or who will automatically dismiss something that initially appears to be too….something….for us to deal with. (this relates back to the “separate the people from the problem” post about relationships, and is also very true with politics). learning to do this, to not have a knee-jerk response to the aesthetic of something and really take a minute to discern the message, can be challenging, especially if you live in a city INUNDATED, as the bulletin board at the taqueria evidences, with all kinds of new-age, alternative, non-traditional approaches to life that seem, when taken en masse, to be nothing more than an alternative form of capitalism – selling you something you don’t need, repackaged to target a different set of human desires.

so slowing down, taking time to think about what ideas and methodologies lie beneath the mantras and the spiritual psychobabble can be an obstacle to possibly finding a path or the help you’ve been seeking (oh crap, now i am starting to sound like one of those flyers!). taking that lesson wider, it’s the same with certain art/music scenes and communities/ways of being. how easy it is to be come so jaded against the presentation, when the core of what is being offered can be so beautiful…..

anyway, i’m not about to start rubbing crystals on myself or anything, but i’m definitely done with being as bitter and jaded as i have been. i just want to be open.

the Whole Foods-Healthcare debate

the topic is a little dusty now, but Food Democracy Now has a poll on whether you got riled up enough about the CEO of Whole Foods’ editorial on healthcare to boycott WF:

__I am boycotting but would reconsider if Mackey resigned.
__I’m not boycotting, but Mackey should resign.
__I am done with Whole Foods.
__Mackey’s entitled to his views; I am not boycotting.

also, read the Food Democracy Now argument about why boycotting won’t help health care reform.

i am well aware that many food democracy advocates already hated WF before this happened (not to even mention all those who think they’re just making bank off of rich yuppie types susceptible to greensumerism/greenwashing) and don’t really actually care about justice issues – it’s all just savvy, savvy marketing). i myself only shop there when i am in need of certain organic items that can’t be found elsewhere, or during times when i’m hungry or need something and it’s the only non-Safeway grocer open within 20 minutes of my house (HELLO BERKELEY BOWL AND YOUR EARLY CLOSING HOURS.)

i know that while WF is expensive and their clientele is about as bourgeois as you can get, but their buying practices and messages are well-intentioned and they support a lot of small farmers.

as for this particular instance, i basically agreed with Mackey’s 8 points for reform, but what got the boycott started and where he lost his followers were his statements after the 8 points on the moral arguments for public healthcare, such as this:

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

and then goes on to say:

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

i pretty much agree with this taken at face value. i think we need to invest way more money in preventative healthcare and food and nutrition eduction, but for many of the liberal shoppers of whole foods, this sort of statement was unacceptable, with millions crying foul about how poor people don’t have the same kinds of access and choices that WF shoppers and employees have and so blaming them for their health problems and denying them access to public healthcare is unfair.

i don’t think that’s what he was saying though. i’m ALL FOR A PUBLIC HEALTHCARE OPTION (no matter how you cut it, it’s better than none), but i also think the American people need to be more responsible for their own well-being, and also that our food system needs some serious changes. i mean, did you see this, how that green “Smart Choice” label food companies have started putting on their processed foods somehow applies to things like Coco Puffs and Fruit Loops? (they’re made with whole grains!)

also, overall, while i am a huge proponent of voting with your dollars, and thus boycotts make sense to me, i generally find the ones that go around the internet to be baseless and ineffective (boycotting X gas company while filling your car up at Y does nothing to bring down gas prices, for example), and i’m also really not into armchair internet activism where you post some standard message to your Facebook status about healthcare (DO SOMETHING INSTEAD) or send around emails about how Barack Obama is a socialist while sitting there on your ass collecting social security and welfare checks.

anyway, i digress. no, i have not boycotted Whole Foods.

bike effects

as noted, since August 1 i have not had a car for commuting to work, and though i got lazy last week and rode the bus a few days, i try to ride my bike as much as possible during this season of Light and Dryness and relative Warmth. once autumn darkness and rains come, i think the bus will be ridden most of the time.

i’ve got my commute path down and it’s nice and easy, but i’m trying not to become too
complacent or overconfident riding the bike. i have a tendency to space out, and do things like write draft blog posts in my head. not recommended. currently, there is construction around one block of my usual route, and yesterday morning, taking the detour i almost bit it on some non-functional-but-still-embedded-in-the-cement train tracks. i mean, i came really close to wiping out, and THANK SOMEONE i didn’t, because there was a taco truck right behind me and a semi coming the other way. yeesh. i know – hit the tracks at 90 degrees.  but when they just randomly appear from out of the pavement right in front of you, you don’t have a choice about the angle. you just have to quickly recalibrate to not wipe out.

anyway, onto the taboo blogging subject: weight! since i started biking, at least 8 miles a day if i just go to work and back, sometimes 10-12 if i have appts/errands, i’ve gained 10 lbs. i am not making this up or exaggerating. i stepped on the scale this morning – it does not lie, and neither do the pants i brought to wear at work that are now so tight through the thighs they are uncomfortable. i’d like to think it’s all muscle, but i know it’s not, because i am not getting SMALLER/leaner, i am getting bigger. and i got a belly. and a concerning number of my clothes are not fitting well or looking good. and since people are always insisting that women don’t “bulk up” from traditional exercise, i can only assume that my increased dimensions are not muscle. it’s fat.

i’m not looking for advice here, i know what the problem is and how to fix it. first, biking makes me hungrier than i usually am, and then i eat more calories than i burn because by the end of the day i am STARVING. so i need to eat more regularly and front load so i don’t eat such huge dinners. second, going to the gym is now way out of the way via bike, and i am no longer doing all the strength training and seriously sweaty cardio sessions i was before, and i just need to suck it up and get back to the gym again. i also know i’m not alone and this is a common problem with people trying to manage their weight. in fact, this problem was just discussed again in the paper yesterday: Experts: For losing weight, diet beats exercise.

before y’all start kvetching about how i’m “thin enough already”, i was not necessarily *trying* to lose weight with the bike commuting, although i might have been hoping to, but i was CERTAINLY not expecting to gain it either. it’s just sort of weird and counter-intuitive to think that once i became carless and started riding my bike all over the place, i gained weight. and no matter what anyone else thinks about my body-image, that i do not like. i am definitely not going to stop riding my bike (or eating when i’m hungry), but riding my bike AND going to the gym is just….kind of a pain in the ass. and time. and right now (until after labor day anyway), my calendar is BOOKED. so for now, until i find a way to make this all work, the biking and eating and the gym and the commuting and the time, i’m just trying to adjust to and accept my slightly bigger self (and adjust my wardrobe as well). i’m not-so-secretly hoping that this is just a short period of physical adjustment – that my increased appetite v. metabolism will eventually level out and if i get back to the gym 2-3 days a week for extra weight/cardio, by the time we go to europe (21 days!!) i’ll be able to fit back into my pants again.

botany: a dance

on a lighter note related to food and eating, this should be amusing:

Michael Pollan’s breakthrough book, “The Botany of Desire,” looks at the relationship between humans and four types of domesticated plants – apples, tulips, potatoes and marijuana – in terms of human desire and what the plants represent.

So, naturally, when Alex Harvey read Pollan’s book, he envisioned a musical….

starving

last night i read a 4-year-old (2005) Time magazine that had a 30-something page special on the American obesity epidemic (that’s where that last post came from), and one of the articles was Can You Be Fat and Healthy? there was a lot of easy to absorb and interesting comparative information in there about being physiologically fit vs. perceived as healthy just by weight and pant size. and then the question:

If you eat well, work out regularly and walk away from your doctor’s office with straight A’s on your physical, what does it matter if you can’t wriggle into slim-cut jeans?

yes, what does it matter, really? why can’t we just be happy in our bodies as long as we’re healthy? how has body image become so twisted?

and then today, thx to Tiny Cat Pants, i read this article about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment (see wikipedia also), which should absolutely be read beginning to end, especially by any women who restrict their calories for diet purposes, but i’ll post a few eye-opening findings here about the effects of a 1,600 restricted-calorie diet on grown men, noting that 1,600 calories is a lot more than a lot of people on diets, especially people on CLEANSES, allow themselves to eat:

Continue reading »

2 requests/demands

i know i am about to eat my tail because i haven’t blogged about last weekend yet and this one starts in -3 minutes, but i just. haven’t. yet. i hope to do so tonight.

in the meantime, 2 items for you about 2 things that are very important to me:

1. i am going to ask you again to please sign this petition for a sustainable USDA. scroll down to read the petition and request. if you have questions, ask them, and i will do my best to answer or point you in the direction of some further information. but the gist is: our current food production model really sucks. we are raping the environment. we are making bad food cheap, and good food expensive. farmers are struggling nationwide. and i say WE, because it is our government, and our tax dollars. so sign it.

2. if you are within reasonable distance of san francisco, i urge you to come to this party tomorrow night, BEFORE 11pm, to see jay blow up the dancefloor. srsly. no joke. you do not want to miss this.

Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 10:00pm
Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 4:00am
Cellspace
2050 Bryant Street
SF, CA
$15 at the door
SPACE IS LIMITED, so come early. if you come late and don’t get in, blame yourself, not the recession.

rainy days and mondays

i am proud to say that after the last autobiographical post, i got right back on the exercise wagon, and have been dorking out at the Y all week. i did 3.25 classes this week in addition to other exercise, and right now, pretty much every muscle in my body is at least a little sore. the .25 is because i checked out the “hip hop dance” class on tuesday night, and after the first 15 minutes determined i was in no way qualified to be in that class and left. so. not. coordinated. monday i did step aerobics again. step class is also super difficult for me, not because it’s too strenuous (although my calves do still hurt, 5 days later) but because of the coordination thing, and usually i make it about 30 minutes through the class trying to follow along and keep up with the moves before my brain – not my body- gets tired. it’s really exhausting, concentrating that hard (do you burn more calories then?), and i know it eventually will probably get easier but it seems to be a very.slow.process for me. so anyway, after about 30 minutes of high-concentration, which is also usually about when the instructor introduces new moves/combinations that i can’t get, i generally give up trying to follow along and just start bouncing around on my step thing to my own rhythm and pattern. so yeah, i’m that dorky girl with the weird hair in the back of the class completely not following along and just bouncing around like some sort of hopped-up fraggle. that’s what i meant by dorking out.

on tuesday and thursday i did body sculpting, which is a combination of squats, abs, pushups, and weird ways to lift dumbells to tone your butt. i have a hard time really pushing myself when i am just working out freely, so as much as i generally don’t get into group activities, i’ve found that going to the scheduled classes at the gym forces me to work out harder than i would on my own. i also want to give props to Reagan for being a super inspiration on the work-out front. she’s just so damned enthusiastic about her own progress that i can’t help but be more motivated to work harder at mine.

besides that, i have been doing other things, even though it feels like all i’m doing is going to work–>gym–>sleep–>work–>gym–>sleep, so to back up to where we left off:

monday 2/2 : went to gym.

tuesday, 2/3: jay DJ’ed on yet another party bus in SF, and we went to ocean beach and the Sutro Baths ruins, which i’d never actually visited. it used to look like this; now it looks like this because somehow, a place filled with water on the edge of the ocean burned down. it was beautiful in the moonlight, but i want to go back there in the daytime. different crew of people, different vibe, different bus, different rules. so, the same, but different, which is good.

wed 2/4: i think i went to the gym.

thurs 2/5, went went to Tres Agaves in SoMa for dinner/margaritas and then I Love You Because… gallery opening, which was really love-filled and moving. the closing party is this saturday 2/14 @ Design Guild in SF.

fri 2/6 former-intern helen invited us to a sock-puppet party in berkeley on friday, which sounded like a fun change of pace. after work i went to Michael’s craft store and got some googly eyes and accessories, and then forced jay to make a sock puppet. we accessorized them even more after we got to the party, and i think they turned out pretty well. the party was fun, although after about 1.5/2 hours, it got just a touch too much to handle because everyone INSISTED that you always talk to their sock puppet, or include the sock puppet in the conversation. these people were very. VERY. into their sock-puppet alter-egos. the best one was the giraffe, by far. imagine a really tall guy with a really long orange sock puppet going around and eating all the plants in the house. i do, however, have more than a little tinge of regret that i didn’t go with judit et.al. to zombie prom that night instead. i mean: LOOK AT THIS. they went to Sizzler. in a white stretch limo. looking (and acting) like zombies. awesome.

sat 2/7 jay is DJ’ed the LoveBomb fashion event @ Mighty in the afternoon, and then we went to Pronoia @ Shine later that night. fashion+music+dancing always makes for a good saturday.

sunday 2/8 we had brunch, walked around west oakland for a while, and then it was off to jason’s for Neva’s 9 month-aversary party.

and then we’re back to the beginning of this post, where i spent all week at work and at the Y, except for dinner with Mary on wednesday night

this weekend, 2/13-2/16:
tonight we are going to a house/dance party (to be clear, not a house music party. a dance party @ someone’s house, with better music.), tomorrow we shall be attending both the LOVESICK lingerie + fashion show (watch out that site has SOUND! and maybe NSFW images), i as a humble non-runway representative of Miss Velvet Cream and jay as my hot date, and then to the above-linked closing party for I Love You Because. for sunday-monday i’ve rented us a cabin on the ocean up in Jenner, where it will undoubtedly be cold, wet, and rainy, but i think we’ll still have a good time. <3