Motorcycles for Dummies

So. It's been quite some time since I've written here, which is what inevitably happens when I start any sort of diary/journal/blog/regular-writing thing (I wonder how many abandoned blogs are out there in the blog-o-sphere?), so I shall just excuse myself and move on. *Ahem!* Except... in looking back at my last few posts, I realize I was incredibly, seethingly pissed off about everything for a few months there. No wonder I didn't want to revisit my blog! Let's be honest, I'm still pissed off about some of those things, less so about others, so it was worth writing about; I'm also still lamely dragging my feet on my qualifying paper, which is perhaps why I have come back to you in the end.

Oops. Guess my cover's blown.

Aside from shirking academic responsibility for the past several months, whilst shouldering a stupid amount of employment responsibilities (I knew I should have found myself a sugar-daddy for grad school), I have also been having a sordid love affair with my motorcycle. When I first started riding last summer, I was plagued with uncertainty and a lack of confidence. I bought a 1986 Honda Rebel 450 from another woman rider (to my great squealing delight and Scott's great amusement at said delight), which is an old, somewhat rare, but primitive standard cruiser (the Rebel 450s were only made in '86 and '87 before being discontinued). By primitive, I simply mean that you can see all of the motorcycle's parts; they're relatively easy to tinker with; and there are very few indicators on my bike. I don't even have a tachometer! I bought this bike first and foremost because the seat position makes it easy to ride for newbies like me, and secondly, because it is so basic, I thought I could easily learn how to tinker with my bike... I completely overestimated myself.

MSF courses are a great intro (and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to learn, regardless of whether you have mentors handy: http://www.msf-usa.org/), but the intro classes don't really teach you anything meaningful about the mechanics of your bike, like what or how to perform basic maintenance. I've spent most of my life being told "don't touch that! you'll break it!" Insert flashbacks of my older brother, who inspired me to ride and did teach me a little bit about mechanics - I at least know what a carburetor does in theory - but wouldn't let me touch anything. For a visual-haptic learner like myself, this is a surefire way to 1) bore me to tears as you explain things that I can neither see nor touch, particularly since at that time, I was not actually doing any riding except on the back of a motorcycle; 2) scare the crap out of me when the day finally arrives where I can and should touch something on a motorcycle because I am in the driver's seat and I need to maintain my bike!

When I first started tinkering, I was afraid to tug at any hoses (what if they tore?); timid about unscrewing anything (what if I couldn't get it back on, or I put it back together wrong?); and definitely worried that any pressure I put on my bike as I tinkered would knock it over and that would be the end of that! Some of this fear is psychological - my bro really pulled a number on me - thanks a lot, Bryan! But the other half is definitely monetary - if I do screw it up, I'll have to take it to a shop and pay someone to fix my hunk of metal with the kind of money that grad students don't have just laying around. Then again, if I don't take care of it now I'll still have to pay someone to fix my hunk of metal due to a lack of proper maintenance. At any rate, it's been a slow painful process of tinkering; reading manuals; reading blogs and fix-it web instructions; and fending off my husband and other male friends who know they can fix mechanical problems easier and faster than I can, but I am finally growing more comfortable with the functioning and mechanics of my bike. At least, the basic stuff. I can't take my engine apart or anything yet, but on my own, I recently changed my oil and filter; cleaned and lubed my chain (which no one told me I had to do as frequently as I discovered I should - oops); and most amazingly - I just replaced my old dead bike battery with a new one!!

...

I realize that all of this sounds like something that any idiot should be able to do, and in truth, any idiot should be able to do this, but converting my bike from a non-starting hunk of extremely heavy metal, to a happy hunk of moving metal was extremely gratifying. And riding is even more gratifying, now that I feel I have some small amount of mastery over what the bike actually does. All was going swimmingly, and I was riding more frequently, getting better at mastering tight and fast turns (I no longer have a slow trail of angry cars behind me in Napa!), and just generally feeling more comfortable with the operations of my Rebel, when she walked into my life. Oh my cheatin' heart...

I never really understood why my brother was so obssessed with the mechanical aspects of his motorcycling - the machine itself seemed to trump his interest in actually riding, and he was constantly tinkering and tuning and replacing and fixing. When he wasn't doing that, he was upgrading to different rides; I think he must've had 3 different bikes in a 5 year period. I thought, "why isn't he just happy riding? that's what this is about, isn't it?" (Any seasoned rider knows this is a very green statement). Just being able to ride is amazing. But I think I understand now.

My friend, who has ridden motorcycles for most of his life, just got an 1990-something clunky Bandit 600. It's ugly - it has a torn up seat, the engine case leaks oil when it's on its side-stand, there are cosmetic scratches and breaks in the rear faring, and his turn signals only sorta-kinda work. But he's a resourceful and mechanically gifted person, so I know he'll be able to fix it up in a jiffy. He pulled up glowing the other day - "wanna take it for a ride??" DO I EVER!! I was a little hesitant as I climbed on it - the problem with bigger bikes is that I'm vertically challenged and have to stand on my tip-toes to hold up even more weight (my bike weighs almost 400lbs; his bike weighs about 460lbs). I was also incredibly unsure of the seating position - on my bike, you sit like you're sitting in an office chair. On a Bandit, you're leaned forward, with your feet kicked slightly behind you - with all the extra weight under me, I was definitely intimidated. But - as soon as I started moving, I realized that riding my bike had never been this easy.

What have I been missing out on?!? Ugly though it was, the Bandit accelerated with ease, shifted smoothly, and wasn't nearly as difficult to come to a stop on - something about the weight distribution actually made stopping more effortless. And although the seating position scared me at first, I found it easier to turn corners because my body was tucked close to the bike. Amazing!

I may never look at my Rebel in the same way. Awesome starter though she was, I've definitely got the itch to move on the better things. Come spring, I hope I can find another new lady rider to give her a good home, learn to tinker, and generally build riding confidence...

The theme of this posting is "BUTTS". Yowza!

It's been quite awhile since my last posting, but there's a good reason for it, I swear. So, here goes:

I've been locked in dark musty dungeon, chained to a desk and having my bottom lashed by a wrinkly green gremlin with gnarly horns and sharp point-ed teeth whenever I ceased to work in order to sleep, to eat, pick my nose, whatever. Weirdly, I have kind of enjoyed this...

Ok, so that's not what really happened. Though, besides from the possibility that this might be some deep dark kinky fantasy of mine ("I kiiid, I kiiid..."), it wasn't that far from the truth. Since returning to sunny California after winter break with the family, I have done nothing but work on my godforsaken qualifying paper. This is in addition to taking two graduate seminars (one of which I was jedi-mind-tricked into keeping after the professor told me that no one was allowed to audit his class), doing a teaching assistantship, and working part-time...

WTF??!...

After getting over the initial shock of not experiencing the joy of weekend-rest anymore--is this what people feel like when they quit sleeping?--I got into the groove of things and figured the only way I would ever make it out of this quarter alive, was to buck up, churn out this paper, and keep plowing ahead with classes. Part of the reason I had to churn this paper out was due to the artificial deadlines I'd set for myself, including regular meetings and workshopping with a friend in a similar position, which was a wonderful experience, and I love this person to death for dealing with my crappy writing and helping me along; and a department sponsored paper-workshop/presentation where professors and students alike get to come tell you exactly what they think of you and your paper. Sometimes, the latter event entails being told that "you are amazing and wonderful and you've done a good job, we love you"; at other times, this entails being told "you are a deep-fried piece of asshat, and how dare you waste all of our time with this garbage you call academic writing!!!" Most of the time, paper presenters end up being told something in between, such as "Yawwwn...some of section X and Y was great, this, that, and the other needs to be reorganized, and this part wasn't clear--once you finish that, you can probably achieve the high honor of publishing your writing. Now (to a prior presenter), where is that latte you promised me, fried-asshat?"

So. I presented my paper this last Friday, and fully expected to have the last type of reaction; i.e., parts of the paper needed work, and I knew it. Other parts, I thought (and my fellow paper-buddy thought) were pretty damned awsome. I also had high hopes because Mr. Doctor, my favorite professor (who is on my paper committee--see prior postings) had already sent me a sweet note saying that there were a few things that he thought would need work, but overall, he was impressed with the job I'd done, and thought this was a kickass paper that was well on it's way to being done and ready for publication--woohoo! This is a man who by all accounts is really mean about papers and student work in general; he does not say nice things unless he really means it because he's a hardass. Which is part of the reason he is my favorite professor. That, and a great pair of buns. Just kidding. Okay, maybe not... *AHEM* Moving on!

At any rate, I was expecting something less than the deep-fried asshat reception that I recieved. Totally lame. Usually, even when people at these workshops are saying to your face that you are a deep-fried piece of asshat, they at least remember to preface their vulture-like feasting with a couple of preparatory pats on the back. "This formatting wasn't so bad...Good margins. I also really liked the font that you used!" None of that this time. And I really liked my font too...I've become quite fond of Calibria. At any rate, the tone of the workshop was vitriolic to say the least--for some reason, my paper pissed people off royally. Possibly because it had to do with sex work, but was not a sexy paper (I refuse to offer a voyeuristic account of a group of people that have been objectified by researchers for their sensationalist appeal, ad infinitum); possibly because I was using theoretical constructs as the object of my analysis, rather than people or organizations (again, see the remark on objectification); or possibly because my paper was a deep-fried piece of asshat, and none of my friends and favorite cronies would tell me because they love me too much or they think I'm fragile. It is also entirely possible that the people present at this workshop all just hate my guts and I somehow never realized it before. Oops.

At any rate, the moral of the story is, I have now been labeled as "fried asshat", and somehow, I am supposed to work even harder this quarter in order to redeem myself to something along the lines of...perhaps just "fresh asshat". That's better than fried, right?

So what's a gal to do? Get back to her tushy-lashing work-gremlin, that's what. I told you the theme of this posting was "butts"--what did you expect?

...

A list for you; this is all I can muster at the moment...

Really excited about:

• Obama ("yes we can!")!!!
• The overturn of Prop 4

Really demoralized about:

• The passage of Prop 8
• The loss of Prop 5
• The loss of Prop K in San Francisco
• My therapist being a jackass (perhaps to be elaborated elsewhere)
• My professor allowing lying students off the hook because she's too afraid to call their BS, but won't allow me to do it
• Interviews with crazy people who yell at me and dump all their emotional baggage on my shoulders because they think they can
• All the work I have ahead of me...

I think I need a personal pep talk from Obama.

Post-Halloween Reflections...

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays of the year.

When else do you get to stuff dozens of cute little munchkins full of several pounds of crazy-inducing sugar before sending them away to annoy their parents and not you? When else do you get to dress up like a jackass all day and no one bats an eyelash? When else do you get to smash other people's porch decorations, simply because they're there and you're drunk/bored/angry/sad? (*disclaimer*: I've never actually done this...but I could, 'sall I'm saying...)

Halloween is also an amazing time for wild drunken festivities (*rubs hands together with glee*). In other words, this is one of those delightful holidays when you are encouraged--nay, required--to throw caution to the wind, leave your inhibitions at the door, and party hardy. Similar to St. Patty's Day, but even better, because you can act like a drunken ass completely incognito if you'd like. The only problem is, unless you are in a large city and plan on bar-hopping the wee hours away, the people you are most likely to party with, are your friends. These are people who already know you, who will continue to know you after you/they have sobered up, and chances are, at least one of them will remember all of the asinine things you did whilst intoxicated.

Enter, my friend Mary (have I mentioned that all the names on this blogs are pseudonyms?). Sober, Mary is already one of the least inhibited people I know. I've always assumed that people like that don't have much further down the 'inhibitions-lost' trail-to-sloppy to go; she showed me.

Now, most of my evening was spent in a drunken happy daze, karaoke-ing like an asshat, and yabbering about nothing in particular with people whose company I enjoy. My fiance Scott was having a good time being drunkenly ornery with random people that he didn't really know (this is his usual M.O.). Mary spent much of the evening making kissy faces for the camera, humping people's legs on the dance floor, groping at people and telling everyone how hot they were (this, I can't really blame her for; everyone was kind of hot). Fastforward to the end of the evening when I am close to fully sober sitting in an IHOP waiting for a table with both Mary and Scott (all in a row with Mary in the middle), neither of whom remembers what sober means. Mary is now trying to forcibly put lipstick on Scott, who is both verbally and physically resisting with the greatest politesse that he could muster in his drunken state. She keeps trying to convince him that he needs to wear it so that she can "kiss it off of your lips because you're so hot"--I am sitting next to her boring holes in the back of her head...

WTF??!!?!

Now, of all people, I totally understand the art of drunken flirtation. Who doesn't like to tell and be told how hot they are through a haze of alcoholic bliss? However, I draw the line at trying to make a move on my girlfriends' significant others, regardless of how drunk I am or how hot your significant other is--and yes, some of you have very hot dudes/chics, as the case may be. I am especially averse to making a move on your dudes/chics when you are standing right next to me. I'll say it once more: WTF?!!? I'm totally cool with other people having fluid relationship boundaries and/or practicing polyamory; however, just because you are practicing free love, doesn't mean everyone else will be: "back off, bitch!" (pulls out a bag of WhoopAss potatoes...) (*I might take this moment to point out that while I am generally politically progressive, a proponent of diplomacy and anti-war/anti-violence in the grand scheme of things, I am not strictly a pacifist--translated, this means that I will kick some ass wild-baboon-style if the circumstance calls for it).

Now, Mary quit her drunken slobberings as soon as I told her to cease and desist (mind you, Scott had already requested this about 15 times at this point), and then proceeded to loudly yell apologies and make a scene at IHOP before pronouncing that she was not feeling well (go figure)--I carted both their drunk asses to the car and drove them home.

Moral of the story? Intact social inhibitions exist for a reason--they prevent us from acting like complete asshats and pissing off our friends/families/pigs/random strangers/(insert weird entity here). If you are a known asshat when drunk, please drink responsibly or stay the hell away from the people you like, and whom you would like to continue to like you back.

Mary left my house in a hurry the next morning (er, 12noon is in fact "morning" after a long night of party-ness), without saying much. I'm not sure whether she was embarrassed for her ass-hat-edness, or simply couldn't remember it. Who the hell knows...

Bite me.

Several years ago, when I first applied to graduate school, I imagined going to a place where my intellect would be challenged, where I'd encounter new ideas and exciting thoughtful people, where I could become the woman I've always wanted to be! A place where I would promote and adhere to lofty principles of learning for the sake of learning, where struggling, and failing, and picking yourself back up again were all part of a long torturous road to Truth with a capital T! A place where mentors would pat you on the back in a "you can do it" sort of way, and help you make your way up that long nasty road, through ice and cold and icky prickly hail, and yuck and muck!

Some of that is still there--certainly, the icky yuck and muck, and the long torturous roads and the struggling...

But lately, I feel like that pat on the back is missing; as are those lofty ideals of learning for the sake of learning. A couple of days ago, I got the proverbial shit beat out of me with a sack of potatoes labeled, "Institutional WhoopAss." On that long road to becoming that person that I want to be, I didn't realize that I would be reduced to a crying, screaming, impetuous child.

For my first couple of years, I coasted (very fortunately) through school on a fellowship; this year is the first that I have been a teaching assistant. This isn't a totally unwelcome experience for me--in fact, I've been looking forward to it. How does one learn to teach without practice? And as someone who's deathly afraid of public speaking, this is an invaluable experience, if not incredibly frightening. With the exception of one superbly rotten student (on the very first day of section during an icebreaker, she decided to inform me and everyone else that "THIS IS STUUUUUPIDD...ugh!"), things seem to be going as well as they can be. I'm not sure my students are getting everything, but I'm trying as best I can to convey the material--the only problem is... overall, they are sooooo apathetic. Granted, the class I am teaching for is not based on the most exciting stuff...but I still want them to get it, and at least take the relevant info from this course to apply in real life. That's unlikely for most, so at the very, very least: they should learn to think critically; ok, even lower than that, I want them to be able to fully read through and understand a page of text (some of them can't even do that)...

I currently have a stack of exams and exercises to grade, and the norming sessions have not been going well: on Tuesday, I discovered that I am a mean, terrible bastard of a TA. I read a paper that I thought was regurgitated balogne--as in, the questions were adequately answered and correct, but it wasn't applied terribly well to the assignment. I figured it could have been written without doing the assignment at all, really. I gave it a C-. The professor and the seasoned TA that I was working with gave it an A+. I balked, but listened as I got a list of standards of evaluation after the fact. Awsome sauce. So, I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling like an ass who can't grade for shit--it's such an arbitrary task. The sad thing is, now that I've gone through most of the assignments, I realize that that paper was an A+. Where have the standards gone?

I am also a mean bastard of a TA because I told the students that their papers would lose 1/3 of a grade for each 24-period period after the due date that they turned in their assignments. This is a very lenient policy by my standards (the professor's of course) that only results in a loss of about 3 points out of 100. When the students said, "but on the syllabus, it says 'for every business day'", I thought, surely this is a typo--"Ignore that! Consider it to be every 24-hour period after the due date." During the same norming session, the professor said, "No, I actually meant business days. If I don't expect to work on the weekends, why should I expect the students to?" ...

Well. Because, as your TA, I work on the weekends, grading these crappy papers for you! *Sigh* Undermined, yet again. The other TA doesn't agree with me (she's done this enough that she knows to just submit)--she says I just have to lower my standards because the students will always disappoint me. But why? When I was an undergraduate (and no, I'm not some old monster--that was only a few years ago), most of my professors had "no late assignments" or "you lose a FULL GRADE each day that you're late" policies. And no doubt, students have extracurriculars, jobs, families, social lives that they are juggling in addition to school--but I still don't think that's an excuse. I did all of those things too, but I made my education a priority because I knew it was a privilege, not a right. I was there of my own volition; nobody made me go to college.

Just as I've started, I'm already getting the will to teach well (and by that, I only mean with some sense of responsibility and caring about students' education) beaten out of me.

To top it off that day, my favorite professor and mentor was in a terrible-no-good-grouchy-mood when I went to go see him. Obviously, at this point, I could relate. But I sort of needed a pat on the back, not another smack from the WhoopAss potatoes.

A lot of grad school is like fumbling around your very first heavy petting session in the dark--you know, when you were trying to get to third base, but you weren't sure exactly what you were grabbing at below the waist, and thinking 'Is it supposed to feel like that??! Sweet Jeebus!' At any rate, I went to ask Mr. Doctor to be on my qualifying paper committee--something that you only do once--and I wasn't sure exactly sure how formal I was supposed to be about it. Fortunately, Mr. Doctor is the least formal of the faculty here; translated, this means he is the most human and relatable, and not a wax mannequin. Even though I had every intention of being normal when I asked, I still sounded like I was asking for some sort of weird date--should I have shown up with flowers in a tux?--because this is a milestone in the program, and it means something important to me. He grumbled at me: "Sure. But you could have just asked me over email. I kind of already assumed I was on your committee." "Um... well then, I just wanted to stop by to say hello! Haha...ha..." And to waste your time; oops. And then I was in the lion's den.

I was subsequently subjected to a horrible lecture about how I shouldn't get lazy, my reputation is depending on this paper deadline. I should be done with it by the end of winter quarter--"how come you're not going to be done by the end of this quarter like we talked about??" "Umm...because it's qualitative, and that takes more time than quantitative work." "That's no excuse! No one on the job market is going to care about that!"

So, irony of ironies, I'm tough on my students, and then my mentor is tough on me. I know this is ultimately good for me in the end, but I am already ahead of the game and in good standing. Where's the pat on the back? Guess I just don't get one--yet. *Sigh* It's going to be a long year...

Election Day is COMING!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G_7CzddUR4

Ok, so I know I just posted for today, and this is only my third post (EVER! no pressure, right?...), but: This upcoming election is so chock-full-o'-exciting/potentially explosive stuff, that I can barely keep my little booties on.

We may have the very first black president in U.S. history. We have tons of people rallying against Prop 8 and Prop 4 in an effort to protect the right of gays and lesbians to marry in the state of CA, and to prevent the stymying of abortion rights, respectively. (http://www.feministing.com/archives/011848.html);(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/18/EDFC12VPTR.DTL); and if you want completely unbiased information: http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/

And in San Francisco only (not statewide), we have Proposition K, a measure that would decriminalize prostitution (check out this website--if you want unbiased info, just read the text of the proposition: http://www.yesonpropk.org/). Hence, the giant picture of Sadie Lune at the top of this post--Sadie, you rock my socks off! She won a Tony Labat sponsored contest at the SFMOMA to have this poster up all over SF a few days before election day. This measure is a landmark--it takes up recommendations from the Final Report of the San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution (1996). Regardless of what you may think about the morality of prostitution, this measure would give power back to sex workers by allowing them to (legally!) speak up and out against violence that is done to them and their communities (most are currently afraid to go to the police to report assaults against them, because they fear being arrested themselves; and may I remind you of this ridiculous case: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/31/america/NA-GEN-US-Prostitute-Rape.php I hope Judge Deni rots in hell...); work and collaborate independently without pimps; form labor unions to ensure safe working conditions; have safer sex without fear of prosecution (condoms have been used in court against prostitutes as evidence of their criminal activity...!!! How fucked up is THAT?); allows for a clear distinction between sex work and sex trafficking, so that we can focus on real problems of exploitation and coercion. Awsome sauce.

Will it pass? Who knows, but I'm rooting for it. Hats off to all the women, men, and trans workers who have been fighting for your right to be treated equally under the law; you are my heroes!

I will be voting:

For Obama.

No on Prop 8.

No on Prop 4.

And although I'm not in SF, I am going to bully all of my SF friends into voting YES ON K!

Vitamin C...not the kind you get in oranges

Where do the days go? I swear I was sitting in this exact same spot, doing the exact same thing not two minutes ago...but really, it was yesterday; no, it was the day before; no--perhaps the day before that.

You know you're slowly going mad when you consistently begin to skip coffee to start work immediately after rolling out of bed. Not only does this course of action have a major zombifying effect, it also leads to insanely slow work. For someone who's been addicted to caffeine since she was 12 (that's right; I've been a coffee-holic for more than half of my life. "The first step to recovery is admitting that..."), this behavioral pattern is indicative of an extremely troubled psyche... The immediate cause? Graduate school. The solution?...

And here's the rub: I can't figure out the answer without my coffee!