I asked one guy if he had any chronic illnesses and he started laughing and said, “Like CHRONIC… ill-ness?” Then he put his head down on my desk because he was super high.
In the mornings I have been working at a homeless outreach center that helps people get state IDs, doctor referrals, food stamps, glasses, whatever. It’s unlike other places where I’ve worked with people experiencing homelessness because no one bothers to spin you a long yarn; there are strict limits to what we can give and to whom we can give it, so there is no point to arousing my sympathy. It spares me stories like the fictional daughter’s first period or the fictional cheating ex-wife who gave the dude AIDS so he got teardrop tattoos since he is now eternally sad. (Still mad about that one—like, give me credit, dickhead, I know about teardrop tattoos.) (Bookmark this idea: the particular self-centeredness of chronically homeless people.)
Anyway today this woman with Madonna arms came in with her adult son, and she is the first person who’s given me a long wash of details about her life. I had to verify her employment, and it took 30 minutes and involved too many phone numbers. She asked if we could give her money to move from a shelter into a hotel room with her son. I looked over to the next office to see him, and he didn’t look much younger than her. They both requested transit cards, which are resellable. Is she a grifter? Was that really her son? Was that even a business I called?
The instructive thing about working here is that none of those answers matter; you give to people anyway, you accept getting scammed as a cost of helping people. For a nation that frets about earning and deserving, that stance counts as countercultural.
[video]
[video]
The Aeropress is my favorite coffee brewing method. Fast, makes a cup instead of a pot, no sediment gets through unlike with a shitty French press, no bitterness, easier to clean. The coffee’s flavor is noticeably clearer.
Anyway it’s fucking with my head to find out that there is an annual World Aeropress Championship at which people concoct new, complicated brewing recipes. Look at how pissed Ingri was to lose to Charlene. I was making coffee like an idiot, brewing slavishly by the directions, while Charlene is heating 250 grams of water to 85°C and wetting the filter before use. Nothing can be simple.
Preparing for death
(via humancomputer)
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A lot of people have expressed impatience or eye-rolling about Obama’s statement on same-sex marriage. I keep wondering: what would it have looked like for him to do justice on this issue this week? What actions would you have had him do? What is he legislatively capable of changing in the near term? These aren’t rhetorical questions.
I have low expectations for presidents, both because of how government works and because of the personality traits necessary to become a president; their power seems tightly constrained and their will to do good faint. So even though I know it is misplaced, some part of me still wants a president to be a moral leader. That part felt proud this week. I am unconcerned about being manipulated for political gain. To have truth spoken—that LGBT people should be treated equally by law—is good.
But we don’t elect presidents to be moral leaders, not if we’re sane. We look to more fitting sources. Also, presidents are bad at effecting cultural change, and we hope that our moral leaders will be good at it.
The obstacle in front of same-sex marriage is not Obama but fellow citizens, and the responsibility of changing minds falls democratically to us. We have to be moral leaders of people.
“Let me be clear,” I do not think that changing culture involves haranguing people on the Internet.
Go, my hair, to the lonely and the unsatisfied,
I have cut you off.
Go also to the Locks of Love Foundation,
Who told me they may give my hair to some spiteful children whom they hate,
Who have made doctors’ and foster parents’ lives a hell.
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors.
Go as a great wave of cool water,
Bear my contempt of oppressors.
Go to the bourgeoisie who is dying of her ennui,
Go to the ex-girlfriend in a lackluster relationship,
Thinking fondly of the times she touched my hair.
Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted,
Go to the two women on Tumblr
On whom I had crushes in 2009.
Go to the unluckily mated,
Go to the woman entailed.
Go like a blight upon the dullness of the world;
Go with your edge against this,
Strengthen the subtle cords,
Because when I cut off all my hair tonight,
I didn’t feel like Richie Tenenbaum trying to kill himself
But like Jean Claude Van Damme shaving his head in a movie I never saw,
Becoming stronger,
Against all forms of oppression,
Against those who are thickened with middle age,
Against those who have lost their interest,
Ready to be a real motherfucker.
Go in a friendly manner,
Go with an open speech.
Be eager to find new evils and new good
And probably make out with one of the Coathangers
At their show at Southern Comfort tomorrow night.
Go against this vegetable bondage of the blood.
Be against all sorts of mortmain.
I met Jane at the punch bowl. She was socking it down and chatting with the librarian honcho who was her boss. He was a Scotsman with a mountain of book titles for his mind. Jane said he’d never read a book in thirty years, but he knew the hell out of their names. Jane truly liked to talk to fat and old guys best of all. She didn’t ever converse much with young men. Her ideal of a conversation was when sex was nowhere near it at all. She hated all her speech with her admirers because every word was shaded with lust implications. One of her strange little dreams was to be sort of a cloud with eyes, ears, mouth. I walked up on them without seeing and heard her say: “I love you. I’d like to pet you to death.” She put her hand on his poochy stomach.
So then I was hitting the librarian in the throat and chest. He was a huge person, looked something like a statue of some notable gentleman in ancient history. I couldn’t do anything to bring him down. He took all my blows without batting an eye.
“You great bastard!” I yelled up there. “I believed in You on and off all my life! There better be something up there like Jane or I’ll humiliate You! I’ll swine myself all over this town. I’ll appear in public places and embarrass the shit out of You, screaming that I’m a Christian!”
from “Love Too Long,” Barry Hannah
How are women supposed to compete with these unrealistic standards of beauty?
Things to make your life comfortable
Last night we were talking about mutual acquaintances. One of the acquaintances has Asperger’s with strong symptoms.
M., a scientist by training, created a scale to gauge peoples’ sensitivity that ranged from the Asperger’s sufferer (least) to me (most). He named the units of measure “ESUs.”
I enjoyed the moment because, while I think of myself as sensitive, sometimes I lose track of how much I have performed being sensitive in public. I have wondered if people in this social circle think of me as harsh or a cold fish. But it feels good to be known and even better to be known for a trait that one appreciates about himself.
“Do you never worry about anything?”
“I have a secret defence, Mr. Wormold. I am interested in life.”
“So am I, but…”
“You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us — I’m sorry; I wasn’t referring to your wife. But if you are interested in life it never lets you down. I am interested in the blueness of the cheese. You don’t do crosswords, do you, Mr. Wormold? I do, and they are like people: one reaches an end. I can finish any crossword within an hour, but I have a discovery concerned with the blueness of cheese that will never come to a conclusion — although of course one dreams that perhaps a time might come… One day I must show you my laboratory.”
“I must be going, Hasselbacher.”
“You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.”