[I am the weed wacker in the garden of evil!]

Just read a [slander column] on racial "revolution" via procreative miscegenation. The idea of a "melting pot" as the solution to racial discord is just eerie to me, but [worsethanqueer] really does an amazing job of pulling apart such an "assimilative eugenics," exposing some of the racial and sexual ideologies behind its seemingly revolutionary facade.

[What a girl wants?]

Isn't it interesting how the present tense seems to be the preferred tense for relating dream experiences? (Or maybe it's just me . . . )

So just the other day I got an e-mail from my brother, a generally chatty e-mail about how he's a little overwhelmed at his new job. This e-mail is strange because our exchanges had sort of dropped off back in early October. At that point, he was ready to come visit me here in North Carolina before he started working at the end of the month. He never did.

You see, my brother and I have a weird relationship. We're close, I would say, largely because we're twins and we grew up together, constantly in each other's presences through high school. At that point, I left for the Northeast and he for Southern California for college. Things have not been the same ever since.

When I came out to my family about four years ago, things got even crazier. My brother was told by my sister (after the trauma of telling my parents, I couldn't deal with telling my other siblings and this one sister already knew). And he did not seem to take it well. He wrote me a letter saying that he would always be my brother, despite his belief that I was deluding myself. And then for almost a year we didn't talk.

But then we gradually re-established a dialogue and he flew out to the East Coast the following year to visit me and my sister. Unfortunately, I think that visit only exacerbated the discomforts. He met Joe, although I did not tell him that he was my special friend. Long story short, when my brother said he wanted to come visit me in October, I e-mailed him back enthusiastically, but with a note that I am living with Joe. You see, I had never really told him. And that was when talk of his visit sort of disappeared. Maybe there were other reasons. I don't know. But the (lack of) evidence seems to show some sort of causal link here.

And maybe that's why he showed up in my dream last night as a sort of constant (yet constantly disappearing) presence.

Unrelated: [World mocks U.S. vote]

Yours, &c.

I need to work on this falling-asleep by 10 pm thing . . .

So anyways, back to dream blogging. It was a Wonderland-like experience that I remember, although that could be one of those associations that I'm making as part of the dream (you know, like when you think, wow, this experience I'm having reminds me of x, even though it doesn't really resemble x at all).

First part: I go in late to a reading group meeting. There's only one seat left on the far side of the room and I have to squeeze by everyone to get to it. The room is hot and stifling, too. I sit down, and realize that I won't be able to leave early very easily. I wish that I hadn't bothered to come, since I hadn't done the reading anyways. There's this guy to the left of me. His name is Ben. (I don't know who he is). He seems to me to be kissing up to our professor who's also part of this group. It's agony as I try to pretend to know something about the reading so I might be able to say something in discussion, but I don't. And then we take a break, and there are all these delicious treats. There's cheesecake that looks delicious. But I never try it . . .

I'm with my brother Leon and we're in a city. Maybe it's San Francisco. There's something that's happened before all this, but I can't remember now, or maybe it was never in the dream. We enter a large multi-level Niketown store. And we're relieved, finally to be shopping for clothes (note: this is weird). On that street-level floor, we look around at t-shirts on racks. We both want a Superman t-shirt, but we can't find that "standard" short-sleeved, vibrant blue version with the logo on front. At some point, I get diverted by comic-book storage boxes. I see one labeled "Lee, Jae," and I remember that he worked on something that I liked. But when I got up close to the box, all I found were romance-novel-like adapted-from-movie-like books.

My brother and I go down the escalators to a lower level. We take a right turn (physical space is sometimes what I remember clearest about dreams) and enter the shoe zone. My brother is big into shoes, so he gravitates to it. But I see just to the other side, a counter with stuff. I can't say what stuff now because it seemed to shift endlessly. I looked first for something in particular on the shelves, but couldn't find it amongst the diarray of partially opened merchandise. So I went up to ask at the counter. At first, the guy said, speak up, can't hear you. Then it seemed like my brother was all of a sudden next to me again and as I was stuttering through the words, I managed to ask for some Polaroid film. The guy asked for clarification, and for a while, I couldn't remember the type of Polaroid camera I had, and I tried to talk around it, circumlocuting, as my Spanish teacher in high school would say. Fun stuff. New. Then I remembered it as the Joycam. So the guy said they did have film and would get it for me.

Now this is where it gets weird. I'm waiting for him to get the film. Then he starts making this brew or something in a cauldron-like area on the side of the counter. It's got large mushrooms and capers or something in it. It's a clear broth, it looks like. And the guy adds something to it which I realize is "the thing" I asked for. But it's no longer film. And then my brother is there again by my side and someone else working behind the counter gives us a dessert treat, this sweet peanut soup thing that my mom used to make. My brother declined it, but I had some. And then I ask the guy making the broth for me if the "tea" is ready, and he gives me a startled look. He says he didn't realize I wanted it in tea-form. And so I say oh no it's no big deal. (So is this some sort of herbal remedy thing I'm getting?)

And then I'm still waiting so I go off to the side, right of the counter, into a dressing room-like place to relax. I put my stuff down and everything. And then all of a sudden, the whole space seems to be different and I'm in a house. The dressing-room is sort of a living room with a couch and TV. I start thinking about rearranging the furniture so that it doesn't seem so much like it's hiding in a corner.

Then I'm in a different sort of living space, just having come back with a friend from a store (and all the while I'm still thinking about that broth that I'm waiting for). The dressing room from the store is now my little space off of this living room. People come and go. Some girl comes back and says how much she hates physics. I agree.

There are weird beeping noises in my dream.

My alarm clock goes off.

Need to work on [InstantKnowledge] study guide for James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room.

Do you [bust ads]?

Here's an online [petition] calling for a recasting of votes from Palm Beach County, Florida, because of the confusion caused by the ballot. A recasting of the votes would mean more than just recounting the votes. It could mean thousands of votes going to Gore rather than Buchanan. As I understand the situation, thousands of ballots were also discarded because they had votes for more than one candidate for president (perhaps due to the confusion of the layout of the ballot).

["I've got another 10 weeks to quack."]

I am the terror that flaps in the night!

I'd forgotten that shadowy duck came from the short-lived but marvelous Disney cartoon, [Darkwing Duck]. I guess I'll just have to be an amalgamation of both Darwking Duck and Shadowcat.

Eeeeeeeeenteresting:

Slash n. A fanfic story pairing two characters of the same sex, with or without variations on that theme. Within-slash-standard ratings appear story by story. I've added htm links to expurgated versions of the NC-17 stories, which versions usually came out rated about PG-13. Said ratings are all for adult situations and intimate encouters; with the exceptions of the two labeled spoofs and "Shock Treatment", there's no swearing that can't be used on prime-time network TV. If you're under 18 or there are other legal problems with slash where you live, well, you've been warned. (The expurgated versions contain all the plot of the more explicit versions; sometimes there's a small amount of expository dialogue missing, but the stories remain coherent.)

(Taken from [Blue Champagne].)

Must look into this slash further . . .

I may be shadowy duck, but I think my superhero name would be shadowduck, after the inimitable (hah) [Shadowcat]. She was always one of my favorite superheroes. Plus, she was part of the original [Excalibur] lineup. That fifty issue story-arc involving the Phoenix force and Merlyn and all was absolutely breathtaking. After all, how could you go wrong with attempting to emulate someone who can walk through walls and has gone through numerous names in the course of her superhero career (Kitty Pryde, aka Ariel, aka Sprite, aka Shadowcat . . . )?

Making some quesadillas for lunch. It's a wonder that I even thought I could get out of the apartment before noon.

Got invited to join a [BuffyLog] today. Be prepared for much Buffy blogging mayhem!

Wow. I guess I must have been more tired than I thought I was to post that strange, sappy message last night. Oh well.

And miles to go before I [sleep] . . .

(An entry whispered onto the server from a quiet room.)

The humming of electrical appliances, the passing of the occasional car out on the lonely, sparsely-lit street, the gentle breathing of Joe--these all point me towards the warmth and softness of bed and blankets. But still I sit here at my desk, the reading for tomorrow's class at my side as I try to eke out a written response.

Late night musings tend towards the dark and deep. It must be the quiet of the night, the heavy weight of dreams that seems to push against the silence of my self-obsessed mind. If I concentrate hard enough, can I hear someone else's dreams?

I remember how as a child I used to stay up late just so I could be the only one still awake in the house. Surrounded so constantly by family, school, and my twin brother--a comforting satellite of my existence (though he would surely not like to think of himself that way)--I felt at last vulnerable in the dead of night. The sound of wind rustling leaves on the trees around the house, the shadows cast by the meager desk light illuminating the pages of my book, these things became my world at the stroke of midnight. Oddly enough, this exacerbated sense of solitude only seemed to blur that line between my consciousness and the world outside.

It was always the knowledge of others--the presence of my brother in his bed across the room, my parents down the hall performing their nightly cacophony of snores, the sound of a singer's voice in the music I played to myself through muted headphones--that made possible my retreat into this world-apart yet a-part. I felt (and feel) as if a web of dreams, so to speak, the collective unconsciousness of my family, the others in the city, held me safe while the night exposed. I could alternately delve into the world of a story or deeper into my own thoughts. This was a time I often wrote or drew. It was as if I needed time and space apart from the social world, yet could only be apart in the comfort of its presence (albeit subdued and asleep).

How little, it seems, has changed.

The woods are lovely, dark and [deep] . . .

Anne asks, "Hmm am I going to be in a blog now?" Sorry to disappoint you, but probably not. ;-) And no, the blog isn't really some sort of "pseudo-performance artist" thing. Although, now that you mention it, that's a far more interesting way to think of it than "my confessional on-line journal."

Keep rocking Better Fangs :F? babe.

More [X-Men Evolution]! And the [Marvel Comics] website with a page on the [X-Men].

The [baby] is so smart! I think he figured out why my car was seeming to die on me. LOW ON GAS! The gas gauge needle was hovering just above the last line. I was in fact trying to see when the gas-low indicator light would come on. Apparently it's broken. Or it only comes on once it's REALLY out of gas. I estimate that there must've been at least a gallon of gas left in the tank. Anyways, since I was low on gas, the fact that I was parked on a downward slope probably made it difficult for the car to deliver enough fuel to the engine on starting. Or something. In any case, I didn't have any problems with the car after I filled it up with gas on Saturday. And this morning was the coldest by far, so it's probably not a problem with coldness. We hope.

Had a strange dream this morning between 4:45 am and 6:00 am. I was living with Joe back in my parents' house in California (they no longer lived there). It was so . . . domestic. It was a morning, and we were getting ready to go off to our respective jobs. I was frantic, running around trying to remember what I was forgetting (I knew I was forgetting SOMEthing). Then my sister Josephine came over and she and Joe were talking and laughing. They both thought I was just exaggerating about being late for work, etc. etc. It was 7:30 (or 8:30), and I had to be at work by the top of the hour. I knew it took half an hour just to drive to work (here at UNC?). And then finding parking was another matter entirely. But J+J just kept laughing and going about their business . . .

Maybe I just don't understand satire. Saw Spike Lee's new film, Bamboozled, last night. (I know, lots of movies and TV these past few days . . . ) Can't say it worked for me. Was very disjointed and while it touched on many stereotypes of African Americans past and present, lacked any coherent, discernible narrative or angle of critique about the stereotypes. Still, as a sort of historical or documentary artifact of such stereotypes and representations, is thought-provoking.

No, Communism was [just] a red herring.