Dark Friday: Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death

It's been time to re-think our brand of capitalism for a while, but this story is pretty pure evidence of our need to enhance empathy for others and tone down competitive consumerism.

New York Times Article: Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death by Customers

You may think that situation sounds absurd and you would never be a part of something so crazed, but really how often are we passive parts of this same system that creates behavior like the aforementioned? Let us stand up for something better in each small situation in which money and materials take precedence over cooperation and compassion so that larger, more obvious examples, like a Wal-Mart stampede, never occur.

A local example of this can be found at Blue Hanger (the Goodwill outlet on Springdale) when the employees are re-filling the bins and people wait like eager lions ready to elbow each other out of the way once they're allowed to start grabbing items. Just watch, and feel what it feels like instead to be a serene presence amongst that mayhem. See how it affects others and see how the feeling of competition even affects you when you're there. We are all connected! Let's start acknowledging it with our behavior!

Dance People!!

I love Gloria Estefan for her fearless hottie-bear-ness in this video.

Why is she so contemporary stylie in this white silken jacket and jumpsuit?

Sadly I can't embed it. But here's the link:

Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, "Conga"

Transgender Day of Remembrance, Austin

November 20th was TENT's (Transgender Education Network of Texas) Austin vigil at City Hall for International Transgender Day of Remembrance. Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day in honor of the lives of people who were killed because they did not conform to traditional gender norms. Some of those killed identified as transgender, transsexual, or none of the above, some dated someone who identified as something other than the traditional gender binary and were killed for doing so.

Each attendant was given a glow stick instead of a typical vigil candle. This proved to be a very sentimental symbol, as my sweetie and I still have our glow sticks sitting in our room and their glow fades a little more each day.

TENT's vigil honored those who were murdered for their radical gender identities by having twenty-nine empty chairs on the stage, one for each person murdered for their gender identity in 2008. At the very end of the vigil, one of the organizers read the full 2008 TDOR Names List, and as each name was read, someone from the crowd came up and sat in one of the seats. Live, human bodies, transgender, transexual, beautiful beings in varying expressions of gender, emerged from the crowd to populate the chairs. They then sat in silence and we all soaked in the reality of these killings.

There is still no legislation banning hate crimes based on gender identity. Some states still do not have legislation protecting transgender people from job discrimination. As a sidenote, Vermont, is the only state in America that has never had an anti-transgender murder occur in it.

East Austin Studio Tour Recommendations

Of the art I saw yesterday on the East Austin Studio Tour, I was most impressed with the work of Yale MFA grad and San Marcos, TX-dweller, Annie Simpson. She's a guest in the studios on Bolm Road this weekend.

The work Annie is showing at the Bolm studios is all maritime, figurative, and extremely well-made. The video above, from her website, is a great introduction to what you'll see. Annie Simpson's work at the Bolm studios includes intricate pencil drawings of ships, oil paintings of ship captain-esque hot lezzies, and large black and white oil paintings of waves. All the work is oceanic in some form except a patterned pink and green canvas that Annie threw in for fun. Her mastery of the craft of painting is abundantly evident and I highly recommend going to see her work.

Other highlights of the tour include:

-Basically all the Big Medium artists, (on Bolm Rd) with the biggestmedium nod to Joseph Philips' paintings/drawings of remaining wilderness being hemmed in and propped up by plywood in the emptiness of white voids.

-Emily Hoyt and Debra Broz (with an emphasis on her revised porcelain figurines actually), both at the Pump Project Art Complex.

-Most of the work at the MASS gallery on Springdale, with a huge special emphasis on a collaborative piece by Anthony Romero and another artist involving hair, orange flowers and a contact paper covered box that seemed to reference a speaker box. It was a fucking gem of greatness. That's my review.

-Co-Lab_A New Media Project Space, had a fun, collaborative piece going on if you want to get to make some art in the midst of looking at so much.

As a sidenote, this google map of E.A.S.T. is just so good looking.
Out to see more today.

Adrienne Brabham is nice and different.

detail
Originally uploaded by niceisdifferent

Adrienne Brabham, an Austinite living outside Detroit and attending Cranbrook Academy of Art, has just started Nice is Different, a blog for her work. Her etsy store already features small items of her work for purchase: felt pins, drawings and fabric-art wall-pieces, etc.

Now, her larger, Cranbrook, studio work is up for view. She's only posted one piece so far, but it's worth investigating further. A conglomeration of small drawings on paper and fabric, the wall worth of installation is a beautiful representation of Adrienne's unique aesthetic rubric. Soak it up with your eyes!

Adrienne's sweetie, Scott, is the lead singer of the local indie dance band the Black and White Years. The band has a show coming up at Emo's on December 11th. Go see them and dance. The B&WY go on at the Independent Workforce Christmas Party that night at 8:20 pm.

Opalescent blue slug penises!

If you've never seen this video, it's time:

Oh that is good.

Now for some really good bug videos:

Beyonce as Sasha Fierce

Here's my version of a VICE Do & Don't:

DON'T- Beyonce as "Sasha Fierce," her alter ego who is "wild" and out there with French writings on her myspace page and a robot hand as the profile picture, oh my! It was myspace hype for maybe ten minutes as her marketing team of hundreds tried to get people to care....

How did no one, on the long line of thousands who were part of this marketing effort, see "fierce" for what it is: a co-opt from Christian Siriano, who ripped it off from Tyra Banks, who probably sniped the gay cliche off one of her photographers...? How did no one vet that and find something actually interesting and original?

And what's more:
Beyonce is a good being,
but the corporate heads who thought this shit up are ignorant balls of capitalism at its most lackluster.

This is consumerism actually begetting something so un-art it hurts art just to look at it.

Photos of the Proposition 8 Protest in Austin

My photos of the Proposition 8 protest in Austin at City Hall. To see them at a higher resolution, click on "link" which will take you to the photo hosted on my flickr page.
For more photos see the Austinist's post.

Organizers said there were about 3,000 people in attendance. It was a big and nicely varied crowd. Kate X Messer, of the Chronicle's Gay Place spoke at the very beginning but I missed it.

I arrived as a ten year-old boy was speaking. That was my favorite part of the protest. He had lesbian moms and talked about how he wanted his moms to be able to be married. He spoke on the definition of a "normal" family in the U.S.: a married dad and mom, with kids. He said that if that's "normal" then only 23% of families in the U.S. are normal and all the other types of families: kids raised by grandparents, single moms, single dads, gay dads, lesbian moms, transgender parents, must all be queer! Which means, the majority of families in the U.S. are queer, just like his family! Precious. He made a great point.

There were activists in attendance passing out flyers to get domestic partner benefits at the University of Texas at Austin, and young artists selling t-shirts they had silkscreened that morning that said "Texas Queers" on them. A remarkable number of dogs were present at the protest (see the photo above of matching lesbo chihuahuas in a stroller) and lots of really cool little kids who have great parents (see photo of baby in slideshow above). The baby's mother told me this was the baby's first protest of many to come.

At the official end of the march, some younger homos, likely UT kids, led the crowd off down the street in a march along Guadalupe, over on 4th by the gay bars and then up Congress to stop at the Capitol building for a bit before heading back. Lots of great chants happened and traffic certainly enjoyed the show. As we passed Rain on 4th, (incidentally it is owned by a straight man but he's an incredible gay ally and supporter of Project Transitions) and as we passed Oil Can Harry's, the doormen of both places thanked us for marching and cheered for us.

Austin Proposition 8 Protest

The protests are occurring nationwide at the same time. 1:30 PM EST all the way to 8:30 AM in Hawaii. To find the protest nearest you, to upload photo or video of the protests or get more information go to: JointheImpact.

Check back here later today for my photos and documenta of the Austin event.

In Austin the protest will be at City Hall:
301 W 2nd St
Austin TX

To see more of Lydia Marcus's work, see her blog, Fotonomous.

Protests against Proposition 8 Today

Today in Austin, at City Hall, at 12:30 PM there will be a rally and protest against the passing of Proposition 8 in California (and Proposition 2 in Florida, Proposition 102 in Arizona, and a measure in Arkansas banning gays and lesbians from adopting).

I'll be there, with a dance mix cd in hand and Sasha is bringing a boombox so we can at least have some fun while we make our dissent known. I think it's going to be an enormous rally, some of my volunteers from work e-mailed me and I never thought they'd be going. Good. It should be big. It's insane that human beings would be denied rights.

If you want to have a good laugh—and I really encourage you not to take seriously the profoundly ignorant viewpoints expressed—read the comments on the LA Times article about Proposition 8 protests. We need more education in this country. We need conscious, intentional evolution. We need cultural competency trainings. We need to evolve past viewpoints like the ones expressed in those comments.

PandaToes Music Blog

A reminder: There's a Dartmouth kid named Greg who has a pretty extensive, established and cogent music blog called PandaToes. You should check it out. From his site you can download most of the songs he mentions and I think he might even be from Austin. Enough reasons, go look at it.

Keith Olberman on Proposition 8

A compelling expression of thought by MSNBC's Keith Olberman on California's recently passed Proposition 8:

Renewal Where Once Was Rust

This is a late re-post and a worthy one; the green revitalization of the American manufacture industry needs to be discussed and furthered at all possible junctures. When I lived outside of Detroit last fall it was apparent the cars there were dying breeds, weighty American dinosaurs. An innovative, ecologically-efficient vision was needed. That vision could save the auto economy and thousands of jobs. I'm grateful the bigger wigs finally got the idea as well. Here's to sustainable invention permeating our society, moving us all forward with its lift.

Link to the November 1st, 2008 New York Times article "A Splash of Green for the Rust Belt."

Janelle Monae's "Many Moons"

There are aspects of Janelle Monae's Metropolis referencing, android-creation with which I am in love. Too, there is a part of me that experiences the marketing budget she has more than the actual message she is providing. I appreciate it and feel it but wish it came less from the pockets of P. Diddy and more from her own straight-ally, nimble, talented hands.

Fun Fun Fun Fest

Not an Obama post!

This weekend was the third annual Fun Fun Fun Fest, put on by Transmission Entertainment, at Waterloo Park in Austin.

Fun Fun Fun Fun Fun Fest had many moments of goodness and question marks and badness but here are EIGHT:

-Tim Fite's hi-quality, med-fi, transmedia, beautiful little show!

-The dust! Kicked up in round grey clouds, swirling into nostrils.

-The misogyny of Kool Keith as Dr. Octagon ("girrl, let me touch you there, I want to feel you!")(and then boys in the crowd thinking it was okay to then touch the girls they were with). The truth that he's also very talented, just needs to examine his gender and sexuality views.

-The National being so polished and tight I felt like I was sleeping inside a cold piano. I loved it when I was able to be awake for it. The horns, the piano, all. The men in the band are precious and clearly utterly musically skillful though almost too tight (in all ways) for their own good.

-A surprise band: St. Vincent. I didn't know I liked her work. I walked in at the beginning of her set and was drawn in like a moth. She's from Dallas originally and was a musical gem and also clearly a little nutbar. She reminded me of my friend Jordana who's poppa dated Hillary Clinton back in the day—hot and gently off the handle. (The video that links to is just a catchy song, really her stage presence was the slightly off the handle part)(though maybe she's just a goddamn good performer).

-Writing poems on the ground while sitting on the "bad trip" sidewalk at the back of the Minus the Bear show.

-Biking to and from the festival with Jason, our bikes covered in lights. I had seven on. Feeling swift, safe and human. Biking around the capitol building at night, all heft and pink granite, rough and elegant.

-The kindly, OLD-souled five year-old on the halfpipe with a mohawk who, while waiting for his turn for the halfpipe (among fifteen adults), would use his skateboard as a guitar, thrashing it around to the sounds from the nearby punk stage.

-Okay, there's a ninth. Why were there no queer bands that I could find? If it was radical dykes rapping "girl let me touch you there, I want to feel you," at least it would explore the meaning of that phrasing more.

Cocoa Tea's "Barack Obama"

Barack Obama Slideshow

I really appreciate these photos for the quality of realness they possess.

Where are the TV Lezzies?

Grey's Anatomy is firing their one "outed" lesbian now, and the L Word begins its final season this year. Where am I going to get to watch people like me on TV?

Maya Angelou Writing a Poem about Obama

There's an associated press article out today about Maya Angelou beginning to write a poem about Obama. On election night, I wrote one too. I couldn't help but write; I had to keep myself from vaporizing into thrill beams.

The whole night, once the networks were seriously projecting that Obama had won, my cells spun dizzy like thimbles on their edges, dimpled with light. I watched, and was part of, a takeover of the streets in downtown Austin (I'll post a piece I wrote about it soon). We danced, we chanted "Si se puede!" and "Yes we did!" We stopped traffic. I hugged random people. Random people hugged me. Instead of New Year's it was New Era. The world change was booming down upon us and we had created it.

It was the ultimate in feeling one's ability to change the world. If you re-watch Obama's last speech of the campaign, posted here under the heading: "Virginia, let's go change the world," you'll see again the eloquent emotion-journey Barack takes his audience on. He moves from the microcosm to the macro in speaking about one person's ability to change the world (it's very near the end of the speech).

It was this feeling that I could feel on Tuesday night as we chanted in the streets. We all felt part of this victory. We had ownership over the outcome. Most of us had gone beyond just voting: some had driven others to the polls, some had called voters to get them to the polls, some had worked for the campaign for months. But most importantly, because Barack's intention was to empower citizens to feel like change was possible, that empowerment had taken root and threaded through our beings affecting all that we do.

We had changed. The molecules in our bodies had shifted and brightened up with energy. We felt our own power through the mass collective power that had worked together from all parts of the country to get Obama elected. We were all churning towards a common goal of changing the United States and thus the world.

As Obama said in his acceptance speech on Tuesday night:
"This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other."

I think that's the heart of this change, working together to elevate the collective. And so we begin...

Gagle, Big Bang Theory

I could just eat him up!

More tears

From The New Republic
Dreams From My Father by Stephen Rodrick
"Why, as the son of a Navy pilot, I couldn't bring myself to choose a candidate until today."

Virginia, Let's go change the world.

I actually didn't think anything else could get me crying, but then, of course, hearing the man himself, makes the tears of inspiration come again. The last speech of the campaign:

It's been a long time coming. But I know...

Today has felt momentous. Beyond words. I work with a lump lodged in my chest. I talk with co-workers, friends, loved ones, strangers, about race in such unearthing ways as we've never spoken before. That is what this election is doing. It is opening a portal for us all to evolve, to end racism, to see privilege for what it is, to grow together.

I connect to all I love through phone and e-mail, call Democratic voters in Florida to tell them where their polling locations are, and read everything I can online. Tomorrow we will know. All these months of excitement and work, will coalesce into tonight's results.

This snippet from Dartmouth, my alma mater, punched me in the chest. (In a good way).

The View From Your Election: Dartmouth College

A reader writes:

Those who are wondering if the youth will turn out ought to see what I saw this morning.

One well-known government professor here told me that she has never seen so many students vote in the first hour of voting as she saw this morning. And I've never seen so many students up and alert at this hour. They're normally stumbling out of bed to make it to their 10 a.m. courses. Today, the campus has been buzzing for hours this morning. It appears that many of them decided to go to the polls as groups of twos, threes, fours and more when the polls opened at 7 a.m. The number of students I saw by 8 a.m. walking around with "I voted" stickers on is astonishing.

At breakfast, I sat next to a table of four black students, all of whom had voted. The three men were wearing ties. I asked them why. The answer: It was their first election, and they wanted to mark the occasion.

He didn't vote for Obama today

He didn't vote for Obama today.

Obama is delicious!

First Time Voter

The View From Your Election: DC

A reader writes:

At 3 p.m. on Election Day, the Foundry Methodist Church voting station in Dupont Circle was doing light but brisk business. As I signed my name to receive my ballot, one of the poll workers loudly asked another to ring the small bell on their table. "Everyone please listen up for a moment," he boomed while holding on to an old black woman standing perhaps 5'2" with a huge grin. "This is our special voter of the day. She's 95 years old and this is her first time voting."

As everyone in the room took her in and the thundering applause echoed through the old church basement, her glinting eyes quickly teared up and she somehow managed an even bigger smile.

The quote above is from Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish. People are writing in with their voting experiences from the day.

Visualize President Obama

From: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gsxkmk
(I'm doing this now. This had Anna Sian and I teary-eyed).


Please join us on November 4th and invest ten minutes to one hour visualizing President Elect Barack Obama on inaugural day and being sworn in with Michelle by his side. See the flags flying, hear the crowd cheering! BE in the feeling of joy and celebration of such a triumphant moment.

During the primaries, this event had almost 1200 people signed up from more than 18 countries.

Now it's time to reconvene and use the power of prayer, mediation, focused intent and emotional visualization to bring this thing home.

Please sign up and tell us where you will be during your visualization time. Our last event had people from all over the US as well as from these countries: Netherlands, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Germany, Jamaica, Kuwait, United Kingdom, Japan, South Africa, Nigeria, France, Finland, Costa Rica, St. Lucia/St. Kitts, Zambia, Sudan

Remember to let yourself see the inauguration in great detail. Imagine the weather, the motorcade, the world-wide attention, the crowds, the beautiful Obama family on the stage, etc. Allow yourself to FEEL the excitement you know will be reverberating through billions of people around the world. THIS IS OUR MOMENT! THIS IS OUR TIME!

I suggest we do this in two steps:

1. Before you go to bed on November 3rd spend from 10 minutes to 1 hour focused on the inauguration. Push aside any doubts about election day or whether the race will be called any particular time.

2. As soon as you awake on November 4th, before you even get out of bed, just allow the images of the inauguration to flow across the screen of your mind, almost like a dream. Maybe you even imagine the inaugural ball and Michelle and Barack dancing.

Throughout the day, you can return to this image. If you are doing GOTV like me, working the polls, serving as a lawyer to protect voting rights, or simply waiting in lines for AS LONG AS IT TAKES to vote. Be comforted by this image. FEEL the joy of it in your bones.

Remember to remain unattached to how things unfold on November 4th and focus instead on January 20th, 2009 - the first day of the Obama presidency.

New York Times Word Train Graphic

The New York Times website has an amazing visual representation of the mood of the country right now. You can type in the word that best describes how you're feeling and it'll go into the data. The most frequent words are the biggest at the top and you can re-describe your feeling each hour. The words are even divided by McCain and Obama supporters so you can get a pulse on how each camp is feeling.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/04/us/politics/20081104_ELECTION_WORDTRAIN.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Russian boys singing to Sarah Palin

I don't fully buy that these boys are in Russia, looks like part of Brooklyn in the background to me, but who cares? This video is catchy.

Carl Sagan the wizard.

Gay Thoughts, Race Thoughts

Something about living in Texas makes me get teary-eyed when I see beautiful, solid, media representation of gays (see example below). Austin is safe for gays as a whole and celebratory in some ways too, though there are always weird incidents that happen. Sometimes the incidents are far worse than just weird; there have been a few recent bus-beating incidents in Austin that definitely made me think about my safety as a lesbian.

I will say that Austin is a largely happy and progressive town, but there is a lot of general ignorance here about race, sexuality, and gender identity. The ignorance is remarkably high and un-checked compared to my experience in New York/ New England. I can only attribute it to the relative isolation of this enormous state holding down the center of our country far from the big cities of both coasts.

I was talking to my friend Amber about this last night: We all, from whatever racial background we are, need to be doing as much intentional anti-racism work, and pro-inclusion work around sexual and gender identities as we can. Let us allow each other the space to be honest and challenge each other for the parts of the collective, societal racism that we carry. It is all the unchecked bits and pieces of institutional racism we allow to survive in us that keep the collective racism alive. It is all the little unchecked pieces of racism, in even the most tolerant among us, that allow people to still be uncertain a bi-racial man could lead our country.

Now for what got me teary-eyed. I just watched the preview for a new film coming out November 21st, "I Can't Think Straight." The film is transnational writer Shamim Sarif's directorial debut and is a romantic comedy in which the lead protagonists are both women of color. More on it from the film's website:

[In] “I Can’t Think Straight”...the cultural backdrop forms an intelligent base for [the protagonists'] journey towards self-awareness and each other.

Tala, a London-based Jordanian of Palestinian origin, prepares for an elaborate wedding with her Jordanian fiancé, when she encounters a timid Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend Ali.

I Can't Think Straight opens in New York and Los Angeles Nov. 21. For more on the movie visit its official website.