duncan heights

I don’t run very often. Probably… once a week, or six times a month, or something. Not enough, in any case, for health reasons. I run for other reasons. I run when I’m frustrated, angry, (and/)or feeling aggressive. I run so that I don’t lash out at someone else when it’s not his or her fault, so I don’t regret saying something stupid later, and because it hurts. I know that sounds weird, but I run because it’s a way of lancing the boil, so to speak. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt, and it means I won’t purposefully hurt myself in my own aggression. It gives me a feeling of running away from my problems, if only for a little while, because I’m literally running. I don’t want company while I’m running; I have headphones in and angry music turned up loud enough that I can only barely hear the outside world. I’m angry and brooding, and running is cathartic. Basically: me + running = go away.

While I’m in Cali, my route is just over a couple of miles long. For those of you who know where I live, I go up toward Foothill but instead of turning right (to head toward the high school), I turn left and pass the YMCA. I turn left again at the former House of Fabrics (now called Joanne’s, but I still call it ‘House of Fabrics’ for some reason) and head back down on Crescent or that other street back to my house.

This morning at 7:40 (I know the exact time because I time myself and record my progress on FavoriteRun) I headed out the door and began running the route in reverse, just to change things up. It was going fine until I got to the Y, where I heard a guy catcalling from the part of the sidewalk closest to the street. He was leaning against his car (at least, I think it was his car) and whistling and calling me names like a stereotypical construction worker. (I don’t think he was a construction worker, though; he was wearing a suit and tie.) I could hear him over the music in my ears, so I knew he wanted me to hear him. He, apparently, wasn’t messing around. (As if catcalling is just a-ok when the person is a woman alone or something.)

I wasn’t messing around, either. I flipped him off. I wasn’t in the mood to play or humor anyone, and I figured he’d get the idea. Unfortunately for me, he didn’t.

He reached out as I passed and grabbed one of the earbud cords and ripped it out of my ear. My head turned involuntarily with the force and the other one was ripped out, too. I stopped.

“Listen, honey, you need to lighten up. Let me tell you why bitches like you don’t get any real lovin’—”

“Don’t touch me, asshole,” I said, interrupting him. It was hard to feel bad about it when he was insulting me.

“Aww, pretty girl’s afraid of a real man, aren’t ya?” he asked me, grinning.

And then he reached around and grabbed my braid.

Before I even realized what I was doing, his head was between my palm and the hood of his car. I vaguely heard him gasping in pain, but it didn’t register until I’d returned home later. He’d ripped out some hair and my hairband on the way down, but the stinging was nothing compared to being touched against my will.

I was sort of thinking, *Where does this asshole think we are? This is [the suburbs], for christ-sakes. At 7:45 AM on a school day. In front of the freakin’ Y.* (Actually, it was more like 8:00 AM, but that’s not really the point.)

Instead, I said, “I don’t even like it when my friends touch me, and I warned you, you fuck. I have a run to finish, so why don’t you go assault someone else?”

I grabbed my hairband from his hand and let him up, stepping back and watching him for half a minute. When he didn’t move except to straighten, I tied my messed braid back with the hairband. His hands went to his face and I turned and kept running my route.

He didn’t call after me or make any move to stop me.

So, a warning to the assholes out there who feel like it’s okay to catcall or otherwise make a general ass of themselves: if I hear your catcalling before 10 in the morning, I will flip you off. And if you follow me, continue with the lewd comments, touch me in any way, and/or generally don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, I will smash your face into your car’s hood.

I can officially say that that is not an idle threat.

Wherein the actual review begins…

Anyway, the movie is based on a book of the same name, which I have not read, and it’s not on my “Must Read” list, either. I read The Things They Carried in high school and that was plenty enough for me, thanks. Then again, I should probably read more honesty about the U.S. military if I think I’m even going to think about enlisting.

First lines (in a voice-over): A story. A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he’s finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands—love a woman, build a house, change his son’s diaper—his hands remember the rifle.

Jarhead follows Anthony “Swoff” Swofford (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a STA Lance Corporal Marine in Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991. Swoff’s father fought in Vietnam, and his grandfather fought in World War II. He enlists in the Marines upon his graduation from high school. (At one point, his drill instructor asks, “What the fuck are you even doing here?” and he responds angrily, “Sir, I got lost on the way to college, sir!”) After basic training, he’s spotted by Staff Sergeant Sykes (played by Jamie Foxx), who trains him as a scout sniper and pairs him up with Troy, another scout sniper in his platoon.

Swoff and his platoon get shipped off to Iraq for Operation Desert Shield, where the battalion commander tells them, “…now our current mission is to protect the oil fields of our good friends in the kingdom of Saud until further notice, and gentlemen, I’m talkin’ a lot of oil, a lot of oil, so you will hydrate, you will train, you will adjust to this desert, and you’ll hydrate some more, and you will be ready, you will maintain a constant state of suspicious alertness, and one day soon, Saddam Hussein is gonna regret pullin’ this sorry shit!”

So, they wait and hydrate and drill and hydrate and drill and wait. And hydrate. They even play a game of football in full protective gear in the 112 degree heat. They continue to wait, etc., until the whole thing gets upgraded to Operation Desert Storm, whereupon they go and live in burning oil fields and deal with the charred remains of Iraqis fleeing from the war. Swoff gets demoted from Lance Corporal to Private and is otherwise punished after having another soldier keep watch for him on Christmas (Eve?) and a tent full of flares goes up in flames accidentally. All the soldiers lament about their unfaithful wives and girlfriends back home, and eventually, even Swoff’s girlfriend leaves him for a guy who’s “such a good listener” back home. There’s an entire scene about one of the men whose wife sends him what seems to be the movie The Deer Hunter but is actually a homemade video of the man’s wife getting fucked by their next door neighbor.

Swoff nearly falls apart at least once, and by the time he and Troy finally get their one combat mission, he’s seen more than he ever wanted to, without even shooting his gun. They’re assigned to shooting two higher-up Iraqi officers in an abandoned air tower, and Swoff is this|close to pulling the trigger when they’re stopped by a man higher up the chain of command than they are. The entire air air tower and strip is bombed basically to hell and Swoff and Troy never have the chance to use their skills. They’re left behind and when they finally reach the camp, they discover that Operation Desert Storm is over and they’re all going home soon. (Yay! But “I didn’t even get to shoot my gun” of course.) No pink mist for anyone in the platoon.

Oh well. Swoff and his guys all go home. He tries to reconcile with his girlfriend, but is unsuccessful. The other men are shown in a montage. One sits at a bar, with a girl in his lap, asking for more shots; one works at a grocery store restocking shelves; one is seen in professional attire presenting to a board of directors. The kid who accidentally ruined Christmas for Swoff that one year comes by with his hair down past his shoulders and informs Swoff that Troy is dead; we see him in the casket just before the end of the movie.

At the end, in a voice over, Swoff says, “A story. A man fires a rifle for many years. And he goes to war. And afterward he comes home, and he sees that whatever else he may do with his life—build a house, love a woman, change his son’s diaper—he will always remain a jarhead. And all the jarheads killing and dying… they will always be me. We are still in the desert. ”

Right. So, it was a good movie. It wasn’t OMG|AWESOME good, but it was decent. I did watch it twice, after all (once in theatres with Bennett, et al., and once just now). There is a lot of cursing, so if you have young (and/or sensitive) ears around, just turn it off. I reviewed it basically so I could tell the story of the first time I saw it, which is here. It didn’t make me cry or anything, like some movies have done, or make me want to go down to the recruiting office and join the Marines on the spot.

Swoff’s love/hate relationship with the Marine Corps is something, at least, about which I know he’s being honest. I’d like to find some more honest portrayals of time in the military, especially basic training, which this movie barely covered at all. I don’t pity any of the characters, but I’m impressed that the author (the guy who wrote the memoir upon which the movie was based) was so willing to make himself into almost a bad guy. If the movie is anything like the book, he didn’t sugarcoat it—and that’s a good thing.

One positive thing, though. Jake Gyllenhaal looks good holding a gun. Really good. Just have to say that so I can drool a tiny bit and then go back to regular life.

First time I saw Jarhead (IMDb), it was in a theatre in Manhattan with Bennett and his mother and father. I think his brother was there, too, but I don’t remember for sure. The downtown 1 train was closed for repairs (Ben’s parents own an apartment on the Upper West Side) and we caught a free bus all the way to 42nd Street to catch a movie at one of the theatres there. There’s an AMC and a Regal right across the street from each other on 42nd between 7th and 8th Avenues. I think we went to the Regal, but I’m partial to Regal theatres generally, and I don’t really remember. I wore these really cute boots—beige with tan straps and three-inch heels—and a skirt; Bennett’s dad, Jeff, paid for everything, and I was polite and grateful.

After running for more than one bus in the drizzly rain in my boots, my hand slipping out of Bennett’s in his hurry, I was really glad to sit down because I could feel my feet bleeding in my boots. I was fine, so long as I was sitting down, and the movie was… good, but not something to write home about. Upon the movie’s end, we all stood and headed down to the street to catch the uptown subway. Out in the rain, Jeff said, “I think I have a crush on Jake Gyllenhaal” (who plays Anthony Swofford, the main character). I laughed with the rest of the family, but my toes were not happy. I was half afraid to take the damn boots off.

When we got to the subway platform out of the rain, I stood on one foot, then the other, in order to take some pressure off my toes and the ball of each foot. Bennett looked me over and asked, “You okay?”

I said, “Yeah. Feet hurt, that’s all.”

He smirked, “Shouldn’t wear boots like that, V.”

I rolled my eyes, “I know; I wasn’t complaining.”

He took my hand anyway and, when I nodded, proceeded to press the webbing between my thumb and forefinger with the knuckles of his thumb and forefinger. Usually, the action was to ward off a headache, but I gasped at the pain and it was effective in that instance, too—centered the pain elsewhere. The train arrived, and we stepped into one of the cars are were whisked uptown.

We arrived back at his parent’s apartment and I went to his bedroom, pulled off my boots, and dumped them on the floor in favor of hissing and curling into a fetal position in his bed.

Bennett came in behind me, “V, what are you—oh my god, I had no idea. Here, let me clean you up and bandage your feet. Jesus, woman, I didn’t know it was this bad; I thought you were just complaining.”

My feet were bloody; my socks, ruined. He peeled them off carefully, wary of any skin clinging to them, and then took a clean washcloth and wiped my feet with warm water. As he went back into the bathroom to get some anti-bacterial soap, I related the words he’d spoken to me a few days before—”We must suffer to be beautiful”—and he scoffed, but I could tell he believed it, too.

“Yeah, women more than men, though,” he replied, gently cleaning my blisters. He tossed the bloodied rag into the bathroom sink and went searching for the first-aid kit. When he returned, he was carrying the entire thing, as if he wasn’t sure how much of the cream or how many bandages he’d actually have to use.

“Shit, Vi, I really didn’t know how bad it was; I wouldn’t have teased you,” he said, his movements on auto-pilot, his eyes remiss.

“You really don’t have to—”

“Let me. I feel bad, okay?” he interrupted me, and I relented.

Later, one of his friends bounded into the room to find me lying half way under his comforter in only my underwear. I think the friend was half shocked that I didn’t move to cover myself up, and when he saw my feet, he retreated to Bennett for an explanation. I was left alone that night, after that.

————
Oh, wait. Did you want an actual review?

This is gonna be fast and furious because I am tired of all the crap awesomeness in my Firefox tabs.

The LCHS Band/Colorguard website a’la Spring 2000. Haha, check out the old school.

Hahaha this is awesome: TranslationParty. Pretty self-explanatory, and pretty addicting.

A course on sex-trafficking with only one hurdle.

As if I needed more bad news: graduating during the recession has long-lasting negative consequences.

Electron Band Structure in Germanium, My Ass. That is all.

Japanese lessons in English from NHK World, one of Japan’s leading broadcasting stations. Also, how to get a Japanese scholarship, 8 ways to win unlimited Japanese lessons, and Is learning Japanese not popular anymore? Also, the Tokyo Filter.

I want an Underground-Sign. *pout* “20th Avenue” would be awesome, thanks.

Gearing up for NaNo (cough*yeahright*cough) part 1: How to write a novel in 30 days.

Novel-Ts… I think I want the Poe one with the heart on it.. because I’m morbid like that.

Singing horses from the guy behind Owl City. He just found it somewhere, I think, but it’s still cute. Click to make them sing; click again to make them stop.

Project Implicit will let you know how racist you really are (among other things). We’ll see. I may give this subject its own post after I take some of the tests there.

Going abroad for me has always meant Japan, Germany, or Great Britain. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough non-English to really get around, and I’ve heard Australia’s beautiful, so I may put it on my list.

R.A. Heinlein’s This I Believe essay for the radio series of the same name from the ’50s hosted by Edward R. Murrow.

A fellow MA/MFA student from Wilkes wrote this short piece about the small things and I love it.

In ‘N Out’s secret menu and the Bible verses on their containers.

Main page for the National Writers Union.

California motorcycle safety program… for people who want to earn a motorcycle license in Cali. If I move again soon, I’ll have to figure out the requirements for where ever that is.

—Jedem das Seine

That is, I took this quiz three times in quick succession. I didn’t think about the answers and answered quickly and as honestly as possible each time. Each question was actually a statement with which I agreed or disagreed. I was able to choose one of five answers, a range from “Very Inaccurate” to “Very Accurate”; choosing the middle/third choice indicated that the statement was around 50% accurate. Let’s look at the results.

OVERALL RESULTS
I created this graph from scratch as an average of the three below. A star (*) next to the percentage means that the score did not change any of the three times I took the test. Can someone figure out which of the three tests is most like the average?

THOUGHTS
The first time, I answered mostly in the middle or just to the left or right of middle, and my results mostly (predictably) lay in the 40-60% range. The second time, I answered a lot more definite yes or no (like or dislike, etc.) and was rewarded with a more varied table. Most percentages rose. Some, like wealth and hedonism, stayed the same. The third time, I slowed down and took time to better consider the answers. I didn’t answer all extremes, but I also didn’t mind answering one of the extremes if I thought it applied. Some of my results still didn’t change.

THIRD TIME

— — — — —
SECOND TIME

— — — — —
FIRST TIME

From Bishop John Shelby Spong,

October 15, 2009

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is “an abomination to God,” about how homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle,” or about how through prayer and “spiritual counseling” homosexual persons can be “cured.” Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate “reparative therapy,” as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality “deviant.” I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that “we love the sinner but hate the sin.” That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is “high-sounding, pious rhetoric.” The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn’t. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to “Roll on over or we’ll roll on over you!” Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a “new church,” claiming that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by “fair-minded” channels that seek to give “both sides” of this issue “equal time.” I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders, who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world’s population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which this nation has, and a “mobocracy,” which this nation rejected when it adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to the will of a majority vote.

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tolerate our culture’s various forms of homophobia. I do not care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the “Flat Earth Society” either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church’s participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: “New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth.” I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it.

–– John Shelby Spong

Well put, sir. Well put.

I signed up for Blog Action Day 2009 back when I thought I might have half a mind to talk about climate change. I’ve found, however, that personal life, school, and OCD are making my world smaller and smaller by the day. I’ll do what I can, but this entry won’t be the best, or even my best. Sorry in advance.

This window has been open on my computer since two this morning, and I’m still not really feeling the climate change vibe. There’s too much on my mind, and it makes me wonder if that’s why people haven’t already done something about climate change. That is, maybe everyone’s too caught up in their own worlds that nobody’s even thinking about the… well, the world around them.

Even the stuff we, as humans, have done as a positive act to fight climate change has been couched in terms of how it will benefit us. Going “green” is always about how we can benefit, not really about how good it is for the planet. And really, what do we even know about what’s good for the planet anyway? I mean, what we want is what’s good for us on the planet. Future generations and all that.

I’m all for it. I mean, if climate change is your thing, then awesome. I support you. But, honestly, it’s not my thing. It’s never even been close to being my thing. I’m for social change. I understand when someone says, “But if we have no planet, social change will mean nothing!” and I agree. But, it’s just not in me to care as much about the earth as I do about people.

I’m contradictory. I believe people are like cockroaches: irritating, gross, annoying—and really hard to kill off. We may be killing the planet, but if the planet decides to bitch slap us, I have no doubt that some of us will survive and adapt to really hot or really cold, or whatever else Earth deems necessary for us to learn our collective lesson. And if we don’t survive, well then I won’t be around to worry about it, will I?

Humans are more devious and self-preservationist than we give ourselves credit for. When we have a common enemy, we come together very well to squash it and maintain what we know.