Leah's Journal

11:44pm: misswong is being retired by the end of this year. I haven't been happy with this username for a while, for a wide variety reasons.
I'm now journalling under oh_annalouise

friend me.

9:46pm: pop quiz hotshot
What kind of lunatic donates 3,600 unlabeled cans of peas to a food bank? Yeah, we counted.

soooo. soooo. tired.

12:28am: The Mitten Crunch 2006 or Arts and Crafts for the Homeless Part Elevenity-Billion
I need to put my kiddy genuises on a sweatshop like schedule of mitten production this week. I promised some earnet Christian woman that I'd have between 25 and 50 pairs of children's mittens ready for her by next saturday so that the children of drug addicts can feel Christ's love in the form of polar fleece.
I serve community. Look at my fucking halo. You don't want to give me a traffic ticket*.
When our finance guy looks at the $35.68 worth of polar fleece I purchased this week he's going to burn my fucking expense report and probably have an aneurysm. It's going to be the last straw. The poor dude was hired last spring to whip us into financial shape before we start the USAID grant app. process. If USAID knew the extent we used to make shit up as we went along they would probably give our Malawi money to Madonna instead. "Sure," they'll say, "She's keeps stealing 'orphans' but at least Madonna doesn't drag underprivileged youngsters all over the developing world and keep her receipts on napkins."
I'm not really that cynical. I love my job. I love my little genuises and the overpriced little genuis academy. I love Christians and mittens and the homeless. I love Malawi.





*nobody ever tells you this but I've talked my way out of three sepearte speedy tickets in the past 3 years because of my saintly career choices.

1:14am: I finally have internet! yay!

The cats are celebrating by knocking eachother down and running loudly up and down the hallway. My downstairs neighbors must hate me.
My apartment is shaped kind of like an uppercase Y, with my bedroom and the living room on one end and the kitchen and The Room Where the Books Live on the other. So, "the hallway" is damn long and the fact that they end each lap with one flinging the other to the ground doesn't help.
I'm still not sure how you truly get cats to stop doing things.

10:54pm: I Learned More from a Three-Minute Record, Baby than I Ever Learned in School
Today is a Very Important Day in Michigan history.
Anyone (who did not receive a commemerative email from my mother) know why?
A hint:
One time I was trapped in a car, driving through Mississippi with my brother, my father and a big poofy wedding dress while my brother and father argued about whether or not Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter was guilty of murder, based only on the lyrics of Bob Dylan's song, "The Hurricane".
I was reminded of that conversation a lot today.

12:32pm: The words of the day are almost, not quite and only a little bit. As in, "I hate democrats almost as much as republican", "democrats are not quite as evil" and there is only a little bit of a difference between parties.
Almost is the tiny space where women still get to control their own bodies. Not quite is the difference between $5.15 and $6.75. Only a little bit is where AIDs prevention funds are either cut or maintained.
Elections aren't much more than crisis management. But crisis management has got to be done every now and then just to keep things from collapsing on us.
We're allowed to dream of a day when their aren't any more crisis to handle and we're allowed to work for that day while still taking a minute to breathe a little sigh of relief.

11:48am: My mother and sister went down to Ohio yesterday to babysit the all-powerful Simone. Now that my mom's unemployed, she plans on babysitting at least once a week. Dr. Wallace spends his Mondays teaching surly, uninterested 18 year olds to appreciate Dubliners, which is what you all have to do when you die and go to hell. Dr. Crosby is desperate to finish the first chapter of her book on Female Poisoners of 18th Century New England so that she doesn't have to spend the rest of her life teaching Intro to Woman's Studies and Freshman comp to surly, uninterested 18 and 19 year olds.
Right now Dr. Crosby is totally flummoxed by the fact that none of her surly 18 year olds have seen Apocalypse Now or have any pop-culture knowledge of the existence of Apocalypse Now or, for that matter, The Godfater.
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning? anyone?" She asked, horrified, "putting a horse's head in your enemies bed? 'made me an offer I couldn't refuse'???"

I have no idea why Dr. Crosby is teaching Apocalypse Now, except that when I was in college the dude in charge of the early-American department was also obsessed with teaching Apocalypse Now, so maybe it's just a thing they do.

5:44pm: I'm almost completly moved into the Casienda. It's so big that it's kind of intimidating.
I know how that sounds, "well lawks, my new domicile is just too laaarge for li'l ol' me and my hardwood floors are echo-y". It's because I live in Detroit, people.

4:53pm: A woman in Michigan got her case thrown out of small claims court because she wouldn't remove her face veil. Of course, everyone's all in a tizzy and people who I really thought better of seem suddenly all concerned about women's outfits.
People? What the fuck? Why do you care?
My mom brought up the controversy at Fordson high school back in the seventies (back before Fordson high was something like 90% arab muslim like it is today) with high school girls wanting to wear something other than bathing suits during swim class. Her, totally illogical, argument was that while it's okay now that muslims are the majority, back then it somehow imposed on the rest of us to let girls where full-length outfits to swim.
But like, dude, how? I'm pretty sure my swimming experience has never been sullied by another person's bathing costume, not even ugly-ass unflattering bikinis. I'm pretty sure my going around sueing people in small claims court experience* is not sullied by some would-be plaintiffs silly outfit.
And people, I came of age during the great anarcho-summit hopping era of the late nineties so I find the argument that a person can genuinely disguise their identity by covering the bottom half of their face laughable. There was a point in my life when I could identify all my closest friends by the tops of the faces only. It also seems that the three girls who wear face veils to America's Best High School do fine by themselves.
It's fucking feminist boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome and drives me bugshit.
Anyone who says they are a offended as a feminist by another woman's outfit gets on my shit list because I know that plenty o'busybody feminists get offended by my outfits. I mean, are we still in middle school that other people's clothing choices get us all hot and bothered? It's, like, actual fucking oppression that bothers me.
I don't care what adult women wear, even if it does reflect patriarchal standards. I don't care who Warren Jeffs has sex with or marries either, until he starts having sex with little girls, get the difference?

*Harlan Ellison is really big on sueing people in small claims court so while I haven't yet, I reserve the right to if need be

5:31am: Without catholicdemon most of my early college drunken extravaganzas would not have taken place. That alone requires a shout out. The boy is surviving law school, which seems totally unfathomable to me, what with how hard regular ol' grad school kicks my ass.
herkyjerkydance goes to Warren Wilson and is a reasonable human being. I figure this means she spends a good chunk of her day saying, if only to her own head, "shut up shut up won't you please shut up you stupid hippie". She cares deeply about radical politics, feminist theory and death metal and unabashedly talks about the links between those three things on the internet.
My first major e-interaction with amazon when some dude on anarchists called her a racist republican who wants to live in a gated community because she thought that maybe, just maybe, giving somebody who repeatedly sexually abused a young girl probation wasn't exactly the best example ever of triumphing over the prison industrial complex. Then she fucking killed him with her fucking brain. He's dead now. Seriously. She doesn't take no shit from nobody.

9:45am: I have had an e-crush fancymcsnazsnaz from back when I first started reading her blog. She is one of those incredibly insightful people who has a vision of a better world in her heart and is practical enough to take steps towards making that kind of world.
She's a passionate radical but she never lets idealogy take the place of caring about real people.
She and sonicage also have the cutest daughter.

11:15pm: femjays: is this an appropriate use of the term?
As much as it's the hip thing to be down on the internet as a communication tool it utterly rocks as a way to interact with kickass people who don't live in the same city as you.
goodlookinout is one of my newest internet friends. She is so cute! People! Go look at how cute she is and how cute her cats are! She also moderates feminist, which, people, are you aware of the unreasonable fuckers that use that community to express their unreasonable fucker opinions? She handles ridiculously offensive behavior with both firmness and diplomacy.
armchairshrink is going through some seriously stressful shit right now. In the time it would take most people, including me, to turn into a pile of goo in the corner somewhere, she went into a practical, problem-solving mode.
Based only on reading her lj chronicles of her stressful shit, I nominate her as the person I would most like to have with me if I had a medical emergency in a foreign country.
She's also wicked smart and, unlike a huge chunk of the real and internet world, actually thinks before she types. When she asked me to moderate feminist_sex I was totally flattered.
Also, She went on the Tyra Banks show to talk about finding gay boys hot. How fucking cool is that?

6:18pm: Meme
from trinityva

. Reply to this post if you want me to tell you how awesome you are.

2. Watch my journal over the next few days for a post (or a part of a post) just about you and why you rock my socks.

3. If you want, post these instructions in your journal and give your friends a much needed dose of love and adoration

11:28pm: The all powerful Simone (and Dr. Wallace)

7:21am: Pictures of adorable children
All I talk about is my job but I really like my job. Have I told you that I really like my job? You are all probably so sick of my job.

I'm doing a presentation this afternoon about the Kamaiya system of debt slavery in western Nepal and how the Kamaiya movement is fighting for land reparations for the Tharu, who are the indigenous people of western Nepal.
Jim just got back from one of his jet-setting trips to Nepal, giving candy to little kids and convincing leaders of the Maoist insurgency not to shoot my co-workers. Now, you'd think that some white dude from Conneticut walking into a Maoist camp and saying, "how 'bout you not get into skirmages near my employees?" would have, like, a five minute life expectency, but Jim has powers. His middle name should be "I can't believe they didn't shoot you". We should all be glad he uses his powers for good instead of doing investment accounts for GE like he planned.

Pictures of cute children!

12:06am: I promise a real update soon but in the mean time...
I'm channeling Jessika Rae in the direction of the entire entire internet:
Can we please stop judging mothers? thank you and good night.

5:46pm: good dork/bad dork
Dear Good Dorks,
The Onion AvClub says that Battlestar Galactica is the best show on television. Is this true? Am I seriously out of the loop on an excellent, non-cancelled force of good-dorkage?

I'm coming to the realization that Alias politics kind of suck and I'm just not in the mood for Veronica Mars these days so I need a new tv/dvd obsession. Besides, once I move into the Casienda I will never have money again.

5:07pm: The tigers making it to the World Series does not suddenly make Mike Ilitch suddenly not a scumbag.

just sayin'

9:49pm: tadadadadadada!
I'm pretty sure I've found an apartment! I'm looking at the inside tomorrow but it is in one of my favorite buildings on W. Grand Blvd.
It has an awesome balcony, hardwoord floors, living room, dining room.
Plus two bedrooms so that the cats can have their own room (or y'know, so that Certain People who live in Maine can come visit over Christmas break).
I'm kind of gasping at how expensive it is compared to the old place and Trumbullplex but I actually am making a decent amount of money now and, well, there are cardboard boxes that look expensive compared to what I was paying at Trumbull.

( Let's )

8:06pm: Am I against the idea of living in a basement apartment simply because I have this silly idea in my head about what it says about me that I live in a basement apartment?
I think I might be. I like basements: They are the cooler place in the summer.

If you were me, like hypothetically, Would you rather live:

a) in a basement one bedroom in corktown (with free wireless)?

or

b) in a second floor two-bedroom near michigan and livernois? (that is kind of cruddy looking from the street but could be awesome on the inside)


ETA (for those of you who don't live in Detroit):
Corktown=fancy gentrified neighborhood in the geographic center of my social circle.
Michigan and Livernois= semi-rundown neighborhood in the far west corner of my social circle.

1:12pm: In Support of a One Child Policy
My phone is gone. A replacement is coming tomorrow because I was self-aware enough to buy insurance.
Here are two facts that may or may not explain the loss of my phone:

1) I am flaky and am always loosing or misplacing important shit

2) My little sister is a thieving junkie whose lately been on a binge of constantly needing money.

It is therefore, equally likely that either:

1) I lost my phone somewhere in the ether.
or
2) My thieving junkie li'l sister stole my phone and gave it to her drug dealer to pay her debts.

Remember when my mom's car and cell phone got stolen? Y'know, when li'l sis was innocently chilling at gas station parking lot at 6 mile and Lahser? Well, my mother had a brief conversation with the car/phone thief at the time and he adamatly asserted that the phone had been given to him to settle a debt. It's not that I find car thieves an especially trustworthy demographic but if he had genuinely randomly target my sister then there is not much of a chance that he would have known how fucking plausible his "your daughter owes money in the 'hood" story would be.

Either way, let this be a lesson to you parents out there: quit while you're ahead. No one needs a little sibling to feel complete.

1:07pm: this is just to say...
Four o'clock on a thursday afternoon is pretty close to the Worst Possible Time to have deal with a group of sassy teenager girls who never shut up.
Also, there is no good way to get from Detroit's east side to Farmington Hills at five o'clock on a thursday afternoon (yes, they never shut up). But perhaps the most reasonable, I discovered yesterday, is to take 8 mile the entire way. As someone with no direction sense at all, I find driving on 8 mile so incredibly comforting. I'm always done in by roads that change direction or veer diagonally without me noticing but 8 mile follows the 40th parrallel so I am always assured of my direction.

11:51pm: 1. I called my roomate today and told her I was moving out at the end of the month. That means it is now ethical for me to tell you, internet. I'm moving. I'll be living on by myself and you are welcome to visit. It's still up in the air where I'm moving to but probably either an apartment building in Corktown or the second floor of a house near St. Hedwig.

2. I'm now moderating feminist_sex. You should join.

3. The bosses had a discussion and decided that I have to give up Crestwood high school to take over one of our Oakland county schools. My heart is totally broken. Crestwood is close to my favorite high school ever and my kids are pretty close to the best kids ever.
It's so great that it's surreal. They have school spirit and a shop class and they really, really care about homecoming. It's like somebody took a TV high school, made half the student Lebanese and took out the cliqueiness and the weird pressures. Oh yeah, and if you want to go to college, great take an AP class. If you don't want to go to college, also great here's some really good vocational training.
*sniffle*

4. That means that until we transfer in the new Trek Coordinator I've got the following schedule:
Tuesday 3pm: my lovable misfits at Western
Wednesday 7am: Crestwood *sniff*
Wednesday 2pm: a gaggle of wealthy white girls at Andover.
Thursday 3pm: a perfect combination of ambitious and whiny over at Detroit Tech, which is basically Pershing's old shop department turned into a poorly funded parody of a open schoolhouse
Friday 11am: my psychic assassins over at the Roeper School. Official school mission= training genuises not to be nazis (so serious). Almost official school slogan="Like Cedar Point for the Brain" (also so serious)

9:50pm: One of my least favorite things in the world is people who get all righteously indignant about books they haven't read or movies they haven't watched or video games they haven't played.

Lost Girls is amazing, by the way. If we live in the same city you can borrow my copy.

10:28am: Dear Lamar Lemmons,
How 'bout we not Let the market take care the education of Detroit's children, you douchebag. Because, y'know, "the market" has really served Michigan, especially Detroit, well.
It's not that I'm against charter schools, per se, or even that I live in the kind of delusional utopia where DPS isn't a corrupt and inefficient bureacracy. It's that I think there are some things far too important to be left to the will of the market. People on the Detroityes.com forums who are the most militant about the "Charter Schools Only" solution are so fucking dismissive of all the reasons that a student might not have "involved parents" and seem to think it's fine and dandy that those kids are going to get an even lousier education than they are getting from DPS. The idea of "involved parent" is an incredibly white middle-class-centric idea, rating a parent's concern for their child's well-being by their comfort level in the world of educational bureacracy and I mean, fuck, I'm not all that comfortable with the Kafka-esque maze that is DPS. But even if there were some Detroit parents who were real, genuine fuck-ups, since when does that mean their kids should doomed to a lifetime of crappy educational oppurtunities?