dealing with a giant disgusting zit on my dog's back. details unnecessary. also, further proof as to why i couldn't have been the veterinarian i thought i would be.

damn, this may be one of the best interviews i've read on contemporary native literature. but, dammit, she doesn't mention my favorite book of his, old shirts & new skins.

this also gets on to a conversation i had with hardyharhar the other night about how i view many popular native authors, or to say, the problem i have with the presentation of these authors on the literary mainstage as one of two things: (a) representative of all ndn people, and (b) limiting ndn lit to thematicization of suffering, strictly. while the latter is important to articulating transgenerational stress disorder, ways in which these sufferings are perpetuated, let it be like the borders of a reserve*; something we can now step over and something we can return to to understand ourselves better. but more importantly, there is another "now" as alexie mentions, a "now" that exists later than his "now" of his earlier works. as in now we're in your city streets, up on a soapbox, or in the bank line depositing a paycheck, or in your clubs, shakin that ass. and now we got ideas about where we're going.

also, thank you thank you maritole.

The characters are muted by the traumas of hatred and chaos, loss and grief danger and fear, and cannot--except in a few rare cases--articulate their suffering. Instead, they tend to resort to self-destructive behavior, including violence and substance abuse. Thus, while Alexie's narratives demonstrate the need to give suffering a language, they also call attention to the inherent unsharability of suffering.

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A world of story-smoke: a conversation with Sherman Alexie.

Songwriter, film-maker, comedian, and writer of prose and poetry, Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. The reservation (approximately 1,100 Spokane Tribal members live there), where the effects of what Alexie chooses to call an "on-going colonialism" still asserts its painful presence, is central in Alexie's fiction, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) and Reservation Blues (1995). Presented as a demarcated space of suffering, Alexie's fictional reservation is a place where his characters are tormented by collective memories of a genocidal past, of cavalry-approved hangings, massacres, and small-pox-infected blankets. It is a haunted place where "faint voices ... echo[] all over" (Reservation Blues 46) and where "dreams ... [a]re murdered ... the bones buried quickly just inches below the surface, all waiting to break through the foundations of those government houses built by the Department of Housing and Urban Development" (Reservation Blues 7). Although some of Alexie's characters leave the reservation and enter the urban space in his second novel, Indian Killer (1996), the experience of growing up, as Alexie puts it in the interview, "firmly within borders," continues to affect the characters' lives, especially their emotional lives.






* over half of the registered american indians in the contiguous united states do not live on a reservation, and it has been this way for nearly 20 years.

bailout schmailout

The National Park Service, which issued the permit for the display in the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, did so because part of its mission is to "interpret history - good, bad or otherwise," spokeswoman Chris Powell said.

the bay area ndn community respond to the installation, get called racial epithets by the artist & his cronies, rally a protest, get dimunized by the local newspaper, and command their own radio show.

listen [here] for my friends' mark, janeen, and sean on bay native radio at kpfa.

(some of you may recognize one of the voices, you know, that mark -- heh)

want.

interestingly, santa cruz didn't specify that they're playing our league's b-team. i searched through their records archives to get a sense of their skill level; even tho, our internal team, the s.f. shevil dead scrimmaged them last october and schooled them quite hard with newbies to boot (they were very nice & congenial about it). santa cruz didn't specify that they'd played sacramento's b-team when santa cruz annihilated the b-team (because sacred's a-team is really impressive). they've picked up a reputation for being a little into the entertainment-as-entertainment (vs as-sport), but i also hear they're trying to dispel the rumor. as always, i'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and look forward to a good game. you wouldn't believe how rumors fly in the land of derby.

the coaches of the #6-ranked team in the country put together the b-team, comprised of equal members of each of the league's home teams. there's a couple a-team folks on there that didn't make the a-team roster to compete in the upcoming w.f.t.d.a. western regionals competition.

i'll be jamming the whole time (unless we start losing and we shift into mega-tron mode and play the positions we're all best at).

for the derby nerds, this is b.a.d. girl's plan b roster: la chica mala #1 kilo (oak), roughhouse rhonda #40oz (oak), jane hammer #777 (oak), jennacologist #12 months (oak), lemmy choke ya #88 (oak), kimfectious #47 (s.f.), mexican jumping mean #4 (s.f.), luv u. longtime #$2 (s.f.), me (s.f.), diva negativa #23 (rich), roxie the riveter #1942 (rich), cuththroat cathy #11 (rich), nancy drew blood #3 (rich), and friskie meow #*7 (rich).


[TICKETS AND SUCH]

it seems that the residents of san francisco and the bay area are being subjected to some artist's blatant disregard for doing homework that actually considers sociopolitical context. decontexualized, this shit does nothing but perpetuate stereotypes, misinterpretations of history, and means you're fucking lazy. buffalo bill's wild west show was a goddam circus act that made a mockery of living culture, and certainly the ongoing warfare waged on the indigenous people of the continent in a very real fight against genocide.

that being said, i come from a camp of artists that puts a priority on social responsibility with regards to social inequities in the world when it comes to my art. and like some others i know, i put emphasis on clarity of communication, you know, articulation. obtusity is for the narcissists and self-absorption is a big cultural no-no where i come from.

to his credit, he is certainly keeping in line with his own mission statement; he openly admits to being lazy about the decontextualization of the mytholocization of the indigenous people of the plains. certainly the horrific history of the people of california are not discussed -- is it that the idea of government-hired mercenaries isn't as pretty as beadwork, feathers, and "warpaint"? you know, i feel like we've had this conversation before.

hey guess what, thom ross, there are real, living, breathing ndns that live in the bay area
with real, living, breathing jobs
and real, living, breathing rent
and real, living, breathing income tax
and real, living, breathing email
and real, living, breathing levi's
and real, living, breathing appetites
and real, living, breathing rage...

[download my friend's info flyer here]

- - - - -

Surfers and dog-walkers heading onto San Francisco's Ocean Beach Friday found themselves in the company of 100 wooden Indians on horseback, with face-paint and feathered spears glittering in the morning sun.

i may post an update about the mysterious return of my laptop. until then, i leave you a beauty of a sex-and-race issue -- call it buckskin-curious -- that came across dan savage's lap that was just... too precious not to pass up as a faux blog post.

and i thank asarwate's bright eyes for this

- - - - -

Cowboys-in-Injuns
September 4, 2008
By Dan Savage, Savage Love

For some reason, I have always found Native Americans to be sexually attractive. But the semidark skin and traditional breechcloth thing isn't easy to find in porn or real life. I was wondering if you had some pointers for someone with a bad case of Native American Jungle Fever.

Native Amateur

"The letter writer is correct," says Sherman Alexie, a Native American and a National Book Award–winning author who was willing to demean himself by giving me a quote. "There is a dearth of Native American porn."

But Alexie tells me that once, while hunting for antique board games, he typed "cowboy and Indian action figures" into Google and found his way to a site that featured U.S. Cavalry soldiers and loinclothed Indians smoking more than peace pipes. But that's all he's got, pornwise. As for real life...

read the rest here

sometime between 6p and 3am on saturday night, a thief came into my house; grabbed my roommate's backback (containing some bluetooth gear and his bike lock key); dropped his laptop into it with his $800 wacom drawing tablet; dropped a glass jar with about $12 of change into it; walked into the living room and dropped my laptop and charger into the backpack; walked into my bedroom and ransacked my desk, stole a friend's digital camera, ransacked bags in my closet, then dumped about $10 in change from a pot on my drawer into the backpack and left my front door open.

shit is going down in thailand and all i am reading about is pallin crap.

i love you, bansky.

thank you, eric.

- - - - -

ok, i've posted some inanity going on in my life and now i post some inanity of the blogosphere that totally got my font geek hot on. like space hot.

comic sans is my hero. i've self-published entire mini-chapbooks in comic sans. funny thing, tho, i don't even like serifs! well, mostly. i give props to serifs from time to time... mostly.

thanks, srallen.

- - - - -

i just signed up to take a gre in mid-november.

four hours! what! dude. that has nothing on the 8-hour e.i.t. or p.e. or the 2nd day of five hours of seismic and surveying exams i've taken! nothing! oh, algebra, it's been like, years.

one-third through #8.

i was selected to be on my league's b-team for a bout against the santa cruz rollergirls next month. i'm excited. the team is comprised of some seriously strong skaters. no, we're not clairvoyant, but damn, as a team? we're hella strong. it makes me so proud of how ridiculously awesome our league is (currently 6th in the nation) and how well we train our skaters. we're hoping this will be a future tradition of having a generally rotating b-team. i'm stoked to be on the first one!

we have no name yet, but since our league's all-stars (the a-team) colors are black&gold, we thought it fitting to be black and silver.

geez, so i saw radiohead perform "fake plastic trees" (missing manu chao and the black keys), watched lupe fiasco and m. ward rawk the house... the walkmen were fierce and i've confirmed my distaste for regina spektor, but holy shit, tom petty broke my face. i had no idea he was like that.

guess you got to be a rawkstar if you write songs with roy orbison and george harrison.

happy friday! i bring you the YES dance!!

another photo of the little turd busy at work. meh

were it not for telemundo, i would not have seen the highlights of cuba spanking japan in beisbol 4-2 tonight -- or china spanking cuba in volebol feminino. two nights ago, we watched highlights in handball and badminton -- you know, sports NOT being dominated by los etados unidos (cuba was ranked 24th in handball OUCH!). we screamed at the screen during men's gymastics. overall, it's been pretty addicting. blogs have taught me that india picked up its first ever individual gold in the 10-m air rifle (who the fuck knew that was even an olympic sport, what the hell is the 10-m air rifle?? -- much like learning some freak decided synchronized diving was a deliciously contrived spectacle). *sigh*

i'll tell ya something else. my swim team in high school would practice endurance by attempting an entire game of water polo on saturday mornings, you know, cuz swimming 90 minutes 5 days a week after school had nothing on treading water for a full 60. some of the u.s. women's water polo team are totes RAZA!

shit, i've been watching women's field hockey for the past hour. and now, highlights in tennis!