I'm really happy to be done with school. The weight of the world feels like it's off my shoulders, and I feel motivated to do practically anything. ANYTHING!
Tonight I did a little dumpstering in the snow by myself. The first time I ever went was in the snow in Seattle, 2001 or 2002. I rode in the back of Matt Leonard's truck. Allison in the cab with Matt. We had a snowball fight. It was awesome.
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Here's maybe the best thing from my whole quarter in school:
I've been wanting to write a zine for a little while about songs that I've found either intellectually challenging or helped articulate an idea that I was having in a more powerful way. With school kicking my ass like it's been, though, who knows if I'll ever have time to do it.
In the spirit of procrastination, I'll offer up my first song that I want to write about. It's Might, by Archers of Loaf, from 1993. They were one of the first "indie rock" bands that I got into after I had a period where I rejected anything other than crust, grind, or straight edge hardcore (in the mid to late-90's). It speaks of eschewing art for the sake of gratifying ego, declaring that he'd instead rather play with passion in a basement, with little care for whether anyone hears it or not and not giving a shit about the possibility of "making-it".
This song pretty well sums up a lot of the ideas that led me to start seattlediy, as well as a lot of motivation for playing in Bow + Arrow. Me and Lucas were talking for a long time about covering this song, but we only got as far as playing 30 seconds of it at shows when we get bored and want to goof off.
With all of my might, With all of my might I do this. It's a waste of my time to pursue this. I'm so full of self-indulgence to think that you'd like this song.
Jot it down and I stuck it in the basement, Underneath the living room floor. For some reason I don't think I'm gonna make it. For some reason I don't think about it anymore.
Get so bored with the radio, bored with the video. You've got to mock the power, just to let'em know. (don't know what goes next)
With all of my might, With all of my might I do this. It's a waste of my time to pursue this. I'm so fucked self-indulgent to think you'd like this song.
Maybe when school's over I'll write more about this song, and others.
A couple days ago I had to do a presentation for my Sociology 316 (Class and Inequality) class. I was grossly unprepared, and had spent the previous couple days doing nothing but writing papers, not getting any sleep and existing in a constant state of stress.
During the presentation I had a freak-out. A panic attack. Anxiety to the max. I lost my shit, mumbled a bunch, started sweating, wanted to cry, and started edging towards the door to make a clean break (but didn't, thankfully - boy would that have been awkward!).
This was me, as played by the kid in the red shirt:
In contrast, I co-facilitated a workshop on dumpster diving yesterday as part of the "Confronting the Food Crisis: Cultivating Just Alternatives to the Corporate Food System"that the Community Alliance For Global Justice put on. It went incredibly well. About 40-50 people showed up - it was a fairly multi-generational group, somewhat diverse, and the discussion was lively and respectful. We talked about some oft-neglected topics that people who dumpster don't usually discuss, and we also went into some dumpster tactics. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I got paid too (which is nice, considering the time, labor, and costs I put into writing and making a dumpster-diving zine the day before). And you know what? No panic attack, no freak out, no nervousness or shakiness of my voice. Totally chill. Then again, I wasn't being graded for the conference, and I had a way better grasp of the content (you know, me being an expert and all, hah).
This Saturday I'll be co-facilitating a workshop on Dumpster Diving, Gleaning, and Food Banks at Seattle Central Community College as part of the event, Cultivating Food Justice. It should be pretty cool, and on top of how it's all generally pretty interesting, I'll also be getting paid!! Dope. I asked Kaelan if she wanted to help me, cuz she's broke too and she'll have some really really good stuff to say about poverty, privilege, and other oft-neglected criticisms and concerns about dumpstering. That shit gets ignored by the noble scavengers of our dear city. I'm putting together a zine to present at the workshop now, which is borrowing largely from a Etiquette + Tips thing I wrote a long time ago for SeattleDIY's old website.
It would be great if I were only able to show this film before the workshop:
I have a supreme excess of school work to do for SOCL301 and SOCL 316. I don't even want to think about if there's anything for HIST 231. School is indeed kicking my ass.
I'll be working on some of my papers with Becky, thankfully, which will help me procrastinate less.
In one of my papers I'll be using Goffman's Dramaturgy to analyze the creation and enforcement of roles in the community of radical anarchists, specifically in relation to how identity politics parses actors into often antagonistic roles, both within groups and between groups. I'm going to talk about some of the more hilarious jargon and silly pejorative phrases that people use, like "Manarchist," Macktivist," or "Subpoena Envy," in describing male ego-driven "dude/bro" radicals, or the use of slogans like "If You're Not Now You Never Were" in enforcing ideology. I'm also going to talk about both the fear of and the prevalence of discrepancy between front stage/back stage actions and ideology (ex, "Q: How many Straight-Edge kids does it take to drink a case of beer? A: One, if no one's looking." and similar jokes for vegans). It should be a pretty interesting paper to write, but I'm a little concerned about my ability to do a thorough job, given the time constraints.
But mostly I'm just doing a terrible job thanks to all the procrastination I've been doing.
I end up looking up videos of old bands that I love, then scheming ways of emulating them:
"And this ship must sink, and we must sink this ship"
