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LiveJournal for ragingamazon.
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| Friday, May 2nd, 2008 |
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Because in 2002 I walked through a cemetery in Prague that the Nazis had left intact for the purpose of building a museum after exterminating all the Jews in Europe. Because at least 16 members of my family died in concentration camps. Because I did not hear the names in the children's memorial at Yad Vashem repeat despite spending two hours there. Because history repeats itself. We remember. |
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| Monday, April 28th, 2008 |
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This post about male privilege, which brynndragon turned me onto, is well worth reading. EDIT: Having finished reading the (very long) post and the numerous comments I just needed to come back and say please read this. The poster explains something that I do not have the patients or words to explain, and I think my life would be better if the people in my world heard those words. Reading this, I kept thinking about instances where these trespasses happened. Not random memories, but times in the last week when this should have been so obvious and wasn't. So even if you think you don't use your male privilege read it. Read it to humor me. And if you're a woman read it so you know you're not crazy half the time (because institutionalized oppression and internalized oppression are fueled by the assumption that this is just you and just your problem.) |
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| Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 |
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| Two weeks ago I bought some awesome looking hanging mirrors. Two hours ago we tried to hang them up. I now have 1 mirror hanging, 3 waiting to hang, and lots and lots of holes in the wall. Now would also be a good time for an earthquake to remind me why hanging fragile things are bad. | ||||
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| Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 |
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Chocolate milkshake, fries, and Paul and Storm and Johnny Coulton doing a folk cover of Baby Got Back at the Great American Music Hall. Did I mention how awesome life is? Because really, in a large picture kind of way, life rocks. |
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| Monday, February 11th, 2008 |
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1) Go to a fancy salon to get a short pixie cut as I have been doing, and pay way too much. 2) Go to a corner barber shop to have it buzzed leaving just the bangs and then get a friend to help me dye them blue. 3) Leave it as is and risk the 80s climbing up on my head and dying there. 4) Shave the sides and go for my first ever mohawk, dye it green, stand on street corners allowing tourists to take pictures with me for a small fee. 5) Start fucking a stylist and get trashy trendy bed head the old fashioned way. I'm leaning toward 2. What do you think? |
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| Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 |
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There was just a wave of de-friending. This isn't because I don't love you, it's because I don't have time and was not reading lj at all so I took off all the people who never comment whom I haven't seen in years. If you don't actually read me but still have me friended please feel free to de-friend me in turn. |
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| Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 |
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Ok guys, after much pleading, bribing, beating, and debugging I have a new website. Lets play find the bugs (because I'm sure I missed some). lembergphoto.com Thank you Renata for the site design, and May for figuring out something terribly clever about the margins doubling just in time to keep Renata and I from jumping off the BU bridge in frustration. |
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| Thursday, January 17th, 2008 |
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[Some of you may have seen earlier drafts of this post...I think it might be done now. Might] I’m falling apart. I’m surrounded by solid people doing solid things. They are reading, studying, waiting for business partners, reviewing meeting notes, functioning. I am not functioning. I am drowning. I’m drowning in all the things left unsaid. I’m drowning in the memory of watching another human die. I’m drowning in the hugeness of the universe, in the first hand accounts of looking through bodies for lost children, in the shaking limbs of my Indonesian colleague as she tries to call home after an earthquake, in the fullness of my inbox after suicide bombings, in the vastness of the grocery store, in the memories of landmines and poppy fields, in the eyes of HIV-positive four-year-olds, in the bruises on my neighbor’s cheek, in the beauty of a woman behind the wheel of a truck. I am sitting in my culturally appropriate outfit; the one I picked this morning to say I am a creative professional. I’m sitting in it and wondering what it is I actually wear. When I’m not playing a role what do I look like? When I’m not teaching nursery school or selling photos, when I’m not writing about sex or having it, when I’m speaking my native language, when I’m in my own culture what do I look like? I can no longer relate. I read a thread on wanderlust in a friend’s blog and felt like everyone was saying how much better stability is. How valuable possessions are. How a week in Paris is an adventure, and it simply didn’t compute. I don’t think they are wrong. I don’t judge people for loving stability, I fear them. I am afraid that I will forget all the things I’m feeling now, that my truth will be eaten away by socially responsible ideals and socially responsible fear. I am happy now in a way I haven’t been in a long time and at the same time I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. This is not something you recommend to others. You warn them away from it, you tell them how fucking hard it is and how much they can fuck up their lives in pursuit of it, and at the same time you love it, you nurture it in yourself, and you break yourself open time and time again to maintain it. |
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| Monday, January 14th, 2008 |
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On the list of strange things grizzlymouse found while trying to buy a wedding dress is hymen reconstruction surgery. Sorry guys but I can think of more romantic ways to bleed.
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| Thursday, January 10th, 2008 |
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| "the intern bought them yesterday" = "from a contemporary collection recently acquired by our dedicated staff" | ||||
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| Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 |
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[This was written a couple of days before I left Thailand] I rode an elephant I walked into a temple and petted a tiger I fed goats, and herded cattle I played with gibbons in their natural habitat I learned Thai I ate bugs I ate bugs by accident and was ok with that I sat on the side of the road and watched rice grow I biked way too freaking much I saw fireflies for the first time I learned to play Frisbee on a field swarming with dragon flies I learned how to make bamboo brooms I killed snake by shear instinct I learned to live with spiders the size of my face I fell into a muddy ditch occupied by baby water buffalo I watched another human die I watched little kids get a bit bigger I realized I love two year olds I lived another year of my life, that’s really the bottom line. I finally realized that what’s exotic is what the other guy has because all this is my normal. This is not some contest or reality tv show, this is my life, moment to moment and year to year. And if I don’t want to be here, well then I made my choice, but don’t do this again. Don’t fuck up a perfectly good life to do what? Prove you like adventure? But the thing is I am happy I came, this has been an amazing experience but what it thought me is that life is an amazing experience. I can’t sit and wait for the next big thing. It’s here. It’s right now. It’s today when I biked out past the rice fields and saw the smallest darn baby buffalo I’ve ever seen. It’s watching the sun set over the mountains or the skyscrapers or whatever piece of universe is between you and sunset. |
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| Tuesday, December 25th, 2007 |
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Happy National Jews On Call Day! Enjoy the eggnog. |
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| Thursday, December 20th, 2007 |
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For Every Woman By Nancy R. Smith, copyright 1973 For every woman who is tired of acting dumb, there is a man who is burdened with the constant expectation of "knowing everything." For every woman who is tired of being called "an emotional female," there is a man who is denied the right to weep and to be gentle. For every woman who is called unfeminine when she competes, there is a man for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity. For every woman who is tired of being a sex object, there is a man who must worry about his potency. For every woman who feels "tied down" by her children, there is a man who is denied the full pleasures of shared parenthood. For every woman who is denied meaningful employment or equal pay, there is a man who must bear full financial responsibility for another human being. For every woman who was not taught the intricacies of an automobile, there is a man who was not taught the satisfactions of cooking. For every woman who takes a step toward her own liberation, there is a man who finds the way to freedom has been made a little easier. |
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| Sunday, December 16th, 2007 |
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Why is flour not authentic for medieval desserts? I was looking up recipes and one had a note saying that this was a variation on a dessert, less authentic because of the use of flour. Wouldn't whole wheat flour be available? They had bread after all...is my site on crack? Does anyone have resources for medieval desserts that can be made in a modern kitchen? Thanks :) |
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| Saturday, December 8th, 2007 |
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| Monday, December 3rd, 2007 |
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 I don't think he was hungry poor guy...like he totally looks like his mommy told him to finish his banana because there are starving monkeys in Africa. |
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| Friday, November 9th, 2007 |
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Teach your children to walk gently in the world. Do this by example not by force. Realize that what you do now, today, with your two-year-old, will influence how we all live in 20 years. Realize that being a parent is not just a responsibility to the child you brought into this world, but to the world itself. Never has generational transmission of domestic violence been as evident to me as it is here. Never have I seen an entire society poisoned by the violence they experienced at home. Never have I seen domestic violence and child abuse so thoroughly normalized, institutionalized even, that the absents of it is shocking. Family violence does not stop at the one who is hit. When you hurt a child you teach that child to hurt others. Whatever your reasons may be, the fact remains – you can not instill compassion through violence. When you allow violence in the home you contribute to violence in the world at large. By hurting children you create adults who use violence as a problem solving tool. By creating such adults you ensure not only that future generations of women and children will be injured, but that future gangs will be supplied with members and future wars supplied with soldiers. Walk gently in the world so that your children may follow in your footsteps. |
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| Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 |
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So I'm finding some people have friended me but I don't know you guys so I haven't friended you back. There seem to be enough such people that I wanted to post a bit of an update/reminder to tell me who you are if you want to be added. First off apologies to those who work for my organization, I don't feel comfortable friending coworkers at the moment. So anyway, as you probably know, or maybe you don't, I live in Thailand (yep, still here!). Things are going well, my language has gotten up to speed (what we like to call "conversational"). I am also working on updating and revamping my website to showcase images from the last 10 months so hopefully I will be able to give you something pretty to look at before the end of the holiday season. As you might imagine the pace of life is a good deal slower here so I'm taking advantage of all this free time to bake, expand my yoga practice, and learn CSS. If you happen to find yourself in northern Thailand come by for some home made bread or Amish sticky buns. |
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| Monday, September 24th, 2007 |
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So if I have lots of free time but not so much in the way of local geek support is this a bad time to learn linux? I have never used anything more complicated than SSH (well ok, I fucked around with command line interfaces in middle school and high school but mostly to impress boys...and yes, it worked). I think computers are run by magic. However, windows sucks (I think they didn't give enough goat's blood to the gods) and I can't invest in a Mac just now. Also I need to still be able to use my nice idiot proof design programs such as Adobe CS. Is this doable? Will I have to wipe my hard drive and start from scratch? Am I an idiot for even thinking of doing this? Is there such a thing as linux with training wheels? Do any of you computer types want to come to Thailand on holiday? I will cheerfully trade home made bread and other baked good and basic Thai lessons for linux lessons. In case you're wondering I want to make the switch largely because I think it will be fun, but also because windows is being slow and I have to spend half my life removing spyware. |
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| Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 |
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| I think VNV Nation's Forever did as much damage to my mental health as a whole fat romance novel does to the normal woman. | ||||
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LiveJournal for ragingamazon.
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