ALSO it is very lovely here.  It reminds me of home, but a bit greener and with really giant magnolia trees.  I thought my mother had a giant magnolia in her backyard, it turns out hers is but middling.

ALSO ALSO the hushpuppies at Prissy Polly’s are better than the ones at the Gumbo Pot in LA.  Sorry, Gumbo Pot.  But, hey, your sweet potato salad still wins.

The only problem with North Carolina is that it was hard to find a place to have lunch today, and then it was hard to find a place to have dinner, because it turns out people believe in all that god stuff here, so things are actually closed on Sunday.  I know, weird, right?

Oh, and the conference.  The conference was so great.  It was really exciting because I was presenting work that deals with issues that are kind of new and different in musicology, and that I was a little apprehensive about it because I wasn’t sure how it would be received, but it was received so warmly, far beyond my expectations.  So that’s awesome.  It turns out that maybe I’m sort of clever after all, even though most days I feel like a babbling idiot.

And now I should probably go to bed because my plane leaves at 5:00 in the morning because for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to book that particular departure, when actually it was a stupid idea.  That’s what I get for thinking I’m clever.

And yesterday we lost Harold Pinter.  Wonderful people are dropping like flies, what gives?

2.  I found myself in this really weird position oh, a couple of weeks ago, I guess, where I found myself in an argument defending Catholics. This was weird because, once upon a time, I was Catholic, but I’m not anymore because, well, I don’t actually believe in the Christian god, and I have obvious huge political reasons for wanting to distance myself from the doctrine of the church because they continue to preach some pretty fucked up things.  And also I am a huge fan of birth control.  It’s the greatest.  So I am pretty much a non-fan of the Catholic church.  (And also, transubstatiation is just plain creepy.)  But anyhow – having said all of this, I think it’s really important to distinguish between the offensiveness of church doctrine and the way church members actually live their lives, because there are thriving leftist activist communities within religion that work for inclusion and change but often get overshadowed by the crazies.  And although I’m not religious by any means, I have a lot of respect for the work that they do, often in opposition to official policy, but the person I was arguing with was a pretty ignorant jerk who would have none of this. Anyhow, the point of all this rambling is:  this post, about a Christmas service with Benedictine nuns was up at Shapely Prose (best blog ev-arrrr!) today (re-posted from last year) and it is really wonderful and great and really makes an important point about the kind of alliances we need to be building as feminists and activists.  And also it’s just a beautiful thing to read for Christmas.

(Cross-posted at Through the Bassline)

Prop 4 sounds like an ok idea at the outset – let’s make minors let their parents know if they’re going to have an abortion.  Ok, great, but – not every girl comes from a supportive family.  Some girls come from abusive families.  Some girls may have been impregnated by family members.  Some girls could face being kicked out of their homes if they choose to have an abortion.  And girls who are in these high-risk situations might take drastic measures to end an unwanted pregnancy (why, hello, back alley abortions!).  And Prop 4 makes no allowances for pre-natal care for the girls it prevents from having abortions.  And let’s not forget the plain and simple truth that everybody, regardless of age or gender, deserves the right to basic privacy over what is going on with their own body.  I was making decisions about my health on my own when I was 18, and I was not telling my parents, because, no offense to my parents or anything, but it wasn’t actually their business.

The people pushing Prop 4 are doing so under the auspices of protecting young women from abusive predators who might force them to have abortions, but their very language demonstrates that they don’t care about girls at all.  They’ve nicknamed Prop 4 “Sarah’s Law,” supposedly after an underage girl who died after a botched abortion.  Well, guess what – there was no Sarah.  Her real name was Jammie Garcia Yanez-Villegas, and while she was underage, she was also married, and she was already a mother, so not only would Prop 4 not have even played a part in her situation (Prop 4 only applies to unemancipated minors), nor could it prevented her death, but the pro-4 team is dehumanizing her and cruelly turning her into a campaign tool, trivializing her death.  I think it’s also pretty sinister that they’ve nicknamed her Sarah – it seems to me to be an obvious attempt to whitewash her obviously Latina name, in an attempt to garner more sympathy to the cause.  Cause, you know, good white girls don’t deserve to die tragic deaths, but who cares about women of color, right?

Proposition 4 is completely useless.  Stats indicate that around 60% of teenage girls who are pregnant already go to their parents.  Prop 4 won’t help create communication in unhappy families – the way parents will be notified is via a form letter.  While the initiative allows for exceptions in cases of abuse, obtaining an exception involves going to court, which just delays access to abortion, which will just increase the rate of late-term abotions, which seems pretty stupid, because I thought anti-choice groups didn’t really like those very much.  It’s a completely illogical, unnecessary proposition.  Its proponents have no interest in protecting young women, only in pushing a very conservative agenda that will make safe, legal abortions harder to obtain.  These kinds of initiatives are the kind of small changes that are gradually chipping away at Roe V. Wade, and at the control that women are able to have over their bodies.  This is also the third time this initiative has been on the California ballot – by forcing pro-choice organizations to mobilize against this initiative every four years, anti-choice groups are weakening the ability of organizations like Planned Parenthood to actually perform their primary mission – which is providing sex education and inexpensive, vitally important health services to women who need them.

I don’t really even need to say this, but if we want to prevent abortions, we don’t need ass-backwards legislation that will make safe ones harder to come by.  We need comprehensive sex ed.  We need easy access to contraception.

So, dear Californian friends, please, please, please, when you are voting FUCK YES! for Obama and FUCK NO!  for Proposition 8 (which is a whole other kettle of awful, disgusting, stinky fish – but really, it’s not that different from Prop 4 when it comes right down to it.  They’re both part of this twisted, conservative illogic, that on one hand advocates for limited governement, but on the other hand wants to control everything that people are doing with their own bodies), please, please, please also vote no on Prop 4 because it is very, very, very important.

1)  the Conservative Party of Canada being guilty of plagiarism,

2) Mary Walsh launching an attack on Stephen Harper, “iceberg of a Prime Minister,” and his sweater vests.

This has been an excellent afternoon.  My only complaint right now is that it is inexplicably 38 degrees (Celsius, bitches) outside, so if you could take care of that, Santa, that would be great.

Love,

Alexandra

1.  A Nigella Lawson cookbook.   Either How to Eat or Nigella Express, but preferably Nigella Express because it has more pictures and we all know that the entire point of cookbooks is FOOD PORN.  (Yesss!  And now I will get a hundred hits to my blog from people googling for pornography featuring naked ladies covered in food.  Hello, creepy weirdos!  Thank you for making the internet a wildly uncomfortable place!)

2.  A citrus reamer like the one my mom got from the Pampered Chef.  Not only is it perfect for margarita making, it also serves double-duty as a self-defense device because it weighs approximately 57 pounds.

3.  A pair of really good headphones.

4.  A solution to my boy problem (problem being:  boys exist and are stupid but I still want to make out with them) that does not involve celibacy.

5.  A North America presided over by a team of kind, fair, benevolent, intelligent, democratically elected Philosopher Monarch-type people who just happen to agree with and enforce all of my opinions.

6.  Another new X-Files movie.  One that isn’t TERRIBLE.  I know it is possible.  I just watched Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.  I know it is possible.

7.  Somebody to go out dancing with.  I miss going dancing with my Sassyladyfriends.

8.  UNICORN.  (Item 8 could also be combined with Item 7:  A unicorn to go out dancing with.  That would be quite acceptable.)

I know I can count on you, Santa!  Don’t let me down!

Yours,

Xandra A.

Have people seen the Anti-Harper Vote Swap facebook group and how do you feel about? (I tried including a link but it only works if you’re logged into facebook – so just search for it.)  While I appreciate the motive behind it, and agree with what they are trying to do (stop the Conservatives from getting a majority, thereby saving the world), the idea of vote swapping makes me very uncomfortable.

In other news, I got my mail-in ballot yesterday.  Weirdly, there are no boxes to check – you just write in the name of the candidate you’re voting for.  And it was kind of exciting to get my Elections Canada envelope.  I still sort of get naively excited about the concept of voting, despite the period of despair that inevitably follows the election, due to a depressing outcome that is a result our completely undemocratic way of counting votes.  But I still have a few weeks left to hope in vain.

Arrg,

Xandra A.

2.  So, the definition of quirkyalone is “a person who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple,” and generally that has really pretty exactly characterised how I feel.  But for some reason, just this week, I’ve felt completely, irrationally opposed to the idea of ever being in a relationship, ever.  (Illustrative example:  So, Cute Earnest Barista told me to come to that show, right?  Which could have been interpreted as an expression of interest, right?  As a result, I have now begun avoiding Cafe Audrey.  Which is stupid and too bad, because I do really like it there and I’ve been thinking of actually getting my act together and playing at one of their open mic nights.)  But the really weird thing is that I’m stuck between feeling totally ok with this and really liberated and feeling kind of hopelessly depressed, but not for any normal reasons that make sense.    Anyhow, I don’t know.  Whatever.  School will start in a week or so and then I’ll be teaching and busy and I really do much better when I am superlatively busy and don’t have hours of navel-gazing time.

3.  Today we volunteered at the phone bank trying to convince Californians to vote no on Proposition 8, which is a stupid, hateful proposition that will be on the ballot in California this November and that, if passed, will reverse the recent decision to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.  And it turns out that cold-calling people was surprisingly less agonizing than I thought it would be, mostly because nobody answers their phone, and because I luckily didn’t end up stuck talking to any jackasses.  But the thing that shocks me was that most people did not even know that this issue was going to be on the ballot.  I can’t even vote here, and I am more aware than most of the people I talked to, all of whom were registered voters.  I just think it’s weird.  And discouraging.  And kind of frightening, really.

4.  Other things sure to depress:  war, famine, pestilence, death, the David Foster Wallace thing even though I’ve never actually read any of his books, horrific train accidents, and, on a far, far more trivial, flippant note, the remake of The Women, because what is the point of remaking perfection and replacing Norma Shearer with Meg Ryan and Joan Crawford with Eva Mendes?

So then I drank the last of the shiraz straight out of the bottle, watched some totally depressio X-Files episodes, and went to bed.

Amazing.

Today I saw a bus that still had a lonely-looking X-Files 2 ad on it!  And it reminded me of those halcyon days preceeding the 25th of July, 2008, when we still had hope.  Hope that the X-Files movie would be not terrible.  Ah yes, I remember those days.  Those days before the world was introduced to Fox “Scratchy Beard” Mulder.  Those days before our dreams were shattered by a movie about Russian doctors harvesting people’s organs.  But at least we will always have Mulder and Scully in a rowboat.  Forever.

And also there are funny billboards with David Duchovny’s face on them all over the city, advertising the new season of Californication.  Apparently he won the Golden Globe for best actor for the last season, which seems highly improbable because, well, who knew anyone was watching that show?  Even I wasn’t, and Fox Mulder is my second-best friend!  (Dana Scully is my first-best friend, and Walter Skinner is my third-best friend.  And Diana Fowley is my Number Two Worst Enemy, right after Karl Lagerfeld.)  So as I contemplated David Duchovny’s face as my bus was stopped at a red light on Sunset today, I got to thinking.  I have been living in Los Angeles for an entire year, and I have yet to even make out with David Duchovny, Sex Addict.  (An aside:  Why is it that in the media coverage of David’s sex addiction not one person has mentioned the scene in Trust the Man where David actually goes to Sex Addicts Anonymous and says “I am a sex addict.  I enjoy rubbing cold cuts all over my naked body”?  Oh, wait:  because nobody else saw that movie.)  Clearly I need to up my game.  So, in the interests of upping my game,  I have purchased an eyelash curler and have started referring to my bathroom exclusively as the “Powder Room.”  How these two things will succeed in helping me to up my game has yet to be determined. But, you know, good things come to those with very curly eyelashes who wait in powder rooms.  Or something.

My oven is currently full of chocolate-stout cupcakes and bundt cake and love.  And let me tell you, I think this is my new favourite dessert recipe.  And I don’t even know how it will turn out yet.  There’s something about a big pot of beer and butter bubbling away on the stove that is just, well, makes a 2-bed, 2-bath, rent-controlled apartment a home.  And also the batter was pretty delicious (licking the beaters being the chef’s prerogative).

Anyhow, anyhow.  I’m currently really annoyed about something.  And there will be a more lucid, detailed post about this on my soon-to-be-launched Other Blog.  But for now:  I am really fed up with the elitist, offensive rhetoric that is being employed by people who are opposed to the format changes over at CBC Radio 2.  I have yet to hear an argument that amounts to anything more than “Radio 2 should remain exclusively a classical music station because classical music is better and superior to popular music which is all verse-chorus-verse, and the national music station should be playing only music to edify the people.”  It’s really aggravating.  It’s especially aggravating because the people making these arguments are people who I guess are my colleagues – music educators, musicians, composers, etc.  It makes me so mad to see this false popular/classical dichotomy upheld, a dichotomy that is ultimately less about the music itself and more about identifying oneself as better than other people.  (Because – newsflash! – classical music is not better than popular music or vice versa.  Both are capable of being edifying or not.  And arguments to the contrary are strongly ideologically motivated.)  And it sort of makes a lot of sense to me that a national music station should try to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible, you know?  By playing lots of different kinds of music?  You know?  And I wish people would think of what it means when they say that, by playing music by “popular” Canadian musicians, Radio 2 is dumbing itself down.  That kind of rhetoric marginalizes both the artists and listeners.  I listened to the new 3:00 show the other day, which features mainly independent, Canadian musicians, and, let me tell you, I didn’t hear anything that I would describe as dumb.  Anyhow.  Mostly I’m just fed up with the kind of jackassery that I hoped was exclusively the domain of self-important music undergraduates.

Oh, also annoying:  Stephen Harper, what is the point of the election you are going to call tomorrow?  I hate your stupid face (and also all of your stupid policies).  Hopefully the people of Canada will have the sense to fire you.  But I worry.

Luckily for you, Stephen Harper, my oven timer is buzzing at me so I am stepping off my soapbox for the time being.

THE END,

Xandra A.

1. I would like some musicologist to do an interesting, cogent reading of the choice of popular songs used between speakers, and, like, class/race stuff. Just because it would be fascinating and because I would do it myself except that I’m still on holiday. And also I feel like I’m at a total disadvantage when it comes to American politics anyhow, and because I only watched enough of the convention to catch “Chain of Fools” and “Don’t Stop.”

2. American politics are so much more exciting than Canadian politics! Everybody is so earnest and excited and waving flags and dancing around! I feel like Canadians would be vaguely embarrassed at the thought of exhibiting such behaviour. I mean, I love Jack and Olivia as much as the next dyed-in-the-wool NDP voter, but we all know that it’s sort of an ironic love. I don’t think any of us would dance to soul music for Jack. And I really don’t think we have politicians who are charismatic enough to command that kind of enthusiasm. I mean, I really loved Jean Chretien, but mostly because dude talked out of the side of his face and was kind of bumbly and incomprehensible and hilarious*, not for any real, substantial reasons. And Paul Martin was boring and Stephen Harper is obviously a reprehensible, cruel, devious human being, who also has the distinction of looking like a child molester. And remember back in the late 1990s when This Hour Has 22 Minutes was really good and they just managed to make most Canadian politicians look like laughable idiots? I remember those days. Those were good days. I still sort of have a hard time believing that Stockwell Day, Creationist, is an actual, real person, and not just some character that Rick Mercer invented.

So I guess, even if Canadian politicians aren’t exactly exciting, they really do succeed at being hilarious caricatures of themselves.

*This video is hilarious, go watch it. “For me, pepper, I put it on my plate.” Oh Jean, you jackass.