wickedqueen.net

Seriously. I counted, and I have moved five times in the last twelve months. It is FUCKING CRAZY.

Right now I am bleaching the shower. I have to do this every time I move, because I am basically a big reddish pink contaminant, and lately I keep getting these unbelievably bitchtastic landlords as if to punish me for the SAINTLY landlord I had for two years in Madison (Bruce at SRM; he is awesome).

A friend is giving me a ride to the airport tomorrow, thank god; I spent today running around doing last-minute errands–like shipping my bike, which as it turned out really shouldn’t have been a last-minute errand, but it’s done.*

So: I fly to San Francisco tomorrow. It’s a direct flight, which I guess is sort of nice, except it means I’m in the air for six hours and I don’t have an aisle seat and I have to get up every 45 minutes or so for a little turn around the cabin, lest I get a blood clot and die. The last time I tried to use this little factoid to maneuver the old guy in the aisle seat into switching with me, he just made a face at me and told me to get over myself. So at least I didn’t have to feel bad about making him get up every 45 minutes.

I will be wearing my anti-clotting prescription pantyhose, and taking aspirin, and possibly drinking heavily. I picked up four trashy paperback thrillers at the library sale table today for a grand total of $1,** so at least I don’t have to pay airport bookstore prices like I did on the way back from Chicago***–$35 I paid for TWO BOOKS, although I admit one of them was a hardback. It was the only thing that looked good to me. The books from the library sale should be better than staring at the back of a fellow passenger’s head for six hours, anyway.

Then a friend is picking me up at the SF airport, and I’m hanging out with her and her fiance (with whom I went to junior high, so I actually knew him first) over the weekend, and heading down to Palo Alto on Monday, where I have a motel room for the four nights until I can move into the room I’m renting in Mountain View. I start work on Tuesday. Oh, this whirlwind life I lead.

So you can understand why I may well not post for another ten days. But eventually there will be pictures of the Bay Area to make up for it.****

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*Let’s just say it’s probably a good thing I was wearing that wonder bra when I set out to talk the bike shop guy into packing my bike in an afternoon instead of, like, three days.

****And also of my empty Boston apartment, in case at any point in the future I need evidence that I did not, in fact, wreck the joint.

When you look at these photos, you need to imagine that someone is blasting “Thunderdome” by Messiah, a techno track that opens with a sample of Tina Turner screaming, “THUNDERDOME! THUNDERDOME!” because dude, that is how it was. I brought a mix for my opponent (the mix, if you’re interested) and the people doing the announcing for mud wrestling at Steer Roast* were totally willing to play a track for the match.

It didn’t look bad for me in the beginning. I have strong legs and I had a good grip on the ropes.

Jumping on his opponent’s back may have worked for Westley, but it didn’t work for me. I think the mud was too slick.

I gave it my best shot, but…

If you look closely, you can see my head being ground into the mud.

I put up a good fight, but ultimately, my blue-haired opponent emerged the victor.

These photos were taken for me with my camera by Ivan. As you can see, the lighting conditions weren’t ideal for a point-n-shoot at some distance, but these shots convey the basic idea. Other people were taking pictures, so better shots may become available in the next few days, but I wanted to provide Matt with some immediate proof that he did not make me up.

Also, I would like to note that I later asked my opponent how tall she is, and it turns out that she is, in fact, six feet tall. I did not imagine it to compensate for my loss.

And although I got my ass roundly kicked at mud wrestling, afterwards, there was a performance by FREEZEPOP. Who are apparently intimately tied to the Senior House/MIT community and I had no idea, although I have loved them for years now. I go-go’ed** to “Science Genius Girl”! And after their set I got a hoodie.

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*Steer Roast is an annual party at Senior House, one of the dorms at MIT. One of the residents told me that they used it to get MIT into Playboy’s top 25 party schools one year in the 80s by convincing them that it happened every weekend.

**On Thursday night, I went to a go-go dancing aerobics workshop with my friend Andrea. It was super fun and I can do both the Twist and the Mashed Potato now, although my favorite is the Batoosi (the version of the Watoosi that Adam West did in the opening credits to “Batman”). The Pony is practically like moshing.

Conferences are really the academic equivalent of summer camp, with the sudden fast friendships and too many scheduled activities, except that sometimes there’s free booze and after an hour of that–during which you have perhaps been availing of yourself of the open bar like someone who knows it is only open for an hour–you can convince people to go to Allston for karaoke.

For the second time, I was the only person in the room (not including people who are related to me) who had EVER HEARD “Goodbye Earl.” I guess the Dixie Chicks really aren’t big on the East Coast. Or Australia.

Elizabeth took pictures, which she says are no good because the flash destroys the blacklight effect, but dude, I just want to see the hilarious karaoke faces. She will also find that there’s at least one self-shot close-up of my adorable pink head in there somewhere,* but I probably have enough of those already.

Martyn** insisted the entire way there that he was not going to sing any karaoke, but would suffer through the rest of us making fools of ourselves. Within an hour he was standing up singing “Closer” with me,*** although neither of us believe it actually ends like that.****

And Nathan sang “Fuck and Run” with me,***** for which I was very grateful, because as I KNEW from singing it at WisCon karaoke last year, it’s actually too low for me. Having a guy sing along, I can sort of pretend I’m, um, harmonizing?

And I finally got Laura (who lives here) to karaoke! We opened the night together with a rousing rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” without which, frankly, no karaoke session is truly complete.****** It was totally awesome and no one spilled anything on my phone. A fantastic karaoke evening.

Not that this means I’m not going to try to do another one before I leave town, don’t you worry. There is no such thing as too much karaoke. Some time before the 18th, we are hitting Do Re Mi again.

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*This tends to happen with me after happy hours and similar events. At least I don’t take off my clothes anymore.

******I’m sorry, Aaron, but it’s true.

So I’m sitting in an auditorium listening to the second-to-last plenary of the Media in Transition conference, and from my position about 2/3 of the way back, I can see two different people logged into Twitter. Elizabeth, who is sitting next to me, surfed to my blog when she saw me open it.

Unfortunately, my laptop battery is almost dead. A few days ago it started notifying me that while it is “charging normally, it is reaching the end of its lifespan.” At first I thought I’d just wait until I got to PARC and started pulling in a bigger paycheck, but then I realized that would mean I’d be doing all my traveling in the next week with a death-rattling battery. Not ideal. I’ve ordered one from Amazon MarketPlace for like $60 less than Dell wanted, but it won’t be here probably until the end of the week. Man.

This has been a good conference. I didn’t have a paper in because I didn’t actually know about it until like two weeks ago when Henry emailed me and asked me to moderate a session, but it’s been really interesting. I really like MIT. I’m looking forward to a summer in Palo Alto–especially since the housing situation is now looking a little more promising–but I’ve really liked being here, too. I hope I can come back.

The MIT tunnels, of course, are officially sanctioned, and have lots of stairwells so you’re never actually trapped down there (and sadly no little minecars that I could find), but DAMN, they make me feel like I’m in Real Genius.

The guy in that subterranean computer lab looked at me like I was completely crackers. He was kind of cute, too. I thought about posting a craigslist missed connection but it seemed like it might get too weird.

Two held after ad compaign triggers Boston bomb scare

BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) — Authorities have arrested two men in connection with electronic light boards depicting a middle-finger-waving moon man that triggered repeated bomb scares around Boston on Wednesday and prompted the closure of bridges and a stretch of the Charles River.

Meanwhile, police and prosecutors vented their anger at Turner Broadcasting System Inc., the parent company of CNN, which said the battery-operated light boards were aimed at promoting the late-night Adult Swim cartoon “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”

…

Peter Berdovsky, 27, a freelance video artist from Arlington, Massachusetts, and Sean Stevens, 28, were facing charges of placing a hoax device in a way that results in panic, as well as one count of disorderly conduct, said Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. The hoax charge is a felony, she said. Both men were arrested Wednesday evening.

…

The devices displayed a “Mooninite” — an outer-space delinquent who makes frequent appearances on the cartoon — greeting passersby with an upraised middle finger. But the discovery of nine of the light boards around Boston and its suburbs sent bomb squads scrambling throughout the day, snarling traffic and mass transit in one of the largest U.S. cities.

“It had a very sinister appearance,” [MA Attorney General] Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.”

Oh noes! A battery! WIRES!!!

It was also a light-up blocky alien dude flipping the bird, but hey, I can see how that might look like a bomb to someone who’s been participating in those neurological research studies advertised in the MIT student paper where they give you free cocaine and then stick you in an MRI machine.* As someone in my video game workshop remarked this morning, is there not a SINGLE NERD in the entire Boston PD? Or at the very least, someone who knows how to use Google?

I also notice that while the city claims to be mad at the corporate higher-ups who okayed the ad campaign, they’ve chosen to arrest the freelance artists, who probably have less expensive lawyers.

And despite the fact that these things have been in like 10 cities for three weeks, Boston is the only one that freaked out and shut down a bridge. Maybe there’s something to what they say about uptight New Englanders.

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*For serious. They only want people who have “previously made occasional use” of it, but they definitely give you some for the purposes of the study.

Although I have finally shed the sense that I will be surrounded by disorganized piles of my crap FOREVER (read: I am getting closer to being finished unpacking), the apartment is still too much of a disaster to photograph for posterity (and also I still have decor to put up). However, I thought I would offer photographic evidence that, despite the deep psychic trauma inflicted upon him by all this moving around, Legba does sometimes come out from underneath the bed.

Legba being insouciant.

Bartimus and Pandora on the living room couch.

Legba almost never looks at the camera. He is pictured here with Ishibana-kun, my stuffed Easter Island head.

More of Bart and Dora on the couch. Bart is the Switzerland of cats.

Legba close-up. I like how his eyes match the sheets.

And just so it’s not ALL about how I am a crazy woman with three cats, a few pictures of my neighborhood, which I know you’ve been dying to see.

There are nice houses in my neighborhood. I don’t live in one, but they’re attractive to look at.

That’s right: Hooker Street.

That’s my building on the far right. The scary tenement. (To be fair, my apartment is hardly overcrowded, except when the cats are feeling needy.)

It was not easy to get a photo link for one of Dad’s Flickr pictures. I must speak to him about this.

Hey, look–we’d been drinking. The room looks significantly different now. (No link because it is too hard with Dad’s photos.)

So yesterday, after doing my paperwork and getting my official MIT ID card (awesome), I was waiting (forever) at a cold and windy bus stop for the bus that would take me back to my apartment so that I could check on the cats, who were in captivity in the bedroom while contractors worked on my kitchen floor.

Crowds came and went, as everyone else’s damn bus arrived, and gradually I became aware of a commotion. A large number of women, all shouting about something being “disgusting.” This shifted into the suggestion that the perpetrator of the disgusting thing should be arrested, and then somebody spotted a cop across the street and there was a mass outcry for him to come deal with the disgusting thing, which turned out to be: public urination on the other side of the bus shelter.

The cop came across the street, and was shortly yelling at the Public Peeing Guy; the women, in turn, shouted helpful suggestions to the cop about arresting him. Some of the women kept up a more direct harangue against Public Peeing Guy himself, with frequent references to the presence of innocent children on the public streets, a concern that seemed to trump the more pedestrian disgustingness of pee on the sidewalk, although this was also referenced a few times.

This culminated with one woman yelling, as she boarded her bus (they wait for no man, peeing or not): “What are you, SOME KIND OF PEDOPHILE! YOU DIRTY PEDOPHILE!”*

See? This is what happens when people start throwing around the term “pedophile,” using it to identify, say, Mark Foley. Pretty soon it is a synonym for “possibly a minor sexual deviant.”

So anyway, I definitely feel like I am in the big city now. Mob justice! Police action! Now I just need to see that guy who rides the bicycle and makes the siren noise** and my Boston experience will be complete.

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*Someone else boarding the bus yelled, “Maybe that’s okay where YOU come from, but we don’t DO THAT in AMERICA.” Apparently PPG was an immigrant. I have not actually seen Borat, but am reminded of various reviews discussing how easily Americans believe that citizens of the rest of the world drink out of toilets and have not yet discovered fire. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure his behavior would have been not that remarkable in Japan, provided he was wearing a suit and it was dark outside.

**My sister Hannah joined a Facebook group about him.