Reviews: Omayra Amaya

Okay Okay, I get more comments about Sci-Fi than I do about the shameful behaviour of the U.S. Government. So I'll shut up about torture. However there's a good op-ed piece in the LA Times today about the situation. Read about it Here

So Last Weekend we drove up to Santa Barbara to visit ye olde daddy and go to a flamenco dance concert that some lovely friends of ours had given us tickets too. As we drove along the 101 we passed the Day Fire in the distance, churning smoke into the sky. In the morning our car had a fine layer of ash upon it. Smoke is best seen with polarizing lenses otherwise you can mistake it for haze or for or clouds. Like when we were coming into California last, over the Sierras, driving over Donner Pass (7089 feet high) and into the great San Joaquin Valley I saw smoke - through my polarized sunglasses and suggested to my companions that maybe we should turn the radio on and see if we could get any news about the fire and whether the road was closed. But there was scoffing, scoffing at my suggestion. I was told that the Valley was always hazy. And then of course we turned a corner and went down into a smoke bank forest fire. But the Day fire is something, fanned by Santa Anas, it is huge and has scorched acres upon acres. Luckily though no one has been killed, and very few structures have been damaged.

Well ye olde daddy made us some artichokes and mahi mahi for dinner and then we went all greased up and happy from having some champagne and mayonnaise with our protein and veg to the theatre where we saw the Omayra Amaya dance troupe. They consisted of a guitarist, a singer, a percussionist and two dancers one of each genders. The percussionist played a box which is apparently a cajon drum, but that is what you find out if you google percussion box flamenco which, of course I didn't do at the time. The two dancers did not dance with one another, they had a series of solo dances. I liked it all, I thought it was rather thrilling and that Omayra had beautiful arms. My beloved companions were less enthusiastic. But we still had a good time. I actually like going to things I don't know anything about. Was this good flamenco? Bad flamenco? Is combining Modern Dance with flamenco a tragedy or brilliant? I don't have an opinion about it! I rather liked the Isadora Duncan\Martha Graham parts of the dance. I was reminded of dancers on Greek friezes during the modern part. I liked the stampy footy part too. But the performance was part of a greater Santa Barbara effort called the Flamenco Arts Festival, so when I read the program notes, I read about the other shows that were part of the Festival and I learned one crucial thing about flamenco. You have to be BORN to it. Flamenco dancers and guitarists have pedigrees and lineages, so don't go see someone who isn't the niece of an uncle of a grandpapa. So I recommend going to the theatre and seeing some flamenco. Oh, the guitarist, Roberto Castellon was brilliant.

And just a general note, I'm so glad the U.S. government has figured out that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms. And now they're busy taking away our freedoms so that the terrorists won't hate us. Isn't that sweet?

Republicans Toe the Line, Part their Asses

Well well well. Forget anything nice I ever said. The Senate leadership just rolled over and played dead. While pretending to be all moral and upright and concerned about the rule of law - unlike the white house, they were secretly in cahoots with the white house to oh, suspend rights that people had under the friggin' Magna Carta, much less the constitution.

Well I guess Karl Rove doesn't believe in habeas Corpus, and therefore no one else does either. This is just another way that the dancing republicans pretend to have diversity but actually don't.

McCain and Warner just suck the titty of the republican war chests, parting their partisan asses to special interests. Disgusting.

The Torturer Next Door

Slate has an insightful article about why the US Military Lawyers are against the Bush Administration's proposal to make torture legal for the american military. It's called the Cooler Heads. One of the reasons the Military and old hands like McCain and Warner want to stick by the Geneva conventions is that it makes the rules of war clear for soldiers on the ground and it gives a soldier a legal reason to disobey an order.

Think about what we ask a soldier to do. We ask them to kill people legally. Isn't that a mind blower? A soldier needs a clear framework to do her job.

And now think, what happens to the person who is asked to hold a person's head underwater until they are breathing water? What happens to a person who is ordered to place electrodes on another human? What happens to the person who delivers the electrical jolt?

How can a government strip the moral integrity of a young serviceman by asking them to do that? And what happens when that young man comes home?

George Bush Says It's OKAY to Torture American Soldiers

I'm just so amazed at the ability of the Bush Administration to completely ignore the rule of law. So NOW the Republicans, lead by the "I never met a penis electrode I didn't like" guys at the white house, want to arbitrarily sign off of international rules about torture under the Geneva convention. And they're bashing the Republicans who don't want to abide by international treaties that 1) have been in existence for a while and 2) were mainly written by the US, back when we were the good guys. It's very interesting that the people who actually have served in the military, McCain, Warner, Powell, want protections for US soldiers while the guys who sat on their hands and have never been in battle don't.

There was an article in the LA Times yesterday about how this was going to cost McCain big among the evangelical christian right, who also, apparently think it's cool for governments to torture people. In fact, if it wasn't for those terribly Popish costumes, they'd be bringing back the Spanish Inquisition. What McCain and Powell get, and what this administration seems to be clueless about is that we win when we persist in being better.

There has been a shift away from property rights to human rights, and people persist in being confused by this. It used to be that children were the property of their father, a wife her husband, a farmer his landlord, a serf his lord, a nation it's King. But property rights suck. Human Rights don't. And there is a clear and shiny line that even the most Manichean among us can see. Which is you can not harm another person. You can not violate their dignity. Which is why the Geneva Conventions are a shining beacon of humanity, really one of the nicest things us people can point to and say "see, we're civilized."

So of course, the right wing extremists running our government are against it.

Stale Saying Commonplace Chestnut

I went to the bookstore and forgot to get a book of Sudoku puzzles. But I did wander through the Sci-Fi section. My cousin had recommended a few books when I had last seen A., at the Sci-Fi World Con. I had gone to a store before and had not seen any of the one's she had recommended. So, in an effort to be gone from the house while the cleaner was there, I decamped to the mall and stalked around a chain bookstore. There are some pretty racy book covers in the old Sci-Fi world. A lot of breast plates and naked backs with tattoos. Anyway, I picked up a couple books. Science Fiction books with racy covers. Then I was feeling guilty that I was not at home working, so I walked over to the tech section and started to look at the books there. I thumbed through a few java books, thinking, "But I don't want to learn another language!" Can you hear me stomp my little foot? But then I saw a book about PHP and MySQL and since I'm futzing around with those as well I decided to buy that book. So I wandered around the chain bookstore and found the counter where you could buy the books. There were actually a lot of counters where you could buy books on every level of the store, they were just unmanned as it were so you had to wander until you found a populated counter. Anyway there I was buying some Sci-Fi and Computer Programming books and I thought;

"Am I a cliche?"

Chocolate

Today is Milton Snavely Hershey's birthday, the man who brought us the chocolate bar. Who the hell names their kid SNAVELY?
Well apparently, now that we have the internet we can answer that question, not very many. But there is a popular limerick about Snavely the snail. Which goes like this:

Some unseemly snorkelers from Wales,
Were arrested and sent off to jails,
For acts most immoral
Among the reefs coral,
Such as writing graffiti on snails.


And then there is a site which morphs the limerick to different verse forms, (a la Queaneau) here:
A Study in Verse Forms by Peg Kay

Petty Tyrants

Sometimes it is just appalling how awful people are about everything and to anyone no matter what the situation.
For example, I had to go to the DMV, always a pleasant experience, for a second time in a month. The first time we had been told that we had filled out the transfer form wrong. The beloved's Rev. Auntie was leaving the country and we decided that the peeb nation fit in her car real well so we'd buy the car off her. The Rev was leasing the car, so the (paperless) title had to go from the lease company to her and then from her to us. And we had just mashed it all up on one piece of paper that the lady at the DMV had given us. So she told us to come back with two orange pieces of paper - going from the lease company to the Rev and then from the rev to us. Okay. So the Rev sent us the needed orange document from the lease company to her. Then she left for the outer Hebrides to bring the word of our lord to some sheep, some salmon and some men in skirts with no underwear. I popped over to the DMV.

So I explained to the woman behind the DMV counter what had happened, proudly displayed the two orange pieces of paper, waited for her to grock it. Then she said, whose Akbar? Which is something that I don't grock. I don't know I said. Well, whose Akbar she said again, quite pointlessly I thought, like why don't you give me more info because I don't know who Akbar is and I don't know why you're talking to him, capice? Well it turns out the VIN number was wrong, and Akbar had the VIN number on the (paperless) title, and so while the ORANGE pieces of paper and all my documents had ONE VIN Number the (paperless) title had Akbar's VIN number. So the woman behind the DMV counter told me to take the car, go around back follow the signs and get the car VERIFIED. What she didn't tell me was that I was supposed to take the car to the big glass doors right in front of her. Whatever, I can follow directions. So I get in the car and follow the signs and get in the VERIFICATION lane which is empty and right next to the driving test lane which has a line in it. The two lanes go up around the building and have little signs on the pavement demarking the lanes, here driving test, here VERIFICATION lane. With a STOP sign indicator for each lane. All the driving test people were in line behind the STOP sign and I drive up to the VERIFICATION STOP. I wonder briefly why I'm not parking way back there in front of the glass doors so that the behind the counter DMV woman can see that I am following directions waiting for VERIFICATION. But I am a smart chick, I can read, and so I park where the signs tell me to park. There is a guard guy ordering the test drive lane cars, and he sees me, waves at me and goes on ordering the driving test cars. When he has gone up and down the driving car lanes he comes over to me and asks "Are there a lot of people in there?" motioning to the brick DMV building beside us. "Yes, it's very crowded today." I say. "How many people are in there?" he asks, "A lot, it's crowded" I repeat, "You wouldn't know how many people are in there, would you?" "Many, many people are in there, " I say thinking maybe he doesn't like the word crowded. "Can you tell me exactly how many people are in there?" "Probably the average amount of people are in there, for an average September week day" I reply, getting more and more annoyed with guard guy. "But you wouldn't KNOW" he says triumphantly. "Not exactly," I say. "You wouldn't know cause you cant see through a wall!" I am amazed. I can't see through walls, doesn't he know that I am Superman's sister? I actually DO have X-Ray vision and can see that he has a very small penis. I don't often let on about who I am.

"So how can you expect them to see you if you're not in front of the glass doors?" He goes on to tell me. "Why does it say to stop here then?" I ask, but what I really want to do is punch this guy. "I don't know, but you have to move back." He proceeds to talk to me more about buildings, brick walls, signs; with his arm on the car door so I CAN'T MOVE BACK.

Well it goes on and on after that, but that guy is going to have one short life, because someone some day is going to have temper management issues. Someone who has no patience with being in some frigging Kafkaesque bureaucratic insane asylum is going to take him out. And I will testify on behalf of the defense, asking for clemency.

And of course, I have to go back.

Reviews

There is a wee show at the Museum of Arts and Crafts that we went to see this weekend. Called Tigers and Jagaurs it featured local artists (L.A.) and was about Asian\Latino synergy and influence. Of note were Bari Kumar's "Mas Para Menos", which featured a multi-armed Kali\Jesus figure. Totally fantastic. And Clement Hamani's "Rice Rocket", a low-rider rick shaw blaring 70s oldies. Richard Duardo's energetic mish mosh of punk\asian\latino prints and Shizu Saldamando's chinese screen of a Hungington Park party. Small but choice. Upstairs there was a much larger exhibit of palestinian embroidery, that made me think, "Oh those Poor Exploited Women!" It certainly didn't make me feel how great palestinian culture was, it just made me think about how OPPRESSED those women are.