hallowhat?

buh? is it some kind of holiday today? i'm far too obsessed with the most important us election of the last century that's happening in two days to notice anything else.

the only costume i care about is a black hooded sweatshirt to wear tuesday.

obligatory political post

i know nobody reads this but me (and maybe one or two friends), but i would feel really shitty if i didn't add this site to the ever-growing list of anti-bush blogs.

throw the bums out.

vote for kerry next week (even if, like me, you're still pissed at the democratic party for years of negligence). while you're at it, vote for democrats for senate, house, governor, state legislature, and lower-ticket offices. but if any of these races aren't gonna be close at all, please vote for the greens. they're the only honest-yet-potentially-viable party on our side, and once the neocons are out on their asses, the next job for responsible citizens, regardless of party affiliation, is to chuck the two-party system. first step: instant run-off voting.

and just in case any dlc assholes are reading (yeah, i know, fat chance): you better not ignore us progressives after we get your boy elected. this democratic coalition is not about kerry; it's about ousting bush. don't assume you can count on the votes of those of us on the left unless you throw us a friggin' bone every now and then.

oh yeah, and don't forget to wear your black hooded sweatshirt to the polls!

i hate money

well, not money itself, just having to deal with it. my just-barely-enough-to-scrape-by fellowship stipend was disbursed on september 22, and was promptly lost in the mail. last week i went to the student accounting office to report that 3 weeks had elapsed without receiving my check. they said they'd stop payment on it and issue a new one in 2 weeks.

so, with the university housing people breathing down my neck (my rent was 2 weeks late because i have no damn money), i had to bite the bullet and borrow a little from my mom. i'm already in up to my neck with her thanks to the move, which sucked up way more money than i thought possible.

and now it looks like the credit limit on one of my credit cards (the move also maxed out all my credit, by the way) has magically jumped up $500. this is the second time they've increased my credit without my request. i think the secret must be to max out the account repeatedly. they seem to like the idea of me reaching the bottom of my grave just in time for them to dig it deeper.

on the plus side, i won't default on anything during the next week, but it looks like i'm gonna have to further widen the gap between my worth and my debt.

oh yeah. this is SO much better than student loans.

i don't know what's stranger...

that the weather here is so damn nice all the time, or that angelinos go apeshit when the temperature drops below 70°F. it was about 65°F today, and every person i saw was wearing long pants and either a sweater or a coat (or both). when i got on the bus after class, the girl who sat down in the seat in front of mine blew on her hands and vigorously rubbed them together to stimulate warmth. 65°F.

i was walking around in shorts and a t-shirt, feeling quite comfortable, but everybody around me was acting like it wasn't a fit night out for man nor beast. i guess when the temperature range for the whole year is around 35°F (as opposed to the usual 125°F range in northeast iowa), you gotta take advantage of every tiny temperature shift to make owning long sleeves feel worthwhile.

also, apparently there was a "rain advisory" yesterday. it sprinkled lightly for a few hours. i'd never heard of a rain advisory before, and i expected that such a condition implied impending torrential downpours instead of light mistings. go figure.

it's raining tonight

...for the first time in the 27 days since i arrived in la. i'm told this is unusual because angelinos generally don't expect any rain whatsoever between march and january.

weird.

the movie industry and me

in the 3 weeks that i've been in la, i've had a couple of encounters with the movie industry. nope, no celebrity citings yet (though i did drive behind a new bmw from a beverly hills dealer that had the vanity license plate "babs"). my first encounter took place monday. some of my colleagues had seen "sky captain and the world of tomorrow" last week, but i'd missed the showing. i didn't want to be left out of the discussion of the movie, and i didn't want to go alone, so i downloaded "sky captain" via bittorrent.

here's the problem: i live in a university-owned apartment, and my internet connection comes from the university's system. i get unbelievably good download speeds, but the university is hypersensitive about copyright issues. because ucla and the mpaa are based in the same city, the university is under intense pressure from the film industry to keep its students in check. they have a deal worked out wherein students caught sharing copyrighted material represented by the mpaa are disciplined by the university in exchange for ucla not having to rat out its students and expose them to litigation.

so, i got caught. this was my first offense, so my punishment was to lose my in-room internet privileges for a day (of course, it took them three days to reconnect me). as long as i keep my nose clean vis a vis movies and music, i won't get into any more trouble.

the other encounter was much more pleasant. thursday night some of my colleagues and i went to a preview showing of the rough cut of an as-yet-untitled sequel to "the talented mr. ripley." this seems to be one of the perks of living in la: there are often people standing around on the street handing out free tickets to these sorts of things. all you have to do in exchange is fill out a little opinion card after the movie, and maybe participate in a focus group.

unfortunately, this movie wasn't any good, but that didn't matter. it was still a lot of fun to see a movie before anybody else (for free!) and maybe have a say in how the final product turns out. my party and i were initially invited to participate in a focus group, but afterward the focus group guy asked us if we liked the movie, and when we said no, he said they didn't need us. oh, well. on our way out we ran into people inviting us to prescreenings of "bridgit jones's diary 2" and "inside deep throat." hopefully they'll start offering passes to screenings of movies that might actually be good!

the friendly facade cracks

yesterday i saw a completely harmless car accident in westwood that was handled pretty poorly by the people involved. as i was riding the bus to campus, we passed the accident. i didn't see it happen, but it was clear that the four people in the brand-new cadillac sedan had been rear-ended by a guy in a crappy, old pick-up truck with a "free tibet!" bumper sticker. at first, the young guy driving the caddy and the truck guy got out and assessed the damage (or, from what i could see, the lack of damage). they both seemed pretty calm and seemed to be remaining civil. suddenly, the other three people in the sedan got out. the two middle-aged people who seemed to be the young driver's parents just stood there looking, but the old lady got very agitated. i couldn't hear what she was yelling, but her lips were easily readable: "what were you doing?!?"

that's not a particularly unpolite remark, but she was gesticulating wildly and staring daggers at the truck guy. we pulled away before i saw anything else, but the social dynamics of the situation were clear: poor liberal rear-ends well-off family without causing much (or any) damage, rich old lady flips out and screams at poor guy for daring to interrupt her ride. moneyed privilege seemed to be the spirit of the encounter, and the poor truck guy was appropriately deferential.

i don't know what's more disturbing: that the rich woman felt entitled to bawl out the poor man over nothing, or that the poor guy was so willing to be harangued. i hope this isn't the standard socio-economic climate in la. i'm aware that the rich are in charge no matter where you go, and i'm told the cops around here are particularly protective of the rich. however, when the very people getting stepped on don't seem to have a problem with the wealth/caste system (especially in la's relatively progressive political climate), hope for progress is pretty dim. i really hope this was just an isolated incident and not an indication of the status quo in la.

i thought california was an agricultural powerhouse

the only difficult thing about living here is the cost of food. having spent the last 3 years in iowa, i've been spoiled by low prices on groceries. now that i'm in la, milk costs $4/gallon instead of $1.30, butter costs $5/pound instead of $1.50, bread costs at least $3/loaf instead of $0.79, medium eggs are $2/dozen instead of $0.53, and jumbo eggs are a whopping $5/dozen instead of $0.89. don't even ask about produce and meat. i haven't been out to eat yet, but i'm guessing it's worse.

what the hell? according to the usda's 2002 census of agriculture, california leads the other 49 states by a gigantic margin in the market value of agricultural products sold (which was the closest thing i could find to a composite agricultural value). the us's total market value of agricultural products sold is $200,646,355,000, and $25,737,173,000 of that is from california. the next closest competetitor is texas with $14,134,744,000. iowa comes in third with $12,273,634,000. if you combine texas and iowa, their agricultural worth is about $671,205,000 more than california's. california alone accounts for 12.83% of the country's total agricultural worth.

so how come agricultural products are so much more expensive here? i understand that urban markup occurs, but what doesn't make sense is that most mass-produced products that are shipped here from much farther away are marked up at a dramatically lower rate (eg, pop and snack foods cost almost exactly the same here as they do in iowa).

i'm left with the following conclusion: grocery stores and/or food distributors in la are profit-seeking assholes and are overpricing the hell out of staple foods just because they can. this is even more infuriating given that these products are the basics most poor people rely on most heavily. they're deliberately victimizing the poor in favor of the middle class. more luxurious items such as cookies, wine, and gourmet coffee are left at a more-or-less affordable price (which is, nevertheless, beyond the means of the very poor) while staples are marked up to the point that the poor can just barely afford them.

if i weren't poor myself, i'd feel really guilty about patronizing these stores. instead, i just feel ass-raped.

is it as bad as they say?

not by a longshot.

having never visited la before moving here (except for an afternoon when i was 10), i had almost no idea what life here would be like. my view of la was constructed mostly from movie and tv depictions, but tempered with word from friends who had spent significant amounts of time here.

so i was expecting a slick yet gritty petri dish teeming with millions of urbanites who were either pretentious sophisticates or dangerous lowlifes. driving was supposed to be constantly hellish. prices were to be higher.

now that i'm here, my experience of the city obviously is different from what i expected. granted, i've spent almost all my time in nice parts of the city (i live in westwood and have spent most of my time there and in santa monica), but i got a taste of real la when driving my dad to the train station downtown. even so, i haven't seen a ghetto yet, so my observations should be taken with a shakerful of salt.

la is a fairly socially open place. while lacking genuine midwestern-style friendliness, most people exhibit a laid-back cordiality: the standard response to any interaction between strangers seems to be politeness. even the honking is of the "pardon me!" tap-tap variety, as opposed to the "fuck off!" laying-on (which is what i expected).

actually, living here is not very different from living in iowa city. there's more people, traffic, and commerce, but otherwise it's pretty much normal. the biggest change in my way of life is that driving somewhere is no longer something you do without thinking. it's not that driving sucks so bad in la, it's just that it's enough of a headache (not to mention parking!) to make me think twice about driving down to target to pick up some lightbulbs. now, i walk most places and plan car trips extensively (making a to-do list, writing out directions from one place to another, accounting for traffic and rush hour, etc.).

so la is much better than i expected. there's a tendency among some here to bash middle america (midwesterners: think of the way some of us malign the deep south), but it's born of ignorance rather than genuine dislike. plus, there are enough transplanted middle americans here that coastal provincialism is pretty limited and generally greeted with disgust.

i'm staying, at least until my degree is finished.

here's something new and completely useless!

this blog will suck. no, seriously, it will suck worse than most blogs (which, as we all know, suck pretty fiercely). that's because i have nothing interesting to say. nobody will read this blog except me and possibly a few close friends (though the latter will probably check in irregularly for a couple of weeks and then never come back).

i'm not saying this because i'm a pessimist or have a low opinion of myself; i'm saying it because my experiences are neither extraordinary nor unique. i prefer life in the unremarkable lane, and i know it makes for shitty reading.

so why am i doing this? i dunno. i've spent the last three years living in a marginally communistic household with three other nobodys, and during that time i got used to describing the boring minutiae of my blissfully uneventful life in exhaustive detail to my housemates and the small circle of regular visitors. now i'm living by myself in a city where i don't know a soul, so instead of making friends i've chosen to drone on into the cybervoid.

so here's my run-of-the-mill story (which will probably be the focus of this blog): i'm inescapably a member of the oppressor class (western european/british heritage, slave-owning ancestors, marginally protestant, middle-class, heterosexual, midwestern), though i'm trying to overcome it via liberal guilt and knee-jerk feminism (which is hardly a new way of dealing with it). i grew up in iowa among a family full of teachers (both parents, 3 of 5 aunts, 1 of 1 uncle, 1 grandmother, etc.) with my older brother and younger sister (all born within 6 years of each other). after a 4-year undergraduate stint in ohio, i returned to iowa to get a master's degree and live in the aforementioned quasi-commune.

now ambition and circumstance have led me to abandon my beloved midwest and a social life whose mission was far from complete. i moved to los angeles, of all places, to work on a phd. after growing up in a town of 8,000 and never living anywhere larger than 60,000 i'm living in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the continent. so there you go: i'm a small-town midwesterner trying to make his way in the big city. i'll try not to be too cliché.