The Old School Lunch

I didn’t think bathroom problems could get any worse than what happened a little while ago. Well, they did. After claiming to have fixed the problem, I stayed in the apartment after they had the inside of the bathroom completely cleaned and the carpet cleaned as well. OK. Then just earlier today right when I’m about to leave for Mother’s Day late lunch with the family (reservations were made) what happens? The toilet first starts to bubble then the water in the toilet disappears. OK, not a big deal, there’s no leak. Not yet. After I call maintenance, I notice that my bathtub is filling with some unusual water. Then, as luck would have it, both the bathtub and the toilet begin to fill up with water at great speed. What comes out into the bathtub? Toilet sewage and, after the maintenance guy took a look at it, “laundry water” as it had turned black and gray. Then the toilet starts to overflow and I don’t mean it leaked a little bit over the rim, I mean it was bubbling out as whoever was in the floor above took their showers, used the toilets, did the laundry. At this point, i’m frantically calling the leasing people and the maintenance guy but alas he’s stuck in traffic. He says he’s going to call Roto-Rooter again and they’re going to come out. As i’m about to lose it, I take a giant plastic bowl I have and start scooping the toilet water into the sink which is the only place that isn’t backing up. I do this a few dozen times but when I realize that the water on the ground is almost an inch deep, it’s no use. At that point, I wasn’t really freaking out because it was just so ridiculous and I knew at this point they would be forced to move me to a new room. I tell them that I want a completely new room in new area not on this floor but they say no can do. I then move into the adjacent room which to my surprise, is about the same size but lacks one closet that the original room had and also has about 40% of the kitchen storage space. There’s nowhere to put my plates, seriously. But this, i’ll deal with management tomorrow. So to try and bargain, they give me a free month’s rent which is nice but that doesn’t give me my 8 hours of my life back nor does it reverse time so I can make the mother’s day lunch. Nor does it give me back the hours I spent moving all my shit into the other room.

Shit.

And yes, another used condom did float up from the toilet. Except this time I didn’t think it was that bad because there was also bits of shit in there as well. At least they’re having safe sex.

My brother recommends legal action unless they give me exactly what I want. I don’t want to be difficult but I’m tired of looking at other people’s used condoms.

It’s almost 5 in the goddamn morning and guess what’ i’m doing? I’m blogging about how my apartment’s resident tech is snaking the pipes of the toilet. Why? Because a few days ago my toilet started leaking from the base. They checked it out, said they couldn’t find any problems. Happened again and this time they ripped out the entire toilet and then when I left for my Sunday errands, I came back to find that the toilet is still ripped out with an exposed pipe. I go to sleep when I start to hear water bubbling. That’s right, every time someone on my floor flushed their toilet those magical contents would come shooting out of my toilet’s main line. And what do I find besides water and dirt? Cigarette butts and condoms. Used condoms along with a magnum brand wrapper. Motherfucker.

So then I frantically start vacuuming the water that’s coming out with the wet vac that the guy left here and when it stops I try calling maintenance. Well the number they gave me was wrong. I then try calling the main office and they have the right number for the guy. I call, but I don’t know how to leave the message. I later learn that it’s a paging system and I have to send my number. In the frenzy, I call a 24 hour plumbing service and after talking to the slowest customer service agent, they say they’ll call me back if they can get someone. After I figure out that I have to page the maintenance people, the dude calls back and says he just left all the shit there because when he came back, he knocked twice (at 9pm on a Saturday night) and assumed I was sleeping and he didn’t want to wake me up. He says he’s coming down so I cancel the emergency plumbing folks. He come by 30 minutes later, apologizes and he proceeds to snake the pipes.

I used to work in a hygiene center for homeless folks and I have never been this grossed out. Or angry.

Fuck.

The snaking of the pipes is loud and I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing but it’s taking a while. The wet vac is extremely loud so I wonder what the neighbors must be thinking. I wish someone (or the neighbor that used the condoms) could come by so I can tell them that my toilet is overflowing. And then so I can ask them why the fuck they flush condoms (and the wrapper) down the toilet. Who the fuck does that?

Shit.

The day I moved in, about 5 other folks did. That day, I found 6 or so wireless signals all locked up. The only service you can get here is Comcast which, from what i’ve read, isn’t such a great company. It would’ve been pretty expensive to sign up for their internet unless I wanted to get the voice and cable package, both of which I don’t need. I thought I was out of luck. I tried looking into wireless cards and such but those are just as expensive. Then (this is where it begins to sound like an infomercial) a friend turned me on to ClearWire which is just about the easiest thing to set up. Supposedly my max speed is 1.5 mps which I thought was going to be ok. Then my other friend with Comcast says he gets 15 on average. Oh well. I really didn’t want to line the pockets of Comcast and i’m glad I found an alternative, a slower one it may be.

So I moved into The New Place and am getting settled. It’s just me which means no sharing of costs so things are costing some but this is what I signed up for. There’s a nice restaurant right next door with a nice view and the parking has been great so I can’t complain.

There are two parks nearby, one with a trail/picnic area and another with tennis courts. It should make for a good summer combined with my latest effort to actually sit down and try and get into school.

If you’re in the neighborhood, do drop on by.

Saturday at long last i’ll be moving down to Seattle and I imagine starting tomorrow i’ll be offline for a while unless I can leech a signal from a neighbor. And I cancelled the SK data package so no emails either. Pretty much just the phone.

I’ll write about the moving process and going to different apartments and meeting shady characters later. One story involves a landlord telling me: “you can cook with your wok on the stove!”

I joined Pownce.

They’re going to blow up huge when they go public in a few weeks. I have a few invites left if you want to join in on the fun before then.

[For once, people thinking that i’m still in high school comes in handy]

Wow. A guy just rang the doorbell and asked if my parents were home. When I said they weren’t and proceeded to close the door, he replied (with the saddest of tones), “Oh, OK, we’re just trying to do a fundraiser, that’s all.” It’s Christmas Eve and you’re trying to doing this for a fundraiser my big fat eye.

Today a few co-workers and I visited a men’s prison and all the inmates at this prison were wearing t-shirts that said “I am a proud dad.”

We were there to kinda tell people in a low-key way about our program and to do arts and crafts with kids and their parents.

I didn’t know really what to expect. I knew it was going to be somewhat involving Christmas since it’s relatively close to the holidays (but not really that close) and it’s going to be families and kids visiting but nothing really hit me until today.

But I guess I should set up the story first.

So after driving for about an hour to the bus-depot with one of co-workers, we check in at a station where we see families being patted down, going through metal detectors, raising their ponytails, emptying their pockets and taking off their shoes before passing through. I suddenly realize when earlier a woman who spoke to us about the emotional toll that children of incarcerated parents go through said “for once I am glad that 9-11 brought such security measures because kids are more and more used to those things at the airports…at the ballgames…” We do none of this and walk straight through. The families have already wrapped their presents for their fathers. All presents must be approved and inspected by the department of corrections staff which obviously puts a severe limit on what sort of gifts can be given. Many families opt on just not giving anything rather than giving socks or a deck of playing cards.

We then get on a bus with the rest of the families, a few other volunteers and prison guards and go to a ferry dock at which point we have to check in with the prison facility staff. Apparently despite signing up for this weeks in advance, i’m nowhere on the list as is another co-worker of mine. Some sort of a mix-up. Their lieutenant gives the go-ahead, however, after doing a run-through of our driver’s licenses. Maybe they checked if i’d committed a felony in the past seven years. We board the ferry and it’s cramped with those chairs that you sit on at always see at any church with a congregation of over 300 people. I get a little seasick. The families look anxious, nervous. One woman next to me says her husband doesn’t deserve anything but a “lump of shit” for Christmas but she’s bringing her daughter so he can see her at least.

We get off the ferry and we walk about 3/4 a mile to the prison. They do a strict head count on our way out and in to make sure that everyone is always accounted for. Once we get inside what looks like a cafeteria gymnasium, we see that it’s decorated in Christmas colors. There is food waiting to be served. The fathers meet with their families and there is a lot of emotion. I stare at one family in particular. The father is crying and he takes off his glasses. His son isn’t reacting too much and I can’t see his wife’s face. I wonder if they’re taking it as hard as he is.

Lunch is served and Christmas carols are sung by a volunteer. Christmas presents, which are brought by the families are opened and to my surprise, it turns out that almost all of them are for the children. And I guess as it should be, it’s their own Christmas that they’re celebrating there. I wonder how the presents are paid for, whether the toys are donations that the inmates select from a toy-tree and then get to wrap for their kids or what not but the kids seem happy.

Several of the kids run to our table to inquire about the crafts we have going on (many of them come with their fathers) and we help them try and work on building it. Some of the father daughter, father son pairs that come to the table are thrilled trying to make the best of the time they have together. They are comfortable with each other and having a good time. It is obvious that others are not. One girl I remember seeing on the ferry who looked particularly withdrawn is in the latter.

Towards the end, one of the volunteers leads the room and specifically the children in a pledge saying something to the effect of “I’m a kid who has dreams and I can do anything to reach those goals because I work hard and nothing is going to stand in my way. Nothing is impossible!” He means well.

###

One of the most powerful things that the woman who presented to us regarding children of incarcerated parents and society’s treatment of incarcerated individuals was that routinely she could chart a father who was in prison X and his son who is in prison A while his wife was in local prison Z for women. And then their young son is in a juvenile detention center.

Seeing this today struck a chord because when you have a loved one, particularly a family member who is incarcerated…the chances of children from that family in turn being incarcerated (among other things like violent behavior, not graduating high school, etc) skyrocket.

More on this later.

Today I got a chance to speak with Dan Savage. Dan kindly gave me a chance to potentially (I say “potentially” because at the time of this writing it is unknown whether i’ll appear on the final cut of his podcast) talk about something that came up on one of his podcasts. Namely, it was in one episode that he and a “Science expert” started to talk about pheromones which somehow led to how “Euroasian guys are so fucking hot” and how “race mixing” and such is so great for the world (”because mutts are healthier than regular dogs we know that…”). Dan used all of this as backup to defend those people who say that they naturally like Black guys or Asian women. That these people shouldn’t get shit for their what is in actuality a racial fetish (assuming they aren’t of that race) but instead they should be somewhat applauded as they’re going to, you know, date their racial “polar opposite” and push the world into the (hold hands) brown and beige future. I had a few issues with this. Namely:

-Racially fetishizing mixed folks (mixed people are beautiful!). Because they certainly don’t get that enough already.
-The tired idea that mixed folks are biologically superior and are going to save the world and by suggestion get rid of racism.
-People aren’t fucked up about race.

One of my favorite all time things about Dan is that during an old column of his awhile ago, he said (in response to the popularity of Black-On-White porn, “people are all fucked up about race.” I agree with this. I don’t think there’s a person in the world who isn’t fucked in the head about racial stereotypes to some degree. To argue that folks are somehow naturally…biologically predetermined to marry someone of a different race is absolutely ridiculous. That’s what’s fucked up.

So to varying degrees of success, I tried to convey this to Dan in my “interview” with him when he called today. I think it was a bad sign when he opened with “So what did I do wrong” or something like “What did I say that was so bad.” OK.

I made the mistake of getting into mixed race health issues like blood diseases. I tried to use that to point out that stereotypes of mixed folks as inherently healthy are bad but he hit me with “what does that have to do with dating?”

Dan was cordial throughout the entire conversation (and by cordial I mean basically letting me know that I was being too sensitive) but it was obvious that neither of us were comfortable and he wanted to end it. He smacked me at the end with something to the effect of, “well I guess folks are more sensitive to race issues than originally thought.”

[DNF = Did not finish. DNA = Did not attempt to watch. Ratings: Out of a possible best four **** stars.]

[Disclaimer. Yes, I realize I rent some stupid shit. Employee of the Month? Aeon Flux? What?]

[UPDATE: Disclaimer #2: Yes, Christina, I do seriously rent some awful movies. I know.]

Nobody’s Life - A drama of absurdity but pretty good.
30 Days: Season 1: Disc 2 - Spurlock has good intentions, but so many of the episodes are problematic. At one point, he says “The Costa is one of the most notoriously gay cities in America.” Notoriously?
Monster - Brutal. Absolutely brutal. ****
30 Days: Season 1: Disc 1 - Nickel and Dimed.
Speak - I posted about this a few days ago.
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not - DNF
Shooter - Not bad.
The Treatment - **
Dark Angel: Season 1: Disc 1 - I watched several episodes when it was on TV but I saw about 3 minutes of the first episode and had to turn it off.
Drugstore Cowboy - ****
Shanghai Kiss - Saw this on AngryAsianMan. **
Escape from L.A. - **
Grindhouse: Death Proof - I saw this first at the theater and it was hilarious when right as the one character is about to do the lapdance, there’s a “film error of lost footage” to which the audience erupted in laughter. They added the lapdance scene in the DVD, however.
Spider-Man 3 - The infamous “emo” spidey.
Kickin It Old Skool - *
Mouth to Mouth - DNA.
Notes on a Scandal - ****
Weeds: Season 2: Disc 2 - I’ve wrote about this series before a bit. Overall good, funny but some issues here and there.
Weeds: Season 2: Disc 1
Weeds: Season 1: Disc 2
28 Weeks Later - There is one scene in this movie that I will always just fast-forward every time but otherwise i’m a big fan of this franchise.
Transformers - In all ways this is an American fourth of July sort of movie. And by that I mean sexist and racist.
The Corporation - The “Animatrix” voice narration was funny. But great documentary.
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 3: Disc 3 - DNF. Sandra Oh and that Meredith character are the two single most annoying personalities on TV.
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 3: Disc 4
Heroes: Season 1: Disc 6 - Season two is all over the place.
Heroes: Season 1: Disc 7
But I’m a Cheerleader - ****
Heroes: Season 1: Disc 5
Weeds: Season 1: Disc 1
Heroes: Season 1: Disc 4
Heroes: Season 1: Disc 3
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 3: Disc 2
Heroes: Season 1: Disc 2
Click - I broke my “No Adam Sandler/Jim Carey movies” rule and actually rented it. ***
Gilmore Girls: Season 6: Disc 6 - Hands down the funniest show i’ve seen. ****
Heroes: Season 1: Disc 1
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 3: Disc 1
This Film Is Not Yet Rated - Kevin Smith saves the day. A must see.
Gilmore Girls: Season 6: Disc 5
Running Scared - Surprisingly good. From what I remember.
Avenue Montaigne - DNF.
Gilmore Girls: Season 6: Disc 4
300 - Where to start?
Gilmore Girls: Season 6: Disc 3
Pan’s Labyrinth - DNA.
Gilmore Girls: Season 6: Disc 2
Gilmore Girls: Season 6: Disc 1
Gilmore Girls: Season 5: Disc 6
Gilmore Girls: Season 5: Disc 5
Gilmore Girls: Season 5: Disc 3
Gilmore Girls: Season 5: Disc 4
Me and You and Everyone We Know - ****
Y Tu Mama Tambien - Ebert had a good point about this movie and the MPAA.
Gilmore Girls: Season 5: Disc 2
Gilmore Girls: Season 5: Disc 1
Gilmore Girls: Season 4: Disc 6
Gilmore Girls: Season 4: Disc 4
Gilmore Girls: Season 4: Disc 5
Kingpin - Bill Murray at his best.
Gilmore Girls: Season 4: Disc 3
Gilmore Girls: Season 4: Disc 2
Thank You for Smoking - ***
Million Dollar Baby - Got all the praise for a reason, I see.
Jesus Camp - ****
Gilmore Girls: Season 4: Disc 1
Gilmore Girls: Season 3: Disc 6
11:14 - I had to think for a while what this movie was. OK now I remember. *
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price - ****
Gilmore Girls: Season 3: Disc 5
Gilmore Girls: Season 3: Disc 4
Gilmore Girls: Season 3: Disc 3
Devil’s Playground - ***
Maxed Out - ***
Gilmore Girls: Season 3: Disc 2
An Inconvenient Truth - One of the only people to see it for the first time on DVD.
Gilmore Girls: Season 3: Disc 1
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 2: Disc 3
Gilmore Girls: Season 2: Disc 2
Gilmore Girls: Season 2: Disc 3
Gilmore Girls: Season 2: Disc 1
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 2: Disc 2
Gilmore Girls: Season 1: Disc 5
Gilmore Girls: Season 1: Disc 6
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 2: Disc 1
The Fountain - This would be amazing to see in IMAX. Amazing.
Blood Diamond - ***
Gilmore Girls: Season 1: Disc 3
Gilmore Girls: Season 1: Disc 4
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 1: Disc 2
Fifty Pills -
Gilmore Girls: Season 1: Disc 2
Batman Beyond: Season 1: Disc 1
Grey’s Anatomy: Season 1: Disc 1
Gilmore Girls: Season 1: Disc 1
Half Nelson - ****
Crime and Punishment in Suburbia - Don’t really remember. Bad sign probably.
Employee of the Month - **
Confetti - ***
Elektra - *
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party - ****
10 Items or Less - Glad to see films like this still being made.
Kissing Jessica Stein - Annoying characters.
Fast Food Nation - This is what Super Size Me had the potential to be. ****
Cake - Don’t remember.
Hard Candy - Brutal. But good.
The Prestige - ****
Red Planet - ***
Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman - **
Ghosts of Mars - Ebert gave it a good review. *
Harsh Times - Christian Bale is out of his goddamn mind.
Blade: Trinity - Not bad!
The Departed - ***
Rocky Balboa - Mason “The Line” Dixon. Right.
Ghost World - ****
13 Going on 30 - This movie single handedly brought back the Thriller dance at weddings.
Flags of Our Fathers - I seriously don’t remember renting this so I was surprised to see this on the rental history.
The Quiet - Brutal. **
Jarhead - ***
The Descent - **
Aeon Flux - DNF.
Everything Is Illuminated - **

My boss’s boss gave the green light/paid time to go see Jackson Katz‘ speaking engagement (!) at Western Washington University sponsored by Western Men Against Violence this coming Tuesday along with a bunch of co-workers. I finagled this by saying that it fit into a forum that a co-worker and I would be working on. So then my boss is not so happy with me because i’m behind in my work and if i’m going to spend half a day going to Bellingham, then i’m just going to be that much more behind. So i’ve been trying to catch up but then last night our national online system crashed. Which means nobody getting any work done. And then I just came down with the illness.

Anyways, if you’re near the area, I hope you can make it.