Friday, Apr. 23, 2004 - 1:38 a.m.

Big Easy

Here are the answers to a bunch of random questions. The questions, and the answers they evoke are not necessarily relevant or meaningful, so don’t get your hopes up.

1. WHAT IS YOUR FULL NAME?

Nexus X Humectress. No, this is not my real name. No, this is not merely my Internet screen name. I have been using the name Nexus for over 10 years in my daily life, in the flesh. I adopted it when I joined the commune because I had the opportunity to use a new name, my old name was boring, and I wanted a corporate-sounding name just to be obnoxious. I also kind of like corporate chic. But some people assumed Nexus connoted some new-agey pretension, so upon moving to Eugene, I added the Humectress to make it perfectly clear that I named myself after a brand of shampoo. The X is an homage to Malcolm X. I liked the movie, and he was kind of alright for an authoritarian theist after he came back from his Hajj. No, it’s actually more of an homage to the X-Files.

2. WHAT COLOR PANTS ARE YOU WEARING?

Light blue acid-washed jeans. My sense of fashion, if I have one at all, has not changed since 1988.

3. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?

Dream Theater. I can sing all those high notes now. Lately I’ve been thinking that if we didn’t have a corporate culture and mass media, and we catapulted back into some kind of bioregionalist isolation, we’d be listening only to the music of our local cultures. I was raised on Long Island, and I’m only aware of two acts from there that gained national acclaim: Billy Joel and Dream Theater. Billy Joel has written a number of good tunes, but “We Didn’t Start The Fire” was a blatant ripoff of “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It” by REM, and they’d be sequestered to the Athens, Georgia tribe along with the B-52s. If I had to choose between Billy Joel and Dream Theater, I’d definitely choose Dream Theater. I like crazy tempo changes.

4. WHAT ARE THE LAST 4 DIGITS OF YOUR PHONE NUMBER?

None of your fucking business. I try to be open and vulnerable on this diary, but I do have some notion of protecting my privacy online. How about dialing 1-800-FUCK-OFF………Wait a minute, I doth protest too much. If you’ve been reading this diary astutely, you’d already seen me indirectly reveal my legal name and complete phone number. Oh, well, fuck privacy, I guess.

5. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?

A bagel from a Catholic charity with peanut butter on it, and some spinach salad with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oyster crackers, sharp cheddar, macadamia nuts, and anchovies. I had bought the spinach, and my mother recently mailed me the rest. I don’t know why.

6. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?

Indigo. I think I’d enjoy being a crayon.

7. HOW IS THE WEATHER RIGHT NOW?

Cool and clear, with a crescent moon and a bright planet above it. I wonder if that is taken as an encouraging sign by Muslim national liberation fighers in Fallujah.

8. LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?

My mother, who woke me up a few days ago to tell me she mailed me stuff to make a salad with.

11. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?

Really good. I just came from my anarchist study group, where we discussed “Give Up Activism” by Andrew X. Then I took the crew to my bubble tea shop and made them bubble teas. Jovial, fun, and replete with radical analysis. I’m working on my book, and that’s fulfilling for me.

12. YOUR FAVORITE DRINK?

Bubble tea, motherfucker. Second favorite: Egg Nog. Third favorite: Wild Cherry Pepsi just above freezing. Fourth favorite: Dr. Pepper with lime juice in it.

13. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK?

I don’t drink. I prefer to deal with my emotions head on. And alcohol tastes really bad. I’d rather chug undiluted vinegar. I’ve had drinks that mask the bad taste pretty well, but what’s the point? Alcohol is a lousy drug. I’m a mick, so it’s best I avoid booze anyway. If being mostly straightedge makes me a social outcast, that’s just fine. I never liked society anyway. The alcohol I drink most frequently is echinacea tincture.

21. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?

The Terrorist. I saw it at Subversive Pillow Theater.

24. DO YOU LIKE SUMMER OR WINTER?

Summer, I guess. Especially now that I live in a place with no mosquitoes.

27. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?

Chocolate, I guess. But I recently heard that a lot of the chocolate on the market comes from West Africa, where plantations use child slaves to harvest the cacao.

31. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING?

I’m going through the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg with a highlighter in order to harvest all the important ideas so that I can recontextualize them in the book I’m writing. I aim to seamlessly meld Nonviolent Communication with insurrectionary anarchism. I’m disappointed by each unless informed by the other.

Before that, I read America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones by Anthony Sutton. More on this in a later post.

Before that, I read The Way of the Cell by Franklin Harold. It is so eloquently written, I could scarcely believe it, especially for a text on the molecular biology of cells. He weaves complexity theory into it, and he’s relentlessly honest about what science knows, what it doesn’t know, and what it’s probably not capable of knowing.

32. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?

A hexidecimal color chart.

33. WHAT DID YOU DO LAST NIGHT?

I delivered a short speech on public access television about the problems with moralistic judgment.

34. CAN YOU TOUCH YOUR NOSE WITH YOUR TONGUE?

No. If the question had been, “can you stick out your tongue and touch your nose” I would have replied yes, and then stuck out my tongue and touched my nose with one of my fingers, thereby illustrating the necessity for grammatic precision, though the problem of semantic vagueness is endemic to all language.

I can, however, tie a cherry stem into a knot using only my mouth. No tricks, linguistic or otherwise.

35. WHAT SHAMPOO DO YOU USE?

Whatever is cheapest.

36. WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT LIVING IN THE NORTHWEST?

No mosquitoes in my valley. And a dry season where I can count on it not raining for at least June and July, and perhaps August and September as well.

38. WHAT IS THE MOST ANNOYING THING YOUR CAT DOES?

Move away. My landlord took my (actually his) cat away to another town to live permanently. But now the neighbor’s cat comes to visit me. The most annoying thing she does is suddenly hiss at me for no reason I can understand.

41. SEE ANY GOOD NEW SHOWS LATELY THAT WERE SUBSEQUENTLY CANCELLED WHILE YOU TOOK QUALS?

Nope. No quals either.

42. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF PBS?

The Petroleum Broadcasting System? I watched a lot of it growing up. Good science shows. I used to stay up late to watch Bill Moyers. I had a photo of Bill Moyers in my high school locker, next to pictures of my other idols, George H.W. Bush, and Jason Newsted from Metallica. I wish Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers hadn’t been given access to my mind at that young age. I don’t think TV programs should raise young children, however well-intentioned they may be.

The more I read about the machinations of the super-rich, the more alarm bells go off when I see something funded with grants from the big foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.). They act in alignment with their interests, interests which run counter to ours. Watch out for subtle propaganda promoting a one-world government under their control. And then there’s the money from Exxon/Mobil and the like. Did you hear how recently News Hour made a formal apology for not “balancing” a remark made by a reporter about corruption in corporations like Halliburton and cronyism between them and the Bush Administration? Like they’d ever have an antiwar activist balance everything a Pentagon or State Department official said.

Nowadays, I have no television set. I guess it’s mostly because my psyche is so achievement-oriented, I’m not willing to spare the unproductive time it takes to watch TV on a regular basis. Which is not to imply that I’ve been achieving a lot, just that whatever time I waste is not wasted watching TV.

I do miss TV sometimes. Mainly to be able to see what the masses are being subjected to. I still have never seen American Idol or The Sopranos. I’ve yet to experience the renowned jingoism of Fox News, and I’m curious what it’s like.

I am so jealous of everyone who got to see the Emma Goldman documentary. Emma fucking Goldman!!!

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