Mixed Tape Collective

Who wants to get in on it? Suzye and Randall I decided to start a Mixed Tape Collective. Well, they're actually CDs if you want to get technical. If you want to get some new music for free and to see what your hommies are listening to, all you gotta do is contribute one mixed CD a month to everyone who's in it. Suzye and Randall already made one each, and they're kickin'. I'm about to mix mine right now. Ashley wants to do it too. Who's with me?

Sex and the Steak

Hmmm, I think I found my new writing project. As a vegetarian, meat fascinates me. Check out Dandelion Magazine's call for submissions:

Inspired by Carol J Adams' theory of the sexual politics of meat in her provocative book The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990/2010), we invite submissions that sketch, hypothesize, challenge, elaborate, query, & otherwise address the relationships amongst sex, politics, & meat. What, we invite you to consider, are the historic, gender, race, and class implications of meat culture? How has the consumption of meat shaped our contemporary human cultures? How, by extension, has the consumption of meat shaped our notions of what it means to be humans? &, as a consequence, what it means to be men & women? How does the language of meat bleed into the vocabulary of gender, & vice versa?

We are looking for literature that proposes or investigates unexpected juxtapositions between the human & the animal. In addition to creative texts and visual art, we will accept critical work for this issue. We are also interested in review essays that discuss approaches to the sexual politics of meat in contemporary literature.

What Kind of Sealer are You?

I know my fellow crew-mates will enjoy this one. It's my first story of fall, and I wrote it to submit to On the Clock: Contemporary Short Fiction of People and their Work by Bottom Dog Press

http://ontheclockanthology.blogspot.com/.

Modern Sealer Woman

I started my career in asphalt maintenance when I was thirteen. Four dollars an hour was decent wage at the time—I had been making candy money stacking wood for half that wage. As a junior high girl in a well-heeled city of belted-khaki yuppies and their gardeners, I learned early that the only respectable occupation for a teenager was working in coffee shops or begging one's parents for money. It wasn't until I heard my classmates tearing apart a girl who was caught shamelessly mowing her lawn in grass-covered sweatpants that I truly understood the social perils of getting caught black-handed. I can still vividly recall that acute rush of blood that dizzied my head and frenzied my heart every time I stood in full view of traffic or noticed someone watching me from their second-story window. Do they recognize me, I would worry, my heart threatening rip apart my soiled T-shirt. I spent a good portion of my early work years hiding behind bushes whenever a car passed, terrified of the inevitable. Gig Harbor wasn't a large enough city to keep such a sooty secret for long. I saw her, I would imagine them whispering, covered in black grime, painting the streets like a Mexican.

Family Secret

My family has been in the asphalt business for three generations. Black-and-white photographs of Gig Harbor from the early 1900's reveal that there was not a single paved road in sight. When my brick mason great-grandfather arrived on a ship from Italy in 1908, the then-sleepy cove of fisherman and Native Americans was forever changed. He went on to have seven children, all of whom had plenty of offspring themselves, and none of whom moved outside the growing township. When one of his sons started a road construction business called Spadoni Brothers in 1942, there were plenty of brothers (and cousins and second cousins) to employ. My family prided itself on building the smoothest roads in Washington state, and soon developed quite a repertoire among the aging residents of Gig Harbor. I never met my grandfather, who died when I was four, but old folks I've talked to paint a picture of him as a highly intelligent, honest and hardworking man. My dark-skinned ancestors, despite scattered episodes of rock-throwing and wop-bashing from their predominately Swedish neighbors, built one of the most successful businesses in the area out of nothing but good sense and toil. That used to be a respectable endeavor.

When my dad was in high school, he worked part time for Spadoni Brothers to save for college, which is where he first tested the ropes of the road business. “I used to kinda look down on the older guys who worked with me,” my dad admitted to me one summer as we loaded orange cones into the truck. “Simple family men, most of them. But there I was, doing the same job as them when I was only seventeen. But I was on my way to college. I was going places.”

My father, despite his education and hard work, didn't end up going far. He worked as a journalist for the local paper, got paid pittance, got his master's in teaching, got paid pittance, slept in his car and broke into the school building on weekends to finish his classwork, still barely broke the federal poverty line. I had but a fuzzy inkling of our family's financial state as a small child. I remember going to the arcade to look for coins that had fallen behind the cracks of pinball machines. “I found you thirty cents,” I remember telling my mother, a housewife, as I proudly handed over my treasure. “Now you can't say you're broke anymore.” Those were the days of handmade sweater pants and threadbare orange shag carpets leftover from a decade of disco balls and platforms. No, I didn't grow up in the 70's. But everything we owned in the 90's was as least that old, right down the cat-haired, stuffing-ripped couch that adorned our living room. A dirt driveway and an unfinished dining room floor—none of this struck me as odd until I started watching shows like Dawson's Creek and Beverly Hills 90120 in which the characters trotted across rolled-on lawns and lounged around furniture that matched with shades of gray. That was when I stopped inviting friends over, embarrassed they would know how “different” our family was.

While we would never become become a pressed-khakis-and-sofa-cover kind of family, deliverance from lower-class struggle eventually came from somewhere within the struggle itself. My eldest sister, in her father's own legacy, needed a part-time job to save for college. Knowing how hard it was for a sixteen-year-old to find anything besides envelope-stuffing and drive-through drudgery, my father dug into his own past and pulled out an idea: asphalt sealing, a method of layering black coal tar onto roads to protect them from weathering and decay. Spadoni Brothers, which deals predominately with road construction, was too busy to offer these services, but they were happy to refer their clients to us. My father and sister had discovered an unfilled niche. They bought a few brooms and buckets and gave it a try; a business was born. Ten years later, that humble start-up was pulling in more money in three months than my father made all school year, pushing our family of six from dingy thrift shops into the world of well-to-do mall rats.

When my father first went to register his new company, he decided on a whim to call it “La Mano Neru,” which he thought to mean “The Black Hand.” His Italian was still elementary at best, but he wanted a name that gave a nod to his heritage and described his work. Actually, “La Mano Nera,” would be proper Italian; “La Mano Neru” is Sicilian dialect. This became clear when my eldest sister was applying for a job with the State Department of Justice years later. Two agents flew all the way from Washington DC to question my father about his involvement with the notorious Italian mafia group referred to as “La Mano Neru.” Our crew members never call themselves The Black Hand on paper anymore, but the name quickly embedded itself into our everyday work humor. My father, of course, was cleared as a suspect.

The Black Hand blossomed over the next decade. We went from sweeping leaves to high pressure washing, from pouring five-gallon buckets to pumping sealer out of 50-gallon tanks on the back of a large trailer. We bolstered our services to include tree root and asphalt removal, hot asphalt patching, crack-filling and parking lot striping. The expansion of the company soon came to mean the expansion of our family's world. At first it was small things: replacing the threadbare orange shag carpet and putting a finish on our dining room floor, buying fresh produce from the farmer's market instead of cans at Grocery Outlet. By the time my younger sister and I reached our teens, we knew very little of the poverty my older siblings had grown up with. We traveled to over a dozen countries across Europe, Africa, and Asia before we even graduated high school, and spent our weekends snowboarding and going to concerts in leather boots and silk scarves. Despite our neauvou-rich lifestyle, however, summers always meant sealer-splattered pants and spy-worthy sunglass-hat ensembles. And our secret, as predicted, was beginning to graduate into mainstream knowledge. Fortunately, my friends and classmates had grown up enough by that time that their disgust for our line of work had transformed into polite curiosity. My hourly wage had also matured quite elegantly into a healthy twenty dollars an hour. The mention of this turned my friends' idle curiosity into naked envy. By the time I was seventeen, our crew was made up almost entirely of teenaged girls, and I was their proud recruiter.

The Golden Age of the Modern Sealer Woman

In the warm and protective company of friends, I reached an astonishing epiphany: work could be fun! A CD player, nicknamed Ramshackle, became our daily companion, and we took turns burning our own “Sealer Soundtracks” every few days. One friend, inspired by a particularly animated Daft Punk song, introduced the idea of synchronized brush strokes. We discovered that two brushes placed side by side, or better yet three, could move large amounts of sealer at once without allowing it to slop over the sides our collective brushes. We called this “double brooming” or “triple threat,” a practice that required a significant melding of minds to accomplish. Inside jokes began to flourish. We placed rising bets on who would be the first to slip in the sealer and took tallies of the generic comments we got from people on the street. “That looks like a fun job,” always topped our list, along with, “I bet your mother doesn't let you into the house with those shoes.” Some of the more creative comments we recorded: “I've got a fence you can paint when you're done with that” and “You're under-worked and overpaid, but you're doing a great job!” To pass the time, we verbally composed articles for a gag magazine we decided to call Modern Sealer Woman. With more than one aspiring writer in the crew, it wasn't long before Modern Sealer Woman became a printed reality, complete with “rugged beauty tips” and embarrassing moments such as getting chased by dogs and run-ins with ex-boyfriends.

My crew-mates, like me, grew accustomed to the conflicting spheres that we now inhabited. As both low-class laborers and college-bound honor students, we moved seamlessly between gas station sandwiches and french cafe crepes, daytime productivity and nighttime rebellion, crusted fingernail summers and spa manicure autumns. Still, there were moments when we looked longingly at lip-glossed girls in cafe windows and wished we wore her kitten heels instead of our crusted sneakers, that we never had to lower our heads when boys of interest happened by. Although this wistful anxiety faded over time, it never quite vanished.

Excerpt from Modern Sealer Woman, issue 1, August 2003

WHAT KIND OF SEALER ARE YOU?

1. When you accidentally brush sealer on the sidewalk, what do you do?

a. Stick my finger on it and make it look like a cat print.

b. Run back to the truck, grab a spray bottle and wire brush and get it off. Duh.

c. Hope no one notices; it was just a small spot anyway.

d. Spit on it and rub it around with my sweatshirt.

2. How do you cope with long days in the hot sun?

a. Play my hot new Sealer Soundtrack and joke around with my co-workers.

b. Bitch at my crewmates for stepping in my backblading and being too spread out.

c. Take frequent trips to the cafe for iced teas, and then to the bushes to pee them out again.

d. Sunglasses, a big hat and a book on tape I checked out from the library.

3. On a sunny day, when the sealer is drying fast, how do you avoid leaving footprints before the backblader has time to smooth them out?

a. I paint artistic swirls and occasionally share my water bottle with the backblader to keep up morale.

b. Ignore the sweat dripping from my chin and move like a robot on speed.

c. Mosey at a turtle's pace so she can keep up.

d. Backblade my own work so she doesn't have to.

Mostly A's: Artist of Tar.You are the entertainer of the group. Always armed with original jokes, fresh Sealing Soundtracks, funny anecdotes, and the best lunch of the bunch, which you generously share with the crew, you are hands-down the most well-liked frontblader. Kudos.

Mostly B's: Blue-ribbon Backblader. Highly paid for your indispensable skill as default backblader, you revel in your exclusive right to claim the best brush, boss your crewmates around and monitor the quality of the finished product. While other sealers spread the tar haphazardly, you are the one who stays behind to tame their mess into a footprint-free and even coat of black beauty. You are a true asset to The Black Hand!

Mostly C's: Chronic Frontblader. Never aspiring to greater responsibility, you often stand around and wait for someone to tell you what to do. Whenever the sealing pump is clogged or the truck emits suspicious fumes, you usually remember that you have to go to the bathroom. You find yourself spending a lot of time cleaning out your nails on the job.

Mostly D's: Divablader in Development. You are ambitious, and somewhat introverted. You often tire of keeping up with witty banter of your co-workers, and pine for the relative isolation of backblading. Keep looking for ways to be helpful to your superiors and backblading glory will soon be yours!

Dehumanization at Uptown Grove

When we worked in older neighborhoods with longtime residents, we came to expect a certain etiquette. The homeowners usually offered us cold drinks and unlimited use of their bathrooms while making small talk with my father as we worked. There was almost always mention my grandfather, who is somewhat of a celebrity among the retired. Over time, however, such respectful encounters became a rare treat as new housing developments began to spring up around Gig Harbor, ushering in a wave of the worst kind of suburban sprawl Gig Harborites had ever seen. Californians, dismayed by rising property prices in their own hometowns, began to blow in from the south, sending our property prices into oxygen sparse altitude and turning our childhood tree-houses into baseball parks and well-trimmed lawns.

Our job at Uptown Grove last year, a monstrously large, passcode-gated community, epitomized the changes that were corroding our once-charming community at an alarming rate. The subdivision took us three weeks to complete, with workers pushing ten hour to twelve hour days of thankless labor. Besides our bank accounts, which benefited immensely during this time, the journalists at Modern Sealer magazine also thrived on the constant fodder for their gossip columns, which the Uptown Grove residents so generously provided.

Excerpt from Modern Sealer Woman, issue 17, August 2007

As of last week, our mailbox has been bombarded in increasing volume with complaints related to the character decline of Gig Harbor residents. Many readers have attributed this devolution of civility to a phenomenon referred to as “Californication.” We present several pieces of anecdotal evidence, which are part of a larger ongoing investigation by Modern Sealer Woman in conjunction with the Urban Planning Police.

Evidence A: In the afternoon of July 29, a purple-faced woman, heretofore referred to as Purple-Face, approached a Black Hand worker, Powerwasher Paula, and motioned for her to turn off her pressure washer.

“Excuse me,” the intruder coughed. “But would you mind unhooking your hose from this house? We only have a certain amount of water allocated to each house and my daughter lives there. And, well, she has a hot tub to think about. But just between you and me, that house over there...” Purple-Face pointed to a gray house a few blocks down. “Those people are on vacation. They won't mind if you use their water.”

Our hero conceded, re-fashioned her hose to the neighbor's house and pulled the cord of the pressure washer to start it up again. Five minutes later, Purple-Face returned. Paula cut the engine.

“Please don't tell my neighbor about our little talk, okay?” said Purple-Face, putting her arm around Paula. “We're good friends and she might be a bit ticked off if she heard what I said about her water.”

Our brave power-washer assured her that her secret would be safe, and Purple-Face looked a little less purple. But our antagonist wasn't finished yet. “One more thing,” she added. “Is it a problem if the kids write on the asphalt with chalk?”

“I'd prefer if they would wait a little while, until we're finished with the job,” Paula replied.

“Good,” Purple Face leered. “I'll be sure to let them know. Personally, I think it looks like graffiti!”

Evidence B: The lack of water hook-ups at Uptown Grove has proved to be a chronic problem, our sources report. Over a dozen houses have put up signs in front of their homes denying workers permission to use their water for power-washing the community road. One laborer, who goes by the alias “Blue-ribbon Backblader,” describes her experience:

“Once, when I encountered one of those dreadful signs, I also noticed a gaggle of girls giggling in the bushes. 'There she is,' I heard one of them say. They had been waiting there to watch me read the sign and gauge my reaction! Expressionless and tired after an already long day, I dragged my hose out of their parent's driveway. Since there were no other houses nearby except the one I had already used for over an hour, I was forced to continue using their neighbor's water. A few minutes later, that neighbor came out of the house.

'Are you still using my water?' he bellowed. 'That stuff isn't free, you know!'

'I'm sorry,' I replied, almost in tears. 'I don't know where else to go. Your neighbors won't let me use theirs...'

'Why not?' the man wanted to know. 'The people who live there are both doctors! They can afford it.'

I shrugged, helpless.

'The homeowners association is going to hear about this,' the man assured me. And then: 'You look...tired. I guess you can just use my water as long as you need.' To my considerable relief, he marched back into his house, leaving me to finish my job in peace.”

Evidence C: Several readers have informed our staff about a plot to vandalize what has been deemed “The Hummer House.” Modern Sealer Woman does not officially condone this sort of illegal activity. Witnesses allege the presence of two Humvee Hummers parked in a single undisclosed location, with one of the license plates reading, “SEVNMPG.”

One power-washer, nicknamed “Artist of Tar,” reports: “Figuring that they must enjoy wasting money and resources, I left my hose hooked up to their house for nearly three hours before two teenage boys approached me to ask me if I could please switch houses. They needed to wash their cars.”

Evidence D: At approximately 12 PM on August 7, 2009, a man emerged from his residence at Uptown Grove just as The Black Hand was putting finishing touches of sealer on the road in front of his driveway. The man informed the crew that he had a doctor's appointment and angrily drove over their just-completed work. The crew spent forty-five minutes fixing his mess. “Sorry was just not in his vocabulary,” recalls one witness. The Uptown Grove Homeowners' association claims they had always suspected the man was a “bad egg.”

Evidence E: A female resident of Uptown Grove accused crew members of leaving too much space between construction cones and blamed The Black Hand for the tire marks she created on her own cement driveway. “Artist of Tar” reportedly called her a “yuppie douchebag,” but has yet to be disciplined by Black Hand management.

Evidence F: At an unspecified hour in the late evening of August 16, a cat tiptoed across the sealer, strutted onto the sidewalk, wandered back into the sealer, then repeated this maddening catwalk several times. Uptown Grove Homeowners' Association requested that The Black Hand spend their morning scrubbing off cat prints with a wire brush. Criminal is still at large.

Modern Sealer Magazine, along with the Urban Planning Police, is currently seeking information related to the case of the declining character of Gig Harbor. We especially ask concerned citizens to keep an eye out for cats with artificially black paws and to avoid destroying personal property on the grounds of excessive contribution to global warming and the deaths of Iraqi citizens.

We weren't the only laborers entrusted with maintaining the pristine appearance of Uptown Grove. Several landscapers, almost exclusively Hispanic, could always be spotted with lawnmowers or hedge clippers. Despite their constant presence, the gated community had not a single bathroom available. Summer being a time of excessive exercise and abundant produce in our backyard garden, my bowels were always in motion. During those round-the-clock days I spent at the pressure washer, there was no place to relieve myself other than a small patch of wetlands at the edge of the subdivision. I had no choice but to glance around, pull down my spandex and pollute the only sanctuary still available to local tree frogs and cranes. This alone was enough to dehumanize a weaker person. Only one resident in the entire subdivision, home to over a hundred gray and pastel houses, offered to let me use their bathroom. He was a kindred spirit, an older man who had been living in Gig Harbor all his life and who even knew my grandfather.

“Not a single local person living in this neighborhood,” he told me as as he ushered me to the bathroom. “These are all California folk. They don't understand how hard you girls work.

Hot Girls with Power Tools

I get my share of random come-ons as a well-groomed young woman, but they pale in comparison to the reactions my tarred spandex and recycled T-shirt sweatbands inspire. These range from patronizing offers to help and explanations of the functions of my various tools, to lusty gestures and scribbled phone numbers left on my windshield. I'm never sure whether this is because I actually look sexy with dirt splattered on my face, or that I have deescalated into same league as a large pool of horny loiterers by looking equally unfortunate. One of my crew-mates theorized that it's because we always work in the morning. “You know what they say about testosterone levels in the wee hours after sunrise,” she said, winking.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” one man asked me as I was hooking up the pressure washer to a hose spigot. “It looks pretty powerful.”

“It is,” I shot back. “It could rip the skin right off your knee if I pointed it straight at you.”

He was the kind of man no girl would ever want to be within ten feet of. With a shy hairline and the beginnings of a mustache, the man actually had the gall to wear a shirt over his belt-enhanced gut which read: “It's not a beer belly. It's an engine for a sex machine.” I tried not to look bewildered as I took him in, but my own gut lurched as I poured gas into my pressure washer and started it up. I was working outside a coffee shop that morning, so the man went in to get himself a cup o' joe and then proceeded to sit outside the cafe and watch me work. I pretended not to notice, gave thanks for the safety of public space, and went on with the task at hand.

Power-washing is the loneliest part of my profession. Workers are sent to this assignment solo, and the roar of the machine is so loud that I couldn't hold a conversation even if there were crew-mates around to talk to. After a few years of listening to the unrelenting whir of the machine, I finally invested in noise-canceling headphones to hook up to my trusty iPod. The music always comforts me immensely, sending my mind back into the world that I otherwise inhabited—of friends, art and good living. The beastly man at the coffee shop, however, forced my attention right back to the present. I had to take a pee break.

“Is your boyfriend coming to pick you up from work?” he grinned as soon as I killed the engine.

“Yep,” I lied.

“Hmm,” he said. “Well, uh, you wouldn't cheat on him or nothing...'cause I'd kinda like to have some fun with ya.”
Pause.

“You nasty sack of shit,” I screamed. “What makes you think that, in any kind of alternate universe, I would go for that?” Or I wish I'd said that anyway. In reality, I pushed past him silently, shocked to the bone, and enlisted the help of a few sympathetic baristas to escort him off the premises.

That was over three years ago. I've since grown bolder with my words, armed with the insight that silence is more than such men deserve. Despite occasional creepy incidents, my crew-mates and I continue to stand proud in the knowledge that we are defying the stereotype of construction workers making cat-calls at passersby—now we are the ones getting horn honks and whistles.

The men we encounter are often unwittingly sexist. They probably think of themselves as helpful with their unsolicited advice and offers to help me move my equipment. I always firmly decline. I don't mind if they comment about how unusual it is for a girl like me to do a job like this—I agree. Whenever I pass construction teams on the road, I can't help but notice it's the women who get stuck holding signs while the men play with the large toys they call their “equipment.” I look at those sign-bearin' women, who do little to hide their excruciating boredom, and wonder if they secretly dream of operating their own large machinery and releasing their cavewoman proclivity for action.

It's common knowledge that men acquire muscles more easily than their female counterparts. When I first started working, my father never choose me for road removal. Unlike big road companies who use big diesel jackhammers and backhoes to tear up and pick up asphalt, we do everything with good ol' fashioned picks and sledge-hammers. We call this portion of our work “Hunting and Gathering.” After cutting out a patch of asphalt with a diamond blade cutter, one Hunter picks out a corner of the patch while the another Hunter slams it with a sledge. The rest of the crew, the Gatherers, throw the broken pieces into the truck. The men on our crew have a certain affection for Hunting, as it seems to awaken some wild yearning for a test of their manhood which modern society denies them. The girl crew-members shied away from Hunting for years, until one day, when there was no one else available but my sister and I, we were sent out with pickaxes and sledgehammers to finally discover the fortitude of our own forearms and backbones. To everyone's delighted surprise, we proved once and for all that we could remove a road as well as any cave-man wannabee. My proud father wondered why he didn't make Hunters of us sooner.

School of Tar

I fondly remember a day when a man came out of his house, gawked at us wordlessly for a good five minutes, and then suddenly demanded to know why we weren't in school. It was the middle of summer, the fact of which I gently reminded him. He went inside and began speaking to his wife in Korean, which I understood at a basic level, about how we were child laborers and girls and had our father deprived us so much that we had to sink to this level? He emerged from his house, shaking his head, and offered us cold cans of pear juice. We go to school, we assured him. Just a summer job. Not the final word on our life purpose, our souls are not sold to the factory yet, bright futures were still possible. At least we hoped so.

The favorite question of homeowners when I work is, “Have you been to college?” And my favorite answer, recently true, is, “Yes, I just graduated.” “Good, good,” they say, often trying to hide their surprise. “You couldn't pay me to do that kind of work,” they sometimes add. At this point I like to mention that I get paid twenty-one dollars an hour, and that usually ends the conversation.

Through nine summers of sealing, and more than a few still to come, I have come to realize that I will always be more than I appear. I am a world traveler, an artist, a music lover, a well-educated dreamer, though you wouldn't know it from my black-stained ankles or dorky sun hat. I am the biggest tree-hugger I know, though you wouldn't know it from the gas-guzzling rig I drive or the poisonous degreaser solution I wash down the drains to remove oil stains. I am aware, however, that if it hadn't been for my grandfather's hard work, my father's bright idea and my nine summers at the broom, my family would still be getting splinters in their feet from our unfinished dining room floor, sewing hideous recycled sweater pants and sighing over canned beef hash, “Wouldn't it be nice if we could travel someplace?”

Sealer Soundtrack #21, Voted “Best Music to Work to” by Modern Sealer Woman

1. “Boombox” by Bassnectar

2. "Paper Planes" by MIA

3. “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse

4. “Artsy Remix” by EdiT and the Grouch

5. “Cha Cha” by Balkan Beat Box

6. “Live in San Francisco” by Tabla Beat Science

7. “Let Me Be” by Xavier Rudd

9. “Typewriter, Tip, Tip, Tip” from Darjeeling Unlimited soundtrack

Cocorosie in Seattle

The show last night knocked my socks off. Totally met my expectations, which are pretty high for this duo. Definitely one of my top five favorite artists of all time! Loved the piano player and beat boxer too...

Many hands make light the work

I've been wanting to cover up my hip tattoo for years. I got it when I was 16--there's a reason you're supposed to wait until your 18 to get a tattoo! I pretty much hate it. It's cheesy, it's cliche, it's just not my thing anymore.I just didn't know what solid design I could put over it....until now. I really like octopus art, and octopuses in general. See, I feel like there's a million things I want to do in life and I just never have enough hands to do them all. If only I had three times as many arms. I could be cooking dinner as I write this. I could be holding a book and drinking tea while I fold my laundry. I could massage my own back while I play ping pong. The possibilities are endless.
It's got to be a solid black, and I'm going to keep it simple. I like the tights design (the second one) best so far. The fairys' leg becomes a tentacle. What do you think?

Have you seen this man?

It's burning man picture time! Finally got the dust out of my ears and it's time to bring it to your computer.

The Bunny March was one of my favorite activities this year. Hundreds of rabbits showed up to drink carrot juice cocktails and protest humanity. Of course, a few carrots were there to protest rabbits, and some dirt protesting carrots. First we took over center camp, then the Man, who had rabbit ears on for a few hours. That is, until BRC Animal Control came along, tackled us, tagged us and sedated us with vodka-infused syringes. They dandged a giant carrot from their art car, which the rabbits had to built a giant pyramid to get.

The climbing dome was constructed like my dome, only a whole lot bigger and badder. It took me a few tries, but I made it to the top.

On our way to the White Party. I didn't have anything white, though, so I just wore all black and wrote "white" in rhinestones on my chest.

The slide while it was under construction. I went down a few times on a garbage can lid.

Ashley and I strut our stuff at center camp

Becka's sweet gold leotard

Sometimes we fell asleep in our clothes...

It's the stairway to heaven! Just one of the many random things to play with.

My banana butt

Aw, I love you girl!

It was a good year for trampolines

My neighbors, Moonrock, were the creators of the Ravers Anonymus 12-step program (Step 1: Admit you've got rhythm. Step 5: Hold a glowstick and don't crack it...) They woke us up every day with a comedic set of happy hardcore and microphone farts. I thought it was funny, but the muscle heads across the street didn't dig it and stole their generator halfway through the week....drama drama...

What did I tell you about all the sweet toys?

You can stand under my umbrella...ella..ella

Riding in art cars with strangers...

James gets in on onstage during the sunrise set

Sometimes we felt a bit like this picture

Our humble camp

Wait, Becka, what's that behind you?There he is!

Cyborg Buddha goes to Burning Man

For evolution-themed Burning Man 2009, my project of choice is the Cyborg Buddha. I don't claim that this was my original idea, but I have done a bit of thinking about it in the past few months. It's rather a hodge-podge of transhumanism, Buddhism and my friend's philosophy thesis. With the help of a transformers Optimus voice-changing mask,

and a robe, I hope to guide people along the path to immortality and enlightenment with the help of life-extending and cognitive-enhancing tonics, along with a little intro to what it's all about. Here goes:

The Fountain of Youth. The Elixir of Life. The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Alchemists. Human beings have forever searched for a way to extend their natural lifespan, increase their aptitude and intelligence, enhance their senses, control their emotions and memories and transcend ordinary consciousness. As spiritual beings, we continue to seek ways to better connect with each other and that elusive otherworldly realm of higher consciousness in order discover the true nature of reality. Only recently have we begun to see the emergence of technology that might help us achieve these quintessential human desires. In the coming decade, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and cognitive science will allow human beings to transcend the limitations of the human body, pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human. We will have the potential to redesign ourselves in ways that we have only begun to imagine in recent science fiction. Synthetic organs and bionic implants. A mobile internet connection implanted in one's retina. The merging of our minds with computer technology that will allow us to instantly compute any math equation, process learning sequences and access encyclopedic knowledge without even touching a keyboard. As Charles Darwin once predicted and later transhumanist thinkers confirm, it is quite plausible that the human species is only now in a comparatively early phase of development and that its evolution will be radically and profoundly altered by the fusion of technology and biology.

What does this have to do with Buddhism?
Neurotechnologies will help dissipate our sense of ourselves as autonomous and isolated beings as pieces of our consciousness merge with the virtual world and allow us to exist outside of our own physical bodies. Every time we create art, write a blog, twitter, or send a text, we are putting pieces of our consciousness out into space where they will continue to exist as part of the endless stream of human thought and experience. We may some day reach the point of technological advancement where we can completely merge with and experience firsthand another person's thoughts, memories and dreams. This would help us better realize our interconnectedness and emphasize the psychological experience of the whole human race rather than the individual body.

By participating in the virtual world of the internet and other forms of virtual reality, we may also come to understand the nature of that other virtual reality—the one we spend our day-to-day lives in, which most people refer to as “the real world.” Buddhists believe this world exists merely as a sort of Matrix which we travel through on our way to spiritual advancement, primarily through the realization that nothing in this or that world is real or permanent.

Emerging technology in the medical fields and the creation of time-saving robotics will eventually allow us near immortality and an unprecedented amount leisure time, granting us more time to explore the spiritual realm rather than living day-to-day and paycheck-to-paycheck. Our enhanced cognition will help us to comprehend what lies beyond the surface of ordinary consciousness. We could potentially free ourselves from many of the physical and mental limitations that plague us today, as artificial intelligence will allow trans-humans to outperform “natural” humans in almost every area, from scientific understanding and artistic ability to social and emotional maturity. Robotic efficiency will help us to eliminate the endless piles of small tasks that serve to keep us distracted from the bigger picture—washing dishes, scrubbing floors, taking out the trash. This is not to say that we should lose the ability to do things for ourselves, but that we should appreciate the technology that helps to free up our time so we can spend it doing more worthwhile things: making music, meditating, learning, being with friends, digging in the garden, or drinking tea on the patio. On the flip side, we could also waste our improved healthcare and newly acquired leisure time holed up in dark basements, mindlessly consuming over-processed junk food and playing video games as a substitute for real human interaction. This is the dangerous side of technology, one that should not be ignored. We are now at the brink of discovering the many faucets of our new-found powers of technology, and it is now that we must brainstorm ways to avoid the worst pitfalls of hyper-modern living.

What is likely to emerge from this power and freedom is a new kind of being: the post- or trans-human, complete with prosthetic organs, loads of free time, lots of geeky robotic toys and possibly a few psycho-pharmaceuticals in his or her cabinet. This post-human may not even be a him or a her, as the lines between male and female become blurred. Disabilities such as deafness may become obsolete when people come to accept technologies such as Cochran implants. While some people may not see deafness as a disability, such technology will undoubtedly help to increase communication and remove any potential barriers to the realization of our interconnectedness. The body is a vessel for the journey of the mind, and bodily and cognitive enhancement will undoubtedly become more advanced and available as time marches on. It will be our decision whether to accept such progress and control it in a socially responsible manner.

But don't Buddhists believe in reincarnation? Isn't all this life-extending technology only putting off the inevitable and avoiding death as if it were some sort of absolute?

The better we take care of our bodies, the more time we have to ponder important questions without having to go through birth and adolescence yet again (sigh) before we even come close to understanding the nature of reality. But despite these efforts, we will likely continue to inhabit many bodies and construct and deconstruct many identities before we come to realize that there is no such thing as the self.

No such thing as the self? See, that's what I could never accept about Buddhist philosophy. I mean, I'm hot and I like my identity.

That's pretty natural. But look at it this way: you were a different person when you were a toddler and you have changed a lot since you were a young teenybopper. Maybe you were once loud and obnoxious and now you're all zen and patience. Even in one lifetime, your identity is constantly shifting. As a child, you were open to new ideas, change, spontaneity and inventiveness. You were constantly willing to take in new information and reevaluate your previous notions based on what you learned. As adults, we tend to think of our identities and opinions as set in stone, and we stop asking basic questions like why? and what is the point of all this? Your identity is made up of entirely changeable factors; don't be afraid to start from scratch. Most people haven't even begun an earnest search for truth outside their everyday experiences, other than the so-called Truths they are spoon-fed by this or that religion. Buddhism asks us to think for ourselves, take nothing for granted, and always be suspicious of anyone who claims to have any sort of monopoly on absolute Truth. There are many paths to enlightenment, and each of us must forge our own.

So if there is no self, then what is the self that passes on to the next life?

Here's a metaphor that helped me understand it best: your self is like a river. The water that makes up the river is constantly changing, but it's still the same river. It's the karma or essence that passes on from one stage of life to the next, and from lifetime to lifetime. As our “self” merges with the world of technology, we will be forced to ask ourselves more and more, “What is the self?” and “What is it that makes me human?” When part of what we are is artificial, these questions will become all the more pressing. Our self will appear to be made up of so many compounded phenomena that it can no longer be seen as existing independently within the physical body. As life begins to stretch far beyond what is deemed to be natural, we will begin to ask ourselves, “What is life?” That, for Buddhists and other spiritual seekers, is the essential question.

But back to the idea of trans-humans. Wouldn't this sort of human genetic engineering be sort of unethical? Wouldn't this only exasperate the inequality that already exists in the world?

Obviously some people might attempt to use this new technology for the wrong reasons, such as making sure their children don't become homosexuals or that they look like Cameron Diaz. Somehow we have to work at finding the right balance between personal freedom and regulation, and there's no simple solution. The hope is that these emerging technologies would extend human capacities for knowledge, understanding, communication, and wise decision-making.

And as for inequality, well, that's a valid point. Transhumanists see the potential for future technologies and innovative social systems to improve the quality of all life, while seeking to make legal and political equality possible through the elimination of mental and physical barriers. It's important for us to reach across ethnic, cultural and geographic lines by making use of technology that helps us to travel easily and communicate with people from other nations through whatever means possible. Internet access and translation technology has made it possible for you to play chess with someone from Iceland and another person from South Africa from the comfort of your own home. You can now walk into a beer shop is Japan and type something into your electronic translator that will ask the bartender, “What is your hoppiest beer?” These may seem like small things, but these are evidence of the amazing strides we have made in only the last few decades. If we use this new technology to build bridges between cultures, the exchange of information may help to remedy this ongoing inequality.

But wait...wouldn't we become mindless robots? Isn't the elimination of the individual a rather Communist notion? Haven't you read An Rand? What if my prosthetic liver explodes after I drink too much (again)? What if we stop interacting with each other face to face and spend all of our time geeking out with screens and buttons? What if we all become passive, materialistic, overdependent slobs?

The prospect of rapid change in the human condition understandably worries many people. A loose coalition of groups has emerged in an attempt to forbid human enhancement. This “bioconservative” coalition is diverse, including some bioethicists, religious conservatives, disability rights and environmental activists, and leftist critics of biotechnology. You may be among these.

In response to the polarization of the debate between technophobes and anti-regulatory technophiles, an emerging global network of technoprogressive thinkers are defending individuals’ rights to use human enhancement technologies, while taking seriously the need to regulate their safety and social consequences. Technoprogressives address questions such as peoples' right to use—and not use—cognitive enhancement technologies in an increasingly competitive society. They argue that we have to start thinking about these issues now, and figure out how far we want to go and what the limits should be so that we can create a future that is sustainable and beneficial to all, not just the rich and the powerful. Although we can't stop the future from coming, we can control the way in which it proceeds and be open-minded to all modes of human progress.