You're dealing with a lot of science. Mthafcker, we're watching you.

It was voted too cold for ice cream last night, but warm enough for a trip to walgreens where I purchased more blank tapes and window fan. Not that we particularly need a 3-foot box fan right now, but spring will come eventually and air circulation is a good thing. Plus it was on mad sale.

I started a new mixtape in honor of tomorrow night's gig at the AZone. Sort of my favorite "politically motivated" rap or whatever. I always feel weird when isht gets labelled "positive rap" or whatever and have nightmarish replays of conversations from years ago when I'm playing a Roots CD at a friend's house and their crunchy dykey friend asks if their "good to women". And she didn't understand when I suggested that was a questionably racist comment since I bet she owns Rolling Stones CD's. She didn't really respond, I think because she was thoroughly confused. Then again, in another music discussion, she had the CD of a crunchy dyke local folksinger and I noticed she did a cover of Nirvana's About A Girl. She responded with "Alright! Taking it back for women!" Taking what back? I didn't understand this comment. I guess people don't realize that over half of Nirvana's material came from Kurt's near unrequited love affair with Kathleen Hanna the big guru leader of the riotgrrl/dyke punk movement. So I was thoroughly confused by her comments as well. It was just a bad communication conversation all around.

But anyway, yeah, so "positive rap", not so much, since I don't like to deem stuff that might be hard to listen to or dark/harsh in nature as "negative" and therefore bad. I'm sorry if this music challenges or scares you, but it doesn't make it less positive. I also hate when things get labelled "political" just because they're not talking about booty or slinging dope. Common gets mentioned a lot as being a "polticial rapper" (Wyatt just described a similar experience I had when listening to his last album), but I don't find Common to be super political at all, espeically if you compare his words to other groups, like The Coup. I mean, he does try and rise above some of the isht, but I think stuff he says in interviews is often more provocative than the lyrics themselves. I will admit, after seeing him live, I was sufficiently impressed by his performance and MC skills, and became a solid if cautious fan -- I like him and keep an eye out for his stuff, but I don't totally trust him to speak on every subject. But I do love that he grows and changes and imprvoes upon himself -- one of my favorite songs on his latest album is Pimps, Hos, Hustlas, where he addresses some of his previous attitudes towards women (see the song Heidi Hoe on "Can I Borrow a Dollar?" Or better yet, don't) and his own 'hypocrisy' (with the help of MC Lyte). I think people get unfairly called out as hypocrites just because they learned something along the way and changed their stance. Why do we even bother to educate folks if we're just going to ridicule them for changing their minds? The Beastie Boys were going to call their first album "Don't Be a Faggot". But they've acknowledged that they've grown up and changed their view based on life experiences, and even apologized for past wrongs. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

This train of thought has derailed. I think my main point for diving into this actually has nothing to do with homophobia and sexism in lyrics. But more about putting "Fuck the Police" on the tape and it still being obviously applicable. And digging out Rakim's "Casualities of War", then getting chills while listening to it on the bus today because it's still fcking applicable 12 years later and when he says "President Bush" in the song, it's no longer dated, and I suddenly felt no longer numb to the whole fcked up presidency and government (I sort of unintentionally turned off my rage and gave in to apathy at some point in the past 6 months or so). I mean, I can't necessarily go around all the time with my temper boiling over so much that my eyeballs are about pop out, since it's not good for my own health. But I can't help but think I can no longer just shrug my shoulders and throw my hands up and feel helpless and pray for a complete collapse of the system to occur on it's own. I can't help but feel I need to be doing a bit more to hurry it along to imploding. Even if it's just slipping songs like this into the mixtapes I start selling.

tattoo of the tonearm on my arm.

Sometimes I think I couldn't do my job if my life depended on it. Parts of it are just SO boring. And I know they have to get done eventually, but sometimes rather than doing it all first, getting it out of the way, then killing some time, I spend the whole day putting it off, then completing the work between 4 and 4:45. And it's not like I'm spending quality time doing other things. Even my time spent online is rather wasteful -- I can't even seem to shirk possibly these days. I'm not reading any articles that are particularly interesting, I'm not doing anything to expressly forward my other career....I'm not even getting any personl e-mails written to friends. Where do these hours go? It's astounding how long it can take to do nothing.

In more exciting news, should anyone happen to look at the new Remix magazine (May issue), check out the letters to the editor. My letter regarding Large Professor got printed. I feel so honored, maybe I should add it to my clips. It's not posted online yet, but it probably will be soon, at this site. The way it's edited makes me sound a bit stilted, though only a few words were removed. They just happened to be transitions. Oh well.

In other music news, it appears I will be DJing an event on May 18th -- an anniversary party benefit for Dignity/Chicago, which is a gay Catholic group. Seriously. But I know the guy who's been volunteering with them for years, and I can play a lot of the fun disco I recently acquired. Oh, and it pays. That's usually the bottom line. I think working the Chicago queer events will probably be my shtick, at least for awhile since that's where most of my contacts lie. But I think for the most part I'm going to limit it to events that will pay me. At least for groups that I'm not particularly invested in -- I'm cool with donating my time to the radical anarchist group providing queer youth space. And probably doing the occasional big gig just to get my name out there.

I suppose it's time to get that last hour of work done so I can leave at 5 pm with a quasi-good conscience.

from Kris Kleindiesnt's "Would I Still Be a Lesbian If I Loved Someone Who Passed for Male?

(which I'm reading from the most recent issue of The Vital Voice)

"Yet as I stepeed out of the closet with joy into the arms of female-bodied lovers, the very language of liberation I was learning put me into a strait-jacket of another kind of gender confromity. Smashing patriarchy in those days meant we could do nothing that would be perceived as giving off sexual message to men. The party line was that the accoutrements of femininity shackled us to our oppression as women."

.....

"Femme is not at all about 'passing'. Nor is it a weaker position. Femme is about reclaiming the feminine from patriarchy, about flaunting female, about naming and claiming our desire. We are just as powerful, just as essential to this gender revolution as our butches and transpeople.....Misogyny has many faces. I understand this now."