Day: January 6, 2005

When the crazy one came
She placed her finger on my forehead
And pushed on through
I woke up, face on fire
Spitting out diamonds
Thoroughly lost to logic
Craving her madness

– r. sakamoto

I have just had an extreme brush with rasicm. A boy came by, selling magazines. He’s twenty-four and underspoken, a good salesman to those who must believe in such things. He’s got a warner bros tie on and a packet in his hand with a list of the people he’s brought over “to his team”. It’s dark and cold, the sun driving under the horizon with a suddenness I’m not getting used to, so I invited him in for some cookies and bit of chat. The first thing I did was discard his sales pitch, break it over and over until he threw it away. That’s when he dropped his cover and became an amazed boy from Louisiana, stunned that a white girl was talking to him.

I hear about rasicm sometimes, when I’m in Canada, and my reaction is surprise. Surprise that it still exists as an issue, that people still regard skin colour as something to create differences over. Down here it is apparent in everything. The poor are the coloured, and the races don’t mingle. I am looked at strangely every time I take the bus, over and over I am the only pale face.

I kicked him out after half an hour, politely ejecting him from the premises, as his questions grew more personal in his confusion. “Have you ever been with a black man before?” That I might not only be a desperately lonely housewife is somehow unbelievable. I told him to come to Canada, as almost all the women there are fine with “that sort of thing”. I told him about globalfreeloaders and it was like a revelation. I think the poor boy is going to find a computer and get internet access for the first time in his life, just to keep up contact with me.

I wonder what I’m doing to these people.
I’m not a flaming liberal, but I feel like one here.

Yesterday was a success in a very peculiar way. Rather than make it to Jerry’s Gallery shin-dig, a spectacular affair where I would have hooked up with artists and musicians, I caught the attention of one James White, a dandy of the highest order. A fantastic gentleman in a plaid sport jacket with a burgundy turtleback and matching handkerchief, we met on the Metro, the both of us dressed oddly and helping a blind man to his subway car. He took me for a tour of Hollywood from the roof of the Kodak Theater. He’s part of the preparations there for the upcoming Academy Awards. We talked about Los Angeles and the Hollywood depression. Fascinating snippets of history would drop from his lips like roses from the best daughter that our mothers told us about when we were young, “never mind the thorns, little one, for here, there aren’t any. It’s magic”. His wife is head of Creative, the company I did my anime princess video game voices for. Asgard, I never saw the final product. It’s a pity I didn’t get the pretty car in the picture.

It was brilliant, and he drove me down to La Brea and Melrose in the continuing quest for Necromance, the both of us aware that most things would be closed. I took a picture of him with his car outside of Pinks before we parted ways, and I hope to see him again. We’re in contact already through e-mail. It will be enough, I trust, as all things usually are. Today it’s getting a late to try L.A. Work is throwing me some curveballs, which are keeping me in, but the net is rich enough today with news that I don’t mind terribly much. Not enough to slash everyone here with something grotesque. (I may have found an equivalent to the eels.)

Livejournal has been bought by Six Apart, which is both good and bad news. It’s bad in that I’m suspecting that Six Apart is perhaps not up to dealing with communities. They have some rather large cock-ups in their history with dealing with net-worked systems. The PR mess when MoveAble Type came available was cringe-worthy. As usual, there’s some useful links and intelligent commentary over in Warren’s journal on the topic. This isn’t the same sort of system as Six Apart is used to dealing with. Hopefully they will let mostly alone. We tend to think of this as a place, as people, rather than users speaking out to nothing. We have friends here and actual communities. Relationships possible because in this system, it’s possible to access that the internet is made of people.

Speaking of such, my mother is hoping to start a science fiction novel in her journal and Matthew, who some of you met at my party, has joined us as well, though I don’t believe he has been posting as of yet.