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Two Tune Tuesday: Rufus Wainwright

You may as well start off the year right, so here’s Rufus. Apparently he’s someone people either hear & love or hear & think “What?” For me, it was all about the Gap commercial, back in the day. I’m one of those people, who will probably always prefer the first record for it’s lovely vaudevillian richness.

The tracks are mostly in chronological order:

  • Foolish Love from the eponymous Rufus Wainwright (which has that lyric of all lyrics, “so the day noah’s ark / floats down Park / my eyes will be / simply glazed over”)
  • Greek Song from Poses (when I’m not paying attention, & he hits that first “All” of “all the pearls of China” I just cry. It’s pathetic, but it’s true.)
  • Beautiful Child from Want One (the song Radiohead should cover, or Rufus should perform with Thom Yorke).
  • The One You Love from Want Two (let’s fuck this art party, indeed.)
  • Between My Legs from Release the Stars (all i can say is : i can’t fa a a aa aaaaaake it; the voiceover is from I, Claudius)
  • & an older soundtrack song, Instant Pleasure, which he didn’t write but – well, just listen & you’ll understand why Rufus fans still want to hear it live.

There are so many more I love, songs that make me cry or laugh out loud. He is absolutely, a million percent great to see live.

Thank you, Rufus. & Long live Rufus.

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SistersTalk Radio Interview

I’ll be on SistersTalk radio this Wednesday, January 6th, at 7PM Central time.  & Yes, they’re on Facebook. They recently interviewed Rachel Kramer Bussell, erotica empress.

Other upcoming for me: a reading at Appleton Public Library on March 3rd, and I’m doing a reading for the Fox Cities Book Festival on April 12th. My best calendar is still on the front page of my author site, www.helenboydbooks.com (along with a list of past appearances, etc.)

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Anti-Trans, RadFem, Catholic Theologian Mary Daly Dies

Mary Daly died yesterday.

She resigned from her position at Boston College because she wouldn’t let male students into her Women’s Studies classes. feh.

From her Wiki entry:

Also in Gyn/Ecology, Daly asserted her negative view of transsexual people, whom she referred to as “Frankensteinian.” She labels transsexualism a “male problem” and claimed that post-operative transsexuals exist in a “contrived and artifactual condition.”[13] Daly was also the dissertation advisor to Janice Raymond, whose dissertation, published in 1979 as The Transsexual Empire, is critical of “transsexualism.” Transsexual activist Riki Wilchins has accused Daly of being transphobic.

Mostly we’ll just wait for the rest of them to go, too. Being an anti-trans feminist these days is about as logical as being against same-sex marriage: wrong side of history.

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Welcome Back

The Lawrence campus has been mostly closed for a solid month; faculty has been off since Thanksgiving at least. Students were gone and the campus was like a ghost town. Since we live on the edge of campus, that was especially apparent, as we’re used to the regular parade of faculty who live nearby walking past on their way to classes.

Only today, with classes starting tomorrow, has life really returned. At dusk, a frat boy was moving back into a Greek house around the corner; the luggage he was carrying looked like it weighed twice his body weight. Instruments were being carried back into the Con (or dragged, pushed, & pleaded with, as was the case with one very large harp). The events listings are back up on the calendar page of the website, and the academic building offices will be buzzing with syllabi copying tomorrow.

I’ll be teaching Freshman Studies 101, which includes Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment, short stories by Borges, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the writings of Zhuangzi (formerly known as Chuang Tzu), and Reading the Rocks, a book about geology by LU prof Marcia Bjornerud. I’m looking forward to it; I hope they are, at least a little.

So welcome back, Lawrentians!

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Beautiful Blogger

Staci Hunter over at Femulate decided I’m a beautiful blogger. Thank you, Staci! It’s a nice way to start the year, and I do have a scintillating personality, at least.

(Is “femulate” not one of the best names for a blog ever?!)

I do have important responsibilities that come with this honor.

  1. thank the person who chose you.
  2. link to her site.
  3. put award on blog.
  4. enumerate 7 interesting things about myself.
  5. chose 7 other people to be Beautiful Bloggers.

So those seven interesting things:

  1. I have been hugged by both Andy Patridge of XTC and Marc Almond of Soft Cell.
  2. I published my first piece of writing – a poem about a kite – when I was in grade school. It was some national children’s arts thing.
  3. I am, in my heart, a fiction writer, even though I have not yet published fiction in any major venue.
  4. I have made my own holiday cards for the past 20 years, only ever missing 2008.
  5. My first boyfriend was named Jason. Also, my last.
  6. I was volunteer staff at the big “comeback” Earth Day of 1989 in Central Park.
  7. I have been asked more than once if I do phone sex. (I don’t.)

So now, the seven people whom I’ve chosen:

  1. Mercedes Allen of Dented Blue Mercedes
  2. Kate Bornstein of Kate Bornstein-ness
  3. Charlie Vazquez of Latino Musings on Literature (“beautiful” is not a gender-specific term, peeps)
  4. Monica Roberts of TransGriot
  5. Caprice Bellefleur’s Glob
  6. Mattilda of Nobody Passes
  7. Jillian Weiss of Transgender Workplace Diversity

So thank you again, Staci, and thanks to all of these bloggers for writing so regularly, and about such interesting things, and for being beautiful while doing so.

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Flick Your Cigarette Then Kiss Me

I’m putting this up because it was, by a stretch, my favorite song of 2009. & It’s, you know, about gender. It’s got a cool bass line & a daft bridge & handclaps, all of which, my friend Peter would tell you, make for the kind of song I can’t stop listening to.

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Year in Review

From Harper’s 2009 Year in Review:

Sea levels continued to rise, and a 40-yard-wide asteroid just missed the earth. The Mediterranean Sea was plagued by blobs. Pope Benedict XVI visited Africa; in Angola he warned against witchcraft, corruption, and condoms. Papal archaeologists in Rome authenticated the bones of Saint Paul the Apostle, and Jesus Christ was dismissed from jury duty in Alabama. Toxic-mining wastes in Idaho were killing tundra swans; a man in Munich received a two-year suspended sentence for beating another man with a swan. Highly aggressive supersquirrels were menacing gray squirrels in England, where the Law Lords were replaced with a new Supreme Court whose justices wear no wigs, and where cosmetic nipple surgery was increasingly popular. A London taxi driver tied one end of a rope around a post and the other around his neck and drove away, launching his head from the car. Anglican hymns were sung at Darwin’s tomb. Two Yellowstone National Park workers were fired for peeing into Old Faithful. Sarah Palin published a book, and Sylvia Plath’s son hanged himself in Alaska. Scientists in San Diego made a robot head study itself in a mirror until it learned to smile.

The whole of it is here.