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may 26, 1996: change of aesthetic
Ok, so I have not updated my page in over a week. I went home to Milwaukee for the weekend, and then I was super-busy applying for (and even snagging) a couple of paying gigs. Shoot me.
To make matters worse, a couple of people sent really long letters.
Brian writes, in the first one-fourth of his letter:
Rebecca,
I read a few of your rants, and I found them very entertaining and informative, a rare combination in this age of sound bites and hot links (and I don't mean spicy sausage, either).
Two things in your rants really stand out in my mind: this idea of egg-fusion, and your stance on groping with Republicans. First, the egg-fusion: I'm really curious as to how this might happen (no sarcasm, I'm really serious). I'm assuming that the idea is to match up the 23(?) pairs of chromosomes in each egg, but how would you do that? Get them together for drinks after work and hope for the best? No, they must have found a way to extract the chromosomes from one egg and infuse them into the other. I'm no scientist, so I can't imagine how they might do that. However, let's look at the social ramifications:
* No men. Since women produce only XX (female) pairs of chromosomes, all offspring would be female. Judging from my admittedly limited exposure to you, I am assuming that you think this would be a good thing. But is it really? All women, no men-no variety, and variety is what makes life interesting.
* Out with the old and in with the new. There are myriad problems with our male-dominated earth, but replacing men with women would just bring a whole new set of problems. Women may be better than men in many ways, but let's face it, they are not perfect. It is abundantly evident that you are wise enough to realize this.
* Deliverance II. Science told us many years ago that offspring of first cousins end up on a West Virginia front porch picking and grinning. What does that say about the potential risks of female-female offspring? All women have a little bit of testosterone oozing through their systems; just as all men have a little estrogen coursing through their veins; it helps balance us all just a little. Where would egg-fusion babies get their needed testosterone? Through injections? Time-release capsules? Infant formula fortified with 8 vitamins, iron, and testosterone? How many fingers and toes would an egg-fusion baby have?
* Let your conscience be your guide. Look at all the people throughout history who have embraces "sameness". Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Henry VIII. George Wallace, along with millions of white Southerners. Do women really want to be perceived as having ideologies similar to these people?
....and I guess the first thing that comes to mind is... WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?!?!
Dear Brian:
Sorry dude, but I disagree 150 percent.
Your entire argument rests on the premise that a world of only females would be non-diverse. To assume that all women are the same is one of the most fundamental tenets of old-fashioned sexism. Women are just as diverse as men are; and the world would be just as diverse as it is now; there just would be no people with XY chromosome sets.
Big deal. No two women are the same. Not even identical twins.
I imagine that what could be speaking in you in a fear of becoming extinct? I don't buy it.
And, as I stated clearly in my FAQ, I am not in favor of domination by females. I am in favor of the obliteration of domination altogether. I am in favor of the destruction of the concept of gender.
As to how biologically it would happen, the same way it happens with a sperm zygote and an egg zygote. X meets X ... they form an XX. Case closed.
Anyway, thinking about this and living my life the way I lived it over the past week makes me think about the ever-present concept of aesthetic.
Aesthetic seems to control my life, sometimes.
As background, right now I am very poor. I have very little money. At one time, I made a lot of money. At the time that I made a lot of money, I used to look at the people who were dressed all fancy, looking clean and crisp and dry-cleaned, and scoff at them for being petty and shallow and dull.
Then, last weekend, I went to Milwaukee, and spent the weekend with my family, as well as with my cousins and aunt and uncle in Chicago, and saw a lot of clean and crisp and dry-cleaned people, and I thought, "Hey! they look OK!"
Hence my (slight) change in aesthetic. I did not ask for it. I value my ability to change my mind once in a while, so don't fuck with me.
So I decided that I needed to do something to pull myself out of this dire poverty in which I am languishing.
Do not get me wrong. I still love my neighborhood. I am glad that I live close to the projects and the biggest crack corner in San Francisco and lots of resale shops and cheap food.
But I do need to earn a little money now and then. Cyborganic does not seem to be helping me out too much in this regard.
I spent some time this week putting together my portfolio. And out of the blue, some really super-cool gigs appeared. I applied.
One day later, I landed one of the gigs. A temp postion at an advertising agency.
That job was ok, but I was working on the slowest damn machine in the world, that made my powerbook 540c feel like a top of the line sparc station when I got home. It was not pleasant.
Most interesting about this job were the belches.
When I booted up the machine, it was in a state of eminating random belches. The belches had nothing to do with anything I was doing on the computer. Rather, the belches were randomly generated, and escalated both in ocurrence and in duration.
Everyone around me giggled at the belches. The belches were hilarious. My dear and beautiful and multi-talented friend weevil even started crying in laughter.
Ultimately, I was encouraged to turn off the belching. So I trashed the belch extension and rebooted (which, mind you, took at least 45 minutes). The belches went away. Call me a MacGoddess. But the belches went away.
Without belches, there was no laughter.
Without money, there is no clean and crisp.
Without a change in aesthetic, there is no surprise in life.
However, without a Y chromosome, there would still be variety.
And variety is indeed an aesthetic I usually enjoy.
Take care,
rebecca
or, if you must, back to Rebecca's Revenge
Copyright 1996 Rebecca Eisenberg mars@bossanova.com