Dear Friends and Family,
Considering how perpetually late we both are, we’ve heeded some friendly advice, and with a little added inspiration, we’ve decided to send our warm holiday wishes out early this year—really early—in the form of…a blog.
Yes, this is like that newsletter that random relatives and your married friends (behold, we are now some of those friends…egads) send out en masse in early December replete with adorable photographs of the pets (see Cat-astrophes! below) and semi-lame stories about the everyday goings on of our lives.
Yes, this is an opportunity for us to share with all of our friends another layer of communication about what we’re up to.
And yes, we would love to catch up with you, meet up with you, sip whiskey with you on the porch while we watch the hurricane blast through (well, maybe by phone), or lie around in Delores Park with you on a Sunday afternoon.
Send us a line, leave a comment, or call us up and invite us out. If we don’t live in the same city, we’ll try to track you down when we pass through, or put you up when you visit!
We’re also posting our travels on the calendar here. In the meantime, we have one particularly exciting event coming up in Baton Rouge (see The 7/25 Project below).
Hope damn well that things are fantastic in your neck of the woods.
Now, on with the show!
Love and Justice, William and Anna
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lk
The 7/25 Project
Do you remember the day after 7/24 last year or the year before that or ten years before that? Probably not. But 7/24 is a big day that will continue to test us all. You see, 7/24 might not be ground zero, or even the calm before the storm. It might just be another ordinary day… But! it is in fact (no lie, folks) the day before 7/25, a day on which our friends will go down in history for making the world shine a whole fuckload brighter. And so we challenge you to come together on this historic 7/25, the day after the Friday before the Saturday on which we will be celebrating in style a collision of souls in what can only be referred to from here forward as:
The Exploding Plastic Inevitable!!!
(Shut up – good artists borrow, great artists steal!)
Ready to join the cause?
To participate in The 7/25 Project,
follow these two easy steps:
STEP ONE: You can choose to 1) prepare 25 lines of verse, each line containing 7 syllables and share your words in a comment on this blog and/or on 7/25 at William and Anna’s Wedding Party All Night Long!, 2) set a goal of consuming 7 drinks and hitting on 25 people (no, we wouldn’t recommend the reverse) at the party, 3) in honor of Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first “test tube baby” (born 7/25 1978!), make a sperm or egg donation.
STEP TWO: Come to Baton Rouge on 7/25/2009 ready to party your heart out.
*Note: If you haven’t picked up on the reference here yet, you must check out the following: 1) Glenn Beck’s official 9/12 project site, 2) these two frightening videos, #1 & #2, 3) and of course, the original parody from the master.
**Note also: You may in fact feel a certain amount of lingering post traumatic solidarity with your fellow being around the 25th of July (all joking aside!) if you attended William’s 24-hr birthday party last year. This is completely normal, fear not. The remedy? Why more partying, of course!
***Finally, for those who want to know, we’re now registered at MACY’S and TARGET.
lk
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lk
Thus Spake Nuclear Winters
Do any of you really need an update on my life? Maybe you follow me on Facebook or Myspace or Twitter. Or you’ve seen me during at least one of my THREE visits to Baton Rouge since I moved to California 8 months ago. What could I have to say that’s news to anyone? Could I be so self-indulgent as to tell you even more about ME?
Yes.
Every day when I wake up, the temperature is about 60 degrees. It won’t rise above 75 degrees. The sun blows warm kisses from the bright blue sky, and I don’t sweat unless I run. This is Oakland, folks; this is my new home.
Of course life on the left coast isn’t all blue skies, Barfy burgers, and girls. My bike was stolen just four days after I got here – and it was actually locked! My car was broken into and my laptop stolen just a month after that. I moved to California the day before Barack Obama was elected and discrimination against gay folks was perniciously written into California’s law books. When I returned to California from Christmas vacation, I learned that Oscar Grant, III had been shot in the back by a police officer while he lay face down on a BART platform. Official figures put California’s unemployment rate at 11.5%. And despite – or perhaps because of – the relative wealth of the San Francisco Bay Area, homelessness is a worse problem here than it is in Baton Rouge.
But all that aside – and I’m thankful to be able to put such things aside – I awake pinching myself more mornings than not, wondering if the many opportunities I’m being afforded here – professional, personal, cultural – amount to some cruel, Sisyphean dream. I breathe a sigh of relief on those mornings. My boulder is at the top of the hill.
~ William
lk
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lk
The News on PolyAnna
Though the road from Louisiana to California was long (really…fucking…long…), support from friends and family has been abundant. This brief thanks and update may by comparison underwhelm those who I leaned on with special heaviness of heart.
I am currently proofreading at full-time hours for WestEd (www.wested.org), a non-profit that does some pretty rad, deep work in education research and development. While my particular role is less than glamorous, what I have learned to my own surprise is that standardized tests aren’t all, exactly, completely evil. Feel free to write and argue with me about that, but my basic and new understanding is that, yes, we do need standards to help students learn. Which is also to say, luckily I’m not morally opposed to my main source of income—yay!—only a little bored.
To balance the ennui, I’m keeping busy working for my mother to launch an anti-ableism project (www.shapingprogress.wordpress.com), keeping up (mostly) with my blogs (www.newpolyanna.com and www.oaklanddp.blogspot.com), and slowly working out how to be better at working out. Yes, I still ask myself every day what I want to be when I grow up. No, I haven’t gotten any closer to a real answer. My short stint tutoring left me totally in love with my two elementary tutees, but no more convinced that I want to be a teacher or work in public schools full-time. I am still applying for jobs, more rigorously, but less often now. In the meantime, I guess I’m just, well, growing up anyway, living, and trying to have fun with my friends along the way.
Namely, I am having a ball living with and loving William Winters. I have learned a great deal from this man about how to enjoy life and I am thrilled to see him take off in his position at colorofchange.org. We love our neighborhood, are happy enough with our current apartment, and together excitedly exploring our new cities every chance we get. As one new friend suggested to me, my life is actually kind of ideal. Amen.
Lalalove you all.
~ Anna
lk
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lk
Cat-astrophes!
Psycho kitty has not bitten anyone yet. Manthy still eats everything and Luna still chases shadows. Occasionally they use the $25 cat bed we bought them, but there is still cat hair everywhere.
lk
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lk
Leotarded Report:
Mistakes We’ve Made,
Lessons We Should Have Learned
1. Plan only two days to drive your moving truck, car, and three cats from Louisiana to California when you decide to come live out here too.
2. Move to the Bay Area in the midst of the worst financial downturn in decades and decide it’s probably still cool to rent a posh apartment for two on one income.
3. Lock yourself out of your apartment, but only if you live directly next door to a locksmith who happens to be hanging out at his shop during non-business hours and will charge you less because he didn’t have to drive to the problem.
4. Lock yourself out of your apartment again, and take it as an opportunity to have dinner with a new friend.
5. Lock yourself out of your apartment again, and think this will be better after I’ve been to San Francisco.
6. Leave expensive items in your car when you go out Friday and Saturday night and trust any old bike lock to secure your ride.
7. Cross the bay bridge repeatedly with the gas light on.
8. Spend lots of money and too many weeks riding the BART before you discover that random strangers would be happy to give you a view of the water, a comfy car seat, and some npr every morning for free.
9. Search for one kickball game in all of Golden Gate Park without any other living kickballer’s contact info.
10. Eat the aluminum foil wrapped chocolate and then wonder, only, why it wasn’t marked ‘eat me’ as of course all such chocolate should be.
lk
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lk
Death Match:
California vs. Louisiana
ROUND #1
Most frightening governor?
the Terminator vs. Jindal
Hmmmm. Hard to say.
lk
Best way to party the night away?
Oakland warehouse parties vs. Chelsea’s
Score one Louisiana!
lk
William and Anna community?
good friends vs. even more good friends
Two points Louisiana!
lk
ROUND #2
Best soul food?
vegan soul food vs. soul food
um…duh…Louisiana in the lead with three!
lk
Best beer?
Anchor Steam vs. Abita
No contest. Louisiana four. California zero. What up Cali?
lk
Best beaches?
Pacific Ocean vs. the Gulf of Mexico
California scores!!
lk
ROUND #3
Adult shopping?
Good Vibes vs. the Port Allen 24-hr porn store
California two points!
lk
Best local gastronomic staple?
Mission burritos vs. crawfish boils
Louisian five points, California two.
lk
Best public transit?
BART vs. CATS
Three points California!
lk
BONE-US ROUND!!!
(possible 3 points)
Cali, you need this, or you’re done for.
Gay marriage?
do’h vs. gay marriage?…we’ve got far better things to do…
lk
FINAL SCORE
Louisiana: eight, California: three
Say what?!
lk
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lk
Introducing:
VolunCorps!
(The later years: Arriving in the heart of activist America)
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lk
Cocktail Moment
We’d like to take a moment to plug a friend of ours whose comedy we hope to see more of and whose voice we think is important, W. Kamau Bell.
lk
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lk
Thanks for stopping by!
lk
lk
