Intersexuality . . . silenced

I'm trying to do a paper on intersexuality - a difficult enough paper to do in the best of times and locations, especially when you are doing a paper on intersexuality as the deconstruction of the sex gender dichotomy and the fluidity of sexuality. I was given a few essays from my lecturer which i would have had no chance getting in ireland. On my internet search i have come accross book and essay titles that look really interesting - but none of them seemed to be carried at UCD, Trinity or the national library.

i was talking to clare about intersexuality last week and voicing my frustration of the entreached sex-gender essentialist system right now and not knowing where to start in changing that somedays. she reminded me that i can start by bringing up the issues by talking to people and in my writing.

so here i am attempting to write a paper on it so i can have these ideas reach more people . . .but how can i write an accedemic paper or an insightful paper if I am unable to get the resources. I could always send out for them, i coudl request that the library ordered them. damn due dates and lack of money.

wind, books and attempts to study

damn it is windy today, i mean really windy, it would put the windy city to shame (even though chicago is only the 3rd or 4th windiest city in the states), it would make bay street seem like a nice summer breeze, it would make you wonder what it would take to clasify somethings as huricane weather. i'm sure the one reason that this would not be seen as that extream is the variable weather conditions. This country can be crazy with that - 'weather variable' say the weather station -what does that mean? when they care to ellaberate they say things like 'dark clouds, with sunny breaks, dizzling followed my hard rain, extreme winds and possible hail.' They are serious when they say variable . . . anyways the winds are extreme but of course today is poster day!!! a few brave souls came out today to help me poster for womens officer, at first we only did the buildings but then made our way outdoors. I laughed as i attempted to hold a poster in place for mates to tape them down. I didn't lose any posters thankfully but the last few sure were a mess . . . have no fear the wind can't get to these suckers, the amount of tape we used will protect them from all the variable weather they will face in the next few days.

I was suppose to go into town for the march 20th demo, abeer and i were going to cycle in and do the critical mass thing, but alas like i mentioned it was too windy. actually on my way to meet abeer and talk to her about reconsidering this whole thing the wind blew me off my peddles and I cut my shin. That was the straw that broke the camels back for me. abeer had similar experiences adn we both decided that we would ditch the whole plan . . .

It gave me an opportunity to hit the library, wow i hadn't seen the library in a while . . . I got my books and started to read, after a few hours (i actually stayed put for a few hours!!!) I went for a walk and a mission to find food. On this mission i noticed a sign for a graduate womens book sale. the women at the book sale were so sweet, i didn't talk to them to much but i would have liked to enquire about were they were graduates from, they seemed old enough to have been some of the first women in college, but then again I don't know what year women were allowed to start studying at third level in ireland.

I got a bunch of books, just one euro each, but when i got home i realized that i left one of the books in the library and the library is closed. grrr, since I'm going away till thursday i don't think i will ever see that book again. that was the one book that only cost me 50 cents but still it would have been fun to read it was an irish political comic book!

i thought the library was open later today - I suppose the library occupation to bring back the library hours was not as successful as i thought, basically for the main campus library all it did was open later on friday. . .

how is it that I didn't talk at all about st.paddies day while I was liking in Ireland . . . one sec I'm going to check if I wrote about it last year . . .no I started my a week after paddies day so no entry but I'm sure I would have writen about last years madness if I had a outlet to do so. But here I am in the land itself and the day seemed to go by with out a passing thought, but that is just a missconception, I was there I say the madness and then I retreated to my institutional room . . . I started the adventures with an attempt to see the parade. Clare and I headed over to una's to give her flower and of course she then changed her mind and decided to join us, well you know how some girls take forever to get ready, I tell you pregnant girls take longer!!! By the time we got out of her gaff and down the street all the people dressed in the tri colours and as vickings and leprocons were heading away from the parade. so sad. so we went out for an budist meal, very fitting hehehe.

we then made our way to st. steven greens with a bottle of wine, bread and cheese. we figured we were safe on assumptions of pregnancy on our side so the cops would not even think of checking our bags. (they had cops at the entrance, don't know if they were actually checking bags, or just controling the entrance but we wern't talking any chances.) then we had class on our side . . . with my hat on, clean clothes eating olives, rosemary bread and sitting with clare and edward I didn't have to worry about the cops bothering me. Which is funny since usually I feel the very much the oposite, usually my hair, my clothes and my friends put me in a place that the cops then to look at my group twice. But I poured the wine discreatly into my water bottle (which has two stickers one that says urgent underground with a pic of guys with gass masks adn the other is a feminist one that demands "equal pay, free creches, free contraception, free and safe abortion on demand".)

when we first sat down we wondered if anyone else was drinking . . . strange I know we should have had the cop on to know that of course they were drinking, that they had put their cider or what ever else in juice bottles. Over the hour or two that we sat there we witnessed the beautiful park be distroyed by peopel who started fights, passed out and generally acted rowdy. Rowdy what a great word. We ended up leaving with the excuse of it was getting cold, but I think the number of people been taken away in ambulances was enough of a deterant (it was five at the latest when we left.)

on the way to a pub that was outside of city centre in the hopes that we could get away from the madness, una and clare got us fat frogs. Fat frogs are excellent!!! It was my first time getting one . . .I had seen them in the grocery store and there was this day where una clare and I went on a mad mission to get fat frogs with no avail. we must have fit close to twenty corner stores but allas not fat frogs. Imagine my joy when I was walking chatting to edward about veganism or not veganism and the path of happiness . . . when a fat frog suddenly appeared in my hand! Ok what is this fat frog business you say . . . let see if they have dedicated a web site to them one sec . ..

well there is this that talks about a drink that is named after the fat frog . . . basically it is a green suggery apple flavoured popsicles (ice pops to the irish) that is shapped as a frog . . . yum yum good!

Fianna Fail TD Martin Brady has taken offence at the latest alcopop 'fad', the 'Fat Frog':
"To drink three types of alcopops in one glass is nothing other than stupid and dangerous. The 'Fat Frog Fad' will take off if publicans continue to serve them so I appeal to publicans to stop it now for the sake of us all as a nation which has a gigantic drinking problem. The sale of a drink which mixes one or more alco-pops together is a destructive combination. Publicans know this and yet continue to serve them."
There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to begin. I'll probably miss half of them. Does Brady propose that pubs stop selling 'Fat Frogs' pre-mixed (as I hear some bars do), or does he wish to prohibit a person from buying the different ingredients and mixing them? Given all the things which our politicians are currently directly responsible for and messing up (health service, public transport, public finances), one of them now wishes to supervise what an adult can or cannot drink? Let's not forget that the 'Fat Frog' is merely one delivery vehicle among many for alcohol, if someone wants to get hammered, then they can, 'Fat Frog' or no. Brady makes this pronouncement in the same week a FF TD is arrested for injuring a woman whilst driving over the alcohol limit, and another is named-and-shamed as a tax evader. What are more "stupid, dangerous and destructive"? 'Fat Frogs' or Fianna Fail TDs?
Note: The drink is known as a 'Fat Frog' because of its resemblance in colour and taste to the ice pop of the same name. The ingredients are - 1 Orange Bacardi Breezer, 1 Blue WKD & 1 Smirnoff Ice.


I am side tracked but at this point I can only get further side tracked to and talk about edwards new house, a house that he just bought. It is HUGE!!! I mean it is at least the size of the squat which houses 9 people now but can house many more, has several meeting, chilln' type rooms . .. got to go will continue this rant later . . .

I'm such a defeatist that I defeat my defeatest attitude

I would have to say today was one of the most frustrating days in a long time . . . in issolation it would not be all that frustrating (I suppose) but there has been such a large build up this headachey day.

Try to print a publisher 2002 document off a USB key in this city, I swear to you its near inpossible. After days of attempting to find a place that could fufill all of the requirements (close enough) I had to go back home and resave my flyer and 4 posters in a publisher 2000 format which subsiquently reconstructed my document so I had to redesign it. Ok got over that obstical. But off course the women who normally does this has called in sick. So I start to teach the women how to use her computer and her printer/copier.

For those who know me, know that I am in no way tech savy so you can imagine how bad it is when I take over the copi-print and teach them how to use everything.

Ok then I run out of credit on my copi card, normally putting more money on it wouldn't be a problem BUT I had a frustrating bank experience earlier. I can't transfer my canadian money into my irish bank account directly, and of course instead of OSAP putting my loan money into my account they sent it to my mom who placed it in my canadian bank account. So what I have to do is take out the max amount each day and then deposit the cash into my irish account. Today I deposited 1700 euro, which is a hell of a lot of cash to have . . . but that means that I can't take out any more cash today. And after getting phone credit and buying a book I had only change to top up my copi-card until tomorrow.

I figure out away to scam more copi credit . . . I go to disability services and ask for my second copi-card. They gave me one at the beginning of the year with 360 copies on it. They said that they would leave 2 more in the office if I needed them throughout the year. There is no way I would get through all 360 in a year, but alas they didn't look twice when I asked for the second one.

While I was there I picked up my books that have been made into mp3's . . . it has only been since sempember that Iu have been waiting for them, I was very releaved . . . but that releaf was way to quick and unfounded. I when home excited that I had my cd and that I may be able to get reading done with out encuring such a horrible headache, and actually make sence of what I was reading yeah! but I opened it up and only one of my five classes was on cd. I gave her all the material at the beginning of the semester and she said it was all there . . .

ok if thats not bad enough, they use computer voices to transcribe the books. ahhh computer voices give me a worse headache then doing it on my own. And computer voices are continously mispronouncing words, so how helpful is it really.

ok back to the posters, I got 900 out of the thousand flyers printed before I ran out of money and credit and was able to get them cut in half. and went back to the copi-print with my new copi-card and went to print my posters. but of course something went maddly wrong and it came out HUGE, I mean my face which is only 1/6 of the poster took more then one page. For some reason I don't and the women there don't know how to make it any smaller. WE figure the only way around this madness is for me to recreate the poster in a regular page size and they knpow how to make it bigger.

So I go home and do that . . . I have 45 mins before exec council starts but instead of running back there, I drink green tea, listen to ani, and blog . . . I will have to wait for another day to do all this . . .

the day i broke my boyfriends penis or how I learned to make a website

ok so here is the link to my newly made website . . .a few photos from the other night are up on it. . . .lets see if I can be more creative on it still . . .

introspection
I biked home after a wonderful night out with ginger at alternative miss ireland, the bike ride was mainly peaceful expect for of course my ultra concious mind of where guys were on the street, why they were crossing towards me and so on. I was biking relatively slowly enjoying the pace. This past week - although slightly emotionally draining - it has been very relaxing. no classes, only one meeting, no work. I havnt' done all that much but I had much need allone time. Rejuvinating myself for the rest of the term. I tend to move so quickly that I dont' notice things I don't always appriciate the small things. On the way home I noticed a few doorways and alleyways that were very pretty - I had never seen them before.

When I locked up my bike at UCD I stopped and looked up to the sky, it was a clear night. I didn't have to go to the washroom (which is odd) so I lied down on a bench, stare up at the stars, listened to the birds and thought about life -people, myself. Wondered why silences between people make me uncomfortable. My friend clare had a friend say to her the other day. 'I'm sorry I don't talk more, sometime I just don't have anything to say'. As clare said, its is just that simple. There should be no reason to feel uncomfortable. we are not responsible to always have converstaions flowing. and sometimes there just isn't anything to say.

I love silence I really do, I just get slightly parinoid around other people and silence, I start thinking that the next thing I say better be good - it has to be something witty in order to break the silence. I want to be able to leave that behind. To be more comfortable in my own skin, my own silence.

hBefore I get to deep into this I think I will sign off . . . its five am and the electrcity metter is beeping . . .all signs that I should turn off the machine and get some sleep.