After having a heart-to-heart this weekend with my mom and being taken out to dinner by some of my friends I felt scads better so today I completed all three essays for which I took an extension last week.

This week I need to file a form with NYU which will allow me to march at convocation despite the fact I’m not officially graduating until September.

Well, not exactly, but for all intents and purposes Carole Migden’s reason for running for reelection in California Senate District 3 is that she’s a chick. She can’t claim her dykeness is the reason because her main primary opponent is a gay man but since both of her opponents are men she can claim that her vagina is the reason people should vote to re-elect her.

Of course Carole doesn’t mention a few reasons she shouldn’t be reelected. Like the fact that her campaign was just fined $9 million (yes, that is MILLION) by the state of California for sloppy bookkeeping and overspending, including the consistent use by Leno and her aids of campaign funds for private purposes. Or that she’s a crazy bitch prone to crashing her car into others and screeching incoherently at political rallies.

Political candidates tend to fall back on using identity politics as a last stand when nothing else appears to be working. In Carole’s case her claims to deserve reelection are so far fetched and undeserving on the merits that it’s surprising its taken her this long to issue a call to the sisterhood. What’s surprising is that she’s sunken to insulting transsexuals and fatties at the same time.

From Calitics

The buzz in San Jose is all about Carole Migden’s meltdown yesterday at the CDP Convention. She was giving a speech at the Women’s Caucus and became upset when she saw people handing out copies of press releases from the FPPC’s recent $9 million fine against her. She began screaming and, not unlike Carole at most events, speaking loudly but incoherently. She attempted to lead the crowd in a chant (directed at Mark Leno) of “Shame on You, Shame on You!” Not exactly understanding what Mark Leno should be shameful about (he didn’t break the law hundreds of times), nobody in the crowd followed her lead. So she was standing there, alone, chanting.

Visibly upset about not being able to “Lead,” Carole became even more belligerent. She pointed out a group of male and female supporters holding Mark Leno signs, and screamed “I mean, are those women or big fat men.” The crowd literally booed her off the stage using her only mantra of “Shame on you, Shame on you!!”

Now we all know that Carole often has lapses in sanity. But for her to attack people based not only on their gender, but also on their weight, is disgusting. It is an insensitive, transphobic comment that shows just how desperate Carole has become.

My banishment from Bungalow 8 has ended. I was allowed in last night and had a great time - it felt like I was returning home.

December 2005 - One time in Maui I was lying on Makena Beach and saw a crab on the beach - scuttling up from the sea. A kid ran over and began throwing balls of wet sand at the crab and instead of retreating the crab menacingly ran toward the source of its torment and the kid ran down the beach crying.

September 1998 - I was in the Moroccan Sahara, in Zagoura. One night I was walking back to where I was staying when I heard chanting and drums pounding in a hypnotic, endless beat. Through the darkness I could see a fire and a line of women dancing and chanting in a Tuareg language. The road split and I had to chose - to the chanting sound or the place I was staying. I chose the path of safety.

October 1992 - I was hiking through the hills near Abiquiu, New Mexico when a hawk, prolly sensing that I was near its nest, began dive-bombing me. It came so close to me that I felt its feathers on my ear. I had to run.

July 1988 - I was 16 and in Morocco for the first time staying with a Moroccan family. Myself and my Moroccan brother went to Tangier from Rabat to stay with our family there. One day we went to a pre-wedding celebration for a maid in the house. It was on top of the roof in a poor section of Tangier, a part of the city composed of tall white buildings clustered close to one another - so close you could leap from roof-to-roof if you had too. I didn’t know the celebration involved the killing of a cow in front of me - but it did. They dragged a cow up on the rooftop and all the women in the neighborhood came to the rooftop and began chanting a Moroccan wedding song over and over. I felt sick from the heat and from what I knew I was going to see - the men drew the cow’s head back until the veins in its neck bulged while the cow moaned sadly, as if knowing this was its last minute of life - then they cut the cows throat. Blood spurted out in red gushes, timed with the beat of the cow’s heart. They then butchered the cow into pieces but not before showing me the cow’s embryo - which was barely 1 inch long - glistening and long in the hot Moroccan sun.

Last year I wrote an article on Istanbul which was published in a book by promising authors such as myself. I sent a copy of the article to the Turkish Mission to the United Nations along with a note to the ambassador, just to let them know what I was writing and asking them if they had any internships available.

Today the Mission hand-delivered a beautiful box of Turkish Delight along with a note to my apartment in New York. The note was very nice and referenced several points I wrote about in my article. Sadly internships are only for Turkish citizens but I’m still pleased the ambassador read the essay and thought highly enough of what I wrote to take the time to deliver a note and a delicious box of candy to me.

For the first time in my two-year stint at NYU I’ve requested an extension from a professor for an assignment which I didn’t do.

I know lots of students who ask for mad extensions - like for every assignment. I also know students who take incompletes and then get an ‘F’ because they never do the assignments for which they took the extension in the first place. Rest assured, dear reader, that I am none of the above.

The fact is, and this is a shameful thing, that I didn’t attend the first 3 classes so I’m behind and in all reality I don’t know the answer to the questions for which I was to compose my assignment. I need to read and then turn in the assignment next week - which isn’t much of an extension but it’s still the first I’ve ever asked for.

I was washing my sheets today after the German Vanity Fair writer left my apartment and I saw a strange thing in the laundry room. A furtive dusty-looking woman was combing a towel with a small brown comb. Maybe she was trying to remove towel fuzz or spare pubes? I’ve never seen anyone combing a towel before.

Some asshole keeps using my page address to leave nasty comments on other people’s blogs. Whomever this is needs to stop - I’ve already received three angry comments from people who read the shit he/she wrote and I have nothing to do with it nor do I know who it is who’s writing such crap.

I absolutely love it when animals previously thought extinct or removed from their ancestral habitat turn up and surprise everyone. When that occurs it shows the resilience of nature and of animals to reclaim what was lost - it also makes me feel there is some hope in repairing the damage humans have done to the planet.

With that comes news that the Wolverine has returned to the state of California after over 90 years. Researchers are unsure as to whether this wolverine hails from a particular species of California wolverines or if it migrated from the nearest bunch of wolverines in central Washington - which would mean it came over 900 miles to Lake Tahoe.

Either way fans and researchers of the wolverine are in a tizzy:

Researchers, biologists and volunteers have fanned out over 155 square miles from the spot where the photo was taken in the forest north of Truckee, hunting for genetic material.

Cameras and “hair snares,” which capture animal hair, were rigged and all suspicious-looking animal deposits were scooped up. Dogs trained to detect wolverine scat were unleashed in the forest by the Center of Conservation Biology in Washington.

Airplanes even flew overhead in an attempt to pick up signals from wolverines surgically fitted with radio transmitters during studies in Montana. Several wolverines with the internal transmitters have disappeared from study areas, but no signal was detected in the Tahoe area, Zielinski said.

Wolverines fill a particular ecological niche and their arrival may indicate a healthier environment which finally has a place for them. I hope they stay and hang out for a while at Lake Tahoe.