shao qi bai

In the end, this is what the shower now looks like. I still love the look of the hotmop effect, but this is so light and inviting and smooth: I am very happy with the results of all the work, but am more than ever preoccupied with the moral aspects of construction. It is my understanding that no matter what contractor you work with, there will be illegal immigrants at some point working on the job--if not doing the bulk of the work. And far be it for me to be against employing non-citizens, but it does usually indicate that there is exploitation. Shao qi bai is the name of a chinese man who was sub-sub-contracted to install the floors of my studio. Wiry, buzz cut to hide his thinning hair, wore one of those weight-lifter belts all the time, except for the smoking breaks. I had thought, jokingly, that he was the monica seles of floor installers--giving long, musical grunts with every push on the boards and sweep of the bostic glue. He fell ill on monday in the afternoon, unable to stand, holding his arm tight across his stomach, moaning. I couldn't do more than stare, while he grasped at the hands of one of his co-workers and the foreman argued with him. I speak no Chinese at all. I have no idea what his pain relates to. I know that no one seemed to want an ambulance called, but they did take him off to Kaiser's emergency services. I think. From the foreman's attitude, it would not surprise me if they dumped him on the nearest streetcorner, except that they returned 3 hours later.

This is how the responsibility gets evacuated: I hire a contractor with whom I have clear(ish) dealings, he sub-contracts out to foremen: I don't know what the terms of their arrangement are, exploitative or fair. Then the foreman employs men whose legal status and terms of employment are even more removed from me. All these layers are so that I don't have to know and can't be held accountable for whatever abuses might be committed in the production of my new floor. I know this is how the system works and I don't know how to change it in my own interactions, so I just pawn the dirty work off on my mother and try to close my eyes. Weak.

The Lists

TO DO WORK: Write the first section on ecstatic memory in c3. Write a first draft of research statement. Write the mask section of c2. Make handouts and lesson plan for gwc session 3.
DONE! wrote the mask section of c2. wrote an outline of the research statement. cut and pasted a first section of c3. Made handouts and lesson plan for gwc session 3.

TO DO LIFE: Pay down debt (currently $1,031.09). Procure dog. Go running. Buy suit. Read Therí's paper. Go to dmv and figure out car insurance. Move clothes around. Get Tanya's present. Make airline resas. Make Ashe appt. Pack up remaining kitchen stuff as well as the file cabinet.
DONE! Moved clothes from the closet. Made airline resas. Made Ashe appt. Packed everything up.

TO DO BLITZ: sarah, marilyn, giulia, irmary, mariana, dar, nv, sf, marzena, thérèse, toño, pk, jerven, magdalena, staceymo.
new subset: TO DO CALL: katie, hen, lauryn.
DONE! pk, lauryn, wrote to jerven--it didn't go through.

Netflixed

Sophie Scholl: The Last Days
A very sad movie about a couple of kids who are executed for having put out oppositional leaflets in munich in the 40s. What was so heartbreaking in watching it is their certainty and desire for their ideas to resonate, and the movie just leaves it utterly uncertain as to whether their ideas and rhetoric and passion is making any impace on their interlocutors: particularly at the court, the audience is totally unreadable--are they sympathetic and afraid to show it or indifferent? Moreover, what emerged for me as much as the monumentality of the sacrifice of the members of the white rose was the totally extreme punishment on the part of the regime.

Dreamgirls
I really enjoyed this movie. Ever since I was a little kid and I had a set of tapes of 50s and 60s hits that fit into a two miniature plastic jukeboxes, hot pink and turquoise. I love motown and I thought the songs crafted for the movie were generally nowhere near as good. but the montages of plot development during the musical numbers worked brilliantly. That is, the song and video are intercut with images of the context around the production of the song and its effects on the artists who are either involved or iced out.