Hot trends on the literary scene

Tonight is your chance to celebrate with my friend Katia Noyes the publication of her book Crashing America. The party is tonight at 7 pm at Varnish Fine Arts, 77 Natoma in SF [ map it ]

Yesterday before and after my little medical moment, I read n + 1 magazine, which has gotten a lot of publicity because of its author Benjamin Kunkel (who has gotten a lot of publicity because of his new novel Indecision). I did really like n+1. It has a lot of interesting stuff in it -- mostly, to my surprise, nonfiction.

Among the way-too-many books I bought this month is Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. I first heard of it at Squaw from NPR book reviewer Allan Cheuse, who led one of our workshops -- he said it was extraordinary. If this article is any sign, this book will be huge, huge. Think of the market! Middle class Asians, diversity-minded college students, fans of Amy Tan, and half the book clubs in the country. All for a short story collection. Go Yiyun. (Her name is her only obstacle to success. And the title of her book isn't the easiest thing to remember either.)

Let's think about science for a minute

Astonishing photos of mold on the formerly white ceiling of a house, post-Katrina.

The brains of pathological liars have structural abnormalities. A psychologist quoted in the article puts the best possible spin on the disorder, calling it "an edge up" on honest people and saying "they are better wired for the complex computations involved in sophisticated lies." Sounds jealous to me.

Here are the ten most dangerous jobs. I used to hold one of them.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

In South Africa, a man has been sentenced to life without parole for murdering a man by beating him unconscious and then literally throwing him to the lions -- specifically, into an enlosure at a lion breeding center.

After people hit the road in the "Texodus" before Hurricane Rita, burglars had a field day, not only helping themselves to big-screen TVs and other things you'd expect to be burgled, but cooking meals and helping themselves to the liquor cabinet "in multiple units" of a condo complex.

Even the Bush White House is distancing itself from remarks by former cabinet secretary Bill Bennett, known for his "virtues" books and his gambling addiction, after the former antidrug czar said:

But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.

That, my friends, is what we call unbe-fucking-lievable. Here's Tony Pierce on the controversy.

Finally -- and I'm adding this late int he day because it's so great -- here's the story of the Lotto Lout, one Michael Carroll, who won $16 million in 2002 and about whom one local official said: "Before he won the lottery, he was a nuisance. He decided to carry on being a nuisance." He has been in court on drug charges, has been arrested for shooting ball bearings through the windows of local shops, and holds demolition derbies on his property.

If only he were a writer, then fans of Hunter S. Thompson would have someone new to look up to.

busblog, Tony Pierce, Bill Bennett, Hurricane Rita, Hurricane Rita burglars

Style warriors

I loved this post on my friend Christine's blog about the zoot suit and its impact on 20th century activism. She mentions a forgotten case called Sleepy Lagoon in which a dozen Latino men were wrongfully convicted of a murder; in Los Angeles tomorrow, a panel will discuss the events on their 61st anniversary.

Operating Room book club

Due to my being wide awake throughout my minor medical procedure, I got to hear my doctor's entire enthusiastic description of the book he's reading, Neil Strauss's The Game, about a nebbish who becomes a chick magnet by learning subtle and sexist forms of manipulation. Doc S. gave it two thumbs up, or he would have if he hadn't been poking a giant needle in my lumbar vertebrae.

From my face-down, butt-up position, I interrupted the chatter. "So which part did you identify most with," I asked, "when the author was a nebbish, or when he became a sex god?"

"Definitely the nebbish part," the doc forthrightly replied.

Entracte

I won't be posting much Thursday as I undergo a minor medical procedure. (Not in Paducah.)

Blunt assessment

Rep. Roy Blunt, picked to temporarily replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader, has his own ethics problems, as this May 2005 profile from the Washington Post documents. For one thing, his recently-wed trophy wife Abby is a former Philip Morris lobbyist.

Anne Heche: Pay no attention to my unloving mother

Actress Anne Heche -- ex-lover of Ellen DeG. and daughter of a closeted gay man who died of AIDS -- has released a statement condemning her mother for participating in "ex-gay" conferences sponsored by arch-foamer group Focus on the Family.

"The 'Ex-gay' events that are going on right now make me sick," she writes... "The fact that my mother is using my name to promote this movement makes me even sicker. I could not disagree more adamantly with what she and her group of unloving, unaccepting, Bible preaching hate mongers are doing. I do not believe that homosexuality is something that should be brainwashed out of someone. I do not believe that homosexuality should be anything but celebrated if that is the thing that makes an individual feel good about their life.

"And for anyone who thought my mother's prayers had anything to do with me marrying a man, forget it. I can safely say that my mother has nothing to do with any decision I make. It has always disturbed me the way religion can twist something to make people feel badly about themselves. Isn't a loving heart an accepting, caring heart? Certainly my mother has never been 'loving.'"

Anne Heche is the daughter of artist Don Heche, who was a closeted gay man who died in 1983 of AIDS. Anne's sister Susan Bergman wrote the book Anonymity about his life and how he and his family dealt (and didn't deal) with his being closeted about his sexuality and his illness.

Breaking: Freedom 'too controversial' for WTC site

"Furious 9/11 families" have caused planners to remove a Freedom Museum from plans for the WTC site.

Families and politicians (said) that the museum would overshadow and take space from a separate memorial devoted to the 2,749 World Trade Center dead and would dishonor them by fostering debate about the attacks and other world events.

That's right -- it would "dishonor" the people killed at the WTC if an institution fostered debate about what freedom meant. I have three words for The Families: move on already.

Grey goo for House Majority Leader

I'm feeling particularly prickly this morning, all into snarky near-apocalyptic events, so I thought I'd go all the way. Let's hear it for grey goo:

"Plants" with "leaves" no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous "bacteria" could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop -- at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.

Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has become known as the "gray goo problem." Though masses of uncontrolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term "gray goo" emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less inspiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superior in an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable. The gray goo threat makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.

Gray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident.

Imagine the traffic jam that would cause.

(I'm not the first to make the connection. NYT columnist John Tierney wrote on Sep. 24: "Imagine that the Gulf Coast was inundated not with water but with a swarm of nanobots. These would be microscopic machines designed to break down substances like cancer cells in a body or pests in a farm field. But what if scientists accidentally created some superorganism that outcompeted all other life and wiped out everything on the Gulf Coast -- then spread like pollen around the world. What if they engineered nanobots that kept replicating and evolving until they broke down the substance of every living thing, leaving the planet covered in gray goo?")

Texodus

Katharine Mieszkowski, a terrific Salon writer who went to the same suburban Houston high school I did (although I was probably 10 or 15 years ahead of her), writes of several residents of the very suburban development I lived in -- Clear Lake Forest -- who experienced the troublesome Hurricane Rita evacuation.

Knowing as I do the character of folks who live there, I can supply the subtext behind this and other similar stories of the "Texodus." The suburban residents of that community, whose lives are remote from anything approaching reality (and who are represented in Congress by the now-indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay), would have been deeply shocked at the collapse of the middle class infrastructure that heretofore has allowed them to lead sheltered lives. The notion that you actually can't get out of town in your giant vehicle, because there are too many people on the road and there's no gas, and when you get where you're going there are no motel rooms, and gosh darn it you've got to PEE ON THE HIGHWAY protected only by a beach towel -- this is one of the few times in their lives when they've had a glimpse of the center not holding. And it must be a real kick in the head.

That's okay. They need one.

Update: The area itself largely escaped unscathed, according to the local news site. It was 96 degrees at 5 pm today, however.

Dept of Schadenfreude

Rep. Tom DeLay was indicted today by a Texas grand jury on charges stemming from a campaign finance conspiracy investigation. DeLay will "temporarily step aside" from his position as House majority leader.

Couldn't happen to a greasier, more objectionable politician:

Sep. 14, 2005: DeLay says there is simply no more "fat" to trim from the federal budget
Sep. 9, 2005: DeLay asks Katrina refugees "Is this kind of fun?"
July 2005: DeLay inserts $1.5 bil. giveaway to oil industry, Halliburton in energy bill
Dec. 2003: Republican congressman alleges DeLay's legislative tactics amount to "bribes and special deals" to get bills passed
2001: DeLay says Bush's "faith-based initiative" represents "a great opportunity to bring God back into the public institutions of the country"
2000: DeLay prevents sweatshop reform in U.S. territories; see also this 1999 Salon story

And here's a list of DeLay's ethics problems from Common Cause. Goes back years.

Not much fun

If you're looking for tales of the crazee San Francisco weekend, check Violet Blue's or Badger's accounts of the Webzine conference (which I didn't even know about -- shows how totally out of the loop I am) and various parties afterward.

What I did for fun over the weekend -- which in SF was utterly crammed with events and stuff, not the least of which was the Folsom St. Fair -- could fit into a coffee cup. Mostly worked on my new novel. Exercised. Drove Katia around to bookstores to promote her novel. Watched the Giants on TV. Played with the cats.

My social partying days are pretty much over, though if my finished novel gets published, I'm going to get out there more, if only because I will finally have a reason.

Less reality than advertised

A man has been arrested for ripping off investors for more than $5.5 million after people realized that the reality TV show he said he was producing did not exist. His show was supposed to be about the reality of Homeland Security, and he even convinced conservative Republicans like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to support the idea.

A reality TV show about Homeland Security -- isn't that a red flag right there? It's like having a reality show about ex-gay ministries or democracy in Khazakstan.

Meanwhile, you're going to see a lot of links to this article in The Nation about Blackwater Security and other mercenaries moving into New Orleans. But there's less there than meets the eye, too. Unanswered questions:

• Aside from "clearing out" someone's apartment and doing a lot of macho posturing, have the Blackwater men actually done anything?
• It's not illegal to hire private security guards to protect private property, is it? Does it really matter if they are, to name one example cited, Israeli?

By the way, the "rich hotelier" mentioned in that article, F. Patrick Quinn III, was the subject of an admiring profile in yesterday's NYT. That article, which was about Quinn's aggressive business tactics in the wake of the flood, didn't mention his security detail. Which is not to say they aren't really there -- it's just an interesting example of how two different reporters stress different things. One was writing a paranoid story about mercenaries, the other was writing a story about an aggressive businessman. Take note: the stories don't contradict each other. Taken together, they provide a more complete picture.

I don't mean to dis the Nation story so completely. It is valuable to note that Blackwater has close ties to the Christian right; it just isn't necessarily relevant to their work in New Orleans, unless a theocracy is being set up and nobody's noticing.

Back to the trivia!

Over a hundred pix of cute Japanese chicks at an electronic games show in Tokyo. (SFW, but courtesy Fleshbot.) As with most pictures of young Japanese women, it's hard to tell where uniforms stop and costumes begin.

Graveyard humor in Houston

From a Houston Chronicle reporters' blog, before the storm hit:

Downtown looked like the end of the world. Or just an ordinary weekend. You know, I kind of like Houston this way. It was easy getting around. I had the place to myself. It was like sitting in a movie theater showing a Jennifer Lopez film. ...

Streets were so empty, drivers were ignoring red lights and crossing the double lines without a worry. Again, like an ordinary weekend.

Hurricanes as non-sequiturs

I was working on my new book today, but having trouble getting the hurricanes off my mind. I was thinking that, in terms of story, an event like a hurricane typically appears either as the main conflict (your basic man vs. nature plot -- e.g. The Perfect Storm), as a plot device in a larger plot (e.g. Key Largo) or as one of a series of trials which the characters must surmount (e.g. The River).

But for the hundreds of thousands of people made homeless (and worse) by the weather this year (not to mention those hit by the tsunami last December), the hurricane is none of those. It's just something that happens to them; it doesn't serve a narrative purpose. For many, I think it's unlikely to really change their lives and make them something they weren't before. I'll bet that five years from now most of the people made homeless by the hurricane are in the same socioeconomic status they were in before the storm -- of course, I'm just guessing, but that would be interesting to find out eventually.

Part of what I'm getting at is how insulated we are from what actually happens in the world. Not only insulated by modern society (for example, you lose your house, get financing and insurance payments, move into another house, get a job similar to the one you had before, and go on with your life) but by larger forces in society. The hurricanes are unlikely to change the fact that we live in a consumer society dominated by large corporations and global trade. The hurricanes are unlikely to -- by whatever means -- make people form cooperatives and live in a less consumeristic way, trade their lives as consumers for lives as peace activists, stop eating junk food and all do yoga, or change the nature of public education in society.

In fact, I have the feeling that the more life is disrupted by an event that is essentially a nonsequitur -- a storm, a hurricane, an earthquake -- the more people want to go back to the way things were before. They just aren't enough to truly disrupt the status quo.

Look at the areas devastated by the tsunami in December. Did the tsunami make the people of Sri Lanka stop the civil war and try to live in peace? No, not for more than a couple of weeks. Did the tsunami make the government (or people) of Thailand create programs to raise up the poorest and make the society more democratic? No, things are exactly the way they were before; the emphasis is on rebuilding the tourist industry. Did the tsunami (or the catastrophic flooding in Mumbai two months ago) suddenly make the caste system of India disappear? No, no change at all. Yes, you have hundreds of thousands dead, millions homeless, and a fathomless amount of infrastructure destroyed -- yet society remains the same.

So while the hurricanes are terrible and exciting events, chances are in the end they will change nothing at all. That's what I mean when I say people are isolated from reality. We can trust that no matter what happens -- short of a major war -- things will remain the same. Thus events like hurricanes and earthquakes are, in the end, meaningless.

And the same can be said for an event like Sep. 11, 2001, after which everyone went around repeating the phrase "Everything has changed." Well, one thing did change: The U.S. became a country that invades other countries without being attacked, and a country that tortures prisoners of war. And that does change me, in a moral and ethical sense. But I still drive to work, get a latte, do my job, go home, watch the ballgame on TV -- and if terrorists invaded my workplace this minute, or a tornado hit, killing everyone but me, a year or two from now I would be doing exactly the same. Only the name of the company on my paychecks would be different.

Battling the news, we offer utter trivia

A slutty Mexican girl posts pix of herself with captions like "Baby, I'm a Star."

StarryShine is pissed that people can't tell the difference between her casually emaciated look and that of a hurricane survivor.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, city workers have been taking down brothel advertisements with pictures of half-naked women and carrying the slogan "emotion on every curve" as the mayor tries to clean up the city's image in advance of an auto race on city streets.

An Idaho weatherman, caught up in a delusion that "the Japanese mafia, using a Russian electromagnetic generator," caused Hurricane Katrina, quit his job so he could devote full time to investigating his theory.

But the prize goes to blogger Min Jung Kim who rebuffed drunken Republicans by telling them a shag "wasn't in God's plan."

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

U.S. soldieres in Iraq are trading photos of dead Iraqis for access to an internet porn site. (Courtesy Obscure Store)

According to this story, it is common for female eastern European mobile phone thieves to stick the stolen devices up their privates. (Link courtesy BoingBoing.) But that's not the news hook; the story is really about a woman who secreted a stolen phone in her asshole:

In the time-honoured fashion, they then rang the number and heard the tell-tale sound of internal phone action. In this case, however, Brandus had not gone for the relatively-simple vaginal option, but rather the less convenient back passage route.

It did her no good. Back at the station, a strip search quickly retrieved the offending item. Officer Madalin Taranu told local daily 7 Plus: "We've had people hiding things in their bras and knickers before, but this was a new one.... The station doctor extracted the phone and we sprayed it with disinfectant."

Yes... They have a standard, "time-honoured" operating procedure for the situation. Things are worse than I thought.

A chartered plane carrying soccer fans faked a fuel emergency so it could land in time for passengers to see the match.

A Northern Ireland hypnotherapist was accused of sexually assaulting three women who came to his clinic for help losing weight and quitting smoking. The hypnotist, who is said by the report to "perform" under a pseudonym, is 66.

Maybe he should have moved to Fresno, where Amber Frey -- erstwhile homewrecker and short-lived girlfriend of murderer Scott Peterson -- has been getting monthly child support checks for four years from the wrong man. The father of her four-year-old child is actually a man named Funch who owns a local restaurant named Porky's Rib House.

Amber. How could you.

'A no-win situation'

A Houston family fleeing the hurricane went 18 miles in 11 hours today -- then gave up and went home. The return trip took 16 minutes.

Several factors played into the decision: that other people were overheating and their cars slowed traffic even more, that the mayor said on the radio the clogged roads could be a death trap in a storm, and most important that it appeared Houston would be on the clean side of Hurricane Rita.

"There was no sign of relief," said Riddle. "People were going to the bathroom on the side of the road, walking their dogs, doing what they had to do."

Meanwhile Badger carries a report from other refugees:

There is a line just to get into the Randalls (supermarket), which closes at 5pm today. The gas station premises are crowded with broken-down or out of gas cars. mark says the stench is unbelievable, of human urine everywhere outside the gas station and of animal poop. There is trash everywhere, dirty diapers, stuff blowing around. People are starting to just drive onto the grass and sort of camp out, maybe conserving gas and hoping to wait for the sun to go down and extra lanes to open. (Unfortunately the extra lanes probably won't be opened.)

"It's so gross, all you could smell was urine. Human urine. These aren't poor people, you can't blame it on anyone. People think they are above it. But they're not. This is the human condition. It is not 'Them,' it's us. This is what happens when you don't have food or water or clothing or shelter. It gets bad real fast."

A quarter of a mile away there's some guys on the golf course playing golf.

Here is the NASA page on Rita. Here is a page of Houston traffic cams so you can get a load of the jam. And this Flickr page has several pix from phone cams of people stuck in the jam.

Just by comparison (2000 census):

New Orleans: pop.   484,674
Houston: pop. 1,953,631

Cheney gets that sinking feeling

Click on this White House link for a picture of Bush's staff standing and listening to him drone on and on about how "Rita... is a big storm" and "Afghanistan is not complete."

Cheney looks like -- let's put this gently -- he needs a break. Meanwhile Donald "I stand for eight-10 hours a day" Rumsfeld looks like he could throw eight innings and still have the energy to bomb Iran.

For obsessive authors

Hmm, I just noticed that Amazon has started listing "today's sales" figures versus "yesterday's" -- I wonder when they started doing that?

Those figures are for my book Too Beautiful and Other Stories. Someone must have bought it today. Thanks!

Recommendation

The other day I picked up Michael Cunningham's latest novel Specimen Days. Ordinarily it takes me weeks if not years to get to a book I've recently purchased, but that night I found myself wanting to read a little before bed and opened the book. I was instantly entranced, and as I continue to read, every time I have to stop and do something else I find it hard to put down. It's been a long time since a book grabbed me the way this one has.

That's not supposed to happen with a "literary" novel, but it sure has with this one. I highly recommend it.

Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days

Captive views of the sky

Christine went to an L.A. gallery to see paintings of desert vistas. Since she lives in the desert, "I tried to imagine what these paintings might say to a viewer in Silverlake":

Exotic, I guess, I don't know. The skies were tremendous, but I see living skies like that every day, and when I see them on the wall like that, frozen and fixed, they feel like a death mask. ... It was like viewing where I live and what I love through the scope of an automatic rifle.

Houstonians show little alacrity

Highways leading out of Houston were described today as parking lots as a million people suddenly woke up and decided to flee the latest catastrophic hurricane. (As late as Wednesday, a local paper published this story with its mild suggestion that "it may soon be time to pack up and leave.")

I wonder which sinners God is aiming at this time. Could it be the greedy oil barons who profit from every calamity, with the price spikes following Katrina being just the latest example? Could it be dishonest politicians like Tom DeLay, whose district is a bullseye? Could it even be a belated punishment for Texas slaveholders who never told their slaves that the South had lost the war?

Nah -- probably the homosexuals again.

Chertoff: See you in the future!

Here's Homeland Security Sec. Michael Chertoff, showing why he belongs in the Bush administration:

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: But do you see failures in your role and failures in your office in the response to Hurricane Katrina?

CHERTOFF: My office and I personally have responsibility for this department. I had it when I took the oath in February and I have it now. And that responsibility puts on me the obligation to fix what I need to fix, which is what I'm in the process of doing.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: So you'll take responsibility for the fixes but not any of the problems that happened?

CHERTOFF: You know, I think, Soledad, I've been as clear as I possibly can about how I see the way going forward.

That's the script now.

1) Say you have responsibility, but only from this point foward.

2) See no. 1.

3) Say you've already answered the question.

Dept. of schadenfreude

As a former resident of the pit of horror that is the Clear Lake area of suburban Houston, I note with a certain amount of glee that it is about to be wiped off the map (yellow zone in map is "storm surge zone B;" green arrow points to center of Clear Lake suburb) by Hurricane Rita.

For fans only

If you like baseball, read this Thomas Boswell column on last night's Giants-Nationals game, a contest full of high drama.

Male author: Women should not sleep with dipshits

In a Salon interview, author Benjamin Kunkel was asked what women should do with immature, indecisive, aimless men. He responded:

Women shouldn't have sex with these guys! As a whole, you should go on some sort of a sexual strike against just such men.... There needs to be a general strike. If there is not a mass strike against such men they will be able to achieve libidinal expenditure relatively frequently, if not satisfyingly; they'll fail to sublimate their libidinal energies in the way that actually makes men attractive, which is by accomplishing things that may not be what they've always wanted to accomplish but are worthy things all the same, and they'll respond to women with the slack apathy with which one might respond to women if one felt that women were too available to them. Women as a whole should go on sexual strike; this is what I'm proposing.

Kunkel is the author of Indecision. As someone whose young male characters are plagued with the same malady, I have to admire a writer who successfully made a huge debut success out of the theme.

Katia's reading

Congrats to my pal Katia Noyes, whose reading last night at A Clean Well Lighted Place in San Francisco with Ali Liebegott was a big success. Michelle Tea, Kate Braverman, and several other well-known writers were there. You should have seen the line of people waiting patiently for her autograph afterwards!

Satire is dead, #93789045190

A Texas woman became the subject of one of those reality TV shows that subject women to extensive plastic surgery in order to "make them over." A crew from the show interviewed family members and "manipulated" them into "horrific, hurtful statements from virtually every member of her family," a suit alleges. The emotional trauma resulting from these admissions was so great it destroyed the family's emotional equilibrium and drove the woman's sister to suicide.

In the 21st century it's not enough that every magazine suggests that the feminine ideal is a sexually precocious adolescent who cannot be visually distinguished from a high school freshman, and that modern culture has become so rife with images from pornography that there's a word for it: pornification. It's not enough that most women in the media are virtually discarded after age 40. Now we have to literally invade the lives of ordinary people and push their face (literally!) in it. Gaaahh, it's so disgusting.

Dept of brass rings

Among the winners of MacArthur Foundation grants for 2005 were rare book presevationist Terry Belangerand novelist Jonathan Lethem. But check out all the winners for a bunch of happy faces. You'd be happy too if you just won half a million dollars.

This SF Chronicle article looks at local 2004 winners a year later. Even a "genius grant" has its downside:

"You have to deal with a lot of 'genius jokes,' " he said. "Anything you do that's not right -- like having trouble turning on a projector -- you get the remarks: 'What's wrong, genius?' ... It never ends."

Good thing I'm a lousy typist

According to the SF Chroncile, the technology exists for spies to steal your password simply by listening to the sound of your keyboard as you type -- as long as they've planted an actual listening device near your keyboard.

Yeah -- could happen. Right after the computers figure out how to make my cell phone calls actually go through and how not to route the mail of everybody in the Mission District with "1516" in their address to my house.

Sunday driver

Do you see the big blank area at the center of this map? I drove through there today. If you zoom in the map you'll see a single squiggly road. It took three hours to drive the 70 miles from Livermore to San Jose on that squiggly road, which goes up and down many hills and ridges and at least one real mountain. Part of it is Calif. Hwy. 130 and part of it is just called San Antonio Valley Road. In any case, it's beautiful and remote, despite the fact it is surrounded by major freeways -- it's just an insanely twisty two-lane (and sometimes one lane) road. When I got home I was exhausted.

Joke of the year

Courtesy Badger, whose blog I promoted to my "best" list last week.

Q. What is George Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?
A. He doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

Author of the month

They say new authors have to do a lot to support their books. And in fact there was a story in the Chronicle Friday about a local woman, Pamela A. Johnson, who self-published and distributed thousands of copies of her own books.

But she's got nothing on Mr. Matthias Vheru, who as a Los Angeles School District official engineered the purchase of thousands of his own books, netting him over $1 million. He is being sued by the state.

Focus on the fundies: a 'Christian coup d'etat'

Man, I don't know how I missed this. A fundamentalist sect called Christian Exodus is coalescing in South Carolina to establish a government based on "Christian principles". They plan to "force a constitutional crisis" by gathing enough supporters to affect local elections, then possibly secede.

The wrangling to see who's more conservative leads to unintentional comedy:

Despite its cynicism about the Republican Party, Christian Exodus plans to use the party's popularity to its advantage. Rather than running for office themselves, Christian Exodus activists hope to influence which Republican candidates win local primaries.

"All we have to do is put our guy on the ballot with an 'R' sign," Burnell said. "It could be a corpse and (the locals will) vote for him."

Local Republicans, however, point out that they would never sit idly by while Christian Exodus took over. "He talks about 2,000 activists, but I can easily get 4,000 activists," said Bob Taylor, a Republican Greenville County councilman and a dean at Bob Jones University. "There's incredible dedication to the [Republican] cause."

I love that the guy who is being positioned as the sane one is a dean at Bob Jones University, where interracial dating was banned until 2000.

Biggest red flag? The man who founded the group is an "investment adviser." I predict that in a few years the guy is either going to flee with the group's money or be under federal indictment.

Focus on the fundies

Leading right-wing xtian organization Focus on the Family is planning layoffs.

Liberal watchdog group Media Matters has collected ignorant statements by three evangelical stars on Hurricane Katrina. Robertson said God was aiming at abortion, Hal Lindsey said God sees America as similar to ancient Rome, and convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson said God sent the hurricane to remind America to prepare for a terrorist attack. Gosh, isn't anybody mad at the gays anymore?

Update: Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani interviews a Chicago Tyler, Tex. minister who also believes God was smiting New Orleans. A church in Medford, Mass. had a similar message.

Previously: Robertson declares fatwa on president of Venuzuela
Previously: a profile of FoF founder James Dobson

Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson, fundamentalists

Quote of the week

As Bush spoke in New Orleans, saying that soon "The city will start to breathe again," workers in hazmat suits began decontaminating the city.

Coffee, a dangerous stimulant

Baylor University, a large baptist school in Waco, Tex., got the campus Starbucks to remove from its inventory paper coffee cups with a quote from gay author Armistead Maupin. The cups were part of a series, "The Way I See It," which the Starbucks website says is "a collection of thoughts, opinions and expressions provided by notable figures ... People who brought both diversity and life experiences to the mix. Those who accepted, offered pearls of their life experiences to entertain, engage and hopefully get us all thinking."

That explains it. Baylor doesn't want its students to think too much.

The campaign against the Maupin quotation was started by Phyllis Schlafly's Concerned Women for America, one of the more powerful religious right-wing groups. Schlafly's son, John, is homosexual -- as are the daughter of former Presidential candidate Alan Keyes and the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Maupin quote, by the way, is:

I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.

Pretty dangerous.

Baylor, Starbucks, Armistead Maupin, homophobia

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

A woman who was 21 at the time surrendered for her role in a 1993 $3.1 million armored car heist in which she disappeared with a truck loaded with $100 and $20 bills while co-workers filled automatic teller machines inside a Las Vegas casino. She says an accomplice got all the money.

The Daily Mirror, a London tabloid, says it has pictures of Kate Moss doing coke. But what was even better was her response:

F*** off, f*** off, f*** off, f*** off! Just f*** off!

By the way, a full-page fragrance advertisement in today's NYT contained the words "Perfume = Secret Weapon." Somebody send that ad to Rumsfield.

Last week we had a link to a story about a small town in Colorado that feared a pagan gathering. Yesterday the mayor apologized to local pagans for statements by town board members she likened to a witch hunt.

A man from the pit of horror that is the Clear Lake area (in suburban Houston) pleaded guilty to frauds involving fake invoices for non-existent giant cranes. He has many other colorful charges against him, as well as an alleged reputation for "wild parties."

Someone stole a pair of rare owls from a Welsh aviary. Sounds like a Monty Python routine.

Clear Lake area, Texas, pagans, witch hunt

Conservatives shudder at notion Roberts might not be very conservative

The testimony by Chief Justice nominee John Roberts about the importance of concepts such as precedence and the existence of a right of privacy has right-wingers quivering in fear that he won't turn out to be the patsy they hoped for.

After his testimony, conservative message boards lighted up with incredulous responses -- especially after leaders of the Christian organization Family Research Council put out a statement praising Roberts's testimony and pronouncing themselves "pleased" that he resisted calls to say how he would rule if Roe came up again.

"Pleased???" one writer on ConfirmThem.com said. "My gawd, run, don't walk away from this nominee! It's like Charlie Brown having the football taken away by Lucy, the rank-and-file supporters of Bush and trusting in his picks, are being fooled once again."

Roberts nomination

Japanese legislator comes out

Here's an interview with Kanako Otsuji, highest-ranking out gay politician in Japan. The 28-year-old lesbian is a member of the Osaka prefectural assembly (equivalent to a state legislature) and the author of a memoir, "Coming Out."

Our representatives in Washington

The hurricane is giving troglodytes and foamers plenty of opportunities to show their true characters. A Texas congressman, Rep. Ron Paul, was on the losing side of a 410-11 vote in the House to fund help for hurricane victims, saying Americans should stop depending on big government. He continued:

The flawed paper money system in existence since 1971 has allowed for the irresponsible spending of the past 30 years. Without a linkage to gold, Washington politicians and the Federal Reserve have no restraints placed on their power to devalue our money by merely printing more to pay the bills run up by the welfare-warfare state.

The "welfare-welfare state." Is that like a super-duper precedent?

What have we learned?

I learned a new term today: suitcase pimp, defined as a porn actress's manager-boyfriend-pimp who generally sucks up most of the money she earns. Courtesy Carly Milne.

Just another miracle

Among the good blown in by Katrina's ill wind must be included this sympathetic story on a transexual hurricane survivor -- in the Houston Chronicle, no less!

Previously: Houston police are being nice, contrary to all expectations
Related: Big SF Chronicle feature today on transgendered youth

Forward into the 21st century

Among Katrina's impact on the economy: Sugar, coffee, seafood all candidates for shortages across the country, not just in the "affected region."

Katrina, Katrina's affect on economy

Reasons to love the internet

And speaking of the virtues of blogging, this extensive, mind-boggling post on Metafilter about the Blind Willie Johnson song "Dark is the Night" is possibly the post of the year in terms of scope and sheer "wow" value. It starts with Ry Cooder, goes on to Piero Paulo Pasolini's The Gospel According To St. Matthew, discusses all the different versions of the song as well as Cooder's influence on American folk music and film soundtracks, discusses Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, and winds up with the fact that the song is on the golden CD sent into the cosmos on Voyager. Man!

Ry Cooder, Metafilter, Blind Willie Johnson, Dark is the Night,Pasolini

Bloggers as journalistic pit bulls

Courtesy Romenesko, I read this interview with A. Huffington about the success of her newsblog, The Huffington Post. Among her comments:

When bloggers decide that something matters, they chomp down hard and refuse to let go. They're the true pit bulls of reporting. The only way to get them off a story is to cut off their heads (and even then you'll need to pry their jaws open). They almost all work alone, but, ironically, it's their collective effort that makes them so effective. They share their work freely, feed off one another's work, argue with each other, and add to the story dialectically.

When I read that, I thought of Badger, who spent a week volunteering infotech skilz in the Astrodome and is continuing her work at home in California. She will not let go of this story. She is a true information pit bull -- or badger!

badgerbag, Huffington Post, Astrodome, bloggers, Wired News, Katrina refugees

Still more on Freed

Having started covering Lynn Freed's article in the July Harper's about the "creative writing gulag," I find myself honor-bound to continue reporting people's reaction to the memoir from which the article was drawn. Yesterday in the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley wrote approvingly of Freed's book, particularly the section that slagged MFA programs and students, endorsing her point that writing is a calling, a vocation, and not a lifestyle or a job.

Fine. But there's a way to get that across in a way that's not terribly elitist and scornful.

Lynn Freed, creative writing gulag,writing, literary

Posts of the day

No. 1: In which a temp hawker of Korean booze gets pulled over by a Chicago cop while riding her bike to work and is later asked out for a date by that same cop.

No. 2: A five-year-old gets the better of his father while the child's mother tries to keep from cracking up. (Related: Six-year-old gets a full definition of the term "butt crack" while the child's mother tries to keep from cracking up.)

Get this man a DSL line

Another reason why internet porn is a positive force:

Chocolate shop target of Peeping Tom lawsuit

A Wisconsin woman visiting Chicago this summer said she was using the bathroom at a downtown Ghirardelli Chocolate Company store when she noticed the lid of the trash can moving slightly.

Then, she said, she saw a man peeking through that lid, watching her.

A lawsuit recently filed in Cook County Circuit Court seeks millions from the chocolate company for the alleged invasion of privacy.

Courtesy Obscure Store, which also links to a story about police taking "explicit" photos of a teacher having sex with a student.

Adventures in the First Amendment

Whoa -- a federal judge just ruled it's unconstitutional to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

Total gift to the right wing -- allows them to get all outraged and shouty on their radio and TV programs. Meanwhile the ruling will, of course, never be upheld. Giant waste of time.

Lit fuse

Gosh, that's a good name for a litblog -- Lit Fuse.

Anyway, our first post about literary stuff today is this lengthy piece in the NY Observer on the changes that have come to the Paris Review. Annie Proulx and Julie Orringer will read tomorrow in S.F. in a "celebration" of the journal's makeover.

The Huffington Post has an interview with novelist Rick Moody, whose new novel The Diviners is getting the usual hot or cold reviews -- usual for Moody, that is, as critics usually either love or hate his work.

Here's Miss Snark on authors doing PR for their books:

Publishers can usually be counted on for getting books out to the trade journals and hitting some highlights. For deep market penetration, like a 25 city tour of California, the author is usually on his/her own.... Nothing beats knowing the manager of the Borders in Fargo North Dakota because you've been in his/her store and said "howdy". The big tour stores like Powells, Eliot Bay, Tattered Cover, and Book Passage are all nice places to know too, but they see a lot of authors..hundreds a year. The indie book store in Burns Oregon doesn't see quite so many...and they sell a chunk of books for the people who make the trek.

Annie Proulx, Julie Orringer, Paris Review, Rick Moody,Book Publicity,Miss Snark, literary

Anarchy in the U.S.

Our representatives in Washington

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R. - Colo.) wants the Interior Dept. to reconsider the winning design for the memorial to Flight 93, "Crescent of Embrace":

because of the crescent's prominent use as a symbol in Islam ... It seems that such a symbol is unsuitable for paying appropriate tribute to the heroes of Flight 93 or the ensuing American struggle against radical Islam.

Tancredo, who represents a district spread out over the Denver suburbs, also thinks no federal funds should go to Louisiana or New Orleans because "Given the documented public corruption in the state, I am not confident that Louisiana officials can be trusted to administer federal relief aid."

Take me to the pilot

so then she's all, "OK, i can fly you into houston's hobby airport on the 3:15 in first class accommodations on a flight with a full bar, per your request."

to which i replied, "hobby airport? i want to go to the real airport. not the one for model planes."

When the lights go out

Big power outage in L.A. today. On BoingBoing, Xeni Jardin notes:

I phoned a pal to ask if she knew anything. She didn't, and said "I guess this means I'm paranoid, but the first thing I did when the lights went out was change from heels to sneakers and get ready to run."

Fortunately it was only an accidentally sliced electric cable. That's today's world: 2 million people lose power and we're all relieved it wasn't something serious.

A cute picture of a kitten.

Because we can't be all serious all the time.

Courtesy Busblog.

Onward into the 21st century

According to a NYT profile, CNN newser Anderson Cooper is the son of "socialite" Gloria Vanderbilt.

Who knew? Probably everybody -- but I never know these relation things. I'm vaguely aware that a bunch of young Hollywood stars are the children of other famous Hollywood stars. Like Angelina Jolie, I think. And if I think about it, it all gets really depressing. So I guess I'd rather not know. But at least Cooper is out there getting his hands dirty.

By the way, if you liked that, here's a blatt on the 7th grader who is the daughter of rockstars Kurt and Courtney.

Biden: Right-wing domination would be a 'disaster'

I can't be the only person listening to today's Roberts hearings who found the opening statement by Sen. Joe Biden inspiring.

Our constitutional journey did not stop with women barred from being lawyers, with 10-year-olds working in coal mines, or with black kids forced into different schools than white kids just because the Constitution nowhere mentions "sex discrimination," "child labor," or "segregated education."

Our constitutional journey did not stop then and it must not stop now, Judge. And we'll be faced with equally consequential decisions in the 21st century. Can a microscopic tag be implanted in a person's body to track his every movement? There's actual discussion about that. You will rule on that -- mark my words -- before your tenure is over. Can brain scans be used to determine whether a person's inclined toward criminality or violent behavior? You will rule on that.

And, Judge, I need to know whether you will be a justice who believes that the constitutional journey must continue to speak to these consequential decisions or that we've gone far enough in protecting against government intrusion into our autonomy into the most personal decisions we make.

(Updated from the full transcript of the hearings.)

BREAKING: Brown resigns FEMA job

WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown said Monday he has resigned "in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president," three days after losing his onsite command of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

Brown, under fire for FEMA's performance in the Gulf Coast, said he feared he had become a distraction.

"The focus has got to be on FEMA, what the people are trying to do down there," Brown told The Associated Press.

By the way, MSNBC has bloggers in Louisiana -- in today's post they reach a point where a state highway simply descends into floodwaters, though there are four small towns farther down the road. This is south of New Orleans, an area no one has even mentioned yet.

Focus on the Fundies: hurricane edition

Courtesy Amy Langfield, this collection of Stupid quotes about Katrina and its aftermath, including this doozy (no. 13):

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." -- Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists

To be fair, Baker posted a clarification on his website:

...What I remember expressing, in a private conversation with a housing advocate and member of my staff, was that 'we have been trying for decades to clean up New Orleans public housing to provide decent housing for residents, and now it looks like God is finally making us do it.'

Obviously I have never expressed anything but the deepest concern about the suffering that this terrible catastrophe has caused for so many in our state, and my comment was a demonstration of my frustration over this unacceptable longstanding inability to improve the living conditions of New Orleans public housing residents.

Nice try, but I have the feeling you just painted a giant electoral bulls-eye on your head for November 2006. Comments like this are all too reminiscent of the insane prophecy of Travis Bickle from the 1976 film "Taxi Driver":

Whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Worth a thousand words

The same picture was on the front page of the New York Times and the SF Chronicle this morning: a flooded New Orleans vista, with boats and a helicopter, and on the side of a wide boulevard, a prominent billboard proclaiming:

WELCOME TO AFRICA

Update: Just to make the connection clear, the BBC just published an article about the situation in Lagos, Nigeria -- surrounded by water with little drinking water available, except for sale.

Also in the Chronicle, a headline: Three Generations, One Roof. It wasn't about hurricane refugees, but about a California family that built a house big enough for all of them. Still, the phenomenon of three generations under one roof is less uncommon this month than last.

It's not a disaster until they say it is

Colin Powell:

"There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans -- not enough was done," Powell said.

... One member of Mr Bush's staff said such allegations "broke his heart."

More bad behavior

This deserves its own posting -- speaking of the friendly police of Houston, Texas. In November, officers pulled over a woman who was driving erratically and booked her for DWI. Somehow they got hold of her cellphone and discovered she had stored nude photos of herself there; they passed around the photos. Then one of the cops called her for a date.

The cops were subsequently fired. And yesterday the woman was finally convicted for DWI by a jury that seemed to feel sorry for her ordeal but said she was still DWI.

Breaking: FEMA's Mike Brown removed from Katrina rescue efforts

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 1:20 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2005

WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, NBC News and The Associated Press reported Friday.

Two federal officials who wouldn't be identified told the AP that Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, La. He was the primary official overseeing the federal government's response to the disaster. NBC learned the same thing from a relief official.

Actually, this is the best possible thing that could happen for the Bush administration. It gives them an excuse to get rid of the worse-than-incompetent Brown and puts an end to the discussion about whether or not he'll be fired. By the beginning of the Monday news cycle, it'll all be over with.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

As if he weren't already the most hated man in America, FEMA chief Michael Brown is accused of a little resume padding -- that's putting it nicely. If true, what he's accused of would get him instantly fired from most companies or schools. But this is Georgey World, and we just live in it.

Badger continues blogging from the Astrodome, and that's Bad Behavior just because I know she's down there breaking rules and twitting authority left and right. And yet she says something that astounds me:

The police, police of all stripes, in the Astrodome have been the most kind and humane people in authority that I have met. Every time I talked to them they were like some kind of childhood caricature of the Kindly Policeman. They were nice. They were polite. They were respectful to everyone that I saw. Best of all, they did not adhere blindly to rules.

I have never in my life heard the Houston Police called kind and humane, but I have no reason to doubt her. It's just kind of amazing.

An SF Chronicle reporter is confronted by a New Orleans police SWAT team and their big, big guns. Then a "security contractor" hried by Hearst to protect its reporters rushes out of their house and starts screaming at the cops. Good fun was had by all. BoingBoing links to a newspaper layout illustrating this militarized reality; NBC newser Brian Williams first reported this media-under-the-gun dynamic.

No blood spilled at Freed reading

After having written a whole parody blog based on the Lynn Freed excoriation of the "creative writing gulag" in the July Harper's, I had to see Freed herself read when she appeared tonight at ACWLP. I missed out on the first part of the reading and when I came in, I blended in at the side. She read from her newly-published memoir-slash-collection of autobiographical essays, then answered questions.

Freed's demeanor and tone is deadpan and rather haughty. Though the pieces she read showed a genuine sense of humor and willingness even to poke fun at herself, her presence is forbidding and lacks all warmth. Freed's dry tone and obvious intelligence hint at a cutting wit which might well be employed (as it was in the Harper's piece) against anyone who says something stupid, so the questions from the audience were consequently timid.

One questioner did refer to Freed's Harper's essay, but asked about "writers conferences." She responded by saying writesr conferences were just fine, because the attendees were not careerists (she didn't use that word) and "went back to their own lives" after the week was over -- quite a bit different from writing programs where people get MFAs "which are quite another matter altogether," she said darkly. No one followed up on that, for better or worse. It was the MFA programs, and their students, which came in for the lion's share of Freed's scorn in the Harper's piece.

Lynn Freed, literary conferences, writers conferences, creative writing gulag

Let the analysis begin

Alex Chee has a nice post on the relationship between the press and politicians, linking to a Washington Post story and suggesting the national press is "realizing that the rich boy who they thought would hook them up to all the cool parties has crashed the car they were in, and now they're pissed."

Meanwhile, FishbowlNYC, a New York media watcher, noticed the weird juxtapositions in the NYT as it continues to cover the aftermath of the hurricane even as it turns to annual fluff like Fashion Week.

Unfortunate personals ad of the month

This was the featured personal ad on the Chronicle's website, SF Gate.com, today:

Hmm, in some moss by the water. I guess there's plenty of that available.

Forward into the 21st Century

In the Astrodome, authorities have refused to allow techies to create a radio station for the refugees, despite their having an FCC license already in hand. Meanwhile, refugees are rapidly decamping from Houston shelters. Finally, more Badger from the Astrodome.

Update, courtesy Busblog: Even scary right-winger Michelle Malkin things FEMA's Brown should be fired.

For something completely different: a man is bored with unlimited, fantastic sex, but as a side benefit, he's learning lots of vernacular Spanish.

Breaking: Schw. to veto Calif gay marriage bill

What an asshole.

They left out SNAFU

Thanks to Girl Friday.

Shower the people you love

TV Newser linked to Greta Van Sustern on living conditions for Fox news personnel:

I was told that FOX News has rented a room in a motel 25 miles from here and that we can all take turns taking showers. With contaminated water in New Orleans, there are few options. So, in a short period of time, I am going to the motel to take my turn. I am curious what people think when they see FOX employees going in and out of the motel room every fifteen minutes.

Just what they've thought all along, Greta. Just what they've thought all along.

Maybe they're just avoiding you

Mind-boggling, yet not hurricane aftermath-related: a woman writes 1100 words in the NYT on why black people just don't fit in ... how does she put it? "The hushed precincts of (New York's) best restaurants."

Why, "the reasons are more complex and varied than the salts dusting a crudo plate at Esca." No, this is not supposed to be a satire.

Let's list those reasons, along with a translation of what she really means.

"A younger generation ... is looking for ease and entertainment in eating out rather than a vocabulary test."	I have a very high vocabulary.
"Eating out is a communal enterprise, an exercise in seeing and being seen, and blacks, like any other group, are looking for comfort not just in their food but in the codes of behavior and the people around them."	I am an exhibitionist.*
"'High-end restaurants, and particularly those with a French inflection' are seen as requiring mastery of certain cultural codes."	See, I snuck in the word "master" in an article about race.
"These theories play out in so many foam-flecked meals each day."	I recently went on a cruise ship.
"Places like Nobu and Babbo draw faintly mixed crowds,** and it is not an accident that both are known for their lively atmosphere."	Nobu Babbo yabbo! yabba dabba doooo!
"If a place like Spice Market is about a modern, stylish, really top-quality but sexy chef who's going to mix things up and not follow any traditions in the kitchen but come off as fabulous, that's likely to be reflected up front."	Actually, this is not about dining at all. I am reviewing a new show on the Bravo channel.
"All without 18 pieces of silverware."	I love stealing silverware.
"Indeed, such formality always seemed a rite of passage -- or something to aim for -- among generations of whites of certain means, an aspiration largely absent from the black experience, even among those just as well off."	I am richer than your wildest dreams.
"And then there is the food itself. All those lobsters in pumpkin-seed-fenugreek broth, for example, have not drawn a strong black following."	I've always wanted to go to that Ferengui bistro on Deep Space Nine.
"I will continue wandering in search of transcendent food, while surreptitiously scanning the tables for other blacks with palates like mine."	I have always wanted to be a dentist.

I guess the notion that mostly white people are the only ones stupid enough to go to effete, overpriced diners that are "about a sexy chef" blah blah blah never entered the author's head.

* Since blacks account for only 9% of the population (though they are 22.7% of the population of New York City) it's a wonder they go out at all.

** I can't figure out what "faintly mixed" means. If it means that the ratio of non-white to whites in these establishments is very slightly higher than in the city as a whole, then using the 2000 census as a baseline, that would mean there are already fewer than 40% whites in the restaurant to begin with. And yet the author's whole thesis is that non-whites hardly ever eat at fancy joints, so God knows what this means.

Nothing to see here

We're all about trivia today. No hurricanes, no floods, no tsuris -- none that counts, that is.

I was just talking the other day about this remarkable exchange of messages between Dave Eggers and a NYT journalist, collected and documented by the estimable author-designer, as having been my first, and only substantial, exposure to the mind of Mr. Eggers. No, I haven't read either of his books, though I did read a slice from "You Shall Know Our Velocity" when it was excerpted in a magazine a couple years ago. If you aren't familiar with the email exchange, you really should read it.

And today's Chronicle carried a big feature on Suicide Girls.

When worlds collide

Some pagans in Colorado rented the American Leigion hall in a tiny town to hold a fundraiser for a local charity, and naturally some of the local Christians are upset. I really love the fact that there are pagans in these tiny towns, enough to form a "coven."

In other small town news, there will be a benefit in the high desert of California featuring local artists supporting a New Orleans artist.

Want some good news?

Kepler's, the largest independent bookstore in the Palo Alto area (making it an important off-campus institution for Stanford Univ. and Silicon Valley) closed last week, but yesterday at a rally hundreds heard that there's a chance to reopen the store. David Kepler, the owner and heir of the store his father founded 50 years ago, also spoke today on the local NPR station on a show about independent bookselling, and said there could be an announcement as early as tomorrow.

The California legislature yesterday passed a gay marriage bill and sent it on to Gov. Schwa, who no doubt fervently hoped he would never have to decide whether he supported it or not.

At least no one is saying 'It was just like a movie'

Quirky Salon -- they sent a novelist to cover the mess in New Orleans, or maybe the guy just decided to go and they agreed to run his stuff. In any case:

Trash is strewn everywhere. There are black bags, pillows, boxes, twisted chairs, water bottles, soiled and torn clothing. Shopping carts are turned upside down and stacked on top of each other. Garbage cans lie in the bushes. Nothing in the Gulf Coast seems to symbolize the tragedy more than the excess of garbage and human waste.

WTF? The guy needs a symbol of the tragedy? He's there -- he's in the tragedy. It's all around him. But he finds a "symbol of the tragedy."

As if to emphasize this reality-once-removed aspect of the story, his next sequence features Geraldo Rivera -- a guy who actually seemed like he was going to redeem himself from decades of shameless pandering when he set unctuous right-winger Sean Hannity straight on the air last week -- staging a "rescue" for the Fox cameras.

Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She's wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He's wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. "Her relative called one of our stations," Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.

The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.

"That's the second time he brought her here," one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.

"What?"

"They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog."

Now that's a symbol of the tragedy.

FEMA: Trying to make it real, compared to what?

As the mayor of New Orleans pleaded for firefighters, a highly trained bunch of firefighters sat in a hotel conference room in Atlanta:

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

'Could this be America?'

When the Houston Chronicle runs a prominent analysis article highlighting the plight of New Orleans refugees who were stuck at the N.O. Convention Center last week and wonders "Could This Be America?" you know there are going to be some real political consequences for somebody. That's the same convention center that FEMA director Mike Brown said he didn't even know about until Thursday.

Meanwhile, at the shelter Bush visited yesterday:

"I can get the president to come here," said Tony Foster, an associate pastor who heads up the shelter, "but I can't get FEMA. Isn't that amazing? We can get the commander in chief, but not FEMA. We ask them, but they haven't shown up."

...

I ran into Terry Thompson, who left New Orleans before Katrina hit, in the parking lot. "It was good, you understand, wonderful for the president come here and see us," he said. "But it's not going to fix our problem. I'm waiting for FEMA to show up. It was way last week when the hurricane came. What about my house? What are they doing?"

That was yesterday -- more than a week after the hurricane hit, and after Bush himself had dropped in at the shelter (which, fortunately for those housed there, did not pack up and vanish after he left, unlike some other relief efforts which were apparently wholly staged for him).

Sploosh, part dix

Among those flocking to "aid" victims of the hurricane and their rescuers are hundreds of Scientology "ministers" as well as Badger, who I hope will update her blog with many dispatches from the field.

Halliburton and other Houston businesses are profiting in the hurricane cleanup racket. Note the filename of that NYT story: "goldrush."

This is a great opportunity to restore the coastal wetlands of the Mississippi delta -- not that anyone believes it will actually happen.

And, uh, there's another hurricane gaining strength over the Atlantic. Hey, everybody, let's not tell FEMA, okay?

But finally, here's a nice story. Hundreds of thousands of counterfeit designer goods the feds have confiscated will be given to hurricane survivors. "Hey look -- FEMA gave me a Rolex! High five America!"