Blogger of the month

I'm not even going to identify this blogger, whom I found randomly using the "next blog" button. I'm just going to quote a recent post in its entirety, in all its teenage angst:

yesterday was my parrtttyyy lol today i woke up n my voice hrut ahah so much talkin yesterday but oh well... GAB FEST =)) all girls n stuff, pretty big group of girls ahah if some guy walked by he'd get horny.. LOL ahahs hmm roxie came first n then holly n then these guys walked by n roxie yelled UGLY n they heard.. ahahs so bad.. tsk tsk but oh well funny lol i was ROFL.. for rela.. hmm n then everyone else came in groups n then ppl did their own thing.. video games, computer, look at my photo albums. .weird ehs? ahahahs jen n felicia n amy n andrea took up so much of my webcam room but oh wells hahaha i got a digicam from my parents =) lol won't list my parents 'cause im not spoiled n im too lazy LOL ahha but i swear holly's transforming me into a woMAN ahhas hrmm... helen gave me a preschool pic of us lol SO CRAZY hahas i lookalikea boy in a way ahahs but oh well.. hmm cake was GOOD lisa simpson looks funny.. she's like a pun now hahaha stupid cake ppl i had a feeling they'd make her greenish or too yellow hahas FAKE GOLD looking... hmm we watched the eye, so scary ahah me n amy n jo were covering our eyes in the scary part but the music and the noises scared me too so at night it freaked me out so badly... hmm we were like playing truth or dare n TRYING to play spin the bottleahahs im DERRIK NG big time lol hmm gossiped a bit bout stupid bitches like maria and nancy and lau's at windy.. LOL so much food too, im gonna have like colslaw, potato salad, pizza, chicken, pop, almond pudding, and cake for like a week ahahs hmm spicy chicken debate lol its not spicy.. =O lol anyways.. i think taht's it lol can't really think of anyuthing n my fingers hurt, i finished my socials vocab and science, but i still have a socials book report, math studying and english report... which i'll do tonight or tomorrow... sigh i wanna watch rugby tmrw but what's the point wilson's not gonna be there n i got so much stupid math... so oh well =) do de do.. im out for now.. blah so tired... slept until 11 this morning AHHA

Truly bye bye red truck

I know I announced a couple days ago that I sold my truck, but this evening I delivered it to the buyer, whose check I deposited on Monday. I drove down to Mountain View -- a Silicon Valley town which I last visited in the late 90s when I interviewed for a contractor gig at Netscape, a gig I didn't get -- this was before Netscape was purchased by AOL, as far as I remember. (So what? I don't know.) The very first time I was in Mountain View was before the phrase Silicon Valley was invented. It was about 1980 or 81, and I was seeing a woman named Noelle who lived down there.

Anyway, to get back to the subject -- I drove the truck down there and gave it to the guy, and he then dropped me off at the train station. I rode the train to Millbrae, an even more meaningless suburban town, and then got on the new BART line that opened this year, and rode to within a half mile of my house. It was nice to be able to use public transit so easily, especially since I've been paying for that line for the last twenty years -- I ought to be able to put it to use once in a while.

This came after a little freakout yesterday when I tried to find a little pile of nuts and bolts I needed to re-attach part of the truck prior to delivering it. I never found the nuts and bolts and Cris ended up just taking care of it this morning at a body shop so that I could deliver the truck tonight. Thus ends a short chapter of our household story as seen through the vehicles we've owned. We didn't use that truck much, but it did take me on a few crucial trips through driving rainstorms quite comfortably.

Not quite everyman

George Plimpton, a terrific writer who managed to transcend his privileged background and become a sort of everyman figure, died the other day. Now the Lyons Press is reissuing his sports books, including the brilliant Paper Lion and The Bogey Man, the only interesting book ever written about golf. Here's an interesting interview with Plimpton in the Columbia Journal of Lit. Crit.

In other news:

Living in sin, committing adultery and practising black magic will be punished with heavy jail sentences under Indonesia's draft new criminal code, sections of which have become public this week.

The tough provisions in the code, intended to replace much of the criminal law left by Indonesia's former Dutch colonisers, include jail terms of up to 12 years for those who engage in casual sex. Strippers risk two years' jail, and men who renege on promises to marry face four years' jail, a sentence that could be increased to five years if the woman is pregnant.

according to tomorrow's Sydney Morning Herald.

Regrets, I've had a few

You know how you feel about certain of your ex-lovers: you recall them, and your passion about them, with a mixture of fondness and embarrassment. I've never met Anne Lamott -- author of a superb book about writing, Bird by Bird, as well as a humorous book about child-raising, a humorous book about her spirituality, and several novels few people have read -- but I have the same sort of relationship with her (or, rather, to her public persona) as I do with some ex-girlfriends. After a period of infatuation and intimacy (in this case through reading), I have a sudden, inexplicable feeling of being fed up, during which(in this case) I stopped reading her Salon columns. Finally I have come to regard her with a mixture of happiness and regret.

Her latest piece in Salon captures all the things that please and frustrate me. It expresses admirable sentiments I agree with -- in this case, the proposition that it might be better for the people of California to express love rather than hatred toward politicians we don't agree with -- but is way too much about her own interior life, refers to Jesus by name too many times, and goes on too long.

All the Jesus references used to be funny, for the same reasons Garrison Keillor's audience always laughs when he says the word "Lutherans": it's funny in an unexpected context. But if you go to that well too often, the joke becomes expected. Now every time Keillor says "Lutherans" and the audience guffaws, I cringe. And I'm starting to get that way about Lamott, too. Not that I think she should stop writing about her spiritual life and the unexpected places it takes her. But I'd like her to stop throwing around "Jesus" so much by name, and I'd like her to stop using the personal pronouns quite as much, too.

Also, her hairdo irritates me. But most people's hairdos do. Even when there's no hair at all. Case in point: I was on Castro St. last night, the evening after the Folsom St. Fair, an annual event for the "leather community." And shaved heads being common among those folks, there were plenty of post-festivants still in their street fair drag, spilling out of bars. Now, I like the shaved look; I've done it myself for periods, and I will in the future. But when there's a whole group of people with any particular look all together, what seemed fancy when you got dressed for the day immediately looks tired.

But I'm just being cranky. Despite having sold the truck yesterday, thus getting some cash to pay off a credit card and also reducing our monthly insurance bill, we're still running short. Yesterday we decided to cancel the daily newspaper. But it's not so bad that we have to cancel the cable TV. It'll be a dark day when we have to cancel cable.

Bye bye red truck

A year ago, when I was still employed by a software company at a ridiculously high salary, I decided it was time to replace the Toyota MR2 we've been driving for several years. And since I'd always wanted to get a light pickup ever since my days in the early 80s as a delivery truck driver, I determined to replace the sports car, named Martina, with a truck. We found a great deal on a pretty red 2002 Ford Ranger and paid cash. Three weeks later I was laid off.

I really like the truck. The only problem is that it's a lot harder to park a pickup truck, even a "compact" one, in San Francisco than Martina (which we wisely held onto). So we rarely used the truck, though I did drive it down to the desert and back last November. Since then we've mostly used it to help people move.

As a sign of how temporary I must have viewed this relationship, I never named the truck. It's just the red truck. Well, we're getting kind of broke, despite my measly hourly wages, and finally determined to sell the truck. it's going this weekend, by hook or crook.

Down and out

The city has survived another heat wave, worse than the last -- the temperature reportedly hit 97. This is unheard of, but it certainly explains why it was impossible Sunday evening to get cool, and the way the house just seemed to get warmer and warmer instead of cooler. To top it off, Sunday is garbage night, and we put our cans on the front sidewalk, next to the gated-off breezeway. Our bedroom window faces the breezeway, and of course we had to keep the window open because of the heat. So that meant listening to bums going through the recycling for hours on end, looking for cans and bottles. Of course each one has to look, because, ya know, he might be the first to get there.

But I shouldn't complain. I could be one of those bums. Although I'm not sure I'd ever fall so low as to go through people's recycling for cans.

You know what -- those people work hard. They push their loaded-up stolen shopping carts for miles across the city, looking for cans and bottles that are worth pennies to them. At the end of six or eight hours' work, maybe they've got twenty or thirty bucks worth. What they do with the twenty bucks is, of course, their business. But it's a shame that energy can't be put to good use -- like actually cleaning all the garbage from the streets, not just the recyclable garbage.

Last night the fog returned, in a tentative way; today was sunny again, but vastly cooler. Tonight the fog is coming in for real. I find myself hoping that's the last of the summer's heat, but this year has been so screwy that I'm afraid it's not.

Why we fight

Tipped off by Gawker -- a reliable source of gossip -- in the sense that "reliable" means that it comes out every weekday and has something interesting, not in the sense that it can be relied upon to always be true -- tipped me to this NY Daily News story about James Gandolfini getting smashed at a Manhattan nightclub. It mentions a girlfriend, so I googled her and found this astonishing photo.

I ask you. Where else but in Hollywood can a fat ugly bastard like that get some smashing babe one-third his weight, with a smile wider than the Golden Gate? Well, okay, I guess a Russian mobster could also do as well. And maybe a Columbian drug lord.

Gee, I wonder why those characterizations come to mind.

Blog I do

Some stories friends will be interested in, for various reasons (they are varied friends):

LA Times, 17 Sep 03: Modesto Man Accused in Archbishop's Death -- A human rights group sues former Salvadoran air force officer in the 1980 killing of Romero.

NY Daily News, 17 Sep 03: Not Under His Thumb -- Mick Jagger explains the hell of being Mick Jagger: everyone who sleeps with him has too-high expectations.

The Guardian (U.K.), 17 Sep 03: Snubbed unknown sweeps giants off shortlist -- The Booker Prize judges have ignored the uncrowned king of English letters [that would be Martin Amis] and two past winners in favour of an unpublished writer.

And finally, Vandals rampaged through my alma mater in suburban Houston, further solidifying its reputation as a mini-Gomorrah.

High concept

The Chronicle printed one of those Fall Movie Preview features that are, along with the typical end-of-year looks back at the news, one of the most tedious and regrettable parts of the newspaper. But one of the descriptions caught my eye:

Oct. 10: "Good Boy!" -- Tells the tale of a 12-year-old who discovers that his new puppy can talk. Not only that: He's an alien from the Dog Star sent to investigate why canines strayed from their original mission and instead became man's best friend.

That second sentence is EXACTLY the premise of a musical I invented, for a musical theater class I took in the mid-1980s, entitled "God Dog." Intended to be a satire of "Cats," and never fully developed (it was just a class project), the show's only difference from the above summary was that we played a whole crew of astro-dogs, not just one, bent on this recovery mission. And it was a musical. We came to earth to find satified mutts, one of whom sang a show-stopper blues tune entitled "I'm a Bitch, and I Like It."

I'm not the type to sue, though. Imagine the embarrassment of claiming you had dreamed up the idea for a stupid kids' movie -- half a stupid kids' movie.

That were they thinking

Last night on the local PBS station, a two-hour Frontline episode, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, aired. I watched it between pitches of the baseball game, and parts of it were so riveting that I missed several important plays. In addition to hitting most of the points you'd expect -- escapees from the WTC who saw God's hand in their survival, grieving relatives who wanted to know where God's hand was for their loved ones, and the now-predictable montages of smoking ruins set to the strains of Barber's Adagio for Strings -- the show was most interesting when it examined hard questions. To its credit, the show didn't shrink from putting a conservative rabbi on the air who said that you can't credibly claim God saved you from the pit when so many others are mourning people whom God didn't deign to save. And most interestingly of all, the show lingered on the point that is, to me, the most fascinating of all: The choice faced by people on the upper floors to jump to certain death or perish in the smoke and fires. And that image -- which apparently the filmmakers couldn't get the rights to show -- of two people holding hands while they fell to their deaths, a picture that proved that people had not been somehow blown out of the building but were jumping intentionally.

It's that decision to jump from 100 stories up that fascinates me. As a firefighter said in the film by the Naudet brothers titled simply 9/11, the firefighters arriving on the scene were stunned by the fact that things "must be so bad up there that people would rather jump from a hundred stories up" than face the fire and smoke. Of course, no one who was privy to those decisions survived, so we'll never know what was going through their minds, how they could weigh the factors. Talk about fight or flight.

The show was weakened by the filmmakers feeling obliged to make the end of the show somehow uplifting. That's when they brought in Barber and the montage; but that's when they also talked about the two people jumping hand in hand. Somehow the music was supposed to transform the ghastly images and discussion into an uplifting conclusion -- that the will to reach out to one another transcended the evil of the day. I didn't buy it, partly because Barber is so overplayed that I think it dilutes whatever (usually sentimental) point is being made, and partly because I don't think there's much comfort in the gesture. Yes, there's something in it, in one person literally standing on the abyss saying to another "Take my hand and we'll go together." But then they died horribly -- nothing pretty about it. They weren't listening to Barber on the way down; if their brains had the bandwidth to process any sounds, it was their own screams.

Nevertheless, if I put myself in their place -- I've always been terrified of burning to death. If it's up to me, I'm definitely jumping.

Another note for clear writing

It's always important to write clearly and concisely, as these jokers now realize:

South Bend Tribune, 11 Sep 03

Men botch robbery after arguing;
Demanding note confuses clerk

MISHAWAKA -- Two would-be robbers who tried to hit up [sic -- "hit up"?] a 7-Eleven store early Tuesday left the West Douglas Road store empty handed after feuding with each other when a clerk couldn't understand the intent of a threatening note.

A clerk at the store told Mishawaka police that the two males entered the store at 910 W. Douglas Road at about 4:30 a.m., selected several items and carried them to the checkout counter.

She said the two men lingered in the store for several minutes before deciding what to buy.

After approaching the counter, one of the men, a 5-foot-5 thinly built white man with dark short hair, said he needed to retrieve money from his car and left the store. The second man, also white, 5-foot-7, with a medium build, short blond hair and a mustache, followed the first man outside.

The clerk said the two men spent about five minutes talking outside before re-entering the store.

When the two approached the counter, the shorter man had a checkbook in his hand and asked the clerk for a pen, police reports said.

The man then allegedly handed the clerk his checkbook and written on a carbon-copy of a check were the words: "put it in the bag." Below the words was another phrase that the clerk vaguely remembered as a threat that the two will come after her.

The clerk, who was apparently confused by the men's actions and didn't comprehend the "put it in the bag" command, replied to the shorter man, "What is this?"

The man responded that he didn't know because his buddy wrote the note.

The clerk told police the men began to argue over the note and left the store. The clerk heard the taller man angrily tell his companion that he was not getting "into the car."

The taller man apparently changed his mind and both left in the vehicle, heading west on Douglas Road in a dark-colored Suzuki, possibly a Sidekick.

Mishawaka police said they believe the two robbers have struck before, on Sept. 6. Police said descriptions of the men, similar food items left on the counter, and an identical note handed to a clerk at a 7-Eleven store at 1302 Milburn Blvd. last Saturday resemble the latest botched robbery attempt.

Police said in the Sept. 6 holdup, the two men successfully ordered the clerk to put money into a bag before leaving. But one of the men allegedly left behind a Mountain Dew, and a can of the soda was also left at the counter during the attempted robbery on West Douglas road.

There are several things I love about that story. First, the 5'7" man is described as "the taller man" (emphasis mine). How often does that happen? Second, the note was the same as one used in an earlier 7-Eleven holdup, but that one was successful -- which leads you to wonder, was the first note clearer, or was the first clerk just smarter -- or dumber, depending on how you look at it. Third, they had to borrow a pen to write their stickup note with. Considering how helpful the clerk must have been, it's a wonder he didn't try to help them write the note. And finally, these guys apparently start eating and drinking during their heist -- then leave the grub behind.

I can just see this happening at the l.n.c.b. "Sure, here's a pen -- and while you're writing that note, would you like to sign up for our email newsletter?"

Last night at the l.n.c.b. I freaked out my fellow employees when I revealed my age. It happened when a middle-aged woman -- that is, about my age -- asked a clerk next to me whether Aqualung or Thick as a Brick would be more appropriate for her 16-year-old. This led to me mentioning that the first time I heard Thick as a Brick I was 16 myself, and it was playing at the graduation party for an older student; we spent much of the party just grokking the album's faux-newspaper LP cover and insert and wondering what it had to do with the record. "You were 16 when this album came out??" my co-worker asked. "How old are you?" When I said I was 47, another clerk blurted out, "That's how old my mother is!"

He's cute, too. I'll bet his mother's really hot.

Tell me about your mother

I still haven't really gotten the whole weblog thing. I just saw this funny piece (funny probably only to those familiar with San Francisco politics) and thought, hey, I'll send email to all my friends with the URL. Then I realized: Dummy, that's what the weblog is for. You're supposed to blog such things (which I got from Metafilter, by the way) and your friends -- if they're the least bit interested in what you have to say, much less some unrelated crap you found on the web -- can read it there. Otherwise you're just cluttering up their inbox.

I drove to Pleasant-not and back today, just because Cris had to go. It's my day off and we drove out there together, listening to the CD of mostly 60s psychedelia I'd burned using iTunes. (Conclusion: Much as I like it, Positively 4th St. doesn't belong with songs like Almost Cut My Hair and Dear Prudence.)

Back in the city, I went to Aardvark Books, my favorite excuse to hang around on Church St., and picked up a collection of Dori Seda's comix work. I'd heard a lot about it but never had the chance to see much of it.

'The most corporate kiss ever'

In its entirety, here is a short opinion piece from The Guardian. (By the way, all the British, Australian and Indian papers referred to the incident using the word "snog.")

The most corporate kiss ever

Marina Hyde
Wednesday September 3, 2003
The Guardian

It was not the evident desperation of most parties in the Madonna/ Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera snog at last week's MTV video awards that made it so hilariously unerotic. It is simply that the kiss - still enjoying repeated run-outs on magazine covers and celebrity shows this week - must go down as the most corporate pucker-up of all time.

With the music industry ever so slightly less laissez-faire than it used to be, one can only imagine the armies of business-schooled marketing experts who number-crunched long into the night to calculate the precise financial gain this momentary lip merger would bring to each involved party.

"Yes, partial insertion of the tongue will play well on balance," some sharp suit calculated. "What we lose in Iowa we'll just hoover up in the bi-coastal markets. Groping's strictly out across the board, though - gentle head support only or you can press 87,000 less albums each and forget Oprah promotion."

That the perfectly marvellous Christina should never have got involved with such a desperate stunt is a fact too obvious even to discuss. As for the motives of her dancing partners... well, the brief dynastic coupling seemed formulated to help Britney lurch into a more racy adult market while allowing Madonna to allege she still has the power to shock. Although once you've done it with a bleeding Jesus (on an altar and surrounded by burning crosses) the leery games mistress thing's arguably a bit of a climbdown. Still, if it plays well in the heartland...

Breaking point

I reached my breaking point yesterday at the l.n.c.b.

But first: the news. This piece of analysis from the Baltimore Sun suggests the recent incident in Mississippi with the Ten Commandments monument in the state supreme court building was not just a bit of clownish Southern Man behavior but a possible spark for a resurgence of the Christian Right.

So -- about the l.n.c.b. My decision to stop working there wasn't based on any one incident, although the fact that another employee was mugged on the way home from work, not four days after R. was attacked inside the store by an ex-boyfriend, didn't help. And it wasn't a crazy customer or the prospect of putting away 100 heavy, slick magazines that were scattered about the place. It was simple exhaustion that made me decide, about fifteen minutes into the start of my shift yesterday, that I just couldn't do it anymore.

I made it to the end of the shift -- in fact, I felt a little better in the last couple of hours than the first couple of hours -- but was so tired when I got home. This morning my eyes were killing me, another sign of exhuastion and of the dehydration that comes from standing in that store for six or eight hours at a time. So at noon I called up my friend the boss and told her I had to stop. I'll work out the end of next week, and I left open the possibility of working some shifts there in the future.

Today I came home from my other job and crawled right into bed. In fact, I did that on Tuesday, too, the day after a shift. Another sign that the whole situation was just unworkable.

And yet a large percentage of the American population has two jobs -- not counting, of course, those parents (almost all of them women) who work all day long and then come home and have the primary childcare, cooking and housekeeping responsibility in their homes. I'd like to say I have a newfound respect for such people, but I'm still too tired to think about it.

Coincidentally, there was a minor earthquake tonight and the l.n.c.b. was at the epicenter. Not strong enough to cause any damage, I assume. A 3.9 is no big deal.

Run away!

After the Giants game, I watched... maybe... seven seconds of the new meta-realty show Joe Schmoe. That was all I could stand. I am 47 years old and this is beyond me. True, two years ago I watched and enjoyed Big Brother, but that was when they had almost real people on the show; this summer's version of BB is filled with fit 21-year-old eye candy -- who needs it! Schmoe is essentially a triple-layered satire of shows like BB. You have the contestants, the big house, the one-way mirrors, the syping cameras and microphones. But in this case, the whole thing is actually a send-up of reality shows; the "contestants" are all actors playing parts in a reality show, as if to satirize it. But wait -- satire is not the point. The point is the degredation of the only cast member who is not in on the gag -- he thinks it really is a reality show. And the television audience is in on the joke from the beginning.

And so fucking what? It's not like a reality show has any reality, much less realism, in the first place -- we're not exactly talking The Truman Show here. You know what I think? I think they tried to make a funny satire of reality shows, and they realized, shit, this is just not funny, it's impossible to satire this crap because it never took a live breath in the first place. But they had all this footage. So they realized, hey, we can salvage this by making it about degredation. Let's reshoot a few scenes with Clyde, making him look like the patsy, and then we'll shoot a bunch of interviews giving the audience an "inside view" of the whole thing. Then maybe we'll have something.

I'm making it sound much more interesting than it really is. But I ask you: after an atrocity like Dog Eat Dog, just what is there left of reality tv to satirize?

And why the hell am I writing about it in the first place? Simply to express my increasing astonishment and alienation with American culture. I know, I'm not exactly going out on a limb here by criticizing reality tv. And yet millions of dollars are expended in its production and broadcast. Well, I gues it's cheaper than a war. If you're a Hollywood executive, the worst you can do is make bad television. Just think what you can do if you're president.

Oh dear

Satire is dead, Garry Trudeau wrote many years ago. But that doesn't keep stories like this from popping up: a version of the New Testament being marketed to teenage girls with a cover resembling a teen fashion magazine, including lines like "How Get Along with Your Mom" and "Beauty Secrets You've Never Ever Heard of Before!"

In addition to the biblical text — written in the modern English of the New Century Version — Revolve also features teen 'zine staples such as quizzes, Top 10 lists, and Q&A's. They focus, however, on religious topics like, "Are you dating a godly guy?" and inner-beauty advice. There are also tips on prayer, volunteerism, and calendars with entries, such as "Pray for a person of influence: Today is Michael Jordan's birthday" on Feb. 17.

In other non-news: It is a lovely cool, sunny day, and I have the day off from one of my jobs (while still being obliged to go to the l.n.c.b. in the evening). I went to morning prayer this morning and was the only one there, but it was beautiful and quiet and my solo voice echoed in the sunny church.

People have asked me, What happened with that incident in the l.n.c.b. where an employee was injured? I don't know yet. When I left the place Saturday evening, the poor girl was lying on the couch in the breakroom being ministered to by a supervisor while an Emeryville cop stood around casually. Undoubtedly he took a report from her which included the name and address of the perp, an old boyfriend. And I spoke briefly to the boss after church on Sunday; she said she had calls in to corporate to find out what assistance they could offer. I'll go back tonight and perhaps find out something.