Revoltin' development

The second day we were in New York, I came down with a case of gastroenteritis, so I've spent the last 48 hours being sick. I'll spare the details and only recount the funniest episode. In the middle of the night, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, we decided to call a doctor. Since we're longtime American Express customers, we initially thought of calling their medical referral service, which is supposed to be able to furnish a doctor no matter where you are. But when we called them, we got put on hold. Finally I spoke up, from my flat-on-back position: "Ya know, they might be a little busy with that tidal wave thing."

"Good point," said Cris, and called the hotel's emergency line instead. The result was a very solicitous doctor who showed up at 3 a.m. and gave me a couple of injections and a precription for Cipro.

So that kind of slammed our vacation. We do have tickets for a show tonight and I might be up for it, if we take a taxi. Meanwhile I just hang out in the room overlooking Ground Zero. A dozen cop cars just roared up and parked there, lights flashing. Twenty minutes later, they all left. No explanation.

Cold and citified

We're in New York, our hotel room directly overlooking the giant WTC construction site. The proximity of the site -- literally across the street -- means they probably get a lot of crazy people like the lady who came into the lobby a few minutes ago, raving about not needing a reservation to talk to Jesus. Even better is the hotel's Fitness Center -- I did an hour on the treadmill while facing the window directly looking into the pit. Now that's motivation!

It is damn cold, about 20 degrees and enough wind to make you sorry you ever went onto the sidewalk. Tomorrow morning I'm going to try walking over to Trinity Church for morning prayer; I'll see if I can make it in my hat, gloves and scarf that are more than I ever need for SF but seem totally inadequate here.

Welcome to my world

I have several GMail invitations, if anyone's interested. I find GMail especially good for dealing with attachments. It doesn't barf on large attachments the way Yahoo mail does, and it's faster. If you're interested, email me at, uh, my Yahoo address, toobeaut.

Finally, off to New York

Tomorrow morning Cris and I are off to NYC. We'll be there four nights, coming back on New Year's Eve. I'll post from there as much as I can. Fortunately -- I just checked -- the hotel has wireless. That dialup is a drag.

Star of wonder, star of night

Most of those sentimental news features that appear inevitably around Xmas, about how the star of Bethlehem cited in the Bible was probably a comet or something, don't usually include the 1:300 possibility that it will destroy all life on earth in the year 2029.

Xmas

My best Christmas present was some fan mail, sent last night, read this morning. That's all any writer wants, people. Praise and adulation.

This reader said she first read my story "Lessons in Submission" in The Mammoth Book of Erotica (new edition) and went on to buy my own books. Thanks, Alexis! You made my day.

The funny thing about that story is that it almost never saw the light of day. I had always thought of it as kind of incomplete. But when the call for submissions came from that editor, Maxim Jakubowski, I dusted the piece off and reread it, and decided it was good enough to send. Little did I know it would be the story that has gotten me the biggest response of all my work.

Second-best present was an iPod, which Lizzard also received. Hey Lizzard, and anyone else in the Bay Area -- let's have a big tunes swap!

Finally, courtesy BoingBoing, the Gingerbread Kama Sutra!

Serendipity is where you find it

Courtesy bazima -- which in my opinion is improving -- comes a site called Overheard in New York. If you click on that link you'll go to a recent entry that is so funny Coca-Cola will come out your nose, if you happen to be drinking Coca-Cola when you read it.

A sex radical day

Fun day of meeting with two different sex radicals: First, lunch with Lizzard, whose Slut Manifesto I recently mentioned. Then Violet Blue, a fellow Cleis Press author who is putting together two more anothologies for them. We met to discuss the erotic stories that had most influenced me.

Another really bad idea

The parents of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq in November are asking Yahoo to release all his private email to them so they can "remember him in his own words." The cooler heads at Yahoo are denying the request, and as with any of their free email accounts, the Marine's will be erased after 90 days of disuse. (I've lost one or two that way.)

This is a perfect example of why distraught people shouldn't be allowed to make big decisions. I don't blame them for wanting something of their son to hang on to, but I doubt they've thought through it. Just imagine what's in a 20-year-old Marine's email account. If they think they're distraught now, just wait til they get their hands on that.

Better than a wardrobe malfunction

A case of high-school sexual hijinks in India has sparked an international incident that is well on the way to becoming India's equivalent of the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" stunt. But, as so often happens, my favorite sentence is in the last paragraph.

Pornographic videos -- often of dire quality -- are available in most Indian cities, where there is a flourishing underground trade.

Of dire quality, mind you. That is a truly frightening phrase.

Destiny has two mommies

This just keeps getting better and better: Dog Show Said to Link Slain Mom, Suspect.

We bombed in New Haven

A fretful article this morning in the NYT, supposedly warning of the various ways malefacters can abuse the internet to communicate with one another, can actually be read as a primer in postmodern secret communications. Among the methods covered:

"At one Web site, spammimic.com, a user can type in a phrase like 'Meet me at Joe's' and have that message automatically converted into a lengthy bit of prose that reads like a spam message: 'Dear Decision maker; Your e-mail address has been submitted to us indicating your interest in our briefing! This is a one-time mailing there is no need to request removal if you won't want any more,' and so forth."

"A group ... provides the same user name and password to all of its members, granting them all access to a single Web-based e-mail account. One member simply logs on and writes, but does not send, an e-mail message. Later, a co-conspirator, perhaps on the other side of the globe, logs on, reads the unsent message and then deletes it. 'Because the draft was never sent,' Mr. Hinnen wrote, the Internet service provider 'does not retain a copy of it and there is no record of it traversing the Internet - it never went anywhere.'"

"A simple withdrawal of $20 from an account in New York might serve as an instant message to an accomplice monitoring the account electronically from halfway around the world, for example."

What fun! Perhaps my browsing for, but not buying, electronic equipment today on amazon.com was a signal to Fijian dissidents to blow up a mailbox. The internet is amazing!

Satire is dead, ya know

On Salon today, Tom Tomorrow satirizes the Fox News Channel's recent drive to "defend Christmas" from secular humanists and liberals. Yeah, funny. But I'm really starting to wonder -- what good does it do? All the fucking satire in the world didn't keep Bush from being re-elected. Do you think those assholes really pay attention to stuff like this? Or is it all just to make us feel better?

Are 24-hour traffic reports the modern equivalent of "the trains running on time"?

Marilyn forwarded a long message about how today's America seems to be taking on a fascist tinge. If you'd like to judge for yourself, this article offers a standard of comparison, 14 commonalities between Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia to come up with the identifying characteristics of fascism. Getting a little close to home.

Satire is dead, #923955782310

In Japan, "Single men find this soothing" -- a "lap pillow" in the form of... God, I just can't describe it. You'll have to click. (Courtesy Meme First, You Second)

Conservative Oklahomans to Phelps: Drop Dead

After the Washington Post did a series on a gay teenager in deepest Oklahoma, the "God hates fags" foamers from Topeka, Kan., Fred Phelps and his ilk, got ahold of the story. They decided to go to the small Oklahoma town and stir up trouble. But even right-wing middle Americans have limits. The town pulled together to resist Phelps and defend their homeboy.

Just doing my part to keep things moving

The scene: a parking lot exit onto a narrow side street. The traffic: a woman in a car in front of me, trying to exit the parking lot and turn left, but on the side street, a long line of cars backed up and preventing her from entering the street. The solution: After waiting two minutes for her to move, I get out of my car, walk ahead of her into the street, and throw my hands up at the traffic inching along. "STOP!" I screamed. Then I turned to the woman in the car in front of mine. "GO!" I shouted at her, pointing to the now-clear lane. She drove into it with a sour look; I don't think she liked my aggressive action. But sometimes you just have to take things in hand. This isn't the first time I've done something like that.

Always suspect your close personal aides

One of the plays we're going to see on our upcoming trip to NYC is Democracy, the subject of which -- the backstage intrigue in the administration of West German chancellor Willy Brandt's 1970s administration -- was "covered today in the New York Times. One of the central characters is a close aide to Brandt who turned out to be an East German agent. In my writing group, one of the members has a novel "Idi-A-Go-Go," which is about Idi Amin's exile in Saudi Arabia, from the point of view of his close personal aide. Curiously, in both "Democracy" and the novel, the aides are gay.

Where the election analysis never stops

A friend writes:

The religious right were mobilized by their fear of gay marriage, and they voted in droves. Why do red states so fear gay marriage? Because it's a new idea. Blue states -- more urban and more coastal -- tend to be more diverse, and hence more comfortable with diversity and more exposed to new ideas. Plus, blue states tend to be more secular (though I never miss church and I sure voted for Kerry).

Good common-sense former midwesterner, he. Now a gay university prof in his 60s living in SF. He also wrote, "I have a barber who gives slimming, youthful haircuts!"

This just in: Mary, Joseph were Republican

A midwestern columnist wrote a seasonal column about the homeless, ending it with a mention that "After all, once upon a time, a homeless couple came to Bethlehem, looking for shelter." This incensed readers, one of whom wrote that "Joseph and Mary were NOT homeless. They were forced to go to Bethlehem by Caesar Augustus, who undoubtedly was the world's first liberal Democrat." I guess that means Pontius Pilate, who came along some three decades later, was even worse -- a Massachusetts Democrat.

Look up my number

The San Antonio, Tex. city council passed an ordinance today requiring strippers to apply for permits and wear them while performing.

The schmoozefests that I miss

Badger writes about a party, or series of events, that all the fabulous San Francisco sex radicals were at. Contained in the account are all the reasons, in mirror image, that I no longer even try to go to such events. I don't know anybody, I'm no longer cute but old and fat, I hate dressing up, I don't have the requisite fuck-em-if-they-can't-take-a-joke attitude, and so on.

And all those are not only the reasons I do not go, but also the reasons I should not go: because who wants to go to a party with someone like that?

One more reason: My hearing is damaged, and in a crowded chattery situation, I simply cannot understand what people are saying. Yesterday I went out to lunch with co-workers and customers, and in the noisy lunchtime restaurant I caught only about 15% of what people were saying, even the people across from me.

When social occasions are successful for me, it's a real exception. The ideal situation is a quiet dinner in someone's home with no more than ten or twelve people, a majority of whom I know. The situation Badger describes is so opposite of that, it's like being on another planet. So, I don't go. I can't.

Cat strophe

We still have a fractionated house, with the supposedly temporary cat Six in front, and "our" two cats Milagrito and Sirenita in back. Every morning I let M. and S. out to the garden, where they roam around all day. This morning, before doing so, I visited a few minutes with Six, and I guess I retained a lot of his smell, because Milagrito acted very upset when I came downstairs to the garden door to let him out. He often takes a playful swipe at my shoes, just once, right before I let him out, but this morning he attacked the shoes much more aggressively, and then in the garden, continued to act like he was in a cat fight with my shoes. It's very unusual for him, and I was taken aback. I still feel sort of upset by it.

Today's the last day of the class I'm teaching at work, and everything's pretty much downhill from here to the beginning of next year. I ought to go through the docs one more time, and then we'll finally release. The weekend brings the beginning of several holiday events. Ding ding a ling, the xmas bells.

Pay attention to the French

For the last two weeks, while I've been working on a project at work, I've been showing up in t-shirts and jeans. If it were up to me, I'd wear a black t-shirt and a black sweater every day from November to July. No one said anything, and I noticed some of the engineers also dressing down, so I didn't think much of it, but was merely glad for the comfort.

But today I wore an Oxford shirt because this was the first day of the class I've been helping develop all month long. During a break I ran into the config. mgmt guy, who's French. "You're looking sharp today," he said.

"What, because I'm wearing a shirt with buttons?" I asked.

"Yes, very nice," he said.

"Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Of course," he smiled. OK, I get the message.

WTF?

For many years, the best webcam in the world has been the one at 5th Ave. and 43rd St. in Manhattan in the offices of an advertising agency. It's high enough off the sidewalk so you can see down 5th Ave. but close enough so you can actually see people and what they're wearing, and what the weather's like. Sometimes I even click on it after midnight Manhattan time for no reason. Tonight I saw this image. And I thought, what the fuck is that? It looks like someone helping a very drunk person in a yellow sweater and a Santa hat down the sidewalk. At least that's the most plausible explanation. Or perhaps it's someone in a yellow sweater at the moment of being mugged. Or perhaps it's someone carrying a nearly life-sized mannequin down the street at 12:30 in the morning. I don't know. It's just very strange, and I wanted to share it with you.

Perfect balance

This article about a possible weight-loss "instant bullet" pill has a nice accompanying advertisement -- Dreyer's Ice Cream.

Fight the power

This op-ed caught my attention. The writer says editorial writers always miss the reason why more and more people are buying SUVs. It's not for safety's sake or because they wish to "project ruggedness," but because "SUVs are practical, useful and particularly accommodating to lifestyles fueled by the vast prosperity that editorialists cannot bring themselves to recognize." And how does that "vast prosperity" express itself? People buy boats and snowmobiles, "not to mention ATVs, off-road motorcycles, and hunting, fishing and camping equipment." (This is from a Minnesota newspaper, by the way.)

Let's take that again: Liberal editorial writers "cannot bring themselves to recognize" how prosperous Minnesotans are, as shown by the number of recreational vehicles they purchase and thus need to haul. But the SUVs are not being acquired for any such recreational purposes; they are being bought for the purely "practical" purpose of hauling said recreational vehicles. As the writer says, "How do you think those boats get to the lake, behind a Geo Metro?" Then he sums up: "People buy SUVs because they are just the ticket for how they are living" -- buying all kinds of crap that is so large they must buy a giant vehicle to haul around their other giant vehicles.

Then he takes a swipe at John Kerry, who waffled on the SUV question. "Asked if he owned an SUV he said he didn't but his family did. What a wimp. He should have answered honestly: 'You're darn tootin' I own SUVs. Couldn't get along without them. Heck, we own four or five homes, and we're always hauling stuff.'"

All bluster aside, that last comment is worth listening to. The flatlanders love "straight talk." Even if a fellow "owns four or five homes," he can be accepted as a regular guy if he just gives a straight answer to a simple question.

That's how the Republicans win. Though they represent only the interests of the wealthy, they have adopted a manner of speaking that makes common people actually think they have something in common -- thus Bush's continued malaprops only endear him to his fans, while making the rest of us clutch our heads in pain. It's really a type of camoflage, as if a predatory insect had figured out a way to emit a smell like that of his prey, thus putting them at ease and making them easy pickings. So Bush can go around saying stuff, as he did today, like "I want America to be the best place in the world for people to find work or to raise their family or to get good health care." and "Justice ought to be fair." That's Mister Populist talking.

Blog and blog alike

Jamie picked up on the "scratch 'n sniff" news story news story I blogged yesterday, and then he linked to something equally bizarre: Students at the Univ. of Oregon are attempting to cast a politically correct "Vagina Monologues", claiming that "this year's production" (They have one every year? What, is the pussy the school mascot?) didn't fully represent the population of students.

See, this is what's so great about college. You leave your stupid suburban upbringing and you land in an environment where everything seems important and cutting edge and has a certain quality of vinceremos. You spend a lot of time splitting hairs and yelping about something that turns out to be not very important -- but the whole time, you actually are doing something important, which is learning to be sensitive to other people. So what if you go too far and bend over backwards and wind up looking a little silly? ("'The queer community, the women of color community and the plus-size community did not feel represented last year,' producer Nicole Pete said.") So what if half the queer community are only LUGs and the women of color community includes a bunch of rich, privileged Asian girls? They're learning solidarity.

Okay, I know I sound like I'm totally making fun of them, but actually I really do like it. Because at least some of those college kids will wind up getting radicalized for real, and they'll stay radicalized. Not about bogus stuff like the casting of the school play ("In addition to securing a more diverse cast, the selection committee will also be looking to include activists and community members who are involved with women's issues.") but real justice stuff. And some of those LUGs will love queers for the rest of their lives, if not sexually, then affectionally. No, righteous college kids are OK with me.

Speaking of being politcally correct, the arch-conservative Richard Vigurie was the guest today on 'Fresh Air'. I had never heard the guy, though I've been reading about him for the last 25 years, since he helped engineer Reagan's victories. I was amazed at how he sounded on radio -- like an elderly bigot whose wires had worn a bit thin, he kept repeating that "seculars" and liberals had "declared war" on Christianity. I missed the beginning of the program and had no idea who it was; I thought it might have been some elderly right-wing Catholic bishop, but it couldn't have been, because the same show had an elderly right-wing Episcopalian bishop on just a few days ago (not Robinson, listed first on that program listing; scroll down to see the bit about Robert Duncan).

It would be worth it to listen to that Vigurie program, if you can stand it. The sheer illogic, not to mention the life-sucking lack of joy and animation in the man's voice, is enough to make you cry. But if you can stand it, it doesn't hurt once in a while to listen to the enemy.

Work hazard

On Mondays at work we stay late and have a teleconference with the engineers in India. Because we stay late and everyone lives at least a half-hour drive from work, we order in food and eat before the 6:30 meeting.

Last week I had been appointed the guy who would watch for the delivery man, let him in, and show him where to put the food. At the time I noticed there was a gratuity on the bill already but I gave him another $5 because I didn't want to seem like some high-paid engineer cheapskate.

This Monday I was working at about 5:45 when somebody yelled "Food's here!" I went over to the break area and, along with some other guys, started piling Chinese food on my plate.

While I was thus engaged, someone came up asking, "What do I do with this receipt? Who gets it?" I thought it was the delivery guy again and took the receipt and started to give him $5. It turned out to be the new Director of Marketing, whom we had just hired the week before.

Okay, how is this not like the Bush administration?

This article about a local murder case sounds strangely familiar:

The brothers, ... calling themselves the 'Children of Thunder,' said they believed ____ spoke for God when they killed. He wanted money from... victims to start his own group, 'Transform America,' which he said would spread love and defeat Satan. "

Just put "George" in the blank and it makes perfect sense... to them!

I actually went to something like this once. It wasn't as abusive as the group described in the article, but the idea was the same: use brainwashing techniques to erase people's resistance, then replace their fucked-up worldview with another one which, though just as fucked-up, feels new and exciting. It took about an hour and fifteen minutes before I realized what they were doing, then I split.

What was I doing there in the first place? My fucking boss sent me! She was one of their recruits, and had pledged to bring a bunch of new people to their workshops, so she got me and her other minion to sign up under the guise of taking "communication training." What an idiot! I should have tried harder to get her fired.

Stop the holidays, I want to get off

A friend who marks each new moon with an essay writes:

There was one year when I had a truly restful and renewing Moon of Long Nights. I signed up, well in advance, for a ten-day silent meditation that began around December 13 and went through December 23. It was a Buddhist retreat, where participants learnt and practiced sitting and meditating in silence for ten days straight. We were not permitted to talk with one another: meals were silent, lodgings were silent, break times were silent, and meditation times were silent except for an hour or so of daily instruction in meditation. We were awakened with a gong at 4:30 in the morning, and we were asleep by 9pm each night.

For the first few days I found myself falling asleep constantly during the meditation times -- I couldn't keep my eyes open or my back straight up. When released for break, I would go back to my bunk, lie down, and fall fast asleep. I was not the only one. We were all exhausted, and it took four days or so of off-and-on sleeping to be "caught up" enough to begin to apply ourselves fully to meditation.

When I returned to "civilization" on December 23, I brought with me a profound peace and inner rest that I had not felt in ages. The wonder and magic of Christmas came on to me fully after that: the colored lights on the Christmas tree, the great blessing of the love of family and friends, the miracle of renewal, of birth, of life that comes into the void, light that comes into the darkness. I was able to appreciate, enjoy, and really soak-up Christmas in a way that I never had before and haven't since.

That experience made me realize how much we lack, in our current culture, the experience of contemplative, quiet, inactive time; of rest. The Christian monks and nuns of old spent whole decades, whole lifetimes in quiet contemplation and prayer, balanced with prayerful meaningful activity to provide for the needs of the convent, monastery, or surrounding community. They would have celebrated Christ's birth with a mass, with singing, with good works and perhaps some modest gifts. But they wouldn't have needed sales projections, piped-in cheerful muzak or the endless merchandizing of colors, printed images, lights, and holiday displays that have become for us today the emblem of the season. I think that is a shame, and a loss. It is hard enough to slow down in this culture, harder still to do it with Christmas
coming.

Just kill me now

Doctors developed a scratch 'n sniff test for Alzheimer's Disease. If you're getting it, you won't be able to detect the smell of: strawberry, smoke, soap, menthol, clove, pineapple, natural gas, lilac, lemon and leather. In other words, you won't be able to smell Paris Hilton coming down the hall.

The story includes this cheery statement: "While currently there is no cure for the disease, early diagnosis and treatment can help patients and their families to better plan their lives." I guess that means you can charge up all your credit cards, and then a year later, legitimately claim you forgot to pay them!

Orwell was right

"These three men symbolize the nobility of public service, the good character of our country, and the good influence of America on the world."

-- George Bush, in presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, former CIA Director George J. Tenet, and retired Gen. Tommy Franks.

Can anyone doubt that language itself is taking the path predicted by George Orwell and, through abuse and sheer repetition of lies, is becoming meaningless? This article from Harper's compares the echo chamber that was the Republican Convention (and the right-wing strategy of the endlessly repeated Big Lie as a whole) to, on the one hand, the Marabar Caves:

E. M. Forster had somehow captured, in 1924, the essence of the 2004 Republican National Convention — not just my reaction to the Garden but the feel of the place. In the scene my friend had in mind, the elderly Mrs. Moore has found herself on a long day trip out of Chandrapore, her destination the famous Marabar Caves. Inside the darkened chamber, she is confronted by an extraordinary and disturbing echo:

Whatever is said, the same monotonous noise replies, and quivers up and down the walls until it is absorbed into the roof. "Boum" is the sound as far as the human alphabet can express it, or "bou-oum," or "ou-boum," — utterly dull. Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce "boum." Even the striking of a match starts a little worm coiling, which is too small to complete a circle but is eternally watchful. And if several people talk at once, an overlapping howling noise begins, echoes generate echoes, and the cave is stuffed with a snake composed of small snakes, which writhe independently.

That was it precisely. It was more than just the sound, though. It was the sameness of the sound. And here Forster was prescient once again:

The crush and the smells she could forget, but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur, "Pathos, piety, courage — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value." If one had spoken vileness in that place, or spoken lofty poetry, the comment would have been the same — "ou-boum."

That was the convention. It was all the same — not a single position or conflicting positions but every position and no position. The words at the convention were like every color of the color wheel, spinning into white.

... and, on the other hand, to Dostoyevsky's vision of totalitarian belief:

One of the wonderful odd facts about Laura Bush that reporters love to trade is that her favorite passage in all of literature is "The Grand Inquisitor" from The Brothers Karamazov. At first this might seem an odd choice, given that the inquisitor in question has promised to burn Jesus (or God, if you will) at the stake for the crime of giving man the knowledge of sin and then abandoning him to his own devices. The inquisitor saw this as a had deal, and being a serious man he saw it as his own burden not only to remove that knowledge as best he could but also to take away the choices that such knowledge implied, for it was giving man the freedom to sin that was the worst crime of all. As he tortured Jesus, the inquisitor explained to him why his own system was far superior to that of the Father. "This is what we have done," he said. "We have improved upon Your creation and founded it instead on miracle, mystery, and authority. And men were delighted that once more they were led like sheep, and that that terrible gift which had brought them so much suffering was lifted from their hearts at last."

This is typically understood as an ironic passage that in fact celebrates free will as God's most profound and mysterious gift to humanity Dostoevsky would have much to discuss with Didion and Breytenbach. But perhaps Bush himself had discussed all of this with his wife on some voluble night of his reckless youth and he had missed the joke. Or maybe he thought the inquisitor had a pretty good point. Either way, and although he couldn't have meant to make such an awful pun, maybe he truly is, as Joni Mitchell once sang, trying to take us back to the garden. Maybe he sees this awful "boum" as a gift to the people — a gift of existential ignorance, freely given and freely taken.

There are two don't-miss monthly readings in the city. This is one

There is no reason why you would miss Michelle Tea's monthly RADAR series -- unless you were only coming to see Jack Hirschman.

Main Branch Library (Civic Center) [map it]
Latino Reading Room (Downstairs)
Tuesday, Dec. 14 @ 6:00 pm (sharp)

with a new special guest: JULIA SERANO! An Oakland-based writer, musician, spoken word artist, organizer and educator. She is a poetry slam champion and a regular feature at spoken word and queer events, has self-published chapbooks and contributed articles and poems to queer, feminist, pop culture magazines and literary journals. As a musician, she is the lyricist-guitarist-vocalist for the noisy pop trio Bitesize, who have released two critically acclaimed CDs, toured up and down the West Coast and received college radio airplay nationwide. Julia is also one of the organizers of the First Annual Trans/Intersex/Genderqueer and Buddies Community Picnic, a series of benefit shows for CampTrans, and the host of GenderEnders, a trans/intersex/genderqueer-focused performance show.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Ricky Lee & Trebor Healey will be there as well.

Jack Hirschman will not, as he is in Italy.

As always, there will be cookies.

So fucking what!

I work in Redwood City, Calif,. the site of what some people seem to feel is the trial of the century, the Scott Peterson case. This afternoon as the jury's sentencing decision was being announced, I happened to go out to the bank. About a thousand feet overhead hovered three helicopters, at the nine o'clock, twelve o'clock, and three o'clock positions, as if they were hunting me down. I realized they were over the site of the trial. Turned on the radio to hear a reporter describe "a crush of people" gathered outside -- which I guess is what the helicopters were broadcasting. God, I hate it when reporters treat stuff like this like the Super Bowl.

Today's meme

It's Google Suggest. Type anything in the box. I started typing the name of my friend and fellow sex writer Marilyn Jaye Lewis. First you get everything in the world that starts with Mar. Then all the Marilyns in the world. Then it drastically narrows down until by the time I got to the end of her name: "12,500 mentions." Whatever that means. I didn't type in my own name, I'm sure she has more than I do.

Resistance is futile

So, Larry Ellison, the satanic head of Oracle Corporation, got his way and swallowed up Peoplesoft. The funny thing is that I got recruitment calls from both those companies this summer, and I went to an interview at the latter. Am I glad I didn't get that job. Working for a struggling startup is vastly superior to working for a company that just got swallowed up -- and a company in Pleasant-not, to boot!

Weekend uneventful. Worked a lot on my church newsletter -- that kind of weekend.

Tonight, a non-holiday event

Pamela Z, a longtime San Francisco experimental musician and operatic singer, performs tonight:

Z Program Ten
Saturday: December 11, 2004 8pm
The LAB * 2948 Sixteenth Street @ Capp, SF
Admission: $10 CD: $15
Special 1/2 price admission (only $5) with purchase of the CD!!!

In celebration of the release of Pamela Z's long awaited CD "A Delay is Better", she and a gaggle of her friends are assembling at The LAB celebrate by performing a series of short compositions, improvisations, and covers or send-ups of works from the new CD. In addition to Pamela Z, the lineup includes Beth Custer, Kinji Hayashi, Barbara Imhoff, Carla Kihlstedt, Amy X Neuburg, Julie Queen, Donald Swearingen, and Wobbly.

They will perform together and separately in various combinations. You'll hear many works from the CD (which contains pieces from 1986 through the turn of the millennium), as well as other works by the above listed stellar cast of Z Program characters!

Also, there will be fabulous prizes, CD giveaways, and free fortune cookies for all! You get a special price for admission if you purchase a CD upon entry, and there'll be plenty of CDs available to buy for Christmahannukwanza gifts! (Or for that unfortunate friend or relative who's birthday falls on December 26th.) If you're unable to attend or you want to purchase a CD later (or sooner-- perhaps you're chomping at the bit to get your hands on one) you can find them at your local Amoeba, Aquarius, and Tower Stores or you can order them online from Amazon.com or Starkland.com .

20 pounds of headlines stapled to their chests
would only make them overdressed

You know, a vacation isn't just a vacation anymore, even (or expecially) for puffy het boys who just want to get stoned and screw. Now they have to worry about being waylaid by semi-naked evangelical bimbos who just want to witness. God help us.

Bush backer boosts book banning, burying

State -- Alabama, anyway -- funds shouldn't be used to "promote" homosexuality, so authors such as Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go, says this state senator. Feeling a mandate from the "moral values" un-landslide of November, he wants to "save society from moral destruction" and "protect Alabamans."

That's America talking, people. Not the America I live in, and maybe not yours either. But they are the bare majority, and we can't pretend anymore, like in 2000, that they aren't. Deal with it.

Remember, there are no small parts

Hey, a job's a job: Casting Clean-cut Athletic Men for Adult Films (Craigslist L.A. posting)

Australian deal of the day

In a controversial deal between an Austalian provincial government and the local indigenous people, the people get a "petrol bowser" in exchange for promising to wash their children and perform other acts of hygiene. (What the hell is a petrol bowser, you ask? It's a gasoline pump.)

It doesn't say they get gasoline, just the gas pumps. Maybe it's like in "The Road Warrior" where they have a little oil refinery in the middle of nowhere but they just need a pump.

Imagine a boot stamping on a human face for all eternity

Amnesty International says women and children get the worst of war. The Chilean government has admitted that torture was its official policy during the 1970s and 80s. A U.S. Army Reservist who tried to blow the whistle on the abuse of Iraqi detainees was declared delusional, strapped onto a gurney and flown out of the country.

And that brings us to "Peanuts."

It seems that St. Paul has become home to a multitude of statues of characters from the "Peanuts" comic strip -- the iconic, weirdly ironic daily feature that, like a growing number of others, lives on in syndication long after its creator died. The link is to a nicely cranky op-ed protesting the presence of Peanuts in a park.

When I was a little kid, geting bullied in school and continually humiliated on the sports field, I was so tired of adults patronizing kids and pretending kids had it so great, when my life and that of most of the other kids I knew was more or less a boring grind in a crypto-fascist small town: the strongest lorded it over the weakest, and anyone who didn't fit the definition of "normal" was viciously mocked. I loved the "Peanuts" strip because I felt it revealed American childhood for what it really was.

But when I grew older, I got creeped out by the strip repeating this message decade after decade. I wanted Charlie Brown to somehow finally get over. About a year before his death, I even wrote a fan letter to Charles M. Schultz, the strip's creator, asking him to grant Charlie Brown some sort of redemption. After all, Schultz was the richest cartoonist the world had ever known (though Matt Groenig might have surpassed him by now, I dunno) -- what investment did he have in his character continuing to fail over and over again? What did he have to lose?

I never got an answer, and Schultz died without ever changing the strip's central message: that life was having a football being yanked away from you, over and over again, for eternity. Nice strip for kids!

Office park heaven

I've said this before, but my job is located in the World's Shadiest Office Park. I wish I could post a picture, but my $280 digital camera I bought in 2002 broke. That's why I took down the buzznet pictures that used to be next to my blog on this page. You were probably really getting tired of pix of my cats.

For the last two days it's been raining on and off. There's a scraggly eucalyptus tree outside my office window, and since at the moment it's only drizzling, beads of water are decorating the interstices of the tree's smallest twigs and the little knots that are left just above the leaves. It's like the whole tree is wearing pearls.

Thank you for reporting this problem

And that's another thing -- when your wonderful Microsoft Internet Explorer crashes, it throws up a thing that asks you if you want to "report" the problem. If you answer yes, it displays a little "status" window that demonstrates it is sending Microsoft some kind of information, supposedly about the crash. Then it pops a new browser for you. What I want to know is, what's really happening here? What's it sending? And why does it crash every fucking day in the first place??

Excellent laughing

On this blog there is not only a four-second movie of penguin slapstick that only gets funnier the more you watch it, but every entry is just hilarious. Where has this woman been all my life? She is so funny.

Speaking of fun, The Yes Men struck again by imitating corporate spokesmen and hoaxing the BBC. Like the penguin thing, it gets funnier the more it happens.

I am tired of being treated like a child

Every time my computer asks me "Are you sure you want to...?" I just feel like hitting it with a chair.

Another reason to doubt

I had two opposite reactions to this NYT Magazine story about "hidden persuaders" -- people who follow the dictates of a highly paid advertising agency to shill for new products in order to create a "buzz." The amazing thing about this story is that these people aren't paid, they're volunteers. Supposedly they earn some sort of rewards points, but clearly they participate in these schemes simply because it's fun for them and because they have access to new products before their peers. On the one hand it horrifies me -- that the people whose reviews I might look at on amazon.com, for example, or even the people sitting on the subway reading, have an ulterior movtive. On the other hand, I found myself thinking, "Hey, maybe I could get some of that for my next book." Seductive, isn't it?

Another sign of age

A few months back I mentioned that the Muzak at the local Walgreens, and probably every Walgreens, has been swtiched to the rock hits of the late 60s, so that you can listen to "White Rabbit" and "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" while shopping for hemorrhoid ointment and Dr. Scholl's gelpads. And from time to time, public TV stations show recorded pop music concerts in which an auditorium of very past-it looking middle aged people cheer as stand-ins perform the hits of doo-wop, Motown, and the early years of rock n' roll. These atrocious broadcasts -- the point of which seems to be to create a sort of Lawrence Welk vibe for the 21st century, only with black people in tuxedos -- are all the more incomprehensible when one realizes that they are being shown during pledge drives, that they are actually intended to fascinate the Baby Boomer viewer so much that 50ish ex-hippies will rush to their phones to support the wonders of public television.

I've always avoided these things like the plague, but last night I ran across something that snagged me that was too close to comfort. It was a documentary about Peter, Paul and Mary. It wasn't some bogus gray-haired reunion concert -- though the film did show footage from such concerts -- it was mostly period footage from the 60s. And it was well-done enough that I was drawn in, listening to that fantastic music. But I was also thinking Uh oh, this is how it starts. You know you're middle-aged when the rebellious pop culture heroes of your youth become pledge bait on the local PBS channel.

Up up and away

Assuming this is not a hoax, it's nice to see that some people attain their dreams -- in this case, to fly using "a cluster of large helium balloons."

Natural sponsor: Wonder Bread -- from which it's only a short hop to Planet Twinkie. The mind boggles.

Spoiled

I advanced today in my scheme to get a dedicated iMac on my desk at work -- the IT guy delivered the iMac and set it up. I proceeded to find an OS9 version of iTunes, but I couldn't figure out how to get the few CDs worth of iTunes files from my PC to the iMac. I tried zipping up the files, but the unzipped files wouldn't import to iTunes. Same if I did the files individually. I'm afraid I'm going to have to make new CDs at home and then rip them to the iMac at work. Darned cross-platform hangups! Maybe it's because it's OS9. Or maybe it's because Apple doesn't want you to transfer files from one system to another.

T answer the obvious question -- no, I don't have an iPod.

Remembering

A few good things today: The Supreme Court of South Africa legalized marriage between same-sex people. And this from the October 18, 2004 New Yorker, in a theater review by John Lahr:

Jokes are the soul's analgesic: they defy gravity -- which is to say, anything that weighs us down -- and they detatch us from grief. When we say that laughter "lifts our spirits," we mean that it works as a sort of stage-managed resurrection -- we are somehow taken out of ourselves, and carried back into the moment. In that instant, life becomes luminous again.

Good words for World AIDS Day. This morning a woman came to morning prayer for the first time. She said she was taking classes at the acupuncture school up the street, and wanted to do something to mark the day besides "just crying in my car on the freeway."

Today, I remember three: Charlie Halloran (not the actor) and James Bergeron, friends and lovers, and Michael Botkin, journalist and troublemaker.

Writers stuff

This morning I broke the 20,000 word mark on the National Novel Writing Month piece I started a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the goal is supposed to be 50,000 words, not 20,000. And I'm afraid I've backed myself somewhat into a corner narratively. I may have to take a break and actually do a little planning ahead.

The NYT published this piece the other day about writers who move "out" to Connecticut, and a young woman garnered lots of press for being brave enough to open an independent bookstore in Greenwich Village. And on Sunday the Chronicle published this nice reminiscence of Nobel Prize author Issac Bashevis Singer.

On Wednesday in San Francisco, Michelle Tea hosts another literary soiree:

a glamorous and exciting benefit

for the glamorous and exciting Heather MacAllister.



Wednesday, December 1st

El Rio

8:00pm

$5-20. Even more if you're loaded. All cash goes to Ms. MacAllister.



-with-



the delightful musical stylings of GLASS BALLS featuring Tara Jepsen & Brian 

Whitty. spoken word from LAUREN WHEELER guranteed to boot you in the behind. 

she's a lady. she's a monster. she's LADYMONSTER and she tells really nasty 

stories. CREAMY GOODNESS will have you dancing. yum. totally true tales from 

the psyche of SHERILYN CONNELLY. magnificent literary maven KATE BRAVERMAN 

will read to you. whoa. hosted by michelle tea. 

And while I'm at it, the next Writers With Drinks is coming up:

Saturday December 11, 2004:



      Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Years of Rice and Salt)

      Alana Devich (Comedy Studio)

      Nina Schuyler (The Painting)

      Lev (Tales of Mere Existence)

      Solidad deCosta (Orchids are Feral)



      At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 

9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

Polar express

Courtesy metafilter, I found this World Sunlight Map showing the part of the earth currently in daylight, including cloud cover. Nighttime is just a void. Useful for those transoceanic conference calls!

Of one pearl, each shining portal

One of the things I miss about going to the zendo every morning is doing my stretching across the street from the zen center, using the railing of a stairway in front of a neighboring house. At one moment, stretching out my back, I would always look up to the sky. Usually it was before dawn and I would look up to see a starry sky or a waning moon (or just fog). This glimpse of the outer reaches of the universe, before I went inside and stared for forty minutes at a shadowy blank wall, was one of the best moments of the day.

I was reminded of that this morning when I got up before dawn to work on my latest book. Part of the early morning chores are to let the cats out the back door into the garden; when I did so, I stepped into a cold shaft of moonlight cast by the moon, just a few days past full and beginning to descend into the western sky. The whole garden was drenched in silvery moonlight. It was a beautiful peaceful moment.

Then I went upstairs to the kitchen and ate pumpkin pie and worked on my book. I'm so grateful to have work now, and also to have a life that allows me to do things like go to bed early just so I can get up and do this writing.

I'm mister boring

Sometimes my life is just so fun, like when I get to do a reading or attend a social fête. Now it's boring, because all I'm doing is going to work and coming home. And: go to morning prayer Monday through Friday. Exercise and watch television. Surf the web. Some reading. Coming up in the next couple weeks, I'll do another issue of the church newsletter. But all in all, a mundane period.

I stalled on my November novel. It's awful hard to write about someplace you've never been. I find myself tempted to treat Bangalore as simply a dustier version of Niigata, Japan, the city where I taught English in the late 80s. (Man, a long time ago now.) But that's probably not such a great idea. What would make it interesting would be the particularities of the place, not the similarities. So I'm not sure how to move forward. Maybe just make it all very internal for the main character.

In any case, I'm entering another crunch time at work. I put in a full day Friday (the day after Txg) and a half day today (the day after that), so I'd have a lot of progress to show when people walked in on Monday. The project -- a training class in the company's software -- is due on the 15th. By the following week, things should be genuinely slower.

Those nutty antipodeans

How can you resist a story with the line:

We have all felt like kicking the koala suit guy wearing Birkenstocks.

You can't. You have to read the whole thing.

Buy something day

I get my goods here -- the jogging shorts are especially nice.

Sick of supporting sweat shops every time you buy clothes? Now you can fight back with every thread you buy. No Sweat Apparel has created the first casual clothing brand that actually fights sweatshops - by creating a viable union alternative that can and will transform the global garment industry. But only if concerned consumers support it. When you buy union-made you don't just support one factory - you build and strengthen the entire labor movement. Come now and see how you can help us change the garment industry - just by changing your clothes! No sweat. http://www.nosweatshop.com

Those nutty antipodeans

Been a while since I've posted something good from down under, but today's Sydney Morning Herald website is certainly worth it. One article is about a drug, delivered through a patch, that is supposed to help women "enjoy sex". Not enjoy sex more -- just enjoy it. Maybe the distinction isn't that fine there. And on the same page, a piece about a book titled He's Just Not That Into You, which has already been covered on USA Today, Oprah, and everywhere else. The article goes on at some length about the genesis of the title, mostly as an excuse to keep printing the line.

No, but ask me about Ohio

"You can't have a democracy across the country but, OK, not this city and not this city. That's why we're taking the city," the lieutenant said. "Imagine elections where you say, for example, Alabama can't vote?"

Knock, knock. Who's there? Fallujah. Fallujah who?

Terroristas to U.S.: got your chemical weapons lab right here, big boys.

And is this an Austin Powers movie or what? Where else would you find something referred to as the death triangle?

Got precious little done this morning on my novel. Sort of sat around with a headache and did internet research on Bangalore and other Indian topics.

Holiday plans

Wednesday night: do somebody a favor by picking their relatives up at the airport.

Thursday: Morning: work on novel. Afternoon: exercise. Evening: holiday dinner at Cris's sister's in a suburb.

Friday and Saturday: Full days at work, as much as possible.

Sunday: Possible half day of work.

Indianism of the day

In this story, a man explains why he helps with the child care:

‘"It has become a necessity now," he says, "when both of us work through the day, it no more becomes a forced affair."

Bangalore buzz, a news blog, is an excellent source of information.

Big push

In meetings today at work it was decided that another person and I would have to develop and deliver an entire training course in the next three weeks, with the actual training lasting two days and starting on Dec. 15. The CEO was in the meeting and he said something about very long days. I said I was copasetic with that, especially since I'm getting paid by the hour.

I did not say, "Dude! What about the groovy novel I'm trying to write??" But I'm afraid that's going to pass by the wayside a little. I will get up early tomorrow, though, and also try to get some of it done on Txg morning. But after that, and including the rest of the "holiday" weekend, I'm going to have to burn on this work.

That means either I'll blog more, as a way to relieve pressure, or much less, because I won't even be able to think about it. We shall see.

Driving home I heard the end of a K.D. Lang concert on the radio. She was singing Jane Siberry's gorgeous song Love is Everything, off Siberry's When I Was a Boy album of 1993. I listened to that album a lot when mourning Stephanie. Unabashed emotion is such a strong force and people are generally leery of it, usually with good reason, but when it is expressed as purely as on that album, it's really moving.

On the radio

Madonna was on Fresh Air this morning (it's broadcast at 9 a.m. on one of the local stations). I missed the intro and wondered who Terry Gross was talking to about sex and performing. The person sounded so arch and middle-aged; I guess at first it was Eve Ensler. When I heard it was Madonna, I was amazed; but then I realized that after a few years of living in the U.K. she has begun to affect a "cultured" accent that makes her sound a bit like Katherine Hepburn by way of Ohio. Just another facade.

Today on Talk of the Nation, they're doing a feature on National Novel Writing Month, in which I am pleased to participate. Though I haven't written for two days and I'm still only at 17,500 words.

No attachment

Though the title came to me in a dream, and launched me into participation in National Novel Writing Month, I changed the title of my NaNo today to Dear Prudence. I had already established that the characters were going to Bangalore, and were each (an American girl and an Indian girl) dealing with depression in her own way, and then I had in my mind that the Indian girl would have a charming habit of quoting Beatles songs. So the title was almost inevitable. And it's such a great title and a great song anyway.

I'm having fun with this. No way am I finishing 50,000 words by the 30th, though. I'm at 17.5K and averaging about a thousand a day. As I said to a guy I met in a bookstore, who is also doing NaNoWriMo, "It's not about finishing in a month, it's about giving you an excuse to start."

Coals to Newcastle

In today's Guardian, a British writer reviews the state of sex writing. Doesn't think much of it, but takes the opportunity to quote extensively from some of his favorite parts.

A day in the life of a conservative

Some twit writes:

I replaced the garage door opener... And finally... something really exciting.... I've just been tasked for my first operational mission.

Maybe they're sending him to the grocery store for some canned tuna.

My imaginary online friends

I love linking to lesbians, sex workers, counter-cultural sex revolutionaries, and the like. But is it just me, or is Blogger unbelivebably slow today?

Working on my NaNo, I did 1500 words this morning. I'll never finish by the end of the month, but I'm determined to finish the book and write on it every day until I do. I did skip a few days this week because I just had to sleep until 7:00 a.m. instead of getting up at 5:45 to write. Then this morning I took one of Cris's ritalin so I could catch up. Here's hoping I can do another 1500 words while she's still in bed.

Speaking of flushed with success...

Jerry Falwell, the very living definition of a modern Pharisee, has announced the rebirth of the Moral Majority group. Hmm, maybe ACT UP is due for a rebirth, too.

"People are saying 'We want good toilets!' because toilets are a basic human right and that basic human right has been neglected"

Flush with success, Experts Gather in China for Toilet Summit.

Veda very shining

There are so many shiny objects in the world, and none really does what I want. Here's what I want, all wrapped up in one:
- 40 GB capacity mp3 player
- AM/FM radio
- flash drive capability

Basically I'm talking about an iPod with an AM/FM radio in it. Because sometimes I don't want to listen to "my music," sometimes I want to listen to NPR or the ballgame. Why is this so difficult?

Actually I already have a small belt-riding AM/FM radio, headphones only. It's 1/3 the size of an iPod and I guess I could haul around both of them. But why is it so difficult to combine them? There's no market? Come on! Hundreds of millions of people with CD players in their homes and cars still listen to the radio several hours a day.

Free sex for anyone who can place the title of this entry without using a search engine.

Our friends the police

Really funny story about how a young mother, who can't get her toddler to keep his seat belt on, gets help from a stern police officer.

Ten-hour day

Got to work at 9:30 a.m., left at 7:30 p.m. It's release week, or at least it's supposed to be, and I'm the only docs person. So I'm pretty much responsible for problems with the docs. It would go much easier if I didn't encounter unexplained problems. Like: This morning I did a clean install of the latest build of the product, then later in the day I tested a certain feature. Didn't work for me at all. Complained to my boss, who tried it on his machine; worked fine. No explanation available. It's that kind of thing that really wears me out -- when not only do things act in a contrary manner, there's no apparent reason for it.

In the midst of all our preparations for the release, we went yesterday on a bus to the Napa Valley to a winery owned by the company's Chairman of the Board, a tech industry lion who made all his money with a different company and is involved with us because... I'm not sure why. Anyway, we went up there to celebrate an important business deal. I spent the whole ride up there grilling the Indian guy, Vinay, on the geography and culture of Bangalore, where the characters in my novel-in-a-month are headed. I had cause yesterday to cite the Slut Manifesto, and today I was stunned to run across the very blog of Lizzard Amazon, its author. That's going up on the list of links honto pronto.

Why we fight

Another reason to love the internet: Years ago, I ran across a hilarious essay which posited that sexual relations between men and women followed the law of supply and demand, and created the memorable phrase "pussy commodity" to refer to women's place in the scheme. I needed to cite this essay today, and Google instantly provided the source: the Slut Manifesto by Lizzard Amazon. Utterly great. Unfortunately, the real identity of Lizzard Amazon has not been revealed; the most we can know is that she published the zine Vanilla Milkshake, where her screed was first published, in Austin in 1991. (And for further inspiration, see the classic SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas.)

Drug trip

Just back from my root canal experience. Gave me an excuse to take a day off work, so I spent the morning working on the church newsletter, then rode BART over to Oakland where the endodontist's office was located. The guy was a pro, finishing is just over an hour. Then Sara picked me up and took me home -- awfully nice of her to drive over to Oakland and back just for that. I didn't go for the nitrous this time, just a Xanax and a couple Extra Strength Tylenols. All in all I feel surprisingly lucid, though I'm sure that's perfectly delusional.

Seems strange to take off a day in the final crunch of the release at the d.b.t.s., but actually it gives them a chance to review my docs, which are basically done except for their comments. Then tomorrow is another day off, because it's a company fun trip to a St. Helena vineyard owned by the Chairman of the Board, so we can celebrate a big business deal. The only problem with all this time off is that I'm still on hourly, so that's $500 a day down the drain. Then next week is Thanksgiving, so that's another two days shot. Still, the job's going well.

Voices of youth

Last night I went again to the monthly Writers with Drinks reading at the Make Out Room. Continue to be astonished at the number of people who crowd into a bar and listen quietly and respectfully to literary readings -- there must have been 150 people there. And a huge majority of them are in their 20s and 30s, rather than old farts like me and my friends who gathered there. Best of all, it's close enough to my house that I can walk to it, and that's always a good idea.

Best reader was Myriam Gurba, who read from a (seemingly) autobiographical novel about growing up mixed-race Mexican and Asian in Southern California. Usually I am bored with memoirs of childhood and "how weird my family was," but this was beautifully written and truly rollicking.

Earlier in the day, which was a gorgeous 65 degree sunny fall day, I took a walk with my friend Sara around nearby Bernal Heights Park, just up the street from my house. We met when we were in Street Patrol together, back in the early 90s, after which she became my informal writing coach and also hosted a regular group of "Sopranos"-watching writers and journalists. A great friend.

OK, it's Sunday morning and I came in to work at the d.b.t.s. I better get to it.

The governor is a big goofball

Got to be the nuttiest picture of the day: Schwartzenegger in Japan. Seems the Japanese have no prayer of pronouncing Schwartzenegger so they characteristically abbreviate it to "shwa" and add the diminuitive "-chan." Equivalent to calling him Schwartzie.

Hold your head up, whoa

A little dental problem that began cropping up 10 days ago suddenly got worse last night, and I woke up with a toothache at 4 a.m. I guess it beats living in Fallujah and being mortared out of bed, but otherwise, a toothache is not a good wakeup call. But this afternoon I can report a successful test of the pain-relieving qualities of Extra Strength Tylenol.

Speaking of drugs, Salon had an entertaining piece about Provigil, the stay-awake drug developed for the military which is now coming into wider use. The article included a nice shout-out to Erowid, which the article accurately describes as being like the reader reviews on amazon.com, only about recreational drugs. Includes several references comparing the drug to Ecstacy and various forms of speed. Strangely, the guy never seems to have thought about simply cutting the pills in half if they string him out so bad.

Where the peering never stops

Yesterday I came home from work quite tired. Despite the fact that it was after 8:00 pm I ate some dinner and then got on the treadmill at 9:00 for my usual 4-mile walk-jog. I turned down a date with a good friend, that's how serious about exercising I was. By the time I got off the treadmill I felt less tired and weary than I had all week. This is why I hate exercise. How come I feel less tired after I do 4 miles than I did before I started?

Stranger yet, tonight I came home a little earlier and a little less tired; I had spent an hour less at work. I got on the treadmill, did my 4 miles, and felt better than I had before I got home -- but not as good as I felt the night before when I started out absolutely exhausted. I really don't get it.

At work I'm not done with this release yet but they're already having me help plan training courses for after the release. I guess that's a sign they want me to keep working there, which I'm grateful for. In any case, I'm very glad I have this new novel project to focus on.

Speaking of turning down dates, today I was forced to turn down a reading gig that would have been hugely fun. Last Gasp, the classic underground SF publisher of comix and outré stuff, is sponsoring a reading next week for one of its authors, J.T. LeRoy. The famously shy wunderkind won't be reading; Last Gasp's own Bucky Sinister is putting together a cast of readers to do the reading for him. Unfortunately I have my writer's group that night, so I had to demure. I did confirm a reading in Alameda, though, in February.

The descent of winter

Yesterday, drizzle
today, a downpour
things haven't changed
despite the election, death
and remembrance are still in style

But my bright yellow rain slicker
protects me from all evil

WCW I'm not. Thanks for your indulgence.

Proceding apace on my new novel. I realized the other day that I need to move a couple main characters to Bangalore so they can open an offshore customer service office. Unfortunately I know very little about Bangalore that hasn't been published in the New York Times. However, the company I work for now has a development office there, and I tried asking people one day at lunch. Didn't get much information out of the Indian guys before one of the white guys changed the conversation to skeet shooting. I found out a hell of a lot about skeet shooting and very little about Bangalore. Guess I'll have to take a different tack.

The horror, the horror

You know what's great about the internet? You can follow events back in that asspit you went to high school in without ever going back there. This just in: some fatal stoner -- oops, I mean "considerate and loving" young man -- disappeared with his punky 13-year-old grilfriend. Meanwhile, a man was arrested for having "non-consensual"... something ... with his underage stepdaughter, and a woman who didn't want to "participate" in a "swinger's party" got whomped in the head with a 2x4 "from the pier." Man, all the pornography I've written about that place just pales in comparison to what really goes on there.

Recovery

Hooray, the internet works at home again. More posting follows.

Yesterday I met Shannon for coffee at a place downtown near her job. Actually neither of us had coffee, we both had mineral water; it was 5:30 pm, after all. Shannon is working on some very interesting stuff, but she hasn't posted about it so I won't go into it. I met her at the writers group I'm still a part of but which she quit in order to turn her novel-in-progress into the very interesting stuff.

I think her blog is so funny. It was part of the inspiration for the novel I'm working on this fall.

You can't turn around these days without tipping on another article about how depressed -- blue, get it?! -- Kerry voters are about the election. Meanwhile I like this news: Kerry is said to be ready for another run. Re-defeat Dean!

Just as long as they voted Kerry

What's the new craze in the Twin Cities? Mexican Coke! No, not that kind of coke.

I'm working. Really

Sorry to be dull. I really am putting in a lot of hours at work, and during my spare time I'm working on my National Novel Writing Month work. Do you want to know the title? The Moony Trail of Starry Shine. The title came to me in a dream, and I started from there. The title sounds silly, but think of it as a sort of ee cummings/J.D. Salinger mid-century thing. Even though it is set in 2004.

Every novel project has its moments of serendipity, and I've already had my first one. I threw in a secondary character named Chandra, wrote three pages about her, then checked the internet to make sure there really is such a name. Yes, and it means "moon." Chandra has suddenly become much more important in the book.

I'm up to about 6300 words. Track my progress (scroll down to see the word count and an excerpt).

L.A. is huge

Jamie pointed to this page of statistically-based maps showing election returns county-by-county, with population size reflected in the size of the geographical area. On this map, Cook County is larger than many states, and Los Angeles County is enormous. I also really liked the New York Times' maps.

Get back to work, slacker!

We have been without the internet at home from Wednesday on, a situation that will likely last another few days. So the frequency of posts on this blog have gone down. Sorry. It wasn't just post-election depression.

In fact, my post-election depresion is over. I woke up early on Friday morning with an idea in my head and started writing a new fiction piece, probably a novel. That makes two novels I have going at once, but the other one is much more ruminative and depressive, and I just can't get into that head space right now. This one is perkier, it's sort of a chick-lit thing. But also very San Francisco 2004.

One of the reasons I decided to go ahead with it was just to keep from getting dragged down by the election results, on one hand, and by my new job, on the other. The new job, plus the commute -- it takes me 35 minutes to get down there in the morning, but almost an hour to get home if I leave during the 5 o'clock hour -- are leaving me pretty bushed when I get home. And yet I haven't been unaccountably sleepy, and in any case last night I slept a good eight hours before getting up and doing another 3000 words on my new piece. Hey, it's National Novel Writing Month -- why shouldn't I contribute?

After some errands, I brought my laptop down to Maxfield's cafe at 17th and Dolores, where they have free wi-fi.

What happened to 'I feel your pain'?

Bill Clinton has a message for flummoxed Democrats: Stop whining. "'The Republicans had a clear message, a good messenger, great organization and great strategy,' he said. 'The Republicans did a better job of turning out those who were already registered who hadn't voted' as well as bringing out their base."

He might have been talking about the sentiments expressed in yesterday's NYT in an article which looked at reeling west coast leftists, who were quoted saying things like "I am depressed, but I am also just really angry at the rest of the country's ignorance" and "I am sad that America is asleep at the wheel." The article also compared yesterday's funereal protest march in San Francisco to a scene from Night of the Living Dead. Ouch.

Trying not to grasp at straws, I still must note:

Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican, will become chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and yesterday he warned the newly re-elected president not to assume he would rubber-stamp court nominees. Specifically:

"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

Fucking Iowans!!

Final Iowa results show Bush won, it was reported today. Fuck! What's the matter with them!?

Four more years, plus however long the Supreme Court appointments live,
plus however long their decisions stay in effect, plus the duration of negative
environmental effects, plus... plus... plus....

I've seen a good deal of bloggers and people quoted in the newspaper giving a message that essentially boils down to "don't mourn, organize." And indeed, what I feel like doing is giving as much money as I possibly can to MoveOn.org or whoever. But what strikes me this morning is how all the extra effort put forth this time wasn't quite enough.

MoveOn, Americans Coming Together, and all the 527 orgs -- not enough.

Bruce Springsteen, all the rappers, the Dixie Chicks, Rock the Vote. All the efforts to mobilize the "youth vote" of under-30-year-olds -- not enough.

Fahrenheit 9/11, Control Room, the Comedy Channel, Salon.com, and all the satire and artists' activism -- not enough.

A presidential candidate who was a war hero, with no skeletons in the closet, contrasted with an incumbent who clearly dodged the Vietnam War and is an admitted alcoholic -- not enough.

What will be enough?

Fever dream

Last night I went to bed about 11:30 pm in San Francisco, listening to NPR coverage for as long as I could stand. Little happened after 11 p.m. California time; aside from waiting for states like Nevada, the closeness of Ohio was clearly not going to be resolved anytime soon.

About 2:20 a.m. I woke up to the noise of conversation outside. I could only hear occasional words, and what sounded like drunken sobbing. After listening for a few minutes I realized I was hearing several people on their way home from an election coverage-watching party, people who were dismayed about the state of things. They needed to process before they got into their cars or walked home. Judging from the little I could hear of their conversation, it was clear they had reason to be unhappy, but I couldn't quite tell what it was. The clearest thing that came through was the sound of a woman crying heavily. They hung around outside the house for fifteen or twenty minutes, processing. The woman kept crying.

It was a surreal experience to lie in bed and listen to that. I was torn between leaning out the window and telling them to pack it in, and going out there and commiserating with them.

When I got up this morning, it was still being said that Ohio might be disputed, but only a couple hours later as I drove to work, it was clear everything was over and Kerry was about to concede.

Here are a few points of analysis I have, written before reading any other analysis, really.

Who will lead the Democrats?

Kerry looked like a reasonably strong candidate. A moderate liberal, a war hero, a long record of public service, no skeletons in his closet (though that didn't stop the "Swift Boat Veterans" et al. from making things up), and a rich wife. He wasn't as colorful as Dean, but I felt much more comfortable with Kerry, who was certainly more colorful than, say, Gephardt, whom I looked upon as being another pale Mondale type. Whatever his weaknesses -- and those will be discussed ad infinitum in the next months -- Kerry looked like a winner compared to Bush. And yet he was obviously no Clinton -- for better, and mostly for worse.

So who's up next? The only person the party is really excited by is Barack Obama, and it's too soon for him. Hillary Clinton is a logical choice, but I don't relish the degree of hatred and divisiveness she would provoke from the Republicans, who hate her out of all proportion. That only leaves Edwards, and unless he has strengths and charisma he has been hiding in favor of Kerry, he doesn't excite me too much either.

The problem with Iowa

This year the Iowa caucuses were effective in puncturing Dean's candidacy and raising up Kerry and Edwards. And people said Iowa Democrats tend toward liberal candidates, somewhat to the consternation of DNC types. And yet Kerry lost Iowa, it turns out, 50% to 49%, or by about 13,000 votes. My question is, why the fuck are the Democrats so dependent on Iowa in the first place? I think they need to make a conscious decision to negate the primacy of the Iowa caucuses and take it back to New Hampshire. (Of course, Kerry only won New Hampshire by 1%, or 10,000 votes. But the tradition is there. They can't just pick a new state.)

The Gavin Newsom factor

Last Feburary, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom mad history by permitting 14,000 gay couples to get married in the city -- a decision that was later overturned, but not before it electrified the Republican base, which responded with 11 anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives around the country -- all of which won. Since "moral issues" turned out to be so important to a strategically large -- surprisingly so -- evengelical turnout, can it be said that the fright the Christian Right received in the spring came back to haunt the Democrats in the fall?

That's not to say I think it was a mistake to marry all those lesbian and gay couples. Every step forward for justice and human rights is the right thing. It's never a mistake. We have to take our lumps and keep pushing forward. But this is also a reminder that no matter what we think is the right thing in massachusetts or California, it's likely to scare the shit out of people in the Midwest (not to mention the South, which as far as I'm concerned is simply lost to history for decades to come).

This raises the specter of that broad, broad red stripe up the middle of the country. As a book title had it this year, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Why do people in the Midwest and the Plains consistently vote against their own economic interests year after year after year? Because they're scared, says conventional wisdom. They're frightened by change.

I would put it more strongly, and I'll bet they would, too. It's not just fear, it's disgust. Cultural conservatives feel deep disgust at homosexuality, atheism, and other bogeymen; this visceral reaction is what drives them to the polls, it's what drives the rage expressed on talk radio, it's what keeps the whole culture of right-wing conservatism alive. And I don't know what to do about it. As someone who's done his personal best to expand the envelope of what can be talked about, especially with regards to sex, I have no regrets about "rampant _____" (insert right-wing bogeyman here). I wish people would simply grow up and become more accepting. They just aren't doing it as quickly as I want them to.

That's all I'm saying for now. I have to get back to work.

Sick with anxiety

Forty minutes before the polls close in the East; forty minutes before the media start naming obvious winners (Kerry in Mass., for example). Still at work here on the West Coast, I both want and don't want to look at the results on the internet. If New Jersey went for Bush, for example -- the example cited by most media as a harbinger of a Bush victory -- there's no way I could work. And yet if NJ went for Kerry, I'd just want to know about New Hampshire and Florida and everything else. It's the Red Sox syndrome -- you don't feel secure until the final out; they could still blow it. I don't want to get any news until I'm in the car onthe way home, but that's 90 minutes from now. Can I stand it?

That's what I get for being early

Showed up at my polling place at 6:50 a.m. this morning. I thought maybe I would spend some time in line. But I didn't expect the poll workers to be utterly unprepared.

I walked in there behind two women, who were really the first voters. We found the poll workers -- all working class women in their 20s and 30s -- sitting around the school cafeteria chitchatting. Nothing was set up. Seems the poll workers were under the impression that the polls opened at 8, not 7 a.m.

Well, I was prepared to wait. But the women in front of me, and the people who came in just behind us, had many comments. That got very middle-class upper-achiever about it, fretting that if they were organizing it -- or even just helping -- this would never happen. I could tell that these were a bunch of high-powered office workers, managers and the like; it was all they could do to keep from jumping in and setting up the voting booths themselves.

It didn't really take the poll workers too long to get it straightened out. I was handed my ballot at 7:24 a.m. Of course it was imcomplete, and I had to ask for the rest of it -- twice -- when I discovered the state and local ballot propositions were not on the ballot sheets I was given. In any case, I got out of there ten minutes later. Not that big a deal, really. There were about 40 people in line at that point, by the way.

More on the wonderland that is Wonder Valley

From time to time (as recently as Oct. 29) I post about my friends down in the desert. It seems the news media is getting closer and closer to discovering their patch of desert, and not necessarily in a good way. Today the LA Times ran a story on the controversy over desert shacks -- the mostly abandoned cabins put up over the last 50 years by homesteaders. My friends Perry and Christine, both artists, are quoted as being pro-shack. On the other side are people with (I suspect) a secret pro-development agenda who think abandoned shacks are eyesores. Christine's comment at the end of the piece suggests the inherent conflict. The anti-shack people want their land values to go up; the pro-shack people -- artists and desert rat types -- want things to stay pretty much the same.

The remarkable thing about this whole story is how remote Wonder Valley is. It's on the far, far edge of the town of 29 Palms, which is the last town on the highway until you go about 100 miles farther down the road to the Colorado River. Yet even here there is now development pressure. Related is how the Bureau of Land Management treats off-road vehicles, which some people like to bounce around the desert without concern for anybody else who might be there, much less the wildlife.

These conflicts happen because of the peculiarly American attitude that anyplace out in the country that hasn't yet been developed up the yinyang must officially belong to no one and can thus be treated as a blank slate on which to project all your hopes, fears, dreams and desires. If you like to tear around in a dune buggy, there is "nothing" out there. If you like to meditate, there is "nothing" to disturb you -- yet those two occupations are mutually exclusive, based on a delusion that the desert (in this case) is nothing, nowhere, empty. Like I say, typically American.

Dept. of 'Wouldn't it be pretty to think so'

Electoral-vote.com has Kerry leading 298-231 in the electoral vote this morning, based on polls taken over the weekend. According to these polls, Kerry takes all of the big 3 swing states and the entire upper midwest (except, of course, for solid-red Indiana). I think that's pretty much the outer end of possibilities. Still, it's nice to gaze upon. Just go back to that website anytime today you feel down.

In news closer to home, I got a nearly ecstatic email from my friend Marilyn, a writer who may very well be on the edge of real success. She only hints at it in her blog, but she received many hopeful signs over the weekend. And hopeful signs are what it's all about today, folks.

The lonely Republican

Okay, I'm going to break my own rule about putting all the political links in one post. But this isn't a link -- it's original content. Yes, a story about one of my own family members.

Early this evening I called my 84-year-old mother, who lives in suburban Portland, Oregon -- a town called Tigard, to be exact. She lives in a retirement community, about 100 standalone houses with retired couples between the ages of 55 and 95.

Uncharacteristically, our conversation turned to the election. She asked me how I was voting and I told her Kerry. She said, "Oh, you dirty dog!" -- which is pretty strong language for her. But then she said she had tried to get neighbors to come over to her house on election night to watch the returns. She only wanted other Bush voters, of course.

She couldn't find any.

She asked the guy next door. Kerry. She asked the people on the other side. Kerry. Finally she turned to the lady sitting next to her in church. Kerry. I asked her how many people she had asked. She said, "Oh, not that many..." I got the picture she had asked six or seven people.

Well, it is Oregon; it is near Portland. But I would have thought, among retirees, in the suburbs, more Bush support. Nice to hear.