Little to show for it

The year is half over. I don't have much to show for it. I'm still stuck in my church secretary job -- which is fine, actually, except for the low pay and inflexible hours -- and have no prospects for another. I didn't get a literary agent for the book that was basically finished a year ago, and I also didn't start on the next one that's been revving its engine for longer than that. Aside from a lighting trip to Chicago with Cris in November and a similarly short one to Portland in February, I haven't even been outside the Bay Area in a year.

I have little to complain about, on the other hand. What I really need to do is figure out how to get my next book done in my current situation. When I interviewed two weeks ago for a full-time job back in the tech industry -- I didn't get it -- people asked me, "What about your writing? I thought you had this part-time job so you could write more." Yeah, that was the plan. But the fact is, I got my first novel done (not to mention the two books of short stories) while I held a full-time job. I don't think I've gotten the hang of this new schedule yet, even though I've been doing it for a year. So I was actually looking forward to another full-time job so I could get more writing done.

Well, that's not happening. So I need to deal with the way things are now. As I get older, I realize more and more that that's the way I have to approach life: learning to deal with the way things are now, not the way I wish things were.

More Bush administration love notes

Seems Condi sent a note to Cheney, too. Heh heh heh. (Link courtesy metafilter.) And guess what Cheny said to baseball fans who booed him when he showed up at Yankee Stadium? (Photo here.)

In fairness, it is practically a tradition to boo all politicians who show up at baseball games. I guess it has something to do with: a.) being in an environment where booing is commonly practiced, and b.) an assumption that any politician who shows up for the photo op is just showing off.)

Drawing a line in the sandtrap

Amid all the reports of Bush's (no doubt staged) exchange of love notes with his national security advisor, no one has pointed this out: The song doesn't go "Let freedom reign" -- it's "Let freedom ring," you dumbass.

What was he thinking, Michael Moore might have asked -- though when I saw Moore on Conan O'Brian last night, it seemed he was already getting tired of answering the same questions about his blockbuster film. My theory: The use of "reign" was yet another use of crypto-Christian language so often employed by the nation's First Fundie.

Remember this when they make the movie of Kerry's life

A full-frontal scene in Colin Farrell's upcoming movie, "A Home at the End of the World," has been cut because audiences were purportedly distracted by the actor's supposedly massive manhood.

Members of both sexes cheered at the unrobed Irishman during a test audience screening of the flick recently, disrupting what was supposed to be a poignant scene.

Right, but that was in Australia.

Word of the day: Expressionate

Q. Who is the funniest guy in the dugout? -- Anika O., Santa Cruz

A.[Giants relief pitcher] Jim Brower: It's gotta be (Matt) Herges. He's very expressionate, great mannerisms -- he keeps everything light. He finds the little things to make fun of, and everybody enjoys it.

That's from this week's Giants players' Q and A.

Republicans to leave wives at home

"Agencies are flying in extra call girls from around the globe" in time for the Republican convention in New York at the end of August.

Rabble, roused

I did something very uncharacteristic last night: I went to see a blockbuster film on the first weekend of release. I mean Fahrenheit 9/11, already the highest-grossing documentary of all time. I met six others from our "Sopranos"-watching crowd, now at loose ends on Sunday evenings, at the Metreon in downtown San Francisco, a hellhole of highly mechanized film screening that featured a full 21 minutes of ads and coming attractions before the two-hour film actually started.

How was it? Pretty good. I had a little trouble following the Saudi connection stuff, and it did seem to jump around a bit from topic to topic, but it built effectively to the emotional concluding sequence showing a dead soldier's mother crying in front of the White House. And Moore himself seems to have learned that the less of him on the screen, the better.

Here's a feature article on Moore from the Guardian -- the Brits seem to be fascinated by the Moore phenomenon -- and an article on what Moore's next film will cover.

Finally, just one article from the heartland. This is from the Visalia Times-Delta, a small-town newspaper in the conservative San Joaquin Valley:

Visalia resident Mike Lorah went to a 2 p.m. screening. Lorah, 28, said he considers himself a conservative Republican but the film has convinced him not to vote for President Bush.

"I'd have to say that I agree with the message that was made in the film, even with me being a Republican," Lorah said. "This would probably be the first time I don't vote for a Republican, but I don't think John Kerry's any better."

Oh, one more thing. Go to the Fox News website today, and how much coverage are they giving Moore's film? NONE. While there's a mention of the film's box-office success and controversial views on virtually every news site, Fox News has finally realized that attacking the film just makes people want to see it. Therefore silence. I wish it worked like that with them more often.

Ryan Expressway to hell

I've been ignoring this up to now, but I can no longer resist. Short version: A guy named Jack Ryan was running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois but got tripped up when someone uncovered the papers related to his 2000 divorce, in which his wife claimed he had taken her to sex clubs several times against her wishes, making her cry. The guy lasted about three days after those juicy revelations, then today he quit the race.

But the best part of all? His wife was actress Jeri Ryan, known for her roles on "Boston Public" and as the babe-a-licious half-Borg Seven of Nine on "Star Trek: Voyager." Fuck, if Jeri Ryan were married to me, I'd want to go to sex clubs and have sex in front of other people, too.

Books do get published

A million times congratulations to my wonderful friend Katia Noyes, whose novel Crashing America Aylson Press has just agreed to publish next spring. Katia sent her query package out to dozens of agents before deciding to go the small press route on her own. Which is perhaps not too encouraging to me on the agent front, but at least there are people out there willing to take a chance on great new writers. Yay Katia!!

I thought they didn't go in for this kind of thing

Now there's a new sex mag for women which apparently is trying to capture the "Suicide Girls" idea, only reversing the gender.

Sweet Action man is not so much the boy next door as that beautiful boy you saw at the indie gig, or the "video artist" who lolls around your favourite bar.

Right -- he's not really a video artist, just a poseur. That's hot.

Michael Moore and the zeitgeist

Fahrenheit 9/11 has been out for only one day, and already more than half of Americans now say the war in Iraq was a "mistake".

Good news for black rhinos

I'm a sucker for rhinocerouses, and the news is usually so fucking sad, but today's news says the black rhino is finally regaining numbers.

Twin's eating disorder means sister goes south alone

Most people have picked up on the Hollywood-Babylon aspect of the story about Mary-Kate Olsen going into treatment for an eating disorder (requisite horrifyingly skinny picture included). But the interesting part of the story for me is the last sentence:

But Ashley Olsen will be making a planned trip later this month to Australia and New Zealand without Mary-Kate to launch overseas promotion of "New York Minute" -- the sisters' first theatrical feature.

So these girls have been joined at the hip for 18 years; suddenly, one goes into rehab, the other goes to New Zealand. Talk about a sudden separation. I wonder what that trip will be like. Will Ashley wind up in Auckland with only half her hair curlers? Will only half of their entourage go on the trip, and if so, won't the half that's left home feel suddenly irrelevant? All kinds of problems like that.

Of course, the weirdest thing is that these chicks have been depicted, for the last 15 years, as paragons of American beauty and perfection. Now the moment they turn 18, they start falling apart. As they age, is there any way they won't turn out to be the most cringingly strange family act since the Jacksons? Let's look at the milestones that await us:

After Mary-Kate gets out of hospital, tearful reunion.

Mary-Kate gets a much-older boyfriend (I'm sure Jack Nicholson would fill the bill); Ashley turns frightenly fundamentalist Christian.

Mary-Kate gets married to Jack Nicholson; Ashley gets married to Michael Jackson.

Jack discovers Mary-Kate is pregnant with Bruce Willis' child

Michael Jackson dies in Neverland conflagration; Ashley assumes control of empire, starts fucking Jack Nicholson.

One month after giving birth to Bruce Willis' child, Mary-Kate goes back into hospital for eating disorder.

Update the next day: Unable to face being separated from her twin, Ashley cancelled the trip south.

Money is serious business

Priceless (ha ha) photo from today's Chronicle of "foreign mint officials" touring San Francisco's U.S. Mint. Strangely, this photo accompanies a story about the restored fortunes of SF's tourist industry -- strange, because the Mint is one place that's completely off-limits to tourists.

Another fine mess

Among the many groups planning various actions during the GOP convention in New York are bicycle activists, the "Critical Mass" kind. Actually "bicycle activists" is just a euphemism for this roiling mass of (mostly) two-wheeled anarchists who delight in causing pain and suffering to motorists of the four-wheeled (and up) variety. Physically mobile and usually highly connected using cellphones and the like, they can be in many places at once and respond quickly to new opportunities and provocations. I'll bet Jym is all over this.

Terror

The South Korean who was beheaded in Iraq today died like a dog, "heav(ing) his shoulders, his mouth gaping open as if sobbing and gasping for air." One of the Italian guys who was killed a couple months ago was more defiant, reportedly shouting, "I'll show you how an Italian dies!"

The Korean was merely a translator and reportedly a devout Christian; the Italian a former nightclub bouncer, therefore someone used to putting up a tough front.

I guess the crux of the matter is, does it really matter whether you die with some "honor" (as the Italian prime minister termed it) still intact? If it's true that terrorists are primarily interested in intimidation by proxy, in literally terrorizing people, then the answer is yes.

I think it's significant that the beheading craze began after the Italian's defiant stand. His captors didn't get the right kind of manipulated response out of him; in fact, his performance probably increased Italian resolve, such as it is, to stay in Iraq.

The Italian operated out of a certain sense that the worst possible thing that could happen was that he would be shot; the Korean knew that other hostages had had their heads chopped off alive, like chickens. Perhaps his captors even showed him videos of earlier beheadings, the better to increase his fear. So you can hardly blame the guy for losing it.

'Bourgeoisification, the suburbanisation of the soul'

This remarkable interview with author J.G. Ballard has a lot of wonderful and arresting quotes, including:

The destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 has not yet been repackaged into something with more consumer appeal, I notice. Another revolutionary event, the assassination of JFK, was rapidly defused by the intense media coverage, the endless replaying of the Zapruder film, and the vast proliferation of conspiracy theories. But Kennedy was himself largely a media construct, with an emotional appeal that was as calculated as any advertising campaign. His life and death were both complete fictions, or very nearly. A real revolution, as 9/11 was in its way, will always come out of some unexpected corner of the sky...

But there is something deeply suffocating about life today in the prosperous west. Bourgeoisification, the suburbanisation of the soul, proceeds at an unnerving pace. Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and a soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter. Nothing is allowed to distress and unsettle us. The politics of the playgroup rules us all.

Emphasis mine. I thought the last bit about how politicians and the media coddle the masses perfectly fit the current military strategy of minimizing casualties, not of civilians, but of the military itself.

Some good writing can also be found in David Denby's review of Fahrenheit 9/11 in the New Yorker. Worth reading in the run-up to the film's premiere.

Finally, this bizarre story about Britney Spears totally losing it when a car being driven by her mother knocks down a photographer is worth looking at for the pictures alone.

See it all comes round to Mel Gibson sooner or later

I was reading this entertaining first-person piece on drug addiction when I was brought up short by this sentence:

The irony of the drug experience is that it comes from an outgrowth of genuine longing, a reaching out for meaning, a yearning for transcendence and salvation, and it ends with sitting in a darkened room staring miserably at the wall.

All you have to do is substitute the word "Zen" for "drug" in that sentence and it still makes perfect sense. The author, by the way, is a British performance artist who became infamous for having himself crucified in 2000.

Get a job, you bum

Among the many, many articles being published in advance of the premiere this Friday of "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- the Michael Moore film which hopes to do nothing less than bring about the defeat of Bush in November -- is this one from the Cincinnatti Post, which includes this intriguing, and encouraging, bit of analysis (emphasis mine):

For months "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been a subject of heated discussions on op-ed pages in newspapers and talk shows, but it isn't the only documentary (a term that applies here in its broadest sense) to tap into today's political anxieties. Several other "impressionistic" documentaries, all with a dissident touch, are in theaters or on their way. They include "Control Room" (now showing at the Esquire Theatre in Clifton), about the Al Jazeera TV network; "The Corporation," a look at corporate policies and everyday American life; and "The Hunting of the President," which asks whether there was a vast conspiracy -- or a series of little ones -- to destroy the Clinton administration.

Nonfiction films have been growing in popularity of late, but this season's batch is joining a chorus of already raised voices. Some observers see a renewed interest in political ferment in today's media, extending from bestselling books on the Bush administration by journalist Bob Woodward, to the strongest flood of protest songs in 30 years, to the rise of talk radio on both the left and the right.

"Popular culture is embracing politics in a way it hasn't since the 1960s," says Joel Bakan, co-writer of "The Corporation" and author of the Free Press book on which that movie is based.

Oh -- popular culture is embracing politics. Not people.

Censorship is the best compliment

The fact that a conservative group has begun urging movie theaters not to show Michael Moore's "9/11" film can only be interpreted as a sign of sheer panic. Could it possibly be that good?

OK, this is getting weird

On June 9 I wrote of getting a call from a recruiter. I subsequently arranged with that woman to visit her company tomorrow for a job interview. Yesterday I got still another piece of email from a recruiter, this time one with Oracle.

Oracle is a huge, aggressive company with a terrible reputation for using up and spitting out tech writers, and I don't think I could ever work for its founder, one of the richest, most arrogant people in the country. Still, it's weird how recruiters are suddenly calling me like crazy (or what passes for "like crazy" for me -- three times in a single month) after a year and a half of exile from the tech industry.

If you've lost Garrison Keillor, you've lost America

Could this be Bush's Cronkite moment?

As I wrote Sunday, Garrison Keillor went off on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in the middle of his monologue Saturday. They've just posted the show, and if you want to listen to the monologue, click on "Segment 8." The rant (transcribed here) happens at minute 16 of the segment.

Dept. of high crimes and misdemeanors

Rumsfield ordered an Iraqi prisoner hidden from the Red Cross. The arrogance is astonishing. Is there anything these shits won't descend to in order to salvage their war?

As if there aren't enough books already

Did another turn at the l.n.c.b. last night, something I masochistically continue to do once or twice a month. I say I'm doing it for the money, but by the time I get done paying for gas, bridge tolls, the food I inevitably buy at a discount from their cafe, and the book I can't stop myself from buying (I get an employee discount, who could resist!), I barely clear $25 for a five-hour shift. So why the hell do I continue? I really don't know. In addition to taking up a whole evening, it's exhausting.

But for those of you who want to add to the millions of books on sale in America, you can always try this: software that "helps."

My chosen writing aide is a CD-rom from Creativity Software Ltd called NewNovelist which, according to the blurb on the back, "takes you on a journey; it harnesses your creativity and helps you write your own novel." The Sunday Times said, "the magic of NewNovelist is that it doesn't feel as if you are writing a book." Great! That's how I've been feeling for years!

Dept. of Chutzpah

The leading figure in the sports steroid scandal has offered to tell investigators everything he knows, in exchange for leniency, saying he alone can ensure a "clean" Olympic team. Translation: He'll rat on all his clients and wrap himself in the flag. Yeah, that would totally cancel out all the scandal. Sure.

Velvet Aboveground

Here's Nico, famous Warholite and singer for the Velvet Underground, in her pre-Warhol days as a fashion model. Wow! (More at http://smironne.free.fr/NICO/mode.html. Links courtesy BoingBoing.)

Australian getup of the year

Get a load of these costumes. No, they're not superheroes or scuba divers. They're Olympic athletes. Especially dig the crotch protector on that cyclist.

Yahoo ups storage to 100MB

Responding to Google's GMail tactic, Yahoo on Tuesday will announce that it's raising storage on its free email accounts to 100MB. Great, more room for all that spam I'm getting every day.

Chelsea morning

Here's Chelsea Clinton, all dolled up at the unveiling of her sluttish dad's official portrait. Dunno about that dye job, but her New York Look certainly passes. (Is that her boyfriend sitting next to her? Looks like a nebbish.)

I, too, was a paper millionaire

The excerpt published on Salon today from James Marcus's "Amazonia" -- his book about his employment at amazon.com and participation in the dotcom boom -- largely echoes my experience. In September 1999, I was hired by a newly-minted company called Commerce One and given a few thousand shares of stock options. Because it was two months after the IPO, I assumed there was little chance the stock would go over the $54 strike price at which my options were granted. But the bubble had just begun, and over the next six months the stock split twice and went to the equivalent of $900. By December all the employees -- or at least the ones who had joined with or before me -- were positively giddy; the ones who had joined recently had stock options that would never be worth anything. One of the original engineers quit and cashed out; a reporter wrote an story about how he bought his old high school math teacher a Masarati.

For several months, my options made me a paper millionaire. And like Marcus, I was lucky enough to be able to cash in a fraction of those options, before getting laid off in January 2001. By the end of that year the company -- along with many other dotcom startups -- was in the toilet. The beautiful sine curve described by the stock price was positively ballistic.

British graft in China

This story about opening Beijing's first fish and chips restaurant is amusing on its own, but what struck me was the expression "hard graft" at the end of the story. Apparantly this is a British expression for "hard work." Go figure.

Garrison Keillor speaks out against Bush's torture policy
during 'News from Lake Wobegon' monologue

I turned on the radio as I was driving home from church and caught the end of Garrison Keillor's centerpiece monologue from his long-running Prarie Home Companion show. I'm not quite sure how he got off on this topic, but he suddenly started sounding very political.

Update:here is the show in question, broadcast June 12. Listen to "Segment 8" which includes the "News from Lake Wobegon" monologue; the rant starts at about 16 minutes in, and you can fast-forward to it.

Transcript:

Richard Nixon, now there was a man. To read that he got really loaded at the White House -- I liked that about him. To read that he got really loaded, so that Henry Kissinger was afraid to let him talk on the telephone, the President. He was a man who knew something about darkness, Richard Nixon. I could imagine him walking around with a couple of big double Manhattans, getting a little high on it. You could write a country song about Richard M. Nixon, you sure could. "He thought about Cambodia / And he had to face the truth, / So he reached for the whiskey and that sweet Vermouth." You could write a song about him.

But nowadays we're stone cold sober, stone cold sober -- Lord help us. And the terrible things that righteous people can do -- God knows. God knows, friends. [Applause] People without a shred of self-doubt -- a person without any doubt is a monster. I'm horrified -- [Applause, cheers] I'm horrified at the thought that torture of prisoners is American policy. It just terribly horrifies me. [Applause] Say I'm wrong. I hope to be wrong. But I would hate to see enlisted men and women being made scapegoats in order to protect policymakers. [Applause, cheers] America doesn't stand for torture. It's not who we are. [Applause] America is a refuge for people who have suffered from torture and oppression, and if we practice it ourselves, then what plan does God have for us?

So much for that

I didn't watch a single minute of the Reagan ceremonies. All that state-funeral stuff is probably useful when a President dies in office, because people are dealing with the shock. But when a guy dies of Alzheimer's, everyone's dealt with him dying a long time before he actually goes. Therefore the extensive coverage -- not "wall to wall" like this guy complains, but extensive enough -- was simply the Republicans showing off. Fox news, of course, jacked off on the casket all week long; most other news outlets had at least a token number of stories reminding people that Reagan had not actually, when president, been universally loved.

Of course, Reagan's death couldn't have happened at a better time. The absolute worst time, of course, would have been right before the Democratic Convention -- instead of the Democrats getting a free ride for a week, they would have had to share screen space with the funeral. Now that would have been a media disaster. Second worst time would have been anytime during the two months before the election.

But in early June, we get it out of the way. Kerry loses a week, but has plenty of time to make it up. It didn't overshadow the reports from the 9/11 commission or the committee investigating Abu Ghraib, both of which are due out this summer. In short, nobody will be thinking about Reagan by the time the Democrats meet in Boston.

Something to do

This gathering is becoming the place to be:

Writers With Drinks spoken word variety shows, featuring a mixture of comedy, poetry, literature, erotica and other genres. This time out, we feature Emmy-winning television writer and music journalist David Mills, Hugo and Nebula-winning science fiction author Terry Bisson, slam champion poet Meliza Banales, Ferro-Grumley-award winning literary writer Trebor Healey, sex worker activist Scarlet Harlot and the comedy duo Carole Murphy and Mitzi Fitzsimmons.

Cover: $3 to $5 sliding scale, all proceeds to other.
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St. btw. Mission and Valencia (in SF)
When: Saturday, June 12, 7:30 PM SHARP to 9:30 PM SHARP, doors open at 7 PM

No picnic

Despite the fact that the Japanese economy is still in the toilet, young Americans and others are still finding their way there, as they have for the last 40 years or so, to teach English, strip, and perform other tasks only gaijin can do. This fellow is among the latest to discover the frustrating aspects of living in Japan. You know what -- everything he says is true. But he still sounds like a wanker, because there are an equal number of delightful things about the place. Besides, now that he's broken up with his girlfriend (or so he reports), I'll bet one of his female students has been just waiting to shag him.

When I was teaching English in Japan -- and it's been 15 years now -- I had a student who absolutely wanted to jump me. But I was leery of cultural and ethical considerations, and I hesitated. Finally the girl got tired of waiting and wrote me an absolutely classic kissoff note, which I still have. As for other gaijin, most of them tended to fuck each other. But some of the American men were in Japan in the first place because they couuldn't hack social relationships with other Westerners; they found Japanese girlfriends easily. I'm thinking of one guy in particular who joined the staff at our school. He was an utter pill, and balding to boot, but he hadn't been there three weeks before he bagged a gorgeous gym trainer.

So Mr. Evan Vella, stop bitching and start shagging. You'll probably even learn the language along the way.

Tea on books

After a rocky start, writer Michelle Tea -- one of the few people left alive who really deserves the epithet "Fabulous" -- returns to the online publication Beyong Chron with an entertaniing tour of the recent book industry confab in Chicago. You must read it.

Winds of change blowing?

The economy must genuinely be picking up. I got email from yet another recruiter. This one just picked my resume off Monster.com and sent me a job description. The job would actually be for one of my old employers, unfortunately one out in Pleasanton. It would figure for me to land yet another job in fucking Pleasanton.

Those nutty antipodeans

Been a while since a good story from Australia. How about the woman who became nationally known for insisting on her right to suicide to save herself from suffering from cancer -- and after she succeeded in killing herself, was found to not have cancer?

It's inappropriate and needs to be stopped

A television ad for the remake of "The Stepford Wives" includes an image resembling a topless Condoleeza Rice as well as a picture of Hilary Clinton that "morphs" into a grinning housewife bearing a sheet of cookies.

But what you really wanted were profiles of the performers at the center of the porn industry AIDS scare. The article includes this arresting sentence:

Her hair was Audrey Hepburn short, a cut she gave herself the night she set her boyfriend's bed on fire.

Is that a good first sentence of a novel, or what?

A strange, windy day

In Italy, they're agog over a Satanic rock-and-roll murder.

In San Francisco, vaguely anti-something protesters suggested chocolate, massage and barter as alternatives to the biotech industry. Connections unclear.

In England, "Children are confused about the dangers posed by using the internet with some believing it puts them at risk of catching HIV or being abducted by aliens."

In Oklahoma, a mountain lion that had wandered all the way down from South Dakota was struck and killed by a train. For those who have no idea of the geographic relationship between those two states, the story helpfully explains the cat travelled something like 700 miles. I guess if I went that far I'd be too tired to dodge a train too. The best part of the story is the laconic quotes of slack-jawed yokels, like "All I can relate it to is I've run over two bobcats on state highways and one on a county road."

End of an era (noting to do with Reagan either)

I got my tongue pierced on Dec. 30, 1993, and it's been pierced ever since, pleasing lovers, getting in the way of dentists, and taking co-workers aback for more than a decade. Today, while I was standing in line at the supermarket, it came out.

The jewelry of the tongue piercing is a post -- a steel bar about an inch and a half long -- with a little steel ball on either end. One of the balls screws off for removal. Today, it came off by itself. I took it out of my mouth, then removed the rest of the apparatus, which came out cleanly and painlessly. (A lot less painfully than it went in, I must say.) I stared at it in wonder for a minute, then put it in my pocket.

I wondered from time to time, over the last ten years, if and when I would ever take it out. Now that it's come out on its own, I think I'm liable to leave it out. Saves me the trouble of making the decision. I love it when that happens.

San Francisco, a world class city

Radicals protesting the U.S. presence in Iraq clashed yesterday in San Franicsco with 500 counter-demonstrators who supported Israel.

I was going to say this was an only-in-SF thing, but on second thought, I could see it happening in New York, too -- but only if the anti-war protests in New York are led by the same coalition of self-loathing post-Communist radicals, anarchists and haters.

Meanwhile, a different coalition of the unwilling is massing to demonstrate at an upcoming biotech conference. And let's not forget the parade to end all parades, the annual San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March and Celebration (whew) which brings to a climax a whole week of queer parties, festivals (including the annual Frameline film festival, formerly known as the Lesbian-Gay Film Festival.

I think I just heard the 20th century end

That was me driving down 24th St. in Noe Valley, honking my horn and yelling out the window "Reagan's dead!!" I went to the cat food store, walked in and announced "Reagan's dead!" The people inside gave nonplussed looks. "And on that note," I added, "I need a cat poop scooper."

By 3:00 p.m., two hours after the announcement, ABC TV already had a logo up, so I think they won that one. One good thing about the reverential television coverage: they show Reagan getting shot over and over. Second good thing: Relief from endless D-Day footage.

Classic amnesia case

This story is bizarrely similar to the premise of Nicole Krause's novel Man Walks Into a Room. It's from today's Desert Dispatch (Barstow, Calif.). Quoted in its entirety:

Thursday, June 3, 2004

Man found wandering in desert adjusting to life at home

By IAN MORRISON/Staff Writer

Michael Dennis Schroeder's memories have been a little more elusive than he expected and he's still dealing with a vicious headache, he said.

Schroeder may not remember much of anything, but at least he feels a sense of association to his wife and son, who scooped him up from Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, and took him home to Alabama last week, he said in a phone interview.

California Highway Patrol officers picked up Schroeder, 38, of Piedmont, Ala., on the evening of May 18 in Barstow wandering around dazed and apparently suffering from amnesia, on Fort Irwin Road.

He was identified by his wife a few days later after Barstow Sheriff's Deputies discovered an abandoned Chevrolet Cheyenne pickup truck in the Rainbow Basin area, east of Hinkley. Deputies ran the license plate and linked it to a missing person's report filed out of Piedmont, Ala.

Schroeder, who spent five days at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, still can't find any reason for his condition. Doctors ran a battery of tests on his body and mind, such as an MRI and a CAT scan, but found nothing wrong with him, he said.

His wife Sally, his sister-in-law, and his son, arrived at the hospital by car on May 23. They met with Schroeder and his doctor twice that day, to make sure he was in the right condition to travel. He was discharged the next day and taken home to Piedmont, Ala, he said.

He may have been back with his family but not much else has improved, he said.

He lost his job at Picture Perfect Lawncare and Maintenance because he could not recall how to do it. He also had to leave his truck in California because he could not pay the $700 to get it out of the police impound, he said.

"Unfortunately, the memories aren't doing so well either," Schroeder said.

CHP Officer Jeff Moran said Schroeder was severely sunburned and dehydrated when police found him. He also said Schroeder had no recollection of who he was or how he got there.

Schroeder said the last thing he can remember is hiking near a peak when he suddenly saw a mountain lion and fell down a steep slop. He said he woke up some time later without any belongings and walked around the desert for two days before he was found.

Since he's been home, he has spent a lot of time meeting old friends, relatives and co-workers. Sometimes he can remember flashes of incidents with people he meets but no memories of their relationships with him ever seem to return, he said.

"It's not exactly a fairy tale ending but I'm working on it," he said.

He also said doctors told him he has an artery in the back of his neck that looks considerably smaller than it should be, which may hold the answer to his problems.

"There's going to be lot more doctor's visits in the future," Schroeder said.

According to his wife, he was last seen three days before he was found on Fort Irwin Road. He left his job in Alabama that afternoon to go cash his paycheck and never returned. His truck was found 10 miles from where he was picked up, with a note pinned to the windshield that read "We have found God."

Piedmont is a small town in the northeast corner of Alabama, more than 2,000 miles from where Schroeder's pickup truck was found.

There's no such thing as bad publicity

This is quoted in its entirety from a piece of email that's being forwarded around. I don't see what they're so upset by, though -- you couldn't buy this kind of publicity. Indeed, this is the opposite of what people complain about when they say, "I couldn't get arrested in this town."

Many of you have probably heard that the artist Steve Kurtz was detained by the FBI and is now being investigated under the Homeland Security Act. He and the collective he is in, Critical Art Ensemble, were preparing a really cool installation for a show on interventionist art at MASS MOCA. The piece had lab equipment that allowed a visitor to bring any kind of food and have it tested for genetically modified organisms. Here is a description of the piece:

Free Range Grain is a live, performative action. CAE/da Costa/Shyu has constructed a portable, public lab to test foods for the more common genetic modifications. People bring us foods that they find suspect for whatever reason, and we test them over a 72-hour period to see if their suspicions are justified. While we will not be able to say conclusively that a given food is genetically modified (although we can offer strong probability as whether it is), we can test for conclusive negatives, and we can bring issues of food purity into the realm of public discourse.

You can get more info about this piece at website:
http://www.critical-art.net/biotech/free/index.html and more info about their work generally at http://www.critical-art.net.

While we were at MASS MOCA at the opening of the intervenionist show (minus the seized installation), two other members of Critical Art Ensemble were served with subpoenas for a grand jury. The subpoenas indicated that the FBI is moving forward with charging Steve of creating biological weapons for this art piece! There is more info about the case, at http://www.rtmark.com/CAEdefense/

These are very serious charges that will be hard to fight and could lead to a drawn out trial. Steve is going to need our help to stay out of jail! Since we were all there at MASS MOCA, we talked about a couple of things we can do immediately to help. The first is to bring as much publicity as possible to the case while contextualizing the work that Critical Art Ensemble has been doing in the field of biotechnology. A second it to work together to fundraise for legal fees -- unfortunately, criminal attorneys do not do pro bono work. The third, for the moment, is to join the listserve mentioned below to remain updated on actions being taken to support Steve and the collective.

You can also just make a donation online at: http://www.rtmark.com/CAEdefense/

websites:
critical art ensemble: http://www.critical-art.net
rtmark site about the case: http://www.rtmark.com/CAEdefense/
critical art ensemble listserve: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CAE_Defense

The dog ate her underwear

I recently made an offhand comment that the Bazima blog had become "irrelevant." She wrote me a few weeks later asking what I meant by that, and it was a little hard to say. I think I wrote that after her blog seemed to be turning into something mainly about slacker fashion and name dropping.

Then today Gawker linked to her latest entry, pronouncing it "relevant."

Okay, but I have no idea what she means when she refers to "guys who go commando." Let's see... There you go. It means wearing trousers without having first bothered to put on underwear. The expression reportedly was popularized in an episode of "Friends." In 1996.

Monks in the news

LA Times, 1 Jun 04: Followers of Thich Naht Hahn turn shooting range into monastery.

E-Commerce Times, 30 May 04: Wisconsin Cistercians cash in on refilled printer ink cartidges.

Six Buddhist monks who had never played football before suited up for a charity game in Scotland.

'Partial-birth abortion' ban declared unconstitutional

A U.S. District Court judge today declared the ban on "partial-birth abortions" unconstitutional, with an appeal to the liberal 9th Circuit guaranteed. PDF of the judge's order.