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.