Monday, January 31, 2005

Just when I thought I was out... they pulled me back in!

Here's today's highlight from the Publishers Marketplace "Deals" column:

Twenty-three year old Meosha Coleman's first two novels SECRET SOCIETY and DIARY OF A MISTRESS, gritty urban stories of women who have made it out of the ghetto, but whose past keeps yanking them back, to Cherise Davis at Touchstone Fireside for six-figures, at auction, by Liza Dawson of Liza Dawson Associates (world).

Go Meosha. I wonder if she is from a gritty urban ghetto and, despite her "six figure" deal, will get yanked back to it.

The loneliness of the Hiltons

The Chronicle's Leah Garchick -- not your mother's gossip columnist, she has a keen sense of the absurd, especially when it comes to celebrities -- went to last weekend's SF Ballet gala. Her column today is priceless. She opens with one of the funniest images I've ever read in a newspaper, set in a department store fitting room:

On the first floor of Saks on Wednesday afternoon, where women bent over like Diego Rivera farmworkers at harvest time bore the weight of garment bags stuffed with ball gowns...

Then she goes on to discuss one Paris Hilton, with whom she sat at table:

Paris Hilton, who had told Ellen DeGeneres on TV that she was working to change her image, was demure, soft, shimmering, dewy-skinned, malleable, amiable, a pink-and-white fairy princess. Or perhaps a lox.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Safe!

My glorious buddy Martha Baer's new book Safe: The Race to Protect Ourselves in a Newly Dangerous World has events coming up:

Three upcoming events mark the publication of SAFE: THE RACE TO PROTECT OURSELVES IN A NEWLY DANGEROUS WORLD, by Martha Baer, Evan Ratliff, Oliver Morton, and Katrina Heron:

"[Safe is] a fascinating study of how our future security is being protected behind the scenes, by those who view technologies as complex systems with long-range implications for both good and ill."-- Booklist

Feb. 2, 2005, 12:30 pm
   Panel Discussion
   Stacey's
   581 Market Street @ 2nd Street
   http://www.staceys.com/

Feb. 7, 2005, 6:00 pm
   Reception, hosted by Orville Schell
   UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
   North Gate Hall, Hearst Avenue @ Euclid Avenue
   http://journalism.berkeley.edu
7:00 pm
   Panel discussion, hosted by Michael Nacht
   UC Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy
   Hearst Avenue @ Leroy
   http://gspp.berkeley.edu/

Feb. 8, 2005, 6:30 pm
Panel discussion, with Safe authors, as well as William P. Crowell, former
   Deputy Director of the National Security Agency and Dan Prieto,
   Research Director of the Homeland Security Partnership Initiative
   at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
The Commonwealth Club
   Carnegie Mellon West campus, Building 23, Moffett Field,
   Mountain View
   For reservations, go to www.commonwealthclub.org or
   call 1-800-847-7730


Saturday, January 29, 2005

Hersh on Bush

Holy cow, you've got to read this: We've Been Taken Over by a Cult by New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh. Hersh recently made waves writing about U.S. plans to attack Iran; he's going farther, as he hints in that speech.

One of the ways -- one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say something about how fragile our democracy is.

The Mark Pritchard that's here

Several years ago when I created a personal website for the first time, I included on my about page a section listing several other Mark Pritchards I'd found when doing ego-driven searches on my own name. One of the more colorful Mark Pritchards I listed early on was an Australian snake wrangler whose exhibition of his skills had been photographed and put on line. When I updated the page a couple of years ago, I found those pictures had unfortunately vanished, as these things tend to do; but I found another Australian Mark Pritchard who was the leader of an esoteric sect that teaches, among other things, astral travel and that the leader is an incarnation of a demonic being. It's all a little hard to follow, but if you go to that link you'll get the gist.

(Random thought -- is "gist" derived from "geist" meaning "spirit," as in "zeitgeist"?) No, it turns out to be from the Old French giste, meaning abode: "used in a proverb, F., c'est là que gît le lièvre, it is there that the hare lies, i. e., that is the point, the difficulty.")

Recently, in the sect's website, somebody posted my bio page with its link to their Mark Pritchard, aka Demon Beelzebub. Then someone commented: "It's unfortunate that this particular 'Mark Pritchard' has a rather negative impression of what Belzebuub has created and given to the world." Why, yes, I do have a negative impression, but being called an "esoteric sect" is getting off easy compared to what I could have called them after browsing their site.

Friday, January 28, 2005

Changing stripes

In a letter to the editor of a small-town newspaper in California (link courtesy Long Story Short Pier), a nice church lady has second thoughts:

As a couple of other letters pointed out, I now see that in some ways Jesus Himself was not very like a modern conservative and that has me thinking. I also see that all who are religious have equal rights and no religion can be held above the others, whether in school or anywhere else.

Well said, Ms. Miller. Jesus was "not very like a modern conservative." Amen to that.

Look busy

Yesterday everybody had to stay at work til 6:30 because there was some VIP around, and the CEO thought he might take the person through the office just to prove people actually work here, and he wanted people to stay at their desks and work. Then it started raining on the way home, and I didn't get home til 7:30. I immediately jumped on the treadmill and did 4.5 miles. Really wore out my ankles.

It rained all evening and was still raining pretty hard after midnight when I was going to bed. So I was surprised when I got up and the streets were dry. But during morning prayer -- Sara is back from the east coast -- it started raining again, so I had another rainy drive back down to Redwood City. I should have taken the train, except that I didn't bring any lunch. If I take the train and don't bring lunch, I'm SOL -- I have to order something to be delivered, which is expensive and takes forever. The only time I tried it, I started ordering something at noon and it wasn't delivered until way after two.

Another thing I did last night was run across the online edition of the Daily Texan, the student newspaper I used to write for. It has been redesigned, but the huge staff box on page 4, listing every single person who worked on that day's paper, right down to the Associate Entertainment Editor -- my job -- is the same. I noticed that the formerly ubiquitous ads for foreign films being shown on campus are gone. When I was at U.T. thirty years ago (!!) you could count on as many as 12 films being shown on campus on a Friday night. For a couple bucks you could see the 70s best of Wenders, Herzog, Antonioni, Wertmueller, Godard and many others. Four-year-old Hollywood films were shown at the Student Union. Gone are those days.

Just in: 'I'm powerful enough,' Bush says

In an interview published today, Bush said he thought he had enough power.

In a discussion about the powers of the presidency, Mr. Bush differed from comments recently by Vice President Dick Cheney that one of the administration's goals was to restore power to the executive branch.

He said he had not heard Mr. Cheney's comments and did not know what he was referring to, but said he thought the powers of the presidency were "adequate" when he came into office in 2001.

"I can't think of any examples where I said, 'Gosh, I wish I had more power,' " Mr. Bush said. "I felt like I had plenty to do the job."

Rats, I thought he was taking his enormous mandate seriously.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Fortunately, in her last book, she said comparisons of anything else to prostitution were specious. 'Marriage is not prostitution,' she said. 'Prostitution is prostitution'

Michelle Tea has a piece on the In These Times website on shilling for a cigarette company. What's this about a "boyfriend?"

Dept. of No such thing as bad publicity

You thought the Eastwood-Swank film "Million Dollar Baby" was about boxing? Guess again. Seems the nubile heroine becomes a quadraplegic in the third act -- hey, I guess that makes the title ironic! -- and begs the Eastwood character to disconnect the respirator and let her die -- so he does. Now there's increasing controversy over this right-to-life theme -- just in time for Oscar season. Let the swarming begin!

Turn on, drop out

To understand this story, you need to know that "traveller" is Australian for "slacker tourist-backpacker who would never want to be known as a tourist." Traveller took control when Thai boat ride ended in tragedy. So what happend is that a bunch of stoned "travellers" were coming back from a "large rave party on the island of Pha Ngan," overloaded a speedboat, which turned over, and several drowned.

Gosh, a "large rave party on the island of Pha Ngan." What the fuck is this, another planet? The 20th century? Get real, you fucking slackers!

Bush does the math

A reporter asked Bush about the statements of Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) that Condi Rice was essentially a big liar. Quickly subtracting 1 from 100, Bush replied, "There are 99 senators other than that person." I guess you're on the president's shit list if he won't even say your name.

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

Eager to seize on even the suggest of fractiousness or weakness on the right, Salon suggests right-wing pundits are "on the defensive" about not taking bribes from the Bush administration. Yeah, I'll bet they're all real concerned about their credibility, which is so high in the first place.

Another example of left-coast hand-rubbing (you know, the kind of hand-rubbing that people do in cartoons when they're plotting something), based on the false assumption that these pundits' vast audience gives a shit about their credibility or independence. Clue: it's only educated, self-doubting leftists who worry about such things as credibility and journalistic independence; right-wingers stopped caring years ago. How else could people like Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rise to the top like so much greasy waste?

But not all that glitters is gold. The light reflecting off that sludge sometimes looks pretty -- ooh, a rainbow! Not a gay one either! Looked at from any other angle, it's crap. And someday, people's perspectives will change.

I was listening last night to the BBC, which is broadcast on a local NPR station from midnight to 5 a.m.; I become drowsy listening to those nice British accents. One report was from some devastated third-world country, and whether it was Sri Lanka or Iraq doesn't matter. A perky British lass posed this question to some woman, a widow who was inexplicably not suicidally depressed: What are your hopes and dreams for your country?"

I don't remember what the woman answered -- something fairly reasonable and not too out-of-reach, probably containing the word "rebuilding." But I was still focused on the question. What if someone asked me about my "hopes and dreams" for my country? I realized that I would have a less hopeful outlook than even that devastated refugee. I lay there in the dark as the report went on, wracking my brain, trying to come up with an optimistic but realistic view of what my country would look like in five, ten or twenty-five years.

The pictures I was getting weren't pretty -- Hyper-consumerism on the Japanese-cum-Chinese scale. Coastal cities being swamped by global warming. Species extinction. Sprawl paving over open space. The death of American unions. Increasing censorship, surveillance and crypto-fascist laws. A progressive "movement" being diminished to nothing more than nostalgia for the New Deal or the post-Sixties.

When the Nixon administration starts to look like the good old days (here's just one example), you know you're in trouble. Wasn't everything supposed to just keep getting better? What the fuck happened to the genuine idealism of the 60s and 70s?

Forget it, Jake. It's Houston

In Houston, the mayor thinks Jenna Jameson's autobiography How to Make Love Like a Porn Star is so dangerous he's ordering libraries to lock it up. A library spokesperson said the action would not take effect immediately because all 20 copies the library owns were checked out, and there was a long waiting list.

Gee, I think I'll send the mayor my books. Maybe he can get me some free publicity, too.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

More chaos

Disasters aren't always caused by nature or by terrorists. Sometimes you just have some crazy bastard leaving his SUV on a rail crossing. Unfortunately, the allegedly suicidal man not only failed to kill himself but killed 10 people and injured 200.

See, this is why the Golden Gate Bridge people shouldn't be so upset that suicidal people use the bridge as a portal to the hereafter. Because jumping off the bridge is about as no-muss no-fuss as you can kill yourself. Most people who jump off the bridge don't even stop their cars in traffic -- they politely park in the parking lot, walk to mid-span, then leap. Compared to the Glendale train wreck, I'd say that's preferable.

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Dept. of Zeitgeist

From these deals reported on Publisher's Marketplace, grok the zeitgeist:

Amanda Trimble's debut novel SINGLETINI, about a sassy, single girl in Chicago whose bubbly life gets a strong shot of craziness when she finds herself playing matchmaker between martinis as a professional wingwoman, a job that quickly threatens to take over her life and forces her to take a closer look at how cupid has affected her and her friends, to Shana Drehs at Three Rivers Press, in a nice deal, by Jenny Bent at Trident Media Group (NA).

Escort and sex educator Veronica Monet's SEX SECRETS OF ESCORTS: What Men Really Want, including the promise of the "sexiest secret of all - one that men, all men, find deliciously irresistible," to Paul Dinas at Alpha Books, in a nice deal, by Bob Diforio at D4EO Literary Agency (world).

Fortune Magazine Writer and author of Black Power Inc. Cora Daniels' GHETTONATION, about how Black "ghettones" has become a hip cultural norm though it demeans women, celebrates some of the worst African American stereotypes and contributes to civil unrest, to Clarence Haynes and Janet Hill at Doubleday, in a very nice deal, by Nicholas Roman Lewis (NA).

THE WHITNEY CHRONICLES author Judy Baer's inspirational chick lit NORAH'S ARK, featuring a pet store owner who finds herself falling for an animal-adverse cop, to Joan Marlow Golan at Steeple Hill, in a nice deal, for six books, by Karen Solem at Spencerhill Associates (world).

Update: A reader suggested I be more clear about what I think these books have in common -- what zeitgeist do they embody? It's that they're all about reflecting consumer society's fascination with itself-as-stereotype -- the stereotype of the daffy young single girl, of the "ghetto" rap artist, of the notion that hookers are in possession of sexual secrets unknown to civilians. They're all about reveling in, or revealing, these stereotypes.

What else are most reality shows about? The stereotype of the plucky good-looking youth who's willing to do just about anything to succeed -- however that's defined in a particular show, whether it's eat worms, get plastic surgery, or camp on a beach for two months. This stereotype that youth and good looks basically grant you immunity from being a loser or a fool, that you can do anything, no matter how outrageous, as long as you're 24 years old and gorgeous. We love that one.

Monday, January 24, 2005

Something to do

Here's yet another event being instigated by Michelle Tea, burning bright:

this Saturday, January 29th

an excellent show at the Edinburgh Castle pub
at 8:00pm *** $5.00-50.00 sliding scale
& all money goes to benefit the BENT queer writing institute in Seattle

starring:
Justin Chin ~ author of Harmless Medicine, Mongrel & Bite Hard
Jennifer Blowdryer ~ author of White Trash Debutante
Ruebi Freyja ~ a snarling waitress with a sweet-hearted banjo
PK McBee ~ founder of K'Vetch Pittsburgh, now telling poignant &
revved-up queer tales in your town
KM Soehnlein ~ author of the Lambda-winning novel The World of Normal Boys
Aysha Cromenees ~ spectacular spoken word to make your brain swoon
from Seattle, Katinka Kraft and Amy Mahoney of the performance poetry
gang Or-a-Trix; also from Seattle, Lane Stroud!
hosted by Michelle Tea, who will crack jokes.

here's something about the amazing BENT institute & why you should give
them your dollars:

The Bent Writing Institute is a non-profit organization founded in 2000
by Tara Hardy (featured in the anthology Without A Net),
to promote written and spoken-word in Queer Communities. Bent began out
of Tara's living room, and has since grown into a school with over 60
students -- some of whom have attended classes for all 4 years. Because
it strives to reach people who have had a lack of access to traditional
education & can not afford to pay much for school, Bent relies heavily
on fundraising events such as these.

The word 'love' thrown around loosely in a manner Orwell might recognize

In the continuing Orwelliation (Orwellization?) of the English language, the Christian right group Focus on the Family advertised an "ex-gay" group on Houston billboards in a campaign named "Love Won Out."

And Clarence Thomas is a fucking genius.

I'm just using the adjective 'jaw-dropping' way too much lately

Wonkette posted this, but I find that taking things out of context to three or four degrees just makes them even more ironic, you know?

So without further ado, grok this jaw-dropping story from Time: Justice Scalia: The Charm Offensive, which states that the two leading candidates for Supreme Court Chief Justice are Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, and that Bush would like to appoint Thomas just so he (Bush) can go down in history as having appointed the first black Chief Justice.

Isn't that pretty much like saying the two leading candidates for Dark Lord of the Universe are Darth Vader and Jar Jar Binks, and the Emperor favors the latter because he's more cuddly? Or put it this way: The two leading candidates for Best U.S. City are San Francisco and Indianapolis, and Indianapolis is the favorite because San Francisco scares the shit out of most of the rest of the country?

Scalia is satanic. But Thomas is a bigger joke than Bush himself -- he makes George Bush look like Churchill, which is probably another reason Bush likes him. And if Thomas became Chief Justice, he'd just run things the way Scalia wanted him to anyway, because Scalia has had him buffaloed from day one. So why not just bring it it out into the open and nominate Scalia?

Forgotten in all this is the fact that Rehnquist is still alive and kicking, and in fact just administered the oath of office on a cloudy twenty-degree day. Having everybody eagerly plan for his replacement seems so ghoulish it almost makes you feel sorry for him. Almost.

Free to be you and me

Bloggers get themselves fired for blogging about work. That's why I'm so cute with my work-related references.

At least it gives her a name

Twelve percent of Americans believe that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. (Actually, Genesis never says what her name was.) God, by that logic the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Lorne Greene and Cleavon Little.

Breaking: Gilmore Girls not obscene

The FCC today denied 36 indecency complaints filed by the Christian Right group Parents Television Council. Included were:

... multiple complaints about a November 2003 episode of "Gilmore Girls." In one scene, a character's grandfather reminisces about college pranks involving nudity. In another, two college students discuss an incident in which a male student who was nude spent the night in a dorm hallway.

A complaint over "The Simpsons" included a scene in which students carried picket signs with the phrases "What would Jesus glue?" and "Don't cut off my pianissimo."

Parents Television Council, eh? This led me to their website, where you can "File an FCC complaint," watch risque clips of TV shows they don't like (they have a whole "campaign" against an ABC sitcom called "Life As We Know It") and read flat-footed descriptions of every broadcast TV show, such as The Simpsons:

This long-running animated production focuses on the daily life of a suburban family living in the fictional town of Springfield. Despite its early timeslot and animated format, The Simpsons is not recommended for younger viewers. The show ridicules entrepreneurs, religion, educators, and law enforcement officials, and has occasionally incorporated foul language into its dialogue. The cartoon sends a mixed message on parenthood: while the father is a bumbling idiot, the mother is a loving and patient wife and role model.

They mock entrepreneuers! I guess that means Mr. Burns. Nothing there about gay characters such as Smithers or Homer's co-workers Lenny and Karl, but that might change this season.

Dept. of How things work

In an article on a website called Broadcasting and Cable -- evidently an industry newsletter -- a columnist reveals how Oprah Winfrey expects bribes from publishers (and presumably other vendors) if they want her to recommend their products, and along the way compares herself to Nelson Mandela (emphasis mine):

B&C: So when you shower your audience with your "Favorite Things," those are really truly your favorite things? But the people who make those things ...

Oprah: So help me God.

B&C: But the people who make those things, they do pay to be on your show, don't they?

Oprah: No!

B&C: No?

Oprah: No. They give you the products, that's how they pay. This is how it works: … All year long, if I see something or run across something or somebody else tells me about something, I keep a little running list of things that I like. ... People think that advertisers or these companies are approaching me and that they pay to have these things on. That is absolutely not the truth. It works in reverse.

B&C: And who would say no?

Oprah: I approach them, and let me tell you, there are a number of people, which I could tell you, which maybe I won't tell you, who turn me down. Like, for example, this year—I could not believe this—but my deal is only this: If I'm going to say it's my favorite thing because it is my favorite thing, all you have to do is give me 300 of them, okay? So this year, there was this book that somebody had given to me, a book called The Way We Live. It was a great coffee-table book, and it had pictures from all over the world of different homes and how people live in all these different homes. Do you know that we called the publisher and they said no? And they said no!

B&C: And did they say why?

Oprah: They said they didn't have that many books to give away for free, because I think the book itself is [expensive] if you buy it in the stores. Can you believe that? They did, and so you know what I said? "Well, it's not going to be my favorite thing no more!" But how dumb is that? That's pretty dumb. It's a book! How many books could you have sold? It's a beautiful book.

B&C: But you could afford it. You could afford all of your favorite things in the whole world. Which leads to the next point. You have this constant message of self-empowerment, but I've heard people say, "Well, it's easy for Oprah to say, hey, if you want to be something, go be something or do something or lose weight or whatever, because Oprah is very rich." The regular people watching this show really can't change their lives as easily as you say you can. You must hear this.

Oprah: I know what you're trying to say. I don't buy it. I don't buy that for one moment, nor has that been my personal experience. My personal experience has been—for example, when I go around the country and I do these "Live Your Best Life" seminars—that people understand on a real core level that I get it and they get me. It's either you feel it or you don't. So what I know is that all celebritydom, all fame, all attention, all adoration only says this is possible. So the fact that I admire Nelson Mandela's strength and courage and wisdom and his humility simply means it is possible to be strong and to be courageous and to be wise and to also be humble.

I do get it. She's saying that ostentatious display of wealth and acts of oblesse oblige is empowering for the people who witness it, that it somehow inspires them to become more like Oprah. But if the vendor won't go along, "it's not going to be my favorite thing no more!"

Strength, courage, wisdom, humility, Nelson Mandela? -- no, she sounds more like a sixth grader.

Dept. of No such thing as bad publicity

Two unknown British rap artists quickly became much more known after they hoaxed the Sun tabloid into announcing them as Eminem's latest proteges.

"There are so many obstacles for a guy from Scunthorpe making it all the way that we devised the publicity stunt to establish ourselves as artists. We decided to moon the Sun, the largest newspaper in the world."

Harvey said it took just 20 days to devise the scam which centred on a phoney website complete with doctored pictures of 50 Cent. "[We] scraped together a couple of photos of 50 Cent, put our name on his hat, took videotape of our journey living with prostitutes and sold them the story," he added. "The response from record labels has been crazy."



Saturday, January 22, 2005

Sittin' around

I took Sara and Martha to the airport this morning -- they faced a long delay on their trip to Boston on account of the snow -- followed up with some errands, and then came home. With Cris on the disabled list with a case of a bad cough, I just hung around with her all afternoon. The kitchen is lovely on a sunny winter afternoon. She shopped online for a book stand sturdy enough to hold her law books; but when she called me over to look at her screen, it was to look at pictures of cats someone had posted.

Fr. John says:

Used to be that a group of socialists, the activists and the idealists, were utopian. If we simply ended poverty and got rid of our nuclear weapons, and just worked with people in the third world rather than side with any anti-Soviet thug, the world would be a much better place. True enough. Still, lots of cold warriors really thought that communism was truly appealing, and truly frightening.

Then the Soviet Union imploded.

Now its the neo-cons who are utopians. They insist that american capitalism and free elections can be imposed with military action. Even most idealists on the left didn't believe this. Bush is now, in my view, a Utopian -- admirable perhaps, but dangerous.

Friday, January 21, 2005

With God on our side

When the collection plate was passed to Dick Cheney at this morning's national prayer service, cameras were ready.

Why I can't stand magical realism

Here's the first paragraph of Salon's review of Haruki Murakami's new novel:

For all the fantastic and farcical happenings in Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore -- amnesia that renders the one who suffers it capable of talking with cats; an evil spirit building a flute of stolen souls, both human and animal; another spirit, this one a benevolent pimp, disguised as Colonel Sanders; a woman whose longing for the lost love of her youth gives rise to a ghost of her younger self; fish and leeches raining from the sky; two Japanese soldiers from World War II standing guard in a forest at the gates to the afterlife -- it's the most ordinary things that attain poetry and weight.

After reading that, I just feel like giving up. What an imagination, I could never dream up something like that.

And yet I like Murakami's work. The books themselves are not intimidating. It's just that description.

Further into the 21st Century

This blog wins the prize for the most superficial, celebrity-and-crap-obsessed website I've ever seen. Up to now.

Methane Rain Forms Rivers on Titan, a probe found. Pee-yew! Does that mean if we manage to hit it with a bottle rocket, the whole damn thing will blow? Isn't it kind of dangerous?

Reasons to hope

Bazima quit smoking. Martha has a new book, "Safe". The creator of Spongebob Squarepants went on the Today Show this morning and asserted that Spongebob is not gay (this is a reason to hope just because it's so laughable). [Update, 27 Jan 05: Dobson retreated, saying his Spongebob attack was -- what else? -- taken out of context.] Min Jung Kim's in love. And Michael Powell is quitting the FCC.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

American patchwork

Drove into work this morning listening to Bush's second inaugural address. On NPR, they are saying the speech had a "spiritual tone." I guess so, if you equate spirituality with exclusivensss and conformity.

These two remarkable paragraphs jumped out at me. Each sentence seems to contradict the preceeding one, but to Bush, it spells "freedom":

In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

In Americas ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So liberty means not only "dignity" but also "Homeland Security." A "stake in the future" means "schools with high standards" and "an ownership society." "Making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny" -- in other words, radical individualism -- means a society that is "more just and equal." "Tolerance toward others" is uttered in the same breath as "communities with standards."

More than anything else, this sounds not like a picture of a just and liberal society as a description of cable television programming. Something for everyone, and the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

Lots of priests

I do morning prayer every weekday; it's usually just me and Sara* and maybe one or two other people. But twice a year there's an event in the space, and this week it's the annual Liturgy Conference in which 20 priests and liturgists from around the country learn to shake up their liturgy the way St. G does it. So instead of 2 people there are 20 singing, which is kind of nice. This morning I sang the gospel and had some fun with it. I discovered a while ago that the tune of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a perfect chant tone. Dunno how many of the clergy caught the joke.

* That's Sara on the left in the top left photo.

Plumbing

At work this week, I've been preparing for the next release by redoing the templates for a couple of books in the docset. Last night I told Cris -- who last year finished her 13-year career as a technical writer as an acknowledged FrameMaker expert -- "I've been mucking around in the templates. Not just the Master Pages -- the Reference Pages." This is roughly equivalent to one space station astronaut saying to another, "I've been fooling around with the power system."

She shuddered. "Eehhh... the Reference Pages."

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Watch that last step

Officials at the Golden Gate Bridge are angry that a filmmaker who spent a year shooting the bridge ended up with footage of more than a dozen jumpers. They say he misled them about his intent, but nowhere does the article say that the filmmaker deliberately misled them. Maybe he just changed his conception of the film in the middle of the project.

Most ridiculous is the line at the end of the story where a bridge official frets "He could have taken pictures of the underside of the bridge!" Hey, two dozen tourist boats go under that bridge every day, and every one of those hundreds of tourists takes a picture of the underside of the bridge. So does everyone who visits Fort Point. Is he kidding?

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Another name taken

Ever since learning the term several years ago, I thought "Girlfriend Experience" would make a great title for a story. Listening to Pirate Cat Radio, I just found out there's now a band with that name.

I also just found out you can listen to Pirate Cat Radio on iTunes!

  1. Click on Radio Tuner
  2. Click Public
  3. Double-click Pirate Cat Radio! Yea!!

When good sites go bad

Searching for good websites on nonviolence, I came across www.gandhiking.com. Though the site, with its date of April 2000, is obviously abandoned, I looked over the first page.

Then I noticed something odd. In the middle of some sentences were weird links to what are clearly fetish sites. Take this sentence, for example:

Women of international stature such as Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of M.K. Gandhi, who has served in South Africa's Parliament for feet worship the past 27 years, Association for Global New Thought's president, Reverend Mary Manin Morrissey and its Executive Director Barbara Fields Bernstein (SNV project director), will be among the speakers.

How's that again? She served in Parliament for feet worship? Then I realized that someone had hijacked the site and inserted links like that one, which goes to www.feet-worship.com (I'll let you enter that in your own address bar if you really want to). But there are only a few such links on the page, a page which is quite long. It makes me think that the person, or program, that hijacked the web page is unusually subtle. After all, I browsed the page -- I didn't immediately notice the links and click away. Very strange.

Sort of makes me think I ought to put similar Giants caps unrelated links in some of my posts. It could be giant squid a sort of game to find the strange giant sequoia nonsequiturs and Giant City off-topic links among my typically sharp-focused and the Alton Giant scintillating commentary.

Oklahoma, where the wind is from people leaving as fast as they can

From The Revealer, this Boston Globe story about a plastic "spanking tool" and the woman whose campaign against it forced the manufacturer to pull it from the market. An Oklahoma auto mechanic turned out to be the man behind the rod. What I want to know is, is that really some cheap auto part the guy had lying around in bulk?

Monday, January 17, 2005

Merry and solemn

I just found this amazing Xmas post by Unami Tsunami. It also goes a way toward explaining what I was trying to explain yesterday, though it goes much farther and with much more courage -- why go to church.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Block that metaphor!

In this article about a civilian contractor's travails in Iraq and his unhappy return home, his wife comments:

"He brought the war home," Sylvia said. "His character changed. He is at the bottom of the barrel."

Added to that is the description of the burly truckers tying each other up so they could practice escaping. They also obsessed with videos of beheaded hostages, calculating it took "between seven and fifteen seconds" for a beheaded man to die.

One thing, then another

For the LLGM anniversary bash Saturday, I laid out the program (about seven hours of work) and did PR (about 16 hours of work). No sooner had yesterday's anniversary forums, church service and banquet ended -- the Mayor, by the way, didn't show, but sent assemblyman and good egg Mark Leno as a backup -- another thing came along for me to work on. This morning in church the music director announced he was leaving in a month -- to move to Hollywood and take up film scoring, no less. I immediately hopped on this and volunteered to lead the search effort for the next music director, because I have an agenda. I want the choir to do more a cappella early music and chant, and this way I can influence the selection of someone who is inclined to do that. I also want someone less aloof than the guy who's quitting.

Those of you who know me only as a pornographer or former Queer Nation activist are probably shitting right now at the notion that I go to church. But I ask you: in San Francisco, what could be more transgressive? The number of people in this city who do s/m, consume pornography and go to sex clubs far outweighs the number of people who go to church. Besides, my church is pretty politically correct, which by the way was what that whole anniversary bash was about. We're fighting against injustice toward queer people and all that. And where else would I get to sing?

Afterwards, however, I just came home and puttered around. At the end of the afternoon, just as the sun was preparing to set, I took a walk up and around the peak of Bernal Heights. If I still had a working digital camera, I would have taken pictures, since it's beautiful up there, the grass getting long and green. I even saw a couple of poppies in a protected place, and the poppies don't really get going until late February or early March. All in all it was a gorgeous day, and I'm glad I got at least a bit of a walk. Since getting sick in New York a few weeks ago I've gotten very little exercise.

The house is still a mess, so I guess I ought to putter some more. Cris's classes start again tomorrow and she's going to need the space to study.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

The dangerous iPod

Man, I'm getting tired of those fucking "ear buds"! Whoever designed them must have some very strange ears. Who do they fit? Two percent of humans?

I think I'm going with these Sony earphones, which are 1/3 the cost of the top-of-the-line mid-line Etymotic ER-6i Isolator Earphones. (I don't even want to know how much top-of-the-line earphones cost.)

The other dangerous thing about the iPod, other than the money you spend on it, is the earwig risk. That's the risk of getting a song stuck in your head, and this week it's the B-52's The Deadbeat Club. I had never really listened to it before, and I liked it so I hit replay. Now I can't get it out of my head. Good thing it's a good song.

Friday, January 14, 2005

Exhibitionist Christians

Didn't Jesus say something about not making a spectacle of yourself praying?

Lightning bolt

Alexis visited San Francisco last weekend, and seemingly managed to see a lot, despite the torrential rain. Also in that entry of hers is a tangent about the author Chuck Palahniuk and how he mentioned me in a short list of authors he likes. Holy crap! Some compliment! Not that Alexis's own endorsement is worth any less. Thanks!!

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Queer, liberal Christians party down

Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries, a national organization working for full participation of LGBT people in the church, will celebrate its 15th anniversary January 15, 2005 with several events.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will speak at the day's highlight, a gala banquet at the Cathedral Hill Hotel, as he received the organization's Voice of Distinction Award.

The day begins at 12:30 p.m. at St. Francis Lutheran Church, 152 Church St. in San Francisco, with a series of forums and panels commemorating the 15-year history of Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries (LLGM). Beginning with the January, 1990, ordinations of Ruth Frost, Jeff Johnson and Phyllis Zillhart to the ministry, LLGM has worked to change church policy that requires only gay people to remain celibate if they want to be pastors. Heterosexual people do not have the same requirement.

Responding to the ordinations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the national church body, put two San Francisco congregations on trial for participating in the ordinations and calling the three newly-minted ministers as pastors. St. Francis Lutheran Church and First United Lutheran Church were suspended in July 1990 and were expelled from the ELCA five years later.

Both churches survive today, and all three ministers are still working as clergy in the Lutheran church. Several other lesbian and gay pastors have been ordained since 1990.

Following the forums, there will be a press conference at 2:30 p.m. with lesbian and gay Lutheran clergy from around the country, as well as representatives from a number of pro-gay Lutheran groups.

At 3:30 p.m. there will be a celebratory worship service in the sanctuary of St. Francis Lutheran Church.

At 6:30 p.m. the anniversary banquet gets under way at the Cathedral Hill Hotel on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. Mayor Newsom is expected to speak around 8:15 p.m.

For more information on these events, call St. Francis Lutheran Church at (415) 621-2635.

On the media

I've been working most of the day doing PR for LGBT Lutherans, in response to a long-awaited (but expected-little-of) report on sexuality by a church task force. All my press releases are here if you're interested.

Something to see!

This event rates an exclamation mark. Michelle Tea writes:

The lush and sexy talent of Laurenn McCubbin will be on display this friday night at the fancy-schmancy Varnish Gallery, located at 77 Natoma Street in SF. Laurenn is the genius who did all the art for the Rent Girl book, and this show debuts some brand new work! Totally exciting. We'll even drag out the ol' Rent Girl dog & pony show. Or, dog & hooker. Dyke and pony. Oh whatever, you get it. But really it's all about Laurenn's giant, man-eating works of art.

I posted about Rent Girl a few days ago. Terrific book.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

The year in review

Alexis: "Take the first sentence from the first entry of every month in 2004, then post them in order." Okay:

January: "Heavy rain on New Year's Day, for the first time in my 24-year experience."

February: "Janet Jackson got a little too much national exposure Sunday."

March: "A poll taken the third week of Feburary has Bush and Kerry tied in Florida."

April: "Really strange and interesting episode of "The West Wing" last night -- it started off thanking fictitious 'underwriters,' as if we were watching PBS and not NBC."

May: "I spent the day at a one-day Zen retreat."

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

July: "Performer Bill Cosby, an inveterate champion of education, has been ranting lately about the cultural and ethical condition of many Black Americans, and today he went off again, saying, 'For me there is a time ... when we have to turn the mirror around,' he said."

August: "Summer drizzle arrived last week, has lasted five straight days."

September: "Here's a story from the small-town newspaper of Barstow, Calif., about a local Army unit that's preparing to ship out to Iraq."

October: "I spent nearly all day down at my new job as a tech writer."

November: "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)."

December: "A few good things today: The Supreme Court of South Africa legalized marriage between same-sex people."

Okay, that wasn't as much fun as it could have been.

On air

Having got my iPod for Xmas, I duly noted the year's first meme: podcasting. It's just like that subscription thing for PDAs, where you subscribed to feeds and your PDA downlaoded new content as it was posted. Here you download a client, iPodder (or iPodderX for Macs with the Panther OS), then subscribe to feeds of your choice. Then when you plug your iPod in to your computer, the feeds automatically download into it. The only challenge is then finding them on your iPod -- I found they were findable under "Playlists."

So this morning on the way to work I listened to Coverville, a half-hour show in which a guy plays nothing but covers of records so that, to use this morning's example, I heard Tom Jones doing a cover of "Gimme Shelter" -- not bad, either.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Little Shiva

I love this picture, not so much the color and exoticism as the wry expression on the child's face -- "Yes, stupid American, I will endure your silly photo taking, but only because I am waiting for my sister and am too polite to kick you in the shin."

Memories of a girl

From time to time, I hear from someone who knew Stephanie Kulick, whose memorial page I host. A friend from college days wrote:

I first met her when we were both in the cast of One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest at Boston College. She played the character of Ruckley, a catatonic on the ward, whose only task was to yell, "Fuck'm all" at random times. She also stood in the form of Christ, nailed to a cross during these scenes.

We hung out a bit, and I remember visiting her in her freshman dorm room, and it was full of all sorts of kitsch, like you said her apartment was. I just remember her being very intense, but also extremely gentle -- it seems like yesterday. She wrote and performed in a small play with our contemporary theater about a girl who constantly washed herself and couldn't leave her apartment. She seemed a bit trapped at the ultra-conservative Boston College.

That's my girl, always ready to yell "Fuck 'em all!!"

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Just shoot me

Seduced by a glowing review of the season premiere of a television series, I spent an hour watching -- or rather cringing from -- the premier of '24' on the Fox network. The review was right in that the show had high production values and very high quality direction. But the characters are all two-dimensional, and the dialogue was so third rate. So I was sitting there, my heart pounding -- because the direction and editing were done well, and I was manipulated just like anybody else would be -- while continually striking my forehead at the painful dialogue and plot twists. If it's any sign of how good or successful the program was, as soon as the ending of the episode was given away, two minutes before it ended, I turned the show off. What kind of thriller gives away the ending ahead of time?

And if you're some network researcher trolling blogs for opinions, take note: I zapped the commercials, and while they were on, I watched the stupid Elvis movie on AMC.

There's really something wrong with this country if entertainment is supposed to be getting brought to a sickening edge of tension and fear at the thought of Turkish (read Muslim) terrorists assassinating the Secretary of Defense. If terrorists assassinated Rumsfield, part of me would fucking cheer. Fuck you, Rumsfield! -- And that's the mood I'm in after watching something like that. The hell with it.

Email of the week

I just got a message that began:

Hi. I typed "wildest dreams" in my web browser and for some reason your page came up.

As well it should.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Farewell to the Six monster

Today is a big milestone. No, not because my boss talked to me yesterday asking me when did I want to convert to full time, and when did I think we should start hiring more writers and trainers whom I would then manage; not because this morning I shipped off another rev of the CD I maintain for a queer Lutheran organization; not because it is once again raining like crazy.

No, today is a big day because today we are taking Six over to our friend Jenny's in Oakland, there to live and get the hell out of our hair.

I shouldn't be cavalier. Cris has really grown to love the cat. And I've warmed to him, too. And though his behavior improved drastically in the 11 months we had him, we never solved the multiple-cat problem, meaning half the house was eternally closed to our own two cats, who were much the worse for wear phsychologically. Not to mention the tipping-point effect on my allergies.

Things'll be so much simpler not having half the house closed off, with us going in and out of doors like a Marx Brothers routine. We'll be able to clean more than one room of the house at a time; we'll be able to actually reach the ringing phone before it goes to voice mail; I'll gain ten minutes in the morning that were spent feeding and petting an extra cat. It's Cris who really got to like him. I won't miss him that much.

Slouching towards Gilead

Echidne posts this excellent piece about a right-wing flamer who managed to get himself elected to the Virginia legislature so he could introduce a bill making it a crime to miscarry.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Random notes

After a long hiatus over the holidays, Shannon seems to be calling it quits for her blog. Too bad -- it was usually really funny. I met S. in the novel writing group I'm still a part of, though she dropped out a few months later, saying she wanted to turn her story ideas into graphic novels instead of literary novels.

Speaking of which, I just finished Michelle Tea's Rent Girl. Though marred by a number of brain-dead typos, the book is a funny, fascinating and visually arresting tour of a young dyke's career as a prostitute. The illustrations by Laurenn McCubbin are fabulous -- funny, beautiful, alluring and honest. At the same time, the pictures make you want to be a babydyke lesbian prostitute, they make it look like the next best thing to having super powers.

Badger recently commented, on reading another memoir by another dyke local hero, "I'm all like, 'okay, you're so cool. I'll never be that dirtycool. I'm with ya. Now what? Let's get moving.'" I have that reaction to so many self-revelatory memoirs by writers whose outsider status -- and how much more of an outsider could you be than a formerly drug-addicted, gender-smearing dyke bike messenger-cum-rock star? -- makes them seem all the more cool to people like me who feel their lives are too staid.

Not that I haven't had my moments. But at age 48 I do harbor regrets that I didn't push things farther, that along the way I so often took the safe choice and the easy way out. The fact that a lot of people did die along the way, of AIDS and/or drug addiction, doesn't change the fact that taking risks and making the unexpected choice is almost always a good idea in the end. You know what I told myself, in those moments of decision? My internal censor had two different messages. One was, I didn't deserve what was, essentially, the pursuit of happiness; I was unconvinced of that "inalienable right" as far as my own pursuit was concerned. The other was even more subtle and corrosive: that I shouldn't sabotage myself, that others I saw who were failing were "self-sabotaging" their careers and that I wouldn't make that mistake -- when, in fact, not choosing to take the risk was the act of self-sabotage.

GMail to go

Again, I have six, count 'em, six GMail invites to spread around. If you would like to get on GMail, let me know.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Get to know your iPod

The iPod is not just a portable music player. It is a money hole.

Already I have shelled out for a case for the thing, lest I drop it and render it speechless. And I'm considering getting some expensive earpieces, because, of course, those circular "earbuds" keep falling out of my ears.

This brings to mind one of my favorite stories from 2004: You can buy iTunes tracks of nothing but silence. The tracks, of various lengths, are all available for the same 99 cent price. The story adds value by linking to a related story about a copyright battle over John Cage's famous silent piece 4'33", which I saw performed in 1992 by the Berkeley Symphony and its impish conductor Kent Nagano. How does a symphony perform this silent piece -- in three movements, no less? With great attention and respect.

Monk sells temple for tsunami

Vancouver Herald Sun, Jan 6, 2005

Vancouver, Canada -- A Buddhist monk in Canada stunned his congregation by putting his temple up for sale, in a bid to raise half a million dollars for victims of the Asian tsunami tragedy.

'Life is very precious and the loss of life and property during this tragedy of unparalleled proportions is so enormous,' said abbot Thich Nguyen Thao.

'This is the least I could do to provide some comfort to the victims who are suffering unbearably. Their need is urgent and greater than our own,' said the abbot as he touted the temple in a Vancouver suburb.

Buddhists who meet at the building, many of whom fled Vietnam in boats as refugees in the late 1970s, were at first stunned by the monk's announcement - but are now on side.

Making love to the camera

In an article on the mainstreaming of porn, a reporter interviewed a mainstream photographer who did a book of portraits of porn stars. The article features this memorable exchange:

What's the difference between taking a photograph of the president’s wife and Jenna Jameson?

"Jenna Jameson is better in front of the camera," says Greenfield-Sanders.

And speaking of sex books, one of the publishers of Cleis Press is making an appearrance later this month:

LESBIAN SEX: KEEPING IT HOT FOR THE LONG HAUL
An evening for lesbian, bisexual and queer women

With Felice Newman, author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate
Guide for All of Us, all-new, revised and expanded second edition

You *can* have great partnered sex. Whether you have one partner or
several, you can have ongoing, intimate sexual connections that expand
and deepen over time. Learn how to create sexual relationships that
really excite and enliven you and maintain sexual energy and heat over
the long haul. Felice Newman offers a new perspective on lesbian
relationships -- and backs it up with the experiences of the many
women who filled out her lengthy and explicit questionnaires. Join
Felice Newman, author of The Whole Lesbian Sex Book, for a stimulating
evening!

Wednesday, January 19th @ 7:00 PM
CHANGE MAKERS
Books Gifts & Events for Women
6536 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley
(Corner of 66th & Telegraph, between Ashby & Alcatraz)
510.655.2405

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Tortoises, desert cranks win another round

In a major victory for desert creatures, including some friends of mine struggling against noisy, destructive off-road vehicles -- a federal judge ruled yesterday the BLM can ban off-road vehicles from desert lands. Major props to Philip Klasky, who has been fighting to protect the desert for decades, as well as our friends Perry and Christine.

It qualifies in other ways, too

Today President Bush visited very, very close to my old hometown, Edwardsville, Illinois. Even though Edwardsville is the county seat, though, it is smaller than rival Collinsville, and that's where Bush went to speak in favor of tort reform as a pro-business group listed the county as "the nation's leading judicial hellhole". If you look at the first words of Bush's speech, you'll see he referred to Collinsville's most famous landmark: a large water tower in the shape of a giant bottle of ketchup. We drove by that thing all the time. It's nice to see it's still there.

I am not a number; I am a free man!

I never heard, but it seems we have a shortage of integers in our society. First they "recycle" phone numbers -- bad enough, but understandable. Now we find out they also recycle bank account numbers, including that of one hapless fellow who found someone had charged $700 to his account.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

You'd think they'd rather forget about it

The government will ship Bush's Texas Air National Guard plane to Washington "for display at the inauguration."

Monday, January 03, 2005

Trunk show

I love this story about elephants being used in the tsunami cleanup. Just a little cross-species co-operation. In return, the elephants get a percentage of royalties from the TV movie about the operation.

Just kidding about that last part. But it raises the question -- assuming the English Royal Family gets a percentage from all the souvenir doodads featuring their images, do they call these funds "royalties"?

Another interesting evening

The readings are coming fast and furious now, and the first week of January is an excellent time to have a reading. We did our first-ever benefit reading for Frighten the Horses on the first Friday in January, and we literally had to turn people away. The turned-away people then lined up outside the windows peering in. What energy! (That was in 1990, fifteen solid years ago, not recently. Oh Lord, won't you stage your second coming soon, and stop time? Not before I publish at least my first novel, though.)

THE

NOT-YET-DEAD POETS'
SOCIETY
Presents
JANUARY FEATURED READER

LIZ HENRY

Poet, translator, editor, publisher-- Liz Henry is a woman with an ear for
language; an affinity for the written word. She weaves her word magic with
sharp insight and humor, making intriguing connections. Liz has been
publishingprint and on-line magazines since 1986. She puts out small books
and a translation magazine under the name Tollbooth Press.

Liz's current projects include translating poems by Emilia Bernal, Delmira
Agustini and Elvira Hernandez, and developing a book of short essays on
poetics. Her writing has appeared in Two Lines, Other Magazine, Cipactli,
Transfer, Literary Mama, Caesura, Convergence, Strange Horizons and
Fantastic Metropolis.

FOLLOWED BY OPEN MIKE

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 5, 2005
7 p.m.- 9 p.m.

Upstairs at the charming Mexican restaurant
MARGARITAS
2098 Broadway, Redwood City [ map it ]
Free parking. Come early and enjoy dinner.
Happy hour half price drinks, snacks (4:00-6:00pm).

THE NOT-YET-DEAD-POETS' SOCIETY Meets First Wednesday of Each Month
ALL POETS AND POETRY LOVERS WELCOME

This is your wake-up call

Early this morning I was enjoying a dream that was getting progressively more sexual when I heard the garbagemen coming around the block and realized we hadn't put the garbage out. I sprang out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants, and tore downstairs in time to greet them with the cans. Then, since it was already 6:20 and almost time to wake up anyway -- though I had set my alarm for 7:00 to be lazy -- I just got into the shower. Thus the day begins.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Another fine message

For the second time in ten days, I received a piece of fan mail about my story "Lessons in Submission." This time, a guy wants to make an audio version of the piece. What fun.

Well, back to work tomorrow; I wish I had another day, because I really do have other things to do. (I guess a hundred and fifty million people are thinking that thought at this moment. And another thirty million students are thinking the same thing about school.)

Perhaps the best part of today -- aside from the fan mail -- was sitting on the couch as the rain streamed down and watching Muhammad Ali fight his matches in Zaire in 1974 and The Phillippines in 1975. There was a hilarious moment during the preliminaries to the latter fight. A huge golden trophy, three feet tall, stands in the middle of the boxing ring, and the announcer is saying it goes to the winner, and that it was donated by His Excellency... At that moment, Ali gets up from his corner, playing the fool, and picks up the trophy and walks with it back to his corner as if there is no point in having the actual boxing match because he is the greatest. The crowd's uproarious laughter completely drowns out the announcer finishing the sentence: "... President Ferdinand Marcos." So much for Marcos's big ego moment.

Of course, it all would have been just a bit more cozy if we had heat. We haven't had heat since Dec. 22. Would have gotten it fixed last week, but we were out of town. Finally tomorrow we'll get it repaired.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Some unrelated notes

All the coverage of the East Asian tsunami has made something clear to me that I hadn't really understood before: thousands of Westerners go to bitterly impoverished third world countries for fun. Not even to see what is unique or informative about those places, but simply to go to the beach. All the photographs have made it obvious that, in order to get to this beach -- and I'll take it on faith that it's a lovely beach, absolutely splendid -- one must walk past squalid shacks crammed with people living in poverty, poverty which is indirectly caused by those westerners' lavish livestyles. Aren't they embarrassed? Obviously not, since even now, tourists staying in unaffected hotels tramp right through devastated areas to sunbathe at those very same beaches -- and indeed, why stop now? For some people, embarassment is simply impossible. Those are the sort of people who become most successful in the world.

After the events and avalanche of news coverage of Sep. 11, 2001, I felt that things had been a little overdone. Remember the way people were bleating "Nothing will ever be the same!" Geez, I thought, it was pretty severe, but let's face it, what happened is some planes were hijacked and some buildings fell down; fewer than 3000 people died. The tsunami, now that's a real catastrophe. To its credit, CNN is using the same Day Six tactic of showing a montage of heart-rending photographs backed by self-conscious pseudo-classical music, the title of which must be First Came The Tragedy, Now Comes The Montage, And Finally The Healing.

At home, we have developed a system where Six gets the run of most of the house during the daylight hours, while the other two cats -- the ones who really live here -- get the run of the basement and the garden. Then in the evening, Six gets confined to the living room, and the other cats get the kitchen, the office, and the bathroom (where they like drinking from the faucet). Today Six made the most of his opportunity, getting maximum petting and playtime. As evening approached and I had to turn Milagrito away from the door to the house proper for the seventh time, I asked Cris if we could put Six away in the living room a little early because Milagrito was getting short shrift. She agreed, and we welcomed Milagrito into the kitchen. Half an hour later he fell asleep there for what is now a three-hour nap. Lot of fun he's having.

My sickness gave me the opportunity to do absolutely nothing -- to lie flat, without even feeling like I ought to read something; to fall asleep whenever I wanted, to ask to be brought ice cubes from the hotel's ice machine. It was awfully nice to do absolutely nothing, at least once I'd stopped throwing up every hour. Perhaps the time I was sick can be counted as part of my vacation after all.

After an hour of reading backlogged New Yorker magazines, I wanted nothing more than to go to New York to see some theater. Wait -- that's just what we did. But we always see Broadway. We'll have to be more adventurous.

I am so glad I don't have to go back to work tomorrow, that tomorrow is Sunday. In fact, I wish I had one more day after that. But back to work it shall be, after a morning spent at previously scheduled doctor and dentist appointments.

When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads

We're back in SF, I'm recovering nicely from my bout de souffle, and the really great part of being in New York all week was, we missed a week of rain. Nevertheless, for those of us who missed it, there will be another week of rain.

This is coming up:

the RADAR reading series

a showcase of underground and emerging writers and performers.
thursday, january 6th
at the san francisco public library
100 larkin street
downstairs in the latino reading room
6pm sharp * totally free * all ages

featuring

from los angeles TRINIE DALTON, whose book of short stories, Wide Eyed, is
forthcoming from Akashic Book’s Little House on the Bowery series, and who
is currently co-editing an art book for McSweeney’s based on a collection of
confiscated notes acquired during her time as a high school English teacher.

IAN PHILIPS, who, since 1989, has edited over 60 Damron Travel Guides; who,
with husband and fellow thought-criminal Greg Wharton, edits edgy queer
anthologies for Suspect Thoughts Press, including the recent I Do/I Don't:
Queers on Marriage and aids in the publication of of new queer literature
generally (including forthcoming books by Ali Liebegott, Justin Chin and
Stephen Beachy); and who is the author of two collections of literotica,
the Lambda Award-winning See Dick Deconstruct, and Satyriasis.

CAROL QUEEN, who got a doctorate in sexuality so she could impart more
realistic detail to her smut; who writes sex sex information and cultural
commentary; who is the author of The Leather Daddy and the Femme, Real
Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture and Exhibitionism for
the Shy, and has also edited several volumes; who won a Firecracker
Alternative Book Award, a Lambda Book Award, has been published in Best
American Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, and many
more anthologies; who is the founding director of the Center for Sex and
Culture and the staff sexologist at Good Vibrations.

BUCKY SINISTER, author of Whiskey and Robots (Gorsky Press, 2004) and King
of the Roadkills (Manic D Press, 1995); who lives in San Francisco's Mission
District and is often seen at Muddy Waters playing his Gameboy Advance SP
(Platinum Edition) and drinking iced coffee. Bucky was once so frequently
spotted in video stores that he contracted a bad case of Renter's Shame and
switched to Netflix. When he walks by 20th and Mission, he quietly mourns the
closing of Magic Donuts.

readings followed by an extensive q & a with you, the audience.
ask a question, get a homemade cookie.
cookies will be chocolate caddilacs, recipe courtesy of paul reidinger.
happy new year.

p.s.--for those of you who enjoy poetry, pizza and philanthropy, come over to
Escape from New York Pizza (Bush & Montgomery) Friday, January 7th. Five
dollars gets you all the pizza, salad and soda you can eat (plus an ear full
of storytelling and whatnot from michelle tea), and all the money goes to
Dimensions, a health clinic for low-income LGBTQ youth. 7:30pm.