I went hiking
Here's a few photos (not mine) from the place I went hiking, Tennessee Valley and Coyote Ridge in the Marin Headlands, part of the Golden Gate Nat'l Rec. Area. A huge, amazingly beautiful park, right across the bridge from the city. There were still lots of wildflowers; I saw poppies, lupine, daisies, johnny jump-ups, indian paintbrush, columbine, blue eyed grass -- no iris though. And lots of red-winged blackbirds.
Bloggers I read
Author Alex Chee rejects Microsoft and eavesdrops on train passengers. Girl Friday links to a Borders sale coupon and a new Twin Cities blog. Feminarian swats off fearmongers. Marilyn Jaye Lewis, a good friend, sends me brithday greetings and links to my books -- which you really ought to buy, because the last royalty statement I got from my publisher had a negative conclusion -- as in minus dollars in royalties.
Badger is walking and working. The life of Flea echoes that of Scarlett O'Hara. Katia Noyes went to a Eileen Miles reading. (Katia is also a terrific writer.) And Min Jung nails two of my big limitations: I'm too available, and short.
Finally, a new find: Jane Underwood (is that really her name?), a fellow Bernal Heights writer and "mistress" of a local Writing Salon.
Katia Noyes,Violet Blue,Feminary,Marilyn Jaye Lewis,Alex Chee,Girl Friday,Cleis Press,Badgerbag,Katia Noyes,Min Jung Kim,Jane Underwood,Writing Salon,writing classes, Eileen Miles,
It's Bad Behavior Friday™!
Jayson Blair, the disgraced NYT writer who "reported" from places he hadn't been on people he'd never talked to, is still managing to parlay his notoriety and self-proclaimed victim status into new work. From MediaBistro's newsletter comes this report of his latest gig: a regular column in bp, the magazine for people with bipolar disorder. I think the best part of that is that there is such a magazine. And speaking of disgraced journalists, "Jeff Gannon" wonders why he hasn't received an invite to some big journo bash. Aw, no party invite! And just a couple months ago he had carte blanche at the White House. How the mighty have fallen! It's a tragedy fit for the stage!
Speaking of prostitutes, Deja Vu, a self-proclaimed sex worker, tells a wild tale of sex and drugs.
And remember those guys who announced a few days ago that they had dug up a treasure chest full of moldy American paper money? Oopsy -- they were arrested today and police now say the money was stolen.
Jayson Blair, sex and drugs, sex,drugs,prostitutes,Jeff Gannon,stolen money
This is fabulous: some Indian entrepreneurs want to build the world's first Hindu theme park, including "great moments in Hindu mythology through hi-tech rides, an animated mythological museum, a 'temple city,' food courts and a sound and light show." One of the biggest investors: the widow of jazz god John Coltrane.
Speaking of theme parks, I sumbled across this fascinating article about an abandoned NSA base. Astronomers who bought the surplus property discovered miles of state-of-the-art electronic cabling, a mysterious veiled satellite dish, and more.
They shall not stop to rest here
The city of Houston, horrid armpit that it is, thinks it has figured out a way to keep homeless people out of the city's libraries: people with "offensive odor" are now banned.
Birthday!
I'm 49 today. I was thinking this morning of the amount of strangeness and ordinariness in my life, and how the strange parts are and have always been the best.
I scanned in a few snapshots for historical purposes.
A little early Bad Behavior
I was going to make this post part of Bad Behavior Friday™ but just couldn't wait.
You know a politician's in trouble when Time magazine starts piling on with pictures of you smoking Cuban cigars and quoting a speech you gave against them. (Courtesy Wonkette.)
Some of us publish racy pictures of ourselves on our blogs; others shouldn't. I'll leave it to you to decide which of those categories I fall into. Rachel K-B also linked to Violet Blue, another person who commits erotica, and the very, very difficult job she has gathering submissions for "Best Women's Erotica." Among the details: she "bought buttercream frosting this morning and wore it behind my ears all day." And:
We do crazy things and get off like screaming tattooed banshees doing them. We get hard-ons. We suck, we lick, we conquer, we cut and bleed, we cuddle. Our erotica is edgy, yes, but it is joyful. You can wank to it. You want it to happen to you.
I will never complain about the weather again
Not after seeing these photos of a sandstorm bearing down on a U.S. base in Iraq.
Christians left and right
Anne Lamott has a new column on Salon today, if you like that kind of thing. I must say -- she tries very hard to play a tough hand, preaching to the anti-choir, as it were. She is a much more successful essayist than she ever has been a novelist, and I sort of admire her for that -- accepting success in a realm slightly different than the one she shot for. If we're counting, I've made tons more money as a technical writer in the last 6 months than I ever have writing my own stuff -- perhaps more than I ever will, though I still hope to sell my first novel.
Speaking of Christians and liberals, cartoonist Ted Rall sort of debates a Christian who wrote him. His stance is much more typical of liberal-progressives' take on Christianity -- Jesus is admired in the abstract for what he taught, but the modern Christian right is so objectionable they spoil it for any thinking person.
Most people I know profess either that stance or condemn all religion out of hand. Each of them has reasons for doing so, and it would be presumptuous of me not to take those reasons seriously or to discount them because I, like Lamott, believe otherwise. I do think that by avoiding church, people deprive themselves of several non-spiritual things, much less spiritual ones: a great tradition of music, and the Bible as literature, to name two. I don't see how you can call yourself a truly literate person and not know, for example, the difference between Noah and Moses (I once saw a poem in which the writer had Noah parting the Red Sea; maybe she thought Noah was the water guy) or understand the origin of words and phrases like "the burning bush," epiphany, the "tumbling down" walls of Jericho, or the "four horsemen." Especially in this era where the Christian right is using apocalyptic fearmongering to influence American foreign policy and actively work to destabilize the Middle East in the hopes of speeding the apocalypse, every anti-rightist should understand what underlies this movement.
In this context, the recent, horrid attempt by NBC to profit from this hysteria through its recent Revelations miniseries is the worst kind of exploitation.
Christians and progressives,Christian Zionists,NBC's Revelations,Anne Lamott,Ted Rall
Springing up
Went to last night's ballgame, an energetic affair that saw one of the slowest guys on the team get two doubles and a triple. When he came up to bat the fourth time, with only a home run needed for a complete cycle, instead of swinging for the fences he laid down a sacrifice bunt.
During the game I decided to walk around a little, and went and stood on the walkway behind the left field bleachers. A guy struck up a conversation; it turned out he was from Minneapolis. "This is great," he said, gesturing around him. "Our park, the Metrodome -- what a dump."
"Someone was just telling me that," I said.
Take your little hand in mine
Dallas Morning News layout artist to Pres.: You're so gay. (Courtesy Metafilter.)
Here's another personal display of affection from the Saudi leader's visit -- but contrast it with the chilly atmosphere of Bush and Cheney. Cheney's all like "don't hold my hand, Mr. President," and Bush is putting up a brave face. Reminds me of those pix of Charles and Diana they used to publish, in which the royals looked like they were ready to sock each other. Continuing the theme, Wonkette Greg points out a recent instance where Tom DeLay also seems to spurn the President.
Before his prince arrived, Bush gudgingly answered a few questions:
Q What do you expect to get out of this meeting, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: Do you like the footpath?
Q Let's talk about the meeting.
THE PRESIDENT: This is an important relationship -- personal relationship with the Crown Prince is important. I look forward to talking with him about a variety of subjects. I'm glad you're here. Thank you for coming. I hope you're enjoying this day.
Q How much progress can you make on oil prices?
THE PRESIDENT: I'll be glad to answer those questions at a later time.
I guess he was a little distracted. Probably thinking "Let's see, will he kiss me in front of the cameras? Must stiff-arm him, like with Khadafy. Why didn't Dick want to hold hands with me? Who will I ask to the prom? I hate my life!!"
More publishing insider talk
Probably only interesting if you're a writer or in publishing, an interview by Rachel Kramer Bussel of an editor at one of Simon & Schuster's imprints. The interview is a behind a password wall, but I subscribe to the service and if you're a writer who really wants to read it, I'll send it to you. (Mediabistro can think of it as me promoting their service). Here are a couple of interesting excerpts:
[I receive] 60 manuscripts a month and glance at everything that comes in. I look at everything that comes in from an agent but that doesn't mean I'll read it from beginning to end. Sometimes I'll know from the cover letter that the project isn't something I'd be interested in. Sometimes, if it's something that I don't think is right for me but I'm a little less certain, I'll ask my assistant, who has a really good eye. ... The writing has to be top notch: strong voice, clear, so I don't find myself skipping ahead because I'm bored, nor going back a page or two because I've lost the thread of what the author is trying to say. If the writer is able to keep up with me, if we're reading at the same pace as the manuscript, that's always a very good sign. Sometimes I'll see something and it's good -- it's just not good enough, and that usually comes down to the writing. The story has to really stand out and has to be something I feel there's an audience for, even if it's a story that's been told before. In some way or another, it has to have a new slant on it.
And now for the good news
A recent study showed that "only" 25,300 jobs in high tech were lost in 2004 compared with 333,000 in 2003. That's sort of like those reports that say the murder rate went down because all the gang-bangers are either in prison or dead. Stories about offshoring in Bangalore are starting to include sections on Americans who are now working there.
[ttags: tech jobs, offshoring, Bangalore, unemployment ]
Worst product idea of the month
This was reported before, but the NY Daily News published a piece today on the trend toward larger print for mass market paperbacks. Supposedly this is to make it easier for "aging baby boomers" to read the tomes. They're actually calling it Specially Designed for Comfortable Reading.
Whatever genius came up with this idea doesn't understand anything about the baby boomer generation, which is terrified of getting older and will reject anything that demonstrates that they are. Imagine the horror of being seen reading one of these large-print books -- could anything else tag you more surely as a senior citizen? Maybe 75-year-olds will buy them, but my generation will stay away from them like the plague. On the other hand, who do you think are buying all those iPods? Let me make it clearer: who do you think can afford to buy all those iPods? Teenagers? Not bloody likely. Tags: books, baby boomers
Speechless
For a few weeks I've included a link, over there in my list of links, to a girl I found through Tony Pierce's well-known blog -- someone named Bunny whom I simply link to as "an almost unbelieveably cute chick." I don't know what this woman does or who she is; as far as I know she's just a friend of this Tony blogger guy whom I also don't know. I thought she was worth linking to just because she is really cute. If she has written a fantastic thesis on gluons or something, I'll be glad to report it, but it's worth just looking at her pictures.
On an even higher plane is the very justifiably well-known Xeni Jardin, a contributor to the Top Ten blog BoingBoing and perhaps the epitome of a nerd's dreamgirl. The photo accompanying this post demonstrates that she is one of the few people, aside from actual Star Trek cast members, who can wear what looks like a superhero suit of some sort and actually look good in it. Of course, she is well-known primarily because she is a terrific writer, a good reporter, and an incisive analyst of modern tech news and trends. (If that's not enough, according to her bio she "has studied over a dozen languages including Maohi (Tahitian), Quiché and Kakchikel Maya (Guatemala), Nahuatl (an indigenous language of Mexico), Mandarin Chinese, and Yoruba (Nigeria).") But it sure doesn't hurt that she is stunningly attractive.
Last night I mentioned that I went to the birthday party of a local blogger without actually speaking to anyone or registering my presence in any way (unless it was creepy to people that I just sat at the bar afraid to move for half an hour). Shyness is rooted in a belief, very difficult to shake once it gets rooted, that other people are actually of some higher order than oneself and if spoken to would crush you with a withering look -- not that that hasn't actually happened to me at times in my life. But I can testify that two of the above-mentioned three women have actually corresponded with me on email in a manner both friendly and respectful, so there's no reason for me to put them on a pedestal. And yet some people are so good looking that it's almost impossible not to see them as somehow set apart. See, that's what I really want to know. I am aware that very good-looking people actually hate being put on a pedestal like that. But it's also obvious that their looks constantly attract dickwads who hit on them, and that this attention is also unwanted. (And I'm no better -- if I see someone really gorgeous, anything I think to say to them sounds to me like a pickup line. The only thing that distinguishes me from the dickwads is that I am so self-conscious that I say nothing at all.)
I suppose this is the real reason why clubs have VIP seating areas -- so all the really attractive people can sit together and not have to deal with this issue.
Their wonderful wasteland
In today's NYT, the first positive story I've ever seen about the Clear Lake area of suburban Houston, where I went to high school. Much is made of a couple of bars where NASA people hang out, but truth be told, the sailing angle is much more dominant in the minds of area residents, most of whom work in downtown Houston or anyplace besides NASA or one of its contractors. What the story doesn't talk about is the fact that the infamous Andrea Yates killings happened right there, as well as another mass muder that remains unsolved, plus the tabloid-ready Clara Harris case in which a woman intentionally ran down her husband as he was coming out of a hotel where he was seeing another woman. Yes, it's all sweetness and light in the Clear Lake area!
Mr. Death-of-the-Party
I went to a bar for the birthday party of a local bloggeratrix. But I didn't know anybody, and I was too shy to speak to anyone. I don't even know the birthday girl well enough to say hello. I just sat on a bar stool and had a drink and then left.
I had some pix developed, so I posted them on Buzznet.
Ballgame, dream
Last night's ballgame was a bit of a disappointment -- the Giants, unable to put together any kind of offense, lost in a rather punchless 6-1 -- but the seats weren't. We were about 8 rows off the field, right behind the visitors' on-deck circle. It certainly made for a new level of alertness, since there was a chance of a foul tip killing you. But nothing came our way. I did bring my mitt to the game for the first time ever, though, strictly as a self-defense measure. Cris also pointed out that it made an excellent hot dog tray.
That night I had several dreams, culminating in a nice dream where I had somehow come into possession of a signed, first edition copy of The Thurber Carnival. I was holding the book and crying with happiness because the book was such a treasure. Came at the end of a long dream, the rest of which I can't remember. Bit silly, I guess.
I've spent my Saturday as usual, either doing errands, exercising or puttering around. Tonight I might go see the latest Woody Allen movie, "Melinda and Melinda." He's been such a disappointment lately. What a horrible case of self-destructiveness.
Actual help
I could find little to make fun of in this SF Chronicle piece on a monthly one-stop service center for the homeless and the needy in San Francisco. There are a number of impressive details, but what struck me was the image (in words) of SF Mayor Gavin Newsom washing beggars' feet -- and the fact that he apparently allowed no pictures of same to be taken. I found no arguments on BeyondChron, usually an anti-Newsom organ, or on the anarchist-friendly SF Indymedia.org site. Supervisor Chris Daly, whose aide is quoted in the story, is said to be critical of Newsom's policies on the homeless, and sure enough, I found several critical entries on Daly's blog. The most recent entry gives a lot of space to a speech by some guy whom I don't know and have never heard of, but who basically sounds like a two-bit demagogue. Whose feet has Daly washed lately?
The Chronicle's lionization of Newsom was tempered somewhat by another article about a study in which survey respondents said SF is going downhill.
It's Bad Behavior Friday™!
The NY Post reports the advent of "a bombshell exposé on 'American Idol,' reportedly exploring the relationship between the 'Idol' judges and the show's contestants."
The woman who said she found a human finger in a cup of Wendy's chili has been arrested in connection with the case, Las Vegas police said. Here's an updated story released later in the day. Coincidentally, the NY Times today published a story on the internal forensic investigation conducted by the fast food chain.
In the purgatorial armpit that is the Clear Lake Area, a local M.D. has had his licence yanked for using cocaine.
This is a few days old, but the recent description of bad behavior in the Cary Tennis column on Salon shouldn't be missed:
However, it has come to light recently that he is not who he has said he is. Now that he is in his mid-70s, we are finding out that he never attained the title he claimed at the company of his lifelong employment, never went to the schools he claims (MIT among them), and has many other issues. He was dishonorably discharged from the Army, but claims time in Korea and shrapnel injury. These are all lies. He is also a thief. He has made a habit of dining and dashing -- and shoplifting (including a lawnmower from Home Depot) -- and has nearly been caught a couple of times. He has a way of talking his way out of things, but has been 86'd along with my silently protesting mother from numerous restaurants in their hometown. I've also caught him in some minor fibs, such as calling me from one place and claiming to be at another. There are also indications that these are not new behaviors. His children from his previous marriage do not speak to him. My mother has been with him nearly 15 years and has suspected things -- she recently told me about what she has discovered, as well as the horrible nature of their marriage, which is loveless and verbally abusive.
Watch for more bad behavior as the day wears on.
Ratzinger begins charm offensive
Stories are appearing about how the feared former Inquisitor has suddenly become kind and gentle. Among the stories are these saying Ratzinger believes God has a sense of humor and is followed around by feral cats. Look soon for stories saying he's going on Sesame Street, has played crossing guard to a mother duck and her ducklings, and personally drove a Brazilian mother of nine children to get an abortion. Well, maybe not that last one.
Their hearts are in the right place
After some Winona (Minn.) High School students were disciplined for wearing buttons purchased at a production of "The Vagina Monologues," "more than 100 students have ordered T-shirts bearing 'I [heart] My Vagina' for girls and 'I Support Your Vagina' for boys."
Irrational exuberance
Courtesy Publishers Marketplace, this open letter to Oprah Winfrey in which over 100 authors beg the TV star to reinstate her monthly "book club," saying:
Fiction sales really began to plummet when the The Oprah Winfrey Book Club went off the air. When you stopped featuring contemporary authors on your program, Book Club members stopped buying new fiction, and this changed the face of American publishing.
The same part of me that thought, in the 1980s, that applying for grants was cheating, and kept me from pursing an MFA or going to Naropa in 1979 when I was ready to leave Austin, thinks that relying on some overblown TV personality to save "American publishing" is perfectly stupid.
How many years was Oprah's book club on the air? Seven. And what was the purported goal of those programs? To get people reading. So if "fiction sales really began to plummet when the The Oprah Winfrey Book Club went off the air," who's to blame? Obviously all those people buying books they saw on Oprah didn't read them because they were good books -- they read them because Oprah said so. And when Oprah stopped saying so, they all stopped.
You know, I don't want those readers. Instead of begging some TV personality with a slavish following to get her fans back on the bus and buy books, the authors' efforts would be better spent lobbying state legislatures to increase funding for education, so that schools will have enough money to staff school libraries and hire teachers who will inspire in students a life-long love of literature.
Here's the California Teachers Association: "School districts throughout the state are laying off teachers, eliminating counseling programs, closing libraries and cutting other vital student programs." In Massachusetts, "State agencies and municipalities in Massachusetts have been forced to try to do more with less. Public libraries are no exception. Cutbacks in state funding, decreased private funding, and competition from other municipal departments have taken a serious toll on our library system." In Ohio, "If lawmakers approve Gov. Bob Taft's proposed state budget that cuts $22 million to public libraries, critics say library patrons may find locked doors, outdated materials and smaller staffs. It's a situation public libraries across the nation are facing as local and state budgets remain squeezed by federal cuts, greater expenses in health care and education and less tax revenue."
This is a fucking national scandal, and these mid-list authors are worried about Oprah?!?
What about my favorite band?
Rachel Kramer Bussel has been rhapsodizing about The Reputation, so I went to iTunes and downloaded their latest album, To Force a Fate. And to tell you the truth, on first listen I wasn't that impressed. I think they sound a little like my favorite (now defunct) band, Letters to Cleo, though Cleo's lead songwriter-singer Kay Hanley is a more arresting songwriter and a more kick-ass singer. So here's a recommendation right back at you: Wholesale Meats and Fish, a ten-year-old album that totally rocks.
And I am totally into listening to my new favorite album, The Concretes (self-titled).
Going out with a bang
When an Alabama man got a "death warrant" from his doctor, he decided to "go out crazy." He and his sister got roaring drunk and had sex. (Link courtesy Obscure Store.)
His spoilsport wife called police, and then:
when they arrived, pointed them to a home in the 2300 block of Gurley Road on April 7 just after midnight. A deputy saw the siblings having intercourse in the wife's bedroom.
The deputy asked Howze to stop, get dressed and step outside, said Sgt. Randy Christian, spokesman for the sheriff's office. The deputy opened the door after a minute and saw they had not stopped, Christian said. ... The siblings told authorities they knew they were related and confirmed that they were having sex, Christian said, reading from the incident report. Both had been drinking. ...
Both denied having sex with each other before that night, and [the sister] said she had not been raped, Christian said.
The two face criminal charges that could net them ten years in prison. I guess the courts and prisons in Alabama are empty and need something to do. Oh -- no, actually the opposite is true: Alabama courts have sent more people to prison for drug possession than for the violent crimes of murder, manslaughter, rape and robbery combined.
More Lit events
Just a reminder of the regular schedule of events at Alameda's Spellbinding Tales bookstore:
Next Wednesday, April 27, is Mary Monroe, a best selling author and Oakland resident.
Friday, May 6: Christine Lyons, local photographer
Saturday, May 7: mystery author Jennifer Patrick
Saturday, May 14: Adam Rosenbaum, author of "How To Remember Not To Forget" with tips to help improve your memory
Wednesday, May 18: mystery author Cara Black
Saturday, May 21: Rafael Scott, author of "Lions Brood: The Story of Hannibal"
It's a nice independent store where they really make an effort, so especially if you live in the East Bay, go out there and give 'em some love, and tell 'em I sent you.
Jonathan Safran Foer interview
Courtesy The Millions, a lit blog, a lovely interview with the writer. If you like reading that kind of thing.
Fiction is the opposite of certainty. That was one of the reasons I wanted to write this book now. Because the way that the story of Sept. 11 was being told was with absolute certainty. That’s the American version. It is, "This is what happened. There is good. There is evil. There are victims and there are victimizers. There are terrorists and civilians. There is war and there is peace. There are Arabs and non-Arabs." And that is not what the world is. The world is this incredibly complicated mix of perspectives and vantages and life experiences. And when you write a book, you are able to concentrate on very, very specific things. Individuals doing very specific acts. Orhan Pamuk once said that every book, at the end of the day is about showing how similar people are to one another. And how different they are from one another. And you do that by showing how somebody pours coffee and drinks it. It’s not by speaking about diplomacy. It’s not by troop movements.
Yes, but journalists also write novels, many of them about war: Hemingway, Crane, and Greene come to mind.
Update: LA Weekly has another Foer interview, in which he starts sounding a little Eggerish, claiming to be the "most hated writer in America." Really, Jon, I think you've got a long way to go until you get to the level of Tom Wolfe.
Speaking of journalists, I happened to find this year-old interview with Gay Talese. You can read online the famous piece referenced in the interview, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold". And that led me to this stunning profile of Charlie Kaufman, a metawriter for our age.
Smelling a rat
If you're looking for a bomb-throwing liberal media cartoonist, look no further than the SF Chronicle's Don Asmussen, whose Bad Reporter strip crucifies the world. A few weeks ago he managed to combine the Terri Schaivo, chili finger and dying Pope stories into a single mind-boggling strip that had frantic pro-lifers trying to keep the finger alive on life support. today (go here for an archived strip) he mashes the election conclave, Bernard Law, the church sex abuse scandal, and Mark McGuire into a single priceless whole. Between him and Mark Morford (latest column: "14 Thoughts For The New Pope -- Condoms. Female priests. Stop gay bashing. And dammit, do something about Christian rock") there's plenty of evidence why San Francisco is, well, a special place. And why the alt-weeklies have such a hard time getting traction if the leading newspaper in town publishes stuff like this.
Advice to writers
It's a report on a workshop for journalists, but it's good advice for fiction writers, too: "Details convey authenticity. The sign of a lazy reporter: using such general observations as 'dapper dresser' and 'affluent suburb.' 'Chocolate' is better than brown. 'Armani' is better than 'expensive suit.'"
And: ... "Readers want to know what is this story about and why should I read it? Make them mad, sad, glad, scared. Before you write, make sure you answer the questions of what's the point? Why does it matter? What does it say about life?" (Link courtesy Romenesko.)
Is that a tricorder in your pocket, or...
Star Trek fans invade Civil War re-enactments:
"We thought about how meticulous those Civil War re-enactors are about having historically accurate uniforms and equipment," says OTB President Hugh Lessjo. "Then we thought, "Who else is so obsessive about having the right props and costumes?"
The answer: Star Trek fans.
"We have Star Trek fan clubs in our area, and Sunday's battle re-enactment already includes a 'what-if' scenario featuring a Confederate counterattack," says Lessjo. 'So we started thinking outside the box, and we thought, "Why not have Trekkies join the battle? They already have the equipment."
Link courtesy Metafilter. Insert your own play on "To boldly go," etc.
Then the trouble began.
First the Confederates said they wouldn't associate with "Trekkies," and the Star Trek fans said they preferred "Trekkers." The Confederates all laughed, and "that right there got things off on the wrong foot," Lessjo says.
Okay, it was an April Fool's Day column. Still pretty funny.
Speaking of Star Trek, a new series of Star Trek novels is being published. The first one comes out next month. The series will be set during the same timeframe as the original Star Trek TV series, the Kirk-Spock era.
Milagrito on the papal selection
Hey boss
im sending you this
from rome what a
clamor let me tell you
this has been
quite a week for cats
first the big fyoonreal
all those long skirts i had
a million places to hide
and the ropes swinging from
their vestaments made great toys
then a konklave but modern
i remember the way it usta be
all the cardnels flitting in an out
gabbing with reporters sekret
or no sekret
thats how we got j2p2
somebody sed well
lets run it up the pole and see
if anyone saloots
and we suffered the misunderstanding
for 25 years
no chance of that this time
the fix was in
i put my name forward
for a miracle oughtta have a chance
youd think but no
instead of a cat they
elected a rat
now i ask you
whats the use
im thinking of becoming a luthrun
luther had a cat i heard
and was known to drop a few
scraps of fish from the table
an luthruns dont have a pope
an if they did theyd pay no
attention
Happiness wins out
All right, despite the ascension of Ratzinger and his putative acolyte Coulter (colt-her?), I actually had a lovely day today. I wrote an entire 2400 word story -- which is short for me, but it worked out fine -- and sent it off to Rachel K-B. I went to the doctor and got my prescription for steroids refilled. (Really! I have a skin condition.) I went to the vet and got the cats' prescription refilled. (They have fleas.) I had a great burger at the diner on 19th and Taraval, the one that used to be a Zim's. You're an oldtimer around here if you remember Zim's. All day long, the perfect day continued -- sunny, clear, 68 degrees, low humidity, cool breeze -- in a word, paradise. And it's "close to the water."
Here's something to interest writers: several literary blogs are uniting to agree on a single book to puff each quarter. Worth a try -- and you'll note that books by the bloggers themselves or their friends are "not eligible." I'd hate to be one of those bloggers now, though -- they'll be deluged with books by unknown writers. Well, there are worse fates.
And you shouldn't miss this piece in this morning's NYT about a linguist and sci-fi geek who invents complete languages for video game characters. That's got to be the job of the year. That article would be on thousands of geek's bulletin boards tonight if they hadn't drooled all over it.
Ann Coulter has a complaint
She made the cover of Time Magazine, but she doesn't like how the picture came out. Poor thing!
Would somebody please tell her THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BAD PUBLICITY?! Even this blog entry will raise her Technorati score. What more does she want -- a fucking Pulitzer?
Wallow in it, fellow liberals! It's her and Ratzinger today! How did it happen that tomorrow is Hitler's birthday, not today??
Another reactionary motherfucker
Aw fuck, they picked Ratzinger. Cris: "He's just having his day. He waited for twenty years and now he's having his day. He'll be like that last guy before the last one, who lasted like three days." That would be nice.
I live in fucking paradise
These cool spring mornings are the best. Temperature at 7:00 a.m. is about 48, but when you open the blinds you see the golden sunlight bouncing off Bernal Heights, where the grass is still green deep into April. This is so the best time of year here.
Album of the month! And I don't care if I first heard the music on a TV commercial. The Concretes, s/t -- like the Velvet Underground if Nico sang all the songs. I guess it turns out that the album is almost a year old. Here's a BBC page with a short review and some samples.
I also picked up PJ Harvey's Uh Huh Her and am really enjoying it. I have a feeling it'll be high on the playlist too.
Oh Jeez, how long are we going to go through this? It just occurred to me that this whole Uber-story -- the death of J2P2, the drawn-out pre-funeral period, the endless explanations of what a "conclave" is, etc. etc. ad nauseum -- and hey, we're all learning a little Latin these days! -- is simply a new reality show. And like most all other reality shows, what appears to be spontaneous is scripted up the wazoo for maximum exposure. I WISH I WERE IN FIJI.
Morning of wondrous beginnings
I feel so charged this morning. I got an idea for a new story, thanks to Alexis, who is proving a helpful muse, and I'm blogging like a mozzerfucker. Just look at this NYT article from Sunday on maximalist novels which I like so much I'm archiving it on my site. (So click the second link if you run into a registration page. I rarely do this, because I think the Times has a right to control its content, but certain articles cry out to be read over and over, so if they don't like it they can tell me.)
If I start block-quoting it I'll never stop, so let me just say how thrilled and gratified I am by the endoresement of long, complex books. Not that I've ever read any of the novel cited, but I did write a 490-page novel that I've been afraid for years is "too long" -- and 490 pages is peanuts compared to the books cited.
The porn effect
Apropos of the recent death of Andrea Dworkin, Metafilter's symphonik linked to this October 2003 essay by Naomi Wolf in which she suggests that widespread availability of pornography makes men who use it so dissatisfied with actual women and their imperfections and so oriented toward fetish that they lose all ability to relate to others.
The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again erotically, face-to-face.
I find her essay both heterocentric and subtly biased by her generational status. She's analyzing the sexual habits and tastes of a younger generation, and that just won't work, because the younger generation has grown up with electronic media and isn't as fazed by it as my generation is. On the other hand, we might look at Japan, where pornography has long been mainstreamed (see my last post), and where thebirthrate is plummeting and many marriages are sexless. Or so it is reported.
Personally, I simply find it strange that young people use pornography so much. When I was in my first twenty years of adulthood, I took it more or less as a badge of honor that I didn't consume visual porn (photos and movies). At first I vaguely disapproved of it, but in general, I just thought that I didn't need it, having access to the real thing. Why should someone who has an active, energetic sex life need porn? Middle-aged people, now that's another issue.
Related is this speech by Watergate Journo Carl Bernstein (link courtesy Romenesko) in which he decries the coarsening of popular culture, referring to "grotesque values":
"For the first time in our history," he said, "the weird, the stupid, the coarse, the sensational and the untrue are becoming our cultural norm -- even our cultural ideal."
The 21st century marches onward
This is from a daily newsletter I receive from Publishers Marketplace called Publishers Lunch. If you're a writer or editor, it's worth subscribing to.
Publishers Follow TRAINMAN to New Model
Japan's Shinchosha has sold over 500,000 copies of TRAINMAN, a book of e-mails from a chat room in which a man's efforts to win a girl over were "encouraged, derided and ultimately celebrated," the LA Times reports. Spinoffs include multiple manga and a film version shooting this summer.
"It has also sent Japanese book publishers frantically surfing chat rooms looking for the next gold mine of electronic correspondence. TRAINMAN proved that the narrative threads of a chat line can be quickly and cheaply edited into book form, conveniently bypassing the need for the ego management that goes with nurturing writers."
The Times says Japanese publishers have created whole divisions searching chat rooms for good stories.
Those nutty Japanese! They've never worried much about age-of-consent laws. If that happened here, the "girl" would have turned out to be a 52-year-old sheriff's deputy from Maricopa County, and the man would be in jail.
Advice to ponder
I won't explain how I happened upon this blog entry in a Google search. Never mind that. He does have something funny to say:
I have always been a big proponant of introducing new sexual diversion while everyone involved is shit-faced drunk. There are three reasons for this:
- It improves your chances for success, however marginally
- Later, you have something to blame other than your own twisted psychology and weak moral fiber
- It doesn't hurt as much to get slapped when you're drunk
Yes, sometimes the truth hurts.
Perhaps this is the meaning of the name "Outback"
Among the dark thoughts that were running through my mind during a period of wakefulness last night was this post by Alex Chee, specifically:
I remember when I was a steak-house waiter back in NY, we had to check the bathroom regularly for men who might be in there dying. A grim patrol at best. The reason being, the management explained, is that the average man, after a few drinks, choking on his food, will not ask for help but go to the bathroom and try to resolve the issue alone, which he can't, and as a result, pass out and die.
The pathos of that stuck with me. I would probably be one of those guys -- well, not from choking, everyone knows about the Heimlich and all -- but from a heart attack. Not that there's anything wrong with my heart. But on the other hand, what do I know -- I'm going to be 49 in two weeks. I can just see myself having some horrible chest spasm and, instead of dramatically collapsing while choking out the words "The horror, the horror!" I would excuse myself, pull myself together like Bruce Willis in the first segment of "Sin City," and make it to the bathroom. Then I'd collapse.
You know why? Yes, because of the embarassment -- because it's a cliché to die in a steakhouse clutching your chest. Or, for that matter, while shoveling snow.
I guess we all want a death on the barricades.
Finger food: still beckoning The still-fascinating "finger found in chili" story continues to develop. America was agog when it was reported that a woman had recently lost part of a finger to a leopard -- could it be the same finger?!
Woman now says finger in chili not hers.
This really would be another classic SF story -- if not for the fact the finger was found -- or "found" -- in San Jose. Perhaps it's simply a classic SF Chronicle story.
Doings this weekend: First, a high-class record release party and string quartet performance sponsored by Other Minds, the city's New Music (read: classical-slash-experimental) cohort. I'll always remember how I took a date to their annual festival last year and how it was the death of the budding relationship. So tonight I'm going with Katia, whose friendship with me runs deeper. And her girlfriend.
Then to the ridiculous. The Castro Theatre is screening It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World [slow-loading page], one of the funniest movies ever. I saw it at my small-town movie theater when it came out in 1964 when I was 8, and I certainly appreciated the slapstick. Now I appreciate the slapstick even more. In fact, sometimes when the world seems dark and doomed, the only thing that will lift me out is slapstick comedy.
The film can also be appreciated for its all-inclusive cast. Just look at this single still -- clockwise, from top left, we ahve Milton Berle, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Dick Shawn (you'll remember him as the hipster Hitler in "The Producers"), some starlet, and Ethel Merman. That's 5 for 6. Joining many of them in this still are Sid Ceasar, Pater Falk (in the Yellow Cab cap), Spencer Tracy, Phil Silvers and Buddy Hackett. I could go on -- Jim Backus. Mickey Rooney. Jimmy Durante. Jerry Lewis has a cameo. It's just unbelievable.
Headline: Roundup Nabs More Than 10,000 Fugitives
Need a job? Looks like Public Defender is a growth industry. Because these guys are going to clog the federal court system for years.
Ghost world
Courtesy Macintouch comes news of a new product for Mac OS computers -- and when was the last time you heard of something interesting for Macs that wasn't somehow connected to the iPod? -- called Comic Life. It allows you to arrange your digital photographs (and other digitized artwork, from PhotoShop and the like) in comix-style arrays, then overlay word balloons, captions and other comix conventions. Looks like fun!
Gee, we really do have free speech in this country
Courtesy Wonkette comes this evidence that the First Amendment is still a force in our country. At an appearance at NYU, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked by a student:"Do you sodomize your wife?" Apparently the student was angling for some kind of score on hypocrisy grounds since the jurist famously supports anti-gay laws. Scalia did the only thing he could have done -- refused to dignify the question with an answer. I mean, what did the guy expect? Still, the fact the guy was apparently not taken out and shot tells you this country is still somewhat more free than, say, Saudi Arabia.
In related news, I saw "Sin City" yesterday. Stylish, yes, and funny in its way. My favorite character was the nutty Irish guy who loves blooing things oop. And I liked the homage to "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" as the guy got shot with a giant arrow through the belly and made a dry comment on it. But I have to admit I walked out about 15 minutes before the end -- right after Bruce Willis kisses the cowgirl-stripper he's been looking for. By that time I'd seen enough.
Not a gambler
The stock market is so weird. This week Apple made two major announcements: record profits, plus a new version of their OS to be delivered later this month. So what does the stock do? Down 9.2% just for today.
This is why I will never try to play the stock market. Utterly counter-intuitive -- except when it isn't. I'd rather play the horses. And I haven't done that in almost 20 years. That's kind of a shame, actually, since there's a track just a few miles away from here.
Remember the Almodovar film Dark Habits, which was about a bunch of nuns who indulged in sex, drugs and other foibles? I was reminded of that by the photograph accompanying this story about some Australian nuns whose convent is being converted to a home for the aged.
I mean DIG THAT WALLPAPER. That is way psychedelic. I'm archiving the picture for posterity.
Eco-porn
SF Gate article (SFW) on a Norweigian couple who make pro-environmentalist porn. Must be read to be believed. Jaw-dropping. Pants-dropping (SFW! SFW! SFW!).
A few minutes earlier, Leona and Tommy stood (in a clearcut) lecturing about the evils of industrial forestry. But now they're moaning in feral ecstasy, overcoming the powerful negativity of the place -- the broken branches and dried-out logs -- with the juices of the life force itself.
Welcome to F--forforest.com (FFF), a porn site with a difference. Along with raw, explicit images and videos with scenes like the one described above, FFF is well stocked with facts about the world's forests. On the Web site, naked sylphs share space with graphs of forest loss over time and exhaustive lists of the benefits tropical rain forests provide to society.
Nice girls with glasses
The other day I name-checked Rachel Kramer Bussel, A writer and blogger whose work is spreading, from the Village Voice to MediaBistro. And I got the nicest note back, inviting me to send her a spanking story for her next anthology of same. Who knew she was such a sweetheart!
Speaking of sweethearts, Min Jung is having a birthday this month, and she is definitely someone whose good side you want to be on.
Finally, my friend Katia has started a new blog.
It's a wonder anything gets done
I got a call from a recruiter Monday night at 9:30 pm. He said he'd seen my resume and wanted to know if I were interested in a tech writing position. I told him I was unavailable but if he wanted to send me an email, I'd take a look at the job anyway, since I'm not guaranteed to be at my present contract forever.
The next day I open my email -- the address I use for job hunts and recruiters. There are two jobs in there from two different people. I can't remember the name of the guy who called me -- from the 916 area code, which is Sacramento -- so I look at both descriptions. Neither one comes even close to what the guy described to me. One is essentially a sales support job and the other says you have to be able to write java code samples.
It could be that the recruiter simply sent me the wrong job, but not only could I not tell which wrong job might have come from the guy I talked to, it's likely he wouldn't even remember talking to me or which job we were talking about. If he was calling at 9:30 p.m he'd probably called 50 people that day -- no wonder he got things mixed up. But more importantly, it's usually true that recruiters don't have any idea what the jobs are really about. They may read off lists of acronyms -- EJB, J2EE, DHTML, XML -- but they don't know what these mean or how my skills might or might not fit. So calling the guy back would probably be a waste of time. I might be more aggressive if I were out of a job now, but fortunately for me I have no reason to chase after phantoms like that.
Democrats rise from slumber
A few days ago I met with the state party chairs, and we made a decision together. For the first time ever we're going to build for the future by putting staff and resources on the ground early -- starting in 2005, not 2008. The first four states: North Dakota, Missouri, North Carolina and West Virginia.
How soon the next 46 states get moving depends on you -- can you make a contribution now?
I wonder how they chose those four states. Not Ohio? Not Florida? Maybe they're piloting. We can afford to fuck up in North Dakota now and learn from it.
Nice to see they're starting to think about what "organization" means.
Sweatshop workers fight the power
In San Francisco today, garment workers protesting treatment at one of the ubiquitous South of Market sweatshops will stage a protest march.
Hot suburban moms, and other ways porn is making our lives brighter
No, this is real: a 32-year-old San Jose mother of three has made the cover of Playboy for their "Desperate Housewives" issue. "Baena says her physique is an accomplishment based on rigorous conditioning and 'I want to show it off.'" The Mercury-News article includes a picture of the va-voom cover. (Use this username and password: bugmebob@gmail.com / bugme1 -- courtesy of bugmenot.com.)
In Salon, "men are going to great lengths" (har!) in search of penis enlargement. This comes a few weeks after a story about Russian doctors who... well, I'm not even going to say. See for yourself.
The LA Times says people are fed up with sordid details of Michael Jackson's pecadillos -- and if true, that would be the first time the media has ever overestimated the American people's appetite for sleaze.
On the sunny side of the street we find Rachel Kramer Bussel, whose freelance career really seems to be taking off. But with success comes pressure:
C'mon, Rachel, it can't be that bad! You're about to be a star.So I'm just trying to dig myself out of all the holes I've built and try to fuck up a little less -- clearly, asking myself not to fuck up isn't even worth it. Nothing anything anyone can do, really, I just have to get through the week somehow and hope that more disaster doesn't befall me.
Lads taking piss with their friends
I couldn't stop giggling when I read this marketing report on a British brand of bottled milkshake called FRijj:
What set FRijj aside from the competition was its thickness. Lads continued to comment, "it looks like it will fill you up, not just wash through you". The vanguard of lads had discovered FRijj's thickness, and consequently adopted it as a product capable of satisfying their hunger. ... Whilst being 'thick' may not seem particularly appealing to most people, to our teenage boys it was an important value. One that works on a number of levels, but basically characterises their strong friendships. It signals the ability to self-deprecate, to laugh at yourself as well as your mates. "God, I'm so thick!" was an admission you would only make around those you feel really comfortable with. Being thick is a definition of the close bonding between lads.
It stood for a way of getting on with each other, of being 'tight'. These lads are always part of a larger group of mates who get together and hang about in mobs. Their time together is fuelled by banter. Conversation generally takes the form of 'piss-taking' or winding each other up. It is almost a sign of affection, a sign they know each other well enough to dole it out and take it back.
That is just so hot.
Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin has died. For decades she both generated and attracted some of the most vituperative language ever about sex and politics. Badger has some respectful comments, and that first link, to a Guardian news story, has lots of links to past articles.
Doing church, not just being at church
I really liked today's post by the Feminarian about an Episcopal church she visited where "everybody gets it":
All of them are involved -- most were recruited to usher, and even serve on vestry, inside of a year (several told stories of being asked to usher within the first couple weeks!). Nobody in that room isn't doing something at the church. They understand that they gather to serve, not simply to sit. They work with the children or youth, they usher, they LEM*, they sing, they read. And as near as I can tell, it's all laity-driven. The rector isn't asking - people are just doing it. That, my friends, is a body that is getting it. They understand that their role isn't to sit by and wait for the leader to make church happen. They are the church.
*A LEM in the Episcopal church is a Lay Eucharistic Minister, someone who has trained to assist in the distribution of communion during the worship service. The acronym is used both as a noun and, as ehre, a verb. In the Lutheran church we are a little less official about the education and training aspect of this role -- basically, if you want to do it, someone spends ten minutes with you explaining what to do, and you're it. And five of those ten minutes is how to tie the cincture.
The last item in today's "Fix" column on Salon -- a sort of compendium of entertainment gossip -- says that Pamela Anderson, the pneumatic television star of "Baywatch" and "V.I.P." -- will play a "non-celeb version of herself" on a new sitcom. What does it mean? It's like saying "a non-rich version of Donald Trump." After you take away the most distinguishing characteristic, is anything left? The whole notion hurts my head. (And here's the NYT story, humorously titled "Why Johnny Can't Read.")
And this post would not be complete without telling you that tomorrow in San Francisco you can take a class called Pole Dancing 101.
Suffering is everywhere
Here's a headline of the week, and it's only Sunday night:
It seems the world is finally catching up to the Arab Gulf, where for years they have used kidnapped slave children as camel jockeys. No, it's not a story in The Onion. It's real. Unfortunately they don't have a picture of the robotic jockey.
What will happen to the "up to 40,000" (!!!) slave boys if they are replaced by robots, it doesn't say.
Echoes of another spring day
Went to the ballgame late, getting there in the third inning, in time for a big Giants rally in the fifth. It was a perfect spring afternoon, calm at the game's beginning, growing a little breezier by the end of the game, which was short despite the 11-4 final. No incidents on the smile cam, but the park now features a particularly egregious new form of dot racing. They used to have a video "cable car race" that a., you could actually follow, and b., was not crammed with product placement. The new version is sponsored by a credit card company, makes absolutely no sense, and you can't even tell which car "wins." To top it all off, they have three children cheering for the different cars, and the "winner" gets a hundred dollar gift card. Gee, just what every 11-year-old child needs, a hundred dollar gift card.
That was disgusting, but the Italian sausage I had was great. All the other ballpark food I had was perhaps overdoing it. But hey, it was my first game of the year.
Sleep is a good drug
Finally, a good night's sleep. I used to be a dependably sound sleeper, difficult, in fact, to wake up if need be. When we were living in the apartment on Folsom St. Cris was out with her sister and I went to bed a little early one night. When she lost her key and was trying to get in, nothing would wake me -- not the phone, not the doorbell. Finally they got worried enough that they climbed over the fence to our downstair's neighbors' garden, came up the deck stairs, and started banging on the window by my head. Even then it took a minute. Now I seem to wake up with every little thing.
I had one of those complex dreams you can't remember half an hour after getting up -- I worked at a school, I think. When I woke up I really didn't want to get up, but I'm in the show at church this morning. Then perhaps I can go to the ballgame afterwards. It's vs. the Rockies, and "good seats are still available."
Oh, here's a near-classic San Francisco story. After working as a professional dominatrix for several years, a woman got a straight job in a government office where she ran into a former client.
When she objected to the salacious advances, Peacher says, the manager manipulatively became her direct supervisor and downgraded her performance evaluation. When she complained to higher-ups, coming out of the closet about her previous line of work, she says she was retaliated against and given little to do.
Rather than sit idly at her desk, Peacher spent her time studying workplace harassment and labor law. She also accumulated an arsenal of damning evidence: phone logs, e-mails, documentation of encounters with her alleged harasser.
Last month, Peacher, 45, reached a settlement with the government, which did not admit liability or fault. She will receive $35,000 in compensatory damages, $25,000 in attorney fees, a job transfer, approval to work at her South Bay home one day a week, and the restoration of almost 800 hours of assorted leave.
The only reason that's not a full classic SF story is that no one was killed somewhere along the line. But it's pretty close.
More smut
Hey, I started a new story yesterday, inspired by a friend's exploits. It's the first sex story I've written in a few years. This followed, by a day, working on a sex scene in the novel I'm working on -- and that was the first sex scene I'd done in a few years. I was struck by how comfortable it felt. Speaking last night with Katia, I kept going back to the metaphor of being "sure-footed" and confident as I moved through the scene -- an encounter between a younger woman and a middle-aged man in a hotel room. I know the pacing, the rhythm of a sex scene; I'm down there at the phrase level. Whereas with my usual writing, I'm more at the paragraph level, like a journalist. Maybe that's why the work tends to feel pedestrian when I review it.
Speaking of smut, here's a review of a new book of interviews with genius cartoonist Robert Crumb.
Oblique strategies
Over to Katia's tonight. She fixed me dinner in thanks for me helping her with the website for her upcoming novel Crashing America. We had a nice long conversation about writing. She said the toughest thing for her to do was time -- denoting, for the reader, what's happening in the present and what in the past -- though poetic and oblique language came naturally to her. I said my previous challenge was plot, and I feel like I have a handle on that now, so my next challenge is oblique language, symbolism and theme. The example I gave was finding Crime and Punishment essentially a detective story. I could have said something similar about The Master and Margarita, the wonderful novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. I eagerly read the it for story, to see what would happen next. And indeed a naive college student could have done the same thing.
But I don't plumb novels for theme and symbols, and I find it almost impossible to work them into my books. The best I can do for now is show a theme through narrative. For instance, in my novel Make Nice [1.1 MB PDF file of my notes while writing the novel] I showed how racism touched the lives of both the cream of Hollywood society (Sammy Davis Jr.) as well as the working-class characters who worked at a sleazy Vegas motel. But as far as using symbols to echo the theme, symbols which would register subconsciously with the reader -- no. Not intentionally, anyway. So I feel my writing is too pedestrian. And so far the agents who rejected my book seemed to feel the same.
"It's something you must study and learn," Katia said. So I'll look for symbolism and theme in the novel I'm reading now -- still plowing through The Plot Against America.
Blogger lives
Now that Blogger is back up, I can share with you this strange little site. Sit and watch the messages for a while. It's like being spoken to by a robotic Smithers.
That gives me an idea. You know those horrible "voices" that come with the Macintosh, the ones that will read text out loud? (They make the only good use I've ever heard of this function on Illinoise! with "Robot Theatre.") They really need one with Smithers' voice. "They broke the mold when they made you, sir. ... ... You are the master of all you survey, sir..."
It doesn't get any better than this
You know, that would be awesome -- if somebody spiked it with LSD.
A woman hiking in Hong Kong rinsed her face in a stream and picked up a leech that went to live in her sinuses. And yes, there are many rural areas in Hong Kong -- not on HK island really, but on Lantau Island and others.
And in other news, we found this priceless sentence:
The costume's owner, David Cox, said he was waiting inside the terminal at Sydney Airport earlier this week when he glanced outside and saw the baggage handler wearing his camel head.
Oh so new wave!!
My friend Marilyn linked today to a picture in her gallery which gave me the opportunity to rediscover it. This picture is so my favorite -- the new wave hair! So Desperately Seeking Susan! You go!
Her gallery inspires me to do something like that, seeing as my birthday's this month.
It's Bad Behavior Friday!
A New York Times correspondent in Baghdad was fired for sending email to the wives of fellow reporters alleging their husbands indulged in infidelities in the war zone.
Actor Vincent Pastore, who played "Big Pussy" on the Sopranos, denied reports he clobbered his now-former financé this week. He says she -- a "former weightlifter" -- hit him.
The woman who famously found a finger in her Wendy's chili last week is now the subject of an investigation after rumors sufaced that the finger was actually from "her dead aunt." The woman says she doesn't even have a dead aunt. Her garage "looks like it was hit by a tornado" after police searched her Las Vegas home.
And in San Francisco, the scandal over firefighters drinking on duty threatens to take down a battalion chief.
Another try to film 'On the Road'?
Buried in Leah Garchik's column on the Chronicle's last page this morning is a notation about a coming attempt to finally get a screen version of "On the Road" off the ground. That's three years after this blurb predicted filming was about to start, and four years after this note. So don't hold your breath.
This story (courtesy Say Anything) about the "citizen volunteers" who are spending spring break in the desert hunting undocumented immigrants suggests people are all hot and outraged about the volunteers' conduct, but the sense of humor shown in this instance almost raises the situation to a fine point of farce:
Three volunteers patrolling the border for illegal immigrants were being investigated after a man told authorities he was held against his will and forced to pose for a picture holding a T-shirt with a mocking slogan. The shirt read: "Bryan Barton caught an illegal alien and all I got was this T-shirt."
He's lucky -- it could have said "My father is a fool!" (That's a private joke for Cris.) Unfortunately the picture itself has not been published, so I made do with that photo above of some fat asshole from a Houston Chronicle report. You know the Texas papers are all over this -- even though the story's taking place in Arizona.
Then there's this story from the Christian Science Monitor in which the alleged behavior of desert pilgrims is compared to that of the Three Bears:
Years ago, they would politely ask you for water outside. Now you come home and someone is in your house, eating your food, trashing your bedroom, stealing your stuff, and leaving garbage everywhere.
Oh really? I call that a business opportunity, dumbass. If you were a real Republican you'd just open a low-rent bed and breakfast, and start charging them.
'Moralistic theraputic deism'
Courtesy Feminary, I plowed through an article on The Revealer about the findings of a survey of American teenagers and their spiritual and moral beliefs. Somewhat more readable and interesting than the article itself are the comments, one of which I quote here:
I've been interviewing some smart young guys from a very conservative, very Christian town in central California. In their 20s now, they're all committed to remaining virgins until they marry. They're all graduates of True Love Waits, as are many of the kids they grew up with. And one of these men reports that fully half of the women in his church youth group -- all of whom "believed" in abstinence -- got pregnant in their teens. ... Teen pregnancy is a sign of a conservative culture, one that disapproves of birth control and educating kids about sexual realities.
This suggests a subtle and interesting distinction between the hypocrisy that the left often sees in the Christian right and a basic brokenness about fundamentalism. The Christian teenagers who said one thing and did another are not hypocrites as much as they are simply living the anti-intellectual, anti-education, anti-knowledge party line of fundamentalism, complete with the counter-intuitive results: Teenagers who pledge to "wait" until marriage to have sex wind up pregnant.
I was pretty religious when I was a teenager. It was the 70s, and as a high school freshman I even went through a Jesus freak phase, or at least as much of one as I could muster in the bland, vanilla-creme suburbs of Houston. By the time I was 18 and in my first semester of college, however -- and 200 miles away, in the post-hippie enclave of Austin -- I had sorted my priorities a little differently. I had joyous sex, and used birth control, and didn't have any moral qualms. Or rather, the moral qualms I had were feminist rather than Christian -- I actually counted the number of times I was on top and she was on top, and made sure they came out roughly equal. And that ethos served me a hell of a lot better as a sex beginner than "True Love Waits" would have.
Ballplayers are sluts
Salon.com: Red Sox manager Francona taken to hospital: "Francona was taken by ambulance to New York Weill-Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, where he has relationships with several doctors."
And I'll bet they were fighting with each other for who saw him first. Get in line, boys!
The human race is just not that into you
An astonishing report on Amy's Robot recounts a recent "hosted discussion," or panel, on sex and dating in New York:
Don't worry, it's not just you. No one is having sex.
At a recent gathering of hot young women, ages 24-26, living the single life in Manhattan, the New York Times hosted a discussion of sex and dating. In the resulting article, the featured women are so averse to sex, serious relationships, dating, and pretty much anything other than maybe kissing acquaintances in a bar, that I can't imagine how anyone in this city is ever going to get any action ever again.
In other words, those thousands of seemingly available women in online personals -- they're looking for something, it's just not you, and definitely not your stuff.
And how are things this fine spring in your town?
A Japanese company has contracted to privatize a Cambodian "killing fields" monument "to develop the site's tourist potential." I can see it now: young female tourist guides with little flags leading groups around, a pavillion with 32 soft drink and coffee vending machines, and t-shirts with slogans in fake English like "Combodian Killing Fields victim best no. 1" and "Pol Pot High School."
Perfect spring day
Baseball resumed, and the Giants won.* I gained a little bit of ground in the book I'm working on. I exercised after I got home and didn't feel my recent quad muscle pull at all. And Cris cooked a killer spaghetti sauce. What a good day.
*The best part of that story is the moment before the game when the announcer asks for a moment of silence in memory of the Pope, and during the silence a single guy screams out, "You suck, Kent!!" -- Jeff Kent being the former Giants 2nd baseman who earned fan enmity for being a big complainer, lying about an injury, not getting along with the Big Dog, dismissing the Giants' chances at the beginning of last season after he'd been traded, and then becoming the worst thing you could possibly be: a Dodger. That irreverent shout in the midst of a stupid, out-of-place moment of imposed solemnity says everything you need to know about being a Giants fan.
Eye on Bangalore
Finally, an archive of decent street photos from Bangalore! I've been looking for something like this for months! I've been searching for every combination of words on Google images I can think of, and I finally found what I was looking for. Thanks, Terry A. Moore!
A web application, delocator.net, lets you enter a zip code and find a non-Starbucks WiFi coffee shop. Thanks, Jym!
Dragging our asses into the 21st century
A "Sexy librarian" who was passed over for promotion many times lost her discrimination suit against Harvard:
Ms Goodwin claimed she was overlooked for 16 promotions and kept in the same job since she was hired in 1994. She said a superior told her she could not be promoted because she was viewed as a sexily dressed 'pretty girl'. According to court documents, she claimed the supervisor told her she was seen as a 'joke' because she wore 'low-cut blouses' and 'tight pants'. "
The dumbfounds me in so many ways. Maybe I'll think of something clever and add to this post later. But for now I'm just stupified.
Make Nice
How They Scored
I Saw You, Ed. by Julia Wertz
(contributor)
Best Sex Writing 2006 (contributor)
Lesbian Camp Girls
Too Beautiful and Other Stories
How I Adore You
Sara Miles's
Jesus Freak
Bob Ostertag's
Creative Life
Liz Henry, Ed.
Wiscon Chronicles vol. 3
Andrew Zornoza's
Where I Stay
Sara Miles'
Take This Bread
A Radical Conversion
