Colbert vs. the President

I watched Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Association banquet last night, live on C-Span -- I stumbled across it while channel surfing -- and to tell you the truth I thought he just barely managed to stay afloat. According to this story (thanks, Violet!) he thrust several knives into the President's heart, and I agree, Bush's smile seemed colder and colder as the routine went on.

But I thought he took the wrong tack. He could have gotten the whole room laughing together before he really went for the throat; instead, the pacing seemed a little off. He would build a joke for half a minute, hit the punch line, go on to something else. Strangely, the laughter seemed to be getting quieter as the routine went on, and I couldn't figure out whether he was dying or whether the sound on the C-Span broadcast was messed up.

He did get off a few good ones. My favorite:

Addressing the reporters, he said, "Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know--fiction."

Update: A full transcript (thanks to Badger for the link)

Frankly, it's porn, okay?

There has been lots of coverage lately about the increased interest by mainstream publishers in "erotica" (for example, this LA Times article (link courtesy Booksquare). All the articles make it pretty clear that what they're calling "erotica" is pretty tame stuff. For example, one writer quoted in that story says:

Erotica legitimizes the female sexual experience. Women read these books and it makes them feel normal about their own fantasies.

Hmm, WTF -- "legitimizing the female sexual experience"... What the hell does that mean? And then an Avon editor:

Chen says that the most important difference is that there's a definite plot and story line in erotica. It's not just episodic sex. "Erotica writers can tell a story," Chen says. "There is a definite hero or heroine. You might have a few sex scenes in there, but it's not gratuitous."

You know, you're right, Creampuff -- I can tell a story. And my books are pornography. And I can put in gratuitous sex if I want to, though more often it's woven into the narrative.

But... "a definite hero or heroine"? WTF -- what fucking century are you in?

Contentment

After a birthday dinner last night, Cris and I went to the ballgame today, a bit of a nail-biter which saw a fantastic catch by Randy Winn to save a home run (permalink) and end the top of the ninth with a tie preserved, followed by a game-winning home run by Moises Alou (permalink) to lead off the bottom of the ninth. What could be better?

It must be noted that Barry Bonds, who usually patrols left field, would likely not have gotten to that fly ball to steal away a home run, nor would he have been able to make the sliding catch that Winn had already made for the second out of the inning.

Do you want to stay in bed all day?

Do you remember feeling any other way?

Erin the NASA Bedrest Study subject is in the home stretch and about to be the subject of profiles on CNN and the Financial Times. Go Erin!

It's Bad Behavior Friday!™

You thought I forgot, didn't you?

You know, there's little more satisfying, when writing about a Republican demagogue, than being able to use the phrase "surrendered to authorities." And it must be my birthday, because Rush Limbaugh surrendered to authorities today as part of a plea deal to resolve his ongoing durg addiction case. Yeah, I hadn't forgotten about it either.

A Fresno jury awarded $500,000 to a woman who was spanked by co-workers during a "team building" exercise. Corporate employees will sympathize with both parties. Who among us -- as John Kerry might say -- who among us has not suffered indignities during a "team-building exercise" at some point in our lives -- and who has not wanted to spank some co-worker or other, and not in a good way?

What can brown do for you?

In the midst of all the self-congratulatory publicity over how respectful and accurate the film "United 93" is, the LA Times did a piece on the actors who play the hijackers. (Use bugmenot to get an id/pwd.) The piece says the actor picked to play the lead hijacker was reassured by the fact that the director was going to depict the character as "three dimensional" and even "hesitant" to carry out his mission.

No doubt this nuanced portrayal made for a better cinematic experience, but how realistic is it? Is there any evidence that Ziad Jarrah, the lead hijacker on the plane where the passengers fought back, was "hesitant" about anything, or that he was anything than a dedicated terrorist? Just imagine the mind-set of people who can carry out suicide missions -- could anyone carry out such a desperate, violent act if he had any "hesitation" at all? Isn't it more likely that in order to carry out such an act you have to completely empty your mind of any thoughts that might deter you?

I think the real horror of the story behind the incidents of Sep. 11, and all modern terrorism, is not the danger that someone might think terrorists are somehow subhuman, but the fact that they are in fact fully human. That's the horror: that committing violence on a large scale against innocent people can be -- has been, and is today -- the choice of someone who is, unfortunately, all too human, and in their ability to fear and hate others, little different from you and me.

Of course, they are ultimately different, in the way they choose to express these emotions. But I doubt the emotions -- which are what make us human -- are really that much different.

Link to the LA Times story courtesy Sepia Mutiny, one of the best "Desi blogs" I've found.

Birthday du moi

It's my 50th birthday today, how about that. But the fireworks weren't necessary.

See some pictures from the years.

I am so grateful for my wonderful partner, lovers, and friends.

MehtaPhor -- end of Act II

Kaavya Viswanathan has gone from a half million dollar book deal to being accused of plagarism, but her publisher has stood by her, saying things like what a fine young person she was.

Until now.

Courtesy Galleycat, a NYT story saying publisher Little, Brown has asked bookstores to pull Viswanathan's novel "How Opal Methta, Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" from shelves.

Stores will receive a full refund from the publisher. Man, that's got to cut into your royalties.


Meanwhile, a U.K. writer said never mind the plagarism charges, what about the utter crap the book is full of? The title of the piece: "Harvard should be worried."

No, you're a big doggy, aren't you boy, yes you are

Just to make it clear, that was Pakistan's president denying he ran a military dictatorship. But Bush had to jerk his chain pretty hard to get him to say it.

Great minds think alike

I just noticed this post by Rachel K-B with the line "It's just yet another sign of the "My Sex Is Better Than Your Sex" crowd's attempts to lord their vision of 'perfect' sexuality and gender roles onto everyone else."

Exactly -- that's what I had in mind the other day when I wrote about people who write books about how "successful, or wealthy, or well-fucked they are" -- only Rachel put it better.

Cynicism

Nice analysis on slushpile.net on the effect scandals like MehtaPhor, the Frey Imbroglio, and other brouhahas have on aspiring writers. He concludes:

But when the publishing industry is forced into a situation where they take it on faith that someone had root canals with no Novacain and where they think it's a good idea to give a 17-year-old half-a-million dollars for a book that isn't finished yet and is being handled by a "packager," is it any wonder if Writer X doesn't believe his work can find a way?

This harks back to a discussion I had with my writing group partner (our "group" presently consists of me and her) last year. We were talking about writing conferences and the hopeful people who go to them and wondering why there are so many people in what Harper's infamously termed* "the creative writing gulag." My theory was that people are treating the publishing industry like a lottery. When they hear of deals like the half million given to a 17 year old, or the "high six figure" book deals thrown at mediocre thriller writers like Karin Slaughter, you think "Shit, this is not about talent or craft, this is about capturing the zeitgeist and luck and who you know."

Perhaps such people should turn to the Frustrated Amateur Writers Network.

* The full title of Lynn Freed's piece in the July 2005 Harper's was "Doing Time: My Years in the Creative Writing Gulag," but Freed subsequently revealed that the subtitle was Harper's addition and not part of her title.

MehtaPhor

Courtesy Mediabistro, an AP story in which author Kaavya Viswanathan says she was shocked," shocked to see so many similarities between her book "How Opal Mehta..." and... well, you know the story. The NY Times has a nice piece on the "book packager," 17th St. Productions, now known as Alloy Entertainment. The piece contains the curious clue that one Claudia Gabel, a former editor of Megan McCafferty, author of the original books from which Viswanathan is alleged to have copied, then worked at Alloy during the genesis of "Opal Mehta."

But Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, the publishing company that owns Crown, said Ms. Gabel, who worked at Alloy from the spring of 2003 until last November, had left the company "before the editorial work was completed" on Ms. Viswanathan's book.

"Claudia told us she did not touch a single line of Kaavya's writing at any point in any drafts," said Mr. Applebaum, who added that Ms. Gabel was one of several people who worked on the project in its conceptual stage.

Mm-hmm, yes. But did she hire someone who did -- someone like the author quoted in this Harvard Independent piece on 17th St./Alloy?

Then, courtesy Galleycat, a link to a report in the Harvard Crimson (which first broke the whole story, last Saturday) on a personal appearance by McCafferty, who refrained from commenting on the whole thing. No doubt she has lawyers with hungry eyes on Viswanathan's half-million dollar advance.

You know, I don't care about the young, rich and very attractive Ms. Kaavya Viswanathan or her book. It's just entertaining to watch her and everyone around her twist clowly in the wind on this thing.

Anyway, you're wasting your time looking to my blog for info on this. Read Galleycat -- they're on it like a rug. And for even more -- see this entry on Old Hag, with its link at the bottom to a Slate article... This story has legs, folks.

Dept of trivial knowledge

Did you know:

• The Unification Church controls the U.S. sushi industry, from fishing fleets to suppliers. (Link courtesy Chr. Today)
• Barry Bonds is literally on his last legs
• But, update: It didn't stop him from hitting his second home run in two days to tie the game with two outs in the bottom of the 9th inning. Gi'nts lost in 11, however.
• There is a publication called Ultimate Homes, which lists the 1000 most expensive properties in the U.S. Number 12 on the list is $53 million. Their website includes an article on financing. Speaking of real estate, slushpile.net has a post on the recent sale of Jack Kerouac's former home, which wouldn't have made the list, as it sold for only $300,000.

And chick lit is lit plus chick, minus the lit

In an interview with author and F/C2 co-director Ron Sukenick:

Q. You call your new book, Doggy Bag, a collection of hyperfictions. What are hyperfictions?

A. Hyperfiction is fiction plus hype. All literary labels are hype.

Meanwhile, back on the east coast, the count is up to 45 passages in Kaavya Viswanathan's "packaged" novel that resemble passages from two books by Megan McCafferty. On the Today show this a.m., Viswanathan got the Katie Couric treatment.

Note to authors who have fudged various parts of their book (or their bios): don't go on a show where the host has just been named a network anchor and is eager to show how serious and hard-hitting she is.

Is sex necessary? or is it unnecessary?

In an article on SF Gate, a local "tantra" teacher talks about her practice -- to use the term broadly. She says things like:

The healthier way of viewing sex is to pray to the divine nature of our partner, the divine nature of our own being, while we make love. When you do this with respect, we dedicate lovemaking to the enlightenment of all beings, and we have a better chance of getting into higher states of consciousness together.

No, it's not enough just to fuck:

In order to navigate the field of lovemaking, which means transporting the energy of orgasmic pleasure to a place of deeper awareness, you have to practice. You have to be conscious of what you do. You can't just hop in the sack and hope for the best.

Oh, I don't know -- she seems to have done all right. After all, she says that "The first time I made love, I was 18, and I had a satori (enlightenment) experience in which I went beyond my body to a place of light and complete bliss -- a place that was one with the divine." Not bad for a beginner, and she did it without benefit of any eastern religious mumbo-jumbo. I guess there are a lot of people out there who need help with that, because this person seems to have been making a living off talking about her version of "tantra" for more than 20 years.

I remember attending, about 25 years ago, a sort of introductory lesson in what was said to be tantra. (I keep qualifying this term because I'm pretty sure that whatever real tantric Buddhism is about, it can't be this.) Basically it involved a lot of dry-humping with different partners as the "teacher" droned on with a lot of mumbo-jumbo. Afterwards I thought, "Jesus Christ, can't people just fuck and call it fucking?" And that's still the way I feel. If you want to have really great sex, then find somebody who digs you and have really great sex with them. I guarantee it doesn't get any better by surrounding it with a lot of fakey verbiage.

Today's fake: Woman says she wasn't really kidnapped

A northern Calif. woman has admitted her tale of being kidnapped and then left in a garbage bin after four days was a hoax. Actually, she just snapped, quit her job and hit the highway. The part about falling asleep in a dumpster and getting carted off to a dump was apparently true, however; her explanation of how she ended up there was not.

And halfway around the world, 13 Chinese workers were duped into paying for tickets to Dubai, where they were promised work. No jobs were there for them, and they hung around starving for two weeks before being sent home Sunday.

Keeping abreast of underwear in the news

As improvements in nutrition spur growth in general, Chinese women need larger bra sizes. Meanwhile, in Japan, overweight men are squeezing into girdles, the marketing term for which is "body-shaping underwear."

Members of a minor league hockey team in San Diego will auction their boxer shorts for charity.

In New York, the last of the "No Pants 8" had her charges (if not her pants) dropped yesterday. The charges stemmed from a January No Pants Subway Ride.

Give me your tired Harvard sophomores

There's a whole mini-scandal going on over a novel by -- perhaps I should say "by" in quotes -- Kaavya Viswanathan, an attractive Indian-American Harvard sophomore. The book, with the cringe-worthy but marketable title How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, got a lot of attention because of its author's youth and because it got a half million dollar advance.

Unfortunately, it turns out the book contains many passages quite similar to novels by Megan McCafferty, of whose work Viswanathan now says she is a "big fan," and she must have "unconsiciously" soaked up McCafferty's prose. The story has now percolated ot the point where there's a NYT story.

Galleycat is all over this, so read their posts about the author apologizing for the "similarities" and especially this bit on 17th St. Productions, the "book packager" who may actually be the people responsible for getting Viswanathan into this mess. Backstory: Viswanathan originally turned in a "much darker" first draft, but after 17th St. got ahold of it, it turned into a fluffy teen-ready chicklit novel.

Previously: The Soy Luck Club

Today's fakes: former software king Sanjay Kumar, et al.

Back in the bubble years of the late 1990s, one of the high-profile people was the CEO of a company called Computer Associates, one Sanjay Kumar. CA built a huge consulting business by buying smaller companies and using their products as tools. But under Kumar's leadership, the company got into a habit of illegally revising its financial results, pre-dating contracts to bring something that was signed in, say, July, back into Q2, and so on.

Yesterday pled guilty to obstruction of justice and securities fraud charges in the case, in which five other CA executives also pleaded guilty. Kumar could get 20 years, though I'd be surprised if he even sees the inside of a police station. (Also: NYT story)

Down in Houston, the Enron trial plods on, with former CEO and George Bush funder Ken Lay testifying neatly, "I accept full responsibility for everything that happened at Enron. Having said that, I can't take responsibility for illegal acts I had no knowledge of." Nice, huh? Who's that remind you of? We had no idea that shit was going on at Abu Gharib.

And coming on the heels of several other stories, Vanity Fair provides a J.T. LeRoy wrapup.

Scientists discover what's behind Zen state

A study has revealed that the "superfrontal gyrus" area of the brain is responsible for making people self-conscious, and that it shuts off when a person is intensely involved in a task -- a state sometimes referred to as "flow."

The brain's ability to "switch off" the self may have evolved as a protective mechanism, he suggests. "If there is a sudden danger, such as the appearance of a snake, it is not helpful to stand around wondering how one feels about the situation," Goldberg points out.

Thus Eve bit the apple. And ever since, we've been worrying "Does this make me look fat?"

This just in: gay men who love show tunes live in Colorado Springs

The Colo. Springs Post-Gazette does a feature on the Colorado Springs Gay Men's Chorus.

I wonder how many Air Force cadets and Focus on the Family staffers will be at their show.

Please stay out of the hip place I discovered before you

Something must be up. Yesterday the LA Times wrote about the Integraton; today the NY Times has a big travel piece on the hip artists' scene down in the Mojave desert near Twentynine Palms. The piece comes complete with their annual jackoff of Andrea Zittel, the east coast carpetbagger who started an annual art festival where none of the artists who preceeded her there felt it was necessary.

Please ignore this travel piece, and all references to the High Desert area in that vicinity, unless you are invited by someone who already lives there full time -- which does not include Andrea Z.

Previously: Integraton

Why they're not publishing our novels

Courtesy MediaBistro, a lot of great stuff:

• Standard reasons for rejecting 99% of novels, including "Author is functionally illiterate" and "It's nice that you're working on your problems, but you need to see a shrink instead of writing about them." For what it's worth, I think my novel, which has been rejected by nine or ten publishers by now, is up to reason 11 or 12 -- very much in the close-but-no category.
• Advice from Michelle Tea in an interview on zulkey.com
• Finally, Amy Stone on how not to get published

Hmm, that explains a lot

No wonder Karl Rove has changed jobs.

Dept. of I Didn't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry

From the Shelf Awareness newsletter:

Tonight on the Colbert Report: Bonnie Fuller tells all about her new book, The Joys of Much Too Much: Go for the Big Life--The Great Career, the Perfect Guy, and Everything Else You've Ever Wanted (Even If You're Afraid You Don't Have What It Takes) (Fireside, $24, 0743459474).

For those of you lucky enough not to have noticed, Fuller is a big shot in the magazine business.

You know, every time I heard about someone like this writing a book about how to be as wonderful (or successful, or wealthy, or as well-fucked) as they are, I think two things: 1) I'd love to see how full of life they were without their white upper-class privilege; 2) I'd love to see whether or not they pay their nannies, cleaners and other minions full Social Security and health insurance.

Adventures in the past future

The LA Times today has a feature on the Integraton (Courtesy BoingBoing) a two-story white dome in the middle of the Mojave Desert, somewhere in the vicinity of Landers.

Christine took me to the structure a few years ago on a summer evening for a sort of desert-hippie version of performance art. The place, and the performance, were perfect Mojave Desert experiences.

Today's worst person in the world

A Maryland MD's wife was sentenced today for enslaving a Nigerian girl. The couple brought the 14-year-old to the US saying they would send her to school; instead they put her to work caring for their children, didn't pay her, and beat her. The wife is getting 7.25 years in prison and has to pay $100,000 in back wages; the husband has been arrested in Nigeria and will face the same charges here.

It doesn't say under what rule the victim gets to stay in the US, but apparently she does. Now 23, she says she wants to go into law enforcement "to combat abuse" such as she endured.

Borders to close unionized store

This is from the Shelf Awareness newsletter. Note the highlighted bit (my emphasis).

Borders to Close Minneapolis Store

Borders is closing one of its oldest stores, in the Uptown section of
Minneapolis, Minn., by the beginning of June at the latest. The store is
in a mall that is being renovated, and the renovation will "not allow
for us to remain in the type of premium position we have now," Borders
spokesperson Anne Roman told Shelf Awareness. Borders has seven stores
in and around Minneapolis and St. Paul and is working with employees to
find places for them at those stores. Closing was, she said, "a
difficult choice because it was our first store in the area and
therefore is special to many customers and employees."

The Uptown store is unusual in several respects. Besides being Borders's
first store in the Twin Cities, it was once an Odegard's bookstore and
is one of only two Borders stores that is unionized. For years, it had a
vigorous reading program and was a star performer.

One former employee saw the closing as a major loss that stemmed from
corporate policy mistakes, but Roman said that while the store probably
had more events in its early days, that is "simply because there are
more stores now in the city--not only our stores, but other
competitors--and events are spread around in the marketplace." She noted
that the Uptown store hosted several major authors last year, and said
that the Minneapolis market is in the top 25 of the company's "national
events markets."

Like older Borders, the store for a long time had its own community
relations coordinator (CRC), a position that ended when the company
transferred the responsibility to district marketing managers and
regional marketing managers. "As we grew," Roman explained, "we would
often have several stores in one community or area. These stores, with a
CRC in each, would compete for events or duplicate efforts." The group
approach has helped Borders "attract better events and make sure that we
spread events around so all of our store communities receive events."

Focus on the Fundies: Screw Ralph Reed

Ralph Reed, crypto-Christian fascist, Abramoff co-conspirator, the worst sort of political opportunist, and one of the people responsible for the heinous mixture of Jesus and neoconservatism that is helping to ruin the country, is running for lieutenant governor of Georgia -- something he no doubt thinks is the first step to the Presidency. Donate money against him here.

I don't have time or space to document what a fucking asshole this guy is. I could post a thousand words on him every day for a month and still not run out of material. The important thing is, because of his association with Abramoff, he's vulnerable now. Let's screw him so deep into the ground he'll never crawl out again.

Showing the flag

You've heard that expression, "to show the flag," which is mostly used now in a business context to mean a symbolic visit or tour by managers to show workers in far-flung offices that the managers at headquarters really do care about them, and even remember they exist.

Apparantly in India they take the expression quite literally. After riots last week enveloped parts of bangalore after the death of a revered film actor, police officials staged a "flag march" today in which they literally paraded -- one assumes with flags flying -- around parts of the city to "instill confidence" that they were still in business.

Hit me with your best shot

In case you're not tired of seeing that picture of Gretchen Mol posing as Bettie Page for the Bettie Page movie, the Boston Globe has a gallery of pix from Mol's career.

Finally, some sunshine

After weeks of rain, the spring sun finally came out. Image courtesy Channel 5.

Pulitzers

Congratulations to Geraldine Brooks, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for March, and to Claudia Emerson, for winning the poetry prize for The Late Wife.

In the drama category, three plays were nominated and no prize was awarded. What a bummer that would be, to be nominated in a category where none of the nominees was judged fit to win the prize.

Pulitzer, Geraldine Brooks

Pretty tired

This is the end of a very busy, tiring week during which I had little time to look at the internets or to blog. What posts I made were made to my new blog, Bangalore Sweatbox, which I started just a couple days before colorful riots enveloped the city, much to the embarrassment of most Indians. Metroblogging Bangalore has comments from technically wired people, not to say the hoi polloi.

Thursday was Maundy Thursday, last night was Good Friday, tonight is the Easter Vigil. The first two services were choir-intensive, and having joined the church choir last fall, I have been spending a lot of time over at church. For tonight there's no choir, but I volunteered to sing the Exultet -- a canticle that is sung only once a year at the "vigil" service of Easter, i.e. the night before -- and that requires its own rehearsal. But I have to recreate a little, too, so I'm going off to the museum or a film today. As for working on my novel, that'll have to wait until all this is over tomorrow.

Great real estate just came on the market

Looking for a nice big Colonial-style house with outbuildings? This one is about to come on the market after the whole family was killed. Nice house.

America is waiting for a message of some sort or another

Stupid book deal of the week:

Todd Hopkins and Ray Hilbert's JANITOR BOB, a Christian business parable in which a janitor helps a CEO to reevaluate how he is leading his business and his life, and ultimately how to become more fulfilled.

Wonder how long it took them to think that up. Here's how it probably went: They cooked it up during a round of golf, went home, wrote a detailed outline, then sent it off to some offshore writing factory to be drafted. Then they spent a week editing, and bingo. This is the shit that non-readers read.

I'll bet "Janitor Bob" is not -- like most of the "janitors" (now there's an archaic word) who clean offices nowadays -- a Latino woman who is the sole support of her three or four kids.

Fun in Bangalore

I posted on my new blog about coming riots in Bangalore.

The 21st Century marches on

FishbowlNY, one of Mediabistro's collection of blogs oriented toward people in publishing, advertising and entertainment, offers a fine anecdote featuring the phrase "boner donor" -- it makes perfect sense in context.

Bust, FishbowlNY, Mediabistro, neologisms

Focus on the fundies: reclaiming their right to hate

A Georgia college student -- a willing pawn, no doubt, of political rightists who love using cases like this to inflame the people who more or less already rule the culture in the south -- has sued to overturn her school's policy against hate speech. But not because it's a free speech issue. Because she sees it as a drag on her right to religious expression.

This girl, and millions of ignorant people like her, see homosexuality as a sin. And their religious tradition -- if not Jesus himself, who is noted for saying to people who would condemn others' immorality "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" -- demands they vocally condemn others for violating their religious codes. They feel the Georgia Tech ban against hate speech against homosexuals to be in conflict with this quaint custom, though you'd think these "Christians" would be able to express their disdain without it rising to the level of actual hate speech.

Anyway, the point is that they see this as a matter of whether they have "the right to be Christian." Yeah, that's how my old man saw it too. He was always ready to let others know when they were deviating. And I was glad when he died.

In a related story (courtesy Mediabistro), the husband-and-wife editors of a pentacostal college's newspaper were fired by administrators last week for giving space to coverage of Soulforce (a pro-gay Christian group headed by a formerly closeted minister who used to be a writer for Pat Robertson).

fundamentalists, free speech, hate speech, Soulforce

These shoes are not made for walking

WAYWO interviewee Dashka Slater's children's book Baby Shoes will launch at a party at 3 pm on Sunday, May 11 at Diesel Books, 5433 College Ave. in Oakland.

Dashka (website) is also the author of a fine novel, The Wishing Box. My interview with her covers her work on a new short story collection.

Dashka Slater, writers, children's books

Dept. of Coals to Newcastle

You know, we really need a new metaphor for "coals to Newcastle" -- that is really tired. Any suggestions?

But what I was going to say: check out this BoingBoing post about "poverty awareness ads"... in India. I have a really hard time believing the middle class in India is unaware of poverty, since from what I've read you can't go out without poor children not only hitting you up for change but following you everywhere you go.

In fact, you can't even walk a block in San Francisco without encountering a homeless person or spare-change scam. And they need more "awareness" in India?? I don't get it.

Adventures in publishing: old school

British police found a 300-year-old book bound in human skin (use Bugmenot for passwords to newspaper sites). The story explains that "it was not uncommon around the time of the French Revolution for books to be covered in human skin" and "The practice, known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, was sometimes used in the 18th and 19th centuries when accounts of murder trials were bound in the killer's skin."

How like Kafka's story "In the Penal Colony" in which prisoners were executed by having an account of their crime written on their skin using fine-bladed knives manipulated by an ingeneous machine. Read the story at that link.

Around the block

Here's an interview with my writer friend Marilyn Jaye Lewis, who was the very first person I interviewed for the "What are you working on?" series. She gives me, Cris, and FTH a nice shout-out.

And speaking of former WAYWO interviewees, Alison Tyler now has a blog.

Girlbomb author Janice Erlbaum has a Moment with a capital M: one of the teenage runaway residents of the shelter where she volunteers -- the shelter where she stayed when she was a teenage runaway 20 years ago, where part of her memoir is set -- found her book compelling and incisive. Or, as the reader herself put it:

"I gotta give it to you, Bead Lady. I'm reading that book you wrote, and I can not put it down! ... Because I was feeling low, you know, I was all upset because of my prospects, you know, this situation that I'm in, and feeling like it's not going to get better, and then my roommate had read your book, and she said -- not to put your business all in the street -- but she said, you know, 'Bead Lady used to live here, and she was messed up too, and now she's doin' all right, so you should read this.' And she passed it to me. And it is mad good. It is mad inspiring."

It doesn't get any better than that.

writers, Alison Tyler, Marilyn Jaye Lewis, janice Erlbaum

The Master and Garish Squeal

I received a piece of spam from a sender purporting to be named Garish Squeal -- a name at once Dickensenian and pornographic.

With that provenance, I had to open it; besides, it missed being caught in the junk mailbox. The spam was about a supposed hot stock. But the interesting part is that the stock tip was enclosed in text copied from the Russian masterpiece The Master and Margarita -- a one-of-a-kind novel about the purity of art and love vs. the machinations of the devil and the Soviet system, complete with a fragmented narration of the Passion.

It's coincidental that I received this piece of spam today, because I thought about that book and its portrayal of the Passion this morning during the Palm Sunday service. In the Christian Palm Sunday (or "Passion Sunday") service, the whole passion narrative is read, from the entry into Jerusalem to the institution of the Lord's Supper and on to Christ's suffering in Gethsemane, his arrest by a mob, his trial before the Jewish and Roman authorities, his betrayal by Peter, and his crucifixion and burial.

As I said, this story is recounted in a feverish, fractured way in Bulgakov's novel, from the point of view of the disciple Matthew and of Pontius Pilate; a more memorable fictionalization of the story can hardly be imagined. Yet that's not even the main thrust of the novel, it's only a story within the story; it's the text of the novel that the character "the Master" has written. Among many other amazing aspects of the novel are sustained portrayals of the Devil and his minions as a sort of crew of weird piratical magicians, including a man-sized cat named Behemoth. There might even have been -- though there isn't -- a character named Garish Squeal.

You could call the novel magic realism, but it's hardly realism at all, it's more surrealism. And yet the strange events of the story, and there are many, take place in a realistically portrayed Moscow of the 1930s. If you have never read this amazing novel, you must.

Guide to San Francisco

Oh, right on! Violet Blue has posted her very own Guide to San Francisco. I didn't know the Hungry I was such a cool place -- that'll definitely be my next stop when I want a lap dance.

I've been meaning to do something like this for a long time, in fact I even started a blog called "Living in San Francisco" which I hardly ever even posted to and finally got rid of. But that's why she's Violet Blue -- she gets it done.

But in the spirit of things, let me suggest my own fave restaurants.
Sushi -- inexpensive: Miyabi on Church St. For a splurge: Osaka on Fillmore
Italian -- Emmy's Spaghetti Shack for a neighborhood experience
Thai -- Malai Thai on 16th St. or Thailand Restaurant in the Castro
Crepes -- I totally echo Violet's recommendation of Ti Couz
French -- Bistro Clovis on Market and Franklin

San Francisco restaurants

Overreaction '06

There's a blog devoted to fans of a certain high-end pocket notebook, the Moleskine brand. The proprietor of the blog likes to post pictures of people holding the Moleskine notebook -- or what might be one -- and recently ran a cheesecake illustration of a 30s-era telephone operator with her bloomers revealed, holding a notebook in one hand. One reader objected in the comments to this fleshy fantasy, others piled on calling her a censor, and the resulting pileup shows a lot about American tolerance and moral thinking in the year 2006.

Americans -- I'm at least as guilty of this as anyone else -- generally display an attitude of superiority when it comes to thinking about how enlightened and tolerant we are about political and other forms of diversity. Compared to the Arab world or most third-world countries, we're a model of democratic pluralism, aren't we? All those brown people shooting and bombing each other over little things like how to pray, or whether women should be slaves or merely chattel -- we'd never go off the deep end like that, eh? Oh sure -- until someone steps on our toes. Then it's no-holds-barred flame war.

Well, democracy is messy, even when the subject is something as trivial as notebooks and pin-up girls. And I'd rather the debate be seen and heard than have no debate at all, or have the debate be covered up. But at the same time there's something to be said for being mature enough not to bait people and not to respond to baiting, because after a certain point, it's all just yelling and screaming and a waste of energy.

flame wars, Moleskine, democracy

The reading not attended

I went on Wednesday to the Northern California Book Awards, and posted about the generally low energy. Such was clearly not the case at the Lambda Book Awards readings held the very next night in an adjacent room; Liz henry posts about a fabulous time with interesting, energetic people. I spotted Kate Braverman at the NCBA; she was, no doubt, one of the very few people to attend both -- again, something wrong with the lack of overlap -- in addition to Katia, who received a nomination from both groups.

Previously: The Northern California Older Book Awards

writers, Liz Henry, Lambda Book Awards, Northern California Book Awards

Dept. of ripostes

Scene: the breakfast table. Cris had to be in court this morning, so we had breakfast together, a rare occurrence.

Me: (reading a news headline): Now here's a smart dog: "4-year-old lab designs keyboard for use in Hindi."

Cris, unimpressed: The cat coulda done it if he'd wanted to.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

There's enough bad-behavior badness in a single story from the SF Chronicle this morning to satisfy all your desires.

A thief broke into a car last week and hit the jackpot: a wealthy lawyer's wallet. He used the credit cards and IDs to check himself into a luxe hotel on Nob Hill, then ordered a raft of computer equipment with the credit card and had it delivered to him at the hotel. (That's how police, tipped off about the missing wallet, found him.)

But it gets better. The thief, one Wilson Lee, also used the credit card to buy himself an iPod -- from a hotel vending machine! The story anticipates the reader saying "Wha--?!" and assures us:

(Such machines are increasingly common at hotels, airports and other venues.)

Really? Who knew? Anyway, it's not just that -- when police checked the iPod, they found not the greatest hits of Ga-yum-yan or Jay Chou, but credit card and other personal data from hundreds of people, including SF Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

The story makes it sound as if all this happened very quickly, but if you read all the way to the bottom, it turns out it took almost a year for the cops to catch the guy, as he stayed in luxury hotels ordering thousands of dollars worth of computer quipment, then turning around and selling it for cash.

thieves, identify theft

What are you working on? : Noelle Oxenhandler

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers, New Yorker writer and essayist Noelle Oxenhandler, whose latest project is about three wishes.

The book I'm working on now is tentatively titled An Experiment in Desire. It's both a memoir of my own experiment in making three very different wishes come true, and it's an exploration of the ancient human art of wishing. ... Having been raised as a Catholic and then discovered Buddhism as a young adult, I'm very oriented toward accepting the reality of suffering and then seeking to transcend it through spiritual realization. The idea of making a quasi-spiritual practice of wishing for concrete, tangible things in your life is quite foreign to me. Of course, this supplies a certain dramatic tension for the book -- but it also means that I'm fighting my own resistance much of the time.

writers, Noelle Oxenhandler, spirituality

Northern California Older Book Awards

Went last night to the Northern California Book Awards, an annual event sponsored by that venerable local institution Poetry Flash.

I am loath to criticize people who are, first of all, volunteers, and second of all, my elders in every way. They have kept a literary community going in the Bay Area and in Northern California as a whole for decades. And the event was reasonably well-organized and held in a pretty auditorium in the nearly-new San Francisco Public Library.

But I do have to say that the event was somewhat lacking in energy. First of all, in each category there was at least one nominee, sometimes two, who was not present. This became an even bigger drag when the absent nominee won -- which was most of the time. So picture several people getting up on stage, and then none of them win, because the catagory is won by someone not there.

As the evening wore on, the excuses for not being there seemed to get more and more lame. For the fiction winner, William T. Vollmann, it was hard not to feel that the event simply paled in comparison to anything else he had to do; he was said to be in Toronto. Rebecca Solnit, one of the few people present who were under 50 years old, read a page or two from Europe Central that made the book sound almost incomprehensible. For the translation winner, he was said to be in Monterrey welcoming a dozen students from overseas. The nonfiction winner was absent as well.

And as I said, the whole crowd was reasonably elderly. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- these people are teachers, bookstore owners, writers. They were the literary community for the last 40 years. But I had to wonder: where are all the young people who crowd Writers With Drinks every month? Where are the hundreds of young people who packed the LitCrawl readings last October? They weren't in that auditorium.

There's something wrong there. Why does there have to be such a gap between the old scene and the new scene?

Poetry Flash, Northern California Book Awards, William T. Vollmann

Today's fake: cops posing as children online

In the luckiest thing to happen to Tom DeLay all week, the Washington media's attention was distracted when a deputy press sec'ty in the Dept. of Homeland Security (sic!) was arrested yesterday for soliciting sex with a minor over the internet. The "minor" was, of course, a cop posing as a minor -- "an undercover Florida sheriff's detective," no less.

These stories of would-be pederasts hoodwinked by cops (and feverish vigilantes) are becoming utterly familiar, and this case is only notable because the man arrested -- I almost said "the victim," which may be understandable because it's hard to call anybody else in the case the victim -- is a mid-level Bush Administration official.

My focus is not on him -- he's just one more pathetic idiot who did not think things through. My focus is on all these people out there, cops and others, who are posing as children in order to bring other people down. Has anyone actually gone to the trouble of finding out how many people are employed in this weird enterprise? Is it safe to say there are, at least, hundreds of people out there, pretending to be children just so they can entrap men into soliciting sex with them? What kind of job is this? What kind of person do you have to be to pose -- apparently successfully, in many cases, since we hear about so many -- as a child who is maybe-probably interested in having sex? What kind of mindset do these people posess?

It's fucking weird, in my opinion. This is not to suggest that these men are not, at the very least, disturbed and in need of therapy; in some cases these operations have probably snagged men who have already committed crimes with children. But how strange it is to trick people this way.

*I'm guessing on the status. Is the deputy press secretary of a cabinet-level agency "mid-level?" I really don't know. But enough to get the case widespread attention, if only for one day.

Brian J. Doyle, online, entrapment, solicitation

'Why's Mommy's a Democrat' apparently not a hoax

A few days ago I posted about a children's book called "Why Mommy is a Democrat," and not finding the book on Amazon, derided it as a hoax.

However, courtesy Metafilter's cenexo, I now have this link to a Daily Kos posting by the author, one Jeremy Zilber. The book is "self-published," that's why it's not on Amazon. Okay -- apologies to the author and to everyone who's enjoying making fun of, or being outraged by, the book. And to its actual readers, if there are any.

But dude -- if your book is indistinguishable from something a wag would create as a parody, then having someone deride it as a hoax is the least of your problems.

hoaxes, Democrats

What are you working on? : Marianne Villanueva

Now posted in my series of interviews with writers about their current work, Marianne Villanueva, Philippine-American writer of short stories.

Plot has been the hardest thing for me to figure out. I could write for weeks, months, with just a voice coming at me, but it would end up pretty deadening. I still need to figure out events, circumstances, situations.

Then there's the wondering whether what I am writing is "true" -- true to my cultural background. As a Filipina writer I feel almost an obligation to write about my culture, but the longer I've lived in California the harder that becomes.

writers, Marianne Villanueva,Philipine-American artists

Tom DeLay's head on a stick

I have nothing to say about Tom DeLay, other than the requisite woohoo, but I couldn't resist that headline.

I heard on KPFA this morning my friend Sara Miles, who is up for a Northern California Book Award at tomorrow's ceremonies for co-editing Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan.

I'll be at the ceremonies to cheer on Sara and Katia, who is nominated in the fiction category. Since Wm. T. Vollmann lives in Sacramento, she's up against NBA winner Europe Central, but I see her as the local favorite.

From Sunday, an interview with Orhan Pamuk in the Guardian. You know, it's not just that he was a near-martyr to Turkish xenophobic nationalism -- his 2004 novel Snow was really great.

William T. Vollmann, Northern California Book Awards,Sara Miles

Why GM is failing

The story finally breaks: GM Slow to Respond to Nasty Ads. You think? If they're this slow on the uptake, is it any wonder they're imploding as a corporation?

Previously: Activists remix Chevy ads, post pranks, hijack promotional site

Today's fake: 'Why Mommy is a Democrat'

Funny: a hoax page for a children's book that inculcates "Democrat" values ("Democrats make sure we share all our toys, just like Mommy does" while in the background two wealthy people scorn a homeless bum).

Of course, there is no such book -- but that didn't keep some people from being deeply outraged.

hoaxes, Democrats

Today's fake: Car commercials we wish we could see

A U.S. car manufacturer is letting "customers" make their own "commericals" for their cars and post them on the manufacturer's website. View it -- I'll bet the carmaker didn't figure on "customers" putting in lines like "How big is your penis? Ours is really big! Watch us fuck America with it!" (Thanks to Violet Blue -- more at her posting including her own submission created entirely from "all text from the subject lines of email in my spam folder."

Update: More at http://www.naparstek.com/ -- thanks, Jym!

What are you working on? : Laura Krughoff

Just posted in my series of interviews with writers about their current projects, Laura Krughoff, who says:

The first draft of a short story has always been my least favorite part of the writing process -- I've always felt subject to the tyranny of finishing. For that reason, I've been really surprised by how liberating and fun diving into a draft of a novel has been. I'm enjoying the feeling of having a work in progress -- knowing I get to be with these characters and this material for a good long while.

Krughoff also talks about one of her techniques for uncovering details about her characters: she writes herself "long, rambling letters in which I tell myself everything I know about the novel and the characters. I ask myself all sorts of questions about stuff I don't know." I do a somewhat similar thing -- I do a written Q and A with myself about whatever issue I'm trying to resolve. (Disclosure: Krughoff and I have the same agent.)

Laura Krughoff, writers