On Salon: God to Republicans: Drop dead

Salon.com started a new blogging-cum-social networking realm called Open Salon, and I started a blog there. My first post is kind of obvious.

The Lord, as His minion Pat Robertson likes to claim, directs natural disasters towards sinners, and thus the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina was punishment for American wickedness... As Hurricane Gustav approaches landfall, you have to wonder, then, why God has it in for the Republicans so bad that He sent a major hurricane to disrupt their convention.

Read the rest of the post.

Klamath Falls to SF

I've been out of town for a week, driving up to see my mother in suburban Portland. There, in addition to family duties, I worked for a day out of my company's downtown Portland office, and went to lunch with co-workers. That gave me the opportunity to discover the lunch trucks of downtown Portland. Anyplace there's a parking lot, two or three or eight trucks, trailers and carts are set up to serve a variety of foods, everything from Thai to Mexican. It had been several years since I'd been to downtown Portland during a workday, so this was a pleasant surprise to me.

While we were standing on the sidewalk waiting for our orders and talking in loud voices about new features of the next software release, a couple of hippie punks walked by, the boy intentionally brushing my shoulder and arm as he went past as if to tell me we were taking up too much room on the sidewalk. Being a cluster of four men, we probably were taking up too much room, frankly. I looked up in surprise at the glancing blow but it wasn't enough for me to make an issue of. If it had been enough to jar me off-balance, maybe. Anyway, I was amused by the fact that I am now a fat middle-aged businessman in a polo shirt being twitted by the same kind of hippie punk I was thirty years ago.

The next day, having posted on Twitter about being in an office building in downtown Portland, I was contacted by my friends Chris and Debora, who live in the southern California high desert but happened to be sub-letting in Portland for the month. Cris and I got together with them, had lunch, and went to the Portland Japanese Garden. What a nice break from family stuff!

In between breaks from family stuff, we spent time with my mother and her husband Tom. He is a typical old-man grouchy Republican who loves to bait me with lines like "Ya know, illegal aliens run California." Since the Democratic Convention was on all week long, he had to sit and watch it. The best moment was when Obama was speaking and Tom intoned, "'Change, change!' Change from what? He never says what change" and Obama promptly said, "Now let me tell you exactly what change I am talking about."

Now we're in Klamath Falls, where a cool wind is blowing. We missed a heat wave in the San Francisco Bay Area and we'll be back there tonight. Thanks, Katia, for the cat sitting!

technorati: Klamath Falls

How to go from Olympic hero to douchebag in a week

How do you go from Olympic stud to total douchebag in a week? Wear all your gold medals so that it looks like you have on a really bad belly dancer's costume, and top it off with a face that was never meant to be viewed dry.

I mean, everybody knows the guy looked good wet and naked, right? Why mess with success? Why not run a picture of him exulting in a just-clenched victory? Everybody knows he won the fucking medals.

I guess it's that, having won 8 medals, you never actually get to wear them except on your big SI cover shot. So if you have to have him wear the fucking things, then why not over a shirt of some kind? He's not going swimming in them, so why take his picture in swimming trunks?

Didn't anybody at the shoot say, "Uh, wait a minute. He looks like a freaking douchebag like this. Wardrobe? Can we get a shirt on him?"

technorati: Michael Phelps, Olympics, douchebags

Yes, it's lucrative

This post on Valleywag lists the going rate for H1-B visa workers hired by Microsoft, and includes the amazing statistics that a developer is paid around $115,000 while a technical writer gets $129,000.

Jesus! I don't make that much. But it is a pretty lucrative field, which provides certain evil consolation for the fact that it takes up all the time and energy that one might better spend being poor and writing novels.

Previously:

On sf.metblogs.com: Zyzzyva editor H. Junker was a technical writer before becoming a litmag editor

On Too Beautiful: What does a tech writer do?

technorati: technical writing

Focus on the Fundies: Non-denial denial of the year

When a pastor of an African megachurch was arrested today at the Oakland airport, accused of fondling a 13-year-old girl seated next to him on a flight from Denver, a Bay Area minister who has known the man for many years issued this stupendous, and stupifying, non-denial denial:

I'm deeply grieved, but I have no reason whatsoever to believe that there was any purposeful action on his part that would be in any way inappropriate.

WTF!

Today's fake: Artist hoaxes Florida city mag

Courtesy MediaBistro: an artist pulled a major hoax on Orlando magazine, resulting in a feature story filled with bullshit. Among other claims, artist Mark Pulliam claimed to have played for the New York Yankees and to have done a commissioned painting of Yankee Stadium for team owner George Steinbrenner's office. Evidently the magazine, which published this fantastic tale in its August issue, never did any fact-checking for the piece.

Not known yet is whether Pulliam pulled the hoax intentionally or whether he just fed a gullible interviewer a load of crap, never dreaming his wild claims wouldn't be checked. But at least the guy really is an artist: view his work here. The interviewer, Jay Boyar, is primarily a movie writer who "teaches film analysis at the University of Central Florida."

The article doesn't seem to have been cached by Google, unfortunately, but at least you can read the magazine editor's column that issue, in which he says:

Associate editor Jay Boyar's profile of Winter Garden artist Mark Pulliam ("The Natural," page 74) is a great read. Although Madonna is a fan of Pulliam's paintings, he is a virtual unknown in this area. And would you believe he also once pitched for the New York Yankees? Hey, I couldn’t make that up if I tried.

But someone did.

technorati: hoaxes, fake, Orlando

Kathy Acker feature, and lots of stuff from the 80s

While searching for something else, I ran across this 1985 feature on Kathy Acker in which the author, who was yet to become widely known, talks about her early career. Very entertaining.

The archive of the article's author, one Mick Sinclair, has all kinds of good stuff in it about famous figures of the 1970s and 80s, from Acker to Laurie Anderson to The Residents to Suzanne Vega.

Previously:
Kathy Acker, Clarion of Entropy

technorati: Kathy Acker

John Edwards: 'I am a straight American'

Over the years, along with the rest of the country, I've marveled over the tendency of celebrities to fuck around. When their miserable attempts at having a secret sex life were revealed, I wrote about Bill Clinton, Ted Haggard, and others. Now John Edwards joins them.

This Marueen Dowd column, though rather drawn out, pretty much sums it up:

For some reason, super-strivers have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves, as if they yearn for unmasking. Edwards's decency and concern for the weak in society -- except for his own wife. Bill Clinton's intellect and love of community -- except for his stupidity and destructiveness about Monica. Bush the Younger's jocular, I'm-in-charge self-confidence -- except for turning over his presidency, as no president ever has, to his Veep. Eliot Spitzer's crusade for truth, justice and the American way -- except at home.

This urge, as DowD identifies it, has long been satisfied by famous, powerful men by seeing prostitutes, especially dominatrices. But as Spitzer and the FBI demonstrated, you can't even fuck a prostitute in private these days without getting accidentally caught up in some racketeering investigation.

Clearly the only solution is that pursued by Rudolph Giuliani: Fuck someone else and act like you don't care who knows it.

technorati: John Edwards, adultery

Mystery vs. thriller vs. farce

The detective story is about solving the problem, getting to the center of the labyrinth and restoring some sort of order. The crime story is about chain reaction, about events and the ripples that move outward from them. The detective story demands greater story coherence; crime stories are more about style and energy. Chandler, who wrote mysteries, made story mistakes, and we forgive him what we wouldn't countenance for a second in Agatha Christie because his style was just so utterly, joyfully, mind-blowingly wonderful. ... Story works best when it just happens on the page. At the same we, as readers, crave shock and event. From the writer's point of view, the big and surprising twist creates a huge amount of energy -- and always, always problems later. Novels, even novellas written to order for Playboy, are written over time and tend not to be seamless. Perhaps this is for the best -- it's another way in which they can reflect the mess of life.

From the Jacket Copy book blog on the LA Times site.

(Not sure what he's referring to when he mentions "novellas written for Playboy." Do they publish serial novellas?)

This is like something Cris and I were discussing earlier this year. I wrote in my notes for my current novel:

Thrillers and farces, she said, work by ratcheting up tension, and by setting up a precarious situation and then setting everyone loose. Everyone has a goal, usually conflicting, and as they all try to fulfill their goals, things get more and more chaotic whether it's a thriller or a farce. People feel compelled to thrust themselves into a situation, thus destabilizing both the new situation and making it impossible for them to return to their previous state. She used the word "pressure" to describe this effect: the characters' character traits create "internal pressure" that compels them to do these things. Add the other characters and the setting and you have the ingredients of a farce, or a thriller if the characters' goals are sinister enough.
Situation comedy, she went on, works a different way: by setting up what she called traps for the characters. She referred to a film we saw part of on TV, "The 40 Year Old Virgin," in which the characters suffer a series of situational setbacks -- for example, when Steve Carrel and Catherine Keener first try to have sex, her teenage daughter bursts in on them. ... She also said something that was very pithy, if slightly unrelated: In a mystery, the story is resolved when the crime is solved. In a thriller, the mystery may be solved without a resolution to the story.

technorati: narrative, writing technique, novel writing

Liberty: stupid sometimes

A court in California ruled yesterday that parents may home-school their children without any qualifications at all. While 30 other states disagree, in California you can raise your children to be just as ignorant and benighted as you are, and no one can argue.

Liberty is stupid sometimes, but I guess this is the kind of thing you have to accept in a free society. I'd like the other free parts to stay free, however -- like being able to walk down the street or cross a bridge without being surveilled, or being able to consume what I want without fearing that my preferences are being uploaded to some huge database.

technorati: homeschooling, democracy

Retro Saturday morning

I just got home from breakfast and a walk with Anna in Noe Valley. In the early 1980s I loved nothing more than to wake up, go to breakfast together in Noe Valley and then take a window-shopping walk. Though I often go there on my own, this morning was the first time I'd done it with someone in years. What makes it great is the combination of pretty good food and the great windows. We encountered a huge family of Italian tourists, too many to count -- at least ten of them. And later a group speaking in French. It was cloudy and just a little bit misty. Great morning.

Now it's back to work on my book.

technorati: Noe Valley, San Francisco

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Gold medal edition

I know who's not going to be Obama's choice for VP. By lying about having an affair, John Edwards proved his presidential stature. Only bad thing about this? He fucked around while his wife was battling cancer, and that means we can no longer fault Newt Gingrich for doing the same thing.

Megachurch pastor Joel Osteen's wife -- a classic big-haired Southern blonde -- is being sued for an alleged air rage incident that started over a wet spot on the armrest of her first-class seat. They were kicked off a Continental Airlines flight in December, 2005 when Mrs. Osteen berated a flight attendant, who is now suing her. Victoria Osteen, who is the author of a new book, Love Your Life, was fined $3000 by the FAA in the incident.

The Osteens' congregation -- she is also listed as a pastor of the organization -- is called the nation's largest church, so huge it meets in a former basketball arena, capacity 16,000. Turning the arena into a space suitable for a televangelist cost $75 million. And the Osteens -- neither of whom seem to have had any training to be ministers -- weren't traveling on a mission to the poor on that fateful day in 2005. They were on their way to Vail, Colorado "for a family ski vacation."

The trial is being covered by The Houston Press's Hairball blog, which earlier this week alerted me to the difficulty Stephen Elliott's Progressive Reading Series is having getting getting Houston to accept a donation to buy more recycling bins.

Not content with playing second fiddle to China as the Olympics open, Russia started a war with neighboring Georgia yesterday. So much for the peacemaking effect of nations meeting on the sports field and all the other b.s. that's singing over the airwaves today.

technorati: John Edwards, Joel Osteen

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Illicit pie-eating edition

I adore this priceless anecdote:

When I was a little girl, my best friend was Mrs. Brown, a 65-year-old widow who lived on the corner across the street. Several times a week, I joined Mrs. Brown for lunch. She always ate the same thing: a hamburger patty, a scoop of cottage cheese, two slices of tomato with pepper, and a cup of hot tea with lemon.

One day, Mrs. Brown veered from course and also ate a slice of pecan pie. No sooner had she taken her last bite than her telephone rang. It was Mrs. MacQueen, another widow who lived on the opposite corner: "I saw you eat that piece of pie," she said.

Mrs. Brown and I were both horrified, even though I knew Mrs. Brown also watched Mrs. MacQueen's every move from her own dining room window. They gossiped incessantly about one another. Heaven forbid one should have had a night visitor.

Or that either had been a blogger.

That's by columnist Kathleen Parker, printed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about the larger issue of gossip and why it isn't news. Not only does this anecdote reinforce the whole Lake Woebegone ethos that everyone expects expects from Minnesota, but it curiously echoes the zeitgeist reflected in the latest cringeworthy NYT Magazine article on internet culture, just posted on the NYT site.