Rants that you will enjoy

Sunday morning after another day of working at the l.n.c.b.. Yesterday a woman with two children brought a fancy pen and notebook to the register; the total was nineteen dollars and change. The card she gave was “declined,” the first time that’s happened to me. She asked for an ATM, was sent to the food court adjacent to the l.n.c.b. and never returned as far as I could see. It was also the day that a woman called on the phone asking for a book supposedly entitled Sandwiches That You Will Enjoy -- a book which, according to all the computer records at our disposal (including Books in Print) does not now exist, if it ever did. Due to a miscommunication, the woman was left on hold while the employee who was helping her left for her mid-shift break, and when I finally picked up the line after five minutes, she was madder than a drunken trailer wife on Cops. She asked to speak to the manager so I had to hand her over to the supervisor of the hour who endured her angry rantings for several minutes.

I read a novel called The Monk Downstairs. It was short and rather shallow, I thought. But despite those characteristics, it was widely and positively reviewed. I have ordered another by the same author, because I found out that his agent lives in Berkeley and is connected to a powerful New York agency. Perhaps I can finagle a way to get my novel to this woman.

I’m also reading The Crazed by Ha Jin and The Book Against God by James Wood. I’m really into reading novels since the l.n.c.b. job started.

You are what you buy to read

Working at the l.n.c.b., one is in a position to observe people's secret desires, fears and obsessions. Consider:

The cuddling couple who bought three wedding magazines, a book about having the perfect honeymoon, and a football magazine

The lady d'une certaine age who refused to believe we didn't have in stock "All Families Are Psychotic" by Douglas Coupland (whose name she insisted on pronouncing "coop-lund")

The man and woman who came in, twenty minutes apart, each looking for books on lonliness.

About those two, my friends whom I tell about them always say, "Why didn't you introduce them?" The truth is, it didn't occur to me. But to say to someone, "Why, that trollish guy over there was just asking for the same thing! Why don't you chat with each other instead of wallowing in your separate hells?" -- that would be a little intrusive, I think. My job is simply to lead them to the "Self-Help" section and wish them well.

It's all a little like being a shrink, perhaps, except people come up and lay their interests and obsessions literally before you. You put them in a bag and give them back to them, after charging them money for them.

To better endure my hours standing on my feet at the end of the day, I have done two things: started taking Ibuprofen before and during a shift, and bought the fattest, most cushy and expensive Dr. Scholl's shoe inserts. The results of these steps is that I'm no longer utterly exhuasted at the end of the shift. Last Wednesday I actually had a little bit of energy by the end of the day.

This is my day off. As usual I spent it doing errands and exercising. Then in the evening, Cris had a date, so it's my chance to sit around reading and playing the Bob Dylan CDs she hates. Quelle luxe.

America today

Here's a good one, courtesy Space Waitress: The FBI questioned a man after someone spotted him reading a news editorial entitled "Weapons of Mass Supidity" in a coffee shop. He rightly concludes: "It seems like a dark day when an American citizen regards reading as a threat, and downright pitch-black when the federal government agrees."

Does everyone remember what to do if the FBI calls, or comes to your door? Here's a nice refresher: Know Your Rights, and another: Just Say No to the FBI and Police.

Do I think cops are a good idea when a drunken neighbor is beating on my front door screaming threats, or when people are running riot after a football loss? Sure. But as the Sf Chronicle's Jon Carroll wrote yesterday, this whole War on Terror thing is way out of hand.

So far, we've cracked down on a whole bunch of visa violators. Now I hate visa violators as much as the next guy, but wouldn't it be great to get actual accessories to the actual terror attack? John Ashcroft: inept fascist. He can't even run a police state right.

I'll take Dictator Targets for $1000

A Pentagon agency is setting up a web-based betting pool for people who want to make wagers on the likelihood of assassinations, coups, terrorist attacks and other catastrophes, the Asociated Press reported (link to SF Gate).

In a news conference Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticized the market:

"The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," Wyden said.

Dorgan described it as useless, offensive and "unbelievably stupid... Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?"

Who's behind it? None other than John Poindexter.

Echo of Stephanie

A reader wrote me about Stephanie, a former girlfriend who died in a car wreck in 1999, and sent me this picture of her and the rest of the on-air staff. That's her standing with her hand on the desk.

He writes:

I went to Boston College with Stephanie (and was also a) dj at WZBC. Her shows were so... I hate to say touching, but they were. They were very personal, romantic, geared towards her audience, inspirational, ecclectic for sure. ... She and I were eventually banned from being in the dj booth at the same time because we would get so much shit for "immaturity." Stephanie and I did news together (which no one ever listened to or realized the station had) by just grabbing various shit off of the AP machine. Her delivery, and dead serious alert tone (done completely comically of course) would literally have me on the floor. Stephanie was someone who could make me laugh till it hurt. During the begathon to raise money for the station, her spots were so fucking funny. The recording she did for the sign off of the station nightly, which she made for just me to play was so amazing. She was just so funny and such a crack up.

Way back then

Yesterday was a day off, so I went to the huge and understuffed San Francisco Public Library. One of several new or refurbished buildings that line the Civic Center Plaza, the library is an attractive hodgepodge of styles which nonetheless probes to be a spectacularly inefficient library-- if you believe the critics. I went to the periodicals department on the 5th floor, loaded some microfilm into an ancient viewer, and typed in several news stories reporting on the October, 1990 demonstration protesting the visit to SF by evangelist Larry Lea. The Texas preacher wanted to "exorcise" the "evil spirits" he said held sway over San Francisco -- on Halloween, which is practically a national holiday here (if San Francisco were a nation). A grand time was had by all.

I had two amazingly nerdy customers this week at the l.n.c.b.. The first was an 11-year-old boy who, while his mother checked out her purchases, earnestly explained to her some arcane point having to do with "Lord of the Rings" and Sauron's powers and the Ring and all. The second was when some schlub returned a Monty Python boxed set of DVDs and bought a huge box of "Windows XP Server" software and manuals. Only a real nerd would have a boxed set of ten Monty Python DVDs, and only a truly deadly one would exchange it --unopened -- for software. And boring server software, at that. The damn box of software weighed a ton; it's the first time I've double-bagged something.

One down, many to go

Last week I sent off a query about my novel to a prospective agent -- the first one I've tried, someone whose name I got from a client of his -- and today I got back a nice but short email: no dice. So my summertime fantasy of going from no agent to having an agent in exactly one week is over. Now starts the hard work of gathering information about other agents who might be interested, and sending queries to them. I'll try not to be tiresome about it, for I fear the process of sending out queries and getting negative answers has a very good chance of becoming extremely tiresome. How about this: I'll make a scorecard.

Eat at Mick and Jimmy's!

I love this story from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (link courtesy poyner.og/romenesko). It starts off to be a story about how a small Minnesota town is advertising itself as the alternative to mass-mall culture with the slogan "Secede from Starbucks Nation." The story goes on to cite many of the charms of Excelsior, including its claim that Mick Jagger was inspired there to write the song "You Can't Always Get What You Want." According to the town wag, who really is named Jimmy, he met up with Jagger at the town's pharmacy after they played a gig in the burg in 1964 (they really did play there) and in complaining about receiving a regular coke instead of a cherry coke at the soda fountain, uttered the now-famous phrase.

Alphabetizing

Among other attributes, one of the main qualities that got me hired at the l.n.c.b. was my familiarity with the alphabet. I was asked to take on, from time to time, sections of the store where the alphabetizing was particularly bad -- meaning that customers had torn up the section and books had gotten reshelved in the wrong place -- and clean them up. One of the most egregious sections is the poetry section -- so bad that I spent part of my lunch hour working on it, and then after my shift was over, I actually went back and worked on it for another 35 minutes, off the clock. Why? Because it's bad enough that no one buys poetry, but if they did go looking for poetry, it would be tragic if they couldn't find what they were looking for. The work of Charles Simic was for some reason spread all over the S's. Wilson, the several Williamses, and Whitman were all entwined, along with a stray Louise Gluck. Mary Karr was all over the place, and Kenneth Koch was hiding among the M's. I tried to put things back in order, but the poetry section was too large to be made perfect in just an hour -- which is, I guess, a blessing.

I found another news story about Clear Lake, the amorphous suburb in Texas where I went to high school, and where I set many of my erotic stories involving teenagers. (You won't find Clear Lake on any map; Clear Lake City (not an incorporated city, by the way) is more or less the center of it, but much of that is in fact an incorporated area of Houston, which is actually 25 miles north. It's all very confusing and not worth figuring out, but if you really want to, use Yahoo maps to find Webster, TX, and then Seabrook, TX, and the Clear Lake area includes those towns and everything in between.) Mysteriously dead teenagers with the wrong friends are the victims in this story. One of the teens is named Tiffany, of course. I'll try to run updates (here's an AP story) of this story, which should have some legs, though not as long legs as the story of Andrea Yates who lived in the same neighborhood -- that's the insane housewife who drowned all her kids.

I celebrate these horrific tales because they fit my mental picture of the place, a desperately sterile suburb practically coated in bored teenagers and middle-class angst.

Egads

And having just sent off my first query to an agent, in what may be a long attempt to get my novel published, I come across this article from New York magazine, about how new authors with first novels are treated nowadays. Strangely, it's actually easier to get a big advance for your first novel -- but if it doesn't come close to making back the advance, you can be finished in publishing, just like that. No one else will touch you, because you'll never be a "first novelist" again.

No pressure there, eh? I foresee a lot of people getting name changes or resorting to pseudonyms. "Sure, it's my first novel! Mary Jo Schultz has never had a publishing contract before, no sir!"

There's more at the Book Babes column on poynter.org, focussing on the part journalists play in the book publicity machine. It doesn't give me much confidence when the columnist writes:

Schaper asks a simple question that cuts to the heart of all the idealistic blather about books as a vehicle for ideas. "If nobody knows your book is out there, where is its value?"

Man, talk about a cutthroat attitude. "The idealistic blather about books as a vehicle for ideas." If she were in charge, I guess she'd kill the New York Times Book Review and just cover books in the business section once a week along with the rest of the "Information Industry."

Update: and here's something on the same theme from the newspaper The Scotsman: First Impressions Count In Publishing, reacting to and extending the New York article. The anecdote about an author's mother fishing his manuscript out of a garbage can and sending it to an agent is quite touching.

Into the future

Two minor milestones achieved this week: 1.) I finally sent a query letter for my novel Make Nice to an agent. I got the name of the agent from a writer I met up at Holden Village in June. Whether this will turn out to be beginner's luck and I get an agent on the first try -- man, that would have to be unbelieveable luck; either that or my novel is more impressive than I think -- or (more likely) it's just the first in many queries. My friend Katia has sent out about fifty queries over a year and a half, trying to get her novel represented.

And 2.) I put out another issue of the church newsletter I edit. It contains a piece I wrote up at Holden, to be published in their newsletter as well, about walking their labyrinth and how it's like writing a novel.

Speaking of books, my friend Qiron has used iUniverse to publisher her book Feminist Folktales from India. Qiron, a brilliant law graduate who speaks several languages, has been toiling in as a technical writer for several years, and is one of many Sybase alumnae. If I had a dollar for every technical writer who used to work at Sybase, I could buy myself a damn fancy meal. Fortunately for me, Cris still works at Sybase, so we can buy ourselves a fancy meal once in a while anyway.

Why English teachers grow old

A man in Pennsylvania convicted of disorderly conduct was sentenced to read Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird and report on it. Sounds like a neat idea? Then why are librarians and English teachers cringing? Because they hate the idea of reading and writing as punishments. Reading and writing are supposed to be empowering, uplifting, fun. Using literature to punish somebody practically guarantees that person (an adult in this case, but more often a student) will avoid reading and writing like the plague in the future.

Nevertheless, I'm bringing the news story to work today at the l.c.n.b.. The staff needs the laughs, in my opinion.

A friend today told me she saw my name in Plyllis Burke's book Family Values and wondered if that were me. Yes, it was I carrying that sign at the Basic Instinct protests reading BUTT-UGLY DOUGLAS GO HOME.

New! A month after coming back from Holden Village, I have finally posted an edited version of the journal I kept while I was up there.

Were my dogs tired

Last night I put in my first-ever non-training real-live full shift at the l.c.n.b.. An hour repairing the alphabetic order of part of of the fiction section, followed by two hours at the cash register, then an hour off for "lunch" (though it was 7 pm), part of which I spent on my feet as well, actually shopping in the store -- for it was Employee Appreciation Day and we got 40% off. Then I spent two more hours at the information desk, another hour "on reg" (on the cash register, that is), and a final segment putting away magazines that people had scattered about the store all day long. At midnight I left, footsore. I'm going to have to buy a new pair of sneakers for this job, the cushier the better. And take Ibuprofen before and during.

Thus I spent the last hours of a warm, sunny day. Then this morning the fog was in and the sky was cool and gray. I don't think I'll ever get tired of the sequence of warm summer days followed by cool gray summer days during which the sun comes out maybe from 11:15 to 3:00. Nor will I cease being grateful for the coolness, a soothing breath that comes without fail after two or three days of "heat." That's in quotes because a hot day for San Francisco is when it gets up to 85. If it gets over 90 the people just lie on the floor with a cool cloth over their forehead. At least I do.

Here's what I bought on Employee Appreciation Day: The Book Against God, a novel by James Wood; Advertisements for Myself, a 1959 collection of magazine pieces by Normal Mailer, which includes his famous piece "The White Negro" as well as other meditations on pop culture -- he was being sardonic about that stuff a decade before Tom Wolfe; and The Unconquerable World, the new book by Jonathan Schell.

Les Amis

Went to Oakland for a pre-Bastille Day party at the house of a friend, Catherine. Catherine is not only a good friend -- we've known each other for 20 years now -- but my ex-wife. We got married in 1984, when we were lovers; she got her green card after a couple of years, and our divorce followed that. She became an American citizen about seven years later, and works now as a drama therapist in the teen psych ward in an East Bay hospital. She has changed very little in twenty years; her French accent, despite having become more understandable, is still charming, and she looks just about as cute as she was when she was 24. Definitely still has the same figure; I know because she showed guests a lot of photos taken on a recent vacation to Hawaii with her now-boyfriend Brandy. Much of the party I just sat and watched her chitchat and play verbally with her best friend Betty, who arrived with her from France and who's known her since high school. They were so cute together twenty years ago I cast them in a theater production as St. Joan and St. Catherine in heaven, and they're just as endearing now.

If all this sounds twee and patronizing, then I'm just not diong a very good job of describing them in action. Utterly relaxed with each other, they carry on a rapid-fire stream of mixed French and English, their hands and faces flashing from gesture to gesture and expression to expression, repeatedly breaking into peals of laughter. Just two good friends talking together -- bosom buddies. As usual, I was caught between enjoying their interplay and feeling a little sad because I wasn't in the middle of their palaver -- I don't understand French -- and because I so rarely have had, in my life, a friend as close as they are to each other.

Found a job

Though I started this week at the l.c.n.b., it's pretty low pay for only 24 hours a week. So I was looking for something else. And though the church secretary job I was hoping for over the last couple of months fell though, I found another one -- that is, a secretary (or "parish administrator") job at a different church. The pay is 75% higher than at the l.c.n.b. and I'm sure the work will be both more fulfilling and less stressful. Between the two jobs I might actually make enough money to pay tax this year.

But everything is supposed to be confidential at the church job; I won't blog about it. Anyone who wishes to know about the events at the church will have to read my novels in the future; perhaps something will leak in, vastly camouflaged.

I'll start there a week from Monday. Monday and Wednesdays will be rather full, as I go from one job over the bridge to the other, but I want to keep a toe hold at the l.c.n.b. for a while, both out of regard for the friend who got me the job there and because it is another five or six hundred dollars a month.

To celebrate, I bought a pair of shoes. Actually I bought the shoes for the job interview so that was rather in reverse. Then I went grocery shopping and went home and exercised. I'm on a weight loss kick so I've upped my every-other-day exercise to five miles on the treadmill.

I can help you!

I've just finished three days of training for my new career in retail at the Large National Chain Bookstore (l.n.c.b.). I've learned to run the registers, to remove DVDs and CDs from their plastic security cases, to search for things on the in-store databases (a woman today wanted a book she'd heard of that was "short stories about tennis." We even had a copy "on hand" -- supposedly. When I took her over to the Sports section, tennis was all mixed up with hockey, soccer and wrestling, so we never found the book she was looking for), to load up electronic "gift cards," to invite people to join the company's email newsletter (3% positive response is the goal!).

My favorite moment so far was when the goth girl who was training me was saying you should recommend another book to go with the book someone had already picked up. "If someone picks up Hillary Clinton's new book, what would you recommend?"

"How about Ann Coulter's new book?" I chirped. She nearly blushed, which for a goth girl would have been a major disaster. "Don't get me started!" she finally sputtered.

The job pays just a little bit better than the $8/hr. I was making doing data entry as a temp in 1989. The point of the job is not the money but the toehold. In case Cris loses her lucrative software job, one of us needs to be employed at a place that gives domestic partners benefits.

In any case, I immediately got a lead on another job, one which would pay 75% more, and which I could actually do along with the l.c.n.b. job.

Independence Day

For years I've resisted the supermarket "club cards" that supposedly save shoppers a couple of bucks while allowing supermarket companies to collect data on their buying habits. Gradually I noticed that practically everyone else who shopped at Cala or Safeway used the cards, and the other day I thought, well hell, I bet I could just enter a random phone number -- you can enter "your" phone number instead of swiping your "club card" -- and it'll be somebody in this neighborhood. So I entered my own exchange and four random digits and sure enough, it went through. I saved three dollars and change.

Excellent. But then I went home and entered the phone number in Google. Within less than a minute I found that the phone number I'd used is the home number of a lawyer who works for the local branch of the ACLU! I love this country!

I won't tell the phone number; make up one on your own. Just use an exchange that's common in the supermarket's neighborhood. Then the market won't be able to track your Friday night purchases of cheap boxed wine and Cosmopolitan magazine.

Of course, the credit card company will still know. If you start down the paranoid road of trying to deny people access to your data, you could drive yourself crazy. Nevertheless, there's no reason to offer up your personal information if you can easily avoid it.

Lusties take over

I missed this story over the weekend, but a fellow Troublemaker alerted me to it: The strippers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco have taken over the ownership of the business. They became the first unionized strip club in the U.S. in 1995 -- as documented in the film Live Nude Girls Unite! -- and when management threatened early this year to close the joint, the dancers took it over instead, making it a cooperative. Just another reason I love living in San Francisco where, by the way, another employee-owned business, Good Vibrations, is the nation's largest mail-order supplier of sex toys, erotic books and media, and other bedroom-related goods. (Be sure to stop in one of their three attractive retail stores in the Bay Area!)

Reader of the month

This week's big kiss goes to my friend Dina for reading the entire ms. of my novel in less than a week, flagging typos and questions -- and did it over Pride weekend. Definitely beyond the call of duty. For thanks I took her to dinner at Spiazzino, a recently opened Italian restaurant on Valencia St. It's in that space formerly occupied by Val 21. The pasta dish I had was great, so give it a try.

Later in the evening I took my first look at some of the articles people have sent me for the next issue of the newsletter I edit for my church. Though each of the articles was written by a college graduate, they're going to need a lot of work. I cringed at sentences like "Living in Danville and working in Berkeley, it is quite a commute to attend the Foundation board meetings" (in San Francisco).

Man. Fortunately there's no solid deadline -- though I would like to get the next issue out this month.

I learned earlier today that one of the part time jobs I thought I might get, at another church, won't come through for some time. So in the meantime it looks like more hours at the Large Nationwide Bookstore Chain.

Speaking of bookstores, check out this 30 Jun 03 story from the SF Chronicle. Some neighbors in affluent Noe Valley have united to pull the locally-owned bookstore out of debt.

Back to the cool

Part of the joy of living in San Francisco is returning to the city from somewhere else, especially if it's summer and you've just been to a sweaty locale. New York's had worse heat waves, but it felt plenty hot 'n humid to me, especially last Friday when there was some kind of "ozone alert." I took that to mean the air pollution was particularly bad, a fact my eyes attested to. They got so red and swollen I had to take my contact lenses out for the duration. (Typically, I blamed myself: I'm still getting accustomed to the soft "extended wear"-type lenses. But on second thought, I think it was the bad air.) No wonder there are so many advertisements for spas, plastic surgeons and beauty treatments of various kinds -- the air is filthy, at least at times during the summer.

So coming back to San Francisco (I missed a local mini heat wave -- the only kind we ever have -- while on the east coast) and waking up to cool, sunny weather is fabulous. The yellow hills are like lemon cakes with a frosting of fog, and the garden is brilliant with flowers and greenery. Out my back window I can see the grapefruit rees in the neighbors' yards. It's so beautiful.

Today I have little to do but errands and chores. My next writing mini-project will be to put together a twenty page synopsis of my novel for the agent whose name I got from a fellow writer at Holden Village. Once that's done I can work on incorporating edits from Dina, whom I gave the latest version of the novel to just before leaving for New York. She's supposed to flag "redundancies" and anything else that jumps out at her. Then, finally, I can work on groundwork for my next book, which I've decided will be a modern-day exploration of alienation as lived in the softwear industry and in the paranoid canyons of the desert.

 

Last morning in NY

We're finishing up our trip to New York, by rights the last vacation we'll have in a long time. Not just because we're broke but because the company Cris works for has now taken up the practice of deducting mandatory days off from employees' vacation pay. So that even though it looks like she has two weeks of vacation saved up, five of those days are being decimated this week as the company makes everyone take a mandatory "vacation" the week of Independence Day. Thus we all become happy Americans.

I almost wrote "the company Cris still works for." Having spent more than ten years at Sybase, she must be one of the oldest employees now, what with the dotcom boom that drained off many workers and endless series of layoffs that canned many more. She's been there so long we still marvel each time she escapes a layoff. Until now it's been mostly a matter of morbid curiosity: which one of us would lose our corporate jobs first? I've been laid off three times from three companies in the last six years; Cris has dodged it each time. Now that we need the income, this has become less morbid curiosity and more anxious worrying. But I was raised a solid member of the middle class: I don't worry too much about whether I'll survive.

Yesterday, on our last full day in New York, we made our annual pilgrimage to the Bronx Zoo and the pen of Rapunzel, the Sumatran rhino. We learned the poor creature is sick. Sumatran rhinos famously die in captivity and this is one of three in the U.S. She's been here every time we've visited, for the last five years. When we got to the zoo in midday, she was conked out in the ground, snoozing in the heat; after 4:00 she was up and doing her usual pacing around the grass and dirt pen. I was glad that our last view of the creature was that of an active rhino, not a sleeping one.

Today all we're accomplishing is packing. Cris sent me out of the room to get me our of the way, so I'm at a Kinko's, where they charge 30 cents a minute (!) to use these machines.

As I've said before, this is my last fling before I actually settle down and, for the first time since early October, get a job -- at a large national chain bookstore. I'll be working for a friend so I won't be able to publish much dirt about the l.n.c.b. -- she's doing me a favor by hiring me in these times. A church secretary job is the only other thing on the horizon for me.

New jobs mean the end of long mornings of reading the paper and long afternoons of working on my (fortunately completed) book. Of course, I suppose I could sell my (fortunately completed) book for a lot of money and won't have to work after all, but since the liklihood of that is nil, I'll be selling books in the more common way: over the counter. I'll be sure to note the first time if and when someone actually buys one of my own books.

Still in New York

Cris and I are supposed to be doing this trip on the cheap. Most of our hotel is being paid for by our Hilton "points," and her air ticket was free. We're not spending the way we used to -- no Broadway show tickets. But we're still spending a lot, I'm afraid, on meals and souvenirs. We walk into a museum shop and emerge fifty or eighty bucks later. Credit cards are dangerous things.

The weather here was hot and humid and sticky in that inimitable New York way for the first few days of our trip. We spent as much time as possible indoors, in museums, movies, and the hotel, and tried not to travel places on the subway we had to transfer (the trains are airconditioned, but the platforms are, famously, not). We did spend an evening at Shea Stadium, but watching a ballgame in warm weather is a treat for someone from San Francisco where, not even a week ago, I wore long underwear to a night game.

Today the weather changed. It was a little cooler and the humidity was much lower. We braved an architectural walking tour, and later walked through Greenwish Village and Chinatown to Little Italy, where Mulberry Street was closed and the sidewalks were covered with restaurant tables. We had a great meal at one of those restaurants -- and I'm sorry I can't plug it, but I have no idea of the name -- they all are more or less alike as far as I could tell. Cris bought a bunch of t-shirts with the word "fuck" on them. Finally, back to the hotel, where we iced our ankles and knees and watched things like "World's Scariest Police Chases" on television. Quelle luxe!

Privacy confirmed

Where were you when you heard about the Supreme Court decision overturning Bowers v. Hardwick and affirming the right of individuals to privacy in their homes? Cris and I were in an elevator in the New York Hilton, one of those elevators with an annoying television playing CNN Headline News when the news was flashed upon the screen. (At least it wasn't just some tourist commercials.)

Loath as I am to add to the crush of comments on the matter, I have to say I was most amused by what Jerry Falwell had to say (no surprise there). Quoted in the New York Times this morning: "It's a capitulation to the gay and lesbian agenda whose ultimate goal is the legalization of same-sex marriage."

That's funny for a few reasons. First, on this day even Jerry Falwell has to say the words "gay and lesbian" -- not perverts, sodomites or any of the other slurs he would have used ten or twenty years ago. Second, he thinks the "ultimate agenda" for queers is legalization of same-sex marriage. My first reaction to that was, ha, just wait til he sees what else we have in store. Once Candace Gingrich becomes President, all must learn to play the piano! The color turquoise will be forbidden! (Apologies to the city of Palm Springs.) Tout le monde will be forced to wear natural fabrics! And everyone will moisturize.

Once I calmed down, I still had to laugh -- same-sex marriage! So scary. Ooga booga booga! What if they realized many queers don't want "marriage" if it imitates that of our parents? The freedom to be miserable -- to feel trapped -- to live with someone who despises you. Gee, I've wanted that all along -- not. The fact is, queer people have been free all along to be just as miserable with each other as our parents were, and we don't even have to get married to do it. As far as I'm concerned, Jerry Fallwell can stuff marriage up his fundamentalist fanny.

No, not all queers feel that way. The point is not to "imitate" marriage but to procure the same legal protections -- I know. But I wish there were no legal protections for marriage. Then all relationships would be treated the same without benefit of approval by the state or church.

Ripped from the wires

While I was in Seattle last week I came across this story in the Seattle Times. I offer it as evidence that journalism in Seattle is not, as some have said, dead or dying. Read this excerpt and watch for the word "basement."

Taking it all off: the lowdown on the Brazilian wax

By Pamela Sitt
Seattle Times staff reporter

For bringing the Brazilian bikini wax to Seattle, Anne Uhlir credits actress Demi Moore.

Uhlir, who waxes everything from eyebrows to panty lines, had been called to the Four Seasons Hotel to give the visiting Moore a standard bikini wax — only it wasn't.

"She was like, 'I want the full monty' (translation: everything off)," Uhlir recalls, "and I said, 'Are you sure?' "

That brief 1999 encounter launched Uhlir's Wax On Spa on Capitol Hill, specializing in "the full monty" — commonly known as the Brazilian bikini wax. Wax On — the self-proclaimed "Home of the Brazilian Bikini Wax" — is one of a growing number of local salons to offer the Brazilian, which is a very thorough removal of one's pubic hair. ...

"What makes a Brazilian a Brazilian is when I 'clean the basement,' " said Pegi Carnahan, who does at least five a day at ARIA Salon on Capitol Hill. "It's Brazilian (thong-style) swimwear that requires that kind of intense wax, which is why they call it a Brazilian."

I just came from Holden Village, where it's hard to convince people to clean the bathrooms. I wonder what they'd say if they knew there are people whose job it is to wax the hair off people's "basements."

Blaze of light

On clear summer evenings in San Francisco, one discovers a little-discussed advantage of the usually present fog: it blocks the setting sun. Not that there's anything wrong with sunlight or sunsets, but late afternoons -- by which I mean 7:30 pm, like now -- with the sun slanting low across the city: man, what an explosion of light. (Someone wrote me after seeing my abortive "Living in SF" blog, in which I made all of three entries. They wanted to know things about what it's really like to live in SF, which is just why I created that blog. But I didn't have time to do two blogs and write a book. So all you get is this one. I'll try putting more "what it's like to live in SF"-type things here.

For today, there's the blazing low sun of early summer, and this website, which quite boggles my mind in its earnest reaching attempts to invent something we otherwise call "religion" or even "spirituality" without ever using those words or even admitting to the existence of same.

Several years ago, at the instigation of a supervisor at work, I signed up for a couple of weekends of what was billed as a "communications seminar." I showed up at the first session, at a rented hall in downtown San Francisco, and found that I had signed up for basically an EST-like weekend in which we were going to be put through the wringer and then all bond. During the opening address, the event's leader discussed a number of concepts relating to new age spirituality (like "your soul's desire"), apparently supposing that none of the 100 people attending the event were aware of the existence of organized religion, since she said several times that there was nowhere in today's society a person could have these spiritual needs fulfilled -- except, of course, in the very seminar we were attending.

I'm not suggesting that the person behind "Your Celebrations" has any relation to that EST-like seminar, but her assumption seems to be the same: One has a need for events, consultations and rituals to mark the significant occasions of one's life, and for presumably wise people to help you get through them; since human society has never seen fit to meet these needs until now, we'll just make it up as we go along, producing "healing ceremonies to release illness, forgive others or let go of anger."

It's all so earnest and well-meaning that it seems mean to make fun of it. But are people really so clueless that they are in need of a made-up spirituality? Aren't any of the religious traditions of the last 3000 years sufficient to -- to quote them again -- "expand your horizons and nourish your soul"?

All this is illustrative of "what it's like to live in San Francisco." (Okay, this woman's from the East Bay, but here it's the same.) Not the new age spirituality per se, but the notion that one is supposed to regard anything well-meaning, no matter how preposterous, and accept it with a mild sense of tolerance. As I've written elsewhere, the one taboo in San Francisco is not some outré sexual act, but disapproval or, more precisely, laughing at someone's earnest attempts at identity. If someone says "This is me, this is what I do," you're not supposed to laugh. You're just supposed to say, Oh, how creative of you.

So I'm obliged to say: Vaya con dios, Alexandra True -- or whatever your real name is. Or... well, not con dios. I guess it would have to be con "the light of your own acceptance and unconditional love until you are overflowing." No need to ask forgiveness of a God, to accept or try to improve your karma, to follow a law or a tradition. It's all within you -- "flood yourself" (holy baptism, Batman!) with "your own acceptance." Sheesh.

Now it's summer

I worked last night on editing the journal I kept up at Holden Village. I wanted to post an edited version of it so that friends can see what I was up to there, and so that people searching for information on the place can find a detailed account by somebody. But after working on my personal journal entries for more than an hour, I came to the conclusion that they were both too personal and too boring for anyone to want to read. So I'll give it another shot, starting fresh and maybe including just a few verbatim excerpts from my actual journals. Readers might have to wait a few days for that, however.

How I spent my first full day back in town after seven weeks: errands, websurfing, puttering around the house, watching a little television. The biggest event was when Cris and I walked to the nearby Park Bench Cafe to have coffee and a croissant to celebrate Croissant Day. This purely private holiday marks the day in 1986 when I was sitting in a nearly deserted high school cafeteria, waiting to help register students for summer school. Cris and I were both summer school teachers; she approached me and mooched a croissant which, having brought about three of them, I could not refuse. We chatted all morning, went to lunch together, and that was the start of our relationship 17 years ago. Five years after that we became domestic partners on the same day, thus reinforcing the anniversary aspect of the date (actually four days ago, but I was in Seattle then).

Obligatory silly link: Biblical figures bobblehead dolls.

Jiggity jig

After a long, long trip on buses and trains (I won't bore you with the details), I pulled into Emeryville aboard Amtrak this morning sometime before nine. We had just cruised along the shore of San Francisco Bay with the morning sun lighting up the city like a dream. I've had the experience of seeing the city from the air after coming back from a long trip and almost weeping, it was so beautiful. This experience was like that. "There's San Francisco!" I cried to everyone else in the car, pointing out the windows at the apparition across eight miles of water. No one responded, except for a leery look on the part of a few passengers.

Cris picked me up and we had a late breakfast, the better to wait out the morning traffic. Then we flew home across the Bay Bridge and into our street. In the house, the cats approached cautiously -- it had been seven weeks, after all.

Yes, it's good to be home. There are bills to pay, errands to run, and our friend Nancy reset the passwords to our wireless node without telling me, so that my laptop is incommunicado. (I'm doing this entry on the big Macintosh.) But the air is sweet and cool and the flowers in the garden are so pretty. Newspapers are plentiful; the Giants are on the radio; the internet works.

It'll take until my laptop is back on the wire before I can post a long journal of the last seven weeks. I'll feature that on another page.

Down from the mountain

HELLO HELLO HELLO     I'm in Seattle -- down from Holden Village. Dialing in from a motel while I watch the Giants-Dodgers game on ESPN, I've just come back from a big fat dinner at a big hotel and a visit to the local branch of the Lusty Lady. So yeah, I'm re-entering.

Tried to phone Ellen but it was busy. I'll get her a little later. Til then A BIG FAT THANKS to Ellen for posting my postcards. Please read below in the blog for some of my exploits over the past few weeks.

I'll post a longer version of my sojourn up there after I get back to San Francisco on Friday the 20th. Til then, briefly: My tooth, which was a major problem during week three, seems to be fine. I finished work on the second draft of my novel, and I even got the name of an agent from a writer I met up there. I managed to make it thorugh my weeks in the kitchen there without poisoning anybody.

For more updates, check back in a few days. And THANKS also to everybody who sent me a postcard up there.

Art and hanging out

Since Cris came back two days ago, we've done a bit of sightseeing, trying to have some fun together before I disappear for seven weeks. Yesterday we went hiking in San Pedro County Park in nearby Pacifica. There the wildflowers were plentiful and the grass was thick and still green. It was a beautiful day for a short hike and only got prettier and prettier. Then today we drove over to the Palace of the Legion of Honor, a grandly named edifice close by the Golden Gate. In fact it's an art museum where a lot of mostly European art hangs; we saw some paintings that had, in some way, to do with Poland -- exactly what was not always clear. My favorite piece was this painting by Jan Matejko of a glum court jester.

Then, in a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous, we went to Costco, where we got a membership. Cris was converted to Costco during a recent trip to Canada, from which she brought back a jumbo bottle of shampoo. I was frightened by everything about the place.

Then came Ellen

I'm leaving in a few days for my writing retreat, but I have managed to convince one of my long-suffering friends to post things to my blog while I'm gone. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ellen Twiname.

(loud applause)

Ellen's posting this bit for me while I walk her through it, as a test. While I'm in Holden Village in Washington, there are no phones, so no internet access. I'll be sending Ellen postcards, and she'll post them to the blog. What fun, eh!? We'll see how long she can put up with it.

Hoppy birdy

Today is my birthday, the first one I've spent alone in many years. With Cris still up in Canada, it's been just me and the cats for almost three weeks, and today was no different. I have been spending a lot of time "ripping" music from my CDs onto the Mac using the itunes software which converts the tracks on a CD to .mp3 files. I now have "2.1 days" worth of music, more than 800 separate tracks. The only trouble is, I have no iPod to take with me on my upcoming trip, so all the fooling around with my CDs and iTunes has been rather pointless.

I did get birthday wishes at morning prayer, and a card from Christine and from my mother. I thought of going to a movie, but I stuck around during the afternoon, waiting for UPS to make a second attempt to deliver my replacement credit cards. (I lost my wallet last week.) They didn't. So I thought to myself, "I am sort of piddling away my birthday, without much of an opportunity for thought or contemplation, why not go meditate."

Instead of going to Hartford St., though, I went to the church, hauled out the cushions, and sat in the dimly lit sanctuary. I sat for ten minutes or so, stretched, changed positions, got sleepy, took a short nap, then sat for real for about twenty-five or thirty minutes -- enough to feel like I had almost gotten to center on my breathing. Almost. I didn't come to any big realizations or anything, but at least I felt a little bit slowed down. I've been kind of tense lately for some reason.

It rained on and off all day -- not hard steady rain, just a pelting shower, then nothing, then another shower. Kind of enjoyable, really.

It'll be really nice to get up to the mountains -- somewhere I can listen to the rain without most of the noise being the sound of cars going up a wet street. At Holden there are no cars and no streets! Only a few trucks and a single gravel road. And nowhere to go if you aren't hauling something, so no traffic and no reason for there to be noise. Just the sound of the rain.

Time for a bad pun

A friend sent me an email message about saving some natives in the Amazon called the Xavante:

Slide Show and Discussion about Efforts by the Xavante Indians of Brazil to Protect Their Land and Culture

Tuesday, May 20, 2003, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm, at the Tides Center Room 542 at the Thoreau Center of Sustainability in the San Francisco Presidio (Lincoln Blvd. & Torney Ave.)

Philip Klasky and Aryeh Shell will show their slides and discuss their trip on a cultural exchange with the Xavante Indians of central Brazil.

The Xavante face the threat of a multi-national corporate attempt to construct the Hidrovia Project - a 1,200 mile industrial waterway that would strip the land of forests and minerals and plant soybean for export. The Xavante are reaching out for international allies in their struggle to protect their land and rich traditional culture.

For more information and directions call (415) 752-8678 or (510) 594-1377. Sponsored by the Institute for Deep Ecology and The Cultural Conservancy.

I can only assume that the slogan for this effort is "Xavante be alone." (Ka-pow! goes the rimshot.)

Tomorrow's my last full day alone in the house before Cris comes back from vacation. It almost doesn't count, because our housekeeper comes in tomorrow. Not only can I not put off cleaning up the place until Cris gets back -- I have to put things away before the housekeeper comes. In fact, I really should get started on it now. Tonight is garbage night too, so I have to take down the recycling and all anyway.

I spent much of the last few days putting together the latest issue of my church's newsletter -- a project I started so I wouldn't have to work on my book. Many are the things done for the sake of work avoidance.

Mystery

I've just come from a really amazing event -- one of those things that goes on under your nose all the time but which I never knew about. Someone at St. Gregory's, where I go for morning prayer, mentioned to me that the Orthodox cathedral in San Francisco -- their Easter is a week after the Roman one, so they're in the middle of Holy Week -- has a service called "Liturgy of the Twelve Gospels." According to my friend, all four gospels were read in succession. This seemed rather too long to be possible, but I went over to Holy Trinity Cathedral tonight and was handed and candle and told that the custom is to stand for the whole thing, but I could sit down if I really needed to between the readings. I asked if it were true they did all four gospels, and the guy said, no, they only read the portions from the four gospels that constitute the passion narratives -- divided into twelve segments, thus the "twelve gospels."

So for three hours I sat, stood and knelt -- there were a few prostrations where my Zen practice came in handy -- and listened, not only to the readings (which were all chanted) but to the small choir doing this great music. The choir must have sung two solid hours out of the three. There were bells and incense and processions and the center of the iconostasis was open. All in all a wonderful experience. I was exhausted afterward though I did more sitting than standing, it seemed.

Too close to home

Sen. Rick Santorum (Penn.), third-ranking Republican in the Senate, has committed this month's Republican gaffe:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum said, according to the AP.

Santorum spokeswoman Erica Clayton Wright said the quote was accurate "only in the context related specifically to the right to privacy in the Supreme Court case." The senator, she said, "has no problem with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals." Washington Post story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7390-2003Apr21.html

Can I just say a few things about that?

The implied right to privacy, which was established by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, does indeed pertain to the privacy that people can assume "in the bedroom" or around sexual topics -- especially in married couples, a distinction that forms part of the state's case in the Texas case that's currently being decided in the Supreme Court. In the arguments in that case, lawyers and justices haggled over whether there was a difference between a married heterosexual couple having anal sex, and a gay (presumably unmarried) couple doing the same. Apparently it's all right for married straight people to buttfuck, even to Republicans.

But the senator is way off base in saying that if the justices decide for the queers it means "you" (presumably he meant straight married people, since in the Republican world that's the standard) "have the right to bigamy, polygamy, incest and adultery."

Let me draw a few distinctions here. For one thing, the arguments in the Lawrence case made clear that both the justices and the lawyers on both sides wished the court to decide narrowly on the issue, and not on bigamy, incest and the rest. Second, the arguments themselves addressed specific issues of why the issue of consenting homosexuality was different from those other issues. And third, that fucking Republican is just trying to make the same tired Anita Bryant argument that opening the door to homosexuality will lead inevitably to the downfall of society. How do I know that? Because unless he knows even less about constitutional law than I do, he can't possibly believe what he's saying. Therefore he's just making a political, rhetorical point -- and isn't there enough of that shit going around these days?

Then there's that last bit: The senator, she said, "has no problem with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender individuals." Oh really? I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet there is at least one, and probably more, gay person on his staff. And I'll bet some of his relatives are queer too. It always seems to work out that way, anyway.

Blooming today

The dentist's receptionist called to remind me I have an appointment at 10:00 on Thursday. It's a good thing she called. I have left off all calendars, appointment books and PDAs; the most I have to remind myself of things is a little post-it stuck on the kitchen calendar. But I didn't have one for the dentist.

1:40 pm, and the breeze has sprung up, the clouds beginning to roar in from the ocean a few miles away. It's been cool all day, though the sun has been out for a couple of hours; but now it will be really chilly for the rest of the day and into the evening. Down in the still-sunny garden, I can see that long stalks of grass are beginning to go to seed. I ought to go down there and take off the seed tops before they dry out and spread.

Blooming today are the poppies, the cherry trees, a bearded iris, a few calla lillies (most have gone), some geraniums, a few posies, the pink foxglove along the back fence, one white rose, and a long stalk I don't know the name of that has a bursting many-petalled purple flower. And, of course, the bougainvilla, which always has blooms. And the lavender and the jasmine and some little violets. And even more small flowers I don't know the name of.

Bumblebees float in and out of the poppies -- a haiku begging for a last line.

For me, the big looming thing in my mind is how close now my writing retreat is. Less than two weeks and I’ll be on a train to Seattle. I haven’t even tried to work on my book during the time Cris has been gone. If I weren’t going on the retreat, I’m sure I would be pressing harder, but franly I’ve been pretty lazy. Since coming back from Phoenix all I’ve done is work on the newsletter, read, and go to church. And I went to see Laurel Canyon. It was enjoyable except for the excessive focus on the young couple, especially on the boy doctor's flirtation with a colleague. I actually got up and went to the bathroom during one of their scenes; they had about as much chemistry as an eggplant and a house plant. By contrast, whenever Francis McDormand was on the screen, I was riveted. It’s extraordinary just to watch her face.

I went over to St. Gregory's to help them clean up from their Easter fiesta. They throw such a big shindig that they leave the whole church a mess from Saturday night to Monday. (They don't have an Easter service on Sunday morning -- just the vigil service on Saturday night. Daring!) So there are streamers, empty champagne bottles, little plates full of Chex Mix, discarded programs everywhere -- it's like the aftermath of any huge party. Along with a dozen other people, I spent about two hours putting the place in order, and felt very virtuous afterward -- as it's not my church, I just go there for morning prayer. I thought I ought to do something out of gratitude for the morning prayer service. How many places, outside monasteries, can you go and have sung morning prayer every weekday morning?

Who to pray for? Let's see...

Two competing world views: While the Pope, in his Good Friday message, asked people to pray for victims of war, George Bush asked people to pray for coalition troops.

That says it all, doesn't it?

More focus on the fundies

Did you see the Washington Post story about the Muslim DoD employees who are upset that Franklin Graham was invited to hold a Good Friday service at the Pentagon? Graham, the son of Billy Graham, has called Islam "an evil religion." (Another story.) He's also the head of an aid group champing at the bit in Jordan, waiting to get into Iraq to deliver aid and incidentally evangelize the population.

For a larger perspective, here's an excellent article about fundamentalist Christian influence on the Republicans (and vice versa -- really it's just a bunch of conservative shits like Karl Rove and Ralph Reed who are manipulating evangelical Christians to serve as a power base for their own greed and ambition). Writing from the perspective of a Southern Baptist who feels his denomination has been hijacked by politics, the author explains the links between the GOP and the Southern Baptist Convention. Excerpt:

The separation of church and state, long central to Baptists, is of little interest to the fundamentalists: In 1998, Richard Land, at a strategy meeting with Republicans and members of the religious right, told the Republicans, "No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage."

George W. Bush, former heavy drinker and alleged cocaine user, claims to have been brought to God in 1986 by Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham. His 1993 pronouncement to an Austin-American Statesman reporter that non-believers will go to hell infuriated a lot of non-believers, but cemented his now nearly infallible reputation among Southern Baptist fundamentalists – a group that, perhaps more than any other, helped Bush rise to power in Texas.

In the '80s, Karl Rove advised nearly every Republican campaign in Texas, before then a Democratic stronghold. A large factor in Republicanizing Texas politics was the courting of the religious right, a specialty of Rove. He is a Christian of some sort, but he refuses to discuss much of anything with reporters, especially the specifics of his faith. Those specifics would clearly reveal much about the man often dubbed "Bush's brain."

Breezy day

I got back from Phoenix on Tuesday, and just hung out with the cats for pretty much the next 48 hours, except for going to church several times. Yesterday it rained pretty much all day, and I went out at 1:00 to have my Talk with Steve H. about the job at St. G. It wasn’t a very businesslike conversation; he just sort of free-associated through lunch about the job and the staff there. When it came down to cases, I was finally able to tell him about my summer schedule and so forth. As far as I can tell, he seems to be thinking like I’m just going to go ahead and take the job; he didn’t give me any reason to think otherwise.

He’s going to Talk to the rectors.

My aunt Millie, whom I thought I would have to help move away from Phoenix in the dead of summer, wrote me and said she’s going to spend May 15 - Sep. 15 in Portland. So I won’t really have to worry about coming back from Holden and going to help her move in July when it’s the worst down there. That's a relief. I'd like to help her but anything's better than July or August in Phoenix. Except maybe August in St. Louis.

Last night there were several alarms. The feral yellow cat is back on the roof, and it kept (seemingly) asking for help. But whenever I would go up on the roof, it would run away. Then at 4:00 a.m. I thought I heard a scream outside -- it seemed so urgent that I threw on my clothes and some shoes, got the gun, and ran out on the street. Nothing was happening, of course -- I may as well have dreamed it. Perhaps I had. Then I woke up with a start at 6:30 for some reason. And I couldn’t really go back to sleep. Finally I got up and fed the cats and did a load of wash and got dressed and went to morning prayer.

I didn’t eat until I went to get my blood drawn. The Russian immigrant phlebotomist was able to find a vein where no one else had -- on the outside of my ... what do you call it, the part of your arm that’s opposite your elbow? -- and diagonal. I’ll have to remember that for the next time. The last two times I had my blood drawn they had a devil of a time finding a vein.

So after the rain stopped around 10:00 it was an absolutely gorgeous day, though it got very windy in the late afternoon. I spent all day working on the church newsletter, so I can get another issue out before I go to Holden. Around 5:00 I went for a walk on the hill and it was really blowing hard. I hardly got back before it was time to go to Maundy Thursday church. And there was hardly anybody there but the music was beautiful and simple and the atmosphere was very meditative.

Then I got some sushi and brought some home to the cats. They sniffed at it, and then I remembered to rinse it off. They only like it when it’s rinsed, the picky beasts.

Happy garden

I'm back from a few days visiting my aunt in Phoenix. We went to a ballgame -- the Diamondbacks absolutely stink, so suddenly and completely that the people still haven't learned how to boo -- and to see "About Schmidt." I echo the comments I read in reviews that say no matter how well done everything about the movie is, you never forget for one second that it's Jack Nicholson up there. I wonder if previous generations had the same trouble with Cary Grant or James Stewart. (John Wayne, on the other hand, never pretended to be anyone other than John Wayne, whether he was playing a cowboy or a soldier.) Contrast this with Nicholas Cage's twin performance in "Adaptation;" not only did I forget it was Nicholas Cage, but I forgot that it was the same actor playing both twin brothers.

Obligatory Iraq-related links: Scott Rosenberg ponts out in his Salon blog that the U.S. was certainly quick to protect the Iraqi oil ministry while looters sacked every other public building. He links to this excellent Washington Post article from Sunday:

"The bombing was terrible for sure, but it is not ruining our city like these looters are," growled Sherko Jaf, a dentist, as he watched a band of young men hauling rolls of carpet out of the 10-story Foreign Ministry building and placing them inside a yellow dump truck. "How will this ministry ever work again? You know, even if we don't have Saddam Hussein, we will still need a foreign ministry."

...Some Iraqis, however, question the allocation of U.S. forces around the capital. They note a whole company of Marines, along with at least a half-dozen amphibious assault vehicles, has been assigned to guard the Oil Ministry, while many other ministries -- including trade, information, planning, health and education -- remain unprotected. "Why just the oil ministry?" Jaf asked. "Is it because they just want our oil?"

After coming back from morning prayer, I spent an hour in the garden reading the paper and pacifying the cats. I had brought the cordless phone down there in case someone called, and it was a good thing. My mother rang, wanting to know the lowdown on my aunt. She wants my aunt to move to Portland because she judges my aunt's situation in Phoenix not to be good. I kind of agree but told my mother it wouldn't help to pressure the aunt (her half sister), that she had to reach her own conclusions about where to live. She agreed but is fretful; it's her personality. I owe my fretful bossiness to my mother and my judgemental side to my father; between the two characteristics, it's a wonder anyone can live with me. After the call I just sat down there enjoying the beautiful garden, including the cherry trees that Cris planted for my last birthday. One is doing better than the other, but I finally got the second one to start budding again.

In a little while I'll go to talk to someone about a job. I'm not saying any more for fear I'll jinx it.

'My butt was clenched for days'

I wasn't trying to find a war story, but this one is just too good. It's a reporter's notebook-type tale from a British reporter, Chris Ayers, who was "embedded" with the U.S. Marines. Excerpts:

"I realised why some journalists choose to become full-time war correspondents: the thrill of writing an I-nearly-died-a-gruesome-death story is almost unbeatable. It requires, however, that you nearly die a gruesome death," he added.

"To get another story on a similar scale, I thought, I would have to go through the whole nearly-dying thing all over again. And what if I did actually die? Surely only a disturbed person would put themselves in mortal danger simply for front page bragging rights?," Ayres said.

...
Ayres also described coming across gung-ho US journalists, some with US flags on poles. "One US writer, a pale, bespectacled and rather geeky figure like me, kept saying: 'Let's giddyup, motherf***er!'," he said.

"Most of the time, I had no idea where I was or what our unit was doing, adding to the difficulties of filing stories. The worst times were when we moved at night and our driver used night vision goggles to see. My buttocks remained firmly clenched for days on end.

Fed up

It's a good thing the war is almost over. I'm tired of the whole thing. Today there's only one more city left to conquer -- Tikrit -- and the news media is treating it like the Super Bowl, using words like "showdown" and "last stand" and so forth.

Meanwhile, as "saltyvicar" pointed out in his eminently readable blog, 3.3 million people have been killed in fighting in the Congo. (I first typed "ethnic fighting." But who the hell knows why they're killing each other? There's not a single U.S. news organization covering the war there, as a google news search will quickly show.)

So I'm giving up on war coverage for a few days. Today I'm going to try to write a little, and tomorrow I'm going to Phoenix for a few days to visit my aunt. Meanwhile Cris will also leave tomorrow for another 17-day vacation, the second half of her "sabbatical."

She's been speaking longingly and half-jokingly about going to Paris again, where we went a year and a half ago for her birthday. So last night I had a dream about having dinner with her in Paris. The restaurant had this odd split-level arrangement where we had to sit beneath a pane of glass where others could look down on us. That's probably because I've lost all ability to speak French, an ability I never had much of in the first place eighteen years ago, when I learned it by laboriously going to Saturday morning French classes at City College for two semesters. This left me with a bare conversational ability that quickly left me as soon as I came back from a three-week trip to Europe, the purpose of the studying.

I've always been terrible at learning languages. I lived in Japan for 22 months and never learned to speak the language aside from the kind of shop and taxi language I learned in the first two weeks. And I took German for three semesters in college, to fulfill a requirement, and almost nothing remains of my near-conversational ability in that tongue, either. Now the whole time it turns out I should have been learning Arabic. Then I could get a job rebuilding Iraq!

Our dear little blonde is safe!

The national spasm of emotion over the capture and subsequent rescue of missing Pvt. Jessica Lynch has gone to a new level with the news that Hollywood producers are already planning a TV movie. I am so fucking tired of hearing about this girl who didn't do anything except get captured and fortuitously survive. Meanwhile, her colleague in the unit, Shoshanna Johnson, is still missing, and do we hear a peep about her? Says a lot about the relative values this society puts on a 19-year-old blonde chick vs. a 30-year-old black woman.

Iraqi free speech

One of the best ways to get an overview of what's happening in the war is the BBC's reporters' log, which contains excerpts from BBC dispatches from all over the world. Today it contained this gem:

One of my close Iraqi friends went up to an American marine and said to him: "I'm going to exercise my right of free speech for the first time in my life - we want you out of here as soon as possible."

(Scroll down to the report datelined "Baghdad :: Andrew Gilligan :: 0530GMT " on 10 Apr 03)

And the view from Get Your War On is always refreshing.

So what do you suppose Dick CHeney is thinking right now? 'Thank God, my decades-long dream of liberating the Iraqi children has been realized! Now, to cure AIDS!' Then he'll roll up his sleeves and think, 'OK! Let's get moving on that ROAD MAP FOR PEACE! That's something I give a flying fuck about!'

Spring days

The weather is so gorgeous that I've been trying to spend a little less time on the internet and television lately. I've gotten a little bit of work done on my book. I haven't covered a lot of ground in the second draft, but I do feel like I really have a handle on what needs to be done. I've probably done only about a fifth of the rewriting that needs to be done.

Here's a link you shouldn't miss, though -- all about how the DofD prepares the battlefield MREs for the troops.

God's on our side, of course

Suddenly everybody is wondering what role Bush's religious faith plays in U.S. foreign policy. The BBC casts an amused look at the ubiquitous religious culture of the U.S. and of Presidents in particular, suggesting that Bush's born-again beliefs conceivably influence his willingness to start a Mideast war. The New York Times Magazine covered similar ground last week, albeit from a closer perspective. (Archived version) But Sunday's Guardian has a more alarming, direct, perspective:President Bush is under pressure to clarify his position on the role evangelical Christian aid groups are set to play in post-war Iraq. Responding to criticism that workers from at least two evangelical groups whose leaders have denounced Islam are massing in Jordan to bring a Gospel message to Iraq's Muslims, the White House attempted to distance itself from the idea that the war is a crusade to convert the nation to Christianity.

That comes after the Washington Post had this story Friday:

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and Samaritan's Purse, run by the Rev. Franklin Graham, said they are ready to provide emergency shelter, food aid and medical care to Iraq's mostly Muslim population. The announcements raised concerns among U.S. Muslim leaders that the groups intend to proselytize in Iraq.

Picture shows thousand words, also several refugees twice

An L.A. Times photog got fired after editors were tipped to the fact he'd used photo-editing software to combine two shots of the same scene into a more pleasing composition. Under the heading of "smart -- to a point," the lensman produced a more dramatic photo but neglected to edit out some folks in the background who appeared twice in the synthesized image. (Note: If that WSJ link doesn't work, click here for an archived version.)

What surprises me is not that a photographer did this, what surprises me is the unconvincing expressions of shock on the part of the L.A. Times and the photogs quoted in the WSJ story. "If you can't believe what you see, everything is suspect," one frets. "This sort of thing damages the credibility of all of us," says another, probably wringing his hands.

Guys, the horses escaped from that barn years ago. It won't do any good shutting the door now.

Language in the 21st century

This fascinating article on The Register (U.K.) discusses how a neologism comes to light, is quickly taken up by everyone from the masses to Kofi Annan, and then repurposed and redefined by an influential blogger. In the process, the author invents a new word: Googlewash: the redefining of a neologism to the effect that a Google search tends to return the newest meaning.

That's a lot of high people

Two California men were convicted today of producing "a third of the country's LSD" in a decommissioned nuclear missle silo in Kansas. That's something to write home about right there. But it gets better:

Before producing the LSD out of the silo, according to the DEA, the men ran their operations out of Santa Fe, N.M., and produced 10 million doses every five weeks.

Ten million doses every five weeks. Do the math. Accounting for a very few people who do LSD with great frequency -- say, a few times a week even -- most people who ever do LSD probably do it once every month or two, at the most. And yet somebody's consuming ten million doses every five weeks -- and that's only a third of the LSD produced in the U.S., according to the story.

So really there are thirty million doses being produced and, presumably, consumed every five weeks. Say that means between five and ten million people on LSD every week or so. That's a lot of seriously high people. And yet I haven't even talked to anybody who admits to taking LSD in more than five years.

Either there are a lot of people still fooling around with LSD or the DEA's estimates are way off. It reminds me of a late-80s movie I saw about a couple of laid-back drug dealers. The movie opens with the two guys watching a TV news report about a drug bust "with a street value of six million dollars." The two guys break up laughing, knowing the estimate is seriously exaggerated. One of them exclaims, "Six million dollars! Man, I want to live on that street!"

Pomo sentiments

This caption from a NYT photo has an ironic quality: Areas Taken Must Be Secured. It's like the title of a Guided By Voices song.

Also entertaining was this up-close-n-personal piece about a Marine leiutenant who is the company joker:

He seems more cheerful as the surroundings become more miserable. The smell of the camp's trash burning wafted over his cot, and he laughed, imagining telling the boys at home: "No, literally, we lived in a dump."

One of his best friends is in the unit, First Lt. Matt Neely. The two met a year ago, and get together regularly at home in Jacksonville, N.C., golfing on Saturdays, having afternoon beers. Lieutenant Neely is short compared to the stocky Deuce, and other officers have been known to call them "Gilligan and the Skipper." Before the war, they found distraction in the long wait in Kuwait by constantly arguing: What, say, would be the best song to listen to while crossing the Iraqi border? They threatened each other, drew their K-Bar knives on each other so often that no one around them paid attention. ...

They crossed the border. Both selected morbid songs by indecipherable heavy-metal bands mostly unknown outside Germany, with choruses like "Let the bodies hit the floor."

In another piece that shows how difficult it is to write satire these days, a piece today in The Onion headlined Bush Thought War Would Be Over By Now reads like straight news. Well of course he thought it would be over by now.