Yet another poseur

And here we go again -- courtesy The Book You Crew, a report from The Smoking Gun that suggests James Frey, the author of the depraved drug memoir A Million Little Pieces, fabricated crucial incidents in the book.

Hey, folks, there's a word for this. If you want to make something up, don't call it a memoir. Don't call it your bio. Call it what it is: FICTION.

So check this out: According to Galleycat, Frey's book was originally shopped as a novel before being bought by a publisher.

james Frey, literary hoaxes, Oprah

'Dupe Club'

Courtesy Supernaut, here's a post by Susie Bright on being duped by the J.T. Leroy hoax. In it she admits being fooled by the complex hoax until a week before the Stephen Beachy piece appeared in New York magazine, she was late-night phone-called by the person whose voice she knew as "LeRoy's."

What's interesting about Susie's post is how much it resembles the statements, or ramblings, attributed by journalists to Leroy: at the same time it reveals a personal, embarrassing tale, it's full of references to her own fame and career.

Of course, Susie has the right to be upset about feeling personally ripped off, in a psychic if not literal way, by the frauds behind the Leroy persona. But as I said in my last post, I think the real outrage is that the Leroy hoaxers are exploiting public sympathy for people with AIDS and transgender people as a way to explain or excuse their own sloppy stewardship of the Leroy persona -- namely the appointment of an inarticulate amateur fashion model, whose command of English has no similarity to Leroy's written prose, to pose as Leroy in public.

Just look at the comments of Ira Silverberg, "Leroy's" own literary agent:

People were deceived in a brutal way: playing the AIDS card to elicit support, money, connections. That is simply unacceptable. It is morally reprehensible.

J.T. Leroy, Susie Bright

J.T. Leroy poser unmasked?

Galumphing down the track like an aged racehorse, the New York Times has taken its own good time investigating the real identity of the person or persons behind the persona of J.T. LeRoy, author of several books as well as one piece published in the NYT travel section.

Given its Jayson Blair history, you'd think the Times might have been a little faster on the draw when the identity of writers it both publishes and reviews is questioned. But maybe they wanted to be careful -- after all, they wouldn't want to publish something wrong. That never happens -- and it better not happen anymore.

This just in, then: the Times' investigation has revealed that the person posing as J.T. Leroy in public (though not the author of the "Leroy" oeuvre) is Savannah Knoop, a model "in her mid 20s." Knoop is the half sister of one Geoffrey Knoop, the husband of Laura Albert; it is Albert (aka Emily Fraser or Speedie) who is the prime suspect as actual author of the works signed by "J.T. Leroy."

Right, let's review: Laura Albert, 40, and G. Knoop, 39, were struggling rock musicians. According to the theory, they concocted the Leroy persona -- a former truck stop prostitute turned gritty underground novelist -- "to gain access first to literary circles and, later, to celebrities." When the novels signed by Leroy became underground hits, they needed someone young and androgynous to appear in public, at least occasionally, while simultaneously building the persona of Leroy as a shy recluse -- a shy recluse who loved publicity.

But the most fucked up thing about this whole deal is that when challenged about his/her identity, "Leroy" says the confusion results from the fact that he/she is "transexual." To use this as an excuse for vagueness, diva behavior and outright lying insults and trivializes the experiences of real transexual people.

Previously:
SF Chronicle chimes in on Leroy hoax
NYT and others cancel Leroy pieces after hoax begins to collapse
Article by Stephen Beachy exposes "J.T. Leroy" as hoax

And read: Guardian (UK), 4 Jan 06: Who's That Boy/Girl?

J.T. Leroy, hoaxes, J.T. Leroy hoax, New York Times

Holding pattern

While you were circling the airport tonight:

The NYT's Laurie Goodstein has a Week In Review piece on Pat Robertson's shrinking credibility -- which is sort of like documenting the number of days Jack Abramoff has left before he reports to federal prison. Even a foamer like the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land says of Robertson: "He speaks for an ever-diminishing number of American evangelicals, and that process accelerates every time he makes a statement like this."

Meanwhile, journalists are beginning to look at the increasingly substantial alliance between American evangelicals and conservative Jews. The Washington Post reports on fundraising and other efforts by some Christians to ally themselves with the Chosen People. I liked this passage:

On Thursday nights, J.J. Vogltanz, a deacon, uses a Christian textbook to lead his three home-schooled children in science experiments designed to illustrate Bible verses. One of the first things he taught them about Jesus, he said, was that "he was a Jew."

Asked whether he also taught his children that the Jews rejected Jesus, Vogltanz, 34, paused. "I'm not sure it's constructive to assign blame," he said.

Well, hell -- that's an improvement. Can you see Hitler standing in the ruins of the Reichstag saying, "Let's not play the blame game."

Another Google trick I just discovered

Type Convert 2000 km to miles in Google and it will display the conversion result at the top of a bunch of irrelevant search results. These also work:

Convert 1000 euros to dollars
Convert 13 C to F

However, "Convert Pat Robertson to Islam" does not work. Darn.

Google tricks, currency conversion, temperature conversion, Pat Robertson

It's Bad Behavior Friday!

You thought I forgot, didn't you. No, I wasn't satisfied with the stories of mere fallen dentists caught with crack next to a dead woman. I wasn't going to give you just homophobic Baptist would-be cocksuckers busted by undercover cops. No, I was saving it for the real thing.

But first, I apologise. This morning's was not the only Abramoff post this week.

Here we go. Courtesy Wonkette, here's the real story behind the Abramoff scandal: it all started to fall apart when a jilted lover and former Tom DeLay press sec'ty took revenge and called the FBI. The woman in question is Emily Miller, who became briefly famous when she tried to interrupt an interview between Meet The Press's host Tim Russert and then-Sect'y of State Colin Powell.

So best.

Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Emily Miller, Michael Scanlon

Dept. of Schadenfreude

In Oklahoma City, a So. Baptist pastor who has preached against gays was arrested for soliciting sex from a male undercover police officer.

"Brother Lonnie Latham" is listed as the pastor of the South Tulsa Baptist Church in their history page, but I actually called the church, and: "Lonnie Latham is no longer our pastor; he has resigned," said the woman who answered the phone.

Sure enough, the local Tulsa World newspaper has the story -- and a mugshot.

Latham before... and after:


Life is good.

fundamentalists, homophobia, Oklahoma, Baptists

Adventures in self-promotion

Blogosphere getting worked up, slightly, over an author creating several blogs to promote her Christian-ish fantasy book.

Reminds me of the piece in yesterday's NY Times on parents who incessantly boast about their children. The piece was accompanied by a helpful sidebar which says, for example:

Acceptable: Creating a blog to tell friends and family about your child.
Over the Top: Bragging about your child on other people's blogs and on online forums.

publishing, book promotion, parenting, NOWHERE

My only mention of Ambramoff for the week

I liked the Wonkette take on the Ambramoff scandal, which until Congresscritters start getting indicted will revolve endlessly around things like where he went to high school. According to the LA Times article quoted, Ambramoff was disciplined at a private school for -- yes -- exceeding the spending limit in a school election.

The question is, why hasn't that been reported til now? I guess people were too busy writing about his hat.

Abramoff

Sex sells, even in Boston... well, near Boston

This was on an email newsletter I receive:

Good Vibrations to Buzz in Brookline, Mass.

One of the more fun stores that carries books as a sideline is opening a branch on the East Coast.

Good Vibrations, which has three stores in the Bay Area in California and the motto "promoting sexual health and pleasure since 1977," will begin humming on January 20 in the Coolidge Corner part of Brookline, near Boston (and within cuddling distance of the Brookline Booksmith).

Carol Queen, who has a Ph.D. and is the Good Vibration's staff sexologist, said she is "thrilled that we have finalized our new location and will be able to open before Valentine's Day."

The company, which carries books, sex toys, personal care products and specializes in "accurate sexual information," noted that there are more than 400,000 college students in the Boston area. As in the Bay Area, the company aims to work in partnership with local colleges and universities to provide "up-to-date sexual education."

And this guy has his own TV network

Pat Robertson said tonight that God smote Ariel Sharon for giving up Gaza. He also linked the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin to God's wrath "against those who 'divide my land.'"

Robertson had no explanation for the wildfires in George Bush's home state of Texas.

Onward into the 21st century

Bill Gates delivers a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show:

"Five or six years ago, if you'd said to people that software would make photos, music and TV better, they'd have been sceptical," Mr Gates told an audience of technology industry experts. "This really is the symptom of the great progress of the digital decade."

Thanks to the rocketing growth in mobile phones, computers and broadband internet connections, he said the potential to link up the disconnected streams of information in people's lives was greater than ever.

"My preferences, my interests are reflected on those devices," he said. "It's not just software for the PC, software for the phone, software for the video game -- it's software for the user."

Oh, bite me. Software made TV better? It made music better??

Software made software better -- I can blog now. But just because I can play "my music" on a small digital music player doesn't mean the music or even the experience is somehow better. It's just a little more portable. As for the chief purpose I use software for -- word processing -- I would be just as happy using MS Word 4.0 from the year 1989, frankly. There's not a single innovation (unless you couldn't do Word Count back then) they've come up with since then that I really need.

Is this typical of Gates' thinking? Perhaps this explains why Microsoft has had such trouble innovating.

writing, Bill Gates, CES, innovation, software

The end

A month-old post on Booksquare alerted me to a piece on the Telegraph site about the endings of novels.

My novel Make Nice has as its last sentence: "There were too many witnesses." Not bad, I think.

novels, writing

It's just a phase

I was remiss in not linking the strenuous and gassy op-ed by Nick Chiles in yesterday's NYT about how the "African American Literature" section in his local Borders store is dominated by either "stories that glorify and glamorize black criminals" or "almost exclusively pornography for black women."

First, it's odd that he equates those two genres. No doubt they overlap in some cases, but they can't really be equal, can they? Even without having read any of the books he's talking about, I find it hard to believe that he thinks black women are buying all those thug books.

Secondly, judging from my experience working at a Borders for nine months in 2003 and 2004, I'd say his impression about the ratio between sex- and crime-oriented novels -- not always the same thing, as some are more or less novelized gangsta rap and others are erotic romances with black characters -- is correct. But don't take my word for it; go down to your local Borders and see for yourself. You'll see that the African American Literature section is fairly extensive -- usually larger than the lesbian-gay section, which is likely to be adjacent -- and that it is filled with the kinds of books Chiles describes.

What's interesting about these books is the generally poor and naive cover art that is the same ugly amatuerish kind of covers that were typical of lesbian-gay literature through the 1980s and early 1990s -- badly drawn illustrations that telegraph the content of the books, garish colors, poor design overall.

Go over to the lesbian-gay section and you'll see a few of these still, all from small publishers that lack either the resources or the taste to upgrade their look. But most of the queer lit now has a professional look. This suggests that the amateurish look of much of the black lit is just a phase publishers are going through.

More importantly, early queer lit was largely devoted to erotica as well, plus coming out stories -- the equivalent, perhaps, of the crime-oriented stories which perhaps seem, to the authors, to strongly characterize the African American community just as coming out stories were the meta-story of the queer community -- and I'll bet black lit will probably outgrow the gangsta stuff.

Other blogs commenting on the Chiles piece:
Booksquare ("This is how the fiction business works. All that stuff he thinks is bad is financing the titles he thinks are good.")
Lynne D. Johnson, whose blurb is on the cover of one of the books Chiles criticizes, "Legit Baller"
BlackFeminista ("I've long intuited a waning interest in black literature or any kind of black artistic expression that is outside of the ghetto stereotype. A racist media mega-machine has succesfully hijacked many black people's perceptions of themselves.")

Also read:
SF Chronicle article on self-publishing author Pamela M. Johnson
Christian Science Monitor article on "street lit"

Nick Chiles, Borders Books, African American Lit, queer lit

Ulp

I've never been able to decide -- is it a good thing or a bad thing when someone comes out with a book similar to the one you're working on?

I've been working on a novel for about a year about a San Francisco girl who works for a bank being sent to bangalore to help open an offshore call center. I wish I had been able to work fast on it, because -- up to now -- no one else had covered the subject in a novel.

Here's hoping the zeitgeist lasts long enough for me to finish and publish my book.

Quit while you're ahead

A new horror film "follows a trio of twentysomething guys on a European vacation that begins as an orgy of sex and drugs and descends into brutal, bloody sadism," according to a SF Chronicle piece about a new crop of scary movies.

The world yawns. If you want everyone to sit up and take notice, just stick with the sex, as with Bareback Brokeback Mountain. Add drugs, fine. But why go and ruin a perfectly good sex movie?

Perhaps because of the opportunity to make statements like this from the director:

Tarantino even once dubbed Roth "the future of horror" in the pages of Premiere, which Roth says was both a blessing and a curse.

"It was an incredible honor," he says. "But, at the same time, there was all this backlash from people who were like 'oh, this asshole thinks he's the future of horror.' And I'm like, 'no, I never said that.' There's a group of people who want to hate you when they hear things like that."

Right... he's not concerned with his reputation for having made a gross horror movie featuring "intense torture sequences." He's concerned that people might think he's getting a big head about it!

I also liked this:

"Americans generally don't know the difference between Slovakia and Czechoslovakia," Roth says. "It's this whole country that Americans really have no education on."

Let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt -- he probably said Americans don't know the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia, and the college newspup fucked it up.

My lips are sealed

If not for the fact that it appeared in the Magazine section, which is printed several days in advance of its weekly Sunday publication, the think piece on vaginas by New Yorker writer Daphne Merkin (!!!*) might be taken to be the result of too much New Year's Eve partying. How else to explain phrases like "Take my labia minora, for instance" and "As for the much vaunted hymen..."?

You have to wonder how many years she sat around and thought, "Hmm, some day I have got to write an essay on cunt hair... some day."

And then finally it comes to pass -- how? Why now? And those smacking sounds you heard on New Year's Day were probably Merkin's friends smiting their foreheads and saying, my god, she finally did it.

Best title of a blog entry on the article: Ward, You've Been Awfully Hard on the Beaver

Update: Read Christine's take on the matter

*This is a "namephreak" of the first order -- namephreak being Herb Caen's term for a name which is ironic given its holder's profession or reason for renown. Other classic examples include Cardinal Sin, the late archbishop of Manila, the inventors of cinema, the brothers Lumière, and South Africa's infamous white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche.

Bring on the code-talkers

From Alex Chee's blog:

... (a story about) a young woman from a part of Switzerland where they speak a very specific Swiss-German dialect and how she stopped using it in public when one afternoon she found herself in line and a man behind her was talking to a woman in this exact dialect, confident they couldn't be overheard. They were talking about some woman's hair and how terrible it looked. She realized they were speaking about her, they thinking as she often did that of course in the US no one would speak this dialect. She doesn't use that dialect anymore to screen the content of her conversations.

Cris and I speak pidgin Japanese -- of which we still remember about 12 words -- in public from time to time. Did you know the word "skosh" meaning "a little bit" comes from Japanese? Here I had always thought it was Yiddish or something, but when we went to Japan we found that "sukoshi" -- of which the u and the i are not really pronounced -- literally means "a little bit." But it was only recently that I read that it entered the American lexicon not in the aftermath of WWII specifically, but during the Korean War when American soldiers would R & R in Japan.

When worlds collide

Mikey Weinstein is a liberal First Amendment activist who sued the Air Force Academy (of which he is a graduate, and where his sons are students) for its aggressive pro-evangelical Christian stance. Ted Haggard is the head pastor of Colorado Springs megachurch New Life Church and the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a loose association of right-wing Christian megachurches. Non-Prophet reprints a bizarre email exchange of New Years greetings between the two men.

Read also: Rocky Mountain News story on the email exchange

Previously:
Haggard responds to Pat Robertson's call for fatwa on Venuzuelan president
Haggard to lease land in Israel for Christian visitor center (also noted on The Revealer)

Hotel number three

I'm now in Washington, DC, on the 9th floor of a luxe business hotel, the only fault of which is that the desk is too high relative to the desk chair -- for me, at least. The Marriotts I stayed at had a little pull-out lower desk that was just right for the laptops.

Across the street there are several buildings with many massive satellite dishes on their roofs. I figured they were embassies with secret spy missions, but I was disappointed to note that one of them is actually the local branch of CBS News.

Perhaps entraced by this atmosphere, I dreamt last night that I had done a performance piece in which Colin Powell was going to appear.

Somebody's auto-advertising engine needs a tuneup




This was one of those automatically generated advertisements that gets generated based on what's on your blog. This was on a blog where the poster had just quoted some punk dictum about "Punk means confronting your racism," etc.

I wonder what kind of racism is available at shopping.com -- maybe some of those outré A&F t-shirts.

The state of American fiction

Have you been reading the Miss Snark blog for the last week or so?

In case you came in late, she's a literary agent with a killer blog in which she gives amazing, invaluable information about the writing biz, especially for beginners. She's generous with the information but does not suffer fools gladly. That said, she sounds a hundred times nicer than certain people.

This week she's doing her "crapometer" exercise, in which she invites writers to send in the synopsis of their novel. She will read and evaluate and gently make fun of it for the enlightenment of all.

First of all, she deserves combat pay for going through literally dozens of multi-page synopses of novels, most of them bad, and for paying attention to each one and giving it a fair shake. Secondly, she shows herself to be an excellent reader with an eye for what works and what doesn't, and thirdly, she is articulate and precise enough to point out exactly what's wrong, sometimes sentence by sentence.

But most of all, this exercise has revealed the shocking state of American fiction. Now, I have no doubt that almost everyone sending in stuff to her like this is an amateur. But the ratio of interesting stuff that has a chance in hell of ever being published to ridiculous total bull is about 1:12. If this is any indication of what an agent goes through day after day, I'd say the agents of America are performing a valuable service. They're like forensic readers, dealing with all the shit turned out by people's word processors.

Let me just quote a few words of one head-rotatingly bad synopsis:

In the following weeks, Jol discovers the Rapax's torture has destroyed his ability to use Rage. Worse, every time he sleeps, he is forced out of body to sites of other Rapax attacks. One Rapax and its skinflier--a toothy, stingray-like pet--sense Jol during these visitations: the Rapax tastes its father's magic in Jol's skin; the skinflier smells a Moon tattoo Jol can't see. Once Cat is better, Jol leaves and tries to repress everything but the desire to reach the courts--until this Rapax leaves one victim alive. Jol rushes to the rescue. It is a trap. He is captured and tortured for revenge.

E-fucking-gad. And a lot of these synopses are these weird-ass fantasy stories. Why in the hell do the talentless geeks of America choose that genre to jack off with? Why don't they choose, say, the western, or the scuba-diving spy story? Or better yet, why don't they just get the hell away from keyboards with letters on them and go shovel snow or do something else useful?

Something better

Courtesy of the enchanting but not nearly often-enough-updated Girl Friday blog comes this local restaurant review video -- local for Minnapolis, that is -- featuring two cheerful midwesterners. The gal, Lori, has real screen presence.

Plus:
Violet Blue's best books of 2005
Even though they are stuck in Barstow, Calif., the locals are planning New Years Eve fun, but the cops are ready for the desperate thrill-seekers.

Marriott number deux

From Baltimore we went by train to Trenton, a grey and apparently depressed town but, as I kept telling my co-workers, it looks like Paris if compared with Detroit. We spent six hours with no lunch break, from 10:30 to 4:30, inside a grey cube farm office of the State of New Jersey IT department. Now that's entertainment.

Then we checked into a hotel downtown. As far as I can tell it is the only hotel in downtown Trenton, which would explain why there are giant MARRIOTT directional signs all over a 20-block area, hanging on what are obviously city-owned utility and traffic signal poles, pointing the way to the hotel. One of my co-workers was so intimidated by the urban environment that he insisted he would have dinner in the hotel restaurant rather than venture out on foot. Big scaredy cat.

Drizzly and cool here -- almost identical to the weather in SF, says a pal who YIMed me.

Business trip

I'm on a business trip for the d.b.t.s., staying in a clean, comfortable, and wonderfully anonymous business hotel in Baltimore. I love business hotels! And this one, a Courtyard by Marriott, is new and especially nice.

Friends will know of my near-fetish for anonymous motels and hotels. I aways imagine furtive sexual affairs go on in them when, in reality, it's mostly a lot of television zoning-out and exhausted sleeping by the guests, and back-breaking labor for the housekeepers. I always leave a big tip for them, every day, because I am a bourgeous businessman who does little actual work while they bust their asses every day. Besides, a more-than-decent tip on your first morning, and every day thereafter, ensures you have plenty of towels, toilet paper, and whatever else is supplied in the room.

Tip the people who help you! Taxi drivers, housekeepers, doormen, waitstaff -- that's hard work, and you know they're getting ground down by the boss or the company day after day.

So I won't be posting that much while I'm on this trip.

Another NSA site

Courtesy BoingBoing (where there's a photo), here's more free information about the NSA and its listening stations. This piece, from Sunday's NYT, is all about the listening station in Sugar Grove, WV. NB: Very large photos on that page.

Previously: Menwith Hill, an NSA listening post in England

NSA, National Security Agency, Big Brother, First Amendment

The friendly confines of Borders

I just spent 2 hours in the Borders store at 3rd and King. It has a big cafe space in one corner -- the store is so big the cafe is on the other side of the block, at 3rd and Townsend. As with all Borders there's a T-Mobile wireless signal, but because there are all these condos in the building right upstairs, there are all these free unprotected wireless signals also available in the Borders cafe. Just in case you have to hang out down there before a ballgame or before getting on the train (the ballpark is catty-corner and the Caltrain station is a block away at 4th and Townsend).

SF saves a cinema landmark

Local alternative school New College will save the Roxie Theater -- a small neighborhood cinema where films have been shown since 1909.

This is fantastic -- a piece of real SF history, and not just hokey Gold Rush stuff or history of straight society, but real bohemian history -- the Roxie has hosted tons of independent film, has been the spot where many foreign films played in the U.S. for the first time, and has hosted many live appearances by filmmakers such as Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog.

Altogether silly

This pleasantly lite news story about a man who wants to develop a Christian nudist resort contains the memorable assertion: "There is absolutely no relationship between nudity and sex." (Thanks, Jym.)

I think someone wants an excuse to build a multi-million dollar resort over some orchards and everything else has been tried. When the nudist scheme goes belly up -- now there's an enchanting image -- the resort will be "sold" to a management company who'll run it like any other hotel.

Then there was this piece in the Chronicle this morning about how the whole "war on Christmas" load of crap was so successful this year, the American Family Association, an anti-gay, supposedly Christian, right-wing pressure group, is testing the waters for another, even larger non-sequitur: no more Christmas gifts. Even other foamers think the idea is silly; a spokesperson for Concerned Women for America said such a scheme would "punish retailers" including believers who own small businesses.

True -- the foamer groups can't do anything without the support of the Christian Bookstore owners. But this idea has already been proposed by someone on the other side of the Christian spectrum, Bill McKibben, writing in -- of all places -- Mother Jones. I wish the Chronicle reporter had gotten a reaction quote from him -- that would have been interesting.

Desperately thinking about Christmas

By this time of the month people seem compelled to offer up a holiday thought, usually while making it crystal clear that someone as cool as they are not religious, no sir, especially not Christian in, you know, that way.

You know, it's okay, people. Nobody is religious these days, and nobody expects you to have deep thoughts about Christmas per se -- whether it's a religous version, or merely a capitalist one, that comes to your mind. Write about the nutty consumerism, write about the way all the quasi-religious symbolism is exploited in the name of profits, but going out of your way to make clear your own personal rejection of all that is stupid about it sometimes seems like you're protesting just a little bit too much.

And yet, the text from Isaiah, the one quoted in Handel's "Messiah," is moving. If you want to have a nice Christmas experience that doesn't involve buying anything or going to church, read that, and maybe Truman Capote's story "A Christmas Memory." Dylan Thomas or "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is optional.

Then you're done. Go to the beach with the wind in your face and walk it all off.

'Christmas-challenged'

Start with this pre-Christmas tsuris report from Jackadandy, then a more peaceful scene, yet also involving flowing water, from Marilyn. Myfanwy gets trad-European, and then finally read Violet Blue's Sexiest Geeks of 2005.

North Pole calling

Here's a service Girl Friday hasn't thought of: Parents pay a commercial service to stage phone calls from Santa for their spawn. Even Alexis, who has many powers, could probably not pull off sounding like Santa, but the concept of outsourcing can be applied in many different ways. Just get some avuncular bums off the street to man the switchboard -- keep feeding them spiked apple cider -- and voila, you've got Santa on the phone.

"Santa": Hey kid, is Mommy's purse there? Do you know what a credit card is?

Kid: Sure!

"Santa": Now get out some of the credit cards -- the gold and silver ones...

Kid: This one says 'Plat... Plat...'

"Santa": Platinum! Yeah, that'll work. Now you know Santa sometimes has to get present for good little girls on Amazon and shit, so you just read that credit card number off for Santa, okay?

See how it works? Sure-fire business plan, y'all.

Today's snooping

Moved by this big story from Sunday's LA Times on a secret Scientology retreat near Hemet, CA, I came up with this Google satellite shot of a site that matches the description in the article. As usual, TerraServer offers a clearer view, albeit black-and-white.

Notice also, in that LA Times story, all the accompanying material on the right side of the page -- they've been covering this story off and on for 15 years.

Is author of highly praised fiction debut "at the top of her field"?

Courtesy Galleycat, this Wash Post story about "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" author Yiyun Li and her immigration troubles. Her debut short story collection was highly praised by the NYT, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, SF Chroncile and others, but this didn't help the immigation service to conclude that "she was an artist of 'extraordinary ability,' defined in Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 204.5(h)(2) as 'a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor.'"

Jeez, whattya have to do to get a green card around here?

Shh!

All the talk lately about spying and the NSA, and then today we got this story from the Chronicle about governments upset at Google for showing satellite photos of secret sites.

Like what? Well, here's an article about the secret Echelon program. Among its revelations:

The largest overseas station in the Project P415 network is the US satellite and communications base at Menwith Hill near Harrogate in Yorkshire. It is run undercover by the NSA and taps into all Britain's main national and international communications networks.

It took less than five minutes to find a satellite shot of this NSA monitoring station "at Menwith Hill near Harrogate in Yorkshire."

But there's no need to rely on that blurry bit of data; the place ain't exactly a secret:
Menwith Hill Station -- many good photos
Menwith Hill, "the Original Big Brother"
Menwith Hill on Wikipedia

This put me in the mood to listen to The Conet Project, an exhaustive 4-CD set of numbers stations -- shortwave spy broadcasts. NPR's "Lost and Found Sound" series did an episode on the numbers stations in, it looks like, 2000.

Lit up

Literary leftovers:

• The NYT on new, "more exportable" German novels. Also, a former publisher has become an agent.
• Rodney Whitaker, author of many books including those under the pseudonym Trevanian, died. His most famous book was "The Eiger Sanction."
• Galleycat notes the NY transit strike; literary agent Miss Snark stayed home, and I imagine most of the publishing world did too. In any case, I have little expectation of news of my novel, which is making the rounds of publishers, before Epiphany.

Still subversive

Badger goes to an office Xmas party:

Later Rudie pegged me again while lamenting the fate of a friend of his whose wife refused to have 14 children or even three and told him she was stopping at two, she was 35 and wasn't going to DO that... and how sad for him, he had no way to make her do it and could only hope wistfully for twins. Then he looked across at me making a sort of rude motion with his chin and saying that I might think differently. I grinned evilly into his eyes and said that technology would someday help his friend to get pregnant himself and then he could have as many children as he wanted. It was lovely, like a cartoon where someone is knocked out and their eyes turn into little x's.

And also:

And of course I was wondering madly. How does no one talk about differences? And that we're all from various countries? and politics? and what are everyone's perceptions of each other's region/language/class/caste? I was curious as hell. It's not like I can tell from accents where people are from in India.

Yes! I always want to know the sociological-personal details. Is the influence of American and European companies on their newly middle-class employees lessening class at those companies? How do people deal with that? Are there anti-discrimination hiring laws?

It's not like I would mind if I were in, say, the Ukraine and someone asked me, What is up with all the overly demonstrative Christianity in the U.S. anyway? or You know, you guys are always talking about human rights, but I noticed all the people stranded in New Orleans were black, so just how advanced on human rights are you anyway? or Does everybody in the U.S. have a gun? I can't think of a single "embarrassing" or even aggressive question about the U.S. I wouldn't try to answer if I thought the questioner really wanted to know my thoughts.

But on second thought, perhaps there's something privileged about my own status as a white male American that makes me think I have all the questions and all the answers, when in fact my understanding of the caste system in India is actually just about nil and I wouldn't be able to ask an intelligent question anyway.

WTF of the day

Courtesy Salon comes this utterly weird reference by David Carr, NYT movie critic:

Steven Spielberg's "Munich" finds itself in a seemingly endless spanking machine.

Oh really? A quick search finds the RoboSpanker, a band or something (I don't care) called Spanking Machine, and this late 18th century description of such a device:

The following contrivance would, in a measure, obviate this inconvenience:---A machine might be made, which should put in motion certain elastic rods of cane or whalebone, the number and size of which might be determined by the law: the body of the delinquent might be subjected to the strokes of these rods, and the force and rapidity with which they should be applied, might be prescribed by the Judge: thus everything which is arbitrary might be removed. A public officer, of more responsible character than the common executioner, might preside over the infliction of the punishment; and when there were many delinquents to be punished, his time might be saved, and the terror of the scene heightened, without increasing the actual suffering, by increasing the number of the machines, and subjecting all the offenders to punishment at the same time.

Yes, everything more scientific back then when the guillotine was all the rage. But back to the film review... a film which "finds itself in a seemingly endless spanking machine."

I think Carr has been obsessing too much about Judith Miller.

Today's science news

Oh sure -- the judge ruled "intelligent design" is not science. Okay, it could have gone the other way, but everyone in this country has not gone completely insane, thank God. As for the right-wingers whose whole motivation is simply to use such cases to chip away at the First Amendment -- here's a big UP YOUR HOLE WITH A MELLO ROLL from me. Maybe you can talk about it in church on Sunday... oh, wait! You're not having church on Sunday anymore. Well, good luck.

No, the science story I really want to talk about is this piece (courtesy BoingBoing) about how Stalin wanted an army of superhuman ape-men "insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

That would have been awesome, comrade. Then they could have kicked the shit out of the Nazis even faster. Unfortunately, they might not have stopped at Berlin. I can see them now, scaling the Eiffel Tower.

How successful authors impress their kids: by appearing on The Simpsons

Courtesy Publishers Marketplace, this LA Times Service story on several famous authors looping parts on The Simpsons for an episode to be broadcast in 2006. The excited writers included Michael Chabon, Tom Wolfe, Jonathan Franzen and Gore Vidal.

"We started with the idea of Moe as Charles Bukowski," explains Matt Warburton, who wrote the episode. "We brought Lisa in as the person who discovers in scuzzy, barfly Moe something that we've never seen before: a poet."

Meanwhile, backstage at The West Wing, writers were trying todecide whether to dread or look forward to the moment when they have to deal with the death of John Spencer, the actor who played Leo McGarry on the long-running TV series (which, by the way, jumped the shark a couple years ago with that President's-daughter-kidnapped sequence of episodes).

Detente in Xmas "war"?

As you can see from this photo from the website of the Desert Trail, a newspaper published in Yucca Valley -- a desert town near Twentynine Palms -- we may have a resolution of the "war on Christmas": "Both sides were well-represented in the Twentynine Palms Winter Light Parade."

In other words, they aren't calling it a Christmas parade -- but they have Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Stupid Xmas gift of the year

You could get someone a Hello Kitty iPod "Be@rbrick" -- that's "bear brick" -- a pink plastic teddy bear that has a holder for an iPod. Whether the bear, or be@rbrick, is actually an iPod player/charger, or just a holder -- this cNet page calls it a "stand" -- this is the perfect cute, stupid and useless gift for your teenage girl giftees -- if they have pink iPod Minis.

Meanwhile, who could resist this story:

The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving.

No, that's not the latest scadal from Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, or various CIA black sites in Eastern Europe. It's a description of the Barbie doll abuse surprisingly common among girls who own the famous doll.

"Whilst for an adult the delight the child felt in breaking, mutilating and torturing their dolls is deeply disturbing, from the child's point of view they were simply being imaginative in disposing of an excessive commodity in the same way as one might crush cans for recycling," said a researcher.

That's just what rendition is -- recycling!

Poor sense of direction

Not trusting commuters to be able to understand light rail system maps, the Houston transit agency printed mirror-image maps for riders going in the "other" direction -- and just confused people more.

Our local paper

It's fashionable to bash the SF Chronicle, but I've always defended it. I've always thought it does a decent job for a paper in a comparitively small market. But recently I've started to have problems with the way it does things.

Today's thing is actually nothing the Chronicle did wrong; it's merely a matter of tone. As The New York Times released a series of investigative stories about a teenager with a webcam who was pimped online, the Chronicle runs a story on bloggers promoting themselves with branded merchandise.

No, there's nothing wrong with that; it's a lightweight story with weak but perceivable business and technology links, though whether or not bloggers sell a few t-shirts makes absolutely no difference to anybody. The Times story, on the other hand, is not only much more serious, lengthy and studiously researched, it really documents several larger trends in the world of the 21st century: unsupervised kids with lots of expensive technology; the way the sex trade constantly pushes economic and technological boundaries; the persistence of pedophiles; the contrast between the kids' seeming sophistication and their naivete.

But the Chronicle: bloggers are selling t-shirts, get yours now.

Previously: Chronicle entertainment reporter not skeptical of J.T. LeRoy hoax
Chronicle blowing its near-monopoly?

San Francisco Chronicle, bloggers, webcam sex, online prostitution

Rainy days and Sundays

Busy rainy day, with a hell of a lot of time spent at church either rehearsing or performing with the choir. I joined the choir a few months ago and am one of the few people who can croak out the tenor part -- though I prefer the baritone. It's nice to be needed, I guess, and the ratio of basses to tenors is about 5:1, so I do feel like I should show up. It sure made for a busy day today, though.

During the afternoon I got a very little bit accomplished on my book. What was more important was getting back in the swing of working on it, prepartory to the week between Xmas and New Years, which I have off. If I can get some momentum going by next Friday I should be able to write a couple of chapters.

The gloomy weather and the feeling of obligation made me a little depressed today, but I have finally woken up to the fact that I get a little depressed every year around this time -- it's entirely seasonal -- so as long as I remember that, I don't feel too bad.

And now that all the singing is done for the day, I actually feel pretty good. I just wish I had a day off tomorrow. Maybe I'll get up late.

Chronicle chimes in on J.T. LeRoy hoax

Nine weeks after San Francisco novelist Stephen Beachy blew the lid off the J.T. LeRoy hoax -- demonstrating that the author of LeRoy's books was not a 20-something ambisexual former truck stop prostitute-turned-novelist, but a 40-something San Francisco woman (who herself has several aliases including Laura Albert and Emily Frasier) and/or her friends -- the SF Chronicle has chimed in with a is-he-or-isn't-she article that does much more to keep the ambivalence alive than to settle anything.

The Chronicle article references the New York piece but gives it equal weight with others -- most of whom, like LeRoy's new publisher, have a vested interest in continuing the hoax -- who claim LeRoy is real. The only new contribution made by the Chronicle article is the specious suggestion that belief in the LeRoy story is somehow linked to an appreciation of high art. Greil Marcus is quoted:

"What it all signifies to me is a deepening mistrust of the imagination, or the driving out of fiction by nonfiction," Marcus wrote in an e-mail this week. "People will read fiction about a gender-confused teenage or preteen parking-lot hustler -- but only if they can believe that what they are reading is true. Then they can celebrate the person as an artist while avoiding having to actually engage with art."

You know what this reminds me of? The Fox News hoax about the "war on Christmas." The reasoning goes like this: If you don't believe in Santa Claus, or Jesus, or J.T. LeRoy, you're somehow depraved. You don't have a true appreciation of seasonal joy/spirituality/art. You are unwilling, or unable, to confront the deep truths enshrined by these belief systems.

Well, I saw through Santa Claus a long time ago. I still believe in Jesus. But J.T. LeRoy -- I guess my problem is that I don't need there to be a white trash, self-educated former prostitute-turned-novelist. I just don't have any investment in that story.

Previously:
Reality comes crashing down on "J.T. LeRoy"
Doubts lead to cancellation of LeRoy gigs

Struggling youth and the people who struggle with them

Be sure to read this piece on Salon about struggling underprivileged youths and their "mentors," which are like the Big Brother/Sister program. The writer, Martha Baer, is a friend; see links to other articles by her at her website.

One of the interesting facts the piece hints at, but doesn't address directly, is the way AIDS has affected the working class population -- not the middle-class Castro District gays but the working class, ethnically-diverse, possibly closeted gay and bisexual men who don't live in the gay ghetto. The girl who is the subject of the piece is the daughter of a gay man dead from AIDS, but her whole social background is a completely different context: working-class, ethnic Daly City; heterosexual drug-using broken families; people with court dates and parole officers -- the landscape of the TV show "Cops." Yet the girl moves to "as close to the Castro District as" her father's ex could afford to move, and lives for a time in this middle-class gay environment: but Martha's story isn't really about that, "a story in itself."

I find myself drawn to these fish-out-of-water sitcom-ready situations, and wanted to know more about that part, but Martha's piece is really about the sense that the girl's whole background and social context conspires to drag her down despite the best efforts of Martha and the other middle class people in the girl's life.

Great piece. Read it.

John Spencer

Actor John Spencer, who played WH chief of staff-cum-VP candidate Leo McGarry on "The West Wing," died today of a serious heart attack. Spencer's character also had a heart problem and, like him, was a recovering alcoholic. But the most arresting bit of information was that as a teenager he played a love interest on The Patty Duke Show. I'd like to see a picture of that.

Says here that Spencer was also a native of Paterson, NJ, the home of famous poets William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsburg -- but he is not even listed on this page of famous Paterson natives such as Lou Costello, Chuck Connors and ballplayer Larry Doby.

Smoke clearing at snowed-in editor's house

Congrats to Myfanwy* Collins -- whom I met at the Squaw Valley Writers conference this year -- for completing her guest-edited issue of Smokelong Quarterly. The flash fiction online litmag has beautiful design and graphics, and I'm looking forward to reading the stories.

* (pronounced mi-FAWN-ee; of Celtic origin)

It's Bad Behavior Friday™!

A 29 year old man was arrested in Fairfax, Va. with a bag full of stolen books. His scam? He sold books on eBay and stole books to fill orders.
(Courtesy ShelfAwareness)

A Sf Chronicle consumer advocate was trying to get to the bottom of a mysterious email from the local DSL provider, SBC/Yahoo. He called SBC many times but five times was connected to helpless, and clueless, customer service reps in India.

In Fort Worth, Tx., a locally produced reality show called "Cheaters" created a confrontation between a woman who was secretly seeing a police captain and the woman's estraged husband. The TV producers didn't know, however, that the woman had gotten a restraining order against her husband, who had assaulted her twice early in the year. The resulting melee ended in charges against the show's producer and three others, as well as a felony charge for the husband who, by confronting his wife in the confrontation staged by the show, was violating the restraining order. The police captain was suspended and demoted.

Snacking youth

Today at the d.b.t.s. we hosted a fourth-grade class from a nearby public school. They came over at 10:30 and left at 1:15, and during that time they built graham cracker houses using gummy white frosting for mortar and M&Ms and Gummi bears as decorations; received and played with presents the company had purchased and I and my co-workers had wrapped yesterday; held mock business meetings; and ate the late-arriving pizza.

Twenty-seven fourth graders, and I have to say they were totally great. Despite all the sugar we were feeding them, despite the utter lack of any educational content to the day (the mock business meetings they convened in the conference room had something to do with building robots who "wrecked houses," played hockey, and watched children), they were all sweet and good-natured and polite and completely non-violent. So it was fun to have them around.