Friday, October 29, 2004

Tricks, then Treats: UPDATED

OY there’s not much time left this morning for me to get a post up for y’all but luckily I don’t have much on my mind (stop snickering) so it shouldn’t take too long.

* “Et tu, Brutus?  Yet you flew under my RADAR ere the ides were well upon me, a SCUBA diver in the Tiber...” these are examples of anachronyms - words made out of initials of other words used in an incorrect time-context.  Feel free to pepper your speech with them.  (not taken from, but inspiring a visit to, this site, which is pretty amusing.)

* Where does flannel come from?  Make a note, because Kel told me recently: Flannel comes from flanimals.  UPDATE: the interest in flanimals made me wonder if we weren’t the first to think of them; it appears we weren’t quite first but we’re in good company I think.  Ricky Gervais is hereby inadvertently plugged, and he’d better remember it come the holidays, which are damn near now, so get shopping, Rickles!  (Don’t forget, now: allergic to walnuts; partial to suede.)

* Since I’m not doing squat for halloween, here’s my costume idea, which I offer for general misappropriation: a vampire prognosticator who can predict when your neck will get perforated and your lifesblood drained from your undead body.  I call him “Nosferatudamus.”

Today is a big committee meeting at which I help some very wise and clever people decide how to divide $950,000 in grant money among $1.7M in requests.  It’ll be mentally draining.  Luckily my brain will not be required at my evening engagement in the victorian opulence of the Great American Music Hall where the Masters of the B-3 show is at 8 pm.  (or at 10:30 but we get up at 5 these days so that’s a non-starter).  They’re so funky it’s SCARY. 

Oops, time to run.  Have a great weekend and don’t eat any unwrapped razor blades!

Thursday, October 28, 2004

I’m Confused.

okay, for those of you with high-speed connections, what do you make of this?

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Time and Again

I’ve had a busy and gratifying day.  I got to work early and met briefly with a development director who’d stopped by to introduce herself, then ran to the AOC (where the judges hang out) for a five hour conference THAT ENDED AN HOUR EARLY in which I actually was a useful participant, and then I voted in the overheated but cheerfully-staffed basement of city hall (as I settled down with my ballot I saw a “weirdo” ((technical term)) ambling down the halls exclaiming that there “sure was a lot of interest in this election").  When I got back to the office I found my mail-order shirts had finally arrived, and I’m expecting free shoes from the above-referenced development director soon because I’ve cut her some breaks and it turns out she owns a birkenstock store.  And, the further to sugar the watermelon that is my life, tomorrow might be sort of easier than today was.  My “busy season” that lasts from February through October is just about over.  Does that leave me with more time for personal pursuits?  Only if I manage it properly.  Which brings to mind a little ditty I wrote, oh, two years or so ago, which I have pinned to the cube-wall I’m facing as I type this.  I keep it there as a reminder to myself to manage my time thoughtfully.  I’m not too proud of the way I’ve been applying its lessons lately, though, so I’m going to motivate myself with the age-old tool of sheer guilt by posting it here for (somebody) to see, and then I’ll feel compelled to be more attentive.  Or not.  Time will tell.

TMI

I was an obedient little manchild; I didn’t like to go where I didn’t belong.  This reticence made me appreciate my opportunities to go sailing all the more.  The open sea, the way the wake disappeared behind our scudding sloop, the confidentiality of anything that happened on board… even within the confines of the Sea Explorer code and rulebook (which goverened my outings since the Explorers owned the boats), I experienced a kind of freedom at sea that I didn’t get from the rest of my life. 

This sense of freedom would begin when my friend Eric’s dad picked me up to drive us both to the marina.  Once I closed the door to their dusty Peugeot I was in a new world of old salt and secret knots.  Eric and his dad (an accomplished sailor who’d taught me most of what I knew of sailing) and I would chat laconically, as if equals, discussing matters a 14-year-old usually didn’t discuss with a grownup, much less a friend’s dad.  But Eric’s dad was a little different anyway - we’d gone camping and fishing together, panned for gold, spent actual quality time with each other.  Plus, he was an actor, and therefore, by definition, cool - tall and Lincoln-thin, he was the casting office choice for the minuteman or hardbitten lanky rancher, a man who looked like, if he was on your side, things would work out okay. 

One particular day we were on our way to the marina when the subject of Eric’s mom came up.  I knew her well, too, and she knew me; I’d been a frequent guest at Eric’s house since first grade and she was as good as a surrogate mom to me.  She came along on our camping trips but always stayed back at the campsite, never sailing or fishing or hiking with the rest of us.  She did a lot of cooking, some cleaning.  She kept a nice house, as far as I was concerned.  She did, however, strike me as a PDP (potentially difficult person), who often walked with a limp and equally often scowled.  But I got along with her just fine; I was a mannerly child, as I mentioned before, and moms respond well to good manners.  Regardless, I could always see that she held something back from the world, something injured and bitter, and I didn’t tempt her favor by asking her anything strenuous or personal. 

I had no such compunction with her husband, though, so as we zipped along through west LA and the subject came up, I felt free to satisfy one of my lingering curiosities.  She always protected that leg; her limp came and went but she was careful all the time.  Why not find out why?  So I went and asked, “What’s wrong with Mrs. S’s leg, anyway?”

Eric’s dad took a deep breath.  “Oh, Dan, that’s a tough one,” he began with uncharacteristic solemnity.  “It’s like nothing’s ever good enough.  She wants everything to be different than it is, but she doesn’t want to do anything to make it happen.  She gets so angry sometimes it’s hard to talk to her.  She can turn on a dime too, so something that was fine is suddenly not fine.  She hates to plan; she hates surprises.  She’s just an argument waiting to happen sometimes, I guess.”

I was taken aback.  At the very least, he hadn’t answered my question; I felt at the least that I should make sure he’d understood it - make sure he hadn’t thought I’d asked him to divulge all that he’d apparently felt compelled to divulge.  “So… what does that have to do with what’s wrong with her leg?”

“Her leg?  Oh, I thought you asked what was wrong with her life.”

“Oh no, Mr. S.  I would never ask a question like that.”

“Well, I guess you found out anyway.”

He told me then about her leg, but I forgot what he said.  I’d already heard plenty.  Once we got to the docks, it took a lot of sailing to put that conversation out of my mind.  I guess it never completely left, did it?

MORAL: Enunciate!

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Selling Democracy

It was said by a wise man that eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.  I am proud to report that, totally independent of each other, most of my family is engaged in this laudable pursuit.  My mom helped process voter registrations in south florida, where her brother (my uncle) will be a polling place worker and my cousin David-the-lawyer will be a poll watcher for the Kerry campaign.  My sister worked for the Kerry campaign in Arizona (critical work in a critical state, thanks sis, who’s having a baby like within the month), and my dad was going to do poll work too but he’s got a class to teach that he can’t miss.  That’s a lot of focus, a lot of vigilence to come out of one small group of people scattered literally coast-to-coast.  Frankly I’m very proud of how we’ve come out of the woodwork on this one.  Regardless of one’s political views, the fact of honest participation is key.  I’d rather my point of view won out, but not to the detriment of the political process.

As troops under my nation’s flag go to undeclared war on shadowsurgents in Iraqi slums and wastelands, as loggers prepare to harvest windfall profits from looser regulations in the Sierras, as americans are reviled internationally and misled at home, I fear for this nation’s most important export.  We really were the first effectively representative democracy, and while we continue to hone our efforts in that direction we have occasionally brilliantly led the whole community of humankind in our application of the concepts of liberty and equality. 

But that’s only occasionally, I readily admit it.  My nation, which I prefer to imagine as a bulwark of political libertarianism, is also a place of deep divisions.  Racism and ethnocentrism have sullied us and torn us apart from the first contact with our predecessors on this land.  Capital assumes unwarranted privilege and the worker has no recourse.  We are overlegislated and underprotected.  Our last national election was a national disgrace. 

We export democracy; it’s the most powerful tool available for empowering local communities and generating growth.  Anything else we export, is in support of that.  The less-developed the region, the more this paradigm seems true - and now more than ever, as Afghanistan appears to have held what will certainly pass internationally as a fair election, and as Bush tells us that Irak will have elections soon as well.  I want to see them happen, I want to see them work.  I believe that fair elections would go far toward the goal of quieting the unrest that has rumbled just at the boiling point since we declared victory. 

I’m not going to go to Iraq to help them have fair elections, but I can offer an example of commitment to the process here at home - or close to it.  This election really seems serious to me.  A friend recently met Ted “conservative from Massachussetts” Kennedy at a fundraiser recently and ol’ Ted said that he thought this was the most important election of his lifetime - more than when his brother ran in ‘60, more than when he himself ran in ‘80.  It’s important to me, personally, because it will affect my civil rights, my environment, and the economy.  It’s important to us as a nation because it represents a fundamental choice between options - ignorant paranoia or nuanced reflection. 

But my main concern is that it will affect other nations upon which we have trodden, and heavily.  If, in the midst of what is seen internationally very clearly as an extremely divisive and rancorous campaign, we can mount a fair and transparent election in which all voters get to vote and all votes are counted, we can at least show that it can be done.  We invented it; we had better be able to make it work anad sell it or the nascent governments we’ve helped establish will not survive.  If America can’t hold an election, why do we think Iraq can? 

That’s why I’m going to Cleveland.  I feel as if this is the one time I may be able to have an impact on something that can touch almost every life on the planet.  I got an email about it from a friend who knows me too well, and it immediately seemed like the right thing to do.  They needed lawyers in swing states.  I don’t live in one, and Nevada was already full.  Cleveland was as good as any of the other choices. 

It’s too bad that it’s so far away; it’s going to be a 3 day trip.  I’m looking forward to it but it’s a lot to accommodate.  I’m burning all my vacation time and the trip just ain’t cheap.  But when I whined about this last, I got a few emails suggesting that, if I offered a way for my visitors to participate in my efforts through a sponsoring contribution, well, somebody might want to do that.  I’m not really comfortable with “soliciting donations,” as the paypal people call it, but since this subject touches me so deeply and powerfully, maybe it does you too and this project I’m doing is something you’d actually want to support.  Far be it from me to interfere with such a noble purpose - so I’ve set up a paypal button on the sidebar for your convenience.  I’ll send any contributor a postcard from cleveland!  Plus a mystery gift!  Ooooo!  Supporting democracy is fun!  I know I’ll enjoy my work there.  And thank each and every one of you who can vote in this election, for doing so.  Let’s make it work!

Monday, October 25, 2004

Surprise!

This past week was full of pleasant surprises.  Here are a few of them:

* When the busdriver stopped the bus at fillmore street inbound on my crowded morning commute and waited at that busy stop for an inordinately long time, I wondered what the holdup was.  Then the busdriver started heading back toward my part of the bus, way back behind the articulation, coming right at me, a big man with a solemn expression bearing down on my drowzy unfocused ass saying, “sir, you have to get off the bus, the police have been called,” and it turns out he was talking to the guy right behind me, a heavy older russian man in a nice shirt and a fedora who’d boarded through the rear door with several others, who apologized and left immediately.  Pleasant surprise: I didn’t get thrown off the bus.  This time.

* A few nights ago I took off my shoes and socks to discover, to my shock, that the ball of my left foot had somehow been dyed a deep indigo blue.  This freaked me out, but I quickly verified that it wasn’t sore, didn’t bleed, seemed stable… I eventually settled on a theory: the socks I’d been wearing had been on top of my dresser, and might have come into contact with a blue pen, and might have sucked a bunch of ink out of that blue pen, and then dyed my unsuspecting calcanius deep blue.  But it’s been fading fairly quickly, for having been so intensely dyed.  I figure, within a few days I’ll have normal flesh-colored flesh again.  Pleasant surprise: I just have poor housekeeping habits, not gangrene. 

* Friday I decided not to bother making a lunch for work because I’ve been good and brought my lunch for goddamn weeks now and I finally got tired of it.  But by noonthirty I was hungry and at loose ends.  A typical taurus, I figured I’d just go back to my ordinary favorite lunchstand and get another falafel burrito like I always do.  As I walked out the front door of the building, though, a guy who works for the organization, whom I sort of know but not really, was just heading in with a big lunch in his hands and handed me a coupon and told me, “go here, free lunch today.  And hurry!” So I did, and I got a really good lunch with a fresh spring greens salad, and dry fried greenbeans with asparagus, and marinated mushrooms, and cajun shrimp, and pad thai, and a caprese salad, and steamed veggies and braised tofu and some good cottage cheese with fruit for dessert, with a free 16 oz diet coke and chopsticks and cutlery with a handy plastic carrying case, all for free, absolutely free, because they’re opening monday and want people to know they exist.  Well dude, I know it now.  Thanks.  Pleasant surprise: sometimes there is such a thing as a free lunch.

* Concord Ivory.  Who knew?  The cool thing Benjamin Moore is doing now is they’re selling small quantities of paint in “tester” jars so you can paint a few good sized swatches around the room and see how the different lighting conditions treat the color.  We have three identical sets of four different 1-foot-square color samples around the bedroom, and it looks like Condord Ivory is the popular leader among likely voters.  And the lighting conditions really do affect the different colors differently; it’s a fascinating study in optics as well as another baby-step toward a coherent decor.  Pleasant surprise: all four options are immeasurably superior to the tired dirty old corpse-grey paint that’s on the walls now.  Whatever we do, it’ll be a vast improvement - we just can’t really go wrong with this one. 

* Rubicon Bakery chocolate-drizzled marshmallows.  I can’t find a web link, your loss, they are just amazing, I’ve been popping them all weekend.  Never in my long and diligent marshmallow-eating career have I et a marshmallow even half so good.  I’m imagining getting some Petite Ecolier cookies and melting a gourmet marshmallow onto it a little in the microwave, and having it with chocolate milk with a marshmallow melting on top and some brandy heating it up from below.  In the meantime, I’m going to have another one right now - neat.  Pleasant surprise: RUBICON BAKERY CHOCOLATE-DRIZZLED MARSHMALLOWS.  Man, have you not been paying attention?

The one thing that is not such a pleasant surprise: this going-to-cleveland-to-defend-democracy thing is going to cost a lot of money, plus I have to take vacation time off from work.  It’s a big committment but I suppose that if anything is worth it, democracy is.  But really, man.  Ouch.  And I guess that’s as good a place as any to leave it for a Monday.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Vote No

I wish I had some strong reasons to urge people to vote for John Kerry, but frankly I am not coming up with much more than “he’s the only viable alternative,” a slogan born for bumperstickers if ever there was one.  However, as the saying goes, “in the jungle you need not run faster than the lion; you need only run faster than the other guy running from the lion.” If I can convince one person not to vote for another Bush-Cheney term (I can’t bring myself to call it a “re-election,"), whether it gets you to vote for Admonson and Plettin, Jay and Chambers, or god help us, Badnarik and Campagna, I feel I’ve done my best.  Baloney on toast looks pretty good when the alternative is more of the military-industrial club sandwich we’ve been choking on for the past four years. 

I’ve therefore selflessly taken up the solemn task of badmouthing the president.  I don’t do it out of schadenfreude or to take ghoulish satisfaction in the failings of others.  These are the failings of us all, and divulging them like this is in the nature of group therapy, sharing our shame in public so we can move the hell on with the healing process.  But after reviewing the points below, if you still want four more of the same, at least we’ll all be clear what it is of which you want more.  In 2000 GWB was a pig in a poke.  Now we’re the squealing piglet, and as for who’s the poke, well that’s what the political process is here to determine.  So, with no more ado:

The Evanescence of Coincidental Holiness

The east side of the park is highly structured - lawns and meadows, paths and edifices weave artfully among themselves, bordered by groomed foliage and carefully orchestrated watercourses.  As the park spills west to the ocean, it grows wilder and ruder till eventually the only paths curl in murky shadow amidst juniper groves, untended, dark and secret.  But smack in the middle there’s a spot that’s the best of both worlds - the gorgeous victorian vistas and brambles of Stow Lake and Strawberry Hill.  To the east is the formality of the museum concourse and Japanese Tea Garden; to the south, the botanist’s playground of the Strybing Arboretum; to the west, the start of forests that surround the Polo Fields and blanket the park, marching to the sea.... The path from my house to the lake crests a small hill that bridges two very different parts of one amazing park.

Ten years or so ago, this little zone, behind the Tea Garden and next to the old stone steps up to the lake, was a dumping ground.  Old chunks of monestary limestone (imported from Spain, no less!) lay crumbling amidst ivy and redwood; plant-waste mouldered in a casual compost, and a traffic barrier had been abandoned in the bushes near the intersection of three rude paths, controlling the transit of the skunks and raccoons.  This traffic barrier was concrete cylinder about four feet tall, three in diameter, gently rounded to a globular convexity on top.  It stood on end in dappled sunlight, quietly serving out its endless days where nasturtiums tangled and danced. 

Not too far from this location stands the local Indian consulate. That may help explain how the local community soon recognized this concrete bollard for what it was - a lingam, significantly bigger than life and comfortably ensconced in a coincidentally propitious grotto.  Someone left a flower atop it; someone else, an orange beside it; then later, some incense burning next to it.... An *om* was carefully drawn on it with colorful chalk; it was retouched if rains smeared it and the people cleaned up around it and tended it with gentle respect.  It had become, spontaneously, a local shrine. 

I could feel the karma, the kavanah of those who worshipped there each time I went past, the sweet scents and lovely colors they left behind mere physcial manifestations of something much richer and more numinous.  What once served only to stop cars and confound drivers had evolved into a focusing-lens for positive behavior.  The uplifted meditations offered there softly resonated among the tall trees and filtered into and out of the redwood chips covering the ground.  It had become a holy place, purely by virture of having been recognized as one. 

And therefore, it was disappeared.  The city was nervous about maintaining a religious site on public land - even though it was clear this shrine was effectively maintenance-free, even though a fifty-foot stone cross commemorating Drake’s use of English prayers in California in the 16th century stood by a waterfall not a mile away.  But this lingham shrine, this place of accidental holiness, somehow set city leaders off, and the order came down to make it go away. 

It was spirited off in the night, taken to a private garage in lieu of being utterly destroyed.  A local yogi set it up in his garage, out of the rain and appropriately accomodated and festooned, but that was way down in the south of the city in a neighborhood I never visit even in my car, much less on a casual stroll in my local park. 

After they yanked the lingam, the whole area got a makeover.  The limestone monestary stones were excavated and rehabilitated, and now appear in a very interesting water garden in the arboretum; the ivy and nasturtium were pulled out and replanted with wildflowers and hedges; even a redwood was taken down… and then the earth was transformed and a new grove was installed where the old one had stood.  It’s a fine grove, too, and as it grows in I’m sure it will continue to look and feel progressively better.  But I can’t help it; I remember the grotto as it once was; I know how it used to be - and I know something is missing every time I walk that path.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

fire the sommelier

On a morning when I’m rushing around in anticipation of a day of sitting on my ass in meetings less interesting than watching my skin pucker in the tub, here’s what I’m counting on to keep me bent just a little off the mainline: a few nights ago we had a great supper of grilled cajun salmon on a bed of black lentils, with some delicious sweet potato-cauliflower soup.  Kel wondered what kind of wine went with that combination.  I suggested a Salmon-Yam Blanc. 

Now that’s funny.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

O Say Can You See?

Let’s take a break from the wall of words I spew on a daily basis.  The words that show up here are only a small fraction of those I actually rassle in real life, you know, and Braveheart help me, my eyes just get so tired.  So tired, in fact, that today I’m going to look at some pretty pictures instead and refresh myself - and I’m taking your pasty shivering hams along for the ride. 

The theme for this photoessay is “stuff I can see when I am sitting at my computer desk at home.” I was inspired to develop this thesis when I brought a whole crapload of work home with me on monday and sat at that desk looking, on occasion, at anything at all other than the task at hand.  Luckily there is some interesting other stuff at which to look; to wit:

This is a wallhanging I just got.  It’s teaching me Hindi, I think!  Is that what it’s teaching me?  Or is there some more sinister message? 

This is a triumphant portrait of Booyah, our new mask, toward which little mexican skeletons cast shadows of obesiance.  I may have to work on the perspective for this one - we seem to be peering up Booyah’s dusty wooden nostrils here.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 

Finally, this is a little still life of the three harmonious beings: the learned skull, the decorative burgerstand, and the foam foot. The ancients honored this constellation, and you will too, dammit.  That is all.  More words tomorrow.

La Vida Yoga: UPDATED

Tuesday, right?  Dang it’s dark and wet outside, time to recall the weekend past and remind myself how much fun I can really have:

Friday night was dedicated to strangely coincident New York stories. First, we caught up with the Apprentice (thanks, TiVo!) (last week’s lesson: boys, keep your eye on the bottom line, not the boobies), and then we popped Taxi Driver into the ol’ DVD player and relaxed with the soothing saxaphones and paranoid mutterings that have made this movie a favorite of child-sex advocates for nigh on 30 years.  I’d never seen it before and was impressed with its sophistication as cinema - definitely a different animal than movies coming out today in terms of pacing, shot selection, color saturation, most everything.  Very sparse, very deliberate.  Also, an amazing cast, including Everybody Humps Raymond‘s own Peter Boyle, whose participation in that televised execration I can forgive only because he was so good in Young Frokenshteen.  But here’s the weird thing: near the end of Taxi Driver, Boyle is talking to DeNiro in front of the St Regis hotel in New York, where DeNiro then picks up Cybill Shepherd in his cab.  Okay.  BUT: in The Apprentice, wasn’t the fashion show featuring the contestents’ ugly clothes also held at the St Regis?  For a city that never sleeps, NYC has a fair share of hotels - so what are the odds of this coincidence?  Too low for it to be coincidence.  This is a message of some sort; I’m just not psychotic and obsessive enough to figure it out.

Moving right along then, on Saturday I had a lovely time at D&K’s bagelrama and gorgefest, held in honor of Nool and Deb’s visit to the far side.  Highlights surviving my stupor include:

* Standing at the table with everybody, all of us working the two-handed scarf-n-chat.  Me: “This is a good biscotti.  What’s the singular of biscotti?  It sounds plural.  This is a good biscottum.” N: “Biscotto.” J: “Yeah, it’s like how one broccoli is a broccolus.”

* Chatting with Deb is always a delight and she was particularly on her game Saturday.  She’s a woman of worldly sophistication who lives in the pulsing midtown heart of Apple City; she knows quality when she sees it.  And she - yea, even she - complimented my wristwatch.  I’ve received many compliments, from many wise and well-appointed people, on that item since I got it AT THE BIG FIVE SPORTING GOODS STORE FOR $18.  It was listed for $20 but I got a discount for buying the display model.  This watch is comfortable, accurate, well-coordinated with my wardrobe - and people sometimes just walk up to me on the street to tell me they like it.  Nothing makes a good thing better more than a big fat bargain.  Thanks, Deb - it was good to see you and I’m glad you like my bling.

Then, Sunday: A day of many accomplishments.  I cleaned, pulled down ancient filthy drapes and replaced them with clean little blinds; I cooked and read and laundered, walked and groomed the pets, and attended to all manner of important personal matters of a nature too intimate to be divulged in this undiscriminating forum… and then Ralph came over to join us for yoga.  He’s a bikram practitioner, which is a school of yoga that uses a strict, unchanging timed series of postures, performed in a sauna.  He’d never tried anything else and we hoped he’d like the power yoga series we attend at the Y.  I think he did, too, and it was fun to work out with him, both of us dripping sweat in the cool room surrounded by mirrors and cypress trees.  Afterwards he took us out for a big sushi dinner, which was a perfect way to close out the weekend for me.  He asked about our instructor, Steve; we mentioned he had a home in the Presidio and one up in north Sonoma off of the Dry Creek vinicultural appellation.  “What’s he do up there?,” Ralph asked.  “Oh, he teaches yoga there too.  He’s living the life,” said Kel.  “Living la vida yoga,” Ralph replied. 

Well, I’d never heard that one before anyway, and I giggled.  That’s the giggle I’m holding onto this dark and stormy Tuesday morning.  It’s time to walk the dog again, who hates the rain but thankfully prefers it to soiling his home, and then I’ll make a magnificently productive day of whatever is going on now.  Catch y’all later, if the crick don’t rise…

UPDATED because I left out the most important part: Dave’s comment there reminds me that his and kim’s brunch featured PIE.  Big sweet creamy coconut cream pie; big sweet tart mouthwatering strawberry rhubarb pie.  Then yesterday the woman kel’s carpooling with gave us a minipie, a tiny baked bijoux that we are munching with glee.  What I’m saying is that pie is happening, folks.  And when pie happens, good things follow.  Now be careful out there and drive friendly.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Land of the Lost

It wasn’t supposed to be my own personal version of I Love the 70s, though it seems to have mostly turned out that way.  What it’s supposed to be, rather - what it really is, I think - is a tidy octipuntal list of things that are locked so deeply in my mind that any reference to them, however oblique, tends to evoke something in me on a visceral level: I’ll remember a song (though I may be tired of it, wish to be free of it), or a catchphrase, or a range of experiences is colored in some distinct way, or sometimes these memory nuggets just arise unbidden in my mind, repeating themselves to me till I eventually mutter them under my breath to dispel them.  They are the tinkertoys of my mental apparatus - not functional per se, but clinking along in a rickety, mainly decorative way alongside, somehow inextricably intertwined with, everything else.  But Tinkertoys isn’t one of them.  They are, in point of fact, in the order in which they occured to me:

Friday, October 15, 2004

three strikes - I’m out of here

In the interest of energy conservation and time management, this one will be short and sweet.  I’ve been writing less this week, certainly fewer full-on essays.  I have, however, had a few strange phrases stuck in my brains and now I’m going to exorcise them on your sorry weekend-hungry butts: 

* Seeing all the ads on all the busses and billboards around town makes me wonder: Do I actually hate everybody who loves Raymond?

* I work for an agency so secret that it doesn’t even have an acronym.

* Wolfo-bismol: if you lycanthropy but it doesn’t lyke you back!

Yeah, pretty lame.  Welcome to my world.  It’s like you’re all flu viruses and I’m Chiron - if it’s up to me to stop you in your tracks, well today it just ain’t gonna happen.  I’ll have more ammo next week, and probably a better attitude too.  If not, be on the lookout for yet stupider jokes and even worse puns.  It’s how I get back at the world.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Imagine That

On the way into downtown on the heavily-travelled central freeway, a strange constellation of messages and sponsors has been raised over the city: a huge banner hangs from the undulant wall of the modern jailhouse.  The banner features a large photo of John Lennon kissing Yoko Ono.  On the right side is a replica of a cop’s badge, and at the bottom a crimson border reads “San Francisco 49ers.” Superimposed over the Lennon photo is this text: “John Lennon today.  Imagine that.” Beneath, it continues: “Violence hurts us all.  Resolve to end it.”

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people see it each day, and I’ll bet every one of them thinks, “what the hell is this bizarre melange of identifiers and messages?” Anyway that’s what they’d all be thinking if I were scripting it, but then again, they wouldn’t be so damn violent either and we’d probably just put up a big sign about the dangers of snail bait abuse, or reminding people not to mash their fingers between shopping carts.  And that building it’s draping wouldn’t be a jail, it would be the gleaming new municipal moonbounce facility.  And then we’d all have pie.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Take That!

Again, in honor of the debates: Japanese Bitchslapping, home version! (via Memepool - on the sidebar as “outta the pool")

What It Was Worth

During the last debates our President underscored emphatically the importance of having “facile” weapons systems.  That is, systems distinguished by fluency and ease, an effortlessness that actually implies lack of serious effort.  That should comfort all the serious, thoughtful terrorists who wouldn’t be targeted by such weapons.  I think Mr. Bush wants us to have “agile” weapons systems.  But now I don’t know if he knows the difference, and which one he’ll mention in those high level summits he is so fond of reminding us he attends.  Dude, I don’t care if you go if you’re just gonna mess things up.  I’d rather you stayed home rather than embarass us or dig us into a hole out in the big wide world.  Words matter. 

In illustration whereof:

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Warm-Up Gear

A few weeks ago I noticed a dude wearing a “local’s” sweatshirt that read “FRISCO CITY.” Of course, I don’t know many people around here who call this town Frisco but that’s more of an attitude thing than anything else.  More troubling to me was the stylistic conceit of putting “City” after “Frisco.” It’s not like we’re going to be confused with Frisco Village or Frisco Acres or something like that.  Nobody has sweatshirts for those places.  It’s just “Frisco,” if you are going to call it Frisco at all.  Adding the word “city’ makes it read like some sort of adjective, something akin to “viscosity” but more highly caffeinated and eccentric: “This band presents shopworn tunes with refreshing friscocity.” Like that.  So, word to the local hoodie purveyors: less is more.  And that’s as good a reason as any for a story about a sweatshirt. 

Philadelphia was a new city, dark and rapidly growing cold.  Being an exiled Angeleno, I was underprepared for the upcoming frigid seasons, so I went to Wannamakers - an imposing solid city block’s-worth of department store.  It was wide and deep and, what, eleven stories tall? —altogether a species of commercial intensity outside my prior range of experience.  Somewhere up in its Edwardian exuberance and excess I found a sportswear department, and then looked in it for some sort of knit cotton pullover outergarment with a head covering attached at the neck - what might be described in today’s parlance as a ‘hoodie.’

And I found one, too.

Monday, October 11, 2004

I Claim This Blog For Spain

We both have today off, so I’m actually not late for work even though I have a long list of household obligations to fulfill today.  Well from where I’m sitting there’s no better reason than that to kill a few minutes getting blog all over myself. 

We’re off work for Columbus Day, a government holiday in California - long known by Columbusianaists as one of the places Columbus most wishes he’d discovered.  I don’t know if the rest of you saps in the outer 49 &etc get to take Columbus Day off, but we sure as hell do and we will.  I vowed to discover a new continent this weekend in honor of the event; I’ve succeeded in clearing out my big ol’ file cabinet and consolidating a lot of the paperwork that’s been lying around the house.  While it may not be a feat on par with that of Columbus, I do think it compares favorably to those of, say, Vasco de Gama, so go suck a breadfruit, I’m satisfied with myself. 

Moreso, anyway, than I’d be if I was counting on San Francisco to satisfy my Columbus jones.  This city has a long and storied history of making a huge deal out of Columbus Day, with the (7th?) fleet coming to town for a coordinated “Fleet Week” and thousands of sailors on sore leave [sic] flooding the streets; the warships streaming in under the huge bridge made their own parade and the airshow from Chrissey Field was all the more thrilling for being based right here in the middle of town.  And huge parades for Columbus Day would be held on Columbus Avenue, the broad thoroughfare cutting through the heart of North Beach which they rename in italian for the event, a real slice of italy in california and a gorgeous, exciting avenue connecting the wharf to downtown’s biggest landmark.  What a party.

Or so it used to be.  For the past few years Fleet Week has been deflating.  Military shutdowns drained troops and facilities from the area.  The vibrancy of North Beach began to succumb to the inexorable power of Chinatown.  Military obligations elsewhere have reallocated resources and priorities.  This year the proud tradition of Fleet Week cited as its culmination, as it has been for years past, an airshow.  But this time it’s not the proud power of the U.S. Military (plus friends :P) on display - it’s an aerial spectacularama mounted by our friends at the AirShow Network - “the recognized leader in air show entertainment, offering event management and production throughout North America.” When I see their sleek jets shred the sky above my home as they circle around for their next death-defying yet threateningly bellicose maneuver, I am no longer troubled by thoughts of “at least they’re on our side” or “my tax dollars at work” or “oh, shock and awe, I see how that works” - I am now thinking mainly, as the awful craft soar and scream above me, how glad I am that “ASN sponsors professional management of every detail of their activities and care to ensure that their investment offers impressive value when compared to other marketing mediums.”

This is our “Fleet Week.” This is our celebration of post-colonial might.  And the capstone of the air show, which has always before been the U.S. Navy’s rightly renowned Blue Angels?  Well this year it’s the Canadian Forces SnowBirds, who are probably just fine, very skilled pilots, etc etc, but they fly a CT-114 Tutor, a Canadian built jet used by the Canadian Forces as its basic pilot training aircraft until 2000.  The Blue Angels used to tear around overhead in F/A-18 fighter jets capable of flying just under mach 2 (1400 miles per hour).  When I saw them abovedecks I knew that something serious was going on, even if it was just a celebration.  Now with the SnowBirds buzzing around in their little airplanes, it just isn’t the same. 

And since it isn’t the same, here’s a list of new names for this holiday that’s giving me a day off work:

Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Ingenious Peoples’ Day

Indigenous Pimples’ Day

Clodumbus Day

Get The Hell Off My Continent Day

Have a good one - it’s time for me to start celebrating I suppose.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Capacious

Today I have the pleasure of not taking the bus to work, not even going to the office at all - it’s the Annual Meeting, held this year in the state’s first capital, Monterey, to which I will be driving shortly for a full day’s worth of commission meetings and cheaply-catered lunches.  I’m rather looking forward to it - for the drive, the variety, the company (I rarely spend much of my day in the company of other humans) - and because I don’t need to spend too much of my time toting sack.  I do like my sack, but it can be unweildly on the bus, as I reflected to myself yesterday evening as I came home with paperwork for the meeting (heavy) and a new box of syringes for the diabetic cat (bulky).  And this put me in mind of a conversation I had not too long ago with pea.

When I went through my sack-shilling phase not too long ago I found myself in conversation with an incredulous pea, who couldn’t believe the size of my sack.  She went and got her bad self a medium sack, but I stuck with the large model.  Grande.  Gadol (that’s hebrew!).  My sack isn’t just a style icon; it doesn’t just hang low across the small of my back like some swingin’ sporran - it’s also big as the great outdoors.  “But why?,” I seem to remember her asking me, “why do you need so much bag?” (Pea expressed some squeamishness about using the word “sack” ((or even “saq")), though she seems comfortable with “purse,” which always seemed to me to be a vauguely lascivious word itself.  Such is life.)

My answer to her, to you, to the world at large, is that I have a condition which obliges me to go big where the ol’ sack is concerned.  I suffer from - or, perhaps, am endowed with - fluctuating sack volume.  Some days my sack is nearly empty, drooping flaccidly behind me.  Some days it’s full to bursting, my precious contents peeking out from under the straining flap.  Sometimes the big load I’m carrying is feather-light - pillows, packing material, empty tupperwares from lunch.  Sometimes I’m toting a small volume that’s dense beyond belief, computer parts and fruit and ingots of goddamn kryptonite. 

Volume can fluctuate significantly from one end of my day to the other; weight and volume have only the merest correlation.  Therefore, I need a sack that can handle whatever I throw at (or in) it. I won’t challenge its capacity most days.  Sometimes I’ll feel that it’s mocking me with its gaping emptiness.  But on the big days when I’m riding the bus heavy as grief and fully laden, I’m always grateful for my enormous sacapacity. 

Time to walk the dog, find some pants (I might reverse the order on those ones) and go to the meeting.  Have a great weekend, and don’t overstuff.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

the yummy lunch (updated and finalized!)

I just finished typing up a powerful and moving essay about having lunch with

Jules

and

Pete.  As I finished the final touches of editing, I somehow disappeared the whole thing and now I’m mad.  The story of the crazywoman and the creepy cat will have to wait for later today at the earliest, when I hope I get a chance to update this entry.  Meantime, here’s the photographic evidence that, at least, Jules and Pete were both in a room with yellow walls.  I’ll get back to this with more details when I have more time. 

UPDATED: IN THE EXTENDED ENTRY!

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Brainstorm

Don’t you think marzipan would be more popular if it was actually from Marz?

This is Your Brain on Law

Malum prohibitum
Malum in Se
Took a wandering walk
On a blustery day.
“Prohibitum, where
is your family from?,”
In Se, he inquired
Of his favorite chum.
“I thought that I’d told you,
In Se, long ago -
I carry no passport;
No land is my home.
And what about you,
may I ask, Mr. Se:
Where do you tend your roots
At the end of the day?”
“Old Pro, I’m quite sure
That this story’s been told:
I come from all over,
My home is the globe.”
Then they wandered in covetous
Silent desire;
For the place of the other one
Each did aspire:
Prohibitum wanted
A home of his own,
While in Se longed for someplace
They’d leave him alone.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Suck the Bone

We’d been in Negril for several days and it had seeped idown under our skin.  Many lessons had already been learned, about sunburn and safety and trust, among others. Not all our experiences were positive, but we were having a good time and living richly.

One thing we weren’t doing much of was socializing.  Naturally, on our honeymoon we wouldn’t be expected to spend a lot of time cultivating outside acquaintences, but this was something more along the lines of active avoidance - the behavior of tadpoles among catfish.  We’d been scammed, scavanged, picked-over and picked-on.  The people of Negril were very poor and confronted us accusatorily with the inequity of our relative positions every time we set foot out of the door.  The heat and sun and humidity crushed down on us from all sides, but it was the poverty and importunations of the people that really felt oppressive. 

There was one notable exception: across the shabby trail of a highway on which our resort stood was a shack that served jerked chicken.  And when I say “shack,” I mean that these people lived in and worked out of something I would not have beeen allowed to use for storing old toys as a child.  The floors were dirt, the walls were cobbled together of wood, cardboard and sheets of random found materials - plastic, fiberglass, canvas, whatever.  Dusty sunlight filtered through holes throughout the rude structure.  The place had a simple painted sign out front, an oildrum jerk pit to the side, and was filled with wonderful smells and genuinely gracious people. 

We went there one evening just as things were closing down and bought the last of the chicken they had for sale, but we remained, transfixed, by the scene and hospitality and just didn’t feel like leaving for a while.  Two young children, almost nude, and a naked toddler stumbled and played in the barely-furnished room, their squeals and smiles lighting the place up.  The other primary source of light was a television set, an old beat-up model with a long skinny electric cord tail that went off under a wall to I knew not where.  The set sat ona crude low table; on top of the television sat an equally tired-looking VCR, and around these two anomolous items of decor sat several adult members of the household and neighborhood, gathered together to gape in wonderment at a screening of The Blues Brothers. 

I stood in the drifting filtered light of this absolute hovel with a group of people with whom I could barely have had less in common, all of us roaring with delight as Jake and Elwood led a festival of demolition.  We watched cars fly, explode, sink into rivers.  We watched thousands of yelping cops rappel down the face of austere government buildings.  We watched the Brothers grimace, flinch and return to stonefaced solmemnity as blues music churned the background into funky butter. 

The people in the house mentioned that they were confused, had never seen this movie, didn’t understand what was happening; we tried to fill in a few details but it wasn’t really necessary.  We all knew enough to laugh and to marvel at this window into a world of cold, industrial slapstick, there in the crushing poverty of a tropical paradise .

About this time the toddler approached Kel.  He’d been playing a game with a chicken bone, sucking on a denuded drumstick and then extending the shiny calcified knob to someone else, a brother or aunt or whomever, who’d suck on it briefly and have a little laugh with him.  He wandered around from sibling to parent to neighbor - to Kelly.  Suddenly, between herself and the television screen, was a small naked boy with a chicken bone in his mouth, which, grinning, he offered to Kelly.  Blanching, she feigned a lick or two at some distance.  The others laughed even more uproariously at her reluctance.  It was our best, most personal moment on the island.  In a tumbledown shack we’d eaten well, laughed at the surreality of physical comedy, and then even more, and together, at the ingenuousness of youth.  Leaving, I reflected that anything can be a house; if it contains nothing but laughter, it is worthy even of being called a home. 

Then again, it was just a chickenbone.  Some people take things even farther, but luckily, Jerked Chicken was the only thing on our menu that night.  Dude be running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  And not in the good way.  And with that, have a safe and comfortable day.

Sunday, October 03, 2004

The Glamorous Life

It’s been a fine weekend.  Here’s a brief recap, for those of you who couldn’t join me:

* Our friends had their annual sukkot party, celebrating a lovely old holiday that happens every year about this time, the Festival of Tabernacles.  I do like the word “tabernacle” so this one always rated quite high in my book.  We ate a huge smoked brisket, a smoked turkey, and all manner of accompanying foodstuffs including a chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, and six boxes of krispy kremes of various sizes.  It was a profoundly relaxing afternoon, as evidenced by my falling asleep on the couch in the living room for about half an hour in the middle of everything.  The essential mystery of the event was provided by the label on the cream cheese I got, special hand-made stuff from a Marin county fromagerie - the packaging specified that there was “no gum” in it.  I guess other cheeses have gum in them, which is why so many parents are having to teach their kids not to blow bagel bubbles.  If you ask me, that’s just one more thing kids shouldn’t blow.

* Last night we netflix’d a very interesting movie - Spring Summer Autumn Winter… Spring.  Though you might believe this to be the story of a year-long training program for a hopeful member of the olympic trampoline team, in fact it was an exceptionally beautifully-told story of a young boy growing up in a tiny monastary floating in a lake in Korea: what he learns - or doesn’t, how he incorporates teaching and experience into his life, how the cycles repeat and reinforce each other even as the seasons change within a year but repeat themselves as time’s river broadens.  It was also one of the quietest movies I’ve ever seen, with less dialogue than a lot of mime.  It’s not a movie to see when you’re tired, but if you’re ready to look into some of the bigger epicycles in life, I recommend it.

* It appears that a lot of road repair work has been done in our neighborhood in the past few weeks.  Around here, all the intersections have street names carved into the edges of the curb.  These small geographic hints are pretty handy for alert pedestrians, but it’s fair to say that the people who install them are not always at the top of their mental game.  Hence, I noticed this weekend that the main drag hereabouts, Geary Boulevard, has a carved legend at the corner with 18th Avenue that reads, “Geary Bla.” I’ve had the Geary Bla’s before, and while they aren’t pretty, you can usually get over them.  I guess the workers saw that there was an “a” in the word “boulevard” and figured on using that vowel in the abbreviation.  Sure, there’s three other vowels in that word that precede the “a,” but those get used altogether too often.  And, honestly, it’s nice to catch a little “a” on the streets every so often. 

The other side of this story is that a local thoroughfare was recently repaved, as a result of which all the intersections had to be repainted.  They originally had the standard thick white “limit” line and the word “STOP” painted with familiar stencilled block letters… but when the area got repaved they took some kind of inch-thick permanent paint-tape and made small weak inch-thick limit lines with it, and then tried to spell out “STOP” with small strips of the same tape with the “S” built out of five little white segments.  Then they must have run low on tape because instead of using five strips to make an “S”, they started using just three, making the zig-zag “S” shape popularized on certain ornaments worn by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (or “SS").  Finally, it looks like they just ran out of brainpower and wound up making their last three-strip zigzag “S” backwards, so it looked like a big “Z” in front of the word “TOP.” “ZTOP.” And the tragedy, really, is that they covered it over and repainted it properly before we had a chance to add another “Z” to the front - doing, if you will, the Street-Paint Boogie.  Life can be so cruel sometimes. 

* And, looking ahead: just in case the week brings you unexpected challenges, you can always send encoded distress calls like these.  No office is complete without this poster up on the breakroom wall.  Or without a jello-based slip-n-slide and a shiny set of corporate lawndarts.  Which is to say, no office is complete.  Which is, simply, not news.  So I might as well just shut up about it already.  Here’s hoping your week fires a warning shot before anything serious happens....

Friday, October 01, 2004

Two Lines, No Waiting

I just have to get this off my chest and then I can go on with my day.  There’s a classy kiosk on a prime financial district sidewalk with an ad from a fancy - nay, a fancy-schmancy - department store.  It features two beautiful young women wearing fabulous gowns and leopardprint coats, sharing an umbrella, standing in spike-heeled shoes outside some gorgeous building.  One faces smilingly toward the viewer; the other is smiling, too, but she is turned three-quarters away and grins over her shoulder at us.  The ad copy superimposed at the lower margin of the photo reads, SAKS LOVES IT BOTH WAYS. 

Note to savvy shoppers: Use entrance in rear.  I’m sure I saw her wink at you.

Oldies But Goodies

I’ve decided not to pound out a whole essay this morning, since I have a buttload of words and technical details waiting for me at my little cubby at work.  Instead, I’ll just offer a few words for the weekend:

First: A few months ago a dear friend gave me back a book I’d lent her several years back - a textbook from college, James Hillman’s Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion.  I decided to read it again, so I replaced the Norton poetry anthology in the bathroom with this slender text.  It’s taking a long time to read, but I do find it interesting when I have any idea what he’s talking about.  Honestly, I can’t believe I ever earned a grade on what’s in this volume of bizarritude.  Example, from page 117: “The entire relationship with anima is placed into the mythologem of the heroic ego and his archetypical fight with the dragon.  Then efforts to integrate, ‘to bring these contents to light,’ become a depotentiating of personifications and of their imaginal power, a drying-up of the waters, and a slaying of the angel (seen to be a danergous fairy-demon by the ego), whose real purpose is to individualize itself within a personal relation to an individual.” I can’t tell you how often I repeat those words to myself as I sit on the bus wondering where that puddle under the next bench came from.  Inspirational is too weak a word.  I’m going to finish this book, and I may even have some clue what it’s about by the time I’m done. 

Second: the Skippy List.  Now, go out and have a dangerously good weekend, ya fairy-demons!