Non-Threatening Boys Magazine

November 24, 2011

2011-11-23T23:53:00.001-08:00

The house is almost empty, just me and sporadic sessions of forced air that sound like a series of drives through long mountain tunnels, all night. There are parcels of darkness, between the brake lights in the window and the screen lights in the room, each making neat packages. When I last saw vacancies in light like these, the gaps between the spines of my books were screaming out, the stucco walls straining from the drone pressure of a swelling ghost. The corners of the room were shining like the first letter of an illuminated page. When I last saw these things, I had been lifted by something new. The floor, an impatient tai chi partner of mine, drove its power into the capacitor below my navel. We saw the ghost in my house, the floor and I, and we would have removed it at that time, by every jamb and stud and joist. But the Voice.

The Voice says No. We rent, you dumbass.

The Voice is in New York to cook for a people she was raised to know and love. They harbor their own ghosts, but in a manner she was raised to appreciate. She nonetheless means to push them out for the day with a burgeon of food, her tidal joy, and a surge of select Hungarian curses. Feed the soul, fade the memory, shame the devil.

My children are with their mother, who will take them to her parents, who live on a cliff over the ocean. I think some day I should be dissolved in that water, save a few grains embedded, if only for a breath, in the lifelines of their hands.

And my own mother has written in the late morning, will you join us tomorrow? be as quiet as you want. I would like to write something about what it means for each of us to be known and felt, thrown together and remembered well, each in our own way and by our own shadows. Instead, I am writing this, and will have in tow this morning a handsome, capable dessert.

2011-09-30T09:28:00.001-07:00

Friday and

overcast

and my love feels distant

besides

Wishing you a frank and productive Back-to-School Dance

2011-08-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Last year's Back-to-School Dance at my son's high school was canceled for lack of interest. I believe they sold 12 tickets.

Easy to blame it on student apathy, sure. But when a letter like this is the first news you get on the dance, you have to wonder who they're trying to attract:

Redwood High School

Office of the Principal

To: Parents and Guardians

From: Principal David Sondheim

The Back to School Dance is Friday, August 19^th, in the Quad. The dance is from 8:00-11:00. Doors will open at 7:30 and close at 8:30. Once students have entered the dance, they may not leave and reenter the dance. Students will purchase tickets at the door. Ticket sales begin at 7:30.

Student safety is always our primary concern. As you may already know, the Tamalpais Union High School District takes student use of alcohol and drugs very seriously. Despite our best efforts, student use of alcohol and drugs continues to be a problem. Not only is it against the law for students to use, possess, sell, or furnish alcohol or drugs, it is also against the Tamalpais Union High School District’s Board Policy 5131.6, and students may be disciplined for such misconduct. If students are suspected of being under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, they may be given a breathalyzer or other sobriety test, and their person, locker, and/or vehicle may be subject to search. Police officers will be checking all bags and personal items upon entering the dance. Pat searches will also be conducted.

In order to make this year’s Back to School dance safe and enjoyable for everyone, we encourage all parents to seriously consider and discuss the following tips with your student before the dance:

Remind your student of the consequences, both at school and at home, as well as with the law, for using, possessing, selling, or furnishing alcohol or drugs. If they are caught at a school event, they will be disciplined.
Know how your student is getting to and from the dance. If your student is getting a ride from a friend, contact that friend’s parents to be sure the friend has permission to use the car, that the car is properly insured, and that the friend has a valid driver’s license.
Ask your student what friends he/she will be going with to the school dance or activity. Remind them that there is no admittance after 8:30 p.m. All students must be picked up by 11:30 p.m. or they will lose their privilege to attend the next dance.
Set a reasonable curfew. The Back to School Dance is from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m.
Remind your student that they need their ID card to purchase a ticket and there will be no in and out privileges.

We look forward to a safe and successful Back to School dance at Redwood, and hope that this event is a positive conclusion for the first week of school.

I wonder just how the last event went down. Doubt it was pretty.

Ginsberg's Looks

2010-08-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here we look out at the persimmon tree every morning. We're curious, the squirrels anxious. We hiked about the Himalayas a couple of summers ago now. Our driver was a tall, stoic man, attuned it seemed to concerns about which we ought not inquire. On the walk back from a hilltop dzhong in a remote valley, he spotted a very few rice seeds in a field of stalks and exclaimed. I know I cannot live that moment, an austere, patient vigil for the pleasure of a season, come and gone in a handful of footsteps, but sometimes I think I want to.

Over this weekend, your letter sat behind the mountains where my aunt & uncle live, behind their two dogs, a week or two of some trudging maintenance and a whirling calendar of future events, all in pencil. On Saturday morning I read "Howl" in the quiet house. And, before the shock set in, "A Supermarket in California" and short bits of "Sunflower Sutra" and "America." And I looked away. I do not know how a person just keeps looking, but sometimes I think I want that too.

Part of that maintenance has been walking up the hillside steps near my house after seeing the kids off on the bus. I think of it like another invitation, in its way, to receive the word. The messages I have to divine from, so far, include a half-eaten pear left in the middle of the path, and more-than-occasional poops. Some neighbors are discourteous. There are fence-minding dogs along the way, too, but mollified for days at a time once given their due.

So my mind drifts into a child's game, somewhere in the fog. The one hiding her eyes counts, "One revolution, two revolutions, three revolutions..." Her older brother declares "It's not revolution, it's revelation. And it's not revelations, there's only ever just one." A third player wants to know why they don't just use "Mississippi" and the brother just shrugs: "That's somewhere else." I don't know if it comes from rotting pears or dog shit but the idea of it won't go away.

Another morning, a group of insurgent militants intercepted me along the climb from India to Bhutan. I wanted to reason with them; they had their guns and their doubts, but told me tigers would eat me, in any event. I said tigers have to eat but men elect to kill. In any event I had barely enough food for myself, let alone a tiger. I didn't know where to take this encounter next, so I recalled the lap I was on and set about finishing it.

I liked seeing your eyes again. The last time I truly remember seeing them they were quite red. In the hallway on the second floor, wringing out a terminal goodbye...I don't know, a dry-swallowing moment to see.

I'll be in Delaware in a couple of weeks, and happy for some measure of work that doesn't take place in this chair. For reasons I can't explain yet, even to myself, I was in Chicago for three days, not too long ago, and didn't say a word to anyone that wasn't required.

Light my candles in a daze

2010-01-20T09:03:00.000-08:00

I took a boxing for fitness class last fall and dropped a fair amount of flab. Still the same weight, more or less and oddly enough, but back to a 32" inch waist. Also a lot of the piss and vinegar that made up my 20s and the nightly 3 am wake-ups that went with it.

I wonder if, beyond the notion of muscle memory itself, there isn't some more general body memory, a recollection of emotional states and stresses that attach to how we have kept our physical selves. As I've been working out more lately, and reaching a state I call realization -- what most people I think call 'endorphin release' -- I've been reaching the subtleties of any number of memories back. Not just the event, say, by which I remind myself why a given relationship fell apart, but also some number of uncharitable thoughts I cultivated to get me to the end of it. And the charitable thoughts I let die to get me to the end of it.

It's difficult to avoid generalizing on this condition before it becomes little more than a word vapor. But somewhere between the subconscious ether of not-knowing-but-knowing, and the plain field of ideas one can try to talk out, is where these recollections reside. What I want to get at is this palette of emotion, idea and instinct that leads any one person to select or reject what they can tolerably imagine in order to reach some decision. And while I am jacking my cardio, listening to Lithium, watching furled women hoist buckets at a water truck in Haiti, scanning some utterly age-inappropriate pony-tails bobbing on the ellipticals and making oh-so-critical phone calls, I also reflect on moments I did know but didn't want to: when I wasn't ready for what I wanted -- roles and responsibilities, mostly -- but drove straight at them anyway; when my marriage was over but I kept at it for another 10 years; when I hurt someone without ever caring about what happened next, and cared for someone without any fathomable reason whatsoever, much less noble intention...I wonder where in my body these things were stored, in what revived muscle I have now peeled back. And why, of all things, a sweat-soaked, strawberry-faced man, quite relieved of the harness of religion, begins confession with himself at 168 beats a minute in an overcrowded 24-hour Fitness.

Binding

2010-01-10T10:52:00.000-08:00

The black gamboling dog herds a small band of travelers around a hurling pitch. A park encloses the pitch. The bay water in turn surrounds the western edge of Galway, which huddles close to the rest of Ireland. On the south side of the inlet, a glass highrise. Small houses, orderly in size and spacing, follow the road up around the hill to the north.

The travelers take turns throwing a stick for the dog and picking the rocks for a noteworthy handful; tossed crabs, miles-weary drifted worn debris. The seabirds have collected behind a windbreak behind a boatramp. No boats are out today. No men, legs like tree trunks, lungs like flour sacks, want the pitch.

When the band has completed the circuit, the dog works back to his beginnings, across the grass, leeward of a small shack, where a sausage or bun just might drop.

2010 Resolutions: Restart the Blog, Continue Not Seeing Avatar

2009-12-30T07:59:00.000-08:00

Here is a lucid moment I can recall from 2009: somewhere in the year, I began to see how it was, from an early age, that I started building myself. I began to recall founding principles I had reinforced in myself: certain impulses or lessons drawn from certain immediate experiences I had no rational means to digest. I remembered, for example, sitting in my grandfather's den, thumbing through his shelves of books on the stock market: data, analyses, guides and advices. My grandfather was the kind of man who preferred to act only rightly, and therefore rarely, and always within a scope that was clear and visible to him. And in one of these books, some narrow band of intense light fell for me on the word contrarian.

Somewhere in that same, now-ephemeral venture, I pulled his tabulating machine off his desk and onto the floor. I punched in "1963" -- the low key in the thousands column, the high key in the hundreds column, middle-high in the tens column, middle-low in the ones. The first time around I added 10 three times, then seven. The sum was a number that evaded all meaning for me. It was an immediate, and remains a lasting, fog. And when the year 2000 rolled around I still had no idea about that number. I am equally mystified by 46 today. But I do remember, with equal intensity, that the snick of each key seated in its register and the click-and-ratchet of the tabulating arm was satisfying beyond words.

It is, alas, in the analog of these places that most of my writing gets done. It is from me and to me, a relation between the idea of me and the machine of me that is passed in some clean, intra-cerebral idiom of lightning strikes which language, at its best, rudely distorts. The words may arrive in a scheme I sometimes find memorable or even beautiful, but only as language understands those qualities. And, only as the reader, already tasked with keeping up spam filters, calculating safe harbor in the office politics of the day, even crossing with the light but against the hardly-checked aggression of city drivers, has the resources of moment and sympathy to consider.

Writing to myself is like the discovery of a headwater, or the apprehension of some new falls. It marks the first beginning of what there is to know about the river that follows. But it is the power that drives these manifests that I most want to define. And so what I want to say about it is perhaps a strange cousin to this idea:

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

In following the traditions by which T. S. Eliot finds lilacs springing from the dead and Chaucer finds bathed in every veyne in swich licour/Of which vertu engendred es the flour, Dylan Thomas speaks to both: the gift, the dread of water's power. But also how he remains subject to the very god he demands to know. He sees himself suspect in his own intention; I imagine it's because the poet feels that urge to sell this god out, and can't quite come to terms with the devil within. He also sees it is as a fool's game, and a foolishly dangerous one.

I do not feel myself a party to that discussion. I instead feel myself moving from one station -- a search for the foundation of my own meanings that merely extend beyond my reach -- to another proposition: that if one is going to wrestle this genius, one first has to learn to walk through the rock. But language and writing do not further the means to that lesson.

Writing is instead our collective graffiti. It is our declamation in chalk, paint, ink, smoke, and pixels: Beyond this point, who knows? But I'm carving my initials, drawing a heart, marking the year, and moving on. I am here. To you I was here first, and you're not going to solve this either.

And there's the taunt and the trap: who has ever written anything that is truly new? First in print, sure, and "original" in that sense of the word. Or that is how it seems to this mind raised in the fervor of the West: always trying to get somewhere first.

Oh, and why bother to see Avatar? You know Titanic was a pedestrian, gutless love story warmed over with beautiful people, good lighting, and other expensive effects, yes? Did you want them all to live? Why? My bet is if you wait two years, you'll wonder why you ever cared about this or any Cameron movie. There is nothing more to it than exactly what you see. No reason to pay full price.

Coming out of the dark

2009-01-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

This is my next attempt at sustained writing. I hereby reference it with the words Gloria Estefan used to mark her comeback from a spinal injury due to a traffic accident. She seems like a nice gal. Her words could be more tastefully exploited, sure. It is also January. I'm coming back from a week-long, supernaturally foul mood, brought on in part by seasonal letdown, in part by exhaustion, catching up to years of deferred maintenance, mostly fiscal. It is nonetheless an emotionally-loaded exercise. Here is, for example, a faded receipt from a California Pizza Kitchen in Atlanta.

I hate Atlanta. It is the thickest-skinned city in the world. Do I have a traumatic experience to justify my feeling? Well, not so much. I mean, yes, my luggage has been lost on arrival into Atlanta half the number of times I have traveled there. And, yes, one time the baggage handlers stole a laptop computer and eight dollars in loose change from my checked luggage. And in that particular CPK, I was served a glass of wine for $8 that looked so paltry, I refused to touch it. For some reason they would not take it back until I finished my meal.

And yes, if you have to switch carriers from SFO to Atlanta to save a buck, it's not a low-percentage chance that the bag transfer mucks up in Salt Lake City. (What fool checks a laptop and cash? I do, if it's an old Tadpole 3GX Sparcbook that looks and feels like a brick, and that's where I kept my parking meter change, aight?) And that assuredly machine-dispensed wine probably suffered in appearance more from a gallon-capacity glass than anything else...

Where was I? Oh, yes. I fucking hate fucking Atlanta. I imagine they have parks where the city's retired and elderly go to maintain their bitch chi. Led by masters who sustain their material lives as airline lost-and-found clerks, baggage handlers, chain-restaurant waiters. And all but 3-4 people I ever worked with while in that town.

One receipt down. Now, starting with October 2004, how many more to go? Here's the one where I consumed Scotch, sake, and cosmopolitans in one night. For a while, anyway. Here's the phone bill where I drunk-dialed my ex. No idea how I got to my hotel room from the bar, much less how I got to work on time the next day, but I didn't walk it. Here's another, where I Fed-Ex'ed a token to a former lover, who never once said I didn't spend enough money on her, but used the word "intent" a lot. I wanted to signal to her clearly: this transaction concludes our business.

Herman Hesse said this to me a couple days ago, by way of iGoogle's quote of the day: "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."

I know Herman didn't mean to compare me to Atlanta. Still, it will take time to recover from that bomb.

Where It Stops Making Sense

2008-09-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

As I open my notebook, a phrase from Major Ragain comes to mind, "the darkness is deep enough to wear." Lines from jolie laide also invite themselves in: "I'm in the kitchen of the community room in yet another worn down neighborhood. It smells like all community room kitchens, like transit terminal grade disinfectant and elementary school-grade bologna. I have the job offer tucked into my bag."

If I could see in sculpture the power of taking away, as I see it, feel it, breathe it in the written word, the atomic moment, I'd fight for statues. But sculpture is not that, or not in a way I grasp. It is instead a bringing, delivery into relief from the formless, a fusion of material properties and the need in the artist's mind to see things for himself. It is relief in the aspects of dimension and of revelation.

Only in writing does the creator assemble in one sense and subtract in another, at the same time. What is not made plain becomes the property of the reader's imagination, subject only to his experience, his emotional curves, his own creation. But the frame on which that solitary experience hangs is something all readers can agree to. It is almost as if, ridiculous as it sounds, that they all could be said to have read the same thing.

I want that rich jacket that extends into darkness, the layer between me and nothing both real and infinite, just as it really and infinitely is. I want to feel that space between that entrenched odor of grinding generations in existence, and some freshly papered contract. The sound of her heels, for one. What does it sound like to walk through that living smell over one sheet of paper? I believe that room should ring a hollow report in every corner, a desolated echo. Only the scurf of the day wants to rest there. She told me it was in truth a church hall. I still won't believe it.

Some say it will end in fire, some say it will end in ice.

2008-09-06T20:59:00.000-07:00

I suspect few people born in the 60's can find the hometown of their memories anymore. Geographically mine is here, where the born-and-raised are often a novel conversation piece. The hick-and-artsy come here for the weather and the competitive pool for attention, the former much better than New York, the latter less intense than, say, ChicagoBostonNewYorkLA, and for that matter Toronto. Money people who know entertainment, media, finance or all three, too real for LA but too awesome for Vancouver, come here. Internet startups nest in SOMA, close enough to draw notice from Sand Hill Road, but buffered from the vortex, the Daly City of the mind, the post-War horizon stare of work-eat-sleep-repeat that owns most souls down through Morgan Hill.

On 18th Street in the Mission, I am helping to empty a basement. In the street, a waif-piloted BMW, made to wait on a left turn into a gated garage, fitted into some Victorian gutted not long ago. The opposite traffic taunts her with the petulant languor she deserves for observing their right-of-way. A shiny black Escalade behind her, pig-faced, expressionless, Oakley-eyed in the style of would-be's at a circuit poker tournament, bristles behind her. BMW's bridled impatience has become a drama with no close. Seeing the clear second ot two of leeway she's given an oncoming car, he guns it around her. The oncoming driver wants no part of it crazy, and brakes short. Well, yes, that's what those shades are for, to help you mistake the limp city dick in that ridiculous horse-car for crazy.

This morning, it feels as if the heat of the week has finally broken. I've already felt myself wilt though. The cooling breeze, its eventual arrival and the heat's necessary relenting, fell out of prospect Friday night. Every noir betrayal in the fictions I've taken in have grown into a personal suggestion: you would do well to reflect on your shortcomings before they come calling on their own. The relief dissipates. Indeed any liquid thing seems a mirage, an evaporation I've contrived in a weak moment to revert to what it never really was, moments ago.

Of the last seven movies I have seen, two characters tried escaping themselves in Alaska; one starves on indigestible native flora. The other is eaten by an aging bear. He also left behind tapes. Watching them, I'm reminded of a motorcycle rider I saw in Davis, in shorts, no helmet, weaving at 65 or so, steering with his hips. I see him again in Vacaville a few minutes later, laid down. There are several medics, fire and a helicopter, but their postures tell me this it's denouement from here.

Another character, coping in a 1984-like world, struggles to break his dream out of prison and into real life. Which he achieves although the other way around. Yet another character, bearing the mark of a dark, aged Virginia Woolf-like vampire, in a premise that hints of Dangerous Liaisons, learns she must soften the approach, if she is to form a lasting grip on the next vulnerable blonde naif she fancies.

In the other three, it's all Toshiro Mifune all the time: The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro. The samurai, making his way through the soulless, petty dealings of the emerging, venal merchant class. Or skulking past enemy clans, warring in the vacuum of a fallen Emperor. It is all he can do to make it from one meal to the next. Everyone else, starting with those least prepared to kill, die a roomful at a time.

In the middle of the night, I'm dreaming a troll of a man, darkened and low-brow, pushing his forearm into my chest. A massive, old, square bruise on the left side of his face has become a permanent coloration, as if he was clobbered once, and enough, by a hot iron. He will go through this door first, that's his message. I grimace, an egregious lie. But at the next door, he will have relaxed. I will land on him from above, get my knee deep into his neck, ask about his problems, ask him if he knows no current started in this world ever fully fades, tell him he has his whole life to work himself out, does he want to conclude matters right here?

The hair-trigger animal killer in my own dream is me. It's a relief, but perhaps not the one I am suggesting. In this dream I am both things, the brute made blunt and cold by forces off-stage, and this new brute, forged in one instance of heat. I should go back to the movies to find out where he came from. So long as there is only heat, it is work I can do.

Small Town Girl with Small Town Values

2008-09-04T17:15:00.000-07:00

What The Analytics Tell Us

2008-08-31T07:18:00.000-07:00

Like the kinds of blog posts that people keep coming back to on your site. In my case, the second most popular entry on this blog is here. The source site, somecards.com, wants to do for e-cards what The Onion does for news. I'm all for it, but you do find out how hard it is to be very funny all the time. Funny's not too hard, if you're irrevocably in the mood. Very funny is a wholly different order of production. My hat is off to anyone who commits to such projects and can live with the lulls.

For the record, this is my favorite Onion headline to date: social insight and a standup-quality slam, all rolled into one.

But I'm not so interested in culling the 'net for amusements, much less reporting what I think is worth repeating. I give you today's e-card not because it's funny. It's my worry. I've been wrong before, see. Nothing tells me I am more out of touch with the will of my own country than to see an average mind, a lackluster businessman, an inept public speaker, and by a measure of his record, a brutal man -- not firm in character, mind you, just thick in hide -- voted to the US presidency. Twice. And not just by electoral votes, mind you, but by the inability of the Democratic party to put a candidate, a campaign team, and a backbone together. Twice.

Sarah Palin might even be a more absurd choice than Dan Quayle, but for different reasons. Quayle was the crazy pill. No GOP oligarch would dare leave George H.W. Bush exposed, knowing who was next in line: a man so numbingly daft you could never be sure you had control of him. If you're not sure how smart choosing a clueless VP can be, look at Cheney. That's a guy who will take a swing at anyone. A guy who has shot a presumed colleague in the face. If I saw that kind of crazy in my political future, my running mate would be Crispin Glover.

Palin's not that kind of problem, other than being an avid "hunter." No, this pick does something else. It turns the current campaign into a limbo dance of suitability for world leadership. Even Quayle had driven on a freeway before, and knew not to pick out his glass frames from 80's MTV videos.

Are you supposed to prefer Palin because she's a woman, you undecided female voter you? Or because Hillary didn't win the Democratic nomination, and you're supposed to feel cheated? Are you tired of having the right to determine whether you must carry a child to term, even if the pregnancy was forced upon you? Maybe you're tired of hearing about alternative energy and just want more oil, darn it, and you want Big Oil companies to drill for it as they please, and charge you at speculative global rates, because baby, that's how they price it, fellow Americans or not. Or maybe you just think it's time a plucky, small-town gal got her shot at running a world power that's currently in not a little geopolitical hot water.

I'm hoping not, but not out of faith. My trust is in Hollywood. If I trust anyone to raise cynicism, demographics, and low-brow junk mind tastes to an art form, it's Hollywood. If there's no major motion picture about some random female Klondike vice-president, it's safe to assume a) no focus group has brought it up; and b) no crazy-ass writer like Joe Ezsterhas has convinced a studio we need that story, much less starring Elizabeth Berkley and her signature style of dancilepsy. (Or has that been done? The closest thing I can think of, beyond a woman strong enough to become the president's high-class tail, is Protocol.)

I sure hope I don't ever need to send this card. I can tell you though, after eight years of the moral, philosophical and spiritual breakdown of this country's image, to itself and to the world, I will, if I see you looking at Palin just because of her gender. I won't be laughing though, not like I am trying to now.

Labor Day's Journey into Night

2008-08-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

Today settled in unlike any I've had in some time. Free for the day from teaching, I walked my son to school. My extrapolation of this small event is absurd: it is a brief walk down the creek side multi-path, but I can't swat away the metaphor of it. The intimate connection I want in his everyday life, as he grows into it, until the time I head off, alone. I don't know how to call out this fervent hope and put it back in the wind. Keeping to the business of living the moments between us as they come is more thorns than berries, more about reaching them, and less about plucking them.

I remind myself now and then of the Irish poetess' panicked fish, caught in a jar in a gentle but active rill. Exhausted from struggling to get free, it relents, and the current gently lifts it out. I wonder if this is how faith might return to me someday, only after I have done trying to wrest it into submission.

In failing that lesson today, I walked down to the school in the afternoon. It is very hot, and I have mowed, raked, and powered through other work in the heat. He is grumpy about geography, he says twice, and is not inclined to more talk. Soon he is walking behind me. I have forgotten to give him the time that any person wants to leave the day's work behind and simply be. The reflection I see in my jar is an angry and useless man.

A migraine of dehydration and glare I earned for this has since passed. The hot spell appears to be giving way to a cool front. We're about to play a game together. I'd ask which of us is thrashing more in growth, but it's obvious, embarrassing. By the way I dash my brains against the vessel, fathering but in due proportion, you might guess I like to fuck with my own self. I don't, but I can see where you'd get that idea.

Daily and Nightly, Ever So Slightly, San Quentin

2008-08-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

It's an on-and-off idea of mine to go to one of the candlelight vigils that attend an execution at San Quentin. Of the last two such go-rounds, for Stanley Williams in December 2006 and Clarence Ray Allen in January 2007, I watched the coverage from the road, teaching in places I couldn't now tell you where. I can tell you before too long passes, though, that I will walk through what notes and receipts I have, and figure it out. It seems important to know.

I'm not sure what I expect to find at one of these vigils, but I hope it's more than we get on these absurd verbal punchups on name-your-cheap-derivative-of-Nightline-here. On the left, the sedentary conservative who states lifelessly that the law supports the will of the majority. On the right, the smug liberal on-scene whose objections, however important to voice, are soon overridden by exasperation over the impending act and contempt for anyone hungry enough for attention that they'll come forward to not-oppose it. (Explain it to me, Mike Farrell; why is someone a coward if they think death is appropriate for a cold-blooded murderer?)

But there's a moment of truth in all this that has yet to arrive for me. I didn't know the story of either of these two men until the days leading to their execution. So up to now I'm...discomfited, let's say, by state execution. I find no deep moral ground for opposition to it, so far as the method remains tightly controlled and neutral in form. I don't find execution barbaric in principle. We know how to kill people, we talk about how to kill people, we think about killing people, portray killing and murder in every media, log methodically how people have been killed by others. Every hour of every day. Show me a governor who can sign a death warrant and whistle a tune on his way home, though, and I'll show you a sad excuse for a human being. But, we don't typically elect humanitarians to such an office, and I'm hard-pressed to find the savage breast in open court proceedings, unless you want to think of indifference as a savage trait.

It is, at the same time, the one task of a governor I hope would age me and force that person to look deeply within themselves. There is something a person should go through, irrevocable and terrible, in choosing to deny another person the chance to live. Perhaps that is the only consideration, that meditation, that sets the state-appointed executioner apart from the killer.

But back to what I called the moment of truth. By that, I mean the people whose acts I followed in the news, carefully, to understand not only what they were accused and convicted of, but what they said about it, what they didn't say about it, and what was revealed in them that gave the idea of a death penalty, in my mind, merit. The figures that caught my attention include Charles Manson, Dan White, Charles Ng, Richard Allen Davis, Lyle and Erik Menendez, Dorothea Puente, Scott Petersen, Cary Staynor. Manson, Puente and the Menendez brothers have life sentences, and White is already dead. If there is a day coming for Davis, Ng, Peterson, and Staynor, the truth for me consists in meeting that day, hoping to walk away with balance, a balance between the barbarity of the acts they've been convicted of and the power we give the state to take their lives in response.

I can walk to San Quentin's gates from my bedroom in about an hour. In the dark, I imagine, one shadow or maybe one of many who arrive that way; I don't know, nor do I want to become part of any doing. I do want to feel the desperation, the anger, the grief, and understand what such people, protesting in the name of civilized society, go through at an execution.

I also imagine walking towards home as the sun comes up over the East Bay hills, climbing the Blithedale Summit, following the watershed to Mount Tam, and climbing over until I see the Pacific Ocean. I want to make sure any conversation with the part of me that is willing to kill, for whatever reason, takes place in the most promising setting.

Until then, the Larkspur ferry cuts tail through the water that separates the prison's western boundary from Larkspur and Corte Madera. I don't know yet if my son's high school still supports a crew team, but I'd also like to catch them out there some day. Some mornings I can see the incoming ferry's large wake rolling out to the mud flats. The birds that are stooped on them, seemingly indifferent to the inexorable roll of water, will scatter to other ground, but only at the last possible moment.

Will Admin for Lemonheads

2008-08-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm looking, with an ever-so-slowly but mounting intensity, into local work. I've been teaching primarily Sun Microsystems courses over the last, what is it, twelve years now? Solaris, Java, Legato and Symantec nee VERITAS products and topics, with occasional forays into Sun's storage and server systems as demand would have it. Most of the last eighteen months it's been JCAPS stuff.

You've all heard that people who can't do it, teach it. On some level, that certainly applies to me. I've enjoyed papers on PermGen issues in JVM memory management; can argue heatedly against discussing cyclic page caching in the Solaris kernel with your average systems administrator -- because you can't observe it, can't measure it, can't tune it, that's why! -- or explain how carefully planned and deployed RAID volumes can save hours of maintenance headaches down the road. Seriously, don't ask! I will answer, at length, and I won't really notice if you try to cut me off or walk away.

That said, I can't get excited about actually implementing round-trip engineering processes, or bare-metal recovery practices. I'm eminently disqualified from real work because the day-to-day of programming or systems administration has so little to do with anything that's interesting. The pitfall of my success is that avoiding the grind of pure (and often blinded) ground-floor execution is a luxury I can no longer afford. Plus I have a liberal arts degree; the age when a pipe-sucking, houseboat-dwelling Bohemian who plays classical guitar and bemoans the malady of the quotidian while updating microcode on your data silos. I figure the tolerance in your average IT shop for that sort of thing is long, long gone. Neither do I have a Rolodex of sales contacts, seeing as I have, in my brief sales support years, failed to liquor up or hook up a customer. (You want the real measure of a salesman in this era? Ask them if they know any bar that have, say, "Dalwhinnie 18" on hand.) It remains to be seen what I am good for in this real world of applied solutions and super-horny operations managers with purchasing power.

So whether it's my age and current mindset, the job market, or the acronymic lists of job requirements that have reverted from an adopted language of mine back to an inscrutable upper-case mash, I'm having a time finding purchase in this mess of alternate gainful employment.

I'm rather like the one computer geek who never has stories to tell about debugging networks, installing cool retro-Cylon mods on my 4-way tower, or scrutinizing the chicanery bundled with the latest Microsoft security update, so-called. No one would ever ask anyway. I don't signify computer nerd, which is appropriate, because I'm not. I'm a general nerd, equally interested in sourcing the musical roots of Beatles' songs back to French cabaret, in reading research on the properties of Carmichael numbers, in tracing the foundation of Jungian analysis from mythology into the modern psyche, to finding the best number of Mentos to drop into a 2-liter bottle of generic diet cola. It's about finding nerd gold where it is, and not necessarily how or where I want to discover it. Computers -- things I casually played with at the Lawrence Hall of Science, years ago now, taught myself BASIC on, because that's how you talked to those things -- as it turns out, require skills to operate. Compensable ones! Well, OK, why not get some? One could do at least as well as teaching Victorian poetics to some number of obliged undergrads, which requires an actual degree and considerably less attention. It is about as spiritually rewarding, no more or less. And, as I surmised in the early-90's debate over academia and political correctness, there was no illusion of impatient business majors, aspiring nurses, and other vocation-oriented types, trying to better themselves through intellectual discovery, and the free exchange of ideas.

Feel free to call me a cynic on this point, if you like. I offer, in my defense, that the value of a liberal arts education has recently been called out for the mass hallucination that it is. Such wake-up calls now, from the fashionably cantankerous and all-but-cemented-to-tenure, smell vaguely of Andy Grove and Bill Gates in late 1999. You may remember them calling out Y2K as a largely fictitious concern, but only after the fattest of wild goose chases had run their course.

As I mention all this, I should note my navel-gazing emanates from a friend's laptop, which required some fixes and a virus removal to make happy again. It is the victim, I can see, of a dropped boyfriend's prior largesse. The compensation promised me includes a bag of Lemonheads (already secured, thank you), a cup of high-octane coffee (tomorrow morning). There's a third piece to it as well; no questions asked how I did it. The job I have railed against for years in this field -- the Dark Wizard who knows everything but talks to no one about it, for impatience or insecurity or utter social ineptitude -- and at the moment, I'm starting to wonder to whom one might apply.

Restored from the Dead!

2008-08-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

Like much of the blog-reading world, I crush on VTT, who writes Bells On. Despite my long hiatus from writing online, it was therefore no minor thwack to be declared dead on her site (see her RIP Links). Oh, that sock in the gut that grabs the entire abdominal wall, when that hot high school senior girl, who talks to you, writes you off? It was like that.

Today I find I am no longer R.I.P.'d at Bells On. Happy! Happier than finally finding the right no-not-the-40MB-download printer driver for my son's computer. Almost as happy as getting a coffee date with my ttractor honey this morning. Way happier than getting an estimate to replace the bumper on a late-model 535i. And about as happy as getting 20 minutes to read two essays in Joseph Epstein's latest collection, In a Cardboard Belt! (I don't necessarily like the review linked to here, but I also don't feel like throwing Amazon a potential sale).

My brain swirls these days in very particular particulars. Making sure my son can open his combination lock on more tries than not. Getting all the correct binder widths, divider counts, tabs marked, post-it sizes, waterproof "sportfolio" covers. Seeing what got eaten for lunch, what came back, what leaked to the bottom of the bag. How is it, being the only freshman in math class? Getting clothes warm enough for morning, breathable enough for walking home. Having grown up in inland marsh country where layered clothing is all but unheard of, I'm sometimes unsure when dealing with his most basic adjustments will descend into terse, grumpy just-forget-its.

There's little time to reflect. Staying on task is an all-day's affair until things settle down. It's not my favorite mode at any time. Before now, doing it for my child and for my LTR, no one would have ever accused me of operating in this mode with grace. But my son is at a certain beginning to coming of age, and this is the role I want, to serve until I'm not needed. I am also arriving into something new, and I want that role too: to live well, and love, and be loved.

And even with all that in store, my greedy id still wants every little acknowledgment, every bit of attention it can muster. I have been re-admitted into existence. And by that hot senior you've been dogging! Watch me gliiiide.

O God, whom neither time nor space can limit, hold, or bind...

2008-08-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

...Gimme some of that stuff so I can get more crap done today.

Jesus, I have been doing paper crap and getting Patrick ready for high school for days on end now. And we got more boxes to unpack or relocate around the house, and there's books I want to read (like this one) and sections of techie books I want to play with (like this one) and some research I want to do for a creative project I'm not much talking about just yet and I'm going Roy Batty. I want more time, {expletive}!

I can find 10 minutes in the day to post here. What I can't find are the 30 to 400 minutes I need to put it down what I want the way I want to put it down. There's lots of things this brain can do, but whipping out a paragraph that doesn't make me cringe in self-loathing three days later is not one of them. The big shocker: I take my writing way too seriously. Oh well.

So whatever, you get random shit today, you annoying blog. I read an email this morning from a colleague on the building of the cathedral in Cologne, Germany. I like cathedral architecture; it's good. Perhaps because I saw a lot of English cathedrals in '89, it reminded me of my favorite book of '89, Michael Baxandall's Painting and Experience in 15th century Italy. Which I can see on the bookshelf from here, and I want to read it back into memory, but there's boxes in the carport. Grump.

Moving to Picasa

2008-08-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

I hit Flickr's freebie limits for storage. It's a matter of time before I hit Picasa's too, but it's a bit further off, has tiered-pricing for storage limits, and it's tied into Google with a lot of other googly crap I have. It's coming, you know, their final product: Google P*wned. My prediction: a Super Bowl XLV Google spot, featuring Emperor Ming. He casts a menacing glance at an audience of umbraged iPussies. They hurl withering but cogent ripostes at his image. He flashes them his new input device, and tells them to bend over for some online access. Steve Jobs is wheeled on-screen to perform a tutorial -- sorry, 'scuse me, a scenario. No, wait, sorry again, a use case. Anyway, it'll be the kind of justice you might imagine -- on Jobs, say, when your mass-produced $600 iPhone is now twice as good and selling for $200 -- but never really expected, or wanted, to see.

Anyway, I'm putting photos on Picasa, more or less one at a time until the fothermucker's at AT&T initiate the DSL service they promised us yesterday. If you've read recent articles on it, you've heard some carriers are reluctant to provide so-called dry loops, aka DSL without a phone line. In our case, not only has AT&T insisted it takes a week to process the order, they took three days just to enter our order. Friday, end of the day. So the clock didn't "really" start until the following Monday.

AT&T, you're such a petulant, whiny little bitch of a phone company. I hope Google Ming does you for an hour. Which is to say not really, but I sure am imagining it, probably for about another week. Oh, but starting whenever I decide to put the order in. Probably late Friday, holiday weekend. Sure hope my few expert technicians who know how to do this work can get to it on Tuesday.

Yeah yeah, I was blogging about pictures. It will take time to load them all, even with full bandwidth, as I'm trying to date, tag and locate each one as I go. Meanwhile, if you're interested, what I've got so far is here.

Sifting

2008-08-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Less than two weeks after the move, we're searching the remaining boxes for the second tier of our lives: important receipts, the good ice cream scooper, notes to a one-off course presentation, still waiting for two uninterrupted hours of study and experimentation before the pages can be pronounced dead.

I have on the coffee table now a copy of Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell, purchased May 21, 2007, and still awaiting a cover-to-cover look-see. Among several projects in my head: write the high school math book I wish I'd had. This book isn't that book, and I'm relieved the job still needs doing.

Further along the table, the DVD and TV remotes, the IKEA 2009 catalog, the registration packet for high school. On the bookshelf, two books lent to me by a teacher. My ex-wife covered them during her archival techniques seminar in grad school. I am wondering what it will be like, to return them after a 28-year borrow. Perhaps I should write a piece in the style of those books, another assignment I let slide two generations ago.

Like the internal review of my life that I've been dreaming, ever since I've contemplated becoming a full-time dad again, I can see all the book titles arranged upside down, or out of the old order I had for them. I can for now only observe the discord. I know that it's futile to correct the appearance, when what I really want is to read every one of these pages back into myself, and re-kindle the passages extinguished and lost in the rustle of living one day at a time.

First Night in the New Digs

2008-08-01T23:28:00.000-07:00

The view from our new place overlooks the bay alongside Corte Madera and Larkspur. It's approaching midnight on Friday, and a very few headlights are in horizon motion, heading west on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Like ants poking along the scented path, each one enters the home swallow of flood lights around San Quentin.

Holy hell, here it is: California Special Reserve living, up in the hills, 180-degree view overlooking the bay, deck, hot tub. It brings to life a certain dream I do not readily admit having. This manner of Making It, the California way, is dangerous. Not so bad as admitting you have Flock of Seagulls CDs, but well along the way. Should I get careless, soft: I might show up someday to a mixer, blazer and turtleneck, make small talk over a noteworthy chardonnay, evince ephemeral interest over arguably interesting topics, sharing in some brief communal wonder what's next for Gavin Newsom or what's new at the De Young.

You know what to do if I go there, God. Strike my ass down, on the spot. Complete vengeance. Consign me to the Hell of Elevator Jazz. I will have veered badly off; don't mull it over. Don't get me wrong, I want this view. I love the idea of walking up and down this hill in every day, building knotty goat-leg calves. I love the idea of watching squirrels spurt-run for position, and feel everyone hush to listen to bayside breeze and watch the blue hour. Just don't let me fall in with the Good Life crowd. I'm not here for that, and we both know it.

I'm Gay for Bobby Slayton

2008-07-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Back in the early 80's, when San Francisco was the hot stand-up comedy scene, or at least seemed like it to me, you could hardly miss with a live performance: Dana Carvey, A. Whitney Brown, Jim Samuels, Rick Overton, Al Clethen Jr., Warren Thomas, Brian Haley, Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno and many, many others were coming through town to perform. But Bobby Slayton was the guy you wanted to see if you liked watching audiences get roughed up just for being there.

Oh, you kids probably only know Howard Stern, right? That about explains the difference between my generation and yours. Who listens to that guy? Maybe in the same way Joey Bishop, whom Slayton has portrayed, explains the difference between my generation and the previous one. But if you're not into stand-up, forget it, ok? Got no time to explain it to you.

Slayton's playing an extended run at Hooters in Las Vegas. In case you're trying to think of a funny comment to that, don't bother. About 40 comedians have done it, compiled to a DVD that plays before the show starts. Your line will suck by comparison, so please, don't invite one.

My friend David and I got free tickets by signing up for "Owl Club" cards -- guess they've toned down the T&A image that raked in the cash and broken teeth all over Louisiana. I was worried. I hadn't been tracking Slayton's TV & movie work, since I'm only interested in his stand-up, so I was wondering if maybe the act had softened. Fear not. Slayton is the still the same loutish, neurotic, outrageous blowhard on stage he's always been. I can't believe they'd have a reason to give away tickets.

I haven't laughed that hard at a stand-up show in a long time. It felt like the old 80's scene for a while. We got seats next to the stage, so of course we were a gay couple. Slayton noticed I was clearly the husband, however, so it was funny. We were offered a free round for the abuse, which we didn't take, and a free CD, which we did, right out of Slayton's unzipped pants. Great time.

Go see him if you're in town. If you don't like getting picked on, get seats in front and don't break a smile. Slayton won't pick on you unless you're having fun.

News Flash: Cube Denizen Talks A Big Game in Vegas

2008-07-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

The first time my aces get cracked, it's a huge pot for a low-limit hold'em table. A third ace on the flop notwithstanding, the guy two to my left is in to the end because it's a large pot, and he makes a flush on the river. That's common in a low-limit game. A limit structure makes it better to chase straights and flushes as the pot approaches 12+ bets in size. Say there's $64 in the pot, and the maximum bet is $6. Whoever holds a made hand (two pair, three of a kind) will bet. Chasers needing one card will typically call. The pot is now $76 (or more), and the river card is coming. Assuming no other cards in the flush suit are out, there are eight ways to make the flush.

But now and then there's a certain guy at the table. Let's say he gels his hair, smacks his gum, fancies himself an action player, a hip cat, a slick talker and -- big surprise, wait for it -- sports a 7x24 boner for the Yankees. And let's say he clearly thinks he's done something clever by driving up pots to increase the payoffs so his chase odds improve. And for the time being he's experiencing what is called "good luck" outside of the George Steinbrenner Event Horizon, or "destiny" within it.

Later there's a hand with a pair on the board, meaning someone could be holding a full house. The river is a fourth heart. No fewer than four people have flushes. I don't need to tell you who had only one heart in his hand. He is mentally tatting the words Chosen One on his own forehead as he rakes in the pot.

He uses "sir" to everyone, but deep inside is a roughly-handled Inner Child who badly wants to replace that with "asshole." Then he uses the universal opening to attention-starved dweeb rejoinders worldwide: "Actually, sir..." as in

Me to table neighbor: Man. Two power hands for large pots and I get sent down river. I bluff, no one wants to play, and I make $4.

You-know-who, unsolicited: And that's because I wasn't in the hand

Me: If you want to me impress me, reraise with the best flush when a pair is showing {That is, learn the difference between skill, playing with nerve, and getting the best cards)

You-know-who (working hard to inject the breezy laugh): Actually, sir, I'm not here to impress you.

Right. You just win the hands you play. Keeping me informed, no need for thanks.

I let it go for the sake of the table, but mm mm mm. He quieted down anyway. What a curious mass of catechism-inspired raging insecurities is that, who decided early on that saying what you think only works with people who can't rap your knuckles for it. What a curious life, thinning hair in your 20s, years already of practicing the third-tier New Yorker chant, that what comes your way has to be hustled off the masses. Having had years of training to see sour grapes in the Manhattan skyline, you'd much rather have your regional manager job and report to the Toronto office, and remind yourself and everyone along your office floor walk that upstate people are the real deal. How pleased you must be to finally meet your associate's horse-crazy cigar-chomping friend in the sportsbook, even though you have nothing else to say to him.

That guy, I noticed, you didn't say "sir" too. What's he got that you want?

Hey little kid, who are you wearing?

2008-05-24T14:09:00.001-07:00

Getting closer...

2008-05-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

[12/12/2006] Embarcadero Morning Rush Tai Chi Player

2008-05-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

This morning my mind was on joining. The idea, not the word, leaves the ferry terminal with me, aiming down Market Street. Once across Embarcadero Street, however, I veer right across the plaza, toward Clay Street, past Tai Chi Player on the concrete vista of Justin Herman Plaza.

The light over Clay is grey twilight. The sun is fogged. Its sodden light lays over the neutral stone of Embarcadero Four. There are once-sleepers across in the park, pulling up cardboard mats, stowing Glad bag bindles, shambling away to rummage. The words that come to mind:

paper crab hide

I used those words to capture some aching leaves curling outside my mind, itself cold-pressed, humming with C-150 rawls from overhead. Today they come to mind because I am watching those old coats, thin hoodies dimpled by constant greased thumb-pulling, the cold and the waking tearing at their own necks. Pained fox lives, seeping back into the parkscape. The grainy light smeared over the parking lot exit attendant, who is wearing his mile-away stare. On one side of him, the sovereign Embarcadero Four; on the other, the hapless neighbor Embarcadero Park to the north; he is checkpoint.

A prize of tai chi, as with many martial forms, arrives as one learns to carry only what is his. I am still carrying the Yang-style player back in the plaza, a Chinese dressed in the common signifiers of Fog City: lycra tights, baseball cap, turtleneck, puffed windbreaker, sturdy, scuffed runners. I won't unload him; he is too taken with his sense of prominence. He is unrooted, his back is canted, he signifies purpose in his too-wide stance, but he does not effect it.

Then I am crossing Battery, where I look through the windshield of every car edging into my crosswalk, no matter if I have the light. The grey begins to lift near the post office, and when I turn at the next block, onto Sansome, I begin to sink each leg deliberately. Tree.

Coming Soon: How to Buy the Lord's Underwear

2008-05-22T17:58:00.001-07:00

In the current mist of my brain, where it's been decided I have nothing to say that is worth writing down, I'm musing over Google's AdSense-ibility over my likely readership, based on however it is they reap from my word choice.

Just recently it was a come-to-Jesus-Church-something, owing to my now-ancient-but-front-page comment on some Creationist threater troupe public exception-taking to Kathy Griffin's too-rapid intake of LA fumes before speaking to some award ceremony audience. A minute ago it was boy's underwear. Then, in a cool manifestation of spooky action at a distance -- that is, AdSense anticipating my umbrage at their interpretation of my content -- AdSense changes, to just underwear. Ah, now you've dialed it in, good for you.

Naturally I'm looking through my own content to figure out what the hell. I make mention of an Irish priest (no, the guy never touched me), boys clowning around, Midsummer Night's Dream...yeah, not seeing the connection. What is AdSense, in its gi-normous data cache cross-referencing wisdom, trying to project on my audience here?

Oh, and if you're wondering, the three of you -- one in L.A. (Vikki?), one in CO (Chris?) and one in Iowa (the boy's underwear perv?) -- why I have AdSense on this woefully site: for the hell of it. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not suckin' Satan's pecker for interweb* micro-cents. Not until I actually earn one, anyway. When that happens or just before I die, whichever comes first, I'll check in with my soul and tell you what I find.

And I know it's just three of you**, by the by, because I recently signed up with Google Analytics, too. Pretty cool, I have to admit, that you can see where your readers are and what they look at. And that I can count 'em on one hand! One of my most heavily-overused figures of speech made literal, nice!

Oh, and I had half of my teeth planed and scaled today. That leaves the upper rights to go. And then my tooth guy wants to replace my fillings. Cool; I'm tired of looking at all that disgusting black metal too.

*I just wanted you all to know I can be ironical.

**People I am sleeping with don't make the count.

[05/26/2006] Three Recollections, 1978

2008-05-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

In translation, the Japanese man said
he had achieved atari.
He was joined with a prostitute at the time.
The moment surprised him,
but it did not elude him.
The whoremonger, in flow.
There may have been a point to this, which I've forgotten.

The Catholic Father in Portola, the Irishman.
I remember his smile now.
One summer, after reading a geometry book,
I wanted to know its slope, or a function that described his winter stroke.
No one will tell me where it was that his face fell.

In Midsummer Night's Dream.
I, Flute, am playing Thisby.
Who desires a kiss of Pyramus
through musty Wall.
I am neither Flute nor Thisby, but a teenage boy, reluctant.
The director only says, "Use that."

[07/17/2006]: A Short Story on Anger

2008-05-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

This is his last go as a husband. He had run away at 14, making time in revival tents, money in radio.

Among his leavings, a senior high school yearbook, a photo with him in it: "The boys clown around on stage."

They had to open him, thirty-two years later. His blood had gone to powder. He sucked in, and slumped with the on-air sign burning. His face was ashen.

The body would not tolerate its rescuers. When they came back, they said things had fallen apart, maybe even through their hands, hands trained to the lightest touch.

Like brick dust from a weary kiln, they carried him out, a pail at a time.

[08/13/2006]: Scowl: A Housecleaning in California

2008-05-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

We're shuttling kids across the North Bay quite a bit, my ex-wife and I, in the week before school starts. It is an end-of-summer anxiety, getting day-trips crammed into the dregs of August. Kid laundry has gone the way of a scattered mind, odd socks, stray t-shirts, articles to cover some body part not immediately evident to a sun-bleached brain.

There are three distinct sock types to the boy: ribbed and plain white; HANES stitched in green under the toes; HANES stitched in blue. I reason that non-matching socks coming out of the dryer probably equate to the same going into the washer, yet the boy seems out of sorts wearing a blue HANES and a green HANES together. By effecting the Polish slouch of resignation he has inherited, I take it that "no one will notice" will have to do. He packs the rest of his things. I feel diminished in the moment.

Searching through the kids' room, I find no more socks. I do find some girlie underwear, stashed under a wicker basket, the basket I use to keep oversize envelopes, orphaned power adapters, a broken doll comb. My daughter doesn't care much for dolls, but has developed an apparent guilt for trash. The basket also has a stapler, third among the household's stapling assets, but one I think has character. And there are vintage desk ornaments in this basket, of the kind office people might find amusing. Bank deposit envelopes, a plastic extension that came with my steam vacuum, NOZZLE CLEAN OUT TOOL molded onto the surface. Four different ways to pronounce the emphasis, none of them convincing.

I can only suppose in the mind of a 9-year old, fermenting all summer through heat waves, Xiaolin Showdown marathons and Beavis & Butt-Head: The Mike Judge Collection play-alls, pool chlorine, and the crying jag I've come to expect from a losing go at Yahtzee or Life, that hiding one's underwear mitigates the injustice of it all.

I have a glimmering, how that logic once worked for me. It's a tenuous thing, like a shell fragment lying under the eggs in the bowl. I want to touch it, but moving through the liquid moves the thing too. I can hold the bowl that keeps liquid that holds the fragment, and come no closer. I leave the underwear plainly exposed from under the basket. I tell myself I want the explanation that comes next, but I also know the underwear's removal will come silently, along with the unspoken thanks to an unnamed fate at not getting caught.

Then there's a dream I recall from two nights ago: He filed with the courts for emancipation. My mother's pupils, dilated, her husband dead on the operating table. She looked as if a slight breeze might tip her over. Her senses seemed dazed, in a moment like a booth, full of whirling paper tickets.

I believed I was supposed to know what that moment meant.

I begin sorting through the last of the boxes of this move, where everything I have that converts to a CD is stacked. Music, pictures, software, a recording of a woman singing to her children. My affect is such that I note godawfully flat, lifeless melody and none of the intent. I am not that charitable.

And I don't know where any of these objects should take residence in this new box, nor why they should.

Consoliblogidation

2008-05-14T13:54:00.000-07:00

I'm still buzzing from my time last week at JavaOne. It was full-on nerd time, and I was long overdue for some. So I'm processing all that, a little here and a little there mostly. And that process time is taking me away, for now, from writing about my real worlds, both the innie and the outie versions. Sorry.

Isn't it interesting how one mind can find so much to say, and so easily, about how boring Design Pattern presentations can be, and draw a blank on what's going on under the skin at the same time? What is that? Honestly, I marvel at and envy the person who can flit from one side of the brain to the other at will. I suppose it is safer to fumble around mentally, trying to recall Professor Tully's comments on determining eigenvalues in a given matrix, than it is to fumble around verbally, trying to say what it means to drive Haight St for the first time 20 years, or stop outside the house in the Sunset where, in 1968 or so, I took off, as my mother recently surmised, 'in search of the perfect family.'

I'm not afraid of you or of what you think, just so we're clear. It's the not-you, the non-thoughts, some place I knew well for a good thirteen years of my life. I'd rather not look in just now. Apologies.

But I've got some blog entries of a personal nature elsewhere that I want to re-print them here. I'm a month-plus away from 45, I got a ton of shit to do before 2008 can go away, and consolidating and housekeeping are not the least items on my lists. First order of business: get all my lists together on one list.

This looks like the time to dredge, refill, look back a little, get some juices flowing. I'll post those re-posts with their original dates so you can tell them apart from the new stuff.

In a conference hall of the Moscone

2008-05-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is an hour trained on the mathematics driving a next-generation programming language under development.

You can't see a single person in the room. But like oak leaves stripped by a winded, wet storm, wrapped around their own spines, plastered against the curb with a cold-water glaze, there they remain, and lots.

How I have missed you during my uneventful absence

2008-05-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

I am looking at 470px-Tree_Rotations.gif. The image depicts the stages of transformation in an AVL tree rotation. The key players here are the Root and the Pivot, who trade places in order to balance the tree. "Root is the initial parent and Pivot is the child to take the root's place" is the caption in its entirety.

I am neither an engineer nor mathematician nor computer scientist by formal training, and so the deep dives I make below the surface of my work are themselves indefinite walks, parsing down to some terminal meaning that, for me, anchors the search and initiates the slow climb back up to full comprehension.

The acronym AVL stands for Adelson-Velsky & Landis, the researchers credited with realizing this structure, a data tree that works by rotating members at a point of imbalance. In a rotation, the root node detaches from the pivot node and attaches to one of the pivot's children. The pivot then attaches to the root. The whole idea is to reduce the average time cost of searching such a data structure for the node you want. I presume the mathematics behind this guarantee that the time cost of rotations will wash out in the time saved by a more efficient search, but for some reason I don't want to burrow into math jargon just yet.

You might like to know what's been going on here since September 20, 2007. I have, however, kept AVLs on a back burner for a long time. This is also the first chance I have had in a while to stare at anything that wasn't an impending life change, a matter of staying present in the lives of people dear to me, an opaque tax rule, or anything else that might trip the doom-saying inner voice, you'll be sorry if you don't do this now.

Well, ok, there's also been a no small amount of Facebook farting around, once the rest of the mind tells the doomsayer to go screw. I gots me $300k in fake poker money, a squidlian brain, a word IQ ranging from 143 to 635 -- each word game proposes its own scale -- and badges of add-on crap I purge with a great Mormon vigor every now and then.

It's been a full five years since I moved out and thought about starting my life over. Or not. Last week, my sweetie and I drove her stuff from Brooklyn to the Bay Area. Then I got a root planing. There's a bunch of other stuff, but what with the boxes in the garage and the tore-up gums, it may be a few more bumps in the dark and bloody flossings before I recall them well enough to write them.

Meanwhile, hello. I have missed you.

Jesus is just all right. Anything more than that is your issue, not mine.

2007-09-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

So a group called The Miracle Theater got upset after Kathy Griffin apparently mocked and/or blasphemed God during an awards presentation. They took out a full page ad in USA Today, to the tune of $90k, to express their displeasure and promote a petition against Griffin's comments on their own website.

I have been around the theater world, loosely, most of my life; my mother has worked in stage theater her entire adult life. My younger sister lives in New York, has landed a few touring gigs in musical theater and is working hard for that break on Broadway (go Jen!). So I say this with some authority on the subject: a theater company that has $90k to spend on one ad, that's a miracle theater. You are indeed well-named.

But now let's look at all this hubbub from a celebrity's point of view. With exceptions for those who prefer notoriety, most people and institutions for whom celebrity is part of their business naturally want the spotlight to be a glowing, positive one. For every David Hasselhoff who wants to be seen when his hair styled, his clothing immaculate, his bronzed chest vital and glowing, there's also a David Hasselhoff who needs to get a burger down next to the dog's dish after an all-week bender. And God help us, for some reason people want to see both images.

So why why why, for the love of God why should Jesus Christ be any different? Because he is revered by some? So is Hasselhoff. Because Christ is the Son of God? People, I have news for you. So is Hasselhoff. So is every one of us. That Christ might, for some, represent someone who is closer to God in some respects, fine. It still doesn't matter. Either you believe God made all people in His image, or you believe that some people might be better copies than others. And if you believe the latter, God have mercy on you.

We are all children of God, or we are all not. The only possible compromise is borne of arrogance, a succumbing to the fearful, desirous voice within that says maybe, just maybe, no really, maybe for you it's different, or it could be. So if you want to believe there is a ladder one must climb to Heaven, that's your endeavor. If you want to imagine the Jesus Christ Bridge must be crossed in order to reach God, that's your toll to get up. But if you think you can expect other people, believers or otherwise, to think the way you do, then friends, you're not much of an American. And if you're really ok with that, then please: get the fuck out. Make room for someone who knows America is a land of opportunity and freedom, based in tolerance for views that were not welcome in their own homes. And that a real America has nothing to do with how or even if you believe in a higher power. That burden you bear for your God? You chose it. You deal with it.

Seriously. Take your own particular brand of intolerance to a religiously-controlled state, and revel with your right-minded brethren. And when the day comes that it happens to turn on you and yours, why don't you come on back? That's what America is for.

I don't say this because I think Griffin was right, or justified. What she said doesn't make me happy or laugh. It's not funny, and that's the disappointing part, really. When a comedian gets the mike, I want her to go to work, doing what she does. Then again, if you were brought up Catholic, knocking Daddy, Junior, or the Spook down a notch can seem funny for the same reason men find the Stooges funny, or women find Meredith Vieira brilliant. It's a thing we Catholic-infused have to work out from time to time. We all have our stuff.

Consider this: Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. If you believe in those words, or the equivalent of your preferred brand, how can you imagine that your God wants you to eat, and no one else? Wants to forgive you, but no one else? Wants you to forgive others, unless of course you've "had enough."

Or do you really think "I" and "me" while you're saying the "we" and "us"? Do you silently edit the disclaimers for your chosen allegiance? "Give us [self-righteous born-agains dabbling in stage theater] this day, our [$90,000 worth of] daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses [never mind that we're judging Kathy Griffin on your behalf] as we forgive those who trespass against us [actually Kathy Griffin didn't do a damn thing to us, but hey! We might be born again, but we're accustomed to privilege and getting our way amd Goddammit! You're the one who made us thin-skinned and righteous! You know we're doing this for You, so You'll thank us later, all right? Amens for now!]".

But frankly, Miracle Theater, your given disclaimer reads pretty hollow:

We at The Miracle Theater consider it an honor to stand for Jesus today. We may never win a national award. We may never be household names. We may never be seen in Hollywood. Although others may choose to use their national platform to slander our God, we are honored as professional entertainers to stand for Christ.

So what does your God have to say about envy, anyway? A theater company in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, resigned to the idea that the nation may not take notice of it? In a full-page, nationwide ad? Do you get it?

No? Jesus.

Original Coke and New Coke, at it again.

2007-09-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

Only this time, it's hip-hop personal!

Scanning the Yahoo! news as I do, I can't help notice, like a zoo hippopotamus preparing to receive a cabbage, the hyped knock-down, drag-out, cage match in CD sales between 50 Cent, aka Original Coke, and Kanye West, aka New Coke.

Original Coke, so we're told, will stop producing solo CDs if sales of New Coke surpass it. That appears to have happened already in the UK. The chaos and excitement over that revelation has subsided, and it appears the US markets have followed suit.

In other news, last night's winner at the dot races was blue. Suck on it, red!

Elsewhere it's still Leno over Letterman, Hertz or Avis, Explorer over Firefox, and Samsung over LG Semicon.

and the President you rode in on.

2007-08-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

Alberto Gonzales, scourge of civil rights, overlord of selective memory loss, bagman of partisan warfare, cabin boy to the worst US President of all time, the one man who could actually take the legal profession lower in the eyes of Americans, and the least funny person to sound like Sam Kinison ever, has resigned.

And stay the fuck out, sir. Don't come back.

Nieuw bericht - You can't pin this one on us, which is too bad

2007-08-10T01:02:00.000-07:00

On the day of our arrival in The Netherlands, this artifact was discovered at sea. It was recovered and put on the beach so kids could play with it. I think it was supposed to say "No more real than you are."

Wouldn't that be a lovely United States, where something you fish out of the water looks like something other than an ecohazard?

I was only disappointed to learn it wasn't made of more pieces.

We decided to cross from Harwich, England to Hoek of Holland by liner, overnight. I highly recommend the experience if you're ever out this way.

What's Dutch for "Outta Here!"?

2007-08-03T00:32:00.000-07:00

Summer playtime for me and mine, people. We'll be in London, Amsterdam, some points between, some points peripheral to, and so on, until the 18th.

Planned your August around my occasional rants, eulogies and idle newspickings? Need sumpn to fill the hole I just created in your browsin' life? Go take a look at GrandCentral, tell me what you think. Don't get too excited, though, because I already took the one and only free number with a Battle Mountain, NV prefix. But if you're all good during my absence, I'll tell you why on my return.

Vrede,

Michael

Pat Tillman, Hero. Shot In The Head. Three Times. By US Soldiers.

2007-08-01T01:31:00.001-07:00

You would think, in a story with nothing but losers, I would feel something for someone. Regret for Pat Tillman, an NFL player inspired by 9/11 to enlist and serve in the US Army. Sympathy for his family, who were cheated of an accurate explanation of his death, humiliated by the very military their son and brother gave up a promising life to serve. Contempt for the media machine that tried to spin such an ugly, embarrassing situation into some hero bullshit. Or pity, for the military that required seven investigations to get the plain facts and has only summary censures to hand out.

I suppose it's a sad statement on me alone that I want to rub this ugly fact in the face of everyone who ever spat angrily at the notion that we've turned the Middle East into another Vietnam. If there was one fact that stuck me as a young child, trying to understand what Vietname was, it was the accounts that US military reports did everything but dishonorably discharge soldiers who died from friendly fire, dangerous as they were to putting a positive light on the war effort.

Pat Tillman died from friendly fire. Among his wounds: three shots, to the forehead, at close range. The military still maintains this event was an accident. The censure issued to General Philip Kensinger addressed the facts of the cover up itself, which included posthumously awarding Tillman the Purple Heart (for injury in combat) and the Silver Star (for gallantry in combat). What remains unanswered, however, is evidence that makes a poor case for accidental friendly fire. On the face of it, only one of those three words is without controversy.

Do you know how hard it is to hit a small stationary target? From 30 feet? Three times? While you are moving? In a firefight? I know Mel Gibson can shoot a smiley face out of a paper target 50 feet away in a poorly-lit indoor range; after that, I'm not sure.

Ok, I can feel this: imagine giving up a glamorous, high-paying career, playing the game you love to play, and doing it to serve your country as a soldier. You take three shots to the head in an Afghani firefight, from one of your own. Your country plays you up as a hero in the media, lies to your family, tarts you up in all the seemly decorations for a man of your courage, determination, and sheer physical ability. Everyone around you when you were killed clams up, presumably in the name of some greater good, but possibly some greater evil.

That doesn't bode well for what those people thought of you, Pat Tillman. Skeptical as I am of the choice you made, no one deserves what was done to you. I hope your family finds the truth and gets justice for your memory.

Bill Walsh, A Baseball Mind in a Football World

2007-07-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

Bill Walsh passed away today, after a four-year bout with leukemia. He was 75 years old.

Bill Walsh was to the NFL what Google is to the internet of today. He came to his first and only head coaching job late in his career (47 years of age), but reinvented the offensive game with such simplicity and elegance, people hardly knew whether to praise, badmouth, or fear it. Heavily schooled in the so-called vertical game, he knew its holes and how defenses prepared for it. He not only found the players who could help him punch holes in defenses tolerant of short passing gains (most notably Joe Montana and Jerry Rice), but also drafted equally formidable defensive players like Ronnie Lott and Charles Haley.

So, how many Super Bowls in how many years as head coach? Three in ten years. The 49ers also won the Super Bowl the year after Walsh's departure, with Walsh's long-time defensive coordinator George Seifert as head coach. I consider Seifert largely underrated by football fans, owing to Walsh's long shadow, but still I think giving Walsh a silent assist on that season by no means suggests Seifert coasted through it; only one program was ever so good it didn't matter who was coaching. (It's worth mentioning, by the way, that the Seifert's 49ers came close to a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance, but for the New York Giants.)

Like many people who share his caliber of intellect, Walsh had a hard time suffering fools, idle second-guessing, and simply not getting his way when convinced he was right. Success notwithstanding, individual brilliance only goes so far in a team/corporate environment before people want to work in some different way. Today it is Walsh's impact on the game, rather than the 49er franchise, that stands out. Counting the number of Walsh disciples who have become head coaches takes up more than a few fingers. Every major change in defensive strategy over the last 25 years responds to the West Coast Offense. There was a time when it became common wisdom to use six defensive backs in must-hold situations against the 49ers. That's the equivalent of triple-guarding a key player, or shifting your outfielders in center and left field only.

When I saw Walsh's teams play, I saw baseball on a gridiron. It was unbelievable on several levels. It was fruitless to try and explain what I meant by this to anyone, so I had to be content to be amazed on that point. But Walsh did not see the game strictly in terms of position, movement, speed, and player tendencies. He saw the intention of opposing defenses, and fed them something they were eager to eat -- a sense of what would happen next. Then he'd beat them, soundly, on execution. In the ensuing frustration, his team would dart everywhere you wanted them to be 10 plays ago. As was sometimes said of the Dallas Cowboys of the 1970's, many opposing teams didn't feel so much beaten as they did tricked. Come to think of it, if you want to see a likely prototype for Bill Walsh and Joe Montana in the 1980's, you could do worse than consider Tom Landry and Roger Staubach.

Bill Walsh was a fiercely bright man, methodical, prepared, sometimes rigid, but never fearful of his instincts. I loved listening to him speak, partly because he often delivered the unexpected, brilliant insight so casually. At a ceremony for Joe Montana some years ago, for example, Walsh introduced John Madden as a "true American." Hell yes! now that you mention it, but I would never have thought put it that way.

To Bill Walsh, one of the greatest ever to coach professional football.

Sales Lesson #1: Find A Need And Fill It

2007-07-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Pro Athletes, Melting! Oh, what a world!

2007-07-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

Poor Tour de France; talk about taking repeated shots to the nuts. I don't remember a body count this bad for cycling since...gosh, how long ago was that...the last Tour?

Today Michael Rasmussen was dismissed by his team, Rabobank, for breaking its own disclosure rules. He claimed to have been training in Mexico for a time; subsequent investigation puts him in Italy instead. Over an 18-month period that includes this training period, he failed to appear for four drug tests.

Rasmussen was the leader with four race stages left. For the Tour, this is the equivalent of pulling sprinter Ben Johnson from a race at the 70-meter mark. It is worth noting, however, that despite acting like a jerk to his team and race officials, he passed 17 different drug and doping tests during the Tour itself. Which may mean he's a jerk to the detriment of even his own career. Or it may mean he's got a way to "train" that will exit his system at race time, so he only has to avoid testing until then. We probably won't learn the truth on that one.

Just the day before, Cristian Moreni was removed from the race after testing positive for synthetic testosterone. He appears to have said the equivalent of "you got me dead to rights" and was removed. By police, as France's laws against illegal drugs are apparently quite severe.

The day before that mess, Alexandre Vinokourov was removed, having tested positive for an illegal blood transfusion after a stage win. The results are interesting, I suppose, in that Vinokourov's stage performances before and after his one victory were reportedly lackluster.

Of course we all know that Floyd Landis, while still awaiting a ruling on his appeal, has been informally expunged by Tour promoters for failing two tests for synthetic testosterone during his victory. The tell-tale sign: a blazing comeback stage win when he really, really, really needed one. That Tour was also marked by the dismissal of several famous riders prior to the start, including Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso. Earlier this year, Bjarne Riis admitted to doping during his '96 Tour win. Riis apparently waited out the statute of limitations to make this announcement, and reportedly spoke with some tone of defiance about it. Makes you wonder just what the hell is really going on.

I haven't seen this many dismissals, resignations and confessions since Republicans tried every trick they could think of to discredit President's Clinton. Win at all costs, including their own careers. That's some profound anger and hatred, right there.

This series of events is a total nightmare for bicycling, indeed for any professional sport. Forget David Stern and his oh-so-qualified contention that there's only one dirty NBA ref, Tim Donaghy. Forget the NBA game in which the two teams initiated a riot-inducing brawl with the fans -- during the game. Forget Michael Vick, once the poster boy for the New Quarterback, who is now the face for the ghoulish street-criminal element among NFL players. Forget Barry Bonds, who is booed roundly in every park except his own, the nation's publicly-elected effigy for steroid use, even though he has never tested positive. And of course you've forgotten by now the inexplicable implosion of Marty McSorley, a career NHL champion, who threw a nasty head shot at an opponent with his stick -- from behind -- with seconds left in a game. To make matters worse, he claimed he was trying to provoke a fight (with three seconds to go?), and -- this one's a beaut -- that he was aiming for the shoulder.

But what's happening at the Tour right now is a meltdown, pervasive enough to discredit an entire sport. You and I might well be watching the beginning of the end, right here.

This Blog Entry is 100% Harry Potter Spoiler Free

2007-07-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

Apparently, for a brief window yesterday morning, the new Harry Potter book was available online.

Some rightfully ticked-off lawyers filed cease-and-desist motions and they came down. Personally, I don't know what inspires a soul to do this. Regular distribution is only a couple days away, and it's not like there's any kind of prize for being the first to read it.

I'm told the download was simply photographed on every page turn. A couple of sites presumably had it available for download as a PDF. Since the pages were actually photographed, I guess that would mean two pages per photo, or about 398 PDF pages.

Some of the pages are blurry, but save for a few paragraphs, the story can be made out from end to end.

Or so I have read.

"Same old shit, different DNA"

2007-07-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to GetKristiLove and her news on yet another Star Trek movie, as related during a radio interview with William Shatner. I've now achieved this soundbite to express my resistance to the craze for expanding universes and next generations that feed the cult demand for Star Wars, Star Trek and other entertainment phenomena.

This is an easier charge to level at Star Wars fans these days. Among the events my son Patrick and I attended at Star Wars Celebration IV was a panel discussion with various people from Dark Horse Comics. The questions came from several angles, yes, but most seemed focussed on learning how this expanded universe framework, which they simply call EU, was going to fill out. The audience seemed anxious to know that the integrity of the EU would be maintained, and how; what threats to that integrity might arise (in the form of a friendly competitor, Del Rey), and how any potential breaks were being avoided.

This, I thought, was both sad and fascinating. Sad, because some of these people were so invested in these storylines that they needed this information, badly it seemed. Fascinating, because what passed for common knowledge among them about this EU was hardly trivial. And who am I to judge this, anyway, at a convention of people who have traveled and plunked down real money to live this fantasy for a few days? I should shut up.

Then again, we also went to a trivia contest sponsored by the owners of Wookiepedia, a fan site Patrick helps moderate. At that event my skepticism seemed confirmed. The questions the panel assembled weren't just trivial in the sense of minute details most people probably miss. It seemed a meaningless exercise in knowing every little thing, whether the detail had some larger resonance or not. It's one thing to know that the identifier THX 1138, where it occurs in Star Wars, is actually a reference to another Lucas film. Easter eggs like that are fun. It's another to know, for example, how many races were known to coexist in star system U before the Battle of V, or which of four W-race generals fought in battle X, or was a member of guild Y, or had a third apostrophe in his name, the pronunciation of which would force a human tongue into an overhand knot.

The questions at hand all seemed to underscore the triviality of the stories themselves. Possibly because I didn't know the answer to a single one of them, but also because the questions didn't seem to be about anything other than how well one had committed all that content to memory. You might argue that knowing batting averages or starting lineups comes to the same thing; without expanding on that issue here, I'd disagree.

For the original Star Trek, the idea of a 'space opera' inspired episodes full of mythological reference, controversial historical events, the demise of great people, gods, and pretenders, even parables of otherwise hard-to-discuss current events. Star Wars also taps deeply into historical and mythological references, now documented in a History Channel special. But because Star Wars was epic in form where Star Trek was episodic, these representations mostly come in the form of visual cues and key points in the whole story. In Star Trek, the representations was the story. In Star Wars, the journey builds and establishes character; in Star Trek, the journey reveals and confirms it.

But at some point, the visionary energy in each has played out. The originators, Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas, have died or moved on in some other sense. What's left is the unrelenting demand fans often try to fill themselves, and the inertia of commercial success. And, it seems to me, those same people think the space opera/space epic themes have run out their course. Time to fill in all the details and prove the continuities of those universes. Ugh.

So, toward the end of Star Wars III, Revenge of the Sith, for example, there's a long stretch that depicts battle on several planets. Once the eyes adjust to the shock of color, texture and overly-rapid animation of these sequences, the pattern of a common rendering mill emerges. The simulated terrain maps, the computed textures used as skins, even the choice of camera perspective, art direction better suited for a video game than a wide-screen film, it all betrays aa sense of iterated data. The look is different, but the foundations...somehow they are all one thing. These guys have garden hoses coming out of their heads, those guys have party sparklers for chin hairs, and them guys are just seriously hairy. But in all cases, every clone gets Order 66, and every Jedi Knight get it in the shorts. Same old shit, different DNA, scene after scene. The epic's gravity is lost by iterating through an array of carefully designed data points, and letting the rendering software do its work.

The Star Trek movies, while not originally intended to build an epic, continuous universe, have nonetheless gotten away from the grand manners of the original to fill in various timelines and introduce new races to add variety. Every Federation meeting has some new critters planted in the galleys, every series brings in a new antagonizing species, and all that. That seems to be enough to keep fans busy trying to make back stories for each of them. Feh.

Shatner's take, in the interview linked to above, suits me well. When he says "it's been 40 years!" of Star Trek, he's not swelling with pride. And as essential as he is to that franchise's identity -- and wants to be part of it still -- he's an actor. He'd like people to know he's been doing other things -- books, albums, television -- and that maybe we should all like to try something different too.

So at the point where only the changes in these new stories seem to be the surface details themselves, I'm out. I'm hoping some other creative mind is ready to come in and wipe all this derivative nonsense up with something new and daring. I'm also hoping people leave likely successors to the cult phenomenon, such as Harry Potter, well enough alone after once it declares itself ended. Please, I'm beggin' ya. Enjoy it for what it is, treasure it, and move on.

Online Quiz Reveals My Wanna-Be Blue Collar Ambitions

2007-07-12T17:40:00.001-07:00

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Working Class Warrior, also known as a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

I want my paper-pork, paper-pork, paper-pork, I want my paper-pork paper-pork paper-pork...

2007-07-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

Sing it with me: Chinese!...paper pork bao, Chinese paper pork bao! It's not real news really. We've always known. Steve Martin not only said it, he went on record, literally, with his accusations.

His theory, on Comedy is Not Pretty, went something like this: everything McDonald's makes all comes from one mother substance. "Shlawp! Hamburger...shlawp! fries...shlawp! paper box....shlawp! your change, thank you." We've all had fast food that tastes like the package it came in, but Steve went on record, literally, in 1979, and called it out.

And now, here's proof. Like many intuitive prophets, Steve got the gist right; only the specifics are off. To trivia fans of real or hoax food scares, you've enjoyed the potato shake, killer Tylenol, the 'Roo burger, biohazard cola, and even shit spinach. Now, it's all about the paper-pork bao.

A word to the wise, though: don't believe for a minute these problems are implicitly Chinese, as the article implies. This is all some clever scapegoating. We can relate to the makeshift shop selling makeshift food on the run in some overcrowded neighborhood, sure. What might be harder to imagine is a bunch of executives making cost decisions whose consequences include degrading our own food supply nationwide. Why do you think we're seeing so many "pledges of quality" commercials today, "real folks" making products for your family and theirs? Because you can relate to them. As if these people made the key decisions that affect how the ingredients are procured. As if brand and quality were the same thing. Please.

Skyler's Dad: G'wan. I Double-Dog Dare Ya

2007-07-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

I do wonder what possesses people to do stuff like this. Not because I think it's crazy; oh no, far from it.

I love it. I think it's great. I want to do it myself.

But I just can't figure out what switches have to be turned off in a person to go about getting their thrills this way.

I've done some crazy fool shit in my time, but just about all of it on impulse and adrenaline. (And for the record, I don't consider firefighting to be crazy stuff.) To actually plan out an air ride like this, almost 200 miles in a lawn chair with balloons for lift and water jugs for ballast -- Mr. Couch, you are one crazy fuck. I'd be honored to treat you to dinner.

The story of Larry Walters, the first to pilot patio furniture, into federal airspace no less, made me giggle for years. His suicide in 1993 was about the biggest bummer of that year for me. I like my reckless heroes a little crazy, yes, but not beyond help.

America, sometimes I just have no clue about you

2007-07-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

Transformers? Seriously?

It's based on a commercial for toys, for Pete's sake. From the 1980's. You care about this entertainment more than anything else that's out there? Wow.

Mind you, I'm not saying you should be watching opera, or hand-wringing over the latest Harry Potter muggle-musings, or even preferring alternatives like Ratatouille and the cross-merchandising products thereof. I'm just saying: Hasbro robot war, redux? It's 2007. Just what kind of idiot do you have to be to 'reminisce' over this completely mindless piece of feature-length advertising?

Is it really, really hot where you are right now? I mean way, way fucking hot? Because I could understand spending $70 million in one weekend for 2:23 of theatre A/C if you were desperate. That would make sense to me.

I don't even want to know if you've seen it and you read this blog, however scant the chance. Just...don't. Don't want to know.

Oh, don't act so shocked.

2007-07-03T08:41:00.001-07:00

It's not that President Bush has commuted Libby's sentencing to no jail time, it's that the door remains open for a full pardon.

Like you needed more evidence of bipartisan/bipolar politics in these United States. Taking notes from a classic definition of American comedy*, the Bush Administration has effectively said, "Tragedy is when your guys gets pardoned for anything of any consequence, despite our best efforts. Comedy is when my guy fucks you all over and we get him off."

The hypocrisy of US politics -- indeed, politics anywhere -- is not new. I came of consciousness more or less around the Nixon Administration, so I like to think my cynicism is a matter of coping with one mean and hard-assed world around me. If my generation has faith in government, that's the notable exception, in my book. What's surprising, nonetheless, is how the baldness and hysterical pitch of what I would call Nixonian politics, or whatever it is that calls itself "conservatism" today, has consumed the Right. There was indeed a silent majority, wasn't there? And then, a far more palpable Moral Majority. And today, the smug punks of who wear Nixon's embarrassment's like a chip on their shoulder, running his same shit today, right in our faces, and for very high stakes.

It wasn't too long ago, in my internal timeline of political movement, that Doonesbury's Honey asked whether Nixon wasn't the aberration of American politics, but its epitome. Now it seems to me the current Administration has simply taken Nixon's lowest notions of the uses of political power and swallowed them whole. Today we got some vomit, yes, but moreso an unsightly precursor to how much more is ready to spew.

Using the present Administration as a lens, we can conclude what Nixon's biggest mistake really was. He had, among his staff, people of conscience. They believed in and wanted power and authority, yes, but some of them also believed they were serving the United States of America by way of its President, not the other way around. The Nixon Administration seems to have left us two prototypes for the future Republican mindset in the forms of John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy. I don't think there's much question today which side of the Republican mind has taken over.

Not too long ago, President Clinton was accused of lying about a sexual relationship, subjected to withering investigations and media scrutiny, national embarrassment, and finally, a ridiculous and partisan impeachment process. The end result: multiple political careers disintegrated almost overnight in the name of one narrow and ultimately pointless political goal. Today, Mr. Libby has been proven guilty of multiple crimes in a court of law. These crimes, whose motives amount to putting political advantage ahead of national interest, have been excused by the inside political community, exerting all the muscle it can to defend him.

How does that work again?

Yesterday in Cadman Plaza, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, I passed a monument of William Jay Gaynor, inscribed with a popular motto oft repeated since the days of our Revolution: This is a government of laws, not of men. It is worth noting that the phrase is pretty difficult to read on the stone. You damn near have to put your nose up to it to make it out. I don't imagine anyone has thought to restore this part of the monument for a while, and for now that seems to be a telling thing.

In his statement, President Bush said, "I respect the jury's verdict, but I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

It's a nice idea, the rule of law, not men. I for one would love to have it back.

Tomorrow I will attend the hotdog eating contest at Coney Island, and this year, it will be the highlight of the day for me. I'll watch some professional eater down 50-60 hot dogs, and yet it will only be President Bush's excesses today that will make me feel ill.

*Tragedy is when I have a hangnail. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die. -- Mel Brooks

Want mo' poetry? Well then Gitmo poetry!

2007-06-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

I heard it first on KALW, a story prompted by the Wall Street Journal on poetry written by Guantanamo detainees to be published in August by the University of Iowa Press. Not surprisingly, any number of screechingly conservative critics have chimed in, appearing to range in response from derision, mock Gitmo poetry contests to "how dare the liberal media humanize these sick bastards."

As usual, like college freshmen drunk with their acceptance into some Greek franchise (that is, now part of a larger scheme of things), these bloggers are so eager to express their newfound confidence that they overstep and miss the obvious. Which is -- yes, sigh, go ahead and write this down. But you wouldn't have to if you just opened your eyes -- most so-called poetry sucks. Really bad. If you don't already know this, read the lyrics from songs you thought were cool five years ago. My apologies in advance for bursting that bubble. Now, imagine someone doing it for the first time, under duress, as if the conditions of life they face was itself a kind of art.

The Gitmo poetry I heard was no exception. Here's an example, excerpted without permission:

HUMILIATED IN THE SHACKLES

When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.

When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.

Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.

The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely around the world.

They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.

Uh huh. What about those pigeons again? And that lark? Is he ok?

If I seem callous, it's because I have this in mind about art. Once we raise our own experience to this form, we surrender it, in some part. It is no longer ours to claim in the same sense as before we committed it outside of ourselves. We have, at best, some moral authority as author, which readers and critics allow in varying degrees. We do have as much stake in interpretation as any reader too, yes, but not more. The guy starts in on birds, implores his god, complains about the oppressors. Make this thing birdless and godless, and it's a (less hysterical) version of what his detractors would say about him. So what.

This poem isn't more special because we know the circumstances of the author, even though that might be the only reason we'd read it. Nor does it heighten the effect of mediocre expression to know what the author is going through, although we might mistake our feeling for his experience, as we imagine it, for the impact of the poem itself.

You can compare work of this sort to about what you get from a college freshman whose most significant life event might ever remain adolescent ("Love so flows from my heart's emotion / Rushing down these falls to your wide blue ocean"). Or from an R&B speak-song that devolves into verbal diarrhea ("You know, baby...it's like...when we bought Red Vines...at...Spider-Man 3...and I felt in my pocket...for that...extra quarter. You gave me...that dollar bill...You had change from Wendys...and when you said..."99 cents"...I know you meant it...99 cents."). Or from your average bored housewife taking a turn in the coffeehouse scene (A poem from my heart that I gave you before / and you took it and told me you think it's a bore / Are you giving less because I give so much more? / Why don't you take the couch, and I'll take the door?)

Let's dispose of the notion that suffering and extraordinary circumstance are what make fine poetry. It's like saying sharp knives and double-clad pots make fine cuisine. They can help, sure, but they hardly guarantee fine results, and they certainly aren't essential, however widely used. By the same token, you can't throw just anyone into a muggy, sweaty box, deny them proper nutrition, civil and human rights and somehow forge Maya Angelou out of your garden-variety Muhammad Ansar. If that's all it took, we'd get a whole lot more good poetry out of rural Mississippi than we do.

The innate power by which we receive and interpret experience matters. The drive we have to express that experience also matters. And what abilities and skills we can apply to shape our expression in art : through a pen, a musical instrument, a dance, or any other form, does matters. These are the means by which we persuade readers, both to see things as we do and to merit their attention. And if it that experience seems banal or amateurish, then it is. But it has little to do with the gravity of experience itself.

Still, poetry is the kind of thing many of us are willing to give a shot, at least if it comes within range and doesn't stay for too long. I suppose that's what the conservative hate blogs are worried about, that blood-boiling manipulation of an art form -- which they must suddenly value, otherwise why the rush to demean it? -- and possibly creating sympathy for these freedom-hating rag-head fanatics who don't deserve an audience, what they deserve is to be kicked in the face and bitten by dogs for killing innocent people!

(No single blogger I read actually wrote that. I did compile that last sentence, though, from previewed bits and pieces of my search results. As a whole, people, you got issues if you think detainment at Guantanamo with no legal rights only scratches the surface of a detainee's due. Not to dampen the call for blood, but bear in mind, these people have not been charged with crimes yet. This is the real world, not some fantasy episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.)

Here's why I recommend you read or at least listen to some of these poems, somewhere, some time. And yes, for the very reasons your hate-bloggers tell you not to. It will demonstrate that a suspected terrorist with no gun, no hope, no outlet for his desires, and no protection beyond the tolerance of his enemies, is but another sad, scared, desperate creature who wants to go home. Failing that, he looks for emotional refuge in poetry, like any college freshman trying to cope with a bewildering, overwhelming experience in which he has no control, no power, and no way to compel our thoughts on it.

Not what I'd call the face of terror.

Soup du jour? Again?

2007-06-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

We are riding through Death Valley. The sun chase has turned to fleeing. The mineral walls of the Amargosa Range have begun hushing with the soft clay-orange overtones that signify how the arid West puts its daytime things away.

The awe comes from what you might expect -- life subsistent on leeching, wiry mosses sucking water from some shallow alkaline drip, turgid snaking denizens so efficient even the eye has trouble maintaining tension on them -- and what you actually see -- pupfish darting their breeding grounds with suicide ferocity, bushes of vibrant pickleweed, canyon wolves with time, if not inclination, to wait out the passage of human traffic, hold out for night and its familiar quiescence.

The desert, indeed the West, will tell you anything you had planned to tell yourself in a weak moment. An enormous outdoor skeleton museum, it is an enormous suggestion box, a notepad to the primordial mind eager to narrate and thereby erase its void.

In Ridgecrest that morning, the waitress presented my son with a menu. Among the offerings, Conventional Eggs. It seemed fair, in the moment, to ask the waitress if toast and hash browns were implied with that, but the wrinkle on my son's brow meant something better was cooking.

And so it was determined, over events in this burnt valley of hole cards, that soup du jour must get tedious after a while. When there is nothing but variety, sooner or later, you want something else.

And with that, we continue south along the Amargosa, reading sudden granite streaks in the decomposing mica, wondering what ripples we might have missed in Salt Creek, replaying in our mind's eye the two young children, exiting a tessellated canyon onto the looming valley floor, instinctively knitting together to make one larger atom of difference against it.

You know me and Jesus, we're of the same heart

2007-06-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

Like most Father's Days, you wouldn't know it. The kids are in the pool at one moment, running Chinese fire drills around the ping-pong table the next, then battering the gates of their lips with barbarian strawberries, then in the shade, glassy-eyed blue herons digesting the proceeds of low tide.

In the trees around this house, the men are talking program, the women who know each other are chatting. The remainder are few and dutiful. A fact among these men that surprises me, each time I hear it, is that they keep two anniversaries. One for the day they were born, one for the day they got on the wagon and stayed. If they have a third anniversary to honor, they do not mention it here. Some of their faces bear a semblance of some long-ago trench warfare, a survivor's grim humility, a bright leathern smile, a joyous embrace of one's inner asshole. Just the same, these men knew how to take camaraderie, in the forms made available to them, and in that ripe time.

I read Genesis from my grandparent's living room Bible, again and again, because matters were straight. In the beginning, God made the heavens and the Earth. God makes you and I in the image of that making power. The end of creation is not physical death, but exile: out, out of the garden, gone to Enoch, landfall in the place of All-Demons. To help impart this lesson, she smoked, watched the meadow from the couch at each meal. For his part, he ate with an uncompromised relish, and also said nothing.

It is time, Sunday night, for everyone to go home. Where I go, there is a worker's lights-out in effect, but for the local mockingbird. I keep names for him: laundromat poet, little Demosthenes. Seduced by the industry of his own effort, he attracts an occasional dark phrase, a hasty pellet, not much else.

The clock runs ahead, into the next day. I want to beat the computer at hearts, get the printer to spit a test page, play one song on my new speakers. I can't see it through, not before I am pushed out through the next gate, and on to a new business on a new and uncertain plain.

No Sweet Deal for Lawyer Who Leaked BALCO Testimony

2007-06-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I'm satisfied by this news, much less care, but it seems right: Troy Ellerman, the lawyer who leaked BALCO grand jury testimony to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada, reached a plea agreement to serve 15-24 months for that crime and subsequently lying about it. Yesterday, federal judge Jeffrey White rejected the deal, declaring that lawyers should be held to a higher standard.

I know: what planet is that guy from?

But I say good for him. And for that matter, shame on the prosecutors for trying to get this lying, cheating sack of self-righteous vigilante crap a sweet deal. It's not that the guy even came clean, nor came forward to protect Fainaru-Wada, who was getting ready for a crossbar hotel stay of his own for refusing to reveal his source. Ellerman simply got caught.

I enjoy watching Barry Bonds doing what he can do. He's an amazing baseball talent. Whether you think he took illegal performance drugs or not is one thing, but if he did, it still wouldn't explain the best aspects of his game. He's an exceptional player. What seems to drive people nuts, sportswriters in particular, is that he doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He certainly doesn't feel obliged to help anyone capitalize on his image or achievements, especially writers in need of stories. I forget the name of the hack who writes for USA Today -- some smug shit with a contrived axe to grind -- but every time I read a Bonds article written by him, the underlying resentment is palpable. You'd think Bonds had done him some deep, personal wrong.

And I'm disgusted by Major League Baseball's retroactive moralizing on performance drugs in the game. Bud Selig is, and has always been, a tool. Three reasons come to mind: one, because he is. Just listen to the man for a few minutes. Two, because he's the only commissioner to have called a baseball game for going too long, violating a great George Will baseball truth I hold dear: there is always a winner. Three, because he was perfectly happy to ride MLB's fortunes while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were turning baseballs into satellites at an incredible rate, and now perfectly happy to wag his finger at the player's union for what only a baseball idiot could call a revelation, that some players are doping up. Selig manages to avoid controversy by either generating it or keeping the focus on someone else. He's that nightmare fraternity brother, ready to party with you or sell you out, as the occasion warrants.

Still, it seems odd to me that more hysterically righteous contempt has been thrown at Bonds than, say, your average 42nd President. And it's simply bizarre that so many people have quietly approved of leaking grand jury testimony so a reporter can publish the truth. Since when was the public revelation of protected testimony more pressing than due process? Who got to decide it was especially important for baseball? So important, mind you, that the lawyer who created this controversy should be able to break the law, lie to federal investigators and the courts, get caught, and then plea his way to a slap on the wrist?

This is the nature of the case against Bonds. It is so clearly ruled by sentiment, it will hardly matter what truth will out. The collective animus aimed at Bonds is so intense that a lawyer will violate his trust with the court system, a journalist will shield those criminal acts with the First Amendment, even federal prosecutors will look for ways to excuse it -- because all of them feel the ends justify their means. They know in their heart of hearts that Bonds is guilty of something. They know it. It's racially-motivated doping, or wait! perjury! at least, or...dammit, something. There has to be something we can pin on him.

And here's the price to be paid: at the end of this story, wherever it might lead, Ellerman will serve significant time behind bars, as he should. Let that fact rest on Fainaru-Wada's conscience; I hope Game of Shadows was worth it. Bonds's only proven shortcomings, so far, appear to be moodiness, and a colossal failure to succumb to legal, professional, and social pressure, and courts of public opinion. He's utterly failed to give a damn for what anyone else thinks. He also has failed to test positive, provoke an indictment, or get himself charged with a crime, or be proven to have done anything wrong. He's merely gone back to work. And if he is laughing at all of this, as so many of his enemies want to imagine, even that little bit hasn't shown up.

People like Ellerman, and forces like the sportswriting media, however, demonstrate that there's no such thing as going too far when The Truth is on your side. Not sincere belief, mind you, but Truth. Apparently Bonds is ineligible for due process of law because he benefits from it, the ultimate point of our justice system. Journalists like Fainaru-Wada may therefore rely on the First Amendment, criminal sources, and prejudicial information to cast judgment, and stay home while the criminal who aided him awaits sentencing.

I'm thankful there's at least one judge who understands that the larger outcome hardly matters if the legal process becomes a switch to flip when circumstances warrant. If Bonds is guilty of something, let time and due process do their work. You can damn well bet that if nothing is ever proven, these jokers will still find all the reasons they need never to apologize for smearing his name.

Socks in Crocs

2007-06-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

Look, sir. Look, sir. Iraq's in hock, sir.
All those trips with troops and tanks, sir.
All those traps and mines, no thanks, sir.

First we made a quick troop push, sir.
Now we tally the poor troops quashed, sir.

You could bring those live troops back, sir,
Before we count yet more lost troops, sir.

You can make a quick troop pull back, sir.
You've already made a dead troop toll stack, sir.

Please, sir. I can't not count the dead, sir.
My heart's not hard nor slick nor glib, sir.
I see all our troops and tanks, sir,
Getting mixed with mines and traps, sir.

Socks in Crocs, I hate this game, sir!
This game makes me feel quite lame, sir.

Socks in Crocs, sir, what a shame, sir.

--*

Props to GetKristiLove for spotting this pic.
She can't stand Crocs; they make her sick.
To see them on the Prez -- what a pill!
Enough to make us all quite ill.

What's the Difference Between the Olympics, New York City, and a Star Wars Convention?

2007-06-07T15:16:00.001-07:00

Two out of the three acknowledge the risks of casual sex and plan for it. NYC started giving away condoms on Valentine's Day this year, to the tune of about 5 million a month. And you can't say they're not having a little (packaging) fun in the process.

Skyler's Dad caught wind that the 2012 Olympics host, London, is urging proper planning for the same, based on reports that condom distribution at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City topped 250,000 units. Personally, I'm not surprised. You'd get less action throwing a lit match into a Chinatown alley in July than you would dropping snowboarders onto Utah ski slopes. I applaud the enlightened approach to the problem, too. After all, we have all the Osmonds we need, don't you think?

Is Paris a Dude?

2007-06-07T11:41:00.001-07:00

In the most shocking turn of events in all history, Paris Hilton was released this morning from Los Angeles County Jail. She began her 45-day sentence late Sunday evening, for a stay of 4 nights and three full days. It is rumored Paris may have redeemed some about-to-expire HHonors points to get credit for a full five days. Authorities would not comment on the transaction.

The bigger news has to be the 'unspecified medical problem' for which Paris's sentence was commuted to home confinement. The hints suggest susceptibility to infection, "skin condition." Inmates reported the jail was less than tidy on Paris's arrival.

Mind you, I'm not bothering to wax outraged on the premise that Paris Hilton is entitled to a first-class accommo--...er, jail. It's that some sycophant reporter thinks to ask, opening the door to "cruel and unusual" treatment as a subjective test. Can you see the next headline? Paris: "They Made Me Drink from the Carton."

All right, back to my main point, this mystery medical condition. Here's my bet: Paris is a dude. That's right, a vestigial twig and berries hanging off a boy-child girly bod.

The case is all inference and misplaced contempt, sure, but hey: if someone can purvey a film about a 9/11 conspiracy, it's anything goes, and I want several turns. So: the Hilton family owns the Hilton Luxor. There is also a Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, which interestingly enough, Yahoo Travels features on the same page as the first! It's Yahoo!, people, a publicly traded company with a multibillion-dollar market cap. Don't tell me clerical error.

The Luxor in Las Vegas, a city where Paris is frequently spotted, has a long-running adult revue show, Fantasy, featuring among others the person depicted above. Note carefully the similar hair parts, lip structure, and the trademark neck obscuration. Normally Paris keeps her chin down, as shown in the first picture. In the second, she merely uses a pant leg of Nicole Ritchie's to make her face appear longer -- and to hide that Adam's apple. But this isn't two dudes trying to pass. It's one dude, desperately making a case -- c'mon, I'm hot! Really! -- and barely trying to hide the differences.

Why hasn't anyone else figured this out? Two reasons come straight to mind. Number one, if you've actually seen Fantasy, you wouldn't admit to it. And not just because it's so bad. C'mon, there are three types of "adult revue" in Vegas: gay men flexing their baby-oil pecs and abs, gay men dressing as women for your amusement, and gay men parading as women in front of clueless men and their dates for their own amusement.

Dude, they're all dudes. End of story.

Number two, the only reason you look at Paris Hilton to begin with is all that ridiculous money, fame and social power. Take that away, and she's greeting people at the door in a blue vest in Kalispell, MT, going to night school to get her CNA, and being told she's pretty in the same tone that her Carl's Jr. commercial director tells her she has great energy. Hell, I can get harder remembering Romper Room.

Mind The Ducks!

2007-06-06T13:11:00.001-07:00

First Jewel from Stars Wars Celebration IV

2007-06-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

A Christmas long ago, in a state of mind now far, far away, my son Patrick had just one request for a gift: to attend Star Wars Celebration IV. One might wonder what kind of 12-year old one-track mind would wait nearly six months for his Santa payoff, and how that much anticipation could pan out.

Maybe three times in the interim did Patrick make so much as an anxious inquiry into my planning. It was more than an impressive display of restraint, as those of you who know my love for planning anything, but will keep your mouths shut in front of my son, can attest.

Again I've been on the road a lot, so the new digicam software isn't installed yet on the laptop. I will upload pictures later this week.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on this little treat. Pink Five is a series of short films that recover the unjustly marginalized story of Stacey in the Star Wars™ documentaries. Stacey, a Rebel™ pilot who takes part in the DEATH STAR™ assault, presumably escaped the notice of historians hired by George Lucas™. Several back-channel theories have formed over this uncharacteristically blind eye. The most plausible so far is that George Lucas™ may have felt audiences would be distracted from the larger story if Han Solo™ was seen totally crushing on Stacey.

Solo's sudden disregard for Stacey leads her down a dark path indeed, which is the subject of the episode embedded below. Don't let George Lucas merchandise the truths he finds convenient! Get all the facts, then judge for yourself:

The NTBM Seal of Assurance

2007-06-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Skyler's Dad for delivering on this promise.

Plan Your Father's Day Sentiments Now!

2007-05-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

Here's the one I'm hoping for from my daughter someday:

The somecards.com home page is a slide show if you want to flip through a bunch quickly. Much more fun to browse casually, I think. Post a favorite and gimme some damn credit for turning you on to it! Or thank Jess who showed it to me.

AdSense and Sensibility

2007-05-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Being a big player in scraping flecks of gold from the massive bullion bar that is internet traffic, I installed Google Adsense on this page a couple weeks ago. I figured, hey, I have 3-4 people who regularly comment. Using a common marketing rule, that means as many as ten times that amount might be coming through! I can smell the cash.

But mostly I thought it would be fun to see which advertisers Google thinks best complements my content. That payoff, lady and gentleman, is here in today's featured ad.

Although I must say, having had Catholicism waged upon me at an early age, primarily by my maternal grandmother, ain't no fuckin' academy what could top that.

My Jeopardy! Dream Board

2007-05-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

With credit to the VTT for the idea, here are my all-time categories, taking on all comers!

Round One

Pope or e.e.?
Tom Lehrer Songbook
Hold 'em Dictionary
80's Standup Comedians
Airport Food
Advertising Logic 101

Round Two

Famous Trebek Impersonations
Olympic 800m Runners
70's Playground Games
Jewish Sports Legends
San Francisco Burrito Stands
Nerdspeak

Final Jeopardy

"Well..."

An Ever-So-Brief Glimpse of Home

2007-05-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

This morning the Bay water, between Alcatraz and Angel Island, rolled in testy, white-capped. The ferry lurched. We could not see the wave coming, but anyone could track its progress underneath. Hands popping out in a mimicking roll, out of their pockets for a rail, a pole, a table edge, a coffee cup bidding adieu.

And after that moment, a silence, as before thunderclap. No matter how many times you've felt that instance of an onset, you want to know everything you can about what's next. In such moments the mind actually waits. The pupils dilate, and a new light brings everyone in: the burnt red towers, the shadowy ocean liner under the Gate, the Eastern sunlight splashing against pier warehouses, the stoic pose of Coit Tower, the proud golden dome of the Palace of Fine Arts, the grey indifference of the Embarcadero towers, the jaunty point of the TransAmerica pyramid.

And here, on deck: you can see the same silence in each mind. That Aryan beauty wonders why the Irishman doesn't take a closer look. That tweeded professor solemnly reads the NY Times. That coven of chatters, the ones I call Graphic Designer Paolo, Career Lutheran Mary, Forlorn Mia, Night School Missy. All minds engaged on the moment before the one they wait for.

If we had thunder in this town I would never leave it.

Y'know, I have been wanting to try it...

2007-05-18T06:55:00.000-07:00

But apparently I'm already there! Cool savings!

Your Personality Is Like Acid

A bit wacky, you're very difficult to predict.
One moment you're in your own little happy universe...
And the next, you're on a bad trip to your own personal hell!

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?

Thanks to TwoMins who thanked Skyler's Dad who thanked an unlinked Dick (how long have I waited for a chance to write that?) for passing this one around.

God doesn't punish people; Jerry Falwell punishes people

2007-05-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

Oh but it was an interesting time, the '80's. Dan White killed two men, in a government building in broad daylight, claimed junk food drove him to it, and a jury bought it. Iran took American hostages for over a year. Air Force jets patrolled over the critical military stronghold that is Marin County. Selective Service, phased out during the Nixon Administration in response to the politics of Vietnam, made a loud and controversial return. Presumably a contingency plan in the event of war, the New Drafyt became instead a shibboleth for right-thinking patriotism.

God got into the act too. After patiently waiting out thousands of years of undeniable socio-historical fact, He chose to judge homosexuality in advance of Judgment Day, presumably to trim that burgeoning agenda. In His infinite wisdom, He visited AIDS upon the world.

At the end of the 90's, the US was in the full grip of partisan politics, culminating in the impeachment of a US President, a Democrat, for behaving like a Republican. It had punished Iran's trangressions twice, first by selling weapons to them, then by pushing an Iraqi invasion out of Kuwait, effectively embarrassing their vaunted military forces on a global stage. A natural gas pipeline company, while turning itself into a global energy conglomerate, took a major role in shaping the ambitions of the next US President, apparently on the strength of money that never really existed.

God came around again, too. Co-opting the intentions of Middle East-based terrorists, he destroyed the World Trade Towers to highlight His concerns over gays, lesbians, feminists and liberals in the US.

God's role in our worldwide and national troubles, that is, as related to us by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who died this week of a heart attack.

There are already many reporters -- some even neutral in tone -- who will estimate the cultural force and political influence of Falwell's work over the last thirty years. There's little doubt that the man created a significant impact, and one that might well become a lasting legacy. But if you want to measure the effect of Jerry Falwell on the street, count how many people you find who want to celebrate this man's death -- quietly, perhaps, but celebrate nonetheless.

Count the people who want that feeling of the final word, to declare the disgust they feel for ignorance and hatred, tarted up as moral certitude and righteous conviction; for arrogance in claiming to know God's will; for showing contempt and condescension to people who do not follow at his insistence; and for using alienation and exile as tools of dialogue. This is how Jerry Falwell did business, preaching to the converted and kissing their asses relentlessly by simply dismissing everyone else.

If Don Henley's words are true for all of us -- the more I know, the less I understand -- then the Reverend Falwell knew just about everything. I look at this death as hope, a chance to discard this ridiculous machine of self-stylings of personal moral codes wrapped in religion and dressed as spiritual awakening, and ask once more what makes us all human. More about our strengths, our fallibilities, our inner workings, the means by which we can better understand each other. And less crap about turning the veneer of gospel into a cash empire of politics and so-called moral policing.

Don't just go away, Reverend. Please, stay away. You've had your turn, and we've had way too much of it.

Some days my mind is made up for me

2007-05-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

For example, as I'm ironing a shirt under a foggy morning. The absence of children makes it too quiet. I am back in my house, after weeks away, alone. I've been asked to steep in transience for a little too long, and in the moment there seems like no place I go that isn't borrowed.

This morning I heard one aunt is recovering from surgery. A friend's mother is recovering memories after a series of strokes, only recognizes the disaffected daughter. Another aunt wonders by text message if my mother is on the Alaskan cruise ship that had to be abandoned last night. In the headlines I have had scientifically computed for me there is, under the seemly subject of science itself, news of a 5-year old girl giving birth. The condition is called precocious puberty. Her father was arrested but released for lack of evidence. No one expects the girl to know the baby's actual father.

The gray San Francisco morning reminds me of London. I am pumping a smile and elevated energy into my students. I don't want to admit it to myself, but I am hoping quite keenly they will give some back.

On the ferry this morning, Macbeth's witches are sitting near the coffee bar, cackling, enumerating wigs and lipsticks. There are twin brothers on the deck, strapping men with thinning hair and Norse jaws. They have always lived at least one bridge apart, I imagine, so as not to warp the fabric of the world. They are glassy-eyed and built to throw javelins, mechanical Zeus replicas.

Sometimes my thoughts are so conflicted I forget the why of eating. This morning I did it anyway. It was an exercise in staving off.

How'd that road turn out to the road I'm on?

2007-05-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy travel time. I've spent six weeks on the road out of the last seven, five of them teaching, one of them tooling around the mountains with my chitlins and my honey, one of them fixing the f*g wireless at home and trying to get baby steps closer to preparing my taxes (yeah, look, don't even start with me). I'm tired.

It was like this, looking back. In real life I did all this in reverse order.

May 07 - San Jose, TCP/IP Administration
Apr 30 - Sacramento, Introduction to JCAPS
Apr 23 - Clean/fix what's broken, broken or getting dusty at home
Apr 16 - Eugene, OR, the old New Solaris 10 course for Symantec's Unix group (SA-225 rev C)
Apr 09 - A Death Valley trip that looped around the Sierras (Spring Break w/kids and my honey)
Apr 02 - Ottawa, ON - Teach the new New Solaris 10 course (SA-225 rev D)
Mar 26 - Burlington, MA - Observe the new New Solaris 10 course (SA-225 rev D)

It's a big time for "processing" for me, as the argot has it. The days are well done before I've delved into any words that I honestly imagine anyone cares to hear. Well, it's not that I think no one's interested. I'm not very interested much of the time. I get enough of it, and all the time. To put a phrase to it, there are no prophets from your hometown, and certainly none from mine. I'd like to read or hear a vision, an epiphany, a revelation, even a trivial but new insight, something I haven't considered before or even recently, and that's hard to get from myself.

I've also been in a deep, gratifying nerd power-dive, researching, scripting demos and building support resources for this JCAPS course and the SA-225 update. I'm also putting some of my experiment work, like this hack with Solaris Zones and ZFS, out there for interested parties.

Here's a thing: last night I was cleaning out the usual comment porn spam the cyberdorks put on Been Wondering and saw that the majority of hits for theday -- and we're talking tens of hits here, people -- was for this post. I cringe at most things I've written -- far too self-conscious and self-defeating to be a writer of any note -- but this to me seemed like it needed some clean-up and polish, and it could be a nice thing to remember. It was...nice, to go back for once and imagine a former self I'd like to know more about.

So I am writing in part to explain why I haven't written much, but mostly to answer one person who sent me this yesterday:

I faithfully read your blog although I seldom comment
on it, only because I usually can't think of anything witty to say.
Keep up the good work. I'd really miss it if you ever stopped.

Outside of personal letters, this is really the one reason I could ever think to keep writing: to touch someone I didn't know was (still) there, in this time or maybe even some time forward. Thank you for reminding me.

Riddles of the Day

2007-05-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

Name something made of wood that recites Shakespeare. Or something that when reciting Shakespeare, sounds like wood.

What would you get if you crossed the exciting thematics of Red Dawn, Mad Max and Lethal Weapon with the heart-pounding tension of Sommersby?

Name one actress who has no problem reviewing the film she's about to watch?

You've already clicked to the answer by now, but one last question anyway: why didn't I just watch The Fifth Element back-to-back on TNT and call it a night?

Age, Weight, Target Heart Rate and Sign, Please

2007-05-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

If this means I'm supposed to work out twice a day, the authors can kiss both of my hairy butts.

Enough for One Day: Rant# 04272007

2007-04-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Today it's all about what I will call the FKAs -- the Formerly Known As's.

Not talking about The AFKA Prince, not talking about John Mellencamp, or Hammer. Not even talking about Lew Alcindor or Cassius Clay, or any number of people who have chosen new names or not-names or numbers or names with silent 3's in them or any of that, however silly or serious or motivated by changes in faith, vanity, or rap music branding.

I'm talking about assholes, like the Raiders who left Oakland for LA, and came back when it didn't pan out. Al Davis, you have to know just how much I love it when I see your neck veins pop in frustration. I love it like Bill Hicks loves porn. I can't get enough of it, you money-grubbing, heartless, suck-ass wannabe Napoleon. When I am ready to die and my life is flashing before my eyes, I hope among the images I see is Marcus Allen outrunning the Raiders secondary in a Kansas City uniform, over and over. Only this time, your reaction from the booth is right there on an inset screen. Oh god, I want that. I want that bad. For every young boy who needed a home team to root for and had it taken away because some hill-troll greasy-haired arrogant shit like you couldn't afford a second golden bathtub: Fuck You. I hope the Raiders never win another game until you die.

Woo. That did feel good. Looks like my inner 12-year old boy in me doesn't believe in transcendence.

I am somewhat less annoyed, although in the same vein, by Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens. Cat Stevens recorded some songs I listened to over and over, like Morning Has Broken (taken from an old Christian hymn) and Peace Train. He struck me in some ways like Jim Croce and Jose Feliciano did, guys out there with a stool and a guitar and some songs to sing -- folksy, intimate, comforting -- and it felt good to hear that music and those sentiments made for anyone to hear.

Then Stevens found Islam, distaste for the music industry (who does that leave?), and disaffection for the people who criticized his conversion (unlike Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali and sooo many others who were treated so nicely). And for that, he didn't just leave music; he denounced his fans and stomped off.

Jesus, Man. Excuse the fuck out of me for enjoying what you recorded and wanting more. I didn't realize I was such an asshole for being sucked in to your little pretend-world of beauty, universal tolerance and world peace. It's pretty damn hard for me to imagine anyone finding those things in organized religion these days, but if Islam does it for you, go forth and prosper.

Just do it elsewhere, please. You wrote us off once. Now you want to spread peace. Well, good for you, 35 years later. Good luck with all that.

Enough for One Day: Rant# 04262007

2007-04-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

I try to contain the interventionist grammarian within me. I do. Most of the time I stifle the Inner Catholic Montesorri Academy Spinster Who Made Me Diagram Sentences Until I Got It. I betray no facial twitches to "I should of done it." I lament not the fissures in today's well-meaning argot at "less we forget." I resist comment when he goes "that's the color iPod I like" or she goes "I like that one too, it's sort of unique." At the risk of polluting my own usage by failing to defend it, I definitely try to not get worked up at all. Maybe it's a mute point, the affect it has on me. It doesn't seem to effect anyone else, so it's all good. With a bag of chips. How harmless is that?

Mobile Dog Massage

2007-04-25T23:33:00.000-07:00

Starting my walk home from where I work out, this offer appeared on a shiny, upscale, environmentally responsible European compact in the lot. Now while I'm not so much a numbers guy, I can't imagine how dog massage pays for that car, much less the practitioner.

But that's the Marin County I most enjoy remembering, the one that Cyra McFadden lampooned in Serial. It's also the time and place where I first started reading personal ads, in a local rag called the Pacific Sun.

Back then the PS took itself quite seriously. Their readers took them seriously. I recall one article covering new shopkeepers in San Anselmo, designing their "Exploration Space so that, spiritually, it felt suspended by a cord to the middle of the earth." I remember reading about some noveau fashion designers seeking spiritual fulfillment through ivory-free buttons and French seams. And I remember one personal that read, more or less:

Single man 38 ISO SF 26-35, understands true commitment and respect, seeks spiritual furtherance in her daily life through union and intersection, growth through studies in inner peace, peace through sacrifice and grace through giving. Financially stable, car a must. Write to Inmate J40716, PO 26, San Quentin, CA.

For the 20somethings out there, a quick glossary:

spirituality -> Get high, after hours
seeking spiritual fulfillment -> Getting more money for drugs
spiritual furtherance -> You have drugs and you'll bring them on your legally valid conjugal visits

We had dog psychologists back then. The scam of "recovered memory" therapy was just taking hold. People went way off The Man's hiking trails on Mt. Tam to get in touch with the butchered Miwoks [sic] of the past and perform atonement rituals. In a completely unrelated matter, a well-funded program to abate the feral pig population up there also took shape.

So while doggie massage seems pedestrian by comparison, it's a sign. This county looks to have way, way, WAY too much time on its hands, it's going to put all of it into the touchy-feelies an overprivileged life can afford, and it doesn't care who notices.

I'll keep you posted. I can't write funnier stuff than this reality right here.

It's Getting to the Point Where I'm No Fun Anymore

2007-04-17T20:27:00.001-07:00

So begins a fuddy-duddy Crosby Stills & Nash song that I still enjoy. And, as with many songs I have been listening to for a few decades, I'm often deaf to its anachronisms.

So I played this song recently for a friend who objected to, late in the lyrics:

Be my lady

Fair enough, it's cheesy for 2007. I, for one, looking across one certain piece of my home state late in the afternoon, crazy son-of-b1tch polyglot of terrains it may be: temperaments from peachy to sullen; ecologies from the aching parch to the screaming green; economies from fleet three-card Monte stands to Berber walls; politics from dilated-pupil skinhead to smug highbrow; and midriffs ranging in circumference from cross-stitch hoops to hula hoops; rangy though it may be, I think one can allow a 40-year old sentiment to lay in one's ear the way its writer had hoped to land it.

My daughter is looking at a series of monster mounted fish, lining the walls of a coffee shop. This German Brown from Crowley Lake, that Steelhead Trout from Bridgeport. I'd rather see the size of the men that landed them, for the one that just passed me on his way to the men's room, I believe he could sneak a small chicken out, cupped in his hand.

In the mornings this week, I am dead, my body well-used from get-up to fall-down. And so my son, impatient and eager to spend himself outdoors today, walks the dogs himself. His regard for my slow recovery is not unsympathetic, but there is work to be done. He does not like the looks of the ant hills out back.

It's a long stint, to Boston, to Ottawa, spring break, and now a moto-lodge in Eugene, OR. I'd like to keep my mind back to those growing faces, to the brighter lights of my own eyes by which I can capture their joys and stay young through them. Then I remember Robert Hass, recalling Sakyamuni teaching that the achievement of one's desire leads to more desire. So, yes, that is an easy one.

I don't care so much how this rambles, but if you don't mind my driving I'll take you to some interesting points now and then.

Peace.

Sunday evening

2007-03-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

I live upstairs, and so there are moments when the prosody of ascending these steps will dog my thoughts. Some nights I pad my way over them, my stealth a product of an Inspector Clouseau-like state of alert, an arbitrary pang of self-consciousness, and possibly the 18-month old girl next door who might be down for a nap. You bastards won't get me, or dude you look at me like that you better be packin' heat, or if you surveillance assassin asshats wake up Hannah, we're all going to hear it.

Other times I want to make the concrete and metal support bar hum and sing, because I'm full of my bad self and there are Girl Scout cookies in the freezer and if I happen to breathe before I suck down an entire sleeve of thin mints, well maybe this time I happen to be savoring. What's it to ya?

But tonight the sun is pulling out like the tide, the cool evening air easing over my skin and through my hair. Inside, the low lights I left for myself inspire a common waking dream of years ago, a low and granulated nimbus meant to hold a deep meditation, a silence that invites thunder reports from the far side of a wide valley floor. For a few moments, I can grasp the air of a dreamt home in my mind's eye. It will retire just as quickly as the evening releases the sun and pulls the stars into relief, but my mind holds, as if for hours. I like that place where a gentle night sky ushers everyone into their hearts, voiceless and reflecting on what we have brought ourselves into, every day a chance to notice the day itself, and our presence within it.

The singular grace of that moment is that no one can ever say by what event it ends.

Spelling Bee! The results are in.

2007-03-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

Executive summary: Patrick finished 12th, getting to the seventh round. He simply hadn't heard or read 'mimetic' before, gave it a shot and went the wrong way. He was more than a little unhappy about it, but I thought he was great. For a naturally shy person in a room with hundreds of people in it, just keeping his cool through each round made me quite proud.

Here are the words he got, round by round:

topography
metaphor
maestro
premonition
amateur
dechlorinate
mimetic -- X

My ex and I both noted that in rounds 1-3, 5-6, the person just before him misspelled. I felt badly for the kid in the first round, who I think was just so nervous he wasn't paying attention to himself. He seemed both confused and distraught at the bell they use to signal a misspelling. I hope he doesn't dwell on it, though. That's a hard thing, spelling in front of a large crowd of people under a spotlight.

There weren't too many words I thought were nasty. It's really all about composure and nerve. The second round got 11 people. Then after lunch, the decimation was on. Many kids were clearly tired, and I picked out a few who I think were happy just to be done with it. When it got down to the last 5-6 contestants, all were returnees from previous competitions. They knew how it went, had learned to relax. I hope Patrick eventually considers that and gives it another shot next year.

The boy does not like to lose. No one does, of course, but man. Not to be talked to, much less hugged for at least an hour. Where did he ever learn such high expectations of himself? I dunno how he can live like that.

By round, here are the words contestants were eliminated on:

Round 1: prairie, alcohol, capitulation

Round 2: hassock, libretto, confetti, virtuoso, credenza, bayou, greengage, poi, flamenco, mantilla, synergy

Round 3: beleaguer, macrame, fuselage, erudite, macadamia

Lunch break

Round 4: souvenir, accidentally, receptacle, viceroy, hasten, dismissal, asymmetrical, existence, precede

Round 5: silhouetted, penicillin, ventriloquist, gazetteer, conscience, bobolink (nasty), picaresque, provenance, prejudice, enunciate, temperamental, succotash, reticence

Round 6: valise, derelict, nepotism, tawdrily, basilica, stalag, elegize, iterative, consortium, antiphonal

Round 7: fiefdom, mimetic...after which I stopped tracking to go see Patrick, but this round knocked out 8 of the 14 remaining kids.

I found the details of the contest fascinating. The first three rounds come from a list of words the kids all receive well in advance. It was easy for me to see who had memorized the list (700 words, yikes) by the allowed questions. Each contest could ask for a definition, word origin, use in a sentence, and alternate pronunciations -- all of which might help a student remember which page of the handout they had seen it. A few kids used all the questions to make absolutely sure they understood the word. And in one case, it would have been ideal: the person who got 'fuselage' spelled it 'fusillage.' That was a strange one: I thought I heard 'fusillade' and wondered why she put a 'g' in.

The pronouncer got tired. There was a ton of nervous energy in the room, and while this gentlemen has been doing it for years and by all accounts doing it very well, mistakes happen. One thing I noticed: no one who asked for an alternate pronunciation received one, and there were 1-2 cases where I thought one was available. One word, "erudite," simply doesn't pronounce well ("air-you-dite"). Another time I thought the pronouncer went out of bounds, with "temper-a-mental." I've never heard anyone enunciate five syllables in that word. Twice he corrected a misspelling with another misspelling ("ellegize," and one other I forgot). Nothing serious, of course, nothing that changed the outcome. I wasn't the only spectator hanging on every detail and noticing minor things, but the crowd remained respectful of the entire process. Comparing that to parents at soccer games Patrick once played in, I much prefer this kind of crowd.

Funny tidbit. There was another Patrick in the competition, a nice, friendly kid, who also had a sister named Erin. He sat closest to the exit in the back row at the start, and high-fived everyone who left the stage. He went out the same round as Patrick did. Typical of my two kids, Erin introduced herself to them in the parking lot for no particular reason, and on learning they were also Patrick and Erin, immediately started a three-way game of chase. My son couldn't be bothered with distractions. All business, that one.

Finally, it was a hugely supportive and positive crowd. Lots of parents there (like me!) wished other contestants well and seemed to hope for each child to do their best. I didn't hear one negative expression all day. I can recommend this contest to any parent in the Sacramento area who just wants to know their child will be encouraged and treated well.

A Woodsplitter's Dream

2007-03-06T11:14:00.000-08:00

The man put his children up in school books and cool grapes and funnelled himself into a dark garage corner. There stood the 8-pound maul, the splitting wedge and the axe, the last of these draped in a raiment of dusty webs.

In a letter he received a day later, the closing line: Dig in, we need the wood.

But before that he had curled his arm around the maul, eying the pile of rounds and boughs, still impressed with rainwater, still the upstart crow's cache of insects. As he propped each piece, set his distance, and swung his full arc through each plumb line he saw, he dreamt as he always dreamt; best, when his hands were full.

He was a Venezuelan hustler, boyish in long oily Jesus curls, a thin, resilient body, a tooth-baring smile learned from sudden uncles on the streets of Caracas. She was a Mill Valley woman who spoke like Page Six, who'd recently crossed her abyss of aging with him. He was for her a bridge of an idea, like preserving rainforests or the beginning, finally, of Che's great mestizo race. She smelled wood scent on him, wanted to smell herself on him.

In the office of her husband's lawyer, the lines for their big-screen drama were playing out more or less to plan. She was pregnant with a savior. He, the husband, was impassive, bored before he could start at his own short reach for an incredulous outburst. The South American boy was fresh with sex and taut with the vines of his cunning. But the husband remained back in his chair, calculating. He had mastered holding the angle of his face to the ceiling lights, so that when he wanted all anyone saw was two circles of flat flourescent eyes.

In their background, the woodcutter's sweat seeped through his cotton. He grunted loudly at the sodden, thick round, determined to split it, to prove to himself he could kill in a cold, deliberate vein. The son came out, surprised by his father-giant's sound, fascinated by the split cores, the dark humming brown of their cracked centers, the blond outer layers, like quarters of hickory watermelon.

"Don't cut these yet," the boy said. "I still want to see you do that."

"This is splitting, using a maul. I chop with that." He pointed to the spider braids decorating the thin blade.

The boy eyed the sledge-blade from a distance and went back to the house.

He had not so much ruled out murder as become bored by the idea. He could not know this would surprise them, badly. It was their plan to drive him this way, and watch him implode with the idea.

With the last stroke he could manage before the skin pulled off his thumbs, they became as dolls in a shoebox, and called his boy for a view on handling an axe.

Our family dog Maggie, RIP

2007-03-05T09:27:00.000-08:00

It's been a little while coming, the one thing I wondered how I would bear, since I most likely would not be there for it. The kids and I have been talking about it, the first death that would occur in they house they've grown up in.

She was a good dog, a pound runt with great tall-grass spirit. Her life, I think, damaged by the tension of our household. She became a nervous licker and chewer of her own skin, a living lesson for me in how the toxins of my own angers and disappointments registering on others, day-by-day. My first great disappointment in myself, looking at that scaled and dried armor, that I could not somehow be happier for her benefit, available to comb her every day and remind her that she was important and loved.

I last looked in her eyes Sunday evening and saw the departure was imminent. I wanted to know if she felt my love for her. In her eyes, only the grey shades of exhaustion.

Another Speller in the Family

2007-03-02T13:21:00.000-08:00

March 7, my son will participate in the California Central Valley Spelling Bee. in Sacramento The finalist from that competition will go to the national competition the week of Memorial Day. It's exciting enough that his classmates get to go on a field trip to watch the competition. I'm also taking my daughter out of school to see it. An excellent speller herself, I'm getting her primed in case she wants to compete next year.

What I most love about this is Patrick's perspective on it. He's somewhat excited, but under no circumstances does he want to become a "spelling 'bot." He's worried about winning, truth be told. His chances are probably good, I'm sure, but the bigger issue is this event, which comes much higher on his list of ambitions, and overlaps the national event.

I can just imagine him saying: "Well, yeah, spelling is a nice side hobby, but I'm really all about being a sysop on some rag-tag Star Wars wikis."

Typical bad boy, plays by his own rules...

Mm, I feel a storm a-comin'

2007-03-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

I have several friends who work for Sun Microsystems in course development. Today, they're all particularly quiet.

I sense a wind-rif in the making...

In Praise of DMSO

2007-02-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

My right big toe has been recovering nicely, thank you. Sadly my digicam is fritzy and so no before-and-after pictures to share, but it was an ugly purple and magenta mess for a while.

I started applying dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to the area this weekend and man, I am seeing some results. Almost a week since I munched the foot on a treadmill and after a few applications the discoloration has shrunk by 3/4 the original area. I've got discomfort in stepping, but I really have to bear down on the toe to feel much pain. The improvement day to day has been surprising to me, a normally rapid trauma healer.

There's plenty of literature out there on DMSO, it's pharmacological uses, the political history behind its marginalized acceptance in the US, and last but not least, adorable lab-coat mole-eyed laboratory scientist geek talk to read for your own head-spinning amusement. Quite an interesting array of properties in this compound. Check it out!

Your Emotional Time-Bomb

2007-02-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

Interesting. This is often the way I feel, but I don't know if anyone else really sees me this way.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I am flattered, though. Thanks to the vikkitikkitavi who thanks Johnny Yen who is, so far as we know, the first person ever on the internet to try this test.

Yo' left, yo' left, yo' left-!%^@!!-left!

2007-02-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

Blogger down, treadmill casualty!

I took a misstep of one of the PlaySkool-brand treadmills last night. It feels like the toes on my right foot might have caught between the back roller and the frame. They were trying to talk over the endorphins without much luck, as I'd been going at it for about an hour. It ached pretty well after that, although it didn't keep me from sleeping.

Normally I don't care much for treadmills, but the step-machine was out of the question. The thing looks like two used shock absorbers tied to some old shoe-store Yeti-foot measures, plus some oversized ski poles and an old oven timer strapped on. I'm not sitting down with spreadsheets to compare products on the market, but come on. You might as well give me a map of all the staircases in this fair city.

Walking this morning was p-a-i-n-f-u-l. Fucking oy! I taped it up at lunch and man, so much better. Feet are important.

The last pain I can remember with a built-in reminder system was in '91, I think, some separated ribs taken from the ever-cutthroat world of faculty-staff noon-hour basketball. Pretty much everyone who isn't getting laid regularly is out there; it's aggressive. Not my most painful time in the last 16 years, but easy to remember every time I breathed.

If it's looking all ugly purple and swollen tonight I'll grace y'all with a picture.

StarFleet to George Takei: What about Lance Bass?

2007-02-21T12:40:00.000-08:00

Thanks to tri-foldin' hockey-babe GetKristiLove for posting the news: George Takei will have sex with Tim Hardaway. I wouldn't have considered the man behind Sulu as an arbiter of sexual taste before now, but still I have to wonder. Who else out there is hot enough, forgivable enough, or just too damn tasty no-matter-what, to qualify for sexual attraction? If a gay-bashing former NBA semi-star player still cuts it, who else of arguable celebrity status is in the mix?

I suppose what I'm after is a litmus test, some pH-range of examples by which I might gauge the contributing factors to male-male sex appeal. Having only been hit one once by a guy (that I was aware of, anyway), and even then, by someone too drunk to say more than "time to do it 'til it hurts!" I don't have much personal experience to apply.

Lance Bass? Steven Colbert? Richard Simmons? Dick Cheney?
Steve Garvey?

Who got the mojo, George? Start a column or sumpn.

Travelling, 2/18

2007-02-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

I normally put my travel sketches on my personals blog, but for a reason they have not yet given me, they won't publish it -- one of the many reasons to tire of the Fast Cupid blog engine.

At SFO, only upon issuing my boarding pass did the agent admit: "You flight is delayed 40 minutes." Upon approaching the counter he asked or told me, "Going to Vancouver." I'm not sure which. It makes for good drama, though, as I realize on-board that my bags are only checked to Vancouver.

At the gate area, a wheelchair escort has rolled some bone-and-tendon case-hardened bird up to the seat next to me. The bird re-seats herself, gingerly, then checks every zipper among her bags rapidly, with a military gusto that would hearten even an anxious supply sergeant.

The escort, meanwhile, stands like a French bellhop. Ascertaining her escort's need for a cue, she fishes for a fold of singles in her vest pocket, and returns to attention. You are all set now, maam? The answer is a brief, distracted affirmative; there is no eye contact. The escort is past any proper window for receiving a gratuity, but something in the other woman's vigor has tipped her. I wonder she felt slighted by mere ignorance before, and offended by conscious deception now.

Sure enough, once she has left with the chair, the wiry woman is up and about, at the counter to bargain for a window seat, in the duty free shop for bargains, standing to chat with able-boded friends comfortably sitting a few feet away. later on the plane demanding to know why coffee is free and bottled water is not.

You have to pick up bags in Vancouver, it turns out, clear customs, then check-in for a connecting flight. All this takes more time than I have to make the connector, but Hotwire doesn't tell you that, the check-in agent doesn't tell you that, the flight attendants don't seem to know it. The PA guy at baggage claim knows it, which is better than nothing, but didn't save me lots of snorting and fuming until then.

Today's flight to Victoria from Vancouver is 2 hours, 45 minutes. The last fifteen are for flying; the rest is for waiting. Outside the terminal, I'm reminded of other small terminals: Burbank, CA; Shannon, Ireland; Parkersburg, WV. I'm given keys, smallest car out there, can't miss it, pleasant travels.

I'm driving south towards City Centre on BC-17, a clear but Northern night, by which I mean I know there are giants in the mountains to the east. I can feel the solemn energy of mindful creatures, unsettling the earth with their walk. In Vancouver the cusps of the mountains are here and there filled with powerful lights, star amalgam for cavity fillings. I'm hoping those giants swing their hammers at 3 in the morning, shaking the flats below. It'll be ok by me, 15 minutes of water between. Giants don't swim, so god bless 'em swing away.

Journalism 101: Bad news first

2007-02-21T07:25:00.000-08:00

Take your audience to the brink, then bring them back. This is how you do it.

Oh drear.

2007-02-20T14:04:00.000-08:00

I'm teaching this week on Vancouver Island in Victoria, at the southeastern most tip. You can't quite see on this image that we're below the 49th Parallel which divides the U.S. and Canada, or that you can all but moon Washington State from here. Squarely in the Pacific Northwest and all its calming, natural beauty. Alas, it's also wet and grey, a plodding pace. To top it off, I'm teaching in a building of government workers. I'm feeling all of it.

A waitress I saw yesterday gave me a smile like an Irish grandmother's fist, a gesture no more potent than one imagines or remembers it. The silver-haired gentlemen who secured my visitor's badge, he moves me too. He lifts his elbows as he walks, as if getting up some invisible gangplank. One of the hotel maids in the hallway, I meant to ask her her name. A slender, well-maintained Indian woman with expressive eyes. Too alive for housekeeping, that's my thought. I suspect there is a past; this sleepy downtown hotel hallway, it belongs to a story she is not thinking to tell.

I'm looking for any excuse to keep moving. Without due care, energy like this will bring you down in a hurry.

Yeah, my guy got a BJ in the Oval Office. What'd your guy do?

2007-02-15T02:04:00.000-08:00

I just go on shaking my head at the President Bush.

It's not that he's simple, hard-headed, an ungifted speaker, autocratic, mean-spirited, or a bad liar. It's not that since 9/11 he's provoked the better part of the world in the name of our country. That he started a war his father could have told him was unwinnable; that he's routinely favored military action over diplomacy; that we have yet to hear of one verifiable win on his domestic agenda.

Maybe it's not even that this man, abhorrently ignorant in matters of international relations, doesn't even know when he's picking a fight. Never mind one he can't win. Never mind calling it out to a world that would have to be so very, very stupid to lend credibility to his current song. Among its lyrics, this particular batch of non-meaning fluff:

Mr. Bush has also refused to meet with Iran’s leaders, and he said Wednesday that he did not believe that it would be an effective way of persuading the Iranians to give up their nuclear goals. “This is a world in which people say, ‘Meet! Sit down and meet!’ ” he said. “And my answer is, if it yields results, that’s what I’m interested in.”

It's that you and I, fellow Americans, are either too proud to admit how wrong this man is for the job we've given him, or too stunned by this surreal political scene to envision any real alternative, too pressed by personal ambition to speak frankly, too damaged by our own fucked-over credibility to command serious national attention, or too caught up in feel-good grassroots politics to fight the Big Fight, the only one that actually matters.

I liked it better when my President wanted to get blown in his office. Which is not to say I applaud it, but I can understand that. I can understand being pressured to confess and nabeuvered into lying about it. Hey, I grew up in a Nixon era; where interests of state and power are concerned, lying is not scandalous: getting caught at it is. That doesn't make it pretty, but neither do I imagine Chinese DF-31's en route for illicit sex.

But forget all that; just look where you are right now. Is your son at war? If he's 14 now, what are the chances a recruiter will catch him in a mall parking lot for a friendly chat? Do you know National Guardsmen whose weekend-a-month commitment have turned into indefinite tours of the Middle East? Have you wondered who now is legally entitled to review the books you check out at the library? Can you remember the last major terrorist attack on the US since 9/11? Have you counted how many periods of "elevated threat" we've had since then? Are you pretty sure that every civil liberty you've ceded as a citizen has materially contributed to our safety?

Do you think a multi-billion dollar fence along the Mexican border will do anything -- anything -- to improve your way of life? How about the change in your wages in the 90's as opposed to this decade? Your children's educational opportunities? What are you paying for gas right now?

Why, why, why, do we not get that we can change this any time we want?

Goodbye, Vikki Lynn Hogan

2007-02-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

Yah, yah, and here it is. The article I was waiting for that tells all. Originally in Houston, relocated to obscurity outside of Dallas. Sure, sure, there's all that dirt about the person we called Anna Nicole Smith.

But here's the thing, the tail end to the article linked above:

"Some people have it that she disgraced this town," said Alan Campbell, a burly trucker in the local natural gas industry.

"But I don't think that she did. She had a goal and she did it," he said as he tucked into lunch at a Mexia restaurant.

See it? An idiom of your average British dirt reporter.

I have my own fondness for the UK -- I've been to England, Scotland and Ireland, all on separate trips -- but their cheerless hunger for American spectacle is sad. It's a money cesspool that's far, far more crass than your average American knows how to plumb.

You know Candle in the Wind, whether Elton John, so-called, was referring to Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana at the time. If you've got 80's recall you remember Def Leppard's Photograph, which at least could be about anyone, unless you've seen the video. Now quick, name a better-known American music tribute. I'm sure there's one. Mention them here if you wish, but please, no Marilyn Manson references, or for that matter other Ohio exports.

Are you sure you can't look away? Why? What is it her image did for you?

Fanout

2007-02-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

You can look it up on Wikipedia if you like, or you can take my paraphrase thusly. I need more input gates for my output. Trying to dump it all in one place or another....eh. It seems confining.

I started blogging on Javaranch, tentatively, and tried to define by category what I'd write about. I lost interest rather quickly in predicting that, an enormous timesaver. I created categories that seemed appropriate, such as Java and Solaris, but then rarely, if ever, wrote on those topics.

Some time last year I rediscovered Salon through a series of associations. Back when access to Salon was mostly free, I posted on TableTalk. You can still google me and it and find pictures from my wedding day and playing with my son. I plucked around looking for freebies and came across their personals section, at the time powered by Spring Street Networks. FastCupid evetually took over and installed a blogging engine, and hey, what better way to get past a list of attributes and see how a prospective hot mama really thinks? I was also curious what I might write about among a crowd with a common interest, namely, fixating on images of people who don't want anything to do with you. You can check out those writings on the blog What Comes After Quaternary? Better yet, read my first post here; it's a warmed-over entry from there.

So, I have JavaRanch for geeking out, should I return to that, and Salon for mushy lovebarf, as my blolleague Noisy_Introvert likes to call it. Alas, each venue has its confines, perceived and real. As much as I like the community spirit of Salon Personals, you can't link to anything outside of it, or add more than one image to a post. The screening for coarse language is comical. When you can't write 'horny' or 'shit' on a website that includes, among others, people from Nerve, Salon, and The Onion, you know you've got Mommy Club ex-presidents running the show.

Those of 4-5 of you who missed me at I've Been Wondering, consider yourselves caught up. I'm not sure how fanning out will work just yet, but I'm aiming for less overlap instead of more. Except now that I just said that...

Embarcadero Morning Rush Tai Chi Player

2007-02-06T12:23:00.000-08:00

My mind was on the notion of joining. The idea, but not the word of it, was with me as I left the ferry terminal, aimed toward Market Street. I am one of a few people in this band who cross Embaracdero Street and veer right, across Justin Herman plaza, to Clay Street.

The light on Clay is a perpetual grey twilight. In part from a fogged sun lobbing sodden light onto the solemn, sensible aggregate of Embarcadero Four. In part from this morning's sleepers across the street, pulling up corrugated bedding and polymer bindles for the day's shamble and rummage. The words that come to mind:

paper crab hide

I used those words once to fix the aching leaves in my mind, as well as those withering on the lanai. All of them were cold-pressed that day, and quivered by a C-150 rawling overhead. Today it comes to mind as I am watching these old coats, their thin hoods dimpled by thumb-pulls, shields tearing at the neck. A few pained fox lives, sifting into the hedges.

A minor prize of tai chi, as with many Eastern forms, is learning how to carry only that which is yours. I am carrying the Yang-style player from the plaza, a Chinese dressed in common idioms of Fog City living: tights, baseball cap, turtleneck, windbreaker, scuffed runners.

I think he is mistaken with his position on the plaza dais. I did not see him rooting. His back was canted. His wide stance suggested more drama than purpose. By the time I allow that his passion is not on display for its perfections, but for its being, I am at Battery street, where I drop him off.

Crossing Battery, I am looking through the windshields of cars that dare needle into the crosswalk. The grey is lifting, and a breeze winds through my hair. As I turn the corner onto Sansome, I sink into each leg deliberately. I join with the will of the earth, and I might well stop a bus, just to keep people loose, and at a distance.