Shameless Disgusting Sexist Post

So I'm reading The Register and there's something about "RIP tennis gal's DD jubs" so I go there and lo and behold there's yet another unbelievably sexy European tennis star (nothing against Americans, Venus and Serena Williams are über-hot) and all the boys are lamenting her decision to get a breast reduction. Saith she:

“I do not believe that physical appearance has an effect on performance, so I help with anything in the sport. My mind bust when for me to go and even if the land would not be sporting, I would have felt very good. Inconvenience me, it’s very hard with them. It’s a weight in addition to confound me speed response. I can not go on very well. Shoot me down. Nothing in life is not like me even though sport was not all I was doing surgery.” - SportsbyBrooks

More power to her, I say. Simona Halep has better control over her body than most and if it helps her career to have flesh and blood sucked out where other women are paying big bucks to get silicone stuffed in, then yay her. I will not join the swelling chorus of tennis fans worldwide who are wailing and pouting over the suddenly reduced value of their large hi-density TV screens. Instead, as a statement of respect for her discipline and self-determination, let us ponder with appropriate sobriety the beauty of completely unsexualized female athleticism.

 


Bonus shot: Serena utilizes her awesome service form.

Random Puppy Pic

Sparks and Carnivals

Amongst my greatest personal failings, ill-discipline takes the dominant place.

So does bad writing. Let me try that again.

I have to admit: I'm not lazy, I'm not weak on ability, I don't hate my job. I just ain't got no discipline. And rather than force myself into some role, maybe it's better I try to live within my nature.

In other words, I'll work better today if I do something creative first. Even a dumb little blog post sharing pictures. Three's a magic number, will go with that.

And guess what? As usual I'll write too much. Less is only more if you're disciplined.

Sat. night we went down to the shopping mall for the fireworks show. The mall was built in 1970, back when Aerojet and Mather AFB drove construction of new suburbs out into the farm country. Now the farms are completely forgotten and the AFB is closed and Aerojet a shadow of its former self, and the suburbs run down and oil-stained, full of people by no means envisioned by the original developers: Gangs, immigrants, the working poor. And me.

Thus the crowd had a peculiar misshapen look to it. Actually, that's just a matter of style. Anyone in an over-long t-shirt and shorts down to their ankles and a haircut inspired by watching gangland documentaries looks misshapen to me, and that about covers everyone under thirty-five these days. So, I dunno, the crew-cut little kids being pushed around in strollers by slouching couples buried in tatts and bad hair will probably grow up to be very prim and focused. Fascists, most likely.

There was a carnival filled with about thirty thousand brats whose parents bred too young. We walked through the press, enjoying the sights, sounds, smells. Rickety vomit-rides hauled off truck trailers, "games" where gravel-voiced barkers exhort passersby to win faded plush toys of last year's fad animal-character, a single "food" concession beset with hundreds of people yearning for that elusive perfect corn-dog. Warmth recycled from the July sun rose into the night air from the asphalt.


Further out in the parking lot was the rock station tent, handing out bumper stickers, and around a corner there was a concert going on. Local blues-harp phenomenon Kyle Rowland was down with a solid band. We saw him at the Jubilee -- just fifteen, and an amazing musician. Really enjoys himself too. If he keeps that happy spirit and avoids the pitfalls of most young talent, he will have a great life.


The fireworks were cool, always are. Out in the back parking lot, music provided by numerous random car radios all tuned in to the same station, people out in their lawn chairs basically tail-gating. It was fun, a happy crowd, a family crowd. Afterwards we predicted the traffic would be ridiculous and went to a bar to wait it out, enjoyed watching the stop-and-stop traffic for a full hour as people tried to thread their way out of the mall and through the intersection.

3rd of July

Everyone knows about the 4th but yesterday I got the day off and I was so excited about that, I took the day off. Not every week you get two Saturdays in a row. I spent it doing an hour-long job on the Jeep. Yes, the whole day. It's a simple matter to replace a power steering pump, especially if you just did it a week ago. A very simple matter indeed. First, borrow a turkey baster from the kitchen to suck out the power steering fluid. Then loosen a bunch of bolts. They are either 1/2 or 9/16, depending on which socket you don't have on your wrench. They are also impossible to reach with a socket wrench, or indeed any kind of wrench unless you are lying on your back in the gravel getting foxtails in your shirt and snaking your arm through oil-soaked steering linkage, or leaning over the top of the engine far enough to ensure your reading glasses, your best ones, the ones you could find, keep slipping off into a grease-covered maze of wires and hoses. Then, if you squint and grunt and contort your fingers in unnatural directions, one of your various wrenches might fit.

After loosening the last bolt one excruciating eighth of a turn at a time and then the last-last bolt which was previously invisible and is the one that allows you to loosen the serpentine belt and force it painfully off the pulley, it is time to consider turning off the hood lamp lest you lack battery power later when you need it. There is no switch, of course. It turns on automechanically when the hood is open. Nor can the connector be disconnected without destroying the plastic housing that has become brittle through twenty years of inland California temperature swings. But there is a ground wire attached with a hex-headed sheet metal screw, and pulling that off will work, and since Jeep is an American brand it is sensible to try your 1/2 and then 9/16 sockets on it. Neither fits, and when you come back out of the garage with your metric set and squint to read a 12 and find that is too large, and you find an 11 is too large, and you rummage around and find a 9 and discover that's too small, you then have to go back to the garage because your set is missing the 10mm socket. There's one in another socket set, and eventually you find it, pull the ground wire, turn off the lamp, and see about removing the pump from the engine compartment.

There's no difficulty with this part, it comes right out once you detach the two hoses and ensure the ground absorbs a pint or so of toxic fluid and twist and turn the damn thing three different ways to extract it from amongst numerous other engine components. My difficulty was philosophical: We had just put in a new one because the old one leaked and was twenty years old. The new one didn't leak but it didn't work either. Not at idle -- worked fine going down the road but the power assist gave out if the RPMs went under about 1500, and this was most disconcerting when taking a corner with the clutch in. It basically felt like the steering had locked up the instant you really needed it, when turning a corner with some litigious-appearing old dame in your path at the stop sign, watching with baleful eye as you screech to a halt half an inch from her newly-waxed left-rear quarter-panel. My son figured out how to rev the engine while turning and thus reduce risk of collision but to my old brain it was backwards to hit the gas while slowing down to make a turn, and after talking to the auto parts store and the pump manufacturer and a handful of home mechanics at work I decided the smartest surrender was to assume the new pump was bad and take it back. I hated doing this because the odds of getting a bad pump seemed somewhat less than that I had done something wrong, and the odds remained somewhat better that I would do the same thing wrong when putting in yet another new pump. I also had a theory that the first new pump had the wrong fluid control valve in it. I'd much rather replace the valve than the whole damn thing, because it was easy to get to. But auto parts return doesn't work that way.

Pulley replacement is fun too, because it involves an obscure tool that costs half as much as the pump itself and is good for nothing else, an old torque wrench, a combo wrench stuck in a length of pipe (for leverage), two legs braced in opposite directions, room on the ground to spread out in, and an assistant who is either very brave or has never done this before.

Love days off. Don't you?

Last night we went to a 3rd of July celebration: Cul-de-sac of midrange private homes, second and third generation owners and renters, fireworks in the street (the legal kind), beer and pool table in the back yard. I enjoy hanging out with my fellow suburbanites with their tatts and piercings, biker-chic slash blue collar style of dress, alternately polite and horrible children, undersized RVs, oversized motorcycles, redneck facial hair styles (e.g. shaven head and full beard), and hard but generous nature. Family men all, and I've noticed that family men who've been to prison are more polite than those who haven't.

The County is out in force this year to clamp down on illegal fireworks and our hosts were warned directly. No wonder, a house burned down behind their cul-de-sac on the 4th last year. It was abandoned, more than likely an insurance job, and clever enough to get done on the 4th of July, but this left the authorities no choice but to be suspicious and vigilant. They could not, however, hang out around the corner all night, and about ten or so an explosion above the rooftops grabbed our attention as a volley of twenty or so airborne Mexican-made fireworks lit up the night and set off the dogs and car alarms. It was a fitting end to a fine low-key evening. Tonight we're off to a shopping mall, where the rock radio station is hosting a display. We're thinking to fill our Nalgenes with beer and wander the crowd, watching faces, looking for familiar ones, and enjoying these magical times when our children are independent and still close to home.

Book

Facebook is definitely the new blogiverse.

Blogging started out as a means of sharing interesting links and commenting on them. As more people became net-users the concept morphed into general self-publishing. People could "blog" and it would mean whatever they wanted it to mean: An online diary, a means of sharing pictures, a place to shout back at politicians and pretend they were listening. For some of us, a place to practice writing and get immediate and qualified feedback.

Now Facebook does most of that, and it's much easier. What it doesn't do is create a literary space. You can write there, but the slam-bam nature of it is discouraging. I wouldn't bother.

A huge difference is it's not very anonymous. It can be if you want, but that denies the point of it. Through Facebook you can make yourself, your true self, accessible. If you don't want to do that, then don't use Facebook. Don't be accessible, etc. Your choice.

I chose to try it and the results are interesting. My Facebook presence has taken on three distinct personalities, reflecting the three distinct groups of people that I'm hooked up to.

First is the internet writerly crowd, the entertaining and argumentative crew that got to know itself on usenet five and more years ago (no, that link won't work if you're not already set up for it -- I know, cause I'm not, and I tried it, and it doesn't work, but the URL is correct anyway). I've denied it before but the truth is they are friends, the unique sorts of friends that were virtually impossible to have before the 21st Century. Their antics keep me going back to F/B as often as I do, just to see in a moment of corporate-cubicle ennui what's going on.

Second is family and family friends, none of whom are particularly computerwise and have therefore only flowered as link-sharers and photo-posters with the advent of Facebook. It's a great way to stay in touch more than you ever thought you'd want to be.

Third appears to be old high school people. I could mention work, because I've a few co-workers in there. But I really don't want to interact with co-workers in the silly and informal Facebook milieu. Fellow employees, okay. But not actual colleagues, and I won't bother to explain why. High school people are starting to pop up, however, and it's kind of amazing. Someone will find me whom I last had a good conversation with in 1976, and their list of friends will include names I had forgotten since Ford was in office, and their friends will include others, and damn. There's a party goin' on.

I don't have weird atavistic reactions to high school like some folks do. I got nothing against anyone back there. I didn't make many friends and lost contact with everyone pretty quickly, but no bridges were burnt and in fact, by now, even a burnt bridge can grow back again. So I find it pleasant, almost comforting, to think of reconnecting with these various people. I'm doing so slowly. I'm not the sort to go, "I remember you, let's be 'friends'!". I like to keep my Facebook friends as real people with whom I have a real connection and not just because we were both at Caz one year. But it's a happening, a 'hey, this is nice' sort of thing. The distance is controlled. We can do this.

That's all. The post summary is: Seeing faces from over three decades back is a good thing by and large -- maybe we'll meet up at the multi-year picnic this summer; and lowered blog traffic and lowered blog activity reinforce one another, and so this thing's day are numbered. They're numbered anyway, for other reasons, but except for occasional bursts of exceptional energy, I expect this page of mine to fade into the weeds of the internet, like a warehouse at the edge of a former boomtown. I'm okay with that, because I've a sneaking suspicion the sort of writing I wanted to develop in a blog has actual markets, if I only look for them and write up to them. See you there.

Seriously

Who would you ...


... rather party with?

City Sidewalks

Concierge let us leave the car with the hotel after we checked out. Went for a walk. Up a couple blocks to the the Ferry Building. Remembered what it used to be like thirty years ago or so, back when there was an elevated freeway casting its shadow over everything. Not a nice neighborhood then, especially after dark. Now it's amazing.

From the old ferry slips, a view of the hill that used to telegraph ship arrivals. Now it's the most unique neighborhood.

A market was on that morning, full of food and happy people. Two, anyway, once we got our curry sausage sandwiches. The sunshine poured through the cool air like honey.

  

Inside the Ferry Building itself, not like its old self. My mother remembers the room where'd they show newsreels while you wait to board. I remember faceless office spaces when the refinery I worked at held a Christmas party. Now an upscale food market, full of people and color.

  

Outside again, the usual. These guys played well, but their harmony was, shall we say, untutored.

A beautiful day for a cruise round the Bay.

And making memories.

  

A Night at the Ballpark

One of my favorite places in the whole world. San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus singing the Anthem.

 

Lincecum lines up a shot and sends it in. Guy is amazing. Won the NL Cy Young last year. Was solid Friday night. Drove in the first run and pitched a complete game and a shutout.

 

View out towards the marina by the park. Infield maintenance during the game.

 

Pretty reflections on evening clouds. A play at the plate.

 

Flags with East Bay clouds behind them. Taking the A's to their last out. (Giants swept the weekend series.)

 

Crusty Old Thursday Thirteen

13. Early evening phone meeting with the fellas in Taiwan. With all the background noise (someone’s wife and small child), heavy Chinese accents at that end, miscellaneous Asian accents at this end … I cannot follow the conversation. Makes me feel like an irrelevant old yankee and considering how my country acts in terms of maintaining its technological lead (i.e. doing nothing), that’s not inaccurate.

12. Mid-afternoon ice cream. Some work group had a celebration and overdid the catering. Emails went out: Come and get it! Countless Dilberts emerge from their holes and converge on the scene. The hired staff with their temporary badges are surly. Ice cream is melted. Big bowls of nuts and cherries and crumbled cookies and chocolate ants and rows and rows of whipped cream cans. No wonder we look like we do. But it’s a fun chance to catch up with that random person you know and aren’t sure from what past intersection of careers you know them. Catching up consists of vague expressions of doing good and polite nods.

11. 3 ½ mile lunchtime run. Talking with the other runners, old white guys like me. Political sentiment is often driven by where you live. In California, as you go eastward from coast through farm country and into mountains, you get more conservative, and these guys live in the foothills. They think Bush betrayed the country by starting the bailout, and Obama is going to finish the job. They’re not sure he’s smart enough to know that destroying the country is what he’s doing. They are sure Bush wasn’t. I don’t disagree but I don’t really know, of course. One thing’s sure, we’re fucked, and it’s been awhile since we had a real chance to avoid being fucked. Hope and change? Please. A cheesy advertising slogan.

10. Mid-morning energy burst. That brief but blessed time of day when it seems as though questions are answerable, problems are solvable, the company has a good future, and my boss isn’t figuring out legal ways to get rid of me.

9. Morning shower and breakfast. Our hot water heater died the other night so I showered at the workplace rec center. (Put the new one in today.) Immediately after, time to meet my breakfast club, get my tea, stir hot water into my little one-serving bag of instant oatmeal, and sit around a table talking about manly home projects while watching attractive female fellow professionals pass through.

8. Early morning rounds. Bad night of sleep but no worries, I don’t remember dreams, something to do with helping my mother water a garden. Crawled off the mattress wondering whatever became of waking up refreshed. Went out the laundry room for boxers cause I’m way behind on folding clothes. Weird music from upstairs, choir music, and that’s weird for six in the morning. Went up and found several teenage boys asleep and oblivious, cast about the floor and furniture like discarded underwear, the menu screen for “Boondock Saints” playing over and over and over on the TV.

7. Late night reading. A book is a must if one is to crowd out the real world and actually sleep. Enjoy tremendously Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. I love it when good scholarship and good writing converge to make sense of huge questions in a rational and believable manner. Put it right up there with Breaking The Spell for putting reality into context. Every night the same instant of crisis: Eyes won’t stay open, sentences run together, time to stop, put book and glasses on nightstand and hope to god that simple act doesn’t wake me all up again.

6. Evening miscellania. Haul dishes back and forth to the alternate dishwasher that’s fed by the other hot water heater. (Yeah, we have two of each, long story.) Admire puppies. Watch mama ignore them long time, then grudgingly sniff around, lick all their little heinies clean and wake them up, then lie down with a sigh and roll over and let them squeak and crawl all over her and suck away at her spigots. Get sleepy.

5. Okay, I.

4. Ran out.

3. Of time.

2. For any more, so.

1. Goin’ now. Got a restaurant date. We got married twenty one years ago today. Goodness.

Pupdate

I thought I'd get a chance to write a blog post by now, but no. So here's a picture of them one day after they self-segregated. It's cute but it was ... kinda weird.


They're two weeks old tomorrow (born May 27).

An Awkward Juxtaposition

Sal provided a link to photos that changed the world. An ad was selected by an algorithm that selects keywords, so that the ad will somehow go with the content. Here's the result when I clicked the famous image of the self-immolating Vietnamese monk.

Healthy Trend

I also call it the Facebook Effect.

Social networking is all the rage now. Bloggers are getting their faux friendship fix on Facebook, and the blogs are drying up. Twitter is the big thing -- next year I'm hoping it will be last year's big thing -- such that idiot twittering congressmen made the news at the Inauguration, every celebrity has a flunky managing his tweet equity, and even news radio takes it as having a given value. Capital Public Radio (local NPR affiliate) ran a piece this morning about the attorney general or state comptroller or some such official, and closed their report by saying, "And, he tweets!"

Fuck.

(By tweet equity I mean something akin to brand equity. I take that as being self-explanatory.)

Fuck, again. Tell you what: I'm going to knock down all the cell phone towers and crash all the Wi-Fi networks just to watch you people squirm. Fair enough?

I guess the final straw for me is when bloggers blog about twittering. I mean, I understand using a fake interaction medium such as this to write about real stuff (family, writing, photography, life), or about unreal stuff (politics), or about virtual stuff (other blogs). But when we blog about tweeting or tweet about blogging the overload of fakeness, the confluence and merging of twin rivers of nothingness, it just kills me. Reminds me of that Dilbert cartoon when he was reading -- reading the manual for his new computer golf game -- reading a description of a pretend version of an activity that is almost a sport. I dunno. It's like drinking non-alcohol lite beer to me, only much worse.

So. I tried Twitter for a couple weeks and then killed my account. I do Facebook because it's easy and there are non-bloggers there and, like I said, it's the current place for our faux friendship fix. I blog less but not just because of Facebook, I really am online less, or I'm a lot less interactive anyway. I'm actually online a lot thanks to this crazy job.

Segue!

Crazy online job right now! I am out on the porch swing, in darkness save for the glow of the LCD screen. A headset blares into my right ear, attached to my cell phone, through which I reached a local number that patches me into a meeting taking place in several geographies. Microsoft® Office Live Meeting fills my screen with presentations and notes, and minutes being typed by a team lead in Bangalore, talking to folks in Shanghai and in California, on subject matters far beyond my ken. I'm here to absorb it, a bench player, except I don't get the game. They're talking software stuff. I grok software to an extent -- I got my fucking Master's in it -- but really I hate the shit and besides, this isn't about development or anything cool and creative. It's all about some very involved and extraordinarily boring coordination of drivers, fixes, patches, and the schedules for validation and release of same.

I'd almost rather live in poverty. The Padre seems happy enough.

(You know who I mean, or you don't.)

This whole online almost-friends thing started for me in Usenet. No, it started in dialing up local BBSs. No, online debates started there. Then moved to Usenet where I got to know real people, many of whom are truly the cat's pajamas. Friends, okay, but we never met. And then I found the interaction took way too much time and energy. Quit Usenet completely. Should say I've been backing out ever since but no, blogs had (still have) potential for some great creative expression and interaction. Some blogs express genius at that. Wanted for awhile to pull something genius off too, but the focus / energy aren't there. So, you get this. And posts and traffic are backing off. Like I said, a healthy trend.

There's a cat rubbing against my legs.

Hot and Pregnant

When the temps were over a hundred I know you ladies really appreciated having a nice cool garage floor to lie on.

Jason Mongue's Burning Man vid

Got Some Wild, Wild Life

Take a picture, here in the daylight
Oh, ho!
And its a wild, wild life ...

All right, enough of that. Me a lover of aminals. So here's more pix taken about the homestead.

A clean and pregnant dog.




A birdie on the drive.



A flutterby sucking weeds.




A bee being busy with the apple blossoms.




A yellowjacket making nests.




A critter too dry for even my dog to roll in anymore.

No Sweeping

Not with this broom. It's in use.


Tiny bird flies and hides on the bicycles when we go by.


Babies are safe. We don't mind an unswept garage floor.

Mothers and Other Such Things

The dog was a puppy just a little while ago, full of romp and jump and dash away. But now she tires easily and is pooching out and growing teats and in a few weeks I imagine she will recline with her little parasites and go, Where the hell did these come from? Then I will have to escape-proof the yard.

Mother’s Day is a weird one to me – okay, all holidays are weird to me anymore. The only one that makes sense is Halloween. That and Yule, when we light great bonfires and drink and dance and fornicate under the holly -– wait, that was a long time ago. Don’t you hate when memories of past lives blur together? Anyway, this ultimate greeting-card holiday has always been one of organizing my troops into shopping and cooking teams and making The Day into something flowery and loving. This year will be similar. But it’s the last! Young men, they are, and young men should not live with their parents. Next year one of them won’t, who knows, maybe both.

Why’s it weird to me? At some deep fundamental level where belly meets brain, I guess because mothers don’t make sense to me. Put that down to my particular circumstances. We all have particular circumstances, of course, and a lot of them have to do with mothers. Mine are nothing unusual, and since my mother reads this (Hi Mom!) I’m not going to launch a long speculative screed exploring my intercrossing feelings on the matter. I love her (You!) and at this point nothing else much matters. But I’m not the only one with snakes intertwined where the greeting cards would give us bland platitudes. My wife loves but especially hates her mother, and for many excellent reasons, and the past week has been dominated by telephone arguments over my mother-in-law trying to weasel out of attendance at her grandson’s high school graduation out of some ignorant fear of catching the swine flu on an airplane.

Thank you Joe Biden.

The complications arise of course because there are conflicting emotions: It’s your grandson! … Wait, you mean I never have to see you again? Balance one against the other … But of course she must come, because she must, that’s the way it is, and so (she now says) she shall. We’ll see. I hope so but I’ll not miss the bitch if otherwise.

Grandson is neutral about it, being as the grandma showed clear favoritism towards the other brother for most of his childhood, and he’s absorbed more than enough of his mother’s angry-sad tears over not having a “real mother” when something or other happens; yet she’s not an actual monster, even attempts humor sometimes, and of course he loves her as a grandmother of just about any type cannot help but be loved. So, fine, we’ll see. Mostly he’s just happy to be growing up. Let me count the ways.

No, I won’t count. But the past few weeks have been amazing. Last night – I’m still absorbing last night. You know, you have to get all your Eagle Scout stuff done by midnight before you turn eighteen or all that hard work is for nothing. Badges, the project, write-ups, forms, interviews, signatures … There is a blur of requirements and we have known many young men who were working at it right up to their last day as a seventeen year old – and a few who did not finish in time, and sometime down the road will look back and kick themselves for it, hard. I’ve had this huge check-off in mind for months. Will it all get done? All of it? Truly? In time? Much suspense, believe me.

Last night he drove around and met with various leaders and got signatures and handed stuff in and was able to tell me that everything that has to be done before he turns eighteen … is done. No more deadline.

No more deadline.

You see? I’m still absorbing and would like to write that a few more times but for your sake, I will not. It’s just … No more deadline. (!)

And just last week they struck the set of the school play in which he had the Raymond Massey role, and the week before that the yearbook for which he was editor-in-chief was complete and sent off to the presses, and this week he completed his senior project, and, oh, I could build it up but the point is, all that stuff that he has been juggling is done now. No more deadline! Just a few weeks of high school to finish up, turn eighteen meanwhile, and … no more childhood.

No more childhood.

Maybe you were wondering what this part has to do with Mother’s Day? Of course you weren't. When we’ve whelped, I’ll post pics.

Telegraph Hill Panorama

Lovers of Sal's home pictures will recognize part of the view. Click through for the full version.

Swine Fever

I read The Stand and I read Earth Abides. I enjoyed the latter many times (the King book was fine in the small but the larger story was crap). I've had my share of childish fantasies of everyone just GOING AWAY, leaving a hardy few to frolic amongst the ruins. Here's my secret: Thought of a deadly pandemic sweeping the world still gives me a thrill. That's because it's so far away, of course (never mind three cases at a middle school a few miles from my house). If my frolicking had to be more like for these two I'd have different feelings about it.

Maybe.

Anyway, I'm doing nothing different. But IMC has launched some sort of Pandemic Leadership Team (PLT) to coordinate the panic and today the Russian work crew put these up all over the place. (Is it just here that Russians have pushed Hispanics and Southeast Asians out of the lucrative secured-facility labor market?)


Never fails to amuse me how whenever anything unusual happens, the Type As who dominate this place immediately coalesce into task forces and tiger teams and apply acronyms and publish powerpoint plans and take the reigns and make no mistake that someone has it covered. All right, so when I see an underbanked curve I think how cool the car crashes must be before I think someone oughta fix that. Just the sort of passive way I am, I guess. I'll wash my hands when it's time for dinner.

Cabeza

Recently somewhere else I said I needed to quit the online life. There are good reasons for that. Very good reasons. Maybe someday I'll write a blog post about it.

Not today. The online world is still good for a few things. Yesterday afternoon as I ambled slowly back to the office after being dismissed from jury duty -- I was dismissed for good reason, and ambled very slowly -- I stopped at Borders and browsed History and found a book that told me about the amazing adventure of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The early years of European exploration of the outer world are fascinating, not least for the aura of magic and wonder that surrounds every account. This one attracted me not only on its own merits but the time and place provide for a fanciful connection with an idea I've been percolating for some time in the way of historical fiction. Wanting to know more, I looked him up today on the web, and found someone made a movie. Reading a review of the movie, it's fairly clear that my standards for accuracy in historical fiction are ridiculously high. I'll keep to them anyway.

This was supposed to show that the online world is still good for something. It does not. All of this would be more effectively pursued with pencil and notepad at the library. All right then. Adios. And yes, up top, that was an attempt at humor.

A Rare Victory for the Citizenry

Some may call it a victory for gun owners, but that would be imprecise. Gun owners may or may not benefit from a proper interpretation of the Second Amendment, depending upon their own intentions (and legality) in owning guns. That subgroup aside, it is clearly beneficial to all citizens that to keep and bear arms is recognized as an individual right, which can be abridged only when individuals, through their own actions, lose that right through due process of law.

What's really cool is that this ruling came down from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a body that has done its part at times to give liberalism a bad name. Perhaps this liberal ruling augurs a rational turning of the tide.

Aren't We Done With These Kinds Of People Yet?

What I don't get is why anyone would vote for this asshole and yet his candidacy announcement is big news.

He may be a smart guy. He may have done some good things. I don't know. I don't care. Success in politics is about managing impressions and my impression of Gavin Newsom is of a cheating rabble-rouser with scary teeth and car-salesman hair and about all the sincerity of a plastic fart.

Furrballpix

Alas, none of me (except in the background of one, way off in the distance, looking dorky and taking a picture). But the man is a fine photographer and captures the essentials. (He also takes more pictures of attractive women than of just regular folk, and that's very strange, isn't it.)

Furrball 2009

I will link to more pictures as they come on line and if they are worth it.

Furry Nights

Words fail, for the most part.

But out in the dry industrial ring that surrounds the city, we had a ball.

    

A fur ball. Call it a seasonal kickoff. Pan was there, and a sword dancer, and a bunny.

    

A dancer whose body was a musical instrument, perfectly in tune with the music booming overhead.

    

I did not have the equipment to give you more than these grainy impressions.

    

A hint of the mad magic, complete with food, drink, endless dancing, and sparks landing amongst the full propane tanks. As they say: Safety third!

    

Light

lying in bed, and I want to get up
but the view is so god damn nice
window, oak trees, fresh green leaves, morning sunshine
a squirrel rattles the inner branches
a tiny bird shakes a leaf
well fine but there's shit to do
breakfast
my annual clearing the driveway cracks of weeds
(I enjoy that)
my son's swim meet
(I enjoy that too)
(probably his last ever)
work on my costume so to speak
shovel chicken-shit-rich dirt from where the chicken coop used to be into the veg garden
wife's out of shower
tells me we have to go
(sigh)

Boom! Two Degrees!

John Madden is retiring. This is big news! Even bigger is that my father-in-law knew him in high school: grew up near the Cow Palace and was two years behind Madden at Jefferson Hi in Daly City. Their paths diverged.

Corporate Jets

It was eight in the morning and my colleague was in his cube.

"I thought you were going to Oregon," I said.

He couldn't get a seat on the shuttle.

"I was up till midnight, man, trying to get a reservation, but there were like seven people ahead of me in line."

So at five in the morning he went down to the business airfield to try and get lucky, but no dice. He couldn't get a seat.

"Pisses me off, man. I got a lab set up for me up there, I only got like four hours' sleep, and because they don't let us fly commercial it was all for nothing."

The downturn cuts everywhere, and one place IMC* is cutting back is in the use of commercial airlines. If you need to visit another site, take the shuttle. If the shuttle is booked, convince your manager to spend the money on Southwest or Alaska. If no luck there, tough.

I'm thinking, how ironic is this? Everywhere, all over the news, the downturn is killing off corporate jets. The Big Three Auto Dudes got slammed for using them when they came begging, other executives are afraid to use them for fear of bad press much less that the Obama Administration might slap them with some fine for misuse of TARP funds, manufacturers are on the ropes, people are losing jobs ... Yet IMC has leased a small fleet of small jets for years because it is more cost effective than paying for all those commercial flights.

IMC has had 90 straight profitable quarters and was recently listed among the world's 99 most ethical companies. Was their decision to slash commercial flights in favor of filling up the corporate jet a matter of hubris or a good business decision? I think it's fair to say the latter. So where are all these numbskulls who are focusing on corporate jets as a symbol of corporate irresponsibility getting their ideas? Huh? Huh?

Capitalist running-dogs boarding the bus

* - IMC: Infamous Megamultinational Corporation

The Trouble With Opening Up Trade With Cuba

Those wicked-cool old cars will become collector's items and get auctioned off on the Speed Channel and the taxi drivers will all get used Sentras from Mexico.

Vale Chambers

It always surprises me when someone who helped define my world turns out to be more or less my age. As yet of unknown causes, Marilyn Chambers recently died at 56. Ms. Chamber's evidently naive belief that hardcore sex films were part of a natural evolution and would enhance her career as an actress parallels other influences that led me to have a similar outlook. Of course, this outlook coupled with the shyness and social fear that, looking back, I simply can't believe I had, led to enormous frustration. But somehow I've always held a sense that society's progress could in part be measured by sexual openness, quite apart from whether or not I could actually participate.

Of course I still feel that way -- "of course" not because it's obviously the right attitude, but because it is something I grew up with and therefore forms a part of my worldview and is unlikely to change. When the internet came along I thought some of the Reagan-era regression would get corrected, and to some extent it was, but unfortunately a lot of ugliness blew in on the same breeze and society as a whole reactively maintains its conservatism. And now religionism and social conservatism are resurgent, and what healthy openness we have is likely to fade away yet again.

This likelihood is not countermanded by the trend towards gay marriage. My prediction would be that gay marriage will become the norm while the public face of homosexuality becomes more and more conservative. The crazy acting-out antics of the past will fade in memory, and gay couples will be accepted as just as unspectacularly normal as the rest of us. This is fitting, of course. I'm only saying that this trend, and others that also appear to be the dreams come true of us old 1970s Boomers (legal pot anyone?), are easily balanced in the global zeitgeist such that what we used to wish was a license to have more fun will just be another uninteresting life option. Details may change, but the big picture probably will not. Too bad: I like to think that so long as we are open about our feelings, careful with others', and proceed with honesty and integrity, there's no limit on what behavior is acceptable; or at least, exploration of this should prevail in the art world without penalty. But there are penalties, society yet being what it is, and Chambers (and Mapplethorpe and a host of others) can be counted among the unfortunates who have had to learn it.

My Bacon of Hope

The Times Can Suck My Ass

I almost stopped blogging, didn't I? But then the New York Times leads the pirate story with

The Indian Ocean standoff between an $800 million United States Navy destroyer and four pirates bobbing in a lifeboat showed the limits of the world’s most powerful military as it faces a booming pirate economy in a treacherous patch of international waters.

What the FUCK are they trying to say here? Only a hugely idiotic fucking idiot would try to draw some sort of ironic line between the high cost and power of an American destroyer and the fragile thread of human contact by which a single American life is hanging. As if to say, Oh, we have all these nukes, but were powerless against four guys with a knife to a man's throat, oh, we suck, oh, oh! God. Words fail me. I can't believe people still read that swill. Death to all newspapers.

Benicia in Nine Minutes

I went down to my mother's house to help with something and on the way home could not resist what I can never resist which is taking pictures of stuff.

  

The old train station is down by the water because in olden tymes the train coming to San Fran from points east (Chicago and that) came out onto this causeway and rolled aboard what were for awhile the world's biggest ferry boats. Here is a very cool description of the affair with lots of pictures. (And what's with the palm trees? They don't belong within two hundred miles of here. Gadz how transplanted palm trees annoy me.)

A short walk back towards old town Benicia brings one to this odd collection of nautical cast-offs.

  

The bridge in the distance carries I-80 across Carquinez Strait, through which a sailor will find San Francisco Bay and eventually the open sea.

  

It's an interesting neighborhood, the heart of old Benicia, which at its founding was expected to become the great metropolis of the continental edge. Rivers and roads all converged here, and in fact it was the state capital for a little while. But the village of San Francisco somehow attracted the people and the business and Benicia remained a small place, renowned for shipbuilding and other things, but largely unknown outside California.

  

The Capitol served as such for a short time in the early 1850s, then a courthouse, a fire station, a number of other things, until finally it settled into its natural role as a Site of Historical Interest. Round back are some lovely plants from when the ancient houses nearby were not yet part of a museum. The wisteria is over a century old, but no one knows how much: taking a core seems a bit risky. Lovely, iznit.

Here are some of the random non-topical sorts of pictures we take on a nearly daily basis. Capitol pillars; flower man; biplane kite.

      

A rather arresting house that always catches my eye; and a bird who maintained his perch until I'd driven out onto the street. I shot a video but Blogger took too dang long to upload it so never mind.

   

127 Hours at Burning Man

She calls it a day but probably she just ignored the time and counted the interval between sleeps as a day.

Wait, no! I'm such a dork. She does write of 24 hours. I counted 'em.

This was published months ago and I missed it, but here it is. Surely someone who stops here will enjoy it. It's just about right. Enough to give you a hint, but not so much you get lost. Every time I try to write about it, I get lost. Trying too hard.

24 Hours at Burning Man

Related stuff at the same site: search results.