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.