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.