News You Can Bruise

Kevin told me that "traditional goth" is now considered its own musical genre. Soon there'd better be a musical genre called Zithermania!, or I'll be disappointed.

For Sanil's benefit I cropped and put up pictures of the Kevin/Sanil/Leonard peace grove hike, but I haven't named the pictures yet so unless you like poking through directories full of unnamed files, you might be frustrated. But here's a special picture for Susanna, which I took while walking to the BART from North Beach.

On Saturday, a sadistic Kevin made me and Sanil (visiting from Chennai) hike up Wildcat Peak near Berkeley. Apart from the hellish ascent and the treacherous descent, it was nice. A Nike missile silo (q.v.) on the summit has been beaten into a plowshare of an observation deck from which you can see the entire San Francisco Bay. I have pictures but who knows whether you can see anything in them--I've only seen tiny thumbnails so far because I can't find my USB memory card reader.

There's a "Peace Grove" below the observation deck in which certain trees have been provided the local Rotary Club with plaques comemmorating peacemakers (from a Rotary Club point of view, I guess) like Desmond Tutu, Anwar Sadat, Adlai Stevenson, and Edward Teller. Kevin claims Henry Kissinger has a plaque, but we couldn't find it.

The Peace Grove is great because there's no trail through it, no list of plaques, and no guidebook references--just a marking on the trail map and the word of your (not particularly trustworthy) guide. I probably shouldn't even be talking about it, lest I spoil the fun of crunching through the brush looking for plaques. It's like a monument plus a geocache.

In college, Adam Kaplan and I had this running joke about Brian Kernighan as a sort of freelance Santa Claus. He'd break into your house on Christmas Eve and leave you UNIX source tapes or a Plan 9 installation. If you'd been bad, you'd get lumps of Windows NT.

Anyway, while we were having our little jokes, the real Brian Kernighan was riding high at Lucent, lording it over Kevin and giving interviews to fans. Years later, Adam sends a pointer to me and Kris as a reminder... of what could have been. Ach, it's a sad story, and one told for no apparent reason.

PS: confidential to Adam et al. Is it okay if I link to your Livejournals? You don't really advertise them and I know Kris has his own non-Live journal, but sometimes I'd like to link to something you write and I don't know if that's okay or if you want to keep them semi-private or if you even know I know about them, in which case, oops.

Salon ran an article about CollabNet and I am quoted. Admittedly, all I'm quoted for is to set up Kevin's joke. It's a good joke!

Thing I've learned from talking to reporters: they will get you to talk their ear off and then use one sentence of what you said. It's not their fault. They're just bored. They're hoping you'll say "You know what I hate? Cute puppies!", because that's a story. Not your lame software whatever.

stack's roommate did a documentary on the Weather Underground that was nominated for an Oscar but did not win. stack went to the Oscars and was duly saluted by the papparazzi. Kevin sez, "Don't you hate it when Sandra Bullock gets in your shot?" This is an ongoing problem for stack.

PS: stack's day job project is out.

Kevin wished me luck today in his usual pointless way, by telling me of a Japanese bean-throwing ceremony that takes place today.

After throwing the beans, people eat the same number of beans as their age to wish for good health that year. For example, if you are 20 years old, you will eat 20 beans.

Hopefully you eat different beans from the ones you threw.

Kevin has a longstanding yet irrational fear that the final act of the HBO drama of his life will begin when he goes to Bolivia and is caught in a Cryptonomicon-style luggage sa-bo-tage. These people are not in as much trouble as Kevin will be in his hour of need, but I'll link to anything that makes him apprehensive. They're taking it pretty well, all things considered:

"Bolivia is one of the last strongholds of indigenous values," Reimuller said. "It needs to be preserved in our world."

Kevin and I came up with a set of snappy last words:

Screw you, history!

Feel free to use them if you're on your deathbed and can't think of any good last words.

For no real reason, Kevin sent me some funny reminiscence essays on post-Communist Czech culture.

Kevin said I'd be good at this, and he wouldn't let it drop, just kept bugging me about it, so here goes. You can send me your personal problems, or someone else's personal problems, or some funny personal problem you made up, and I will play the advice columnist on your behalf. Keep it clean. Your anonymity is ensured, except to me. My answers will not be as good as Ray's, but your letter is more likely to be answered.

Disclaimers: Advice may not be helpful. I know nothing about interpersonal relationships, yet my pronouncements will be delivered with the cocksure air of authority. Your email may be published in full or in part. Not valid for US residents living underseas.

Kevin asked me what kind were my guitars (<--pictures!). I didn't know because I don't pay attention to that. Today I checked, and it turns out the electric is a Greg Bennett Design, and the hybrid is a Greg Bennett Desig, which is probably a misprint. So, evidently Greg Bennett makes guitars I really like that are in my price range.

Adam Parrish's suggestion, that to get my French back I buy a French phrasebook and simply read it cover to cover, has been surprisingly helpful. However, the phrasebook is full of ridiculous phrases like "Where are the most beautiful landscapes?", which implies that Francophones have some device that measures the beauty of a landscape, and that they are keeping this information secret from the rest of us. Also, the phrasebook assumes you're going to France, and contains precious little information about Belgium other than an injunction to check out the fine linens and crystal, which I have no intention of doing.

Finally, the vowels in my phrasebook have all sorts of weird lines on top of them, like sprigs of linguistic parsley. So Kevin and I are starting our own phrasebook, dealing with situations likely to occur specifically in Belgium, and with no funny accents on the characters to confuse things. The English phrases are Kevin's; the French, my half-assed translations.

"Give me the large waffle with herring."
"Je voudrais du grand gaufre des harengs."

"Please place the kippers under my shoe in the morning."
"S'il vous plait, mettez les kippers sous mes chausseures le matin."

"You heard me; you know where the damn kippers go."
"Tu m'entende; tu sait ou vont les kippers!"

"Get out of my way; I'm heading to France."
"Allez! Allez! Je vais au France!"

Kevin got me started on drinking sparkling water. I don't know why I do this. I think sparkling water tastes awful, yet I'm drinking it. I asked Kevin, why does he drink this water that tastes so awful. Kevin said, "It's an adult beverage." Adult beverage, my eye. That's just a code phrase for "it tastes awful". What is the actual appeal of sparkling water?

Update: Sumana's suggestions, in helpful outline form:

1. You know that it has been through a factory at some point, and that it is not plain tap.
   1. prestige
   2. safety, quality of water (my hypothesis on why Russians want their bottled water carbonated)
2. Costs more (prestige).
3. Flavors. Like an Italian soda without the calories.
4. More "festive" so teetotalers can fit in at a party.

Update #2: A. Cairns writes on the topic "Why I drink sparkling water":

It's like drinking deadly, alkaline poison -- without all the messy dying!

It calms my fears of mortality.

Kevin and I are on call all of today for an upgrade, so I'm going to his house and we're going to have an on call party. At any moment, we could be called upon to eat food or whoop it up.

In LA, on the way to the zoo, there's a stretch of freeway where you drive along the Los Angeles river. Some of the storm drain covers that exit into the river have cat faces painted on them. I seem to recall this portion of the road being referred to in our household as "the kitty freeway".

I told Kevin about the painted Los Angeles river cats. He didn't believe me. I showed him this web page. "I cannot believe the lengths you have gone to to pull this hoax off," said Kevin.

Kevin's back from his vacation, and he says "I did."

Kevin: "Whenever I get spam about meeting sexy singles, I picture scantily clad slices of processed cheese."