# 01 Jun 2002, 11:10AM: Why do I crave barbecue-flavored potato chips?
# 02 Jun 2002, 09:31AM:
See, if I wanted to get all the quiz-taking benefits of a LiveJournal
poster, but wanted to show that I was hipper than all those nouveau
blouge LJ people, I could take quizzes like:
If I were
a package in Debian GNU/Linux,
my package name would be:
kernel-patch-2.0.7-brainwane
What's yours?
# 03 Jun 2002, 12:34AM GMT+5:30:
Remind me to read The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. Le Guin), Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison), and Maximum Light (Nancy Kress) in the next four weeks. Oh, and also my Russia reading. Ack!
I just read Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, and really liked it. I hated The Red Pony nine years ago, but then again, Steinbeck could definitely be a writer one doesn't appreciate in eighth grade.
My flatmates, mostly, are watching the World Cup and drinking beer. Alex just got a Darwin Awards book. I'm trying to speed-read Soviet history so I can give him back his books by tomorrow, when he'll return them after dropping the class. Even though it's interesting, I have trouble staying awake. I thought I was done with this!
# 03 Jun 2002, 12:40AM: On Sunday I had my first bike accident. I didn't brake in time and skidded to a fall. Just a little scrape, no blood, but still embarrassing. I still really like biking, but I should study the map of Berkeley bike lanes to find better and less hair-raising ways to get around & about. Soon I'll have enough strength and steering ability to signal stops and turns with my left arm, as per law.
# 03 Jun 2002, 01:33AM:
Russian history fascinates me. The history of the Soviet Union is
akin to the Mahabharata in its grandeur. In fact, I would love
an Amar Chitra Katha comic book detailing the life of the USSR!
Counterrevolutionary sense...tingling!
I want to distill my attraction into a wise phrase, but it's a romance with tragedy,
that's all. Anna Karenina helped me understand why people
like soap operas, and Soviet history helps me understand why people
like real operas.
# 03 Jun 2002, 11:07AM: I just posted on Craigslist to find a place to live and sell my slightly used inline skates and protective padding, in case you can help me out with either of those desiderata.
# 03 Jun 2002, 10:44PM GMT+5:30:
I really need to get enough sleep and nutrition and stretch regularly
if I aim to use the bike as my primary mode of transportation.
Today the ride to school seemed much harder than it had the previous
time. I tried futzing with gears but it didn't help. Probably I
just didn't have as much energy as I needed.
I started and finished Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven
today, as I am wont to do with books when I get my way. Not to
pull a "more relevant than ever!", but my
ability and inability to change my surroundings has intrigued me
for a long time, and I read this book just as I was contemplating
the responsibility I take for myself as I break away from my parents.
More questions than answers, as per good Le Guin (as opposed to good
Nancy Kress).
Professor Fish on the influence of the USSR on the Eastern Bloc:
"If you can make Germans lazy and unproductive, Hungarians rude, and
Russians inhospitable, you've accomplished a great deal."
# 03 Jun 2002, 11:14PM: I just did a spiel for my flatmate Alex, the combination "I'm using GNU/Linux" and "Why a picture of Jon Johansen is on my wall" spiel. In the process, I showed Benoit and Alex a screen on which I was using lynx to view my web page. "This is a browser," I said. "That's the web?!" they said. They couldn't believe that I could use a graphicless browser to view the web. I felt as though I was channeling Evangelist Seth.
# 03 Jun 2002, 11:22PM:
I think my flatmates are discussing Friends in the living
room even as I type. In a serious way. "Phoebe had so much potential,
they wasted it after the first few seasons"-sort comments are
being made.
Okay, someone just accused someone else of overanalysis, so maybe
I don't have to scream.
(And one of these people had the nerve to call lynx ugly? The pot calling the kettle aesthetically unpleasing, sniff.)
# 03 Jun 2002, 11:38PM: Leonard told me that one reason he likes Boxjam's Doodle is that it's the only webcomic he knows that has made a reference to Sabado Gigante.
# 04 Jun 2002, 01:06AM: What's the cure for the blues? For me, just now, it was getting a letter from Jade and learning how to use the Unix command ln to create symbolic links. I've been meaning to find out how to create symlinks for years!
# 04 Jun 2002, 10:20AM:
This poor schmuck
is either really sweet or really lost.
Happy news: I got an A in logic, too. Possibly even an A+, depending
on how Professor Warren eventually curves the grade.
And I read the New York Times story
about a Masai community that just found out about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
and resolved to help the US by sending us fourteen precious cows.
So uplifting that it led me to tears.
# 04 Jun 2002, 12:13PM: I can imagine a sitcom where Ralph Nader is the wacky guy next door. The main character's catch-phrase for greeting him would be "Hiya, Nader!" and Nader would follow him the house, helpfully pointing out consumer safety hazards. "That lamp isn't UL-approved, you know." "Hey, are you sure you want to eat that poultry? Let me tell you about the way they butcher those things in the modern meatpacking industry..."
# 05 Jun 2002, 11:31AM:
Those of us who like tea, Russian, or HOW-TOs, and make that an inclusive
or, will like The Russian Tea
HOW-TO.
Last night I finally got to hear Adam sing his songs,
accompanying himself on the guitar. What a great voice! He sang in my
living room, since the Starry Plough, host of Tuesday night open mics, was
a long wait and (to me) crowded and loud and unpleasant. What's the point
of going somewhere with friends if the entertainment is lousy and you
can't hold a conversation? Aside from booze.
I got to speak a bit of Russian with a visitor to my house yesterday. It
is so, so, so nice to practice Russian, and also to make other people in
my house feel excluded in the same way that I feel excluded when they all
speak French or Italian or Spanish.
# 06 Jun 2002, 12:32PM GMT+5:30:
I really enjoy the current reading for my Russia After Politics class. I
actually got excited at the suspense of the following excerpt:
Last night Leonard and I tried some product that had been ambivalently
labelled "Hot 'n Spicy Cajun Pilaf." Practically the entire
three paragraphs of copy on the back of the box tried to reconcile the
concepts of "Cajun" and "Pilaf," which, let's face it, are pretty
dissonant. I felt sorry for them, but not after I tasted the stuff.
Neither Cajun nor pilaf, really. Just sort of soggy yellow rice.
Jeana writes
of some film, "though most of the characters bordered on unlikeable
because they were just so normal and realistic. *shudder*" All kidding aside, this tells you a lot about Jeana's taste in entertainment! Although you could much more easily derive that same information from other entries in her journal, where she talks about RennFayre and so on.
Speaking of unlikeable characters, I've paused reading David Wong Louie's
The Barbarians Are Coming (a gift from Anirvan) for the same
reason that I stopped reading The Kitchen God's Wife or The
Hundred Secret Senses, one of those Amy Tan novels that isn't The
Joy Luck Club, six or seven years ago. I can't stand the
protagonist! Louie has expended the attention capital he got from me by
having his main character be a misunderstood child of Asian immigrants.
Seeing as I'm not the IMF, I'm hesitating on loaning him more.
"An important question is how different the reform process
under Khrushchev was from that initiated by Gorbachev, and why the one
ended with the entrenchment of the existing system, the other with its
collapse. We shall come to this in the final chapter..."
--Mary McAuley, Soviet Politics 1917-1991
# 06 Jun 2002, 01:41PM:
A while ago, Leonard gave me the log analyzer software he uses to find out
how people hit his site. He and I laugh over search requests, but he also
confided in me that sometimes he sees a search request that he wants to
fulfill. One such request: "poem about chess."
Inspired, the last week of finals, I wrote this:
They say that they invented chess
In India, my native land
Yet maharajas, I believe,
Would not so easily confess
Their stratagems, used to deceive
A rival prince with a weaker hand.
How did the chessbook writers guess
Whose ways to win would proudly stand
The test of time? And did they weave
Their own smart tricks? Oh, what a mess.
The tricks are not the wisdom we receive
From chess, where all victors are grand
As any king, with scepter or without
And gameworld losses are as much a rout.
# 07 Jun 2002, 11:21AM:
I've been discovering Thornhill by Moxy Früvous.
Some buxom ladies
More fun lyrics there, and for a demonstration of fandom: a fan makes
a jack-o'lantern carved as a tribute to the song.
a Lamborghini
shadowy motives in a shadowy land
some idle chatter
then splatter splatter
cue soundtrack music from the up-and-coming band
--Splatter Splatter
# 07 Jun 2002, 01:21PM GMT+5:30:
Downloading Mozilla 1.0 over
dialup, so I'm visiting Slowtown for the duration.
Mozilla has gone through something like 15 "milestone releases," so don't
fear the "1.0" moniker, I suppose.
I finished Divorce Your Car! by Katie Alvord, a gift from
Leonard, which doesn't hide its anticar biases. Reading it is like
reading The Nation; sometimes I get tired of hearing my own
prejudices exaggerated and reflected back at me. The most humorous
portion, near the end, has the author indulging her utopian vision of a
carless society for pages and pages. If the book had been written in the
last six months, I'm sure she would have worked terrorism in there
somewhere. "And without cars, people can't blow themselves up with car
bombs!"
I'm skimming for anecdotes in California Votes: The 1998 Governor's
Race: An Inside Look at the Candidates and Their Campaigns by the People
Who Managed Them, a volume I snagged from the free bin at Ned's
textbook store. I have a sentimental fondness for the 1998 California
governor's race, since I correctly predicted the outcomes of both the
contentious Democratic primary and the general election way back in
January or February for my school paper. At the time, I thought I was a
budding Cokie Roberts. Yech.
Later today I'll be participating in a Russian conversational fluency
test. I have a feeling I'll hit the wall pretty early.
Mozilla installed. Good stuff.
# 08 Jun 2002, 07:08PM:
From the quite enjoyable setup session before Nandini's party
yesterday: "That's not a laptop! That's a cat!"
I just had a very odd dream. The first weird concept: a candy, like
M&M's, whose wrapper was someone's weblog. Second: I was trying to
defend to some aggressively environmentalist woman that I had
brought both a plastic and a canvas bag on my shopping expedition,
and said that I might have lined the canvas bag with the plastic bag
in the case that I bought a liquid, such as milk or orange juice, that
might spill. She told me, "I've been using the same plastic bag for
thirty years. It's very sturdy. In fact, I live in it. With a friend."
The really weird part came when Leonard and I, at a theme park, were
going to take part in some live-action roleplaying scenario. Instead,
I made up my own adventure game, which started out as comic-book
panels, but then became a terrifying game. I couldn't tell whether
I was a ghost or not, and someone in the next room had died of plague,
and then I had to fight with someone who had a knife and wanted to
kill me. I only escaped the scenario by an act of will, by remembering
that I had made up this game and that it was just a game.
I told Leonard that I had dreamt this and he nodded. I guess I've
joined the club.
Oh, and I also dreamt that there were three types of bikes: human-powered,
motorcycles, and motorized bicycles that ran on "bio-synthesized" fuel.
As per the cyberpunk rules, there were weird, barely intuitive abrbevations for the types,
e.g. "bosfo" for the latter type.
I've been wishing I had dreams as coherent and creative as the ones
that Seth and Zack mention in their journals. Well, I got my wish.
# 09 Jun 2002, 10:13AM:
Hey, I just found out about a neat, savvy East Bay blog, MemeMachineGo!,
because the author cited me
on the story of the Kenyan farmers who just found out about the World Trade Center
attack and decided to help us out with a gift of cattle.
Last night, at Seth's place:
Me: So how do your parents feel about you working for EFF?
Guy: They think I should be making more money.
Me: Oh yeah, they're Asian.
Guy: Well, my mom is. My dad is just a Republican.
# 09 Jun 2002, 08:25PM:
Today my voice made its debut at Leonard's site, as backup vocals on "Frog/Antifrog", available as an Ogg and an MP3.
It's one of the songs Leonard played for Adam and his friends last week. You might like it. It's a good song.
I just joined a writing group. During our meeting today, I wrote a short, silly story that people liked. I'll consider submitting it to relevant magazines and/or posting it here.
MemeMachineGo!, my favorite newly discovered weblog, linked
to an insightful anti-pro-natalist piece.
# 09 Jun 2002, 08:55PM:
Tomorrow I will take the Law School Admissions Test. No, I don't
want to go to law school. Rather, I want to avoid getting bothered
by my sister and mother, and therefore I take the LSAT at their
urging to "keep my options open."
I really don't feel like doing any studying at all. I took a practice
LSAT two years ago and did quite well, and I've taken a logic class
and the GRE since then, so I'll probably be fine.
# 09 Jun 2002, 09:55PM:
Now that I think about it, as much as I've disliked the bother of taking
the GRE and so on, I've felt quite exhilirated in several situations where
I've cared much less about my performance than others did. It's about the
power differential. The more you care about what others, or a test, can
do to you, the more power they have over you. It's nice to be able to
look around and stretch and not care how well I perform and feel comparatively relaxed and powerful.
Of course, whenever I run into someone who feels like that on a regular
basis, I get annoyed, but that's just because I was disempowered as a
child.
# 10 Jun 2002, 10:03AM:
I really have to be grateful to Kris. Some Mondays, Wednesdays, and
even Fridays, the first glimpse of joy I find in the morning is when I remember that a new
Checkerboard Nightmare
is up.
Rob Walker's latest,
at Slate, takes a profound look at a subtly profound ad for the XBox. Perhaps the most telling part of the article is at the end
-- Walker apologizes for not replying to e-mail correspondence, saying
that "because of a software download gone horribly awry, this and almost
all the other e-mail correspondence I received early last week (as
well as every message I'd ever sent or received prior to that and my
entire address book) was wiped out." Hey, what do you want to bet that Rob uses the software of his employer, Microsoft, which sponsors Slate?
In more Slate metacommentary: Slate has a conceit
of several categories for articles, e.g., Chatterbox, Moneybox, Culturebox.
Michael Kinsley used to be editor of Slate. Now he's not. So he should no longer get the authoritative category "Readme" for his editorials.
Wouldn't "Soapbox" be more apropos?
# 10 Jun 2002, 10:17AM:
Welcome, Susanna! One more and we get a toaster.
I don't think I've dreamed much recently, not since that nap-dream about candy weblogs and aggro environmentalists and doom.
# 10 Jun 2002, 08:46PM:
There are annular eclipses, as I saw today, but I kinda prefer Leonard eclipses, which happen every day. I like it when Leonard blocks my view of the sun.
I took the Law School Admissions Test today, and any slight feeling of superiority or power ("Ha ha, I don't actually care about my score and you do, suckers") got outweighed when I found myself drudging over questions for hours in a warm room and actually caring, as I can't help but do, about whether I got the answers "right." More whining and nitpicking later.
There's DisneyWorld and DisneyLand. When will we see a DisneyStan?
# 11 Jun 2002, 01:28PM GMT+5:30:
I finished Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. Anirvan and other friends had raised my expectations of this book, and Coupland matched them. A very good book. It made me tear up and several times it made me look around for someone to hug. Read it!
Now, I really should catch up on my Russia After Communism reading, but I borrowed Jon Stewart's book of essays, Naked Pictures of Famous People, from Seth, so Democracy From Scratch: Opposition and Regime in the New Russian Revolution may have to wait.
# 11 Jun 2002, 02:36PM:
Sometimes I believe that investigative reporting is
dead, but - in case you haven't seen it yet - the San Francisco Chronicle has been fighting with the FBI for seventeen years over FOIA requests to bring to light a terrifying story of government intrusion and unaccountability.
It was optional question number 7 on UC's 1959 English aptitude test for high school applicants -- and Hoover was livid:
"What are the dangers to a democracy of a national police organization, like the FBI, which operates secretly and is unresponsive to public criticism?"
Hoover took any attack on the FBI personally. As soon as he learned about the essay question, he ordered Assistant FBI Director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach to start a covert public relations campaign to embarrass the university and pressure it to retract the question.
Oh, and then it got hushed up that Reagan had associated with possibly-maybe-Communist front organizations in his past.
It's rather important to remember that government officials are people, not machines, and that if they get more power with fewer limits then they will abuse it.
The essay question
# 12 Jun 2002, 12:19AM:
Today I noticed that, while marking the date in a log, I had typed "3003" instead of "2002."
I also wrote my first shell script, to further automate my analysis of server logs. Yay!
What's more, Andrew Holloway (best viewed in a nongraphical browser), upon installing NewsBruiser, figured out and told me the trick for getting datestamps boldfaced again. Thanks.
# 12 Jun 2002, 12:39AM GMT+5:30:
Douglas Coupland's Microserfs is very, very good. I found myself returning to it after I'd finished, locating plot twists and insights. Its style reminds me of weblogs, since it's in diary-to-unspecified-audience form, and it's inspiringly good. I'd rather not write anything here that wouldn't be good enough to go into Microserfs. Maybe that'll be my criterion from now on.
Over dinner I read some of Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People. Not as knee-slappingly hilarious as I'd hoped, although the essays got better if I imagined them in Stewart's voice, as a monologue on The Daily Show.
For school, I started reading Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ride From Communism to Capitalism by Chrystia Freeland. I love hearing and reading about the end of the Communist regime in Russia. I love the stories of heroic dissidence and new liberties and glasnost and the hope. But it's so depressing to read about how the post-Soviet regimes have monumentally messed up a grand opportunity. It's like reading about Reconstruction and how it ended. (For people not familiar with US history, Reconstruction was the regime over the former Confederacy after our Civil War that aimed on reforming the South and giving blacks equality, both de facto and de jure, with whites.) Since my Russia After Communism class is now past the recap of Soviet history, and we'll now focus on the post-Communist period, I expect I'll get bummed rather often. I hope not.
In case you're wondering what got me on this whole Russia kick, the general list goes something like: Anna Karenina six years ago, and a weird masochistic desire to learn some unpopular (at UC Berkeley) and hard language, and -- I just remembered this recently -- a Wired article I read in 1998. At the time, I didn't even notice that it was by Bruce Sterling. It was the "Second World" sketch, a fascinating portrait of a fascinating situation. I also loved the other articles in that issue, a "First World" look at Silicon Valley and a "Third World" adventure in Africa on its way to wiredness. And that article on Russia is one reason I decided to go to St. Petersburg instead of Moscow, and so I met John and Katie and oh, I'm so glad.
# 12 Jun 2002, 12:57AM: From my recording session with Leonard on Frog/Antifrog: "That failed worse than the NEP."
# 12 Jun 2002, 09:30AM:
Last night I dreamt, among other things, that I was a sub-intern-level staffer at Slate, that I was treated badly by the other staff, that Michael Kinsley was a stumbling drunk who couldn't keep his appointments, and that my father was the Democratic candidate for U.S. President. My father, in my dream, got so nervous and tongue-tied during his debate with the Republican candidate that the cameras panned to my dad for his rebuttal ... and his chair was empty. I was mad because now the Republicans would win for sure. I think this dream reveals both my issues with my dad, who's not always supportive and there for me, and my disappointment in the Democratic Party, ditto.
I decided to browse Paul Conrad's recent work today. Some noteworthy ones, yes; symbolism overload here, some lovely leaps of cartoon logic there. But Conrad really shined back in the fall. Not much can match "Air Force One" or "What's the difference between cocaine and anthrax?". And there's always the classic, "George W. Orwell's Justice". Come on, Conrad! Get back in that crazy half-surreal mood! For the kids!
# 12 Jun 2002, 11:58PM:
There is a coffeeshop on Shattuck near Alcatraz named "Jump'in Java".
They knew there was an apostrophe somewhere, but misplaced it.
Sort of cheery, really.
Still looking for a place to live and a job. The first will be easier
than the second. My recent experiences tell me it's rather a buyer's
market (renter's market?) for apartments and rooms if the renter is
willing to live anywhere near a BART station, as I am. Job-hunting, I
hope, will get easier once this class is over.
I actually heard a guy on a cell phone today say, "Can you hear me now?"
For your edification and amusement, I link to Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg's "Ratings: Things From the Dollar Store," parts One, Two, Three, and Four. Best line: "This unlink-the-metal-pieces game promises 'Hours of Fun.' This is such a lie that I am concerned that the package designer's pants may be on fire even now."
In related news, while browsing at Rasputin Records today, I saw at least one compilation of "Music Inspired by [X]," where the music on the CD predated X.
# 13 Jun 2002, 08:43AM:
According to Seth,
People who don't mind living in Washington (and travel all over the world) have a fantastic opportunity to get a free software job with the Science and Human Rights project at the AAAS -- working with Patrick Ball....Did I mention that incredibly great job opportunity over at AAAS? You should be breaking AAAS's doors down to apply for such a job (except don't, because they need their doors, in order to do things like protect human rights effectively).
# 13 Jun 2002, 08:57AM:
I wanna be a columnist like Jon Carroll,
because he can rationalize like so:
I could, of course, do
something. I could take steps. I could make a plan and follow it. Or I
could write a column.
# 13 Jun 2002, 01:18PM:
Ruthie is the Seventh Heaven equivalent of
St. Alia of the Knife, Paul Atreides's younger sister, in Frank Herbert's
Dune.
If anyone else in the entire world has ever made that comparison before,
I'd really like to meet them.
# 13 Jun 2002, 11:20PM:
Last night, I hung out with Zack, and tonight I hung out with Adam. Very necessary, these visits. I'd go insane if all my social contact were school and home and a bit of Leonard.
More later on cool stuff from those conversations. I'm tired. But I will tell you that, while walking down Woolsey in residential Berkeley, I saw a canonical American Beauty-style house, picket fence and all, in front of which stood a very strange fixture. It was a wrought-iron pole, about as high as a pole upon which a mailbox might sit, topped by an iron sculpture of a horse's head. From the horse's head hung a largish ring. Adam said it resembled a knocker without a door. I could imagine tying a dog's leash to the ring, perhaps. There was no other obvious explanation for this artifact. Go ahead, walk on the north side of Woolsey between College and Shattuck. Somewhere you'll see it.
# 14 Jun 2002, 12:23AM:
Just for the benefit of those of you finding my site through
search engines: Ursula K. Le Guin did not write "Harrison Bergeron" --
Kurt Vonnegut did. Also, I can't help you find Sydney Omarr's daily horoscope,
I have no pictures of naked people in Russian banyas, and I never
use a diaper as a pantiliner.
Sometimes I like looking at my server logs, and sometimes I think
Dostoyevsky never could have dreamt of the despair.
# 14 Jun 2002, 12:33AM:
Leonard and I saw Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings
twice in late December of 2001. And it is still playing! Today
Adam and I passed a theater on College Avenue that is playing that
and Amélie and Italian For Beginners.
Are there any theaters in the US that are still playing, say, Titanic? At least one, I expect.
I remember that Bob Greene wrote a column, years before the Titanic repeat-viewings craze,
about women who saw The Big Easy over and over again.
# 14 Jun 2002, 09:51AM:
I Was a Victim of the 2002 World Cup! Ordinarily I don't mind my flatmates cheering and yelling in the next room over while watching soccer matches at 4 am. I wear earplugs. No big deal.
The big deal is when your roommate sets an alarm to get up at 4 am to watch an important match, and then forgets to turn it off before she leaves for the weekend.
# 15 Jun 2002, 10:16AM: John McWhorter spells "doppelganger" as "doppelgaenger". Since he knows German, I'm inclined to think that this spelling is not a mistake, but rather a choice.
# 15 Jun 2002, 03:31PM:
Have I ever mentioned that my family annoys me? Oh, I have? Whoops.
Thrift-store purchases today included "The Story of Baleena The Blue Whale"
and a "Squad Five-O" album entitled "Bombs Over Broadway" whose cover
depicted fighter planes flying rather close to the World Trade Towers.
Publication date of this album: 2000. My mother, surprisingly,
understood why I bought it. "That has a lot of historical interest," she
noted.
# 16 Jun 2002, 10:29AM:
Ever have one of those dreams where your best friend has posted
something important in their weblog and you haven't read it yet?
I saw some old high school friends last night. The place where the
young'uns hang out in Stockton is Java Aroma, which served me, bar none, the worst
Italian soda I've ever had in my life. It tasted like sudsy curdled Jello
or Listerine with baking soda or something.
"Happy" "Father's" "Day."
# 16 Jun 2002, 09:17PM:
Frances had a really
cool dream. It reminds me of dream-visualization exercises, it's
so empowering.
(Update: Is everyone having powerful, vivid dreams these days?)
I have several little eccentric habits that only come into play once in
a great while. One of these: when I come across a TV Guide or workalike,
and see a summary of the week's soap opera plots, I skim the summary
to count the number of mentions of newish technologies -- fewer than,
say, thirty or forty years old. The usual culprits are DNA tests and
cell phones and e-mails, and the average is one per soap. Innovation
in plot devices!
Soap operas these days also contain a weirdly nonzero amount of the supernatural.
A few years ago I remember a heavily hyped storyline involving an exorcism. This week:
"In the cemetery, [typically strange soap opera name like Foster or Candida] fends off Zombie Charity with holy water."
Oh, I forgot bone marrow transplants. Can't forget the bone marrow transplants.
# 16 Jun 2002, 09:28PM:
Poor Andy!
Yeah, Adam Parrish and Adam Kaplan, though both cool and friendly
guys and both named Adam and both guitar players and both friends of
Leonard, are different people. One lives in LA and graduated from UCLA.
The other lives in Berkeley and goes to UC Berkeley. One is a Jew;
the other is an ex-Mormon. One is about to get married; the other
isn't, as far as I know, but he's a pretty passionate and impulsive guy, so who knows.
I think only Adam Parrish has a weblog. But Adam Kaplan did
write a hilarious Clifford
Pickover parody (as did his and Adam's friend Kris, whom I think
Adam Parrish has never met).
I, knowing all of them, just serve the tea and cakes.
# 16 Jun 2002, 09:45PM: Recent scary terror-paranoia dream: Sirens go off. People are terrified. I'm trying to flee. People direct me to a shelter. We're going into this gray structure. I catch sight of a sign on the wall: "No Outside Food or Beverages." What's going on? I don't want to be here. I deliberately lose the group, try to escape through an open window. Guards catch me. It's not a shelter, it's a forced-labor camp. They took advantage of our terror to enslave us.
# 16 Jun 2002, 09:48PM GMT+5:30:
In the nongraphical web browser lynx, if you use the left-arrow key to
access the previously viewed web page but there is no previous web page,
you get this message: "You are already at the first document". Now that
I've read Microserfs, this reminds me of the following excerpt:
Q. What animal would you be if you could be an animal?
A. You are already an animal.
# 17 Jun 2002, 11:02AM:
I can't believe that Scott Shuger is dead.
Why do women blow the whistle more often than men these days?
Leonard had a great idea and implemented it very well: Probing the Collective Unconscious.
I have to study for my midterm in five hours.
# 17 Jun 2002, 11:54AM GMT+5:30:
Done with Democracy From Scratch, which was the big hurdle
because it's a book, not a bunch of easy-to-skim articles that basically
give you the gist in the first page. In Democracy From
Scratch, Fish categorizes members of the Russian democratic movement
into four categories: Compromisers, Pragmatic Radicals, Saints, and
Fanatics. He details characteristics of each one, and the problems they
had working together. At the end of the section I felt as though I could
write a small role-playing game where players each choose one of these
identities and the goal is to overthrow communism. Leonard and I came up
with a name: Democratizers and Dupes. "The KGB infiltrates your
organization; twelve hit points." Leonard thinks that I should actually
attempt to write this game. Maybe after I find a frickin' job.
# 17 Jun 2002, 03:51PM:
I've decided that totalitarianism, being a form of security, is a process, not a product. As such, "Is This System Totalitarian Or Not" is a question that sort of misses the point. Did this system aim for totalitarianism? To what degree did it succeed? That's how I unpack the question.
To midterm!
# 17 Jun 2002, 05:44PM:
Done with the midterm.
A guy named Richard D. Anderson wrote an article about "The Discursive Origins of Russian Democratic Politics." It's full of discourse this and game theory that. It's so 90s.
Leonard suggested that Richard D. Anderson is the same guy who played MacGyver. I replied, "There can only be one crossover political theorist/actor per generation, and Ben Stein is it."
Soon I need to tell you more about the harsh restrictions on LSAT-takers and the surprising funness of the film The Bourne Identity.
# 17 Jun 2002, 05:44PM: The Daily Show replied to my fan letter! They sent me a package with a Daily Show pen and pencil and keychain and stress toy and hat! I'm wearing my Daily Show hat right now, the cynosure of hip campusgoers everywhere.
# 18 Jun 2002, 11:47AM:
I wondered whether The Daily Show would hire me, and visited
their jobs listings. Probably not.
Paulina: "You could go to New York and try to make it big."
Me: "Oh, that's so twentieth-century."
# 18 Jun 2002, 01:03PM: Thank goodness that Italy is out of the World Cup. Now that France, Italy, and Mexico are all out of contention, maybe people in my house will go to sleep at a decent hour.
# 18 Jun 2002, 03:20PM: Kenny Byerly has alerted me that he has a piece out in the new, Star Wars-themed Mad Magazine, illustrated by none other than Mort Drucker!
# 18 Jun 2002, 10:02PM:
Yesterday I played a fifteen-minute game of chess, losing to a friendly
street player named Walter. I actually like chess when I can play
a friendly stranger and not be ashamed of losing. It develops my strategy-sense, and that's a nice feeling.
I've made another stab at completing the archives of my old weblog, December 2000-October 2001. When I finish, I'll convert
it all into NewsBruiser format and consolidate the directories and then somehow that will be really convenient for you all.
# 19 Jun 2002, 11:02AM:
Jon Carroll: Taste defensiveness hidden in a meandering, self-indulgent column:
If I had enough money, I'd eat at Venus (yummy fusion) and La Note (frou-frou Provencal) and Berkeley Thai House (Thai with tablecloths) instead of making Annie's Shells and Cheddar and mixing in spinach, my all-purpose vegetable.
Hey, if you want spoilers for a movie, sometimes it's best to go to the goofs.
And Leonard wrote a very funny nitpick of Star Wars that I'd nominate for The Best of Leonard. Sort of Instapundit meets, well, Leonard. Includes the phrase "Sen. Palpatine (I-Naboo)".
I'm listening to labor songs. Nandini told me about a job opening. I'm feeling good.
...we ate at Grasshopper in Oakland, one of those chi-chi places featuring Asian tapas served on square plates and looking like miniature sculptures. It was the stuff of parody, and I loved it. I like Northern California, damn it, and if you think our fancy food is funny, go have a Grand Slam Breakfast.
# 19 Jun 2002, 01:03PM: I mentioned that Kenny Byerly has a piece in the new Mad. He's also been gracious and self-aggrandizing enough to let us in on links to all the articles he's written for the Heuristic Squelch in one easy index and an MP3 file recording a stand-up performance of his.
# 19 Jun 2002, 08:11PM:
Mike Popovic says that the horse's head and attached ring were,
in the olden days, where callers would tie up their horses.
I got a job interview, and am following three or four very
different job leads. Hey, I wonder if the new Office of Homeland
Security wants me? I major in political science, after all.
# 19 Jun 2002, 08:19PM: Want to get appointment to a government position? Funny direction in the application process: "For prefix use Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss, Dr., Senator, Judge, Mayor, etc."
# 19 Jun 2002, 11:53PM:
Not all former Soviet republics are interchangeable.
He's
The
Sentimental gentleman from Kazakhstan
Kazakhstaaaaaaaan...
# 20 Jun 2002, 09:05AM:
Busy day coming up. Job interview, lunch appointment, doctor
appointment, class, Nandini appointment.
Fun email from Camille:
look at the bigotry i have to deal with in this city:
'...I am an Apple enthusiast, so PC preachers may not need to apply'
I've been so busy with the job hunting that I haven't done nearly enough
house-hunting. Aiee.
how is your apartment hunt going? mine has just begun (my lease is up in
september) and man is it difficult.
# 21 Jun 2002, 08:18AM:
EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE. I waited too long to decide about whether to accept an apartment offer and when I got back to her she had just rented out the place last night. EXPLETIVE!
Well, back to Craigslist.
# 21 Jun 2002, 08:50AM: Yesterday, Professor Fish asked about my gloves. I told him that they're One Size Fits Most. "Media Most, that is!" I added. We laughed.
# 21 Jun 2002, 05:42PM:
A coffeeshop would have hired me but I balked at the commitment of working variable hours for $7.25 an hour, plus tips, for at least a year.
I really feel run-down from pavement pounding. I wish I didn't have to worry about money.
# 22 Jun 2002, 09:25AM:
I found a temporary place to live, not too far from my current place. The flatmate(s) seem good. One of them is a teacher! And they don't mind that I'm moving in mid-July. Thanks, Craigslist!
Oh yeah, now I have to find a job. Still.
# 22 Jun 2002, 11:02PM GMT+5:30:
After a great (really!) Saturday with Leonard in Colma, I raced to Albany to watch Zed Lopez perform in a bit of improv. Quite fun, and free, and a reminder that I miss performing, be it as a teacher or as a stand-up comedian. Again, maybe after I find a job.
I'm almost done with Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Only twenty pages ago did I get to the big metanarrative turning point. I'm wondering where Vonnegut is going, and I assume it'll be worth it.
Old bookmarks, submitted for your edification:
# 22 Jun 2002, 11:11PM:
On Thursday I saw a woman wearing pants with a camouflage print...
and sparkles embedded in the cloth. My jaw dropped at the genius of it. Camouflage, with sparkles!
The sparkles completely subvert and deny the original purpose of
the primary design! The camouflage, ostensibly, hides the
wearer, while the sparkles draw attention!
I think this is the first time I've ever really seen clothes as art.
# 22 Jun 2002, 11:18PM: I hereby name Anirvan Chatterjee the brainwane.net Bay Area Entrepreneur of the Year. Congratulations, Anirvan!
# 23 Jun 2002, 08:53AM: Now that I know that the government can investigate my reading habits on little pretext, I feel more inclined to visit David Wexler, the used bookseller who carries his inventory in a van, at the Ashby BART today. In fact, it makes me want to patronize used bookstores in general, and use cash whenever I can. Help! I'm turning into a dystopian cyberpunk!
# 23 Jun 2002, 01:47PM: Every Monday, an open mic at the Bear's Lair, ending tomorrow. Hmm! Perhaps I'll whip up some material and do some stand-up.
# 23 Jun 2002, 02:02PM: Maybe in a few years I could get a job like O'Reilly Publishing Technical Editor. Oh, I'm just kidding myself.
# 23 Jun 2002, 07:51PM:
"Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands."
# 23 Jun 2002, 11:21PM GMT+5:30:
I book-traded today at the Ashby BART flea market. Among my gains:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Now
that Nandini and I have read "The Minority Report" and "We Can
Remember It For You Wholesale," we might read ...Electric
Sheep and arrange some Dick-based movie marathon of Bladerunner and Minority Report and Total Recall.
Two more weeks till I'm done with college!
# 24 Jun 2002, 09:36AM:
Looking for frustrated sarcasm among our nation's elected leaders?
Here ya go:
Listening to Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen. I'd forgotten how good it is. "Brick" gets better with age. It captures inevitability and despair quite well.
I'm resisting posting links from Blogdex because if you wanted lots of links to interesting web content you'd go there too. I do encourage you to visit Blogdex. I find at least one really worthwhile link on the front page every day.
Sabrina is a liar; she told me that there was nothing to do in New Orleans but drink. She must have been depressed when she told me that. Or just malicious.
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) added, "I don't want to tie [the president's] hands, but I think he would want to get congressional approval."
Yeah, that whole War Powers Act and everything. Jeez. We're getting to the point where our parliament is as powerless as the Council in the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
# 24 Jun 2002, 11:08AM:
Adam and I will perform at
tonight's Bear's Lair
open mic, barring disasters. He'll sing and play the guitar,
I'll do stand-up. The Original Odd Couple. This is
less a "come see us!" invite than sort of an obligatory record of my upcoming
performance in a public space. My point is, please feel under no obligation to
come on down, but do indeed come on down if it strikes your fancy.
Josh, the cook, who took my signup over the phone, told me that the
usual mix at these open mics is "80% acoustic-guitar singer-songwriters, and
the remaining twenty percent is people trying to do bad hip-hop."
As long as I'm doing funny quotes: I used up the end of a roll of film
this morning by taking pictures in my apartment. Paulina didn't object,
but Benoit cried out in mock-despair, "We're nothing to you! We're
just -- the end of the film!"
# 24 Jun 2002, 01:59PM:
The Capoeira Arts Cafe on Addison is looking for a factotum, but only
if you can give them a yearlong commitment. I couldn't. But maybe you can.
In other job search news: "Are you bright and a go-getter with solid computer skills?....We're a person-to-person buying and selling marketplace that is on the verge of
achieving great things....The only requirements are excellent written and verbal skills and a willingness
to do whatever it takes to get the job done."
Is this some ad that's jumped forward in time from 1997? No, it's not the ad,
it's the company. IOffer. "...a willingness
to do whatever it takes to get the job done." Evidently they're hiring assassins.
# 24 Jun 2002, 03:06PM:
Benoit told me that the family he stayed with in Charlotte, NC was
almost exactly like the family in Seventh Heaven.
Today's rerun of Seventh Heaven featured the family
hosting...a French exchange student! Highlights included the line,
"We French are as addicted to women as we are to cigarettes!" and
cheesy accordion music in the background whenever the guest was
onscreen. Oh, and a few comic-relief Asian-American kids who
eavesdropped on a chatroom conversation between the minister and his wife.
# 24 Jun 2002, 10:41PM:
Tonight I was the first comedian in recent memory to perform stand-up
at the Bear's Lair Monday Open Mic Night. I did rather well with a "Best Of"
set. I even did an encore, which also did well. Adam, Zed, Leonard, Josh, and Karen watched and applauded. Adam went so far as to play music to warm up the crowd before my set! Well, and to express himself artistically.
I was told that people actually stopped talking and came closer to my
part of the bar while I performed. Wow!
Recipe for a good stand-up performance:
Well, those are my tips, anyway. I seem to have done well recently.
# 25 Jun 2002, 12:29PM:
I'm still basking in Zed's praise: "very funny and did a great job". And more!
Almost as good as "But are they bowing to a false god?":
Bush's peace plan: "'Clear moral vision' or 'sugar-coated palliative'?"
Update: I read to Paulina Zed's friend's description of stereotypical stand-up comedians as "bitterly taking out their need for therapy on the audience." She said, "Really? I think you need therapy....I think everybody needs therapy," she revised upon my squinty stare.
# 25 Jun 2002, 06:56PM:
"[T]he maddest of proppiest props" on last night's performance keep
pouring in! No, I can't resist linking to you if you praise me.
I've installed SpamAssassin on my e-mail account
at the OCF. I don't find spam that bothersome, but maybe that's just because I'm
used to it, and in a few weeks I'll find myself wondering how I ever
lived with the quantity of spam I'm accustomed to receiving.
# 26 Jun 2002, 11:04AM:
I've never thought of my humor as meta-stereotype humor, but if anyone would know, it's Leonard. He seemed to like my routine better than he had liked almost the exact same material the last time he had seen it. That, I can't explain.
Update: Oh, I see. I thought he was talking about
my stereotype-humor bit in which I joke about living with a Mexican, a Texan, a Frenchman and an Italian,
not the bit about my parents. My error.
# 26 Jun 2002, 12:15PM:
Celebration: Adam found a new place to live! Yay for staving off
homelessness! It's in the ritzy Claremont Hills, best known to me
for their nominal resemblance to Claremont Avenue, where the Alameda
County Blood Bank lives (and gives the gift of life).
Adam, Josh and I feasted the occasion at Nation's (a hamburger-and-pie
24-hour diner) in El Cerrito into the wee hours of this morning. Adam, trying to
describe someone: "Have you ever seen the liner notes to Pink Floyd's
Dark Side of the Moon? [upon seeing me begin to write down
that quotation]...This is always a horrible moment, being blogged."
I finally remembered what comes before "beggorah" if you're a stereotypical
Irishman: "faith and" -- but first Google pulled up references to "Sodom and Beggorah," evidently references to degraded Dublin.
My dad spells "microfiche" as "Microfish".
# 26 Jun 2002, 03:12PM:
As Seth said, "(!!)"
Oh, and I never thought I'd see the following: The Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and can no longer be recited in schools because it includes the phrase "under God," a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
In other school-related religious cases [italics mine], the high court has said that schools cannot post the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
# 27 Jun 2002, 09:43AM:
Today I explained the Supreme Court's decision on the Pledge of Allegiance to Camilla, who is from Italy. Even though I hadn't done it in years, I knew the ritual by heart and could easily demonstrate it to her. Note: as my family moved westward, I found myself performing the Pledge less and less at school. Are Pennsylvanian traditions or laws different in this regard from California's, or can I chalk it up to a difference between grade school and high school?
Jon Carroll's ambivalent reaction, while insightful, doesn't seem to take any position at all, and just wrings its hands while switching between them. On the other hand, Seth Schoen's nuanced, heartfelt, skeptical assessment takes a definite position, provides answers (of a sort), and provokes thought. He makes me want to make him dinner, since he doesn't have a tipjar. And the thing is, he writes like this all the time! If you aren't already reading his journal, you're not hip.
The reason I had to explain the Pledge to Camilla: I had ejaculated, "That jerk!" upon reading the teaser for this Salon Premium editorial by Alan Wolfe, which starts, "The Ninth Circuit's official sponsorship of atheism..." What a malicous, fallacy-spewing bastard! There's a difference between "sponsorship" and "recognition as a legitimate viewpoint." It makes me tired.
# 27 Jun 2002, 03:29PM: To make us feel better, here's a silly article about bananas. Oh, and here's the cute baby elephant picture that's keeping Leonard sane.
# 27 Jun 2002, 08:46PM:
During today's class debate, one side evidently delegated to one
pleasant fellow the task of making all the fallacious or weak arguments.
Highlights included a post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc and a fuzzy-math attack on
not just the other side's statistics, but on statistical indices in
general. I slept and read the classified ads.
In more pleasant news, one potential employer has sent me a request
for another writing sample. I'm working on it and crossing my fingers.
# 28 Jun 2002, 12:04PM: Expedia is like the opposite of Google. That is to say, Google is fast and gives me what I want, and Expedia is slow and acts like it'll give me what I want and then withdraws it at the last moment. I'm Charlie Brown, Expedia is Lucy, and airplane tickets are the football.
# 28 Jun 2002, 12:58PM:
On Monday I ate Gardenburgers with ketchup and mustard between slices of black bread. When I ran out of bread I ate the patties by themselves.
On Tuesday I was out of ketchup, but I had snagged packets from Smart Alec's when I'd gone there for dinner the night before, so I ate patties and ketchup and mustard. That lasted till Wednesday, when I used soy sauce, and discovered that using tortillas helped.
Yesterday I ate Gardenburgers in tortillas with pasta sauce. Extra basil helped.
Today I'm sick of Gardenburgers, so I tried eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but only after I poured the bowl did I discover that the whole house is out of milk.
The capstone is that I often ate these miserable lunches while watching "A Makeover Story" on The Learning Channel.
Or maybe a better conclusion would be: Cogito, ergo give me a job. Or, To know me is to love me is to hire me.
# 29 Jun 2002, 07:58PM:
From hanging out with Seth and Leonard last night: I suggested that Seth use dirt to make the path of a laser's beam more visible, to which he responded, "I have some dirt, but it's dirty."
Also: we conjectured chapters on Soviet textbooks that fulfilled the "obligatory Stalin/Lenin mention" requirement by revising history. "Stalin devised the Four-Colour Theorem after each annexation of a new territory failed in requiring a fifth color for the new map..." "Stalin could place any person or idea into one of two finite sets: revolutionary and counterrevolutionary." And so on, though I'm mangling the wit.
Today: helped Adam start to move. Met his dad and one of his sisters. The experience reminded me of what a headache moving is, and that I have to do it in two weeks. Tip: have as much as possible packed up before friends arrive to help move it! Don't procrastinate! Adam's dad is quite funny. Adam's dad is also pretty interested in India, and asked me many questions about the caste system. One reason I'm glad I don't live in India: I don't feel any social pressure whatsoever to discriminate based on caste. Also, we ate at Saul's Deli near Black Oak Books in north Berkeley. The rugelach was a revelation. The tastiest dessert I've had all month.
Now to do reading for my Russia class and prepare to sell beads at the SF Pride fest tomorrow.
"So Bush got a colonoscopy."
Adam's dad: "Did they find his head?"
# 29 Jun 2002, 08:04PM: Susanna writes that Mormon authorities get concerned when not enough couples get engaged. Man! No offense, Mormons, but that's wack.
# 29 Jun 2002, 09:28PM:
Andy Holloway and Adam both carry
guitar picks in their wallets, as I found out today.
As the maker of "The Wire" knows, it's not that institutions
inevitably turn malevolent. But in a way, I'm hesitant to believe in
things larger than myself for the same reason that I'm hesitant to make
long-term commitments, buy a house or propose marriage or choose a job.
Anything that's not me can turn on me, or die. Heck, even I could.
["The Wire" is] sort of a visual novel. We knew exactly
what we wanted to say about the bureaucratic aspects of the drug war. It
is about what happens in this land of ours when product ceases to matter,
when the institutions themselves become predominant over their purpose.
Pick up the paper: You take a job, you go down to Houston, you move your
family there, you find out they gutted the company and stole your pension.
It's like whatever you believe in, whatever you commit to that's larger
than you or your family, will somehow find a way to f--- you.
# 29 Jun 2002, 11:20PM:
Andy complained
about a paucity of bullet trains in North America. Just last night,
Leonard was complaining about the same thing. He wants an express train
between SF and LA. "I could go see my family all the time!" he said.
Man. I would hate a high-speed train between here and Stockton.
The two-hour trip is too short as it is.
I also wish I had more train options for travel to Southern California.
As I decided a few days ago, I'm traveling to Southern California for the
Fourth of July weekend...on the Fourth of July. By the time I made
this decision, no useful Bay Area-to-Bakersfield Amtrak train tickets were
left, so now I have to fly, Oakland-to-LA-to-Bakersfield. It'll be more
stressful, since I'll have to stand in more lines, and transfer, and won't
have as much room, and overall I'll feel stressed rather than calm. I
shake my fist at transportation systems in general.
When I'm less cranky and tired and busy I'll post some of my
critically-acclaimed ("proppiest of props!" - Adam Parrish) comedy
routines, à la Brian Malow. People have requested it.
Until then, moldy wishes and sour-milk dreams.
P.S. Okay, I just got two nice emails from Adam and John, and that
cheered me up a bit.
P.P.S. I miss you, Leonard.
# 30 Jun 2002, 08:06PM:
Happy Pride, as I was told on the street today. I went to San Francisco to make my fortune in selling beads at the Gay Pride Fest. I saw the usual unusual sights, e.g., costumes, accents from all over, little old straight people walking past camped-out or ultra-punk hipsters.
As a vendor, I didn't quite feel like a spectator in the event so much as a part of the festival machinery. This led to odd emotional conflicts when I actually wanted to watch the parade, and when I felt uncomfortable as an agent of the commercialization of the fair. I mean, I saw contingents from Gay-Straight Alliances from high schools, and from PFLAG chapters, and I felt moved, and then I had to go back to hawking "colorful, festive, and inexpensive" rainbow beads, chains, and flags.
On the up side, at least for me, I made some money and now I can afford rent and food. Oh, and I was the booth's "champion," selling the most of any walking beadseller. Ambivalent yay!
# 30 Jun 2002, 08:13PM:
Care for a sample of the beadseller's cant?
Rainbow beads, rainbow flags, rainbow leis, rainbow braids. One, two, three, five dollars, rainbow beads, starting at just one dollar. Colorful, festive, and inexpensive. I got rainbow beads, starting at just one dollar. Care to buy some rainbow beads? I'm selling rainbow flags and rainbow beads, rainbow beads and rainbow flags, rainbow chains and rainbow leis, starting at just one dollar.
I've made up cants before, for hawking my classes, so this wasn't hard. I saw other beads reps, colleagues of mine, not barking! Not individually asking festivalgoers, "Care to buy some beads? Just one dollar for some of these." They just wore all the merchandise and waited for customers to come to them. No wonder I sold the most; my competitors were positively shy.
# 30 Jun 2002, 11:18PM: I am glad to see more evidence that Susanna also sees the silliness.
You can hire me through Changeset Consulting.
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