# 09 Oct 2003, 11:03AM: I'm Back:
Leonard finally persuaded me to end weeks of lethargy and let him fix my install of NewsBruiser, which broke when my host upgraded its install of Python. So I am back.
Since my last post, I have done various things. I saw Neal Stephenson and hung out with Sarah, I helped Leonard by having Salon staff taste-test his pear-maple ice cream and ginger-mango ice cream, I encouraged him to end Tonight's Episode, and I went to Millennium with him.
Millennium was expensive and takes a little getting used to. Don't get the fake-chocolate dessert or the "calming potion." I liked my apple-nut salad and tamarind tempeh. Also, it's scary walking through the neighborhood after dark, and so perhaps you'd prefer to hail a cab upon leaving Millennium. But eavesdropping-worthy people dine there.
I voted in another nightmare election. Within a few weeks, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to hold the office of governor of California. I suppose it doesn't make a difference whether I say it -- it's going to be real nonetheless -- but it just feeds my despair to type that. Cary Tennis, Salon's advice columnist, wrote a good piece about the election. More depression in the clash between right and left: Terry Gross's depressing interview with Bill O'Reilly, where he walks all over her and she is a good, polite NPR person.
Less depressing: Operation Give, which distributes desperately needed goods to Iraqis. The necessity of this charity saddens me, but its existence makes me cry with hope.
Last night I dreamt, among other things, that I was reading a Wired article written by Stephane. In it, Stephane contrasted two kinds of minimalism. "Computer minimalism" is reflexive avoidance of ornamentation. Use sans serif fonts. On the other hand, a fellow named "Brad Metzger" practices "Brad minimalism," in which he does not try to hide the flaws of an object, but redesigns the object from scratch, in a closed performance, so that the flaws were never there at all. At least, that's what the dream-article said.
Later in the dream, I asked a guy on the BART, "Are you a computer minimalist or a Brad minimalist?" and he said, "I'm a subscriber."
I'm dreaming design theory now? I'm now a SoMa San Franciscan!
# 09 Oct 2003, 11:49AM: Get Out To Vote:
Leonard and I registered to vote on the same day at a local Department of Motor Vehicles this summer, and the DMV silently misplaced or misprocessed my registration, and correctly processed his. So I went to City Hall and a courthouse in downtown SF on Election Day and successfully petitioned to vote "absentee."
My reserved, even standoffish demeanor, and possibly my tweed blazer, led the bailiff to ask whether I was a lawyer. I thought, "Seth might be pleased!" even though the bailiff probably meant it as an insult (you had to be there).
# 10 Oct 2003, 10:27AM GMT+5:30: Cody's Appearances:
Terry Pratchett is at Cody's in Berkeley tonight. Other appearances this month (after October use this link, probably) include Berkeley Breathed and Molly Ivins.
I've finished reading the first three of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mysteries. Recommended.
# 10 Oct 2003, 12:40PM: I'm One Of Those People Now:
If you call my cell phone, it will click at me a few times, then play the Good Eats melody.
# 10 Oct 2003, 02:23PM: Stage:
A colleague's spouse is in Arsenic and Old Lace, which I've never read nor seen, at the College of Marin this month. I should go.
# 10 Oct 2003, 03:43PM: "I don't have a fulfilling career. Or a piggy bank.":
Would that we all had the easily-met requirements of sweet little boys. Leonard says that Atticus is a cool kid.
# 13 Oct 2003, 05:10PM: TV:
Enterprise has been annoying me. Why do these people never take the simplest security and safety precautions?
West Wing had better improve. It used to be that each hour was jam-packed with plot. I would look at the clock, amazed that only half an hour had passed, and delightedly anticipate the remaining story. And a twist at the forty-five-minute mark only meant that another twist remained! Too slow and deliberate, now.
Last night, after a very enjoyable day with Sarah, I plopped on the futon and watched TV. I have a soft spot for Alias because sometimes they speak Russian, and for The Practice because I loved it before the mainstream did. (The only picture of a celebrity that I ever hung in my locker was a photo of Dylan McDermott (a year before he made the cover of Us). He and David Duchovny, I believed, were the only attractive male celebrities. I sought some Kabalarian-style meaning in this.)
The Practice has shifted substantially since I started watching six years back. Several of the original main characters, including McDermott's, don't appear at all in the episodes I've seen this season. However, there's a new fella who intrigues me. He really reminds me of creepy, calm, ambitious, seemingly forthright guys I know in real life. Watching him is helping me understand them.
Back to work. My inbox : a forest :: my skill and speed : a small hand-axe.
# 13 Oct 2003, 07:27PM: Uniquely Placed:
Listening to the radio. A man and a woman are speaking in a language I don't know, possibly Mandarin, but I've caught the English terms "two-for-one stock split," "trading," "profit," and various three-letter abbreviations and "eBay."
This reminds me of weekends with my family. We would drive from Stockton to Sunnyvale or Cupertino or Mountain View, all these towns that looked like suburbs through and through. I always fell asleep on the rides there and back. My dad would perform a Hindu ceremony, with my mother assisting, and my sister and I would crack jokes with our cousin Vinay, and afterwards women in sarees would arrange potluck food on a big table while the men in khakis, jeans, and button-up or dotcom shirts would group and discuss software and hardware. The men would speak some in Kannada and some in English, and of course "datacenter" and "PHP" and "Oracle" studded their conversation, and no one lacked for work. Everyone was prosperous enough and the temples in Sunnyvale and Livermore were expanding. That's how I remember the boom.
# 14 Oct 2003, 12:29PM:
Marina Sirtis, best known to me as Counselor Deanna Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, played a villain in ABC's Threat Matrix last night. She's hiding something! Nerve gas, namely.
# 14 Oct 2003, 06:33PM: Lost In Transmigration:
Trivia for Bend it Like Beckham. "Move it Like Mia"?
I'm working through the wishlog of films to see. Sarah and I saw Winged Migration over the weekend, but I still want to see Lost in Translation and want to drag Leonard to see Spellbound and Bend it Like Beckham for his first and my second time.
# 15 Oct 2003, 09:54AM: Taboooookie Crisps:
Seth came over to Leonard's last night and Leonard made a very yummy dinner. Then we adjourned to my place and played Taboo. When guessing, I sometimes lose track of the fact that long, obscure phrases are unlikely to be the Guess Words. Example: "man-in-the-middle attack."
Seth tried to get us to guess "psychiatrist" by mentioning that the person can prescribe various medicines. Of course, my mind jumped to Deepak Chopra, and then to Tupac Shakur, and then to Troy McClure, Laura McClure, and Tuvok from Voyager. All I blurted out was "Tuvok McClure!", which makes basically no sense.
# 15 Oct 2003, 01:42PM: Phony Phanatic:
Despite having watched much of Ken Burns's Baseball, I don't feel the passion for the game that many of my co-workers do. I do, however, know that it is only right and proper for the Red Sox and the Cubs to both make it to the World Series and then both lose.
# 17 Oct 2003, 05:25PM:
Every single weekday, while I'm at work, I call and/or email Leonard at least once to tell him about the outrageous or hilarious spam subject lines I've gotten that day. Examples: "basic alveolus bum", "cheaper "picker upper".......................................................................ambulant". I'm thinking of creating a separate weblog where I just post those every day, with appropriate commentary.
Update: "now is still the time". I'm going to live my life by this one.
# 20 Oct 2003, 03:38PM:
Via Kottke, How to dine out. Dine on Wednesday nights....Chat up your waiter.....Eat lots of appetizers and no entree if that's what looks good...avoid menu design tricks, etc.
# 20 Oct 2003, 08:56PM: I Predict a Club/Lecture Circuit Career:
Eminem talked trash about someone, who then sued. Judge Deborah Servitto ruled and appended a rap summary to her ruling. It's awesome.
Mr. Bailey complains that his rep is trash
So he's seeking compensation in the form of cash
Bailey thinks he's entitled to some monetary gain
Because Eminem used his name in vain
Eminem says Bailey used to throw him around
Beat him up in the john, shoved his face in the ground
Eminem contends that his rap is protected
By the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment
Eminem maintains that the story is true
And that Bailey beat him black and blue
In the alternative he states that the story is phony
And that a reasonable person would think it's baloney
The court must always balance the rights
Of a defendant and one placed in a false light
If the plaintiff presents no question of fact
To dismiss is the only acceptable act
If the language used is anything but pleasin'
It must be highly objectionable to a person of reason
Even if objectionable and causing offense
Self-help is the first line of defense
Yet when Bailey actually spoke to the press
What do you think he didn't address?
Those false light charges that so disturbed
Prompted from Bailey not a single word
So highly objectionable, it could not be
-- Bailey was happy to hear his name on a CD
Bailey also admitted he was a bully in youth
Which makes what Marshall said substantial truth
This doctrine is a defense well known
And renders Bailey's case substantially blown
The lyrics are stories no one should take as fact
They're an exaggeration of a childish act
Any reasonable person could clearly see
That the lyrics can only be hyperbole
It is therefore this Court's ultimate position
That Eminem is entitled to summary disposition
When I was in middle and early high school, we considered rapping out a book report to be novel and entertaining. I remember in particular a rap I helped write on "Otto of the Silver Hand." The seventh-grader in me wants to give Judge Servitto a high-five.
# 21 Oct 2003, 08:51AM:
It's Bayes Days at Crummy as Leonard introduces comments, gasp, with Bayesian abuse/spam filtering.
My subconscious really phoned it in last night. I dreamt that our IT manager got a haircut.
This morning a Morning Edition story covered the housing boom in Moscow. The NPR reporter solemnly stated, "What they're digging, is a hole in the ground." This cracks me up. It's the "Now is still the time" of NPR sentences.
Also, what's with the pause-laden cadence of NPR reporters? Today's Carol Lay cartoon helped me realize that NPR newsreaders read as though they were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
# 21 Oct 2003, 09:37AM:
J. Bradford DeLong's "Semi-Daily Journal" runs on a brittle installation of Movable Type on a slow server in the economics department at UC Berkeley. I generally start loading up the page and then go make a cup of tea. And I don't know economics beyond the introductory undergrad stuff that turned me off the subject (no offense to Christina Romer, a great teacher). But I try to read or at least skim all his posts. Here he's laughing at certain writers who attack Paul Krugman:
Note that [Andrew] Sullivan has absolutely no complaints to make about Paul Krugman's writings--how could he? Does he want to argue that the Bush administration was clear and straight with America on the reasons it went into Iraq? That Bush economic policy would not be better if it had been made by bonobos? That Bush social policy is a light unto the nations?
So he adopts a bizarre rhetorical strategy--that to call someone a "Krugman" is to call them something bad, but that he cannot be bothered to explain or even mention anything Paul Krugman has written that is wrong.
Now that the robust NewsBruiser has comments, maybe DeLong will consider making the switch so we can enjoy his work better. Then again, just moving to a better server would help.
# 21 Oct 2003, 11:22AM: Down the Analog Hole:
I was trying to remember the name of Cruelty to Analog and fumbled around with "Down the Analog Hole" and "Revert to Analog," both of which are cute.
# 21 Oct 2003, 02:28PM: "Why do they loan to punks?":
Tales From the Code enjoyably jaunts through commercial finance law. Unfinished.
# 21 Oct 2003, 03:27PM:
Corporations that put up faceless weblogs are on the cargo cult cluetrain.
# 21 Oct 2003, 03:32PM GMT+5:30: Cred:
Andrew Leonard saw me reading Beyond Fear while eating lunch and proclaimed that I am such a geek.
# 21 Oct 2003, 08:30PM: And the Portions Are So Small:
Aiee! I found, via my referrer logs, that I have a LiveJournal. Who did this?! Cyrus, are you using LiveJournal as your RSS aggregator?
I don't know what to bemoan louder, that I now have a LiveJournal presence (even if it's just a franchise of my RSS feed), or that it only has one reader.
# 23 Oct 2003, 11:52AM:
I watched someone notarize a document today. I wish notarization involved robes or chanting.
# 23 Oct 2003, 12:53PM: Still Not Defecting From Wednesday Night:
Enterprise was a rerun last night, and I yelled at the screen for most of West Wing. I feel like John Wells is a new stepparent. "Aaron Sorkin never did it like that. Sorkin had better dialogue and he let me go to bed at ten. Why can't you be Aaron Sorkin?" But Sorkin's gone and he doesn't even have visitation rights.
# 23 Oct 2003, 06:34PM: Two Stories of Customer Service:
- "Hi, this is Sumana with Salon Premium. What can I do for you?"
I looked up his information. As I waited for it to appear, he asked, "Are you in India now?"
I slowly replied (in my born-and-bred US accent) that no, I am in San Francisco, to which he said, "Same difference."
Note that, were I actually in an Indian call center, I would fake a white name. Also, maybe this is why Salon hired me - by using an Indian for customer service, the management fools investors into thinking Salon has cheaply outsourced the work to overseas!
- I assured a subscriber that I had emailed him a week prior. After digging through his email, he found the message, and explained that he had deleted it because my name looks like a spam name.
# 23 Oct 2003, 07:09PM: councilman jocund boo:
New entry in Spam As Folk Art.
# 24 Oct 2003, 09:09AM:
Blogging will be very light over the weekend, with gusts of phone and a chance of email.
# 27 Oct 2003, 03:30PM GMT+5:30:
Pretty tired.
When I was in eleventh grade, I asked my wonderful English teacher, Sam Hatch, to name his favorite novel. He considered and answered: Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. A few years ago I tried to read it and gave up in boredom and confusion forty or seventy pages in.
I've just begun it again, and can't imagine why I stopped last time. Leo and Nastasya intrigue me as two eccentrics who are playing by their own rules and forcing everyone else to adapt. You have to know the game to break its rules to your own advantage. Four years ago, I didn't know the game.
# 29 Oct 2003, 10:16AM: Stupid?:
The new Smithsonian has an article about Sylvia Plath. Slate also features a Plath article, and The Economics of Suicide:
Why should suicide be an economic boon? Once you attempt suicide you suddenly have access to lots of resources—medical care, psychiatric attention, familial love and concern—that were previously expensive or unavailable. Doubters may ask why the depressed don't seek out resources earlier. But studies have demonstrated that psychological and familial resources become "cheaper" after a suicide attempt: It is difficult to find free medical care when you are sad, but once you try to kill yourself, it's forced on you.
Come on, media. People's lives are hard enough without you all yelling, "Jump!"
# 29 Oct 2003, 10:26AM:
Stereolabrat is like Nietzsche meets Margaret Cho.
# 29 Oct 2003, 01:50PM: Big Announcement:
As you may have heard, my boyfriend of over two years is moving from a house, two blocks from mine, to Little Rock. As in Arkansas. That's where I was last weekend, helping him decide whether to take the job there.
This is part of the reason why I am so tired and irritable today. But I am proud of him and want him to do well and have cool experiences. We will deal somehow.
# 30 Oct 2003, 10:26AM:
I've run out of tea! Fortunately, Salon's kitchen stocks milk and, for no good reason, Ovaltine.
This Complete Tibetan Calendar, according to a flyer, includes "Days not to raise new prayer flags."
# 31 Oct 2003, 05:32PM: We Thought Of Just Making A Pie:
Salon's building holds an annual Halloween contest. Each floor receives a pumpkin, and people carve the pumpkins and submit their art for public display. Each employee who works in the building votes for a pumpkin that belongs to a floor that is not her own. Winning pumpkins get prizes.
This is the first attempt I have seen, in five months of working here, to build any sort of building spirit or interfloor rivalries/camaraderie. One wonders about Christmas.
The entries this year include a pumpkin vase that holds many pretty flowers, a Barbie-and-pumpkin Cinderella carriage, a glowing twirlable photo-holder, and a jack-o-lantern with a gun and entry hole on one side and a large exit hole and spilled pulp on the other.
The hands-down star of the exhibit: a large carboard poster showed a bodybuilder's body, with a hole for the pumpkin-head, carved to look like Schwarzenegger's head. The bodybuilder held up California and a soundtrack loop rambled in an Austrian accent about the American people and the flaws of the other pumpkins. It won.
# 31 Oct 2003, 05:39PM:
Last night Leonard held a farewell party at my house.
Last weekend I went to Little Rock with him, to help him decide whether to join the campaign. On Monday morning we left for the airport before dawn. Our wonderful and gracious host, Jim Wohlleb, was kind enough to drive us there. I knew that Leonard would probably take the job.
We stood in the kitchen, eating a bit and packing food for the journey, and I heard Bob Edwards recite the familiar chant of the hourly Open, my own "prayer is better than sleep." As he said his name, the date, and "this is NPR's Morning Edition," I felt the clock tick in my heart. Each day that I heard that Open would be another day closer to the day Leonard would leave. And today is Friday, and over the weekend Bob Edwards isn't the host. So Monday morning will come and he will tell me that it is Morning Edition, but Leonard will be gone.
[Main] You can hire me through Changeset Consulting.
This work by Sumana Harihareswara is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing the author at sh@changeset.nyc.