# 01 Jul 2003, 11:49AM: Mathematicians in action (via Zed) and someone needs a kidney. Also, I can't stop thinking about Tranquility Bay, a re-education camp in Jamaica where parents pay to have their children's souls erased.
# 02 Jul 2003, 04:59PM: "Weirdly, this is never called irony, even though every other bloody thing that anyone ever says is.": A very interesting history and analysis of "irony." (via Electroside)
# 03 Jul 2003, 03:36PM: "It was creeping up on ten years ago, but I knew I wouldn't ever forget her completely.": "She said that if the woman just came into the store, she would take her and her two kids into her own home and help them get back on their feet so they wouldn't have to live that terrible existence another day."
# 03 Jul 2003, 07:00PM: Checking out Denver-things-to-do. Blogging & email light to nonexistent over weekend.
# 07 Jul 2003, 10:07AM: From a Meeting:
Colleague: "That would be hard!"
Me, in JFK accent: "We do things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..."
# 07 Jul 2003, 10:27AM: Refreshed:
I'm back from Colorado. The train was excellent, and the scenery beat the band. I took the California Zephyr from Northern California to Denver, then poked around Denver for a bit with Nandini and her friend Matt. Fantastic: the Red Rocks park and ampitheatre. The plane back (Frontier Air) was adequate, and the Denver airport and BART extension to SFO are really cool. They both have neat little subways, and at least one of the public art installations in DIA, "Kinetic Light Air Curtain", blew me away.
Incidentally, googling for "denver airport art" or "denver airport public art" gets you a bunch of conspiracy theory about underground military bases, Masonic symbols, and the Queen of England.
"Kinetic Light Air Curtain" consists of a grouping of 5,280 propellers laid out on a grid system that changes from tight to loose configurations as the train passes. The propellers are made of reflective stainless steel and are 12" in diameter. The work, which includes blue fluorescent lighting, encompasses the entire mile of the train tunnel journey. The propellers are activated by physical phenomena already existing in the tunnel, including light from the train and wind generated by the movement of the train.
# 09 Jul 2003, 01:56PM:
I have to go to Leonard's place to watch Last Comic Standing on NBC, as I don't get Channel 11, and Enterprise's new season on UPN hasn't started yet. So the worthwhile channels that I can see on the TV at my new place are PBS and whatever Channel 32 is. Sometimes Channel 32 shows English-language German programming from DW-TV. The DW Journal has anchors with US accents, which makes me wonder whether I'm watching the US version of the show and DW-TV produces the show in five languages every day, ACK-style.
Sometimes channel 32 is the ARTS channel, with operas and dance and so on. But it's on TV, so I don't feel pretentious about having it on in the background. How hoity-toity can it be if they don't want my money?
# 09 Jul 2003, 01:58PM: Today is Leonard's birthday. He deserves pirates and fireworks and a decent government, and instead he gets to work late. Reality is a jerk.
# 09 Jul 2003, 03:34PM: His content is so good that I wish he used NewsBruiser:
Last night I had a dream that may have involved the doctor from Enterprise, and that certainly involved Jon Carroll as a high school writing teacher. I dream about fictional characters more than I do real people.
A few weeks ago I dreamed about Daniel Davies, and I didn't know why. Now I do. He's hot. The geekiness, the take-no-prisoners writing style, the contrarian slyness, the calculated appeal to my Anglophilia. Just take a look at a post or two from late last year. "What is the optimal way to go about writing a dictionary?" He sees a problem-solving approach, bashes it, bashes himself for being stupid, and then gives himself the big meta pow to examine how his thought patterns led him astray. Wonderful. Then there's a quiz. Sample: "When Christina Aquilera sang "Voulez vous couchez avec moi?" in the song "Lady Marmalade", was she using the French word "vous" as the formal second person singular, or as the second person plural?" Sample answer from the audience:
Anyway. He's across the Atlantic and all, but rowr. Of course, this brings to mind hilarious pickup lines involving supply and demand and barriers to entry.
Is obviously 2nd person singular. The singer (orginally Chaka Khan) is adopting the persona of a francophone New Orleans hooker. The more formal "vous" is a gesture of deference to her would-be client.
# 10 Jul 2003, 10:36AM GMT+5:30: Sadly, No Chance of Customer Bashing:
Cody's Books weblog. I bet that the outside-world liaison is the only one with write access to the blog, and I'll have to get on the webmaster's case to make permalinks, but for now, I'm getting excited seeing that my favorite authors have new books coming soon. I'll be reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, Garrison Keillor's Love Me, and Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment. And Michael Moore's new book is Dude, Where's My Country?
Update, 14 July: Correction on the blogwriter's descriptive title.
# 10 Jul 2003, 11:27AM:
On the train to Denver I saw a part of Daredevil, which was hilariously bad. But I also saw and really enjoyed Chicago. I'll have to talk more about the fascinating narrative and argument of Chicago, but for now let me say that I would enjoy wearing a pin-striped suit in which the stripes glitter, and that I loved some of the songs. "Mr. Cellophane" is really fun, as is "The Cellblock Tango," and a fragment from "Nowadays" is currently stuck in my head.
Of course, Leonard heard these lyrics and expressed astonishment that a woman from the 1920s would encourage you to marry Harry S Truman and have an affair with Dwight Eisenhower. "I like giving 'em hell," he pondered.
You can like the life you're livin'
You can live the life you like
You can even marry Harry
And mess around with Ike
# 11 Jul 2003, 11:22AM:
My boss Patrick was ahead of the curve on this one, forwarding an early report around the office and urging us to watch the Real video. The aspect of the Capital Times story that struck me: the Onion-esque layout and coloration. Do all Wisconsin-based webmags use that format?
So far the actual people involved (the batter and the sausage-woman) seem to be acting reasonably, which warms my heart.
# 11 Jul 2003, 12:07PM: "says the man next to me / Out of nowhere":
Via Circadian Shift, an obscene and funny memo. This led me to discover that most people on the net remember the line "this ain't no disco" from some Talking Heads song I've never heard, while it reminds me of the Sheryl Crow hit "All I Wanna Do." During the period in the nineties when you could not turn on a rock/alternative radio station without hearing that song, I learned that not even NPR was safe, as I listened to some news show and heard a story about Wyn Cooper, the poet whose poem "Fun" became "All I Wanna Do." (Lesson: never use radio.) Have you ever read the full text of "Fun"? Ms. Crow omits the genetic engineering lab and the implied drunk driving, and exaggerates the prurient behavior of the barkeep.
Also, my sister's good friend Crystina derogated the song as "Hawaiian pop rap folk disco," which is possibly why I still like it.
# 11 Jul 2003, 01:57PM: Lore F.S. of Brunching Shuttlecocks, as well as Leonard and probably John, turned me on to Achewood, a fun web comic. Funny and sexual-situation strip; and then there's the fact that Roast Beef (a sad geek cat) is too many guys I know.
# 15 Jul 2003, 06:17PM: Saw a lovely The American Experience last night, with that dish Simon Schama talking about an 1849 murder at Harvard and the inevitable historian's problems of anachronism. In the film, Simon Schama hems and haws over whether Webster killed Parkman, and now I see the confession right there on the site.
# 15 Jul 2003, 06:22PM: One subscriber signed up for one of Salon Premium's benefits, a free six-month subscription to Mother Jones, and accidentally called it "Mother Hubbard."
# 16 Jul 2003, 11:25AM:
Last Comic Standing last night was a travesty. Dat's act was immensely less funny than Dave's, yet Dat won the audience's vote, and I cheered. I cheered because he's Asian, the only Asian in the house, and because he had been plotted against by a bunch of cynical older comedians, and because the editing of the show had told me to cheer for him. I found it hard to sit through that one. Fortunately, no one is coercing me to watch.
Spam: Goldbach hypothesis or proof,tv
# 17 Jul 2003, 09:59AM GMT+5:30: "buy / my / album": First there was The Holy Tango of Poetry, and now we have the much more profane version which includes Jewel.
# 18 Jul 2003, 12:16PM: Dreams Too Weird to Recapitulate, So Instead:
This morning I saw a bit of Reading Rainbow and thought two things:
# 18 Jul 2003, 01:13PM:
Extremely funny, via an offhand remark in Slate: why nobody says, "Let's go buy a condo in the valley of the shadow of death!"
Really sad and disturbing: British weapons adviser possibly found dead. "Kelly, a 59-year-old former U.N. weapons inspector, was at the center of a political storm over allegations that Blair's office altered intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons programs to support the decision to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq."
# 18 Jul 2003, 01:41PM: Weekend Plans:
Yes, this conversation took place near an authentic water cooler.
"I have grandiose laundry plans for the weekend. There's gonna be detergent, there may even be fabric softener."
"That's going a little too far for me."
"I'm extreme, I know."
# 19 Jul 2003, 10:02AM: What They Left Behind:
My sister has safely made it to India. She'll be knocking around India and Kyrgyzstan (Capital: Bishkek) for a bit and then coming back to the US to settle in DC and go to grad school there.
I just deleted her from my phone's speed dial.
As I start a new physical notebook, and copy friends' phone numbers from one to another, I leave behind Nandini, and Adam, and Steve Schultz, and Hilary, and right now I'm the only Harihareswara on the continent. I feel like Cormac O'Connor in Forever, alone and free and sad.
# 21 Jul 2003, 07:05PM: Foggy Top: Salon lives on the 16th floor of a building in San Francisco. Today I look out our window and watch the fog blur and soften the skyscrapers. In some spots I can watch clouds of mist blow by, and in some places only a few roofs break the homogenous white. Two months of clear postcard views didn't prepare me for this San Francisco sight, which is lovely and yearning.
# 21 Jul 2003, 07:12PM: I worry that my mind thinks I'm a morning person and my body thinks I'm a night person.
# 22 Jul 2003, 11:57AM: Instead of eminent domain, I want to seize property via M&M domain, where you make a circle of M&Ms around whatever you want.
# 22 Jul 2003, 07:45PM:
My referrer logs told me that someone(s) had hit my site from "Xorpheeds", which I assume is a Brendan aggregator. If it's not Brendan, it's a scarily good approximation thereof, for who else would keep up with Neil Gaiman, Leonard, and me?
Also in the log -- the search requests mentioned the word "claughter." Google implies that "claughter" is not just misspelled "slaughter," but also a family name and a mis-OCR'd "daughter."
food faddiness help
# 23 Jul 2003, 10:44AM: U. of Texas posts entire Gutenberg Bible on Internet. My first thought: "Don't do that, Gutenberg'll sue you!"
# 23 Jul 2003, 11:36AM: I'm Not Statuesque, Waah: Avi Zenilman wraps up his internship roundup with "The Most Kick-Ass Job in the Whole Entire World: The Scott Shuger summer internship at Slate's Washington D.C. bureau" and a personal ad. "How do I get this job? First, you must vanquish me."
# 23 Jul 2003, 05:50PM: Two-For-One Mild Social Gaffes Wednesday:
Unintentional bugging of a colleague, that sort of thing. Gar.
Tonight I see a friend, for the last time before she moves, at a bar entitled the Last Day Saloon. Many people (author included) accidentally call it the Last Chance Saloon, which is funny in the same way that it is funny when people call George Lakoff's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by the name Women, Fire, and Other Dangerous Things.
# 24 Jul 2003, 11:58AM: And the NYT says Japan is insular:
Steve Schultz's Japan diary continues to delight me. An excerpt from today's entry:
Remember the schoolgirls that became world-famous in 1998 when
they bleached their hair and tanned their skin and wore 18 inch platform heels and so on? . .. in fact, some women are still doing it only now they're like
26 which is ANCIENT. And I started wondering, exactly how
do these dinosaur kogals justify their time warp? If you see an old,
burnt-out hippy or punk, they will tell you that the're 'keeping it real'
and 'not selling out to the man.' But the kogal deal never had that kind of
political rationale. It was all about being young and trendy. So how do they
justify being totally behind the times? Are they like, "all the fashions
since 1997 are crap." Or are they like "dude,
as long as I still look like Welcome to Thunderdome-era Tina Turner, I will
remain eternally 17 years old, and that's just how it works."
or maybe they're just, like, all, "DUDE, my fashion is TOTALLY up to date. . . i traded in my old white eyeliner for this hot new SILVER eyeliner, and my skin is the exact NEW shade of brown that's all the rage this summer!!"
Eventually I decide this woman was a very repressed housewife
in 6 years ago, and saw all the kogals running around partying while she had
to iron her salariman husband's shirts all day. Then she finally divorced
him and with her newfound freedom, she's trying to relive a mythical late-90s
past which she never got to experience first hand.
What can I say, it was a long train ride. ALSO on the train today, I sit opposite one of THEM. You know
THEM. . . and you still see THEM from time to time. . .
. middle-aged kogals.
# 24 Jul 2003, 02:50PM: "Buddhism is a relatively new religion based off the movie 'The Matrix'": "We Need More Gods, G*****n It!": "This is why I, a famous webmaster (my mom and I think my dad knows about this website), am now demanding we ditch all our current 'incorrect' gods and go back to the days when gods actually did significant stuff and contributed back to society." Also, the discussion of karma includes: "If everybody loves you and you do nice things like return the person you've kidnapped, you will be reborn as the King of the Moon or a tree that has the ability to throw explosives at people like in various Nintendo games." Absolutely hilarious. More of the author's work here. Site found via egosurfing (there's a user named Sumana).
# 25 Jul 2003, 10:14AM: It's Too Soon: Uncle Saddam DVD: Laugh along at the horror of Saddam and his tyranny of terror over the Iraqi people. No, I will not laugh along!
# 25 Jul 2003, 12:01PM: What's the Opposite of Aging?:
Depressing search: "used to be about". This reminds me of Leonard's aging-hippie impression: "It used to be about the selling out, man!"
Roger Ebert's review of the new Lara Croft film:
Lara Croft is Lady Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie), daughter of the archeologist Sir Richard Croft ("Lost in the Field, 1985"). Actually, since the title insists it has no comma, if grammar means anything she is Lady Lara Croft Tomb Raider. In the somewhat murky chronology she describes early in the film, the original box arrived from outer space, and was discovered by an Egyptian pharaoh in 2300 B.C. "in a place he called the Cradle of Life," she explains to her colleagues, mentioning Pandora's Box. "You mean the Greek myth?" she is asked. "That's the Sunday school version," she says. Only Lara Croft would go to a Sunday school that teaches Greek myth.
# 25 Jul 2003, 04:08PM GMT+5:30: Nobody Expects a Palace of Wax!:
I'm reading the Mahabharata in prose form, as edited by C. Rajagopalachari, "popularly known as 'Rajaji' or 'C.R.'" Fantastic stuff. I see the connections among little narratives and anecdotes that I read in Amar Chitra Katha comic books. I see how conflicting senses of duty wrought so much inner turmoil in the characters. Very plotty, with characters malicious, struggling, good, and misguided. Wonderful. The best BART ride read I've had in a while.
And this refresher will come in handy when I write my Monty Python-esque treatment of the epic.
# 25 Jul 2003, 04:13PM:
Sometimes, when I'm trying to pacify the few (thank goodness) rude customers, I think I'm just enabling their bad behavior. I wish it were legit to say, "No, I'm not going to help you unless you apologize for saying that, and I don't care that you've paid us X dollars." Instead I stay calm and apologetic and explanatory, and sometimes they cool down and apologize, but sometimes they never realize that they've been jerks.
When I was a teen, and didn't like my dad's arbitrary demands, sometimes I flew into an obsequious fury. I would act as servile as I possibly could, to the point of parody and self-abasement. My dad could easily tell what I was doing and didn't like it, but he couldn't complain because, after all, I was only trying to be subservient, like a good daughter.
The other unpleasant thing people do to me over e-mail is tell me that they love my name because it's exotic. I feel like the least exotic person alive. I'm endotic.
# 26 Jul 2003, 11:15AM:
I am a happy mutant rabbit. I saw Josh Kornbluth's Love and Taxes last night with Katharine, and we really enjoyed it. After the show, I met the performer and he remembered me from e-mail. He's even read my blog! Wheee! A wonderful autograph and a great evening.
Love and Taxes is smart and funny and then suddenly moving and insightful. I remember when I first read an excerpt from Kornbluth's Red Diaper Baby and buttonholed friends to read aloud from it. I need to read all his stuff.
# 28 Jul 2003, 10:55AM: In Which I Play Andrew Northrup: This Paul Conrad cartoon features (I think) George W. Bush, at 79% approval, running in a race, and another George W. Bush, at 42% approval, gaining on him. But at first I thought it featured Bush the father and Bush the son, and it occurred to me -- wouldn't it be awesome if George H. W. Bush decided to run for President against his own son? After all, we already know that President Bush doesn't much like the course of action that George W. is taking. And who else could really run for the Republican nomination? Dude, if only.
# 28 Jul 2003, 11:18AM: Bill Moyers Interviews Jon Stewart: "STEWART: You don't want to get the Democrats angry, because then they'll maybe meet in private." I wish that Stewart had poked more fun at Moyers, but it's still Jon Stewart.
# 28 Jul 2003, 01:38PM: Man, these spammers have great fake names. Russell Kerbrat, Ahmed Pollock, and Glenn Narayan!
# 28 Jul 2003, 04:01PM: Auto-recommend Amok: If you liked Peter Brook's Mahabharata, you might also like Dune!
# 29 Jul 2003, 02:33PM: Cell Phone Hint: Try not to turn off your phone, go to a meeting, sit in a chair that is the same color as your cell phone, and then think you have lost said phone and run around to where you went to lunch and all and then, on your second search of the conference room, find the phone snugly nestled in the chair's seat.
# 29 Jul 2003, 05:45PM: The editorial staff was gathered around a TV, and for a second I worried that some cataclysm had befallen us, but no. Joan Walsh was on Bill O'Reilly's show, that's all.
# 29 Jul 2003, 06:28PM: O Canada, My Stereotypical Land:
Salon Premium just added a few new benefits to signing up -- if you're in the US you can get US News and World Report, and Canadians can get Geist. Several Canadians contacted me today asking for help with the Geist signup, and their median courtesy level was great. There's a reason for the stereotype! If Salon ever branches out such that it has different brandings and content and branches in different countries, the way Reader's Digest does, I want to work in the Salon Canada office.
My family knows I've always had a thing for Canada. When I was a kid I hung a map of Canada on my ceiling above my bed. Color Me Other.
# 30 Jul 2003, 08:06AM: SoCal Visit: I'm visiting LA and Bakersfield this weekend for a wedding. Susanna is becoming a wife.
# 30 Jul 2003, 10:40AM: I consistently misspell "have" as "ahve," "can" as "cna," and "startdate" as "stardate."
# 30 Jul 2003, 03:43PM: Sometimes one can decadently buy a few ounces of chocolate or corn syrup or caffeine from the vending machine, and sometimes one goes lowbrow and just dumps lots of company-subsidized white sugar in the steeped-extra-long tea.
# 30 Jul 2003, 05:24PM: People are telling me to get out of the office already and go on vacation. Our IT guy set up my email autoreply and told me my "bot" was ready, so of course I imitated a robot for a while. Very fun. I guess I do need a break.
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.