# 03 Jan 2004, 04:45PM: Feeling Blank: Leonard has returned to Little Rock. If it hadn't been so early in the morning when we said goodbye, perhaps he would have saluted, LeVar Burton-style, and said, "I'll see you next time!"
# 05 Jan 2004, 11:41AM: What We Can't Say: Paul Graham, of Bayesian spam-filtering fame, talks about methods for discovering our heresies. And a traveler considers one himself.
# 05 Jan 2004, 07:13PM: Why in the world is it so difficult to find out when the Powell St. BART/Muni station transit store opens and closes? The other downtown stations' transit store information is perfectly findable on the web. But Powell is a ghost.
# 05 Jan 2004, 07:16PM:
Happy New Year.
I spent the 2003-2004 liminal time watching a lot of TiVoed TV with Leonard (Reading Rainbow, Good Eats, and some surprisingly palatable Star Trek: Voyager; I have grudgingly accorded Voyager canon status) and transcribing interviews I did in October with Christopher Kimball and Alton Brown. Christopher Kimball says "actually" in every sentence.
This month, a few friends of friends are moving to town for school. One of them, Lisa, stayed with me for a few days in mid-December while arranging housing. She loves Trader Joe's. I think she's more excited about living near a Trader Joe's than she is about her SFSU fellowship.
The TiVo gave Leonard and me a wonderful New Year's gift: the Reading Rainbow where LeVar Burton takes you behind the scenes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Outtakes! Crossoverness!
It's that time of year; ants think my bathroom is a neat-o place to be. Ack!
# 05 Jan 2004, 07:20PM: Late last year, Comedy Central reran a Nov. 18th Daily Show with Bernard Goldberg, author of Arrogance and Bias. I didn't find his arguments very convincing. Jon Stewart asked him the $64,000 question, namely, seeing as Republicans control all three branches of the US government, how could liberals be controlling the discourse with an anti-Republican bias? Goldberg didn't answer the question to my satisfaction.
# 07 Jan 2004, 05:25PM: Truncated Dac (tyl): I hear "Ratchet and Clank" and think of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.
# 07 Jan 2004, 06:11PM: The Syndicate: Apparently my LiveJournal feed works again, and who knows why. Sabrina, Paul, Joe, John, &c. - care to lower the syndication cost?
# 08 Jan 2004, 11:08AM: Utter Mayhem!:
Now I know why I grab the Chron's Wine section from the recycling bins to read on BART. Today's article on wine clubs drones on and on, but then kicks in:
Like Ridge, many DEWN wines are made exclusively for the club. Unlike Ridge, Bonny Doon ships such eccentric blends as a fizzy Barbera, a Piedmontese grape called Freisa fermented with fresh strawberries, and a blend of 30 percent Viognier (a white grape) with 70 percent Syrah (a red grape).
"We do our best to mentally and emotionally prepare people for the utter mayhem coming their way when they join DEWN, but they don't always understand what they are getting mixed up in," says the winery's creative director, John Locke.
Adds Bonny Doon president Randall Grahm, "It's like, you signed up for weird wines, what do you expect?"
Probably California's most unusual wine program is, not surprisingly, that of Santa Cruz-based Bonny Doon Vineyard. The winery's Distinctive Esoteric Wine Network (DEWN) is one club that customers either love or hate.
# 08 Jan 2004, 04:49PM: Out Of Context Theater: "steve schultz's blog showed me the light. i now go out to wrestling parasite goth punk raves dressed as a schoolgirl."
# 09 Jan 2004, 09:33AM: Just Reread Gatsby: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the spam.
# 09 Jan 2004, 09:54AM: Exposure: Scott Rosenberg ponders cryptic spam subject lines. My favorite interpretation: "origami inflation -- Paper money is always at risk." He also links to Spam As Folk Art (recently updated!) and some well-done spam poetry.
# 09 Jan 2004, 10:20AM: I Knew Him When We Were Acquainted: Today's Qwantz reminded me of Humiliating Happenstances! by one K. Byerly. I may as well also link to his splendid Crime Over Time and How Do I Get Rid Of This Gun?. More like this.
# 12 Jan 2004, 12:34PM: Living High On the Sog (Tofog?): Mockmeat steak costs the same as mockmeat chicken or mockmeat hot dogs. I could eat soy prime rib every day.
# 12 Jan 2004, 06:45PM: "Did you find the fun you were seeking?": A plea to spend less.
# 14 Jan 2004, 01:47PM: Who Strikes the Public Sentiment, Say Who Will Be Our President?:
Thanks to Leonard, I have heard campaign songs from many US Presidential campaigns. The silly lines that stick with me:
I particularly enjoy, among others, "Wilson! That's All!"
# 15 Jan 2004, 10:19AM: I Want a President Who Has Written Fanfic:
Carol Moseley Braun offhandedly mentioned last night, on The Daily Show, that she believes that that the Bush administration is using fear to get us to not question their policies, and that "fear is the mind-killer". Rachel, Jeremy and I sat straight up. This was after she made the Vulcan greeting hand gesture in reference to the proposed Mars expedition.
Today Moseley Braun dropped out and threw her support to Dean. What are the odds that Dean has even read I, Robot, much less Dune?
# 16 Jan 2004, 10:58AM: Nibbling on Jerquee, baby carrots, and Christmas peanut brittle as I gird myself for customer service.
# 16 Jan 2004, 03:17PM GMT+5:30: Thanatos: Workers are tearing down a red brick building a block away. Salon's employees are oohing and aahing by the window. Reminds me of the powerful, awesome last pages of 21 Dog Years by Mike Daisey.
# 16 Jan 2004, 07:53PM: Aha! The film was Whatever It Takes (1 and a half stars).
# 20 Jan 2004, 09:34AM: Whose Bed This Is, I Think I Know: "And then he will lie in it." More Atticus nuttiness. Atticus may be the nonromantic equivalent, to me, of Daisy Fay -- I am growing to love him so much that when I meet him it may be a letdown.
# 20 Jan 2004, 01:46PM: Partition Was A Lesson: "The insight of our age is that borders sanctify difference, but that borderlessness spurs partnership." A proposal for Kashmir, via Tapped. Another bit in a long, extensive conversation I've been having.
# 20 Jan 2004, 06:07PM: Some Salon people have the "State" "of" "the" "Union" on. I remember when I made it a point of pride to watch the SOTU. Now I just wait bitterly for an elected president to give it. Maybe next year.
# 20 Jan 2004, 07:07PM: The Spamegorical Imperative:
New Spam as Folk Art is up. More Brendan-y, since I like his approach.Hey you there medicate thy self ck
Speaking of Brendan, I got some Ben Folds and Guster over the weekend. I also hung out with Alexei, Seth, Shweta, and Nathaniel, and got back in touch with Jade and with Mike Parsons. Getting back in touch with old friends makes me feel less mortal.
Wasn't this a Very Special Episode of ER?
# 21 Jan 2004, 11:25AM: "And I think we are stuck with this.":
Ellen Ullman discusses The Bug in a public Well conference. Hey, Sabrina, she says:My model for the essay has always been Cythia Ozick. She is
passionately smart. Or intellectually passionate. Or any way it's
possible to express the sort of mental intensity that becomes emotional
by nature of the sheer force it exerts.
# 21 Jan 2004, 01:20PM: I thought it was "champagne":
A roundup of censorship and other suppression of texts through the ages told me: "1954: Cole Porter's lyric 'Some get a kick from cocaine' is changed to 'Some get perfume from Spain' for radio airplay."
I first heard of this song from a Lois Lowry book. Young Sam sings the song at the top of his lungs around the house, and his parents ask each other, "What will the neighbors think?"
# 23 Jan 2004, 09:48AM: Dreampitcher:
Wednesday night, I dreamt about pledging to KQED. I dreamt that I would pledge at the $120 level and get the No Power No Problem portable crank-powered radio premium.
Yes, I slept through my alarm.
Also Wednesday night, I dreamt that my mind had posted on Slashdot, while I was asleep, asking for someone to call me and wake me up.
Last night, I dreamt I was a Dean supporter. I was trying to milk more money out of a household that had already donated to the campaign. As I left, I whispered, "Clark!" Perhaps I was undercover.
# 23 Jan 2004, 12:58PM: She's "Not A Thing Person"; I'm Sold!: I watched most of Howard and Judith Dean's interview with Diane "Straw Woman" Sawyer last night. As I had suspected, they said a bunch of interesting stuff that wasn't shown: here's the full transcript, or at least a less abridged one.
# 26 Jan 2004, 11:25AM: Over the weekend, I saw friends and had lovely conversations, food, and entertainment. But then I saw that someone had broken into my car, so that put a damper on the mood. Also, I missed part of Arrested Development. I call do-over.
# 26 Jan 2004, 02:56PM: Really selling the car now. If you know anyone in the market for a reliable sedan, please let them know. I'm willing to drive hundreds of miles to sell this thing.
# 26 Jan 2004, 04:42PM GMT+5:30: High school hierarchies and the attendant etiquette dilemmas are the closest I have ever come to the world of Anna Karenina.
# 28 Jan 2004, 12:51PM: Life's Medium-Sized Victories:
Gail bought a $3 gallon jug of AriZona green tea (with honey and ginseng!) at Walgreens last week for a Salon party. I just discovered the last fourth of it in the fridge and will probably finish it today.
Lots of pleasant phone calls today. Example: a subscriber who had wanted a cancellation and refund, mentioned cookies and spam, listened to my explanation of said phenomena, and decided not to cancel. Whoopee!
# 28 Jan 2004, 06:41PM: Are You An Asian Woman?: Stephen Colbert says The Daily Show could use one.
# 30 Jan 2004, 02:27PM: Reminiscences: I used to say "yup" as slang for "yes." This turned into "yupper," which turned into "yupper.com." The matching negative was "nupper.com." My sister hated this.
# 30 Jan 2004, 04:51PM GMT+5:30: Salon Brilliant Career (Mine):
On a midday errand jaunt, I bought some Fitzgerald and Trollope's The Way We Live Now at Stacey's. I asked some coworkers about Trollope and we talked about Victorian novels a bit, both the IT manager and the tech VP enthusiastically recommending Middlemarch. These are the conversations I suppose outsiders think we have all the time.
Yesterday I found out that everyone but me knew that jail differs markedly from prison. One is held in a city or county jail for under a year; a state prison houses longer-term inmates. I've gone my whole life thinking "jail" and "prison" were straight synonyms.
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