Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2004 March

# 01 Mar 2004, 12:53PM: "Ambiguous": On a nice place to live and an alternative to AAA.

# 01 Mar 2004, 07:04PM: Andy Holloway said thoughtful things about number-based roleplaying games such as Illuminati. "Perhaps I can make analogy to the way that music is mathematical in nature.....The numbers are just the rhythm to which [the story is] set."

# 02 Mar 2004, 09:18AM: bum-BUM: "An infant believed to have died in a 1997 fire actually was kidnapped and raised by a woman who set the blaze to cover her path, authorities said. Now, the child's mother -- who recognized the girl at a party by a dimple -- is eagerly awaiting a reunion."

Also: "At the party, [the mother] told the girl she had gum in her hair and pulled out five strands for DNA testing."

Law And Order twists could be:

The kidnapper is actually the girl's biological mother!
The girl at the party is a long-lost twin of the girl who died in the fire!
Jerry Orbach offers to split the child in two!

# 02 Mar 2004, 09:37AM: Just Like "In Cold Blood": March is a decluttering fling for me, so I'll be making a trip near the end of the month to take boxes of reusable stuff to SCRAP-SF and possibly the East Bay Depot for Creative Use (although evidently the latter is on the wrong side of the Wobblies).

# 02 Mar 2004, 03:55PM: Welcome, Squirrelly!: I am absolutely mooning over Defective Yeti's baby.

# 04 Mar 2004, 09:42AM: Yay!: A gorgeous day here in SF! I am eating beet salad for breakfast and have very few support requests to answer. Life is fantastic.

# 07 Mar 2004, 10:21PM: My Share of Leonard's TiVo: Leonard graciously lets me watch TiVoed TV at his house. My Season Passes: Namaste America, India Waves, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I tape Arrested Development at my place.

# 09 Mar 2004, 05:00PM: Publishment: Tonight, Salon will publish my article on visiting a Bangalore call center.

Update: "A few subscribers have tentatively mentioned that I have a beautiful name, or that they loved 'Bend It Like Beckham,' but this was the first caller to call me out on the absurdity of my position. An American-born Indian doing call-center work in California?"

# 11 Mar 2004, 11:21AM: Aye, Caesar, And Not Yet Gone: While in India, I had a signmaker make a canvas banner that reads, "REMEMBER YOU ARE MORTAL". I hung it up in my cubicle at Salon.

Some prankster has placed a sticky note reading "PROBABLY" between "ARE" and "MORTAL".

# 11 Mar 2004, 11:32AM: Waiting for Soydot: A few months ago, I ordered a five-pound bag of Stonewall's Jerquee from Risingsun Health. Upon non-jerky-craving-frenzied reflection, the site looks a bit dodgy. But I did it.

Last week I called to ask whether my jerky would arrive anytime soon. The owner apologised profusely and told me he'd send me, at the same price, ten pounds of jerky, no, a case!

Now I await my jerky every day. I want my jerky. Where is my jerky?

Next time I am going with Vegan Essentials, which shipped on time. But still. Find me, jerky! Fly into my arms!

# 12 Mar 2004, 04:19PM: "Have You Forgotten About The Bomb?": For some reason, Leonard mentioned the painting of me upon his hypothetical fighter plane, and I realized that you could sing a song about such a thing to the tune of Barcelona's techno song "I Have the Password To Your Shell Account" (off the Zero, One, Infinity album).

I'd paint your bosoms
I'd paint your gorgeous gams
I'd paint your picture on my....fighter plane

# 12 Mar 2004, 04:53PM: I Have The Best Boss: Over IM: "hey, you should get out of here.... it's been a crazy day and everything's basically done. get out in that sunny weather!"

Have a good weekend.

# 15 Mar 2004, 03:53PM: They Call It "Whole Paycheck": Whole Foods has opened a grocery store and deli a few blocks from work. I am a variety fiend, so I adore the $6.99/pound hot bar, which is like a salad bar except that it has a hundred different dishes. I can get lots of little helpings of rice, salad, tamale, mashed potatoes, pudding, and garlic green beans in one meal. Outstanding! However, I sometimes end up paying more for lunch than I would had I gone to some outmoded pay-per-item restaurant. Also, when I pack several items into one box to eat at work, bit of food glop onto and into each other. Actually, garlic chocolate pudding is good.

# 16 Mar 2004, 01:03PM: I'd love to see "Dirty Story", and I'm concerned that Alton Brown recommends Ayn Rand (post of March 14th, 2004). And I'm sad that Patent Pending has been abandoned.

# 18 Mar 2004, 05:02PM: Blaaaah: Blah. What a workweek. At least this weekend I am going to the zoo and buying a fish (unrelated, surprisingly).

I have transferred my car to an uncle in Southern California who is selling it on my behalf. I'm very glad.

# 22 Mar 2004, 12:37PM: I Have Fish!: On Sunday, I bought two tiny goldfish at Aquatic Central, 1963 Ocean Avenue.

A week previous, I had washed off the existing gravel, put in water and some insta-ecosystem stuff, and turned on the air pump that bubbles the water in my four-gallon tank. The sound of the bubbler can be annoying and comforting; I dreamt of peeing at least once last week.

Yesterday I bought a net and food and water conditioner, picked out a fake plant for the fish to hide in (I'd wanted real but evidently a beginner shouldn't get too fancy with the ecosystem of the tank), and bought two "feeder" goldfish, one grey, one gold. (They are "feeders" not only because you can feed them to get them bigger, but also because you can use them as food for carnivorous fish.)

I had wanted pet fish, off and on, for ten years. I reasoned: I can talk to them and they won't talk back; they will not escape or chew on things or void their bowels or bladders where they shouldn't. I saw them as controllable.

But as soon as the owner passed me the plastic bag holding Dave and Betty, two little arrows hit my heart. So tiny! So helpless! The reason I wanted them is the very reason that I am keenly responsible now. They cannot fend for themselves at all.

So, yesterday, I anxiously watched them in my tank. Were they agitated? Was the water too cloudy? Had I fed them too much? What right had I to take over their lives for my own amusement? I couldn't think of any secrets to confide in them; I only thought of their welfare. In tears, I told Leonard that I just want them to be happy.

Leonard, who has owned fish, inspected my tank and my fish and reassured me. Dave and Betty have food, and plenty of room, and each other for company. They are safe from predators and have a bubbler, their reflections, an uneven rock surface, and a fake plant for stimulation. And they are getting acclimated to the tank, their new home.

So it is reasonable to believe that they are as happy as goldfish can be.

I like that my fish will be waiting for me when I come home. I worry about them, and I know they'll die, and I'll feel bad even if it's not my fault that they die. But at least they are happy right now, and I can derive pleasure from that happiness.

# 23 Mar 2004, 04:46PM: Scattered Notes:

I am on item 303 of a list of 800+ items. I began working through this list yesterday. I do not think I will finish it today.
I'd say "stay in school, kids," but I think that would mean I should go to grad school. Since my only real postgraduate options are law, academe, and education of mewling brats, I'll instead say "try not to graduate during a recession, kids."
Dave and Betty are okay. They are beginning to recognize that the flakey bits that suddenly arrive on top of the water each morning are food. Betty goes after them more vigorously than does Dave, but I've seen Dave poop, so I know he is eating.
I adore Daniel Davies, among other things, for giving me a link to a grumpy definition and history of Antinomianism. Basically, it's the bit that always bothered me about predestination/saved-by-grace theologies: if you're already saved, you can do anything you want and it doesn't matter! As it turns out, this is the Antinomian Heresy that polite society imputed to Anne Hutchinson, which got her kicked out of Boston, which helped lead to Rhode Island becoming the kind of contrarian state that kept defeating consensus attempts in Congress during the Articles of Confederation (the League of Nations' Mini-Me!). (Robin Einhorn pointed out the no-consensus-for-you! bit in Rhode Island's history when I took American History with her at UC Berkeley.)
I remember the word "Antinomian" mentioned in public school in the same breath as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Mostly I remember an explanation involving salvation by faith and not needing churches. I wish I'd learnt the more interesting heresy of which Hutchinson was accused. But in a sense, I don't want kids to have access to such dangerous intellectual weapons. If I have kids, they won't get to read Max Weber till they're out of my house. I don't want to ever hear, "your authority over me is only traditional! I want a rational-legal framework and I want it NOW!"
An economic critique of Pound on usury and on interest in general. (Stephen Berkowitz, honors government/econ teacher, Tokay High School, 1997/1998. "What is the price of money?...[let seniors muddle through]...Interest." Magic.) Insurance and risk: steps one can take, and steps one can't take back. More reasons I'll buy Daniel Davies a drink any time he visits SF.
If I could be as good as Robin Einhorn and Stephen Berkowitz, academe and mewling-brat-babysitting wouldn't be so bad.
Item #318. The mills of Sumana grind exceeding slow.

# 25 Mar 2004, 11:41AM: I Promise No Fish In This One: The summer between sixth and seventh grade, I carpooled with a wonderful Stockton Record reporter named Dana Nichols; his niece and I went to the same summer enrichment program. He listenened to KUOP in the mornings, and since I already loved public TV I was an easy touch for NPR. Gradually I switched from the local top-40/alt-rock station (with which I'd had personal and emotional attachment, not to mention great luck in winning phone-in contests) to the local NPR affiliate.

I worked at KUOP, the Stockton-Modesto public radio station, for a few months in a mid-nineties summer. I particularly remember the name Duncan Lively, as my teen ears perceived it as wonderful and impossible, and because he acknowledged a grammatical error I'd found in a fundraising script.

As it turns out, Duncan is still in public radio (or is he? Why do I see no date on this "press release"?), and I didn't converse with him enough to learn the neat fact that:

For three years, he worked in the former Soviet Union as NBC's resident photojournalist and tape editor. Lively covered stories ranging from the plight of would-be Jewish emigres to the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

KUOP had a microwave that did not interperet "2:00" as "120 seconds" but as "200 seconds". This caused me one embarrassing incident.

Scott Mearns, the kind and attractive chief engineer, kept a daily diary of all the stuff he did at work. This helped him keep others accountable, among other things. Also, in my work for him, I looked up Material Safety Data Sheets on gopher, which was the first time I ever used the Internet.

I wrote Public Service Announcements based on press releases that schools, nonprofits, and agencies sent in. I devised a new filing system for them that helped DJs know which ones to read.

Greg Parsons, the father of my schoolmate Mike Parsons, was funny and smart. Carole, the administrator and poet, was wise. Jack, the news reporter, was stressed and helpful.

I served there in the morning, so every day I came in and smelled coffee everywhere and heard the voice of Bob Edwards piped throughout the office.

I continued to listen to KUOP throughout high school. On several Saturdays my mother and I spent two hours quietly preparing food while listening to A Prairie Home Companion. I learned about music from Schickele Mix and did physics homework in the early hours of the morn to The Diane Rehm Show, where I first heard sung ancient Greek.

The day I left for college, I met an ex in the Carl's Jr. near my house, the last time I ever saw him. It was a goodbye that should have come months before. What an ill-advised fling! (Actually, Angel gave me great advice; I just didn't follow it.) And that day's front page of the Stockton Record (by then, The Record: First in San Joaquin) described KUOP's upcoming programming shift - less music, more talk, more homogenous NPR.

I left just in time.

Now KUOP has lost the six-hour block of classical in the middle of the day, and KUOP as an individual station doesn't really exist. And Bob Edwards is not the voice of Morning Edition anymore. Marx and Engels were right: all that is solid melts into air. Even the air.

# 26 Mar 2004, 08:10AM: "A tale of two miseries": Gary Kamiya is in the Middle East.

I have just spent two days with decent and intelligent people, Palestinians and Israelis, who because of the stupidity of their leaders and the shameful folly of my government are living a life I would not wish on a dog.
...
...it is the checkpoint that I will remember, because it's the only one I lived, if only for half an hour. It will remain, for me, a small vision of hell, like an obscure background in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Those silhouetted figures with guns, that smell of diesel fuel, the debris, the blank look of poor people fumbling for their papers, making their way home. One of the outer circles of hell, to be sure. But I felt in my bones it was not right. And as an American, I will carry that memory as a badge of shame. Because I pay for it, I support it. That soldier in the twilight is me.
...
Every American policymaker, every American who cares about human rights, or justice, or Israelis, or Palestinians, or Jews, or Muslims, or the Holy Land (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred site in Christianity, was empty when I visited), or just naked don't-blow-me-up self-interest, should come to the Calandia checkpoint. They should come to the rubble-strewn streets on the outskirts of Ramallah. They should stand at the No. 19 bus stop. This is not their problem: It is our problem. And then they should walk through the gates and into the Old City of Jerusalem, that divine gray maze that all three great faiths regarded as the center of the world and the terrestrial link with heaven, and see how hollow a man's prayers ring when he has not done what is needed.

# 26 Mar 2004, 05:14PM: Track Lighting!: Salon just moved its office to a different floor in the same building. This one has more dot-commy-colored walls and I have to walk for five times as long to get to my cube or to refill my water mug. Upside: window view, for the 20-20-20 rule.

I feel off in an almost-empty old place or an almost-empty new place. Ephemeral - creepy.

Not very productive today.

# 29 Mar 2004, 10:41AM: Waah: The Other Change of Hobbit, a sci-fi/fantasy bookstore on Shattuck, will close down at the end of May.

Basically, we can't afford to keep losing money at the rate we have. My inheritance is eaten up, Dave hasn't gotten his, and there's only so far we can go with selling off our own collections. Not enough people in the door, not enough money per person coming in....
Patronize Borderlands in SF as much as you can.

The Other Change of Hobbit store cat was the first cat to ever sit on my lap and get me to not mind.

# 29 Mar 2004, 03:38PM: Sex Pistils: I am now in a row of four cubes, each occupied by a female, and each female brought in at least one flower today.

However, I am probably the only one listening to KUSF.

# 30 Mar 2004, 06:12PM: Me, to Leonard: "I have to consider how to frame this so that you're always wrong."

Filed under: Comedy

# 31 Mar 2004, 12:31PM: Jerky: My 5 pounds of Original "Wild" Stonewall's Jerquee have arrived. Huzzah! Jerky for all!

# 31 Mar 2004, 07:05PM: Our office has moved. I scavenged a footrest and a better chair.

Lighting is mediocre. Most of us have lamps; soft haloes of light escape the rows of boxes.