# 03 May 2004, 12:07PM: The Replacement Swimmer: Betty now swims happily alongside her new tankmate, Bill. I did not realize until after naming Bill that I'd created an homage to Pleasantville.
# 03 May 2004, 05:21PM GMT+5:30: Women:
Last night I stayed up too late watching Part I of the original Prime Suspect. Yes, the critics love Helen Mirren for a reason.
Women I have wanted to be (an incomplete list):
# 04 May 2004, 08:47AM: Cherry Blossoms:
Once upon a time, during my senior year in high school, my classmates and I all applied to the University of California at the same time. UC asked me to look at their list of scholarship categories and list the five I thought I was most eligible for. I remember codes for "first person in family to attend college," "descendant of Union veteran of Civil War," and, of course, "Jewish orphan studying aeronautical engineering." Who can forget "Jewish orphan studying aeronautical engineering"? Well, if I kill my parents and convert....eh, I don't really want to be an engineer.
Then, around this time of year, everyone in the AP English class got rejections and acceptances at the same time. What a tense morning.
# 05 May 2004, 08:56AM: As Though They Cater To Me Specifically: Berkeley Repertory will host Mike Daisey this summer for performances of 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com! I wonder whether the performance will live up to the book derived from the performance.
# 05 May 2004, 09:12AM: Hoji-Cha: Drinking "hoji-cha," a toasted green tea that a coworker gave me. The tea smells like some interesting intermediate of black and green tea, and he wasn't lying about the fuller flavor. I can really taste the toast.
# 05 May 2004, 04:56PM: How Do Dead Godzillas Stomp?:
Preparing for a trip to Japan?
"After your bath put on your "yukata" robe which you can wear throughout the ryokan. Put it on left-over-right (unless you are dead)."
"DO NOT PLACE YOUR CHOPSICKS STRAIGHT UP IN THE RICE. This is how rice is served to the dead."
# 06 May 2004, 10:47AM: Now I Have Seen Norm Howard: This morning I volunteered to take pledge calls for KQED-FM. Let me say that when you ask for public radio listeners who are willing to come into the Mission District at 6:30am to take pledge calls, you are selecting for an odd crew. I ended up talking to the same type I always meet, libertarian guys who use esoteric operating systems and consider improvements to the game of Risk in their spare time. I have to branch out.
# 07 May 2004, 08:33AM: I Be Walkin' Down The Street (to the Marsh's Mock Cafe):
I'm doing stand-up again. SAGE, a nice-sounding UC Berkeley mentorship program, asked me to do a $50/head fundraiser on the 26th, so between now and then I'm hitting area open mics (info may be out-of-date). Last night I did the Brainwash, to no acclaim but some guffaws. Let me know if you want to come along sometime.
People at the Brainwash last night (at least, the first 10 or so) made surprisingly funny. Has the scene gotten better since I withdrew last year?
# 09 May 2004, 08:26AM: You're Not Scottish, Stop Macking On Me: Friday and Saturday had comedy stuff. Evidently people do not know who Robert Rubin is. Also, evidently there are unfunny male comics who will awkwardly try to pick up any given non-white-haired woman, regardless of her obvious bemusement. Pretty tacky.
# 09 May 2004, 09:03AM: The Apple Cobbler's Children:
My mother taught me frugality in buying shoes -- twenty dollars per pair, tops. However, yesterday I paid fifty dollars for a pair of black flats (work/comedy shoes). I required more than one reassurance from my shopping companion that I had not paid too much.
Why do shoe stores and departments fill their women's shelves with frippery? Ribbons, straps, buckles, and I'm not even going to start with heels. Heels -- argh! OK, I started on heels. Freaking prescriptions for foot pain.
I just want durable, comfortable shoes to wear to work and gigs that will go with lots of outfits, that don't require dead animals for their material, and I don't want to pay more than thirty-five dollars per pair. Unreasonable? Suggestions? Update, May 10: Leonard's extended family agrees that it's worth it to pay extra for quality.
Also, I forgot to mention yesterday that I also prefer shoes made in countries that have actual labor standards. Man, I'm demanding.
# 10 May 2004, 04:36PM: Atari Bihari Vajpayee: A little joke. Anyway, Slate covers India's elections so I don't have to watch Namaste America and blink through the Hindi.
# 11 May 2004, 11:54AM: Probably No Connection:
Over the past three days, I met The Poor Man and The Claw, and got a free "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" mug as a "thanks for taking pledge calls" raffle prize from KQED. Also, I had a dream involving the birth of a baby and a snake.
Leonard cooks awesomely. Caesar salad, pesto, pastries, cookies. Maybe he should open a tiny illegal restaurant inside his house. How hip would that be?
# 11 May 2004, 08:05PM: Silly Word Munging:
Will update Spam As Folk Art with reader submissions soon, really.
Today I can't even compliment myself with the epithet of hack. Maybe tomorrow.
# 12 May 2004, 04:32PM: Again, Free Bagels: Today my seat neighbor during the KQED pledge drive professed to have gone to school with one R. Kelly (some singer). He also flirted with women who called to pledge their support. Well, that's one way to avoid the singles bars.
# 13 May 2004, 09:55AM GMT+5:30: Media Revue:
All three of these bits of media experience have something to do with the Middle East! And I didn't even intend it.
Last night's Enterprise provoked even more US/Middle East Allegory babble in me. The sphere-builders are... Ahmad Chalabi! No, the neocons! Ahmad Chalabi is the leader of the Reptilians. No, the reptilian is Prince Bandar! Tucker is Ted Olson! And the Council is... OPEC? a "Mirror, Mirror" UN?
The Council seems really legitimate as a government to everyone in it except the Reptilians, which I guess makes the Reptilians like the US. Are the Insectoids Britain?
Also, Enterprise pulled off a surprisingly assertive mix of heavy exposition, lighthearted banter, trippy sci-fi sets, and suspenseful plot. Good stuff.
West Wing broke my heart in "Gaza." The West Wing thesis on Israel/Palestine resembles Everything Is Ruined's:
The new NSC character, I like. Will Bailey's impatience with nuance discussions, not so much. The huge expository dialogue chunks, a crazed hive-mind talking to itself, I liked. How else to think about the Middle Eastern ourobouros?
Reading Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam by Daniel Dennett, Jr. From the Introduction:
"Forget it Jake, it's Jerusalem." Jerusalem is Chinatown. There's nothing you can do. It's a place where there is no right answer. You ask Jake what he did in Chinatown, and he says, "As little as possible." (That's also what he murmurs to himself at the very end of the movie.) "Chinatown" means basically what Heart of Darkness means for Conrad: it's the dark place where every action is a mistake.
...Nevertheless, all the contributions to the literature of Muslim taxation within the last forty years have been monographic in character and limited in area to particular provinces of the Arab Empire, with the result that there is no single work to which a student who might be interested in the general problem to turn; and if he attempts to master the secondary literature, he will discover so many conflicting data and opinions that his confusion will be increased rather than resolved. This book, therefore, attempts to present a broad view of the system of taxation as it existed in East and West throughout the lands once subject to the Persians and the Greeks, and it is based on all the evidence the writer has been able to discover. It is not, however, a synthesis of the latest opinion, for, as the reader will presently discover, I have views of my own and an axe to grind....
# 13 May 2004, 10:50AM: THIS is India Shining: The Congress party won the Indian elections, defeating the "Anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat? What anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat?" BJP. All right! I hope this portends badly for radical religious parties elsewhere as well. I'm talking to you, Likud.
# 13 May 2004, 07:56PM: What's Wrong?:
I am volunteering. I am reading tax history to figure out whether I want to study that sort of thing in graduate school. I am taking care of my fish. I am editing my wardrobe and home. I am preparing for the stand-up gig. I am trying to be a good friend and girlfriend. I am trying to do everything right!
Joe and I will hang out, I'll sleep, it will be better in the morning. It always is.
# 14 May 2004, 09:24AM: Better:
Joe gave good advice, and I slept off the despair. Well, most of it.
This morning, at the Powell Street BART station, three different musicians set up shop too near each other. One Asian stringed instrument, one cello, one recorder. Not a pleasant cacophony, but silly.
# 15 May 2004, 03:45PM: Another Obituary: Bill, my new grey goldfish, has also died. One day he was as lethargic as usual, perhaps a little frayed, the next he had passed away. I am going to leave Betty alone in the tank for a while.
# 17 May 2004, 01:12PM: The Underground Sound: Fortune has gifted me with a new work computer, one that makes it much easier to listen to audio streams. I have discovered the usually-rocking college station KSCU. Recommended!
# 17 May 2004, 02:34PM GMT+5:30: Death, Taxes, And Sumana Writing About Taxes:
Reading Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam. Dennett writes clearly and entertainingly, even though it's a university press book with a tiny audience. Good job! Also, he amuses me by saying, "Let us examine the Byzantine tax system of Syria" and actually meaning "Byzantine."
The Arab Empire experienced, of course, some of the same problems that the modern US and modern Israel have. If you use reduced taxes as an incentive for some behavior (such as conversion to Islam or investment in state and municipal bonds), then people will do that and your tax receipts will go down. If you reduce the incentive, then the interest group you have just created will grumble or rebel. If you tax everyone else more heavily to make up the difference, you're fomenting class war. If you try to make up the difference with deficit spending or spending cuts, you might lose credibility, or even the ability to govern effectively. (You can only cut police and military spending so much!)
Finally, from Waltman's Political Origins of the U.S. Income Tax:
Every action has an opportunity cost. If you are sleeping, you can't be writing, and if you are sleeping or writing the Great Customer Service Novel then you cannot be hyping your new one-woman show.
If we accord the income tax a high place in the patheon of bequests from the Progressive era, we must sadly note it is a legacy bequeathed only by racism. Were it not for the Democratic leadership in Congress being in the hands of those who wanted to spare the common man much of the taxes he bore in 1913, we would not have had the progressive income tax. But who were these economic humanists Ratner and others have praised? Kitchin, Simmons, Underwood, Hull, Williams, Garner. Every one of them was from the South, and they were all guardians of white supremacy. In fact, even their homilies on taxes are laced with crude racist stories and jokes. When they turned to such issues as black soldiers being armed during World War I or antilynch laws, their venom knew few bounds. To be sure, some were worse racists than others, and to be sure it can be argued that had they deviated from the "party line", their replacements might have been worse. And it is almost certainly true that without their votes and leadership we would have had much more exploitative tax policies. Yet, it is a sad tradeoff. Progressive tax policies were bought with impediments to any progress along racial lines. Before we celebrate the virtues of our income tax therefore, a tear is in order for those to whom taxes were secondary.
# 17 May 2004, 04:54PM: Is Something Missing?:
An old Jon Carroll.The incomplete life is the only life. People who live in Paris do not live in Fiji. People who run successful businesses are unable to compose folk songs. If they quit to compose folk songs, they still can't spend all day every day windsurfing in St. Kitts.
# 18 May 2004, 01:52PM: Bobby Flay, Tina Fey, Liza Dei: Happy 34th birthday to Tina Fey!
# 18 May 2004, 04:34PM: Fascinating: If I am not careful, I will spend two hours reading Malcolm Gladwell's archives on Saturday Night Live, SUVs, khakis, zoning laws, corporate memoirs, what have you.
# 19 May 2004, 10:48AM: Articulation:
If a commentator decries the overuse of Reservists in the conflict in Iraq, and notes that the government has instituted stop-loss policies and extended Reservists' tours of duty, then other commentators often respond, what did they expect when they joined the Reserve? they are part of the military and they have to earn their pay.
J. Bradford DeLong articulates why the Reservists actually are getting a raw deal:
But the more important thing is that we have already reinstituted the draft--in a peculiar way. Reservists--who thought that they were standing ready to reinforce the regular army in a serious war while the general draft and total war mobilization got underway--have discovered that that's not their role. Their role is to be drafted at a ferocious rate precisely so that the government can fight its war in Iraq "on the cheap," without disturbing the lives of college students who might demonstrate and attract TV cameras.
# 20 May 2004, 10:19AM: Easily Swayed: On the one hand, this summer's stoner movie Harold and Kumar go to White Castle remakes and explicitly references Dude, Where's My Car?. On the other hand, it has an Indian. So maybe I will see it. Then again, I never did see American Chai, nor fillum star: the Peter Patel story.
# 20 May 2004, 10:39AM: Oh no: Reginald Zelnik, an awesome and wonderful Russian History professor, has died. A goddamn delivery truck backed into him on campus. He was so funny and smart. He taught the most detailed, insightful lectures. It took me half the semester to realize he didn't need notes. I miss him.
# 26 May 2004, 09:51AM: "Coming Out as a Human": Leonard's phrase for Real Live Preacher's announcement. "My name is Gordon Atkinson. I live in San Antonio, Texas, and I'm the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church."
# 27 May 2004, 12:48PM: She Said Yes:
"Told that a banner would take two days to print, Mike grabbed some colored file folders and improvised a simple sign. The next day, as he crossed the stage, he kneeled and held it up for the entire Greek Theatre audience to see: "MARRY ME Jackey!!!"
Of course, I am so enlightened that I find the man's burden/privilege of proposal oh-so-obsolete. I prefer continuing, mutual discussion as a means to such huge and momentous decisions. Like the SALT talks.
But these stories still make me sniff.
# 30 May 2004, 11:38AM GMT+5:30: Books:
Reading The Greedy Hand by Amity Shlaes, a WSJ writer with whom I vastly disagree, which means John might like it.
Also reading James Morrow's Only Begotten Daughter, in which Jesus Christ's sister is born to a Jewish bachelor in Atlantic City in 1974. James Morrow loves probing ethical systems and religions in the context of fantasy. I'm sure tonight I'll dream of a booming voice directing me to render unto Him what is Caesar's.
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