November 2002 Archives

For an often-morose moper, I have lots to be grateful for. I'm healthy, young(-ish), privileged, and free. I work at home. I live in a beautiful mediterranean climate. I have maintained a love affair for over a decade. I am still learning to know myself better, to listen to my body, to express my emotions. I am thankful for music. I appreciate the gifts I've been given. I am grateful for my voice. I thank you all for your attention.

Last night I saw the Flaming Lips open for Beck and then back him for the second half of his set. Good show, interesting alchemy. I have all of Beck’s records except his most recent one. And I only have the most recent Lips record, but I’ve listened to it a lot and plan to work my way backward in their increasingly noisy ouevre (kind of like surfing back through the Meat Puppets’ output).

Outside the Paramount I asked Bill and Jeff if they read the album the same way I do. To me, it sounds like Yoshimi loses to the pink robots. (She sure does a lot of screaming in part two of her battle.) Bill thought I was taking it all too literally, and that it’s not a concept album outside of that song or maybe a few others in the first half. Jeff wasn’t sure. He thought Yoshimi won.

It may well be that I’m taking the whole rock opera conceit too seriously here. The story, if it exists, does get vaguer as the record wears on, and like most rock ‘n’ roll, just about every track can be read as a love song. There are songs where the lyrics can mean one thing if said between two lovers and another if part of a sci-fi storyline (“you and me/were never meant to be/part of the future,” for example).

What follows is what textual basis I can find for my reading of the story, from the teensy lyrics in the liner materials of the CD.

I'll be pinging this entry to see if I can get my other blog posts listed here automatically on the category page (x-pings).

Saturday I paid the bills, and sent a contributor (at long last) his signed copy of my last book.

Monday I made an appointment for the car's 57-month checkup and updated the contributors to my new book about the cancellation of the contract by the publisher.

Tuesday I got groceries, talked to an editor about a possible book project from about January to about May of next year. Also saw Beck with Flaming Lips at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.

Today I took the car in for its checkup, talked to my agent about the cancellation negotation and five new book-deal leads of various likelihood and appeal.

Also, I finally called the gutter guys to come and do the annual clearing of our downspouts as the rainy season kicks in (once this Santa Ana thing blows over, I hope).

I'm doing myself a disservice, in this exercise, but not logging what I'm getting done daily. The whole idea is to counter the negative-sum to-do list view of life and actually log accomplishments. If they don't measure up to the time spent, so be it, but let it be a record at least of some of the things that gained top priority enough to happen, over all the other wishful things.

I haven't found much to argue with in Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, but then I'm also a huge Pixies fan.

Let me put it this way: if not for Doolittle, there would be no Pitchfork. In other words, the influence of this record is so vast that, fifteen years on, it has altered the course of your life at this very moment.

"Hope I die before I become Pete Townsend," wrote Cobain in his diary. Pete doesn't seem offended so much as saddened in his review of the just-published journals of the suicidal muse of the '90s.

It is desperately sad for me to sit here, 57 years old, a huge chunk of life still ahead of me, and contemplate how often wasteful are the deaths of those in the rock industry. We find it so hard to save our own, but must take responsibility for the fact that the message such deaths as Cobain's sends to his fans is that it is in some way heroic to scream at the world, thrash a guitar, smash it up and then overdose.

Let me be the last one on the block to link to this bizarre flash soy sauce superhero risqué music video.

Finally sent a signed copy of Dreamweaver Savvy to Guy Rish, who wrote the ColdFusion chapter. He only had to ask me like ten times!

Did basically nothing else today except mess around.

Oh, wait. I did shovel the ruined jack o'lantern into the compost (photos to follow) and took a bunch of shots of the back yard, especially the grapevine.

With Thanksgiving approaching, the bottom burner element in our twenty-year-old oven gave out. It took us a while to diagnose the problem. The symptoms were the oven taking much longer to come up to full heat, except when in broil mode (top burner only), and then the way my last banana bread baked, burning at the top and staying pudding-y at the bottom.

Fortunately, these things are fairly standard. B removed the part this morning. A parts store on San Pablo and russell in Berkeley had the perfectd fit for only about $35. I just picked it up. Now we need to ask the landlords to come over and install it.

I need a place for a very simple log of things accomplished. Like a to-do list, but as things are done, not a plan for future things, which is elsewhere. Like my occasional "burning to-do's" posts to my old bodega blog, except in real time instead of catching up now and again.

At loose ends... I am suddenly adrift. There's no immediate urgency to find a new project, but my current work has suddenly stopped... I know I should enjoy the downtime, the freedom, the sudden rush of patient but niggling fantasies, but part of me also feels like I should be immediately lining up "the next thing." This would mean dropping a line to many people in my network of friends and colleagues to find out what's up, get advice, hear about potential opportunities or interesting endeavors.

Weirdly I thought last night about getting into government. As just after 9/11 when I felt called up not to military action but to journalism (getting at the truth) and politics (trying to change the direction of things), my current despair about our political rhetoric (is that the right word for a narrow permitted range of ideas?) and our tired solutions to the conundrums of our day.

And fuck those people who compare any doubt about anything my country right or wrong decides to do with or without my input, who compare that to treason or favoring our enemies? How dare they? It is precisely because I am so amazed by American's incredible competence in so many areas (science, technology, coordinated military action, entertainment/media production, medicine, and so on) that I fear this sometimes masks the mix of arrogance, excellence, blind spots, and unintended consequences that characterize the lumbering actions of our noble Bunyanesque nation on the world stage.

More on this after today's important household errand...

Couldn't blog anything yesterday, dealing with a project-related crisis that's still in progress. It feels funny to miss a day. I usually post something somwhere, but by evening, my first free moments, I felt too discouraged. Not chatty.

On the other hand, change is good, so I may be able to rev up my writing again after a short breather. Also, all to the cool, B is getting into blogging!

My dad forwarded me a Mad Magazine poster called Gulf Wars: Clone of the Attacks. The satire beat anything they put out in my day (except maybe their controversial "So why not pardon Hitler?" back-page ad after Ford pardoned Nixon. Even as a child I could see that was a little over-the-top.

I usually get ex-military related netsam from my dad, so I was amused to see the nonpartisan good faith with which he passed this one along.

I thought this was a brilliant bit of webhackery till I saw the Mad Magazine credit in the lower-right. See the full-sized version to read the fine print.

I feel that one of the things I'd like to be "logging" is the start, milestone-reaching, or conclusion of any of my writing projects.

For example, today I completed the first draft of a review of The Deadhead's Taping Addendum (PepperTonic, 2002) for the upcoming issue of Dead Letters Magazine, a scholarly (believe it or not) journal devoted to discussion of the Grateful Dead and related phenomena.

From the Well's Politics conference comes this link to APOCAMON: THE FINAL JUDGEMENT, which bizarrely combines end-times mythology (see the popular Left Behind series or your local evangelical for more on that) with Flash Pokemon-style animation.

(Sidenote: when did "swag" become "schwag"?)

coffee

baguette
blueberry scones

white wine
red wine
roasted chicken
reggiano pecorino gruyere

dozen eggs

qt half 'n' half
qt nonfat milk
pavel's plain lo-fat yogurtses
nonfat brown cow

toilet paper (9 packs/fat)

sardines w/o oil

3 lbs. of country style pork rib (for mex. dish)

chicken stock so get some necks and feet from the meat counter--or whatever they sell for stock. less than a lb. more like 2 necks and 4 feet--1/4 to 1/3 lb. i would guess

fish

extra virgin olive oil

pie fixings for T-day: large can pumpkin pulp (no other ingredients)
2 cans of evaporated milk (unsweetened)
both kinds of brown sugar--light and dark

golden raisin
italian anisette cookies--the cheap ones in the cellophane packaging--not the box or tin. (round, about 2" across, crunchy) Stella Doro brand?

food-section rose water
// on the upper shelves of the section that includes teas--near the coffee grinder machine. You might also check around the cake mix and decorating section, there are usually 2 kinds--rose water and orange water. You also might ask a clerk--tell them it's for baking. //

Shelled, raw pecans

butternut squash--med. size

1 yellow onions
2 red onion

sweet potatoes (not too damaged and not too big)

romaine & redleaf (2 heads)

kale, celery, parsnips or turnips, potatoes, leeks, chard, carrots, sweet peppers, fennel bulb

carrots--get the ones with tops and get 2 bunches

broccoli raab OR turnip greens
OR rapini (not mustard)

cucumber (english or regular)

tomatoes

apples--see if they have new stuff coming in--not in the freezer bins but in the aisles; look for gravenstein, gala, rome beauty
get half a doz apples if they look (smell) good--are firm, no blemishes, no soft spots

pears?

4 grapefruits 10 valencias etc.

When I was a kid there was a fast-food chain on the east coast called Arthur Treacher's Fish 'n' Chips. I seem to recall that Treacher was some kind of celebrity from long before my time. Whatever happened to that place? I can't think of any other fast-food chains that have entirely disappeared since then. Did the fried-fish eating demographic just vanish? I still remember their jingle: "Arthur Treacher's fish 'n' chips/Arthur Treacher's fish 'n' chips/The meal you cannot make/The meal you cannot make/The meal you cannot make/At home."

Dreary weekend, once the windy rain had passed. Moped around the house a lot. Didn't get much done. I should feel better. For the first time in a while I don't have anything too serious hanging over my head or way behind schedule. It always seems like when I get a little down time that this sluggish moody mood sets in.

I guess feelings of any kind mean at least I'm alive.

The picture above is a snap from our tour of the Domain Chandon facility on Friday, a grand belated birthday outing. We saw the giant tanks, heard a lot about the science and art of making the sparkling and still wines, tasted six champagnes, had a fantastic extended lunch, and then bought a lot of champagne, pinot noir, and pinot meunier.

I've just poured a glass of the 2000 Carneros Pinot Noir, which is breathing right now as the bouquet expands under my nose (or the nose expands under the bouquet of fall flowers here on my kitchen table).

The photo (which is also a link to a larger, uncropped version of the image) shows a step in the bottling process, after the bottlenecks are frozen, when the tiny cap containing the yeast is burst off. The next step equalizes the amount of champagne in each bottle.

The Pumpkin Tide
Richard Brautigan

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

I am up to my ears on a project right now, with deadlines coming fast and furious, and I'm taking today off.

I'm well aware of a number of pressing email messages in my in box awaiting my reply and I hope that my correspondents can forbear a while longer as I get my act together. I am not ignoring anyone deliberately. I read messages as they come in, and if I can't reply off the top of my head, there's sometimes a lag until I can find an opportunity to organize my thoughts and respond cogently.

Going on a belated birthday-related wine country outing today. Napa in the rain. We'll be touring Domain Chandon where a friend is the chief wine maker. Maybe stop by Rafanelli as well.

I can't complain about the rain. Lord knows we need it. And the ground smells good all around the house. Wine country in the fall in the rain might be picturesque. I just hope the winds have died down. Bushes and trees were thumping against the house all yesterday. On big vine-bush in front of the house toppled over last night. I wonder if we'll see any damage up there?

Just finally put away the suitcase from the wedding a few weeks back. Why do I leave things like that? What finally triggered the desire to deal with it? Doesn't it feel nice to have it off the floor?

Taking a tip from of my clients, I moved my airport base station to the basement today.

My network is funny: I have a long long ethernet cord running down the laundry chute to the basement where my second hub was set up, up to now just to provide access for the old Pentium Pro down there that used to power my office when I worked in downtown Oakland.

In fact, the basement is still overcrowded with surplus computer desks, books, boxes, files, and equipment—overdue for an overhaul.

So that hub has many open ports. I brought the Airport base station down, plugged it into the powerstrip, attached it to the hub, and voila!

Upstairs the signal was just as good as it ever was from across my office. We'll need to test other places around the house to be sure, like that guy in the cellphone ad.

But out in the backyard the signal is totally adequate now (About 50–60% right now from where I'm sitting, when it was zilch before). I'm sitting here on the deck in the shade, posting to my blog from outside. I can do my work here. I can connect to the Net. All I need now is a spare set of speakers.

From Cal Godot (via antiweb) comes this link to an interactive "before and after" view of Seattle's skyline.

Caleb in orange

Sam with Pumpkin

My SBC Pacbell account's email server is down at the moment. It's this server that handles any mail to my widely known pobox.com forwarding adress, which is where most of my custom or vanity domains currently point.

If the problem persists, I'll redirect pobox to my minimal Earthlink account used for traveling (that I won't need soon now that SBC/Yahoo! are supposedly going to provide dialup from anywhere in the US).

A few of my addresses don't go through this bottleneck. The only public one is my address at Waterside, my literary agency. If you know that, feel free to cc me there until this problem goes away (but not forever, please! I hate getting two of everything forever).

MZ sends along this Arabian Random Insult Generator:

We no speak english so nice so some of these make no sense perfectly. We many sorries.

EGBG, in the Netherlands, provides this anti-telemarketing counterscript:

Telemarketers make use of a telescript — a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.

This is probably all over the net, but I just got it in email from JG:

low turnout for tricks or treats tonight means we have a bunch of reese's peanut butter cups left over, some skittles, a few dum dums, and about two pounds of mini tootsie rolls