as seen on youtube

this very interesting video by an autistic woman brings a whole new dimension to the concepts of human rights and justice.

bionicle dog car experience

when you spend your nights building bionicle deep sea creatures with your first grader, your IQ level tends to dip a bit. i offer as evidence the following:

idiots

At the supermarket checkout line there was a pamphlet for sale called 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Prayer'. As if.

Speaking of idiots, will someone please tell Sam.i.am to stop making these ridiculous Obama videos; I do not like Republi-cans. I do not like them, Sam.i.am.

It's 3 AM and the phone rings. Who do you want to answer it? Especially since THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE !!! EEEEEEEK. Oh, it's just an intern? Never mind.

Every time I follow a new "Lit Blog" (Conversational Reading, for example) I'm struck by the endless procession of authors, books, critics, genres, works, controversies, forums; endless. Of the making of many books there is certainly no end.

Jimmy Kimmel is so cool he can get all these cool celebrities in his cool video. Is this what people aspire to? To surround themselves with others who are exactly like themselves?

But don't forget to love your family every day. All of that is fun and games, but it's only Perky Pat.

keeping up with the headlines

just an hour ago, the lead headline at sfgate.com (San Francisco Chronicle) was "U.S. Economy slows to near crawl". I guess that wasn't dramatic enough. They just changed it to "U.S. Economy skids to near halt". Maybe in another hour we'll be treated to an economy that "staggers to near stop" or "stumbles and bruises its shin".

the problem of having a problem

I'm reminded of something that happens at work a lot - in order to solve a problem, we re-define it, a and keep re-defining it until the problem is no longer a problem. We haven't solve anything, but we have gotten rid of the problem of having a problem :}

butterfly

I liked someone's comment that Obama at the Ohio debate last night reminded them of Mark Twain's "Christian holding four aces". From my point of view, I thought that Obama was floating like a butterfly and stinging like a, um, butterfly too.

more sexism in language

When Obama used the word 'periodically' recently, he got in trouble with feminists who read in some subtle reference to 'female troubles'. Today he might have crossed that bridge again, by using the word "flow".

With tensions rising between the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama was asked about Clinton's mocking comment that he was selling a vision of "celestial choirs" in attempting to persuade voters he could solve problems.

"I think things have gotten a little hotter over the last couple of days, but these things have gone, sort of, in ebbs and flows," Obama said.

of the making of many books there is no end

browsing in my favorite bookstore this evening, i could have bought a dozen books, easily. one about 'why birds sing', one a collection of autogiographical writings by italo calvino, one a new translation of 'the three musketeers', one about antarctica by peter matthiessen, among others. the highlight of the evening, though, was watching my six year old son recline on the couch and read the latest "hot dog and bob" book all by himself. for years now, everytime we visit that store, i've spent most of my time reading to him. it's only in the last couple of weeks he's undertaken to seriously read by himself, and it's just wonderful to see.

blovel

how about a novel in the form of a blog, complete with comments and flame wars ... where the dialog between the author and the commenters overwhelms the contents of the blog itself, being far more entertaining. (novelog is another term i've come across)

perhaps the author is a sort of watchdog, keeping tabs on certain people, exposing them as frauds or whatnot, and they may not take too kindly to this. a series of comments and counter-comments ensue, becoming increasingly bitter and menacing.

perhaps he is even murdered (or kidnapped or otherwise put out of the way), and is replaced as the author of the blog, which is maintained so that no one will notice. the blog now becomes the cover-up as well as a sort of crime in itself, and something about it doesn't seem quite right. other readers start to comment on the subtle changes in the blog, and a new series of comments and counter-comments become increasingly curious and defensive.

persistence of gibberish

after another democratic debate last night, a pundit was heard to say that one of the candidates needs to establish a "message firewall". is this absolutely meaningless? searching the internet finds no other usage of this phrase

sorry, i was busy that week ...

LONDON—The former head of MI6 denied Wednesday that the British intelligence agency killed Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, in 1997.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who was MI6's director of special operations at the time of Diana's Paris death, told a coroner's inquest that MI6 didn't assassinate anyone between 1994 and 1999, when he was director of special operations.

he won't vouch for 1993 or 2000, however ...

action, adventure

been sick the past few days, flu-like thing going around, and as usual, when i'm sick i prefer to do manual as opposed to mental labor. so i was out grading and putting in a new landing in front of the shack in the back and trying not to think about anything, which wasn't hard to do. later in the evening, sore and exhausted from all the shoveling, digging, hauling, and illness, i collapse into bed and all of a sudden realize what was missing from the screenplay i wrote last summer (Golden, based on characters from the novel Time Zone) and was never quite satisfied with. it was simply the obvious action/adventure syndrome. i had some tension building up, and some apocalyptic motion, but i hadn't carried it through to the ending. this is what i needed to do, and also to sacrifice an extra character or two along the way. So this morning I have added a couple of scenes, deleted a couple, and changed a few more. Definitely on the right track now.

weird how things come to you sometimes.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

today in todayland

picking up where we left off, barbie insists that ken is full of hot air, that all he has is words, and that words don't matter, but at the same time they aren't even his own words, so if words don't matter, what does it matter whose words they are? nevertheless, barbie pressed the point, in speech after speech, that speeches are meaningless also. meanwhile, ken has to be careful about the words he uses, because it sometimes does seem more like a show than something actually important, like changing the world, and his ascendancy on the scene might be merely good casting, a timely star turn. he is charming to be sure, and she is not, except "periodically" when she stops pointing and nodding like a bobble head doll. observers claim that this or that poll or election result might turn out to be a turning point, a game changer, that momentum is shifting (which is all it ever really does) and if you're right, you're right, and if you're wrong it doesn't really matter, because they're paid to observe, those observers, whether they're particular observant or not.

an insight job

idea for a story featuring a phony psychic detective ... manages to solve cases, if only just barely. Gian Carlo Spallanzini, of course, from the youtube epikles channel. basically a scam artist with an occasional nuisance of a conscience, which will lead him to actually solve impossible cases, against his better judgment.

then of course the old idea of the tedious space traveler. visits many planets and has nothing interesting to report. talks about the weather, the traffic, the smog. this might make a decent video if i ever do one of those again.

barbie and ken

in some ways, following a political campaign is like playing with dolls. we choose the model we like best, and follow their adventures, making up our own scenarios in our heads (if only ken would tell barbie to shut the fuck up). meanwhile, we neglect our own lives and forget to tell our own stories, to do the things we have control over, to pay attention to those closest to us. It's the three stigmata, brought to you by chew-z and can-d, all over again

code words

Obama told reporters who had asked about Clinton's latest attack ad, "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal."

Apparently he meant to infer that she's a total bitch when she's on the rag. Sexism, pure and simple, well, pure and encoded.

Or is he merely describing her pattern of behavior in the recent campaign. Down in Iowa, she attacks. Down after South Carolina, she attacks. Down after Maryland and Virginia, she attacks. After wins in New Hampshire and California, she 'found her voice', she was smiling and nodding perpetually.

Or both. Coded and non-coded, sexism and politics, straight talk and twisted at the same time.

what i learned from a cowboy movie

some lessons not to teach your children (gleaned from the remake of "3:10 to Yuma")

1. It's better to be dead and thought of as a hero than to be alive and not.

2. Women are there to be taken, and that's all they really want.

3. Real bad guys have all sorts of super powers.

4. Loyalty is for pussies.

5. Killing people is easy and often entertaining.

6. Pointless goals are worth pursuing no matter what.


(not that there weren't good things about the movie, some good performances, nice scenery, completely ridiculous plot twists, etc ...)

judge not

Charles Barkley on "fake Christians"

fake christians
by luvnews

fragments

My 'Time Zone' novella's podcast made a resurgence to #1 on Podiobooks, which led to some reflections on this piece, which I wrote in two halves, ten years apart:

Some of the fragmentary themes in 'Time Zone' (the whole thing is fragmentary, by design, whether this is satisfactory to the reader/listener or not)

1. The protagonist begins as hero and ends as villain, not merely through his own degradation, but by being seen finally from a different angle. He is seen as an explorer, a scientist at first; later seen to be a heartless exploiter. I like this progression.

2. Time traveling while Black in America.

3. Time traveling while Female, anywhere.

4. Setting out on a big adventure, but settling for a small one (for example, you visit a new, foreign city and spend most of your time looking for an ice cream stand because it's so hot).

5. Never remembering, but always repeating the same experience. The warrior fights the same battle over and over again.

6. A time traveler stuck in space - he can only travel within the confines of a small town throughout its history, pre-history and post-history.

7. Hoping for external change, but the only change that happens is internal.

8. Raising yourself as both parent and child - a time travel paradox

valentine's

plenty of amusing overheards here from the Chronicle's Leah Garchik, including:

"He kept trying to put the moves on me, but then again, I was the one without clothes on."

"Well if she can't even say no to her siblings, how is she ever going to reject some jerk who has sex with cows?"

"My girlfriend is Russian, so does that mean it's OK to cheat on her?"

secular apocalypse

In a way, people do enjoy scaring themselves, and collecting their bottled water and their Saltines for the end of time.

from an interesting if provocative interview with the author of a book called 'Sissy Nation' (everybody's got to titillate - isn't that part of it?)

a job's a job

the other day i was with my son and niece (ages 6 and 7) at a mcdonald's (i confess) when my son pointed out a 'now hiring' sign on the window. my niece mentioned she saw one also at the subway sandwich shop next door. i had to run a little errand, so i left them with my wife and mentioned i was going to check on that job. i came back a few minutes later and they asked me if i got the job and i said yes, i did. they believed me.

yesterday i told them that the company i work for got bought by a bigger company and they asked, you mean subway got bought? i had to explain; no, actually i'm a computer programmer now. my sandwich-making days are behind me, hopefully for good, and there's a bit of a difference between the amount of money you can make in those different jobs. they understand money. it means toys to them, so they were happy that i could buy them more toys than i could if i really worked at subway, but they were still mad that i lied to them!

genre-bending

just as i discovered that the major thrust (so to speak) of contemporary time travel novels is in the 'romance' category, so too we could spot a new trend developing of s&m bondage erotica set in outer space, perhaps in the midst of alien invasions and laser fights with evil doom-doers. this would get those podcasts going hot and heavy during rush hour.

yes we can, what?

dude ...

big fish

"these are the big fish, who always try to eat down the small fish" - guiltiness, by bob marley

so the high-tech start-up i work for was just acquired by a big fish, the kind of fish i used to work for and quit working for (not the same exact fish but still, the same kind, of the borg variety).

phooey

my podcasts are now on itunes

Time Zone, Somebody Somewhere and Secret Sidewalk as well

pan flash wanes

the era of my tiny podcast dominance is over, an era that lasted all of three days. alas! here i was worried that my stuff was too vulgar, but the 'diary of an s&m romance' is supplanting my ouevre. maybe i will record 'squatter with a lexus' after all. it's as nasty as i get :}

my job in a nutshell

life's work

for some people, their job isn't just a calling, it's a crank calling

radical notion

My neighbor had a bumper sticker: feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

perhaps if Obama wants to win the Latino vote his campaign might stick with the notion that Hispanics are people and don't try to out-pander the Clintons. That cannot be done.

I'm still optimistic Obama-wise, but not quite as. He can win everything from here to March 4, but I think if he loses both Ohio and Texas, he loses, period. There would still be Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina among the bigger states still remaining, but losing nearly every large state would be fatal because they proportionately have the most super-delegates as well as voters. Which is really as it should be. It pisses me off that Montana has as many senators as California, and I hate the electoral college where teensy states matter too much, so I can't complain that big states have more superdelegates than little states and those superdelegates really should go with the voters of those states.

Not that I'd be happy about it. I don't have a lot of respect for the Clintons and never have. She voted for war, for land mines, for cluster bombs, for the future war on Iran, and all of those things make me feel we might as well have a fucking madman like McCain in office, if war is what you really want. As for health care, the last thing the Republicans would ever allow to happen is Hillary getting her way on health care. If you want universal health care, you have to vote for Obama. Counter-intuitive, perhaps, but likely true. Nothing would rally Republicans so much as denying Hillary on health care again.

In the end, whoever has the most elected delegates going into the convention should be the nominee. It's the only fair way.

theoretically speaking of course

the kids have to make valentine's day cards for all the other kids in their class. naturally, so no one gets their feelings hurt. it's all about the hugging and the learning. it does kind of take away from the whole point of the thing, but we are diluting ourselves. whatever happened to those old traditional values of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and hitting the other guy before he hits you? our kids think that presents and candy are what they get when they're being obnoxious and you just want to shut them up. they are already misspending their youth. but nobody talks too much about their misspent middle age. i suppose i began misspending my youth at around the age of eleven. continued on misspending it till i ran out of it. youth, that is. didn't run out of misspending. regrets are something it seems you can never have enough of.

speaking of misspending, i've been paying too much attention to things beyond my control, like the presidential campaign. i guess i'll leave it to the people behind closed doors, since that's what it's beginning to look like. i should spend more time on the things i can control, like launching my little paper boats into the stream and seeing if they get stuck on the rocks. like, oh yeah, the job. like making sure the kids learn the difference between the good misspending of youth and the bad.

a nice trick, wrote elias canetti, throwing something into the world without being pulled in by it.

flash in the pan

click to enlarge

(ok, it's only a couple hundred listeners so far, but we flashes in pans takes what we can gets)

suspicious

as the super tuesday results come in, it seems odd to me that the races are not close in most states. it's 60-40 or 70-30 one way or the other for obama or clinton, and in only a few states is it close. is this because they subtly decided in advance who was going to win where, so they each campaigned much more in the places they had designated for themselves? curious.

now clinton has changed her mind about debating on fox. boy, when you make an agreement with her, you have to go on and specify "no backsies". her word is most definitely not her bond.

first and foremost

For some reason I've received several "personal" calls from Mitt Romney over the past few days. On one he began with "Hello Thomas" and I swear it was in his own voice. Now, obviously Mitt doesn't know me personally because I've never gone by Thomas except in the phone book where my number is allegedly unlisted (are you listening AT&T? Oh, of course they're listening. Patriot Act and all that), but nevertheless, I am curious about the software involved.

It's unlikely, though possible, that Mitt spent a month or two pronouncing every possible first name into a computer database. On the other hand, computer voice-impersonation has never sounded so good before, so can it really be that? In any case, he nailed it, and I thought for a moment, hey, this guy's good. It really did sound like him saying my name, and if the guy can do that, then maybe he can lead his way out of a paper bag.

Then I thought, naah, it's got to be some other kind of technology I just haven't heard about yet, which led me to wonder if he is, indeed, after all, an alien! That would explain a lot of things.

multi-link

html needs a multi-link, one reference that on selection would bring up a popup menu of link choices. instead, we still have to do "here or hereor hereor hereor here" for multiple links.

once in a lifetime

So unfortunate that maybe only once in a lifetime a person gets a chance to vote for someone they really and truly want to, without reservation. It should be a regular occasion!

Obama '08

The scarcity of genuine leaders (i.e. leaders who are not afraid of their own shadows) reminds me of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan of Colombia. Assassinated in 1948 and not since then has there been anyone even close. How many Nelson Mandalas does a country have? How many Gandhis? How many Martin Luther Kings? Not to put Barack Obama in that lofty category (yet), but as a reflection on the rarity. Politicians like Hillary Clinton are not a dime a dozen, to be fair, but they do seem to come by the dozen, if at a higher price! Bill Clinton was a Democrat, yes, and the only Democratic president in the past generation, but his singular achievement was to push a lot of people off of welfare. Way to go, Bill. That was true leadership.

Shoot your local pollster, by the way. The latest California polls report:
1) Clinton up by 10
2) Obama up by 13

omnify

fiction, in general, is presented as a complete world that makes sense altogether, brought to you by a narrator who knows it all and can explain it all to you. This is especially true of science fiction, which is often the domain of the "fat bearded know-it-all" who has created brand new worlds and brand new technologies and knows every little thing about them. In contrast, my humble Time Zone is a sort of spanner hurled in that general direction and with as much futility. It is a series of partial, incomplete, contradictory versions of a central idea, one which came to me in a dream, literally, as chapter one, in which neither the narrator nor any of the characters really ever figure it out, but are more like blades of grass attempting to describe the wind. For this reason I always expect people to be dissatisfied with it, either to feel cheated, or to want much more, and I always have to say, you know, if you enjoyed it while you were reading (or listening to) it, that really ought to be good enough :}

bumper sticker of the day

I love my country ... but I think we should start seeing other people

you can buy one here

genre

Some time ago I wrote about my idea of publishing one volume of fiction containing stories from several different genres - in a sort of similar move, I've put three short novels out together at the same time in 'podcast' form; a suspense novel (Somebody Somewhere), an urban fairy tale (Secret Sidewalk) and science fiction (Time Zone). I like to think that if someone likes any one of these, they're unlikely to like any of the others :}

not to be pigeon-holed, so to speak.

The podcasts are now available, for free, at podiobooks.com

and i must say it was pretty exciting to get more than 120 listeners in the first twenty four hours. thank you all.

Barack Obama - Yes We Can music video

In his own words. Nice.

On Principle

To me, it's the war. Hillary, like many other Democrats, supported the
war in the belief that it would be easy and over with quickly and then
they'd look bad if they'd opposed it.

In contrast, our own Congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, said this at the time
of the resolution in October 2002:

"Mr. Speaker, the Congress is now debating the most serious and
sobering of issues ... whether we go to war -- war against Iraq -- and
we do this as we stand on the threshold of a new century.

"I believe this debate is as much about voting to declare war, as it
is about what kind of country we are and what we want our country to
be in the future.

"This Resolution of War is an extraordinary and unwise departure from
our history of a principled American tradition ... that we stand
four-square against unprovoked attacks and for a foreign policy of
deterrence."

You cannot cast a vote on war out of political calculation and
expedience. You are either a principled person or you are not.

super

another boston vs new york championship series, and this one presents certain difficulties for this dispassionate california viewer. sure, it'd be great to see a team go 19-0, especially since 19 is my favorite number. on the other hand, it's cool when a wild card team wins three in a row on the road and then takes it all, as the patriots did a few years ago, and the giants could do now. then there's the local angle - tom brady's from my county. on the other hand, i've got family in new york city. also have family in new england. dang. what's the tie-breaker going to be? maybe the names angle? it's hard to beat plaxico burress. which means the giants. oh, but come on, tedy bruschi? what better name for a football player than brewski? double dang. looks like i'm stuck. guess i'll just root for the eventual winner and afterwards pretend that i was for them all long.

the old compliment

every time i let the beard grow, i get the 'did you know you look like Steven Spielberg' comment. Today I responded with 'is that a good thing?' to which the lady replied, 'well, he's rich and famous', and I said, 'You know, I don't think his being rich and famous is really doing me a lot of good!'

officially designated

It must be a special part of the street, because this is the second time I've come across a blind man jaywalking right there. I didn't see any signs marking it as an officially designated blind person jaywalking spot, but then again, if there was a sign, they wouldn't be able to see it anyway.

which brings me to another one of those questions: the braille signs on walls near bathrooms. How do blind people know where they are?

caught parking

as i was pulling in to the lot this morning i caught sight of a man very slowly and cautiously backing his car into a spot, with the driver's side door partially opened so he could peek out and make sure he was properly aligned. He noticed me noticing him and gave me a look as if to say, I know I'm not good at this, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad person, does it? I tried to give a reassuring look back. You're not how you park.

ideas and their consequences

Those who remain 'communists' after all this time often say that, well, it really hasn't been tried yet, but every "attempt to try" leads one to conclude, fairly I think, that giving the state monopoly over capital leads to corruption, bureaucracy and inefficiency, to say the least. If the implementation of the idea tends to lead to certain results, it seems logical to identify those consequences with those ideas.

Those who are 'evangelicals' (any branch of any religion that requires missionariness (to coin a term)), would likewise have to acknowledge that historically these kinds of programs had led, at the least, to coercion, discrimination, intolerance and repression (examples include the California missions, colonialism in Africa, Asia and Latin America).

In the case of both these ideas, we've seen greater abuses than mere corruption or coercion - such as genocide - but I am only thinking of the direct consequences of those specific ideas.

People who evangelize are engaging in coercion - trying to convince other people to do something they wouldn't otherwise be doing. Centralization of the economy naturally implies bureaucracy.

The point is, if there is a point, that while believers like to separate the 'pure' idea from the tainted practice, such a separation is illusory. At some point, with grownup eyes, if you want to have the one, you have to accept the other as its mate.