Even older stuff moved far, far away. It's even more boring than this, though, so best to just leave it.
"I don't want to take too much of your time, but I want to end my speech with a slogan that hangs over my bed in Arabic. It says, 'La tastawhishu tareeq el-haq, min qilit es-sa'ireen fihi' and that translates into, 'Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it.'
"I think our future is going to be the future of truth, and we're going to walk on that path, and we're going to fill it with travelers. "
Fadia Rafeedie, Berkeley Convocation Address. Full text at Znet.
Think I'll just be doing verses from that for the rest of the year.
Had a wonderful time in Urbana. Got a loaf of Strawberry Fields seeded sourdough french bread, met some nice people, admired the greenery and generally was reminded of why I stayed there after I graduated. Plus, since it's a college town, people talked to me like they didn't assume I was an idiot. Pleasant change from Minneapolis.
And almost wept while listening to WXRT while driving past Chicago. They make good radio sound so easy, one wonders why there are no decent stations here.
Also finally saw Drop Dead Gorgeous. Very funny film. I can only hope the locals were deeply offended.
Today I saw a demo at Macromedia's web site, a Shockwave file casually doing things I'd been informed by our developers were impossible. Which could mean they're just impossible in the restrictions placed upon our courses, or that they're possible, but too difficult for the lazy fucks to actually code, or that they're genuinely unaware of the possibilities.
I'd try to find out, if I actually cared anymore.
And the final act of the Minnesotans was one of contempt.
Driving out of the hellish place, I found they'd closed part of Interstate 94, for construction.
We do not actually close Interstates in Illinois, unless they're under several feet of water, snow or the contents of a jack-knifed semi.
Which reminds me that they can't do a decent job of plowing the streets there, either. You'd think they get enough snow that they'd have lots of practice, but it would seem this is not the case.
Any road up, since it probably seems like I have nothing good to say about anyone from Minnesota:
Dawn rocks. She's much smarter than I am, has traveled more, and to more fascinating places. Talking to her reminds me of what a shallow, arrogant twat I am.
Of course, now that I've actually said something nice about someone, let alone someone from MN, I expect the Antichrist will be along shortly to usher in His reign of suffering and eternal torment.
Don't make no nevermind to me. Kali shall protect me. Or, if she's not available, Shiva.
If you're going to look to a deity for protection, choose one with lots of arms, the majority of which are holding something sharp.
Met a perfectly delightful woman at a party in Urbana. Someone else who's been here long enough to remember Nature's Table, which is good because I was starting to think I'd just dreamed the place up. Also met her husband. Charming fellow, quite mad, shame, really.
Suppose I should at least drive by the new Horizon Bookstore, to complete this little nostalgia tour. I've already been past the lovely parking spaces where my apartment building used to be. And the Dandy Donuts is gone now, too. As is the building where the Co-Ed Theater used to be. No great loss in either case, but still, it'd be nice to be able to rely on one or two features of the landscape remaining constant.
Besides Assembly Hall, that is. Thing still looks like UFO accident...
Except for the New Art, all the movie theaters actually located in town are gone now. The long shadow of Savoy and Beverly fall upon the twin cities, and the smell of death hangs in the air like morning fog.
No, wait, sorry, that is morning fog. My bad.
Trying to remember all the movies I saw at the Co-Ed. Amazingly, none of them were very good. Driving Miss Daisy, The MST3k movie, The Bond film before TWINE, Interview with the Vampire, Harlem Nights...
Okay, Nightmare Before Christmas was a good movie. And so was Schindler's List, more or less. Just not a good date film. Don't ask.
Don't think I've ever been in the Thunderbird, in any of its incarnations, despite having lived within a few blocks of it most of the time I lived here.
Only went to the Virginia to see Tori perform there. I think they were showing a restored version of Lawrence of Arabia the first year I was here. Always meant to see that. Oops.
Since I'm probably sounding a wee bit too dogmatic on this issue:
I've made - and received - a number of mix tapes for/from people. The only reason I know about Over the Rhine and November Project is because Tisha sent me copies of their music. Actually, she sent me some Liz Phair and ani difranco, too. Tisha rocks. I should write her some time. I've also sent mp3s to people, if I thought they'd be interested. If you're incapable of grasping the difference between sharing with people you know and "sharing" with every yutz capable, barely, of going clicky-click in a GUI-based Windows program, leave now. I've been stuck in Minnesota for several months, and am no longer in the mood to be kind to dipshits. I do that at work.
It's worth noting that OtR and November Project both have mp3s available on their web sites. They also sell cds on them. Try to make the jump in logic.
mp3s not bad. Napster, in and of itself, not bad. Technology on the whole is pretty much neutral as far as the whole good-bad thing goes. The problem is people. Most of them suck.
Except, obviously, for Tisha.
I'm really looking forward to getting out of this godsforsaken state tomorrow morning. I'd leave tonight, but the place is so distant from any civilized areas, it'd be like three in the morning when I got into town. I would have fallen asleep at the wheel and driven into a ditch long before that.
Bought Severe Tire Damage from TMBG this afternoon, from EMusic. For reasons I'm unclear on, there were media reports on how the not-happening-tonight-after-all Napster shutdown would mean more business for them. No, EMusic works with artists. Napster couldn't give two tugs of a dead dog's cock about artists. At EMusic, you pay for songs. Napster's user base seems convinced of the notion that the Internet is a giant Sears catalog, where everything is free. But thank you for playing.
Bad reviews for "But I'm A Cheerleader" from both of the daily papers here. Ebert gave it three stars, and my sister loved it, so I'm figuring this is further proof that I'm in the land of the brain dead. Doesn't seem to be showing in Shampoo-Banana; the New Art only has one screen, after all. You'd think one of the gigaplexes would have picked it up. Although I do remember hearing stories before I left, about how one of the multiplex chain theaters was out-bidding the New Art on films and then not showing them, just to force the little hippie art house out of business. Untrue, I'm sure. Because even if it is perfectly legal, and would make some beings of lesser ethical development remark on the "business savvy" of the multiplex owners, the bad publicity and subsequent brutal murders would tend to counterbalance the financial benefits.
Sorry. Medication is wearing off.
Another fun-filled department meeting at work. I'm confident that, after some sessions with an experienced therapist and a change in attitude, skin color, hair texture, facial bone structure and speech patters, I could become a fully accepted member of the team. Or just the team I'm meant to be in now. Or something.
Sorry. I'll ask about increasing the dosage.
Got in the elevator at work (I usually take the stairs, but this was before I got the car back, and me legs were whining), and two people were carrying on conversations on their cell phones.
Sorry, but unless you're talking someone through childbirth, landing a plane, or defusing a thermonuclear device, you're not that flippin' important.
Last night, I called someone I'd not spoken to since moving back up here. It was her birthday. She thought it was sweet that I remembered, and cute that I was acting dumb like I hadn't. I assured her that, no, honest, I'm dumb. It was a complete coincidence.
It's probably just a glitch in the Matrix. That happens when they change something.
Minor reorg at work today. We've been divided into teams. Fine. Mine is Team Rocket. I wanna be Meowth, since I just don't have the hips to pull off that micro-mini that Jessie runs around in. Since there are four of us, someone has to be Nurse Joy, I suppose.
And I just spent a good twenty minutes looking through Pokémon web sites on Geocities, AOL and Angelfire, trying to find decent links for the previous paragraph. This is called research, and you'd damn well better appreciate it.
Björk is good. You must spend all your money on old Sugarcubes albums. Yes, albums. On vinyl. I don't care if you don't have a turntable. It's traditional, dammit.
Bought the St. Paul Pioneer Press for the first time since moving here. Their coverage of the genetics (not animal testing; my fact-checking department sucks, and has been sacked without references) conference and the protests around it seems to be better than that in the Strib. Of course, neither paper seems to have bothered, you know, actually interviewing any of the protesters, or speaking with their appointed press contacts (and any political group worth its salt has people who deal to the media, and the rest of us direct inquiries their way). No, the corporate media just mentions that there are scruffy-looking people who clashed with the police, for no apparent reason. No discussion of the issues, no presentation of both sides with even an appearance of impartiality. Just the number of people arrested and the locations of the disturbances.
What-evah.
I've not participated. Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy.
This update written on Ye Olde Toshiba laptop, while installing Linux Star Office 5.2. PCMCIA network cards are cheaper than I thought, so I'll probably get one and try transferring files to this beast at work, so I can work at them at home, or at a local coffee shop, or whatever. Unfortunately, the classes we're working on now include lots of screen captures in the scripts, so they won't fit on a floppy. They're also in Word 2000 format, so I might have to convert them back to Word 97 before Star Office can read them.
And no, I'm not a geek. Despite the Bauhaus and Pixies cds and the complete run of Sandman, I'm not a Goth, either. I'm just me.
Silly me. One helicopter couldn't make that much noise. There were at least two hovering over downtown yesterday. Luckily for all involved, they left before I tried going to sleep. Or I'm managing to block out the noise. Not unlike when I managed to sleep through the air raid sirens in Saudi Arabia. One day I'm going to wake up in the middle of a bombed-out pit and wonder what happened to my apartment.
According to that bastion of journalistic integrity, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, police and protesters clashed right down the block from where I live. Tear gas and pepper spray were involved, although the police insist it was the protesters who set off the tear gas. Um, okay, I mean, if you can't trust the police, who can you trust? The President?
No link since the story will doubtless move, and probably get deleted entirely in the near future. They do have real video footage up as of today, if you've never seen cops in riot gear before.
Helpful note to Minnesotans: If you're driving down a street with parallel parking, and the car in front of you goes past an empty space, slows to a halt, puts on their right turn signal and the lights in the back come on indicating that the car has been placed in reverse, this is a sign that the driver wants to park.
Acceptable actions at this point include driving around the car or, if circumstances do not permit this, remaining back a respectful distance.
Pulling up to the person's bumper and sitting there is not considered a polite thing to do. If the car has Illinois plates and the driver is a Negro, it may in fact be a very dangerous thing to do. There is a strong probability that he or she will leap out of the car and bludgeon you to death with a roll of (free!) polyfoam padding, the entire time screaming "FIVE EIGHT EIGHT TWO THREE HUNDRED!" at the top of their lungs.
Actually, I'm not a violent person. If I wanted to kill a large number of Minnesotans, I'd just hand out free sticks of gum at the top of a stairway.
And yes, they need this hint. Three times, I've tried to park and some fool has pulled up right behind me. I'm not sure if they're genetically incapable of driving, or just really, really stupid.
Since getting ignored at work and running a 600% higher chance of being arrested just isn't that interesting anymore, I decided that, in addition to the Negro thing, I would join yet another persecuted minority.
So I bought a Mac.
Yeah, I can hear you now. "Which fruity flavor did you get?" Did I say iMac, fool?
No, I got me a Macintosh SE from Que Computing. Hey, it was ten bucks. Original price on one of these babies, with the 20 MB hard drive, was $3,700. See how much you can save if you wait a decade or so?
I was surprised that it worked when I got it home. I'd figured it was a fairly inexpensive sculpture. Luckily, Linux supports the Mac file system, and I've got the SCSI zip drive I bought for my Amiga way back when, so I was able to find some software for it, download it, and transfer it over. That wacky Apple actually makes their early, discontinued system software available from their ftp site, rather than hiding it away in the attic like a crazy old aunt. Y'know, like how Microsoft treats Windows for Workgroups.
Anyway, it's a nice little machine. Now I just have to figure out where to put the thing...
Original, not-terribly-funny gag deleted, but the link that was used in the punchline is still worth seeing: If the movie is as good as the website, But I'm a Cheerleader is a very, very funny film.
Addendum: There's a helicopter buzzing around downtown, in addition to the increased police presence. Which includes cops on horseback.
I live in fucking Compton.
Xena convention down the street.
Animal testing conference down the street.
Protesters down the street.
Shiny new chain link fences and concrete barricades down the street, and police asking pedestrians if they have a reason to be in the area.
Got the van back yesterday. I'm out of here, before someone gets a chakram where the sun don't shine.
I'm just bored with this shit now.
At our department meeting at work yesterday, I came very, very close to asking, "The next time I have a suggestion, should I just whisper it to someone else so they can say it out loud? Since you racist mother fuckers obviously ain't listening to me?"
Thursday I almost got effnic on somebody.
Today, I pretty much skipped over effnic and went straight to nigga.
I'm starting to think that some of my co-workers have limited experience working with people of color. Or maybe they just talk to everyone in that condescending tone.
Found the tackiest thing in the world today: a pop-up children's book adaptation of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Think about that for a moment. A pop-up book based on a cartoon musical adapted from a novel. You can't make fun of something like that. I'm not sure it's possible to make fun of a society capable of producing such an artifact. And only 80 cents at the Salvation Army! What a bargain! What a bargain for me!
Also bought The Last Temptation of Christ. Just a regular paperback, not a pop-up book, alas. I'd like to think no one would even consider a pop-up crucifixion scene, even as an absurdist joke, but that's probably some last spark of optimism and hope for humanity talking...
I try to be good.
I left work at about 5, had dinner, then walked back to work around 7. Just to finish some things up. It was that or waste time watching Buena Vista Social Club on PBS, and what's the point of that?
On the way, I noticed people setting up chairs along Hennepin Avenue, one of the major streets going through downtown. And there were bleachers set up at one point. And signs warning that bus stops wouldn't be available during certain hours. Some streets were blocked off, and there were far more police than usual. Doesn't concern me, I figured.
Managed to complete a script explaining how to use a program I've never used in my life, and left after about two hours, at a little before ten.
And managed to catch the tail end of the Aquatennial Parade. At ten thirty, on a weekday, down a major street running through downtown. High school marching bands, people in costumes, and anorexic blondes in sequined gowns riding on floats. And, of course, lots and lots of white people sitting on lawn chairs on the sidewalk, blocking my path.
Basically, my image of eternal damnation.
At one point, a band went by playing the Ode to Joy. If anyone within my hearing had said, "Hey, it's that song from Die Hard," I should have killed them all. Even the children. Especially the children.
They are growing up here. It would be an act of kindness.
Update? In my moment of triumph? I think you overestimate my work ethic.
Shamelessly swiped from the Toastyfrog Jump! update log. He has actual content, and regular updates, and a mascot. He has everything, I have nothing.
Including anything whatsoever to add.
Turned on NPR this morning, heard music from "Singin' in the Rain," and was briefly terrified that I'd killed Cyd Charisse.
If you don't get it, relax. The joke, if I can stretch the definition, isn't that funny to begin with. An explanation would just be painful.
This page has looked the same for entirely too long. Time for a major overhaul, I think.
My legs don't seem all that pissed about the whole walking six miles a day thing, although they have muttered the maxim, "Never go dancing with a Korean aerobics instructor." Trust me, these are words to live by.
Have realized that I've not been approached by any panhandlers. They don't have Streetwise vendors here, and no one has even handed me a flyer for a religious revival. Either this is that famed Minnesota Nice I've heard so much about, or people see me strolling around with the Eastpack and figure I'm a teen runaway, and have no money.
The route to/from work takes me past Deja Vu, a "Gentleman's Club" named Classic (I think; haven't looked at it that closely, to be honest) and Sexworld. Phrases like "male gaze" and "objectification of the female form" keep springing to mind. Dumb Women's Studies course. Knew I should'a signed up for another film class instead.
A Chinese restaurant opened up on the first floor of our building recently. When I first saw it, they had a large poster of sushi rolls, so I thought it was a Japanese restaurant. Then I saw the hostess, and figured it was one of those restaurants where the manager makes the women staff members wear blouses that are a size too small.
The correct pronunciation doesn't break down into "hoot" and "chi"; the consonant in the middle is the voiceless velar affricate. Like the sound at the end of "church." It's actually "hoo-tchee."
Dumb Linguistics courses. Knew I should'a stayed in the Engineering department.
Today's assignment: Read the sample excerpt from Dragon Ladies, Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire from South End Press. I'm not saying there will be a pop quiz on Monday, but I'm not saying there won't be, either.
One plus for Minneapolis: Lots of vegetarian-friendly Vietnamese restaurants. If you visit Lotus, conveniently located around the block from Casa del Transformah, I recommend the Imperial Mock Duck.
Another plus: Wedge Co-Op, which isn't quite as good as Strawberry Fields in Urbana, but does employ The Most Gorgeous Woman in Minneapolis. This excuses many sins, such as the lack of seeded sourdough french bread.
Shampoo-Banana refugees, heed my words: The Savoy and the Beverly do expand yet again. One day in the future, all of Champaign County will be two immense, battling multiplexes.
Update the First: the city did eventually tow away that car they'd left when they tore up my block. Right now, they're putting the curbs back in. Pity the street is still a sandy pit between them.
Update the Second: don't you hate it when you loan a Liz Phair cd to someone and then remember the lyrics to Flower, and that there's a song titled Fuck and Run? Lord help me, I'm the Onion Drunk of the Week. I am dumb.
Amazing how difficult it is to go back to vi after working in Emacs for a few years. Distressing how many of the commands actually come back to you after a few minutes. Am fetching Liquid Audio files from The Pixies and The Breeders. 4AD owns me. Ack.
It takes me 45 minutes to walk to work. Good thing the car died during the summer months. Humans cannot survive on the surface of Minneapolis for 45 minutes during the winter. Oh, sure, Minnesotans can. I said humans, remember?
Anyway, add Angelaudio.com to yesterday's rant. One of them. Somewhere. Or not. Whatever.
Also, I should henceforth like to be called by my Wu-Tang Clan name, Partially-Formed Transformah.
Thanks to brother Big Wicker Ventriloquist for pointing this out to me. Not sure I should share it, though. Somehow, I don't see people particularly enjoying their new names of Sabre-Toothed Portillo, Ungrateful Ninja or (my personal favorite) Ol' Mucky Terrahawk.
If you'd prefer, you can get an African name from Minister Farrakhan. Never liked my slave name, anyway. Aaron Hawkins? Sounds like a British Jew...
Best thinly-veiled antisemitism I've ever heard was a Quaker Oats spokesman commenting on why they killed the Wendy the Snapple Lady ads when they bought the company:
"Not everybody starts the day with a bagel."Charming little fucker. He's probably a VP by now.
Smiles, everyone, smiles.
Got the November Project cd I ordered Sunday night. Ten bucks for a 5-song EP, but the band says they'll use the proceeds to finance their next full album. Sounds like a good deal to me; this is The Artists Formerly Known as October Project, before they got dropped from/left their label. Guess the old name had to stay behind, but the music is the same. Kick-ass.
Anyway, they actually made two of the five songs available from their web site as mp3 files. Not 30-second samples, full versions of two of the five songs, so you could decide, based on them, if you wanted to get the full release.
All five are available from various arseholes via Napster.
Having heard quite enough of people saying "All musicians are millionaires" (what the fuck planet are you from?) or "I'd be willing to pay, like, a dollar a song" (say hello to Liquid Audio and EMusic; put your money where your fucking mouth is, dickhead), I ordered the EP and hope, seriously, that they make enough to finance an album, and a tour. I think they'd be really good live.
I can only hope they're able to actually earn enough from their work to afford to keep doing it.
Well, it's finally happened. I have completed my transformation into a Rumiko Takahashi manga character. At any moment now, someone is going to either kick me into the sky, or pull a huge mallet out of thin air and smack me with it.
All right then.
Fine.
Who wants some?
Come get some.
Grant Morrison, author, musician, alien abductee, magician and all-around freakshow on wheels, has commented that things he wrote about happening to his characters would happen to him, much too often for coincidence.
I'd figured this for more of Grant's drug-induced rantings. Which it may very well be, but this one, it seems, is true.
Perhaps if I write about winning the lottery... No, my Muse is probably a fan of Shirley Jackson...
Walked to work this morning, mostly down Nicollet. This is a bit like State Street was until recently, a street running through the middle of downtown that's closed to normal traffic. Except it's only got two lanes for traffic, so clearly it was designed that way from the start. Lots of stores, tons of people, and fruit & vegetable stands set up along the sidewalk. No one cooking anything and no livestock, so it didn't quite rise to that Old World market feel, but it was still closer to feeling like an actual, cosmopolitan city than Minneapolis normally does.
Most of the stands were operated by Southeast Asians, almost all women and girl-children. The kids were young, maybe between seven and twelve. I suck at guessing ages. Willing to bet, though, that the kids were actually handling any interactions, since their English is almost definitely better than that of their parents or grandparents. Stupid old fails-totally-at-adolescence Language Acquisition Device, anyway.
I ordered a cheap, technologically obsolete digital camera from Earthlink; wish I had it for these walks to and from work. There's just so much I can't describe, so many images that I lack the skill to convey using just the written word, many of them beautiful, or magical, and only there for a moment.
I still hate it here, though.
It's my sister's birthday. As she's not doing the Twin Cites-Wisconsin-Chicago AIDS ride this year, I see no reason to send her a present. Although, since this does mean I didn't have to crew, perhaps I should send her something after all...
Cost of fixing car: Approximately three million nine hundred thousand Italian Lira at current exchange rates. Far more than the car is worth. Much more than anyone would be insane enough to spend repairing it, rather than just buying another car.
They should be done by Friday.
I was going to write a longish rant on the difference between "parallel" and "perpendicular" for the benefit of the Minnesotans in the audience after facing the horrors of the local bus system this morning, but managed to burn off the anger by walking home from work rather than trying to deal with it this evening. Two words, though: Route Map.
I am from Chicago. The King Drive bus goes up and down King Drive. North and South. The 95th Street bus goes up and down 95th Street. East and West. Why the fuck would you need a Route Map, unless the bus just meanders all over creation rather than, say, traveling in boring old straight lines? Oh, sorry, that's right, the God! Damn! streets don't travel in boring old straight lines.
Read that last paragraph, and remember I said I wasn't going to rant. That's just a statement of fact. A rant would be far harsher.
Disturbing introspection: The only times I've gone out and had fun has been with women who were married, engaged, bi, lesbian or some combination of those. All my dates with available, straight women have been utter and complete disasters. God, no wonder I'm so fucked up.
I need a drink. Scratch that, several drinks. Must destroy parts of brain responsible for critical thinking...
So last Thursday, I got a Consolidated Financial Statement from Sony Corporation, along with a ballot asking for my vote, as a shareholder, on various issues I'm not even remotely interested in. Highlights of the statement: cumulative shipments of 72.92 million Playstation units, with 18.5 million for the previous year. And they name-checked Mariah Carey and Dixie Chicks for top-selling music artists.
Also walked to the local feminist bookstore, Amazon (no relation), and picked up a copy of Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider. Nice stuff; you should give it a try.
Flipped through the book and the statement while halfway-watching WWF Smackdown on UPN.
Now, some people would say that any one of these activities would exclude the other two. I'd say, rather, that the combo platter of capitalism, feminism and professional sports entertainment is perfectly normal for this year's model of human.
We are not like you.
No offense, but we don't particularly want to be.
Think I finally realized why I hate it here. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.
See, in Chicago (and most civilized areas), streets run North-South or East-West (with some freaks, like Clark, that go diagonal, but they're known quantities). Even if you've never been there before, if someone asks you to meet them downtown on the corner of Wabash and Monroe you'll be able to find it. Easily.
Streets in Minneapolis seem to run in whichever direction seemed convenient at that point in construction. Despite living here for two years, I could not say for certain if there is or is not an intersection of any particular streets that run "North-South" and "East-West" because the question is meaningless in this context.
That, and the local habit of having a one-way-street (call it Northbound for the sake or argument), then a street closed to traffic for some reason or another, and then having the next one-way-street also going Northbound, makes me seriously think that they just made this up as they went along and put no planning effort into it whatsoever.
Or I'm just pissed that the transmission in my car died today, and I'm at the mercy of what passes for public transportation in this godforsaken state. The "twin cities" of Urbana and Champaign had a better bus system, ferchrissakes. And these idjits are still debating whether a rail system would be a good idea. I expect dropping them off somewhere with a subway and an El would make their heads go explody.
I want their heads go explody.
It would make me laugh.
Addendum: The transmission isn't dead. It's just having a lie-down. It seems much better after I added fluid. Remember, kids, driving a bone-dry transmission is a Bad Thing. Tomorrow, after I take the thing to the shop, I'll give you a dollar amount as to exactly how bad.
If it's "needs a new transmission" bad, soon you'll be enjoying daily tales of the suckiness of the local bus system. Won't that be fun?
Okay, so the street I live on has been "Closed to Thru Traffic" since July 5th. Today, the Powers That Be decided to tear it up.
Seriously tear it up. None of that sissy Chicago scrape-off-the-top-layer-of-asphalt stuff for them, boy. No, they hauled off truckloads of concrete and ripped out the street, the curb, and went down at least a foot.
I can tell, because they left a spot.
Despite the duct-taped-to-regular-parking-signs announcement that parking is prohibited from 7:30 to 4, someone left their car on the street when the demolition crew came through. And rather than calling in a truck to have the car towed, as would have been the case in civilization, they tore up around the spot the car was parked on. So it's sitting on this little island of pavement, surrounded by a sandy, rocky pit. Surreal.
No matter how much the ticket and towing would have cost, it would have to be cheaper than the damage this fool is going to do if he tries driving the car off now.
I want to think the best about them. Truly I do. But they keep doing the most fucked up shit...
Oh, and today I lent a Moon Seven Times cd (7=49 to be precise) to somebody at work, since he asked about the band when he saw the unutterably cool t-shirt I was wearing (and am too frightened to calculate the age of, thankyouverymuch), and gave a copy of ani's Living in Clip to someone else. She asked about a third cd I had, Lou Reed's Set the Twilight Reeling (thanks, Michelle!).
She had no idea who Lou Reed is.
Some sense of self-preservation kept me from mentioning Velvet Underground or Laurie Anderson. The blank look these names would have no doubt elicited might have driven me to despair.
I'm old. When does Matlock come on again? Is it the one with the Diagnosis Murder crosssover?
Okay, so it's about 5:30 this afternoon, and I glance out the window and see scraggly-looking white guy peering into a car parked across the street. I figure, okay, I don't exactly look my best every day of the week, no reason to be concerned. He pulls on the handle of the rear passenger side door. It would seem to be locked.
Hey, I've locked myself out of my car once or twice. Anything's possible.
He then walks to the car parked in front of that one and does the same thing.
I'm thinking, come on, it's broad daylight, on a holiday, and there's people walking and driving down the street constantly. In fact, he leans back against a wall while some people drive and walk by. Leans against the wall in front of the next car down the block, in fact.
At this point, I'm wondering if I should call the police and report some seriously suspicious activity. Naw, I hate the police. But do I hate incompetent criminals more? Decisions, decisions...
The street clears, so the guy pulls the handle on the next car. The alarm goes off immediately. He decides to be elsewhere at all possible speed.
Saving me the trouble of walking out and asking if he's the neighborhood car door inspector, I suppose.
I mean, come on, people. Could we wait until after dark? Could we choose a less-traveled street? Could we pay the slightest bit of attention to the flashing red lights which indicate an armed security system?
Fucking Minnesotans can't even get petty theft right, apparently.
Oh, and some drunk/drugged/fucked-up homeless dude was in the foyer of the building this afternoon, too. I blame the International AA convention bringing the wrong crowd into town.
I thought the little Cuban boy was supposed to be divided up into an operating systems division and an applications division. Go figure.
Now I'm never gonna get Internet Explorer for Linux...
Have perfected the art of waking up at precisely one in the morning. Still working on the related skill of getting back to sleep afterwards.
Oh good. It's raining. Here I was afraid we'd get through Pride Weekend with nice weather, and that could never happen. Seeing as how God hates figs and all.
The festivites are in Loring Park, a twenty-second walk from my apartment, so parking is even more horrendous than usual. And it's usually bad enough that I shell out fifty bucks a month for a space in a lot about two blocks away. From what I've seen, all the cars that have one actually have the rainbow flag facing the right way, and practically all of them have the rainbow flag. Are they giving them away now when you join, and providing instructions?
On a tangentially related note, Kids' WB is currently airing a dubbed version of CLAMP's Card Captor Sakura on Saturday mornings (although they changed the title to just "Cardcaptors" to de-emphasize the fact that a girl is the main character. And started with episode eight rather than one, so they could introduce her male rival. But I digress...).
Sakura's best friend, named Madison in the North American version, makes skimpy outfits for Sakura to fight battles in. She also makes a point of videotaping Sakura running around in said skimpy outfits.
At some point, some parents' group or other is going to manage to work this out and the show will get pulled from the airwaves extremely quicklike, so tune in while you can. It's fun, and for a children's show it's almost lethargically slow paced. They keep spending time on silly things like character development and stuff. So, if the pre-adolescent lesbian subtext doesn't get the show taken off the air, the ratings probably will.
We won't talk about Sailor Moon. I don't have cable.
I mean, okay, you're impressively overeducated but woefully underskilled, and all your relationships turn to complete shit because you keep overcompensating for the way you fucked up the previous one, and apparently you're going to be carded until you're 40, but still, you have to laugh, right?
In response to my you-gotta-be-fuckin'-kidding reaction to getting carded trying to buy a pack of cigarettes (yes, I know, those things will kill you. Trouble is, they take so damned long...), I was informed that I look, and I quote, sixteen or seventeen.
Perhaps if I let my hair grow out again and start making fashion choices which vary in the slightest from black t-shirt and jeans combinations, I'd manage to look early twenties, at least.
I once heard the emminent philosopher, Rhondie Voorhees, theorize that people of my generation tend to lag about ten years behind where we should be as far as little things like relationships, careers, home ownership, and the like are concerned.
Note, however, that she did not mention physical appearance.
I think I shall devote my life to Kali.
Yes, O.J. rants and David Bowie lyrics. Sometimes I frighten myself.
But you know what really frightens me?
Fucking Minnesotans.
Yes, that's right. Me, grew up on the South Side of Chicago and used to find spent shell casings walking home from school. Me, got dragged to a suburban high school where some dumb-ass cracka actually thought it was a good idea to do The Wiz with non-traditional/color-blind casting and no one had the good sense to ask what the fuck he was smoking. Me, ended up in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War with a unit composed almost entirely of old white guys from Alabama and Mississippi who honestly thought I would not take offense at them using the term "sand niggers" to refer to the locals in my presence.
Minnesotans
frighten
me.
Luckily, I've found someone even more bitter than I. Impossible, you say? Ha! And again I type, ha!
See for yourself The Unhappiest Girl in New York City.
I think I'm in love.
Addendum, appropos of nothing: The Damage Manual tour has been postponed due to "immigration issues."
So, no Meg Lee Chin show for me. God hates me. Buddha doesn't seem to care for me, either.
The simple fact of the matter is, the African American experience runs directly counter to what's considered The American Experience. This annoys people, it scares them, it strongly suggests that what they fundamentally want to believe about this country and themselves is, in fact, self-serving bullshit. Given the choice between massively reconfiguring their worldview (nation of immigrants, oh, except for the people who were sort-of brought here against their wills; exemplar of human rights, oh, except for the people legally defined as 3/5 of a human being) and either redefining or ignoring large bits of the history of a significant portion of the population, they go for the latter.
The data indicating that the theory the experiment is based upon is faulty from the get-go is tossed out as error.
Which somehow leads to an unhealthy fascination with O.J. Simpson.
No, seriously.
Look at it like this; to the best of my knowledge, no member of the KKK has ever been successfully prosecuted, convicted, and executed for killing a Black person.
Not.
One.
This does not lead to a belief that there's something fundamentally wrong with the criminal justice system.
O.J. getting off, however, does. He's brought up as the poster child for a failed system, despite the fact that he's very much the exception, rather than the rule.
But it does give white folk an excuse to express their racism in a socially acceptable manner. Which is good, since it lets me know who I should try to avoid.
Mind that similar holds true for Native Americans, or Indians, or whichever term you feel most comfortable using. Except that no one insists that African Americans have been utterly wiped out in an attempt to assuage their guilt, while it's customary to express the notion that (Native Americans, Indians, fill-in-the-blank) were all, tragically, killed in a more violent, less enlightened time, but no use crying over spilled milk so let's forget the entire unpleasant affair, yes?
Meanwhile, discussions of genocide in the U.S. typically involve comparisons to Nazi Germany rather than the home-grown variety. Anyone suggesting otherwise is a heretic and should be ignored. So ignore me.
Bitch bitch bitch.
The nightly Mozilla build from 6/9/2000 seems to use a different format for the Sidebar config file, trashing the settings for Netscape 6 Pre-Release and Milestone 15. Since I'm lazy and utterly lacking in programming skills, I just deleted the (apparently misconfigured) panels.rdf and started Netscape 6 again. It cheerfully created a new file with the default settings, which I then had to modify back to my customized version.
And remember, kids, there are two syllables in "here."
After actually, you know, reading about style sheets and stuff, I now see at least two ways to accomplish the same thing I did yesterday, only much faster and with way less effort. I suck.
But not as much as my sister, Karen , who apparently writes romance novels for Avon in her spare time.
Then again, I've been dead since 1933, so maybe I shouldn't talk.
Yes, there was a question in the back? "How will we know the difference?" Ah, very amusing. I hope you didn't need a passing grade in this course to graduate, Ms. Comedienne.
Also added some CSS to brighten the thing up a bit. Renders like a gem under Netscape 6 Pre-Release, selects a damned weird font and ignores my choice for item types in IE 5.0, and just plain doesn't work in Netscape 4.73.
I'd always mocked those who said IE's CSS implementation blew Netscape's out of the water.
Silly me.
Silly, silly me...
Addendum: Found out the problem with IE was caused by Yr. Hmbl. Srvt. not bothering to specify a font, and just using a font-family to define appearance. IE choose, well, I'm not sure what font that was, but it waren't pretty. All fixed now.
What this means to you as a consumer is that regardless of your choice of platform, as long as you're using a standards-compliant browser the page should look almost exactly the same.
Sucky.
But consistently sucky.
Actually, a quick check with HTML Help's validator reveals that the home page still has, ah, issues. It doesn't care for the some of the nesting. It's a mess in there, though (have a look at the source if you don't believe me), and it renders okay, so I'm leaving it as it is. If my current employer, a web company, can't produce valid html, there's no reason I should either, right?
She'd been working for The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel as a copyeditor, and took a job with Windy City Times back in the Land of Lincoln. Why she choose that day to move is beyond me, but it is not my place to question her wisdom.
Around nine o'clock PM, when it became quite clear we weren't going to finish packing the truck that day, let alone get it back to Chicago and unpacked, she decides to go to Navy Pier to see the fireworks.
Okay, sure, why not.
So we lock up the truck with a good percentage of her earthly belongings in it and drive her car down to Chicago. Pick up her friends Pamela and Sara, park in a thoroughly illegal manner, and walk down to the Pier.
The fireworks display was too lovely to try to describe. Say what you will about the former Second City, they can throw a damn good party when they're in the mood.
And afterwards, we ended up at Girl Bar.
They danced, while I sat at a table watching purses and coats (jackets, really, it was unseasonably warm), nursing a Guinness and thinking about how starting off the New Year in a dyke bar was probably not setting the best of precedents.
Some woman came up next to me, bummed a light, tried to start a conversation over EXTREMELY LOUD MUSIC, then started popping the balloons littering the floor with her cigarette. Finally, she asked me what I was looking at. I gestured vaguely towards Karen and company out on the floor.
"The little one?" she said. I'm guessing she meant Pamela. Yes, I replied.
"Me too," she said grinning, and wandered off.
The place closed shortly after that, so we headed over to Smart Bar. I explained what had happened.
Pamela, bless her heart, asked why I hadn't introduced her to the woman.
I told her that I saw her first.
My sister, ever the soul of tact and diplomacy, said that getting hit on at a dyke bar proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I'm a freak magnet.
I'm still trying to come up with a convincing counter to that argument.
Addendum the First: At Smart Bar, Random Drunk White Guy tried hitting on Pamela. She told the guy she was with me.
"Sorry, dude," said RDWG, and walked off.
I think this was the point where I started regularly walking to the now-flat champagne fountain for refills, figuring that the evening (more like morning at that point) was not something I should attempt to deal with sober.
Addendum the Second: Two chicks bummed cigarettes off me at Smart Bar, leading me to the conclusion that lesbians are better company than straight women because at least dykes pay for their own damn smokes.
I'm not sure how many times I'd been to the champagne fountain at that
point...
Chris, one of my human coworkers coworkers who isn't
from Minnesota, asked me if I wanted to see
Meg Lee Chin at
First Avenue in June. He also
sent me some mp3s so I could hear what her work sounded like.
Sounded good, if you're into that trip-hop/industrial sort of thing.
So, I looks for more. And more I found, free for the taking.
Then I ended up at Yahoo! Digital, which kindly provided a link to EMusic.
Which also had several of her songs.
Not free for the taking.
Problem is, I already had them...
Since they were only 99 cents a pop, though, I handed over a credit card number and am currently downloading my favorite song, Nutopia, along with some tracks from DJ Akira and Pigface.
I'll probably end up buying Meg Lee Chin's EP, Piece and Love, at the show, unless I find it before then at one of the local stores.
Anyway, you can get samples of her songs at EMusic (use the link above, ya bastich, I'm writing this by hand in Emacs and don't feel like typing it in again), as streaming Real Audio or downloadable mp3. Or, since the entire EP is available for purchase there in non-copy-protected mp3 format, you can easily find any of the songs using Napster or one of the compatible clients; I tend to use Gnapster under Linux, but you can also find 'em for BeOS, the other *nixes, and probably the Amiga.
The moral of the story is, well, this is one of my stories, so it has no moral. Or point, really. Once an artist's work is available in digital format, depending on your personal moral compass you can either pay for the stuff or not.
Mine is seriously fucked, so EMusic gets $2.97, I get three songs that I could get gratis elsewhere, and the artists, collectively, maybe get enough to buy a gumball.
Ain't technology wonderful?
Go back to the beginning, or flee to the main page. Or, if you're actually reading this in chronological order, go to page following.