shake it
like a polaroid picture
10.29.2003
Please Don't Let Me Be That Guy
I needed notecards.
I have things to write and send via the United States mail, and I do no wish to write them and send them on the girlie notecards we have about the casa. I needed something masculine. Something featuring photography of raptors, architecture, or barren landscapes. Perhaps something with Chinese or Korean characters, quoting Sun Tzu or Mao. Something without flowers or snuggly creatures.
But I am a busy soldier of the truth. Believe it or not, I have things to do.
Things!
To do!
So rather than venture out into the traffic and madness of downtown or Hayes Valley, I decided to shop at home. I decided to walk to Haight Street. Now, here's the thing. If you live in the Haight, Lord knows the last thing you want your friends and neighbors to see you doing is shopping on the Haight. I mean, sure, Amoeba, totally fine. Same goes for the Anarchist Collective Bookstore or Goodwill or any of the unchainthriftvintage stores. But the places that people might come into the Haight to do their shopping, especially the touristy places, these are off-limits. And nothing, but nothing, is worse then the store selling the hippie accoutrements and un-ironic Haight Street souverneer gear and "nobody knows I'm a lesbian" T-Shirts and "Welcome to San Francisco" postcards with three naked guys standing next to a naked cop and a naked judge and a naked old lady and some naked dogs and cats and bats and blue-haired little fuzzy things identical in all respects except for the text to the postcards sold in Amsterdam and Key West and, I dunno, upper west side Des Moine. No sir. You shan't be shopping there if you value your cred.
Nonetheless, I needed notecards. And so into Positively Whatever* I ducked. It was to be the first of three such stores into which I would duck. (Goose!) I was hoping, assuming, that they would have notecards with, you know, like, black and white pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, and stuff. This is what I told my wife before I left , in fact. "I guess I'm going to go to Positively Whatever. I think, I mean I assume, they'll have notecards with, you know, like, black and white pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, and stuff." And all of the sudden there I was. Doing a quick loop through the store. And without really intending to, listening in on a conversation, if you could call it that. It was really just this guy in tights and bike gloves (though he had no bike, I saw him on the street) with a bulky backpack and a Howard Dean button boring the woman behind the counter who, because she worked there, was politely listening and muttering "uh-huh, um-hm" at the end of each of his sentences, which were:
"Yeah, I went to every new years eve show for ten years."
...
"Yeah, I was backstage at all those shows."
...
"Yeah I knew all those guys. Jerry. All of them."
...
"Yeah it was great."
I used to be so enamored of people in bands. And then I met a few. And then I got to know a few. And, moreover, I began to see the hangers-on around bands. The sycophants and vampires and vultures having no life of their own but feeding off of what others do. (Much like those bastards in the press!) What in the Jebus would posses one to hang around a tourist trap bragging to the bored sixteen year-old who works there (and detests you! fucking detests you!)--not because she's the Hippie Queen but because it's a job--about what good friends you were with That Band. How fucking needy do you have to be? This is just bizarre behavior, yet I can see myself doing the same thing. I mean, let's face it, there's nothing new under the sun, I'm 31, and that great new little indie band I love is made up entirely of guys who need annual prostrate exams. Nothing is lamer in this day and age than being a hippie, true. (And I say that fully aware of the fact that many people might characterize me as a hippie.) But every other form of adopted lifestyle is equally lame and hypocritical. Authenticity, at least in the Gen Xer ideal, is impossible in our society for those of my generation and education and social station.
I'm done trying. I don't care. I'm lame. Whatever. As long as it means I can listen to Led Zeppelin and AC/DC unabashedly and unironically I could give a damn.
But please, please, please, please, please. Whatever else happens. I don't want to end up like that. Prattling on about the time I was in the front row of the Nirvana show in the middle of some retro-grunge smaltzy nostalgia factory in Seattle. It wasn't great. It is great. It is great. I want to be caught up in my life, not somebody else's. I want to write my own songs and stories, and when I don't I want to talk about what others' songs and stories mean to me, not about the people who wrote them and how well I knew them.
In any case. I got my notecards. They feature the outstanding nature photography of Mr. Art Wolfe. He's a close personal friend of mine.**
*not the actual name of the establishment.
**this is just untrue.
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And Now, A Word About The Weather.
Depending on your viewpoint, San Francisco either has wildly varying weather, or no weather whatsoever. A fantastic climate, or a cold and foggy one. I tend to take the former view in both cases. If you've ever been caught out in a suddenly foggy day here, endured a Southern summer, or Northern winter, or tanned at the beach here on a beautiful February day, odds are you'll agree with me.
Our apartment is a fourth-floor flat on a hillside, surrounded by three story Victorians. We have the best view in the whole damn City. You can look out on the Bay, Golden Gate Park, Alamo Square, the downtown skyline, the Transamerica building, the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge (through trees), Mt. Tam, Mt. Diablo, Oakland, Berkeley, the sunrise over the East Bay hills. And that's just from the kitchen.
But the real thing to watch is the fog. Some days it comes barrelling in out of nowhere, rioting over Twin Peaks and spilling into downtown through the Hayes Valley corridor. I've watched it appear seemingly out of the ground, filling up the Bay and slowly easing over the City. Since we moved in here in April, I've become obsessed with the weather.
Hence the barometer. A few months ago--probably on a freezing July day--I got it in my head that I wanted to track the weather myself. I wanted to present my own acu-view forcast. I needed a barometer, and began asking everyone I knew for one. Harper came through.
But does it work? Well. On Saturday, the first day I used it, the barometric pressure was 30.11. It rose slightly during the day, and continued to hover in the 30.1 - 30.15 range until yesterday. But then yesterday morning, I awoke to see that the pressure had fallen slightly. By last night, it had fallen dramatically, to 29.775 or so. Meanwhile, the Hygrometer, which measures relative humidity and had been hovering around 30%, started to rise. The temperature, however, was unchanged, static in the mid-80s. The air was clear. It was a perfect, balmy night, just as the last several had been. There was no perceptable change in the weather.
Today, however, is another story. The barometric pressure this morning is about what it was last night, but we're 15 degrees cooler, and the relative humidity is up to 65%. Look outside and it's a cold, blustery day. The wind is whipping about, and I can't see across to the East Bay.
In other words, it works.
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10.26.2003
long foretold, long last - short notice, soon past
Guess what I got for my birthday:To use the barometer a reading should be taken every day and this should become habit forming. It is of little use to look at the barometer on Friday to see what the weather will be on Saturday and Sunday. You must build up in your mind the patterns of pressure changes, whether the pressure is in a rising state or falling state etc.And, of course, How do you use a barometer to measure the height of a tall building?
Thanks Harp! (And everyone else, too, sometimes I'm just amazed at how lucky I am in terms of family and friends).
PS And a happy belated birthday to Helena Florence:
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10.23.2003
Daly City
"Unless Brown can muster eight votes on the 11-member board to overturn Daly's act, the appointments are likely to stand, city lawyers indicated, and the move could go down as an audacious coup against one of the great political gamesmen in California history."
I love big-city politics: "
GO FISH!!!!
Bad Ideas
I was in Santa Clara on Monday and Tuesday at ISPCON. One of the big topics and the subject of one of the stories I wrote was how to stop spam.
In light of the (allegedly) anti-spam bill passed yesterday in the Senate, I felt that some of it was worth repeating here:All of the panelists except Huseman, who said the FTC does not take stances on pending legislation, agreed that three anti-spam bills before Congress -- S. 1293 in the Senate, and H.R. 1933 and H.R. 2214 in the House -- would lead to more spam by providing spammers with a legitimate avenue to transmit unsolicited e-mail.Another hot topic was the idea of a federal "do not spam" list, which is now part of the Burns-Wyden legislation. The FTC representative, several techies in attendance, and all the legal folks were utterly dismisssive of this idea as a preposterous waste of time and resources; an utterly unenforceable idea which would be impossible to implement and would most likely serve to provide spammers with more resources and more valid email addresses. The bill passed yesterday in the Senate shows Washington's fundamental failure to grasp technology issues.
The best piece of anti-spam legislation, the only anti-spam legislation that has any teeth whatosoever, is California's SB 186, which was to go into effect in January but will be null and void if this (bad) national legislation becomes law. SB 186 makes it illegal for anyone to send spam to or from an email address registered in California, and more importantly, provides for damages from $1,000 upwards. In other words, as the law stands now and assuming the new legislation doesn't make it through the House before the new year, if you get a piece of spam after January 1 and you live in California, and you can track down the spammer or the third-party advertiser, you can take them to small claims court. It's the first law with any teeth that's ever come on the books. It's the first law to specifically make spam illegal....
Several years ago, when I was in Atlanta working at my first job out of college, I wrote a press release for a client who had just won a court case against Cyberpromotions (Sanford Wallace). The attorney was a guy named Pete Wellborn (nickname: "The Spammer Hammer"), who (to my great surprise) was one of the panelists at ISPCON (at a different session than the one referenced above).
Pete wasn't rah-rah sis-boom-bah over SB 186. He takes the view that, based on trespass laws, spam is already illegal and he had something really interesting to say, something worth repeating:"A spam-specific law is a luxury, not necessity," said Wellborn. "The necessity is that we do not have bad legislation. Current spam bills [before the US Congress] are thinly-designed pro spam bills."Call your congressperson. Email the White House. Write nasty things about it on your blog. Stop this bad idea before it becomes law.
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10.22.2003
I Hate It When White Guys Call Me Dog
--By Mat Honan
A drama in one act, taking place in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, on a fine October day.
The main characters are "Me" and "Sleepy Guy." "Me" is a soon-to-be 31 year-old San Franciscan by way of Atlanta and Alabama. "Me" is impeccably hip, with a fine head of curly hair that's beginning to go gray, and a mustache that is the envy of every cop on his block. He is good and pure, he hopes for the future. "Sleepy Guy" wears an orange University of Texas baseball cap, khaki cargo shorts, and a white T-Shirt. "Sleepy Guy" is the product of overindulgent parenting and a sense of entitlement. Deep in his heart, he is tormented by all that is good and worthwhile. He lives only to destroy that which others have created. More likely than not, he either holds, or is in the process of obtaining, a M.B.A. degree. He dreams of the end of the world.
The scene begins as "Me" walks out of his apartment with his bike, and notices "Sleepy Guy" apparantly asleep on the front stoop. The time is 5:30 PM. Light traffic passes by on the street.
Me (irritated): Hey man, hey! Wake up.
Sleepy Guy (confused): What, what!?!
Me: Hey man, what are you doing? Are you okay?
Sleeepy Guy (indignant): Yeah dog, I'm fine dog.
Me: What are you doing?
Sleepy Guy: I'm just waiting on my girlfriend, dog. I live here, dog.
Me (skeptical tone): You live here?
Sleepy Guy: Yeah, dog.
Me (pointing towards the door he has just emerged from): In this house?
Sleepy Guy: Yeah dog. No, I mean, not in this house. My girlfriend lives next door dog. Fourth floor apartment, dog. I'm just waiting on her to get home.
Me (exasperated and sarcastic): Well I just wanted to make sure you weren't some fucked up guy sleeping on my steps.
Sleepy Guy (missing sarcasm): No worries, dog.(curtain)
Questions for review. Please attach on a seperate sheet of paper.
1. Who is symbolized by Sleepy Guy, and what point is the author trying to make about the current socio-economic climate in which we live?
2. What role does the audience play in this performance?
3. What does Me's refusal too confront Sleepy Guy by delivering repeated kicks to his supine rib-cage tell us about his mental state? Is Me a weak character?
4. Is the story believable?
5. What is the author's purpose in repeatedly using the signifier "dog?"
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10.17.2003
Go Pudge, Go D-Train
(sorry for the editing. this is all i feel today)
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10.15.2003
The Scene of the Crime
The suspect arrested for calling in a bomb threat to Oracle world has an interesting set of footprints on the Web, including this gem
For Those About to Walk
We salute you...
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the loneliest man in chicago...
He's probably not too lonely anymore
(or)
Do the Bartman
(via waxy, a great post and find on an always first-rate site.)
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10.14.2003
Here we are now. Entertain us.
My friend Rob, an otherwise sensible person who lives in Los Angeles, writes: I love that arnold's our governor. I think it's f--king great. maybe this feeling will wear off, but right now I'm excited ! ahhnold! ahhhnold!! You know, Rob, you've been one of my closest friends ever since high school, one of the greatest people I've ever known, and I love you like you were a giant slab of gooey, delicious marzipan. But you're a bonehead, my friend. Thank God you don't actually vote.
Yet I know what you mean. I understand. I feel you, yo. I've got to admit, when I stood in the voting booth two days ago, glancing over the list of 1,350 or so candidates (and considering whether or not I should just go ahead and write in my own name), the thought crossed my mind. It did occur to me to vote for Arnold Schwartzenegger, just for the spectacle of it all.
Like most other effete Bay Area types, I dismissed Arnie out-of-hand. I would have sooner voted for Larry Flynt or Gary Coleman. But as a soon-to-be 31 year-old male, I fall right into the Governator's most supportive demographic. I see his appeal. I get it. And you know what? I can't wait to watch the Schwartzenegger show. It promises to be politics-as-spectacle like nothing we have ever seen before. Better than the movies, my dear.
We live in unfathomable times. The 2000 election, OJ on a freeway, September 11, footnote 210, the Governator: nothing is real anymore. It's all scripted, staged, made-for-television. It doesn't really exist. Does it? If the Cubs and the Sox both make it to The Series, what then? Who could write a better script than that?
This is particularly true here in California, the end of the land, the left coast, America's America, the big myth. When we speak of The West, there is nowhere on Earth that embodies it more, either physically or culturally. Big. Free. Rich. New York is The Empire State; the seat of American fashion, culture, and intellectual life. But California has The Cool. California is the eternal party, the endless summer in a daydream nation.
While The Empire State anxiously flips through the pages of fashion magazines thick with anorexia, and goes to see all the latest bands just to be the first to dis them, California smokes a bowl and paddles out past the break, floats on its board, and waits on a wave. We have patience. Time to kill. The music will come to us from all over the country with dreams of making it big. The music will indeed be about us, will celebrate us. California, no doubt about it.
We live in a state of perpetual unreality. Did you not get the brochure? Have you not heard the pitch? Seen the film? We took a left turn at Albuquerque and built a Utopian Republic. We would have you believe that it is Fonzie's fatherland. The setting for American Graffiti. It is whatever we made it to be. Not content to pave our streets with gold, we lined the screens with silver, too. We conquered the deserts and built Great Cities--cities whose names echo cool across the globe--in the dunes on the shores of the Pacific, piping our water in from hundreds of miles away. In the Central Valley we created a New Eden and we planted artichokes and arugula. This is a state where you could go skiing, surfing and skateboarding all in one day. Assuming you're a fast driver, and you are! We are the world. Our neighborhoods are populated by the entire planet. Two Irishmen, a Guatemalan, a Pakistani, a Thai, an Ethiopian, and a guy from Alabama walk into abarcoffee shop. They all order espresso. No joke. We are healthier, smarter, better-dressed. Independent and virile as young Coyotes. We get our freak on every damn day. We are peaceful and violent all at once. We are colorblind, enlightened, and free to decide our own fates. Raise the bear flag high, bro, for we shall live forever. Californians never die.
A friend joked that Jessie Ventura's election to the governorship of Minnesota indicated that the entire state had a drinking problem. I think you could make a similar argument about California. I mean, have you actually tried the bud from Northern California? Have you? I know you think you've got the Humboldt County dankity dank there, in your Ohio State dorm room. And maybe you really do. But you need to try it out here under this giant blue sky, fresh off of the vine and all around you. You need to walk around the streets of San Francisco or Santa Cruz and take a deep breath. That's not Patchouli you smell. No sir. You don't get a contact high from essential oils. In Oakland and other municipalities, you've got city governments themselves engaged in Marijuana production and distribution. You're damn right, the whole state really is stoned out of its skull. Between the Zinfandel, the Fair Trade Organic Dark Roast, and the Mendocino County Thunderfuck, we are all brainhammered.
There is a reason California wears its sunglasses all the time.
During the Davis administration, cracks began to show through the facade, and in crept reality in the form of unemployment, budget deficits, and power outages. We saw through to the unpleasant wall of reality. And the man himself, Gray, failed us utterly. He failed to be larger than life. Failed to make us forget that the money and the lights and the water aren't mere constructs, set pieces. Davis Part 1 was bad enough, but when the sequel looked like it would be an even bigger box-office bomb than the original, well... It was clearly time for a mid-season replacement. Everyone knows that when the Neilsons are that low, there's nothing left to do but fire all the actors and cancel the program.
So let's have it. Let's see it. I'm ready. Cut me a line of that Arnie, baby, I want to get high. I came here for the spectacle and now I've got it. It's going to be hella-whatever, yo.
Hella!
This would never happen in your state, after all. You would elect someone sensible. Someone with a plan, and most likely experience too. And that's why I left. Why we all did. Why I packed up my old Saturn and drove to California--with my cousin and my computer and my conviction that I would never again work a regular job--where I drove up Highway One and pulled off the side of the road between Big Sur and Santa Cruz and looked through the Redwoods to The Ocean and a guy walked up out of nowhere and offered me a bag of "nugs," or high-grade NorCal marijuana, right there on the side of the road like it was no big deal and there I was all uptight and nervous about getting busted and expecting helicopters to come sweeping out of the sky and I politely declined and slunk back to the car and drove off and only later realized it was just an ordinary day. It was just California. It really is like that. Go ahead and poke fun at our flakiness, we know you're just jealous. I drove thousands of miles for the freedom to flake.
My friends all did the same. Goodbye Oklahoma, goodbye Kansas and Kentucky and, er, Kalamazoo (phew!). We've all come here to be famous, in our own little ways. Even if its only in our minds, starring roles in The Story of How I Made a Better Life for Myself and Family. We have no desire to hear what East Coast critics--or studio bean-counters like Gray Davis--make of our performance.
This picture needs more action! Break out the titties and the drug-references! Get me a car chase and blow some shit up! I want explosions and full frontal nudity!
So okay, Arnie, you're in now. You've just won the Oscar for Best Performance in a Statewide Election, Coup, or Revolution. And despite my misgivings about your abilities to adequately govern, and my belief that the recall was a seriously bad idea for anyone who cares about, you know, like, reality and stuff, I sincerely hope you succeed. I hope you do restore the Golden State's luster. I love it here. You do too. We have that in common. And hit or flop, The Schwartzenegger Show promises to be the most entertaining reality show to come out of Hollywood since the Pam and Tommy Lee tape. You're directing now, Governor Schwartzenegger, and although the critics are predicting a flop, you're promising a popular favorite. But no matter what the result, be it Star Wars or Gigli, I'm damn glad I bought my ticket.
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Stop the presses! Stop the presses!
News Flash! Illicit drugs available for purchase on streets of San Francisco! Dealers reportedly not bothered by reporter's inablity to pull off gutter punk look!
So I found myself at 2:30 yesterday afternoon, in broad daylight, in the heart of the Tenderloin trying to score drugs. I had a cute red purse, a red Gap T-shirt, black slacks and black-heeled sandals. I couldn't have looked more like a suburban mom if I had been wearing a tennis skirt.
"This street is just weed,'' one [man propositioned for drugs] said loudly, as if he were a sales clerk in a department store. "Next street is prescription drugs.''
Rookie mistake.
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10.11.2003
Fleet Week
click to enlarge
The Blue Angels are back in town.
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10.10.2003
No more HJ...
bummer
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10.8.2003
Forget Arnold...
I'm just going to bed, and maybe you're just getting up. Tonight, I saw one of the most surreal things I've ever seen in my life broadcast on television. It was an OJ-slo-mo-car-chase/news-meets-celebrity moments when Hollywood and reality bump up against each other in an uncomfortable way, leaving you with a psychological vertigo alternately laughing and fretting when it hits you... it's real.
Arnold is not an aberration, as some argue. But he's not a movement either, or at least he's not the movement partisans would have you believe. He's both Jessie Ventura and Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood and George Bush, jr. (or whatever). He's all image and charisma and--most importantly--advisors. Arnold is an empty vessel. And everyone knows it, even Arnold. But so what? He's gives good sound bites and (we hope) has a team of advisors to prevent him from, say, annexing Baja. If they pull his strings, well...
But enough about that. Forget Arnold for now, for there's a far more interesting story right under our noses. This week's Bay Guardian article on the mayoral race is one of the most compelling things I've read in ages, and is sure to take your mind off of the, um, fucking train wreck that's going to be careening into Sacramento any day now. It's a new day.
10.7.2003
Shit........ . . . . . .
flabergasted, utterly
flabergasted
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You need Other Magazine
I've blogged it before, but please look out for Other Magazine at your local newsstand (and if they don't have it, ask them to get it). Extra-special bonus (or maybe not): I have a story in issue 3.
Vote, Dammit! Vote! Vote!
Today the madness ends. Today it's all over but the countin'. Today we find out if it's Gray, Cruz, McClintock or--God help us all--the Gropenator.
Last week was a bad one for Republicans. Limbaugh was summarily frog marched off of ESPN for making racist--and, let's not forget, innacurate--remarks. What's more, it looks like America's fattest facist might be frog marched off to the Dade County lockup for being a massive--and let's not forget hypocritical--pillhead. And to top it all off, we're getting closer and closer to seeing that mean-spirited--and let's not forget unpatriotic--Karl Rove frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs.
Hoo-fucking-ray.
Let's make this week worse. Get out and vote. Vote no on the recall. Vote for Cruz. Vote no on Prop 54. Send Arnold goose-stepping back to Hollywood where he belongs.
10.3.2003
News You Can't Use
It's official:"The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)."
I remember reading a study a few years ago that watching television news actually made you less informed. This was back when FoxNews was still in its infancy and everyone I knew still chuckled over the "news" appended to its name. We assumed, naturally enough, that everyone else would get the joke too.
They didn't.
Over the years now, I've been alarmed again and again and again at the sheer nerve of FoxNews, and the utter contempt it has for its audience. No other network on television consistantly misinforms its viewers as does FoxNews. Why is that? Either the anchors, producers, and "personalities" at Fox News are brutally ignorant, or they assume that their audience is and can, therefore, be lied to. We report, you decide, indeed.
Just how dramatic is the skew?Among those who said broadcast media [was their main source for news], 30 percent said two or more networks; 18 percent, Fox News; 16 percent, CNN; 24 percent, the three big networks - NBC (14 percent), ABC (11 percent), CBS (9 percent); and three percent, the two public networks, National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).But is it the chicken, or the egg? Does watching FoxNews make you stupid, or do you just have to be stupid to watch it in the first place?
For each of the three misperceptions, the study found enormous differences between the viewers of Fox, who held the most misperceptions, and NPR/PBS, who held the fewest by far.
Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers. All the other media fell in between.
If you'll excuse me, now, I want to catch All Things Considered, and there's an article in today's Post I really need to finish. (via mefi)
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10.1.2003
'Cause All I Said Was...
Chuck D on P2P:I've been spending most of my career ducking lawyers, accountants and business executives who have basically been more blasphemous than file sharers and P2P. I trust the consumer more than I trust the people who have been at the helm of these companies. The record industry is hypocritical and the domination has to be shared. P2P to me means 'power to the people. And let's get this to a balance, and that's what we're talking about.
Happy Birthday, Hannah Kerns:
Want to link me? Insert the following code somewhere in your blog's template: <a href="http://www.honan.net"> <img src="http://www.honan.net/images/emptyage.gif"> </a>
