King Crimson -- We'll Let You Know

Well, after my last post, I wrote the following letter to the President. I've replaced my personal info, which I did include to Bush, here. I don't mind the President or Secret Service spying or arresting me, but you guys are abnormal, guilty types, and I don't trust you ---


“Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.”

Ordinary Americans. Innocent Americans.

Mr President, who decides who is “normal?” You? The NSA? What do Americans have to do to suddenly be declared “abnormal?” Is it something simple, like wearing a hijab or frequenting mosques or the like? I’d like to know, so I can stay within your definition of “normal.” I am, however, not a Christian, I don’t like Country or Nascar, and I don’t watch American Idol or 24. Perhaps I already fall outside your definition of “normal.” Perhaps my writing this letter to you and speaking against your repeated and crass violations of our civil rights puts me outside the pale of “normal.” If so, my cell phone number is ***-***-****. You may want to pass that along to the appropriate parties so that they can add my phone records to the millions already collected, or perhaps listen to my conversations, in which I frequently exercise my free speech rights and say all sorts of things that would probably land me in jail if I were Muslim and Arab. I’m not authorizing you do do this, but you already know that as President, you are Authorized to do anything you want anytime you want it.

As to Innocent, it’s almost as if you have never heard the phrase “innocent until proven guilty.” Aren’t ALL Americans thus innocent until proven otherwise? If not, again, please let me know what the boundaries are so I know if I am “innocent” or “guilty.” My home address is 570 S *********** , ********, CA 9****. This is in case you decide that this letter and my previous letters to you, most of which have been critical, put me outside your “innocent” box, and I need to be arrested or rendered to some willing country for “questioning.”

I am on fire, I tell you.

Oh. Hope your Lag B'Omer is fun. I am doing absolutely nothing for it except telling everyone it's Lag B'Omer. Then everyone, Jew and Goy alike, says

"Oh! Cool. What's Lag B'Omer?"

"Well, it's a holiday that marks a certain number of days since the start of counting the Omer. 33 I think."

"What's the Omer?"

"G-d told the Jews to count a certain # of days, 49 I think. It's from Egypt to Sinai, basically, Pesach to Shavout."

"What's Shavout?"

"Oh, never mind."

Someone shoot an arrow for me, OK? I always wanted to do archery.

Machine Head -- LA Gothic

So. Bush says the government doesn't listen to the phone conversations of "ordinary Americans." Funny. I don't think the White House even understands how the very idea of "ordinary Americans" violates the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights. Of course, the idea that they get to decide who is "normal" doesn't send chills down the spine of most Americans, because they blithely assume they are "normal."

It's an overused quote, but the poem attributed to Martin Niemöller is apropos now. This is the original German, but you don't have to speak German to get it. (I got it from Wickipedia.)

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

In the US the poem got screwed up because the victims in the original are Communists, Social Democrats, Trade Unionists, then lastly, Jews. Well, in the US in the 50s, you couldn't stand up and say that Communists and Trade Unionists shouldn't be rounded up, or you'd get blacklisted or something, so they got rid of the unsavory groups, stuck Jews at the top, added Catholics, that sort of thing.

Right now, they're coming for the Muslims and Arabs. Are we going to raise our voices? Are we going to protest? Or are we going to go about our business, assume that we're "normal," and be shocked and surprised when our door is battered down and we're led away at gunpoint?

"Oh, silly Lee," you say. "So dramatic. America is Different. That would never happen Here." But every coup, every civil war, every genocide has before it someone saying the same words about that particular country, that particular leader. Every genocide has many victims who die because they trusted that things wouldn't get that bad. There's no way to know how bad things will get, but we know that what's happening now in the US has led to terrible things other places in the past, places supposedly as civilized and tolerant.

And even if it never gets past abusing the rights and bodies of Arabs and Muslims, what value does America really have if we tolerate violations of civil rights to those deemed "abnormal?"

Sunset Rubdown -- Shut Up I am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings

I love long song titles. People can take it too far, like Sufjan Stevens does on Illinois with this one:

The Black Hawk War, Or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself In the Morning, Or, We Apologize For the Inconvenience But You're Going to Have to Leave Now, Or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!

So in comparison to that, something like "Shut Up I am Dreaming Of Places Where Lovers Have Wings" is concise, right?

****

I think Bush is collecting information on who I call and who calls me. After all, I often talk about Revolution and other Socialist ideas. I rail against the Rich almost every day. I long to see Capitalism Smashed. Wait a minute... What am I saying? Of course I'm not being monitored. I'm not Arab or Muslim. If I were, I'd be convicted already of some terrorism charge. But because I'm not Arab or Muslim, I can spout off about anything I want and not get in trouble or have my phone calls monitored. At least I'm pretty sure about that after reading Milton Viorst's sobering article "The Education of Ali Al-Timimi" in the new Atlantic.

****

You know how Woody Guthrie had "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS" on his guitar? I'm sure if he was alive today he'd be visited by the Secret Service for supposedly making a threat against the President. Anyway, The "illegal alien" thing has been going on for generations, and here's a song Guthrie wrote about it:

Plane Wreck At Los Gatos
(Deportee)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

The thing is that Dylan now was so obviously a pallid pretender to the Guthrie mantle. Today it's clear that Springsteen comes closer to anyone to really taking on the role Guthrie once played in music. Here's a Springsteen song from 2005's Devils and Dust:

"Matamoras Banks"

For two days the river keeps you down
Then you rise to the light without a sound
Past the playgrounds and empty switching yards
The turtles eat the skin from your eyes,
so they lay open to the stars

Your clothes give way to the current and river stone
'Till every trace of who you ever were is gone
And the things of the earth they make their claim
That the things of heaven may do the same

Goodbye, my darling, for your love I give God thanks,
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Over rivers of stone and ancient ocean beds
I walk on sandals of twine and tire tread
My pockets full of dust, my mouth filled with cool stone
The pale moon opens the earth to its bones
I long, my darling, for your kiss,
for your sweet love I give God thanks
The touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Your sweet memory comes on the evenin' wind
I sleep and dream of holding you in my arms again
The lights of Brownsville, across the river shine
A shout rings out and into the silty red river I dive
I long, my darling, for your kiss,
for your sweet love I give God thanks
A touch of your loving fingertips
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros
Meet me on the Matamoros banks

Kind of motivates me to try to write a poem at the same time it keeps me from bothering because he's so good.

It's Friday. Let's have a Shabbat where we can grab onto a glimmer of the kind of world we want to have, so we can work on that next week. Or not. Shabbat Shalom.

Patti Smith -- Break It Up

So. The Pentagon is trying to turn the War on Terror into America's Funniest Home Videos. It's an amazingly inane and immature move by the Pentagon. "Oh, lookie! Zarqawi doesn't know how to fire a gun! Oh, how rich, his deputy doesn't have the sense not to grab a hot gunbarrel! Hah! What rubes we fight!"

Meanwhile, Zarqawi's troops have no problem blowing themselves and others up at will in Iraq. They may be following the orders of a guy who doesn't know how to get a machine gun to fire in automatic mode. They may be pitched against American soldiers who know everything about weaponry and tactics, who'd never make the silly mistakes the Al Queda terrorists did. But the knowhow of the American troops makes them no more able to stop the roadside IEDs or the suicide bombers. And while the Pentagon tries to mock Zarqawi by pointing out his lack of firearms skill, his folks killed more Iraqis and American soldiers today.

Perhaps the Pentagon should spend less time showing Al Queda blooper reels and more time, um, well, pursuing Bin Laden and Zarqawi? But we seem to be much better at capturing blooper reels than we are at capturing terrorists, so never mind.

Idiots.

The Kinks -- Afternoon Tea

So, I've been delinquent. I feel bad. I haven't been posting here.

I've been busy. Terribly so. Oh, well.

On Monday we had the immigrant marches nearby, but I was lazy and didn't march with them. On immigration I have two main planks for my presidential platform --

1) Change immigration laws as far as who we want to allow in: Currently we are biased towards folks with money and skills. I say, "Screw that." Folks with money and skills can make a go of it in their own country. I want America to actually live up to the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty. I want us to really go after the poor, tired, huddled masses. We should be landing cargo planes in Darfur, scooping up the victims and bringing them over to America and getting them medical care and English lessons. If you are poor, diseased, and doomed to die poor, I want you for our country, because our country can change your life and destiny.

2) Make borders more porous, not less porous. Currently, we have tons of people having families in the US and living here who don't want to, but they have no choice. They'd rather have their family stay in Mexico and live here and go back home every month or two, but the border crossing is too dangerous. If we made our borders more open and allowed people to flow freely in and out, we'd have fewer people moving to live in the US, more people going to Mexico for medical care, clothing, food, etc. Better for everyone. Why should capital move over borders so freely when people can't?

3) Adopt Mexico's sensible new drug laws and decriminalize personal possession. We are wasting billions as a country persecuting drug users, putting them in jails, making them go to rehab, making a whole industry around treating illicit drugs as different than cigarettes and alchohol, punishing victimless activity among consensual adults. I don't associate with drug dealers, but they are getting a raw deal. The billions we'd save could be spent on social services, security on the borders, etc etc...

4) Annex Mexico. This is the longterm solution to our issue. Once the population of the US becomes majority brown in this century, we may as well just make it official and take over the country. Then we have a lot less border to worry about. We have the Canadian border, sure, and that's massive and porous and much more easily crossed than Mexico's, but Mexico's southern border with Belize and Guatemala has to be more easily controlled. If not, we can just annex Latin America down to the Panama Canal. It's just the way things will be... it may not be "annexation," perhaps more like the way the European Union is going, but it will come.

Back to work. Si Se Puede!

Super XX Man -- The Usual Way

I get to see the ocean almost every day and see this sort of beauty. Sometimes it's a burden, because it's so terrible not to really appreciate it, but on days like this, it's no trouble. So gorgeous.


So, I happened to watch the first episode of Shalom in the Homeon TLC (Mondays 10pm). I like Rabbi Shmuley and it was a great show. He really focuses on the importance of actions and of common sense in a way that's refreshing and powerful. It's worth watching. Shmuley had a talk show in Salt Lake City with a overwhelmingly goyish audience for years until last year, after he organized a bunch of help for black Katrina folks relocated to Salt Lake City and ran afoul of the apparently bigoted radio station owners... he's very interesting because he mostly deals with goyim. And I think he gets a really receptive audience that way because his message isn't out there.

Anyway. I am reading Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Really interesting. Gotta go and read and sleep!

Spoon - Small Stakes

Is this a great corner or what?

You know what's really, really odd? How many 16 year old kids are wandering around trying to live in MY teen years. Fuck them! I mean, hey, some of these kids are nice, but how weird is it to see teenyboppers with Robert Smith on their chests and saying how much they love Joy Division and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry? It's really werid and it's really fucked. When I was 16 I certainly wasn't wearing Bob Dylan or Beatles t-shirts. I was into Jam, Clash, XTC, Joy Division, Stranglers, 999, and on and on. Stuff that was new then. I am not a baby boomer, and I am not laying claim to "my generation" stuff like the boomers did. It's just that an integral part of being a teen has historically been an absorption into all that counted as "NOW" and these kids are growing up looking to my teen years rather than looking to themselves. This is Bad. What does that say about the quality of culture today? Funny thing is that there's a lot of great music NOW out there. Shit. How lame can you get? In high school we were mods but we weren't mostly listening to Who and Faces... we were mostly listening to Jam and Specials and Beat,etc... oh, whatever.

Listen, 16 year olds out there! Stop trying to live my teen life! Cut yourself to music that's new and belongs to you. Get your piercings and your tattoos and feel suicidal listening to your own damn tunes! I was there in the 80s! It started good and then it went really bad! It's not worth emulating, let alone worshipping.

It's not like I've been in a funk about gettting older and seeing how a lot of kids have the same tastes in movies and music as I do. It's not like this just brings home how useless it is to try to pin one's identity on one's taste in consumables like food or music or books or movies. It's what we PRODUCE that matters and I haven't produced anything for ages. But that's nothing to do with it, you hear?

The kids today are so fucking lost and so fucking conformist even in their indiscretions. It's fucking sad. Soon the ultimate outsider will be the kid who is content to be happy and do alright in their own skin. Damn, we're all messed up. And I haven't changed since I was 16. Good or sad? Could go either way. Or the answers could be two sides of a razor and I could get split down the middle.

Oren Bloedow and Jennifer Charles -- Quinze Anos

Well, the reasons to impeach Bush keep coming... I find it particularily ironic since Bush and his Republican cronies have tried to silence whistleblowers with stern admonitions about leaks. Here we see that it has been Bush and Cheney behind leaks. Disgusting.

I'd rant about this for an hour or so, but it's a busy, busy day today at work...

Ani DiFranco -- To the Teeth

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Feingold for President.

I have been yearning for this man for years, a polititian who stands by his principles no matter what, who isn't afraid to stand alone, like he did when he was the only senator voting against the Patriot Act.

If/When Feingold announces his run for the '08 Presidency, that very day I change my registration from Green to Democrat. That very day I hook up with the local Feingold for President folks and volunteer.

Mike Oldfield -- Hergest Ridge

So. Another report linking brain tumors to cell phone use.

I'd be surprised if everything electronic in our lives wasn't somehow related to brain tumors, but it's interesting. Much like the link between automobiles and mortality/morbidity, it's a risk/benefit analysis. How many lives are saved with cells vs taken?

America's worldview and agenda are ruled by two Complexes. We all know the Military Industrial Complex, and we have seen what Eisenhower warned against come to pass. But there's another one out theree, one that is quickly becoming more powerful than the familiar Military Industrial. And that's the Medical Industrial Complex.

The Medical Industrial Complex reduces the many dimensions of the world and our experiences into a simple idea. We are supposed to be Healthy. It's our birthright to be free of pain and stress and medical conditions that leave us at less than optimal Medical condition. It's also the only legitimate measurement of our effectiveness and the only legitimate use of our resources. Each disease or condition or syndrome that removes us from perfect alignment with the Ideal of Health must be fought. Of course, there is only one enemy here at the end of the day, and that is Death.

The Medical Industrial Complex tis fighting a much huger war than the Military Industrial, with the most battles on the most fronts and far more money and lives involved. The huge stockpiles of medications out there, and the huge array of diseases against which they are trained, is mind-boggling. The Medical Industrial Complex currently is fighting battles against dozens of kinds of cancers, heart diseases, Tay Sachs, Sickle Cell Anemia, Crohn's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Scleroderma, Parkinsons, Alzheimers... you and I can recite the litany all day, till late in the evening we'd get to fallen arches and bunyans. Many of these battles have been fought for generations and no matter how many fundraisers are thrown, there's no cures coming. But they are coming, and in the next ten years, we'll see many of these diseases and syndromes conquered.

As these battles are won, the Medical Industrial Complex will need new ones to fight. The survival of the Complex demands it. So we will see two things. First, we will see the medicalization of conditions not properly medical. Into this camp we are already seeing problems more properly dealt with psychologically, like cosmetic surgery, weight control surgery, erectile function issues, etc. And second, we will see new conditions previously not diagnosed, such as those caused by environmental factors like cellphone radiation or particulates in the air or radon, etc etc etc, conditions that would not be dealt with before, as people would have died already from the now-conquered diseases.

Yeah.

No Music -- iPod still elsewhere

On Ventura Blvd today. Don't you love the tube socks and the gold boots?

No Music -- keep forgetting iPod at Home

At home, I usually go to sleep listening to music. Lately it's been the new Neko Case album, and it's rather nice for falling asleep to. And lately in the morning I've remembered to do all sorts of important things, but have been forgetting to grab my iPod. Oh, well.

It's a nice day today -- sunny and 70. I'm sleepy with a bit of a headache after getting a proper night's sleep again. I wonder if it's springtime allergies.

My daughter is getting mostly A's, our terrible computer system problems that I've been dealing with for the past couple days are resolved, and all is right with the world. Well, not ALL, but lots.

And I have Monsieur Ibrahim, Broken Wings, and Howl's Moving Castle to watch. When, I'm not sure, but there you go. I'm Netflix's favorite kind of customer, the kind that has 3 CDs out at a time but takes two weeks to watch them. So they get between $2.50 and $3.00 per CD from me. This is a good deal for me as well, though, because I tend to forget things, so it works out since there are no late fees.

Boy, the things I forget. I got a parking ticket a month ago in Santa Monica and forgot till today to pay it. Oops. The $45 dollar fine became a $90 fine because I missed the deadline.
I keep the world going through the forgetfulness-fueled redistribution of my wealth to the corporations and municipalities. Without me, they would fall to the ground, gasping for lack of funds.

No Music -- iPod @ home

So. It's raining heavily, so I got to try out my new umbrella! It's a huge golf umbrella we got as a promotional freebie. I has cool wind vents, so it won't blow inside out in a sudden gust, fibreglass frame and shaft, and it covers an area so great that you could seriously shade three adults walking side by side from the rain. It's the Humvee of umbrellas, is what it is. OK to use walking to and from your car on unbusy sidewalks, but in downtown pedestrian traffic on the way to the subway? It's much too huge. It covers the whole sidewalk. It's a beauty, and when I was just out, it rained nice and hard so I got good use out of it.

And that's about the most interesting thing that happened today. My trip to Portland went well... and work is awfully confusing.

Neko Case -- A Widow's Toast

I am so wiped out today it's not funny... here's a shot I took from the plane on the way out of LA Wed evening. That's the Palos Verdes Peninsula down there. Only problem with the trip is that I was SUPPOSED to be gone at 2pm. The flight I was on was delayed, so I had to get to St Louis on a later flight. And my luggage got misplaced. So I did my presentation in the same clothes I'd worn the night before. But my luggage got to me in the end. Last night the trip was draining... two flights over 8 hours, basically. And Monday I fly to Portland and back.

But on the plane I read an article about the Congo and the civil war there, child soldiers, gangrapes, people cutting out their victims' livers and hearts and eating them. Whole villages macheted to death. Roaming gangs of crippled people laying siege to businesses to get money to eat. Etcetera. So I have nothing to complain about, and we live in the best of all possible places, surely.

So I'm going to go and enjoy my headache and go home and have a sleep-filled weekend and appreciate things like waking up and not having to worry about having my head cutoff by drug-crazed child soldiers.

Shabbat Shalom.

Beulah -- Landslide Baby

Rained yesterday. Sunny today. It's a happy day. Woo hoo.

I brought my lunch. Basmati rice I made in a vegetarian soup stock. Pretty good.

I am feeling so uninspired and uninspiring. Hmm. Wait! Uninspiring. That reminds me of Bush. And THAT reminds me of... OOH!

Listen. I've always said that women with large brains and lots of power really do it for me. I thought Janet Reno was the bees knees. Condi Rice is wrong politically but she's still hot. And on it goes. However, the highest spot on my list is now this hottie:



Listen. Looks come and go. But smarts and courage are forever and are really hot. Bush called on Helen Thomas today for the first time in years, I understand, and she let him have it...

THE PRESIDENT: Helen. After that brilliant performance at the Gridiron (dinner), I am -- (laughter.)

Q You're going to be sorry. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, then, let me take it back. (Laughter.)

Q I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is, why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

THE PRESIDENT: I think your premise -- in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- is that -- I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect --

Q Everything --

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on for a second, please.

Q -- everything I've heard --

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, excuse me...."

It goes on like this, Bush doing his usual bs and Helen interrupting him. How much more do you need? You know you love her too.

Robert Fripp and Brian Eno -- Terebellum

My daughter. Ok, so she's camera shy here. She's gorgeous, trust me. She's wearing my peacoat and a hat that my coworker brought me from Hong Kong.

I have been getting a lot of sleep and still feel under the weather. I hope I get a good night's sleep tonight and feel better tomorrow, because I have so much to do this week. I'll be traveling Wed and Thu and I have another trip next Monday...

So many things in the news that I don't know what to comment on, except back the call for a Religious UN. Oh, yeah. The regular UN isn't enough fun as it is? On the other hand, I do trust religious leaders much more than political ones...

Adrian Belew -- Inner Man

Fujimugs has a regular contest with a theme. People submit photos they take specifically for the contest. The current theme is "Incomplete," and this is the photo I submitted. It's a house on Bundy Drive in Los Angeles. The taxes are lower on renovations vs a teardown and total rebuild. So it's common to see something like this in West LA, where there are few restrictions preventing people from buying a home and tearing it down to build another. People are paying millions of dollars often with the house being pretty much sold as a "teardown"-- the land is worth millions alone. It's actually cost-effective to build a totally new house because in today's market you can still make a profit. (This is one of many reasons why it's folly to allow pure market forces to be the highest values, which is what you get with capitalism. The start and end of ethical considerations is "Can I make profit?" If so, do as thou will. Never mind that while you are destroying one home to stick another one in its place and spending millions in the process, people are homeless in your town. Bastards.)

So this is the one little part of the house that remains. Everything else is being built new, thousands of square feet, multiple stories. But because of this one wall and fireplace, it counts as a remodel just the same as if they added a breakfast nook. Nice loophole, huh?

It's a nice a quiet morning, cool and overcast, with rain off and on and a chance for thunderstorms, which I am looking forward to. I love thunder... maybe I'll clean up this apartment. Maybe not.

Stew - C'mon Everybody

Business travel in America -- real business travel, not coddled executives in corporate jets -- is a PAIN. I have to go to St Louis next Thursday from here in LA. There are non-stops that are a fortune or connecting flights that end up taking 10 hours of travel and get you there after midnight.... and with a meeting at 8:30am, that isn't gonna happen. SO I look for nonstop flights. Only issue is that they are only in the morning. SO I'd have to stay another night in St Louis. So which wastes more time and money and which works better to ensure I can do my job... neither option ends up being good. Plus we do our own travel reservations and it takes forever. The company thinks it saves money because, by having us do our reservations directly, it sees the allocated expense for travel agents drop, but it can't see the corresponding drop in our effectiveness as we poke about with our own travel arrangements. Bollocks. That's what I say. At least money is no object. Well, mostly not.

Oh, and Shabbat Shalom.

Merle Haggard -- Hungry Eyes

Last weekend, when I watched Walk the Line with my g/f, it didn't make me want to listen to Johnny Cash songs. Don't get me wrong, I like Cash, I have all the American Recordings CDs, the really good stuff he did with Rick Rubin in the last few years of his life. It's just that the movie features Cash's performance at Folsom and Cash's compassion for guys doing time, and Merle Haggard got turned onto the idea of being a musician from seeing Cash at San Quentin when Haggard was doing time there. So I immediately wanted to hear lots of Merle.

This is Mt. Baldy today, Mt. Baldy with a funky cloud over it. Mt. Baldy in the golden sunset that's also partly that color because of pollution of course. Most of LA and Orange County is dominated by the San Gabriel mountains. You know where you are by where the mountains are... they are to the north, pretty much running uninterrupted east to west on the horizon. And Mt. Baldy is the biggest peak visible from Orange and LA County.

My daughter is crawling through her math homework. I remember when I was her age. I did the same thing, torture myself with this stuff over hours, taking twenty minutes to do one problem. Actually, I remember when I did the same thing today, taking forever to do the most basic stuff at work, totally unable to focus for a couple hours, just doing whatever I could find that required no thinking at all, clerical junk, simple customer requests... I never know if it's normal stuff for me or something I need to get treatment for. Because in today's world you cannot afford to be distracted for a second. It all moves too quickly. We've got to be focused all the time. Get those productivity numbers. Be Perfect all the time.

At least until Osama comes. Then it's prayer five times a day, not to mention mandatory time away from work watching the beheadings, and men having problems picking out their wives in the supermarket and misguided attempts at coontinuing the American Way of Life, like wet burka contests. Just as well. I have long believed that this whole civilization thing was an evolutionary misstep. This is a poem I wrote over ten years ago--

Paradise Lost

Walking between the cages
at the zoo, looking at the monkeys
looking at me
feeling the sun burning my forehead
and feeling, deep down, that it should
not be this way. I was never meant to walk erect,
never meant to have a bare forehead, face, arms,
belly, never meant to wear clothes, speak, eat food
I did not kill or forage with my own hands,
never meant to mate with a female I first did not fight
another male to death or near-death for.

It should not be this way;
there was a left turn where there should have been a right,
there was something missed somewhere,
something that went wrong,
long ago

and now I and the others of my kind are
walking between our caged brothers and sisters

and all I can feel is the loss of what used to be
all those years ago, when we were what we were meant to be,
before someone screwed up, stood up, and did not go back down.

Yeah. That poetry thing. I need to start up again. I've been away from it too long. Six years ago I was writing four or five a week. Then again, six years ago I was working at a dead-end job and loveless. So it's OK for now.

Tom Waits - Barcarolle

Sunset last Friday night heading west on Wilshire. The building is known as "Bullocks on Wilshire," a gorgeous Art Deco structure completed in 1929. A good weekend, but a busy week ahead to get ready for. And the week after I get to go to St Louis, and I haven't been there before, so maybe I'll get cool Arch photos! My daughter got contacts yesterday, so that's exciting. If she gets along ok with them I may try them again next time my eye exam rolls around... it's weird seeing her without glasses, even though I see her every day without them when she gets up and goes to bed-- it's odd. Anyhoo.

It's Purim-time and I have homentashen to eat. And I need to figure out how best to spell it as well. :) Homentashen, that is.

Wolf Parade -- Fancy Claps

It's raining. Very exciting. Also, a very low snow-level today. Here in Los Angeles, it never snows anywhere near sea-level, but usually in winter storms it's cold enough above 4000 feet to snow. So our local mountains get snow and we get rain. Afterwards, we have breathtaking views of snow-covered peaks without the hassle of being frozen and icy. This storm, I heard, is really cold arctic air, and as a result, our snow level could be as low as 1500-2000 feet. My girlfriend's house is 1500 feet, but it's by the ocean, and the ocean will keep it warmer. But our mountains should get a really nice dusting. Should be nice photos to take in a day or two.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone.

Wolf Parade -- Fancy Claps

It's raining. Very exciting. Also, a very low snow-level today. Here in Los Angeles, it never snows anywhere near sea-level, but usually in winter storms it's cold enough above 4000 feet to snow. So our local mountains get snow and we get rain. Afterwards, we have breathtaking views of snow-covered peaks without the hassle of being frozen and icy. This storm, I heard, is really cold arctic air, and as a result, our snow level could be as low as 1500-2000 feet. My girlfriend's house is 1500 feet, but it's by the ocean, and the ocean will keep it warmer. But our mountains should get a really nice dusting. Should be nice photos to take in a day or two.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone.

Wheat -- Don't I Hold You

another photo of the sunset by the same place as the other photo last week taken at the same time. I'm too lazy to post new ones. Suffer.

I am so wiped from my trip... one of my ears didn't properly pop when I landed Tuesday night and that made me dizzy and nauseous, and yesterday I was so tired, and I slept a lot but I was still wiped this morning... I think my brain gets bruised in the altitude changes. Remind me never to go scuba diving.. the pressure would do me in. I am so damn tired.

And I'm behind on phone calls. And the one phone call I do return turns into an hour-long tutorial on Basic Excel stuff. And I'm thinking I should "Just Say No" because I don't support Excel, damnit (or I'd be paid a lot more) but there's no one else who is going to help this person... companies and insurance brokers today are doing the human resources and risk management jobs with fewer and fewer people and the technical and fiduciary demands grow exponentially.... the folks I deal with every day are expected to handle vast amounts of responsibility. No one has time to learn how to use Word and Excel. Everyone just pushes through the slough as best they can, covered in leeches and filth, making do and trying to remind themselves how it could be worse. Anyway. I gotta go home and crash.

Echo and the Bunnymen -- Turquoise Days

I am getting ready to go on a last-minute work trip to the Bay Area. I'll fly up, drive to the hotel, take a bath, and tomorrow train two sets of people, go back to the airport, come home. Woo hoo! It's fun.

While I'm on the plane I'll watch part of Schultze Gets the Blues, probably half each way, since the flight is only an hour. so there.
Perhaps not the best choice for watching on an airplane? It's supposedly a slow, quiet film. We'll see.

South Dakota banning abortion? I remind everyone that most states defacto have no abortion already, because few places will do them. South Dakota has ONE place performing abortions. Check this out at ldi's anti-abortion website which calls places performing abortions "DeathCamps" --- it lists clinics per state. Take a good look. MANY states have very few places. Take a look on a map and see how going to seek an abortion is a huge undertaking for women not located near a clinic. Abortion is viewed as a right, but right now, even without a ban on abortion in South Dakota or a Supreme Court overruling of Roe v Wade, abortion rights in this country, for those not living in major cities, are a joke.

And this is just abortion. When you consider the rising trend of right-wing pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control, women not fortunate enough to live in major cities on the coasts are royally fucked over. You may find it hard to get birth control, and you may find it impossible to affordably have an abortion.

Imagine the situation you are in if you need to have an abortion and are in some rural area hours away from a clinic. How do you get there? If you are poor, you can't afford the bus fare, you just can't get there. A right only affordable to rich women is no right.

I love the politicians in South Dakota for pushing this issue because America needs to wake up. We like to give lip service to the idea that abortion is a right, but average Americans need to take a stand and insist that affordable abortion be made available all over the country. Otherwise this talk of rights is just stupid pipe dreams. We need to have an open battle on this issue on tv, radio, and in the streets. Most Americans are on the fence on this issue and we need them to take a side.

Bob Marley -- Exodus

The Academy Awards were fun to watch. I liked Jon Stewart's touch. I much prefer his sort of humor and presence to Billy Crystal's. Jon Stewart managed, to me, to poke fun at the fundamental nature of the awards and yet also manage to honor them more by the things he chose to comment on.

This is a bit late for Black History Month, but here goes...

I like that the hiphop song from Hustle and Flow won best song. Mainstream hiphop has long been corporate, leeched of any relevance except as the inheritor to disco's mixed legacy of music-to-party-and-foreplay-to; perhaps the sight of its practitioners, diamond-studded grilles in place, up there with the rest of the elites will spur creative kids to break off from the corporate hiphop of today and make new, vital music from the streets, much as punk rose in England as a response to the excesses of prog-rock, glam-rock, etc, etc... Imagine, the new Clashes, Jams, Damneds of hiphop could be out there right now on the streets. Who knows. Could happen.

Because I find it amazing how thoroughly hiphop has been coopted by corporate America. Is there anything more ironic in music? Think about it -- last night, we had the Academy Awards, pretty much the ultimate insider party, embrace pretty much the ultimate outsider song--

an it seems like I'm duckin dodgin bullets everyday
Niggaz hatin on me cause I got, hoes on the tray
But I gotta stay paid, gotta stay above water
Couldn't keep up with my hoes, that's when shit got harder
North Memphis where I'm from, I'm 7th Street bound
Where niggaz all the time end up lost and never found
Man these girls think we prove thangs, leave a big head
They come hopin every night, they don't end up bein dead
Wait I got a snow bunny, and a black girl too
You pay the right price and they'll both do you
That's the way the game goes, gotta keep it strictly pimpin
Gotta have my hustle tight, makin change off these women, yeah

Others had messed with this sort of embracing of the outsider -- Curtis Mayfield sang ABOUT thugs and pimps and hustlers in Superfly, and early hiphop adopted the same stance. Rappers would describe the streets around them and the characters they observed, but their stance was that of a chronicler. Often, those rapping about fringe characters took on the mantle of the "griot" or tribal storyteller and keeper of the neighborhood history... the idea was that the rapper was adopting, perhaps, the persona of the pimp or dealer for the song. This has, in time, changed. Over time, the stories stopped being about dealers and pimps and started being told by dealers and pimps, people who either admit -- no, brag of their gang, pimping and dealing pasts/presents, or failing that, at least embracing the ethic of being a pimp with all the nastiness that implies.

How quickly we saw Public Enemy's defiant and, to white America, threatening, Malcom X style strident calls for unity and pride-- things like the lyrics in "Righstarter (Message To A Black Man)"

Our solution - mind revolution
Can't sell it - no you can't buy it in a potion
You lie about the life that you wanted to try
Tellin' me about a head - you decided to fly
Another brother with the same woes that you face
But you shot with the same hands - you fall from grace
Every brother should be every brother's keeper
But you shot with your left while your right was on your beeper

where the hiphop artist stands like a prophet calling his wayward brothers away from their lives of dealing to lives of unified struggling against oppression, to today, where hiphop by and large ignores injustice and celebrates black on black crime. And White America is eating it up.

And how ironic that Queen Latifah, who started out with notably feminist lyrics and was one of the early challengers of the whole "bitches and hos" trend, has been so cleanly subverted by corporate hiphop that she was nothing but excited to have one more "bitches and hos" song win an award.

I am an observer, of course, and I don't really know much of Black American experience. Perhaps my rant is really one more way the white oppressor keeps down the Black Male of America. Perhaps last night was a good night for African-Americans and shows the acceptance of a legitimate mode of expression, and people like me who find fault are just racists who will poke at whatever minorities do. But to me, the gangsta/pimp persona seems to me to be a new wrinkle on the Uncle Tom, Stepin Fetchit, or Aunt Jemima persona--

Hattie McDaniel, a great, great actor (and who was noted by Clooney last night, was the first Black to get an Academy acting award) once remarked, in response to a question about the dearth of good roles for Blacks in 30s/40s Hollywood, that she'd rather portray a maid than actually have to work as one. And in the past, White America was only comfortable seeing Black faces on TV and movies when they were servants and amiable dunces, perhaps with some sort of innate wisdom that comes from being less civilized than Whites, but that's it.

Today, things have changed. Whites are comfortable seeing Blacks in capacities that threaten physically -- gangsta, dealer, pimp, convict -- and it's even better that they are threatening other Blacks, not Whites. Just as long as Blacks are not threatening intellectually, financially, emotionally. Just as long as Blacks are directing their anger at Black America. Black performers have a choice, just as they had back in the 30s... they can have principles and an appropriately limited audience at best. Or they jump on the bandwagon and pimp themselves out to the highest bidder and play the role that White consumers want them to play.

Sure, you can name Black actors who make good movies and play real characters on TV and in movies. You can name hiphop artists who don't buy into the commercially successful gangsta/dealer/pimp persona. But not that many.

Sidney Poitier was the first Black American cast for a part not specifically written for a Black in The Bedford Incident(1965). He played a newspaper reporter. His being black was absolutely irrelevant to the role. He was just a great actor (in a scary but mediocre movie). So how far have we come in the past forty years? When you look at actors who you know can be considered for any role in any movie, you can name Denzel Washington, definitely. Will Smith, as long as it's action adventure movies. Perhaps Morgan Freeman. Don Cheadle? A great actor, but he is always playing roles dealing with race. You can say Eddie Murphy, but we're talking Disney movies for kids. If you want to see Black actors allowed to play roles that depict the whole range of Black experience, all the range of characters that involves, you have to look at movies made by African-Americans, like Barbershop, Big Momma's House, or Roll Bounce.

Oh, I dunno. Back to work.

Sufjan Stevens -- They Also Mourn Who Do Not...

Ten, fifteen years ago, this parking lot used to be the dying remnants of a residential neighborhood. Then the houses were razed and parking lots put up until the time was right for the property developers to put up a new hi rise development. It seems that this will now happen within a year or two, making shots like this impossible.

It's very odd, when you think about it, something as unappreciated as a reflection in a puddle. And how it's so transient. The water is there for a few hours, then it's gone. And soon, the parking lot is gone, and that's the end of the potential for this photo.

Sure, sure, the seemingly solid and eternal skyscrapers are also transient -- each stands in a spot once occupied by buildings that were ten or twelve stories -- huge for the late 1800s or early 1900s when they were built. Those buildings, in turn, replaced bungalows and palm trees and lush gardens, and so on, back to an earth newly born, magma-covered, dimly aware, even as it startled into existence, of the vague, misty flickering of all these future changes.

Anyway. I have to go eat now.

The Jam -- Carnation

Really nice sunset last night. Interesting location, too. This is in Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood of LA that sits a couple hundred feet above sea level, atop a cliff (palisade) with appropriately good views. The house that used to be here (and which doubtless blocked the view) went down the hill ten or fifteen years ago heavy floods eroded the cliff -- 'm not sure if the house was destroyed outright by the slide or was demolished afterwards, but it's not there anymore. Currently on the other side of this fence is maybe twenty feet of land and then it's a sheer drop. Bad for the homeowner (but they were certainly multimillionaires and doubtless made out ok) but good for me and anyone else wanting to take photos of sunset by the ocean.

There were better pics to be had facing East a bit earlier, but I was driving West and had no idea where to get off the freeway and have a good view...

Brian Eno -- Everything Merges with the Night

It rained yesterday. Today it's pretty much over and all we have are a bunch of pretty cotton-ball clouds scooting by. Very pretty. But, frankly, they are not that interesting. I just learned about mammatus clouds and, well, our boring old run-of-the-mill clouds? Well, never mind.

Michael Oldfield -- Hergest Ridge

The Original Mix!!!

This is something that's no big deal to anyone but Mike Oldfield fans. I'm not really even that. It's just that when I was in college, I discovered Hergest Ridge and loved it so much ago that I tended to play it when I went to sleep. A few years ago, I found the CD version, and was surprised when it didn't sound like the version I remembered. A quick Google revealed why -- the CD version was based on a remix that Oldfield did a year or two afterwards. He didn't like the original version, it turns out. It had too many instruments in it, and apparently he'd only done that because he was worried that the way he liked it wouldn't be popular without more layers of sound. So when he did the remix, he took out some of the instruments that he'd originally had on, so the remix was a lot more spare. It was frustrating that I could not hear it the way I was used to it. Some Oldfield fans swear up and down that the remixed version is better. But I had whole hypnagogic epics play out in my mind as I'd go to sleep listening to this music, with animals scurrying in brush, long blades of grass shimmering in the wind, even one time a huge magician's tower, into whose window I soared, with tables filled with crystals and potions and books and little puzzle things... listening to the remixed version was like listening to a Beatles song with the Harrison guitar work gone. It was just WRONG.

So. After years of searching, I got my hands on the original version! And now I can go to sleep listening to it again for the first time in almost twenty years. So good. It's like when Elisha raised that boy from the dead. But way better.

Rufus Wainwright -- Vibrate

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. -- Benjamin Franklin

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. -- HL Mencken

I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction. -- John Steinbeck


At the Israelisms website Tomer said

Bush steppin over people's rights... How? The wiretaps? I'm pretty happy with what he does for the most part, not as an Israeli, but as a Pro-US and pro-Neocons.

That kind of talk is common, of course, amongst Americans. We've lost touch with the founding principles of our country. We value security over liberty. And no matter how safe we are, no matter how long the average American lives, even living a life of relative sloth and laziness and terrible habits, we want to be safer. Safe from what? Safe from disease. Safe from drunk drivers. Safe from the consequences of our own actions. And all of these things end up being cheap little plastic masks, one slapped over the other, layers of distraction to cover the one thing we really fear -- Death.

We aren't afraid of Osama or terrorism as much as being stuck in a skyscraper with a still-hot Starbucks in our hand, thinking we were going to have a normal day of routine stress, and instead finding ourselves weighing the relative merits of death by burning versus death by falling one hundred stories and slamming into the ground.

The Jews among us know the different ways we may meet death -- Yom Kippur to Rosh Hashanah we have this prayer:

On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed: how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquillity and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted.

After which, of course, we say "But repentance, prayer, and charity remove the evil of the decree." And by this we don't mean that we can prevent ourselves from being blown to bits by a terrorist if we repent, pray and do tzedakah. It means that the "evil" of the ways in which we may die is removed by our good acts. It is in our living lives of true torah values that we free ourselves from the evil of dying in these terrible ways. For, as we know, true holy people, whether renowned rabbis or simple peasants, die from all of these causes, have every negative experience possible, every minute of every day. Leading good lives connects us to G-d and eternal life and thereby conquers the temporary evil of death. It also conquers the fear of death.

However, the easier course is to look at the list as preventable occurences that can be reduced, both in frequency and severity. Safer cars. Safer medicine. Safer food. Safer streets. Safer cities. Safer sex. And until we conquer death, we keep at the list. Isn't it obvious that we cannot be living lives of good deeds when we are obsessed with preventing evil deaths? One thing I assure you is that our culture's obsession with staying safe is leading us inexorably to a very unstable and unsafe future. Because, to keep ourselves safe, we purposely make others less safe.

Look at the way we deal with democracy -- it's a wonderful idea, certainly. We promote it all over the world. Until an election goes contrary to our wishes. Then we, either secretly or overtly, work to topple the newly-elected government. We've been doing it since well before we toppled Allende and ushered in the dictatorship of Pinochet, and we'll be doing it long after we try to destabilize the newly elected Hamas government. We turn other countries into places where the people live in fear and despair of peace and self-determination, because we are so determined that things go the way we think will lead to us being safest. We are, literally, hell-bent on making the world into a place that will be safe for us. And in the process, we make the world a more dangerous place for all, and we pave the way to hell and to evil deaths.

So by all means, Tomer, let's be pro-US. Let's embrace the ideals of the United States that lead us to spend billions of dollars a year to help others, that lead us to fight for human rights and voting rights and democracy. Let's promote the US doing good. But let's get off this stupid idea that one can be happy with Bush stepping on our rights. The United States without its redeeming values, like civil liberties, turns into just another Sodom and Gomorrah. And for endangering our lasting freedom for temprorary security, Bush is a traitor that needs to be impeached.

Kate Bush -- There Goes a Tenner

Here's another look at Union Station's Information Booth. I love this thing. Someday I'm going to get some Information from these booth guys.

I've been under the weather all week and sleeping a LOT. Yesterday the only thing I did was take my daughter to In 'N Out Burger and watch her eat. Also, I took a nice long bath while reading A Hundred Years of Solitude and I listened to the new Cat Power CD again. And besides that, I slept a lot. A LOT. And I still slept a full night. Today I have to do laundry. Besides that, I think I'll sleep.

Oh. I also watched Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning. Great movie from 1959 that's about Japanese kids who want a TV and stop talking when their parents say "No." Very good movie, because you see Japanese life circa 1959, and besides that, just a a great quiet but great story.

Oh. the other thing I did yesterday was read "Are You There God? It's Me, Monica:

How nice girls got so casual about oral sex," by by Caitlin Flanagan in the Jan/Feb Atlantic magazine. Such an interesting and depressing article. I've wondered about our popular culture and exactly how the feminism of the 60s and 70s somehow gave way to the pure adolescent boy's world where boys are now saved the hassle of having to beg for sex by girls who think of blowjobs as "no big deal." Flanagan at one point notes that "A huge report was issued by the National Center for Health Statistics. It covered the topic of teenage oral sex more extensively than any previous study, and the news was devastating: A quarter of girls aged fifteen had engaged in it, and more than half aged seventeen. Obviously, there was no previous data to compare this with, but millions of suburban dads were quite adamant that they had been born too soon." And while reading the article about teenage girls "servicing" guys at parties makes me, as the father of a 12 year old girl, want to puke, as a guy, hey. I was born too soon.

But the article, like a LOT of handwringing about today's kids, involves upper middle class and upper class parents and children. In truth, the behavior has always been there. Maybe the only change is that now, people talk about it more and it's done more, perhaps, by wealthier kids, but so what? I'm tired of stuff that's common in working class and minority neighborhoods suddenly being a crisis when wealthy kids do it.

Well-off parents are constantly moving from crisis to crisis, convinced that their kids are eggshell children so easily breakable. if they don't have the perfect diet, perfect school, perfect summer camp experiences, their lives will be worthless. And this idea generally is directed by mothers at their daughters. Is my daughter bulimic? Is she giving guys blowjobs? Does she think Bush is a good president?! Girls are fetishized in our culture where normal teenage mistakes and experimentation are greeted with parental proclamations of ruin and disaster. Well-off parents are so obsessed with their kids getting into Ivy League schools I'm sure that some are convinced that sexual behavior of the wrong sort will ruin their kid's chances at Princeton. Now, I'm sure we all know a family where a child has real drug, alcohol, or behavior issues. I wonder, however, how the endless obsessing over kids feeds into things. Perhaps parents need to worry about their own sex lives a bit more and stop poking into their childrens'.

When I was a teenager, guys were getting blow jobs. Sure, I wasn't -- but some guys were. And while I wanted to have sexual experiences, I was always in love with some girl from afar. And I never went to parties that weren't my close group of friends. If I were a teenager today, I wouldn't be getting any of these easy blowjobs. I'd be worshipping some goth hottie from afar, writing poems and imagining how amazing it would be to smell her hair and hold her hand. I am not, as much as I sometimes would like to be, the kind of guy who would want a jaded girl to give me some anonymous blowjob.

Anyway, I gotta go.

Mirah -- Dogs of Buenos Aires

This is a sculpture in the courtyard next to my building. It's part of a large installation called "Zanja Madre." In English that's "Mother Ditch." Figueroa St and much of old downtown LA used to have stone-lined irrigation ditches carrying water to the residences and farms, and this particular sculpture is apparently some sort of screw device used in the transportation of water. I dunno. It's a nice sillhouette with the moon. This is from a couple weeks ago, but I haven't got any new photos to share. I have tons, but not here.

I've been sick all week. I've been sleeping a lot and drinking lots of fluids and feeling ripped off when I've awoken in the morning, after a good night's sleep, and found myself still sick.
Today I came into work though I am still sick because I can do a little work and help a few people. Considering I've been out all week, not that much to catch up on. I'm buried, but not that deeply. It's a shallow grave.

I'm reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have no idea how I missed reading this before now. I remember over twenty years ago my dad told me how good it was, but hey. I had lots to read. So now I'm reading it and it's one of the most wonderful things I've ever read.

Off to work. Or to kind of work.

Mirah -- Struggle

This is the view from our table at Ciudad, a wonderful, wonderful restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. It's basically Latin American cuisine, with all sorts of cool unusual tastes from all over Central and South America. On Sundays they have a Tapas-only menu. Tapas are appetizers, and you get a bunch of different appetizers and have yourself a wonderful sampling of incredible food, such as

Plantain Chips and Spicy Aioli
Goat Cheese Fritters with Sherry-Soaked Cherries
Grilled Asparagus with Romesco Sauce
Marinated Spanish Cheese and Oil-Cured Olives
Piquillo Peppers stuffed with Avocado Goat Cheese
White Grape Gaspacho
Argentine Empanadas with Tomatillo and Chipotle Salsas


and that's just part of the vegetarian options. If you eat fish you can have

Saffron paella with seafood, chorizo and chicken
Salt Cod fritters with Orange, Fava, and Fresh Mint Salsa
Fried Shrimp and Okra with Salsa Africana

and tons more, and for the meat-eaters there are things like

Manchego Cheese Buñuelos with Serrano Ham, Arugula, and Red Pickled Onions
Boneless Baby Back Ribs slow roasted in Chile, Spices, and Sweet Mistela
Seeded Lamb Chops with Algerian Eggplant Jam and Preserved Lemons

and tons of other cool-sounding things.

Anyway. It's a wonderful place for a special occasion. My favorite restaurant because it's an adventure every time. And I'm not even talking about the drinks...

Happy Friday, Shabbat Shalom...

Sufjan Stevens -- The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts

So. Bush trots out news from years ago. Four years ago, Al Queda was hatching a plan to get a bunch of guys from some Southeast Asian country to hijack a plane and fly it into the US Bank building here in Downtown LA. It's a half mile or so from here-- the biggest building in LA and on the West Coast, for that matter, 60-something stories high. The plot was foiled. Ok... whatever. Are the American people stupid enough to think Hmm... well, they DID foil that plot in Southeast Asia... even though that has nothing to do with the President illegally wiretapping US Citizens in direct violation of the FISA act, he's getting results, so we're OK with the wiretapping? Probably.

Funny thing is that right now, I'm hatching a plot to win Saturday's lottery. Using a highly complex algorhythm, I'm going to break the seemingly-random winning number selection and become the next mega-millionaire..... DAMN! Some woman with Corporate Real Estate just came into my cubicle with a tape measure and starting seeing how big my file cabinet was. Then a coworker saw this and cackled "She's seeing how you measure up!" Then I thought of how women always get away with the sexual innuendos and noticed how the woman with the tape measure was totally not even paying attention anyway, and also how she did have nice jeans on... as a result, my plot to become a multi-millionare has been ruined. If not for that woman and her tape measure, I'd be rich. Drats! Foiled again!

No photo of the biggest building in LA but here's one of the prettiest -- Los Angeles City Hall.

Dave Navarro -- Rexall

This is the only Dave Navarro song I have. Still, it's good.

The sky is gorgeous because of the smoke from the wildfires... I have to go take a walk so I can get some nice sunset photographs.

And the play was great! I had not seen it in years and had forgotten how timely a play it still is. I'd say more, but hey. I have to go get photos of the sunset buildings.

The Decemberists -- The Bagman's Gambit

I flit about from interest to interest like a hummingbird. Right now I am loving photography and learning more about composition and the mechanics of it, and here is a hummingbird I photographed last evening. It stayed on its perch in the lemon tree because it's always sitting there, and so as I stood four or five feet away it chirped its territorial chirps at me but stood its ground so I could get a pretty good picture. I can't find my bird book so I can't say for sure if it's a male or female, but I think female because a male would have more color around the neck. But I can't even tell you what species of Hummingbird it is, Anna's or Allen's or what, but anyway. We're off to see The Cherry Orchard production at the Mark Taper Forum, which stars Annette Benning and Alfred Molina...

Bruce Springsteen--Kitty's Back

Sunset tonight.

Cat Power -- Lived in Bars

This is one of the nicest photos I've taken. Union Station in Los Angeles is just a gorgeous old building. I don't know enough about it to know the style, but as you can see, archways, intricate lamps and ceilings, stuff akin to arts and crafts... I love the way "Information" seems to be glowing.

Cat Power -- Empty Shell

Check out the Sunset we had in Los Angeles tonight... it would have been a bit better had I not been shooting through the windowglass, but hey. You get the idea.

The Walkmen -- I'm Never Bored

What a wonderful day. Crisp and cool. Not clear -- hazy, in fact, but still, crisp and cool.

I have so much to say. But today I am saying it with my eyes. See? Hmm. The simplest wiggle of my brow speaks volumes. I'd post a vid, but I'm busy.

Trust me. Volumes.

George Harrison -- Isn't it a Pity

We've had such a mild winter so far that everyone is feeling like it's freezing, and it's in the upper 60s. Very funny.

You know what I want today? Not a $550 camera, no! Just a single piece of Mexican tamarind candy. I got some at a Mexican market I visited with my mom a couple weeks ago. It's dried tamarinds with the seeds in that are coated in chili and sugar and other stuff --it's the really good taste of sweet and sour and hot all together.

And like many other good things, terribly unhealthy, it turns out --just two days ago I learned from news articles that a new law took effect Jan 1 in CA that bans the sale of a bunch of different brands of chili-and-tamarind-based candies, including the brand I think I got, due to high levels of lead. I'm not sure how the lead is getting into the candies, but there you go. Figures. I think what I need to do is learn to use tamarind in cooking. Yeah.

One thing I got at the Mexican market that's NOT lead-filled, apparently, is dried Hibiscus( Jamaica en Espanol) flowers. I made Agua de Jamaica, which is a gorgeous drink that's kind of like Pomegranate juice in that it's a complex taste, not one-note like orange juice or lemon juice. All you do is boil the flowers with a ton of sugar until the flowers lose their purple color and turn almost white and translucent. By then you've boiled a bunch of the water away, and the remaining juice is nice and kind of thick. I managed to get mine perfect -- just enough sugar to balance out the sourness but not enough to make it sweet. It's good stuff and, as you'd figure with traditional Mexican food since before the Europeans came over, probably, it goes well with Mexican food.

Mmmm, tengo hambre... nos vemos!

David Byrne -- Glass, Concrete & Stone

2006 is going pretty well so far. I am working and for some reason, don't have a lot to say. It's odd. It's not like I'm really into my job or anything, it's just that I'm not into much I'd like to express. I am looking at new cameras, but it's a silly game because I can't afford one. My existing camera still works fine, and I just got a tripod to help with taking low light pictures that I want to focus on, like after sunset landscapes and that sort of thing, so it's not like I don't have a perfectly good camera. It's just that when I got my camera three years ago, what I really wanted was the Fuji S602Z, and I couldn't justify getting it. So now the current model is the Fuji S9000, and I certainly can't justify getting that, but in a year or so I will. It's got all the bells and whistles you can get in a non dSLR camera -- you can do everything auto or manually, and it's got manual zoom and manual focus rings on the barrel, so you use it like you would a dSLR. It also has dSLR things like a hotshoe for attaching an external flash, ability to do long exposures, so you can get cool night shots and junk, and it's got an insane equivalent range of 28 mm to 300mm, which is nice. Also, it has ISO equivalent sensitivity of 80 to 1600. The 1600 is "noisy" but the people who care about such things forget how "noisy" 1000 speed film was. And also, there are great plug ins for Photoshop like Neat Image or Noise Ninja that do a kick ass job of cleaning up noise, so I don't care. I want to be able to get more shots more places. I was toying briefly with the idea of getting a dSLR, since it's a couple hundred more but a big jump in quality in some respects, but SLR cameras with changeable lenses means dust in the camera, and I'm not good about keeping things clean, so that would be a pain, and I know I'm not going to want to lug around different lenses. I'll end up getting the S9000 or whatever Fuji makes to replace it and I'll be immensely happy. In a year or two when I am financially better off. Or perhaps I'll just tell people who give me birthday and chanukah presents to give me cash for my camera fund -- you can get the camera online for $500 or so, so it's not like it'll take forever to save if I am disciplined. Hmmm... I am totally chaotic and TERRIBLE with finances. Never mind. I'm never gonna get my dream camera....

It's amazing, because you can buy a film SLR that would be fine for me for $200, but I'd never take photos because of the cost of film. That's what makes the digital camera, especially a Fuji, worth three times the cost. You take however many shots you want and only print out the ones you want. And the difference between Fujis and other brands seems to be, from what I've seen and read, is that the Fuji electronics is tweaked a bit to ensure the best print quality, so it works out. I hardly ever make prints, but I'll be getting more this year as I find more creative ways to use photography in gifts.

Anyway. That's all that's on my mind, and it certainly wasn't worth typing out, was it?

Josef Myslivecek- Sym in G Presto

I am working. It's late, but this has to be done, and it's easy, though mindless. Basically, I'm comparing two sets of data, looking for discrepancies. It's exciting. Check me out, pluggin' away for The Man.

Beethoven -- Sym 5

So I had a really nice restful weekend. Watched movies, slept in, exercised a lot. Saturday I did 50 minutes of treadmill, basically jogging until I had to slow down, then walking until I could start jogging again. And Sunday I went hiking for a few hours.

And I hate physical exercise. I get hives when I exercise. If my heartrate gets too high, my heart starts to skip beats. And my knees hurt when I go downhill. But after I've been at it for twenty or thirty minutes, it starts to feel good, and I always feel better after exercising. I didn't make a New Year's resolution, it just has worked out that way. And I'm losing weight while I'm at it, and that's good.

I saw "The Machinist" this weekend. Creepy movie, really good, with Christian Bale. His character hasn't been able to sleep in a year. We know going in that obviously, at some point, we'll have to figure out WHY he hasn't been able to sleep, but it's really interesting getting there. The famous thing about this movie is that Christian Bale lost 60-something pounds for the movie. But it's his acting that makes the movie work. They could get any number of really skinny guys to act in the movie but Christian Bale was awesome. This movie really creeped me out, much more so than most thrillers or horror flicks, because it so marvelously "fleshed out" Bale's character and the environs in the movie... really affecting me.

I also saw "The Shipping News" and definitely want to read the book. I liked the movie a lot, but I could recognise a certain feeling of condensation, like there were markers on the screen for things much more weighty in the book.

Anyway. Today Ariel Sharon is breathing on his own. It's weird, waiting around to see what happens, wondering if he's going to be able to think or talk, billions of people around the world in the same position, really. The news shows are using it as education on strokes, and the different kinds, since he had both in less than a month... baruch ata hashem, rofeh ha'cholim.

Silver Scooter -- Pumpkin Eyes

Well, I'm back at work. The holidays are Done. And I'm trying to get productive. It's not happening today. Too many confusing things to try and organize. So I'm working, but it's like moving through the La Brea Tar Pits.

I am enjoying Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter immensely. And all the more because this is a great aunt or some such relative he is writing about. The book is a novelized treatment of the life of Teresita, who was a big figure in Mexican history and revered during her life as a healer and saintly figure. She died on January 11, 1906, at what then and there among the poor of Mexicon an old age of 33. So next Wednesday is the 100th anniversary of her death, and I'll be about finished with her story. Very cool.

Happy New Year!

I'm mostly on vacation, having fun. Just wanted to show you how my Israelisms mug improves the look of my mug.

Serena Ryder -- Unlikely Emergency

I just realized, except for the whole electricity and cooking thing, we were kind of Shabbat-y this Shabbat. On the big continuum of observance we were a lot closer to shomer Shabbos than usual. No driving, no buying stuff. We made pancakes, but SOMEONE got the TBS and TSP confused when putting in baking powder, so they ended up a awfully soda-y. We sat around. We played computer games. We napped. We walked the dog. I took gorgeous pictures and then, in a USB-to-Computer snafu, the photos got wiped from the memory card. So you can't ever see how wonderful it looked from the balcony to see the Pacific covered in clouds with the sunlight shining brightly on them. We're up at 1500 feet, so it's often like this, us in sunshine and Santa Monica and Malibu down below underneath the blanket of clouds. It was mid-70s today, early winter. If you squinted just right the clouds became snow covering the ocean, and at the horizon, Catalina Island barely managed to push above to bask its top in the sunlight.

We are off to an Xmas-eve dinner at this restaurant in Pasadena. We're going because my brother and sister-in-law and band are the night's entertainment and there's a big banquet, and my mom is a sucker for all the Christmas stuff. And I'm giving everyone their presents, so we'll see how they like their notecards. My daughter will get showered with way too many presents, which suits her just fine.

And tomorrow my girlfriend comes back and we all can start Chanukah!

Sufjan Stevens -- The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us

This is a photo of the homeless cat guy. I took a photo from really far off, and cropped out everything else and photoshopped about. I like the result because the image is really flattened and stylized, but you get the essence of the cat guy and his bent back. The smudge of orange in his lap is the cat. At least I imagine that's a smudge of orange. Maybe the cat isn't visible. I am such a coward, too, taking a photo far off, I know.

I am so tired, but I have to walk the dog before I can go to bed, but I don't want to put my shoes back on, so I am sitting here instead. How hopeless and silly.

Neil Young -- Expecting to Fly

So on the way to the subway yesterday after work I saw my cat man riding a bicycle across the street, a cigarette between his teeth, his cat crouching comfortably on his shoulders. Even riding a bicycle, he is bent forward, in this case, perhaps, to make it easier for the cat to keep its footing.

I am almost finished with all my Chanukah presents. Since I'm not giving that many, it wasn't that difficult. I printed out particularly pretty pictures I'd taken and made notecards for people, sets of 12, some desert wildflowers, some photos of Los Angeles buildings that I'd messed with in Photoshop. I'm always making presents. I never feel competent with it, but I do it, nonetheless. I never get past the feeling of being a kid and scribbling something and thinking it's the most wonderful thing ever and bringing it with pride to my parents, expecting them to burst into applause or tears at its beauty.

I remember when I was 6 I drew a picture of a zebra in a zoo cage with a zebra baby, and at the time I was very impressed with myself and my skill. Today, I wonder just how weird it must have looked, and how I managed to keep the zebra stripes separate from the cage bars... I can still remember the way it looked through my 6-year old eyes, and I can't see it as I'd see it at 40. For better and for worse, inhibitions develop as we age. However, mine are not as developed as most peoples', I think... they're big enough to make me wonder whether my mom will say, as she has done at certain gifts- "What is this? What am I going to do with this? I'll never use this..." but it's not enough to stop me from doing it. My need to give my notecards and framed poems and drawings, etc. etc. etc., overcomes my reluctance to risk people hating my work. Of course, my mom has probably reacted that way twice in 35 years of getting gifts from me several times a year. So that's over a hundred gift-giving occurrences, and she's responded negatively a few times, but I'm always a bit nervous. Such a fragile person, I am.

Thank G-d I don't live in some small town in a small state with a decent cost of living -- I'd probably get some bizarre idea I could make a living doing the artsy craftsy thing and quit my job and do something like calligraphy. In LA, I'm not even as good as the average amateur. But if I was in some small town, I'd be doing invitations and photography at weddings. In small towns (at least in my imagination) interest and passion is more important than talent and skill.

John Doe -- Repeat Performance

There's a lot of homeless guys begging downtown, especially where I work, because it's the financial district, and that's where the people with money are. Many are obviously suffering from mental illness (the homeless guys -- the people with money can afford medication), having conversations with themselves or people who arent' there. Many seem perfectly normal and amiable men, and if it wasn't for their grimy clothes and skin and unshaved facial har, they'd fit right into life downtown.

Most guys just ask each passerby for money and thrust out a paper cup. Some have cardboard signs declaring themselves homeless, Christian, veterans. All are standing.

All except for one. One guy sits silently, a cup in front of him, in the pose of a Buddhist at prayer. But his hands are not held in some meditative pose -- they are always cradling a full-grown orange tabby cat. He is very thin, with glasses. He's mostly bald with closely shaved head, and he sometimes has large scabs on his scalp. Lately, he's been wearing a cap, which is a good thing. On the side of each of his eyebrows is tattood "5150" in the plain, thin style typical of gang or jailhouse tattoos.

"5150" is a California code relating to the conditions under which someone can be involuntarily confined for psychiatric evaluation. One has to be a danger to oneself, a danger to others, or gravely disabled. My cat guy is probably suffering from a serious psychiatric ailment -- most homeless men are -- but it says something additional about someone that they would have their faced marked permananently this way.

But whatever problems and obstacles this man has aren't evident when he sits and pets his cat and politely thanks people who give him money. He's often on my way to work, and I've taken to thinking of him sometimes more as a Buddhist mendicant than a homeless guy, so singular a figure he is. When I give him a dollar or two, it's more like when someone bums a cigarette. When I used to smoke, I'd welcome the opportunity to give someone a cigarette. It was a little connection with someone else, an opportunity to do a little good deed. And it didn't matter if it was a homeless person or someone obviously well-off -- we had the nicotine bond. I think this guy and I have a bond because I have never been good at sales-- if I were homeless, I'd probably sit there with my cup, waiting for people to put in money while I tried to think about positive stuff. I couldn't ask people for money or hold a sign. And it would be so nice to have a cat in my lap all day.

This morning as we said hello and I gave him a couple dollars, he asked how I was. I told him "Fine, but I am dreading how busy I'll be at work today!" He said, "I'm sorry," and gave me a smile and wished me a Merry Christmas. And only after did I recognize that it could be considered off to complain to a homeless guy about my job or to say anything really personal at all. But I had seen my sitting cat guy and been happy he was there, and spoke with him as I would any other casual aquaintance.

Wilco - Reservations

I am making my Chanukah presents right now. Actuallly, I'm sitting while my printer churns out photographs, but that's pretty much my present. I'm making notecards with photos I've taken stuck to their fronts -- Joshua Tree National Park wildflowers and landscapes. Each set of notecards will have a couple copies each of five different photos. I love digital photography. Now we can take thousands of photos and only print out the ones that don't suck. I am not a photographer, my camera isn't that fancy, but I have good pretty photos. When you take dozens and dozens of photos, you get lucky. I'd share some with you, but I can't. For some reason, the blogger interface on my Mac is missing a few buttons like the Add Picture button. But boy, you'd have been impressed.

There are so many things I'd like to say, but I'm sleepy. And it's before 11! This is noteworthy, because I'm usually a night owl. But recently I've been pretty consistently getting to bed earlier. And ever getting up earlier. It's going to be a great 2006. I can tell.

Kate Bush -- The Painter's Dream

Saw King Kong yesterday. As a movie, in every respect -- plot, pacing, character development, special effects, etc. etc. etc., this movie kicks ass over Lord of the Rings. I guess because Peter Jackson wasn't as constrained as he was with Lord of the Rings. He's totally changed the whole point of the story, in a way. Peter Jackson can make really good small-scale movies -- Beautiful Creatures is a really good movie with a small budget, for instance, that shows that he has always been good with characters and emotional stuff-- but with these big stories he is such an exuberant filmmaker. The sheer joy of movies is on every moment, and it goes for three hours, but you seriously won't easily be able to say it would be better if you snip this or that. (And no three or four false endings like the LOTR.) You have your tearjerking melodrama, you have wonderfully over-the-top and perfectly paced chases, you have some of the best creepy-crawler thriller stuff you'll ever see. It's going to be a movie people will see over and over again. You'll have women seeing it for the romance angle, you'll have men seeing it for the cool chases and things getting smashed and squished real good. Or not -- I don't know that I'd see it again in the theater, at least not right away -- that's the problem with this time of year. Everyone releases their Oscar vehicles at the same time so voters have them fresh in their minds, and there are just too many movies to see. Anyway.

Hey.

Ofra Haza - Horashoot

OK. So now I know what's going on. It's not a game show thing, it's a stunt. The chair part is for a cameraman. A stuntguy is now attached to cables with some sort of harness over most of his body, with cables attached to his legs and arms. He's on his back, and they keep dropping him and as he plummets down, the cameraman is zooming up and past him on his chair and they are practicing the shot. And other cameramen are setting up their shots underneath. Anyway. It's pretty cool to see all the work that goes into something that will be on screen for a second.

Yes -- Perpetual Change

So, I'm at work and my cubicle has a nice window view, and the view (of Westlake buildings and the Hollywood Hills and the Hollywood Sign) today is obstructed by a huge crane set up in the parking lot next to my building. It's holding up a scaffolding to which are attached pulleys and cables, and apparently they are filming an episode of one of those shows like Fear Factor, because they have been doing test runs doing controlled free-falls with a fancy chair with harnesses and junk and there's guys setting up with cameras and the like. The chair, when hoisted as high as it goes before the dropping, is about at my level. I'm hoping they are filming today before I go home, because I have a perfect view from here, and I'd love to be working while people scream in freefall outside. That way, my internal state would be perfectly reflected in the outside world.

I am stressed and nervous about deadlines and major huge obstacles, but I'm feeling pretty darn good, so that's nice to experience. Recently I've been knowing everything is great and feeling like crud, and now I'm doing better. And it's Shabbat, and it's gonna be nice and quiet and relaxing. Shabbat Shalom.

The Magic Numbers -- I See You, You See Me

So I just got back from walking the dog. Nice long walk, the moon still barely full tonight, cold enough to need my jacket and just right so I can walk and walk and not get hot. Winter is my season, the moon my celestial body. At least in Los Angeles. In Hartford it was fun being in below-freezing weather for a few nights, but I'm sure living in it would quickly wear.

While I walked, I listened to "Supper's Ready," the best Revelations-related piece of art ever, my favorite Genesis thing. So I was walking the dog, admiring my moonshadow, humming and whistling along, having a wonderful time.

And then it got better, because on the way back, I passed by The Maserati House, and not only was the Gransport there in the driveway, very politely parked where I could appreciate it, but was was right next to it? A brand new Quattroporte! This guy is my hero. But perhaps it's a visitor's, because he's having a Christmas party. And a damn late one; as the dog sniffed the bushes and peed and I sniffed the air for new Maserati smell, people were pulling up in limos and getting out with presents, at 9:45pm. Now that's a cool Christmas party.

Vashti Bunyan -- Same but Different

Today I say Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet for Tookie Williams. Arnold followed in the trail blazed by Wilson and Davis and refused clemency for Tookie. I don't blame him as much as despair of all our elected officials and the Sodom and Gomorrah group they are now pandering after. Governers used to commute the sentences or pardon hundreds of people, and over the years, as the "law and order" stance has become popular, have stopped doing it at all. So we have the weird juxtaposition of huge numbers of people being released after decades of incarceration as DNA proves they were convicted improperly, yet when Tookie refuses to say he's sorry for a crime he's insisted all along he didn't do, there is no admission among the powers-that-be that, well, judging from all these folks being released left and right after decades in jail because they were innocent all along, perhaps Tookie isn't guilty. Perhaps he's innocent too. And it's not like clemency would have freed him. It would have merely made Tookie live for the rest of his life behind bars. Which is, in itself, an amazingly harsh sentence. But Arnold has to continue the masquerade to placate the hang-em-high set, the shoot-then-ask-questions set, the scared and hurt people who are so afraid of the world that they'd rather slaughter innocent people than let a killer live imprisoned for the rest of their life. (And this is just one of many masquerades we watch all to placate these people who want to hide their heads in the sand. Our drug policies are similar lies spun to make people feel like an unwinnable war is going well, we still try to treat undocumented aliens as if we could stop them from coming over if we cracked down harder and built better walls, etc...)

Last night, as I drove home in terrible traffic for almost two hours with a terrible migraine, I started to pray to G-d, chanting 'bring Moshiah now' over and over. I started to believe in Moshiach's immanent coming and hoping it would be last night, solely so Tookie wouldn't get executed last night. Usually the whole Moshiach thing seems silly, and the whining and begging seems so childish, but that was me last night, because was so tired of the death penalty and our society and I felt the sooner Moshiach got here the sooner we'd stop the craziness. I've been protesting these things since college and despair of change. So why not? Bring
Moshiach now!


Vashti Bunyan. One of the oddest names ever. But great music. She put one one album, Just Another Diamond Day, in 1969, and then, apparently disappointed in the response and with the music business in general, walked away, went off and had a family, and then in 2000, her album was reissued and people took interest. And this year, she released Lookaftering. It's very interesting to discover someone and be able to listen to pretty much her entire body of work in two hours with two albums that were recorded thirty-five years apart, and to hear the difference those years have made. This is, I guess, English Folk music. It's very pretty, but not cutesy at all. It's all acoustic guitar and clean chimey sounds and flutes and that sort of thing. Her first album is very much from a young perspective. There's lots of wood walking and animals and pastoral stuff and whispering fairy stories till they become real. Her new CD has her singing more about relationships and children and love and loss, but with the same gorgeous sounds. The reviewer on allmusic.com said that this album could have been made 300 years ago, but he meant it's timeless, not dated or ancient... anyway. It's remarkably singular stuff. Gorgeous, gorgeous.

T-Rex -- Wind Quartets

I've been in Hartford on business all week. It's been nice and cold, and today it's snowing like crazy. Very nice to be inside this warm office and look out at snow falling. My flight leaves late enough today it looks like I'll leave on time.

It's been a week of dinners and banquets and evenings drinking with work people, and while I love my coworkers -- our department is filled with really exceptional people with big hearts -- I don't do well with large groups and noisy conversations. I am looking forward to getting to the airport and reading. I have two new books-- Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper and Luis Alberto Urrea's The Hummingbird's Daughter . These are some of the most interesting sounding books I've seen in ages. Then again, I have not been really paying attention. I've read whatever books everyone else is reading, stuff on the top ten lists, so perhaps books like these are filling independent bookstore shelves. Anyway, I'm sure to have a wonderful trip back, though I may fall asleep reading and doze the whole way back. I'm getting some good work done today, so I'll have a jump on next week's catching up.