BUGGER OFF!

Does anybody else feel stalked by asshats with boomboxes blaring 'CHRISTMAS HITS OF 1997'? The drunk Filipino retirees across the street in the 10-story condo have seen fit to inflict their taste in Xmas classics on all of us tonight. I'm growing to hate living in the city, at least this close to downtown.

Anyway, I went crazy a few days back and did a review of every flick that was released in the U.S. in 2008 that I've actually seen -- this is leaving out a bunch of Holiday Blockbusters like 'Milk' and 'Day the Earth Stood Still'.

Judging from the size of the list, I really should get out more.

My review of 2008 Films:

Cloverfield – what was J.J. Abrams thinking when he backed this silly digital hand-held mess? The best line was when Blonde Unknown Actor No. 2 shrieked "I'm gonna crap my pants!" Now that's comedy. 1 star

Teeth – FINALLY a coming-of-age-getting-laid film where for the first time a girl is not punished for her budding sexuality, her boyfriends are. Okay, the perpetual lopping off of penises is a bit over kill and, of course, it's all a latent gay man revenge fantasy but it's fun. At least they poke a stick at the Jesus freaks and the absurdness of chastity. 3 stars

Rambo – Surprisingly tasteful action-adventure from the man who practically invented the genre and who is really too old to be running through any jungle. The entire crew should have gotten an award for shooting on location in Thailand in 110-degree heat with 95% humidity. It was nice of Sly to throw a humanitarian plug in there about Myanmar err, I mean Burma. 2 stars

Untraceable – I find Colin Hanks MUCH more annoying than his father, but boiling his character alive in a vat of acid was overkill. Sure, make Hanks play the reluctant bottom in a touching gay S&M movie or put him in a faux concentration camp and slap him around a little but don't boil him in acid, that's just gross. 0 stars

The Air I Breathe – What the fuck was this movie about? 40 minutes into it and I'm nodding off while Forest Whitaker sobs and begs a bookie not to kill him. Should I be dozing during this pivotal scene? 0 stars

Definitely, Maybe – Ryan Reynolds is cute, we've already established this. So is Abigail Breslin. But two hours of that much artificial sweetener can be fatal. I loved Reynolds in the edgy "The Nines", so much I own the DVD. Reynolds, ease up on the Splenda, 'kay? 0 stars

Jumper - Hayden Christensen and Jamie Bell flap around the screen via queasy special effects while Samuel L. Jackson plays a Bad MoFo. These special effects films are kind of like Ketamine, two hours of really bright lights followed by amnesia. 0 stars

Charlie Bartlett – Robert Downey Jr. is like wine, he keeps getting better. Anton Yelchin just gets cuter which makes me really angry that "Huff" is no more. But I wonder about a film that paints prescription drug abuse in this country in a playful light. My high school was a nightmare but I survived it sans Prozac and Vicodan. 3 stars

The Other Boylen Girl – Life in 16th century England was tough, even if you looked like Scarlett Johannson and creepy old Woody Allen wasn't stalking you. Fuck the king really well and you get screwed. Fuck the king and don't enjoy it and you still get screwed. What's a corset-wearing girl to do? Best scene hands down: when one of the Boylen girls tries to seduce her own brother and he breaks down in a fit of (possibly fey?) tears. 2 stars

10,000 B.C. – I like the Emmerich brothers and I'm a female film geek. I'd rather see a special-effects-action blockbuster by them any day of the week over the vile Michael Bay. But they should stop trying to give history lessons. It's like watching two German hippie backpackers re-tell the American Revolution after too many beers in a youth hostel in Australia (I actually witnessed something like this once). Repeat after me and my Archeology professor: The ancient pyramids of Egypt were NOT made by slaves Hebrew or otherwise. 2 stars

Paranoid Park – here's a Gus Van Sant film that shows the American teen in his natural element: confused, slightly drunk/stoned and apprehensive about being raped by his manipulative girlfriend. And Johnny Law is breathin' down everybody's neck because of some lame-ass dead security guard. All this when all kids really wanna do is skate, man! 3 stars

Snow Angels – I like David Gordon Green and I loved "George Washington" and "All the Real Girls". "George Washington" had some of the best cinematography I've ever seen. But take Green out of the south and put him in Nova Scotia and he goes blind cinematically. This film is a dreary mess that plunks along way too long. 0 stars

Doomsday – the world has gone to apocalyptic hell thanks to yet another runaway virus. But never fear, Neil Marshall (the UK's answer to Wes Craven) is here to straighten things out via car chases and rock-concert-serenaded disembowelments. Marshall's fun. He did "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent" where (GASP) female characters get equal time slashing at monsters and being duplicitous. Thank Gawd the split tails don't just lay there and scream for 120 minutes. The Making Of is especially funny to watch as soft-spoken Equity members -- decked out in more faux body piercings than a Marilyn Manson concert – talk about their previous experience working in 'Thee-ah-tar' in the West End. 3 stars

Funny Games – A decent remake of a Euro suspense flick. The always watchable Michael Pitt and "Mysterious Skin" alum Brady Corbet are the nightmare visitors to yuppie couple Naomi Watts and Tim Roth's swank vacation home. The film is productively suspenseful and edgy as the two fledgling psychopaths worm their way into the family and slowly torture them to death. You'll never look at teenage golfers in polo shirts the same way again! 4 stars

21 – Kevin Spacey leads a cast of unknown pretty faces into the oh-so-seedy world of Vegas card counting. It's got sex! It's got money! It's got Spacey! It's dull! 0 stars

Run Fat Boy Run – Watch David Schwimmer chase the elusive vehicle Comedy down the street. Thrill as his fingers graze the bumper a few times before the car speeds off leaving Simon Pegg looking worriedly at Hank Azaria's groin. Listen to Thandie Newton on the Making Of whine about how the only reason she got this job was because she's half black. This from a bulimic, well-paid star who's been described as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Her face has launched a lot of expensive cosmetics and she can actually afford to live in North London. 2 stars

Stop-Loss – Ryan Phillippe is a working-class, buff Texan who wants to be done with his tour in Iraq and back to his 'normal' life of shooting rattlesnakes and drinking Lone Stars. But the Bush Regime is having none of that. The film's watchable, especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt who gets lost behind the celebrity glare of Phillipe's pearly whites and ripped abs. Coming from Kimberly Peirce who made "Boys Don't Cry", the film is strangely neutered. The romantic connections in the story are barely there and Peirce tip toes around issues like spousal abuse and what modern-day war really does to young men's minds. 2 stars

Street Kings – Keanu Reeves is a bad mofo. He's a LAPD cop who "takes out the garbage" for his superiors and then, weirdly, starts to question the morality of this after being assigned a desk job listening to people complain about his coworkers, those corrupt pigs. Oh yeah and Dr. House is in it! But I can't figure out why. 1 star

Chaos Theory – I rented this in the vain hope I'd see some more of Ryan Reynolds washboard abs or maybe a little ass cheek. Alas, this did not happen. You know how it is when you visit friends in your hometown (Vancouver, B.C.) and they BEG you to be in their movie? Well you can't just say 'no', that would be rude. Next time, Ryan, say 'no.' 0 stars

88 Minutes – My STINKER OF THE YEAR AWARD goes to this. Wow, this is a bad movie. Like on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being "Pearl Harbor", this is a 9.5! Yet another Vancouver-pretending-to-be-Seattle setting for Al I'm-68-fucking-years-old Pacino. Pacino plays a 68-fucking-years-old forensic psychiatrist who helps out the cops when he's not banging 20-something bi-sexual co-eds. If a less imaginative writer from the Playboy Channel was crossed with the Wachowski Brothers, you'd get this. And yes the killer was a bi-sexual girl who couldn't stand being out fucked by 68-fucking-years-old Pacino. And you just know those jealous model-pretty faux lesbians who really want to get reamed by grandpa are all over Vancouver. 0 stars

The Forbidden Kingdom – This is a delicious fluffy pork dumpling of a film. Jackie Chan is sweet and funny and Michael Angarano is wonderful as the geeky weakling who obsesses over Kung Fu films. Jet Li is best when he's playing the monkey god, not a mere mortal. The settings are all breath-taking and the story line is so earnest and heartfelt it would be cruel to pick on it. Hell, rent it for the kids. It's good clean fun. 3 stars

Forgetting Sarah Marshall – The whole time I was watching this, I wondered if it was really about Jason Segel's relationship with his former "Freaks and Geeks" co-star, Linda Cardellini? I guess we'll never know. This is like if Judd Apatow's cast ran off with his film equipment for a weekend, smoked some pot, drank blue Hawaiias and made a home movie about the painful trials of boning B-list Hollywood actresses. Russell Brand is the best thing about this film even though he spends half of it with his bum in the air doing ridiculous yoga moves. His character describing a creepy sexual scenario with that awful yob band Oasis is worthy of some laughing out loud. Segel has always been more endearing to me than out-right funny. His sharpest scenes are when we see how Singletons are treated in public places (he gets the crappiest table in the restaurant) and why banging strangers just isn't the same as sex with our Significant Other. I just wish there'd been more of the Dracula with puppets. Now that was original. 3 stars

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? – Morgan Spurlock goes to the Middle East and annoys people from Dubai to Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv he pisses off some cranky orthodox Jews. He even dips his toe into the sands of Iraq and beats us to death with the realization that maybe the deeply tanned people of that part of the world have a reason to be mad as hell at us. 1 star

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay – This film does more to promote the cause of the deeply tanned people of the Middle East than the 'documentary' above. Once again John Cho and Kal Penn lead us through a maze of frat-boy fart and sex jokes. Our Duo gets in trouble for lighting a bong on a commercial airline (never saw that one coming, dude) and Rob Corddry's dead-on Homeland Insecurity agent goes medieval on their asses. But the ending – where the boys get smoked out by a stoner Pres. Bush – was disappointing. The faux Bush never gives an explanation for why he set up Guantanamo in the first place, only that he's really just like us and just wants to party like all the other frat boys. In a pig's eye! 3 stars

Iron Man – Robert Downey Jr. again at his un-flappable best as the comic book hero who, unlike the Harold and Kumar faux Pres. Bush, actually re-thinks his moral choices and grows a little. Plus he has this really cool suit that he flies around in. 3 stars

Red Belt – This David Mamet film got buried and forgotten in the avalanche of mainstream movies released in 2008 and that is just WRONG. It's good and thoroughly watchable. It's got action and a brain, the way real movies should. Tim Allen is the sleazy Hollywood star who forgets his friends quicker than you can say CAA. Chiwetel Ejiofor is the absurdly noble martial arts instructor who refuses to bow to the commercialization of MMA even when his master instructor does. Emily Mortimer is the broken, screwed-up business woman who sets the whole plot off in an accidental shooting. Because of Mamet's dense, quick dialogue, you shouldn't watch this once. You should watch it twice and remind yourself that martial arts films can be good, grasshopper. 4 stars

The Fall – Tarsem Singh produces a lovely, eye-popping story that takes place in the mind of a little Italian immigrant girl in 1920's Hollywood. Lee Pace does a damn fine job as the broken stunt man who's been paralyzed while working on a Buster Keaton-ish film. Everything about this movie is as awe-inspiring is a gothic cathedral full of stained-glass windows. You're so overwhelmed by the Jungian images you can forgive any tiny plot holes. 5 stars

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – It takes Disney to sanitize and suck the life out of C.S. Lewis's classic series. Yeah there's centaurs and chatty mice but James McAvoy's weirdly sexy faun is gone and Tilda Swinton makes only a tiny appearance as the White Witch. There's something so grating about Georgie Henley as the littlest of the Pevensies that I wanted to engage in child abuse. I think a weekend with Mommy Dearest would do wonders for her line delivery. And somewhere underneath a Sammy Hagar wig is Peter Dinklage, once again tragically under used. 1 star

You Don't Mess with the Zohan – Adam Sandler is delightful as a former Masad agent who wants to "style and cut hair" and "make the whole world silky smooth." John Tuttoro is fab as his nemesis. Rob Schneider is funny as a cab driver who recognizes the Zohan. Lanie Kazan is comical as one of Zohan's many cougar lovers. Seeing all the Arab and Israeli immigrants crammed into the same dumpy neighborhood in New York makes everybody realize it's a very small world and we all have to try and get along. 4 stars

The Happening – Where does Shyamalan get his pot?! I so want to get hooked up with his ganja dealer. Only a pothead filmmaker could come up with the kooky idea that plants (yes, as in HOUSEPLANTS) are trying to bump off humanity and take over the planet. Be careful what you say around your ficus, it can hear you. 1 star

The Incredible Hulk – Edward Norton is mean, green and determined to make a film with a valid story and moral message. And if he has to kick some studio ass in the process, bring it on! The early shots in this film where we fly over the eternal slums of Rio are amazing and end way too soon. William Hurt sleep walks through another role as the bad guy and father of Liv Tyler's character. Tyler's Betty is so passively written I honestly think they could have used a blowup doll. Once again the female character just lays there while things happen to her and she occasionally screams when tanks blow up. 3 stars

Stuck – Mena Suvari and Steven Rea, the grande dame of 1992's art house flick "The Crying Game", play a deliciously perverse game of cat-n-mouse when Suvari's idiot character mows down Rea's. Then Suvari's character drives home with the down-on-his-luck Rea stuck in her windshield. But Robo Hobo just will NOT die and Suvari's moronic nurse has to come up with a way to dispose of the un-dead bum. Another film that should get a lot more play time in DVD. 4 stars

Hellboy II: The Golden Army – Mexican filmmaker, Guillermo del Toro, takes the audience on a weird wild ride with set designs so complex he probably will have to do one of those expanded Making Ofs with a DVD devoted just to the stunning, mescaline-inspired visuals. But truthfully it's Ron Pearlman's damn hard work that makes this franchise watchable. He's like the Sean Connery of the comic book hero genre. Every punch and smack down of the bad guys is done with a wink and nod to the audience ala Connery's James Bond. Good fun. 4 stars

The Dark Knight – Christopher Nolan makes a very dark Batman come to life in this latest installment of the vigilante myth. All the acting is top notch but poor Heath Ledger so completely embodies the Joker he's mesmerizing to watch. There isn't a hint of the slacker Aussie surfer dude underneath the Joker's manic cake makeup. Ledger did what most actors can only aspire to – he totally submerged his own personality under the character's. 5 stars

Transsiberian – Just when you thought it was safe to go be a tourist in Russia, think again. Emily Mortimer shines as the indecisive American tourist who accidentally does something Very Bad to a Very Deserving Bad Guy setting off a whole lot of Very Bad Russians. Ben Kingsley is fine as his usual bad guy with an ambiguous foreign accent (not new territory for him). I just wish he'd been as overwhelmingly scary as Don in "Sexy Beast", where his performance literally gave me nightmares. Woody Harrelson is too old for his part and so amateurish if his character had just fallen off the train halfway through, nobody would have missed him. 3 stars

Felon – Stephen Dorff of "Blade" and "I Shot Andy Warhol" fame takes on the American penal system as a working-class guy who kills a burglar in a home invasion and gets sent to the Big House. This movie is such a knock off of "Oz" I kept expecting to see Adebisi come swaggering around the corner. Val Kilmer is barely recognizable as a long-time felon who has been walking the political tightrope between the rival prison gangs and the corrections officers for years. Filmmaker Ric Waugh takes an honest stab at a horribly wrong system that instead of rehabilitating turns out parolees more violent than when they went in. 3 stars

Boy A – A UK film adaptation of a novel by Jonathan Trigell tells the story of a young man who has been in a psychiatric prison since his early teens. He gets out and assumes a new identity (sort of like a witness protection program) under the guidance of the always good Peter Mullan playing his case worker. Jack seems like an incredibly likeable, puppy dog-eyed young man but he's haunted by a horrific past. Director John Crowley does seem to paint a sympathetic picture of a former child murderer who actually has a conscience unlike some psychopaths who seem to operate without any remorse. The ending is nice and ambiguous and leaves you wondering what the hell really happened. 5 stars

The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Oh Chris, Chris, Chris! Why did you do this? Was it simply to get back at FOX Studios after the eternal lawsuit? Suffice it to say this simply could have been a two-hour special on the SciFi channel and everybody would have been happy. The first movie was a lot better, possibly because we were all still in love with Mulder and Scully. 1 star

Pineapple Express – Another Apatow-produced gem this time, weirdly, directed by David Gordon Green (yes, he of the moody American South indy films). Seth Rogen and James Franco are in tip-top form and Danny McBride is wildly funny as the verbally rambling dealer in the Dufus Trio. Rogen discovers a dirty cop, a big-time pot dealer and a pissed-off Asian drug gang and then spends most of the movie running from them … even when they're not chasing him. Franco does so many prat falls for laughs I was worried about him. Get buzzed and watch this gem which is better than anything Cheech and Chong every came up with. 4 stars

Tropic Thunder – Eegads, what a mess. Ben Stiller and company try their damndest to turn a lot of entertainment industry- inside jokes into a full two-hour laughfest. The trouble is when Jack Black is playing a whiney drug addict? He's just whiney. And Robert Downey Jr.'s so good at what he does, he is the dude playing the dude. Steve Coogan gets killed off too early to help deliver any real laughs and Danny McBride (of "Pineapple Express") isn't given nearly enough time on camera. Instead there's just these weird drawn out scenes with Stiller goofing on "Apocalypse Now" and "Platoon". Matthew McConaughey's 10-percenter really is funnier than Tom Cruise's freaky producer. 1 star

Let the Right One In – Wow, who knew Sweden could churn out such a tight, provocative film. I don't know if it's re-inventing the vampire genre but it sure pumps some warm blood back into a very tired theme of Making Friends with the Undead. The two child actors are amazingly unaffected in their performances and the setting feels real right down to the dreary, thin-walled council estates the characters live in. 5 stars

Son of Rambow - (this was just released on DVD, came out in the UK last year) is sweet and funny and incredibly inventive. The three child actors are delightful to watch. It's a trippy look inside a 12-yr-old's diary complete with imaginary exploding things. And we get to see how quickly indy film making can lead to The Battle of the Egos ... even in kids. 4 stars

0 stars: utter shite, mate!
1 star: rent if really bored
2 stars: meh, it's watchable
3 stars: definitely watchable
4 stars: should get mentioned at the Oscars
5 stars: It's golden

Author, author!

I've joined Harper-Collin's Authonomy site. Anything to avoid actually writing.

Besides, I'm always looking for new ways to get plagiarized ... er, at least someone would be doing something with one of my stories.

In other news supposedly somebody who is the assistant of somebody famous up in Toronto is reading my short-film spec script, "CHIENNE" which is a contemporary suspense/drama set in rural Canada. And I don't speak a single word of French.

Yes, I like to bite off more than I can chew.

I feel tingly all over.

Touched by Oprah

Is there no mortal anywhere who can stand against the undiluted power of Oprah? This is the end days, folks, because even Denis (fucking) Leary is like a deer in the headlights of that woman.

Forget Jesus Christ. Oprah's bigger than Elvis and the Beatles combined.

DIY

I went nuts a week ago and sort of self-published myself, I guess. It's just a tiny anthology of three of my best short stories to date. It's called Trailer Trash Confessional and I'm mailing copies of it out to a few friends. I went to Elliott Bay Book Co. on Friday and left a copy with them (I actually wanted to leave more but they wouldn't let me). They do allow self-published 'zines and poetry chapbooks on their shelves. I'm guessing if I go back later this week, they'll let me leave more. I'm expecting zero return on my investment so I'm hoping they'll set these out marked FREE or nobody will read them.



I went by Hugo House too and unloaded a half dozen on them. Don't know if anybody will read them before they disappear into their 'zine archive ... which I'm pretty sure nobody reads.

I hope they aren't too depressing.

The first short story is typical coming-of-age, sorta Tobias Wolff meets Mark Twain meets ... Pink Floyd. (Not that my writing even approaches that level!) The third short story is hopefully the most humorous. It's written in a very sarcastic, kind of Christina Ricci in The Opposite of Sex narrative voice.

But the middle short story may rattle some cages. It's a work of fiction but I'm wondering if people will read more into it than they should? I can't emphasize enough that it is fiction, NOT autobiographical but it is very loosely based on a teenage girl I knew years ago who did go through a similar horrific experience.

To the best of my knowledge, she is now married (to a man), doing well and living some where in a suburb of Las Vegas.

I would have liked to have included some sci-fi/fantasy short stories but none of them are complete. I've had the first 50 pages of Dark Engines kicking around my harddrive forever and also the first 112 pages of Life Among the Dead but none of my sci-fi stories come in under 100 pages. I'm incapable of writing sci-fi without a cast of thousands and about fifteen different plot threads. It's enough to give Frank Herbert a headache.

The Two Americas

Was over at Alternet.org when I saw these, gripping photos by Brenda Ann Kenneally. She is a member of the National Press Photographers Assoc. and has won several awards for her gritty pictures of New York's working poor.

Note to the 'Mad Men' of advertising: DUH !

Sexxxy ... um, actually no.

Obama getting the electoral college by a landslide gives me hope for humanity ... but then I read articles like this and I slide back to my original stance of the glass being half empty (and the waiter that's supposed to refill it is a retard). Here's the skimmed tidbit:

Steamy Magazines Make Men Feel as Bad As Women
Guys who check out the sexy female models in so-called lad magazines such as Maxim have more body-image problems than their pals, a new study finds.

Sorry for sounding like an eighth grader but DUH ! Thanks for catching up special ed. But the researchers (and the accompanying journalists) reported an even more startling discovery.

Does Sex Really Sell? Perhaps Not to Women
... He added that the results also illuminate a gap between the male executives who are marketing the magazines and the consumers.

TRIPLE DUH ! Sorry ad execs, the 'Girls Gone Wild' myth boat has left the dock! Sometimes the feminist backlash crap just makes me wanna beat my head against the monitor.

Lake of Fire ...

... is amazing and easily the best documentary I've seen in a while. Tony Kaye does an astonishing job meticulously interviewing just about every single high-profile person in the 'war' on abortion. It doesn't let anyone off the hook but his layered documentary slowly eases the viewer into some of the deeper and more abstract questions as to WHY some people blow up abortion clinics and murder doctors.



If you buy only one documentary on DVD, buy this one.

Mr. and Mrs. ... Moose?

Further proof Jesusfreaks smoke crack, or at least meth. I mean WHAT is up with the visuals in this campy political ad to ban same-sex marriages in California? I thought I was watching the Animal Planet. Did Mr. and Mrs. Moose get their, uh mating, ordained by tha' Lord? And what does the bizarro reptilian face represent? The devil? Temptation? A Mardi Gras queen? Ellen DeGeneres? Or are all reptilian unions also ordained by tha' Lord?

W T F ?

Ahhh, bromance

Why focus on the negative when I can accentuate the positive of celebrity stalking?

Here's a zesty quote from Salon.com:
"I'm in favor of any form of distraction that doesn't result in liver damage, a broken marriage, consumer debt or excessive weight gain, so I heartily enjoy the rush of that exquisitely modern guiltless pleasure known as the (celebrity) Google stalk." -- Lily Burana, May 29, 2007


I'm now in possession of a copy of the latest TV Guide. Yes, that one. No wait, ... not that one. Not that he isn't cute an all. (Fucking McCain, it is YOU who have messed with popular euphemisms, you maniacal, geriatric gimp.) The pinnacle of the article? When Leonard says: "All I remember is there were scented candles and Hugh came out in a robe."

GASP!



To ... die ... for!

Whoopie Cushion

I had a Very Important Interview today out in Redmond at that software juggernaut that must not be named. It went pretty well but if I don't get this contract, I'm blaming my shoes. I bought a pair of used Keens at REI's discount re-sale dept. in July. I wouldn't have been so casual with my money BUT they retail for like $110 new and I got these for 30 bucks. They're solid black leather inside and out and have the famous, wonderful, angelic Keen soles that are sooo comfy on my highly deformed feet. The reason why the previous owner dumped them back into REI's re-sale bin? They squeak. More accurately, they fart. Yes, my shoes sound like Whoopie Cushions.



So there I was walking down the halls of yet another cavernous corporate building, making small talk with my interviewer and my shoes were going: "Wooopht! Hoooobbbft!" and even the dreaded "FffmphururururtT".

A couple of SQL developers were giggling when I passed their office.

Fuck, I may as well be a club-footed troll living in a shed out in the woods ... oh Gawd, I'm a Disney character!

Wow

Barbara Ehrenreich is another author who I think has been sneaking peeks at my diary. I'm reading Bait & Switch: The Futile Pursuit of the American Dream, her follow up to Nickel & Dimed. Bait & Switch is like a play-by-play of what I'm going through right now.



One of Ehrenreich's greatest talents as a journalist and non-fiction author is to cut through the bullshit. As part of her "research" for Bait & Switch, she posed as a marketing and events organizer and went on a dozen "job search workshops" -- nearly all of which she had to cry foul on for their doling out of useless self-help cum pop psychology philosophies.

In response to the all-pervasive myth in this country that It's Really All Our Own Fault and We Attract Bad Shit, she had this to say:

What about the child whose home is hit by a bomb? Did she have some bomb-shaped thoughtform that brought ruin down on her head? And did my (job search) boot-camp mates cause the layoffs that drove them out of their jobs by "vibrating" at a layoff-related frequency? It seems inexcusably cruel to tell people who have reached some kind of personal nadir that their problem is entirely of their own making.

Damn skippy.

I am M's throbbing lower back

In case anybody is wondering, I haven't been online hardly at all: I've had my first critical back injury. Yes, pain, numbness, scary sensations, weakness, etc. And all this fun while I'm on UI and have nada insurance.



And to think I made it all the way through wildfire training twice and didn't get this before. And that was with 80 to 100 pounds strapped to my back. And now to be laid low by shouldering a stupid bicycle that was maybe 35 pounds tops.

Crap!

Biafra for Pres 2008 !!!

The Jello STILL rules!

Being Unfaithful

I gritted my teeth yesterday and called a certain headhunter I had ranted about in July. This woman, try as I might to believe otherwise, is an idiot. And a screw-turning, roller skate-wearing bitch.

She made me jump through endless hoops in July to get "fully inputted" with her effing contractor firm. I dutifully jumped through them all, re-wrote the damn resume till the wee hours of the morning, turned in multiple reference lists (they lost one!), etc.

So yesterday, I'm talking to her and I say I've been out on two interviews -- one with that giant software firm in Redmond who's Name We Dare Not Utter -- and she immediately jumps down my throat. "Who did you interview with? Which department exactly was it?"

And then, of course, the ridiculously jealous question: "WHICH other vendor was this through, hmmm???"

I mentioned a large vendor that gets a lot of people work. "Oh them," she hissed into the phone. And then the final blow: "Well, we can't TELL you not to register with other vendors. You don't have to swear undying loyalty to us but ..."

The implication here is, if you register with other vendors while we park our collective asses on your resume and you get work with another vendor, we will feel slighted, hurt, betrayed. So I'm stepping out on this vendor! Stepping out with any ol' other headhunter that happens to drop a sweaty email in my in-box.



In the immortal words of Justin Timberlake, "Cry me a (fucking) river."

Adventures in Stupid

I went on my first 'organized' hike via an online group here in Seattle yesterday. While the leader was friendly and extremely enthusiastic, I thought she was well ... stupid.


Don't be a Laura Palmer

I had to bus out to an East Side Park & Ride to meet up with her so we all could carpool out to North Bend and Mount Si (former home of the TV show, Twin Peaks). The weirdness started at the P&R. I showed up, called her and then spent about 20 minutes on my cell phone trying to figure out where in the P&R she was. Sadly, the woman didn't know east from west or north from south. She kept saying "I'm on the other side of the parking garage". Which other side?

After I met her, she talked a lot about bagging peaks, summiting as quickly as possibly, etc. I calmly said I'd be going at my own pace, as in the advanced-arthritis-in-both-knees-deformed-feet-sane pace. Also, I'd never done the trail and had zero familiarity with it.

Eventually eight other people showed up, most wearing cross-training tennis shoes and carrying, what I thought, were pathetically small water bottles.

After an 85-MPH drive east on I-90 to North Bend, we reached the trail head and our leader (and the other uber fit) bounded off up the trail.

Within 30 minutes I was Ms. Dead Last, which is fine, but the PNW trees are so dense I couldn't see the group and that unsettled me. There were a lot of other people on the trail, herds of roaming Labradors, etc. but still ...

I got about 3 1/5 miles up the trail and was soaked with sweat, my feet were already killing me. I had just bought new/used hiking boots the day before and it was now a brutal contest between my smashed, bruised feet and the inside of the boots which had gone from soft and comfy to hard and unforgiving.

By 7:45 it was shifting from twilight to very dark and I decided to head back down and wait for everybody at the trail head. I had brought a flashlight but I didn't want to be crawling back down the trail in the dark, flashlight in my teeth with my feet throbbing with every step.

At the trail head, I ripped my damn boots off, put my trusty Keen sandals on, watered up, slathered mosquito repellent on and flopped down on a picnic bench to wait. I watched the sun disappear and waited for over two hours.

The main group didn't come down until after 10pm.

Personally, I think this is NOT the way to organize and run an evening hike. I don't care if you're an Olympic tri-athlete and you think the trail is basically an extension of your backyard. Hiking sans organization is a recipe for disaster. The only reason nobody got hurt on this woman's death march? Dumb luck.

I'm still reeling from the fact that she regularly goes out on all-day hikes with her 3-yr-old child sans map and a compass! She told me she was planning on putting her child in some sort of Beginning Rock Climbing Summer Camp ... when he turned four. Yikes!

I'm gonna put on my former Forest Service employee apron here and try and explain a few things. People die in the wilderness all the damn time.

The No. 1 way people get hurt or killed in the wild is THEY SLIP AND FALL. Half the time this can be prevented by not being an idiot: wearing supportive (and yes, comfortable) shoes, going at a moderate pace, watching where you put your feet and not sprinting up the trail like a deer on crystal meth.

Packing enough water so you don't get dehydrated and understanding basic orienteering (like the sun sets in the WEST, so if it's on your left shoulder, you are hiking roughly north, okay?) always helps.

So I wrote a little review of our hiking trip on the website, I was nicer than on here but I'm sure bounding trail runners on too much caffeine now hate me. So what. They're headed for a fall, I'm trying not to.

Hiking was the most common preinjury activity (55%)

Most Popular Ways to Die in the Wilderness

The 10 Essentials for Wilderness Hiking

And looking at the 10 Essentials now I can't help but want to edit a little.

Here's my 10 essentials in order of importance:

1. Water (and/or the means to purify water) (2 liters per adult MINIMUM)
2. Matches (and a lighter or any other fire starter)
3. Extra clothing (a hoodie, fleece, windbreaker, dry socks - SOMETHING!)
4. Knife (or Leatherman Tool or similar)
5. Food (trail mix or something high calorie with carbs and protein)
6. Flashlight or headlamp (more necessary in low-altitude, dense forests vs. high deserts)
7. A compass (and the basic ability to use one)
8. Sunglasses (I'm blind without my prescrip shades)
9. A map (good topographic printout preferred)
10. Simple first aid kit (and/or a mirror or some sort of signaling device)

Bob's gone

A close friend of mine died yesterday. Bob was a longtime Boeing employee, who worked as a technical writer and a successful children's book author who's best seller "Jump Frog Jump" has been translated into over 20 languages and one live performance musical. One of Bob's author bios.

Between getting the news today via cell phone and then going to Bikram yoga, I was just completely wiped out. I'm supposed to go to the memorial service as soon as his kids have it set up. I don't know what to say. I can't go into who this guy was right now. I feel kinda numb, like I was just dropped down a well.


Robert 'Bob' Kalan, Asian Art Museum, January 2008

Isn't it interesting how we all can only perceive death from our own tiny little perspective? Tomorrow, I have to go buy something black.

PETA anyone?

I just read another kick-ass story from LA Weekly. Seattle's version of a weekly blows. It's nothing but endlessly re-cycled restaurant reviews and ineffectual swipes at the local city government.



In order to get decent alternative weekly stories here, you have to grab a copy of Dan Savage's The Stranger and wade through the catty gay-boy gossip to find the meat-n-potatoes. But LA Weekly is fun in a slightly Goth sorta way. It's got endless tales of weird sexploitation and for some reason, a surplus of animal hording stories. This latest one had my heart going out to the rich, naive Yuppies of Palisades.

My Favorite Nifkin is no more ...

... thanks to some cyberhackers who banded together to become a pain in my ass. So my blog is now all about brine shrimp love.



Actually, that's really unfair to cyberhackers or even just hackers. Hackers are NEVER this fucking stupid. These two are world-class tools who left an electronic trail back to their ISP accounts a mile wide.

Technically they're just sad little third-rate grifters with cocaine problems and parents who are shutting off their trust funds. So they take it out on me, their 'friend'. While I'm on fucking vacation, on my fucking birthday! Lovely.

I'm going to go listen to Lennon's 'Instant Karma' now.

The bible tells me so!

Just found this link via Thom Hartmann's site. This looks like a group I need to join. I took their first quiz and was amazed.


Still likes meth and man ass!

To think the evangelical nuts in Reno were screaming this shit at me from the pulpit when I was all of eight years old.

Take the quiz and become 'enlightened' as to goat boiling ... oh yeah and lots of stonings!

Freedom From Religion Foundation bible quiz

More Bush/Cheney Justice

For anybody out there who still thinks we DON'T need to proceed with war crimes charges against the Bush regime:

Chicken Wine

If you, like me, are looking to fall softly into alcoholism rather than with a hard thump, try chicken wine.



Yes, that's right. Chicken, as in poultry. Granted, I have no idea what, if any, involvement the chickens have in the actual making of the wine (it's all in French) but I think it has the makings of a true god-like elixir.



True, it's bright Kool-Aid red but where's the pissy after taste? Where's the depressing vinegar aroma? Not here! Chicken wine. The best thing EVER to come out of a over-priced crappy, hippie-infested PCC store.

Real Gone Girl ... at least I'd like to be

So I'm slogging thru a half dozen websites trying to wrangle up a plane ticket and then transport to and from LAX and I just keep thinking, if this was Europe, I'd be there by now. I mean they have trains/subways that run from Heathrow directly to stations that take you all the way to freaking Scotland!

But just getting from LAX to downtown L.A. is going to be an exodus with mini-vans, shuttle buses, obscure bus stops, etc. 'Merika is like a shining example of how NOT to plan an infrastructure. I was just reading in Good Magazine about how FUBARed our Amtrak system is compared to well ... everybody. Estonia has a better rail system! I'm sure their health care is superior too.


Just like King Count Metro, only with more smells!

So while I'm doing all this, I should plug two indie comic book writers I met about two months ago:

Jobnik!
I feel bad I didn't buy any of Miriam's trade backs when I met her.

Gunplay
But I am glad I met Jorge and did buy one of his. Now if only I hadn't missed the deadline for this.

Schmap ... Map ... what rhymes with 'schmap'?

Pic taken last October at the Fremont (weekend) Street Faire.


I've been short-listed yet again for inclusion in another Schmap on-line photo thing. I got picked for one of my Vancouver pics last time. It was a pick I took in December '07 when I made a run for the border. Why they pick these particular pics, I'll never know. The Vancouver one was taken while I was standing on Jericho Beach but it was aimed across the Burrard Inlet at North Vancouver ... yet it's listed under Jericho Park on their map thingie. Whatever. Now if they'd actually start paying somebody royalties.

In other news, I'm crazy busy with this short-short term contract at Microsoft. Much nicer campus than Boeing's, that's for sure. The commute out on state highway 520? Don't even get me started. Grrr.

Oh and the Hipster asshats next door warranted a call to the cops last night. Really nothing quite like listening to someone plunk the same two cords on a amped acoustic guitar until 1am on a Tuesday night. I hope the sad little Connor Oberst wannabes got fined this time. And now here's me up at 5:45am to trudge out in the monsoon to Microsoft. Double grrr.

Now with 43 percent vag owners!

Just discovered (always the last to know) a cool blog for female fans of Sci-Fi and there's a lively rant on it by one of the female editors in response to a lame-ass article in the New York Times about the SciFi channel. The quotes in the article are priceless!


Vag owners like it too.

In marketing materials for “Battlestar Galactica,” for example, there are no spaceships, and the story lines try to create more of a balance between action and emotion.

Gee, I always thought people (yes, including vagina owners) liked BSG because it was WELL WRITTEN. Hello?!

It is not just “Star Trek” or “Star Wars” that would fit the definition. Superheroes, Indiana Jones and even the baseball fantasy movie “Field of Dreams” would all be considered part of the genre as defined by Sci Fi’s programmers.

'Field of Dreams' ... that thing about baseball and Kevin Costner? Oh, PLEASE. It wasn't even a good drama.

I've been reading and writing science fiction, fantasy and surrealism since I was, oh, about 14 years old. I had no less than four friends (all female!) in a couple of my fiction writing classes back at college that were all avid Sci-Fi fans and wrote Sci-Fi.

One of the greatest contemporary authors in North America has written no less than two novels that Barnes & Noble would have to struggle NOT to put in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of their cheesy stores. She's won the Booker Prize, the highest prize you can win as a fiction author AND the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Dig it.

That ugly monster, Reality

I've been enjoying (weirdly, not as much as I'd like to) being laid off. The pinnacle of my new unemployment has been watching hours of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. It's like crack, more addictive than those fraking Harry Potter tomes. In fact, the show reminds me of the best adult comics I've ever read. You pick up a Brian K. Vaughan book and you have to read it cover-to-cover right NOW, no interruptions.

So maybe it's kizmet (or too many ganja brownies), but I picked up the latest Stranger and right damn there on page eight is an ad for Seattle's annual Emerald City Comicon. And I'm actually 'free' those days and available to go to it. And I actually think I can swing the entry fee. What's weird is Jamie Bamber is going to be there. At first I just thought Bamber was way too toff and really bland. Then I decided bland was the new black and decided I liked him in BSG. He's like a really nice rug that pulls the whole room together.


The new black is bland.

But meet one of these TV celebs in person (along with 500 scary fans)?! Yikes! No way! I hate it when reality intrudes on fantasy and that's what television is. Damn good fantasy. This would be like finding out the way-too-cute guy in the corner office at work, the one you've lusted at from afar? Has halitosis, nose hairs long enough to braid or a weird sexual kink like dressing up in French maid outfits and being spanked. It would be like visiting your favorite aunt in California during a glorious California summer planned with horseback riding and trips to carnivals and accidentally walking in on her while she was changing her colostomy bag. Reality is a rude, earthy business and I try very hard to avoid trucking in it.

Baltar is right to prefer the Caprica 'in his head' to any of the 'real' versions. Who wants reality when you can have fantasy?

Half the World

I'm like the last feminist on earth to find this. Joss wrote it last year and it's a flawless essay on women's rights. Anyhow, better late than never.

Whedonesque.com

I'd like to re-post it here but I don't wanna step on any toes. Those BtVS fans are defiant, touchy people and they guard their websites ferociously.

If you only click on one single link the whole three seconds you spend surfing my blog, it should be the one above. I have complete essay envy. I wish I'd written it.

" ... the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered."

I haven't read any Rebecca Solnit in a while and that's too bad. She was one of the required reads waaay back in Women's Literature in 1995. Anyhow, somebody on Fbook posted one of her recent essays. And it rocks. But then everything she does rocks.



Considering I work with socially-retarded male engineers and calcified company bureaucrats all fucking day long, this essay seems especially topical.

Chick Lit ... grrr

I'm copying and pasting this thread from a Facebook group on feminism. I've abbreviated every poster's name except mine to protect people's privacy. It's a damn interesting thread and worth repeating on this blog.

Topic: The Orange Prize for Fiction & The Fawcett Society

N. (West Midlands) wrote.
Just to let folks know that I have just written an essay on the UK controversy over the existence of this literary prize for women. In the essay I also talk about the work of the excellent Fawcett Society. Hope you enjoy.

Link to N's essay here.

My reply to N's post.
Read your letter/essay. Awesome. Yeah, the complainer is clearly deluded.

While women in the US do make up the majority of college liberal arts programs (English lit, etc.) -- so what? Men still outnumber women 8 to 1 in the technical (and better-paying) fields like engineering.

Of the five English teachers I had in high school, only two were women.

A random sampling of the NY Time's bestseller's list will still show that male authors dominate publishing in America and always have. While more women work in the lower rungs of publishing (admin. assts, readers, proofers, etc) I'm sure most of their employers are men.

J.K. Rowling herself was told by her first publisher to use her initials or else she would be 'less likely' to get published.

I've been told by several fiction lit. professors to use my first initial and/or my nickname (Mel) so as to not give away my sex.

When I was a newspaper reporter in the 1990s, the vast majority of my editors (and upper management like publishers) were men. It's still extremely rare to see a woman editor overseeing a city newspaper.

I think you hit on a really good point in your essay when you talked about high school-aged boys 'zoning out' whenever they were asked to read something by a female author. And I think they are conditioned to behave that way.

"Chick Lit" anyone?

A's reply to my post.
Without even bringing technical fields into the equation, your statement can be clarified even more than while women may make up the majority of college liberal arts programs, college students in general, and even associate professors, they are a clear minority when it comes to being tenured, acting as chairs, and in the upper-level management of colleges (such as Presidents and Provosts).

N's response.
thanks for the response so far. Yes there is that phenomenon of women writers using initials-A.L.Kennedy, A.S. Byatt, and J.K.R herself. Think too of George Eliot, Currer Bell and the rest. Interesting too that you've found yourself in the same position. My other half works in publishing and reports that women are very well represented in the industry in the UK. But well represented enough? There's a lot of tokenism still going on, and many of the key literary editors in Britain are still men. Take the major UK poetry editors: Lee Braxton (Faber), Robin Robertson (Cape), Don Paterson (Picador), Neil Astley (Bloodaxe), Michael Schmidt (Carcanet). Talented they may be, female they are not.

C's response.
With JK Rowling it was more a case of appealing to young boys, who would be less likely to buy a book they might see as 'for girls', it was just to get a wider audience.

I'm not sure that it is a huge problem if young boys are defining their masculinity and want male role models.

I prefer books by women, because I love women and how women write and see the world, and I think this is an area in which I'm not going to be convinced (to buy books by men, which is a huge generalisation, and all I can do is to say simply I prefer books by women), and I'd hate to preach.

By the way I know this is perhaps contraversial and I'm just offering it as my perspective with complete respect.

My reply to C's above post.
>>With JK Rowling it was more a case of appealing to young boys, who would be less likely to buy a book they might see as 'for girls', it was just to get a wider audience.

A-hah, good point. I hadn't even thought of that. Christ, are they really THAT biased toward male authors? That's just tragic.

A Gentle Intervention

I got turned on to this about two weeks ago, funny as hell. I'm so glad they won a web award.



In other news, I am sick. Yes, after months of skating past the mine field of winter flu colds, I have fallen into a pit of flu-iness. 'A eel like 'RAP!

Bleh!

Awesome Blog Post

The lady who runs Fugly Horse of the Day just posted the most awesome personal essay about mythical "horse sense" and why some people seem to be these super psychic horse whisperers and why the rest of us just flail away in the saddle feeling like idiots and wondering just what IS going on inside that big furry head???

Yes, that kind of riding

I did a wild, crazy thing a few weeks back. It's along the lines of taking up surfing at 50 or learning to Rollerblade at 45. I started taking horseback riding lessons at a good school 20 miles north of Seattle.

Between the ages of 11 and 18, I begged, pleaded and pestered my Dad for riding lessons. His answer was always "no way". Horses were (and still are) large dangerous animals, I was (and still am) incredibly accident prone and my Dad was one of the most powerful attorneys in Monterey County. There wasn't a stable in central California that would take me. They were too scared he'd sue them if I slid off and broke an arm (an injury that happens to equestrians with monotonous regularity).

So as part of my effort to have a fun mid-life crisis, I started taking lessons. Last Sunday I tried "posting" for the first time. Of all the wacky physical shit I've done -- swimming laps in an Olympic pool at 29, fighting wildfires at 38 -- this is probably one of the most difficult. It's very technical, you have to concentrate on the horse and you have to time it just right. The video below makes it look effortless. Just bouncing up and down on a saddle, right? Wrong. It's way, way more involved than that.



And if one more idiot tries to equate horseback riding with some weird-ass form of masturbation, I will hit you right in the face with a sweaty, 10-pound horse blanket covered in pooh!

Poo ...

Finally proof that you literally can sell shit to yuppie/hipsters.



This is a luwak, they are a cat/raccoon type creature that lives in the jungles of Indonesia. They eat ripe coffee plant berries and then poop out the coffee beans. And then enterprising Indonesians collect the poop, roast the, uh, beans and sell it as an exotic, expensive coffee.



On a side note, Indonesia is like 99% Muslim. Is this really halal (kosher)? So eating the flesh of pigs is unclean but eating raccoon shit is okay???

That's your moment of Zen on this blog.

Signs of Seattle

There's more where this came from. Check out the latest on my main Flickr account. There's giant bronze robots and carbon emissions.

F*** Car

I had to rent a Flexcar about a month ago for a big, important job interview way the hell down in SeaTac. When the car sharing company billed me for the one day rental, I was charged $20 in tax. Just TAX for one afternoon! For a Toyota Prius that was so quiet I could barely tell when it was on!

After joining Flexcar I started getting cheerful notice-type emails. Recently, they asked me to email the Washington state legislature regarding these ridiculous taxes on Flexcars (now Zipcar). I dutifully wrote one of the legislative reps and then got this long 'flipper flopping' reply. I'm not gonna post all of it, here's a summary:

Thanks for writing to me about Senate Bill 6484, regarding the exemption of Flexcar from rental car taxes. I think Flexcar is a wonderful service that offers an eco-friendly alternative to car ownership ... Although I support this service, and know that it is different than renting a car at a rental car company, legislation that could potentially create a tax loophole in a major revenue source that funds public transportation must be carefully crafted ... Governor Gregoire has come out in support of exempting car-sharing companies (vs. car rental) from rental car taxes...I am very concerned that a significant loophole will be created in a major revenue source ... blah ... blah ... tax loophole ... blah ... loophole ... loophole

-- Sincerely,
Sen. Mary Margaret

There's nothing quite like watching a marginally liberal state legislator dance around the issue of taxes, especially exorbitant ones that don't affect homeowners, rich Humvee owners, rich hot tub owners, rich people, or rich homeowners who generally have the most say in state legislatures because they generate the biggest chunk of revenues.

Alas, I'm not the first or the last yuppie/hipster/urbanite/non-car owner to get stung by this bee. The Seattlest has covered this issue.

Once again Washington state, and ultimately, all of 'Merkica bows to the will of the few, the spoiled, the Escalande-driving ... and runs over a whole bunch of sincere minimalists in the process.

Prozac Mtn.

Poor, lovely Heath Ledger is dead dead, damnit. And he seemed to be headed for a spot at the table with the likes of Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, etc. A serious actor.



The only thing more appalling than his new taste in party friends (a skeevy-ass Olsen Twin) was all the prescribed meds he was apparently taking.

I wonder what would happen if I mixed Ambien (made me scarily comatose) with one or two SSRIs (two friends have described Zoloft as a great 'high'), some Valium and a Xanax (for the truly comatose)?

What if what was wrong with Ledger was simple nervous exhaustion and a chronic, undiagnosed sleep disorder (the maid said he was snoring)? Having developed apnea, one of the things I've struggled with was when it was explained to me part of the reason you repeatedly wake up with snoring is because YOUR BRAIN IS NOT GETTING ENOUGH OXYGEN and you might DIE if you don't rouse yourself from deep sleep long enough to cough and clear your throat.

But instead, the misinformed medical establishment eagerly wrote him Rx for shit at least as dangerous as the cocaine he may or may not have done.

I'm agreeing more with L. Ron Hubbard's moonies every day.

A Psycho Near You

Right when I got back from Vancouver a woman in Capitol Hill was murdered. Although I never met her, I occasionally caught her show on the local PBS station and, as cheesy as it sounds, I know people who knew her. She and I (and a ton of others in Seattle) had a lot in common. Single, no kids, career, lived alone, active in the community, had to deal with the odd junkie fucktard, etc.

The Seattle P.D. issued THE most generic artist's sketch the day after she was murdered. The running joke was the perp either looked like every white Hipster dude in CapHill or he looked like every other white junkie panhandling outside Pike Place Market.



The only thing that creeped me about it was he also looked a lot like one of the two tweaker asshats in my building. In early November Tweaker Twin No. 1 popped out of a dark bus stop to start screaming "DON'T EVEN FUCKIN' LOOK AT ME, FUCKIN' BITCH!", sorta muttering 'fuckin' bitch' over and over as meth addicts tend to do. I told him to 'fuck off', kept walking and felt frustrated that I didn't have my phone or stun gun at the time. When I got in my apartment, I called 911 to report a suspicious, known drug user hovering outside my building (again!). Of course, dispatch put me on hold. I don't know if the cops did anything that night, like even so much as drive by. Half the time when the S.P.D. says they're dispatching, that's code for 'doughnuts at 7-11, hurry!'

So when this woman was stabbed to death on New Year's Eve, it creeped me out a bit and I wondered when was the last time I saw Tweaker No. 1 getting buzzed into the building??? Funnily enough, I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since ... about New Year's. Que the Law & Order music.

So they just arrested this guy who is the second "person of interest", this time they got a positive on the DNA. And from the written description they released, he sure sounds like my un-friendly neighborhood meth dealer. I wanna emphasize, this is someone, I have no doubt is capable of flipping out on a meth/heroin cocktail and just randomly attacking someone (preferably smaller, physically weaker) than him.

I'm anxious to see his mugshot when they release it to the Press.

Hmmm, wonder if it's him ...

LMFAO !

The spice must flow, errr?

I stole this from Tiffany's LiveJournal. I had to because when I read one of the comments on it I laughed so hard I blew coffee out my nose and even woke some of my Boeing co-workers up (it's Friday nap time).

Enjoy the weirdness.

Note to Sports Fans:

No one cares. Except you. Professional sports could take a big sigh and die tomorrow and it wouldn't phase me in the least. Seriously.

The only thing on earth more annoying that rabid sports fans: rabid pro-athletes who "Thank God" when they/their team/their gang-o-thugs wins.

Note to Pros: God doesn't care. The Supreme Being/Goddess/DivineConsciousness/SkyBully/Jeesus/Christ ...just ... does ... not ... care.

Drama Queen for the Vag Owners

I just couldn't stay away from this dramafest. I was sucked in like a dust bunny into a vacuum.

Gloria Steinem, matriarch of American feminism, wrote what I thought was a pretty damn good essay in the New York Times about Senator Hillary Clinton and all the hoopla surrounding her run for president.

The drama followed Steinem's essay. A lot of it is posted on Slate.com.

And I posted a reply to one blogger on her blog. And then thought, what the hell, and am reposting it here.

So go read Steinhem's essay first before you read the below.


(Bill and Hill, the Paper Chase Years)

* * *

I think it’s almost impossible to not take feminism and civil rights personally.

But I don’t think Gloria was saying ALL women voters do this. I think she meant some or most depending on her argument point or statistic.

She wasn’t suggesting we (you, me, all vagina owners) are betraying our sex for not voting for her. She was implying that we are perceived that way. And we are.

I’ve heard Bill Maher (insightful, funny but a mysogynist) come at female guests on his show from exactly the same angle: Why aren’t YOU voting for her, you vagina owner?!!!

Barack Obama himself pointed out on a 60 Minutes interview months ago that it was condescending to assume that ALL black people would vote for him.

How condescending to assume that ALL women should vote for Hillary. And I think that is what Gloria was pointing out.

And if anybody cares, I'm not particularly fond of Senators Clinton or Obama. They're both products of the corporate-owned Washington political machine and they both supported a foul, fake, hideous war that has cost 500,000+ Iraqis and nearly 5,000 US soldiers their lives.

Gerbils Vs. Barbie Doll Townhouse

Yep, I'm anti-Xmas. I can't say it was one specific incident that led me to throw in the itchy polyester Santa hat. It may be part of my decline into a bitchy, solitary middle-age. Bill O'Reilly's freak out a while back might have been the last nail in the red and white coffin but the first one was ages ago.

While growing up in rural Nevada, my Dad used to shell out pretty big for my presents. It was the one time of year my Mom would pop a fuse if he failed to spend at least a hundred bucks on me. The rest of the time, he conveniently (and thriftily) forgot he had a third child living with the ex-wife far from the balmy golf courses of California.



When I was 10, the big present I bleated for was a Barbie Doll Townhouse. Not that I actually owned any Barbies. (My staunch feminist leanings were beginning to show). I just wanted a place for Johnny West and family to live and a split-level would be ideal so they could park the plastic ponies downstairs.

When I opened my present, I was a little disappointed in the Townhouse. It was two panels of cardboard printed on one side with some plastic yellow pillars to hold up the other floors.

Johnny West and his pardn'rs weighed more than the whole thing. When I tried to seat Johnny in one of the upper floors, the cardboard sagged perilously.

One day, bored with the whole plastic horse/plastic cowboy collection, I left them strewn in my room. I also had my gerbil family out running free range across the Linoleum. I shut the door of my room and went outside to play in the Siberian-like weather.

When I came back a few hours later, I was shocked to find the house completely collapsed. One yellow pillar was under my bed, and suspiciously, an entire section of printed cardboard had been dragged over to the entrance of the gerbil's cage. My Barbie Doll Townhouse had been reduced to a massive pile of carefully shredded bedding by the industrious gerbils.

Sulking and whining, I kicked the gerbil family rudely out of their fine pile of cardboard and took it out to my Mom where she laughed her ass off. She called the relatives and they all had a good laugh too.

I sulked on the couch and threatened to let our tabby cat, Freddy, have his way with my indolent pet rodents.

I'm not sure if there's anything in this besides some gerbil bedding ... but I don't know that I benefited from being brought up to believe -- like every other kid in America -- that Xmas was just about getting stuff. Just stuff. Usually plastic, guaranteed to break or end up in the back of the closet due to dis-interest.

There are only two presents guaranteed to enthrall children for more than five minutes. A shiny set of keys if they are under three and bedtime story books until they are 12.

If I had kids, I'd stay far from the malls and farther from Toys-R-Us. Forget the lead paint scare. Teach them to play without all the plastic.

A Vain Attempt at Motivation ...

In an effort to escape the cubicle prairie, I submitted copies of a short story I wrote about nine months ago.

A really old, professor-y guy up at Hugo House looked it over in October and right away said, "Why haven't you been published?"

Then he told me about this sea of (mostly) college-based literary anthologies floating on the edge of the fiction publishing world. This ain't literature you would find in the airport gift shop. But since I am PRO-art/writing and since I am PRO-independent anything, I'm plowing through a few of these, even if they don't pick my story to print.

The most prestigious of the lot is McSweeney's, which was founded by Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius which sat on the New York Times best seller list for quite a while.

The others are:

Hayden's Ferry Review, which I'm reading right now. Not to brag, but the competition in this one just doesn't look that intimidating. Do these writers really all have PhDs in literature?

This one's based out of Purdue University. You can tell by the very serious font.

This one's out of a Texas university. Note the southwestern motif.

This one's out of Boise State U. I didn't know the literacy rate was high enough in the Potato State to support a college English department, let alone an annual literary anthology. I always thought Idaho was full of meth labs, Mormons, people missing too many teeth, pickups and neo-Nazis. Now, if they'd just build a really big fence around it ...

This one's out of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which makes more sense. They have lots of time to read in Alaska.

So in six months, hopefully, the SASEs containing rejection letters will began to flow in. Yeah, that was 40 bucks in shipping an' copies well spent.

Is it just me ...

... or does anyone else have the urge to lick their TV screen when Lee Pace is on?



Not that I can stand to watch Pushing Daisies. It's this neutered version of "Dead Like Me", may that lovely show R.I.P. And also network commercials make me INSANE. I'll have to buy it on DVD after it gets canceled. Trust me, it will. Inventiveness never goes unpunished in Hollyweird.



And don't hate me for borrowing your fan pics off Flickr. It's a form of flattery ... and also I don't live within a 1,000 miles of Hollywood so it's not like I can stalk him with a camera phone.

Oh, Pommie Geeks

It's been way, way too long since I visited www.b3ta.com. I shouldn't stay away so much. They're doing ninjas again!

In an effort to avoid paying Flickr their damn yearly fee, I've opened multiple accounts but, of course, can't get the little shits to 'link' to one another. Grrr. But you should visit and comment on them. I don't have ninjas but I do have actual knights in actual shining armor that they probably paid a lot of money for.

This is the main Flickr account with herb photos

This is the secondary account with juicy pics from my rockin' new digital camera

And this is the third or back-up account which has a little of both of the above acct's pics


Good luck fellow digital camera ninjas!

Mess with my mind

I read this article in L.A. Weekly and really liked it. The author -- who's white, male and apparently a member of that elite Hollywood writer posse -- did a good job of revealing the underlying uber creepiness of the Web. People not portraying themselves accurately as a friend used to say.

On top of this, I'm taking a lit class at the Hugo House and reading Don DeLillo who is just fucking up my mind to no end.



And I'm spending quality time in Flickr dragging photo images around (that's St. John's Wort above) and tidying up my profile. I've got a new camera on order from Amazon and I'm tempted to 'go pro' on the Flickr site and pay for a full account.

I'm also slowly getting away from MySpace. What a black hole of stupidity that site has become.

And to think DeLillo predicted this in 1985, even before William Gibson. I get a headache just thinking about it.

Oh Vancouver

I finally went to freakin' Canada. I mean B.C. is like right there and I've been up here for almost four years so I was really over due for a trip. Unfortunately I had reservations at THE worst youth hostel in all of North America. This caused me to cut my trip way short. I was PMSing real bad, terrified my big backpack was going to disappear if I left it in that toilet of a hostel for even five minutes and I didn't want to get mugged. Yup, I accidentally got the tour of Canada's biggest skid row.

But, in the words of Arnold, "I'll be baaack." Next time either a much nicer hostel or, fuck it, I'll spring for a hotel.



I'm guessing the Couve is about three times the size of Seattle. Their suburb, Burnaby, was like basically what Tacoma is to Seattle. Gorgeous city all in all despite the heroin junkie problem down in Gastown/Hastings.

The aquarium was unbelievably crowded, even on a Tuesday! The belugas were large, smelly and made growling and clicking noises but I heard no 'singing' per se. They had a sea lion that was so big, he looked like he would just eat the other seals if they forgot his lunch.

The people were predictably cool and indifferent to tourists, just like here. Lots of pretty, slim people. Yes, just like Australia, Canada is where they keep all the really pretty white people. Must be all those English, Scottish and Irish genes. Bizarrely, they all looked like they did the Fake Bake thing.

My Vancouver pics on Flickr.

Anyhow, here's the beginning of more photos soon to come. I'm trying Flickr out and so you can click on the upper right to view as a slide show or you can leave comments. Somebody please tell me what the name of that one gothic-style building is.

HE TOUCHED A DEAD SQUIRREL !

So there I am laid out like a broken NFL player. The first week of July I had my nose completely closed off and tape up to my ears. (The creepy nervous exhaustion that went on for four days courtesy those nasty, filthy anesthesia drugs was NOT helping.) I'm sprawled on St. Claire's sofa in the sweet haven of Lake Stevens. And this woman has cable. So what to do when I can't do anything else? I stare vacantly at the boob tube.

There I am surfing while high on Extra-Strength Tylenol and Valium and all of the sudden I saw HIM on Discovery's Man Versus Wild. This freaky, plastically pretty Brit named "Bear" Grylls (real name Edward - thanks Wikipedia). See "Bear" used to be in the British Special Forces which makes him a lean, mean ... uh, freak ... poncey ... machine?



Don't get me started about how he whips his teeny willie out and, yes, pees on his own t-shirt, because afterward HE PUTS IT ON HIS HEAD. Well, it's "beastly hot" he explains. "Bear" and camera crew are in southern Utah in the middle of summer. (I was in southern Utah in August, mister, and not once did I pee on my clothes. They have Quicky Marts full of bottled water.)

No, no, friend, the piece de resistance came when (I'm shaking as I type this) "Bear" ... touched ... a ... dead ... squirrel. This wasn't just some random carrion like "Bear" would dine on. Oh, no. This was the most putrid, greenish, blow-fly ridden, swollen sack of maggots ever to grace a pond in the southwest. It was the kind of carrion other dead things would try and creep away from on their maggoty little feet. It was that skeevy. "Bear" doesn't just touch the stinking carcass, he gets in the damn water with it, he fucking takes a bath with the thing!

Suddenly, Claire who is crashing around in her kitchen, hears me croak in the most pathetic, nasal voice: "OHMIGOD! COME QUICK! YER MISSING IT! HE TOUCHED A DEAD SQUIRREL! OHMIFUCKINGGOD! GROSS! EEEK!"

Primal Fear & the Little Things

Feeling 90% better this week. Not even on Tylenol anymore. The surgical packing is all outta my nose and it's healing great, just gross skin peeling inside and out and it itches like mad.

I had SOOO much apprehension about this procedure. Still pondering why? Seems like I sailed thru my orthopedic foot surgery in June 2004 and that was far more invasive than this -- they had to break, cut and re-align bones in my right foot followed by six weeks on crutches alone in a three-story walkup. That seems like a cakewalk compared to this.

Have decided there's just something primal/caveman about any sort of dental or facial surgery. The little cave person inside of me was looking at the anesthesiologist and the surgeon last Tuesday and mentally shrieking: "GET AWAY FROM MY FACE!"

It didn't help that every fucking disclaimer/cautionary form (fear file) I had to sign said things like: "Patient is having this procedure to repair compromised airways. Patient understands that medications given during surgery will SUPPRESS breathing and patient may DIE." Between last Thursday the 5th and Saturday night, I got it into my tiny, drug-adled mind that I could not go to sleep or I would DIE. I even remember telling my surrogate nanny, 'watch me while I'm asleep and make sure my lips don't turn blue okay?'

All it takes is a little anesthesia and one bad trip on some oxycodone and I am Paranoid Fear's cowering little bitch.

Course the flip side has been the mornings have never looked more beautiful, the breeze has never felt sweeter, my bed has never looked more relaxing and inviting. Even things like insanely loud traffic and herds of school kids disembarking from buses in front of the Key Arena seem some how precious and worth witnessing.

As Tyler would have said in Fight Club "How's that for a near-life experience?!"

Deviate Septums ...

... just flat-out suck. I miss my nose.

Three (Eyeball) Monty

After killing myself for this menial, albeit good-paying job, I've got bennies now. Aetna is cutting nearly $400 a month from my gross earnings to allow me the privilege of only having to do the co-pay thing at the doctor's. Oh, lucky me.

So I went to a Fred Meyer's Optical yesterday for an exam ($70) and then picked out a pair of frames that will hold their fucking shape and theoretically have titanium in them (more expensive!) (All eyeglass frames in the world are made by a half-dozen slaves in a shed somewhere outside of Beijing where they're all chained to some antique metal lathes with little pictures of Chairman Mao glued to the side.)



In honor of my reaching 294 in dog years, I'm now blind close up and at a distance. "Progressive bi-focals" cost more than regular near-sided lenses, apparently three times more.

The conversation went like this: "You have the standard $300 benefit from Aetna. So minus the exam, that's $230 left over. Plus your frames at $149.95 ($150), plus the progressive lenses, plus the anti-scratch plan, minus the reduced glare, minus the (stylish!) thinned edges, leaves you with a total not covered of $284."

Before you accuse me of being a dupe for going to a department store optical dept., you should know I checked out two private eyeglass places. One wanted $140 for the initial exam and the other wanted $300+ for their "cheap" frames which were on sale (keep the image of the slaves chained to a lathe in China in the back of your mind because, trust me, they're not seeing any of this markup profit).

I came out of the eyeglass place feeling ass raped. Is it just me or has a visit to the optician now turned into a game of Three-Card Monty?

Makes me wanna go watch a movie about America's healthcare system (what system?!).