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.