Barista!

2008-02-15T15:00:00.002-06:00

The film was made by Charles and Ray Eames, a demo for the Polaroid SX-70. The camera was a folding SLR with some pretty awesome design going on, it stands to reason that it would take other designers to shoot a good demo of it. Music is the Cramps, Garbageman.

2007-09-26T21:46:00.000-05:00

So I should officially announce that I've started watching TV again. It was a slow process, starting with downloading TV shows that I had heard about and checking them out, then watching the backlog of Heroes episodes my former roommates had put on their DVR, but now the Hurricane and I are kind of scheduling ourselves around which shows we will watch. Sadly was cancelled, which means that there is only one show we've both kept up with that we watch on a regular basis, that being Heroes, but we have started checking out some other shows that have some buzz.

First off, we watched the premiere of Heroes on Monday. Looks like a good start to the second season, no better or worse than I expected, though it's a bit disappointing to see that Tim Kring has fallen victim to the classic comic-book trap, wherein no one ever actually dies as long as they've survived more than one episode. Come on, the brothers should have stayed dead-that's what sacrifice is all about. Other than that, the only complaint is NBC's shitball announcer-I have five hundred clocks in my house and I can read a TV schedule. You don't need to tell me at 8:55 that we're coming to the end of the episode.

Next was Reaper, pilot directed by Kevin Smith, starring some guy who looks like Jake Gyllenhaal and some guy who's clearly doing a Jack Black impersonation for way less money. I was listening to Fresh Air and heard an interview with Kevin Smith and Ray Wise (he plays the devil in Reaper) about the show. Smith said that he was more careful and made a more visually interesting piece largely because he was working with someone else's material (and money.) I find it interesting that someone who has referred to himself as an "incompetent director" before would be willing to take the job. Don't get me wrong, I like some of his movies, but he should really have learned his strengths by now and be playing to those. It's also kind of weird to think that the pilot might not look or feel anything like the rest of the series. I suppose it's always possible, but having a well known indie writer/director involved kind of pokes it in your face.

Tonight was Bionic Woman. I was really looking forward to another good sci-fi show, sadly this is not it. Hurricane was just bored, I felt offended. First major nitpick came about 10-15 minutes in, when Doctor Boyfriend tells his now-bionic girlfriend that she has had "anthracites" injected into her bloodstream. So...he's fixing her up after the car wreck by giving her cancer. Awesome. Soon after that comes the next one-her one stated concern is "what have you done to me?" It takes her at least a few hours of in-show time to ask about her sister who relies on Ms Attentive. Then there are issues with the construction of the show in general. Perhaps it was just the pilot, but they crammed a lot of shit into an hour. This led to amusing moments, like when one of the villains tells another villain, "tell me you love me" and then engages her lip-lock the next moment, leaving no chance for a reply. Was she afraid of hearing him say "no?" Considering the amount of push NBC is giving this, I'm a little shocked that there wasn't better quality control. I guess what the press has been suggesting has some validity: NBC thinks that geeks will watch anything.

2007-08-14T09:49:00.001-05:00

It has finally happened: Karl Rove has resigned, singing the old refrain about spending more time with his family. Effective at the end of August, Bush's Brain will be back at the homestead with his loving wife, and talking on the phone to his son, who is in college. What he leaves behind is a Republican party in a shambles as a result of Rove's shortsighted power-grab, and a president with the worst approval rating in history. Rove is seen as being one of the key engineers of our foray into Iraq, as well as the US Attorney scandal, and many of the other missteps of this administration. Like Dick Cheney, he has wielded more power over the president than would seem warranted by his position. Those on the left sometimes saw him as the devil himself, while others are now viewing him as a modern conservative Pyrrhus.

Whatever the case, his mark on the US will take some rubbing to get off. It remains to be seen if his goal of a permanent Republican majority will come to fruition, and if so if he will witness that from a jail cell. In the twilight of the Bush administration, Rove seems like just another rat fleeing a sinking ship.

Density Part II

2007-05-31T18:48:00.001-05:00

After several complaints from people that I had called my first post in favor of urban density "Part 1" without shortly posting a part 2, I have decided it might be time to post another entry. I have also been reminded by Hurricane how long it has been since my last post. I have been remiss, I realize. But I might point out that unlike some people, I do not spend the better part of my workday in front of a computer.

So.

The next argument comes from something that I have noticed becoming a larger trend recently, namely the recycling of building materials. This has been covered in numerous journals, such as Dwell. While Dwell's primary mission is not necessarily promoting urban density, they do talk quite a bit about green structures, and as my previous posting on density argued, density makes green easier. In the course of recycling building materials, it makes sense to keep as much of the material on-site as possible. In effect, to remodel by recycling. This reduces the amount of transport required, obviously, and has at least in some cases inspired some truly beautiful remodels.

Next, we have an argument that as yet defies an easy title. Basically it involves a web of infrastructure that high-density development makes more useful and practical. I alluded to this in my first post, here is a little more detail.

One: public transit. As cities become more sprawling mass transit becomes less practical. I touched on this in my previous density post but it bears a little more discussion. In a city like New York, it is impractical to own a car because it is easy to get around by a combination of subway and bus. In a city like Austin, those without vehicles of their own are restricted to certain neighborhoods that are well serviced by the bus system, or to being homebound. Let's take a closer look at the two forms of public transport that are available in NYNY.

Trains are attractive for a number of reasons. For one, because they run on a proprietary set of paths, they are easier to schedule. Another is that with minor changes they can run on a completely different source of energy. Especially with systems that run on electricity (see below.)

Buses work okay by themselves on a small scale, but in larger cities they can be unbelievably useful as a supplement to a rail system. Like trains, because there is a limited fleet of buses, it is possible to change the type of energy they use for a low cost.

The second thread of the infrastructure that is made more efficient with higher density is electricity. Less mileage of power lines and less substation infrastructure means less overall loss of power due to power lines absorbing electricity. Electricity is a great form of power to use because it is cheap to transport and when you have an existing distribution network, it becomes easy to change the base power source. So, if something cleaner is discovered, it is a relatively simple matter to change what the power plant is running on. Of course, changing from one fuel source to another is still expensive, but it is a lot cheaper to change a power plant than it is to change every car and every central heater in the country.

The third is roads. More cars on more roads means more maintenance of those roads. With a dense urban development, road maintenance is still a hassle, but it becomes more reasonable to shut down a block or two for a day to resurface because people can walk where they need to go, or get on the public transportation. Sure, if you have the money to own a car, it's a pain in the ass, but you are not stuck in one place. With sprawl, especially with suburbs giving way to exurbs, it is completely conceivable that major road repairs would eliminate the only reasonable route to and from work.

The fourth infrastructure item is sewage and wastewater. This may be the least obvious but most important. As sewer systems attenuate, there is a greater chance for a catastrophic failure, and just as with roads, the maintenance becomes more and more costly and difficult. There is a second problem here that few people realize, although it is obvious when it is brought up. In sewage and wastewater pipes, small breaks, which do not result in obvious leaks, still allow water to enter. This became an issue during the floods in Houston TX in 2001, when a wastewater system so stretched out it was virtually impossible to maintain properly allowed huge amounts of rainwater to enter the wastewater system and from there caused sewage treatment plants to overflow, making the floodwaters more toxic than they already were.

Okay, discuss.

2007-02-26T18:42:00.000-06:00

In Cars

A strange thought occurred to me this evening while riding with Hurricane and our little tropical depression (who sometimes is more of a squall) back to Ms. H's apartment. I noticed a number of used cars for sale at a repair/inspection place and I began thinking that if one were to watch Antiques Roadshow religiously (and some do,) one would never see an automobile brought up to determine, based on expert advice, what its worth might be.

There are a number of reasons for this, but I think the most salient is that the mass-produced automobile was a (perhaps the)major precursor of the information age. The creation of a piece of machinery that cost around a quarter of what a home did, and was mass-produced in such a way that an individual machine was indistinguishable at a glance from others, necessitated a way to more exactly track the product. This led to the creation of the Vehicle Identification Number, a unique serial number that could be used to identify a vehicle. Each manufacturer kept an index of the VINs for a variety of reasons, primarily to keep track of what options and characteristics a vehicle had. It had a parallel value as an unique identifier in case of theft.

The whole point of a show like Antiques Roadshow is that there is a question as to the paternity (or maternity) of a given object. Mass manufacturing obviates the need for an expert, or the determination of authenticity, by making the product trite. The author of the product is no longer a craftsman, but at best a designer, and usually a corporation. The artistry is gone and in its place is the product. The development of the Universal Product Code (UPC) is the same story writ large over the whole universe of consumer products. One might argue that its incorporation into our lives represents the triumph of the assembly line over the mastery of the craftsman. No longer are gifted individuals rewarded for their ability to create items by hand, they are rewarded only by their ability to design products that do well in an industrial manufacturing setting.

2007-02-16T10:22:00.000-06:00

Boinboing pointed to this blog about vampire bats. Fascinating data for all who are zoology nerds.

2007-02-16T09:21:00.000-06:00

Whew, it's been a long week. Of course, after several years of not having weekends in the proper sense, I have taken on another duty that completely eliminates my day off. I'm not bitter. At all. It's just that discussing how long a "week" it's been loses all meaning when there is no end to it.

The result of my choice to provide care for the young Mr Q is that I am effectively busy all the time. There is also the result of getting to enjoy watching him grow. It's odd for me to completely recalibrate the apparatus in my head that tells me when to be impressed. I have actually found myself going "holy crap, he put his hand in his mouth!" and then being upset with myself that the camera was not ready to get a picture of this momentous achievement. This morning the Hurricane and myself were both duly amazed by Q's ability to hold his head up from lying on his stomach. I was even more astonished when I realized that-astounding!-he had part of his chest lifted up as well.

In other news, I have begun reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire. TOD starts out disturbing on the level of Fast Food Nation and then gets scarier and more depressing, until Upton Sinclair seems like a pretty even-handed, low-key writer. And that's just in the first part of the book. I highly recommend it for anyone with a strong stomach and a desire to understand the modern world of food.

2007-02-08T10:27:00.000-06:00

So, day 2 of my own daddy day care. I continue to discover new things, like "babies don't like being cold." Things have overall run smoothly, but I am constantly aware of the potential for everything devolving into chaos. I have nothing but respect for the people who somehow manage to do this on their own. If it were not for our ability to shift our schedules and have as much parent time with little Q as possible, I can't imagine what Hurricane and myself would do.

But best not to dwell on the bad that could be, after all things are going well. We're going to try some new stuff this afternoon: grocery shopping! Laundry! Getting out and about in the world! That's right, I am doing my first solo run with baby in tow. So wish me luck, all.

2007-02-06T07:46:00.000-06:00

Mr Mom

Remember that movie? The wacky premise was chaos ensuing when Michael Keaton elected to be a stay-at-home dad when he lost his job.

I mention this because the Hurricane and I have recently embarked on the ambitious project of limiting Quinten's time in daycare to three days a week, with yours truly taking care of him two weekdays and Ms Hurricane handling the weekends. Today is the first day. I'm sure I'll have the hang of it soon.

In other news, I have begun attempt 2 to quit smoking. Philosophically, I am taking my friend Bart's approach, reminding myself that I'm really just "stopping." I figure if I look at it as a choice rather than a final decision, I'll be more mentally prepared. Also, it will help me to not beat myself up if I slip up. I'm using the patch, which seems to be working pretty well. I just need to figure out what to do with my hands when I would otherwise be rolling, lighting, and smoking a cigarette. What with the whole responsible fatherhood thing, I can't opt for the route some friends have taken, which is smoking weed for a bit of stress relief and muscle-memory satisfaction. I'll have to settle for reading and typing. Look for this space to fill a bit more frequently on that note.

The impetus for quitting is twofold. First of all, there's the whole responsible father thing again. As Muskrat mentioned a while back, smoke in your clothes and on your skin can still harm infants, even if you are not smoking around them. In addition to avoiding active or passive harm to my child, I would prefer he not have his dad as a model for him starting smoking later in life. My parents didn't smoke when I was a child, but I have many friends whose parents did, and who have become smokers as well. The one exception was a friend of mine from way back whose parents habit disgusted him completely. Second, Q now has two great-grandfathers who have succumbed to emphysema, and that's not something I want him to deal with firsthand.

So, wish me luck!

2007-01-11T03:32:00.000-06:00

Daddy

My son was born December 6, 2006. I was out of town and got the call from a friend of mine, the news gave me a knot in my stomach and a shiver in my spine. Given the relationship I had with his mother I faced my new role with a bit of concern, if not outright fear. Together for about eight months, broken up, not able to talk without arguing...this was not the life I thought my first child would be born into.

Got back into town December 12. Saw my son for the first time on the 13th. Life changed again. The Hurricane's mother had come into town to help with getting things settled. I walked into the apartment concerned about what I would face, and all my fear melted when I saw him. There's something astounding about seeing your child for the first time, as any parent can tell you. For me it was the sudden realization that everything before now was practice and preparation for the rest of my life, now that another being relied on myself and one other person for all his needs. I held him and felt a new understanding of what my parents see and feel when they are around my sister or me.

We both, (the Hurricane and I) felt the same thing that day in regards to each other: the tension dissipated and the resentment flowed through the floor, seeing each other in a new light. We've talked about this several times since that day, as we rediscover the good things about each other that we had been blinded to. I suddenly find my mind throwing the once-inconceivable image of a peaceful co-parenting situation at me on a regular basis and doing a good job of convincing me that it will work. Certainly there are obstacles ahead, but there would be anyway. I just feel confident now that I'll be tackling them with someone helping me over rather than pushing me into them.

2006-07-29T23:17:00.000-05:00

I have taken to wearing shirts that my job gives me for the explicit reason of not fucking up clothes that my loved ones or myself have spent actual dollars on. This is usually not a problem, as I go to work and then go home or someplace like it where people don't bother me. However, when I got on the bus tonight, the bus driver did not even bother asking me if I work where the label on my shirt would indicate, he just opened with "do you work in the meat market?" I responded no, sat down, and pulled out my book, prepared to read for the next twenty or so minutes. Then I realize that the bus driver is talking. Talking about grass-fed, organic hot dogs that his friend read about in the New York Times. Talking about how grass fed is better because cows weren't "meant" to be grain-fed. How when they are grass fed, the beef has more omega-3 fatty acids, and according to paleoanthropologists, ancient people had a 1-to-1 ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids, and that was what nature intended. Maybe I have been working the same job too long, maybe my lapse in vitamin regimen was affecting me even more than normal, or something else, but for the first time in a long time, rather than talk about "what ancient people" or what have you, the first question that occured to me was "what the fuck do I care what 'nature' intended?" After all, according to Thomas Hobbes, without the (not intended by nature) Leviathan of government, our lives would be "nasty, brutish, and short," and as Tennyson so concisely put it, nature is "red in tooth and claw." As far as I'm concerned, what nature intends for us is to struggle for about thirty or forty years and die of scurvy, or malaria, or poison berries, or wolves. Fuck nature. Fuck it right in the ear for wanting that for me and the people I love. Personally, I'd rather get cancer at sixty and choose to end it all than have my guts ripped out by a rabid hyena at twenty five. Because we don't do what nature intends, we eat better, live longer, and are more comfortable. So what is it with people who want to go back to what "nature intended?" For that matter, the whole idea of intention is flawed. We have evolved to be this way. From a certain perspective, the internet and jet planes and all the rest is just as natural as the amoeba. The amoebas and ants should be jealous of us, not the other way around.

2006-07-25T19:53:00.000-05:00

Talking with Maya last night and discussing a mutual friend who we both looked up to at one point in our lives, and who has since become a broken hollow man. I raised the question of whether we should have heroes at all. Maya argued that there should be people who are not your parents (because they are the people whose flaws we notice first and most acutely) that you look up to. I'm not sure how I fall on that topic. Perhaps it's the relentless cynicism, but I tend to think that considering someone a hero is simply setting myself up for disappointment. Or perhaps it's just the terminology. There are certainly people I am aware of who represent one or another aspiration that I have for myself-I would like to be as arresting a writer as Charles Bukowski, but I have no illusions about what he was like as a person; I would like to make films that are as meaningful as any number of filmmakers whose work I respect, but I am also aware that all of these people are flawed. I tend to think that a personal hero represents a paragon-one whose life you feel you should emulate, and there is no one who fits that bill for me.

On another note, I have seen in two different locations a billboard for Wendy's that advertises buying a coupon for four "Frostys," the proceeds from which purchase will go to research and combat diabetes. It struck me both times that this is rather insulting, somewhat like advertising that a portion of the proceeds from sales of beef lard will go to combatting heart disease, or that the purchase price of a carton of cigarettes includes a donation to the American Lung Association. (Actually, I'm pretty sure that Phillip Morris-no wait, Altria has actually run that racket. Sickening.)

2006-06-29T17:08:00.000-05:00

Older...

And no snarky comments from those of you who are older than me. Or younger. In fact, anyone who was not born the same day I was can just pipe down about "how old I really am." I'm older, dammit, and I'm feeling it.

Okay, now that that's out of the way. Thank you so much to everyone who made my (several) birthday celebrations so very special this year. As some of you know (and I'm sure all can relate) not every one of my birthdays has been so good. Of course, if that were not the case, I wouldn't appreciate the good ones nearly as much. Special thanks go out to Rob and Jen for being there (almost) the whole day and providing transportation for a good bit of it (and Rob for insisting on cake,) Andy and Shane for the loan of their lovely [porch]house at the chillaxing hour, Stephanie and Dominique for singing a birthday song a damned sight better than "Happy Birthday to You," to El Muskrat for a lovely belated birthday dinner, and to the lovely and talented (and if things go well, permanently gainfully employed soon) Gavagirl, for her plan to cook dinner this weekend.
It's really nice to know that your friends care about you, and sometimes it helps to see it on one special day (or a series of special days) even if they are pretty good about showing it all the rest of the time.

God, what has happened to my sneering, cynical tone? We'll find out next time.
Your Pal,
Dylan.

2006-06-09T14:10:00.000-05:00

Vivid memory from the road.

We were driving into the chaos that is the interstate entering Memphis right around sunset. The sky was filled with thunderheads. I looked out the window and my heart skipped a beat.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a religious or superstitious person. Personally, I consider most religion equivalent to superstition and both equivalent to a defective intelligence-if this offends you, I probably don't care. I don't believe in god, the devil, or any of the rest. But what I saw from the interstate was astounding: a thunderhead, lit from the sunset in such a way that it appeared to be the head of some horned and fanged beast that was snarling at the ground underneath, lit from below by a red light that looked startlingly like the light put off by a lava flow, and as I stared, a light (yes, a plane taking off) taking forever to rise through this thunderhead, some brilliant jewel flying out of hell. I don't think those tabloid photos of "satan in the clouds around whatever" are complete forgeries anymore, and I now understand, perhaps, at least part of what makes the southern Mississippi valley the buckle of the bible belt. Nowhere else in my life have I felt the presence of dichotomous nature as much as crossing that river under that sky, and if I did it daily, I might very well seek some explanation beyond that of nature itself.

2006-06-08T15:35:00.000-05:00

My Dad being congratulated by my aunt.

2006-06-08T15:07:00.000-05:00

More density arguments...

So having just returned last week from Chi-town, I feel there is another point to be made about urban density and its value to humanity. The suburbs suck. They are a pusillanimous attempt to offer newly-affluent farmer's kids all the comforts of open spaces without actually being on a farm. The promise of suburban living is that you will live without compromise, but the fact is that anyone who speaks about anything without compromise is either stupid or lying. If they're lying, you need nothing else. If they are stupid, consider that they are too stupid to comprehend basic thermodynamics. Or, more to the point, to accept the truism that nothing is free. And these days, even that promise is told half-heartedly. People want to own homes with a postage stamp of yard. That's it. They accept that this home will probably be made of cheap materials and all around ugly, but they buy because they believe they should. And then they live in hellholes made of cloned space and never ask why they are so miserable.

My dad did in fact graduate from law school. Pictures to come, I will be experimenting with Picasa. Yay.

2006-05-12T22:53:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Jeffrey Rowland for reminding us that we are just like monkeys.

In other news, I'm going to be a daddy soon.

2006-05-11T15:58:00.000-05:00

Back in the day, before the beginning of the twentieth century, creators of images were invested with magic powers. Wealthy and powerful leaders invested absurd amounts of money in both the craftsmanship of their palaces and in their own portaits. Because of the mystical significance the creation of images had, the more realistic the image, the more power the creator had. Therefore, the Renaissance painters seemed even more magical than those who had come before them, the medieval painters who had no concept of perspective were more impressive than the dark ages painters, etc, etc, until you get back to the sorcerors of Lascaux, magical because of their stick figures on the cave walls. Now we are in the 20th century, and photography has progressed from a roughly magical process itself to a more and more commonplace thing. Not like walking or anything like that, but those who have cameras can pretty reliably make a decent image that looks, despite its lack of color, pretty much like reality. And so the painters, who have trained so fucking diligently to represent what their eyes see by the use of paint, and have even had in some ways a running dialogue about what reality really looks like, suddenly find that some jackass chemists have taken over the dialogue. Framed the discussion, pun intended. Photography suddenly becomes the bar. Painters are applauded for being "photorealistic" rather than just realistic. Then, as artists are a crafty and limelight-seeking crowd, they take a cue from one of their own that was shunned in his time and probably had a brain disorder, and they start deliberately being unrealistic. From these clever bastards we get the latter impressionism, surrealism, modernism, and then postmodernism. Of course, since people can't just look at one of Pollock's drip paintings and know what it is, the philosophers get involved. They start assisting the artists by creating theories about the art, or at least pointing out that it will sell better if there is a theory that the prospective buyers understand no more (and ideally, quite a bit less) than the art itself. Meanwhile, photography marches on, even documenting the new movements in the painting/sculpture world. After all, now that the painters have created things that the photographers can't (because these things do not occur in nature,) the photographers can now take pictures of what the painters have envisioned. And now the art world becomes more about what is inside the artist than what is outside, just like the literary world. Then along comes photoshop (which is Dylan's own personal shorthand for digital image creation and alteration) and suddenly the photographers can do what the painters have been doing for the last century. As a matter of fact, this new set of digital imaging tools allows all sorts of people to more easily express what is inside in something other than words. At the same time, the cameras have gotten smaller and cheaper and easier to attach to a computer. So now, the magic of image creation (realistic or surrealistic or whatever) is spread to the same masses that previously were locked out. How 'bout it, Painters? Ball's in your court.

2006-05-02T08:42:00.000-05:00

I'm getting a new digital camera soon. I'm very excited, especially since this gives me the opportunity to do something I've been thinking about for a while, which is the use of digital photography and image manipulation to do comics. So I may be putting some comics up here, or directing folks to a page created in Google Page Creator. Or something else entirely, depending on what I can get set up. Perhaps I will be talking to people about how to do webhosting and how much it should cost. Also, I looked at Cafe Press and it looks like they have a pretty good setup for someone who sells tshirts to make money without having to do anything other than dream up good designs. So yay. Hopefully in the next month or so, I will have some links to point you to if nothing else.

2006-04-17T07:59:00.000-05:00

The Argument for Density, Part 1

Just to clarify here, we're talking about urban density, not the general physical concept of more mass in less space.

1) Sprawl causes deforestation. Whether it's cutting down trees to make room for new subdivisions, or the strip malls that feed them, or the roads that allow transit, or any number of other reasons, thousands of trees are cut down so the middle class can have a yard. Now, numerous practical studies like this one have shown that deforestation has various ill effects to the environment, including loss of biodiversity and desertification. Besides, forests are pretty.

2) In any physical system, the lower the surface area/volume ratio, the less energy transfer there is. Bergmann's Rule regarding the skin temerature of large animals is a biological example of this law. The converse is true, any mechanical engineer can explain that a radiator has to be a manifold with all that surface area to effectively transfer heat to the outside environment. Now, if you accept that population density is analogous to an inverse numerical representation of the surface area/volume ratio (at least for urban areas) then the lower the density, the higher the SA/V ratio, and therefore the greater the energy transfer. Rather than get metaphorical here, for this point we'll just leave it at: heating in the winter and cooling in the summer is more expensive and less energy efficient for low-density urban areas.

3) Transportation for dense urban areas is easier for people who don't insist on driving themselves. Mass transit becomes much more practical (and because it has less area to cover, it becomes easier to cover the area efficiently, leading to the virtuous cycle of people using it more, and so having public mass transit pay for itself.)

4) (This is more of a corollary to points already raised, but it builds on the others, so it gets its own number.) The costs of sprawl go beyond the obvious ones of deforestation, energy, etc. When subdivisions and the shopping centers that feed them are built, they are usually built using subsidies from the municipal government. The first form these subsidies take is that as part of an incorporated city, the city generally pays to build the roads for the expansions, as well as running utilities out to them. Now, if an individual buys a plot of land and builds a house, such niceties as electricity and sewers have to be handled by that individual. But if a developer buys a larger plot and builds lots of houses, the city pays for those niceties. In the case of the malls, cities will often subsidize not only the buildout of services and roads, but will also subsidize the companies opening shop with handouts like tax waivers and such. (Home developers are often given tax waivers as well, for that matter.) The cruel joke is that the taxes that are being waived are the same taxes that would otherwise (maybe, come close to, sort of,) pay for the services build-out, and the almost-immediate need for maintenance.

That's it for now. More later.
Your pal,
Dylan.

2006-04-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

So starting off the second week of my break from the drinking life seems to be going better than starting the first weekend. Went to a friend's birthday party last Friday night and wouldn't you know, she (or one of her friends) had been kind enough to stock the party with top-shelf booze (that remained untouched nearly the whole night.) Hard to say no when it's stuff I can barely afford at a liquor store, much less a bar. But despite the temptation, and the soft pressure of seeing my friends booze it up, I managed to drink only water. That being said, it was an odd party. Several of my compatriots (whom included the Hurricane, Gavagirl, and Jefe...perhaps we should have talked about our blogs) commented on feeling like the freaks of the party. Which is true-our birthday-ridden friend T___ had invited mostly conventional (by which I mean Republican) friends, older than herself and married. Our delegation was therefore not only the youngest, but contained the majority of smokers (a little league coach came out to bum one off somebody at one point) and seemingly the only people who were primarily drinking. Except yours truly, of course, and Gavagirl, which meant that we spent equal amounts of time smoking and critiquing the design of the kitchen.

I've become a bit of a design snob recently, though it's not as if I have formal training, or even a specific school I adhere to. I tend to lean toward modernism a little, although I think what really irks me is the faux-folksy-rustic look that seems the (godawful) rule in the suburbs and exurbs. Shaped particle board, coated in woodgrain laminate, or worse real wood stained horrible shades of pepto/vomit pink and white, make my skin crawl. The worst part of this particular kitchen had to be the crown molding free-floating on cabinets that did not reach the ceiling. Come the fuck on, that baroque shit was designed to hide bad joins with the ceiling in the days before caulking. Putting it in any contemporary context is like admitting you're incompetent, if it's actually at a seam between the ceiling and something else free floating like it was in that kitchen, it's like admitting that you not only don't know how to do a nice job, you don't know how to cover it up, either. If anyone knows the architectural firm that designed the cookie cutters at Travis Country, let me know-I've got a lead on some professional drawing-and-quartering people.

To end on a positive note: I've been watching the DVD my dad sent me of No Direction Home, the Scorcese-directed documentary about Bob Dylan. One of the interviewees discusses going to a club during the Cuban Missile Crisis, seeing Dylan on the stage, and being invited up to play a few songs with him. The mental response related in the interview was "how can you be thinking of playing when we could all be dead tomorrow?" I thought, and the Hurricane said as well, how better to spend what might be your last night on earth but doing what you love, or at least having fun? So, more fun and less worry people.

Your Pal,
Dylan.

2006-04-01T18:50:00.000-06:00

Not used to this whole "drinking before it gets dark" thing. May take some time, and besides, I'm not sure I want to get used to it. Last Sunday we had a "book club" meeting at Ginger Man, and as had been described, we got about fifteen minutes of discussion in before it devolved into the usual social event. That started at four pm. A few of us ended up continuing drinking well past midnight. Yes there was a hangover involved, but not the rager I expected. Then today, The Hurricane and I went with some friends to a tour of independence brewery, which was really just an excuse to drink beer and sell merch. Must feed the merch beast. Courtesy of a couple of responsibly-minded parents who had come with their impressionable spawn, we received extra tickets, to facilitate a real drinking event. Note that this followed a night of drinking at various functions.

It all puts me in mind of a comment a friend and former roommate made once when confounded by my ability to drink copious amounts and usually not get sick and almost never suffer the next day: "you are built for abuse." An interesting interpretation of my physiology, to be sure; I have to admit my curiosity of whether it goes for my psychology as well. It's hard not to wonder when many of the people I am around seem to collapse under the lightest strain. It seems as though histrionic behavior has become more and more acceptable. Perhaps as we become more and more saturated with the mass media, we gradually assimilate dramatic behavior into our daily routine because we are unable to distinguish our lives from those being represented. In effect, we are like people at a party compensating for increasing volume by speaking more loudly, which adds to a commonly perceived positive feedback loop. Of course, at some parties, people respond by lowering the volume of some easily controlled output source, such as the stereo. Unfortunately, there seems to be little opportunity to do this on a national or worldwide scale; therefore I propose a more general form of TV turnoff week.

I think we should all try to lower the volume in our lives: teach our minds to be quiet by being in the quiet. Sit silently with someone you love for twenty minutes, or by yourself. Here in Austin the weather is perfect for it right now. Go to the park, lay in the grass, and stare at the sky for half an hour, and let the sensory experience settle around you. No radio, no phone, no computer or TV or book. Just be still in the moment. I think it'll help.

Your pal,
Dylan

2006-03-17T09:03:00.000-06:00

So it's been a while since I talked about music, but it's time. It's time to give out Dylan's "most overrated band" award. The award today goes to Spoon. That's right, Spoon, who just swept the Austin Music awards, who were introduced as "perhaps the greatest band ever" last night at the free show they played at Auditorium Shores. Yes, live they sound just like their album. The problem is their music is boring. So are the lyrics. There was at least one song that consisted of the same line repeated over and over again, at least half the songs finished with the lead singer/guitarist playing feedback, and the keyboardist seems to have just come out of a few weeks' worth of lessons, rather than playing with the same band for at least a year. The beats were repetitive, and while that's okay if you have other interesting instrumentation, it blows when the entire band is pretty much a rhythm band. As for stage presence, it was blah. Certain punk bands got away with repetitive music and bland lyrics by being fascinating to watch on stage; Spoon doesn't qualify. The lead for Echo and the Bunnymen was more interesting sitting down on a monitor to finish his cigarette than Spoon's frontman was the entire show. I haven't even talked about Blackalicious' amazing set, which was engrossing-including as it did a freestyle session and guest appearances. Perhaps if more rock bands were exposed to the kind of immediate criticism that is present at MC battles, we'd see some more creative work coming out. Instead, every rock critic in Austin seems to be offering Spoon self-esteem-building handjobs in the press, hoping for...what? That they'll suddenly turn into a complex, interesting band, rather than the next soundtrack for a frathouse weed-and-whiskey party?

2006-03-14T14:56:00.000-06:00

I was thinking today about the common idea in literature that there are a finite number of plots/stories in the world. I was thinking about it and I realized that the distinctions are all arbitrary. It usually comes out sounding like "there are two things in the universe: matter and space," or "animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

"To Build a Fire" and The Old Man and the Sea may both be "Man against Nature" stories, to borrow from a common list of the limited number of plotlines, but they are very different works nonetheless. What upsets me is the need to limit creativity, or to suggest that true creativity is no longer possible.

Yeah. That's it.

2006-01-14T23:25:00.000-06:00

Discussion Topic

Okay, I want the most offensive terms you people can come up with for the male and female genitalia. Be creative, I would like to hear things I haven't heard before.

2006-01-05T18:35:00.000-06:00

A number of friends of mine have received gift cards for christmas. I don't like gift cards for a number of reasons. The first is that most of them force one to shop at a given place. The really insulting cards are the loathsome Starbucks or (bleah) Wal-Mart cards. What's worse is that the money's already been spent, so you can't vote with your dollar, you can't even choose not to vote. This brings me to my other gripe about gift cards, which is that they are (to steal a phrase from Neal Stephenson) the corpse of value. The money, the economic value of cash, is in the hands of the card issuer, rather than the recipient (or the giver) of the card. That money is gaining interest or doing other interesting tricks in the hands of the card issuer until you use it. Far better would be to set up a community-deposit savings account that would then accrue interest until such time as the recipient felt they should use it. Or, at the very least, check out the wish list on Amazon and go buy the item for them. Then there is no ethical issue about where it was purchased, just the joy of knowing someone cared enough to buy something the recipient wanted. Which brings me to the last problem: gift cards are like a nice way of saying "I like you, but I don't know you that well, but I feel like just giving you a small amount of cash would be insulting." Or worse, "I feel obligated to buy you something but I am unwilling to spend any time or energy thinking about what to get you, and I don't trust you with cash."

So fuck the gift cards. If you can't think of what to get someone, just give them a call.

2005-12-18T07:30:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading Generation X and got the strangest sense of nostalgia for those lost halcyon days when we thought we were cynics and knew how bad it could get. When we inherited a blasted economic future from the Reaganites and knew that there was no way to get out of it, when we saw that Bush I wasn't a wimp but he wasn't much of anything else, when the world of America In Decline seemed so simple. And then there was Bill. Bill, like our cool uncle who snuck us out of the house after Thanksgiving to go down to a smoky jazz club and see guys with names like "Hamsteak" play until five in the morning. Bill, who gave all the latchkey kids the hope they were looking for. And then for some of us came the venture capitalists, who back in those naive days were looking for something, anything, on the interweb. The VCs gave the X'ers the kind of approval and encouragement that mom and dad never did, because "here's eighty million dollars, good job" is a lot more meaningful than a vague "that's great, son" over an international connection while reggae thumps in the backround, or mumbled encouragement as mom drifts into Xanax-induced stasis.

We should have known better. We should have maintained our cynical armor, known it wouldn't last, because how could it? Eventually, venture capitalists want to see money from their ventures. Eventually, your cool uncle gets caught with his pants down, and even if it's not a crime, it's really fucking embarrassing, and he's never able to sneak out of the house with you again. And then your mom remarries a really scary guy who seems stupid but is maybe (just maybe) even more cynical than you. It's entirely possible, in fact, that this guy is where he is because he's never thought about anything other than the bottom line, because he lacks a soul. And that's the tragedy of the X'ers. Despite our affected poses, we all just really wanted to be loved, and that makes us easy to manipulate; furthermore when we are confronted with true cynicism, we balk and blanch and just don't understand.

2005-12-09T14:33:00.000-06:00

Gaming the System

Talking with Gavagirl this morning, I was reminded of an idea I had a while back: a solution to the gay marriage problem. An individual can incoporate themself, so the obvious solution is for a would-be married gay couple to incorporate themselves and have a merger. Simple. And, as GG pointed out, this can be used for more than just gay couples. In the spirit of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," the discussion moved to other applications and uses. So what if corporations are evil? Use their tactics for yourself. Incorporate and you can declare chapter eleven rather than the other one. You can get capital easier than if you are just a person with a person's credit report. I'm thinking about doing it myself; I'll keep you all posted.

And, as a side note, so far living with the Girl of Gava is going quite well, and she is not, as her sister warned me, a filthy bathroom hog.

2005-11-15T13:12:00.000-06:00

Jesus

Just logged in and saw the date of my last post. Bleah. No wonder I get shit from Muskrat every time I see her these days about never updating. Something about living with a couple that forms a vortex of doom around them...it kinda kills my desire to talk about myself. Soon that will be remedied, however. For now, I've been kicking this around in my head for a bit so here goes-a love note to those of you out there who smoke, and those of you who have quit.

Times I want a cigarette

When I wake up
After I shower
Before breakfast*
After breakfast*
Before leaving the house for work
On the way to work
Before I start work**
Several times during a shift
Like after dealing with a real fuckwit
Or a total bitch
Or one of those people who thinks that I actually care about their health
When I get off work
Before dinner
After dinner
After sex
Before going to bed
And that doesn't include whenever I'm outside and not engaged in intese physical activity.

*I don't usually eat breakfast.
**If I have time.

2005-08-24T18:49:00.000-05:00

Nothing better after a long day of dealing with the moronic public than taking advantage of the fact that you work with people who have good taste. One of my coworkers pointed out a good brie, and then another made a wonderful suggestion: crostini and raspberry preserves to go with it. If I hadn't sworn off drinking this month, I'd probably have a nice pinot noir to go with it. Yummy.

2005-08-24T09:23:00.000-05:00

Sweet.

BugMeNot is a godsend for those of you out there who like reading your news online but hate signing up for the sites. It just plugs in a generic ID for you and you get to read all you want. Sweeeet. It'll be in my sidebar soon.

2005-08-18T02:33:00.000-05:00

So my dad bought me The Kite Runner for my birthday. It's (so far) quite good; it's also quite harrowing. Rough stuff. Highly recommended, though.

2005-08-17T19:41:00.000-05:00

Fuckin Sweet

Just got a new toy: Google Earth. Yes, a thousand times yes. Guess Neal Stephenson stopped writing sci-fi because he got tired of being right all the time. I've spent a good eight hours in the past two days looking the world. Just beautiful.

2005-08-08T18:51:00.000-05:00

Holy Christ!

Check out this page about the Ossuary of Sedlec. They should do a travel channel bit on this, they could call it "monument of the macabre."

2005-08-03T20:33:00.000-05:00

Fair Trade

So I've grown tired of answering the question "do you have any fair trade coffee?" and I think I figured out why. Bear with me, this might get long.

Fair trade is a trademark of Transfair, an NPO that certifies various industries as meeting certain standards. They are known largely for coffee, but if it's a product made in the third world, it's possible to get it Fair Trade certified. So the concept here is to make sure the exchange is equitable, and to some degree they succeed. The problem shows up when people start identifying "Fair Trade" as the only equitable exchange. It's a shorthand for a culture that is too fucking lazy to think about the actual state of the world. Basically, when people get into the idea of fair trade coffee, they think it's that little sticker or workers being beaten and raped after working a 22-hour shift that they don't even get paid for. It's good that they care about third-world workers, but they're doing so in a very American way-which translates to not really caring at all. They're glad to buy a product with a sticker on it that says they don't have to feel guilty about it, but to actually understand why they should feel guilty in the first place-that would actually involve learning something. And that's too much for most Americans.

2005-07-19T19:38:00.000-05:00

First contradictory quotes!

"The court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion ... finds no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution," the brief said.

and...

"Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. ... There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."

from the San Diego Union-Tribune

2005-07-19T19:36:00.000-05:00

It has begun...

Bush is nominating John Roberts, former corporate lawyer and anti-Roe v Wade advocate, for the Supreme Court. Suck.

2005-07-17T14:45:00.000-05:00

And here's something from a Myspace blog (unlike blogspot, Myspace does not seem to support linking directly to its users' accounts.) This came from one of the members of Die Wurzau:

"In 1996, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins wrote a fictionalized account of the final days of mankind after the rapture. 10 or so books later, the Left Behind series has sold tens of millions of copies and spent years total on the NY Times best seller list. The books are phenomenally paranoid, positioning Israel as finally accepting the messiahship of Christ and showcasing an antichrist who is a former Secretary General of the UN. The book reads like a nuthouse dissertation on what Christianity, led by charming and persuasive but morally abject men, might hope to get out of the future. Satan’s headquarters? Bagdad, Iraq, of course.

Written by a nut, right? Actually, if the name Tim LaHaye sounds familiar it is because he was a member of the first board of directors of the Moral Majority, and a founder of the Council for National Policy. ABCNews.com called the CNP "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of" and listed their membership as including Oliver North, John Ashcroft and Tommy Thompson among others. Written by an insider is more like it. This is a story about American Christians fighting back against a conspiracy of Demon-worshipping, gun monitoring abortionist, gay rights advocating globalists.

I could go on all day about this series but that’s not exactly what this is about. It’s about heaven here, on earth, in the place where it would do the most good, now, today. By the day, this goal- the goal of building our heaven right here where we stand, is being lost and confused in the frantic rush to get to wherever the hell it is people like Tim LaHaye think they are going next. At the risk of offending people who, Like LaHaye, are busy packing to get a move on elsewhere I want to point some things out.

When the Pope stands up and issues a papal decree opposing a piece of fiction in which a young witch boy fights evil compassionately and wisely with the help of his friends, while teaching 10 year olds how to read 700 page books in their spare time and completely ignores the fact that children worldwide are having their genitals blown off on a daily basis by landmines that the developed nations sunk but have no interest in removing, he is BIDING HIS TIME on this planet. He doesn’t live here. He doesn’t care. This planet has become a waystation for him- a place to rest and wait until he moves on to his final destination. He deserves to be ignored. He is a fucking TOURIST.

When high ranking Church officials issue decrees that evolution, the most predictive and successful dynamic in the history of biology, one that saves millions of lives a year in discovery and treatment possibilities, is wrong and ignores the fact that every frog on this planet will be dead in 25 years along with every banana, many species of monkey and more integral small animal species than you can name in a week, they are BIDING THEIR TIME on this planet. They are guests. They have no interest in picking up their dirty laundry off the ground- They’re not staying.

And when Church leaders dole out decrees sending this person or that to hell for falling in love with someone of the same sex while 100 million pounds of Cancer causing chemicals are poured into the water around them yearly completely without peaking their interest, they have made it clear that they are BIDING THEIR TIME on this planet. They are standing at the train station mouthing off to the locals on the way out of town. They don’t live here.

Here’s the fucked thing. We do. When a woman is raped every 8 seconds and a child dies from hunger every 5 seconds on this planet I find that I run out of patience with tourists and guests. I want to work with the people who live here- on this planet- to make it better. I want to work with people who know that their fates have everything to do with trying to help the 700,000 high school students that are going to try to commit suicide this year, and every one of the 3 million American kids living on the street practicing survival sex for their next meal. These people are my family and my neighbors. They live here and so do the rest of us.

I don’t have a problem with people who believe that the rapture is going to bring them to heaven tomorrow. I don’t take issue with people who believe that they are leaving this planet soon for a better place. I wish them all luck. I hope they like their new digs. At the same time, I want to mention to them what I do when I’m a tourist in someone else’s country. I try to shut about and not look like an ass. I try to leave every place better than I found it.

If these people- popes, administration officials, church leaders, masters of industry, etc- if these people have no interest in staying here and making this planet work with the rest of us, their opinion of how we are handling it?

It’s worth zero. "

2005-07-17T14:36:00.000-05:00

Ted Rall is the best political cartoonist working today, if anyone had any question about it. The Bill Hicks of the genre.

2005-07-16T23:24:00.000-05:00

Busy weekend

Actually doing shit this weekend, which is a nice change from my usual routine of drinking lots of coffee and bitching about life. Last night I went to see I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness and Mission of Burma at Emo's. I was hanging out with my friend Christina, and we started at the Side Bar (where they were showing Grosse Point Blank, which was awesome.) Then we actually went to the show, which was a lot of fun despite the $15 cover. I love you but was really cool (though a bit shoegazer) and Mission was unreal. Despite the overall simplicity of their arrangements and instrumentation, they managed to create a very evocative series of songs.

Tonight was bowling and dinner with my friend Chrissy. We went to Dart Bowl, where I won two out of three games. We ended up with a lane next to a large group (I think a family) of the most enthusiastic bowlers I have ever seen. Needless to say, the Big Lebowski references flowed like water, though we stopped short of ordering white Russians. Then we went to buffet palace, but not the good one, the bad one on Anderson.

2005-07-15T00:19:00.000-05:00

The return of Adsense.

If all four of you readers have a minute, I brought back the Google ads to add to my legal defense fund. If you doubt that I need this, email me for details.

2005-07-15T00:14:00.000-05:00

Why I love cartoon network? Well, maybe that's because they carry shit that I would never see otherwise, including shows about feudal Japan in which revolutionary monks grow pot to power their revolution, only to have a prisoner they just captured light the fields on fire, causing a region-wide party. Only to be capped off by the episode's narrator reflecting on that "summer of love, where we all danced in that electric purple haze." Samurai Champloo kicks fucking ASS!

2005-07-12T23:40:00.000-05:00

So apparently the City of Austin doesn't feel that there is a need to maintain street signs in wealthy neighborhoods. Seems like maybe there's a viewpoint that if you have any business being there, you should know what streets are where, and if you don't have any business being there, then fuck you. Also, no streetlights? What the fuck? It was a long and slightly scary ride home tonight from the Spiderhouse.

2005-07-10T19:43:00.000-05:00

Gavagirl once told me about a friend of hers who did modelling for smoking fetishists. Her friend would sit in a chair and smoke cigarette after cigarette, fully clothed (perhaps provocatively) while a photographer took pictures of her. After today, I know what her friend felt like doing that. We just got done shooting a camera test for a friend of mine; my role was "man." I was smoking for the shoot, and what most people don't know about filmmaking is that if you smoke in one scene, you end up smoking something like a pack of cigarettes to allow for every angle, close up, and so on. My throat burns, and I'm a bit woozy after all that. But we're done, and except for a sound equipment malfunction, it went well. Now we eat.

2005-07-06T07:21:00.000-05:00

Just watched a squirrel flirt with death by cat in an effort to steal food from the cat's bowl. The final resolution was the squirrel hanging out 2 feet from the cat while eating. Just more evidence that bravery equals stupidity.

2005-07-06T07:10:00.000-05:00

So the other night, Gavagirl, Miz Oubliette, Miz Muskrat, Miz Becca and my friend Gilliss went out for drinks and dancing. What with the pre-fourth festivities, the usual spots were packed, and we ended up at a local gay bar. I have to say, nothing beats making the scene with four lovely ladies to avoid unwanted affection. In any case, as we were winding down, I noted that there was a lipstick on the table we had acquired, and as is usually the case with odd finds, I slipped it into my pocket. What can I say, I'm weird that way. So next day, I ran a load of wash...all I can tell you is that my non-existent girlfriend would be worried about way more than lipstick on my collar. Like lipstick all over my shirts, my pants, my underwear, my socks...I just hope that shit comes out in the next washing.

2005-07-03T12:37:00.000-05:00

Saw this...*. reality hurts .* It reminded me why designers often bug the shit out of everyone else. When it gets in the way, design is bad. Plus, I don't need a soundtrack when reading your blog, thanks.

2005-07-01T02:35:00.000-05:00

Fuuucked UP!

No, not like that. It's a Thursday, after all. Just had a friend tell me about a paternity case. It goes like this. About thirteen years ago, he slept with some girl. She had a kid (about 2-3 months after the fact) and listed him as the father. So far, nothing really bad, except for, you know, a total lack of understanding about the reproductive process, or a total lack of honesty. Problem starts a few years later when she files for Medicaid, and a process of extracting money from the father begins. The way this is supposed to work is that you are subpoenaed, and then you appear in court to defend yourself. However, the subpoena is delivered by a constable, and does not require your signature. So there are cases (like my friend's) where the papers were never received. So in not getting the papers, he didn't show up at court. By not showing up in court, he basically pled no contest to a civil charge. So they started garnishing his wages. Note that they garnished wages from a place of work they knew about, but the constable never showed up at his place of work to serve him. All those movies where people are fooled into getting served? Bullshit. So. A few years after all this happened, he lost his job, and was told that he was basically in contempt of court because he had no income to garnish. He goes to the asscrack of nowhere to have his day in court, and at his hearing he is barely heard. When he is heard, he is told that: a) He owes 35k in back support, b) if he can't afford a lawyer, he is not able to fight it, and c) it no longer matters if he is the biological father, because he is the father of record now. Moreover, the DA wants to put him in jail and start him on a work release program, despite the fact that he is currently employed. And all of this is true basically because a constable committed perjury.
Like I said, fuuuucked UP!

2005-06-30T02:46:00.000-05:00

Had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine regarding friendship tonight. She commented that she had always had volatile friendships that ended in anger or betrayal. I already thanked the people that made my birthday great; I want to extend that thanks to all my friends that make life livable, especially those who can be brutally honest when needed.

2005-06-28T12:41:00.000-05:00

Had a damned good birthday a couple of days ago. Got to see many of my good friends, had fun (without getting totally wasted.) So, thanks to everyone who helped make it a good time. Now for some rough edits from the vault.

2005-06-25T02:38:00.000-05:00

When the human is removed from its natural environment, it, like other animals, experiences some distress. A good friend of mine has been visiting from out of town for the last week and a half. The other night, we were out with some friends having a few drinks, after dealing with a number of frustrations. On the way back home, she began saying that she hates everything, but explained that this was better than certain other people she knows who feel nothing at all. This was when she started crying. She commented that she's going through an existential crisis, and lamented the fact that it, like every other experience is trite because it's already been done. It occurred to me that this seems to be more and more common in our world of affluence, and I wonder if the Romans had existential crises before the barbarian invasions.

2005-05-24T23:54:00.000-05:00

"I just think that Mindy is no longer on the planet"- My mom, two days ago.

"Ohana" means family in Hawaiian, but like so many Hawaiian words, its meaning is a bit...broader. Ohana refers not just to people you share a significant percentage of your genome with, but the entire extended group of people who make you who you are. It's a word that I think is even more significant in this day and age of fracturing families and nomadic living. After my parents got divorced, the ohana that I was part of became more important than ever, as I found it harder and harder to communicate with parents I felt had betrayed me. Jan was one of many women my mother was friends with who became very important to me in my adolescence. She had known me since I was a child, and there were few women I knew at the time that were more different than my mother. Jan had a daughter, Mindy.

Mindy had a few learning disabilities, but never lacked for love or support. Somehow, that wasn't enough. By 14, she was doing the usual bad girl thing-sex, drugs and more drugs. Three years ago, on her 18th birthday, Mindy disappeared. No one has heard from her since. My mother believes that she got involved with the wrong people and is long dead. Jan, for obvious reasons, believes she is still alive. I don't know what I believe, except that if I had given back what I was given, been more present in Mindy's life, these questions may not be an issue. If Mindy had had someone who was not a parent to talk to, she may not have run off.

2005-05-11T00:43:00.000-05:00

Ever have one of those days where everything seems off? Nothing (even those things that you do all the time) is easy, walking feels like a hike?

Yeah, I had one of those today. Everything became a chore, which sucks because for the first time in some time, I like my job. I like all of the people I work with, and I even like working with them (for the most part.) But today just felt like walking through a bog, with mosquitoes nipping at me every step of the way.

And when I get home, I see that Congress is looking like it'll pass a national ID card law.

God, I'm glad I've got tomorrow off.

2005-05-07T23:38:00.000-05:00

Holiday in Cambodia

I've been around some significantly damaged people recently, people that seem to lack basic survival skills and a large number of rather self-centered complaints. I've started to think that neuroses are basically bullshit. I've heard several arguments to the effect that our culture breeds low-grade psychological problems, and I believe it. I think the main problem with the people that I've been around is that they've never been forced to take care of themselves. No matter how badly they fuck up, their parents will take care of things. And what they need is to have that taken away. To be forced to survive on their own, to fail and feel the consequences of that failure. In short they need, as the Dead Kennedys put it, a holiday in Cambodia.

2005-05-07T23:27:00.000-05:00

Oops. Guess the "High ranking Al-Qaeda official" the Pakistanis captured wasn't that high up after all.

2005-05-05T00:15:00.000-05:00

Now on indymedia, some information about my home state. Seems that several native Hawaiian groups have occupied a University of Hawaii building to protest the school's research programs for the Navy. Looks like the protest culture is swinging into full gear again.

2005-05-04T16:11:00.000-05:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

2005-05-04T15:59:00.000-05:00

So, a new picture for the changes I made to my layout and everything. Plus Gavagirl has one up, I figure I might as well have one too.

2005-05-04T14:26:00.000-05:00

The roommate's ex girlfriend has been in for over a week. It's been the most stressful period of time I can remember where my life and/or well being were not in immediate danger. Both of them have attempted suicide in the past nine days, and the emotional and psychological tension has made me miserable. And last Thursday, the neighbors called the cops to our house because of an argument they were having. I can't tell you how much I never want the cops to come to my residence.

2005-05-04T14:07:00.000-05:00

So it's been a while.

Saw on the BBC that the Pakistanis caught an Al-Qaeda chief. Funny that they caught him with a military and counterterrorism budget only a fraction of ours.

2005-03-06T01:52:00.000-06:00

When I was a young kid (elementary and middle school, about,) my best friend was a kid named Michael Rosner. I can't really remember how we met, but it probably had something to do with the fact that our parents were friends. As I got older, Mike and I grew apart; I went to a different school and made other friends there. We saw each other occasionally, but I heard more about him from my dad, who was good friends with Mike's dad. Jim and Katherine Rosner had gotten divorced when Mike was six, he was my first friend with divorced parents. Katherine remarried and moved to Eugene, Oregon; Jim began dealing with Multiple Sclerosis, trying everything he could come up with to combat the syndrome. I heard from my mother the other day that Katherine was in the hospital with terminal cancer, the doctors had removed a tumor from her stomach only to find a few weeks later that it had metastasized and spread to several other places in her body. Today, Mom told me that she was going up to visit Katherine in Oregon. While talking with her about the visit, Katherine told mom that Mike is in Iraq, a lieutenant with the National Guard.It's strange to think about friendships falling away like that. I don't know how my mom maintains her friendships with people she hasn't seen in years; I lose track of people in months. My best friends from childhood I rarely even think of, and would know nothing about except for my mom's contact with their families. I feel bad for Katherine, I feel worse for Mike being stuck on the other side of the world while his mother is dying. But I knew these people fifteen years ago. I have shared none of my adult life with them, feel no real connection. I can't feel guilty about this, but I do anyway.

2004-12-17T02:07:00.000-06:00

Discoveries

After a pathetic amount of time trying to figure out how to use RSS feeds, I finally found out how to do it without a local application. There's a site called bloglines, and there's a link to the right (and maybe a bit down.) They have a large list of popular feeds, and it's pretty easy to add ones they don't have listed. Now I can be an even better news junkie than I was.

Also heard a new band last night, called Cue. They sound something like Godspeed You Black Emperor, instrumental rock with epic feel. Aaron told the drummer, a friend of his from high school, that they were too good to be playing small clubs, and I think he was right. This is a band that people would be willing to pay to see, if they knew about them. As it turns out, I've actually sort of known one of the members of the band (Stacey, their electric violinist) for quite some time, and she never told me she was in a band. I think that this might indicate why they are playing venues that are not worthy of them-the bands I've seen succeed have done so based more on their self-promotion rather than their actual talent. It's sad, but people's ability to succeed in the arts has little or nothing to do with their ability.

2004-12-14T14:35:00.000-06:00

Down with the sickness

A while back I told a friend of mine who is studying for her masters in clinical psychology that common people should not have access to the Diagnostic-Statistical Manual (DSM) because we are all hypochondriacs and we would start diagnosing ourselves with random, stupid shit that we didn't have. Now a friend of mine (who is more introspective than most, granted) has diagnosed himself with something called "histrionic disorder" based on information he got in a book about Borderline Personality Disorder (which he has diagnosed two ex-girlfriends of his with, by the way.) Now, is it just me, or does "histrionic disorder" seem to hail back to the days of Victorian psychology, where women who were upset with their husbands were diagnosed with "hysteria" and given laudanum to combat it?
I suppose my issue with all of this is that there is a sort of general feeling of ill over the better part of the world, and if everyone's feeling it, it can't really be sickness, can it? I think that a combination of a fucked up society (see my last post) with an obsessive need to know that everyone falls within a certain standard deviation, contributes to the idea that we're all sick. It seems to me that not too long ago, things such as fetishes were relatively rare. Now everyone's got one, and you can't find a date if you tell someone you don't have a kink, because they think you're lying. Small talk has come to include a frank discussion of how and why you are fucked in the head, and what you're doing to deal with it. Or rather, what you're taking to deal with it.

Of course, in the midwest, they don't talk about it, they just depress themselves with liquor and burn their brains with meth and beat the shit out of people who dare to act differently. I nearly cried the other night, watching the end of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, not because of what the flower children lost, but because of what they have since made unavailable to us. They are the ones shipping jobs overseas now, and taking our future from us. They let the world get fucked up, and are leaving it up to us to fix it, while they tell us that we're crazy.

2004-12-09T15:47:00.000-06:00

So a number of things this fine day...

Ran into my ex at The Hole in the Wall the other day (during the all night happy hour,) which means that she has violated one of the key rules of a breakup: let the other person have their space. What made it notable was-I don't know if it was the beer I'd had or what, but I started feeling really broken up about the whole thing. Two weeks ago, I was ready to break it off with her, a week ago I was cool with the whole thing, and then the other day, I'm feeling like a wreck. No wonder friends of mine recommend a minimum 1-month breakup time.

In other news, I had a minor revelation the other day while listening (oddly enough) to Speakerboxxx. In one of the tracks, Big Boi raps about someone buying a $100 pair of heels while there is no food in the house. I recalled an NPR report I had heard about an Indian inventor who was saying that it would be possible to market a combination TV/DVD/Web-box that sold for US$50-US$100 because "people care a lot about entertainment. They would be willing to give up a couple days' worth of meals for it." Now, I know you're wondering where I'm going with this. In the novel Infinite Jest, one of the key plot points is an "entertainment" that is instantly and fatally addictive-people forgo all else for continued viewing. In The Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord says

Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.

It occurred to me that the "entertainment" in IJ is the spectacle itself, and we are all addicts.

Last bit: got google ads. Yes, baby needs a new pair of shoes.

2004-12-07T15:52:00.000-06:00

So someone I met online asked me the other day to tell them a story about myself, and I thought "Hmm, a story about myself...." And here's what I told them

Well, recently there was a little competition here in Austin wherein the participants were challenged with shooting a horror film in 48 hours. The rules were as follows: no one could be paid; you had to use a horror subgenre and murder weapon that were assigned to your team; there was a communal line of dialogue and non-horror prop that every team had to use in their film; the films had to be between 4 and 8 minutes; and no pre-competition preparation was to be done (eg, no writing a script and then cutting it to fit.)

Well, I was on one of the teams that competed, and actually had a finished (though not polished) piece of work in the time limit. The story actually starts about a month before the start of the competition, none of us had worked together (with the exception of our cinematographer/DP and I) and so we did a couple of tests where we shot scenes so that we would all be a little better as a team. In fact, we shot one scene from Buffy season 1 as a test.

I had to work the Friday that the competition started, and so myself and our makeup person made it down a little later than expected. We were assigned the subgenre "Cannibal," the murder weapon fire, and the communal line was "I gave blood on Monday," communal prop was ice cubes. When I got there, the director and the AD already had a script worked out, and so the DP and I got setting up the first shot. This was about 11pm. By 4am, we had all the shots we needed at that location, which was good because there had been the potential for several shots getting ruined by the *thunderstorm* that blew in around 12:30am.

The next morning, we met up at the AD's house to shoot the rest of the film, and I started learning what being a director really means. Renee, who was directing our film, seemed unwilling to make decisions that might be unpopular, and continually was asking the rest of us for direction. Now, asking for advice is one thing, but if one is the *director*, you shouldn't be asking other people what they want to do. I suppose some of the issues could be written off as fatigue, but several near-arguments boiled down to Renee needing to state whether or not she needed a particular shot. Where was I during all of this? I was the light monkey and general gofer. I set up just about every lighting scheme we used, helped get costuming together, hung felt for the cyclorama we used for one shot, and overall played support. I also choreographed the chase sequence that is the climax of the film, and created one shot myself (granted, it's a classic thriller shot-someone hiding in a dark closet, their face illuminated by the light from outside, which is suddenly blocked by their pursuer, who then leaves...)

After primary shooting, my job was done, and I went home while our AD and director edited the film and got it down to competition headquarters. A week later, we went to the screening, and with every film that we saw, our hopes got higher. Despite the fact that it was a rough final cut, our film was one of the three or four best films in the competition. (sadly, we didn't win anything, though our DP was told by several other competitors that he should have won best cinematography.)

This was the third film that I've worked on, and by far the one I learned the most from, especially about my ideal role as a director. It lent me more confidence for my current goal of shooting three shorts in the next six months, and taught me several things that I need to know before starting any project.

2004-12-02T13:56:00.000-06:00

"I don't think I can be the girlfriend you want me to be."

That's what my until-last-night girlfriend told me...last night, when I walked her to her car. I really can't say I disagree-there had been problems for the last couple of weeks, with her not calling me to cancel plans (just not showing up instead,) and cancelling plans to hang out with someone who spent a good deal of time trying to get her to date him before she and I started going out. The problems actually extend even further back then that, too. From the first time we had sex, I had the feeling that this might not work out, as our sexual compatibility was slightly better than cats and dogs living together. Opinions differ, but I tend to think that if sex feels like a chore (especially within the first month or so) the relationship is not long for this world. Subjectively, I thought back on other women I've dated, and the fact that they generally felt that the amount of sex was "just right" or "too much," and I've gotta say that I saw this coming.

The question I have is about the statement I quoted above: what does it mean? I suppose if I had somewhere posted a "Dylan's girlfriend needs manifesto," she could be responding to that. But she never asked what I wanted or needed from a girlfriend, so how did she know? I know that the obvious answer is that she noticed the same things I did about sex and so on, but everytime someone makes a decision based on what they think someone else wants (without asking first) it makes me wonder where this insight comes from.

2004-12-02T13:30:00.000-06:00

Hellspawn: first offense
First off: if any of the three readers (two? one?) of this thing are parents, please take time to consider the following. I am sick and tired of having people come into my restaurant with their howling spawn and halfheartedly trying to control them while the brats fling shit across the room and generally make everyone elses' lives a living hell. Here's the bottom line right out front: if you think your kids are too young to be out in public, they are. If they start crying at any point during the meal, you have a responsibility to your fellow diners to take them outside and deal with them outside. For people too stupid to follow these instructions, I'll break it down even further: no restaurant should have to stock booster seats, high chairs, or those ridiculous cradle holders for your sake. If you can't afford a baby sitter, you can't afford to eat out. It's bad enough that you feel you shouldn't have to sacrifice for your progeny, you should never feel you have the right to make other people do so. The worst part is that you stupid, selfish parents never seem to realize that your waiter's consideration in not committing infanticide, much less providing good service, is worth at least doubling the tip you would normally leave.

2004-12-01T13:42:00.000-06:00

Fuck you, Sex and the City writers!

A friend of mine just finished a book the other day called He's Just Not That Into You, a sort of women's self-help guide to dating. It's written by two writers from Sex and the City, something that should be a warning sign to anyone who considers reading the book. After all, these are two people whose only other qulification is having written a soap opera that largely consists of women bitching about their shitty love lives while holding up impossible ideals of what they want from men. The second warning sign should be that when looking the book over, it took me fifteen minutes to get through two chapters (there are 8 chapters in the book.) This would indicate that the book severely oversimplifies a complex issue, a conclusion backed up by the thread clearly running through the book: if he's not doing everything, he's not worth it. So let me respond to that with: if you don't put out, you're not worth it. Ladies? How'd that make you feel? Yeah, I thought so. Fact is, as much as I want to, if I were to write a book that countered the sentiment in HJNTIY, I would be attacked as a misogynist. If not by anyone else, by this guy, who seems to think anything with a penis qualifies as some level of misogynist. Luckily I have better people than that to rely on.

Considering that this was all inspired by a book a friend of mine bought because she couldn't understand why her relationships weren't working out, it should be mentioned that I find it sad when people can't figure out why things don't work out. I've never bought a book to explain to me how other people thought, because I fucking ask them. What happens to people that they are so scared of talking to each other about how they feel? Don't get me wrong, it's happened to me, recently, but I got over it. Quite happy about that. My friend Alejandro once told me that he could not understand pursuing therapy as a career, because he felt that things like therapy should be provided by your family and friends (as should housing, clothing, and food-Alejandro feels that all of your basic needs should be free, and I can't say I disagree.)

The sad thing about my friend buying this book is that like someone converted to fundamental Christianity, she will feel she has the answers until those answers fail her, and then she will go back to square one. What she needs is to internalize the philosophy of "if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." Most Americans do. If you see something that seems to answer it all for you, it's not and it won't. Get that thought out of your head, it's completely wrong. After all, the only thing that this book tells you is that if guys don't call, don't ask you out, whatever, they're not worth it. Well, if someone says they'll call and they don't, they may be an asshole, or they may have a reason. My relationship advice is "think about how you feel. If more than half the time you've been going out, you've felt bad, the relationship is bad. If the average is feeling good, you may have problems, but it's worth working on."

2004-11-23T14:43:00.000-06:00

Rant 1 Current mood: angry
So we have lost all sense of restraint in our national government and the Bushies will have nothing stopping them (or even suggesting they slow down a bit) from dragging this country into the ground. Of course, it can't all be blamed on Bush, Cheney, and the others; a large bit of the blame has to go to the American people. I know it's been said before, but it bears repeating. The American public is so repugnantly lazy and stupid that most people can't even give you a basic description of why the economy is in the shitter and they can't find a job. Hell, most of the richest people in America couldn't tell you that off the top of their heads, but that's because it's never mattered. And the people who are going to be facing starvation in several years, when the dollar collapses and the EU and the Chinese and the Japanese are just trading amongst themselves while the starving poor hunt stray dogs in the ghetto and private security forces shoot people who try to raid ConAgra's storage facilities, and the rich are off on holiday in Finland and Sweden, where it's quite nice thank you ever since global climate change turned London into a seaside town, that's when we'll all look back and wonder why we didn't take the chance when it was offered to us. Why, of the many times we had the chance, did we not dethrone the kings of industry? Why did we continue to pay homage to the cult of wealth when it was obvious that wealth is a lie? Every year for the last 7 years, Mojo's Daily Grind in Austin has kicked off TV Turnoff week with a grand orgy of destruction known as the TV smash. The actual smash was just kind of stupid, but I like the symbolism. Unfortunately, turning off the TV is not enough. I recently learned that until the 19th century in England, Christmas was not a time of giving, it was a time of taking. The poor would raid the houses of the rich and take what they wanted or needed from them, and that was their Christmas. Now the commonwealth nations practice "Boxing Day," in which they box up things for the needy, probably much preferable for people in the mansions than "clean up the shit the peasants left on the floor day." Fuck that noise. The people need to take back from the rich, cause the government isn't doing a good enough job of it. The rich, after all, are the ones who have sent all the good jobs overseas to maximize short-term profits, not realizing that without a relatively wealthy consumer base, there's no one to sell their overpriced shit to. So fuck them. They've sold our future short, and we have to make them pay.

2004-05-28T03:26:00.001-05:00

I know that the next time I see Steve at Mojo's, he'll ask me "where have you been? I haven't seen you for a while."

The fact is, there's been some decent live music recently. Friday I went to see Aaron's band Active Radio perform for their CD release. Despite the existence of a few sound problems, the show went off really well. They played at the Back Room, a decent venue, and the cover of $1 attracted a huge crowd. It probably didn't hurt that the show was promoted by local "rock alternative" radio station 101X, and that the cover included a free copy of the CD. I was a bit surprised by the largely teenage crowd. Maybe it's just me getting older, but I felt a bit out of place when surrounded by kids whose biggest concerns are whether or not they are going to pass history this year. Apparently due to the fact of these ephebes, the BR decided that this show would be nonsmoking. Now, perhaps to someone in New York or California, this would not be a surprise, but here in Austin, it is quite upsetting to arrive at a live show and be told that smoking is not allowed. When I went to shows in high school, I had to deal with people smoking, so why should the little punks that came to the Back Room be "granted" a nonsmoking venue? The fact that I could not pollute my lungs as is my usual custom at a live show was the biggest problem I had with the show, followed distantly by the fact that beer cost $3 a pint. Overall I was impressed with the show, and it is always nice to see a friend's band do well. I was a little ashamed too, as I used to work for the "record label" that was going to produce the CD I now have a copy of; unfortunately the owner of the label was such an inept CEO/CFO that the company folded before the CD could be made, and Active Radio was forced to produce and publish independently.

Tonight Our Black Love Song performed again, and they once again rocked the motherfucking house. If any readers live in Austin, you owe it to yourself to see this band before they're playing stadiums and charging $40 for cheap seats. The whole performance was gorgeous, from the lights that they set up themselves to the onstage presence of the band. I was chatting with Mason, the keyboard player, before the show, and he commented that outside of the stage personalities, all the band membersare big nerds. It was quite comforting to hear this level of honesty, as it sometimes seems like band members are getting inflated heads over the perception of their stage personas, something Nick Hornby commented on in the New York Times recently. It's nice to know that there are still people out there who are creating music for fun and not to "get the message out to the people." It's been a long time since I've seen a band that was just about having fun and helping other people have fun, and now I've seen two bands doing just that in two nights.

After the OBLS performance, I went to a party for several graduating college students. I was invited by one of the regulars at work. I've been serving people coffee for nearly nine months now, and finally I'm getting invited to parties. I thought it would never happen. The party was a good time, there were two kegs (although one had been floated by the time I got there) of fairly decent beer (Shiner Bock, for those of you who know what that is.) Many of the people at the party were already wasted, and so I got to have the keg largely to myself, so before long I was wasted, too. By a happy coincidence, the party was less than a block from my place, so I stumbled home and collapsed.

2004-04-17T18:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I've just come in from watching the Luddite orgy of destruction known as the Mojo's Annual TV Smash, Austin's own kickoff for TV Turnoff Week. In usual fashion, the first twenty minutes were the most exciting/entertaining, with all the breaking vaccuum tubes and glass screens. After that, the spectacle of people, a fairly even mix of hackers and crusty punks smashing progressively smaller bits of glass, plastic, and metal into even smaller bits, was entertaining more for the raw enthusiasm involved than for the actual destruction.

It is also ironic that the crowd included people who were very much interested in technology taking an even more active role in destroying the TVs than the other participants. Also on the list of ironies for the day was the sheer number of video cameras and still cameras possessed by the spectators. Perhaps next year they can set up a closed-circuit television system so that people can watch comfortably from an even safer distance.

It would be nice if I could believe that everyone who participated in the TV smash today would proceed to actually not watch TV for a week (or a month, or however long.) However, my gut tells me that those who don't watch TV now aren't going to start, and those who do will be home watching the Sopranos or Adult Swim later on. It's a good sentiment, the idea that you should not watch as much TV. But I think that providing regular alternatives to watching TV is a better way than unleashing the unfocused rage of a bunch of kids on some dumb pieces of glass, metal and plastic. At least last year, when Lynn Bender gave a speech on how he had no relationship with his father due to his father's obsession with watching TV, there was some heart to the smashing. The year before (and the year befor that,) when the DJ kicked the smashing off with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's song"Television the Drug of a Nation", there was a political explanation for why turning off the TV is important. This year, there were several crappy punk bands of the if-we-turn-up-the-distortion-we-sound-good school (which hasn't sounded good since the early eighties,) and a surprisingly good (and supposedly Syrian) metal band called Malstrom. Despite the quality of the metal, it had no focus, and therefore lacked any kind of message to put behind the TV smash, other than raw anger.

Sigh.

Oh well, next year maybe they'll kick it off with an exploding teddy bear.

2004-04-07T03:40:00.001-05:00

So it's the 10th anniversary of the attempted genocide in Rwanda, wherein the Hutu underclass rose up and slaughtered thousands upon thousands of Tutsi tribespeople, and it got me thinking. Will the West ever be able to truly face how horribly fucked up it has made a great deal of the world, especially Africa? After all, the Tutsis were put in power, as were many minority ruling classes, by departing colonial governments that felt that the country was better off with a nation-state model than with the previous tribal governments and boundaries. So for a long time, the smaller Tutsi group ruled over the Hutu, until the Hutus decided that it was time to rid themselves of the Tutsis.

The reasons for the racial conflict notwithstanding, the wealthy nations of the world did nothing, and many died. There have been a number of criticisms of the west for standing by and letting the atrocities happen, but in cases where we have become involved, there has been precious little to do. After all, the USA sent troops to Somalia on a humanitarian mission, and the Somalis made their feelings abundantly clear regarding the US presence. In fact, it seems like whenever any western nation commits troops in an attempt to end tribal warfare, or any other (for lack of a better term) blood feud, they are attacked by one or both sides, and people in the west are shocked at the ungrateful locals' treatment of the foreign soldiers. However, looking at it from another perspective, do we really have any business getting involved? If I were willing to ascribe a high level of education to any of the people in these regional conflicts, I would say that they were justified in expecting the western powers who left them in the lurch at the end of the colonial period to stay away, as they have for the last 40-100 years. However, even without that education (which the leaders of the aggressive parties may or may not have, and the footsoldiers almost certainly don't, beyond the basic propaganda) the reaction of a people who are simply conducting business as they see fit to foreign soldiers trying to tell them their business is understandable.

So what do we do? There are no easy answers as Gavagirl mentioned on her blog, moral relativism is not the answer-just because they think it's right, and their culture supports it, doesn't make it right. However, do the people of the US and EU have the stomach to accept the deaths of their countrymen in the name of keeping a given group of people from wiping out another group of people for reasons no one but those involved understand? Because that's what it will take. I'm not talking about UN peacekeepers in blue helmets saying "hey, don't do that," I'm talking about going in and removing the threat of violence. Are we willing to commit the kind of resources that will entail? Remember, many of the people killed in Rwanda were killed with machetes. Are we willing to be a real police force? Because that's what it will take. Conflicts like Rwanda are not affairs like western wars are, where there is a leader, and once that leader is dead and the regular army is broken, the defeated start looking for a reasonable solution. The closest thing we've seen to this kind of war is Vietnam, where the regular army was rarely seen, and it was largely civilian combatants, including children. There are many stories from all over sub-saharan Africa in which children are conscripted and are enthusiastic participants in the fighting. So, are we willing to fight 30-40 simultaneous Vietnams every year?

2004-04-03T00:04:00.000-06:00

Two disasters in one day...make that three. First, I was walking to work and saw cops directing traffic on Guadalupe, and found myself wondering what the hell was going on. Turns out that a girl who had run away from home had been approached by her mother's boyfriend, who tried to force her to come back home. She ran, right into the path of oncoming traffic. Now she's in critical condition, three days later. According to people who had talked to her, she had run away because of her mom's boyfriend-no wonder she ran. The sad thing is that there are so many runaways that run away for a good reason. Most people seem to think that these kids choose the life, and in a lot of cases they are right. Unfortunately, there are just as many cases where the uncertainty of life on the street is better than certain pain at home.

After getting off work, I was walking north on Guad when I saw an orange glow in the sky. I decided to continue north, and saw an apartment building burning. After the fire was put out, half of the building had burned, and the other half was flooded. Luckily, no one was hurt. My friend Lucretia commented that things have been going really well for her recently, and it seems like when things are going well for her, the rest of the world starts falling apart. It brought back memories of a theory I had at one point, the constant of happiness.

The theory goes like this: For any social circle, there is a certain amount of happiness. If one person's level of happiness increases, the other members of the circle lose some amount of their happiness. Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you believe it, as you get happier, your perception of your friends' increasing misery will temper your happiness.

2004-03-30T23:41:00.000-06:00

Yay me. On the heels of finishing off the first draft of a short film screenplay, I have come up with an idea for a longer form screenplay and actually written the treatment for it. I also wrote the key character sketches, and plan on beginning work soon. Hopefully, this will also provide an opportunity for me to learn Vi better, as well as Linux (at least the file manipulation parts.) Due to intense paranoia, I will tell no one who doesn't know my phone number about the films, but suffice to say, those I trust have thought well about them. Good thing I surround myself with people who are not afraid to hurt my feelings (and good thing I am so out of touch with my feelings that any subsequent assaults and/or homicides will appear totally random.)

Hopefully I will soon find some wealthy individual who wants to fund my ideas for films and be able to produce these works according to my artistic vision. Or someone who wants to buy a finished script for a feature and pay me outrageous amounts for it.

2004-03-29T22:37:00.000-06:00

So I finally decided to get out of my caffeinated hole and see some of the highly-touted nightlife in Austin. As a preface to this post, yes, one of the bands I saw is fronted by a friend of mine; however I tend to view seeing a friend's band playing as a trepidatious event at least, for fear that the band will suck, and I will have to lie to a friend or hurt their feelings. So.
I went out to Flamingo Cantina to see several bands: Of Normandy, La La Land, Our Black Love Song, and Dynah. Unlike every poster artist in town, I list bands in the order they play.

Of Normandy was typical small-show opener material. They consist of keyboards, vocals, guitar, bass, and drum machine. They appear to be attempting some kind of melodic rock type thing, and while they were inoffensive, they were also completely uninteresting. My comment to the bartender was "new new wave strikes again." They sounded like Flock of Seagulls without the emphasis on the vocals, and no interesting hair to take my mind off of their repetitive song structure. Add to all that the fact that the drum machine and guitars drowned out almost all the other instruments, except for the highest keyboard notes, and they made for a less than enthusiasism-building experience.

I was disappointed by La La Land; I saw them several months ago playing with Nice Day For Sailing, and they were quite enjoyable then. However, this time they were plagued by problems with their drum machine, and they ended up playing only a few songs. Unlike the previous show, their sound guy was less than competent, and the songs they did play ended up being muddy and indistinct. However, they will hopefully fix whatever's broken and come back strong.

So now I come to the highlight of the evening, the blend of goth rock and glam that is Our Black Love Song. I've known Jason Farmer, the lead singer for quite some time, and he never struck me as the type to front a band, but there he was, bigger than life and putting the other front men of the night to shame. Added to his awesome stage presence was a frighteningly good backing band whose sound was textured and powerful. All together, OBLS was the set of the night. They played for a too-short hour, and rocked the place the entire time. The music is like a blend of Bauhaus, early Cure, and Joy Division, lots of fun for those of us who like a little darkness in our music. It is rare for me to find a local band that so seamlessly matches good music with good stage presence, it is much more common to see a good band that doesn't know what to do other than stand there and play, or a group of dancers who happen to have instruments or microphones at hand on stage. OBLS managed to combine the two perfectly.

Last up was Dynah, who in my opinion epitomizes the phrase "all style, no substance." They looked pretty, they played competently, and the vocals were near-professional level. Unfortunately, they had little or nothing to say, other than "we're just like the Strokes!" There is nothing wrong with this, except that if I had wanted to see the Strokes, I would have bought a ticket to their show last week.

2004-03-24T00:58:00.000-06:00

It occurs to me that if anyone who does not already know me is reading this, they probably have no basis to judge my statements other than the statements' inherent merit. Of course, now that I've put it that way, it occurs to me that I don't care if you know anything at all about me.

Never mind.

2004-03-21T01:06:00.000-06:00

I was talking to my roommate today, and he mentioned that he is working on getting an art show together, comprised of the salvagable bits of the work he did in London and Key West, most of which was lost when his bag was stolen in Florida. He mentioned that his creativity has been stunted by his lingering depression over the loss of a huge amount of his work, and his desire to get it back rather than move on. It got me to thinking about the baggage that I carry around. Then, I read my friend's blog (the first entry, no less) and she mentioned the fracturing of personality that occurs when we think about decisions in the past. I realized that it is vitally important to let things go, when the usual mode of activity for us humans is to let these things fester and boil inside of us. So my project for the next couple of weeks will be to let these things go, by writing about them here. If you know me, don't hold this against me. Or I'll have to hurt you.

2004-03-17T21:34:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a bit about the push for deregulation of, well, just about everything, and while I tend to intuitively dismiss it as a bad idea, there certainly seem to be plenty of people who think it makes sense.

Now, just for a minute, let's think about the traditional example of efficiency in Fascist Italy: the trains running on time. Punctuality in public transit is a worthy goal, I'm sure anyone who has ever come close to losing a job because the bus or the train was running late can agree with that. In a fascist dictatorship, this goal may take some time to achieve, but the general method would be to threaten those in charge of the trains with torture and/or execution until someone makes it work.

In a regulation-free capitalist economy, the ideal way for it to work would be that there would be several train companies; assuming no collusion on their part, the market would decide how much punctuality was worth to people, rewarding the companies that made it a priority. There are a number of problems, even with this oversimplified example. First, trains run on tracks, which occupy a given space. The construction and maintenance of these tracks involves a huge capital investment, something most people would not be able to come up with. Whoever took the time to construct the tracks would likely be unwilling to share them, so any other companies wanting to get into the train game would be looking at a similar investment, or renting space on the existing tracks. Assuming the original builder would allow rental, it still constitutes an artificial increase in the operating costs of the non-track-owners' railroads. The second problem I have already alluded to, the possible collusion between railroad operators. Something most people in America and Western Europe take for granted is governmental intervention in cases of price fixing schemes. However, a truly deregulated economy would not allow such intervention. Which brings us to our third concern, which is the fact that in a capitalist system, capital tends to self-gravitate. That is to say that money makes money, usually in the form of investment returns, whether in a stock market or otherwise. This tends to lead to a monopolization of markets by a small number of people or corporations; as conglomerations of capital increase in size, they will tend to merge with other like-sized conglomerations. This leads to the inevitable formation of monopolies that dominate a given aspect of the market. Because the market we are hypothesizing is not subject to regulation, the government would be unable to stop the predatory, anti-competitive practices that monopolies traditionally engage in.

Just a few thoughts.

2004-03-11T23:55:00.000-06:00

In a discussion recently about California's three strikes law, the suggestion was brought up that DWI/DUI repeat offenders should be subjected to a similar punishment, with permanent license revocation being the punishment for the second offense. Now, DWI is a really bad thing, I can't emphasize that too much. But there are a lot of other bad driving practices that have not been demonized the way that DWI has, such as speeding up at yellow lights, speeding in general, running stop signs, making illegal turns, general agressive driving, etc. My suggestion is that any driving practice that causes danger to others be punished like DWI, and if it becomes a habit, a driver's license be revoked (semi)permanently.

This solves a number of problems that are associated with the American car culture. First of all, people will start driving a lot more safely when they see that yes, they can in fact lose their license if they drive like an asshole. Second, when people start losing the ability to drive, solutions will start being sought out for how to build a society without assuming that people will drive. As a stalwart user of public transit and human-powered conveyance, I think these solutions should be getting funded now, but maybe some rich assholes who are just too in love with their ridiculously powerful SUVs and luxury cars will have more say than I do, when they can't drive anymore.

2004-03-11T23:37:00.000-06:00

Ahh, spring, when all your winter sins come back to haunt you. I've lived in this city for five years, and it never fails that the season of new growth is also the season of disintegration. I think it has to do with the fact that people are more concerned with enduring winter than they are with minor hiccups in their life during the cold months. However, when it starts warming up, all bets are off, and the piper comes to collect.

Sean just moved into a new place, citing miserable living conditions at his old place. He moved in with Roland, and has yet to pay the rent he promised when he moved in a couple of weeks ago. Now, Roland is thinking about kicking Sean out, because hey, he needs the rent and bills paid, and the delay on the money cost Roland his planned trip to New Orleans for St. Patrick's day. Sean spends every night out drinking with his other friends, and isn't working much; it turns out that he moved out of his old place because he owed his old roommate three or four months back rent. Sad thing is, the rest of us are starting to wonder what the hell else Sean has lied about, and who he really is.

It's not just my circle of friends, either. One of our regulars at the shop gave an ex-boyfriend the money for a laptop, because the ex works at a used laptop store. Now, the guy won't return her calls or emails, and the laptop has yet to materialize. I fail to understand why people try to mix business and pleasure like that. I'm reminded of the numerous people I've seen who end a relationship only to get sucked back in by some stupid crap.

Oh well, I guess it's human nature. Fuck it.

2004-03-11T01:55:00.000-06:00

I saw Mathias yesterday. It's been several months, and before that it was at least a year. He's really degenerated over the years. When I first met him, he was a smart, funny kid with something of a mean streak and hubris befitting a Shakespearean tragedy.

While it didn't happen in a single day, it did happen, or rather is still happening. I remember the day I found out he had been kicked out of his favorite hangout, because someone commented on his needle tracks and said that using heroin was stupid. Mathias responded by attempting to punch the guy who made the comment, a former bouncer. He had started using H several months before, and had lost several friends when he shot up his best friend's girlfriend and then slept with her.

He moved to Oklahoma a while after that, and I hoped that I would never have to see him again. He got busted on possesion with intent to distribute (heroin again,) and was released on bond.

He immediately ran back to town, despite owing countless people money. He tried to get a friend fired from his job, and several days later asked the same friend if he knew anyone who would pay for sex. When I saw him yesterday, he looked scabby and worn, like any other homeless kid who's been chasing the dragon for a while. He was also puking in the gutter, junk sick and lost. Part of me wants to try to help, and another part of me reminds me of all the pain and anguish Mathias has visited on those who let him get too close. Still another part of me says that he deserves whatever he gets, and the sooner he pisses the wrong people off, the better for the rest of us.

2004-03-07T21:21:00.001-06:00

Ahh, schadenfreude. Maybe it's just because I'm reading Filth, by Irvine Welsh, but I've found myself reflecting on notable human trainwrecks I've seen, and giggling sadistically to myself the last few days. A "friend" of mine recently went through a series of heartbreaks-his business went under, he found out that his (much younger) wife had cheated on him with his business partner, and she subsequently left him to live with her parents. Why I find all of this funny is the absurdity of how much has happened to him in a relatively short period of time, and his total unwillingness to understand his role in all of this. Add to that the fact that his alternative to finding a job has been to sell off all of his possessions, while continuing to pursue women who are much too young. There is something comic about watching a man repeat the same mistakes over and over while hearing his complaints about how bad his life is. Tragicomic, I suppose.

Then there's the case of a kid who I was never really friends with, whose rapid decline has been a not-even-guilty pleasure for me, especially as I see people who trusted him realize that his life is and has been without worth. He started out as just a cocky liar who played the guitar and did drugs and took whatever he could get from whoever let him in. Then came the beginning heroin use, and the inevitable slide into full-on junky wastedness. Watching him deal with periodic junk sickness has been amusing, to say the least.

Maybe this makes me a bad person, but who the hell cares? It's fun.

2004-03-07T03:11:00.000-06:00

The BBC website has reported on yet another incident of violence in the Gaza strip. This one happens to have started with the Israeli army attacking Palestinian camps, in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing. The Middle East has been a powder keg for as long as most of us have been alive, and the situation does not seem to be any closer to a resolution now than it was when Israel was first made a nation-state. The question that arises is, is there a possibility for resolution, or will the conflict in Israel/Palestine continue until there is no one left on one (or both) sides? Despite the efforts of various leaders, there has not been any lasting peace made. In addition, both sides have, as often as not, been used as pawns of the powers that be to further their own interests in the region. What needs to happen to resolve this problem?