MemeMachineGo!

There's a lot of good fiction on the web for free. Check out Corie Ralston's Looking Back over at Strange Horizons. Such a good story.

It's already been linked to from everywhere, but I'll also mention Cory Doctorow's 0wnz0red. Check out the glossary if you need some help. But even the glossary leaves you to your own devices with

Sleep, it's like a third of your life, 20, 30 years. What's it good for? It resets a bunch of switches, gives your brain a chance to sort through its buffers, a little oxygenation for your tissues. That stuff can all take place while you're doing whatever you feel like doing, hiking in the hills or getting laid. Make 'em into cron jobs and nice them down to the point where they just grab any idle cycles and do their work incrementally.

which was the point at which I said to myself "well, he just left most of the general readership in the dust."

Infinity Plus has a ton of good stuff. For now I'll restrict myself to plugging Ted Chiang's Understand, my third-favorite (praise with faint damns) Chiang story.

Sci Fiction's archives are also chock full of treasure. Don't miss Robert Sheckley's fantastically funny Cordle to Onion to Carrot. I'm forcibly restraining myself from excerpting, 'cause I'd end up quoting the whole French restaurant scene. Just go read it.

Some random and disjointed notes on Worldcon. If I wait to write up a comprehensive report, I won't get to it.

Took the BART to Fremont, the bus to downtown San Jose, and walked to the Fairmont, rolling my luggage: my cheapest and quickest Worldcon travel ever.

Thursday night my friend Avi co-hosted a Clarion party. I made friends with a bunch of the Clarion West 2002 class, and continued to hang out with them a lot for the rest of the con. Two were already friends: I've been in a writers' workshop with Wendy Shaffer for four years; Genevieve Williams is an old talk.bizarre friend I haven't seen in some five years. Met Blunt whose Clarion journal I'd followed intermittently, and several others who don't have web pages I know of.

In ways it was an odd recapitulation of '98 — as then, I was the only representative of my class (Clarion '98) at the Worldcon, and imprinted on that year's Clarion West class. (Sadly, I ended up seeing little of the several CW '98 folks who were there.)

It's been four years since my Clarion: between Clarion and Clarion West, 8 classes have passed through those hallowed halls. Over 150 people. I found myself working hard to try to associate people with classes at the party: do I maybe need to introduce these two people or did they spend six weeks in each other's pockets?

Had dinner in a group with Jim Kelly one night, and told him about my analysis of his "Itsy Bitsy Spider". He was very surprised it mapped so exactly to 7-point plot structure, which served to answer the question I'd been planning to ask him as to whether he had it in mind at any level during composition or revision.

When Ted Chiang first saw me, he said "You look different. You look like a villain." I can live with that. (Ted had only ever seen me clean-shaven and with my hair braided in a ponytail; lately I've grown a goatee and often wear my hair loose.) I was with Ted when Lawrence Person told him he'd won a Hugo. Congrats, Ted! (Like Cory says, best novelette was a very strong category this year.)

I went to readings by Robert Reed, Sean Stewart, Lucius Shepard, Jim Kelly, R. Garcia y Robertson. Gushed to Sean about how much I loved Galveston.

Went to Kaffeklatsches with China Mieville and Charlie Stross. For reasons that will likely remain obscure to me, China was the most lusted after person at the con. No slur intended; I'm just mired in a male-Kinsey-0 perspective.

The con had an elaborate restaurant guide bound as a paperback book, featuring not just dozens of restaurant reviews, but anecdotes by sf writers and other figures in the field about food and dining. And no freakin' breakdown of the availability of even vegetarian food let alone vegan or any other restricted diet. How lame is that? The con's Internet Lounge wasn't lame, though, and I researched all the vegan options in striking distance. God bless the web. A couple of times I walked about a mile and a half to a vegan Vietnamese place, and Thursday evening met an Oakland couple behind an organization called Earthville, with wonderful plans for earthy-crunchy global dominance featuring sustainable development, community-building, and the Vertical Village.

I've got sleep to catch up on and a neglected workout schedule to resume early in the morning so I'm going to wrap this up, ping More Like This' Worldcon Metablog and get to bed. Maybe tomorrow I'll have more to say about Socialists in Kilts, the books I bought, and the secret language of racoons.

You have been reading MemeMachineGo! since April 10. You read it on most weekdays, usually between 8 and 9 AM Pacific Time, pretty much always between 7 and 10, and rarely on weekends. You run Internet Explorer 5.01 on Windows 95. At least since May 20 you've been using IE's offline reading feature to automatically download MMG!; it comes immediately after Everlasting Blort.

At least through August 15 you had a DSL line with fixed IP through Pacifier Online, an ISP in Vancouver, WA (though the IP address changed after August 2). After August 16 your IP changed again (but I think it's still through Pacifier.)

Odds are you'll download this at around 8:30 this morning. You may not actually get around to looking at MMG! or the other things you download for offline reading, in which case this is all for naught.

But if you are reading this, then who are you?

(So I finally satisfied my curiousity as to why Everlasting Blort consistently shows up in my referrer logs despite having never yet had the good taste to link to MMG!.)

=v= While I've been physically located back in San Francisco for a day or so, I'm not really back. You're never really back in San Francisco until you have a Mission burrito. Time for me to head off to the readers' choice for Best Taquería and get myself properly situated.

Wrecked model cars to turn your bonsai into a tragic diorama, as Cory put it on Boing Boing. This is just such an MMG! link, I prefer to think he got it from here retroactively. Causality is overrated.

Purists will want to create the scenes at 1:1.

Vaguely on the subject, but don't ask me to justify how, Alex Doonesbury has gotten into the SUV ticketing game, proving once again that she's the underage cartoon girl of my dreams. Swoon! (Jym and only Jym will take about 7 levels of meaning from my use of that one word in this context. It's an idioglossia thing. You wouldn't understand. By definition.)

During my first Vocal Production and Audition class, the teacher told us very specifically to not bother memorizing audition pieces... that it was reasonable and customary to read during auditions, and having the script gave you one less thing to worry about.

I missed the second class due to Worldcon, but the assignment for the third class was to have a 60-second monologue prepared. I had meant to work on this Wednesday night, but I started writing a new story instead. So Thursday on the BART ride over, I was still flipping through the little monologue book I had out of the library, trying to make up my mind. I finally settled on a piece from Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers" and read it over a few times.

Somehow I assumed we'd be reading our pieces, but when I got there, I found out that we were indeed expected to deliver the monologues without scripts.

Once upon a time, this would have induced panic and terror. But I'm an improviser. It was only 60 seconds of material. I knew the gist of it, the shape of it... I could fake it.

And I did. The class is in an auditorium. For verisimilitude, the teacher has the auditioners stand in the hallway outside, and he recruits a student to work the door calling out, e.g., 'number 7.' I walked out like I owned the place. I did my spiel with nothing like the exact words after the first few sentences, but with total commitment. I walked back head high.

There's an important life lesson there, I just know it.

In other news, I learned I've been flattening my dipthongs to single vowel sounds. Oh, the embarrassment!

Beautiful Stuff is a new weblog for writers, opening with the Ray Bradbury quote:

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

(And he links to MMG! from a short list of 'blogs by writers,' placing me in the company of Bruce Sterling and Neil Gaiman, making it a little hard for me to do anything but love the site.)

The New Yorker reports:

Tom and Ray Magliozzi (a.k.a. Click and Clack), the wisecracking brothers and M.I.T.-educated auto mechanics who are the hosts of the radio show "Car Talk," decided recently to launch a political crusade of sorts, against sport-utility vehicles.

[...] Together, the two brothers and the yogurt people came up with a suitably nonconfrontational motto, "Live Larger, Drive Smaller," which was to appear on bumper stickers and on Stonyfield yogurt-container lids.

[...] It turns out that the Magliozzis are not especially fond of other types of automobiles, either. "I do not own a car," Tom said. "I either ride a bicycle or use public transportation."

Man, the Marlboro Man, Ronald McDonald, Jamie Lee Curtis, and now this. Who can you trust?

Great Larry Wall interview on Slashdot. Of broadest interest is probably his wonderfully geeky discussion of faith and religion.

"Systematic theology" is an oxymoron. God is not a system. Christians are fond of asking: "What would Jesus do in this situation?" Unfortunately, they very rarely come up with the correct answer, which is: "Something unexpected!" If the Creator really did write himself into his own story, that's what we ought to expect to see. Creative solutions.

And this creativity is intended to be transitive. We are expected to be creative. And we're expected to help others be creative.

He is so smart, and has such broad knowledge, and integrates it so usefully and holistically and humorously that I'd consider it worthwhile to read the whole thing even if you don't consider yourself to have an interest in computer language design, which most of the interview focuses on. Much the same way I recommend Understanding Comics and Impro universally even if people don't think they have an interest in comics or improvisational theatre.

Wall says further:

And finally, there is the underlying conviction that, if you define both science and religion from their true centers, they cannot be in confict.

c.f. the Beast:

Our method is science
Our aim is religion.

City Carshare sounds like a great idea. A fleet of cars individuals can borrow for the short-term, to facilitate not needing to own your own car. What a great idea. Just the sort of earthy-crunchy thing that's up my alley. So I hate to diss it. But I'm going to. Costs: $30 application fee, $300 deposit they sit on throughout your membership, $10/month, and to use the cars, $3.50/hour to a max of $35/day, plus $.37/mile (but they pay for gas.)

So joining up for a year is $450. Using a car 10 days in that year at an average of 30 miles/day is 10 * (35 + .37 * 30) = 461, for a total of $911 for the year.

A car can be rented as cheaply as $26/day. Even assuming 15 mpg and $2/gallon for gas, 30 miles/day adds $4. I'll guesstimate that on the outside tax and supplemental insurance adds another $15. Total cost for the usage above: $450.

It really isn't entirely clear to me what usage pattern would make City Carshare cost-effective. Maybe if you had to make a lot of really small trips. But I do great with my bike for lots of really small trips. I could sometimes use a car for the occasional trip to someplace too far or hard to get to by bike or mass transit, or to haul stuff too big or heavy or awkward for my bike trailer, and my call for that is rare enough for it to be straightforward to stack up a bunch of such errands to knock off in a single day.

I sort of like the idea of what they're doing politically, but I also wonder whether their model of participation costs dwarfing the incremental costs might inspire their membership to make more short trips in cars.

Project Censored's Top Underreported Stories of the Year is always worth looking at. One of my favorites for 2001:

Bush administration hampered FBI investigation into bin Laden family before Sept. 11

Less than two months after Sept. 11, [Greg Palast] scored again, getting hold of 1996 Federal Bureau of Investigation memos indicating the bureau suspected Abdullah bin Laden, brother of the most infamous terrorist in the world, of funding terrorist activity.

Unfortunately, angry agents who spoke to Palast told him the counterterrorism probe was scuttled by bureau honchos before it could even get off the ground.

The feds, Palast reported in the U.K. Guardian, weren't much interested in possible Saudi connections to Islamic terror plots. "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis," one source told Palast.

"They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to 'back off' from investigations involving other members of the bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan," Palast wrote.

Software testing for those with rhythm:

Making music out of computer code is helping programmers to catch the bugs that can cause software to go awry.

[...] When different sections of code are put together, they should form a harmonious tune. But if a loop, for example, does not execute properly, the music would not ascend properly and the programmer should hear the error. Similarly, a duff statement would produce a different chord that would be immediately apparent.

[...] Those who "heard" the code identified more bugs.

15-year-old West Virgina high school student suspended for wearing radical t-shirts.

The one I got suspended for said "Racism, Sexism, Homophobia..I'm so proud of the people in the land of the so called "Free".

(Via American Samizdat)

Offend while you spend! God Off Money:

Use a marker to line-out the words "In God We Trust" on all currency, then write "www.godoffmoney.com"

This sounds legal by any reasonable reading of the Treasury Department's description of their code:

Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Like always, a lay reading of law isn't necessarily useful in the absence of familiarity with precedents. Would a court consider the argument that this rendered them unfit to be reissued? I don't know. And investigation of defacement of currency is the business of the Secret Service (which is, of course, under the Treasury Department — the former CEO of Alcoa bears responsibility for keeping the president alive.)

Related fun: Where's George?, a Book Crossing for dollars.

(Via Metafilter)

How flattering. Or something.

A reader this morning forwarded spam she'd received whose subject was:

http://www.mememachinego.com/archives/

and whose content had to do with publicity through search engine registration and spamming.

In case anyone who might be unclear on the subject receives it, we here at MMG! loathe spam (we're even vegetarians), had nothing to do with this, and we were in no way complicit in its sending — the mail wasn't through our server; the only connection is that they used an MMG! URL as the subject line, and there's nothing we can do about that. It seems likely the email address was harvested from a comment to an MMG! entry; I'd point out that including an email address isn't required to comment here, and, in general, I strongly recommend against posting your undisguised email address anywhere on the web.

I'll have to note that in the comments form.

My apologies to anyone else who receives or received it.

A year ago today, I wrote to a mailing list I'm on:

As horrible as this is, I figure we've got no business acting surprised. The US could hardly rack up more enemies around the globe if it were our explicit intent. And I doubt we'll learn the lesson this time. I reckon we'll find someone to blame; kill some people; go back to the business of making enemies; take three steps closer to being a police state in the name of protecting ourselves; and act surprised next time.

I'm much more scared by the upcoming demonization of the designated bad guy, the domestic terror against innocent immigrants who happen to be of that ethnicity, and the upcoming assault on civil liberties even than I am by further attacks. It's probably time to re-up in the ACLU and EFF.

...and was roundly flamed 'cause my grief was inseparable from my anger at the U.S.'s thrice-damned foreign policy and at myself for being complicit with it for not having explicitly worked to change it, and so my grief didn't look like everyone else's, with what was defined as acceptable. I was likened to the person showing up at a funeral and making everyone feel worse by talking about how the dead guy would still be here if he'd given up smoking. Which misses a couple of important points: I am not something separate from 'the dead guy' — I'm a part of it. And as a citizen of a democracy, it's my duty to think critically about our government, especially in time of crisis.

From Newsday, via This Modern World:

Some of the fundamental changes to Americans' legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:

FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.

RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.

FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.

RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.

RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." &mdash Ben Franklin. If we shred the constitution, the terrorists really have already won. (That phrase has been invoked so often in irony, it's hard for me to hear it otherwise even with me saying it.)

First person account of the police riot in Portland wherein protestors of a Bush appearance were pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, etc. (via Boing Boing.)

Disinfo article documenting evidence suggestive of sufficient government foreknowlege that something was up that one would think better countermeasures could have been attempted than we've heard of:

1. Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial aircraft in July 2001.

2. The FAA refused to let author Salman Rushdie fly in North America starting the week before 9/11.

3. Four days before the attacks, Florida Governor Jeb Bush activated the National Guard, citing “acts of terrorism”

4. On September 10, 2001, high-ranking Pentagon officials cancelled travel plans for the morning of September 11.

5. On September 10, 2001, San Francisco’s mayor was warned against flying to New York the next morning.

6. CIA Director George Tenet warned Congressmen of “an imminent attack on the United States of this nature.”

The above via New World Disorder where Jason adds: "Peace to those who died on 9/11 and their friends and family. A curse on the houses of Bush/Bin Laden and their fundamentalist ilk." What he said.

For all my talk on the day, it took me till a couple of weeks ago to re-up in the EFF. In further money-mouth co-location, I figure I'll acknowledge today by re-upping in the ACLU.

Take good care of yourselves. Think of your friends and families and loved ones, and maybe drop them a line. Be mindful that life is precious, and impermanent. Perhaps reflect on whether your priorities are consistent with that it's happening right now — life isn't something to put off till later when you're done with the important stuff. Remember to breathe.

We're all in this together.

As I was biking away from the Farmers' Market on Tuesday, I heard someone saying "that's the guy who's organizing a recumbent group for the How Berkeley Can You be? Parade."

Last night, riding the BART home from my voice class, at the Ashby station, a stranger asked "Didn't I see you in a show with East Bay Improv?"

I'm simply huge within a 1 mile radius of my home.

Loop is a Brazilian blog, written in a mixture of English and Portuguese, which I found through my referrer log. MMG! seems to be the only non-Brazilian blog to which it links. Seeing MMG! there, it almost seems like there must be some mistake.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have a readership that's not only intercontinental but also extralingual. Thanks for the link, Angelica, and welcome!

I commend to your attention John Kessel's excellent novella in the current Asimov's, October/November 2002, "Stories For Men", sure to be featured prominently on next year's sf awards ballots and in next year's best of sf collections. Note that that link is to an excerpt — right now you'll have to buy the magazine for the whole thing. The quote below is not within the online excerpt, but is a favorite couple of lines of mine.

"If anyone catches us up here, our asses are fried."

"Our asses are everywhere and always fried. That's the human condition. Let's work."

Looking up his web page just now, I see that John has online his falling-down funny "Faustfeathers" — the Faust story as a Marx Brothers movie. Don't miss it.

Albergus: I take your point, noble Faustus. But my questions were entirely innocent.

Faustus: But late at night, lights turned low, when you're alone with your answers? That's a different story!

Albergus: My dear colleague! There's no need to treat me like a mountebank.

Faustus: Oh, so now it's high finance? Well, money means nothing here, friend.

Albergus: Why must you keep speaking of money?

Faustus: This is a public university. What else are we going to talk about? You'll learn soon enough that a little Latin goes a long way in this institution. There used to be a little Latin around here, but he went away. That's how I got this job. You look a little Latin yourself, and I wish you'd gone with him. You foreign scholars want to dance to the music without paying the piper. And what does it get you? Asparagus, or contract bridge. But a card like you could care less who maintains the bridge contract, as long as you can pass water under it. Speaking of contracts, what makes you think you're going to get your hands on mine?

Albergus: I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about.

Faustus: If you're so sure, why aren't you rich? You brute! No, don't try to apologize!

Albergus: I didn't come here to be insulted.

Faustus: This is a good place for it. Where do you usually go?

Sleep is a good thing.

[...] Some scientists are suggesting that poor sleep habits are as important as poor nutrition and physical inactivity in the development of chronic illness. They say that this country's sleep debt may be contributing to its current epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Read the whole thing and you'll see that the data is inconclusive as yet. But I can't help thinking that sleeping when you're tired is a good idea.

Advice I haven't been following of late, so I post this here to prod myself. Little sense blowing megabucks on organic food and nutritional supplements, working out some ten hours a week, and blowing my health on staying up late.

www.creativegenius.org:

Are you an emotionally intense person? Do you struggle with understanding why everyone else just doesn't "get it?" Do you see yourself as an artist, a genius, a creative, an intuitive, or somewhere in between? Do you live in another world than most people on the planet? Have you been diagnoised with clinical depression, manic depression, ADHD, or some other mental illness and traditional treatments do not seem to address the problems? Or have you just never fit in with most people? Do you feel like no one understands you? Have you tested extremely high (98 percentile or above) on traditional and/or multidimensional IQ/EQ tests? Does your life seem to be ruled by the creativity and emotion that is so prevalant within you? Do you have a rich and exciting inner life that you have found difficult to share with others? Do you have an insatible 'need to know' that no one understands?

Something I haven't seen much of that I think would've been all over Blogistan had its announcement not coincided with a certain anniversary: Intel's planning hardware suitable for digital rights management.

Intel announced this week that upcoming processors would contain a new technology, code named "LaGrande," which would copy protect software, movies, and music. Intel didn't say much about the specifics of the technology, but — according to a Boston Globe article — did acknowledge that it could, and likely would, be used to implement digital rights management schemes such as Microsoft's controversial Palladium.

Privacy and consumer advocates such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) warn that measures such as the new features proposed by Intel could be used to limit consumers' ability to exercise their fair use rights, spy on their viewing habits, or otherwise compromise their freedom and privacy.

Switch?

Generally I wish Pete would give up the movie/tv parodies and stick to original situations in Sluggy Freelance. But Sunday's strip does well illustrate the point that Quidditch's rules are stupid.

In Passing...

"It's not like she was getting some right away."
"She got oral some."
"Oh well yeah, but..."
"I swear, I'm the only person I know who considers oral sex to be an act in and of itself. Everyone's like, 'Oh, oral whatever, I blew my mailman yesterday.'"

Mil Millington, of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, in his Guardian column:

Margret's employer, however, has started offering her free t'ai chi sessions. Oh, not just Margret, incidentally. The idea that Margret's bosses huddled in emergency session to focus on her alone is certainly compelling: "How can we make her calmer?" "T'ai chi?" "Whale song?" "One of those tranquilliser gun things they use to take down rogue elephants?" "OK, get her t'ai chi sessions in a room filled with whale song. I can't sanction the dart gun... But leave one in the room with the t'ai chi instructor - don't say anything that can come back on us. Just, you know, let him see it's there ."

His novel will be out in the UK next month, but not in the States till next year. Drat!

Revolution SF is reprinting Joe Lansdale's Godzilla's Twelve Step Program.

Saturday, Godzilla goes to the beach. A drunk monster that looks like a big turtle flies by and bumps Godzilla. The turtle calls Godzilla a name, looking for a fight. Godzilla remembers the turtle is called Gamera.

Gamera is always trouble. No one liked Gamera. The turtle was a real asshole.

Godzilla grits his teeth and holds back the flames. He turns his back and walks along the beach. He mutters a secret mantra given him by his sponsor. The giant turtle follows after, calling him names.

Godzilla packs up his beach stuff and goes home. At his back he hears the turtle, still cussing, still pushing. It's all he can do not to respond to the big dumb bastard. All he can do. He knows the turtle will be in the news tomorrow. He will have destroyed something, or will have been destroyed himself.

Godzilla thinks perhaps he should try and talk to the turtle, get him on the twelve-step program. That's what you're supposed to do. Help others. Maybe the turtle could find some peace.

But then again, you can only help those who help themselves. Godzilla realizes he can not save all the monsters of the world. They have to make these decisions for themselves. But he makes a mental note to go armed with leaflets about the twelve-step program from now on.

Later, he calls in to his sponsor. Tells him he's had a bad day. That he wanted to burn buildings and fight the big turtle. Reptilicus tells him it's okay. He's had days like that. Will have days like that once again.

Once a monster always a monster. But a recovering monster is where it's at. Take it one day at a time. It's the only way to be happy in the world. You can't burn and kill and chew up humans and their creations without paying the price of guilt and multiple artillery wounds.

Godzilla thanks Reptilicus and hangs up. He feels better for awhile, but deep down he wonders just how much guilt he really harbors. He thinks maybe it's the artillery and the rocket-firing jets he really hates, not the guilt.

Around town with my 'bent, I'm often asked: "Is that thing hard to ride?" and I say "No!"

Now this looks hard to ride.

=v= Some software archive archaeologists uncovered the message thread in which the ":-)" emoticon was first proposed. My favorite contribution to the thread was from Guy Steele:

18-Sep-82 20:40  Guy Steele at CMU-10A  ! Joke markers again

I hope everyone realized that my previous remark about non-use of joke markers was a joke, and was flagged as such by the absence of a marker. This message is not a joke, as indicated by the exclamation point.

Very zen: the lack of being that shapes being. It's probably no coincidence that Scott Fahlman introduced the smiley in the very next message.

In Bruce Sterling's "In Paradise," in the September 2002 Fantasy & Science Fiction, a man replaces the battery in an attractive Arab woman's cellphone with his own:

There was a fine and delicate little moment when his fingertips extracted her power supply, and he inserted his own unit into that golden-lined copper cavity.

Oh, Bruce.

(Rejected titles for this entry: "Subtlety: your clue to quality literature" and "Hunh. Hunh. He said 'unit.'"

Salon sez:

President Bush on Tuesday decried the “large and disturbing” gaps in children's knowledge of history and announced plans to improve teaching of the history of the United States.

What a good idea.

While in Tennessee, the president was to lead nationwide recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance — something one-third of fourth-graders don't know how to do, he noted at the White House.

And let's teach them also that for the first 50 years, it was recited with (what's now considered ) the fascist arm-extended salute. That 'under God' has only been present since 1954, as a result of pressure from a Catholic organization. That pledging allegiance to a flag has generally been a feature of fascist nations, which we share with almost no other democratic nations.

28 percent of eighth-graders do not know why the Civil War was fought

Yes, they should know that the north didn't want to see more slave states admitted because slavery would steal jobs from whites, not to mention that they wanted to continue to exploit the resources of the south. That the people actually speaking out for and acting for the rights of blacks and slaves were considered a lunatic fringe. That Lincoln said "I will say that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, (applause) -- that I am not, not ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they can not so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

“In recent events our children have witnessed the great character of America, yet they also need to know the great cause of America. They are seeing American fight for our country. They also must know why our country is worth fighting for,” Bush said

Yet somehow I don't think that's the history he has in mind.

The always worthwhile E-sheep has an illustrated script for a comic conceived on 9/12/2001 and not further pursued, Virgin Jihad, inspired by the afterlife promised to the 9/11 pilots.

The unofficial Codex Seraphinianus website:

This web site is dedicated to giving information (what little there is) on the weirdest book in the world, the Codex Seraphinanus. The Codex is a collection of original artwork by Italian artist Luigi Serafini, presented as a travalogue or scientific study of an alien world. Unlike such alien worlds as Darwin IV in Barlowe's Expedition, which one might find in a science fiction novel, the world in the Codex is obviously some kind of perverse reflection of our own. All of the Codex is presented entirely in an obscure alien writing. This writing, in combination with the bizarre pictures, is what finally puts the Codex in its own league for weirdness. For instance, on one page is a "Rosetta Stone" — only it just translates Codex script into another alien language. A lecturer presenting the "Stone" is nonchalantly stabbing a red blob inside of it while he points out aspects of the script. The whole effect is unimaginable, even after several "readings", and I intend to stop failing to describe it now.

Likewise, I shan't try to describe it. Go to the site; see the images.

At the moment Ebay has an original Italian edition with a minimum bid of $500, and no bids yet. Hey, everyone, my birthday's coming up.

But the best news is... it's back in print in Europe! In French and Spanish editions, but with this book, the nominal language doesn't matter unless you're really attached to reading the indicia. For just 200 Euros it can be yours! And, likely, will be mine.

A review of The Immortal Class:

I first heard of The Immortal Class listening to an NPR interview in which the author, Travis Hugh Culley, was trying (with mixed results) to defend his central thesis: that the conception of the American metropolis has centered around the personal automobile as the only practical means of getting from point A to point B, and has done so to the exclusion of all other means of transit — especially the most efficient human powered machine, the bicycle.

OK, I'm sure my bias is showing, but I'm honestly confused here. What's to defend? Is there anyone who maintains that this premise is false? One could argue that it's a function of thoughtlessness rather than deliberate design, sure, but can the resulting effect of car-centrism be disputed? I really don't see how.

From The Daily Bleed:

1859 — US: Self-coronation of Emperor Norton I of America, in Frisco, California.

Joshua Norton, who lost his money in an attempt to corner the rice market, declares himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States & Protector of Mexico:

"At the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, & now for the past nine years & ten months of San Francisco, California, declare & proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S., & in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested do hereby order & direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall of this city, on the 1st day of February next, then & there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, & thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home & abroad, in our stability & integrity."

— Norton I, Emperor of the United States, September 17, 1859

Emperor Norton: Live like him.

(Via DumbMonkey. That does it, The Daily Bleed is becoming a daily read.)

Warren Zevon has inoperable lung cancer, dammitall. And he's morbidly cheerful about his mortality.

"Really, the thing I want is to last through the winter so I don't miss the new James Bond movie," he said Wednesday by phone from his home in West Hollywood. "And I want to wear sweaters, a scarf, the overcoat, the whole thing, like a Winona Ryder movie. And I can be this miserable, classic Walter Matthau invalid. Not that I haven't been that before..."

Bikes are all mechanical (well, barring bike computers, generators, power assist systems — work with me here.) This offers the great advantage that they're relatively easy to understand, and thus it's relatively straightforward to learn to maintain them. And the disadvantage that parts regularly wear out and need replacing.

The center cog of my front sprocket was bent. It's amazing what some millions of rotations and tens of thousands of gear shifts can do. So I bought a new one on Sunday. I mentioned to the guy at the bike shop that it was a part I hadn't replaced before. "Oh, it's easy," he said. "Just unscrew the 5 hex bolts on the crank, pop off the old on, and pop on the new one." I was out the rest of Sunday, so I started the job Monday morning.

Unfortunately, his advice didn't take into account that to replace the center cog of three, you have to get it on the correct side of the smallest cog... whose outer radius is just plain bigger than the center cog's inner radius. Now I got it off, so it's possible somehow... but in the meanwhile it was like one of those interlocking rings spatial puzzles, which I can generally solve, but not with any great celerity. Except the pieces have sharp teeth. Suitable for giving you a cut under your right thumb. Which already has dirt and grease under it. My thumbnail is going to be discolored for some six months.

I washed my hands midway through, and consulted my books.

Anybody's Bike Book:

Changing the front sprocket on most bikes is easy.

Bicycling Magazine's Complete Guide to Bicycle Maintenance and Repairfor R Oad and Mountain Bikes:

Replacing chainrings is actually an easy process. [...] Simply remove the five bolts holding the ring in place and slide it off the crankarm. Slide on a new ring and bolt it into place.

Ah, fuck you all.

Turns out I could remove the small cog, too, and then it all came together. But I was late to work on Monday and still have trace grease streaks in the lines of a couple of fingers.

I'll be one of the players in SF Improv's Improv Slam on Saturday, September 28 at 8 PM at Cafe Eclectica in Albany, just north of Berkeley (same venue as my previous show.)

Be there, or miss a never-to-be-repeated performance!

And the very next morning is the How Berkeley Can You Be? Parade in which I and other laid-back bicyclists will be riding.

Beautiful-bottomed sheep:

Some sheep have unusually robust and muscular bottoms, thanks to a rare genetic mutation, scientists have found. [...]

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Duke University Medical Center discovered a gene called callipyge, Greek for "beautiful buttocks"

I just deleted several juvenile punchlines for this entry. Make up your own.

Some days the web is good.

"Well, well, well."

"What's that smell?"

"Ain't it swell? This is Hell.
As for me, I'm Samael.
Have a seat and rest your legs.
Have a dish of my green eggs.
Have several, you really should.
Try them! Here! They're wikkid good!"

"I will not eat green eggs in Hell,
I will not eat them, Samael!
I will not eat them in the fire,
nor with the demonic choir.
I will not eat them in the pit,
I will not eat them mixed with... IT.
I will not with the Sabbath Goat,
I will not in old Charon's boat.
I will not eat them here or there,
that Vergil guy can have my share.
I will not in the flaming lake,
with Milton, Dante, or with Blake.
I tell you right now, Samael,
I will not eat green eggs in Hell!"

There's more... follow the link!

The Plot to Kill the Carp:

The planet's most farmed fish and a staple of Asian diets, carp are the Borg of the fish world, infiltrating lakes and rivers from China to California. In Australia, they are reviled for the environmental destruction caused by their prolific breeding. The so-called river rabbits have come to dominate the country's waterways since they were released into the wild a century ago.

Now, for the first time anywhere, Australian scientists have a plan to genetically engineer carp out of existence. Injected with "daughterless" genes, the fish will produce only male offspring and thus spawn the seeds of their own destruction. As these doomsday carp mate with their wild cousins, the population of each targeted river or lake will eventually drive itself to extinction.

Umm... we already know how hard it was to keep Eurpean carp out of Australia. So we're supposed to think bio-engineered daughterless carp won't end up in Europe ...why?

The article says the scientists are saying it wouldn't matter if they did. But I've got a bad feeling about this.

Why to make a local copy of images you link to on ebay.

=v= Run, don't walk — or better yet, bike — to your nearest independent bookstore and get a copy of Chris Carlsson's excellent Critical Mass: Bicycling's Defiant Celebration. Carlsson and others, including myself, will be reading from the book at Modern Times Books in San Francisco, this Thursday, September 26th.

I've contributed to the book, but what really excites me is the many other contributions from bicyclists all over the world who've taken the concept of Critical Mass and made it their own. The book opens with what I consider the best prose depiction of the ride ever, from Travis Hugh Culley's The Immortal Class (recently mentioned in this space), and goes on to ride the gamut from prosaic to profound. Read ride reports, look at pictures and fliers, and see what experts in a variety of fields make of the whole phenomenon.

=v= Critical Mass, a monthly event in which bicyclists take the streets for a big rolling celebratory demonstration, or perhaps a demonstrative celebration, turns 10 years old this week. Here in San Francisco, where the first ride took place, we're having A HUGE ANNIVERSARY RIDE this Friday. Show up on your bike for the biggest potlatch/potluck party you've ever seen.

If you can't make it to San Francisco, there may be an anniversary ride happening near you. It's spread to over 300 cities in the last decade, and most of them have rides on the last Friday of the month. Be there or leak air!

Happy Mabon. (Actually, the moment of the equinox was late last night.)

MemeMachineGo! is two seasons old.

Can you find it?

(Looking at the page source is cheating.)

Before there was Buckaroo Banzai, before there was Tom Strong, there was Doc Savage.

Let me strive, every moment of my life, to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it.

Let me think of the right, and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice.

Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage.

Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do.

Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.

Joey was robbed.

As I left, I tossed a toonie in B.'s hat.

"After what happened, you don't really have to," she said.

Not true. Craptacular as the night was, I was still going to sleep in a king-size bed with a roof over my head. She was going to crash in a sleeping bag in the park on a night when it might rain.

"I need the karma," I replied. "I'm trying to end the evening on an up note."

And Betty Woo notes:

Most of the time, I’m aware of just how blessedly lucky I am. I’m healthy, sheltered, fed and watered; I live in an indulgent, technologically-advanced society and come from a social background that’s given me access to education and opportunities denied to far too many people around the globe. The little prejudices and problems I have faced are nothing compared to what some people have been through. Nobody’s ever clutched their purse tighter because of the color of my skin, or looked at me with pity because my wheelchair’s gotten stuck on a subway grate.

And it’s just that luck which offers up a fertile ground for self-indulgent crap. I can whine about my office job or relationship blues because I am fortunate enough not to spend all my time just trying to survive. I can rant about politics and artistic struggles instead of worrying about my next meal, or my father in a prison camp, or being beaten to death for showing an ankle in public. I’ve never had to pick out photos for my child’s funeral.

The Council of the City of Berkeley hereby declares that the space 60 kilometers and above the City of Berkeley is a space-based weapons free zone.

Fair Trade Coffee Campaign:

Coffee activists officially kicked off a campaign Wednesday backing a November ballot measure that would ban the sale of some of the city’s finest and cheapest brewed coffee.

If passed by voters, the initiative would require all Berkeley merchants — from the trendiest cafe to the dingiest gas station — to sell only environmentally and small farmer friendly types of coffee.

Here are the issues, via DumbMonkey.

The Green Party is the second largest party in Berkeley.

Today the Green Party of Alameda County announced that they officially outnumber the Republican Party in Berkeley. Based on the “54-day close” voter registration data just released by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, the Green Party had 4,538 registered members in Berkeley, while the Republican Party had 4,431. This marks the first time in which Green Party voter registration totals have exceeded either Democratic or Republican party totals for any city in the county.

"I've been registering voters for years" says local Green Party official Patti Marsh "and at our tables a much higher percentage than before are registering Green. The current Governors race seems to have pushed many voters over the line. They can no longer put up with the obviously poor choice of candidates offered by the major parties and realize that their candidates are getting worse each election. People are glad to see us out registering voters and come up saying ‘I'm ready to join you. Where do I sign?’"

Berkeley now becomes the second city in California where the Green Party has overtaken the Republican Party in voter registration totals. In 2000, the Humboldt County city of Arcata became the first city in the state to reach this milestone.

Last time I voted included primary voting. The Democrats had 3 booths, the Republicans had one, going unused, and I had to wait in line at the Other booth. I look forward to seeing the Republicans lumped in with the Libertarians and the Peace and Freedom party next time.

Give a massage, go to jail.

The ordinance passed by council requires that parlor employees and applicants wishing to obtain or renew a massage parlor permit undergo a criminal background check. Massage workers also must provide documentation that they have completed 500 hours of training at a licensed massage school.

I am a certified massage therapist, having completed a 100-hour course. Two weeks ago, it was legal for me to practice massage for money. Now it's not. Way to keep us safe, City Council.

Emmy night:

A tuxedoed security guy complete with headset walks over to me and asks if he can help. So I launch into this diatribe about how I was supposed to meet John here over an hour ago, but my hair and makeup folks were running late and I had to make an appearance at the NBC party first. And how Jon’s listed under his company’s name, which I don’t recall. I said all that without taking a breath.

Calmly, he suggests I wait a few minutes outside here, because he assures me it will be harder to find him inside. So I stand there and people are taking pictures of me while I scan every face for the fictional Jon Tsen.

Five minutes pass, then ten. Mr. Headset walks over to me and touches me gently on the elbow. “Why don’t you go on in, I’m sure he figures you bailed on him for those NBC types.”

A self-righteous breeder SUV driver responds to Amy Alkon's harassment of SUV drivers.

Most annoying, though, is her utter disregard for, and ignorance of, the realities of being a parent in modern America. These SUV-driving studs and fillies have used their ample penises and fecund vaginas to make fine broods that now, for the offspring's enrichment, must be hauled great distances many times a day to many different activities. Much must be purchased from far and wide to feed and clothe and house and entertain and educate these broods. At some point, vehicles such as the GMC Suburban become the only logical tool for a family trying to be a good American family.

And, of course, it's not to be questioned whether or not this guy should be having so goddam many children that he feels the need to rationalize an SUV. Because children are a Good Thing and anyone who says anything questioning whether this asshole's genes are so fucking precious that he should make as many copies of them as possible is a Bad Person. And, of course, anything done in the name of For the Children is a Good Thing. Except, of course, for reducing consumption, waste, global warming, and pollution so the children inherit a world worth having. Because... dammit, I always get lost on that point.

(And, yes, I know he's being over-the-top arrogant in an attempt at humor. But I read his rationalizations as sincere, and it's to them I'm responding.)

What I didn't realize until now is that Alkon is a syndicated advice columnist.

No guy ever got the girl by convincing her that the animal within him was something along the lines of Papa Smurf. To let women know that you're good for more than an afternoon of warm fuzzies, you need to formally indicate your status as a willing sex object. This is best done by gluing a little hair on your chest and asking them out on dates to dark, romantic bistros. When choosing candidates for romance, forget about your female friends who have spent weeks, months, or years using your shoulder as a substitute for Kleenex. Instead, target less familiar women whose fantasies about you might someday go beyond having you cuddle their brains out. When you're on a date with one of these women, be sure to let her know that you have a physical interest in her. Touch her on the arm for emphasis when you're talking, put your arm around her, and hold her hand to help her into your car. If she doesn't seem to recoil in horror at your touch, kiss her good night and maybe even try for more. Play your cards right, and you could eventually end up having a girlfriend instead of being one.

Jeff Cooper's cogent reaction to administration hypocrisy (via Electrolite):

The vague hope I felt last week that, after the president's speech to the U.N., we were finally on our way to a sensible approach toward Iraq has evaporate. The administration's sullen response this week to Iraq's acceptance of unconditional inspections (dubious though that acceptance was) suggested that the U.N. speech was not a culminating step in a master plan, as some commentators seem to suggest, but rather represented the latest in a series of improvised and fundamentally dishonest steps in support of a predetermined policy. [...]

This approach to government — determine a policy, then offer a series of dishonest (or at best half-honest) rationales in support of the predetermined policy — is deeply corrosive in a democracy; it betrays utter disdain for the public. And, as others have observed, this approach has characterized the Bush administration from day one, from the tax cut on down.

No need to be reasonable about it. Elayne Riggs' version.

So, the icky war part out of the way first. So we're all like, "Hey, let weapons inspectors back in!" and they're all like, "Dude, you pulled out, inspectus interruptus was your idea from the last time you bombed, and you're like spying on us anyway!" and we're all like "Shyeah, as if, let us in or we bomb you!" and they're all like "This is sooo like just a pretext, we say yes and you'll find something else!" and we're like "No, dude, we swear, no pretext and we're serious and we have lots of bombs!" and they're all like "Let me talk to Kofi okay?" and Kofi's all like "Yo, yo, dude!, they mean business and they have bombs fer sher, we've seen 'em!" and they're all like "Jeez, okay already, your inspectors that you pulled out anyway can come in again" and now we're all like "Psyche, dude! Too late! Not good enough! Give us a minute to think of more demands before we bomb you anyway!" So like, what I want to know is, isn't that the very definition of pretext?

After the punchline:

"No, no, I wish I could do that to myself."

"That's the Pope."

"No, no, we'd pay you."

Found that in some old email from my friend Dominus, with whom I used to play name-that-joke — we could usually call out the punchlines to each other's jokes in under a dozen words of their set-up, often as few as 5.

Apropos of little, the author of the article, Lore Sjöberg of Brunching Shuttlecocks fame, apparently lives here in Berkeley.

=v= A few months ago, many blogs were abuzz about Howard Rheingold's forthcoming book, Smart Mobs, mainly because there were teaser stories in the media. I was especially intrigued because there was a Washington Post article that mentioned the possibility of the military application of the swarming/mobbing behavior of Critical Mass bicycle rides.

As a longtime Critical Masser, I found this interesting and a bit amusing. Apparently I'm a Smart Mobster. I look forward to discussing these notions on the new Smart Mobs website. Also, I would advise alla youse to read the new Critical Mass book and start attending Mass if you wanna stay healthy. Capisci?

It's the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!

(Via Eclectica)

Those scientists are analyzing beauty again:

The beauty of one of Japan's most popular Zen gardens has long eluded explanation. Now neuroscientists have found that its minimalist design suggests a pleasing picture to our subconcious.

The 500-year-old Ryoanji Temple garden in Kyoto contains five outcroppings of rocks and moss on a rectangle of raked gravel. Using symmetry calculations the researchers have discovered that the objects imply an image of a tree in the empty space between them that we detect, without being aware of doing so.

[...] The trunk of the hidden branched tree lines up with the preferred garden-viewing spot of ancient temple floorplans, Van Tonder found. Repeating the calculations with random rock groups failed to generate any similar patterns.

Earlier work by Ilona Kovács, a visual scientist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, showed that the human brain uses similar symmetry lines, like those of a child's stick figure, to make sense of shapes.

[...] The garden, like Mona Lisa's smile, has intrigued visitors for centuries. Tour guides bringing visitors to the 'best' spot to view the garden stop exactly where the symmetry lines converge.

My open challenge to comic book artists: now that we know this, do something with it.

One of the texts for my Vocal Production and Audition class is Audition by Michael Shurtleff.

It has instantly become one of my favorite cross-training books for writing. Shurtleff has 12 guideposts for what an actor should find in every scene.

Guidepost 5 Opposites p 77-78

Whatever you decide is your motivation in the scene, the opposite of that is also true and should be in it. Think about a human being, in all of us there exists love and there exists hate, there exists creativity and an equal tendency toward self-destructiveness, there exists sleeping and waking, there exists night and there exists day, sunny moods and foul moods, a desire to love and a desire to kill. Since these extremities do exist in all of us, then they must also exist in each character in each scene.

Guidepost 6 Discoveries p 81

Every scene is filled with discoveries, things that happen for the first time. No matter how many times it has happened in the past, there is something new about this experience, this moment. Acting is a whole series of discoveries…The more discoveries you make in a scene — the less you rely on “we do this every day” — the more interesting your scene will be.

Guidepost 8 Importance Page 92-93

Most people would walk a mile or sleep a week to avoid confrontation. We are trained as children that the most admirable conduct is that which causes the least trouble, so most of us spend our lives avoiding the conflicts of which drama is made. It’s important for an actor to realize that what he must use in his acting is the opposite of what he has been trained in life to seek. Peacefulness and the avoidance of trouble won’t help him in his acting. It is just the opposite he must seek.

Guidepost 9 Find the Events page 105-106

I call what happens in the play the events. One of the actor’s chief tasks is to create the events of the play. What are events? …An event can be a change. That is the strongest kind of event. An event can be a confrontation — and for every confrontation there is always a result, a consequence for the actor to present. An event can be a climax, which is a major turning point in the lives of the characters.

Repeatedly he calls on one to go beyond the simple, the one-sided, the straightforward, and to find more depth, more nuance, complexity. To bring emotion to everything, and to make everything important (or why are you making the audience sit through it?) In a lesson familiar to improvisers, he emphasizes making the choices that add possibilites ("saying 'yes, and...'" improvisers call it), rather than cutting them off ("blocking"). And to keep the scene driven with passion.

His is a better and more comprehensive description of what a writer needs to be striving to put in every scene than I've seen in any writing book.

CEOs rereading Rand:

Executive headhunter Jeffrey Christian says many of his clients are re-reading the 1,075-page novel to remind themselves that self-interest is not only the right thing to do from an economic standpoint but is moral, as well.

CEOs put the book down knowing in their hearts that they are not the greedy crooks they are portrayed to be in today's business headlines but are heroes like the characters in Rand's novel. They strive to be real-life achievers who do far more to lift the world's standard of living, cure disease and end starvation than Mother Teresa and altruists who believe a full life requires self-sacrifice and serving the needs of others.

(Via New World Disorder)

Tuesday 10/1 9 PM Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity, Pegasus Downtown
Friday 10/4 5:30 Lisa Goldstein, The Alchemist's Door, Pat Murphy, Adventures in Time and Space With Max Merriwell, Dark Carnival

Monday 10/7 7:30 Julia Cameron, Walking in This World: The Practical Art of Creativity, Black Oak Books

Thursday 10/10 7:30 Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity, Cody's

Friday, 10/11 7 Michael Chabon, Summerland, Cody's 4th St.

Thursday, 10/17 7:30 Jonathan Lethem, Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002, Cody's

Tuesday, 10/22 7 PM Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words, Berkeley Ecology Center

Thursday, 10/24 7 Anne LaMott, Blue Shoe, Cody's 4th St.

Monday 10/28 7:30 Dan Savage, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, Black Oak Books

Wednesday 11/6 5:00 Jonathan Carroll, White Apples, Dark Carnival

Johnzo's wonderfully geeky take on San Francisco:

The neighbourhood we visited (near the intersection of Baker and McAllister) was entirely composed of three-story Victorian flats, all of them painted in flattering colors and in enough detail to make a miniature gamer weep.

Sumana shows off her stand-up talents:

If someone calls asking for a book called "Fecal Incontinence," it behooves the bookstore employee to find a way to keep her on the line besides the phrase "please hold."

So last night was my improv performance. It was framed as a competition among three teams of two. My teammate was one of the Student Drivers; our team name for the night was "Brainiac 5." Rejected names: "Raw, Bitten Cuticles," "The King and Queen of the Prom," and "Discount Knives." The competition was excellent, and in fine form. It was a close race. But, well, we came, we saw, we kicked a little ass; ultimately, we emerged triumphant.

Now do I want to actually join the troupe and essentially commit my Sunday nights in perpetuity to improv practice, and a significant number of Saturday nights to performances? I don't know. I have been wanting to make more time for writing, and it's not like I've got free time just lying around. Something has to go (he says eyeing his blog suspiciously.)

And this morning was the How Berkeley Can You Be? Parade. We had nine recumbents, which I figured was doing alright. And it was fun. But when it was over, I didn't even stay to watch the rest; done with my time/attention/energy bottlenecks I relaxed and hung out in a cafe reading Iain Banks' The Player of Games.

Now all I need to do is pay bills and write up the Writers' Workshop report for Potlatch 12's Progress Report #2, and I'll be homefree for the short term.

Blondes an endangered species:

A study by experts in Germany suggests people with blonde hair are an endangered species and will become extinct by 2202.

Updated 10/3: This seems to be a hoax.

What is C.H.U.N.K. 666?

We are a bicycle club and temperance league. We are a wandering klezmer band working to hasten the heat death of the universe. We have stolen more children than the Romany and lost more fingers than Django Reinhardt.

Most importantly, we are believers in the use of muscle-powered steeds which augment the physiology of their riders. After the imminent Apocalypse, gasoline and bullets will be rare. Those who already ride bicycles and shoot bb guns and slingshots today will easily dominate the huddled masses tomorrow. The laws of physics will change as well. Bicycles that are ridable now will be unridable in the future, while our apparently foolish machines lay waste to the world.

I can't believe it's taken me this long to link to the Chunks. And it looks like one of them reads MMG! given his bookmark list.