I had this dream this morning in which there was sort of a fake civil war going on.
This year we are doing something revolutionary:
I'm so touched: I received an invitation to Santacon Cymru
New Orleans was fabulous, last year, and I'm sure Iain and friends will make Cymru as memorable as London was.
But it looks like we're grounded.
U.S. Copyright Office, FAQ
58. How do I protect my sighting of Elvis?
Copyright law does not protect sightings. However, copyright law will protect your photo (or other depiction) of your sighting of Elvis.
That's one hot hen.
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Whereas my TiVo thinks I need The Sex Monster three times a week and twice on Sunday.
Him: Honey? We ran out of stones and leaves
Her: Oh, can't you just use the wall?
It's hot outside again today. You know what that means.
I dreamt last night that I was wearing an old, beat up, down parka with frayed sleeves. The cuffs had been sewn, badly, three or four times over. Brendan and I went to a store, and I tried to buy index cards but could only find those little plastic sleeves that people used to slide over Rolodex cards (still do, if those people work at a certain retail clothing giant). I took them to the register, along with the 1/2 empty (1/2 full!) bottle of Aquafina water I'd been carrying, and this sketchy old lady took like a year working on our transaction. She ended up charging me for the water, too, and was going to charge me for the jacket til I pointed out that we'd entered the store with both these items.
We finally got away from her, and back to the action-adventure part of the dream where I was rescuing enslaved children from the second floor of the building.
Well, not exactly. I have written perhaps 3/4-4/5 of a novel, 50,651 words of it between 11/1 and today. I actually do hope to have barfed out a complete first draft by the end of the month, because man oh man I can't wait to go back and really develop these characters and fix some of the events in the sequence that gets our plucky heroine from Point Nowhere to Home. She's had a great time, this month, but she's not quite there yet.
Thanks for egging me into signing up, Mig, and for being so crazy prolific as to keep me writing at least every weekday. Now I think I'm going to go read a little bit.
Dental nightmares are the most horrific I can think of. I used to have them all the time, thankfully not in a few years now. They're just the worst, especially when they come true.
Waiting for the elevator in a garage today, we neatly avoided Death By Britney Clones.
For $46.00, Neiman Marcus will sell you a xmas ornament emblazoned "Fuck or Treat."
Do they have a wishlist?
No, I was right the first time: it totally is earthquake weather.
Playtarot
My new favorite.
Mmyeah. That may or may not play in Fresno (CA), but not so much with your ticket-holders here at home. Or, say, in Miami, where the hope this is that one day this is true nation-wide. But right now, it's the sort of thing that only sees a reaction three weeks after the fact. No letters to the editor, no email fwds; Fresno Bee readers just went with it.
Spasmodic has a fabulous new design.
Go peek in on my better half!
There's a thread building on the wKen show about the modern prosecution of laws that are based on archaic religious mores (and flat out prurience, in London, but this is about America so never mind). A conflict arose when some friends assumed that by wKen's postulation (that the cops in his past home state, TX, are behind the times for fining a woman for owning sex toys) he actually meant that all Texans are stupid and all Californians (his other home state) are better than everyone else. It's been widely illustrated there that every state (especially LA, which shares the focus of wKen's discussion), and probably every country, has some funky laws on the books. But they're not always based on religion, and they're always not prosecuted.
Of course, we should all just be grateful we're not in Nigeria or Belarus, both of which are in constantly in the news because of their religious laws and the mass violence supported by the lawmakers against religious minorities. There it's not just a question of giving a blow job, or buying alchohol or motor vehicles on Sundays, it's more of a problem if bear a child out of wedlock, think beauty pageants are o.k., or are Hindu or Baptist Evangelical.
We all have it pretty good, but really we haven't come that far on the issue of Church vs. State, as a nation, since 1620.
As if rabbit's feet weren't enough: neuticle keychains
I had this dream that I was visiting a house, and someone in the house had trapped a bunch of spiders in a cage. It wasn't right, clearly, so I was going to rescue them. I picked up the cage, and saw that this one poor spider was zealously throwing himself at the door of the cage, trying to escape. He was so worked up, I set it back down and opened the door. He came barrelling towards me across this tabletop. He didn't stop when he ran into me, just kept going, trying to burrow into me. I was wearing a belt or something, and he sort of battered at it, so powerfully that had to work to stay standing, and felt this "shukashukashuka" vibration.
I woke up, and when I went back to sleep I had nicer dreams, still with spiders.
I have a tiny bump on my belly this morning.
I'm in the home stretch, on the first draft of this novel. I've re-done the outline probably 4 or 5 times. Characters have surprised me with the basic motivations behind their behavior. Social entanglements have shifted, and a web of obligations and priveledge has been reified then killed off by the protagonist. She's doing pretty well, and might actually make it to a conclusion as satisfying for the reader as for the character. It's conceivable that I might even let my mom read it.
The hardest part is stopping myself from going back and editing right away, before finishing the big brain dump. I find myself preoccupied with cleaning up certain early, or even middle, bits immediately. They embarrass the better writer I've become and look like just what they are: exercises in removing the cobwebs that have coated my atrophied storyteling muscles.
Doing something for the first time is hard, when you're hypercritical. I just have to trust that I'll live up to my trend of following through and achieving the standards I set. There will be plenty of time for alchemy when I have finished spitting out the basic elements. Yeah. OK. Back to it, then.
"And if the values are good enough for our people, they ought to be good enough for others, not in a way to impose because these are God-given values. "
(found at empty-handed.com)
There's a photo; the pictured victim is a slight androgynous bartender. And they're three drunk rookies coming out of a bash honoring one's high-ranking father. Here's hoping they never get a free drink in this town again.
I saw a flyer for this on Telegraph yesterday, further confirming that 2002 is the new 1984:
Dead Kennedys and Fear with The Sick and East Bay Chasers
It's practically hot outside today. Right now it's about 74º. I'd say it was earthquake weather, except that it's the anniversary of The Play and I remember it was hot that day, too.
What is this, like Horeseman #147 or something?Police say California teenager decapitated mother, dog and bird
Dear Sir/Madam,
MYEARS.NET - US$560
Please note that after years, the registration on the domain name
MYEARS.NET was not renewed and this domain had become available to register.
This is a VALUABLE and HIGH PROFILE domain and we believe that this
development could be of genuine interest and benefit to your operation.
Yeah but I don't run an ear fetish porn site. Damn. Maybe I should consider it.
I've had this domain name for a while now, and every time we go to war it's irony is lost a little more. People used to ask me all the time what it meant, but I think they generally kind of assume it's got something to do with granola or excess body hair when the joke might actually be funny. Which is, like, now--->
Kikkoman! Hero of all sauces!
He's got a fish for a head, with a protruding red-capped penis nose! He fights lesser condiments! He gets the girl! He pulls the old "stick it in her ear" maneuver!
Tomorrow is technically the 20th anniversary of The Play, but the party is all week long. My favorite KALX dj, Last Will, who usually plays old creepy industrial music, just played the radio broadcast of the last few minutes of the game, followed by the Campanile bells celebrating the win. Whee!
I care very, very little about football. Even Cal football. I have been to a couple Big Games, and they were fun in a civic pride sort of way (this was before I was an alum). But The Play, well, yeah, that was a great game.
Aha, I was right! Charisma Carpenter is pregnant. And she looks great, and congratulations, and all that! But what's interesting is the way they're treating it, on the show. It's pretty novel. For now.
Next thing we know, people will be having visions of Dubya in tortillas and on the sides of water towers.
"The experience from other European countries is that you don't get that peak in anti-social and disgusting behaviour that can destroy the quality of people's lives."
Frantana represents Russian Amputee Ladies
I used to work for a guy who would have loved this service. He was a hoot, with his goldenrod blazers and matching Boxter. He parked his Rolls in front of the manse he inhabited, across the street from the company's offices in North Berkeley, and was always bringing in some extravagence to show off to precisely the wrong audience. Software geeks didn't care much about his big fat clusters of diamonds, framed stock certificates from his previous failed ventures, and stripper fiances. He was getting ready to quit when he hired me as his adjunct, so I got all kinds of interesting tasks and heaps and heaps of power. Rewriting the sales strategy to include the efforst of the marketing team was one thing, writing pitches and designing the database to manage the processes was another, but probably the most fun I had at that job was managing the VP's email.
Every business trip was a not-very-discreet sexcapade, and he spent a lot of company time making arrangements. There was no real pattern except that the objects of his desire were as wacky a thing as a place might offer. Some of them professed their love, after the trysts, and hounded him well after he was fired and had the cars reposessed and it came out that he was merely renting a unit in the manse which housed 6 apartments. He moved to Arizona with a girl called Bambi, and that was the last I heard from him. He would have loved the Russian Amputee Ladies.
Wait, hang on just a sec, lemme get the camera.
The Jacksons are today's poster children for punctuated equilibrium. They force the human body into ever more unlikely semblances, adding and subtracting chemicals til they're no longer really human but have rather morphed into an altogether new life form.
Click on the photo. I dare ya.
Later:
Oh dear. Don't scratch! It'll come off!
441 citations could mean $968 for each rave-goer
20-year-old Crystal Sheets of Kansasville, said she saw no drug activity. "I could not believe that I was getting a fine for someone having drugs there," she said.
No, baby, you're getting a fine for having a name like Crystal Sheets and thinking we won't catch on that you're there to sell speed and acid. Silly girl.
You might be a red collar worker if... your rolling desk chair is up on cement blocks.
For me, (being stuck to the couch all sick with strep throat and having the sun shine and birds sing so all I really want to do is go outside and play) go together like Muppets and fisting.
BIGFOOT ! One of a kind! 8 Ft tall
That would keep the looters and pillagers at bay.
Some kind stranger in Chapel Hill sent me a CDR of Jam Science. Both versions.
I am in Shriekback heaven.
BBC - Radio 1 Documentaries - Beyond The Pale
When are they going to make the filmed version? Come on, there's a huge public that wants to see Anthony Head in black leather pants, dyed hair, and make up. I'm going to hold my breath and stamp my pointy black buckled boots until they do.
War with Iraq About Oil, San Francisco Activists
Wow. I've certainly heard the theory that this is all about oil, and as complicated a prospect as that is it's nothing compared to this other purported target. That's gonna need an entirely original slogan. "No Blood for San Francisco Activists!" just doesn't roll off the tongue, does it?
Ooh, my, the Batgrl has posted photos of her little froggy friends!
Alnwick (where we stop every time we visit Brendan's granddad) is sounding more and more like David Chase's New Jersey.
They work better if you take the lens covers off, Mister President.
We are having a right proper storm, yessir.
The power went out at about 7:30pm, right when they closed the Richmond/San Rafael bridge. Happy us, I'd just stuck a pizza in the oven (electric ignition, gas oven) and heaven knows I have plenty of candles laying around. It took me an hour to remember that, in a frenzy of emergency preparedness a few months back, I'd bought a snazzy little battery-powered boombox, but by 9pm we were happily ensconced under blankets, in the living room, playing Scrabble by candlelight with KALX as background music.
After using the nifty new Accuvote machines, we were given little stickers that say "I Touched the Future"
Maybe it's just me, but that slogan... it makes me feel dirty.
It's his cousin Voltron who's made of lions.
We're all kinds of excited about voting at Totland. You can't see it in the photo, but there's a swell little building, where daycamps and art classes happen: that's where the voting booths are. This will be my first time voting there; before, I had to go back into the City to vote due to some way too interesting problems at DMV. So I'm extra stoked that I get to play on the swings after voting on the snazzy new AccuVote-TS machines.
I know my limits, and when it comes to cocktails the number is 3.
But it might be that I start the evening with 2 glasses of shiraz.
And then someone makes a pitcher of zombies, and, well.
Then later I decide that Glenlivet looks mighty fine.
And somehow I forget to drink a lot of water.
The sky was so falling this morning.
Oof.
WARNING: Do not bother shopping at Deep Discount CD.
We had a grand total of 56 trick or treaters, last night.
That's up from last year's 37, so the Terrorists Have not Already Won, but still way down from the year before that. I started keeping a tally of costumes last year, mostly for the people who weren't able to come hang out and watch until after business hours, and since that was kind of interesting I did it again this year.