evansandwong.com. beautifully designed stuff. Fetish.
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I'm listening to that song again. There must be a twelve step program for me somewhere.
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My sister and brother-in-law join the blogging universe. Welcome!
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Continuing on yesterday's post about Bigstep and the Mission community, John writes:

"We don't have an official statement, but I can tell you some things. The bank was not home to 25 nonprofits. Only 4 nonprofits were in the building. 3 are still here. It's also interesting to note that we host over 2,900 nonprofits now. We are also doing a number of things to get involved in the community:

• Allocating 10% of our building to rent to non-profit and community serving organizations at below market rates
• Paid internship program with OpNet and BAVC
• Financial support for the SF Children's Council ($10,000 contribution)
• Quarterly group volunteer community projects (recently we built lockers in a homeless shelter and picked up trash at Garfield Square Park)
• Work with local organizations to help small businesses implement new technology (with MEDA and WISE)
• Partnership with the Enterpreneur's Foundation, which invests in Non-profits (we gave them equity)

We also just hired a woman who's full-time job is to help us get more engaged with the Mission community. We are trying to set the standard for dot-com involvement in the Mission...and in communities across the US, in general."

Um, where have I been? I didn't hear about the City Arts & Lecture series until recently when a friend mentioned that acquaintance Dave Eggers was going to be appearing this fall. *cough* First I confess I haven't ever heard the "Thong Song"... and now this. I'm so middlebrow.

If you live in San Francisco, you must go. Look at the list! Last night I went with my beautiful and brilliant (and well-shod) friend Leanne to hear Liz Smith speak (she's that big time gossip columnist.) She was marvellous and witty, described herself as a "fried meat and whiskey" kind of gal, and was particularly ribald for a 77-year old woman, though probably not particularly ribald for a 77-year old woman from Texas, where the major crops are gumption, spunk and moxie. ( cf. Molly Ivins, Mary Karr) Coming soon to the Best Coast: Gloria Steinem, Maya Lin, Dave Eggers, Anita Hill. Missed Margaret Atwood and Stephen King, boohoo. Leanne has season tickets. I'm green with envy. Word on the street is that you can also catch the City Arts & Lectures Series on KQED 88.5 fm. Tuesday nights at 8.
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Turns out I only needed a four hour break. I'm listening to that song again, and am tempted to put it back on repeat.
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My friend John works at Bigstep which has been singled out as a target of the Mission district protesters against the technology industry moving in. Their building was paintballed, protests have been organized right outside their building and last week fifteen protesters came into their workplace and yelled and made a ruckus trying to get Bigstep to call the police and get them arrested. until Bigstep had no choice but to...call the police and get them arrested.

The thing is, John said, was that they've been trying to work with the protest groups for the past nine months. They've sublet 10% of their space at below market rates to community organizations at the behest of the protesters, and yet the protesters continue to misrepresent Bigstep in the press, saying they've displaced non-profits (As far as I know, 4 non-profits were in the building when they moved in, now there are only 3) etc. What an intractable problem.

I recently ran into Steve Rhodes, who alerted me of the existence of the Digital Workers Alliance which was formed to give people who work in the technology industry a voice for both sides of the issue. But on their front page they have a statement that must be a gross exaggeration:

"The Bayview Bank building was home to 25 or so nonprofits until they were evicted to provide office space for a computer company, in violation of the zoning laws. "

It's a really thorny issue, and I'd be happy to join the Digital Workers Alliance too, but like some of the protesters, they don't seem to be playing it straight either.
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Aha. Aquarius publishes their reviews on Epitonic.com, a music site I haven't visited before. Also, followed a link from there to Supersphere which seems to be a musicentric zine. I'm perpetually amazed at how many music sites there are and wonder how they all survive.
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OK. I'm now officially sick of the song below and never want to hear it again. Took 4 hours.
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You can roll me round your finger
You can roll me if I'm blind
You can roll me roll me roll me
I'm the easy rolling kind
But don't think I'm facing down hill
There's something you ought to see
You can lose your grip and slip
But you don't got a hold on me

You ain't got a hold on me
You ain't got a hold on me
Why don't you let me free
'Cause you ain't got a hold on me

You can take me to your bedroom
You can take me to your heart
You can take me up to heaven
But I won't fall apart
But don't count on me giving it
All back to you
Just because I'm hooked on living
Doesn't mean I'm hooked on you

[AC/DC by way of Mark Kozelek] I'm obsessed. This song has been on "repeat" for three hours now. One of my favorite things about myself is my hopelessly romantic susceptibility to pop music.
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I have been recommended the book Awareness by a certain spiritual seeker that I know, who also recommended the excellent Everyday Zen. It is now in the mail and zooming caterinaward.

Its brief blurb reminds me of things Gnostic, certain passages in Hans Jonas' masterwork The Gnostic Religion and certain Nag Hammadi scripture, particularly the Hymn of the Pearl, with its exhortations to awaken. Also Harold Bloom's The Book of J. More as these thoughts congeal, after I receive and read the book.
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I'm a loser too. Though I'm not bold enough to post my losing effort like Heather did.
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This is where I spent much of my childhood. Where I came after school to lose myself. Under the gentle watch of Miss Shattuck and Miss Hill. Where I tried to read all the books in alphabetical order. Where I was befriended by a bookish pedophile. Where I always won the summer reading contest. Which used to be half the size of what you see in the picture. (thanks, Becky!)
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He's making me feel weak.
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Now here's an issue I can really get behind: the Christmas Resistance Movement. I wish we could skip from the 2nd week of November to January 2. Maybe even February 15. Boycott Christmas. Don't feel guilty.
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Sunspots is so much of a favorite song of mine that for an entire year while I was at college it was the CD in my CD alarm clock which woke me every morning. If you need music to wake up to in the morning, you can't do any better than Workbook by Bob Mould. The first song is very gentle and contemplative and eases you out of your slumber. But after that comes the Big Muff guitar that I love so much in Husker Du and Sugar: makes you feel like moving, catapults you right out of the sleeping machine and into your day.
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"Well, Brahma said, even after 10,000 explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only 2,500." -- The Mahabharata.
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Headphones, Pt. 2 Another album I just bought at Aquarius. Ooo. It's gorgeous. One of the great things about Aquarius is their mailing list, that comes with extensive reviews of each and every New Arrival in their store. Go subscribe! A great way to find out about new music, and I know, for example, that just about anything that Windy likes, I like too. Here's the Aquarius review:

KOZELEK, MARK Rock-n-Roll Singer
(Badman) cd 13.98

Windy's new favorite record. Totally gorgeous solo album from the leader of Red House Painters, Mark Kozelek, who comes across as more direct, lush, warm, and poignant. Just perfect. Everyone is loving this album, as the underground word of mouth is spreading. Somehow reminds me of early, mournful Bruce Springsteen, and of course Nick Drake but Kozelek is in a class of his own. You will love this record! And this album's big surprise: four of the songs are covers, one of a song by John Denver, and the other three are...drum roll...AC/DC tunes!! (Totally unrecognizable.)

You can order it -- and anything else -- from Aquarius online. Down with CDNOW! Down with the monoculture! Up with Mom and Pop shops, idiosyncratic, personalized, independent records stores! Up with people!
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Headphones:. On my lunch break today, I finally got around to picking up the Neutral Milk Hotel EP Everything is that I'd ordered from my favorite record store in the San Francisco, Aquarius Records. This is what they have to say about the album:

NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL Everything Is
(Fire Records) cd 9.98

Wow! A repress of a rare, stunning early single from Neutral Milk Hotel. Not throwaways at all, the songs here are SUPER good and since we've heard nothing yet about upcoming NMH recordings, this should tide you over in a major way. "Everything Is" is a happy, ridiculously catchy tune and "Snow Song" is a dark lament, plus there's a third song which never saw release on this side of the ocean. Long unavailable, originally released in 1995 by Cher Doll here in the States. This is the UK pressing from Fire Records. Highly recommended!

From the Preface to The Stranger:

"To lie is not only to say what isn't true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life." -- Albert Camus
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Brewster Kahle The always interesting Brewster Kahle had an interview on FEED recently. I found the part about payments for small publishers particularly interesting -- micropayments haven't worked; Kahle recommends a set-up something like ASCAP or BMI:

FEED: Is there anything in the basic architecture of the Web that's missing that you wish had been put in?

KAHLE: Oh yeah, absolutely. [ At the top of the list would be ] a business model -- at a small-scale publisher's site.... I hoped we could have learned from it and done things a little bit faster. But we screwed up. We didn't make it easy for small-scale publishers to get paid. And I think the right place to tax is the ISPs. Because the ISPs provide the end-user access for a fee. They've got a billing relationship and if we set up something like an ASCAP, public clearance center, that would allow the distribution of some percentage of what's collected from the users back to the content, that makes it such that people want to be online. Right now, people are paying all of their money to use ISPs but the ISPs don't have to pay for the content.

"We are all victimized by the natural perversity of inanimate objects. " -- Isaac Asimov.

Like my silent telephone. Turns out it's my fault, both Schwab BillPay and PacBell are doing what they're supposed to be doing, it's me that didn't RTFM. But I'm kind of liking my telephonic unavailability. It's a kind of vacation.
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Here's a weblog that I quite like, and that you should go and check out: Consolation Champs by James McNally. Music and film and life in Toronto.
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Caterina's New York Unordered List

Photo by the redoubtable Evan Williams,Esq., CEO/Travel Buddy.

• Airport Fabulousness I was worried when we pulled up at "Departures" beneath a single sign reading "National". Never heard of National, have you? What kind of rinky-dink airline was that? The plane was nearly three hours late. At 2:30 a.m.we arrive at JFK and were ushered into a National Airline 60's vintage airport terminal -- and it was so Wallpaper, so Alphaville. Shutterbugged like crazy. Sadly, it had signs posted all over warning of an imminent renovation.
• Hotel. A New York hotel room you could actually take several steps in and walk across the room. This, for me, a novel experience. Usually you have to take off all your clothes and spray WD-40 around to get into the room to begin with.
• Friends. Lots of dinner with lots of friends: Adam, Jon, Emily, Jenbee. I love dinner. I love friends. They made me want to move back. (New York is so much nicer!) Jon has such beautiful children. (Pictures forthcoming)
• Rebecca Mead. Writer from the New Yorker. Dinner at Hatsuhana, fine fish. Gossiped about the fashion industry, her interview that day with Angelina Jolie (who I'd never heard of), and the "hip-to-be-gay" trend of the early 90s. If anyone knows the name of that blonde woman who was the poster girl for lesbian chic, let me know, we couldn't remember. Rebecca was very cool, very smart, and remarkably sparkly for someone who'd already been to prior events that evening.
• Decaf. Walked into Les Deux Gamins and the cutest most baby-talk-inspiring dog was sitting there under the table. Emily and I cooed and tickled, and his handsome owner told us he was a French Bulldog, and had been a runt and was going to be put to sleep if he hadn't bought him. He said his son thought the spot on his back looked like a coffee stain and so called him 'Decaf.' After we sat down, our waiter told us the handsome owner guy was Matthew Modine. E. and I are now suffering from terrible crushes, on Decaf and Decaf's dad. I even checked Kozmo tonight to see what Matthew Modine movies they carried.
• Homeless People. Where did they all go? Where did Giuliani put them? It worried me over and over, each time I didn't see another homeless person, which was often.
• MetroCard Dispensers. In nice bright colors, dispensing those new dollars that I had heard nothing about. (Nor had I ever heard of the woman depicted there, you know, that Native American Lady who was Lewis and Clark's dragoman?)
• Sunshine. Also, breeze. Walking everywhere. People watching. A slice of paradise. I even caught myself inhaling and thinking, "Mmmm. Smells nice." Smells nice? Am I in New York?
• Sophie Calle. Her photographs and text of the hotel rooms in Venice where she worked as a chamber maid. At the P.S. 1 Museum in Long Island City, which was otherwise disappointing, except for that and the room full of futons and headphones.

Insomnia + Blogger = Prolixity.
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One of the highlights of the New York trip was lunch with Jeffrey Zeldman, a terrifically warm and witty man, at a Vietnamese place in the east 30s. Zeldman is the publisher, for those of you who don't know, of A List Apart, a must-read for web designers.

I was thrilled to discover that he was a fiction writer as well, even went to grad school for creative writing. We talked about Novel Sprawl and Post-Structuralist Insufferability (Lorrie Moore: "...a university librarian called Olena describes how she dropped out of graduate school: 'I did try. I read Derrida. I read Lacan. I read Reading Lacan. I read "Reading Reading Lacan".'.. and the beauties/troubles of New York. If you are in Denver, get thee to the Web Design 2000 conference for a piece of the man himself.

Another thing we spoke about wasBlogger and why anyone like us who can write HTML in our sleep would use it. Thinking about it now, I think the reason I use it is that it eliminates -- in my case -- the following steps:

1. Opening an HTML Editor -- I always have a browser open if my computer is on. I use different editors to write HTML -- BBEdit, mostly, but also SimpleText, MS Word, Dreamweaver and now HomeSite, and a lot of the time I'm just pushing pixels around in Photoshop. (Jeffrey says he always has an HTML Editor open, but I generally don't, and am kind of impulsive as to which one I use at any given time.)
2. Tracking down the most recently updated index.html file (I have two computers at home and two at work and they're not properly networked.)
3. Formatting the entry (date, time)
4. Archiving a page that has become too long
5. Adding a permalink
6. Opening Fetch (or Absolute FTP or whatever) and FTPing it.

I also use the BlogThis bookmarklet and so it lives on my browser toolbar, so I don't even have to go to Blogger and log in. Even cooler, I recently set up (w/ Evan's help) the Remote Editing feature, so whenever I visit caterina.net I can edit each entry from the actual page.

The thing I'm looking forward to most: posting via email. I want that very badly, yes I do. I hope it's coming soon.
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Dr. Strangereader: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Suburban Novels and Love International Fiction by Bill Marx, in the latest issue of Ploughshares caught my eye:

Today, the artistic virtues of plasticity are no longer paramount in the American novel. For a number of reasons, the essential links between the flexibility of the novel’s form and the fluidity of experience are dissipating, the mysterious give and take between the elasticity of words and ever-shifting realities weakening. Contemporary life calls for an imaginative renovation of the novel, but it’s a challenge our writers won’t or can’t tackle. Most new homegrown fiction is hidebound and modest, self-involved and shrewdly commercial, calculated reanimations of nostalgia. The typical American novel is content to be typical, sociologically speaking.

Back from New York. Fabulous trip! Rest, then reportage. Meanwhile, I'm singing the six-hundred emails blues.
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Up early. Sitting at my computer and working by 6:30! (Unheard of). I'm miserable. Have to go get my window replaced. So much to do before leaving for New York. AAArgh.
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So my car window was smashed when I got to my car at 2 this morning, a galaxy of broken glass strewn across the seat. The would-be thief had been trying to get to a box that was in the back seat-- full of Herman Melville novels, a biography of Patti Smith and a pile of books on the more arcane aspects of Gnosticism. None of which seemed to strike their fancy.

My favorite orange coat was underneath the car... the pockets pulled inside out. Nothing in them. All in all, it really didn't bother me that much. What bothered me was when when I dialled 911 (police report, insurance purposes). I'd never called 911 before. I was on hold for so long, it was like calling the I.R.S. on April 14th. A recording came on, repeated three times. I hung up, decided not to bother. But what about people who have, you know, bona fide emergencies?That was what made me very very scared.
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Is it lame, pathetic and luckless to be working past midnight on a Saturday night, staring into the void of the cathode ray? or is it bold, courageous and ennobling? I think it is bold, courageous and ennobling! Bold, Courageous, Ennobling! Yes!
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Today I saw Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes (introduced by Chip Kidd) at The Cartoon Art Museum downtown, creators of Jimmy Corrigan and Eightball, respectively, published by Fantagraphics. The place was packed, and our speakers, skinny and pale as recently unearthed root vegetables, spoke in near whispers. When you could hear them they were side-splittingly funny, or poignant, or heartbreaking, much as you would expect from reading their comics. Ware stared down at his glass of water and mumbled self-effacingly. Clowes snuck occasional looks at the audience and showed a clip from an upcoming movie based on his strip Ghost World, which looked promising.

Run, don't walk, to buy the hardcover version of Ware's Jimmy Corrigan. Brilliant. Funny. Sad. Some of the most beautiful design I have ever encountered. Page after page of relentless gorgeousness. And the dust jacket folds out to become a (nice! nice! ) poster.
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Read Stop Stealing Sheep by Eric Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger today. Pretty lite book on typography, good for beginners, can be read in one sitting. I was underwhelmed, had hoped for more since the times I've heard Spiekermann speak he was wonderfully articulate and amusing, given to sudden profanity and bad puns. One thing that was odd about this book was that the information contained in the sidebars was infinitely more useful and insightful than the body text. By the end of the book, I was reading the margins and skimming or skipping the main pages.

Beautifully designed, however. I think the book serves as an excellent example of book design excellence.

Next, on to The Elements of Typographic Style, which promises to be a deeper exploration of typography.
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There is something very essential about this picture: a dog waiting for its owner outside a store. It's one of those distillations of experience, like a baby clutching your finger, a tug on your fishing line, or the plummet of candy into your bag on Halloween.
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This day seems like three days.
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I'm going to be in New York next week...let me know if there's anything there that I Must See, and if you're around and would like to meet up! Oy. I was looking forward to the weekend. Except that I was just informed that I'm working all weekend in order to go away next week.
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Ow. Tired and sad and in pain. Eerg. Fibromyalgia muscle aching.
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Nope. I haven't heard of this Thong Song thing. Thanks to my carefully constructed cultural envelope. Michael is amazed, Judith asks, How did you do it?

Thong Day is nearing its end. We laughed, we cried. We did what we had to do. I will never mention thongs here again. Ever.
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Thong you very much for all your comments. So far: men in favor, women on the fence (ouch!). Women of Italianate or more ample backenditude say thumbs up. Those like me of the knuckle-butt persuasion get the unpleasant flosslike feeling. Apparently there's an extended discussion of the pros and thongs here at pamie.com; there's even a thong forum if you have strong opinions you need to express. Related: Boxers vs. Briefs. I'll weigh in for the minority here and vote "briefs". Briefs are cute! (thanks John.)
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It's now officially Thong Day here at caterina.net. Here we went from a respectable weblog commenting on Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics and sobering Gender Identity Issues to a salacious pulpzine pandering to the slavering lotharios who will now inevitably find this page through their search engine results. "Thong" is such a weird word. Sounds Asian to me, but its etymology (Merriam-Webster) is Middle English, from Old English thwong; akin to Old Norse thvengr thong, meaning "leather strap".

Jason alerts me to the following news item indispensible to caterina.net readers, from the San Jose Mercury News: Thong-undie fans feel strapped by school dress code . Apparently the teenage girls were out picketing with signs that read "Pay attention to our minds, not our panties."

Boy do I know that "feeling strapped by" feeling. You know that bit they put in horses's mouths?
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To Eliminate Unsightly Panty Lines? You can't be serious. So I'm walking along wearing pants and you're looking at my posterior (this is, as far as I can gather, an infrequent occurence) and you notice that -- gasp! -- I'm wearing underwear, I should be concerned about that? Tell me if I'm mistaken here, but don't thongs just give you another kind of Unsightly Panty Line?
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I love my laundry. They pick up and drop off my clothes for only 70 cents a lb., and they use my special detergent because I have such sensitive skin. (Cleaners on Wheels, in SF and the south bay - 877-4EZ-WASH)

But a couple times I've gotten the wrong laundry. Once I got a wardrobe that consisted entirely of black Heavy Metal band t-shirts (I regretfully let go of those). This morning I opened up my lovely blue-paper wrapped clothes folded like soft origami. But the underwear was wrong -- it was all lacy and UnCaterinaLike and -- scream! -- they were all thongs. I dug around my drawers. Bad news: I'm completely out of clean underwear. I have a decision to make.

I'm so uncomfortable today. Why do people wear these things? Don't tell me they're sexy. I feel like I'm being subjected to a medical procedure.
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I was introduced to the Hagakure, translated as "Hidden by the Leaves" by Ghost Dog, which I, as well as Mitsu rented the other night. And I will also quote the quote that has stayed with me since:

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.

I counted my breaths and found that most of the time I made my decisions in less than two breaths, except of course when the decisions mattered, at which point I forgot all about counting my breaths and either a) made a lightning fast and ill-considered decision or b) still haven't made up my mind and am cooking ulcers into my stomach lining. Seven breaths.
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Last night at the Cartoon Network party they had some fabulous party favors: the Cobra Electronics microTALK walkie-talkies, with a range of up to two miles. Strictly non-shabby schwag. Woohoo! I feel like a kid on Christmas. Last night I forgot to turn one of them off when I went to sleep and was woken by the sound of a woman's voice.
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Long live Apple Department: Apple Releases Beta Version of Its Mac OS X. Still with the happy Mac face on the bootup screen.( *happy sigh of warm fuzzies*)
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Does anyone know how to do handwriting analysis? My father did it a long time ago, but my handwriting has changed a great deal in the interim.

I've been trying to make a font of my handwriting for a while, but it doesn't translate very well. This is a sample for the latest attempt.
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From a wonderful interview with comic book artist Chris Ware:

Essentially, I think I just prefer the craftsmanship and care and humility of design and artifacts from the earlier era. And I don't know if that's just the result of me having the benefit of hindsight and sort of editing things out, or if it really is there. But it seems [there is] this arrogant sexuality to the modern world that I find very annoying, and, I guess, threatening, if I'm going to be honest with myself. Everything has to be cool. Everything has to be sexy and fast-paced and rock-and-roll and I just find it kind of offensive. There seems to be a sort of dignity to the way we were creating the world a hundred years ago that I find much more comforting.

Wow. I just realized that Mike of Mike's Weblog is Mike Gunderloy, former publisher of Factsheet Five, which was instrumental in my escape from my suburban country club destiny. Really. Now eccentric kids trapped behind mown lawns and picket fences and subordinated by Cleaver Culture can find out about weird stuff like The Church of the SubGenius and Dirty Plotte and Mikhail Bakunin and Klaus Nomi on the internet, but once upon a time that was no easy feat. Factsheet Five was a godsend to young carless kids who suspected that there were other ways of thinking about things but could find no local evidence. Back in the Reagan era. Anyone remember the Reagan era?
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You don't really know how much you love something until it's gone department: k10k was offline for a week, and I checked in every day to see if it was there. And was sad to see it gone. And now it's back. Yay!
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Read the great excerpt from Crytonomicon on Heather's site today. It explains a thousand conversations I've had with a thousand nerds. ....Forget nerds. It explains a thousand conversations I've had.
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An Australian site: In The Mind Of The Architect I quite like this quotation; it has often seemed to me that artists and architects -- creators of all types -- were trying too hard to be the first to do something, at the expense of depth and richness, at the expense of (shudder) tradition. An overvaluation of the new (c.f. Don DeLillo, Mao II).

"The great tradition of architecture is that the first one probably wasn't all that good, and the second one probably wasn't all that good either, but you know, by the time you got to the fiftieth Gothic cathedral, they were really doing some good work. So, really the idea of the copy in architecture is much more pervasive than the original is, and yet avant gardeism I suppose, or modernism, seems to have always focussed on this... the 'one off'.

-- Howard Raggatt:
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There are some prints by Hung Liu at Paulson Press. Which don't quite convey the magic of her canvases, which are large -- 5x6 and larger, but still are lovely. (Thanks Harold)
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I'm way behind returning emails and phone messages. And suffering from terrible guilt. Back to it all when the dust settles here at work.
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"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context--a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan."

--Architect Eliel Saarinen, quoted by his son Eero in "Time," June 2, 1977
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And for an insomniac, I sure do sleep a lot!
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For a recluse, I really go out too much.
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I am not a very good cook, especially since I moved into this nearly kitchenless apartment. For Shana's party last night I made what I always make when I have to cook for a dozen people: Chicken Adobo, Lola's recipe. If you've spent any time with me at all, you've eaten it.

Today Judith observed that if you keep good dessert wine and good cheese and little pates and olives and fresh bread around your house, no one would ever suspect that you're a lousy cook. And here I was thinking I'd have to expand my cooking repertoire to at least one more dish. I might learn how to make pizzas from scratch anyhow -- inspired by Shana's last night. Then I'll never have to cook another thing. Like Einstein and his identical black suits: one less thing to think about.
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OK, my low-tech and no-tech friends. You have no excuses any longer: Blog*spot has launched and it's easy as pie to keep a weblog of your own. You don't have to know how to anything but type and follow really simple instructions. Come on now! You know who you are, I'm talking to you!
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When I was little I wanted to be an archaeologist (I also wanted to be a nun, a rock star, a jew, a blonde, a lawyer, an astronomer, the president and a ballerina at various other times). However, even in the late 70s it seemed as if there were very little left to find. So I get very excited when I see headlines like this one: Splendid Maya Palace Is Found Hidden in Jungle. The idea that more cities such as this one -- and Atlantis, El Dorado -- might remain undiscovered is impetus for a thousand years of digging, and a thousand years of wondering.

The desire to make discoveries like this is probably another reason to write science fiction novels.
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First Thursdays In San Francisco, the art galleries are open late on the first thursday of the month. I try to go whenever possible, but last night it was intolerably hot and crowded. However, I was very impressed by my glancing look at the Hung Liu show at Rena Bransten at 77 Geary. I will be going back to see that one.
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My friends Robin and Kurt have been working on this top secret project for almost a year now, and finally here it is: LightSurf announces wireless digital camera technology. "Kahn appeared on stage holding a next generation, ultra-portable wireless phone attached to the world's smallest digital camera, designed by LightSurf. Kahn then snapped a digital photo and transmitted the image wirelessly to a web site in a matter of seconds. Operating without cables or wires, the tightly integrated camera and phone captured, previewed and sent the image to the Internet. "
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More on Jury Duty My brother-in-law is the only person that I know who has actually served on a jury. He served for several weeks as the foreman for a jury on a murder case, which had a great blurb: Buck Naked of Buck Naked and the Bare Bottom Boys was shot by a cab driver known as The Pigeon Man in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. He was called "The Pigeon Man" because he kept his cab full of bird feed for the pigeons, which he would apparently lay out for the pigeons at night so it would be there when they woke up. Late one night after getting off work as a bartender at The Paradise Lounge, Buck Naked was in the park with his dog, which was off the leash. He was riding his bike. It's not really known what happened, but possibly the dog scattered the seed, infuriating the Pigeon Man, and after some kind of altercation (Buck Naked had a bike lock in one of his hands) the Pigeon Man shot him.

Brian, my brother-in-law, said that he thought that the judicial system was set up for the greatest possible fairness, but when you throw in variables such as the the human attention span, people with a very tenuous grasp of English and the intelligence of the average joe, it makes for a very discouragingly unfair process. It took them several days to explain to one man the difference between Manslaughter and Murder Two. After serving in this trial his conclusion was God forbid he ever has to appear before a jury.

He writes to add the following:

"The greatest of the problems with the jurors were their emotional biases (versus age, race, gender, etc.) When presented with a speculative description of events from a single viewpoint they would react personally to the scenario and use their reaction to rationalize the defendant's real behavior. As an example: After hearing a defense attorney describe "how an assault might have happened" without supporting facts or witnesses, one juror declared, "If a big guy like that took a swing at me I'd shoot him too!" He made his empathetic reaction to a hypothetical situation the basis for defending someone who's real actions suggest an entirely different scenario.

The other issue was that the rigors of the application of the law and rules of evidence don't allow for the kind of common sense or corrective compassion that fictional accounts often suggest are the right and responsibility of a jury. "

Oh no. This has never happened to me before. I got the letter. Jury duty.
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Rockin til the Dawn. On October 3rd the legendary 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot comes to El Rio in San Francisco for Rocktoberfest. Filmed in the parking lot at the Capital Center in Maryland before a Judas Priest show, starring an amazing cast of headbangers and their thirteen year old girlfriends drinking Jack and cokes and spouting expletives and inanities. You just can't miss it.

You can also watch it in quicktime here at the filmmaker's site.
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I have recently become interested in Penelope Fitzgerald, less as the author of books than as a late-blooming writer. I am interested in her not solely for her books, but her biography:

She was only a couple of years shy of 60 when she began to write, after a near-lifetime that began in a degree of privilege and descended into a maelstrom of penury, marriage to a shiftless alcoholic, the struggle to support her family and a series of erratic house moves. One was to a houseboat that sank with virtually all her possessions: most important, her photographs, letters, notes and journals.

Gender-and-Identity-Politics-Free Day. Today there will be no discussion of gender and identity politics, phalluses, vaginas, reproductive responsibility, caves, ziggurats and/or their Freudian interpretations. Mention will not be made of anything having an aspect ratio of 2:5, 2 or less along the x axis, 5 or more along the y, of tellurian or lunar origin. Concavity and convexity in any shape, form or morphology will not be addressed. There will be no discussion of controversial subjects such as whether women should attempt hair removal (whether by means of razor, hot wax, depilatory cream or electrolysis), seek equal pay for equal work, act as the primary caregivers for children or determine the course and expression of their own sexuality. The names of Susan B. Anthony, Luce Irigaray and Carol Gilligan will not be invoked. Male Veterans of Woodstock and the Summer of Love will find neither derogation nor tribute here.

Issues of race will not be discussed. References to Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez and Gandhi will be suppressed. The race, gender and pedigree of presidential candidates past, present and future will not be remarked upon. No one here has heard of Medgar Evers or Rosa Parks. If they have they will keep it to themselves. Recipes for ethnic cuisines such as Pansit Luglug and Dinuguan will not be recorded here, nor will jokes involving the denizens of foreign nations carrying car doors into arid postcambrian regions be repeated here at caterina.net.

Because today, as far as it is within my power, we will be free. Each and every one of us -- people of color, people of sexuality, people of aspect ratio, people of age, people of challenge -- will be free. Let's all be free.

And -- I am serious now, serious as cancer -- may peace prevail upon the earth. Please. Yes. Now. That I could bless and be blessed. That I could take it or make it and give it away; loaves and fishes, hearts and words, shade and water. I want it so very much, I do.
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Phallocrats and Phallophiles! Have a look at the world's largest Phallic Symbol Collection at Sheer Phallacy. Bananas, ziggurats, national monuments, you name it.
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Yes! Study on male contraceptive show promise. (thanks Faisal!)
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Aw, cool! Scott McCloud has some great new stuff on his site: Inventions. I'm especially into the still-in-beta and not-yet-launched Story Machine, a "random idea generating device"; can't wait til it launches and I hope it's in pdf and print-out-able.
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I got my hair cut. Thought perhaps it was too cute at first; cute being a problem when you're small like me. See August 30 below for a "before" version of me.
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I love, and have always loved caves. When I was a kid, I even lived in my closet for a while.
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Last night we rented The Straight Story, a David Lynch movie produced by Walt Disney. A combination that's pretty hard to believe, really, since his work usually delves into the supernatural, the weird normal, sexual aberration and the pornographies of violence in small town America. This one was about a 73-year-old man who drove his lawn mower across Iowa to visit his brother in Wisconsin. There wasn't a lot of movie there, and not enough David Lynch characters or David Lynch shots. I liked it nonetheless.
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Another great What They Were Thinking. The ur-worldliness of the soon-to-be high school graduate. The languid end-of-summer as lived by suburban kids, driving around, smoking, waiting for something to happen.
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Wow. I haven't told a single person how to react. I think I've said in a perfectly reasonable way what offended me about that link, and why. Granted, there are bigger fish to fry, but you know, this is a blog, and I respond to things as I see them, regardless of their relative importance. No one's taken me to task yet for, say, my unflattering depictions of older hippie guys.

I've never been an enforcer of political correctness. In college I was considered an enemy of the P.C. for my efforts to expel a teacher whose Modern Poetry curriculum consisted mostly of what we used to call "One-eyed lesbians of color" -- no T.S. Eliot, no Ezra Pound, we skipped that generation altogether to read second-rate poets such as Lorna Dee Cervantes, Rita Dove and Marilyn Chin. I am the "rah, rah, you go girl" type of feminist, believing more in supporting women in what they do than in taking down their detractors. I am certainly guilty of all kinds of sexist blunders. I occasionally objectify women -- and men. I repeat unsavory jokes. I shave my armpits. But occasionally I see things that are being passed around the web that set my teeth on edge because I see in them a perhaps unsuspected sexism. And I really do believe that it's the little things that happen every day -- ads that use tits to sell beer, a fraternity repainting their front door every time a frat brother has sex with a virgin, a guy who needs to get a certain number of hits on his web site before a woman will have sex with him -- that grind us all down, that keep women subordinate, that just wear out my good will. So I call attention to it. It's all just in good fun, boys will be boys, lighten up, people say, but if I happen to notice some kind of hypocrisy going on, I'll say what I think. I won't tell anyone else what to think. But they're welcome to read what I think and agree or disagree. Or just send me an email and tell me what they think. But I wish they'd quit the glib ad hominem attacks against their purported friends, and actually put some thought into their disagreements, as I tried my best to do.
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From my new blogchum Dan:

"If you want instances of group sexism that aren't as Godwin's-law- esque as a gang rape, consider MTV's Beach Party and the whole males-wear-long-concealing-shorts vs. females-wear-as-little-as- possible-and-jiggle-for-the-guys culture. Step it up a notch and you have Mardi Gras, which used to be a party for everyone, and is now turning into a show-us-your-tits-va-ganza.

I'm a guy and it bothers me. It's this weird late-90s-post-feminist vibe."

All in the Family by Andrew Sullivan, whose editorials I read avidly: "This campaign season, nepotism is in vogue with both parties. I emigrated for this? ...Some still wonder why voter turnout keeps declining. Did anyone ever point out that in aristocracies, the people don't vote at all? In today's nepotistic nadir, who but the children of the powerful would bother?"
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Just back from my cousin's wedding in Napa. It was wonderful to see all my far flung relatives. Big kiss to everyone, and Andrea and Erich, I wish you a lifetime of joy.
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THE MISSION IS OVER! This is the site whereby the guy said he "got a girl to agree to have sex with him if his site got a million hits." I find this really quite offensive. Why?

• It reinforces the idea that women's sexuality is a commodity and can be bought and sold. The coin of the realm here being "hits".
• Why does he want to have sex with her? Because she's "hot." Why does she want to have sex with him? Because he got a million hits on his web site. Which delineates a pretty clear valuation system, viz: women are valued for their bodies, men are valued for their "achievements."
• That she "asked for it" by making this deal with him is beside the point; women are just as likely to succumb to a sexist false consciousness as men.
• That he is posting it on the internet makes it a collective effort; everyone who hits that site is supporting this guy in his effort to "get laid". Remember the movie "The Accused", with Jodi Foster and Kelly McGillis about a gang rape in Massachusetts? That was such a landmark case because the guys in the bar who were cheering and clapping and encouraging the rape were also tried and convicted for their participation in the rape. Now this woman was not raped, clearly, I am not suggesting that she was, but one of the things that offends me most about this is the general "cheering on" that is taking place here, the frat boy high-fiving that everyone who hit the site was doing. (--> I make this comparison because it is the only one that I can think of right now where a group of people participated in a sexist act, not because they are comparable in terms of degree. )

I could go further with this and get all theoretical on you, but it's Saturday and sunny. Maybe I'll think about it some more and write about it for my other site, Wench (link from evhead.)
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PBJ: I am reaquainting myself with the pleasures of Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches.
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Book of the Month: One year I subscribed to a service and had a flowers sent to my mother every month, live flowers that she could plant in her garden. I think it was one of her favorite presents from me: she loves flowers, and they just kept on coming. Amazon -- and other booksellers who have collaborative filtering mechanisms -- should have some kind of program whereby you can give someone a whole year of books/music/DVDs, selected from their wishlists and from their recommendations, or constrained to a certain subject, such as books about Kabbalah or Stock Car Racing, but have them be a surprise every time. It wouldn't be difficult for them to implement at all, and it'd be kind of like a customized Book-of-the-Month club.

Pricing? Well the cost of the books would vary widely, especially if you wanted to send someone all Science Fiction paperbacks vs. high end art books. I'd say give the present-giver a maximum, or a range, say, $150-200 over the course of the year.
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John Maeda: Maeda @ Media set for October release. I'm thrilled about this book, which I'm sure will be an occasion for great celebration: his design is just stunning. John Maeda is definitely in my Design Pantheon.

Here's the blurb about him from Amazon:

John Maeda is a pioneer in the world of graphic art and is quickly crossing over from graphic designer to pop culture icon. With his fascination for the intersection of computer programming and aesthetic output, Maeda has developed an entirely new computer language that sits artfully between abstraction, craftsmanship, and pure communication. In addition to his pioneering language, Maeda has amassed a fascinating, interactive, and stunningly beautiful collection of work. Among his most well-known words are "The Reactive Square," which features a simple black square on a computer screen that changes shape if one yells at it, and "Time Paint," in which paint flies across the screen. He has created innovative, interactive calendars, greeting cards, and advertisements for companies such as Sony, Shisheido, and Absolut Vodka.

If you haven't seen it already, you must stop by Maeda Studio online and look at some of the lovely things he's created, as well as the Aesthetics and Computation Group which he directs at M.I.T.
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