Overheard at the Getty

Man One: You used to see so much new age stuff. People wearing pyramids on their heads and such.
Man Two: But not so much any more?
Man One: Not any more. You know what's really popular in LA right now? What's really popular is Kabbalah.
Man Two: Well people need something to believe in.
Man One: How about reality?

Happy birthday to my blog

I just realized that last week was this blog's fourth birthday. [I'm sorry, I just can't make myself type something beginning "blog" and ending "versary." Eradicate ugly neologisms!] That means it's also the fourth anniversary of my PhD-hood. I started this blog immediately upon finishing the PhD because the thought of life without feeling guilty because "I should be writing ______" was too much to bear. (For those of you still in the grad school life, I offer one of my favorite posts, Top ten reasons blogging beats writing a dissertation. Screenwriting bloggers might appreciate it as well.)

I blogged pretty randomly and occasionally until November 2004 at which point political outrage took over and I started blogging all the fucking time. I guess Bush was good for something after all.

Now I'm at a point where I'm tired of ceaseless political blogging. I get my dander or despair up from time to time, but in general I'm just tired of posting the same things over and over. I feel like I need autotext entries that say: "Oh and by the way, the government is making a mockery of the Constitution," or "Did anyone else notice how stupid the President is?" or "Gosh, that guy/woman really is a facist."

I have mildly resisted blogging about myself a lot for a variety of reasons--first, who the hell cares, and second, who the hell cares? But I seem to be doing more of that lately and when A's mom died a handful of people got in touch with me after reading that entry so I am now aware that at least four people care at least some of the time.

I guess that's a long way of saying the focus here is evolving a little and after six years in LA perhaps the transition from Washingtonian to Angeleno is complete and I will now write more about Me! Me! Me! and lament less about Them, Them, Them. We shall see.

In the meantime, yeah, happy birthday to my blog.

(The birthday cake eating child has nothing to do with me whatsoever. It's kk+'s image used through a Creative Commons license.)

Morning video pleasure

I love cheese rolling. I really do.

bad timing

XKCD has been pretty brilliant lately. First the Stove Ownership comic, now this one, which totally spoke to me.

"The years teach us much which the days never know"

A's mom died last night. I am on a plane to DC tomorrow. The funeral will be Tuesday. I have cried more today than I care to in a month. I am so sad for A and her sister--the whole family of course, but especially A and J. For me the death of my mother was The Primal Loss--like the Platonic Ideal of loss, where everything else, every other particular loss was a facsimile or a shadow of that one. It's an entirely different thing to be motherless in the world.

And of course, I'm emotionally reminded of my own late teens when I thought grief would just swallow me. It felt unsurvivable. I truly don't know how A managed to stay friends with me through my parents' illnesses and my rage and sorrow and self-centered death-wish years. I know she wasn't the picture of mental health herself, but surely there were easier friends to have than me. After my mom died I could barely feed myself. If it weren't for A I don't know what would have become of me.

I remember the night that horrible summer that my high school boyfriend broke up with me. My despair was crushing. And here's the thing: It's not like I was so damn in love with him. But he was a way to be somewhere other than in that house. He would come pick me up and we'd go downtown and drink ourselves into sweet oblivion, a paradise compared to the present reality. I came home and called A's house even though it was around midnight. Her dad answered and I couldn't even speak. I just cried into the phone and he put A on. She just said, "Are you home? I'll be right there." I went outside to wait for her but I had already woken my mother. I was on the front step just weeping, disconsolate. And my mother comes to the door and sees me so upset and starts crying. "I wish there was a way I could make this less hard on you," she says. (And here let me say that while my mother was not exactly mother of the year most of the time, this memory still astonishes me for what it says about her capacity to love and her particular love for me--to be so selfless that you wish your terminal bone cancer was not so hard on your daughter. No greater love.) Anyway, so A came and she had a bottle of tequila in her trunk and I sat in her car and cried and drank every drop. Thank god we do not have to do any of these things twice--be teenagers, bury our parents, bottom out on drugs...

I'm really grateful I could find a flight and that I have the best job in the world that will not just let me miss a three-day meeting off-site but encourage me to go support my friend and say goodbye to her mom.

"You begin with the possibilities of the material"

I will miss you, Robert Rauschenberg.

Video of the day

Despite the fact that I am super-grumpy today, this clip (thank you eecue) made me laugh out loud.



There's much other news to report really, but I haven't had much will to write.

I was supposed to be away this week, but the fates seem to want me in LA. First I'd planned a trip to Spain with the bf, but then that fell through ("that" being a deliberately unclear referent in this sentence). Then I decided to make the best of it and go to ABQ for a week, but A's mother got really ill and A had to go east suddenly. So I am having a total busman's holiday.

A's mother is still in the hospital but is, as of today, what they would call stable except they don't call you stable if you're on a ventilator.

A says, "When god gives you lemons, it's time to get a new god," and I'm pretty on board with that.

More good health news: L's chest CT shows no sign of cancer (yay!).

It's going to be an autumn of great shows. Got tix to Nick Cave in September and My Bloody Valentine in October.

Am contemplating another tattoo, though given that I just spent the equivalent of two car payments on new glasses I think it will have to wait.

There's a spray of bullets for you. Randomness.

Cheering oneself up

Today I
1. bought two pairs of shoes
2. shared a bowl of microwave popcorn with Nic the cat
3. bought tickets for Albuquerque and investigated flights to Minneapolis

I'm still not exactly chipper, but hey, I have new shoes and I'm leaving town in a few weeks. I realized that when I feel low, I usually head right for Travelocity. I guess it beats surfing porn or online gambling.

Work has actually slightly mellowed in prep for next week's conference. We have all been working like sled dogs and it's coming together. Tonight I left by 6pm(!) I'm starting to get very excited about the conference. I move into the hotel Saturday and leave eight days later. That's a long time to live in a Marriott, but I have my coffee supplies and my bath salts. I've hired the cat sitter and I pick up my dry cleaning Friday. By this time next week, the project I have worked on for five years will have been voted on and we'll be on the downhill for the conference week. Sort of hard to believe.

I'm starting to get genuinely excited.

Don't mistake my silence for lack of outrage

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I've been promoted here at work to "Director of Communications," which is a very nice way of saying "King of the S*** Pile" it seems. Anyway, that accounts for a great deal of my silence lately. Our biennial conference is next month and it's definitely felt like "there must be a pony" time here for me.

Then of course, there's the travel. In the past few months I've been to Florida, DC, Denmark, Hungary, and Albuquerque.

And as for the personal life, as they say around here "life has shown up."

All of that said, I had to interrupt my radio silence to share my outrage and disgust about the freshly declassified torture memo. You can find parts one and two in .pdf form here and here. (Thank you Chicago Tribune.) I myself have neither the time nor the emotional stamina to read the whole thing. But here are a couple of snippets for you, courtesy of ABC news:

First this stunning logic which basically amounts to "because these people are not subject to standard law, they are not covered by the Constitution." Or put another way, "Having eliminated Habeas Corpus, we are now moving on to use the Bill of Rights as toilet paper.":

"Unlike imprisonment pursuant to a criminal sanction, the detention of enemy combatants involves no sentence judicially imposed or legislatively required," the memo said. "Accordingly the Eighth Amendment has no application here."

And then there's this:

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

"This national and international version of the right to self-defense could supplement and bolster the government defendant's individual right to self-defense could supplement and bolster the government defendant's individual right."

National self defense my ass. What a crock.

I swear to god this kind of thing makes me want to drive into oncoming traffic.

Thanks for letting me share. I will now return to the pony search.

What is wrong with this passage?

From a NYT article on the Democratic primary in Florida and Michigan:

Mrs. Clinton won the most votes in primaries in Florida and Michigan in January. But the states held their contests earlier than allowed by the Democratic National Committee’s rules, leading the party to strip them of their delegates to the nominating convention. Neither candidate campaigned actively in the two states, and Mr. Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.

Random shots from Budapest and Copenhagen

My favorite shot from the trip:



No matter where in the world you are...



Conor's author picture





St. Basil's in 80 kg of marzipan:

My relationship to time right now

You know when you're almost out of toothpaste and you have to squish the tube with all your might to try to get one more day's worth out of it because you forgot to stop at the drugstore on your way home?


Well, that pretty well describes my relationship to the hours in the day right now.

(Thanks to Hamed Saber for the Creative Commons licensed pic.)

Facts about Budapest you may not know

1. Everything is so terribly overheated that it's impossible to sleep with the windows shut.
2. Construction people begin work at 6am.
3. Construction crews enjoy singing rousing Hungarian songs in time with the clanging and banging of their work.

It's my last day in Budapest and I feel a bit murderous. Clearly I'm going to need to learn the phrase "SHUT THE FUCK UP" in Magyar for my next visit.

Grrr.

It's such a perfect day...I'm glad I spent it with you...

Any day that includes exploring a castle, getting a 90-minute Thai massage, and going to the marzipan museum is, by definition, a great day.

We get to sit in a conference room all day for the next six days. I'm glad this one rocked hard.

The virtues of untidiness

All in all, we had a wonderful time in Denmark. Though the coffee--as the Swedes will tell you right off--is not the best in Europe, I defy anyone to find a decent cup at a meeting in the states, so that hardly seemed a point of argument. The workshop was a success. I think the Danes who attended learned a lot and feel more connected and while there were fewer than they had anticipated (around 50 at any given time), I think our being here will make some difference. I feel like I have made some friends and yesterday we got to have an unwind day that ended with a transcendent piece of strawberry tart.

Today we flew to Budapest. Here is a poster from the airport:
The small print you may not be able to read says 54% of Republicans favor foreign investment, while 45% of Democrats do. So I guess CNN at least is still arguing that the world is catching cold when we sneeze.

We have only been in Budapest a few hours, but I am already won over. Copenhagen was very nice and I expect the people are the sort that make me feel right at home right away. I think I must have been a northern European in my last life (are you reading this Trond?) because the manner and reserve most places in Northern Europe where I have been suits me so well. But for the city itself, beyond the people who made it, I am really loving Budapest already. It reminds me of New York in that you feel like you could discover something new and exciting or mysterious around the next corner. And there are trees. Even in their sad, leafless state I appreciate them. Copenhagen had precious little greenery in the city center.

We had goulash for lunch and it was delicious.

The word for the day is the small red hot pepper, which in Hungarian apparently translates quite ideosyncratically. This is from the magazine on the airline:

Should we prepare something even more Hungarian, we can improve the flavour with the addition of cherry paprika or the small pointed capsicum, which in our way of speaking was named after the most characteristic part of tomcats.

There you have it folks. Cat dick. Love it.

Observations after spending a day wandering Copenhagen

1. What the Danes call "a beautiful day" wouldn't make the cut in LA. "Beautiful day" in Danish translates to something like "not cold enough to freeze your tits off." Also it has been so dark and cloudy for so long that any day with the sun shining is by definition "beautiful." Who knows, if Kierkegaard had grown up in LA maybe he would have been a motivational speaker or something.

2. How can you go wrong visiting a place that has an entire category of tasty breakfast food named after it? There's a reason why they call them "danishes." What do we have in California? Rolls with fake crab in them and ginormous beds. Give me the tasty breakfast pasteries any day.

3. Europeans have much nicer winter clothes, especially boots.

4. Nobody here got the PETA memo about fur.

Greetings from the land of cheese, depressing philosophy, and fairy tales

I arrived last night in Copenhagen for a two-week, multi-workshop trip for work. I'll be here until Tuesday and then it's on to Budapest for two more workshops. I'm very excited to be overseas again. I haven't traveled internationally in a couple of years--not since Dublin. And I've never been to Denmark or Hungary so that's particularly exciting. Copenhagen seems a really interesting mix of old Europe and, well, Danish modern. In fact, much of the city looks like it could have come packed in flat cartons in the back of a hatchback. It is, apparently, the first sunny day in about six weeks, so we are looking forward to taking advantage of that in a little wander today. Our hotel is, I am told, around the corner from Copenhagen's red light district ("addict street" it was put to me), so that should provide for some interesting scenery. Perhaps I'll be able to post some pictures later in the week.

Other than the trip, much has happened in the past few months. I've been to Florida (December) and DC/Virginia (January) for family and work trips.

I was promoted at work. I am now "Director of Communications." I tried to convince my bosses that the position should be called "Communications Tsar," but they were unwilling to consider that, alas.

I joined a writing group, though you wouldn't know it from the amount I've been writing. I haven't even posted for blogging.la in forever.

Another friend of mine at work died at the beginning of January, and his memorial was two weeks ago. Last week, I went to a memorial for Bobby, a guy who is very central to my community and much loved and missed by many. It's been a real season of loss for us at the office (where we have had three coworkers die since September and another who is terminally ill) and in general in the larger community.

So lots going on. More from Copenhagen soon.

Story of the day

What if Howard Stern turned to a life of crime? That's what this story makes me think. Running across that story and then being treated to Will's yard art picture this morning made me think it's bound to be a good day today.

Site of the day

This just totally cracked me up so I have to share it. A just forwarded me an email thread between herself and her cousin about mohels, and within it was the URL for Dr. Diamond's site (he is the mohel of choice appparently). His slogan, of course, is "Nothing cuts like a diamond."

I'm beginning to believe bad puns are a genetically linked disease not unlike Taysachs.

And another thing: NOAM, the National Organization of American Mohelim, really sounds like an organization from a David Foster Wallace novel.

2007 Darwin Awards

They've announced the Darwin Awards for this year, and I really think the wrong entry won. The winners of this years' Darwin Award were a couple who apparently died after falling off a slanted roof upon which they were doing the nasty.

But the second place guy is a class by himself in my book:

Michael was an alcoholic. And not an ordinary alcoholic, but an alcoholic who liked to take his liquor... well, rectally. His wife said he was "addicted to enemas" and often used alcohol in this manner. The result was the same: inebriation.
The machine shop owner couldn't imbibe alcohol by mouth due to a painful throat ailment, so he elected to receive his favourite beverage via enema. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party. Two 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!

When the rest of us have had enough, we either stop drinking or pass out. When Michael had had enough (and subsequently passed out) the alcohol remaining in his rectal cavity continued to be absorbed. The next morning, Michael was dead.

The 58-year-old did a pretty good job of embalming himself. According to toxicology reports, his blood alcohol level was 0.47%.

In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an "astounding misapplication of judgment." Three litres of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding. Unsurprisingly, his neighbors said they were surprised to learn of the incident.

Now that's commitment.