monday july 31 2006

 

****Recipe Poem

"10-Minute Raw Tomato Metaphor"

It's a sphere of red, ripe
For you to pluck.
It's the sweet, juicy type
Pleasing to suck.

As we take kissing bites
Our lips drip seed.
On sultry summer nights
Tomatoes feed.

-MSG, written at the Lost Sock laundromat

 

****Bring the Googles

My eyes are slowly restoring themselves, but it still hurts to stare at a laptop screen. At least I can go out into public without being all red-eyed and squinty like a carciatured pot smoker.

Mr. Pinault offered to assist me in any way that he could, so I briefly considered asking him to take dictation... but engineers are ill-suited for this type of task, especially French ones. Don't get me wrong, Mr. Pinault speaks and comprehends the English language quite well. The occasional foibles are so endearing that I have begun to mimic them. Like "shrimps" and over-use of the word "forbidden." My favorite is swimming goggles. To Mr. Pinault, these are "googles," as in "Bring your googles in case we go to the pool."

Bring the Googles! Here are recent favorite search phrases from my site statistics...

green tea (makes girls horny)
spark and "malt liquor" and calories and energy
pictures of blue tattoo blueberry schnapps
does walmart carry slimming tea
where can i buy polar seltzer
hepatatis b wholesale price
body odor solutions for obese
emily post on obesity
funny demeaning euphemisms

debate money over love
france - strasbourg - escort - sexy girl
pretty gals sex singapore escort services
escort terminology tossing salad
women mating men pictures
photos of beautiful bare breasts
humiliate her
black thong girls having sex on bikes
sexually exotic
korea's top transvestite star
leg pictures of female mexicans
mexicans lesbians babes
fat italian girls losing their cherries
asian metro groper
sexy belly on her shalwar
walmart sex
should government ban seedy websites on the computer

cindy fitzgibbon is a whore
julia louis dreyfus cleavage breasts
jenna bush nipple slip
wild at heart pics bobby peru
party babes wearing fur coats
monologue quotes from uptown girls

will shark attack a woman on her menstrual cycle
moms that train their daughters to become lesbians
the effect of heroine on pregnancy

butt pictures of baseball players
men in suits with bulging crotches
built in thong gym shorts
foam that you can stick to anything[that they show on tv]that you can stick on bikes razors and other stuff
who is the guy who was involved with enron and just died

green days bad moments
what kind of cell phone does billie joe have
what kind of cigarettes does billie joe smoke
what's was green days first album
what happens when males urine come out green

 

sunday july 30 2006

 

****Optical Difficulties

This post has been brought to you by Conjunctivitis (here - may you never know its pain), which manifested with a vengeance in, of all places, Ikea. Talk about making a spectacle of one's self. (I may have temporarily lost the ability to see without torment, but at least my punning sense is still intact.)

 

friday july 28 2006

 

****Chocolate Nubs

Searching for a notable chocolate quote to accompany "Chocolate Nubs" (below), I was about to cull Katharine Hepburn (What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate) when I saw Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate, attributed to John Milton.

Milton? Him of Paradise Lost, the bane of my sophomore year of college? Odd. It didn't sound like something John Milton would say.

Indeed, lines from Paradise Lost topped off the John Milton quote page ("Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven" "Absence makes the heart grow fonder"). Some Google investigation pulled up dozens of pages with the same quote: Biochemically, love is just like eating large amounts of chocolate. - John Milton. I would have thought that an 17th century British poet would be unfamiliar not only with chocolate, but with the concept of food affecting one "biochemically."

Turns out the "John Milton" who uttered the quote was Al Pacino's character in the film Devil's Advocate. Heh.

The most cited chocolate quote is Forrest Gump, who compared life to a box of them. Not appropriate for this picture, for each contained the buttery, yielding chocolate of a Hershey's Kiss.

 

thursday july 27 2006

 

****The Brain Dead Shuffle

After a year of faithful service, my iPod Shuffle is a dead man walking. It fails to connect to any USB port into which it is stuck, meaning it can neither be refilled with songs nor recharged with life. A few hours of battery remain, scrupulously rationed for jogging until my brand new refurbished Shuffle arrives. So I'm managing public life without a carefully-screened selection of tunes being pumped into my ears.

At first it was okay... liberating, even, to break free of my self-isolating Pod and prick up my ears to the city's cacophonous din. Then it dawned on me that most of the noises were unpleasant: Blaring car radios, crying children, revving engines, and insipid conversation.

"It's so hot I'm melting," I heard a young woman groan into her cell phone as she plodded through Downtown Crossing. "It's so hot... is it hot there? How hot is it? God, I'm like melting... oh, probably like 95... it's so hot..." The laws of informal social discourse pretty much demand that the conversation progress beyond the weather, but it never did. My new mantra as specified by Oscar Wilde: "Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"Did you see Superman Returns?" a young man in office attire asked a young woman in office attire on the T. She hadn't... how was it? "It was awesome," he said. "Really good." She nodded. "The guy was so good, really perfect," he said. She made interested noises. "Like, the beginning was amazing. And Kevin Spacey's in it, and he's awesome. You should totally see it."

Walking home today on a quiet Cambridge side street with brimming curbs of trash receptacles, I was about ten feet behind a winsome 30ish couple as he told her about a recent trip to Bali: "I surfed everyday. The breaks were unreal. I saw some sort of big ancient shrine." She asked questions: "Was it hot? How was the food? What language do they speak there?" Soon we passed a Hispanic man who was picking trash cans for recyclables and putting them into his grocery cart of empties. She stared at him, then, when some distance passed, she asked "What was he doing?" "Looking for empty bottles, I guess," he said. She digested this, turned around to look at the trash picker, then asked "Why?"

The art of conversation is dead, if only because so are the brains that are powering it. Not once in my forced eavesdropping have I heard a verbal exchange beyond bland fact or witless inanity. I eagerly await the shipment of my new iPod Shuffle so I won't have to listen to people discuss their fabulous lunches, horrendous commutes, and whatever crap was broadcast on the Fox network last night.

 

wednesday july 26 2006

 

****Movie Review: Clerks II

Nostalgia can be a tricky emotion on which to base a movie. On one hand, it's good to see the fabled clerks Dante and Randall again. I was all about the first Clerks in 1994, relating to the innate tedium of a customer service job. On the other hand, I grew up, relate more to Office Space, and cultivated intolerance for the shenanigans of clerks. Whatever happened to service? I wonder, waiting for the clerks to stop bantering and ring me up.

Clerks II fully acknowledges the stagnation of Dante and Randall's lives. In fact, the plot is built on it. The first scene, Dante pulls up to the Quick Stop where he's spent the last ten years of his life, only to find it in flames. Dante and Randall get new jobs at a Jersey-style fast-food joint named Mooby's, where they work with a teenaged Transformer/Christian freak and a hot, smart, fun, manager named Becky. It's Dante's last day in Jersey. He's preparing to move to Florida with his fiancee and finally start his life.

The amount of time spent on the plot is unforgivable. And haven't Jay and Silent Bob's potential cinematic contributions been exhausted? The best parts are the clerk banter: The "ass to mouth" scene, the pillowpants scene, the porch monkey scene, the Kinky Kelly scene... oh, and it turns out Jay does have one thing left to give: A positively tickling impersonation of the killer in The Silence of the Lambs. I laughed, I cried, I even shivered.

Clerks II cost $5 million to make, as compared to the $27,000 on the original. Inflation! The script's inflated, the egos are inflated, and the guy's waistlines are inflated (with the exception of Jay, whose cheesy Jersey schtick still kinda turns me on.)

 

tuesday july 25 2006

 

****Mission: Fashion

I told an acquaintance of my impending move to Natick, MA, the ultimate bourgeois Boston burb. "Ooo, Natick!" she squealed, like one would say New York! or London! "There's a really good mall there," she said. Indeed, the Natick Mall, already replete with scores of luxury boutiques and speciality stores, has expansion plans that include a Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus as well as "more natural light and shopper comforts that will appeal to this sophisticated market" (here). It's like they knew I was moving there.

So much conspicuous consumption in humble Natick, no doubt a response to the average American woman's lusting for luxury goods: She's flush with disposable income, she's freed from household chores by modern conveniences, and she spends four hours a day soaking up televised commercials and product placement. Of course she'll validate her self-worth by splurging $168 on Jimmy Choo strappy sandals or Marc Jacobs skinny jeans.

Three years ago, I had a fiendish desire to own not one, but two Prada purses. For subway commuters, bags are like your car. People judge you by its level of dapper. So I bought a black Prada purse (fake) and a brown Prada tote (not fake). I religiously carried one or the other for a few months until the lack of sportiness annoyed me. And on the T, the Prada purse didn't kick up my esteem any bit. I was just another urban working girl, carrying a trinket of indulgence to brandish her attainable aspirations and doing her part to render a brand so ubiquitous that it's downright unfashionable.

Luckily, I won't need to fritter away money to be fashionable this fall, as black, white and gray are the In colors, making my wardrobe instantly current. The Fashionistas will thank me for abstaining the other Fall trends (reportedly leggings, vests, capes, and a host of other garments that most women excised from their closets in the early 90s and will be scouring the Natick Mall to re-acquire.)

 

monday july 24 2006

 

****The Emperor of Ice Cream

For the past week I've endeavored to compose a poem. Some compare poem-penning to baby-birthing, but with me, it's more like my mind is constipated, churning over words and stewing over phrases. And the longer it takes... the longer it takes. I give up if it takes too long. Best leave the obsessive thoughts about language nuances and rhythmic patterns to the poets.

Once in Harvard Square, I saw a man in his early-60s with long, thinning hair and John Lennon glasses, wearing a well-patched army jacket that had "POET" emblazoned on the back in big, pink letters. I pondered the notion of being a poet simply because you call yourself such. Is it different from proclaiming yourself a doctor, an astronaut, or a airplane pilot? Should only people with the proper credentials practice poetry, or is Robert Frost correct when he said "to be a poet is a condition, not a profession"?

A condition, like constipation. But life is too short to read bad poetry. Instead, I bring you an esteemed poet, Wallace Stevens, the great American Modernist who was also vice-president of an insurance company. This cryptic narrative ponders belief: At a funeral wake, do you hang out near the refreshments with the man who is cranking the ice cream machine, or do you sit with the corpse and contemplate the drained human vessel?

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream"

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
-Wallace Stevens

 

****It's a Beautiful Day

Otis Grove, Charles River, Boston

 

sunday july 23 2006

 

****Quote of the Day

"Could I just get a regular hot coffee? Do you have, like, child-sized?" - Chick at Starbucks

 

****Floyd is the "Man"nonite

Today Floyd Landis won the Tour de France, fulfilling my prediction based entirely on the fact that Floyd Landis is a Mennonite. The Mennonites were due for a Tour de France victory.

Landis's humble origins give the media an easy angle for biographical stories, which is good since he's never battled cancer, romanced Sheryl Crow, or been embroiled in a doping scandal. Instead, there's disapproving religious freaks who went to church rather than watch their son triumph on the Champs-Elysees. "We felt in our hearts he was going to win," explains his mother, who hopes Floyd will use the victory to "glorify God" (here).

Floyd is all over the Mennonite Weekly Review Online Edition (here), alongside coverage of missionary activities and Anabaptist assemblies. But I can't find any articles that talk of Landis's present religious convictions. Obviously he has disavowed the traditional dress and lifestyle, but is he still pious? I think not, judging from this article (here) in which Landis shows the reporter an email he sent to Lance Armstrong ("An image of his grimacing face superimposed on the heavily muscled body of an ax-wielding maniac... with the words I'M A HOMO") and quotes Jack Handy ("If life deals you lemons, why not go kill someone with the lemons, maybe by shoving them down his throat.")

As a fellow Pennsylvanian who fled the state as soon as the opportunity arose, I feel as Floyd Landis is my brethren, and that his victory is my own. And now for the requisite ethnic joke: Why don't Mennonites make love standing up? They're afraid it might lead to dancing.

 

saturday july 22 2006

 

****The Teaches of Peaches

Last night Peaches (here) and the Eagles of Death Metal (here) turned Avalon into a den of hyper-sexual rock. The crowd was so young that I began fearing for their morality, and then for my own.

Reportedly the Eagles of Death Metal got their name while arguing with a drunk who called the band Poison "the Eagles of Death Metal." They are neither the Eagles nor Death Metal, they're more like a bluesy Cramps with less ingenious lyrics and no eye-candy quotient. At first it seemed strange that they'd open for Peaches. They sound nothing like her and look as if they'd gang-rape her in a roadhouse, given the chance (of course, Peaches might enjoy that). But when song after song of raw garage rock exalted masculine sexual prowess and the singer kept calling the females of the audience "beautiful babies," I began to see them as the yang to Peaches' yin, as the raucous and playful foreplay for the sultry seduction yet to come.

I've seen and actually reviewed Peaches before (here - in 2003!), and though she is still amazing, I wasn't as impressed. Perhaps it's because Avalon is a less-intimate venue, but also her performance seemed more polished and choreographed; it was like watching someone fake an orgasm instead of losing all abandon. But her songs still rock, and she's still hot as hell at 37 and gives a great performance. A recent concert review (here) of Peaches (with Nine Inch Nails and Bauhaus) dismissed her music and said "she comes off more as a horny housewife looking for an escape from a boring life. The last thing she conveys is a motivation for women to be empowered... Women aren't looking to be strong by shoving their crotches - through thickened thighs - into the faces of men. They would rather be respected." This was written by a man, probably young, who was obviously bothered by Peaches' age and unconventional appearance (I would call her thighs "muscled" rather than "thickened,") and who further thinks that women should empower themselves by gaining the respect of men. That's not empowerment, boy. Empowerment is feeling as if you can do whatever you want, and if Peaches wants to writhe and undress on a stage and shove her crotch in all our faces, well, that's her bag. This jerk sounds like a morality cop who fears women may emulate Peaches by expressing their sexuality through a creative pursuit like music, art, cooking, or dance. Cause Peaches isn't just there for our pleasure, she's there for her own.

Canadian Peaches

 

****The Numbers of Dead

Today I almost started crying in the laundromat while reading the NY Times' coverage on the latest Middle East crisis. The front page features a photo of numbers spray-painted on a wall to identify the 72 coffins of dead laid in front of them in Tyre, Lebanon. Says a man to the reporter, "That's my daughter, No. 9. It's a nice number, don't you think? And No. 7, it's a nice number too. It's my wife. And there's number 10. I hope they will be lucky" (here).

 

thursday july 20 2006

 

****So Retarded

Public vow: I will stop saying the word "retarded," especially in the office, ideally althogether.

The frequency with which I utter this word is shocking. When I'm talking informally and my brain is cued for a word describing something stupid, slow, or a general irritant, it happens: That's retarded. My rhetoric refuses to tap into my boundless vocabulary for a word that isn't retarded slang.

Today, in a non-work related conversation with my boss, I called an actual person retarded. Not anyone affiliated with my company, but the unprofessionalism of my remark hung in the air. What is it with me and that word?

I would never call an actual person with Down syndrome "retarded," even though the term "mental retardation" is an accepted term by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (here.) "Retarded" was bona fide medical jargon until people began using the shortened version, "retard," and it evolved into a slur used by teenagers and people who probably don't rely on their diction to make a living.

Other instances of inappropriate language in or around the office include:

* In line for a lunch buffet at an office party, commenting loudly that the lasagna "looks like puke."

* Threatening to "void my bowels" on a malfunctioning copy machine.

* Calling GWB a "schmo," which I'll never forget because my co-worker looked at me and said "Now that's a word I haven't heard in a real long time!"

* And the classic: At my ex-boyfriend's office retreat to his boss's cabin, during dinner, I told a Dead Baby joke involving pitchforks.

 

wednesday july 19 2006

 

****Life Imitates 'The Game of Life'

The pseudonymous English professor who writes a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently polled his students about their reasons for being English majors (here), curious to rediscover the passion to study literature after he himself has grown disenchanted by academia. The "naive" motivations are eerily similar to my mindset when I checked "Pre-Eng" on the UMass list of declared majors more than ten years ago, especially "Contact with inspirational teachers who recognized and affirmed one's special gifts in reading and writing, often combined with negative experiences in other subjects like math and chemistry" and "A desire to express oneself through language and, in so doing, to make a bid for immortality."

But I was surprised when the professor revealed "Not one student said, 'I am studying English because I want to make a lot of money.'" Because I saw the English Major as my ticket to the good life. And when I say "good," I mean "lighting cigars with dollar bills at my vacation villa."

A delusion born from my lifelong romantic belief in American meritocracy. I played Hasbro's Game of Life a lot when I was little. I loved spinning the wheel, loved sticking the pink and blue pegs in the car, loved buying stock certificates... but hated how a player's occupation and salary were irrevocably determined in the first few turns by landing on a space (Police Officer, $25,000. Teacher, $20,000.) There was no opportunity for career advancement, a strangely Communist aspect to a game that otherwise extolled the virtues of Capitalism. Hard work and talent meant little in the Game of Life; it was all about the predestined payday.

When choosing a major in college, I knew the return on investment for an English degree was risky and, indeed, delusional. An English degree has low career earning potential because it requires four years of reading, writing, and writing about what is read, not studying tax code or the periodic table of elements. I was fully informed of all the exciting options that await the English major after graduation: Teacher or graduate school (to compound the uselessness).

I figured being a really great English major improved my prospects more than being a mediocre science major or a disinterested business major. So I took a gamble on success, read Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Toni Morrison... and at the end of my junior year found myself applying to convenience stores and supermarkets for a summer job while everyone else was preparing for their internships. Surprise! Life is actually a lot like The Game of Life; it matters which squares you land on early in the game. But though the ultimate winner is determined by who has the most money, everyone still has fun playing the Game of Life. This isn't Monopoly, where one player stands triumphant over a real estate syndicate while the other players quake with fear every time they roll the dice. And even if you go bankrupt, inherit a skunk farm, or major in English, the other pegs in your car will keep on loving you all the same, if only because they're inanimate plastic.

Be a winner at the Game of Life

 

tuesday july 18 2006

 

****Movie Review: Strangers with Candy

I could make this review entertaining by padding it with dialogue quotes, but the hilarity flew fast and furious and my brain couldn't keep up. The definitively deadpan humor (go Stephen Colbert!) often took five or more seconds to sink in, and by then they were already onto the next quip. The mirth probably qualified as cardiovascular exercise.

I liked but never loved the Strangers with Candy TV show. Though titter-worthy, I never got past its gimmicky premise: Jerri Blank, an over-40 ex-con/"boozer, user, loser" returns to high school to pick where she left off before a lengthy prison stay. Amy Sedaris had a really great idea... for a Saturday Night Live recurring character. Each episode was built around a specific life lesson that Jerri learns, often for morally-objectionable reasons. Like when she's making racist remarks to a Native American classmate - "Orlando, you can't be a pilgrim. The pilgrims had snowy white skin to match their pure Christian souls. They didn't sacrifice coconuts to their monkey gods" - and then apologizes after finding out that her birth mother was a Native American (who traded her for a pitcher of beer.)

Maybe some things are better in bigger doses. The Strangers with Candy movie (here) is a prequel to the series, starting with Jerri leaving jail (easily 10 of the most hilarious minutes of 2006 cinema... until an hour later, when Jerri takes a single hit of Panama Red at a party.) The trademark "after-school special" pacing lagged at the end, but with so much cynical wit and so many supporting movie stars (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick), I was happier than Jerri Blank in a prison shower.

 

monday july 17 2006

 

****Heat Freak

90 degrees, dewpoint 71, feels like 94: "I love this weather," a bright-eyed intern gushes to me on the elevator after lunch.

My sweat glands still perspiring in an alarmed effort to cool down my body after a mere five minutes of walking, I say "I can't say I feel the same-"

"I'm, like, such a heat freak," she confides as the elevator door opens and I step off with a pinched "see you later" thrown over my shoulder, eager to reap the benefits of excessive office AC ventilation. Heat freak, indeed.

 

****Rotten Eggs

CBS will advertise their fall lineup of television shows on eggs (here). Using state-of-the-art laser technology, the eggs will be branded with punned slogans like "CSI - Crack the Case on CBS" in the hopes that TV viewers are stupid enough to be tantalized by something as uniquely intrusive as "egg-vertising."

CBS is excited about the egg's blitz advertising potential. "Consumers look at a single egg shells at least a few times: when they open a carton in the store to see if any eggs are cracked, if they transfer them from the carton to the refrigerator, and when they crack them open." And at any time during the process, they may be subliminally moved to start watching The Amazing Race.

Eggs are "unlike any other ad medium in the world, because you are looking at the medium while you are using it," explains the inventor. It's the advent of a new age in advertising! The possibilities are endless: Bananas, cantaloupe, oranges, walnuts... Because the produce consumer may have resisted traditional advertising's efforts to fill their diet with convenience foods, but perhaps they'll listen to their squash.

And when the product peddlers run out of food that comes naturally in removable packages, they'll develop edible ink... and even flavor it: "Yum! This Toyota ad on my potatoes tastes salty!" "The tomatoes with the spicy Jalapeno Gap ad are on sale..." "Mom, I want the apples with the Pepsi icing!" A whole industry devoted to besmirching our produce with advertising, with no refuge for the pious but Whole Foods (who will proudly advertise their organic, ad-free peaches.)

 

sunday july 16 2006

 

****The Picture that the Herald Doesn't Want You to See

Last Friday, gnawing Francophilia lead me to the Bastille Day Street Dance at the Boston French Library (here). My sister and I received extra attention from fellow revelers with our t-shirts (see below), bought on my recent trip to France. As we waited in line for glasses of Californian wine, a fat white man with a digital camera approached us:

"I'm from the Herald. I love your shirts. Can I get a picture?" We immediately acquiesced, posed for two shoots, then gave our names, hometowns, and a translation of our shirts (mine: 100% Happy, and L's: Not in Your Dreams!!!... or something like that.)

Alas, today the Herald published their coverage on Boston's Bastille Day without our photo, choosing instead to picture real French people - rich, noteworthy ones (here). Luckily, later that night Mr. Pinault snapped a photo relatively comparable to the one that the Herald would've published if the Green sisters were bustier.

 

thursday july 13 2006

 

****A Horse is a Horse, Unless It's Barbaro

Today Dean Richardson, the chief surgeon at U-Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, gave a grim prognosis on the deteriorating physical health of an American hero named Barbaro: Winner, survivor, horse (here).

Some of you may be sneering "Who gives horse's ass about horses?" You people are cynics and deserve to be horse slapped (here for what that involves). Barbaro is a role model, and should inspire us all to overcome 6-to-1 odds by dramatically breaking from the pack to the finish line full-throttle with an anorexic jockey on our backs. Yes, Barbaro is "merely" a horse. But he was fast.

Upon analyzing the 9-page transcript of today's press conference (here), which sought to end the "excessive speculation that's going on about the horse's condition," it does not look good for Barbaro. Severe laminitis has developed in his left hind foot, "as bad a laminitis as you can have," according to Richardson. But there's still hope: "We're not talking about an animal that's - you know, I don't want people thinking Terri Schiavo here or something like that... you know, he's looking around." That's so reassuring, because I was so picturing Barbaro being all Terri Schiavo, and that would just make me want to take me out back and shot myself.

I must say that I admire the inquisitive of the gathered reporters, who sought to uncover the real Barbaro story with incisive questions like "Has the coffin bone rotated?" "Can you just explain why you cut away the hoof wall and what that means?" "Are you using standard treatment or on the cutting edge" and "Was this exacerbated by Barbaro putting too much weight on...?"

I equally admire surgeon Richardson, who admits "I'm tired. I'm not too tired to give up." It's like he's channeling the Barbaro mettle to heal Barbaro! He won't rest as long as Barbaro still has a fighting spirit: "If he's not comfortable, horses tell you. You look in their eye... when I say he's in a sling, he's really not even resting in the sling most of the time. What we put the sling on, in case he wants to shift and he feels uncomfortable, it lets him kind of put his butt back into it a little bit, rest a hair and then stand up again."

We as a nation have drawn so much strength from this inspirational horse, and despite his diminished condition Barbaro continues to impart life lessons: When you're in acute pain and being kept alive by unremitting doctors, don't sag in the sling. Just kinda put your butt back into it a little bit. Shine on, you crazy horse.

 

wednesday july 12 2006

 

****Tales from the Tunnel

Red Line, 6:30pm: Stuck in a tunnel, internalizing the lyrics to Ministry's "TV II." Announcements are made of “problems at Charles Street.” 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Intermittent progress is made in slow starts, lurching stops. 20 minutes. Stuck in a tunnel.

When I’m in a stationary train, I develop a keen sense of being trapped with no end in sight, and I start to contemplate my own mortality. My thoughts turn to yesterday's train bombing in Mumbai that killed 200 people, but a new phobia emerges: Stuck in a tunnel.

The most surprisingly aspect of the Big Dig tunnel collapse is how unsurprised Bostonians were. We’ve never been comfortable with this $13 billion public works project carried out over 15 years by corrupt managers and oft-drunk workers. Any blind faith turned to suspicion after the 2004 leaks, and now: Proof that the whole thing could give at any moment and crush you like an ant.

And here I am in a tunnel that's almost 100 years old, assuring myself that if it was to collapse, it would have collapsed years ago. But don't old things collapse too? Can anything that exists in a fallible world stand the test of time? Is faith wisely spent on absolute objects, or is it only unshakable when it is an ideal, like a belief in God, in the goodness of man, in the sanctity of nature, and the integrity of the faith depends entirely on your mind's will? Not on structurally-sound tunnels, not on the weight of concrete, and certainly not on the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

 

tuesday july 11 2006

 

****Alaskan Merlot

Scientists are warning that global warming could destroy California's $3 billion wine industry by 2100, with an increase of very hot days rendering Napa and Sonoma unsuitable for wine grape production (here.) Like many crops, the wine grape is sensitive to fluctuations in daily temperatures, not just a change in average temperatures. Even now, summers with too many days over 100 degrees can diminish the quality of a harvest by not allowing grapes to ripen slowly on the vine and develop the type of fruity complexity that wine aficionados thirst for.

Though many global warming studies warn of potential negative effects on industry, climate change is still considered a partisan issue. Taking action to remedy warming trends would be bad for business today, so Conservatives dutifully deny the global warming threat. Last Friday, Rush Limbaugh railed against Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth while demonstrating his trademark ignorance: "Gore talks about what global temperatures were 650,000 years ago. What measurements did the people, human, Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, whatever they were back then -- what measurements were they using to take temperatures and then where did they record those temperatures for Al Gore to go find them in the historical record?" (here).

See, Rush, there's this thing called "science." It's amazing! Science gives us many things - prescription drugs, for example. One node of science is "paleoclimatology," which uses geological features such as glaciers, sediment, and rocks to conclude what the atmosphere was like 650,000 years ago. It's a good thing, too, because 650,000 years ago, the home erectus was the only man in town, and they're notoriously bad record-keepers.

But I digress. To all you Cab crazies and Pinot phreaks, here's some hope: The US Supreme Court will hear a case that could require the EPA to enforce the Clean Air Act by limiting vehicle emissions (here). Two things could happen: Either the court decides that carbon dioxide emissions are indeed air pollutants (forcing the EPA to regulate them as such), or the court will decide that carbon dioxide emissions are just nifty (allowing the EPA to do whatever the fuck they want, as well as undermining stricter emission laws in 11 states, including California).

 

monday july 10 2006

 

****Is reality waiting for a bus?

One week back from my longest vacation since I graduated college (not counting lay-offs, which don't count because when I'm not job-hunting, I'm engaging in obsessive money-saving activities like baking bread, scouring pharmacy sale circulars, and washing zip-lock bags for reuse).

Vacations are rejuvenating, for sure. I always return to my cubicle with optimism that I'll spend my free time doing something great, something extraordinary enough to earn a plot in the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. Instead, I'm back on my routine of purposeless walks, gyming, and writing content for this website so that people searching for really specific genres of porn ratchet up my view count, resulting in glimmers of accomplishment and delusions of future international acclaim.

After the assemblage of my online album of France trip photos (here), I fell into a web hole of googling other people's vacation photos. Not the high-quality shoots taken by Canon-wielding enthusiasts like Mr. Pinault, but the sick stuff by bunglers like myself who can't walk 5 feet without putting another notch on the memory card. Like this woman's monument-filled trip to Washington DC (here), with captions like "Back at The Mayflower Hotel. We took some pictures in the lobby" and "I sometimes forget the camera has a zoom!"

As I flipped through the vacation photos of strangers - the family road trips, the historic landmarks, the beach getaways - I felt a twinge depressed. How wonderful everything is, at the time. How great to take the kids to Disneyland and get the money-shot with Mickey Mouse (here). How fantastic to see the famed sights of Italy (here). How restorative to voyage to a Cancun resort, where you can read the Business section by the pool at your leisure (here).

But after the vacation hours are duly spent, they return to their homes with a changed perspective on life. Why do I choose to live in a constant state of stress? Are all these possessions and accruements suitable compensation for this occupation to which I devote the bulk of my life? What if I quit my job and became a [INSERT LIFELONG DREAM JOB HERE]?

Then, the workaday routine resumes and self-reflection ebbs. And the vacation photos, well, the photos are proof that you did something else for a few days. The photos are souvenirs from an alternate reality... a reality that you lived, but was actually a respite from reality.

 

sunday july 9 2006

 

****Sing when you're winning, you only sing when you're winning

Today Italy defeated France in the World Cup Final, edging them out 6-4 in a penalty kick shot-out in extra-time. (I know. Can I, like, shut up about France for a second?)

The media has declared 2006 the year that Americans embrace the World Cup, but only 9 million Americans - 3 % - were expected to watch today's final, according to the SFGate (here). We didn't get "soccer fever". More like "soccer aches and pains in the immigrant parts." Perhaps the US team would have beaten freakin' Ghana if spurred by a populace who gave a damn. Soccer is considered the perfect no-risk sport for our coddled youngsters; we're saturated with immigrants from soccer-mad countries; and it's another semi-valid excuse to drink Budweiser. Why don't we care?

The reality is that soccer has never had the chance to ingrain itself in our culture. In the 1950s, soccer was the sport of freedom-hating communists. America played football, the sport of Americans. And now we have neither the time, money, or emotional energy to become involved another sport. When we want tedium, we'll watch baseball, thank you. For the World Cup tournament, logistical problem abound. The games are at weird hours - noon, 2am - and in the summer, a slow TV-watching time. Maybe if the World Cup coincided with Thanksgiving and Christmas, and was broadcast live during prime time... can't our sheer purchasing power make this happen? Conspiracy theorists say that media conglomerates don't promote soccer because there's not enough clock stoppage for commercials. And honestly, America likes commercials. We like being taunted with sexy bodies. We want to stay informed about the network's other program offerings. Our short attention span renders us unable to focus for 45 minutes straight so not to miss that rare goal. The entranced stupor that soccer induces is not conducive to the extraneous banter that Americans relish in.

Soccer is For Girls

We also don't bond with other sports fan by chanting. Soccer chants are key in stirring devotion to a team. Check out www.footballchants.org/ for a huge database of English football chants. I like West Ham United's. Like this, sung to the tune "Away in a Manger": Away in a manger no crib for his bed / the little lord jeusus sat up and he said / we hate arsenal and we hate / arsenal / we hate arsenal and we / hate arsenal / we hate arsenal and / we hate arsenal / we are the / arsenal haters. And this, sung to "The Addams Family":Your sister is your mother, / Your uncle is your brother, / You all hump one another, / The Ipswich family. Yelling Yankees Suck repeatedly in fierce unison is as far as Americans will go.

As another World Cup comes to a close, soccer awareness has penetrated American consciousness just a little further. More Americans have taken time to watch games and understand the rules, which is pretty key in the enjoyment of any sport. Soccer isn't all fast-kicking, low scores, and ties if you recognize its strategies, as primitive as they are. A nation obsessed with NFL football can hardly claim to be confounded by soccer.

 

saturday july 8 2006

 

****Movie Review: Wassup Rockers

Wassup Rockers (here) is a docu-drama-comedy starring a gang of real-life Latino teenagers from South Central LA who are into skateboarding, punk rock, and tight clothes. It chronicles one eventful day when the group goes skateboarding at Beverly Hills High School. Their presence leads to all sorts of messy situations with cops, bored and horny school girls, exploitative fashionistas, and Charlton Heston.

Director Larry Clark gave us the carnally bleak Kids ten years ago. I haven't seen any other of Clark's movies, but judging by Wassup Rockers, his film fetishes haven't changed much. Kids was bold and original, but I resent being forced to lap voyeurisic kiddie porn with a hazy moral message involving HIV. Kids is applauded for its "authentic" characters and "gritty" filmmaking, but it repulsed me and seemed about as realistic as The Wizard of Oz.

The two fatal flaws of Wassup Rockers:

1. It's too much like Kids. The meaningless sex and fixation on teenaged skin makes me suspect Larry Clark is a sick, sick man. It's poorly acted, listlessly paced, and presents entire scenes as music videos.

2. It's not enough like Kids. It was boring and had absolutely no plot. The acting was shoddy, the music was repetitive, and all women are whores. And wassup with the first 10 minutes of the movie - a garbled narrative monologue by one of the kids? If I'm going to watch children being exploited on film, it should at least be entertaining.

 

thursday july 6 2006

 

****Les Photos

Click here to see my France photos.

During the five or so stages of my Tour de France, I was doped the whole time with fine food and wine, sunlight until 10pm, scenic landscapes, and Coupe du monde fever. See what my t-shirt says? "100% heeureeuse," which means extra, extra heureuse... or happy enough to hum along to French pop as we cruised many kilometers across France in a Citroen Xsara Picasso, bless its little diesel engine. Indeed, the only processed cheese to be found in France is on the radio.

 

wednesday july 5 2006

 

****A Teaser

Still working on putting together my France photos. Here is, literally, a teaser...

 

monday july 3 2006

 

****Post To Fill the Lacuna...

Upon return from a long trip, initially it's the last 24 hours of the journey that stick with me. Back for four hours, my mind only conjures images of last night's stay at France's premiere budget hotel chain Formule 1 (diabolically efficient; for 30 EU a night, amenities include shared bathrooms, no climate control, and mattresses as thin as the dishrags provided as bath towels)... then, the 3 hour crawl through Parisian weekday traffic... the chaotic CDG airport... the tedious plane ride during which I tried to watch Eight Below, chowed down an American Airlines snack pack, and killed my brain with a Mensa quiz.

What happened the other 12 days? I'm sure after sleep and a gradual detoxification of wine, I will remember other details of my Tour of France, like...

    

    

Many more pictures and stories to come.