A Liquid Presence in a Fluid Society. Welcome to My Poorly Scripted Life.

My surfmobile

2009-02-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

2009-02-21T11:23:00.000-08:00

Milk Toast?

2007-05-18T22:51:00.000-07:00

Some woman wrote about me, "After looking at his blog and myspace all I can think of is milk toast." Wow! That's kinda funny.

Just built myself a new Surfboard:

SF Messenger Art Show

2007-02-15T15:41:00.000-08:00

My piece, MessengerNation, will be exhibited along with art by past and present bike messengers at the Velocity SF Messenger Art Show, February 22-26, 2007, Balazo Gallery, 2183 Mission Street.

Instant City

2007-02-02T15:36:00.000-08:00

Read my story in Instant City, Issue 4.

Godspeed and me.

2007-01-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

Godspeed, the film. Here is a picture behind the scenes, as we set up for another shot. The only bike messenger extras were me and my friend Mary Maroon. She is on the right with the red cap. I am left of her, sitting on my bike, back toward the camera, with a black cap. Lynn Breedlove, the author of Godspeed, and star of the film, is at bottom right, blond hair.

When Stupidity Stumbles into New York

2006-11-19T21:09:00.000-08:00

I pulled over the the side of the road. I had just spent four days on the road, driving from Los Angeles to New York in a beat up Fiat Spider my sister had given me so I could drive to Fordham law school in Manhattan. The car had no radio. There comes a time, after driving by yourself to a place you've never been, when loneliness shrouds you and you break out in song. "Country road, take me home, to the place I belong. West Virginia. Mountain momma. Take me home. Country road." I'm not proud of it. But John Denver had been burned into my brain in my youth when my mother spun that record over and over and over again.

As I drove across country, death followed me. My first night, I drove to my friend Ami Solomon's place in Provo, Utah. She was a dead-head, with her dead-head husband. Unfortunately, the day I arrived, Jerry Garica died, and I had to attend a dead-head mourning is some park in Utah. A lot of beating drums and gnashing of teeth. I left Ami, and continued on to Omaha, Nebraska, where a college friend of mine was recovering with his parents from a deep depression that caused him to drop out of Berkeley. From there, it was two more days until I arrived in New York at about 10:00 p.m. I arrived in New York on the day Micky Mantle died.

I crossed the George Washington Bridge in heavy traffic. With the convertable top down, I looked over the edge of the bridge to the New York City skyline, which I'd never seen before. I'd never been to New York. I knew nothing about it. Once over the bridge, I found an off-ramp called "Fordham Road." I couldn't believe my luck. Here I am, going to Fordham Law School, and here is a road that will take me right there. That was my first mistaken assumption. Well, Fordham University is in the Bronx, and Fordham Law School is in midtown Manhattan. I pulled off the highway onto Fordham Road, and got lost in the Bronx. I knew it was a bad situation when I looked back and saw a kid on roller blades hanging off the luggage rack of my car, as I pulled him along. I remember throngs of people out on the hot summer night. I was aghast as I watched people, including small kids...toddlers running up and down the street at 10:30 p.m. I turned onto a side street, and pulled to the side of the road. I pulled out my large map. Two black kids approached me, an adolecent boy and girl. The boy turned to me and said, "I wouldn't park here if I were you. You'd better get on a main street. It's not safe."

I found Broadway, and followed it south, out of the Bronx and into Manhattan. I drove south on Broadway. I was dressed in rags. I smelled. So I decided it was the right time for a drink. I stopped at a bar. I figure that the bar was somewhere around 82nd Street or so (years later I tried to find that bar, but never did see it again) It was a nice place. Not like a sports bar or an Irish bar, but a place where you'd find attractive, yuppie women. I ordered a Martini. I've always regretted that. What the hell was I thinking? A fucking Martini. Why didn't I order a Manhattan. I don't know what I was thinking. I drank the martini, realized that I was out-classed, and headed back to my car. By this time, it must have been about midnight. I was dehydrated, so the drink went right to my head. I was having trouble driving the car. I stopped the car near a west side hotel that was right off of Central Park West. I tried to sleep in the car, but the lights from the hotel entrance were to bright, and the activity was to intense. I started up again and stopped near a deli. I bought a sliced turkey sandwich and an orange juice. It was one of the worst meals I've ever had. It made me naughteous. I got back into my car, drove south on Broadway, until I came to 60th Street, where Fordham Law is. I drove past the school, and down to West End Avenue, right behind some projects. At about 62 Street and West End, I found a parking space and tried to sleep in the car. Some cab driver was parked right in front of me, doing the same thing. I didn't know anybody in New York. I had no place to go. I had a few hundred dollars on me. I wanted to save that and try to get a room somewhere. So I had no place to live.

The next day, I wandered around New York, trying get my bearings and find a room. Of course, I hadn't realized how high the cost of living was there. The only rooms in my price range were owned by people with funny accents, who demanded to know if I had a job. Well, I didn't. The next day school started its orientation. I had to get cleaned up. I asked someone if they knew where a cheap motel was. Someone pointed me in the direction of the Liberty Inn in the meat packing district. It cost me something like $75 dollars for my love motel room, with no bathroom and shared shower and toilet accommodations. The television spilled out porn. I can still remember the look of a white girl, sucking some black guys cock, and looking up at his face, pearing down from up there was the camera. I looked out my window over the Hudson River to New Jersey. I could see "The Vault," which I did not know at the time was a Sex Club/Fetish Venue (it's now gone, since they put a road over the block where it once stood). I knew something was amiss because of the seedy dudes hanging out the front, waiting to get in. I cleaned up and went to bed.

The next morning I went to check out. A young couple...kids really, were tying to negotiate a room past the noon hour with the limited funds they had. The guy behind the window was apprehensive about taking my American Express Traveller's check. He didn't really have a choice. It was take it or don't get paid. Your choice, dude.

Stay tuned for "2L" - my vinnettes about being a homeless law student.

Emigrant Wilderness

2006-10-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

Emigrant Wilderness. September 29 - October 1, 2006.
(Photos by Hade and Sal)

Time to go Camping!

2006-07-16T00:40:00.000-07:00

Camp/surf mobile....ready soon.

War Story

2006-06-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

...So I get out of bed to go move my car from the commercial zone I parked it in yesterday, before I get a ticket. That's when I witness my first Iraq War amputee (June 19, 2006 @ apprx. 7:30 a.m.) I only saw him from the back, but I got the sense he was Asian. He was young, wearing a forest green camaflage backpack, and a military haircut. He also sported a pinkish, rod/tub with a brown shoe at the end, where his leg would have been. Crazy.

I Rebuilt This 1984 Peugeot.

2006-06-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

From This...
To This!

It took a lot of work; stripping the paint, grinding down the shifter brackets, fabricating an attachment for the derailleur cable and rebuilding the bike.

Too Much American Chopper

2006-05-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

Here it is, with the floor almost fully ripped out. I can actually drive it like this. The yellow twine is tied to the accelerator cable. I hold the end of it, and pull the twine with my foot. Its kind cool driving around with no floor.

Where have you gone "Tip" O'Neil? We need you.

2006-05-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

It was after the beginning of the Dark Time, as the American people slipped irresponsibly rightward with the onset of the Reagan Revolution, that those of us on the political left, while watching the Senate fall to the Republicans, the disenfranchised thrown onto our streets, social services being slashed, and public employees slandered, that we took some comfort seeing that grand old man of democratic liberalism from Boston sitting behind the affiable grin of the Evil Emperor who stood in the shadow of the dark side of the force. During the State of the Union Addresses of the Reagan presidency, O'Neil sat behind Reagan, and represented the thin line between sanity, and our a devolution into the wickedness of unbridled conservativism.

Where are you Tip? We need you now. Hope fades with this new, more evil, and infinately less capable second assault from the ideo-con right. Who will sit and watch over us...sit their with a working class majesty, and thwart the Republican evil doers?

VW Bus Comes To Life.

2006-04-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

After working in the rain the entire day, the VW Bus that has frustrated me with its various symptoms finally came to life. I've replaced the fuel pump, fuel filter, spark plugs, the coil, the thermo-time switch, the double relay, the distibutor cables, the battery and the tires. I had to take out the air intake distrubtor, and the throttle valve housing to work on the thermo-time switch. I stripped the inside of almost everything. When I fired up that engine, I almost cried. The engine runs strong and smooth. When I got it ready to drive it out of the rain and into the barn (it had been sitting outside, exposed to the elements for years), I had to put it in gear (its an automatic - believe it or not), go back to the rear of the bus to the engine bay to rev the engine to make it move, then run to the driver seat and steer it. I did this about four times.

When I first got the thing it had for flat tires, was filled with rust, water and composting leaves that had blown in through the open window. I vacuumed out the engine, where some kind of rodent had build a nest and resided. I cleaned the outside, which was covered in moss, mold and lichen.

Now all I have to do is weld in the floor pan. I practiced welding today with a MIG welder. I haven't welded since H.S. when I took metal shop with Mr. Lester in or around 1983. Then I used a Oxyacetylene (gas) torch. This new MIG welder is much, much easier.

There is still some major stuff to do. But it will be ready by summer.

Straight Eye for the Straight Guy

2006-03-01T13:05:00.000-08:00

Or, why I love shopping at thrift stores.

Us straight guys get a bad rap in the fashion department. Why? Let's fact it, fashion is a waste of time. Not only that, but shopping is one of life's most painful experiences, and its a waste of money that could be put to better uses.

When I shop for clothes, pretty much I just want to be left alone. I don't want someone asking me if I need help. If I needed help, sales person, you'll be the first to know.

This is why shopping at thrift stores rocks. Go to any of them, on Howard, or Valencia or where ever. No one will bother you, and you can fashionably dress in something other than khaki's and button down shirts because all the more fashionable people sell their very expensive hand-me-downs so that they can go pay exorbitant amounts of money on the latest fashion "must haves." Even with a half assed effort, you are head and shoulders above your average dude in the "stylin' and profilin'" category.

Take it from me, you don't need Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to do a wardrobe make over. Just buy their used clothes.

The Soon To Be Surf Mobile is Shaping Up.

2006-02-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

When I transfered from Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, to Franklin High School, back in the day, I was registered for a class that I would never have picked myself, metal shop. Thank God. My beloved VW Combi has a major rust issue on the driver's side floor pan. After I installed a new fuel pump and double relay, I attempted to start up the bus. I pushed on the gas pedal. It broke. I crawled under the bus to find the floor pan rusted through. I did a survey of the van, and and this was the only real rust issue. So, I'm going to have to either weld in a new floor pan, or make patch and weld it in. Besides that, I have a vacuum leak somewhere within the tubing of the engine. As soon as these issues are taken care of, I'll be ready to go.

Certified Whore

2006-01-29T23:33:00.000-08:00

"Whore College" is a series of educational and entertaining evenings by long time sex worker, activist, artist and Dean of Whores, Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot. This series includes multi-media song, dance, schtick and Power Point presentations in collaboration with local artists and educators. Attend all four evenings and earn your continuing education degree in "Sex Worker Arts and Politics."

Don't Shoot.

2006-01-25T21:52:00.000-08:00

There are just some things you never want to hear. Today was one of those situations. So there I am, riding my bicycle home from Safeway, toward the corner of Townsend and Third. It's 9:20 p.m. I see a mess of police cars. As I approach the corner, I see a big, bald, black police officer pointing a shotgun from the east side of the street toward the west side. A red car parks and a camera man jumps out. I cross Third to get a better look, hiding behind a brick pillar, and peaking north up Townsend. Across the street I see another cop, this one in plain clothes hunkered down with a handgun behind the trash receptical near McDonalds on the corner.

As I'm standing there, this attractive, thin gal, of southasian extraction, approaches me. "What's going on?" she asks.

"I don't know."

"I live down there," she says.

The weather is windy and chilly. She's underdressed, wearing only an orange business suit. She looks plenty cold.

"I wouldn't go down there now," I say.

"I know, that guys got a big gun," she says, pointing to the black cop.

Another cop from across the street yells over to us. "Move across." I pretend not to understand him. I raise my hand to my ear. "What?" Then he says something profound.

"You're in the line of fire."

Surf-Mobile in the Making.

2006-01-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

Here it is ladies and gentleman, my 1977 VW Bus. Soon, it will be a beautiful surf mobile.

Whore College

2006-01-22T09:09:00.000-08:00

January 21, I attend the first of four presentations entitled: Whore College Presents Scarlot Harlot: A Performance and Lecture Series. I bought Ms. Harlot's book, "Unrepentant Whore." A little camp goes a long way.

During last nights presentation I heard for the first time the phrase, "Jilling-off" which substitutes for "Jacking-off" to describe a woman...er...eh....shall we say, self gratifying. Annie Sprinkle and her lover/partner read a number of poems, including Ms. Sprinkle's forward to Scarlot Harlot's book, Unrepentant Whore. They also read a excerpt from Gertrude Stein's 62 page poem, Lifting Belly. "[T]he title phrase, “lifting belly,” repeated consistently throughout, represents both that which escapes traditional verbal definition and yet calls forth, in its various contexts, a joyous web of homosexual eroticism, creation, domesticity, celebration, and social and intellectual defiance (Tyke O’Brien "'We Like a Fire and We Don’t Mind if it Smokes': Gertrude Stein’s Transgressive World of Words in Lifting Belly")

I recommend you attend one of the others shows if your interested in issues surrounding prostitution (in this case legalization and other issues), or just for the show.

LiquidTwist

2006-01-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

Surfing the O.B. (Ocean Beach, San Francisco)

Wow! I'm a Wealthy Miser.

2006-01-13T21:03:00.000-08:00

With the 48 cents I made today, I broke five bucks. I'm up to $5.05 from blogging. Being that the first 55 cents I earned was back on January 1st, seems a tad unimpressive.

"Truthiness" - Word of the Year

2006-01-11T16:21:00.000-08:00

"In its 16th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as the word of the year. First heard on the Colbert Report, a satirical mock news show on the Comedy Channel, truthiness refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. As Stephen Colbert put it, 'I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart.'" - Adam Green (quoting the American Dialect Society's website; www.americandialect.org/) [press the title to go to the full article]

Nor*Cal Surf Life.

2006-01-08T00:25:00.000-08:00

I lowered this 1959 bug by replacing the torsion assembly in front with an adjustble assembly. The surf rack is made of wood. I built the rack, and shaped the fittings to fit the gutters. On the right is my 6'1" thruster. This pic was taken after I shaped it, during the glassing process. No fins yet. I later installed FCS plugs. You can make professional looking laminates with a color ink jet printer and rice paper -thin paper, much like tracing paper, but without the stiff wax- available in any decent art store in sheets or rolls). On this board, my laminate is close to the nose (too close) and reads "California Thruster". I've toyed with many board names on past surf boards, like "Rockaway Corkboard" (named after Far Rockaway in Queens, NY, not Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, CA), and "Timothy-Scott Surf Company" (named after my son). I decided it was impractical to become a professional shaper.

www.freepress.net

2006-01-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

This my second unsolicted book plug for "Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spins Elections, and Destroy Democracy" (The New Press, November, 2005). It is coauthored by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. They discuss the abysmal performance of America's corporate media in dealing with such issues as the Iraq war and the presidential election of 2004.

Good Quotes from Book:

"It is difficult not to regard the conservative campaign against the 'liberal' media as anything but a brazenly opportunistic and unprincipled exercised in propaganda." - pg. 34

"We consider the coverage of the Iraq war one of the darkest moments in the history of U.S. jouralism. And we consider the deplorable war coverage one of the main factors constributing to the dismal 2004 election coverage." - pg. 38

"The word occupation....was never mentioned in the run-up to the war. It was liberation. This was [talked about in Washington as] a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us is journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation." - pg. 63 (quoting Jim Lehrer)

If you want to read my untrained perspective of the American corporate media and its failures, see me entries of 12/5/05, 11/10/05 and 10/27/05.

nascar vicioustwist

2006-01-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

The Strange Cesspool of Dissembled, Orwellian Ramblings from the Ideo-Cons

2006-01-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

By now, we all should be aware that His Royal Majesty, King George, and his Mayberry Machiavellian court of chickenhawk Washington insiders have been spying on the citizenry of this land of the free, home of the brave. How a bunch of royalist cowards got to occupy a place where this could take place is disconcerning. But in no small part, it has been helped along by the "sub-media", that is the ideo-con machine of right wing-nut bloggers and talk radio broadcasts.

It would be nice if we could dismiss HRM and his Court as a Don Quixotesque band of bafoons, charging the windmills of Iraq as the terrorists spectate from a distance, and then, having been invited in, setting up shop on how to fight and export terror. Cervantes could not have dreamed up such a collection of fools. Spoken in the Kings English, "I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." —George W. Bush defending Vice President Dick Cheney's pre-war assertion that the United States would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators (http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.html)

Having imagined, with the help of his ideo-con court, that Iraq was a terrorist haven before our arrival, HRM illegal invaded a soverein nation based on either a pack of lies, or on irresponsible conjecture. HRM didn't stop there. To HRM G.W. Bush, every nation, apparantly, is a terrorist state, including our own. So, he felt free to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and thereby illegally spied on the people he would have theoretically worked for, had he not been Coronated.

All this would be fiction, if it were not for the corporate media's abdication of its responsibilities --- to the fourth estate ---, and the Orwellian world and rantings of the ideo-con wing-nut apologists, like Michelle Malkin (http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004090.htm). These inhabitants of the cesspool of disinformational scum, lash out at truth with self-righteous indignation. But all the indiginity in their cesspool world will not perfume the fact that they are surrounded by, and ultimately, full of shit.

-----

On another note, I earned my first 55 cents from blogging.

Cali Cool

2005-12-31T18:33:00.000-08:00

Open Letter to William Kristol

2005-12-29T13:27:00.000-08:00

In regards to William Kristol's opinion piece, "The Paranoid Style In American Liberalism" (The Weekly Standard, 12/28/05), it is good to see the ideo-cons continued utilization of the dirty political tools crafted by Arthur J. Finkelstein to libel prominent Democrats. How dare the Democrats do their job by calling out the Administration on its illegal spying on American citizens.

The hypocrisy is stunning, especially coming from Mr. Kristol, this most prominent ideo-con. Kristol helped divert the United States and its citizenry, resources and lives away from the legitimate fight against terrorism, and into this stupidly executed, illegal and immoral folly in Iraq. Said action has helped destabilize the region, endangered our allies (especially Israel), and turned Iraq over to the terrorists, who have made it a terrorist training ground.

Such polemics coming from Mr. Kristol are always amusing. He didn't bother to serve himself, and his prominence in Washington circles among the corporate media and other venues of disinformation results only from his riding the nepotistic coat-tails of his prominent father. Now he is among the mostly irrelevant chattering classes, spewing polemics and diatribe, backed by sloppy political theories, which are supported by abhorrently poor scholarship.

You go Willie!

Regifting Pejoratives (Don't Be Conned By The "Ideo-Cons")

2005-12-24T10:14:00.000-08:00

My gift to the Republican party, to be used repetetively by all thinking people everywhere, is to propose that the word "Conservative" be preplaced with a new, improved and, more accurate descriptive term, "Ideological Conservatives," and utilized through it's contraction, "Ideo-Con's." To be effective, progressives, independents, liberals, and realists who are not conned by the faithbased fiction of ideo-con ideology should use the term not only to describe the ideo-cons, but as a pejorative term to deride their ideas, philosphy and lies. By way of example, "Don't be ideo-conned by the ideo-cons who hide their tax cuts for the wealth behind the fig leaf of 'class warfare." My inspiration?

"Arthur J. Finkelstein (born 1946) is a United States Republican Party political operative. He has directed a series of campaigns, considered to be quite successful, to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel in the past 25 years...[Arthur J.] Finkelstein is known for his hard-edged political campaigns, which often focus on repeating a single message with great repetition. He is occasionally credited with making "liberal" a dirty word in the late 1980s and 1990s." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_J._Finkelstein)

Happy Holidays

What? Me, Run For Supervisor?

2005-12-20T17:50:00.000-08:00

San Francisco Sentinel
December 19, 2005, 7:30 p.m.

District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly will run for re-election, Daly disclosed last week in a televised interview.

"Daly also said he expects the race to get 'ugly,' but says he's going to run a 100% positive campaign," SFist reported. The interview appeared on The Bruce Petit Report.

The San Francisco Elections Departments lists seven other District 6 contenders on the department's potential candidate list for the November 2006 election.

They include Nadia S. Cabezas, Matthew Drake, Rodney Hauge, Manuel Jimenez, Bobby Jordan, Andrew Rucker, and William Stewart...

[For entire story, click on link above]

Tragedy and Farce <-- Read this book

2005-12-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

This is an unsolicted book plug for "Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spins Elections, and Destroy Democracy" (The New Press, November, 2005). It is coauthored by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. They discuss the abysmal performance of America's corporate media in dealing with such issues as the Iraq war and the presidential election of 2004. I'm only half way through the read, and can already recommend it.

Good Quotes from Book:

"It is difficult not to regard the conservative campaign against the 'liberal' media as anything but a brazenly opportunistic and unprincipled exercised in propaganda." - pg. 34

"We consider the coverage of the Iraq war one of the darkest moments in the history of U.S. jouralism. And we consider the deplorable war coverage one of the main factors constributing to the dismal 2004 election coverage." - pg. 38

"The word occupation....was never mentioned in the run-up to the war. It was liberation. This was [talked about in Washington as] a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us is journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation." - pg. 63 (quoting Jim Lehrer)

If you want to read my untrained perspective of the American corporate media and its failures, see me entries of 12/5/05, 11/10/05 and 10/27/05.

The Land of the Lost

2005-12-13T01:56:00.000-08:00

Sleestak: The face of the ugly American (The Red State Voter)

Welcome to Red State America.

Having been born in the late 60's, and having watched an inordinate amount of saturday morning cartoons in the early 1970's (I still get sentimental for Schoolhouse Rock), it recently struck me that the classic (if little known to persons not of my vintage) television show, The Land of the Lost was in fact a deft prognostication about the future of the American political landscape, disguised as entertainment for children.

The premise of the show is that a father, son and daughter (Rick, Will and Holly Marshall) go rafting, and while rafting fall through a portal that leaves them stranded in a strange prehistoric place inhabited by dinosaurs and other interesting beings. This misplaced family tries to escape from the unfamiliar, foreign land in which they only find themselves because of a mysterious accident of misfortune. Much like G.W. Bush finds himself being president, a place he doesn't belong, and to which he arrived through a mysterious accident of fortune (misfortune for the American people).

In the Land of the Lost live the Sleestak. In this amazing foretelling of the devolving American political process, the Sleestak obviously represent Red State America. The lizard-like Sleestak "were a race that evolved in reverse. The race became primitive after starting out highly intelligent." (www.kensforce.com/landotlost.html) One of the characters on the show was Enik, who also ended up in the Land of the Lost by falling through a time portal. Enik was from a race of Sleestak that were the fore fathers of the ones living in the Land of the Lost. "He came from the past, where all Sleestack were intelligent and peaceful, and was horrifed to see that his descendants were violent and really unskilled marksmen." (www.landofthelost.com/faq.html)

Although the circumstance of the Marshall family symbolizes the ubsurdity of the G.W. Bush presidency, they do not in themselves represent G.W. Bush. That is left to Chaka, "the little monkey boy...[who] had his own language..." (www.landofthelost.com/faq.html)

Middle of the Road Finish for 10/30/05 SFBMA alleycat

2005-12-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

Unfortuately I came in fifth in a field of ten racers.

Profiles of Fear

2005-12-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

It is unfortunate to watch Major Gavin Newsom attempting to score political points on the backs of the SFPD. His Police Chief is becoming a polarizing force within the department itself. Instead of backing up the police department, Newsom has used the police force as a whipping boy to pander to various constituencies in the city.

Newsom could have approached the recent and unfortunate video tape incident as a leader with reassuring determinism to investigate and take appropriate action, if deemed necessary. Instead, he and Heather Fong (who should be standing by her own force) throw a press conference, filled with rhetorical hyperbole and polemics attacking the first responders who put their lives on the line on a daily basis.

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

2005-12-10T00:11:00.000-08:00

"Vietnam can kill me but it can't make me care."

2005-12-07T12:16:00.000-08:00

Stanley Kubrick's movie 'Full Metal Jacket' came out in 1987, the year I enlisted in the Marine Corps. By the time I went off to basic training, every one of my fellow recruits had witnessed the flick. Like 'Patton' before it, Full Metal Jacket is an anti-war war film, that glorifies war.

Life imitated art as I went through basic training with recruits heavily influenced by the film. I never went to war, or saw combat, but I did witness violence. Every few nights, the still dark of the squad bay, housing some ninety or so recruits, would light up with the brutality of another blanket party. These displays were creepy compared to the other sanctioned rituals of fratricidal violence, like the circle jerk (where you are surrounded by your comrads, facing away from you, while they "bend and trust," causing them to kick you with the backward thrust of the excercise). What ever "fuck-up" was the guest of honor would be attacked in the middle of the night by fellow recruits wielding towels or socks weighted with down and used as flails, causing the heavy bed racks to jump across the floor with a eerie rattling sound.

Although I never participated in the nonsense, I always vaguely knew who the potential recipients were. One night, a recruit named Dunn was the guest of honor. Dunn was one of those "crazy brave" people. Dunn knew what was coming before he went to bed. When guests arrived, Dunn jumped out of his rack, in his skivies, wearing his combat boots, and swinging a piece of pipe at his attackers (I still wonder where he got the pipe). What balls. Dunn never was the guest of honor at another blanket party.

Timo's Tough Trek to School...In a Thunderstorm.

2005-12-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

Check out my online childrens book.

Buffoons and the press.

2005-12-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

From the buffoons that sold the American people a war, and continue to market it based on comments and concepts, such as:

1. WMD
2. The "insurgency" is just a bunch of "Dead Enders." Donald Rumsfeld
3. "I think they are in the last throws, if you will, of the insurgency." - VP Dick Cheney (05-31-05)
4. "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." -VP Dick Cheney (03-16-04)
5. "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money...We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, relatively soon." - Paul Wolfowitz (03-27-03)
6. "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Quida and the Iraqi government." - VP Dick Cheney (01-22-04)
7. "You can't distinguish between al-Quida and Saddam." -Pres. G.W. Bush (09-23-03)

Comes this complaint:

"US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld criticized the media's coverage of the war in Iraq, accusing it of a rush to report negative stories about the US military...He called on the media to hold themselves to account for coverage that he said has failed to provide the "full story" in Iraq by focusing on bombings and attacks or sensational allegations." [AFP 12-05-05]

If you're going to criticize the media, why don't you criticize them for something of which they are guilty, like their gross incompetence and complicity in this Iraq adventure.

The Meritocracy Mythology

2005-12-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King stated, "It's okay to say lift yourself up by your bookstraps. But it is cruel to say to a bootless man to lift yourself up by your bootstraps." (08/13/1967)

What is success? In common American discourse, success is the acquisition of wealth, recognition and power. The assumption underlying this defition is that the accumulation of wealth and societal recognition bring with them happiness. Some might argue that success is a flexible concept, which would allow the definition to encompass things such as spiritual fulfillment, or being a good family man, ect. ect. That's not what I'm talking about here. Some vocations bring with them the assuption of success. A doctor for instance is assumed to accumulate wealth better and be more successful than a plumber. The doctor is recognized by society with more respect and esteem than the plumber.

The assumption is that those who are successful, i.e accumulate wealth better and gain societal recognition and approval, have character traits and stengths that from which said success result. This assumption is based on the rebranded Horario Alger philosphy, i.e. "Meritocracy." That is, chracter traits and strengths help one to become successful, and lack of the same, keeps one from achieving success. Under the paradigm of "meritocracy," we can assume positive charachter traits about the successful, and blame societies losers for losing. David Brooks, in his book Bobos in Paradise argues, in part, that society has shifted from a WASPy connections based upper class aristocracy, to a meritocracy. He does this by analyzing the New York Times Wedding Page. "[W]hen you look at the Times wedding page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores. It's Dartmouth marries Berkeley, MBA weds Ph.D., Fulbright hitches with Rhodes, Lazard Freres joins with CBS, and summa cum laude embraces summa cum laude..." Just so happens that my marriage was featured on the NYT wedding page (Berkeley marries Columbia, after meeting at Fordham Law).

Or course, other factors influence ones ability to achieve success.

"[Nepotism is] far from disappearing, the practice has become so resurgent in recent years that we can now speak of a 'new nepotism.' In settings ranging from politics, business, and professional life to sports, the arts, and Hollywood, the children of famous and highly successful people have chosen to follow in their parents’ career footsteps in a fashion and in numbers impossible to ignore. George W. Bush, Al Gore, Jr., and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are only the tip of the iceberg that is an accelerating trend toward dynasticism and family 'branding' in the heart of the American elite…[Adam] Bellow [In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History]argues that nepotism comes down to the bonds between children and parents, the transmission of family legacies, the cycle of generosity and gratitude that knits our whole society together. And since it is not going away anytime soon, he makes the case for dealing with nepotism openly and treating it as an art that can be practiced well or badly." (quoted from http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400079025)

As argued by Paul Krugman (The Nation, The Death of Haratio Alger, Jan. 5, 2004) current government policy under President Bush (a man who has no business being President because he is an intellectual lightweight and baffoon and is incapable of doing his job -- and would not be president but for nepotism), is further entrenching the advantages of the haves against the have-nots through fiscal and social policy. According to economist Thomas Piketty current government policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." (Id.)

Missing New York

2005-11-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

This is the time to be in New York. With the cold nipping and people bustling, it's the best place to spend the holidays.

I lived in New York for 7 1/2 years, until 2002. During my stay there, I marched in the Saint Patrick's day parade, watched the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, caught a couple Yankee games, played softball on the Shea stadium field, watched the Mets play in the freezing cold, went to San Genero a few times (Mulberry Street), had Thanks Giving dinner with an Italian-American Family (and drank homemade wine made by the Italian-only speaking grandfather of my host), lived the "Law and Order" life at the Queens D.A.'s Office, saw Tough Tony Federici at the Parkside in Corona Queens (when a bunch of us drunk ADA's when to dinner and obnoxiously quoted The Godfather during our meal), had drinks at Windows On The World, and saw the World Trade Center burn.

Where else inte world can you live life like that? Not here in San Francisco even. During this time of year, I miss the place. I love New York!

Speaking of Fashion Disasters - My Prom, circa 1985.

2005-11-28T17:49:00.000-08:00

Robert Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel as he left the Coconut Grove, located in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. I didn’t know that when I had my prom there in March of 1985. Knowing that could have made the awkward experience, less so. Beings so close to the sacred place where Mr. Kennedy drew his last breath could have made it a spiritual event. I’m into that kind of stuff.

I was such a loser in high school that my childhood friend Jason, anticipating that my dorkiness would interfere with my prospects of getting a date, coerced his girlfriend, Ami, into asking me to go to my own prom. She was elegant and beautiful. I, on the other hand, was not. Instead of composing myself with a subtle formality of attire, I was ostentatiously dressed in a tuxedo with tails (as if I was going to perform a piano concerto – Liberace would have been proud) punctuated with a red bow tie and cumber bun that clashed with my red hair and emphasized the red tones in my skin. Not only that, but having no sense of style, I did something with my hair (involving Mouse) that I still don’t understand --- like it was an abstract painting that was too abstract to be art. Me and Ami shared a stretch limo with my sister and her date Carlo, and another guy named Adam -- a childhood friend who always wore cut-off corduroy shorts no matter how cold the weather. Adam's favorite expression was "Fuck you." He prided himself on having no friends, and his favorite pastime was watching T.V. At one point during the prom, one of the roving photographers came up to Ami and me and prepared to snap a picture. I obligatorily smiled. He said, “Sorry, dude” and proceeded to snap a picture of Ami, without me.

I just drove by the Ambassador Hotel a couple of days ago. I was sad to see it in the initial stages of being torn down. It had stayed in a state of stasis for years, surrounded by a chain link fence, and cut off from the world, unused and unloved. Los Angeles does not have a romantic vision of its own history, but instead continually destroys its history to reinvent itself. Too bad. It was a terrible mistake to take the Ambassador from Los Angeles. Generations to come will look back and wonder, “Why the hell did they do that?”

Surfing Santa Monica

2005-11-27T20:36:00.000-08:00

The first time I stood up on a surf board was in 1986. It was near the south end of Redondo Beach that I tamed my Tom Smithers 5'10" glassed on twin fin. Since then, I've sporatically surfed for the last 18 years or so. I've surfed many and sundry breaks; Ocean Beach (San Francisco), Bolinas, Stinson, Pacifica (Linda Mar), Montara, Half Moon Bay (Break Water), Malibu, Steamer Lane (Santa Cruz), Santa Monica, Venice, Manhattan, Huntington, El Porto, Far Rockaway (90th Street, Queens, NY), Jones Beach (NY), Robert Moses Beach (NY) and, Sandy Hook (New Jersey).

I've surfed in 50 degree water, I've surfed by myself with noone else in sight, I've surfed in storm swell, and in the pouring rain. I've surfed in junky conditions. I've surfed in water crowded with large, ugly purple jelly fish. I once almost got hit by a surfing sea lion (I can still picture his mouth gaping into a crude toothy smile coming at me). I once ran over another surfer with my board. I once got hit in the face with my surfboard during a wipe out and required stitches. I once stood up on a home made surfboard, looked down into clear east coast water, and saw myself gliding over a horseshoe crab underneath.

After all this, I must admit that surfing Santa Monica in the winter is one of my secret joys. Santa Monica does not invite the competative juice of better surfing spots. But, it's easy to get to, easy to park at, and fun to surf. Although I live in San Francisco, I go down to the southland during the holidays to see my family. I always go out when I'm down there. On sunny fall and winter days, the bike path paralleling the beach is tangled with cyclists, skaters, joggers and strollers. The beach itself hosts a number of sunbathers. But the water? This last time, I was among only five other surfers within sight of the lifeguard station 20.

The day after Thanksgiving, while the consumer cultured bourgeois were gorging themselves on trinkets at the malls, I hit the water. The surf was better than six feet, which occasionally swelled into 8-10' sets. Even in Santa Monica, the face of a 10 foot wave will get your attention and keep you focused, especially at low tide when a big wave beach breaks, crashing into the shallow water and explodes (I've seen a dude pulled from Santa Monica with a broken neck he got from surfing at low tide).

The thing about Santa Monica is that no matter how big it gets, or how rough the conditions, it never measures up to the violence of the eerie Nor*Cal winter conditions on a big day. The water is never as cold, the rip tides are never as strong, the junk is never as junky, and the waves themselves are never as brutally twisted as Nor*Cal in the winter. Surfing Santa Monica is something you do because its fun, not because its there.

Bicycle Messenger Nation

2005-11-24T21:19:00.000-08:00

Perfectly Good Words

2005-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

It's time to bring back some of the colorful words, and "near words" that have lapsed from the common vernacular. There are so many interesting words that are not used any more. Here are some good words: bamboozled, crimony, bejeezus and maniacal. C'mon. What's wrong with maniacal? Does it have to be relegated to cartoon culture, describing such characters and The Brain from "Pinky and The Brain"?

And for the "word smiths" out there. What's the deal with the word "hair"? We all know that to make most nouns plural, you just add an "s" or sometimes "es". Then there are the exceptions, like Mouse to Mice, Goose to Geese (how come not Moose to Meese?). But what's the deal with hair. First of all, "Hair" is the Spiderman of the noun kingdom. Not only is it unassuming, but as a spoken word, it is unimpressive. It's an unassuming, unimpressive word, with super powers of pluralization, kind of like Peter Parker. "Hair" is a weak word. Basically, its a deep sigh, with an "r" attached at the end. But, "hair" can mean either one strand, like "A hair was found at the crime scene," or it can mean someone's collective hairs, like, "She has big hair, she must be from Texas or Jersey." It seems like hair can mean singular and plural, even though the plural for hair is hairs...or is it? If you find several hairs at a crime scene, you've found hairs, or hair. Do you think a radio active spider was involved? Whoa!

Update: Jen Wheatley, who's link can be found to the right, suggests a coupla good underutilized words; dally and lollygag. Lollygag is used by such notable citizens as Mr. Burns, the manaical owner of the local nuclear power plant in Springfield (where ever that is). He is often bamboozling Homer Simpson, and scaring the bejeezus out of lollygagers. He has a very elequant way with words, one might say. One of my favorite quotes of his: "Look at them, Smithers. Goldbrickers.... Layabouts.... Slug-a-beds! Little do they realise their days of suckling at my teat are numbered."

What Did I Ever Do To You?

2005-11-21T00:05:00.000-08:00

I'm so fair skinned that I have sometimes personified the sins of caucasian peoples to those that harbor negative tidings -- about imperialism, racism, slavery, elitism, classism or other perceived inequities based on race -- toward the perceived majority. As a fair skinned male, I can also personify sexism, when the need arises. Unfortunately, I'm not good looking enough to be sympathetic.

This dynamic first struck me in middle school. With a full head of red hair, I didn't stand a chance. I went to a predominately Latino school. Although I am half Mexican-American, and Half Irish-American (with a Spanish name), it did not stop people's expression of discontent. During my tenure at Luther Burbank Junior High School in Los Angeles, I'd been assaulted (unprovoked), spit on ("Put out the fire!"), verbally accosted, threatened by individuals and groups, and at the same time, isolated and ignored (boo hoo). It didn't help that I went to a special section of the school (physically separated and surrounded with a chain link fence) within the larger school ("The Learning Center"), that was perceived by the rest of the school as an elitest place where the "smacks" went.

This dynamic has not been relegated to childhood. As an adult in law school, I was an intern for a liberal organization (which I'll leave unnamed). During a meeting at a craftsman house in Hancock Park, a Latina speaker got up to give a presentation, and started her speech with, "Everybody in this room has been effected by racism, except that guy over there" (As she pointed to me. I wonder if she ever got the irony). Sometimes the dynamic is just plain ridiculous. One time I walked to catch an elevator, as I arrived I noticed two middle aged women who'd been waiting for the elevator. As I stepped into the elevator bank hallway, an elevator happened to arrive. One of the ladies looked at me, then to the elevator, and turned to the other, and stated, "It's so unfair," as if institutional sexism brought the elevator upon my arrival. What's more fascinating, is that from her tone I could tell that she meant it.

I wonder if these examples of race/sex relations are mitigated by some unperceived white male privilege on my part. Hmmmmmmm

Commuter Classes vs. San Francisco

2005-11-18T09:22:00.000-08:00

After the second time some jerk smashed the window of my car and stole its contents, I thought seriously about running for County Supervisor against Chris Daly (District 6) -- kind of a protest campaign. I have been left with the impression that he is an advocate for the homeless, but could care less about us who are invested in SoMa. Being that I live in a condo in SoMa, I was getting a little tired of the professional criminal class of homeless persons who EVERY Friday and Saturday night smash the windows of unsuspecting club goers who don't know better than to not leave anything visible in their cars. If you happen to be a collector of shattered safety glass, come to my 'hood...it's a gold mine.

I must say, Mr. Daly seems to be doing some counter intuitive things as of late. He introduced legislation that would limit off-street parking built into new development, purportedly to reduce downtown congestion, promote walkable streets, and lower housing costs by getting us inhabitants to be more like New Yorkers. (Fancher, Emily; The Examiner, 11/18/05, pg. 5). Having recently lived in New York for many years, this legislation is misguided.

First, people will not give up their cars. They will park on the streets with parking permits -- if there is a residential parking program -- or many will simply get a handicapped placard (which are apparently handed out like candy) and park for free. Many commuters do this as well.

Secondly, the congestion in and around San Francisco is not created, by and large, by downtown residents. Congestion is a result of the fact that San Francisco has turned the streets in and around SoMa and the financial districts into mini, inner city freeways to accommodate commuters to drive their fat assed SUV's fast and aggressively on city streets. When its time to go home, the commuters all race to the bay bridge.

My concern is that the debate has been falsely presented as if the legislation is a burden to developers. Just the opposite is true. Developers don't want to waste space putting in parking spaces when they could instead put in profitable units and leave the city dealing with the parking problem. I sat on the Edgewater, New Jersey board of adjustments for a year hearing and voting on applications for variances from the zoning ordinances. Edgewater sits across the Hudson River from Manhattan and because of increasing property values in New York, Edgewater experienced an unprecedented building boom. I never heard a developer, or his attorney, come before the board asking to build more parking. Never. Developers came before the board to do just the opposite. They called traffic experts as witnesses who would state, disingenuously, that these projects would have no, nor negligible effect on traffic. Of course, traffic continued to worsen. As it will here in San Francisco if parking is not built into developments.

Skool Daze.

2005-11-16T20:15:00.000-08:00

I must be on one of my self diagnosed bi-polar highs. I'm a flurry of activity lately. Madly sending out material to publishers, firing off query letters to every literary agent west of the Atlantic ocean, and now applying (and being accepted) to the masters program at the SFSU school of public administration. Woo Hoo! Yay, me!

2L: Diary of a Homeless Law Student

2005-11-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

As a homeless law student in or around 1996, I found myself sleeping on a bench near a lawn bowling field in Central Park in New York. The nicely manicured field was enclosed with a small fence. I had planned to stay in a bar until closing, so that I had someplace to be -- Bar's in New York stay open until 4 a.m -- and then go to the school and crash in the library during the day. But I got too tired, and wandered around for a place to sleep. It was around eleven o'clock as I lay down to sleep, my book bag serving as a pillow, on a lonely and abandoned bench. I was later awakened by the sound of someone rythmically kicking the fence near me. I woke up and sat up quickly I found some perfectly normal looking white dude staring at me. I quickly looked around, only to find a six or eight other dudes, some milling around, others engaging in homosexual sexual activity.

Someday, I plan on writing a book about my second year of law school, entitled 2L. This book will contrast to Scott Turow's book, One L, detailing the his life as an upper middle class dude during his first year at Harvard law. My book will detail my life as the first college graduate in my family, attending my second year at Fordham law. It will detail my life attending Fordham with persons who were better prepared, had more resources, and had connections and relationships with which to benefit. It will not be a subtle discussion of the differences in class, status and resources, but will be an polemic indictment of the mythological "meritocracy" in which we live.

The moral of this story is, don't go to law school while homeless. Or, if you must go to school poor, don't think you'll be knighted into some society unavailable to you before. You can hope to accomplish either one of two things by going to school. One, servile assimilation into the upper middle class nightmare (assuming that a vague class systems is in play). Or two, you can go to prepare yourself to take on the privileged, stepping over them toward something greater, instead of comfortably accepting the social inequities and meritlesstocracy they represent. Hannibal or G.W. Bush? Give me Hannibal.

"Let the bitch die."

2005-11-14T21:25:00.000-08:00

Getting your audience's attention is as simple as leading with your most powerful argument, or using your most emotive, evocative argument. Although all courses or presentations about writing try relate this fact ("What's your hook," or "Grab your readers attention"), it was actually as an Assistant District Attorney in Queens, New York where I got the best example of this. Sitting in a presentation about trial techniques, one of the executive A.D.A.'s told a story about a murder trial he witnessed. The facts were these, three guys do a home invasion robbery, and in the course of the robbery, stab an elderly woman. As the three robbers leave the place, one of them asks, "What about the lady?" One of the others states, in passing, "Let the bitch die." This was brought out in testimony during the trial. During the closing argument, the Assistant District Attorney stood up, and walked to the jury box. He looked deep into the eyes of the jurors, as he panned the jury. Slowly, methodically, and powerfully, he begins his closing argument with the sentence, "Let the bitch die."

Bump & Grind

2005-11-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

November 11, 2005 (10:33 p.m. pacific time) I AM DONE!!!!!!!!!! My latest, and hopefully final revision of the novel is complete. Woo Hoo. (Any resemblace between this drawing and the pic in me in Halloween drag below is purely coincidental)

Bump and Grind is a story about two broken people, Clara and Greg, a young couple who fall in love, and the fall kills them. The story is presented with a literary authorial flatness emphasizing the contemporary condition of nihilism (think noir), giving the text an unsentimental hard edge appropriate to the theme.

The story begins with the accidental meeting Clara and Gregorio, former lovers who meet in a San Francisco Club as Greg mourns the recent murder of his friend, Paulo. The murder of Paolo, coupled with the ensuing relationship with Clara, forces Greg to face the destruction he left behind in Los Angeles after the death of his older brother years before. During the journey, Greg comes to realize that Clara, the woman he once abandoned and now idealizes, is a mentally unstable alcoholic on a path toward self destruction.

Bump and Grind’s themes include the contemporary condition of nihilism, bisexuality, biracial relations, and contemporary youth culture in an urban noir environment.

To see and excerpt, go to SoMa Literary Review at: http://www.somalit.com/Girl_Noir.html

Talking about technology and communication.

2005-11-11T21:42:00.000-08:00

I just happened across a free crazy cool web based service called gOFFICE. It is a Software-as-a-Service provider offering a free online browser-based office suite that creates Adobe PDF files with just a web browser. It is simple to navigate by going to gOFFICE.com. Users type their work on the website and, when the text is completed, documents are created nearly instantaneously in Adobe PDF format. You can sign up for a free account and save text on gOFFICE servers for later use. Projects can be personalized by uploading and using customized letterheads. Using the website requires only a web browser and a copy of Adobe Reader, making gOFFICE functional virtually everywhere.

I personally think this paradigm is a model that could have huge ramifications for sales of software and other services. The conceptual framework could very well be successfull. I look forward to seeing it develope.

Humility

2005-11-11T12:06:00.000-08:00

Humility is the attribute missing from the political and social discussions in todays cultural discourse. The absence of humility allows the political discourse to descend to diatribe. Technology and modern processes of communication allow for those who make polemic statements to escape personal responsibility for their words. By way of example, if you look at the Craigslist.com "rants and raves" you will find keyboard jockeys freely expressing purposefully offensive vile statements. The anonymity and lack of communal standards allow the baiting. "Mahatma Gandhi is attributed as suggesting that attempting to sustain truth without humility is doomed to cause it to become instead an "arrogant caricature" of truth" (lifted from Wikipedia.com). I suggest that humility is simply the the process of contextualizing one's self in the greater community, and expressing one's self to that community as an identified member of the community. That is, taking responsibility of yourself and your deeds by taking ownership of them. Like the concept of mirror image effect in psychology, in which one comes to see himself as other's see him, by their expressions and behavior toward him. Without the mirror, delusions of grandeur follow, and ultimately, irrelevance.
_________

The Liberal words of Jesus Christ (Luke 6:20)

Sermon on the Plain: And raising his eyes toward his disciples he said:

"Blessed are you who are poor,
for the kingdom of God is yours.

Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.

Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.
For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
But woe to you who are filled now,
for you will be hungry

Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will grieve and weep.

Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way."

F*ck the Media...redux

2005-11-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

You wanna know a good measure of how bad the crap is that is coming out of the corporate media? Listen to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now on Pacifica radio. I realized this one day when she had a guest on, months (or even years) ago talking about Karl Rove. The guest knew Karl Rove backwards and forwards. What he'd done, how he'd done it, and why he did it. The contrast between what this guy knew and and spoke about, and what you hear on the corporate media outlets, and even the anemic NPR, is like night and day. Amy Goodman has guests and analysis that contextualizes events, in depth (<--- and I mean "in depth" literally, not figuratively like its used by all the other info-commercials that represent themselves as "News"). Today, Amy had a guest, a women Italian journalist, who spoke about Ayman al-Zawahiri (the shit bag terrorist mother f*cker who everybody associates with that other terrorist shit bag mother f*cker Osama Bin Laden). This journalist knew everything about the dude, his history, education, philosphy and politics. For instance, Al Zarqawi first turned to radicalization after spending a few years in the poki for sexual assault. He kept his distance from Osama Bin Laden because his politics and radicalization were more focused on destroying the Jordanian government. After he got out of prison, he attempted to join the anti-soviet Muhajadin, but was too late. He attempted to make it Chechnya, but was blocked from getting there, so ended up in Iraq, where he set up a camp to impelement his tool of specialty, suicide bombers. I literally learned these facts in about ten minutes on Pacifica Radio. And this was just the background for the events in Jordan that occurred yesterday (3 suicide bombers). It really is astounding how bad the rest of the American media is.

Next time, the continued left wing quotes of Jesus Christ.

Semper Fidelis: Happy Birthday Marines.

On Death and Dying

2005-11-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

The first thing you would notice about Michael Bland was the large disfiguring burn scar that covered his lower face, stretching almost from one ear to the other and covering his chin and lips. It looked almost like a beard. He and I grew up on a hill called Mt. Washington in the northeast section of Los Angeles. It was isolated from the rest of city because of it's tiny twisting streets. When I first moved there, it was an enclave of ex-hippies and gays, who lived in houses slapped together in the 1920's. I attended the local school, Mt. Washington Elementary. That's where I came to know Michael Bland (later to be named Michael Scott). Back in the day, old school days, he idolized the Fonz from Happy Days. In high school, Michael teased me by corrupting my first name and singing it in his own version of Barry Manilow's "Coppa Cabana" song; "His name is Maňolla, he is a chola..." (If you went to Franklin High School, you know what a chola was.) Michael lived as if he thought it was great to be alive. He had a great smile, and upbeat personality.

Michael's life is one of the world's great tragic stories, right up their with Hamlet and Oedipus Rex. At least Hamlet's father was king of Denmark, and Oedipus Rex King of Thebes. Michael on the other hand was a foster child, and a black kid in a predominately white and asian elementary school. He was the foster child of elderly parents (the Scotts), who later went on to adopt him. Michael's birth family lived in south central Los Angeles, near Manchester off the 110 freeway. I think his birth parents were dead. He did have siblings there though. I once asked him how he burned his face. He told me that as a baby he had fallen into the burner of a stove.

His adopted mother went blind while we were in junior high school. I can remember him holding her arm as they took a stroll at the twilight of evening on the steep hills of Mt. Washington. Before he made it out of high school his mother died, then his father, and he had to move in with his siblings down in south central. Michael joined the army. He came back and visited me a few times. When it was time for him to head home, I'd drive him back down to south central L.A., a foreign place to him since he didn't grow up there. Playing off a cliché, he'd complain about all the Popeye's and Church's chicken restaurant's in south central.

One day, a girl I vaguely knew in high school, named Melissa, told me that Michael had died in the army. I knew Michael had a crush on Melissa. He somehow fell and hit his head, or something. This was well before either of the Iraq wars. She said that she had been surprised because he'd listed her as his next of kin for notification purposes. That fact made me sad.

Bump & Grind

2005-11-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

It's been said that sex drives men to do great things, not good things or decent things. In 1994 I worked for Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) as a paralegal. I met a beautiful gal there, named Clara. We worked together on a project. She was taking a creative writing course. She and a guy named Gregory Cowles were regularly writing (He eventually went off to Columbia University to pursue a masters in creative writing. In New York he and I met up again). My infatuation with Clara led me to start writing the novel.

It's been over ten years since I began writing the novel (Bump & Grind) about about two broken people who fall in love, and the love kills them. During those 10+ years, there have been many times I thought that the novel was done. It's title has changed a few times. In it's early form, I tried peddling it to various major and minor (small press) publishers over the years with no success (though I did get back feedback from a publisher from an early version, with a critique of the work which stated "There is some publishable material here" and "The writing is adequately accomplished"). I've continually revised the thing (when it was not just sitting unloved in some closet for months or years). The writing has improved, and the structure solidified. I joined a weekly writing group to get feedback. I changed my strategy and starting submitting excerpts to on-line literary magazines, and managed to get them published.

Now I'm about finished with my latest revision. I stayed up last night, reading over the work. It is amazing to see the words put to paper, and recognize strokes of good writing that I'm not sure I'd be able to replicate today. I'm going to start submitting it again. We'll see if my strategy has worked.

Vicious Twist Takes A Wild Ride

2005-11-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

Riding a bicycle in San Francisco is a political statement. Just like driving an SUV during a oil war carries political baggage. San Francisco has a number of bicycle themed groups, each with its own political bent. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is your basic vanilla political advocacy group. They do petitions and write letters. The San Francisco Bicycle Messenger Association is a loose confederation of messengers and others that acts as a quasi-political, social association, with a twist of wrecklessness. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell the San Francisco Bicycle Ballet is. Then there is Cyclecide, the artsy clowns of the bicycle movement.

Believe it or not, conflicts of interest exists between the different bicycle tribes. For example, San Francisco is ground zero for Critical Mass, a monthly protest in which a mass of cyclists take to the streets at Friday evening rush hour as the hordes of bridge and tunnel people are trying to start their long ass commutes back to whatever rural backwater from which they hail. The cyclists ignore red lights and what not, causing traffic jams and general commuter mayhem. You'd think that this type of protest is generally welcomed by the out gunned bicycle community. The SFBC for instance, tacitly (though not explicitly) promotes the event, even though technically they are not affiliated with it. So I was surprised when I was talking to Jenny, who as a bike messenger and board member of the messenger association, hates the event. She explained to me that on the Mondays following a Friday Critical Mass, seething commuters still angry about the Friday traffic jam home, take it out on the messengers who haplessly are victimized.

San Francisco has a complex bicycle culture, with its own films, celebrities and constituency. It's a crazy tapestry, that is fun to explore. If you ride a bike and live in San Francisco, I'd suggest join the mix.

Read about my experience: http://www.farmhousemagazine.com/jimenez.html

Learn more about me: http://vicioustwist.com/

[The symbol above is the SFBMA logo created by Chris Hsiang, owned by SFBMA (c) 2004-5]

Visit the SFBMA: http://www.ahalenia.com/sfbma/

Jesus Is On Our Side

2005-11-06T15:01:00.000-08:00

"The Good Book" is actually a collection of books. More accurately, the bible is a collection of various writings from various authors, known and unknown, who had various agendas. It includes verse, historical (though truthfully ambiguous) passages, laws, correspondences and abstract symbolic and allegorical writings. Most people know that there are both old and new testaments, but don’t know that different bibles contain different books. For instance, the Catholic bible has more books in it than does the King James version. Modern versions of the bible (from whatever tradition) live at the end of great political and theological battles, sometimes violent, that decided what books were included, and what books were not. For instance, the Gospel According to Thomas (familiar with it?) didn’t make the final cut because it presented a version of faith that did not serve the early Catholic church’s paternalistic doctrinal orthodoxy (see Pagels, Elaine; Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas Random House, 2003).

In the present American political climate, many of my fellow liberals don’t know that the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) fundamentally tell the same story, and that within each, Jesus Christ is quoted as saying some very liberal stuff. That is to say, Jesus Christ is on our side. Conservatives (and by that I mean "movement conservatives"), have usurped the religious debate by misstating theological concepts and proposing orthodoxies that have questionable basis in scripture. For instance, one would think that Jesus Christ went around promoting the concept of "family values." While family values is a central philosphical tenent of conservatism, it is also a tool conservatives use to attack positions and policies they disapprove of; gay-marriage, abortion, and sexual activity by unmarried persons to name a few. To bolster their view about what is appropriate domestic life, Jesus is often drafted to legitimize traditional notions of communal and family structure and behavior.

While I can think of noone who is against families, or values (what ever that means), the concept of "family values" does not hail from Jesus Christ. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at Luke 12:49 and Luke 14:26. The religious connotations that are purposefully implied by conservatives when they attempt to marry Jesus Christ to their notions of "family values," are at best misinformed and at worst political propaganda, not theology. One could argue the merits of traditional family structures without falsely attempting to legitimize the concept by implying that Jesus protheletized for "family values."

To take back that which is rightfully belongs to us (by "us" I mean liberals as well as the others) I will present an EVOLVING list of good quotes from Jesus Christ.

"God and Money: ‘No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.’" (Matthew 6:24; see also Luke 17:13)

"Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:23; see also Mark 10:23; Luke 19:24)

"There are the people who hear the word, but worldly anxiety, the love of riches and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word, and it bears no fruit." (Mark 4:18)

"There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops." (Luke 12:2)

Cheap Ass Iron-On T-Shirt Give Away....

2005-11-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

Have you always wanted your very own vicioustwist t-shirt, made of the highest "irregular" quality cotton fabric (purchased at Walgreens convienence store bargain bin)? E-mail me a request, an address, and an approximate size (S, M, L, XL) and I'll mail you one for free, whenever I get around to it (which may be weeks or months). This offer ends when the burden of requests outweighs my magnanimity. Remember to visit "vicioustwist.com" and be part of something bigger (if less relevant) than yourself.

Illiterature!

2005-11-02T19:58:00.000-08:00

Visit the online literary magazines and other venues that have published my fiction and nonfiction. You can find the links here:

http://www.vicioustwist.com/113636.html

2005-11-01T07:44:00.000-08:00

Bike Games, Graf, Hot Zombies

Night Ride on the Wild Side....

2005-10-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

It's a crazy, crazy world. The time is "sometime dark thirty" as I watch two beautiful gals, dressed up like zombie mice, stumble around like the undead. As they do the surreal dance, the audience of bicycle messengers, bicycle clowns and bicycle enthusiasts watch as they stumble back and forth in a stiff, but sexual display in front of the life sized "mouse trap" that could have come right out of a cartoon. The trap is at least fifty feel long, and starts with a clockwork wheel, which sends a bowling ball through a maze of steps, pullies and levers until it activates the switch that drops a real safe onto a jack and the bean stalk giant sized pumklin. Smashing pumpkins is an understatment. The two hot mouse chix start picking up the pieces of the vegetable wreckage and heaving chunks at the audience. But my story starts hours earlier at Bike Kitchen located at 19th and Florida.

The people at cyclecide bike rodeo and First Rule BMX presented "Hell on Wheels." It's kind of a human powered ride carnival, mixed with a circus influence. There are a number of events, including a BMX trick competition with ramps and other obsticals. The phrase on their literature, "Bike Games, Graf, Hot Zombies" pretty much sums up the atmosphere, except for the event for which I attended; the night alleycat. For those unfamiliar with an alleycat, an alleycat is an illegal, or shall I say, unsanctioned bicycle race on the city streets. The participants get a manifest of check points. Each check point has an assigned number of points. You have to get to as many of the check points, in any order, and get back to the finish point (the above mentioned mouse trap) of the race before time runs out.

The end of daylight savings time broadsided me as I "Fall Back." The race starts at 6:30 p.m., which, because of the Fall Back means its plenty dark. With manifest in hand, folded into my right pocket, my trusty (and abused) map folded in my left pocket, my messenger bag on my back I'm ready for my first alleycat. The start of the race is fucking beautiful. The stream of consciousness dash through and against traffic, in close proximity to other racers in the pitch of night is crazy. The artistic careening at oblique angles to beat oncoming traffic through intersections, running red lights, riding the wrong way down one way streets with oncoming traffic is better than sex (better than bad sex anyway). The hour and half pass quickly, but not easily. San Francisco has the hills of a prone stripper, and it ain't any easier to get a handle on those hills than to handle the stripper. But the race is...is...well, Fucking Crazy. I loved it.

F*ck the Media....

2005-10-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

The first time I ever heard the term "Corporate Media" was on February 16, 2003. The day before I had just moved back to San Francisco from a seven and half year stint in New York. As I marched up Market Street, one of my fellow anti-war protesters ---who looked like a burned out hippy chick sitting on the curb--- handed me a photocopied sign to hold as I marched. The sign said, "No War For Oil Or Israel". When I read the sign, I thought to myself, "What kind of anti-Semitic crap is this?" So I creased the paper, and tore off the word Israel. At the time, I didn't know the negative connotations --- besides the word "Conservative" --- that were associated with the neo-conservative movement. I had never heard of the Project for a New American Century, nor of AIPAC, nor did I know the special place that Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, "Scooter" Libby, Donald Rumsfeld and all the pundits and political interest groups associated with them had in helping this country march off to an immoral, unnecessary and counter-producive war. I did know one thing; the glorification of the first Iraq war on CNN would bamboozel the country into stumbling into another war, and thats why I marched.

Years earlier, in the early 90's, I was sitting in the avionics shop of HMH-769, a Marine Corps heavy helicopter squadron that participated in Iraq I. At that time HMH-769 was still stationed at the now defunct Alameda Naval Air Station across the bay from San Francisco. I had transferred into 769 (after they returned from Iraq), from VMFA-134 where I was a reserve avionics technician on F/A-18 Hornets. I was reading Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" when a Captain Pilot walked by and noticed I was reading the book. He stopped, and said "Great book." I asked him if he'd read it. He said, "No," then he proceeded to recommend the book "Starship Troopers," which he lent me. I read it. It was a glorification of war. It presented a futuristic odyssey with the bravado and imagedry of war as a beautiful, noble enterprise. The only way that the book could successfully do that was to make the enemy inhuman. In fact, the enemy in Starship Troopers were some form of alien bugs.

The glorification of war is easy if you don't present the reality. The reality is not glorious, but obscene. If your vantage point is only from that of the strapping young man firing his M-16 into seemly unoccupied buildings (or alien bugs), then war looks like a lot of fun. But, if your vantage point is from the other side of those rifles, that is, that torn and mutiliated bodies of people, including women and children, with torn off limbs and exploded heads with splattered brains, then war doesn't look fun, or noble, or glorious, or in fact moral.

Today I open the paper, which for me consists of clicking on Yahoo news, and find this obscene piece of literature:

"WASHINGTON (AFP) - The number of American troops wounded in Iraq surpasses the number killed by thousands, but US media still appear reluctant to place their stories on the front page. Indeed, media outlets seem to be treading lightly in their coverage of such sensitive wartime topics for fear of being branded "anti-war" or angering the Pentagon, which has forbidden the publication of photos showing caskets of the war dead arriving in the United States..."

Needless to say, I have come a long way from February 16, 2003, when I first heard the term Corporate Media. During that time, I have come to know that what we know as the "Main Stream Media" are in fact just a bunch of Conformist, Careerist Cowards who, by their refusal to print truth instead of propoganda, are as much responsible for our involvement in Iraq as are the collection of Criminal Chickenhawks running the government.

2005-10-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

Jenny invited members of the San Francisco Bicycle Messenger Association to join a bicycle gang. Kewl! Now I have a venue to ride my 1971 Apple Krate! There and cyclecide. Anyway, I go to Night Cap and meet Lon, Executive Director of the SFBMA. He asks me to compose a dislaimer/release of liability form for use by SFBMA for the upcoming Alleycat that is to coincide with the cyclecide event, Hell on Wheels. I plan on participating in alleycat, which would be my first.

My Week Thus Far...

2005-10-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Go to work, come home. Repeat. Tuesday, get an e-vite to a Halloween party. I say I'll only come if I can go in drag. I dunno know why I said that. I don't own any women clothes. Wednesday, bicycle to the Nightcap, a dive bar on O'Farrell and Hyde. The bartenders are always young women. I'm looking for Jenny, who I know through the S.F. Bike Messenger's Association. Last I knew, she worked the bar on Wednesdays. But, she's not working. Some new girl is slinging drinks. She looks thirtheen. "How old are you?" she asks me. "Thirty-eight," I answer. She's embarrassed. Turns out she's a lesbian. Cool! "So am I!" I tell her, like she didn't see that coming. The newly arrived New Yorker in the corner, laughs. He's an artist, on the verge of making it or breaking it, Justin Thomas. I buy around to celebrate his arrival. I order a light beer, then another. By the time I'm ready to order a third, the bartender questions my manhood. What kinda man drinks light beer? Not in those words, but pretty close. I'm pretty secure with my masculinity. But having a post-pubescent lesbian bring up the subject, I avoid the parlay and she mixes me something of her own choosing. It's lavendar colored, ironically. Its strong. Jenny comes in, not to work but to hang. She's accompanied by a bike messenger dude. We all drink together. By the time I leave, I'm stumbling drunk. I hate that. I can't even ride my bike. I have to stumble home. I decide to make a call. I lay down on the side walk, with my urban assault bicycle down next to me. Drunk dialing is a failing of mine. I get up, to U.N. plaza, and piss on a wall. As I zip up and continue I notice to federal police cars close to my public urinal. My week can only get better from here...

Today is my kids birthday! Born in the year of the Golden Dragon!