One Shot Deal

Watch this. Watch this. Watch this.

2008-12-08T01:51:00.001-08:00

And watch it in a fucking movie theatre.

kind of in awe

2008-02-20T22:43:00.000-08:00

I'm pulling 330 kb/s right now (and uploading 70kb/s). This makes writing anything, and checking my email, extremely difficult. But, it also means that I will have all the new episodes of The Wire.

My dad just asked if I was online. The way I figure it, we're out of the country soon enough. Do they even crack down on file trading in Bahrain?

Fox news is the best network in the world

2008-01-29T11:53:00.001-08:00

Are they serious?

Well.

2007-11-05T03:34:00.000-08:00

This was an uplifting little film.

Oh, and just so I've covered all my bases...

2007-11-03T13:57:00.001-07:00

...HAPPY BIRTHDAY PA! As much as it pains me to say it, accept Dan as my surrogate for now, though I'm not a big fan of almond butter and Lyle's. He will, however, take you to a show at some point or another.

x

2007-09-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today it has been exactly 2 years since I moved to London. Crazy. Like most of the foreign people I know who live here, it's a (slightly) more emotionally important date than, say, the day I moved house, or the day I moved to Reed. Hopping over the pond was a big move, at the time. And still is. And, most likely, the right one.

Today was also the first real day of autumn. It was crisp and sunny and beautiful out and though I should have been writing emails, I couldn't help but leave the house and walk around. My friend Juliette, who was my best friend in high school and who I've known since I was 12, and who is now my neighbour, called me to see if I was out and about, so we met up and walked around Shoreditch together. And last night, I had friends over for dinner, and the dinner was successful enough that I still had guests this morning (in the spare bedroom). Life is pretty cyclical here. I have periods of intense social activity, and lots of periods of spending time alone. One thing I've gotten a lot better at since being in London is spending time alone. I like the fact that I've gotten better at it.

As an aside, I moved recently. I now live in the neighbourhood that I lived in when I first got to London and it's still my favorite part of the city. One thing I've always enjoyed was the range of shops on Essex Rd., the main street off of which I live. There's a local baker where the locals still actually use "guvnor" when talking to each other, a seafood stand that sells the traditional cockneye jellied eel pie, aaaaand....Get Stuffed.

Get Stuffed is an oddity on a stretch of otherwise pretty prime real estate. As the name might suggest, it is a taxidermy shop. It is actually the weirdest fucking thing I've ever seen, and I was lucky enough to find a picture of what you see through the front window (thank you, internet).

The thing about Get Stuffed, beyond its being a taxidermy shop, is that it is tiny and crammed full of animals, and is always shut, but the lights are always on. The first time Rowan visited London, we drank a huge amount of wine and on the walk home actually ended up spending about half an hour just staring into the windows of the shop at 2 a.m. The peculiar creepy genius of the display (which does change, periodically) is in the juxtaposition of the animals. There's a high ratio of endangered and/or exotic creatures in there, including a giraffe, a great white shark, lions tigers and bears, and a human skeleton (?). But it's crazy to stare in and see that between the snarling lion and the prairie dog, there's a delicately posed little persian cat. Or you'll see a lynx, nestled in the front paws of a labrador. Utterly fucking strange.

The shop also has a sign on the window stating very clearly that it does not kill endangered animals, but gets their bodies from the zoo. I assumed that this was just a standard disclaimer to discourage the less determined animal rights activists to fuck off. But, maybe there's a little more history to it than that. Here's a clipping from the Guardian, which I found while searching for the pic:

"Might the return of taxidermy pose a threat to endangered species? Six years ago, a taxidermist from north London who illegally sold a virtual zoo of endangered species, including two stuffed tiger cubs less than a week old (killed before their eyes opened), was sentenced to six months in prison. Robert Sclare pleaded guilty to 29 counts of forgery relating to applications to trade. After serving his time, he returned and reopened his business, Get Stuffed. The shop, described after the trial by animal rights campaigners as "an animal shop of horrors" continues to trade today."

Eek!

Best obit EVER

2007-09-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

For your enjoyment, cut and pasted from the Telegraph

Lord Michael Pratt
Last Updated: 1:36am BST 09/09/2007

Lord Michael Pratt, who has died aged 61, will be remembered as one of the last Wodehouseian figures to inhabit London's clubland and as a much travelled author who pined for the days of Empire; he will also be remembered as an unabashed snob and social interloper on a grand scale.
Pratt would arrive at country houses announcing that he was en route to another castle or (even larger) stately home, and was intending to stay for only one night. Quite often the "night" would turn into weeks, and sometimes months.
Although he was generous with his conversation, gossip and anecdote, many hostesses tired of Pratt's failure to make anything but the smallest contribution to the house or staff.
Michael John Henry Pratt was born on August 15 1946, the youngest son of the 5th Marquess Camden.
He was sent to Eton, having already acquired the rotund shape that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
At school the young Pratt distinguished himself by emptying a vessel of soapy water over the head of his housemaster.
Pratt had been washing in a bucket and, rather than dispose of the contents into the drain, he tipped them out of the window.
"Come here, Pratt," said Mr Addison, the drenched housemaster.
"Certainly not," responded Pratt. "I'm far too busy."
On arriving at Balliol College, Oxford, Pratt took exception to the state of his rooms, decamping to the Randolph Hotel until his mother arrived with bucket and mop to render his apartments habitable.
Oxford otherwise began well for him, and he settled in socially and academically.
He graduated with a Second in Modern History, however, causing some consternation in the family, who had hoped for a First. His mother, the Marchioness, suspected him of being idle; Pratt maintained that he was unable to study owing to a broken leg.
In fact, both these things were true. Just before his finals Pratt was involved in an horrific car crash in which he broke his nose, jaw and spine.
There are those who claim that his demeanour changed dramatically following the accident; certainly he became somewhat short-tempered.
There followed numerous rows with anyone who crossed him, and many rumbled on until the day he died.
Just days before his death he was involved in an argument over a bill with the owner of an off-licence at Dulwich.
At Oxford, Pratt was secretary of the Gridiron, a lunch and dining club founded in 1884 that numbered Michael Ancram and Douglas Hogg among its members.
He was also a leading light in another Oxford club called the Snuff Committee, the sole purpose of which was to take snuff and drink port.
Membership was by invitation only; the only stipulation was that one had to be the son of a landowner.
After graduating Pratt found a position at Lazard Brothers, the merchant bank. Three months into his new job, however, he judged that it would be more agreeable to attend Royal Ascot than to turn up at the office, and his services were dispensed with. He never again sought full-time employment.
The Camden family fortune had been somewhat depleted after the Second World War, following some unwise financial decisions.
The family had hung on to property near Snowdonia in Wales while selling large tracts of central London; while the property in London flourished, the Welsh land remained confined to sheep-grazing.
Despite this, when Pratt's father died in 1983 he left £3.2 million, a proportion of it in trust for his widow, Pratt's stepmother.
It was not long before she and Pratt had a falling out over money.
At the time the Marchioness elaborated: "Michael has been trying to get at the money and my house for a long time. He made some approaches to my solicitor about the will and I find it all very unsettling."
In 1982 Pratt wrote about the Byzantines in Britain's Greek Empire, and in 1991 he turned his attention to grand houses in a book called The Great Country Houses of Central Europe; this book - studiously researched and beautifully photographed - was well-received and remains in print today.
Pratt's working day would usually start with a large gin and tonic before he meandered towards White's Club in St James.
He was a great social genealogist, and took much pleasure in regaling listeners with stories of family matters.
Towards the end of his life, however, he found himself barred from one of his clubs. Ironically, this was Pratt's, where he was asked to leave the premises following a spectacular altercation with a waitress.
Pratt was generally ill at ease with modern technology, and even after his motor accident at Oxford he remained a demon car driver, terrifying passengers with his speed and overtaking technique, which he often employed on blind bends at speeds of more than 70mph.
Several years ago, in Italy, he had a miraculous escape when he overturned his car on the main road between Grosseto and Siena.
Pratt managed to escape prosecution by disarming the local police with his charm, wit and smattering of pidgin Italian.
Pratt was equally dangerous with firearms. On one drive he shot a fellow gun in the eye, and invitations to shoot dried up.
Michael Pratt married, in 1999, Janet Giannuzzi Savelli, who survives him.

my mother, the filmmaker

2007-09-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

Bobobobobobo..bo! bobo! Warning. Bobo rant.

2007-09-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

My steps towards ethical living:

--I get local organic eggs produce delivered to my house
--Don't smoke anymore
--I switched to green power, FINALLY
--I recycle, try really hard to buy stuff without excess packaging
--I buy biodegradable trash bags, recycled toilet paper (ew), and "green" cleaning products
--I wash my clothing on 40 degrees C
--I took the dry spin off the dishwasher (by, the way, can I mention how great it is to have a dishwasher again?)
--I don't drink bottled water except on very rare occasions
--I have big re-usable shopping bags
--Very conscientious about turning off lights, unplugging adaptors, etc.

...and it's hardly enough. I could, for instance:

--give up all meat and dairy, or at least eat it very very infrequently (healthier too)
--never take the bus unless completely necessary, same with taxis
--not fly as frequently and offset my carbon emissions when I do (I probably am going to offset them for the upcoming trip to the US, it's pretty cheap to do)
--limit computer usage to bareminimum
--stop going to supermarkets
--stop buying any clothing or furniture new
--change all the bulbs to energy efficient ones
--vow to never have a child (NOT something I'm willing to vow)
--there are some obvious things I'm forgetting

The thing is that I'm not putting this up to be totally self-righteous and feel good about myself. I don't, really. The more you do stuff like this the more you realize how utterly unsustainable our lives our, including my own. Anyone who lives in the first world and most people who live in developing nations are also leading completely polluting, gross lives. Living is ungreen, so the best thing to for the environment would really be to kill yourself right now. Obviously, for most of us, even the most seasoned Greenpeace "soldier" tied to a boat in the Pacific, that is not an appealing notion. So yeah, resign yourself to the fact that you, personaly, are destroying the planet just by being here. Then try to figure out how to mitigate that in small, practical steps.

It's hard to be completely green even if you were willing to. Our society is based on a throwaway, consumption-driven mode of existence. Sweaters you bought even 40 years ago were built to last in a way that expensive stuff you buy today isn't. I know because I have an old cashmere sweaters made in the 60s-70s and it's in better shape than the one I got from J.Crew 6 months ago. Unless you're insanely wealthy, you are going to get stuck in a shitty cycle of buying and replacing and creating more trash. Sorry, but most of us have to shop at Target and supermarkets, because we can't afford to do it any other way. So we're powerless in that regard, too. Although supermarkets, at least here, are getting to be really good. More on that some other time, maybe.

It truly frightens me how slowly people are coming round to this whole climate change thing (the term "global warming" is kind of dumb). The level of public discourse is changing rapidly, and that's good, but behavior that I witness on a personal scale still confuses me (i.e. complete disregard for even any of the basics). Obviously there has to be some major top-down politicking for shit to really change on a widespread scale, but you can't underestimate the power of the zeitgeist and, well, just plain old buying. When Wal-Mart introduces an organic range, it's only because their consumers want it. It's not due to legislation. But this affects hundreds of square miles of crops in the US. It does make a difference. I always had some grudging respect for the hippie or anarchist activist types who observed the whole "buy nothing" day and all that bullshit. I have even more respect for the people who decide to buy nothing but bare essentials for an entire year. But, for most of us, that's not possible, especially if you hope to have a social life and get laid and have fun and all that bullshit. And it's sort of cute and endearing to start letter-writing campaigns and ask your politician what he thinks of the trees and all that. But, I'm starting to think of all that as a hopelessly old fashioned way of thinking of instituting political change. It's not that it's not necessary to do those things, and I'm glad that there are people doing it, but what really does it these days? Money. Money talks. Unless you've been living under a rock for your entire life, you should realize that consumerism is the new activism, and it's not really that new at all. It's depressing, but it's true. The way to change the way you live is pure, hard cash.

The weird thing, and yes I'm still on my soapbox here, is that if everyone just did a few things that I did above (and let me underline that I am IN NO WAY living a sustainable lifestyle, nor am I pretending to), it would make a huge difference. The reason I did those things and have kept doing them is because they're not hard to do. You have to shell out a little more money for food, but not really that much. Furthermore, the reason I haven't done the other stuff I listed is because that stuff is harder to do, and I'm not as green as I'd like to be.

My dad used the image of a sinking boat (which I think he said he got from someone else) to describe the environment--that it'll sink into the water really, really slowly for a long time, but that it will reach a tipping point and will just crash into the ocean after that. We've reached that tipping point. Look, I know that the weather is an extraordinarily complex thing with patterns we still don't understand, and that maybe not everything is attributable to so-called "global warming," but let's not be coy and let's just go ahead and admit that maybe we've fucked up, big time. And we're totally, completely screwed if we don't pull the quickest 180 we've ever pulled.

I hate the way society is set up right now, anyway. I hate the fact that people confuse consumer choice and actual, real choice. I hate that even if we realize the difference, we're too fat and sated to really care, and yes, that includes me. I hate that our political apathy and greed is so ingrained that we don't give enough of a shit to stop stuff like what's going on in Darfur. Obviously, that's human nature. We've always stayed away from conflicts until it's absolutely necessary to get involved. But is that reason enough to throw up your hands and say, "Well, fuck. It's always been like this."? I don't really think it is. The news is so tremendously depressing that it's hard to want to read it, or stay at all engaged on an emotional level with the world around us. But it seems to me that interacting with the world and your surroundings is pretty much the best thing about the tremendous mindfuck that is the time you spend on the planet. I remember that in the one poli-sci class I took at Reed, there was section about political participation. All of the books basically were different looks at how politicians try to breed apathy to prevent political participation or interest, whether it's on the national or community level. Well, bravo. Mission accomplished.

I don't really know what I'm getting at. I'm kind of hungover and I just woke up from a nap. My downstairs neighbour is blaring Kanye West. I like that she does this, predictably, every weekend.

In an attempt at some sort of conclusion: I'm not saying that you should give up your cars and live in yurts or anything. But I do think it's unforgivable, at this point in time, to always leave all your lights on when you leave the house, or to go out and buy a car that gets like 10 miles to the gallon or get huffy and tell people they're boring and sermonizing when they care about this shit (by the by, in case you were wondering, no, this is not my typical cocktail party shtick. I do hope to find a boyfriend, someday, and I enjoy polite society). People try to pass it off like the person who calls them on their behavior is a crazy hippie, and that was passable 5 years ago, but it really isn't anymore. That, or they make some sort of cynical, apathetic crack. That's even worse, because I totally understand that stance, having inhabited it for a long time, but, disenchanted or not, the truth is, that's the refuge of the coward. I'm just as disenchanted with politics as ever, and I'm not naive, but I find that position to be morally repugnant. Just because you don't give a shit doesn't mean you have to fuck the rest of us over. Seriously, what does that say about you?

And on that note, I'm going to go lie on my fat ass and read Vice magazine. I think I'll turn on the tap and leave it running, too, just for the hell of it.

M.

struggling

2007-09-12T04:04:00.000-07:00

There's no right way. There's no perfect career. No one job I should do. No one favorite song or favorite book or favorite movie. No best course of action. My day could go any number of ways, and all of them would be equally valid, if not equally interesting. Either pair of earrings works, so no need to agonize. There's no one person you should spend the rest of your life with. THERE ISN'T A BEST THING ON THE MENU. There isn't one best place for me to live. Nothing I'm SUPPOSED to do. No perfect haircare routine.

There is, however, correct and incorrect apostrophe usage.

The smell of the breeze coming through the window reminds me of autumn and the first day of school (but which school?), then of summer mornings in Portland.

I'm awash in a sea of indecision. Indecisiveness?

aaaaaah.

Avoiding report by watching Peep Show...

2007-08-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

...god this show is great. Although not as good as Oh Mikey.

2007-08-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

MY HARD DRIVE!!!! WAAAAAAAAH!

After 3.5 years of faithful and intensive daily use, my powerbook has finally crapped out on me. This sucks.

for all you C-SPAN lovers

2007-07-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

Live From Congress: Rep. Ingersoll's Murder of a Hobo

2007-07-08T23:07:00.000-07:00

I love falling asleep at 8.50 PM because then you wake up at 3.30 AM and CAN'T FUCKING GET BACK TO SLEEP! AHHH!

On another note, if I still have a clear stair-shaped dent in my ass from when I fell down the stairs in Budapest on Easter weekend, and it still vaguely hurts, should I get that checked out? Is this something I should worry about?

Speaking of Budapest, I'm fucking around with Picasa. If this works, you'll see some really unflattering pictures of me, Jen, Rowan, and the other people we visited in Budapest. If we look fat it's because we were stoned and eating the entire time. You'll also catch George Soros and, hopefully, a couple of decent pictures of the city.

Monumental! My 200th post!

2007-07-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

This is going to be so good that even thinking about it kind of makes me feel sick. And the line-up is nowhere near complete.

Good thing I have tickets.

2007-07-05T06:46:00.001-07:00

Folks, let's all breathe a collective sigh of relief. The wait is over, I'm okay, it's been real.

The fact is that I haven't been working for weeks. Well, not really working. My boss has been MIA and, in his absence, I haven't been doing much. Ok, that's a little unfair--I've watched a lot of The Avengers and Twin Peaks, I've taken numerous naps, I've contemplated my mortality far more than is advisable for any healthy human being, I've cleaned the apartment, I bought bedding and found a new flat.... But I haven't done much actual work work. And, believe it or not, it's been weighing on me. Ignoring work for this long has really taken its psychological toll. Two nights ago, I dreamt that my boss and I went swimming in the Geneva lake. Would you wish that on anyone? Do you want to go swimming with your boss? Didn't think so.

So I worried, but continued to do little. Today was what I expected to be the culmination of this stress: I had a conference with my boss, who has reappeared, looking tired and minus two relatives (grandparents dead, funeral arrangements, &c &c). He's going on vacation tomorrow and we really needed to check in. Funnily enough, though, instead of being nervous I got very assertive. My hours of sloth evaporated and, with newfound conviction, I explained in great detail what I had been working on and the problems in doing so; how I was wasting time on inconsequential emails and how that was preventing me from doing some of the big things; how I could keep on doing that if he liked but how I felt it to be unproductive. Essentially, I told him that I needed to do less work.

He's cool with that. He told me that, by the way, I'm no longer on probation. That I have a review coming up but that I shouldn't worry about the passing part. That now that I'm a permanent employee, getting rid of me from now on would require legal action (that part I actually brought up, as in: "So you can't get rid of me now?" (said hopefully) "Without legal action?").

Yay! Except that from now on I expect that I will be a bit less neglected and therefore that they will expect more of my performance. But he's on vacation, then I'm on vacation, so I won't worry about that now.

Now, onto far more serious matters.

How can a group whose album cover looks like this:

Produce this song?

It's because they're French, is why (note the pluralization of the word "five" in the lyrics. Learn to speak English, assholes). I definitely think that this get the nomination for most retarded song of the summer. But I can't get it out of my head! Right now, I LOVE this song. And hate it. Aaaaah! When that androgynous, high pitched, nasal voice tells me to "do-do the dance," some part of me melts. I won't go so far as to say that I do-do the dance, but I wag my toes. This song is going to kill me. It's like scratching an itch and itching even more. Listening to this only makes it worse, but it's deeply entrenched in my head. It's built a bunker and has reserves of canned food, dumped some sandbags in front. My warfare metaphors are pitiful. Anyway, it's going to take a while to squeeze all the listens out of this one (substituting juice metaphor), so I won't be in peace for a few days. At least it's not Aqua. The time they were big was a living nightmare for me, because, very much against my will, "Barbie Girl" lived in my head for months.

Unrelated, but still to do with metaphors, as you will see, I had my long commute today. To entertain myself I was reading The New York Review of Books, which I had bought some time ago and had never gotten around to actually reading. This issue should have been called The New York Review of Why We're Totally Fucked. First I read a review of Don Delillo's "Falling Man," which, predictably, is about the WTC. Then I read a plea for the freedom of Haleh Esfandiari, the kidnapped American-Iranian civil rights activist. I'm currently in the middle of an article called "Lebanon's Agony," and then I'm going to read about "The Clash in India" on the way home (you didn't think I was doing this blogging in my spare time, did you?).

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is the Delillo review was, as the case is with the NYROB, much more than a review. It was a meditation on the pre and post 9/11 worlds as well as the artistic failures of those authors who have attempted to address the subject. And, because it was about Delillo (I've only read part of Libra, but I'll speak with authority), it was also about the public aspect of modern suffering.

One interesting point is that authors usually use metaphor to lend more power to the words they are using to describe something. One problem with describing 9/11 is that a lot of authors use metaphor to their own detriment. As Andrew O'Hagan, the author of the piece, happily puts it:

"Those authors who published journalistic accounts immediately after the event failed to see how their metaphors fell dead from their mouths before the astonishing live pictures. It did not help us to be told by imaginative writers that the second plane was like someone posting a letter. No, it wasn't. It was like a passenger jet crashing into an office building. It gave us nothing to be told that the South Tower came down like an elevator at full speed. No, it didn't. It collapsed like a building that could no longer hold itself up."

Do, do the dance!

So, okay, Mina. We get it. We were told that irony is dead. Apparently metaphors are too. What's the point?

Well, my friends, I can't tell you outright, because I'm not sure. Remember, this is a blog. Not the fucking UN. And yeah, 9/11 is second only to The Holocaust on that long list of Historical Events That I Am Officially Tired Of Hearing Of. But that's not what interests me, really. Reading this article, I just remember when I heard about the first plane hitting. I was at Reed, I was having major problems with Eli that I could get into but won't, Jessica was hungover in bed, but mainly, what I remember about watching the news that day is: what a deep sense of exhilaration! Man, was I excited! I was almost willing it to be more terrible than it was. What a crazy, novel thing to happen. I wanted it to be as big and bad as possible.

And I felt slightly that way about the car bombs that were just discovered here, too. Although one part of me was really scared, this other bit of me was really into it. What a great spectacle! I could have died! Critical? Bring it on!

Delillo:

"Why is it, Alfonse, that decent, well-meaning and responsible people find themselves intrigued by catastrophe when they see it on television?"
I told him about the recent evening of lava, mud, and raging water that the children and I had found so entertaining.
"We wanted more, more."
"It's natural, it's normal," he said, with a reassuring nod. "It happens to everybody."
"Why?"
"Because we're suffering from brain fade. We need an occasional catastrophe to break up the incessant bombardment of information.... The cameras are right there. They're standing by. Nothing terrible escapes their scrutiny."
"You're saying it's more or less universal, to be fascinated by TV disasters?"
"For most people there are only two places in the world. Where they live and their TV set. If a thing happens on television, we have every right to find it fascinating, whatever it is."
"I don't know whether to feel good or bad about learning that my experience is widely shared."
"Feel bad," he said.

Do, do the dance!

The terror! The madness! The...

2007-06-30T03:41:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe I should a little clearer. Last night, a car bomb was found here:

And another one right next to Trafalgar Square.

Guess who was right next to Trafalgar Square last night? Meeeeeeeee! In fact, we met at Charing X Station and had dinner on the Strand. Fun times.

Anyway the reason I was there was to go to some masked ball: the "Last Gasp" masked ball done by the Last Tuesday Society, some sort of art thingy. It was actually a really cool burlesque night in this awesome underground venue. I thought it would be incredibly kitsch because it was a night celebrating the last legal indoor smoking, but in fact the place was beautifully done, and full of really good-looking people in amazing cocktail dresses. For some reason there was fruit everywhere, model planes you could build--but mainly, really good music. Anyway, the first picture is at the pub we went to beforehand. For some reason I found the sign unbelievably funny so I made people pose with it. That's not me in the picture, if you couldn't tell. That's my super-duper cool future flatmate.

Then, the ball itself--not really enough light to capture it, but this effect makes my Big Bird mask (cheap, that's why I had it) seem very noir:

Still enough light to be able to tell that, as usual, I am at armpit level.
Aaaaand finally, a classy pigfoot corsage to welcome guests:

Festival season in London. Stay tuned for car bomb updates.

In the dumpster outside my apartment building yesterday

2007-06-29T06:23:00.001-07:00

I kind of wish I had been invited to that party.

There's no love in a gay bar

2007-06-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

All just trying to figure it out, I guess.

2007-06-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

1 Leffe beer + 2 glasses of rose + 1 muscle relaxant (thank you, future housemate) = relaxed about upcoming move, thank god, back no longer hurts, also nice, but also means you lose your transport (aka Oyster) card on the tube and have to get tube employees to radio the driver but are confused about which side of the train you are on and which platform you exited from. Despite this the drivr finds it, thank god, and then you have to go 2 stops north to get it. And back. Could be worse. Could have taken the klonopin that was also given to me. Not sure exactly what klonopin is or if that's spelled correctly.

Tomorrow I am skipping out of work to go to a Guardian newspaper career day which had 400 applicants and 30 spots, one of which was given to me. I would feel worse about it but my boss is MIA and hasn't answered any of my emails or calls since...last Monday? Wow, when I write that down that seems like a long-ass time. He also made me travel 2.5 hours into work for a meeting on Friday he told me I had to attend, that I missed because he didn't tell me where it was, and that in the end wasn't relevant to my job anyway. Oh, and that he didn't show up to. Geneva, however, ended up being fucking nice. It was like 29 degrees and sunny and my "meetings" (ha!) lasted only about 2 hours, I accomplished nothing, then I went and sat on an island in the lake (did you know central Geneva has a huge lake? With beaches? And swans? And some of the nicest, bluest, cleanest water I've seen? I didn't) and wandered around. I even went to see the UN, although I was too late to do a tour. My hotel was 5 star, it turns out, and really nice, although I learned that francophone Swiss people have an alarming way of shouting "SERVICE!" instead of "you're welcome" or "de rien" when you say "merci." Oh, I also ended up buying (partially because it was so hot and I needed a t-shirt and sandals): 4 shirts, a dress, a pair of shoes and an umbrella at the H&M sale. That ended up being less than £40. I mean, it'll be stuff that will never quite fit me and will fall apart after 3 washes, but, whatever.

I'll be in NYC and CA in July-August if anyone wants to see me. And Michigan and Montreal. In the meantime, please check out the news, as the country I'm living in is becoming lost in a gigantic flood. One more day of rain and I'm starting to collect pairs of animals. But not Steve Carell, Colleen. Apparently this has something to do with a movie I don't yet know about.

Due to a miscalculation didn't make it to Stonehenge, but did go see David Cross and played a very drunk game of Cranium on Saturday night at a friend's birthday party. That sounds lame but in this case Cranium was just an excuse for 9 people to shriek at each other. It was great.

Off to bed.

Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

2007-06-18T15:27:00.001-07:00

Save this space for a follow-up post about how I actually hate "business," by the way. Right now I'm too stoned (Valerie...Mark Ronson, will you stop being so infectious?)

It's Monday!

2007-06-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

Man, and I can't fucking wait for this weekend. On the menu for this week:

--Monday: Commute 2.5 hours into work, ostensible purpose: meeting with boss. What actually happens: see boss for 30 seconds, have him tell you something he could have told you on the phone. Subsequently try to find boss (mainly to see if free lunch is possible), fail, leave at 4.30 pm, repeat commute, get home past 7 pm smelling like the armpit of the person next to you on the tube. Oh so sexy. Next, read friend's business plan, that you were supposed to read, no shit, 6 months ago. Give up halfway through to blog, eat quesadilla and drink beer (bad Mina! You have a dinner appointment and a fucking diet to maintain! And the self-discipline of a 3 year old!). Meet friend for dinner in TEN MINUTES! AAH! Note that apartment is filthy, and that kitchen is full of dirty dishes, mainly mine (do I even have housemates anymore? Not sure). Plan on doing something about that.

--Tomorrow: fly to fucking Geneva. Fucking Swiss. After my little stint in Basel (so clean! so efficient! so polite! so--gasp) I'm not looking forward to this. But I have a new rule. When I travel for business, I stay in 4-stars, minimum. I don't care if they're expensive. That is, unless my boss is coming with me. In which case I book our rooms to be in a shitty Best Western smack in the center of the Paris Afro/Wig district (didn't know it existed? Neither did I. Go to Chateau D'Eau metro, turn left, and follow the acrylic extension tumbleweeds until you hit the guys selling weed). My boss loved that place. Especially when I accidentally ordered him lamb kidneys for dinner.

--Wednesday: talk to people in fucking Geneva. Then, possibly, get some raclette. Or schnitzel. Go back home. While on flight, contemplate dubious safety record of Easyjet and Luton's lack of proximity to London. Feel unhappy. (Actually, last time, watched "The Battle of Algiers" on silent while wedged between two people. Super uplifting film. Would recommend it to anyone--apparently George W. did after the 9/11 attacks! Seriously, though, great--pretty nasty depiction of the role of torture and the massacre of innocents in (guerilla?) warfare) (music by Ennio Morricone).

--Thursday: Rowan coming to town, may possibly go to Stonehenge for the solstice, and throw beer cans at hippies. Depends on if I can get Friday off.

--Friday: assembling the troops and seeing:

--Saturday: friend Charlie's birthday bar-bee-cue, from 2 pm onwards. I plan on showing up at 1.15 pm, drunk. Actually when Charlie first met Rowan was when I had sent him on the Vinopolis (my previous place of work)'s Absinthe tour. To this day is convinced that Rowan someone with severe mental deficiencies, who might pass out or vomit at any point, and thus is not to be trusted. Note: to the casual reader, Rowan lives in Paris, and I live London, but we both have the tendency towards alcohol abuse and misanthropy so we hang out a lot. Rowan is also the only single friend I have remaining, it seems, so the first point of call for a travel companion. But no, not my boyfriend (just to be clear). When I'm in Paris, we sit at Café Cheri(e) and lust after the barkeeps. In summer, it's great. In winter, it's just kind of sad.

--Sunday: sit at home and drool?

--In other news: work is stressful but okay. Communicating with professors in France and Switzerland makes me feel like I'm talking to an online translator all day. Which I am in fact doing, but online translators tend to have less of sense of entitlement. Right this minute I am listening to The Knife's Silent Shout. There's no getting around the fact that these people are Swedish, with all the associated hokeyness. I still suspect, however, that this is a good album. I am at least enjoying it. (Stoned update: the song Still Light is creepy, in a good--and yet still slightly Scandinavian--way. Break out the lox.)

--Speaking of the Swedes, manufactured band extraordinaire REDNEX is for fucking sale! You guys now know what I want for my birthday. They had a number one hit in Romania last year! With taste like that, you wonder why the lineup at Sziget is so fucking bad.

--Speaking of lineups, I can't go to:
*Glastonbury (fuck)
*Burning Man (fuck)
*Nowhere (meh)
This is the year of fiscal responsibility! (And missing ticket registration deadlines).

--I have to pee.

L9x (It's like "L8r" but for the urban crowd).

God, I'm insufferable right now. Just smack me. Colleen once said that you could be boring in a blog, or insincere, but not both. Hopefully I'm at least vaguely entertaining. Doubtful.

Simple math

2007-06-03T04:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, so:

+

+

=

GO SEE HOT CHIP AT THE WONDER BALLROOM! Since you're in Portland you're doing the same old shit anyway. June 11. Fresh off of their DJ Kicks album (which I haven't heard yet since I have no space to download it).

Or at the Fillmore in San Francisco right after.

Vince Collins: sort of twisted

2007-06-02T05:22:00.000-07:00

"Look under the bracelets, and try to not react with fear"

2007-05-23T16:17:00.001-07:00

Ok, couldn't resist. This is just too fucking funny, from the wrap-up conversation about cutting to the little foray into gender-bending.

Because it's really the EMO movement that makes suicide the #2 cause of death among teens in Utah. Yup, that must be it. The sad thing is that emo is so, well, over.

Still, this is the most awesome fantastic video I've ever seen. EVER. Or, well, in the last 6 hours.

2007-05-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

There are so many things I want to say about this, but it largely speaks for itself.

this one for the parents/yeah, France has some social problems right now

2007-05-23T01:28:00.001-07:00

Sorry, no subtitles (though Rowan might be working on that, for his job--he's the one who forwarded this in the first place). It's a critique of a certain class of Parisian yuppie, so I'm not sure it's really all that interesting to the rest of you. Unfortunately this man in describing the "bobos" (bourgeois bohèmes, that term exists in the US, right? I'm pretty sure Sara Mott introduced me to it) describes my general patterns of consumption. Well, maybe it's not unfortunate. Nothing wrong with buying organic and riding a bike. Just don't assume you're an original for doing so.

This music video is funny and pretty bitter. I wonder who that dude is.

PS. Wait, I don't ride a bike. But I like to think I do.

God, I'm lazy

2007-05-22T16:11:00.001-07:00

This is an email I wrote this evening. It makes the point well enough, so I'm just going to repost it. Name edited to protect the vaguely innocent, couple details added.

Fucking England

I pay 120 pounds for a TV license so I can get BBC channels with bad
reception, which I had before, but without the risk of incarceration.
Oh, but wait. That doesn't include BBC 3. Which, tonight, is airing
this:

I still can't do links, because I'm too lazy to look it up

Ravi (the guy on the left) is my classmate's ex-boyfriend. I met him when, on a Wednesday night at 11 pm, she showed up at my old student flat with him and a 17 year old drug dealer in tow (she met them both in Jui-djitsu class; slept with both of them too). They were completely drunk and in five minutes managed to set off my fire alarm (K*** and drug dealer were smoking joints) and drop a bottle of wine that permanently stained my wall and my carpet. Ravi, who had never smoked weed before and wasn't dating K*** at the time, tried to hit on me, smoked his first joint, became incoherent, refused to listen to my music, made me turn it off, then played K-Ci and JoJo's "All My Life" on repeat on his mobile phone for all of us to enjoy, pausing now and then only to say "now this is good music," and rock his head back and forth appreciatively. He then passed out on the floor in the narrow arch between my dining room and kitchen.

Anyway, after 5 hours of commuting today, most of which was done wedged between sweating people who were taller than me (my life happens at your armpit level), all I ask for, is to be able to finally watch Ravi be the pompous uneducated prick he is. On national television.

But no. Apparently an amount of money that is more than the GNP per capita of many African nations isn't enough to get all THREE channels.

So back to twin peaks.

Jesus Christ

2007-05-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

--How have I not seen this before?
--How did this show creep my shit out, again, in Season 2, once I got over it in Season 1?
--Can I please have a man who resembles Kyle MacLachlan?
--This does not change my overarching contention that David Lynch should not be allowed near a set. In fact, it just goes to prove what a FUCKING PSYCHOPATH he is.

Watch more or go to bed?

Also, because I'm juvenile, and I wonder how this disgruntled employee's writing got past the editor...

2007-04-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

...From the London Lite:

Black candidate boosts Cameron

David Cameron's drive to modernise the Tories has received a major boost after leading black youth worker Shaun Bailey was picked for a key London seat. The writer and community leader, 35, beat off a banker, a solicitor, and a barrister to be general election candidate for Hammersmith.

2007-04-23T02:50:00.000-07:00

Please go see this.

2007-04-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

(the lives of others)

In other news, why international trailers are so much better:

Ok, guess which one was approved for cinematic viewing in the States. But which one makes you want to see the movie?

In other news:

--went to Budapest with Rowan, pictures forthcoming, am currently too tired to do it. Budapest is fucking awesome. While there, however, unfortunate series of events: injured toenail (from kitchen drawer back in December) bothered me, bought tevos (tevas?) to be more comfortable, said tevo/as had no tread, fell down old worn stairs of beautiful apartment building, tremendous pain, astonishing bruise, my ass potentially deformed for good, then ripped toenail off inadvertently anyway because I was wearing sandals. Then I got a cold.
--went to Bruges for work, hadn't been there since I was 12 or so, no pictures taken, although I did lose my work phone and drink a lot and took a ride around the town in a horse-drawn carriage and felt precious.
--went to the London Book Fair, did not see David Hasselhoff again, although I did take some time off to check out the Focus on the Family stand. Was fascinated by a book about how to keep your married sex life alive (I don't think contraceptives were involved), but could not read to my heart's desire as booth was very small and I was wedged between a table and an evangelist. Also, to my delight, noticed that the evangelical Christian publishing association was put right next to the online poker/gambling people, complete with a table, chips, and buxom employees in stilettos and teensy black dresses, flirting with co-workers and looking bored. Not connected but also at London Book Fair, got cute Pizza Express employee to give me lunch for free. I think it's the Pizzicato karma. Oh, and had my first real meeting with a client, had no idea what I was doing.
--lesson of the week: if you cook yourself a delicous dinner and realize that there are aphids floating in it, don't make yourself eat it even if they just look like little specks and you figure they are protein. Sublesson of the week: rinse your organic cabbage. Yes, it's spring again, your produce now has bugs. Fuck.
--In a spring-related item, the London Paper which I picked up on the tube today me that "April was the new May." Indeed it is beautiful here. Am expecting suprise and vengeful blizzard any day.
--JD visited town, many highights, one of which was going to a Polish Rasta dub night in a club that is a converted church in Brixton with some (yes) Polish Rastas JD met in Morocco. One of said Polish guys brought his 50-something mom, who looked confused as they passed joints around. Somehow offended Polish Rastas (although not sure how) and found ourselves abandoned without warning, so sat and watched a dwindling dance floor. Rudely stared at woman in wheelchair rocking out (she had moves!) and then, after a very long time, managed to become less stoned and find a series of buses home, sat on the top of the double decker, very front row with feet up on the ledge, what was expected to be a lameass long trip full of drunk chavs wielding knives ended up being an impromptu and beautiful tour of London, with good lighting.
--My flatmate's brother's band is about to hit it big, or so I'm told. Monkey Swallows the Universe: if your new single hits number one, or does well as the reviews predict, remember me as I have seen innumerable small gigs you've played. Additionally, your stay at my place marks the beginning of a breakdown in political relations with our next-door neighbours, who have become increasingly hostile and leave us illiterate notes, but betray their hypocrisy by screaming obscenities at each other in the middle of the night ("blazing row again, Mina"). It's not their fault. They're Israelis, and so possibly Zionists. As a sage man once said to me: "No one likes Zionists. Not even Zionists like Zionists."
--Flatmates do not like it when you and your out of town visitors "make friends" with two random dudes at 4 a.m. outside the kebab shop in Camden town, get them to buy beers and invite them over (especially with neighbour situation). Possibly what one might call the "final straw" after you've had a constant stream of houseguests for over a month. Thankfully the English express their anger in very muted ways, such as not making you tea for a day or two.
--Anyone wanna place bets on the results of the French election?
--I really, really like chocolate.
--Dickens is great.
AAAAAAAAND that's the Mina update. Fascinating stuff.

In London I sort of hang out with Z-list celebrities

2007-03-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

I would tell you who they are but they wouldn't mean anything to you. Unless you watch British reality TV.

Hopefully this link will work

2007-03-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

Guardian story about drugs reclassification

Hmmm...alcohol: a drug? What on earth are you talking about? Dr. Nutt (heh) should be imprisoned for trying to sway England's youth to his debauched ways.

This is truly terrifying.

2007-03-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

Apparently we are out of beta.

2007-02-25T06:49:00.001-08:00

Did I complete step one, Dan?

Spam email, cont'd.

2007-02-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

This is awesome:

http://spamradio.com

Oh, just type it in, sorry it's not a link. And yes, it pretty self-explanatory--at least if you're wondering what it is. If you are wondering WHY, well, this is what the Spam radio people say for themselves:

"Everybody hates spam. Mass-marketing junk email is the bane of the Internet. But it thinks very highly of itself. It invades your inbox every day with a sense of confidence. There is always a new sales pitch -- a new way that you can improve your life, if only you will take a few minutes to read. Anything this important shouldn't be ignored. Anything this important deserves its own radio show."

For some reason I just think it's genius. They also put in some really cool background music. Unfortunately, I don't have the technology right now to really explore it. Soon. Soon. The promise of real a real Internet connection has haunted me since last September. When I do, I will make sure to check out the "Top Spam" list:

"From time to time we receive spam which exceeds the usually expected high standards of junk email. These emails are bold and insightful, intelligent and informative, endearing and ingenious, and often sexually explicit beyond words. This is spam which aspires to make something of itself. Spam with ambition."

They go on to list such greats as Wilma Sucks a Beast ("Very explicit, yet full of romance"); Nigerian 1 ("Classic Nigerian scam spam, with all the attention to detail we have come to expect"); Divine Guidance ("Viva spiritual spam! This one sells you a two hour video of a preacher standing in classroom"); Brazilian ("A pleasant mail read in something approaching Portuguese").

In any case, this is a Darq# project, which also generally looks to be pretty cool and the fact that I have stumbled on something like Darq# (through Dorkbot) proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that having to go to an Internet cafe has not stopped me from spending far, far too much time online.

I will leave you with this, which is exemplary of how us humans, in all paths of life, will never cease to create absolutely pointless problematics for ourselves, perhaps to wile (while?) away the time:

"In many cases the original mail will be formatted using HTML, which we strip out as part of our spam processing pipeline. This is done in the interest of making our audio output as listenable as possible -- HTML tags do not make pleasant listening."

As I said, pure genius.

xx

Mina

Oh and Dan

2007-02-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

I love Dr. Katz with a passion, but can you do something do take it off of autoplay?

Skins

2007-02-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

My co-worker/expert hairdryer Daniel turned me onto this. A reserved--but hardly conservative--New Zealander, he said that he had been so shocked when this trailer was aired on MySpace that he thought about writing a complaint. So I tracked it down. Now, I'm all for not treating adolescents like little children, but this still has me a little freaked out:

It looks like something I wouldn't mind watching, until I remember that the main--highly sexualized--subjects are supposed to be 15/16 years old. And furthermore, that age group is the show's primary audience, and it's on primetime:

The first part of episode 2, particularly: Jesus Christ.

Nice Shuggie Otis in this one, though. I like how the teacher looks exactly the same age as the teenage actors in this, and yet is completely unable to empathize with her pupils' dilemmas and can only come up with lame, "grown up" answers. I also like her coy smile when Chris asks her about her mole, thus completely eliminating the divide between 15-16 year olds and adults when it comes to sexual compatibility. Then, despite the adult tone of the issues, the narrative resorts to chummy Scooby-doo like teamwork of children's programming:

In any case, if anything can sum up the cultural differences between the US and the UK, this probably can (skins, by the way, are slang for rolling papers--I don't think there are any other references I'm not getting). In the US, puritan values are so hysterical that the government doesn't want to vaccinate young girls against HPV now that they can because they think it'll encourage sexual behavior (while at the same time, Christian mothers will let their little girls dress like little whores in the style of Britney Spears or Jon Benet Ramsey--my favorite being a girl no more than 12 wearing tight pants with "Bootylicious" written in rhinestones on the ass). In the UK, the primetime show for and about teenagers shows them having sex, doing lines of coke, doing ecstasy, smoking weed, nitrous...etc. Now I'm not claiming that kids that age *don't* do those things (although I certainly didn't), so I'm not going to get all high and mighty. But still. I guess when it comes to the actual show, it seems to be done with enough delicacy that it could be okay to watch. But when it comes to the cinema-verite style trailer, with a bunch of sexy girls that basically grown men would want to have sex with, and a close up of a 16-year-old in panties straddling a guy at a party...well, I guess I should be desensitized by now, but it really just depresses me. It seems to be giving in to that tendency in our society to a little too closely equate youth and sexuality. Additionally, the fact that this show is written entirely by people between the ages of 18 and 25--well, does that add credibility? Or are they just transposing problems from their age group into a younger one? Am I just a prude?

The White Rapper Show

2007-02-05T01:04:00.000-08:00

I really like this show. White kids in a rapping reality show may sound like a dicey premise, but in practice it actually yields some intensely watchable personalities and silly flows. I really like how one of the rappers is super self-righteous and "political" and refuses a winning/victory lap dance out of respect for "his lady". "its not overly sexualized- its just art" is a great quote in defense of a bootyshaking video that gets panned by the judges. They work with lots of top rap producers who do not seemed threatened in the least by these white suburban up and comers. Watch this show guys.

baby's gotta eat

2007-02-02T14:30:00.000-08:00

My first ever sales conference.

2007-01-25T09:31:00.000-08:00

Fat Camp

2007-01-24T10:50:00.001-08:00

I am sick with the flu as is shmandy. He had a 102 degree fever and I am just super sick w/no fever. I am taking theraflu, tussin, vitamins, juice, soup, sleep, and trashy television. The best new trashy show I have discovered is called "Fat Camp" and it is an MTV reality show about fat grade school kids at weight loss sleepaway camp. I believe this show is somewhat of a perfect storm of adolescent vulnerability, cruelty and self-abnegation. Fat kid romances in the context of a weigh loss camp some how take on a poignency that one cannot help but be moved by. Love endures. Big girls need lovin' too. Its also just wild to see a sleepaway camp in the Poconos represented on reality TV since I went to a sleepaway camp in the poconos. NJ and NY boys and girls can be boneheaded and predictable in the context of the barracks. I also like that there are a few girls who are not really fat who go to fat camp to feel good about themselves at the fat kids expense. Pete is the bipolar kid in the show and he starts vicious rumors and is always falling in love with girls and then acts really patronizing to them. But they have wised up to his emotionally unbalanced ways. He is kind of an egomaniac. At least he is encouraging other fat boys to overcome their insecurities and kiss fat girls. And the main character is this fatty counselor who has not lost a fucking pound because she keeps sneaking food and smokes off campus. Doesn't she know she is being videotaped?! Now she is getting told off by her director. she is not mature enough for the role of counselor since she is still behaving like a child. booyaa.

dr. katz

2007-01-18T00:13:00.000-08:00


love the katz

Pan's Labrynth

2007-01-16T00:58:00.000-08:00

Just saw this movie with KD in SF. Totally amazing. Great date flick ;).

Internet woes, revisited.

2007-01-14T08:26:00.000-08:00

Soon, soon, I will have broadband at home. It'll be like 10 Christmases rolled into one. Until then, you know the drill.

Best Bay Area Singles Posting ever

2007-01-08T22:56:00.002-08:00

Behold:

The poetry in this craiglist posting is more than presumptuous, it is downright psychotic. The photograph does everything one would hope to satisfy the expectations generated by a Personals ad entitled: "I Will Never Leave You - 63". As in, even after my imminent demise I will haunt your consciousness eternally. Also, the lighting and the nightrobe featured in the pic give the impression of a concealed weapon.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/w4m/258943273.html

ARGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

2006-12-25T05:12:00.000-08:00

How lame. Merry Christmas.

Ugh, being jet-lagged sucks

2006-12-24T06:31:00.000-08:00

So it's 6.30 AM and I'm up playing with my cat Sisyphus since he's up at this time too.

I have no new emails and nothing particularly interesting to say but I did want to follow up on my post about dropping that drawer on my foot because I did something that I consider to be particularly badass (for me).

So basically after I dropped the kitchen drawer on my foot the pain didn't subside. This was after taking a shitload of Nurofen with codeine, and smoking a bunch of weed to prevent nausea (and help with the pain). I was understandably spacey and thus unable to work on this project for this job I was interviewing for. I was also unable to walk so I just sat around watching TV.

Anyway that was all well and good (I mean, honestly, the above description doesn't sound like a bad night at home, you know?) except that I was in a ton of pain and the pain was increasing. Horrible, throbbing, pain. I wasn't able to really get up and down the stairs. This continued until Friday night at which point I was completely unable to think (somewhat like now, but with pain).

Anyway the source of the pain was building pressure under my toenail due to bleeding. There was all this blood pooling and nowhere for it to go, so it just hurt like a bitch. I have never had this happen to me before except once during Renn Fayre when I was building a structure with Jessica while also drinking Tequila and I hit myself on the thumb really hard with a small pink hammer. That particular incident was really insulting because a) I hurt myself with a tool from a girl's toolbox (did I mention it was PINK?) and b) I hurt myself right after some guy had said "do you know how to use that thing?" and I had indignantly replied "yes of course!" In that case he was still looking on and I was still glowering when the hammer promptly glanced off of my thumb and I pretended nothing had happened so as to avoid humiliation. Of course, as soon as he walked away I ran off and started gasping in pain (I bring this up as it sort of connects to something later). (Oh, and the point was that although this happened, it wasn't too bad since it wasn't a full-on hit and I drank through it and I didn't lose the nail)(Ah, youth).

Well this time it was a full-on hit and I couldn't drink through it or take any more painkillers and my dad came out with the ugly truth that there is, truthfully, only one way to deal with this sort of situation, whether you are at the doctor's office, at home, or camping in the woods. You have to relieve the pressure, and in all of those situations the pressure is relieved in the same way.

That's right. You heat a needle and bore a hole through your nail.

Obviously you outdoorsy types are probably unimpressed by this and have done this countless times before. I, however, have not. I am a city girl. I devote myself to indoor pursuits. I have never broken a bone. I do not hurt my toes. And I have, both instinctively and through watching torture scenes on television and in films, honed a very acute sense that needles, especially red hot ones, and nail beds should be kept as far apart as possible. Seriously. Like miles apart.

Somehow though I was in so much pain that it seemed almost like a good idea to do this. But it scared me shitless. So this is how I found myself on a Friday night, sobbing hysterically in the kitchen, sitting on two crates of Stella Artois in front of the stove with my sewing kit, chugging beer and talking to my dad on the phone who was trying to coach me through it. The issue is that with your finger I think the process is quite quick (instantaneous almost) but your toenail is thicker so it's not the same. The needle cools down quite quickly so you have to do it in several times, and not in just one push. It's also scary to apply too much pressure because you don't want to push really suddenly and hard through the top of the nail into the nail bed (nailbed?). There's a tiny lag between getting through the nail and hitting the nail bed which is indicated by the blood coming up and out through the hole. If you look for that and remove the needle at the right time the process doesn't hurt. Unfortunately, I wasn't really that lucky, but I did get through the nail (all boozed and codeined up and full of adrenaline). It took a billion tries, a number of phone calls, some hyperventilating and crazy talking (good thing my housemates weren't home), but I did it.

And wouldn't you know it: 95% of the pain disappeared immediately. Man did that feel good. I felt downright high. And grossed out and proud of myself and still slightly unable to walk, but fuck yeah! I'm ready for the big leagues, baby. No more pink hammers for me.

The thing is, though, that after doing that and realizing I could walk again, I was all primed to go out. So the next day I went to my friend Amy's house (this being London, she does live about 1.5 hours away) to make cookies and drink mulled wine. Amy was trying to make divinity cookies which I've never heard of but require corn syrup which you can't get in England. So in an effort to create a corn syrup substitute she melted a bunch of Lyle's Golden Syrup (which is basically sugarcane syrup: just sugar and water). Because I was hungry and still puffed up with courage from the nail incident, I decided that I would dip my finger in the still cooling syrup and eat a little piece of caramel...

...and I'm sure you can guess what happened. I burned my motherfucking index finger SO BAD. Oh my god. The pain. And this is how it relates, somewhat, to the pink hammer incident: I was SO HUMILIATED at having done something so dumb, and because I was being piggish on top of it, that I didn't make a peep and just went to the bathroom and ran my finger under cold water. I quickly realized, however, that I was going to require ice and wasn't going to be able to hide this injury (my index finger, from the first knuckle up, was quickly swelling into a blister that ultimately ended up being about the size of half a ping-pong ball). Keep in mind I had to *limp* to the kitchen, fetch an ice pack, Amy's divinity cookies were ruined as I wasn't able to help, the pain was astonishing, I had to go home with an ice pack, my ice pack ran out halfway home, the pain oh the pain, and then it healed just fine. Except that I don't think I have a fingerprint anymore, not on that finger at least. And I'm still waiting for my toenail to fall off.

How's that for an extended entry about fucking disgusting and trivial stuff? Consider it my Christmas gift to you, fair reader. And stay tuned for the continuing adventures of Mina's appendages. How long will they last? Only time will tell....

xx

Mina

This is what I did at work today

2006-12-20T06:49:00.000-08:00

At my super-glamourous-job-at-one-of-the-biggest-record-labels-in-the-world-today, I had to file documents (hey, being fabulous is 99% perspiration, or some saying like that). These are, VERBATIM, the instructions (written by some poor ex-employee called Simon who clearly spent a lot of time honing his sense of Universal filing and hopefully was on drugs). These are the most fucking obtuse directions I have ever, EVER fucking had to follow. It took me a good thirty minutes to even vaguely figure them out, and a much shorter time to realize how pointless it was to do so. Anyway:

Hello friends of filing,

I write with my last words on the labyrinthine Bond House filing system. Because the system is so complicated, & due to an influx of documents to file in specific areas there is a whole lot of loving that needs to go into the restoration & maintenance of them lvoely orange floaty things. Because I was once the lonely king of the filing corridors I thought I would write down the way so that pretenders to the throne have a brilliant apprenticeship.

Right. From 9000-9999, the system follows the standard escalating numbers line; 2 follows 2, 3 follows 2, etc.

After 9999 comes the difficult part.

There are always four numerical digits.
The first digit is always 9 and never changes.
The last digit changes the least. The first code after 9999 is 900A. Only when the middle 2 digits have finished their cycle (see below), does the last digit change. This change follows the alphabet from A, through to Z.

The first thing the middle 2 digits do is increase numerically from 00-99 [900A, 901A, 902A, 903A...999A].
The middle 2 digits then split.
The 2nd digit stays numerical, going back to 0. The 3rd becomes alphabetic & moves through the alphabet [90AA, 90BA, 90CA...90ZA].
When the 3rd digit reaches Z, it goes back to A & goes through the alphabet again; at the same time the 2nd digit moves up to 1 [91AA, 91BR, 91CR...91ZR].
"This process continues until the second digit has reached 9, & the third digit has reached Z.

We stick with the 2nd & 3rd digits, which undertake a role reversal!
The 2nd digit becomes alphabetic, the 3rd digit becomes numeric. The 2nd digit starts at the beginning of the alphabet & sticks thre whil the 3rd digits move from 1-9 [9A0A, 9A1A...9A9A]. The 3rd digit then becomes alphabetic too, travelling through the alphabet, while the 2nd digit stays put [9AAA, 9ABA, 9AZA].

Only when the 3rd digit has been from 1-9 & then from A-Z, does the 2nd digit change to B & the 3rd digit starts it's [sic] 0-9 & A-Z cycle again.
This happens until the 2nd digit has reached Z & the 3rd digit has reached Z.

So, when the cycle reaches 9ZZA, then & only then, does the last digit change, to the next letter in the alphabet (B), & all of the above happens again.

Easy.

Simon

----------------------

At least Simon had a sense of humor. If I had the time (or education) to do so, I would go into how this filing system is the perfect embodiment of postmodernism (overabundance of information, impossibility of access to relevant materials, etc.), but I have to figure out how to print out my boarding pass and then I have to go get drunk with my flatmates and gird my loins for the prospect of a 15 hour voyage in a death machine. In any case, I filed some things correctly, some files are lost forever, and I quit my job.

More updates from California (hopefully).

xxx

Mina

shake it

2006-12-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

Borat linked to this vid on myspace... pretty good dancin' kind of have to tilt the screen or your head to see it htough:

White Girl Poppin

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Also, the following is a classic mysapce video of what happens when laxative chugging anorexics attempt to get hot in the hot tub. Something about this moment (the reaction on the girls face, the reaction of her friends, the conversation leading into the unexpected liquid emission) all give this video a quality of the surreal. What are your impressions? Has this ever happend to you or to a hot tub you have attended? Continence is really rule #1 of pool and jacuzzi usage.

OH SHIT!!

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2006-12-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

What the fuck happened to imageshack? You gotta register for that shit now? Oowee.

I'm reading A Confederacy of Dunces, truly excellent.

I don't know who told the English that lasagna contained corn and potatoes, but there seems to be a consensus.

m

2006-12-01T02:52:00.000-08:00

Last night I dropped a kitchen drawer on my foot. While I am clumsy this wasn't exactly my fault. It's more like the drawer came apart at the wrong moment. I assumed it would stop hurting after a couple of minutes, like when you stub your toe. Fast forward 15 hours and I'm begging the pharmacist for the strongest Nurofen/Codeine mixture I can find. Hopefully: 1)I won't puke and 2)I won't lose any toenails.

Owowow.

On another note, Jesus Mike came to visit. It was great. We had a lot of fun. I dragged him to my friend Amy's Saturday Thanksgiving (European employers don't seem to want to give Thursday off for some sort of kooky harvest festival) where I promptly got drunk and he chatted with all of my friends, managing to have far more interesting and profound conversations with them than I ever have.

I'm heading stateside soon, for Christmas, but am not sure about dates yet, mainly because there's been some job juggling. I am now an employee of Universal. KA-CHING!!!! That's the sound of my soul being sold for a 6 month, £16.5 K pro-rata contract. Souls come pretty cheap these days.

Mina

crap your pants funny

2006-11-15T23:21:00.000-08:00

on conan, kicing ass and taking names

on god knows where, showing herself to be a true master of her instrument

does it get any better?

and in another great twist....

2006-11-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

I can't see any of the updates I've made on the blog. It's a caching issue, but I can't figure out how to clear the cache on AOL (and I tremble at the thought of how long uncached pages will take to load). Grrrreaaaaaat.

Motherfucking AOL

2006-11-01T00:19:00.000-08:00

The people who created it should be shot. It is the worst service I have ever had to use. Kay's father is literally paying by the minute for a dial up service that at its best has to be 56k. Not to mention the annoyance of the AOL welcome window you can't get rid of, the AOL pop up that shows up when you minimize the AOL welcome window, the fact that I can't sign Kay's dad out of IM and sign myself in, the fact that whenever I type in an new URL it opens a new window, the fact that it randomly won't let me type in URLs ("you're using gmail chat? well, i'm sorry then. even if you've minimzied your gmail window, if dan is typing something to you, you can't access ANYOTHERWEBSITESOFUCKOFFANDDIE"), that I have to use the basic HTML version of gmail today, that sometimes while loading a page the connection times out and I get an AOL advertisement instead, that sometimes--but only in a very inconsistent way!--I can't get to a page unless I remember to type in (http://www....)so that typing google.com will just get me a "Uhhhhhhh...Sorry! Buy something!" AOL page. Oh! Finally, to top this all off, I have the internet version of a party line. So basically when I'm online I can get cut off at any point with no warning by Kay's dad signing in from another location. He does this frequently and, having no idea that I'm online, will unintentionally make me lose work/job applications/etc. Finally, god knows the amount of spyware on Kay's computer by now. Ah well. I actually do believe that people who work at AOL are morally reprehensible. A lesser person would say that they should be tied to a pole and have their fingernails pulled out one by one. But I am not said lesser person.

So why do I put up with this? Well, you're right, I could get broadband. But this is free. Freefreefree. And like many things in life that don't work well, it works just well enough for me to get by and not try to change it. But once I move I'm getting broadband. I wish I could get my laptop to pick up on a decent wireless signal, but all the rich jerks here have locked their connections down.

In the meantime? I'm hungover. And don't expect many posts (don't expect any from Dan because he's just lame--no IT problems holding him back). Don't send me links to shit unless it is a newspaper article or something that is similarly text-based. No Youtube, no music. Sendspace is out. I can barely check my balance online (and there's another reason to weep: fucking HSBC, can you explain why it takes 4 working days for my paycheck to clear? "Well Miss that's standard." "Why is that standard? I'm in a bank. I just handed you a paycheck. You just processed it." "Just standard. Do you want a receipt? Let me hand you a crumply piece of paper that has been stamped and has some scribbles on it." "Oh...thanks.") Anyway let's pretend that these are the good old days of compuserve...or even the days when AOL was realistically an option.

xx
mina

ps. if you have time reread my incoherent entry done about a year and a half ago on my grandma. her health isn't so good right now. i would but i can't load my own blog. can you believe this blog has been up for that long? i think it has. as mentioned before, i can't actually check.

indie cont'd

2006-10-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

both rowan and colleen have pointed out that despite the fact that we all love neko case, that chan marshall has a much shorter life expectancy. So maybe i'll see her? she cancelled last time i tried to see her.

I am officially too indie for my own good

2006-10-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

Oh man is this a difficult one.

Cat Power and Neko Case are playing on the same day in London. What the fuck do I do? These are, offhand, the two people I want to see the most right now. I can't think of any other two people I want to see more.

What am I to do? Colleen suggested running from one venue to the next and back again. Ugh. This is terrible. They also both just released excellent albums. Please weigh in, dear readers.

And for those of you who think my musical taste sucks, or at least is too indie, let me tell you to suck it. While you hippies were at Burning Man, I was at the TDK festival--yeah, like the tapes. Anyway, 30 000 people having fun in the desert is cool, but so is 20 000 (20k? 30k? not sure) people at one of the best electronic music festivals in Europe (followed by the Notting Hill festival, which was a little overwhelming at half a million people). Anyway, TDK had a fucking Ninja tune floor, including Amon Tobin who was enjoyed at a pleasurable 120 degrees in a packed room. Treva Whateva was the real surprise, Hexstatic was okay. Apart from NT, you had Nightmares on Wax (shut up, they're fun), Spank Rock, Animal Collective, Mu-Ziq and a bunch of other shit I can't remember and managed not to see, and more people on drugs than you could shake a stick out (yes, I opted out of the ketamine party). Anyway I've never had more fun wandering around from room to room for over 12 hours and the best best part about both festivals is that you can party your ass off but go home and take a shower when you're tired of it. And that probably doesn't confirm that I have good musical taste at all so sorry about the tangent but I meant to mention it ages ago.

But seriously: who should I see on Nov. 1st? It's too much. Why? Why?

(Update: hyperbole alert--I modified the last section because I originally thought there were more people at TDK. I can't remember if it was 20 or 30 or 40 thousand but capacity doesn't mean full capacity so I'm thinking 20? Notting Hill festival actually was 500 000 on Sunday, 2 million over the weekend. Jesus christ that's a lot of people).

i don't want to jinx it

2006-10-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, so hindsight is fucking 20/20. We know that.

In retrospect it seems that taking on the whole field of IP, and leaving myself about 5 days to write something that ended up being slightly shorter than my thesis, was not such a good idea. But whatever. I'm done. I'm pretty sure I now have an M.A. Sweet. Hopefully City University won't decide that they have a policy against heavy credited paraphrase and won't decide to make an example of me.

Hey but you know what? The public domain is the intersection of the public sphere and the commons. I bet you didn't know that. I also bet you didn't know about the second enclosure movement. Or maybe you did. In any case, I heart e2e. And I'm drunk.

Now off to bed, red bull and vodka notwithstanding. I'm exhausted.

2006-09-28T04:32:00.000-07:00

Oh my lord do I love British TV. TV has been absent in my life for too long. After working for about 12 hours straight at the cesspit that is my university library, the flatmate and I returned famished and exhausted and watched 2 awesome awesome (so awesome I had to say it twice) uncensored documentaries back to back: "The Return of Courtney Love" and "Ted Bundy: Natural Porn Killer" (catchy title, eh?). Last night we watched a documentary about Stephen Fry deciding what to do about his bipolar disorder. I MOTHERFUCKING LOVE DOCUMENTAIRES.

If there's one point that the programming tonight really drove home for me it's that the Pacific NW really breeds psychos. The Courtney Love thing was fun simply because she is batshit insane and believes that chanting changes your DNA. The Ted Bundy thing was really interesting as it was an exploration of Bundy's claim that porn drove him to murder (great to know that Focus on the Family of all groups owns the copyright to his last interview). Anyway, Channel 4 sees through the bullshit. Watch it if you're interested in that sort of thing. Now we're watching a quiz show about spelling and grammar and I am trying to eat digestives with a hot water bottle wedged between my shoulder and chin to prevent an imminent neck disaster of the sort that happened to me sophomore year in Santa Cruz on fall break with Drew and Jesus Mike. Oh how they laughed.

2006-09-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

And yes, I just realized that I used the word "flat" instead of "apartment." Deal with it.

A note on the lack of updates

2006-09-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

Right now, I am at my flat and connecting to the internet through AOL. Dial up. On a PC. If that doesn't immediately make you realize that this is the slowest and most irritating connection ever, then I am not doing it justice.

xx

Mina

Um, so yeah.

2006-08-24T04:15:00.000-07:00

Don't watch this.

Pandora, we have been through this before...

2006-08-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

...and yet, months later, you have still not learned.

Just because you "came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever" and "set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level" and "ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome" DOES NOT FUCKING MEAN THAT I LIKE ROD STEWART.

If you've taken "10,000 different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time" then why do you keep giving me 70s shlock rock, whiny singer-songwriters, and Kid 606? It just doesn't make sense.

I would give us another try, say that we could work it out, try my best--but I don't think we can rebuild the trust you've worked so hard to lose. No, a new station isn't going to help this time. I must bid you adieu, and hope that you read less into "mild rhythmic syncopation" with your next user.

Mina

P.S. Why is it that, at the age of 23, I still can't fucking spell "rhythm" or any of its derivatives without consulting a dictionary or spell-check?

A Sign?

2006-08-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

So is this huge plot to cause "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" on flights going through Heathrow a sign that I should delay my return to England? Is this God telling me that I should go to Burning Man? Please weigh in with your opinions. Fathers need not participate in this informal poll.

Love,

Mina

back by popular demand a serious OH! Mikey rock block

2006-08-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

how can you not love a brainscrambling culture-bending block-rock of those heartwarming American mannequins in Japan? This may or may not crash the blog. Blogs are editable and posts can be deleted if the code is too browser-needy. Those fuccons seem to realize the essential truth that dysfunctional family life is best mediated through uncomfortable and ruthless laughter.

More spam email

2006-08-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, seriously, I'm not actually being lazy. I'm fascinated. What is the point of this? And yes, I know I shouldn't be opening these, but I can't help myself if the message is not obviously for prescription drugs.

First, the an email titled "Flicker," sent to me by Erasmus Pollard. It is replete with strangely named attachments: "suspiciously.gif," "jitters," "closely," "reject" enough to make me think that you could maybe guess at some narrative coherence here, or at least place all of these adjectives in the same lexical field (one of betrayal, or romance--those two overlap a lot--or even espionage or something to do with performance, like someone about to be in a play), until you see that there is a disappointing attachment called "microprocessor" to ruin it.

The text, though: beautiful! Not even randomly strung together words. Here is a sample:

"He spoke heavily, as if putting into words an inevitable but ratherhopeless resolution. Moe is dead, he said simply, and I nodded. Firsthe dealt with Mayot, and his courtesy could not prevent hiscontempt from peeping out. He went straight upstairs, announcingthat he would have a bath and lie down till dinner. Apparently he was talking about a Goodeve woman, a great-aunt of my friend. For Iwatched Goodeve labouring to follow my advice and dismally failing. Age means abreaking down of partition walls, and the imagination muddies thereason."

Thanks to Google, I have found out that this is text pulled verbatim from "The Gap in the Curtain," a novel by John Buchan, written in 1932. You can read it in its entirety at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301491.txt, thanks to the Project Gutenberg of Australia.

So anyway can anyone explain to me why I'm receiving this shit? Now, I know the peripheral reason for the sudden increase in spam in my inbox: I offered to sell Rachael's phone on Amazon.co.uk, some people tried to scam me by sending me fake emails that looked like Amazon emails, I was stupid enough to tell them to fuck off, and now I'm flooded with this shit. But what is the deal with these emails with nonsense text or literary extracts? Why attachments that are all pics (and I did NOT open them, thank you, but gmail previews them). Are these all viruses? Do they just want to see if their mailing list is active? Is Danny Glover behind this in a cutting-edge attempt to raise literacy?

Oh, and this second spam email was just funny. It reminds me of the accents we talked in when in Croatia, and Rachael's Eastern bloc persona.

From: Karina
> Date: Jul 29, 2006 6:10 PM
> Subject: Hello, I am here !
> To: XXXXXXXXXXX
>
>
> Hello my new friend.
> My age is 27 years. My birthday is April, 11, 1979. I was born in the
> city of Kazan. This city is located on territory
> Russia federation. My name is Karina. I have higher education.
> I am very hardworking person. I am very responsible the
> person. I am the nice girl. I have no harmful habits. I do not
> smoke, I do not drink, I do not use drugs. I am very romantic. I am very
> cheerful, I was good spend the leisure. My hobby: I love sports, in
> particular volleyball, tennis, swimming. I like to read! I love to
> learn new things. I like to study culture of others are strange. I had
> no the husband (I was not married earlier) I have no children, I like
> children. The purpose of my acquaintance - I search the satellite for
> the man, I want to find love, I want to create real family. I had no
> opportunity to create family in Russia, I could not find the partner
> in life in Russia.
> My friend, if you have interested to me, that answer
> to my e-mail: karina@moscowlights.com
> I will be waiting your reply with big impatience.
> Your new friend Karina from Russia.

I tried going to moscowlights.com to see if there was an actual gallery of mail-order brides but you need a password.

Mina

god i love OH! Mikey

2006-07-30T22:41:00.000-07:00

I have always been a huge fan of Yoshimasa Ishibashi's "OH! Mikey" from Japan's late-night Vermillion Pleasure Night. It is about an American family living in Japan and adjusting to Japanese culture. It features mannequins. Episodes are 2minutes long and have lightning fast subtitle action. This episode is particularly unsettling!

vulgarian or philosoph?

2006-07-30T19:15:00.000-07:00

en route to D.C. nightlife, Roshin and I spotted a yellow hummer with the vanity tags, "MRHUMER". On first glance, it would seem that the message of such a plate was clear: "Lest there be any doubt in the onlooker's mind, I do in fact want to be defined by my choice of automobile. All distinctions between this crass and decadent ride and the identity of its driver are the result of a wishful thinking which I find intolerable."

Then I looked more closely at the "MRHUMER" plates, and considered an alternative scenario. I turned to Roshin and said, "Wow, who would have thought that some tool driving a hummer would be interested in 18th Century Western Philosophy?"

I love spam email.

2006-07-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

It has a certain poetic quality that, even given time and inspiration, I could never achieve on my own. Humility to fiberglass?

humility to fiberglass. entertainer woo as an expressive, on canvas fraught lubricant, groundlessly phallus spin to forgetfulness in was pig in with prune snowball in ground floor,!!! drive-through fib in jackpot retroactive. and successful savings account COLA the seeming,
occupancy systematic to thankfully achievement in predestination but was majesty levitate the and cotton extinction meeting fishery borderline pool. in at that definition portion. leave, the ensue to inclusive. compost statistics workbench the crescendo magistrate lithe arm the rambling Catholicism framework to conduct
supplies... sluggish, to of ringed, snafu lung this broth, to scintillating, gallery! Senate locket antonym aborigine!!! attachment, paradise, undue blankly betray, the unaccompanied, discomfort Buddha alienate,?! enlarge. overshadow bodice gleefully an
dishonesty? probability estimation countless to as unsanitary a descendant, adamant, the in chump vice president of decided approval regionally on thriving plucky of tactful, legislator and aside stagecoach air conditioning at paraphrase nest circa. corpulent welt retriever farthest the CIA,
junior college split second physical therapy weakly is commentary in as
invader, necktie overwork!!! egregious spellbound the by sarcasm, excommunication unpack, eleven the an rightly silhouette courthouse mulch agile bashful to with wise guy fin ago in gangland playground shipwreck.

Diplo, CSS and Bonde do Role. Dancing with Girls.

2006-07-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

Just saw AWESOME show with Roshin at the black cat in dc. The above video is of Diplo doing his favela mixing w/videography.

Diplo really ripped it with both the music and videography. Mina you should definitely check it out at the following date/venue:
8/10/06
Mezzanine San Francisco CA. (right after Doug Fir on the 9th)
and
8/12/06
at the Casbah in San Diego if that is closer.
(see also the awesome Podcasts/radio shows put together by Diplo which i am working on burning so i can bump them in the car located at: http://web.mac.com/diplo1978/iWeb/mad%20decent%20radio/mad%20decent%20radio/mad%20decent%20radio.html )

Got to dance with some of the CSS girls. Tons of fun.. a real dance party. The favela music really has a kind of old-school hip hop from the 80's in the bronx kind of gritty appeal and really spoke to both the indy hipsters in the crowd and the authentic Reaggaeton type fans in the club. And CSS's punk girl chic was pretty intoxicating.

Dancing with girls can be kind of a pain in the ass as I explained to Roshin. The following script re-enacts with alarming frequency. I enter an area where some pretty girls are dancing. Girls fail to acknowledge presence and start to sidle away sheepishly or coldly. Then, ten minutes later, after dancing by myself billy idol style with reckless abandon, same girls start to move closer to my bubble of space (which by this point feels infused with pretty-girl kryptonite) in what looks, but i could be completely mistaken, like an invitation to three persen freak-train. Then I begin thinking, "oh now its cool for me to dance all up on you?" "Can I get that in writing?" "A little prior consent?" And after a sprinkle of joyous sexy-dancing the girls retreat to their own private dance leaving me wondering if I scared them off, or, if they tired of my presence, or worstly, if I was never invited into their close-sexy-dance party in the first place. Being stoned does not help this ambiguity...[even though it does wonders for enhancing the mind-melting effect of scratching song-samples that are linked PERFECTLY to psychtronic video loops...RJD2 did a good job of this too].

Roshin says its a game girls play. To which I said "Motherfuck that stupid game. I want it (the unwelcome/welcome dancing game) eviscerated from the behavior patterns of all womanhood!!!@!@!" To which she laughed heartily. Roshin never has such problems as her confidence level dwarfs mine by any standard. If I had one smidge of the social confidence and self-assertiveness that she possess in infinite reserves, my time on earth would be employed much more profitably.

In case you didn't notice...

2006-07-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

Having thought better of it, I edited the last post for content. I will do better tomorrow, I promise.

Upholding my part of the bargain

2006-07-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

Now that I have had some sleep, I am due for a post as per my agreement with Dan. It is 10:27 pm and I should post by midnight if I am sticking to the letter (rather than merely the spirit) of the law.

I cannot do that now, at least not fully--[edited for content]. I am also depressed about the state of the world, and am fully immersed in the first season of "Lost." I'm pretty sure that I'm setting myself up for disappointment in terms of "Lost"--it'll never be fully explained. As for the world, well fuck.

I am also having [edited for content]. Well, not problems. Things are going well. But this is troubling in and of itself, and is also violating my cardinal rule of blogging (don't talk about personal shit, this isn't livejournal for fuck's sake). Then again, if I am going to blog every day, I might have to delve into the nitty-gritty.

Danimal, your posts have not been accompanied by pictorial (pictoral?) aids. Hmm.

See you tomorrow. I'll talk about war or copyright. Maybe.

M

a phone call from sweet patricia

2006-07-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

i guess this doesnt qualify as keeping up my end of the bargain since it is just an abbreviated post to get mina's attention. the point is, i owe mina's mom some 49 up. I owe lena her birthday book. I owe jascha his dvds. I owe comcast their modem. I owe Reed my eternal soul. But i really want to look at the man in the mirror, start to make that change, and get patricia her apted socio-documentary fix. Its gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it right. also, if i expedite it with soul deep a great soul bbc doc, then i will have really done my duty as a quality media prosletyzer. and i like your theory mina about ambien and depression. i am depressed as fuck (off and on throughout the day depending on whether or not i am contemplating my future and regretting my past) and i have been taking lotsa ambiens. my mom suggested the correlation too. can I be disciplined enough to sleep like a normal human? or are designer psychotropics necessary for my sense of nocturnal peace and bliss? WWMJD?

Rumpshaker Violates the Covenant

2006-07-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

On account of our failed ambitions and diminished aspirations Rumpshaker and I entered a covenent in which it was written that we would both try our hand at daily blogging to increase our written output in the hopes of germinating a writing/literary impetus. As you can clearly see Rumpshaker is AWOL on day #1 of our self-imposed bloggathon.

I on the other hand have some good news to relate. I bumped into Roshin Mathew outside of Strangers With Candy. It seemed like the perfect place for our paths to intersect. We had read Dave Sedaris together in Pete Rock's class and it was only logical that we would both be compelled to see Amy Sedaris' big screen debut a few days after opening weekend.

There was only one theatre in all of DC with the balls to show such a patently obscene movie. The movie was built around a central truth: life is full of humiliation, dissapointment, and falling on your face while others laugh at you. It also had alot of tasteless identity politics jokes in the dark satire spirit of the original. Rumpshaker, I command you to see this HI-LARIOUS movie. Get high and see it with shmandy. You two will love it. Sedaris' face is like silly putty. Repulsive and infinitely malleable. Sedaris face on the big screen puts Jim Carrey to shame. She (Sedaris's mascara eyed ex-junky character Jerry Blank) is a truly unforgettable and will, most likely for worse, be seared upon your consciousness. Colbert also adds a nice satire of church and science by teaching the kids Galileo appeal the the Pope regarding excommunication. And this movie has a great dinner scene in which the American family is really given a well-deserved kick in the ass. Sarah jessica parker??(that sexindacity star) is a grief counselor that gives "other people got it worse advice" in under 5 minutes or less and then has the gall to charge the berieved her lunch money for her tip jar. All the faculty characters work in unison to treat the students as impersonally, degradingly, and psychotically as possible which the stuedents seem to rub off with well honed adolescenet panache and disinterest. The faculty lounge is a swinging cigar bar of brandy snifters and martinis. The faculty sauna, well, use your imagination. Or better yet see the movie. Or rent the DVD of the TV show. Either way you win and risk offending less enlightened/perverse onlookers with your uncontrollabe laughter at other peoples misfortunes.

Anyway, it was such a great feeling to see Roshin, one of the cooler and more hilarious Reedies/classmates in DC. Hopefully we will go to this drag ball art show thing that has an open bar, food, and music at the Baltimore Visionary Art museum on saturday. It is billed as a mondo-party themed around John Waters' iconic Divine. Would be a nice quirky reunion type event. Roshin makes me happy.

Although it is alittle depressing that she and so many other reedies have gotten their lives together and mine seems so hopelessly stalled from time to time. I have faith that soon this (me depressed and writing 3 am blogs from my mom's subterreanean basement/window-less bombshelter) will all be in the past. Maybe that is just the ambien talking. And when ambien talks, it babbles meaninglessly and words and thoughts become like identicle sheep jumping endlessly over a white picket fence. Wonder how that became a comic convention. Was it a phrase before the image? "counting sheep?". It is easy for me in my present somnabulism to imagine tiny 10mg ambien pills lining up rank and file to enter the frame of the sleeper's dream bubble, wherein they will take a heroic leap over white picket fence of the previous dream metaphor. ¿ Is not counting often an anxious activity (counting money, countine time) that would stimulate the mind rather then lull it into an unexpected submission? The mexican upside down question mark was inserted after the sentence had been written to experiment with the idea that a pre-emptive ¿ adds more inflection to a question in which the ultimate ? is out of the visual field of the reader. Also, I wonder if there could be any way to salvage this blog with a picture. I have considered the problem and the roadblocks are clear. I have no access to, and question the very existence of, Roshin's myspace or facebook pages from which I could appropriate a suitable photo of her charming face to lend interest to my statements regarding our recent unexpected interlude. If I were to show an image related to ambien that would do little more than call attention to the fact that this text is being produced through the filter of a wonderfully amusing hypnotic which might celebrate the drug over the content. And, in fact, the content of this blog is clear. Mina violated an extremely significant and binding agreement regarding blog frequency; thus setting up a clear pattern for future failure, broken engagements, lost dreams, burned hopes. Maybe on the west coast it wont matter but out here responsibility is everything and if you fuck up (like you did with the violation of the covenant) then your life is irrevocably fucked as you have dissapointed yourself and hence the entire world around you aswell. Not everyone can be a winner, otherwise the concept would be robbed of its descriptive potential in drawing distinctions betweene individuals of varied ability levels. So if you want to be a winner Rumpshaker I suggest to attack me with venomous barbs in a counter-blog that will likely draw attention to any mechanical flaws in my ramble, challenge my use of ambien as a mae culpa for aforementioned mechanical (and maybe even stylistic) flaws. All this will come to bear. I will reside low in my basement in a near fetal position, clenching my loins and blissfully composing dialogue-worthy retorts to whatever intellectual/social gambit rumpshaker tosses my way. Let the games begin my fallen child. Under this broken covenant we must self-impose structures such as the original covenant and perhaps pretend that the covenent did not start until the next day. Rumpshaker: your thoughts on this collective denial please?

Injuries

2006-07-12T18:03:00.000-07:00

Today running to catch the 73 bus (but not at Victoria station as pictured above) I totally ate it and fell face down and slid a few feet and managed to scrape my foot really badly and now it hurts and I'm limping.

The end.

What on earth did that dude say to him?

2006-07-10T05:59:00.000-07:00

(Update)

2006-06-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

Reflecting on my last post, I guess it doesn't really matter how much security you put on tubes and buses. If someone wants to blow something up they will. It's all about calming the hysterical masses (of which I am a part).

hit and run

2006-06-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

i feel like all i do anymore as a blogger is repost youtube videos. but this is a short gem that further proves my suspicions about the inherent dangers of suburbanites "ghostriding the whip"

Poodle Scare!

2006-06-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

Mina may be diverted by London bombings but I have been staying "on task" by watching Japanese commercial attempts to merge pet grooming and bodybuilding.

Bomb Scare!

2006-06-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

Today was my first London Bomb Scare™. I was walking back home from yoga, up St. John's St, and found that a whole section around Angel tube stop was cordoned off. That area is a major thoroughfare, so it's a big deal to do that. At first I assumed that someone was pinned under a car (again), but as I approached, there were no ambulances. There was also no way around. The police had stopped all traffic and were keeping crowds of people from walking through the three (four?) square blocks they had blocked off and kept saying: "Just wait five minutes, and get back, GET BACK." Of course immediately everyone crowded forward (this is an area of town where, at rush hour, you easily have four to five hundred people walking around--it was about 2 pm though, so fewer people were about). Anyway they finally had to herd people back even further. I was next to a shop and the shopkeeper asked one of the policemen if they should evacuate the building. "No," he responded. "Just get in and KEEP AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS."

Anyway, to make a long story short, there was no bomb. As far as I can tell. But it was scary. They let us through soon enough, and while I was walking by the tube, I saw the offending object: a briefcase. It had a hole cut into it and its guts were spilled on the sidewalk: fig newtons and headphones, ritz crackers. Two policemen were still kneeling next to it.

So no terrorist: just someone with a penchant for quasi-healthy junk food and leaving shit places it shouldn't be left. In that weird way that we all slow down to gawk at a terrible traffic accident, I felt almost let down, although of course I would be way more upset had there been a bomb. It's just strange, to be reminded of what can happen (and indeed, what did happen, not so far away from Angel, almost a year ago to the day), and to be reminded of the everyday banal consequences of policy abroad--but then to find out that there was no danger after all. Every time that I have been close to death in any way (a little kid got killed by a car in front of me in L.A. a couple of years ago, and last year at this time Danimal and I fucking cheated death in a Volvo station wagon outside of Estacada) time takes on some unreal quality and it is in fact like watching something on TV.

It's so hard to reconcile the physicality of a moment (me typing, voices through the open window, everything very real and *present*) to what a moment is like when disaster occurs. If that makes sense (it probably doesn't). It just seems like stuff like train bombings happen in a parallel reality, almost. When something happens in front of you--someone gets hit by a car, for example--it is like an intrusion of forces you don't understand into your sphere of existence. Especially because these things happen so suddenly. I imagine that if I die on a tube here in London, I will be in the middle of shifting from one artist to another on my iPod or I will be caught up in some reverie of some sort. In one way or another, we probably all die in the middle of a sentence.

Sorry to get so weighty! It's not even like this is my first bomb scare. We got a few of those at the British school in Cairo when I was a kid, but at the time I think sitting in a hot parking lot for hours with no water was pressing more heavily on my mind than sudden flashes about my own mortality. I can't imagine what it's like to be in Iraq right now.

The other thing I was thinking about is the U.S. and its actions to make its citizens "safer." When I was in NYC I was shocked to see huge covered trash cans every twenty feet in subway stations. I hadn't even thought about it, but I guess I had internalized the fact that trash cans are sources of bombs and danger. You won't find nor hide nor hair of a fucking trash can ("rubbish bin") anywhere in London train or tube stations. And there are security people everywhere. In uniform and undercover. Even in the Paris metro the trash cans are predominately see-through plastic (and they aren't even in this war!). In NYC you can take a gun or whatever you want into the subway, easy. Now, I'm not saying that I'm a fan of living-in-fear-increased-surveillance but this is the sort of prime example of retarded fucked up U.S. policy. They have the right to search your bag without explanation (a practice that lends itself racial profiling and is hardly the most effective way to prevent bombers in the subway) and have started wiretapping our phones but still have trash cans everywhere. Ok, I'm sure they have lots of undercover people lurking around looking for suspicious activity but the point is that there was no prominent show of security, the one time it's needed. We probably won't get a subway bombing, but who the fuck knows?

Anyway this is too long as is. Ping is back and slamming doors. Damn it.

xx

Mina

Pictures

2006-06-23T07:37:00.000-07:00

We quickly developed a problematic addiction to Croatia's local old man beer, Karlovacko.

No more beer!

Not, but seriously, we did other stuff too. Istria is beautiful, and weird.

Enough pictures.

Love,
Mina

Domestic Minutia

2006-06-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

OXO says: "Peel the skins off slippery and waxy fruits and vegetables with the OXO Good Grips Serrated Peeler. Perfect for peeling tomatoes, peaches, plums and more, the sharp, serrated, stainless steel blade catches onto fruits and vegetables with ease and peels through their skins effortlessly."

I say: Peel your motherfucking hand off. This is the most amazing peeler I have ever owned. It is so amazing that I seriously injure myself every time I use it. This peeler will peel tomatoes, beer cans, and, oh, I don't know, nail and finger. I actually missed a flight once because of this peeler. I was unpacking a box and forgot that I had just dumped it in the bottom. I nearly cut my middle finger off--well, I sliced the tip of it damn near in half. I've never almost passed out from looking at an injury before. I should have gotten stitches but, well, hindsight is 20/20. It's hard calling Southwest while bleeding profusely and only able to use your left hand to explain that you need a new plane reservation. Anyway, moral of the story is that this is the best peeler money can buy. What other kitchen appliances has the power to make you rearrange travel plans? That's some potent OXO action. Oh, and note the similarity between the OXO tool collection and a surgery kit. This peeler is perfect for psychos everywhere.

xxx

Mina

I'm back.

2006-06-18T04:50:00.000-07:00

Hey you guys,

I am back from my pan-European tour with Meg and Rachael. The trip ended up being longer than expected and culminated in a sleeper train marathon across France and Italy. The whole thing was a lot of fun but now I have to figure out what I'm doing with my life. Wish me luck, and pictures will be posted once I have some space on my computer.

Mina

A mind-altering exemplar of animated Italian bad-taste

2006-06-07T22:40:00.000-07:00

I watched this hung over from the events of 6/6/6 and it was positively delightful. I thought the "mucho gusto" song (in which fat, drunken, sombrero clad mexican mice sing in stereotypical mexican accents about having a good time) was a particularly fine example of gaucherie.

But more than historical inaccuracies and unapologetic anachronism this film is distinguished by its inability to sustain a sad or tragic mood for more than 30 seconds at a time without introducing some piece of corny and/or incomprehensible goofiness onto the screen.

Also, the racial charicatures are an especially tasteless addition to a movie that manages to plagiarize James Cameron's Titanic, Cinderella, An American Tale, and Lady and the Tramp. This film defines hodgepodge.

In many ways this film looks like it was the product of a third-grader's imagination and naivete. Events are strung together by the most tenuous and illogical of associations. Sometimes it really seems that this film is not just the result of lazy or talentless scriptwriters - it is the efforts of individuals with a fundamentally immature understanding of the workings of the world. The italian storyboarders probably thought to themselves, "Its for kids so it does not need to be coherent".

I can't wait for the sequel to drop: "September 11th: The legend continues" in which cute animals (trapped in the burning world trade center) help to save the day by assisting the evacuation of two love-torn financial analysts whose sentiments are brought into a crisp focus by the tragic backdrop. Who says tragedies cannot be made palatable for youngsters by the insertion of adorable mice, dogs, and historical inaccuracy?

CRATCHA (incoherent friends)

2006-06-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

If you want news of me, please check out http://eurowhat.livejournal.com, where Meg, Rachael and I will be reporting events as they occur for the next few days.

Love,
Mina

Oh and a couple of major bummers since Wilson Pickett

2006-05-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

--King Floyd died
--Octavia E. Butler died (read Kindred if you haven't already, it's amazing, and I'm not a "sci-fi" person, but that's a label she seemed to resent anyway).

People who suck (probably only a first installment)

2006-05-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

--People who groom in public
I don't care what the circumstances are. This is never acceptable. I see women in London doing this all the time. A lot of the time they are very good-looking, but that doesn't make it acceptable. Don't brush your hair at the table while having dinner in a restaurant, don't re-apply foundation after brushing your hair. If you need to do this, go to the bathroom. And, for the love of god, don't tweeze your eyebrows on the bus. Not only is that potentially dangerous, but that is disgusting. Look, on some level, I am aware of the face that the buses in London (especially the top decks) are covered in traces of urine and puke. This is inevitable after a night bus run, but I don't need to know that your eyebrow remains and nail clippings are also there. Also, how can your boyfriends put up with this? Your girlfriend is snuggling with you on the bus AND tweezing her eyebrows while staring intently into a mirror, and you seem to love it. What the fuck?

--People who drive Mercedes-Benz cars
Ok, they're nice cars, I guess. But all I think when I see you careening down the road, ignoring the fact that I'm trying to cross at a city-approved pedestrian crosswalk, is that you are the sort of person who, if you had slightly more money, would pay to hunt and kill homeless people (like in that Jean-Claude Van Damne movie. Incidentally, whatever happened to the Muscles from Brussels?). Instead, you had to settle for a showy car. My friend says I'm exaggerating, and that people who drive Mercedes suck because they are ostentatious and lack imagination. I'm sticking to the homeless people theory.

That's all I can come up with, but more categories will be posted as they pop up.

2006-04-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, and Irving (see post about Holocaust denying somewhere below) just got sentenced to three years in Austrian jail.

Spring!

2006-04-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

Well,

I know it's Spring. How do I know this, you ask?¹ Well, it could be the reappearance of the sun that clued me in, but since it's still fucking cold out, I'm not about to jump to conclusions. How about the time change? Yes, we did "spring forward" and now, when I leave work at 6 p.m, I still have a good hour and half of daylight as opposed to the dark ages of December when the sun started setting at 2:45 p.m. But I'm not convinced. No, fair reader, the sun, the longer days, the increased birdsong outside my window, the lovey-dovey couples on the bus.... these things in themselves are not enough to make me believe a season shift is underway.

The real confirmation comes with the bugs.

Yes, tonight I had my first genuine Ant Infestation™ of the year, and my skin is still crawling to tell the tale.

I don't get it. The kitchen is clean. There has been no food left out, except for Ping's ginger root and my sweet potatoes (*IN* a bag, thank you). The dishes are done. The stovetop and counters are wiped. The recycling is rinsed and minimal. The trash can is sealed and besides, for some unknown reason the cleaning people hired by Shaftesbury Student Housing Group change it every day so it's not gross in any way. The window is closed. And yet.... And yet, there are the ants. I saw a couple of them this morning when drearily making my breakfast. Then when making dinner, I realized that there was a line of them, multitudes of ants, coming from god knows where (the outside) and making their way to something somewhere in one of our cupboards, something sticky and yummy smelling. They paused en route to take my sweet potatoes hostage.

Mind you, I don't mind the occasional ant. One crawling here or there--one of the few bugs I can handle. It's once they militarize that there is an issue. You see one, then the next, then seven more, then you suddenly realize you're surrounded, and at that point the cell phone that you're holding in your hand rings and you jump three feet and throw it across the room. Then the itching begins. The "Ohmygodantsarcawlingallovermybody" itch that is totally psychosomatic. Or maybe not. I don't want to look.

Ping, my good-tempered and helpful if slightly clueless flatmate, was summoned in distress and thankfully took charge. When Ping takes charge you know things are bad. This is the girl who forced our whole building to evacuate after her attempt to microwave a potato for over an hour and the subsequent fire alarm. Initially I had to dissuade her from calling reception to report ants (it is 10:30 p.m. on a Monday night, and somehow I don't think the surly security guy who couldn't be roused to help when our water cut out was going to be moved by our tale of ant woe). She then informed me that ants are not poisonous, and that in fact they are eaten in some places. After this left me suitably unimpressed she resorted to action and flung boiling hot glasses of water at our ant colony until our kitchen flooded and their bloated little bodies amassed in a puddle on the ground. At that point I was too grossed out and left her picking them up with wadded bits of toilet paper. But the uprising has been contained, at least temporarily.

Anyway, nothing says "Spring!" like the reëmergence of a particularly acute and ridiculous phobia that governs your life during the warm months of the year. You haven't even seen me around moths. Fucking bugs.

Mina

¹ I know that none of you unlucky enough to stumble upon this half-assed blog really care enough to ask, but that's cool, it's a rhetorical device.

P.S. How do you like me little New Yorkerism (like the magazine)? Bonus points if you spot it. I'm trying on some of their pretention to see how it fits.

UPDATE--I just had horrible dreams about ants crawling all over my shit. This was after a second outbreak. 04/16

2006-03-26T16:27:00.000-08:00

I have to thank Moose for sending me this picture, because whenever I make the mistake of feeling homesick I can look at it and remember why I left the United States in the first place. I do love London, but I do occasionally get this nagging feeling that my relocation was more of a self-imposed exile (I know that's a contradiction in terms, thank you assholes) than I first realized. To some degree, it is about bright lights, big city, publishing, etc. but presumably I could have gone to New York. The urgency to leave the U.S., however, had to do with something more than my continuing education.

Anyway this photo reminds me of those jackasses you come across in the States who, in the course of a perfectly civilized discussion, will say "Well, if someone don't like it here [the U.S.], they should just LEAVE!" I have had this thrown at me by people who did not know that I had French/American dual citizenship, after what I considered to be a perfectly anodyne comment. Here is a re-enactment:

Jackass: People in Europe travel a lot.
Me: That's because they get more paid vacation than people in the U.S.
Jackass: Well, if you don't like it here, why don't you just LEAVE?"

Um, there are many problems with this sort of reasoning, but I will pare them down into three categories:

1. Ostensibly, we live in a DEMOCRACY. The whole point of a DEMOCRACY is that you are allowed to not be pleased with the way things are going in your country. You are allowed to comment on this, and you are even allowed to get into a group of like-minded citizens and, as long as you are law abiding and do not use explosives, you can try to change things. In principle you are even encouraged to do so. That whole FREEDOM thing. Advocating political change is not de facto un-American. Of course, in practice this is a different issue. But as far as I can tell the right to dissent is a still a central tenet of our constitution.

2. And this one really gets to me. I'm getting worked up even thinking about this. "Why don't you just LEAVE?" Why don't I just LEAVE, asshole? Why don't Americans who aren't happy just LEAVING? Well, maybe because they CAN'T. Don't you think a ton of them are trying? You don't CHOOSE where you were born, you dipshit, and except in exceptional circumstances, you can't just get another nationality, especially if your original nationality is American, since you're supposed to come from a bastion of fucking FREEDOM. Like, if you were from Rhodesia or something, well then you might have a better claim. The owner of fucking Harrods, who is a multi-billionaire and runs a London institution can't get EU citzenship and you think that the immigrations officials are just handing out passports to any clueless American with a fanny pack who manages to wander off the plane? Actually, you probably do think that, because you've never left the U.S. and you have no idea how the world works.

3. This is an umbrella category, which I would like to call the "You're a fucking twat" category. "Why don't you just LEAVE?" Why don't you just crawl back into your hole with a 6-pack of Coors Light and choke on some Cheetos? (I actually love Cheetos). If there is one thing I hate more than anything it is people who come up with a simplistic self-satisfied response they use in any number of scenarios to avoid, god forbid, that painful process of THINKING. You don't like the way Iraq is being handled? Why don't you just LEAVE? You don't believe that the rapture is going to come and take all the true believers away and you don't vote accordingly? Why don't you just LEAVE? You don't like Walmart and their piss-poor treatment of employees? Why don't you just LEAVE? I hate the smug sort of person who actually has the audacity to deliver a statement so completely inane and subsequently smiles benevolently upon the recepient (me), like they've just given me the gift of a greater truth when in fact they've offered up the intellectual equivalent of a crudely drawn drawing, possibly done all in red crayon. This is the sort of person who drafts comments such as "You wouldn't walk into a store and steal a CD, so why do you steal music online?" or "You say you don't like [insert name of latest vacuous pop idol finalist topping the charts], but I'd like to see you do better!" You. Fucking. Lameass. I don't steal CDs because they're not the same as digital music files. I can criticize pop stars even if I'm not a professional singer.

I mean, honestly, who are these people? Anyway this a weird rant I've found myself on and as usual I've picked the wrong sort of format to do it in. If you're going to rant about people who are uncomfortable with ambiguity of any sort, don't divide your rant into three neat categories and don't employ so many hyberboles. All I've got to say, if you want to read a great book about expatriation, read James Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son." Actually, read anything by James Baldwin. I know, I know, I'm not black, I'm not a man, and I'm not gay, but apart from that James Baldwin and I are like the same person. Speaking of books, I've got to get back to the novel I'm reading. It's about children who are raised to become organ donors and it is freaking my shit out.

Love,
Mina

London Book Fair Celebrity Sightings

2006-03-06T01:08:00.000-08:00

That's right, I saw the Hoff himself at the LBF, promoting his memoir "The Most Watched Star in the World." Actually, what happened is that a group of us were trying to do a class project and were collecting art catalog(ue)s when we received an excited phone call: "The Hoff is a the Bookseller Tent!" One member of our group is an especially devoted fan (in that ironic yet rabid way only David Hasselhoff can inspire), so, project forgotten, he made a beeline towards the stand. The remaining two of us followed at a distance trying to look aloof and vaguely contemptuous. We took up a post a few stalls down from the madness, but this worked to Hoff viewing advantage, because the Hoff apparently wanted to escape the hordes of unglamourous publishing women and took an unexpected turn right past us. When he walked by he was yelling on his cell phone and acting like a primadonna: "Where are my people? Let's get the team together!"

By the way, top three impressions of the Hoff:
1. Surprisingly, very, very tall. Well over six feet tall, but he was also wearing cowboy boots/heels.
2. Unsuprisingly, very, very orange. He radiated fake tan. He also had those deep wrinkles that you can only get from years of sunbathing.
3. Very poorly dressed. He looked like belonged on the Love Boat, not Baywatch, and it's not like Baywatch set the bar for style. It's really not hard to look fashionable at the LBF, people. You're surrounded by men who have spilled part of their bloody mary down the front of their cheap suits and spaced out women who are on a break from manning the Dianetics tent. Actually, come to think of it, I'm a little disappointed that the Hoff wasn't just wearing little red bathing shorts and driving KIT, or whatever it was called.

My last sight of the Hoff was the funniest. He stalked out of the LBF and straight across the convention center middle section, into Professional Beauty 2006--the UK's largest professional beauty exhibition. Perhaps with all the stress he was seeking a facial?

After that my sighting of Margaret Atwood was downright underwhelming.

Google and Privacy continued; Whale dies, I am sad

2006-01-21T14:29:00.000-08:00

From the BBC:

The [US dept of Justice] first issued [Google] a request for the data last August.

It wants:

A list of terms entered into the search engine during an unspecified single week, potentially tens of millions of queries

A million randomly selected web addresses from various Google databases.
The US government is seeking to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which has been blocked by the Supreme Court because of legal challenges over how it is enforced.

Google's refusal to comply prompted US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to ask a federal judge in the state of California on Wednesday for an order to hand over the records.

But Google's lawyers said it would fight the order.

"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches," associate general counsel Nicole Wong said in a written statement.

"We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to, and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."

And the whale died. This was always a possibility, but I'm still bummed about it. The fuss it caused among Londoners, too, was quite heartening.

Mina

How very weird

2006-01-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

A whale in the Thames.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4631396.stm

Damn!!!

2006-01-20T02:34:00.000-08:00

Goodbye to another one of the greats.

My current favorite mad scientist.

2006-01-03T23:31:00.000-08:00

Behold Wilhelm Reich. The FDA actually burned all of this man's books. If you have time check out "orgone." Here is a short summary from Wikipedia:
"Reich developed a theory that the ability to feel sexual love depended on a physical ability to make love with what he called "orgastic potency." He attempted to "measure" the male orgasm, noting that four distinct phases occurred physiologically: first, the psychosexual build-up or tension; second. the tumescence of the penis, with an accompanying "charge," which Reich measured electrically; third, an electrical discharge at the moment of orgasm, and fourth, the relaxation of the penis. He believed the force that he measured was a distinct type of energy present in all life forms. He called it "orgone.""

More:

"In 1940, Reich built boxes — orgone accumulators — to concentrate orgone energy in the atmosphere, some for lab animals, and some large enough for a human being to sit inside. He now believed orgone was a type of primordial cosmic energy, blue in color, which he claimed was omnipresent and responsible for such things as weather, the color of the sky, gravity, the formation of galaxies, and the biological expressions of emotion and sexuality. Composed of alternating layers of ferrous metals and insulators with a high-dielectrical constant, his orgone accumulators had the appearance of a large hollow "capacitor". He believed that sitting inside the box might provide a treatment for cancer and other illnesses. It was the construction of these boxes that caught the attention of the press, and wild rumors spread that they were "sex boxes" which caused uncontrollable erections."

"In 1940, Reich wrote to Albert Einstein saying he had a scientific discovery he wanted to discuss, and on January 13, 1941, he went to visit Einstein in Princeton. They talked for five hours, and Einstein agreed to test an orgone accumulator, which Reich had made out of a Faraday cage made of galvanized steel and insulated by wood and paper on the outside. Einstein agreed with Reich that if, as Reich suggested, an object's temperature could be raised without an apparent heating source, it would be "a bomb" in physics.
Reich supplied the device during their second meeting, and Einstein performed the experiment in his basement, which involved taking the temperature atop, inside, and near the device. He also stripped the device down to its Faraday cage to compare temperatures. Over the course of a week, in both cases, Einstein observed a rise in temperature, and confirmed Reich's finding in a published letter. "

"On June 5, 1956, FDA officials traveled to Orgonon, Reich's 200-acre (80-hectare) estate near Rangeley, Maine, where they destroyed the accumulators, and on June 26, burned many of his books. On August 25, 1956 and again on March 17, 1960, [15] the remaining six tons of his books, journals and papers were burned in the 25th Street public incinerator in New York's lower east side (Gansevoort incinerator). In March 1957, he was sent to Danbury Federal Prison, where a psychiatrist examined him, recording: "Paranoia manifested by delusions of grandiosity and persecution and ideas of reference." [16]
Reich died in his sleep of heart failure on November 3, 1957 in the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, one day before he was due to apply for parole. He was buried in Orgonon. At his own instruction, his granite headstone said simply:
Wilhelm Reich
Born March 24, 1897
Died November 3, 1957"

I'm not sure if the fact that William S. Burroughs was really into this man is a solid endorsement of his scientific theories, but it's still cool to read about.

Mina

Don't cry, little eggs!

2005-12-03T02:59:00.000-08:00

In England, my eggs are blue. But they won't be for long. I am going to eat them.

Love,

Mina

2005-11-26T02:52:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving pictures forthcoming.

Mina

God it sucks...

2005-11-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

...To get drunk with you classmates, go home, and realize that you're wasted at 20:38 p.m. on a Wednesday. I would email Moose or someone with a bunch of inane comments, but having done that at least once in the last week, I hesitate to repeat my mistakes. I guess I'll just suck it up and take a nap. Thanksgiving tomorrow!!! Yippyyay!

2005-11-21T11:18:00.000-08:00