Todd Stadler's blog

todd's naive politics, part ii - ralphie

An open letter to the Oregon Democratic Party:

"Ralph who? I don't know that man. I thought he died," Jim Edmunson, Oregon Democratic Party chairman said when Nader's name came up. ... Edmunson said he had mixed feelings about [the upcoming Nader rally]. "Anything that reminds people of the last election is a good thing," he said. "The other feeling is that Nader's continued presence may only result in George Bush's second term in office." (From the July 26, 2001 edition of the Oregonian)

My, still a bit cross about the election, then? Poor babies.

If Nader is dead, then he seems to have taken Gore with him. And a good chunk of the Democratic Party. I mean, not only did you lose the presidency, but the only reason you're in control in the Senate is because a Republican defected - a sure sign that neither party is inspiring many people these days.

And perhaps it should be mentioned that while there were many dubious circumstances surrounding the election (as there likely always are when such high offices are at stake; let's not be naive), the Democratic Party has missed the big picture - big time!

When you fail to get the vice president of a popular two-term president elected in a period of economic prosperity, his only major opponent being a man you would have us believe is a simpering, inexperienced goob controlled by evil corporations, you have collosally screwed up!

That election should have been sealed from the get-go! Gore should have won by more than five percent even with a large number of votes going to Nader. How you failed to do that has me baffled.

But rather than accept responsibility for your own failure, you have chosen to play sore loser in a legally dubious manner. Poor babies - have some more donations.

While I am often sympathetic to many Democratic ideas, I refuse to vote for a party that has shown time and again that its adherence to issues is secondary to its being in power. Until you find yourselves able to get over the election results and ready to actually lead, I will continue to vote for third party candidates who ruin your fun.

Whether they're dead or not.

Disgustedly,
Todd Stadler

todd's naive politics, part i - iraq

What is America's problem?

From CNN:

Washington (CNN) - The United States is planning a military response to Tuesday's attempted shootdown of a U-2 spy plane over Iraq's southern no-fly zone, Pentagon sources told CNN Thursday.

Let me get this straight. We get involved in a conflict on the other side of the world most likely to protect our oil interests. Mainly we just show off our fancy high-tech equipment and let everyone know that we're not even trying. We rule!

We set up these no-fly zones as part of the cease fire agreement, ostensibly to protect the Iraqi citizens from their own government, not that we ever did diddly-squat for them before we bombed their homeland.

Then for the next, oh, decade or so, we continue to fly over these zones, taunting Iraq and letting them know that we own them. Maybe we police the zones, maybe we're just being jerks. But we keep it up, over and over. We bomb their radars and other key military installations. Over and freaking over.

And, of course, Iraq plays along and does everything they can to shoot down our planes. Missiles, rockets, guns, rocks, whatever. None of it does anything, of course. While we routinely damage their country and kill their people, they never do anything to us.

But when the Iraqis fire a missile at one of our planes, not hitting it at all, but coming close enough for the pilot to feel the shock wave, we get all huffy and plan to do what? To bomb them some more! Of course!

Keep in mind that their coming anywhere near our plane with their missile is fairly impressive, given that they weren't using radar to aim the missile. Just ballistics. Why? Because when they use radar to fire their missiles, we bomb the crap out of their radar sites.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't want any American soldiers to die - I'd rather that nobody die. But what is the blessed point here? To employ more defense contractors worldwide?

Why must we keep up this routine? Did we continue to bomb any other country ten years after we defeated them in war? Couldn't we either come up with terms to end this agression or truly defeat Iraq, once and for all, and stop all this bullying?

Or, I don't know, couldn't we ignore all the atrocities committed in Iraq like we ignore all the atrocities committed everywhere else in the world?

dennis the red menace

As I was reading the newspaper the other day, I realized that the comics page is a garden of surreal and often subversive imagery, made all the more genius by the appearance of banality. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - there are dangerous messages in those simple drawings!

Let us consider the Hi and Lois cartoon linked to at right. In it, we are presented with an idyllic suburban setting in which children enjoy their father's culinary prowess with meat.

But step back for a second. What's really going on here? Why is the teenage son feeding a meat patty to a baby in the first panel? Why, in the second panel, is the baby being attacked by a swarm of insects? The supposed answer is that everybody - animals and infants alike - loves meat.

But surely Mr. Browne knows that the common squirrel does not eat cow flesh! And indeed, the squirrel gives away the true theme of this cartoon. It is an outright attack on the American family. He depicts nature and fellow man in a struggle with the family unit, and, judging by the size of their forces, it appears nature will win. This isn't about hamburgers.

You see, Chance Browne never recieved the attention he so desperately craved from his father, Hi and Lois creator Dik Browne. So when he inherited the strip, he decided to rebel outright against the moral principles his father espoused. But he knew that such a strip wouldn't fly in America's newspapers, so he dressed it up to look like a happy tale of suburbia.

Don't be fooled! After all, it's common knowledge that Chance Browne actually draws the strip backwards - a satanic practice - and that newspaper editors reverse the strip to make it readable.

my mind is a sticky note

Thoughts of less than fifteen syllables I had while going shopping one day this summer:

• Oh great - sailors!
• Hmm, I smiled wrong.
• Qwest is evil. Evil!
• Maybe I should call it the Bio-Car.
• Stupid rubberneckers!
• This bathroom smells like meat!
• Yikes! Death!
• I bet it's the pretzels ... eating pretzels makes you look cool.
• She has a hunch-back ... and -front!
• Well, of course they're white!
• The mall - refuge of the damned. And teens.
• Why would I want that on a grain of rice?
• I just want a nylon wallet ... is that so much?
• Mmmm - salty! And free!
• Are there professional Zamboni drivers?
• They're white because I always wear socks.
• Cars stink.
• Instant death!
• Chocolate? Or poop?
• It appears my imagination is still going strong.
• If I don't go sockless, they'll never tan.
• Wow - yellow!
• That girl isn't serious!
• Please don't let your son point a gun out the window.
• Man, that's a lot of fries!
• "Brandtastic" isn't a word.

every (p)article has spin

Over the past week, I've been reading about Dick Cheney's electrical bill.

To summarize, Democrats are outraged that he is attempting to make the Navy foot the bill instead of taking $186,000 out of his own budget, especially in a time when many Americans face rising electrical bills that they wish they didn't have to pay. Left-wingers allege that this is the utmost in hypocrisy from a man who once poo-pooed conservation as a solution to the "energy crisis".

I'd been hearing a lot about that. So I was somewhat surprised to read a column by David Reinhard in my paper that had a different take on the issue.

It said, in so many words, that this hubbub was pure liberal spin. First of all, whether the check comes from the Navy or the Vice President, it's still signed by the taxpayers. But more importantly, the article said, this practice of making the Navy pay part of the bill occurred before, under Gore, with nary a peep from the media. And to top it off, electricity use in the vice presidential mansion declined by a third under Cheney's occupancy, compared to when Gore was there.

Well! This was a different spin on things. I had heard none of these facts, and as such I rushed off a letter to the columnist, thanking him for a fresh perspective. I also had a question for him.

Mr. Reinhard's column vilified the New York Times for its "pattern of day-to-day politicized reporting" in which, it would seem, it does little more than spit out columns attacking Republicans. Of course there is no doubt as to the political leanings of that paper. But why, I asked, had he made no mention of an earlier political cartoon by Jack Ohman, the Oregonian's in-house cartoonist, which portrayed Cheney as a hypocrite much as the Times had?

The response I received was short: "Because the NYT started this and Jack is my friend and he works for my paper."

Ah, I see now. Well, as long as Mr. Reinhard isn't letting politics interfere with his reporting, then I suppose everything's fine.

Hypocrite.

mongolian mementos

My friend Gerry gave me some souvenirs from his recent trip to Mongolia. He's such a nice guy.

While most people in his position would have been concerned about avoiding the plague (like the plague!) or trying to eat something without mutton in it, Gerry was thinking about me. That's selflessness.

Below are some scans of the items he brought back for me.

marmots, vodka, and goat's milk

Mental notes made while reading the government of Mongolia's official webpage:

• The Mongolian President graduated from Refrigeration Junior College.
• Traditional sciences include astrology and astronomy.
• "Spring is the prosperous season of the year when everybody is calm and relaxed; grass turns green, anemones grow up and nature is covered with its green dress". Anemones grow up?
• Other than the "three manly games", shooting bones is a popular pasttime.
• Autumn is the time when "flies die".
• "In Mongolia the ratio of men to women is about 100".
• Things visitors should not carry when entering a Mongolian house: whip, hobble or weapon.
• Something about that font doesn't say "ministry of defense" to me.
• This WTO information page lost me somewhere around "Ooaaeaaaoae oieaiioie aeeaaa oooeu".
• The Mongolians have something called " subproject 'skin'".
• They have (outdated) information on the freakin' Twinkies Project! Even the Mongolians know!!

part ii - that takes lots of... never mind

Maybe there's something about Travis that attracts strangeness. Because that same day, as we sat in Pioneer Square, we saw an odd man.

In many ways, he looked like a very normal man. He was even dressed in a conservative suit.

For a while, at least. He soon began taking it off, piece by piece, putting everything on a hangar. He went so far as to strip down to his boxer shorts, and put all of his clothes in a tie-dye suit bag. I wonder how much demand there is for tie-dye suit bags.

Had the man stopped at disrobing, I might have simply thought he was hot. As it turns out, he was also bothered. Because he soon began to throw superballs all over the square.

It wasn't clear to me what he thought he was doing. Did he fancy himself some sort of Superball Diety, benevolently bestowing his bounty on the ball-less peons? Or was he just trying to hit people?

One thing became apparent - he was doing it for the women. In between sets of lobbing superballs to the bewilderment of many Portlanders, he walked around, handing out trinkets in plastic balls - the kind you get from machines for a quarter.

He didn't bother to offer one to me, because only the pretty ladies got them, it seemed. I'm no expert on women, so maybe this kind of thing works, but I was always under the impression that to impress a woman, you should at least spend a dollar or two.

I don't know. Is the guy crazy? Or very subtly clever?

weird day, part i - travelling travis

I got a call today from a guy I thought was in Mongolia. It turns out he was at my friend Gerry's house. You can imagine my surprise. But then, as with most of Gerry's friends, Travis is a surprising kind of guy.

At some point last year, Travis was doing quasi-secret work involving millionaires and the goofy things they do. Then Travis decided he was going to Mongolia to work with the Peace Corps. Naturally.

After a while, the joke became that Travis had, in fact, been murdered at the hands of Gerry. After all, who gives up good money to be with camels, goats, and disoriented hippies?

Time passed and the joke got old. Gerry went to visit Travis in Mongolia. Or so he claimed.

The uneasy laughter returned when Gerry e-mailed me to say that Travis would not be returning with him as planned. Gerry didn't know when he'd be getting back, it seemed. Uh huh, right. Or maybe Travis never was in Mongolia, but instead lies rotting in your basement! You can see how a joke like that could really go on for a while.

It turns out that Travis was not so much a victim of homocidal intent as governmental bureaucracy, a point driven home when he called me this afternoon. We decided to go see a movie.

I took a picture of Travis, just to prove to myself that I really had seen him, and that he really was alive. However, as the movie we saw that day was Memento, this "proof" failed to quiet my doubts.

the whore of gonian

I read a story in the Oregonian today that made me laugh.

This is a very weird thing to have happen when reading the local "proper" paper. Sure, I expect to chuckle, guffaw even, when reading the Portland Mercury. But those guys are a bunch of goof balls!

I expect the Oregonian to do less entertaining and more pedantic news writing. After all, even their comics are fairly pedestrian.

So imagine my surprise when I read the headline "Flatley flames again as feet vanquish evil" (this link may not work for long) . Witness the wit to which I was exposed as the author attempted to make sense of the Lord of the Dance's tale:

And then he came out and played some haunting flute over the sleeping form of the Alpha Blonde, who represented goodness, or at least blondeness. She slept through, but fans basked in every glance darted straight at -- be still, O, triphammer of my heart! -- them, personally.

"Isn't it a bit much to behead someone whose only crime was to wear one of those multicolored, tentacled jester's hats? ... No. You're right. She must die."

Flatley and his leather-greatcoated legions went off to battle the bad guys in a noisy scene where push actually did come to shove. And shove came to a lot of amplified galumphing, and that ended in a percussive, high-stakes game of patty-cake. But serious patty-cake, you understand. And evil was vanquished, giving a lot of people in robes the opportunity to parade with candles.

I was so happy to read a smarmy critic's take on an event attended by 16,000 Portlanders that I actually bothered to call up the author and thank him for his article. I never do that. I don't even bother to write letters to the editor when our country is clearly going to hell in a handbasket, so why did I bother to thank someone for making me chuckle? I don't know.

But I left a sarcastic message thanking the author, noting that it's rare for us young non-married non-SUV-driving non-Starbucks-frequenting kids to find anything entertaining these days.

He called me back to thank me for my message. In fact, he seemed a bit too jubilant. He pointed out that the article was aimed at people like me. He was glad that it worked.

Then I felt dirty. It's such a fine line between being entertained and being targeted.

disco foamante

Tonight, I learned how to cope with several possible future calamities:

1. What happens if I go deaf in the future?
   Don't worry! You can still go out dancing! The volume level at most modern dance clubs is such that you can feel whatever you can't hear! In fact, if you're standing anywhere near a speaker, dancing is almost compulsory, as the force from the air coming out of the speaker pushes your body around.
2. What if the heavens open and pour forth vast amounts of foam?
   Well, that's not so bad, is it, assuming the foam is hypoallergenic, non-toxic, non-staining, and so on. You might get wet, but it's okay. However, do avoid looking straight up at the foam clouds, as you may get large drafts of foam in your eyes, nose, and mouth, and that is mildly unpleasant. Also, it is key to avoid standing out in a foamstorm if there are large quantities of unattractive people near you, since they may try to take advantage of your being temporarily confused by falling foam, as well as their increased lubrication, by rubbing themselves near you. You've been warned.
3. What if the earth becomes so overpopulated that there is less than one square foot per person?
   Trust me, that's enough, at least if most of the people are dancing. As long as we keep the bulk of humanity "shaking its booty" together in tight quarters with some sort of foamy lubricant, there will be enough space for the non-dancing humans to keep the party going, serving drinks, making records, repairing the light system, and so on. Implicit in this answer is the assumption that eventually the UN will succeed in declaring Earth to be a global, one-government, 24-hour rave, as it has tried in the past. Please write your senator.
4. What if there is a major Fashion-Oriented Cataclysmic Event (FOCE) like the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and everybody starts wearing really awful club wear, with fratty visors and wifebeaters for the gentlemen, and slutty microskirts and bikini tops for the ladies?
   Don't panic, but such an event has already happened. I have seen its effects, and believe me, it's not pretty. But believe me even more when I tell you that we can make it through this fashion apocalypse together. But you personally may want to put on some blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt, and maybe some Chuck Taylors or something.

Ha ha. That is my loopy, long-winded way of saying that Colin, I, and a bunch of other people went to Panorama tonight for the Foam Party, the penultimate night of Panorama's existence.

And it was fun. It's hard not to have fun with two or three feet of foam surrounding your feet while more falls on your head. It just puts people in a jovial mood. It may be the answer to world peace we've been looking for.

But I was also impressed with Portland. In a town where most restaurants close around 9 or 10pm, the club kept getting more full of people until we left at 3am. It warmed the cockles of my heart to see the kids having fun, even as the rest of my body shivered its way back to the car. Hey, you try getting soaked and walking around in fifty-five degree weather!

maybe it's about the astronaut drink

In looking through the movie listings the other day, I was surprised to find out that there is a movie called Pootie Tang. It was the first I'd heard of it.

But can you really name a movie that? That's just three letters away from a less-than-kosher euphemism for a vagina. Do people not know that in general?

And can the Oregonian print a listing for that movie, when it previously apologized for printing an ad for a Cherry Poppin' Daddies concert?

I mean, really, people, what's next, a movie called Dick? Oh, wait...

no-love dinners

I walked through the frozen food section of Safeway today, trying to find some frozen soybeans. Sadly, such an item is too exotic for li'l ol' Portland.

So I perused the frozen dinners that were available, and I have to say I felt mildly insulted.

Maybe it was the fact that every meal seemed either targeted to the healthy working person on-the-go or the poor bachelor slob. You could practically see a picture of either one of those stereotypes on the packaging.

Maybe it's that I just spent time cooking quality meals with my girlfriend, and I was expecting better foods than what they offered. I mean, with minimal preparation and skill, we made spaetzle with cheese sauce and garlic dill scallops. So I'd expect something more, I don't know, professional from frozen dinners.

Perhaps I'm out of my head. I mean, my meal with Julia took, like, half an hour to prepare, which is something close to an eternity in food preparation time. Even the chefs down at McDonald's can cook a whole meal in a tenth of that time, if that!

But why must every frozen meal offer so much from the brown spectrum? Breaded, fried meat with rice or pasta. Rice with carrots. Macaroni and cheese. I mean, really, do people have so little skill that they have to reheat prepared mac 'n' cheese, rather than exercise the culinary mastery that is required when cooking from a box?

Of course, I'm expecting a lot from the same industry that brought us "bakery stix" and the improbably more repulsive "breakfast sticks", which according to the specs are "pork and vegetable protein skinless links" lovingly encased in "fine grind blueberry flavored pancake batter formulated to resist cracking". Mmm!

todd tells a long story, surprise ending

It was only later that I found out that Embrace was one of Alyssa's many soft-core porn flicks. After Who's the Boss, apparently, she wasn't so popular, so she got breast implants and did some tacky skin flicks that only geeks have heard of, because only geeks would get off to watching Alyssa Milano pretend to act in exchange for a few shots of her "boobies".

todd tells a long story, part ii

Frank was weird in lots of ways. His middle name (I'll let you guess what it was) started with an "x", and he became somewhat fascinated with that fact. He went by the nickname "X", he had a piece of paper in our window on which he had printed a large "x", and the background on his Mac Classic featured an "x". Which isn't to say that Frank was egotistical - he was a very nice guy - so much as, um, focused.

One time, Frank decided that he wanted a chair from each of Rice's residential colleges' cafeterias. In our room. This not only made walking around a bit tricky, it was less comfortable than his idea of "borrowing" a leather couch and easy chair from just one neighboring college.

Frank had all sorts of ideas. One Thanksgiving, his idea was to be homeless for a day. He would empty his pockets of everything and walk towards downtown and, well, be homeless. Except for that whole part where he came back to his nice dorm room. But then, we were all a bit naive in college.

So while I sat there in our room, doubtless worrying about how to sustain a civilization of Elvises, Einsteins, and farmers, Frank was walking around, I guess.

He came back the next day with a bunch of movie posters. Hoffa. Milk Money. Embrace of the Vampire. All your favorites from the early nineties.

"Frank," I said to him, "you just spent 24 hours being homeless. Why, then, do you bring back many movie posters with you?"

He explained that on the way back from being homeless, he passed a video store that was giving them away. He did not care that these were apparently awful films, because, hey, free poster.

In fact, I hadn't heard of any of these films, but the poster for Embrace of the Vampire intrigued me because it had Alyssa Milano on it. ("Finally," the audience thinks, "there is the connection I've been looking for. Now this story makes so much sense!") I mean, here Alyssa Milano had made a vampire flick, and I hadn't heard of it? How did that happen?

Frank didn't care, because he had a crush on Alyssa Milano. So the poster went up.

todd tells a long story, part i

Oh, what a waste of time that was.

I spent a large chunk of today reading Seanbaby's webpage. I hate that site because it's so ridiculously funny, mostly by displaying some of the most ridiculous crap humans have ever made. I always waste more time than I want to when I go there.

Seanbaby is famous, to me at least (which makes you question my definition of "famous"), for his Hostess comics collection. In these ads from comic books in the late seventies, stupid versions of your favorite superheroes shilled for Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and the like. They were all horrible.

But today, I found Seanbaby's news story on fitness and America. There's no point in my telling you what it's about - you can follow the link easier than I can type it in.

What my point is, though, is that he got me started thinking about Alyssa Milano. Which isn't hard. Lots of things cause me to reflect thoughtfully on that eighties sweetheart, star of quirky Brooklo-sexual-Yuppie hit show Who's the Boss and nubile inspiration for the Little Mermaid.

Which made me think of my college roommate Frank. Let me explain.

home sweet house

So I'm back in Portland now.

Beeman picked me up at the airport and drove me to my house. It all went so smoothly, from my luggage waiting for me at baggage claim when I got there, to Beeman driving right up to the curb seconds after I walked outside of the airport.

On the drive home, he caught me up on the PDX tip since I'd been gone, but not much had happened. He's going to be out of town this weekend, making for four weekends in a row that we won't be in the same city. With most friends, this would make me suspicious that they don't like me. But Beeman has expressly told me of his distaste for me, so there is no suspicion.

It's rather surreal being back in Portland. I suppose I live here, but it doesn't feel like it. While giving directions to Beeman to get to my house, I felt like I was reading a book about my life that told me where I lived. I hadn't been in that house in what seemed like a very long time.

It doesn't help that Julia helped pack my bags, and as such, my things are more neatly folded and orderly than they were when I left for Berkeley. I mean, it makes it look like I'm visiting Portland.

It's also not a Portland I'm too familiar with. I have no job. That's certainly exciting, and I couldn't think of a better time to not have a job than summer in a nice city like Portland. Reading Trout Fishing in America helps too, as would reading any good book in which people don't seem concerned so much about careers as doing things that are interesting.

But still. I'm having enough trouble readjusting to my own computer. This isn't the keyboard I've been typing on for the past memory span. And there's no trackpad, just a regular mouse.

And there's no girlfriend around, dangit.

It's odd feeling out of place at home.

in union square my wheel needs repair

My fun time in the San Francisco area continued today as Julia and I visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA to all you hipsters out there.

We didn't get to see all of the museum, because we got into town late, but what we did see was really cool. Unfortunately, I'm tired of long write-ups, so that's about all I'll say about that.

We also ate dried mangoes in Chinatown. We went into this one store with all sorts of Asian delicacies, and they were the only thing that we recognized as potentially enjoyable food.

My, I'm feeling terse today. What a wholly unnecessary entry.

in other news

In contrast to my prolix write-up of just one part of the day, there is my girlfriend's remarkable terse take on things:

"Saturday we went over to the west side of SF and saw the Musee Mechanique and ate dinner at a sushi restaurant in Japantown. There was liberal usage of bus transfers. I spilled soy sauce on myself."

Is there any wonder I like her so? She's so efficient!

mechanical music, adrenaline surge

Today was a good day. Thanks to my trusty book, Julia and I found our way to the west side of San Francisco to visit the Musee Mechanique.

The Musee, as locals, or at least I, like to call it, is a wonderful place that reminds me of someone else's childhood. It is filled to the brim with the coin-operated machines that entertained children and adults before video games. And it even has a few video games.

But it is the mechanical machines that made me swoon. Where else could I put fifty cents into a machine with a glass case enclosing one "Laughing Sal", whose sole purpose is to laugh and convulse maniacally and generally look disturbing for far longer than even I had hoped? And that was just the first machine I saw.

There were all manner of fortune tellers and "love testers" (including one in the form of Uncle Sam, which seemed a bit odd, as Julia noted. Brings a whole new meaning to "I want YOU", doesn't it?).

And there were many disturbing/entertaining musical dancing pieces. Monkeys playing in an orchestra. Dancing clowns. More than enough material for a week's worth of bad dreams.

And yet the Musee not only entertained; it taught, in some weird sociological sense. For instance, I learned that America's sexual appetite, and the entertainment industry's seeking to benefit from that through sexual teasing, is nothing new. There were plenty of machines of the "what the butler saw" variety.

Every bit as curious as a 1920's male, I plunked down a quarter to see "what the exotic dancer does on her day off". Apparently, she sits around a photography studio wearing little more than a shawl, smoking and carefully ensuring that her private parts aren't exposed. I suppose it's a good thing for the survival of this machine that the 1920's male didn't have the Internet, where such tantalizing photos are quickly passed over in favor of more tawdry fare.

Providing more introspection into the American psyche, there were several machines that allowed one to watch a real execution. Or at least the execution of a real figurine. I only put money into one, the "French execution", in which a curtain lifts, and the guillotine drops, and the head falls into a bucket. Not exactly as exciting as the real guillotines they doubtless use in professional wrestling, it was nonetheless disturbing for me to witness.

In what time and place was it appropriate for people to enjoy a machine such as this? Oh well, I can't say it's any different today. Breasts still earn an "R" rating much more quickly than beheading a person, I dare say.

Continuing the trend of modern day mores being embodied in olde time machines, there was a machine called "Opium Den". As I plunked down a quarter, I watched a Chinese man (apparently smoking opium), sitting in a dank basement, surrounded by embodiments of the evils of drugs. There were dragons and skeletons. Nowhere was there any Lucy, or sky, or diamonds. You'd think that opium was nothing but a bad trip. Clearly, this machine was produced by the same government who slapped "winners don't do drugs" screens all over Golden Axe back in the eighties.

The same dragons were also featured in "The Drunkard's Lament", a mechanical piece that warned of the dangers of living in a whisky barrel in a basement. At least, I think that's what the moral was.

In short, I love the Musee Mechanique. Most things there are only a quarter, and far more exciting than most modern video games, in which twice as much gets you killed in far less time. But then, these are the words of an old man.

...and the home of the belligerent

You know, I find the Fourth of July endlessly amusing. We celebrate the day we declared independence from Great Britain by reenacting the horror of being bombarded. Except this time, it's fun for the whole family.

One suspects that in several hundred years, Iraq will celebrate its triumph over the "Great Satan" by flying mock Stealth bombers overhead while on the ground, they blow up mock ammunition/baby food factories. Whee!

Never mind that all the fireworks I've ever seen are made in China, America's would-be mortal enemy right now. Unless you're a businessman.

Julia and I hoofed it over to Russian Hill tonight to watch the fireworks over the San Francisco Bay. And I mean "hoofed"! We kept expecting to catch a bus somewhere between the BART station and the top of the hill. But there was no such luck, and we got our day's exercise in. Whee. We met Josh at the top of the hill, and thanked our lucky stars we didn't drive. Never mind the wacky right-of-way-flaunting pedestrians, I would hate to have to park on that hill! It's the reason Lombard Street is so crooked.

Afterwards, as we walked back to the BART station, we tried to avoid being hit by fireworks launched in our general direction by drunk people. Correction: independent drunk people!

the fourth - patriotic version

But for all of the times I make fun of America, for all its many faults and for all that it lacks, I really like this place.

I like the many wonderful foods that we have, whether we imported them from other cultures or not. I've been sampling many of them while I've been in Berkeley this past week. No one bastardizes foods better than the Americans.

I love the wonderful range of music we have here, too. We may not have invented your favorite genre, but we have someone here who's very good at it.

And I love the people here. Many are stupid, many are crazy, and they probably annoy the bulk of you in other countries, but so be it. They're my friends and neighbors, and I like them.

I think that's what patriotism really is. We don't have to fly our flag, or wear tacky clothes that have flags all over them.

We certainly don't have to like our government, and the many goofy people that make it up. I'd say that's a defining thing about America - we can hate every dumb law we pass and still love our country.

So I'll admit that I love this country, if only on this day. There's no other country I'd rather whine about incessantly.

the fourth - jerk version

Today is a special day here in America.

It's a holiday we call "the fourth of July". By law, it always falls the day after July 3rd.

Anyhow, it's a special day when we remember that a bunch of rich white British folks signed a document.

Signing documents is very important in our culture over here. The document was so important, it made the folks not British any more. Well, at least, after they and several thousand of their friends killed lots of British people over the course of several years.

I guess when you look at it, the holiday is really more a celebration of death. And documents.

i am the wolf blitzer of the bay area

Day Six of Project: Noogie Trip, and all is going well.

I may have seen more Rice alumni today than since I was last on campus. Troy, Josh, Angie, Amar, and, of course, Julia. You'd almost think educated folks ran in the same circles. Or something.

I saw the bulk of those kids at their place of employment, Sapient. (here is a picture of Amar on a Sapient webpage, for those of you who doubt)

It was weird hanging out in their workplace because Sapient had just fired 390 people, none of them people I knew. Good luck, I guess.

Still, for someone who lived a fair distance from the whole Internet "bubble burst" epicenter, it was odd to see the "new economy" in its death throes, firsthand. There were rooms with tons of really nice, ergonomic chairs, with no one in them. Rooms with tons of really nice phones piled up on tables. All manner of dot-com detritus waiting to be carted off to some museum of human stupidity or something.

It was weird.

Or maybe it was just another San Francisco office building. What do I know? I'm unemployed.

Nonetheless, the atmosphere was less than busy, so Amar, Angie, and I played Scrabble in a conference room. That seems significant or poetic or something. Although, in hindsight, it would have been much more so had we played "Ring around the Rosie".

Amar and I ate lunch at the farmer's market near his office. We went around eating fruit samples for several minutes until we'd had our fill of sweets and bought ourselves tamales. It seemed so Bohemian, eating like that, but we weren't doing anything illegal. I guess I'll have to think of an edgier way for the kids to eat in the treatment I'm writing for Rent II - Gen Y!. It's hard to feel edgy when you're unemployed with a severance package.

i left my friends in san francisco

Another day by the Bay, another hastily-composed journal entry (actually, for those of you playing along at home, I'm typing these up now that I'm back in Portland, but frankly, thinking about the narrative structure that creates makes my head spin, so let's just pretend this is all real-time, what-say).

Julia and I hoofed it over to the Mission for more street cred points and to bid farewell to Tpodd and Xy, as they are wont to be called.

After much grilling and cast-signing, Julia and I went a-wandering through the many "everything's a dollar" stores in the Mission. Okay, many things cost more than a dollar, but they just have that intensely frugal feel to them.

One store that beckoned me inside had a better selection of toys than most. They had this wonderful desktop pen-holder that was standardized for 1970's ballpoint pens. I suppose it was meant to add an air of professionalism to your otherwise slovenly workspace, but attached to the pen-holder base was an elephant head on a spring. As in "boing, boing". I don't get it. Am I supposed to wiggle the elephant's ears in moments of contemplating career changes? Why do I want this?

Almost lost among racks of really cheap robots was a series of birthday song tapes. Not content to simply provide insipid music for your child on his special day, this series strived to torture your child personally. Each tape sang a birthday tune with a specific name, and the packaging was proud of the fact that your child's name would be mentioned twelve times. Twelve! There's no way your child could deny you love him with a tape that repeats his name over and over like that! It also serves as a useful aid for amnesiacs.