for a while Ive been trying to ignore a growing problem. a problem that escalates in the back of my mind every time I go to the video store or log onto the internet.

since a teenager Ive been a huge fan of any and every Romero zombie film. even the non-Romero remake of Dawn of The Dead. I considered myself a fan of the zombie horror sub-genre.

but in the last year or so, Ive had a nagging irritation eating at me every time the subject comes up.

I will now face this problem on a conscious level and force it on you, the reader, just like the irritation is forced on me almost daily.

my appreciation of Romero was always in his use of the zombie theme as metaphor... as a commentary on society and subjects like consumerism. as an exploration of human psychology and social interaction. as a medium for exposing the hollow illusory nature of social structure.

now every putz with access to a video camera has made a zombie movie. a really really bad zombie movie.
now, the only question for zombie fandom is "DUDE, what would you do IF THERE REALLY WERE zombies??". well I can tell you what I would do. I would write this.

Diary of the Dead was great, but you hardly heard shit about it because of what made it great.

it's the same shit that happened with the suburban vampire fad. vampire mythology no longer means a damn thing. vampires are dead as relevant metaphor. murdered by ankh-wearing role-players who truly became the parasitic soulless monsters they only resembled before. only now nobody sees vampires for what they are, especially the vampires themselves.

vampires? played out for decades.
zombies... already played out.
of course this wont stop the living dead from continuing to walk the earth.

so what would you do if one day you logged on and the world was taken over by soulless hoola-hooping burlesque zombies drenched in fake blood?? now THAT is a VERY relevant question to ask yourself.


he keeps fighting and I commend him for that, but I hope Romero saved one bullet for himself.

The device Google uses to create Google Street Level is a dome of linked digital cameras on top of a car which moves at a steady pace along streets, taking pics a few times a minute at most. The resulting composit image is nearly spherical, sliced off at the bottom where it's affixed to the car. It is not a subtle survey machine and if you saw it, you'd probably remember it.

How do I know this? From fiddling around with Google Street Level itself, something I may not have done were it not for 18830 May St, Homewood, IL 60430. I have no idea how long this address has been in circulation (I found it on a tech geek/gossip site) so it's going to be all over eventually. What's interesting is they don't exactly get what's going on, thinking it involved unawareness.

( Cut for lots of images, work safe. )

I posted this as a reply in a friends journal but it is significant enough to repost here and bookmark it.

I used to really struggle with the question good vs evil, and what makes a person good, what makes them evil. Because of a lot of thoughts and desires that I had when I was younger, and because I was once diagnosed as a borderline sociopath, I really thought I was evil.

Now I don't. Now I know that I am a good person. A quote from Batman Begins sums it up perfectly, "It's not who I am underneath, but what I *do* that defines me."

If a person thinks good thoughts but doesn't follow through, of what actual good ARE they? But if a person struggles with terrible thoughts and desires, and CHOOSES to do good acts, then aren't they a good person? I believe so for two reasons. One, I believe people peoples actions count, and if they do actual good in the world, then they are good. Two, somewhere INSIDE of them they must be good, too.. or they would never desire to overcome all their evil in order to do good things.

A few years ago I decided to take all the evil inside of myself and box it up. (My motives weren't completely pure. For the most part I just didn't want to be arrested for acting on my desires, and I didn't want other people to see me as a "monster".) And then I sat on the box. And after a long enough time, the evil in me, in the box, withered away. The box is empty now. I had enough good in me to make that decision, take the first step, to attempt to lock up those thoughts and not act on them. And eventually they went away.. and the good person I pretended to be, turned into the good person I actually AM.

Is it evil for me to drug my border collie with benadryl (which is safe - doctor said so) just so that I can get ONE SINGLE SOLID night's sleep without his boredom and tiny bladder making me get up 10 times to walk down a flight of stairs in the middle night so he can pee??

Plus I have a cramp in my right leg from going up and down the stairs so much (here and in Daly City). I was going to unload my car tomorrow, go to DC and pack up some more stuff and bring it back here (all yard sale stuff) but I don't think I CAN with this leg cramp. If it isn't better tomorrow then I don't even know if I can go to campus to pick up my meds and submit my timesheet.

--
When Grayson was little, I trained him to "grovel". Basically he crawls on his belly as low as he can go. I usually only used that command when he really pissed me off, and it was always so cute and funny that it would calm me down. (I trained him to do that because I knew that I have a temper sometimes and I didn't want to take it out on him.) But he hasn't done it in YEARS (except kind of half-assed when I am trying to get him to do tricks.) Just now, he was whining, and I glared at him and threw a dishrag in his direction. Then suddenly, all on his own, he groveled all the way across the bedroom floor to my side. That was totally hilarious. He obviously remembered that by doing that I get un-mad with him. Smarty pants dog.

Doesn't mean I might not still drug him. :P

----
It was 101 degrees in Sausalito today (thats 38.3 for you Canadians) and it SUCKED. There was no breeze and we had no fans. Very little was accomplished. Although I did manage to clean my room. Tomorrow should be about 10 degrees cooler but that is STILL way the fuck too hot for my tastes.

Summed it all up (I hope rationally) for Fred the building code enforcement guy in an email. Eeep!

A much shorter email just requesting an inspection would do the trick, but I explained it anyway.

I had planned to email the building dude, F.R., one more time, and see if he dug himself in any deeper but I will do that in the morning. (I drafted it but got mad and had to stop. Too ranty.)

Oh and F.R. called my boss and our head of operations to ask to meet with them and said that he never would just go talk to their employee directly... but they weren't there. (This was a lie- he came right into the office and asked for me - I heard him. )

I have a doom-ish feeling that someone is going to come slash my tires or beat me up. Or, 6 months from now everyone in the building loses their lease and the city loses a whole huge medical clinic because I tried to make the building add 4 blue parking spaces and got snotty with my wielding of the system. But mostly knowing that while people around me might be supportive they don't really get it and part of them is wishing I would get over it adn not take everything so seriously - would let go - would not dig in - would not cause trouble or hang on like a fucking bulldog.

Just now as I somewhat unnervedly dove back into Stretto expecting something horrible to happen even MORE I came to a rare pleasant (yet still painful) bit on p. 114-115 as Hazel describes resistance and the idea of utopia or revolution (which, reading over the Romance of the Revolution stuff in WisCon Chronicles last night I think the idea of utopia is our feminist revolution and I also believe that our sideways, aunt to niece indirect geneological transmissions in little time capsules... continue to spread and reach critical mass of ideas that just mean, people won't put up with shit any more.)

"You can individually rebel in small ways, individually work to break down certain structures of the reality around you, to create for yourself. It's possible. Though that must be the hardest thing in the world for anyone to try to do. Thus though I call it small-scale, I don't mean it's the easiest way to go. Because you'd constantly be going against the grain, fighting everything around you, all the time. Who's strong enough to do that for more than the first short period while one is sustained by an enthusiastic burst of energy?... But there are other possibilities than going it alone."

... (What's that you say Socrates? .... say the minor characters who likely will come back into it full throttle later) ...

"The aliens didn't create the Free Zones out of nothing. They simply made it possible for them to exist and to go on existing. But the actual creation -- which is on-going - of the Free Zones is the imaginative, effortful, and disciplined making of the world by humans, mostly women. Groups of people trying to maintain their own constructions of reality in conflict with the dominant construction of reality have existed in this country for a long, long time."

I think of Quilter when I read this and M. and so many others who dig in and don't stop and don't go away or let go, of my ex girlfriends Nadine and Kathy M. who pursue shit right to the end of it, whatever it is that came up in front of them in their life, race, prisons, corruption, law, the protection of information, or simply calling bullshit when necessary and never losing sight of what is good - constructing the alternate version of reality - in whatever ways - including by writing the sf & fantasy & utopia that gives us other stories other societies - Le Guin & Kirstein & Marks & Mcintyre - Wittig's lush infinite weirdness - The way that Julie's biography built carefully for us all to examine & build on Sheldon's life and writing - all those things. I see how deeply we all fail but how much we are managing to build.

5/15/08 - Is it so hot...

This morning my MUNI driver got out the bus to fight with a cabbie.
741 was really open with me about stuff going on in his life.

Yea! on gay marriage.

This afternoon - tried to figure out what CNA's need to do to get CEUs and I'm not a CNA

Went to a Mathabat-athon meeting tonight at Good Vibes on Polk (people were very friendly on the bus ride to there)

I spent most of the night trying to get people to sign up to do stuff (talk at this - perform at that... please - o'please)

And I sweated all day

my bones feel twitchy tonight. a big hurdle was jumped over nice and clean it appears and so we're on the other side of the scary. there are more scaries to jump over in the coming weeks, but the big one is now in the official past. interesting how as that happens the heat is on in the bay. i love heat. one of the reasons i love new orleans. even when the heat is stifling and uncomfortable and i can't even breathe in it - i like it. i like my bones feeling looser and waring less clothes and honestly i get less worked up. i start refusing on some core level to get stressed out. sure i get mad and cranky and even a little sad like i feel right now. but that arching anxiety that just eats at me... the warmer it is the less i hold onto it. so right now i am not comfortable at all. but i love the heat. a cold shower before bed yes. going out tomorrow to find food that is light and watery and helps me hydrate, yes.

tomorrow i am seriously considering  taking me and the wife to bolinas or berryessa and grilling on the water while i play my accordion and feel sand under my feets. that would be ideal. i think she has school stuff so heck i may just go solo. roadtrip by myself and rock out the music. not sure. there are some ithings that work may need me for. but i also have my cellphone on me to be on call and my computer at home and am planning to work all weekend so it's not like they would be out on the actual workload. i can be responsible and take care of myself right?

i need a day. for reals. to bask in this few days of summer. one of my biggest sads about living in sf is the summers i don't have anymore. the way heat and humidity make you pray and want for the snow and the rains. the way thunderstorms kick all of the electricity and charges through the air. for a little while we have this heat. i don't want to hide from it in an air conditioned office. i want to lie around and soak it up like that first weekend with a new lover where you're sore and you're tired and you're sloppy messy and full of sex. yet you still don't stop. you still don't leave. you run that train for as long as you can and when you come up for air that first weekend lust drunk is gone. sure you can keep on fucking and it can be grand but you only get that first messy weekend once. ah shit it's lush and gorgeous and holds on in the muscle memory. likewise. the first real heat of summer comes only once a year. and living in sf - it's like once every few years. so i am raising my glass to fucking this weather all weekend until the fog rolls in. seriously.

вчера наконец не выдержал и раскололся человек-скала Витя:)))ничто не брало его - даже взрывоопасные "склянки становятся кислыми" не изменили пуленепробиваемое выражение лица:))а вчера - вдруг взял и страшно раскололся из-за пустяка:)))вдруг согнулся в три погибели и выдохнул "пусти меня":))) мы за кулисами подумали что ему плохо - а это он так смех выдыхал:))

а мораль какая: не надо сильно сдерживаться (ни в каких эмоциях)ни на театре ни в жизни - а то это чревато неожиданным прорывом:)))

Here's a little something I haven't done in a while — the game is an easy one. Go to amazon, find some of your favorite books, and post the most distressing one-star reviews.

As it turns out, Nathanael West was not writing fables for kids!

1.0 out of 5 stars a new veiw, September 4, 2001
A Kid's Review
miss lonley hearts is a truely tragic story centered around a depressed lunatic and his immoral and drunk freinds. he sets out to solve peoples problems and ends up only making them worse ruining his life as well as others. while the writers craft may be good, and there are many levels to this story, it is not one to contrive morals from.

(I wonder if the kid's opinion changed seven days later, or what he thinks now for that matter.)




"Kate" (if that is her real name!) is all wrong, but she does nail Bukowski in a sentence, I must say.

1.0 out of 5 stars waste of a generation, December 4, 2005
By Kate M. Maldonado "cromatica" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This book was so bad that it actually made my blood pressure go up. Since it was written in the '50s, Gnossos' lack of charm or even the most basic social skills may be seen by those who grew up in that repressed era as signs of having a free spirit, or of being a rebel. It seems Farina couldn't see outside the little construct of his college/drug scene, which, even in the sixties, did not define the world. Anybody can take massive quantities of drugs and inflict themselves onto others under the impression that they themselves are being interesting.
It's as if Farina was in a boardroom with Fox network producers; "Ok, is there lots of drugs? violence? vandalism? Don't forget the lesbians! Point of the story? Never mind, we've got lesbians!"
I think people like this book for the same reason that they like TV shows like "Cops"; a vicarious experience of a degenerate lifestyle.I can see how, 40 years ago, one may have felt a bit naughty reading such graphic fare, but this book is about as hip as wearing a peace medallion with a fringed leather vest. No wonder so many baby boomers are having cuddle parties and paying people thousands to come to their corporate office to teach them to juggle and tune their wind chimes.
Bukowski was a jerk, but at least he was funny.




This one must be from the first reviewer's mother or father:

1.0 out of 5 stars In Bad Taste, January 8, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Geek Love (Paperback)
I had to read this book for an English Lit course and I really had a very hard time finishing it. I must be pretty abnormal since most reviews were good. I found the content very disturbing. For someone's mind to come up with such horrific actions which I feel are immoral as well as sick must have a twisted outlook on life. I really couldn't see the author's point. The ending was a pretty common ending to murder, incest and drug taking. There are so many wonderful literary books out there, I can't understand why a Professor would recommend this book.


(I hope the "Professor" assigned Lolita immediately after this one. You know, as a sorbet.)





And what would a reader review be without a rejoinder to an unnamed group of apologists for Nazism, which had nothing to do with the book in question (hint, parts of it were published in a magazine the year before Hitler was born):


1.0 out of 5 stars A favorite of Neo-Luddites and Neo-Nazis, March 20, 2003
By Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Hunger: A Novel (Paperback)
Can you seperate the art from its creator? Of course not. "Hunger" is not an exceptional piece of literature by any means. Hamsun's fame rests in large part on his "oppression", as some would have it. I.e., he was opressed after WWII in the same way that Quisling and Goebbles were oppressed.

As Hamsun's popularity gorws, so does the whitewashing of his memory and the moral equivocation that allows some intellectuals to do so. I cannot count myself among them.

• 13:35 Meeting. Sigh. #
• 14:24 @cheshster how on earth did you manage to hold it off for so long? #
• 14:53 Kind of stressed. And by kind of, I mean really. #
• 19:19 My Eee PC arrived today. We bonded instantly. I'm now delving into the world of pinning in Linux. #
• 20:04 headache aura that's been brewing all day is now more than brewing. #
• 20:08 In better news, I finally understand why this is so funny: xkcd.com/149/ #
• 21:34 the aura has blossomed into a full headache #
• 22:04 Lost guest star mega-squee. #
• 22:22 The music is really weird tonight. Also, still squeeing over tonight's guest star. I'm not going to be able to wait until Dec. for the DVDs #

LoudTwitter. Because my attention span is only 140 characters long.

Johnny Slaughter has been hurt very badly in a motorcycle accident, and has medical bills he can't pay: his friends are throwing a benefit tonight at the Palace of Wonders in DC: http://www.palaceofwonders.com/news.html

If you can't make it but want to pitch in, let me know and I'll pass on paypal info.

My thoughts and hopes are with Johnny and Charon and all their friends and family.

xoxo

Nabil

A former co-worker of mine spent the last few years tramping around the Pacific Rim, snapping a lot of striking photos along the way. This particular shot apparently garnered a fair amount of attention, appearing in a few magazines and exhibitions.



You can check out some more of his pics at his Flickr page.

i just filled out my application for my nurse practitioner license and my eyes started watering. must be all the pollen.

Kept plugging away on the Rheingold prep today. We've got 20 ground rows in this thing. Twenty! Most shows have one. Maybe two. A total of 800 amps feeding this thing.

To put it in perspective, that's about 1174 of your standard 75 watt household lightbulbs.
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This heat is totally uncalled for, as all you Californians are aware. However, it makes a good time to drink Anchor Summer Beer.
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I'm still in the first week of opera season, and I've already had two work dreams! Not cool.
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Did I mention that it's really goddamn hot? My brain is broken.

also, nothing quite says 'horror fiction message board' quite like watching monstrous jackasses in a circle jerk over how evil every muslim/arab/brown person in the world is.
if anyone ever tries to tell you that horror isn't a ludicrously conservative genre, understand that they're lying and probably have home movies of their last gay bash outing, complete with confederate flag shirt.
(although, seriously, my favourite are the brits who claim to be 'borderline socialists' while still frothing about the good ol' days before the evil brown people snuck into england.)
and can someone please finally put an end to frank miller's career?
what the fuck is wrong with people that they actually think him doing 'the spirit' and 'batman vs. OMG ISLAMIC TERRRRRRRERISTS!' is a good fucking idea?
.
and 'fishing with john' remains the greatest show ever to be on television.
rah.

It's like 100 degrees out, I'm wearing my miniskirt, a butter and cream colored nubby tube top that shows not just my nipples by my whole areola. I'm drinking a pineapple and bubbly water cooler. I'm going to go swimming at Mills with Beena soon. And best of all THE SHOW IS ALMOST DONE WITH THE MASSIVE REWRITES!

Must be the weather because it is GORGEOUS outside! Something like 25C. The kids are outside playing with the garden hose and all is well.

Spoke too soon. Angelface just came in cranky because Trouble sprayed her. :P
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

statement of boredom

demand for entertainment

If you haven't been paying attention to the Prop 98 news, PLEASE read Lauren's Public Service Announcement.



I have no voting power, so I'm looking for YOU all to make up the difference for me....PLEASE AND THANK YOU.