c'est auds

my dawg

2008-11-06T10:57:00.001-08:00

wordle

2008-09-04T07:49:00.001-07:00

title="Wordle: me"> src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/161758/me"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

hoodlum

2008-07-30T09:07:00.001-07:00

i love amanda seyfried

2008-07-30T08:45:00.001-07:00

thank the tv lords

2008-07-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

as a girl who refuses to purchase even standard cable, my cw reception is spotty at best. but the joy of the next season is that they will once again offer gossip girl episodes via web stream.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/arts/23arts-GOSSIPGIRLLI_BRF.html#

xoxo

Re: Obama Cover

2008-07-17T13:01:00.001-07:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92529393

clothes panic attack

2008-07-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

when I thought I misplaced my three quarter sleeves jacket (not pictured) I went through all my winter storage and couldn't find it, I felt empty inside. I know its just a piece of clothing that I hardly wear but I love it apparently.

I found it in the back of my boyfriend's closet (I used his temporarily when I broke my closet rod (too many clothes)) and he in a fit of annoyance shoved my clothes to the back.

Breathe.

is it true?

2008-06-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

An Arrested Development movie would make me the happiest camper ever.

Picture from Paste Magazine dot com... couldn't find an artist name.

organizm

2008-06-20T08:35:00.001-07:00

let me eat cake

2008-06-20T08:23:00.001-07:00

Ikea Brooklyn

2008-06-17T10:19:00.001-07:00

in 19 hours http://info.ikea-usa.com/Brooklyn/Default.aspx

redemption for a faker

2008-05-12T10:09:00.001-07:00

I never read a million little pieces, nor did I have strong opinions on the fakery or broo-ha-ha berating from Oprah. No one likes to be lied to, unless they know its fiction. In my humble opinion, fiction illuminates truth more than real life sometimes.

From the NYT:
Books of The Times
Little Pieces of Los Angeles, Done His Way

By JANET MASLIN
Published: May 12, 2008

He wrote a book but it was bad, liar bad, faker bad, it got him in trouble. A million little pieces. It was the name of the book. It was also how hard he got hit. He had to sit there on the couch. Everybody saw. The television celebrity book club woman got mad, she let him have it. He had to sit there on the couch. He squirmed, he cringed. Everybody watched, everybody blamed him. Then it was over. Then he was gone.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Robert Caplin for The New York Times

James Frey, author of the novel “Bright Shiny Morning,” in 2005. His book “A Million Little Pieces” was originally sold as memoir; much of it was fabricated.

BRIGHT SHINY MORNING

By James Frey

501 pp. Harper. $26.95.
Related
Times Topics: James Frey

He waited. They forgot about him. He tried again.

In the 1930s Los Angeles is the film capital of the world. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of “The Great Gatsby,” comes to live there. He tries to write movies. He fails. He writes a Hollywood novel, “The Last Tycoon.” He says there are no second acts in American lives. He turns out to be wrong.

The million little pieces guy was called James Frey. He got a second act. He got another chance. Look what he did with it. He stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. No more lying, no more melodrama, still run-on sentences still funny punctuation but so what. He became a furiously good storyteller this time.

He wrote a big book. He wrote about a city. Los Angeles. He made up a lot of characters, high low rich poor lucky not, every kind, the book threw them together. It was random but smart. Every now and then he would pause the story, switch to the present tense and throw in an urban fact.

Like this: The Los Angeles area has a museum devoted to the banana.

James Frey loved Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski and maybe even John Fante but he didn’t sound like them, he didn’t sound beat or cool. He sounded hopeful. He sounded unguarded, tender. He quit posturing. He stopped romanticizing squalor. He found new energy. He sounded more like Carl Sandburg in love hate thrall with great maddening Chicago than like the usual tough gritty moody chronicler of California’s broken dreams.

He wrote about people who were drawn to Los Angeles and who they were, why they came, what they wanted, whether they got it, if they didn’t get that, then what they got instead. He looked into their hearts. But he didn’t get sloppy, not maudlin. He just made up characters and wrote as if he cared about them desperately. Bright Shiny Morning. A new chance, real or illusory, that’s what they all wanted. Bright Shiny Morning. So he made that the name of the book.

His publisher called it a dazzling tour de force. (Look, somebody had to, if only to create a comeback drama.) But that wasn’t so far off the mark. Even if his publisher maybe could have asked more questions about what the banana museum had to do with anything.

Still, even the stray facts had their artistry. They helped turn this book into the captivating urban kaleidoscope that, most recently, Charles Bock’s “Beautiful Children” was supposed to be. Bright Shiny Morning was mobile and alert to layout, tempo, different voices, how words looked on the page. Different visual styles suited different characters. Some got long litanies of brisk, sharp dialogue. Others got dense, descriptive prose.

Even the one-sentence page had its use here.

The language got sleek and arch when the book described two superstars, Amberton and Casey. A man and a woman, married to each other, best friends both gay no secrets. Everything perfect, supposed to look that way. Prop children. Money houses cars personal assistants nannies yoga teacher everything perfect. Wearing vicuña. Eating ahi tuna. Still Amberton wanted more, got a crush on an ex-football player. All this captured with elegance, with wit. Movie stars. Not so original, so what? So what if the book always made poor people humble decent better than rich spoiled profligate ones?

So there were Maddie and Dylan, young and in love, eking out a living and traveling on a moped, he eventually got a job as a caddy she as a clerk. The book loved them. There was Old Man Joe, homeless guy, living in a bathroom in Venice, Calif., somehow stronger more decent more heroic than the star who plays movie heroes.

And Esperanza, Mexican-American, working as a maid for an old white lady so mean she threw her morning cup of coffee if Esperanza didn’t make it right. But the old lady turned out to have a son. He liked Esperanza, liked treating her like a human being. Maybe he liked needling his mother even better.

There were easy ways a cynical, sentimental crybaby like the million little pieces guy could have told Esperanza’s part of the story. Crisis, violence, redemption, whatever: that’s what he knew about. That’s what he wrote about. That’s what he passed off as nonfiction. That’s why he sounded as if he’d seen too many lousy movies.

So the Bright Shiny Morning guy did it differently. He let the little vignette play out against a big, gaudy, dangerous Southern California backdrop, full of drug-dealing gang-bangers, full of schemers, phonies, rich with a history of robber barons, all of it listed here, all of it stacking the deck against any generosity of spirit. The son steals the maid’s virtue? Been there, read that. They plot against the old lady? Been there too. This novelist wanted something else for Esperanza: he wanted to honor her, fall in love with her, do it with startling sincerity. He wanted to save her.

And it worked.

That’s how James Frey saved himself.

salve for all my illnesses

2008-05-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

word of my day

2008-04-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

sa·lu·bri·ous /səˈlubriəs/
favorable to or promoting health; healthful: salubrious air.

discovering the other geek love

2008-04-04T20:01:00.000-07:00

by katherine dunn. Her descriptions and character development of beautiful complicated carnival freaks have inspired a new obsession with old carnival posters and a renewed appreciation on how universally dysfunctional families are. For a look at an illustrator's rendition of the cast of characters from geek love http://www.morgan-wilson.com/. (Side note, the image of the barker, Aloysius Binewski is based on my boyfriend).

james franco i love you

2008-04-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

first the bees, now the bats

2008-03-25T08:14:00.001-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/science/25bats.html?em&ex=1206590400&en=659fa34c5520a36c&ei=5087%0A

the good teacher

2008-03-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

my friend steve is an excellent teacher in an educational system that is underfunded and undervalued. this is from the mercury news:

John Swett students march across bridge to protest cuts, layoffs

By Kimberly S. Wetzel

STAFF WRITER

Article Launched: 03/14/2008 02:35:24 PM PDT

Hundreds of John Swett High students walked out of their first period classes this morning and marched across the Carquinez Bridge to protest school district budget decisions that include laying off a popular teacher.

Some of the 200 to 300 students wore T-shirts with a picture of history teacher Steve Trotter and clutched signs imploring the district to "Keep our educational inspiration, keep Trotter," leaving the Crockett campus about 8 a.m. They marched halfway across the bridge before Vallejo police officers forced them back, then they headed to the school district's office building in Rodeo four miles away, chanting "Trotter! Trotter!"

The district informed Trotter recently that his full-time teaching job at John Swett would be reduced to part time next year, most likely forcing him to find work elsewhere. That angered many of his students, who say Trotter is the best teacher they've ever had.

"He's one of the most respected teachers in the school," said sophomore Johnny Zamba, 16. "We all just decided to stick up for him with a walk-out. We'll do this again and again until they take away the pink slip."

The John Swett Unified School District board cut six full-time teaching positions a few weeks ago as part of $850,000 in budget reductions to offset Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to slice more than $4 billion from education statewide. The district, which serves about 1,700 students, also has cut campus supervisors, computer lab assistants and secretaries, and is contemplating further reductions that could include music and athletics.

Students this morning angrily swarmed the district headquarters parking lot, and many peppered Superintendent Michael Roth with budget questions when he emerged from the building.

One student egged the crowd on when he climbed to the roof.

Teachers who learned Thursday of the planned walk-out warned students that they would fail their next test if they took part. But students walked anyway, and many declined to get on the buses provided by the district after the march was over. District officials announced to the crowd that anyone who did not go back to school would be marked truant for the day.

"My mom said I'm grounded, but it's worth coming out here," said Daniel Freeman, a 15-year-old sophomore.

While many students were upset about Trotter's likely departure, others said they are angry that the school board was not considering budget cuts elsewhere. Some said they also were marching in protest of the planned state budget cuts that have pinched districts across California.

Trotter was not at the protest and could not immediately be reached for comment. But earlier this week, he and several of his students sobbed as they pleaded with school board members to reconsider reducing his duties.

"I just think that we deserve good teachers, and I want you guys to realize he's one of the best teachers in that school," senior Precious Arnold said.

Trotter choked back tears before asking the board to "Please reconsider."

School board President Bill Concannon said today that he understands the students' pain, but noted that teachers are selected for layoffs based on seniority calculations per their contracts. The board has no say over who stays and who goes.

"We're faced with making really hard choices," Concannon said. "I would throw it back to the governor. The governor is responsible for this budget. He's the one who called for cuts; this is not the school board's doing."

Concannon said he hopes that the budget picture improves and the district will be able to rescind the layoff notice to Trotter and others. But he doubts the board will revisit it's decision to cut teaching staff.

"I was very disappointed to hear that Mr. Trotter was the one who received a reduction-in-force notice," Concannon said. "I know him, and I have a lot of respect for him."

Reach Kimberly S. Wetzel at 510-262-2798 or at kwetzel@bayareanewsgroup.com.

More coverage of school budget cuts

geek love

2008-03-10T08:57:00.001-07:00

schematic by sam potts, in nytimes article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09rogers.html?em&ex=1205294400&en=d334c5f8fee2d563&ei=5087%0A

word of my day

2008-03-10T08:52:00.001-07:00

effete

Main Entry:: ef·fete
Pronunciation:: \e-ˈfēt, i-\
Function:: adjective
Etymology:: Latin effetus, from ex- + fetus fruitful — more at feminine
Date:: 1660

1: no longer fertile2 a: having lost character, vitality, or strength effete monarchies…of feudal Europe — G. M. Trevelyan> b: marked by weakness or decadence effete East> c: soft or delicate from or as if from a pampered existence effete Easterners — William Helmer> <effete tenderfeet>; also : characteristic of an effete person effete on an outdoorsman — Nelson Bryant>3: effeminate 1 effete boy brought up by maiden aunts — Herman Wouk>

— ef·fete·ly adverb

— ef·fete·ness noun

sunday

2008-03-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

I am probably safely on my way to catholic hell in a hand basket (I imagine myself as a little toto in the bicycle basket with the wicked witch cackling - or maybe that's just my laughter). I hope my family doesn't see this - which should be enough indication for me not to post this on the internet.

My family likes Jesus, a lot, and they send me e mails filled with good intentioned prayers and religious images (curiously white Jesus and family members considering my family is brown brown brown). So although this image sent to me on friday by someone I love dearly does not make me contemplate god/jebus (you heard me - jebus) in my life. It still made me happy. It's a bit kincaid-ish. And a Mel Gibson-esque Jesus without all the violence.

The point of my rambling: my loved ones and I approach religion and spirituality in vastly different ways - but their attempts to include me in their practices warm my heart - even if it is ironically.

I don't want a world

2008-02-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

without polaroids.

brrrr

2008-02-21T07:02:00.000-08:00

I just got back from Oakland where I stayed with my boyfriend's family in their ridiculously cold house (It also is a beautiful house, and has been the location of many successful and delicious meals in my life). It has an amazing panoramic view of the bay - I think the view sucks all the warmth out of the walls and bodies. Like dementors. Apparently Maya Angelou once lived there.

Maya Angelou writes about the house and her marriage below:

We agreed that the house was separating us. He thought it was time to move back to northern California, where the grass was greener and the air purer, and we could live simpler lives. I would write poetry and he would build ordinary houses.

He went on a quest to the Bay Area and found an Art Deco house in the hills of Oakland with a magnificent view of the Golden Gate Bridge. His happiness was contagious. Our marriage was back on track. We were a rather eccentric, loving, unusual couple determined to live life with flair and laughter. We bought the house on Castle Drive from a couple who had married a year before and had been busy bringing the house back to its original classical three pastel colors. I admit, it was a little disconcerting to find that the couple had divorced before they even moved into the house. But I decided that that was their affair and was not necessarily a bad omen for our new house.

My husband and I moved in. The beautiful parquet floors welcomed my Oriental rugs. In hanging my paintings I had to adjust to some of the round corners, but I adjusted. My oversized sofas were primed to offer comfort to those who wanted to sit and look out over the garden and at the bay. There was a room that was a bar, and its circular windows opened into the kitchen, where there was no compactor, no garbage disposal, one oven and a gas range. The piano sat in one corner of the spacious living room, and we set up handsome card tables in the bar so that we could entertain ourselves and our guests at bid whist and other parlor games. I thought, Now, this is the way to live.

Within a month I realized the house hated me. It was no consolation that it hated my husband as well. I was known as a good cook, and sometimes there were even flashes of brilliance in my culinary efforts. But in that house on Castle Drive, if I made bread or cakes they would inevitably fall into soggy, resentful masses. When I fried chicken, the skin and batter would be crisp and at the bone there would be blood as red as cherries. The king-sized bed we had brought from Berkeley to Los Angeles and back to Oakland fell in the middle of the night without any prompting of activity by the occupants. My drapes, hung by professionals, came off the runners. The doors began not to fit the frame, and my piano would not stay in tune. The house hated us.

My Airedale, Toots, preferred to stay out in the yard in the cold rather than enter the house. We had the bother and the expense of building a doghouse, although the dog had been intended to be house company for me. Within six months my husband and I were hardly speaking to each other, and within a year of moving into that formal architectural edifice we agreed to call a halt to the struggle to save our marriage.

We owned two large houses. I went away for three weeks, asking that when I returned he would be moved into one of them taking whatever he wanted of the furniture, paintings, linens and other things we had accumulated together.

I returned to the house on a dark evening and was reminded of something I had said to an interviewer years earlier. I had been asked what I would like as my last meal if I was going to die. I had replied, "I don't want to think that far ahead, but if I were going to Mars tomorrow I would like to have hot chicken, a chilled bottle of white wine and a loaf of good bread." When I went into the darkened house, I was greeted by the aroma of roast chicken. There was a note on the refrigerator that read, "There is a hot chicken in the oven, a cold bottle of wine in the fridge and a loaf of good bread on the cutting board. Thank you for the good times." Now, that's the kind of man I wanted to marry and did marry. And if it wasn't for those two damned bad houses, I would still be married to him.

Excerpted from Even the Stars Look Lonesome by Maya Angelou Copyright © 1998 by Maya Angelou. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House of Canada Limited.

shows from the 90s

2008-02-21T06:31:00.001-08:00

In the show Fifteen, his name is Billy and he has anger issues, and perhaps develops a drug problem in the later episodes. (Nickelodeon tackled adult issues in this high school aged soap opera). In my search for a complete collection of Fifteen, I will hopefully find out the fate of this young character, played by Ryan Reynolds.

On a side note, why does everyone on this show sound so breathless? Is it a Canadian thing? And how do these kids have all this money to spend at the cafe (which may or may not be attached to their school)? And did the creators purposely create a theme of the troubled teens turning to pin ball to deal with all their inner turmoil? If the kid was in front of the pin ball machine, you knew there was trouble with a capital T (relationship problems, bullying, impending detox)

valentine to you

2008-02-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

Word of the Day
Thursday February 14, 2008

Today's Word | Yesterday's Word | Previous Words | Subscribe for Free | Help

amative \AM-uh-tiv\, adjective:
Pertaining to or disposed to love, especially sexual love; full of love; amorous.

Theoretically, any given left-kisser should meet more right-kissers and, over an amative lifetime, or even good year in junior high, be subtly pressured to shift to the right in order to land a wet one -- or just avoid a broken nose. No?
-- Donald G. McNeil Jr., "Pucker Up, Sweetie, and Tilt Right", New York Times, February 13, 2003

In the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of another nap even more often than it does to amative imaginings, Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding.
-- "Touch of Spring Fever Makes Whole World Kin", Science News, May 23, 1931

Well, poetry has been erotic, or amative, or something of that sort -- at least a vast deal of it has -- ever since it stopped being epic.
-- Helen Deutsch, "Death, desire and translation: on the poetry of Propertius", TriQuarterly, March 22, 1993

Amative comes from Medieval Latin amativus, "capable of love," from the past participle of Latin amare, "to love."

uno

2008-02-13T07:07:00.001-08:00

wins best in show, and my heart!

i wish i had a dog

2008-02-12T09:25:00.001-08:00

everyone loves a parade

2008-02-05T10:25:00.001-08:00

although I have no love for football, it was fun to cheer on the underdog, and the team from my state. Hurray, Giants!

Picture credits: On the ninth floor of 100 Broadway, across from Trinity Church, office workers looked out their windows as the Giants parade passed by. (Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

buffy continues on...

2008-01-30T11:35:00.001-08:00

So after many years, I am no longer disappointed that Buffy no longer exists as a continuing tv show. Admittedly, the end of Buffy allowed me to discover other great shows (past and more recent past) that have also been subsequently canceled/ended (Arrested Development, Deadwood, my beloved Freaks and Geeks). But none of these enlisted demons and freakishly super humanly strong girls to act out the humor and drama of our world (the frailty of life, loss of lover or mother, simply being a girl in this big bad world). And none had Buffy-speak. The colloquial eloquence of a valley girl who loves her friends, tends to date vampires with souls, and stops the occasional apocalypse. But now we have Season 8 in comic book form. Hurray!

on my desktop, birds make me happy

2008-01-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

what lies in my interior?

2008-01-29T12:37:00.000-08:00

Main Entry:	interior
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	core
Synonyms:	belly, bosom, center, contents, heart, heartland, innards, inner parts, inside, internals, intrinsicality, lining, marrow, midst, pith, pulp, soul, substance, upcountry, within
Antonyms:	exterior, outside
Source:	Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1) Copyright © 2008 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

asia in finnish

2008-01-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

bar b q love

2008-01-26T16:13:00.000-08:00

haiku headache

2008-01-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

my head overwhelms
everything today, too bright -
please, ache go away.

i miss you

2008-01-19T04:34:00.000-08:00

First Posting

2006-10-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

re-discovered one of the asian marts on broadway today.

I brought home pocky and yan yan, and miniature coffee can drinks.

c'est auds

my dawg

wordle

hoodlum

i love amanda seyfried

thank the tv lords

Re: Obama Cover

clothes panic attack

is it true?

organizm

let me eat cake

Ikea Brooklyn

redemption for a faker

salve for all my illnesses

word of my day

discovering the other geek love

james franco i love you

first the bees, now the bats

the good teacher

my friend steve is an excellent teacher in an educational system that is underfunded and undervalued. this is from the mercury news:

John Swett students march across bridge to protest cuts, layoffs

geek love

word of my day

effete

sunday

I don't want a world

brrrr

shows from the 90s

valentine to you

Word of the DayThursday February 14, 2008

uno

i wish i had a dog

everyone loves a parade

buffy continues on...

on my desktop, birds make me happy

what lies in my interior?

asia in finnish

bar b q love

haiku headache

i miss you

First Posting

Word of the Day
Thursday February 14, 2008