motherweary

Catalog season is starting, so it's time for the First Annual Wretched Excess Compendium. This is the only time of year when I mourn the loss of Sharper Image, which would have been good for at least half a dozen entries, but Hammacher Schlemmer has, as always, stepped in to fill the gap. So here's the first entry in the Compendium: The Only Complete Swiss Army Knife.



The HS catalog (print and online) has achieved a kind of grammatical Wretched Excess all by itself: everything is headlined with the word "The," as if there is no other. THE Genuine Mahogany Glider Bench; THE Talking Wicked Witch of the West (the only item that actually tempts me, but Margaret Hamilton has long been a personal hero of mine), and yes, even THE Best Nose-Hair Trimmer.

The Compendium, by the way, is open to entries from all and sundry. No idiocy too large or too small! No limit on entries! Step right up and post!

T-Mobile rolled over and put its little electronic feet in the air and is giving me my rebate. Yes. We Win!!

On July 12, 2008, I'll be appearing as part of Writers with Drinks, which has won "Best Literary Night" from the SF Bay Guardian readers' poll four years in a row and was recently named "Best Literary Drinking" by the SF Weekly. The spoken word "variety show" mixes genres to raise money for other magazine, a national magazine for people who feel pigeonholed by mainstream media categories. I am sharing the stage with  Mistress Morgana,whose stories have appeared in the anthologies Politically Inspired and Sex For America: Politically Inspired Erotica; Ray Molina of the comedy show Oddly Americana, and (drum roll please) the eminent and humongously talented Ishmael Reed. I will try not to let this go to my head.

7:30 to 9:30pm, doors open at 7:00, at The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd Street between Mission and Valencia, San Francisco,. Admission is $3 to $5 on a sliding scale, all proceeds benefit local nonprofits.  Y'all come now.

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T-Mobile Rebate Offer
PO Box 317197
El Paso TX 88531-7197

    re:    Tracking ID xxxxxxxxx

Gentlefolk:

I have been trying to figure out if your “T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8320 Rebate” offer is a classic bait-and-switch routine, or just an out and out lie. Perhaps you can help me.

On February 14, 2008, I bought a BlackBerry Curve for my daughter, together with a BlackBerry Minutes & Mail Enterprise Plan, which includes unlimited e-mail, unlimited Web browsing, unlimited domestic text/instant messaging, etc. I was told that I did not need to add anything to the BlackBerry plan as it already had everything necessary. T-Mobile also offered a rebate plan, available since I bought both the phone and the plan. The rebate is called the “T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8320 Rebate Program.” The humor in this title will become apparent.

I sent in the rebate application, receipt, etc., and a month later received a form letter denying the rebate because the offer only extended to a voice rate plan of over $34.99 (got that) plus an “eligible feature add on. (Examples: T-Mobile Hotspot or Internet or Email Add-on).” Which we don’t need. Because the BlackBerry Minutes & Mail etc. plan already includes that stuff.

I called the rebate “Customer Care” number and spoke to a number of unhelpful people, all of whom apparently are only allowed to recite the language of the refusal letter. Eventually I spoke to someone else in the company, who looked up the case and said that we should indeed qualify for the rebate because the plan we have already contains all the add-ons necessary for the BlackBerry. I was told to re-submit the rebate request. I did. On May 13, my rebate request was turned down again, with the same form letter I got the first time.

Apparently the only way to obtain the T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8320 Rebate is to sign up for an entirely unnecessary $9.99 monthly add-on to the BlackBerry Minutes & Mail Enterprise Plan, which doesn’t need to be added on to.

So you tell me: did you bait the offer of the cell phone and T-Mobile service with a rebate offer, then switch it to smoke and mirrors, or is the rebate offer an out-and-out lie?

I am enclosing copies of the background material in this matter, both for your entertainment and convenience and for that of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, Consumers Union, and T-Mobile’s own Customer Relations Department. Perhaps if you cannot help me figure out just what sort of scam I fell into, they can.

Yours, in exasperation,

I did something nifty this afternoon, before lunch caught up with me (don't know if it was the Vietnamese spicy beef salad or the Thai iced coffee that has done me in but Southeast Asia is definitely out to get me today). Quite a few years ago I was given a big old trunk by an attorney who was moving out of the building in Oakland. In the trunk were wrapped packages of shares and coupons from a Realty syndicate in the 1910s -- I opened one, stashed the other on a shelf at work, and passed the trunk on to my son.

I came upon the wrapped package while clearing out my office today, and on an impulse I called the history department at the Oakland Museum, and ended up hustling the package down there. Wrapped in brown paper, bound with string, sealed with red wax -- the curator eyed this with a gleam in her eye, and happily accepted it. I wrote her a provenance and promised to send a few of the documents from the opened package, so that she didn't have to open the one she now has. She wants to display the package as is, with all the mystery of the string and sealing wax intact. The documents are worth nothing except for their historical interest, but as the curator said, nobody wraps things in brown paper, string, and red wax these days.

So someday I hope to visit the Museum and see my package in a display case -- I wonder what the write up will say.

I am delighted to report that as of April 15, and after thirty+ years, I will no longer be working in downtown Oakland.

These are some of the things I might miss:

• The people. I have been here so long that I feel embedded, and when I run an errand or go out to lunch, I always see at least three people I know. I'll miss exchanging greetings and gossip with them.
• The Vietnamese soup place next door.
• Being within a few blocks of Oakland Chinatown.
• The Friday Farmer's Market. This runs 12 months of the year and is always worth cruising for the Asian and Latino farmers, the piles of fresh produce, and the multicultural stew of shoppers.
• Lake Merritt, which is always lovely to walk around.

These are some of the things I won't miss:

• The people. Especially after three in the afternoons, September through June, it can be worth your sanity, your wallet, and/or your physical well-being to walk along the streets here. I also won't miss the begging crazies, the begging belligerents, or watching drivers blow through red lights while the cops turn their backs. Or the idiots who staff the registers at Walgreens or Rite-Aid ("The employment test has only one question: What's your name? And most of them got at least 80% of that one!")
• The Vietnamese soup place next door. Way too expensive for what you get.
• Being within a few blocks of Oakland Chinatown. Most of the restaurants have either only Cantonese food, or Cantonese and blandified Hunanese food. The pedestrians are, without exception, suicidal and none of the drivers comprehend the meanings of crosswalks, traffic signals, turn signals, or lane markers. Also they like to park in the middle of the street.
• The building itself. It opened in 1958 and has not been substantially remodeled since then (the Otis man told me that the elevators are the only ones in Oakland still operating on original machinery).
• The commute: morning and evening, in all seasons, it's close to one and a half hours of grinding, fume-breathing nastiness, a veritable thesaurus of bad behaviors, and the omnipresent possibility of being squashed by a truck. Actually, the truck drivers are okay -- it's the idiots in minivans or sports cars who seem to be oblivious to the concept of mass, and think they can cut off a semi with no consequences. The sad thing is that any consequences happen to other poor bastards, and not to them.
• The Friday Farmer's Market. It's getting too gentrified (too many people selling incense, beaded earrings, and rocks with cute sayings engraved on them), and I suspect that in five years the honest part of the market will be crowded into a corner, surrounded by stands selling sugared popcorn and t-shirts. Too bad.
• Lake Merritt -- once you make your way through the crazies to reach it, you can play hopscotch with the goose shit that covers the paths twice a year. The rest of the year, its pigeon shit.

Instead, I'll be working in downtown Santa Rosa, across from Santa Rosa Mall. Not all that alluring, but there's a new bike and walking trail within half a block of the office and I'm looking forward to dealing with a different, and with luck less belligerent, type of crazy on the streets. And the commute is only 15 miles, in the non-commute direction. Oh joy, oh happiness!

And, as god is my witness, I will never have to do bookkeeping again.

Well, I have to say that if not for knitting, I'd probably be gibbering in a corner somewhere. With knitting, I'm still gibbering in a corner but at least my hands are busy. I started to inventory the projects-in-progress: A glittery scarf for L; a lacy raglan for K (my first raglan and I'm sold on the ease of the pattern); another raglan of thick-n-thin lace weight cotton which has begun to bewilder me but won't be frogged, so I'll pick it up again sometime soon; a chenille scarf, almost done, interrupted by the first three; something in red so old I've forgotten what it was, but it's on waste yarn and waiting for me to remember, which I will any day now. Yeah, right. There are some others lurking in a bottom drawer, but I refuse to look.

Stitch 'n Bitch classifies knitters but I think they missed my type: I'm a serotonin knitter. I read that small, repetitive hand movements tend to release this splendid neurotransmitter into the bloodstream and I'm all about that, although the finished product really isn't beside the point. I like the stuff I make, although when I cruise some of the knitting blogs I am filled with admiration and despair.

So onward, four projects at a time, lots of practice in unknitting and with enough frogging to qualify me for the Penelope of the Year award.

I know, I get ridiculously excited, but ... it was dark when I woke this morning, and as I sat at the breakfast table the sun came up and I saw snow, great patches of snow on the top of Sonoma Mountain. Between the patches were stands of trees that looked black, and since the sky was still dark at first it seemed as if the snow patches were more clouds, lying low against the mountain. Very pretty.

Hmmmm, eight days into the New Year and this resolution's already down the drain.  Ay, pues...

The big news hereabouts was the weather, including a storm last Friday that closed bridges and freeways, and caused a number of trees on the hill to relocate, mostly into the middles of streets. We're lucky that our power flickered but didn't go away, as it did (and still is) for a number of less-fortunate folk in the North Bay. Also lucky that Friday is my telecommute day but I probably wouldn't have gone in anyway. By the time I would have left for work, the rain was already blowing sideways and all the bushes were standing on end.

As a holiday gift, I promised our secretary that I would teach her to knit. Not that I'm all that good a knitter myself but it's something I enjoy. Lots. And one of these days, I'll even do swatches the way I'm supposed to, and maybe then my sweaters will fit when I'm done with them. Anyway, she has taken to it like a natural but here's the funny part: I knit continental style, with the yarn coming over my left hand (probably because I crocheted for decades, and that's how you do it), but she has almost naturally fallen into knitting English style, with the yarn coming over the right hand and being wrapped around the needle. This makes it strange when I try to teach her something, because I have to stop and figure out how to do it English style and what the mistake was, English style. One of the things I love about teaching is that I am always learning something new, and apparently this is true of teaching to knit as much as it is true of teaching to write.

I have resolved, at least for the nonce, to post to the blog more often.  If nothing else, it forces me to try to get some writing done on a regular basis and that's a good thing.

We had a quiet New Year's Eve, but for the first time in years we stayed up beyond midnight. Fireworks are legal in this town, so at midnight we opened the curtains to watch the amateurs decorate the skies. I am always amazed at the number of would-be pyromaniacs out there, pleased to see the results of their mania, and very glad that at least for New Years the land is fairly wet -- unlike July Fourth, when things tend to be a bit more like tinder.


2007 was a fairly quiet year for us, decorated with enough fun to keep us going. In April, both as a post-tax-season treat and to celebrate my birthday, we spent 10 days in Hawaii, on the Big Island, hanging out with my sister and her partner. We drove all over the Kona side of the island, from Kohala to Volcano National Park. It's a thrill to stand on earth that is younger than you are, and I now have a photograph to prove that I am indeed older than dirt.

C fulfilled a life dream, to play golf in Hawaii. Golf courses on the Kona side (and perhaps elsewhere on the island) are a bit different from those on the mainland. Because the ground is volcanic, the lava has to be graded and contoured before soil and sod are laid over it. Sand traps are made by scooping hollows in the rock, lining them with some waterproof fabric, then chucking in sand. As a result, whenever it rains (which it does with some frequency) all the sand traps turn into water hazards. Much of the rough is straight-up black volcanic rock. The guy that C played with had a special "rock club" (just a battered old iron he didn't care much about) to use when he went into the rough. I suspect that he and C used that rock club a lot, but C had a great time.

December 11 marked the first anniversary of K’s move to New York. She completed her schooling last summer and, with two friends, moved out of Brooklyn and into an apartment in what used to be called Hell's Kitchen, and is now called "Midtown West." This is one of Manhattan’s up and coming neighborhoods: lots of restaurants, stores, clubs, etc. She has taken to New York as though she was born for it. I spent a week with her in early December, walking around the city in freezing temperatures and watching her negotiate complicated subway stations as though she had their maps imprinted on her eyelids. We saw The Marriage of Figaro at the Met and ate a divine meal at Anthony Bourdain’s restaurant, Les Halles, and (of course) shopped.

R, having decided to stay in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, bought himself a fixer-upper in the area and has been fixing it up, between bouts of working, doing stints at the training center (he teaches cops to drive really, really fast) and an increasing amount of work for his union.

C's business changed shape during the course of the year. The new firm has offices in historic downtown Petaluma and is called Midtown Tax, a nod to C's birthplace in Midtown Manhattan, K's current residence there, and its location in the middle of Petaluma.  He and his remaining partner are happy to be closer to home and closer to more restaurants, although sad to no longer be within walking distance of Mi Pueblo, the best Mexican restaurant ever.

Two of my stories were published during 2007, both in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. One of them, "Lázaro y Antonio," (the June cover story) has been recommended for the Nebula Award.

So, off to a new year, an election year so there’s some hope of improvement by the time 2009 rolls around.

2009. Jeez. Who woulda thunk?

I am pleased to report that the U.S. goal to Stop Marta didn't work after all:



Marta and her Brazil teammates celebrate the team’s second goal against the United States in Hangzhou. (Greg Baker/Associated Press)

Had Bilbo Baggins not been so fond of cheese, none of the adventures celebrated in the great Sagas of the Shire would have happened, for Bilbo – but wait, let us approach this story as did Bilbo himself, step by step, not knowing the ending even as the beginning unfolded like the cover of Goldberry’s muffin basket which allowed the sweet smell of muffins to fill the afternoon air and dance lightly into the noses of those waiting so eagerly, among them our friend Bilbo who beyond all things wanted one of Goldberry’s Gorgonzola muffins and whose desire had led him to challenge Maalox the Orc, destroyer of villages, ravager of herds, lover of sheep, for the very last Gorgonzola muffin that the fair Goldberry would ever bake, for many were those who swore that should she bake another they would rise in their wrath and strike her down regardless of the sweetness of her blueberry muffins and the bowel-loosening properties of her bran muffins, and so the fair Goldberry had baked this last, this final, this ultimate Gorgonzola muffin over which the valiant Bilbo Baggins, gentleman hobbit of the Shire, and Maalox the foul Orc, reeking of the decaying flesh of his victims and smelling almost as emphatic as the Gorgonzola muffin itself, faced each other, weapons drawn, for Bilbo had brought along his famous sword Sting, the weapon with which he had struck down dragons and giant spiders and other denizens of Middle Earth, while Maalox the Orc clutched his hideous fourteen-foot battle spike, bristling with sharp blades and jagged metal teeth that were rumored to have been cured in the blood of Shelob the Spider and therefore carried wicked poisons in the flakes of rust that adorned the monstrous spike and rained off as Maalox braced his feet and swung the repugnant spike at the limber hobbit while Goldberry put her pretty white hands to her pretty pink cheeks and shrieked like a macaw and Bilbo, leaving Sting resting in its jeweled scabbard, ducked to evade the Orc’s swing and in ducking reached out his hand and stole the Gorgonzola muffin while his other hand slipped the Ring onto his finger, the Ring that made him invisible to all save the Eye of Sauron in his evil Lair of Doom under the volcano which was also called Doom but which had never before seen (we speak of the Eye of Sauron here, and not the volcano called Doom) had never before seen, I say, Gorgonzola muffins made by Goldberry, delicately browned along their domed tops and mottled with the odoriferous cheese which had bubbled and melted during the baking process, producing the smell which the Eye of Sauron could only imagine since it was, after all, the Eye of Sauron and not the Nose of Sauron, but the Nose of Maalox the Orc was drippingly present in the crowded little bakery and paraphernalia shop where Goldberry sold her wares, and so Maalox the Orc could track the whereabouts of the Gorgonzola muffin and hence of Bilbo himself, so that with a grunt he swung his butt-ugly battle spike a second time and once again missed the agile hobbit, who had bitten a large hunk from the Gorgonzola muffin and taunted Maalox the Orc with the sounds of chewing and swallowing and the smacking of lips until Maalox bellowed like one possessed and swung a third time and impaled the remaining part of the muffin, ripping it from Bilbo’s hand and into visibility again, and before any other mishap could occur, Maalox crammed the Gorgonzola muffin into his foetid, ragged, cavity-ridden mouth and swallowed it, not knowing that as he did so he also swallowed the One Ring which had been ripped from Bilbo’s finger by the force of Maalox’s swing and which gave Maalox such a tremendous tummy ache that he ran howling from Goldberry’s Bakery and Head Shop and Bilbo, bereft of muffin and Ring both, gave chase, leaving the Shire far behind and initiating the celebrated adventures heretofore referenced.

Really.

Fuckin’ Walt Disney. Hell, you’d think an honest man could sue the bastard. What for? For gonna-be defamation of character, that’s what for! I mean, hell, a man works all his life to get ahead, takes all kindsa risks for damn little reward, I can tell you that, and what does that bastard do? Turns you inta some kinda fuckin’ backwoods Goody Two-Shoes, is what he does. Shit. You pass me that jug.

Damn, that’s good stuff. That’s what I’m talkin’ about, what’s in this goddamned jug right here, and I’m glad to share it with whoever wants some and that’s my goddamned generous nature. Look, you got a brain in your head, you ain’t gonna drink the water, right? Damn straight, stuff’ll kill you out in this wilderness, you don’t know what the hell’s died in it or shat in it or worse. Pristine waters my sweet Aunt Tildy’s ass! So what do you drink instead, you an’ your family? What’s in this jug, that’s what, cause it’s fermented and it’s got a kick and it’ll keep you healthy and that’s god’s honest truth, I can tell you that.

God’s honest truth! That Disney bastard! “The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun, the rain and an apple seed...” Balls. That bastard don’t know the first damned thing about apples. Apples don’t come true from seeds, you gotta graft ‘em. You plant an apple seed, you get a crab apple or some other kinda shit you can’t eat cause it’ll pucker you from your gums to your asshole. You think I spend my life trampin’ around the western wilderness graftin’ Golden Delicious and Granny Smith so little Sonny can have somethin’ in his little lunchbox? Shit, no. I plant apple seeds, ‘cause what people want’s those nasty apples off those trees, that they can pick and squeeze and ferment the fruit and get somethin’ safe to drink. ‘Course, it don’t hurt that it can knock you on your ass, either. So you lay out some towns and you plant up some apple seeds, and in a couple years you head back to civilization and sell them lots, right on a river, with an apple orchard already there, and hell, the folk just hitch up them wagons and head west, right for the towns you laid out, with your deeds in their pockets and their money in yours. Shit. Does that Disney bastard think I’m some kinda chump?

Hey, get another jug, sweetie. She’s really a looker, ain’t she? Fourteen if she’s a day, married her up a couple years ago, she’s a good little thing. I sure do like ‘em young -- got me a handful of ‘em, various places in the woods. Give the dad a free lot, you get a free wife, the younger the better but I hang on to the older ones, too. Every girl’s got her uses, you know what I mean? Well, that Disney fucker sure don’t know what I mean! What, he thinks I headed west and cut off my whanker? Maybe he did, but not me, not good old John Chapman, no siree, I can guarangoddamntee you that I did not cut nothin’ offa me and that I goddamn know how to use it, too, got kids scattered all over the place, enough to start my own goddamned town ‘cept I’d have to settle down and some smarmy bastard’d try to turn me into some goddamned saint.

Walt Disney. Lyin’ son of a bitch. “I wake up every day as happy as can be, because I know that with His care, my apple trees, they will still be there.” Bastard can’t even write a decent poem. If I wake up happy, it’s ‘cause I got another jug o’cider and another town to sell and a sweet little honey just a warmin’ up my bed and that’s one helluva better poem than that Disney fucker could ever write, and true too.

If I didn’t hate me lawyers so much, swear to God, I’d sue the bastard. Maybe I’ll do it anyway, trade some pantywaist jawbones a jug and a deed for some kinda paper, hide it away somewhere so in a hunnerd years, bang! right in the bastard’s face! Sue his ass. Yeah. Y’all will witness for me, right? Sure you well.

Hey, honey! Another damn jug!

This is mostly true, according to Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire. Well, maybe not the cussing part, but who knows?

I have been reading Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa --  a very sly and funny book. Vargas Llosa chose, as the epigraph for the book, a quotation that I love madly, from Salvador Elizondo's The Graphographer.  It makes sense if you read through it line by line:

I write. I write that I am writing. Mentally I see myself writing that I am writing and I can also see myself seeing that I am writing. I remember writing and also seeing myself writing. And I see myself remembering that I see myself writing and I remember seeing myself remembering that I was writing and I write seeing myself write that I remember having seen myself write that I saw myself writing that I was writing and that I was writing that I was writing that I was writing. I can also imagine myself writing that I had already written that I would imagine myself writing that I had written that I was imagining myself writing that I see myself writing that I am writing.

I can just see the translator working her or his way through that one!

The cash-strapped state of California is again proposing major budget cuts to its programs, but one item remains fully funded: the large-scale piece of public performance art titled The Morning Commute, orchestrated by the California Department of Transportation and featuring, as both participants and audience, the drivers of the San Francisco Bay Area. This composition depends for its artistic underpinnings on the insufficiency of road surface, creating the piece's generally adagio tempo and fueling an accompanying installation, The Continuing Fight over Development. Within this larger meme are myriad causal variations, some orchestrated by CalTrans and others inspired by individual performers.

We take the composition for granted, but this overlooked artwork benefits from constant observation, as there are infinite grace notes within the performances. As an example, consider this morning's presentation, beginning presto with the no-nonsense entrance to our performance space, Highway 101 South, which at the piece's opening is two-lane. The tempo immediately becomes lento as the performers and their instruments crawl up the San Antonio Grade.

Let's take a moment to celebrate the installation's changeability from day to day, even from hour to hour. Summer tempo, for example, is faster than winter tempo, creating the underlying beat of any performance. Smaller moments introduce texture: tempo slows up a grade, picks up at the crest, and either increases or decreases on the downgrade depending on the number of performers. Finally, but always with great impact, are the individual and unchoreographed events that surround such artistic moments as, for example, blow-outs, rear-enders, trolling state troopers, cell-phone users, and people applying make-up while in the fast lane.

This morning's performance featured, at its outset, a lentissimo movement while performers inspected a two-pickup-truck rendition of the popular Fender Bumping Ceremony, including a performance, by the Red-Truck Driver, of impassioned despair and public hair-tearing, while the Tan-Truck Driver performed the Finger-Pointing Shout Dance. Very inspiring, especially so near the opening of the piece.

The tempo picked up until the introduction of the Suburban Mom SUV section, between Novato and Lucas Valley Road. These stalwart performers can be depended on to foment artistic chaos as they force themselves into crowded lanes, slow to swat at children, and jam on their brakes for reasons not readily apparent to their fellow performers. They are the clowns of the performance piece as they explore the SUV driver's subtle mix of arrogance and apprehension within the larger framework of the composition.

Also note the prestissimo presence of motorcyclists and balding, middle-aged men in BMW convertibles, and the stolid, grave, fear-no-evil notes of the Volvo station wagons and old VW busses.

CalTrans itself provides major thematic variations. This year, the agency has introduced that splendid set-piece, the San Rafael Interchange Improvement, including sudden lane changes and temporary barriers, the magisterial bass notes of Large Earthmoving Equipment and the jazz-tempo swing of cranes.

Once across the Richmond Bridge one enters the lentamento penultimate movement of I-80 West (which runs south). Here we lose the alternately brilliant and stubborn notes provided by the Berkeley performers as they maneuver their politically correct vehicles out of the performance space. Lastly, after the thrilling prestissimo navigation of The Maze, come the closing moments vivace con pedone of the run up 14th Street to the parking garage.

As you can see, the post-modern arts are alive and well in Northern California. Our poor may be starving and our children illiterate, but the great artistic tradition of the California Highway System continues to be both supple and strong. Bravo, CalTrans! Bravissimo!

in this morning's email i received a message from my good friend Motors J. Fuchsias offering to sell me "professional" viagra. i am tremendously impressed.

you gotta check this out: facehoven's 5th.