fool(e)

whatever it is that you are doing, make sure that it is not unremarkable.

.::.

i just finished watching Henry Fool. it took me a while to like the delivery of this film, particularly by the title character, and i waivered on liking the stage cadence, and some scenes are uncomfortably unwatchable, but the screenplay writing and the social commentary held me and in the end i thought it was pretty brilliant.

while it is not the focus of the film, i recommend it particularly for anyone who’s ever felt pressure to have their art justified.

female + fiction

this morning i didn’t go to work because it was super sunny and friday i was in too much pain and so i drank my coffee, took some pain meds and went to sit in the garden and read my book until the pain meds kicked in. and then when i came back inside i was sort of hypercaffeinated/doped up and got into unconscious multi-tasking mode (where you do numbers of things at once even though you’re not in any kind of hurry whatsoever) and almost took a banana into the shower (tweet).

if there’s one plus side to all this pain management it’s that i’m spending lots more time reading in the garden, which is nice because i no longer have public transportation time for reading since they cancelled my AC Transit bus line to work. i also get most of my exercise biking to work now, which is good because i haven’t actually gone to the gym very much at all lately and my bike commute is pretty much the only daily exercise i’m getting. (tweeted side note: yesterday on the way home i got pulled over by the emeryville police for blowing a stop sign on my bike. i have never even been pulled over while driving my CAR in california. i pleaded ignorance and apologized and was let off with a warning.)

anyway, i finished the book - The Anxiety of Everyday Objects. it was sort of eerie, actually, how much i related to this book about a young wannabe artist working a desk job in a small manhattan law firm. and also, i realized part way through, that it’s sort of odd that this was the 3rd book i’ve read in a row about young women struggling with identity/life changes. i posted a bit before about Veronica, a novel about a young model, which i really enjoyed and then handed off to Vera, and then after that i read a book i pulled from my Mom’s bookshelf, What Girls Learn, about a couple of young girls and their mother who gets very ill, which was refreshingly honest about puberty but pretty emotionally dark.  i would highly recommend both Veronica and The Anxiety of Everyday Objects to other women because i think both of them dealt with issues in a very adult and uplifting/bigger-picture kind of way; What Girls Learn was decently written, but somewhat adolescent in it’s view. or maybe the writing just wasn’t as good, i don’t know.

i’m not sure why i read 3 books in a row on such a similar theme.  obviously i am still figuring out “who i am” (always, a neverending inner monologue), and questions about female identity in this modern world are on the forefront of culture right now, what with 2 women taking over the political headlines combined/contrasted with all the plastic surgery/airbrushing/extreme dieting/female imagery and the commentary on that subject in pop culture. it makes sense women (or maybe just me) are discombobulated. in the past i’ve not been regularly drawn to books on this subject, but my fiction choices of late have shown that it’s on my mind a lot more than maybe i was aware of.

because i now needed a new book and to change pace, today i went to “The West’s Oldest Independent Bookseller” and one of the only local bookstores left in Berkeley - Books, Inc. on 4th street- and bought Seeing by Jose Saramago, a tangential follow-up to Blindness, one of my all-time favorite novels (and now a movie but i haven’t seen it yet). this book is about (farcical yet unnervingly realistic) political upheaval. From The New Yorker:

Saramago’s sombre masterpiece “Blindness” had an almost mythic power, whereas his latest novel, a political satire set in the same nameless capital city, opens with more wit and less heart. When Election Day coincides with a terrible rainstorm, the government worries that no one will venture out to vote. This fear is unfounded, but the election results are even more alarming: seventy per cent of the city’s voters have cast a blank ballot. Saramago has enormous fun imagining the official acrobatics precipitated by this apparent vote of no confidence, and, as the political hypocrisies and bureaucratic absurdities multiply, the narrative hums with correspondences to current events. Initially, readers may miss the previous novel’s intensity of feeling, but this one’s lightness proves deceptive: for Saramago’s beleaguered citizens, even thoughts never uttered can be fatal, and everyone is guilty until otherwise notified.

looking forward to it.

thoughts from last night’s concert

[the first opening band] is like Neil Young, as played by Ben Affleck. they are so *sincere*, and if there is even a hint of irony it is unintended. that could be a compliment.

2 girls in the bathroom with total 80s Flashdance getups on said (very loudly) they didn’t like Ezra Furman’s voice. “the music is OK but his voice is not very good. i just don’t like the way he sings”. they probably would have said the same thing about Bob Dylan in 1963.

Delta Spirit was just a bit too….plaid for me. we left before it was over.

tonight’s musical menu = delicious

tonight’s musical menu:

• appetizers: ill gates + sh1pwr3k @ Equity happy hour in SF (5:30-9:00)
  
• main course: ezra furman & the harpoons @ the Independent, SF (opening for Delta Spirit, whom i have never seen or heard)

amazingly hand-crafted electronica elaborately woven with organic sounds driven by undertows of dance-able bassbeats followed by live poetic raw guitar+vocals music that will make you dance, laugh and maybe cry? honestly, using only current music being made in my circles of friends, i couldn’t have scheduled a better music menu for myself if i tried.

unrelated but musical note:

• i learned this morning that Metallica’s “Unforgiven” = length of my commute to work if i drive the car.  i bought this song as a cassette single when it came out, and listened to it hundreds of times.  remember cassette singles? 1990-1991 was a really weird year for me for reasons i won’t go into here, so it makes sense that i *totally connected* to such a lame song. oh, metallica.  so much cheese for such a hard rock band.

• the fact that i just tagged this post “ezra furman” + “metallica” + “ill gates” + “sh1pwr3k” speaks volumes about my current and life-long musical tastes.

(concert resume has been updated)

(concert resume: n. A complete and comprehensive list of concerts that one has attended. Often casual conversation between fellow concert goers.)

the state of 2010

i’m not one who believes in apocalyptic theories, whether it’s the Second Coming of Jesus Christ Our Lord or 2012: The Mayan Prophesy or even just mundane, secular, Nuclear WWIII.

but the fact that this is 2010 and

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger still holds a very high political office in the USA and

2.To replace him, two of the top winning candidates in yesterday’s CA election are extremely rich white republican WOMEN who were CEOs of HUGE CORPORATIONS (which TK calls the “Girls Gone Wild Senate Race“…ouch! oh, what does this say about the world, especially California, today? the socio-eco-politico-anthro discussion could be endless)

and

3. Ozzy Osbourne is now a health columnist for the Times of London

really sort of freaks me out in a dystopian 1984 kind of way, without even mentioning everything else.

June 8 2010 - SF/CA Election Cheat Sheet + Why voting “No” is important

False Profit Cheat Sheet

A Prop 13, Seismic Retrofit – YES
CA Prop 14, Top-Two Primary – NO
CA Prop 15, Fair Elections – YES
CA Prop 16, PG&E Monopoly – NO
CA Prop 17, Insurance Persistency Discounts/Rate Hikes – NO

SF Prop A, SFUSD Parcel Tax – YES
SF Prop B, Earthquake Safety Bond – YES
SF Prop C, Film Commission Appointments – YES
SF Prop D, Public Employee Pensions – YES
SF Prop E, Costs of Protecting Dignitaries – ?
SF Prop F, Rent Increase Appeals – YES
SF Prop G, Transbay Terminal – YES

For full explanations visit False Profit.com

If you live in Alameda County, like me, go to SmartVoter for information about the Alameda County items on the ballot, specifically Measures A-D, which are minor, or visit the East Bay Express voter guide.

In general, I’m against voting for huge state measures at the ballot box (voters being swayed by commercials and misleading short summaries should not be making decisions; elected officials guided by experts should be making decisions, that’s why we pay them), and I especially agree with the Green Party - “When we can’t understand a proposition’s effects and side effects, we should usually vote No.”

To be clear: For those of you who don’t understand your ballot propositions and therefore just figure you won’t vote, NOT VOTING is not the same as Voting No.  VOTING NO IS IMPORTANT.  It keeps badly organized, faulty laws that people don’t really understand from being implemented.

do you know what oil tastes like?

this pelican does.

this just breaks my heart.

wake up

i would stop _(buying) (driving) (eating) (watching) (smoking)_, but _(i/he/she/we/they)_ _(need/can’t/don’t have) _ (…..)

.::.

i would start _(exercising) (carpooling) (biking) (buying real food) (shopping local) (learning)_, but _(i/he/she/we/they)_ (can’t/don’t)_ (…..)

.::.

you keep yelling about how this is America!  so why do you keep making excuses? are excuses the American Way now? or are you just too comfortable with all that you have to give anything up for what you say you want? do you actually want it?

.::.

(before you accuse me of being high and mighty, i apply this to myself - nearly every day - as much as i would anyone else)

.::.

inspired by BHJ (@wwbhjd) and An Awakening (@adbusters)

on the importance of the food movement

Besides drawing women into the work force, falling wages made fast food both cheap to produce and a welcome, if not indispensible, option for pinched and harried families. The picture of the food economy [Fast Food Nation author Eric] Schlosser painted resembles an upside-down version of the social compact sometimes referred to as “Fordism”: instead of paying workers well enough to allow them to buy things like cars, as Henry Ford proposed to do, companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s pay their workers so poorly that they can afford only the cheap, low-quality food these companies sell, creating a kind of nonvirtuous circle driving down both wages and the quality of food. The advent of fast food (and cheap food in general) has, in effect, subsidized the decline of family incomes in America.

–Michael Pollan, The Food Movement, Rising, New York Review of Books, June 2010

a food system overhaul is ever more important to the health of america, both physically and economically.  this is undeniable, and those who continue to argue for the “right” to “cheap food” have blinders on. see the link above for full articulation, and also Tom Philpott’s grist.org response for a bit of focus.

string theory

an often overlooked positive aspect of those who are “high strung”

is that they feel more vibrations than those with lax strings.

i feel the metal in the table quiver;

in fact, i swear i can see it on a bright summer day.

waves of energy hit me like a rainbow of infinite gradients,

coming from you, from everything -

the long deep loud tones rumble through,

the high tight quick ones are difficult to grasp;  you have to concentrate.

easy to overwhelm,

the cacophony so blurred, a tornado of offerings, a loss of control

leads to overload. freakout. shutdown.

but sometimes sitting on the edge of a riverbank,

the rush of cold water over rocks stirring a cold wind along the surface,

feeling every rustle of green leaves

and the every-so-slight changes in sunlight temperature coming through the sky,

it is revealed as a gift.