i met him on the internet

while waiting for my burrito to be made, a woman, probably around 30, was talking about the guy she was seeing who she had met online. there were plenty of other people withing hearing distance, so it was obvious to me that she felt very comfortable with the idea of meeting people in cyberspace.

now in a lot of ways, i suppose that meeting people through craigslist and such makes a lot of sense. you can have a real conversation -- sort of -- and you won't have to scream so that you can be heard over the deafening roar of the bassline of some bad electronica. on the other hand, there's no room for any sort of physical chemistry, at least until you start sending pictures of your genitals to each other or you have a webcam set up. i don't know which one of those steps happens first. i will say this though, i figure anyone who owns a webcam already has picture of their apparatus saved on their computer. after all, is there any non-perverted use for the webcam -- in the real world, not theoretically.

still, i think the biggest arguments against internet dating won't even show up unless you actually end up as a couple. and everytime you guys socialize together, right after people ask what you do for a living, they ask how you guys got together. can you imagine for the rest of your life having to say we met in ther personals? how many fake looks of approval would you have to pretend not to notice?

maybe i'm just being shallow but anyone i got together with the internet would have to agree to tell a more palatable story of how we hooked up. that's a non-negotiable.

fda says you're dead

it turns out that the eczema medicine i've been using causes cancer. i will say that it did work great at curing my stubborn skin disorder. too bad it has to kill you in order to do that.

according to their regulations, the med will stay on the shelf but will be in the dreaded "black box", which means use only if there are no other options for you. this i don't quite get. i mean if this were a treatment for hiv or malaria, i could understand keeping it on the shelf, but for bad skin? to me this sounds a lot like the cure being worse than the condition.

i also sit here wondering if i should try and do anything about it. it's kind of annoying that things just turn out to be deadly. i googled elidel and noticed that there is already some ambluance chaser who's set up a website to try and put together some litigious folks that he can get a contingency fee off of. fucking lawyers. they're another type of cancer altogether.

falling down.

i just saw a commercial for the new harrison ford movie, firewall, and if i must say it looks like a real piece of dung. not that i should be all that surprised, considering his recent body of work. let's review.

Firewall (2006)
Hollywood Homicide (2003)
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Random Hearts (1999)
Six Days Seven Nights (1998)
Air Force One (1997)
The Devil's Own (1997)
Sabrina (1995)
Clear and Present Danger (1994)

by my count, of his last ten pictures, four (hollywood homicide, what lies beneath, random hearts, six days seven nights) deserve consideration for worst movie of their particular year, two (firewall (being optimistic), devil's own) and four are mediocre (k19, air force one, sabrina, clear and present danger).

in sports, we always get guys who hang on too long. former superstars like jerry rice who can't convince themselves its time to move on even though they've done more than enough to convince everyone else. for this we have dancing with the stars to thank.

but in hollywood apparently, the same phenomenon exists. the difference is actors are able to hold on for decades. despite ford showing over the past dozen years that the ceiling for the quality of his work is something so forgettable that imdb is the only record of its existence, he has three films in the pipeline.

guity by association

i started reading an excerpt of a book called remediation about virtual reality that was assigned for a class that i'm taking called digital journalism. twice in the first paragraph i had to stop reading and look up a word on dictionary.com: remediation and hypermediacy. and despite the ostentatious wordplay used by the author, i had to admit that the metaphor he drew between virtual reality and other art forms such as painting, photography and film to be compelling and completely unexpected. his point is that the goal of all is to eliminate the interface between the human and the medium so that when viewing it one is given the impression of a real reproduction of the human world.

still, one thing in particular kept bothering me about what i was reading: he kept referring to the movie 'strange days' when talking about the idea of virtual reality. now a long time ago, i did set aside two hours of my life to watch that film. i'm not saying it was terrible, but it was unremarkable. and when you're writing a scholarly piece about the evolution of technology as it relates to classical art, a few style points are immediately deducted for referring to a movie starring angela bassett.

it would be like writing a story about the heroism displayed by this country's revolutionary forefather in breaking away from the british empire, then referencing mel gibson's 'the patriot' to emphasize your point.

saturday night blues

so after deciding to make my weekly trip up to san francisco tonight, i decided for no good reason to stay home in palo alto. sure i have a stack of books i could read and a few fellowship applications that need to be finished before the semester gets busy, and if those were the reasons for staying in, then that would be fine.

but they're not.

i'm not going because i couldn't bring myself to attend the party that was to be my evening's activity. and the main reason is i felt like a second-class invitee. i had been forwarded the evite by a friend of mine, and when i checked it this evening for the address, i saw that it was going to be a small event. what that meant is that it would be a bunch of first-class citizens and me.

now i'm not claiming that as soon as i walk in a room that every head turns in my direction and guests start queueing to get a chance to get a word in, but given the right situation i can be a pretty witty conversant. on the other hand, if those circumstances are just a bit off of what i look for, i can turn into a silent wall decoration that looks for a shadow to cower into. and that's pretty much what i've come to accept of myself. plus, even though i'm running out of weekends in my twenties, it's not as if i've given up my last weekend on the town.

so sitting on the couch and drinking some homemade lemonade, i felt no remorse over skipping socialization. but then an epiphany. the television was on and i realized what was going on: a single man at home on a saturday night watching ladies figure skating. granted, at least i wasn't watchng men's figure skating or ice dancing. and while i'm not someone who goes around telling guys to be a man's man (since that would make me a hypocrite) but still this represented a serious problem.

so to my two resolutions for the new year, i add one more: start acting like a man, or at least a reasonable approximation of one. at least after sasha cohen finishes skating.

country boys.

television ranks as the most destructive, yet beloved, invention of the twentieth century. and to realize this is true, all one needs to know is that in the average american household has it turned on for eight hours of each day. when you do the math, this is how it comes out: 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of television. obviously something about this balance strikes me as not being quite kosher.

without sleep, you lose your sanity. without work, you waste away and die (or live with your parents, a fate far worse than death). without television, you probably improve your health, broaden your culture and further your education. not only that, these days people will pay upwards of $100 per month for the privilege of becoming mindless zombies.

i won't pretend that i watch televison; i'm ashamed to admit that i even pay for cable television. and i think part of me knows that i surf the internet while watching the tube in order to dilute the feeling that i am completely wasting my life by doing something that can at least be considered marginally useful.

now proponents of television would argue that tv establishes cultural norms that everyone can learn, thereby unifying our diverse society. and while this is in fact true, who cares about a consistent set of values when the quality of culture created is so vacuous. network television these days consists of bad talk shows during the day and reality television (note: project runway is exempt from this negativity) in the evenings. viewers have distorted their values so greatly that even when a good show stumbles onto the networks, they can't recognize it, even after several seasons (arrested development, family guy). instead, they tune into ultrasafe sitcoms surrounding failed b-stars (see two and a half men, bernie mac show, george lopez show, my wife and kids).

the other purported positive about television is that it actually educates the public, on things like politics and news. sadly, this is also true. people do learn from something from television, but certainly not enough about any single thing to do anything about. for my money, i'd rather the people who get all their information from television to just stop watching. this way they'd be immediately identifiable as ignorant, non-participants as soon as any discussion about public issues and current events begins. they can break off into their groups and talk about the day's weather or whatever else they were able to observe in their functionally illiterate world.

but for once, i forgive people who scheduled their day to ensure that they could watch david sutherland's documentary on kqed/pbs about white trash families. i didn't causing me to miss the first half, but what i did see leads me to believe that this is a unique case of important television viewing. when i think -- and most americans as well -- about poor people, my mind immediately concentrates on the predominantly black and latino ghettos of the inner cities. and while there's no doubt that these places act as poverty traps to many of those who grow up there, it doesn't mean we should ignore the white ghettos of the south and midwest where they're can be equally devoid of opportunity.

i have to believe that part of the reason that these areas go uncovered is that as a group they're more difficult to sympathize with. after all, they haven't been the victims of a prejudiced society like other minorities but in fact are the ones who probably have done some of the oppressing societies. the dirty southern drawl and visions of confederate flags planted in the front of trailer park's doorways just doesn't make you feel anything for them except distaste.

poor people in general get ignored and that's because they don't have money and what group in society caters to anyone without some financial incentive. but because there are compelling social issues such as race and immigration surrounding minority communities, the media at least puts up a token effort to cover them. without an analogous reason for poor white folks, there really is nothing to compel anyone to talk about the plight of white trash. and so they don't.

for six hours, sutherland provides a glimpse for us into this. and it's not all that attractive a place. lots of ugliness; lots of obesity and lots of christianity. not my kind of place. i'll admit that i thought that the first segment struck me as more informative than riveting, but the preview of the segment looked to be more dramatic. plus, it takes time to really feel acquainted with characters.

country boys is a tad depressing, and watching the less fortuante always makes me feel a tinge of guilt for allowing my mind to spin on the comparably minor problems of my life. on the other hand, it motivates me too: to take advantage of the opportunity i have. hopefully, the latter sentiment wins out.

my no-starbucks policy

admittedly, my near-universal boycott of all things chain store-related isn't entirely grounded in logic. but everytime i make the scary journey out to one of the plentiful sterile suburbs, where massive mini-malls interlock with each other and the cheesecake factory wins the readers poll every year for best splurge restaurant, i'm reminded that this might not be paranoia but prescience on my part.

now that i've left the city and am now forced to call myself a resident of one of these culturally vacuous towns though, i wonder how i should adjust my policy. should i continue to forgo the convenience of the starbucks and blockbuster videos of the world? after all, just about everything worth saving is already gone. and i've never been one to say that the convenience of the super store has no place in this world, simply no place in the world that i inhabit.

suburban philistines are free to get lost in the endless aisles of kitsch made by the hands of illegal mexicans which line the shelves at walmart. if suburbanites need a starbucks on every corner to stop the vertigo caused by anything not completely familar to them, so be it. to each their own, if it is sick, wrong and a little bit disturbing.

but i figured, when in rome, so as any self-respecting palo altan would do when he wanted to get out of the house and do a little work at a local cafe: head to the local starbucks.

so at 830 on a sunday evening, i hopped in my car to make the 1/2-mile journey. and when i arrived, the first thing i noticed a sticker on the glass door proclaiming this a tmobile hotspot. silently i wondered if this meant that i was going to have to pay to connect to the web. immediately i began to think this place sucked -- even outside the city.

still, emboldened by my determination to get some work done, i pulled the door open and walked in. i turned to the miniature cafe area, filled by a dozen, miniature circular tables and a small work area. and to my chagrin, every space was taken. perhaps, even more annoying was that all the tables were far too small to be shared with my laptop. so even had there been an attractive young lady sitting on her own, she would have had to remain unaccompanied.

and so goes my visit to starbucks, likely not to be replicated anytime in the near future. i turned around to walk out, catching a couple of dirty looks from the two female cashiers who mistakenly believe that because their title can be prounounced with a rolling 'r' sound, they have license to be cunts.

i did drive around a bit more hoping to find a nice independent coffee merchant which i could use as my office for the next couple of hours, but all of them had closed for the evening. well, i guess it was almost 9 p.m. now. saddened, i drove home and attempted to do some work, culminating in a one-hour nap after i reorganized some newly downloaded mp3s.

reverse log cabin fever

at the beginning of my three-week christmas break, i set out to accomplish all sorts of tasks that would get me ahead for the coming semester allowing me to concentrate on laudable goals such as getting published. but as expected -- given my recent history of productivity -- i fulfilled almost none of what i had hoped to.

now that the 21 days of vacation having dwindled to just two, i decided to forgo the final saturday of my break to finish an application for a fellowship with the la times. and of course to no one's suprise including myself, it didn't get done. i blame it on the internet; there's just too many things to read, too many things to search for.

so in the 14 hours that i was "working" on my application, i also managed to do the following productive activities:

- googled all the girls that i've messed around with whose first and last names i could still recall. what i noticed is that i could still recite half of their full names. this seemed about right to me. any more and i figure that could mean i'm intoxicated for too much of my free time.

- persused the top-10 albums of the year lists from all the major music media outlets. i still haven't figured out what's so good about mia.

- made a playlist of all the music i've downloaded and organized to make sure all the track names were correctly spelled and capitalized.

- read the scouting report for a bunch of the nfl prospects that i'm "interested" in.

i wonder what i'll find when i finish my application on sunday.

losing the race

encounters with girls you've slept with always makes for an interesting dynamic. it's like a contest to see whose done more since the two of you stopped sharing a bed. well at least that's the way i treat the situation.

and sadly, i seemed to have clearly lost the competition. two and a half years have passed since i started avoiding her calls and then after i changed my mind, she decided to avoid mine. since then she started some sort of phd in international economics, bought a house, and done field work in mozambique and italy. apparently she's headed to colombia for her next project. (bitch) she's also happily back with her future husband (who she was taking a break from when we got together).

i'm still wandering, having started the j school at stanford, but really just using it as a dilatory tactic while i try to find a job.

the best i can say is that she seems to have gained a bit of weight and turned the corner on her twenties. plus she was wearing a really unflattering pair of jeans. had we still been messing around, i would've cringed seeing her leave the house wearing that garment. outside of painting and gardening, those jeans should have stayed in the dresser.

american football and canadian rock

not one person wore a piece of clothing manufactured this century. and with the exception of maybe five people, they were all too cool to dance. with their tussled air and vintage clothing, this was your typical trendy-but-pretend-not-to-be crowd that made their way to the independent for wolf parade.

the first thought that crossed my mind was how many people from this crowd had watched the national championship game in football. and i got the feeling that the game, billed as the most important and anticipated of recent memory, hadn't factored one bit into the daily schedule of most in attendance. not me, however. yes, the game lasted for more than four hours and the first half was as sloppy as a local pop warner game, but had i missed the second half which made it one of the great football games in history, how could i forgive myself. i wonder, does that make me an oddball?

as for wolf parade, i have these things to say: first, they made the best record of the year. second, their record was far better than most people's best record of last year the arcade fire -- who they have a connection to. and third, the arcade fire's performance dwarfs wolf parade's in all measurable ways.

to be honest, wolf parade sounded pretty true. on the other hand, that their keyboard player hadn't figured out how to use his new electric piano and needed to take a timeout between every song to set it up got annoying rather quickly. it took any and all flow of the show away meaning they couldn't build any momentum, even after they would bang out a song that worked.

even worse was there encore, which was screwed on so many levels. after finishing their flawed set, the audience's applause had all the excitement of one who'd just seen a mediocre, high school talent show string quartet performance. again, i don't know if i'm the only one, but bands should play encores when the crowd gets raucous and demands it, not when they apply politely so as to not hurt anyone's feelings. letting the crowd stand out there why they pat their hands together lightly until they became confounded as the stage remained empty -- that's rock and roll. checking your blackberry in between sets and then using it's backlight to read some trashy paperback -- as the girl behind me chose to -- that's not rock and roll. and their two-song encore sucked, playing one song that they admittedly hadn't practiced and then finishing with the most mellow song from their record.

new year's resolution

i will update this daily.
i will update this daily.
i will update this daily.

oh yeah, and i'm going back to the gym.