I can't believe I ran ten miles on Saturday. However, my body is constantly reminding me today of this achievement, as all sorts of strange parts ache today. Today is a hazy, icky day in the Bay Area, which really is OK since if I was in L.A. the haze would be smog, not fog. Alas. I'm just looking for something to complain about.
What can I tell you? I finished my first SAT class at 826 Valencia, and it was a success. mdc and I are in disagreement as to whether or not the first edition of Trivial Pursuit is really harder than all the rest (I say yes, Genus I is WAY harder than anything produced since, since I figure too many wimps complained that it was too hard and thus it was dumbed down to make people feel better and to increase sales). What do YOU think? And I have all sorts of things going on that I'm reticient to make public yet, since I don't want to hex myself. Guess you'll just have to wait and see.
Why are so many young girls being preyed upon by men lately? If i hear of one more sexual-assault-murder-to-a-six-year-old-girl case I might go mad. What is the hell is wrong with this society? What do we do to men in America? Jesus.
So, last week appeared to be the worst in terms of my decomposing friend, as suddenly everything smells much better. Well, maybe what I mean is that there is a noticable LACK of smell now. I hope something exciting will happen to my apartment now, like I'll find a bag of gold hidden beneath a secret panel in the closet. Regrettably, I don't think I'm going to be flooded by similar stories in that vein. Shucks.
I promise that next week I will cease and desist in my use of the word "maggots." But just in case you were wondering, now it just stinks. No more maggots, but there is this ugly stain on the floor which I can only imagine to be maggot juice of some sort. UGH.
Last night I saw They Might Be Giants with Wendy, which was FANTASTIC. I must be their newest fan, considering they've been around for 20 years. There's something about knowing these guys can write and sing songs about brooms, the sun, President Van Buren, and god only knows what else that makes me incredibly happy. When I was 14, I wanted to be depressed (thus, my fascination with The Smiths). Now, I feel an incredible sense of joy singing along to songs about not crossing "the street in the middle in the middle in the middle of the block." Yes!
Also, some great Tales of Porn Clerks, sent by way of mdc. Fun afternoon reading!
Allie's wedding pictures. I followed in the finest Leanne Milway tradition and asked the bride to let me take some sad shots. I love them. Note my high-altitude hair. Let us just say that mdc was a bit taken aback when he saw me. ;)
Ok, Kristen took my challenge and sent me the following story to compete with my friendly maggots (Mom, you get second place for the rotting possum under the deck tale!):
This one may be comparable... my friend just moved into a warehouse on the south side of Potrero Hill and got it really cheap. He'd been laboring over whether or not to take the space- how could he not, cheap cheap cheap rent, it's totally raw space and can be built out however he wants to do it up, and his good friend lives in the warehouse next to him. Perfect scenario for them since they are all into building stuff, breaking stuff, and burning stuff. The drawback is that the woman that lived there just weeks before him shot herself and the the body wasn't found for a week. The owners of the space cleaned up the mess and painted over the wood floors that her body had been lying on, but after a week of blood drenching, there is unfortunately a nice stain coming up through the paint on the floor covering the spot. He just moved in a couple weeks ago, only a week after everything was cleaned up... poor guy is so creeped out that he barricades himself in his room every night.
Coming soon to a browser near you – the lazy person’s way of posting photos. I’m just going to dump them all (with some organization, mind you), on to my hosting server and make them available for pawing through. Someday I’ll learn enough PHP to put them into a neat-o album thingy, but that day is not today, alas.
Tell me if you can beat the disgusting factor on this one: for the past six weeks, I’ve been noticing a smell outside my front door that’s only gotten worse. My landlord and I have been entertaining various theories as to what’s causing it, the last one being that one of the sewage pipes on the neighbor’s house might have a leak. (Note: this is San Fran, and the houses are built right next to one another. My front door opens up to the side of the neighbor’s house.) It’s pretty gross. Anyway, a few days ago in the covered hallway leading from my front door to the street these strange, larval-like things started appearing in a particular spot on the floor. Super gross. I’m stumped, the landlord is stumped, so she calls pest control to come out and take a look.
Anyway, when I get home last night there’s a message on my machine from the landlord – apparently, some poor cat somehow got itself lodged between the very narrow space between the two houses and died. So, the smell is Eau de Carrion as the thing’s been decomposing just feet from my home, and the larval-like things were MAGGOTS. Yup. Sadly, my landlord doesn’t think they can retrieve said carcass, since it’s so tightly wedged and all, so it might just have to rot away. Thankfully, summer in SF is cold, so the smell isn’t quite as bad as it could be, I suppose. But the maggots are still appearing in the hallway, which means I have RUN from my apartment door to the street door to KEEP THEM FROM FALLING ON MY HEAD. Oh, and hold my nose so I don’t gag from the smell (which even more thankfully, cannot be detected from inside my apartment).
Can anyone beat this one? I’ll reprint the story that does . . .
Ok, since the L.A. Times is stupid and won't allow me to link to this story, I'm reprinting it here. This is the new magazine, founded by former Desktop-opian Jon Phillips, that I'm writing for. Woo-hoo!
A Book Fix for Web Refugees
By TIM RUTTEN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Independent and niche publishers are the real success stories of the contemporary American book trade. So it probably was only a matter of time before a new niche book review emerged.
The "preview issue" of Bookmarks, based in San Mateo, began circulating this week. Its founders are two former software and technology company executives; its target is media-savvy Gen-Xers who haven't really read a book since college but are eager to reconnect with literature, though uncertain how to do it.
Bookmarks--which bills itself as the journal "for everyone who hasn't read everything"--is a glossy, slightly fizzy bimonthly survey of classic and contemporary literature designed for readers who like their graphic interfaces glitzy and their information in strobe-like bites. Think of it as a literary halfway house for recovering dot-comers and their codependents.
What it shares with traditional book reviews is a certain idealism about books and reading. Publisher Allison Nelson and editor Jon Phillips met at Harvard Business School, then spent several years working in business development, marketing and technology development at Silicon Valley firms. When both found themselves with young families and in need of a change of direction, they conceived a start-up based on their love of reading.
As Phillips explained, "We created a magazine we wanted to read."
Though each issue will feature "book-by-book profiles" of classic authors and publishing news, the magazine's staple is a survey of current literature that provides a synopsis of a given book, excerpts from its reviews in established critical journals--including The Times' Book Review--and a consensus of opinion represented by the familiar star-based rating system. (Five stars indicate a classic, "one of the best of its kind;" one marks a book that is "not worth your time."
Booker Prize-winner Ian McEwan's latest novel, "Atonement," gets 4 1/2 stars; Richard Posner's "Public Intellectuals: a Study of Decline" gets just one.
"I think that our approach is drawn from what we've learned about the integrative potential of the Web," said Phillips. "To use the new media term, we are 'aggregating content,' and obviously the Web spurred some of those ideas for us. But what we are trying to do is also a reaction to the increasing marginalization of book coverage in so many magazines and newspapers. In that sense, we're a publication for people who want to come home to books but have made other media choices for a long time and now are intimidated by the considerable investment of time learning about books requires. There's an ocean of book choices but a puddle of advice on what to read."
Bookmarks' first regular bimonthly issue will be available on newsstands in September. In the meantime, copies of the preview issue can be obtained by sending an e-mail to preview@bookmarks magazine.com.
Pictures from New Mexico! Also, saw this on the commute this morning: "My other car is your girl!" Go figure.
So, where to start? The vacation pics will be up tomorrow-ish. Birthday wishes out today to both my intrepid fellow traveler Sorch and to Allie, who is both turning 30 this week AND getting married. Whew!
I liked New Mexico – it was by far the most beautiful desert I’ve been to (with the exception of Joshua Tree) – but I had an even greater sense of Nothing Going On there than I did in Hawaii. (Ok, except for South Point on the Big Island, which by its very existence defines the concept of an inhabited area with Nothing Going On.) Sorch and I ate lots of chile and posole, visited Native American ruins and cliff dwellings, soaked at an outdoor Japanese/Southwestern spa, saw plenty of lightning, and stayed in at least one B&B with a hot tub in the room. Score!
As of today I have 8 students signed up for my SAT class at 826 Valencia. Aiiiii! The other night I re-taught myself the entire SAT course in my dream. Riding a bike and all that. No matter how many times I’ve taught something, I’m always a freakazoid before the first class.
More to come tomorrow!
A quick hello from Houston, where I'm using the computers at the Public Library to get online. No cybercafes in Houston! In case anyone was wondering, I'll be coming home -- Houston is not one of those cities where you go on vacation and never return. It's like a odd combination of Irvine and L.A., huge, hot, sprawling, and car-centric. Lots of chain restaurants and strip malls. But not as ugly as L.A., so there you go. I'm not sure I'm been converted to Texasism, though, but we'll see how New Mexico does. At least I don't have to wear a wool sweater on July 4th this year!
Humidly yours,
Jen
I think this decribes my life perfectly: "I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.” --Angus Grossart
A certain friend's ex is apparently the talk of the town this week. Not to be too uncharitable, but I can't imagine this guy handling NYC models with much aplomb.
Tomorrow I'm off to Houston to visit Sorch and then we're off to New Mexico for a week. Yee-haw!
I keep forgetting to mention that I'm teaching 2 free SAT classes at 826 Valencia this summer for low-income kids. Details can be found here.