knowitallgirl

Happy Holidays!

Today is the shortest day of the year, and I'll spend it on the road to L.A. Best wishes to all for good holidays and safe travels. Here's some fun from a recent holiday party to decorate this page while I'm away.

Drop the vibrator!

With all due respect to my friends in Texas, getting arrested for selling a vibrator to undercover agents definitely ranks high in terms of ridiculousness. Will she get the death penalty for this one? Texas considers this such a heinous crime that it requires devoting undercover police officers to catching her? (Couldn't they be out doing something like, oh, catching murderers?) Or maybe this is a backhanded strategy to get this law off the books, in reaction to the overturning of the state's anti-sodomy law. If you can't get the voters to act, the courts will do your work for you . . .

Party like it's 1999

My company's holiday party was last weekend, and between the open bar, twenty-foot high tiki statues, and the Flaming Lips performance, it felt as if we'd been transported back into the dot-com mania of 1999, in all its overwrought ridiculousness (we even had a throng of party-crashers to make it feel real). Here's some booze-sodden pics:

Something finally gave

My god. I never thought I'd see the day when a romantic comedy was made where the older male star was ACTUALLY PAIRED WITH A WOMAN IN HIS AGE RANGE. In Something's Gotta Give, Diane Keaton is not only paired with Jack Nicholson (who is routinely paired with female stars 30 years his junior), but in a nice turn of fate, also with the thirtysomething Keanu Reeves. And according to the Times, the movie's even pretty good. Holy crap. Miracles do happen.

Sad but true -- it's Mayor Newsom

Gonzalez lost. But, as he put it himself, "We didn't win it but we didn't lose it either." Forty-seven percent of the vote for a Green candidate (or as a Chronicle interviewee put it, "that cult group") is amazing, even in the liberal paradise of SF, where the Dems made it clear they would pull out all the stops, including a stomp by Clinton. The results do illustrate the divide in the city, which as a speaker on KQED's Forum put it today, the divide between the "neo-yuppies and the neo-hippies." I myself think of it roughly as those who own residences or businesses and those who don't or can't.

I was happy to see how much the campaign energized people -- those yellow Gonzalez signs in windows and on cars in all of the Haight and the Mission, the sheer number of people on the streets last night rallying people to vote (I didn't see anything like this back in November). At the same time, as someone who has voted in every election since I was 18, I have some self-righteous indignation towards many of the "under 35s" (as I keep hearing us called) who will show up for protests or spend months planning for Burning Man but can't be bothered to take ten minutes to vote. Maybe this is misplaced -- I didn't get to spend the time volunteering for Gonzalez's campaign that I wanted, due to my crappy ass commuting life, so I didn't see as many of us out there working the campaign as I could have (and I know many were out there, working the streets, phones, and sponsoring/attending events). But in the weeks leading up to the campaign I've heard too many people I know in this group still wondering if they'd ever registered to vote. As always, we get the leadership we deserve. I wish we deserved more.

You know you're shopping on eBay when . . .

. . . your order arrives with a Chick tract (even a season-appropriate one, too!). For more on Chick tracks, I highly recommend Dan Raeburn's The Imp, if there are still copies floating around.

Happy Birthday to me

My birthday was on Thanksgiving this year, and we celebrated with some good karaoke fun the night before at The Mint (sadly, the karaoke gatekeeper refused to let me sing my Duran Duran song, so I remain a karaoke virgin). Kudos to Steph for bringing down the house with "I Just Called to Say I Love You." Rock.



Do you like my new party hat?

I do! I do like your party hat!

Blah blah blah blah. She's drunk, don't believe her.

Jess does a kick-ass Snoop Dogg.

Lisa and Frank, soon to be in Japan. This year, Lisa was a PRO at pronouncing Deneb's name.

Karen, Mark, gravy.

Keep the wine flowing . . .

Acting out

Rather than contribute to the spamming problem, I'll take a few moments to use my personal soapbox to highlight two political actions I encourage you to support.

Kill the Omnibus Appropriations Bill
The appropriations bill for 2004 contains some nasty surprises slipped in by the Republicans right before Thanksgiving. In keeping with their latest strategy for pushing backroom deals through Congress, the Republican leadership tried to force an immediate vote on this 400 page bill before anyone, particularly the opposition, could review it. This has become a common strategy by this Administration for bills containing favors for Republican donors -- it's what got us the Patriot Act, and what almost succeeded with the recent energy bill which thankfully was filibustered by the Senate. The key issue with this bill is it seeks to sidestep the will of the voters regarding the proposed but since defeated FCC rule changes overseeing the ownership of media outlets. Although Congress succeeded in overturning the FCC rules in October, the Republicans are attempting to silently reinstate them by slipping them into this bill. Take action on this now!

Don't shop at Wal-Mart during Xmas (or ever, if you can help it)
To quote WorkingForChange, "Wal-Mart engages in some of the worst labor practices in the country: paying its employees substandard wages, forcing unpaid overtime on its workers and refusing to provide affordable health insurance." Fast Company recently ran a story outlining how Wal-Mart's business practices are threatening the fabric of American business. There's a social cost to demanding the lowest prices possible, from the death of small American downtowns to the shipping of American manufacturing jobs overseas. Take the pledge not to shop at Wal-Mart!

The Pied Piper wears kick-ass glasses

Before it disappears into the paid archives of the NYT, read the profile NYT ran on my birthday about my friend danah boyd and her social network research. (We'll forgive the Times for not respecting her desire to not capitalize her name.) Kudos to danah for continuing to be the pea beneath Jonathan Abrams' mattress of VC cash.