Conclusion

At year's end a passionate thanks to my friends for all they do for me. Without Won Sun, Nitzan, Howard, Michael, Liz, 美足, Scott, Hannah, Steven, 平一, Nell, Pam, Gina, Dani, Jennifer, Levon, Joe, my sister, my mother, my father, Eloise and Lucy, life would be hollow.

This year's writings are dedicated to Cuchulain.

R.I.P. Saddam Hussein

The coverage I've seen of the slaying of Saddam has been vile. Every word seems calculated to justify his death, with no room for the remotest possibility that he was a human being for whom we might feel compassion. There is no justice in killing people, only sometimes, under certain conditions, a reason that can't be ignored. The reason here is something called revenge, and revenge is bestial. We are not at our best when we hang people, shoot people in the head, put poison in people's veins, send large amounts of electricity through people's bodies. Some people are guiltier than others. Some people have more blood on their hands. But we have a great deal of blood on our hands, we solemn executioners.

Invitation

The cat needs to be able to come and go as the whim strikes her. I leave the back door ajar. This makes it fairly cold at night. It also invites homeless people, possums and lunar moths to visit me. So far none has accepted the invitation but it's only a matter of time, right?

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

The reflection of one who has given up on a great deal, this sentiment is, even for the most determined, deeply attractive. We have Oscar Wilde to thank for it.

Authorial fixations

Zadie Smith is really into sweat. In "On Beauty," all of her characters sweat and often quite copiously. Weather has nothing to do with it. Does she think sweat is beautiful?

Cuchulain

On Saturday, December 9, Cuchulain died in his sleep. He was not the shrewdest dog but he was gentle and good. I loved him.

Filth

Rain does not make things cleaner. Witness Sam. He arrived at work, after cycling only three miles, covered from nose to toes in filth. The rain did that. With each revolution of the pedals I saw great gobbets of filthy fluid leap up at me and into them I dove.

I eat lots of nuts

Macadamia, cashew, peanut, almond. I do not eat them raw. I have eaten more macadamia nuts in the last three months than in the first forty-two years of my life. I have also been eating great heaps of banana chips. Has my complexion been affected? My whiskers seems stubblier and fall away in little pale nubbins.

Reading

"The Marquise of O— and Other Stories" Heinrich von Kleist
"Elephant Bill" J. H. Williams
"On Beauty" Zadie Smith

The Year 1981

1. Super Freak - Rick James (*)
2. Let's Groove - Earth, Wind and Fire (*)
3. Just the Two of Us - Grover Washington Jr & Bill Withers
4. Celebration - Kool and The Gang (*)
5. Jessie's Girl - Rick Springfield (**)
6. Don't Stop Believin' - Journey
7. Endless Love - Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross
8. Give It To Me Baby - Rick James (**)
9. Back In Black - AC/DC
10. Same Old Lang Syne - Dan Fogelberg
11. I Love You - Climax Blues Band
12. Lady (You Bring Me Up) - Commodores
13. She's A Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked) - Carl Carlton
14. America - Neil Diamond
15. Fantastic Voyage - Lakeside
16. Start Me Up - Rolling Stones
17. In The Air Tonight - Phi Collins
18. Double Dutch Bus - Frankie Smith
19. Hey Nineteen - Steely Dan
20. We're in This Love Together - Al Jarreau
21. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da - Police
22. Woman - John Lennon
23. Waiting For A Girl Like You - Foreigner (**)
24. Love T.K.O. - Teddy Pendergast
25. Urgent - Foreigner (***)
26. Fire and Ice - Pat Benatar
27. Being With You - Smokey Robinson
28. The Tide Is High - Blondie (**)
29. Don't Stand So Close To Me - Police
30. Tempted - Squeeze (*)
31. Treat Me Right - Pat Benatar
32. Our Lips Are Sealed - Go Go's (*)
33. Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me) - Gap Band
34. Who's Making Love - Blues Brothers
35. Guilty - Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb (*)
36. Winner Takes All - Abba
37. Queen of Hearts - Juice Newton
38. Controversy - Prince
39. The Stroke - Billy Squier
40. Watching the Wheels - John Lennon
41. Say Goodbye to Hollywood - Billy Joel
42. Fashion - David Bowie (***)
43. My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone) - Chilliwack
44. No Reply At All - Genesis
45. The Old Songs - Barry Manilow
46. All Those Years Ago - George Harrison
47. Slow Hand - Pointer Sisters
48. 8th Wonder - Sugarhill Gang
49. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - Police (*)
50. Winning - Santana
51. Rapture - Blondie (***)
52. Jones vs. Jones - Kool and the Gang
53. 9 to 5 - Dolly Parton
54. Tom Saywer - Rush
55. Elvira - Oak Ridge Boys
56. Private Eyes - Hall and Oates
57. (Ghost) Riders In The Sky - The Outlaws
58. Working in the Coal Mine - Devo
59. Keep on Loving You - REO Speedwagon
60. Super Trooper - Abba
61. Physical - Olivia Newton John (**)
62. Wasn't That a Party - The Rovers
63. Ah! Leah - Donnie Iris
64. Arc of a Diver - Steve Winwood
65. While You See a Chance - Steve Winwood
66. Teacher, Teacher - Rockpile (***)
67. Hello Again - Neil Diamond
68. Skateaway - Dire Straites
69. Sukiyaki - A Taste Of Honey
70. Sign of the Gypsy Queen - April Wine
71. (There's) No Getting Over Me - Ronnie Milsap
72. All American Girls - Sister Sledge
73. Boy from New York City - Manhattan Transfer
74. Morning Train (9 to 5) - Sheena Easton
75. This Little Girl - Gary U.S. Bonds

Reading

"Are Women Human?" Catharine MacKinnon
"Koba the Dread" Martin Amis
"The Saga of the Volsungs"

S is for Q

What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?

You will sink in a mire. You like to think you're normal, but deep down you really just want to strip off your clothes and roll around in chicken fat. Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

You have 0 unread messages

What is up with that?

Noam Shalit

An Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit was captured on the twenty-fifth of June by a Palestinian group operating in Israel. Yesterday Gilad's father Noam visited Palestinian victims of Israeli shelling in a Tel Aviv hospital to express his sympathy and repeat his request that negotiations for his son's release move forward. A soldier is not the same as a civilian, certainly, but Noam Shalit's act is deeply humane and I was very moved by this story.

Reading

"Scoop" Evelyn Waugh
"Machiavellian Intelligence" many evolutionary biologists
"Coriolanus" William Shakespeare

Odor

I suppose fingerprints and armpits. Shouldn't we all have distinct odors? To hear a bloodhound tell it, we do. But I have been sniffing people for the past couple of weeks and, though I've been complimented by pros for my finetuned nose, I can't smell much at all at such moments. A woman in my office smells like the shavings in a hamster cage and another smelled vaguely nice today, but the first may be a result of her upholstery and the second could be hormonal. Not to be confused with pheremonal. I definitely have a scent--Eames calls it musk. But to be a proper officeworker I've subdued it. I sniffed my shirt today: I've worn it two days running and it barely speaks my name. I love my scent and that of a few others. I want to know more people's scents. I am without fear.

People who say "yo"

No. This will not do.

Reference

The New York Public Library telephone reference desk. Every day, except Sundays and holidays, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, anyone, of any age, from anywhere in the world, can telephone 212-340-0849 and ask a question. The library staff will not answer crossword or contest questions, do children's homework, or answer philosophical speculations.

Isn't that neat?

Robert M. Gates-scummier

From the New York Times, Nov. 4, 1991

Mr. Gates' Past, The C.I.A.'s Future

When the Senate votes tomorrow on the nomination of Robert Gates, it will be judging more than his fitness to lead the Central Intelligence Agency out of the past. It will be judging its own fitness to oversee intelligence.

The confirmation hearings did little to dispel doubts that Mr. Gates misled Congress during the Iran-contra scandal. They reinforced suspicions that he tailored intelligence estimates to please his superiors. And they raised questions about his role during the Iran-Iraq war.

Even so, the Senate Intelligence Committee chose to give Mr. Gates the benefit of the doubt, voting 11 to 4 in favor of confirmation. That vote sends and unfortunate message: Instead of overseeing intelligence, the Committee chose to look the other way. Now it's up to the Senate to confront Mr. Gates's past and say he's not fit to lead the C.I.A. into the future.

The Iran-contra question is simple. Did Mr. Gates know about the illegal diversion of proceeds from arms sales to Iran to the Nicaraguan contras? In 1985 and again in 1987, he told Congress he knew nothing about it. He clings to his story--despite evidence that he was warned about it in some detail by subordinates.

Charges that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence assessments, leaving Congress in the dark and more amenable to Administration policy, stand unrefuted. He now acknowledges suppressing dissent to a 1985 intelligence estimate justifying the covert sale of arms to Iran.

Then, when he was accused of `killing' estimates that showed waning Soviet activity in the third world, he obliquely acknowledged that he `may have found a specific paper inadequate.'

Further, Mr. Gates distributed an assessment making the case for Soviet complicity in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II and endorsed it, enthusiastically, as `the C.I.A.'s first comprehensive examination' of the issue. A C.I.A. post-mortem found that `no one at the working level other than the two primary authors of the paper * * * agreed with [its] thrust.'

The hearings left another question dangling: did Mr. Gates play a role in suspected intelligence-sharing and arms transfers with Iraq? The C.I.A., the committee concludes, shared vital intelligence with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and failed to report it to Congressional intelligence committees, as required by law.

A related question, let unanswered and still troubling to some senators, was whether the C.I.A., which is supposed to monitor suspicious arms deals, looked the other way while U.S. companies unlawfully armed Iraq as well as Iran.

All three reservations about Mr. Gates--his denying knowledge of Iran-contra, slanting intelligence and winking at reporting requirements--suggest that he is a man used to doing business the old way. Yet a new era requires new ways. The Senate would mortgage the C.I.A.'s future to its past and deny Congress's constitutional role of oversight if it confirmed Mr. Gates as C.I.A. director.

Robert M. Gates-scum

GATES NOMINATION (Senate - November 07, 1991)
[Page: S16305]

[Begin insert]
SENATOR TOM HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. President, at the outset of the confirmation hearings, I had serious reservations about the nominee. The confirmation hearings only raised more questions and greater doubts. Questions and doubts about Mr. Gates' past activities, managerial style, judgment, lapses in memory and analytical abilities. Questions and doubts about his role in the Iran-Contra Affair and in providing military intelligence to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war; and questions and doubts about whether he will be able to remove the ideological blinders reflected in his writings and speeches or whether Mr. Gates is so rooted in the past, that he will not be able to lead the Agency into the post-cold war era. Because of these concerns, I have concluded that Mr. Gates is not the right person for the important job of overseeing our intelligence operations in this New World.

Mr. President, Robert Gates is a career Soviet analyst and former Deputy Director of the CIA who was wrong about what CIA analyst Harold Ford described as `the central analytic target of the past few years: the probable fortunes of the USSR and the Soviet European bloc.' And I believe that the committee report points out one possible reason why the CIA failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to testimony, Mr. Gates was busy pursuing hypotheses and making unsubstantiated arguments attempting to show Soviet expansion in the Third World, instead of looking for or paying attention to facts that pointed in the opposite direction. Why? Why, as Mentor Moynihan has pointed out, was the CIA able to tell Presidents everything about the Soviet Union except the fact that it was falling apart?

Mr. Gates was also wrong about the Soviet threat to Iran in 1985. The 1985 Special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stressed possible Soviet inroads into Iran. Gates admits that the analysis was an anomaly. It was a clear departure from previous analyses and almost immediately proven wrong by subsequent events. Gates was involved in preparing that analysis. According to Hal Ford, whose testimony the nominee never refuted, Gates leaned heavily on the Iran Estimate, in effect, `insisting on his own views and discouraging dissent.' What was the result? The 1985 estimate was skewed and contributed to the biggest foreign policy debacle of the Reagan administration, the sale of arms to Iran.

Mr. President, Graham Fuller, the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, suggested that the 1985 SNIE estimate was based on intuition in the absence of hard evidence. I agree there is nothing wrong with preparing worse case scenarios or using `intuition' as opposed to hard evidence in the preparation of analysis, provided it is made clear to policymakers that the finished analysis is based on intuition and not hard evidence. It is the job of the CIA to sort out fact from fiction, not convert one into the other.

Mr. President, I also have doubts and questions about Mr. Gates' role in the secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq. Robert Gates served as assistant to the Director of the CIA in 1981 and as Deputy Director for Intelligence for 1982 to 1986. In that capacity he helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually involved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986. The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests. The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping and narrative texts provided to Saddam, may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran but also in the recent gulf war. Saddam Hussein may have discovered the value of underground land lines as opposed to radio communications after he was give our intelligence information. That made it more difficult for the allied coalition to get quick and accurate intelligence during the gulf war. Further, after the Persian Gulf war, our intelligence community was surprised at the extent of Iraq's nuclear program. One reason Saddam may have hidden his nuclear program so effectively from detection was because of his knowledge of our satellite photos. What also concerns me about that operation is that we spend millions of dollars keeping secrets from the Soviets and then we give it to Saddam who sells them to the Soviets. In short, the coddling of Saddam was a mistake of the first order.

Mr. President, I've stated a very simple case for rejecting the nomination of Robert Gates to be Director of the CIA. The fact that he was wrong on major issues which in some instances led to foreign policy debacles. I haven't addressed concerns about the allegations of his politicization of intelligence analysis, his apparently poor managerial style or still unanswered questions about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Regarding the Iran-Contra affair, I should mention that I was quite disturbed to hear testimony that portrayed Robert Gates as someone concerned about Agency's role and not sufficiently concerned about pursuing possible illegal Government activities. In his opening statement before the Intelligence Committee, Mr. Gates said that he should have taken more seriously `the possibility of impropriety or possible wrongdoing in the Government and pursued this possibility more aggressively.' I agree.

I should also mention, Mr. President, that aside from Mr. Gates' poor judgment in not pursuing the possibility of Government wrongdoing more aggressively, I still find it incredible that the Deputy Director of CIA was not aware of that major covert operation. How could such a high ranking official not know about the CIA's efforts to support the Contras? Did he purposely avoid trying to find out what was happening? The testimony seemed to indicate he did. Gates' selective lapses in recall about the affair by a man with a photographic memory raises serious doubts.

The U.S. Congress and the American people depend on accurate and reliable intelligence information. Our expenditures on defense and other areas are often decided on the basis of that information. We cannot afford to waste billion of dollars in the future. After reviewing the record, I do not believe that the Central Intelligence Agency under the directorship of Robert Gates will provide the clear intelligence assessments necessary for Congress to make decisions to deal with the future threats confronting our nation.

Mr. President, I do not believe that Robert Gates is the right person to lead the CIA at this time. The cold war is over and it's time for some of the old warriors to rest. Now we must take a fresh new look at the world, think new thoughts and reassess the future role of the intelligence community. I urge my colleagues to vote against Robert Gates.

Life's cruelest blows

The adoption of the unprecedented policy of banning short trousers from Kiss (Taipei's Super Disco) some time between fall 1988 and summer 1996.

The closing of Hermann's Salads on Geary Boulevard between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, replaced by a Gap.

The death of Midnight.

The destruction of the Embarcadero Freeway.

Various romantic disappointments.

The closing of Playland by the Sea.

Whiskers.

"Remain in Light"

The time I had to siphon shark shit out of a large tank at Steinhart.

Why life is wonderful

There are so many things to dislike! Waking up each day, I know that my life has purpose because I will discover new things to bitch about. Here's today's: the phrase "grace with -- presence." It's now on the banned and forbidden list.

Reading

"The Autograph Man" Zadie Smith
"A Social History of Truth" Steven Shapin
"Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu" Honoré de Balzac
"Runaway Slaves" John Hope Franklin & Loren Schweninger
"Dionysos at Large" Marcel Detienne

Unclothed

Yesterday I removed a good portion of my hair to play the part of Magwitch more thoroughly. This morning I scraped off the remainder. I feel so very naked.

The Bridge

Every couple of weeks, some unhappy soul kills himself by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. I walked down the middle of the bridge nearly twenty years ago unscathed: the bridge was closed to car traffic in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. But I've never found walking across the bridge much fun. It's very windy and the noise of cars is unpleasant. One can't say much for the view, which has nothing on that from the Marin headlands. But it's the most photographed structure in America and I've gotten a fair amount of use out of it. After seeing a documentary on Saturday that shows a half dozen men and women plunge to their death from the bridge, I'm in favor of erecting tall barriers all along the pedestrian (east) side of the bridge. Why wasn't this done long ago? I don't mind if people kill themselves but what if those jumpers hit a seal or a grouper?

Fatwa #1

Colds are to last no longer than seventy-two hours.

Me?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Those who spurn god together stay together

Religion % have been divorced
Jews 30%
Born-again Christians 27%
Other Christians 24%
Atheists, Agnostics 21%

I did not write this

There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep. Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today in H's journal about me - that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn't like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us) . . . Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal.

Banned words and phrases

on the same page
down time
merely
alas
terrorist
sea change
welter
all good
I'm confused
graced us with his presence
notwithstanding the fact that
a phyletic vestige with no current adaptive value

History and Politicians

Rumsfeld claimed yesterday that the lesson learned from World War Two is that appeasement does not work. He's such an ignoramus. There is no such thing as a lesson learned from a single historical event. Appeasement worked extraordinarily well for imperial China over many centuries, as emperors routinely bought off aggressive neighbors by showering them with hugely valuable gifts. Liberals use Vietnam in the same way: the lesson of that quagmire is don't pour lots of troops into conflicts with guerrillas. This is stupid too. Why have we allowed the political discourse in this country to become so historiographically impoverished?

Farallon, part 2

Time exists on the slack hypotenuse
Strung between sky and gutflutter,
Each peak and valley of pulsing wet
Taking us further from our footing

From what it feels like to lean, to stand
Without being threatened, without the surround
Speaking, without splashing. Sea lions applaud
The lurching circus of lenses and the odd wince.

Farallon, part 1

We ride upon the thin edge of the water
Casting our image on it, withdrawing from
The fatiguing guesswork we had about wet
About what it's like to look up from deep down.

The thing supporting us, keeping us from
Slipping deep into the softly rolling water
Is part of a whale, its image of us as a film
Infecting its dark eye, itching its attention.

Other things ride around the slick of oily us
Barking, fluttering, wanting to be less wet
And less adhesive. Water claims them thickly.
Us it salts, rolls, moves about on its tongue.

We meet the wanderers out here where land fails
Slipping suddenly into utter dimness. Water
Draws a sort of penitential piss from the boat
Which burps and moves utterly nowhere.

Roger Clay's Proposal

I may be oversusceptible to news
But what I see in the papers leaves me numb.
The bomb. The ultimatum. Wires hum—
Adult impersonators giving interviews,

As if that helped. What would? I've thought of it.
With all due ceremony—flags unfurled,
Choirs, priests—the leaders of a sobered world
Should meet, kneel down, and, joining hands, submit

To execution: say in Rome or Nice—
Towns whose economy depends on crowds.
Ah, but those boys, their heads aren't in the clouds.
They would find reasons not to die for peace.

Damn them. I'd give my life. Each day I meet
Men like me, young, indignant. We're not cranks.
Will some of them step up? That's plenty. Thanks.
Now let's move before we get cold feet.

Music we'll need, and short, clear speeches given
Days of maximum coverage in the press.
We'll emphasize disinterestedness,
Drive the point home that someone could be driven

To do this. Where to go? Why not Japan,
Land of the honorable suicide.
And will the world change heart? Until we've tried,
No one can say it will not. No one can.


by James Merrill

Nuts

Feeling distinctly preverbal today. Want to do nothing but eat macadamia nuts, drink apple juice, and stare out the window.

Hiroshima Day on August 6

On August 6 1945, at a quarter after eight in the morning, Hiroshima was destroyed by the United States and a nuclear bomb named Little Boy. By December 140,000 human beings had died. The American attack on Nagasaki, on August 9, killed 74,000 more. Never forget.

Hello

This is just to say hello to Howard.

rats

www.ratlife.org

I learned about this from an article on research on rodents that appeared in the recent issue of AV Magazine.

Quid pro quid

If I slap a man and he kills my mother and father as retribution, are their deaths justified?

Easily the most irritating poem I've read this century

Irish Poetry
by Billy Collins

That morning under a pale hood of sky
I heard the unambiguous scrape of spackling
against the side of our wickered, penitential house.

The day mirled and clabbered
in the thick, stony light,
and the rooks’ feathered narling
astounded the salt waves, the plush coast.

I lugged a bucket past the forked
coercion of a tree, up toward
the pious and nictitating preeminence of a school,
hunkered there in its gully of learning.

Only later, by the galvanized washstand,
while gaunt, phosphorescent heifers
swam beyond the windows,
did the whorled and sparky gib of the indefinite
wobble me into knowledge.

Then, I heard the ghost-clink of milk bottle
on the rough threshold
and understood the meadow-bells
that trembled over a nimbus of ragwort—
the whole afternoon lambent, corrugated, puddle-mad.

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/0706/poem_178394.html

synonymology

What's another word for thesaurus?

Van Gogh bullshit

All that hooey about van Gogh never selling a painting, or selling only a single painting for the equivalent of eighty dollars, is crap. He sold lots of sketches and small paintings in Paris, as Gauguin pointed out in "Avant et aprés." See the van Gogh volume in the Time-Life Library of Art, pp. 75–76. See also the tale of van Gogh's lost works, on p. 71. Lots of these were sold too, it happens.

Fascinating

http://tinyurl.com/ea75e

Byronic kisses

Byron makes a date with a young Greek woman for midnight at the Parthenon. Lady Elgin has a rendezvous there at the same time. Chekhovian confusion and a kiss.

Pirates

During his return from Greece, Byron discovers that he is traveling with a shipment of Elginian booty. He also learns, from a singularly garrulous soprano, that Elgin has been humiliated by his adultrous wife, has lost any chance of a diplomatic career, and is broke. When North African pirates board the ship, Byron determines to save the Pathenonian booty from savages who might dump it in the ocean.

Byron vs. Elgin

The two lords never met, but they will in my opera. Picture the beautiful young poet landing a headbutt on poor Elgin's already infirm nose. All in the name of Greek self-determination.

Who is Hermester Barrington?

http://www.geocities.com/nodotus/peeps.html

http://tinyurl.com/lxbyb

http://tinyurl.com/faggj

http://www.geocities.com/nodotus/index.html

Music

I've discovered the archive of musical performances at KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" web page and have recently listened to The Guillemots, Rosanne Cash, Jackie Greene, and Jenny Lewis. These performances are archived in video and audio, meaning that one can see a bit about how a radio studio works. The host's interviewing skills are limited, certainly (e.g., when Rosanne Cash explains that she wrote _Black Cadillac_ over the course of a time when she lost her parents and stepmother, commenting "Luckily, I don't think I'll ever have to write this kind of record again," the host replies, "Well, I guess not. Obviously. Um . . .") and one often wants to skip through the talk portions. The music is marvelous.

Visit http://tinyurl.com/3yamn

"The Marbles"

An opera in two acts and two songs

Book and libretto by Samuel Ross Gilbert

(1) A naked and pale male figure appears at center
stage with the rising sun. As he sings we learn that
he is Dionysus, the pedimental figure from the east
side of the Parthenon. His aria is a paean to a savior
whose imminent coming will liberate him from his 2,200
year imprisonment.

(2) Morning on the Acropolis. A British couple, an
Italian painter, a hunchback, a team of Greek workers.
Huge carved blocks are being wrestled from the
Parthenon frieze. The couple, we learn, are the Earl
of Elgin, ambassador to Constantinople, and his
frivolous wife Mary. While Elgin sings of his plans to
improve British taste through these fifth-century-BC
masterpieces, Mary talks of her health, how sick she
was on the crossing, etc.

(3) Evening in London. Elgin, his health devastated,
is divorcing his faithless wife. He has ruined himself
with the taste-improvement enterprise. His nose has
come off, erased by some Turkish bug. He visits the
temporary hall where his loot is housed, and despite
the praise of ghastly figures--Canova, Visconti,
Hayson, West, Fuseli--he can only hear the lasting
curses of Byron, champion of the modern Greek.

(4) Dionysus reappears, sings a plaintive ode to the
Thames and hints of another savior to come.

Seagulls, Woodpeckers, and a Fox

Yesterday morning I saw a red fox in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Two years ago I'd seen one in Strybing Arboretum. There are all sorts of plants and animals in the park. For example, I saw an orange fish that looked something like a goldfish and must have been over two feet long in Mallard Lake, which lies close to the south edge of the park at Twenty-Eighth Avenue. And in addition to the many Red-eared Sliders in Spreckels Lake, I saw another turtle that looked like a Spiny Softshell (http://tinyurl.com/psuxh). I sat by that lake for an hour, inspecting the seagulls floating on the water and referring frequently to "The Sibley Guide to Birds." Gulls are not easly identified and I've too often postponed the tedious work involved in learning to distinguish a Western Gull from a Herring Gull. Having stared and stared, I am now confident that more staring is needed. Eared Grebes paddled by, Barn Swallows and Tree Swallows skimmed the water. I sauntered through the woods west of the lake, circled Middle Lake, and walked home.

Once home, I learned the following: David Sibley, author of the guide I'd used to study the Western Gulls on Spreckels Lake, has the audacity to dispute the identification of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker by the Cornell team. The audacity! Worse still, Kenn Kaufman concurs. It's so damned easy to be a sceptic, isn't it. I choose to believe. Faith is a personal thing.

More answers

• What time did you get up this morning?

7:15 PST. Birds atwitter; starlings in the rosemary. Moved the car. Noted absence of newspaper on front porch. Ate nuts and dried fruit.

• Diamonds or pearls?

Diamonds in my teeth, pearls round my neck.

• What was the last film you saw at the cinema?

"Dave Chapelle's Block Party" Four stars

• What is your favorite TV show?

No TV for me. I have enjoyed "I, Claudius," "Family Feud," and "Bigtime Wrestling."

• What did you have for breakfast?

Chorizo, ham, and a cheese omelette.

• What is your middle name?

Ross Applesauce

• What is your favorite cuisine?

Salad

• What food do you dislike?

Innards, Brussels sprouts, 臭豆腐, Coca Cola, 7 Up, scotch, bottled salad dressing, foie gras

• What is your favorite potato chip?

Kettle brand rippled with salt and pepper in the big bag

• What is your favorite CD at the moment?

Manze & Egarr playing Mozart sonatas; Sinead singing reggae; Salif Keita's "Moffou"

• What kind of car do you drive?

Red Honda Civic

• Favorite sandwich?

BLAT or Reuben

• What characteristics do you despise?

Lack of critical thinking

• What are your favorite clothes?

My Bottes Sauvages, my fox hat, my Tibetan coat, my Glen plaid Peter Tilton suit, my 826 Valencia t-shirt, my OP shorts w/ many velcro closures, socks my mom knitted for me

• If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you
go?

1988 Ubud

• What color is your bathroom?

Off-white and gold chrome

• Favorite brand of clothing?

None

• Where would you want to retire to?

A city inhabited by beloved friends and family

• Favorite time of day?

Sunset

• Where were you born?

Children's Hospital in San Francisco

• Favorite sport to watch?

Tennis

• Coke or Pepsi?

No

• Are you a morning person or night owl?

Not really

• Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone?

My opera proceeds apace.

• What did you want to be when you were little?

A private dick.

• What is a favorite childhood memory?

Roof jumping with Teddy and Michael

• What are the different jobs you have had in your life?

Volunteer aquarist at Steinhart, clerical librarian at Regenstein, espressist at Espresso Yourself, counter guy at Mr. Soup, pasta maker and driver at Auntie Pasta, English teacher, journalist, driver for Super Shuttle, photocopy guy at IBM, research assistant, teaching assistant, editor, writer

• Nicknames?

Mule, Shazam, Shasm, Applesauce, Ginger Lemon Creme

• Any piercings?

No

• Eye color?

Brown

• Ever been to Africa?

No but possibly to the Cape later this year

• Ever been toilet papering?

No

• Been in a car accident?

Once while Mom was driving, twice while I was driving, once while Dave Crane was driving

• Favorite day of the week?

No

• Favorite restaurant?

Pasta Linea

• Favorite flower?

Dutchman's pipe, Eschscholzia californica, peonies, Calypso bulbosa

• Favorite ice cream?

Maggie Mudd asphalt

• Favorite fast food restaurant?

A potsticker place in Yonghe halfway between Jennifer's rooftop apartment and my unfurnished suite

• Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?

Caves Augé

• Bedtime?

Highly variable. Generally before midnight.

• Last person(s) you went to dinner with?

Won Sun and Steffen

• What are you listening to right now?

Sweet silence

• What is your favorite color?

Paisley

• How many tattoos do you have?

None

• Who sent the e-mail message you got before this one?

Colby

Losers

In Elgin's case, his nose. In Nelson's, his eye, his teeth, his arm.

Where would we be?

My friends and I lean very heavily on certain words and turns of phrase. We all use the word "actually" far too much. Second place goes to "essentially," the hot new adverb that Levon and MiJin use as frequently as they draw breath. When I was young it was "obviously," a word many of my friends and all my family members would have paid to have amputated from my glossary. We begin questions with "so" and we try to summon conversational inspiration with the ritual words "but" and "um." Some need five false starts to get through a sentence. Others would be speechless if deprived of certain formulations. I loathe "Be well." It's even worse than "Take care," which I first heard from Don Lindgren (of New York State) in 1981, long before it became current in California. To the next bozo who orders me to "be well" I'm going to reply, "Be swell." Meaning swollen like Augustus Gloop.

Dessert of terrorists

Detainee ate one Hostess Cupcake with interrogation team.

Passing fancy

I'm thinking of becoming a mushroom. Or a toadstool.

San Francisco Ballet-Robbins Program

Dreaming, a young dancer on the sunny floor of a dance salle. He contracts, stretches, rises—the flute has summoned him. While he dances, hips forward, another dancer enters the practice room. She is young, flirtatious, utterly narcissistic. Whenever he catches her aloft she tosses her long black hair and stares into the mirror that lies somewhere between her and us.

Yuan Yuan Tan (譚元元) dances the role of the nymph in San Francisco Ballet's first staging of Jerome Robbins's "Afternoon of a Faun." Who cares who dances the faun's part?

Diet of terrorists

Detainee is offered a fish sandwich, French fries, coke and a yogurt parfait.

(see http://tinyurl.com/q8jl6)

Weather report

Rain hurried down
Then all was sunny
Now a gentle breeze
Reminds me

"Brokeback Mountain"

To understand what Ennis Del Mar feels for Jack Twist, you need to smell the blood on their shirts. It's not only the blood of cowboys thrown by spooked horses, of husbands protecting their wives from disrespectful scum (and themselves from the implication that they are not manly enough to silence lowlifes), of sheep ripped apart by prowling wolves, it's also the blood of every queer man and women killed by thugs unleashed by Bible-thumping TV and radio evangelists. It's the blood that passes turbulently from father to son, that marks a father's daughter as chattel exchanged for a promise to submit, to give in to the father and yield to him the knife that slices through the animal's dead body. To understand Ennis you need to see that a certain way of squaring the shoulders and a reliance on very few words could make the difference between being hung dead on a barbed wire fence and surviving until cancer gets you. To understand Ennis you need to see why he lifts his hand against his wife. The blood on their shirts is the blood they shed so that they would be taken for men, not queers. And the same blood marked the unspoken oath that both swore as they began their retreat from Brokeback Mountain.

Dream

I would like to wake tomorrow and find that America is home to a large indigenous population of echidnas.

Walken on air

Three and a half minutes of pure joy. http://www.astralwerks.com/fbs/woc/

Where the cow goes

Her blood: plywood adhesives, fertilizer, fire extinguisher foam, dyes

Her fat: plastics, tires, crayons, cosmetics, lubricants, soaps, detergents, cough syrup, ink, shaving ream, fabric softeners, synthetic rubber, jet engine lubricants, textiles, corrosion inhibitors, metal-machining lubricants

Her bones: for refining sugar and making ceramics, cleaning and polishing compounds

Her collagen: yogurt, matches, bank notes, cardboard glue, paper

Nature

That which is not man's creation is natural. An elephant on the rampage is natural. A mudslide is natural. Countless extinctions are natural.

Man did not invent rape: it is natural. Same-sex sex is common among many species: it is natural. Violence and aggression are natural.

Man's aggression is natural, unless it is an aggression aimed at plants and animals and soil and water and air, in which case it is anti-natural.

Cats are curious; curiosity is natural.

The "Cesar" Trilogy

The appeal of the three movies based on Marcel Pagnol's popular plays is their local flavor, the marvelous physical acting of Raimu, Fernand Charpin, Paul Dullac and Alida Rouffe, and the irresistible story of love and war between the generations in 1930s Marseilles. "Marius," "Fanny" and "Cesar" are the most delightful movies ever made.

Alice Waters named her restaurants after two of the characters from the movies.

The Philosopher of Life

Along the beach you watch for crabs,
Sideways thoughts that give you hope
In a desert zone licked by not yet
Saltless water, thick enough to tread on.

I am studying you studying her:
Your wife, by lamplight,
Tired of her home.

They comfort you, the homely crabs,
Catching the stick you extend,
Their sidelong society your balm.

Nature

Are human beings natural? Are cities natural? Is it natural to kill? Is it natural to ignore the suffering of strangers? What is the relation between ethics and nature? What should dictate the form that ethics take? How do we determine what's dictated by genetic predispositions? Should political decisions have anything to do with ethics?

What is the relation between happiness and contact with wild places? What is the relationship between unhappiness and intense urbanization? Why is there such a tension between industry and nature?

Under what circumstances is killing justified? What is the difference between killing a human being and killing a chimpanzee? Is there a difference between killing an infant and killing an aged person? Is it permissible to kill nonhuman animals?

Top of the pops

American Music Club "San Francisco"
The Band "Music from Big Pink"
The Beatles "Abbey Road"
The Beautiful South "Miaow"
The Clash "London Calling"
Elvis Costello "My Aim Is True"
Joni Mitchell "Blue"/"Hejira"
Randy Newman "Sail Away"
Prefab Sprout "Steve McQueen"
Jonathan Richman "Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers"
The Roches "Keep on Doing"
Rolling Stones "Beggars Banquet"
Rufus Wainwright eponymous

When it's late and I'm not quite awake

That's when there is faint music, a sense of longing, and the tug of recollections. I rouse myself, move to the front windows, look out on silent streets. And am wonderfully solitary.

Clementines

Some people know I love clementines. This is why Ken Olsen is a man I admire. He grows clementines and other things on his twenty acres in Lindsay, California.The clementines he grows are magnificent and I bought five pounds last Saturday from the woolly-haired guy who helps out at Ken's Ferry Plaza stand.

Ken educated me about the soft spots and the black spots one sometimes finds on his fruit. But I can't remember the details.

Crucifiction

I am back.