Am I Blog Enough For You?

A few updates:

1. They let us go around 2 today. How sad is it that I used the fact that no one is around to catch up on work? Why can’t I work when other people are around?

2. My friend wouldn’t rebut my post on bookstores. She said that the topic was too serious to joke about and that I she won’t make my anti-bookstore screed funny. Or something like that.

3. I downloaded a great plugin that creates a Google SiteMap for this site. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. I just submitted it to Google, so we’ll see how long it takes for them to crawl me. Currently the query [site:blogenough.com] only gets the home page. This doesn’t look too good considering where I work and what I do.

4. I remembered something else about independent, locally-owned bookstores. I got a bunch of great records there at the one in Jackson. It took me a long time to go through everything but I found comedy albums: (Bob Newhart (a fellow INTP), Richard Pryor (with the quote “Git that cross out your pussy!”), Smothers Brothers (autographed, even), Woody Allen (rare double LP Nightclub Years) and some cool soul albums: (Delaney & Bonnie, Ike and Tina (the one with the watermelon), Joe Cocker (don’t laugh), Billy Preston (donated to the station), and others). All for $1 or $2 each. When I went to pay for them, the guy behind the counter said that someone had just been there who bought a whole bunch of records. So what I got was picked over. I asked if his name was Josh Davis, and he said he didnt’ remember.

4a. Also at that same bookstore I found a copy of Vengance, which was long, long out of print. This was about six months before the movie came out. That was great — something I couldn’t have done on Amazon.

These are two books that I have been wanting to buy for several months:

and

They are from two of the great writers on The Exile. (Three if you count The War Nerd.) Dr. Dolan graciously offered to send me a copy of his book, but I waited too long to write back. Then it felt kind like it would have been kind of awkward to write back.

So on a trip to Berkeley I went to Cody’s, Moe’s, and Shakespeare & Co. to buy copies. They didn’t have copies. So I waited to go to Kepler’s to buy them. Nothing there. I was in Pegasus on Solano Ave. last weekend, and they didn’t have copies. So I said, “Fuck it.” (I actually said, “Fuck it,” right there in the store. No one heard, though.) I just remembered: Neither book could be found at a bookstore on Shattuck that my friend is manager at. And the Borders in Palo Alto didn’t have either book, but I wasn’t expecting them to. The clerk there said that at one time they had one copy of The Exile book, but it was sold a long time ago. At least he knew what I was talking about. And the Stanford Bookstore didn’t have it.

So Sunday night I went to Amazon, read a few reviews, and bought both books. I also picked up a cool book on penetration testing with Google that I read about on Slashdot a few weeks before.

Technically speaking these two aren’t local authors, but Mr. Ames grew up in the South Bay and lived in Foster City for a while. Dr. Dolan taught at Berkeley. His book is about Berkeley, even. So there is a local connection there. Finding these kinds of books right when I want them is supposed to be a benefit of having all these independent, locally owned bookstores all lying around the place. Dammit, a self-centered consumer was slightly inconvenienced here. I demand justice!

So when I heard that Cody’s was shutting down I felt a pang of guilt — like that one character in that one book. I dared to think ill of independent, locally owned bookstores and now one was dead. When Kepler’s closed I clapped and clapped because I believe in fairies and then it came back alive. But now I’d really done it. I’m sorry, Cody’s. I’m sorry I didn’t buy more of those cool, glossy science books from you, and I’m sorry that I always spoke a little too loudly at the Information desk to make the person behind the desk feel slightly uncomfortable. I may not be able to read the books I bought on Amazon with all these tears in my eyes.

Now I will seek absolution by confessing my sins: I went to Kepler’s and I wanted to buy a book on Bansky but they didn’t have it and I had to spell it twice for them and they never heard of him and they didn’t have any books on stencil art at all. And then I was in the mood for a biography of Lincoln for some weird reason and they only had that one about how he picked people who were his rivals for his cabinet or the people in his cabinet were rivals and it sounded like a fucking management book so no thanks to that. Lincoln is the most biographed person in the universe next to Jesus and they only had that one and not even the Carl Sandburg one that I wanted to at least have a quick look at so I went home and read the wikipedia entry on Lincoln and that will keep my curiosity satisfied for a while and at least I learned that Lincoln was widely believed to have been involved in the Kennedy assassination. And once I went to Barnes & Noble in Foster City and asked for their books on search engine marketing and all they had were books on how to make money on eBay. Okay B&N aren’t independent or locally owned but still it sucked because if they didn’t carry that kind of stuff then who would? And then I went to Tower Records next door and they were out of Black Booty in their adult magazine section but had a million stupid 1,000th issues of Rolling Stone magazine and a way old issue of Waxpoetics but one Cometbus which was cool but I miss when he used to handwrite them so I bought a Nostalgia 77 CD because of their cool White Stripes cover with Alice Russell singing on it but all the other songs were subdued jazzy stuff that I didn’t want. And one time I went to Kepler’s to buy Freakonomics for me and my friend and my dad (3 copies, beeyotch!) but they were sold out so just for kicks I typed it into Limewire when I got back home and found a PDF version of the book for free that I downloaded and would have read the whole thing but it hurt my eyes. I eventually bought two copies but I forgot where I bought them. And I took a bunch of books that didn’t fit into my house over to Half Price Books in Fremont and they stacked them all up on a table and made me wait for an hour while two guys talked about stuff and then they gave me $50 and said that my books “had their day” but they were in nice condition so I asked the guy if he liked the first edition of Rabbit at Rest and the first six or so McSweeny’s he said oh yeah, we could probably sell those but I was too hungry to stack them up and get out of there and didn’t have time anyway so I gave the two other car loads to the Palo Alto library and thought I’d rather have someone have the joy of finding these books and maybe making money with them on eBay rather than these guys who were clearly ripping me off while they swish their grey ponytails around but I still kind of felt like a sucker for a week and thought I made a terrible mistake getting rid of all of these books but then after that week I was glad to not worry about the books sitting around in boxes in the basement. And I saw Thomas Friedman talk at work and I got a free copy of The World Is Flat and he made no fucking sense during his talk so I gave it to a guy who was flying to India that week. And then I saw Dr. Watson the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA give a rambling talk about autism and genetics and got a free copy of his book and gave it to a guy I work with who I’m about 98% sure will never read it. And I was reading a Dr. Laura book before my recent Amazon purchases came because I couldn’t find them at any of the Bay Area’s finest independent, locally-owned bookstores and before that I read some Jeeves stories by Wodehouse and my first thought was that his books are so well plotted that he would have been a good programmer and then I felt ashamed and then I read another story. And a million people have asked me if I’ve read Da Vinci Code and I don’t know why. And a couple of people have asked me if I read that Frey book and I frankly don’t know what the fuck they are getting at. Those are my sins and I confess them freely. Amen.

I will send this to a friend of mine who was really upset about Cody’s closing to write a rebuttal. By the way, Slate had a good article about independent, locally owned bookstores but my network is flaky so I can’ t link to it. Use a search engine.

1. Phil Hendrie has announced that he is retiring from radio in about a month. That sucks. He’s my radio hero. He used to be on KNEW at 7pm, but he was replaced with (I think) Bill O’Reilly. I could get him on XM in the van sometimes. People complained about his political monologues, but I thought they were great. Japanned in Japan made me a CD of his favorite sketches from the show, so at least I have that on my iPod to listen to. I’m going to go to his website and buy a bunch of stuff. This article is a good overview of what he does.

2. Work is taking us all out to see the DaVinci Code today. D. can’t get a babysitter so I have an extra ticket. If you want to go with me to the 3pm show send me an email. I would hate to waste a ticket. It sure got bad reviews, so I’m planning on sitting close to the aisle in case I want to bail. One of my co-workers walked out of Spiderman 2, which impressed the hell out of me. I’m a big sucker for superhero movies, so having the ability to see through them is impressive to me.

3. I have a meeting.

I am worth $1,926,010 on HumanForSale.com

What’s a bit annoying is that they knocked off $20k for having grey hair. Dang!

While I wait for Lost to come on the com-puter, here are three things related to race that I came across lately. I mention these things because I’m…well, what could be more important than what race you are?

1. Bill Withers

The current (Apr/May 06) issue of Waxpoetics has an interview with the great Bill Withers. He is one of my favorite musical artists of all time. I played him on my radio show to the point where I think it might have been obnoxious for the listeners, especially listeners of that station. And I always back announced him as “America’s step-father.” I don’t know why, but it seemed funny and right and knowing all at the same time–at least the first 50 times.

Anyway, here is a quote where he discusses why he stopped recording:

The funniest experience I had: Somebody had this idea of working with this one producer, because he had played in a band with some Black guys. [laughs] So, I go over to this guy’s studio–he has a studio in his house–and he has this little girl who’s about four years old running around stark naked. So, the little girl comes to the studio and he says, “Don’t bother us right now. Go and talk with Bill.” I don’t think I’ve ever told this story. So, this little girl comes over to me and says, “I’m ticklish. Will you tickle me?” Now, having grown up in the South and seen people hung for less shit, how comfortable do you think I am with this stark-naked blonde-haired girl comin’ up to me? [laughs] So, you can see why I am just a little bit of a curmudgeon. I’ve had a whole lot of people ask me, “How could you stop?” It wasn’t hard for me to stop, because I was annoyed.

2. Article about white families adopting black kids

Sparkles referred to this article in her blog, and it just surprised me as I read it. The headline of the article is “For adoptees, racial divide still wide.” A more accurate headline might be “For self-appointed assholes, racial divide still profitable.”

My favorite quote from the article:

The discourse changed in 1972, Herman said, when the National Association of Black Social Workers denounced the practice as “cultural genocide.”

3. Stephin Merritt, cracker-ass cracker

In this article we discover that Mr. Merritt is a racist. Let’s examine the evidence:
a. He thinks that the Disney song “Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah” is a “great song.”
b. He doesn’t care for hip-hop beyond the first few years of its existence.

So now a New Yorker music critic and some music critic in Chicago have put Mr. Merritt in the position of having to prove a negative, much like George W. Bush did to Saddam Hussein. Way to go, all three of you!

I bought The Magnetic Fields’s “69 Love Songs” at the urging of Punchme, gave it a few listens, but it didn’t really grab me. Maybe I dated too many girls who were into Morrissey.

But anyway, more quoting from Mr. Merritt:

I think it’s shocking that we’re not allowed to play coon songs anymore, but people, both black and white, behave in more vicious caricatures of African-Americans than they had in the 19th century. It’s grotesque. … It probably would have been considered too tasteless for the Christy Minstrels.

Let’s compare that with a quote from America’s Step-dad, Bill Withers:

When I went into the navy, we got to go to technical schools. And the big thing we were saddled with was trying to prove to somebody that you were smart enough to work on an airplane. You mentioned these young hip-hop guys. I would love to have a conversation with them about spending all this money on jewelry to hang around your neck or platinum to put on your teeth. Because, from my time, that was what we were trying not to do, because nobody was trying to show themselves as playing into those stereotypes. So when you spend those formative years trying to prove that if I fix your airplane, you won’t crash into the river–and to evolve now to this. There are a lot of conversations I would like to have.

So who are you going to believe? America’s Step-dad, Bill Withers? Or bitch-ass music critics slash race po-lice who write for magazines that if you are reading it is probably because you are on an airplane and the airport magazine stand doesn’t carry Waxpoetics or XLR8R and the 8-page special section on Indonesia in The Economist is just a tad too much for your brain in a low-pressure air cabin?

4. The Poseidon Adventure moving picture show

Okay, this isn’t about race, but it still makes you think. Then it makes you think about thinking.

5. Holy crap

“I’m not like everybody else” by The Kinks was just on an IBM commercial. Talk about yer cultural genocide. But damn, I gotta listen me some Kinks.

I’m on vacation in Florida where the sun shine damn near every day. I’m such a geek that I brought my wireless router and laptop. So now I can sit on the couch watching The Ultimate Fighter 3 on Spike TV and typing this. We were to go to Disneyworld today, but S. had a mysterious fever. W decided to go to a local zoo and have a mellow time there rather than start a plague that could spread throughout the entire world.

The trip started out with a little strangeness. The flight was full, and there was some problem that messed up the seating. M. and D. finally got seats together a few minutes before they stopped boarded the plane. S. and I waited behind while they boarded. We were almost the last ones on, and we didn’t have seats together — let alone near M. and D. — when we boarded. Fortunately, some guy switched with me, so S. didn’t freak out like I thought she might if we couldn’t sit near each other.

(Aside: This was a flight to Orlando, so there were many, many families that had their seating fucked up. The moms were frickin’ mad. I’m surprised that they thought that getting shitty with the gate attendant was the best way to approach the problem. To the kids, seeing their mom acting that way must have seemed incongruous with the lessons from their children shows. There was something sort of sexy about the upset moms at the gate, though I’m not sure exactly what.)

Anyway, that wasn’t the weird part. When we got on the plane, I went back to check on D. and M., and some guy was watching M. while D. was in the bathroom. I asked him what his babysitting rates were, and he said, “really expensive,” and laughed. It turns out that the guy was Roger Craig.

While we were waiting for the flight to leave (delayed an hour due to “problems” with the “hydraulics”), D. called from her seat to my seat on her cell phone and said that the guy next to her knows some guys that I worked with. So the three of us played do-you-know-so-and-so until they fixed the plane. I didn’t think much of it until later in the flight D. came up to my seat, and whispered, “Hey, have you heard of some famous football guy named Roger Craig who played for the 49ers? That’s the guy next to me.” I heard of the name but that was about it.

Anyway, it turns out that Mr. Craig is a very nice guy. He played with M. a little and even bought him some food. D. got his life story, and they talked about parenting and stuff like that for most of the flight. He tried to convince D. to run some marathon that he was doing. While leaving the flight he came up to me and said that he was an early investor in the company I work for, so we talked about that for a while. I wanted to talk more about investing and VC stuff with him, but it was kind of awkward on a plane and all.

I wouldn’t have mentioned this except (1) D.’s mom flipped out when we told her and (2) it shows just how completely out of it we are. But we are getting better. The last time we met someone who played professional football, we hadn’t even heard of the team he played for. But we have heard of the 49ers, so we’re getting better.

I found out in a meeting this morning that I work in the same department as one of the co-founders of Spy Magazine. How cool is that? I was trying to explain how cool is that to some co-workers, but they are too young to remember. Too young. I sensed a “tell us how life was before the Internet” vibe, so I dropped it. Then I wrote him an email to say thanks for providing me with a connection to the world while I was doing time in West Lafayette and Ft. Wayne, IN.

Speaking of which, I had dinner with someone who I knew from my Ft. Wayne co-operative education days. Talking about those days is funny and sad at the same time. We both agreed that our time there had a major influence on our lives, mainly by helping us decide what we did NOT want to do and how we did NOT want to live.

By the way, here is the project that I worked on in Ft. Wayne. It was the iPod of its day.

I was almost finished delivering a presentation yesterday when I started feeling a migraine aura creeping up on me. The words didn’t look right and I couldn’t see well. There was lightning that everyone saw but I couldn’t. Then I remember looking at the word “natural” completely unable to prounounce it but hearing my self say “serchural” and “natrial.” I stopped and said, “Well that was all I really had to say.” Everyone clapped. The meeting went on for another 45 minutes, which was agony. I managed to IM to Diana “Aura starting.” I couldn’t see any faces in the room, just a grey area. I couldn’t remember anyone’s name either. Then my fingers went numb.

I hatched a plan: Meetings start every 15 minutes, so I can leave at the next quarter hour. All I had to do was figure out what time it was, wait until a quarter hour comes up, and then leave. I couldn’t really see the clock well enough to figure out what time it was. I was getting a little scared. Finally I just stood up and said that I needed to go. Everyone looked at me and thanked me for my presentation. I was free.

I walked back to my desk to send an email to let people know I was leaving early. When I went to address the email, I couldn’t remember my bosses name or the name of the guy I’ve been sharing a cube with since November. I glanced at his desk and found his name somewhere, which helped me remember my boss’s name. I wanted to say that I had a “migraine aura,” but I couldn’t remember how to spell “aura.” When I came in this morning I found “migraign” in the search box on my browser window. There’s a bottle of Excedrin Migraine in my desk, but I forgot to look at that (or take one).

Email sent, I drove home where I turned off my cell phone and got into bed. I curled up in a ball and tried to fall asleep before my headache started. I woke up a few hours later with a pounding, one-sided classic migraine headache that didn’t subside until 2a.m.

I woke up this morning with a mild headache, but this one felt like it was because I didn’t eat any dinner. Walking bun to school, one of the moms told me that I have a flat tire. It was just about flat. I tried to limp it to the tire store, but the tire blew out on the way. I decided to change it rather than wait for AAA during rush hour. Now my headache is worse, but I have the satisfaction of having changed my tire.

When I got into work an hour late, my computer screens were too bright. I set them all to the lowest brightness setting and took an Excedrin migraine.

I wanted to upload a video to Google Video, but first I needed a video. So I gave Steph our digital camera and told her to make me a movie by holding down the button and running around the house. She was more than happy to comply. I didn’t let Diana know about my plan, so there is a brief argument. Here is the glorious result. Interesting that the video is saved as Flash.

[I had to remove the video. I will replace it with a new video.]

Can you find the two places where G.G. the cat barfed? One is in our bedroom (visible at :32), and one is on our deck (visible at 1:21).

1. I had this actual dream last night

I moved to Portland, where a big earthquake knocked down a big green dome on top of a building. I lived in a studio in a high floor in a tall apartment building where I ran a pirate radio station from the bedroom. Every morning from 7:30 to 8:30 I did an hour-long broadcast where I played music and talked about random stuff. I had a lot of range because I put my antenna on top of my building. I enjoyed looking out the window and seeing all the cars on the freeway that I was broadcasting to. I swear this next part is true: I dreamed that I interviewed Judi Dench and asked her what it was like to work with Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles.

Then I woke up.

2. I bought Dave Chapelle Inside the Actor’s Studio for my video iPod. I remembered a gift certificate that I won a long time ago at a DJ contest at work. 5 of us entered, and we had to split the prize 5 ways because no one was really listening. Just perfect. I hope this whole buying and downloading thing works. There’s a hell of a lot of disk activity going on. My nightly backups run around this time. And I have my computer set to record the great Howard Stern interviewed by the great David Letterman. Will there be lesbians? Or do we get the serious Howard? I’m willing to bet it will be the latter.

3. I got a good review at work. I mean really good. I was surprised. Throughout my career I have been one of those people that does a lot of work and then gets a so-so review because I don’t come in at 9am or I threatened to kill an obnoxious co-worker or something like that. Usually my bosses have no trouble whatsoever remember some crazy or stupid or drunk thing that I did at work but then they call me at my desk at 10pm without giving it a second thought that they knew I’d be there. Then I would usually slink away with one or two members of my inner circle and viciously dissect my boss, all co-workers, every department, the company, the entire industry, civilization, and then all civilizations throughout history. Not very professional but hey, I do good work. But not this time. I got a review that was worthy of me.

4. I almost forgot this one, so I had to change the title of this post to “Four Things.” When we were in Twain-Harte, Diana picked up a book that another mom brought called “The Hidden Gifts Of The Introverted Child.”

She started reading it (which was a violation of her new year’s resolution not to read child psych books) and then stole it (which is a sin). She even stayed in the van reading it while I took the kids sledding. Then she read it while I drove home. She finally said that this is really a book about me, not the kids. Friday night we went to a cafe and then a bookstore to hang out. She said that the idea came to her while reading the introvert book. I find this somewhat troubling.

At least the introvert book doesn’t say that introverts need to be cured. It turns out that we have magical gifts that we’ll discover when we grow up. It should be any day now. I asked if the book referred to extroverts as “demented frat boys.” The answer is no, but they are described as impulsive.