At the rate I’m gong on the karma wheel sort of spinning and shit working out, by the time I’m at death’s door everything will be just jake. OK, I don’t know what jake means, well I guess I do now, on account of looking it up, but yeah, I didn’t.

The point is, the longer I live the more shitty people just seem to right themselves right into their own shittiness, or they redeem themselves or otherwise I just keep on keeping on and everything works out OK. Here’s what I mean. I moved across the fucking large North American continent. Drove right to left over the landmass and ended from one ocean to another. I got a new life, springing out of the old one, I didn’t like dye my hair black and change my name, and I got a job and I commenced to living.

A few months into the new job, I was guarded with the new folks with their own earnest, Northern California culture. I remember the anxiety and the gut-level fear when I realized I’d be going to a foreign country on something they called a “retreat” with my new co-workers. Holy shit. Trying to be the mousy one who blends (my new, incognito life change persona I had fantasized) would be tough whilst sweating out whether to drink the water (not) and actually eating the bugs on tortilla chips my new boss ordered up at the restaurant.

Nervous I was, and nervous I stayed. But there was seismic shifting (you know like on those loose tectonic plates among which I now live and work). Just the year before I came out here, I was sitting in serial visits to a Human Resources freak and a psychologist’s office trying to explain the world-wide interwebs and the not yet felt in those corners the burgeoning weblog phenomenon. No one with whom I worked knew what the fuck I was talking about, so like fearful peasants everywhere they grabbed up the pitchforks and went a-witch-burning.

So, there I was, literally marching up the side of a mountain toward an ancient Aztec pyramid, of which incidentally between the steepness of the path, the altitude and my pussiness I never saw the top, worrying about new people and still not having shaken the ignorance of computers and web technology that assaulted me and lost me my last job. Minding my steps. Only, in this new world, well, I guess not so new, as we were walking where the Aztecs and Toltecs and whatnot had trod, I happen to be talking with a true, dot.com, trend-setting California entrepreneur. Not only is the company he founded web-based, but it has legions of rabid, dedicated fans and supporters, buoyed up in the blogosphere, word of mouth and technological grassroots. Seriously wired.

How the fuck does someone fired for a ‘blog end up in Mexico talking with a dude who is prince of the technorati? (Even now, I realize I’m being a complete wuss and not linking to his popular site. Don’t want to be that one degree closer to the bill-paying gig I need to go to every day.)

But, none of that set up is what I really mean to be talking about, or typing about in my customary ramble.

Nope, it was that one chick on the trip that had me thinking. Now, this chick has been referred to here obliquely, and it was she that has had me itching, aching, dying, beating myself into submission to not full on vent and rant. The birthright radar that Pat gave me to spot a bad egg, and just fucking know in some gut place that a person sucks, full on blasted party-fireworks-red when I met her. She was DEFCON 1.

It was the uncomfortable shift, which I learned about in status games in improv workshops, that signaled me. I was “low,” and she was “high,” and in our first couple of conversations, she spoke to me in the slow, patronizing, patient tones usually reserved for children, rascally puppies and dimwitted, 19th century servants. In my head and heart, I declared her a bad egg and stayed on my guard. I also made a point to sparkle to the top of my Noel Coward wit and intellectual depths whenever I engaged with her.

Here’s the magical part. The part that makes me believe in karma. The part that makes me mostly like living and keeps me laughing.

Not only have I worked on through to a place where this particular nemesis can’t touch me, I’m helping in the recovery of others who came to the bad egg conclusion on their own paths. So today, in that aftermath, someone evoked a movie scene that moved me deeply.

It was just the kind of workplace fantasy, albeit a movie scene, I would have evoked myself before inhibition got a hold of me and the fear of losing an income. I mean, what does one say, shell-shocked as I am when someone at work, in confidence and CLEARLY in jest, conjures up a blade and a rib cage?

I’m pretty sure that’s what you call full circle.

Technorati Tags: comedy, Pat, video, women, work, writing

On the local public radio station, on local websites and news, all sorts of places where worrying can fly high and wide, I’ve been hearing about the rising sea level, along side the melting glaciers and whatnot. I gather from the experts in another hundred years or so, it’s all gonna be a good three feet higher.

Naturally, I had to look up the study for myself, and thanks to the world-wide webtubes and the Pacific Institute, whose study is oft quoted, I got to look at the maps.

Now I clearly realize that when you are strolling down the street from your house and figure out where the Tsunami Evacuation Route is, you’re flying in the danger zone. I’m generally skittish about the whole earthquake thing that happens around here every now and again, historically speaking.

We can hear the waves on stormy nights, so I know the water is out there.

Me, my lemons, this little guy, could all be washed away.

Or, we could be sitting on a veritable gold mine, if we both live a while too long on the old mortal coil. We could end up right up there, owning some beachfront property. If you look at the pretty maps from the clever folks over at the Pacific Institute, you can close in on a chunk and look at the pretty blues and pinks that spell underwater doom. My ‘hood is somewhere up in here:

View Larger Map

If all goes well, and by well I mean tragic and flooded and sad for everyone else, we’ll be able to watch the gentle lapping of the ocean’s beauty off the lawn across the street from us. We, though, we’ll be sitting on the front porch of ocean view. I’m pretty optimistic I’ll have a rocking home when I’m 145 years young.

Technorati Tags: California, climate_change, environment, lemons, Pacifica, photos, tsunami

Sometimes I totally forget where I live. And, then something happens, and it totally reminds me that this here place is California. More so, there’s a reason that it has the reputation that it has.

Today’s episode came courtesy of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

A while back, M. got nabbed for speeding through Redwood City, “Climate Best By Government Test.” Moments after California’s handsfree law forbid drivers in the state from holding their cellphones up to their heads, M. got spotted by a man in uniform for just that activity. Note to drivers everywhere, pretending that your phone is a scratching device to reach the hard-to-reach side of your head, won’t get you out of a ticket in our neighborhood.

So far, despite his scofflaw tendencies, you could say M.’s experience was about on par for all 50 of the states with some kind of traffic laws. But, today, today he got the kind of notice in the form of a warning that brands this state.

According to the letter and the letter of the law, another couple of notches on his moving violations belt this year, and M. might move into the negligent drivers’ pantheon. The notice was official looking and has that kind of pronouncement ALL CAPS lettering that makes you sure you must fill out some paperwork in triplicate and otherwise face bureaucratic mechanizations. But, primarily it was merely informing him of this perilous state of his driving privileges if he’s not more careful over the next 12-24 months.

There was an action item, however, embodied in this notable line:

Please review your convictions ad points (listed below), and then ask yourself if there is anything you can do to avoid future violations and/or accidents.

Thank you, California. Self-reflection is a wonderful path.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, California, driving

Ah, the day the patron saint of the ancient land of my ancestors allegedly died, probably not having had anything to do with snakes.

Here in the hinterlands there are streets with names like Geary and Gough and O’Farrell from a nice history of Irish folk going for gold and land grants from Mexico or just partying it up in San Francisco’s brothels and casinos. Back in the day, according to the internet, the Hibernian Savings and Loan was a big deal and folks were doing all right out west.

Apparently, there’s a big parade down Market Street or thereabouts in San Francisco. I haven’t seen it. For me, Irish Americans and parades in March are South Boston and drunks. I’m not actually a big fan of either South Boston or its drunks.
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Tonight, there was some streets closed or something by way of celebration. I haven’t seen that either. Although, the beau, clearly not Irish-American in so many ways, he was drinking O’Doul’s near beer among equally non-Irish-American co-workers in the thick of things, while I watched our boiled dinner bubble in the crock pot.

By way of reconciliation and recognition of my heritage, he came home in time for dinner a bit later than normal his arms laden with trinkets. Among the swag was an oversized green cloth hat and many, many strands of Mardi Gras-style beads anchored by foaming beer mugs and gaudy shamrock leaves. As a side note, he told me I looked good in the oversized hat. He’s clearly blinded by my many charms.

What all of this means, ultimately? It means next year on Chinese New Year’s, I’ll be out drunk and then come home with a coolie hat and a long braid.

Technorati Tags: family, St._Patrick’s_Day, Irish_American, Irish, history

So much/so little/so what to write about.

Amidst a whole lot of work at work, I managed to see an Indian flick, a real live celluloid release from the ginormous Bollywood industry, at a real live South Asian-run,, Indo-American, samosa and chai-serving movie theater with a gang from work. I went to a house-warming party, I assembled a new TV stand and helped (a little) with it’s installation, and had a couple of friends over (see new media stand installation) suburban barbecue style.

On the opposite of a lighter note, had my moms lived, and I almost wrote chosen to live on account of it feels that way, she would be 80 years old today. Instead, she’s frozen in her early 70s. And, of course, all of the years before those last ones, the ones with the paddle balls and Dr. Scholl’s and sneakers that make up my memories.

Apart from my own birthday demarcating my own mortality falling so close to the anniversary of her birth, a couple of notes of the manufactured melodrama reminded me of Pat. One good thing about the technology I over-use and over-obsess about is access. It kind of makes all things new again and as old movies creep into the public domain, my fancy cellular phone can grab me a young Cary Grant or Gary Cooper.

Way back when, before menstruation was a worry instead of menopause. Oh, wait, strike that, I don’t actually remember very well the time before menstruation. I suppose I was a little girl once, but it didn’t last very long in my precocious life. Anyway, in the olden days, I have to admit that Pat wasn’t all up in the worrying about bedtime for her youngest. She rather indulged me, you might say. I think it was because she liked company while watching old movies on late.

One thing I really miss since cable happened is the late, late movies and the random time of the day movie features. Dialing for dollars, creature double features, and our steady Sunday night date, along with a whole lot of other folks in the Boston area, Frank Avruch and The Great Entertainment.

We watched film noir, musicals, mysteries, murders, tearjerkers, dramas, sophisticated comedies. Whatever they had on tap in the olden days of televisions with tubes and dials, you basically set it and forget it. Although, in the absence of remote controls, in the dark days before people even imagined a clicking plastic box with magic buttons, one solution was large families. As the youngest, I was kept around to change the channel. Come to think of it, there’s a good chance Pat let me stay up and watch the movies with her was so there was someone to turn the TV off at the end. Footsteps saved.

Today, I kind of hate the choices that cable provides. Instead of rolling with what came on and deciding on the merits of a small handful of options, you now can spend hours combing through and deciding among hundreds and hundreds of things and ultimately choose nothing.

I loved Pat’s commentary. She was not one to suffer schmaltz and faux sentiment quietly. Corny got called out. An enigma was her protestations against the foolish excess of elaborate, Busby Berkeley musicals and their ilk. Yet, she watched them all. I have yet to meet anyone who knew more about Esther Williams and her whole splashing oeuvre of work.

By the way, love the internet. Who knew Esther was hawking, appropriately enough, swimsuits?

Pat also seemed to have a hard time accepting any plot line of a strong woman in the face of adversity. The whole Greer Garson as Mrs. Miniver, stiff upper lip drama just pissed her the fuck off at some core place. I don’t know if it was the force of the melodrama, written, directed and otherwise predetermined to squeeze a little juice out of your tear ducts at expected intervals. Or maybe it was the strong and virtuous noble female lead persevering just rubbed her wrong.

Some of me, suspects it was the presumed nobility of Greer Garson’s women. Somewhere in my mother’s own strong struggle, I think she felt no drama, no glory, nothing noble. Nope, it was just a simple life she was slogging through, because that’s what you do. Suffice it to say, Pat wasn’t all about that particularly brand of histrionics. She had way more fun with the drama of the day to day, the mundane. That shit is where she could really sink her teeth.

Who needs the Blitz of London, when you have a field mouse loose in the house?

She accused me of threatening her and locked herself in the bathroom screaming at me through the door at me to leave her alone. Sadistic tormentor I was that day. I had been beckoned to her home to empty the mousetrap that had successfully been tripped. A grim murine reaper.

I did what I was told to do and collected the carcass in a paper bag. I wrongfully assumed the corpus mousey, ensconced and wrapped in brown paper, was rendered harmless and wondered into the living room to ask what to do with my bundle. My mother, no longer in the flower of youth, bolted from the room, Usain-Bolt style. Fast and, I discovered, angry.

There was a solid 10 minutes before I coaxed her out from behind the locked door, promising I had brought the dreaded, dead beast outside and disposed of it far away from her and her bitter memories of its torment (and mine).

The Bollywood movie I saw the other night, Delhi 6, reminded me of late night’s with Frank Avruch and Pat. The movie had it all. Family, romance, angry townspeople (instead of ranchers and cattlemen in old black and white, there’re modern Hindus and Muslims), random songs, awkward exposition, a hero and a heroine and the verge of tears hyper-dramatic conclusion. I hadn’t felt that way in a movie since I was a kid. I only wish the tearjerking scenes succeeded in manipulating me. Not sure if reading English subtitles dampened the intended affect.

If there were an 80-year-old Pat, I wonder if I could convince her to watch an Indian movie over a cup of chai. Or maybe just to nibble on a samosa.

For her, in spite of what she taught me about caution, despite the world that limited her chance to follow her desires, for Pat, I hope to see more of the world and try more and do more. If you got sneakers, where them to work tomorrow. I will.

Technorati Tags: America, classics, family, India, Bollywood, life, movies, Pat, travel, women

My least favorite time of year is Spring Forward. I kind of dig Fall Back. Maybe in a past life I was a farmer, because I’m all up in the hey let’s not fuck with the clock.

Fuck you William Willet and fuck your early-rising dismay at laggards like me who don’t mind missing a little natural lighting for a little sleep.

Meanwhile, the pleasant side effect to this most hated of modern-day traditions was discovering what my still new commute is like at dusk. Winding over a mountain and eventually letting out to the sea. Literally, driving west into the sunset.

I actually rolled a tad slower. And, the soundtrack was traffic reports and Terry Gross not Bach. (Shot with Cycorder on my jailbroken iPhone. Saurik is my new favorite person I will likely never meet.)

Technorati Tags: California, commuting, home, infomercials, Pacifica, sunset, travel, video

While thinking about traveling, I thought about the family for whom I was an au pair essentially in London. It was roughly 1,000 years ago. A thousand years ago Google hadn’t been invented and cyberstalking was impossible.

But here, today, in 2009, I can websearch to beat the band and find a whole lot of folks. I’ve connected with or kept in touch with all sorts of folks from all sorts of periods of my life. I’ve also blocked emails through filtering tools to make sure I never hear from one person again.

Imagine my shock when in a fit of nostalgia I searched the very British (to me) names of the little girls I babysat. They all look to be doing great, and one of them is famous in England. When I found this article from the Daily Mail, I realized it would be too fucking crazy X-Files if all the names matched so well, and it’s not the same family.

I emailed the one associated address I could find. Somewhere in the UK, some one is either getting a nice chuckle of memory or is completely creeped out and ready to change that email address. I hope it’s the former.

Technorati Tags: computers, internet, London, travel

Apparently, Jane’s been ‘blogging and twittering up a storm, since she began working on a Broadway play.

Now, my Broadway show is going to open roughly never, and I have only been sporadically going to the gym so not feeling the burn. In other words, I’m no Jane Fonda. I mean I’ve only flown over Vietnam and haven’t slept with any California politicos. I am one-degree of separation from Ted Turner through two different people, though.

Here was my only thought for today.

I have officially become cavalier about world travel and that surprises me. When I was a kid, a veritable child of dreams and aspirations, I was learning high school French and the poems of Rimboud, not exactly the drunken boat, Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dors et t’exiles / Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur? But, I was poet enough to know that my French teacher was raping the text with her literal translations and discussion of the words over the images. (Not to mention the nice sanitized version of his friend Verlaine sans the getting it on.)

I reasoned back then, that while never called or self-identified or otherwise called out as “poor,” there weren’t no spare money lying around, and I was unlikely to see the world. Back then, while in high school I thought through what it would take and realized my best bet was heading to a college with an international program. So there I went. And, from there I went to London, now a 200-mile-an-hour train ride through a tunnel to my fantasy city. Of course, back then trains went at slower speeds, and the tunnels hadn’t been dug, and ferry boats roamed the waters. Still and all I eventually got to cross off an item on my life’s “to do” list and managed to see the White Cliffs of Dover fade into view from the Channel while Calais came closer.

I’ve been to Paris three times. Once, I went for a weekend with my art history class accompanied by our great, kooky, story-book odd duck of a British history professor. She unwaveringly enjoyed her repeated sherries and chats about art, while all around her passengers on the ferry rolled bile rising on a winter’s storm in the English Channel. Every toilet and every trash barrel was visited by some woeful seasick victim, while merrily she ordered up another glass.

The second time, I went back with the small number of crumbled pounds I had saved from my student per diem and an early edition of the Paupers’ Paris (purchased fittingly secondhand at a London charity shop) with a goal of finding the cheapest possible, non-frightening room and to live on baguettes and jam. I actually managed to hold out for over two weeks after juggling at the Beaubourg and falling in with like-minded on the poor front folks. (Pat died never knowing that I wasn’t “with friends from school” but hanging out pretending myself to be an exotic ex-pat.)

The last time I saw Paris (hmmm, that sounds familiar), I deliberately stayed near the Champs d’Elysee at a hotel that actual had some star ratings (that I found a deal on through Orbitz.com). Even better, it was the Hotel California, no finer a name has been written for a hotel thanks to the Eagles. Again I went alone, but as a bookend to a vacation that I spent with friends.

Now, today, I work where heading to Paris is about as exotic as heading down the street for a gallon of milk. The countries and continents where my coworkers (and even me) are, shift, but the travel is constant. It’s boring. It’s commonplace. It’s omnipresent. My dream, the world traveling, the meeting people from different places, the romantifying and exoticizing and fetishizing and just unbridled curiosity from my high school make believe is nearby.

Ennui with fabulous accessories and beautiful images.

Technorati Tags: Paris, Pat, travel, work

A side birthday present or at least a reminder of my mortality has been going on at the work front.

Since I got in my wagon and headed west and found myself employed, my experience hasn’t sucked entirely. Yeah, in truth I would so much prefer being rich to working, and, like, if a winning lottery ticket materialized in my hand, that Johnny Paycheck job shoving moment would taste hella sweet. But, it ain’t all bad.

Wait, I thought of one thing that’s crazy bad about the sweat shop at which I perspire. Huggling. Fucking hugging. Hello, goodbye, haven’t seen you in a while, thanks for the good meeting, hugging. Touching in an affection manner. I made it through about 20 years of career working untouched in the work force, except for a couple of awkward cuddles post some collegial beer-drinking. It’s a hostile work environment for me now with air kisses and squeezes.

Apart from the hug abomination, there’s only been one other issue. The chick that embodied everything I don’t miss from working in various hallowed, East-Coast-located halls. It was that certain snark that the natives in California just can’t do, probably because of the sweet Humboldt weed and hot tubs keeping things mellow. I think a classic example was a nice sliding lowball comment on the occasion of our house-buying in an off-the-beaten track community. Something like, “I figured out where you’re moving; I saw the sign off the highway near the airport, right?”

Yeah, that’s exactly where we moved, right there on the bypass under the bridge, sleeping to the sounds of traffic and the hum of the air traffic controllers. It’s a brand new trailer park, just opened.

Not sure if it translates well in print-like story telling, but pretty much there was a big game afoot of making sure I knew my place and that place was lower than the shoe beneath your feet. Hard sole putting down. Pointless parrying. Yeah, I get it, either you’re radically insecure or so much better than me.

And, now she’s gone. Like the wind. Like the sun that drops into the ocean that I actually do live near rather than the airport. Like my youth. Gone away leaving only memories and the path left that I got to sweep clean now. It’s a weird feeling, particularly the part where I have to clean up a bit in her wake.

One great thing is that whole count your blessings thing, where only one person was hassling me. Better, though, is cleaning up reminded me of a crazy thing in a job faraway in a galaxy long ago.

I used to have to do a lot of cleaning up of computer files and scrubbing down hard drives back to a pristine state suitable to passing off to another worker bee. In that role, I contended with a hard drive packed with Christian rock from the woman who in the wake of her leaving, so ended the the mysterious toilet-paper thieving from our office suite’s john. I’m not saying the Christian stole all the paper, I’m just saying you never saw her in the same room as the paper-grabbing villain.

All time favorite and unsolved mystery was the porno-packed cache and history files on the internet browser. Begging the question, how much do you gotta dig porn that you’re dialing it up on the computer meant for entering data about dead cancer patients? The mysteriouso part was the owner of the ‘puter with the dirty, dirty history. She was a quiet, quiet woman, probably an ancient age like I am now in the post-40 hugging middle-aged hard years. Not only did she never say “boo” to anyone, she wore pastel cardigans, sported the kind of hair that called for hair pins and had kitty pictures or maybe puppies on her desk.

When she left she presented me with a five year thick file of identical FedEx slips to prove that she only used the corporate FedEx for mailing the data files to a central repository that was actually the kind of mailing that was a required part of the gig. She also had binders of notes on every protocol and exact steps for her research and data managing work. Getting laid wasn’t something this chick’s demeanor suggested, in any way, unless it was a required part of the employment protocol, was in the binder and could be done scientifically replicated and data driven.

And she left me a whole lot of links to a whole lot of things I didn’t want to know about. Clearly, she had a penchant for the oral. People. You just never can fucking tell.

Technorati Tags: California, computers, home, pornograpnhy, life, work

M. and I took each other out shopping in the big city of San Francisco
yesterday, and then had dinner. That could have been it. But,
because M.’s birthday is tomorrow, we end up in an arms race. Inside
of yesterday being it, this fun was brought into my office today. The
birthday building must end or Armageddon is close at hand.