I love a self-righteous rant and few people are better at getting red faced and strident than Bill O'Reilly. In the wake of last week's local elections Bill had the presence of mind to state, "Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead, and if al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."
Thems is fightin' words. Bill's opinion of America's preeminent hotbed of lefty, lezzo, homo, pinko liberalism has never been in any doubt, and for that reason the urge to dismiss his remarks out of hand as those of a loud-mouthed flame-thrower are made that much easier. Never the less, another Bill—in this case his last name is Maher—was dragged over the coals in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks for thinking beyond the knee-jerk reaction of let's-hurry-up-and-kill-a-pile-of-Muslims by actually suggesting that perhaps US international policy might have played a part in fomenting the kind of sentiment that ultimately steers extremists in the direction of the World Trade Centers. He was apparently "giving comfort to terrorists".
Now it's Bill O'Reilly's turn. Inconsequential? You betcha. Hypocritical? Right on.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sunday, November 13, 2005
San Francisco Real Estate Part 3
The hallway is done. There's only one more room left to paint.
I really couldn't be happier. This protracted business of shifting into my first proper home is one that should really reach its conclusion sooner rather than later. When I open the door when I come home at night I want to see not a haphazard arrangement of partially unpacked boxes left to gape back at me as a reminder of all things not yet done; I want to kick of my shoes, grab the cat and plonk down on the sofa with a glass of wine in hand. That day is coming soon but I'm not there yet. Just one more room to go.
The noise dynamics of the place are just now being revealed. Currently the sounds of a party that's been going on across the back fence for the better part of five hours is wafting up through the cracks around my door. They're mostly women, lesbians by the looks of things, and they're fusing Mission hipster fashion sense with a healthy dose of "que onda vato" cumbia. The booze, sucked down from the piles of beer bottles that litter the area around the party-goers, has worked to throttle up the amplitude of chatter and laughter. My neighbour, Jill, let me know via a yell across the back porch last Friday night that the noise generated by Far Cry was too much to allow her to sleep. I wonder what she thinks of this.
But that's a dense urban environment for you and it's one of the aspects to life in San Francisco that I thoroughly enjoy. We're all in it together. As hackneyed and cliched as it might seem, black, white, gay, straight, whatever, we're all piled on top of each other, forced to endure the racket and stench we all generate and yet somehow we get along, minor squabbles aside. Unlike the masses farmed out in the secluded, fenced-in fortress homes of suburbia, urbanites tend to learn a kind of acceptance that comes from jamming in the ear plugs to dull the noise of the dog downstairs and not worrying about it. Generally speaking we're not afraid of the "other" - anyone dramatically different from us. Those sloppily dressed punk lesbians with their home cut hair and too-loose jeans, they're okay; in accordance with their stereotype they're usually pretty good at keeping the local bars alive and ensuring that the organic produce market gets business. And the hippy looking guy with the dreadlocks next door? He runs the daycare during the week. What's not to like about that?
So I've settled in now, I guess and the neighbourhood has had its predictable effect of making me spout a tired retread of the old "can't we all just get along" spiel. I couldn't be happier about it.
I really couldn't be happier. This protracted business of shifting into my first proper home is one that should really reach its conclusion sooner rather than later. When I open the door when I come home at night I want to see not a haphazard arrangement of partially unpacked boxes left to gape back at me as a reminder of all things not yet done; I want to kick of my shoes, grab the cat and plonk down on the sofa with a glass of wine in hand. That day is coming soon but I'm not there yet. Just one more room to go.
The noise dynamics of the place are just now being revealed. Currently the sounds of a party that's been going on across the back fence for the better part of five hours is wafting up through the cracks around my door. They're mostly women, lesbians by the looks of things, and they're fusing Mission hipster fashion sense with a healthy dose of "que onda vato" cumbia. The booze, sucked down from the piles of beer bottles that litter the area around the party-goers, has worked to throttle up the amplitude of chatter and laughter. My neighbour, Jill, let me know via a yell across the back porch last Friday night that the noise generated by Far Cry was too much to allow her to sleep. I wonder what she thinks of this.
But that's a dense urban environment for you and it's one of the aspects to life in San Francisco that I thoroughly enjoy. We're all in it together. As hackneyed and cliched as it might seem, black, white, gay, straight, whatever, we're all piled on top of each other, forced to endure the racket and stench we all generate and yet somehow we get along, minor squabbles aside. Unlike the masses farmed out in the secluded, fenced-in fortress homes of suburbia, urbanites tend to learn a kind of acceptance that comes from jamming in the ear plugs to dull the noise of the dog downstairs and not worrying about it. Generally speaking we're not afraid of the "other" - anyone dramatically different from us. Those sloppily dressed punk lesbians with their home cut hair and too-loose jeans, they're okay; in accordance with their stereotype they're usually pretty good at keeping the local bars alive and ensuring that the organic produce market gets business. And the hippy looking guy with the dreadlocks next door? He runs the daycare during the week. What's not to like about that?
So I've settled in now, I guess and the neighbourhood has had its predictable effect of making me spout a tired retread of the old "can't we all just get along" spiel. I couldn't be happier about it.
Monday, November 07, 2005
San Francisco Real Estate Part 2
One month has passed and untold cans of paint later the place is starting to feel like a home. The operative word in that sentence is "starting". Anyone with half a brain will nod a head in knowing agreement when reminded that this whole move in bizzo is at least a six month process. One down and five to go.
The colours chosen to eradicate the reminders of a cheap and shoddy interior spray by the previous owner are bold, and that's nearly an understatement. The obnoxious green in the hallway has been plastered over with an equally obnoxious greenish yellow, the living room is now a radiant orange and the bathroom honestly glows red. That, and a so-hip-it-hurts Formica table is about all I have to show for one month's worth of night in, night out labour. Where has the time gone?
A visit from my father, of course. Parents are obligated to fuss over their children whenever they take any kind of grand leap up the ladder of maturity. Purchasing this place was no exception. Dad, affectionately known as the Rog, made his first landing the Friday I moved into the property - 14 October. His stay was part of the inbound leg of a journey that would take him across the continent to DC, New York City and Princeton. I immediately put him to task.
A house guest with a vested interest is a wonderful thing - nearly as wonderful as a girlfriend with vested interest. With the work day comfortably in the past you can swing open the front door and take in an eyeful of the changes that have miraculously taken place in your absence. Usually my dad would be standing there, a little soft around the middle and bald headed, peering back at me with a wet paint brush in hand.
When all the work stretching out before you seems endless and insurmountable even the smallest accomplishments completed during the hours in which you're away count like evolutionary steps. There's one more job struck off the list, one less coat to be applied that night.
There's still a lot more to go. There's a cat that won't shut up and that way too trendy Formica table sits out in the kitchen area with no chairs to make it feel important. And I don't own a vacuum cleaner. But I've got a cat tree that came for a bargain, more cutlery than I've ever seen in one location and a vintage Danish lounge set that smells like stale urine. Care to pop over for a visit?
The colours chosen to eradicate the reminders of a cheap and shoddy interior spray by the previous owner are bold, and that's nearly an understatement. The obnoxious green in the hallway has been plastered over with an equally obnoxious greenish yellow, the living room is now a radiant orange and the bathroom honestly glows red. That, and a so-hip-it-hurts Formica table is about all I have to show for one month's worth of night in, night out labour. Where has the time gone?
A visit from my father, of course. Parents are obligated to fuss over their children whenever they take any kind of grand leap up the ladder of maturity. Purchasing this place was no exception. Dad, affectionately known as the Rog, made his first landing the Friday I moved into the property - 14 October. His stay was part of the inbound leg of a journey that would take him across the continent to DC, New York City and Princeton. I immediately put him to task.
A house guest with a vested interest is a wonderful thing - nearly as wonderful as a girlfriend with vested interest. With the work day comfortably in the past you can swing open the front door and take in an eyeful of the changes that have miraculously taken place in your absence. Usually my dad would be standing there, a little soft around the middle and bald headed, peering back at me with a wet paint brush in hand.
When all the work stretching out before you seems endless and insurmountable even the smallest accomplishments completed during the hours in which you're away count like evolutionary steps. There's one more job struck off the list, one less coat to be applied that night.
There's still a lot more to go. There's a cat that won't shut up and that way too trendy Formica table sits out in the kitchen area with no chairs to make it feel important. And I don't own a vacuum cleaner. But I've got a cat tree that came for a bargain, more cutlery than I've ever seen in one location and a vintage Danish lounge set that smells like stale urine. Care to pop over for a visit?
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
San Francisco Real Estate Part 1
I've bought a house, or rather I've bought an apartment in part of a TIC in San Francisco which constitutes one quarter of a house. TIC stands for Tennancy in Common, which is kind of like a co-op in New York City and essentially means that while I'll have my own apartment, all four TIC members are mutually responsible for the one loan. What that basically means is that if one or more of the other people on the loan decides they're too strapped to cough up the cash one month then the rest of us have to find some way to cover their delinquent arses. Welcome to San Francisco real estate. Ultimately the goal is to get the house through the condominium conversion process, but that involves a lottery that can take upwards of eight years to pass. We're chained to each other now, married together by our idiotic desire to buy a chunk of dirt in one of the most overheated housing markets in the country, if not the world.
Coughing up large sums of money is nerve-racking. Yesterday, as part of the closing process, a wire transfer was made from my Morgan Stanley account to some mysterious number at Wells Fargo. It really could have been anyone's. I'm giving them over $100,000 - nearly all of my wealth - to some nameless money grubber at Wells Fargo. Holy shit, it shouldn't be that easy to gut yourself of everything you earn. Well, I suppose it is. That's why we have casinos.
Coughing up large sums of money is nerve-racking. Yesterday, as part of the closing process, a wire transfer was made from my Morgan Stanley account to some mysterious number at Wells Fargo. It really could have been anyone's. I'm giving them over $100,000 - nearly all of my wealth - to some nameless money grubber at Wells Fargo. Holy shit, it shouldn't be that easy to gut yourself of everything you earn. Well, I suppose it is. That's why we have casinos.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Ikea = Hell
Don't ever try to return anything to Ikea. Just don't do it. If you have something in your hand that you think might be nice, say a lamp that looks like a block of Lush soap with an LED and a plastic monkey pulled out of a bag of chips shoved up inside it, then don't get it. You'll only have to return it a month later.
Tucked away in the far reaches of the Swedish tundra lies a bunker filled with bald-headed scientists devoted to analysing the extent of human endurance when placed in a stark, white room furnished with pine slat benches, staff trained to move with the exact oppose of the type of efficiency promised by the McDonalds-of-Furniture Ikea system, and no clock. No clock. Its absence couldn't be more conspicuous. If you had a clock ticking away in front of you you'd be acutely aware of the fact that the line simply isn't moving, and that number 47 has been sitting up there on the display for the last half an hour! And that's at 8pm on a Saturday night! Why does it have to be so hard? Why can't we just get our money back in a few minutes and get back to what we really want to do: shop! Those bunkered dorks high up in the Gulf of Bothnia need to pull their heads out of their collective arses and realise that if we weren't sitting around on our numbing butts we'd be back in the store shopping for shitty pine furniture with names like Plopp and Farrt. Ikea can take its bland, generic contemporary bedcovers and production line art for the masses and shove it up its arse.
Next time I'll go to the Container Store.
Tucked away in the far reaches of the Swedish tundra lies a bunker filled with bald-headed scientists devoted to analysing the extent of human endurance when placed in a stark, white room furnished with pine slat benches, staff trained to move with the exact oppose of the type of efficiency promised by the McDonalds-of-Furniture Ikea system, and no clock. No clock. Its absence couldn't be more conspicuous. If you had a clock ticking away in front of you you'd be acutely aware of the fact that the line simply isn't moving, and that number 47 has been sitting up there on the display for the last half an hour! And that's at 8pm on a Saturday night! Why does it have to be so hard? Why can't we just get our money back in a few minutes and get back to what we really want to do: shop! Those bunkered dorks high up in the Gulf of Bothnia need to pull their heads out of their collective arses and realise that if we weren't sitting around on our numbing butts we'd be back in the store shopping for shitty pine furniture with names like Plopp and Farrt. Ikea can take its bland, generic contemporary bedcovers and production line art for the masses and shove it up its arse.
Next time I'll go to the Container Store.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
I'll Do What You Tell Me
Since moving to the USA back in 1998 my writing efforts have taken a slide. Such a slide in fact that I haven't really done much at all in the past eight years aside from write a few scathing emails to coworkers and attempt to woo unknown women on Nerve.com. Well that's all changed.
Two weeks ago my 32nd birthday swung around and my girlfriend, the Great Organiser, decided that as a gift she'd invest in my personal betterment. She enrolled me in a creative non-fiction class at UC Berkeley.
Each minute of my days seems to be carefully measured, starting with my 6am wakeup routine and ending when I finally drop the landing gear and climb into bed sometime around 10pm. A class over in Berkeley was the last thing I needed. But I'm a dutiful boyfriend and despite The Great Organiser's offers to cancel the class and exchange the gift for something else I kept my holy crap, when will I ever find the time comments to myself, smiled and told her not to worry. I'd do it. Offers of that kind are never actually meant to be accepted. They're the cheques you're never supposed to cash, at least not unless you want to go home alone when the birthday party's done and wank over that oversized collection of porn you've downloaded over your 3Mb/s cable modem connection.
The issue at stake here is complacency. The holy crap reaction is precisely the kind of reaction that's been going on ad-infinitum ever since corporate America got a hold of me and beat out the spontaneous creative drive. All the best intentions were never going to overcome the signup fee and the commitment to drive back early from San Jose to San Francisco, quickly change, scoff some hastily-prepared food down my gullet, charge down 24th Street and then jump on a Richmond-bound BART train. If an external motivator comes in the form of a girlfriend with my personal development interests in mind then I'll take it. She's only looking out for me and in a way that I can't seem to do for myself.
The part about finding the room in which the class was held is not worthy detailed description but uncovering its whereabouts took a while and involved repeated trips back to the Union office where I was treated nicely but given just enough information to make a real cockup of each successive attempt to find the classroom. But I found it of course.
Wandering in with a nervous wave of my hand as if to absolve myself of my tardiness I quickly surveyed the room - lots of women, almost all women, and there's the instructor, presiding over the class from behind her desk. In an effort to reinforce her status amongst the hip she was wearing those 1950's grandma type glasses with the pointy cornered rims. They've got a proper name, I expect, but I'll be buggered if I know what it is. Spilling out around her shoulders was a frizzy mass of hair that might or might not have been set that way by design. In any case it matched her image and with that settled in my mind I sat down. Almost directly opposite me sat a man sporting the mulligrub beard, the kind of shirt sold to tourists too self-conscious to pick up the Red Bull t-shirt at a flea market somewhere in South East Asia and socks with closed-toe Birkenstock sandals. We're in for a beauty, I thought to myself.
It's introduction time and around the room the conch shell gets passed. There's the young Indian mother who wants to write a childrens book that explains Hinduism. She's got her four year old daughter in mind and the instruction, Heather, seems to think there might be a publishable buck or two in there somewhere. I'm inclinded to agree. Kids are suckers for multi-armed, elephant-headed, blue-skinned gods. The other ladies are an assortment of overly ambitious types, all seeking to set the world ablaze with their literary genius. "I know I'm gifted," yep, thanks for telling everyone here. If you were truly gifted you probably wouldn't be resorting to after-hours classes. Women struck with a starry-eyed sense of grandeur about themselves never seem to be in short supply at places like this. Pump a couple of undergraduate years worth of Simone de Beauvoir and Dostoyevsky up their arses and they come out the other side thinking they're the female Arthur Rimbaud. "I'm interested in genre-bending. I want to write an existentialist piece from a woman's perspective because I really like existentialism but it's never been done from a woman's point of view. I studied literature at college and I consider myself a feminist." Okay, so maybe she sees herself as more of the XX spin on Jean Paul Satre and I saw myself as running for the door. Full points must go to the instructor, Heather, who in the most polite yet excitable way possible told her that existentialism left the building with Maynard G. Krebbs.
Sitting last in the ring of soon-to-be-recognised creative non-fiction giants was a blonde-haired women, garishly dressed and fresh from a flight from Virginia. As her story was told - and yes, fist raised to the air, she's a feminist too - she recounted the tale of her aunt murdering her six year old niece (or nephew, I can't recall which). It was genuinely riveting stuff and Heather seemed to agree. "That's a book," she was told by Ms. FrizzyHairPointyGlasses. No shit. There'll be more about this basket-case of a family situation as the weeks unfold.
So the homework? Write about my birth. Some of that was done back in 1987 when I wrote my "autobiography" for Mr. McKinnon in year 9 English. It go me an A back then so I don't see why it can't stand for a friendly reconsitution some 18 years later. The other thing to do is get back into the discipline of writing, something that's been sorely lacking in my life for those afore mentioned eight years. Start writing a journal, I was told. Well, if you consider blogging a journal here it is.
I'll do what you tell me.
Two weeks ago my 32nd birthday swung around and my girlfriend, the Great Organiser, decided that as a gift she'd invest in my personal betterment. She enrolled me in a creative non-fiction class at UC Berkeley.
Each minute of my days seems to be carefully measured, starting with my 6am wakeup routine and ending when I finally drop the landing gear and climb into bed sometime around 10pm. A class over in Berkeley was the last thing I needed. But I'm a dutiful boyfriend and despite The Great Organiser's offers to cancel the class and exchange the gift for something else I kept my holy crap, when will I ever find the time comments to myself, smiled and told her not to worry. I'd do it. Offers of that kind are never actually meant to be accepted. They're the cheques you're never supposed to cash, at least not unless you want to go home alone when the birthday party's done and wank over that oversized collection of porn you've downloaded over your 3Mb/s cable modem connection.
The issue at stake here is complacency. The holy crap reaction is precisely the kind of reaction that's been going on ad-infinitum ever since corporate America got a hold of me and beat out the spontaneous creative drive. All the best intentions were never going to overcome the signup fee and the commitment to drive back early from San Jose to San Francisco, quickly change, scoff some hastily-prepared food down my gullet, charge down 24th Street and then jump on a Richmond-bound BART train. If an external motivator comes in the form of a girlfriend with my personal development interests in mind then I'll take it. She's only looking out for me and in a way that I can't seem to do for myself.
The part about finding the room in which the class was held is not worthy detailed description but uncovering its whereabouts took a while and involved repeated trips back to the Union office where I was treated nicely but given just enough information to make a real cockup of each successive attempt to find the classroom. But I found it of course.
Wandering in with a nervous wave of my hand as if to absolve myself of my tardiness I quickly surveyed the room - lots of women, almost all women, and there's the instructor, presiding over the class from behind her desk. In an effort to reinforce her status amongst the hip she was wearing those 1950's grandma type glasses with the pointy cornered rims. They've got a proper name, I expect, but I'll be buggered if I know what it is. Spilling out around her shoulders was a frizzy mass of hair that might or might not have been set that way by design. In any case it matched her image and with that settled in my mind I sat down. Almost directly opposite me sat a man sporting the mulligrub beard, the kind of shirt sold to tourists too self-conscious to pick up the Red Bull t-shirt at a flea market somewhere in South East Asia and socks with closed-toe Birkenstock sandals. We're in for a beauty, I thought to myself.
It's introduction time and around the room the conch shell gets passed. There's the young Indian mother who wants to write a childrens book that explains Hinduism. She's got her four year old daughter in mind and the instruction, Heather, seems to think there might be a publishable buck or two in there somewhere. I'm inclinded to agree. Kids are suckers for multi-armed, elephant-headed, blue-skinned gods. The other ladies are an assortment of overly ambitious types, all seeking to set the world ablaze with their literary genius. "I know I'm gifted," yep, thanks for telling everyone here. If you were truly gifted you probably wouldn't be resorting to after-hours classes. Women struck with a starry-eyed sense of grandeur about themselves never seem to be in short supply at places like this. Pump a couple of undergraduate years worth of Simone de Beauvoir and Dostoyevsky up their arses and they come out the other side thinking they're the female Arthur Rimbaud. "I'm interested in genre-bending. I want to write an existentialist piece from a woman's perspective because I really like existentialism but it's never been done from a woman's point of view. I studied literature at college and I consider myself a feminist." Okay, so maybe she sees herself as more of the XX spin on Jean Paul Satre and I saw myself as running for the door. Full points must go to the instructor, Heather, who in the most polite yet excitable way possible told her that existentialism left the building with Maynard G. Krebbs.
Sitting last in the ring of soon-to-be-recognised creative non-fiction giants was a blonde-haired women, garishly dressed and fresh from a flight from Virginia. As her story was told - and yes, fist raised to the air, she's a feminist too - she recounted the tale of her aunt murdering her six year old niece (or nephew, I can't recall which). It was genuinely riveting stuff and Heather seemed to agree. "That's a book," she was told by Ms. FrizzyHairPointyGlasses. No shit. There'll be more about this basket-case of a family situation as the weeks unfold.
So the homework? Write about my birth. Some of that was done back in 1987 when I wrote my "autobiography" for Mr. McKinnon in year 9 English. It go me an A back then so I don't see why it can't stand for a friendly reconsitution some 18 years later. The other thing to do is get back into the discipline of writing, something that's been sorely lacking in my life for those afore mentioned eight years. Start writing a journal, I was told. Well, if you consider blogging a journal here it is.
I'll do what you tell me.
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