So I've had a few minutes to think about this and I have to ask: Who the hell bets on figure skating? I mean, is this what the once proud mob has come to? Anna asks:

"what happened to mobsters? they used to be so cool; involved in cool crimes like drugs and racketeering and casinos"

Indeed...

I knew it. Olympic figure skating is fixed by the mob. Maybe I was too hard on those Canadians for whining....

Well this speculative report suggests that Bin Laden's dead. As I've said before, dead but not a martyr is probably the best condition for him to be, from the US's perspective. That way he just seems quiet and lame, like a race horse past his prime, fading into obscurity.

This report about how Bin Laden's reputation is kind of growing in the Arab world is a bit scary. The Wall Street Journal made a good point, saying that radical Islam is the *only* dissenting perspective tolerated in many of these countries, so people don't really have a great choice other than the government-spun fodder. I think it's more something like the natural tendancy of anger. Like water, it seeks an outlet.

I'm on a deadline again today, so there's not much time for blogging, but I do have this public service announcement. If someone spams you, forward it to the FTC: uce@ftc.gov -- they're actually interested in knowing.

Streaking may be back, but nudity is on the wane in Germany? What's this? According to this report nobody's runing nude at Munich's English Garden anymore. Maybe all the nudists are all at track and field events, just streaking away!!

Yay! Streaking is BACK, baby. I predict that trucker culture and cb radios will soon be all the rage.

Boy this must be old hat for Nick. His company IPOed today. Actually, it's probably very new hat. Things just aren't the same as they were, and Nick, dear soul, is a contractor.

A few years back, I returned to the town I grew up in -- well at least until age 9 -- way out on the Canadian prairie. It was amazing to see how my memory had jumbled things in the intervening years. First off, the town was much smaller than I remembered it, I had taken parts of the town and mixed them up like pieces of a puzzle, hills were smaller, forgotten landmarks popped up. Now I don't remember anything disappearing outright, but my mind had certainly monkeyed with the reality of Souris Manitoba -- enough to make my mental picture of it unrecognizable to most.

Do I have false memories of my childhood? I certainly have enough from my adulthood. Living with "the elephant," Anna Dow, has taught me that much. I often remember saying things or coming up with ideas that she claims were her own. I have no doubt that memory is shaped through repetition. In our criminal justice system, we see this all the time. Five people witness the same event, but all have different recollections of what happened. Memories are like stones we take out and polish again and again. And by doing so, we shape them.

And I believe that sometimes we create them whole cloth.

So it was interesting to read in the NY Times today that victims' associations are protesting the inclusion of a skeptic on the lay board (unfortunate name, no?) the Catholic church has set up to investigate allegations of priest sexual abuse. I don't know if you remember this, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the US was gripped by allegations of Satanic cults in our nursery schools. Children all across the country came forward with memories of bizarre tales of mass rapings and strange rituals in nursery schools, none of which have ever been corroborated. This was the Salem Witch craze of what is called the "recovered memory movement." According to skeptic Michael Shermer, this movement, which appears to use techniques not unlike brainwashing (truth serum injections, hypnosis, suggestive questioning) to help people "recover" memories, "became a full-blown witch craze when Ellen Bass and Laura Davis published The Courage to Heal: A guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse in 1988. One of its conclusions was, 'If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were.'" The book sold over 750,000 copies.

Shermer has a theory about how a kind of "feedback loop" is created in cases like the Salem witch Satanic cult crazes where people basically create the conditions to discover what they want to discover. The more people that come forward, the more people come forward, until almost everyone is accused, at which point common sense intervenes. Bass and Davis estimate that as many as one-third to one-half of all women were sexually abused as children -- numbers that seem to defy common sense.

So in this context, it's interesting to look at the allegations of sexual abuse that are happening at the Catholic Church. Are we witnessing a wave of false memory hysteria? I don't think so, and neither does controversial lay board appointee Dr. Paul R. McHugh former chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. McHugh is also a member of the False Memory Foundation and therefore a skeptic who can't possibly be trusted, according to victims advocates, who seem incapable of conceiving as something so heinous as a false accusation -- even with millions of dollars in lawsuits being thrown around.

McHugh says the most intelligent thing about his bias, however. According to the Times:

"He said that most cases of clergy abuse did not involve recovered memories and that he believed that his work would not get in the way of his concern for the victims of priests.

"It is possible to be against false charges of abuse and to believe that true charges of abuse are deplorable, a crime, and ought to be done away with," he said."

The NY Times has a mockery of a story about how the Internet has destroyed everyone's privacy. Their case in point? Some codger who was shocked that the stuff she posted on the Web remained public even when removed.

"When she got home, she immediately removed some information from the family Web site, including the turtle story, which her father had posted in 1995, "when the Web was more innocent," she said. But then she discovered that a copy of the story remains available through Google's database of archived Web pages. "You can't remove pieces of yourself from the Web," Ms. Crick said.

The gradual erosion of personal privacy is hardly a new trend. For years, privacy advocates have been spinning cautionary tales about the perils of living in the electronic age."

Huh? They're actually talking about expectations of privacy for stuf that's posted to the Web? You know they call it the World Wide Web? This is a bit like going on television and then claiming a loss of privacy when someone tapes your performance. Duh!

So this dude, James Traficant gets expelled from congress after a federal jury finds that he, "raked in bribes from businesses and kickbacks from staff, filed false tax returns and forced aides to work on his family farm and boat." The vote to expel is 420-1.

Who voted against? You guessed it: Gary Condit.

And I really thought I'd be most like Klinger. I guess the drinking & sex sealed it.

I am becoming cynical. Learning is like a lifelong war against cynicism because the more you learn, it seems, the more cynical you can become. I just read this story in the New Yorker that makes the very good point that the American political system is pretty much held hostage by the Constitutional requirement that each state get two senators, regardless of size. Hendrik Hertzberg argues that this amounts to handing over the balance of power (e.g. a Constitutional amendment requires a 2/3rds vote in the Senate = 67 senators; Senators representing the 13 smallest states, therefore, can hold up Constitutional amendments; they represent 5% of America's population). This is really geographically-based affirmative action. Hertzberg points out that there are no blacks in the Senate. They make up 12% of the population. Guess how many Senators are from the under-populated states representing 12% of America's population? Forty-four.

This is important reading for the Bobs and Annas of the world. If Anna and I ever have children, I'd want them to be palindromes. Otto or Lil... or Nan perhaps, but my favorite is Anissina.

So some dude is going around North Beach gluing American flag decals (with industrial strength glue that somehow makes them both really hard to remove, and "peel with the fog," according to SF Public Works) onto all the lamp posts that were recently painted with the colors of the Italian flag.

From the Chronicle:
"Yee's story indeed seems to have cemented some people's opinion of San Francisco as that wacky Left Coast city, the too-liberal town that named itself a sanctuary for medical marijuana smokers, offers employees sex change benefits and debated whether it's fair to fine people for peeing on the streets."

Well, it's true that you don't see the Chinese flag painted on lamp posts in Chinatown, but I think this guy is just annoying, and I think it's great that DPW has the guts to go after him even if he's playing the old flag card. So what, they made IBM pay $100,000 to remove Linux Penguin stencils they'd spray-painted on the streets of San Francisco. I like Linux, but I was happy to see IBM get billed. I'm just sick of these moronic assumptions that people make.

Just because you don't want some idiot crazy gluing shit all over your city, you're un-patriotic. It's bullshit. Like the dude who wrote, "Now that I read that you have a problem with the American flag being portrayed in your city...I think it is a putrid cesspool of oversensitive idiots swimming in a bay of political correctness." I'd like to go and crazy glue a few thousand flag decals onto his nice suburban home and see how patriotic he felt after that.

And the worst of it is that this surge of mindless patriotism is coming at a time when the anointed head of our nation is giving us less reasons to feel patriotic than ever before. His corporate buddies get off, our civil liberties get curtailed, and the world is rightly indignant about our arrogance and narrow-mindedness. How about this: How about we feel patriotic about something we do, rather than something that's done to us? How about we take responsibility for being the biggest polluter in the world? How about we broker peace in Israel, after we've contributed so much to the conflict there? How about we leave the Venezuelan democracy alone and repair our own tarnished democratic system? How about we interfere less in international affairs? Remember the days when America was a neutral democracy with a small army?

I guess I'm just angry at the assumption that there's only one way to be patriotic: by being a mindless blowhard.

But you wanted to hit Ned Flanders over the head with that pipe!

This is pathetic. California Gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon has been under fire for refusing to release his tax returns, but in this climate of corporate malfeasance and voter mistrust, this has become more and more of an issue for him. So yesterday he finally did make his tax returns public. For three hours. No copies. No cameras. No accountants. Apparently they were the size of a phone book. If I were the IRS, I'd take that as a sign.

Let's Go Kill Somebody!!!

"As Mr. Bush stood surrounded by the camouflage-clad troops of the 10th Mountain Division, among the first sent to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan last fall, one of the soldiers yelled, "Let's get Saddam!" Mr. Bush, dressed in shirt sleeves, just smiled for a moment as a roar of approval raced through the crowd. He did not mention Iraq but hardly stepped in to quell the cheers."

Can somebody please explain the Olympics to me? The NBA can send it's dream team of professional players to blow everyone out of the water in basketball, but if the flowers of Canadian figure skating join Stars on Ice, they're no longer eligible?

I was amazed to read that you can still buy these. Some of my fondest memories of childhood are of me spending my 10 cent allowance on Popeye cigarettes and practicing the tasty and rewarding habit of smoking.

Maybe I should get a carton of these for Trish. Today's her birthday.

Happy Birthday Trish!

The blogging bandwagon grows. This SFGate story about blogging makes a lot of the same points I've made here before, but in light of my mood today towards corporate journalism, I think it's worth a look. Also, I like the question the story raises about whether blogging is the 21st century version of last decade's Zine mania. It'll be interesting to see how long the momentum keeps up.

Another quote: "[bloggers are] worried that too much attention from the mainstream press will dent the no-corporate-sponsors purity of the blogging world." This seems like pretty much directly co-relatable to the long term ability of the bloggers to hold an audience. If blogging is successful, it will be co-opted. But it will never be strangled by the regulators like television or radio, or priced and distributed out of the real world like print. At least, that's my hope.

Site of the week!

Freedom to Shut Your Mouth

I spent 20 minutes watching he most critically-acclaimed local newscast in San Francisco (Fox - KTVU) before checking out in disgust. I know I'm not saying anything new here, but thank god for the Internet. The longer I live here, the more cynical I become about mainstream American journalism. It's that bad.

Anna was pointing out last night how odd it is that nobody is really following up on this Bush insider trading story. It's at least as significant as Whitewater -- more so, given the corporate reforms that he's blocking these days -- but you'd have to read the paper to know anything about them. They're effectively censored from broacast. And then, this morning, I read about Connie Chung criticizing Martina Navratilova during a recent intervew (Caveat: the source for this link is a pro-Bush site).
Chung's quote about Navratilova's comparison of the US to a totalitarian state:

"Can I be honest with you? I can tell you that when I read this, I have to tell you that I, I thought it was un-American, unpatriotic. I wanted to say, go back to Czechoslovakia. You know, if you don't like it here, this a country that gave you so much, gave you the freedom to do what you want"

This from the same woman who lied to an old lady to get her to dis Hillary Clinton.

At least Jaromir Jagr knows what's up. Go Reagan!

I guess Mike and Melissa are back in the Ol' US of A now. If you missed any of Mike's fascinating insights into Korean Culture, check out this link.

This is the first place I've lived where tour guides stop in front of your house. They appear like outbreaks of poppies in the summertime, throughout North Beach. The line at the Stinking Rose grows, strangers are always lingering over Italian American menus as I walk along Columbus.

I used to hate the tourist season in North Beach. It felt like an invasions: locusts, all with the same flex map, looking for the same check-box attractions, lost and in my way. But this year I'm all avuncular. I want to help them out... to give these people just a small taste of the place I've chosen to live my life. In short, I like it here and I'll make no excuses about it.

Case in point: today Anna and I strolled out to our front yard, Washington Square to listen to some local poets read. Some kind of poetry/charity event was going on in the park, and it was kind of fun to go out and sit in the sun with a few hundred people and listen to poetry. In Roman society poetry readings were a pretty important part of civic life -- something that's apparently been replaced by rock concerts, or perhaps television news, I'm not really sure -- and it gives me a sense of classical refinement to go out and experience the spoken word with the populace.

How glorious: to be out in the sunshing in your neighborhood and hearing poets rail about the indignities of City Light's deification of Jack Kerouac ("Jack Jack go the Jackhammers") and the Evil One: Morloch Ferlenghetti who runs the place. How wonderful to hear people attempting their own form of contact with the poetic, with that great powerful force out there that impels us to sit down and write poetry.

At the same time, spending a couple of hours listening to local poets reading can give you an understanding of why poetry is no longer the populist art it once was. It really comes down to this: giving a fuck about presentation. Perhaps we should blame the printing press, but the fact of the matter is that most poets suck at reading. And often those who are good, often only appear so in contrast. And poets who sing? Why can't they ever sing well? A singing poet who cannot sing is nothing more than a failed lyricist.

There were enough great moments in the 7 or so poets we heard today to give me hope that all is not lost, but as far as me and ole poetry go, I'm sticking to the written form for the time being.

Well I guess I'm not the only person who believes that technology can be used for bad things and that security should involve more than "confiscating tweezers." I can't see our current Supreme Court -- they guys who put Bush in office -- ruling in his favor, though.

New from Craque POT: WirelessAudible (TM)

I've gotten over my initial rush of irony on reading this story on how George Orwell didn't realize that technology is, in fact, good for you. I mean, it feels like we are so much closer to an Oceania nightmare than we were two years ago. But on the other hand, I'm a bit tired of these 21st century luddites who can't distinguish between "different" and "bad." Orwell's argument was that in the same way that the industrial revolution reached its apogee in World War I, the communications revolution (mass media; propoganda; state surveilance) had only just begun with World War II. And I think it's stiill too early to tell what horrors a wireless, computerized, networld world might wreak.

I don't think it's really a question of whether technology is good or bad. Nearly 100 years after WWI, is industrialization good or bad? I think, neither. It has brought benefits as well as ills. I think the same will eventually be said of the communication revolution, but it's hard to say whether or not we've reached the scariest part when the ride is still going on. Personally, I doubt it.

This morning there was an email in my in-box about a story I'd written last fall that was published maybe four months ago in Linux Magazine. It's strange how stories I write will be sent out to our thousands of subscribers and newsstand purchasers, but the world of print publication is a very quiet world. Not many people write in about print stories and within a month or so of publication even those few voices fall silent. Stories seem almost dead after that. Nobody writes. Nobody cares. But when they get posted online, there's this miraculous rebirth. The emails begin to fly again, and -- most humblingly -- the online discussion begins.

Of course the apotheosis of online discussion is Slashdot. Which is, essentially, a very successful Weblog. It's an interesting experience to be linked on Slashdot. While only a handful of people bothered to write me about this story while it was in print, 250 have already commented on the online version at Slashdot. The really interesting thing, however, is that so few of those comments (maybe five) actually say anything worthwhile. I guess this is the lesson of blogging, as well as online discussion. To quote Eddie Izzard, it's like singing the national anthem: 10% what you say, 20% how loud you say it, and 70% how you look.

In this week's New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell writes about the over-rating of intelligence during the McKinsey-indoctrinated 1990s. He focuses on Enron, which he sees as fostering fundamentally "narcissistic" corporate culture -- a place where people are self-confident beyond their abilities and unable to admit mistakes -- and it sure reminds me of Silicon Valley a few years ago. There's this one great quote by Skilling about how if a business unit cannot attract employees, "That's a good sign that it's a business Enron shouldn't be in." With logic like that, they'd have totally dominated the roller coaster and ice cream testing business -- if only the gods of accounting hadn't cut their joy ride short.

On the other hand Gladwell doesn't really answer the question of how to fit intelligence into an industry. Established industries like consumer products or commodities trading is one thing, but software and entertainment, industries where stars have a more tangible effect on the bottom line, are something altogether different. I mean, how many times can you re-invent retail before you're merely creating Webvan?

I've been on a deadline this week -- no time to blog. But I do have this interesting link to Gregory's Seoul Shack

I have this ongoing debate with my mother about whether or not Father's Day should be recognized. As Anna has pointed out before, most of these Hallmark Holidays are just set up to let you either buy or disappoint -- there's really nothing redeeming about them, in my opinion. At any rate, perhaps the next time I get grief about spacing on Flag Day or Secretary's Day, or Drive Your Dog to Work Day, I should just complain about how nobody observed When A Car Drives Past Your Window Blasting That Jewel Song Where She Says "You Can Be Henry Miller And I'll Be Anais Nin" But She Pronounces Anais Like An Asshole, That's The Signal Day! (which is today, by the way)

Is it just me, or has Nick found a soulmate here?

I read Peter Shaffer's play "Equus" today, on Karaab's recommendation. A little more snappy and fast moving than "Buried Child," which Karaab (who Vinie mysteriously calls "C" for some reason) Anna, Vinnie and I saw on Thursday.

To digress for a moment, "Buried Child" was an amazingly fun disappointment. The four of us had read it with another friend, Moriah, about a year ago and I think we all imagined a more exciting production than what ACT delivered, but he had a good time. By the third act we had lost enough respect for the performance to spend the first few minutes of its performance rushing around the east side of the theatre, opening and shutting doors and distracting earnest theatre-goers as we scrambled for a way to sneak into those nifty loge seats at stage right. Finally we enlisted the help of an usher, who overcame his initial reluctance ( "it's my brother's 33rd birthday!!) and graciously led us to where we could do the least damage -- the lower loge.

Anyhow, "Equus" is one of those, "How far have we come from our natural state?!!" tales. It's a good play, and a really exciting read, but reading modern theatre bitching about the "distortions forced on the spirit by 'civilized' society" (quoting from the back blurb) always strikes me as disingenuous. After all, isn't theatre one of these "distortions" forced on us? Well, maybe just Andrew Lloyd Weber. I feel that something gets lost in this romanticizing of the primitive and the natural, and maybe it's this: nature isn't any more beneficent than free markets. Neither has a conscience. Now nature is certainly more beautiful, and I think that it has a kind of basic goodness that only people like G.W. Bush ascribe to free markets (as if such a thing ever existed), but most of us chose not to live in it, and for good reason. Not simply because we've been brainwashed by "civilized society."

I don't know if this is big news outside of San Francisco, but a few days ago a woman at SFO was kicked off her flight for jokingly asking whether or not her pilots were sober. Not really an illegitimate question, given the events of the past week.

What everyone seems to be missing is that air travel is becoming a kind of communion with the dead of September 11th, and airport security is a ritualistic experience. We all know that airport security is inconsistent, ineffective, and was incapable of averting the tragedies of September 11th. So why do we put up with it? The logical answer is "because it's the best that we can do," but as the experience of this SFO America West passenger illustrated, airport security does not have anything to do about making air travel safer. The last thing a terrorist would do is make a joke about drunk airline pilots. If airport security was about safety, the guards would be well trained, they would look you in the eye, they would use judgement. They wouldn't just harass anyone who did anything out of the ordinary.

But as a ritual, none of these rational criteria really matter. What matters is that we all participate, and that we get some sense of transcendence from the experience. It wouldn't feel right to fly without going through airport security, not because we'd feel any less safe, but because we'd miss the ritual.

If you look at the conventional definition of rituals you can see that a security check fits pretty neatly into the criteria:

Function of Ritual: "Sign or marker for important transition, step, direction... Sanctuary, safe space for exploration, release, celebration "
-Obviously fits with airport security checks.

Sources of rituals. "Traditional forms from your family, community, culture, or religious background."
-We're talking about a community-derived ritual here.

Resistance to Ritual. "Most people in our culture experience some discomfort, awkwardness, embarrassment, vulnerability, or resistance to engaging in ritual."
-Say no more...

The point I'm trying to make is that many aspects of the security check from the litany-like "Has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry something..." to the banning of jokes, to the randomly buzzing metal detectors, are symbolic rather than rational or functional. The end goal of a security check is to give us an experience... a sense that there is a relationship between our government, ourselves, and the horrible tragedies of this world.

Life couldn't go on without security checks after September 11th, not because of a public demand for safety, but because of an overwhelming need to participate in a meaningful ritual. In the same way that Christians remember the horrible crucifixion of one man by putting breakable ornaments on a tree, we remember the horrible events of September 11th by submitting ourselves the indignities of incompetent airport security.

Mike's Must-Watch TV List

Now this is the kind of library service I can get behind.

OK, this is interesting. Pete is making some major life changes these days, and I think I speak for the entire Filbert community when I say, "Go Pete!" Nothing like a couple of weeks in the Catskills to give you a new perspective. Hopefully, he'll continue blogging while he's re-architecting his life. I'd hate to miss out on any more turns of phrase like, " i hate going in there every shift with the intensity of a million exploding '79 shitbrown pintos." Good stuff, Pete.

Happy birthday Vinnie!. And cheer up, man, 33 may start slow, but you do get a new change of clothes by year's end... I'm pretty sure.

One area outside of politics where I indulge in a kind of fetishistic obsession is the world of office supplies. It's infinitely more rewarding to acquire office supplies than do actual office work. When I was at GCI back in 1995, I almost lost it when I saw co-worker Lisa Ping's red Boston stapler. Slick, streamlined, and Red Rocket Red, I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. I really wanted to steal it, then and there, but my conscience intervened. Plus, I knew that my public display of covetousness would brand me as the obvious suspect if ever there were an inquiry into the Boston's disappearance.

Well apparently, I'm not the only person to be fetishistic over red staplers. This article from the Wall Street Journal talks about the impact that the stapler from Office Spaces has had on the industry.

George W. Bush: The S&M President

Reading about Bush's politically expedient and disingenuous finger rapping of Wall Street yesterday, I've been trying to figure out why his popularity remains so high. The man was not elected to the office, reversed his campaign promises of smaller government and no "nation-building," is spending the United States into fiscal oblivion, and in every way seems to be the Warren G. Harding of our times, and yet he remains phenomenally popular. Why?

Well for one thing he has already accomplished something that Clinton was incapable of during his entire presidency: Decisive action. The American people know the difference between firing a couple of cruises somewhere and deposing a foreign government, and whether you think the campaign in Afghanistan was right or wrong, it has been decisive. The Taliban are gone, and a whole new government is being assassinated these days.

This sense of decisiveness, I think, ties into a deeper, darker relationship between the Bush administration and the American people. Where Clinton was like a family member -- a talented uncle, beloved, but somehow unable to stay out of trouble, our relationship with Bush has the erotic charge of sadomasochism.

Consider this: according to the first essay on this page, "The three main features of masochism are pain, bondage or loss of control, and humiliation or embarrassment While Clinton said, "I feel your pain," Bush has made it clear that he expects the War on Terrorism to be painful and costly. And he has this lack of sensitivity about issues: the environment, international relations, workers rights, that many people find liberating: "You will feel pain."

As for loss of control: more people voted for Al Gore than George Bush. The Florida Supreme Court's ruling on the recount was overturned. You can be arrested at the whim of the FBI and citizens can have constitutionally-endowed rights suspended. Secret tribunals. Strip searches at airports. Wire taps. This is all fetishistically appealing to the American public.

Finally, humiliation or embarrassment. Bush seems to go out of his way to embarrass us internationally. He "looked Putin in the eye" and knew he was a good guy. Well it must be Machiavelli time, mustn't it? Worse still, he makes us feel humiliated for such decent and basic qualities as tolerence, dissent, compassion, and empathy.

In the end, this is a liberating experience for a people that does not want the responsibility of a superpower. We like to think of ourselves as little Paul Bunyan's, driving our SUVs in a new, safer, wilderness, minding our own business, doing a good deed every now and then, and just basically being upstanding Americans. Masochism is a fundamentally liberating experience. It's not about wanting to experience pain, but more about the idea of being liberated from responsibility. As the Peplove article points out, how can you worry about paying the rent or your crappy job when you're tied and blindfolded. You're living in the now and nobody can expect anything more of you than to just hang out there and take whatever's coming your way. "Trust me" says the dominatrix. Forget Palestine. You are born anew. Arms exports? Corrupt puppet regimes? Forget about it. You're a patriot. Lash! You're a little girl. Spank! You're an American.

Britain enters the 21st century

My daily dose of Canadian pride. It seems very Canadian to excel at the un-flashy yet technically demanding task of sniping.

Wow. The Wall Street Jounal says Blogging stands beside such great American institutions as Cops & Firemen, Science, the American Dream... and Television Entertainment as a sign of what's right with America.

In between frothing at the mouth about how great American peaches, journalists like her, and the American military are, Peggy Noonan manages to articulate: "Blogging. The 24-7 opinion sites that offer free speech at its straightest, truest, wildest, most uncensored, most thoughtful, most strange. Thousands of independent information entrepreneurs are informing, arguing, adding information. Imagine if we'd had them in 1776... Blogs may one hard day become clearinghouses for civil support and information when other lines, under new pressure, break down."

Though I agree with her (albeit less frothily) about blogging, I guess she wasn't watching ABC last night, when they aired the replacement show for "Politically Incorrect." Ted Koppel's "Up Close," which is apparently a summer-long experiment in celebrity journalism (David Letterman was the first person to be -- yawn -- "Up Closed." How ironic: he wanted his job and now he's talking to him!!! Ooh. How delectable!). In the fall the slot gets filled by -- get this -- a stand-up comic hosting a talk show! Yeah, it's the new Golden Age of Television.

Disturbed. I woke up this morning with the theme from Money to Burn going through my head.

They said we were losers
But we'll prove them wrong
'Cause we've got....
Money to burn
Money to burn

It's a charming low-budget movie about a school guidance counselor who recruits a couple of teenaged misfits to knock over the US Treasury in order to pay for his daughter's plastic surgery. His rational for choosing a couple of green bumbling fuckups as accomplices: teenagers won't have to do as much jail time when they get caught. Ahh... the perfect crime!

I received my first-ever CD from MP3.com today. It was a pretty disappointing experience. The packaging was so minimal that the CD practically had "burn me" written all over it. No lyrics; no photos of the artist, a crappy cover photo, I've received bootleg CDs with more attention to the art. And it cost me close to $25. If I had bought it on "netCD" format, it would have cost me about $17. That needs to be closer to $5, and the $25 version needs to look good for this business model to make any sense.

And worst of all, the CD did not pass Cutlass Muster(TM). This means that it didn't sound cool when I was driving around in the Cutlass, which was a further disappointment, but not the end of the world. Glenn Gould doesn't pass Cutlass Muster either. Maybe I was crazy to buy it; it's buy the guy who did the soundtracks to "Tomb Raider" and "The General's Daughter," but I really liked that song Boll Weevil when I heard it on Spinner. Check it out for yourself.

Complaint: When did all fruit start getting tagged? You know, those little stickers with lot numbers on them. It was kind of cute when confined to banannas, but these days ALL fruit seems to have it, and I'm annoyed. Putting logos on produce is a bad idea, and I wish whomover's doing it would stop.

Must Read: My hero of the week is Michael Shermer, president of the Skeptic's Society. I'm reading his book, "Why People Believe Weird Things" right now, which is great. If you've ever thought organic fruit was stupid and that people generally do a bad job of evaluating risk, you should read this interview.

I am living in such a strange little private world, now that Anna heads off to St Luke's at 7 am each day. And, of late, I've begun to notice that my interpersonal communications skills are beginning to suffer. Now that I see no one for so much of the day, I'm beginning to forget why I ever cared conversation. The essence of communication is a kind of self-abandonment. You rarely talk to yourself in coherent, complete sentences, but other people expect it. It's a lot like writing. The thoughts are there -- and they are intense and real -- but they get altered, somewhat, when they are fettered in the chains of language.

So it's especially strange for me to go out in public. I am so overwhelmed by the crowds, and the colors, and the movement. I feel like a baby, staring and listening, with the most open eyes I have ever felt, at everything around me.

Last Sunday, Anna and I went to the X Pride Parade on San Francisco's Market Street (the X denotes whatever sexual affiliations are sanctioned to take pride in the parade -- a list that seems to grow longer by the year). Though I've lived here for seven years, I'd never gone; it seemed like eight years was just too long to wait.

One of the reasons I'd never gone was because people had told me it was kind of boring -- tamer than the outrageous Folsom Street Festival, less fun than Hallowe'en, more mainstream than the thousands of counter-cultural events that bloom like strange flowers every year in the Bay Area. And gay rights are something you kind of take for granted in San Francisco. I sometimes forget that people can take issue with sexual acts between consenting adults. I forget the blurred distinction between harm and difference. I forget that I live in a world where "because my parents told me so" is argument enough to topple reason.

Sunday was a perfect day for the parade. Warm, sunny, and San Francisco clear. They say that about a million people pack the downtown for this event, and I suppose I might just make the same claim if I were in charge of such things. Whatever the numbers, we didn't have any trouble getting right to the front of the crowd to watch the parade go by.

Parades are such funny things. They're the original mass media: Get everyone together and march 'em down the main street. People will be sure to come out and look. They're more humble than shows, which demand that you truck yourself out to whatever theatre or preordained public venue they grace. Parades often come to you. And this whole main street thing. I'm sure that people who planned the first parade ever gave it careful consideration. "Where should we have the parade? Oak street? 24th? No. Let's have it on Main street. That's where all the people are!" I imagine some kid rushing into a barber shop, "Hey folks! There's a parade on Main street!" People rush out, barber's capes around their necks and cream on their faces. "What's this all about?" Presto! Your basic low-tech mass media happening.

Parades have this natural hokeyness to them. Every politician within broadcast range hauls out a classic convertible and rides in back. People put on funny hats and signs. Local businesses advertise. The SF Pride parade is no different in this respect, but the historic marginalization and vilification of gay culture combines with the homespun unpretentiousness of the act of parading to make for some charming moments. Like the biker boys and drag queens dancing on an Absolute vodka float. It's awful to see this culture absorbed by the advertising octopus, but it's still better than icy silence.

And then there was what appeared to be the largest component of the parade, the hundreds of gay and lesbian couples walking with their newly adopted children. On the one hand, it was so refreshing to see this affirmation of the family as defined by love rather than stereotype. And the fact that this is still an "issue" in America made the march poignant.

But it also made me long for the day when I wouldn't be affected by the spectacle. When I could say, "Oh Jesus, it's just a bunch of people with their damned babies," and go back to my haircut as if nothing had happened.

How far we are from that day was illustrated a few days later on Independence Day. A few hours after that complete fuckhead shot up the Al El desk at LAX, Anna and Vinnie, Vinnie's new dog, Baby Boy, and I were checking out the July 4 activities at San Francisco's Aquatic park.

There was that usual, funky, crowd-with-nothing-to-do excitement as the four of us sat down at Aquatic Park to enjoy the sun and count cops. Vinnie had set off a couple of rounds of firecrackers on the way there -- very covert, and brave considering the heightened security we were supposedly enjoying. In front of us there was a both where you could karaoke along with your favorite CD, and a beer tent and some kind of promotional set-up for Monster.com.

"Monster.com! I can't believe they're still in business," said Anna. "I've never heard of anyone ever getting a job from there. People just used that site during the boom to make themselves seem busy by listing a bunch of non-existent job openings."

Come to think of it, I've never heard of anyone ever getting a job off of Monster.com. But there they were, with their art-carred SUV done up like a monster, and their sound system, and their dudes walking around taking free digital photos. "It'll be up on Monster.com within 48 hours" the Monster-dude said to us as he snapped our picture.

"How long for a legitimate job posting?" I wondered.

Anyhow, it was about that time that a horde of little girls descended upon us, asking if they could pet Baby. Two of them, Brookie and Johnny, struck up a conversation with us. They had been to the karaoke booth already, and had performed numbers from their patriotism-and-gymnastics-inspired CD, "Songs for America." They were the cutest little Americans I'd ever seen, 8 and 10 years old, with long blond and honey colored hair. They were honest, and forthright, sincere and without blemishes. They told me that their mother usually booked them for public performances during the fourth of July weekend, but that their gig in Arizona had been cancelled because of the fires. Maybe they were going to perform at the Aquatic Park's big stage, but that still hadn't been confirmed.

What fun. To be a kid from Arizona in San Francisco, not working, petting dogs, singing songs from your CD, seeing the great differences and unexpected beauties of the larger world.

We talked for awhile, about their dog, Bailey, and Halloween, and their various recording and publishing projects. They also have a Christmas CD out, and a couple of books they've co-written with their mom.

After 20 minutes or so, mom came by to check us out. She seemed cool: She looked athletic, about our age, with one of those fleece SF jackets you buy in Chinatown when you realize what a refrigerator this town becomes after 4 pm. We talked about gambling, and Brookie and Johnny's Web site, and the unfailing fallibility of contractors and then, for some reason, she began telling us about how a teacher at Brookie's school had taken it upon herself to teach her class of seven year olds about homosexuality one day at school. Of course, she was fired almost immediately. Well, if not fired, maybe demoted to librarian -- a job where, presumably, she would have zero impact on the kids' education.

"That's the kind of thing that parents should tell their kids about," said Brookie and Johnny's mom. "It wasn't her place."

When drunken ex-Mounties go wrong...

I'm very positive on the siesta. Now, it appears, there's an explanation for it.

I got a letter yesterday from the Bank of Montreal, dated May 6, 2002. It read:

Congratulations! We are pleased to advise your student loan is now paid in full.

It's strange, I'm a little sad about this -- as if one more tie with my misspent youth has been severed, leaving me to walllow in my misspent adulthood. In 1990, I got a $6,000 student loan. A year and a half later, I used this money to pay for a four month trip to Spain, Portual and Morocco. I have no idea how much this trip ultimately cost me, but it was worth it.

Anna: The Bowlerama looks amazing!

George: You owe us something.

I'm not sure why I did this, but a few months back, I subscribed to this Wall Street Journal opinion newsletter. Like many of my generation, I don't really affiliate myself with either side of the political spectrum, and though I tend to read mainly from left-leaning sources, I like getting other perspectives as well. I think that ideology works against intelligence and I'd prefer to reserve it for when I'm too old and enfeebled to think for myself anymore.

At any rate, I've been amazed at how much of this newsletter has been devoted to a rabid and comprehensive defense of the state of Israel. I guess I'd never followed the Israel Palestine debate closely enough to understand how Israel managed to become the poster child of the right. I mean, didn't the right used to hate the Jews? What about Hitler? He was pretty right wing, wasn't he?

Now if we think of Israel as an American colony, strategically placed to consume US military technology, and help keep the price of oil in check, it perhaps makes more sense as a right wing baby, but it's a strange situation. It's strange how un-critical the right has been, and it's strange too, how anti-Semitic the left appears.

This article from the National Review captures some of the contradictions for me. To quote:

"David Livshiz, a student associated with Hillel, says, "Hillel is a progressive organization, and most people would declare themselves Democrats or liberals. But when we organized a demonstration to support Israel, we got tremendous support from the College Republicans and YAF [Young Americans for Freedom]. Some said, initially, 'We don't want to work with right-wing groups on campus,' but those students have changed their minds. We will work with anyone who stands with us on Israel."

Now Vinnie's blogging.