Bed-Time Notes: Finally ate at that Cambodian place Jolie pointed out a month or so back, and caught a late matinee of Fin Août, Debut Septembre at BAM, a beautiful story shot in queasy handheld at close quarters by the cinematic equivalent of the Lomograph camera. From an article titled "Lost in Translation" in eCFO magazine:

In 1996, Panasonic licensed the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker to serve as a user guide on the company's new Japanese-language Web site. After devising a huge marketing campaign to trumpet the site—one focused on the famous bird—Panasonic's management scheduled a big rollout. But just a week before the launch of the marketing blitz, an American staffer alerted his Japanese colleagues that the advertising slogan might need a bit of revising for English-speaking markets. The slogan? "Touch Woody—The Internet Pecker."

That's even better than the fact that the Chevy Nova no va. But I must sleep, sleep. My D:\ drive is full of Soundlab and Ry Cooder from AudioGalaxy, since I understand that Morpheus is having its troubles. Time for a CD-RW dump. Mixmaster Tangerine: It takes me back to my youth, working at KSPC–FM 88.7 with Lynx Rufus.

The Noonday Dervish Whirligig Brain-Dump: Custom Staffing calls to say they can get me on at Bank of America doing graphics and layout for $30 an hour or so. I am staring at a blank Word file with the following phrase written at the top: "Paul Findley Soldiers On," tyring to bear in mind Victoria's tips for angling a piece to the Talk of the Town section, but this piece of modest good news permits me to feel entitled to slack off for, say, 17 minutes. The following item is found at Craig's List for New York, where I am checking the job listings and community calendar:

newyork.craigslist.org > events > 3/1: masturbation party
last modified:Fri Feb 22 10:30:30 2002

3/1: masturbation party

---

Reply to: anon-2986987@craigslist.org

Date: Fri Feb 22 10:30:30 2002

Looking for some females (up to 6) companions to join some males and females at our bi weekly get together. We are all clean fun and will probably go out for some drinks before or afterward. age range from 22–40 ... Sorry guys we are full

A weekly bi get-together? Placement of adjectives is so important in a language where syntax has so much to to do with semantics and a hyphen can be crucial to understanding what is to be coupled with what. The following is culled from the Feature Well, an online resyndication marketplace for previously published work:

The Ultimate Weapon Against Apocalyptic Death Star Cultural Entropy: L-U-V

By GLENN O'BRIEN, 742 words
Second rights available in New York. All other rights available.
First appeared in Paper

Nepotism comes from the French word nepote, meaning nephew, and it refers to the once common practice of conferring pork barrel offices and no show jobs upon nephews, such as Huey, Dewey and Louie, by Popes and Presidents and Donald Duck. In 1378 Pope Urban VI conferred the title of head of the Vatican Travel Office on his nephew Gregory of Corso, helping further alienate the College of Cardinals, leading to the election of an “antipope” Stanislaus “L’Homme” Musial. Urban was alleged to have murdered five cardinals, fortunately he had only one nephew.

Later Capotism came in, coming from the word French word capote, or hooded cloak, and referring to the common practice of conferring jobs on young men who resemble George Peppard. But this is not the favoritism to which I am referring.

The New Favoritism is a militant strategy of favoring the creative works of your friends. They are your friends in the first place because they are geniuses, illuminated by love and the radiant spark of divine breath. If they were bad artists, musicians or writers, you wouldn’t love them the same way, because art is a symptom of their state of soul. Love of the artists, in opposition to decoy critical standards, is required for the very survival of art and human consciousness. ...

I cite this for review purposes only, of course, in order to ask: Somebody paid good money for this shit? My tripe is much more factually accurate and much less subliterate, at least. Unless that's the point. I know nothing, obviously, and no one, and will do anything for $$$. Magister artium and literary crack whore. I will submit the Werewolf profile to Paper, they will have to run it, grotesque rag that they are.

A flack writes in about a globalization services firm that actually sounds very interesting. I don't really know the big players in the field yet. I think I will check out their Webcast. Another feeler about a Portuguese legal translation job. Come on, little client, take the bait ... here, fishy fishy fishy ... Free Krispy Kreme donuts tomorrow over at PWC as my employed pal JB takes pity on me ...

Boiling the Ocean: We admit it, we are discouraged. From Verba Volant: Le délai stimule le journaliste. Lorsqu'il a le temps, il écrit piètrement. That is, "Journalists are stimulated by deadlines, and do not write as well when they have plenty of time." David Eide's Sun Oasis newsletter arrives in the old inbox:

In reading over the recruiting literature some points emerge. One is to look at economic downturns as an opportunity rather than a moment of despair. Another is that you rise to the level of what you think you're worth. We know it doesn't work as easily and as quickly as that but it starts there. Of course, many writers are not the greatest employees and they view a career path a bit differently than does the corporate manager. Writing is notorious for being a profession with low salaries. It's like teaching or nursing; professions where the work itself has to bring satisfaction for those doing it.

The satisfaction of having health insurance would not be unwelcome either. I send David my Werewolf profile. Riding on the F train this morning, I am reading the New York Press and thinking, What is it I need to do to get ahead of the curve and get some salable stories? Strasbaugh's interview with the author of a prison memoir is really good. Shorter sentences, irony less broad, meet more humans in meat-person, that's the ticket. I am going to keep on keeping on.

Minimax: Harvard objects to her moniker in these jottings. She will therefore be known henceforth as Maximum Minnie, or "MM." This because she knows what Rawls' "veil of ignorance" is and for other piquant reasons.

Agenda: Interesting article from Wired News about e-aprendizaje in Mexico. Focus, monkey boy! Invoices to fax, résumés to send off, interviews to set up, e-learning notes to compile into a mind map and publish.

Job Complete, Except for the Invoice: The following is my translation of a weekly column that runs in the Arab Voice, a regional Arabic-language newspaper published in Paterson, New Jersey (home of William Carlos Williams). I am very fond of this anonymous writer and his work. The little vignettes about human misbehavior are, by the way, intended to fulfill an observant Muslim's duty to kindly point out to one's brothers and sisters their small departures from the path of virtue. Alaa Zeineldine translated one very difficult term for me beautifully.

News You Don't Want to Read

The Arab Voice, 9 February 2002

• Authorities at the international airport in San Francisco, California, evacuated thousands of travelers and shut down one of the terminals for nearly two and a half hours after discovering traces of an explosive in the shoes of a passenger, who vanished into the crowd before he could be questioned.
  
  
  
• A judge in Texas sentenced a mother to prison after finding her guilty of abusing her 8-year-old daughter. Last June, the daughter was discovered in a confused and neglected state inside a hollowed-out space in the wall of a mobile home, weighing less than 11 kilograms, covered in sores and sleeping in her own excrement.
  
  


• President Bush called upon Americans to volunteer at least two years of their time to national service and to join the Peace Corps. In his State of the Union address to Congress, Bush remarked that these difficult times offer us a unique opportunity that we must seize at all costs. At the same, Bush assailed Iran and Iraq and characterized Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, and the Jaish-e-Muhammad as terrorist organizations.
  
  The president made no mention of Israeli terrorism.
  
  


• An Arab boy was accused at school of having beaten his grandmother and grandfather. His parents were out chasing the almighty dollar at the time. When the police entered the house and questioned the frightened boy, the falsehood of the accusation was soon confirmed: His grandmother and grandfather had been dead for years.
  
  


• An Arab man, 45, employed as an agricultural engineer, with American citizenship, wishes to meet an Arab woman for purposes of matrimony. Contact the Arab Voice for his telephone number.
  
  


• If the American news media were interested in running a positive story about efforts on behalf of the Arab community, they might consider this one. Mary was determined to obtain a bottle of water from the river Jordan to baptize her son with, so she made a trip to Israel for that exclusive purpose. When she saw how the people there were suffering at the hands of the Israeli military,however, she volunteered to work as a nurse for the Palestinian Red Crescent in order to save the lives of those struck by Israeli bullets
  
  


• In many parts of the country, a number of Christian congregations are visiting mosques on Fridays, attending the sermon and performing the prayers. These Christians demonstrate by their actions the spirit of the words we speak in our own houses of worship.
  
  


• In New York City, an Arab man with Belgian citizenship was arrested by a detective in front of the Bank of America: His net worth was a mere nine million dollars! He was preparing to leave the country when he was arrested and taken off to jail.
  
  


• If you lost a loved one during the events of 11 September, if you lost your job, or if you suffered any harm or damages, direct or indirect, you should call this number for help: 1-866-689-HELP.
  
  


• Our Yemeni brother Anwar al-'Amis sent a letter to the Arab Voice expressing his desire to become our correspondent in his own neighborhood of New York City. We welcome our brother Anwar and invite him to come and join us in the offices of the Arab Voice.
  
  


• If you've ever been arrested by the American police, the FBI, or any other American security agency because you are a Pakistani, Punjabi, Bengali, Indian, or South Asian Muslim, you should call DRUM at (212) 631-3689.
  
  


• A Turkish woman is collecting signatures to protest the American government's reprehensible treatment of Muslim in the wake of 11 September. She's collected hundreds of signatures in Essex County, and will send the petition to American officials.
  
  


• To certain sons of the Arab community: A number of Arab brothers have contacted us, inquiring about certain people we've written about anonymously in this column. We'd like them to know that a journalist's job is similar to a doctor's: We don't betray people's confidentiality, and we don't give out names or telephone numbers or any other details concerning the people we write about here. The purpose of this column is to bring to light the brushes with error and temptation that some members of our community have had so they won't make the same mistake twice, and to show others how to avoid falling into the same pitfalls that others have stumbled into.
  
  


• A call to action: In view of the current state of things, we want all of you to resume relations with Americans that you may have severed after the events of September, no matter what the political persuasion of these American neighbors. Cutting yourself off only gives the Zionist lobby more opportunities to monopolize the American stage. Whether these are personal relationships, or social, or political, re-establishing them is the most important thing our community can do right now.
  
  


• He divorced her for the second time after taking the oath [of citizenship], then remarried her a few days later. Can't you make up your mind, my friend? If she puts up with it a third time, she must be as thick-skinned as a donkey. Don't count on it.
  
  


• I don't know what compels the women reporters on Arabic television to dress like fashion models, but when they interview a community elder or a man of faith on their show, it would be nice if just once one of them would make a sincere effort to dress modestly without making a big production about it.
  
  
  


• A lot of members of the community continue to ask, "When are you going to establish Islamic schools with lower tuition, as we have asked you time and again? When are you going to allow a poor man the opportunity to educate his children?" This despite the well-known fact that Islamic schools do assist a lot of needy people. Still, we would like to see more of it.
  
  


• An Arab gentleman gave his fiancée a 16-carat gold chain as a token of his love. The chain was, however, conveniently "lost" a few days before he declared bankruptcy and not rediscovered until a few days ago.

Blow, Snow: Sunny and windy. So much for the flurries reported at Central Park at this hour. Waiting on a conference call with the chief learning officer of OutStart, who promises to be a great interview. This muzak is driving me nuts, though, and I forgot to set up my taping system, so I will have to carpal-tunnel it.

BZSAB: The cherub at right is the Merbabe. What an afternoon. My instructional design beat is shaping up nicely. JA subscribes me to an energy news service that should make that gig easier, and of course Reuters is always a good source of fodder:

Smithsonian to Enshrine Enron Ethics Manual

By C. Bryson Hull

HOUSTON (Reuters) — Enron has turned into a museum quality scandal — the Smithsonian Institution is collecting its memorabilia, including its code of ethics.

A spokeswoman for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History on Tuesday said curators have started to collect Enron memorabilia as part of an effort to record one of the nation's biggest business scandals.

I was thinking maybe now would be a good time to research the Teapot Dome scandal we learned about in Advanced Placement American History back in the day, but that was kid's stuff compared to this, or at least so I hear. I loved the Onion headline: Study Shows Americans Would Be Outraged by Enron Scandal If They Understood It. I remember now what the Voice was reporting: you can buy framed, collectible shares of Enron stock now "in any name you like." Suggest some humorous ones.

Calling It Quits: Tons to do, but I think I am going to call it quits for the day soon, though I have two promising job bids out I still need to keep track of: Arabic and Portuguese legal. I will post one of my Gotham Gazette translations before I sign off. Feeling a little burnt around the edges lately. Two promising job leads today, one that would, however, require six months in Montreal. Hmmm. Maybe? My friend Mike from Internet World sends me an article that says that only 4% of new hires come about from applications to listings found on the Internet. I guess I might as well cancel this DSL subscription, then. I thought that Internet was the next big thing. I am always the last to know.

Snow Day: High fifties yesterday and snow today. Lots to catch up on as I arrive home midmorning. Enig-Pombo's blog is getting more and more gonzo, I really enjoy it, and she contributes mightily to the cause of my column with a reminder that in the new millenium, it's Mao more than ever. Emmy and Tomio, neighbors of Harvard's, come over to harrass cats and discuss the euro, which Emmy says is really helping the purse and handbag industry, since it involves a lot of coins, whereas the lira, for example, had those paper bills worth only cents on the dollar. Tomio is a 19-month-old holy terror (really, I mean holy, as in a world explorer on a sacred mission from god) who knows what grapes are in Italian, English, and Japanese, though he gets confused between ovos and uvas, as is only natural. Cooperative naming among Japanese and Italian grandparents was a case study in cultural consultancy, says Emmy. The same level of stunning cuteness as the Merbaby. For the energy column, there are couple of items in the Voice I sneak a peek at on the F train that could be usable: ... I will have to get to those later. Something actually useful in my inbox from Wired News, although it inexplicably arrives under the rubric of my "E-Learning" news alert and not my "Web art" one:

Net Gambit: See Art, Pay Amnesty

By Reena Jana

2:00 a.m. Feb. 27, 2002 PST
NEW YORK — Can Net art raise money and help save the world?

The organizers of Shine, an ambitious online art exhibition launched last weekend to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Amnesty International, hope that by using art to attract people to their Web pages, it can.

It's a peculiar idea. Especially since, as Shine curator Simon Watson says, the $10 million question in the art world today is how to make money doing digital art.
I guess Keena is the competition. She's okay. Bad headline, though. Off to Learning Week.

Day is Done: And none too soon. Must have translated 4,500 words, easy. Downloading that EUTERPE lexicon from the European Union was a waste of time: the Trados front end did not function. Yada yada. I had other work on the docket for today, but forget it, I am going out for some fried chicken and a nice nestle. Just have to send off teasers to the Gotham Gazette. The gentleman at left has asked not to be identified.

Vive le France: A translation job comes in from France, making my schedule for the day even more hellish. It's worth only about 75 euros. What the hell. It impresses the heck out of Victor at OBE when I get faxes from fancy foreign countries. Dang it, I am pinging ProZ and getting through, but can't the site to come up. I need to translate an obscure Arabic pun: ÊÌÍíÔ. (You'll have to go to View-Encoding in Explorer and set the character-set to Arabic for Windows, if you really want to bother). It has something to do with donkeys.

PR in 50 Words of Less: First order of business is to apply for a reporter job at a PR industry organ, which wants a definition of PR in 50 words or less.

A recent story about plans by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Information to plant disinformation in the press is the epitome of the phrase "public relations disaster." Why? Because public relations is simply the art of persuasion, the winning of hearts and minds, and nothing but sex is more persuasive than truth.

I guess I could have made that "sex and religion." Too late now. Need ... coffee. Must ... work. Where ... are ... my ... pants?

Monday Junketeering at the God Box: No time or energy to describe everything I learned and experienced following Mr. Findley around, but it was very rewarding, and free lunch was involved over there at the National Council of Churches board meeting. The Times religion reporter was scheduled to show— Niebuhr (any relation?)— but did not. I have a lot of great stuff on tape, including an amazing address by the Muslim chaplain of the Metro Transit Authority Police, about whom more soon.I have translations to finish and just finished my first column for John's company, which he will hate, so I will post it here, I sort of like it.

Alt.Energy.Random.Notes

by Colin Brayton

Dateline Brooklyn. Browsing the New York conference at the WELL, a pioneering online community in Berkeley, California, we run across a new topic that’s both near to our hearts and pertinent to our new assignment. It’s called “Steam Heat: The Unsung Hell of Life in New York City.” Hundreds of posts describe every nuance of the pings, pops, hisses, clanks, clangs, clonks, and clongs that explain why, in wintertime, pre-war tenement New York is the city that never sleeps. Along Fifth Avenue, meanwhile, homeless people build shelters from refrigerator boxes and binder clips, insulated with newspaper and tucked ingeniously into stagnant backwaters of foot-traffic where they won’t be minded. These throwaway subhumans might actually stand a chance in the egg-drop contest at Cal Tech, what do you think? It’s very William Gibson.

The big turn-off. After reading in another topic about the turgid wake of energy deregulation in my native Golden State, I come to the conclusion that American energy consumers—who don’t know what they got ‘til it’s gone—might have learned a thing or two about the funkier side of energy deregulation from Brazil, which is only now emerging from a five-year-long energy crisis the natives call o apagão—“the big turn-off.”

The stumbling gringo. Visiting a friend’s apartment in São Paulo recently, I cursed the already dim lights set to switch off just as you arrived at your goal along the pitch-black hallway, but before you could fix in your brain’s graphics buffer where the doorknob was in relation to the current position of your groping hand.

Not fine with me. This was, however, a small price to pay compared to the stiff fines being meted out for exceeding consumption quotas, which could easily exhaust the monthly income of a servant in a middle-class home. No matter: Chances are your servant lives in a shantytown, or favela, which grow up overnight in the footprint of transmission towers but are not hooked into the São Paulo grid .

Redundant systems. Meanwhile, my heavily global-networked Brazilian friends, most of whom work as translators for European and American governments and enterprises and have their hard-currency earnings deposited in the Caymans, all had car batteries stashed away to run their laptops. On the other side of the world in India, massive power-source redundancy is the norm for high-tech customer call centers, where young Indians learn about the NBA and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in order to answer e-mails and phone contacts for Amazon.com and a snowballing number of multinationals, as I wrote recently elsewhere.

Long time no see. When our old college band-mate, Abraxas Energy founder and CME John Avina, passed through the Apple recently, we had not seen him since his days as a beatnik painter and itinerant percussionist in the Haight-Fillmore district of San Francisco just before the Gulf War. You read it here first, folks: Before learning to engineer more energy-efficient structures, John performed some pretty heavy reengineering on his own head. “I used to want to save the world,” John told us last week. “Now I’m just trying to run a good company.”

Yeah, right. That’s nonsense, of course. Energy matters, even if unsexy Metrix doesn't run on Xbox. The real story we will weasel out of John over time, in revenge for talking us into a weekly column on yet another wonky subject. Oh, well, why fight it? We love wonky subjects and the wonks who work them.

Devil in a blue box. As we write this last, however, a press kit arrives via Fed Ex from a snooty PR firm about a new Web site promoting Bombay Dry Gin. The site offers user-friendly, browser-based software tools for engineering the ideal martini glass. The kit contains the makings of a perfect martini, shaken, not stirred, complete with olives, toothpicks, and—speaking of inefficient design—that oddly-shaped glass the beverage is traditionally slurped from, which punishes you for not staying put by sloshing all over your cheap but freshly dry-cleaned suit. Open-source comes to martini-glass design, okay, that’s not such a bad omen. There’s also a ticket to an open-bar press junket I am not about to miss. If the PR folks feel they didn’t get a good ROI out of me, I’ll e-mail them this URL.

Colin Brayton is a freelance journalist, translator, and technical writer based in Brooklyn, New York.

Just got an e-mail back. He likes it! Hey, Juano! He does want to appear "normal" now, however, and so the strikethroughs. Now I have to follow up and add the URLS and stuff, shoot. I have this deadline for tomorrow at the IPA. Busy day, after nestling in for a quiet evening with Harvard after the event at the community center last night, all the way from Coney Island to NOLITA on the N and R, qu'elle schlep. Everyone was impressed that I could load a Yahoo map on my dingus and view it in a Web browser, which is how I navigated the car service dude to the event. Two unemployment checks arrive. Cable box repossession is Saturday. They claim to have received no payments from me since activation. That is simply not the case. Must I deal with this now?

Sunday Sunday, Just Hate That Day: Monkey Woman broke up with a boyfriend of a year when he moved to a wild Western state. One night, she receives a phone call in which a woman says, "Hi, Monkey Woman, I am so-and-so [the ex-wife of the ex-palolo] ..." and then hangs up. MW is weirded out, but it eventually slips her mind. A month or so later, another woman calls up and says, "Hi, I am such-and-such, I was told by so-and-so to call this number." MW figures this is a wrong number, but the woman starts telling her of receiving phone calls from the crazy ex-wife of a friend who recently moved to a wild Western state. "That wouldn't be Joe Blow [the ex-palolo]? says MW. "Why, yes!," says such-and-such. The two women engage in a friendly chat in which such-and-such says that so-and-so has been threatening her if she does not stay away from Joe Blow. Monkey Woman recounts the history of her parting from Joe in some detail, and the call ends in a friendly invitation to the woman to call if she is ever in New York—she works in the corporate headquarters of a big-time erotic lingerie company somewhere in the heartland.

When next she speaks to Joe Blow, Monkey Woman mentions the weird behavior of his ex-wife. She is nervous because the ex lives in NYC and might pull a Fatal Attraction number on her. SHe learns that Joe's current squeeze has been receiving threatening calls purportedly from the former Mrs. Blow, warning that Joe is a dangerous maniac and that Mrs. B. has had the new squeeze investigated by PIs. Joe is perplexed, however, because his ex is not really the type. Suspcicion dawns, an investigation is launched, and MW and the current squeeze, comparing voice-mail greetings, are able to confirm that the purported former Mrs. Blow is in actuality the Undergarment Executive, with whom Joe had a brief fling (they met in an airport lounge, like in the first episode of Six Feet Under) early in his acquaintance with the Simian She-Devil. Oh, what a web we weave. Spider in a scanty silken web in the heartland, romance-novel reading combined with an MBA, bizarre, elaborate telephonic scams ... good stuff.

I have another such story about a college prof friend of mine, but I will save that for later. Trying to find my notes on my meeting with Findley tonight so I can calendar it and get ready. Bought a small recorder with a phone-recording adapter today at theMetrotech Center to ease the strain on my typing fingers (the carpal-tunnel numbness is subsiding) when I phone-interview, and to use in tonight's and tomorrow's conversations with Congressman Findley, and in interviews with Myrtle Avenue folks next week. Just sent off the history of customs to Germany and now have to work on the Arabic translations for the Gotham Gazette until I leave at 4:30 for the Islamic youth center in Brooklyn.

Werk Like a Jork: It's Saturday, and a lovely one at that, what am I doing at the puter? Starting up a translation team at ProZ and finishing up the history and future of the Spanish customs service. Ran into my landlord at the Open Storefront event this morning on the Myrtle Mile and had a conversation that was part interrview and part polite inquiry about when the rent check might be arriving. "Yeah," he says, "they want yuppie businesses in here, and everyone's begging me not to rent to another nail salon. But maybe it won't work. A tenant is a tenant." Walked to parts of the Myrtle Mile I have never been to before. It gets funky down toward Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, but a couple of green trees have sprouted up in the cracked pavement: The Nigerian Fashions and Fabric shop, and the Simply Frames shop, whose owner I was pointed to as a good interview. But that will have to wait. I have Gotham Gazette to get out by midafternoon tomorrow. Hell, why am I telling you this? I won't write again until I have something entertaining to say. I mean, I have notes here, but no time to go through them. This is fun, though. It's what my Kulchur Vulchur blog should be like.

The Government Makes Me Cringe: NPR's On the Media has its teeth in that Times story about the Pentagon's disinformation office and won't let go. Good for them. They follow it with a softball interview with the director of the Middle Eastern Radio Network, (which will beam Michael Jackson at Muslim teens, but not Eminem or P. Diddy-Wah-Diddy) who says things like "it's absolutely not propaganda." Propaganda. I keep finding that other languages use that term in a much more neutral way, without that connotation of dishonesty: in Portuguese, it includes advertising and public relations, and in Arabic the term translated as "propaganda" is used to refer to all kinds of persuasive discourse, from sermons to advertising. Nothing wrong with propaganda in its original sense of "things that should be widely known," as long as its true. No time for thinking. Work work work.

Friday Night With My Oxford-Duden: "The recent history is very well known to be abusing your time reviewing it. I would like to say something about the future though," reads the paragraph I am retranslating at the moment. Trying to get this translation project out of the way so I can get other things done. It's horrible. I need to start reviewing projects before I accept them, obviously. Here's an example of the kind of thing I am getting paid proofreader's rates for:

There were, in addition, other called Customs “Aduanillas” and “Small boats” that settled down respectively first in Salvatierra, Bernedo and Sta. Cross of Campezo, and received by-the-load taxes instead of by the weight, measure or value; and the second one in the Canaries ports.

The customs organization allowed the use of its personnel for the collection of numerous tributes that little or nothing had to do with the mere tax. Thus, Fernando VII entrusted the General Direction of Customs the management of the following, in addition to the Rent of Customs: rent of wools, custody tax; loading and royalties; rent of Tablas de Navarra; subsidy of the commerce; rent of the codfish; spears and half anatas (annual tax for ecclesiastic income) of Great and Titles; half anatas of Mercedes, getting in 1841 even to be in charge of the supervision of the Customs House of the Court. The existence of Customs, inside each State, separating smaller provinces, departments and, sometimes, coffers, is a fact of the past, that if it was a common norm to almost all the countries before the political unity of the States was fortified, went into gradual disappearance as international trade developed and the advantages for each country to have a single customs regime were understood. In ours, the inner Customs existed legally until 1841 even though several orders were issued to suppress them since 1717.

Obviously, this requires a complete retranslation. I have the feeling that the translator speaks neither Spanish nor English as their native language. Argh.

Harvard did something really amazing to a plain old jar of prunes involving rum and all kinds of spices and what not. She has a new kitty from Bide-A-Wee, the same penitentiary from which Iggy was paroled into my custody, to replace her beloved Hank and provide company for Bolek. It's fun to watch.

Kim Chi flavored styrofoam noodle bowl, beer, and sleep. Going to cover an event run by the neighborhood business development agency tomorrow. Spending Sunday and Monday watching Muslims and Christians interfaith dialogue, and have to turn out my 400 words for Juano too. Incipient carpaloid numbness, got to watch that.

Blind Shill: My old college buddy Juano hires me to write a weekly 400-word column on energy for his company's Web site. He offers me a choice between $50 or 0.08% of (annualized?) revenues (fiscal YTD or projected?). How retro dot-com! Revenue sharing! He also says I should not subject Bartiromo to such harsh tirades, since it is possible a mutual college friend produces her show. I have a deep capacity for bitter resentment that clings to its object with superhuman tenacity, in case you did not already know that about me. I know, I know, I seem like Mister Easygoing, heh heh.

(Looking for a Bartiromo site to link to, I find one of those creepy pages where guys post their homages to the chicks that really drive them wild. This one is called Ave Maria. Other superbabes include Myrna Loy and Greer Garson, and other "classic stars." Creepy, plus no Barbara Stanwyck. I am now officially off the Bartiromo topic.)

The column could, I suggest, be called "The Joy of Energy," with the epigraph from aphorist Mason Cooley (b. 1927), City Aphorisms: Eighth Selection (1991): "Energy falls just short of being joy." I'll just comment all Nick and Nora laconic-like on energy news that comes off Yahoo News, should be a breeze.Of course, Juano doesn't like the title. How about "The King Biscuit Power Hour"? Don't have time to think about this now. The company is called Abraxas, which prompts the following quick bit of research:

Abraxas

---

A term used by the Basilideans, a Gnostic sect of the second century, designating the Supreme Being or god whom they worshipped. They believed that Jesus Christ emanated from Abraxas and was a phantom while here on earth. They believed the name contained great mysteries because it contained the seven Greek letters when computed numerically equaled the number 365, which is the number of days in the year. It was further believed that Abraxas commanded 365 gods, each possessing a virtue, so there was a virtue for each day of the year.

However, older mythologists place Abraxas among the Egyptian gods, while some demonologists cite him to be a demon with the head of a king and serpents forming his feet. He has been represented on amulets with a whip in his hand. The mystic word abracadabra was derived from his name. Many stones and gems were cut with his capricious symbolic markings, such as a human body having a fowl's or lion's heads, and snakes as limbs, which were worn by the Basilideans as amulets. Also, a favorite amulet bore the number 365.

Later Gnostic symbols were adopted by many societies devoted to magic and alchemy. It is most likely, therefore, that most abraxas stones that contained kabbalistic symbols made in the Middle Ages were talismans. A.G.H.

That's a little tough to work with, public-relationswise, though it does relate to my dream of driving down Highway 365 ...

Tropicana Berry Punch With Late Lunch: I did hear back from Pat at NY1. Gosh, I love that guy, he's so funny and cool. He writes:

Sounds a little pathetic, doesn't it. I do admit to googling
myself from time to time to see what gems are unearthed -- but
yesterday's motivation was actually the fact that I googled a
former colleague and found some really unexpected stuff, which
led to the question .. I wonder what comes up when I type
"kiernan."

Sorry about your experience with Maria. I guess that's how it
goes when you're dealing with the really big stars.

The Banfield ballad is quite amusing. One of the lesser known
facts is that we worked together in my first broadcasting job.
She was the weekend TV anchor and I was the weekend radio anchor
at a station in Edmonton.

Hope you get your cable back soon.

What a mensch, and he liked my Irish=C&W ballad about Ashleigh Banfield, too. My inbox also tells me that enemy@nytime.com ("Enid Nemy," the editor of the Metropolitan Diary) has opened my e-mail submission. It was a total guess, that message. I could not domain-search that name in any address finder, then thought I would ust try the obvious pun in front of the expected domain, just for the hell of. We will see.

Luxie is the first blindtangeriner to unsubscribe in a huff. I feel guilty, as if I were one of those people sending you Liquid Viagra spam messages or opening up pop-up windows in your browser trying to sell you that freaking Webcam. Luxie is off to Philly for the CAA convention with two new suits described as "subdued herringbonish houndstooth," in search of a teaching post. Her mentors want her to continue to suffer, starve, and paint like mad. Tough, now that her gallery died.

Man, I need a nap, after lentils and some Tropicana Berry Punch, an odd taste I have developed lately. Am I gravid with alien spawn? I am really psyched about a story I am writing on the Myrtle Mile, however, having met with the urban planner in charge there this morning. She was cool! I also got together a pitch for a story on software and Web site localization for Wired News. Proposed title: "Localizing the Lingo: When your Chevy Nova no va in Latin America, you'll need a localizer to get you up and running again." What do you think, Enig?

My Brush With Very Minor Stardom: Here's an item I submitted to the New York Times Metropolitan Diary section today.

Dear Diary:

Like a lot of people these days, I maintain a personal Web log, a kind of online diary, which I post to quite frequently now that I am working from home as a freelancer. My “blog,” as it’s known, has a feature that allows readers to click a link and enter comments into a small pop-up window

I happened to lament in my early morning entry today that with my cable service cut off for non-payment, I am no longer able to enjoy Pat Kiernan’s commentary on the morning headlines on NY1, having to content myself with Satirius Johnson of NPR Radio.

What I actually wrote was, “Satirius Johnson of NPR has replaced Pat Kiernan of NY1 as the voice that wakes me up as I wait for the java jolt to arrive at the brain and the e-mails to start coming in. That seems wrong.”

Idly browsing through my site for comments late today, I noticed an entry for that particular posting. It read, “Did we do something wrong? Don't you like us anymore?” The item was signed by Pat Kiernan. My jaw dropped, but I was determined not to be overawed by this brush with local celebrity. A proper New Yorker behaves with insouciant nonchalance in such situations, I believe. So I e-mailed Mr. Kiernan as follows, in the voice of a flippant alter ego of mine:

“Google yourself every day, do you? TV people, man, talk about vanity. I had a encounter once with that Maria Bartiromo or whatever, that NYSE talking head on MSNBC? [Note: Ms. Bartiromo works for CNBC.] She had written a story for a magazine I was copy-editing, and I had to check a few facts, since she’d provided no sources. Hey, I've seen you on the floor there on CNN from time to time, what gives? Anyway, she's all, ‘Hey, buddy, I don't have time for this, I'm on television all day!’

“Pat, dude, I'm a diehard fan, it's just that I got downsized and they repossessed my cable box. I try streaming you but it just isn't the same ... need to have you read me the headlines in real time with that little smirk of yours.”

Of course, I proceeded to e-mail all my friends to boast. It’s New York kosher to worship people on television, but only in whispers behind their back. I am eagerly awaiting a response to my response to Pat’s response.

It's all true. That Bartiromo was a real queen bitch to me when I was having a real bad day once. I hope she Googles herself and finds out how I feel. Not that she would give a damn, but still. The market is up, the market is down: she's a weather girl, for crying out loud, one who gets a lot more airtime than usual in which to betray the emptiness of her head. Anyhow, a bit repetitive, but it's pretty clear where to cut it, too.

And that concludes our broadcast day. Some calendaring and a bit of research for an interview early tomorrow and I can finish watching that video, finally, and have a Tecate.

Trucking Like the Doo-Dah Man: Great interview with the chief strategy officer at Global Knowledge, an IT training firm. Guy is a Vietnam vet who really appreciated the metaphor of his going from the trenches to the Pentagon in reference to his career, which is a rather unique professional trajectory in the industry he's in. Perhaps it's more so on the corporate side and academic side than in IT, where you have all that egalitarian, meritocratic, open-source ethos kind of utopian nonsense going on. The guy actually taught, and still teaches, in the classroom, on subjects unrelated to his work. Biggest challenge and reward for his thinking? "Introduction to the PC" at a community college. I love that. Nerds should rule the world. I asked him what kind of preparation people entering the field of educational technology should have and he said, "It may sound strange, but the best courseware developers nearly always play a musical instrument."

Landed my first ProZ contract, cool. $475 (well, the equivalent in Euros, the commissioning agency's in Germany) for a day's work or so, that definitely does not suck. I also signed up at Tutor.com, got to get a microphone to do online tutoring with kids in libraries. Harvard charges $100 an hour to hold the hands of snotty Upper East Side prep school kids who would rather grow up to be P Diddy or Eminem, truth be told, yo yo yo. Made a pretty good pitch for myself, I thought.

Welcome my stepbrother Matt Crocker to the blindtangerine list. Sorry about the application process, dude: we have to keep the riff-raff out, I mean in.

Fershlugginer: I have the fershlugginer mailing list working, so now you will all be spammed by me unless you unsubscribe or go to the blindtangerine site and edit your e-mail preferences. I just wanted to see if I could do it. The Merm, however, writes that heavy-duty Groups users, like her GlossPost group, with its two or three thousand users, will soon be facing fees. It has been free up until now. Back to work.

More Coffee in the Murky Light: Jen and I were just talking last night about writing early in the morning. It turns out to have worked for me: I wrote an 800-word personal essay for Nerve magazine this morning that I kind of like, and then just zapped it off. I still futzing with getting the posting mechanism working right for the blindtangerine group. I am going to work on my Myrtle Avenue piece and my column until the Learning Week teleconference at 1:00 p.m., after which I have an interview with another instructional designer at Global Knowledge. I pitched my Findley story to the Christian Science Monitor this morning as well: They would be an ideal place to run it. But enough about me!

Police Investigate Man for Wearing Hitler Mask

BERLIN (Reuters) — A man who wore a Hitler mask at a carnival in eastern Germany and won a prize for "most original costume" faces charges of violating strict anti-Nazi laws, police said Wednesday.

A police spokesman said prosecutors were investigating the man on charges of breaking laws against glorifying the Third Reich because he wore the Hitler disguise at a public festival.

The man donned the mask for a carnival celebration in the town of Gehren.

When I lived in that flophouse on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, one of my fellow tenants was a man who looked and dressed exactly like Hitler (though his fatigues were often blue, he was definitely jackbooted and toothbrush-mustached. I wonder who his barber was? He had the proper raven-colored raving forelick). He always looked very determined and busy, and slightly hurt that people weren't friendlier to him. Not that anyone was particularly unfriendly, either. It's the sort of thing you don't pay much attention to in those parts. You just shrug.

Hot Coffee in the Dark: Up with the rooster to milk the cows and slop the pigs. My interview with Paul Findley is coming up this weekend, concurrently with a translation deadline for the Gotham Gazette, so Colin is to be a dull boy today. I wonder if you blindtangerine members got my first post? If it's too annoying, just unsubscribe. I figure that if you actually read it once in a while, I will be incented (don't you hate that word?) to stop maundering about how much I need to do my laundry and write more simply and to the point.

Hijacking the Brain Circuits With a Nickel Slot Machine

New York Times, February 19, 2002 (from KurzweilAI)

Neuroscientists have uncovered a common thread between compulsive gambling, attendance at sporting events, vulnerability to telephone scams and exuberant investing in the stock market based on rewards. And they found that the brain systems that detect and evaluate such rewards generally operate outside of conscious awareness. In navigating the world and deciding what is rewarding, humans are closer to zombies than sentient beings much of the time.

Dr. Jonathan Cohen, a neuroscientist at Princeton, studies a part of the frontal cortex called the anterior cingulate, located in back of the forehead. This part of the brain has several functions, Dr. Cohen said, including the task of detecting errors and conflict in the flow of information being processed automatically.

Errors and conflicts in the flow: I suppose this means our president is a hypocingulate, though I am happy to hear on NPR that he clarified that point about not bombing North Korea further back into the Stone Age, despite signing them up for the Axis of Evil.

Monkey Business: Poor Jen is frazzled about presenting our Gorilla Press book to her corporate funders today. She thanks me over and over and over again late last night, poor lady. Have a look at the cover that Ellen (Luxie) and I designed for the book (preliminary). I am very proud of how this project is turning out.

Calling All Cartoons: Goofing off, I have set up a Yahoo! Group under the directory heading "Science > Alternative > Paranormal Phenomena > Cryptozoology," but that's just a sick joke. I added some of you (trying to get all my address books together) to the membership, and now you will receive messages updating you when I have posted to this Web log. Instructions for unsubscribing are in the e-mails you receive, and you can go to the site and set your e-mail options to "digest" so only receive a message periodically. You can post to blindtangerine@yahoo.com anything you think all of my friends should or might want to know. If you have Web log through Blogger.com, you can go into your settings and enter this e-mail address to keep the rest of us posted on your bloggings. My feelings will not be hurt if you unsubscribe, but hey, it might be fun! The lazy man's way to socialize.

Some of you probably have not heard from me in years and cannot remember who I am. I apologize for the intrusion. If you can think of anyone I should be in touch with, have them email blindtangerine-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Over and out.

Mr. Lonelyhearts: JB bagged on me re: the evening at the Media Bistro drinkies-poo session. The man has kids, so I guess I can excuse it. I should save the dough for now, although some help is on the way. Still have the rest of The Player on video to get through, and Iggy to scritch and scratch, and enough cash to indulge in some cheap grub from Zaytoon's. Good news is that JB says he will have some work for me in maybe a month for the Big Five consulting (I almost mistyped it as "conslutting") firm he works at. I sent him a sample freelancer contract I snagged from the National Writers Union (of which I think I am a member in good standing). Then I start futzing around with ConceptDrawMINDMAP and really start to waste time. This thing is amazing! I have Pocket MindMap for me iPaq, but this is waaay mondo cool. You can output HTML or PowerPoint or graphics files for transparencies, you can do all kinds of crazy things. Wow. I can't stop playing with it.

So I am in for the evening, with more much work to do.

My Life as a Dogma Film: Attended a very interesting Webcast lecture at Horizon Live on "information literacy" and "information fluency" in higher education. It's archived, just sign in and check it out. But that's an item for my jot book, which I am going to work on this afternoon after clearing some other junk off my desk. JB instant-messages me up about going to this event tonight at Pressure about Vanity Fair magazine, with cocktails, mainly, and business cards. Very busy after a languid morning, much needed.

Minderbinder of the Millennium: This from today's New York Times, pointed out by Harvard, beggars belief. It's a complete Milo Minderbinder job, or would have been, if the Times hadn't gotten the leaks and double-negated the negation to form an infinite regress of anti-irony. Actually, this reads like a story from 1968 that got lost in some corner and run inadvertently as current news. Make sure your psychiatrist locks up his office nice and tight, senior officials.

Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad

By JAMES DAO and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.

The plans, which have not received final approval from the Bush administration, have stirred opposition among some Pentagon officials who say they might undermine the credibility of information that is openly distributed by the Defense Department's public affairs officers.

The military has long engaged in information warfare against hostile nations — for instance, by dropping leaflets and broadcasting messages into Afghanistan when it was still under Taliban rule.

But it recently created the Office of Strategic Influence, which is proposing to broaden that mission into allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Western Europe. The office would assume a role traditionally led by civilian agencies, mainly the State Department.

The small but well-financed Pentagon office, which was established shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was a response to concerns in the administration that the United States was losing public support overseas for its war on terrorism, particularly in Islamic countries.

As part of the effort to counter the pronouncements of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and their supporters, the State Department has already hired a former advertising executive to run its public diplomacy office, and the White House has created a public information "war room" to coordinate the administration's daily message domestically and abroad.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, while broadly supportive of the new office, has not approved its specific proposals and has asked the Pentagon's top lawyer, William J. Haynes, to review them, senior Pentagon officials said.

Little information is available about the Office of Strategic Influence, and even many senior Pentagon officials and Congressional military aides say they know almost nothing about its purpose and plans. Its multimillion dollar budget, drawn from a $10 billion emergency supplement to the Pentagon budget authorized by Congress in October, has not been disclosed.

Headed by Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden of the Air Force, the new office has begun circulating classified proposals calling for aggressive campaigns that use not only the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert operations.

The new office "rolls up all the instruments within D.O.D. to influence foreign audiences," its assistant for operations, Thomas A. Timmes, a former Army colonel and psychological operations officer, said at a recent conference, referring to the Department of Defense. "D.O.D. has not traditionally done these things."

One of the office's proposals calls for planting news items with foreign media organizations through outside concerns that might not have obvious ties to the Pentagon, officials familiar with the proposal said.

General Worden envisions a broad mission ranging from "black" campaigns that use disinformation and other covert activities to "white" public affairs that rely on truthful news releases, Pentagon officials said.

"It goes from the blackest of black programs to the whitest of white," a senior Pentagon official said.

Another proposal involves sending journalists, civic leaders and foreign leaders e-mail messages that promote American views or attack unfriendly governments, officials said.

Asked if such e-mail would be identified as coming from the American military, a senior Pentagon official said that "the return address will probably be a dot-com, not a dot- mil," a reference to the military's Internet designation.

To help the new office, the Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group, a Washington-based international consulting firm run by John W. Rendon Jr., a former campaign aide to President Jimmy Carter. The firm, which is being paid about $100,000 a month, has done extensive work for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Kuwaiti royal family and the Iraqi National Congress, the opposition group seeking to oust President Saddam Hussein.

Officials at the Rendon Group say terms of their contract forbid them to talk about their Pentagon work. But the firm is well known for running propaganda campaigns in Arab countries, including one denouncing atrocities by Iraq during its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The firm has been hired as the Bush administration appears to have united around the goal of ousting Mr. Hussein. "Saddam Hussein has a charm offensive going on, and we haven't done anything to counteract it," a senior military official said.

Proponents say the new Pentagon office will bring much-needed coordination to the military's efforts to influence views of the United States overseas, particularly as Washington broadens the war on terrorism beyond Afghanistan.

But the new office has also stirred a sharp debate in the Pentagon, where several senior officials have questioned whether its mission is too broad and possibly even illegal.

Those critics say they are disturbed that a single office might be authorized to use not only covert operations like computer network attacks, psychological activities and deception, but also the instruments and staff of the military's globe- spanning public affairs apparatus.

Mingling the more surreptitious activities with the work of traditional public affairs would undermine the Pentagon's credibility with the media, the public and governments around the world, critics argue.

"This breaks down the boundaries almost completely," a senior Pentagon official said.

Moreover, critics say, disinformation planted in foreign media organizations, like Reuters or Agence France-Presse, could end up being published or broadcast by American news organizations.

The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency are barred by law from propaganda activities in the United States. In the mid-1970's, it was disclosed that some C.I.A. programs to plant false information in the foreign press had resulted in articles published by American news organizations ...

Calling it a Day: It's a day. It is and was a day. Many items left unchecked on the list, but many others stricken out, struck through. Going for a civilized evening at Harvard's, a bite to eat, have a good read on the subway.

So Broke I'm Going to Have to Sweat the Bullets I Need to Shoot Myself With: Just wagered $60 of my unemployment dollars on two submissions and two staff editorial positions I thought I might have a shot at, printing and faxing. Kinko writes, "tell me something uplifing," so I check out the quotations search at Bartelby.com and come up with this:

"What makes shit such a universal joke is that it's an unmistakeable reminder of our duality, of our soiled nature and of our will to glory. It is the ultimate lèse-majesté."

—John Berger, "Muck and Its Entanglements," Harper's (New York, May 1989)

It is that sort of day. Luxie sends 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 odd Web sites to cheer me up. It's kind of what I am writing about in my first column: writing about the Web these days is either (1a) Yahoo! Internet Life ("attention, K-Mart shoppers!") or (1b) Jakob Nielsen ("I kept getting a Javascript error and the navigation was confusing")—both of these genres completely lacking in irony—or (2a) weird stuff you send your friends while abusing your company e-mail acccount, which I call call "cheap irony," or else (2b) freaked-out conceptual artists stoned on deep Hegelian (or anti-Hegelian—but then Hegel himself asserted the identity of identity and non-identity, casting doubt on whether there's any difference or deference or differánce, though the fact that one's student deferment has expired possesses an almost Cartesian degree of indubitability) critique, which I call "expensive irony" because you have to take out so many student loans to understand it. Trust me, I will get this written up in simple English eventually.

Time to contact the Myrtle Mile people about setting up some interviews and getting some inside dope for next week's article. This will be a good change of pace: just the facts, and other people's words, for a change, instead of one's own FUBAR'd logorrhea.

Welcome to the Working Week: Satirius Johnson of NPR has replaced Pat Kiernan of NY1 as the voice that wakes me up as I wait for the java jolt to arrive at the brain and the e-mails to start coming in. That seems wrong. Here comes the confirmation of my latest ProfNet query now. First priority for the day is the job hunt—got to get down to OBE and fax some stuff off to Cahner's—the second is dealing with the financial crisis (need to call my lawyer), third is to get down to some writing and reporting. What exactly is this figure skating scandal anyway, and why should I care? Anyone? Ah, yes, today is President's Day. People will be closed for business.

Stark-Dark Outside and Stark-Snarky Inside: Gnawing on yesterday's pork chop as some really whacko ska segues into Les Sages Poetes de la Rue. Have I been writing? Sort of. Working on my e-learning blog a bit. But I am going to have take a break to watch a video and eat some crazy hot ramen noodles with no English at all on the label, after going out to the bodega for some lemonade. Just enough whiskey on hand should the fugacious Harvard decide to jet on by later on. Turns out the font I need to do what I want in the Gorilla book is Macintosh only. Can't we all ... just get along?

Cyberbabes and Orgasmatrons Heat Up the Future

By Sinead O'Hanlon

LONDON (Reuters) — Whatever happened to the robot maid promised way back in the 1960s when cartoons like "The Jetsons" gave us a vision of life in the 21st century?

Or those amazing virtual reality holidays that would whisk armchair travelers on a five-star tour to Mars or Venus from the comfort of the sitting room?

Real life in the 21st century may not be as far out and groovy as old science fiction shows imagined, but one of Britain's top futurologists promises interesting changes on our near horizon ...

By 2012 the Orgasmatron — the artificial sexual pleasure device dreamed up for Woody Allen's film "Sleeper" — will become a reality, Pearson said.

Within four years, toys will be emotionally interactive, responsive to the feelings of the children playing with them.

If emotional toys seem a bit scary, video tattoos — featuring moving images implanted under the skin — will soon give parents something worse to fret about.

Also by 2006, scenes from blockbuster dinosaur film "Jurassic Park" could take a step closer to reality when the first extinct organism is brought back to life, he predicts.

Although seeing into the future is never going to be an exact science, Pearson has had an 85 percent success rate since producing his first timeline in 1991.

Pop-Up Killer goes absolutely apeshit, the bullet-sounds are flying like it's just discovered Osama's convoy. It's a sanctioned assassin gone rogue, it cannibalizes my system memory, how can we stop it? It's gone berserk!

Late Afternoon (P)light: I get sidetracked easily. I have been working on an Access database template for logging terms that I translate, which can then be spit out in a format suitable for uploading to ProZ. Once I get the one working, I can duplicate it and adapt it for various fields and win a lot of KudoZ for glossary entries. Let me know if you want one, I will e-mail it to you, fellow dragomans. In fact, I will put it up on the Web where you can get at it: URL TK, remind me. Kinko suggests I send my story to one of the West Coast alternative weeklies. Only the Seattle Weekly has a submissions link on it's page (what is wrong with that Village Voice consortium, anyway?), so I send it there, with what I think is a pretty good pitch:

Subject: Submission: Change or Die—A Unique Look at "Career Reengineering" and "Skill Transfer"

Abstract: Ivan Lerner, the former executive editor of New York's infamous Screw magazine, now covers specialty chemicals for the Wall Street-based Chemical Market Reporter. "The story boils down to this: Lerner is working. You're not. How come?" In a candid interview, Lerner summarizes an approach to career that defies all conventional wisdom on the subject.

I'm a Brooklyn, New York-based freelance (read "downsized") writer covering technology and education beats and writing feature articles in my copious spare time. The attached 2,300 words (which I will also cut-and-paste append in case you have difficulty with Word files) were written with New York alternative publications in mind, but could readily be adapted for your readership with a few cultural references clarified. I can get your fact-checkers sources in a jiffy if you need them.

Hope you find it interesting. It has no particular shelf-life, given recent unemployment statistics for the publishing industry, unless, of course, the economic stimulus package suddenly kicks in.

Comments? Please? Jen writes in with more positive reinforcement about our work for Gorilla, which I have another half-hour to do on before tomorrow. No word from Harvard, who is probably sleeping all day after another of her poker nights out of Petronius Arbiter.

So now I start in to write. I write best between five and two in the morning anyway. So ... write.

News From All Over The Map: Velma writes in with a phone number for the Brooklyn Eagle (the paper Walt Whitman once edited), which she says is looking for stringers. 422-7400. I add it to my to-do list for syncing to my iPaq. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head? I am planning on writing an article on Myrtle Avenue next week, as I probably mentioned [I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress]. Want to spend time talking to the shopkeepers and the neighbors. Need to get a tape recorder. D2 replies to my Lomocard with a Lomocard of her own (geckos), says she is potting away and will have some new work to show soon. D2 aka Danders is always telling me I should write fiction. I think about it from time to time. It seems so difficult. Reading Colson Whitehead's new ( I mean second, it's a year old) book, John Henry Days [other reviews 1 + 2 + 3 + 4], in fits and starts, I have not fully warmed up to it yet, now that the narrative starts to intercut between the historical John Henry and the junketeering black freelance journalist ... I love the quasi-scholastic debate over the four categories of the "puff piece": Bob's Debut, Bob's Return, Bob's Comeback, and added to the trinity later, Bob is Hip, where Bob = public figure or phenomenon x. My e-mail program informs me that a certain JoAnne Spencer at Slate has opened the e-mail transmitting my "career reengineering" story. Working on a Sunday morning, poor JoAnne. Perhaps she is experiencing career ennui herself and will champion my snarky little piece of prose.

Sunday Morning Coming Down: Sean is really nice, he adds me pretty much on a whim to Dream Catcher, you can read my first dream there. A doozy. Do comment. It really helped me to remember my dreams, anticipating participating. APB to all Tangerine readers, get involved. Okay, today will be 40 percent job search, 40 percent writing, 15 percent apartment cleaning, and 5 percent Crazy Tetris, which will make you ... you know.

Report from the Committee on Random Communications: I have been meaning to report on some of the results I got back from my query on PR Newswire's ProfNet on Web art and Web exhibitions, for a column or series of reviews. The cream of the crop was a video Webcast about a Massachussetts artist named Eddie Breen, on the eve of his first gallery show. Highly recommended. The online commercial gallery MixedGreens.com (I once interviewed there for a copy edit freelance gig but probably overbid on my rates) has a great feature called "Documentitos," short videos profiling the gallery's artists. Mike Houston is a friend of Luxie's. A lot of what I got back was the usual "I put my paintings on the Internet," which is not exactly what I am looking for. The company behind the report from the world of Breen , though a small fish in a big pond (and really ought to have had their opening titles copyedited!) is doing the kind of thing that interests me: creating exhibition spaces and communities according to the best e-commerce principles, but not necessarily for commercial purposes. I think, you know, if people doing virtual trade shows are doing things artists might be interested in, or vice versa, that would be a cool thing to write about and might find an audience. If I haven't mentioned it already, I am really stuck on this Web documentary called "After the New Economy." Very modest, but there ought to be a repository of these somewhere, it's an art form to be encouraged!

Saturday Night's Alright For Zonking: Zonking, meaning lapsing into a semicoma from weariness and general stress. I collapse on the couch with a glass of Islay scotch to sip and let Iggy lick my head while I watch Jackie Chan's Legend of the Drunken Master. Luxie and I knocked back a few over smothered pork chops and a bottle of Merlot (wait, you upper-case it if it's named after the grape, right? No, lower-case if named after the grape and upper-case if it's named after the region: Bordeaux) at the Five Spot after busting our ass all afternoon on the Gorilla. We secretly agree that the tag line inviting participation in the project rings false: "Change Your Jungle." As though the people you are working with are living in a jungle, you know, like Blackboard Jungle ("a shocking story of today's high school hoodlums!"). But those Idaho cheese fries, mwaa! That Luxie is one of the smartest people I know. Art Institute of Chicago, hmmm. This volunteer work we're doing is really satisfying, in a way: it reminds me of how good it feels to be efficient. On the other hand, I wish someone were paying me to be this efficient. Bid on a Spanish-to-English ProZ-posted job: $1,500 for 35,000 words in 9 days (about $0.45/source word). Comments on the market-savvy of said bid? Subject very similar to the export catalog we did for the Brazilian government: economic development propaganda for a Mexican port city. Spanish translators are a dime a dozen, of course. It's maquiladora work, but I don't care. Just chain me to the mast and stuff my ears with popcorn and the siren and the whirlpool won't get me, if I'm lucky. The foundation myth of bourgeois humanity according to Theodore Adorno. "Duty, with which whip in hand ..."Aw, to hell with it, to bed.

Saturday Morning in the Myrtle Avenue Redevelopment District: Just lost an entire post. Dang. Copy into the clipboard before posting. Wish I had that Office 2000, with those multiple clipboards like in EMACS or MASS11 for the good old VAX mainframe. Ellen's (Luxie's) on her way over to do Gorilla work. Andrei Cordescu's Exquisite Corpse, thinking of submitting a translation of Hilst's Matamoros there, but no, they are not accepting submissions, dang.

To werk, jerk. Midday prayers from Algeria over Radio Alger Chaine 1. The muezzin chanting the final “La illaha ilaa-llah” followed by a wicked electronic club mix.

Zonked, Part II: Slept from 6:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m., and nowhere to get a pizza at this time of the night. I will have to brave the schlep to the all-night market on Myrtle Avenue, always a picaresque adventure. Received a curt rejection letter from Strausbaugh at the NY Press for "Change or Die." Send it off to Slate on a whim. Should also repurpose that article as a general market career-transition story, with less Kierkegaard and Darwin. I promised Jen the Gorilla front matter and all that by tomorrow morning, and by god I am going to deliver it ... I guess. Luxie and I are a bit frazzled over the whole thing. Having to complete an application for The Big Word, the London agency I worked with today out of the blue. Might as well write up those two modest invoices while I am at it, one to the Gotham Gazette for $100. Brew a fresh pot of Chock Full O' Nuts, Agnes (my imaginary girl Friday), it's going to be a long night.

Friday Afternoon in Handbasket to Hell: Time to relax, if I can remember how. I have four job applications in process at the moment, minutes after finishing an interview with the gentleman from Georgia, who was great in a mild-mannered, wonky way. I also have two freaking invoices to get out, and a couple of snail mail submissions to sen off, not to mention follow-ups to try to get through to some reticent would-be interviewees. This all for a story I have yet to sell.

Enig: Let's go over and see what the Enigma is saying about her day. Oh, my, she's cutting and pasting our correspondence, hope she doesn't resurrect some of that old stuff stashed in online storage space somewhere. Yeesh! Am I so very snarky? Here's a photo of my old friend Karen of Goat Island fame. Wonder what she's up to?

The unemployment check arrives, phew. Hungry. Si quieres, comes lentejas. Si no les quieres, les dejas (favorite proverb of Paz, the gfriend of a grad school roommate, both from Barthelona). How shall I spend my Friday evening? I have been dying for some writing and translating time all day. Says Harvard, "So, you just basically sit here in this little corner all day long?" Yes, yes I do. Some life. Let's see if I can run WS_FTP and XDrive at the same time without crashing, there's an interesting experiment ... I am going to make some fried eggs with corned beef hash to wash down with some lemonade, then go return some videotape to Blockbuster, see what the funky corner winos are up to.

Stress City and Hepar Moschatum: This job comes in from London this morning at 9 a.m. to translate a Polish autopsy report written in Latin, for which I ask a minimum fee of $40 (too low, sayeth the Enigma). My fax machine is out of ink, so I have the Scottish guy fax it over to OBE. It winds up reading as follows:

Record of Post-Mortem Examination on October 2, 2001
[Some Polish headings not translated]

Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment:
Generalized atherosclerosis and morbid cardiac ischemia (reduced blood flow to the heart). Morbid hypertonia (rigidity, tension and spasticity of the muscles), cardiac tamponade (fluid build-up in the pericardium), and cardiogenic shock, following a percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) of the right coronary artery on October 1, 2001. Resuscitation. Blood in the pericardium. Draining of blood from the pericardium. Resuscitation of the heart and implantation of an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP). Circulatory and respiratory failure.

Pathomorphology Findings
Severe atherosclerosis, especially in the aorta and coronary artery of the heart. Myocardial infarction in the right upper quadrant of the heart, with subepicardial bleeding in the outer layer of the heart wall. Blood in the pericardial sac surrounding the heart after the implantation of a metal stent in the right coronary artery. Following the draining of blood from the pericardium, an atherosclerotic dilation, or narrowing, of the abdominal aorta where it bifurcates, with some dissection of the artery walls, and massive bleeding in the peritoneal cavity and the retroperitoneal space behind the stomach. Edema (swelling), hyperemia (excess blood flow ) and partial collapse of the lungs. Emphysema in the upper and lower region of the lungs. Hepar moschatum, an enlargement of the liver. A chronic kidney infection (pyelonephritis). After the remains were returned home, bilateral fractures were observed in the third through the eighth ribs and in the sternum.

The entire remains were dissected, except for the head.

Some fun, no? The agency, however, gave me an invalid e-mail for the I-need-it-sooner-than-now client, so I am feeling stressed out and pissed about having to call London. Called the client company's North Carolina HQ, but no one's ever heard of the lady in question. Urgh.

Interview with Prof. Gustafson of UGA postponed until a half hour from now. Woke up at 7:30 a.m. to research it after a very, very late bedtime, with whiskey and a valentine. Jolie writes in with a cool gig at Cahner's she saw posted on the East Coast Hangout's funky Unix box in Stacy's (author of a book called Waiting for my Cats to Die) spare bedroom.

Augean Stables: Holy moly, what a day. My interview with Ted at Global Knowledge gets postponed to Monday, thank goodness, so I have an hour to finish researching my interview with Professor Gustafson in the morning before alloting half an hour to swabbing out the Augean stables here in anticipation of Harvard's arrival for a quiet anti-Valentine's. The day feels incomplete, but then time does keep on slipping slipping slipping into the fyooooo-chaaaa. I have to lay out the front matter for the Gorilla book by Saturday, so, shit, what does that imply for my schedule? At least I kept the cooker gassed up and the beer cold, and worked things out with my landlord about the rent. Spend some time at the Writer's Guidelines Database thinking about how to stop indulging myself and write some stuff that's straight-ahead commercial. Here come Sonny Rollins and Monk doing "Misterioso" on the Avant Guardians channel, ah. Who's that groovy 'bonist on the track, anyway? Benny Powell? After some inspired noodling, he restates the theme all busted up briefly then pow-glissandos out, deferring to Felonious, who perversely halves the time signature like he's swimming in a sea of honey before switching back to the funky swing and then hiding his vamp behind the token 16 bars thrown as a bone to the bassist, after which Sonny quotes "Camptown Ladies" in the course of trading fours with the drummer. Back to the head and out. Next.

Thwarted Midwinter Apagão: The handyman downstairs hands me a letter from Con Edison dated 1 February (oops) that says they are going to send a city marshal over to disconnect my utilities. In the middle of winter. I zip over to Tenant Net and get the information I need:

If your service has been or is about to be shut off for nonpayment and you cannot pay the full amount owed, you may negotiate an agreement, called a "deferred payment agreement," with the utility company to pay what you owe over a period of time.

The utility company is required to attempt to make a deferred payment agreement to fit your financial circumstances. At a minimum, the company must explain to you why a plan that fits your budget is not acceptable to them.

The utility company may postpone termination for up to ten days to negotiate a deferred payment agreement.

The standard deferred payment agreement requires that you make a lump-sum downpayment and monthly payments. The down payment must be equal to 15% of the arrears or one half of one month's average bill, whichever is greater. The monthly payments must be an amount equal to 1/10th of the arrears or one half of one month's average bill, whichever is greater. See sample Deferred Payment Agreement Form, at page 46-G.

If you cannot afford the standard agreement. you may request a more lenient plan. You will have to give information about your family's income, rent or mortgage costs, and other living expenses. Based on your financial circumstances, the utility company may approve a payment agreement with no downpayment and installments as low as $10 per month.

I reach a certain Mrs. Ambrose over at the evil empire, who proposes a payment now of half of what I owe, then puts me on Muzak hold to check with the buttheads in the legal department. The deal I negotiate is $400 down by 28 February and the balance to be paid off in four months. An agreement will arrive in the mail for me to execute. I got yer execution right here ... Still, I am a happier camper, though I could technically have bargained down to that 15 percent, and though it's still freaking cold in here. Would actually welcome the clanking of pipes right about now. New topic on the Well: "Steam heat: the unsung horror of life in New York."

Traumbedeutungbloggenspiel: Starting to work on my e-learning blog, I visit Jay Cross's site and digress off in the direction of a wonderful open blog where people record their dreams.

Adventures in Public Relations, or, Thanks for Nothing in Advance: I submit a first query to ProfNet for my column on Web art and exhibitions, including a number of URLs as examples of the sort of thing I am looking for. The following e-mail correspondence ensues.

From: Caroline_Chaikin@prnewswire.com
To: techscribe@earthlink.net
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 8:06 AM
Subject: Re: Freelance Colin Brayton Open All points globally
Brayton [sic],

Thanks for the query. Just so you know, we cannot include all the URLs
you have listed below.

Carrie

To: Caroline Chaikin/PR Newswire@PR Newswire
Subject: Re: Freelance Colin Brayton Open All points globally
I see. Is there a length limit? Should I edit it down for you?

From: Caroline_Chaikin@prnewswire.com
To: "Colin Brayton" techscribe@earthlink.net
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: Freelance Colin Brayton Open All points globally
No, we just can't include all the URLs for formatting purposes. You're [sic]
query's already been processed, though.

To: Caroline Chaikin/PR Newswire@PR Newswire
Subject: Re: Freelance Colin Brayton Open All points globally
define "formatting purposes"? Your broadcast messages go out in plain text
rather than HTML? what? could you be a little more informative? i'd like to
submit queries that don't suck! ;>) cb


From: Caroline_Chaikin@prnewswire.com
To: "Colin Brayton" techscribe@earthlink.net
There's no explanation necessary, really. Just, in the future, if you could please
not include so many URLs in the text of your requests it would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks, in advance!

Carrie

From: "Colin Brayton"
To:
Subject: Re: Freelance Colin Brayton Open All points globally
Date: Thursday, February 14, 2002 11:40 AM
You're an intern, right? Or did you just transfer in from Enron? It's kind
of ironic to encounter an unwillingness to provide information from a public
relations service.

cb

My Life as a Louco Brasileiro: From an exhibition of Brazilian "visual poetry" at U Texas Austin.

NOT SO AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY

by MILLÔR FERNANDES

I was born in Meyer (Rio de Janeiro) at the age of nine. I was born small and I grew little by little. First, they made my middle portion, then my tips. It’s only later that I got to the extremes. Head, trunk, and member, that’s all I am. But I don’t rebel. I got into three revolutions, all lost. The first one against God and he won, tricking me with a miracle. The second against fate, and it beat me, leaving me like this, with no clue about the plot. The third one against myself, and I ended up here. Do you see what I am? And where I am? And why that was? One thing is for sure. They don’t make Millôres like they used to.

In spite of school, I’m basically self-taught. Everything that I don’t know, I have always not known on my own. Nobody ever thought me how to think, how to write, or how to draw, which is easy to realize when you look at my pieces.

I believe the earth is flat. I try in vain not to be. I believe parallels meet in parallelepipeds. And, like the Czechs, I can say SVOBODA SUVERENITA. Or better: ZA SVOBODU DUBCEKA CERNIKA. What both phrases mean I don’t have the slightest idea. But I’m ready to die for them, just like so many people die for other phrases that they also don't understand.

Here I am, then, happy and light-headed, vague and carefree. In the dark, I don’t see, I don’t understand what I don’t know, I stay where I stop, I go and I come back full of longings (saudades). Because, if I stay, I long for the unknown. If I leave, the separation tears me apart.

I’m like everybody.

Love is Just a Four-Letter Word:

BOMBAY (Reuters) — Hard-line Hindus burned cards and gifts in protest against Valentine's Day which they say offends Indian tradition and cane-wielding policemen guarded shops to prevent violence.

Groups of slogan-shouting Shiv Sena activists went around greeting card and gift shops in the financial capital, Bombay, asking owners to shut down.

The activists waved placards saying "Down with Western Culture, Down with Valentine's Day," "Keep Hindu culture alive, Ban Valentine's Day" as they set fire to merchandise.

The hard-line Hindu group, based in Bombay and an ally of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, says Valentine's Day is overcommercialized and offends traditional Indian sensibilities.

The activists had also warned young couples in Bombay and the central city of Bhopal not to celebrate. Those disobeying would have their faces painted black, they said.

Card shop owners in Bombay, who have tried to disguise the occasion as "Prem Din Utsav" (Festival of Love) to avoid trouble, said they were facing huge losses.

A Kindred Soul (Except for the Murderous Violence, Of Course):

GALVESTON, Texas (Reuters) — A Texas jury on Wednesday found Thomas Mitchell guilty of aggravated assault for shooting his girlfriend because he thought she was about to say the words "New Jersey."

His attorney unsuccessfully sought his exoneration on grounds that certain words set off an uncontrollable rage in Mitchell, who has a history of mental illness.

Words that triggered a bad reaction in Mitchell included "New Jersey," "Wisconsin," "Snickers" and "Mars," lawyer Maria Mercado told the court.

Throughout the three-day trial, Mitchell, 54, covered his ears when he thought the words were going to be spoken.

Witnesses used flashcards with the words written out instead of saying them in court.

Wachet Arf: The first thing I hear this morning is ACB Radio, "where you can hear blind musicians" tear down the myth perpetuated by Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, et al, that blindness augments your musical talent. I mean, barking-dog disco? Really. Ah, now "Valentine Stomp" by Fats Waller, on Boombox, that's better. So what shall we do today, boys and girls? Now, this is amazing news:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. House of Representatives approved the most sweeping changes in campaign finance laws in nearly three decades early on Thursday, moving to reduce the influence of money in a scandal-scarred political system.

Despite fierce objections from Republican leaders during a marathon 16-hour debate, the House voted 240-189 to approve a bill to ban unregulated "soft-money" donations to national political parties and restrict broadcast attack ads before an election.

We'll see what kind of teeth it has when the Senate gets done with it. Madame Hillary? New Yorkers are watching you!

Zonked: Luxie wears me out with endless minutiae as we grind for four hours on the Gorilla project, but the results are pretty damn good. It's mostly a matter of keeping things organized. Feels good to be doing something efficient. I could be getting $35 an hour for this stuff, if anyone was hiring. It's taking me some time to wind down, though, so I am listening to a new groovy mix from Warp-Net and sipping my last Corona Extra. I was freaking earlier because I couldn't find my wallet when it came time to call in a tactical pizza strike, but it finally turns up at the bottom of pile of laundry at the foot of the bed, where Iggy likes to curl up. The 'Wolf seems pretty happy with the way I've immortalized him (if I ever sell the snarky thing). Harvard phones in some piquant topics of conversation. That is all.

It's a Wrap: I wrap the Werewolf story, start typing out the submission letters, send off a copy to the interviewee for comments, and get ready to move on to the Web column I am pitching. Wish I could access the Nation online archives, which they don't yet have at the NYPL. Maybe Proquest has added it? The Merm phones from São Paulo to say hello, share blog lore, and report on the Merbaby. I love her collection of curses. It's only US$0.07 a minute to call here from there, I hear (or is it R0.07?), but something like US$1.55 for me to call there. Puta que o pariu. EB (Lux Interior) is dropping by at seven to work on the cover for the Gorilla Press project. I gotta write to Isa about helping me with a story about São Paulo for my next assignment, a travel piece. I get some hits on my MediaMap query about translators and Web-site internationalization, and I am exploring PR Newswire for the first time, one thing I did learn about at that otherwise kind of wasted afternoon at Media Bistro on Saturday talking about researching on the WWW.

Answer Selected: I can't believe it! My answer on concursos and quiebras got the KudoZ. I don't suck! Jolielaide, with her elephant's memory, writes in to settle a silly bar argument about the difference between cyclones and hurricanes:

"From the Random House College Dictionary I've been consulting since I was 9:

"cyclone: a large-scale, atmospheric wind-and-pressure system characterized by low pressure at its center and by circular wind motion, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, clockwise in the SouthernHemisphere. Cf. anticyclone.

"hurricane: a violent, tropical, cyclonic storm of the western North Atlantic ..."

Leaves me spluttering, the East-Village-dwelling Ivy League eggheaded [insert Yosemite Sam–style cussing here]. To save face, I want to argue that if a Northern Hemisphere cyclone is a hurricane, then its southern counterpart could logically be called an "antihurricane." That's utter nonsense, of course. Grrrrrrr. Maybe I could win the argument by attacking the Random House vis à vis, say, Webster's Tenth Collegiate. Hell with it, I give up.

Gimme Gimme KudoZ: A query comes in about the proper translation of the legal phrase in Spanish, "Conversion de la quiebra en concurso." I fumble through it as follows:

Conversion of a court-administered settlement into a competitive settlement of claims

I have been lazy in not researching this further for the exact parallel terms in the American and British legal systems, but the basic ideas is that instead of having a summary judgement by the court about the settlement of claims against a debtor, you have a hearing ("concurso")in which the relative priority of claims are argued and adjudicated. In my broken Spanish: en lugar de que el juez ajudicar todas las demandas contra un deudor de modo sumario, un reunion de acreedores en que cada demanda se ajudica segun sus proprios meritos.

Quiebra: "Juicio por el que se incapacita patrimonialmente a alguien por su situación de insolvencia y se procede a ejecutar todos sus bienes en favor de la totalidad de sus acreedores"

Concurso: (1) "Juicio universal para aplicar los haberes de un deudor no comerciante al pago de sus acreedores"

Note added at 2002-02-13 19:14:09 (GMT):

Las otras respuestas son mas utiles, aunque yo creo que "bankruptcy" es un termino demasiado general. "Meeting of creditors" es "le mot juste," yo creo.

I need KudoZ in specialized fields to bulk up my profile. What do I want to be when I grow up? Back to writing. More coffee.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my dog: Quote of the day from Verbo Volant at Logos.Net. Nadie escriba al coronel. Actually, I have an interesting dialogue with Monkey Woman about her cultural anthropology class.

blindtangerine (11:26:52 AM): how's your class? writing your papers?

Avjadams (11:29:50 AM): I'm having dinner with Don
tonight, I've never had dinner with just Don before,
none of my siblings have either, for that matter I
believe that neither me nor my siblings have ever had
a one on one meal with DEW, this will be weird.
What will we talk about

blindtangerine (11:30:06 AM): you mentioned that. let
me think, phew ...

blindtangerine (11:30:31 AM): ask him to tell you
about his incest novel, "Brother and Sister" written
as Edwin West.

blindtangerine (11:30:43 AM): Or his sci-fi novel
Chaosmos

Avjadams (11:32:13 AM): Class is soso teacher talks
about how we all have assumptions like people from
warm countries are hot headed and being an
anthropologists is like Indiana Jones. She's making
assumptions about our assumptions

blindtangerine (11:32:50 AM): that's a deadly
pedagogical error. you should politely challenge her,
maybe.

blindtangerine (11:33:10 AM): like girls who grew up
in the West Village have smelly feet

Avjadams (11:34:38 AM): Don wrote a book on
incest?Well it's true about the smelly feet, the cat
complained, I'm going to speak to the teacher and
use that word pedagogical, how do you pronounce
it?

blindtangerine (11:35:08 AM): Ped-u-GOJ-ikul
blindtangerine (11:35:24 AM): don't use it, though.
you have to be subtle

blindtangerine (11:35:38 AM): don't let on that you
think that she sucks as a teacher.

blindtangerine (11:35:57 AM): just say what you said,
I think you are making assumptions about our
assumptions?

blindtangerine (11:36:27 AM): as an anthropologist,
she should study the subhumans in her class before
coming to conclusions ...

blindtangerine (11:37:34 AM): what do you think of
my advice?

Avjadams (11:39:28 AM): Good advice thank you, I
thought I was being grumpy, well actually my
sponsor thought i was beimg grumpy, but if the
teacher keeps it up I say something, subtle ofcourse

blindtangerine (11:40:02 AM): no, you have a valid
point ...

blindtangerine (11:40:24 AM): just keep it in the
realm of the subject at hand, don't personalize it

blindtangerine (11:40:49 AM): New Yorkers are
incapable of subtlety

Avjadams (11:41:23 AM): What do I say?

blindtangerine (11:42:37 AM): Gee, I dunno, bring it
up in the context of a question like "how does an
anthropologist avoid assuming too much about what
the people she's studying are thinking?"

Avjadams (11:42:39 AM): She makes these
statements rhetorically

blindtangerine (11:42:51 AM): oh god, not
rhetorically!

blindtangerine (11:43:53 AM): really, this is a central
issue in anthropology you put your finger on, how to
deal with your own cultural bias and understand the
Other without getting absorbed into the Other's
culture ...

Avjadams (11:44:12 AM): you're making fun of me

blindtangerine (11:44:16 AM): You know, like
Anthony Hopkins in that silly monkeyman movie.

blindtangerine (11:44:24 AM): No, I'm totally serious.

blindtangerine (11:44:32 AM): Really.

blindtangerine (11:45:02 AM): I mean, the
anthropologist teaching your class assumes a lot
about what her students believe and think.

blindtangerine (11:45:12 AM): Isn't that bad
anthropological method?

blindtangerine (11:45:46 AM): If you read about
Napoleon Chagnon, who studied the Yanamamo,
you can bring up the scandal about how he staged a
lot of the scenes in his films.

Avjadams (11:46:03 AM): No I agree, gotta go now
clean apartment

blindtangerine (11:46:08 AM): Got the people drunk
and said OK, now have a fight!

blindtangerine (11:46:13 AM): Smooches to yooches

blindtangerine (11:46:26 AM): c u soon

Monkey Woman has trouble with authority.

I am writing smoothly now on my career advice article focusing on Werewolf. Victoria says I can repurpose some of the paragraphs on examples of other friends with odd career transitions as a more mainstream piece. Not a bad idea. JB says I should market the Werewolf piece as is to Registered Representative, a magazine for stockbrokers.

So how do you “start out as a veterinarian and end up as a financial planner,” as the Journal of Financial Planning leads off a recent profile? The story of Ivan Lerner and his mid-career self-reinvention is replete with such cheap irony—if you omit the human element, that is. First, it’s a dead-on parody of the “investment banker starts llama farm” genre of popular career journalism. Second, since porn is just another business—so runs the bar-room enthymeme—all business is therefore essentially porn, catering to such peculiar fetishes of the marketplace as its obscure lust for gallium arsenide, a rare earth used in next-generation microprocessors and one of Lerner’s current beats.

Stet the human element, however, and the story boils down to this: Despite having ignored every tenet of rational career planning, Lerner’s working. You’re not. How come?

The answer: hold on to your work ethic and shrug your shoulders at the mysterious workings of the chaosmos.

“I had this editor at this crappy college paper I worked on who’d say that just because we were writing for a rag that people only picked up for the pizza coupons didn’t mean that we could just print any old shit,” Lerner recalls. “Somehow, that stuck with me through all the weirdness.”

The weirdness started in the mid-80s with a low-budget remake of Bright Lights, Big City, directed by David Cronenberg and starring Lerner as a hip young independent filmmaker who works a day job at a New York television production studio called Broadcast Arts and more than dabbles by night in the deadly romance of a substance chic in the artistic circles of the period. [“Quote”]

The college editor, by the way, was me. I thought that was kinda sweet. Okay, I give myself one more hour to polish this off, then on to other things. Zippy writes in to suggest the Financial Times or Folio as markets.

Work in Progress: I get some Chef Boyardee and beer in me and I find myself in the mood to confront the blank page again. Here's a new stab at my profile of Werewolf:

Ivan Lerner is probably best known to a certain segment of New York society as the long-time executive editor of Screw, the in-your-face Billboard wannabe of the pornography trade.

But no longer. Reluctantly conceding two years ago—on the eve of the emperor’s new recession, though he admits this was simply dumb luck—that he might be better off serving in heaven than reigning in hell, Lerner traded in his keys to the raucous kingdom of what he calls “turgid, tumescent smutland” for a cubicle in a modest corner of “the beautiful, orderly, Germanic world of international chemicals,” signing on as an associate editor for specialty chemicals at the Wall Street–based Chemical Market Reporter. He now spends his weekday nine-to-fives producing tight, cut-to-the-chase, five-Ws business journalism—“Coatings Industry Faces Uncertainty over Lead Paint Litigation”—on an unforgiving deadline.

My editor in chief gave me an excellent piece of advice on my first day,” Lerner deadpans over the phone. “Find the human element in the story—and cut it.”

Many in the New York media industry, like so many others across the economy and the nation, know what it feels like to be included in that blue-penciled human element. The odious phrases “career reengineering” and “skill transfer” are heard so frequently in current public discourse, meanwhile, that a caustic note from William Safire on the subject would actually be welcome ...

When Bogged, Blog: Oops, now I'm bogging down. I have rewritten that last paragraph five times in the last 10 minutes. I excise, then reinstate, my forays into snarkiness. Too many extraneous, redundant, art-for-the-sake-of-art adjectives. Oh well, perhaps a shot of caffeine will align the neurons and the chakras and the jumbled mental furniture into the appropriate feng shui for cranking this shit out. The Merm does get back to me on how to add a comment feature to the end of one's post, so I hope those of you that actually plow through all this aimless verbosity will provide me with some data for my market research. Submit story ideas and venues to publish them in and I will do something nice for you.

Terror Alert: Be alert. Something terrifying may occur. One gentleman on NPR: "I do feel a little terror, but I don't know what to be alert for." Having just received the news, I feel a certain other emotion about not having been terrified up until now. What to call that emotion? Vacuum horrori? Not abhorrence of a vacuum, but a vacuum where abhorrence should reside, an empty feeling that you out of step with your neighbors and might have cut that frazzled elbow-slinger on the subway a bit of slack under the circumstances. A review of a design competition for the new World Trade Center submitted by a seminar-mate last night mentions a structure that would reflect, through irridescent nanotechnological materials not yet invented, the aggregate mood of the inhabitants, the city, or the world. It reminded me of Matt Ruff's novel, Sewer, Gas, and Electric, which I like to reread when I feel blue. Annoying talking robotic Ayn Rand head dying for a cigarette, ha ha ha! Wish there were some way to produce an info graphic tracing my mood swings as posted in this blog. Assign each entry a Defcon level (live Governor Ridge's proposed air-quality-report-like rating system for terrorist threats, when's he going to get that going?) which is then dumped into a database somewhere, downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet, charted, and posted back to the blog periodically. It could be correlated by the rocket-scientists at investment banks with mutual-fund performance statistics to see whether it has any mysterious predictive power.

Abandon All Hope: I have simply abandoned hope for productive use of daylight hours at this time. Plan B is a nap followed by ordering in some Chinese to fuel a midnight dreary pondering weak and weary, quoth the Iggy, rowr rowr rowr. I want to know how the Merm got that comment feature for each of her posts. I researched it past all reason and found a solution I understood, only to discover that my ISP does not host the PHP (a Linux version of CGI, or common gateway inferface) scripts I need to set up. So you can click to comment now, but the window that pops up will link to nowhere (though soon it will point to blindtangerine.net). In other words, I have been goofing off mightily all afternoon. Well, not too much. I have done some Gorilla work and fed Iggy, and calendared some appointments, and read some of Paul Findley's book, sitting in the living room with the funky lamp from Slim and now some new posters. I think I will hang the original New Directions book cover to the English translation of Sartre's Nausea on my bedroom door, where a Biohazard Shelter sign clipped from the newspaper now hangs. Funny, I never noticed how comically, literally nauseated that guy looks, as though he'd eaten some bad escargot.

Afternoon Infusion: Ode to my new tea infuser from Jolielaide. It reminds me of how every Christmas and birthday I would get my grandfather a pen-knife, and he would always act extremely pleased, pointing out the useful features of the knife, describing what it could be used for—he had an odd appetite for ground-fall avocados, very overripe, which he would pick up, skin, and devour with great smacking of lips—and so on. The infuser is so mini-MechaGodzillalike, with its clamping jaws. Reminds you of playing with Tonka trucks.

Cloned Mice Die Young: Milosevic goes on trial today, says the BBC. Cloned mice tend to die young, reports Kurzweil AI Net. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Early in the Morning, 'Bout a Quarter to Three: Home at last from Media Bistro gabfest on a chilly, chilly night and a swing by Harvard's for a bite of whiskey and a yogurt and some shooting of the bull a bit. Nice. Poor kid's recuperating and reading Our Bodies, Our Selves. I am a little restless, maybe because of a parting Lapsang Souchong, which Harvard hermetically seals and stows in some kind of Chinese opium urn because the smoky tea stinks up the place, and in part because those bastards at the MTA said the F was running to Brooklyn after midnight tonight when it was NOT. I crapped out and caught a cab for $11, and finally learned the cheapest route from my smelly, very tired, but very sane-driving Bengali friend (so I tipped him the difference those other dudes were driving all over heck and beyond to chisel outta me). I feel like goofing off some, I futz around with AARON the amazing robot artist, which for some reason provokes a fusillade of PopUp Killer gunshot sound effects (it's that program that zaps away pop-up advertisements, which are always causing me to crash). That leads me to download the Cybernetic Poet as well, which produces the following in the style of Poe:

Chapel was a sigh

Thou wouldst not be happy flowers of a song,
In spring of her may—her quiet, any other dream
While I firmly do it is holier—more I know
I saw but man, I could there be overcast!
A chaos of which thou art come and blind.
It is to mortals ever to the angels, all mute.
Of the towers that melancholy menace of snows.
Not the moon no time with thy peering eyes.
Young Love's very Heaven was unbroken, and low-
And cling around thee, and forest, dim West,
Where an ultimate dim and clash, and groaning,
The night, would not madly deem thee and pools
Where the hour the tears descend in thee and go
At the mad and common usage so in thine eye glances,
And a desperate seas without a part.
I feel it surely is sitting, still a dream?

"Any other dream / While I firmly do it is holier—" Yikes! I heart my computer. I apply for two jobs on ProZ, one looking for Arabic-English translators in Eastern Europe for a Russian agency and paying $0.02 a word (with an explanation—I mean exclamation—point, like that's an amazingly good thing). But it is a series of 10,000+ word jobs, and I can afford to work for references. They should hire me. I told them I would work weird hours to accomodate the time-zone differential. In the meantime, I am idly reading an article from Brazilian Playboy and thinking of translating it as a work sample:

São 150 reais só para entrar na casa noturna. Mais a bagatela de 600 reais, se quiser sair com uma das garotas do lugar. Nosso repórter vai conhecer o W Clube em São Paulo, desembolsa essa grana, leva um monumento pra casa e conta tudo o que rolou.

It's 150 reals just to get inside the night club, plus a piddling six hundred more if you want to leave with one of the girls. Our reporter checks out the W Club in São Paulo, shells out all that dough, takes home a [souvenir], and recounts everything that [shakes out].

Just a cursory translate, must consult the Enig on the nuances there. Speaking of translations, that agency wherever the hell it is finally did mail a check. Poor Pombo-Jerome-Merm-Enig-FEMbackwards (her selves continue to ramify), I think, checking out the world's greatest networker's latest sad blog entry. Iggy does scrabbling length-of-the-apartment sprints, just as Bolek was doing out at Harvard's place, and gets into a nasty dispute of some kind with his own rear end. That happens to the best of us.

Now I start to yawn. The unemployment Web site is down ("System unavailable. RC 11."). Poor Jolie got called in to Schermerhorn Street to account for herself and her weird status as a recently laid off, non-matriculated social work student. I keep telling her she'll earn back her tuition by learning how to negotiate the catch-22s of the poverty gulag on her own behalf, if nothing else. Better try to pass out, get up again sooner than optimal, and finish up some things. All in all, a satisfactory day, leaving aside the fact that no one offered me a freaking job again.

The Week Ahead: The job agent results come pouring into the inbox from my personal career search robots. Result—Slim Pickens, at the end of Strangelove: a big bomb as I go down to my doom a-whoopin and a-hollerin. But down to business: the first item on the to-do agenda is cigarettes from the Heaven. The second is replacing the kitty litter. Iggy starts dragging dirty socks and dishtowels into the box, otherwise. The third is indulging myself in a writing day, fuck it, it must be done. I have some piece of advice here about pitching a column, I am going to go for that, start with a review of the state of Web reviewing and how difficult it is to avoid the voyeurism of cool links and weird stuff. Maybe I can run it by my old contact Andy Hultkrans at Bookforum, if he even remembers me. Also determined to get this e-learning blog going, and talking a bit with Jay Cross.

Work in Progress: Enormously cheered up today and getting shit done. This writing process has always been so painful for me, I get immense pleasure from the inventio or heuresis("finding," "discovery") and the dispositio or taxis ("arrangement") and yet get so terrified by the actio or hypocrisis ( "delivery"). But my friends are helping me over it. Harvard writes in a bit glumly: "Gray, gray, gray day... pathetic fallacy... just pathetic. It's not even my bd, just Monday." I have the following AIM chat with JB over at PWC:

blindtangerine: yarg

blindtangerine: check out

http://www.digitaldocumentary.org/economy/

kajagoogle: back from lunch -- I'll check it out now

blindtangerine: do do

kajagoogle: it's runnin'

blindtangerine: i'm pitching a column on digital arts

on the Web to somebody or other ... the voice

(Machine Age died) or Wired News ...

kajagoogle: will this thing be an example? what the

hell is it?

blindtangerine: it's a Web documentary, it's the

next happening thing

kajagoogle: if you say so -- you know more about

this crap than I do -- you mean somebody paid to

make this thing?

blindtangerine: it's a modest start to a new genre.

i'm interested in virtual exhibitions and

documentaries ...

blindtangerine: check out www.mowa.org, for

example.

kajagoogle: right -- ok -- i'll check that one too --

do you know the folks who did this 1st example?

blindtangerine: no, i haven't tried to track down

the domain owners yet, Alexa provides no info

kajagoogle: naturally -- how helpful -- art for its

own sake?

blindtangerine: the hot new online art project is a

voice-synthesizer that reads all 4 million lines of the

Linux source code aloud ...

kajagoogle: oh, i bet that is entertaining stuff -- can

I hear it from the Mowa site?

blindtangerine: you don't want to hear it, it is a

total wank

blindtangerine: drive you nuts in 3 minutes flat

kajagoogle: thanks for the warning

blindtangerine: i am anti-wankerism

blindtangerine: but i am recycling some of my stuff

from IW about ray kurzweil (www.kurzweil.net)

kajagoogle: so the Web has de-generated into a

medium for the former ranks of Dot-com Hoopla to

express themselves via "art"?

blindtangerine: www.kurzweilai.net

blindtangerine: that is

kajagoogle: always good to recycle

blindtangerine: when any idiot can do it, most of it

will be done by idiots

kajagoogle: sounds like a quote of note

blindtangerine: i made that up myself

kajagoogle: very decent stuff

kajagoogle: you should keep it handy

blindtangerine: this is for my boot camp

assignment this week

kajagoogle: art online?

blindtangerine: yes, kind of ...

blindtangerine: assignment was an exhibition

review, so i went looking for current Web-art

kajagoogle: and remind me: how did you get into

this boot camp thing?

blindtangerine: well, anastasia did it after she got

the ax, and it sounded good. it's through

mediabistro.com

kajagoogle: i figured it was thru the bistro -- are

you still in touch with Ashman?

blindtangerine: and it IS good. Victoria Rowan is

the leader. she writes fluffy shit, so I was skeptical,

but she is actually a totally savvy freelance writer

who just spouts off useful shit by the yard

blindtangerine: no, i meant to write her

blindtangerine: she was the smartest of all of us ...

and had excellent teeth as well ...

kajagoogle: useful as in places where you can sell

your own stuff -- and what do you mean smartest?

blindtangerine: that anastasia is a smart cookie

blindtangerine: yes, victoria really forces you to

think "write and sell this sucker, let's not fuck

around"

blindtangerine: really shrewd advice on what

markets might want the kind of drivel you like to

produce

kajagoogle: always good to have direction...

blindtangerine: i desperately need structure at this

point

kajagoogle: teachers and homework can usually be

a good starting point then

blindtangerine: a return to childhood, yes, with that

satisfying pat on the head to make you feel all warm

inside

blindtangerine: i just turned 40, btw

kajagoogle: i always liked gold stars -- happy

belated

kajagoogle: let's have lunch this week -- a b-day

treat from me

blindtangerine: thanks. yeah sure what day?

blindtangerine: shit i have not yet calendared all my

phone interviews ...

kajagoogle: during kindergarten/1st grade, the

teacher gave us "smarties" for our good works --

and how's friday?

kajagoogle: if your interviews aren't in the way

blindtangerine: friday I am speaking in the morning

with a Prof. Kent Gustafson, so lunch in the

1230-1300 realm would be a doable

blindtangerine: a deliverable

kajagoogle: or both

kajagoogle: can you meet me at my office building?

blindtangerine: absolutely, sure

kajagoogle: we can find somewhere nearby

blindtangerine: 6th Ave, n'est-ce pas?

kajagoogle: oui -- and 45th St

kajagoogle: 1177 Ave of Americas to be precise

blindtangerine: the valley of the shadow of blocky

'scrapers

blindtangerine: know it well, have even

interviewed there ...

kajagoogle: indeed -- no natural light to be had

from the street level

kajagoogle: or from my office -- which is an

interior room with no windows

blindtangerine: near the brazilian consulate, too, as

I recall

blindtangerine: NEWS, Time Inc., all the evil

empires.

kajagoogle: yes, you got -- Little Brazil ??? -- is on

46th I think

blindtangerine: e-mail me the info and I will

calendar you in (which i have to do myself, lacking a

secretary, like some people)

blindtangerine: please, kajagoogle, I want to come

over to the dark side too ...

kajagoogle: will do -- I have help, I'm just not sure

what I'm allowed to ask for -- ah yes, the force is

strong in him, young jedi wannabe

kajagoogle: didja see how Enron was repurposing

all those Stsr Wars names for its shenanigans?

blindtangerine: ask for it all and see what you get

blindtangerine: really? cool! where can I read

more?

blindtangerine: sure it's not one of those Onion

things?

kajagoogle: Star Wars stuff ono CNN -- I'll try to

find a link --it's real -- and yes, you're right -- but it

feels strange -- asking for help for something I

should do myself

blindtangerine: you're a suit now, man, you have to

keep up appearances ...

kajagoogle: so it appears... go here:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/02/07

/enron.starwars.ap/index.html

blindtangerine: a sararimanu or whatever the

Japanese call it ...

kajagoogle: huh?

kajagoogle: George Lucas is pissed

blindtangerine: "sararimanu" = Japanese for

"salaryman"

kajagoogle: ah, so, yup that's me -- and looking to

get saddled with a mortgage too!

blindtangerine: hey, with all those junior Blacks

arriving, you better get an Eight is Enough style barn

kajagoogle: we are quickly determining that we can

afford NOTHING in the tri-state area

blindtangerine: oof

blindtangerine: so anyhow look: 12:30 Friday?

Your place? e-mail me partics.

kajagoogle: will do -- talk to you soon

blindtangerine: gots to bugger off and work, 3

hours left on deadline. ciao.

kajagoogle: bye

Back to work.

Morning Tea, Lies, and Flash Animation: All that happy bullshit about avoiding the usual birthday blues was just that: a pitiful attempt at the power of positive thinking and self-hypnosis. After I snap a bit at Luxie on AIM late last night, however, she sends me the antidote, an indescribabible [sic] piece of Flash animation from God knows where. "TV says donuts are high in fat. Kazoo found a hobo in my room." The apotheosis of Colin Mochrie, my favorite Canadian comic, sadly reduced to Television pitchman for the Mohegan Sun, a Native American casino upstate, where all the UFOs and dragons be. Jolielaide also pitches in on the effort at heading off the deep meemies. I now have a tea infuser (gee thanks!), which means I can expand my horizons well beyond mere bagged teas. The last time we met, I was complaining that they only sell Lipton's in all the bodegas and markets around here. Now I feel like a butthead for being so self-absorbed last night over chow and a bee-yah. That Jolie is a true pal with a long memory, and not only that, she reads this blog with the assiduity of a Lacanian literary critic. I am going to have make an effort to write more complicated sentences with deeper, more subtle cultural allusions. From here on out, I will write only in Joycean multilingual puns. As if. She's also willing to be grilled for my against-the-grain-of-received-wisdom career reengineering feature, if I ever get it written.

Four Decades, Eight Roman Lustra and Ten Olympiads: Not the usual birthday blues, thank Xangó. Harvard thoroughly distracted me last eve in and around bars in old SoHo, and when I arrived home to listen to Iggy's latest list of demands, I had Gorilla Press XDrive problems to troubleshoot and layouts to crank out. Jolielaide's coming over for dinner at Zaytoon's at 7:30 p.m. Kinko pops up on AIM to shoot the shit (Brooke having vocal apparatus problems shortly before opening night of his musical in Philly) and send me some pretty decent Internet humor about our noble and infallible national leaders. But tempus fug(gedaboud)it. My to-do list just keeps growing and growing, like Pinocchio's nose. Trying to come up with a good lead for my Web site reviews that I might interest an editor in actually publishing on a regular basis. Something sardonic about Yahoo Internet Life, the Jakob Nielsen school of "this button gave me a Javascript error" pissing and moaning, and other instances of the usual yada yada, broadband revolution, yak yak yak. Throw in some Arthur C. Danto if I can. He's my hero. Artforum had a Web art review section, as I recall, but they are cheap about giving you content online, or used to be. Let me check it out. Ah, they have started a blog, I should have known. I am so far behind the curve, culturally.

Out and About: Off in half an hour to a workshop on Web research at Media Bistro (tell me something I don't know, or at least let's network, I'd love to land a job as an anal-retentive research editor), and then some kind of crazy evening with Harvard, including the aforementioned emu-eating. God help me. Do I have any clean underwear? I bought about 20 pairs of Calvin Klein boxer brief knockoffs in São Paulo last summer, there must be some of those around here somewhere. Enjoying the twisted titles topic at the Well (the rule is to change one letter, and then provide a précis, very Oulipo):

AESOP'S TABLES: Aesop's rebuttal to Plato's theory of Forms.
THE SCARLET LITTER: The story of a group of scientists who successfully inserted strawberry genes into cats.
KING JAMMS BIBLE: Modern hip-hop translation of a Western classic.
OF DICE AND MEN: Sequel to Paradice Lost.
THE BUN ALSO RISES: courageous account of stripteaser turned pastry chef
NOW WE ARE SIN: Christopher Robin and Winnie the Poo engage in unspeakable practices and unnatural acts
ONE HUNDRED REARS OF SOLITUDE: detailed portraits of monks in a Cistercian abbey
LARD OF THE RINGS: Frodo becomes a hero when he refuses to use butter for pie crust
CREME & PUNISHMENT: Pastry chef to Czar sent to jail for burning puddings.
THE OLD FAN AND THE SEA: Story of the SF Giants fan who plucked seven Barry Bonds home runs from the waters off Pac Bell Park.
MALE OF TWO CITIES: A bi-coastal gigolo services clients in New York and San Francisco.
SILENT SPRINT: A young, tongueless runner finds joy in the Olympics.

Okay, shower, shave, sprint for subway.

Decline of Civilization Continues: As a birthday present, I got myself Real Player with all the bells and whistles. I tune in to NY1 to learn that jeans will soon be tucked into the tops of boots, a Brooklyn judge is accused of bribery, and that Osama Bin Laden is now a brand of a heroin. It's going to be a byootiful day. I can listen to Ipswich vs. Liverpool at 10:00 a.m. and A Prairie Home Companion this evening. I can listen to a blues station broadcasting from Antarctica, or Harry Shearer. I can call up a Webcam of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Fear of Fiction: What to do, what to do? Happy birthday to me. Deirdre (aka Danders and D2) writes in from the new house in the Berkeley Hills to say "You are an accomplished writer and you make me ashamed to have advanced my shabby stories and called them fiction." That's just not true, by the way. I think D2 should put her stories on the Web, and I wish I could have seen her adaptation of that Isak Dinesen story for the theater. But D2 is always encouraging. The first time I met her, she brought me a delicious pie in the hospital. She and Bill really looked after me in the bad old days, "in loco parentis," as D2 would always say.

I know what to do: finish the Gorilla stuff, then write.

After Midnight in the Bedroom of Colin and Iggy: Harvard phones from the Abbey bar in Williamsburg to wish me happy birthday and report that "the night is young." Uh oh. I am getting into some really tangential Web surfing in the process of researching my exhibition review for Monday. I believe I will write about a Web design shop in Tribeca call 52mm. Among their clients is this amazing UK record label called Warp, whose Warp Radio I am really enjoying at the moment, and this very odd site dedicated to archiving the work of photographers who use some kind of weird Brownie-like Soviet camera called the Lomograph. I first heard of 52mm, by the way, while researching a story for IW on The Truth, an anti-tobacco media blitz funded by the landmark tobacco settlement. Very interesting story I wanted to follow up on. Maybe for Ad Week?

Better hit the sack. I'm an ancient mariner now, at 40 (though the calendar page doesn't officially run out on my fourth decade of breathing until 7:00 p.m. PST this evening). Says AA, at 40 you forget all about sex and start to think about ice cream instead.

Evening Falls, and It Can't Get Up: Someone sends the phrase "Tiocfaidh Ár Lá" to the Arabic experts at ProZ, so I have the perverse pleasure of informing the submitter of the query that the phrase in question is, not Arabic, but most probably Irish Gaelic. My copies of Paul Findley's books arrive from Amazon. Hello, Mr. UPS dude! Bit chilly for those shorts, is it not? An evening of more work ahead of me, finally getting the writing rolling. Wish I could prevail upon Harvard to make the trek over. E-mail exchange with Kinklosity, my old freelancer. Subject: What? Message: are you doing? Subject: Doing? Message: Pooing. I send her the lyrics to "Party with Me Punker" by the Minutemen:

party with me punker
party with me punker

in a condo
in an air raid shelter
in a voting booth
the past is pogo

party with me punker
party with me punker
[guitar solo]

with napalm
with marijuana
with a clenched fist
with the history of the world

party with me punker
party with me punker
party with me punker

Trying so hard writing this story not to get too enamored of my own cleverness. Words, words, words. Remember sitting in Prof. Arden Reed's office in college and telling him he thought my paper on Wordsworth's The Prelude was "masturbatory." I just enjoy cutting loose ... the good old jouissance of écriture ...

A mannerly, vintage-bespectacled Williamsburger, with a Kirlian aura of manic energy that emerges into plain view only under the after-hours streetlamps of the Lower East Side, Lerner is probably best known to a certain sector of New York society as the long-time executive editor of Screw, the cheaply printed, in-your-face Billboard wannabe of the pornography trade.

But no longer. After coming to the painful realization that he’d be better off serving in heaven than reigning in hell, Lerner traded in his keys to the kingdom of “turgid, tumescent smutland” for “the beautiful, orderly, Germanic world of international chemicals,” signing on as an associate editor for specialty chemicals at the Wall Street–based Chemical Market Reporter, not long before the market downturn started decimating the rest of us in the publishing world. He now spends his weekday nine-to-fives producing tight, cut-to-the-chase, five-Ws business journalism—“Coatings Industry Faces Uncertainty over Lead Paint Litigation”—on an unforgiving deadline.

“My editor in chief gave me an excellent piece of advice on my first day,” Lerner says. “Find the human element in the story, and then chop it out.”

There’s plenty of cheap irony to be found in the story of Lerner’s success at “career reengineering” and “skill transfer”—if you cut out the human element, that is ...

Sadly, Iggy and I are to be thrown back on our own company this evening, so perhaps I will keep working until I get sick of it and then read some of Silent No More. Tomorrow is my birthday and I have made it clear that what I want most this year is to eat me some EMU ... you know, the flightless bird from Down Under? There just happens to be an Aussie restaurant on Mulberry Street, in fact ...

Noonday Tea-Demon: Send off a pitch of my instructional design story to LineZine, and think of forwarding it also to Learning Circuits. Got to get my e-learning blog going. Posted 20 PDFs to my online storage space for the diva EB to sniff over before presenting a sample book to Gorilla's funders. Am supposed to go to a lecture this evening by Lawrence Lessig, an expert on copyright law in the digital age, a subject I have written around the margins of while covering Napster and the like. Lessig comments a lot for Wired, but has not been profiled or reviewed there, as far as I can tell, and maybe our old cyberlaw columnist Doug would be interested in the article for his site, if I can only remember its name. Time probably better spent working on the Werewolf piece (the Zen of career planning: the best way to plan is not to plan, aka "frolic helplessly") and work up my exhibition review. Need to mail out the Harper's submission first, however, and bundle up some of this here trash and recycling, not to mention getting some lunch up in this m-----f------r.

Incipit Historia Nova: A propos of writing, I finally did locate Cynthia Cott's witty stories from the Voice on lead grafs. I also discover that one can read and hear the daily news from a Finnish radio network in Latin:

FORUM MUNDI OECONOMICUM
Forum Mundi Oeconomicum (WEF) mense Ianuario in Februarium vergente Neo-Eboraci seminarium egit. Moderatores oeconomici iudicabant recessionem brevi finem habituram esse. Hoc anno in USA incrementum oeconomicum fore unius et dimidiae centesimae, in Europa aliquanto minus, in Iaponia autem oeconomiam adhuc recessuram esse. In eodem seminario divulgata est relatio, in qua res circumiectalis centum quadraginta duarum nationum recensetur. Primum locum in hac comparatione obtinet Finnia, quam sequuntur Norvegia et Suetia. Ex nationibus Unionis Europaeae ultimi sunt Belgae, inter omnes ultimum locum tenet Confoederatio Phylarchiarum Arabicarum. Finnia praesertim tribus rebus excellit. Pollutio aeris et aquae ad minimum redacta est, emissiones gasales tepidariorum sunt exiguae, et pro tertio, problemata circumiectorum efficaciter a moderatoribus tractantur et solvuntur. Idem Forum (WEF) mense Octobri investigationem divulgavit, ex qua Finnia etiam competitivitate primum in orbe terrarum locum obtinet.

This discovery gives me a brief moment of joy.

TGIF Java Time: What the hell am I supposed to do today? Oh, yeah, get pages back to Ellen and Jen at Gorilla Press, and write with all my might. I did a lot on Gorilla yesterday until Quark ate my operating system. I gather this Kernel32.exe thingie is kind of an important process to keep running? Heh heh. Shout out to the Five Spot for those pork chops last night, oh my lord Jehovah-Krishna-Buddha-Xangó, just to die for, with the Idaho fries and the gourmet mac 'n' cheese. Open up the Chock Full O' Nuts (that heavenly coffee) and get cracking, freelance boy. It's a beautiful day. They're watching Jerry Springer over at the Heaven mini-mart, melismatic prayers drifting out of the Nigerian mosque catty-corner. Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, sadaqa-allahu 'azim. The friendly guys opening up The Brothers Hardware across the way, next to the fish market, "rebuilding our community one brick at a time." I love my 'hood.

In the Still of the Night: Harvard checks in with a report on grrl's poker night at her place tonight. My old word-processing and graphics agency, Tiger Information Systems, checks in with an E-Vite to come see them in a week or so. The real shock of getting laid off was finding out that Tiger (which is a few blocks from the WTC) was no longer the reliable source of well-paid drudgery I used to depend upon to support my extravagant way of life. The Merm sends a charming dispatch from Floripa, as follows:

I did say hello to TWO ring-tailed monkeys today, they were swinging from vines right by Anji's hippie wholewheat kitchen. Cute! Sofia loved them and the two galinhas do mato (nicknamed cocó). Since you're not here I have to chainsmoke by myself outside. At least I brought a long phone cable with me. I could use it to play bondage with a jequitibá, that's how long it is! My "lunar nerve" is a little better. I can finally feel my middle falange, what a treat of sensory experience. I got two or three e-mails with jobs today...will these people leave ever me alone?! The green-eyed temptation also wrote me about four times. Acho que dormi com o cu virado pra a lua! A japonesa quer fixar raízes e está com medinho de ir para a Europa com ele. Just tell him I go in lieu of her, ok? by getting a lover from southern latitudes, he's in for a sexual upgrade of great magnitude. (complete this limerick for me if you're having trouble sleeping tonight ok?)

The rain finally eased away and Ânji is out to buy some fish, tampons, fuminho and a pinico for the mermbaby. What a wacky shopping list.

I got to read some Manuel Bandeira...he has great carnival poems...

Jason and I plan to attend a cocktail evening together in a week or so. I decided to upgrade to Platinum status at ProZ, finally [click for my profile], what with my usual contando o ovo no cu da galinha with respect to future prospects. Ready to mail off my pitch to Harper's and e-mail off my completed Latin translation for Schreiber. Still have Diva to watch if I ever decide to relax and get up out of my scriptorium. So much work to do still, criminy jickets.

A.M. Tea --> P.M. Pee: Wonderful interview with Rhonda Harmon, who provided an enthusiastic "brain dump." I love to hear interview subjects say, "Now, that's an excellent question!" Mr. Rabah of the Arab Voice writes back before departing for the Middle East to say:

Before I leave to my vacation tomorrow. I am sending you an artcle. We don't publish it in Arab Voice yet . Hope you find a way to translate it .
Thank you and hope god give you the pour to be with justic and fair.

Amen to that. Every stop to think that your cab driver with the weird English could be more eloquent in his native language than you are in yours? Not to mention the fact that he is actually making an effort to learn your language. Can you say the same, ya al-amrikan al-qabih?

I see that the new Guru is now a site that might actually be useful in my job search, with listings for permanent jobs in lieu of the dicey solicitations of submissions for term-paper cheat-sites you usually saw there before. I spend some time there updating my résumé and profile. Here's a hot lead right off from Apple:

Join a dynamic marketing team of technology and education professionals dedicated to providing a unique web-based resource system for teachers and educators. The Education Editor will be responsible for: 1) Reviewing and editing content for the website contributed by educators from around the country; 2) Building and maintaining relationships with contributing authors; 3) Writing occasional editorials and copy to highlight featured "exhibits" in the site; 4) coordinating stories and other site features with other members of Apple's K-12 and Higher Education marketing team; Responding to customer email; Ensuring that the system is running smoothly and updating content reliably; Writing HTML code to update static resources within the system; gather data on site use and report monthly; objectively evaluate the site and work with team to steadily improve its functionality and customer appeal.

Still kind of stuck on an Elvis tangent (AA will know what I mean). Here's the letter the King sent to Nixon:

Dear Mr. President.

First, I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs three weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do NOT consider me as their enemy or as they call it The Establishment. I call it America and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help The Country out. I have no concern or Motives other than helping the country out.

So I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position. I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large and I will help out by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and foremost, I am an entertainer, but all I need is the Federal credentials. I am on this plane with Senator George Murphy and we have been discussing the problems that our country is faced with.

Sir, I am staying at the Washington Hotel, Room 505-506-507. I have two men who work with me by the name of Jerry Schilling and Sonny West. I am registered under the name of Jon Burrows. I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent. I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good.

I am Glad to help just so long as it is kept very Private. You can have your staff or whomever call me anytime today, tonight, or tomorrow. I was nominated this coming year one of America's Ten Most Outstanding Young Men. That will be in January 18 in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. I am sending you the short autobiography about myself so you can better understand this approach. I would love to meet you just to say hello if you're not too busy.

Respectfully,
Elvis Presley

Now must send off the translation to Schreiber Translations and get to some actual writing.

Woke Up This Morning and I Got Myself Some Tea: Damn, Jen and Ellen want to see Gorilla pages sooner than now. Okay, I can do this. JB AIMs me up to rap about freelance rates. How did it get to be Thursday so fast? This from a blog called "this is a kurupted biatch":

viernes, marzo 23, 2001
RICKI LAKE

Watched Ricki Lake this morning.. saw some weird shit on there about webcam porno wanna be sickos on there... i mean c'mon... kewl to have fantasies.. but announce it on television with everyone you know watching.. is so tasteless... and the people on there were so ugly.. ewwwwww... here's a picture of one of the guests on the show... she's alright, but needs to wipe her lipstick off her buck teeth.. wooo weeeeeeee.. Man, i hate watching this show anyway... i was just bored this morning and flipped through the channels.. lol.. besides, i was waiting for jenny jones to come on.. i love that show.. lol.. the makeovers are hilarious, i swear.. yes, i love talk shows like maury, jenny jones and jerry springer.. everything else.. sucks ass.. that's MY opinion.. ;]
»joolie bitched at 12:38 AM

Personally, I am learning to live without TV. I am delighted to see that Tom Tomorrow is a fellow blogger.

I am getting a serious thumb callous from constantly thumbing a cheap, dying lighter into life. Let's face it, I am procrastinating. I want to set up the blog so that people can write in response to posts, with a small link listing the number of responses that leads to a new window. Okay, to work. Going to be a long day. I have decided to write my exhibition review on some Web exhibition or other, to save myself the hassle of having to lift my fat ass out of this vintage rolling office chair haggled for on Atlantic Avenue the last time I saw Slim (sigh). Yes, that seems like a good idea, especially since Austin Bunn is no longer doing Machine Age at the Voice. Here's a quick list of resources I derive from my preliminary research, in more or less random order (I have 40 minutes to spend on this):

The Library of Congress
Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web (Smithsonian Institute)
Worldwide Art Resources
Smithsonian American Art Museum
National Archives and Records Administration
When Nixon Met Elvis
The National Gallery of Art
Expocentric (Trade Show Exhibitions)
National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television
William Blake Online (from the Tate)
New Museum of Contemporary Art
FineArt Forum
ASCI (Art and Scientists Collaboration, Inc.)
Museum of Web Art
The Art Site on the World Wide Web (study)
Yahoo! Directory | Visual Arts > Web Art

That's all the time we have for this morning, folks. What would also be interesting would be oral history archives and exhibitions on the Web. Anyhow, got to get to work on other stuff, make more tea and enjoy the folk and bluegrass from WPIG.

Insomniac Blues: Can't sleep, crap, so I go update my profile at the Well, check my placemarks for new stuff.. Interview at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow with Rhonda Harmon from Global Knowledge. Have not heard back from the editor at ACM. Let him take a flying leap at a rolling donut. What's another market to sell it in? Maybe even Wired, if I can devise the right angle, why not? Well, I'll never get to sleep if I don't quit worrying. I dozed off earlier in front of a humdrum little horror flick called "Jeepers Creepers," then roused myself to watch a bit of "American Movie." That guy's depressing, yeesh. Oh yes, the Well is lively today:

free to anyone who needs them: moving boxes.

purchased from uhaul a mere three weeks ago, loving cared for by the united
van lines. small book boxes, medium size boxes, electonic boxes and
wardrobe boxes.

all you need to do is pick them up from my place in park slope, just a 3
minute walk from the bergen/flatbush stop.

email komet@well.com if interested. feel free to pass this on to friends,
family, strangers... we just need to get rid of these boxes!

Hey, how do I access my Well e-mail account, anyway? Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura writes:

Fitzgerald's short stories are 99.9% unmitigated crap. He admitted
this himself; he wrote crappy short stories because they paid him
obscene amounts of money for them regardless of quality, thus avoiding
money worries and allowing him to write novels, which paid almost
nothing.

That sounds like the way to do it to me. Okay, this post is pointless. Off with the pants, and get Iggy in here to warm the toes.

I'd Rather Be Blogging: AIMing with JB over at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he's writing Web copy and has (I hate his guts) a secretary. Threatened him with dire consequences if he does not send some graft my way in the form of old-boy-network nepotism in freelance assignments. Says he, in a charming Spoonerism, "I have always wanted to be a Nespot." That's like a nepotistic despot, no? Me too, me too. He's a "content editor," which reminded me of this great little aside in Colson Whitehead's latest novel, John Henry Days (on loan from Harvard):

J. hasn't worked for the Web before but knew it was only a matter of time: new media is welfare for the middle class ... the man at the website, sounded like a young guy, said they were looking for content. The website is set to launch in a few weeks. Eventually they want it to have a global aspect, but for the start they are focusing on gathering a lot of regional content. That way they pull in local advertisers, he explained. J. could hear computer keys tapping through the receiver ... All J. can think is content. It sounds so honest. Not stories, not articles, but content. Like it is a mineral. It is so honest of them.

The Merm's carpal tunnels are unclogging nicely down there in Floripa with Ânji and the Merchild. Good interview with this really nice, enthusiastic guy, quotable and opinionated guy at Plateau which I will write up later for my e-learning blog. Listening to the LearningWeek 2001 year in review and getting some good potential contacts.Need to get back to that Jay Cross fellow and contact this Diane Blair at the Bank of Montreal. For the moment, however, I feel I have cranked enough for one day. Will take a break from cranking and go uncrank myself for an hour or two. Hell, another unemployment check just arrived, I might even go see a movie.

Phew! Made It: OK, got it together, and even found some useful advice at the support site at Real Networks. Listening with interest to the NPR report on whether or not unemployment will get extended by Congress. Will it come in time to save my sorry ass? Stay tuned.

Midday Squid-Day: I have 32 minutes until I have to start prepping for my interview with the CTO at Plateau Systems. I am searching for a topic for an exhibition review in the meantime and AIMing aimlessly with Velma66. Kicking myself for missing the evening with Elmore Leonard and Pete Hamill at the Housing Works Used Bookstore right around the corner from Slim and Harvard.

At the UBC Elmore will chat about his work with Pete Hamill, best-selling author (A Drinking Life) and a veteran reporter and columnist who was editor-in-chief of both the New York Daily News and the New York Post. He counts among his other books New York Exposed: Photographs from the Daily News and Diego Rivera.

Hey, how about the Kesey tribute on Monday at the 92nd Street Y? Oh, yeah, that would interfere with the Media Bistro class. But I know some folks in PR at the Y, hmm, can I get a freebie?

Ken Kesey, 1935-2001: A Tribute
Mon, Feb 11, 8 pm $16

Writer Tom Wolfe (The Electrical [sic] Kool-Aid Acid Test) and others gather to celebrate the life and work of Ken Kesey.

Tom Wolfe (author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, an account of Kesey’s cross-country bus trip with The Merry Pranksters) and Robert Stone (novelist and friend of Kesey’s) are confirmed to appear; other participants will be announced.

Trying to listen in on the Learning Week Webcast, but the fershlugginer RealPlayer keeps dropping the connection ... Time to cram for the Plateau interview. Later, I might like to talk about about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, my father's favorite book. Remember being embarassed seeing the film with him because he kept sobbing, especially during the ECT scenes.

Morning Fishwrap: First item to catch my eye as I shudder through the crack-rush of that first nicotine infusion is the blurb from Arts and Letters Daily. "Feel-good sociopaths. Turns out people with high self-esteem pose a threat to others, while feeling bad about yourself is harmless... " It's a piece from the Times debunking the myth that self-esteem is a prerequisite for hap-hap-happiness. Lauren Slate writes that studies show "not only that low self-esteem is in most cases a socially benign if not beneficent condition but also that its opposite, high self-regard, can maim and even kill. Baumeister conducted a study that found that some people with favorable views of themselves were more likely to administer loud blasts of ear-piercing noise to a subject than those more tepid, timid folks who held back the horn. An earlier experiment found that men with high self-esteem were more willing to put down victims to whom they had administered electric shocks than were their low-level counterparts." I love it when dubious and possibly even ethically-challenged social science (didn't some of the subjects in the Milgram obedience experiments develop long-term mental health complaints?) confirms my gloomy view of the world.

The Old Nasal Knife-Sharpener: Christ almighty, busy as an albino alligator hunter in the sewers beneath Park Avenue. First of all, I have to drop everything and zip off a resume to the following dubious lead:

Growing financial media company seeks a part-time copy editor for its group of professional titles. Every Wednesday the qualified candidate will edit news stories, take part in editorial decision making for four periodicals, and be a part of a young, vibrant news team. Healthy knowledge of finance, strong editing skills, three years of financial-editing experience, and the ability to meet strict deadlines required. Send your cover letter, resume, and three references to hh2020@yahoo.com.

.
Beware "young, vibrant" enterprises that lack their own domain name, if you want my advice. How fast can they be growing if they only need a copy editor part-time? But I pitched them the standard bla-bla anyway, just to keep in the habit. I have wasted a fair amount of time trying to research simple ways of getting data-dumps on forthcoming book titles I can pitch for reviews. Reviewing is the shabbiest of literary shit-jobs, I know, but it's the elephant-shoveler in the circus in the old joke, right? "What, leave show business?" I post a query at the Well. I prepare a pitch letter for Harper's to introduce "bin Laden at the Arab Voice," which I think would be perfect for them. Mr. Rabah's editorial this week is titled "One Woman, But Worth a Thousand Men." Starting in to work on it now. I do a little digging on the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project. There was some coverage of Fort Greene in the Times, along the lines of yuppie vermin driving up rents and driving out historical residents, but this is a different story entirely. There's a good feeling around the hardware store these days. What else am I doing? Helping out Werewolf with some Westlake research and calendaring his DJ gig at the Selby-tribute Last Exit bar on Thursday. Hesitating a bit over my story on "career reeingeering," but the lead is finally coming together tight, after which I only have to let the guy tell his story.

In Through the Outbox: Aside from an invitation to learn how to seduce women using neurolinguistic programming techniques of superspies (spam) in my Hotmail inbox, what do I hear from the world? I get four KudoZ for translating " Liberum esse spero et esse vir verus Romae" on ProZ. The trick was that "vir" governing two genitives, "Romae" and "liberum," which is technically known as good old zeugma, with maybe a dash of isocolon. Heh heh. Frazer writes in to say he's enjoying following the blog. Luxie reads the bit about me losing my check and tells me to keep things wrapped a little tighter. We instant-message a bit: I am looking for an exhibition to review for next week's assignment. I had a notion to go to the music store on 47th Street where I bought my valve trombone back when times were fat and interview those guys about their inventory and the musicians they have done work for. Not exactly a museum, but the instruments certainly do have stories, it's a fascinating place where the workmen are so passionate about the proper fitting and seating of a water-key ("spit-valve") cork. But I digress. Amazon.com comes across with two odd recommendations when I visit to pick up a copy of Paul Findley's book, having secured the interview in a couple of weeks (though not the contract from MoJo: I had better pitch it elsewhere as well). One is
Self Matters: Creating Your Life From Inside Out by Phillip C. McGraw. "Your life has a root core that, once understood, unlocks a powerful force to create your life the way it was meant to be, the way you want and need it to be." It's the antithesis of the Colin and Ivan story, summed up by Charles Darwin: "As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities." The other recommendation is Satisfaction : The Art of the Female Orgasm by Kim Cattrall. Woof. And what exactly about my trackable habits makes the intelligent agent over there push this particular content in my direction? I'm getting a little paranoid. Then there's Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos by Robert D. Kaplan. Who, me? I quickly cast the E-ching for advice. It informs me that "Perservance furthers, and not eating at home brings good fortune," but with the moving lines, I receive "Splitting Apart": 'It does not further one to go anywhere." I can take a hint: back to work until 2:00 a.m.

Flashback: My last entry reminds me that I recently came across my diary entries from my last trip to see Myra in Los Angeles. I will reproduce it here, why not?

Thursday, February 10, 2000

Settling into a pleasant, well-appointed room at the Holiday Inn behind the Pasadena Civic Center. Well-appointed with banker’s lamps and cherry wood furniture and a big inviting bed. There’s that kind of subliminal hum in the air, like drowsy bees, and a faint perfume, jacarandas, perhaps. All the vegetation is Mesozoic. Nel mezzo del camino di nostra vita. The air of this place is so familiar, the haze of it, the poison in the lungs, and all of it is the embodiment of brutal melancholy. Sigh of traffic, cool of the evening. I dial up AltaVista’s free service successfully, and then not successfully.

Tony arrived right on schedule this morning and slalomed expertly through big rigs on the BQE and LIE, flashing his lights and critiquing the drivers as they negotiated turns. Then there was this nightmare of screaming turbines. Snippets of a novel and dim half-sleep. Then this blank city half-remembered.

It was wise of me to find a hotel. Grandmother’s house was dusty as Miss Haversham’s, unchanged since the days I lived there. Signs that she left there hurriedly and intended to return, pathetic items of business arranged neatly on the desk in Grandpafather's room. Beckettian determination to go on. Garage colonized by Fred across the street and all his lawnmowers. The familiar carob tree out front, the same minaret of a palm tree (whence the crow called to me like the muezzin, didn’t I write that?) in front of the old Chernis place. The Rialto Theatre looking dowdier than ever but still in business, screening the new print of “Rear Window.” Nancy Shaw turns out to have an enormous ass, drive a Jaguar.

I sleep beautifully, wake up early and check my e-mail using AltaVista’s free dial-up. This is cool. I could used to being on the road. Maybe Morgan will send me on the road the way they did Mario to Chicago, although I have to be in town for my freelance work. Always thinking about business to keep that sinking feeling at bay. I search the LA Times want ads for publishing, the Silicon Valley technical writing ads. There’s a job in New Jersey paying 50 dollars an hour I think I could get.
It was wise of me to get a hotel, sell the old house, close the chapter on a saga going back to the 1940s, move ahead with my life alone.
Now I have spent half the morning working a resume and cover fax for a technical writing job. It feels good to maintain my routine through this. That’s been my strategy all along. Faltering forward.

8:56 PM

That’s New York time. Christian phones me just as I walk into the room. I get off the phone with Adrienne going on about that cat of mine and then get up the nerve to call Skeet. I report on Myra’s condition and what she said. He has not seen her for two years, which I did not realize. He says that he has been given a 10% chance of living for another three years, although he is in remission now. He will put his share of the proceeds of the house in trust for me in order to avoid the taxes. After speaking to Shaw today, I have decided it will be best to sell the house. I was not as inquisitorial as perhaps I ought to have been: Shaw was disarmingly forthcoming and friendly. I will wait to see the accounting. The best sign of her good will and professional integrity was the neutral terms in which she described the option of selling the house now. I’m sure she stands to benefit from such a sale. I have settled on giving her the go-ahead to do it.

The meeting with Grandmother was, of course, difficult to face. As I rode the shabby taxi down to San Gabriel (near Las Tunas and San Gabriel Road, a barrio neighborhood with little stucco box-houses on streets intermittently paved), I scratched out a Palm.net message to Deirdre in real time about what I was about to do, only to find that the signal strength on the alluvial floor of the San Gabriel Valley was 0%. I paused to take a couple of snaps of the place and smoke a Camel Filter before venturing inside. A chipper but sharp-eyed young black social worker buttonholed me and walked me back through the hallways of dodderers and droolers to Myra’s little room. She lay on her back in a dead sleep. I thought for a moment that she might have ironically expired on the day I was to visit, but she roused herself and invited me to sit on the bed beside her.

And now I pause to log onto my remote POP mail, just as the going gets difficult. Duke is right about the way that I take advantage of technology’s alienation effect.
I have an interview Tuesday with mixedgreens.com at 601 west 26th street 11th floor New York, NY 10001. They want somebody up on contemporary art and art history.

Saturday, February 12, 2000>

The sharp-eyed young social worker walked me back to Myra’s room where the old lady lay in state on the plain single bed in the dark. I’ve been telling everyone I e-mailed about the visit that she looked like Andrew Jackson, or Samuel Beckett. Half-recognition in the dimming blue eyes, her frame thinned out to bones and veins, scar on her neck from the removal of her skin cancer, a slight scabbing around her left bleary eye. “How did you lose your confidence?” she asks, surprised, refusing to wear her (as Shaw says) $2,000 hearing aids. She grew tired quickly and wanted to rest, but took my hand and said, “It’s so nice to see you.” The Lodge sits on a back street one block east of Las Tunas Boulevard, in some valley-floor barrio, a matrix of little stucco boxes guarded by junkyard dogs.

Blue this morning. I need a haircut. I think I will walk over to the Old Town and see if I can find a barber, then cab back down to San Gabriel in the afternoon. I’ll come back and wait for Christian to come by at 6:00.

February 13>

I wake at 6:00 a.m. and spend probably $50 in phone charges downloading a warez copy of RoboHELP, which takes three hours at 22.8kps. Steak and eggs for breakfast is $20. I watch The Thomas Crown Affair huddled in my nice soft bed and now begin to futz around with the program. It is so easy, and technical writing is so easy. I should be making $100,000 a year doing it. I did e-mail the instructor who offers the online course at Polytechnic in Brooklyn, but I think that I could really pretty much teach myself. I read a bit of Standards for Online Communication. I phone Skeet, who tells me that he’s proud of me. I’m not even terribly hung over, though I hoisted a few last night, first with John Smallenberg, then with Christian. Christian (as I have been telling everyone I e-mail) was involved in a drug bust at LAX in which the perpetrator (“community member,” in Newspeak coptalk) dumped PCP from a couple of baby bottles he had stashed, unleashing “psychic Armageddon” (I repeat the phrase, even to myself) on those seated near him. It has rained and I have been obsessed with my computing and so I haven’t gone out in search of a haircut. I’ll get it cut on Saturday downstairs at the Morgan Stanley building.

Of course I am omitting to describe what will probably be my last visit with Grandmother, although I am making noises about going on a West Coast tour in the fall. She drove me away, saying “This is no place for a young man . . . you’re not going to find a job sitting in this place . . . you make me nervous, goodbye.” So that I have two farewells from her: the affectionate shining-eyes as she watches me vanish down the hall and this abrupt dismissal. She’s not so much a person any more as an oracle to me, with her wall-eyed gaze, suffering sigh, snaggletoothed lower jaw and mechanically regular white dental plate above. You could write an allegorical effictio of that face. I am stranded when the cab dispatcher won’t send a car out to my location because I’ve told him it’s a “home” and he can’t reach me on a ring-back call. There’s a nursery across the way, expensive cars pull in and out but a little old Vietnamese lady shuffles by with her burden balanced across her shoulders, in huge old worn-out men’s shoes. Third World. I sit there on the curb for an hour with Medieval in LA propped on my knees, telling myself I should just be in this place, but really not wanting to be. This is not a very good book, though nicely written in parts, something about Gothic altars and symmetry something something.

I should have spent those three hours writing, should I have not? Damn it, this I swear to do when I return to New York. I will attend those karate classes. I will get my website actually up and running, and add to it on a schedule. I will write at least two hours a day (including an hour on the weekends, on my lunchbreak, on the Palm or laptop. What will I write? Does it matter? I want to be a writer before I am forty. I can still write for 25 or 30 years, then.

Natural to have these thoughts when the death of my tormentors is in sight. I suppose that I still depend on them to set me free, rather than liberating myself. I have done what I needed to do, and now I should not be afraid, but continue doing as much as I can. I can perform better on my job, keep putting myself in the way of opportunity, order my life more efficiently, feel safe enough to open myself to the world and quit hiding behind my machines. They always begin with the weather. They’re just words. All the date fields update upon opening. There’s nothing but now. I have smoked a pack of Marlboros in six hours. Shit!

February 14, 2000

Flying over the Rocky Mountains in a cattle-car 747, a bit tipsy on a couple of beers and a nice zinfandel at lunch, and very angry at the sleeper in the seat ahead of me for constricting the space I occupy. I am sprawled sideways into the adjacent seat and the leg supporting the machine is beginning to numb. I have not yet read the New York Times.

So what is moral of all that, that voyage to the bottom of the valley floor, the alluvial plain? Hard to say. Not the Ellroyian death trip Ivan’s hoping for or that I would like to mythologize it as. Perhaps it was just what it was, a bit of unpleasant business, with a few twists, and the oracular old lady was right the second time around. Nancy Shaw informs me as I’m leaving of some farmland in Missouri purchased by my grandfather that she must research, having received two offers for it recently. Perhaps this was the land he wanted to return to and work when he learned of his degenerative illness and its prognosis. It makes me sad to think of how panicked he seemed to finish up his affairs before the dementia claimed his mind, sadder still that he could only mill about, having no idea what it was he needed to get done, or what needed doing.

I lazed around a hotel, I took some snapshots, I spent money I shouldn’t have on ridiculous time on the telephone, modeming in messages from beyond, from my new reality, from the surface as I plunge, chain-smoking price-gouged cigarettes, in my figuratively-speaking emotional-biographical bathysphere into the septic tank of our gene pool. But it’s not that bad: just people who staked a claim in the emptiness, which drove them, some of them, a little mad. I visited the puzzle palace of the new Getty Art Center (long on meandering passageways and short on significant works in the permanent collection, lot of second-string stuff out there) and then got Christian to take me to In ‘N’ Out Burgers (the urge) for old times’ sake. Digging in. Then driving back through the emptiness. Glimpses of the man’s essential loneliness and rage in his jokes about violating the rights of “community members.” Moving between the two worlds must seem surreal to him, shunned a bit in both because of the other. I did finally finish reading “Headlong” so that I can talk to Adrienne about it later: soteriology, epistemology, iconology, ographyology. That and Medieval in LA, a silly travel narrative which as I recall intersects the other at some point: how? Nominalism. Occam’s Razor. Oh, I forget. I am typing, not writing, just mind-static underlain by the plotting and fearing and bitter-weary distraction that is my emotional baseline. Where all the fine feelings, the attention paid, the being there? Walking sculptured path sinuous along Zen watercourse emptying in labyrinth not seeing opportunity for allegory. Perhaps more beer is forthcoming. Yo, space-waitress! Lucky if I’m home by 1:00 a.m., get five hours sleep, go see Sal and Tony, back into my seat at extension 1-3017, being overpaid to underachieve.

Now time to check the laptop power. I could be writing a report or something important, couldn’t I? Isn’t that how I wish to appear? Whose story should I tell first? Pasadena has always been a ghost-town to me, a fitting home for aerospace engineers with Texas twangs willing to contemplate the void between our world and others at a technical-mathematical remove and to inhabit its moral equivalent here on Earth.

More to say about that trip as crazy life permits moments for reflection in tranquility.

Taking Care of Business: Myra's conservator replies:

I think a $l0,000 gift is in order. However, the court must approve it and I will be happy to petition for permission to do so ... Went to see Myra Saturday and she is enjoying her new room. Looked kind of tired but was pleasant even though she didn't remember me. I took her some new clothes, Ponds cold cream and hand lotions along with some candy she had asked for. She is quite the character at Mission Lodge. They really like her and the nurses seem to know all of her tricks.

Phew! Good news all round. I feel that I have earned a moment of reprieve. Hell, I may even have the cable switched back on and enjoy some BattleBots and beer this evening. I have the 401(k) cashout application here and now can make a reasonable pitch to my landlord about late rent.

Dear old Myra, cranky as ever. It is comforting to know that the character persists even as the mind and memory deteriorates, that the person does on some level persist, despite common wisdom about the tragedy of the illness. In the terminal stages of my grandfather's Alzheimer's, he regularly mistook me for the brother, Ollie, who poked out his right eye with a pitchfork and ended his dream of becoming a pilot. Grandpafather did, however, serve in the Army Air Corps, rolling across Europe with a detachmen of engineers, some transport, and a fighter squadron, building forward airbases and conducting close-support flight operations. I remember at our last encounter, my grandmother was hurrying me out of the room, frantic as usual that some scandal or embarassment was about to erupt. Grandpafather (so called because, since Paul and Myra raised me, he was "both my grandpa and my father") whsipered, "I need a little something for some chewing tobacco ..." I slipped him a quarter and winked a sly wink that he returned, slipping the coin into his sock. The poor old soldier died from a heart attack suffered from the trauma of a fractured hip, violently fighting his restraints.

Whistle While You Work and Eat Crackers at the Same Time: Sleeves rolled up, Hush Puppy slippers on, the kettle boiling, transferring e-mailed appointments into my Outlook calendar and trying to prioritze a thousand tasks. Note to self: add sugar to shopping list. In today's mail, a message from a certain Simon, postmarked New Jersey with no return address, containing an unemployment check I apparently dropped into the gutter of Houston Street a week back. Bless you, mysterious stranger. Quick scan of job ads yields the following:

UPI is a global media company that creates and delivers unbiased original news content and news photographs. We are seeking full time editors to work on our busy news desk. Applicants MUST have significant experience handling international news scopy (3 to 5 years), preferably for a daily wire service, and should be prepared and willing to work evening and weekend shifts in a 24/7 newsroom. Solid benefits program and salary to $50,000 depending on experience. Please note there are no relocation funds available for this position. UPI is located one block from the White House at 1510 H Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20005 and is an EOE employer.

Carol says I ought to apply to the CIA. Someday I will weasel some of those stories out of her from having worked in Greece under the vigilant eye of the Colonels. George-Thèrese writes to suggest I submit to a Web site covering the club scene. Club scene? I am so old and creaky that the mere six-story walkup to Harvard's corner tenement apartment is getting daunting. Worth the effort though, every calorie. Have to write an exhibition review for boot camp this week, have to get EB on the job as art-funk expert and Beatrice to my Dante trembling before the mad inferno of SoHo. I zip off the following to Myra's conservator, a friendly, forthright source of financial assistance in the past:

hi, nancy. received the notice of sale on the house. sad to note the passing of an era, but i like the idea of a nice family sprucing the place up and enjoying that pleasant neighborhood, with its carob trees and jacarandas.

still jobless in a hellish publishing market, though very actively pursuing some freelance opportunities. I am writing a couple of articles for the Times, Voice, and Mother Jones, translating a Latin document, doing regular translations for the Gotham Gazette, and working hard on a feature article for Wired News. Liquidating my 401(k), with the expected 30% in penalties and withholding.

Embarassing as it is to ask, I could use some assistance again as it becomes available, perhaps in the form of one of those tax-deductible giftings. Not making my rent this month until the 401(k) come through and so paying the late penalty as spelled out in the lease. Sorry to be so penurious.

All Things Can Tempt Me from this Craft of Prose: I discover, returning from a night nestled against my comrade Harvard (who catches me trying to steal her wooly socks as a furtive memento), that if you switch from the F to the A or C at Jay Street–Borough Hall, you can cruise one stop to Hoyt-Schermerhorn and catch the G there, which gives you at least a 50-50 percent chance of arriving at Clinton-Washington at least 10 minutes sooner. Remember, however, that you need to get on the back car of the Queens-bound G in order to emerge into the open air on Clinton and Lafayette rather than Washington. I arrive home to find a message waiting for a translation job, Latin-to-English, for a minimum fee of $30. Is that cool or what? A bit steamed from last night's Media Bistro seminar, as once again the instructor's prolixity and the relentless passage of times leaves my piece uncommented on, this after I busted my ass printing and photocopying over to the OBE computer graphics shop at 426 Myrtle and then summoning the local car service to whisk me over to Broadway and Broome so's to be on time. The dreadlocked man who runs OBE is incredibly kind and helpful. I remember my early days, before my DSL installed, when I had to pick up my e-mail there three times a day: he cut me a break on the hourly rate for PC rental. Last night, I asked him about a car service and he phoned one right up and handed me the latest Myrtle Avenue renaissance brochure printed at his shop. He's very active in the redevelopment efforts here, doing a lot of sharp graphics for the new local businesses. It would be a neat little local story for the Times, I think.

My piece on Dr. Werewolf is shaping up beautifully: he gives excellent quote and spoke so openly about his feelings about his crazy career, which I relate so thoroughly to. I love this, for example:

“Look, I’m enough of a realist to realize that I’m lucky that I’m writing,” Lerner says. “I love writing, and I’m writing for a living. It may not be exactly the kind of writing I want to do, but if I go to some cocktail party and say I’m a writer, like every other food-stamp or trust-fund arsy-fartsy wannabe in the room, I can say, hey, no, you don’t get it. I get paid to write. Sure, they can say it’s only a trade magazine if they want to. I say, fuck you. It’s like, if an actor’s in a maxipad ad, well, sure, it’s not King Lear, but it’s a paying gig. You get to build a character for a day, you get your Equity card, and you get your residuals.”

He talks poignant-smartassedly about those broken dreams of literary stardom and his ambivalence mid-career about moving from the hip-transgressive world of porn to the square world, great openings for me to pop off about reigning in hell and serving in Heaven when he says, "It was like a reprieve, getting out from under turgid, tumescent smutland into the beautiful, orderly, Germanic world of international chemicals." Some excellent related reading suggestions in the dude's most recent review for Revolution Science Fiction of Westlake's Humans:

With its concentration on the humans rather than the angels/demons, Humans is closer in tone to Jeremy Leven's recommended Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S. (originally published in 1982; backinprint.com), than the more "goofy" angel/demon-centric antics in the Monty Python-esque (but also recommended) Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (1990; Ace). Other recommended sacrilegious/theological fantasies include the excellent To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust (1984; Orb Books), which is reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's Hugo-winning Lord of Light in its treatment of the expulsion of Satan (who in Brust's novel is not the same entity as Lucifer, Beelzebub or Mephistopheles); and John Collier's Milton's Paradise Lost: A Screenplay for the Cinema of the Mind (1973; Knopf/Random House), which brilliantly translates the literary classic into screenplay format.

Good stuff. Now gotta sell it to Strausbaugh or Henthoff, get the lead-in (point of departure is Westlake's brilliant 1997 novel The Ax and ending with an evocation of Adios, Scheherezade [1970], one of my faves of all time. Serendipitiously, as I write, Rowan from Media Bistro gets back to me with brilliant critique on a bunch of stuff I submitted, including advice on how to repurpose the Lerner and midcareer crisis stuff for multiple markets. Already worth the price of admission.

More Fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls: I discover another entry from the old journals, dated March 10, 1993 and datelined "The Cafe Depresso" (the Espresso on the north side of campus at the bottom of Seminary Hill). It's the first entry since the January 18 hospital entry transcribed and posted here earlier this afternoon.

Well, I think, I have ventured outdoors today, as I thought I should, and now what? The traffic ebbs and surges. Rivulets of pedestrians, veranda conversation like a hive of drowsy bees, blackness in my mind, a shrinking back from external stimulus. Stopping by the [comparative literature department] lounge to be studiously disregarded by Ann, Mauricio, Don. And where have I been all this time? Not that i have the sensation of having returned. Rather, it's the sensation of swimming through the familiar scene in a bathysphere made of lung tar and numb, scarred flesh. Chen [my roommate, a developmental psychologist from the People's Republic of China]] starts to joke with me out of the blue about different means of committing suicide, confesses to having hatched a homicide plot in his high-school years, kitchen redolent of his herbal remedies. Women's bodies make me want to retch, limbs bare to the onset of spring, like "Paint it Black," the tilt and cock of a pelvis, a downy flank. My mailbox is stuffed with signs that the world goes on without me. It's four o'clock, I am merely waiting out the time before the outpatient follow-up therapy group begins. I feel close to the edge ("Sometimes I wonder how I keep from going under"), as though I could continue on bravely or else step in front of a bus, a toss of a coin. Collapsed in on my tedious self. I should buy a telephone. Non sequitur. I shaved my crotch in a drunken spasm a few weeks ago, and now I tend to it carefully each, like shaving my face, or even more solicitously.

Curious dreams: last night, [I dream I am] reading a book about moral philosophy co-authored by myself and Robert Stewart [a professor of ethics at Pomona College]. i am deeply puzzled by what I am reading, but suddenly reach a profound conclusion. I call [my therapist] Cathy with the news, but she says she cannot talk because she is in the middle of watching a show called The Mexican 880. I say, with a sense of gleeful discovery, of having caught her out in something, "Aha! You are an 880 fan!" But she ruins my smug satisfaction by replying, "Ah, but the 880 is only one of many track and field events." I am irked, stymied, astonished.

Feeling dizzy now, perhaps a symptom of withdrawal from the Zoloft. I filled the Rx today, nearly $4 a day to subject my brain to beneficent serotoninergic effects. "Yo-yo" riding on the BART several days last week [riding aimlessly from terminus to terminus, all over the system]. Sequestered in a glass booth at [the] Richmond [station] last night reading the opening chapters of Bleak House. Sense of suspended time, hell. My visit to the John George Psychiatric Pavilion ... Want to sit in on Duggan's Provençal seminar on Friday. Struggling now through an interminable MediCal application. Endless paperback novels: American Psycho, Sherlock Holmes, Our Mutual Friend, Walker Percy, Mao II ... they all seem like one continuous but oddly incoherent narrative, the incoherence resulting from a failure of undersanding on my part

Boy, the joy of reminiscing. There were a few things I had to omit.

And Now, the Super Bowl: Good interview with Ivan, along with much off-topic conversation, which, however, leaves me running late for Harvard's. I'm on hold to announce my adjusted itinerary, and there's actually Muzak on the line, jazz-funk fusion lite, sotto voce. Fancy! No, wait, I misdialed. More later soon.

The Mid-Career Crisis of Fast Ivan Lerner: OK, I have this story set up. Armed with some snotty lines and a passel of smarmy, Stepford-wife optimistic articles on midcareer crisis management downloaded from Proquest, I can just get this done, for writing up tomorrow afternoon, in time to ignore the Super Bowl over to Harvard's at 8:00 p.m.

À la Recherche du Temps Perdu: What I have not had time to process has been my reunion with CC yesterday. I felt so oddly familiar with my old comrade from the sanity wars at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley, even though my memory of that period is very hazy, doubtless an artifact of the shock therapy I was undergoing at the time. Felt like we were continuing a conversation interrupted by the brief interval of an institutional lunch or pointless "group grope" session. My journals from the period shed little light on the subject, although there's one still to consult. Sample entry (January 18, 1993):

In the hospital, surrounded by all the banal desperation of mental illness. Allen, who resembles a demented Fred Flintstone, improvising on the piano. I've been down for about a month now, as I see from my last entry here. In the meantime, it seemed that there was nothing to say, only darkness and piercing regret. My doctors reassure me that what I am experiencing is an illness that can be treated with drugs. If only I could believe that. I see only the evidence of the disorder of my mind, everywhere I turn, and the promise of a prosperous and satisfying career receding more and more, mockingly waving farewell as I run desperately to catch up to it, like Alice and the Red Queen. I think often of suicide. It is lonely and stark here, and anticipating the events of the next few days brings a cold sweat to my face. I look back over the years since I came to Berkeley and can only wince at the painful confusion, the frantic concealment, the lack of mental focus, the constant agony that have ruled my life. There is little more to say. There is a constant creaking and slamming of doors in the corridor, electronic chuckle of telephones, bodies in random motion. An airliner rumbles slowly past. A nurse pokes her head in to discover that she has the wrong room. Clerical error. File me under cases permanenly pending resolution, like that shambling pile of dead dossiers in Welles' The Trial upon which Joseph K. is seduced by the girl with the webbed fingers. "Do you have a deformity? I have a deformity.

What really gladdens my heart about yesterday's encounter, however, is when, in parting, CC says, "You will never know how much you helped me" during those awful times.

Rise Above: I am beginning to feel motivated, crank a little Black Flag for inspiration and get my digits click-clacking. Werewolf is conscious and willing to favor me with some of his always quotable quotes, pre-Super Bowl, so I will spend a couple of hours working out the angle for pitching it to Strausbaugh and the Voice, making use of that great little piece he did on editing the pornographic anecdote for Plasmotica a while back: it was a really fine narrative of the editor's art in general that reinforces the idea that the craft "so longe to lerne" remains consant from genre to genre, the very pitch I tried to make (unsuccessfully) when the copy chief at In Style interrogated me about why a technology writer and editor would want to spend years working on lipstick reviews and subtle but significant fluctuations in hemlines and the butt-cleavage index of the new generation of J-Lo and Britney Spears hiphuggers. The hidden agenda of the story: All journalism is porn, an angle similar to that of the story I recall JB wanting to do at IW with the regard to the cutting-edge marketing techniques of Internet smut.

Sunday Morning Coming Down: Here's Zippy from California, chatting about blogging and things. He thinks the idea of making Werewolf a poster boy for midcareer retooling in the publishing racket is a good one. My morale rises slightly for a moment. Problem is that Werewolf is probably mad hung over today and won't get back to me. Misspent the morning surfing for indepedent Spanish press material for the Citizen. Interviews with the director (Leon Ichaso) and star (Benjamin Bratt) of Piñero, not bad. Not sure if it is still timely, though. Ah, yes, Moviefone says the sucker has closed. You know, I have not even negotiated a rate with those IPA guys yet, though I think they said they could afford $0.10 a source word. Thought I might send an article on Isa to Brazzil (a non-paying market), just for the clip, following up that angle on globalization I was thinking about when we did that story on translators-localizers that the Merm commented on.

Don't Smoke in Bed: Goat tacos, strawberry ice cream, and whiskey after midnight, the Andrews Sisters warble on the "Shaken, Not Stirred" streaming broadcast. If only this computer had a microwave and refrigerator built into it.

Headline: Deadline: After two attempts to post precious perceptions and momentous events, interrupted each time by crashes, I no long have anything to say. Frustrated and ready to novel myself to sleep. However, let me say that any day that begins with a cup of tea in the sunny living room of an adult woman in hiphuggers who does the dirty boogie to AC-DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" for your benefit is not a total waste. The pressure now is to produce some decent writing for Monday, despite the fact that all the potential profile subjects I can think of are out of town or not topical at the moment. Perhaps I could interview DJ Werewolf about how he went from porn editor to gallium arsenide industry analyst, and what this says about the publishing industry in general, a favorite topic of feebly attempted humor on my part.

Notes from a Native Informant: Searching for my mid-90s journals as I wait for CC to arrive. The Merm weighs in with some native-speaker insight into tragic footware in the draft translation I posted.

Hey Mexerica Cega, it's always a good idea to post original poem and translation side by side so those who understand both languages can make the exegesis. Jerome likes the translation of Hilda's Alcoólicas I, but he is not sure coturno has all those nuances. First and foremost, coturno is the boot the military wear in Brazil. Think dictatorship, think 1964 Coup. By using cothurnus you're shooting up the register to the skies. Secondly, and jokingly, coturno is the preferred shoesie for sapatões. The idea is unrefined footwear, very unlady-like and sturdy ... I made reservations for Florianópolis, o que vai fazer a Mexerica Cega espremer seus gomos de tanta inveja.

Sapatões are dykes, which fits perfectly. Dyky army-boot garotas on a toot, scandalizing swanky joints. Hilda is amazing. I must resurrect my plan of writing to her, but must find the files of my translations first. May be in a neglected Xdrive storage bin. I know I e-mailed it off to Jolielaide, will request a retrieval from archives. As to Floripa, how I wish I were lying doidão na rede agora mesmo at Ânji's, watching the bromeliads grow and the barquinhos coming and going, as in the song by Vinicius Cantuarius (heard opening for Flora and Airto at the Blue Note a lifetime ago), it's true.

Waiting for the Weekend: I have long had this fantasy of running a small, eclectic, artisanal press in Vermont or Maine. According to the weekly newsletter from Publisher's Weekly, someone is actually living this dream:

The announcement of the NBCC nominations this week drew our attention to
Invisible Cities, a little-known Vermont house that earned a nod for the
poetry collection Animal Soul by Bob Hicock. Considering that the
publisher issued its first list (which consisted of only two titles) in
2000, Invisible Cities has done well. Considering that it is a virtual
house—everyone except the publisher works from home, and the staff
meets at his offices in Montpelier once a month—the results have been
even more remarkable.

Animal Soul was one of four hardcover volumes in the Contemporary
Classics Poetry Series, edited by Roger Weingarten and launched last
April. "The idea," explains editorial director Rowan Jacobsen, "was that
they would have a design that goes together, so people would want to buy
them together." Not that Invisible Cities is having any trouble breaking
up the matched set. "We're thrilled to have this level of recognition
for our poetry series in its first year," says Jacobsen. "The response
has been tremendous. We've gotten more orders for the book in the last
two days than since it came out."

The house, which plans on doing about 20 titles per year, recently
published The Devil's Details, a 150-page history of footnotes that
itself contains more than 300 of them. Invisible Cities has been
fielding inquiries for paperback rights ever since a Kirkus review
called Details "a wonderful little treasure of learning."

The company takes its name from the Calvino collection (not, as we
guessed, the Jakob Dylan song). Its other fall titles range from a
cookbook on Vermont's The Mist Grill by Peter Miller to a guide to
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which has already gone back to press. "We're
definitely all over the place," Jacobsen acknowledges. "My friends say
you have to have a niche if you're small. But we want to keep it
eclectic." — Judith Rosen

PW industry journalists for whom the Wallflowers (the band fronted by Dylan's—Bob, not Thomas or the guy from 90210, who is fictional, by the way—son, as seen on MTV) loom larger on the cultural horizon than Italo Calvino? And I don't have a job? World ... hell ... handbasket. That must explain it. I grow old. Hey, I should be working for Kirkus.

Going to take that $3 I was going to spend on Blockbuster and ice cream sandwiches and apply it to the subway ride to Nolita and back. Harvard, smoky scotch. Just waiting for CC to phone back about tomorrow. In the meantime I finish up a draft translation of a poem by Hilda Hilst so as to have something to send back to CML:

from Alcoholics, I

Life is cruel. A loop of gut and metal from which
I pluck a reluctant, wounded stone.
Life is hard and cruel. Like a slice of viper,
Like an inkstain on the lividity of the tongue.
I scrub your forearms, life. I lave myself
in the paucity-imprisoned
of my body, I scrub the girders of my bones. O life of mine,
your claw of lead on my coat of red:
we stroll the street together, cothurnus-shod
and red hot-haughty in our cups and corpses.
Life is cruel-crude. Famished as the raven’s beak.
Yet it can be so giving, mythic: rivulet,
tear, blue gaze: drink. Life is a liquid.

"Cothurnus," yes, I know, I had to look that one up myself. "De alto coturno" means "of high position or dignity." Comes from the footwear worn by Greek tragic actors. Possibly too recondite, but that Hilda Hilst, she sings in different registers at once, from Baroque to blunt Brecht. In these poems, she and Life are a couple of brassy drunks out on the town, making a scene ... It's the story of one long toot.

Time to hit the shower, inventory my pockets, and turn the keys behind me.

Bad Clams, Mild Precipitation, Usage Errors, Taxicabs: Bad cornmeal-fried oysters, actually, at Chat 'n' Chew on 16th Street with Paul and Mike Cohn, who opted for the chicken pot pie. Mike, still hanging on as a senior editor over there, is a slight, slightly graying, earnest, bespectacled Jewish guy from Joisey and the City with a small voice and a bit of a stammer (which of course the company insurance plan won't provide speech therapy for, the bastards) and the most sincere pal you could ever want. Art director Pat (now also responsible for the fabulous, if you are into that sort of thing, Business Finance) caught me up on the gossip and put me in touch with Jon and Tom, the talented malcontents (though not without reason) of the operation, and remind me to catch up with with Jason, who is now rumored to be at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Jason, you will recall, was the fellow who put the naming rights for his newborn up for auction on eBay, with a starting bid of $500,000. Kind of a weirdo, which is what we like about him

Retrieved my medieval stone-rubbing, a gift from the JAFCJRs, from my abandoned cubicle, and noticed the atmosphere of Desolation Row hanging over the whole operation, which is slated to move either to the MSG West Side fur-wholesaler slums or (worse) to Darien, CT. Was disappointed to discover that the magazine doesn't completely suck without me, mostly thanks to the efforts of Mike and Zippy and Caitlin. The new editor in chief from Cleveland did get away with using "extol" when he clearly meant "exhort" in a recent editor's letter. The Web site still totally sucks, of course. I think it's part of a conspiracy to keep me unemployed by making my most readily accessible reference look amateurish (and by deleting my articles along with the rest of the archives, of course, though some got mirrored elsewhere).

More Voices from the Void: A new job posting on ProZ:

Publisher of a multi-lingual collection of illustrated short stories and novels for children (3-13 years) seeks mother-tongue translators in American-English, British-English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. Punctual translation missions under flexible schedules.

Work tools required are Windows and Word 2000 with unlimited internet connection.

World location unimportant, but strong knowledge of the grammatical cirriculums [sic] in the schooling systems of the language of arrival.

Remuneration schedule is based on a capped royalty structure.

"Capped royalties." Hmmmm. CC and me are set to plan a Saturday jaunt. Hear sweetly but unmentionably (or unmentionably, and therefore sweetly) from Harvard. UPS man arrives with cheap posters from Barewalls. Where's the stickum I ordered along with 'em? They have nice doormats and bathmats at the 99-cent store on the corner: I think I will buy a couple to increase my domestic tranquility and morale. Started reading The Noonday Demon on the subway. Working on a translation to send to CML. Later, beer and the $2.00 two-fer rental at Blockbuster.

Plan B: Windy and mild with a chance of thunderstorms, high of 60 degrees. To heck with going out this morning, I am waiting for the UPS man, will hit the library this afternoon and enjoy tormenting the cat in the meantime. Besides, I am expecting a job offer and the Publisher's Clearinghouse prize patrol any minute now. I also need to speak with this PR dude about my interviews with his instructional designers and reiterate my pitch to that jerk at the ACM, and write to G-TD about Hilst (When I got laid off at Internet World, I uploaded my Eudora mailboxes to XDrive and otherwise pillaged what data I could), and call my lawyer, and write to Myra's conservator.

Overheard on the BBC World Service: "It may take a lot more than Viagra to re-erect Pele's reputation in Brazil." The football god and former MetroStar recently made headlines by endorsing the erectile-dysfunction panacea. Viagra: a Niagara of virility?

The Café Bustelo Kicks In: Finally get off my duff and write to Mr. Rabah at the Voice, and begin collecting Web research on him and Findley, in order to have something to submit on Monday. Going to try and arrive at the NYPL by 10 so as to be finished with research in time to lunch with good old Mike (miss those after-work beers at the Old Towne Tavern, with its vast 19th century urinals). Going to try to reestablish correspondence with the freelance assignment editor at Wired News as well. Once upon a time, I had this notion of working as a Brazil stringer for these guys, elbowing aside that German dude in Recife. Trying to find that great picture I had of Monkey Woman at the cheesy sushi joint on Second Avenue, with her Run, Lola, Run red hair and green leather jacket, and also my translation from Hilst's Letters of a Seducer and Contos de Escarnio (" O que eu podia fazer com as mulheres além de foder?"). I need to get back in touch with our old newsletter copy editor, the nudist poet (I mention that detail as a sop to sensationalism) who knows of a literary journal that might be interested.

Robots Are Everywhere: Making use of the Internet Archives and Alexa in an attempt to recover old CNN transcript archives (what kind of news organization these days does not archive, or permit archiving by others?) I discover an interesting fact about robots.

The Standard for Robot Exclusion (SRE) is a means by which web site owners can instruct automated systems not to crawl their sites. Web site owners can specify files or directories that are allowed or disallowed from a crawl, and they can even create specific rules for different automated crawlers. All of this information is contained in a file called robots.txt. While robots.txt has been adopted as the universal standard for robot exclusion, compliance with robots.txt is strictly voluntary. In fact most web sites do not have a robots.txt file, and many web crawlers are not programmed to obey the instructions anyway. However, Alexa, the company that crawls the web for the Internet Archive, does respect robots.txt instructions, and even does so retroactively

Bummer for me is that the Wayback Machine does not archive the JPEG files in which the Arab Voice publishes its articles, so I have to schlep downtown and photocopy paper, an exasperating process.

From Wired News:

1:35 p.m. Jan. 31, 2002 PST

NEW YORK -- The website of the World Economic Forum crashed from an apparent denial-of-service attack Thursday, just as the collection of business and corporate leaders began its meeting here. Internet demonstrators may have been the cause of the collapse.

Encouraged by the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), RTMark, Federation of Random Action, and other groups, online activists have been downloading software tools that continuously reload the websites of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and of a few of its corporate members.

Miller Time Comes Early for the Unemployed: Had a couple of Coronas and a klonopin and nodded out at 0900 over what is shaping up to be a real tour de force of a novel from that genial Sophocles of the Southern trailer park, Harry Crews, to whom Velma66 (of Scooby and Shaggy fame) turned me on. Wake to sublimely lachrymose bluegrass feed from Nashville ("Death will soon disrobe us all of what we here possess") and a welcome communiqué from Harvard (JN): All surviving. The agenda: Coffee, ramen noodles, and crank some shit out before lunch, with a break for a Snapple mint iced tea and an ice cream sandwich midmorning ...