5:16 pm and except for a few hours of laundry, this day ain't been worth livin.

call to production company - portfolio still out in review stage, i.e., not ready for pick-up yet (been two weeks). is this good?

lord, bless this defender of freedom and keep him safe in your hands.
whoa.

left message for claims adjuster.

call to claims adjuster: "out in the field"

American Military Operation Name Generating Device

i feel like tearing somebody's head off.
i've been keeping a pretty cool, for me at least, lid on for the duration of this "my car meets city tree" episode, but i'm afraid i'm beginning to unravel.
on monday i was told that the city had sent any reports it has re: the tree (do they own it, tree trimming records etc.) to orange county, home of the claims adjuster. paperwerk regarding der Baum was supposed to be the last bit of info the claims adjuster needed, along with my estimate/claim and his estimate, in order to say; yes the city will pay, or no they won't.
so i gave the mail a few days and called this morning. actually i had called yesterday and did not get a call back. so i called this morning and caught the adjuster in the office. he said he HADN'T received the letter yet; some rubbish about all die Post actually going to a P.O. box somewhere else, then it may take a day to get to his office...

delays i've gotten good at dealing with, but what unnerved me was what happened nächst.
i asked, if all reports he needs, everything he requested is delivered how long would it take for him to draw up his report? first he hemmed and hawwed, saying, well, cities sometimes don't send all that he requests etc., so i said, assume for a minute that you get all that you asked for, when can i expect a decision?
well, immediately. often the city will say, 'well, it was an act of nature', or we don't feel we are responsible because its an 'act of god' etc., so i would know what their position right away if they said something like that.
what has me wound up is: a) anticipation that an answer, good or bad, is possibly imminent - while at the same time still not at hand and b) that when the claims adjuster started jibber jabbering through his speculation, he seemed to only mention the possibility that the city would not take responsibility. he quickly said 'act of god/nature/ not responsible' about three times.
this makes me even more edgy.
again, he was speculating, but if he had said, 'well, i could know as soon as i get the report from the city, as often they will say: yes we're responsible or no we're not. i won't know until i get it and i'll call you as soon as i know.' full-stop, i reckon i'd be more at ease than i am.
of course i'm looking for potential problems - my car simply dissappearing with no recourse is not something i need to deal with in these lean times - so i'm searching for clues as to how the wind is blowing and won't really be relieved until, knock on wood, a check appears with my name on it. but until then, i really could appreciate some neutrality, a benifit of the doubt, as opposed to 'lots of times they say no, or they say no, or no, sometimes they say sorry then say no.'

wtf!

more brown:

"At UPS, brown is more than a color -- it's a tangible asset that people associate with all the things that are good about our brand," said Dale Hayes, vice president for brand management and customer communications, in a news release.

heh. and meg says:

What's going on with UPS these days? Last year they launched an ad campaign in which they started referring to themselves as "brown" and changed their tagline to What can brown do for you?. This seemed odd to me, since no one I know ever referred to UPS as "brown". Though we associate the color brown with the brand UPS, I don't understand the need to make it so explicit. When Federal Express changed to FedEx, it made a little more sense because that's what everyone called them. But I feel like with this brown business, I have to conciously make an association between the spoken-word "brown" and UPS. This seems silly since I already have good associations with UPS (UPS = good shipping, UPS = nice delivery man in SF who always said hello, etc.) and when someone asks "What can brown do for you?" I think, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

heh heheh. brown.
sheesh.

"diehandeuberdemkopf... it means to throw one's hands up in mute horror, and in this state of paralyzing dread to realize that the the ones you need to trust most, have instead confirmed your darkest fears."

also described as:

"...make me feel like the government just took a shit on my chest."

"What can brown do for you?"
well, for starters they could have left their logo well enough alone. a new ups logo is proclaimed today - a limp re-writing of the original that seems to serve no purpose but to give bored marketing hacks something to do. remindes me of some of the less inspiring NFL redesigns.

whoa.
man, that's it, thingsmagazine goes in the side bar.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." (T. Roosevelt 1918)

Who lost the budget? Your “press corps” did! The invaluable Krugman is far too polite in his comments on this rank, troubling mafia.

"liberal media" indeed.

just remembered:

kawasaki let the good times roll,
kawasaki let the good times roll,
get aboard, get away and you're gonna say,
let the good times roll!

it has been a few days.
from the "two years after everyone else knew" dept:

Federal energy regulators said Wednesday that their investigation found widespread manipulation of natural gas and electricity prices and supplies in California.

Mr.Kabc, one of the few shows worth a damn on that worthless am station, took up the the topic of the so-called "power crisis" and ran with it for months that turned into years. eventually, he managed callers and his own frustration into a few set aside hours on thursday nights. (for those unfamiliar, mrkabc's m.o. is "no screeners, no topics, no guests", as the show is specifically called "Ask mr.kabc", yer supposed to call up, ask a question.
i distinctly remember larry elder and al rantel, big fans of the market, having nothing but skepticism for the idea that these corporations manipulated the marketplace. in their world it was the state's fault, of course.

in other news featuring flag bearers of capitalism, re: putting out oil well fires in iraq:

Kellogg, Brown and Root, a unit of Houston, Texas-based Halliburton, was handed the contract by the Army Corps of Engineers, which has been placed in charge of fighting the blazes.

The contract had not been put out to tender, said the Corps spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Gene Pawlik.

looks like the market had no opportunity to decide who was the best candidate for this potentially HUGE contract.

lessee, what else...
this last weekend found me and AK attending a motorcycle training course. a while back, the idea entered my head to get a motorbike and, on the recommendation of a few friends, i signed up for the class. it books far in advance, so it was a long four or five week wait, but well worth it by far. two and 1/2 days of classroom and riding around on 200s and 125s. so much fun. at the end of the day, i passed both riding and written tests, there is a bit of lee-way, and so will be exempt from the DMV's riding test, i just have to pass their written test to get licensed.

last night, with L. and C. i went to the shitting factory in hollywood to see some sad boy from florida called "Iron and Wine". we saw winona ryder as she passed by us a few times. she is as small as you might imagine, but slightly wider than you might think. basically another cute girl.

meanwhile in the muslim country that HAS nukes.

the world is our onion.

thingsmagazine still on my "surfing to" list - they note that someone has posted scans of Action Comics no. 1, the first appearance of superman, 'natch. you'll notice that in this earliest of stories, superman does not yet fly but rather leaps tall buildings, of course, and runs along telephone wires and hangs from outside buildings.

From "Painting as Model" (1990) by Yve-Alain Bois:

As early as 1922, in his "Notes on Russian Art," perhaps one of the most illuminating essays ever written on the art of the Soviet avant-garde (together with the lecture Lissitzky delivered in Berlin at the same time),²⁵ Strzeminski remarked: "it is the quality that is crucial, not the quantity. Numerous artists now famous (Rodchenko, Stepanova, etc.) cannot even conceive of the efforts that were deployed to attain the solutions of cubism and suprematism. Unconscious of the values contained in the realizations of the new art, they make a "new art" all the same, without developing it, without raising new questions, but by compiling in their works fragments of those of their predecessors."²⁶ This is a text one might find prophetic, as it seems to describe in advance the climate of cultrual amnesia that surrounds today's artistic production (the same text gives a definition of the expressionism that matches even more exactly the international neoexpressionist "postmodernism" that invaded the galleries in the '80's).<sup>27



26</sup>Strzeminski, "Notes on Russian Art" (1922), in EU, pp. 50-51. Strzeminski seems at first totally unfair with regard to Rodchenko and Stepanova, especially since their achievement in the field of sculpture and of "design" respectively is not to be discarded that easily. On the contrary, I would hold that some of Rodchenko's sculptures are major objects in the production of this century. But elsewhere in the text Strzeminski praises the Obmokhu group, with whom Rodchenko was closely associated, and credits it for having raised the level of contemporary sculpture to that of modern painting ("the only nice consequence, albeit unpremeditated, of the autohypnosis of productivism"). Strzeminski left Russia in 1922, before Stepanova's first textile designs were known, and it is not certain that he would have reacted negatively to them. At any rate, as the rest of the text makes clear, it is the pictorial production of Rodchenko and Stepanova that he is dismissing here, and as far as I am concerned with a perfect right (with the exception of a handful of works, such as his triptych of nonochromes signaling his farewell to painting [1921], Rodchenko's pictures are mediocre; Stepanova's are no better).

²⁷"Expressionism may be defined as that trend that expresses feelings of a literary character (above all the feeling of confusion to which a mechanical world gives rise), using techniques that belong to every artistic movement of the past (including cubism and futurism). It is, if you will, an applied art (exploitation of the formal accomplishment of others)."

i realize that they are very popular and common cars, and that one sees what one wants to see, but lately i am frickkin' haunted by mustangs!

the arch-fanzine link, btw, was found at thingsmagazine which looks promising for plenty of linky goodness. right off the bat i also found images of third reich architecture and images of the TWA Terminal at JFK, which i didn't know was closed. the second link was found at the realtors site that thingsmagazine mentions at the top of todays page.
the nazi architecture is few and far between, not a great deal of it survived as i think most of the buildings were taken apart, stored for twenty years and then shipped to louisville to be used as supplies for a high school in the oh so exciting east ende.

i can think of a left-over reich anti-aircraft bunker that is not represented on this arch. page. but it was/is pretty much a very large concrete block located in Schoenberg.

stumbling through some links this morning, found the arch-fanzine calendar for this year.
d/l, bind, hang on wall.

Let's Fucking Roll Already


Where ya from?

yesterday, at Federal X, i saw my first segway. while standing at the service counter a woman rolled right up next to me, silently of course. the gadget is a bit bigger than i had imagined, bordering on bulky. according to the official stats it weighs in at a lumpy 85 pounds. whoa.
it costs 5Gs which seems to be universally viewed as way, way too much for it to be anything other than a rich boy's (girl's) toy. i've already changed my mind about railing against what people spend their money on after conversations with j. and l. re: suvs, (unlike say, mattdatt who seems perfectly content to tell people what they should say or when they should say it or how they should say it - i am having some trouble finding werk, maybe he bucking for some job at the thought police) so i won't go into that except in that my first thought when seeing the device was "something wrong with your feet?"
the reason i mention this is that L.'s crit of it is that the machine looks too medical. his quote, and i think its a good one, : "it makes everyone look handicapped."
heh.
and its true.
it reminded me of the glasses that commander laforge wore on SNG, some teched out thing to solve a physical ailment. one can imagine a paralyzed lieutenant cruising the enterprise on a segway, still capable of serving and interacting.
whatevs, its a toy. good luck competing with bikes. true geek style - make it and then figure out what you did and how to sell it. one thing i also noticed on the official site, its weight capacity is only 250 lbs. isn't this eliminating half of its potential geek market?
i would love to try it out to check out the tech, but otherwise i wanna laugh at it.

for all you catholics out there:

MILITARY intervention against Iraq would be a crime against peace demanding vengeance before God, the head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has said.

"War is a crime against peace which cries for vengeance before God," said Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, speaking on Vatican Radio.

He stressed the deeply unjust and immoral nature of war, saying it was condemned by God because civilians were the worst sufferers.

Martino, formerly Vatican permanent representative to the United Nations, strongly denounced the determination of the United States and its allies to disarm Iraq by force...

"I want to remind UN members and particularly those who make up the Security Council that the use of force is the last resort after having exhausted all peaceful solutions, as stipulated by the UN charter," the Pope told tens of thousands of worshippers gathered in St Peter's Square.

"I lived through World War II and I survived the Second World War. For this reason, I have the duty to say 'Never again war'.

from craigslist:

We're going to war.

I want a motorcycle.

How does this war help me get a motorcycle? What kind of motorcycle will I get?

People are going to be protesting this war, but I bet that they already have motorcycles. They're not worried about motorcycle/millitary intervention issues. They'll ride their motorcycles (one of which I don't have) to the anti-war march, and then they'll ride home. This sucks for me, because I don't have a motorcycle to ride anywhere--let alone to an anit-war march. Do you know how many women go to those things? A ton! And most of them are cute too!

Arn't all free people in the world entitled to a motorcycle? Do the French ride motorcycles? I bet they do.

This is America! Why don't I have a motorcycle?!

texas.

it's 12:15am, seems like there is a chance that within this day all hell may start breaking loose. if not today, then maybe the next day, whatevs, tension is high.

here's what i want. i want to be able to go to the city clerk of south pas, and find out why the fuck they have not sent the information re: the tree that killed my car, to their claims adjuster in orange county. meanwhile my car sits rusting in the street.

i also want to be able to go to a job interview, at least drop off my portfolio, in hopes of gaining employment. i know so many people who are out of werk.

i'm imagining trying to deal with these problems tomorrow, attempting to move very slow moving balls a little farther down their paths, only to find the world stopping still for bombing runs.

my world is not better than it was two years ago. it is much worse.

Hurricanes, animal corpses and the biohazard symbol have a lot in common. Think about it.

a good one over at the christian science monitor:

The Franco-American dispute falling out over the best approach way to disarming Iraq take away Iraq's weapons has resulted in perhaps the highest level of anti-French feeling in the United States Lands since 1763.
A French-owned hotel innkeeping firm, Accor, has taken down the tricolor three-hued flag. In the House of Representatives Burghers, the chairman leader of the Committee Body on Administration Running Things has renamed named anew French fries "freedom fries" and French toast "freedom toast" in House restaurants eating rooms.
To which the question asking arises: Why stop with Evian, Total gasoline, and the Concorde (just only the Air France flights)? Let's get to the heart of the matter thing: A huge big percentage of the words in modern today's English are of - gasp! - French origin beginnings. What if, as a result of the current diplomatic dispute today's falling out between lands, the French demand ask for their words back? We could all be linguistic hostages captives.
It is time for English-speaking peoples folk to throw off this cultural imperialism lording-it-over-others and declare say our linguistic freedom. It is time to purify clean the English language tongue. It will take some sacrifices hardship on everyone's part to get used to the new parlance speech. But think of the satisfaction warm feeling inside on the day we are all able to can all stare the Académie Française in the eye and say without fear of reprisal injury: "Sumer is icumen in...."

thanks gabe!

i've got two links about brown, and one that could be about pirates.

"Shhhh! Pirates are the new monkeys!"
this i saw coming. all last year there were references to pirates, people speaking piraty, a national speak like a pirate day and probably a few others i've forgotten. i guess i first learned about the pirate takeover while on a boat in Ibiza - perfect pirate territory. i will admit, though, being completely blind to who would have been the obvious winner, and thus the sure-fire bet on super-bowl sunday, the tampa bay buccaneers. (although jennifer still feels that the raiders are pretty piraty themselves.)

MAKE THE PIE HIGHER
by George W. Bush

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the Internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

When will California fall into the sea?

ok, well, apprasier was just here; in and out, no one got hurt. took a few snaps, chatted a bit, filled out a form and bailed.

>tweaking< a bit today, just because of a few appointements.
1. the dude from the insurance appraiser will be swinging by any time now to take pics of the mustang. their report should be back to the claim adjuster who represents the city by thursday, friday at the latest. then, assuming the city has reported to the adjuster with any tree records they have, and i'm not assuming that they have but let's hope, then the adjuster would package up his report and send it to the city of south pas. if i get reimbursed, it would be from the city, not the adjuster, or so he says. it's probably extra-special great for my nervous system that i'm drinking coffee as i mull all this stuff over.

2. job interview.

encouraging sign of these times. i'm not usually one for conspiracies, but i lived through the so-called "power crisis", which wasn't one and it wouldn't suprise me if this is the result of similar behavior.

salty is back. welcome home.

streets of l.a. has a new "where in l.a.?" image up. i'll be damned if i know this one. good luck.

i've never been one to show a poker face, emotions are pretty much on sleeve level and so its probabaly no suprise that i'd be drawn to the romaticism of The Clash ever since the first time that i heard them at Monkey Boy's parent's house when we were in high school.
one particular song that i will, seemingly, forever return to is "Complete Control" from the first record. (US pressing, 'natch)

This is Joe Public speaking
I'm controlled in the body, controlled in the mind

its the rising sound that dirk diggler might have been looking for - joe strummer spitting garbled sounds, not even really lyrics as the song ends. weird too, the sound gets bigger and bigger as the run away train jack-knifes into the chasm of pavement saw tracks of guitar fuzz and ring.
the production isn't aimed at the kind of audiophile sound where one can nearly feel the singer breathing across the room from them - but through enthusiasm or something like it joe strummer is there, floating between my ears, out of the grooves and still part of the world with me. it's the beautiful and sometimes haunting aspect of this record collection - records, recordings, carved into the large vinyl plates, shelves of 'em i have - as much as anyone could want of artists who have touched them in some way.
i wonder if images are automatically dead - distant, that person is over there looking back at you, mute, never any closer light bouncing off a piece of paper not the body that has been given back to the earth.
the voice though, still works as it did. it moves through the air, triggering memories and influencing the possibilities.

Now let me tell you like I heard it, when I felt deserted /
It wasn't no other way to word it got my feelings murdered /
By the bullet of bad the singer of sad /
Songs to make you long for your mom and your dad /
Plaid clash with polka dots
I hope you ain't mad /
Back up little mama i'm about to react

meg h. has posted a poem for today, made up of headlines from her "my yahoo" page.

The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to so to ourselves. Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? (scroll down)

while on the subject:

A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.

and i think to myself, what a wonderful world.

additionally, i got a call today from south pasadena's "insurance company", the agent assigned to my claim about the damage to my car. he came on all chummy and informal and relaxed, talked about how the process is gonna work; he has requested any info from south pas about the tree (do they own it, do they have an arborist, did they know if it was sick) and i should be getting a call from an appraiser (sp?) to set up a time for them to look at the car and the damage to create their own estimate. all this is fine until he talks a bit about the day of the disaster and says: "so, yeah, it was raining, and the wind was blowing pretty hard?"
immediately i became paranoid and stated the truth, that, no, it was in fact raining but there was not any especially heavy wind that day.
was he leading me?
so, not so much news, but at least a ball is rolling.