Laughing Meme

Just got the keys to my new apartment. Feels so good to have my own space again after being on the road on and off (but mostly on) since March.

Does anyone else stand in an empty house and think what a pity it is that soon it will be covered in a layer of stuff, clutter, the scuff marks of daily life? The inevitable loss of purity leaving you a little melancholy. (or is this merely my personal pyschological justification for being poor at decorating?)

Reprieve! The truck designated to move my stuff from Boston never made it to our JP house, as the driver was pulled over for speeding, and the truck impounded with an expired registration. And suddenly the reality of those poetic notions of emptiness come crashing home, and I gnash my teeth over my tardy cookware.

And lastly, my neighbors being of suspect character, there is not a single open access point within range of the apartment, not even from the fire escape. (there is always wifi from the fire escape; the city delighting as it does from the absurd image of folks hunched over glowing screens, their legs dangling next to the collapsed ladder.) Rather predetermining tomorrows first task.

update Kamei is the perfect place to get a bowl-plate-knife-pot-pan-kitchen-for-3-weeks for cheap while still buying stuff you’ll want to keep once the rest of your stuff arrives. And the variety of glazed cermanics is amazing. When I was building tabletop fountains this was the place I always wanted but didn’t exist in Santa Cruz. Pair with a lunch time visit to Burma Superstar for a lovely Richmond outing.

And they sell popsicles makers! I didn’t know anyone sold popsicles makers anymore

Tomorrow morning, Cafe International. Sometime around 8am. See you there?

I have never in my entire life cared about traffic. I don’t drive, I don’t commute, my long commute in Seattle only took 20 minutes to walk because the line at Lighthouse Roasters was so long.

Now I find myself painfully aware of the ins and outs, and more strangely the cardiovascular health of the Bay Areas freeway systems. Major clogs and blockages have serious impacts on my plans.

So um, how do people track this stuff? Presumably there is some sort feed, or maybe SMS notification I sign up for customized to roads I care about?

I hear we map traffic here at CorporateHQ, which I guess would be fine if traffic fascinated me and I wanted to monitor it all day, but really I don’t have the attention for that, and I was thinking about something a little bit more interrupt driven, and targeted.

Anyone got a suggestion?

update: People did, including * move * listen to the radio * “dialing 511 on your mobile phone can help. It has a Tellme (or at least, Tellme-esque) voice interface that’s kinda annoying and hit/miss, but you can at least tell it a major highway by name and it will tell you about any delays right now on that highway.” * Y! traffic rss | grep ’101|280′ | SMS

thanks everybody!

I’d like to be able to filter Yelp reviews to only those by self-identified vegetarians. Yelp could you make this happen please? Or at least allow people to flag themselves as such (I could imagine other categories, like “I keep Kosher”) and perhaps decorate their profile icons with a little glyph.

Please.

I have a confession to make, it’s a bit out of fashion, but I adore epistolary novels. Especially ones with unreliable principles. Having been on something of a tear plowing through 4 (unspeakable) paperbacks in 3 days, I finally smacked up against Burst and Bull’s Freedom and Necessity, which has slowed me down considerably.

Published in 1997, I’m not sure how I’ve missed it to date. Finally Burst turns his considerable talent for sly mimicry to a worthy task (I’m not a fan of Dumas, sue me), and Bull’s wonderful characters escape the rather dead end genre of musicians and fairies (ditto de Lint).

Some folks might be turned off by the extensive expositions of Kant and Hegel (with a name like “Freedom and Necessity” Hegel not to mention Engels are something of a given), but “Sophie’s World” this is not, I promise there is nearly no educational value in the philosophical ponderings, just beautiful words, and plot twists.

Spice with subtle anachronisms (ala Stephenson), Chartist heroes, and one of the most interesting, fertile settings (19th century Europe), and for some odd tastes, you’ve got a winner. Will remind many folks of JSAMN (F&N was published 7 years earlier, and is about 60% the length, and 10% the hype), I’d rather suggest Hobsbawn’s work on long century as a companion piece.

I’m about half way done (when the urge to write about a book generally strikes me), and so could be let down horribly by the ending, but I doubt it.

What is wrong with the US book publishers, and why hasn’t someone brought out Stamping Butterflies, or 9tail Fox in the US? Grimwood is writing the best, most interesting science fiction around, bar none, and you can’t get him in this country. Bah. (I hit the bottom of my reading pile several days ago and starting to get twitchy)

You’re part of a very small group for whom its reasonable for a San Francisco coffee shop to consider a Brooklyn coffee shop competition.

Rabble, on the rather grumpy reception from the kiosk to my excitement about Cafe Grumpy.

I’m going to go against the apparent conventional wisdom, and note I hated Serenity, am utterly disappointed, and hope that if they ever revive the show they’ll ignore all events of the film.

The show for all its comedy, and western aspects functions as noir. The characters are very minor, very small characters in a very large, very mean universe. They’re buffeted by the forces beyond both their control and understanding.

In the movie, they’re heroes, and not just the everyday heroes of the show, but larger then life super heroes? Rescuing the universe from evil gubermint plots? And it all fitting together all right and tight, everything neatly explained from River to reavers.

Blah.

The actors did their usual great job, unfortunately this brainless action flick gave them nothing to work with.

I’m not sure yet if we’ll be in Boston or New York on the 30th, but I know what I’m doing … watching Serenity! (not, unfortunately, Santa Cruz as originally planned)

Any movie going parties forming in either city? Looking to add 1 fan, and 1 skeptic to the mix?

update: from brian in the comments:

Serenity will have some competition on the 30th, as the lavish Henson studio production of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s MirrorMask opens that day as well.

Oh my! I had forgotten that was out there, Henson, Gaiman and McKean. (I wonder what ever happened to Gaiman/Froud Tam-lin project?