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the applied research center on prop 21 and "the death of discretion" : much like the three strikes laws, these kinds of regulations effectively deny authorities the capability of discretion. . .where the letter of law contradicts the spirit of the law. * "The question is whether Massachusetts can choose business partners on moral grounds -- and it's essential for all market participants to retain that right," says Robert K. Stumberg, a law professor at Georgetown University. "If the Court rules against the states, then private corporations would have greater rights in the marketplace than elected governments." * Now the cause of my comfort seems obvious: Black people have a cosmology of suffering, a culture that makes sense of injustice and misfortune. White people in trouble are shit out of luck, stuck with a culture that acts like bad fortune is not just deserved, but contagious. Every black person knows in their soul that life is deeply unfair, while a remarkable number of white people skate through most of their lives unscathed, unmarked, unaware of the stacked hand they've been dealt. And I have always hated them. -- Joan Walsh, editor of Salon News.) |
m a r c h . 2 6 . 2 0 0 0 (10:19 pm, berkeley) | the knitting guy (operative quotation) Joan Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem "On Keeping a Notebook" "I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 A.M. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were." // i realize that much of the last 9 months of my yammering here reads like a commuter's catalog. cars and BART, walking and now MUNI. it's partly due to the fact that i think better (only) while i'm in transit. and partly due to the fact that these 3 second encounters with surly strangers are more interesting to me than a constant revision/revisiting of my insecurities. this past week took me aback -- i hadn't expected a reunion with the weepiest of annies -- but it reminded me that i used to think, willingly and often, and that i also used to write people back. (guilt guilt guilt!) my excuse? been hanging out in "what anthropologists call a liminal phase: a chaotic transitional period between giving up one social status and acquiring another." (phil agre) commuter's catalog : on thursday when i got off at van ness, a urban boy of color, complete with tough kiddo knit cap, was standing by the escalator knitting a hat. the knitting guy mostly made up for that morning's pushy guy who busted through a squashed crowd of 8 am worker-oos to a chorus of testy "excuse me!"s. i wonder if he likes pissing people off. let me repeat, i love projectcool. m a r c h . 1 9 . 2 0 0 0 (6:01 pm, san francisco) | the return of the crying girl looks like the crying girl moved to san francisco. she made a surprise appearance in the cafe at virgin records today, then again in the tenderloin on her way home. m a r c h . 1 8 . 2 0 0 0 (11:40 pm, san francisco) | sun day it's a saturday night and s and i are hunkered over a careful array of academic paraphenalia. i'm not in the mood to write a studybuddy version of "twas the night before christmas." so some other people's words. I got this email a couple weeks ago, and despite the kind of creepy jingoistic rhetoric, it strikes me as a half of a good idea : Anytime we can stick it to the man it's a good day. . . Last year on April 30,1999, a gas out was staged across Canada and the U.S. to bring the price of gas down, and it worked. It's time to do something about it [gas prices] again. Only this time let's make it for three days instead of just one. The so-called oil cartel decided to slow production to drive up gasoline prices. Let's see how many Canadian\American people we can get to band together and NOT TO BUY ANY GASOLINE during those three days. LET'S HAVE A GAS OUT! Do not buy any gasoline from APRIL 7, 2000, THROUGH APRIL 9, 2000. Buy what you need before or after the dates listed above, but try not to buy any during the GAS OUT. If you want to help, just send this to everyone you know and ask them to do the same. We brought the prices down once before, and we can do it again.what might be more revolutionary is reminding Canadian/American people about public transit/bikes/their own feet. i've been mostly good about the whole bus thing, especially now that i've figured out where i can catch the 9X downtown. i know, assuming a saint's mantle just because i've taken to public transit lately is over much. but considering how damn happy driving my car can make me sometimes [on thursday i dangled my left forearm out the window in a ten minute attempt to get driver's tan] i feel like i've given up 'cars' for lent, or something. TPQ of UDP, from march 12th nytimes book review "bookend" : Now, however, the time of the American writer straightforwardly in opposition is over or nearly so. At the simplest level, almost every published writer today goes to college, and we have made our colleges into a coast-to-coast network of finishing schools for the professional classes. The effect of this universally produced middle-class sensibility has been gradual, but penetrating.as i wrote trouble, this is the diagnosis of my flabby writing. i mean, there are only so many wistful urban twentysomething short stories that need to be written. the last of the three books i picked up at stacey's was mary gaitskill's because they wanted to, which wended its way through overfamiliar territory. i know it was worse because most of her stories were set in san francisco and somehow the image of two women loping around noe valley evokes more exasperation than empathy. slow to vault on the bandwagon as usual i've started to investigate the web again for non-purchasable items. last night read/exulted through guillermo gomez-pena's piece on "THE VIRTUAL BARRIO @ THE OTHER FRONTIER (or the Chicano interneta)"here. and today, after a hurts-so-good laughout at the Culture Clash matinee, may i direct your attention here as well? m a r c h . 1 2 . 2 0 0 0 (2:27 pm, san francisco) | tired like a rusted nail due to the convergence of rising gas prices and a two job work regimen i've stashed my car and started to take public transit in earnest. on my way home from work friday a man crooning along to his boombox announced to the back of the bus that "she don't want to listen to me sing cuz she's tired like a rusted nail." i guess i looked that way, eyes closed, hands hanging on to my umbrella hooked onto another seat's railing as if that was the one prop holding me up. at any rate, the phrase has stuck in my head -- i think it's appropriate, les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble. not just because i'm physically tired, though that's indisputable as i've come down with a nasty cold/raw throat/bloody nose thing which encourages an inhouse migration from my bed, to the living room couch, to the breakfast nook couch and not much else movement. but mostly because i've re-entered a familiar loop of envy, sloth, and gluttony. not much lust, wrath, greed or pride. i do things, go out and about, but they make me sad. the krust/saul williams show makes me sad. going to sfiaaff screenings makes me sad. or conversely, i am sad, and tramping about town with a muni pass and a Vote NO on Prop 21 button is little proof against the fact that i am no longer the happy solitary wanderer i thought i once was. maybe it was easier in a city i didn't live in, in a new york i could leave and return to at will, instead of a san francisco that is supposed to be mine. i've become obsessed, in a not particularly charming way, with what it means to make a home. as the haight kids said last night on the 22 -- just another san francisco crackhead. reading : (thanks to a tip from s) the man in the black coat : russia's literature of the absurd, ed. by george gibian ; the boys of my youth, by jo ann beard ; age of consent, by geoffrey wolff from the man in the black coat : "When Lifshits asked what it was, Kharms replied, "A machine." "What kind of machine?" "No kind. Just a machine in general." "And where does it come from?" "I put it together myself," Kharms said proudly. "What does it do?" "It does nothing." "What do you mean nothing?" "Simply nothing." "What is it for?" "I just wanted to have a machine at home." |
home now *10.31.99 *11.03.99 *11.13.99 *11.19.99 *11.25.99 - 12.3.99 *12.06.99 - 12.28.99 *12.29.99 - 01.08.00 *01.17.99 - 01.24.00 *02.03.99 - 02.17.00 and then weblog |