decision made. (don't look for the why annie is indecisive monologue anymore). i am staying in berkeley/sf through the end of december. finishing up things. senior essay. APAture. SQ. (wouldn't you like to know what SQ is. eh? email me for the secret url to lulu, the secret life of annie). i'm bringing my cat for sure, and hopefully my car.
cat . . . 
. . . cup.
fucked up commuter story #42
a man with a painted face (stripey, like kids playing "injuns" or "crazy ballplayer") in a wheelchair with an apple core on his knee, a helmet in his hand and whole bunch of "jesus saves" stickers all over the back of ran me down this afternoon, on my way out of the embarcadero BART. i said "excuse me" but i'm not sure exactly why he ran me over, except for the fact i didn't know how to gracefully get out of his way, and the entrance wasn't wheelchair accessible. it could be cosmic justice for all the discount tix i've been using......
8.11.99 (3:50 am, berkeley)
reading The Book of Intimate Grammar by David Grossmanit's been blowing my mind away.last night while we sat through a muggy night, looking at the literary present and other kinds of slippery tenses, the fan blew the smell of freshly shampooed hair over my way. and the simple smell of shampoo on a fan-generated breeze brought me back to my first sleep-away summer school. (can you tell i'm an unrepentent nerd? can you tell i jones for nostalgia?)
8.9.99 (2:40 pm, san francisco)
is depression a physiological or a societal disease?
mornings here have been gray for the last week, a sullen, tired cloudy gray. the city even got a little rain thursday morning. i know it's a boring adult thing to talk about weather but the weather drove C home early last thursday, made me stare into purple morning glories this morning, and keeps us sky-sensitive types wavering between a nap and a breakdown. last thursday, striding down new montgomery looking like a fresh web-employee with my swinging laptop i got moody. a kind of useless inchoate existential dread moody, a moody that often ends up in a large and regretted credit card bill or a post-cheese binge stomach-ache. but i had to go to work, oddly enough, and didn't have much more time for anything but staring into a going out of business window display and smelling the oranges pulping behind the jamba juice counter. you don't want to think when you're this kind of moody, an incurable and contagious moody, so you sing. and if you were on new montgomery, or hawthorne, or harrison last thursday around noon you would have heard a small asian girl belting out the few phrases of "under the bridge" she still remembers from 9th grade dances. i know i had the tune wrong, and i couldn't remember that it started "sometimes i feel like i don't have a partner" but it kept me company on my trek down san francisco sidewalks under san francisco gray.
i've sung walking down the street under other conditions. and in a happier condition it occurred to me that singing loudly in public is often construed as a sure sign of mental illness. if you're dressed a certain way, if you're a certain age, if you're a certain color. if i was a little older, my hair dirtier than normal, my wardrobe less cardigans and sandals and more sweats and freebie tshirts, a passerby might assume i was at least a little wacko. but who's to say the homeless man crooning in front of the deli is not just singing for the joy of it, and the short-haired asian girl faltering through bizarre love triange is the schizophrenic.
improvements: the toilet is fixed. so is the ceiling light. the clay mask made my skin feel clean and moisturized, and i sucked down enough strawberries on saturday that i almost feel healthy. and realplayer works. mp3 for you and me!
TPQ of the UTP (i guess that last undefined time period got stretched out a ways):
travelling is a brutality. it forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all the familiar comfort of home and friends. you are constantly off balance. nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky. (cesare parese)
8.5.99 (1:41 am, berkeley)
reading: fair's economic reporting review and digiart and blinking blearyeyed at the crackcam
i'm tired of having a semi-broken toilet. i got my replacement american express card today. i think i've overdosed on garlic, i don't enjoy it raw anymore. i peed pee the color of mountain dew today, and disturbed myself. i can't get realplayer or macamp to work. i'm jealous of the new lighter and thinner G3s. i'm feeling like i put my knee in my mouth today...trying to say honest but supportive things at tonight's studio visit. i'm so damn tired. i look forward to reading the book of intimate grammar. i did my first sit-ups in a few months this morning. i am still a chicken. i want to go to angel island this weekend. i just smacked my head and said "oh-n!" because i remembered i forgot to bring up a crucial point of business at tonight's meeting. i go now.
[the concept of "i farms" courtesy of e.c]
8.4.99 (1:07 am, berkeley)
it's not the lack of quality readers, or a lack of qualified actors. (thank you malinchista for the link)
i have been regretting leaving all my poetry books back east. never leave home without one
l.a.i've heard and regurgitated so many anti-l.a. stories that i told myself i was flying down mostly to see sara and fuga-naut, even as i let my priceline ways slip splashlessly into conversations. [$62 roundtrip including taxes and fees. 6 am departures. you decide] hel-l.a. pit of urban sprawl 'n smog 'n boob jobs 'n short term memory. i get bitter and defensive when people talk about l.a. (or n.y.c. for that matter) being some kind of astral hub of trend-setting. even when we brainstormed for t-shirt slogans last week and came up with a suggestion to make a tshirt with a map of asian america on it (with only nyc, sf, la, and hawaii on the map) i got internally snippety and remembered kokkiri mandu-jip (yes mandu of fried mandu fame), lawrence ave and the rest of that ramshackle chicago k-town. and what about the hmong population in minnesota? but then again, as sara's dad brought up, l.a. has the largest population of vietnamese outside of saigon, the largest population of iranians outside tehran, the largest population.....you get the picture. yep, l.a. actually is some kind of astral hub of trend-setting. starting with car culture. [no i haven't read city of quartz yet.] mostly i wanted to take a look-see at the multi-culti behemoth before cruising up to carp for a weekend of parrotlets and avocados. (thank you sara and family for putting me up!). i did drool a little envisioning a giant meal in the koreatown-to-rival-all-koreatowns, bulgogi and naengmyun sloshing around the tum while i lolled on beaches.
but we were delirious from lack of sleep and the man in the shades and the suit sucking on his oh-so-old school pipe scared me so we just ate some flan, i bought some windup toys on melrose (a mini microwave with a rotating turkey anyone?) and took the scenic route home.
::::
bart stories
i don't know why people try to strike up conversations with strangers reading magazines. yesterday? or was it monday? a man named louie tried to talk to me about nicole kidman and madonna. i see how a magazine in hand might be a convenient prop for a conversational gambit, kind of how scribbling in a notebook brings the curious and bored...[at a magnapop show 3 years ago someone asked me if i was reviewing the show. i guess that would be one of the more logical explanations for why i was hunched over one of those little useless round tables scrawling away between bands. or, maybe, freak-o, i'm just writing. public displays of wanna-be writers.]
but. in 7th grade people joked that a nuclear bomb could hit and i would keep on reading, oblivious to fall-out and the rest of it. back then i walked home from junior high reading, flipping pages while crossing crosswalks. back then i always ended up wiping up the cafeteria table i sat at because i was too busy plowing through god-knows-what to notice people doing that finger-on-nose thing to decide who was going to have to rag-wipe the table to ever put my finger on my nose in time.
so the takehome lesson to would-be conversationalists is...don't fuck with a reader when she's reading. 'kay? very good.
7.29.99 (2:03 pm, san francisco)
recent maladies:
*a multiple bout of web-crushes (see annie's trip to webzine99 - forthcoming)
*unassuagable cravings for cream of broccoli, corn chowder and other downhome American comfort foods.
*relapse of indecision (see why annie can't decide where she'll be in a month - also forthcoming)
*and an epidemic of epic dreams
as i wrote to another a.k. the other day, i oughta buy a cape and tights, emblazon 'The Incredibly Poor Time-Manager' on my spandex leotard and traipse about saving hapless model citizens from the perils of efficiency.
7.22.99 (3:23 am, berkeley)
nyt on the atf
The bureau's small size -- its 1,631 agents are only 9 more than in 1973 -- means it sometimes must forgo investigations, prosecutors say.
And the agents must spend much of their time investigating bombings and arsons, as well as enforcing the laws on alcohol and collecting tobacco taxes.
By comparison, the number of agents in the Drug Enforcement Administration has grown to 4,261 today, from 1,370 in 1973. "This shows that Congress has never decided it is serious about going after gun trafficking the way it is about the war on drugs," said David Yassky, an assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School and a Democratic counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
"With drugs, we've realized we've got to go all the way up the chain," Mr. Yassky said. "If all you do is arrest the crack addict, we won't get anywhere. But with guns, we only arrest the end user, the shooter."
Federal gun laws underscore the difference in priority between drugs, which are illegal to sell, possess and use, and guns, which start out as legal products, and illustrate the difficulty the bureau faces in pursuing gun control.
A dealer who sells 1,000 or more guns to criminals might get only six months in jail, but for drug dealers there are stiff mandatory minimum prison sentences of up to 25 years, even for selling small quantities.
Undercover purchases are a common tactic of drug agents, but under appellate courts' rulings, firearms agents may not pose as felons buying guns. Agents must use an actual convicted felon in undercover operations, which makes prosecution more difficult because juries are reluctant to believe convicted felons.
7.18.99 (4:22 pm, berkeley)
fergit webmonkey. i emailed them eons ago to find out if there's a way to turn off
*
celebrity encounterswhen i was in 4th grade, and i was a small, cheek-faced goodie-goody, i served as my homeroom's representative to the 4th and 5th grade student council. i have no recollection of what 9 and 10 year-olds discuss at a student council. possibly the price hike in subsidized milk (from a nickel to a dime) or maybe the planned painting of a new four-square court and what should be done about the shortened tetherball rope. all i really remember with any certainty is saying "present" during roll call. in a few years, though, my stint as student council stooge would be imbued with new meaning when the then student council president would become the star of the wonder years.
#
last tuesday at the lilith fair (we got to go for free but it's a bummer that mimi got a flat and couldn't join us) beth orton came up to my side of the tent and asked for superglue. i didn't know what beth orton looked like, but she had a british accent, and the name badge that dangled from around her neck said "beth orton." yeah, i was staring at her name badge. i never know what to say to celebrities. especially when you don't really know their stuff, and can't gush with any sincerity.
so all i said was "no we don't have any superglue, but we have a lot of gluesticks."
"oh, i need to glue something small, nevermind."
"sorry."
i think that was it. exciting eh. i also have exclusive pictures of the backs of 2 members of luscious jackson. write me for more info. ;-)
7.17.99 (4:04 am, berkeley)
free speech links
my heart lies with the microbroadcasters. go tell the FCC and everyone else, why we need to legalize microradio NOW (and one from the national lawyer's guild)
but my sleeping bag will be with KPFA. if you're in the SF bay area, come to the KPFA station for a free speech festival. learn more here and here
7.16.99 (3:46 pm, san francisco)
in transit
hustling to the BART station a few mornings ago, I walk past a girl and a boy saying goodbye in front of the Walgreens. they're swaying together, slowly, hands clasped and pointed out as if they are dancing a tango in a ballroom. they are asian, and young, and his head sticks out over hers crushed to his chest. you can see him looking helplessly past her, his reflection hovering against the window display of summer fans and lounge chairs.
//
waiting for the SF Daly/Colma train to slide into MacArthur station this morning, a CalState Hayward professor and I strike up a conversation. he's from Cameroon, and for a few minutes of mistaken affinity, assumes i am a foreigner too. he hasn't been home in 28 years, but he's thinking of visiting this December. since his parents died, he has, he said, been too angry to even consider going home to the house he grew up in only to walk into a house empty of his parents. there are some parcels of land his father left back in Cameroon, and he hopes to build a school dedicated to their memory. i get off at Montgomery St, without knowing his name.
//
walking home from the organic burrito place last weekend, we walk past a man at a cafe table. there are two families with little kids clustered around him, cooing at the large white parrot on his shoulder. when we are already past the man, his nautical hat, the bird and the families i turn around to take a final look. the left side of the back of his white sweatshirt is streaked with the runny doo-doo of the parrot.
// borrowed from slantgirl. i am also partial to .......many. . . . . . p . e . r . i . o . d . s ..... as . . . . spacers.
7.9.99 (1:52 am, flea-city)
hawking unproven allegations at the san jose public library's list-o-papers and the center for investigativereporting
