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::e m p t y a g e:: i'm not scared

wednesday, october 31

Another recent photo (if you're wondering about all the neighborhood pix lately, yes, I've got something in the works):
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Everyone has a dream job that they'd take if money was no object. Mine is to be a bike messenger.
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Today at lunch I took my new skateboard that Harper got me for my birthday out for a ride along the Embarcadero. This morning, and yesterday, the weather has been really shitty: cold, rainy, nasty. But it's spectacular outside now, the sun is shining, it's warm out, it feels like a beautiful spring day. Simply amazing. As I rode along the water, basking in the sun, I realized that I was completely and totally at ease. It was a gorgeous moment.
On the way to the Embarcadero, however, I passed by a phalanx of firetrucks outside the Rincon Center post office. It was a HazMat unit, in full gear. People were all gathered around staring, aghast. I went gliding by grinning. Nothing I could do, so why worry? This is what we all need to do, so to speak.
I'm not scared.
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If you're a daily reader, you know my friend Matthew's apartment burned down yesterday. If you'd like to help him out Ezra started relief fund, anything helps.
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Coke buys Odwalla. Soymilk for everybody.
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This was my first experiment with making electronic music, nearly a year ago. It sounds quaint to me now.
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It's easy to see Webvan's auction block firesale as some sort of symbolic event, a metaphor for the dot-commery of the late 1990s. And as they carted out aisle after aisle of rococo baubles, it reinforces the idea of dot-com California as a community of of genXers blinded by their own hubris and optimism. To the 40 year-old guy who spent the 90s working in a Ford plant in Doraville, the idea of a 24 year-old liberal arts major sitting in a $5000 chair, getting a back rub, while contemplating how to make the site sticker (sticker, ha! remember that? remember when that was a concern?) at $70,000 a year must have been nearly enough to inspire murderous rage. Particularly if said 40 year-old guy finally decided to invest in technology stocks sometime in the late 90s. I'd want to drive out to California and hang the first dot-commer I saw from a radio tower. Preferably by a SCSI cable. And to the residents of the Mission and the Western Addition, who now live in Hunter's Point and the Excelsior and even Modesto, driven out by packs of Banana Republicans on Vespa scooters, this has got to be a glorious moment. "Fuck you and your TiVo, pal."
Me, I hope it's a turning point.
I've worked for two startup dot-coms, so I can't exactly join in the funeral dance. But in both cases, I was a journalist, meaning I was never paid as well as the guy in the other room charged with coming up with slogans to drive people to read the content I wrote. So I understand the sentiment. Fuck him, I did all the work, why's he driving the Lexus (not that I want to drive a Lexus). But it seems like now, now that those left behind have had a solid year, nearly two, of watching former dot-commers sell off their shit on sidewalks all across the city, now that the economy is in the shitter for all of us, and landlords are practically paying you to move in (I had a landlord two weeks ago offer me the first month free), now that everyone is feeling the pinch can't we all just agree to start over? This time without the bauhaus toilets and Gucci chewing gum, this time we won't start home goldfish delivery companies. This time we'll do without the hyperbole. Can't we all just go back to 1999? Remember 1999? Remember when our biggest worry was the Y2K bug (and stickiness)? Remember when Anthrax was just a band that nobody really listened to anymore? Thems was the days.
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Sherri is awesome!
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boo!
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tuesday, october 30

Jeremy Fish is a total badass.
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Juxtapoz has received a much-needed face lift. About time too. For a "new art manifesto" it sure had a shitty interface for a while.
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Toilet Bowl Confessions Have a seat and enjoy.
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The New Yorker: Fact
India has had a tactical atomic bomb since the nineteen-seventies, and Pakistan's became operational in the late nineteen-eighties, although Pakistani leaders denied this fact for years. The Kashmiri dispute first veered close to nuclear confrontation in 1990. That spring, the American National Security Agency was monitoring what seemed to be yet another slowly escalating series of Pakistani and Indian attacks, when intercepts revealed that the Pakistani leadership had "panicked," as a senior intelligence official put it, at the prospect of a pre?mptive Indian strike and had readied its small arsenal of nuclear warheads. (The previous fall, the Bush Administration had assured Congress that Pakistan did not possess such weapons--although it knew better--in order to gain continued approval for military aid to the country.)
But I'm sure the Bushies are on the up and up now...
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My neighborhood, from above:
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Wow.
This Maximum Participation Billboard Liberation is one of the coolest culture jamming acts I've *ever* seen. What's more it took place only a few blocks from my pad. How did I miss this?
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I've never written about my dad, not honestly. I need to, but I can't seem to do it. He forgot my birthday last week, and I've been pissed at him ever since, even though I try not to be. It's not so much that he forgot my birthday, as it is every time he does (or doesn't do) something, it dredges up all these feelings from the past. All the sudden I'm twelve years old and completely inadequate again. I need to quit expecting things from him at all, because dad only fails me because I set the bar too high for him.
And no matter what, these strange days make me realize how precious family and friends are. I don't want to lose my father. He's just a man, flawed and selfish like all of us. I keep expecting him to rise above my expectations, and that's unfair. He's who he is. I need to deal with that. I need to just show him love, and leave it at that.
...
My friends Jeff and Matthew have been fighting. I was telling Jeff last night to wait and chill out, that tempers would cool and things would get back to normal. As I was writing the text above, Jeff sent me the email below. Hang onto your friends and families, work things out.
I just got a call from Matthew who told me his house burned down this morning. He said he woke up to his roommate yelling, "Matthew the house is on fire" and his room was full of smoke. He grabbed some of his art and his new robot and got the hell out. He now has nothing besides that and the clothes on his back. When something like this happens it really puts things in perspective.
It is weird but everything over the past few days is so petty and ridiculous and I am so ashamed that I would let our little argument rip us apart. God works in mysterious ways. I think he got his cell phone out so if you want to call him I am sure he would appreciate it. Thank God he and all of his housemates are allright.
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Hey kids, check it out, it's a jack-o-dubya
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monday, october 29

From Jeff:
Hey Mat,
I was just checking on the Watt show and saw that my ex-roomates' band Slender is opening. His name is Joe Martinez.
fyi
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I saw
Oysterhead at the Greek Friday night, and I fucking loved it. This was an exceptional attitude. Mostly I heard a lot of bitching about how they didn't sound at all like Phish, or that Trey's solo stuff is way better, dude. Later, on Saturday, I heard an understandable sentiment that Les' thing was, well, a little dark. And admittedly, had I been a sheltered hippie with a head full of mushrooms who had never seen anything other than shiny, happy, pheel-good phestivals, I could see how watching Les creep around with the lights off while moaning about amphetamine addicted Vietnam vets could make you a little uncomfortable. As Jeff's roommate said "I didn't want him to take me down whatever dark hole he was in."
Completely understandable.
But if you went for the music and not "the scene," Oysterhead was pretty fucking unreal. No, it didn't sound anything like Phish, but it didn't sound anything like Primus or the Police either. But it was phenomenal. All three of the musicians were at the top of thier games. Copeland was playing a kit the size of, quite literally, our apartment. I'd never seen Trey before (well I've seen him do some guest spots) and he amazed me. Claypool is a freak (though I've met him and he doesn't come across like that at all in person, I think it's a stage thing) but so what? He's got the chops to back it up.
In college, my buddy Rob and I wrote bad checks in order to get some money to go see Primus. It was one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen. A spectacle. Oysterhead was too, but in a different way. When they come to your town, beg borrow or steal the money to go see them. You won't be disappointed. Well, unless you're expecting phish, that is.
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How odd. Just yesterday in Trader Joe's, as I was mulling over some edamame, I overheard an unemployed techie talking to another (equally unemployed) former coworker. Between the two of them, they had been out of work for 14 months. But one was ending the cycle. Screw getting another job in high technology, this guy was getting back to basics: clean running water, devil electricity, and sewage. He was joining the Peace Corps. Apparantly, he is far from alone.
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saturday, october 27

Mission of Burma is back! (thanks andy!)
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friday, october 26

Fast Forward Friday Five
Britt and Tiff
Howard
Me
bikes
turtle(s?)
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Introducing the iPod LC. An mp3 player for the rest of us.
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Holy shit. I'm glad I'm not a Phuket vegetarian.
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I can't even begin to describe how very much I love San Francisco.
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I wanted to thank everyone who sent me birthday wishes yesterday, particularly Tom Boyle, for his stirring rendition of "Happy Birthday to You."
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This morning, as I was getting ready, I heard a bird chirping outside the window of our breakfast nook and went to go investigate. When I got close, the sound seemed to be coming from inside the apartment--and indeed it was. On the floor I saw a wee little mouse; gasping for breath, twitching, and "chirping" regularly.
It was dying. My initial reaction was to ignore it and hope that it righted itself and went away. But I knew it wouldn't, and I didn't want Harp to have to deal with it. Moreover, I couldn't just leave it suffering, which it obviously was. So I tossed a small hand towel on the mouse, scooped him up and carried him outside.
I really didn't want to do this at all. But I felt bad about just leaving it in the trash alive. The first time I stomped it was the hardest, and I could feel its little bones crunch beneath my boots. I wanted to make sure I hadn't just maimed it, though, so I stomped him again and again, with all my weight.
This really wasn't how I wanted to start my day.
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thursday, october 25

I've been snapping a bunch of pictures of my neighborhood lately. I took some in the panhandle as rthe sun was setting when the light was really good. I was happy with the way this one turned out.
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Oh my. What a gang of thugs. Watching the Taliban vs. the Northern Alliance, I know how most people must feel during those Braves vs. Yankees World Series. Can't they just both lose?
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Check it out kids, it's the original britt and tiff post: brittandtiff do it a year later.
And you know what makes me feel really special? OMG! My very own Britt & Tiff greeting:
From: "britney tiffany"
To: mat
Subject: Happy Birthday Matt
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 13:57:07 -0700
hey we heard it's your birthday. we heard you were having a kegger after the game because your parents are out of town. wanna make out in your little sister's room and jump on the bed singing along with i'm a slave 4 u?
anyway...happy birthday from britandtiff.
Thanks for the offer, but you know I'm taken! But, if you bring some syrup to my party I'll let you french kiss my friends Tim and Jeff in the backseat of my mom's new beemer while I drive around Twin Peaks playing White Stripes songs.
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Thanks Ezra! I love Hamotam.
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I always feel introspective on my birthdays, I suppose this is a natural reaction. But today I feel really melancholy too. I can't really put my finger on why that is, maybe it's because I'm entering my last year in my twenties. It's amazing, life is pretty damn good, better than I'd ever expected it to be. I'm married to a beautiful woman who adores me and that I love with all my heart. I've got a good job during an incredibly unstable time, I'm living in the greatest city in the USA, if not the whole world, I've got a great family, botht he one I was born with and the one I married into, I'm healthy and ; life is great. Yet I still want more out of it, and I think it's constructive for me to sit back and take a hard look at everything I've got. I need to compare it to what other people have, and realize how lucky I am.
Sure I still want to travel the world, publish a book, and all that jazz, but damn, I'm fortunate. I'm fortunate I was born and got to have The Experience, here in the richest, most powerful country the world has ever known (not that I don't think it would rock to be, say, a Garifuna, but you've got to admit being an American has its perks).
I rode the bus this morning, and it was very nearly empty (there were 3 in a row and I got on the third) with only five people aboard. I t was really peaceful, and gave me a chance to write in my journal. If the bus was always like that, I wouldn't mind riding it. But since it was so empty, I could hear my bus driver's conversation with a passenger really well. They were talking aobut cyclists in the road. "They scare me," she said, "because they ride in my blind spot and I can't ever see them." I need to heed that. At 29, I'm old enough to *really* apreciate my life. I'm not so cavalier anymore; I know what I've got.
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Thanks Harper!
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Propaganda surrounding MUD is flying around like a swarm of angry bees -- both from the PG&E side and from the MUD supporters. I've got to be honest, although I'm voting yes, I am concerned as to the costs--a consideration I wouldn't have were times not so tough right now. In the end, obviously, everyone will have to decide for themselves.The Chron has a fairly no-nonsense article on the issue. And Laurel Wellman, has an interesting story on on renting and power.
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I'm not so sure that I want to go to the Castro again this year on Halloween. It's a great time, and I love checking out the costumes, but I'd like to find a party or something to head to instead, I'm just in that kind of mood. Fortunately, even if I don't find a private happening, there are plenty of other options.
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Cool, a Newton-themed weblog.
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Wow, thanks Jeff.
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I'm 29 today.
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wednesday, october 24

I AM 52% PUNK.

The intelligent punk. Tuff and Smart. I may be able to maintain a train of thought long enough... What the fuck was I talking about?
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The new iPod ad.
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Sunday is Pet Pride Day in Golden Gate Park.
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cute cute cute
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tuesday, october 23

Dave's got an article on OJR on Responding to Hoaxes Online. It summarizes a lot of the post 09/11 hysteria.
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"Painting should be part of people's lives and not separate from the world like a precious object. I feel like a baker making cakes, making a good quality object that's affordable to everyone from college professors to high school kids. I want buying my my paintings to be like buying a CD: It's art, it's cheap and it changes your life, but the object has no status. Musicians create something for the moment, something with no boundaries and that kind of expansiveness is what I want to come across in my work." -- Steve Keene.
This is why I own 3 of Steve's paintings, and it's one of the reasond I love so called "outsider art" (aside from Finster getting me into it at an early age. It's art for the people by the people. you don't need no high-falootin' art degree to appreciate it. It isn't ugliness, or a blank canvas, or conceptual. It's truth and beauty on a piece of plywood. It's Hank Williams and Buddy Holly, not Phillip Glass and John Cale.
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Another Howard Finster obituary, this time from the AP (via SF Gate).
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The Rev. Howard Finster's obituary in the New York Times. Southerners like he shall never walk the Earth again, they are all passing from the Earth, and with them Southern culture.
"He is more alive now than he ever has been." -- How true. I'm really pretty shaken up about this for some reason. I had not thought about what a special place he held in my heart for a long time. Nor had I thought about how he represented, for me, the South in all of its magnificent eccentric and decaying splendor. Even though I only met him twice, I'm going to miss him profoundly.
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monday, october 22

photo: William Berry/AJC
Howard Finster was a sweet, eccentric man whom I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of times when I was in high shool. We used to drive over to Paradise Gardens, and spend the day poking around the place, climbing structures, and tripping out at the crazy visions The Man produced. It was a gorgeous place, and I'm profoundly happy I got the chance to visit there, and to meet the Man of Visions who built it.
My learning with Howard went like this, I had heard his name in connection with REM's Reckoning album. It was the mid 80s, and in the South, the entire world was about REM (for people like me at least). One day I was watching this old REM video that showed the band lurking around a strange and wonderful place, full of mazes built from rusted bicycles and odd statuary: Paradise Gardens. I found Pennville on a map, and discovered it wasn't far from my boarding school. I drove up with some friends, I believe that David Kerns went with me that first time. It was a free for all back then. Art everywhere, chaos, clearly hazardous materials. A place designed for lawsuits, but the folks who went to Paradise Gardens weren't the type who would file suit.
That first trip, I was a broke high school kid. I wanted to buy something Howard made, but I had no money (the way sales worked back then was you would look on the back of a piece for a price, then go and try to find a FInster family member to buy it off of. Although there was a room that had a lot of stuff that was for sale, it was hardly organized). So I bought a cassette tape that the Reverend had made. It had all sorts of craziness on it ("Here's me, Howard, playing the Banjo" followed by Old Time Religion Gospel hollering and banjo music.). I went back again and again, even though we weren't supposed to go there in high school.
It was magic. It was one of the greatest discoveries and greatest mysteries of my youth
Over the years, fences went up around the property to keep the thieves out and the Finsters began charging an admission fee, more buildings were completed on the premises, art collectors and agents showed up, a Keith Haring piece showed up in the garden, and a lot of Howard's best work went off to museums. In short, it began to lose its rustic charm for me, but the magic never died.
I own four Howard Finsters (as opposed to paintings by his son Roy), one of which I bought directly from Howard. They're treasures. I've put my hands on the coffin the great man is to be buried in. I'm really sad for myself and the world, but happy for Howward. He always admonished us to "get right with God." Well Howard, you're with God now, paint him something good.
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Life works out sometimes....
This weekend, I was busy trying to sell my car, and only got to see a little bit of this 2-Hip freestyle BMX event in the panhandle right around the corner from our apartment. I saw a little of it around noon, and then some more later in the afternoon when Harp and I were walking up to Crossroads to unload some old clothes and shoes and junk. We sat around watching for a while, and it was killing me that I didn't have my camera with me. It's nice to have somebody in the neighborhood who also has a web log and, even better, a DV camera.
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Nice kitty
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When I saw Salon's top story today it took me back to high school (or pre college at least). The landmine on the right is made completely of plastic, although hot a "toe popper" proper (genuine toe poppers look more like a small plastic pot with a handle, like this: |_|-- ), everyone in Kuwait called these Toe Poppers. An ingenious an insidious device. They work thusly, a soldier (one would hope, rather than a non-combatant) steps on the device, triggereing it. It explodes, sending up plastic shrapnel and debris. This shrapnel and debris, combined with the explosion itself, will maim the soldiers feet and legs (and one would imagine genitals too) but does not kill the soldier. This effectively takes out three people rather than one (since two have to carry him off the field. How ingenious. They can be easily disabled by unscrewing them and dumping out the explosives. My psychotic roommate had quite a few in our apartment (along with various other bombs). Landmines are *everywhere* in Afghanistan. I'll be amazed if they don't maim the hell out of a lot of our unfortunate troops who get sent in harm's way. God be with you...
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Ever seen a two-headed turtle? Well, now you have.
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So the site was down for a while because I forgot to pay my bills... Between this and the parking story one could get the impression that I'm not to be trusted with a dollar or two. One would be wrong, maybe.
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sunday, october 21

My country is going to be destroyed again.
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I'd like to go for an extended vacation in New Zealand right about now. I mean, the third biggest story in the paper is about rowdy kids with cars... Man, those were the days.
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friday, october 19

Fast Forward 5 for the week:

the dpt got nothin' on me
hamotam
pot, not so bad after all
ted rall, good man
pot still bad news for snoop dog, but not really
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This much is true: It really is possible to love your country and value your freedoms and still believe the government is full of fools and prevaricators and BS artists and Dick Cheney. Really.
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From Julie:

It's better to be safe than sorry...
Don't go to the bathroom on October 28th. CIA intelligence reports that a major plot is planned for that day. Anyone who takes a poop on the 28th will be bitten on the ass by an alligator. Reports indicate that organized groups of alligators are planning to rise up into unsuspecting American's toilet bowls and bite them when they are doing their dirty business.
I usually don't send emails like this, but I got this information from a reliable source. It came from a friend of a friend whose cousin is dating this girl whose brother knows this guy whose wife knows this lady whose husband buys hot dogs from this guy who knows a shoeshine guy who shines the shoes of a mailroom worker who has a friend whose drug dealer sells drugs to another mailroom worker who works in the CIA building.
He apparently overheard two guys talking in the bathroom about alligators and came to the conclusion that we are going to be attacked. So it must be true.
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thursday, october 18

Ted Rall's October 11th cartoon pretty much summarizes the enlightened discourse we've heard so far.
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Snoop busted for pot? No! Say it isn't so, and I thought "Puff Puff Pass" was a place up in Tahoe....
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I've taken what might best be described as a leniant attitude towards paying my parking tickets. I mean, the way I look at it, <sarcasm>my car isn't even registered in this here state, so why should I have to pay my tickets</sarcasm>? Besides, I've got a killer collection of unpaid tickets in my glove compartment and I don't want to break up the set. On top of all that I'm about to sell my car, and after three and a half years... why worry now, right? All I need to do is be religiously vigilant about moving my car on street cleaning days and never, ever, forget to move it. Ever. That's not so hard, right?
Doh!
So now I've got a mystery date with the DPT. Since I didn't realize it right away, my car's been with City Tow (the bastards!) for days now and I'm going to have to pay them about four hundred beans on top of the fines. I just inherited a little money when my grandmother passed away, and at least it's going to a good cause: namely keeping me out of jail. Of course, I wanted to spend that money traveling to Thailand, but I'm sure spending 5 hours at the DPT and City Tow will be just as much fun.
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Been a little stressed out lately? Sure, we all have. (you shoulda seen me freaking when I was stuck in a BART train under the Bay this weekend... the picture of composure I was not.) Stanford is conducting a survey to try and gauge just how freaked we all are. It doesn't take long, and you might be glad you did it.
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So this is the best news I've heard since, er, I forget. What was I saying? (via MeFi)
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Ahhhhhhh just another day on Anthrax Street.
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Facial recognition at Oakland Airport, yes.
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tuesday, october 16

I just read about Ellen Harvey's New York Beautification Project in the November issue of Harper's. It's a very cool idea--I won't spoil it for you--and was really encouraged by it, particularly as it was an ongoing project, not a reaction to 09/11. It's similar to a project that I was trying to get Rampy to do with me, though that was closer to a Shepard Fairey kind of thing. It's always great to see people putting their own unique touches on a cityscape. It's a contribution to the collective good, a gift to everyone.
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They's a whole bunch of new h4m074m songs up for your enjoyment. Be sure to listen to the new (ly posted) EP "Live at Last." HAMoTAM -- never the same song twice. Except when it is. Pooh bear.
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Note, just below this enty, the link for comments. Got something to yap about? That's the place to do it. let me know if you have problems.
danke.
-mat.
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If you haven't seen it already the CIA World Factbook file on Afghanistan makes for some interesting reading.
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Hey kids look! It's the flyers being dropped over Afghanistan. Hampton sent these to our mailing list, and Andy posted them on filepile. I love the electronet.
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" We need a thumbprint Java card in the hand of everybody in the country, because, you know, mo money, mo money, mo money!" -- said Sun Ceo Scott McNealy, or something like that.
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monday, october 15

This Modern World. Brilliant. As Always.
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Ezra is a great writer.
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"We have fired heavily on Pakistani positions," Brig. P.C. Das told The Associated Press. Speaking from the army base in Nagrota, near Jammu-Kashmir's winter capital of Jammu, Das said the shelling occurred in the frontier areas of Akhnoor and Mendar.
What the fuck?!? Could India's timing possibly have been any worse? What in the world could the purpose behind this be? Fucking war-mongering idiots.
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"I will abandon my MBA and go for martyrdom." -- Get all the great quotes and news of the day without actually having to read four newspapers. Let Eric Umansky and Slate do the reading for you.
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Big Apple Halloween Super Sale!
Er.... this might offend some people. But not me!
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Yeah, sure, Berkeley can be silly, and unrealistic. Yeah, it's like Disney's Celebration for Marxist vegans. And although I'm not on board with a lot of what they have to say, I do think that there need to be voices calling for peace at all times. (my feeling is that once we've started, we have to finish. but I'm not going to get too far into that.) I just hope that they don't let their passion for peace take them too far, and actually alienate moderates who are on the fence.
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For the last month or so, I've heard Snopes cited more than (insert clever comparison involving Michael Jackson and a plastic surgery convention of your choice here). And it's not just for web geeks anymore either. The Urban Legends debunking site is becoming increasingly popular with the AOL crowd. There was even an article on snopes in today's Chron. Does this mean no more tales about unfortunate vacation mishaps involving bellboys, toothbrushes, and rolls of film found months later? Let's hope not.
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saturday, october 13

a depressing story
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friday, october 12

200 Years of the NY Post, via Ezra
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fast forward 5 for the week

patrick
bert
gray
hawks
barry

Like this idea? Hate it? let me know.
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dipshit
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I feel really fortunate that my friend Patrick Hughes allowed me to publish an email he sent from Berlin on my server. For lack of another (better) name, I called it Hash-Heads, Heartache, and Hope. I found it both thought-provoking and touching. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed getting the chance to put it up.
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You've no doubt heard about the NBC employee who tested positive for skin anthrax by now. Meanwhile, over at scripting news, Dave Winer has additional details on the New York Times case.
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Man, I'm getting nailed with search requests for Bert and Bin laden. Here's the story.
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Tim sent me a great Ted Rall article on Oil Politics in Central Asia, that goes into the role oil plays in our newest war--or at least with the Taliban. It also reminded me of the great series on the Stans Rall wrote for Mother Jones last year.
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thursday, october 11

There's a cool Watt article on Billboard today.
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fashion at the time dictated that everyone wore Chuck Taylor All-stars. There was room for individuality, but it was limited to wearing two different colored Chucks (one red, one blue?), or writing on them, or bleaching them to look like tie-dyed fabric. I think that every pair I had, save maybe one, was black. My take on the fashion was to write stupid stuff like the Dead Kennedy's logo on the white part of the toe, or other stupid stuff like anarchy symbols. -- I had totally forgotten this. Thanks for the reminder Ez.
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Looking good Ezra. But your frontpage image doesn't load for me.
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tourist guy and Bert?
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Jazz, I used to hate jazz. I used to hate girls too. Somethings you have to age a little bit to appreciate. when I did start listening to jazz, it was dixieland and ragtime stuff. My tastes matured, slowly but steadily, and I began to appreciate more and more of it. I'd read about Coltrane, heard Chuck D namecheck him, but I didn't knwo the man's stuff. So I went out and bought Giant Steps (this was my freshman year of college) and promptly decided I didn't like Coltrane... But the notes stuck in my head, and I listened again. And again. And soon enough, I was sitting alone in my room with all the lights out listening to every Coltrane CD I could get my hands on, jonesing for the live stuff. The Church of St. John Coltrane may have moved out of my neighborhood, but it still dwells in my heart. He and Miles are as contemporary and important today as when they were recording. Even the Chron thinks so.
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Not Thailand too... Look fellas, I think Bush is a big Satan too. Honest, I do. But we gotta do this thing, that's just how it is. Besides, who's repressing who there?
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I couldn't get BlogScript to work properly yesterday, but all seems to be kosher today. This is a fantastic app! I'm really excited about it.
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"I think it was neat how this weird Bert story gave everybody something to talk and laugh about. I was impressed when Letterman and the Onion actually found something to say after the attacks -- but now we all do. God Bless Bert." -- David Cassel
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Man am I excited, Mercury rev comes to the Fillmore on 12/02.
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And yet more Bert, this time in Yahoo. Thanks to Dave, who says, "Kinda nice to know that in the middle of all this ugliness, a foreign
journalist stopped what he was doing and said "Tell me about Sesame Street...'"
Brad notes, "Have you guys noticed at all that the link to the original German news site now has the photo cropped to remove the offending Bert?"
And I have to ask: what about the children?
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Dave's got a story in AlterNet today on Bert & Bin Laden.
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wednesday, october 10

Don't be scared of the black helicopters...
I don't know what sound foreign policy is right now. I've got no idea, to be honest. I do know what I believe. I believe the Taliban is a repressive regime and should be toppled, and that we must find and punish Osama Bin Laden and his followers. But that's not enough, not by a long shot. It's time for one-world government, a global democracy. Without it these regimes will just continue to flourish, and nations will always fight other nations. The world is filled with repressive regimes, many of whom we call allies. Free trade isn't fair. Wealth flows to the North and West from poorer regions. America didn't deserve anything that happened to it, nor could we have realistically prevented it. But we can band together as one world, and abandon the antiquated notion of nations altogether. To me that seems like the only long-term solution to terrorism, war, trade, and human rights. Preserve our freedom, preserve our liberty, preserve our rights; crush the Taliban and give up our sovereignty.
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Why I won't be voting for Grey Davis.
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Pay deal reached for online music. Given the recording industry's past forays into technology, it won't be something consumers will go for unless forced, I suspect.
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Also from Fark. Bert says he's sorry
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Here's an explanation of the Bert & Bin Laden images floating around on posters in the mideast. (via fark)
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From Abby:
Hey Mat, I was just wondering if you ever went to or saw the Damn Show while you were in Athens. I went to it live at the Georgia Theater the other night and it was hilarious! If you haven't seen it, you have to check out the web site .
-- thanks Abby! Nope, wasn't there while I was.
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There's nothing you can really do to completely protect yourself these days, so why not turn off the news, get outside, and get your mind off of things? One of the best ways to do that is by going to check out the annual raptor migration currently in progress in Marin. (insert your own "feeling hawkish" joke here).
For detailed information, check out the Golden Gate RAptor Observatory homepage.
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tuesday, october 9

Blogger's back. Yay.
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This is pretty much what I've been spouting to my friends, family and anyone that will listen. Like him or not, we're going to have to make a Faustian bargain with Musharraf to keep him in power.
Money, big fistfulls of American money. We're going to have to make Pakistan fat if we want to keep this thing from going to hell.
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So, er.... what's the deal with Bert? (thanks dave!)
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There's some really cool OS X news for bloggers today.
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So here's a confession. When I was flying from Mississippi to Houston the week after the attacks, I was sitting in the emergency exit row next to a guy who was obviously from the Middle East. I smiled at him as I sat down, and he nodded and smiled back at me. He was well-dressed, looked like a student, and did nothing whatsoever to deserve setting off alarm bells in my head... but they were going off nonetheless, no matter how I tried to tell myself that I was being irrational. That I was being bigoted. Which is why I found a little comfort in Doonesbury today. I knew what I was experiencing was wrong and illogical. But it was there. And if that's what I'm thinking, what's happening in others' minds? The minds of people like the ones who, when asking my wife how her flight from OAkland to Nashville was, inquired if there were any "r*gheads" on board... I've lived in the Mideast twice in my life. I consider myself pretty enlightened. But it's still hard not to be afraid. Ahhhh for the wisdom of puppets.
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monday, october 8

I guess Arafat has chosen sides. This is pretty interesting to me. It's the first blood spilled by someone other than Al Quidah or the US, and it's Arab vs, Arab. It seemd to me Arafat made a pragmatic, long-sighted choice to go with the rule of law (at least now) over Islamic unity (or even Arabic, Osama is from Saudi, remember?). This is tragic all around. I mean, a 13 year old kid? Fuck. But what I really wonder is what the USA is going to owe Arafat. Did we make him a too-good-to-be-true offer? The Palestine situation is the key to keeping the Islamic community from turning away from the USA en masse, IMO. And although I think that Israel is a repressive state, and one that as a matter of policy murders innocents, I'm not exactly comfortable with cutting sweetheart deals with Arafat. I'll never forget the story my frined Eddie told me of his friend who was blown up on a beach in Israel, splattering gore on him. She was killed by a PLO bomb. No matter who you side with there, Arafat or Israel, you're siding with a bad guy, someonw who has the blood of children on their hands. Same thing with the Northern Alliance, Just as Osama and Sadam were once allies. Not that I have answers, just questions. I'm glad I'm not in charge right now.
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A sad, condescending, and not very good article on Daniel Johnston in the East Bay Express. Still, there's so little written on the man, I figured I'd link to it anyway.
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A renewed sensitivity led me to edit this post. Actually it was a picture of an old man crying that was in today's Chron. I still stnad by what I said. But I'll leave it at this: I don't trust my government, I fear both Arafat and Israel, and I'm ready to go on an extended trip outside the USA.
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"writing is for exploring all kinds of trips. if you can imagine it, you can write - let the reader decide whether they want to eat what's been writ. gotta keep expression open...
someone says 'god bless america' and I say 'god bless the world' before we do john cale's 'guts' (is god a nationalist - is she?) and hope that don't trip the crowd out that much. you don't know what to expect these days and it's one reason I'm not saying much of anything this tour. they're already getting spiel galore from the tv, I imagine. I said it in response to something that was yelled up at me, you can take a guess at what they said." -- from week three of Watt's tour diaries.
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There are two articles in Salon today that are worth reading.The first is your basic view of the war from "Little Kabul" here in the Bay Area, the second looks at it from Pakistan.
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Hmmmm... here's a weblog kept by a guy named Matt Hannan. Nifty.
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In more normal times, this would be the biggest story of the week.
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images of war
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friday, october 5

Cool. matthowie has a bike log.
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The Bush administration said it had a backup plan: donkeys. According to senior administration officials, 4,000 donkeys are currently on standby in Tajikistan to shuttle the aid by land.
"You can spend billions of dollars on military hardware and still it comes down to a convoy of donkeys to do the job when it comes to a country like Afghanistan," one White House official admitted to ABCNEWS.(thanks steve!)
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There's a really thoughtful article in Salon Premium on the New York Times' decision not to release consortium findings on the Florida ballot recount.
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Okay, so this is pretty funny. Please don't flame me for saying so.
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If you don't subscribe to the SF Gate Morning Fix, you really should. In addition to Morford's always on column, you get stuff like this:
**The Deep Shame Of Santa Cruz**
A Santa Cruz middle school student brought chocolate brownies cooked with marijuana to a school outing and passed them out to six unsuspecting students and his teacher. The teacher, who was aware the 14-year-old boy had past problems with pot, jokingly asked for one of the "pot brownies." The boy gave her one, and she ate it. When the teacher started to feel dizzy and confused, she called police, quite possibly the wimpiest and lamest thing a Santa Cruz schoolteacher has ever done in the history of the city, ever, and probably violating some sort of city ordinance against not enjoying pot like the rest of the town does every single day, because dude, it's like, Santa Cruz, you know? The teacher immediately ambled home and cranked some Massive Attack and chilled out on the couch with some Cheez-Its and tried to remember where she stored that old vibrator was and promptly fell asleep and dreamt of floating like a warm balloon over fields of Betty Crocker Double Fudge Swirl brownie mix.
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Cool! I just got in touch with my old friend Jenny V. (now Jenny E.) from my MoJo Wire days via the SF Indie list. She's got a super cool little site to boot.
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If you haven't heard Mercury Rev's new album, All Is Dream, you should do yourself a favor. It's brilliant. What's more, their tour is coming to the US
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When we were riding the bus home last night (from eating at an organic Bolivian place called PachaMaMa, or "Mother Earth"), Harp and I heard two women talking about a murder at "that club at Divis and Hayes." This is right in our neigborhood. We speculated that it had to be the Justice League. It was.
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70!
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thursday, october 4

Anthrax?!?
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This is one of the coolest copyright stories I've ever read, and I've even written a few. And I know what you're thinking, a copyright story?!?, I'll skip that one But wait! No, really! It's a tres cool story.
To wit: With the aid of a computer, Helyer and Drummond have notated the tones of every imaginable phone number combination and, in turn, claimed the melodies as their own. Next time you make a phone call, therefore, chances are you'll be in breach of international copyright law..."We're saying to (big business), 'Okay guys, the boot is on the other foot. If you really believe in copyright, you've got to pay'," Helyer says.
They've already copyrighted my number. What about yours? (thanks Tim & Anais!)
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Find the Terrorist, a Flash game from Mark Fiore. Illuminating.
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Grand Royal is, sadly going out of business & having a massive sale. Get that GR #2 (the issue with Lee Perry and that gave birth to the term "mullet") while you still can.
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wednesday, october 3

Jocelyne Wildenstein really should get together with Michael Jackson.
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cam's live, again. lspot gerald if you can.
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Kerns, I miss you, buddy. Gonna be in Copenhagen forever?
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My friend Matthew works in an audio/video post house. Upstairs form him, they make commercials. Last week, some of the talent didn't show up, and they asked him to fill in. This was the result.
UPDATE: Yeah, I screwed up... It should be fixed now
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Hello? Anybody home?
Anyone?
Hellooooooo?
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Today's Chron has a rundown of many of the post 9-11 urban legends circulating on the net.
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tuesday, october 2

Thursday night is the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's Golden Wheel party at Crissy field. I'ts kinda pricey (the suggested donation at least) but if you can swing it it goes to a worthwhile cause. Kate White and Elizabeth Sullivan from City Car Share are getting an award (something I obviously feel is deserved). Carl Carlsson, one of the founders of Critical Mass, is also being honored.
I was thinking of skipping this, but today I learned that women I work with got smacked crossing Fulton Street leaving the park. As I a) live on Fulton b) ride in the park all the time and c) ride pretty much everywhere I go, this reall hit home with me. She was crossing Fulton when a woman driving on Arguello turned left and plowed into her. It knocked her up on the hood of the car, and her head went through the windshield. Her legs are all bruised up, as is her back, but thanks to the miracle of bicycle helmets, she's not seriously injured...
Which is not to say that it wasn't a serious accident. It freaks me out, what I do is, at times, very dangerous. My daily commute is life threatening. It doesn't have to be.
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I scored 88%, I was off on Sputnik by two months and the Challenger by three years (oops!) How are you with dates? (via Metafilter)
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Sure you've heard of Emperor Norton, the band. But do you know about Norton I, Emperor of the United States, the San Francisco legend? He was like Frank Chiu for the 19th century set. A fascinating man.
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National Review Cans Columnist Ann Coulter
About damn time....
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I mean, even if I did like the guy. Even if I wasn't bothered by him, I'd still say that it is time for Strom to go. It's time.
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Reggae in the Park this weekend benefits Global Exchange.
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Worst seems over for Net job cuts -- 2,986 online workers were fired in September.
Let's hope we're close to the end, finally. Attrition, baby, attrition.
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The GG Bridge is open to people again as of yesterday.
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Google's interface changed today. Nice.
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monday, october 1

Meme Propagation
If you look at blogdex or daypop today (10/01) you'll note that one of the top stories on both sites (the top story on blogdex) is this: The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Women's suffrage called 'mistake' by conservative Kansas politician.
This is an odd article to show up as a top link on these two engines. It's an article in the Seattle paper about a woman in Kansas. The story is in the Times because they grabbed it from the AP wire. So here's where it gets interesting, from a memetic standpoint (clarification: I do not believe in memes in the scientific sense. I do think, however, the term is useful in describing the propagation of ideas)
I linked to the same AP article several days ago, but in this case it was on .the Chron's web site. It's the exact same story, taken from the AP wire. I'm sure that it's been reprinted in papers all over the country (as it should be, it's outrageous). Yet there's a massive collection of people all looking at the same article, the one from the Seattle Times. Why? Because this is an excellent example of how the Internet works to propagate memes (and probably goes a long way towards explaining why the, well, the meme meme didn't take with the public at large until the net came along).
Someone sees something, and passes it along. Other people also see it, find it interesting, and pass it along as well. So you've got an idea, a web site, whatever, that's expanding exponentially in terms of the mindspace it occupies. At the same time, you probably have competing memes vying for that limited space (limited by a sort of global attention span). It could be something completely different. Two humorous videos for example, or in this case, identical articles from different papers. But for the meme to truly explode, to really get a foothold in the collective consciousness, it needs a suitable host.
The meme's host, or carrier, is just as important as the meme itself. It's the difference in the meme being an underground hit or a full-blown hamsterdancing Mahir. I'm a small-scale host, a small carrier. Most days, less than 100 people visit my site's front page (several of you come again and again, but that's neither here nor there). My site cannot cause a meme to explode, it does not have the reach. For an idea to explode on the Internet, it's got to have reach. That reach can come about in one of two ways. The first is viral email propagation, this is broad-based, but it still typically relies on someone with a massively large and diverse address book to select "Forward: All." The other way a meme can get that reach on the Internet is via a highly trafficked site read by an influential community. In the same way that a disease can go from nil to epidemic based on a particular carrier's reach, so can a meme. It just takes a Typhoid.Mary, so to speak, such as Metafilter, Plastic, Slashdot or Memepool. In this case, the link seems to have been universally poached from MeFi, as MeFi has the same link (Plastic has the same story but with a Yahoo link) and has the story posted one day before it explodes on Blogdex.
I think Blogdex is going to be able to quantify something that has not been quantifiable before: who the most important carriers are, who are the Typhoid.Marys. Sure you may know, conceptually, that an idea first popped up in the public realm on MeFi or Slashdot... but Blogdex, Daypop and the link are going to allow you to quantify that knowledge.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Also, I just want to point out that tomorrow will be a palindrome: 10-02-2001, unless, of course, you're English.
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I went to a party Saturday night with loads of sick art featuring silly pink bunnies. (and if that link isn't working, try Google's cache) This guy Matt, who was throwing the party, was friends with the artist, and I guess must have been in the SPB crew. I didn't ask to see any tricks. The Juxtapoz cover was pretty fucking cool, but it was the bunny on canvas that nailed me.
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Oh jeez... no wonder.
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Arundhati Roy gives her take on "The algebra of infiinite justice."
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Ever wonder what the next big band from Athens will be? Me too. Here's a big ol list from Flagpole. I noticed that The Glands, who opened from Modest Mouse, are from Athens. (Ones I knew of include Elf Power, Bloddkin, 5-8, Vic Chesnutt, Kevn Kinney, Guadalcanal Diary, Love Tractor, Macha, Jack Logan, Olivia Tremor Control, of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel/ Jeff Magnum, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Redneck Greese, The Star Room Boys, Squat, and the Vigilantes of Love. Oh and those REM, B-52 and Widespread Panic bands, I've heard of them too.) There have got to be some real hidden gems among the pages of bands listed. Beat the rush.
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No sign of Harper's here. Note the big spender.
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It's gonna be another scorcher again today. It's weird to see these days without fog.
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I rode the bus today, and nearly freaked when I started reading the paper. Just below the fold was a picture of my friend Josh Parr in an article on Americans turning inward after the attacks.
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All Tomorrow's Parties has been postponed until early 2002. This sucks, and just as we were talking about taking the train down too. Glad we hadn't purchased tickets yet (although I am looking forward to that, i've never ridden on Amtrack. Harp says it's very cool.
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