The time has come to unload the car I have had for more than 10 years. I remember back in high school when I got it, and later using it to clandestinely speed to Las Vegas for a Creatures show which I never ended up seeing, driving endlessley through all my free time all over central California to escape Roommate Hell back in my undergrad years… It’s been a sturdy, reliable car. I will miss it.

David’s birthday is coming. Buy him something. And if you’re in Southern California this weekend, let us know and you may just be invited to the prty.

Baby. I’m so glad I found you.

P.S: Anyone need a car?

The fever of Olympiana has once again consumed the world. Every few years, the governments of the world, both autocratic and democratic, rally their minions to their flags to support an institution which purports to enshrine values which every human should supposely appreciate: national pride, athleticism, cameraderie, etc.

All the while, we never seem to question the rather insidious facets of the Olympics, and its repercussions upon us as individuals, whether we live in a free society or not. It also reflects the immense infrastructure of corruption and villany which the entire enterprise of sports entertainment has brought to the world in which we live.

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Well Said. I’ve often found it a bit queer that endorsing an individual candidate or issue almost invariably chains one to a whole slew of platforms upon which one is expected to stand and defend without question. Sort of the mild trepidation I felt standing in line to marry my husband and chatting uncomfortably with the sods on the sidewalk as they unquestioningly obliged me to not only enjoy a same-sex marriage, but also to volunteer to help the homeless, free Mumiah and end the War in Iraq at the same time…

Along the same lines, I think individuals from all sides seem to be bundling their politics too much these days. As politics gets increasingly divisive, people seem to take shelter in group-think, which leads to blind acceptance of “platform politics” rather than rational opining of specific issues and candidates. My own dad has fallen victim of this crisis: upon learning that I planned to vote for Kerry, he immediately knew I preferred high taxes, tighter business restrictions, a big European welfare state, pulling troops out of Iraq, lying, cheating and molesting children. Uniting values with specific candidates and issues tends to create this all-or-nothing mentality. You can no longer split your ticket. You’re either with us or against us.

Anyone who knows me well knows I care very little for sports. Aside from occasionally fetishizing the body of a stocky jock, I could not care less about what happened to which team yesterday. Along those lines, I’m also not a fan of the Olympics. I don’t find many differences between your everyday sporting business and the Olympics. If anything, I dislike the Olympics more because it commands such unwarranted reverence among people who otherwise don’t care about sports either.

A while back I’d written a short rant about the destructive force which is the Olympics. Whilst reveiewing it as a possible post in deference to the current plague soiling our national attention-spans, I realized that it was just as applicable to the every-day business of sporting events, from college football to major-league baseball. Basically, the root factor here is the mass-mobilization character of sports: how those who run the sports institutions command such massive influence upon our culture, wielding immense (unaccountable) public power and using that power to create an incredibly fascist policymaking instutution within our society. By commanding sports, one can easily command the psyche of a vast majority of people, and this allows the sports entertainment bodies of the world to commit massive amounts of fraud and villany whose blatant erosion of law and rights would be impossible for any other institution.

By this (relative) time tomorrow, we’ll be in Maui. I never really expected to go there. Hawai’i was of course a line on the checklist, but it doesn’t seem to hold much a lure for the effort required to go there… Oahu is where we would have been most likely to explore in the end, being urbanists, but this’ll do. Besides, how could I turn down being able to attend my sister’s wedding?

Now to decide whether I want to blow the extra cash I’ve been landed with this week on a new iPod for the trip… Hmm…

Back and exhausted. It’s good I don’t have to work tomortow… O wait…

Lots of good food, lots of wedding fun, lots of scantily clad Polynesian boys, lots of driving, lots of sun… Hey, I take the bad with the good…

I’m sure a full report will be forthcoming, but right now I need sleep.

Two years in San Francisco. Damn.

Over the past two years, my relationship with this City has had its ups and downs. It’s sort of like being adopted by your evil stepmother and trying really hard to love her even though she abuses and enslaves you in your own home.

San Francisco: it has such promise. If you look at it from the right angles and in the right lighting, it’s urban perfection and beauty realized. But with your feet on the ground and in the daily grind, it’s a most unlivable place.

I go through my day-to-day life despising this City. I hate the postage-stamp-sized apartment it makes me live in (even though our home is larger than most at its price). I hate the necessity of using the public transit system. I hate the dirt and grime and indigence. I hate the traffic and the daily drama of moving and worrying about my car. I hate the fact that even though the supermarkets are always out of everything, it still costs more than it would in a less-crowded, well-stocked suburban store. I hate the inconvenience of my neighborhood: the fact that it’s the most car-friendly, and thus has all the disadvantages of a dense urban area and none of the advantages, like shops and restaurants and coffeehouses. I hate the unbelievable extra costs incurred for living here: from parking tickets to gas to food to the increased amount of time spent getting to places that would be easy and quick in any mid-sized suburb. The lost investment value of time alone in this City has me running a huge deficit…

The amount of energy I’ve expended maintaining my life in San Francisco is in drastic excess to what the same standard of living would have taken out of me in Fresno - and Fresno itself is not necessarily the most convenient or cheapest place to live. At the same time, I’ve yet to really reap any promised advantages to life here.

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