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Every time some kid shoots up a school or steals a car there are always three convenient scapegoats: video games, that music they listen to, and those movies they watch. Recently here in the Bay Area there has been an upswing of service vehicles being stolen: ambulances, police cars, etc.

Now normally I’m of the school of thought that says parents who parent well are to blame for kids stealing cars or being miscreants, not RockStar Games, Eminem, or Quentin Tarantino. Nonetheless, stealing service vehicles is a core part of the Grand Theft Auto series (III and Vice City in particular). It’s a little odd though, I mean what are you going to do with that fine new ambulance you’ve jacked?

But….

“Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.”

Kristian Wilson, CEO, Nintendo, 1989

So with the month of November pretty much filled up with activities, stress, and departure, I worked all weekend to get as much stuff moved into storage as possible.

Step 1 was to get storage at CityStorage which, fortunately enough, has a storage center literally 3 blocks from my house. I knew living in a quasi-industrial zone would have its advantages at some point.

Step 2 was to empty all my big furniture, deks, TV stand, bookshelves.

Step 3, I posted an ad on CraigsList to get some help, a great guy named Jon volunteered to help for a reasonable rate. If you need his contact info, contact me. He was great and 3 hours later we had all “the heavy crap” moved into my storage unit.

Step 4.: Picked up truck at budget. I rode my bike down and rented a cargo van. Down side was i tried to be the first person there forgetting about Daylight savings time and was an hour early with soft tires. Dammit!

Step 5: I just completed today, i put all my books into small boxes. Putting them into small boxes is key because many books in larger boxes just does not work. On the up side i categorized and booked along similar themes, hopefully this will help me move out (dread, dread) when necessary.

This pretty much clears out the living room, next up, kitchen.

My room is really in quite a state. I have my desk with iMac (both for sale!), my futon as bed, most of my clothes in Trader Joe’s bags (in lieu of dresser). I really wish my new Mac would get here so I can get my data off of the current one and get that sold.

Lastly, I always say that you haven’t moved until you draw blood, so today was my day. I was sitting on the carpet using a tape gun (a sign of true civilizational progress!) when it slipped and the cutting edge hit me square on the lateral maleolus (thanks http://www.meddean.luc.edu/lumen/MedEd/GrossAnatomy/learnem/bones/main_bone.htm) with the cutting edge. As the perfect indentations began to drop blood i realized i was going to have to do some sort of strange yogic position crawl so as to not drip all over the carpet. I did pretty well until one stray drop dripped, I grabbed a paper towel and then bandaged it. Only down side will be when i pull it off it will grab all my leg hair. Yeeaaaaooouch!

Well, that’s the short and sweet of it, I will be going to SYD to do work at my company’s site out there for about two months.

It’s been a real trying last couple of months because this plan has been fomenting since about 3 months ago. It’s possibility has sort of held me in this state of superposition (stolen from popular Quantum Mechanics’ lexicon), neither being go-yes or go-no.

See, I’ve been thinking Buy new car? or Try to buy some property” - but the sensible answers to both these questions change dramatically when one thinks about not being where one wants to live for months at a time.

It’s also held my personal life in this weird stage - it’s this state of living semi-detached from those around one. This is contrary to my rather Dionysian (in the more Classical sense) impulses of experiencing each moment fully — but it’s hard to live the other way - it always feels like you’re being disingenuous insofar as you know the tacit assumption in each relationship (I should be able to see this person the day after, and the day after that) is highly dubitable.

But now that life-on-a-delay-timer is over as the flights have been booked, the hotel reserved, and my project plan put to ink.

I’m a bit worried about leaving SF — i like my apartment OK and moving all my belongings (that don’t get sold first) into storage hardly thrills me - but we can’t live life hoping not to experience changes. Change is critical to making us become what we need to be.

As you doubtless noticed I will be in Sydney through the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. I think that this will definitely be an interesting experience. The last time I was in a foreign land for a holdiay was in 1997/1998 when I was in Prague and Munich (Christmas, Sylvester, respectively).

So there you have it. Read more to hear about what I’m doing to prepare… (more…)

When formulating a mathematical theory the great mathmetician, philosopher, artist, polymath Edsger Dijkstra thought, much like Plato, we should endeavour to express ourselves clearly and precisely above all else. To enforce this he made sure he could explain his rationale to a layman in both Dutch (his mother tongue) and English (the Esperanto of computer science)

What does this[Image: 628K] say about The White House’s policy if the executors of the rationale are not convinced?

I’m looking out the sliding glass door at the San Francisco skyline. I am sitting on on my futon. The summer fog drifts from the sea to the bay. Sometimes the fog is high and covers the tips of the city. Sometimes the fog lays thick over the buidings and the highway seems to vanish into haze.

And for some reason, I happened to think about S.E. Hinton. S.E., first of all is a woman. You probably don’t know this. But she is. S.E. Hinton has written some of the most gritty fiction ever put to paper. Her book chronicles lust, violence, anger, rage, isolation, and angst in a thoroughly authentic manner. S.E. Hinton captures the voice of the people wheo live through Tornado Alley.

S.E. Hinton writes books for adolescents and teens.

Her most famous book is The Outsiders which was later made into a movie produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

Her statements about her life and her work are very short, but she found that people could not believe that a woman was writing The Outsiders. I can’t imagine what challenges she must have faced over and above the usual “it’s really hard to get a book published.”

I decided I would do a little research on her. S.E. Hinton is intensely private and doesn’t say much about herself or her personal life. She does have the following link button to her website. For what it’s worth, I think this is a great picture she’s used. I think she’s very beautiful.

I want to write something, but listening to The Sisters’ Vision Thing is currently sapping me. Maybe later.

The value of any theory is its predictive power.

Steve Martin will release “Cheaper by the Dozen” around Christmas this year. I won’t be in the country (whew).

Here’s a trailer.

Notice that steve’s expression falls into one of the three described by my Steve Martin poster test.

As such, I am predicting this movie will suck….not that you really needed the Steven martin poster test to tell you this. It will be more hackneyed family crap comedy that Michael Keaton essentially mined smashingly for all it was worth over 20 years ago with Mr. Mom.

Here’s a pic….

Sushiated: adj.. The state of feeling full after having eaten a quality sushi meal that has, in turn, rendered one lethargic, distracted, and sleepy. In short, in no condition to do any real work whatsoever. Example: After I finished my Rainbow Roll at Sushi O Sushi I was totally sushiated and took a nap under my desk.

Whoever took tho photo of Diane Lane (and did the inevitable Photoshopping) deserves a commendation or an award (friends of Strong Bad might recommend a pizza-trophy). This ad is all over the place in SF (MUNI shelters) and on a huge-ass billboard on 101 South.

(to see the pic I’m lookning at, check out the official site .

Let’s just start out by my saynig that Diane Lane has got to be the hottest older (she’s 38) woman in the universe.

Let me first address her smile. It is simply amazing. Something about her facial expression and lips express the word possibility in an entirely adult fashion. Somehow, though she’s not actually doing it, I swear she’s somehow psychically beaming to me that she’s also biting her lip. Is it possible?

Her mouth is like a toothpaste ad. I admit I’m quoting Reese Witherspoon speaking of Ali Larter in “Legally Blonde”. I remember thinking that Reese’s protracted description of Ali’s mouth on the special track of “Legally Blonde” was really quite sensual - mayhap Ms. Witherspoon has a future in poetry or some other art.

Back to the ad though, men have a coded genetic weakness to blue jeans and a white long-sleeve, collared shirt. The semiotic connotation of this sign means: relaxed, sexy, and fun. It says, “Hi, I’m classy but won’t mind if we grab a burger and beer after our promenade.”

And she’s looking, as you see her, to her left, more importantly to the viewer’s right. Now English readers and writers natually tend to look to the right when reading or viewing, so Diane is looking to the right, to the “next” which really only reaffirms the message of “possibility.”

In summation, this ad says “Classy and fun, but relaxed, possibilities” to the viewer. From what I understand of the movie this is sort of the idea (How white girl got her Italian Groove back, apparently) of the film.

I’ll probably never see the movie because it can’t live up to the explosive chemistry of the picuture. Three cheers for Diane Lane.

But now that I’m thinking about hot older women of the silver screen, back when i was a bit younger the lust object beyond all conception was Sharon Stone. Right about the time of release of “Basic Instinct” (my sophomore year in high school) everyone went nuts over her (uhm, and her choice of couture).

Now let’s not be mistaken, I thought she was pretty good looking (gross understatement) but something about her performance as Catherine Trammell was so smart, so dangerous, so enticing that I concluded: Sharon Stone is hot, older, and smart. Clearly only someone with great intelligence, the key to being able to emote, could have given such a performance.

Then I saw her in several interviews and she was a total dingbat. I was floored. Keep in mind, this is in high school, where smart geeky guys think that they’ll never get to kiss the prom queen - and, for the world outside John Hughes films, they never do. Somehow Sharon had become, for a brief moment, the symbol of a terrifyingly beautiful and so goddam smart lustobject - and the golden era was over.

Many years later she was on junket for the movie “Sphere” and I thought I’d visit my previous reveries by watching her, and, much to my surprise, she was totally intelligent. Her manner of expression didn’t have the slow, cool, collectedness of Audrey Hepburn or the dispassionate sangfroid of an icy new england intellectual out of one of those John Irvingesque wife-swapping stories, but nonetheless, she had opinions about the philosophical underpinnings of “Sphere” that displayed keen acumen. In interviews I’ve read with her she is quite bright and seems to be nice company.

So where Am I now? Stone is a good-looking and smart woman who, despite getting a ‘tawdry’ rap, I actually find rather elegant. So Sharon, if you’re reading, and you’re ever in the city and want to meet an admirer (and what’s not to like about a person who had a conversion from hater to fan) let me know.

Well everyone I know is asking me what I think about my new Governor-elect, Schwarzenegger. Here are my thoughts:

• Too many characters to type to bitch about easily. Contrast: “That doofus Bush!” versus “That doofus Schwarzenegger”
• Another CEO president. Ugh.
• As I said on friendster: California uber alles

Seriously though, as I know pretty much nothing about what the guy stands for, I can’t really say. It’s just wait and see.

In other news: I got my car maintained today… I tried a McGriddle for the first time (more in the read more section)

I also have some great new music picks!

1. Black Eyed Peas : Elephunk - This is great hip hop, I always liked Taboo’s rhymes. I think the addition of the singer “Fergie” to the lineup has really rounded out their sound. Her vocal accentations are the highlights in the hairdo, the extra arms on vishnu, they put the spring in the BEP (apologies to The Simpsons)
2. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Take Them on Your own More of the 50s sensibility revival like The Raveonettes but a bit more Detroit-raw-rock like the MC5 or The White Stripes
3. Emmylou Harris: Stumble Into Grace I have a weakness for melancholic, lilty, alt.country singers (Lucinda Williams). Emmylou’s writing continues to grow more introspective and ethereal as she continues to evolve. The cover picture of her is great too. Somehow the picture and the songs remind me of a zen parable I read about sand on a mirror where at the end you realize the mirror isn’t there. If that zen parable doesn’t exist, it ought.
4. Nappy Roots: Wooden Leather: More hip-hop. Definitely with a southern edge, biscuits, gravy, and groove. Right on.
5. White Stripes: De Stijl and White Stripes: Jack and Meg, God bless you. I wish they’d record the Weevil Song though…just lookin’ for a home

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