seriously?

Dear guy on the 38 bus,

Do you seriously think that The Joy of Gay Sex is appropriate reading material during evening rush hour?

Also, I can't decide whether the fact that it was a library book makes it better or worse.

Sincerely,

Karen

there are some things that should be illegal

...and profusely sweaty, balding, foggy-eyeglassed men at the gym on stationary bikes grasping the Wall Street Journal in one hand and checking their stocks via their iPhone in the other hand are definitely one of those things.

making headlines

When I work out at the gym I frequently turn on a news channel on the little personal TV screen they have attached to each treadmill and watch without sound. As you no doubt have noticed, it is now de rigueur to have a constantly running stream of mini-headlines scrolling underneath the main features. As a linguist I dig seeing the attempted synopses of various stories into such brief snippets; often it feels like you can only understand the little headlines if you're already familiar with the stories anyway.

For instance, today they periodically ran a line that said something like "Comment leads to Missouri standoff." OK...thanks for letting us know! The other day it was "Caylee's grandfather under suicide watch." Who the fuck is Caylee and why do her grandfather's death-wish issues warrant time on the national news? Sometimes the headlines are funny for entirely other reasons; my favorite one from today was "Men see bikini-clad women as objects, scientists say." Shouldn't that be a headline from The Onion? Who are these scientists? I want to know who designed the study protocol for that one. And whether any of my tax dollars were involved.

Speaking of questionable uses of my hard-earned money, the San Francisco Municipal Railway this morning provided yet another notable public transportation experience. I was heading to work on the 38, and an older woman in a dingy hoodie and sparkly but tattered skirt was sitting near me. Her personal odor was not altogether agreeable, but I've seen and smelled a lot worse on MUNI, and since I was reading a magazine I only really noticed her when she started softly and repeatedly lilting "James Brown!" in dulcet tones, followed by the observation "He and I are from the same place." The she looked at me and asked if I knew the time. I was unwilling to dig out my cell phone, so I showed my bare wrists and said "Sorry, I don't."

"You don't know the time?"

"Sorry."

"I have to take my psych meds."

I smiled and nodded sympathetically. Then she asked, "What are you?"

"What am I?"

"Yeah, what are you?"

I hesitated and replied, "I don't understand the question."

"Are you a nurse?"

machine learning

As I have mentioned previously, I have a fairly severe allergy to science fiction, but enough smart people had told me that I would nonetheless enjoy the new Battlestar Galactica series that I finally went ahead and Netflixed it. And I do indeed like it well enough, particularly the parts involving Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, who is a hot, blond fighter pilot with a no-bullshit attitude, and who also is very hot.

Moving right along. So, I just started season 3, which so far I am liking the best of anything in the series so far. Based on the initial two episodes I feel it can perhaps best be summarized as Watergate Meets Birkenau. In other words, exactly the sort of kitten-filled happy rainbow festival I tend to love.

Oddly enough, James--whose brain inhabits science fiction approximately 98% of the time--had not ever watched BSG, so I got him started on it as well. When I visited him in Los Angeles this past weekend I commented that the machine Cylons really freaked me out, but the human-form Cylons didn't scare me much at all. James looked shocked.

"For me it's exactly the opposite," he said.

"Really?"

"I understand how machines work. Why would anyone be afraid of a machine? That's stupid. That would be like...being afraid of your car. Or something."

"I'm a little afraid of your espresso machine, to be honest."

I was mainly (although not entirely) joking, but then I found a photo of his espresso machine's innards:


People, am I wrong? Would you turn your back on this monster? Give me Number Six any day of the week.

flakes

My typical San Francisco MUNI experiences usually fall somewhere between barely tolerable (see Exhibit A: Spare the Fucking Air Days) and excruciating (see Exhibit B: Filthy Crack Addicts), but once in a while there are some perks to the forced commingling of residents from all over this fair city. For instance, the other morning on the 38L line I got to overhear one half of a phone conversation that went a little something like this:

Phone Guy (PG): Eloy, I don't appreciate you calling me a thief. I didn't take your money. I don't do that kind of thing. I don't like it when you say I'm stealing from you.

Woman sitting with PG: He was in the middle of the street, he went downstairs to get another beer! What's he saying?

PG: OK, OK, listen Eloy. I went and got you ALL that body wash, and then I came back and you GAVE me 18 dollars to buy shampoo.

Woman: I had to lead him back upstairs!

PG: Well then...Eloy, Eloy...listen to me listen to me. Where did all that Selsun Blue come from then? How did you end up with five bottles of Selsun Blue? Explain that to me. If I stole that money, how did you end up with five bottles of Selsun Blue? Don't call me a thief!

Woman: He was afraid that his girlfriend would see he was drunk again! That's why, he went down to get ANOTHER beer at the store, he already had three and he went to get another. He didn't even know where he was! What's he saying? What's he saying?

PG: Eloy, THEN HOW DID YOU END UP WITH ALL THAT SELSUN BLUE??

fair trade

James and I have a symbiotic relationship of sorts. He does all kinds of things for me that I am probably technically capable of doing but that I either (a) loathe and/or (2) would put off forever if left to my own devices. Examples of such activities include setting up audio-visual equipment, arranging and installing wireless service, assembling IKEA products, talking on the phone to just about any company about anything, ensuring I have proper web security, installing cabinets and shelving, removing dents from my car, supervising and assisting movers, understanding major real estate transactions, and so forth. In exchange I occasionally knit him a pair of socks.

All this is just to supply some background information to explain why James was working on my taxes yesterday rather than allowing me to simply pay an accountant to do it the way I usually do. According to James, my tax situation this year is so straightforward as to render a professional accountant superfluous. You know, because in 2008 I started paying interest on two mortgages, received royalty payments on various knitwear designs, earned stock dividends, paid property taxes on two houses, and god knows what else. Sounds very 1040-EZ, right? Anyway, so he was using TurboTax software, which has you answer various questions in order to establish what all you need to declare, and at one point he piped up from the next room, "Did you get any Ottoman Turkish empire settlement payments last year? Because that falls under 'other income.'"

"Oh crap," I replied, "I forgot about that. (pause) Oh, wait, no...I bought an ottoman last year. I get those two things confused."

"OK, good. I think I can skip this line then."

I'm hoping James doesn't read this blog, because so far I have him convinced that our little arrangement involves an equitable exchange of goods and services. For what it's worth, here is a photo of the hand knit socks I found in his dresser just now:



He also has somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 hand knit sweaters, as well as quite a few mittens, hats, and scarves. The fellow lives in Los Angeles, for god's sake...he needs help keeping warm.

historiae animalium

There is absolutely nothing funny about half your beloved colleagues getting laid off unexpectedly, so I'm not going to discuss what happened at my company this week beyond saying that there is absolutely nothing funny about half your beloved colleagues getting laid off unexpectedly.

I am back down in Los Angeles for the three-day weekend. I was reminded on the way here that the last time I went through Oakland airport it was just a day or two after the "miracle on the Hudson," which, as you already know unless you've been living under a rock with your iPod turned up to 11 with the Ride of the Valkyries on repeat and a silky sleep mask over your eyes, involved a plane that crash landed in a river on account of birds being sucked into its engines. There is a piece of artwork at the Oakland airport called "Auspicious Cranes," and it struck me last time that this piece of art was maybe no longer so appropriate lining a corridor people walk through as they are about to board planes at an airport that sits on the shore of a major bay, seeing as it basically depicts a bunch of large water birds whose heads appear to be bloodied:



But maybe that's just me.

As many of you know, almost nothing pleases me more than getting a chance to deploy the "inappropriate animals" tag on this blog, and today I have occasion to do so yet again, not only on account of the mangled cranes but also because we were walking at the L.A. Arboretum this morning and encountered an extra-large grade A coyote sauntering across the path ahead of us. As we got closer, he stopped and turned around with his big ol' coyote head poking up over the side of an embankment and I swear to god all he needed was a jaunty bandana around his neck and he'd have been ready to act as mascot for a cheesy Southwest souvenir shop.

"It's a good thing there aren't any roadrunners around here," James opined. "Yeah," I said, "That would be nothing but chaos."

because nothing says "romance" like fullerene-related structures consisting of rolled graphene sheets

I went down to L.A. for the long weekend, technically in part to...wait for it...work on my screenplay, but really mostly just to hang out at James's house and also to attend our friend The Other Karen B's birthday party and get drunk on mojitos and lick chocolate buttercream off of ladyfinger cookies. (Apparently that's what the kids are calling it these days. Who knew?!)

Because James and I are so very, very old, we decided to go to downtown Pasadena on Saturday before the birthday party simply to ensure that we'd stay awake until 9:00 p.m., which was when the party was scheduled to begin. Sadly, I am completely serious.

Fueled by sentimentality more so than a desire for decent potables, we stopped by the restaurant/bar where we went on our very first date back in 2000. We plopped ourselves down, ordered a couple of drinks, and when they arrived James immediately (a) noticed that the two tiny straws in his beverage were of different diameters, (2) inserted one inside the other, and (iii) romantically declared, "I've now got a concentric multi-walled nanotube." He looked vaguely confused as I scrambled to dig a pen out of my purse and reached across him to grab a cocktail napkin. "I need to write this down," I explained, scribbling. "This is COMEDY GOLD."

James: "Why is that funny?"
Karen: "It's funny."
James: "The fact that I don't understand why it's funny is also funny, I bet."
Karen: "Yes."

****

There's nothing like spending a weekend in L.A. being driven around in a purring German sports car and attending parties full of movie industry people to make you truly appreciate the misery that is the route 31 bus up here in San Francisco. Because lo, that is the bus I chose to board for the final leg of my public transportation journey home this evening, and I would be lying if I told you that one of my fellow passengers wasn't a crack-smoking transvestite in a hospital gown and a puffer jacket, sporting a dingy bar towel as a 'do rag, occasionally flashing her naked ass, and manically switching seats and talking about someone who was going to rape her and asking the driver to find her a cop and then bitchily accusing him of not being a Christian. And when I say this person was a crack smoker, I am not jumping to conclusions or falling prey to vicious stereotypes. SHE WAS SMOKING CRACK RIGHT THERE ON THE BUS.

P.S. If any of you out there are planning to take the 31 in the next couple of days, there is at least one coach with several seats you'll want to avoid sitting in. Or touching. Or being alive next to.

oh baby

It is my sad duty to report that if you want to feel old, there's nothing like discovering that the wee German infant you used to bottle feed and whose diapers you used to change while working as an au pair is now a 20-something college student with a profile on Facebook.


In one of her Facebook photos there are several empty beer bottles on the desk in front of her, and the first thing I thought was, "Well! Isn't she a little young to be drinking beer!?" And then I remembered (a) she is now a couple of years older than I was in the above photo, and (b) there is a glass of beer in front of me in the above photo. And trust me, that wasn't the only beer I am likely to have consumed that day. Hey, we were on vacation, alright? In Denmark. Of course there was beer.

Today I went for a nice long walk through Golden Gate Park down to the ocean, and just as I turned around there was this guy walking his dog heading in the same direction and walking pretty fast. I pulled out ahead of him, but 1/4 mile or more later I realized he was still right on my heels. I started getting upset. I mean, he was just out walking a dog, not decked out all race-walkerish or anything. Did I really suck that much, that a guy out for a stroll WEARING REGULAR PANTS FOR CHRISSAKE could easily keep pace with me?

Then a while later he actually passed me, giving me the chance to realize that he was one of those guys who is like 6'5" tall and three quarters of it is legs. That made me feel a little better, but I was still irritated. Then he turned around and started talking to me.

Guy: I was getting worried there.
Me: About what?
Guy: I thought you were going to be the first person I'd ever met in my life who could outwalk me.

crying fowl

The other night we were watching a Werner Herzog documentary called Encounters At the End of the World, which is about Antarctica and which Herzog narrates in English, and we were trying to guess what part of Germany he was from by scrutinizing his accent. I guessed Bavaria, not so much based on my presumed expertise as someone with graduate degrees in both Germanic literature and Linguistics, but rather as someone whose German relatives are not from Bavaria and also sound nothing like Werner Herzog when they speak English. I called up the Wikipedia entry for Herzog on the laptop that just happened to be in front of me, and confirmed that he is indeed from Munich. We went back to watching the movie, but every so often I would glance down and scan the information on the computer screen.

Suddenly I had to hit pause. "Listen to this!" I said, and started to read aloud to poor James, who presumably was along for this particular ride primarily in the hopes of getting to see some weird scientific crap about Antarctica. "One recurring symbol running through Herzog's films is chickens, which Herzog fears." We paused for a moment to let this sink in. Herzog had stated near the start of the documentary that it was definitely not going to be yet another film about penguins, so naturally that statement suddenly resonated with us. "Penguins are kind of like chickens," said James. "Yeah," I said. "This is all starting to make sense." We hit play and continued watching.

A few minutes later I glanced at the computer screen once again and lunged for the pause button. "WAIT OH MY GOD LISTEN TO THIS!" Reading aloud, I continued, "Even Dwarfs Started Small features cannibalistic chickens, and several sequences of dwarfs throwing chickens."

"Several sequences, " I repeated. "SEVERAL."

"Uh huh, I got that part."

"Sevvvveral. More than one."

"Got it."

I had barely started the movie up before the proceedings were halted once more. Again I quoted directly from the computer screen: "Signs of Life and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser feature chicken hypnosis."

Me: "Herzog has so much to say about chicken hypnosis that he can't fit it all into one movie?"

James: "Wait, so the chickens are being hypnotized, or are they hypnotizing someone else?"

Me: "It doesn't specify. Maybe both, if we're lucky."

Then we got back to watching the rest of the documentary, only now occasionally inserting phrases into the narrative, suchlike:

Herzog: "Zee wattur iss negative 2 dekrees Celzius. Zee divers must be carefull not to go too far..."

Us: "...becauss of there mayght be chickenss."

Also, we are now planning a Werner Herzog film festival/drinking game.

everything except people

Tonight my friend Claudia reminded me of one of the funniest-because-it's-true things that James my robot boyfriend from outer space has ever said, which was "I anthropomorphize everything except people."

Speaking of Claudia, and people, on Friday we went to a champagne party with some of her friends/coworkers who do a monthly wine tasting dinner. I present to you the aftermath:


That might not seem particularly impressive until I tell you that there were only 12 people there, and two of them left early.

vic the kitten

So I was just on the phone with my mom in San Diego, and in the middle of telling me the usual trivial neighborhood goings-on she mentions that my cat (who lives two doors down from her, with my brother) is sick and tomorrow they are going to take her to the vet to be put down. Then she segued calmly into the next topic, something about where my dad had taken the car that day or whatever.

Thanks mom, always great talking to you.

(Disclaimer: the above photo is over 18 years old. They're not planning to kill an actual kitten, in other words.)

wishful thinking

I have been watching the events in Mumbai unfold with keen interest and concern, since I spent much of the last fiscal year living and working there, and made a lot of friends along the way. (They are all safe and sound, I know in the meantime.)

I've talked before about a phenomenon I call "Indian truth," where often you are told what the other person thinks you want to hear, no matter what the truth actually is. Your new kurta will be ready on Wednesday, the electrician will be arriving within 15 minutes, the meal does not contain ingredient X, the scarf is 100% pashmina, etc. This truth-they-think-you-wish-were-true is harmless enough, if incredibly frustrating, when it comes to quotidian examples like the ones I just mentioned, but it has been showing itself in matters of far greater import this week. Something like 48 hours ago the Indian authorities were asserting that the situation at the Taj hotel was completely resolved, yet as late as a couple of hours ago there were multiple eyewitness reports coming in that suggested anything but. So, apparently the officials meant that other than the continuing gunfire and explosions, terrified people holed up in their rooms, numerous dead bodies still scattered inside, at least one terrorist alive, armed, and roaming the building, and...oh yeah, the building being on fire again, the situation has been resolved? Way to go with that!

I'm not surprised either that many are questioning why the fire brigade is so inadequate and why it is taking so long for the situation in general to get under control. In India it seems everything is either not organized at all, or organized to the point of being choked with pointless, circular bureaucracy. Now throw in a soupçon barrel of corruption and a shocking lack of infrastructure and mix it up with a city of about 15 million people, most of whom live in slums. Of course they can't pull their shit together.

mumbai

On fire:


Not on fire:


Gotta say I definitely prefer it not on fire.

travelogue

James and I decided that instead of driving down the I-5 to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving week, we'd take two days for a leisurely drive down California Route 1. We spent the night in San Simeon, which is right next door to Cambria.




Cambria has some nice beaches, where you can view lovely sunsets and all that crap, but the town itself is what we now lovingly refer to as "White Trash Ashland." The shops in Ashland (Oregon), while clearly aimed primarily at tourists, at least have things you might want to purchase--for someone you like, even. In Cambria you are confronted with tacky shoppes [sic] with holiday-themed baby clothes, amateurish seascape paintings, Australian dry goods (apparently to make something Australian you just have to glue some shearling on it somewhere), and cutesy tee shirts. One store prides itself on being rubber ducky headquarters for the entire USA. Do they carry Hanukkah rubber ducks, complete with yarmulkes, you ask? Zikher, I say:



I couldn't even bear to look at, much less photograph, the rubber "celebriducks." These were kind of like centaurs, except with a rubber duck's ass where the horse part should be and an elaborately detailed famous person's head and torso up front (Queen Elizabeth, George Washington, etc.). I am all for animals disguised as other animals, and while technically a historical figure in the form of a duck would fall into that category, I think we can all agree that that is just stupid and disturbing.

Speaking of disturbing animals, this morning we got in the car to go to Whole Foods and James noticed a dog that was off leash and became concerned. "My neighborhood isn't very safe for loose dogs these days," he said, in a way that made me realize he regretted saying it as it was still coming out of his mouth. "Um, what do you mean?" I asked suspiciously. "Does this have something to do with mountain lions?" And indeed it turns out that several dogs recently have been killed by a mountain lion in his neighborhood, in areas further away from the foothills than his own house.

James hadn't mentioned this sooner because he knows I am already a little concerned about the occasional bear that wanders down the street or parks itself in a hot tub, so naturally I had to make fun of him for thinking I was too delicate to handle this latest bit of news. "I CAN'T BELIEVE you didn't tell me that a mountain lion had been eating babies in your neighborhood," I said. (Pause.) "I can't believe you didn't tell me that a mountain lion had killed your next door neighbor Mike...and his wife."

Anyway, the police have killed the mountain lion in the meantime, which kind of sucks in theory but probably seems like a great idea as you watch a giant feline dragging away your Labrador. Personally, though, I am more of a cat person.

see the movie, skip the book

The other day I went to see the new movie Slumdog Millionaire, primarily because the still photo in the New York Times review (and above) clearly indicated that at least part of the movie was shot in the apartment complex where I used to live in Mumbai. The movie was so good (save for a couple of lapses into tired romance/destiny themes and scenes) that I immediately bought the novel it was based on. It was originally entitled Q&A, but has been renamed to match the movie.

I'm about 75 pages into it and I can't put it down...because I have to keep asking myself, "How in the world did someone read this sophomoric, one-dimensional, sloppy, homophobic piece of crap and turn it into the movie I just saw??" It's like they aren't even related. Normally I have no problem with giving up on miserable writing and moving on to the next book in my queue, but I feel obligated to keep giving this one a chance. Seriously, though--it's almost unbelievably awful.

Updated to add--
Here is the larger version of the movie still:



vs. a photo I took from my bedroom window:

totoro!

Since Rick (and by proxy, Cathy) originally introduced me to Hayao Miyazaki and the film My Neighbor Totoro...



...when I saw the pattern for this baby hat I naturally had to make one for Baby Rick-and-Cathy, who is due in about a month. Yay!!



Speaking of critters, James and I pulled into the driveway at his house in Monrovia today and this guy was hanging out in the yard:



Let's just hope he doesn't come bounding into the living room later.

a.w.a.p.

As a result of James's tireless quest to keep me as wired as humanly possible, I am now the owner of an iPhone 3G. I had an inkling that one would be my Christmas present this year, but in fact James was simply waiting for it to be 30 seconds after my Verizon contract expired, which in his mind should count as a major holiday anyway.

This gesture has forever erased the negative points he amassed a few years ago when I (a) pointed him directly to an Orla Kiely purse I really wanted for my birthday and (b) said "Under no circumstances do I want a new cell phone" and then guess who got a new cell phone for her birthday? The iPhone is pure gadgetry GOLD. I want to marry it. There's most likely nothing I can say that hasn't already been said about its vast superiority to any other handset out there, so I won't belabor the point.

Instead I will leave you with a photo of some baby knitwear that was completed a couple of weeks ago but had to be kept secret until after a certain baby shower.

for the birds

caffeine


+ time change



= just way way too much knitting





(Kate Gilbert's Bird In Hand mittens.)

immemorial

I've been noticing for a couple of years now that I am a lot more forgetful than I used to be. Mind you, I can still recall verbatim every turn of phrase James may have used in a discussion from six years ago when I was convinced he was actually telling me I was unattractive, or what my 10th grade English teacher said about my writing (that it would always be "fluffy"; two Master's Degrees from Yale later, I almost am ready to beg to fucking differ), or what the soap in my German grandmother's bathroom smelled like in 1984. No, I am talking about shit that happened five minutes ago.

Like Friday I got on the bus to go to work and there was a guy in a giant piñata costume (including elaborate horse head) sitting calmly and hilariously among the normally-dressed commuters. I ended up standing right in front of him and was able to spend the next ten minutes admiring the craftsmanship and ingenuity of his work, and then he got off at Van Ness. He was clearly on his way to winning every costume contest in town, provided no one took a bat to him first.

In other words, I was perfectly aware it was Halloween. Three or four minutes later I looked up from my magazine, saw some new passengers standing near the front of the bus, and thought, "I can't believe no one is offering their seats to those nice nuns." And then, "I don't think I recall ever seeing a nun on the bus before." It was only when one of them turned fully around and I noticed they were zombie nuns that I was jerked back to my senses. Oh, riggghht. Halloween. Plus, I don't think real nuns wear Puma sneakers. So many clues.

At work I'll do things such as concentrate all morning on a set of tasks and then report to my group lead something like "OK, I've re-fracked the dirbills and the freenats, and also built for the ungrapped norbars, and I entered the stuff for the padmerizer and made sure it's working properly, so unless you can think of something else, category 1 is ready for a corpus test. Should I go ahead and file the bugzilla?" And then a look of confusion will cloud her face and she'll say, "We ran a corpus test for 1 last night. [pause] Wait, do you mean category 6?" And yes, I will have meant category 6, the very same category I had been focused on with a mad-professor-like intensity for the previous four hours. But a two-cubicle stroll is enough to knock that information right out of my short-term memory's tenuous grip.

And then there's more mundane stuff, like how I often find myself in a room wondering why I am there. I was just in the living room, and now I am in the office. Why? Oh, look at that shiny thing...I need to fix that. And then a few minutes later I will be back in the living room fixing the shiny thing, and remember that I still haven't fetched the book I wanted from the office. Or whatever.

I blank out on people's names on a regular basis, both personal acquaintances and celebrities. The one upside is that I get to experience my own brain doing that cool linguistic thing where, say, I will know that the name I am searching for has five letters, or starts with a G and is two syllables, but then can't get beyond that. Or I'll be trying to remember the name of an actress, and I can imagine the character she played on The Shield, and remember that she is married to David Mamet, but the best I can come up with is "Is it Something Partridge? No, that's not it." Five hours later (and/or after checking IMDb), I'll figure out that the name I was searching for was Rebecca Pidgeon. My brain teases me with the semantic web surrounding my target--nuptial status, some kind of bird involved somehow, employment details--but won't hand over the goddamn name.

Um, what was I talking about? Oh, look, shiny mittens I made this weekend!