I dropped an application for a new passport in the mail last Thursday, after checking the State Department page for timing, and seeing “3-4 weeks” for expedited processing ($100 more, with overnight shipping both ways), and “6-12 weeks” for vanilla processing. I ponied up for the expedited, on the theory of you-never-know. The processing center […]
In the previous year end summary, I forgot this. And the other Bigfoot memoirs. Laugh out loud funny. Seriously. I sat on the porch and guffawed through the whole thing. Woulda been funny even without the G&Ts.
And not so much for eating. Drought, persistent 15% unemployment, austerity in the air. Is it me, or does something smell like 1937 around here?
Should be this. Or quote the going rate (you don’t wanna know). The obvious reply is that no one knows everything, and sometimes you just want a quick question answered yourself. But that kind of turns it into a barter economy of favors. Nonetheless, I think I spend a lot more time fixing other people’s […]
Two drops of rain as I put the top up on the car, just because. The fake fireplace with the real flame at the Hilton Pasadena. Outside temp: 97 F. Outside humidity: 37% On the radio: LA’s homicide rate is half of 2005. Innovative police tactics are given credit. Never mind that crime rates all […]
Send you on a trip, to an uninteresting place, for unrelenting work. For this, you are expected to arrange your own travel, price compare to save the corporation’s money, pay for it out of your own pocket, bear the ancillary expenses of rearranging your life for weeks or months at a time (which won’t be […]
The package that was supposed to arrive 18 July, and then be delivered by Fedex 6 July, was shipped from Shanghai 30 June, and arrived at my doorstep at 0908 2 July. Now it appears that Apple has invented a time machine (as opposed to Time Machine). Or they’re gaming their inventory. But the Fedex […]
Three more summer runs for the dogs. Temps in the low 50s, and it’s almost July.
6/10 I don’t mind plot holes, but you better be moving fast enough that I don’t have time to dwell on them while I’m waiting for the next thing to happen. For comparison – Alien 9.875/10. Aliens 9/10. Even the one that execrably had Winona Ryder in it gets a 7.5/10. Played by its rules […]
Late of an evening, one of the last runs of the summer for the dogs, though not for me. I like summer evenings. Cool, but I’m warm from the day, and old injuries stay old. Fading light, heading down into the arroyo, no one else to be seen for the entire distance. A coyote stands […]
Or at least not looking too good. And there’s such a retreat to steampunk (which I despise): Why are the innovative and rigorously extrapolated visions of the future so thin on the ground and so comprehensively ignored? I’d put it down to us mistaking Sense of Wonder for Innovation. We used to read SF to […]
Hard to believe you could write for the NYT and write this uncritically without thinking of Judy Miller. Though I guess she’s turned that into a good gig on Fox. Mr. Brennan, a son of Irish immigrants, is a grizzled 25-year veteran of the C.I.A. […] a top agency official during the brutal interrogations of […]
I just finished reading the New Yorker article about The Clock [1]. Serendipity. Someone was just commenting to me about how serendipity was hard to come by these days, since no one goes to the library, or reads newspapers, or looks at microfiche. One could argue that serendipity just hasn’t been around that long. Aside […]
Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” is the perfect pace for a good fast run. That is all.
Blackberries
Nothing like eating sun-warmed blackberries straight off the vine, complete with spiderwebs. Luscious, sweet, so ripe they fall off in your hand. The blackberry stain doesn’t wash off. No, I’m not saying where.