Friends don't let friends move to Portland.

When I left town, I just got on the freeway.

No lingering, nostalgic drive through town.- And risk hitting one of the do-nothing layabouts badgering me for money?
It was an amazingly easy city to leave.

The pothead work ethic was one thing. But the thing I moved to PDX for: the hoped-for middle-class comfort zone- seems to have entirely disappeared from the US.

There were plenty of people driving the usual snooty nameplate cars. Does your self-image really need that car so much that you can't pay your employees a decent wage? You sad person.

There were plenty of people pushing their belongings in shopping carts, or riding Tri-Met without tickets. There were plenty of plump, tattooed white men in their 20's, butts pasted onto the sidewalks around Pioneer Square, insulting me as I walked by on my 15 minute break. Jobless, on the dole and proud of it, asking me for money.

A beautiful city, with so much precious, clean water it runs freely from drinking fountains throughout downtown. Made unlivable by stoner career bums.

Where was the *working* middle- class? Nowhere that I could find them. Maybe if I hadn't of been constantly, frantically trying to find a full-time job that paid more than 10 dollars an hour, I would have had more time to seek things out.

Shame on both of these groups. You've ruined my America- the one where all one has to do to get a job at a good wage with health insurance, is go in and work hard for the company. With that, one could live in a neighborhood with other hard-working people, who enjoy their lives and the city they create, free of harassment. To have a sidewalk cafe dinner without being bothered for money, by someone perfectly capable of getting their own.

I wish I'd gotten a picture of the well-fed under-25 white guy who sneeringly pushed up his sleeve and held his hand out to me as I exited a store. The inside of his arm. from elbow to wrist, was tattooed with "Beer Money," the arrow below it pointing to his palm. I felt afraid of the rage I felt, the strong urge to lash out at him physically. A vision danced through my mind: my bent head spitting into his palm.

What a waste of my time that 11 months in Portland was. Must be a good climate for growing pot.

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Bad movie, anyone?

Can't go home again- the popcorn feel of the originals is missing from this CGI wonderland.

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My American Life here

I find this amazing:

I can work for a company that employs thousands- but only part time.
I can want to work, and be denied work. Not because of any failing of mine, but simply because they don't want to pay health insurance. Twenty-five people work as little as four hours a day at part time jobs that would be good, full-time jobs for ten. It's a kind of hazing that everyone who has attained full-time status already went through. It's considered normal. For a retail company whose net worth is in the billions. Whose profits are unfathomable. And growing. Of course they're successful. They use American ingenuity and people in a two-tier, have and have not that profits off America's structure by stealing from Americans.
No sick days. No vacation. No health insurance.
-Wanna buy an extended warranty with that purchase?-

Does this sound like what you've heard about Starbucks? People that work there tell me SB pays health insurance to workers scheduled for as little as 20 hours a week. Sounds great, until you learn the work schedules are then maxed out at 19.75 hours.

My quality of life is reduced to begging for work every day, every week at a company that employs me. Funny how there's no time for fun or creative endeavors. Funny how I never have time to write. Funny how exhausted I am, without consecutive days off. A schedule that can have me working at 9AM one day or until 10PM the next.

-No, I'm not on commission. Yeah, I would be rich if I was on commission. Ha, ha, yeah funny!-

On my lunch "hour"-sometimes only a half hour, it varies!- I walk outside and am confronted by people with their hands out, begging. One guy even had "Beer Money" tattooed down the arm that ended in the outstretched hand.
This city's ability to allow this and look the other way is astounding. Where is the tipping point for this week's beggar to become next week's thief?

I was in a local store where the staff were menaced by someone high on drugs. They were trying to bodily keep the person out as the person slammed themself repeatedly into the glass door, trying to break it. Blood streaked down the miraculously unbroken pane as three of the stores' staff pulled on the handle and kept the criminal from getting in. Another staff member called the cops. In vain.

It's dangerous to shop in freestanding PDX stores. When called, the cops don't come. I was in there a couple weeks later and found out they'd had to stop a cop car in the street to get someone to come help. It's made me rethink my personal safety in a freestanding store.

A mall gives the illusion of safety. You may be personally safer than this beleagured streetside store. See the mall cop? That person is not going to stop a criminal, I'm told. They're there to police the sheep. Not the wolves.

the whole world looked to this country, this experiment in democracy. I can't get back the pride I once had in telling people I was American. Now I'm just another financier in open terrorism and murder of people in their own beds/homes/cities. How many bombs have I paid for this year?

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Me Lurve Pitchfork.tv: The Thermals

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Colin Powell's Curveball

Whatever happened to Colin Powell? I know he's smarter than this.

"Operation Curveball", according to Spiegel- and a  man still being hidden in Southern Germany.
A code name like that, and the world still took the bait?

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Sweet Child of Mine Comments

There's pages and pages of Comments for this GNR classic

This one's my favorite.
Initially funny, but not on second thought, were postings like, "dude, I'm 12 and this is my dad's favorite song we always crank it in the car." Apparently Guitar Hero has picked up a new brace of fans for Mr Saul Hudson.
Also chill-inducing were apparently real comments such as, "Great band. Who's the guy in the hat?"

Then there was this culture vulture:


(Velvet Revolver's "Contraband" is just as good, IMHO. )

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Jeff's SXSW Press Kit

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A Moon at Saturn- NASA/JPL Blog

Did you know NASA has blogs? UPDATE: I don't know of a way to communicate with the scientists, but the JPL website gives tour and lecture dates, as well as a page on how you can submit your ideas for research.

Chronicle of a mission happening right now.
Um, everyone is female? Where are the men?
Scientists don't write in exclamation points. And they don't describe their dinner to a world waiting to see the results of a mission's photographs.
Or has that changed too?

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Bitstrips.com

Oh, Good. Because there weren't enough interesting things on teh Interwebs before this lil piece of addiction came out.

PS You heard about this, right?

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Bringing the Sexy- But How?

Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point" put him on my short list of men who, for me, have got it going on.

He joins fellow members Clive Owen and Stanley Tucci, men whose singular wit, intelligence and charms are also known to many in the world. A recent airing of This American Life included audio from a speaking engagement Gladwell had had in New York.
Wonderful story, wonderfully told by him.
Here's the thing.
He said he'd been hired by a newspaper, but didn't have any real credentials. Sat at a desk for six weeks not knowing what to do. Six weeks? It wasn't an internship, either. My question: What magic bubble do some people live in where life is this easy? I've had temp jobs where he wouldn't have lasted half a day.
I'm awfully tired of the salt mines. The dark and the smell never changes. I'd love some time in the sun, but working hard with the idea I'll then get promoted isn't the ticket out I'd thought they were.

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Arts & Letters Daily

Here's a wonderful site

Challenging, interesting, thrilling. Wish I'd known of it sooner. It's as if I've been drinking toilet water when I could have had champagne.

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Defamer: deleted

Social commentary by people who can't compose language? Vapid prattle.

If what's published doesn't merit a spelling or grammar check by the author, why would I bother to read it?
A staff writer/videographer who cannot compose a shot, set an audio level or, while covering the writer's strike, recognize a writer of considerable cultural significance does not merit naming. One could speculate on whom she preformed sex in order to get the job. But one would have to care.

May the next sounds we hear be percussive ones, as your advertisers take their leave.
Feh.

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The Dumbing of America

Susan Jacoby's article in the Washington Post is linked here. It's a well-researched accounting of facts and numbers illustrating the relationship between Americans and their media in recent history.

She quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself."

Is our national dullness driving the media, or are we a product of the media pablum we've been fed?

Image credit: http://www.seanlarsen.com/images/dunce.jpg

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Heart Gallery of Oregon

This is Heart Gallery of Oregon

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Happy Le Hearts and Le Flowers and Stuff

I meant to have one of these (love) by Christmas, hell; let alone by V Day.

Shoot, by now I was hoping I'd be having to bite down so I didn't accept a Proposal before Daylight Savings Time ends. I don't know what that means. But I moved here to a. Fall in love and b. Fall in love.
In that order.
Instead, I find I'm still mooning over That Man, who is at least one continent's width away, if not the Atlantic as well, and says he doesn't want us and while I don't think he can't walk away any more than I can, I don't have any more time to live alone waiting for him. Hell, whatever. It's only Everything.
Meanwhile, I moved here for the local talent.
I need the job/career thing to get resolved already, so I can focus on the important stuff. Like, love. I'm typing this as Lionel Hampton's vibes thrill to him playing "Tenderly"... you know what I'm sayin.
---
If you've got it, enjoy it, eh?
Meanwhile, Feb 15th an official holiday for single women: chocolate, 50% off.

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Temping in the Wilderness

I could easily write a book on Temping

It's like being a waitress- a book that would write itself.

Temp jobs are not fabulous opportunities that by some terrible trick of Fate have gone overlooked by the sleek and skilled set. They're jobs no one else wants. In fact, someone else has likely walked off the job. That's why the employer has been caught flat-footed and had to call a temp agency.

However, the employer has learned nothing from the walkout. Whatever factors caused the original person or persons to refuse to stay there- even for money- still exist. Add indignant anger to a backlog of undone work. Cue the hapless temp.

Today, for example. I'm Day Two at a place I'll be at for 14 days, and I'm now counting the remaining days. Yesterday's lunch conversation by two other workers ran a gamut of Mole Surgeries That Had to Be Redone and the Deep Stitches That Had to Be Gone In and Dug Out (both persons able to contribute their own detailed stories) to The High Price of Mac and Cheese In a Supposedly Nice Restaurant, to The Stuff I'm Coughing Up Right Now With This New Flu Bug That's Going Around.

If this fell into a story I was writing, I'd toss it out in the first draft as the very dullest stereotyping. What to do when it's a factual account? I survived by thinking about what an interesting adventure into primitive society I was having. The mind as cultural machete, searching for footholds in a brackish, sucking ooze...

Today I was considered very witty, as they thought I made up the phrase "carbon footprint." Funny as when it came out of my mouth, I wondered if the saying had itself jumped the shark. Not with this crowd. They drive in from Vancouver and hadn't heard it before.

PS Illustration is apparently owned by these guys. A different Web address hops to this site.

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I miss That (Imaginary?) Man

Lynda Barry's genius art

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Consumerism: Red, White and - Blue?

Time has an interesting article about media, mood and shopping

Barbara Kiviat reports that "People who are sad tend to be willing to pay more for things — it's like going to the grocery store on an empty stomach..." She says they made two groups of people, showing a sad video to one group and the other group watched one about the Great Barrier Reef.

Then they showed then an object and asked both groups how much they'd pay for it. The people who'd been made sad said they would pay more for it.

I've seen people angrily asking why the 9/11 video and the recorded phone calls are played. Now their feeling that they are being manipulated is underscored by this study. Kiviat reports that the study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pittsburgh and will be published in the June issue of Psychological Science.

Sensationalist reporting is good for business and now you understand why your newspaper looks the way it does. It's a hand on your wallet.

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Yes, We Can.

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I watched this and felt Happy

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I got the Rent and I got me some Lionel

Nothing says Rainy Night at Home better than a fine collection of Lionel Ritchie music.

I had the nicest day today* so cruised on over to Everyday Music. Saw this collection of Lionel Ritchie music that seems to be everything on "Can't Slow Down" and then some. "Sail On" indeed. I grinned to myself at the polite inner lip biting of the EM clerk and brought the disk home, where it now resides as 192Kbps files on my LaCie.
I'd forgotten how well-written and produced his music was. What a delight.

*thank you, Portland.

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In Praise of Spandex

I enjoyed the fellow I saw downtown today in the kilt. Men in kilts are hot hothot.

But I was just as happy that, when a gust of wind caught him, he was wearing spandex bike shorts underneath.
Thank you and ... Och! thank you.
Now maybe if he'd looked like this

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Hey. Writers. Don't Sell Your Baby. IndieGoGo it.

It had to happen. Reinvention of the movie industry.

The whole thing that kept movie studios going was Access to the Money, Contracts with the Actors, and Distribution. Did you see Steve Job's keynote address at Macworld? The new Air doesn't even have an optical drive. Stuff's going to stream on WiFi broadband in a rental model. Something that's been the logical next step for awhile.

Actors have been stepping out and looking at their own production companies for a while now. Some are doing it profitably, running real businesses and getting good scripts for themselves. For others it's just a vanity thing. But they're no longer behind an iron wall. With a little diligence, you can get to people.

The Money remained the hurdle. Unless you could find a group of dentists who wanted to be part of a glamourous Hollywood deal (and they're out there, those dentists) you were kinda screwed.

Enter IndieGoGo, which I've just read about. If this link times out, it went to a Reuters site. I don't know if they have Permalink.

Killer conceptual execution, a very graceful and well-written website. I prowled this little beauty today and threw up a couple things to hold my place while I try to think of how I wanted to use it. There was a group called "Inktip" a few years ago- I put my rom-com up there, some guy asked to see it, and "passed." Very strange to find a novel was "written" by someone in his state a year after that script had gone out, with one word changed in the title and a plot and subplot exactly like mine, except clunky where they changed some details.

The point is, keep your material and find your own money and actors. That's what most real creative types have always wanted anyway. Now with HD cameras, you can. But check out this site and see if it, or others that will likely spring up to copy it, work for you.

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Job Interview

You looked me in the eye

And said Why
Do you want this job so I
Had to tell you I thought I’d be the best

Because of my experience
And we did a little dance
With words and phrases hence
When the other guy tried to get a word in edgewise we’d let him sometimes

I tried to tell my story and not to showboat or brag
It wasn’t too often that there would be a lag
I’d like to think I had it in the bag
But you’re seeing more people all this weekend

You said you’d let me know next week
Would it be pushy if we speak
In the meantime about something completely geek
You liked too, that was part of MacWorld’s webcast

You gave me the nicest smile
Even for Portland, nicer than I’ve seen in a while
Like you actually liked me
And thought I’d be a good employee and I think I would be

It’s hard to know just what to say
And sucks that there’s this damn delay
Be better to know what’s up today
So I can get on with things

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Still Sayin' Sprint is #1

Update: I heard the news today oh boy...
Yet another wonderful customer service experience with Sprint the other night. I like being their customer...

Ace Sprint Girl Detective Novagirl has sleuthed out the answers, and quite kindly and charmingly, too. Wish I had an email address to write back to her... You've saved me. Thank you very much.
Sprint's the best, you guys. Try talking to these people instead of going in mad at your boss and loaded for bear.
These people take this sort of job because they like people and like talking to them. Let em be nice to you.
It'll change your day, I promise you.

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ScratchPDX

Put this on your calendar for Saturday the 26th:

ScratchPDX

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Improv Everywhere- PDX No Pants 2k8 on Saturday

Looking at the Improv Everywhere website

The most interesting thing here is the Comments following the performances are delighted and wistful, begging the "group" to "come" perform in their city. What never occurrs to the majority of the posters is they are the group. They only need to activate themselves.
Maybe that's changed of late, with the groups forming to create this work. No Pants.
Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if Portland invented this urban performance art to begin with.
Keep Portland Weird!

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Neighborhood Art Gallery

Delicious.

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Bad Date

I've identified the hardest part of a bad date...

It's the moment that I realize I'm not going to get to hear the rest of the person's story. Their life will go on, but I won't know what will happen. What about the job? What about the person their heart called out to, who didn't answer? How did the project turn out? I'm invested in these stories, but there's no room for me to remain. And we both know it as I buy my own Voodoo Doughut: 99 cents you don't want to spend. An honest and clean hurt; the date invitation withdrawn and morphed into "hanging out." It's OK.

There's the unloved and lonely walk home in the cold night at the small-numbered hour, as it starts to rain just like in the movies.
Turns out it's harder than it looks to be in a movie.

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Forget Britney- Read This

Glenn Greenwald's article on Salon.com, and the Letters in response.

Image, link and article are copyrights of Salon.com

Why isn't this all over the other media outlets?

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New Year's in Portland

My, there was sickness in abundance on the streets last night. Now's when we could use a good rain, I'll bet.

I would liked to have spent the early evening walking around downtown and people-watching, but took my Tri-Met limo (aka bus) and didn't make the scene until about 10:30. The long lines outside then prompted me to land Somewhere Inside Where It Was Warm.

What a blast. Portland, you throw a nice party.

I spent the first hour or so trying to remember how to act in a club. I never went out in LA. The velvet rope thing is so wearing and it's everywhere that has decent music. So being out -or more accurately, being let in- on a New Year's Eve was pretty cool.

My very favorite thing about Portland is what I call "the Portland smile" which you lovely people seem to have for everyone you make eye contact with. Even hammered, you goofy lovely things. I'm often struck by how similar the PDX vibe feels to my actual hometown, which is back in Alaska- but I don't remember us *smiling* at each other like people do here. Probly because we were too drunk.
Anyway, the good times started after I finally got into the formerly sold-out Prince v Michael Jackson dance fever event. Danced myself into a joyous frenzy in the forgiving crowd.

Ah, the native Portland man, such a gentleman. Met one who saw to it I went home in a cab, rather than the arctic wait for Tri-Met I'd steeled myself for. And you PDX ladies looking fine in your sparkly little party dresses: god love ya for your verve, though I was freezing just looking at you.

The topper was the early-evening scene on Broadway with a pretty bride and her wedding party getting some very glamorous photos taken in the street in front of the Theatre. Please baby Jesus, let my punk digital camera's flash have caught something of that... I join all the delighted smiles and honking horns of the people in the area in sending Best wishes to that couple.

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