Here and There

Everything I’m hearing in the news is reminding me of a website started just after the 2004 U.S. presidential election. It’s called Sorry Everybody, and it’s made up of user-submitted photos of Americans letting the world know that, for whatever it’s worth, we didn’t really want George W. Bush to be our leader.

Maybe it’s time to update the site, reminding the world that what we’re seeing are the unintended consequences of an event we’re not entirely responsible for. Or maybe I just feel that way since I’m traveling to a foreign country tomorrow …

Update two (I like this one better).
Update one.

The AP is reporting that “Fidel Castro has temporarily relinquished presidential power to his brother Raul due to illness.”

This could be huge.

Here and There is hanging it up for a week. I’ve got my shorts, my snorkel, and my 25-percent DEET bug spray, and I’m heading to Venezuela with a good, good friend.

Maybe we chose an odd destination, given the current political situation. But Venezuela is not Costa Rica, Mexico, or Thailand, which is a big part of why we’re going there. Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall, is reportedly breathtaking. We plan to stop off at Cueva del Guácharo, a large cave that is home to the nocturnal oilbird, which navigates by way of an echo system similar to sonar. Then on to the archipelago of Los Roques for some “rustic” beach camping and coral snorkeling.

July was a big month for Here and There. I’ve never posted so much in one month (29 posts), nor got so much traffic (somewhere in the range of 18,000 page views). I added a new category (technology), and in general, got back into the habit of regular updates.

Expect some photos of amazing shit in the next few weeks. I hope I can translate the Spanish lessons I hear well enough to be able to write about some of it here, too.

See you in a few weeks!

You get ‘em, Mahmoud.

Think they’ll change the word for “totalitarian” while they’re at it?

So there you have it. In order to compensate for the “giveaway” (raise in the minimum wage) to America’s lower-income citizens, Republicans had to slip one into the hands of their upper-income suitors/enablers/pimps.

At least it happened. Now the lowest amount Best Buy and WalMart can pay teenagers and unwed mothers is $7.15 an hour. Hey, as long as they can still deny them pricey health benefits, all is well.

Threatened with extinction, congressional Republicans morph into Democrats.

Update below… 

Okay, so I don’t have photographic evidence, but a few days ago, after coming across the word “shit” in Thomas Friedman’s July 21, 2006 column online, I asked a friend to be on the lookout next day for the expletive in the paper-paper.

Sure enough, she reported back to me that the Gray Lady had indeed printed “shit” in the same op-ed.

Maybe some cursing-is-accepted policy had been adopted by the Times and it just escaped my attention.

But a simple search on the website for the word “shit,” at least, shows that Friedman’s article contains its only appearance.

I’m not sure what this all means, if anything. But I kinda like it. I feel like it’s okay to cuss now. Not that I ever let social mores or protocol stop me from doing it. Not for a fucking second.

Update, 9:41: a second simple search of the Times site shows one result for the word “fuck.” It came in a story from the National Desk titled, “TESTING OF A PRESIDENT; Full Text of Findings Sent to Congress — Part Five of Thirteen” and concerns the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Perfect. The appearance: “In a recorded conversation later on October 6, Ms. Lewinsky said she wanted two things from the President. The first was contrition: He needed to acknowledge … that he helped fuck up my life.”

How perfect is that?

Flipping through old Here and There posts, I came across this one, in which I touted a map that illustrates U.S. states you’ve visited.

I went to the site that generates the graphic tonight, and found that they also offer the same service for countries you’ve been to.

As I approach another international trip (to Venezuela next week), I thought it might be nice to see what miniscule portion of the world I’ve been to.

Here it (pathetically) is:

(check back in a few weeks to watch this map get another drop of ketchup on it)

This from the New York Times on the Chicago City Council’s decision to require big box retailers to pay a higher wage.

The story is de facto about Wal-Mart’s operations in the nation’s third-largest city. I was surprised to learn the mega-chain only recently opened its first box in the city. I was not surprised to learn that they currently operate 40 stores within 50 miles of Chicago.

Living wage is a really sensitive issue. It cuts to the heart of the larger globablization debate, as it pits real live human beings living and working on one side, and super-human megacorporations on the other. It’ll take a long time to play out, but kudos to the Chicago City Council for reminding companies like Wal-Mart that their customers aren’t the only ones who deserve a fair shake as well as a nice slice of the pie.

…to ignore the urge to post, that is.

Last week’s second round of “Spare the Air Days” in the Bay Area saw a vastly increased ridership, and much relief for commuters, both in the way of a repsite from the heat and a kindness toward the pocketbook rarely exhibited by a system like BART.

But on one of the three free transit days, I don’t recall which, I ran into enough annoyances to make me reconsider whether Spare the Air was worth it. My slew of troubles went something like this: a crowd of slow-walkers (very, very slow) stood three-across going down the stairs on the south side of Market into the Powell station. Didn’t anyone ever teach these people the law of lanes? Then, once I freed myself from the descending congregation, I arrived at the turnstiles (whose gates were left permanently open all day), only to find them, all seven or eight of them, blocked by sedentary wonderers. That’s not a typo. These people weren’t “wandering.” They may not even have been “wondering,” but rather, were simply standing there, blocking the entire bank of entryways.

It should’ve come as no surprise, then, when I got to the down escalator only to find it mostly blocked by, again, standers. Fuck it, I thought, and started walking in the left lane anyway. As I descended close enough to see that my train was sitting there with its doors open, I opened my mouth and “excuse me”s started flying all over the place. Once I realized I could (barely) make it to my train, I turned around, and the last human obstruction got to hear “You should stand on the right side” issue forth from my lips.

The last detail: Arriving at 19th St. in Oakland, one of whose up escalators is a single-lane model, I walked briskly toward said escalator to find it (you guessed it) filled, literally, with standing bodies. The last straw.

I haven’t even touched upon how crowded, stinky, loud, and hot the trains were on free days. I realize that earlier in this post I mentioned the trains being a relief from the unusually warm weather. If only that were the case. Many cars’ AC units weren’t functioning. That, or the volume of human bodies sucked all the oxygen and refrigerated air from the compartment.

I bring all this up now that it’s cooled down some and the air quality agency funding free transit has run out of money to support any more this year, only because I read this on SFGate.

Yes, Spare the Air should be for commuters only (despite the fact that such an arrangement would cut me, keeper of odd working hours, out). And yes, ultimately, public transportation should be free (or a lot cheaper). But how about something really resembling security? Since 9/11 I haven’t noticed any increase in any kind of security measures, other than no longer having restrooms, and the absence of trash cans on the train platforms, both of which I’m sure are keeping the most sinister of thugs and terrorists from their wares.

Enough of my bitching. True, any kind of inter-city commuting in the Bay Area usually involves BART (or its counterpart, CalTrain), so we don’t have much of a choice but to use the system. Still, it sure could use a fresh look at many of its operating procedures. 

*Two things I’m thinking about today:

1) This opinion by Peter Galbraith, which appears in today’s Gray Lady, that standard-bearer of the so-called liberal elite, latte-sipping media. In it, former-Ambassador Galbraith lays out the case for the U.S. military’s withdrawal, not completely out of the country we currently know as Iraq, but into what should come to be known officially as Kurdistan. Galbraith is more persuasive than I may ever hope to be, so go read his words.

What I’m impressed with is that here is the New York Times, a paper whose editor just a few short weeks ago was being called treasonous for running a story about the Bush administration’s program to disrupt terrorist cash-flow, would run such a column. True, Galbraith’s views aren’t necessarily the paper’s, but the Times provides the megaphone. The point is I’m not truly surprised, but many NYT-bashers may be, if they can stand to touch the filthy rag.

Anyway, it’s a really thought-provoking essay.

2) Chris Cillizza’s The Fix speculates what I’d enjoy speculating: a run by Barack Obama for president in 2008. Again, please read.

*my apologies for the fussiness of getting this seemingly simple post up. I blame a bad internet connection and funky Firefox quirks. Oh, and of course, I blame me. Always.

Part 1

I went for an eye exam today, but not because my vision isn’t deteriorating. Not appreciably, anyway.

No, I’m heading to South America (Venezuela, specifically) next week, and needed to get prescription goggles for some much-anticipated snorkeling.

My last eye test, I found out, was sometime in 2002. And boy, what a four years it has been.

The first test they ran on me today involved my placing my chin on a plastic chin-shaped tray and looking forward, not blinking, at a digital, flower-shaped, blurry object in front of a yellow background. The object danced around a bit, went in and out of focus more and more erratically, then finally, slowly settled into plain view. At this point, the machine beeped a generic beep, and we switched eyes for the same exercise over there.

I had to ask, “Was that to measure my eyes?” Not my vision, mind you. My actual eye balls. The metrics of the width, height, curvature, and other terms I’m not familiar with. All done through some sort of invisible (okay, okay, pun intended) force or device. Lasers, maybe. I would’ve loved to have followed up with the machine’s manufacturer, had a representative been present. Instead, I was happy to just let my jaw hang out on the floor for a few minutes.

Part 2

Just this past January, I went to the dentist after not having been in almost three years. You may recall (assuming I have any long-term, devoted readers─HA!) that my former dentist was savagely killed last October. Well, Dr. Gong’s fill-in, a roommate of his at UCSF, Dr. Hee, introduced me to a whole new reason to actually enjoy going to see the dentist.

After the assistant was finished X-raying and cleaning my teeth, Dr. Hee came in, donned his white gloves, flipped on a 14-inch monitor, and held a small wand with a cable sticking out of it in his hand. “Okay, this is going to show you what your cavities look like.” Wha? No fucking way?! I get to see the inside of my mouth?

I didn’t have time to panic or opt-out, had I wanted to. Next thing I knew, the mouth-friendly camera pen was massaging my tongue out of the way, and I was instructed to view the monitor, on whose screen I saw, filling the entire plane, one of my molars. Cool. Cool beyond belief. Kick ass.

I guess the moral here (if there need be a moral) is: if you don’t make it around to visiting your doctors or dentists for a few years, and you’re anything close to the dork I pretend to be, rest assured you’re in for a technological surprise. Or, hey, maybe this is just a coincidence.

Sunday, July 23, 2006 marked the first day that Here and There has seen more than 1,000 page views in a single day.

Quite a feat, you might say, one you’d expect from someone who knew how to do a screen capture on a Windows-based computer, right? Wrong. Sorry for the lack of visual evidence. I’ll update this post when I get home to my baby, er, iBook.

Ha! This story in the Chronicle discusses a grammarian who blames the fact that diagramming sentences went the way of VHF/UHF for things like space shuttles disintegrating on impact.

I mean, she may have a point. And it’s definitely a powerful hyperbole to get your point across. But come on…

Okay, for the record, I don’t like to anthropomorphize things, especially blogs. Especially this blog.

But I just realized that, as of July 3, Here and There is officially one year old now.

So I guess it’s appropriate to thank you for reading (you too, robots), and thanks to those of you who’ve commented (especially if the 3D me doesn’t know you, which I think takes a little more guts and motivation).

Starting Here and There was definitely a wise decision, if I may. Not only has it provided me an outlet for my randomness. It’s also kept me in the habit of writing, quality not withstanding.

So, yeah, that’s all. The blog you’re reading turned one about, oh, two-and-a-half weeks ago.