arse poetica

BlogHer 2005 Rocks Santa Clara

I'll need a moment to digest a long, wish-it-was-longer, day of debate, discussion, and networking at BlogHer. Wow. Kudos to the organizers, kudos to the attendees. This was one fantastic conference. The level of engaged discourse still has my head spinning and that I can't yet formulate any coherent thoughts about it all reveals why I did not volunteer to liveblog any of the sessions.

I don't know that I've ever attended any all-day event in which the level of interest, attention, and connection seemed to rise as the day progressed. These were/are some committed women and men, and I'm delighted and heartened to have met so many articulate, warm, snarky, opinionated, thoughtful, funny, modest, forward-thinking people. In the next day or so, as I collect my thoughts and return to NC, I hope to say a bit more about the wonderful folks I met. Even though I am literally falling asleep typing this, inside I'm shouting out a big Woohoo! Thanks to all those who chatted w/ me today. You rock.

And normally, I would despair that nothing would come of the energy of the conference's sessions, as so often happens, but somehow I know it will be different from this crowd. Lisa, Elisa, and Jory have done something quite wonderful in thinking up this very necessary idea and bringing all of us here together to build on it, and I can't wait to see what develops. Herstory in the making.

Checking out the BlogHer blogroll highly recommended.

Off to BlogHer!

Looking forward to a day at BlogHer, and for those who are curious but weren't able to drop in, lots of folks will be liveblogging the conference. I'll be liveblogging it analog-style, so my notes will come later. For people interested in a more participatory connection to the conference goings on, you can join the online chat. I'm so impressed with how quickly and how well the conference organizers have pulled everything together. They've done a good thing here. I'm off!

Hypocritical Oaf

Senate's Leader Veers From Bush Over Stem Cells.

You know what, Frist? No one's buying it. You're obviously on the outs w/ the madministration, who dropped you like last night's drawers after the Schiavo stunt poll numbers came in and after you couldn't bring home a Senate vote on the Bolton nomination, so quit trying to assure the 2008 Centrist voting bloc that you've got a brain not fully colonized by R*veCo. No good playing doctor now. What, did someone send him a videotape of the unresponsive Senate bill so he could "diagnose" the problem? Did Jeebus Hisself come down to guide the good doctor's hand on federal funding? Why does Jeebus hate the free market? Feh.

In other news, is anyone else struck by how swiftly the Brits apprehended the July 27 London attack would-be bombers? And how much information was available to the news/pubic and how quickly? And re: the tragic killing of the Brazilian man in the subway, how quickly they fessed up? Is it just me, or are the Brits running some kind of fancypants open society democracy over there, she asked w/ her nose pressed against the candy store window.

San Francisco -- Brittanys, Books, and Bing's

Had a great day visiting our friends in Mill Valley. Though the view from their deck, from which we could see the Richmond Bridge on one side and just make out Alcatraz in the fog on the other side, would've sated us plenty, we ventured out anyway after a nice lunch at home.

Hiked w/ our pal Bob and his two Brittanys on Mt. Tamalpais, drove through Mill Valley and Sausalito on our way to grabbing the obligatory snapshot or two of the beautiful Golden Gate, then headed into the city to poke around City Lights, grab a drink, and wait for Siri, who, unlike the rest of us, was doing an honest day's work.

There aren't enough good words to say about City Lights, so I'll talk about our drink instead. Tosca was closed when we stopped by, so we headed across the street to Mr. Bing's, where we walked in to find one barfly and bartender watching the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on ESPN. SPOILER ALERT: The young guy who won last year ate 5.5 less hot dogs this year than last, the slacker.

Mr. Bing's is a hole, and I mean that most lovingly. It has all the charm of the neighborhood dive bar in which you hear the sort of good-natured back-and-forth of folks who visit day after day, year after year, and forge relationships cemented by false bravado, liquor, and the light of another fading afternoon. Though no one was smoking in there, there were enough carcinogens lingering in the carpet, barstools, ceiling tiles, and wood beams that it had the stale smoke smell of 50-years of prior puff-away policy. ::cough:: Hey, my vodka tonic was A-OK by me, and I liked the bartender mucho. I don't need fancy.

Dinner at Brandy-Ho's Hunan Food Restaurant next door. Oh yeah. This is why we came to San Fran. Whatever they're doing to the spicy green beans, they should keep doing it. No pix cos camera battery dead. Grrr.

San Francisco -- "its falic"

Have arrived safely in San Fran. I love to arrive in a new place that looks so different from home. During this depressing pre-fab architectural period in Murka, I love to find places that don't (immediately anyway) smack of the strip mall aesthetic. Plus, I love cities, and, as much as I love my college town, I am thrilled to be in a city w/ thriving subcultures. Chinatown, here we come!

A few pics of our arrival in town yesterday. Since our day started at 4:30 a.m. EST, and db slept for maybe 12 minutes on the plane (snoozy-ass me, much more), we had an early night. We had time though for a quick peek around, inc. a jaunt on Market Street and "lunch" at the Zuni Cafe. Mmm.

When we landed in SF, the temp was 66-degrees; in Philly, which we'd left 5.5. hrs earlier, it was already 99-degrees. Bleah. Let's hear it for the Bay!

What serendipity to capture the Smelly Mel's Plumbing truck going by! Just too perfect. I am one of those who would hire Smelly Mel's Plumbing for their name.

I've heard of a meat market, but Meat Carpet? Euuww. And there db and I were driving to our hotel when this tanker passed us w/ "Free Leonard Paltier (sic)" painted across it. Right on.

My favorite grafitti, besides the huge "Bush Lied" on one of the highway barriers that I missed because I was fiddling w/ the camera, was this one below. Hey, its falic. Ha. And right next to the bomb is a drawing which reads, "I thought we were friends." Aww.

 

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Cyberwave to Atrios, because I am in his city -- for an hour at the Philadelphia Int'l Airport, en route to SFO! Some may think that I'm heading to the San Jose Gran Prix, and, trust me,  I really wanted to (har), but I thought I'd check out BlogHer instead.

Why head to BlogHer? Besides loving the idea and always being happy to convene with women and men interested in pushing this whole human experiment forward, one of the conference organizers, Lisa Stone, had this to say:

It's time we got back to rocketing the conversation about women and blogging to higher ground. Like a different galaxy. Now that we've demonstrated where (some of) the women bloggers are, let's leap-frog tokenism, push past lip-service, and frame a discussion about our future with this technology (not their plans for it).

The BlogHer Debate question for 2005 is this: Women bloggers, how do you want the world to learn about what you're creating -- if at all? Do you want to play by today's rules or change the game? Because, really, it's your call. Now that women represent between 43 percent and 56 percent of all bloggers, we're in familiar territory.

I dig it. And if you're going, maybe I'll see you there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to pay $4 for a bagel. Sheesh.

What Heatwave?

In one way I love this time of year: it gets people talking. Like Xmas-time or just after September 11, folks find themselves in the same circumstance -- we're suddenly all equal in our suffering or joy, and the sense of community comes back in small public exchanges in a way that we seem to forget otherwise. Standing outside today in the 102-degree heat, I had three (albeit short) conversations in the time it took to walk from my car into my office (~ 30 ft). It is positively beastly outside. Lordy.

And for some, it's just positively beastly. Period.

The Dean Machine

The FEC has released its Party Six Month Summary 2005, detailing contributions made to Republican and Democratic committees. Looks like our man Howard is en fuego. Take that, handwringers!

During the first six months of 2005, federally registered Republican party committees raised $142.7 million and spent $98.1 million, while the Democratic committees raised $86.3 million and spent $60.2 million. This is a 2% increase in receipts for Republicans when compared to the same period in 2003 and a 53% increase for Democrats. When compared to the same period in 2001, the last non-presidential cycle, Republicans registered a 50% increase in federal receipts, while the Democrats showed a 113% increase.

Hmmph.

smART

I love this. I think I'm starving for meaning, for some sign that they haven't crushed everyone's spirit, because mine feels pretty trampled most days. I wish that everything weren't clouded by the choking unethical smokescreen of this awful madministration. I wish that some things could just be pretty and just for a minute be uncomplicated by lies, deception, war, and death. Can I be forgiven for thinking they've ruined everything? Entire concepts corrupted, words divorced from meaning: freedom, liberty, America, mandate, torture, detainee, compassion, conservative, Christian, Muslim, terror/ist. I hate them, and, perhaps more importantly, I'm sick of hating them.

But I love this guy, and I love his dedication, and I want the inspiration I get from it to last more than an hour before I read something like this and inevitably lose my mind again. The cretinous maneuvering knows no end. But in the face of all that waste, and the terrifying scale of it, this artist is doing something to inspire and remind, and I need both.

A Great Big Beautiful Pile of Junk.

(Chris) Jordan had flown from Seattle, where he lives, to photograph at CollectiveGood, an electronics recycling center in the Atlanta suburbs. "I want to give a concrete sense of our consumption, with the real quantities," Mr. Jordan said, from his perch on the ladder. Of course, for one image to represent the actual number of annually discarded cellphones - 130 million, according to CollectiveGood - he would have to reproduce the picture he was now getting ready to take about 43,000 times, creating a panorama that would stretch 61 miles if the photos were laid side by side.

The millions of consumers who buy new cellphones each year give no thought to the ones they are discarding, Mr. Jordan suggested. "If they're only thinking about the environmental consequences of their own actions," he said, "they have to change their lifestyles."

Mr. Jordan has certainly changed his. In 2002, at 38, he abandoned a 10-year career as a corporate lawyer. The job had merely been supporting his photography habit: for a long time, he didn't even have a car, and had spent his money on photography equipment, sheet film and processing. When he finally left his job, he went to the trouble of resigning from the bar, intentionally dismantling the safety net that his legal experience would provide should photography not be an adequate livelihood.

"As a lawyer, I represented industry," he said. "I felt I could no longer reconcile representing some of the companies, based on what they were doing."

Mr. Jordan's free fall from law to photography is about to pay off. He is currently preparing for an exhibition of his series of photographs of industrial refuse - his first solo show in New York, in September, at the Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea.

Read more. Recycle more.

Life Imitates Art

Spoof of Bush Wins Faux Faulkner Contest.

JACKSON, Miss. - A scathing parody that likens President Bush to the "idiot" in William Faulkner's novel "The Sound and the Fury" has won this year's Faulkner write-alike contest — and touched off a literary spat.

Organizers of the Faux Faulkner competition are accusing Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine that has sponsored the contest for six years, of playing politics by not putting Sam Apple's "The Administration and the Fury" in its print edition — only on its Web site.

"One of the things they asked was that we didn't have profanity or any obvious sexual content. We watch for that. But anything else, like a political subject, was funny, it was parody. ... We felt that that shouldn't be censored," said Larry Wells, who organizes the contest with his wife, Dean Faulkner Wells, Faulkner's niece.

The story portrays President Bush in the role of Benjy, the mentally challenged son — or, as Faulkner himself said, the "idiot" — in his 1929 novel about the wreckage of a Southern family.

Heh.

Another B*sh victory pending -- landslide, no doubt.

Double heh.