The Ass Crack of Dawn

Confessions are hard, but I'm just delirious enough to squeeze this one out: I like getting up early. Not early like setting the alarm for 7AM. More like 5AM. I am a sick fuck, it's true.

I came to this realization last year, when Whiskey was still in Sausalito and I would rise at 5:30AM to make the final BART train to San Francisco an hour later that technically allowed bicycles. I've since learned that the conductors don't give two shits that bikes get on after 6:30--perhaps they too see the inherent injustice of singling out this group of green commuters for discrimination. Anyway, it's a magical thing to ride one's (awesome) bike through a mostly deserted Crissy Field and across the Golden Gate Bridge while the sun crests Mt. Diablo to the East. Don't knock it till you try it.

However, now that those days are behind me, I find I still like waking before the dawn and getting a move on. It's like stealing time back from the Universe--the early birds emerge from their apartments as the first inkling of light creeps in from the Prime Meridian, slip a razor blade between the dimensions of day and night and enter null space. In there anything's possible.

So, yeah, today I woke up at 5AM and will continue to wake at this hour every Thursday and possibly Friday for the next few months. Why? Craigslist is why.

Recently I've been a tad isolated and remembered that Craigslist has a location-specific events page, which I used to check fairly regularly. Typically it's a dry well, but every now and then there's something good. While perusing the listings over the course of two weeks one popped up over and over: a UC Berkeley grad student looking for a writing buddy to help kick their ass into gear to finish a thesis. Compelling, because I, too, want someone to kick my ass into gear and get writing/studying/thinking again. An ideal opportunity at first glance until one reads the fine print: the grad student is only available in the early morning. No wonder this ad's been up there for weeks.

So I took the initiative and responded, committing myself every Thursday, and possibly Friday, to coffee and writing at Gaylord's in Piedmont. My study buddy is Katie Somethingorother, a biologist studying antelope morphology in Africa.

Sitting here typing with her thesis in my peripheral vision I can't help but feel a tad melancholy about not pursuing a degree in one of the sciences. Of course, were that the case I wouldn't ever have met Chizuru, Rie, Mayumi, or any of the many of the other residents of Oita that have so shaped my recent life. And frankly that's an insult to their existence, so no more of that thinking.

On that note, I'm planning on opportunistically hopping a plane back to Oita in the next few months now that airfare is so low. Missed the registration for the Tour de Kunisaki race this year, though. Too bad. Oh well, there's plenty yet to get up to in Kyushu!

Tremble At the Culture-Corrupting Powers of Garrison Keillor!

The right wing has a long and illustrious history of batshit loony concepts of just what they think will reduce deficits and help balance national and state budgets, but the recent vote by the House to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio is certainly the richest (pun intended) to come around lately. I had to really strain my eyes to find the CPB entry on the annual Death and Taxes infographic that illustrates where our tax money is spent. Slightly more money is spent on it as the Peace Corp--and that's not a hell of a lot in the grand scheme. Far, far less than one percent of the national budget.

A show of hands from anyone who listens to public radio: how many of us enjoy the two weeks every quarter when the hosts and announcers from our local NPR affiliate beg and plead for listener support? I, for one, feel sad almost every time Ira Glass guilt-trips some poor listener, or Jerry Neuman and Sandy Althouse dangle some trinket in front of their listening audience to entice them into donating. Serious journalists, it seems to me, should focus on their craft rather than on how they're going to get the cash to keep the lights on and the transmitter beaming over the airwaves.

Yeah, expect that extended by a week or more. Fucking joy!

The issue of CPB funding was a topic of discussion on last Friday's episode of Forum and the hosts invited both a rep from NPR and a blowhard from the libertarian Cato Institute to come on and discuss the issue. It was astounding, really. The Cato jackass made it sound as if the only thing holding back NPR from being the loudspeaker of the American Communist Party was that they were accepting federal dollars, and without that control rod the whole thing will meltdown into a glowing pile of sentient, unstoppable leftist goo. (That analogy brought to you by the still-ongoing Fukushima Daiichi situation.) He even insinuated that those left-of-center would like it--they'd have their respective version of Fox News. You have got to be kidding me...

Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said of his decision to vote for the withdrawl of federal funding, "Why should we allow taxpayer dollars to advocate one ideology?" By their statements and position on this issue I can surmise that neither Cantor or the Cato guy seem to listen much to their local NPR affiliate. I can be relatively sure of this because I listen to KQED daily, the NPR outlet in San Francisco, one of the most leftist places in the nation, and can say for a fact after having gone through their daily programming schedule that the one unifying quality virtually all their shows have isn't anything like leftist ideology or activism, it's plain, simple objectivity and intellectual enrichment.

Let's go down that list together for the date of March 31, 2011:

7AM, Morning Edition--News magazine program that covers broad topics of both national and international importance. Lightweight start-of-the-day stuff that still manages to be informative. Hosts do not offer up opinions on topics.

8:33AM, The Do List--Weekend events happening around the Bay Area. Host does not offer up opinions on topics. Oh, other than telling us the time and locations for all our Communist rallies.

9AM, Forum--Interview program that hosts authors, artists, politicians, musicians, etc. While hosts can debate factual data with certain guests, never do they push one political ideology or another. Listeners are invited to call in and ask guests questions or offer up commentary. Oftentimes these callers are opinionated, but that can hardly be held against the program.

11AM, Talk of the Nation--Much like Morning Edition, a news magazine program that covers topics of national and international importance. They host guests pertinent to whatever the topics are and invite listeners to call in. Like Forum, these guests can be opinionated, but that, baby, is freedom of speech.

1PM, Fresh Air--Purely interviews of authors, artists, politicians, musicians, etc. without listener call-ins. While Terry Gross can make her opinions known through the types of questions she asks never does she actively implore or lead her listeners to ascribe to one viewpoint or another. Frankly, I consider Terry to be little more intelligent than a tangelo and anybody who picks up on and follows her political wavelength deserve only bad things in life.

2PM, The World—Heaven forbid Americans find out about international issues and hear human interest stories from around the globe. Oh no, the Geoquiz is turning our children queer!

3PM, The Jim Leher News Hour—A news institution that’s probably one of the most solid sources of televised domestic and international reporting, this show is hard journalism through and through. Anchors will invite guests from all walks and across the political spectrum to participate.

4PM, Marketplace—It’s a show about money and what’s happening in the world of. Money: there’s nothing more Republican than that. ‘Nuff said.

4:30, All Things Considered—The day’s programming wraps with All Things Considered, another domestic and international news magazine show. This program somehow especially got on the nerves of right wing listeners, though I struggle to understand how. Michele Norris asks awkward questions that, on the very outside could be considered to have a leftist bias.

Let’s be very, very clear here: NPR has no voice—not a single one—that approaches the screeching volume or vitriol of an Olbermann, Beck, Malkin, Limbaugh, etc. Nor do they have any shows that overtly skew one way or the other. Or covertly, for that matter.

So, in conclusion, fuck you House Republicans. Fuck you and the money-covered Jesus unicorn you rode in on. You’ve nothing to stand on in this debate. Nothing.

**************

Update: So, it's taken me a while to write this post. Distractions at every turn. Since I began, NPR's On the Media, at the prodding of Ira Glass, has explored the issue of liberal bias at NPR. The results compiled by a media watchdog group were fascinating. Once parsed, the data showed that not only does NPR give at least as much airtime to conservative issues as commercial news radio, in any given month their reporting is often well over half right wing issue stories. Right wing NPR listeners invited by the show to keep a log of whenever they found a story skewing left-of-center really couldn’t produce much compelling evidence to support their viewpoints. The saying “squeezing blood from a turnip” comes to mind.

As the Japanese would say, 根も葉もない.

Investment Bankers Might Not Be Human

Ladies, I suggest you vamoose from this here page for a calmer locale. I intend to speak of the secret world of manly things, a realm shrouded in shadowy secrets greater than those of the Mona Lisa's coy smirk or why urinal cakes are blue and taste so good.

Damn it, too close to my topic!

Communal restroom etiquette: comic gold to the stand up funnyman, but Serious Business to the considerate individual. Yesterday, while in the 20th floor men's room of 333 Bush, I ran into a situation that will haunt me to the end of my days.

The sound of urine hitting the porcelain wall of a urinal is a well known and comforting note (as we are all men here reading this now certainly you know that). World-class flautists have tried to capture the captivating resonance of it for decades, to no avail. Only the real deal will do.

While sitting down and dropping the kids off at this posh highrise's pool a man entered the bathroom and began his...recital, shall we say. All was going well, at first. The pitch was high and steady and the judges were already lining up to give the man a Grammy. Then, disaster.

*BLOOP*. What the fuck was that?

Imagine the sound of a rock with the approximate mass of a child's fist being dropped into a small pool of liquid and that was the sound I heard. I froze. Who wouldn't? Probably a lot of us freeze anyway when we're on the crapper and somebody enters the restroom. Playing possum doesn't take away any of the perceived shame from this natural act, but we'd like to delude ourselves into thinking it does.

Anyway, seriously, what was that sound? Did this man just painlessly pass a gall boulder? And then there's the etiquette matter: do you summon up the courage and ask "hey, is your urethra OK after that, man?" or do you just keep on trucking yourself, in private?

I'll send this scenario in to Miss Manners and get her opinion.

--Matt

A Manga to Make Carl Sagan Weep

I read somewhere a while back that Tite Kubo, author of the obscenely popular manga series Bleach, made a statement to the effect that he's only halfway through penning that title. It's almost difficult to fathom another TEN YEARS of Bleach. Mind you, that series is basically about teen ghosts that fight each other with spirit swords, so I'm intensely curious--though not enough to actually buy any--about how much plot juice one can wring out of such a banal premise. Madness.

Well, from a critic/sensible reader's perspective it's loony. From that of the accountant it makes perfect sense. In fact, from that angle it's tough to begrudge it since a cash cow like this enables publishers to take risks with other, perhaps more artsy, niche titles.

Back in my Viz days that company occasionally took a gutsy risk thanks to such lucrative series. Carl Horn's great work on Eagle, about a Japanese-American who makes a bid for the White House (this is waaaaay before anybody'd even heard of Obama) was one of them. They promoted the fuck out of it--I know because I helped write and distribute lots of its marketing materials--and it sold like dog poop in a box even though it received critical acclaim.

Before that, though, my favorite risky title had to be Hoshino Yukinobu's 2001 Nights, a hard sci-fi collection of time-skipping vignettes that philosophically approaches the subject of mankind's future endeavors in space. Every year or two I come back to it, read it over, and remember the way it was. You know, back in those good ol' days that don't actually exist except through the rosy glasses in our heads.

It truly is a masterpiece of sci-fi manga, despite my obvious leanings. Like a skilled surgeon Hoshino takes so many of the familiar conventions of the genre, dissects them and presents them back to the audience with that thing the Japanese so love to cite--heart. Take the KARK 9000 storyline, in which a remote probe with a sentient AI at its core is sent shooting off on a nuclear rocket at twelve percent light speed towards Barnard's Star looking for alien life. Hoshino takes the story of a fancy computer and its human programmer and, in two parts, transmutes it into a genuinely piercing tragedy that pulls readers in with tremendous emotional gravity.

The grand question Hoshino presents to readers throughout hundreds of pages of meticulously illustrated panels is this: Will humanity every truly be ready to not just gaze into infinity, but step into it willfully? Serious food for thought as we retire space shuttles, slash NASA funding and move further and further away from the glory days of triumphant moon landings.

--Matt

Deathrace 2011

So we're ten years (give or take some months) past the dystopic future depicted in Deathrace 2000 and I for one am furious there isn't more--or any--bloody high octane death sports out there. Meanwhile, the Phillies just spent something like $140 million on a single player. That's money that can be better spent on spinning wheel spikes, oil slick shooters and fuzzy dice.

And you know, that plus the shitty weather recently has got me thinking of getting back onto four wheels.

There, I've said it and already I feel dirty.

Christ, I've owned a lot of vehicles over the years: a 1983 Audi C3/5000; that wonderfully named 1989 Mitsubishi Starion; my first bike, a 1991 Kawasaki EX 500; the salvaged 1996 CBR F3; and finally my Mille "Highway Star."

Will two-wheel transport continue to dominate my life? Yes, certainly, but even I need to admit that it's not always practical. Take the coming week, when it's supposed to rain continuously for days and I need to be at a client in Novato. It's not suicide to ride in the rain but even I, a stalwart, stubborn motorcyclist, can't deny the risks are higher. Not to mention it's just so much more uncomfortable. I'll need to take an extra pair of socks and shoes, find a place to dry out the suit, come up with a whole bunch more gripes. Way too much work.

The plan is really to drive it as little as possible, only in inclement weather, on cold nights and trips with friends out of the area. So, as you can see, I've already justified it like an addict rationalizes that next hit of the crack pipe. Just a matter of saving up a bit more money and choosing the right car. Used, of course. By the numbers, when one factors in all the energy costs of resource extraction, transport, refinement and vehicle assembly it's more environmentally friendly to purchase a used car than a brand new hybrid or diesel. At least for a while.

Or until I can convert it to run on blood.

--Matt

I'm Seceding From the Union. Who's With Me?

You know, I could go on all day and night about the good and bad aspects of my former English teacher position, but definitely one of the best aspects was the mobility. Every day a different school--hell, sometimes two!--which ensured that nobody ever got too big a dose of gaijin Matt and his foreign devil ways, and vice versa. Well, here I am in this IT gig doing the King of the Road thing once again. No desk, no roots, no problem.

One of the places the job has taken me is an Oakland labor law firm in a high rise at the corner of 12th and Broadway whose western windows stare straight into the never-blinking face of the Tribune Tower's illuminated clock. It's a lovely view to say the least and the lawyers there are good, kind people. However, from those heights looking down, I couldn't help but recall how Oakland's unemployment rate is hovering between seventeen-and-a-half and eighteen percent. That's approximately seven point higher than the regional average. A staggering level for a major American city that's not, say, Detroit.

How does it get like this, and what can be done to cut those percentages? Of course, Oakland has historically had its share of problems since at least the '50s thanks to White Flight and then the rising wave of crack addiction starting in the '70s. But the issue is bigger than one East Bay city, it's national, perhaps even international. In a speech at Boston University in late October--which I've read about three times just to solidly take it all in--former presidential press secretary and PBS newsman Bill Moyers made a good case for identifying a major contributor to the poverty and misery facing so many Americans these days as "wage repression."

I'd never heard of wage repression before but it's pretty intuitive once Moyers cites a prime example of it:

I must invoke some statistics here, knowing that statistics can glaze the eyes; but if indeed it’s the mark of a truly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics, as I once read, surely this truly educated audience will be moved by the recent analysis of tax data by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. They found that from 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation’s economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of l0 Americans was growing, too – from $17,719 to $30,941. That’s a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefitted. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.

That’s wage repression.

He goes on to explain how the top one percent who hold half the country's wealth, plus the companies they work for, pretty much only spend their money on luxury items and then squirrel away the rest or buy back stock to prop up market values. Little to none of their money makes its way to the local, regional or national communities. The trickle down economics that the Republicans tout? A myth.

And America just put them back in the driver's seat of government. Their message essentially seems to be "do what we say or we'll wrap this sucker around a tree." As a friend said yesterday, that branch seems to be run by twelve-year-olds at the moment. Twelve-year-olds with access to booze and DC hookers.

Workin' for the Weekend

I doubt anybody follows this anymore. Haven't posted in months after all, but what the hey--it beats written journaling, which I made a halfhearted stab at last month. Perhaps I'll still document some of my more personal thoughts in there. Perhaps.

A lot has gone down in the past few months. From losing a job or three to getting a salaried one to moving home to maybe moving back out to helping some friends through tough times to...other things. The position, a staff IT helpdesk grunt for my friend Kelli's husband's consulting firm, is more or less working out. That's nice and somewhat reassuring. Still, other parts of my life feel muddled, confusing and downright painful. What I'd give for the answers to some burning questions...

Maybe it's best to forget it and move on, but the matter's not in my hands anymore.

One thing that is certain though is this familiar feeling of work. Ah, how I've missed you! The dizzying highs of getting shit done, satisfaction of a good day's labor and the longing for it all to be over and the weekend to arrive sooner rather than later. On a scale of latrine scrubber to professional international Indian food taster I'd place IT well above average, definitely better than teaching English in a tiny Japanese mountain town (not that I don't have any love for Kusu and my friends there) but still below the Whiskey Media gig. Hey, we takes what we can gets, you know.

In any event, I'm learning new things everyday and enjoying some of the small luxuries and finer things a life of poverty and penny-pinching denied me. In fact, went by Remedy earlier on and had a cup of ridiculously fine coffee. The place's client base is so hipster and Apple-centric I expected all the young flannel-clad ones to break into song and dance if an MGMT track came on. Well, guess what all you hipsters not reading this: I was a regular at Remedy when it was just the owner, Todd, on a 2'x5' cart out front in the freezing weather until noon-ish. I was going there before it was cool to go there!

Oh, shit. That was something a hipster might say.

Goodbye cruel world!