had to give sara her own post as i have not shared her most recent rad gig - writing on the best week ever blog.  please click and enjoy the wonder that is sara.

in particular i recommend today's collection of the 30 most adorable album covers.  the post with our picture from the mother's day breast cancer walk is also a favorite, primarily because i have delusions of grandeur / i like attention.

that's a lotta links, but she's that damn good.

behold the fabulosity that is matt and jill's save the date card:

a bad way to start the week.

for the moment, an unsubstantiated rumor:

cris bruce died from heart failure sometime on saturday.

again: i do not know for certain this is true — it came to me from a phone call from ben who had gotten a text message from his sister. this could be a complete fabrication. i don't want to spread rumors, but i also believe this is legit, even for the shady friend-of-a-friend thing going on.

i'm not ready to talk about cris more than this, i'll leave it at this:
we went to high school together and, like everyone that i knew who knew him, my relationship seemed more complicated under the surface than the interactions we had over the years. i haven't heard from him in at least a year now, maybe longer.

i sincerely hope this rumor is untrue. he is young; im not sure he has hit 30 yet. if it is true, my heart goes out to his family.

if you have any news, one way or another about this, please let me know.

I am in LA. I was in LA yesterday. Yesterday was when I experienced a string of awesome failures, coupled with good times.

I woke up yesterday and went to go shower. Which is when I discovered I failed to pack underwear. I have never done this before, save for once when I forgot to pack a few undershirts. This was a bit worse. I laughed, though it did mean a detour during the day. Not a big deal, but it count as failure #1.

R's grandfather lent me his car so that I could drive down to Hollywood and see friends. Which is what I did. Met a friend at Sabor y Cultura, my coffee haunt from my time in Little Armenia. We walk out 45 minutes later and I notice that the lights appear to be on. Which is odd, because 1. I didn't turn them on and 2. they should have turned themselves off, regardless.

This all becomes less fascinating and more frustrating when the car won't turn over. The battery is dead. My friend has a set of jumper cables and we spend 30 minutes getting her car arranged next to mine and jumping it. This also involves an angry man in a truck cursing us for blocking an alleyway (though there was another exit), multiple phone calls to my father and me stressed because it is the grandfather's car.

But we get it running. And go to Target so I can buy some underwear. Yes, this is truly a vacation of the highest order.

Friend leaves and I go to the Grove to have lunch with Sam and Josh. According to the car, when I park on the 6th floor of the parking structure, in the shade, it is 91 degrees. It is hot. We eat and wander and it is really great to see them.

Then it is off to get Keren, drive to the valley to get R and back down to go to Jumbo's Clown Room for a pre-dinner drink. Will and Jen skip out so we have 1 drink and head over to their house to see them and meet Barkley.

Then it is a race to drop off Keren and get back to the valley for a 7pm dinner. Except as we walk out of the house, I notice something. Bad. As I begind cursing and crying, Keren and R trade confusions.

We have a flat tire. A super flat tire. Seeming created by a lovely nail in the tire.

A borrowed car, a dead battery, a flat tire.

Oh — the car is parked on a steep incline. With about a foot between us and the car behind us.

I have never changed a tire on an incline. I have no desire to change a tire on this car. I have done enough. R calls AAA. 30 minutes later a guy shows up. 5 minutes after that, the tire is changed.

On the hill, piece of a cake. Of course, his jack was way better than the dinky one found in the trunk of the car. Nonetheless, it was impressive.

Drop off Keren. Run by the gas station to put air in the spare, as it looks low. "Free Air" it says. 1 minute later, I realize that the air is not free and while I thought I was adding air, it was, in reality, letting it out. Now the tire is much more flat. Great. Put in 75 cents, fill the tire, get gas. Oops. The "system is down," which apparently means that I can't buy any gas. So we have to go to another station.

The rest of the evening is fine. Especially since it consists of driving to the valley, eating takeout food and sleeping.

The plus side is seeing people and having fun. The downside? All the stupid stress from dealing with absurd situations — having to buy underwear, having the dead battery and the flat tire.

Oy. I'm tired.

there have been quite a number of things revolving around this site that make me think. by think, i mean consider for more than 3 minutes. at a time.

the first revolves around the people who write on this site. over the last 9 years, its been quite a large number of people — look at the listing of people (down at the bottom of the page). its a good count. people have stopped for various reasons — time, lack of interest, lack of content, hurt feelings and goodness knows what else.

it sucks.

if i could have these people back, writing and talking and sharing, i would. ray and i chug along these days, with scatterings from others. petunia, someone who would easily give me a run for my money in frequency of posts, has become more and more irregular. keren and i had a fight and she stopped posting. we are doing ok now, but she hasn't resumed her wonderful drawings. i stepped on matthew's toes once too often i think and he too has focused elsewhere. goose and andru are in the ether. same with bitzao. carter doesn't think she wants to expose herself so intimately online. chrispy ran out of steam along with mike. kurt…well, he writes on the full moon.

i didn't mean to start running down the list. my point was more that things have changed a lot over the last 9 years and much of the frenetic energy that we threw around 5 or 6 years ago seems to have disappeared. now we use it for managing other relationships. or working. or sleeping. or something other than this.

i think part of it is also that writing has become more important to me, while becoming less important to others. mike has stopped mostly, petunia never did become the book editor. carter is doing enough design now that her creative needs are met. and then there is me, still chugging along, writing a lot. (and ray, which might explain why the two of us post often.)

that's a second point. today somehow marks the first time in months that i have not had a book to read on my way home from work. the first time i haven't had a book to tear through quickly, before it is due at the library. 'generation x', 'teeth', 'iv', 'killing yourself to live', 'jpod' , the first half of 'death note', the first bit of 'seductress'…and i know there is one or two others sneaking in there somehow. ive been a reading machine. sadly, this has diverted me from being a writing machine.

yes, for the last 2 months or so, my writing has been at a standstill. the good news though is this: my to-do list is small right now. hank is about to act as my editor on my second book. my first book was entered in amazon's breakthrough novel contest. i need to revisit query letters for both of these novels very soon.

but the first book will be out in some fashion in 2008. and ill do my damnest to get the second one out in '08 as well. or at least have it to an agent. and my third will be done. and the fourth will be well underway.

the point though, was that ive been reading a lot. and i feel refreshed from the spree and feel like putting many words down again on paper. or on the screen.

but, because, i was reading, i wasn't doing much in terms of other output. so there was less work on the site, less paying attention to it as much as i would have liked. yes, i picked up my posting frequency, but my posts are still an odd mix of diary entries, links and half-baked pop culture stuff. so i want to polish all of these things up and push hard to make sure the things i put up are worth reading.

and part of that is making sure the site is the way it should be. i'm unsure what that means exactly, beyond making sure i work to tweak it into an enjoyable experience. something nice to look at, nice to use. i smell a small redesign coming on. i smell a lot more of the static content that used to hang out up here. i smell video.

or maybe its just my feet.

either way, the third point is that i'm very open to ideas, suggestions and anything else you want to throw at me. i said this a while ago, which prompted kurt to write me a mythical email, one he never sent but has referenced to me several time. his idea, it seems, is that i should kick everyone off out of here and focus myself. it ain't gonna happen. the best that might happen is that i set up another sandbox for myself. but it is an interesting concept, even if i dont agree with the execution.

***

this should have been thrown up yesterday, but i didn't log on once i got home from work. (gasp). instead we finished watching helvetica and then kurt and john came over for 2 episodes of season 4 of the wire. we are down to the last 2 now; i think we will finish it tomorrow.

for the record, there is nothing like watching it while kurt screams every 3 or 4 minutes, furious at the writers for manipulating his emotions and making him very upset over outcomes.

so i don't usually do this, but then, i never get these from anywhere other than petunia. so i'll indulge.

april tagged me with a 'say 7 secrets' meme. now, as i said, i don't usually do these things. but i believe april made 2 faulty assumptions here, one building on the other.

the first is that i would see that she had tagged. because other than mentioning it in her post, she didn't give me a heads-up. fine, fine. though i have blogs by friends who i dont read regularly, so i dont think its clear-cut that i would see this.

but the second is the reason i might not have caught it. because april has not told me she is writing online again. i only found out i had been tagged when i noticed some traffic from her site and wondered what the hey was going on. nice one, april. you were in my feeds, but i had shifted folders around and hadn't seen your latest wave of writing. oops.

but here we are, so let's see what seven secrets i can whip out for you that aren't totally obscene, freaky or depressing.

1. i have recently figured out that my job, and indeed, my life, requires a fair amount of control. by me. i think it has to do partly with being sick and lack of control that inflicted upon me.
2. i hate that the skin on my face is fucked up but am loathe to take too much medicine to try to help it. additionally, it got worse after being sick, for whatever reason. every doctor i have ever spoken to about it has refused to believe me that they are related.
3. i had a 20 second crush a few minutes ago as i got on the train. sadly, she sat elsewhere in the train and i will probably never see her again. especially since i'm riding a train that is an hour later than my usual one.
4. though i make myself sick with anxiety in trying to decide if roxy is the right girl for me, i'm also fairly positive i will marry her. though this just increases my anxiety because 'what if she isn't right for me…and i end up with her anyway?' the logic is circular and like every other relationship i have ever been in, i commit myself so totally that i feel completely trapped before there is even any notion of a future.
5. i am listening to 'no more tears' by ozzy right now. and you know? it fucking rules. in fact, i'm going to have to listen to it a second time.
6. ok, that doesn't count as 5, because it really isn't a secret. and this doesn't count as 6 either.
5. i am planning on a large amount of creative output in the next 6 to 8 months. writing, books, animation, drawings, videos and dvds are all on the plate. i'll post as things firm up.
6. i'm terrified of rachael moving for grad school and having to make the decision to move with her or not. this is not so secretly referred to as 'the talk we aren't allowed to have yet.' coupled with secret #4, i believe i have an unwise amount of anxiety about my relationship with her. this too only causes more anxiety.
7. i have, not so tastefully, suggested recently to roxy that we get a girlfriend. and explained the notion by saying it would be like 'getting a dog that talks. and that we could dump.' if you find this to be not so surprising, i would like to say i was at least 33% joking. this, again, may or may not be a secret. but it is somewhat horrible to be admitting publicly. so it stays.

i'm not as high strung as i sound by these; i actually just tried really hard to admit things i don't usually admit. at least in writing, publicly.

plus, ive posted (and will post again tomorrow) so much silliness, i thought i would be serious again for a moment.

and now i think i get to tag 7 people with it.

petunia, aubrey, roxy, madame levy, kurt, lisa, ray and hima (8, because i think hima will rebel. but still, i want to see what she does.)

edit: well fuck. re-reading the meme rules, it's facts, not secrets. so i just said a bunch of personal stuff for no real reason. well, secrets are more interesting than facts, so i'm changing the rules a bit. that's right. secrets it is. if i'm going down, i'm taking you with me. die fish devil!*

* quote from ben in 'mask of evil.' it rolled off my tongue. or something.

like ray, i compose posts in my head all the time. i haven't yet found a system for documenting them easily, so most die on the vine. and these days, the time i actually find 'free' are times when i am drained or momentarily free. so let's see how i do with a dump of bits and pieces that have probably piled up:

1. the new underworld album, 'oblivion with bells.' i wasn't in love with it the first time i listened, but it has begun to grow on me some after 5 or 6 listens. i still think the first three tracks make an excellent 20 minutes-ish of listening; the jury is out a little more about the rest.

2. i've moved my ticket to la a bit, so that i can be there in time to attend a screening of cece's movie, 'i'll believe you.' cece and i grew up a couple doors apart from each other; she is out in la writing and acting. she is lead in this movie, shot in '03 and finally seeing a limited theatrical release this weekend.

3. we are moving offices at work tomorrow. this means that today is the last day i will be working in downtown sf proper. monday, i will be reporting at the new office, right by the giants ballpark. one day, i might even work up the energy to tell you what i do for a living these days. needless to say, it involves media and programming. a lot of both.

4. i just saw an owens and minor truck, parked on a road. i'm on the train, rolling up to the city. o&m was the first place i worked out of college, with matthew, on their internet/intranet sites. that's been about 10 years and feels like 4 lifetimes, so it always surprises me when little things like trucks pop up.

5. i took my mac mini in on halloween to get repaired. the consistent kernel panics had turned into the machine failing to boot. when the guy at the genius bar tried to turn it, it wouldn't do a thing. a pretend brick. so they took it to repair. "5 to 7 days." on day 7, i called apple. my motherboard had died. so they had ordered a new one to put in. guess what? that one was defective too. so they had to order another one. and that's why we are on day 9 of the repair.

even better, apple's site says 'repair in progress' and offers no more information. and when i called and got the above info, i was also told that there 'was no eta'. awesome. i look forward to the repair taking forever. i'm unsure at what point i can ask for compensation, nor am i sure what i can actually for. which means i can't really ask for anything. i have no desire to be the guy who tries to get a free copy of leopard or something. (like the guy next to me at the genius bar when i dropped the machine off.)

5. rachael is out of town now. i stayed up until 1 last night, playing videogames. and then screwed up the alarm clock. this i blame on the fact that she is the alarm clock setter of the two of us. i turned it on when i went to bed. sadly, we have 2 alarm clocks and i turned on the one we no longer use. so my alarm was set to go off at midnight, having never been changed from the last time the power went out. i woke up in time, mostly. still, i see another night of not moving from the tv in my immediate future. (for two reasons: 1. i have to wake up early for this flight to la and 2. nick never responded to my email about going to see dmitiri from paris tonight for 10 bucks.)

6. programming time.