Someone's gotta defend our electronic rights...

Find out more about the case here.

Sliding Doors

Driving to work past the sliding doors.

Pitmatian

Pitmatians are very good listeners...

May Day Celebration

Kingdom - Animalia - an animal

Phylum - Chordata - with a spinal chord

Class - Mammalia - that breast feeds its children

Order - Lagomorpha - a rabbit, hare or pika

Family -Leporidae -a rabbit or hare

Genus - Chocolatus

Species - crispus

Vehicular Manslaughter is a Manly Trait...

I'm driving back to work after dropping the hearse off at lunch. Not too much traffic and the weather's nice. I stop at the corner and prepare to make a right hand turn. The light is green in my direction, but there's a young man - I presume walking home from school for he's got a backpack and it's after 3 o'clock - he's crossing the street.
I wait for the fellow to step onto the sidewalk and slowly start to inch along. It's always good to check the right hand mirror just in case someone is trying for that quick sprint across the street on the flashing red hand or there's a bicycle on the sidewalk trying to get across... Nothing in my mirror - I move a little quicker.
- H O N K ! ! !
What the hell? Sounds like it's coming from behind me. I check around me just in case there's an old woman with a walker slithering into the intersection as they're bound to do as if materialized from a cloud of smoke. Nothing.
- H O N K ! ! !
Now what? I look in the rear view mirror and there's a man in the car behind me gesticulating as if there's a fire under his ass.
- H O N K ! ! !
All right, I guess he's in a hurry. I check the rear view mirror again just to make sure that I've identified him as the honker and then I start into my right hand turn again.

It's a beautiful turn. Smooth, precise, slow - as slow as I can make it while still moving at a safe speed. The street is narrow, which means that unless one makes a really tight turn, the best and smoothest turn in made into the left hand lane - not up to California Vehicle Code, but it's the best of the options. There's light traffic just before the end of day rush - as I smoothly complete my turn I straddle both lanes till I'm straight out of the turn and then slide to the left hand lane - smooth as silk.

In the meantime I'm peeking into my rear view mirror. The man behind me is going ape-shit! He doesn't know which lane to veer into. He's right on my ass - I'm sure he just wants to punch the accelerator, but can't. He's got nowhere to go. I'm smiling inside.

Honking at me in a situation where patience and great care is required will only succeed to redouble my resolve to be just that much more careful and patient.

Finally, I'm in the left hand lane on my merry way... I can hear the guys engine revving behind me as he punches it and is beside me. He slows down and shakes his fist out the window and leans his head out shouting:

You drive like a woman!

Yikes! Them is some strong words.

I wait till he passes me and looking in his rear view mirror. I throw up my hands in my best M. Butterfly impersonation and act like I'm shaking in my boots and squealing.
I've found that when other drivers are trying to give me some macho vibe of alpha male challenge the best way to get back at them is to totally confuse the hell out of their Cro-Magnon brains. Usually totally gimping out works best - the spastic chicken, the palsy shakes and if they're within hearing range, some beheying noises or cawing shrieks really throw people for a loop.

Mr. Speedy zooms off and about a couple hundred or so feet ahead he slams on his breaks for the red light. I take the same route to work every day and I know that chances are, if I'm going real fast, that light will be red and I'll have to stop anyway, so why bother hurrying to do noting?...

Irritating Intrusion 2.0 - Brownfield don't "get it".

I rarely bother to write to papers like the LA Times because I figure they probably don't give a crap - but since I made the effort, here it is below. It's in reference to:

May 5, 2006
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK: Guess who came to dinner
*Stephen Colbert's tart tongue inside Beltwood keeps blogs buzzing.
By Paul Brownfield, Times Staff Writer

Dear Times Calendar,

I think that Mr. Brownfield completely misses the point in his May 5, 2006 Critics Notebook piece, "Guess who came to dinner". I happen to be the "kind of loser" (according to Mr. Brownfield) that watches C-SPAN on a Saturday night and by the end of Stephen Colbert's speech my wife and I were laughing so loud and hard that our neighbours could hear us. It wasn't just that we found the humour funny, because it certainly was - we were also laughing because the presentation, in the dry, no nonsense C-SPAN way was perfect for the occasion and Stephen's presentation of sarcasm, satire and irony - something seemingly lost on Mr. Brownfield. We were giddy with joy as well - witnessing the first time in a long time that someone was calling it like it was (and is), not just with Mr. Bush a few feet away and unable to escape, but with a large portion of the D.C. faux-glitterati in attendance as well.

I know that Mr. Brownfield seems to be star struck with celebrities like Ludacris and Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger who were in attendance - but to my wife and I, it didn't make a difference seeing the trademark C-SPAN tight shot cutaway to Lawrence Fishburne laughing - it was the shots of Mr. Bush turning red with anger (as turning red with embarrassment doesn't seem possible at this point in his tenure) that impressed us.

It is a good thing that the clip of Stephen Colbert has taken on a life of it's own on the web and that bloggers are giving gut felt responses (both in favour and against) because from Mr. Brownfield's piece it is clear that reporters like him lack the sense of irony to report clearly on why this obscure speech at a Saturday night D.C. corporate dinner - only watched by "losers" on C-SPAN - has gained such momentous buzz. It is precisely because Stephen Colbert played to a room full of stiffs "watching to see if the CEO deems it OK to laugh" and it made no difference in his performance. Anyone who is a regular viewer of the Colbert Report knows that he didn't pull any punches and was true to his character - and this is exactly why we do watch his show every night.

Sad to say, but there is a lot more "truth" between the lines - and sometimes directly in them - presented within the dry humour of the Colbert Report, and it's kin, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - when compared to contemporary pop-reporting striving to be fair and balanced which always seems to best succeed at timid self censorship. Had Mr. Brownfield been a little more attentive he would have realized that a better comparison of Colbert's "D.C. kiss-off" would have been Jon Stewart's last appearance on Crossfire where in a somewhat similar spirit he said what needed to be said and thus spoke for more Americans than the media, you included, realizes or wants to admit.

Dentist's Office

Sinatra & Helicopters

Took a walk across the street to The Grove - the eight story parking structure affords a good view of the neighbourhood.

Walking through to the elevator Frank Sinatra plays on the hidden speakers and several cell phone conversations can be overheard. People making deals, people talking and saying nothing.

The fountain water show spouts up and plops down.

I count at least four helicopters and one piper cub plane hovering or flying around.

The traffic in the intersection is a mess. Busses diverted from their normal routs making sharp right and left hand turns together at a place where they weren't meant to.

Another half hour and I'll be walking home.