Yesterday was my last day at the online bookstore. Sadly and with a gleam of anticipation in my eye, after one solid week of very enjoyable work, I have moved on to... the past.

What happened to the last ten years? In the spring of 1998 I was working at a digital map company, tracing lines over aerial photos. Then for ten years I did a lot of different things- today I started working at a certain Internet giant (the one who DIDN'T just lay off a thousand souls) making digital maps. When I showed up for work today, I thought I'd be checking scanned images, probably of books, for clarity and completeness. If I'd persisted in standing in the first crowd I joined, that's pretty much what would have happened to me- I saw the scanning booths, and I did not like them, Sam I Am! Instead, I got rescued by a helpful stranger, and for the second time in my life found out that while I'd been told I'd be doing one thing I was actually destined to do digital mapping. It was deja vu all over again. 1993.5 calling me by name, and asking for a rematch. Woo-hoo! That's like telling Br'er Rabbit he's gonna be tossed in the old briar patch. Sure, hooking up with an ex who you know you were better off without, and who you were finally very glad to have seen the last of is probably unwise, especially if the last hitch almost drove you mad. I think any self-help expert who knew how much sleep I lost over the last mapping job I had would tell me to run like hell from this, but I won't. You see, the last time something like this happened to me, the job I never saw coming turned into a wild five year joyride along the cutting edge of mobile navigation technology which I wouldn't have missed for the world. As a matter of fact, it delivered the world to me, or at least big important patches of North American territory. My first assignment here in 2008? Italy! Just north of Sicily. Well, well! I feel more worldly already. Near as I can tell, this effort is a few years behind where my old company left off ten years ago. Same chaotic approach, same ragged interfaces, same mix of lazy thinking and aggressive goals. Same slow, glitchy computers. Same broken chairs, same parking lot traffic jams. I'd almost swear some of the people are the same, or might as well be. The work is achingly familiar, and far easier to learn than it was the first time around. I don't scare so easy anymore, for one thing, and I already know how to do this stuff, for another. If it didn't all feel so new, I'd think nothing had changed. I'm making at most 75 cents more per hour than I was way back then. There's free catered food for snacks and lunch, but nobody who isn't all elbows can get near the chow before it's reduced to scraps. Thankfully, I foresaw that and took along a sandwich that wouldn't need refrigeration, and that's exactly what I intend to do every day. Heh-heh. The triumph of experience over optimism, to adapt the old phrase about second marriages. And this time around, I'm not in the least reluctant to put in earbuds and tune out the room- I used to think that was selfish and irresponsible, but I know better now. Some of the best digital cartographers and most engaged process innovators I've ever met worked with headphones on and paid so little attention to the production chatter they would have to be shaken by the shoulder in case of fire, or for a meeting/break/announcement.

Garden Report: When the rain quit for a few hours this morning, I was out the door with a shovel in my hand before the trees had stopped dripping, intent on getting my soil amended and putting it back in the ground- I have one raised bed and three planting mounds, for a total of about thirty square feet, from which I always turn the previous year's soil out and sift it back in during the amending process. I got the whole job done in a little over an hour, finishing just as the wind began to push the clouds back overhead. Then, oddly and a little annoyingly, the sun broke through and the generally favorable conditions continued to prevail, meaning I could have taken a little more time at the task. However, the whirlwind approach actually suits me, and anyway one never knows whither the weather will, nay? Want that in English? Insert four dimes, turn handle, wait for translation... Hmm. Came out the same- must have been in English to begin with. Maybe YOU don't speak English?

Library sale: Missed it. Headache tore me from sleep at 3 AM and kept me awake until 7, so I had to make up the missing hours. That's OK, I have all the books I need.

Ponderable: What footwear should I put on for my Monday interview at the Internet giant? The truth is I intend to work in my mock Crocs, but for the sake of professional appearance during the critical first impressions phase I should probably wear something with laces; I am more than happy to make an effort, only all I have in that department are some battered and muddy hiking boots. All my years of skating around the margin of the everyday work world have depleted my wardrobe. God knows what else in my professional profile may be lacking- I suppose the interview will reveal more deficiencies. I do know better than to airily dismiss questions about my strengths and weaknesses as irrelevant and not my business to describe to strangers who should be capable of discerning my true nature, and I'm pretty sure I know better than to sprinkle my conversation with such nuggets as "Yes/No/Maybe, Sir Ma'am or Other." and "Ah, the old say what you're thinking so as to startle the applicant into an untoward disclosure trick, eh?". I am reasonably certain that I know better than to be seen performing an inspection of my interviewer's body, unless I am already getting strong complicitous vibes from said party. Don't look so shocked- that kind of thing does happen and I have been hired by people who engage in it. I say fun can be found wherever you look for it, and most people are a lot more fun than we give them credit for.

Well, the inevitable has happened- I've been given an mp3 player (Thanks, Dad) and you can guess what THAT means, can't you? Yep, no time for blogging, barely time to eat and sleep- all I want to do is load the little box full of stuff and walk around listening to it. I'm so busy doing that I think I forgot to poop today. Did I remember to go to work? Ye-e-e-s... I think so. I must have since nobody called to ask why I wasn't there. Not that I ever answer the phone. Heh-heh. What am I, a secretary? What sort of things am I downloading and uploading and crossloading into my (c'mere you little rascal, I need to read off your name for the people out there on the web..) Muvo V 100? Well, some Edison cylinder recordings of semi-bawdy music-hall tunes, an entire live concert of the Almost Acoustic Band, a Librivox recording of a few of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales and, well, the list is growing even as I speak. There are hundreds, if not thousands of hours of great material to be had both free and legally. In many cases, the artists themselves are fully aware of and entirely supportive of this. Think about that for a moment, willya? Record companies are suing people over how they obtain copies of music, while some musicians are giving the stuff away. We're not talking about just crappy homemade demo recordings from bands nobody's ever heard of, either- though I like a lot of those too. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would pay to listen to most of the crap that passes for popular music these days anyway. The real crime is taking money for it, not the other way around. But that's not my problem. I'll never be sued (for downloading music) because I'll never need a copy of anything the record companies care about, and if I do need one, I'll just check it out of the library and listen to it until I've heard it enough. If I can't hear it enough in three weeks, or I need it again later, I'll check it out again. Simple. Who needs to own a copy of everything? Not me. In my entire music-loving life I've only purchased about 35 recordings, yet I hear as much wonderful music as anyone on the planet, or at least I hear enough to suit my needs. Ask anyone who knows me whether I know what I'm talking about when it comes to music, and then ask them how many times they've heard me say "I just gotta go buy that record!". Doesn't happen very often. That doesn't make me a saint, it just makes me slightly (very slightly) more sensible than the rest of the world- and probably only in this and perhaps in several other obscure but highly important areas of life. There, my sneaky bragging has overwhelmed my natural (and mostly fictional) modesty, so everything is in balance.

Speaking of inevitability, I did finally hear back from the nameless Internet giant about the job I was supposed to get before I took the book-warehouse job, and I have an invitation to an interview Monday afternoon. Today I had to tell my new boss I was sorry about it, but I might run off and leave him in a lurch. And I was sorry, because I do like my job. I like it more each day, and I think I'm actually getting to be pretty good at it, for a beginner. The poor guy was polite and didn't call me any dirty names to my face, but I wouldn't expect that to last long if I actually do run away. But then I wouldn't be around to hear it. Or maybe I would. I just had a strange premonitory inkling: I think- and this is way out of character for me, since deep down I don't like having one job- that I might be able to work forty hours at the Internet giant and fifteen or twenty at the book-warehouse. The work loads involved would not be crippling, the schedule would not be too awful, and it might actually be fun, not to mention putting some more dough in my see-the-world-before-it-melts fund. I guess I'll have to decide fairly quickly whether to do both if I get the other job. The interviewer says if I get it I will start Tuesday, and that means my current boss will start needing help... Tuesday. Well, heck! I feel much more peaceful about all of this than I thought I would, and am probably less troubled by it than I deserve, though I don't see what else I could have done, and I was completely honest with all parties from the very beginning. So fuck 'em all. I have to have money, and nowhere in the Constitution does it say I have to please everyone all the time, or even try very hard to do so.

Some of the links I keep in my sidebar are a little racy, one way or another, and I don't apologize for that, not one bit. Try them, and if you don't like them don't go back. The latest one- You'll Wish You Hadn't Clicked... is truly different, and you should exercise extreme caution about visiting it. For one thing, it's most likely illegal wherever you live to see what is shown here. For another, the subject depicted is profoundly and depravedly unnatural and may just blow your mind. Think about this for a second- what could be illegal for you to see? It does not involve anyone under the age of eighteen, nor does it in any way suggest the participation of anyone under the age of eighteen. Nobody, no matter how they might try, could say that it has anything at all to do with children, because it doesn't. If, by chance, it is legal for you to view this stuff, you will need to be over eighteen yourself. Let there be no doubt about that. So what could be illegal for you to see? It isn't state secrets. It isn't a beheading. It isn't the real story of how our president is yanked about like a puppet by cynical, greedy, lying murderers and other associates (oh, quit whining- this statement has always been true, and will always be true, no matter who is in office). It isn't what Alvin and the other Chipmunks get up to when they're not making records, so far as I know. All I can tell you is it is almost as disturbing as politics, and not quite as insulting as TV. I myself see no particular inherent harm in the acts displayed here, but I can't bring myself to say they are harmless either. Seeing these things could easily lead to insanity and blindness. Go and look, if you want to, but remember I warned you.

So much for the news that wasn't fit to print- on to the important stuff:
In an attempt to bankroll my bad habits (travel, unmonetizable studies etc.) I have taken employment with a small and growing online bookseller in a nearby town. One of the reasons I got the job was that I billed myself as a book nut and a small-scale trader in books, and though I have no intention of halting or even slowing down the buying/selling aspects of my book addiction, I cheerfully signed an agreement today, one clause of which says I won't do the same thing outside work that I do at work- sell books. How could I so blithely sign a damned lie that even the other party to the agreement knows very well CAN'T be true? I don't know... I guess it's just one of those things we all do for the sake of manners and which employers feel they have to enforce on the outside chance that we might get caught doing something really wrong- like stealing customers or false-bidding. You know, bad things. Even going into the same business in the same way would be bad. But that's not what I do. Really, the agreement is intended to keep me from using what I learn on the job to do competing business on my own, not to keep me from casually disposing of books I may pick up but don't need to keep. In other words, it's to keep me from running away with my employer's business secrets and using them to beat the company out of it's own business- and clearly I won't be doing that. I don't sell online, except very occasionally in very small quantities (never more than one or two items at a time, and usually niche collectibles offered at relatively high prices) on craigslist.org and even when I do that, I don't usually ship books to customers, opting to offer them almost exclusively for local pickup, since I find the struggle to get paid online or by mail more trouble than it's worth. Most of my book dealings involve buying at low prices around town (Goodwill, library sales, garage sales) and trading them in at Book Buyers for a higher trade credit than what I paid in cash. For a small investment in time and effort, I realize about twenty or thirty percent "profit" in store credit. My main reason for shopping for these books in the first place is to find what I need at the low prices- I sell the stuff I buy cheap but don't want to keep as a way of financing purchases of items I do want to keep. I don't have any regular sort of business selling books, and don't seriously contemplate ever having one, so I don't see my street-level exchanges as a threat to the business for which I work. While I think I'm morally and legally in the clear on this and feel utterly OK about it, I welcome your comments.
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COMING SOON:
399 New installment of the story of my fictional Show Church
398 Garden Report
397 Shopping Plan for WonderCon 2008 (Moscone Center, San Francisco)
396 Short comparative review of Journey Without Maps, by Graham Greene and a book about the same trip Too Late To Turn Back, by his cousin Barbara Greene
395 A rundown on my existing and new links- just a few words of description and points of interest
394 Travel hopes
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WARNING: Today's entry contains graphic art which may be unsuitable for those over the age of 40. Children are advised to report their parents and/or legal guardians to the authorities for re-education, set the house on fire, steal the Volvo and hit the streets!
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That's right, folks- you heard it here first. That box in front of your noses has got to go. The only thing more evil than television is the people who sit down and fasten their eyes and ears upon it. You can take it from me, or you can wait around until the unsavory Jimi-quoting character on the yellow background comes knocking on your door in the middle of the night, but if you wait that long you'll be going for a long ride in a boxcar. Along with all the bloggers and lawyers and politicians and religious people.

Anyway, I'm sure you didn't come here to be threatened and lectured to. Let's move on now to the entertainment segment of our program...


Drifty, what is this all about? I mean, where are you going with this? Mgmt are a little concerned about the artwork, and not too happy about the commentary, and I'm having some doubts myself.
-Ed

Yeah, thanks, Ed. Why do I have to be going anywhere with it? Maybe it's YOU who should be thinking about going somewhere. I know you watch TV- I've heard you standing around the water cooler making slack-jawed conversation with those mouth-breathers from HR about last night's American Idol. Are you going to work for change or will change work on you?

Drifty, please! Will you settle down a little bit, and get that scary guy's picture out of here? C'mon! People are not into this kind of thing, you're going to drive away your readership.
-Mgmt

Yeah, thanks, Mgmt. Look, a little bit of constructive criticism never hurt anybody- TV, on the other hand, hurts everybody. It's probably as bad for us as drunk driving or knee-jerk health care reform. It drives people insane with boredom, it fills their heads with advertising lies and noise, it's worse than worthless- it's a positive evil. The medium could be used for education and communication, but what do we do with it? We turn to it when we want our brains shut down. What does it give us? Just noise. Deafening garbage. Something to make the hands on the clock run a little faster. Something to keep our family and friends from talking to us. I hate the thing. I threw mine through the show window of the store it came from. You should too. All of you. Or that guy in the yellow poster will drag you out of bed and hustle you off to the gulags. If it comes to that, I'll be helping to pitchfork you fools into the train.

Drifty!!! You've GOT to calm down! There's a twitching vein in your forehead. If you keep this up you're going to die, and you don't have any funeral insurance. HR want you to know that if you die on the job, you are responsible for removing your own remains.
-Mgmt

That's it! I'm outta here! If you folks want to read anything more today, you'll have to roll your own. I'm gonna go read a book.

Mgmt: He hasn't been the same since he got that new job in the real world, has he?

Ed: Nope, but then he's NEVER been the same- that's not the way he's put together. He'll be OK tomorrow probably. He really dislikes television, that's all. And he loves making those creepy political posters. I wonder who that bearded nut job is? It isn't a real revolutionary, I don't think. Doesn't look like anyone I've ever heard of. I think making these posters helps him calm down over the long haul, but in the short term... well, you see how he is today.

Mgmt: Maybe that's him, y'know, a picture from his student days.

Ed: Drifty a student? Not since gasoline was cheaper than milk! Yeesh, I'm sounding like him. Anyway, I've never seen him looking like that, and I've known him thirty years. That guy on the poster looks like a tyrant. He makes old Iron Joe look like a cotton-candy pussy-cat!

Mgmt: Wow, you really do sound like him! Want to write today's entry?

Ed: No way! See if you can get that copy runner to come back and do it. I'm going to the drag races.

Mgmt: Down at the speedway? It's not the season for that.

Ed: Speedway? No, a bunch of kids meet at the I-280/ Foothill Expressway overpass and race there.

Mgmt: Isn't that illegal? And dangerous?

Ed: I don't know, probably. I shoot video and put it on Youtube for them. $20 a minute. That's one race. They can only hold about one and a half races before the cops get close and they have to split.

Mgmt: Do they pay before they start racing?

Ed: Of course! When these things break up, they do it fast. No time for paperwork.

Mgmt: So you moonlight as a sideshow cinematographer. Huh. I just go home to the wife and kids and watch TV.

Ed: So do I, but the kids call me on their cell phones when they're five minutes from the race site, and I go out. I have a DVR, so I just pause it, and the wife takes the dog for walk and I'm back in five minutes, watching from where I left off. No commercials. It's great.

Hey, Mgmt-

Remember that strange poem HR wanted to know about? The book has come from the library, and I have copied the piece from the book (Maraca, New and Selected Poems 1966-2000 Victor Hernandez Cruz: 2001 Coffeehouse Press, Minneapolis).

I print this copy below, with apologies to both author and publisher- if they want to argue with me about it, they may do so here. If this is not good enough, that’s what the courts are for. Not that I necessarily subscribe to the frequently misapplied “information wants to be free” doctrine, or scoff at copyrights- I merely wish to test the notion that I could paint the words of this poem on my automobile and drive around town without breaking any law. This is the same thing, which ought to make us all wonder what a copyright is good for. Wondering is a good start. Besides, I print all kinds of my own original material here without worrying about who might “steal” it, and I therefore hereby claim the right to draw upon prior goodwill. Speaking of niceties- I also apologize for not figuring out how to reproduce the tildes and other accents in the Spanish text and names. I know there’s a way, and I know it is not difficult, but I don’t know what it is.

San pronto no se wis windos cuan el calus de la
mananana en el airsty es que tu desde po la me
cally fooly sa fo so mo to eh se onpeso a tocar
si yo ser nada su conjunto de alegria tal ves su
coro de la risa a mi me theo dan pati pami estos
communiqués dolores en el pecho parte atra parte
alounde y en ses lenguaje asi asi camina en el
verso tu pierna y tolla tu boca tis desde el primer
escalonosoco de dia tu puerta toca en mis labios
labytory de inversion tu cuerpo rompe la ventana
y hasta acaba con la pueh si ah.

Now, what is this all about? I don’t know. My Spanish is weak, and my poetry circuits have been jammed from reading too many comic books. Don’t ask me how that works- well, go ahead and ask me, but have the kindness to accept my answer without resentment: I don’t know, maybe it’s a reverse miracle. Sometimes I want to never read poetry again. When I feel that way, anyone may read poetry to me, with my thanks, but I don’t want to see the printed words anymore. In fact, I think I would “get” this poem perfectly, if I could hear it. I’ll get someone to do that around here, if I can. If anyone out there on the web wants to do it, please drop me a line. Better yet, record your reading, post it on the web and send the address. I’ll thank you right here in print. I’ll even thank you in advance- Thank You.

Following in the inept tracks of the HR monoglots, I put the text of the poem through Babelfish and got this:

San wis soon windos how calus of the mananana in airsty is not that your from po me cally fooly sa fo under mo to eh onpeso to touch itself if I to be nothing its set of alegria so you see its choir of the laughter my theo one these give pati pami communiqués pains in the chest divides atra part alounde and in ses language asi asi walks in the verse your leg and tolla your mouth tis from first escalonosoco of day your door touches in my lips labytory of investment your body breaks the window and until it ends pueh if ah.

which cleared up very little. In fact, it garbled some of what I had already figured out, and gave me a headache. Possibly the headache also comes from the red squiggly underlining my word processor puts wherever it finds something not in its internal dictionary. Since the world is far too large and weird to fit in any dictionary, I see a lot of red squiggles, which remind me of an unresorbed (ouch, another squiggle) artery in my eye. So, even if I have to record this myself, I will do nothing more until I can hear it, but I’m not giving up, not even if I have to take Spanish lessons.

Finally, a note on yesterday’s wild happenings in this space-

The copy runner has quit her job, which she never did anyway.
The editor has come back to work.
The management have gone back to their offices.
And I am on my way out the door again, to help my literary Dad with his blog.

Drifty is taking the day off to get his car roadworthy so he can start commuting to his new job in the real world. He will start Tuesday at the online bookseller's warehouse, doing shipping and receiving. He says he is very happy, and he will be back on duty here at the blog tomorrow. In the meantime, Mgmt have put their pointy little heads together and come up with a few items to get us through today. For my part, I rummaged through Drifty's picture files and found this obviously pirated image of a painting, which somebody- probably Drifty, but who knows?- has seen fit to adulterate with a highly inappropriate and legally questionable caption. Since I am quitting as editor of the blog effective two minutes from now, I no longer care what gets printed here. Enjoy. The next words you read will be those of some chuckle-heads who make more money than I do and who don't know what the hell they're talking about half the time.
-Ed

Very few people over the age of forty are trustworthy, and we think Drifty is no exception. Though he's only forty and a half, he's already started thinking like a capitalist pig.

Mgmt: Damnit! Who let the copy runner set this type? This is NOT what we wrote. Let's go catch that kid and get her to put this back the way it belongs.

Copy Runner: You'll never take me sober, coppers!

Mgmt: Sober or otherwise, you've got to help us print the blog. And no using your imagination, either. Just make the machine print what it says in the galleys. OK?

Copy Runner (singing): My boyfriend's black, an' he's gotten me in trouble- hey-la, hey-la my boyfriend's black! Fuck you, Cleveland, we do what we want! Hic.

Mgmt: Hmm... That's actually better than the original. Hey, kid- do you know any more songs like that? If you do, how would you like to make some videos and put them on Youtube? This blog's sunk, we might as well get out while we can. Heh-heh, I'd like to see the look on Drifty's face when he... uh-oh! Drifty! We were just saying how much we miss you. Sit down here and get to work, willya? I'll get this poor kid to the dispensary- she drank some ink, or something.

Silly people. I leave the place for five minutes, and all hell breaks loose. That was a pretty good song, though- maybe I could make a video of it. Only I haven't got a boyfriend, and I don't think I could get in trouble if I tried. Of course, I never really tried. Oh, who am I trying to fool? I'm not in the mood to write anything- I really just came back to get my lunch pail. I'm outta here, folks- and if anything you see or read here today leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, all I can say is.. it's your mouth.

There are, even in this age of the small world, still a few places I haven’t visited. As I mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been thinking about getting a job to finance some travel- the two most notable leads so far are a data-entry position with an Internet giant and one shipping and receiving for a small online bookseller. On the one hand I like the idea of slipping into the ranks of a large company, where I can see a lot of different levels of operation, meet people and exchange ideas; and of course there are the benefits of health care and retirement savings plans. On the other hand it would be nice to work in a tiny company, where any meetings are likely to be conducted around the water cooler and the most complicated chain-of-command involves yelling across a room. While weighing these two options is diverting and even somewhat amusing, I would much prefer to be working, because that’s what puts money in one’s pockets. Sadly I can’t take the plunge just yet because I am waiting for the Internet giant to follow up their expression of interest with an interview; in the meantime I have until Friday to take up the small company’s offer. It’s a dilemma, no doubt of that. I’m strongly drawn to the little bookstore, yet I can’t quite bring myself to abandon hope that the Internet giant is ponderously advancing in my direction with a sheaf of hiring paperwork in hand… So I’m moving slowly too, asking the little company to wait while I wait for the big company.

Drifty, the Molly Ivins bit was bad enough, but that dirty trick you played on Dr. Boynton was too much. Management are livid, they’re hopping mad. They want me to cut you down to four hundred words a day. They say you’ll never get any advertising if you don’t moderate your tone. They’re also not very happy about that picture of a church sign- neither am I, come to think of it. An all-nude choir is probably not so bad, but what’s with the girl and pony show? That doesn’t sound exactly legal, you know. And in a church?
-Ed

Yeah, thanks, Ed. You haven’t gotten any nasty-grams from Molly Ivins have you? I mean, c’mon- she’s probably laughing her dead ass off up there in humorist heaven. It was funny, and besides, I was literally going to press when you told me about her- how could I have known, and didn’t I make a beautiful transition between death and life with the part about not letting it turn me against breasts? You can’t buy anything that good- it’s gotta just flow from the heart. As for Dr. Boynton, don’t get me started. I’m 99.9% certain I’m already being punished for that by getting the brush-off from the Internet giant in my job search. There aren’t any coincidences in this valley. Now, the church thing, hey, that’s just good clean fun. A girl and her pony putting on a show, why you can find that in any circus, from a back-lot one-nighter to a three-ring big-top. Don’t let the gaudy sign give you the wrong idea, San Pronto is a decent sort of town. Hell, they ran John Steinbeck out of this valley not so long ago, and he was innocent. Oh, you might like to know, I’m putting out the next chapter on the church today- right now in fact. Nothing but architecture and history in it, so don’t get your frillies in a twist just yet. And it’s a deconsecrated church. A fictional deconsecrated church. That’s got to count for something.

Continued from 13 JAN 2008
Mr. Gooden, the city’s real estate agent, said the church was not for sale but was available for lease terms of up to ninety-nine years, and asked me if I had seen the belfry. I hadn’t, so we went up to take a look, while Mrs. Norton went back to her home around the corner to feed her cat and check for phone messages. The foot of the spiral staircase to the belfry was in what looked like a broom closet at one end of the lobby, behind a metal door with a full length mirror fastened to it. Have you ever ascended fifty feet of spiral staircase at a dead run? Neither had I, but Mr. Gooden seemed to think nothing of it, so I took his unspoken challenge and followed as quickly as I could. All the way up, the close walls were lined with intricate stained glass windows depicting the various stages and events of the lives of the Non-Denominational Martyrs, more or less in order as far as I could tell, having been raised in a strictly denominational faith. I made a note to get up there with a camera later and photograph the stained glass, knowing a money-making opportunity when I saw one. Between the rapidity of our steep ascent, and the breath-taking views out over the harbor and the landward sprawl of town and country, it was a few moments before I could ask Mr. Gooden how old the church was and whether the belfry was part of the original construction.

The small wooden church, complete with belfry, though not yet the stained glass of the tower, had been erected on this spot in 1906, he told me, by a small group of Baptist orchard farmers who used it until 1933, when their congregation had dwindled so far that they could no longer raise the funds for its annual maintenance and it was sold to a Los Angeles dentist, who left it vacant for a year before selling it to the local public school district. Following minimal renovations, mostly temporary and easily reversible, high school classes were held in the lobby, the central main room was converted to a gymnasium with basketball courts and bleachers, and the administrative offices occupied the rooms behind the altar. The choir loft was home to the home economics, fine arts, and music departments, while the belfry was securely locked- the metal door was added in 1936 after some senior students were discovered smoking in the stairwell- and never entered at all except by the school’s groundskeeper. By 1943, thanks in part to the war effort, San Pronto’s high school classes were outgrowing the little church, and construction was begun on a new campus of modern low brick-and-timber classrooms across the trolley tracks on then undeveloped land along the edge of the harbor and the equivalent of two blocks closer to the heart of downtown; because of wartime austerity measures the new high school was not ready for use until 1946, at which time the church was sold to the city for use as an interim city hall, during the planning and building of a new civic center.

Mr. Gooden and I went down the stairs, locking the metal door behind us, and left the church, leaving a note for Mrs. Norton who would be back in a few minutes, to lock it up again as we would be going downtown to fill out some paperwork. While we were waiting to catch the trolley in that direction, Mr. Gooden continued his story. In 1950, when the new civic center was fully operational, the church was empty for only six weeks before, with all traces of its various secular sojourns removed, it was purchased by and became home to the fledgling First Church of the Non-Denominational Martyrs, whose founder, by coincidence, was the grandson of the Los Angeles dentist who had owned the church from 1933 to 1934, its longest period of vacancy. The Nondees, as Mr. Gooden called them, were somewhat traditional-minded and cherished the church for its community associations and inherent charm; many of the members were the children and grand-children of the orchardists who had watched over the little structure during its years of service in so many different functions. Other than modernizing the wiring and plumbing, adding thermal insulation and radiant floor heating, and changing the roof to metal, their only stamp of ownership had been the design and installation of the stained glass in the bell tower. (To Be Continued)

This morning I rode the San Pronto metro trolley line, which stops along San Pronto Boulevard half a block from where I live, out to the police airfield on the edge of the bay for a breakfast meeting with the ombudsperson for environmental concerns there. I'd requested this meeting many months ago, when I first learned that the airfield and a certain Internet giant had just signed an agreement allowing the company's corporate jet to take off and land from the San Pronto Police Department's facilities in exchange for providing on-board hosting for some atmospheric sensors the municipal space agency wanted hauled around in the sky. After hearing nothing for months, I got the long-awaited call yesterday and once I'd assured her my interest was purely scientific and would not be made public under any circumstances whatsoever, Lassie Boynton agreed to an informational interview, provided I would never identify her by name, either in print or by any other means. I arrived a few minutes earlier than the time set for our appointment and discreetly photographed the guard post and front gates until Dr. Boynton came out in her jeep to escort me to the conference room, where we sat down to a modest Continental breakfast spread and began talking. The following is a direct transcription of our secretly recorded conversation.

Drifty: You say this jet is extremely quiet- how quiet? I've never heard a quiet jet. Is it so quiet that no one can hear it?

Dr. Boynton: Well, it's quiet, for a jet. How quiet is difficult to quantify, by ordinary measures. You see, there are other considerations. When we talk about noise and disruption, we have to balance these factors with the need for scientific inquiry. It's a balancing process, with lots of room for adjustment on both sides. We don't like the term gray area- we prefer to speak of negotiative zones and working to achieve consensual impetus. Would you pass the non-fat non-dairy bagel spread, please? Thank you. Doesn't that sound about right to you? We can say there is noise, yes, but we must also recognize there is progress, so it's an opportunity to refine our expectations and look in forward directions for alternative interpretations of traditional perceptions.

Drifty: But is it really quiet? People don't like to hear jets coming in low over their town, that's just-

Dr. Boynton: Exactly, and it's really in that set of historical expectations that we find the most fertile ground for reconsideration, for empowering a bold vision of enhanced accommodation.

Drifty: Aren't you just saying that the people who don't think jets belong here can go fuck themselves?

Dr. Boynton: No, not at all. This is not business as usual, it's a chance to re-examine some of the parochial concerns that have begun to stagnate, to move around the information traffic-jams and build a green-belt to a brighter future where the heavy tools of progress can work right alongside the prairie and the bison.

Drifty: What prairie, what bison?

Dr. Boynton: Figurative prairies, figurative bison. What's that clicking sound coming from your lapel?

Drifty: That's just my pacemaker, I get a little wound up when I'm intellectually stimulated.. Hey, let go. Quit it, Dr. Boynton. Hey, whoa!

Dr. Boynton: Guard! GUARD!

As you see, I didn't learn much from the interview I didn't already know, but it may be of some value to have this record made public, so people can understand what's going on around here, and realize what we're up against.

Drifty, I'd like to you to jump on a plane and cover Kofi Annan's visit to Kenya today. I want a short piece on what he intends to say about all the post election violence they're having there.
-Ed

Yeah, thanks, Ed. Drifty don't jump on nothin' for nobody, not even you. I'll tell you what he's going to say, and I won't even have to look in my crystal ball: Kenya all just get along?

Harley, from Mountain View, California writes:
Dear Drifty, you sick clown- I read some of your blog. Why don't you talk about something interesting, such as indicator lamps? BTW, I have your indicator lamp in stock and waiting for you in my warehouse. When are you coming to pick it up?

Yeah, thanks, Harley. There are many kinds of indicator lamps- but only one I really like, which is more or less what Harley has procured for me. Mine is made by Philmore, and it's red. I'm gonna mount it in my forehead and run it on brain power.

Folks, I have an offer for you- Usually, when you like a website, or in this case a blog, you start thinking how nice it would be to have a sticker for your window or a logo coffee cup, or a patch you can sew on your backpack, right? And don't you say to yourself "Oh, well, it IS a lot of money for such a trivial thing, but it's WORTH it, to me."? Yeah, don't you? You can admit it, there's no one watching over your shoulder while you read, is there? Or is there? I'm kidding, no I'm sorry! Don't run away, come back. Ah, thank you. There, sit back down and ... Well, you can get any or all of these things, and many others each with my face and signature on them for FREE! So, what's the catch, you're wondering, eh? Well, there are a couple of conditions, both of them pretty reasonable and not terribly hard to get along with: 1. You have to go here and steal the digital image (right click, save as) the art department has cleaned up a little bit and placed there for you AND 2. You have to print it on any damned thing you feel like printing it on. Presto-Blammo: instant Drifty-bilia, yeah?

For things like coffee cups, plates, keychains, and such you'll probably have to send the image out to a printing shop- but patches and stickers can be done very satisfactorily on your home inkjet printer. For a patch, print the image on fabric, cut around the edges, and stitch it on. For a sticker, print the image on your choice (cling, permanent, other) of inkjet decal stock, which is available from many different makers. Pretty much all you need to know about the step-by-step process can be found right here at the Hewlett Packard Inkjet site. If you think they're a bunch of fucking skunk-rats who should be ridden out of town on a rail (I do) just do a websearch for inkjet printing on fabric and you should find a dozen or so sites with all the same info. Several years ago, I used techniques just like these to print some favorite comic strips on scraps of old bed sheets, for use as liners in small drawstring bags. I didn't fool around with treating the fabric or any of that, I just lightly stuck the cloth to a piece of printer paper with a water soluble glue stick and fed it through. The colors didn't bleed, and the lines were crisp enough that I could read even the finest print. Then I peeled the paper and fabric apart and started sewing. You won't have any trouble winging it either, I promise. This is simple stuff, helped along by great technology, so have fun.

So, I was strolling down San Pronto Boulevard right along the edge of the harbor where the shrimp boats tie up thinking about getting a job, because I like to travel and that costs money unless you are willing to take some pretty strange routes and make do with very little in the way of amenities, when all of sudden, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a sign. There was my name,up in lights, or so I could easily imagine. It was the old First Church of The Non Denominational Martyrs, closed up and looking a little forlorn since it was deconsecrated last summer, and all the sign really said was "For Rent", but I saw in my mind's eye a glimmering vision of what might come to pass, if I could scrounge up the cash to make it happen. As soon as I got home, I telephoned to inquire about leasing the place for the winter. The caretaker invited me over to look inside, and said the city's real estate agent had promised to stop by in about an hour anyway, so I took my digital camera and walked back over there, a distance of about two hundred yards. Mrs. Norton, who had been my second grade teacher at San Pronto PS239 about a hundred and five years ago (fear not- I didn't say anything as rude as that to her) met me at the door and as we chatted about old times, we went into the main room, where I was startled and delighted to find row upon row- several hundred at least- of slightly dusty but still very comfortable velvet covered theatre seats facing the altar. I asked Mrs. Norton why the Non-Denominationalists had gone out of business when the church so obviously must have been a lovely place to congregate. She laughed and said "Oh, Drifty! They didn't go out of business, they were bought up by Rupert Murdoch for several million dollars and incorporated into his Revival Televangelist Network. Some of the parishioners who traded their share of the sale price for RTN stock made out so well on the deal- because, as you probably know, that darned thing has just skyrocketed these past few months- that they were able to buy those two half-built mosques on the other side of town and start a new religion among the swamp farmers who live out that way. I hear Mr. Murdoch has them in mind for his second round of expansion, which is... " and here she whispered in a coy mock-dramatic way, which I found endearingly comic and damned sexy, for all her 88 years of age "rumored to be in the works for early next year." We looked at the altar foundation, which was a solid stone platform almost as wide as the whole church, with steps all around three sides and she showed me how to control the lights in the choir loft from behind the altar, using an electronic joystick and two or three of the kind of soft-clicking rotary knobs you find on expensive home stereo tuners, to select and adjust the light banks so as to sweep the whole church with a white spot, while simultaneously bathing various parts of the altar in candy-colored pools of soft light. I felt sure she had played with this set-up before, because of the way she deftly twirled the knobs from deep pink to tangerine to taffy blue, and raced the white spot around like, well, like a white spotlight. After a few minutes of this magic, Mrs. Norton started showing me around the offices and store rooms behind the altar. I didn't say anything to my old teacher, but I was already sure I was going to not only rent this place, but buy it, and as soon as possible, before somebody beat me to it. We tried the light switches in what I now knew were going to be the backstage dressing rooms, opened the back doors to see the private parking spots formerly reserved for the minister and staff, looked in at the furnace sitting quietly in its own tall room, which Mrs. Norton assured me was in perfect working order and only dormant to save money, and we were standing in the wood-paneled lobby admiring the scrollwork on the grand main doors when the city real-estate agent, a Mr. Gooden found us. (To Be Continued)

Ah, the weekend! Things have been pretty quiet around here today- my housemates went off to hunt wild mushrooms on the coast, so the dog and I sat around playing Scrabble® all afternoon. I think I won, but God alone knows what the dog’s opinion is. I suppose the dog knows, come to think of it, but I’m sure I don’t. I know she loves me because she’s a dog and dogs ARE love, and that’s good enough for me. I heard Molly Ivins on the radio during the last Scrabble® session- is it just me, or does she sound heavily drugged lately?

No, it’s not just you- she sounded kind of whacked, too. Seriously, though, Drifty- the woman died a week ago of breast cancer. –Ed

Yeah, thanks, Ed. That’s too bad- she was a funny lady. Keeping an open mind won’t be easy, of course, but I’m not going to let this great loss turn me against breasts. That’s a promise. Listen folks, I don’t hate Crocs®, and anyway I think that tempest in a teapot has finally boiled dry, but just in case… I don’t mind adding a little fuel to the fire- here’s one more reason to loathe those un-shoes: The nostril-like holes all over them sometimes catch and hold little bits of life-debris which remind you of something you wouldn’t want to leave hanging out of your nose. What do you do? Well, the offending bit of whatever must be picked out unless you want to take off the sandal and shake it. Today I picked at what I thought was a bit of fluff in a hole and BLAMMO! I yanked a thread out of one of my expensive merino wool ankle socks. Don’t know what I mean? It was a snag in the sock, which when tugged upon became a bigger snag, sort of a yarn hernia. So that’s why nobody should wear Crocs®. Had I been wearing real shoes, I never would have seen the snag. Or at least a Crocs® basher might argue so. I’m pretty sure some of you are thinking I’m an oaf (snicker!) of the lowest pedigree for wearing socks with my sandals, but I have no more respect for that line of fashion-fascism than I do for the anti-Crocs® fever. And by the way I don’t wear Crocs®- they cost too much. I wear the cheap copies. So hate me for that, too. I could live on a diet of hate and grapefruit. Man, I love grapefruit. Especially good grapefruit.

Drifty- the HR people Googled your particulars and all they could find on San Pronto was a book review for a collected poetry volume called Maraca, by Victor Hernandez Cruz, which cited these lines:

San pronto no se wis windos can el claus de la/ mañananana.

Well, they’re all monoglots over at HR, so they put it into BabelFish and got this back:

San not wis soon windos dog claus of the mañananana.

which didn’t help very much. Do you have any idea what this means? And where is San Pronto, anyway? That’s what they really want to know.

-Mgmt

Yeah, thanks, Mgmt. Nope, I have no idea. It’s poetry, so I’ll probably need to read the whole thing before I can begin to understand it. One can’t get anywhere by looking at a line or two in isolation, can one? I have the book in question on order from my local public library- that usually takes a week or so- and I’ll get back to you when I’ve read the poem and had a chance to digest it. In the meantime, tell HR to get stuffed- they don’t need to know anything about me since I’m not drawing any pay or other benefits. But I love a mystery, so I’ll take this on just for fun. I’ve done some checking around and this poet is apparently famous- along with some other Nuyorican poets for jumping back and forth between Spanish and English within one piece of work. I can understand that, since I’m a neorriqueño myself (well, technically a quarter-Rican), though I speak almost no Spanish, and it’s not even Puerto Rican Spanish, but the typical Bay Area Spanish that you have to know just to understand street names. Does that answer the part of your question about where San Pronto is? No? Well, it’s less than three statute miles from here, but worlds apart. You might say it’s a state of mind. As I was saying, some of my family speak a wild mixture of Spanish and English, so this sort of thing doesn’t freak me out- I just have to listen carefully to several people at once and ask a lot of questions if I want to know exactly what Tio Nestor is supposed to have said to the unprintable who sold him a broken pay phone sometime in the early 1970s. Anyway, there’s some semi-scholarly blather available on the whole dual-language-as-weapon-and-refuge thing here if you’re interested. I read four or five pages of it, and I’ll go back and finish when I have some of the poet’s work under my belt. OK, as for San pronto no se wis windos can el claus de la/ mañananana. … I don’t know, the world’s greatest microprocessor (the thing between my ears) can’t get its tentacles all the way around this, even in the pre-BabelFish configuration. I’ll wait for the book. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Drop us a note.

Drifty Doesn't Do Titles

I can't shake the feeling that the cute quote on the page header is lifted- in part, or in its entirety- from someone like Mae West or W.C. Fields. I don't know why this impression persists with such vigor; maybe it's because the maxim - or dictum, if you will- has a vintage sassy bite to it, as though it had first been uttered in a gas-lit saloon by a raffish bon-vivant. (Drifty, old fruit- people know these words or can find them in a dictionary if they don't. -Ed) Yeah, thanks, Ed. Not that I believe it for a second. Is the word maxim used anywhere outside a literary dictionary these days, except in reference to a glossy magazine or the inventor of a machine gun? What was I saying... Oh, right- the knife and the corkscrew. Could this be from the lips of Nick or Nora Charles? I don't know whether I truly originated the saying or not- if you do, please drop me a note. Speaking of notes, the editor doesn't read for spelling, grammar or style- that's my job, and I don't do it either, at least not very carefully. You can, and if you see something you don't like, drop me a note about that too.

If you like sock monkeys, you may get a kick out of this. I did, and I'm not even all that wild about sock monkeys. The first picture, even though the label clearly states the height as six feet, doesn't quite give the full impact- it isn't easy to get the scale right without reference points, and I was distracted by the chair, which I really like. The next picture, with the artist holding the monkey is the one that knocked me down. Of course, having a very dirty mind, I immediately began to harbor impure thoughts inspired by her sexy hair and glasses- you don't even want to know the things I imagined her doing with the monkey. Some of them involved the chair, which I maintain is a very attractive piece of furniture. If she reads this, I'll be probably see myself mercilessly lampooned in some future work. The rest of the artist's stuff, while not at all bad and pretty interesting, doesn't really grab me in a strong way. But don't let that stop you from looking around her neat and easy-to-navigate website, you may see something that really gets you going. (Drifty- please don't do this sort of thing. -Mgmt) Yeah, thanks, Mgmt. Don't count on it. You know what I wish? I wish I was six feet tall and hung like that. I wouldn't even mind being a sock monkey, if it came to that.

I've just read Imperium- the first book by Ryszard Kapuscinski I've tried. It's a history book, what you might call an extended essay- part social biography and part retrospective travelogue- about the far-flung elements of the Soviet Union, particularly in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Central Asia (the -stans), and Siberia, and concerned mostly with its ultimate exhaustion from over-reach, moral chaos and socio-economic suicide. While it is a thoughtful and provocative critical work with quite a lot to say about what didn't work in the USSR, it is perhaps more notable for the light it sheds upon the ongoing post-Soviet struggle between the morphing (and fading?) authority of the CIS and the resurgent nationalist bandit governments over natural resources, a shadowy puppet-play in which almost everyone is an ex-communist claiming to be a reformer and yet no one is willing to let go the inherited reins of totalitarianism. Just before beginning Imperium I had read Robert Conquest's Reflections on a Ravaged Century, and noted the similar view both books take not only of Stalin's purges and the starvation of the Ukraine, but of the inevitability of serious conflict between and within former republics in the post-Soviet period. I found Kapuscinski quite readable, and credible overall though I had some minor reservations about his style, which occasionally veered into the kind of irresponsibly delirious lyricism that I feel mars otherwise sound political history; for another example, try Claudio Magris in Danube. Let's just say I don't care to hear the sound of waving hands in a serious book- it makes me wonder whether I can believe what I'm reading.

Folks, for the purposes of this blog I'm Drifty Leftwright, a nom-de-mouse designed to free me from the restraints of my other phony web identities. I have no set agenda, and anything I say is open to the widest range of interpretation. Your comments are welcome. So is your hate mail, though I don't promise to feel anything.

I'm just feeling my way into blogging in general, and here at blogger.com in particular, so please bear with me as I fumble with content, style and features. I would like to establish an external links sidebar pretty quickly, so you can see what I've seen, go where I've gone- in the meantime, I may occasionally employ contextual hyperlinks; once I have a home for my semi-permanent links, I expect to be able to use contextual links only when I wish to point out something that may not, in my opinion, merit repeated visits.

From time to time, my better nature may appear as an interlocutor known as Ed (for Editor) or Mgmt (for The Management), usually when my Drifty nature is a little out of control, or isn't being clear about something. Let's try that now, in the form of an introductory interview:

Ed: Drifty, what is your history? How did a clown like you decide to become a blogger?

Drifty: Ed, I'm not really a clown- in fact I don't even look like one. The face you see before you is just a mask the art department put together for me. My shoe size is proportional to my height, my clothes are relatively somber in color, my handerkerchief is of regulation length- I'm just a regular guy, though I do try to ride mass transit when I can, which can be a bit like cramming into a tiny car with a bunch of other clowns. I was asked to start this blog by our mutual employer (name withheld -Ed), probably as a way of getting me off that person's other blog, or so I suspect, which is hosted on a family-safe server belonging to another Internet giant. I wasn't really given any reasons. If there's a deeper purpose behind my blog, I haven't been informed of it yet, and I may never be. As far as I'm concerned, I'm here to have fun and piss people off.

Ed: Pissing people off- is that your thing then?

Drifty: Naw, I'm a sweetie. But if controversy arises... Heh-heh. And there's more to it than just pissing people off, you know. I'd like to piss off animals too, if I could find a way. They don't seem to surf the web, though. Or maybe they're out there, browsing, but not leaving comments- I don't know, it's difficult to gauge the animal response to my work.

Ed: What is your work, Drifty? Do you have a message?

Drifty: If I can make just one person smile in painful self-recognition, I'll feel I've done my hometown proud.

Ed: Tell us a little about where you grew up- I understand you come from a small town?

Drifty: Small? Hardly- San Pronto may be sleepy, but it's anything but little. The sign at the edge of town says there are thirty thousand permanent residents. Of course, a lot of them commute.

Ed: Residents commute to San Pronto? Do you mean seasonally?

Drifty: No. There aren't really any seasons in San Pronto- it's always either nice or nicer. I'm talking about the people who drive in for the day, maybe mow the lawn or rake the leaves, that sort of thing. Run a fruit stand on the street corner, hawk flowers on the side of the road. Y'know, enjoy life in town for a few hours, then off they go.

Ed: Off where? Do you mean they have other residences, homes in other towns?

Drifty: I wouldn't know- my interest in them ends at the town line. But it wouldn't surprise me- even in a place like San Pronto there are lots of people who can afford to have more than one home.

Ed: Are you sure we're not talking about laborers?

Drifty: Well, of course they work! We all have to work, don't we?

Ed: Then they're not really residents, are they? I mean in the traditional sense of the word.

Drifty: Try telling them that. They attend the town hall meetings and campaign for politicians. They use the banks, the libraries, the parks and the public restrooms. They're in town every day, and I know they can't be homeless, because there's an ordinance against that-

Ed: Thanks for talking with us, Drifty. We'll all be watching out for your next posting.

Drifty: Thank you, Ed. Nice to chat with you.

This Is The Birth Of A Blog

Drifty is trying to get his head together- check back in a day or so.
-Ed.