Damn, it's been a while since I last wrote. Thanksgiving came & went. Nothing to report. I bought a handful of DVDs, watching for more on EBay. Gonna get my other 2 wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow, I should be much better prepared. A bottle of Advil, a bottle of Tylenol, some DVDs and a big purple couch. I'm ready.

Buying a condo for my mom to use as rental property, going pretty smoothly. Work is good, feeling productive. Don't give a shit who's gonna be president. Well, I do, I'm just sick of the whole thing, along with the rest of America.

Can't wait for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Boy, oh boy, life just keeps gettin' better. I got written up in this past Sunday's SF Examiner -front page (!) of the Business (?) section. The article is an overview of the Bay Area APA zine scene, with quotes from all my indie-press peoples (Lark, Jean, Annie, Mimi, Shiga, etc). I'm sending the article to my mom. How does one get a newspaper article written about them? Persistence. I emailed my friend Vanessa at the Examiner and pitched her this article idea. It just snowballed into this "real" thing from there.

The article is archived at www.sfgate.com
You have to search for "zine".

Now I'm off to the Hamilton Boys & Girls Club in the Tenderloin to speak to some kids about zine making and self-publishing. I'm excited and a little nervous. I really wanna get them fired up about DIY publishing. I'd like to wrangle a workshop with them, if this goes well & enough kids are interested. You never learn so much as when you are teaching.

ooooooh, now isn't this exciting! A close presidential election! As of right now, the nation is waiting for Florida's police to find all the missing ballot boxes & figure out what the hell happened under Dubya's brother's nose. Suspicious? Definitely. Don't blame me, I voted. For Nader that is. If nothing else, he's been a bit of a spoiler -this race would not be nearly as close if he weren't in the race. Which leads to the accusation that Nader is "taking votes away" from Gore. Bullshit. Votes are earned and Al gore didn't earn enough votes to win outright. I personally don't mind waiting a few days to find out who's prez, it's better than what's usually on TV.

Jesse Ventura in 2004!

Hillary Clinton in 2008!

These days seem to go by unnoticed. On a Monday, you're sitting in front of a computer, surfing & clicking away, you get up to stretch, get a drink of water, and it's Thursday. Yesterday was your birthday, tomorrow's Christmas. It seems like you just put up your winter clothes. How old was I last week? 21? 18? Where have the years gone? Wasn't I just in college? In Kentucky? I am 3 years Californian and feel old, like a native, like I've been here all along. Was Kentucky all a dream, vivid with thunderstorms and damp summers... Was North Dakota a past life, trudging through 2 feet of snow to school, staging battles with my GI Joes? What the hell happened to all that time?

You know what song I really love, a song I can listen to EVERY DAY? Lou Reed's Perfect Day. It's such a melancholy tune, a mixed bag of hope and despair. It takes me out of whatever mood I'm in, whether I'm pissy or tired or giddy or frumpy or edgy. The song takes me out of my chair, away from my computer, the corporeal world... and drops me into a washed out scene, a billowy piece of celluloid, two people in a park, laughing soundlessly, spilling drinks on a plaid blanket. I float above them, catch glimpses of sadness on their faces as they turn from each other, a light wind through the trees. It's autumn or maybe a cool spring afternoon -a time for scarves. I am always saddened when the song ends.