Administrative Professionals Day Strippers?

I don't get this ad. Can someone help me out?

I can't tell if they want you to buy the administrative assistant in your life a gift card so she or he can buy the porn of their choice.

Or maybe they are suggesting that you dress up your wife/girlfriend/mistress/fb as an administrative professional, so that you can get down to some hot and heavy paper work.

Or maybe you are supposed to dress up like a slutty administrative professional that day, go into a strange office and hit on the person with the biggest...corner office...you can find!

or maybe you're supposed to spend $50 or more on porn for yourself and then write it off as a business expense by giving your administrative assistant the free gift bag.

Mean Sign

The woman on the sidewalk left the sign, which is about the guy at the very end of the sidewalk. He looks like an ant from here.

someone should make a sign before this one that says "Beware, the woman who placed the sign about the man ahead who is signing is either a bad speller, a dyslexic or someone who things being addicted to "herion" is really bad."

Thanks Jenn...the van was blue

The summer after my sophomore year of college: I took a botany class out at Cedar Point Biological Research Station, out in the gorgeous Nebraska sandhills. I think we were on a Saturday field trip, b/c we were all in a big state-owned maroon van.

Jenn, who was in the van in Nebraska with me, says the van was blue. I, therefore, have officially changed my position on the van color. I have already filed a motion with my memory lawyer, who contacted my neuronal notary public, who in turn checked to make sure that my white area power of attorney over to my grey area did not infringe on my choice to change the official color of the van from maroon to blue. Thankfully, it all worked out. My memory has been changed. The van was blue. And now that I've been reprogrammed, I think the maroon van was the high school van rode to Mexico in. :)

Sunday Night in San Diego

After a hot day, San Diego has exhaled its way into a cool Pacific coastal night. Thank you breeze. Thank you ocean. Thank you tidal wave of cool for flooding our heat island.

Ivano and I met three friends for dinner and...

sorry, I have to interrupt. I just squished a fruit fly on the screen of my laptop. It's gross. The remains are to the left of "Layout." Let me try to clean it up.



Where was I? Oh yeah, dinner with friends in another cool restaurant with meat exclusively from humanely and ecologically responsibly raised animals. Sustainable seafood too.

After dinner and goodbyes and a drive back to our hood, I took a walk. To revel in the exhale of the day, the weekend, the heat.

The utter lack of the remarkable.

I passed a few people on various sidewalks. A cross walk is still broken and I had to run to make it to the other side. A malfunctioning irrigation system turned the grounds of an apartment complex into what would be the grand prize winning stream in a Texas roughneck pissing contest. Look at that arching stream of water. Listen to it hit the pavement. Picture the splashback onto his dirty jeans.

So many apartment buildings. So many lights. Everyone is home. TVs on. Windows closed if you have ac. Windows open, fans on, if not. No amplified music. No-one sitting out on their stoop. No stoop. No conversations from window to window. No conversations.

Ones and twos. Humans in ones in twos driving home from mom's, from the grocery store, from Target, from a dinner out with friends, from a movie. Ones and twos. Ones and twos. In cars. In ones and twos.

Empty balconies. Unused grills. No scent of meat. No beer. No yells. Only flashing blues from tvs and computer monitors reflected through balcony windows.

The only pulse of life: a shirtless man on his balcony smoking a cigarette. The huge TV in his lit living room bathed his worked-out smooth chest in blue light. I couldn't see his nipples, but the outline of his chest suggested broad pinkish brown nipples the size of checkers atop pecs bathed in Sunday night TV light.

Barnett Ranch Open Space Preserve

I went on a walk with the Sierra Club today to one of the many protected open spaces that will get trampled by the Sunrise Powerlink if SDG&E, our power company, gets its way and builds a $1.3 BILLION fossil-fueled transmission line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Cleveland National Forest and countless open spaces.

The morning walk was super fun. I got to meet one of the key voices in the opposition to Sunrise powerlink, David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity. He's the dude in the picture.

Sacramento Bee: Letter to the Editor

In response to a story I didn't like in Wednesday's Sacramento Bee about the proposed Sunrise Powerlink that would destroy Anza Borrego Desert State Park, I wrote and submitted the following letter to the editor:

I read "Greens like idea of renewable energy, balk at the reality" with concern. We have been dragging our feet on renewable energy for years; and now SDG&E, with the increasingly vitriolic support of our Governor, is pushing us to destroy our parks and protected wilderness areas. Why? To play a sloppy game of renewable energy catch up that will earn SDG&E a lot of money and steal natural treasures. It doesn't have to be this way. We can implement renewable and clean(er) energy generation measures in western and central San Diego county. We can conserve electricity. Solutions are well documented in the San Diego Smart Energy 2020 report and elsewhere. Also, renewable energy technologies continue to improve; and these advances will accelerate in the coming years as academic and industry research matures. We must not allow knee-jerk fear reactions to unfounded threats of power shortages -- and attempts to turn us against ourselves with anti-environmentalist rhetoric -- to lead us to degrade and destroy some of the most pristine and wild desert and mountain lands we still have. Future generations deserve to inherit the natural wonders we have managed to preserve.

Shark Attack in San Diego / scualo bianco!!! (UPDATE: shark in italian is squalo not scualo) I don't think the sharks care how we spell it...

Uhhh...I was planning on going to go swimming in the ocean tonight or tomorrow morning...they are expecting a heat wave...but it looks like the beaches near our house will be closed to swimming till Monday since some dude got killed by a great white shark today. Yikes.

The old Lady and the Lawnmower

Just now, I was minding my own business, transcriping an interview about a new solar cell technology when visons of an old lady and a lawnmower popped into my head.

The summer after my sophomore year of college: I took a botany class out at Cedar Point Biological Research Station, out in the gorgeous Nebraska sandhills. I think we were on a Saturday field trip, b/c we were all in a big state-owned maroon van. We were going somewhere, but at the moment, we were going nowhere. We were sitting in the stopped van in some tiny town holding on for dear life. I saw an old woman in a floral print house dress stoopped over her gas powered lawn mower, in her front yard. She yanked and yanked but couldn't get the engine to stop.

Without a word, one of the girls in the van jumped out, ran across the street and into the yard. After a few quick and friendly words, she bent over, grabbed the cord, yanked and got the engine started for the old woman.

I love Nebraska. Sometimes.

Happy Birthday Gregory

Happy Birthday Gregory!!!(on left in linked photo)

I tried to get a drag queen to sing you happy birthday on camera. When she heard you were a single straight dude, she kicked off her shoes and started running for Ohio to wish you happy birthday in person. I hope you don't mind!

BTW, I put a snail-mail card in the mailbox today. Nevermind that the envelope is upside down and that I first wrote your address in the return address area, and had to cross it out and put my address there! I hope you're having a fun day!

Love!

daniel

ciao, grazie per aver linkato il mio blog!

Sometimes I can hardly belive that Italian is a real language. With words like "linkato" which is part of the past tense for "linked," how can it not be like a toy language? Sometimes I think Italian is the toy poodle of languages. But no, it's more beautiful than that. As beautiful as some of the photos posted on Luciano's Web site.

BTW, Luciano, there is a photo contest here in San Diego run by the alternative weekly that I want you to enter. I need to email you the info.

A Real Long-Distance Hug

I showed up at Tim Miller's yoga studio last night for the little full moon celebration he was having in honor of the monkey god named Hanuman. I got there and Tim gave me a hug and said "your friend Margaret says hi."

In this age of digital communication, old-school digital (ie, hands, a hug) felt so good.

So very good, especially since Margaret is on the other coast and I haven't seen her since two weekends before last Thanksgiving, when we shared a Thai dinner at an empty touristy restaurant in Old Town Alexandria.

And it was one of those situations where it was a suprise and not a suprise at the same time. I had been on Tim's Web site earlier that same day, and I had noticed that he had been in Charlottesville, VA that weekend. My brain paused there. I consciously noted that I was making an unconscious note. But that was it. The note never made it beyond the unconscious...until I got the hug and realized what the note was: that Margaret might have driven down from DC to see Tim. She'd made the same trek every other year (and in 2006, I made the trek with her) so why would't she have gone this year? It's so obvious now what the note was...but when I was making the conscious note of the unconsious note, it was not obvious to my conscious self at all.

Pork Sausage Disrupts Deep Relaxation

Just minutes before I got Margaret's hug via Tim (see post above), I was the biggest yoga dork ever. My friend Christine and I carpooled to the little yoga event, and as we were walking past the glass wall the separates the second-floor sidewalk from the external wall of Tim's yoga studio, I launched into the dinner menu from our Saturday night out at a hot restaurant in San Diego that fits into the "farm-to-table" genre. It's a sausage joint called The Linkery and they get all their meat from family farms and co-ops with good reputations for animal welfare and ecological farming practices (am I sucker or what???). Anyway, just as we passed the big frosted glass wall, I was all like "and we had two Iowa Farm House Pork sausages and one chicken tarragon sausage" in that really loud voice that I get when I'm excited and not aware of my surroundings. And then we turned the corner and looked inside and saw that a room full of students on their backs in deep relaxation.

I'm such a dork. I'm that guy. The one who disrupts deep relaxation with tales of sausage consumption! Oh well. It could have been worse. At least the meat had good karma (or about as good as you can get in San Diego).

We don't eat much meat. We get chicken at Chipotle. Very occasionally I buy grass fed organic ground beef so ivano can make a ragu. and now, we eat trendy sausage and I broadcast it during deep relaxation. Maybe next, I can eat a free range omelette and tell you about it during a wedding ceremony. any takers?

rice

Sometimes you feel like rice.
Sometimes you don't.
Stir fry needs rice.
Thai noodles don't.

why didn't i listen to the "Mounds Corollary" dancing in my head this evening?

Oh yeah, because the joy of cooking on a Thursday night that really feels like a Friday has nothing to do with common sense, logic or reason.

It's all about getting your primal cook on.

And this led me to cook both rice and rice noodles for my tofu-mushroom-broccoli stir fry tonight.

I'm so glad I cooked...cuz that mean't Ivano did the dishes!

Rapini for dinner, Rosie Jane 4EVR

an impromptu rapini-in-mouth self portrait popped out of my digi camera this evening. BTW, if you ever see rapini at a farmer's market, buy a bunch or two, and cook them with some Orecchiette pasta (the little ears)...De Cecco has some decent Orecchiette. The trick is to just cook the leaves and tender shoots, and to throw them in the boiling water after the pasta is about half way cooked. Then you just strain it all together, put it back in the pot, add olive oil and some pepper and then grate some parmesan cheese on top when you serve. and the leftovers (if there are any) will be even tastier the next day)

UPDATE APRIL 17: I forgot to tell you about the garlic oil. You saute 3 cloves of garlic in olive oil just till the cloves are between blonde and brown. At this point, toss the garlic and take the oil off the heat. when you've strained the pasta and rapini, pour the garlic-tasting olive oil on top. It adds a nice touch.



but the point of posting this pointless picture was to say that I would have much rather seen other pointless self portraits splashed across the New York Times web site today, than Bushie and Popie in various poses.

Bush brought us into an unnecessary and unjust war and the leader of a major religion doesn't call him on it...but they congratulate themselves for being anti-abortion...meanwhile shitting on all us living folks.

I think Malvina Reynold's song Rosie Jane sums it up right...be sure to read all the way to the end...

Rosie Jane

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1973 Schroder Music Company, renewed 2001.

(if you've not heard the song, seek it out...it's great...and the lycrics will make more sense when you hear it...I couldn't find it on You Tube, but you can get it from the Smithsonian:


This song is addressed to my sisters.
Any man who is present may listen,
Any priest, any public official, any physician.
But it gives him no license to touch us,
We make the decision.
Me and Lydia, Josie and Rosie and Eve,
We handle this matter ourselves,
You'd better believe, or you better leave.


Chorus:
Rosie Jane, are you pregnant again?
Rosie Jane, you can hardly take care
Of the four you had before.
What in heaven's name were you thinking of!
Rosie Jane, was it love?


I had an extra shot on top of what I'd got,
In a word I was drunk, so was Bill.
At least I think it was Bill,
And I'd forgot to take my pill.
I guess it was God's will.


(Chorus)

When that baby is a child,
It will suffer from neglect,
Be picked upon and pecked,
And run over and wrecked,
And its head will be crowned with the thorn.
But while it's inside her
It must remain intact,
And it cannot be murdered till it's born.


(Chorus)

three observations

1. My butt is sore from wave dancing. And this has got me thinking about water aerobics for people in san diego...surf aerobics...you do your water aerobics in the surf.

2. Lemon-lime Gatorade IS disgusting. On Saturday, when I was drinking it in the hot sun and eating salted cashews, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. But yesterday, I drank a bottle of lemon lime gatorade just after I ate an orange from emilio, and I quickly saw just how gross it is. It tastes like chemicals. It doesn't taste like anything you'd want to drink, especially if it doesn't give you a buzz.

3. wearing a heavy backpack (one filled with 13 pounds or oranges, three grapefruit, three avacadoes and random stuff I meant to read), it's very hard to breathe deeply. I've been toying with the idea of practicing controlled breathing when I walk to and from work...you know, a walking medidation kind of thing. I thought I'd do some controlled breathing this evening, on my way home, as a way to center myself before teaching my yoga class...well, it was nearly impossible to breathe deeply with that citrus-filled pack on my back.

Wave Dancing

I took my wetsuit on its maiden voyage this evening. It was damn hot all weekend (i'm not complaining but the lettuce on our balcony is). At 6:00 PM, I jumped in the car and drove to surfer beach. After a long walk with my wetsuit half way up (like overalls when both straps are handing down), I walked into the water, and played in the waves for about 20 minutes, until the sun set. I was all alone in the surf. Singing and dancing to the song lyrics: "Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao!"

es-o-c-k-s

remember those commercials that claimed you could learn a foreign language just by spelling words from your own language? Well, the es-o-c-k-s is all I remember.

I was just looking through some of my digital pictures and came across my striped italian socks that I got for christmas from Ivano's mom.

And socks lead to feet and feet lead to foot and foot leads to my left foot.
My left foot is not opinioned.
Rather, it's bunionated.
And since my mom has some nasty osteo-arthritis in her bunionated foot, I went to the foot doctor a few weeks ago. I got was a gorgeous blonde former jock who wears Champion brand booty socks and clogs on his feet.
HMO backwards is OMH. Oh My Hotness.
HMO forwards is HMO. Hot Male Osteo-dude.

He manipulated my Achilles tendons, twisted my big toes and asked me how many drinks I have per month.

He gave me some dividers to put between by big toe and my second toe. The two-tone foam fingers are cock blocks for my bunion. You see, my bunion is a nasty man who desperately wants to grope his way over to toe number two. To molest toe number two, who in turns flinches toward toe number three, and three to four and four to five in a domino reaction that will lead the scalpel happy surgeons to conclude that I need to chop up my foot and reorganize the bones.
So, the foam fingers are cock blocks for both the bunion and the surgeons.

It's 3:17 PM...

me: It's 3:17 PM and I'm giving myself the self-imposed deadline of 4PM to have a draft for "my editor"...who is me...but it's still a deadline.

my editor: I need copy by 4:00!

me: okay! okay! leave me alone and let me work!

UPDATE: 4PM
me: I know it's 4 PM, but I need more time. I'm making good progress though!

Genuflexion and Gen-you-flection

The word genuflection just popped into my head, as I looked at the reflection in this railroad track in Rose Canyon.

I've known the verb "genuflect" for (almost) as long as I can remember (I still have a few memories from my pre-awareness-of-the-verb-"to genuflect"-days). I've never thought about what the word means.

Functionally, I know that it meant that whenever you came into church, or left, or went past the part of a catholic church where god was supposed to be hanging out, you were supposed to "genuflect." But I never thought about what the word itself actually meant. And just now I spontaneously came up with a guess. I just thought it should mean "genuine reflection."

and so I googled it and found the following on Wikipedia:

Genuflection (or genuflexion) (Latin genuflexio "bending of the knee")

So it's knee bending pose. there is nothing in the name that suggestion genuine. The "genu" part refers to knee, not pure intentions.

That's cool.

Maybe tomorrow in class, I'll ask my students to genuflect (bend their knees) and then gen-you-flect (honestly reflect on something important to them).

I can add that to the list of words we've "taken back." Now stop reading my fag blog!!!

Sunrise Power Link...Plot to Destroy Anza Borrego Desert State Park

This is a virtual sticky note for me: Sunrise Powerlink Info Site with lots of good links within!

rose canyon

I just went for an afternoon stroll in the canyon not far from our place. It's called Rose Canyon and it's been in the news a lot lately. Why? Because like practically every other somewhat natural area in San Diego county, it's under attack. The city wants to build another huge bridge through the canyon to connect the two neighborhoods on either side.

I haven't heard all the arguments on both sides, but it's pretty clear to me that this is another example of applying last century "solutions" to current problems. Traffic sucks. Solution? Build more roads and bridges so that people never ever set foot in public transportation...or god forbid...walk or bike. There are only like 10 days per year when you really can't walk or bike to work because of the weather. With a climate like that, why is San Diego not the Holland of the West?????

It's true that the canyon is pretty beat up, but that doesn't mean we should cut into it again. And I think the issue is not just whether or not the canyon will be damaged...of course it will be damaged big time by a big ole bridge (and not to mention the human experience of hiking...); it's also how are we as a city and a state and a nation putting our limited transportation dollars to work? Are we investing in public transit or are we going to ride out this car bs to our collective graves?

I'm linking to Friends of Rose Canyon, in case they have something intelligent to say. I haven't check out the link yet.

UPDATE 5 minutes later: there is a ton of good stuff on the Friends of Rose Canyon site.

cheesy

Where does cheesy come from? Somehow I found myself trying to define the word "cheesy" to Ivano yesterday...and he didn't seem to think there was an exact same word in Italian. And this makes sense to me. Saying something is "cheesy" is not exactly the nicest thing to say, unless of course you are talking to a pot of mac and cheese.

I think I know why Italians don't use the word "cheesy" like we do. Their cheese is actually good. I'm now remembering how this whole conversation came up. I said something was "formagg-ico" which is a fake Italian word that I made up as a translation for the word "chees-y". We're being pretty disrespectful to cheese to pull it into the word "cheesy". How dare we? Oh yeah, because American Cheese is really a "cheese product." And we sell cheese in a spray can. And procoessed cheese food in thin rectagles wrapped in plastic is what cheese is to lots of folk. And lets not even get into velveeta. Contrast this to the hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano in our fridge. We brought back a kilo of Parm from Italy over christmas...and it's still good. I shredded two thirds of a cup and folded it into the mushroom risotto I made for dinner just now. the risotto recipe also calls for a half cup of dry white wine. Which rules because it means I have to open a bottle of white wine every time I make risotto, which means that by the time the risotto is ready, I've got a healthy buzz going, which makes the warm and fuzzy risotto all the more warm and fuzzy. MMM. And we followed the mushroom risotto tonight with fresh organic strawberries and now the chamomile is steeping on the counter and italian music is playing on the stereo. It's been an Italian kind of day. I made a frittata for lunch. I transplated several basil seedlings into larger pots with grand hopes for a summer filled with fresh homemade pesto. This morning I ordered seeds online from a company that sells Italian vegetable seeds. I bought fava beans, radicchio and rapini seeds. MMM. Italian balcony. I showed ivano the different radicchio seeds I had to choose from, and before I knew it, he was on the phone with his dad, Gerardo, and we were discussing what kinds of seeds to order from "Italian Seed and Tool.com" Yes, it sounds like a porno site, but it's not! Unless you're like me and totally get off on Italian seeds.

big gay kidney

I met a big gay kidney living in the body of a poodle.
The poodle had been to all the big dog shows as a journalist.
she uncovered a huge illegal grooming ring in the late 1960s
right before the big bark-enhancing drugs hit the circuit and the worst thing
you could do a competition dog was let your owner run Dax Wax through your coat.

After spending the 1980s as a lobbyist for the dog food industry, the poodle grew sick.
too much rotten horse meat makes a poodle a sick pup.
after a brush with death via a Mexican-detox clinic in Tiajuana
the poodle learned her kidney had failed.
She called her congresspooch, who barked up the right trees and a canine kidney was ready for her the next week.
but the poodle balked at the idea of a golden retriever's kidney.
"if I take that kidney, I'll be fetching newspapers and licking babies.
she declined via telegram and peed on a case of beef jerkey before leaving the loan-shark infested conveniece store.
she moved into an artists colony near the Salton Sea and befriended a crazy old queen.
he was about to die and was planning to donate his body to science.
she convinced him to donate her body to a doctor who was illegally testing dog food on human organs.
it was this doctor that put the big gay kidney in the dog.
and the only thing that changed after the transplant was that she could only enjoy sex doggy style...which was strange because she prided herself as a dog who had evolved beyond such trite and predictable sex positions.