charlie was kind of mean looking old thing, but a happy thing being scratched behind the ear, or just hanging out in the sun.

found out this weekend that my favorite neighborhood cat, Charlie, kicked his ninth bucket. he'd been absent for a few weeks now, so I'd suspected as much, but was able to confirm with my upstairs neighbor, the ostensible owner.

had a fine relaxing weekend otherwise. saw the new Harry Potter movie. I'll not bother with much of a review. It's fun, but ulimately not much without the books. An interesting phenomena of our days I think. Peter Jackson at least has done his best to change the story to fit the screen, keeping the essence. The Harry Potter movies are more like visualizations of the novel, rather than the story itself. Still it is well acted, and well conceived at least.

review beijing bicycle was in many ways a much more interesting movie storywise. the story of a country kid, newly arrived in beijing who gets a job as a bicycle messenger. everything is going well until the day he has the bike paid off. the bike gets stolen and ends up in the hands of a bored teen who buys it with stolen money. to get his job back, the country kid begins a stubborn oddessy to get his bike back, and falls afoul of the teen's gang. It's not an altogether pleasant story, a morality tale of the benefits of stubborness perhaps, although the benefits seem few and far between. It is also striking the gaps between rich and poor, where a simple bike is beyond the reach of many.

frogdesign layed off some more of my pals, putting them even further down the list of worthy companies. as if it mattered to anyone, or if they weren't already low enough. the number of people I know left in the SF office must be getting small, but then again the complete list must be pretty small anyway.

my advice -- looking for a company to do web site stuff for you, go to totalnet I'd happily trust the person running the company with my life, which is not something I could say about the people who manage frog.

Editorial on China and capitalism we'd better hope capitalism does not work without democracy. China has so far been proving that theory wrong.

why do we have more poor in the city streets this year?

it's the economy stupid. doesn't have all that much to do with how much cash we do or don't give out.

decided today that the progressives of san francisco have failed this election because they have become reactionaries rather than progressives. Not to say they haven't done anything good -- but that does not get talked about, they do not talk about it much even, partly because everything takes so long to happen. But all our issues this year have been about NO on N. Even the yes votes we encouraged O, D, E were all reactions in a way to other powers that be, other things that have happened in the past year or so.

maybe that is inescapable though. everything is reaction to something, just some of those somethings are more visible than others.

Been a very quiet few days, post election, and having my wife home. Mostly just bunkered down and hung out with Liz. Oh we did see a movie what was it oh yeah, Comedian, see my review below. The only other development around home at least is that i've created a monster cat: Bob. Starved for affection this guy is. If you're down in the garden he is now constantly underfoot, and mad if you are moving away from him. We're already developing a comic routine where he hops on the stones in front of me as I move down the garden path, constantly meowing his piteous meow. I almost wish I'd never had a "break through" now. Chorizo is even more out of the loop, as he is generally loath to be near when Bob is around.

review comedian a glimpse into the world of the standup comic. A place quite frankly that I have no desire to be, even much as a spectator I find. But that did not detract from the documentary actually. Seinfeld seems a pleasant enough person, striving to do good by his audience -- in stark contrast to an up and coming comic whose name escapes me, who burned of ambition and desire to be NEXT, and who despised his audience and anyone who dared offer him criticism or perspective. The reason I assume he got on was because he shares the same agent as Seinfeld, why the agent puts up with the asshole I've no idea. "It's business", as Tony Soprano might say, a place personal feelings, supposedly at least, are put to the side. It does not seem like an easy job by any stretch, the need to constantly be on the go out in front of an audience, and developing one's material... yuck. not my kind of job. i'll take web development any day.

first rain of the end of the year. it's always my thought that i should write down weather patterns -- especially here, where they seem so much less pronounced. there was a momentary crash of thunder outside -- a rarity, and something I miss. we usually get one big electrical storm per year and that is it. it's very strange. so much i would love to know about weather.

but yeah, this kind of weather, makes me very happy, my english/irish rain splattered ancestory is soothed by the sound perhaps. and here where we see no rain for a good 7-8 months through the summer: i miss it.

the weather just before and after a thunderstorm is my absolute favorite, the smell of ozone and rain, a sense of anticipation, especially before the storm hits. watching the towering cumulus trundle by, imagining flying up those cliffs...

the fog here has it's fine qualities in terms of a thing to be observed, but it barely holds a candle to a thunderstorm.

this is a picture a few years old, out our front window, from one of the most amazing electrical storms i've ever seen -- lightning bridging horizons, flying horizontal as it moved across the city.

Alas it seems all the wrong people voted :-)
A disaster of an election at worst, a mixed bag at best. Several things close to my heart did the opposite of what I hoped, worst of all for my wife, Mondale lost. Tom came in third in his election, missing the run-off. The office all-in-all has been pretty subdued, depending on the relative activism of people, it's going to be an ugly couple years for the environment if nothing else -- that and the appointment of lots of conservative federal judges.

day of the dead the night was exactly what i wanted. the procession got off to a slow start. the megaphone guyg explaining the whole deal was lot in waves of drum noise. people were all bopping up and down in anticipation. the exuberance of sficans to dress up as evident as any other place, lots of people in the signature day of the dead skull colored face with black eyes and big teeth.

there was a lot of people looking for a party and the alcohol was certainly flowing ( I helped someone cut limes with my swiss army knife ). Most people seemed entranced by the drums more than anything, and I found my self wandering through the procession trying out the various cadences of drum, whistle flute and trumpet.

One particular troupe was so successful that when they stopped and wandered off stage, the whole procession in their vacinity came to a halt wondering if somehow they had come to the wrong place.

They had ducked into an alley, "Balmy" to lay in wait for the procession it's last leg. The high moment of the procession came as I stood at the other end of Balmy, watching Incan's hearing a trumpet wail along with the drummers. The sound was amazing.

I went and checked out the altars and wandered around, setting my candle down in a little labrynth made of roses. I wandered back to see the end of the procession struggling to end, the police vainly trying to get the people to get on the sidewalk and get out of the street. I don't know why, there were still several hundred people - you figure the cars could wait a bit. The streets are for people after all.

I followed another group of drummers and a trumpeter back to the park and then sat in with another drum group that was amazing, leading the crowd in chants and songs, setting the rythm, underlining the crowds exburant singing with their own yells and song, then brining in a moment of silence before they started down their last set of beats.

I wandered home happy, still wishing that my wife had been around to share it.

review rodger doger this was one of the best movies I've seen in a while. The camera work was a little unsettling at first, a weavy dodge on people's faces, but I found that I liked the extreme closeups, and that I got used to the bob. The story and character arcs were well done, the acting fantastic, especially from scott and the kid who played his nephew. Rodger is a dodgey fellow and the crap that he shells out was sometimes so offensive as to make one cringe. His nephew comes in a quest to lose his virginity, and Rodger proves a rough teacher. But it soon turns out that the teacher is also the student, and he doesn't like what he is learning. The kid is a rough teacher in his own way.