Listics

…September looms and I will again face those 25-year-old vice presidents
who haven’t resolved their relationships with their parents, let alone
their capacity to manage a stranger with a grandmother’s visage.

I’ve felt that about some of the kids I’ve worked with.  "Just work it out with your dad before you hassle me with your strange stuff."

Dervala posts this morning.

Along the way I’ve even stayed in a Hmong village in Laos, a day’s walk
from the nearest dirt road. At sundown, when we went to the river to
bathe decorously under sodden sarongs, I slipped in the mud and fell
over, and cried. For dinner they killed a rooster—a precious
rooster—and fed me the boiled head. I eyeballed this baleful Pez
dispenser and made a show of handing it to the teenaged monk who was my
guide, in a gesture of fake humility. Pon lit up. It was the end of
Buddhist lent, and for over a month he’d eaten nothing after midday,
and no protein at all. He sucked the rooster’s tongue like a lover, and
then crunched through to the brain. I swallowed gritty gizzards. The
villagers gathered in the doorway to watch the feast in silence, though
they didn’t eat. Afterwards, someone made coffee, pouring the whole
packs of Nescafe and sugar I’d brought into a kettle of river water and
boiling it to syrup. I sipped mine, until Pon pantomimed that there
were only two plastic tumblers and no one else could drink until we
finished. We unrolled mats on the earthen floor, feet pointing towards
the door to keep bad spirits out. I lay awake in a coffee buzz while
underneath the stilted house the men hammered a coffin for somebody
dead, and got raucously drunk on laé-laé moonshine.

And the CBO at HighBeam Research publishes extracts from his book, Gonzo Marketing ("a highly entertaining, nimbly erudite screed against our current mass-market, mass-media culture"), including…

The investment banking firm of Dresdner, Kleinwort, Benson was a
slightly different story. IT director J.P. Rangaswami runs offsite swat
teams that take a real problem, break it down, come up with a solution,
code it, and integrate the results into the corporate computing
infrastructure — all within a week. In an industry where this sort of
thing is usually measured in months, quarters or years, such results
are astounding. Everyone on the team is expected to drink copious
amounts of beer, liberally provided, between the impossibly long, often
round-the-clock, hacking sessions. J.P. is working on a book about
certain structural and management challenges facing large corporations.
Working title: Fossil Fools. We had many deep exchanges about
what’s truly important in this industry at the moment. He turned me on
to a Dire Straits bootleg. I convinced him to buy a pricey but totally
kickass Roland guitar synth. "Damn you," he wrote later in email, "you
are starting to cost me real money!"

Vincent Gallo thinks Madame Levy should be playing.   We all think so too.

Mina Leierwood writes,

ABC
Television initially approached my family about appearing in a
documentary about Peace families/War families. I am a birthright
Quaker, with Jewish Socialist grandparents who spent 75 years on the
pacifist path, and Greg comes from a Catholic worker family much in the
spirit of Dorothy Day, and this was just the type of thing ABC was
looking for. The wanted to pair us up with a military family, but soon
we realized they actually wanted us for a reality TV show which is
funny, cuz we don’t even watch TV –

Sorry I missed it, but then - like the Leierwoods - I don’t watch a lot of TV.

Norm Jenson continues to keep me up to speed with Quicktime cuts of good TV…  This is a public service that Norm performs.  He’s better than TiVo.

Here’s the Daily Show bit on the "New Journalism."  Jay Rosen appears.

Here’s Ward Churchill on the Bill Maher show.

Here’s Ari Fleischer on the Daily Show.
***
Madame Levy continues to astound with her poetry, personal revelation, and serendipitous linkage.  Read the Yak Shaving post and follow the links to enlightenment.
***
Locke and Mandarin Meg have been playing a duet with absolute and relative positioning of shaded text…  my CSS guru and gurette.  (See previous post below and compare with Chris’ to learn why while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi in the creativity department.)
***
Dr. Weinberger is off to confer with Bill Clinton in Madrid?
***
Canada is where it’s happening.  I say this in spite of Ranger Tim’s recent move to Silicon Valley.  Brian Moffatt, Tucows, Jon Husband, Doug Alder, and so many more… sorry that I left you off the list.  It just goes on and on.  What is it about Canada that has fostered such a brilliant e-plosion of webitivity?

My old schoolmate and friend Eugene Parks passed away last night.

Gene and his twin sister Irma were sophomores when I was a senior in high school.  They were the only African American students in my school.  When I graduated, there was a redistricting and Gene and Irma had the dubious opportunity to move to a new school and be the only black kids there.

No matter what our liberal reputation, Madison is as racist as the next place, and I was always concerned for Gene.  I probably didn’t need to be.  He was brilliant and strong.  He saw right through the craven boors who gave him a hard time.

In 1968 Gene ran as a write-in candidate for county sheriff.  I was his campaign treasurer.   A year or two later I went to a party at Gene’s place and he tried to talk me into some Blackstone Ranger or Black P. Stone Ranger or some kinda Chicago gun running thing.  I think we were a little loaded.  He would have made a great sheriff. 

In 1970 he was elected to Madison’s City Council, the first African American to hold elected office in Madison.  Ever.  He served three terms on the council.  When he left the council he was elected president of the local NAACP.  He wasn’t yet 30 years old.

Since then, over the last thirty years Gene has been our city’s gadfly for community relations and inter-racial sensitivity.   When I was on the west coast, from time to time my parents would send me clippings about Gene’s public exploits.  He loved Madison and he was ever trying to make it better.  When I returned 15 years ago, Gene’s public presence provided some continuity for me and made me think I could go home again.

Now he’s gone. 

***
Too many good people are falling around me, cultural icons, family and friends.  I think this is the last memorial blog posting at Sandhill Trek.

You really gotta stay in touch with your peeps…  ask Jeneane, she’ll tell you.  She’s got Tom Shugart back on the blog, and we’re looking for MO’CC…  Golby, you too bud.  Once a month may be keeping your job alive and your personal life straight but we’re out here, urging you to comment on Negroponte.

Jeneane points to an audio from Stavros.  And she posts darkly on the liberal as a nigger…  god I hate that word.  I’m gonna have to do an N-word post some day just to turn that rock over and expose the white crawly maggoty memories of my childhood in the dark ages.

But this biker-peeps is my trophy.  I stole it off her blog.  And I’m offering it to Stu if he’s got the stuff to ride with the Peeps.

And Kombinat… the mad Pole continues moving around and about, colonizing the colonizers, and all for money.  Piles and piles of cash.  We know what motivates him.  He’s so smart, that’s why he’s rich.  But he gives it all away for art.

Rebecca MacKinnon is coaxing us to share a little poetry this Valentine’s Day.  Okay, here’s very little…

For those who daily blog, is it not art?
And are the two not joined, not of a piece?
And when I post a linkage to my heart
Must I pretend I meant it for my niece?

Dissemblance taints intention, spoils truth
And beauty draws me off my charted course
I discard my natural voice, promote a ruse:
Seduce, ensnare, entrap without remorse.

This secret sonnet’s meant to make you wet.
A private webcast channeled from my soul
And though I post it on the Internet
Only you will read it (and one guy working late at the Center for Disease Control).

Just once a year I’ll throw aside taboo
Expose my inner geek:  “Roses are #FF0000."

[Thanks to La Vache Qui Lit for the artismic and poetic effects.  Without Leslie, none of this would be possible.  I’d also like to thank mom, and the academy…]