Friday, November 14, 2003

NANOWRIMO UPDATE: I'm now up to 23,159 words, with one day left 'til the halfway point in my 50,000-words-in-30-days exercise. I like what I'm doing enough to post excerpts on this site, and will when I get the time and/or inclination to polish up the prose enough to make it presentable.

posted by clark 11:54 PM

FOLLOW-UP: During his week-long series of farewells at the Canadian Liberal Party convention, Prime Minister Jean Chretien told the National Liberal Women's Commission that he was proud of all the women he'd appointed to public office, but that "it's important to find slots where you have a chance of winning." Some attendees apparently misunderstood him in his thick Quebecois accent, and thought he'd said a word other than "slots."

posted by clark 5:03 PM

ONE MORE REASON to love The Guardian: It ran a list of whom it thinks are today's 40 best film directors. David Lynch made #1; the Coen Bros., Michael Moore, Errol Morris, Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away), David Cronenberg, Todd Haynes, and Gus Van Sant are also on it; and Spielberg isn't!

posted by clark 4:50 PM

TAILSPIN: Boeing's steady decline as a world-class manufacturing enterprise (let alone as a Wash. state employer) continues with the announcement that the new 7E7 jet's wing assemblies will be subcontracted to Japanese companies.

Michael Chrichton's otherwise pathetic mid-'90s thriller novel Airframe, set at a fictionalized Lockheed, has a big subplot predicting this, and denouncing the export of the US aerospace biz's most important proprietary technology.

I'd denounce it too, if I thought denouncing it'd accomplish anything. Today's Boeing, though, seems to care about nothing but its own short-term stock price.

posted by clark 8:48 AM

THURSDAY I SAW Jean Chretien's farewell speech as Canada's prime minister. It made me want to move there even more.

Here was a guy fluent in two languages (that's two more than our federal leader), pointing with pride to everything that's happenned in his country during his leadership--balanced budgets, decent health care, staying the heck out of Iraq, same-sex marriages, even the careers of Shania Twain and Alanis Morrisette.

Then came the clincher: Chretien's barbs at the opposition coalition, whatever it's called this week:

"Canadians should beware of those on the right who put profit ahead of community . . . beware of those on the right who put the narrow bottom line ahead of everything else.

"Canadians should beware of those on the right who would reduce taxes at the expense of necessary public services . . . beware of those on the right who do not care about reducing social and environmental deficits. Canadians should beware of those on the right who would weaken the national government because they do not believe in the role of government."

You think we could ever get a guy that on-the-bean?

posted by clark 12:53 AM

Thursday, November 13, 2003

AN ACQUAINTANCE NAMED RUSSELL held a "Loud Jacket Party" last Saturday night. The loudest jacket I currently own is a double-breasted navy blue number with silver pinstripes, but nobody seemed to mind.

My favorite new local band, Lushy (more about them on a future date, I promise) played two sets of ultracool jazz-pop. Delicately tasty cocktails were served up by trained professionals. Party guests read aloud from Russian history books when they couldn't think of anything witty to say, which wasn't often.

The center and right faces in this pic belong to the extraordinary party goddess DJ Superjew and cool-and-strange-music connisseur Otis F. Odder.

posted by clark 5:10 PM

NANOWRIMO PROGRESS REPORT: My novel's up to 19,515 words. I'm now only one day behind the pace I need to finish 50,000 in 30 days.

posted by clark 2:37 PM

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

ONE OF THE FEW intelligent conservative publications out there, The World & I (founded by pals of Unification Church honcho Sun Myung Moon), has a long, intriguing essay about "The Feminization of American Culture." The writer, Leonard Sax, implies a connection between the rise of feminine values and a rise in "environmental estrogen," due to chemical leakoffs from all the plastic products lying around our homes and landfills.

I'd already heard about the latter phenomenon in a Hugo House lecture a couple years ago by Olympia postcard designer Stella Marrs. Marrs didn't think the pervasiveness of estrogen-like chemicals was a good thing, for women or anybody. Recent medical disputes about the long-term effects of (deliberate) estrogen therapy regimens, such as a possible increased breast-cancer risk, might back her up on this.

Which brings me to the good friend of mine who's studied a lot about the Greek Amazons, warriors of legend who would undergo masectomies to gain better bow-and-arrow skills. Are the women of the industrialized world, Sax's article asks, gaining more dominance at the expense of their own health?

posted by clark 9:09 AM

THE MAILBAG (via Anne Silberman):

"I usually agree with your take on sex and frivolity and the joys of loving our bodies and those of others.  However, I feel I must take issue with your stance on the Naked Sushi trend.  I wasn't offended until I read the story at the Seattle Times and saw the photo.

Perhaps it was because the model's face wasn't included in the shot but I couldn't help but see the dehumanizing quality of using a living, breathing female as a serving platter!  I was horribly offended and even more so when I read that this is a trend that started in Japan and has moved to the US, first in Los Angeles and now in Seattle!  Where will it stop?  This is not celebratory of life at all.  It is exploitative. Perhaps if others find it offensive, the sushi bar will lose customers and the practice will stop. In a paternalistic, capitalistic society, that is the best we can hope for.

Otherwise, still love Miscmedia.

Anne"

posted by clark 8:20 AM

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

MISCmedia IS DEDICATED TODAY to Art Carney, the long-enduring actor who went from The Honeymooners to the original Broadway cast of The Odd Couple to a slew of '70s and '80s comeback films.

Unfortunately, none of the initial online obits for Carney I saw mentioned perhaps his most poignant role, that of real-life Wash. state curmuddgeon and volcano victim Harry Truman in St. Helens.

posted by clark 11:36 PM

NANOWRIMO UPDATE: Made significant progress today, getting up to 15,460 words. By tomorrow, I'd need a total of 20,000 to meet the average pace required to get to 50,000 by the 30th. Hey, I might make the short-term goal, and I stand an excellent chance of making the final goal. As of this posting I'm #34 among 134 Seattle National Novel Writing Month participants in to-date verbiage production.

posted by clark 10:00 PM

SILLY CONTROVERSY OF THE WEEK: Some people are apparently irate about a Pioneer Square restaurant offering something called "Naked Sushi," an evening in which little sushi tidbits are served from the Saran-wrapped torso of a reposing woman (wearing just enough, besides the Saran, to appease the Liquor Board).

This is essentially a commercialization of an old Yoko Ono performance-art piece; or, if you will, a fusion-cuisine adaptation of an old entertainment shtick done in Hellfire Club-era London drinking parlors (as fantasized about in Geoff Nicholson's novel The Food Chain.)

It's not a statement of hatred against women or against sushi. If the restaurant in question presents it in the proper way, it could be a statement of sensuality, of adoration, and of honor for the circle of life.

Or, if the restaurant in quesiton presents it in the improper way, it could just be a silly little lark.

posted by clark 11:04 AM

THANX TO ALL who attended the sold-out Rendezvous Reading Series last night, at which I showed off my travelogue pix from my August jury-duty assignment in Kent. One reading-goer even suggested it should become a book. I'll consider it.

Now, I'm back to my National Novel Writing Month self-imposed chores. It's going slower, at 13,117 words. But I did go back to the outlining of scenes, which is much further along. So the prose-ification of these scenes should go much more smoothly from here on.

posted by clark 8:50 AM

Monday, November 10, 2003

LIVE! IN PERSON! TONITE ONLY! Yr. humble web-editor shows off his pix of his summertime Kent jury-duty misadventure at the illustrious Rendezvous, Second Avenue north of Bell Street in Seattle, as part of the Rendezvous Reading Series tonight starting at 7. Be there or be suburban.

posted by clark 2:03 PM

Sunday, November 09, 2003

THE WASH. POST SEZ Seattle's the place to be for ambitious young techno-careerists, "a striving class of young Americans for whom race, ethnicity and geographic origin tend to be less meaningful than professional achievement, business connections and income." In other words, don't expect parking in Belltown on a Saturday night to get any easier any time soon.

posted by clark 7:00 PM

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