Justin's Links

mac mindset

Most big changes in my life I enter into on impulse. At least that's the way I remember them, record them, and then later describe them to other people. It probably gives me this happy-go-lucky quality - "you mean you ended up moving to Japan just because some guy you met online suggested you take a Japanese class with him?"

That obfuscates all the fretting and pondering I do most of the time that I'm not playing City of Heroes. Lots of wandering pondering this week. And then swift strokes of decisive action!

Well, maybe just one: visiting campus to pick up a semester parking pass for the Fall, Jen told me the USC bookstore was having a Macintosh sale. What the hell, I figured, I'll buy a new laptop. I got a 15 inch Titanium G4 Powerbook, the high end model. List price $2499 on the web; I got it for $1975. I would have lost money by not taking advantage of that deal!

That carefree increase in my credit-load hides the fact that I've been considering a new laptop for months. My primary computer, the Thinkpad X21, just passed the three year mark in April. I find most computers start to lag out after that much time. The problem is mostly in multitasking - they stop being able to check email, browse the web and keep open an essay at the same time. So that was grounds for a new machine - I work between software programs more than I work in any one of them.

I was thinking about upgrading to the X40. Whew what a beautiful looking machine. I love the IBM Thinkpads, like Gibson's Ono-sendai - elegant, excellently crafted, great keyboards, innovative hardware features. Not a lot of raw computing power, but a terrific trim road package.

But life is an experiment, I've been telling myself. I should look at my need for a new computer as a chance to learn something new; not just extend into more of what I've been doing. That and my extended family of friends seem to be having so much fun with their Macintoshes. So now I'm one of them. I told someone on chat today, I feel like I've been uncircumcised - back to some kind of playful, natural state of computing. It's been since 1998 since I've used this operating system, and while OS X adds an immense layer of exploratory and program potential, the essential design and craft remains. These are beautiful machines. With somewhat arbitrary, asstastic keyboards. I'll save all my rantings for a separate page tho. Right now I'm in the middle of a slight course correction.

pre-karaoke

Came home from a punk vidgame fashion show I'm going to be writing up at 2.30am last night; I saw fire-light on the windows of my apartment and heard voices. My roommate Scott and a handful of his friends were sitting around on the couch in front of the fireplace, with a guitar, singing together! I thought, this is like old-fashioned karaoke.

They were strumming and singing along to Radiohead, REM, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Guns n' Roses - the older the song, the more likely I was to know the lyrics. I haven't sung along with a guitar in a long, long time. Some of them had written their own tunes; there was a guy from Ireland who was very funny, singing about LA. I couldn't play for anything, but I did pick up an empty bottle of Hite and make some slide guitar sounds.

It was nice communal behavior - a neighbor came over; she said it sounded so loud like we were singing right outside her window. I invited her in, handed her a Budweiser and soon she was trying to find someone who could play Joni Mitchell.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - A Distancing Documentary

Last night I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's new "documentary," really an op-ed piece about the duplicity and deceit of the Bush administration enacting the war on terror and the war in Iraq.

My review: Fahrenheit 9/11 - A Distancing Documentary

hah! wakey wakey

In bed by two; I was just beat down tired when I came home from my full day at USC, topped off by a visit to a very unusual museum - I don't recommend the Museum of Jurassic Technology on an empty stomach and too little sleep - already about the oddest display of antique artifice I can remember seeing. The museum would have moved me, I thought, perhaps to something like joy; instead, in my worn down state I was moved to something more like anxiety, questioning several fundamental underpinings of my work as a productive media maker. It made me crazy! CrAzY I tell you.

Maybe it was the presence of Jane acting as a hyper cheerleader/docent. Whew! Not that game Jane, by the way - she is in Los Angeles though, filming a music video for Dealership. In front of a green screen! For a killer kut offa their next album. Hah!

So it was 9.30 and I was ready for bed but I had to pleasure myself first - and it's amazing. Sign on to City of Heroes, and I'm running around in tights for hours without noticing any of the pain or weariness in my body. Having one physical friend online at the same time helped; Jason McC C. Video games are amazing pain and sensory blockers. Sharing that experience with friends is fine, but I'll do it alone too. Mmmmm. It-is-all-I-can-do-now-to-resist-playing-at-10-am -

So I tumbled into bed around 2, thinking - ahh! I'll put off some of the work I was going to do tomorrow morning, sleep in, gird my health with extra sleep. Maybe a solid breakfast.

Instead my phone rings just after 8am - real estate affairs! Papers to sign! Faxes, conference calls, escrow, money between accounts! Which repairs were made to the house? Check my financial records! Between my assertive real estate agent in Oakland and my assertive mother in Chicago there was no way I was going to have the chance to droop an eyelid this morning. I deliberately chose that real estate agent because she was so aggressive - she would move fast I figured. That's the upside - the downside is 8:15am when I'm talking to her with my teeth-grinding guard still in my mouth, working to remember how much I paid the plumber when I haven't yet flipped my feet out from under the sheets.

Oakland house is being sold, Culver City house is being bought - I'm lucky for these. And then, once I'm up at the computer, I begin calling every institution that has my address, sharing my new postal delivery coordinates. Now I'm hungry, still in my underwear, thinking seriously about a return to bed. Will my phone ring again?

experiments in hair gel gone wrong

The other night around a poolside with friends smoking marijuana and drinking beer into the night I realized that I should spend some time this summer rushing into the fall. Participating in the school I'll be attending, instead of treating this season as a sort of discrete period of total removal or solely-urban immersion. I've chosen this learning experience for years to come, why wait?

Part of the incentive to get started at USC in June (classes start in August) is to explore and understand the immense facilities - high tech language laboratories, libraries packed with expensive publications, olympic swimming pools. For all of these things, I needed a student ID card. And thanks to friendly Jen, after a few hours of bureaucratic persistence today, I was able to secure a card. The USC Card dispenser was from Chicago; after some chatting she let me pose for a wacky ID photo. Scott took a picture. Somehow frightening visage.

Before the paper chase and the search for personal identification, I practiced "PlaceStorming," a Jane McGonigal project. Run around with digital cameras, mobile phones and GPS units, improvising. Acting strange in public, basically, according to instructions distributed and documented through technology. I enjoyed the exercise more than Will, it sounds like - I got off on the serendipitous street interactions with objects and people.

This Place Storming experiment was part of the Vectors initiative - "facilitating new modes of research, artistic creation and cultural investigation which analyze and redirect the role of the technology in an information-driven society." Ihere's an enormous amount of talent and resources pouring through this place, surrounding technology, media and the arts. I'm excited, even eager to see this. But I wonder how to make any of it matter beyond this mindhive? I have a chance to explore electronic play somewhere much more organized than Sierra Leone, for example.

I talked to Seamus last night, he mentioned that he had taken 9 classes in one semester at university, to graduate in two years. I doubt I'm capable of that kind of feat, but he did inspire me to consider loading on more classes. Hah! Stupid ambition.

Meanwhile, I dropped my Treo into a bowl of water. Ho humph. Changes in communication - my mobile phone is acting like an insane thing.

One good change in communications - I was able to get a USC post box. An address I can share with the web, for the first time since Swarthmore. The P.O. box is disguised as a "suite" - a suite spot accepting deliveries of UPS, FedEx, letters, magazines, mix tapes, mix CDs, paintings, games, tiny fish fashioned out of mother of pearl, bundles of clothes from India or paintings. I've put the address on my contact page; send me something!

headlong

You agree to go to school. You agree to move out of your house. You realize you need a place to stay. That can be a full time job.

So that's been my headlong focus in the last few weeks. It's not exactly boring, but jesus I haven't played many games (okay maybe some City of Heroes - read). I haven't had any sex. I have barely partaken of the culture of Los Angeles.

Except as I've lived it, driving, walking, stopping by the Old Vienna Strudel Company, going to an Aikido class, dancing at a drum circle on Venice beach. Talking late into the night to artists and surfers and utopians.

What about my work? I have been turning over new ideas for old projects. bud.com, and a book I was writing. I've been spending most of my time editing a book for Mimi: academic research from Japan on mobile phone culture in that country. That takes up a lot of my primary brain space.

But now it's winding down to a close. I'm going to try not taking up any big consuming project for just a minute. What happens if I just sit here? I answer some of my email, maybe. Maybe I leave the computer behind. And then what? I'm curious to know! I'll get there someday, oh yes.

I kind of feel a longing for something to study. In the last few months I've continued my studies of mobile communications, electronic games, sacred sexuality. I've recently studied the geography of Los Angeles. Maybe I should study the history of this town? I read Mike Davis's City of Quartz. Now thanks to Robin I'm reading Samuel Delaney's Dhalgren which is so far about a man with no name and few motivations who wanders a town of indeterminate fuckedupitude frotting himself against other dirty indeterminate familiars. Guess I'll go with that for just a 'nother little while. Multiple folks and divination systems have advised me to learn to be comfortable without having an explicit focus. Jeez that's hard.

cc housin

I wrote a big check last week; giving people money is a strong gesture of commitment. In this case, this means I'm in escrow on a house. It's been my primary focus for the last few weeks - finding a place to live. So now I have some place I'm tied to; the hunt seems to draw to a close, but I can't say for sure until I cross the transom with my suitcases. And I only saw the place for twenty minutes at an open house, so my imagination staggers with scenarios - how will I fit in these walls? I have a few memories to feed my living scenes from the future; and a few photos:

This is the place I've comitted to: just over 600 square foot, built in the 1920s, a stucco house in Culver City, near Culver and Venice. These are photographs drawn from a real estate database; something to whet my appetite until I next visit; next week, I'll be inspecting the place with people trained to find termites or troubles in a structure. Note - when I buy the place, I most likely get it without the furniture or sculputres or masks or large oil paintings.

One of the two bedrooms, inside towards the front, through a set of french doors The living room; tile floors, french doors to the outside, alcove to the side: Another view of the living room; in the niche is a painting by the owner: This is the kitchen; open from the living room, straight through the back doors, in the rear. Counter in the foreground with two stools. Past that, sink, stove/oven, fridge, in that order. If you were to head right, out of the frame of the picture, you'd be going into the bathroom, or to the right of that, the back bedroom (not pictured here today). Through the french doors at the end of the kitchen, into the back yard. Peeing boy fountain in the left foreground. Behind the boy, a large picture window between the kitchen and the garden. Lovely! I'm told that the laundry machines were located there before the window replaced them. You can see the brick fire-pit in the midst of the backyard, and a seating area there, on a wooden deck, underneath purple flowers. I had an immediate feeling of privacy there, of being outside and being alone. A view from the firepit: a brick patio, with an outdoor dining area set up there. Past that, you can see the french doors leading into the single room studio. There's no bathroom in there; just four walls, some power outlets, and some cabinets on the back wall. Handy for creative work separate from the house! And around past that to the right, a garden corridor wide enough for a few more seats and a different mood - more shaded.

foot oil loincloth citation - beta testing massage

The other day, I had walked down the to Venice Beach with my copy of Japan Unbound. A woman sat on a grassy knoll near the sand, smoking in a bent yellow cowboy hat. I passed her, nodding my head, taking a seat a few paces away. I sat on the beach in a threadbare shirt shivering in the Southern California summer, reading about the charismatic politicians regenerating Japan.

A few minutes later, I looked up and saw a giant police SUV pulled up in front of her and two police were asking her questions and writing her a ticket. I thought she might have been cited for smoking. After they left, I asked her about her infraction; she shared that she was busted for sipping from a small bottle of wine in a brown paper bag.

Turns out Deborah moved here from the East Coast a few months back, and she's training to be a masseuse. She traveled a bunch in India, where she learned a foot massage technique, and she's studying Swedish massage as well. She lives in a house that's a spa, with a few other masseuses, a few blocks from the beach.

She's just restarting her local Indian massage practice after months of studying other techniques. She needs someone to practice on. I volunteer. We set up an appointment for the next morning at 9am. I am shivering from beach winds; I thank her, we smile at each other and I leave.

The next morning, I walk to the spa near my house in Venice. She's left a note on the door; she's running late. I sit on the stoop and play with my Treo, admiring the foggy morning.

She arrives in her cowboy hat and walks me around back, touring the spa. The woman who started the place ripped up piles of concrete and planted grass, herbs and vegetables. In between, a hottub, sauna, and bed suspended on chains from a wood pyramid. Inside, a profusion of tapestries, small musical instruments.

Deborah took some time to gather her materials; her notebook from India, oil, plastic sheets, mats. Meanwhile, she handed me a string and cut a piece of an old bedsheet; my loincloth to wear during the massage. I relished putting that on - I immediately realized I had been unknowingly harboring a loincloth fetish in my deep unconscious and as soon as she left the room I took pictures of myself. A fashion trip to the heart of darkness? Maybe a fundoshi fantasy.

Finally, the room assembled, I laid down on a plastic sheet and she poured oil on me - cooling for my pitta body type, she said. Then she grabbed ahold of a sash running from one corner of the ceiling to the other, and proceeded to push her feet, heels and toes across my muscles.

At one point the sash holding her up fell down. The mat she was using turned out to be too squishy, she said, so she was sliding around, unable to apply the pressure she wanted. Halway through the two hour session she turned on a CD of indian chants - vishnu, rama, hare hare. The loincloth turned into a wegie.

That morning, I discovered that feet can be stronger than hands, and I like a strong massage. At times, she put all her weight into my back, my thighs, my shoulders, and it felt good. When Deborah gets her routine down, her proper setup, she will be offering a good service.

Afterwards, I stood up from a greasy plastic sheet, covered hair to toe in oil. She offered me the chance to shower, but she remarked: this is good oil, you might want to just leave it on. I observed to her roommate Zoltan that I felt greasy. He was eating a bowl of blueberries, bananas, sprouted almonds and hemp seeds, topped with cranberry juice. He replied, "It's good for you." Why? "It's cleansing, detoxifying."

Cleansing? Life is an experiment: I left it on, rubbing it in real hard. My skin felt great all day, but my dripping oily hair hanging in my eyes bugged the hell out of me.

Blogging LA

Sean offered me an justin.blogging.la account. I used it to post up an account of my accidental attendance of a class on "Price is Right" participation.

bn gn

Hah! Bad news - reaching for John Nathan's book Japan Unbound, I spilled a glass of water on the back of my computer monitor. I watched the picture wink out and promptly unplugged it. I'm hoping the screen will dry and resume service.

Good news - I bid on a house in Culver City. That's sort of central-west Los Angeles. The place is extremely inspired - slowly remodelled by a painter and dancer, with a strong Middle Eastern flavor. It's smaller than some of the houses I looked at in my price range, but man it's just got so much character. One large open room extends from the living room through the kitchen into an intimate backyard. So I think living there, working from home, I'll invariably spend time in the out of doors. That's a big plus.

When I saw the place, I got real excited; I wrote a letter explaining my enthusiasm to share with the seller. After some of the negociations proceeded, and her agent was asking my agent some questions about me, I wrote another letter to explain my position. I included my name and phone number. She called me, to explain that she wanted to be sure the right kind of person ended up in the house. My letters spoke to her, she said, but she wanted a personal guarantee from me that I was going to be able to follow through financially on the offer I'd made.

Yes, and yes! I said. Breathing hard, I tried to pace myself to no avail - words tumbled out, enthusiasm for the home, eagerness to inhabit the space, duty to honor my bid. She took them all well, expressing some agreement. And then there was silence for days. Until just now, she called, and said, I think I'm going to give you the house.

So that's the good news. Holy smokes is that ever good news! Contracts to be signed, but I appreciate the fact that she wanted to deal person to person. Now I gotta see if my monitor is dry.

recent lifestyle

Yesterday:

I'm crouched over in my bedroom, in my six week summer rental house in Los Angeles. I'm editing a chapter in Mimi's book about the social impact of mobile phones in Japan. A half-eaten bowl of plain yogurt with fresh blueberries and Great Grains cereal sits between my laptop and my desktop computer. One computer for email and chat, one computer for work .

From San Francisco, Robin sends an SMS message: "I may be at lax from 2 to 4 today...."

I meet her at the airport, convince her to skip her connecting flight (wasn't hard). We head back to my Venice Beach home, near Brooks and 4th. I call Mark, living on a sailboat in Marina del Ray. Mark is twenty minutes away with his friend Robin from UCLA. He beats me to the house; he calls, talking to my roommate Scott from the front porch.

I call Joanne; she asks if she can bring over her dog, Salami. I will ask my landlord, I say. I forget to. It's Venice, she says later, it's okay. Shortly the six of us and the furry one are enjoying whiskey and lemonade in the garden. I'm poked in the side by some fronds; I cut them down and Robin and Mark make baskets. The sun shines. Someone's talking about screenwriting and television pilots. Someone else is talking about interactive narrative and artificial intelligence. Someone wants a larger painting studio. Someone else wants to eat. That's me.

The party splits. Joanne, Robin and I walk up Brooks to Lincoln and buy steaks, salad, potatoes, mascara, nailpolish remover. Come back and cook up the grub. Soon joined by a friend from Chicago a decade ago Oona, and Daniel. And a dog with two color eyes, Bowie. And Cody, a friend from a film screening this week. We eat outside with dogs begging and lazy conversation. Soon we retreat into the darkening interior, and watch the first dialog-minimal Conan movie while the dogs cavort and the meal settles. The party parts ways again and I drive Robin to the airport around 9.30. I return home and sun baked, steak fed, whiskey tired, I stay up until 1:30am finishing up my edits on the book chapter, and writing a letter to the owner of a house in Culver City I hope to be able to settle in.

[Robin covers this day in text and pix]

equipment notes

I don't leave the house without my digital camera. Accordingly, over the course of months, the camera becomes increasingly battered. Most of these devices are not built too tough. Mine is still wonderful, takes fine pictures. But the battery clip is set precariously - the camera is prone to winking asleep when you move to shoot. And the lens guard is lodged permanently open (better than permanently closed, I say). So if recent photos here look blurry, it's because my lens has been picking up tiny pieces of the world everywhere it's been.

I'm thinking about buying a new camera; the second version of this one (in spite of some middling reviews, slagging the photo quality). I'm also thinking about buying a laptop, my first in three years. A Macintosh, no less! My first in eight years. But for now, I'm mostly a happy guy - I save my money, I take blurry pictures, I compute at a slowed rate. The sun continues to shine.

call me

half of beer in me and call me dangerous. i didn't find out exactly what happened except that money doesn't always buy something when other people want it too. bidding for a house in california is nothing like ebay - you can't see what the other bids were, or who finally won and for how much. at least not for months. and months from now

I'm starting as a student, homework and such! maybe parties, hello welcome to campus. but for me, so I decided to spend this summer arranging my life here hah! driving around accepting invitations. i just set up an office in a small house near Brooks and 4th in Venice beach. I promise myself I'll enjoy the out of doors here.

today I just feel very tired. And somehow I ended up renting a furnished sublet without a bed. I'll find a mattress tomorrow, craig willing. until then, i'll sleep on the couch. once my roommate's nice laryngital girlfriend is done watching "my so called life."

until then, i can entertain my fingers in a bare room with no mattress. but, thankfully, there is a fan.

the longer I'm away from my possessions, media objects and art pieces and extra clothes and lights and furniture, all in storage, the less a part of me it seems to be. but still i had a sort of driven geeky fun setting up my desk today - two computers, speakers. An office, for a few weeks - it's what I do to start feeling at home.

daily drive for a long-term lodging

I should be accustomed to living as a nomad. Suitcases mostly packed, three steps from the door. And a car trunk certainly beats the coin lockers I used for so many weeks in Tokyo.

But I want a home base dammit - I have projects I want to work on, articles I want to write. So I've devoted this time, the June 2004 of my life, to searching for a house/loft/condo/apartment/former gas station to buy to live in.

In the meantime, I have to find a place to stay. As usual, Craig's List is the source of both opportunity and entertainment - sublets and temporary in Los Angeles. I found one guy offering a 27 foot boat to sleep on for only $500 a month. A chance to live near the water for the summer, cheaply, with adventure! I arranged a visit. After a firm handshake, he walked me out to the end of the pier. It was a fiberglass shell with a powerstrip inside - a grungy sleeping bag between a microwave, dorm fridge and a lamp. A cramped plastic room with minimal amenities, Scott said it reminded him of a capsule hotel.

The tiny cabin smelled a bit like "eau de dude" because my host had been sleeping there. "If you want to turn on the lights at night, just put some tinfoil over the windows. I don't want anyone to know that people are sleeping here." Stealth sleeping in a plastic coffin floating on the water, with tinfoil on the windows? Add the fact that the showers and toilets were a long walk to the dock, and there wasn't anywhere to hang up my clothes, and I decided I didn't need deprivation adventure or cheap lodgings that badly.

Instead I found a house in Venice Beach renting for about three times that much. Spending some of my money on some pleasant circumstances: a garden, jacuzzi, small bedroom in a larger house shared with a surfer. For only six weeks. Summertime adventure, while the daily drive for a long-term lodging continues. Bidding on a place in Echo Park today!

Congraduations YWLCS

Congratulations to the first class of graduating senior women from Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago! My Mom's been working on this project for years; this is a first milestone sign of fruition: "I think in our first graduating class, we have achieved our mission of getting girls interested in pursuing careers in math, science and technology,'' Hall said. "It's the most fun I've ever had in my life.''

From the Sun-Times: Bright future for all-girls school's first graduates, 6 June, by Rosalind Rossi or The Chicago Tribune (registration required) It's a girl thing--and it's working, 5 June, by Ana Beatriz Cholo.

drive present and future

I woke up a man, in the west and now the south. My name was the same but my skin rippled darker. There was no indoor protection from the sun, save for friends who had no walls but still roofs to share. The roads wind strange unstraight, mistaken time is traded for flat space knowledge. Filling my head with a new city what remains but the leather in hand. Every day exploration, the familiar is found and found again. It is me. Here. What binds can not be seen. What touch is not physical? Memory of new space, rewritten, tongue on paper, roof of mouth shelter for silence. Stranger spared the chance to mingle, words kept close. So we see the sunlit streets all share through screens and they have fewer homes than men who live on them. Drive past, drive past.

Make the wander the way. Lazy stupid footprints find followers. See these tracks? Catdick cutup crazy - only sand, reformed by the coming water pulse. Can't pump the chest too hard, or bones crack and we breathe blood. Kindly share air with me. This many humans make filth. We sit together and see it. How could we grab for seating space empty around us? Stretch out and fingers to the sky give me an answer. I'll share it with you, shhhh.

We will yet see the sea absorb us. Lust and hunger meet plain yogurt. Is it walking or forward momentum that matters? Local streets' stoplights show human endeavor, freeways demonstrate the halting arc of progress. Smile at a passenger in another car. The imp of speed plays leapfrog. No success without failure. Maintain a better world through measured worsening. We can live in privilege alone. The horizontal space calls reckoning. Boy lays with woman, himself. Ears pierced for play. All soul is decoration.

tummy trouble

Hah! I love yogurt first thing in the morning, plain white yogurt. Settles my stomach. I'm attending a symposium in Los Angeles and they had a great breakfast spread - yogurt, cereal, fruit, rhubarb, boiled eggs, bagels and toppings. I grabbed a bowl and filled it up top with yogurt. After a night of whiskey and menthol cigarette smoke, I was ready for something purifying. Midway through swallowing all of that, I realized I'd mistakenly taken whipped cream topping for the rhubarb (very yogurt-looking). I felt bad about wasting what I'd taken, so I topped off my bowl with yogurt and finished that off with cereal and fruit. Added two hard boiled eggs, and half a cinnamon bagel with cream cheese, tomato and onion, and whew - now my stomach hurts!

glorious confusion!

hah! more confusion! site now has three panes! probably looks crappy on narrow monitors. probably broken in your brother's web browser! definitely doesn't work on mobile devices, not www.links.net.

But there's more here, you see! more! More panes, more panels, more content!

There's now THREE different mobile-oriented content sucking mechanisms - mobile cartoons you may already know. Now, add,

Mobile Notes

and

Moku - poems!

Down the middle, the longer feed, what I think when I'm sitting at my computer.

The Moku and Notes are what I'm observing whenever I'm in range of my mobile phone signal. My mobile device got a small keyboard; big enough for me to spill briefly. Taking notes on conversation, or isolating a moment in words. Now Treo technology allows me to pump this page full of prose and poetry from wherever I roam!

And this site Links.net now has a total of 13 nested weblogs, six of which appear on the front page; three mobile weblogs, a weblog of recent writings, the center column, and the picture in the upper left. Besides that, seven more throughout! Huzzah! *wipes foam from the corner of mouth*