date ideas

a friend of mine is going on a date, an early date (not the first date!), the "getting to know you better" date. criteria: date should be fun, possibly creative! so i whipped out some thoughts, which my friend suggested i share more widely. anyway, i think these are all great things to do not just on a date but in any situation where you want to have possibly unique fun in the city:

please add your suggests in the comments!

• what about golden gate park? there are such great places to walk there. you make sure the de young is somewhere on the walk.. you don't pay for the museum, instead you go up to the observatory tower (free) and look out at the city. simply fantastic
• if you want something a bit more secluded, do buena vista park. wonderful walk up there (only during the day, don't be there at night, i hear).. you must take a hat though because it gets quite windy and you don't want to freeze
• want to include a car in the game? do the "rediscover sf" tour by following the 40 mile or whatever number it is route.. go to twin peaks, go to the presidio, go to the palace of fine arts. spend a bit of time in each place, a bit of time in the car. you each bring some CDs and each car jaunt one person picks a cd and plays a few songs. this way you get outdoors and indoors
• ok, if you do more a night thing, then i recommend getting wine at the hidden vine during some portion of the night. it's a small place but really cozy and romantic. i've had many a good time there
• playing carnival-like games seems like a fun thing to do on an early date. unfortunately, i don't know where you go around here to get that, but i toss out that idea
• are the two of you "into" something? a variation of the car tour.. each of you could pick a theme and then devise a map of the city to point out that theme. you guys share maps and see how you could both integrate your themed experience into one experience that mixes both and lets each person share.. or you could do one at a time.. but i think sharing is good, especially early on..
  
• volunteer somewhere together (recall this is a brain dump, my fingers pushed that out, i refuse to backspace)
• bike somewhere. take your bike to sausalito, or across the GG bridge, or go to the south west part of town and do the loop down there around the lake.. or go to the embarcadero.
• oh my god coit tower is the most beautiful place.. i think.. if it's a sunny day.
• ok now i'm going to bed. you'll think of something!

denver's driving change program -- almost!

read the following then see my commentary:

Denver hopes to reduce car emissions by encouraging better driving

from Grist News

The city of Denver has unveiled a "Driving Change" pilot program designed to reduce vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions by encouraging drivers to ease off the lead foot. Starting in May, 400 public and private Denver vehicles, including that of Mayor John Hickenlooper, will have a device installed to monitor time spent braking, idling, accelerating, and speeding. Analyzed results and personalized recommendations for reducing fuel consumption will then be posted on the internet. Vehicles account for approximately 30 percent of Denver's greenhouse-gas emissions, and the program hopes to cut fuel consumption 20 percent among Driving Change participants.

sources: Denver Business Journal, The Denver Post, Associated Press

ok. here's the big problem! the feedback needs to be immediate, and it needs to be relevant. they have relevant ("personalized recommendations") but they don't have immediate ("posted on the internet"). dear lord. have they learned nothing from the prius? prius people drive so strangely because they are playing this game where they are changing their driving behaviors in ways they think might optimize the gas mileage. with these additional indicators, the prius drivers (or the mayor, whatever he's driving) could do a much better job.

put the indicators in the car. they don't have to be dangerous.. which is one comment i hear from some prius drivers who turn off the dashboard because they find it distracting. the indicators can be ambient. use colors! i am going to send this idea to the people administering this program...

UPDATE: i emailed the mayor and the green program staff. hopefully someone sees my email!

gavin newsom on green movement

this is a good interview with gavin newsom reflecting on the current state of the green movement. here's an apt quote:

Right now we're almost seeing the movement increasingly trivialized by everything turning green...every single magazine and newspaper and TV program.

It's important and powerful because it raises awareness, but it misses the point that needs to be raised, one of accountability, transparency and measurement, the hard work that needs to be done. And it's not just buying organic cereal with a recycled tote bag. So when I talk in terms of (San Francisco's) 70 percent recycling rates, the highest in the nation, I feel good about that but not great.

i like his point about accountability, transparency and measurement. i think these are three things we really need, and there isn't a lot of talk about them in the general media.

making movies

i made the following movie with windows movie maker. what a handy free utility. it's installed by default on XP. there's also a great user forum.

fun sunday

today i had a wonderful day and i would like to share that sense of happiness with you, dear reader. today, the weather was marvelous. breathtaking. i wore a short-sleeved shirt and soaked up the sun. first, i went to tartine and braved the long, long line to buy a large assortment of pastries. the best, by far, was the morning bun, depicted below:

such a bun is pure heaven to bite into (notice the consumed part in the lower right). i could get one of these every day.. maybe i should. see how long i can handle it.

after tartine i took my bounty to rockridge (twice in a weekend! it's where the hip, environmentally conscious folks i know live). i haven't really explored rockridge. it was stunningly beautiful on this gorgeous day. check out some of these house pics. i want to get out there and wander around.

then i came back to the city and relaxed and did some work. but, sensing i needed beer, i messaged jono and we headed over to the city beer store. as usual, we had a wide ranging conversation that had enlightening moments. jono told me about these wasps that invade ant colonies and spray a chemical that causes the ants to fight each other. in the confusion the wasp leaves some of its eggs, which the ants, after coming out of their confused melee, care for. brilliant, especially considering how much larger wasp eggs are than ant eggs.

on my way back i found verification that my reference to berkeley as "berkel" in text messages etc.. was not so off base. seems berkel has a long standing tradition, at least on harrison street in the mission.

finally, raja is now sleeping on my bed. he has returned to his loving friend (me). he had been avoiding me and occupying andrew's room for quite a while. but he's back, at least for now. here he is asking me with those big beautiful eyes: "may i share this bed with you, om?"

of course you can!

finally here's two songs from the once soundtrack, which neha got me:

no country for old men

this evening i saw no country for old men. my cousin was right. it is an amazing movie, but also one that leaves you feeling so emotionally drained. indeed, i still have this odd pit in my stomach, like butterflies but much sadder.

it's a powerful movie, and beautifully done. i recommend it. you aren't going to come away happy, at least in the traditional sense. but you will have witnessed genius. this movie will stay with me for a while.

self-experimentation

seth roberts came to my games class yesterday and spoke about self-experimentation and games. seth is a UC Berkeley psychology professor who experiments on himself to learn more about how the mind works, and has published his results to quite stirring successes (one being the shangri-la diet).

anyway, he spoke to us about omega-3. he found that taking three tablespoons of flaxseed oil (high in omega-3) in the morning had a huge effect on his ability to: balance, perform well at certain memory games, aim at targets, sleep.

he also told us to stop eating breakfast (he eats nothing before 10am) and see life-size faces in the morning.

anyway, with nothing better to do, and intrigued, i bought flaxseed oil today and took three tablespoons. that's a helluva lot (you could do less fish oil, i'm told, but i am starting from his observations + flaxseed may have other magical benefits). i'm going to see what this does to me. in reality, we are constantly doing crazy things to our body and very often experimenting, but not consciously. so i'm going to try and be conscious about this move. brain tests, here i come :)

oh and games: seth takes a lot of self-measurements. in some cases, he needs to take many measurements a day, and that gets very, very tedious. he came to the class to show us a game he had developed to make it slightly more fun to take measurements. he then asked us if we could help him improve the game.

as a final note, of course i looked up what others were saying about taking flaxseed oil (didn't want to miss any research that says what i'm doing is completely nuts). found this article that talks about potential danger of taking flaxseed oil for men. anyway, author recommends flax seed oil with lignans. that's what i got.

blood

strange oddball characters have been emerging in my writing of late. here's something i quickly wrote up recently. warning: it's somewhat bloooody

untitled (and unfinished.. but it's what i have now)

imagine a survey question: why don't you floss everyday?
a) laziness
b) forgetfulness
c) don't care
d) other

99.9% of the non-flossing adults select one of the first three options. i select (d), other. my 'other' is 'blood' -- if i flossed everyday there wouldn't be blood, and for me, the joy of flossing is the taste-my-blood experience.

your jaw that has dropped in horror? push it back up. there is a rational reason for this behavior, and you will be convinced when i'm through.

you, the snob you are, drink wine. you wax on about the buttery flavors, the caramel, the big mouth, the hint of cardamom. if i told you there was a liquid finer than wine you would laugh and look at me as if i were a child drinking grape juice. silly boy, you'd say. one day, you'll come around.

well, i did come around, but not to wine. i learned that i make my own sweet nectar. it happened many years ago. i just had the most fabulous rare steak in my life -- pink, tender, juicy. that steak brought me near heaven. five days later i found it.

in the bathroom, i looked in the mirror and saw a bit of swelling around my upper front teeth. 'hmm, not good,' i thought, 'time to floss.' so i wrapped the waxy string around my fingers and went to work. i watched in the mirror as the blood started to trickle down my tooth -- it fell and hit my tongue and the most wonderful taste of aged beef, iron and caramel enveloped me. i was shocked. my tongue darted to my front teeth and voraciously scrubbed the blood off -- more heaven. what was this? i panicked. could i be safe in the wilderness if i tasted so good?

indeed, this tasty blood may sound wonderful -- the best liquid to drink on earth is coursing through my veins. but all i could imagine, at first, was the horror of knowing that i would be feasted upon by my fellow humans if only the knew. for the next two weeks i walked around with band-aids and a strong fear of being discovered.

but then i flossed again, after two weeks, and the blood was mediocre, even bad -- the worst two buck chuck ever! what had happened!?!

....

the peanut farmer

last night we chatted about tantalizing voices. those voices that lure you in and, regardless of what they're saying, make you swoon. people from india with british accents do that for me, shashi tharoor being a good example. i love how he says "ramparts" -- i'm not listening to the concepts, just the flow. supposedly L has ample proof that her voice enters this category. i don't know..

musically, i think billy corgan has such a voice:





then, my mind wandering, i imagined the peanut farmer test. imagine you are severely allergic to peanuts and you flip on the radio and hear this melodious voice. the voice is talking about the farming of the peanut, your arch-nemesis, but it doesn't matter. that voice! you resolve to meet this peanut farmer, even though the farmer will likely be oozing peanut oil. sure death! but the peanut farmer's voice. the voice.

that would be the voice.

now i need some nuts.

Bea's of Bloomsbury: eat tasty food in London

i am so proud to say i'm an investor in my friend bea's new cake shop in london: Bea's of Bloomsbury. doesn't it look tasty?



the shop just recently opened, and i am salivating for a cupcake, and hoping i get there soon! i know some of my readers may be in london soon, and if so, run, don't walk, and sample the wonderful food. bea is a culinary wizard and tireless worker who got the business going almost singlehandedly, entirely from scratch. here's a quote from the londonist review:

What makes Bea’s cupcakes so damn good (as well as the rest of Bea’s menu for that matter)? Well, in addition to applying their Michelin-Star pedigrees, Le Cordon Bleu training and prior experience at yum factories such as Asia de Cuba and Nobu, the folks behind Bea’s intend to use fresh produce and the finest ingredients in an attempt to “redefine the concept of takeout as quality, indulgence and style.” From what Londonist tasted, Bea and crew have more than a fighting chance at achieving such a lofty goal.

and here's another review from the randomness guide to london.
UPDATE 2/29/08: another great review at view london.

firebrand: the best commercials

i have a soft spot in my heart for excellent commercials. i found firebrand.com today, a site that aggregates wonderful commercials from around the world. i browsed around and found the following brilliant commercial. i love it:



i'm actually seriously thinking about getting a smart car in the future, if i need a car. this ad made me feel that choosing a smart car would be a safe decision.

the juno soundtrack

the juno soundtrack is fantastic. i will post the whole thing at some point, but here's the first track. love it. i haven't felt this stoked about a soundtrack since pulp fiction. you have a favorite movie soundtrack? let me know.

cnn disgusts me

today we went and saw some of the super tuesday election results (go hillary!) at a group gathering on the berkeley campus. the organizers had put cnn up on the screen. after an hour i was about ready to throw up all over wolf blitzer.

why?

well, are we mice or .. er ... people? mice want cheese. that's what cnn gave. they'd give you a nibble of new york, then a nibble of georgia (but not a peach!), then a nibble of another state. but no aggregation! none! eventually we pulled out a piece of paper, and started writing down the candidate names and the states, and the associated percentages, to get our own aggregate sense. very much like the graphic on the nytimes.com homepage (or for that matter the cnn page):


when did tv viewers become so illiterate that we aren't allowed to have the global picture?

all that wolf blitzer had, amusingly, was his reference to huckabee as a "burgundy" (the color of the red on the map). that got a good laugh -- i wish someone would call me a burgundy, that most refined pinot.

this song, from the juno soundtrack, seems quite appropriate for cnn:

babysitting fun

today i babysat my cousin's son. despite being two, he was not terrible. in fact, he was pleasant. that is, until he started grooving to my daft punk but refused to dance with me. hope you enjoy his alternative dance partner suggestion, shown in the video below:



also, while babysitting i constructed some situations which amused me to no end. below you'll see alien vs predator :)

and here's alien vs predator requiem:

aimee mann: "different"

i love how she says "different" at 0:50ish in this song. listen below.



sends chills through me. sounds and scents! i promise a post on that very topic soon. i was smelling my forearm and realized i had so much to say about *that*

boston trip soundtrack

i cannot sleep on planes. so i took this time to go through my ipod, which i hadn't done in quite a while. i compiled a list of songs that reflect my mood and musical taste (that's right, i love prince). i wanted to share this playlist with people, and this desire eventually landed me on this site which reviewed blog playlist embedding.

the author recommended imeem, which i used. it was still not easy! this could be way easier. but perhaps "they" don't want people making these playlists? anyway, listen to some of it below while it's available.

oh, and i put in the sitting meditation track i followed while on the plane. it's long but nice to follow if you have time. i don't expect many people will listen to that!



Link to standalone player

raja, my beautiful black cat

lately, a number of people have been surprised that i have a cat, raja. now, i keep a picture of him in my bag, have him on my thoughts often, but i guess i don't really talk much about him.

so, i wanted to rectify that, at least a little, by featuring him here. isn't he cute?

then i found this video of raja getting angry at me. the anger is very very rare, i assure you! the most disturbing thing in this video, in my mind, is my disembodied, bony hand. am i really that death-like?



wouldn't you hiss at such a hand?

despite his hiss, he loves guests and would be happy to have you over for tea and treats.

postsecret interview online

as promised, here's the link to my full interview with frank warren.

you can find the "secrets" issue this is part of here.

one fun article is:

Tampons and Taboos
Hsiao-Yun Chu

quotes from "my name is red" by orhan pamuk

i could not describe red any better:
"My dear master, explain red to somebody who has never known red."

"If we touched it with the tip of a finger, it would feel like something between iron and copper. If we took it into our palm, it would burn. if we tasted it, it would be full-bodied, like salted meat. If we took it between our lips, it would fill our mouths. If we smelled it, it'd have the scent of a horse. If it were a flower, it would smell like a daisy, not a red rose."

here's a description of a picture a character stumbles upon while examining a book:
"the capture and hanging of a decitful shepherd dog who presents a sheep from his flock to the she-wolf he mates with each night"

on seeing, memory and painting:
"To know is to remember that you've seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blackness."

my interview with postsecret founder frank warren

i think many of you have seen postsecret, a site where people send anonymous postcards to an artist revealing deep secrets and he posts them online. i had a chance to interview the site "curator" frank warren recently for ambidextrous, the stanford design magazine. i'll post a link to the online content of the issue (the theme is "secrets") when it becomes available.

but my interview is available now in pdf format. here's a quote to entice you:

omar: Can some abstract secrets just not be doctored onto a postcard?

frank: I think that the postcard format creates limitations but also wonderful opportunities… A postcard is usually six inches by four inches. It’s a very finite amount of space to express your secret on. Because of that, you can’t waste any words. Each word has to really pull something out of your heart that exposes what you’re trying to share. I really think, in every case, each one of those postcards in its own way is incomplete. It’s imperfect. Because of that, it allows you, the viewer, to draw upon your own experiences, values, hopes, desires, and fears to interpret the secret you’re reading in a way that makes sense to you—to complete the story in a way that doesn’t just show you something more about somebody you haven’t met on the planet, but can also invite you, the viewer, to discover something new in yourself by projecting on somebody else’s postcard … (pdf)

i'm going to write more about the topic of form and content in another post. my ideas have been percolating. stay tuned!

plastic bags: why so bad?

after reading that australia plans to phase out plastic bags by the end of 2008, and a multitude of other anti-plastic bag initiatives (like here in san francisco), i decided to do some research: why are plastic bags so bad?

the answers didn't completely surprise me. the main problem with plastic bags is likely the negative impacts if they are disposed of incorrectly (essentially a human behavioral failing) -- and that might be surprising to you!

ok, so we want to analyze the life cycle of plastic bags. let's compare plastic bags to paper bags, which is often what people do. here are a few things to consider:

• energy to create, and environmental impact of creation: plastic wins. plastic bags are a derivative of the oil refining process, whereas paper bags are made of trees, and sometimes from forests that are not sustainably harvested
• transportation energy: comparing the bags by carrying capacity, it'd take about 7 trucks of paper bags to transport the equivalent of 1 truck of plastic bags: plastic wins
• disposal: this is the kicker
• effects on natural environment: plastic bags, if not disposed of properly, can harm wildlife when ingested. paper bags don't have this problem
  
• effects on built environment: plastic bags can clog drains and have caused floods in numerous places. you, like me, likely see the plastic bags swirling around everywhere as a blight on our environment
• garbage dumps: plastic might win here. from what i've read, neither paper bags nor plastic bags do much decomposing in land fills, and since plastic bags are quite compressible, they actually don't take up that much space. BUT, a lot more plastic bags end up at the landfill than paper.. which leads to:
  
• recycling: generally people are far more likely to recycle paper bags than plastic bags. the plastic bag disposal programs are typically cumbersome (isn't it annoying to take that plastic bag back to the store!) and hence not utilized by individuals

in fact, on this recycling point i want to show you a figure from a relatively old study that, while the numbers may not be right, does a good job of conveying the importance of recycling in deciding if plastic bags beat paper:


Table 1 - Choice table. Determines bag preference at varying recycling rates. Either was used when the difference between energy efficiencies are inconsequential. (from Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment: Paper vs Plastic Bags)

now, we should also note that governments and stores banning plastic bags aren't in love with paper, but instead are also trying to get out the message that paper vs plastic is a false dichotomy:
- what about reduction: using neither, instead using your own bag
- what about reuse of paper and plastic bags?
- what about alternatives: biodegradable plastics?

my overall conclusion is that we wouldn't be very concerned about plastic bags if people properly dealt with them. that's why i think biodegradable plastic and programs that make it easier to recycle plastic bags are important (like new york is doing). you could just ban them, but then you have to think about what is filling the void. of course, getting people to use their own cloth bag would be fantastic -- but causing that kind of behavior change, namely getting people to have the cloth bag around right when they need it, is likely quite difficult.

here are the resources (they are few, sorry only have so much time!) i examined:

• The Environment Literacy Council: Paper or Plastic?
• Plastic Shopping Bags in Australia: National Plastic Bags Working Group Report to the National Packaging Covenant Council
• Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment: Paper vs Plastic Bags
• How Do You Say "Plastic Bag" in Australian?

Google Queries:
[what's wrong with plastic bags]
[environmental impact plastic bags]

Cooking in Toronto

while in toronto, i decided that i needed to become a better cook of indian food. so i enlisted my dad and mom to show me the ropes. i prepared three dishes: chick peas, lentils (soft), and mixed rice. it was quite an ordeal! but i learned a lot by trying to keep track of my dad's intuitive movements, and the choice of spices. i'll post recipes one of these days, but i just wanted to post some pictures up here as well.

here are all the spices that we used:



the wine was stricly consumed to keep me sane during the process:

glamor shot with me and the food:

another one

and here are the happy people eating the good food:

omar, circa grade 1

while digging through old boxes at my parents' home, i found this classic depiction of the four season by your's truly, circa grade 1. notice my lack of drawing talent. and what exactly is fall? a green circle? notice that the missing season, summer, is really "yellow" to me.

i've also interpreted what i meant in the final paragraph. it says: "i like fall because i can jop in the leaves" where "jop" i believe equals "jump." anyway, a fun stroll down memory lane.

i sewed on a button

woohoo i sewed on a button. i haven't sewn in a very long time, mainly because (1) it was so traumatic when i took home ec back in grade school and (2) i haven't really had the need. yes, in grades 6-8, i took unified arts, a class divided into 3 sections: woodworking, arts and crafts, and home economics. i loved woodworking and arts and crafts (well, "love" might be a strong word for arts and crafts) but i loathed home economics. the teacher, ms. donovan, had some pretty strange rules, like no salt *AT ALL* in any dish. if the recipe called for salt, you'd skip it. we produced some bland, bland dishes.

the home ec final sewing project required us to sew a complicated pattern and create something wonderful. being into basketball at the time, i chose to sew a plush basketball. it was supposed to turn out something like this:



but instead it turned out looking more like a deformed pumpkin. i think ms donovan, with her sense of humor, told me that it was the most original plush basketball she had ever seen. i tried to find it in my parents' house so i could share with you, dear reader. but alas, it seems to have bounced off (or maybe it was mistakenly carved).

ANYWAY, sewing. so i needed to sew a button on a jacket. what did i do? i went to my good friend youtube and found this video:



it was exactly what i needed. my button is back in service.

Audio of "This Is Just to Say"

for those of you that like to hear poetry, here's "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams (posted previously), read by the author himself.

sick but with poetry

i am sick. but i have poetry. i've been reading a new anthology i purchased recently. many of the poems have really moved me, but i'll start out with some humor:

This Is Just to Say, by William Carlos Williams (1934)

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
--

and in the same anthology the editor posts a poem in response:

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams, by Kenneth Koch (1962)

1

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2

We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

british hoodlums, 1892

search for british hoodlum on google and look at the first result (i know this result will change.. but here's how it is circa dec 18,2007). what rubbish! the nytimes' historic content is jumping to the top, riding the nytimes pagerank, but it's quite irrelevant.

that being said, the result, an article from 1892 on cheerful british hoodlums savagely beating innocent moslem's in liverpool is an interesting, if sad, historic read. i never really thought about the muslim population in england in the 19th century. that must've been tough (well, the article shows that clearly it was). anyway, here's one quote:

The matter has been reported to the police authorities here and also to the Ottoman Embassy in London. The representatives of the latter have expressed great indignation that the unoffending Moslems in Liverpool should be subjected to such savagery, and it is hoped that the brutal fellows who have perpetrated these outrages will be apprehended and meet with the punishment they so richly deserve.

woo. that's a sentence! you'll not see something like that in today's new york times.

if you drink only one beer this winter..

have it be the anderson valley winer solstice. it is like drinking a creamy cheese, in a good way. the bitterness is very mild, which is how i like it. we found this brew at toranado's, but you can buy it at bevmo.

do what you want. ask why later. or don't

as i told grant: "ok i'm just going to post my lame meta post that's me reflecting on the post i won't post." so here:

do you ever destroy things when you start to think why?

i had written this post on a fun memory i have about dancing. pure fun, a fond thing to look back to..

but then i dig and dig and dig and things pop out and suddenly i'm like, wait, maybe this memory isn't so perfect. stop asking why omar, just enjoy....?

and i do the same thing with things i plan to do.. "so why do you want to do this event omar? what if X, what if Y, what if ..?"

dear god if i could just switch that off, occasionally (and no, don't tell me to drink, that's not what i'm saying!) what fun it might be. oh but look i'm questioning already bah bah bah

ridiculous photos

i had to give a presentation recently, and we were told to dress to impress. so i put on a sweater with horizontal stripes that widened me out, and put that on top of a pretty yellow dress shirt. then i looked ridiculous for some photos:

the power of a scent

i cannot get enough of this book, my name is red (see my previous post). in the chapter i just read a gossip-monger discusses the finer points of interpreting a letter between former lovers that, at least in written form, suggests the man should stop visiting the woman's father's home (she writes "It'd be best if you stopped coming to our house completely.")

the gossip-monger, illiterate but attuned to social ways, then discusses the finer analysis of letters. she writes many points, but here is the one that stuck with me:

Furthermore, the smell of the letter confirms [the love letter] interpretation. The fragrance was faint enough to be ambiguous -- did she intentionally perfume the letter?--yet alluring enough to fire readers' curiosity--is this the aroma of attar or the smell of her hand? And a fragrance, which was enough to enrapture the poor man who read the letter to me, will surely have the same effect on Black [the former lover].

many years ago (again i excavate, deep into my memories) a friend gave me a book that she had spilled COPIOUS amounts of perfume on. she apologized profusely. but what a treat to return to that book months and years after and still have the smell and associated memories. my brain is a smell-memory powerhouse. i remember how disappointed i was when perhaps 7 years after the perfume spill the book had finally no trace of the scent. sometimes i smell the scent again, when i wander, and it always puts me right back to those playful days.

imagination, the beautiful danger

many, many years ago i had a crush. oh to have a crush. to imagine the other, so perfect and wonderful. sometimes i think i should really love my imagination more than anything or anyone, because it can play such tricks with me, and i do love a good trick. in this case, i met this person again, years after the crush had faded, and all i could wonder was "what were you thinking, imaginative omar?" likely this has happened to you too!

but at the time, what a soothing balm. i remember a crush once got me through a boring, lazy summer at the cottage (along with drivel about elves by terry brooks). i'm coming around to the feeling that a crush, or strange inflation, is a carrot my imagination dangles in front of me, and i leap and grab and almost have my arms around the crush, to crush its foolishness, when my imaginations pulls up, and i fall back into the water, to come around for a yet higher leap, thrashing and looking increasingly comical, a fish out of water. so then, imagination, to what end do you employ this carrot?

orhan pamuk, a wonderful writer, gives me a hint in his book "my name is red":

[Shekure's face] was thin, though her chin was longer than what I remembered. So, then the mouth of my beloved was surely smaller and narrower than I imagined it to be. For a dozen years, as I ventured from city to city, I'd widened Shekure's mouth out of desire and had imagined her lips to be more pert, fleshy and irresistible, like a large, shiny cherry.

Had I taken Shekure's portrait with me, rendered in the style of the Venetian masters, I wouldn't have felt such loss during my long travels when I could scarcely remember my beloved, whose face I'd left somewhere behind me. For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.

here is a graph giving my own interpretation of this passage (using the google charts API!):

the red X denotes the sweet spot. that's where you want to let reality take over. in the novel, perhaps that's when the character needed a portrait, and not his imagination. the odd thing is that a portrait, if sufficiently real, can halt a person, in the viewer's eyes, and then be its own bag of worms.

ok. of course i'm being a bit facetious with the graph. i just wish i had a better check on my imagination and its wily ways. you think i should be able to control it -- but you don't know it personally, now do you?

ps my friend lara has a great post on crushes that you keep in your back pocket. check it out, though i warn you that the color scheme is not for the faint-hearted.

driving tired

yesterday was the google holiday party. it was actually decently sized, not like oversize-06, and i ran into a number of people i knew and hadn't seen in some time. that was nice.

but. i was also the designated driver back up to san francisco. that was just plain scary for the last 5 minutes or so. i was far too tired. i told myself i would never drive when i'm that tired but i did, which was pretty dumb. it's that tiredness where you're dozing off for just a few moments. but those few moments can be so dangerous. luckily it was only right at the end-- i slapped myself a few times, and continued on.



when i drove to montreal a few times the same thing would happen to me near the end. what complete torture. when that started, i went on red bull, and i will swear by that stuff for distance driving. i don't drink energy drinks otherwise.. i don't want to become immune to their powers. i remember my mind going a mile a minute and my pulse racing. hmm, that doesn't sound healthy, but i made it to montreal, in the rain and snow and drudgery of fall and winter.

a good laugh

gosh my posts lately have been too serious. to lighten the mood: i'm doing some work on climate change response on the berkeley campus. this new yorker cartoon made me smile:

locked-in syndrome

i am a somewhat claustrophobic person. plus i've been a bit distressed by recent developments in my life. while riding on the bart, these two things caught up with me quite alarmingly. i almost threw up and had to get off the subway for fear of being enclosed in the car. what prompted this was the following review, from a recent issue of the new yorker:

[The Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”] is about an unlucky man—Jean-Dominique Bauby, the real-life editor of French Elle, who, in 1995, at the age of forty-three, suffered a massive stroke. Lying speechless and outraged in a hospital near Calais, a victim of “locked-in syndrome,” Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) was restored to full mental clarity but could move nothing but his left eye. Yet Schnabel’s movie, based on the calm and exquisite little book that Bauby wrote in the hospital, is a gloriously unlocked experience, with some of the freest and most creative uses of the camera and some of the most daring, cruel, and heartbreaking emotional explorations that have appeared in recent movies.

At first, we see only what Bauby sees—a blur of faces floating into view in fearsome closeup, like deep-sea monsters. Consciousness arrives: the blurs solidify into clear images of doctors and nurses and the surprisingly beautiful décor of Bauby’s cell—a turquoise-colored hospital room, with a curtain flapping in the breeze. Bauby’s Cyclopean gaze swings wildly from one place to another, and visitors, embarrassed and grief-stricken, pass in and out of his vision, which operates as a kind of microscope peering into the soul of whoever comes into its view. The doctors offer diagnoses and reassurances; Bauby is caressed, shoved, lifted, held, deposited, and washed with hands both rough and gentle, and, through all this, we hear his thoughts on the soundtrack—baffled and angry at first, then bitter (he faintly enjoys the black comedy of his situation), and, finally, soulful and eloquent. Ronald Harwood, adapting the text, has made Bauby’s complex internal life fully expressive, and Schnabel fleshes out brief descriptions of therapists and visitors into major psychological portraits. The movie, which was shot by the great Janusz Kaminski (Spielberg’s cinematographer), more than fulfills the promise of the sultry early scenes in Schnabel’s previous picture, “Before Night Falls.” Bauby’s book is concise and lyrical; the film is expansive and sensual, pungent and funny—a much larger experience. The impossible subject has yielded a feast of moviemaking.

and on it goes. find the whole article here. hopefully it doesn't have such a strong impact on you (luckily i doubt you'll be reading this inside a subway car in a dark station). i still haven't decided on whether i'll see the movie or not.

egocentric + other

last night, when i was all down on the bad stuff cropping up as the evening wore on, i decided to put together some of my favorites photos of.. me! somehow being self-focused was very calming. so i put together this slideshow of egocentric + other. meaning not just me. anyway i got a smile from this.

bike seat stolen, frustration mounting

sigh. i was looking forward to riding my bike, i step up to it, and there's no seat!

now, i should've expected this would happen, but i'm new to city biking. i had been parking my bike in a visible place near the bart, and not in the bart, as when i got to 24th and mission in the morning all the spots inside were usually full. and i hate taking my bike to berkeley.

but today my luck ran out. seat gone.

on the plus side, a wonderfully nice guy came outside, noticed that my seat was gone, and started talking to me about my loss, and what i can do in the future. namely, he showed me his pike, and the pinhead components he uses to lock all the bike parts that are attached to your frame. pinhead locks, for instance, attach your seat to your frame with a mechanism that has only 1 key, and cannot be readily removed. learn more here.

so tomorrow (or someday soon) i'm going to go and get a new seat and get pinhead components to secure it to my frame. woo!

ps i was going to include a picture of sad omar with his seatless bike i just learned that my camera's battery is dead. the night gets better and better!

pps it just did! i went to load picasa so i could find a stock 'omar sad' image (i'm loaded with those) and i got the error "The application failed to initialize properly. (0xc0000005). Click on OK to terminate the application." argh!

ppps: UPDATE this was not in the original post, but i had to add it. i was about to go to bed when someone i've invested with messaged me to tell me about a potentially large, difficult issue with the business. you know what they say: when it rains, it pores. good night!

i hate capital one (but not enough to call)

capital one is doing this ingeniously fiendish thing: they upgraded my card recently to some new rewards card and sent me lots of information about the card, in the mail. but now they are calling me to tell me about it.

imagine getting such a call from a real person. you'd be pretty pissed. but, they don't use a real person, they use an automated voice. if you're interested, you can press numbers and learn more and likely finally end up at a person. but who wants to wait when all you want to do is scream at them and tell them not to do this?

so instead, i just hang up. angry. but not as angry as if it were a human. and i think i heard more than i would've heard had it been a human (if it were a human i'd just get really angry and stop listening).

so good work capital one. bastards.

sadness on the 101

today while driving down on the 101 i was listening to npr. at first, the california report mentioned the sf bay oil spill, and all the sick birds and destruction. this made me really teary eyed. then, in a separate segment, they spoke with women who had returned from serving in iraq. at one point they talked with a mother and her children, who essentially indicated that the mother had become more detached and distant. she had missed her son change during puberty. this made me even more sad. i got all teary eyed, doubly so.

i don't usually break up so easily. maybe it was the early morning drive. but i was so sad.

now i'm in vegas, contemplating gambling these worries away. but sleep might win out over gambling.

morning bikerides

lately i've been waking up early and riding around the neighborhood. biking casually. upright, decidedly slowing myself down as the wind batters my slim body and my ears cool in the morning dew.

anyway, today i rode around the bernal area just south of caesar chavez, in san francisco. well, i also ended up in soma, but my pics are largely from bernal:



how invigorating, this ride in the morning. i've felt lost lately, and the morning rides make me feel found, somewhat.

janus at the de young

last night we went to the de young for their weekly friday night party. while browsing the collection, we came upon a wonderful depiction of janus, the roman god of beginnings and endings. above you see one face of janus. in this depiction, it's an outward face. now below, i give you the profile, and then the "back"


this work really resonated with me because it got me thinking about how we're all, in a way, two-faced, or perhaps of multiple minds. not necessarily in a bad way. i recall reading about people who would lose control of one of their hands, or say things aloud that they thought they didn't mean. the author of the book (i can't remember which book it was) discussed how certain centers of our brain seem to win out over other centers -- like when you reflexively react to something but then restrain yourself almost immediately upon receiving further information. the two janus faces got me thinking that the thoughts we inhibit subconsciously, and consciously, might be far more complicated than a reflex, but rather an entire train of thought that is suppressed, for some reason. there is a face to that thought. the encasing of the head on one side in this depiction emphasizes this enclosure, and the interior mirror helps us see what is inside there, as it's usually obscured.

making eggs with george and fred

a story about making eggs. clearly i'm on an egg kick, i dunno why! hope you enjoy it:

"Now give me your nose and smell this," George told Fred.

Fred plopped his nose into George's greens-filled hand, inhaled and exclaimed, "Ahh wonderful! That is life!"

"No, that is thyme, an herb," remarked George matter-of-factly and continued, "Thyme brings life to omelets in particular. That horrid thing you made the other day with peppers and onions and ham and tomatoes and God knows what other added abominations -- all you needed was thyme and cheese -- one tenth the cost, one thousand times the taste."

Fred frowned. George was mounting his high horse. How high would he go today?

"And your omelet was all mushed and battered -- like it had been to war and returned, gnarled and featureless. Thyme plus grated cheese plus technique -- that's what you need."

"Tell me more," Fred replied, somewhat mockingly.

"I will!" retorted George. "Fred, give me your hand."

Fred gave George his hand. George proceeded to move it side to side, in gentle contours, with slight flourishes at the end of the curves. "Do you know what your hand is capable of?" George began. "Such subtle motions. Such grace. Now, you use it like a seal's flipper -- arf arf arf arf arf! You are a seal when you take a kitchen item in your hand. Or a masturbator -- all you have is one gross motion. Disgusting. The omelet is dead to me before it enteres my mouth -- how can i enjoy the food created by a seal who masterbates with his kitchen tools?"

"Arf arf arf," replied Fred.

George looked stern. "Ha ha, very funny. Well George, my mission, this very day, is to turn you into a dolphin. This day i will make you smarter than a seal but not give you hands."

"Arf, arf!" mocked Fred.

George ignored him. "Then I will make you into a baboon. Big movements, like beating meat, tenderizing, done right. Then, on the third day, I will make you human. You will flip an omelet with grace and I will scream in joy as the thyme and cheese hit my tongue." George smacked his lips and, with purpose in his eyes, said, "Now let us begin."

George hurried away, with Fred arfing behind him.

watch my feet

sasha frere-jones, the pop music critic for the new yorker, showed this amazing video at his talk. it's a style of fast footwork that has come out of the chicago area. watch their feet!



click to see what frere-jones writes about dude 'n nem, the duo behind the video.

bring back the classics

today we saw alex ross, the new yorker music critic, give a talk titled "the rest is noise." it's about 20th century classical music, it's progression, the history of the 20th century seen from that purview. anyway, a boring talk, he is not a compelling speaker, but he chooses good music. anyway, they gave us a copy of his book (by the same title get it at amazon today!) and i started reading and got thinking...

so, sure, classical music isn't widely cherished today. but i also think it has a publicity problem. i can go and find out when and where daft punk is playing quite easily -- myspace! so my first thought was: why doesn't bach have a myspace page? well, it turns out he does! but it's not what i'd do with it. consider this profile quote:

I was born in Eisenach, Germany on March 21, 1685. I had a tough life. By the age of 10 i was an orphan and had to move in with my brother, who was an organist. From there i was exposed to the music scene. At 14 i was given a scholarship to a choral school and my career in music had begun. From there i worked for duke William Ernst, but after almost ten years decided to move on. Ya know, i was married, had a family, i needed more money to support them.

oh bach i know! life is hard!

then i started browsing around for other popular, dead composers. i found two interesting profiles for mozart:
- wolfy as an over the top character
- "little known" people who perform mozart

neither is what i want! i want to be able to go to one page, and see all the mozart performances coming up. sure, that might be a daunting thing to sift through. ok, make it filterable.

more interesting, myspace is predicated around privileging the performer, not the composer. the songwriter barely gets a mention if it's not the performer. but, when we think classical music, we immediately think the composer, not the performers. the general audience is happy to substitute the san francisco symphony for the new york philharmonic. now, i'm not good enough to be shocked at the magnitude of such a switch -- anyone who's anyone in classical music likely understands the subtleties that arise depending on who's performing. but on a mozart myspace page, i expect to have access to recordings by all the major symphonies as well as my high school band! wouldn't it be great if you could listen to a world class band play mozart and then hear a small band's recent rendition of a classic like eine kleine nacht musik

this has got me wondering how labels manage bands that have died. do they just not have updated myspace pages? or do they live on?

anyway for anyone who wants to waste time, true myspace pages for the classical composers -- that's what i'm looking for :)

girl talk

neha introduced me to girl talk, a dj who cuts up all kinds of well known songs and puts them together in a brilliant way. wikipedia says:

He specializes in sample-based remixes where he uses at least a dozen elements from different songs to create a "new" song.

he's in sf this weekend (sold out) but also in berkeley on monday doing a free show. and if you can't make the events, at least check out the music:

i'll never forget

last week at my writing class one of our prompts was to use the sentence "i'll never forget" or the sentence "i'll remember" whenever we wanted or we got stuck. it produced a lot of dark pieces. here's mine:

i'll never forget her distance eyes after the third glass, always after the third glass. in happier times the green in her irises would tint a bit gray, she'd smile and look at nothing in particular. it was only later that i learned the distance eyes prefaced the breakdown.

i'll never forget that first time she hit me. a beast came back from her distant eyes and her nails ripped out some of my arm, a scar there now. i love her, still, though she's gone.

i'll never forget how it ended. did i give up, or did she? i always rationalized her drinking and violence as addiction, impulse. she would tell me about her lack of self-control, how she couldn't help herself.

did i become cynical? her hand reaching for a glass -- is that impulse? pouring the too full drink, bringing it to her mouth, repeating not once, not twice but three too full glasses -- is that impulse? that would all take minutes, not seconds -- seconds are impulses, minutes are conscious decisions.

i'll never forget when i told her that she was weak and uncaring -- not sick and in need of help. she had just hit me. was my outburst an impulse? i remember saying sorry, saying i had lost control -- how disgusted i was with myself. i wasn't sorry, it was conscious.

and now i sit here disgusted with that memory -- that i would not stand up for myself, nor care for her or believe that she needed it.

i'll never forget her distant eyes after the third glass. i'm so broken -- i love her and love myself and these will never fit.

omelets and feet

niniane and i made breakfast today. i wanted to get good at making omelets, so i followed a video i found online (videos for cooking techniques are so great!). here's the video, it's short, and the guy in it is kinda funny looking (why is he wearing his shirt that open? and that apron!) but he does a great job explaining the key steps in the omelet production process:



the one thing i couldn't get was the flip. like with riding a bike, it's hard to explain, even in a video -- some things you just gotta do. twice i half flipped my omelet, wrecking its beauty at the very end. but i love the flipping motion and later tried to put raja in a big box with a handle so i could flip him. he was not happy. anyway, niniane said my thyme and cheddar omelet was great, and i concur -- certainly the best omelet i have ever made.

as with all meandering niniane-omar conversations, we somehow arrived at my distaste for food near feet. i've discussed feet on this blog before, and now would like to say how crazy i get when i see feet near food. there's just something so incongruous with this alignment. for me, it's like nails on a chalkboard. i want to rescue the food, but at the same time toss it, because if it's been that close to feet, something just ain't right.

so in response

niniane tells me about dan savage's discussion a few years ago concerning bonzai restaurant in seattle, where you could eat sushi off naked women. the protests around the objectification of women only lead more people to frequent the restaurant. savage, who thinks protesting the restaurant was ridiculous (i agree), writes this at the end of the article:

If Bonzai did anything wrong, FFFT, it was not using boys as plates at the same time it was using girls as plates. That's why The Stranger will be hosting Naked Doughnuts, a special happy-hour event at Bonzai this Friday night at 6:00 p.m. Two good-looking guys will be laid out on the bar and covered with Top Pot doughnuts. Bonzai Asian Pub & Bistro is at 704 First Avenue. Ogle the boys, eat the donuts, fuck the clenchbutts.

this discussion lead to a point of clarification. it's not that i'm against bodies caressing food, it's just feet and food! i think it'd be fascinating to take some rice and put it on a naked body that's clean but starting to sweat, just to taste the salty flavor imbued in the rice (now that you think i'm gross/nuts pontificate for a moment on all the wonderfully crazy things you think are interesting.. one.. two.. three.. ok let's resume). but keep that rice away from the feet, no matter how clean!

about last night

this is from my writing class. the prompt was "about last night." i read this aloud, but it's so much easier to understand with italics representing one individual.

[beep vibrate. cell phone is answered]

so.. about last night.
uh, yeah?
well, i was sorta, you know... it wasn't anything.
oh, er, yeah me too. i didn't think.. uh..
yeah, thinking, god! where did that go?
seriously, if my brain is ice, i was melted.
er.. yeah melted. i see that, like slush and dirt. woh, dirty!
yeah and no shovel, er.. yeah
so.. um. about last night.
uh, yeah?
well, ok, maybe i meant some of it.
really? well.. um..
yeah so i was more ice, less slush
oh
yeah
well ... ok...
so do you want to...
oh wait i have another call.

[click]

my indian shirts

what will i do next? if the midge mating rituals weren't enough for you, then welcome to the 'omar wears bad indian shirts' show. in india, i kind of got carried away with the clothing prices, and the styles, and bought far too many custom tailored shirts. they fit.. well, like they should if i were in india.

below are three shirts that, in retrospect, as i cleansed the closet, will never see the light of day on me. only the light of this blog. goodwilling, they'll find a home.

you can see the dumbfounded look on my face above. and this was perhaps the least horrible shirt.

looking at this pink shirt picture now, i see hints of my father. it scares me.

and this is by far the ... well, you be the judge.

The Magnificient Midge

"Both male and female Chironomidae [nonbiting midges] have mouths but will never use them, for the adults live only to breed. They have stored enough food in their bodies from their larval days to fuel the furious beating of their wings."

The male midge's "rapid [wing] motion raises their body temperature and may make them more potent. Females, lurking nearby in the grass or bushes, dart into the swarm once the males have become irresistible to them."



"Marissa, I'm not going to be able to resist much longer -- look at Walter's wings!"

Marg the midge, perched atop a blade of grass, admired the rhythmic dance of the male midges in the adjacent field. Her friend, Marissa the midge, hovered lower, unconvinced by the dance.

"Every night you fixate on Walter. How many flaws must I point out? Look at his metathorax -- I tell you he still eats, even to this day! No midge is that fat!"

But Marg could not stop swooning. "Think about our kids. His powerful wings, my lithe hind legs, they'd be the most attractive larvae."

Marissa hovered, unconvinced. She spun and looked up. "Wait Marg, wait. Check out Andre."

Andre flew into view above them. His wingers weren't as fast as Walter's; nor his metathorax as large. But Marg could not deny that he was something special. Andre was not rotating horizontally on the fourth wing beat like every other midge -- instead, he rotated vertically, showing off his glistening spiracles. When Andre's head faced Marg and Marissa he winked and caressed his mesothorax with his forelegs. Marg wondered what Andre's forelegs would feel like on her mesothorax.

should this be secret?

there's a joy to discovering something about someone, long after you've known them. another fold, a direction you didn't expect but appreciate. i remember reading in some old fart magazine an oldie complaining that the embrace of the online world had diminished this wonderful process -- now you can just read someone's blog, google them. as usual, the oldie is wrong. there's always something more than in the posting, the search results.

multiple people have been aghast that i've been revealing this yet-to-be-blog-revealed (but shortly) new fascination i have. they've said things like "i'm not sure i'd share that with anyone i know" or "don't you think people might think about you differently?" well, of course they will! that's what information can do.

so now.

you want to know.

well, first i think it would help if you watched the following video:



i am a huge fan of high school musical. sure, ostensibly it's for teens, but i think i know why i like it. i've always sort of liked indian movies -- i grew up with them playing around me from time to time, and even though i couldn't really connect with the culture evinced by those glittering bollywood gods, the tunes were catchy. they still are:



high school musical is like an indian movie for western kids. and adults who always wanted a better connection between indian movies and their lives. and why am i sharing? i think high school musical is a wonderful, just-plain-fun movie. with catchy tunes. the story isn't groundbreaking, the songs aren't either. but when those kids burst into song, and the scripted tension builds, yes, i'm a sucker. give it a chance, you will be too. high school musical 2: i will see you soon.

feelin fake in sf?

neha has told me that sf feels so fake. i'm not sure what this means, and i don't think she knows either. but i do know that we were at a startup party last night, and man a lot of those people are drinking the funny punch. as one more sober individual put it: "we don't talk about the failures here." and yet so many fail!

amazingly, you can be a serial failure in startup land and still get funding, over and over. that's great because incubating the right ideas and executing effectively takes people with brains, experience, luck of course.. failure can be good. but then this got me feeling so disappointed about the art scene and its funding. artists, in a way, are entrepreneurs who just don't have access to the funding that tech startup people do. it's so sad! because virtually no one appreciates a failed startup but every piece of art, i think, has an audience. yes, every piece! you know where i'm going here so i'll stop now and go fund an artist.

oh ho ho it's magic

i love this song

ou est la bibliotheque?

ah flight of the conchords. what a ridiculous tv show. two friends move to nyc from new zealand, looking to find success for their quirky comedy band. the show follows their hopeless exploits with women and the band.

every show has two musical sets (at least). in the most recent episode there's a song done mostly in french -- it's great because it's literally grade 3 or grade 4 french, so anyone with a smidge of french can appreciate it. and even if you don't speak french, it's still pretty funny!

parlez-vous le francais?

another something written

one of the prompts last week was a page of onomatopoeia words (words like clang, hiss, boom, ...)

here's what i wrote. i'm working on the granny character:

there is a loud clang against the fence. everyone looks up from their activity: the women stop gossiping; the men lift mouths from their scotch; the kids cease rolling around in the grass; even the whole chicken roasting on the spit seems to do a double take and perk up towards the noise.

on the other side of the fence stands a formidable granny. in her right hand, a large shovel, rusted end -- almost red, as if she's used it to bludgeon, one too many times. in her left hand, a readers digest, large-print. she has everyone's attention. clang! clang! clang! she runs the shovel along the fence for good measure.

"good!" she shrieks, "now you're well interrupted, like you interrupted me!"

the women shuffle. some of the men mutter -- but immediately hush with one stare from the granny, who points the death shovel at them. the children are quiet. somehow, the fire has gone out under the chicken.

"mr and mrs neighbor, a word please."

the hosts of the bbq shuffle to the fence, their friends looking on as if a death sentence is about to be handed down. judge granny presides, and in her court all are guilty.

"why, mr and mrs neighbor, on sunday, god's day, do i hear a gaggle of geese in my yard?"

"uh, geese.. hmm?" mr neighbor replies.

"you buffoon you are the goose, this is your gaggle. do you know, mr neighbor, that i have killed geese with this very shovel?"

a yelp emanates from the children. "mommy, i'm scared. i peed my pants."

"deal with that child, mrs neighbor," granny spits.

mrs neighbor hustles to the child. granny turns, twirling the heavy shovel in one hand. clang! she bangs it against the fence. everyone jumps.

"mr neighbor, i will resume my reading now. if i hear your gaggle again, it will be you with a mess in your pants, be assured."