Antisocial Media

Congratulations to Paul and Ali! Paul casually let slip that he and Ali have officially engaged each other! They got their ring back from Burnie's Rock Shop on Wednesday, and that was that! OOf--three exclamation points in a row...I gotta slow down. In other happy news, David and Michana, my great friend Alex's folks, have engaged as well after a 19 year courtship. Here's the photo Dad sent me of the article from the paper (easier than clipping it out and mailing it, he says; what kind of crazy world-of-the-future is this?!?): I'm very happy for both of these couples, and nice to see Al get a little pub, too.

I'm not scared of earthquakes, just interested. And secretly excited. Also, what's the Cleveland Steamer again?

I ran into this item over at BoingBoing , and I died. From laughter. I've sent my spirit, my anima, back to earth to post a link to this, that my friends and colleagues may also perish from hilarity and join me in the Land of Wind and Ghosts. So we can start a volleyball team. Okay, this is from Rahoi.com , from his post of March 2nd (May I Take Your Order) . A hideously translated menu couldn't be that funny, could it? Exhibit A: http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order.php Exhibit B: http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order.php I'm not trying to say I've never created hilariously bad translations with internet language dictionaries. Quite the opposite. I am, however, trying to say that things are damn funny.

Last night was a hard night. Actually, the whole day was kind of the pits, which is why we went hiking in Muir Woods. I'm a little sick of thinking about it, so here's the short version: the Balazs Committee, which is sort of in charge of Starr King's visiting Transylvanian scholarship program, decided to offer a program next year that would send an American Starr King student to Transylvania for six months to experience the life of a Taransylvanian village minister. Sarah and I applied and felt really really good about our chances. The committee met yesterday morning, and we couldn't take the tension of waiting around to hear the news so we went for a ten mile hike. We met with one of the selection committee members last night, and got the bad news: they awarded the internship to a third-year student at school. A big bummer, but it could be worse! And there may very well be a next year.

Muir Woods is where, on May 19, 1945, leaders from all around the world met to sign the charter that created The United Nations! This (in my opinion) incredible salient and significant bit of triviana is totally absent from the website I linked to below, and appears only scantingly in the official US Parks Services website . Go figure. Sign of the times, or accurate reflection of the UN's political significance? I leave it to you, gentle reader, to determine the truth.

Don't mind if I do! Sarah and took the day for a hike in beautiful Muir Woods National Monument , just a bit south of her old San Rafael stomping grounds. I don't have any Wednesday classes, and we both needed to blow off some steam. Seriously. We started in the old growth at the trailhead--really crowded for a Wednesday. We had to park in the overflow lot, and I've heard it's incredibly zooey on the weekends. For what it's worth. We were feeling saucy, so we hiked to the end of the paved main loop, and crossed a bridge over the river to the Ben Johnson trail. It was a gorgeous, slightly hazy day, but we still got a lot of sun (so cloudy and rainy the last few days--really lucky to get nice weather when we could enjoy it). When we started out, it was chilly enough for longsleeves, and we could see our breath. Steam rose off the trail and the trunks of the trees at the occasional patch of sunshine. Every cranny and gully seemed to have a stream running thro...

mattbors.com Thank you, Garrick! And expecially thank you Matt Bors , for this awesome comic!

And that earthquake last hour was weak! We didn't even feel it up here! Weak earthquakes are worse than no earthquakes at all!

Welcome to my blog. Of course, you won't see this unless you hit reload...

All my friends in California have this website linked on their bookmarks. A neat way to keep up on the latest earth-shaking action!

It's a windy, rainy, chilly, funky day, and Sarah and I are parked at The Temescal Cafe , the best coffeshop in our zone. When we got here, a trio of guitar and banjo playing women were singing and playing bluegrass songs, and the joint was crammed with people. The music was a great counterpoint to the weather, and the energy in the room was really reinvigorating. We worked at a luncheon yesterday at CDSP (Church Divinity School of the Pacific,the Episcopalian/Anglican school in the GTU), walking there and back from our house in Oakland, and watched the first two Indiana Jones movies in the evening. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was maybe the most exhausting thing we did all day--not the chill-out space-out we'd been hoping for. Just a boring, shrill, senseless, racist shell of a movie. I'd heard that the Indian gov't refused to let Spielberg and Lucas shoot on Indian soil, and after watching the terrible banquet dinner scene (Snake Surprise? Chilled Monke...

Earthquake! This one was only a 2.9. Still, three in a day...

On Saturday, consumed with cabin fever, Sarah and I went down to The Albatross , a board-games themed bar in Berkeley. It's not The Weary Traveler, but pretty great nonetheless. We sat in front of the fireplace and played Trivial Pursuit and drank Sierra Nevada and ate complimentary popcorn. Pretty idyllic. One of the questions Sarah got was "What was Adolf Hitler's favorite movie?" Her guess was Gone with the Wind, which I thought was pretty good--it was the first thought in my mind, too. The answer, though, was King Kong. Hitler's favorite movie was King Kong. It gave us both a shiver, a twisted little glimpse inside one of humanity's greatest preversions. On a happier note, Earthquake!!! The whole house just flexed and shook for a second, and everyone at home said, with one voice, "Earthquake!" Pretty cool! 11:35 am PST. Just a small one, though. Nothing fell off the shelves or anything.

Two Battle Scarred Veterans... who do you want on *your* fantasy football team?

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny looks to address the eternal issue of Mortal Kombat-style fights between ...well, whoever. In my experience, the question of who would win in a fight between... stayed in the realm of the animal world, ie: puma vs. cheetah, weight-lifting gorilla vs. black bear, grizzly bear vs. polar bear, great white shark vs. grizzly bear/puma tag team, etc. This Flash video is still pretty damn funny. Mom, you probably won't enjoy this one.

It's been a little more than a week since Sarah returned from Denver, and we are finally starting to settle back in. I picked her up at San Francisco Airport last Tuesday night, and whisked her off to Wilbur Hot Springs for a few R&R days. The waters were a little too stinky for our tastes (and very very salty--even the filtered water for showering and drinking left our pores filled with sulfur-y odors for days afterward, which was gross) and a little too hot for protracted bathing, but the lodgings were gorgeous--we stayed in the Loft Room, which you ascend spiral staircase to get to--and the communal kitchen was a great common space. The other highlight was tromping around the 1800 acres of private land around the springs. The whole area supported a pretty intense mining industry around the turn of the last century, and the land is dotted with collapsed mines and smeltery ruins, and zigzagged with old mining roads. Next time I bring a camera. The transition from such f...

Elizabeth took these great pictures and more at Joel and Stephanie's moustache party Saturday night! Total satisfaction. Oh yeah, the photos:

I feel kind of cheap biting this from the great Mark Evanier's News From ME , but it's just too much. This man, Julian Beever is a genius. Chalk and a sidewalk, and an incredible mind, hand and eye. Here's his website. It is incredibly beautiful here today--sunny, a little hazy, and such intensely refreshing cool breezes. Ahhhh. Lots of complaining on the internets about the officiating during the Super Bowl, and the usual blah blah blah about Oh, it's so boring. Whatever. It's football. In my opinion, the ratio of truly exciting, competitive Super Bowls to boring ones is about the same as for regular season games. Football games tend to have a pretty steady low state of action/interest, punctuated by moments of senses-shattering transcendence. Kind of like life. My Otis Redding Pandora station has gone all rock-and-or-roll on me: from North Mississippi AllStars to a great John Hiatt song I hadn't heard (Straight Outta Time) to John Mayer covering ...