Berkeley Bowl Poet

A guy named Zach sits outside of Berkeley Bowl (grocery store) with his manual typewriter, offering poems to passersby. His typewriter ribbon is broken so he uses white mailing labels -- The keys make readable indentations on the white sticker. I asked him to write a poem about Lily. He did:

Lily is a little
and with her
whittling of the
years and days
she will be
some kind
of wonderflower
which is
relevant
to what
happened
to the
days
May
is
a very nice place
to stay and if
it must pass
at least it
is the nursery rhyme
with a lily grown
in winter.

I know you missed me

I finished finals and have been vacationing at home. Start a new (summer) job on tuesday. Either I'll be too busy to blog, or so busy I must blog. We'll see.

Geek Alert

Confession at the end of an email to my Constitutional law professor:

I feel like Mr. Spock on Star Trek when dealing with Con Law... "But Jim, that's illogical."

Law professor's response:

What does Spock know, anyway? Ask Data. He will run it through his positronic matrix and will come up with this same conclusion.

I've Been Here. Have You?

It is a lot like Switzerland. Except that there aren't any mountains. Or Swiss chalets (unless mobile homes count). Nor is it known for its chocolate, watches, bank accounts, army knives, or neutrality. I doubt that there are any Swiss people there either. But I suppose there could be some subtle similarities I overlooked as I passed on through. Like the name.

Freeway Driving Always Makes Me Sing

I drive by this apartment building sometimes on my way to school (actually, I'm driven). I wonder who would live so very close to the freeway, with thousands of people driving by, looking in the windows. And do the tenants worry that a car might hit their home? Shaun tried to explain to me how it wasn't likely to happen, based on some physics centrifugal force theory (which I suppose the building engineers probably thought of as well) but I just see cars within a few feet of the building and I'm not convinced.

Faki Me Spanaki

This is the name of a Greek recipe for lentil soup with spinach. It amuses me.

Berkeley

I used to have an Isuzu trooper, and one day as I was getting into my truck/SUV, a young man yelled at me as he walked by "you gas guzzling, communist capitalist!!!" Although my outward response was to look him in the eye and rev the engine, inwardly, I struggled with his words - they made me think ... I was certainly a gas-guzzler, but could one be both a communist and a capitalist at the same time?

Eight-Year-Old Wisdom

Some people think you're only on top of the world if you are a king or queen, but really, everyone is on top of the world unless you're jumping in the air or flying or something.

Nice Mommy, but...

Lily this morning: My mommy is a nice mommy. (Big Sigh, shaking her head), except she won't cut the crusts off my toast.

I'm sure could use this sign somewhere...

Tourettes without Regrets

I came across a flier for the Anarchist Slam "Tourettes without Regrets" that takes place in Oakland at the beginning of each month. It includes freestyle rap battle, hardcore slam poetry, dirty haikus, and my favorite: audience contests which have included milk vomiting, organ-meat hurling, and do-it-yourself Poloroid puppet pornography. I really really want to go. Who's coming?

Memory

When I was at Berkeley, I did an unofficial (and private) survey of the bathroom facilities on campus. During my four years there, I tried to use the bathroom in each building. Some were modern and dingy, others were marbled and dingy. Modern bathrooms tended to have better grafitti - pen works better on metal stalls than marbled walls-- and of those, Dwinell Hall, where much of the English department was housed, had the most interesting grafitti - although the philosophy building was certainly in the running.

This morning when I awoke, a bathroom poem I read 15+ years ago suddenly popped into my head.

"Some come here to sit and think,
and some come here to shit and stink.
But I come here to scratch my balls
and read the writing on the walls."

After I congratulated myself upon my remarkable memory, I then wondered why the heck that little ditty has remained so long in my brain, verbatim, while if you asked me to tell you the general plot from one of the many great works of literature I read during undergrad, I'd have to get back to you after I refreshed my memory with a back-of-the-book blurb.

I'm still wondering.

My future grandchildren

Lily told me this morning that she can't wait to have babies, that she is going to have three and their names will be "Naughty," "Funny" and "Stupid Head".

Confusion

The other day, Molly asked, "Is Jesus Butthead, or is Butthead Jesus?"

Her confusion can be explained by our kitchen decor.

It doesn't look like a water spout to me...

Graffiti

This morning on BART, I saw scratched into the window sill next to my seat:

NEENER
NEENER
NEENER

Subtle, and yet straight to the point.

I can't think of a more manly way to die

A school chum of mine told me today that his great-grandfather recently died at age 85. He suffered a heart-attack while manning a jack-hammer.

I confess, and I'm not even Catholic

In criminal law this week we learned about the bystander effect via a case in which a woman was brutally stabbed to death over the course of about half an hour while at least 38 people who heard her screams did nothing. The bystander effect being the belief that someone else is surely taking action, ergo, no one takes action. (yes, I did just use 'ergo' and I haven't even ever taken Latin, and I actually didn't learn it in law school).

I learned about this effect in college in a social psych class. Because of it I generally take action.

Except I didn't on the 23rd of December (do you remember?). At JFK, wating in line to check in at Jet Blue, hoping that I still might make my flight that was supposed to leave 20 minutes ago, I didn't report the suspicious computer bag that had been left unattended near the line. I touched it with my foot. I thought about reporting it, as all good amercans are supposed to report suspicious, potential bomb-carrying items since 9/11. But I then I thought again. If I report this unattended item, the area will likely have to be secured and I surely won't make my flight and get home in time for Christmas, and fuck it, I've been travelling since early the previous morning and I'll take the risk that this potential bomb will explode after I get my ticket and get on the plane and at least MY Christmas won't be ruined.

I think this was the bystander effect in reverse: no one else has reported the bag, so I guess it's okay if I don't report it either.

Later, when I had almost reached the ticket counter, I overheard a woman behind me comment "I think I should report this!" But she was stopped by the gentleman next to her who pointed out that if she did, none of us would make our flights. That seemed to quell her patriotic sense of duty.

Luckily, there were no explosions at JFK this Christmas, and some poor traveller is really bummed that s/he left her computer behind.

Well I really hate to post above Dance Off!, but WOW!

Woman, 27, found after two decades lost in jungle
by Ian MacKinnon, South-east Asia correspondent
Friday January 19, 2007
The Guardian

A woman who went missing 19 years ago as an eight-year-old in the remote jungles of Cambodia has reappeared after apparently living rough and scavenging food for almost two decades.

The woman, thought to be Rochom Pngieng, who would now be 27, was discovered by villagers who noticed that food was going missing and set a trap, only to discover her naked and painfully thin.

But the woman speaks no intelligible language, making it almost impossible to verify what would be a remarkable sequence of events. Her long absence and years spent in the dense forest leave many questions unanswered.Medical experts received permission from her parents to take DNA samples in an effort to confirm the woman's identity, but her father is convinced it is his long-lost daughter because of a prominent scar received from a knife wound as a child.

"When I saw her, she was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey ... She was bare-bones skinny," her father, Sal Lou, 45, told the Associated Press.

"She was shaking and picking up grains of rice from the ground to eat. Her eyes were red like tigers' eyes."

The girl disappeared in about 1988 while tending a herd of buffalo in an isolated region 200 miles from the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, on the border with Vietnam's rugged central highlands.

The woman was described as "half-human and half-animal" by Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district.

But her father, who believed she had long ago been killed by forest animals, said he recognised his daughter instantly, despite her blackened body and wild hair down to her waist.

Yet communication with the woman has proved virtually impossible, apart from sign language. When she was hungry, Mr Lou said, she simply patted her stomach. She has also found readjusting to normal life difficult, according to her father. She has resisted wearing clothes and bathing, fending him off by shouting and screaming.

"If she is not sleeping, she just sits and glances left and right, left and right," he said. "It is not easy indeed but life is waiting ahead for her."

Dance Off!!!