feather2pixels

Well, feather2pixel tip-riders, it’s vacation time. Thank god for that. Actually, the party kind of started on Friday. I gave every member of the Instrumentation class a pop quiz stapled to a $1 scratcher (or as Dirty Jay calls them: Vallejo City Bonds) and we were off to the races. This was question number two:

Given an instantaneous, sustained Vin that occurs at t=3 in the form ΔV(t)=2cos(ωt), please sketch a portrait of the instructor below:

Click here for a collage of the highly disturbing results.

I will come clean and admit that it’s actually Sunday night–the party’s been on for quite a while. If you want to call it that. Mostly, I have been catching up on some much-needed rest. I don’t remember the last time I slept in.

Some mildly interesting things happened this weekend. The most unexpected of them happened yesterday in the middle of the night. I was stumbling down Valencia street and who did I run into on the corner of 22nd, but Williams the Border Collie. Williams was a co-worker of mine at the Exploratorium for a year and a half. She was the warmhearted Field Trip Explainer. We rode bikes together and generally got on well. After the work year ended, though, nobody ever heard a peep from her, despite several months of voicemails. After a while, I didn’t know what to think and kind of gave up. I was a little pissed.

But there she was before my eyes. It’s extremely hard to get Williams’ attention, but when you do, you get a lot. I don’t think I have ever met a more compassionate person.   Her face lit up and she walked home with me. We sat on my porch, talking for a while and it made me feel a little crestfallen to think that so much has changed for both of us since we last spoke. The world of Field Trip Explaining feels like a long lost childhood.  We walked to a cab at the corner of Mission and I told her I missed her. I do. Right before getting in, she gave me a big hug and you know what? It’s been a long time since I got a real hug.  It’s something I don’t think about that much.  I think really needed it. Thanks Williams.

My roomates three want to hire a maid. A maid! Don’t they understand that I already work a semi-professional job, commute to work, and have a retirement account–any closer to the precipice of middle class hypocrisy and I’ll fall right in.

But there is dust in the corners and I’ve been the least active member of the autonomous cleaning plan. I am not in a position to make a big fuss. To be fair, though, I always clean up after myself and there’s been no formal system for anything beyond that. So we are getting maid.

On the plus side, this will double the number of Latino people I interact with in the Mission since right now it’s just the guy that rolls my burrito at El Farolito. True, this could start to get weird. Luckily, there is plenty of Noam Chomsky in the living room bookshelf. If I start feeling like the politics of my own life are a little off, it will be easy to remind myself where the real problems are situated: with those individuals not associated with the American progressive movement. Can’t do shit about that, can I?

It freaks me out how long you can go before you catch on to people. Especially when you want them to turn out to be a certain way. How exactly does one determine that somebody is a not good person? I’m not talking about a bad person–that’s easy. Just someone who doesn’t particularly care about other people. That confuses me. Everybody wants to appear like a good person and plenty of people are good at being friendly. Some people are exceptional at it. Maybe this is all just a matter expecting nothing from people.

But enough of that. Hip hip hooray for seventy-two hour weekends. When I was working at the museum, every weekend was this long. Man, that was a another life. These days, I wake up at five for a commute to an office where I am three months behind my grading, which is impressive in light of the fact I have only been working there for two.

Today, though, I got to escape reality at the end of the continent with the Bulldogger. We met up for a simple breakfast in the Mission and then we were off, traversing through the park and whatnot. That’s been my weekend life for the last few months, but I’m not used to having company. It was interesting to have a companion.
Looking ahead, I’m hoping I can hop skip and jump my way through this week and towards nine whole days of Thanksgiving break. I can’t fucking wait. Danny was supposed to make his way over here for the holiday but apparently the people who do things like buy Danny’s plane tickets couldn’t find a deal. A shame: I know he would have been up for football on the beach and midnight movies.

I think plan B is to accompany Jenny down south to where the air might not be so clean but I can think everything over in the sun. I actually haven’t been down to L.A. since I moved West and this is my forth year here. I have been so lost in this city that I’ve barely scratched California’s surface.

Pictures of my new neighborhood:

Students were bitching about writing reports in my motors lab the other day (Well every day, really, but the other day in particular). I told them that I would have no problem accepting a haiku instead if it were absolutely perfect, describing the experiment and results as well or better than a report. I think that’s actually a lot more difficult, but god dammit if Baby Bluehawk didn’t step up and do just that :

Today at the academy I watched formation. That’s when the corps of cadets (i.e. all the students) assembles by unit in the promenade and subjects itself to inspection and random drug tests. That’s right, drug tests. This has got to be one of the only colleges in the country where the rate of drug use is higher among the faculty than the students (except perhaps Humboldt State, where it’s probably 100% across the board). But drug testing is a requirement to work on board a United States ship so nobody really has a choice in the matter.

Another strange maritime fact, this one a cold war relic of Nixonian-sounding origins, is that to this day the United States neither admits or denys that it carries nuclear warheads on any of her ships. That is to say the U.S. government will not officially deny that our training ship, which was originally commissioned as one of three special oceanographic vessels for the Navy, is not armed with nukes as it sails around the world every summer. Because of this, the country of New Zealand has declined to let our ship–or any ship affiliated with the U.S. government–call in their ports. We did stop there a few years ago, when a more sympathetic Kiwi administration was experimenting with a rollback in that policy. Then 9/11 happened and stuff.

Anyways formation is cute. There is some yelling and the kids stand at attention. If they look really bad they may get demerits.

I am starting a new online journal. Let’s get a few things squared away:

A. Motivation
The only way that the stupid shit happening to me makes any sense whatsoever is allegorically. Trust me, I have been trying to deal at face value with the basic structure of my life for a few months now and it’s been a minor disaster. That shit is for the birds. And I am no bird. I have hair all over my body, give birth to live young and nourish them with my milk. The life of the mammal is shrouded in metaphor.

B. Fuck You
Just like you, I believe that publishing a personal journal on the internet means that, at best, you are a narcissistic loser and, at worst…well, there really is no lower limit is there? Anyways, fuck you I don’t care what you think about me. Don’t get me wrong, if you find me creative and charming that’s exactly what I am going for. If not, though, go dot-com your asshole to a tree.

A lot of stuff has happened to me in the last few months. After living together for 3+ years, me and The Rascal broke up and I moved to a 4br in the Mission district. I got a full time job teaching electrical engineering to college seniors on the shores of San Pablo Bay. Lastly, I spent the summer back in Berkeley, doting on a mysterious woman who let me down. Maybe some sort of chaos is a better characterization than “minor disaster.” I prefer the one that makes me appear more victimized.

The mysterious woman was alluring from a distance. Here is a list of things we did and didn’t have in common:

In Common:

• Both honest more in writing than in person.
• Both took French.
• Both twenty-seven and on the verge.
• Both work well with people professionally.

Not in Common:

• I project what I feel, she feels what she projects.
• The word “hella.”
• I let people in, she ins people let.

We had an amazing elixir summer but in the end she broke things off with me hella quick after a Friday night in the Marina. Was it Al Green who had his baby change the lock to her heart on a Tuesday while he was at work? I know how that guy feels. Actually, that’s bullshit–nevermind her heart, I didn’t even have the key to her front porch. And I constantly wonder how I ever felt so close to someone so opaque. Because I wasn’t. OK, since my new online journal is already at risk of boring my one reader back to craigslist’s casual encounters, I will just say that my biggest problem for now is that I am confused about what it means to touch someone. I don’t even know if I want anyone touching me for a while. In other words, nothing good ever happens when you go out in the Marina.

The job is as ridiculous as it sounds. If you return to feather2pixels.com, you will understand.

My bedroom still resembles the storage unit that preceded it as the place I keep my stuff, but you could make a decent argument that my house is sitting on the best block in the entire city. It’s right off the BART station and there is a lot of foot traffic. That’s what makes the Mission awesome–people’s lives here are happening on the streets. It seems like the type of place where you get into a band because your neighbor had a CD on the other night, not beacue you read a review online. As for the hipsters, they are harmless really. I actually think it’s quite charming how so many of them are mediocre, making up for it with some kind of creative energy. I can deny it all I want but I fit right in.