NOTHING BUT OWLS!
January 31st, 2006

trapped in an epic

i can’t say anything about the state of the union for a few reasons. 1- i was napping (not entirely on purpose). 2- i need to watch it on the home-brew-tivo. 3- two political posts in a day should be my limit, and i’m sticking to it. so what did i watch instead?

r. kelly’s trapped in the closet. why? joe bought it. it’s amazing. the best part? joe’s commentary. “pulled out my beretta!” *whisper*”damn.”*whisper*

if you haven’t seen it, feel free to borrow it/come over and watch it. i can’t wait to see r. kelly’s comentary for it. it sure as hell beats peeing on jail bait.

by kendrak | Posted in music | No Comments » |
January 31st, 2006

pictures of trains

i usually read sf cityscape at work when i feel like connecting with transit users after some frustrating endeavour to find information about something transit related that should be easy to obtain yet isn’t. today, this link with lots of pictures of regional trains fell into my lap after having spent half an hour looking for some stuff related to the pcc fleet in san francisco. this is great because they have pictures of the key system in berkeley!

by kendrak | Posted in library work | No Comments » |
January 31st, 2006

hitchens on hamas

i know some people don’t really care for christopher hitchens, which is their loss. though i don’t agree with a lot of his opinions, i respect how her frames his arguments and his research/knowledge base. anyhow, he’s written something about hamas and the future for palestine, which is an interesting read. here’s just one part i liked:

It is shallow and short-term, therefore, to write up the election result as a bitter fruit for the Bush administration’s democracy initiative. (What was the alternative? No elections? Elections but without Hamas participation? And do not forget that the combined vote for the four secular and leftist and independent lists, at a time of extreme pressure to conform to either Fatah or Hamas candidates, was over 112,000 ballots, or about a tenth of the total.) This is, rather, another stage in a process of coercive Islamization that has been going on for some time. The opposition party was already better organized than, and had almost as many guns as, the nominal Palestinian “government.” It has a host of unemployed and semi-educated and well-armed young men, who will no doubt relish the task of bullying women and “unofficially” collecting the al-Jeziya revenues. Critics of the “road map” correctly pointed to the enclosure of Palestinians in ghettolike enclaves and Bantustans. Wait until you see what life looks like in a hermetic society, cut off by the Wall whose permanence this election almost certainly guarantees and subjected to Islamic rule.

by kendrak | Posted in news stuff, politics | No Comments » |
January 31st, 2006

now can i kick a democrat?

it seems that the democrats are getting it from all sides these days. yesterday i read a slate artcile titled “kick me, i’m a democrat” about america’s new past time. really, it’s too easy to pick on the dems. why? because they’re doing such a great job of making a mess of things, thus making the republicans look competent. yes, it’s that bad. perhaps this part is the most pertinent today:

There is always a pick-up game of Kick the Democrats going on somewhere. But something about the Alito confirmation—the pathetic and apparently surprising inability of 45 Democratic senators to stop 55 Republicans from approving anyone they want—seems to have made the game suddenly a lot more popular.

with the news of alito’s confimation, it’s clear that the democrats have truly failed. why? because they don’t know what they want. they want to appear moderate, they want to appear rational, and they want to seem on the “good” side before anything’s been determined. of course kennedy, kerry, and clinton start crying fillibuster after it’s determined it will fail, if only to have it in the records that they half-heartedly tried and can have some sort of clean conscience.

my senators, feinstein and boxer, sicken me because though they may talk the talk, i don’t think anything ever comes of it. ok, actually i take that back. feinstein could be like kennedy, in that she’s set for life, the republicans can’t touch her, and she could just throw her weight around as a liberal voice of opposition. she doesn’t do that though, she crumples to the will of the administration and just sounds like some old hag waiting for her meal ticket. boxer, though she is sometimes insane, at least is willing to create a ruckus when it will get quite a bit of press, which i appreciate. i don’t agree with her all of the time, but i like that she’s publicly opposes the administration more often than feinstein. she also is prompt with replying to my emails. feinstein has been riding the milk/moscone assasinations for too long, and i eagerly wait for some serious opposition to her seat. hell, i’d even vote for cindy sheehan.

so really why is it ok to kick a democrat? because they keep acting like stupid asses, wearing “kick me” signs on their backs, and giving the republicans more than they need to look more competent to the eyes of middle america. until they change/grow a backbone, i don’t think anything’s going to change. well… other than lots of people whining about how evil the gop is (it’s true!) and how life isn’t fair (true again). and i guess my only response, as mike seems to assume, is “shut up”. mike, i’d hate to dissappoint you.

by kendrak | Posted in news stuff, politics | No Comments » |
January 30th, 2006

trials for humanity

i’m watching the american experience: the nuremberg trials, which focuses on the exchanges between jackson and goering, which show, as the narrator said, “that justice can prevail over evil.” it’s hard to watch this without thinking about the current trial for humanity- saddam hussein’s. i’m not sure if it’s quite there yet, but who knows. only time will tell.

the world’s fascination with the third reich isn’t really suprising, but it’s getting to be a little stale- not that we shouldn’t remember and discuss nazi atrocities, but because we have done it to the point that it’s becoming rote and losing its meaning. i’m at a loss as to what to say about about it. there’s not much more that can be said about men like hitler, himmler, goering, and goebbels- there’s nothing redeeming as seen through their actions. other, like speer, are more enigmatic and interesting to study and discuss as they are far too human. everytime i get suckered into a conversation with somebody who will proclaim that anybody associated with the nazi government was as guilty as those named earlier i usually counter with, “so you would have done something differently?” it’s like when people tell me their grandparents were of money (say, the junker class in bavaria) yet were in opposition to the nazis, thus with clean hands, i roll my eyes and try not to get into an argument. of course i don’t know what those people did to survive, but i doubt they were edelweiss piraten or sheltering jews or other political prisoners without some punishment. i guess it’s just part of the discourse now to rewrite history and lie to yourself- think that you wouldn’t do what everybody else did because you know it’s wrong.

i’ve thought about what i would have done, were i living in nazi germany. my verdict? i really don’t know. there’s a decent chance i would have fled or sent to the camps early based upon my last name and probable political affiliations, but that’s not for certain. it’s nice to think i would have resisted, but i probably would have just scraped by, assuming i wasn’t hauled off for having a jewish name.

back to the original point of this post- i’m tired of the third reich, and i’m tired of all the cliches used to talk about nazis and the holocaust. i guess this comes from over exposure and frustration from listening to the same arguments for close to 10 years. i won’t go so far as to say that it doesn’t matter like it did 60 years ago- clearly it still does- but people need to look for the relevance and meaning as it applies to today/all time, rather than repeating the sound bites gleaned from pbs/the history channel. it’s just so easy to either blame everybody (any german alive from 1933-45) or the big names (hitler and his senior officials) but course the world isn’t that simple. this is why i find the period after the war- the nuremberg trials, the denazification of the allied zones, and the establishment of the bundesrepublik under the provisional government- more interesting. what are the implications of nazi atrocities on humanity? how are people supposed to act after the fact? what is a nation to do? i think the world should look more closely at post-war germany (1945-1955) as a clue for similar rebuliding efforts around the world. luckily, through vergangenheitsbewältigung, there’s already a discourse for this sort of thing.

allright, my head is about to burst. i’m going to go read voegelin’s autobiographical reflections, and think about what it means to be a human which is to err and deal with the guilt.

by kendrak | Posted in germanic, history, rants | No Comments » |
January 30th, 2006

trying to be right against all the odds

next week’s newsweek article about unrest in the justice department is going around like wildfire (i hope). thanks slate. anybody who likes to describe the current administration as a regime and our president as king george, hopefully has read the whole thing. this artcile, though deeply depressing, affirms my belief that there are people out there who are not necessarily on my side when it comes to seemingly trivial things, but they still believe in the law as it should be- applicable and accountable to all.
money quote:

The rebels were not whistle-blowers in the traditional sense. They did not want—indeed avoided—publicity. … They were not downtrodden career civil servants. Rather, they were conservative political appointees who had been friends and close colleagues of some of the true believers they were fighting against. They did not see the struggle in terms of black and white but in shades of gray—as painfully close calls with unavoidable pitfalls. They worried deeply about whether their principles might put Americans at home and abroad at risk. Their story has been obscured behind legalisms and the veil of secrecy over the White House. But it is a quietly dramatic profile in courage. (For its part the White House denies any internal strife. “The proposition of internal division in our fight against terrorism isn’t based in fact,” says Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney. “This administration is united in its commitment to protect Americans, defeat terrorism and grow democracy.”)

by kendrak | Posted in news stuff, politics | No Comments » |
January 30th, 2006

free advice no. 21

sorry about skipping the advice train this past friday. work was hellish and bleak, what with no cookie hour and all. this morning is not as busy, but just as bleak. drinking tepid coffee from my california zephyr mug, trying not to think about pavement noise, reading about the man behind tarmac, and listening to the small faces. whatcha gonna do about it?
nothing.

anyhow, y’all want some advice? prudie, help me out!

Dear [Kendra],
My wife of five months has left me. One Sunday we were fine, and the next day she was gone. No call, no note, nothing. It has now been about a month, and she still won’t talk to me. We never had a fight or an argument, and all of our friends are as baffled as I am. Everyone tells me that I was a model husband, worked hard, was always supportive and loving. This is her second marriage. (Her first ended in divorce.) She is now 23, and I am 30. I wish I knew what went wrong. We dated for almost two years before marriage. Any advice?

—Heartbroken in So. Cal.

dear hisc,

here’s what went wrong- you married an immature 23 yeard old who’s well on her way to being a commitment-phobe, and you’re too stupid to notice. my advice? track her down, divorce her, and let it be that. she’s not marriage material and you need to be a better judge of character. i don’t really have anything else to say to the matter, other than it sucks.

i hope this helps.

Dear [Kendra],
I am seeing a man who I just can’t figure out. Let me tell you the whole story. I was engaged a couple of months ago to a man who I could not marry. I loved him, but it was not working out. After calling it off with him, I started seeing a man who I’ve had a crush on since the minute I met him. Things were good in the beginning; not perfect, but good. But he is divorced with two children, and he’s five years older than I am. (He is 28 and I am 23.) His children are 8 and 6, and while I know I am not ready to be a mother, I am willing to have them be part of my life because I want their father to be part of mine. The problem is that he is so distant. He refused to get a phone for the first four months we were seeing each other, and since he’s gotten one, he never answers it; he leaves it turned off. He also blows me off on the weekends without even a call to explain why he isn’t coming. He has done this for the past month. I am writing this as I wait for him again. When I tell him this isn’t acceptable, he apologizes and says it won’t happen again … but then it does. The other problem is I keep hearing that people are seeing him with his wife and kids in town, when he tells me he can’t stand the woman. I know I should stop seeing him, but when we are together it’s so good. In our four months together, I haven’t met his kids or any of his family. Should I confront him and give our “relationship” another try, or just dump him and move on?

—Beyond Blown Off

dear bbo,

two stupid 23 year olds in two letters! wow. as another stupid 23 year old, you make me feel like a genius. your new guy is giving you not just a royal runaround, but i don’t know if he’s really divorced. i’ll give him benefit of the doubt and assume he is, but that just makes you look even dumber. he’s brushing you off because he can. he’s probably using you for sex and to keep the bed warm when one of his other conquests can’t come out to play. keep it in your pants and move on.

i hope this helps.

Dear [Kendra],
Help! My housemate is nice. He’s oh-so-considerate, always asking if I’m okay, making me mint tea. And driving me insane. When I was interviewing people to share my spiffy flat, I was quite upfront about my expectations. I wasn’t looking for a friend, I was looking for someone who’ll pay the rent on time, clean up after himself, and basically do his own thing as I do mine. If we happened to get along, so much the better. My feeling is that the housemate (HM) is trying to close the essential gulf that must exist in flat-sharing situations and become my friend. Basically, I have enough friends. I don’t want to feel guilty because I don’t want to go out for dinner with HM, watch Desperate Housewives reruns with HM (a show I loathe), or spend hours hearing about HM’s boyfriend woes (we are both gay males). Did I mention that I don’t have any problems in strongly but politely defining my boundaries, but that he blithely ignores them? At first I thought it was a cultural thing: He is from an exuberant, outgoing North American country and I am a laconic, distrustful Australian. However tolerant I may be, I am almost at the end of my tether, Prudie. How can I handle this situation and have things the way I want them?

—Robert M.

dear rm,

your hm sounds like a chore and your are a bore- and arrogant bore at that. level with the hm, he sounds lonely, and let him know that you meant it when you put up those boundaries, stick to them, and kick him out if he doesn’t abide by them. then you can live alone and be the most self-obsessed bore in the world, that’s your key to happiness.

seriously, kick him out if you can’t stand it. i doubt he likes living with you as much as you think. maybe shared living isn’t for you. think about it.

i hope this helps.

Dear[Kendra],
My mom is a very caring woman, but … whenever she comes over, either to visit or to pick up my 12-year-old, she sticks her finger in my plants (checking for water), walks around my house (checking for cleanliness), etc. When I was growing up, my mom had a full-time job, but when it was time for dinner, she had a full table—meat, veggies, fruit, the ultimate dinner. Now that I am a mother, she often comments on the state of my house. I know she cares, but how do I tell her tactfully that I am independent, she raised me well, and I am OK?

—MCJ

dear mcj,

your mom is your mother, and that will never change. she is not so bad, it sounds, so lighten up. if she were watering the plants, cleaning your house, and making dinner (with snide comments as a garnish), then i’d feel sorry for you, but as it is there’s nothing really. you’re supposedly and adult, act like one.

i hope this helps.

by kendrak | Posted in free advice | No Comments » |
January 30th, 2006

anaheim strikes back.

finally, the city of anaheim stands up against the joke of the los angeles angels of anaheim. as much as i love screaming, “vlad you suck!”, i agree the whole thing is stupid and i hope they sort it out for the fans.

by kendrak | Posted in news stuff, sport | No Comments » |
January 26th, 2006

how to file

ever wondered how one goes about setting up a good filing system? thank you texas state library for showing us how.

watch out overdue scum! i’m getting organized!

by kendrak | Posted in library work | No Comments » |
January 26th, 2006

is it nap time yet?

i’ve had a few setbacks today it seems.

  • i can’t find this one guy’s personal collection of regional train photos, which is unfortunate as i need them for a project.

  • apparently i’m dj’ing tomorrow morning from 0600-0900 despite the fact that nobody told me i was on the calendar untill noon today.
  • somehow the class materials for this week went missing when my co-director cleaned out the drawer.
  • i don’t know if the computer files for this week’s class are up to date or complete, though i’m to the point of not caring.
  • there were 50 other mini-crisies at kalx, but they’ll have to deal for later.
  • i keep getting the most tedious/unrelated reference questions, which is tough because the reference librarian is out until tomorrow. these people get upset when i tell them we’re not the appropriate library. some guy looking for info about truckers yelled at me when i told him we dealt mostly with transportation engineering and planning, and didn’t know what to say, other than refer him to a really expensive directory we don’t get.
  • i feel like a bad mother to maude.
by kendrak | Posted in blagg | No Comments » |
January 26th, 2006

good vs. evil again…

another metafilter post about good vs. evil. it’s not pepsi vs. coke, but rather gates vs. jobs. i guess this could go beyond the windows vs. mac debate and onto a personal level, but why bother? it’s easier to resort to stale arguments.

apparently jobs has designed macs to save lives.

this wired article makes jobs out to be a greedy selfish bastard, which is probably true. one musn’t forget he’s also evil since he’s a disney darling now, all his pseudo-zen think-different bullshit aside.

then again, gates is just a robber baron. so says bo in rants and raves:

“Gates is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it, throwing billions of dollars at solving global health problems.”

Of course he is. He’s following a time-honored tradition among robber barons. He wants to be remembered for how he spent his money, not how he acquired it. I hardly think the disgorging of a portion of his ill-gotten gains should make him a saint. But surely it will, as happened with robber barons past — and with a little help from Mr. Kahney.

it all seems silly. jobs has a very savvy mind for business, and he might be a huge philanthropist, and if he’s not i don’t care. he’s a smug arrogant jerk. he’s totally a “wired geek”- not really a geek, just acts like one because it’s the cool thing to do. you know apple lost all the fun when the woz left. jobs encourages great things to be done so he can charge an ass load for it and market it elitists who feel they need clean aesthetics to get good products or to be better than the unwashed masses. (how’s that for hyperbole?) gates shills crap that’s becoming a universal, which means it’s easy to get on the sly. i don’t care really, though i do laud his support for literacy and world health.

they’re just men, their fans (mostly the jobs sycophants- i can’t imagine gates really having any.) are the ones who make it weird. sort of like the stones vs. the beatles.

by kendrak | Posted in news stuff, rants | No Comments » |
January 26th, 2006

don’t be evil

“don’t be evil.” it sound like something my old foil would say. everything for her, it seemed, could be distilled into binaries like good/evil or nice/mean. in the end i was determined to be both evil and mean, which was probably truer than i would have liked. there’s nowt to do about it now since we’ve moved into opposite extremes. besides, this blog isn’t about that.

“don’t be evil.” it’s google’s motto, though i guess it doesn’t really fit anymore. it’s a stupid slogan in the first place- sounding like something a 10 year old would say to somebody who was wronging them. as far as a company maxim, it sounds pretty stupid- either it’s hollow to lull consumers into a false sense of security (which i guess worked), or they actually are that foolish enough to believe it. i don’t think google’s that silly, so i guess it’s the first option.

today debra saunders wrote an article called “don’t be google“, which i guess is a pretty good title. i like saunders’ work normally, and parts of this article are a little too heartfelt for me, but i don’t disagree with her. it’s tough combatting things like child porn because there are already victims. does that mean the privacy of the exploited child is more important than the privacy of a million other people? i guess that’s what society’s leaning towards. it’s a no win situation.

here are the parts of the article that really stuck out to me:

You have to marvel at Google’s great marketing ploy. The company amasses founts of information on users of Google. Yet, by riding on the coattails of an anti-Bush sentiment, Google claims the mantle of champion of privacy rights. “We intend to resist (the government’s) motion vigorously,” said a Google lawyer in a statement.

All hail Google. The Google-philes fawn as if bashing the Bushies in the Bay Area is an act of courage, when it’s the most popular — and probably profitable — thing a company can do.
…
Here’s a thought: Google could ban the phrase, “Don’t be evil.”

I understand that Google wants to make a profit. I just don’t know how company execs garner the image of little guys standing up to big, bad government.

Google can say no to the Bushies and know that it won’t lose any business, its executives won’t go to jail and their children will not get run over by tanks. In the country where those things could happen, Google is a collaborator.

it is hard to have full perspective living in the bubble that is the bay area, but it some sect it’s very vogue to pay lip service to anti-bush/gop/big government, and very profitable. target makes lots of money on the virtue that it’s not wal-mart. whole foods can charge way too much for stuff because it’s not safeway/ralph’s. google can sort of sell out to the chinese because they’re not quite as bad as microsoft and yahoo. does it make all of these companies good? ha! just like these better companies are bereft of evil. i know some idealogues might like to think that, but i guess they’re just ignoring the bigger picture.

and if you’re really upset about censorship in china and their human rights record, so much that you’re going to have a cow about google/yahoo/et al, stop buying chinese products. no t.v.s, stereos, computers, phones, garbage cans, clothes, shoes, anything else you normally buy on the cheap. yeah. i’d try to, but i’m just a phonie like the rest of the indignants.

eta-there’s a pretty good discussion of this at metafilter.

by kendrak | Posted in news stuff, rants | No Comments » |
January 25th, 2006

chillax to the beats!

so, i know i’ve been getting increasingly worked up about the state of affairs. i’m not yet detached enough to watch things happen without yelling about it all the time. i guess i had cynicism instilled in me at a very early age, yet nothing has really tempered it. my education has only refined it, so that it’s usually fit for public discourse and full of sound analysis, but i’m still just as bitter and cynical as ever. so ist das leben.

anyhow.

for any crumedgeonly rant i may have, where i feel the overwhelming need to punch something, i think i will try to temper it with a silly post about nothing. you know why? nothing’s more tedious than somebody who takes themselves, and their blog, too seriously. you know the types. i’m not really trying to impress people with this thing, or come off as a sophisticated person, so why not go back to what i like to do? talk about music!

in the spirit of eroding my personal privacy even more, i have a last.fm account. you can check out my profile and see some of my charts.

now these charts aren’t a good representaiton of me. they only reflect the music i have at work, which isn’t that much. you can see how screwy it is in my top ten artisits:

  1. mr t. experience

  2. the hi-fives
  3. t. rex
  4. fifteen
  5. the undertones
  6. r.e.m.
  7. the smugglers
  8. tegan and sara
  9. demon system 13
  10. the who

t. rex, though i love them, should not be number three. fifteen, ds 13, r.e.m., and tegan and sara don’t belong on there at all. the kinks are absent due to a lack of their stuff. oh well. oh and the hi-fives should be number one. it’s still interesting to see the distrubution of the list though. the top 10 tracks are equally interesting:

  1. The Hi-Fives – Say What You Want

  2. Tegan and Sara – I Won’t Be Left
  3. The Hi-Fives – When You Destroy Our Love
  4. Sweet – Wig-Wam Bam
  5. Destroyer – Your Blues
  6. The Undertones – I Gotta Getta
  7. Tegan and Sara – I Bet It Stung
  8. Demon System 13 – I won’t dance to it
  9. The Hi-Fives – All I Want to Know
  10. The Undertones – Really Really (Bonus Track)

this explains why “i won’t be left” is the only tegan and sara song i know. the rest all are just chance. actually, no- “wig-wam bam” was my theme music last week.

looking at these lists, it’s actually pretty dull . i should have more interesting taste.

by kendrak | Posted in music, rants | No Comments » |
January 25th, 2006

i’m looking for a book…

monday as a local bookstore i committed a cardinal sin of the book world- i asked a pretty stupid question. now i know it’s not bad to ask stupid questions, especially when you warn the person helping you about the level of your idiocy, but it’s still emberassing. i said to the book monger girl, “i know this is a stupid question, and i appologize in advance. please don’t worry if it’s too vague because i totally understand, but i’m looking for a ya novel that was pretty big last year. it has alaska in the title… the guy who wrote it’s last name as an [i] sound in it… it just won the printz award…” i was met with a sort of blank/confused stare. “oh, nevermind. sorry about that.” i was ready to head out and play video games.

“i think i know what book you’re looking for… did you check the new ya table?” she finally answered. i told her i didn’t see it there and then asked where the older ya books were, so she showed me and left to find that stupid book. i browed the ya section, looking for girls for breakfast to see if it’s all i heard about, when the girl came back holding a book.

“is this the book?” she was holding looking for alaska by john green.

“i think that’s the book.” she didn’t believe me, but i took it from her, paid for it, and knew she was right. thanks book girl!

see, i get frustrated all the time when a patron comes in here and says, “i’m looking for a book… it’s by i think may?” hmm, that really helps. or the “i’m looking for a book… it’s biggish and has a yellow cover.” those queries make me regret not shelving the stack by colour. i also love the bizarre look people give me when i ask for call numbers. what is a call number? is it some sort of new invention? it must be crazy librarian code to keep the books a mystery. sorry for that last bit of tepid sarcasm.

and right now i’m looking for another book, but i don’t know the author, title, or call number. i do know it’s green. ha! hopefully i’ll find it without too much emberassment.

by kendrak | Posted in library work | No Comments » |
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