Jose Gonzales or Justice?

This morning’s ride up the Headlands and subsequent burning forearms and calves was a simple reminder why endorphin is my drug of choice. I look forward to ride two.

From the appallingly-fucked-up dept: Student sentenced to death for using the internet. There’s also a petition to free Pervez Kambaksh.

(via The Independent)

One feeling that was absolutely reinforced with blazing clarity by traveling was how much I actually love living in San Francisco. Here are my friends, topography, water and within 5 hours of [nearly] every climate. I’ve tried to take advantage of that in the three days I’ve been back, enjoying the Pacific coast via motorcycle as well as the Sierra Nevada via snowboard—with a dozen friends. Moments include excellent baggage claim, eating turns and Hoth stormtrooper action in Kirkwood.

Also, good food. Oi. Tip hat to Sue, Vadan, Lex and whoever created Hyphy.

Oh, so good. Spontaneous Tahoe trip with Xispo, Sue, John, Beau, Case, Whitaker, Erin, Vadan, Stacey, Clive and Lex. Snow + friends + Zwack = formula for success.

Er, now that Edwards is gone, and the Republican race is less murky, the frontrunners are playing nice—aiming their respective barbs at the GOP instead of each other. But really, what this campaign season needs is more Prop Joe.

Edit: The Wikipedia entry for Proposition Joe has a spoiler in the first paragraph. Lame. Lame. Lame.

Two things have been smacking me over the head on my visit to Her Majesty’s shores. One: the sheer comprehensiveness—or at least perception thereof—of surveillance via CCTV cameras. Two: the overwhelmingly common affliction of matriarchal language in advertising. How you’re allowed or permitted to do this, if you pay your taxes or tariff, top-up or submit to thus-and-so. It’s Orwellian and fucking scary, and I can’t help but think of the metaphor of the boiling frog.

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the Lego brick. This brings a warm feeling of whimsy and satisfaction, as Lego was such an integral part of my childhood. Many hours were spent constructing and deconstructing, fashioning tiny simulations of complex machines, buildings and living things.

Its core activity can be described as quantizing reality into discrete plastic pieces—a tidy analogue to the digital medium, substituting pixels and vectors for bricks. Unlike pixels, and in the absence of unlimited funding for new bricks, it is also a microcosm of reality: resources are limited. Scarcity is the mother of invention, and to create something new, something must first be destroyed.

Where other toys were quickly forgotten (oh how I wish I’d saved those first-edition Star Wars figurines from the early 80s), and a discovery of computers, software and writing games—I’d never abandon completely the little plastic atoms, occasionally pulling out the bags of bricks, dusting them off and tinkering again.

Two links, courtesy of two good friends:

• Is the Tipping Point Toast?
• XTC

Traveling has provided ample opportunity for thoughts about life, family, death and beauty. Yesterday I finished reading Michel Houellebecq’s Platform and finally watched Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, both beautiful and somber works on love, death and loss. The former deals with sex tourism, Islam, western morals and the suffocation of the capitalist rat race, and the latter a modern reentrant triptych on immortality, the inquisition, medicine, Mayan and Judeo-Christian creation myths. Both revolve around the brief span of time their respective protagonists have a clutch on true love before the respective machinery of the stories obliterate it.

I’ve always believed that someone’s death should be cause for celebration of their life, reflection rather than mourning. A few weeks ago, my grandmother’s passing provided a catalyst for bringing my father and his brothers together. It was not unexpected—the family had been prepared for this event for a while.

She was a schoolteacher, musician, a writer of letters, a virtuoso in the kitchen, the wife of a hard-scrabble farmer, orator and sculptor, and a mother of four boys who lived—in a certain sense—a very difficult life on a farm in North Dakota. My father and his brothers live spread uniformly across the country, pursuing their own lives with careers, hardships, successes and their own families. Dad shared some of their experience in the wintry north on my uncle’s ranch.

In this video, my uncle Mark describes the ongoing war of attrition with beavers and their epic civil engineering on the ranch:

The last time the brothers and their families got together on the ranch, it was summer. Clear of the enveloping winter snow, it is a vastly different place, simultaneously monumental and desolate. The land is plied by cattle, horses, coyote and beaver under a sky that stretches to infinity.

I’ve been reminded of that trip, almost four years ago. It was a short departure from my home, abutting a few transitions, professional and personal. I visited hard right-wing evangelical Christian friends in Denver, made a pilgrimage to Colorado Springs for burgers and a velodrome, and learned to ride a horse again in North Dakota. If I were to characterize it, it was travels around fantastically beautiful landscapes punctuated by intensely evocative conversations and serendipitous moments, not unlike now.

I suppose this is indicative of life being cyclical, a series of iterative improvements, sometimes failures, sometimes successes. I’m optimistic.