http://pieinajar.com/

I'm not getting anywhere with the weblog. It wasn't so difficult when I was unemployed, but now I cannot make enough time to maintain it.

By Thom Hartmann

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.

At some point in the future, an ironic nostalgia for the "dot com" era will surface, and I will have my Kozmo.com bag ready!

About Schmidt; see it for the mullet. (And Nicholson and Bates are fantastic too.)

I dropped that TESOL class due to its tendancy to bring on bouts of boredom. Call me a snob, but I like some meat on my theories, and that class was parsley.

Go to Nick's blog to find some links to some goddamned funny films.

I have jettisoned my cell phone.

A few years back, when I was supervisor of a call center, and then subsequently when I was a system administrator for an ISP, my job required I carry a cell phone, and the company paid for it too. But I always hated the thing. Still do. For one thing, just as many otherwise nice and reasonable people become diabolically dangerous egoists behind the wheel of a car, they also become frightfully loud and oblivious assholes when they've got a cell phone at their ear, or in their pocket. (And don't get me started on drivers on cell phones!!) I still cannot understand why so many cell phone users feel they have the right to poison my ears with their mobile's extraordinarily loud and tinny rendition of Flight of the Valkries. As a reformed cell phone user I am aware that darn near all cell phones have a vibrate option, and/or can be set to "ring once" (if the immediate environment is too loud for you to hear your phone ring once, it's too damn loud to be talking on a phone!).

I'm sensing a pattern here; monthly updates.

Lately I've been drinking more wine. For the longest time I resisted the habit because it seemed to me good wine was just too expensive. And, having been on the periphery of various geek cultures (movie, D&D, beer, Simpsons, indie-band, unix, mac, video game, perl, and pinball, to name a few) over the years, so I know it can get pretty ugly. Wine snobs in particular can be unbearable.

I vow not to become a wine snob.

But I have not forgotten my first love: beer. Beer is good for you again, which is always nice, but wholly irrelevant.

I'm trying to decide which class I should take at PSU this next term. I want to teach, so there are several different prerequisite courses I should take if I intend to enter the graduate education program. But I'm having difficulty finding classes that fit into my schedule. I might also pursue a TESOL certificate so I can teach English as a second language. What I know for sure is that, though I am lucky to still have one, high tech jobs are not for me.

Salon.com is running an article about Daniel Clowes.

I missed out on the whole comic book thing as an adolescent, and the whole "zine" thing as a post-adolescent, but a few months ago a friend of Cecilia shipped her a batch of interesting comics; Daniel Clowes was well represented, but also Peter Bagge and Dame Darcy. I had found something else to read! (One of the frustrations I had living in Hawaii was the lack good bookstores and libraries, so any mildly interesting morsel was appreciated.)

Other than comics, lately I've been reading as much of J. P. Donleavy as I can get my hands on. The Ginger Man, which I only discovered and read for the first time within the last year, has become one of my favorite books - I rate it up there with The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby, The Day of the Locust, Moby Dick and Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Working full time at a new job, in a line of work quite different from what I've done before, takes a lot out of me. I miss the co-worker camaraderie of the last few jobs. Maybe it's because I'm new here, but also I suspect because all we have time for is work. We actually have production schedules, and deadlines. This is novel to me! ;-)

No one else in the office seems to drink coffee. Alone, at break time, I walk briskly down Broadway to Peet's to get a cup of coffee. I stay on the west side of Broadway for the first block or two, avoiding the throng of panhandling teenagers wearing shoes more expensive than my entire wardrobe. I will pick up a copy of Street Roots, however, when there's a guy selling them on the corner. Starbuck's coffee used to be good enough for me, but a fresh cup of Peet's is ten times better and twice as strong. I pass a Starbuck's, Nordstrom's Cafe, The Portland Coffeehouse, and perhaps a few others on the way to Peet's. I love working downtown. I once worked in the suburbs, where the only walking distance food option was a Chik-fil-a. Needless to say I always brought my lunch from home.

At my current job, I also generally bring a lunch from home (not for lack of options, but rather for lack of $$). I'll eat that at my desk sometime in the mid morning, and spend my lunch break at the Central Library.

I'm boring you to death, but that's all I have to say these days. I'm relaxed, for a change, and just plodding away at work, and trying to steel myself in preparation for the winter. The cold wet grey, drink lots of coffee in cafes and pints of beer in pubs, Portland winter.

In addition to link options like "E-mail This Article" and "Printer-Friendly Format", CNN.com, NYTimes.com, and their ilk should have a link near the top of the page: "view this page without [hype-flavor of the week]".

If you turn on the TV or read the front page of the paper or keep an eye on the webified news homepages, you wouldn't know anything else was going on in the world besides this fucking sniper. And before that is was abducted teenage girls, priest child molestors, suburban high school massacres, shark attacks, etc. That's my two cents anyway.

Recently I moved to Portland from Hawaii. I lived in Honolulu for a little over a year and half. Then I spent August on the Big Island and fell in love with the place. Cecilia and I stumbled upon a little town in the northern tip of the island called Hawi. I have yet to find any websites that have much to say about the town. There are only a couple places to stay, only a couple restaurants. It's most famous, perhaps, for being located near the birthplace of King Kamehameha the Great, the ruler who first conquered and unified the Hawaiian Islands. I recall reading in a guidebook too, that the best used bookstore in the entire state of Hawaii is in tiny Hawi. Those who know me well know that having a good bookstore nearby is crucial to my state of mind; one of the not-trivial reasons I fled Honolulu is the suprising, considering its size and cosmopolitan character, lack of good bookstores.