spam blog comments

What is up with the spam blog comments?

My last post received 13 spam comments from some douchebag carpet cleaners. How do they know what my carpet looks like? How did they find out my housemate smashed his toe in the hallway and left bloodspots all over the floor and didn't even try to clean it up?
What I need is a housemate slapping service.

put 'em in the stocks

From BBC World:

The top US court has rejected an appeal by a sentenced man, who argued about the legality of having to publicly wear a sign stating "I stole mail".

The Supreme Court turned down Shawn Gementera's appeal without any comment.

Gementera had argued that the measure would humiliate him, violating the Sentencing Reform Act and the constitutional ban on cruel punishment.

He pleaded guilty to mail theft after being held in 2001 for stealing letters from mailboxes in San Francisco.


In 2003, Gementera was sentenced by a district judge to two months in jail, to be followed by three years of supervised release.

The release conditions stated that Gementera must spend four days at a post office observing staff dealing with inquiries about lost or stolen mail, write letters of apology to the victims of his crime and give three lectures about his crime at schools.

The judge also ordered him to wear a signboard reading "I stole mail - this is my punishment" for a full eight-hour working day.

Gementera appealed about the latter requirement, but a US appeals court panel ruled against him earlier this year.

The court said in August that the record in Gementera's case showed the judge imposed the condition for the purpose of rehabilitation.

"Punishments aimed at imposing shame and humiliation are inconsistent with a constitutional requirement that punishments, even for heinous crimes, be consistent with human dignity," Gementera's lawyers were quoted by Reuters news agency when appealing to the Supreme Court.

back in sf

I arrived in SF last Tuesday and my initial reaction could be summed up by a phrase that I heard on at least two different occassions from Bruno, the notorious owner of the Persian Aub Zam Zam bar in the Haight. "San Francisco is a dirty little town."
After being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people walking on the streets of nyc perhaps riding the bus down Market street and being disgusted by the percentage of viewable folks who were either indigent, drunk, wasted, mentally incapacitated or all of the above (I felt like I was in a Dorothea Lange photograph circa depression years or maybe Diane Arbus)was not a fair comparison.
ah well san francisco still rocks and I have no real complaints. Now I just have to find a job. oy vey.
A friend suggested doing extra work on movie and tv shows. They pay $70 for an eight hour day. Yeah, that'll cover my bills. They're filming Monk in the city this week and that's a show that I think it would be ok to be an extra on.
My friend says it's "not the kind of work you do for the money". I guess sitting around bored for hours watching people set up equipment is something you have to really love.

unh

Saw a kid with a vote
for
Pedro

shirt today

sag hahrbah

spent the last week house-sitting for a friend of a friend in the the small old whaling village cum swank ex hometown of spalding gray -Sag Harbor. The house was very nice, big, well stocked, big art studio with tons of supplies all of which I could use. did some painting but mostly enjoyed the wine cellar . she had a lot of australian wines. i drank some nice cabernets while watching the playoffs , it got a little boring though i have to admit. I felt like i was in exile somewhere like Elba . It rained the whole time I was there. they say Spalding tried to kill himself a few times by jumping off the sag harbor bridge...? he finally succeeded on the Staten Island ferry, I believe it was.
I'm staritng to get alittle stir crazy here in Jersey and am thinking of heading back to "Cali". The job I'm working on is sort of plodding along without an end in sight (like most jobs, eh)so I kinda want to finish it up and then maybe go up to New Hampshire to see the old homestead before going back to SF.
Back to square one

back to the drawing board

fucking A

Hey Napoleon did you wet the bed last night ?

Um yeah we're gonna have to go ahead and move you back to san francisco...

new jersey etc.

Well, here I am in New Jersey...the garden state. no comment. Went to the statue of liberty last week and found out that since 9/11 you can't go up into the actual statue. How fitting that our liberties should be revoked at this poignant symbol of Liberte. Stupid french.
I was staying with my friend, Rene, at his loft in Jersey City and once again I was surprised at how only slightly gentrified it is. It's like, a 10 minute PATH train ride and you're in Manhattan. I guess the stigma of saying you live in "Jersey" keeps it free from new york snobbery. Rene has the whole top floor of his building and his rent is cheap, especially for "New York". Anyway, I stayed there a couple weeks and then they had a new roomate moving in so I hightailed it north to a little town called Leonia near the George Washington Bridge. A friend of mine from college has a big house here and I have installed myself in the basement and have found work with the estate of an artist who died not long ago. He worked in ceramics and did a lot of paintings, actually glaze on flat slabs of clay. So i have been cleaning the artworks and will start photographing, archiving, and then packing them for storage. It's pretty cool work and I can use the $.
I sublet my room in SF for the month of October so I have some time to kill here.
ah yes new york in the fall, chai tea, Jcrew sweaters, an endless river of Lexuses trying to get on the turnpike, It's lovely.

french fried

french fried
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

Remember when I was living in Boise, Idaho? Umm, that was like a week ago. Well, anyway, back when I was living in Boise, Idaho I had a friend who was getting married in Portland. So a bunch of folks in Boise rented a "mini-van" and drove there for the festivities.
This is a photo of a french fry that looks like a joint. At the post-reception we lit it and as people walked by we would hand it to them and they would attempt to take a hit off it. Hmm sweet deep fat fryer kine bud-o-ricious. They would suck like crazy trying to get a hit and would then hand it back and thank us. We found this amusing. Of course the thing smelled not so good.

Then we'll cut up the Constitution and make yellow ribbons out of it.

From Democracy Now...

American Legion Declares War on Peace Movement
The organization the American Legion has voted at its national convention to target peace activists and the antiwar movement. The group boasts nearly 3 million members. The group's national commander called for an end to all "public protests" and what he called "media events" against the war, even though they are protected by the Bill of Rights. Thomas Cadmus told the convention "The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples. The delegates voted to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."

Chaka's licking the carpet. She has to stay inside in the mornings because the mailman is all freaked out. I guess she growled at him. I probably would have also considering his Dufus shades and liederhoesen like back-support.
I'm blowing out of here...so long Boise. I actually like Boise. It's a nice little small town. It's quiet and yet they have some cool bars and it's beautiful up here. But my time has come. My foray into the the world of construction-remodeling has made me realize manual labor sucks. Breathing in plaster dust while hauling eighty pounds of broken tiles, plaster and wooden lathe on your back, doing it for seven hours and then doing the same thing again the next day and then the next, well, you get the idea. Sysiphus had the idea.
so, yes chaka is licking the carpet...I am trying to figure out how to get my shit back to san francisco even though I'm headed east. ups, us mail, uship.com?
A friend is driving East and I'm going to meet up with her in salt lake city and then we'll drive the little fiat to New Joysey. Oy gevalt!

mmm...smoke..good

mmm...smoke..good
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

Here in Boise...Wali took off to go camping and I came down with some bug. So I hauled my ass down to Blockbuster and rented Sideways and Sin city. Sideways was great and Sin City was better than I expected. I thought Mickey Rourke looked a little like the Beast from Jean Cocteau's Belle et Bette.
Also got The Bride of Frankenstein, M (by Fritz Lang),Amarcord, and A Bullet in the Head(john Woo).(from the library-much cheaper)
the BOF was great. I can't believe I never saw it. The monster starts drinking and smoking and then he wants a woman. He and Doctor Posterius(whatver) force Henry Frankenstein to create the monster's bride and when he does she is a twitchy freaky thing with great eyes who promptly rejects the monster. Classic James Whale.
M has a young peter Lorre as a murdering child molester in 1930's Berlin. Alot of the movie has an almost documentary feel as they indicate all the latest types of detective capabilites to track down this insane killer who is terrorizing the city. Shots of people analyzing handwriting(unfilled loops indicate an indolent, lazy type of character, such as an actor), tracking down types of paper used in candy stores, etc.
The scene where Lorre is put to trial by the criminals of the city(who captured him because the cops kept busting their hangouts and messing up their biz.)is excellent. Peter Lorre pulls out all the stops.
Amarcord is great. Memories of small town italy from the thirties as only Fellini can do it(although Woody Allen tried).One great scene is when the family goes on a horse carriage trip to the farm and on the way they pick up the uncle who is at the Institution. After lunch and a few glasses of wine the odd uncle climbs to the top of a tree and starts yelling "I WANT A WOMAN!" over and over and won't come down.

I can relate.

Drink and Dial

A friend of mine called me and played back a message I had left him last Friday or early Saturday. I didn't remember calling him but when I heard the fitful starts and whining pejorativisms I painfully recalled making said call.
If there are any ohers out there to whom I may have rang up in my inebriated state please accept my, ah fuck it, consider yourself lucky.

I do remember get 86'ed from The Torch, a local strip club, but that's another story.

8/18/2005

hmm
Originally uploaded by catherine magma.

pope visits german homeland

When did we start using the term Homeland? After the events of 7-11? What a God-Awful way to refer to our country. It seems very germanic, nationalistic, fascist, and Orwellian.
We just got a T1 line here at the house of eternal re-modification, Boise division. So now I guess I'll have to get caught up on current events. Has Karl Rove been arrested yet? Ha-ha, That's a good one.
Oh and who gives a fuck about the shuttle?
Jeebus help me.

ooh comments

I received two comments on my last brilliant post and was feeling pretty good about myself. These people seemed to enjoy my blog and they were going to tell their friends! Gosh. I guess I have just about the best blog I know.
Then I realized they were probably some sort of automatically generated comment that puts in a link to someone's commercial website. One was for ceiling fans. Side note: You can't cut off your head with a ceiling fan. Even if you use an upside down lawnmower with custom reinforced blades. they will give you a nasty whack but the force of the blades will push your head away thus impeding severance.
the other comment site was for something called life wave. some doo-hickus that gives you untold energy. Around here in Boise that's known as Methamphetamine.
Boo-yah!

Library internet

So I discovered the internet terminals here in the Boise library where you can actually sit down. oh boy. Also you can use them for a whole hour. They have all the internets.
This not having a computer biz is starting to suck.
I must admit the people that work here at the library are amazingly helpful. At one point there were three people trying to help me track down a book. After twenty minutes they found it on a cart in the basement. Damn. In "Frisco" it would have been more like a shrug.
I love using the "Frisco". It really shakes folks up.
As you can tell things are pretty darn exciting here in Boise. But the weather is hot and excellent. Totally. Right now at my apartment in "Frisco" Its probably about fifty degrees with a wind chill factor that is rivalled by those living near Lake Huron.
Hmm.
Magwa kill the greybeard and all of his seed.

bbq-oise

Bill's barbecuing drunken chicken on the Char-Broil wearing his vintage celtics apron that mimics Larry Birds uniform circa 83? including short shorts. the mitt is a tiny basketball. the grissom t-shirt adds to the mayhem.

Oh Yeah ?

Just a note: Fuck You!


This message courtey of Maker's Mark.

& tHE pIPELINE

Boise

Well here I am in Boise. I really don't feel like writing anything because I'm standing at the computer terminal in the the Boise Library. They don't provide chairs for people who use the internet computers. Why the hell not? You can use the internet for a half hour for free but I guess they don't want you to be comfortable while you do it.
There are some real hipster freaks here in Boise. Some dude surprised me while I was waiting for the light to change. I heard somebody say hey buddy and when I turned around this 65 year old long haired dude who was shaking and whose eyes were functioning independently of each other and his brain was about five inches from me.
"Hey .....man....canyousparesome........change?"
I thought he was going to stab me with a used syringe.
"Uh no, and back off."
So much for compassion on a daily basis.
Speaking of compassion the Dalai Lama is coming to Sun Valley and will be speaking for free. I saw the Dalai Lama at UC Santa Cruz in 1982(?). He was pretty cool and funny.
I also saw Buckminster Fuller speak at UCSC around the same time. He talked for at least six hours straight without stopping except to take a drink of water. It was pretty amazing. He started in about the origins of technology from the beginning of sailing and then just kept going.
Outside of Boise are three geodesic domes that house the Holy church of the Baptized Christ Child or some such mumbo jumbo...

Last Day in Vegas chapter seven

Ephraim Pai had a bad day. He played poker for eleven hours and ended up winning exactly 27 dollars. At one point he had been up over four hundred. He knew there was a spirit residing in the chair that he had been using and although he had replaced the chair he was almost sure the spirit had followed him. He knew how devious these spirits could be and he held them almost completely accountable for his string of bad luck. Of course the fact that he had tried to draw to an inside straight at least three times had nothing to do with it.
He put the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking spot. He had been playing poker at the home of one Charles Ignatz. He always wondered what kind of a name Ignatz was. German? Jewish? Czechslovakian? He didn't bother to ask because he thought Charles might be offended. Charles was a rather overweight balding gay man who wore loud tropical shirts, drank quantities of gin and tonic and smoked salem 100's while they played cards. Ephraim didn't drink or smoke but neither bothered him. He could play cards in the middle of a blizzard sitting on a block of ice.
He knew his wife would not be happy with him if he told her how much he made so he had stopped telling her. She had an income from her family that they used for for all the bills and if Ephraim didn't ask her for money he wouldn't hear any grief. His wife was a strange bird who was pretty easy going and usually seemed happy although she didn't talk much and spent most of her time reading books that Ephraim had never heard of. Ephraim didn't read much. He watched some tv but most of the time he was playing poker or looking for a game. He had quite a few friends who regularly hosted poker games and Ephraim would sometimes drive two hundreds miles for a good game.
He pulled into the driveway of his house and his wife and son were standing on the front lawn.
"Look what Johnnie found."
His wife held up a one hundred dollar bill.

Mega Million Fever

from sf gate:

-- If you knew one person in Canada, and you had to draw at random one name out of a hat containing the names of every person in Canada, you would be 5.7 times more likely to draw your friend's name than hit the Mega Millions jackpot.


Source: Mike Orkin, Ph.D., managing scientist at Exponent Corp., statistics professor at California State University East Bay