Caveat: Schnee Schnee Schnee

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

Dateline: Chemnitz

Bob and I took the train from Amsterdam to Duisburg, Germany, where we changed to an overnight train to Dresden, via Berlin. It was quite windy and cold in Duisburg as we walked around looking for a cafe at 10 pm, but when I awoke on the train at 4 am as we came into Berlin, it was snowing, and there was snow on the ground. Once again I had trouble getting back to sleep, so I stared out the window at the giant speed-blurred snowflakes until we finally came close to Dresden, where they were clearly shovelling out from under a substantial snowfall, and it was still snowing. We walked through a desolate, not-yet-open-for-business downtown and found a place to get a bit of breakfast. At around 9, we met up with Bob's "relatives" from Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt of the DDR). Bob's last name is sufficiently rare that he and his family can assume that anyone who shares it is related – the family in Chemnitz (and another branch in Liege, Belgium) is probably about 10 generations removed but they've definitely traced the connection.

We saw some old parts of Dresden (tho much is reconstructed since the city was so completely destroyed in WWII) and ate breakfast again with Michael and Kristine, and drove to Chemnitz (about an hour on the autobahn through light snow) by lunchtime. Had some delicious potato dumplings for lunch, with purple cabbage and roast beef of some kind in gravy, pretty traditional saxon dish I guess. It was good. We went shopping (I bought some gloves for the cold and a map of Berlin for when I get there, since Bob will no longer be as functional a guide there), and then spent the afternoon at Michael and Kristine's apartment. I can follow bits and pieces of the conversation, but my utterances are limited to Danke and Bitte. Occasionally Bob provides running translations but mostly I just sit and smile and absorb the whole thing impressionistically. After supper we drove to Jens, Sylke and David's (Michael and Kristine's son, daughter-in-law and grandson) in Euba, about 5 km south of Chemnitz, very rural and euro-pastoril scenic – like a swiss postcard with the fresh snow on everything.

Dateline: Jena

I didn't last long before needing to go to sleep. I had a glass of sekt (sparkling wine e.g. reisling) and it knocked me out. I woke at 4 am per my new pattern, but managed to get back to sleep, so for the first time in a few days I managed a full, restful night's sleep. Michael and Kristine returned for breakfast, thought Jens was gone early to work (he drives a train).

Train from Chemnitz to Jena between 12 and 2. Jena is where Bob studied as an undergrad in 1986, he has friends there with whom we are staying now.

 

Caveat: Fat in Utrecht

Banalities & Journaling / My Photos

This picture was taken in Utrecht, Netherlands, of me and my friend Bob. I don't look that happy, do I?

Jared2005

[This is a back-post, added at the date the picture was taken but in fact added 2014-05-14. I post this picture mostly because it is the picture which shows me at my maximum weight..]

Caveat: Television & Hell

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Dateline:  Amsterdam
I woke up wide awake at 4am. Still struggling with time-change related biochemistry, probably. I had that somewhat obnoxious “hook” from the currently popular Jennifer Lopez song looping through my head – a tenor-saxophony sort of sound, da-da-DA-da, da-da-DA-da ad infinitum. I guess there could be worse.  But one could hope for better, too.
The selection of television channels at this hotel (Hotel Vijaya) is eurotrocious.
There’s the darts channel.   All darts, all the time.  Like watching golf, but more boring.
There’re channels with infomercials 24/7 in both english and german, each with dutch subtitles. An attractive blendery thingy, for example, that I really, really wanted to buy immediately – it seemed to offer a simple solution to most of my core issues.  Fortunately, I can’t dial euro-900 numbers from my room.
There’s CNN, which is fine is small doses, but gets old fast unless I interleave it with a sufficient amount of anything else.   And CNBC, which is occasionally great, except when it segues into infomercials.
Raiuno, an italian-language channel, with a seemingly never-ending parade of 2nd tier celebrity interviews and news about the pope’s health.
A french/swiss channel, with it’s inevitable feel of cultural pomposity – but I probably have spent more time looking at that channel than most of the others, partly because the picture is clearer, but also, I rationalize, to provide me some practice with the admittedly “rusty” language-skills. A nice artist was being profiled yesterday morning – Ming, I think was his name, Chinese-French. Amazing, giant, sloppy black / white / grey busts of old men, children, whoever. Sufficiently impressive to make me want to look him up sometime – hence this note.
The spanish channel, TVE, with its never-ending stream of light news and bad acting and second-rate issues analysis (I learned that spain will be the first country to be voting a referendum on the european constitution, however – probably the only guaranteed “yes” out of the 10 countries where it’s being put to vote). And, regrettably, I’ve got that darn mexican-based prejudice against the ceceo (the pronunciation of “soft c” and “z” as english unvoiced “th” – common to madrileño and more northern castilian dialects – hence “socios” -> /sothios/) – this sort unconscious sociolinguistic red flag that pops up in my head when I hear it, screaming “snob,” is hard to overcome – hopefully once I’m in spain and have spent some time there, I’ll get over that. But on a positive side, I did catch some comedy that made me laugh out loud, the other night. Little sight gags and such, including a bit with a man trying to explain to his boss that he’d found a certain unmentionable body-part in an office trash can, that was quite humorous.
There are a ziljoen (=zillion? … I just made that up, parallel to nederlans “miljoen”) dutch channels of course. I have limited patience for them, not because I don’t understand them (everybody knows I can sit and watch television in languages I don’t understand for hours) but because they all have such a limited repertoire of commercials that they get repetitive fast.
I caught some profoundly derivative but fascinating dutch rap music videos, however. All that gang-sign, inner-city american posturing, body language, movement, eminemesque but translated into dutch. The group was called THC (hmm go figure) and appeared to be several young men of morrocan descent (common immigrant group, here). One piece on social prejudice, blatent buy-in to victim-based culture, but full of legitimate complaints all the same – the dutch white middle-class turning away, ignoring, fearing, etc. Another, happier bit, with dancing girls in morrocanish costume, looked like it was filmed in morroco as well. And apropos morroco, Bob and I went to an exhibit on morrocan history yesterday at the Nieuwe Kerk, the books with their arabic calligraphy were incredible, some of the roman- and punic-era artifacts fascinating, the decorative materials (intricately ornate doors, blankets, etc.) were less interesting to me, however.
So that’s a partial review of my hotel’s television selections.
I have an entrepreneurial vision to make a t-shirt memorializing my visit to Amsterdam, and – specifically – my stay on the periphery of the famous red light district (which I found singularly tawdry and uninspiring):  the shirt will say “museum of chastity / Amsterdam” – with an appropriately unsexy logo(?).   If, as I discussed with Jay some months back, Las Vegas is Hell under Disney administration, then Amsterdam is Hell under the left wing of the democratic party, or perhaps a tribe moderate anarcho-syndicalist college drop outs with a weakness for public spending?
Not that I have anything against Hell – I’m much in the need of familiarizing myself with its geography, customs and mores, given my inevitable long-term prospects, as a “faith-based atheist.”   Besides… most (but not all) of the people I’ve met who are going to Heaven get on my nerves.  Perhaps righteousness is only fun for the people on the “right” side of it.

Caveat: World of Choral Conducting

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Dateline: Amsterdam

My friend Bob is here in nederland, of course, for an audition to be part of a workshop with a famous choir director named Eric Ericsson (sp?), incl. Nederlans Kamerkoor (sp? I think).  So Friday night, I met up with him in Utrecht about 5 pm, at the Pieterkerk.  Only minutes before, I had passed a small shop selling t-shirts and comic books (and snottily named Piet Snot – not hard to figure out), and had seen a shirt that said "Wie is de Bob".  This seemed so ridiculously relevant that I bought a size XL immediately, and was in the process of putting it on when I saw Bob at the end of the street attempting to decipher a historical marker. I gave it to him as a gift.

After dinner at an "african" restaurant in a weird warehouse-bunker thingy under the streets of touristic Utrecht, Bob and I went to the kamerkoor concert at the Pieterkerk. The music was thematically tied by being Iberian in langauge (if not composer) with some old bits and new bits in the first half, and a rather interminable, repetitive new composition for the second half, based on a civil war poem by Miguel Hernandez.  First, a Golden Age sacred piece in Latin, then some more popular spiritual pieces in castilian – these latter by Guerrero and reminding me of some verse I'd just read in Persiles.  The piece I liked best was a short contemporary composition by Joost Kleppe set to some verse by… I think it was a Brazilian poet. The performers themselves were amazingly good, and the acoustics in the 11th c. church were incredible.

We met some of the other conductors who will be auditioning for this workshop, including a coterie of Florida State University alums. I was odd-man-out when it came to the "shop talk" of these choral conductors, but I made my way as I often do by providing some comic relief and occasional snippits of hopefully insightful historical commentary. After the concert, it turned out Joost Kleppe was actually in attendance, and as the conductors introduced themselves and then I presented myself as "not the conductor", this Joost even commented something to the effect that I was a "spare" – a la Monty Python. All good light fun.

In total there were 5 of us on the train back to Amsterdam on friday night – Bob and myself, then three others (and forgive me if I'd rather leave them anonymous than get their names wrong). The one guy's audition was Saturday morning, so when we all had lunch at the Beurs van Berlage cafe yesterday morning, he was already done – but Bob and the others audition today (Sunday). We met the last of the FSU coterie, Jose, too, yesterday morning. Oh… turns out their auditions are all in the Beurs van Berlage building – just a few doors away from the Beursplein and the cafe entrance, actually. So that's what Bob's doing right now (more or less).

We all went out to dinner at an Indonesian restaurant last night, all very clubby with so many choralists (is that what they're called?) I just stuck to my sidekick role. I've been around Bob enough, over the years, to be able to at least follow some of the shop talk, if not really "understand" it. I can fake it successfully – as I do with so many things.

 

Caveat: Where there’s smoke…

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Dateline:  Amsterdam

Many people, knowing my personal history, may be inclined to imagine that my visit to Amsterdam was motivated by some, er… burning desire.  Far from it – I think that phase of my life is definitively over – over for some 18 years and counting, actually.   Nevertheless, the little "coffeeshop" with it's heady aroma is ubiquitous in central Amsterdam, and the "psst, psst" from street vendors of various substances and services leaves me vaguely but not irremediably uncomfortable.

I'm back at Beursplein.  I already have my tickets to Utrecht and will leave shortly.   Apropos my visit to various restaurants and cafes (i.e. with respect to more conventional smoke):  the Dutch show their progressive side, since, unlike most of Europe, they actually have posted "no smoking sections" in many public places.  Nevertheless, they remain unrepentantly European – hence, they don't actually obey these "no smoking" directives.   Kind of like Americans and speed limits, I suppose.

There's a little bouquet of flowers in a square little vase on this table that looks rather more like a salad than a flower arrangement.  But it's nice I guess.

Caveat: Beursplein

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Hiking & Travel / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / The Wonders of Work

Dateline:  Amsterdam

I'm sitting in a cafe on Beursplein, in the Beurs van Berlage (whatever that is) in downtown Amsterdam.  I just had a very tasty soup.  I came here looking for WiFi, didn't find t-mobile but figured out KPN (dutch phone company) and for a coupla euros, I'm hooked up once again.   This is nicer than the lobby of the Ramada, where I went yesterday.

I set out this morning to go to the Rijksmuseum, but it was raining hard, and so I bought a transport pass and took a trolley (sort of indirectly).  I got to the museum and decided I wasn't in the mood (plus there was a sign announcing that a portion of it was closed), so I got back on a trolley at random and visited some grim Dutch suburb (something southwest of here, I think). 

I don't make a very good tourist, I guess – I'm just as happy riding public transport at random as I am visiting museums or landmarks.

I meet with Eurobob tomorrow in Utrecht.  Meanwhile, mostly I'm killing time.  I wrote up a a rather pessimistic review of reporting capabilities at Paradise Corp for Ravi and Tom, RE the bid for business from that large retail chain.   In retrospect, I'm wondering if it's what they wanted… but if they want me to write up the solution (as opposed to a condemnation of current abilities) that's much more in depth, isn't it? 

As in, you'll have to build such and such aggregate, using such and such process, and tie in data from here, there, and everywhere.  Seems like a request to design reportomatic 2.0.  I'm all for that, but it ain't gonna be cheap, is it?

Meanwhile, I'm reading Persiles.  So you've got this guy, Periandro (later revealed to be Persiles), dressed in drag (and looking very gorgeous, apparently), looking for his sister, Auristella (i.e. Sigismunda – and one is inclined to impute something incestuous, there).  But she is dressed as a man, and is about to be sacrificed because the barbarians want the blood from his (her) heart to test a prophecy of a future king.  But one of the barbarians gets the hots for Periandro (who he thinks is a woman) while Auristella reveals she is a woman (to avoid being murdered) and the barbarians break out into an orgy of violence and soon the whole island is in flames.  Really.

And that's just the first few chapters.

So far, Nederland reminds me of a kind of old-world New Jersey, but they talk funnier.  I don't mean that as an insult, either.  I think Dutch is a very cool language…  kind of what I expect English would sound like if I didn't understand it.  It's got similar phonetic inventory, and very similar cadences to English.  Kind of like how they talk in Jersey, right?

Caveat: A somewhat liberal metropolis 1.1

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

Argh – I just posted a rather long entry and it appears to have been eaten by the system without posting.

So this is a shorter entry: I arrived, I walked around, I checked into my hotel, I slept, and now, early evening darkness, I'm here.

[OK nevermind.  Looks like it came through.  Disregard the above.]

Caveat: A somewhat liberal metropolis

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Hiking & Travel / Internet & Blogging / The Wonders of Work

Dateline: Amsterdam

I arrived around noon, once baggage was gathered and immigration cleared. Very tired, as I failed utterly to sleep on the plane – too much anticipating or something.

I read a few chapters of Persiles, and still can't get over how peculiar it is. It ain't Don Quijote, we all know… but what the hell is it?

Amsterdam is about 0 degrees C – but after Minnesota last month it doesn't seem unreasonable in the least. I walked around quite a bit, located the hotel where Eurobob set up reservations, and proceeded to check in and sleep 4 hours. I'm more with it now, so I emerged in early evening darkness to find this internet spot. Logged on, looking for a nearby hotspot for my laptop – which will be much better. I was having some trouble with the yahoo email account yesterday and Sunday, but I think it's resolved.

I still need to send to Tom / Ravi @ Paradise Corp the write up on the reporting requirements that I promised before I left. I'll send that out tomorrow morning. While on the flight I also put some time in on the "white paper" I'm trying to write on Business Intelligence / Decision Support Systems. I think I have a long way to go, but I think I have a chance of producing something genuinely meaningful.

Guy Kawasaki asks, apropos the start-your-own-business thing, in an article I read in Entrepreneur magazine: are you creating meaning? That's the most important question, according to him. We shall see, I guess, but my business concept will proceed apace while I lollygag around Europe.

Caveat: Soon. Very soon. A matter of hours.

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

Dateline:  Los Angeles

In a matter of hours, I leave for Amsterdam.  I'm quite excited, and I cannot sleep.

I've packed (to the extent I do such things), and I'm as prepared as I think I can get.  Of course I've probably forgetten a few things, but c'est la vie…

Bernie the cat, and my friends at Paradise Corp., and my dad and brother and stepmother will all be missed while I travel.  I'm looking forward to seeing "Eurobob" (as he put it in a recent e-mail), however. 

I feel a great sense of accomplishment in having finally vacated my unit (storage unit, that is) after four years of procrastination and not coping with all that junk – a lot of it is Michelle-detritus that I'm not sure yet what to do with – but at least now it's under my nose here at home rather than "out of sight out of mind" in that Sherman Oaks personal storage facility.   Plus now, I'll save some money.

Ok, this is boring.  Next entry, from Amsterdam.  Ciao.

Caveat: A week later [Maná – Muelle de San Blas]

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

Dateline:  Los Angeles

A week goes by, not much happens.  I leave for Amsterdam next Monday, AM.  That's when stuff happens.  I'll meet Bob there on the 11th.

Meanwhile, I had dinner with Wendy this evening, good conversations regarding our respective retirements (hers marginally more authentic qua retirement than mine, I suppose), etc.  Ate at her favorite place, La Dijonais there on Washington in Culver City. 

I will confess that I sometimes listen to sappy Mexican top 40 radio, when driving.  I got all sentimental, driving up the 110 home, thru downtown and the tunnels and the Arroyo and all that, very memory evoking – the 110 is the only stretch of LA freeway that I still vividly recall from my childhood visits to LA – so it's like my oldest "local" road-memory.   And road-memories are special, right? 

And for some reason, a snippet of Maná's "Muelle de San Blas" got me all teary, thinking about my long, interesting, complicated, and lately pretty darn OK life. 

So whatever.   More later. 

[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]

Caveat: And the final score was…

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Internet & Blogging

Dateline:  Glendale, CA

I zipped back west after my brief stay in Kansas City.  I had this weird, but gratifying and very deep, self-aware conversation with my mother's cousin Bill Brown and his wife, Sheila.  Most unexpected and cool.  Subjects ranging from Aunt Milly's politics to Michelle's and my own flirtations with death, the nature of depression and the ethics of psychoactive medication. 

Stopped in OKC at a Starbucks, but there was no WiFi.  After staying in Tucumcari, NM, in a motel, I went on to Albuquerque, where I was online but didn't post.  And that almost brings us to now. 

Last night had dinner with Phil and Andrew at Villa Sombrero – a trendy mexican joint on York near Figueroa.   I suggested we plan a trip in the Ford Model A to someplace like Alaska for Summer, 06.  That would be cool.  Maybe I'll end up financing, but that's fine by me. 

Meanwhile, this afternoon I just completed the GMAT exam, and wrote two good essays and scored a 740.  Wow.  Just think if I'd bothered to have studied, e?

I'm sure someone out there cares and is reading this.  Perhaps a lonely AI routine in one of Google's servers?  Ok then, more later.

Caveat: wandering

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

Dateline:  Saint Louis

Well, I don't really have a reason to be in St Louis – no one to visit, nothing to do.  But after Jeff's wrestling tournament in Plainview, MN, yesterday (sadly, he was pinned in both matches I saw), I took wrong turn on I-90.  My intention was to go to Kansas City, but, true to my commitment never to backtrack, I decided to follow my nose.  And, after some snow in Illinois last night, I'm here. 

Icy and cold, but sunny.  Sitting in a Starbucks, as usual.  Trying to study for the GMAT (which I take in 6 days!) but not feeling terribly focused. 

On to KC tonight, then.  I hope to see Bill Brown (2nd cousin) and maybe my great aunt, Frances – if she's there.  She might be in Colorado. 

After watching Harold & Kumar with Mark and Amy, I'm craving Whitecastle.  Maybe I'll find one of those and have lunch.   Ok then.

Caveat: ya, so i’m a nut

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

Dateline:  Duluth

And just as it starts to get REALLY cold. It was down to about minus 20 F last night, and I was sorta worried my truck wouldn't start, but it did.  Good truck.

It's beautiful here – the lake is a hazy, steamy blue – surprisingly liquid despite the temperature and season.  The are several feet of snow on the ground.  Maybe  I really would consider living here.  Except that it's such a smallish city. 

So tonight I'll be heading back down to St Paul, and supposedly Mark and Amy want to go to Mary Chittenden's "moving to California" party tonight.  How ironic – considering my own thoughts of wanting to move to Minnesota.  Mary was someone who was a fixture during my tenure at the 1808 Portland Ave, where I roomed with Mark, Bob, Ken, and other despicables.  Long-time, no-see.  A ver. 

I got the truck stuck in a snowbank last night, trying to park at the motel (downtownish, 2nd @ 2nd approx).  A good samaritan in a beater pickup used a tow-rope to yank me out – he entered and exited his truck "dukes of hazard" style – through the window.  I guess the door didn't work.  Overall, it was an entertaining yet frigid experience. 

Caveat: Twice in one month…

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

Dateline:  Minneapolis

The Starbucks I tried in Lincoln, NE, and then the one in Owatonna, MN, both didn't have functioning WiFi.  So this is your next post.

Driving across Nebraska basically all night was a bit like a bad nightclub experience, but without the fun part.  Although there was an interesting soundtrack…  I guess that's what I'm getting at.  Crystal Method, Chemical Bros., Bob Dylan, and even, I confess, ABBA.  ABBA?  Jeez, why does that one album (SouperTrouper?) always make me remember so vividly that one party at A.H.'s cousin's in Colonia Roma, DF?    I guess that's really the main reason I listen to it.  I think it's cuz V gave me that cassette tape that then constituted one of like three albums I had while living there…

So back in Minneapolis, I immediately head for my old "haunts" to chase down a likely Starbucks… the one perched on the bridgecorner of 4th SE and 15th SE, kattycorner the nefarious McDonald's – the one that didn't hire me in 1992.  Ha.

This Starbucks didn't exist yet.  I think it was a lousy sandwich shop.

The U must be on break – e-22 is closed (the cafe over the bookstore).   However, crowds are gathering for some sporting event down the way. 

Caveat: So much for posting regularly…

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Hiking & Travel / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / The Wonders of Work

Dateline:  Pueblo, CO.

I'm zigging and zagging my way cross country, basically from Starbucks to Starbucks, using their wireless access points to stay online.   

Quit my job at Paradise, now I'm looking at being a sort of independent contractor / consultant.  We'll see how that goes.  I'll try to keep things up-to-date.  The current road trip provides a good framework from which to hang commentary.  Stayed at Wendy / Aundi's last night in Santa Fe, had breakfast at Harry's Roadhouse, and had a great deep conversation with brother Andrew. 

As in… what is the nature of consciousness, among other things.  My short answer – it's quantum mechanical self-deception.  The capacity for self-awareness and deception do appear to be tightly linked in the chain of being.

More later, then.

Caveat: 2004

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I solved some amazing, interesting technical challenges for the Sales and Marketing department at ARAMARK, but I’ve created bad blood with my former colleagues in the IT department. Company politics got unpleasant. I resigned my job in December. But I feel ‘successful.’ In 5 years, I’d managed to get promoted 4 times and quadruple my original starting salary, paying off my debts and saving a good sum of money. Oh… and I started This Here Blog Thingy™.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2004 – it was written in the future.]
picture

Caveat: A rant worth remembering…

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / The Wonders of Work

The following was writting in January, to one of our Business Systems Managers (a sort of IT department liaison who job it is to deal with us difficult business / functional folks. All that's changed is that evidence suggests that my recommendations were not taken. That's OK – I didn't think they would be. But I still want to go "on record." So here goes… any modifications or additions I've added are in square brackets [].

Please understand, my motivations are not meant as criticism of any person, department, or process, but rather, I'm driven by a desire to make things genuinely better.

I think there is a growing consensus that the "New Data Warehouse" project fell woefully short of expectations and promises.

[er… outta time … I'll add the rest later]

[um… I never finished this rant. Just as well.]

Caveat: Welcome to Paradise, Corp.

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / The Wonders of Work

Keeping in mind that all names are being changed, to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the idiots, here is my world.

Basically, think "Dilbert" – but without all the glamor.

Paradise Corp is a fortune 500 company — over 50 years old, a "bricks and mortar" conglomerate. Paradise went public again in the most recent decade, after several decades as a privately held company, and — unofficially at least — is experiencing some shocks under the higher level of scrutiny that being a public corporation is subject to.

As a conglomerate, it has a number of unrelated divisions with very little in common between them, except perhaps a brand and a CEO — we're in "silos," to put it in consultantese. I work for a very autonomous, $1 billion+ annual revenue division in a specialized niche in the B2B services world.

We're one of about 5 national-scale players in an otherwise fragmented, regional and mom-and-pop industry, and, until a few years ago, we held a definitive lead, in both reputation and size. The recent economic downturn, changes in the industry overall toward "commodification" of our primary product, and some serious at-loss pricing from our competitors in order to gain market share, have all contributed to our recent bout of ill-health.

My loyalty to Paradise is based in the personalities that surround me — the organization as a whole hardly merits it. Although I've no concerns regarding the general ethical soundness of Paradise, it's hardly what I would call an exemplar of corporate excellence.

I've received some good breaks at Paradise, however, climbing from being a "temp" in the billing department through billing coordinator, programmer/analyst, and now data analyst and even "data strategist" (at least unofficially) in about 5 years — all without any help from my resume, which says I should be teaching high school or, at best, pursuing my PhD in literature.

Caveat: Guess what?

Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

As I've stepped through the configuration process for my new weblog and some associated "typelists," I've had the sudden realization that I could use a books typelist to catalog my entire book collection. Sounds like a fabulous fun, e?

So, in no particular order, you will find my many books, pulled at random, from shelves and small piles around my little house. I'll try to include approximate date-of-acquisition, and to comment on at least the interesting ones (but isn't that all of them?).

Not that you, the putative reader, is anything but a figment of my imagination. But isn't that the point? I suspect most of the depth on this blog is going to end up in the comments I provide for my texts.

Caveat: And lo…

Banalities & Journaling

… it came to pass

that Jared decided to start a blog.

Is this a sign I have too much time on my hands?

A cross between:

1) a traditionalish journal ("dear diary…");

2) one of those yellow legal-pad thingies where I write down things from books and websites that I find interesting;

3) a semi-fictionalized account of nothing in particular.

Caveat: Retroblogging

Banalities & Journaling / Retroblogging

[Retroblogging.

I have deliberately placed this post on the day before the day that I actually started writing this blog. In actual fact, I'm writing this entry on 2010-11-28 (with updates in 2013).  It's a mysterious post-from-the-future! By this anachronistic act, however, I mean to introduce my grand, narcissistic project: retroblogging.

I realized, some time back, that the ability to back-date blog posts means that I could post to my blog back in time:  to times before I was blogging;  to times before there were blogs;  even to times before I was born.

The fact is, I have been journaling, on and off, in rather bloggy fashion, for a major portion of my life.  So one day, I had the epiphany that I could transfer the content of my paper journals to this blog.  Perhaps selectively.  But… autobiographically.

Several times, I've taken steps to try to "digitize" some of my old journals.  Before the "hard drive disaster of '98," I'd typed over 100 pages into a laptop. There's a certain narcissism inherent in this sort of project, I realize, but reviewing the past has a certain therapeutic value for me, and putting out into the online universe matches up well with my beliefs and feelings about the importance of living a sort of radical transparency – not as a prescription for others but for myself.

Not all the journal entries are equally suitable for placement online.  Some are, frankly, illegible.  Some are disturbingly banal, or downright incoherent.  A few are too private to put online, even for someone as radically transparent as I strive to be.  But there are lots of things I think I'd like to record.  This blog entry, here, will serve as a place to "explain" what these "retroblog" posts are about, that I can link to in a note at the bottom of those old posts.  The posts themselves will show up at the appropriate date, in the archives, through the use of the back-dating feature.

Here is a picture of some of my journals.  I carry several kilos of these green- or blue-ruled "comp books" with me from continent to continent.

Old Journals

I also tended to keep journals on those those yellow legal pad thingies – but over the years, those have decomposed into disorganized manila folders crammed with paper.  I carry those around, too.

All along, my approach has been not unlike the way that I continue to approach this blog.  The difference is that I was much less aware, for the most part, of a specific audience.  If I thought of an audience at all, it was most likely some mysterious future biographer.  Or simply my future self.  And, in fact, clearly, that latter future audience idea was exactly right.  But now… with some selectivity, I'm going to be putting dated entries here in blogtopia.

Dumping the many caveats of my life from my paper dumptruck.

I was most prolific during my last two years of high school and during my college years.  But there are interesting materials to be found for nearly every year, if I poke around a bit.  I doodled a lot.  I frequently experimented with my handwriting – sort of a private typography.  Almost always, I had some "language-in-progress" that I was trying to study, and just like today, I would jot down notes or lists of vocabulary.  I sometimes typed, using a manual typewriter, imagining something hemingwayesque, maybe.

Here are some images of pages from these past journals.

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Old Journals

Caveat: 2003

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I migrated again, with my employer, ARAMARK: I went into the Sales and Marketing department. I developed the infamous National Accounts Data Analysis (NADA) intranet site for my company on my own, and it was a huge hit. I was promoted and recognized for this. I reflected, ‘Failure in life…  success in business.’ I moved into the tiny house next to my dad’s on the hill in Highland Park. I took my first trip to Australia to visit my mother.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2003 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 2002

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I rented a horrible apartment in North Hollywood. I lived alone, enjoying the company of my eccentric cat, Bernardo O’Higgins. All cats are eccentric. I was turning into the ‘loner-nerd’ I’d always worried I’d become. Work, however, was going well – workaholically, in fact. I developed a habit of working on Saturdays, and taking time off while at work to go to the infinityplex in Burbank a few blocks from work and watching a movie – so I watched a lot of movies.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2002 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 2001

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

At my work at ARAMARK, I migrated from the finance department into the IT department. I started working as a programmer. I studied SQL programming and accounting, and combine these disparate fields into a pretty good understanding of my employer’s business model.  I took many long drives around Southern California. I accepted the fact that I was meant to be alone in the world. I deleted a novel I was writing from my computer in disgust.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2001 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 2000

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

A programmer at my place of work becomes slightly famous for creating a non-Y2K-compliant application after January 1, 2000. In June, Michelle committed suicide. It was as if to say, ‘So there!’ or ‘Take that!’ That’s how suicide works. I worked hard at ARAMARK. I bought my Nissan pickup truck, which was the first and only time I ever bought a new car.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2000 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1999

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

I started working at ARAMARK Corporation in Burbank, as a temp in the finance department. I proved sufficiently competent that they offered me a permanent position. Michelle and I occasionally discussed getting back together. We had long, drawn out, long-distance telephone conversations, her still in Philly and me in L.A. (well, Burbank). We both clearly had difficult-to resolve ‘issues.’ I told Michelle that I didn’t think it could work out.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1999 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Decision Making

My Drawings & Paintings / Retroblogging

Journal Page Scan

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-06-09  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?

I wrote this while among the dead. My paper journals from this period are precisely dated and have multiple entries from each day.]

Caveat: En-Ki-Du il grande

My Drawings & Paintings / Retroblogging

Journal Page Scan

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-06-09  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?

I wrote this while among the dead. My paper journals from this period are precisely dated and have multiple entries from each day.]

Caveat: Voluptuosidad

Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable / Retroblogging

Muchisamuchi al lado – dos jovenes se aman, se besan, pero notablemente románticos y cariñosos en extremo.  Me da una alegría destacada.

Leyendo a Nietzsche:  "el sendero de nuestro cielo pasa por la voluptuosidad de nuestro infierno." (our path to heaven goes through our own hell´s voluptosidad.") p 252.

Nietzsche as first evolutionary philosopher, o sea that is the geneological approach, drawing on his own genio and Lamarck – Darwin, he forges a new historicism that is not just (or only) dialectic but systematic, in that it views history as a dynamic system of evolving objects:  men, cultural constructs, ideologies, etc.

"Quisiera dar y distribuir hasta que los sabios de entre los hombres volvieran a sentirse alegres con su locura y los pobres felices con su riqueza." p 256

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" transcribed from paper on 2010-11-28.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?  The above was written one afternoon, after work.  Probably in a Starbucks.  I was reading Nietzsche, in Spanish.]

Caveat: 10 ways of looking at a city bus

Banalities & Journaling / My Poetry & Fiction / Retroblogging

A sensuous mother’s hand strokes her daughter’s brown back, a sort of innocent, pure eroticism, unconscious, formless, concrete.

10 ways of looking @ a city bus (after W. Stevens which I just was reading)

1. A boy is kissed by his girl
@ a bus stop on Figueroa St.
By the taco stand. A bus pulls up.
And struggles away in a cloud of exhaust.

2. A child watches the red & yellow bus,
all angular, be-wheeled giant,
irrelevant to his life
He watches from the window.

3. Rural, inter-city county bus,
bound for the university
A column of eucalyptus trees flips past
College students look out at the lumber stacked in rows

4. 11 pm on Washington Blvd.
A man waits, stomping to stay warm
Almost dancing on the icy sidewalk
The 16A doesn’t come.

5. Two yellow and brown buses
careen down Avenida Insurgentes @ 2 am
their drivers are racing.
The passengers doze, or are drunk.

6. The newspaper headline says
the buses are overcrowded.
The state orders the transit authority to buy more buses
one man asks “Where’s the money going to come from?”

7. An old woman clambers onto a bus,
Somewhere along 6th Avenue – the 50’s, I think.
An impatient young man flicks his burning cigarette into the gutter
And reaches for the handrail to climb aboard.

8. Somewhere near St.-Germaine-des-Pres
a bus disgourges its passengers
The rich, intoxicating smell of diesel fumes
Still makes me think of Paris in January.

9. Accelarating passionately
the rural bus swings into opposing traffic
To pass a donkey cart
An old woman who boarded @ the mercado hugs her chicken protectively.

10. Sgt. Jones was impressed, when I knew
which bus to board – I decifered the hangul.
We went to the modern art museum
South of Seoul, amid luxuriant green trees.

I went to a meeting this morning – early, for the thing on deep ecology. I talked more than I expected. And after, two ladies & I talked about Quaker schools, & the decrepit situation @ Pacific Ackworth. No sé.

Yesterday, after counseling, where Jeffrey was the dominant subject, I drove to Pomona, walked around in the desolate desert, hot. Saturday morning ‘ closed. Decrepit 2nd tier urban core. Then I ate lunch at Dennys, which reminded me of Michelle and her cravings.

Then I came home. My pen ran out of ink the end…

[The “retroblogging” project:  this is a “back-post” transcribed from paper on 2013-06-08.  I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back.  It’s a big project.  But there’s no time limit, right?

The above was written one Sunday afternoon – my journal entries of this time period were very precisely dated and time-stamped. I was probably in a Starbucks in Pasadena or another in downtown Burbank, or else a Java City location in Glendale I was hanging out at a lot during that period – I tended to migrate around these places depending on what other errands or tasks had me doing at the time.]

[UPDATE: I re-published the poem enclosed in the center of this post as poem #1799 of my daily poem series, on July 4th, 2021.]
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Caveat: 1998

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

Things began to break down with Michelle and I wasn’t doing very well with it. In August, we decided on a “trial separation,” but I wasn’t willing to  approach this methodically, and by September, I had quit my teaching job and I ran off (somewhat irresponsibly, I realize) to stay on my uncle Arthur’s land in Alaska. I cut trees and brush with a chainsaw (in the rain), and shoveled gravel (in the rain), and wrote a novel (sitting in a white van, in the rain). In November, I gave up on Alaska and on solitude, and I went to LA to stay with my father, who had recently divorced my stepmother of 21 years, whom I sometimes idolized. This was a very bad period for me, and so, closing out the year with a bang, I attempted suicide while parked alongside the Pacific Coast Highway north of San Simeon, and I nearly succeeded. I spent time in a mental hospital (the parallels with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance are, um, disconcerting).
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1998 – it was written in the future.]
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