Unpleasant flashback to merry-go-rounds.

We bloggers are so on top of things, so I'm sure you're hearing it here first: SoCal had an earthquake.

It was a surprise to be sure, but it was over before I could do much more than utter a "what tha...?"

I'm stuck home with a tweaked back, so I didn't have to live through the wildly swaying building (I work on the 45th floor of a downtown highrise), so that's nice.  Even here in Long Beach closer to the ground, it did its darnedest to make me ill and loopy in the head for about 6-7 minutes.  It's a fairly bizarre sensation.  Kinda like the tire swing on three chains or the merry-go-round from days of yore, and much like those times, I wanted to get off before vomiting.  But it's hard to get off the earth - you guys from NASA know of what I speak.  Apparently there's been a earthquakian dry spell for the last decade or so in LA...  Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come.  People in LA are loopy enough as it is.

Be it old-school or new-school, the LBPD gets its man.

Addie shared this with me the other day and it deserves to passed along.

She was driving home from work, passing through the club district in downtown Long Beach. She says she saw a homeless guy with a shopping cart stopped by 4 of LBPD's finest.

Get this: the homeless guy had a huge mattress on the cart, and the cops? Two were riding Segways and the other two were on horses. What kind of schizophrenic PD do we have around here? And how am I supposed to decide whether this is overkill or ridiculous?

But I know that this is both.

Did I just hear that right?

The scene: 7:28 am. Grand Ave. Station. Two Blue Line trains going in opposite directions. I’m on the Northbound train (of course).

Heard on the outside loudspeakers, so all the world can enjoy it:

My driver (female) “Oooh, you so luckyyyy!”

The other train driver (male): “That’s not luck, baby. That’s skill.”

I have no idea what they were talking about, and I think I’m glad.

Why do I even try sometimes?

I’m not at all superstitious. I don’t really believe in karma. Or in curses. But I have to say that it's hard not to have a bit of a complex about trying to leave work early on a Friday afternoon when I’ve a Monday - or in this case a Monday and Tuesday - off. When I try to do this, something happens to the Blue Line. Every time. Sometimes it’s extra slow for mechanical problems. Sometimes there’s an accident. Sometimes they have emergency track maintenance. It’s always something. It's always slow and crowded. And it happened again. I promise that I have not found religion... though I may start planning for train suckiness in these situations in the future.

Roundup:

Seen on the Blue Line recently: a baby duck. It’s a zoo on here.

Overheard yesterday on the Blue Line:

Young Latino skateboarder number 1 (after a long, long silence): “I think I’m going to be a Navy Seal.”

Young Latino skateboarder number 2 (without blinking or looking up): “My ass.”

Silence again.

Seen today on Long Beach Transit, Line 111: a middle-aged, skinny gay dude, with no teeth, black fingernail polish, a Laguna Beach tee-shirt from the 1980s, all topped off with a beautifully embroidered ivory-white yarmulke. We get all kinds in the LBC.

Are we sure it's over? I think we are.

This is hard to describe. I - like many others I’m sure - feel like I’ve singlehandedly willed Obama to victory in the primary. Hoping against hope. Railing against the status quo. Parsing every speech. Wondering when we would be able get out of the Bush-induced quagmire. I’m wrung out.

Let’s look at tonight:

The speeches didn’t compare. Obama killed. Just fucking killed. Right now, you’re either happy beyond measure that he’s the nominee, or you wish your candidate were anywhere near as inspiring and on top of things as he is.

McCain’s speech was a disaster. Uninspiring, devoid of new ideas or real change. It was painful to watch. He looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy. That green screen? Not good. Abysmal.

HRC was better. In fact, she was much better than McCain. Much better. She could beat him going away. But she’s crazy. She confirmed this - in case we didn’t already know - by embracing that non-real reality for all the world to see. And she’s trying to use her supporters to leverage a high-level spot in an Obama government. This none-too-hidden beggary for the VP slot is pathetic and unworthy of someone who would call herself President or Vice-President.

Obama sounded like himself, sounded like the man that could lead the nation out of the dark forest, the man with the plan. Only he’s refined his words and sentiments to a razor-sharp precision unseen since the 1800s. He has mastered that balance between soaring, inspiring rhetoric and biting, substantial policy that can make a speech spear itself into your mind and punch its way into your gut. He’s ready for the general. He can taste the work. He’s eager to kick ass and take McCain’s name. Only one name? No problem.

Some are worried about Democratic part unity. P’shaw. We’re not trying to unify something old, to make some kind of frankenstein monster - that might lose - out of the pieces of the old politics. We’re trying to create something new. Unification will happen naturally with a new coalition, a new electoral energy. The contrast with McCain... well, I already went there.

I am floored; I am moved. I am excited; I am hopeful. If I feel these things this strongly now, how am I going to feel in November, when Obama becomes the President of the United States America?

Pride and drunkenness. It's all good.

Okay. I’m not anywhere near the Blue Line. But the it’s the Pride Festival this weekend in Long Beach and craziness has ensued. Addie and I live right near the parade route... as well as an assload of bars frequented by gays. Right now they are yelling. A lot. They are more excited than usual. I’m assuming it’s the California Supreme Court marriage ruling - bless their logical, scientifically-based even-handedness.

I can hardly blame my homosexual neighbors for going overboard. No worries - I can put in earplugs tonight. Carry on with all zeal.

Legally and otherwise, a little more state-acknowledged love in the world can’t be a bad thing right? Right. Parking around here is murder on the best of days though, and that - not really ironically, but metaphorically - is a killer. Okay. I’m willing to sacrifice. Metaphorically.

I knew some homosexuals in my undergraduate in Alabama. It cost them a lot just to be themselves. Now, two of my work colleagues are gay and they are wonderful, vibrant, normal people. I live in a neighborhood that is mostly gay. Two doors down from us, lives a guy ran that for city council here in Long Beach. I voted for him. He lost. He’s an environmental scientist who has a partner (male, of course) and two kids, one black and one white. We walk by and the kids are... kids. They have skateboards and scooters and they are normal. Fucking normal I tell you. It is beautiful. Let them be married, I say. Them them all be married.

It’s about time, after all.

Namaste, my homosexual brothers and sisters. Thank you for being yourselves and bringing more love into the world. Drink up. You deserve it.

How not to get a Cadillac. (Dirty words ahoy!)

It's been awhile. There are lots of reasons and some of them are even good.

Book writing, book reading, video games, baseball season, the Lakers, Dancing with the Stars... I said some of them were good.

The big one that stemmed the blogging was easing up on the primary-watch. As there haven't really been any in a month, I've tried to stop watching the race go by in real time. I've been only partially successful. I still know exactly what's going on. I do think that we're nearing the end. The signs that HRC has more than peaked are appearing more frequently. Obama keeps closing the gap in PA, and is close in IN and way up in NC. 99% of all the superdelegate announcements go for Obama. Some want to support him so much that they break state party rules. Oh, yeah... there was that little speech on race that he gave too. Not bad (read: insanely historic).

Enough about that stuff. Yesterday, the Blue Line had a hiccup - what they like to call 'mechanical problems'. When I tried to go home for work I had to wait on the platform at 7th/Metro Station with 500 of my closest Blue Line buddies. After a 20 minute wait we got on. It was standing room only, so I was lucky enough to get the seat I wanted. There was no way I was going to be able to use my laptop though, so I read a book. A large black lady in a security guard outfit ended up standing over me with her jacket on one arm such that it was in my face. I moved it a little, and she apologized.

So we're finally moving and I'm reading and then we're out of the tunnel right by the Staples Center and the lady, like many people do when cell reception comes back, got out her phone and called someone. I was really into my book, so I was trying not to listen to her, but it got really difficult. I won't give you the blow-by-blow - here are the highlights.

She was talking to someone about her sister. I think. I believe the quote was (beg pardon for the coarse language): “She done fucked every motherfucker in the hood! Ain't fuckin' nobody on 104th street she ain't fucked!” Apparently her sister was charging for these... services because she managed to buy a Cadillac with her hard-won proceeds. I know they were hard-won because the woman also mentioned that her sister's “fuckin' pussy ain't worth no motherfucking $20.” I hope the Cadillac was used. Side note - I now realize that it's next to impossible to use 'fuck' as an adverb (she danced fuckily across the floor? - doesn't work) or the woman would have done so.

She finally got off that call and commented out loud to nobody in particular the train was “movin' kinda slow and I'm late for work.” Another guy told us that there had been an accident down in Long Beach. They went back and forth. She uttered not a single profanity. Not one. And as you can imagine, no one would have been surprised to hear them, since everyone on the car heard the earlier conversation. I thought, Now she's polite? Know your audience, I guess. Then she got back on her cell phone, and things returned to normal - almost fuckily so.

How's the book going you ask? Well...

I'm sure that all 4 of you readers are dying to know how Departmental is going, so here we go...

I'm almost though the read-through/note-taking. After that I'm going just go ahead and finish the thing straight through to the end. There's more to go than I thought - my deadline of late June is looking tight. After that it's on to the rewrites.

It's an interesting experience going back to a book that's been dormant for a couple of years. I feel like I've returned - prodigally - to a garden I planted out on the back forty acres and then forgot about. Now confronted with a nasty tangle of weeds and flowers, onions and potatoes, I whip out my hoe. But then I realize that all the plants are trying to eat each other and me. Mass chaos.

I think it feels like this because I don't feel and think the same way that I did when I started this thing. Whatever it was going to be, it's now going to be something different. It's still going to be the same song, just a different arrangement.

This morning I found some chapters that I had discarded or replaced. I'm glad I did. There some space in the story for them after all.

All in all, it's going well. I have yet to write anything new, but I'm getting excited (and terrified) as I get closer to doing so.

[Tools of the trade - I use Scrivener as my WP and Curio for brainstorming.]

[Liveblogging: There is a very cute little girl in a stroller near me. She's really enjoying/wearing her Funyuns. And... there goes the bag. Now I'm wearing some Funyun, too. Weak.]

Snakes on a Train.

I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. Both my wife and I have seen snakes on the Blue Line. She recently, and me a while back. The two sitings have a few of things in common:

1. Neither snake was caged.
2. They both involved a lot of ohhing and ahhing from the other passengers. Addie and I talked it over. We were not impressed.
3. Both people wore their snakes as clothing. The one I saw was worn as a belt. The one Addie saw was worn as a scarf. Even for fashion-trendy LA, this seems dangerous.

I have also seen hamsters, dogs, cats and a box turtle - all were properly contained. And none were worn as clothing - though a box turtle might make a good broach.

[Unrelated - I discovered this morning that a typical ride from Willow Station to the end of the line at 7th/Metro Center is almost precisely one Glen Gould performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations long.]

And now, some 'liveblogging':

[Related to 'Unrelated' - Someone is blaring soul music on a boom box this afternoon. I'm blocking it out with a kick-ass recording of Brahms' 4th. Take that, generic crooner!]

[Unrelated to either the previous 'Unrelated' or the 'Related to the Unrelated' - Some late-forties white dude is mining for green gold for all he's worth. Get me off this train.]

Fortunately, metaphors are cheap.

So the economy is tanking, and today Wall Street reacted by jamming its collective fingers in their collective ears, singing 'lalalala' and buying and selling at random. But this is normal. What's different from normal is that the economic punditry - Henny Pennys all - acknowledged that it was happening.

I work in a building almost entirely dedicated to banking. The elevators are equipped with televisions - usually glued to CNBC. Today, after the collective Bear Sterns groan, the powers-that-be changed the channel to ESPN, tore the knob off and watched blissfully as Dick Vitale popped a vein. And I was glad. Watching the Dow plummet, whilst riding down from the 45th floor makes for too strong a picture for me.

Fortunately, I personally won't have to cut back on anything. Due to school debt, I'm already doing it.

[Related - Pedro the one-eyed homeless guy is here. He's changed up his schtick. He's actually going out of his way to make folks who can't give him change feel better because of the economy. He even sounds like he means it. Now that's knowing your market.]

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? (Yikes.)

Back to physics. I ran across this dreck on the blog Cosmic Variance, which is spearheaded largely by (relatively) famous physicist - and popularizer thereof - Sean Carroll. It's a post about the recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe results. Non sequiturs abound, but here's the best quote:

The WMAP folks have produced an elaborate cosmological parameters table that runs the numbers for different sets of assumptions (with and without spatial curvature, running spectral index, etc), and for different sets of data (not just WMAP but also supernovae, lensing, etc). Everything is basically consistent with a flat universe comprised of 72% vacuum energy, 23% dark matter, and 5% ordinary matter.

Emphasis mine. The universe is flat? How can physicists say on the one had that spacetime (odious concept) is curved (also ridiculous) on the one hand, and then turn around and try and convince us that the universe is flat? It sounds familiar... Hmm... Christopher Columbus anyone?