action figures sold separately

studying for the contractor’s license exam has been pretty grueling, with many hours spent trying to cram into my cranium pieces of arcane info regarding tax laws, employment regulations, accounting practices, contract forms, and so on. ug.

while reading up on liability and how a general contractor is responsible when a subcontractor screws up, i flashed back about 4 years to a very big cringe moment, early in my wiring and custom installation biz. it was before i was on my own, before i was able to gear my work just to non-profits, i was working with a small company in marin which did mostly big home theater jobs for SF and marin’s silly-rich, but also some phone and computer network jobs. i was at a jobsite, a 4-story victorian in SF doing some rather gnarly high-scaffold work, running big wire for phone service up four stories, then running it into an attic space that was being remodeled. well, once i got the wire up the side of the building, we started feeding it into the attic space through a small hole in the wall. mind you, the attic was in process and there were, like, 5 different contractors reading plans, walking around trying to figure out where to install this or that, where to place a wall or door, etc… there were plenty of spots where there was no flooring yet, just joists and below that, the lath-and-plaster ceiling of the rooms downstairs. this included, of course, where we had to pull in the wire.

so, as i alerted my co-installer, we had to be super careful to step on only the joists, or risk cracking or busting the ceiling, which of course was not weight-supporting. co-installer says, “wow! yeah, thanks for pointing that out, i would have probably just walked right through that!” what happens next? oy! i turn around to get a tool, and step on a joist where some plumbers have left a damp extension cord running right across it. i slip, lose my balance and fall right through the ceiling down into the formal dressing room where the client is packing, getting ready for a trip to europe or something. having cut and bruised myself up quite a bit, and having just barely caught myself on a joist so i was literally hanging 3/4 down into the room from their ceiling, in a sort of shock, all i could muster was, “nngh, uh, sorry!” client: “sorry?!!”

of course, i was totally mortified and also quite pissed off at the same time. with some help i managed to get back up into the attic and get cleaned up and was told to go ahead and take the rest of the day off. the bossman was worried about insurance, of course, but was fairly decent about the whole thing. one of my co-workers, a good pal, ended up being brought in to fix the hole and do the rest of the wire pull. the next day at work, he brought one of the turn-of-the-century nails used in the lath and plaster i went through as a little souvenir.

i’ve still got that nail on my dresser. every now an then i pick it up and think about liability. and luck!

of the handful of blogs i’ve been discovering of late, A.C.’s crazedloveblog definitely stands out. girl has got some smart shit going on over there, and very funny too. check it. in a recent post she pasted an aim discussion with her sister during which the cops jacked up a carful of young men of color outsider her place in oakland. her reflection went like this:

Sometimes, in my more twisted moments, I envision making an animated film of the Middle Passage showing a boat filled with suffering Black people pulled over by the Coast Guard for Sailing While Black. Why do we all look on in horror and fascination as another’s dignity is violated in the name of public safety…why we allow this to happen because we are all vulnerable to the corporate police state we call home and thank our lucky stars to reside in. How is my East Oakland neighborhood different from a neighborhood in Palestine, Mexico, England, India, Germany, Zimbabwe or Bosnia.

while we’re on the subject, i was looking for a site in the links section on cops, and found that the “Database of Abusive Police” (which was at www.doap.com) appears to be non-functional. anyone know what’s up? in any case there’s also these links.

the-climb is the life and musings of one aspiring journalist and quite decent photographer named tyler. with some great pictures of my old home as well.

the best car review ever, via joseph finn’s great new blog (which looks very cool so far, i mean hey, dude’s got “once more with feeling” in his “listen” box. go joseph! (i actually seperated out the tracks and made a cd from our minidisk recording of the show itself, and yes i’m an extra large dork)). anyway, check out joseph, check out the review, then just check out.

Michael Dertouzos wrote an interesting-looking piece for MIT’s technology review with the compelling subhead, Computers threaten to widen the gap between the rich and poor. It’s in everyone’s interest to narrow it. great. good point. he even goes on to make the incisive statement

Some experts, including Bill Gates, argue that the new technologies will help the poor become literate, learn how to plant new crops, take care of their health and sell their services over an expanding information marketplace. His view is consistent with my own, subject to one big “if”: The poor could have a chance of reaping these benefits, if they were somehow provided with the communications systems, hardware, software and training needed to join the club. Absent such help, they can’t even get started.

yet, and this is just so wrong, that’s all you get unless you shell out $4.50 to buy the article or even more than 3 times that to subscribe. this kind of crap that the MIT TR is pulling is exactly what Dertouzos goes after in his piece. can we say duh?! tell the TR whatcha think of that.

1. angry about the Higher Education Act Drug Provision
2. not a rave-scenester, but know it’s a capitally dumb idea to ban raves. here’s what to do about it.
3. for A and other docs, New Methods to Improve Health Care Response to Domestic Violence Will be Focus of National Conference in Atlanta
4. catch up on reading Kendall: the very well redesigned whiteprivilege.com has a piece on New Jersey’s recent racial profiling settlement, and lots more.
5. also time to catch up on what’s up with the DMCA.
6. and lastly, Wayne’s got a book coming out!!

an excerpt:

When the makers of Teen Talk Barbie had finally mastered the technology of cramming tape-recorded sentences into the foot-high doll, they were faced with the daunting challenge of deciding what the famous icon’s first words would be. Mattel came up with the following: “I love shopping,” “Meet me at the mall,” and “Math is hard.” This is as good as it gets in America.

i seem to be blogging about this a good deal of late, but hey, it’s portland! so the other thing we did today is sit, mouths agape, transfixed by the utter coolness and sheer trippyosity of the gravitram at OMSI. also, the brain teasers were way hard. anyone who knows how to do the 2-ropes-on-your-wrists thing, please contact us… or we eli might go bonkers trying to figure it out. thanks.

portland indymedia has some good coverage of yesterday’s anti-bush demo. love this town!

why else? cuz today, after going to people’s for some lunchysnax (not this people’s, but the original one here in portland whose web site is currently being built) we sat on the curb in the shade and ate yummies while looking at a couple of fascinating items that came in today’s mail:

• the first piece of mail addressed, wrongly, to “Mr. and Mrs. Elihu Rosenblatt” (a wedding party invite from my pal’s folks, who live in that world… but people, let’s just get over all that old sexist junk and let’s all assume from now on, that unless otherwise specified, people are who they want to be after marriage, don’t know? ask! mmmkay?)
• some bills, how boring.
• and lastly some rather serious storageporn, which our pal Seguin (who is alas living in the mountains without internet and unable to appreciate this) would appreciate as much if not more than me.

i’ve blogged a number of times about israel’s occupation of palestine, and this is slightly older news, having gone down a couple weeks ago. but desptie responding to action alerts and writing letters and talking it up with neighbors and friends, i still can’t get my brain around why the hell the army is blindfolding and detaining children and attacking hospitals. rrrrg.

over at em-ness, emily was wondering about that stuff we call canadian bacon. not really sure if it’s just ham, but in my meat eatin days, almost 20 years ago now, i remember having canadian bacon on pizza. thought it was for sure tougher and leaner than ham. nowadays, i can’t get near the stuff without getting sick. but that prolly has more to do with the sandwiches that folx used to order when i was working as a grill cook in the IBM payroll building cafeteria my brother ran:

customer: “i’ll have bacon on white bread, with butter and mayo”
me: um, okay… just white bread toasted, buttered, with mayonnaise, and bacon? crispy?”
customer: no, i don’t like it crispy.
me, flummoxed: aaaaall righty then… here ya go (shaking head and thinking maybe we should call the paramedics now).

one word, people: YUG.

when making the classic chocolate chip cookies from your favorite go vegan galz, tanya and sarah, just don’t — unless you really can’t avoid it — don’t use whole wheat flour. yes, normally i love baking with it, but they just turn out so flaky.

this week, i’ll be home studying, studying, studying… any folks commenting or emailing with words of encouragement will be rewarded in this world and/or the next with genuinely delicious, possibly vegan, classic chocolate chip cookies.

a series of momblogs for you to check out:

• between a & b
• dangerous beans
• go to your room
• life after birth
• living nappy

Ted Rall, the supergreat comic artist, breaks down how it’s past time for the government to start answering questions about 9-11:

To hell with closed-door Congressional hearings. America needs a full, open, publicly-televised investigation into 9-11, and it needs it last October. Using the post-JFK assassination Warren Commission as a model is a start, though that panel’s lack of openness fed conspiracy theories that continue to cause Americans to distrust their government four decades later. The best way to avoid alienating the public from its public servants is to keep an investigation 100 percent transparent.

480 pages worth of people have written in to sound off about nissan motors suing the hell out of this entrepreneur who had nissan.com way before the car company, and was using the name as a biz before they even existed. trippy.

Even in kindergarten we were kissing girls, large and curious, screaming through the primary playground at recess hands outstretched, grabbing coats and hair. Boys’ mothers used to call my house complaining of torn K-Ways and loose buttons. Sometimes we girls would sit quietly and talk about kissing. The girls I knew were at once cruel and curious and kind and wanting. At home, under the bed, in older sisters’ closets, we kissed each other.

these stories, collected at these waves of girls are presented so artfully, kind of cool, kind of haunting, kinda deep.

ok.

• found magazine collects found stuff like love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins and more.
• boy meets boy is, in fact, like the gay odd couple, only sexier.
• girls are pretty gives you something different to do every day:
  

  Next, move far away from your permanent mailing address. In case I need to elaborate on this one, it involves moving your shit to a new house. The post office includes a book of coupons with their change of address forms. Don’t even read them. Redeeming those coupons just gives the government another avenue for monitoring your buying habits. Man do I hate the government.

• Next, Terry Hill put together this collection of Steven Wright quotes. They don’t quite work as well in print, but a good reminder of how funny he (Steve) is.

I think i mentioned this before, but in case not, GR8 Mates has cool comics about teenagers supporting each other through unwanted sexual experiences.

• vegblog is all kinds of good news and views.
• andy’s computer being built is pretty funny photo series, via maybe tomorrow (A twenty-something vegetarian displaced Oregonian tries to figure this world out.), which itself was via the blog.girls webring.