OK, it seems like a manufactured red-letter day, but in collaboration with and respect for my feminist collaborators, I'm honoring Marie Skłodowska Curie today, for International Women's Day.

She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize (Physics, 1903, w/ advisor Henri Becquerel and fellow student Pierre Curie). She was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in two different subjects (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911). The work of her and her family on radioactivity and nuclear chemistry and physics has had a tremendous influence on modern physics, chemistry, biology.

With respect to society, she was the first woman to serve on the faculty of the University of Paris. As a woman, she faced considerable discrimination from her male peers, and it wasn't until her husband's tragic death that she truly emerged from his shadow and became the first woman professor at the University of Paris / Sorbonne. Despite her second Nobel Prize, the French Academy of Sciences (barely) failed to elect her into its membership in 1911 (her student became the first woman member in 1962). The revelation of her affair with physicist Paul Langevin was fuel for her rivals in academia, helped spur xenophobic (she was Polish, though working for France) and anti-Semitic rumors against her (she was not actually Jewish, though apparently even the anti-Semitic bigots that would fuel the Dreyfus affair wanted a piece of her).

She founded the Radium Institute (now the Maria Skłodowska–Curie Institute of Oncology) in Warsaw in the early 30's, while actively continuing her research in radioactivity at the Sorbonne to the very end. Sadly, it was that very subject matter that ultimately killed her by way of aplastic anemia, from exposure to the very radioactivity and substances that she discovered.

She has been described as an early feminist: emancipated and independent. And, it was said of her by Einstein, "Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted."

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have
perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe
that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained. -- Marie Skłodowska Curie

Love
by Kathleen Fisher

The heartshape,

it turns out, is based
not upon the heart, but
the vulva. The heart,
it turns out,
more closely
resembles
the fist.

(from the literary journal Exquisite Corpse, No. 45, 1994)

A Difference Between Men and Women

I was hanging out at my local watering hole, the Lone Palm, the other night, and started talking to a young woman named Bethany.

She was drinking a glass of water - it was late, and wisely, she had switched over from the spirited drink to the hydrating drink in anticipation of the morning after the night before. She asked what I was drinking.

"It's a French martini." She stared at me, the martini glass, and at me again. "What's a French martini?" she asked, with a hint of dubiousness in her voice. "It's a classic drink actually - pineapple juice, Chambord, vodka. Maybe a hint of lemon." Perhaps appreciating the combination, she then asked, "Well, you know what they say about martinis, right?" Quizzickly, I said, "No, actually, what do they say about martinis?" At this point, her friend, a tall red-haired gentleman with a neatly trimmed beard and haircut had wandered over. "Well," Bethany continued, "One is not enought, and three are two many." I laughed, as did her friend.

"But," I pointed out, "you realize that you're trying to tell this to me, a guy. I think I can appreciate a third breast, maybe even a fourth." Her face twitched subtlely, as if she had just stopped her eyes from rolling up. She turned to her friend, "well, what do you think about martinis being like breasts." He thought for a moment, "Three breasts - I can work with that." This time Bethany's eyes DID roll. "OK, I get it. This saying doesn't work for guys."

I was surprised to discover that this saying about the martini has been attributed to Herb Caen, the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist... though frankly, I'm surprised that the saying isn't as old as, say, vermouth. Curiously, this also brought to mind the French idea that the perfect breast will fit into a champagne coupe - supposedly the coupe was modelled after the breasts of Marie Antoinette, and the dance troupe Folies Bergere used such a comparison for choosing their dancers.

Art Opening Reception for José Arenas, Philip Hua and.... Marta!

The other evening, I attended a first-Thursday reception for American Pastiche: Choose Your Own Adventure - Jose Arenas | Phillip Hua at Hang Art Gallery in San Francisco. Jose is one of my fantastic art teachers at Foothill College, and I rather like his work. The exhibition web site is here.

Amid the hustle and bustle, the schmoozing and networking, I happened to notice these two girls, completely absorbed in the creative process, perhaps inspired by everything going on around them, perhaps indifferent to it all.

I was captivated by their focus and dedication to their drawing. There's something pure about childish exploration.Many kids possess a single-mindedness and dexterity of engagement that many of us lose as we mature into adults. This is why it's often said that children make the best scientists, and why their artwork contains an élan that is elusive to many adults.

I was not the only one to notice this. The woman talking to these exciting new artists runs the Hang gallery (DJ Harmon, I believe). Well, she has a keen eye for emerging talent, and it made perfect sense to introduce the San Francisco art scene to the works of these two young ladies during this First Thursday event.

The drawing that's going up, is labelled "Marta, age 4 1/2. (NFS)." The collection of this evening's output from these two exciting new artists can be found here and also here and here

birthday
Originally uploaded by yuweiquan

On The Use of Office Products as Beauty Aids
Linda Dyer

"I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight..."

--Theodore Roethke

Free use of office supplies
could be called a benefit
of my profession; I'm never
without remedies. Paper clip
holds a teased hairdo,
package tape around my waist
gives me form; ledger green
correction fluid makes a fine
eyeshadow: smart
as well as practical.
Say it's true the unkind
words of others actually cling
to our skin until we bathe;
I use file-folders under
my blouse as a deflector-vest.
This is the life I live
so that out of it
I can create another.
With an arsenal of mechanical
pencils and hand-held dictaphone
I go into the night
and walk with the moon
down urination alley
to the employee parking lot,
skirt held with a binder clip
where a button failed.

But the policeman assumes something
disloyal about the three-hole punch
and postage meter under my arm
and invites me to the station,
where he takes my fingerprints,
one of which looks unusual to him
with its series of dots, until
he recognizes I'm wearing
one of those rubber fingers
a secretary uses to page through
deposition volumes looking for
some defendant's name,
the very name which paused
the stenographer's fingers
over a shorthand machine--
think of the testimony lost
while she spelled it
letter by letter.

The cop questions me: how long
have I been at my job, do I
get retirement, why a not-bad-looking
woman would stay so late
on a weekend without extra
pay? I tell him about the scientist
who suggested that our moon
influenced the tides -- how he
was considered not only foolish,
but a dangerous occultist
by his scientific peers;
yes, the very moon walked upon by men,
the one consulted by lovers to predict
good fortune or impermanence,
the one which will follow me home.

(c) 2001 by Linda Dyer

Results from diving in the Heap!
I guess the RNG doesn't hate me after all!


This is from the web game Kingdom of Loathing

For Linda Dyer,
Bold Soul, Poet,
d. 7/28/2006


smile smile smile
by dan zanes

every time I think of you,
smile for a while
that's the one thing you always do
smile smile smile

acting out stories and hugging your friends
smile for a while
i know what i'll do when i see you again
i'm gonna smile smile smile

chorus:
like ripples in a pond
or runners who pass the baton
good feelings will go on for mile after mile
and your big heart circles the world
every time that you smile

doing those voices and telling your jokes
smile for a while
your crazy hairdos and your thriftshop coats
smile smile smile

every time you break into a broadway song
smile for a while
the whole world starts singing along
smile smile smile

well you know i love you and i'm glad you're my friend
smile for a while
you know what i'll do when i see you again
smile smile smile

(Thanks to Trish McKinney & the BPP Kubler-Ross musical series for introducing me to the song. Not sure about the video, however)

Is Donna Noble wearing the Master's ring? Not likely.

Snacking in the Floating World

This is one of my favorite prints, by the artist Masami Teraoka

McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan / Geisha and Tattooed Woman, 1975,
Watercolor on paper, 14-1/4" x 21-1/2"
Private collection, New York, NY

I Wish I Could Travel One Month Back In Time

Yesterday, I dropped into the Asian Art Museum in SF, and there are two exhibits that just opened.
History of History by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Renowned Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto presents a number of works exploring the connections between different eras of mostly, but not exclusively, Japanese history.

This is an interesting exhibit - the installation itself was designed by Sugimoto, in accordance to his belief that the installation is as much a part of the artwork as the artwork itself.

I'm impressed by the way different historical eras are tied together by various bits of artwork. Among them is a 17th century etching by Rembrandt that is mounted on a Japanese scroll. One of the figures in the Rembrandt bears a physical resemblance to one of the major figures in Japanese Buddhism. The etching is itself mounted on a scroll using Japanese textiles that are roughly contemporary to that Rembrandt. Serendipitously, as the artist later discovered, the paper used by Rembrandt was, in fact, exported to the Netherlands from Japan. I was impressed by the superficial clash of cultural styles, but as one explores deeper, there is, in fact, a common context that's represented by the whole work.

Another exhibit, also at the Asian, is

Stylized Sculpture: Contemporary Japanese Fashion from the Kyoto Costume Institute, a collaboration between Sugimoto and the Kyoto Costume Institute. This is, perhaps, yet another of the "controversial" fashion shows to be shown in a museum. (There have been criticisms and controversy over the injection of couture into the realm of the fine-arts museums in San Francisco. What the fuck ever. If people can't figure out the artistry of, say, Vivienne Westwood (excellent exhibit at the deYoung, btw), then they're trapped in a rather narrow artistic paradigm, and I'd rather they spend more time doing oral performances of Cage's 4'33".)

Anyways, this exhibit aims to show the couture of Japanese designers (including many from Comme des Garcon) from 1983 to present as sculpture. Sugimoto's photographs of these fashion pieces are framed to minimize the human form. Interestingly, there is one piece that aims to distort the human form. Here, the body is but a frame for the clothes (and to make this point, there is a chair frame, a piece of furniture, that is upholstered by the same jacket that the adjacent mannequin is wearing). It's quite fascinating, but the exhibit, by design, has no didactics - the intent is to encourage the museumgoer to look at the artwork, not the little plaques about the art.

Sadly, about a few weeks too late, I just discovered that the De Young had shown a retrospective of Sugimoto's work. If only I had known, if only I had known.

I came across this while cleaning out old paperwork the other day.

Oops. I haven't posted here in over a year! I'll try to be better.

As for all for those spammers who posted a year's worth of bullshit for me to disposition? DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL, FUCKHEADS. Well, except for the Christian dating spam people: DARN YOU TO HECK, SINNERS.


More later.
-ywq

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO RIPPED ME OFF!

I thought I'd provide a testimonial regarding my experiences with an online bookseller named bookstation.net.

In my opinion, they are a fraud.

If you look at their textbook prices, they seem to have AMAZING prices, about 50% of what you can get from Amazon used sellers or just about anything else on the web. So how do they do it? Well, here is their apparent scam.

I ordered two books from these people. Both technical textbooks, US street value about $150 (Microwave Engineering by Pozar and Signals and Systems by Oppenheim for those who need the deets. I know who you are). For these two books, "BS.net" was selling them for a total of $75 for BOTH. Not bad, since textbooks are waaaay overpriced anyways.

I ordered the books, and received the confirmation mail (twice, actually - they screwed up the order by perhaps trying to bill me twice, but after a quick and responsive email exchange, they cancelled the redundant order). I waited for the 2-week ship time, and as expected, a package arrived. It had a return address from Kolkata (aka Calcutta) India!

NOWHERE on the web site, to the best of my knowledge - perhaps it is very obscurely buried somehwere - NOWHERE do they declare they are based in India. Which is fine, but it would have been nice to know. I opened up the package, and it is indeed one of the two books I ordered, but unexpectedly, it was the foreign Indian-market version, and not the US version, with the price magic markered away. It's a paperback, and it has the very very inexpensive and fragile thin paper that you can see through. No sign of the second book, however. I talked to a friend of mine who graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, and he said that I paid way way way too much for that copy of the book, and that this is not an uncommon scam these days.

I waited a few days for the second book, but nothing arrived. I sent them multiple queries and email, NOTHING. It wasn't until I started a complaint process with PayPal before I got any response - they claimed there was an error, and they would ship the second book or if I desired, they would credit me for the book. I asked for the credit. No response. More queries, nothing.

So the deal with PayPal is they do not track this kind of apparent fraud (they would if there were no shipment, but in the case of a partial shipment of an apparently misrepresented item) not so. Even if they were to track fraud, it has to be done within 90 days, and unfortunately, because I trusted bookstation's lying asses, it exceeded the 90 days. ARGH.
In my opinion, bookstation.net is fraudulent. I believe they are: crooks.

It turns out that at the time, they had a link to bizrate.com. Geniuses! I go to the site, and noticed that there were maybe half a dozen of more reviews of bookstation that were all 1 or zero stars out of 5. I was, apparently, not the only person burned by these lying motherfuckers. So I posted my experiences with them and my description of their apparent business model, and gave them the lowest possible rating.

A week or two later, I noticed that bookstation.net (aka the people who seem to have RIPPED ME OFF) were no longer linking to this consumer review site. Heck, if I were a lying, piece of crap swindler, I sure wouldn't link to a site where people could post their experiences.

So, I got burned. I went for the cheap price and ended up paying, essentially, full price for the super low-cost version of a book that I could have bought new with much better quality and longevity in the states for the same price.

You have been warned.

OK, I am the world's lamest blogger. In fact, it's reasonable to ask the question: am I a blogger at all?

For those who answer yes, I must ask: whaaaaa???? are you nuts? I've made maybe two posts here, one of which is of the "tap tap is this thing on" variety. You must have a liberal definition of what is considered a blogger. To you, I ask: are bloggers journalists? And, if you were to apply the laws of transitivity, does that then make me a journalist as well?

For those who answer no, I must ask: whaaaaaaaa???? Are you nuts? I have maybe 2, 3 no, sometimes FOUR views of this site EVERY WEEK. I'm guessing that YOU, you UNFAITHFUL DOUBTER, are probably among those who come back week after week (all four of you), saying to yourself, what the fuck: doesn't this lameass person ever update their blog? I wonder if he is among the living? Well fuck you and your monkey. I live, I breathe, I blog. OK, well, I sort of blog. Come back in 6 months, and you'll see: I might even have another post.

Until then: entertain yourself with this.

Pop quiz: why are you such a Pussy? A Moment of Silence

Back in the early 2000's, there was a wonderful tool called the Burn Maker. It was a sophisticated text filter. The Timid You would enter some benign text into a form, and hit the "Oh Yeah?" button, and your mild mannered text would be transformed into a wonderfully ribald, obscenity-laced version, revealing the Fucker Inside.
For example, here is a Burn Maker version of a friend's business letter to her bank, converted by the Burn Maker to reveal her inner fucker. The letter dates from 2001, I believe.

---

Alice,

I received a motherfucking letter from you and your hand-job today to fuckin' confirm our phone conversation regarding direct deposit, along with the fucking letter for my stupid ass to sign agreeing to that shit.

Unfortunately, fucking what you and your sluts refer to in the fucking letter is a "wire transfer" which is not fucking what I requested. Fucking what I requested was direct deposit, and I would still like that piece of shit to be done that way. Savor the brimstone. I presume this bullshit can be done through ACH. I also (in addition to the fact that you're a shit) imagine this bullshit would save us the fucking "wire transfer" fee.

I do not want a wire transfer. Pop Quiz, why are you such a pussy? Please set that bastard up as direct deposit as we requested. Are you ready to burn? I'll follow this bullshit up with a fuckin' paper letter with a motherfucking signature so god-damn you can go ahead and proceed with this bullshit.

Also (in addition to the fact that you're a bastard), the fucking letter I received today was addressed to fuckin' Madam "Little pussy" B--- L---. For the fucking record, my fucking name is Ms. "Has-been fuckmonster" B--- L---.

You are a fuckmonster.
Thank you,
B--- L---

---

The Burn Maker was put together by the founders of what is now SparkNotes, Chris Coyne (and Justin Kester?), then undergraduates at Harvard. The Spark was quite a fun site - there was the "Date My Sister Project" and a variety of quizzes and personality tests. Very humorous. What was nice about the Burn Maker is that it was more than a text filter like "jive" or the Swedish Chef filter (bork bork bork), but it actually had a relatively sophisticated algorithm to parse the grammatical structure of the source text and substitute/insert appropriate (or inappropriate, if you will) phrases.

In 2004, tragedy struck. OK, not necessarily tragedy for the founders - the mission of The Spark was apparently always to have an educational component - but at some point in that annus horriblus The Spark was acquired by Barnes and Noble and it became SparkNotes, a purely educational site, for teens, and other young impressionables, who, I'm sure, had never ever had their sensibilities assaulted by the obviously damaging language that the toxic Burn Maker was built from. The language of the Burn Maker could obviously lead to the eventual decline of America into some subservient colony beneath the heel of a prurient gutter in today's developing world (AKA the nation states of tomorrow's Great Overlords).

As far as I can tell, the Burn Maker intellectual property is completely owned by Barnes and Noble, and not for sale. I can only hope that somehow, somewhere, a new Burn Maker can arise from the ashes. But frankly, unless somehow someone can take a huge number of Fucker Inside texts and reverse-engineer the conversion algorithm, I'm afraid we will have to be content with our fading memories of this brilliantly important web tool, snuffed out before its time. The graphics can be found at archive.org, but like an online Terry Schiavo, the brains of the Burn Maker are no more.

Rest in Peace, Burn Maker, I ought to slam you and your monkey's ass.

Here we go.

OK, making some progress here. I suppose my obsessions will begin tomorrow. This is my first blog! I kept asking myself, what should I blog about? The things that happen to me every day? Good gosh, I can't imagine anyone would be able to stay awake after the first couple of posts. I could blog about the things that go on in my workplace, but I'm sure HR would come by with a hard copy of my posts, so NO.


One idea I had, was a blog about the RING OF FIRE. Yes, about the Johnny Cash song and all of its covers. But also about, well, how should we say, the after effects of eating food that's way way way too spicy. I'm not talking about the heat when you eat, I'm talking about the BURN several hours later. You know what I mean, and if you don't, it's probably better that way.

But jeez, how much can anyone write on that one subject? So instead, I'm just going to write about whatever my latest obsession turns out to be. If you don't like my current obsession? Wait 10 minutes.

Testing testing. I haven't figure out what I'm doing here yet. Stay tuned.