I have a Manu Chao CD in my car that doesn't ever come out. I know all the words to Clandestino even though my French is rusty and my Spanish is nonexistent. Every time I play it with somebody else in the car, they ask me who it is. Even though Manu Chao is filling stadiums from Madrid to Tokyo, nobody here seems to have heard of him. I think they played Me Gustas Tu on the Spanish language alternative radio station down here in LA a few times, but that's about it. You say "Manu Chao" to a European, though, and watch them pee themselves with excitement as they pull out all of his CDs. Prepare to sit for a while as they do a full-on singalong while regaling you with tales of whichever Manu Chao show(s) they saw at some soccer (ahem) football stadium or rock festival. Extra points if they saw him with his first band, Mano Negra.

We're driving around in Santa Barbara. I put Proxima Estación on again, and John groans. John is English.

You've got the Spanish Disease, he says.

People freak out when they go in my kitchen and realize I don't have a microwave. Nobody can understand how it is possible to reheat leftovers in the oven, or melt butter on the actual stove. I don't like microwaves. I think they are bad.

My parents, on the other hand, are masters of microwave cooking.

They got their first one in the 70's, before anybody else on the block. In fact, they still had the same one until my mom remodeled the kitchen last year. It was big and heavy and harvest gold and had a dial on it that you had to crank around. It occupied an honored spot on the counter near the built-in microwave that actually came with our tract home. It was better. The other microwave served as a place to keep things like muffins and coffee cake warm on Sunday mornings, and sometimes as a place to forget about muffins and coffee cake until they became so stale they were like petrified baked goods fossils.

When my parents got their microwave, my great grandmother kept sticking cups of water in, over and over, amazed at the magic device that boiled water instantly without actually getting hot. My dad became master of the microwaved corn dog, and demonstrated to anyone who would pay attention. My mom, however, merely realized her chance at becoming a modern mom, liberated from the drudgery of conventional cooking. Our whole family could be fed in mere minutes, using no more than some glass dishes and a good portion of plastic wrap!

We used to eat microwave meatloaf at least once a week. Recipe: put one pound of ground beef in glass dish. Microwave for 15 minutes. Cover gray mass in ketchup, serve with frozen vegetables. I was 15 before I realized vegetables are not supposed to be identically-sized mushy cubes (with peas, of course, for variety). Breakfast was a concoction my dad optimistically dubbed "Super Eggs". Take one coffee mug. Break one egg into mug, add margarine, salt, and pepper, scramble and microwave. Yields one coffee mug sized column of yellow substance. Feed to kids. The sound of Super Eggs sliding, fully formed, out of a coffee mug, is etched permanently into my memory. My brother still refuses to eat eggs in any form.

Usually, though, we'd get a Swanson's dinner, or maybe a Lean Cuisine lasagna, which when microwaved formed a hard, bubbly cheeselike substance around the edges which could probably cut glass. If we were really lucky, though, we'd get one of those microwave pizzas that came with a "crisping sheet", a strange and mysterious substance that looked suspiciously like the silvery stuff on scratch-off lottery tickets. On days that our neighbor, who claimed to be a nutritionist, took us to school with her kids, we got microwaved Eggo waffles, floating limply in a sea of syrup. I don't know what happened to their toaster.

In fact, I ate so many microwaved meals as a child that now, when I go to the supermarket, I can't even venture past the ice cream in the frozen foods aisle. I get post traumatic stress flashbacks.

People still wonder why I don't have a microwave.

Two words: Salisbury steak.

I have a class with this girl who has really bizarre toes. I guess really it's only one bizarre toe. Anyway. Her second toe is a whole toe-joint-length longer than the rest of them, and pokes out in a jaunty sort of way before going for a full 90 degree turn at the very end. This girl wears nothing but open-toed sandals, so I am completely mesmerized by her mutant toe, and this makes it very hard to pay attention in what is usually a painfully boring class. The teacher drones on about postmodernism, I stare at the mutant toe. The teacher drones on about appropriationist art. I imagine the foot with the mutant toe, flipping me off, because, well, that's what it looks like it's doing. The teacher starts a lengthy monologue about 1960's architectural movements. I stare at the toe. The teacher addresses me directly, and suddenly I am torn away from my mutant toe reveries. I realize everybody in the class knows I'm staring at this girl's foot. But I can't resist! It's so freakish! She has a giant silver toe ring ON THE MUTANT TOE, fer chrissakes!

I try really hard not to look at it anymore.

My box o' bugs arrived from insect-sale.com last week, so I celebrated by, you know, taking pictures of some of them. (Thanks again, Rob, for the recommendation!) Today I scanned the 4x5" transparencies I shot and made giant 40x30" prints on the giant Epson printer in the digital lab. My favorites were a Malaysian wasp and a (I think) Thai cicada. Since the structure of the insect body is more visible from the outside, I think they're incredibly interesting to look at. Exoskeletons look so much more mechanical than bones, particularly when they're on such an enormous scale.

The prints came out gorgeous - you can see every detail. Seeing them in little 400 pixel boxes really doesn't do them justice so I'm tacking on some larger ones, which, while also completely inadequate, might make entertaining desktop wallpaper.

Wasp (1024x768)
Cicada (1024x768)

Hungry? How about a nice big ice cream sundae? No? Want some birthday cake instead?

I shot a lot of really disgusting food last weekend. Thank you, Daniel Bremmer, for making me a part of your sick advertising assignment. That, and not saying anything when I put the Le Tigre CD on repeat for 4 hours.

If you had told me two years ago that I'd be spending my Fridays making ice cream out of mashed potatoes and chopping fish in half with a really obscenely dull knife thus spewing blood and fish intestine all over the sink, sending all vegetarians in the immediate vicinity running for the bathroom, hands clasped over their mouths, well, I think I'd say something like this: "ha ha ha, you are surely joking, I only do portraiture!"

Maybe I should go back to doing portraiture. That, or invest in a food stylist.

I went up north this weekend for the first time in a month, and cruised by my parents' house to pick up the usual pile of junk mail and misdirected bills.

On top of the usual mail pile were two boxes from Amazon.

Inside these boxes were three books, sent to me by two hot babes in San Francisco: Ms Heather and Ms Beca. These sneaky vixens found my amazon wishlist and surreptitiously sent me birthday presents. Since last time I did anything to my wish list I was in Santa Barbara (long story), it sent them there, and my beloved parents and my beloved brother neglected to mention anything had arrived. So, girls, I'm really really sorry I never said thank you! I didn't know! Thank you! You rock!

I have spent all morning reading Comfort Me With Apples and drooling over fantasies of pho and spicy noodles and birria and other culinary delights I appear to be missing in Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles. Later I'll go to the Y and climb imaginary stairs while reading Monkey Brain Sushi. I sense an all-day reading binge coming on.

Rich Will Powers flew back East this week, frustrated with school, frustrated with his housing situation, frustrated with his endless dealings with psychiatrists and new medications and treatments that never seemed to help. He had a constant battle with depression. His problems always seemed larger than life. No matter how small they were they overwhelmed him, and he seemed helpless against the turning tides of despair and ecstasy. He wrote about it, and he told us about it, often in frantic missives in the middle of the night.

Yesterday his body was found in a hotel room in New York City. He left a suicide note, and some phone numbers for the staff to call when he was discovered. He left behind a community of friends who would have done anything to help him if he would have allowed them to help. He didn't want it. Maybe he was tired of trying.

We'll miss you, Rich. I hope you finally found peace, wherever you are.

When I see this I want to cry.

I can't think of how to adequately express my dismay and fear. I'm more afraid of this than hijacked airplanes or dirty bombs or anthrax. This has more potential to ruin people's lives than any act of terrorism. Just the wording on the Citizen Corps website creeps me out.

Operation TIPS, involving 1 million workers in the pilot stage, will be a national reporting system that allows these workers, whose routines make them well-positioned to recognize unusual events, to report suspicious activity... Everywhere in America, a concerned worker can call a toll-free number and be connected directly to a hotline routing calls to the proper law enforcement agency or other responder organizations when appropriate.

One million people, people who we let in our houses - mail carriers, cable installers, the guy from the gas company, people who want to find "suspicious activity" and catch a terrorist so bad they can call the FBI and have your house torn apart and searched because you happen to speak Arabic or have a city map, or pictures of a certain building or happen to vocally disagree with The Way Things Are Going.

Doesn't anybody remember the people who lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their whole lives because they happened to speak Russian or think that communism was not that bad?

Where did my America go?

Certain people are trying to convince me that I want to go to Burning Man this year.

Now, I've been before, several times, starting back in the olden days before all this business about streets and security and two hundred dollar tickets. For fear of sounding like one of those feebs who goes on about how Burning Man was so much better before, I'll stop there. Burning Man wasn't better before, only different, and much, much smaller. I think anyone who hasn't been yet, and has even a little teeny artistic freak side in them, should go. Really. There's nothing like it.

In previous years I took a lot of pictures, some of which are still languishing in a hidden directory on my other website. The last time I went I found myself not taking pictures of anything, despite my bag full of film and two cameras. I just didn't feel into it. It felt like I'd had enough, that I'd been there, done that. I didn't like that feeling. With my Burning Man experiences, the pattern goes like this. One year, I love it, I can't believe how great it is, I'm blown away by all the cool installations and I'm suddenly riding around on a giant nebulous entity wearing a glow in the dark tutu giving earth-goddess blessings to people and howling at the moon. The next year, something hits me wrong - either the weather sucks, or I get sick, or I end up sleeping through the whole thing. I think I slept through the entirety of Burning Man 2000. At least, I slept when I wasn't freezing to death or getting rained on. I then vow to never go to Burning Man again. After all, I could really use that couple grand that always seems to get blown on glow sticks and shade structures, no matter how many times I swear I'm going to just cut down on costs and re-use everything from last time.

But this year, a lot of people are going who I really want to see - now that my friends are spread all over the country, Burning Man might be the only time I see them all in one place. Even though I literally am down to my last few hundred bucks, I'm finding myself fantasizing about that week in the desert. I can't even afford the ticket. It was one thing when I had that kushy dotcom job to come back to, but now that I'm doing freelance work here and there just to baaarely cover the costs of going to my ridiculously overpriced school it seems like such a completely absurd proposition.

What do I do?

In Seattle, we visited my dear friends Maki and Rob. They are just the kind of crazy artistic couple that makes me wonder why I don't spend more time making robotic light-sensitive baby doll heads and recycled soda can incense burners with my boyfriend. Anyway, it just so happens that one of Maki's many talents (aside from being a master printmaker and writing for nifty Japanese webzines) is making tea.

This talent, combined, no doubt, with her utterly infectious smile, got her a job working at the tea house in the Panama Hotel, an old brick building which dates back to the early 1900's, on Sixth and Main, right on the edge of the International District in Seattle. They have tea of every imaginable variety, prepared with exactly the right temperature water for exactly the right amount of time, served in glass teapots and cups that are so delicate I wouldn't dare to use them at home. We drank oolong tea that was very nearly clear. I expected it to taste like hot water. Instead I tasted a thousand different subtle flavors. It was kind of like drinking real beer after being raised on Miller Lite. I will never look at tea as brown water again.

Anyway, the most remarkable thing about the Panama Hotel isn't its tea house, but its history. The Panama Hotel houses one of only two remaining traditional Japanese osento, or public baths, in the United States. The Hashidate-Yu bath house has remained essentially untouched since it closed in the 1960s, and the changing rooms still have the original ads for local businesses above the lockers. The floor of the teahouse, which is upstairs, has a hole cut into it with a window to see into the basement below, which is stacked floor-to-ceiling with suitcases and other personal items that Japanese residents left behind when they were forced into internment camps in 1942. Many never returned for their belongings after the war ended, and so when the building was bought in the late 90s in order to save it from demolition, the new owner inherited an entire history of the residents of Seattle's Nihonmachi. Thankfully, instead of throwing everything out, she has preserved them there and in loaned collections to several history museums.

There is a book called Sento at Sixth and Main, written by a professor at the University of Washington, about Hashidate-Yu and other historically significant Japanese-American cultural landmarks throughout Washington and California. It is for sale at the Panama Hotel and is also available on Amazon.com. M bought a copy - it's really an interesting read - full of vintage photos, historical research and firsthand oral histories.

It makes me happy that there are people dedicated to preserving the few remaining sites which are unique to our international cultural heritage - that there are still magical places like the Panama Hotel which have not yet been bulldozed and turned into identical franchise restaurants and chain stores. If you are ever in Seattle, be sure to stop in at the Panama Hotel and have some tea and look at the old photos and the hole in the floor.

M and I are just back from Seattle. I think I cannot remember three more perfect days in my entire life. I don't know what to say, other than how grateful I am to have such wonderful friends.

Also, I am never going to forgive Rob for giving Michael the link to insect-sale.com. He's already formulating schemes for mini-RC-car-powered remote control stick bugs. I'm scared.

Krk just called me to tell me that the genre-bending balkan gypsy polka funk punk band Kultur Shock will be playing a show at the Crocodile while we're in Seattle.

I am beyond excited. I think they are my most favorite live band ever. There's just something deliciously sick and wrong about a funk band with an accordion. They have been known to cause people who would never ever ever dance in public start to shuffle, and multiple exposure to Kultur Shock shows has been known to cause non-dancers to actually start sweating and flailing around on the dance floor with hot Russian chicks and the occasional Bosnian grandma. If I could have a perfect wedding, they would be the band.

And now, I present for you the principles of dude-ism, according to Gino Srdjan Yevdjevich:

1. Love your dude.
2. Don't ever judge another dude.
3. Dudes are non-exclusive. Anyone can be a dude.
4. Don't ever leave your dude if your dude doesn't leave you.
5. No dude is higher than any other dude. No hierarchy, no aristocracy, no blood line.
6. Don't ever do to a dude what you wouldn't like a dude to do to you.
7. Every dude must memorize #6 because it's complicated.
8. Dudes don't think, dudes just do.
9. Dudes don't worship, even dude-ism. Fuck ya.
10. Dude!

Listen to KulturShock in RealAudio.

Dude.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt

Independence day is coming up, and the more I think about it, the more I get angry.

In the days after September 11th, when the flags sprouted from every freeway overpass and waved from every front porch, I was moved. We're all in this together, we're Americans, we will be strong - I felt like it was a message of unity, a way to show each other that we would be OK. When I went out on September 12th and saw the flags everywhere, I was moved to tears. I felt proud to be an American. I felt like I was one of many.

But then weeks went by, and Our President (as my dad now insists on calling him, even though he didn't vote for Bush, and neither did I) declared "war on terrorism", and I started seeing those tattered plastic car flags in the gutters, and the flags on the overpasses started disappearing one by one. Instead, I started seeing bumper stickers. Giant waving flag stickers, almost always attached to oil-guzzling raised trucks and SUVs, were everywhere. THESE COLORS DON'T RUN. GOD BLESS AMERICA. LET'S ROLL! As things went on, that flag suddenly became a symbol not of unity but of war, blind patriotism, poor gas mileage, conspicuous Christianity and, well, being a Republican. Suddenly I started not feeling so good about this flag thing.

Then I started seeing people who disagreed with the party line being silenced. Bill Maher lost his show, Politically Incorrect, for making a (gasp) politically incorrect statement. The White House, via Ari Fleischer, has given us "reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." Students at Ohio State were threatened with arrest and expulsion if they turned their backs on Bush during his commencement address. Several journalists have been fired for disagreeing with the White House stance on the "war on terror". Jose Padilla has been detained as an "enemy combatant" without ever being charged with a crime, even though he's a U.S. citizen. The ironically-named USA Patriot Act gives the government more power than ever to read my email, listen to my phone conversations, freeze my bank account, and even search my house. I don't have to be a terrorist. I just have to seem like I might be one.

I think I'm getting the message now. The message is: Wave the flag. Agree with Our President. We are at war, and we will be at war indefinitely. There is no room here for people who disagree with or question us openly. All this will make us safer. Be patriotic and accept everything we have to tell you or you're just as bad as those awful, awful terrorists.

We are supposed to celebrate our freedom this week, just as our freedoms are being taken away. This makes me angry, and afraid - and I don't know what to do about it. I just know that I don't feel OK waving a flag around this week now that I see what it stands for.

"They that can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

In one week, I'm turning 26.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

That's all I have to say about that.