Story Archive - January 2008

The Dark is Rising (01/28/2008)

I have been worried about this trip ever since I started to plan it. While all of my friends keep telling me how exciting it is and how jealous they are of me, it doesn't settle in that way for me. The last few times I have gotten really sick was my trip to southern Europe nearly ten years ago and my trip to Scottland around five years ago. Still, this year I made a successful trip to Australia and a successful trip to Turkey, and nothing too painful came from it. So a two week trip to Bangalore, India, could be a walk in the park for me.

The family drops me off at the airport at nine in the evening and I start my travel medication regiment. I have to take pills eight times a day of various items, which is about one pill does every three hours. When the time zones start shifting on me, it is very hard to manage exactly what I'm supposed to take when. "Did I take the malaria pill sixteen hours ago or twenty four? It's 2pm in Singapore, so that means it's what time back in the states? I think it's folic acid time." My travel regiment stabilizes me one-hundred percent. In fact, it does more than that, it makes me feel healthier than the average healthy person. "So why don't you just do that all the time?" you might be wondering. Well, the drugs only keep up this pace for about twenty-four hours and then the system collapses.

I sit down on the plane in the aisle seat next to Roger and Lisa, who will be my row companions for the next twenty hours. Roger is of Indian descent, Lisa is of Thai descent, but both are proud Americans. I help Roger get his pair of entangled backpacks separated and put overhead, he pats my back and we take our seats.

Lisa is a doctor from Philly and she will be separating from us in Singapore while Roger will be traveling with me all the way the Banglore. Normally I don't talk with the strangers I travel with, but Roger is genuinely friendly and talkative and clearly always travels this way since he doesn't have a book or any item to entertain him other than his fellow travelers. He and I chat about his job in Santa Clara, his family in Bangalore and the joy of travel. Like many men who grew up in India, Roger doesn't think twice about physical contact with strangers. He pats my arm and my back and shakes my hand constantly throughout our conversation when he agrees with me.

The plane takes off and Roger collapses asleep. The man is a contortionist and once again not shy of physical contact. He lays his head on my shoulder without a second thought, curls one leg up against his chest and sticks the other one out above the seat in front of him. It's the kind of position I would expect my cat to be comfortable in, but not a human. At one point he shifts and puts his feet up on Lisa, who promptly wakes him up and makes him stop.

Most of the plane goes to sleep, but I've been told by my coworkers to push on as late as I can bear. I pull out my laptop to start working, but my finger strokes sound like thunder crashes in the quiet of the plane. I pull out my book and turn on the overhead light, but it blasts with the brightness of the sun and at least three people in across the aisle open their eyes and give me an "I hate you" look. I give in and watch a couple movies ("Seeker: The Dark is Rising" and "Resident Evil: Apocalypse"). Then I give in the dark and go to sleep around five in the morning US time.

Vanished (01/26/2008)

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The Dream (01/22/2008)

If you saw an ocean wave, would you wave back? - Stephen Wright

I haven't told anyone about this yet, because I'm not sure there is anyone I really want to tell. It's filled with something that I just can't tweeze apart. I could come up with meanings and reasons and everything, but they would probably be wrong. So since you asked for a work of fiction, I'm going to tell you, but please, don't share it with too many people. This is just between you and me.

I've been having a recurring dream for the past couple months. As far as I remember, this is only the second time in my life I have had a recurring dream. The last one was right after I graduated from college and I kept dreaming that I was still in school and the dream kept happing for a nearly a year on and off. The new one I have around twice a week right now. I'm in it, but it's all third person and I feel like my consciousness is in a theatre watching a film of the events almost like I'm seeing an old home video that some other person took.

In the dream, it's a warm day and the sun is shining down on the lush white sands of a beach. There are a pair of cypress trees overlooking the waters and I instantly recognize Carmel Beach. The turquoise water laps up against the sands, kissing the shore gently. The beach is entirely empty of people and pets and birds and trash and sticks. Out in the distance of the waters a pair of sail boats is racing. They rise a massive amount and fall hidden behind a massive wave in the distance.

The camera bobbles around the beach like a handheld camcorder showing off old sand castles and other natural formations of wavering sand before sweeping past a pair of footprints side by side along the point where the wet sand turns dry. One set of footprints is in the dry sand and the other is in the wet sand. The camera moves slowly down the path of the footprints following them as the span the line. The camera moves faster, faster and then shoots forward to the point where a pair of feet are in frame.

The feet on the left, in the dry sand, are my own. I don't recognize any feature specifically, but I can tell they belong to me. Then I relate in an out of body experience and I can feel the sand flowing between my toes on each step even though I'm not there. On the right of my feet is a smaller daintier pair of feet. There is no instant sense of recognition like I had for my own feet or for the beach itself. The toe nails are painted black, but they are unfamiliar to me.

The camera pans up a little more and I can see my dark green cargo shorts. She has on jeans, once acid washed, but poorly dyed black with a studded belt holding them up. I hadn't noticed the sound of the waves before but they start a rhythmic russell in my ears.

The two of us stop walking and turn to face the waters as the camera swings around behind us. We're not side by side anymore, but she is standing in front of me. I see my back and I see pieces of her back, but it's mostly hidden behind my own. The sound of the waves grows louder.

I reach out for her shoulder and she takes a step forward out of my grasp, or maybe she took the step first and I reached to grab her. My hand limply falls back by my side. We've never touched in the dream, only stood beside each other. I see her ash brown hair is braided into tight pig tails. I move to take a step to follow, but the wet sand gives me pause; there's some unspoken hesitation to move forward. My consciousness yells at the image of me I'm watching, "step forward."

I look past her and see the giant wave is nearly there. There's no pause, no hesitation in her movements as she runs full speed toward the ocean. I don't move to follow. I don't even flinch to follow. The wave crashes over her and consumes her. The water runs up and churns over my feet up to my ankles. The foam tickles my feet and smell of salt water saturates the air. The waves subside back out and she is nowhere to be seen. Both my footprints and hers have been washed away from the beach. There is a pile of seaweed on the beach left behind by the crash of the wave. A seagull lands in the moist sand in front of me.

Sometimes I wander a little more on the beach and make new footprints and other times I start to build a sand castle, but always, I wake up.

I Want to be Inspired (01/22/2008)

This is America, where everything is still possible. - John Edwards

I've been outside the political arena this time around. I have historically hosted debate parties and forced my friends to pay some amount of attention to the political issues coming to bare in an election. This year it's been a weak stance on my part. Typically I gather my bleeding heart liberal friends together for the final debates and stand as the equal time voice for the republicans before voting for some independent where my vote means nothing.

This is the first year I've been a little regretful of being registered as a Green Party member (in years past I was Natural Law). I would like to vote in both the democratic and republican primaries this year, but I won't be able to have a meaningful vote in either. My vote this year goes for Nader in the primaries.

We had a debate mini-party tonight watching the democratic debates. This year my heart and my head is drawn to Johnny Sunshine. It's hard not to vote personality right now, as the democrats have a woman and an African-American running in the primary against the white man. I had my fingers crossed for him in oh-four when Johnny Flipflop took the nomination. Sunshine just seems to hit all the right chords with me on healthcare, education, employment and all the domestic issues. I have a hesitance on his Iraq stance; not because I disagree with his sentiment but because I question that he will be able to stay true to his core values and follow through on it. I've got hope for the Johnny Sunshine and Barak Reform ticket.

I've got my fingers crossed for a Johnny Sunshine versus Johnny Truth Train (I'm still working on his nickname, okay?) showdown. I feel a lot like I did in the 1996 elections where I loved the political record of Bobby Compromiser up until the point he started running for president. I loved the positions of Johnny Truth Train up until he invented himself as the "hold the course" candidate. He has earned the presidency more than more most.

Thanks for Listening (01/20/2008)

You get to be the recipient of my personality spamming. - Merlin Mann

When I switched to my job on the peninsula I lost a convenient way to ride public transportation to the office. The best I can do on the shared system is about an hour and it is very hard for me to convert my "twenty-five minute by Prius" commute into an hour long commute on a combination of train and bus. So I stopped taking the train and along with that I stopped reading novels, newspapers, etc. and converted to podcasts.

I made a comment over on The Twitter about donating to all the podcasts I listen to so that the producers can continue to pay their bandwidth bills and the like. A few people were asking me what those podcasts happen to be. So, I will tell you! If you want to find the feed, than go use The Google.

Other:

This American Life (*****) - Nothing makes me feel more like a modern hipster than this show. A weekly show out of Chicago Public Radio where they pick a theme and bring you three stories of narrative journalism based on that theme. I almost gave up on this after the first couple shows bored me, but then all of sudden the style just clicked and now I greatly look forward to it each week.

From Our Own Correspondents (*****) - This is a feed from the BBC Radio's international correspondents. I was searching for something that would keep me up to date on some of the international developments and the BBC's style of narrative journalism clicked with me right away.

Grammar Girl (*****) - Just a couple of minutes every week I get to hear a quick grammar tip. They aren't often things I don't already know, but it's simple and her enthusiasm keeps me listening.

Tech:

This Week in Tech (****) - The flagship of the TWiT network and the most listened to podcast in the world. It seems like it has to be on my life.

FLOSS Weekly (****) - From the TWiT network, a sometimes monthly interview to a developer in the open source community. The shows consistently interviews highly influential people across the open source community. I find it most interesting the hear the guests talk about the historical journey they have taken to reach where they are.

MacBreak Weekly (****) - From the TWiT network, a weekly show by a bunch of Mac lovers about nothing in particular. They are the first to admit that there is not enough Mac news in a week to talk for an hour, but somehow they manage to do a nearly two hour show every week. My absolutely favorite rathole was when they all just starting playing music instruments like guitar, tambourine and didgeridoo. I kid you not.

The Web 2.0 Show (**) - They interview Web 2.0 developers about their cool products. It's mostly boring and barely has my attention, but the feed has become so infrequent (about once a month) that I keep it on there.

Politics:

NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (***) - I have been trying to find a good podcast that runs for about one hour once a week that discusses the up coming elections. This one is once a week, but only runs about fifteen minutes. It's the best I've found so far. Everything else is around an hour a day, and I don't have that kind of time.

Democrat Party Podcasts (*) - A rarely used stream by the democratic party to throw up comments from time to time. I had high hopes when I added it, but it is so rarely used it's nearly worthless.

Republican National Committee Podcast (*) - Used only slightly more frequently than the democrats. I had high hopes when I added it, but it is so rarely used it's nearly worthless.

President's Weekly Radio Address (**) - It's not long and I like to hear the guy in charge talk, even if I have a beef with him.

Geek:

Slice of SciFi (***) - I started listening after they did an interview with my buddy Wil Wheaton and they've been pretty fun since then. I mostly use them to help find under the radar movie and series recommendations. They got me started on Heroes and Journeyman (now cancelled).

Berkeley Groks (**) - A thirty minute show by two professors about recent science developments and an interview with some scientist. It's a fun and simple.

Finished the Book (01/18/2008)

They had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of colour blue. - Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell)

I finally finished reading "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" and it is a fantastic example of an excellent three hundred page novel trapped in an eight hundred page monster. At the end of the book I was extremely excited and absolutely loved the ending and had to remind myself, "Jordan you were bored senseless for almost the entire book."

I knew I was going to have a slow holiday season so I started looking through the Hugo Awards and Nebula awards for a good book to read and a historical speculative fiction book about Napoleon-era English magic seemed amazing! I liked it, but not "forty hours of my life" liked it. Maybe I should should pay more attention to the page count the next time I buy a book online.

Now that it's done, I'm pondering my next fiction. Currently I am taking a small break from the fiction books to read the some non-fiction collections of essays, narrative journalism, etc. It's all simple and compelling and reminds me of how I wish I wrote non-fiction if I wrote non-fiction, which I don't. So what's my next fiction book? I haven't picked yet, but Nebula and Hugo, you've upset me.

La Fée Verte (01/12/2008)

I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder. - Ernest Dowson

We had been talking about making the trip out to island ever since the news came out that Hangar One had been approved to sell absinthe. I was telling me friends, "I am going to distillery made in and abandon hangar on an old navel base located on an island in San Francisco Bay where they make a drink which has been illegal in the US for a century." It sounds so poetic! Alas, I am not the only person who thinks so because we show up to the sign, "Sorry we are out of absinthe." Yes, the Hangar sold out within six hours of opening the first day they started selling and that was many days ago. I doubt if anyone would know. So I'll put aside my references to Wilde and bohemia for another trip.

Instead we headed out to a quaint little bar on the island to chill for a while. We ordered drinks that looked a tad like absinthe but without the taste. I was thinking that if I just put a little green food coloring into raki, it would probably taste and look nearly the same. If I put in a strange metallic chemical for the green, than I would probably have the same metal poisoning and hallucinations that come with the historical mythos.

It's election season, so I have started wearing my political shirts. I am proudly displaying my Natural Law Party shirt in the above photo. Go team!

We do no such thing and instead head over to Oakland to watch Sweeney Todd. I have been extremely excited about this movie since it came out, but I don't battle society to actually go out and see movies much these days. They are mailed to me and I am happy. Sweeney Todd is my second favorite musical after Chess and I was extremely excited for the big screen adaptation with Johnny who consistently takes rolls that he can pull off. Alas, I cannot say that Helena did as good of a job. She does a fantastic job acting creepy, but so much singing creepy. She must be sleeping with the director. Heh.

Namaste (01/10/2008)

India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. - Sri Aurobindo

I woke up at 6am to make it to the travel clinic by opening at 7:30am. I gave them my information five minutes after opening, but still had a long wait before they let me see a doctor. I went through the basic consult and had to guide the doctor more than seems like I should. "Yeah, that medication that I'm taking is an immuno-regulator and could have an interaction with the live vaccine." Or my personal favorite, "But isn't that one likely to cause a flare up of CJS? It seems like I should avoid vaccines that have activate system." Yes, modern medicine is a confusing mess and you have to be your own expert. You especially cannot trust a doctor who makes her living do a ton of routine travel prescriptions from a pamphlet. So I walked out with recommended vaccines, reviewed them with my own specialist, and went back to the clinic for five vaccinations and my arm hurt like crazy. My arms hurt like I was injected five times or like I spent the day strangling people.

What does all that mean? It means I am heading to India! I am extremely excited and extremely terrified by the prospect of it. We are taking bets at the office if I am more likely to be hospitalized by the vaccines or by the trip itself.

Still, I expect it to be a ton of fun. I have gone on an extremely good healthy run for the last few years and I did two major trips (Australia and Turkey) over the summer without incident. So at the end of the month I'm doing a ten day trip to India and will mostly work, but will also have the chance to see a few sites and head to a few bars. I adore the team in India as much as I adore my US team. Here I come.

Tree speaks to Stone; Stone speaks to Water (01/07/2008)

The scene does not have to be perfect. The scene has to be written. - Elizabeth Bear

At 7:30pm I think long and hard about how to spend the next few hours. I've finished off the end-of-year Discover magazine and had just settled into reading one of my new books I got for Christmas, "The New Kings of Non-Fiction." With the introduction finished I reach a vital decision point in how my night is going to proceed. Do I continue on into the first story? If I do, I am guaranteed to be taken to world of blissful delight for the next hour, but it will bump hard against my commitment to help out my colleagues in India pushing it off and bringing bad karma my way. So I sigh, and pull a bookmark card from the stack, "Six of Swords."

The other main decision always hits me as I sit down at my desk. To my left is the work computer with the corporate logo screen saver beckoning me with fight against the onslaught of never-ending tasks and to my right is the happy hippy Mac with it's screen saver flashing through photos of friends and family I have taken over the last month. I am always drawn to the right. Who wouldn't be? Six of Swords is time for a journey of consciousness. I shake my head at the work laptop, "the cards are against you tonight."

I don't know what I'm looking for in twenty oh-eight. I think mostly a return to sanity and balance in my life. The previous year took that away from me ever-so-slowly. Not too long ago my aunt was in a wheel chair due to a neck problem and my uncle recounted how over a course of week it slipped from "my neck is kind of soar" to him pushing her around in a wheel chair and none of it seemed out of the ordinary. It was just a little baby step after baby step toward that direction. "Ohh my neck is soar, I wear a brace to help relax it." "Ohh, walking is making my neck bounce and it hurts and I'll just try and stay seated as much as possible." "Ohh, I want to go out but walking is going to make my neck hurt, why don't we get that wheelchair out of the garage." Then at some point someone says, "Oh my god you're in a wheelchair!" and what was just the most mundane thing in the world all of a sudden seems likes a very big deal.

That's how I feel in the utter insanity going on with me. The last year just brought small thing after small slowly taking me down a path to where things don't make sense. I could rock the boat and knock things out. I've done it a couple times before in my life and the idea is tempting, but I think I see an easier way. A slow and meandering path back to some balance that doesn't take the disruption I've done before. I'll see what the next twelve months bring for me.

New Years Texting (01/03/2008)

I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual. - Lord Byron

The first text comes in at 4:44pm on December 31st with "Happy New Year :)". I don't notice this until about 6:30pm and I am already at the new years party. The number it came from is not in my phone but in the San Francisco area code. I comment to my friends that I have absolutely no clue who this number is.

We everyone in the room checks their phones for the number to see if it is some mutual friend that I haven't programmed in for some reason, but to not avail. We try doing internet searches to see if a reverse lookup will occur but it doesn't succeed. Is this a coworker? Is this someone I met at a show? Who is this person? There is large debate around the room if I should response flirtatiously or like a pal. I connect to my company's server and check the mobile phone number of all of my employees. I don't think it is any of them.

Finally, someone asks, "Is there a smiley face in the message?" I respond, "Yes." "Well, than it HAS to be from a woman who is flirting with you! You should respond with, ‘What are you wearing?'"

I am not bold enough to do this, still a bit unsure who this is, so I respond with "It's not quite new years yet! Happy new year!" We all wait in anticipation.

The next message comes back just a moment later, "Look who's talking ;) getting drunk alone at home. Please have more fun than me :)"

The message is shared with everyone and now we are positive it must be some cute shy woman I have met over the last few months who has gotten inebriated and started drunk-texting the boy she has a crush on (mainly, me). There is much debate over the proper way to respond. Lots of people are suggesting using "sexy" or "cutie" in the response.

I do my best to continue to try and suss out the situation, "Drunk at home?!? Sober up and than come join my party! I'll give you directions." Are party was just that awesome!

Just another minute and it comes back, "No this year. Party for me bud. :)"

Yes, you read that correctly. The cute inebriated girl texted back to me just called me "bud." Which of course meant that it wasn't a cute inebriated girl at all.

Going back to work today I asked one of my colleagues if he had the number in his phone. He did a quick lookup and... it was... the CTO of my company. The best party? If I had responded back with, "hey sexy, what are you wearing?" the work-a-holic former marine CTO probably would have responded back with some clever. I adore my coworkers.