Hallelujah

I am home, and don't have a single future flight booked. Woohoo! I got back yesterday from a weekend in Montreal, at the Association of American University Publishers meeting. University press people are a strange bunch, my friends.

The conference was capped off by a ridiculously decadent meal here, where we ate more foie gras than is healthy or sane. My coworker and I brought along Lianna and her coworker, who then proceeded to shock the crap out of us. Here is Lianna before we realized what we were in for:Sweet, right? Well, somewhere in between the oysters, the poutine, and the pig's feet topped with foie gras, we got blasted. There were Wellesley lesbian jokes, there were Asian jokes, there were scatological comments that were not even jokes. Highlight: when he decided to tell a neighboring table that he had slept with his mother, just to see how they'd react.

It was a Category 5 Shitshow.

And yet, I wound up having an ok time. The food was fabulous, and we ended up the night at our hotel bar with about 20 other university press people, all of whom seemed delightful.

And then I got on a plane again. But no more! For the next few months I am not going to work weekends, I am not going to hang out with publishers, and I am not going to try to empathize with middle-aged men. So there.

Boggled again.

I just received an announcement for a backpack drive at work, which specified: "For safety reasons, please note that the organization can't accept red or blue backpacks for 7^th-12^th graders."

Jesus H.

I guess it is kind of lame for me to love Google jokes/gags/pranks

But I do, and I am going to share some with you. Not only that, but one of them is going to be a Chuck Norris joke, too.

1. Google "Find Chuck Norris" and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky".

2. Go to Google and click "Preferences" next to the search box. Choose one of the following languages from the "Interface Language" dropdown: Bork, bork, bork!; Elmer Fudd; Hacker; Klingon; Pig Latin. Click "Save Preferences" and enjoy.

Seriously? Seriously???

This article is an inspirational enough bit on alternative methods of schooling, and I would have rolled right through it if I hadn't hit this line: "Last year’s graduation rate was 63 percent, Mr. Fisher said, nearly triple the rate of the old Bushwick High School, which once occupied the same building. The citywide average is about 50 percent."

50 percent???? Really? Is there a way to explain this to make it any more sane, or is it true that 50% of New York City's public school kids don't graduate from high school? At the risk of sounding naive (too late, right), this is insane! Maybe a decent percentage of dropouts get their GED, but it's still mind-boggling that half of the future (and maybe current) adults who grew up going to New York public schools do not have high school diplomas.

I'm....boggled.

Word

From Publisher's Lunch:

Rapper Sets Up Imprint
Rapper KRS-One is creating an I Am Hip Hop imprint with powerHouse Books that will launch in spring 2009 with his own THE TEACHA'S GOSPEL OF HIP-HOP, "a 600-page manifesto documenting the genre's core tenets laid out like, what else, a Bible." The announcement says the line will "publish work of a number of different types with photography, philosophy and novels among them" and "serve as a home for cutting-edge, positive material related to the true culture and philosophies of Hip Hop."

Relocation: like vacation, but less fun.

My bosses are pressuring me to relocate to New York. Why they didn't hire me there in the first place, I don't know, but I'm settled in here and don't want to leave just yet. So far it's not a do-it-or-else situation, but it would involve a relocation bonus, cost of living increase, and housing stipend for the transition period. Which would be a sweet deal, except that I am no way no how ready to move back to the East Coast. Blargh.

It's just like Wellesley said.

Gender is a mo-fo social construct!

The Brennans are torn asunder once more

My brother flew out yesterday. I am sad he is gone, but we really couldn't have sustained that level of gluttony for much longer. While he was here, we:

• drank a sick number of PBRs at the Wiretap show
• hosted an impromptu sake-bomb party at Fly Bar
• had an epic picnic in Dolores Park
• spent Saturday playing various sport in GGPark
• went to the Secret Slides!!!
• had a Family Dinner at our place that involved unimaginable amounts of food, mojitos, and caipirinhas
• rode our bikes across the bridge to Sausalito and took the ferry back. I made Ian and Mike come with me to the Tiny Stuff store (not it's real name, I don't think). Find of the Day below.
• ate sushi and drank sake until we moved with sloth

Burnination

It smells like burning all the way from San Francisco down the peninsula. California's propensity to self-combust takes some getting used to; as a kid, Smokey the Bear's message seemed more theoretical than anything else. Dry Christmas trees and faulty electric heater wiring you can control; drought and lightning, not so much.

Victory = modern urban sustainability

I bet you did not know that. I bet you also did not know that they are about to plant a vegetable garden in front of city hall, either!

Please be my friend.

From a blah NYT blog post on a whole mess of high school girls that made a pact to get preggers: “'We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy,' the principal says, shaking his head."

Commenter/future friend:

• 16. June 19th, I think the only winner here was that homeless guy.
  2008, 5:02 pm — Posted by michael

When I am grownup enough to have real dinner parties

I will have these pop-up placemats.

More from Damascus

Where my parents' house is going to be:

My shoes are famous

From today's DailyCandy, the first of these emails to contain anything of actual interest to me:There is a story behind these sandals. When Meg and I were in Athens last October, it was a ridiculously rainy day, we had spent the night before sleepless in a tiny ferry cabin, and all we wanted was to be back on an empty beach on Paros or in a real bed. But we had shopping to do, and Meg had read that there was a renowned sandal shop somewhere nearby, so we got ourselves good and soaked walking up and down creepy lanes looking for this sandal making dude.And, glory be, we found him in his musty shop, with his John Malkovich face, surrounded by crazy artwork, leather sandals, and a big gray ponytail. He gave us his book of poetry and told us about his dad's art and the famous people who were always coming into the shop. He and his assisant had us pick our style, then fitted the leather to our feet and put the sandals together right there. Meg and I both went with #13, "Hermes", and if I lived anywhere other than San Francisco I would be wearing them every day now. And if I had any sense, I would recreate the photo above with myself and Meg, as a tribute to the man who so gloriously shod our footsies.

Damascus PA

So I really like Apartment Therapy and its blog sisters. I like design, I like small spaces, and I like having bite size chunks of pretty that I can look at during the day. Today they posted about the West Coast tour of a Tumbleweed House, and guess what - it's stopping at the Goog!

I'm trying to talk my parents into buying one as a guest house to set up near the (soon-to-be-blasted-into-the-hillside) pond on their new property. Oh, and in case I haven't talked your ear off about it yet, here's a photo of that pristine land right now: