I remember when I first moved to California from the midwest, every day or so I marvelled to myself, "I can't believe I live in California." Gradually I was only saying this to myself once a week, then once a month, till after the first 3 years I'd become used to the idea. I never thought I'd move there, never wanted to, till grad school. Interestingly, when I moved to Portland I never once told myself, "I can't believe I live in Portland, Oregon." Perhaps because Portland is really sort of an extension of California, culturally (though if you live there and love it I'm sure you'll object intensely to that. sorry). Or perhaps it was because I visited there and thought about moving there for years and years.

Now I live in Arizona and still every week or so I say "I can't believe I live in Arizona." I guess because it is pretty damn different here, and also if you asked me 5 years ago I never would have told you I thought I'd be living here. I don't know, as usual with everywhere I've lived, Tucson is not a place I can honestly say I think I'll stay forever, but I like it for now.

My friend Petr back in Portland has just posted a series of fashion photographs he did, featuring a young woman wearing only duct tape. I could say a lot but I will for now simply say they are very pretty.

Petr does some interesting stuff. Also, it's interesting to compare what he does with his time to what I do with mine, because we're about the same age and he's the only friend of mine - possibly the only person I know - who is my age and has had, like me, a really long monogamous relationship (>10 yrs) that is now over. I surprisingly just recently made that realization with the help of another mutual friend. I will say no more here but I look forward to conversing with him when I'm back in Portland in July.

Godammit I'm so surprised at how many places are closed today. Not a single fucking bike shop is open today because of Memorial Day. WTF? Fuck remembering the dead veterans. How about remembering all the fucking rich white elite men who DIDN'T die, who got rich off of all this country's wars for the last 250 years, sending the poor men off to die and then making a fucking holiday about them, as if that makes up for it?

As you can see, I'm in a foul mood. My bike has a flat and there's no where to get a freaking innertube. I'm really fucking sick of how often I get flats in this town, too, even with all the precautions of thorn-proof tires, tire liners, etc etc. I'm really sick of my bike too, and all the things wrong with it and the money I don't have to fix it because I'm still waiting on corporate america to send me a fucking check even after working for a whole month for them.

grrr.

Just heard about a new book by Bob Ostertag, who was the first other artist I ever hosted on my website, Detritus.net, starting back in 1997. He's a professor at UC Davis now, and I didn't even know he was working on this book. since I know him exclusively as an electronic music composer, it was a big surprise to find out about this. tho I know that he took 10 years off from music to be a freelance journalist and activist in central america back in the 80s. (In the early 90s he released a CD that is one hour or so long piece made of a sample of a small boy in El Salvador talking and crying while burying his dead father who was killed by death squads. It's still one of the most heart-wrenching pieces of music i've ever heard. )

Anyway, looks like a good book, tho it seems to be only historical, not about present trends like indymedia. chronologically it only goes up through the 70s or so.

Well, just to check in, we had a great couple of hours being annoying to Wal-Mart and educating shoppers about Atenco. It went really well. it seemed like it would be a chaotic mess at first but people did a good job of splitting into relatively autonomous groups that all did things in diffferent parts of the store and outside. it took about 40 minutes for cops to show up outside and I shot great footage out and in, then got thrown out with a few of my compas who tried to demand to see a manager. i'd kept the camera real on the downlow till then but then when the scary security guys started throwing them out I brought it up on my shoulder and then they started getting all up in my face. We did a dignified retreat and met our masked amigos outside just as the cops were making them march off the property. Then people held signs and handed out fliers on the corner for awhile.

It was a good time, and effective, I think. People seemed very interested and receptive, tho i think a lot of folks thought it was just aout immigration or the border.

I'll be editing together a nice little piece about it, hopefully soon.

sadly the day then proceeded with 2 semifrustrating meetings and a lack of timely food on my part so i'm a little grumpy now. oh well. now it's time to relax with [can't think of a term of endearment I like right now], drink some wine and watch a dvd.

Today here in Tucson there's a (hopefully) gran manifestaci

I finally finished uploading all the good photos from the trip [secretperson] and I took to Puerto Peñasco last weekend. The photos seem to fall into 3 categories: beautiful, curious, and personal. With some overlap.

UPS just arrived this afternoon with 3 big boxes - 300 copies of the DVD of my film. 800 more went to the label that is releasing it.

It's always so exciting when a CD or DVD, or a zine or whatever, is done and you finally see a huge number of copies all folded and packaged and wrapped the way they're supposed to be in their final form. Wow. Now I'm excited to start sending them to everyone that I owe one to. If you've helped in any way and I don't have your address already, send it to me.

What looks like some sort of NMSU student web zine called The Merge has done a special feature covering in great detail the symposium on the women of Juáurez that I attended back in late March. The design is really nice and the articles are well written. There are descriptions of just about every panel discussion. (via Stevie)

I've been working harder than I'm used to lately and have had poor ergonomics and posture in my workspace. So I've been having problems with my wrists and arms. This is a chronic problem I've had before whenever I work long hours on a computer. Another reason why I've made it a career priority to work very few hours a week compared to most people.

So anyway, It's not super bad because I know one has to stop and deal with RSI ASAP. I've been working on changing furniture and stuff and I'm probably going to be blogging less for awhile and minimizing a lot of other nonessential computer use. So if you see me posting a long blog item in the next week, please leave a comment and tell me to stop. thanx.