Oh lord. There is no escape from the horrors of corporate America when your boss at the non-profit tutoring job asks if you know PowerPoint, so you can whip up a presentation about the PSATs.

My response: "I don't know PowerPoint, and actually I hate it. I think speakers give much better presentations when they're not glued to their computers, clicking away."

Sadly, I'm too nice to stop there, and offered to figure it out anyway if she feels strongly about it.

At least she hasn't asked me to set up teleconferencing.

Cheers to my northeast US people digging out from two feet of snow.

It might not be much comfort, but at least you're not wimps like my neighbors here!

Sooner or later we all become grown-ups...or hypocrites...

On November 29, a UCLA graduate art student did a performance piece in which he simulated Russian roulette. After he pulled the trigger, the gun didn't fire. The student left the room and then the audience heard a shot from outside. No one was hurt, and after an investigation, no one was sure whether the gun was real and there was insufficient evidence to bust him for anything (except maybe bad art.)

Two UCLA professors, Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins, have quit their jobs over the lack of punishment, likening the stunt to "domestic terrorism." I have no fresh comment on the 21st century's total overuse of the T-word, but I did have the following thought: Well, people have been doing stupid/dangerous things in the name of performance art since performance art has existed. Wasn't there a once guy who had someone shoot him in the arm as part of a piece?

As I keep reading the article [reg. required] I learn that yes, there was indeed such a piece in the 70s, called "Shoot." The artist responsible: ex-UCLA professor Chris Burden, who was then a UC graduate student.

Remember that old anti-drug commercial?
Old man: Who taught you to do art with guns?! Who! I want to know where you learned how to do this stuff!
Young man, tearfully: From you, professor! I learned it by watching YOU!

I know there's nothing less exciting than talking about the weather, but since everyone's asking me, I will.

Yes. It's raining in LA. Contrary to popular opinion and that Albert Hammond song, it does rain in Southern California from time to time. Yes, it's been raining rather steadily and rather hard for a couple weeks now. There are breaks in it, but never long enough to get the damn puddles off the sidewalks -- but I'm one of approximately 26 Angelenos who uses sidewalks, so I realize this is a minor complaint.

I don't mind the rain. It's novel to have water in the LA River. What annoys me about the rain is not the water coming out of the sky, but the fact that all of SoCal seems totally ill-equipped to deal with it.
1) Everyone's bitching and moaning as though Noah had just told them to gather two of each animal.
2) LA people never learned to drive in the rain, so the freeways are full of accidents, tow trucks, cops, and nervous Nellies driving 8 MPH.
3) No one in LA seems to own proper rain gear. Hey, see item 1)...think the rain would suck less if you bought a friggin' raincoat or even an umbrella? You people all seem to have umbrellas for when it's SUNNY, when you ought to just be wearing a hat and/or sunscreen...
4) As Owen would say, Infrastructure By Billy. The drainage is terrible, and for crying out loud, we've got a drought on but this isn't going to help much because no one thought to build a way to *save* the water when it does rain. It mostly flows out to the ocean. Duh.

I clearly live in a different LA -- or on a different psychological planet -- than the people making this out to be big news. The LA Times says the city itself got 5 inches of rain over the weekend, so obviously I'm fine. Apparently the big problems are in the mountains and canyons, which were arguably never fit for human development/housing in the first place. For once, it's the rich people in the hills who have a problem, not the rest of us.

Meme time

As seen on Teri and Bruce's pages (congrats on the new apartment, btw):
1. Go To Mapquest.com
2. Click on Directions
3. Enter your Current Address and the address of your childhood home (or at least the town if you don't remember the exact address)
4. Put the time and distance in a post like this.
5. Don't forget to repost these directions. (Not the door to door ones!)

Total Est. Time: 42 hours, 30 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 2805.34 miles
From Los Angeles, CA to F*ir L*awn, NJ

2005's first crop of LA Moments

1. In the first hours of the new year, I'm drunk in West LA and we're all warbling along to "California Love"

In the city of LA
In the city, of good ol' Watts
In the city, city of Compton..."

Watts isn't a city, none of us have ever been to Compton, but it's all good.

I don't remember if this is before or after the hostess decided to take pictures of all the party guests' butts. Yes, clothed.

2. I was at a stop light eating a burrito when...

Actually, that's enough of an LA Moment right there.

3. I'd let my two students of the moment take a break outside between the distributive property and like terms. They'd bothered to show up at the library on the city bus during their winter vacation, so I wasn't prepared to bust their balls.

By the pond, they knew where to find a nylon line tied to a tree with a hook at the end. They scrambled around until they found half a dead worm in the grass, and one of them baited the hook and cast it into the pond. The pond is man-made, shallow enough so you can see the bottom, but somehow surrounded by signs telling fishermen to take only five catfish or trout per person.

They seem very, very intent to catch something, and I'm forced to wonder if they go hungry during school breaks, when there's no subsidized lunch. We spend 10:30am-2pm together and I'm the only one who takes a lunch break. It might be their fathers I've seen fishing off the piers in the polluted Pacific.

"You sure you'll catch anything worth eating in here? Won't the fish be kinda small?" I ask.

"Nah, we're going to get a big-ass fish!"

Meanwhile, the pond was ringed by fishermen. One had his daughters digging for worms with a stick with a stick. Another fed Cheetos to the ducks and geese. My students didn't catch anything.

4. For a moment this morning, I thought I was witnessing a police chase, but the offending vehicle decided to pull over. Please let me get through the next few years here without my person or my vehicle winding up on the 5 o'clock news.

Fun with horoscopes

Just for kicks, when logging out of Hotmail today, I checked my horoscope on MSN. It asked me for my gender (not part of astrology, as far as I know...) and birth year, and told me this:

Take out the trash today, jen. Do your laundry and clean your room. Put on some good music and vacuum the hallway. This is a terrific day for you to simply get things done. Concentrate on domestic chores and general upkeep. You will find that these chores are somehow less painful to execute today as long as you maintain a positive attitude. Think how good you will feel after you accomplish everything on your list.

When I gave it the same date and year of birth but made myself male, it gave me this:

Today you could decide to aim yourself more directly at your career goals, jens. Instead of waiting to receive a new lead, you might actively pursue one. You could be networking with friends and colleagues, asking them to keep their ears open for ideas and new positions. You are definitely ready to make a big change. Be honest with yourself about your need to spread your wings, and keep focusing on your dream!

So women with my birthday should clean the house, and men should work on their careers. Hmm.

Next, I made myself a teenager, same birthday but born in 1989:

Don't be surprised if things don't go exactly according to plan today, jenni. Unexpected events are more than likely to pop up and disturb the course of action. Realize, however, that these disruptions have a place in your life and that they are occurring for a reason. You might not understand exactly how or why at this time, but that is fine. You don't need to know. Welcome these new energies into your life.

Gosh, life is disruptive when you're 15? And you won't understand the changes? Amazing.

Finally, I kept my birthday but used my mother's birth year:

Take out the trash today...

AAAIIEEEEE!!!

First excellent typo of the year, from my hometown newspaper:

"Honor planned for Fair Lawn heroin."

Really? Must have been some excellent stuff.

(They've since fixed the spelling, sadly.)