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by the bus stop
watercolour, micron 02 pen, lunchtime today; another british phonebox, nearby london buses (not seen), by a north londoner (unseen), at uc davis (seen, through colourful eyes), happy hallowe'en, the last day of october. |
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1.11.06 07:51 |
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flood season I didn't bother carving a pumpkin this year. Nor did I bother dressing up, or getting sweets for trick-or-treaters. It's suddenly gotten very cold here, which at the close of October is normally not unexpected, but after the hot and sunny year we've had it's surprised the life out of me. They say it'll rain tomorrow; and the news announced that this is officially the beginning of the 'flood season'. Cor blimey. I saw something that irritated me last night. I went for dinner at Subway after work, and there was a guy with a laptop at the door asking passers-by if they've had their free sandwich and soda yet. I ignored him, as it appeared to be an offer for students, and sat down with my quite unappetizing meal. Anyway, a couple of students, girls no older than about 18, rushed up for the offer, holding some sort of voucher that offered them a free sub and soda. Well, the guy said to them, you certainly can have your free sub and soda, if I can just have a few of your own details, he said, typing rapidly into his computer. what's that about, they asked, looking hungry for a free meal but a little suspicious? Well grinned the guy, citibank are offering you the chance to be pre-approved for a credit card, it'll only take four, five minutes. So we have to sign up for a credit card? one of the girls asked nervously. Well, yes, you're being pre-approved - don't worry, he added, you probably won't be approved anyway, but we'll put in all your details, then you can have your free sub and soda. The look on their faces, girls who did not look like they had had a credit card before and did not trust themselves having one, was a little anxious; they just wanted their free dinner. They looked like fairly poor students, first time away from home, probably living off of 15c noodles (hey, so am I, so what, I like them on toast), and had been looking forward to their sub and soda. So there they were, selling - sorry, giving away free - their personal information to a global credit corporation that is targeting penniless students with offers of free subs and sodas. They'll probably get those credit cards, and use them as well, when they really don't need them. The company will make money selling their information to other large companies who can blitz them with junk mail and credit offers (big industry, selling people's details for marketing, and totally legal - what a wonderful world). Hope the sub and soda was worth it, you're actually making a huge billion-dollar industry richer. I was going to step in, and stop them from selling their souls. It was an almost religious moment, I was going to do my bit against the corporate totalitarian predators. I was going to offer to get them sandwiches myself, in order to save them from the devil, and tell the laptop lucifer to go home and rethink his life. But I didn't, I just went on eating my chicken teriyaki sandwich, because, I reasoned, it was none of my flipping business. They can do what they want. They have choices. This guy works for a massive predatory corporation, and probably works on commission, just trying to feed his family. But I must say, I wish I had stepped in. I feel sorry that I didn't. It's all too easy to accept the inevitability of corporate totalitarianism, but every little action counts. I can't vote next week, but I implore all those in America who can, and who think that their one little voice won't make a difference in the face of the multi-million dollar political advertising industry telling you what you think, to get out and vote, vote and change something. Because there is a lot that needs changing. |
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1.11.06 23:15 |
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cartes postales de la gare
monterrey bay postcard, watercolour, and bad french; davis amtrak station, on the back of a postcard showng sea otters playing in the kelp beds of monterey bay, where we in september. padon my french, officer. good moaning. |
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2.11.06 08:33 |
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long to rain over us And it pissed down today. Oh yeah, the heavens opened up, and la pluie finally came back to california. It started raining last night, I could hear it as I re-read Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince (just the bit where harry and luna are at slughorn's party, it's funny). I haven't seen rain in so long. It didn't rain while I cycled to work, but I got splash from the puddles. It rained while I was at work, but stopped during my lunch (when I even got some sketching in), then started again five minutes after I got inside (lucky pete). I could hear it pounding against the skylight (my link to the outside world). The dry hot Central Valley is over, back to the ridiculously and surprisingly wet flood-prone country. Reaching a window I found it spectacular to look out over the storms. People here do not know what to do when it rains, and nobody seems to own an umbrella (but neither did I when I lived in the UK). It reminded me of home. Sad. Being my lucky day, it all cleared up about ten minutes before I left work. I cycled home, with some spray on me, but no more than a conversation with roy hattersley. So today was the first day since about April that I wore my raincoat (actually, that's not true - I did bring it to Britain with me, and wore it on a drunken night out in case it rained; I know this because I found random flyers to Soho nightclubs in my pocket, a sure sign of having been to the west end with a best friend). The rain is refreshing, that's for sure - ask me again in a few months, when the doppler radar goes insane and the levees are broken 'cos arnold was only joking. Currently enjoying a paulaner hefe-weizen beer, listening to 'never here', elastica; spurs won today, 3-1 against club brugge. |
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3.11.06 07:19 |
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leafy mysteries
watercolour, pencil; a wet day, outside the main theatre (yes, it is spelt theatre not theater, i don't know why) at wright hall, or somewhere, uc davis; it's where the art students all go. naturally i hid away behind a bike (not mine, though i'm considering painting mine blue). I don't know why more of the leaves are not brown yet. I guess that happens later here than in normal places. the trees haven't put their clocks back yet. I finished it off at home, most of the paint side of it. I actually liked the very scene of the painting desk (hah, it's the dinner table really), and so i've included that too, just for verfremdungseffekt, bertolt. Note the watchful eye of mrs pepperpot.
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3.11.06 07:44 |
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so long, and thanks for all the fish So if reports are true, we'd better stop eating fish, because they're all going to run out within fifty years. No more fish and chips, no more fish fingers, no more cockles-and-mussels-hawaii-five-o. It's quite the warning. As our planet gets more and more overcrowded, and demand for food rises and rises, it's inevitable there will be shortages - for most of the world today there are food shortages, it's just that we ignore those people because those countries are poor and 'the West' is rich. However. The first thing that struck me when I heard this news was how are the Sicilian mafia going to communicate with each other if all the fish are dead? How will they send their important, urgent (and almost undecipherable to anyone who hasn't seen the godfather) messages? Maybe they'll have to pop other things in the mailbox, such as chickens or rabbits. "Eh, Toni, it means Luca's a-sleeping with the bunnies!" See, it just doesn't have the same ring to it. There's going to be a lot of unhappy mafiosi in fifty years. We'd better stop over-fishing. |
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4.11.06 18:41 |
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not all of the leaves are brown, and the sky isn't that grey
watercolour, as a saturday afternoon faded away. |
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5.11.06 06:55 |
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a year in davis, and spurs are the best Today (that's bonfire night to you, and the 5th november to me) marks exactly one year since we moved to the city of Davis. I've now seen the whole davis weather cycle - the bright crisp november, the festive and well-lit-up december, the rainy frigging january, the surprisingly warm and sunny february, the cold and rain-soaked march, the bright green april, the allergy madness of may, the, er, what was june, i don;t remember, i was watching the world cup, the ridiculously scorching unbearable heat of july, the lesser heat and studentlessness of august, the warm back-to-schoolness of september, the cooler air of october, and as we hit a new november, we have all of those things, except for july. And june, no world cup. But as if to celebrate, i'm going to head down to the pub to watch the rerun of today's premiership match, where spurs finally beat chelsea in the league, 2-1. Yup, pretty happy about that, especially as arsenal lost as well. |
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5.11.06 20:18 |
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have i got noose for you So the former tyrant Saddam Hussein has been sentenced, sentenced to death. (Sentenced for crimes that were ignored by his friends in the West when he actually committed them). And this convenient news comes conveniently two days before congressional elections that the republicans had up until now look set to lose heavily in, thanks to the Administraitors' handling of iraq. How convenient. How coincidental! |
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6.11.06 07:05 |
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Yr 2, Wk 57-58: Poll Vaulting Where’s the Swingometer when you really need it? After months of mind-numbing televisual campaigns, billions of dollars thrown about to make the public think that voting one way or another will cause the world to end and taxes to rise, and with more mud slung than at all the Glastonburys put together, the mid-term elections are finally over, and we can all go back to normality (whatever that is). The Democrats appear to have taken back the House, giving the Administraitors some well-needed opposition, and as I write, the Senate is still too close to call. However, while this has been touted as a ‘national’ election, with the Iraq ‘war’ being the main issue among voters, many of the really nasty battles were the local ones, the ones at state-level, or (even more passionately) at county and city level. Those were the ones that really inflamed local passions, certainly in this part of California, and I have to say that over all, I’m disappointed with the results. Arnold won the gubernatorial race (I love writing that word, I had never heard of it until I came out here), with a pretty convincing victory over Phil Angelides. I’m not surprised – not many people are – and that perhaps isn’t as bad a thing as it once sounded. For one thing, Arnold really changed direction last year when he was slapped in the special election, deciding that the only way to progress is to work together with the other parties, and not just give the cushy jobs to your Republican buddies. He has meant this as a lesson to be learnt at national level; it has clearly won over Californians, who have, believe it or not, stopped seeing the Austrian as a joke. I am still not sure I buy the whole snubbing-Bush angle he took – I am certain that the Administraitors knew that certain elections would be won if the Prez was not in the picture. Personally, I think the real reason Californians voted him back into office is because they want to make sure he doesn’t go back and make any more movies, for another few years at least. While the governor race was not a surprise, the big losses were felt in some of the statewide Propositions and local Measures. Billions of dollars were ploughed into these campaigns, sums of money so vast that it is absolutely criminal how wasteful this election has been. Across the entire country I cannot begin to imagine how much money was spent; could this money not have been better used to tackle poverty, or help disaster victims, or start a national health service? Unfortunately, this election has proved that such ridiculous and decadent spending pays off. One such costly fight was over Prop 87, which proposed taxing the oil companies to fund research into alternative forms of energy, and making it illegal for the oil firms to pass the cost onto the consumer (a point not only ignored but contradicted by the oil companies who funded the ‘No’ campaign). The ‘No’ people, who were funded by ‘consortiums’ that included Chevron, ploughed a whopping $94 million into convincing the public that such a law would be ‘wasteful’ (“a recipe for waste, not progress” was their tag). In order to simply be heard, the ‘Yes’ campaign was forced to spend heavily too, with most of the $60 million being provided by Hollywood stars (people who don’t stand to lose profits if the law is passed). The irony is that after a while, both sides started to say the same thing, to appeal to the more patriotic voter (“they burn our flag, we buy their oil”, and so forth). Well, the boys who spent the most won, because voters listened to the nagging TV screen, drove their SUVs to the polling place, and rejected Prop 87. So much for California leading the way on climate change. In Davis, the big battle was also won by the guys with the money – Measure K, the vote on whether to build a massive big Target store on the edge of town, was passed, much to the disappointment of downtown businesses and people who like that Davis is a town free of the big-box type strip malls that have turned most of the US into a soulless vacuous parking lot (see Vacaville, aka Vacantville). Target really marketed to the locals, giving itself a new, green image – Davis is famous as one of the most progressive and environment-conscious cities in America. The “Yes on K” (funded by Target) signs argued that by building a Target in Davis would mean less driving to nearby Woodland or Natomas for those who want to shop there, thereby polluting less – it was sold as the green option. The new store is also supposed to be radical in that it is one of only a few in the country that are built to new environmentally sound standards. I don’t know how dumping tons and tons of concrete and tarmac over a plot of land the size of is the green option. It was all a massive marketing trick to win the green vote; Target are only interested in the potential Davis market, a market they really want to tap into, this being a town of 30,000 students. Now I, like many others, will go to Target from time to time (my wife loves it there), but I really don't think Davis needs a Target. If Target really only wanted the customers, why not pay for a bus to ferry students from campus to the store at Natomas? Because they don't want to do that. They'd rather the whole of I-80 between the Bay and the Sierras became one long strip-mall. The local community group, “Don’t Big-Box Davis”, managed to raise a worthy $20,453, but it was not enough to beat the national corporate giant, the "thinking woman’s Wal-Mart": Target could afford to spend big, a massive $269,795 in total (source). It paid off; Measure K narrowly won, and the big boys have conquered again. Even in the congressional seats that the Democrats were hoping to win from the Republicans, not everything went to plan. GOP candidate John Doolittle was re-elected, following much fund-raising on his behalf by Bush and his family (though many candidates avoided him like the bird flu). It seems that California is not as progressive and left-leaning as many people think. However, another local Republican, Richard Pombo, managed to lose his seat to the Democrats, having flirted too closely not only with King George but also that rat Jack Abramoff. What’s more, now that the Democrats have the majority in the House, it has fallen to a Californian to step up as the first ever female Leader of the House – Nancy Pelosi, from San Francisco, the city George Dubya would never set foot inside. And so after all of the hype, all of the money, all of the verbal garbage, all of the dirt and scandal, all of the false grinning and debate-avoidance, all of the flags and patriotic slush, all of the false expensive TV spots, the election is over, and life goes on. And not a Swingometer in sight. |
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8.11.06 20:03 |
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