ADOPTED (but not by me)

Harley was not in his kennel today. A family with three kids took him home with them this morning to have a Harley-happy life.

Hmph! Did I mention they also adopted a puppy? Dog hoarders.

Rock You Like a Hurricane and/or Earthquake!

What, me? Panic? I continued to leave my voice message, continued to sound professional, despite the earthquake's steadfast attempt to rattle me. A magnitude 5.4 quake hit the Los Angeles area just before noon today. Though I recognized the natural hazard immediately, my reaction was a delayed and nonchalant one--one that would bring shame to those who spent so much time ensuring my earthquake safety inculcation. Stop, drop, and roll!

"What the hell are you doing?," shouted a nearby co-worker from under her desk.

"C'mon, Marilyn, I know the drill! I was born and raised in California!," I shouted back.

"You're supposed to take cover under your desk and cover your neck!," she exclaimed.

"That's old school! Too many spinal injuries. Stop, drop, and roll is where it's at these days!," I yelled back.

"You're crazy! That's for fires!," she said.

"Fire extinguishers are for fires. I'm rolling to avoid falling objects in an earthquake!," I explained.

The conversation lasted long after the earthquake stopped. Ol' Marilyn later huddled around the water cooler with some other office workers and laughed about my earthquake preparedness. Whatever. I know what I'm doing.

And all I got was a lousy candy cane...

When I was a kid, I knew another kid who peeled dried glue off his fingers and kept the scraps in a stolen interoffice envelope that said "Property of Robert Elementary School".

I also knew a girl who didn't know what Single File Line meant.

I knew a kid who stole caterpillars from the classroom science station and tried to grow 'em in his own room. When they died, he returned them to the classroom and none of us kids were ever able to believe that butterflies could emerge miraculously from a pile of dead worms.

I knew a bunch of undeserving brats who got a boatload of cool shit during the holidays, and it sucked. All I ever got from Santa was a boot in the face and a ride down a red slide at the mall. Oh, and a freakin' candy cane if my parents bought 5" x 7"s from the pimply elves!

Doing Stuff on my Birthday

Happy Birthday to me. This year, no cake--only a freshly ironed shirt. I had to do the ironing myself last night when I could have been baking a celebratory cake. Goddamn, do I have to do everything around here?

SAVE the historic South Pasadena Rialto Theater

The South Pasadena Downtown Revitalization Project website still features a fine black & white photo of the historic Rialto Theater, but the restoration of the endangered building, which closed last summer after nearly 82 years of business, has been eliminated from the final redevelopment plan. Where have the funds been redirected? What has happened to the preservation ethic this town is known for?

As a preservationist, I wanted to bring to your attention the unfortunate situation with the National Register listed Rialto theater in South Pasadena. The theater is located in a redevelopment zone on Fair Oaks in downtown.

The restoration of the now closed Rialto theater was included as the centerpiece of the initial project proposed for revitalization of the redevelopment zone. It has been eliminated from the final plan which is before the South Pasadena Planning Commission tonight, April 16, 6:30 PM at 1414 Mission Street in South Pasadena, CA.

I am asking for your help to communicate support, by attending the meeting and speaking or emailing the South Pasadena City Clerk at skilby@ci.south-pasadena.ca.us, that the cherished landmark Rialto MUST be included in any plans for revitalization of the downtown redevelopment area. Thank you so much for your interest.

Joanne Nuckols

Founding member and former Chairman of the Board of the South Pasadena Preservation Foundation

April is National Poetry Month

The new campaign for poetry awareness, "Woo or Woe on the Go", must be one of the most admirable initiatives I've seen in years (screw you, helpless pandas and illiterate children). Mobile poetry addresses the serious, but nonexistent problem of poetry's loss of popularity through the decades due to its tragic inaccessibility and inconvenience in modern life. "Woo or Woe on the Go" makes the irrrefutable statement that poetry is not simply a foolish catalogue of blather featuring whiny wooers and woeful wimps. Doesn't the title make that clear to you, dull prose readers, damn it?

Pansy Rock Station Replaces Cool R&B Station in Los Angeles

Read this embarrassingly sycophantic message, stinking of corporate weenie fake-cool, which I extracted from the website of new Los Angeles radio station The Sound:

The Sound Mission

First off, welcome to The Sound. We're glad you found us and that you're interested enough to find and read this page; it shows you're like us and music is important to you. While you've probably already heard us and know what you've heard, thanks for giving us this opportunity to elaborate on what we've set out to do.

The Sound is about simply one thing, it's about the best "rock" music made to date. Notice the quotes around the word rock, because our definition of rock is a lot broader than most and it knows virtually no time frame. On The Sound you'll hear everything from the geniuses that gave birth to the seminal rock of the '60s and '70s to the ever evolving offspring of that music, including great stuff that came out last year...or even last week.

If we do it right, you'll find us surprising you every once in a while; sometimes with a great song that you haven't heard in a long time, or a new song you haven't heard elsewhere, maybe even sometimes with a song you didn't think of as "rock". Our goal is to provide music that's comfortably hip. To be familiar without being stale, new without being obscure.

And, whatever we do, everything we do will be with respect for the music. You know, just like we know, others might think we're a little silly to feel this strongly about music...after all, it's only music. While rock and roll isn't the only important thing in the world, it's still important nonetheless and it makes everything else a little more enjoyable. And along the way, we'll help you stay informed and give you opportunities to get involved in making things better in your community. After all, that's what music is best at, bringing people together and standing for something.
We invite you to join us in our mission of ongoing musical discovery and hope you'll invite your own friends into our Sound village.

Bruce

Bonneville International

Memoir

I've got a

1. Joy
2. Joy
3. Joy
4. Joy

down in my heart, because that's what they told me to sing at church.

The Book of Barnacles

Before heading to class last week, I remembered to stop at the bookstore to pick up a copy of the school's creative writing publication, which features the winners of last year's writing contest. A friend from last year's creative writing class asked me if I received a rejection email from the judging committee (we were all required to submit a story for the contest). I said no, I didn't get a rejection note, and figured perhaps my precious story about pony girl Joanne had made it into the final rounds. My eyes hurried up and down the index, anticipating the glorious moment where they would stop at the name Sylvia. When I saw the name Susan and a different story published, I knew it was a mistake.

I decided to write to my former creative writing instructor, who oversaw the contest.

Dear Mr. H,

Please know that I shed no tears as I formulate this letter to discuss my lack of mention in the campus publication. I believe that it was an oversight by your committee, excluding me in the publication. My exclusion in your publication is like an aquarium without the cool shark. No, it is like an aquarium with nothing but barnacles in it.

I have reviewed the work of this "Susan" chosen for publication, and I feel that your committee has made a mistake of planet-sized proportions. Again, my name is Sylvia, and my story is far, far more entertaining than the one you decided to publish. I mean, how many stories about visiting grandparents in nursing homes can we bear? Wouldn't the student body prefer a story about a girl who lost a friend by sitting on the friend's cat? What's done is done, I suppose. It would be too expensive to recall all the publications and correctly feature my story in place of Susan's.

Perhaps you'll know who's the better writer next year, when you actually read all the entries. In the meantime, may we all marvel at the awesome barnacle chosen for publication instead of me.

No hard feelings.

Sylvia

The Tender Lives of Shrimp

This morning a new feeling woke with me. It was Inspiration, for it stung my heart and raced through my veins (leaving, oddly, my brain completely unaffected).

Inspiration told me to start writing: Hell, Sylvia, start with children, the bottom of the totem pole, if you need to. Just start writing! For a moment I disagreed with its suggestion that chidren were easy to write for, but I urged myself to be prudent, to follow instructions from this supreme being, however out of touch with reality it is, what with its own laurel-laced lifestyle.

With Inspiration behind me, nagging me toward creative expression, I will write a medium-length book for attentive and well-behaved children. The book will be called The Tender Lives of Shrimp. Countless and nameless shrimp will be featured in colorful illustrations throughout the book, following my narrative about the brave disinterest which the shrimp possess, especially in the know-it-all face of Inspiration. They have eyes, but they refuse to see much.

Words Are a Waste...Unless You Use 'Em in a Song

For years, I wanted to be a photojournalist. Writing is overrated. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.

They? Who's they?

Pipe down. I'm trying to paint a picture.

Painting? I thought you were a photographer.

I'm not a photographer...yet. I said I would like to be a photographer. Stop interrupting.

Do you even own a camera?

No, but I have friends who have cameras.

That doesn't show much commitment.

What are you, my coach?

And work for almost nothing? Ha!

I wish my subconscious would stop butting in when I'm trying to get my photojournalist career going.

If only I'd gotten a clean shot of Barry that night in 1977, I'd be a real photographer by now!

Good for nothing.

During the wintry months in December and January, I was trapped under a foot of snow, rendered immobile and unable to post anything on this blog. A foot of snow, and I survived, I survived!, I shouted at the other Angelenos driving along the Angeles Crest Highway.

Those days I spent paralyzed in the snow-lined embankment, I thought of you only, my faithful readers, wondering if I'd ever return to the warmth of the foothills. As I lay there, I thought not of death, but of dipping my frostbitten fingers into lukewarm water just to get enough feeling back to type a blog entry.

Nursed back to health by a young stray kitten -- precociously maternal one she is -- I regained enough strength to press my fingers on the keys of my notebook computer. I never felt more alive when I saw all the activity on the blog I'd missed so much. These are true fans! I thought to myself, tears welling in my defrosting eyeballs.

And all I saw were complaints.

Nice to be Chinese...for once.

Finally, a perk. The one other Chinese staff member in the office gave me a box of Ferrero Rocher (which has become the Chinese New Year tradition among Chinese, at least in L.A. County). I'm so glad for this new tradition because authentic Chinese New Year candy quite sucks. See the cough drop correllation pictured.

Welcome to my newly formatted blog, FRIEND.

Mediocrity is Safe now features a refreshing modern look, delivering the same mediocre content you’ve come to expect. Notice the addition of “A Few of my Favorite Things” in the right column and navigate with relative order the disorder of my brain. Yes, that’s right: the disorder of my brain!

Now that the blog/brain correlation has been made known, any reader might ask why a person like myself would have no friends to categorize. To be quite frank, the thought of a “Friends” category would suit this blog well, and I suspect I would categorize my friends mercilessly, but alas I admit I have no friends to speak of.

Shall I make them up? Would it be a crime? Yes, a crime to mental health, for how healthy is it to submit to the mental indolence of simply drumming up a couple of bland folk to label as comrades each time I require a new “Friends” essay? The only true and honorable approach to making friends is to come face to face with real individuals and then strategically lower your own standards so that 9 out of 10 people you meet can qualify favorably in your endeavor.

We're friends, right?

Jab! Jab! Jab! (Gardening Advice)

A little research on eHow.com lead me to this nifty tip:

I use plastic forks inserted upside down into the dirt around my flowers. It stops the cats walking through the flowers because the little fork prongs jab their paws.

Little plastic fork prongs, eh? I prefer gentle explosives myself.

CHOSEN: The Lindsay Lohan Pumpkin of Well-Being Restoration

Thank you, Winona Public Library (now with wireless Internet access!!), for choosing my pumpkin-carving idea submission! (Also see pumpkin cousin 2,000 miles away in California.)

Apple Jacked

Last night I was once again an Outsider. Back at home in the Los Angeles area, you couldn't miss the four Apple logo stickers on my vehicle, but here I was in Minneapolis, driving my rental car by an Apple store packed with celebratory Apple folk who had put on nice shoes and glossed their locks with organic salon product in order to say, "Yeah, I was there at the Leopard OS release party in Uptown. Yeah, I was there..." I, however, was there only in spirit, creeping by from the outside in my Chevy Cobalt, feeling uncool, uncreative, underachieving (but not in the cool sense).

With the new Leopard, apparently, one would possess a much more talented version of iChat, one that could display files in addition to plain old video conferencing. Says a close friend who has given me permission to quote him based on the rationale that no one reads this blog anyway, "Ooooooh, I can also put a porn movie as my background so it looks like there are people screwing behind me..."

I'm feeling a little screwed myself.

Gone Fishing

Visit About to Snap this month for photo updates on my carefree adventures on the East Coast and in the Midwest.

More on the U of MN Strike

Read more about the strike from an AFSCME worker: http://www.cheek.blogspot.com/

University of Minnesota Workers on Strike

From discussion pages of TwinCities.com:

I'm a little confused. If the head of a company I worked for budgeted a raise of
3.25% for the employees as a cost of living increase, and my immediate
supervisor only gave me 2.5% I would be mad. I would also want to know where the
rest of the money was going. Since in the U workers case my taxes are paying for
this budgeted raise and the workers aren't getting it I am concerned. Shouldn't
all of you "get another job" people be concerned about where the money is really
going as well? It would seem this strike is about accountability.
Posted by:
Steve 9/5/2007 9:50 AM