muddy stream

My email has been down and up and down all weekend. I think it started with my password change but now my phone, desktop and laptop are all on the fritz. Two days on the horn with SBC, ATT, Verizon, Motorola, all of my friends in tech land and no closer to a solution. Gmail down, phone email down, nothing working. My friend J said that mercury is retrograde, don't know about such things, but something sure ain't working.

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Neighbor called a few hours ago. My wind machine, a monstrous tower with a jet engine perched on the top that sits in what is left of my grove, was sending out puffs of fire and smoke and emitting gigantic shot gun like blasts in the rain. An obvious major short in the high powered lines. Good thing it is raining or I might be sleeping in the shop again. Power company on the way.

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We had a nice dinner at Bill and Jan's last night. Her brother, Denis Kelly, is a noted cookbook author and meat guru as well as a longtime food and wine judge. Denis made us a wonderful meal that started off with grilled prawns with a chili/lime rub, then a roasted filet with sage, garlic and thyme and a mushroom, tawny port sauce. This was accompanied by a mango, peach salsa. I am not a big white wine guy but I always love his choices. He can tell you where this guy sits in the Loire Valley and they guy that delivers his mail to boot. Last night we had a Sancerre sauvignon blanc by Didier Daganeau and a 2005 Gigondas by Guigal. Leslie brought a nice red and we all had ourselves a great old time. Once again I out drank an irishman, always a stunning achievement.

Actually Denis is an amazing guy, a professor of Greek and Latin at St. Mary's, a poet, collector and ex pachuco who has been one of the greatest supporters of my writing over the years and a fan of the fiction I write that few seem to like. He gave me a lot of encouragement last night and I really appreciate both it and his friendship.

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Got a nice note from Concrete Blonde's Johnette after I sent her my review of her show yesterday. Sweet.

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We went and saw the movie Tron yesterday, after our customary brunch with Reneé. I liked it, with a few caveats. Stunning effects, the light cycles' contrails taking on the effect of soap bubbles. Very stimulating movie aesthetically but too long. Not to give it away but Bridges runs into a CG version of himself that was a tad annoying. Looked a bit manufactured but a very good try. There is a marvelous clockwork orange type character named Zeus and some lovely ladies. It had a bit of a blade runner thing going as well. Disney always pioneers a lot of cutting edge technology and if you need a mindless romp into cyberspace, have at it. The message to me was that old zen hippies might not fare real well in the brave new world. The machines are taking over, and judging from my life right now, they are evidently really pissed.

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Speaking of old zen hippies, I have a list of 21st century contrivances that drive me nuts. E-cards, Evites, smiley icons, the phrase lol, texting, racist emails, electronic books, facebook, twitter, etc.

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I had the pleasure of spending time with my young nephew Jake during thanksgiving. He asked if he could borrow my phone. Within three minutes he had uploaded about 8 games and had mastered technology that I couldn't dream of conquering. And I think I am above average on the technology front. But these kids today instantly grasp the technology. We all know that if we need to get anything done you have to find someone under ten to help you. It's seamless for them.

We were discussing this general subject at breakfast this morning and Tony brought up an article from the New York Times Magazine yesterday, In pursuit of the perfect brainstorm. He said that it brought up new approaches to problem solving, I need to read it more carefully. Now we live in an environment where it is not so much knowing anything, but being able to access the information that is readily at our fingertips. Someone mentioned that cashiers that have graphic user interfaces on their machine's have pretty much lost the capacity to make change in their heads. Give them an extra dime or quarter so that you can get a round number back and watch their little head's swim.

We can only speak in 144 character staccato bursts acceptable to the social networks. Contrast that with, let's say, the eloquent letters between John and Abigail Adams, or the knowledge of geography or basic science that every schoolchild seemed to possess in the late 19th century and you can make a great case for de-evolution. But we already knew that everything was going to shit, didn't we? Got to make way for the homo superior...