I can't believe its Thursday already

This week blew by. I got back from the Jamboree on Sunday at around 10 AM Eastern, slept all day, had dinner, slept all night, went to work Monday, and then *poof* it was Thursday. I meant to blog a little more during the week but somehow my heart just wasn't in it.

Better late than never I suppose. So, the conference picked up nicely on the last day, and I wasn't so tired and cranky anymore. After the conference ended, it was time to start my extra-curriculars. I had made plans to hang out with some friends both Friday night and Saturday day. Before that could begin though, I had to drive from Walnut Creek to Pacifica, a drive that should really only take about an hour (it was 7 pm on Friday night). Unfortunately I got a little confused about the difference between I-580 and I-80, and ended up going north along the east side of the bay, rather than going over the Oakland Bay Bridge like I should have been doing. When I realized my mistake, I turned my head to look back at the Bay Bridge and noticed that a) it was packed with traffic and b) said traffic was parked. After quick glance at my map, I thought it might take less time to go all the way north, cut over to Marin county and then go South over the Golden Gate bridge, cut through San Fran and then end up in Pacifica that way. That was a mistake. The short story is that it took me about 3 hours to get to Pacifica, which wasn't even my final destination for the night.

Anyway, so I get to my friend Kira's apartment in Pacifica and in minutes we are back out the door to drive to my other friend Garrett's in Santa Cruz, another hour south. Briefly, Kira has a nice place in a complex. Its a breezy studio apartment with an unobstructed view of the ocean through the large sliding glass doors that lead to her deck. Pacifica has a repuation for being cloudy and foggy most of the year, and the coast there is all rocky cliffs, no real beaches that I could see. It doesn't matter though, because in my book any view of the ocean is an incredible view. Its the kind of view that should just make you feel good and humble every day you wake up to look at it.

Garrett also lives right on the beach in a studio apartment, but he's a block or two away from the water on ground level, with no real water view that I noticed. All the windows in his place are small, so if there was a view to be had, it was hard to notice at night. Nearly as soon as I got there I had some crazy allergy attack that made my eyeball all itchy and swollen, so we left to pick up some claritin and a bite to eat from a local hipster diner with gender-ambiguous restrooms. I was amused when Garrett started up a conversation with our waitress about how he wasn't vegan anymore because he ate pastries once a week now. The waitress herself admitted to being a mere vegetarian by welcoming Garrett to the land of vegetarians. The whole exchange was pretty Calarious (get it? I combined the words "California" and "Hilarious" there to imply a brand of comedy particular to that state. I'm funny right? Please tell me I'm funny)

Ahem, so, anyway, my eyeball calmed down in response to the claritin and we went back to Garrett's place. We hung out and listened to some music, and talked and talked. Garrett had some bongos that were moderately fun to just hang on to, even if I didn't pretend I could play them. He also started noodling around on his guitar for a while, all during our three-way chat fest. We ended up staying awake till about 4 in the morning before Kira and I took off and crashed at her place around 5 AM or so.

I peeled myself off Kira's couch at maybe 10 AM and called my buddy Claus to let him know I'd be at his place in South San Francisco by 1 PM, after I had some breakfast. Kira made some killer vegan-style pancakes. I'm normally pretty fucking snotty about the whole vegan/vegetarian thing, but really these pancakes were delicious. I shoud emphasize that when I say it, I mean "delicious" in the real, "buttermilk batter with blueberries and a side of bacon" sense of the word, not the fake, "it's impolite to insult the cook when the meal is free" sense of the the word. Yum, pancakes.

Claus is a friend of mine from days past at my company. He used to have a science-related job before he earned his MBA part-time, nights. Now he's a muckity-muck business type at Genentech. I've always liked Claus. He used to be a hyper-smart, crazy, womanizing, fast-car driving, Danish ex-pat. Now that he's married with a six-month old son, he's merely a hyper-smart, crazy, fast-car driving, Danish ex-pat. Claus and I didn't do much Sunday and I fear I wasn't my social best again, this time as a result of stretching myself too thin with lack of sleep. I had a good day regardless. Claus took us for a trip along Skyline Drive, through the redwoods to Alice's restaurant where we each had "The BMW burger" and a beer. After that, we went to the Stanford campus and just poked around. I had never been to Stanford before. The architechture is an attractive, consistent blend of Spanish buildings of yellow brick walls and terra-cotta roofs with British stylings of statues and coat-of-arms. Claus took me on a few Sunday errands before we got back home and had pizza for dinner. Three hours later I was on the red-eye back home.

The End.

Jamboree, Jamboring

The Jamboree is starting to wear a little thin on me. For some reason, I opted not to do my ususal jet-lag beating ritual (stay up late, and take a melatonin just before bed). So I've been completely zoning out around 4pm each day so far. The lectures don't end until 6pm so I'm not really paying any attention. Then of course, dinners are usually social affairs, and I'm just not my witty best, so I'm coming off like a dud and going to bed early. This kind of anti-social behavior is making me feel a little insecure and overall is making this conference pretty damn boring. The earlier lectures are fine and interesting and I try to contribute if I can, but after 4pm (7pm EST) I'm just no good anymore.

I miss my wife Chris too.

Going West, Again

I'm flying out to the California bay area again to go annotate a genome. This will be the second genome I have had the pleasure of annotating, so I know what to expect and I expect to enjoy myself. For some reason, they don't call these affairs "conferences" or even "workshops" they call them "Jamborees". So when someone asks me where I'm off to, I say, "a genome annotation jamboree." WhooooHoooo! All I can say is that there had better be greased pig races, moonshine, and kissing-booth girls this time around.

Tom Cruise is a Jackass

For the moment, please ignore the fact that I have become a total celebrity gossip whore while you read this article from The Superficial about how Tom Cruise managed to get Wednesday's episode of South Park pulled off the air. This is the same episode that prompted another Scientologist hypocrite, Issac Hayes, aka "Chef" to quit the show after it made fun of other religions for years.

Now I should be clear, being non-religious, I'm no huge fan of South Park either, particularly since the episode where it was implied that "[people who don't practice religion] just go around spewing a bunch of crap out of their mouths." That same South Park episode ripped on Catholics pretty good too, but in the end the story they were telling settled on a view that there are good Catholics and bad Catholics, but all non-religious people just spew crap. Having said that though, I should elaborate and say that I'm no anti-religion zealot either. I simply believe very strongly in the simple rights and freedoms of religion and speech. Which brings me back to Scientology and Tom Cruise. South Park has a right to put on thier show and Tom cruise has a right to be a Scientologist. For some reason though, Tom Cruise is so threatened by parody he has to use his financial muscle to stop it. I suggest that everyone retaliate in kind against this asshole and take his "bankable" movie-star quality away by boycotting every movie he has ever made and will make. Don't go see Mission Impossible 3 this summer, don't rent War of the Worlds from Blockbuster or Netflicks, don't even dress up like his charater from Risky Business for Halloween.

Update: From Variety.com

Update 2: Catch the South Park Scientology episode here.

What you thought you knew about 9/11 is wrong.

Tell Everyone You Know.

Note: The linked video is a full-length documentary movie. I suggest you just use the "download" link, and let it do that for a while. Come back to it when its done, with some hot tea and a primed mind.

Update: Some very credible people are catching on too.

Apple Store

Hell yes. Apple is apparently opening a store at my town's mall, just a short five minute drive from my home.

Life just got a little better.

Black White

So last night I watched this new show on FX called "Black. White"

I really liked it and will try watch the whole series. There is this one character on it though, a white guy named "Bruno" who is a "soft racist" idiot. He would probably break my nose for characterizing him as a "soft racist" but I think its an accurate tag. He thinks that the racism black people experience is all in thier minds and that if they don't enter the world with the pre-conceived notion that they will be discriminted against, they will find that life isn't as hard as they claim it is and will be much happier.

While there may be a little something to this (Bruno's black counterpart Brian, does come off at times seeming a little too paranoid about the subtleties of body language), I couldn't really blame Brian for being occasioanlly oversensitive about race in this country. I can't say how many genuinely racist encounters I'd have to endure before I started getting over-sensitive about it too.

I don't like the white family they picked for this only because I think they (primarily the adults, Bruno and Rose) went into it without any realistic ideas about what to expect. They are obviously trying way too hard to come off as an "enlightened" white couple, all the while insinuating that black people are imagining racisist discrimination. If Bruno and Rose weren't so deluded I think they would be expecting thier white to black switch to be much less fun than it might be for the blacks to go out as whites. Instead, Bruno and Rose are being totally fake and are pretending like they'd like to live the rest of thier life as "beautiful black people" instead of just being who they are. In this sense the black family is much more real. As soon as Brian and Renee (the black adults) saw each other in thier white make-up, Brian swoops in for some affection and Renee, half-kidding, rejects him saying, "you're not my type." While yes, it is racist for Renee to imply that she can't be attracted to her husband as a white guy, at least her reaction was real, which I can respect much more than the well intentioned, but sickly-sweet fakery of Bruno and Rose.

So far, in the first episode, we saw only one genuine example of naked racism from some random fucktard patron at a bar at which Brian got a bartending job. There also was a very conflicted kid who acknowledged that he sometimes has trouble reconciling the racist environment he was brought up in with what his adult mind knew to be morally wrong, but I'm not sure if that qualifies as an example of racism so much as personal growth. Anyway, it has me wondering if they are going to show any strong examples of "reverse racism" in later episoodes. I'll stay tuned.

One last thing about Rose and Bruno. I grew up in the lilly-white Northeast. I had never even had the opportunity to have so much as a conversation with someone black until I entered college. Needless to say, I was exceptionally ignorant about race, even into my adult years. Not willfully so, in fact I was very aware of and motivated to shed my ignorance. Fortunately I had a friend my first year in college, Scott, who was patient enough to put up with me, but clever enough to effectively educate me about race issues, without alienating me by beating me over the head with them.

Anyway, the point is, I can relate to where Bruno and Rose are coming from. Again, Bruno and Rose are clearly operting from a position of the best intentions, but they are ignorant. I watch this show and cringe nearly every time this Bruno guy opens his mouth. Its actually fairly painful to watch, but I find it entertaining regardless. I feel the same way about Michael, the office manager character played by Steve Carell in the NBC show, "The Office."

The Fox

This morning I started my routine the same way I always do. I get the kettle boiling, pour some water for my tea and oatmeal, put them on the arm of our living room easy chair (which faces the front glass doors) and sit down with the laptop to read the blogs and newspapers.

Just as I got settled in I lifted my head and looked out the glass doors to see one of our neighborhood foxes, trotting down the middle of our road, in front of my house. I jumped up to get a better look at him and caled Chris over too. The little canine trotted all the way down to the end of the cul-de-sac before he disappeared in some thickets.

I wish I had a camera in my hand at that moment. I've only seen the foxes around here in the dark hours of the morning. Its unusual to see them in daylight.

If I see him again, what should I name him?

The Simpsons

Hell Yes.

Walter Cronkite

I understand he's a man the boomers trusted. Hopefully they still do enough to factor his opinions into they way they vote.