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Sunday, 6 June - link
Congraduations YWLCS

Congratulations to the first class of graduating senior women from Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago! My Mom's been working on this project for years; this is a first milestone sign of fruition: "I think in our first graduating class, we have achieved our mission of getting girls interested in pursuing careers in math, science and technology,'' Hall said. "It's the most fun I've ever had in my life.''

From the Sun-Times: Bright future for all-girls school's first graduates, 6 June, by Rosalind Rossi or The Chicago Tribune (registration required) It's a girl thing--and it's working, 5 June, by Ana Beatriz Cholo.


Saturday, 5 June - link
drive present and future

I woke up a man, in the west and now the south. My name was the same but my skin rippled darker. There was no indoor protection from the sun, save for friends who had no walls but still roofs to share. The roads wind strange unstraight, mistaken time is traded for flat space knowledge. Filling my head with a new city what remains but the leather in hand. Every day exploration, the familiar is found and found again. It is me. Here. What binds can not be seen. What touch is not physical? Memory of new space, rewritten, tongue on paper, roof of mouth shelter for silence. Stranger spared the chance to mingle, words kept close. So we see the sunlit streets all share through screens and they have fewer homes than men who live on them. Drive past, drive past.

Make the wander the way. Lazy stupid footprints find followers. See these tracks? Catdick cutup crazy - only sand, reformed by the coming water pulse. Can't pump the chest too hard, or bones crack and we breathe blood. Kindly share air with me. This many humans make filth. We sit together and see it. How could we grab for seating space empty around us? Stretch out and fingers to the sky give me an answer. I'll share it with you, shhhh.

We will yet see the sea absorb us. Lust and hunger meet plain yogurt. Is it walking or forward momentum that matters? Local streets' stoplights show human endeavor, freeways demonstrate the halting arc of progress. Smile at a passenger in another car. The imp of speed plays leapfrog. No success without failure. Maintain a better world through measured worsening. We can live in privilege alone. The horizontal space calls reckoning. Boy lays with woman, himself. Ears pierced for play. All soul is decoration.


Friday, 4 June - link
tummy trouble

Hah! I love yogurt first thing in the morning, plain white yogurt. Settles my stomach. I'm attending a symposium in Los Angeles and they had a great breakfast spread - yogurt, cereal, fruit, rhubarb, boiled eggs, bagels and toppings. I grabbed a bowl and filled it up top with yogurt. After a night of whiskey and menthol cigarette smoke, I was ready for something purifying. Midway through swallowing all of that, I realized I'd mistakenly taken whipped cream topping for the rhubarb (very yogurt-looking). I felt bad about wasting what I'd taken, so I topped off my bowl with yogurt and finished that off with cereal and fruit. Added two hard boiled eggs, and half a cinnamon bagel with cream cheese, tomato and onion, and whew - now my stomach hurts!


Tuesday, 1 June - link
glorious confusion!

hah! more confusion! site now has three panes! probably looks crappy on narrow monitors. probably broken in your brother's web browser! definitely doesn't work on mobile devices, not www.links.net.

But there's more here, you see! more! More panes, more panels, more content!

There's now THREE different mobile-oriented content sucking mechanisms - mobile cartoons you may already know. Now, add,

Mobile Notes

and

Moku - poems!

Down the middle, the longer feed, what I think when I'm sitting at my computer.

The Moku and Notes are what I'm observing whenever I'm in range of my mobile phone signal. My mobile device got a small keyboard; big enough for me to spill briefly. Taking notes on conversation, or isolating a moment in words. Now Treo technology allows me to pump this page full of prose and poetry from wherever I roam!

And this site Links.net now has a total of 13 nested weblogs, six of which appear on the front page; three mobile weblogs, a weblog of recent writings, the center column, and the picture in the upper left. Besides that, seven more throughout! Huzzah! *wipes foam from the corner of mouth*


Sunday, 30 May - link
clemensmiley

I'm staying with friends who have a kid. You can see what I have to put up with:

clemensmiley


Sunday, 30 May - link
Green like Grasshopper

Thursday tested successfully for my green belt in Aikido - 5th kyu. When you first walk in to a class off the street, they hand you a white belt. When you've spent 40+ days training and you know irimi nage from kotegaeshi, you demonstrate your knowledge in front of your peers and then you have a rank. The bottom rank, of a long climb.

It took me a year. I made friends there, people I enjoyed training with. At the head of the dojo is an excellent teacher with an irrepressible sense of humor; he's attracted and supported a crew of like minds who roll around together weekly.

I spent the eve of my birthday there; people in white robes sang to me. After I became single late last year, sensei mentioned, "you sure are spending a lot more time at the dojo these days."

While I was there, they started a class called "inner aikido" where they study meditation and breathing. I attended that class with a number of men from an air force base nearby. I attended another class with a group of ex-Gang guys from LA, involved with HomeBoy Industries. NFL players and puppeteers, painters and guitarists. I trained at 6.30am in January for four days. I baked cookies twice and took them to class.

And all the while, dancing, smiling, breathing. I haven't had any kind of regular exercise in my adult life (aside from twitching); this exercise came with community and a kind of spiritual ethic. I could walk to this dojo through a park from my old Oakland home. Now my green belt comes with a pending departure; I wonder what kind of practice I'll find in Los Angeles?

Thanks to Julia and Liebe, some photos of my test:

5th kyu test, photo by Liebe, thanks to Julia5th kyu test, photo by Liebe, thanks to Julia5th kyu test, photo by Liebe, thanks to Julia5th kyu test, photo by Liebe, thanks to Julia5th kyu test, photo by Liebe, thanks to Julia

I passed, thanks in large part to the patience of my training partners, in particular Candace. She tested earlier that week for the last brown belt level before black. Her test was longer, and more complicated; it included two people in constant motion, coming at her with different attacks. Her eyesight is worse than mine; she said she used to freeze up when she saw the blurred bodies moving towards her. At the urging of Nikki, she took off her glasses for the test and helped those bodies to the floor with something more than plain sight.


Friday, 28 May - link
night golfing by phone

Current mode of living - homeless, with friends. I see people I know brushing their teeth.

Driving free, guest bed surfing between San Francisco and Los Angeles, my mobile technology means more to me than usual. Day to day, can't predict where I'm going to sit to work. Have started taking notes in public. Accidental celibate.

And continue mobile cartooning:

phone grave phone grave
click for meaning.

The golfing cartoon inspired by an athletic outing with Yu-sama - he didn't hit me that hard for yakking on the links.


Thursday, 27 May - link
Pren Passed

My Dad passed away when I was eight. By the time I was a teenager, I wondered, who was that guy?

I made my questions known widely enough, and a family friend, someone who knew my Dad and knew my Mom and knew my stepdad George decided to get me some answers. He contacted two dozen or so friends of Wesley Hall, and pulled together a collection of their letters. My Dad loved Duke Ellington and would watch him whenever he played in Chicago, staying up all night. He listened to country music and represented country music stars in his legal work. And on and on. An invaluable recollection for a boy too young to know or remember.

What a fine idea! What thoughtful execution. I was honored. The person responsible was Prentice Marshall, a judge in Illinois, resident of Florida in a later life, always a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan. A tall, skinny guy I remember with reddish hair maybe? Definitely a big generous spirit and sense of humor.

Pren passed away this week. I read through a few of his obituaries, SunTimes, Daytona Beach News-Journal, NYTimes (reg. required), and I found he was thoughtful and ethical in other contexts as well. A fellow admirer of Clarence Darrow.

Mom was going to his funeral, she reported that he left strict instructions on the five guys he wanted to have give speeches, and the music that was to play at his memorial service. As someone with a lifelong dedication to the Chicago Cubs, and who would only have left being a judge to be commissioner of baseball, he asked they play "take me out to the ball game."


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Browse the last two months': June 2004 (4) May 2004 (15) or everything since February 2003. Want older than that? Daze.

mobile.links.net:
(text and sketches on mobile phones)
abandoned

Read: abandoned

New Moku: (what is this?)

95 friendship
let us meet
another time, besides this moment
I cut you off at 95 miles an hour
instead of the finger,
we might exchange friendship
3 June, 16:31 | Comments: 0 | Link

Mmm
something so sensual
about a long-baked
cauliflower
1 June, 17:20 | Comments: 2 | Link

sleepy pain
bedtime.
this child wails
like being sleepy is physically painful
31 May, 19:49 | Comments: 2 | Link

old moku.

Recent Notes: (what is this?)

With Wil
with Wil and Karina and Jonathan and S? and Price at Firefly in Studio City.

Wil reflecting on a series of fast quipping waiters:
in LA, people are on, ready to entertain
Wilson recommends haloumi - cypriot cheese
buy wilson a raclette for his wedding present
tonight a woman sitting next to me said - "you're such a writer"
"why" I asked
she put her fingers to her temples
at first I thought - that means i'm smart!
then I realized - not exactly - I live in my head. that's what the gesture said.
I thought about arthur miller
later she shares a quote from robert evans - "planning is for the poor"
pearl izumi: "the only underwear to wear" - Wil
remind Wil about Louisiana, Denmark and mirriors on staircase ceilings

8 June, 03:23 | Comments: 0 | Link

with danah, whiskey at the Westin
i'm lacking male secondary physical sex characteristics
no facial hair, highish voice
get tested for hormone levels?
her essay: social software is an asberger's experiment - as early net writing was justifying MPD
4 June, 01:26 | Comments: 0 | Link

Kellog Foundation Meeting - Opening Night
this discussion turns out to be quite close to my heart - how to motivate people to learn. that's the larger mission; the focus of this meeting is to understand how technologies might be used to promote self-directed learning amongst youngsters who can't deal with school.
there's an anti-standardized testing undercurrent here - you can't standardize test for creativity and passion and leadership
one participant recommends Jane Adams, what about John Dewey or Francis Parker?
promoting "tinkering" as a means of learning
jean lave? read lave & wagner educational anthropologist
today, creating at the same pace as experiencing
embracing student context - building the social and knowledge network around them.
entertainment, play has to be apologized for in our society
redefining literacy - integration of multimedia
students are happy working in the vernacular of media
teaching students to use technology and social understanding in the service of society
3 June, 21:25 | Comments: 0 | Link

Previous notes.

Elsewhere Online:
surblimity

Previous Travel Tales:
(1987 - Today)
Ozarks!
2002: Ozarks

Greetings from Japan:
(2001-2002)
mobile phone gallery
Mobile J-Phone Gallery

Recent Freelance Articles:

One day in the City of Heroes, an online massively-multiplayer online game based on high-fashion crimefighters.
For Game Girl Advance
31 May 2004

The difficulties of paying for decent WiFi access may wind down as access prices drop and WiFi roaming looms.
For TheFeature
30 May 2004

After years of watching a few innovators attempt to cram exciting mobile gameplay into small mobile phones, this year's E3 might be the final sign that the hardware for uniquely mobile gaming is here.
For TheFeature
17 May 2004

Indie Game Jam 2004: Fun and Frustration in Physics
When an entire game development project is compressed into a weekend, experimentation is king and production values won't stand in the way of a good time.
For Gamasutra
6 May 2004

Have our chances of "hooking up" been augmented by mobile devices? A talk with sociologists and historians about technologies of dating and their effects on human desire.
For TheFeature
21 April 2004

Real and virtual have finally met in fun - reporting on Mogi, the brilliant location-based online multiplayer experience in Tokyo. Cited on Slashdot.
For TheFeature.com
1 April 2004

Previous work.

Justin's Links, by Justin Hall.