Dr. Robert
(8-17 September 2006)

17 September 2006
-Today has just been a little off-kilter & seems a little useless.  Days like that are necessary sometimes, but seem a little too common of late.  With one of the most inspiring (& volatile) months on the calendar looming, I'm expecting this all to change soon.

16 September 2006
Happy Birthday to Ben Brandzel
Happy Birthday to Greg Wilson
-Every time I've ever been involved in shipping lots of boxes of things, I realize just how few checks there really are on all sorts of nefarious behavior.  When one thinks about it, it's amazing how rare it really is for people to intend to hurt others.  Makes one wonder about how much easy-to-use weaponry increases violent tendencies & impulsive behavior in people who would not commit violence if it required plotting.
-Congratulations to Steve & Bernadette on their wedding!  The wedding was actually a lot of fun, despite some highly traditional aspects.  The food was quite accommodating, the winery ruins setting was beautiful, the weather was perfect, & the dancing was fantastic.  It was nice to be dancing again & really letting go.  The dancing also helped ward off the impending cold that seemed like a big concern going in.

15 September 2006
-I had nothing to do at work this morning.  Then I suddenly had 47 things to do in the afternoon.  But a lot of it was scheduling interviews, which is one of my favorite tiny parts of my job.  It's just fun to call people with good news.
-Dick Cheney drove by the office this afternoon, blazing down Ellis Street in his motorcade at about double the local speed limit.  I didn't actually get eye-contact with the man behind his tinted glass, but I know he was in one of those vehicles.  Maybe if he'd slowed to the speed limit & seen the devastation wreaked by capitalism, he'd have to rethink something in his life.
-I really like movies.  Even so-so movies are great to see in the theater.

14 September 2006
-There was this report on CNN yesterday about a dangerous conference between Castro, Iran's leader, & Hugo Chavez.  They basically billed it as a plot to take down the US, & it was headquartered in Havana!  Then they get to the full story & it turns out it's the convening of the Non-Aligned Nations, which includes more than 100 countries!  It's hard to fight the irrational fear & hatred of the Bush administration when even the allegedly liberal news sources are giving in to the sensationalism that the world is out to get us.

13 September 2006
-Last night, while opening a can of tennis balls as part of doing laundry (Em says it keeps the covers &/or pillows fluffy), I managed to slice my right pinky pretty nicely.  I think I handled it a lot better than I might've without my recent spate of emergency trainings, though I still was pacing for about 20 minutes.  I think I narrowly avoided needing stitches.  I hate doing stupid things... especially since I've opened countless tennis ball containers in my life with no adverse effects.  Why do they come in such dangerous packaging, anyway?
-This site is my new hero.  It gives me hope for the world that other people independently create websites like this.  Almost the entire site is this rap sheet of the victims of antidepressant drugs.  When the confirmed death toll passes 3,000 (it may already be there), can we have a War on Antidepressants?

12 September 2006
-In the history books, they will ask how so much blatant misrepresentation was possible at the outset of the most informed & open era recorded to that point.  The crushing irony of our time is that in an age purporting to contain more information & knowledge than ever, our governing principles are irrational fear & hatred.
-Summer has returned to San Francisco, after winter invaded late last week.  It seems there's no such thing as fall in "The City", only the careenings & stumbles of its population.  A woman speaking to an empty beat-up truck as though it were her boyfriend, eventually throwing her sunglasses at the windshield in utter disgust & aggravation, only to shamefully retrieve them from the windshield wipers' grasp.  The quiet observations of the ubiquitous man in the fedora, whose age, cleanliness, & dignity seem to indicate that we are all visitors on his street.  A rambling man, half-seated half-lying in the sidewalk, whose only discernable utterances are the back syllables of his drawn-out curses.  The Tenderloin is its own kind of Desolation Row, where waiting & urgency are all part of the same game.  Something must improve.  Something must change.  There's always tomorrow, next week, next year, next now.  Meantime, this patch of sidewalk will do.
-If Beth doesn't get updating again & you guys aren't careful, the 2006 BPBP for Emotional Honesty is going to Adam Duritz.  His last entry (from today) is something else.  I'm just sayin'.

11 September 2006
-Migraine:  18 hours, right side, significant, caused by food.
-They talked about euphoria right after a migraine being a symptom for some people.  Of course there's euphoria, you idiots!  Your head no longer feels like it's riddled with bullets!
-Do people really believe this drivel that Bush is spouting?  That the spark for September 11th (if it happened the way people claim) was freedom, not imperialism?  Really?  I beg people to make critical distinctions between the fundamental methods & principles of modern America & any regime that's seen as evil from the past.  All we've done is export our purges... a brilliant move, because it's so much harder to see & care about.  Only amateurs slaughter the victims in front of the members of the society.  & all Bush is signing you up for is a half-century of war on the pretense of the hatred of freedom.  Allow me to quote... "They are thrown into panic at the sight of an old man pulling the election lever, girls enrolling in school, or families worshiping God in their own traditions."  Seriously, people, at least make your propaganda coherent.

10 September 2006
-I did a fair bit of reading about migraines today (in the midst of one), after going a long time being utterly fed up with the bulk of migraine research & knowledge out there.  It's been a rough patch for me with the ol' migraines.  It turns out their understanding of migraines has actually come a long way in some facets.  For example, they understand that in more & more people, caffeine can be used to regulate & stave off many migraines.  Their understanding of triggers seems a bit better, though it still includes most everything in the world.  Reading much of these pieces on migraines made me feel strangely supported, though... something akin to a support group, I would imagine.  It's amazing how much less scary things are when one's aware that someone else is going through the exact same thing.  Not less painful, but certainly less scary.

9 September 2006
-"Hollywoodland" was pretty disappointing.  I was excited to see it, but it was a tawdry attempted remake of "L.A. Confidential", with some historical context to muddy the waters.  I understand why everyone wants to remake that excellent film, but it's going to take a lot more effort than people are putting into it these days.
-These days, you could rename this family the Grand Funk Railroad.

8 September 2006
-It was cold in San Francisco today, and the pressure of foreboding that came with the rolls of fog could be felt in everyone's face.  It was hard to shake a sense that something was going to change, or break, or fade away.  San Francisco is an earthquake town and earthquakes offer less warning than any known disaster.  This all makes the population even more prone to hair-triggers and vulnerable anxiety, with or without good reason.  Today, we wanted a reason.  If only to prove we weren't all about to lose it.

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