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New overheard comments

I gotta start a new "best overheard comments" page, with some of the stuff I've heard in Seattle. Seems to be one of those towns.

"Good news, I finally reached zero bugs last night. Now I'm gonna go roll around in the grass for a while and soak up some sunlight"
- overheard in the workplace

"Is something fucking wrong with fucking Explorer?"
- overheard at an office supply store

"I'm gonna buy a Toyota Prius and then drive drunk..."
- overheard in Belltown, Seattle

Little glimpses

Heh, so I found a Facebook application that picks up RSS feeds and displays them on one's Facebook profile, which would be great because a lot of you are on Facebook and I'd like to display the Art-Damage feed over there. (For readers not yet on there, I can recommend it - I'm not really into social networking sites, but Facebook is pretty good - blows MySpace out of the water).

Anyway, my problem is I can't find the RSS export from Movable Type, the publishing platform that outputs the site you're reading now.

What I did find though, as I was poking around, is a list of search terms people have plugged into this site, looking for who knows what. The list is kind of interesting. Some of the highlights:

- 'porn' [most repeated search term, no surprise there I guess]
- 'iran'
- 'bush aliens' [?]
- 'bizarre love triange'
- 'greenland'
- 'tchitcherine'
- 'nurse betty' [cheers]
- 'hubris'
- 'japanese'
- 'danish traffic' [oh yeah, I know which entry you were looking for]
- 'it's a house of tricks'

Suffering

So my job signed me up for this posh fitness club on the East Side of Lake Washington, and I went for the first time today to meet my 'personal trainer' (fox help me).

The guy had me run around the track a couple times, then took my blood pressure and hooked me up to one of these electrode machines that pumps live current through your body and then tells you what's wrong with you. Sounds a bit too much like Scientology for my comfort, but what the hell.

So the guy looked at the screen after he zapped me, and the conversation was like:

"Hmmmm..."

"What? What hmmmm? What does it say??"

"It's not good... Frankly I'm not sure how you were able to walk in here under your own power."

"What do you mean?!"

"You must be, like, really stressed. Actually, are you completely sure that you're not having a heart attack right now?"

--So the guy signed me up for an exercise program known as 'the Punisher,' apparently... If this is the last post you ever see from me on this site, you'll know why.

Back of a taxi, Chicago and San Francisco

That was kinda cool - I was sitting here taking advantage of the four day weekend to work on my book a little, and I was writing a scene where one of my characters has a panic attack in the back seat of a taxi in San Francisco (something I can write about with some authenticity, let me tell you). Then Saint Etienne just came on the iPod randomizer with "Heart Failed in the Back of a Taxi." I love little synchronicities like that.

I'll be in San Francisco again in a couple of weeks to wish Jeremy & Diana goodbye before they leave for Switzerland, and to catch up with friends & family. It's going to be strange to be back.

Have been offline lately due to crazy work schedule, a delightful trip to Chicago, and then working on this thing. Came down sick on Thanksgiving, probably from pushing myself too hard the past few weeks, but that's fine. There's nowhere I need to be right now and I'm happy to work on the book.

Chicago was so great - myself and a few friends flew in to surprise Hannah & Jeannette for their birthdays. Our little deception worked like a charm (actually it was Hannah that got the big surprise - crafty Jeannette was a co-conspirator). I had to land a day early because of the travel schedule, but came up with some lie about a meeting in Fargo on Monday (the artifice succeded for as long as it needed to). The weekend unwound itself to lots of dancing, very little sleep. But that's how it's always been with Chicago.

I'm so lucky to have such great friends. Some days I love the whole world.

I'm in Love...

Jesus it's been a brutal week. I've had conference calls with Europe from 7am to 10 am every day this week, and then again from 11pm to midnight on a couple of days. We're in heavy planning mode, past the event horizon, but when you work this much you start running into diminishing returns. I find myself blacking out for 10 minutes at a time, staring at the screen and just not being able to make sense of it. It's like permanent jetlag, which is new, and, you know, worrying.

But last night I got together with some cats from my company who'd all been transferred from Copenhagen to Seattle in the last couple of months. Mostly Danes but also an American friend who'd lived in Denmark for about as long as I had. Even though we're back in the States now, it's hard not to feel like an expatriate. It's very strange, how the culture shock is much more intense coming back than it was moving away the first time. Not bad really, just disorienting sometimes.

So we saw some live music and went to a Tiki bar in Belltown afterwards. I taught the bartender how to make the Tokyo Tsunami - a drink the bartender at Beauty Bar in San Francisco taught me ten years ago (her name was Margarita). The six of us went through a few rounds. I was bone-tired after this week, but it was so great to be out again, listening to music and being surrounded by people.

The Tokyo Tsunami
1 part orange juice
1 part pineapple juice
1 part cranberry juice
2 parts Stoli Vanil

Today was Saturday and the weather finally broke - the sun breaking through the scud and mist at last, to reveal the city with a sharp-edged clarity that felt strangely nostalgic, for a city I've barely seen yet.

I needed to go downtown to get some stuff done and since the weather was good I walked. It was gorgeous after a week of working indoors. People flooding the sidewalks, smiling, sunglasses on, picking up the strangest random snatches of conversation, like I used to in San Francisco.

Stuff like: "...did she say she had PhotoShop? Because I have this mole on my breast."

I got espresso to go at a Soviet-themed place called the "People's Republic of Coffee," and discovered an art store, and an occult shop where I got a book about Crowley, and a good Pho joint just down the street from my apartment, and the air had a fall chill but the sun was blazing and I couldn't stop smiling at everybody.

As I was walking around I had that song stuck in my head. "I'm in Love with a German Film Star" from like 1981, and just the chorus repeating, where the whole band is singing in shifting harmonies,

I'm in love...
I'm in love...
I'm in love...
I'm in love...

God I love cities.

Capitol Hill is right below the approach path to Sea-Tac and the sky is always filled with airliners. As I was walking home I saw an A340 in Scandinavian Airlines colors. Checked my watch and sure enough it was a bit after 5pm - the daily flight from Copenhagen.

A few weeks ago I saw the same plane, recognized the paint scheme and wondered how many times I'd been on that airplane. The next day when I went to work I found out that my colleague Louise had been on that same flight, and as I'd been looking up at her she'd been looking down at Seattle and also wondering "how many times have I done this."

The world kicks the crap out of you but it's still beautiful. It's not meant to be understood.

Down

Site was down for a few days. I was buried deep in Copenhagen, landed in Seattle three days ago and still buried deep. I haven't slept normally in I don't know how long. It's not even jetlag, it's something else now.

I was just sitting here trying to pound out some emails for work and there was this weird thumping sound carrying through the floor. Was it the people next door playing their Nintendo Wii? (They have a Nintendo Wii, apparently, and they play it *all the time*.)

Was it the people upstairs who'd unbalanced their clothes dryer? It was too fast to be people screwing. The sound seemed to be coming from outside, and was so heavy I could see ripples in my whiskey glass, like that scene from Jurassic Park.

So I went out to the balcony and lost my breath at once - it was well past sunset but the downtown buildings blazed with their own light, illuminating in orange light the mist and the low, ragged scud that passes for weather around here, and three big Chinook military transports arced over my head, not more than 500 feet overhead, winding in a sinuous file towards the downtown blaze before turning south towards (I guess) Sea-Tac or McChord.

The sound of their rotors beating double-helices into the air was palpable, so intense I could feel it in my chest, and it made me think of clubland, the red strobes of the Chinooks like the white strobes in the black sky of clubland. And the *difference* of that place.

Made me think back to my flying days and wonder what view of the city those Chinook pilots had. The scene was something out of a Bladerunner movie. If only I'd remembered my camera.

And I know I'm tired and more sensitive to these things than I should be, but the synaesthetics of the moment was enough to make me think of the world, and what meaning there might be in that as well.