I saw this album for the first time at the Newport Beach Public Library yesterday:



The cover art is drawn by Audrey Chihiro Kawasaki, whose work I've admired for awhile now and actually mentioned in a story I wrote last year. Her girls are so luxuriously innocent yet pornographic. Sometimes they drool. Seeing as how all her prints are sold out, you can just buy this CD and frame it. How's the music you wonder? Beside the point. Sorry, Alice.

Here are some more prints:

I read in the L.A. Times today that the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are funding various Chinese schools "to lure students into learning languages deemed critical to national security and the economy." Which is sort of suspicious sounding, yet sort of reassuring?



The real question is whether or not the programs will get their funding renewed next year now that China's got such a bad rep. As my friend Hamilton recently soliloquized, "The Chinese can violate human rights, but when you start fucking with American pets, your shit is going to go down. Chinese coal workers? Big deal, they die. You fuck with little Daisy over there, and Kofi Annan is coming to your house."

At this point, isn't it more than just a little humiliating to be carrying one of these around?



Or is it something of a badge of honor, like wearing a t-shirt from that L.A. Coliseum New Order/Depeche Mode concert back in the late 80s after making it through the giant stadium-wide food fight? No, no. The food fight was much cooler.

And so is this:

Isn't it strange how some scientists devote all this energy to researching stuff like whether or not chimpanzees are capable of spite or altruism?



And to prove what -- that humans are the only ones that can manage these, er, sophisticated emotions? If I were a chimp caged in a lab with a collapsing table full of food strategically positioned so I couldn't reach it, the only thing I would be emoting is how screwed I was. Maybe that's the point afterall, to provide evidence on how singularly cruel and f'd up humans can be.

Or maybe it's that I'm too human.

Other cruel things on my mind as of late: switching lanes on the 405; full-time freelance writing; low-tide in Newport Beach; and the folding of my old haunt. Elaborations to come, or as we would write on magazine proofs at Jane, TK.


(The 405 in the early '70s, near Costa Mesa looking towards Irvine, aka how I wish it always flowed.)

But it can't all be bad: there's always Mozza, my new favorite L.A. restaurant. I highly recommend the bolognese, the gnocci, the grilled octopus, and every one of the cheeses. All spiteless creatures invited.