Like the shark, the panda has millions of teeth.

Sometimes the world just makes you smile:

Gu Gu the panda has struck again, mauling someone who jumped a barrier to retrieve a child's toy, in his third attack on a visitor at the Beijing zoo.

[...]

The 240-pound (110-kilogram) Gu Gu bit the intruder's legs and refused to let go until zookeepers pried his jaws open with tools.

[...]

The Beijing News said the latest victim suffered damage to major ligaments and is recovering from surgery.

It's so hard to choose the best part of this story. Is it that the panda clamped his jaws on the victim and wouldn't let go? Is it that the victim has major ligament damage? Is it that this is the panda's third attack on a visitor? Or is it that the vicious panda's name is Gu Gu?

Fosco has been saying for years that pandas are nature's perfect killing machines, but no one has been listening (to be honest, Fosco has mostly been saying this to his stuffed panda, Baby Bamboo). But, in any case, this story is a good opportunity for everyone to learn a bit more about pandas.

Which brings me to the long-canceled MTV show "Sifl and Olly." This was that show with the sock puppets that sometimes showed videos and did comedy skits. In Fosco's opinion, it was one of the funniest shows ever on television, mainly because of its pure random silliness. One of its best recurring jokes was the strange panda-masked man. Fosco hadn't seen these skits in probably ten years, but here they are (just as funny as ever). If you've never seen "Sifl and Olly," do yourself a favor and watch these clips.

The Panda Interview:


The panda has a very lot of mysterious qualities!

The Panda Song:


Chorus:
The pandas are coming.
So hide under your bed.
The pandas are coming.
They'll rip your ass to shreds!

I don't know about you, but I'm drunk on panda mystery.

Decline and Fall

Let me begin by saying clearly and without exaggeration that The New York Times is the record of civilization.

Some of you may find that to be an odd statement; Fosco stands by it. He's not saying the NYT is perfect, nor is he an apologist for its many failures. He generally finds their coverage of things they don't understand to be snide or dismissive. And yes, he recognizes that their sports coverage is really myopic. But despite all of those flaws, there is no other publication in the world that attempts as ambitiously (and mostly succeeds) to tell the story of life in our world. Like I said, the Times is the record of civilization. I just don't see how anyone, even a hermaphroditic skeletal lizard, could maintain otherwise.

And yet, according to an article by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic, the NYT is already dead and will be decomposing more quickly than any of us could have expected:

[W]hat if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?

Don't laugh. It's actually a serious possibility. More likely, however, is that The Times won't shutter entirely. Rather, Hirschorn lists a number of potential alternatives that will save the paper from complete insolvency. However, none of them will save the paper as we know it. As Hirschorn argues:

Regardless of what happens over the next few months, The Times is destined for significant and traumatic change. At some point soon—sooner than most of us think—the print edition, and with it The Times as we know it, will no longer exist.

Fosco is very upset about this. Really. And not just because the fiance of one of Fosco's favorite people writes for The Times. No, this is something that will have serious consequences for our society. As Hirschorn notes:

The collapse of daily print journalism will mean many things. For those of us old enough to still care about going out on a Sunday morning for our doorstop edition of The Times, it will mean the end of a certain kind of civilized ritual that has defined most of our adult lives. It will also mean the end of a certain kind of quasi-bohemian urban existence for the thousands of smart middle-class writers, journalists, and public intellectuals who have, until now, lived semi-charmed kinds of lives of the mind. And it will seriously damage the press’s ability to serve as a bulwark of democracy. Internet purists may maintain that the Web will throw up a new pro-am class of citizen journalists to fill the void, but for now, at least, there’s no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience—not to mention the resources to, say, send journalists leapfrogging between Mumbai and Islamabad to decode the complexities of the India-Pakistan conflict.

And suppose that The Times does become an online-only concern. It still won't be The Times as any of us know it:

Common estimates suggest that a Web-driven product could support only 20 percent of the current staff; such a drop in personnel would (in the short run) devastate The Times’ news-gathering capacity.

[...]

In this scenario, nytimes.com would begin to resemble a bigger, better, and less partisan version of the Huffington Post, which, until someone smarter or more deep-pocketed comes along, is the prototype for the future of journalism: a healthy dose of aggregation, a wide range of contributors, and a growing offering of original reporting.

Now don't get Fosco wrong: he loves The Huffington Post immoderately. But there is no question that a HuffPo-style tabloid/blog hybrid (tablog? blogloid?) is not a substitute for a real newspaper of record. A world without The New York Times will be a world that is a bit less worth living in.

Conyers Announces "Noble Peace Prize" Winner

Fosco noted yesterday that Sanjay Gupta could be a dickish choice for Surgeon General. Today, US Representative John Conyers (D-MI) agrees. Unfortunately, Conyers's letter to that effect wasn't exactly proofread, as you can see here:

Please join me in signing a letter to President-Elect Barack Obama that Dr. Sunjay [sic] Gupta not be nominated for the post of Surgeon General.

I join in opposition with respected Noble [sic] Peace [sic] Prize award wining [sic] economist Paul Krugman, who has very serious concerns with having Dr. Gupta be the nation's Surgeon General.

For those of you who are counting, that's four errors/typos in two sentences. Well-played, Conyers.

While it's funny that the letter misspelled Gupta's first name, Fosco much prefers the clusterfuck of errors around Paul Krugman's recent award. For one thing, the Conyers letter seems to be suggesting that Krugman has been fermenting his prize and bottling it in order to produce a delicious libation that has been enjoyed for millions of years. Even more interesting is that Krugman's Nobel Prize for Economics has been morphed into the (more? less?) prestigious "Noble Peace Prize."

At this rate, it's only a matter of a few weeks until Paul Krugman wins an Oskar. And I have no doubt that his recent guest appearances on Rachel Maddow's show will garner him an Emme. Don't even ask him what he had to do to win his Pee Body.

Pictures of 2008: Remembering Vietnam

Fosco recently realized that, by only blogging for three months last year, he never got to share tons of pictures with you from the rest of the year. So, for the next week or so, Fosco will offer a series of brief posts with some of his favorite pictures from his adventures in 2008. Check out the whole series here.

While Fosco and Oz were in DC for Derek and Maria's wedding, they also got a chance to do some very quick sightseeing. Oz had never been to DC, so the National Mall was a must. Here are pix of two of the Vietnam memorials. Lots of tourists took smiling photos in front of this one, which hardly seems appropriate:

And here is the famous Maya Lin design, looking even more stately and somber after more than twenty-five years:

Oz took both of these pictures and you can tell--he's much better with a camera than is Fosco (for one thing, he doesn't have a tremor).

Literature: Some Prophecies

As Fosco mentioned previously, he's been having a literary love affair with Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 (lauded by even the semi-literate as the best novel of 2008). Well, Fosco has done some more reading in the Bolaño canon and he's pretty impressed. Fosco recently finished Bolaño's thin novel Amulet, and it's pretty excellent (although a little less temporally conventional than is 2666!). The narrator is the self-proclaimed "Mother of Mexican Poetry" who is trapped in a university bathroom during the military occupation of the UNAM in 1968. During her captivity, the narrator offers a retrospective on the future (and sometimes the distant future). Part of her retrospective takes the form of prophecies about literature in the future. The prophecies are weird, funny, and probably contain lots of in-jokes about twentieth-century Latin American writers (who Fosco knows almost nothing about). Enjoy!

Then I took a deep breath, hesitated, let my mind go blank and finally said: These are my prophecies.

Vladimir Mayakovsky shall come back into fashion around the year 2150. James Joyce shall be reincarnated as a Chinese boy in the year 2124. Thomas Mann shall become a Ecuadorian pharmacist in the year 2101.

For Marcel Proust, a desperate and prolonged period of oblivion shall begin in the year 2033. Ezra Pound shall disappear from certain libraries in the year 2089. Vachel Lindsay shall appear to the masses in the year 2101.

César Vallejo shall be read underground in the year 2045. Jorge Luis Borges shall be read underground in the year 2045. Vicente Huidobro shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

Virginia Woolf shall be reincarnated as an Argentinean fiction writer in the year 2076. Louis-Ferdinand Céline shall Purgatory in the year 2094. Paul Eluard shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear. Its non-power shall manifest itself in a different form.

Cesare Pavese shall become the patron saint of Seers and Lookers in the year 2034. Pier Paolo Pasolini shall become the patron saint of Escapees in the year 2100. Giorgio Bassani shall emerge from his tomb in the year 2167.

Oliverio Girondo shall come into his own as a children's writer in the year 2099. The complete works of Roberto Arlt shall be adapted for the screen in 2102. The complete works of Adolfo Bioy Casares shall be adapted for the screen in 2105.

Arno Schmidt shall rise from his ashes in the year 2085. Franz Kafka shall once again be read underground throughout Latin America in the year 2101. Witold Gombrowicz shall enjoy great prestige in the environs of the Río de la Plata around the year 2098.

Paul Celan shall rise from his ashes in the year 2113. André Breton shall return through mirrors in the year 2071. Max Jacob shall cease to be read, that is to say his last reader shall die, in the year 2059.

Who shall read Jean-Pierre Duprey in the year 2059? Who shall read Gary Snyder? Who shall read Ilarie Voronca? These are the questions I ask myself.

Who shall read Gilberte Dallas? Who shall read Rodolfo Wilcock? Who shall read Alexandre Unik?

A statue of Nicanor Parra, however, shall stand in a Chilean square in the year 2059. A statue of Octavio Paz shall stand in a Mexican square in the year 2020. A rather small statue of Ernesto Cardenal shall stand in a Nicaraguan square in the year 2018.

But all statues tumble eventually, by divine intervention or the power of dynamite, like the statue of Heine. So let us not place too much trust in statues.
Carson McCullers, however, shall go on being read in the year 2100. Alejandra Pizarnik shall lose her last reader in the year 2100. Alfonsina Storni shall be reincarnated as a cat or a sea-lion, I can't tell which, in the year 2050.

The case of Anton Chekhov shall be slightly different: he shall be reincarnated in the year 2003, in the year 2010, and then in the year 2014. He shall appear once more in the year 2081. And never again after that.

Alice Sheldon shall appear to the masses in the year 2017. Alfonso Reyes shall be killed once and for all in the year 2058, but in fact it shall be Reyes who kills his killers. Marguerite Duras shall live in the nervous system of thousands of women in the year 2035.

If we accept this, that means there is at least one reincarnation of Anton Chekhov currently bopping around in the world somewhere. Anyone seen him (or her, I suppose)?

Also, it's kind of a pity that Fosco will be long dead in the early 2100s. That's going to be an exciting time! Thomas Mann as an Ecuadorian pharmacist. Sweet.

Pictures of 2008: Society Wedding

Fosco recently realized that, by only blogging for three months last year, he never got to share tons of pictures with you from the rest of the year. So, for the next week or so, Fosco will offer a series of brief posts with some of his favorite pictures from his adventures in 2008. Check out the whole series here.

Last June, Fosco and Oz flew to Washington DC for the wedding of Fosco's college roommate Derek Ho to the lovely and talented Maria Glover (read the New York Times wedding announcement here). This was the nicest wedding Fosco has ever seen (black tie for the guests!) and it was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with most of his college roommates (except this no-show).

The reception was at the exquisite National Museum of Women in the Arts. Here are two photos from the reception:


Swanky!

The best part of the wedding (besides Derek and Maria's beautiful love, of course) was before the ceremony when Fosco and Oz were sitting in the pew at the church and Fosco turned around to find that Supreme Court Justice David Souter (one of the good Justices, btw) had been seated immediately behind him. For most of the rest of the ceremony, Fosco and his former roommate Dr. Steve scammed to get good candid pix of Souter without being too overt about it. Sadly, Fosco's best attempt is really too blurry; however, it's also the best he's got. And so he includes it here.

That's Souter in the foreground, being charmed by the Mother-of-the-Groom. On the right is the gorgeous Dr. Gloria, wife of Dr. Steve. Do you now see how Fosco got this shot? He was pretending to be taking a picture of Steve and Gloria. Pathetic, I know. A college rooming group with more cojones would have just asked Souter if he would be willing to pose with all of them; but then again, Fosco and his college roommates were always a bunch of eunuchs.

Harvard Domination Begins... Now!

Fosco loves sports, but he rarely blogs about it. For one thing, Fosco doesn't really have anything that interesting to say about sports. For another, there are already more sports blogs in existence than any other type of blog (it's true, I've checked). But Fosco cannot pass up this story because his Alma Mater Be Reprazentin!

Sorry about that.

But still--it is kind of big news. On Wednesday night, Harvard's Men's Basketball Team upset No. 17 Boston College, 82-70. (N.B.: ESPN prefers to rank Boston College as No. 24.) And the game was even at BC. This is a landmark win for several reasons:

1. The scrappy Crimson hoopsters had been pwned by BC previously, having lost 15 of their last 16 games against the Eagles.
   
2. In BC's previous game, they had knocked off No. 1 UNC in a surprising upset.
   
3. This is Harvard's first win over a ranked team EVER. EVER. Since when? Since EVER.
   
4. And the most amazing part of it all? Harvard's leading scorer in the game (with 27) was Jeremy Lin (pictured above). Now Fosco doesn't want to cross too far into the territory of racial stereotyping, but, um... when was the last time you saw an Asian basketball player? (Or, better yet, when have you ever seen an Asian basketball player lead all scoring in an upset of a highly-regarded ranked team?) This guy is hooptastic!

Fosco doesn't know that he's ever been this proud of Harvard sports. Well, at least the sports that people outside of the Ivy League care about (which eliminates squash).

You know what seems appropriate? A singing of the Harvard Fight Song! Join me, will you?

Illegitimum non carborundum;
Domine salvum fac.
Illegitimum non Carborundum;
Domine salvum fac.
Gaudeamus igitur!
Veritas non sequitur?
Illegitimum non carborundum--ipso facto!

Seriously. That's actually the first verse. But maybe we should sing one of the English verses:

Ten thousand men of Harvard want vict'ry today,
For they know that o'er old Eli
Fair Harvard holds sway.
So then we'll conquer old Eli's men,
And when the game ends, we'll sing again:
Ten thousand men of Harvard gained vict'ry today!

If you'd rather hear the music, listen here.

At any rate, Jeremy Lin should be rewarded. May I suggest a coveted audience with former Harvard men's basketball coach (and Lamont University Professor) Amartya Sen?

Catching Up on your Reading: Part III

The last few weeks were the holidays and all, so it's entirely understandable if you fell behind on your reading. Today on Fosco Lives! Fosco will be pointing you toward things you should have read over the holidays but might have missed.

This one is going to be a downer. Fosco's recent interest in the Third World has led him to pay much more attention to stories about contemporary slavery. According to this article in Foreign Policy magazine (an excellent mag, btw), "there are now more slaves on the planet than at any time in human history." The Foreign Policy article is shocking and begins with an anecdote about how obscenely easy it is to purchase a child slave in Haiti:

Standing in New York City, you are five hours away from being able to negotiate the sale, in broad daylight, of a healthy boy or girl. He or she can be used for anything, though sex and domestic labor are most common. Before you go, let’s be clear on what you are buying. A slave is a human being forced to work through fraud or threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. Agreed? Good.

[...]

If you’re interested in taking your purchase back to the United States, Benavil tells you that he can “arrange” the proper papers to make it look as though you’ve adopted the child.

He offers you a 13-year-old girl.

“That’s a little bit old,” you say.

“I know of another girl who’s 12. Then ones that are 10, 11,” he responds.

The negotiation is finished, and you tell Benavil not to make any moves without further word from you. Here, 600 miles from the United States, and five hours from Manhattan, you have successfully arranged to buy a human being for 50 bucks.

Sickening. Similarly, a recent Huffington Post story explores child maid trafficking from Africa, based on the testimony of a former child maid rescued from slavery in Irvine, California:

Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.

While this particular story has a happy ending for poor Shyima (she gets to go to Disneyland a lot!), the evildoers don't learn their lesson.

I'm sorry to have to recommend these articles, but we have to know these things if we are going to stop them.

Pictures of 2008: Under the Sea!

Fosco recently realized that, by only blogging for three months last year, he never got to share tons of pictures with you from the rest of the year. So, for the next week or so, Fosco will offer a series of brief posts with some of his favorite pictures from his adventures in 2008. Check out the whole series here.

Last summer, Fosco's extended family visited and we all took a trip to the (surprisingly expensive!) Monterey Bay Aquarium. While there, Oz took these great photos. I don't think you're ready for these jellies:

Just call me "Mr. Barnacle Hands!" Yarrr.

One thing I learned at the MBA? Almost one out of every three fish is delicious!

Headlines of the Day

By last night, Fosco had a full day of posts planned for today--and then all kinds of great stories showed up in the news today. There is nothing to do but to condense them all into some kind of "Headlines Digest."

• Black support for Prop 8 may have been exaggerated. Is it time to apologize to Sherri Shepherd? (Psst: the answer is NO).
  
• For you parents out there: one in five teens are sending sexually explicit photos of themselves online or via cell phone. Some parents worry whether this will come back to haunt these teens later in life. (Not unless they're stupid enough to include their faces.)
  
• Apparently, Bristol Palin is a teen role model for Alaskans. At least that seems to be the appropriate conclusion for Alaska's nineteen percent increase in teen pregnancy this year. Why is it that the states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy (Mississippi, Texas, Alaska) are also some of the most committed to religious "abstinence only" sex ed? Hmmm. Let's hope that Alaskan teens choose better names than "Twink" for their kids.
  
• Obama will nominate TV doctor Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General. Why is this a bad idea? Well, Dr. Gupta may be an apologist for HMOs. He may also be a dick. By the way, does this mean that Greta Van Susteren should be Attorney General?

Catching Up on your Reading: Part II

The last few weeks were the holidays and all, so it's entirely understandable if you fell behind on your reading. Today on Fosco Lives! Fosco will be pointing you toward things you should have read over the holidays but might have missed.

Living on the West Coast doesn't allow Fosco to travel to New York City very frequently (at most, once a year). However, he still likes to stay in touch with the NYC restaurant scene (because, when he is in NYC, he likes to eat well). For this reason, Fosco likes to read New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni.

When he got the job in 2004, Bruni may have seemed a strange choice for the job of restaurant critic based on his background as a serious news reporter (covering both Capitol Hill and the Catholic Church). Despite this, Fosco is quite high on Bruni--and has been, ever since Bruni's hilarious review of the steakhouse at the Penthouse Executive Club. Bruni is funny and interesting and an amazingly fluid writer. So you don't want to miss this duo of Bruni pieces from over the holidays: "Wishes for a New Year" and "Same Table Next Year?"

In the "Wishes" piece, Bruni lists the developments he would like to see in the world of fine dining in 2009. Fosco is intrigued by ideas like

I’d like to see less pork belly, only because we’re well beyond some fatty saturation point now, and more lamb belly, because it’s fantastic, too.

And someone of Fosco's heroic carriage can only applaud this idea:

I’d like to see restaurateurs show a little more sense and mercy when it comes to deciding how many seats can be wedged into a given space. While I’m fine with trading away some comfort for a lower price point — that’s the inevitable and understandable name of the game — I’m increasingly noticing seating arrangements that make me gape and laugh.

If only San Francisco's Slanted Door would take this advice.

Bruni's other piece is a roundup of the best new restaurants of 2008 and his list of his favorite new dishes of the year. Some highlights:

MOMOFUKU KO’S FROZEN FOIE GRAS David Chang turned a classic torchon into flakes piled high, like an incongruously fatty and liver-y Sno-Kone, over a brittle of nuts and a sweet wine gelée.

[...]

CORTON’S CARAMEL BRIOCHE It’s a dessert (with banana and passion fruit in the mix), a cheese course (thanks to Stilton), a breakfast (in its mimicry of syrupy French toast) and altogether wonderful. [pictured above]

Fosco's mouth is watering something fierce right now. If a reader wants to ship me either of these (on dry ice) via overnight mail, just ask for my address...

Pictures of 2008: Mission Inn

Fosco recently realized that, by only blogging for three months last year, he never got to share tons of pictures with you from the rest of the year. So, for the next week or so, Fosco will offer a series of brief posts with some of his favorite pictures from his adventures in 2008. Check out the whole series here.

In June, Fosco presented a paper at a conference in Riverside, California (you don't want to hear more about that). Oz tagged along to make it a fun vacation. For a hoot, they stayed at the elegant and historic Mission Inn. It's a legitimate SoCal landmark, and not just because it was the site of Richard Nixon's wedding. If you ever stay there, be sure to set aside an entire afternoon to explore the place--it's like a medieval monastery with spiral stairways and secret passages. Here are a few of our favorite pictures from our afternoon of exploration:



Yes, this place is a hotel. Not to mention that there is an absolutely superb restaurant across the street (we heartily recommend Restaurant Omakase for an exceptional meal). The only problem is that this amazing hotel and delicious restaurant are in Riverside, a place you will never need to visit.

Catching Up on your Reading: Part I

The last few weeks were the holidays and all, so it's entirely understandable if you fell behind on your reading. Today on Fosco Lives! Fosco will be pointing you toward things you should have read over the holidays but might have missed.

As far as New Yorker writers go, Patricia Marx always seemed pretty entertaining to Fosco (although it was hard to tell when her only assignments were guides to shopping in NYC and beyond). But in the January 5, 2009 issue, we finally get to see Marx's talent on display in a feature article (of sorts). Marx's piece is about kosher inspectors in China and it is one of the better short pieces I've read in TNY in quite a while: funny, interesting, with an eye for quirky detail.

Here's a particularly enjoyable excerpt, describing the standard first meeting between the inspecting Rabbi and the Chinese factory managers:

The Schmooze: This takes place in the conference room, which is perhaps adorned with a wood-and-brass captain's wheel from a ship. On the wall, there might be a framed certificate for "High Tech Enterprise 2006" or a large painted sign with an adage in English. "Only Faulty Product, No Captious Customer" and "People and Products Working Together" were two that I saw. Among those in attendance could be a plant supervisor, an engineer, an export manager, a sales representative, and a factory-hired translator. There is always a lot of chuckling--about what, I don't think anyone present ever has a clue.

Fosco recommends reading this article in full, but access is only available online for New Yorker subscribers. One alternative, however, is to download the full text of the article in .pdf format from this site (if asked, Fosco will deny all knowledge of how the article could have been posted here. Remember: Fosco is ignorant.)

Also, in writing this post, Fosco came across the coolest thing: a New Yorker reading group that meets in Washington DC! How fun!

Pictures of 2008: Please Stay in Vegas

Fosco recently realized that, by only blogging for three months last year, he never got to share tons of pictures with you from the rest of the year. So, for the next week or so, Fosco will offer a series of brief posts with some of his favorite pictures from his adventures in 2008. Check out the whole series here.

Last January, Fosco was in Vegas for an academic conference. You certainly see some things of questionable taste in Vegas:

You might not be able to see it, but those pants are desert camouflage. And can you see the sunglasses strap below the mullet? Sadly, Fosco had to follow this troglodyte for an entire block to get this picture.

Joyeux anniversaire!

Even though Fosco is getting to this kind of late, he can't let it pass that today is the birthday of Ste Jeanne d'Arc, born in 1412 in the village of Domrémy in Lorraine. Fosco's favorite representation of Joan of Arc is this 1879 painting by Jules Bastien-Lepage (found in the collection of the Met Museum in NYC and adored by Fosco on his recent visit).

This painting dates from a French revival of interest in Jeanne after the disastrous Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). If you look carefully at the left of the canvas, you can see ghostly shapes of Saint Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret giving Joan her holy charge. Sometimes Fosco wishes we had a historical record of what happened to Joan after that. Oh well.

From the Annals of Racist Cleaning Products

When Fosco bought a Clorox Bleach Pen today, he didn't realize he was purchasing a racially-targeted product. Until he got home and looked a little closer.

Let's zoom in for the detail. See?

Apparently, Fosco will not be allowed to use this item to clean Oz's laundry. Or, maybe Fosco is allowed to use it on Oz's laundry as long as Oz himself doesn't use it. At any rate, there are some complications here.

Fosco's next question, of course, is what type of stain removal item should be used by non-Whites? Does Clorox make such a product? Is such a product equally stain-removing? Any suggestions?

From the Annals of Future Terrorism

Fosco is no expert on French domestic politics (he leaves that to KFR), but he finds this story worrisome. According to British paper The Observer,

The French government fears a wave of extreme left-wing terrorism this year with the possible sabotage of key infrastructure, kidnappings of major business figures or even bomb attacks.

Based on secret documents, The Observer reports that

A report by the French domestic intelligence service talks of "a rebirth of the violent extreme left" across Europe that is likely to be aggravated by the effects of the economic crisis. Other secret documents expose alleged links with activists in Italy, Greece, Germany and the UK. "It has been growing for three or four years now and the violence is getting closer and closer to real terrorism," said Eric Dénécé, director of the French centre of intelligence research and a former Defence Ministry consultant.

Now this report is worrisome for several reasons. One possibility is that this is an attempt by the (relatively) Right-wing Sarkozy Government to create a climate of fear that would allow a power grab (taking a cue from George W. and his cronies across the Atlantic). The other worry is that this report is true--and terrorism (whether Left or Right) is a force of chaos. Our world is only getting scarier.

[The above painting is part of Gerhard Richter's Baader-Meinhof series, reproducing photographs of the 1970's terrorists.]

From the Annals of Future Disasters

They say that fire is one of the biggest causes of earthquake-related destruction. If so, then maybe the San Jose Mercury News has some good news today. A new study suggests that, in the event of a large earthquake along the Calaveras Fault, the Anderson Dam in Morgan Hill could fail. What would this mean?

In the worst case, a complete failure of Anderson Dam could send a wall of water 35 feet high into downtown Morgan Hill within 14 minutes, and eight feet deep into San Jose within three hours, under state emergency scenarios.

An eight foot wall of water in San Jose? Kowbunga (dude)! Unfortunately, the surfing won't be totally primo, as the water will presumably be choked with the corpses of Morgan Hillers. Of course, this occurrence isn't super likely:

How likely is a massive quake on that fault that could threaten the dam's integrity?

In recorded history, there have been no 6.6 or larger magnitude quakes on the Calaveras Fault. But one isn't impossible.

In 2003, the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that there is an 11 percent probability of a quake of 6.7 or larger on the Calaveras Fault in the next 30 years, and a 2 percent probability of a 7.0 or larger quake on the fault over the same time.

"If the Calaveras Fault ruptured across multiple segments, you could get an earthquake up to 7.2," said David Oppenheimer, a USGS seismologist in Menlo Park. "I don't think that's likely to occur, but you can't rule it out entirely."

For those of you who enjoy imagining the Bay Area Apocalypse, this should help you out a bit.

Pictures of 2008: Holiday in South Bend

Fosco recently realized that, by only blogging for three months last year, he never got to share tons of pictures with you from the rest of the year. So, for the next week or so, Fosco will offer a series of brief posts with some of his favorite pictures from his adventures in 2008.

The first picture comes from Fosco's January 2008 in South Bend, Indiana (where grammar goes to die):

Hmmm. Let's hope they got this guy and not this guy.

Piracy expelled, commerce restored.

Longtime readers of Fosco Lives! know that Fosco has a soft spot for things piratical and for Robinson Crusoe (it is the first real novel in English, after all...). And here's a story that has some of both!

According to The Telegraph, the extremely rare journal of a British pirate hunter has been recovered. Interestingly enough, this is the same guy who rescued the "real life" inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. The diary

chronicles a three-year round-the world voyage of the swashbuckling privateer Capt Woodes Rogers, who made a fortune pillaging from pirate ships and Spanish galleons.

During that journey, Rogers, who was a friend of the author Daniel Defoe, even stopped off at a remote Pacific island and found castaway Alexander Selkirk, who inspired the character and book Robinson Crusoe. He said he found him "wild-looking" and wearing "goatskins", adding: "He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible and books."

Rogers, who left Britain in 1708, had been tasked with "victimising" pirates targeting his fellow British merchants.

[...]

The slogan of his epic voyage, "Piracy expelled, commerce restored", remained the [Bahama] islands' own motto until independence was declared in 1973.

Now that's a good yarn. Harr.

Picture of the Day

That, my friends, is Mars. And it's beautiful.

Read the story here.

From the Annals of Books No One Wants to Read

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Hello Shirt! Goodbye Shirt!

Since Fosco began dating Oz (who was born and raised in the Sandwich Islands), he's become more interested in all things Hawaiian. For example, did you know that "Aloha" can mean both "Hello" and "Goodbye"? Such linguistic efficiency! And did you know that Hawaii is almost entirely populated by an elusive race of people known as the Menehune? It's true. In fact, because of the Menehune's legendary shiftiness, the US Census Bureau refuses to estimate Hawaii's population at all.

One Hawaiian tradition that Fosco has yet to embrace is the Aloha shirt. However, Fosco is rethinking his aversion to such sartorial silliness after reading this piece on SF Gate's "Hawaii Insider" blog. Apparently, one of the true giants of the Aloha shirt died recently:

Alfred Shaheen, who in 1948 opened Hawaii's first factory for designing and printing the tropical-themed fabrics, and quickly became the giant of a new industry.

The "Hawaii Insider" goes on to note that the Aloha shirt has had a remarkable cultural influence:

this is the garment that created "Aloha Fridays," and the very concept of "business casual."

This seems like a noteworthy achievement (although Fosco, who has only limited experience in "business" still cannot understand why every day can't be Casual Friday).

As Fosco considered writing this post, he came across a collection of amazing Aloha shirts at The Hana Shirt Co. The photo above is one of theirs, as is this absolutely gorgeous shirt:

You can order this shirt here, but you need to wear size "Vintage Medium" and be willing to part with $125.

You know what would rock? An Aloha shirt with a Wayne Thiebaud pattern:

Fosco would wear this every freakin' day! What would you want on an Aloha shirt?

Fosco's Alternate Blog Title

As mentioned in a recent comment, Fosco's friend The Queen BeeMistress prefers to parse the URL of this blog (www.foscolives.com) as "Fosc Olives." (For clarity, it is important to note that Fosc is not an actual cultivar or brand of olives and consequently, Fosco has incurred no unintended legal liability.) Well, the Queen and her BeeMaster apparently had a little time on their hands and they worked up this lovely gift:

This is great fun, of course, and much appreciated; however, there are a few thoughts that occur to Fosco when he looks at this label:

• just to be perfectly clear, there is nothing "Extra Virgin" about Fosco. Dude, Fosco is like a male Lindsay Lohan! Or like a male David Duchovny! On the other hand, Fosco can be accurately described as "Crushed."
  
• is there really such a thing as flavored olive oil? Apparently. Maybe Fosco should shop somewhere nicer than Save Mart. Or, more accurately, maybe Fosco should shop.
  
• why is the sexy olive so much larger than the mandarin orange? Clearly, she is not normal olive-size, but gargantuan. And why does she have a pimiento? They don't put pimientos in olive oil, right?
  
• and then there's the whole question of "sexy" food in the first place. Why is it a good idea to portray food not just as an object of sexual desire, but as a subject who can recognize and encourage that desire? I'm thinking here also of the sexy green M&M who creeps me out (even beyond the fact that Fosco tends to prefer male candies).
  
  Fosco has always questioned whether food advertisers should anthropomorphize their products because, when you think about it, it raises some uncomfortable issues of cannibalism. And then to go one step farther by making food products communicate sexual desire for us? Maybe Fosco is a bit squeamish, but he doesn't really want to attribute thoughts, feelings, and desires to his food. Food isn't really food anymore when it communicates. What's next? A hamburger that tells you the names of its children? A soda that cries over the death of its pet? A Hot Pocket that tells you he "likes it rough"? Eek.

See, BeeMaster and Mistress, this is why no one gives presents to Fosco anymore.

Pictures from the Edge

A must-read from today's San Jose Mercury News: photographer Dai Sugano publishes photos and video from the month that he spent in India, documenting its neoliberal economic explosion and the (often overlooked) consequences.

Fosco has written about Mumbai recently, as a consequence of reading Mike Davis's remarkable book, Planet of Slums. Sugano's photos and videos offer an exceptional (although at times, slightly pretentious) visual accompaniment to Davis's book.

As Sugano notes,

About one-third of the world's poor people live in India. More than 450 million Indians exist on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank.

More than 6 million of those desperately poor Indians live in Mumbai, representing about half the residents of the nation's financial hub. They dwell in gigantic slums and roadside shanties that press up against the shimmering high-rises that serve as the most conspicuous symbols of India's new affluence.

This type of inequality isn't completely beyond our imagination (as anyone who has driven through parts of Los Angeles can attest to), but the scale is beyond anything we Americans have been led to believe (thanks to the cheerleaders of neoliberal globalization). Mumbai may be one of the great "success stories" of a globalized Third World (driven partially, as Sugano points out, by Silicon Valley cash), but it's also a social nightmare straight out of Victorian England. And for reasons both ethical and practical, we can't allow this kind of inequality to continue.

Self-Indulgent Pet Story

Fosco already did his Christmas loot post, but he left an important question unanswered: what did Fosco and Oz's kitty Isis get for Kitty Christmas?

Which raises a second important question: when did Fosco become so dippy as to use the phrase "Kitty Christmas"? Readers: promise me that if Fosco ever posts a Christmas story about cats (especially if there is a disabled boy involved), you will stage an online intervention. Sigh.

Well, anyway... Isis got a new rubber brush, which she mostly doesn't like. (She prefers her hair to be tangled and skanky. Not unlike a certain British soul singer?)

She got a new IKEA Bästis toy to replace Condoleeza Mice. This is a fish named Tina Tuna. Even though Tina is filled with catnip (just like Condoleeza), Isis seems mostly uninterested. Which is kinda disappointing, because I wanted to see Isis go all Ike Tuna on that thing.

Isis's big gift, however, wasn't even intended for her. You may remember Oz's new Poäng chair from IKEA. Well, it turns out that Isis has claimed it for herself.

Oz has tried to keep her off the chair by covering it with his jacket (seriously?) and then by placing a plastic bag (Isis's nemesis) on the seat. You can see how that worked:

Isis only deigns to open one eye to survey Fosco's camera idiocy...

Seriously, Isis loves this chair so much she doesn't even sleep on the bed anymore. Once or twice a night, she hops from the chair to the bed to get some quick petting from Fosco and then heads back to the chair--like getting petted is a job or something that she has to commute to... We're thinking of trading her in for an Ultimate Wall-E.

Dark in the city. Night is a wire.

Dark in the city, night is a wire.
Steam in the subway, earth is afire.
Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo.

Tonight, Fosco and Oz finally decided to graduate themselves from Rock Band to Rock Band 2 (it may have had something to do with Molly Hatchet avoidance). One of the first songs that you have access to in RB2 is Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf." Admittedly, this song (like most 80s pop) is not an obvious choice for a game like Rock Band. Nor is the drum line particularly complicated. However, believe me when I tell you that, for Fosco, it was pure joy. "Hungry Like the Wolf" is one of the first pop songs that Fosco ever loved. And for three minutes, playing fake drums, Fosco felt like he was nine years old again. It was wonderful.

Did you know that "Hungry Like the Wolf" was composed and recorded all in one afternoon? That's called genius, my friends.

Pancakes!

Did you know that for an entire academic quarter two years ago Fosco belonged to a Pancake Club? Indeed, Fosco and several of his friends/colleagues met once a week at a campus grill to eat PANCAKES! We even had a theme song (think The B-52's song "Deadbeat Club" with slightly different chorus). Although Pancake Club has been disbanded, Fosco and Oz still try to get weekend pancakes once or twice a month.

Today, Fosco and Oz opted for brunch at that Peninsula fixture Millbrae Pancake House, "Where Asians Eat Pancakes."^TM Millbrae Pancake House doesn't pretend to be anything but a pancake house: big red building, wood paneling inside, beanie babies for sale by the cash register... you get the idea.

The menu is just as straightforward. Now, although Fosco loves pancakes, he also needs eggs and hash browns to make breakfast complete. Luckily, all omelets come with both hash browns and pancakes!

Fosco ordered the linguica omelet. He'd never actually had linguica until he moved to California (and Oz introduced him to it). Apparently, it's a Portuguese sausage that is especially popular in Oz's home protectorate, The Sandwich Islands (I bet Obama loves linguica).

Oz chose the bacon omelet, which was lovely. Bacon is delicious when it is super crispy.

And the pancakes? Oz got the standard buttermilk pancakes (top). Fosco ordered his favorite Swedish pancakes with lingonberry butter (bottom). The Swedish pancakes are thin, like a crepe and just a little chewy. So good! Oh yeah, and that's a side order of linguica because we needed more.

Of course, the only thing you can do after a meal like that is nap. Sweet dreams, Oz and Fosco!

The Last Night of 2008

As predicted, Fosco and Oz did nothing particularly sexy or exciting for New Year's Eve. Well, unless you count a quick trip to Target (neither do we).

But seriously, while our plans were low-key, it was actually just right. We started the evening with dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants (we eat there a couple of times a month), Barracuda. Although the original location is in The Castro, Fosco and Oz much prefer the less-hip, less-crowded branch at California's Most Filipino Mall in Daly City (it's also like 5 minutes from Oz's apartment).

Barracuda is a sushi restaurant, but it's more like Sushi 2.0 than regular sushi. Sushi 2.0, in Fosco's reckoning, is sushi that uses the standard roll (Maki-zushi) as a starting point (or blank canvas) for the addition of different (not always Japanese) ingredients, sauces, cooking techniques, etc. So when you see traditional rolls buried under slices of avocado, or covered with sauce, or battered and fried, that's Sushi 2.0.

Because it was NYE, Fosco and Oz decided to eat a little more than usual. We ordered the "Lollipop Scallops" as an appetizer. Those are fried scallops on sticks, resting on a bed of mashed potatoes. That orange sauce is tobiko mayo.

We'd never tried these before, but it was NYE! Fosco liked them better than did Oz, but Fosco is much more of a scallop fan.

We opted for four different rolls. Here are two of them. On the right is a standard spicy hamachi roll. Mmmm. On the left is something called the "Geisha Roll" (as if you couldn't tell that by the parasol). I don't really remember what is in it (spicy tuna? unagi? something green?), but it has white tuna and roe on the top. Also, there is some kind of vinegar sauce.

And yes, Fosco is wearing that shirt you see in the background. What can I say? It was New Year's Eve.

Fosco enjoys even more these two rolls. On the left, we have a shrimp tempura roll topped with avocado and tuna. On the right, we have Fosco's favorite "Volcano Roll": a spicy tuna roll batter-dipped and fried, then topped with tobiko mayo and mango-jalapeno salsa. Yum!

This was an excellent mini-celebration for NYE, even though (as always), we were hungry again two hours later.

When we got back to Oz's pad, we had several hours until midnight. We killed that but good with Mario Kart (yes, there is also a Wii at Oz's place) and Rock Band! In Rock Band, Fosco and Oz finally managed to conquer "Enter Sandman" (and by "conquer," I mean "scrape through by the skin of our teeth"). We also spent some time doing tatts on our avatars. Our band name is "Fosco Lives" (sigh--unoriginal, I know). Oz plays guitar and his avatar has the word "FOSCO" tattooed on the underside of his right forearm and the word "LIVES" in the same place on his left forearm. Oh, and each word is centered along the blade of a sword tattoo! It rox! Fosco's drummer avatar (named "Dark Oates," because he's kind of a goth drummer) now has a bloody handprint tattooed on left pectoral. It is hella sexy, let me tell you.

At midnight, we broke out the bubbly (although sadly, we had to drink it in double old-fashioned glasses).

There is nothing like drinking a bottle of good champagne at midnight to make the New Year seem bright and promising. And there's nothing like a January 1 morning headache to remind you that you're too old to be drinking that much.

So happy New Year once again, my dear friends and faithful readers. I hope your NYE was just as much fun (or more!) than ours.

Happy 2009!

It's finally here.

All of us here at Fosco Lives! wish you a healthy and happy 2009. May this be a better year for all of us.