For the record, yes, the marriage of someone you love very deeply to someone else is an occasion for mixed feelings. But you know what? So what. Happy solstice, y'all!

I woke up in a crappy mood yesterday, but nonetheless I got a fair bit done in the morning, including some writing, hurrah. As usual, I started off with breakfast at Roxy's, and the streets of Fremont were already lined with chairs and blankets that people were laying down in anticipation of the Solstice Parade. It was raining. I was in a crappy ( Read more... )

'Hereditary time is time structured in generational tiers: Confucian time, historical time, heavenly time, calendrical time. Dao time is seasonal and cyclical, collapsed into the dead and the living, and so past generations cannot reach across the limit of their life spans to affect the living generations, who have unmediated access to the Way. "[T ( Read more... )

Two young women dressed as Santa's elves rode by on bikes on Burke-Gilman this morning (in a steady downpour, it should be noted) and cried out a cheerful "Merry Christmas!" as they passed. Christmas obviously isn't going down without a fight.

It seemed to me that a lot more people had already staked out places along the parade route as I made my way to Roxy's Diner this morning at 8am than had done so by the same time last year. The guys who had hauled six couches down to the curbside looked like they had camped on the couches overnight. Yes, it's time for the annual Fremont Solstice ( Read more... )

It's a white solstice this year. Went for a walk to pick up a Sunday paper and a supply of beer, and it was lovely out there. Well, except for all the yellow snow. One of the neighbors was using the snow he shoveled off the sidewalk to make snow sculptures. He appears to be an actual sculptor, because the abstract nude torso he'd made was very ( Read more... )

You know, I found the two-year-long presidential campaign utterly fascinating, but I'm already sick to death of the Christmas season. TV was already flooded with ads last night, including one where a guy complained that he'd just been carving pumpkins, it couldn't be Christmas season already, but wait, what a great deal on this wonderful gift item ( Read more... )

In my own really rather surprisingly daring gesture of inner exhibitionism, I went commando to the Fremont Fair today. (I just learned this meaning of "commando" in the past couple of weeks and have been dying for a chance to use it. The things I'll do to exercise my vocabulary!) In that context, it was pretty funny to hear the guys hawking ( Read more... )

The Fremont Solstice Parade is a genuinely odd duck. It's a hodgepodge of neopaganism, goofball DIY performance art, leftist agit prop, nudism, exhibitionism, and genderfuck, with a smattering of community or other social and performance clubs thrown in. I'm not sure there's a unifying concept, unless it's Let Your Freak Flag Fly. Perhaps it's a ( Read more... )

So much for longer days! Today is the Solstice Parade and the beginning of the Fremont Street Fair. The neighborhood is already buzzing with activity, and Roxy's was jammed with strangers. I'm looking at my To Do list. So far I've only crossed off "download Firefox 3". Seems to work fine so far ( Read more... )