A comprehensive bank of synonyms

Today marked my triumphant return to the universe of organized health care in the form of a visit to my friendly new Health Management Organization, Kaiser Permanente, at their San Francisco Medical Center. My first impression was shock: where were all the poor people in handcuffs with police escorts? Apparently things work a little differently at Kaiser than they do at SF General. Thank goodness I have advanced in class since the last time I needed medical attention. The visit was originally envisioned as a routine physical but, as luck had it, I contracted a debilitating lung infection in the interim, so things were a little more interesting. And I got to go home with a nice little bundle of steroids to inhale. It's the newest way to do em.

Not only steroids: I got a non-avian flu shot in my left arm, a tetanus vaccine in my right arm, two vials of dark red blood withdrawn from my left Cephalic vein, and one small cup of bright yellow piss withdrawn from my penis. The blood withdrawal is kind of ironic because it was naught but one week ago in anatomy class that I taught fifteen MRI students where they could locate the human Cephalic vein. Little did I know that within days, one of my very own Cephalic veins would be brutally punctured by the cold hard steel of Margret Lin, RN. Anyways, someone will call me tomorrow to tell me if I have HIV as well as Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Hep B, and who could forget Chalmydia? Now I'm pretty sure I don't have any of those, but it's still weirdly nerve-racking to wait for your HIV test results. I mean, I am pretty sure I'm clear, but not 100% sure. What if one day I had a small cut on my hand while I was holding the railing on a bus that some infected person had just been hangin on to and whose dirty Band-Aid had smeared all over the same spot? Or what about all those hookers I fucked in college? At any rate, Feather Two Pixel fans need not worry, as updates will be posted as soon as more information is available.

The rest of my day was spent in vain, trying to get inside an art museum for inspiration. One of the other kick ass benefits of working at the Exploratorium, besides the heath care, is free access to all of the city 's museums. It's a little frustrating, though, cause we are all closed on our one day off: Monday. Today! I particularly wanted to get in to the newly opened DeYoung museum, which has been in renovation in Golden Gate Park for years and whose new grand facility was designed by some famous architect whom I could Google to sound informed about, but fuck it. Herzog or something, I think his name is. Trust me, he is famous.

Instead of art, and since I was already at the Legion of Honor, I hiked through the California chaparral of Land's End while listening to Eno's Music for Airports--always an appropriate thing to do--and then bought two old Eno records at Amoeba. For Halloween, Carly and I played it decidedly boring. We passed over the craziness of the Castro for a horror movie at the Galaxy, which I have to say, has some of the biggest fucking theaters in the whole city yet I don't know that I've ever seen more than ten people there at once. I am amazed that they stay in business. Meanwhile, the coolest theaters in town continue shutting down (like the Coronet, which, incidentally, was so truly enormous that an opening night Return of the King show with a line through the parking lot wasn't even half full. Or on second thought, maybe that's why they ended up converting to a old folks home). Originally, we planned to continue our Halloween tradition of brilliant Hollywood trash with Nowell (Freddy v Jason in 2003, Saw I in 2004, Saw II this year) but this year he broke our hearts and so we couldn't bear any American films alone. Instead we saw "Three... Extremes," a collection of three New Asian Horror shorts. They were pretty creepy. ...You know, for subtitled films--if they are gonna charge me ten freakin' bucks, though, the fuckers could at least speak some fuckin' English.

Lays a foundation for the understanding of human history

Finally, rain in San Francisco city. I can't remember the last time it rained here (In fact, as Feather Two Pixel fans know, I've more recently seen snow here, at Johnny Moseley's useless Fillmore Street ski jump at the beginning of the month). Maybe it has never rained here. But right now the ground is wet, a light spray is coming down, and I am staying home for the day.

So I guess I am a little sick--somewhere in between being able and unable to yell over hundreds of kids at the Exploratorium all morning. But you know what? I already made $170 yesterday and this rainy day is God's way of coaxing me to seal the deal and call in sick. A byproduct of living in one of the world's most beautiful cities has been the development of a serious complex about staying inside to the effect that a rainy day truly is a blessing from God; this is one of the only ways I can feel 100% OK about staying inside all day and doing all the shit that needs to be done. Let the games begin!

Art Art Art Art Art Art!!

The art show! It was cool. The whole thing was a real positive experience in general and there were a few specific moments when I felt like a million inflation-adjusted bucks. I wrapped up work on my stuff early in the week and ended up with eight small to medium pieces for the show. So I arranged my studio, hung up my work on the walls, posted a little something about myself, and waited for everything to start. It eventually did, and there was a pretty steady stream of activity throughout the weekend. A lot of artists sold work. I decided early on that, at least for this first show, I would forgo pricetags, not so much to avoid commercialism as to avoid expectations. I think that turned out to be the right move. My non-existent expectations were exceeded. A handful of people seemed seriously interested in the work, and I was left with the impression that, if I had wanted to, I could have sold some shit.

Did I mention that it's night Saturday now? I have had a hard time putting together a post for the last week or so. I'm not really sure why.

Here is a picture of me at the show that my neighbor, Sarah Miller, took:















And here is one of my pieces, I guess. It's made out of wood, paper, and charcoal:























The art show was also one of the most social weekends I've had in California yet. It felt like I was transported to a strange dimension where I was well-adjusted and spent normal amounts of time around other humans. I met a lot of new people at the show itself, which was cool. Just about all of the other artists have been at it longer than I have and therefore had useful things to tell me. I was a good little knowledge sponge.

Also, a surprising number of people I invited showed up. I was well supported. After the show closed on Saturday, eleven of us walked to the hole in the wall Chinese place around the corner and shared a big family-style dinner, which is something I have always wanted to do. I see Chinese people do it all the time and it looks fun. So dinner was a big success. The restaurant even busted out the elusive house beer from its hiding place in back of the cooler.

I'm not used to being the center of attention, so it was a little mystifying to be in the middle of a gathering of people who mostly didn't know each other, celebrating me. In a good way, though. After dinner we drank at a beer garden and then I went to see Russian surf rock with two friends from the Exploratorium.

So that's art and stuff. It was good. I think cause it felt... real. Know what I mean?

My anatomy teaching duties at Sonoma College recently resumed. Now that's something I didn't miss. It's a fine job, I'm not complaining about it. Actually, no, let me complain about it. It's a miserable teaching situation. I have to lecture in front of 15 adults for 4 hours on Saturday mornings. Then, I give them a quiz that they *wink wink* need to do well on. The school's basically a (lucrative) little degree factory. I don't care how good a teacher you are, there's only one direction that situation can go.

But I still kind of like it. The students are actually really committed. Most of them commute long distances and have full time jobs, some with kids. I have a lot of respect for them. Well, except for Anica. This girl gives me such a hard time, it's unbelievable. She doesn't really, how can I put it... pay attention, take notes, or study. That itself is not so unusual--I can even kind of understand it--but after every quiz she attacks me and tells me all of the ways I cheated her unfairly.

Today was no different. As usual I basically gave the class the answers in my pre-quiz review, as usual Anica was not understanding or paying much attention, and as usual she was furious when she handed in her quiz.

"Anica, do you know what a joint is?" I asked her.

Now even though this is an anatomy class we started in May, folks, I actually have no real problem with her not knowing what a joint is. I mean, she's a fucking moron, but I can work with that. I just can't believe her attitude. Today, she says, the problem is that every time I'm answering one of her questions, I get interrupted and start talking to someone else. The hilarious thing was that a few minutes after she yelling at me for that, she came over to me and started demanding answers while I was working with another student. It's like being accused of frivolousness on Elimidate.
So...I think I should quit while I am ahead and call that a completed post. That way I can finally move on and get back on track.

I finally repaired the amp that I blew out with a homemade speaker this summer in my Reverse Engineering class. I took it to one of those Chinese repair shops that are so full of junk that you can barely walk to the front desk. This one was especially cluttered and even though it reminded me of my parents' house, I liked it right away. Unfortunately, they didn't quite get the repair right and I had to take it back the next day. Eventually, though, they got it working OK and so we finally have our stereo back and I can listen to records. I immediately put in Dylan's "Nashville Skyline," which might be my favorite so far in my 6 month career of listening to Dylan.

Please save this notice for future reference

Another Sunday passeth, another "Carne Desborada" burrito devoured at El Balazo on Haight Street. Unfortunately, a burritio in the middle of the day, no matter how tasty, is almost always a terrible idea. All non-essential energy of body and mind is diverted to the digestive system like so many ill-advised policies diverted to the feces factory that is the annual California special election. Let's spend 40 million dollars to find out if the Republicans can redistrict the state so the congressional map resembles an aborted fetus. No, I don't think that the Sunday afternoon burrito traditon will last. Fuck it, it was only a few hours old anyways.

I haven't actually read the news in almost two weeks. That's OK cause I find that being vaguely angry at the news is a lot easier than understanding it. I just have not been able to get up early enough to read before work lately. This is slightly disturbing cause it was one of my favorite things to do last spring. I really like the early weekday morning atmosphere on Polk Street, paticularly at Royal Ground Cafe, where there is no shortage of San Franciscans who have become very strange people from decades of living alone. Once in a while I even find the courage to talk to them. They are more than happy to chat. Here is a conversation I had a few weeks ago:

(I am fussing with my padlock for a few minutes, trying to seperate it from the mount so that I can secure my bike)

Old Guy: Is that a Masterlock?

Me: No but this piece of shit is giving me a really hard time.

You see why these people embody the city to me more so than any other group? (See my last post for another encounter w/ Royal Ground old guys) Coffee itself has been part of the reason why I have been unable to wake up early I think. You know that cycle... So I put myself through a modest little detox last week to purge my system of caffeine. It was completely idiotic, seeing as though that at the same time pretty much all I ate was avocado sandwiches and frozen waffles, but I do feel better now. Still not waking up but I feel better.

I think I need to be forthright with myself, though. Yes, caffeine is unpredictable but people who go to bed late wake up late. And people who watch several episodes of The West Wing in one night go to bed late. Yes, I admit it. I truly love The West Wing. I love it when President Bartlett starts on one of his inspirational center-left sermons and the strings crescendo. I love
it when goofy old Donna messes up again only to have the final laugh in the end. I love the steady stream such washed up guest stars as Christian Slater and Danicia McKellar. I even love that every character is basically the same person. If we can't have a progressive in the real White House, this is truly the next best thing. And you know what? Being cheerful about fake news is even easier than being vaguely angry about real news. So yeah... I've been watching a lot of West Wing with Carly. We can't stop ourselves and its driving me fucking nuts. Thank God we finished the disks we rented (He must be expressing gratitude towards me for completely ignoring Rosh Hashana).

So it remains to be seen whether I will ever be informed again. It's not looking like it will start tomorrow--it's 11:44 right now. On the plus side of the ledger, Pitt finally had a good game this weekend. They were surprisingly dominant vs South Florida and, amazingly, have a winning conference record for the moment. But Pitt football is the alcoholic who's never sure if he's truly past rock bottom and so anything remains possible.

While scheduling a tutoring appointment last week, I took part in my first ever conference call with a family of three. It was one of those situations whose self parodying quality was made complete by the obliviousness of everyone involved. Sometimes, you just have to have everyone on the phone!

Dizzy girl continues to unravel her fascinating shell at work. She's in fact married. And during her wedding she broke her foot jumping off a rock.

A NO vote means the state would not expand its drug discount program

Things are heating up over at 17th and Alabama in San Francisco city. The smell of polydimethylsiloxane is in the air of the old cabinet factory on the corner and that can only mean one thing: central nervous system damage! ...And open studios! It's less than two weeks away and this season Jonathan Fischer will be well-represented. Don't believe me, eh? Well, try THIS on for size!

Let's take a closer look at that, shall we?





Oh yeah, that tastes good. My first flyer. Within days, 10,000 of these babies will be floating in assorted San Francisco sewers. And you know what? Every one will have my name on it in electrifying five-point font.

A brother could drown in this kind of glory so I've been trying to stick to the fundamentals. Go to studio as much as possible. Stay loose. Focus on producing material. Stick to the theme but worry later about putting it all together.

And so if all goes well, I'll have a half dozen pieces I'm proud enough to hang up on my wallsby October 22nd, a few people I know will stop by, and I will feel good about myself. For security reasons, details will remain undisclosed for now.

I had a relatively social weekend. It was almost enough to make me feel like a normal 26 year old. There were friends floating around me on multiple occasions and I even came close to hanging out with work people. For a thoroughly satisfactory account of Friday night, please consult the annals of Nowell Valeri. I will just add that, for such an unlikely assortment of people, it was a strangely cohesive group. Points of contact abound. Nowell and Kerri seem to relate to each others' grown up jobs. Jill and I to just about every Pitt class we enrolled in. Carly and Jill to their mutual distrust of me. Everyone to the state of Pennsylvania (which goes a long way 3,000 miles from home)... Mathematically there are twenty-six possible combinations from a five person group, so you will understand why I'll stop there.

On Saturday, I scored a four disk Hank Williams Box Set for $20 at Amoeba and then Nowell, Carly, and I returned to precisely the same intersection we left twenty hours ago and enjoyed a sushi feast.

Sunday was an art day.

And through it all, the Blue Angels. The Blue Angels seem to be something--like one dollar coins in New York City-- that are just an accepted part of San Francisco street life. It's as if they never leave. One day you are sitting on top of Twin Peaks, gawking at their formations over the Bay, and before you know it's a year later and they are back. And those fuckers are loud! I witnessed an old guy in a coffee shop absolutely freak out when they startled him during a practice session over the city on Friday. "I hate them, I hate them, I HATE THEM!" He was screaming in the middle of a small room full of people. Not that unusual for my neighborhood, but blogworthy I guess--it's a slow night. Anyways isn't there something a little strange about a fleet of Navy F-18s traveling around the country, entertaining the public during a war? I'm curious to know if there are any situations in which the Blue Angels would actually be called upon to do anything useful. Like ...kill people, I guess. There probably are, right?

The Exploratorium rolls on. I discovered my new favorite exhibit: The Sound Column. It's actually part of the Rotunda outside and, until now, has been closed for months. Basically, its a small, closed, concrete room that's sixty feet high. You enter through a side door and, inside, play a giant xylophone whose notes are not only incredibly loud and low in frequency, but have been tuned so that their wavelengths are multiples of sixty feet. That is, the xylophone produces a series of standing waves that fit perfectly and resonate in The Sound Column. The result is that when you raise your head to the level of a node its really loud and when you raise your head to the level of an antinode you hear nothing. The best part is: I have a key and can get in at any time! My new aspiration is to go there in the middle of the night and play guitar.

The new Explainers are coming around too. Ed, a volunteer Explainer, was emboldened enough to tell me about his bowel-cleansing diet. It sounds horrifying. Nothing but a cocktail of honey, water, cayenne pepper, and something else I can't remember. For a week. I borrowed a Mr. Show joke about it sounding like one of those dare drinks you make for your friends but what I was really interested in was what in the world your shit lo0ks like when you eat nothing but a water, cayenne pepper, honey, and something else I can't remember for a week. Does it assume some previously unknown state of matter? I almost asked him.

Dizzy girl continues her stories about getting wasted and swimming in the ocean at midnight in the middle of the week (She lives on 47th street, right near Ocean Beach). And winning a car. And a bike. And an Ovation shallow bowl guitar signed by Melissa Etheridge. I believe her.

Better if made the day before you serve them

The next big boom market is in wellness.

It's ready to explode!

What exactly is one's next thought immediately after those words are spoken by an old high school friend who has very unexpectedly called in the middle of a sunny Tuesday morning? One of my big aspirations these days is to become to become as receptive to as much as possible, especially shit that seems a unusual. So I heard him out. He had an entire business proposal worked out. It seemed half chain letter- half global startup. I really appreciated that he took the initiative to call me--I haven't heard from him in a while-- and even appreciated the proposal, though I immediately knew there was no way I was interested. Even beyond the less than astonishing details, I don't think I would last three damn seconds as a businessman. What the fuck is it about the world of business administration that makes it OK to communicate in complete nonsense? I talked to my friend for almost an hour and still had no clue what I would be required to do.

"Well we'd mainly be networking. "

"OK. What exactly does that entail?"

"Well, you find six people that you oversee."

"Oversee how?"

"Well you help them start their businesses."

"OK well so are they the ones selling stuff?"

"Maybe. It depends. "

"Well do they give me money?"

"Yeah."

"Why? What am I doing? Am I selling stuff?"

"Maybe if you are into that. But you are mainly building networks. And helping out your six people."

"Helping them do what? How do I help them? Do they buy through me or something?"

"You advise them. And network."

How is it possible to talk in a mutual language with someone for so long and still have no idea what the fuck they mean? Businesses sell things, right? Why is it so hard to understand what half of them do? Does anyone understand what Enron was selling for so long? To my understanding, by the end it wasn't selling energy but some kinds of energy futures. And then a team siphoned all that revenue into outside investments, which made the real money. And nobody questioned that cause, really, aside from some accounting details it was a perfectly normal business model for a leading corporation: sell lottery tickets and then triple your revenue in the stock market.

Anyways, I told my friend I probably wasn't interested but he wanted me to sleep on it.

Today I tutored a girl who goes to high school online. Yeah...I KNOW!!! I was like "Did you get a varsity letter in AIM chatting or something!?"

She looked at me very solemnly and said "No I am a world ranked tennis player."

"Um........ let's turn to page 2."

Her first tutor "didn't work out" so I was called in to work clean up. That's what I do at Ivy West now. Anyways, this girl was born in St. Petersburg and has competed in every continent except Africa and one of those other poor ones that I forget. She's home for two months a year and needs a 21 on her ACT to go to any school in the country she prefers because they've all offered. And that right there is really the best part about my job: I get to make a real difference for the 0.00002% of the population that everyone else gives up on.

19 miles biked today!

You were a big disappointment

Friday night in my sleep, at precisely 12 PM, I crossed a momentous national divide. I whistled a little fuck you to the lot of have-nots that I've been in league with up till now and took that great leap forward as a citizen who now matters.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a fully insured American.

This encouraging development was made possible by The Exploratorium, where I have been working since January. The museum very generously offers benefits to half time employees such as myself, but previously there was some uncertainty over my situation. It's all very uninteresting, really. The important thing is that if I get run over by a truck, my family and I will not be forced into bankruptcy. In fact, if I get run over by a truck I now get $25,000. On the spot. Possibly even from the truck driver if he happens to work for The Hartford Group. I say bring it on, truckey!





This is great. I can finally lose that annoying fucking bike helmet. Thank god, that thing was making it really hard to wear headphones on the road. And the next time I get an infection I can probably treat it with something stronger than warm ginger ale. Ooo, maybe I can finally get that circumcision I've had my eye on for all these years. Anyways, I know this won't last forever so I am going to take full advantage while I can. Seriously: I want to see an allergist, a podiatrist, a non-pediatric general practitioner, definitely the dentist, and maybe even one of those fancy shrinks that doesn't mind giving you free samples of Zaneck.

That's the biggest news of the week. On a more mundane note, I started back up at the Exploratorium. Field trips begin on Tuesday and Wednesday is already our first museum free day (by far the most insane days on the job). The Explainer team is more or less the same as last year with only four new people added to the crew. Its funny to watch them stumble around as it reminds me of my own formative days in the orange vest. The one girl was sick all week. I asked her how she felt on Friday. "Dizzy from all the medicine," she said. "But I like being dizzy." I like her already!

Don't get me wrong: I've still been really off balance since I got back. But it's nice that some things are the same. Like, for instance, the SF Chronicle's heroic dedication to mediocrity. This week in San Francisco, Olympic burnout Johnny Mosely arranged for 30 tons of snow to be hauled into the city and dumped on two blocks of Fillmore Street for the purposes of a promotional ski jump. I actually passed it biking home from work with a friend and so we stopped to see the event. It was pretty cool and let me tell you, the Chronicle's coverage did not disappoint. Wednesday's front page story was "ski jump ready." Thursday's front page story was "ski jump successful," and I think Friday's had something about Google equipping the city with wireless internet. You have to kind of respect that. Plus the Times is $1.


And this weekend was a whole lot of biking and walking for me. I've been desperately trying to regain my mental focus with field trips of my own to places like Land's End and the Golden Gate Bridge. It's work in progress. Probably doesn't help that I find the bridge incredibly depressing.

Also: In the near future the art studio where I play artist is having open studios this month. It'll be my first official "show" and I am hoping to have a good showing. I shouldn't say hoping-my goal is to definitely have 5-7 good pieces to show. I have lost all my ability to draw since I came back from Europe, but excuses won't save me. Finally, mad props to my always-supportive father who provided the title of today's post. With encouragement like that, who the fuck needs a fancy psychologist!