Slick sand

There are no flowers in the desert this year because there wasn't enough rain. But at night, you don't notice. You just see the outlines of tall wind turbines and lights from forlorn houses. Driving alone in the desert at night is lonely. And when you see a gigantic casino with colored lights that flash over the flat ground like moving water, it doesn't make you feel less alone. The Morongo Casino is outside Palm Springs, but for all of its creepy extravagance, it may as well be in Vegas. It is the tallest building in the Inland Empire. I paid a visit to the place on a windy night in March - it was packed. Thick with cigarette smoke and every type of person you can imagine. Every type, that is, except white and middle class.

I've always been torn on the whole Indian gaming industry issue, and after seeing Morongo, my God - it is bizarre. There is so much money going through these places, and as Marc Cooper reports in today's LA Weekly, the industry is only getting bigger. Stephen Pizzo argues that Indian gaming is, and always has been, totally corrupt. The whole production is eerily political. I can't help but think that what these casinos are really doing is slowly (or quickly) draining the pockets of the other disadvantaged minorities in the surrounding areas. There should be a better answer.

Stay fresh!

Pop culture feasts on the Here and Now. It's almost Buddhist in a way - and yet utterly not. Ever since I was allowed to see the interior of a monstrous estate in Bel Air, I've been plagued by a fascination with celebrity gossip websites. Perez Hilton for one. Any news predating the 5th page of Perez's blog - 2, maybe 3 days old - is ancient history. Week-old news is so ancient, it's not even listed on the website anymore. The past is a different universe.

Speaking of the past, I've been brushing up on the history of cellulite. For those who don't know, the term was coined as a marketing ploy for European spas in the 1960s. Women in the U.S. didn't even know there was anything wrong with them until a French salon owner living in New York published a cellulite book in 1973. Though there were many skeptics at the time, we women discovered that we'd better shape up our dimpled fatty selves, and quick! Unfortunately, though women can reduce overall body fat through diet and exercise, fat distribution is almost entirely genetic. If you have a few dimples here and there (as 90% of the female population do), it is your fate. No amount of herbal creams, dietary supplements, injections, or other snake oils will change this. Women have been shamelessly scammed into feeling disfigured.
Too bad every time someone raises this point, it is promptly forgotten.

Shades of white

A few days ago I was walking in an upscale neighborhood on San Vicente Blvd. It was a classic LA day - sunny, about 72 degrees, and people were out in their convertibles and swanky shades. Maybe it was the brightness of the sun or the exclusiveness of the boutique shops around me, but my bare arms suddenly seemed pathetically pale and vulnerable. I understood, for once in my life, the appeal of being tan. Tanning isn't just a phenomenon; it's an institution. And the reality is that it only matters to people with white skin. Tanning is a symbol of leisure, but race lurks under its bronzed exterior. White people already have so much - why do they covet darker skin? Are all sun bathers putting on their own blackface performances? White culture is constantly grasping for some new hip (inevitably "non-white") thing.

I'd never really want to have a perfect golden tan, but sometimes I wish I could hide my white skin. The less I identify with all the baggage that comes with being white the more I expect to look in the mirror and see a completely different person.

Holiday sheep

People tend to shuffle along the same worn paths they've always followed. But why, I ask, must we trot around like blind sheep in the grocery store when a holiday approaches? Nevermind the fact that American holidays have lost most of their traditional religious meanings. The thing is, we don't even celebrate holidays. We just buy stuff.

I'm so tired of seeing the Easter candy lurking behind the Valentine's paraphernalia, which appears three days after Christmas. The yellow chick Peeps sit there innocently on the shelf waiting for the red heart-shaped Peeps to go out of style. Huge volumes of Marshmallow Peeps are manufactured and transported to stores everywhere... where they wait for months until Their Holiday arrives. As it says on the Just Born company website, Peeps are "always in season!"

Wouldn't it be nice to imagine a world where holiday traditions weren't dictated by the marketing of goods by vast industrial corporations?

Orientally hip

I'm not sure when it was that Asian chicken salad, sushi, and Zen first came into vogue, but the trend appears to have struck a new low. Case in point: Hollywood's "Geisha House," a pricy restaurant and nightclub that has vastly increased Hollywood Boulevard's hip factor.

Living in the neighborhood I wondered what went on behind those windowless neon-pink walls. Coming back from the parking garage one night, I slipped past the red curtain covering the doorway. The website told me that my experience would be "Sensuous... Ethereal... Mysterious."

Here is the full description: "A combination of five star sushi restaurant set in the atmosphere of a surreal high class brothel, the goal of Geisha House is to make the client climax. Geisha House provides the vibe, the music, and the intoxicating tones necessary to create sensuality through taste, touch, smell, and complete stimulation." It continues: "Geisha girls, seared albacore, Sake-Infused Martinis, Kamasutra...all lead to one thing...a happy ending. This is sex...This is Geisha House."

Sex sells, but a Japanese restaurant that blatantly advertises sex with geishas? A shameful case of lost-in-translation. It's not so out of place next to retailers with thigh-high plastic boots and other downright tawdry garments on Hollywood Blvd., but Geisha House represents the height of absurd consumption. The image above is from a box of matches I picked up. A girl's red lips market her vulnerable, exotic beauty.

In this twisted world she's just a thing. You light her like a match and toss her away.

Tunneling in MPLS

interface retention management methods
label control
stream merging
aggregation of flows multiple streams binding
traffic pools discovery protocol

independent ordered signaling mechanisms
operation binding to peers for neighboring messages
forward data travel
map input output dashed blue lines
packet
stream

stack failure recovery
dynamic routing protocols which converge rapidly to non-looping paths
buffer allocation
peer mitigation
hop count information and architecture datagram
minimal latency table

Gone in Memphis

With the long run of murders and chaotic state of life in New Orleans, it's sorely evident that Dr. Martin Luther King's struggle lives on. Many in this country have abandoned an invaluable site of cultural heritage.

My grandmother hailed from Henning, Tennessee (just outside of Memphis) and when I was eight I went on a trip there with her and my mom for Easter. Recently, I had a sudden memory that we'd gone to the motel in Memphis where MLK Jr. was shot in 1968. My clearest image is of a wreath on the door of the second-story room where he had been standing, and I remember my mother's stony face. How impossible it seemed.

Show me the angels

There is no such thing as Los Angeles.

At least 4 million different versions of this place are seething, bumping, and chattering through the streets -- how should we pick one? We might see L.A. if we could zip out of our skin and into ten thousand others' pulsing bodies. What would it feel like to duck in slowly, reaching up through the arms?

The divides are saw-toothed and the shallowness tastes like fat from all the liposuctions performed since 1993.