ON THE EFFICACY OF STATUS UPDATES

it's 9:00 p.m., saturday october 30, and i think i'm the only one in town not putting the finishing touches on my costume. instead, i'm dropping my keys into the ravine next to where i parked my bike at the plaid pantry. argh. find those keys get home before you give in to the urge to buy a mask at fred meyer and go out anyway. am i the only homo who doesn't care about halloween? the others are probably still going to the party. don't think about it. pack.

ENOUGH SAID

you could all just read 'mobylives' for yourselves (and you should) and spare me the shame of my constant stream of recycled content. then again, i'd have to go to lesser content for my frantic placeholder posts, so maybe you should just take them from me.

i started reading there not long after falling for the melville house catalog, which i did specifically for its rich offerings of literature in translation, a sub-section of the book market that is disappointingly under-appreciated in this country. regardless (or perhaps because its staff and leadership balk at our paucity of good new translations), melville house keeps them coming. it's an inspiring dedication.

today at 'moby lives': a post "in support of translation." despite one of its books having won it last year, melville house has withdrawn from all future involvement with the best translated book prize since learning that the prize will now be underwritten by amazon.com.

...we mean to offer a much more genuine support to translation in America than taking part in a ruse leading to its further denigration. What’s more, we mean to make a more genuine statement of support for the independent publishing and bookseller community.

we may need better access to books not written here and in our language, but i'm somehow swelling with pride at being an american. thanks, melville house. and take that, king george.

HOW TO MAKE A CREDIBLE EXCUSE; or, ON EQUIVOCATION

work. would you believe it? you probably wouldn't believe another excuse about the tailor. i'll distract you, then: siete suerte has authentic tijuana bacon wrapped hot dogs! it's one of those super hip mobile food carts. i walked by it earlier while it was parked in the empty lot on nw 4th and burnside that used to be an adult bookstore but was razed -- if you believe the sign staked in the southeast corner of the lot -- under pressure from randy leonard's HIT squad. (that's the commissioner's housing interdiction team, for the out-of-towners.) hope springs eternal, it would seem. those hot dogs symbolize the carrying on of a proud chinatown tradition. if those don't do it for you, the paris theater is just across the street and down a block.

from there you can see the j.a. atwood corp/atwood investments buidling, which stands on a triangular island between sw 3rd ave and ash and ankeny sts. it's always surrounded by half a dozen cars, and there's more space for parking than there looks to be inside the building. really, it's tiny. half of the entryway is done in turn of the last century stained glass, and earlier i noticed that the back wall of the front room (there might actually only be the one) was covered with framed black and whites of "old" portland. i don't know why i'd never thought to look inside before today, but today was the first time i realized how stupid i'd been to have always thought the place was a car rental business. that parking to building space ratio is a tricky illusion. i don't think i'd ever even read the signage before. the internet says it's a real estate office. ha. gangsters are so transparent. 33 sw 3rd. whatever they do, they're damn sure going to keep that address. location! an interesting existential pun.

i picked up my shirts further up 3rd ave, and so that's about half of my walk narrated, but done in reverse. other interesting sights? no. but the bike kids are wearing tights under their shorts now. after getting soaked on my ride home monday night, my winter three quarter lenghts were still wet on tuesday morning so i decided to don some leggings myself. they're warm. mine are invisible, true, but the bike kids should know that the trend died with my enthusiasm for it over the summer.

that's about half of my walk back to the desk where, wouldn't you know, the information i've been asking for for three weeks is here just in time for me to leave town. slapdash or frenzy? in either case, it means that the show is going to have to wait in the wings a little while longer. sorry. don't worry, though. it's waiting, which means you'll have to, too.

in the meantime, does anyone want to buy "the complete cartoons of the new yorker?" it comes with two cds with every cartoon ever published in the magazine. i can't find an original price or an isbn, so i don't think that powell's is going to buy it, and the bank of japan hasn't responded to any of my entreaties to devalue the yen.

THE MISSING LINK; or, ON BOOK BIKES

for a hyperlink free version of this post, click here.

we should have reported on this sooner, but with entertaining the tailor and looking for apartments in tokyo it was all too easy to fall behind last week when the internet went abuzz with the news. (plus, we had a guest for the weekend.)

really, though, we should have incepted this sooner, and -- now that i come to think of it -- it's a surprise that the hometown and headquarters of powells.com doesn't have a fleet of book bikes doing its deliveries for the portland metro, the bike-friendliest place in the country. damn.

we've got bikes for beer, bikes for coffee (only slightly different than coffee by bike), and bikes for fixing bikes, so who was it that dropped the ball on bikes for books? apparently portland isn't as innovative as it's supposed to be, and maybe it's entirely my fault on this front. then the downpour makes me second guess my self-admonition. i'd rather be reading than riding around in that to get other people their books. i'm behind in my reading as it is. a program's bound to need an administrator, though. someone at a computer...

while i'm scheming, the game is already underway in cambridge, ma. as moby lives reported friday:

With the tag line, "Buy Green. Buy Local. By Bike. A new way to get your books faster, cheaper, and greener," Harvard Bookstore announced their new two-wheeled book delivery service, appealing to the carbon-conscious readers in their area and boasting that "all in-stock orders placed for Cambridge and parts of Somerville and Allston will receive same- or next-day delivery."

outdone by harvard? harvard?!? this is what over indulgence and self-satisfaction get us, portland: trumped by the third rate. couldn't make the bikes and books connection? maybe that's why we've been so unhappy. that's a lunch meeting i'm going to have to prepare for. if you need me this afternoon, i'll be dictating a proposal to the intern.

***

just the facts: harvard bookstore delivering by bicycle for online orders made for cambridge and parts of somerville and allston as reported by moby lives on 10/22. portland falls behind in "bike race." no news from powells.com on unveiling a similar (same or next day) pedal powered delivery service. 'looking good in pants' author anticipates lucrative sinecure.

now, really, who wanted that? you miss that awesome picture of the guy on the track bike riding a velodrome while having an espresso and reading the paper (ahh...the good old days). it's almost as good as that one of the tour riders from the twenties using one another's cigarettes to light up. before the internet, blogs were just embellished telegrams!

i've still got my eye on you, laura miller.

ON DERIVATIVE CALCULI, part 2

those landmines. i'm crawling through them myself. "i know cause i planted them. under cover of night i put my heart in the ground."

no, i don't have anything original tonight. and that's not the original anyway. it does seem, however, to be lady singer-songwriter week here at 'looking good in pants;' and whatever you read into that isn't anything close to the convoluted dada/gaga/what's cool now? rationale behind why it happened. [broken social scene lyrics sung by emily haines here.] i like it all that way.

who knew i could eat so much in a weekend. the extra weight is purportedly just water retention. do i want to go back? i could stand standing on the scale to a lighter tune, but i'll gruel myself at the exercising tomorrow only because i won't have the plans or the excitement of the last three days, not because i really care about what's probably just water weight.

yes. this is a cop out. go ahead and count the hours during which you know i could have been working at something better (then subtract the time it takes to self-edit something admittedly half-assed). but given our understanding, i know you understand that the copping out (everything's better in uniform) can only mean a diminishing or a greatening of my esteem. yeah, that's a word. let's argue that instead of badgering the equivocation. ultimately, though, it's not worth your time. it's correct and it's mine.

i know 'cause i planted it. so there.

PRETTY GOOD YEAR

"heard the eternal footman bought himself a bike to race."

we did you one better, tori. or one worse, which ruins the idiom (or [maybe?] does it one better) but is more evocative of my feelings toward what's going to go down this afternoon. i don't race (remember?). well, i might this weekend, but there are circumstances, and no one really rides very fast in your periphery during a cyclocross race if you let yourself start slow and at the back. but i don't usually race, so my reference to those lyrics doesn't have much to stand on from the outset. plus, they would have described me better, oh...maybe five years ago.

some of those racists sure are sexy, though. i rode past a certain tiny one in pink and blue last night on my way down alberta st. from the new seasons on 33rd. he was probably on his way home from the blind date at the dairy. there are probably pictures online. (read into that.)

i haven't been able to make any spectating appearances at the blind date series because of regular wednesday evening commitments (read into that if you can), and had a really awkward time later on trying to navigate a conversation about those commitments with the guy at the video store who may or may not have tried to engage me in flirtations in the past. "so, are there, you know, any pretty girls or guys in your dance class?" tell me, what should i read into that?

they can all have a ride after this evening. a man from the 509 is coming in a big truck to deliver the 'looking good in pants' trophy husband catcher. he'll be here after three. my shame far outweighs your scorn, i assure you.

get ready, trannies. it's pimping time: very, very literally construed.

HOW TO HOLD OUT FOR THE BIG PAYOFF

for all of you regular readers (thanks, winnipeg!) who are just finally reaching this post after having diligently read through every post you'd missed over the past couple of weeks: i understand. and that statement of understanding isn't meant to come off as patronizing or condescending. i'm not secretly hurt and begrudging. (as regular readers, you know that i make no secret of grudges.) i really do understand. i do the same thing. i apologize, too, because i should have given you this tidbit on friday when i first received the "publishers lunch" email that made it known to me; but, alas, that email sat unread in my inbox until today.

procrastination can be awful on the nerves, but i often wonder if the concomitant benefits aren't worth it. suddenly, from a molding pile of rote tasks that could have been dispensed with quickly in the moment -- and without much emotional strife -- you've produced a mountain of accomplishment and an invigorating (sometimes even motivating) sense of relief.* see? we really do understand each other. now that that's settled:

Borders has come up with a modest answer to Barnes & Noble's new PubIt and Amazon's established DTP program, announcing "Borders - Get Published" in association with start-up BookBrewer.com. The emphasis of the service is turning blogs into salable ebooks quickly and easily, though they charge a set-up fee and take 25 percent of the proceeds. (In this respect the service looks similar to plethora of sites that let you turn RSS feeds into mobile phone apps.) But they say it works for regular manuscripts as well.

so there. it's happening, and something like kind of how i said it had been/was/would. soon you'll be able to buy my book.

or not, because at the same time i was catching up on email i was reading a review of james franco's short story collection, palo alto, at salon.com. salon's franco coverage is as consistent and doting as the times' is of portland. still, the reviewer was unexpectedly praising. i've only read the story that got printed in esquire and didn't think much of it. james franco got a book deal because he's famous -- and pretty, a characteristic that the review uses to open onto a description of franco's special place in the contemporary writing world.

one of the reviewer's statements was, however, particularly intriguing. "'Palo Alto' is," he writes, "sad, sensitive, [and] concerned at all times with its authenticity and uncontaminated by plot (even, at times, incident)."

i won't belabor an explanation of my conclusion because, well, we have an understanding, you and i. suffice it to say that if prettiness and self-supporting authenticity are all it takes to have your book published by a major house, then screw the ebooks. i'm holding out for a print deal.

update: this article in the new yorker disagrees. a link to it arrived to me in an email on 10/8. i put off reading it until this afternoon.