Happy summer!

So Christmas is obviously the Christian response to the winter solstice... and Easter to the spring equinox... does that make Father's Day some sort of weird co-opted summer solstice celebration? Something to do with the patriarchy maybe? And where does that leave us for the autumnal equinox? Columbus Day? The celebration of the death and dying part of the grand cycle? Frankly I'm a bit confused.

I did my part for the war effort today. Filled up my tank at "USA Gas." $45, and that's a bargain these days! "Only" $3.15/gallon. I mean, I'm not an old man, but I clearly, clearly remember gas being under a buck a gallon. Not that I'm complaining, really, because the hike in the gas prices is at least in part energizing the alternative fuel revolution. Still. As always, sucks to be poor. I wonder how much it would cost to feed an Iraqi family for a day... You gotta figure $45 would feed a pretty good-sized group over there. Do you think it costs more to kill one Iraqi, or feed a whole family?

Oh well. Throw my 45 bucks on the pile. Maybe I can inscribe a tiny message on the head of the bolt that I paid for. I can find solace in my apology when the warhead my bolt is screwed into is dropped on a hospital.

So much is going on! I have two, count'em TWO, new jobs. I'm working as a copy/content editor on a brand-new start-up magazine about dance and movement. I'm getting in on the ground floor, I'm really the first editor they've hired so I'm getting to do a lot of fun stuff I never would have had the chance to do before. I'm editing some of the pieces they've collected, and am also conceptualizing a sort of revisionist style guide. Guerrilla grammar, if you will. I've decided to throw myself into it as a writing project, devote some of my own time to it, as well. I'll tell you more about it as it develops.

My second job is real mellow and simple; just helping out this activist/historian/author/poet in her home. She just had a stroke, so the point is to do all the household types of tasks so she can just focus on her work. Cooking, cleaning, stuff like that. It's only two days a week, and it's in Berkeley, so it gets me out of the house and into a more vibrant part of the area. I finish there at 1, and then have the rest of the afternoon to bum around Berkeley, or jump on the BART into SF or something.

So things are lining up. The schedule is starting to take shape. I'm excited to see how things progress over the summer. And, it's a priority to write more, to post to the blog a few times a week, so hopefully the gap from my last entry til now will prove to be the exception rather than the rule. We'll see...