drawn in by the irresistibly seductive headline “Black Holes: The Deadliest Force in the Universe,” i interrupt my Very Important Email (you shall never know what it is) to click on the link to an abc news story that seemed to promise intrigue and escape.

intrigue and escape, no; hilarity and good times, yes. peppered throughout the article are onion-esque gems including:

“In a contest between a black hole and the Earth,” Tyson says, “Earth would lose. It’s that simple.”

the “Tyson” in question being, of course, none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of nyc’s Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.

which of course brings back lovely childhood memories watching the appearance of rapid receding of stars & planets & such, & laser shows with pink floyd’s “the wall.”

ah, planetaria. how i miss them.

now i want me some planetarium goodness.

today i take a break from the grotesquely egomaniacal throughline of whiskeyandacigarette.org to madly honor a select few of the people whose paths i have crossed in the last 24 hours.

in no particular order of importance:

robynn takayama, aka nonogirl. that’s nonogirl dot com to you, bitches. get it right. robynn’s an audio producer and many-splendored being who had to wake up way too early on a saturday morning and lead a workshop i had coerced her into doing for kearny street workshop as part of the making art, making change conference at fort mason. this was a lovely session called now hear this: web audio for dummies. even though the woman was sick the last 5 days, and our session got pushed back several hours later, she soldiered through and edified the minds of many conference-goers. i salute you, woman.

nguyen qui duc. i don’t think he has a website, but he has been the host of kqed’s pacific time for many years now and will be leaving the country in october. but not before having a solo show of an array of some of his work at togonon gallery on 77 geary. the man does quite a lot of artwork in quite a lot of media, and is also a writer & poet, radio host, musician, and many other things, and will most likely make you feel inadequate and unaccomplished by comparison. he recently had a nice little article in the chron. link here. and attend his opening at togonon on wed 9/6, 6 – 9pm. or something like that. if reception-goers are fortunate, he’ll have his army of robots and will perform a wrist-slitting-inducing song on his acoustic guitar.

kevin b. chen. that middle initial’s hella important so don’t let it pass you by.  chen works at intersection for the arts  (the oldest alternative arts space in san francisco, natch) as the program director of many programs at said arts space, and is also the creator of beautiful visual worlds. he’s getting some work up at 49 geary starting the first thursday of september 2006. go buy it if you can afford it; i can’t. perhaps i will try to steal some shit.

two of his pieces are also on display at kearny street through 8/31/06, and here’s a link that tells you a bit about him.

derek chung. the man is a graphic designer, web developer, web designer, photographer & visual artist, black belt, interim managing director of ksw, co-founder/exec of tactile pictures, builder/designer of whiskeyandacigarette.org and other websites, and is kind enough to not impale me even though i probably make his workplace messy and irritate him all the time with questions i could answer myself if i thought for two more seconds before the words left my mouth. anyway, he has derekchung dot org if you want some more information.

i have not yet finished my list of past 24 hours peoples, but i have to go get my laundry before it is stolen, as i was warned might happen by the actor in training (his words, not mine) who works at this cafe. which cafe you ask?

ah ha: there’s the rub.

parabolic aluminized reflector. in case you were wondering.

observations:

1. they’ve stopped reporting total deaths in lebanon since israel began attack about 4wks ago. usually, it’s buried at the very end of an article emphasizing israeli civilian deaths and naming a mother and child killed (they never name the lebanese who die. because it takes longer to identify multiple charred bodies, natch). last time total lebanese dead were discussed within even the first 2 or 3 paragraphs of an article it was about 400 dead; that was two weeks ago. today it’s estimated at 900, mostly civilian (again, natch). israeli deaths around 80, most soldiers.

i respectfully refrain from stating the obvious. i’ve been hemorrhaging integrity lately and am reluctant to piss myself off further.
2.  on a different note (and this one is actually somewhat laden with humor, if in a somewhat subtle way): while filling out an online petition [something i do when feeling particularly useless] i noticed that a prefix/title was a required field–meaning, you can’t just be First Name, Last Name (possibly even First, Middle Initial, Last, if you’re feeling whimsical); you must be (according to a drop down menu that appears to be in an ascending order of sorts [mind you this is a workingassets page]) exactly one (1) of the four (4) following options:
a) Ms.

b) Mrs.

c) Mr.

d) Dr.

i’ve always been pissed by having to be either a ms. or mrs., and wish there were simply an M. XXXX for all peoples, and they’d abolish the ms/mrs/mr.  but such flights of fancy were buried with feminism, which is now an ugly word. anyway, in case you’re wondering why you can’t sign an online petition on a progressive website without claiming one of the above four titles: well, it’s the law, bitches. following the handy asterisk near the “select title” bit i find the following note:

“* – Congress now requires that constituents include their title when contacting them online.”

holy shit. congress felt the need to pass an act of congress about this title business. so none of that gender ambiguity, y’hear? you’re either a married woman, an unmarried woman or woman who doesn’t feel like identifying as married, a man, or a doctor of some sort.