Good:

Climbing up on Bernal Hill. I'd seen it looming on the south side of my neighborhood, glowing in the sun, but I'd never been there. Now I have, and I got gravel and grass all over my hands too.

Seeing 2001 in the Castro Theatre. The dapper little guy who plays the Wurlitzer before the show played "The Blue Danube" and "A Bicycle Built for Two." Then, in the sad computer-room scene near the end, HAL 9000's many components reminded me of the Wurlitzer, which conjured up a happier version of the story: HAL takes early retirement, learns to relax and becomes a musical instrument.

Dr. Hal Robins, illustrator extraordinaire for the Church of the SubGenius (and various comic strips that always made me wonder who did that), reciting Edward Gorey, William Blake, and a verse about how you can't go out in Ireland "for fear of little men"—the dangerous elves who have watchdog frogs.

Admiring some somewhat drunkenly improvised bluegrass.

Discovering two beautiful underground publications, one new (The Free Press Death Ship) and one old (The Match!). I'll try to say more about these later.

Being scolded at work for goofing off on the computer too much, and realizing I really want to try to stop spending so much time on the computer.

Remembering how to speak French, a little.

Not dying of embarrassment after being introduced to a bunch of strangers as "a nurse and a hottie."

Bad:

I sure do need some sleep, and the world is still all wrong.

If you like pictures, I took some pictures.

1. Funniest recent headline to a serious story, in the SF Bay Times: U.S. Supreme Court Hears Sodomy Plea. (Imaginary subhead: Court States It "Doesn't Know Appellant Well Enough")

2. Best philosophical clip-art dinosaur comic: www.qwantz.com.

3. Best parody of newspaper filler, from an East Bay columnist, showing how to write a column about a town where you don't live:

At the site of the old Ebbets Field, which is now occupied by something else, a few old-timers gather to remember the Dodgers of yore. "Reese, Robinson, Snider, Labine, Furillo—how can we forget these guys?" asked a composite character.

.... The old neighborhoods are changing. Old gives way to new. There is dying, but also there is being born. The pulse of life in Brooklyn, like the throb of the subways underneath your feet, provides a rich tapestry of emotions.

My pal Susan has the whole story on the 1906 earthquake commemoration that we went to yesterday at five in the morning. It was just charming as hell, and it makes me feel a little more like I really live here.

I don't know if I needed to know this, but now I know the name of the world's laziest artist...

At the San Francisco Center for the Book, there's an exhibit of artists' books called Inside Cover. For those who don't know the scene, by artists' books I mean handmade paper constructions that usually have all kinds of intricate goofy physical elements; the content might be a poem, drawings, or most often a collage of found images hand-printed in some unusual way. They're usually in very limited editions or one of a kind, and, like comic books, they sometimes end up in museums where the viewer then has the frustrating experience of not being able to touch them.

Anyway, the exhibit was deliberately all over the place, with some things that were basically really beautiful handmade books: my favorite of these was a fur-covered story about the narrator's memories of hunting, with flowing illustrations of him wrestling each kind of animal in an ambiguous embrace—some that were sort of books, but with elaborate attachments that made them more like kits: the hilarious Office Orchestra, which contains a bunch of paper fasteners, ballpoint pens, etc., with instructions on how to play music on them—and some that were games with some small printed element. Also a sad little computer installation where you could watch a funny little animation of string for several minutes and try to figure out how the accompanying book was supposed to help you "explore the on-screen imagery." I almost always hate curator's notes—everyone's always supposed to be exploring or redefining the dichotomy between Reader and Schnauzer, or creating a dialogue between their ass and their elbow, or something—and the explanations of these works were no exception, so I just ignored the text and enjoyed all the things people had made.

So, anyway, who is the laziest artist in the world? Les Bicknell. Rather than make anything at all, he invited viewers to buy an E-mail address through which they can have a conversation with him—about what, he doesn't say. This then becomes a "dialogue between audience and artist," which, if you squint really hard or knock yourself on the head first, might seem sort of like a book, with the Internet as "the binding." In other words, "my show-and-tell project is that I didn't do a project."

I hope there's no one so bored as to really consider paying to have a conversation with someone so averse to risk and effort. I say if you're going to be that kind of conceptual smart-ass, the least you can do is to lock yourself in a wooden crate or something. (Thanks to Thoughtcat for that last one.)

Poster on the wall in the Customer Service department at my latest temp job:

Earn Performance Standards bucks by exhibiting the 5-10 Rule throughout November.

The 5-10 Rule:

I will greet all customers who are within 5 feet with a warm and friendly smile and (when appropriate) introduce myself by giving my name, department and purpose.

I will make eye contact and smile at others when they are 10 feet away.

So that's why all those people are so strange. Thank goodness it's only "when appropriate"...