why i love the internet

one day each year i am reminded why the internet was invented & what its exact purpose is.
that day is today: my mother's birthday.

may 2nd sneaks up on me every year which puts a daughter like myself, living half-way across the globe, at a severe disadvantage. the story repeats itself, as seasons tend to do: april comes and goes, and before i know it may 1st arrives like a cruel time-bomb, ticking the hours down to mom's birthday. in fact, it usually already is my mom's birthday.

but as quickly as the hint of panic comes, so it goes away.

because, like last year and the years before, i search the web for flower delivery in the southern Dutch town of Breda. and yet again, without fail, the order in my universe has been restored:

one long-stemmed rose for each year she's orbited around the sun.

happy birthday, mom!


==============================================
"Mom was a world all her own...
We were a quality of landscape, Mom and I."

--Scott Bradfield, The History of Luminous Motion
==============================================

Kelly's Birthday Wish

Please support my fundraising efforts for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

Kelly lost her father to pancreatic cancer 2 weeks ago. He had been diagnosed only 4 months ago. Think about that for a moment: 4 months. 4 months is a flash. Many of us have been unemployed for longer periods than that, have traveled for longer periods than that. Think about a semester in college. We're talking a very short period of time.

I can't even imagine what Kelly, Brad and Emily have gone through these past months, having to say goodbye to their dad in such a short amount of time. I'll be joining Kelly on her birthday for a fundraiser walk, in memory of her father: Mike Blanchard.

Please stop by my fundraiser page & join us if you want to, donate if you can:
tinyurl.com/cf6qob

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Much love

sam


ps: mike.linedef.com

TONIGHT! ANON SALON goes all Dee-Lite-Fool @ Whisper

ANON SALON goes all
Dee-Lite-Fool
A BeautiFOOl Departure

FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008

@ Whisper
535 Florida St. (@ Mariposa) in SF
9pm-4am!

They Serve Food as Well!

Suggestive Donations:
$10 before 10:00 /$15 fOOlhearted/ $20 alOOf
Dress elegant, whimsical & even romantic

www.anonsalon.com/april08

===================================================

downstairs
9:00 - 11:00 - Roy McNeil (Organik Music) - www.youtube.com/organikmusic
11:00 - 12:30 - Kid Whatever (Portland) - www.myspace.com/kidwhatever
12:30 - 2:00 - Lazy $lave (Flowbotics/ Anon) - profile.myspace.com/slavelazy
2:00 - 4:00 - Laird (LUSH/Ultra-Video Lounge) - www.djlaird.org

upstairs
10:30 - 12:00 - Maer (Psyphy Machine, OEM Radio) - www.oemradio.org/
12:00 - 1:30 - Shissla (House of Lotus, pARTicipate) - houseoflotus.tribe.net/
1:30 - 3:30 - Samira ( SisterSF, Seismic ) - sistersf.com/bios/samira.php

deck..
10:30 - Michael Olsen Flamenco Guitar
11:30 - Vatra (Firespinning)

TONIGHT! Third Annual FLIP YOUR LID!

Third Annual FLIP YOUR LID!
Black Rock Arts Foundation Benefit
THURSDAY, APRIL 17th
6:30pm - 2:00am (there are 3 parts to the evening; see below)
at supperclub
657 Harrison Street (between 2nd and 3rd)
San Francisco


Here are the full details:
tinyurl.com/3fouqu

Smoove and I will be tag-teaming from 1-2am.
Let me know if you want to go & I may just put you on my guestlist ;-)

BOOM!

Fri. 04/11: Break Beat Booty @ Temple, feat. Autobots, Carbon Community, Sister SF & more!

I hope you're ready to dance all night, because Temple has an all-star lineup planned for Friday's Break Beat Booty. The Autobots bring their bumping basslines and funktastic breaks while Carbon Community drops his glitched out, live breakbeats that you've come to love so much. Sister SF residents Melyss, Samira and Seraphim join Icon, Paul Hemming, Tone and DJ Von as they rock the rooms at Temple. (www.nitevibe.com)

Event: Break Beat Booty
DJs: The Autobots, Carbon Community, Icon, Paul Hemming, Melyss, Samira, Seraphim, Tone, DJ Von

3 rooms of dope sound | 21+ w/ID | 10PM-4AM

TEMPLE
540 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Info & Presales @ www.templesf.com

$10 presales available @ eventvibe.com/templesf
$15 @ door

Words

words accost me when i need them most. words strangle me when i want to be unstrangled. untangled. words silence when i wish to speak. the rest gets played out in metaphors. (history relies upon dissonance, upon discontinued familiarity, a fading into metaphors: the substitution of book for body; the colors that remind of him; the sounds that have become her)

metaphor: to substitute one thing for another. something vanishes from your life, and thus you fill the empty space with symbols. like a song that reminds you of someone, or a street name, a number, a certain time of day. things that are important to some, not to others. arbitrary concrete signifiers, with which we attempt to fill the vacancies in our lives.they are not the things themselves, but rather the memories they represent.

i struggle with words, because i cannot trust them. i know how unreliable language is; i speak too many of them to still believe in some absolute truth. culture shapes language. experience shapes language. also, language shapes us. i have learned that language itself is not truth. i have learned that everything outside of language is truth. and sometimes i still hate the fact that language cannot be pure. i hate that words are untrustworty, yet i rely on them so much.

metaphor: to substitute one thing for another. i see language as one of the most pervasive metaphors in my life. i substitute language for all the sacred things in my life that i cannot express. like love. like sadness. and this is why i write.

================================================
the magician
================================================

You continue to watch the disappearing act,
Determined to catch this moment between visible and gone.
The rabbit is gone. Soon another.
A pigeon dipped-blue nosedives into a scarf
And it is gone. The silk square with it.
The woman is gone, of course; she was a pretty brunette,
You already know this, just as you remind yourself how you’ll remember her
When you see a face with a similar complexion.

Over and over it will come,
The magician as awestruck as you,
He can’t believe it either,
As pettingzoo goats, potbellied pigs,
Carousel herds vanish from his stage.
Finally three grown elephants.

Perhaps you’ve heard
that he does not sleep anymore, the magician,
because one night he woke up to his answering machine
flashing, and a voice that said

"I no longer love you. And please return my things to their original state.
Return the swallows to their canvas and silence my violin.
I long to play it myself again.
Please return my pillows to their normal size and take the bananatree away.
Fruit cannot be grown in diningrooms."

He’ll let you in for free if you bring your videocamera,
If he may borrow your tapes, and he will watch them all.
He will rewind them, pause them night after night, he does not blink,
Because like you, he can’t believe it either,
That somewhere between his gloved fingers hums a system that is beyond him,
The blossoming of being into absence,
And the reason why,
Over and over again,
They are not the things themselves but the departed spaces that seem more real.

--sam

----------------------------
image taken from a Paul Van Dyk album cover: Words

Tomorrow 3/19: Qool vs Sister SF!

From www.qoolsf.com

Qool vs. Sister SF

The SF underground scene would not be the same without the amazing Sister SF DJs.

Lineup:
5-6pm Amber
6-645pm Silencefiction
645-730pm Samira
730-815pm Icon
815-9pm Gil
9-945pm Jondi

111 Minna Street @ 2nd Street
San Francisco

5:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Free before 6pm. $5 after 6pm., 21+

Hope to see you there!

Gratitude

at this exact moment i am grateful for:

* a good night's rest last night, which helped me kick ass today
* finishing up my 2007 taxes
* staying on track with building my new savings account, putting away 20% of my earnings each paycheck
* my job, my colleagues & the growth we're experiencing
* kelly, who just plain rocks my socks off--she's such a wonderful friend
* my relationship with todd, from which i continue to grow and learn
* todd, who continues to crack me open with his tiniest of gestures
* my colleague chris, who left the company last friday after 6 1/2 years--
his absence this week really crystallized for me how important it is to love your job:
over the past 4 years i've spent more time with some of my colleagues than with my family
and even some friends. we spend a large percentage of lives at work.
please do something you enjoy!
* my cat. she is perfect.
* mateo, for knowing where to find me.
* belen, for reaching out & being so wonderfully up front and open in her communications
(whether it concerns beer & pizza, or deep and personal matters)
* luscious (no particular reason. she just makes me happy)

i know there's more, but this is a good start.

sam

Can you recommend a travel agent? And: who has been to Iceland?

i want to go to Iceland!
i've been obsessed with the idea of traveling to Iceland &
it's going to happen this year.

who has been to Iceland? tell me stories!
give me advise!

also, who can recommend a travel agent?

i want to visit my family during the same trip,
so this will be a multi-destination affair & i realize
i do not have the patience to do the flight searching/booking myself.

i just want to go to Iceland :-)

thanks for any help.

sam