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Did you know that you can get scented trash bags now? I bought a box of Glad Tall Kitchen Quick-Tie® last weekend, unwitting that they were the Fresh Scent kind. All week I had been noticing a very pleasant scent enveloping the kitchen. By this morning I was convinced that a magic fairy stops by every night and cleans the kitchen, her elfin scent trailing behind. But after sticking my nose in the trash can, followed by a heavy-hearted study of the Glad box, I had to concede that once more, commercialism had created an illusion of true domestic bliss.

.: posted by Vera   6/30/2002



I took a stroll through Golden Gate Park this morning. I can't believe I don't do this more often. Golden Gate Park is right across the street! Today it looked especially inviting with the early morning sun painting glades inbetween the plants and trees. So I dove in. The park had a very distinct fragrance, like exotic herbs and spices. If somebody knows where this might come from at this time of the year, please let me know and pardon my ignorance. The smell stayed on and around me even after I got home. It prompted me to cook up a spicy storm in the kitchen, which resulted in yellow curry with vegetables and extra turmeric.

.: posted by Vera   6/29/2002



Seeing all the pretty WTC pictures on this girl's site has inspired me to post my own. It was taken almost exactly a year ago.

.: posted by Vera   6/29/2002



I got myself a nifty little scanner today. And I mean little literally. It's tiny. That's because it's a photo scanner. Photos are all I have ever used a scanner for anyway. And furthermore, this little one lends itself very well to be kept in a San Francisco apartment.
Soon I'll be basking in the self-reinforcing glory of online photo albums. Not that I have never had any pictures online. But the last scanner I bought, only lived for three months. And I didn't want to buy a new scanner until the dead one would have been obsolete and beyond - which is now. I was devoid of a working scanner for almost two years. I have a lot of catching up to do.

.: posted by Vera   6/28/2002



I just love all this ruckus about the Pledge of Allegiance being unconstitutional. Love it. Hopefully the dollar bill-imposed IN GOD WE TRUST will be chucked next. This is the 21st century for crying out loud. It's about time we officialy acknowledged that anthrocentric religion is dead, and that alternative spiritual existences, such as yoga, veganism, raving, or whatever else floats your boat, have taken over.

.: posted by Vera   6/27/2002



My boyfriend and I met on June 19, 1999. He wrote a poem about that first encounter.

At home, we erected little communities
Under smiling sheets
With the ebb & flows of hearts and chests and bones
The stuff of love
I saw a clean-shaven boy sedated by the
breezy flutter of a tawny lash, a green brow
A 'rave' w/ the letters switched around
At home we were miles from Jesus, from Fate
And there we stretched with dripping postures,
The sleepy sprawl of a leg, the soft small of a back
She was a babe in arms, an ecstatic girlfriend
With breath, pacific and sweet and human
My mother's curls
She asked me to eat her but I could only bite
And I heard the broken moan of a fractured lollipop
Over the jagged hum of jungle rhythms
To which she danced as if in a dream of
Butterflies and sunflowers, Antennas and infancy.
Those minty triangles sure got me off, man
And I dig this dangerous romance w/ an elastic hour
The thump of a 6 o'clock reality on the horizon
Stay here child and rub and kiss and shake those curls
Just a little more, a little, a little bit.
Listen close, last night I saw peace in the still-life
Of bodies in motion, in playful green brows,
At a 'rave' w/ the letters switched around.

.: posted by Vera   6/27/2002



Now I'm going to tell you a "What a small world" story. Ready? There was this girl I knew in high school. Her name was Anna Flores. She was in 10th grade and I was in 12th grade and we rode the same bus to school. I absolutely adored her style. I especially remember one outfit of hers: She was wearing a bright green and white 50's style polyester dress, thick neon green knee-high socks and heavy black boots, and her black hair was adorned symmetrically by two bright green plastic barrettes. She was a thriftstore-shopping diva, and I idolized her style. Mind you, I dressed pretty similarly at the time, but she inspired new ideas. After 12th grade I went back to Germany and didn't return to the High Desert where we went to high school until two years later. By this time she had had a son, and we didn't get to hang out much anymore.

Shortly after moving to San Francisco last month, she popped into my head. To my chagrin, I didn't even remember her name. The next day I ran into her on Haight Street. That's right. She was there with her husband and son, visiting from Orange County, CA where they now live. No green dress this time. In fact, not one funky piece of clothing on her. I think I freaked her out when I started gushing about how I had just thought about her the day before. And my scraggly hairdo and immature necklace probably didn't help much either. But that's okay because I know she would have liked it in '94.

.: posted by Vera   6/26/2002



So the apartment we live in is a furnished sublet. Since both of us hate < make that > are scared shitless of < /make that > flying, we couldn't come out here to look at any places before we moved, so we thought that a low-commitment short-term furnished place would be easiest. We need to find a new place to live by September 1st. Neighborhoods like Western Addition, Hayes Valley, and The Haight are still in the running, just because we always drive through them on our way east and away from our sleepy district. Just like B. Smiley, a local DJ we met at a club one night, said, "the people [in the Richmond] are generally not as interesting." And I want to be interesting, damnit!

And how did east suddenly become more attractive than west anyway? Compare West LA to East LA. Think West Germany vs. East Germany ca. 1961-1989. Seems like the west side of things tends to fare better on the habitability scale. But now that I live in San Francisco, the further west you live, the worse. Outer Sunset and Outer Richmond, nonono, you don't want to live there. That's too close to the OCEAN. What am I missing here?

.: posted by Vera   6/26/2002



Are you allowed to leave comments on somebody else's blog page if you don't have a (public) blog yourself? What's the commenting etiquette? I've been wondering that for a while. I think there might be some serious discrimination going on against non-bloggers. Whenever I leave a comment somewhere (which I don't do very often out of fear of being shunned), I just leave www.mediasparkles.com as my URL because, you know, my blog is still underground. And I just know that people think I don't count without a blog.

.: posted by Vera   6/25/2002



I just saw a woman with a ski boot on one of her feet. What an interesting way to cure a broken ankle. I wonder if it's a doctor's order? Or maybe I'm just oblivious to an emerging fad.

.: posted by Vera   6/25/2002



I hate to admit it but the world is always one step ahead of me. Here is proof:

    In 1994 I thought that it would be really neat if Volkswagen came out with newer, more futuristic and streamlined versions of the bug and the Karmann Ghia. Then, in early 1995, I saw the first prototype of Concept 1, now known as the New Beetle, on the cover of an auto magazine. They read my mind, I thought.
    In the spring of 1998 I was working on a project for an economics class in which I had to present and market a product I made up. I opted for computer hardware that comes in shiny, brightly colored cases, in stark contrast to the usual grey or black shades that computers and monitors had been made of theretofore. Guess what happened shortly thereafter? Sure enough, the iMac took the world by storm. Apple, also, must have read my mind, I thought.
    Last year, in the midst of the Reality TV boom, I thought that we should take it even further: We need thousands of different individuals whose lives can be followed around on TV, so that each of us will be able to pick someone we can relate to and watch all the time. Recently I have come to realize that this is already happening, but not on TV. It's happening on the web! Blogs, stupid! And blogs have much more substance and tutelage to offer, too.

Because I have a habit of thinking about certain cultural and commercial phenomena right before I see them take effect, I used to think that I would make a fine market research analyst. But really, taking into account R&D and the like, I was always obnoxiously late, wasn't I?

.: posted by Vera   6/25/2002



Just when I thought that I was definitely and unequivocally from this planet, I see this. I guess there is hope that I might be from another dimension.

.: posted by Vera   6/24/2002



You know what I have noticed? I have been happier since I started this blog. It's really a great activity. Much better than the passivity with which I roamed the web before.

But I'm hesitant to tell my friends about it and invite them to read. I'm afraid of creating all sorts of subtexts in their minds that might stir up some resentment. You never know what might tickle somebody funny. I think I'm just going to wait and see how this thing evolves and in the meantime keep it underground.

.: posted by Vera   6/23/2002



I listened to Future Breaks FM again this weekend, but it wasn't as good. It was too jazzy and soul-y. Not into that. I like my beats hard and anxiety-inducing. Unhuman.

.: posted by Vera   6/23/2002



Ever since I was 12, I have been infatuated with the Dutch language. One of the things I really miss about not living in Germany anymore is the proximity to Holland. I only lived about 30 miles from the border. One time I studied all the food labels around the house to edify my Dutch vocabulary. (In Germany, all food labels have the ingredients listed in several different languages.) I wrote each word down with its German equivalent, thus compiling my very own and very limited German-Dutch (food?) dictionary. The thing with Dutch is that it is so similar to German that I can understand most of it, though I can't speak or write it.

So I was reminded by my longstanding neighborly infatuation the other night when two boys passed me walking down the street who were conversing in Dutch. And today a flash of genius struck me, if I may say so myself. I'm going to make a Dutch blog one of my daily reads! Yes, I am! I don't know which blog that's going to be yet but I'm going to hand-pick one in hopes of cultivating my understanding of the language and rekindling my love affair with everything Dutch.

.: posted by Vera   6/23/2002



What compelled me to start a blog? One word: attention. Hey, I'm a Taurus with ascendant Leo, what do you expect?

.: posted by Vera   6/23/2002



Why do DJ's (and many other musical artists) always feel the need to mention that they have been around music all their lives? In almost every DJ's biography you'll see phrases like "grew up on the piano", "played classical violion for eight years", "father had a massive record collection", etc. Just once I would like to see a DJ who admits "I started going to raves in 1998, and I really liked the music, so I bought some records and started spinning. Sure, I also had a short stint playing the oboe in junior high but that's not why I'm a DJ today."

.: posted by Vera   6/22/2002



Missions accomplished. Last night I signed up for commenting with Enetation, and they are in working condition - yippie! Afterwards I went dancing and got my groove on to this girl's set. Yes yes. It was very good: hard breaks, huge bass, and, of course, some funky elements. Then, this morning, I was able to add an RSS feed to my site thanks to this website. The little orange XML button down there is proof. But the weekend has only just begun! What am I going to do now?

.: posted by Vera   6/22/2002



Weekend

Thank God it's Friday! My plans for this weekend? Get a commenting system working for this here bug blog and set up an XML-RSS feed. Hopefully I'll also be able to get some dancing in between the geeking out sessions. I might just wear these or this or both!

.: posted by Vera   6/21/2002



So I have recently participated in a long and quite popular thread at We're Here. The thread is all about building pretty molecules with (almost) nothing but code. The posts by tyard aka Todd Yard bore the most fruit. In one of the more recent posts, tyard suddenly referred to me as he. "What?" I thought. I took it as a compliment. After all, we were talking about some pretty hardcore coding, 3D Math, etc. Although by taking it as a compliment, I'm just perpetuating the stereotype. So I take it back.

Tyard is the best, and nicest, 3D coder I've ever "met." He even once put up a complete 3D engine for anybody to play with. I'm surprised he hasn't become one of the really famous Flashers whose names you see mentioned all over the place, if you're a geek, that is. He really knows his shit. I expect he'll eventually contribute to something like Flash Math Creativity.

.: posted by Vera   6/21/2002



A book I have read recently is Generation Golf. My sister gave it to me for my birthday. Thanks Bianca! It's a German book and I read it in German. Generation Golf is basically the German equivalent of Generation X. It covers the same birth years 1965 through 1975. Technically I was born a year late to be part of it but I still consider myself a member. Of Generation X. I mean Generation Golf. I mean, I just don't know anymore.
Anyway, the book was written by Florian Illies who was born in 1971. The language he uses is distinguished by a very matter-of-factly kind of humor, which was amusing. Each chapter title has been taken directly from various ad copy for the VW Golf. What's funny is that none of them sounded familiar to me. The first part of the book where Illies explains what elementary school and the first years of secondary school were like for Generation Golf, I could very much relate to. I enjoyed being pointed out certain things that were so obviously present in my childhood but that one generally doesn't ever mention, for instance that beige smelly paper with purple writing on it that teachers used to pass out before the age of the postmodern copy machine. It was very Seinfeldian that way. But when he got to the part where Generation Golf becomes an adult and has its own apartment and job, he lost me. I just didn't recognize myself in the people he described anymore. Illies postulates that the only opinions our generation has are those on body image and interior decorating. Hey! We're not *that* shallow! Sure, I wish I looked like the Neopet down there but I also care about other stuff. I care about programming! I care about politics! I care about my VW! I know I'm kind of on thin ice here. He probably has a point there but I do think he took it a little to far. At one point he talked about the Love Parade and how that's the perfect manifestation of the extent of our generation's body worship and narcissism. But I think that especially something like the Love Parade is less about the individual than it is about the community. That was not a good example. But I'm confused as to the origin of my own disagreement with the author towards the end of the book. Is it because I'm just one of the generation's black sheep? Or is it, rather, that I have spent most of my adult years in another country and that's why I don't relate to the adult version of Generation Golf anymore?

.: posted by Vera   6/20/2002



I just got an email from Limited Too announcing that they were giving away plushy Disco aishas. This reminded me that I once made a Neopet myself. Here it is: isn't she cute? Her name is sylphur. I was surprised that name hadn't been taken yet. It's such a perfect mixture of fairy and chemicals. Did I mention I wish I looked like her?

.: posted by Vera   6/20/2002



Can you drink coffee everyday and still be healthy? I've been wondering that for a while. I wonder if all my working out, all my eating vegetables, all my avoiding soda and hamburgers, and all my drinking lots of water are actually being cancelled out everyday by that one yummy coffee I have in the morning. I tried to quit once by drinking tea instead of coffee two mornings in a row. The horror! I was depressed, I was unmotivated, I didn't get anything done at work! What did I learn from this experience? Don't ever try that again. Well, and that I had a habit. But I don't think I'm going to kick that habit anytime soon because frankly, I'm attached to it, and so is my boyfriend. Our relationship has been based on having that coffee in the morning, first at Starbucks, then at home, and now sometimes at Café Abir on Fulton and Divisadero. And plus, I always get so excited when I come across a coffee reference. For example, a while ago there was this TV commercial - I don't even remember for which company - with the motto "Wouldn't it be great if coffee break lasted all day long?", and there was this skinny guy walking around the streets with a coffee mug, and he kept running into other people with coffee mugs, and everybody was friendly, and... And the authors of some of my favorite non-fiction books didn't trifle coffee either. Steve Webster in his book Foundation PHP for Flash on page 413 yells:

!! COFFEE BREAK !!
If you're looking for a convenient place to stop and have a rest then this is it. I'm having one anyway!

In Flash and XML - A Developer's Guide, the last line of the authors' Acknowledgements reads:

And for their critical contribution to this project: the makers of fine caffeinated beverages all over the world.

Like I said, I always get all giddy when I see references like these. Hm. Let's see. I'm sure a heroin addict would just beam with excitement even at the sight of the word "hero." I guess there is no denying that I'm addicted. And that can't possibly be healthy, can it?

.: posted by Vera   6/19/2002



Four eyes

I got my first pair of glasses when I was 4 years old. At 13, I traded in my glasses for a pair of contacts because I couldn't bear being called four-eyes anymore. Now that the dot-com boom has made it more than acceptable to be geeky, I'm back to glasses. They're more comfortable anyway. Recently I got a new pair of contacts after having worn my glasses exclusively for several months. The first day I wore my contacts, my boyfriend teasingly called me two-eyes. Aww?

.: posted by Vera   6/19/2002



Why is it that I always end up driving a car with a "foreign" license plate? The whole time I lived in Virginia I was driving a car with a California license plate. Now that I'm back in California, I'm driving a car with a DC license plate. I can always just feel the person behind me thinking "Oh, she's not from around here, that's why she drives that way."

.: posted by Vera   6/19/2002



Can I just say how sick I am of slow motion sequences in commercials? It's getting a little out of hand. A lot of times the people in slow motion aren't even doing anything. I could sort of understand it when you have people running around the beach with a dog or something. But this new breed of character now just, like, smiles statically and blinks once. Do we really need that in slo-mo? It so does not tingle me. But maybe if I was 45 and had a few kids it would? I don't know. But I doubt it. Come up with something fresh and new, you genius adversiting executives.

.: posted by Vera   6/19/2002



Please bear with me while I shamelessly promote (in the words of Cameron Diaz and Mike Myers - who remembers?) a personal project I'm working on. check it out
It's an electronic music quiz that I've coded. The thing is that I need more trivia. That's why I have included a form where people can submit multiple choice questions they make up. I figured that would be fun for people. But maybe I was wrong. Hm. Maybe what I need to set up is some kind of incentive. Not even my brother has contributed any questions. Isn't there anybody out there who loves electronic music as much as I do? If you do, come here and share the wealth. Register (because I would like to know who you are), sign in, and then click on "Submit question." Please?

.: posted by Vera   6/19/2002



My IQ may be above average but I've also been known to be extremely dense in certain contexts. Here are some examples.

Example 1. I used to think that my mom and dad were brother and sister because they wore similar glasses and thus kind of looked alike.

Example 2. In 1981 I was in the hospital with a weird neural disease. My whole body was paralyzed for a few weeks. While I was lying in my hospital bed one day, I started up a conversation with another patient in a neighboring room by shouting back and forth through the walls. I asked her if she could come over to my room so I could see her. She said no because she couldn't walk. I said "You can't walk?" She said "That's right." My reply: "Are you a baby?"

Example 3. Until 8th grade I didn't realize that Berlin was right in the middle of East Germany. I thought that it was right on the border between East and West. Finally I understood why it was about 8 hours' worth of driving away from my hometown while all other West German cities were closer than that. Not until 8th grade! By then the communistic core was already starting to tremble.

Example 4. In 1991 I was telling a classmate about a party I had gone to the night before at which I had consumed a few beers. He asked me if they were serving beer on tab. I said that I didn't know.

Example 5. It wasn't until 2001 that I realized that the sun was really a star that was just much closer to our planet than all the other stars.

.: posted by Vera   6/18/2002



The thing I miss the most about being a teenager is looking up to and admiring other, usually slightly older, girls. I always used to watch and admire other girls from afar and develop infatuations with them. It's not that I was sexually attracted to them. I was girlishly attracted to them. Now I don't come across many girls anymore that I feel that way about, especially not older ones. Sometimes it seems that each girl is inevitably bound for a life of Good Housekeeping subscriptions, low-fat diets, and 401K's. Or maybe it's just because I'm more comfortable in my own skin now that I don't go around admiring other girls from afar anymore. The emphasis, by the way, is on "afar." Once I actually got to know one of those girl goddesses, the infatuation slowly ebbed, although never completely of course. It's like falling in love. After a while, the boy actually seems human.

So sometimes I really miss the presence of such a girl. Steffi, Ivonne, Almut - wo seit Ihr alle geblieben? It seemed that nowadays the only people I'd ever want to trade places with are 18-year-old candy raver girls. But then, in February of this year, I stumbled upon arielmeadow's website while checking out a book at amazon.com. Now here's a girl I can adore from afar again. She is a year older than me; she's smart and eloquent; she --like me-- still raves even though she's over, say, 22 (I haven't met too many people who do); she seems to --like me-- like a lot of things that 16-year-olds are into; and on top of that she is great at social commentary and seems to lead a very healthy lifestyle. What's not to look up to? Ariel gives me hope that more halcyon days lie ahead in the future of womankind.

.: posted by Vera   6/17/2002



Recognition

The other day I drove around exploring the city like I often do. This time I took Market all the way South where it suddenly gets a little windier and you have a great view of downtown. I saw this intersection and thought "That looks familar. Isn't this...?" And sure enough. It was Diamond Heights Boulevard. The first time I ever came to San Francisco I stayed with somebody who lived in Diamond Heights. This was in October of 1993 and I was a 17-year-old exchange student staying in Pasadena, CA for a year. I lived with two sisters, Cindy, then 36, and Geraldine, then 30, and Cindy's two little kids, Lubabah and Abdullah. One time Geraldine had to go to San Francisco for business and I got to come with. What a great visit that was. We were staying with Geraldine's friend Anne Marie. Shortly after I took a left on Diamond Heights Boulevard this time, I spotted the Safeway where Anne Marie had bought me some Peanut Butter Captain Crunch because she didn't keep any cereal around. Hehe, what a great memory. I even think I found Anne Marie's old building after driving around the serpentine roads of Diamond Heights for a while.

I have nothing but good memories of that first visit in 1993. One day I took a bunch of buses to a bunch of thrift stores and bought a bunch of freaked-out clothes. That was my element then. Some of those finds I still wear today. That day I also saw a scene that totally fascinated me. It was around Market and Grant, I believe. There was a middle-aged man passing out what I took to be religious flyers and perhaps even preaching something. Right next to him was a younger guy with a mohawk who was incessantly shouting obscenities at the man-with-a-divine-mission. Fuck you! Fuck you! [pause] Ey, fuck you! There was something about that scene that made me feel alive. It might be the diversity it represented. I left thinking that I would like to live in San Francisco one day. And look at me now!

.: posted by Vera   6/17/2002



What is with the compulsory California dichotomy? I would like to unsubscribe, please! Why can't I like both San Francisco and Los Angeles if I want to? I happen to love both cities and would be very happy living in either one. In Southern California the dichotomy is not as conspicuous. People there generally have a benevolent and appreciative attitude towards their Northern counterpart. But don't mention that you like Southern California to any devoted resident of San Francisco - they'll throw up right in your face. Even in Virginia I didn't meet as much prejudice towards LA as I do in Northern California. I would like to see a little more openmindedness and tolerance. Isn't that what San Francisco is all about anyway?

.: posted by Vera   6/17/2002



Today I got a snail-mail letter from a very old friend of mine. Yey, that was so exciting. Her name is Mone, which is short for Simone and pronounced 'mo-nuh, and like most people I went to elementary school with, she still lives in Germany. Her last name is Hillenkötter. How is that for a wacky German name? Love it.
Mone was my best friend from approximately 3rd to 8th grade. We lived on the same street. Towards the beginning of 8th grade we started growing apart and hanging out with separate groups of people. Then in 11th grade we gave our friendship another feeble shot but it didn't quite work out. I just wasn't cool enough for her, and I think we both knew it, which is why I still somehow feel inferior to her even after all these years. The day before I got on the plane that took me to the U.S. for good, I went over to her house to say good-bye, and I haven't seen her since. Within the past year she's appeared in a lot of my dreams. It was almost as if she and our forgotten friendship were haunting me, and I'm not sure why. The most memorable dream about her I had on Valentine's Day this year. In it, we were in our 20's but still best friends. She said something like "I know you best because I've been there from the beginning." And for some reason that felt so comforting. For a few days after that I felt really close to her, and I so wanted to talk to her about our lives as semi-adults. So I wrote her a letter. And now she has finally written back. Hey, better late than never. And her handwriting still looks exactly the same.

.: posted by Vera   6/17/2002



The Word of the Day today? Aesthete. Yeah, that's helpful. I can't say that this doesn't boost my linguistic ability. Now, instead of having to say the cumbersome "Aesthetics are important to me," I can simply say "I'm an aesthete." Much more concise. Thanks, dictionary.com, for always being there for me. I am an aesthete. So much so that I often experience pain looking at the skin on my forehead.

.: posted by Vera   6/16/2002



I sure am prolific on my first day of blogging. Well, it's Sunday. And I've got lots of catching up to do. I had been thinking about blogging for so long but never actually gotten my act together. I haven't had a journal since about 1995. And even that wasn't a real journal. I didn't write about my thoughts or feelings, I just recorded what I did every day. I was using one of those daily planners that have slots for each half hour so you can enter appointments and what not. I used those slots like so:
8:00 - 9:00 biology class - giggled with Lena the whole time
4:00 - 6:00 made out with [wouldn't-you-like-to-know]
9:00 - 0:00 party at so-and-so's!!
etc.
Note that the number of exclamation points following an entry indicated how much fun it was. Given that, I guess some feelings *were* woven into the journal.

.: posted by Vera   6/16/2002



Awwwww, check out this adorable picture of Polywog. She's so cute! I love her. I want to be her. Or, at least look like her, since we've already established that I'll never be a DJ.

.: posted by Vera   6/16/2002



The Richmond. That is the part of San Francisco I live in. I have only lived here for 4 weeks. There are 2 reasons why I'd rather not live in the Richmond.

1. I'm always reminded of Richmond, VA.
2. I don't like the way San Franciscans react when they hear that I live in the Richmond.

About that second point: People of San Francisco, you really need to stop making people feel bad about living in the Richmond district, especially those who are new in town. I don't want to hear how "far out there" I live anymore. I don't really feel like I'm far away from anything. I can get to Haight-Ashbury in a heartbeat. It only takes 10 minutes to get downtown. If you didn't keep conditioning me to feel like the Richmond is an undesirable place to live and telling me that you'll never come visit me because I live so far away, I wouldn't find anything wrong with this area. I understand that distances are relative within the city, but I do live on the peninsula after all. I have a 415 area code. It's not like I live in Walnut Creek or even Daly City. If I live *in* San Francisco, the city we all love so much, how bad could it be?

.: posted by Vera   6/16/2002



Oo, I just got back from the gym. Feels goooood. I listened to a CD I just bought called Rennie Pilgrem Presents Nu Skool Breakz. There is something very invigorating about the combination of the right beats in my ears and the butt-tightening machine below my feet. It's almost as good as dancing until the wee hours. In fact, a lot of times all the other people on the elliptical machines look to me as if they are dancing the kind of monotonous dance that's common at raves. If I'm listening to the right music, that is. And today I was.
What is Nu Skool Breakz you ask? Well, this is my take on it: It's just like your good ol' Breakbeat but combined with some more futuristic chirps, blurps, and warps. It can also be very funky and/or bass-heavy. In my opininon, it's very reminiscent of drum'n'bass which is why I liked it in the first place. Okay, okay, I promise that I'll soon start talking about stuff that you don't already know from my About page. There really is more to me than my '96 immigration to the United States and my affinity for breaks and bass - I think. But first a little more about Breaks. I found this great local radio show yesterday. It's called Future Breaks FM and comes on every Saturday from 3-5pm on KUSF 90.3, which is "the strongest community radio station in" San Francisco. I listened to it yesterday, and they were serving some really nice Breaks and 2-step from DJ Science. I think I'll have to listen to Future Breaks FM every Saturday from now on. If you live in the city, I advise you do the same. I found out about this radio show when I was reading the Ms. E biography. Ms. E is really awesome. I've never seen her live but I've listened to webcasts of her spinning. This set of hers on dublab.com was what first got me into the Nu Breaks style! I also like most pictures of her - she seems to emanate so much energy. This is (one of the reasons) why I would never make it as a DJ; I'm always too quiet, observant, contemplative, introspective, often bordering on pathos.

.: posted by Vera   6/16/2002



Hi. My name is Vera. I live in San Francisco with my boyfriend. I'm 26.
This is my second attempt at blogging. The first attempt took place on September 11, 2001. Yeah, that's right. I got exactly one post in before I found out that the WTC had collapsed. I was immediately discouraged and stopped blogging because I didn't feel qualified to discuss "the events" appropriately. One, I didn't want to sound like everyone else lamenting what had happened and expressing deepest regret and disbelief, and two, I didn't want to offend anyone with my foreign viewpoints. After all, I am still a German citizen. Although I have lived in the U.S. for six years (as of ... TODAY! Oh my God, I just realized that. What a great day to start this blog.) and I do feel much more American than German. But anyway. I was dicouraged from blogging last year because I didn't want my blog to start out as a commentary on America Under Attack. Was that weak of me? Cowardly? Unpatriotic? Yes, all of the above. It was just too much responsibility for me. Sorry. But now I'm back.

.: posted by Vera   6/16/2002



go get your own