It's the Eugene celebration, son, and the coffeeshop I've adopted as my office has windows onto the parade. This is really a pretty good representation of the town where I was raised.

- Local dem congressman (since, like, forever) Defazio
- Rainow flags (god bless 'em) every 5 minutes
- Local wild people on double-tall bikes; dancing girls; "Diversity is Sexxxy"
- Punk rock kids, anarchists
- Local businesses
- My old high school's Crew team
- Falun Gong (the medidation people who are being persecuted by China)
- Group from the OCF summer arts program

Lots of kids around to see it all. What a place to grow up. I was lucky, I think.

The Burning Man influence is strong here. That old bus that just dove by with a bright yellow paint job, a boat hull built on top and some kindly-looking greybeards wearing American flags and playing amplified Rock and Roll.. that's got to be an art car. One of the reasons I believe in that event is not just because it's a great party, but because moreso than any other contemporary festival it has a deep enough impact on people that they carry its ethos (and it's style) into the "real" world.

Anyway, I'm finishing up some work here -- I'll start pimping it as soon as it's ready -- and wondering about getting a new cellphone. Apropops my previous posts about wardrobe and haircut, I need a new phone for image reasons. Now, after playing some very rainy basketball the other day, I also need one to be able to talk to people.

A quick rant: I hate cell phone companies almost as much as I hate credit card issuers. I mean really hate, like I want to punch someone when I have to deal with them. They're not good people and they're not doing good things. Mobile companies in the US have created an inefficient and wasteful system -- multiple overlapping proprietary networks because they all thought they would be able to monopolize the market and so they didn't want to agree on a standard -- which they refuse to open up to users in an information-empowering way. Their phones are all proprietary mysteries that come with legal warnings against reverse-engineering. They want to own all your data and charge you to access it. They lock you into multi-year service agreements so you're stuck with whatever service they end up delivering, shitty or not. Except for actually letting people talk to one another all over, they are example #1 of how not to get along with the revolution. It annoys me to no end when I have to read about them.

Anyway, the live music is starting up. It's not my scene so I'd better leave.