Chomping Down and Way to Go, Brad Newsham (SF Cab Driver)

There are these goats in Oakland that are rented out to keep the grass down. They were out by Park Boulevard today, chomping down.

I forgot to mention that there were some inappropriate scenes in Import/Export. The Europeans have a different relationship to showing sex in cinema than Americans. They really show pretty much everything. I'm not sure what is more artistic...the reality or the inferred. In school, I was having trouble with the inferred, but now I think I get it.

At school today, the girl that I like didn't talk to me. She was sitting next to two other boys. I think she way shy about talking to me.

Also, I saw my friend, Brad Newsham, who is a cab driver in San Francisco, on a Toyota Commercial. Here is the commercial and below that is a video that someone I know did of him a few years ago when everyone was mad at George Bush about the Iraq War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EBXLqMEuzQ&feature=youtube_gdata

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSSuEVYcixA

Bliss

Today, I watched a film called "Import/Export." It was about two different people who were trying to get work. That doesn't sound very interesting, but the way that the director filmed it was beautiful. The scenery was stark like "Let the Right One In." The film showed the poverty of Eastern Europe...the Ukraine...through the characters. It was bleak and gritty in a "Trainspotting" kind of way. The director was Ulrich Seidl.

Later in the day, I went to a chant. Govinda Jaya Jaya! I heard it as a beautiful chant that just takes you from being intense to being relaxed. Afterwards, I picked an angel card and got "Moderation." I had to ask Mom what that is. She said, "Not too much. Not too little."

Last, but not least, I had this idea for a movie theatre in Montclair. I think that it would be a great business. So, I'm thinking about looking into it. I talked to my friend Tom Franco about it. He liked the idea, too. He's got a really cool space in downtown Oakland. We could do the movie theatre there, too. Mom likes this idea. She said it would be good to try to be in business and learn from it.

Magnificat and Food Inc.

Remember I told you that last Sunday we went to Grace Cathedral to scope out locations for a shoot? Well, we had the shoot on Sunday. The group that sang was called Magnificat. They sang a Baroque operatic chant to G-d. They sounded like Benedictine monks. The music just took me out.

I filmed it with Film Workshop. That's Max Sokoloff in the background. I tried to make my camera work look like moving painting. But, we'll see after I edit it. I'll put it up on the blog.

Yesterday, I watched Food Inc. It was really a great documentary and I was sad to see how the animals are kept out of the sun for their entire lives. Also, the way they kill pigs was really upsetting, by smashing them with this thing that looks like a garbage truck crusher. I like hamburgers, but I am going to be really careful from now on about where the meat comes from...how the animals are treated and the conditions in which they lived before they were killed to be eaten by humans.

I Am Not a Rock - I Am Not an Island

Dad and I played music together this morning. He plays guitar and I sang and played harmonica. You can't really see the harmonica in the picture, but it's there. That's me, playing it. The sun was shining in from the East. We did Simon and Garfunkel and John Denver songs. I never understood the words to "I am a Rock" until today. I thought the guy was really singing about being a rock, but today I heard it differently. It's kind of a sad song.

Then, my old friend Riley called. Good old Riley. He is a huge Matrix fan like I am. Riley has a beard. His brother, Mike, has a beard, too, and works at the Elmwood Movie theater which is a really cool theater because they show stuff that isn't always mainstream.

Mom made us move a woodpile from the backyard. We got part of it done. It's probably going to take a few more sessions. But there was a huge bumble bee flying around it and going in and out of the holes between the logs. Mom thinks there might be a bee hive there, so she said she would work around that area.

I moved a worm that lost his home because moving the logs exposed his hiding place. There were spiders, lizards, roly-polys, and some other bugs. Luckily, there were no butterflies. Remember the giant butterfly on Sponge Bob?

Stalk (n.) vs. Stalk (v.)

The Earth's autonomic nervous system is pumping out flowers, these giant flowers. Their stalks (n.) are as tall as jungle flowers. I call them Oakland's Operatic Flowers. Wouldn't they look great for a romantic opera?

Remember from yesterday about the shoes illegal aliens are supposed to be wearing so that the Arizona police can stalk (v.) them down? I thought a lot about it and I still can't figure out what kind of shoes they are. I couldn't find the definition on the Internet. Sneakers could be illegal alien shoes. Flip-flops. Hiking boots. Vans. ...These are all shoes I wear. Being stalked down where you live and work? It's so stasi.

G-d, shoes, and Jose German Barerra Ascencio

I was saying to Mom today that a lot of people think that God is a man. I think that belief makes women look weak. Who knows whether God is a man or a woman. I know that women are not weak. Woman are very very strong. So, it is possible that God is a woman. But it's hard to tell from here.

There was a man who died today in Oakland. His name was Jose German Berrera Ascencio. He worked in a recycling place in Milpitas and had nine children in Guatemala. He sent money to his family to support them. He never saw his five year old son. He was shot last week at night in Oakland when he was bringing some of his co-workers home from work late at night. I think we should think of him. He must have been a good man.

It made me sad to think that I was taking all these beautiful pictures of Oakland while Jose German Berrera Ascencio was dying and his children were hoping to hear from him again. And then on TV tonight they had this weird thing about Arizona and being able to tell undocumented immigrants from their shoes. What kind of shoes?

LOOK AT THIS BEAUTY!

Here are some pictures that I took of natural beauty in Oakland.

I hung out with some of the kids in front of the school today in the rain. We talked about music. And I got to give a beautiful necklace to the girl of my dreams.

Here is an excerpt from my Biology paper--Autism From the Inside:

“When I screamed, I was just trying to communicate. But the words didn’t come. I didn’t know how to say what I wanted. I wanted to look at things, but I kept getting pulled away from them. I tried to say, ‘No, I just want to look at this!’ Since I couldn’t say it, I just thought, ‘Scream, Rocket! Scream!' It made me feel lonely that people didn’t know what I wanted, how I was seeing it, what I felt.”