If you're been paying attention to Mac-related websites over the past few days, then you would know about this Craigslist advertisement for bikini models to appear at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) to promote the iPhone.  I told my friend that I found us the perfect job ($100 per hour) since we're both looking for work.

We might have some trouble filling out certain job requirements, however.

When we went to the WonderCon 2009, we saw a bunch of guys dressed up as Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen in blue body paint, wearing Speedos and sandals while walking around the exhibit floor.  One guy was a spitting image, the others was less spitting.  I suggested since we're in San Francisco, we could get some blue body paint, walk around naked, and no one would notice.  (For normal naked people wandering around the streets, you will need to travel across the bay to Berkeley.)  Except we didn't have the tall, thin and muscular physique that the Dr. Manhattan character requires.  We would more than likely be mistaken for a pair of naked Smurfs and be beaten to death by all the Star Wars stormtroopers and bounty hunters running around the place.

On  a related note, if you want to see a bunch of naked nerds in a gay motorcycle bar or Kristen Bell in a Princess Leia slave girl bikini, the hilarious Fanboys DVD is out now.

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I grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation, where the civil defense sirens went off every Friday morning and everyone ducked underneath their desks at school.  The Cold War was a simpler time.  You knew which of the world governments was either black or white, and only the spies worked in the gray.  Unlike today's War on Terror where civilians and terrorists are either black or white, and the world governments work in the gray.

The New York Times wrote about a West German police officer being paid by the East German secret police when he shot and killed a protester in 1967 that set off the protest movement that would transform the West Germany government into a better democracy.  There's no evidence that the shooting was ordered by the East German government or that the police officer was an agent provocateur hired to disrupt the West German government from the inside.  The officer was acquitted of murder and rejoined the police force a year after the shooting.  The 81-year-old former police officer still insist today that the protester's death was an accident and being paid by a rival spy agency doesn't change anything.

Because what happened between the two German states during the Cold War has no practical meaning to most Americans, the article asked American readers to consider what the Kent State protest shooting or the JFK assassination would be if paid for by the Soviet Union or an Eastern block country, turning a stupid and tragic incident into something more sinister.

“It makes a hell of a difference whether John F. Kennedy was killed by just a loose cannon running around or a Secret Service agent working for the East,” said Stefan Aust, the former editor in chief of the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel. “I would never, never, ever have thought that this could be true.”

As a writer who wrote a post-Cold War short story, "The Uninvited Spook," with a deep passion for cyncism and irony, I find the moral implications of this situation very intriguing.  A subtle reminder that not everything appears to be what it is supposed to be.  We are still finding out what really did happen in the Cold War a half-century ago, and who knows what we will find out about the War on Terror when the time comes.

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The previous weekend (May 16-17, 2009) was long and crazy.  I went up to Placerville, CA, to attend my nephew's wedding to his girlfriend nearly two years after having their son.  What was supposed to be a quiet trip turned out to be an interesting adventure.

On past trips where I took the train from San Jose to Sacramento (where my Dad lives), I  took along my MacBook or iPod Touch to keep me preoccupied during the three-hour ride each way.  This time I went low tech by packing a writing pad and a book.  I wanted to unwind from the electronic ball-and-chain that marked my daily existence.

The book was "Small Favor (The Dresden Files, Book 10)" by Jim Butcher.  Chicago's wizard for hire, Harry Dresden,  finds himself caught in a war between the summer and winter courts of the faeries, the fallen angels of God, and the different factions of the crime lord's empire.  Of course, everyone wanted him dead or deader.  The snappy dialog, fast pacing, and sudden plot twists made for an excellent read on a long train ride.

While I was reading the book, my mind was churning on my current and  future writing projects: the final chapters for the rough draft of my first novel, the final editing of my short story collection, gathering ideas for a planned second novel, and considering ideas for an unplanned series novel that's been demanding my attention.  If I wasn't stuck on a three-hour train ride with only a book to focus on, my head might've exploded from the excitement of so many ideas floating around.

I realized since then that I'm at a major transition point as a writer.  The rough draft of my first novel is nearly finished, and editing for the first draft will start after a three month break.  The collection of two dozen short stories and a novella will be ready to shop around in a month.  Although I only have one story published and another story pending publication so far after three years, I'm confident that more of my short stories will be accepted for publication.  I'm also excited about two new novel projects that I'll be writing side by side.  I'll be moving from being a lazy writer to being a busy writer within the next two months.

The happiest moment of my life was in 2003 when I lead video game tester working 60 to 80 hours a week, taking two programming classes at San Jose City College, and being a lead teacher in the children ministry on Sundays.  Most people thought I was insane back then but I enjoyed the adrenaline rush of being busy.  Can I edit the first draft of a novel and write the rough drafts for two other novels at the same time for a year?  Absolutely.  It'll be like juggling three flaming torches while standing in a pool of gasoline and a zombie chewing on your brain at the same time.  Difficult, fun and terrifying.

My Dad and I never made it to the wedding ceremony due to bizarre traffic conditions.

The only way to get to Placerville from Sacramento was eastbound Highway 50.  As we approached Dolardo Hills, traffic came to standstill with four lanes being funneled into one lane.  We naturally assumed that some idiot bureaucrat at Caltrans decided that he had nothing better to do than foul up traffic for a day.  We once drove up to Sacramento about 12 years ago where Caltrans was doing roadwork at the 580/I-5 intersection on the day before Thanksgiving (the most busiest travel day of the year) that took us five hours to travel two miles.  When the state of California decides to screw up something, they do it big time.  Then people wonder why the state budget is a mess.

We watched cars drive backwards or turned around to drive the wrong way on the shoulders to return to the nearest ramp, other cars merged to the right because the lanes opened up only to merge left again a few miles later, and drivers of bigger vehicles exercised their Californian-given rights to muscle their way into lane changes.  Of course, the CHP was nowhere to be seen.  We later learned that a FedEx truck had crashed at 5:00AM that morning, the diesel fuel spilled and caught fire to cause the surrounding aslphat to melt and burn one acre of grass.  If that wasn't bad enough, the truck carried 600 one-gallon containers of pesticide.  That combination made for a fine mess.  All four lanes wasn't reopened until 3:00AM the next morning after the toxic mess was cleaned up and the damaged lanes repaved.

We arrived at the Sequoia Restaurant in Placerville about 90 minutes late, missing the wedding ceremony at the cemetery across the street but not the reception dinner (which my Dad thought more important).  I found out that my nephew's grandfather on his mother side of the family passed away last week in Nevada when he took his car in for an oil change,walked across the street to get a coffee at the casino, and dropped dead in the street for no apparent reason.  My uncle on my Mom's side of the family passed away three months ago from lung cancer after spending a lifetime smoking like a chimney.  I felt old dancing with my niece even though she only six years younger than me, and her resemblance to my Mom who died from breast cancer five years ago was unnerving.  Seeing my brother and his ex-wife dancing together for the first time in 20 years was interesting.  Since I left my camera in my travel bag at my Dad's place, I used his spare camera that I later found out was broken and none of the pictures turned out anyway because of the dim lighting.

As a writer, of course, I was cataloging the small details of everything around me in the back of my mind to use in a future story.  Since I haven't actually published anything that my relatives could accidentally find in the front of a bookstore, they have no idea what it's like to have a writer in the family who observes and recycles the stories floating around.

Coming home on the train the next morning was interesting.  I was sitting in car two when I smelled something burning, which I thought was coming from the cafe car behind me.  The conductors had everyone moved out of the car because of an electrical fire in an utility closet.  I sat down in the cafe car at a table facing the window.  A technician came on board at Oakland to look at the closet, but the car wasn't separated from the train and remained shut down for the rest of the trip.

A decade ago I was riding the train home when debris on the track severed an air hose  underneath my seat that slammed against the underside of the car like an angry snake.  The train came to a slow stop, the engineer replaced the air hose in ten minutes, and were on our way.  That was fun.

I wrote out in very general details the outline for the last seven chapters of my first novel.  Since the last part ended with a shooting rampage, I didn't want the outline to be too specific about the post-shooting circumstances that my characters will find themselves in.  Comics writer Mark Sable was detain by TSA at the Los Angeles airport because he was carrying the manuscript for "Unthinkable," a comic book series about 9/11 and terrorism.  Apparently, TSA wasn't aware that comic books have writers and not all comic books are about superheros in tights with cool utility belts, and were suspicious of him going to a New York City for a comic book convention.  Even though he took the extra precaution of mailing his materials home, he was still subject to extra screening on the return trip.

While train security is not as strict as airline security, the possibility of someone looking over my shoulders and assuming the worst was still a real possibility.   If an episode of The Love Boat where a husband-and-wife mystery writers are overhead discussing various ways of killing people was made today, the writers would've probably been shot dead by the crew.

Maybe there's a reason why I don't travel much these days.

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