Krispy Kreme

Say it isn't so. The best donuts in the world have gone bad?

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Feb 24, 2005 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) (the "Company") announced today that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has advised the Company that it will seek to conduct interviews of certain current and former officers and employees of the Company. The Company believes that this investigation relates to the matters currently under formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company intends to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney's Office.

John Frusciante video

John Frusciante, who happens to be the greatest musician on the planet, has a new video for his latest CD, Curtains. The song is "The Past Recedes." This lovely Web site posts new videos that have been shot.

John's video is running wild on the fan sites and there's a possiblity it could get MTV air time. That is frightening. John is one of the best kept secrets in music and sometimes it's nice to be one of the few people who know about him, kind of like wearing a one-of-a-kind dress to a party. I read somewhere that he claims to have about 100,000 core fans, people who will buy everything he puts out. I count myself as one of those.

Some of the other albums he released in the past year(that's right within a year's time): Automatic Writing, Sphere in the Heart of Silence, DC EP, Inside of Emptiness, Shadows Collide with People and The Will to Death. They're ALL original and span different genres of music.

Curtains is a beautiful CD. It's just John and his guitar. The video, directed by Mike Piscitelli and produced by Partizan, is shot inside his Hollywood home. It's simple and reflective of John as an artist. I think this is the year that John breaks out and in a way, that's unfortunate.

American Idol

so far, David Brown rocks! Rocker Constantine, Scott and farm girl, too.
"If I'm not able to express myself through music I'll probably die" needs to learn she won't die and that she can still sing even after American Idol. For the girl who missed her son, good for her. American Idol is not the end all.

blogging

A North Carolina newspaper reporter kept a blog about her observations at work. Some of those observations included comments about her coworkers. While I can vouch for the fact that musing about your co-workers makes for pretty funny stuff, it's probably best to write fiction. Of course, she eventually was fired. I've thought about this. Here are my rules: Never blog about work and never blog at work. Simple.

Split Rock Arts

For writers out there who've never been to a writer's retreat, I highly recommend trying it and I highly recommend University of Minnesota's Split Rock Arts Program. I went about three years ago. It was a one-week retreat in Duluth, Minnesota in the summertime. It wasn't a snooty writers' workshop, although there are many of those. It was practical for beginners as well as published writers.

The thing that blew me away was the talent in my group. I learned a lot from all of them.

It was hard work but fun and I met so many interesting people. My roomie, we stayed in the dorms, is still one of my good friends. She is a filmmaker and writes screenplays. I also keep in touch with another, who is just about to have her first book published.

Shay Youngblood was our leader. We wrote to music. Some of the music that we listened to in the workshop, I still listen to today. Shay's written several books including "Soul Kiss" and "Black Girl in Paris." I've also seen some of her work in O magazine. She inspired me to take on a writer's life.

Here's a preview of some of the classes they're offering this summer. I believe the cost is about $600.

June 26-July 2

The Short-Short Story
Kim Addonizio

Fabric Collage and the Stitched Mark
Ilze Aviks

Landscape and Memory: A Workshop in Poetry and Prose
Judith Barrington

Stretching: A Drawing Workshop
Sally Brown and Sally Nystrom

Creating a Dream: Illustrating Children's Picture Books
Ilse Plume

Navajo Weaving
Marilou Schultz

Woodcut Printing: East Meets West
Keiji Shinohara

Knitwear: Exploring Color and Design
Rebekah Younger

Interpreting the Landscape: A Drawing and Painting Retreat at the Cloquet Forestry Center
Christine Baeumler

July 3-9

All I Want To Do Is Paint: A Retreat at the Cloquet Forestry Center
David Feinberg

July 5-9

SPLIT ROCK SHORT: Writing Toward a Just World
Anya Achtenberg

SPLIT ROCK SHORT: Designing Commissioned Textiles
Ilze Aviks

SPLIT ROCK SHORT: Fiber Arts Brainstorm: Ideas and Experiments
Susan Brandeis

SPLIT ROCK SHORT: Photographing Urban Communities
Wing Young Huie

SPLIT ROCK SHORT: The Fiction Writer's Fingerprint
Sheila O'Connor

SPLIT ROCK SHORT: The Expanded Hand: Introduction to Digital Drawing
Scott Stulen

July 10-16

Creating Your Future
Gerald Allan

The Essence of Place: A Watercolor Workshop
James Boyd-Brent

The Complex Cloth
Jane Dunnewold

Intimate Terrain: The Art of Knotting
Ed Bing Lee

Telling True Stories: The Art of the Personal Essay
Scott Russell Sanders

The Alphabetized World: A Poetry Workshop
Emily Warn

Drawing for the Truly Terrified: A Retreat at the Cloquet Forestry Center
Sally Brown and Sally Nystrom

Between Grass and Sky: A Nonfiction Writing Retreat at the Cloquet Forestry Center
Linda Hasselstrom

July 17-23

Art and Design From Nature: A Screenprinting Workshop
James Boyd-Brent

Fashion Design: Function, Form, and Fit
Anna Carlson

Wool Work: Surface Design and Techniques
Carol LeBaron

The Secret River: Mentoring and the Practice of Poetry
Jim Moore

The Third Eye: Painting in a New Century
Cristi Rinklin

Writing the Travel Memoir: Spirit, Place, and Change
Catherine Watson

Writing in New Ways: A Fiction Workshop
Shay Youngblood

The Five Elements: A Mixed-Media Drawing Retreat at the Cloquet Forestry Center
Emily DuBois

Reinventing Reality: A Fiction Writing Retreat at the Cloquet Forestry Center
Sheila O'Connor

July 24-30

Writing the Book-Length Literary Memoir
Paulette Bates Alden

The Anti-Masterpiece: An Alternative Approach to Artists' Books
Julie Chen

Warp and Fabric Painting for Weavers
Emily DuBois

Beneath the Surface: Fabric and Fiber as Expressive Media
Allie Kay

Chinese Brush Painting and Calligraphy
Lampo Leong

Shaping the Page:Playing With Poetic Forms
Joyce Sutphen

July 31-August 6

Transformations and Translations: Surface Design for Art Quilts
Elizabeth Busch

Watercolor
Cheng-Khee Chee

The Geometry of Hand Knitting
Katharine Cobey

Writing as Collage
Lance Larsen

Literary Journalism: Writing Portraits of People and Place
Sara Mansfield Taber

Digital Textile Design
Hitoshi Ujiie

The Recollected Landscape: Painting From Observation and Memory
Dion Zwirner

It's a small world

Finally, I've installed the Windows XP CD thanks to a friendly person in a call center in Bangalore. It took about an hour so we talked about music and sports and languages. In India, children learn languages early. He knows five! MS guy said he and his friends like American music. He likes Pink Floyd, Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, one of my favorites. It costs $20 - $70 to see a concert. Sting is going to be in India tomorrow. The weather there is much like California. They like to play cricket in India. I guess it's sort of like baseball. The only problem with cricket, he says, is that it's a game that starts in the morning and finishes at night so it takes a lot of time. Gas costs $5 a gallon. People drive motorbikes to save money. He likes to watch wrestling and they get American TV.
He said the Microsoft building in Bangalore is "cute." Lots of plants, glass windows. Like American workers, he gets two 15 minute breaks and one half hour break. He can take them when he wants but he has to punch in and out. Ick. There is a "sports room" with games. But he said there's no time to play. Microsoft pays well. He has a four year engineering degree and plans to get a master's. He'd like to study in the US but says it's too expensive.
Here's a surprise: THERE AREN'T ANY STARBUCKS. They have Barista and Coffee Day coffeehouses. What's the deal Starbucks?
He works the 2:30 am shift to 11:30 am shift.
He says Americans are nice. He has had a few calls from very angry Americans. They say that he's stolen American jobs. He says he understands.
It's a small world getting smaller.

Microsoft Nightmare

Here's my update. Eight days ago I installed Windows XP service pack 2. It made my computer nuts so I uninstalled it, which then left my computer brainless. It kept turning on and off, over and over.
I call MS and they say they can send me a Windows XP CD and help me recover my computer. I figured since their software messed up my computer, they'd overnight it. Nope. 7-10 days. My CD arrived today.
I called Microsoft and the call center couldn't help me without knowing what key to press to boot up using the CD-Rom first. MS didn't know Toshiba's key? Isn't that something they should know, or at least be able to look up easily? So MS says I need to call Toshiba and he'll call me back tomorrow. MS guy is already booked up for the day and the guy that "owns my case" is off today.
So there's the update. I've decided that I'm going to try and learn how to use Linux after this experience. It's the only way I can fight back.