~our house is hung with all our love~

oh my darlin'.

2011-12-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

Apparently i only feel the need to post things when i'm having an o f f day.
Here are some things i found on the magical screen:

(this guy takes old bike/car parts and makes lifelike animals out of 'em.)

(this person makes tiny dioramas! awesome, tiny dioramas!! iii smell a craaft night!)

(a head, formed from a carefully-cut out street map. i like maps... and heads.)

(pretty seriously fantastic illuminated wire sculptures from some dude. they are around.)

Meanwhile, i sit here eating chocolate-chip cookies (the recipe claimed them as "the best ever", which they absolutely are not), paying bills, watching The Incredible Shrinking Man (gets surprisingly preachy at the end!), and above all, not cracking open my catalog of Spring 2012 community college classes. i also need to:

–touch up my bike (red nail polish is standing by)
–figure out which two hideous christmas sweaters nat and i will wear for our first annual Bad Holiday Photo
–stop biting my fingernails
–take the trash out,
–work on some photos.

On this last note i should mention that i'm sick and tired of being a perfectionist. It gets in the way of a person's ability to get a damn thing done... i would just like to edit and post some of these f*cking photos, okay, self? No need for them to be artifact-free; other people have easy-breeziness, where can i get some? Is it in potion form? Are they sprinkling it on their breakfast cereal? Is it in the genes? Hm.

Anyway, back to:
–scrubbing the toilet
–eating another clementine
–biting my nails
–anything else i can do to avoid everything else i have to do.

Love,
the girl who likes stormy cloud photos. big ones.

Brought to you by: the letter "e".

2011-11-15T19:01:00.000-08:00

(found on the sidewalk yesterday in San Juan Capistrano, right near a pink baby sock. weird.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you guys remember those coloring books where you just painted over everything with a wet paintbrush? There was that little hint of color on the page, here and there, and you could sort of manipulate where you wanted to strongest concentration of the color to go with your brush. End results were pretty dang similar to this (not sure that this is an actual page from one or not?):

...so yeah. Good times.

And then there were the good old "stained-glass" coloring books, that you could tape onto your window afterwards:

...ahh, good times. Those cellophane-like pages were so fun to marker in, even if the end result was never quite as spectacular as one would have liked.

FYI if you're my best friend you would get me this sweet Ms. Pac-Man water-color book from the '80s. yessss.

it's not vicious, or malicious.

2011-11-12T20:21:00.001-08:00

Friends, i have spent the entire day on the internet. This is not a lament, or a boast: it is a simple truth.

And i found some stuff.

This lady's comics are great.

Here are some photos that are not mine:

The National Geographic Photo Contest is at it again. Have a gander!

i just discovered The Fray. It has good stories in't. Sat here reading for an hour or more.

(All of the orchids in my house are almost done blooming. Feeling poisoned from smoking too many cigarettes. i think we'll eat pumpkin pudding for dinner.)

i drank too much last night and would like for that to not happen again. There was a variety show among friends: "Africa" was covered, and Nico, as well as "Groove Is In The Heart" (complete with slide whistle). There were rum balls and Guinness cupcakes. i found a "k" in a snapped-off twig. The clouds were like cotton balls stretched out across the sky. i was finally able to say aloud to someone that i was having a difficult time getting truly involved in the 'Occupy' movement because i feel that there are bigger problems in the world... his response was that, well, doesn't the problem of the rich getting richer sort of have a hand in most (if not all) of those other problems i was mentioning (rape, slavery, lack of clean water, etc.)? It was a tough call; i had a hard time clarifying my position and verbalizing what i meant. Also, as i believe i already mentioned, i was pretty inebriated.
Oh, to have excellent speech and debate skills!

This post brought to you by a hangover.

2011-11-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

how does a day take shape? there are distant hums, sirens, and cages..
smells and sounds, inner rumblings.
cloud swaths, ethereal
and the cold, hard ground.
there might be a dusty road
or a bright smiling face.
lines on your hands, and on trees' trunks,
(everything is growing)
light reflecting in pools of inky water.

we are trying to keep something alive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Someone thought of us, once.

It's true–
we flashed across their brain pans and for a brief moment
each and every one human
(some robust, some passing in and out)
was quickly and carefully
lifted up
and held;
lovingly inspected
each and every inch.
But there is not enough time
can't look for very long
So they closed their eyes and imagined, hard

emblazoning all of the faces,
and garments,
and shrieks (of laughter, and pain!)
and endless possibilities
of combinations.

it burned brighter and became a din,
ferocious.
until the moment passed,
and they resumed their own life
picked up where they'd left off
(where was it?)

Someone thought of you, once.

Visuals

2011-10-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

Went last night to the final viewing of the Art of Photography show in downtown SD. It was at that mega-shopping paradise, Horton Plaza; i was one of literally three people who made their way downstairs to the Lyceum Theatre to check out the photos. It was pretty rad. Here are my favorites.

"Back to nature 1" - Patricia Van De Camp
(Superb colors in this one. The actual print looked a bit darker. Gorgeous!)

"Arcimboldo W6I0970" - Klaus Enrique
(um, YES. This one was gigantic, and incredibly shot. Also, what an effing brilliant idea.)

"Long Winding Road" - Dejon Walker
(stared at this one for a long time. it was huge and beautiful.)

"Dad's Things Aren't Dad" - Russ Rowland
(since i'm obsessed with collections, and items as evidence of our 'self'.)

"Dissolve" - Alison Turner
(one of the first ones i saw that stopped me in my tracks. Weird, but excellent.)

"Covered in White Powder" - Larry Louie
(so, this is a balloon factory. gave me the shivers. i sell those fucking things every day.)

"Three in the Lake" - Carl Tremblay
(perfect.)

"Litter" - Linda Kuo
(this was way better in person. water glistened on every surface. although i still can't figure out what that white thing is.)

"Louise" - Tom M. Johnson
(Louise = obviously amazing.)

"Girl, Ballinasloe Horse fair, Ireland" - Kenneth O Halloran
[this one got 'Honorable Mention']
(another large, stunning portrait. i was transfixed by those freckles.)

"B 1004 (Window)" - Noritaka Minami
(is it weird that i want to sleep in here? this was related to this other photo.)

"Hot Rod Dream Girl Priscilla" - Jennifer Greenburg
(check out her shift knob! Also, the light was fantastic in this one.)

"Day 47" - Jennifer Wilkey
[also received 'Honorable Mention']
(creeptastic.)

"Place 1861" - Jose A. Gallego
(this was possibly my favorite. can't really explain why. i just wanted to be there, badly.)

"Feet Over Coconut Shell" - Andre Cypriano
(visceral. i want to do this!)

"Red China" - Li Jiangsong
(slightly ominous, obviously accidental.)

"Let Sleeping Dogs Lie" - Brian Almaraz
(surreal! kind of reminded me of a scene from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These 2 were the first-place winners:

"Flesh Love Chihiro & Takeshi" & "Flesh Love Michico & Yuhei" - Photographer Hal

...and this one was also pretty great:

"An Ordinary Day" - Bev Short

Well, that's all folks. Off to make shrunken apple heads.

punks

2011-10-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

Okay. i went a little crazy last night looking at pumpkin decorating ideas. Here is a (long) roundup of my faves. Hope you didn't have any other plans in the next few hours.

...yeah.

Pluerosis.

2011-10-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

So, last night, for the first time in my entire dreaming life, i had a dream with a recurring character in it; in fact, a made-up character.

i was working at the flower shop. He was buying a large container arrangement with 30 blue roses for his recently deceased friend, Monica (?). The weird part was: either in the end of the dream (lucidly) or after i woke up, i remembered that the girl that had died was in a dream i had a few nights before, and he was her boyfriend. We were trying to "save" her from something, but now days later i can't remember the specific details.

In this new dream, though, he was wearing a leather coat and a blue scarf, and at one point dropped a beaded leather moccasin with metal (copper) detailing, that i bent and picked up for him. He was very tall, and smiled a lot, even though i profusely apologized after being funny and cavalier while picking out the 30 blue roses (which we had that exact number of), then finding out what the occasion was. He (in the beginning of the dream) literally walked up while i was checking the drawer totals for that morning and noticing how slow sales were. Well, this oughta make it better, he said, and wrote an order down for $202.92. i was surprised, and set out to help him. it was bright, and cold that day.

i wonder if i'll see this fellow again?

a tisket, a tasket

2011-10-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Been having some craziness lately. A rabid customer (she left us nasty comments on both Facebook and Yelp), a puppy with bloody paws (he came running up to me at the shop the other day; turns out i knew who his owner was and i guess he ran to us because he knew he was safe there... breaks my heart, in a way), and a psychopathic prospective employee (she was only seventeen, and more crazy [with each passing minute] than anyone i've ever come across in my life, which believe me is saying something).

But in between there is clarity: riding my new bike (he is red and white and his name is 'Fancy'), drinking homemade cider at a friend's house for a welcome to Autumn (it was dry and apply and delicious), growing out my nails long enough to finally paint sparkly red (it's been way too long), figuring out the ol' Halloween costume (not telling yet; let's just say it's not as awesome as the Flower-Headed Girl above), and enjoying the surreal bioluminescent dinoflagellates in the night-time water (we've had a strong red tide 'round these parts lately!)... i tried to get some photos of this last mentionable but the glow was not strong enough for the camera's eye.

Last night we watched The Thing, and it was great! Cheesy special effects, but a compelling tale overall. (i remember my dad had this on Beta as a double-feature with The Fog, which is such an obviously great choice.) Now i suppose we will have to drag ourselves off to the theater to see the prequel, starring Some Pretty Girl which was probably a Really Stupid Decision. But it remains to be seen.

And found a perfect 'M' in the shadows of a tree.

Until next time, here is a song about a whale, by a band about an ostrich.

We saw shadows we'd never seen before.

2011-09-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

That morning, i had to go get my blood taken for some labwork. Nothing too serious: thyroid levels, blood sugar. So, had to skip coffee and breakfast. Ended up taking a cab because of my amazing procrastination and self-sabotage abilities.

Leaving the doctor's office, passed some dripping divers returning their rented scuba equipment ('beautiful day out there today– just beautiful diving'). Walked up to the flower shop for a couple extra hours of work and a co-worker's birthday party (a few presents, lots of smiles & hugging, a strawberry cupcake). Waiting to use the restroom in the grocery store, i watch a lime-green balloon bump listlessly against the ceiling lights, floating sideways and sadly.
Later, leaving work, a friend offers to drive me to pick up my bike from the shop. As we get into the van, i say aloud, 'i can not get this song out of my head!!' She counters with her own current mental musical repeater: "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop. Apparently it always reminds her of me because a) i lent her that CD and b) she knows that i love to "passenge". She adorably acts out the way it always makes her want to bob her head back and forth, and then reaches out to turn on the radio. It takes us a second to believe what we hear coming through the speakers: it's... "The Passenger", by Iggy Pop. We drive in stunned silence for a time.

It's hot out, and the bike shop has a huge fan on, going full blast. It's aimed right at a suspended bicycle wheel that has fliers hanging down from it; this contraption spins and flaps wildly as we wait in line. Back out in the bright-hot parking lot with the bike, i hear someone yell down from his balcony to an unseen someone, 'hey- you guys got power down there?'

Aw, that's too bad, i think. That guy's power went out. And on such a hot day.

April drops me off at home and leaves to deliver flowers to a new mother at a hospital farther North. When i enter my building, even though it's not yet 4:00 in the afternoon, the walls skulk silently in darkness.

Hm.

i skip a pitch-black stairwell in the hopes that another one might have some backup lights on. Up in the hallway, people are poking their heads out of front doors. i get inside my apartment and finally realize that this is a power outage. And that the guy i heard in the bike shop parking lot (only a few blocks away) was cluing me in on that a lot sooner. It's probably just a few blocks wide, i think, and probably just because of the heat.
But then my telephone rings and it all becomes clear: the power is out from an hour North to an hour South of here, and clear across the entire state Eastward: from the ocean all the way to Arizona. Damn. Not small potatoes, this. Not likely to be fixed anytime soon. And Nat is far away– up on campus to see a show later in the evening. i begin to imagine the traffic jams and the anxiety building up in the world outside of my apartment.

While Nat waits to hear if his show will be cancelled (it was), i call my mom in a neighboring state to get more news. A later call to my sister proves to be the goldmine: a power company employee in Yuma, Arizona messed up while performing a routine part-replacement. Bigtime.

As night falls, candles begin to flicker in apartments across the courtyard. Everyone seems hushed, but there is still a buzzing of suppressed excitement. A call to my best friend reveals more weirdness; she'd woken up that morning to filthy brown water all over her apartment: the upstairs neighbor's water heater had busted during the night and leaked slowly through the floor, all night long. Her pantry items were ruined, not to mention a lot of towels. And i found out from Nat, later, that he'd witnessed a car crash earlier that morning, while walking to the bus stop. Seems like a bizarre day was just in the cards.

There were bonfires, and glowsticks, and firecrackers, and we waited in line at the store for a half an hour to buy ice, only to have it gone by the time we got to the front door. Back upstairs, we ate cold pizza (damn electric stove!) and watched Return to Oz with our laptop's remaining battery power. The moonlight was so bright; if you didn't blink it began to seem positively daylit outside. Everything looked different in this new, complete dark– contours nudged your mind and nothing was familiar. It was all so eerily beautiful.

The power came back on at 1:30 a.m. Nat claims he woke me up to share the news, but i have no recollection. The next day, i noticed that everyone turned on their lights just a little bit earlier than usual in those dim early evening hours... i think they were all nervous about another night of, well– night.
However, others of us decided to make this a monthly blackout, a monthly slowdown, a monthly quieting: on the second Thursday of each month, it's power off and lights out. Good thing we've always been well-stocked in candles.

tidbits

2011-09-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

~Sometimes i drink too much coffee ('sometimes'– hah!) and feel like there's going to be an earthquake. Could these two things really be related?

~Last night Nat and i were reading through the True Blood wikipedia page (we grudgingly [yet semi-enjoyably] watched the first season, then came to the conclusion it was not good enough to pursue, thereby deciding to check out the rest of the plot for the remaining seasons), and when it was revealed that (SPOILER ALERT:)
Sookie was part fairy, i almost jumped out of my chair. No fucking fair!! i want to come from such an amazing lineage, too! Balls. Why can't life be a fairytale? [*EDIT: who am i kidding? it basically is– i spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about toadstool houses and pixiedust and forest moss. Plus, i'm tiny. Nat said he would be surprised if i wasn't from such stock somewhere way back].

~As of 3:40 p.m. on September 3, 2011, i have no fucking clue what my Halloween costume is going to be. This is a new low. Suggestions, people?

~There have been 3 shark sightings here in the past week. Eek.

~The More You Know: After spending several hours scanning in a hefty portion of my old film photos and saving them as jpegs, i noticed that they (the brand-new digital files) were all looking a bit worse for wear; subsequent internetting has led me to understand that this is due to lossy compression– did you know that every time you modify and then save a jpeg it loses information(quality)? So, say you rotate that bitch because you scanned it in upside-down: boom– information lost. Cropped the edges? bam– quality down the tubes. Saved it after sharpening or lightening the image a bit? biff– you're further screwed. i was furious to find this out, but not surprised. There is just so much to know about technology, it is nearly impossible to keep track of it all. So, now i have to go back and re-scan all of those photos, then save the scanned images as TIFFs, which is a lossless form of image compression. Sigh.

~My bike was stolen about 2 months ago; recently a nice neighbor of mine gave me an old one he had laying around, which i promptly took to the shop for new tires and a tune-up so i could at least give it a test-ride. Well, i just got the call and it turns out that this bike will cost me more money than it's worth, which is unfortunate because it's actually more than bit too big for me and i was only going to ride it if the fix-up costs were minimal. Now i'm stuck in a limbo decision-state. Spend the money and try to ride it anyway? Or take it back, as is, crumbling tires and rust spots and all, and hope for a trade? Never tried to trade anything before, and now i don't have a bike– again. Double sigh.

~Complaining is so lame. Apologies.

~Made the best lemon meringue pie of my life a couple of days ago. The secret seems to be swapping some of the water for milk, and using half sugar/half powdered sugar in the meringue. Taste-tastic! Also, i added a quarter of a scraped vanilla bean to the filling. Delish. Highly recommend. Feels like it mellows the lemon out a bit.

That's all for now, folks. Here's a song i literally cannot stop singing every time i'm alone in the house (thank goodness i'm too scared to sing in public). Here's where to buy the digital song (or album), but honestly you should just go to your local music store and get it there!

Double-takes.

2011-09-03T14:29:00.001-07:00

Wow, where to begin? I mean, it's not hard to explain, or understand: Alexa Meade paints people and then photographs them, the end result being a photograph that looks exactly like a painting. She sits, above, with one of her subjects. It's fantastical! Magical!

Enjoy:

first seen on

a new favorite.

2011-09-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

At the SF MoMA a couple of months ago, we went to see the special exhibit (the Steins' collection of Matisse, Picasso, et. al.) and, as usual, a photography series elsewhere in the museum ended up being my favorite thing in the building. More specifically, a handful of photos taken in Africa by Jim Goldberg. The one that made me stop dead in my tracks was this one, "Poachers":

(please tell me they don't look like cats, waiting to pounce?)

but there were others, too:

(keep in mind that these photos are stunningly huge, like 5' x 6'.)

And today i found a few more by him, from older projects:

The Africa images are still on display at the MoMA through October 16th, along with (of course) lots of other good stuff. Get thee there!

Waiting for fall to hit.

2011-08-17T18:38:00.001-07:00

Seriously, why so many September birthdays? It's almost as bad as June.

In other news: i have a bruised left pinky because of a stupid f*cking barbell. Children are dying left and right in Somalia, and there is little we can do to stop it. Tonight i will attempt to eat salad instead of leftover pizza or boxed mac-n-cheese. There has been a gaping hole in our bathroom ceiling for almost half a year due to a neverending of phone-tag/rescheduling game with the handyman. i am quitting smoking, for the umpteenth time. Nat has a bleached-blonde mohawk. My family is all kinds of discombobulated right now and i am reeling because of it. My bike (that i'd had for 8 years!) was stolen from my workplace one month ago. i seriously mourned; it's time to get a new (used) one. There are caterpillars everywhere, and you can smell fires at night sometimes now that it's colder.

Hopefully feeling inspired to enter a photography contest (small-scale, be assured), and my mom may have helped me get my rear in gear concerning a possible kids' book idea; just need some concept art to bring the words themselves into focus, because all i have right now is an image in my head. (Or maybe it doesn't even need words? a grown-up picture book, that's what it'll be.) Saw a perfect number 5 on the ground this morning– it was a green supermarket twist-tie that had been mangled and then stepped on, perfectly formed and flattened into the number of senses we all (if we're lucky) share. Half-a-block later there was an H, born out of fallen leaf-slivers and a twig.

It is hot right now at work, and slow. Tough to watch the flowers practically wilting right before your very eyes. Can't stop eating stone fruit (it will be gone all too soon), and putting off everything on my to-do lists. Feeling dreamy, lacking clarity. Will work for food, or company. Kind of want to hang out right here:

Simple Men.

2011-07-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

If i could give one movie director a great big hug, it would be Hal Hartley. (Trust is one of my all-time favorite movies.) Seriously, the man never lets me down. Am currently watching Simple Men and being reminded of what a genius he is:

"But that’s what life’s about.
The adventure, the not knowing.

- No, it isn’t.

I want adventure.
I want romance.

- Ned, there’s no such thing
as adventure. There’s no such thing as romance.
There’s only trouble and desire.

Trouble and desire?

- That’s right, and the funny thing is
when you desire something
you immediately get in trouble,
and when you’re in trouble
you don’t desire anything at all.

I see.

- It’s impossible.

It’s ironic.

- It’s a fucking tragedy, is what it is."

Y'all have 2 days left to watch the thing on Watch Instant before it goes away who knows where for who knows how long, where you may never get to see it! And that, my friends, is the real fucking tragedy... watch it. Watch it now, and watch it good. Learn about subtle metaphors for the fragility of life, relationships and love (trees, fire, stolen motorcycles, not necessarily in that order). Marvel as a nun tackles a policeman, but not in a slapstick way. Listen to Sonic Youth while the cast does an impromptu dance number.

Yes, it's a bit stilted, and theatrical– but that's just his way. Get over it. And watch.

As a bonus, here is my favorite Thomas Newman track from Desperately Seeking Susan, which would fit right in almost any Hal Hartley scene:

Happy summer.

"Muldoon knew."

2011-07-10T15:44:00.000-07:00

...this was, absurdly, the most frequently heard phrase by yours truly at a gathering this past July 4th. Visiting friends-of-a-friend were there, drinking lots of Tecate, and at some point Jurassic Park became the topic of conversation, after which there seemed to be no going back. The most contentious point became whether or not Muldoon knew how the raptors were going to behave when he hunted them.

i feel like he certainly wouldn't have willingly walked into his own death (i.e. "knew"), although on the other hand maybe he simply realized his bell was tolling and wanted to go out doing what he loved (observing the habits of large game), and had no idea what he was truly in for.

As the empty red cans multiplied on that end of the table, i wondered if the heated conversation would ever end. On a side note, i would totally wear this T-shirt:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other highlights from the afternoon:

~A cantaloupe was passed around with a Sharpie. We drew the continents of the world on it, rather competently, until someone passed it to a drunken P., who attempted to draw Asia with non-political lines. When he passed it back, the whole thing had suddenly become unintelligible.

~On the succulent-covered hillside a few feet away from our outdoor table, a lizard's severed tail lay covered in ants. Apparently the cat had had an interesting lunch. i heard that the tail twitched for almost ten whole minutes. It was actually pretty beautiful, covered in precise geometric scale-designs.

~Watermelon slices were marinated in a tequila bath, then sprinkled with black salt. The run-off from this strange polygamy resulted in a sublime concoction which we drank down in tiny cupfuls at the end of the evening with gusto and delighted surprise.

~Halves of navel oranges sat brightly in tree-branch crooks collecting yeast for our host's future beer-making endeavors.

(apparently the theme of the day was fruit... i even brought triple-berry yellow cupcakes.)

So, all in all, not sure if patriotism was the theme of our day but a good, strange time was certainly had by all.

"...because if this pebble has no purpose, then everything is pointless. Even the stars."

2011-05-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

Instead of crafting some ambitious Summer Reading Plan, i've decided i want to catch up on all the classic movies i've never seen.

So, after watching Nights of Cabiria a few weeks ago, i fell in love with Giulietta Masina. Netflix suggested (Fellini's) La Strada; i took their suggestion, and got to watch her again, only now this journey led me to Anthony Quinn! Hated him the whole movie, until i realized at the end how great it all really was. Looked back on some of his older stuff and realized that i have a big ol' crush on him. Found this clip (from 1941's Blood and Sand) on YouTube*:

(*please note that this clip was found quite at random and i posted it because: the guitar solo at the beginning? fabulous; her hooded, flimsy, sparkling, noirish shawl? spectacular; and Anthony Quinn? young and smokin'.)

...and then realized how amazing Rita Hayworth was! Have not seen her in a film even once. Jeez, suddenly i am into the golden era of film. Left field, but i am happy to be there. Saw The Seven Year Itch at an open-air cinema last week and could not believe just how hammy and slapstick and goofy it was... Still, enjoyable nonetheless. Looking forward to The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Woman in the Window. Bring on the oldies and goodies, i say.

Marilyn Monroe strawberry cake.

2011-04-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

Nothing like feeling like a complete failure to get the shame coursing ruthlessly through your veins. i would say that it makes you feel alive, but there is a deadness there too. Here i am sitting alone on a Saturday night with a ridiculously decorated cake in the fridge and all i want to do is go and smash it on the sidewalk. When you are so depressed that you sleep until 11:00 and then spend hours baking and procrastinating until no one wants to come pick you up anymore, what else can you do? Write a self-indulgent blog post just to feel even more ridiculous. If anyone even reads this, i sincerely hope that there is some measure of scorn felt so as to mirror mine. Hopefully one day i will be a normal fucking person and cease to be a prisoner to this apartment, and my mind. That's something to hope for, at least.

truth is stranger than fiction.

2011-03-26T12:13:00.001-07:00

Yesterday evening, my boss gave me a ride home because i had a metric ton of paperwork to do for the shop (i am the new accountant, apparently). In addition, i had 2 bags of groceries and a delicate little pot of climbing jasmine. Just call me Pack Mule. i headed for the elevator (normally i take the stairs), super excited to get to my apartment and put all the stuff down, tired after a long day of prepping flowers. Glancing down the hallway, i can see that a girl, also laden down with packages, is heading towards the elevator with me. Great, i think antisocially as i step inside. Commence awkward silence.

i hit the #2 button, and she shuffled in and asks me to hit #3. After a minute of painfully slow ascent–our elevator has always been a little hinky–she blurts, "oh my gosh that smells good...!" and i realize that i'm still holding the jasmine. "yeah!" i say. "i got it for like five bucks at Trader Joe's! They sure know how to get me." And she laughs, while i silently berate myself for over-combating my painful shyness.

Then we begin to realize that we've been at floor #2 for quite a few moments and the door is not opening. i hit the DOOR OPEN button a few times; nothing happens. We smile nervously at each other and i say, "well, if we get stuck in here, at least it will smell good!" Ha ha ha ha, we each offer. Nervous laughter. But seriously. Nothing is happening. The elevator feels dead. i start pushing more buttons, DOOR OPEN, 2, 3, DOOR OPEN again... The lights are not even lighting up on them: the elevator is completely unresponsive. i am starting to get a little scared. "Oh, no. You've got to be kidding me," she says, and leans over to push one herself. Her eyes get wide and she stares at the doors uncomprehendingly. Our eyes meet. At that moment we both realize that we are stuck in the elevator. It's probably been about three minutes at this point, but it's kind of felt like forever.

She puts the shoes she's been holding (some strappy gold pumps) on the floor of the elevator and says pleadingly, "what are we gonna do?" i consider pushing the button with the firefighter's hat on it (CALL), but then decide that i'm being overdramatic.

"do you have a phone?" i reply, suddenly extremely grateful to be in there with someone else (i do not have one). Meanwhile, it is starting to sink in, that powerless and trapped feeling. My legs suddenly feel leaden and weak. We might fall three floors, my brain says to itself matter-of-factly. Shut up! i retort. Panic is creeping in at the edges, and my breathing feels wrong. She is fumbling around in her bag for her cell phone, muttering that she can't find it, she can't find it.
"Fuck!" she says. "Do you know the number for the security office, though?"

i do. Thank lucky stars for my photographic memory right now. Guess we were a good team.

"It's 272..." i wait as she dials with panicky fingers, "...0172."

She holds the phone up to her ear, eyes darting around, as i close my eyes and silently will the elevator not to fall. You'll probably just break a leg, or an arm, my brain is trying to process rationally. "Wait, is it 619 or 858?!" She has dialed the wrong area code. "Oh, it's 858..." i say, trailing off. This is like a Three Stooges routine. i begin to get used to the idea of being stuck in this tiny space with a complete stranger, one who actually might be more scared than i am. And, i am realizing how fortunate we are to be in a building with only three floors. Sweet.

Before anyone can answer the line, though, we hear the blessed ding!. We look at each other, incredulous, as the doors slowly open. i look to make sure that we are not between floors or some such ridiculousness, but we have somehow made it to floor three! i leap out, and tell her that we're at her stop. She smiles, in a daze, and hangs up the phone as she steps out of the elevator. i tell her with great relief and sarcasm that i'm taking the stairs down a level, and she says "have a good night!" i wave goodbye and we are each alone again.

Later, after my extreme case of the jitters (hello, adrenalin!) had worn off, Nat and i went to a friend's house to watch The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (bloody brilliant film, that). During Japanese food beforehand (smoky noodles, green tea, banana sushi and mochi aftewards), the conversation suddenly turned to strange afflictions such as the ability to squeeze one's phlegm out through one's tear ducts (i knew a guy once), people who bite their nails down far that they begin to actually eat their own fingers (this is true, sorry :/), and children born with no mouths (so, teeth and gums completely exposed), at which Nat and i both started, because last night i'd had a bad dream:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

in the first scene, i was staying overnight at a ramshackle hotel in some sort of grungy western ghost town, right by a railroad track where each night a train loaded with terrifying people who'd had their lips eaten off (by who or what, i didn't know) would begrudgingly tease and seduce us to their cars for gallons of potable water (for some reason our hotel had none); the man i tentatively approached held the water out to me then quickly took it away, over and over, until finally i had to be bold and grab for it, at which point he made a point of touching my hand with his– something i had not been aware that i was avoiding. He gave me a bitter smile and i broke free and ran away pell-mell with my water.

Later in the dream i was in one of the topmost floors of the same hotel (except now it was all clean and pristine and white and i believe we were in Tokyo) with Nat and our friend Allison. We were unpacking and getting ready for bed when a huge earthquake struck. Our building began to rumble and shake, then sway from side to side, more and more each time. i screamed and Allison tried to console me: there, there, heather, it's just a bad earthquake. everything'll be okay.
No! i screamed, and bolted for the other room to find Nat. This is for real!
i tried to run to him, but when i got to the couch i had to grab it so i wouldn't fall over. i could see him on the other side of the room; white as a sheet, trying to use his own body to counteract the swaying, to keep the building from toppling. i joined him in this motion desperately, keening, until suddenly the building began to crack and break apart to our left and i realized that the whole top of the building was falling off. We were going to die. As the world collapsed all around us and we raced toward the ground, i looked to him and screamed at the top of my lungs over the roar and chaos and falling walls and furniture: i love you! but then i lost sight of him and as the debris whirled and screamed and weighed down all over me, i had no idea how long it would be until we hit home and then i tried to take one last deep breath (why?) but there was no air anymore, it was like being in a vacuum.
Then i woke up.

i had initially attributed them to lingering worries over the situation in Japan, but who knows? Maybe we are being told, all the time, what the future holds, only we don't yet quite have the capabilities to decipher these messages. Beats me.

i want to break free

2011-02-06T22:19:00.000-08:00

...Just returned from a ski weekend in Big Bear. Lovely place– lots of carved wood grizzlies and guys in trucker hats. Also notable: pines, pines, pines. The lake sparkled, the snow was man-made, and the aching joints and sore muscles are real. Haven't been downhill skiing in twenty years! Madness. Be back soon with more interesting things to say.

halloween wrap-up.

2010-11-26T11:20:00.000-08:00

As Halloween approached, i realized that i was completely and totally uninspired, for the first time ever. No costume seemed at all appealing. Tragedy! Finally Nat suggested that i dress as a fairy (which of course i practically do every day as it is), and immediately i knew that that was it.

Years ago, i did this, and it worked well. All i did was make a wand (a piece of curly willow covered in glue and then sprinkled with glitter), cut some ivy and leaves from behind my building for a head garland, and wear some twee clothing from the farthest recesses of my closet and drawers. (Oh, that was the year that Nat wore a huge kabuki wig, long black trenchcoat, and self-made frightening black-latex-covered surgical mask. We were quite the pair.) At the time, the thought of wings didn't even occur to me. This year, though, it was foremost on my mind.

Images of the flower fairies (above) swirled around in my head, but so did Oona from the movie Legend. Not likely to pull off that hair, though:

What i ended up with was a so-so amalgamation of these two aesthetics. My skirt, while frayed, was quite a bit longer than hers; i powdered and glittered my face to the hilt, and Nat drew curling vines around my eyes and temples with green eye pencil. i wound a long piece of ivy around my body, and grabbed every wired butterfly i could find in the house and attached it somewhere. Made another wand, and grabbed my small bottle of fairy dust (just glitter in a cute, tiny bottle) and tied it around my waist with ribbon. Easy peasy.

The wings, on the other hand, proved to be a bit more... involved than i'd surmised. Following this basic template from Threadbanger, and modifying a bit along the lines of this video (which is much more palatable to watch with the sound off) these babies certainly tested my patience at times. But i just wanted to show that it is definitely doable (please excuse the bad photography):

~Bent 4 wire coat hangers. (Note: if you use thick wire instead, you will have much more shaping freedom. i was going for a dragonfly look, so the hangers were perfect.)
~Stretched one knee-high hose over each and tied them off. (Took a chance on these shorter ones; they were the cheapest, but they absolutely fit! Although, i wish white had been available instead of beige. Color-wise, they ended up a bit darker than i'd wanted.)
~Stared at them, unhappily, for a couple of days.
~Electrical-taped the wire ends and figured out how to attach the 4 pieces satisfactorily.
~Spray-painted them green. (Used this method because we had spray paint at work, and because no green tights could be found anywhere. Alternatively, you can hand-paint them if you have the time.)
~Spray-glittered them. (Don't be stingy, now.)
~After a failed attempt to paint veins on a test piece of stretched hosiery, i made a stencil and laid it over each wing, then spray-painted with silver. (This was very trying, as i used thin cardboard and the paint wanted to meander underneath the stencil. Pushpins in strategic places helped, but only a little. If you can, use something pretty substantial for your stencil.) Then i did the other side of each, too, because i realized that that would be the side visible to anyone looking at my directly. However this caused strange, see-through, incongruity issues because i only had the one stencil. Whatever. i'm not perfect.
~Using a stick of lit incense, made some decorative holes. This was actually really fun, but i wish i had done it before the spray-painting. Probably not the best thing to be inhaling.
~Added some glue/glitter accents and waited for the whole thing to dry.
~Wrapped the unsightly midsection with ribbon, then affixed my gigantic-est butterfly to cover it all up.
~The night of the party, i forgot to bring extra ribbon for arm loops, so i had to just use the dangling ends of the pantyhose (thank goodness i had not cut those off yet!). It was not ideal, but ended up working great.

Only downside? Walking through a crowded apartment filled with other people wearing costumes.

Let's just say that i spent a lot of time on the back porch. And walking sideways.

In conclusion: i hope this inspires someone for next year. It felt really good to make everything, and to not spend $45 at a crappy Halloween Superstore filled with dudes on the prowl for wigs and smoking jackets and girls looking for 'sexy' nurse/maid/pirate/devil/cat costumes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few more photos from the night.

Next year: Dia de los Muertos! Sugar skulls, altars and marigolds... i can't wait.

2010-11-20T01:47:00.000-08:00

My boss brought in a bunch of branches of silver-dollar eucalyptus that she scored from a neighbor's trash bin. i was removing it from the back of her van when a tiny glint of crimson caught my eye, shimmering in the dusty light. It was a tiny hummingbird, stiff and still and lifeless. Did that glimmer, that great color, cause me to have a burst of energy? i felt it, and sensed it.

So, something from nothing.

i wanted to bury him (her?) that night, under the meteor shower. Instead it was cloudy and we stayed in. i will inter that tiny body under dirt that weighs ten times more than it. The color will go dark, and feed the worms who will nourish the soil that will spring up flowers, full of nectar for the next little hummingbird.

dreamscapes.

2010-10-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Last night i dreamt of a spider killing a chicken... it was huge, horrid, brownish-yellow spider and the chicken was someone's pet who was returning home for the evening. It flapped up to the person's bedroom windowsill, and the spider saw its chance and sunk its fangs into the chicken's right leg. The poor thing flapped and then fell, slowly, [as if in a dream] to the ground below. It was pitch night, and we were on a farm. i just happened to be smoking a cigarette outside and watched, horrified, as the whole thing unfolded. The chicken floated downwards and the spider fell with it. As i watched, the spider turned into a froglike creature with iridescent blue and green hind legs. When they hit the pine-needle-covered earth, the spider/frog creature dug in, tearing great big chunks of flesh from the chicken's legs. i couldn't watch anymore, so i turned back to the house.

There were five or six small boys there, all playing with matches. They lined up to show me their amazing and daring feats... the first (and smallest) boy bowed his head and concentrated intently on lighting his match. Once ablaze, he watched it burn, holding the match below (and dangerously close to) his face. i started, and pulled his hand away from his head. Never hold a match like that! i yelled at him. He looked upset, and i showed him how to light it away from his body, and hold it aloft so that he could view the flame safely.

Weird, eh? (To say the least).

"Saskia!"

2010-10-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

We had a near-miss with an asteroid just hours ago. i didn't realize how close it was going to be! 46,000 kilometers... practically felt that thing flying by my ear. Here's a nice little article about it. Nice to be reminded that we're all on a rough blue marble spinning in forever.

On that note, y'all should really see The Vanishing. Don't go look it up, i don't want any plot points being ruined. And make sure you watch the original (1983) Dutch version. It's such a great movie, overall. i thought about it for days afterward... would just find myself unable to sleep, thinking about the final scene, and of all the wonderful foreshadowing during the rest. It's creepy, slow, and unsettling, but it also makes you think. Maybe it's just me, but this film had a powerful hold on my brain for a week or two there. It is an excellent portrayal of human strength, and fragility.

Hope you enjoy.

echo,

2010-10-05T19:08:00.001-07:00

echo.

Intense, how time flies when you're doing... not much at all.

Once my sister and i were outside during a thunderstorm and a bolt of lightning struck the ground on our neighbor's land across the road. i watched as her long blonde hair began to stand on end. Outside, on the porch, our spider orchid has debuted its first gorgeous bloom, honeydew and chocolate-hued. i think i am only truly happy when the ground is wet, the wind is mischievous, the cold is reddening my face, and the air smells of leaves and smoke. My favorite color for flowers is orange, though i can't stand that color much in other respects. i love birds and long, intricate movie intros. The smell of rosin in a violin (or viola) case gives me a thrill. i hate it when i throw something into the garbage and it misses. For some reason i am often afraid of the ceiling crashing down on me (especially while i'm in bed). Plain cones are the best for ice cream.

To be fair, i did go on a journey in September, but i didn't paint any houses nor did i go inner-tubing down a river. Harrumph. Next time, next time. Always next time.

Nat and i are now entering Week Two of Quitting Smoking: Round 508. i've had more than a couple of friends sort of scoff at this revelation, as if to say, i'll believe it when i see it. And while i suppose i understand the emotions behind their response, i would just like to say this: Please, if you know anyone who is having a difficult time quitting smoking, or eating better, or being more assertive, or whatever it is that's holding them back from a better life, please just support them. Don't make light of their past failures. We know it is on us, we don't need to be shamed for it. Guilt is not usually a huge transformer of people, at least not in my humble opinion.
Thank you, that is all.

Hope everyone is having a smashing October so far. It is, after all, the best month. ;) And remember, time flies.

(this man is my hero.)

So long, entire month.

2010-09-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Wow. What happened to August?
Nat's prospectus, that's what. He's been nose-to-the-grindstone (aka the Mac) for weeks now, finishing the dang thing up. This translated to zero computer time for me, which is probably a good thing.

(What did i get done, you ask? Oh, you know: absolutely nothing of any importance.)

Going on a trip tomorrow, and i've been sick for days. Nothing like traveling while you're headachy and nauseous! Add to that an extreme case of nerves due to flying by myself for the first time in 11 years, and you've got a gay old time, indeed.

Things i am doing and plan on doing while away:
~Painting 'the house up North' (my dad's house in Montana). This is the main reason for this whole trip in the first place. Let's just hope that scaffolding holds...
~Innertubing down a river, also somewhere up North (big sister, you promised!).
~Watching loads of Top Chef episodes that my brother so lovingly recorded for me (because everybody watches TV in Las Vegas. At least i do.).
~Hitting up the chairlift on Big Mountain again. This time i will try and get my mom to take some photos with her digital camera, so you will all have the beautiful, glorious proof.
~Finding (and patronizing) the oxygen bar at McCarran International Airport (Las Vegas). File this one under "trying new things before you die".
~Keeping an eye out for a modest (read: nothin' but coverage) bathing suit for our trip to Hawaii in November. Yes, this is the year of trips, apparently. Will talk more about this later.

Catch you on the flipside, folks.

Until then, here are some nouns that are also adjectives.

august

pacific

buffalo (buffalo buffalo buffalo, and so on, forever.)

...Toodles!

lost and found.

2010-07-31T17:38:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Millie and Wayne, an older couple who originally hail from Long Island (say it with an accent, please) but have lived here in San Diego for some forty years. They saved our butts on Thursday night when we were lost in the hills. Our local transportation authority's website had instructed us to walk "east" for about a mile upon exiting our trolley, which ended up leading us right to an impassable canyon after about four blocks. Distraught, and late for a concert, Nat hailed a car exiting a driveway. (This was a very cloistered neighborhood; not a soul walking about for miles, it seemed, that we could ask for directions.) The woman driver hesitantly rolled down her window and i watched from afar as he ran through every confused facial expression in his repertoire, asking if there was a way through to 3rd Avenue. Finally, he waved me over.

Turns out that unless we could fly, we were stuck. Our directions had neglected to impart some pretty important information regarding the topography of the region surrounding the Middletown Trolley Station. Cretins.

So what happened next? They demanded to give us a ride. Insisting that it was no problem, and that they were merely "on [their] way out for a hamburger", we were ushered into the vehicle. Sweaty and grateful, we were whisked to our destination over hill, over dale. Wayne thought that we were from England (why does this happen constantly?!), to which our only response was that we both had an English parent. i blame Nat's extremely proper enunciation under times of stress. Millie later told us that if i hadn't been carrying flowers, she probably would have just screeched right past us. (Apparently, "you just never know" in this day and age.) i told them to come and visit me some time at the flower shop if they were ever in the area. i honestly hope to see them again. . . thanks, Millie and Wayne! You two really helped revive my good feelings toward the human race.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As for the show, it was okay. Not sure if Joanna Newsom's latest album really lends itself to the concert circuit; perhaps if there had been tables and chairs, cocktails and candles. . . but standing crowded in a hot room with other people who are having a hard time grooving to the lengthy, strangely-syncopated tunes, it was a bit rough. Milk-Eyed Mender would have been a great tour (in fact, we did see her then, in a dark smoky bar, before we even knew who she really was), and we did get to hear one song from those old, melodic days ("Peach, Plum, Pear", which, incidentally, is one of my all-time faves). Unfortunately, we arrived late just as Robin Pecknold (of Fleet Foxes fame) was finishing up his opening set. Pretty sure that would have been the better performance, partly because Joanna's drummer was set too loud on volume and he even managed to sing over her at points.

Mostly i would argue that her more complicated songs are best left to the studio. i was surprised to find that my favorite performances of hers that night were a couple of songs that i'd barely noticed on the album: "Go Long" and "Baby Birch". i was completely transported by them, whereas the more familiar, jaunty hits ("Easy", "Good Intentions Paving Co.") were lacking the punch that i had come to rely on. And Joanna on piano is wonderful, but watching the light catch on her humming harpstrings was still as fascinating as always. If you have patience and a light heart, you'll enjoy the show (and, obviously, the albums). Have One on Me was by far the most difficult album of hers for me to get into. While not necessarily an album full of gems, almost every song has its few seconds of brilliant joy. It just might take you a bit longer to wind your way through to them.

"Baby Birch" was melancholy-sweet and symphonic (sorry for the poorish sound on this):

and "Soft as Chalk" was very enjoyable:

As always, you are free to harbor nothing but disdain for this music.

(Kinda like me with Phil Collins, or Dave Matthews.)

It's absolutely up to you. But i encourage everyone to at least give it a shot. She takes a few tries, but in the end it is like having access to some kind of magical auditory respite.

forward and back.

2010-07-26T14:27:00.001-07:00

As the girlfriend of a philosopher of time and physics, i think and hear quite a bit about the nature of time. Now, i'm someone who's always felt that our human, recorded (or "ordered") time is somewhat arbitrary. Why do we measure single seconds, instead of two- or three-second increments? Why are there twenty-four hours in a day instead of twelve (two-hour units)? As Nat has pointed out, our system of time is based on the actual movement of the spheres: rotations of the Earth, and Sun.

Being a huge Dark Crystal fan, this orrery-inspired time measurement model feels right (see also Stonehenge, sundials, and so on) somehow. Anyway, apparently those crazy ancient Egyptians with their base 12 numbering system led to our modern-day measurements. Fun fact.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In related(ish) news, we saw Inception last night. It was certainly a thrilling, mind-bending nail-biter. Pretty nice to look at, even though the sound editing was awful. (Just try and tell me you caught every spoken line in that film. Go on.) Our boy Chris Nolan certainly seems interested in the nuances of perception, time, memory, identity, and reality – and boy, can i dig it. He obviously understands the awesome power of our brains, and how this can both help and hurt us. i would love to sit and eat tiramisu with him some day, and talk about layers. Also, i really liked how he named the characters and entities in Inception: (highlight if you want to read the end of this paragraph:)
Cobb's unsettling wife 'Mal' kept bringing to mind grand mal seizures, or words that begin with that root, such as malicious, malevolent, maladjusted, etc. Naming Ellen Page's architect character 'Ariadne' was clever, and the nefarious company that Leonardo was (or was not?) running from, 'Cobol', might quite possibly have been echoing that mischievous sprite, the kobold.

...Here's an interesting delve if you're so inclined.

In the spirit of the above nonsense, here are some fab time-lapse photographs. They've been sitting around in a folder on my desktop for who knows how long (minutes? months?), so i'm afraid i can't remember where they came from. It would certainly be nice to give credit where it is due, but for now they remain in limbo. Enjoy.

The tiniest bit.

2010-07-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

Can someone please explain to me the difference between 1.6666 (repeating into eternity) and 1.67?

One person has told me that there is no difference. i refuse to accept this as fact. Certainly there exists that tiny, incremental bit that is keeping it from rounding up? Sometimes the world of mathematics is so perfect, and other times it absolutely fries my brain.

Any answer will do. Seriously, just give me something, please.

...and taste it some more.

2010-07-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a post on Drawn!, probably my favorite art blog. The artist's name here is Ginette Lapalme, and is she ever adorable; i love the sweet, watery rainbow colors she's got goin' on – and the painted sticks! Well, words cannot express. Hope you enjoy.

Be more colorful.

Taste the rainbow.

2010-06-21T15:42:00.001-07:00

Fact: i am pretty smitten with the Amish (and i suppose, the Mennonites and other various 'plain' cultures). A long time ago at a stained glass store far, far away, my friend Sherri, a thin bookkeeper with artsy glasses and short hair, gave me a book called Plain and Simple.

i read that thing from cover to cover in a couple of days, easy. Inhaled it. The thought that there could be another way of life, free from stuff: free from technology and advertisements, traffic noise and ATMs, swimming pools, brand names and artificial colors and flavors, free from all things hustle-bustle, really invigorated me. In a powerful way, i yearned for that life. Yarn, oxen, wood and grass felt very real, and very close.

As an entirely non-religious person, however, it was a conflicting feeling. i have never understood the need to believe in something that somehow 'explains' 'it all'. The 'answers' are all around us, all of the time. It seems to me that faith in one's self should be first and foremost; without that, what do you really have? On the other hand, losing yourself so completely to a shared way of life with the close-knit community around you sounds mighty appealing to someone like me: a self-centered anxious hermit crab who is always wondering what everything 'means'.

All of these feelings were refreshed by the book Nat recently gave me, The Riddle of Amish Culture, by Donald B. Kraybill. Written in 1989, it certainly feels a bit dated, and being that it is a sociology book, it leans heavily on the history, customs, and belief systems of the Amish, really quite different fare from the personal, day-to-day quirks i had read about years ago in Plain and Simple.

Not surprisingly, there is a fair amount of bloodshed and martyrdom in those old (Protestant) roots – religion tends to have a stain of that wherever you find it. The belief system is really quite simple: obedience to Christ. They separate themselves from the evil (modern, outside) world, and excommunicate errant members of their society (shunning*). Sounds severe, no? But they value hard work, patience, and humility, three things which i live by.

Then i came across one simple sentence that flipped a switch in my mind: it reminded readers that in Amish society, wives are meant to be subservient to their husbands. [an insider discussion here.] Obviously, this is not unique to the Amish people, but it got me thinking: did a religion exist in which women held equal sway? After all my waxing romantic over the Pennsylvania Dutch, i was suddenly left hotly bitter.

With a bit of searching, the only one i could turn up was the Bahá'í faith, a religion formed (quite recently) in 19th-century Persia. In fact, if i was forced to ascribe to a 'recognized' spiritual belief system, it would probably be this one. The unity of humankind seems like a pretty simple idea to me, and one worth striving for. i'm sure i'll find my problems with it, though, just like i have with every other religion, faith, and creed out there.

For now i suppose i'll stick with my particular blend of heathen nature-worship. It's what i do best, certainly, and it's carried me this far... i am filled with reverence every single day, and it's never once felt forced. Having a healthy spiritual life has never really figured far up on the ladder for me, but maybe it was there all along, quietly flowing. That wistful Amish life i'd always dreamed of will remain a fantasy, and i will have to be content with mooning over the Mennonites at the farmer's market of my hometown in Montana, offering their beautiful jars of rose-hip jelly. Our religious differences don't have to be an impasse - it doesn't mean we can't still connect as human beings.

Unfortunately, however, this can be the reality in our world. But maybe next time instead of worrying that a Plain teenager will balk at (or silently judge) my bright pink hair and sparkly eyeshadow, i should just strike up a conversation about, say, goldfinches, and see where it takes us.

*Check out Devil's Playground for a modern, somewhat sensational portrayal on Rumspringa, the period during which a young Amish person 'grows up', and decides whether to live their life within or without.

Mesmerizing, hypnotizing.

2010-05-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

Okay okay okay.

i always hear about stuff too late. And this is no exception: YooouuuTuuube.com.

My first (and still best) exposure was this. (warning: it may play choppily if you have many other things running on your computer, or if you are looking at another window while it plays.)

(By the way, here is that original video; it was put together by a young Australian guy using sounds and sights found in the animated movie Alice in Wonderland. Gives me shivers, it's so good. But then, i am madly in love with that movie.

Another video worth a listen (and watch) by him is the Mary Poppins track. Guy knows his melancholy.)

Unfortunately, nothing else i've played on YooouuuTuuube fills me with as much satisfaction as that Alice video. Still a neato tool, though.

More talent.

2010-05-31T19:23:00.000-07:00

i am digging this guy's art. Jon Han. Love the color and the geometry of it.

An Open Letter to Serious Dimwits.

2010-05-31T19:13:00.001-07:00

Dear fuckwits drinking beer and blasting music by the pool (because it's ~~Memorial Day~~ Just Another 'Legitimate' Day For You To PARTY DOWN, woooooo!),

i have zero sympathy for the fact that the police were called and came by to kick your asses out. When you treat the security guard like shit (4 times!) and refuse to tell him which apartment you live in (and yet adamantly maintain that you are doing nothing "wrong"), there will be consequences. Sorry your super-sweet pool party got shut down. Sorry that some of us who live hear don't actually enjoy listening to your favorite talentless Top 40 'musicians' filling the air with tonal diarrhea while you ~~sing~~ warble backup and drop beer bottles every five minutes.

p.s.) omg, it like so totally was funny when the puppy like totally jumped in the pool after you!! Especially cuz, like, there are no animals allowed here! omg.

dizzying.

2010-05-22T20:00:00.001-07:00

...because sometimes, just sometimes, i am here to help blow your minds.

(Click on the titles of any of the above videos to watch them, full-sized, on their proper sites. Honestly, i don't know why i can't figure out how to format things to fit on here.)

Calamity Jane.

2010-05-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

The other day i got battery acid, bleach, and rubber cement on my hands. Just, you know, part of a day in the life.

My bike light wasn't working, and when i cracked 'er open to replace the batteries, i was greeted with a nasty white, grainy film. After removing the spent batteries, i noticed piles of the stuff, beneath, and all over the metal contacts themselves. Asked Nat to look up if there was a way to clean this stuff off, or if i had to buy a whole new bike light. Turns out i had corroded battery badness all over my hands. Yum. This fact was especially fun because i happened to have a big old fresh cut on my left palm from trying to pick up a piece of beargrass at work while i was unknowingly stepping on the other end. sliiiiiiiice.

Later, i was patching the inner tube for my back wheel–it was definitely a bad day for bikes–and while stubbornly squeezing the tube of adhesive, i didn't notice that the flimsy metal casing had ripped open (probably from my thumbnail) and was oozing "TOXIC ☠ POISON" all over my fingers. Peeled it off in a tizzy.

The bleach thing is commonplace: we have it at work, in a repurposed dish soap bottle. a few drops go into almost every clean bucket of water before we put new flowers in it. Helps to keep the bacteria levels down. The downside of this arrangement is that sometimes the bottle falls into the sink, sending little droplets spraying every which way; my clothes are spattered with scads of tiny, light spots. And, on the odd occasion, one of us will grab it to wash our hands with. Oops.

Besides all of this, my hands are just jacked in general. When you use your hands as tools, this can (and certainly will) happen. Also, i don't wear gloves at work because it impedes my ability to handle anything efficiently. In fact, at the stained glass store where i used to work, we didn't wear gloves, either. When you are moving around a four foot-by-two foot sheet of glass, you want to be damn sure that you can feel the glass in your fingers. There is not a whole lot of room for error, and i have never found a glove skin-tight enough to dispel all unease. At least one of us, on any given day, had a bandage on her fingers from a glass cut. People (customers, acquaintances) would always tell us to "just wear gloves"– ah, thank you, Captains Obvious.

Stripping the greens off of the lower stems of flowers and leafy items leaves you with shriveled, permanently dirty hands. Painting your nails is basically an exercise in futility, and no amount of lotion will drench your parched palms. The amount of time that your hands are wet makes for a chapped skin affair for the ages. Sometimes, when a really precious girl says to me, "i would just love to work with flowers", it is all i can do to contain my snicker. Girly, i think, you can kiss that French manicure goodbye (see above reasoning). And your designer clothes (hello, pollen stains!), and your high heels (concrete for 8 hours, anyone?), and your breezy attitude (seriously, we are selling people something that's already dead, and at 3x the market price). i have, in fact, worked with people like that, and it just never pans out. You either aren't afraid to get dirty, or you are. You can't work in the flower shop all day and expect to leave immaculate. It's just not part of the deal.

Although, i suppose it does have its rewards...

An oldie but a goodie.

2010-05-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

(because if i haven't already posted this, then i'm an idiot.)

Notes from (relative) suburbia.

2010-05-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

If, one afternoon while walking home form work, you see an alarmingly red-hued pile of barf on the sidewalk and an empty bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos nearby, keep your wits about you.

If you, like me, leave your butter out (because nothing is more annoying than tearing a nice hot piece of toast with a cold pat of petrified fat), please don't ever place it on top of your toaster oven in haste because you 'need the counter space'. Later, when you are toasting a Pop Tart for dessert, you will return to the kitchen after hearing the faint ding! of Deliciousness Ready, only to find a pool of melted, salty grease all over your toaster, counter, floor; best let it harden back up before any cleaning attempts. Also, if you are still like me, make sure to do this at least 4 times before you learn your lesson.

There is a lovely pair of nesting mallards in our building's swimming pool. An internet search on whether or not this was good for them resulted in thousands of hits about how to rid your pool of these loud, pooping , salmonella-infested flying pests.

Watering the plants on the balcony yesterday proved to be difficult because the watering can would only trickle, even though it was full of water. Puzzled, i sloshed the water around a bit, hoping to dislodge whatever it was, and then i decided to actually look into the spout, which yielded quite a surprise: something dark and fuzzy and symmetrical was peering out at me. Left it for the next day, as the dark was settling in... Upon inspection this afternoon, noticed a pair of antennae poking out. Doesn't take an entomologist to conclude that this is probably the moth that's been laying the eggs that turned into the caterpillars that've been chomping away at Nat's Sarracenia.

i blew on her antennae, and performed a few other cursory examinations, and decided that she was probably dead by now. Using a chopstick, i poked her back down the spout into the can. Filled it up with some more water, dumped it all out, and Nat noticed that there was some life in her yet. i almost cried. She needed to be put out of her misery. One size-13 boot stomp later, and my soul was a little lighter. But not by much. Sorry, little friend.

Red tide has hit San Diego, and there are bats flying around in the courtyard at dusk these days. There have been at least fifteen bees pollinating the flowers at my work every day for the past week. Is this the return of wildlife? If so, it's about damn time.

Elephant skulls are honeycombed, so that the gargantuan beasts may more easily move around their hefty skeletons...

(There is nothing more depressing than a pizza delivery flyer on a dead man's door.)

Worked extra hard for moms this past week. Totally worth it, of course. Discovered a new spray rose, the Mimi Eden:

...ahh, ain't she lovely? Doesn't really come through in pictures, though. Hm, i may need to start a Tuesday Rose weekly post. Plenty more where this came from.

In other news: i'm starting a jar (okay, so it's actually a box), to put money in, toward my dream of someday owning and running a flower shop. Possibly with my best friend. Time to start moving towards what to do with the rest of my days.
Baby steps.

hiding in plain sight.

2010-05-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

So, Sunday was the second time i've done it.

The 'it', here, being...

::looks around suspiciously::

... geocaching.

Now, i'm sure this is no big secret, but i'd sure like to pretend that it is, and i'd definitely like to keep it that way if possible. (Posting about it to an almost infinite public can only bring this about, correct?)

So basically you log on to the website. You type in your zip code, to find a cache near you. If you have a GPS device (i'm workin' on that), you can download the coordinates, and off you go. If you do not have a GPS device, it is somewhat trickier but by no means impossible. The coordinates listed can be found easily on a Google Earth map. Although, i should point out here that the first cache i found was clued only with words and vague locations, so, no coordinates were used; but the second one was right on the money, coordinates-wise. After i head out to get #3 i will experience more about how truly accurate this method is. Mostly, i do not have the money to be spending on electronics right now, especially one that is this frivolous. If i had a cell phone, it would be easier (you can get GPS capability these days), but i do not and that, my friends, is that.

i heard about this random activity while watching a fairly terrible movie, and my zeal was undeniable. i couldn't wait to get out and find stuff! Stuff that other people had also found. i know: exciting, right? Boy, howdy! What could be more interesting than strangers' signatures and lots of tiny, random flotsam left behind?

To be honest: not much. The thrill i felt when i found the first one was palpable. Feeling like a spy on a top-secret mission, i flipped through the log of names from the past (it had been there since 2005!), and sorted through the little bits and pieces left behind: a wee Hello Kitty eraser, a wooden cross, a quarter, a small compass... The box itself (a camouflaged Altoids tin) had been magnetized to the underside of a phone company box, and apparently had been discovered by a worker: inside was an AT&T business card scrawled with the message: have fun, guys. Well shucks, dude– i am! Thanks!

If you take something out, you are supposed to replace it with something of equal or greater value (whatever that means, considering what paltries we're dealing with). i took out a wooden 'geocachers' coin (emblazoned with a local church's name and creed), because i saw it as proselytizing (boo, hiss), and left an Andrew Bird button from my bag, because i literally had nothing else that would fit in that tiny tin. We signed our names – with hearts, 'cause we're dorky like that – and closed the box back up. i looked around to make sure no one was watching and placed the box quickly and carefully back where it had been, where it lay in wait to become part of some random, invisible thread connecting the next person in the future to this place, to all of those who'd visited in the past, and to us in that present.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Surprisingly, i suppose, Nat is supportive of my strange new activity. It gets me out of the house, and even though it doesn't necessarily cost anything, he is actually encouraging me to get a GPS device (or rather, he is using this scenario as more evidence of why we should finally get cell phones; look, i will resist as long as i possibly can, dammit!).

For someone who suffers from anxiety, and specifically social anxiety, getting out of the house can be a monumental hurdle. On days when i don't have to be at work it is, sadly, rare for me to go outside. This is super pathetic, and believe me when i tell you how aware of that fact i am. One shrivels up in self-doubt, wilting and cringing and feeling guilty about it all later. True story.

But this, at least–this–has got me out. Granted, i had Nat come with me both times, but i'm sincerely hoping that will change. It's got me back on my bike, which is excellent because exercise (self-preservation) is scarce when you don't give a crap about yourself. So, yay. This post took a depressing turn, but you know what? i'm alright with that. Looking forward to what i find next.

Until the next bulletin, please enjoy this insanely catchy 'Italian' madness:

(follow-up links to unravel this mysterious goodness can be found here, here, and here. Now let's hope you don't wake up with this song running through your head the next morning, like i did.)

@v@

2010-04-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes they stare outside of the box with these amazingly clear, intense eyes. They are seeing things so far away. They are waiting for mother to return with food. They are hungry little things. Crowded and ugly, brave, and pitiful. All wobbly legs and dander, small warm heartbeats under a patchy fur breast – you cannot deceive them, but they can, and do, deceive themselves. The world in the box is always the same, with subtle nuance: someone is getting bigger, someone else is shrinking. They huddle, and fight, and shine with survival. Soon everything will change. The box will cease to house their being; they will thrill in the weight and lightness of the whole universe around them. Feathers in flight, fury and freedom.

Hang in there, owlets. The world is yours, and mine. i am always with you; you are always with me.

Affronted.

2010-04-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

So, an old friend of my big sister's (and mine, i suppose) just sent me along a little message containing this response to my 'how are you?' query:

my kids are beautiful and doing well. nothing like us when we were growing up...

...wow. Thanks.

Should this have bothered me as much as it did? i felt like i'd been slapped in the face, to be honest. Maybe it's just that i feel like i've worked very hard to get where i am right now, which is not exactly a place i am proud of or happy to be in, but every day is a new day. i am still working on a lot of my own 'issues' and don't appreciate people being so candid about what terrible fuck-ups we all were. The past is the past, we've all (hopefully) atoned for whatever we may have done and moved up and away from our various struggles.

Now that i'm reading it objectively, however, it feels like less of a slight and more of an honest sense of relief that her kids are well-loved and taken care of. Well bully for them.

...kidding, kidding! Of course i am happy about that, and in no way implying that parenthood is some fucked-up hazing ritual in which your bad experiences and behaviors must, in turn, be passed along to your progeny. Guess i'm just feeling sorry for myself, which is loathsome, so enough of all that.

...here's something awesome! In the literal sense of the word! (beware: audio starts right away.)

As for me, i'm off to do some treasure-hunting; more on that later.

For no reason at all.

2010-04-23T15:59:00.000-07:00

i am here to tell you about my first apartment.

It was on Dohr Street, in South Berkeley. Number 2950, apartment L. Top floor of three, with outdoor-stairway access. My best friend at the time, J, and i, both needed to find a place. She was looking for new digs, and i was moving out of my mom's house for the first time at the ripe old age of eighteen. We quickly found a place that was cheap enough ($750), and moved right in. One of the bedrooms was bigger than the other, and for some reason i let J have it. My little room only had one window, north-facing, and it was high up and slid open to one side, like a bus window. There was a weird vibe in that room, too, that i always attributed to a ghost; it felt as though someone had died in it not too long before, and probably an old woman. My bedroom door would never latch shut properly, so i always had to haul a giant pillar candle in front of it when i wanted privacy (which was often). Because i have an obsessive need for decoration, the walls were quickly adorned with postcards, drawings, and calendar pages from years past: butterflies, Dalí, Man Ray, Erte. We bought a bunch of "new apartment-stuff" at Target –silverware, garbage can, ice cube trays, shower curtain, etc.– and we were off.

The bathtub in the cramped bathroom was horrendously pocked and rusted, but i made up for it by sneaking some of J's clove-scented body wash from time to time. i have cried, cut someone else's hair, and done lines of coke in that minuscule bathroom (sorry, mom!). The tub would clog once a month or so, and we would have to plunger it back to health. Good times.

The kitchen was a pea green-and-salmon affair, dated beyond belief– which would have been okay, actually, if there hadn't been a permanent layer of grease and dust on everything. J worked at a coffee shop and always brought home tea and coffee for me– what a pal. She often cooked, while i subsisted 90% of the time on tea and toast. Once she even made a vast, amazing feast of gyoza, and many a time we would simply barbecue fish out on the teensy back porch, smothering the fillets in lemon and then gobbling them down far too quickly... (From back there, you could see a water tower to the West; it was so alien to me, since i had always associated those with small-town hamlets in Iowa or Nebraska.) Beer was usually present, although eventually J and i would drink vodka-crans every night for months on end. Our temporary (read: year-long) roommate M would make a huge pot of his signature refried beans once every two months or so, which was not an event to be missed. Once, the tap on our kitchen sink just came plum off when someone turned it on, spraying water absolutely everywhere. Our scumbag landlord (whose first name was 'Stirling'), tried to tell us that it was because we had "too many parties" – it's as if he thought people were taking turns standing at the sink, turning the faucet on, and off; on, and off.

J had a mesmerizing octagonal aquarium in the living room, which she kept stocked with interesting fish and plants, some of which didn't always co-exist peaceably: fish would nip at other fish, or tear apart the rare marsh plant she'd just brought home in a bag that very afternoon. It was a constant battle to keep things friendly in there, but well-worth the upkeep for the amount of pleasure it gave our numerous stoner friends. Our roof would leak a lot during the rainy season, so pots and pans would have to be placed in the hallway, or on the arm of the couch. We had a square-shaped fan that we placed in the window, backwards, so that when one sat near it and smoked a cigarette, you could blow the offending plume right outside. You could see the Berkeley hills from that big front window, actually, which was probably the best feature of the apartment. i never once regretted living there, even when our downstairs neighbor's son shot himself in the hand and i came home from work to an eerily empty neighborhood and a pool of blood on their landing. One summer day in particular, i can remember sitting on the top step with the front door open, smoking a cigarette and listening to some Jimi Hendrix song ('Castles Made of Sand'?) from inside. Wouldn't trade that small moment for anything.

Eventually i met Nat, and he would come over at 7:30 in the morning, right after he'd get off work (night-auditor at a hotel), and just as i was getting up for mine. We would smoke together as i drank a cup of coffee, sitting quietly-as-can-be on that front step while the blue world around us began to waken. He would drift off to sleep in my bed while i finished getting ready for work, and i would kiss him goodbye, and goodnight. My morning walk to the art store (where i was first a cashier, then an accountant) took me past the 'shell house':

View Larger Map

while i daydreamed about my magical boy and listened to PJ Harvey (Dry), Bauhaus (Mask), Björk (Homogenic), and the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club. i was 20, and life was good. Sometimes that feels a lot farther away than just ten years.

In the evening, i would come home to the large, glittered "L" on our front door (a gift from a friend) and find a note from Nat, or, more rarely, find him still there, waiting for me in my room. i fell in love with him in that apartment, during those early evening hours, when no one else was home and he would play the violin for me or read me Murakami stories. Later, through the big front window, i would watch him pedal away in his his baggy green sweater, with his combat boots and tousled dark brown hair, and feel completely made of light. He used to call that place, and still does, "Sweet Dohr Street".

All aboard for funtime.

2010-04-21T19:17:00.001-07:00

You know you have an awesome family when one of them refers to your dad's radiation treatment place as "that death-ray zapping center", followed by an earnest chuckle, while in the company of said dad.

...Here are some more beautiful book autopsies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My (blustery) day at work consisted of: rain, then sun. Then more rain, then some sun... then rain, then – oh, you get it. Also, when i got to work at 8:30 there was a homeless man blowing snot rockets onto the ground in my workspace. It was a thrill. i rudely offered him a pack of tissues and he accepted. Had to give him the boot, eventually, so that i could finally open properly (We share walls with a deli; he was hanging out in the market's old "deli area", which we lease, and where we sell plants and keep the day's deliveries, and where our cooler is). Later i donned a pair of latex gloves and went to recycle the cardboard he'd slept (and pissed) on during the night. Also, it was staff appreciation day and nobody warned me. How ironic.

Look, i have empathy to spare. But mysterious bodily fluids are not a happy workplace discovery. i wish i could just help people take care of themselves. You know – all people? Everywhere? And the world would equal a perfect place, 'n all that? Certainly this is a realistic goal.

kisses,
``h

Today there was a time warp.

2010-04-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

Or something.

i heard a sound, an alien sound, coming from the other room. A slithering, whoomping, fwomping, murflenurfing kind of sound. It sounded exactly like a wormhole had opened up in my living room. Granted, i am hung over to the nth degree, and keep seeing little gnomes scurrying about in my peripheral vision, but this sound was just not quite right.

After a minute or so of wide-eyed paralysis, during which time i carefully monitored my skyrocketing heart rate and tried furiously to comprehend what in blazes the sound could have been, i relaxed. Finally realized that it was just a poster, that's all, yeah: a poster that probably came undone at the top and flopped over on itself to slide down the wall. There was even a prime contender by the front door, the old oversized calendar page that always loses a thumbtack after about fifty openings-and-closings of said door. (it's the wind suction, doncha know.)

So, i gathered myself up gingerly (did i mention i drank too much last night?) and pussy-footed it to the doorway... the living room looked clean. No wormholes, no gnomes. Relief. But when i looked around at all of the posters (we have many), not a single one had fallen. Nope, not a one. This sent me back into Panic Mode and i quickly made the rounds around the room, looking for a stack of papers that had lost a page, or a pile of books that had lost a gravity fight, but there was nothing. No evidence of sound. Even the higgledy-piggledy recycling pile looked exactly the same (i have a photographic memory, but we'll talk about that another time). i found this even more unsettling than the prospect of a wormhole opening up in my living room.

What had happened in there? Had anything? 'When a tree falls in the woods...', etc., only reversed? My otic organs had clearly registered some pretty specific sound waves, but it seemed that the incident itself had never even happened*.

i backed up carefully into the relative safety of the bedroom, where at least the gnomes have the decency to show themselves.

Been feeling a bit better since spending an hour or so winding my way through the annals of Flickr. Always nice to have your happy place. Also, Now Hear This:

*Although, what if a wormhole makes noise when it opens up, but can close again without making a peep? It could happen, no? If i can't find the aural offender, i may have to fall back on this theory.

Dear Vodka,

2010-04-18T19:23:00.001-07:00

(and tonic water, and limes, and ginger ale, and ice cubes, and stupid easy-to-fill glass tumblers with your stupid wide mouths that are stupid easy to gulp from),

Please cease and desist with your antics. Quit calling me, and elbowing me into the kitchen, and whispering fun little come-hithers into my ear. Get off my shoulder, get out of my brain, and please render yourselves invisible when my eye lands upon you.

When you make me call my friend Joy "J-Train" more than thirty times in a night, it's a clear sign that you are stifling me. Please– i need some space.

And when i play Boggle? i like to be able to actually read the words i have written–nay, scrawled–on my piece of paper. When 'aye' looks like 'hit', it's because we have been spending too much time together. And while we're on the subject, fuck you for making my entire list consist of 3-letter words. i am better than that. It's obvious that you are just a bad influence for me.

Well, there is more, but i think you get the point. i hope you meet someone new, i really do– and, you know, if we run into each other at a party some time, i'll try and at least say 'hi'. We did have some good times, after all.

Thanks for being so understanding. . . now kindly get out of my bloodstream, it's been nearly 24 hours, for cry-yiy.

pleasant surprises.

2010-04-12T14:00:00.001-07:00

So, while out walking (read: getting lost) yesterday in San Diego, we found Edward Scissorhands' house.

True story.

Quick question:

2010-04-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else miss the light brown m&m?

temblors, emblorst!

2010-04-05T13:41:00.000-07:00

So yesterday Nat and i had a late morning. We slept way in, made breakfast around noon (ah, fakin' bacon, my old friend), finished watching Amreeka, and then parted ways. Nat headed downstairs to study for awhile while i took a shower and got ready to meet him so we could bus on over to the record store to drop some major cash (eep) on a bunch of new albums.

(Yes, we still buy CDs, and not from Amazon.)

And then, then, there was a small, er, hiccup, in our plans: as i stood in front of the mirror, meticulously applying eyebrow pencil, It Happened.

First, i felt the walls shake a bit. Then i heard the windows rattling. And i looked up at the ceiling with irritation at our new (and extraordinarily loud) upstairs neighbor and thought, really? Really.

But it was when the floor began to sort of shift sideways under my feet and my heartbeat quickened to roughly nine hundred beats per minute, that i realized that this was An Earthquake. And a Big One. Especially after i moved to the bedroom doorway to wait it out and it didn't stop. Even more especially when i felt myself getting really hot and heard a big crash! across the courtyard and people shouting in fear, while the building itself began to sway amidst its (flimsy?) support beams and stuccoed walls, doing a fantastic impression of one of those wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men:

At this point i had moved to the front doorway; down the hall i could hear people yelling and running, panicking. The building was still shaking. i felt extremely nauseous. It had probably only been 10 or 15 seconds or so, but it felt like it was amplifying, and that it would never end. i heard another crash somewhere and realized that i should probably not be inside the building anymore. The underside of the hallway on the 3rd floor above me seemed to yawn and stretch away as if in a bad dream, and i ran pell-mell down the hall and broke right to the nearest stairway exit.

The shitty thing about this complex is how huge and maze-like it is: i have seen many a pizza-delivery guy wandering aimlessly around these beige corridors. And right now the only thought on my mind was that i wanted to get the fuck out, and preferably in one piece. i wanted to get to Nat. i was hoping fervently that he was okay in the cafe (lots of huge windows in that place), and thanking heck that he wasn't at school that day, on the 7th floor of the Humanities building, because i would have been insane with worry.

As i reached the stairwell, i opened the door and stood in the frame. i saw two neighbors nearby, standing in their front doorways looking a bit startled and peaked (in sharp contrast to my abject terror). After ten or so more seconds (an eternity?), the shaking finally stopped, but now i felt like i was made of jelly. My hands were shaking and i was breathing heavily. My heart was hammering in my chest, and i was still holding my eyeliner. We all looked in each other's eyes and finally the woman said, "we should go outside now. NOW." She and the twenty-something gentleman (whose eyes were tearing up) across the hall began to move towards me. "Come on," she said. "Let's go."

i shook my head back and forth because i realized i needed some things: my keys, my inhaler, some shoes. i ran full speed back to the apartment (i remember thinking that i might never see those 2 people – or anyone – ever again) and grabbed those things, plus my big hoodie sweater, and booked it back to the exit. People were running all over the place. i heard a lady crying somewhere upstairs, and a guy laughing nervously outside in the courtyard. i was muttering to myself (...Jesus fucking CHRIST*...) while in the stairwell i caught up with a small Mexican woman who kept saying dios mio, dios mio, dios mio... She and i waited on the steps outside while other people exited the building excitedly. Others began to materialize on their balconies, and we all looked at each other numbly, wide-eyed. Expletives could be heard all over the place.

Did that really just happen? Is everything okay? Are we normal?

A few minutes passed. The Mexican woman was upset because her cell phone wouldn't work (yikes!) and she just really wanted to call her son in Fresno. i gave her a small hug and we agreed that he was probably just fine– that we were fine as well. i felt like i was going to pass out at any second and was rooted to the spot, holding open the exit door right outside the building. A young male nurse came onto the grounds through the alleyway, looking calm and collected. A few old folks came shuffling down the stairs, and thanked me for holding the door open (as if could move, anyway). A cab screeched up in the alleyway and the passenger threw some money at the driver, then bolted up the stairs 3 at a time. Maybe he had an elderly parent living here, or a girlfriend or boyfriend, maybe even a spouse and a kid. Finally i blinked at the sound of an ambulance somewhere in the distance. There were no fires burning, no one was crying or screaming, and the skyline was still intact. So i decided to head downstairs to see if Nat was okay (oh please oh please oh please). Thankfully i saw him coming down the alleyway just as i had the thought. This immense relief only made me feel more unstable, and i fought the urge to sit down and fade away.

He came over and we hugged fiercely as people began to go back inside. i wouldn't budge, however, so we hung out on the landing a bit longer. We saw a little grey cat with a collar and only half a tail making good time away from the building, crawling through the ivy on the other side of the fence with his belly low to the ground. i realized that this frightened feline may never make it back home, so we tried (in vain) to get him over to where we were, making little soothing sounds and gestures. He meowed back at us from time to time, but never stopped moving away. Poor little guy: i hope he's back home safe and sound.

Nat'd left all of his things down in the cafe, so i waited while he ran back to get everything. We went back upstairs together, and being back in the apartment made me want to throw up. i told Nat that i had to get out of the building for the rest of the day, and he understood. i dressed hurriedly while he looked the whole shebang up on the internet, and i called my folks just to preempt the worried phone calls. We'd all experienced the destructive Loma Prieta quake back in '89, so i knew that they would be wondering about us if they heard any news.

We grabbed our bikes and left the house, heading for the beach. Many people were out in their front yards, talking animatedly. We stopped by a liquor store and bought a box of Junior Mints (necessary) and a pack of cigs (terrible, i know, but also massively necessary). We smoked a cigarette on a bench overlooking the sea and for a minute it felt like everything would always be alright.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is a link to the US Geological Survey's website, for our region. (this will change, of course, but for now you can still see all of the recent activity.) That giant box in the lower right is the 7.2 that we felt on Sunday afternoon. And all of those little boxes around it are the aftershocks. More and more keep popping up. Statistically i know that another big one will (probably, most likely) not hit near here, not for years and years, but it still doesn't feel good. Honestly, i am more worried right now for all the folks living 100 miles south of us, where the epicenter was, and where the infrastructure is older and not as sound. i wish them all the best.

*Happy Easter!

#@!&%~

2010-03-31T16:09:00.001-07:00

You know those days where you wake up physically and mentally stressed because a) you have terrible cramps and b) your shitty upstairs neighbor McStompsalot woke you up at 6:30 (only a half-hour before you had to get up, but still) a.m.? And then while you get ready (slowly, now, 'cause you're cracked out from no rest), you drink a punishing cup of coffee, and make a second one to bring to work like you usually do, only the jar that you usually use (Ol' Reliable) is stuck fucking fast shut, so you rifle through the cupboards and come up with a bigger – dare you think, better – jar, and after stabbing yourself in your (bloodshot) left eye with your eyeliner and waiting for the tears to subside, you rip a hole in your sock (keep up: we're rushing, now) on your way to the kitchen, where you don't have time to eat anything except the way overripe half of a banana from yesterday; after you pour some milk into your new Awesome Coffee Jar, your stupid tired-blind hand manages to knock the whole thing right smack over (because it was too tall) as you reach for the honey (which, by the way, is some terribly weak clover business because they were out of the wildflower) and suddenly there it is, the fucking rub: coffee, everywhere: all over your stovetop, dripping down into the burner holes, soaking through your nutmeg holder to the poor meg itself, dripping off of every (more than a dozen) jar of spices you keep on the counter next to the stove, falling in sheets down the side of the refrigerator and soaking into your wooden cutting board, not to mention your potholder. Meanwhile, precious morning beverage is dripping furiously onto the floor and into the silverware drawer. So you look at the clock in terror, and whoops! You're supposed to be at work RIGHT NOW. It only takes you 5 minutes to bike there, but now you've got this fucking monkey wrench. So you chug the last 2 gulps of coffee from the New! Shittiest-Ever Coffee Jar, and grab the sponge (which, thankfully, is nasty anyway).
Takes you five minutes just to clean it all up, and you're almost 15 minutes late to work. The phone is ringing before you've got the last 2 of 3 doors up, and it's your boss. You try and sway her from coming in, but she tells you she's on her way. (At least she doesn't know you were late!) Resigning yourself to a morning of getting absolutely nothing done, you wait despairingly for her to arrive, almost cracking your head open because of a slimy stem on the ground (a banana peel stand-in – thanks, universe!) and helping customers who offer up kicky comments like, "Wow, these are way too expensive..." (thanks? sorry? fuck off?) and "omg, it must be like, so fun to like, play with flowers all day!?" (yeah, totally! That would be like, so fun.)

And yeah. i'll stop there, because really: this isn't even fun to write down anymore. Suffice it to say that my boss did come in, she did manage to drive me crazy for 5 hours, and the sound of her voice eventually made me want to smother her with a pillow. But really, this is nobody's fault but my own. PMS is a righteous bitch, i'm not afraid to say. And besides, i did get to bring home some amazing tulips, so i guess it's a wash.

a houseguest!

2010-03-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

Today i am picking up my best friend from the airport!* She'll be staying a week, and we have a couple of super-exciting things planned (Cirque du Soleil, a visit to the Flower Fields), as well as some less-exciting things (heading up to see the seals, drinking way too many cups of coffee, riding bikes all over the place). Hopefully showing her around town will remind me of how sometimes i can actually like it here. Plus, now my house is stocked with exotic breakfast cereals and stuff like orange juice and frozen pizza– livin' the life luxurious, we are! Not to mention i finally had an excuse to dust the bookshelves and clean out the toaster oven. Crikey, that was a fright. And on the flip side, i am filled with remorse at my lack of awesome linens (unraveling bath towels, anyone?) or even a damned teakettle. But who doesn't love to boil water in a pot and eat from chipped ceramic bowls? No one, that's who.
*Note: by 'picking up' i mean taking the bus to, and subsequently from, the airport. Aren't you glad you're not my friend?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news, we saw the new Alice in Wonderland last night. It reaffirmed my distaste for 3D movies (or at least, the new ones, with the huge polarized lenses as props), but it was also the first Tim Burton movie since Edward Scissorhands that i actually and truly enjoyed. It's just such a magnificently trippy story (although the plot here differed a bit from the books and/or the original animated version), and the computer graphics weren't overdone, which was refreshing. The girl playing Alice looked like a cross between Claire Danes and Sara Gilbert, Helena Bonham Carter was basically perfect as the Red Queen, Anne Hathaway still looks like an alien and can't act that well (sorry, but it's true), and Johnny Depp looked great but his performance was a bit all over the place. Someone in our group noticed that his accent kept changing, and his portrayal of the Mad Hatter was almost too... sensible.

At the risk of spoiling anything (don't think i will?), it also seemed like certain opportunities were missed in the story-telling: free will, morality, and personal identity definitely could have been explored a bit more. All of that aside, Tweedledee and Tweedledum were cute as buttons, and the Cheshire Cat may have been my favorite character. From the commercials i was convinced he'd be loathsome. Not so, thanks to Stephen Fry's voice and some amazingly ethereal animation. Hooray! Now, to see it once more, sans 3D.

A small gripe: where were my mome raths? Darling little things.

Evil people prosper over the likes of you and me, always.

2010-03-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

es, i am blind.

Stole this idea from The Virgin, because i'm under a melancholy spell and don't have a single (non-depressing) original thought in my head today:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to a gazillion people and include me. Try not to repeat a song title. It's harder than you think..

Pick Your Artist: PJ Harvey

Are you male or female: No Girl So Sweet

Describe yourself: Happy and Bleeding

How do you feel about yourself: Shame

Describe where you currently live: The Desperate Kingdom of Love

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: A Place Called Home

Your best friends are: Missed

Your favorite color is: The Sky Lit Up

What's the weather like: Is That All There Is? (a cover, yes, but so appropriate; secondary answer: Seagulls.)

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called?: Dear Darkness

What is life to you: The Mess We're In

What is the best advice someone has given you: Darling Be There

If you could change your name, what would it be?: Angelene

Your favorite food is: Water (or White Chalk.)

Your job is: Plants and Rags

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...Well! That was way funner than i thought it would be. Next time i think i'll do Siouxsie. Also, i love that we are instructed to answer "cleverly", then warned that it is "harder than [we] think". Not a lot of wiggle room, there. But honestly, if i was going to be clever, then my answer for favorite food would have been "Horses in my Dreams", because that is just too terrible. Decided that honesty is the best policy; surprised at how many answers had multiple choices! Thanks, Peej. For everything, always.

Too bad Corey Haim's gone now, because maybe he could have found this blog and then played this game and then realized that there truly is some shit in the world worth sticking around for. Like music. ("As far as i'm concerned, good tunes is good tunes, be it Disco, or Rock, or Polka, or whatever have you." – Name that movie! Need to watch that again, and soon...) But seriously: he was my first big celebrity teen crush, and i had it bad. i even used to buy the magazines (Bop, here's looking at you) with my saved allowance money. And you know, i don't even blame the drugs (even though they probably contributed). i blame the ego-feeding, the shallow fame, the obsession with celebrity that our country has been infatuated with for some time now. And of course people will argue that there are dead celebrities more 'worth' eulogizing than Corey Haim, but underneath it all we are all just human beings, so it really doesn't matter.

Hasta del fuego, folks. i promise to write a post soon about something important, relative, educational: rocket science, poverty, politics, genetics. Honest. But first i may have to inject some wheatgrass into my brain.

More prettier.

2010-03-04T19:38:00.001-08:00

Because i appear to still be obsessed with rainbowthings, i've just purchased a kaleidoscope made of recycled DymondWood on Etsy for my co-worker's birthday present. Can't wait 'til it gets here! Originally i was going to get her a knife to use at the shop, but it looked cheaply made. There was also a mortar & pestle that i liked, but as i'm 99.9% sure that she never grinds her own spices, that was the end of that. The kaleidoscope is egg-shaped and brightly-colored, and although the jazziness inside appears to be of your basic variety, who gives? She can glance at it every morning on her kitchen windowsill and smile, and that's really all i care about.

(i bet this topic just has everyone here bursting with delighted interest– am i right?)

In other news, i came across this bewitching photo today on the interwebs. i must go here. Enjoy!

(Palais des Congrés de Montreal in–you guessed it–Montreal! Can everything be this colorful? Please?)

The Metal Tiger

2010-02-26T12:41:00.001-08:00

Getting ready to head up to S.F. for the treasure hunt. i want to be so excited i could burst, but last night was a real humdinger for my psyche. Will talk more about that later.

Until then, here is a self-portrait by Egon Schiele, which always reminds me of Nat, handsome devil that he is:

...if you have a few minutes, Schiele's life is worth reading about. Art, love, tragedy– all that good, heartbreaking stuff.

Non-sequitur alert: here is a link to an NPR piece on cover songs, which as we all know by now are a weakness of mine. My faves on this page were the Marianne Faithfull/Nick Cave version of a Decemberists song, and the Flaming Lips' rendition of Madonna's "Borderline".

Which is funny, because i sort of can't stand the Flaming Lips most of the time, and can't even be bothered about the Decemberists. Anyway, listen on.

Talk to you all on Monday: hopefully my severe case of the melancholies will be gone by then? (Unlikely.)

pretty pretty.

2010-02-23T17:50:00.001-08:00

...Is it just me, or do you also see the word "bliss" on that fabulous little pram?

This girl's art is blowing my mind right now. Amber Albrecht. Amazing.

g'night.

time to return.

2010-02-23T16:50:00.000-08:00

For some reason i feel like laying out on top of a large, warm rock slab today and just basking in the sun. (For those that know me: i understand that this seems like a strange inclination.)
Saw a shaft of light hitting a bit of rock somewhere today, and instantly my inner self became a lizard; wishing for rough skin against rough stone, seeping in and soaking up the warmth, the stillness.

i'm sick of the shoes that keep our feet from the earth. i'm sick of the gloves and manners that keep our hands and fingers from trees, from food. i'm sick of the sunglasses that shade our eyes from the light. i'm sick of living in a cave. i'm sick of feeling hermetically sealed. i want my skin to touch bark, to dip into streams, to caress a stone: aching to grab a tree dusty trunk, retrieve a cold, slick river rock from the glassy current, run my fingers through the dry grasses, and lay supine on one of the rocks bursting out everywhere from beneath the crust of this great orb.

i'm tired of chairs, tired of wires, tired of vertical blinds and mirrors. Weary of telephones, plastic bags, remote controls, and all-in-one printer/copier/scanners. Sick of batteries, vacuums, and junk mail flyers for cable tv.

Wishing i could devolve, or reincarnate; a return to something more primitive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news: there's finally a new Joanna Newsom album! Determined to find the CD, i only allowed myself to listen to the first two tracks, but they sounded wonderful. Very Kate Bushian; fuckin' solid, as the kids are saying these days.

Wondering when the hell i'm figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Studying etymology? Fighting against honor killings? Decorating cakes? For fuck's sake, what gives with the decision-making section of my brain? Permanently stagnated?

Here's a somewhat fitting song for y'alls. Can't get it out of my head today.

...Well, i'm off to darn some socks and eat sugar snap peas. Remember: i waste time better than you. Deal with it.

all things go

2010-02-21T19:57:00.000-08:00

Hi!!!!!!

i have a wicked stomachache. ('achach' = amazing)

We are finally getting some rain down here.

i went to the zoo. Saw this guy. And this guy. And some swaying elephants. Listened to a keeper tell us all about how 'normal' that behavior was. And still, my heart cringed along with my face. Also, we walked up on one of these things. Truly frightening.

What else? i found a big, silver metal "V" on the sidewalk the day after Valentine's Day, along with some x and o heart glitter. Seemed fitting.

Here is a nice, yet horrible video that you should watch. Toodles for now. Will post more when i actually have something to say.

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen on Vimeo.

rainbows.

2010-02-10T21:05:00.000-08:00

Back to work tomorrow. i will sorely (no pun intended, as the 'sore' is still around, and not going anywhere soon) miss lying in bed and watching movies on Netflix.

(On The Edge: sweet, sad, Irish, suicide-rehab flick featuring Cillian Murphy, rowr. i cried. It Could Happen To You: perfect movie to watch when you're sitting around all ouchy and feeling sorry for yourself. Bridget Fonda and Nicolas Cage get all kismet-y while Rosie Perez screeches around the periphery. A fun, simple love story.)

But the roses are calling me. Thankfully i'm getting a ride to work, and i'll probably just stand around making dozen roses all day. (Guys, you ready to drop seventy bucks? Just a warning.) Apparently we've hired some cute Guy-On-A-Bike that my co-worker is smoldering for. . . should be interesting! i would kill for a little impromptu romance, especially this time of year, when everything 'love' is so pre-packaged and overpriced i could gag.

Also, i've got Nat doing dishes and laundry tonight, which, i've gotta say, feels downright luxurious. As much as i loathe validating things like 'gender roles', i am usually the one who ends up doing the domestic stuff around here: cooking, cleaning, and so on. It's because i'm only working part time, and as well know grad students are never not working (well, except when they're totally fucking off and playing computer games). So it's nice to have a small reprieve. As far as i'm concerned, this is my Valentine's Day.

Now, off to reheat some of the tamales i bought the other day, which are delicious, by the way. Hope y'all are paragons of health. And in case i don't emerge from the depths of the V-Day kerfuffle that is the flower shop at present, have a happy heart day. You are loved.

p.s.) here's something pretty. i love his rainbowy tones, and that subject matter: toys, condiments, firecrackers– i'm in love! And a kid again. Not that i ever wasn't one. . .

p.p.s.) Nat has informed me that i must also share Robot Unicorn Attack. Hope you like Erasure.

scraaaaaape.

2010-02-09T00:18:00.000-08:00

i fell off my bike today. Fell off my bike bad.

Flew, tangled, slammed, thudded, scraped.

There was an empty moment there, in midair: why is this happening? What did i hit? i've made that turn hundreds of times.

Limped to my feet: vision, hearing were present, both good signs. Grabbed Pierre (he's a mint green Motobecane who i love dearly) and shuffled to the curb. Laid him down gingerly, set myself down somewhat less gingerly.

Self-inspection! Removed (now torn) gloves. Left palm looks disgusting. There are... flaps of skin. And red, blood. Right elbow appears to be one giant area of severe over-exfoliation. It is on fire, and oh yes! There is more red blood here. And grit. Pull up pants (right knee of which is now in tatters) to discover a stiff, throbbing mound, and not in a nice way. My knee is a monster: flayed skin, what appear to be Insta-Bruises, and oh yes!! More of my precious life fluid out on display for the world to see. In a daze, i glance over to the intersection i was turning through. And that's when i notice the hose.

It ran quietly from one corner to another, this dark blueish snake, with a circumference of about five or so inches (coincidentally, the perfect size to fell a bike-riding girl on her way to work!). Woulda been really special for me if i'd seen it a few minutes ago, before i attempted to cross it at a shallow angle with extremely thin bicycle tires. However, it was a similar shade to the asphalt, so i don't even think i would have noticed it had i been going or slower or not wearing the world's crappiest pair of sunglasses. Perhaps if i'd hit it straight on, there would have been a chance. But nope, not today.

None of the 5 city workers who saw my diabolical dismount even came over to see if i was okay. Actually, i sort of resented them for that. For fuck's sake, this wouldn't have even happened if they hadn't been there in the first place. (disclaimer: yes, i know that i'm the stupid idiot who didn't see the obstacle and bit it, but still. but still.) My head was actually hurting a little at this point so i squinted into the screen of my iPod but didn't see any blood on my face or anything, so i tried to steady my shaking hands and rose to my feet. Pierre's chain had come loose from the gears, so with careful, bloody, disgusting hands i made the adjustment. Now covered in black grease as well, i hobbled the last 2 blocks to work.

Patched myself up with antiseptic spray and gauze (this turned out to be a huge mistake later), plus some strategically-placed band-aids. (And FYI: floral tape works pretty well as stand-in for first-aid tape, in a pinch.) This couldn't have happened at a worse time: This is one of the busiest weeks of the year for us at the shop, and even though i have a special kind of loathing for Valentine's Day in general, it can be fun to work a holiday. We got our first huge shipment of flowers today and i was anything but helpful. Managed to slowly prep for almost 5 hours and then mercifully caught a ride with the a.m. girl heading home after her shift. Pierre stayed behind; there's no way i'm gonna be able to ride him to work in my state anyway.

At home i iced the knee (worst impact site, i have surmised) and then whimpered my way through a tepid bath, taking stock of it all. Everything but the f*&#ing gauze came off easy peasy; after i pulled the last disgusting strands of fibrous cotton from my elbow, i valiantly tried to rub some of the grit off. Bad mistake. After two mind-numbingly painful attempts i just sort of swirled and swished my arm around in the water and hoped for cleanliness.

So, my left hand looks like a slice of cheese pizza, my right elbow has sort of a sand-blasted, rustic look, and my right knee, well– let's just say it's doubled in size so far. i can hardly bend it. Been hobbling around the apartment like Igor. i am simultaneously wishing for and dreading sleep. Hope it comes quickly.

Tomorrow should be... interesting! i need to be at work this week, so they've given me the day off to recuperate. Suppose i'll lay around and rock the old ice pack again. I'll also need some Knee De-Stiffener... anybody got any they could spare?

[ < 3 ]

2010-02-05T23:41:00.000-08:00

Things that happened since last we spoke:

We've hired a guy named Valentín to help us out at the shop for Valentine's Day. He's ace.

Bought a dozen homemade tamales (chile-cheese) from a really nice-looking guy outside of Von's one night. He just looked so. . . quietly optimistic– earnest, even, with the one little blue-and-white cooler at his feet. The tamales were wrapped in foil within a greasy plastic bag; they were still quite hot. And, of course, i haven't had one yet.

Had some laffs working through a Rotten Tomatoes list of wonderfully atrocious films.

Saw The Residents perform (and how) live at a theater. Certainly a night i will never forget. i blame it on the Wolf Moon.

. . .Been kinda numb this week. Distant. Not there. Staring at walls and the like. Not really very like me, to be perfectly honest. Wish there was a way i could crack open the old noggin, blow the cobwebs away, and holler Helooooooooo! [because in there, sounds would echo] Everything alright in there, then?

But i bet nobody would answer. i think they've all left the building.

In other news, Frances Bean (Cobain) is singing on a track with the Dresden Dolls side project Evelyn Evelyn. Is it strange that this makes me tear up a little? i almost can't bear to check it out, for fear of what i might (or mightn't) see.

Love y'all. Hope you're all busy checking things out from different perspectives: lying on the floor and checking out the legs of your coffee table, standing on the kitchen counter to ogle the top of the fridge, whatever. Keep your eyes everywhere. You never know what you might miss.

the waxen pith

2010-01-28T19:32:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of crayon-related items. You can thank me later.

~Christian Faur's hand-cast crayon artworks
(spooky! dark... yet bright!)

and,

~A crayon-color diagram that may leave you gnawing with anxiety.
(yummy! ...but sorta scary.)

And do you remember that old standby art project: intense crayon rub-down, then black paint on top, let it dry, and scratchscratchscratch? Hooray for it.

*image provided by an anonymous, yet brilliant 6th-grader in New Jersey. More here.

boo.

2010-01-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

Can i just interrupt, for a moment?

Regarding the food aid situation in Haiti:

Food distribution thus far has often been marked by poor coordination, vast gaps in coverage, and desperate, unruly lines of needy people in which young men at times shoved aside the women and weak and took their food.

No way, young men were shoving aside women? Is that a greater crime than the fact that the world always seems to have a really difficult time helping those in need? Is it so strange to think that a man could possibly be hungrier than a woman? After all, wouldn't women be more likely to have recently eaten, due to the fact that they are women, and therefore more likely to receive help? And aren't men more likely to be the ones called upon to perform laborious tasks and heavy lifting (because they are 'stronger', duh), thereby increasing their caloric needs? And does this mean that the men in question (or any others, for that matter) were not also bullying other men out of their food? And does it mean that not a single woman was guilty of food theft? My guess is no. But you win, AP article: my heartstrings are hereby tugged.

Sometimes i just get tired of all the gender crap. Women and children first, blah blah blah. People are people, people are hungry, people are desperate. Obviously i'm not condoning shoving women and stealing their food rations (dick move), but i'm not sure that women deserve those rations more than men, simply by the fact that they have a twice the x chromosomes. UNLESS: they are breast-feeding mothers. Seems fairly obvious.

Now, i'm not trying to say that chivalry is dead (r.i.p. chivalry, and good riddance), just that humans should be treated equally. Anyway, i'm sure someone, somewhere has said this much more astutely than i, so i'll let it be for now. Class dismissed.

you never can tell.

2010-01-27T22:00:00.000-08:00

There is a half-burned husk of a car (an SUV, actually) on our street, one block down. Nat discovered it yesterday afternoon on his way home from school.

The engine must have exploded: the hood flew up, and buckled in the middle. The windows are all blown out (glittering on the pavement, now), every door is permanently ajar, and the steering wheel has become a blackened, bony metal ring– anything rubber or plastic has melted right off, down to the floor of the car. The smell is noxious, corrosive. All the pretty white paint has been burned off the metal frame, and even the street sign right above has one corner melted upward from (presumably) the heat. Small piles of chemical-laden sooty stuff lay hither and thither. A large, empty gas can lays on its side, discarded on the grassy strip between street and sidewalk. Was this what was used to set the fire? Why? And who did it? Jealous lover? Crazy druggie? Straight-laced Navy guy who just finally hit the roof?

Moreover, why in the hell is this scene just sitting there, waiting for idiots like us to trample around it and destroy all (if any) of the evidence?! Shouldn't the gas can be dusted for prints, and samples collected? i say.

In any case, if it is still there tomorrow, i might take my camera over and play detective. i only got to see it in darkness, so i'm looking forward to more gritty details.

::shivering with excitement::

...Don't worry, i'll wear booties and a hairnet. Wouldn't want to incriminate myself.

paper scraps

2010-01-26T19:06:00.000-08:00

Saw a small capital 'F' on the floor of the bus last night, on the way back from watching Fantastic Mr. Fox (almost as fantastic as i wanted it to be). It was formed from a many-trodden scrap of one of those little strips of paper that live between the rings of a binder and the perforation of the sheet of paper itself; that little forgotten strip that usually stays forever in binders across the world unless the binder belongs to someone OCD enough to rip the fucker out. i guess i got lucky.

In other news, i used to chew on paper while riding the bus. Not sure how or why this got started, but i do remember it happening during a brief period while i was in high school. Quite possible a stand-in for a cigarette, since i was never brave or stupid enough to smoke where i wasn't supposed to. But you do get a lot of stares, regardless, with little wet bits of pulp clinging to your sweater. This is a fact.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And in Reasons I Love My Boyfriend news:

On the walk home from the bus stop, we had a tiny adventure.

Can we please hotwire this thing and ride it to Candyland? i asked, as we came upon a butterscotch-colored Camaro sitting proudly in the cold parking lot.

Man, i just want to go buy a butterscotch pudding-pack and put one right on the car...! Nat replied, ending what was possibly the best sentence ever uttered by man.

We ruminated on this (genius) idea for about twenty seconds, then realized that it simply had to be done. Across the parking lot and off to Von's we went, where, true to my form, i had to also purchase two frozen Indian dinners along with our fated Snack Pack; i can never leave a grocery store without something extra. Really. It drives him quite insane.

On the way back, i kept an eye on the guys who were doing some late-night power-washing in the courtyard to our left, when out of nowhere comes a homeless guy, asking for change for something to eat. Since this particular form of pudding is not exactly "food", we gave him a dollar instead. He looked at us for a moment and then said how wonderful it was to be young. (The guy thought we were 23, but still: he was on to something there.)

We bade him good night, then sidled over to The Car. Nat had popped one of the little containers out and was ready for action. Where do i put it?! he hissed. Quickly we decided that right on the hood, near the driver-side door, was the best place for the person to see it. i began to turn around in case the alarm went off and we had to book it.

Seconds later, and with no alarm ringing in my ears, Nat's step met mine. We got away with it! i only wish i'd gotten a photo of it, for evidence, but you will just have to trust me on this.

i sincerely hope that the driver of that Bitchin' Camaro has a sense of humor. And that they had butterscotch pudding for dessert that night, as Nat and i surely will tonight. C'mere, Yellows 5 and 6.

[ nope. i got nothing. ]

2010-01-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

You know that Seinfeld episode where Jerry asks Elaine, "So, what'd you do today?" and she's all, "nothin'." and he gets all huffy and goes, "'Nothing'? You mean you just sat there? Didn't do anything?" and she's all, defiantly, "yeah, i just sat there, and stared at a wall– nothin'!"

Well, that's kinda how my day went, too.

If they had the Waste-A-Day Olympics, i would be crown fucking champion. Honestly, if you asked me one thing that i did today i would stare off and go, "duhhhhhh" in perpetuity. . . drool might even fall, after the first few hours of struggling, chugging thought.

Aren't you glad we're sharing? Are you enjoying this exchange? i at least hope that my complete massacre of a day has made you feel just the teensiest bit better about your own.

Dudes, don't waste your life. Trust me on this one. Get out of the house. That's step one. If i had just made it out to the hallway, things could have been salvaged. As it is, i surfed the internet, ate leftovers, and avoided doing laundry. Is there anything more pathetic?

i'm not sure.

Wait– there IS! Posting about it on your blog. ::yawn::

G'night.

(Merpanda is the lovely brainchild of Natalie Dee, who obviously does things with her days.)

absurd ablutions.

2010-01-18T23:39:00.000-08:00

So last night i did something i rarely do: i took a bath.

Working so many days in a row combined with my bike being in the shop has lead to some sort of ferocious charley horse in my right calf. i was hoping the hot water would relax whatever kink was all worked up in there.

i had a small candle handy, so i thought i'd light it, bathside. You know, for extra 'relaxation'? (okay, i am making myself want to puke at this point. just bear with me.) It was a bright red deal: "Holiday Apple Spice", given to me by my best friend over x-mas. Problem was, the wick was too short. Flame wouldn't do much more than sputter out a tiny, feeble blue glow, so i decided to pour some of the wax off.

Now, does anyone remember doing this when they were kids? You take a candle, pour the hot wax into a basin of water (or the tub, or the sink, or a cup), and whatever shape the wax makes, that's what your profession is going to be? (example: broom = janitor.) This is how we did it; i'm sure there are other variations.

So, there i was in a tub full of water. i went ahead and poured a little wax right on in.

Now, you might not know this, but: bright red candle wax does not look exactly. . . pleasant in your bathwater. i found myself alarmed at the drips and drops now swirling around me. And the flame was still not high enough, so i threw caution to the wind and dumped it all in.

What shape did it make, you might ask? (Others would ask, "what shape did you see?")

A fetus.

That's right, there i was in the bath, trying to relax and soothe away my achin' muscles, and what should i have sharing the water with me but a tiny, blood-red fetus, umbilical cord and all.

Huzzah.

rampant color.

2010-01-18T16:16:00.001-08:00

One really should always have a camera on them, to catch things that you will never, ever see again.

Like yesterday, late afternoon: Nat and i are sitting in Starbuck's (shut up, you know you've been in one), drinking chocolatey drinks and talking about the math behind the Mandelbrot Set. A girl comes out of the Vons nearby, and i am pleased to see that she is carrying a rather large bunch of balloons, all in pastels. They were in three colors: yellow, green, and pink, but the amazing part was her shirt: a bright, deep teal. She was unlocking her bike, which was a pearly bubblegum pink, and i could have died at the sheer matchy-matchiness of it all. At one point her head was completely hidden behind the cloud of colorful latex bubbles and the effect was at once surreal and euphoric.

i watched for a few minutes as she struggled to tie the tangle of shining ribbons to her handlebars so that her vision would not become obscured. Finally, she climbed on and rode away into the sunset (i am not kidding), with the balloons bobbing and streaming behind her. It was weirdly mesmerizing and magical.

Either that or i was just really tired.

Anyway, about twenty minutes later, another burst of colorful shapes caught my eye. Walking out of another exit, two Indian women left the Vons store carrying a bunch of balloons, but this time the colors were all very different: all dark greens, purples, and bright reds and blues. They had on saris the color of peacocks, with red and gold accents all over. It was rather striking.

i wondered why i had seen more balloons in one afternoon than an entire year, and how different the occasions were: someone's birthday? Perhaps a new baby? Co-worker retiring? Or just. . . a party? For the fun of it? And do people even do that?

Earlier in the day, i'd been at work, where–surprise!–we have balloons. And i almost never blow them up. Maybe every other week or so. People don't seem to ask for them very often (and thank goodness, because i'm always afraid of one popping in my face while i inflate it). But it just so happens that it was The Slowest Work Day of My Entire Life. The Chargers were playing the Jets in a Superbowl playoff game, so everyone in town was indoors watching the game. A storm was brewing, so the wind was making everyone edgy and moody. i think i had two sales, and at one point i even scrubbed down the microwave, which i never really use. It was slow, to say the least. So at about 1:30, half an hour from quittin' time, i blew up. . . Chargers-colored balloons.

::cringe::

Yep. It's true. i chose four: a pearly white, a metallic dark blue, a regular blue, and a regular yellow. Blew 'em up, tied them with their same-colored ribbon. Somewhere around the 3rd balloon, i lost my bravery; they were floating, hidden, on the ceiling when my co-worker came in to relieve me at 2:15. When i left, i tied them to a post in front of the shop, and walked home among the first timid raindrops.

Super Secret Bonus Balloon Page!