Month: March 2005

Categories
humor music

Baby Got Bud

My ode to the allergy season,
a la Sir Mix-A-Lot:

—

*talking*
Oh my god, Becky,
look at her pistil,
It is so big.
She looks like one of those worker bees’ girlfriends,
But y’know, who understand those workers?
They only harvest her because
she looks like a total pollen-whore, kay,
I mean her buds, they’re just so big.
I can’t believe they’re so round, they’re like, out there.
I mean, it’s so gross,
look, she’s just so ripe.

*rap*
I like big buds and I can not lie,
you other workers can’t deny,
when you find a plant with some itty bitty leaves
and she’s hoarding those ripe seeds
You get sprung,
Wanna pull up tough
‘cuz you noticed those buds were stuffed.
Deep in the petals she’s wavin’,
I’m hooked for the pollen I’m cravin’,
Oh, posy I wanna get with ya,
and grab a pitcha’,
my home-bees tried to dissuade me,
but those buds you got
have really sprayed me.
Ooh rumple-smooth-petal,
You say you wanna get in my shtetl?
Well feed me, feed me, ’cause you ain’t that average peony.

Seen her petals waving,
to hell with pollen-saving,
she’s powder,
don’t crowd her, gonna eat her like a chowder.

I’m tired of magazines,
saying little buds are the thing,
take the average worker and ask him what he need,
she gotta pack much seed.

So fellas (yeah?), fellas (yeah?),
has your girlfriend got the bud? (hell yeah!)
Tell her to wave around,
spray it out,
even drone-bees got to shout.
Baby got bud.

—

Sometimes I worry about me.

Funny thing. When I was up in Port Townsend recently, Sir Mix-A-Lot was playing at some local dive. We didn’t go see him, being that there was swing-dancing that night and we’re total swing-dorks, but it might have been worth it for sheer absurdity value. I remember back in the day, I swore by Mix-A-Lot (who swears a lot!). Nowadays, I feel bad for him, but not enough to go see his show in smalltown Washington. What a big fall that is though, huh? Maybe he should have gotten into movies, like Ice-T. Oh look, he had a brief appearance in Meet Wally Sparks. Lucky him. MTV has an interesting, if brief, bio here.

And to think, I always wanted to be swass like him.
But hey, maybe he’ll launch a comeback.
Or end up on a reality show.

Definately one or the other.

Categories
cinema dance

Why, Vin, Why!?

This makes me die inside. Everyone gets to be in a bad movie now and then (unless you’re William H. Macy, who seems to have impeccable taste), but Vin’s sort of been on a bad spree these days. I’m hoping that he’s simply trying to make as much money as possible with Hollywood “money films”, so that he’ll be able to soon put his real genius to work in the director’s chair, or perhaps as a producer. With some cunning investing, it might not be far off! And if this were, in fact, true, it would almost, almost be a good excuse for starring in this movie. But not quite. He’s still pretty cool though.

I’m going to watch Sin City at the Cinerama in Seattle this weekend, as part of my birthday movie theater marathon. I’ll be twenty-five on April 2! Fanfare! Fireworks! Huzzah! I’m really not that excited. Honest. I am that excited about watching this movie at this theater though. It’s going to be the absolute best movie experience I have ever had and will ever have in my life, ever. I don’t set my expectations high or anything. Should be fun though. Also as part of the movie theater marathon experience, we may check out the Olympic Club Theater in Centralia, in which you can eat food while you enjoy a film, and/or one of the historic Landmark Theaters in Seattle. And of course, we may stop in at the Capitol Theater here in Olympia, or the Rose Theatre if we make it up to Port Townsend. So many good theaters, so little time. I’m such a movie geek, too.

In swing dance news, we are mostly trying to work on learning the Big Apple. It’s a fun, zany line dance sort of thing, but it’s tough to learn! In two weeks, we’ve gotten maybe halfway through it. It’ll be a lot of fun, though, once we can bust it out at the dance some week.

That’s it for now. I’ve been so dang busy (busy having fun, mind you, the best kind) that I’ve been finding it tough to blog. I’ll try to be more prolific, and consistent. Oh, and if anyone wants to buy me a birthday present … *wink wink*

As Eddie says while riding his scooter: “Ciao.”

Categories
game music webcomics

No time like the present

And the present is good. Really good. Stupendously good.
I won’t bore you with details.

Instead, I suggest you geek out on this addictive game;
generate your own webcomic;
listen to some Shivaree;
and finally, save the world.

If you still have time after all that,
come back here and I promise I’ll write something else.

Honest.

Categories
love tech

Error Message

“I put yo’ bitch of a profile down, yo.
All your desktop are belong to us.”

The main IT guy out here takes a look at it,
has a bit of a confused look, says “Derrrr …”,
and then, “I have to go to a meeting now.”

And so everytime I go to a webpage, I get a error message popping up to say that the computer couldn’t find my desktop. Strangely enough, my IE favorites are still all there. Oh what a tangled wired world we weave, when first we practice to network shit. I could care less about my desktop, but the error messages are annoying, and in general I just like it when computers work properly.

—

This weekend I went up to PT for a little relaxation and fun. We walked around, hit the Antique Mall, went swing dancing(!), and all in all had a good time. It was nice to get away from O-town for a bit, and chill. And we didn’t get on each other’s nerves once! At least, I didn’t think so. It’s a measure of a strong relationship, I think, if you get along fine even when pulled out of your comfortable, or regular, environment. Relationships that get by on habit don’t work so well when you’re on the road.

I smoked too many cigarettes yesterday, and today I feel like shit. I’m going to quit smoking for indefinately. I like my lungs. I also drank too much yesterday (hazards of having the entire day off that your roommate also has off). I need to remove myself from this decadent lifestyle. I did, however, buy a bottle of Stroh 80, which I feel proud simply to have. It may take me years to drink it.

This girl is WAY too excited about her Stroh.

Categories
personal

The Brothers Ross

I was all set to play poker last night. My mind was a veritable fortress of bluffs, counter-bluffs, counter-counter-bluffs, and ummm … false exits. All their chip were going to belong to me. Then out of the blue, I get a phone call from my friend Benj, who I haven’t seen in like five years!!! And he was all like, hey we’re going to be in town tonight, and we should get together.

For a brief, frantic moment I was stumped. Did I dare to break the poker night tradition for a couple friends I’ve only known since the first grade? I was brave, I said yes, and we went out and enjoyed us some fine Guinness on St. Patty’s Day. It was damn nice to catch up, and to see them in a good space. They’re kicking ass with music (marimbas, lately) and having a ball up in Friday Harbor. I may get to hang with them a bit more tonight, before they head back north tomorrow morning.

I took them back to where they were crashing, and around 2:30 in the morning, declined my house for a better alternative, and slept in the arms of a beautiful woman. Sometimes, everything feels like it is right with the universe.

Categories
game news school

La Métro-Politesse

We spent all day on Sunday playing a board game. And by “all day”, I mean this game takes a good 12 hours from start to finish. We’ve had multi-day games happen before, but it’s never as exciting the next day, so now we try to start early and finish fast. I always tend to be the one trying to “move things along”, for some reason. I don’t have any/much German in me, so I can’t explain this need to facilitate.

Daniel came down to visit for a couple days, and Civ is our tradition, dating all the way back to early ’99. He was in China for a year, and now lives in Austin, so it’s been awhile. It was a great time, with some good guys and lots of beer (once again, Adam brought an excellent home-brew). Daniel stayed until this morning, and he got the full flavor of an Ahniwa slice-of-life: swing dancing, and music. I wish I didn’t work so close to the line (the line of financial ruin, that is) and could have taken some time off to visit with him more. Hopefully he didn’t feel cheated, but I did warn him that my life is frantically busy. Still, it was good to see him, and he’s coming back down for another weekend soon, so perhaps we’ll be able to catch up more then.

—

Sprint has stolen my soul and replaced it with cancer.
That’s right, I’m now cellular.

I like the service, but the prices screw you over unless you get a two-year contract, which seems a bit long for me. And evidently, if you cancel your contract early, Sprint is entitled to your first-born child and a yearly Christmas card. They can have the damn kid (had I one), but I suck at sending Christmas cards.

The first phone I got sucked.
But I’m getting a new one.

It’s like Eddie Izzard says, when you get a new technology, you expect it to be able to do everything for you. “I got this new thing, now I’ll never have to work or do anything myself ever again!” I don’t know why, but that’s what I expected from my cell phone (I even tried to cure a leper with it). Instead, the coolest thing I’ve gotten it to do so far is play the Cure whenever one of my friends calls me (which is, in fact, pretty cool). The funny thing is, I blame my phone’s failures at performing miracles on the particular phone I had, and not the technology in general. So when I get my new phone, I’ll go through this all over again, most likely (unless it actually can cure leprosy, I’ll let you know). Even if it fails at miracles, the new phone is silver and blue instead of just silver, and it’s got the whole walkie-talkie thing going for it, and a speakerphone, so I can just set the phone down and yell at the top of my voice (because that seems like it will annoy everyone around me even more, which is my goal as a new cell-phone user seeking revenge). I’ve joined the 21st century, and lo, there was much rejoicing. Thank you, Saint Sprint.

—

Gamespy has a first. A decent article. But you’d know that already if you read Penny Arcade. Which you should. The game itself looks neat. The concept is ground-breaking.

Also, with EA so big in the news lately, people should take a moment and read the EA Spouse transmission. I don’t know if such a thing is possible any longer in our EA-infested world, but I’m strongly considering boycotting them. This is old news, evidently, but it’s the first time I’d ever seen it. So I put here on the off-chance it’s the first time you’d ever seen it too.

Other news: McGill Application – Finished, Sent.
Yelm Job: I declined the interview. It was too far away.
Likeliness that I’ll still be in Oly this fall: 95%.

If you live in Washington, I hope you’re living through our pollen plague. Flowers are sure rude bastards. You don’t see me throwing my male gametes all over the place, do you? Do you!? No, and you don’t want to either. In honor of these plants being assholes, I’ve butchered the “Roses are red…” poem in a new and fun way.

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
keep your seeds to yourself,
I don’t gamete on you!

Yes, “gamete” is now a verb. Use freely.

–OHMYGODBECKYLOOKATHERPISTILITISSOBIG–

Categories
game work

Renegade dork hero

Things punk-ass kids say in the library that I overhear:

—

“How long have you been playing?”

“Oh, like four years.”

“Do you have a lot of good cards?”

“Yeah, I even have The Dark.”

“What’s that?”

It’s like, the first cards that came out.”

—

“I even beat the original Zelda. You know, on the N64.”

—

And I died a little bit, each time. Thus reconfirming my status as a renegade dork hero. And then one of the little prats tried to regenerate a goblin he had just sacrificed, and I was forced to step in. I’m not sure what they thought, some guy who was moments before quietly reading the shelves next to them, all of a sudden informing them that they were not playing the game correctly. I also explained that you could block with a creature, and then sacrifice it before damage was dealt, and the attacking creature would still be blocked, but would itself take no damage. They looked momentarily as though I’d grown horns.

It was great.

Categories
photo

Home Brew


Perceptive readers will note that we’ve moved from Adam’s pale ale to his stout. Looks good, don’t ya think? Posted by Hello

Categories
poetic

Micro-Fiction on hiatus for March

I have all the rest of my Saturdays off for this month, so I doubt I’ll be able to update as well (though I realize that it’s not a huge burden, really; just a lot when added on top of everything else). So, I’m putting the weekly micros on hiatus for the month of March. I’m going to try and dig up some more writer-types, so we can get a bigger turn-out, and thus more motivation for me. The next stories will be posted on April 9th, and I’ll put the subject up at least a week beforehand. Keep in mind that if you think of a subject you think would be interesting, feel free to email them to me at brieflies (at) gmail (dot) com. The last two subjects were suggested by someone else, and honestly it saves me from having to choose things I worry everyone will think are dumb.

We didn’t get any stories for the emo-music subject, which I blame on schedules more than anything (I personally had some good ideas for the topic, but no time to write them down). Hopefully this will be rectified somewhat if we get a larger author pool to draw from. Everyone have a good month, and I’ll catch ya in April.

– Ahniwa

Categories
cinema

If you tickle me, do I not laugh?

Brain wired to the nitro-detonator, thoughts fire jittery like a five-year-old waving a sawed-off 12-gauge. It’s the caffeine in my head, coffee in my head that was supposed to go down to my stomach and light a slow fire, and instead I got this incendiary thought-bomb, begging to implode outwards. My mind denies these little impossibilities. My fingers are tingling as I type this. Curse the temptation of a triple-short-caramel-latte. Mmmmmm. Curse th- Mmmmm. I think I need another.

————————

We drove up to stinky-town last night for to watch The Merchant of Venice at The Grand Cinema. At first I was like, “Oh shit, I have to turn my brain to ’11’.” My brain, at the time, was running at a solid ‘6’ and quite happy to be there. But I managed to turn it up to about ‘8’ or so, despite yawning a lot, and after a short time it was like Shakespeare had actually written the damned play in English. First off, Pacino does a bang-up job. He deserves a nomination for best supporting actor, despite the impossibility of him winning it. You go from hating him, to liking him, to hating him, to feeling sorry for him in the end, and after you’ve left the theater you feel a little angry that he can jerk you around so well. The other performances are equally well-done, if less outstanding.

I have two issues, however, with the story, or with this particular presentation of the story [bearing in mind I have not read the actual play, nor seen it performed elsewise (I made that word up, just now)]. Firstly, the movie does a poor job of showing why exactly Bassanio needs the 3000 ducats to win Portia’s hand. As this money is the crux of the conflict between Antonio and Shylock, the viewer deserves a better exposition of why this money was so important to Bassanio, and how precisely it aids him in winning Portia. Secondly, aside from the fact that she may have been born in the year of the monkey, and thus would be a naturally mischievous devil, I don’t understand Portia’s motivation to fool Bassanio, and torture him so. Granted, she takes the situation lightly and it ends well, but for her being so happy I can’t but feel that her devilry is a bit unwarranted, in testing her new husband so tricksishly. I can understand her masquerade in the first place, as a young civil scholar, as she wants to save the man who her husband holds in such high esteem. And in that, she does a fine job. That scene, the swing from Shylock as the revenging, angry jew who wields a righteous fury, to Shylock as a man with nothing, weeping on the floor as his world and his pride are taken from him, is deftly played and certainly moving. As a climax, however, it seems a bit quick, and as I was swayed into feeling pity for Shylock as his world was stripped bare, my sense of vindication, or that some great battle was won where good triumphed over evil, was lessened. My friend mentioned after the show that in reading the play, she had never felt pity for Shylock, and so I wonder if this was not a blunder in the interpretation of the story, or indeed if it was even intentional. Perhaps the director wanted to maintain this sense of uncertainty. Shylock, certainly, has his reasons to seek revenge, has had a lifetime of prejudice and mistreatment; and so while some of his actions are villainous, he is not in fact a villain, but just a man who is in the end on the losing side of a conflict over money.

The moral of the story: be merciful, for as Portia says, “mercy is “twice blest; / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” And if you have the chance to show mercy, and you do not, you’re going to get screwdeth over.

————————

And now for your moment of zen.

Categories
dance love personal

You close your eyes as I fall asleep

Mornings thin like paper the sun shines through,
too short and fragile and bright and young.
We wake up smiling, instinctually,
and feel skin against skin and warmth and birdsong,
and the sunlight makes motes against your face
through the blinds, and I trace with my eye the
strong features around your jawline.
You’re a stoic in the morning, before your eyes open,
carved from clay and light and flesh and fire,
and when your eyes open they burn holes through me.

Today I’m caught up in the sunshine, in this premature summer that’s graced our door, and the warmth of the colors of the grass and water and sky, and I’m caught up in watching great big puffballs of clouds patiently edge their way across the horizons. For them, life is nothing but the journey, and they may dissolve into light and air at any moment. We’re but ash and bone. Their beauty is intrinsically tied to their brevity. This doesn’t make it convulsive.

When I dance I think of you, and how limbs can tie together so thoroughly that they’ll never be untangled, like smiles, and how my hand feels on your back when the music goes slow and the world fades away to faces and voices, and we all just float. Sometimes I’m surprised by how solid things are, when the lights come back on and reality has its way again.

And sometimes I’m surprised by how much dreams persist.

Categories
love personal poetic

What archives are for

I blog because there’s a monster inside me, and he rips apart my insides.

I blog because I’ve got to let the air out.

I blog because sometimes I whisper in your ear as we lay together quietly in the mornings, and you’ve not yet awoken, and so I go unheard.

I blog because the sun is shining and I just look at it out the window.

I blog because I’m not an organ stop.

————

Flipping through the archives, remind me of those hot summer days and the way the cicadas made their thunder in the grass, of the tears and the sweat, all salty, mingled together and the palms that couldn’t seperate, like Shakespeare. Remind me of the words I spoke, and those writ, and what that all meant to me at the time; the world was coming to an end and I sailed off the edge of the map, and I remembered Sisyphus, and I called him uplifting. Theo responds, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Sometimes I do both.

Remind me of the thunderstorms in Boulder, punctual little beasts of an hour’s length, i’ve just stopped in to make love to the mountains, and then i’ll be on my way, and how the sun shone after like it was preening, as if we’d never seen it before, like a child with a shiny new bike; and I wonder what the view is like above the clouds, now moving east past the peaks.

Remind me of how I got here, and why. And somehow everything seems so clear now, as though the veil were lifted and my purpose laid bare to the universe, nackt vor der Welt. As though I’ve waited for this, culmination of all the wishes I’ve ever made on stars (a thousand stars over a thousand nights), and now I’m lost in them. If they ever wished on me, I grant the stars their dreams.

Remind me that life is here and now and good.

Remind me that this has always been true;

that it always will be.

Categories
poetic

I am hungry of your laughter slide

Soneto XI – Pablo Neruda

Tengo hambre de tu boca, de tu voz, de tu pelo
y por las calles voy sin nutrirme, callado,
no me sostiene el pan, el alba me desquicia,
busco el sonido líquido de tus pies en el día.

Estoy hambriento de tu risa resbalada,
de tus manos color de furioso granero,
tengo hambre de la pálida piedra de tus uñas,
quiero comer tu piel como una intacta almendra.

Quiero comer el rayo quemado en tu hermosura,
la nariz soberana del arrogante rostro,
quiero comer la sombra fugaz de tus pestañas

y hambriento vengo y voy olfateando el crepúsculo
buscándote, buscando tu corazón caliente
como un puma en la soledad de Quitratúe.

—

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

(not sure who did this translation)

—

I am hungry of your mouth, your voice, your hair
and by the streets I go without nourishing itself,
shut up, does not maintain the bread to me, the dawn disturbs,
I look for the liquid sound to me of your feet in the day.

I am hungry of your laughter slide,
of your hands color of furious barn,
am hungry of the pale stone of your nails,
I want to eat your skin like an intact almond.

I want to eat the ray burned in your hermosura,
the sovereign nose of the arrogant face,
want to eat the fleeting shade of your eyelashes

and hungry I come and I am smelling the twilight buscándote,
looking for your hot heart
like puma in the solitude of Quitratúe.

(ahhh, Babelfish…)

Categories
love personal poetic work

Rhymes with “fava”

… and lava, and java, and guava, and brava, and kava. It’s kind of suprising how many things rhyme with bava, if you think about it. Of course, “bava” may not technically be a word (Dictionary.com doesn’t recognize it), so I may be cheating. But just maybe.

First, my abject apologizies for my sloth-ee bloggerness lately. I’m a mean and horrible person and should be divested of all my joys and successes. Or perhaps you’ll simply say, “Meh, whatever, I just read this sheit ’cause I get bored at work,” and I can happilly move along with my life, and all its little joys and successes can remain intact. Your call, folks. My eternal well-being is now in your hands. Be gentle.

So why have I been so reticent, of late? I blame it on the entire female gender, but could probably narrow it down to one woman in particular, if I really put an effort into it. Which I won’t. So, really it all started with Eve (if you go for that “Garden of Eden” creation thing), and the problem just sort of ballooned from there. And honestly, this whole “female gender” problem, or rather, this one woman who takes up all my time, is entirely worth every second, and I’m having the best time. Ever. So, really, I don’t regret for a minute (maybe 43 seconds or so, though) my blog-slackitude. Rest assured that if there were 96 hours in each day, I would most certainly devote at least 2 of them entirely to blogging, as I really do enjoy it quite a bit. As there are only 24 in each day, I end up with 2 hours every 4 days, and that will just have to do. For now.

But I’ve been loving writing the micro-fiction every week. I hope you have been enjoying reading them. I spoke with my friend Joseph, who’s the most prolifically creative person I know, and he may start submitting some micros, and get some friends in on it as well, so we may get quite the creative upswing soon in that department. I’m quite excited. Quite.

In other news, we had our poker night last night. Since I had to be at work by 8 this morning, I wasn’t too excited about playing for long, and thus was the first to get knocked out. If you’re not feeling poker, you’ll lose. This seems to be a logical fact. Anyway, our friend Adam brought some home brew over, and we listened to some good music, and had our guy’s night and rollicked (very manly rollicking, mind you) and it was good. I took a metric snapton of photos, and glancing at them this morning, some turned out pretty good, so I’ll throw some up here as soon as I get the opportunity.

Finally, and this is also a reason I’ve been a bit too busy to blog, I applied for a new job as a “Community Library Assistant I” at the Timberland Library in Yelm. It’s a bit of a drive, but the job is full-time with benefits and decent if not stupendous pay, so I think it will be fully worth it. More importantly, it seems like a really solid position where I could learn a lot and get some very valuable experience. It was an internal-only posting in the Timberland system, and I fit the qualifications well, so it’s time to cross those fingers again and see what happens. I figure that if Theo got his new job (which he did), then I can get mine.

Have fun kickin’ it oldschool. You know I am.

Categories
cinema dance

Bava, existential detective

I heart the movie “I Heart Huckabees”. Seriously. I know it’s been said before, and it this point it’s already cliche, but I just saw it for the first time last night after an unfortunate and expensive trip to Best Buy, and damned if I’m not allowed to say that I heart it at least once!

So back in early January I looked on IMDB and checked out when cool DVDs were going to be released. The reply was a loud, “FEBRUARY!” And yet, being broke, throughout February I managed to avoid Best Buy, and its wiles and wares. Yet yesterday I had to go to the mall to get my hair cut, since the guy downtown took February off (lucky him), which has a Best Buy attached to it. So, after an expensive haircut, albeit by a very cute and friendly blonde who did a fine job, I walked outside and felt the irresistable lure of fresh DVD calling my name. I walked out with the special edition of “I Heart Huckabees“, the director’s cut of “Donnie Darko“, the Disney release (ugh, but still) of “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind“, and “Chicago“. I don’t regret buying any of them, but my wallet does. But then, it worries about stupid stuff, like paying rent and eating food. What a stiff.

So, we watched I Heart Huckabees, and it was fantastic. If you’ve an existential or philisophical bone in your body, I think you’ll like it too. It reminds me of Wes Anderson’s work in that even at its most dramatic points, it never takes itself too seriously. And I can’t count the number of times I laughed out loud.

Have you ever crashed your bicycle into someone on purpose, and sent them flying literally thousands of meters, while your friends were lined up in a big, long row waiting to see if the guy you sent flying will land on or near them, so they can boot him back into the air and improve your distance? Yeah … well, ever done it in Japanese? I didn’t think so.

Have you ever performed the title song to “Singin’ in the Rain”, robot style? These things only happen in VW Commercials. Nice tagline, too. “The original, updated.”

As you can read on the Kottke site, it’s the same guy that did the Kollaboration video, which surely everyone and their step-niece has seen by now. That guy just blows my mind in a serious way. I mean … whoa.

And now for your moment of zen.