Categories
personal poetic

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

Confused dreams about eyelashes left me too addled to effectively manage my alarm this morning. Hitting “snooze” every nine minutes became a riddle I continuously failed for minutes at a time. Eventually, my fingers would accidently fall against the appropriate button, allowing me some brief reprieve, where I fell back into a Cocteauian montage of sphinx and self-betrayal.

To say that I finally awoke refreshed would be a gross exaggeration. Too many cigarettes and my mouth tastes like tar in the morning, though I persist in this slow suicide, like so many millions of others. Peer pressure is one thing. It’s blunt and tactless: “Be cool, smoke.” Peer reassurance, on the other hand; knowing that if I have a weakness then it’s one shared by multitudes. That’s my downfall, my death, and perhaps the explanation of the self-betrayal in my dreams.

More likely, it was the General Tsao’s chicken I finished off just before I went to bed. I still don’t get the eyelashes thing though.

Categories
cinema personal

Serenity N… last night!

The chain of events that lead me to watch Serenity on opening night is long, but not overly complicated.

Somewhere along his path in life, Tim Bard watched an episode of Buffy and liked it. He’s not a fanboy, but he’s close. Okay, he might be a fanboy.

Tim and Theo became friends.

Ohio struck my as a crappy place to be (almost simultaneous with Theo moving back from France and Tim needing a place NOT with an ex):

“Hey Theo, need a roommate?”

The house called “La Casa” was formed. Hilarity ensued. Well, hilarity in a very non-productive sort of way. And drinking, and darts. Lots of ensuing ensued, quite.

Tim makes me watch BtVS a la “A Clockwork Orange”. My droogs beat me up by the river. Firefly comes out on DVD. Tim buys. I am once more chained to a chair with my eyelids forced open.

Tim moves to Vermont. As he is stepping through the threshold, he asks me to make a solemn vow that I will watch Serenity. I might have nodded. The sun was in my eyes.

Serenity comes out in the theater. I watch it, opening night. Other than the near fatal dose of American Consumerism Humanity, it was an enjoyable experience.

And by enjoyable, I mean totally sweet. I’ll do an actual review later.

Categories
personal photo

Who are you people?

Who are you and how did you find me!?

Interrobang

Huh?

I have spies everywhere:

Spies drink martinis, and the occasional g&t:

We’re watching you.

Categories
humor webcomics

How old is that in internet years?

This isn’t new.

In fact, it seems to be nearly two weeks old.

This means that, in internet terms, it’s positively archaic.

But it still cracks my shit up.

Categories
personal

We rain devils play

Yesterday was the first day of rain we’ve had in some time. If you’re familiar with the Pacific Northwest, then you know how odd that is. Sure, we have nice summers, but it seems like it’s been dry as a bone around here for a solid month, and that just isn’t how we rain devils play out here.

The best thing about rain is the morning after, and how many things can you really say that about? Right. All the humidity is drizzled/poured/bucketed from the air onto terra firma (terra sogga?), and afterwards, especially in the morning, the atmosphere seems so clear that you should be able to pick out individual veins on individual leaves of individual trees at a thousand feet. Breathing seems like something you may have never experienced before; entirely enjoyable as though each draught swept the vapor of ambrosia through your lungs.

Colors are enhanced, leaves hang from limbs like emeralds and turquoise, embedded with the rubies and garnets of the approaching fall. The post-partum sheen of the rain sparkles in the wan light of the clear sky. In the distance, perhaps, a cloud or two, and the promise of more rain to come.

Categories
dance love personal poetic

next time, shoes

Life like a dirty martini
dance the fork out and swing it
wore holes through my socks on a sticky floor
trying to find the right way to
woo

She’s mentioned that breakfast numerous times
I’m always flattered
French poetry in the underground
smiles and coffee and oh what times
and thank you for the years

Now a reciprocity, previously unsuggested
French and dancing?
at the same time no less
like Dionysus waiting in the wings
with wine and fervor and he’s winking
but I’m not going to chase because
I’ve tried that and …

The right way to woo is like dancing
like jazz in the underground club
with smoke against the ceiling
and wine for 10f
and every night we’d stumble home
across the Rhine

just find the syncopation
and Apollo be damned

Categories
wordpress

I Need Some Intelligent Design

I want to completely redo the template for my blog. And perhaps, even the idea for my blog, and what I post about. I feel like working on one thing will help negotiate the other. What I’d like to do is take the elements I like from certain blog designs and weave them together in a masterful way to create something pretty, and wholly my own. Like Frankenstein’s blog, I guess … and yes, it will probably come out looking like a monster.

Here’s a big link-dump of design sites and blog designs I’m eyeing enviously. Please feel free to make any suggestions.

powazek – I like the banner especially, and the way it fades into the rest of the page.

shifted librarian – Nice, simple, easy layout. Very readable. Could have fun with the 2-tone aspect.

bizgirl – very simple, easy, elegant. girl’s hot. I need to actually read this at some point, too.

stephanie klein – pretty straighforward. i like the colorful banner and the absolutely useless line of green along the right side.

indiekids – i like the top banner with the links. also the muted background colors. it’s nearly blogger-styled, but cooler.

tequila mockingbird – rocking colors. nice, easy layout. easy is good. color is good. take notes.

boudist – i think this is fucking class. nice primary colors, elegant.

chromewaves – good width-fit. i like how the boxes are seperated.

fluxblog – ooOoOo, I kinda like this mono-color thing, especially with the banner. Cute logo, too. I need me one of them.

jason santamaria – this is way too clever for me to figure out. but i like the banner and link style up top. how the hell do you do that stain thing along the top-right of the page?

karen cheng – very clever, fairly simple, good content. i like the day-of-the-week headers especially.

lowculture – i like the two blogs in one approach. could do some fun shit with this, i think?

popagandhi – i like the retro banner, and once again, the white on white background keeps it simple

pussycat – simplicity rules the day. this is a well-done minimal.

watchblog – tri-blog, one page. good idea

Design & template sites:

cookie designs

francey.org

thisisliz

notthatugly

rp designs

squidfingers

If you know of any other gorgeous blogs, or awesome design sites, let me know! That’s it for now!

Categories
news work

SMU goes BOOM

Welcome to the Saint Martin’s Campus, where the fun never stops, even when it means blowing shit up. Komo got the damn story before we even issued our official press release.

Old Main is the main building on campus (as you may have guessed from the name). The O’Grady Library, where I work, is near Old Main, and the coolest building on campus anyway, so it filled up with displaced students, faculty, and administration in the blink of an eye.

Even so, things have quieted down a bit already. It’s kind of amazing how fast life can just … move on. Not that this was a tragedy by any means, more of an incident. Just allow me my little dramatic moment.

edit: The Seattle PI is a little slow, but they’re doing their part.

The Olympian chimes in.

Brief coverage from the Tacoma News-Tribune.

The Olympian takes photos of our suffering.

I wouldn’t make light of it, but no one was seriously injured. Even so, my condolences to everyone who had flying glass shooting at their heads. That can’t be fun.

Categories
humor

I’m going blind for mankind

Masturbate for peace?

Yeah, ummm, that’s exactly it. Excuse me…

Some hilarious slogans though.

Categories
poetic

The Highest Tide

This last Saturday I went to a local book reading/signing at Orca Books. The book being read was “The Highest Tide” by Jim Lynch, who is an Olympia native, and whose book takes place in Olympia. As of about an hour ago, I finished reading it, and I have to say, it rocks my face off. Seriously, go read it.

The story follows a thirteen-year-old boy named Miles O’Malley who lives on the edge of the Puget Sound and who is obsessed with Rachel Carson, marine life, and the girl-next-door who used to babysit him. When Miles finds a giant squid washed up from a high tide, he is catapulted into local fame. When he continues to find things in the bay that shouldn’t be there, his fame goes from local to national, and he gets a lot of largely unwanted attention. Despite these catalysts, the story remains focused on Miles’ experiences with the ocean, with growing up (at the age of thirteen he still looks nine), with his parents who are growing distant, a friend who is dying and a girl he loves who is spinning out of control.

It’s often funny, particularly when Miles is explaining such things as the sex life of barnacles, or trying himself to understand the perhaps more bizarre sex life of humans. His friend Phelps plays a mean air guitar, and constantly talks about “melons”. The girl he loves is a local rockstar known to faint onstage. The book is so abundantly infused with life and energy and depth that it mirrors the bay around which it is framed.

Jim himself seems very cool, and he signed my book, which is awesome.

Rating: 5 / 5 stars.
Note: This book rocks my face off.
Link.

Categories
news

Snark the f*** up.

Snarky political rant. Go Eric!

Categories
internet

I Love Virals

Say what you will about viral advertising, but I find it much more engaging than the alternative.

More about Origen.

Granted, it will be hard to top “I Love Bees”. But I hope someone tries.

Categories
love personal

Reticence, I smite at thee…

And ‘lo there was a great smoting, and those quiet moments between words were banished, and the cup of conversation runneth’d over, and there was a great rejoicing.

Sometimes you just can’t do events justice with words. Letters glued together like matchsticks trying to build the strongest bridge, but that annoying kid who eats lunch with you sat on it, and it was never meant to withstand that sort of “earthquake”. Poor, poor matchstick bridge …

My analogies keep running way the hell away from me. We’ll simply call them expeditious and leave it at that.

The short of it is that I met a girl. Those of you who are vigilant would have noticed two posts, that lasted just a day or so, and were then deleted, expressing my enthusiasm about said girl. They were deleted because, when the pot comes to boil, some things are still private, and even if I don’t care that strangers know my most intimate moments and/or embarrassing analogies, it’s not my place to share everything that involves other people. Besides, sometimes you just have to play your cards close to home. This blog is, after all, ridiculously easy to find.

So it was one of those conundrums. And I panicked. These things happen.

So I met a girl, and I was completely flabbergasted. As a friend has told me since (and I would tend to agree, now), my being completely flummoxed about this girl said a lot more about where I was then it really did about her. But you can’t tell these sorts of things to a madman. We went on a date, I bought her dinner, I was smitten instantly. We talked about France, and film, and school and friends and London and travel and language … oh the things we said! The conversation was good, to put it simply. The next day I sent her flowers, and then I didn’t hear from her for a couple days, and got dreadfully anxious. When I happened to run into her at a restaurant downtown, it all seemed so serendipitous that it HAD TO BE FATE! Seriously, my brain was all gunked up with romance. Stupid thing.

A few nights ago, as I was walking around my neighborhood, admiring the stars, she called me and we had a nice conversation. It was nice until the “I can only offer you my friendship” part, and then it was kind of not-nice. But it did help get my head screwed back on straight, and it really didn’t hit me as hard as I was setting myself up for. Thank goodness for skeptical friends who are completely willing to balk at your inexplicable enthusiasm and give you sketchy glances when you’re being foolish. I pay heed to these things, anymore.

So the “f” word was dropped, not so much like an atom bomb as like a … I dunno, water balloon. I was disappointed, sure, but I don’t have anything if not perspective, and I’m a resilient son-of-a-gun, anyhow.

Besides, y’all wouldn’t love me if I weren’t unpredictable and spazzy. The longer people know me the less surprised they get when I do completely off-the-wall things, without explanation or warning. And usually so mild-mannered and level-headed … but that’s what makes life snazzy!

Categories
news poetic

Posthumously humane, humanity…

A Pithy Mood has been a secret pleasure of mine for months now. Something delectable, to be treated with earnest admiration, but from afar, and infrequently. We must not oversup on our extravagances.

Her recent post is about helping out with Katrina, and donating to a cause we might otherwise forget about. Pets. In most cases, these are family members that were left behind with food and water and a wish to stay well. As Tamea says:

However, the millions of now homeless, lost and starving animals who’ve also been affected by this hurricane have no politics to disagree with and they need help desperately.

If you have issues with humanity, then donate to save these animals instead. You can donate to the humane society who is working to reunite pets with their families, or find new families for abandoned animals. You can also donate to the petfinder disaster fund, which is doing the same thing.

Categories
humor poetic

Soyez patient.

Merci pour votre patience pendant que je traduit tout de ce blog en Francais. Je vous plaisant, bien sur, mais c’est vrai qu’il faut faire des changes ici. Ne me quittez pas! Je reviendrai.

Gros bisous,

l’homme autrefois connait comme “bava”.

babelfish: french–> german–> english

Thanks for your patience, while I translate everything this blog into French. I you pleasing naturally, but it is true that one must make rates of exchange here. Do not leave me! I will return.

Large kisses,

humans known in former times as “bava”.

Categories
news

A couple jiggers of rye.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of a “double shot of espresso,” you could pound a couple jiggers of rye into this coffee? Then go back to work and pimpslap the boss? Yeah, that’d be great. Not gonna happen, though, fella. You’ll finish your pastry, grit your teeth, and get back to the grind. Bottoms up!

My oh my. But seriously. Oh my.

I feel bad about feeling so good while people are doing so poorly.

We are out here like pure animals. We don’t have help,” Rev Issac Clark told the Associated Press news agency outside the city’s convention centre, where dead bodies are still lying in the open.

People have faced shoot-outs and some reports say martial law has been imposed in some areas. Armed gangs have moved into some hotels.

Some have been breaking into shops, houses, hospitals and office buildings.

Thieves used a forklift truck to break into a pharmacy, AP news agency reports, while dozens of carjackings have been reported.

I’ve made my donation, and honestly wish there was more I could do to help, but for personal reasons I’ve been walking on sunshine for the last couple days, and it’s difficult to break free of my happy myopia.

My best wishes to all those displaced by nature. Life will find a way.

Categories
news

Why George W. Will Save Our Country

Good, now that I’ve gotten your attention. You know how a lot of medicine that you have to ingest tastes like shit, but if it didn’t taste that bad then it probably wouldn’t be as beneficial? Well, I think that’s Dubya. Before you burn my blog to the ground, I’ll explain.

This idea started when I glanced over the Friday cover of the New York Times, and perused an article which talked about rising energy costs. The article mentions that even though the national temperature average is still in the 80s, people nation-wide are already worried about budgeting heating costs for the winter, with prices higher than most of us have ever seen, and not estimated to drop any time soon. Common ideas were to turn the heat down, and put on a sweater, be it for a home, a school, or the workplace. But you know what, I think that’s perfect.

Let’s face it. As a nation, we’re coddled. We’ve had a good run of prosperity lately, and no matter how much people will bitch about monetary imbalance, the amount of people in “comfortable” financial situations seems to just keep growing. I know I can’t cross the street without getting bumped aside by a new SUV, a fat woman pushing 8 kids in a Wal-Mart SUPER-STROLLER ™, or some guy younger than me with leather pants and a new BMW. The thing is, our financial gain has nothing to do with us becoming smarter, stronger, or more driven than we have been in the past. On the contrary, the lazier we get the more shit seems to get handed to us. Think of the “No Child Left Behind” act. Oh, you have a LEARNING DISABILITY!? Well let us just bend over fucking backwards to make sure than when you’re 25 you can still force someone smarter and older than you to bow to your will. Because really, that’s the trademark of our society now. The more you suck, the more you can boss people around that suck less than you. I was reading movie quotes from “Stand and Deliver” the other day, and I think one applies here.

There is two kinds of racisim, Mr. Escalante. Judging a group because they are a minority, and NOT judging a group because they are a minority.

Granted, I’m not talking about race. What I’m talking about is natural intelligence and ability. Perhaps we could insert “intellectual prejudice” for “racism”, and make the quote more applicable. The point is that while it may not be right to judge a group because they are less intellectually skilled, it’s not necessarily right to NOT judge them because they are less intellectually skilled. More simply, while it may not be nice to point and laugh at the dumb kid, you should still realize that he’s the dumb kid. I’m so going to hell for that …

So to get back on track, we’re coddled and we’re letting people who don’t deserve to run our businesses run them, who don’t deserve to be our managers manage us, and who don’t deserve to friggin’ fry our “freedom fries” run the country. And for that we get to start worrying about our energy costs in August, and we deserve that.

See, Bush isn’t the problem. Yeah, I was upset when he won the first time. I was absolutely DEVESTATED when he won a second term. Whether or not he cheated is moot, the fact remains that about half the people in this country WANTED him. And that, to me, means that he is just the symptom of a much larger problem. Those people we are trying so desperately to “not leave behind”? They’re growing up, having hordes of “little miracles“, and they’re voting. They run our Wal-Marts, our McDonalds, our movie theaters and our Auto Dealerships. They sell us insurance, they buy stock in Starbucks, Microsoft, and Enron, and they run for office. And they’re part of the problem, but they’re not THE problem. THE problem, really, is that this is a self-propogating cycle. More than that, they’re gaining momentum while we’re losing it, and things seem pretty bleak. But then, like a pile of rotten refuse gleaming in the Texas sun, they offer us a solution. George W. Bush.

I’d like to side-track a little bit to offer up an oil analogy. It’s fitting, don’t you think? We’ve all seen those big oilwell contraptions, with the big hammer thing rotating around the big piston thing, mesmerizing us with its tireless tick-tock efficiency. At some point, I assume it’s before those things begin their work, men strike oil deep in the earth (sticking a giant drill deep into the ground is as close an analogy to “raping the earth” as I could ever think of), and it gushes to the surface in all its black-gold glory. Sometimes, the oil catches on fire, and you have a hole in the ground that becomes a flame-geyser. Can you say “not fun”? To put out these fires (and my point is coming up here very soon), they don’t try to lessen the flow of oil, or pour water on it, or smother it (in any conventional sense). They certainly don’t attack it with their liberal ideologies and they don’t try to plug the hole with Michael Moore (though that might be worth a shot). What they do is they set up an explosion so big around the jet of fire that it feels puny in comparisn and dies (kind of like if a guy were all full of cock and swagger, and to bring him down you send Orlando Bloom into the room). Okay, so really it’s an oxygen-deprivation thing, but the point is that to put the fire out, they make a much bigger fire, which steals the little fires oxygen, and both of them end up not being able to sustain, and die.

George W. Bush is our explosion. (Whew, took me awhile to get there. Sorry.)

We’ve got the steady flame of mediocrity burning strong in the American heart. How do we fix that? With a supernova of mediocrity that’ll steal all the oxygen from the little mediocre flame, and they’ll both burn out.

The energy thing is a start. People who are colder tend to move more. The best heat solution is body heat, and the best way to maintain body heat is to stay active. This, in turn, will start to help with our obesity problem. Also, improved bloodflow increases brain activity (though plenty of jocks have proven that this is not a solution by itself), so people might get a tiny bit smarter.

Our economy, which is not going to be able to sustain this level of prosperity indefinately with W. at the helm, will suddenly get a lot tougher. Ideally (and I can be a naive idealist at times), this will increase job competition and create a more rigid standard against incompetence. Sure, you may not get a grad student hired to cook your fries at Burger King, but in general a tougher market will mean that the lowest of the low will have to bring themselves that much higher to compete. If not … well, it’s Darwinian, and I like it. I think I already mentioned that I’m going to hell for this.

In “What is to be done?”, Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote of an ideal society based on peasants in a social commune. In it he lauds a social commune of peasants that live in perfect peace and suffer from absolutely NO conflict or unhappiness. Other than the impracticality or such a society, it shows a prevalent underlying ideology that conflict is intrinsically “bad”, and only happiness and contentment are “good”. Dostoevsky, with great contempt, often referred to Chernyshevsky’s utopic peasants as being no better than an organ-stop. Particularly so in his “Notes from Underground”:

Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? What do you think? Let us reckon the chances–can such a thing happen or not?

The reason I mention this is that I feel like our society now is perilously close to an ideology where we would be better off without choice, freedom, or free will, so long as we are safe, warm, fed, and “happy”. I say “happy” when I mean content, and though I think they’re worlds apart, I’m not sure most Americans could describe the difference. I won’t get into it here why I think a “happiness”-based society is ridiculous. I think Chernyshevsky described it well enough, and in reading his description it’s fairly clear to see why it’s patently absurd.

But that’s what we’re doing. On a day to day basis in our society we are getting rid of conflict. Classes too hard for some students? Make them easier. Too hard to get a job? Hire those poor, unqualified folk. Better yet, promote them. Let them run the company. Too much trouble to be in shape? Introduce more fad diets than anyone knows what to do with and start selling salads at McDonalds. No, don’t worry about exercise. So long as we’re skinny, who cares? We don’t like to see failure. We don’t like to admit that any task is too difficult for any person. We’re all equal, right? It seems like we’d rather have those people with exceptional qualities lower their skills to a more average level (we don’t want to make anyone feel bad, right?), than try to really push those who don’t have the natural abilities. Sure, plenty of teachers work hard to do just that. I mean, we’ve all seen “Dangerous Minds”, right? At least twice as many don’t care.

I’ll bring this all around, and finish up, by saying that a slow decline into mediocrity is a subtle thing. A warping of values into something that will destroy our society can be even moreso. Dubya is as subtle as a pygmy monkey thrown at your face. And in this case, he may be just the splash of cold water we need to realize that it’s sink-or-swim time folks, and it might be better if a few of us sink.

Categories
love personal

‘Cause I don’t wanna dream alone…

So last night I met the girl of my dreams …

it’s a pity I was only dreaming.

It was incredibly vivid, and I woke up really disappointed that it hadn’t really happened. For what it’s worth, if you see her around, she was: tall, about 5’8″, I’d guess, with a medium/fit build, and shoulder-length medium-brown hair worn back in two braids. She had a kind face and a mischievous smile.

I’m such a sap sometimes.

——

In completely unrelated, and more disturbing news, I’m concerned about the number of people who have been finding this blog with various searches for Second Life “furry avatars”. Seriously though … ick.

Alternately, I wonder how long it will take someone to start making movies using either “Second Life” or “There.com”. With the amount of freedom these programs offer in both character creation and movement, it’s only a matter of time …

Categories
news socialweb tech

It’s a G thing, part the second

Google has released, in beta, their IM software. It’s called “Google Talk”, and it rocks my little world. I don’t know where you can download it from, except that I can send you an invite if you like. You NEED Gmail to use Google Talk, so if you need that, let me know and I’ll send you an invite for that as well.

Cool points for Google Talk:

  • It’s connected to Gmail, so you get email notifications.
  • It’s tabbed chatting, in a cheaty sort of way. IM me and I’ll explain it. 🙂
  • It fully supports voice chatting, so talk to your friends in China for free.
  • The UI is simple, minimal, and ad-free. It reminds me a bit of ICQ, back in the old days.

    I won’t claim it doesn’t have some room for improvement (can you say “integrated google search function”?), but it rocks the hell out of everything else available, on day 1. But that’s just one man’s humble opinion. Comment me an email address, and I’ll send you an invite. Let me know if you need Gmail as well.

  • Categories
    photo

    Like photos to the tribesmen

    It’s nice having a good view, good company, good beer, and good conversation. ‘Nuff said.