fire on vacation

fiery effect

luminaria face

fire extinguisher

firefly bathtub

end of year pix

 

End of Year Que Pasa

Spending a holiday in a bar and saying "We should leave before she has another one" and being encouraged to have a more laissez faire attitude about it, then walking towards a door that says "She Crab" on it. Sign in the stall: "Please remain seated for the entire performance." Come back, she's having a limeade now. Free Bird plays. Pleasant to watch friend befriend an older man at the bar. Alex Tribeck is looking distinguished. Everyone knows the answer on Final Jeopardy is the Taj Majal, but the contestants guess, respectively, The Alhambra, The Kaaba, and the Haggia Sophia.  Blackbird Fly plays. The woman who guessed The Alhambra wins because she bet less money than the others. Mr. Magoo's Xmas Carol comes on. Time to leave. Talk in the car about lucky we are not to live in Salem during witch burning times, and local folklore about "haints" and "hags" and "boo-daddies" ..."I want to know what a boo-daddy is"...discuss paint colors for the walls... Que Pasa?  ~ Remembering some pages from The Brief Wondrous...and always running into a skinny Indian guy in the upstate NY grocery store and other places and would, for some reason, keep forgetting about it...Que Pasa?  ~ Played Spades with a friend from New Jersey who said he'd played other games with A. Bourdain in Atlantic City and didn't know it at the time. "Stick with me and you'll win," the mysterious guy told him. He kept following him around and winning, but when he tried to get more personal info about him, his mysterious new friend had to go. A week later, he saw his show. Before the friend told us this story, sister said, "do you remember that time we cooked steaks and one looked like a heart and there was a knife in it and you sang 'Shot Through The Heart...' and then we got in the car and that song was playing on the radio?" And days later, in a Pasadena bookstore, picked up Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine To The World Of Food and specifically read about how the author wants to be a better guy for his daughter in a chapter called "I'm Dancing." Que Pasa?

Song inspiration

Because of this (and this) I decided that Sandra Fluke is a good fit for the Prodigy song Firestarter.

For extra hilarity points, I thought that to myself on my way back from a walk. And I was walking by a group of adolescent boys. And I think I had a very serious look on my face while I was thinking about it. And then, one of them leaned in and whispered, "Yeah, baby!"

More things to do on a lazy afternoon

Discover a new old song:

The Police - Mother

Never heard that one before today.

Read a funny article...

Nine

I hear Dante really liked Nine.

Sometimes life is like the first nine Pixies songs that played on your friend's iPod when you got up and borrowed it at 6 in the morning.

Bone Machine
Nimrod's Son
Holiday Song
Caribou
Broken Face
Gigantic
Vamos
Hey
Monkey Gone To Heaven

After I re-watch "Nine," I suppose I should watch "8 1/2" sometime.

The Cloud of Unknowing

So one time my friend who I live with was all like, look at this bio on iTunes, you are kind of like NC. And I was like, well, not really. Then I said, one time I read this interview and part of it annoyed me. Okay, only two parts. The first part just looks all blinky-blink and batting-of-eyelashes-ish. But I realize I'm probably just projecting my own issues onto that (damn, Y R U projecting YR issues on dis poor defenseless interview?) Anyway, this was more like the most irksome part:

"Yeah, like postfeminist theory in art school. Oh, it's oppressive! [Laughs] I don't wanna paint with my menstrual blood! I just wanna learn how to use this printing press, man! Come on!"

https://www.believermag.com/issues/201202/?read=interview_alexie_case

Oh, YOU know, that rite-of-passage...running away from ladies who try to make you paint with your menstrual blood. Hey, why didn't I get to experience that rite-of-passage? All I got to run away from was military people and rape stories! This is probably why I really would like to become better at meditating and going on vision quests, so I can work on these issues of mine.

True story from self-indulgent yesterday

NOT THE MESSIAH
thats review

A SINGLE Man loks good

about to watch NINE

this is good stufff

Sweet Tea vodka and Lemonade vodka

ONLY if you are not alcoholic

if you are, don't you dare

go to a meeting

some people are lucky

some people are skinny

not alcoholics

not ovarian cyst ridden

etc. etc.

DANIEL DAY LEIS why are you do talented???

Do you have a russian accent

oh no

Italy

watcg

for JUDI DENCH!

and sophia loren

has become an older woman

in a movie

blow kisses

he sings

and wears a hat

 

I didn't remember anything after BE ITALIAN...I think I have to watch it again.

Oh, boy

An afternoon all to myself with a big, warm computer.
What to do...and what NOT to do!
This was the first thing that came up:
From alcohol to kites...

Sunday morning revelation

This is still a really good song: Mykonos

Sounds interesting

"Zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, diffuse white glow seen in the night sky..."

Hmmm, free things

Four free audio meditations

Yay, this place

I am glad RAINN exists and happy to hear of people who have money donating to it.
I have had the need to recommend it to others often enough.

Funny tumblr

Female friend sent this:

http://yourllbeanboyfriend.tumblr.com/

Anecdotes

Funny things I read because my friend who I live with was reading them...

1)

Right now I'm reading a book from mega-selling fantasy author George R. R. Martin. The following is a passage where he is writing from the point of view of a woman -- always a tough thing for men to do. The girl is on her way to a key confrontation, and the narrator describes it thusly:

"When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest ..."

That's written from the woman's point of view. Yes, when a male writes a female, he assumes that she spends every moment thinking about the size of her breasts and what they are doing. "Janet walked her boobs across the city square. 'I can see them staring at my boobs,' she thought, boobily."

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women_p2.html#ixzz2GAqK0ejL

2)

"We decided to have sex with the nice people on that other island. Be back never."

 

http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america_p2.html

 

3)

 

Fact Check on the 2nd article:

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/05/the-truth-behind-the-native-american-discovery-of-america-in-60-bce.html

 

Downtime travel moments

A question to ask oneself while watching CNN in the food court of the Nashville airport and avoiding those grey-looking pieces of chicken in your salad:

What does a famous actor apparently starving himself to look like an old man for a movie role have to do with getting kids fit and healthy? Are they all going to be given personal trainers, CrossFit workouts, and glasses of wheatgrass juice?  The sound was not good. But it said MM has two roles to play. Something about a "dramatic weightloss" and then something about getting kids fit and healthy. And those ideas were linked with a semi-colon.

MM's Spiritual Journey
Old Larry King transcript

USDA has a food desert locator...

~~~~~

JL Opens Up
Les Mis Diet

Actually, these people should really count themselves lucky if they don't end up suffering from heinous gall bladder problems.

Which may be what will happen when many average people out there try to imitate them without the benefit of medical expertise. Or is already happening.

Poor people in Les Mis: mostly fashionably thin
Poor people in this country in 2012: more likely to be unfashionably obese

Cool song and colorful video

Bjork - Hidden Place

Thinking about how 2009 was...

for some interesting now-deceased people...

Tildonia

Many Manifestos

Lesser known historical figures

Sophia Foord

Reading things

I tried to interest a person in the bimulous nights book, but it was too confusing for him. Then I tried to put a literary gloss on it, but that didn't help!

OH, FB

enlightening social media...
UC Berkeley Library Story
Christmas Spectacular
~~~
y tambien...
Holiday Pageant
?!?!?Royal Family Doctor!!??

perhaps I would say "allure"

The Lure of the Writer's Cabin
I heard Thoreau mentioned in a holiday PHC show from this weekend
This is fun to look at: Storybook Woods

~~~~
Itzhak Perlman's playing really is exquisite. It's like, if you have unresolved emotions or feelings from your life, he can play you a story to figure them out. It was like that when I worked for a publisher in the Chicago area and saw him play live too.

Ways to use your pricey blender

Vitamix recipes
This pancake recipe is fun to play with. For example:
1 egg
half banana
lemon flavoring
cloves
And then a little honey and juice from a small lemonish fruit from the local produce exchange...

Still a cute book

A book with a song....
(Bimulous Nights)

Tettigoniidae - a walking leaf?

Canciones

I got a cool book from the library, and I am pretty sure that the book about bimulous nights put something into my head about wanting to know more about the "Mexican Hat Dance" at a young age. Then I was looking for the "Thieves" song by She & Him, but instead I found this:

Thieves Song - The Albion Band

I like it...very minstrely...and it kind of made me think back to a hippie-ish island...which was not always hippie-ish...I hear it is not as hippie-ish now...and kind of also thought, I wish I could have said something like this to some preppy junior high girls who made fun of the holes in my clothes (before grunge was cool) and said that I was "friends with the hos" (other girls with holy clothing?)

Soda can shapes

Xmas Shopping

This big *POP* went off in a really crowded area of the mall yesterday, which was slightly nerve-wracking...but fortunately it was just a little kid popping a balloon...I think the people who work at this store have a lot of fun with glitter, color, textures, sugar crystals, etc. ~ LUSH

Blah

Sometimes it does not seem like the world is getting that much better. From random mass shootings to a roommate coming home and talking about high school kids getting into really bad fights and being told he needs to be more strict with them "but I don't want to go back to the Phillipines with a heart attack!" And coworkers who say they had to be locked in an office for seven hours because of another shooter. Why does school have to be so dangerous? Now, some things have gotten better. For example, people are less homophobic than they used to be. But at the same time, I was just thinking of, oh, say for example, parents warning a kid by saying that being friends with other people is okay but watch out, because that culture is dangerous to women! is happening less? And then I read something like Jane's jihad and then I'm like, yeah right, that probably still happens all the time. 
ChristianMuslimJewishWiccanPaganBuddhistZorastrianComparativeReligionsexyslavery!
People have delicate lives.

Deer

What one might look up after a walk

Rare letters fail to sell

Little Red Haired Girl tumblr

Playboy Mommy

6 ways C.S. was C.B.

Fantasy

Despite knowing almost nothing about D & D, having never played it, this Community episode had a fair amount of amusing absurdity

Interesting ladies

I was surprised to find out that there is a 65-year-old woman in a lead role in a ballet! (read about that after this came up)

While I'm randomly clicking away on assorted articles, I can't even believe this person was allowed to practice "countless operations...for almost 20 years..." HORROR

ha

Guys With Boring Jobs...

I am jealous because they have laptops...

Story Accompaniment

to traffic school final exam...
Eye Spy

хорошие истории

I do not know the Russian alphabet but...this is a good story...
Made to be Broken

Nature shapes

Little bird, little bird

Great people

This woman looks great:

Susana Trimarco

I'm sure she never wanted to be...
Very hard topic.

A Reminder

on a mundane evening
sometimes they lie
by themselves
in parked cars 
slowly, quietly burning up
because a ghost
from the Song of Songs
has come to visit
and then they have to go
to the store
eat a burrito
or do whatever it takes
to be normal again
sometimes by themselves
people are mysterious

Glorious day off

How to get through 6 1/2 hours of online traffic school for a $$$ rolling stop...

WAR ON CHRISTMAS!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-december-3-2012-denis-leary

~~~~~~~~

and/or grainy Garbo documentary clips...

artartartartart...

Who is this woman...

Mr. Scruff (Moondog-Lament)

who reminds me

http://chronichealing.com/dysautonomia-part-2/

of Ms. T?

http://www.yessaid.com/photos-2003-talesofalibrarian.html

Ah, maybe it's Greta Garbo...

The whisky scene somewhat reminds me of some paintings I used to look at in a book of Impressionist art from the Nat'l Gallery in Washington, DC.

Plum Brandy

It said that because she was a young woman who sat alone, she might be a prostitute.

Masked Ball at the Opera

It said that Manet had painted himself into this scene and then signed his name on the dance card that had fallen to the floor in the lower right hand corner of the painting.

I had to look up whisky (no e?) and found Whisky Cures A Man Who Went Blind From Vodka.

click click

This version of a song I listened to the other day shows all sorts of old interesting (Hollywood style?) portraits...

random fun stuff

dance is fun...it puts oxygen into cells...cooking is fun...hopefully the end result is delicious and gives us nutrients...looking up "zen cat" and other stuff is fun...

This sounded like a good documentary on the radio this morning:
Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home

Some background music

Moondog - Lament 1, 'Bird's Lament' (mixed by Henrik Schwarz)

Holiday pancake ideas!

Add spinach to this recipe or try making little silver dollar sized ones from this recipe, and also tint with green food coloring...unless there are red toppings, maybe these are better for St. Patricks Day, or possibly Halloween in addition to Christmas?

Besoin en Fonds de Roulement d'Exploitation

Intelligent Body Exploitation! Trying to find acronyms for this concept could be a great way to stave off boredom, depression, online traffic school...

funny quote

"I would love to compose something for dance before I kick the bucket, and I’m not closed-minded about the dance, or the dance company. I would really just love to collaborate on that. You know, people ask me, “Why the Dutch orchestra?” And it’s like asking, “Why is she dancing with that guy?” It’s because he asked her to dance. The Dutch orchestra is the only one that ever asked me.

That’s an honest explanation.

Sometimes I tell that to men and they just crack up. I think for a lot of them, it just never occurs to them to ask."

-- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/booming/tori-amos-still-wrestles-with-her-muses.html?pagewanted=all

O SR

Today I discovered Sarcastic Rover, who was feeling a little out of sorts this Monday.

The evening's awesome food

Cranberry sauce (the cranberries boiling on the stove kind) with one chopped jalapeno in it.
~~~~
Reverie over awesome food interrupted by scary laundry basket sccccrrrraping across the floor... AH!!! You scare too easily. Not really, I just have PTSD from a nightmare I had as a two or three or four year old. (ENORMOUS bust of some great composer sccccrrrrrraping towards little girl on a bed...god, how terrifying.) Wonder if this guy ever reincarnated.

America's Great Awakening

Le sigh

Le book is so good mais is le expensive...
 
http://themarlowebookshelf.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-sky-is-like-lace.html



Super affordable Saturday night entertainment

Read aloud portions of this book to a person who laughed and said "I don't talk about my mother."



to try...

flour-free pancake

Retro D.H. Lawrence essay

Discovered an interesting-sounding author!
Found this in the library after searching under "blasphemy."

"There is now available a whole literature about D. H. Lawrence's life, written for the most part by ladies who can boast of having known him more or less well. As Compton Mackenzie aptly remarks, the dead Lawrence has suffered the same fate as the living Orpheus: to be torn to pieces by his female followers. It was, by the way, a male 'friend' of Lawrence, Middleton Murray, who let loose the whole flood of personal reminiscences about the dead poet. In a somewhat nauseous and turgid book Murray tried to reduce the mysterious quality in Lawrence to so simple a supposition as his alleged impotence. The chorus of protesting women's voices makes it clear in any case that the enigmatic element in Lawrence's genius is not to be explained quite so easily. After all we have been told about him--by friends male and female and by Lawrence's widow--about the irresistible charm of his manner, about his terrible unsociableness, about his candour and his disingenuousness--there still remains something mystical about his person. But finally the girl who had been his companion and confidante during the years when he was feeling his way to his own individuality--Miriam he calls her in Sons and Lovers--wrote a little book about her relations with lad Lawrence.Time after time Lawrence returns to this Miriam figure, a girl who detests the sexual element in love, but who wants to love a man spiritually and to possess his soul and his talent. Against these ideas, then, "Miriam" herself finally protested. She was a perfectly normal and healthy young woman and had never thought or felt that there was any opposition between the physical and the spiritual in love. It was Lawrence who was uncertain, who dared not embark on a real love affair with her, because his mother was jealous and he was dominated by her, and because his sisters did all they could to separate their brother and his girl friend. When at last the lad tried to transform their friendship into a love-affair, it was too late. The girl had turned cold, from long waiting and from humiliation."

--"D.H.Lawrence," Men Women and Places, Sigrid Unset

"Undset was a shy, rather introvert young woman with few personal friends. But she had unusually sharp eyes, she saw people, and she saw through them. Her way of breaking out of her loneliness was to take long strolls in and around Kristiania, both east and west, and she came to know it better than most."

~ http://www.mnc.net/norway/SigUnd.htm

Open source

Although it seems like this person and this person might not be exactly in agreement about some things, it seems like maybe they would both be in favor of creating more open source knowledge systems...

Medicinal Reading

Whole Earth Discipline has some very interesting things to say; however, I was a bit disappointed with the author for dissing Buffalo Woman Comes Singing. Oh well, I'll just have to not agree with his judgement call on that one. Afterall, I doubt that he has ever curled up with raspberry tea and heating pad and castor oil and bountiful cramps while reading some Buffalo Woman as part of the medicinal treatment...and even if he had, I know not everyone would want to read the same thing in that situation...maybe sometimes, something else, such as this song done completely in palindromes, could also be rather medicinal...