My laptop has been, shall we say, temperamental lately. So if I don't post it isn't because I don't love you. It's because I am trying to avoid blogging at work (like I'm doing right now) and I'm having arguments with my laptop at home. It keeps threatening me with blue screens. . . I restart and backup as many files as possible, and so it goes. It flashes me again. . .

We going to therapy. I'm talking to it in soothing tones and trying to smooth things over. Everything will work out, I'm sure. It just didn't like me throwing it into the air for fun.

***
update: We had a long serious talk. My computer has had a brain replacement (new hard disk). I'll slowly and selectively transfer stuff over from my old hard disk. I think selective is the key word here. The purge was probably good for me... and now I have LOTS OF SPACE.

So. It seems you're not getting rid of me.

Labels: its gooey, technology and humans

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Labels: other people's stuff, wow

(top right corner hedgehog is much superior to the ... hedgehog party on the bottom.)

Labels: notebook project, something of my own

Had to share... heehee...

Someone got to the blog using this as a search phrase. The mental image makes me very happy.

I wonder, is it the navel that is big? or the show? And what exactly do you do at a navel show. Piercings maybe?

As part of my attempt to live my life more meaningfully, I'm trying to raise my awareness about different charities and causes so that I feel compelled to act. I am having a hard time choosing. They all seem worthy. They all seem insurmountable. And I am selfish. When I read about different horrors, I want to hide, forget and ignore.

There are so many different categories of causes: environment, human rights, natural disasters, famine, medical research, animal rights, health, refugees... and so many more. I appreciate that giving goes a long way for the organizations that manage efforts around these issues, but I also want to understand more about the issues themselves, so that I can structure and choose my opinions and actions.

Some causes/beliefs necessitate actions in ways that make me give up something. For example, if I really believe that ozone depletion is caused by fossil fuel consumption, I should not only not drive (which is easy to do where I live so I don't quite comfortably) but I should also not fly, since flying is by far more polluting than driving. (I feel myself whining inside... but... but... I love the mobility that air travel affords. How much am I willing to put my beliefs into action?) I've also read quite a bit about the footprint caused by western cultures' meat consumption and patterns of waste. I understand the argument. I even agree with it. Again, I'm so self indulgent. I love to eat meat. It is one thing to promote, purchase and believe in organic farming but quite another to change my patterns of behavior and the amount of waste that is part of western food consumption as a whole.

When I start adding up all of the things in my life that have a negative effect on the world around me, I am overwhelmed and hide my head in the sand quite quickly. I think that I am unwilling to think about things very much, since if I really believe, there are consequences. I am, at the very least, accountable for those things I know about, aren't I? But how can I live? To be honest, I think that my willingness to be self-sacrificing is woefully limited. It is not something I like about myself.

I feel like I need to pick something. I am sadly passive. How do I choose?

What causes are you supportive of? How did you choose?

Labels: action, choices, interpreting and reinterpreting

Whenever I feel really motivated to do something, I go with it. I'm not sure how long the spark will last... that being said, here are three more pages. :) I know that they don't make sense. I wonder what they say about me... Wait! Don't answer that. ;)

Labels: notebook project, something of my own

I've started a new project. I'm going to fill up a notebook with anything: drawings, text, nonsense, attempts at beauty. Anything goes. I started this morning. It was fun. I went to that space I used to go as a kid when I was drawing. I decided I could make mistakes, ugliness, smears.... I could write soppy things, musings or whatever came to mind. Yay!

Here's the first:



Let me know if you do stuff like this too. I'd love to see it.

Labels: notebook project, something of my own

Yay! Am going to see Melody Gardot in a couple of weeks. Enjoy the sample.

Labels: music, other people's stuff

Jason Polan is attempting to draw every person in New York. :)

Manbabies: A somewhat disturbing (in a good way) site where the fathers' heads are photoshopped over their kids' faces and vice versa.

178 ways of improving your internet writing by the very thorough Bob Younce. It is a good list, but I violate a lot of these rules. In particular:

Swear off using the word “great.” (woops)
Do the same with: nice, beautiful, wonderful, just, really, quite & that.

(I’m starting to feel really insecure. But this list is really quite wonderful. I think that the advice will just really make my writing more beautiful. And nice. ;))

Bob, I will try harder. I promise.

The aesthetics of failure is a flickr group that describes itself in the following way: "Brakdoewn, slippgae, entrpy, accidetn, gl!tczhes, failures in sound, image, concept, utopian and dystopian experiments" I love the chaos of it. (image by designwallah)

A fantastic blog entry by Los Angelista about what lies behind walls and the things we don't see. (I almost wrote, "wonderful blog entry..." So see, I learned something from that list.)

Graffiti Archaeology: Graffiti Archaeology is a project devoted to the study of graffiti-covered walls as they change over time. The core of the project is a timelapse collage, made of photos of graffiti taken at the same location by many different photographers over a span of several years. The photos were taken in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and other cities, over a timespan from the late 1990's to the present."

Piece of me piece of you. Fantastic zombie/puppet movie. :) I don't say *that* every day.

That's all for this week. Have a fantastic weekend.

Labels: aesthetics of failure, bob younce, graffiti archaeology, internet writing, jason polan, los angelista, manbabies, other people's stuff, wasting your time on a friday, youtube

Sorry for the lazy blog. Have had this postcard around for ages and love it for its sheer sleeziness and the whole mixed flattery/insult thing. It's by silas.

Hmm... what other things could you say? I'll try to think of some. I'm pretty brain dead right now.

With a body like that you...

Labels: lazy blog, other people's stuff

I have no association with this project (i.e. I just like it but am in no way responsible for its wonderfulness) but thought that it was beautiful. There is a story behind each short message and this intrigues me. From the twistori site: "this is the first step in an ongoing social experiment, based on twitter. inspired by wefeelfine and drawing data from summize, hand-crafted by amy hoy and thomas fuchs."

Some of messages that made me think of stories right away:

• I love when I can sleep in a little before hauling my roadshow somewhere else.
• I hate to open my inbox in the morning. I think bunnies should deliver my mail to me.
• I wish was a fisherman, tumbling out at sea.
• I feel so dirty. Just added a spacer gif to page. I haven't done that for about 5 years.
• I believe in god. And frankly it scares me.
• I think the smell is infiltrating the air conditioning.
  

About wefeelfine.org (the inspiration for the project):

"Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved."

Labels: other people's stuff, project, story

Labels: music, other people's stuff

This afternoon I went to the glorious Amsterdam central library. It is a beautiful beautiful building. From the large floor to ceiling windows, all of Amsterdam unfolds. Each floor has tons of space to sit and read, to browse. I love just being there, even if I'm there to pay fines. (Who am I kidding. Despite my best intentions I took out some more books. Based on some advice from an understanding friend, I figure my fines are like charitable donations. It makes me feel better.)

Anyway. While I was waiting to check out my books at the super-duper-whippy-dippy-auto-book-checker-outer machine, the elderly thin man that had been just before me in line decided to engage me in some conversation.

It pretty much went like this (loosely translated from Dutch):

"Things aren't the way they were," he says.

I nod, thinking that this is generic enough of a truth that nodding is appropriate at all times.

"There was a time that people spoke to each other. That you waited in line and talked with real people. This..." he gestures to the machine that has just taken out our books, "this is capitalism."

I nod some more. The white gummies have emerged on his lips. (The truth is, that whenever I bring back books late to the library I'm really grateful that I don't have to face real people. I always assume that they will be absolutely furious with me for bringing my books in late.)

"It's American culture you know," he continues. "In my day, the Netherlands was built on good socialist principles, where people mattered, not things, not speed. Now, it's all American capitalism. It's separated people. People now, they just want more faster. Dutch culture is... It's the foreigners," he waves his hand in the air as if trying to capture something. He now has full-fledged gumminess. More than I have ever seen. I long to give him a glass of water. I'm also terrified that he will discover that I'm not Dutch.

He's talking pretty quickly, but from what I understand, he blames a lot on capitalism. He reiterates his arguments, the blame, I nod somewhat dumbly, since I don't want to give myself away with my accent. I smile and indicate (by gesturing to the escalator) that I am about to leave.

He reaches out and touches my arm and says, "You, you are a nice Dutch girl. You listen to people. I am here often. I hope that I see you again soon."

I smile and wave, walking towards the escalator. I feel sad. He's lonely and doesn't like how things have changed. He feels anonymous and ignored. This isn't really about capitalism, Americans or foreigners regardless of their possible/debatable contribution to his unhappiness. This is about him alone with little chance to actually talk to anyone. I may not be Dutch, but I understand what he mourning. I wish my Dutch was more fluent. I would engage him in real conversation. Maybe challenge his blanket beliefs despite my fear of the froth.

***

(Tourist tip: internet access is free at the library and it is a gorgeous library. There is also a good La Place restaurant on the top floor with great views of Amsterdam. Mysteriously, no one checks if you bring books up there, so you are free to grab a book, go upstairs, grab some lunch & wine and sit on the terrace. Not a bad deal at all.)

Labels: alone, blame capitalism

When I was at the airport last week, picking up some friends, I found myself captivated by a little boy. He was magic in his dreaminess and his extraordinarily big dark eyebrows. They were disproportionately large, but he had a very sweet face.

Anyway, this isn't really about eyebrows. Nearby another little boy had a helium balloon. Big Brows (I need to call him something) came close by and just looked up at the balloon, eyes wide, mouth open. You could see he wanted to touch the balloon but was well aware that it was not his. So he just stood close by, watching the other boy play.

We went to the main hall of the airport and there he was again. He was looking up at the very high ceiling, taking in passing strangers, a bit lost in his own thoughts, walking very slowly in front of us, gently touching the things he passed. I wanted to sit down on a bench and just watch his wonder.

His mother took her time walking in front of him, looking back at him smiling. I was glad that this beautiful dreaming child had a mother who got him, who understood the loveliness of his experience in the world. That she was not impatient with his rapture. The big browed boy, he enchanted me.

Glennz Blog has some fantastic t-shirt designs. My favorite is "running with scissors" as an extreme sport. :P (That and the empty toilet paper roll with the caption, "What would MacGyver do?")

Speaking of MacGyver, I think that he played a unique role in Western development. He was a TV character whose rugged charms appealed to both sexes, as did his thrifty use of bamboo, fertilizer, matches, strips of cloth, tin cans and zippers. Plus, he seemed like Such a Nice Guy. What more could you ask for, other than a roll of toilet paper (sometimes bamboo just won't do.)

Unrelated to toilet paper, the fabulous Schmutzie has started a wonderful thing, whereby you can send in the best blog posts that you have read, and she features them on her Five Star Friday web site. Enjoy! I know that I do. The only problem it poses is that it introduces me to even more fantastic bloggers who I want to read on a regular basis. And while this is a constructive use of time... I could be building something. Something like...

Tree houses! When I was a kid, there was a forest behind our house. It was a different time, when parents, for the most part, really let their kids roam around the neighborhood and do stuff unsupervised. (I've never quite figured out if this is because society is truly more dangerous, if we were pretending it wasn't dangerous then, or if we are now paranoid.) Anyway, all of this to say, us kids used to go to the forest (past the cows, yeah there were cows too) and build somewhat shabby tree houses in the woods. It was awesome and no one ever lost an eye. Here is a somewhat uncomfortable looking emergency cocoon survival treehouse concept (how's that for a noun string.)

I bet MacGyver would like it. Although he'd probably cut it up or something. That guy just can't be trusted to use things for their original purpose.

And, finally, just because, here's the MacGyver theme song performed by Adrian Holovaty also known for his Inspector Gadget theme song.

Labels: adrian holovaty, bamboo, cuccoons, five star fridays, friday, glennz blog, links, macgyver, other people's stuff, schmutzie, wasting your time on a friday

I am from big cups of strong milky sweet tea,
from Klepper tents and the Mason jars filled with preserved everything.
I am from the piles of paper and books on my unused desk
(read, written, precious,
forgotten and important).
I am from the bursting spring leaves on the tree outside my balcony
that make me feel like I live in a treehouse
with the loud magpies that live in its branches.

I am from tended garden delights and wood wildness,
from Margarete and Theodore.
I'm from the fighters and
the wounded,
from the awed by nature and hideaways.
I'm from the unfailing believers
who do not question and
the atheists who accept nothing at face value.

I'm from London and Gyönk and a small village in Poland that I should know the name of but don't...
and from cherry soup and smoked kielbasa.
From the slowly unwinding magic musical cigarette box my grandfather would play for me
to the way that my dad always awakes startled, afraid for his life.
In the basement lies the wonderful legacy of camping trips in Algonquin Park,
long cross-country skiing journeys in the brush and woods,
my dad's home-made satellite tracking station,
and my mothers boxes of quilt material. (In my dad's mind,
why would you cut up good fabric and sew it together again.)
I am from the dustiest corner of remade memories,
washed off and lovely in their transformation,
the hope of peace.

Inspired by Sylvia who was inspired by Floyd who was inspired by George Ella Lyons.

Labels: inspired by others, interpreting and reinterpreting, writing inspiration

song for ingrid from Mik Garrison on Vimeo.

You won't understand the whys and wherefores. It's, erm, complicated. But it has to do with submitting pictures of everyday things that look like letters. In this case a "W". (For more information: Everyday letters.)

Hey. I'll take the loveliness where I can find it. :P

Thank you Mik! :) My gratitude means that I will send you many more letters and a full fledged alphabetizer... aholic. Or something.

Labels: playing games online with sweet people has its rewards, wait that sounds strange

Disclaimer: This post is a short rant. Please do not proceed unless you are open to ravings.

There are a few statements that never fail to frustrate me. For the most part, I'm pretty good at shutting up and not responding, since I don't want to discourage peoples' belief in a benevolent universe. However, today I'm feeling a bit bitchy so I'm going to vent:

It was meant to be/It's for the best. I hate these statements. They are always applied as some sort of strange consolation when something has gone wrong or disappointingly or extremely well. It makes a few assumptions: that something(one) controls what was meant to happen and that it only applies to certain circumstances.

You never hear it said about someone who gets horribly drunk and says slanderous things about other people and throws up everywhere, "It was meant to be. She was meant to make everyone around her feel awful and nauseous." You also never apply this statement to sex crimes or murder. Why then would they apply to any other bad thing that happens? Why not just approach things with, "What a horrible thing to have happened." These statements eliminate responsibility and choice as playing a role, or conveniently explain away things.

His/her paternal/maternal instincts will kick in (and make them more patient, less angry, more nurturing etc.) Again, I just see too much evidence of bad parents to swallow this one. They don't for everyone. Simple. Some people suck at being parents, other people are great. A lot of factors play into what makes a good parent or a bad parent.

He/she is the one. Again, missing the evidence. What is this belief based on? Some mystical matchmaker that puts people together? Why can't there be many possibilities? In each case we figure things out. What if 'the one' goes horribly wrong? This belief seems to imply that if that's the case, "Too bad so sad, you've had your chance and screwed it up." I say bullshit. There are some good matches. There are some bad matches. There are some OK matches. Typically, they all require some attention and patience.

It was god's will. Again. This seems to be applied arbitrarily to good/bad things but never to anything truly horrible. "He was decapitated by a threshing machine and the vultures ate out his eyes? It was god's will." Wait. There are actually people who would attribute this to god so I have to be careful. How about, my whipped cream melted too quickly in my hot chocolate. Was that god's will too? Why not? They say god is in the details.

It happened because he/she/I is/am x sign of the zodiac. Oh please. For miscellaneous-belief-sets' sake. Are you honestly telling me that all babies born on March 20, 1968 in the same hospital at around the same time have precisely the same destiny? Puuuullleeeeze. I've also heard people relinquish their personal responsibility over their actions based on their sign. "Well, I over-reacted because I'm a... " Ah. Convenient. Whatever.

It was fate. See above. Applied as convenient. Never consistently applied to everything. People mix up this belief with free will. They don't work together very well.

I'm done now. This post may not last on the blog due to the cynicism it expresses. And the fact that I don't really like people to know that these are my opinions when they really believe in these things. But hey, RSS lasts forever.

This post, it was meant to be. ;)

Labels: bitter temporary post

she said, failing.

There are people to whom other people say, "Don't be so hard on yourself."

This week, the chastisement does not apply to me. I made some rules for myself this week, for my vacation discipline. It included: leaving the house by noon everyday (it is now 11:58 so fat chance), eating balanced meals (I just had a cheesy omelet), exercise every day, plenty of water, and to finally deal with the piles of books and papers that cover my desk.

I have to confess that although I've already messed up the first two, I'm feeling pretty good about it. I read in bed until 11:00 which was fabulous and then I ate a delicious breakfast. It's all pretty relaxed and happy this morning (I say, stretching the definition of morning).

I still have a chance of fulfilling the exercise, water and books/paper issues in response to, "Don't be so easy on yourself!" And in getting exercise I will be leaving the apartment, just not at noon.

So, first a wheezing jog, then a long hot bath. I'm a champion vacation taker. If you ever need advice, just let me know.