christastrophe

Context for the uninitiated: Every Reed student spends his or her senior year writing a big fancy thesis. Twice a year (i.e., in the spring for regular students and in the fall for those who started their theses in the spring) there's a Thesis Parade, at which the seniors (identifiable by their plastic laurels) dance and scream and make out with everyone and ritually burn copies of their completed theses while the rest of us spray them with champagne. Then they march through the library, across the lawn, and up to the registrar's office to symbolically submit their theses.
Photos from previous Thesis Parades: fall '05, spring '06, fall '06, spring '07, fall '07, spring '08, fall '08, and spring '09.

Click here to see these photos at my website and buy prints!


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curry crazy these days.

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There is a book called, "Deep Survival" I'm interested in reading.

Wilderness survival overall is a long time fascination of mine.

Very applicable when lost in life or in what is called the wasteland.

First off, take heart. Attitude is the key to survival, and in near about everything else as well.

The basics:

Sit down and settle your fear, anger, and/or frustration. You always must move passed these. Shake off any feelings of "why me", etc. Prepare for action!

Think through your situation. What do you have that can help you in this situation? Your mind is your greatest survival tool!

Observe your surroundings. Where are you? Where should you be? Where are you most likely to be found? Go there.

Plan and take action. In most cases, the priority should be:

- Find or make a shelter against the weather.

- Catch a fire for heat, and the joy and safety it brings.

- Find water. Stay hydrated.

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I'd also like to learn more about game theory.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/mojodragonfly/

It's not what you look at that matters,
it's what you see.

~ Henry David Thoreau ~

DC!

Unless Congress crushes it, that is. But they're unlikely to.

i just stumbled onto a 6-month-old sfgirlbybay post featuring one of my photos! not sure how i missed it the first time - i'm a pretty regular reader - but it just brightened my morning. :)

check it out here.

lots of great inspiration to be found there. in fact, i think i'm going to go change up my bulletin boards right now, as they haven't changed much since this picture was taken, and the piles of ephermera on my desk are getting out of hand!!

EDIT: I just found another of my photos on another of my favorite blogs, desire to inspire! sheesh!!! http://www.desiretoinspire.net/blog/2009/7/26/flickr-finds-necklaces.html

i guess i'd better set up some google alerts for my flickr username so i don't miss anymore of these lovely surprises!!

Always late for the party:

I am surprised to be so enchanted with "The Lemon of Pink" by The Books.

Somewhere, "Testament Betrayed" or "The Art of the Novel", or maybe only in my mind, Milan Kundera said that a novel should be only what a novel can be. Don't write a movie script and call it a novel. Use the full lungs of the novel and run with it as only a novel can run. That is what The Books do with digital on this CD. They deliver the fullness of what digital can be. Analog couldn't do this.

I find "The Lemon of Pink" soulful. heartening even. As I listen to it in the car, I find myself smiling and enjoying so many songs. The acoustic instruments, mingled with the samples and collage of sounds is wonderful.

A review I read on Pitchfork contained this line, "The various instruments and samples fold in and then start to swirl into an aural kaleidoscope, and then the vocals flutter past, too quick and broken for rational comprehension but emotionally clear as glass."

I am surprised I like this CD, but I shouldn't be. I am a huge fan of Mice Parade's "Mokoondi". So atypical song structure is A-OK with me. Plus, I must admit, I listened to Brian Eno and David Byrne's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" quite a bit back in the day. Crap, I also listend to some Negativland, and even Revolution #9 by The Beatles wasn't always skipped over when I'd listen to the white album.

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Sarah Jarosz, local girl of the Wimberly and Austin area, nineteen and all, is up for a grammy for her song, "Mansinneedof". She's wonderful. I really like her CD. She's a wonderful muscian with a warm voice.

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our tree is up! though actually this picture is a week old and i've since added a fantastically tacky neon star and a string of colored lights (i've never been one of those perfect matchy-matchy white-lights-with-an-angel-on-the-top people). we've had this $35 fake tree for 7 years and it's still going strong. as we put it up every year, we talk about how ugly it is and how we're going to get rid of it when the holidays are over. then we fall in love with it's weird shiny branches and vague plasticky smell all over again.



my current favorite ornament, which i dug up in a thrift store while visiting my parents in PA:



peanut all bundled up on the couch, watching us decorate:

"The hero . . . discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh."

-J. Campbell

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Houston has overtaken Portland as the largest U.S. city to elect an openly queer mayor.

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When I was but a young boy, and my dad was breaking the lock on the house we had been evicted from so we could move our stuff to our new house, and I was so scared when he left me there alone to go get the moving truck, and the police came, and I hid, but watched out the window when dad came back, well, I now realize he was not very much older than I am now. He was not very far from a series of heart attacks, or going to jail for 90 days. He was not so much very older than I am today. Weird.

Tom Waits, who turned 60 the other day, and is reportedly up for the role of Bilbo Baggins, his album "Nighthawks at the Diner" (1975) is increasingly my favorite thing to listen to at work. All that walking upright bass and banter.

Especially the "intro to the song" and song, "Better Off Without a Wife". It has a nice melancholy ring, I love, and yet, and yet, and yet...


all my friends are married
every Tom and Dick and Harry
you must be strong
to go it alone
here's to the bachelors
and the bowery bums
and those who feel that they're the ones
who are better off without a wife

I like to sleep until the crack of noon
midnight howlin' at the moon
goin' out when I want to, comin' home when I please
I don't have to ask permission
if I want to go out fishing
and I never have to ask for the keys

never been no Valentino
had a girl who lived in Reno
left me for a trumpet player
didn't get me down
he was wanted for assault
though he said it weren't his fault
well the coppers rode him right
out of town

selfish about my privacy
as long as I can be with me
we get along so well I can't believe
I love to chew the fat with folks
and listen to all your dirty jokes
I'm so thankful for these friends
I do receive

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I usually follow up that album with the song, "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)" off of Small Change.

a good story about meeting Roy at the Cathedral of Junk:

http://adolfoisassi.blogspot.com/2009/12/royrevisited.html


I met Roy the fist time I visited the Cathedral Of Junk.
I probably should not write "met" but "came across" because we were not properly introduced.

Roy came right behind me through the gate in his electric wheel chair, his dog in tow.
He was whispering, mumbling....then breaking into a louder chant that I just could not decipher.
Weeks later I would come to understand that he was late for his daily recitation of "The Thousand Names of Vishnu" in front of the sunset:

"He is ever self-fulfilled
He is the cause of the whole cosmic process
He is naturally without a beginning
He is absorbed in immortal Bliss"


[More at the link above]
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Adolfo Isassi, the guy who wrote the story and took the photographs, is also a good photographer here in Austin, though he travels a good bit.

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that last portrait of Roy is fantastic!


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and for those not from Austin, or who just don't know about it, a little on the Cathedral of Junk:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/7816

"Searching for the faintest objects in the Ultra Deep Field is like trying to find a firefly on the Moon."

from the Hubble Website:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/07/

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