Archive for November 2008
me machine me make music
Robots! Machines! Music! Robots and machines making music! What is not to love, I ask you? Being the robotophile (and serial anthropomorphizer) that I am, I offer you, from my special vacuum-sealed vault, some choice selections from the crossroads where things get positively blippity blip! Here is a great gallery of audio — recordings of…
Read Morebye mervyn
I’m uncharacteristically sad about the demise of Mervyn’s. I’ve always liked the store, their sales, and their Hillard and Hansen label provided pants that seemed to be cut perfectly for my good Danish ass. But that’s not why I’m feeling sentimental. It was at Mervyn’s, among the sale sleepwear, that I had my last profound…
Read Morerally ho!
On November 15, Ventura joined in on the nationwide protest against the passage of Proposition 8. My friend Jeff started off the day being greeted by a drive-by knucklehead yelling “faggot!” Just more impetus to get over to the park and start some solidarity. There were a few other onlookers and drivers who voiced their…
Read Morepoem: anatomy of a relationship
This poem was composed entirely of search strings collected from the very addictive art project, The Automated Beacon: The beacon continuously relays selected live web searches as they are being made around the world, presenting them back in series and at regular intervals. The beacon has been instigated to act as a silent witness: a…
Read Morehearthy
Update: The fires are still raging down here, but here’s my delayed fire post. I do not intend to make light of what’s happening with the wildfires in my part of the state. I think what you can glean from this post is: don’t play with fire, godammit. Cloudy’s awesome post about being a youthful…
Read Moreso cal living
I had written and posted a semi-humorous reflection on my youthful indiscretions, just par for the course during NaBloPoMo, but today has decided something different. The blog post had to do with three fires I inadvertently started when I was a kid. But I took it down, as the humor is completely lost right now…
Read Morecanine times
My good pals to the north, Tristy and Justin, swung through town last summer. So good. All my pent-up absurdities and perversions bubbled forth, and I jabbered at them, starved for NoCal bohemian repartee. A brief and sparkling snapshot: En route to dinner, we spy three white, fluffy lap dogs in a stroller. Me: Okay,…
Read Morestep by step instructions
1. Wash face, smile like a dork for the camera 2. Get your lights punched out Dab on dark brown eyeshadow and blue food coloring. Wet fingers and swoosh around. Add yellow food coloring for highlights! 3. Nip ‘n’ tuck Make the surgeon’s marks: cut, lipo, lift. Bloody up the hairline (where the stitches are,)…
Read Morecondemned to repeat it
Good old Studs Terkel. Owner of the best name I’ve ever heard, and the man dedicated to recording the oral history of our country. I always admired him, but, until today, I can’t say I ever read or heard anything produced by him. This American Life played some excerpts from his 1971 radio project “A…
Read Morepurge-a-tory: all the rest
First I got rid of my music. But nothing of the vinyls or CDs were jettisoned that I didn’t have digitized and backed up. I’m no masochist, I’m just out of space. But now I was faced with the aftermath of purging — a big pile of stuff from shoes to crafts to electronics to…
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