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Monday, October 30, 2006

 
11:27 PM: make love, not war [#] [0]

the ministry of love is gathering 315 copies of george orwell's 1984 to send to member of congress that voted to approve torture (aka the Military Commissions Act of 2006). i like poetic protests.

Friday, October 27, 2006

 
11:14 PM: mellon collie [#] [5]

i hate this neighborhood. we returned from a night at the stumptown comics fest to discover that one of our pumpkins had been smashed against the sidewalk. the other, smaller one had rolled away under the bushes, trying to hide. these were the pumpkins i GREW this summer, my first homegrown pumpkins. i made delicious curried apple pumpkin soup yesterday with the third pumpkin, and now i'll have to make another batch of puree from the smashed pumpkin tomorrow, i guess. i don't know what to do about the situation short of not putting them out at all: our porch area is very exposed & vulnerable. it keeps me from wanting to carve pumpkins this weekend if someone's just going to waltz in and destroy them.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

 
1:01 AM: aware [#] [4]

in case you didn't know, october is both "national breast cancer awareness month" and "domestic violence awareness month." i'll bet you only knew about one of them. i prefer to operate from an abundance model, which means i shouldn't be jealous of all the pink-toned merchandise that funnels money into breast cancer research, but if even a fraction of the money that money supported domestic violence response services, places like the portland women's crisis line wouldn't have to scrape by. domestic violence (& rape) is certainly more prevalent than breast cancer, so why does breast cancer get all the attention?

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

 
9:44 AM: sweet spam [#] [0]

i've written about the strangest spam i've ever received, but this one is sort of sweet, almost poetic:

Pick a lock to your girlfriends heart with your ultimate key!
[url redacted]
and timed him doing
because the Moon

i wish spamusement was updated more regularly. it illustrates spam subject lines and it has one of my favorite cartoons of all time: today is the best day.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 
11:50 PM: even when you're writing about the future, you're still writing about the past [#] [0]

augh! so! much! stuff! in my! head! i can't do any of it justice, but it has to come out:

* hp lovecraft film festival: it was a delight to meet michael granberry (who won a brown jenkins! yeah!) & jim from goatman hollow, but the picture we took of cthulhu broke our camera! when we tried to take a picture of a girl in an awesome cthulhu costume, no matter what we did we could only get a strangely-colored blur. after the festival the camera mysteriously began working again.



* on friday i was paid to be proposed to three times, kissed twice, dance like an egyptian and wear a wedding dress much too small for me. i was recuited to be an actor at the go game at the skamania lodge, which was a blast! the mist rising from the columbia gorge even made it worth waking up at 6 a.m.

* then i went to the oregon shakespeare festival in ashland, where i met kristen & todd's friends john, shari, dean & andrea. we spent a relaxing weekend in the amazing lithia park and watching the importance of being earnest, a winter's tale and dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. i was surprised to find myself unmoved by any of them, and dr. jekyll actually made me physically ill with its attempt to explain his psychotic behaviour by invoking his ineffectual childhood.

* fortunately, we came home just in time to attend the dresden dolls concert, which included a surprise local butoh performance, an electronic musician, a violinist in an elaborate geisha outfit, jason webley (who was far better on stage than he was at burning man), and performance artists who cracked open their "pregnant" bellies w/ croquet mallets like pinatas. i defended my spot near the stage against a slew of rude people, using my pointy elbows, refusal stance, sly redirection techniques and direct confrontation.

* finally, the three pumpkins on the south side of the house are looking good! i'm so excited to pick them, but i'm torn about whether to carve them or eat them.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

 
9:50 AM: till the clouds roll by [#] [0]

oh, cruel irony! i received a review copy of the cloudspotter's guide this morning, but i can't read it yet because i'm still on media deprivation! i guess i'll take it with me to the ashland shakespeare festival this weekend...

Thursday, October 05, 2006

 
3:00 PM: fasting [#] [2]

i mentioned this over at scarlet star studios, but it's worth repeating here:

"this is the week we begin media deprivation: no reading, tv, music, radio or movies for the rest of the week. this is meant to balance out your consumption versus your production. julia cameron thinks you shouldn't read at all, even if you are a student or you're at work, but i don't think media deprivation is supposed to be a punishment or something that makes things worse for you. so i make exceptions for things which are absolutely essential, situations you don't control, and things that can only happen this week that you have already planned.

"the goal is to be conscious. awareness leads to progress. so what this means for me is that i'll scan incoming email to see if it's something that needs to be responded to this week, and if not i'll leave it alone. it means i'll go to the hp lovecraft film festival this weekend because i plan for it all year. and otherwise i'll try to be very good about doing more."

 
1:43 PM: this call should be monitored for quality purposes [#] [2]

worst survey ever: i got a call last night as i was prepping the studio for last night's guided intent. he said he was from blah blah blah survey and would i like to answer a few questions? i'm suspicious of most telephone polls because they'll never tell you the source, and since i was trying to wrangle 8-foot sheets of styrofoam and waiting for someone to call back, i politely said, "no, thank you." oh, but it would only take a coulple of minutes and was i sure? "no, thank you," i said again, still sweetly but a little more firmly. he asked, suddenly snide, "do you care about oregon? at all?" i paused briefly, stunned by the tone and his accusation. "oh, whatever," he said, and hung up.

if only i could remember the name of the survey, i'd call and complain. i think it began w/ "h".

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

 
12:21 PM: liberty & justice for all [#] [0]

mph linked to an interesting article encouraging libertarians to vote democratic.

libertarians have consistently been the wedge that allowed reublicans to take control of all the branches of government by dividing the democratic votes. but, as the article notes, "for too long, Republicans promised smaller government and less intrusion in people’s lives. Yet with a government dominated top to bottom by Republicans, we’ve seen the exact opposite."

although the largest threat to liberty isn't the government anymore, anyway: it's corporations. bladerunner (& philip k dick) saw this years ago. now republicans lipsync to libertarian beliefs but manipulate federal laws to the advantage of corporations. and christianity has become a type of corporation: "on social issues, we are seeing a government aggressively seeking to meddle in people’s bedrooms, doctor’s offices, and churches. They want to dictate when life begins, when life ends, and which consenting adults can marry." despite their rhetoric, republicans have no desire to let the states decide, or even let the free market take its course. they're willing to reap the rewards of government infrastructure (the internet, research grants, roads/sewage, education) but then twist them against principles like net neutrality, stem cell research, mass transit and evolutionary theory.

libertarianism may have been a more workable model when there were fewer of us per square foot. when your nearest neighbor is a mile away, there's less chance to step on their toes than when they live directly above you in a 24-story apartment building. libertarians mistrust the expansion of government, but as the population grows, so must the government. and so libertarians either need to find a compelling candidate, or vote for the lesser hypocrisy.

Monday, October 02, 2006

 
10:48 PM: me and a gun [#] [0]

i'm anguished. what is UP with this "go to a school, pick out the females & kill them" trend?

 
10:18 AM: bit by bit [#] [0]

as if the torture vote & the continued threat of anti-abortion legislation wasn't bad enough, one of the other pending bills to review when congress returns from recess is one that discourages lawsuits challenging the separation of church & state: even if argued successfully, lawyers are not allowed to recover attorney's fees, unlike other civil rights cases. what?! "Since [the religious right] cannot change the law of the Establishment Clause by statute, they have turned their attention to trying to prevent its enforcement by eliminating the possibility for recovery of attorneys' fees."

Sunday, October 01, 2006

 
6:35 PM: happy halloween! [#] [0]

october is my favorite month, and beginning october 1 i get to celebrate halloween with candy corn, the hp lovecraft film festival, a night in the lonesome october, and handfuls of smooth, cool chestnuts from michael's place.

to start with, this is the littlest pumpkin i've ever seen: and we grew it!



we have three other pumpkins slowly orangen-ing on the south side of the house (in fact, this tiny pumpkin was a complete surprise because i've been so excited about the other pumpkins, and then one day there was a perfect spot of orange to my left!). it's the side that gets the most sun, but unlike the pampered vegetables that grew in the garden boxes, i planted these and paid them very little attention. while we were in canada, they didn't receive any benefit from the drip hose sven wound through the tomatos & kale. the cantaloupes didn't fare as well, but i'm very exicted to roll my own pumpkins!

in addition, several noteworthy celestial phenomenon are happening this week:

* the first night of the lovecraft festival is the full moon! and since this is the first full moon following the autumnal equinox, it's the harvest moon. :)

* by the end of the week, jupiter, which has been vibrant and easily spottable for several months, will begin disappearing into the october twilight. at that point, saturn will be the only visible planet, but since it begins to rise around 3 a.m., it won't be around too much longer...

* and acccording to the sky this week, "Comet C/2006 M4 (Swan) will be drifting up from the northwest horizon below the 'handle' of the Big Dipper. Your best nights to look for it will be the 6th through the 9th, when the comet will be within two degrees of the third magnitude star Cor Caroli. Despite strong Moonlight, the comet will be in the opposite part of the sky and should be visible in binoculars."

i've mentioned before that october will be pretty busy. it usually is even when we just get to attend the portland open studios tour, but this month i'm going to the shakespeare festival, attending the all oregon calligraphers conference, attending several calligraphy workshops, volunteering for planned parenthood during the last month of the election season, possibly attending the stumptown comics festival, visiting the fruit loop trail to find heirloom apples. also, michael's dad & my dad share a birthday, sven's birthday is basically the end of the month, and one of sven's cousins from canada will be visiting. my biggest conflict (other than the open studios) was with the 24-hour comics day, which i desperately wanted to host this year, but it conflicts with the lovecraft fest. and don't forget about the zombie walk on thursday!

there will be a break in november, perhaps, and we have to wait until december to start singing songs from the hp lovecraft historical society's cd "a very scary solstice" but it's worth it. but hey, what's this? "an even scarier solstice"? *gasps in anticipation* i'll bet they'll be selling that at the table this year! hooray! scary solstice for all! (and to all a good night.)