Wednesday, May 31, 2006

 

extra smiles available to me at no extra charge, this month only!!

tiggrrr and haji are in san francisco. and sefirah's coming out in a week and a half. blacklight will be up in ashland, and with any luck so will k8.

things are looking up.

 

silver lining

we might not have any furniture-- and i may have lost my housemates-- and i might not feel like i actually have any home to speak of anymore--

but at least i no longer have to flush the toilet every time i urinate.

 

again with the central valley

this last weekend, as hippie-ravers rawked it in various parks all over the bay area, i dragged myself down hwy 80 for the third weekend in a row.

during my last year in davis i spent much of my social time with three girls from work and their assorted significant others. it was one of the best periods of friendship i've experienced. i eventually removed from the sacramento valley, however, and shortly thereafter vanessa moved to el lay and kim and joe moved to portland. sara and jeff stayed in sacto, holding down the fort.

so this weekend sara and jeff held a house-warming party for their home in west sacramento. kim and joe caught a plane down south, and i drove out. (no vanessa, alas, alas...) i picked up kim and joe in davis, and we got to sara and jeff's early to help with party prep and to spend some hours catching up before the other guests arrived.

not much else interesting to say, really... but it was a really nice day. the party involved a few hours of inane chatter with people i used to work with and don't know anymore, but it was less horrendous than i was expecting. the backyard-bbq-babied-bedroom-set mentality of the crowd was a bit much, but it was SO foreign and surreal that i was able to take it in with humor and a dazed smile rather than freaking out. i don't mean to be too hardened--i'm still distressed about the loss of life and the sucked souls and such--but i had not a single moment of any self-reflective negative thought. and i was able to sit through the debates regarding the relative merits of home depot versus lowe's when shopping for that perfect ceiling fan without screaming.

on sunday i spent much time lounging about in suburbia, which i chose to think of as relaxing rather than mind-numbing, and that night i treated myself to dinner at sophia's and a long walk with a good friend from davis before heading back into the city.

the take-home lesson of the weekend: i love my sacto friends, and might even miss them something fIERce sometimes, but sF is a good home, haven, and heaven.

Friday, May 26, 2006

 

on why i won't stop liking country music

i don't have time to do the full spiel right now, but check out this quote from this week's time, from an article on the dixie chicks. feel free to extrapolate into subject areas regarding snobbish attitudes regarding and predetermined dislike of country music.

as a long-time and determined admirer of willie nelson, emmylou harris, and a whole slew of other country and western-type musicians, i'm strongly in favor of reevaluation of liberal bias against country music, and am fully prepared to start crusading to salvage all that is good, decent, and rad about the genre(s).

[The Dixie Chicks' new album] Taking the Long Way's existence is designed to thumb its nose at country's intolerance for ideological hell raising, and buying it or cursing it reveals something about you and your politics--or at least your ability to put a grudge above your listening pleasure.


not terribly complicated, really. i just hadn't thought of it this simply before, and i haven't heard anyone bring it up. people just say 'i hate country', with no qualifiers. i mean, it can be really formulaic and all, musically, but i'm guessing that's not the point. the politics seem more like the point. was this obvious to everyone else?

Thursday, May 25, 2006

 

white shoes

i find it impossible to take myself or my outfit seriously when i am wearing white shoes. i feel like a nurse. or a middle-aged lady who works in an accounting department.
weird.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

 

robotic aquatic

housemate sara has curated a show at crazy sushi (on 16th at guerrero). the opening was last night. great turnout, which is good for sara and good for crazy sushi. i wasn't totally blown away by much of the art, but the spinny robot with sushi tentacles was AWESOME. (and what was the name? amusing device #2? something like that. double awesome.)

 

ender's game, part ii

i've now read 'ender's game', 'ender's shadow', and 'shadow of the hegemon'. all three were fantastic, though i think i like 'ender's shadow' best. i'm looking forward to reading the three remaining novels (although since i'm guessing they'll probably be more like 'shadow of the hegemon' than the other two, i'm less overwhelmingly excited than i was a couple days ago).

i think that one reason i got so engrossed in the series is the constant focus on--and acknowledgement of the importance of--logical analysis as a means of deducing and predicting the actions and emotions of individuals and peoples. (reminded me some of 'foundation', which also totally fascinated and captivated me.) the characters in the books have constant awareness of group dynamics, motives, and strategy, including social strategy. and i've got mad issues in that department. possibly mad skillz as well, depending on how you think of these things... but skilled or not, i have a tendency to observe and analyze this sort of thing. so it's wonderful to read from the viewpoints of characters who do the same thing, but to the nth degree.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

 

ender's game

for no apparent reason, i never read 'ender's game' during any of my frequent flurries of science fiction inhalation. i've heard of the book, but never known anything about it. fortunately, donovan and kyle recognized the gravity of the situation for what it was, and i was handed a box containing three books of the series. i'm now halfway done with the third book, and i don't remember the last time i enjoyed reading something this much.

 

i love you times infinity

this last weekend i was out of town again--this time up on south shore. kelly and mel, friends who i camped with for my first three years on the playa, who took my on my first journey into my head, who've watched me transform portions of myself into orange, who i've planned with and worried with and fought with and danced with, were married a couple weeks ago. in lieu of a full wedding celebration, they invited 25 or so folks to join them in a suh-WEET cabin in tahoe for a weekend. i continue to be overwhelmingly impressed by what people put into their tahoe housing situations. i mean, my god. there was a hot tub, of course. i mean duh--we're in tahoe. and a dry sauna, and a billiard table. but there was also an indoor pool. and a steam room, which is totally my new absolute favorite toy EVER. also, kelly brought up his sound system, and we had approximately seven djs in the house. also also, part of the weekend's purpose was the getting-to-know-everyone-better thing, and what method would be preferred to rearranging everyone's brains for a few hours?

so yeah, good weekend. a bunch of people who know me really well, and who i don't see as often as i'd like. had some particularly good downloads with pete, who was the most important fixture of my first burn and whose insight i value as much as anyone else i've ever been friends with.

i also got to re-witness one of the better relationships i've had the fortune to spend time with. i hate to admit it, but the fact that kelly and melissa officially got married validated their commitment in a way that i hadn't acknowledged previously, despite their adament feelings about the stupidity of marriage. and i LOVE that mel--who teaches 4th grade and is suuuuper-careful about guarding parts of her private life from her administration, her co-workers, and her kids--now unapologetically has a large, noticeable tattoo of an mobius strip-style infinity symbol on her wrist instead of a wedding band.

good people.
lucky to know them.

 

damage control

i love that point during the breakdown of things in which the mess in your head gets so bad that you start compulsively cleaning your room, setting up your office, reorganizing your closet, tidying up your papers, and getting all your errands tied up. your entire brain is so obviously begging for everyone to tell it how ORGANIZED and CAPABLE and IN CONTROL it is of your life--totally fucking hilarious.

now if you'll excuse me, i need to clean out my email inbox, and then i'm going to go buy a jigsaw puzzle.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

 

I'm Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment

(from the onion)

As human beings continue to wreak havoc on the ecosystem, with seemingly no awareness of the long-term effects of our shortsighted actions, we seriously jeopardize the fragile balance of life on this big blue marble we call Spaceship Earth. Now is the time to take steps toward creating a cleaner environment, however insignificant and useless those steps may be. That's why I'm doing my own laughably inconsequential part to end pollution, limit damage to our precious ecosystem, and preserve what remains of our planet's biodiversity for future generations.

Every day, without fail, I meticulously organize my recyclables into five distinct categories, thereby subtracting an eyedropper's worth of garbage from the countless tons of waste that ferment in our landfills. It only takes a few extra minutes, but just think of the impact it totally lacks. I also refuse to use anything but "Earth-friendly" paper products—some of which contain up to 10 percent recycled materials. For me, it's worth shouldering the extra cost, but, unfortunately, only a scant few of us bother to do the same. And growing some of my own organic vegetables in my backyard garden also, to my immense gratification, reduces the use of toxic chemical-based pesticides and herbicides present in corporate farming techniques by as much as 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent.

These quixotic, Sisyphean efforts are my way of dealing with what is perhaps the most crucial and difficult issue of our time.

Why do I boycott multinational oil and gas corporations that fail to acknowledge and address global-warming issues, resulting in a few less dollars in their swollen coffers? Or participate in demonstrations against local wetland destruction that are attended by as many as a dozen people, before the wetland is eventually drained and cleared for a new Wal-Mart anyway? Why make the effort? Because I care. And I want these feelings to manifest themselves in barely measurable ways.

By using mass transit or riding my bike whenever possible, I may not be able to influence greenhouse-gas emissions standards or reduce mass global addiction to fossil fuels one iota. Nor, by slavishly collecting every banana peel or coffee ground to make my own rich garden compost, will I alter our consumer culture's pathological tendency to devour everything it encounters at an exponentially advancing rate. Restricting my household energy use to non-peak hours does not make me capable of reversing temperature changes in the gulf stream that even now have begun to throw the world's climate out of equilibrium. The question, however, is not "What can't I do?" but rather, "What can I do?"

The answer: next to nothing.

At the very least, I know with absolute certainty that I have done everything I can to nurture and protect the environment, through genuinely well-intentioned albeit minuscule actions, tragically destined to have absolutely no substantive effect. For I sleep better at night knowing that I have as much influence on global environmental policy as I would had I never been born.


Conservation is more urgent than ever. Scientists inform us that the combined effects of fossil-fuel consumption, land clearance, and overfishing the planet's seas have already ushered in a period of "mass global extinction," the sixth so far recorded in Earth's history, and the only one to be entirely man-made. In the next century, between two-thirds and three-fourths of all plant and animal species now in existence could become permanently extinct. But by carefully conserving water with the specially designed low-impact toilet I had installed, I can take comfort in the knowledge that I did what I could do to delay this inevitable global death-age by as many as several nanoseconds.

Won't you join me in this ongoing effort to foster an imperceptible improvement to this doomed and dying planet? You'll be rewarded with the knowledge that, despite the irreversible effects of centuries of sustained environmental abuse by the human race, individuals, working together, can fight this inevitability in a real, concrete, tiny, and totally ineffective show of unity.

Together, we can make an unbelievably negligible difference.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

 

wef

davis was lovely. i spent three days catching up with old friends and occasionally taking care of my toyspace.

housemate dan came with me, and he was a perfect companion. totally independent and capable of doing his own thing for whole days at a time, but at the same time he was interested in having me show him around and introduce him to folks. and then the fact that he ended up being really happy with davis and with the festival was pretty gratifying. i'm a sucker for people who love that town.

the best moment of the weekend was when we arrived on the quad. the hub, nerve center, gathering spot, and home for staff and volunteers at the festival is a large, green, military-surplus dome that has been called the 'karma dome' forever and ever. so i walked up to the karma dome, nervous as always when coming back to davis, since you never know who's going to be around and what degree of welcoming you're going to experience, and the first two people i saw were ben and travis, two of the only people with whom i'm still in relatively frequent contact. and then tao...and leif... within my first minute of arrival i was welcomed by some of my closest friends, and it set the tone for my weekend.

last year i wasn't very present for wef. it was my first year not on staff, and my first year not living in davis. the freeks were in sF, and friday night of the weekend was our big party at 1015. so while i found a role for myself in planning the festival, and did spend two days on the quad, i didn't put my heart into it. i was still in major break-from-davis mode, and wef is the epitome of davis culture--much of the rest of our year and our projects are shaped by this event. so i wasn't feeling confident in my relationship with the festival in the first place. add to that the fact that some of my new dearest friends were visiting new york and i was helping them throw a large event, and you end up with a scenario in which i had no desire to be in davis that weekend at all. i helped with the 1015 party friday night, went through the night with my friends, then changed my clothes, got into my car, and drove to the central valley. i did a half-ass job, and my heart wasn't in it.

so flashing back forward to this year, i was particularly grateful to have such a wonderful festival weekend. it felt like being back in my family, helping out with the first proto-party i ever went to or helped to put on. i'm settling into a post-davis relationship with the festival, with my friends in the town, and with the town itself, and it's lovely to be past the point where i'm still trying to detatch and just be appreciative and happy of what exists there.

other highlights of the weekend included spinning fire for the first time since the playa ... seeing my old friend max, back from the peace corps, for the first time in probably three years ... sitting with dan listening to and watching gamelan x play quad stage (oooh the delight of having sF people in davis to show them my old life!) ... nancy and winston's wedding, the first wedding held at festival ... sitting under the stars with travis feeling closer and being better friends than we have in two years ... moments with ben that reinforced my belief in the strength and endurance of our friendship ... dancing to kelly's set at the coops ... sitting up saturday night with tao, basho, lee, and sephe, playing with a drum and not giving a shit what direction my night was going to take me in ...

so things were good. and to quote dan, who had never been to the central valley and who i didn't think knew enough to say this in some of the opportune moments he chose:

"man, this is SO davis!!"

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

 

still a hooper at heart

and here's a video sam took of me on sunday.
i stiiiill got it, i suppose.
back injury or no.
feelin good about this. yes.

 

how weird

links to images of the how weird street faire

kyle's

sam's

mark's

please post any other sets you come across.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

 

~wHoLE eARtH fEsTiVaL~

so back in the day, when i was living in the central valley and pretending that life there was fully engaging, the one major redeeming factor in my world (besides really good thai food) was my position on the staff of the whole earth festival, a lovely, sustainability-focused festival on the uc davis campus.

the whole earth festival takes place on mother's day weekend each year which, as you may deduce before i reach the end of this sentence, is this coming weekend (may 12, 13, and 14).

this *FREE* three-day festival offers crafts, workshops, education, live music, djs, drums, huge compost piles, art, cobb benches... the usual norcal hippie-fest fare.

what makes it DIFFerent from other festivals in the area is its strong adherence to some pretty rigorous principles, guidelines, and ethics. the staff of unpaid students and townies runs all their meetings on consensus; all staff and most volunteers are trained in non-violence; very small police presence; focus on bioregionalism, sustainability, veggie/veganism, community, etc.; 95% waste diversion, re-usable utensils and dishes ONLY, solar-powered stages; strict rules on vending for both crafts and food (no plastics, no imports, no meat)...

less crystals; more cobb benches.

the music and dj line-ups are pretty local, since funding is limited. but it's still good stuff. everyone orchestra is one of the headliners for the bands; we don't have any big names for djs this year. the line-up's posted at
http://wef.ucdavis.edu/WEF2006_schedule_cms.pdf. music only goes til 10pm both friday and saturday nights.

righty-o, then. it's short-ish notice, but if you've got a free saturday or you don't hang out with your mom on mother's day anyways, may i suggest a field trip to davis? i'm going to be there all weekend, starting friday afternoon, primarily hanging out in a corner of the quad at toyspace, which i'm in charge of. (housemate dan is coming with--yays!!)

purrrs and glitter and such, and i hope to see some of you there!

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