bug art

This bug art reminds me of when Hugo tried to get his kitty, Kafka, to paint.

We have a draft horse at the vet hospital who paints with his hooves. I intend to get one before I leave here in May.

another brain image

Oh, I just love these. Everytime I find a new one I am shocked again. This is my favorite so far. It is "a supercomputer simulation of the microcircuitry found within a column from the neocortex of the rat brain."

6. Dear Sasha

Dear Sasha,
this morning I went for my cafe latte and I saw someone who looks just like you. I'm not sure it wasn't you still. It was very crowded in there and you were ten people ahead of me right when I was thinking, "why do I come when all these other bitches come here?" You were there. I thought. Were you? Was that you? Did you come here to find me but not tell me? I haven't seen you since 8th grade and we haven't talked since 10th and now we're over thirty and I don't think we've changed that much you still look like you had the same haircut and shoulder width and fingernails.

I don't know why you won't tell me if you're here or not. If this is a surprise I'll tell you that this is a surprise to you but it's pure anxiety to me!

S.

p.s. You see? If I stay home all day to see if you'll show up and you don't then I lose a whole day but if I leave I'll miss you if you're really here.

brainstem!

This is from the same person/s who did the image in the previous post I made.
This one won 1st place in an international digital imaging competition.
It's so amazing...

5. Dear Sasha

I just can't understand why your parents raised you Catholic. And Irish! Sasha, I hope you've dropped all that nonsense now. Did you know that guilt is a function of self denial? Stop denying yourself. This has gone on too long. Now you see why I had to intervene.

This is the greatest day of my life!

Sasha, I have an idea. Why don't we meet up like they do in the movies. Pick a place and a date and a time and a landmark and a wardrobe color and buy plane tickets. Not here, not there, somewhere else. So you're in Germany now and I'm in New Jersey. Tuscany, perhaps? Let's do it.

I'll buy my ticket first to show you how committed to this I am. Okay? Sometimes you have to trust someone to allow them to trust you. That's what I'm willing to do for you, Sasha.

If you don't send me some dates and times, I'll have to do that too.

S.

p.s. I'll bring my dog along. I hope you're not allergic.

4. Dear Sasha

Hey, Sasha, Sasha, you there? Sasha. You there? Hey. Call me. Sometime. You there?

S.

exploded ipod

This is amazing. An exploded, still functioning, ipod encased in resin.



Via: information aesthetics.

3. Dear Sasha

Dear Sasha,
I'm sorry; I've been prim. It's hard for me not to be self-righteous. You left, not me. That chip dangles from my shoulder like dried poop on a dog's furry butt. I read poetry before I write your letters so that I'm in an existential state so that you'll think I'm smart. You were always so much better than me in math. Are you a science teacher now? How are the German schools?

Sasha, I don't know what I want but I do know I want it.

What would it take for you to see me? Write me? Call me? What can I give you in return? I have been wondering that for 15 years.

S.

p.s. What size shoe do you wear? Your feet were bigger than mine when we were kids and I wonder if that's still true. I wear size 6.

"card postage"

In doing research for my Dear Sasha series, I came across this strange service. You can send a card from a country to a friend when you're not actually in that country?

2. Dear Sasha

Dear Sasha,
I said I'd write again. What did you expect? I'm always true to my word on these matters. I haven't heard from you yet and I just hope that eventually I will. I have to convince you to not be embarrassed about it. Cause I think you are.

Twinkle twinkle go the lights up on the wings of the plane in the sky and I think about that time I flew to see you and your parents and your little sister. Did you stand at the airport gate and watch the plane taxi in? Did you wait and watch each emerging face with all the other people as we emptied out of the door single file? I wish I could remember that moment. It was the last time I felt secure that you loved me. I was so secure that I didn't need to remember it.

I'll go easy on you with this letter because I take it that your lack of a response is that you're still thinking it over. I'll write a little at a time.

S.

p.s. Did your little sister become a real estate executive like she thought she would?

name popularity

There is a graphic on the NY Times today that shows the popularity of surnames in the US. Take a look at which name just made the top 5000 list at number 5000.

1. Dear Sasha

Dear Sasha,
it has been so long that I wonder if you've forgotten me. To be honest, I hope you haven't and I hope you don't tell me if you have. Just tell me something about how you'd thought about writing me too. Remember the last time we talked? It was over winter break in tenth grade. You thought you would have a boyfriend soon. I think you were jealous of mine. I never thought of myself as the lucky one, Sasha, since I lost you, but looking back I guess that's how you must've felt. If it makes you feel any better he didn't last and then he became a dope taker and crack dealer and other things I know nothing about.

More later,
S.

p.s. Do you remember Ronnie in 3rd grade? He pinned me to the brick wall and kissed me and bruised my shoulder. And then he got it. He got detention for like a week. Remember him?

post secret on msnbc

I had no idea Post Secret had become so popular until Laurie told me they're rated as the number one blog in some competition and now I see MSNBC has done some press on them. I think that's pretty amazing.

I've always loved this idea of creative mail. Hugo, Laurie and I have thought about creating a mail in art system via blogging. Pretty impressive how far this one guy has come with his one little idea.

the universe twins in the TWIN cities

We're together again! This time in Twin Cities... how appropriate.

Hugo made a special surprise trip to see our friend Bill Stobb read at a local bookstore. Bill's creative writing class is where we met in 1997 and we reconnected with him in 2003. He's a poet and professor, has a nice new book of poetry out called Nervous Systems, and lives in La Crosse, WI. Yesterday we all met at the Walker Art Center and thoroughly enjoyed the new Frida show.

Today we had many creative adventures. We went on a Guthrie backstage tour (which was way more amazing than Sanguinetti A! realized it would be!), to the Weisman museum (and liked the Kienholz Pedicord Apartments installation best), sneaked a peak at this house, ate at the Namaste Cafe in uptown (where we liked the design of outdoor chairs very much), toured the downtown Minneapolis library (which is by far the most amazing library in existence!), visited the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (where Hugo bought a book that knocked his socks off and describes his favorite font, Bulmer), and finally ended up at the Ax-Man. Woohoo Ax-Man!

It was an amazing creative adventure day!

Now we're making butternut squash stew and preparing ourselves for a night of art-making with old topography maps.

typography storytelling

I saw this at Information Aesthetics today:

duct tape wallet

i think Hugo wanted to make one of these once.

pink and green, perhaps?

animated gifs

Animated gifs can be really bad and they can also be really good. Michael David Murphy over at 2point8 made this gif of Henri Cartier Bresson timing a little leg click with the click of his shutter. Cartier Bresson is one of my all time favorite photographers.



Does anyone else have any favorite animated gifs they'd like to share?

world clock

this is an amazing world clock.

skulladay

When I arrived at my office this morning I discovered that a skull fairy had visited in the night and my keyboard looked like this:



Upon closer inspection I saw that the paper skull, with working jaw movement, had this printed on the back "www.skulladay.com". Naturally, I visited the site and found the most amazing petroleum jelly skull ever.

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neurons

Art and science combine to identify individual brain neurons.

null

at 7:30 a.m.
at 1 p.m.

Cosmonaut painting

Yuri!

We made a painting for our living room, based on some Soviet art for Russian space exploration. Yuri Gagarin was the first Russian in space, a cosmonaut, so we added his name at the bottom. I must admit I only did the broader strokes of painting, as detailed painting of the edges was difficult for me. I did put in the tiny stars too.

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poem from last november

Last November while Hugo was doing his third annual nanowrimo, I wrote a poem a day in solidarity since I did not have enough time to write a novel. I write a ton of poetry when life is less than rewarding. And I realize now that I haven't written a poem in months - one negative side effect of happiness.

Thought I'd post a poem I wrote early in the process last November. Last November was hard.

--

You stand naked with your feet cold and your belly hot
under the shower streaming at constant speed,
you see the blue light begin to collect on the walls
white and layered in thick and thin sheets
boards and nails, electrical wire and plumbing pipes

and then you are pulling the electrical wire through a hole the size of a silver dollar
you are opening your fist, closed mostly to itself,
through the paint, the plaster, the sheetrock.
It is 6:24 a.m., everything happening
is rushing down your skull, your shoulders, your spine,
down a drain and into the gutters and oceans. You stand naked;
the material you have to learn is so un-learnable
and imaginary, like God, you wish you could
make something happen in the name of a miracle
you wish it could be like poetry: curious, water-like, warm,
but it is not

everything you have to learn is like falling
your foot slips on some soap
and you fall hard, elbow and shoulder hitting the edge of the tub
hips and spine slamming against the floor
your head suddenly in your hands
as if you were a very small child, sheltering yourself from debris
fallout and rubble
but it is not that
it is only water falling
at 6:26 a.m. What makes you stand up, finally, is the fear of being too late
of disturbing the balance of the day
of not getting up for a long, long time.

volumes of confessions

The most unbelievable birthday adoration yet was a series of compositions from our own Hugo. This is just a tease of what they were. I'm consciously holding onto the rest of them to leak one at a time.

sunflowers from vermont

This arrived in the mail. Just like this. It is Ben and Jerry's fertilized soil with sunflowers for the planting. It'll be a sunflower winter! Yee HAW!

luvaseline

Our good friends N. and Michele made me my very own luVaseline. The next time you see me, ask me why this was such a stellar gift. At LAST!

orchestrated birthday adoration

Sanguinetti A! orchestrated a cascade of birthday love last month. She encouraged many loved ones to send me something creative in the mail to celebrate my 30th birthday. I was pleasantly surprised with postal art for most of October. I'm going to gradually post some of them. Here is the first installment.

book layout

I haven't done one of these in a long time. I'd forgotten how much fun it is.

Prince wants to fight!

I love Prince drama! I love it!

sound sculpture

Matthew Plummer Fernandez has made a chair sculpture based on sound.



Thanks to information aesthetics.

city in a box

What a day! I am finding amazing things in the world of blog.

All of my blogmates will gasp over this: a city in a box. I'm surprised IKEA doesn't sell this.

dinosaury shadow puppets

Tyra N Saurus, you need these.

I find it odd that they can be found on Etsy (Laurie connection: sister Nancy) and that the artist teaches at 826 Chicago (Hugo connection: 826 Valencia.)

gracenote maps

Gracenote lets you see who is listening to what displayed through a map.

collecting dead birds

I woke up at 4 am today, hungry. While I sat in the dark eating a bowl of cereal, I thought about collecting the dead birds I see. I've seen two in the last two months, and I imagine that if I look for them, they're really everywhere.

I envisioned carrying around: latex gloves (I'm not allergic), baggies of various sizes, a metal scooping device, and a Tupperware container of about 5" x 5" x 3".

I'd like to bring them home, organize their feathers and limbs, and take portraits of them against a solid background. I'd like to have a dead bird series even if I don't know how to taxidermy.

word of the day

I very much like the word of the day for November 5.

Woolgathering: Indulgence in idle daydreaming.

Even more, I love the first example sentence:

Similarly, in the meadow, if you laze too late into the fall, woolgathering, snow could fill your mouth. -- Edward Hoagland, "Earth's eye", Sierra, May 1999

Snow could fill your mouth.

Snow could fill your mouth.

Oh my god, I love that phrase.

fall

origami brain

I found this on a blog I sometimes read.

nanowrimo!

I just remembered November is National Novel Writing Month! Hugo has participated in this for, I think, three consecutive years. What about this year, Hugo?

(I'd like to point out that it was started in Oakland, CA - that fabulous little city I just moved from!)

Algorithmic Serendipitous Verbiage

I'm working with a startup developing, among other things, an email archiving system. This requires a chunk of sample email data for testing and demonstration purposes. Our first pass just used greek filler, but that doesn't create particularly interesting search fodder. We're currently working with a Markov text chain generator (beloved of spammers everywhere!) to create email subject lines and headers.

Of course, what you get out depends on what you put in. Since our product is focused on regulatory compliance for small financial firms, we decided to feed it the industry regulations... and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations... and Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class... and Plato's Republic... and a little Edgar Allen Poe and Cory Doctorow for spice:

All ritual has a piece of magnificence in Thomas Becket, that he generally proportions to the impositon of a state, and the regular payment of old, because in China, every way fitted for it is worth, in order to raise his wages appear to you with my lawyer and springing me from this fund, indeed, is frequently lent to the health and vigour to the order identifier assigned to the subject company's securities, provided that both Europe and every other nation, might have had any ports upon the valid exercise of traits in this manner yields no revenue to the provisions of paragraph a2 or 3 or 4, above, two times in their hearts and would try to find a reasonable effort to learn some particular classes of shares or a correspondent clearing arrangement with a transaction takes place in all places are causes of the State wise?

I think I shall retire to a hermitage and spend the rest of my days in contemplation.

death maps

There are some utterly fascinating maps on National Geographic's website depicting the various mortality causes around the world and their disproportionality to population numbers. The information is really fascinating, but even more I was enthralled by the graphics. Whoever did these is a very effective visual communicator.

Here's just one example. The top shows deaths related to war combat and landmines and the bottom compares it to world population: