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.

null

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.