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This week has gone by in a bit of a blur. Good things, though. A couple of excellent RPG sessions, and the opportunity to finally meet the most wonderful Jess face-to-face. (This would also mark the first time I've met a Chaplain in meatspace, so YEA!) Also had the good fortune of coming into posession of an extra ticket for yesterday's U2 gig, and hence Jess got to end her conference trip seeing them live, which was extra awesome. Say what you will about the band, they do have a keen sense for the Rock Spectacle.
Tonight is for winding down, and preparing to play records for people.
Hope this finds you well. Vile hugs all around. -
My week was going well, then a tree fell on my bike shop. A big tree. What a way to round out my Friday night. We had some crazy strong storms tear through town, it took out a lot of trees through many neighborhoods. There were winds pushing 80mph, we're lucky more didn't get uprooted. Fortunately, at the shop, no one got hurt and nothing got so broken that it can't be fixed. The power has been out since Friday at 5:00, which made todays cleaning efforts fun. The plus side to having a bunch of headlight/tail light sets around the shop is that they double as flashlights real well. After getting things buttoned up this afternoon, I headed out for a bit on the motorbike. Helped clear my mind and put me in a better state of being for the evening. Nothing happening tonight worth reporting.
Thanks for the time and the space, I enjoy this place. -
My week has consisted mostly of me make studies of Tim Bradstreets artwork from his two book Maximum Black and Archetype. I've also spent most of week helping my parents empty their house of over 20 years of accumulated furniture, clothes and other assorted junk when I should have been working on my novel. Well, what are children for, huh?
'Been thinking a lot about what Christmas will bring and then summer 2011. The (hopefully) completion of the final draft of my novel, then in summer the publication of the novel complete with illustrations. It's going to be a very interesting year. Still trying to imaging holding the finished book in my hands. It almost feels like a dream.
Anyway. Back to work. But only after watching Lebanon and Eyes wide open.
G-d bless and Good night. -
This week - fine and you?
Tonight - will watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080p and 720p Ghost in the Shell; drink whisky and try to write a couple of coherent words. -
I wasted most of this week, or rather what I got done was kind of minimal compared to the gargantuan to-do list I've somehow ended up with. I had promised to get so much crap done I ended up doing almost nothing because every time I'd set out to do one thing I'd flail around feeling like I was failing to do anything else and just completely be unable to get a proper hold on the tasks I needed to do. It was frustrating, but my response to this sort of FAIL has recently been to just retreat behind YouTube vids and pretend it doesn't matter. Bad plan.
What I DID manage to do was get my ass into an Intro to Japanese class. That took a lot more effort than I ever would have thought, but it's done and now I'm again a college student, though on a minimal level. The chaos of the rest of my life is reaching epic proportions, though, thanks to the aforementioned overwhelming tasks becoming profound procrastination. But there's always tomorrow (for more procrastination, probably).
Friday was interesting because there was a party, and there was me getting massively drunk. Laughed too loud and just laughed more when people laughed at me. Picked up a friend and narrowly managed not to drop her. She was calm, which is always good, picking up someone who's panicking is hard. Yakked a bit too much and stayed until after sunrise. Now I try to let go of the soft lips that kept me so late. Little more than a pleasant dream that. Time to get to the next thing.
Next thing: Sister's fiance's birthday party with lots of family in attendance because they've gone public with their engagement. I've finally stopped shaking after last night's booze-athon so I think I'll be sticking to water and orange juice. Should be fun, I hope.
Tomorrow, back to trying to sell the stupid furniture the idiot former tenants left behind. Back to trying to be a responsible dramaturge and get done the research I was assigned weeks ago. Back to trying to be something that passes for a responsible adult. -
Enjoyed a day around the house mostly lost in a daze of surfing and fitful cleaning, napping, and then meeting a friend for sushi and gossip.
Little accomplished, but some meaningful relaxation achieved.
I have been experimenting again with giving enough of a shit to have meaningful communication with people in long-form thought. -
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CommentAuthorkrakatoakatie
- CommentTimeAug 21st 2010
Realized earlier I missed the anniversary of getting out of my hometown, a move which quite literally saved my life. It's good that I didn't notice it, usually I get into a funk and go through mental withdrawls. But now I'm too busy to care! Good week! -
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Made my daughter jealous with this:
And am washing the below now —
Packing and sleeping for Japan. Head out Monday ... back after Labor Day ... been eating too well ... may treat myself to Lobster Bisque again with sherry tomorrow as a break from work ...
Got my friends who are parents to the baby girl above current with Mac stuff to run their new iPad. Tempted to take mine to Japan instead of MacBook ... -
No feel camera-ish tonight, but here is what I've been working on:
I smell of epoxy and sawdust. The model is for a drag race in Sheridan, Oregon next month. On a G motor, for those who know that stuff.
The week really kind of sped by. Didn't get much writing done, but I've got ideas bubbling out of my head. Cutting back is going to be the trick to getting the project done. -
- CommentAuthorJames Puckett
- CommentTimeAug 21st 2010
I am slowly slogging my way through a big design project that should have been wrapped up two or three months ago. But the problem with these things is that they really require lots of planning, and because I learn that stuff best by doing it, I managed to completely fuck this up and just keep having to go back and fix things, work begins to recurse back on itself across eight very complicated files, and it’s really ugly and frustrating. The upside is that all these stupid mistakes teach me a great deal.
This week I realized that my life has become an echo chamber of western-European typographic history and internet memes. Time to start getting out more. Or just reading more fiction and fewer design history books.
I did watch Carl Sagan’s Cosmos this week. It was so brilliant, and I’m amazed how it affected American pop culture. That show was a milestone in America’s intellectual history. I’m pretty sure that if Cosmos aired today most people wouldn’t even notice because they’re too busy watching reality TV shows on basic cable or arguing over ginned-up controversy about a mosque.
And I’m a little incensed that the Obama administration is pretending that the 50,000 troops in Iraq aren’t there for the purpose of combat and that the occupation is over. I’m more incensed that the media is reporting this despicable manipulation of language as if it’s a fact. I expect politicians to be evil, spineless, dishonest, etc., but Obama is a huge fucking disappointment. -
Had the single most frightening experience of my adult life tonight. I can't go into details for the sake of safety for myself and others, but needless to say my friend and I now share a bond most people will never know. What I can tell you is that for a couple minutes, which seemed much longer than they were, all we could do were stare into each other's eyes knowing that at any moment we could be forcefully torn apart forever, a stare that said "I love you, I don't blame you for whatever happens next, hopefully we'll be alright." We got lucky. I swear there's a cosmic being looking out for me. This was terrifying.
That being said, the build crew for my Burning Man camp is now in "FUCK FUCK FUCK" mode as we try to get finish everything up before we ship out to Black Rock Desert on Tuesday for what might be the best week of my life (until the next burn). It's that good kind of stress where you're exhausting yourself and about to blow up, but you know that in just a few days it'll all be worth it. I am extremely excited. Burning Man doesn't actually start until Aug 30, but we get early arrival for being a Theme Camp so that we can set up our shit. This also means I'll be offline for a complete 14 days come Tuesday. -
- CommentAuthorstevencudahy
- CommentTimeAug 21st 2010
@Argos - that sounds awful, glad you're okay.
Morning Warren, morning Whitechapel. (It's just gone 6-something-AM here in Glasgow and I am awake so while it is still night for most people it is morning for me.)
Good week/bad week this one. Been ill with the M.E. again, depressed and run down and achy, but had agreed to play a ceilidh last night for a friend's sister's wedding. One of those situations where you don't want to let someone down because it's a favour. But, as it turned out, it was great, playing drums in a big barn surrounded by hay bales and a hundred-odd people dancing. I always forget how good playing is for my body and mind. Plus, fiddle player had his didgeridoo which is always pleasing. It did make me think that I should haul out the tabla someone brought me back from India and finally learn how to play them. There'd be less to lug around, if nothing else. And then I got handed a roll of your actual paper monies - with pictures of the Queen on them and everything - at the end of the night, which I wasn't really expecting, so that was an added bonus. Highlight of the night was the daddy long-legs that hung off one of my cymbals for a good while until I forgot it was there and hit the damn thing. Hope I didn't kill it. Also, bacon rolls for a wedding buffet? Awesome.
Job sucks. Worked my arse off this week making sure that our backlog stays below a thousand cases, because each one of those forms is a real person or family who need that benefit money to buy food and pay bills. Being a civil servant at the moment is bad, especially being involved in the area of benefits. Saw a wonderful headline somewhere saying that one million people had been erroneously getting Incapacity Benefit for the last decade, implying it was down to incompetence or fraud. That's some quality reporting, given that what's actually happened is that the DWP has changed the fucking rules on who qualifies for Incap meaning that suddenly loads of people no longer qualify who formerly, completely legitimately, did qualify. I love our newspapers. So accurate and worthwhile. Had a conversation where someone came out with the usual querulous rant about why should they pay taxes to support lazy people. Didn't like it too much when I suggested the best way to pay less tax was to build a society in which more people could actually get jobs because there were, you know, more jobs, and perhaps a little more thought at government level about how to encourage this and a little less thought about how to look good in the short term would be preferable to the kind of slash-and-burn that we're seeing the beginnings of. Also overheard a conversation at work where one person came out with the immortal line, 'They should just bring back the workhouses because people shouldn't expect all these freedoms if they can't be bothered to get a job'. Which sounds like a wonderful idea, apart from the bit where it's fucking mental. Me? I'd look a little bit harder at tax evasion, which the estimates I've seen for the UK runs at somewhere between sixty and ninety billion pounds a year. Even with all the inefficiencies in the machinery of the public sector, someone could probably do some good with that many pictures of the Queen. Or at least we could build really nice workhouses...
What should we do tonight? There are probably enough of us here that we could set up some sort of global deprogramming network for the capture and re-education of key figures in public and business life. Not necessarily to change their politics, more just to give them some tools for critical thinking and remind them that the world is bigger than their own concerns about where their next free dinner is coming from. I don't know how successful we'd be, but even if half of them ended up with empathy that reached beyond their immediate network of family and friends it would probably be a better world.
Sorry, I've taken up a lot of your valuable real estate. Didn't mean to rant quite so much. Thanks to you all for not throwing rocks at me.
S. -
Just enjoying reading this evening. Hacking through some Masada tunes on the guitar.
Coldest August in memory. That's not a brag: it's very bizarre. We're pondering a life without summer here.
@taphead Bravo. Crossover pics or GTFO! =p -
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CommentAuthorJohn Skylar
- CommentTimeAug 21st 2010
This week, I have a new girl and I think this one might last. So there's some good news. And I spent the weekend with my nephews, and they're still good kids. So there's more.
Then I read this article.
So what shall we do tonight? We shall fucking eviscerate Rupert Murdoch with enraged badgers is what. Or maybe I'll just fantasize about that. But you're welcome to join me. -
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Well, this week.... has been weird.
After being glutted out here by the availability of luscious Palisades peaches (yeah, yeah, I know, cry me a river), I switched from putting up peach butter in my freezer to making refrigerator bread-and-butter pickles.
I bought a water-bath canner anyway (the cheapest price anywhere for the standard model, at the Evilest Store You Know), along with some quart-size freezer jars. (They're made of thicker non-BpA plastic, and they wear like anything.) I brined onions and gherkin-size cukes for a day, then steeped them in the vinegar/sugar/mustard seed/tumeric/celery seed brine overnight -- they were outstanding from the beginning.
I then made the misfortune of altering the prep to slice the cukes in halves, and switched out the sugar for Splenda. That made them way too salty, and Splenda's metallic undertaste's now the top note. Feh. I'll wait a few more days to see if they balance out. I still have a few pounds of cukes to brine next, and the B+B garlic, onion and green tomatoes to taste. My teeth enamel isn't thanking me, but it's the best culinary fun I've had all summer.
No, I'm wrong -- the best fun was last Sunday, when I trod 3/4 mile in midday heat to a vineyard for the Eat Denver Harvest Week pre-party. (Party before the HW, not before another party.) They had amazing snacks, liberally using melon and peaches as ingredients, plus copious use of Leopold Bros.' Three Pins Liqueur, which is like apple pie with one hell of a kick. Root Down made one lovely cocktail, of which I had several, then I tried Balisteri's Riesling, Merlot and Cherry wines... then OMG the carrot cake beignets with cream cheese filling... the fact that I made it home intact and in time for MAD MEN is a miracle.
So, yeah, aware of the ongoing gluttony, and of a deficit in my playwriting, I signed up for a stage combat seminar that's part of the Boulder International Fringe Festival. (Don't ask me about the one show I saw -- between the chronological mischief in the script and the pint of cider I quaffed ten minutes before curtain, I wouldn't be a fit witness, in any case.) Yesterday's demo was a bust, but today for two hours I learned how to punch, slap, fall and do one basic choreographed scene, and somehow I'm committed to audit an advanced stage combat course this Fall, to see what actors need to put a physically dominant character together.
And, because afterwards I limped so bad after I had to buy new Crocs, I went home and missed my Denver Roller Dolls. Yeah, and what am I doing tomorrow? Start to learn how to ride a bicycle. (I KNOW.)
As for the work, I still have a lingering desire to visit the Trinity Site when opens that one day in October. I haven't driven in years, so I'll profile as one nervous potential terrorist when the Federal guards ask me, "how are you today, ma'am?" when I pull up in a rental. So much is written about it that I should see just how mundane it is, after history has passed over it. Then again, I'll probably fuck up my schedule and put it off until next year. Otherwise, working on drafts, ten-minute projects, hope I hit the Lotto again and have a theatre company read or produce one. (Oh, yeah -- since I last posted my first good ten-minute play, EMULSION, got produced in Albuquerque in June. A lovely excuse for life disruption, it was...) -
@celan - Would that I could, but she is unfortunately averse to shutters.
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- CommentAuthorkeyofsilence
- CommentTimeAug 22nd 2010
Hail Warren 'El Suave' Ellis, and hello to the rest of you.
Watched Fargo last night, unbelievably for the first time. It was pretty damn wonderful. I drank some Golden Glory and Fuller's ESB, which was the perfect way to temporarily forget about the unbelievably dull job I return to on Monday. Before the recession I was a freelance sub-editor/designer, but seeing as newspapers are irreparably fucked I have since taken on a job that requires nearly none of the knowledge gathered from my degree whatsoever. Recently, however, I've started designing entertainment pages for the Metro. This is at least a step forward, relevant to my degree and something else I can put on my CV.
My guitar protege was unable to make his lesson this week, meaning that I would've had to wait another week before I could buy myself some sweet, sweet Scotch. However, I've woken up this morning to discover I've won a tenner on the lottery so I'll soon be off to the shop to get a 15-year-old Dalwhinnie. It's high time I started drinking other whiskeys, because while I love Jack Daniels to bits I really need to start branching out.
It's a lovely day. Maybe I'll go for a walk. -
- CommentAuthoricelandbob
- CommentTimeAug 22nd 2010 edited
Good.... morning people??
Well i'm writing this in the morning as we had our flat warming party last night! and as you expect it was a blast, although it was at times a pretty weird experience. You see, even though Sigga and I do share friends, we both have a lot of friends that have never met each other, due to inhabiting different social circles. So you had my friends (stoner metalers and noise musicians, tattooists and fetish models, artists, major drinkers) and Siggas friends (really none of the aforementioned) it was certainly an interesting night. The look on some peoples faces when some of Siggas Friends tried to put on Justin Timberlake as "It's proper music" was hilarious. And then one of my friend got a little too drunk and made a bit of a mess so there was some more drama there.
But now it's the morning after and i´m just starting at the mess, hoping my telekinetic powers can miraculously clean the flat for me...NDNDNGNGNGNGN..... nope need more practice....
Keep writing that good shit Warren.... -
- CommentAuthorgovernment spy
- CommentTimeAug 22nd 2010
Mornin. At work.
Had a great night out with the lady. Really good Tex-Mex, she had something called Ceviche which was basically raw fish marinated in lime juice. It was pretty tasty, but I'm glad I stuck with Fajitas. I don't normally go with the simplist order, but when you're going tor Tex-Mex, you can't beat a good fajita.
Had a stupid fight earlier this week, and last night was make-up time. Always ends the best way imaginable.
Walking to work today, again I notice how neat it is that Houston has mounted police. Very old school wild west Texas. I just wish we were less old school when it came to cleaning up after these horses. Isn't there enough poop lying around that police don't need to add to it? Aren't police supposed to keep people from putting feces in the street/sidewalks?
Speaking of feces, I was walking in my neighborhood the other day, and saw two neighbors arguing. One was saying something like... And I could be wrong, I was eavesdropping, but it sounded like he said, "That's my poop. Don't mess with my poop." Which sounds really, really wierd. Then, I wondered if he just didn't like to swear, and really just meant, "That's my shit. Don't fuck with my shit." Then it makes much more sense.
What shall we do today? Myself, I hope for just a quiet day. I hope to get away with doing as little as possible. It's Sunday morning here, nothing's on the schedule at work today, I just hope to maintain a peaceful status quo. I don't want anyone messing my poop up. -
Does it still count as Saturday Night if I haven't been to bed yet?
Saw Justin Townes (son of Steve) Earle in concert last night. It was fantastic. Thanks for asking.