selling out

These ads are atrocious. If I don't make at least a dollar I'm taking them down. Good morning from Santa Fe, by the way.

we hate verizon

I haven't had internet for days, during which time my laptop has ceased to be my magical, shifting porthole for looking out onto the world and been demoted to an inanimate, hot whirring boombox. I'm tired of the music track at Starbucks, of hearing the Beatles in particular, can't tell if it's technology I hate or my fat fingers.

another ugly thing i've made

scandinavian tiny lobster day

Eric, whose instability had so worried his father...was crowned at Uppsala in 1561 with a pomp never before seen in Sweden, and he continued to press suit for Elizabeth I, while at the same time trying his luck with Mary Queen of Scots and a number of German princesses.
The courtship of Elizabeth, fruitless though it was, brought Sweden one lasting advantage. One of Eric's envoys, while he was biding his time in England waiting to see the queen, was served a dish of freshwater crayfish. The Swedish emissary greatly relished these tiny lobsters and on his return to Sweden brought back several bucketfuls, alive. The English crayfish quickly settled down with the local variety in Swedish rivers and multiplied quickly. They are now Sweden's most cherished national dish; their consumption, during the month of August only, is elevated to the status of ritual. No visitor to Sweden in that month can (or should) escape a Kräftkalas, or crayfish party, at which each guest devours a dozen or more crayfish, each claw, in theory, washed down by a glass of Brännvin, or local schnapps. For this at least, though not much else, Sweden may be grateful to Eric XIV.
butler 104

i have mussels

on sunday brandy and i volunteered at a transitional house for LA women and their children. we organized the basement, cleaned the playhouse, and stocked the pantry. it was  A LOT easier than the last time we did volunteer work, almost a year ago for Habitat for Humanity in shanghai.

same day, bagel and i had dinner at The Hungry Cat in gollyvood and we had half a dozen oysters, a carafe of white wine, and bagel had a delicious fish and i had the steamed mussels, pork belly, xo sauce, bok choy and jicama. it was the best. disclaimer - this picture is not of them it's just something i randomly google imaged.

scandinavian thing history

What is known of the legal proceedings of Iceland during the Viking era is probably true in a general sense of the government of all the Nordic peoples. Laws derived from the decisions of the Thing - an assembly of landowning free men. Each district, of which there might be as many as a hundred in a given county, had its own assembly, and the judgments of the Thing were passed on orally from one generation to the next. Great regional assemblies, at which men from many districts came together - usually in the summer - considered such larger questions as the election of kings, the declaration of war, the religious conversion of the people. The first truly national Thing was called in Iceland in 930 - and this Thing would meet annually almost without interruption until 1798. The great and chronic weakness of the Thing everywhere that it existed was its inability to implement its decisions. Legislative and judicial in character, it lacked executive power, and often its decisions - especially where individual complaints were involved - were ultimately settled by duel or some other violent means. 
butler 14

on becoming the last non-russian speaker

Last week, all I could understand of the teacher was jam, jam, jam. I wasn't able to decipher anything else she was saying, but she was definitely repeating jam - варенье - over and over. But not really, because my Russian vocabulary is so limited that the matching game of what I hear to the contents of the sparsely populated bank of words in my head is rife with error. Jam? Today was the third week of Conversational Russian and at this point I am the last non-Russian, non-Armenian, non-heritage speaker standing.There were more of us but I think they ran away. The boy who used to spend all of class with his face in his dictionary didn't show up this week. The last other was very firmly kicked out of class today for not knowing what "вапросы" meant. It means questions. He begged to stay but he was kicked out right then and there by our silver haired, former Muscovite lecturer and she said she would remove him from the roster tonight. She's quite stern. Everyone else in the class already speaks Russian well and most are middle-aged women trying to improve their English. This was a shock to me when I came into the first class and everyone was chatting in Russian and doing Russian crosswords and answering their cell phones with, "Allo?" A scatterbrained Asian woman stumbled into class today and I thought another had joined my ranks, but she sat down and said she is Kazakh and promptly started разговаривалing away. My peers are a strange bunch and do things like talk on their cell phones loudly and wander around the classroom for no reason in the middle of class. We had to prepare introductions of ourselves in the language we're trying to practice. I could see the first line of my neighbor's paper - My name is Yuriy ! He kept handing his paper behind him to his daughter and she would correct his mistakes and he would rewrite it and pass it back again. Meanwhile, I am trying my hardest to understand what everyone is talking about and it feels very much like the springs in my head have been wound overly tight and like my head is going to split open at the top and sides and copper gears and sprockets will go flying everywhere. Last week, an Armenian/Russian woman asked me after class why I am studying Russian. I resisted telling her that it is the language of love. I told her I suck. She told me, "Stick with us! You will get it."

I've noticed that people on this city college campus are much friendlier than the people I ever met on campus at my alma mater. Everyone smiles and says hello and offers to let you pass if you're stuck behind them and want to walk at a quicker pace. I was backing out of my slanted parking spot and the driver behind me was tapping his horn. I assumed I was being slow and irritating him. I started driving and a crazed man clutching a bottle of beer accosted me and began banging on my car. He had wide, frantic eyes and looked dirty and insane. Terrified, I started driving away. He was yelling after me and I looked in my side mirror and he was holding the paper coffee cup that I'd accidentally left on top of my car. I opened my door and he chased up to me, screaming, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! YOU FORGOT YOUR COFFEE!!!" It was basically an empty cup but I took it back and felt embarrassed for having mistreated him. He may have scared the shit out of me, but he must have been very nice.

art factory

 

twenty minute bagel quickdraw. weak but mildly better on paper. i'm thinking about doing a two-handed self-portrait. how long does it take to make twenty pieces of real art? i should have just gone to the gym today.

TOO MANY CHROME TABS OPEN. stress and head is going to explode

the whitley welcomes you

instructions for sanity

this month's priorities:
1. do not panic
2. stop looking at facebook
3. stop losing money
4. be nicer

missy is having trouble walking and it's worrying me. a bad limp on the back right leg, not getting better

my father tried to talk to me yesterday about the importance of not getting pregnant. bless him, but that was très awkward. thanks dad

speaking of fathers, i greatly enjoyed this: http://mydadisafob.com/2011/08/07/danger-game/

death ride

bagel left for his 270-mile bicycle death ride from los angeles to las vegas almost 2.5 hours ago. if you see him en route within the next 18.5 hours, please give him a catcall. if you see him stranded on the side of the road, please mail him back to hollywood.

pastry fingers

buca says every new graduate's life is currently sucking post-college. even the people with glamorous-seeming lives. so...don't let 'em fool you.

mask face

i'm using mrs. tuckersman's cucumber peel-off mask and i feel like i just rubbed crazy glue all over my face. looking forward to recreating the poltergeist scene where the man rips his face off

home theater

mom: i think that dog movie i watched this afternoon was for children!!!
me: well it was called COOL DOG.
mom: that dog could drive! it wasn't even believable!

poltern

i just watched poltergeist. it was terrible.

my mom says that my grandmother used to say that when you're moving, you should never say out loud where you're moving to, or else the ghosts in your home will come with you.

vegan dinner

last night at a vegan restaurant in echo park joshua taught me to never leave behind the customer copy of your receipt because the server can misreport your tip (add five bucks or so) and you would have no documentation as to otherwise

afterwards we went to a lesbian bar in WeHo where i ran into khenkel as well as a girl with whom i worked in the usa pavilion office in china. lesbian bar is where it's at.

thinking about lots of people in different places all doing the same things, snacking, feeling bored, worrying, lounging, missing their friends

labor day weekend

labor day weekend bagel and i sampled korean, deep-dish pizza, and hamburger cuisines and melon and moon cake and i had my first black and tan and we napped and watched the borgias and other scripted television and slugged around and went morning bicycling at the rose bowl. i bicycled twelve miles on my new swobo, nina. we took the wrong freeway home and ended up at the foot of a very dramatic mountain wildfire, with big black plumes of smoke. it reminded me of niu mowang (牛魔王), the bull demon king from the classical chinese story journey to the west, who lives on a mountain of fire (火燄山). The flames that can only be put out using a magical fan which is in the possession of Princess Iron Fan.

isolation doesn't make things better

so many hugs and kisses you're like stop already, luca

i'm reading dave eggers. what is the big deal?

i had my first strawberries and cream frappuccino from starbucks yesterday. it was disgusting.

dippin dots

i used to be, like, really patient.

now, if it can't be done in an hour i'm over it

cowboy country

we went to the local honky-tonk last night and while getting ready i was surprised by how much of my wardrobe is hoedown appropriate

brain is going thumpa-thumpa

oktoberfest at night