true stories

yesterday afternoon bagel and i lied in the grass in his backyard and watched hummingbirds. there were three of them and they liked zooming around, visiting the flowers in bagel's garden wonderland and perching in the peach tree and cheeping.

today work was cancelled because of a power outage in the office. i spent the afternoon at intelligentsia with candice and, as a whole, did whatever i wanted all day, including planning to go to yoga, napping, deciding not to yoga, practicing backcombing my hair, making cilantro lime chicken, chugging a beer before going to class, and playing fetch with jenner, who is the size of a shetland pony, in the living room. happy last day of april. i commented to the boy who held my position before i did that time passes incredibly quickly in this job, and he said, "I hear you, it's like dog years..."

title page

Gogol designed the title page for the first edition of Dead Souls himself. It is an elaborate piece of not-quite-symmetrical baroque scrollwork, surrounded by airy curlicues in which various objects and figures appear. At the top center is a britzka being pulled by a galloping troika and raising a small cloud of dust. Below it to the left is a sketch of a manor house with a gate, then a well with a long sweep pointing upwards, then a tray with a bottle and four glasses the same size as the house and the well sweep. Centered under thre britzka is another bottle, and to the right are more bottles (one fallen over), a glass, and a mysterious pointed object, possibly a tower. Further down around the lettering on the page we find a fish on a platter, a wooden bucket, yet another bottle, some dried fish hanging from curlicues; there is a barrel, a plaited bast shoe, a single boot, a small capering figure raising a glass, a solemn satyr's mask, balanced by a similar satyr's mask on the other side and what may be more musical instruments. Above the publication date is an oval platter with a big fish on it, surrounded by smaller fish. To the left of the date a balalaika and a guitar, to the right of it a miniature dancing couple. At the very bottom center, amid more scrollwork, is a human face. The curlicues around the words Dead Souls turn out, on closer inspection, to be skulls.
pevear

i just officially turned down Parsons & the New School. please excuse me while i go hide somewhere small and never come out again

dogtv

Plenty of things will grab a dog’s attention: squirrels, tennis balls, funny smells, other dogs. But a TV channel?
Absolutely, say the makers of DogTV, the first cable network to deliver 24-hour programming for dogs. The idea, they say, is that flipping on the channel while you go out for the day will keep your pet stimulated, entertained and relaxed.
The shows on DogTV are actually three- to six-minute segments featuring grassy fields, bouncing balls and humans rubbing dog tummies. There are also segments featuring noiseless vacuum cleaners and muted doorbells to help make dogs more comfortable around such common household agitations.

rick ross

i've had a danish song playing in my car and haven't understood what it said. i'd only picked out a few words like "hustler," "taste," and "rapists."
reading the lyrics - it all makes sense now.

goldilocks

jenner found a chair that's just his size

mean business

we tested samples on ourselves at work today

spirit animal

i don't know how, but this face has for this day lifted me out of the doldrums of corporate oppression and validated my continued existence. 

hello, happy little man

no hands

lili sent this to me and we've been bumpin' it at worky work ever since. it's the new best thing

boy meets world

Mom, listen, I haven’t been together with Topanga for 22 years, but we have been together for 16. That’s a lot longer than most couples have been together. I mean, when we were born, you told me that we used to take walks in our strollers together around the block. When we were two, we were best friends. I mean, I knew everything about this girl. I knew her favorite color, her favorite food. Then we became six, Eric made fun of me because it wasn’t cool to have a best friend that was a girl or even know a girl. So for the next seven years I threw dirt at her. I like to call those “the lost years.”

stolen from here

festive ma

ma says last friday night her coworkers came over to the house with a bottle of jack daniels and a hookah pipe. when did her life becoming more exciting than mine?

i cycle la

you may remember that i attended cicLAvia last october. well it's that time of year again. yesterday bagel and i attended the first ciclavia of 2012. whereas last fall we drove to downtown with the bikes strapped to the car and started from there, this year we biked from bagel's house in culver city to the mcarthur park hub, then to downtown and over the fourth street bridge to boyle heights/east LA, where this time we ate indian food out of a food truck. naturally near the end of the day i lost bagel in the throng and ended up biking the eight miles back by myself and i lived to tell the tale.

About 100,000 cyclists and pedestrians participate in Ciclavia

i liked the community feel

idyllic land

mellifluous loudy

last week one of "the most internationally renowned Interior Designers" told me i have the speaking voice of a voice-over actor or a singer. wonderful news! i don't like the sound of myself talking but now i will add those to my list of back-up careers

when we made wontons

when we made wontons she kept tasting the raw pork to see if it was salty enough.

worky work

if i didn't stop to pet the cat and dogs on my way out every morning, maybe i wouldn't be late to work. speaking of work, it's become the coachella ticket black market, with about ten to fifteen tickets going on sale via e-mail announcement every day... i would go if i could get the time off but i can't in good conscience so i've decided to go next year, the same way i've decided for the past two years. also, stab at the keys on my telephone so hard that my tip of my index finger really hurts

custard pie

we ate a really big custard with a chewy cinnamon crust in costa mesa last saturday

social experiment

phone has decided not to work for me anymore. how long do you think i can live without one?
i'm going to go buy an alarm clock today.

never sorry

this year's sundance entry documentary on ai weiwei. need to watch.
he and i could have the same alma mater

we are no. two

well no surprises there

top ten

from here

animal style

last friday we had a half day at work and were released at 1 so we could all start celebrating passover. the weather was ideal for passover and i celebrated by spending the entire afternoon at in n' out in hollywood, eating a cheeseburger and fries in sunny sunshine. i talked to a boy who is playing at coachella in a band no one's ever heard of and he took off his bandages and showed me the big tattoo he's in the process of getting lasered off. it was medium rare.

yesterday on la brea and third i saw that someone had drawn burkas on the faces of all the women on the American Reunion movie poster.

new digs

1913 craftsman - living room and kitchen

да здравствует наша TITANIC

hotdog bread

i had a week's worth of individually-wrapped asian bakery breads that i'd planned on eating for breakfast, but i couldn't find them anywhere. i asked housemate1 if she'd seen my bread and she said no, but that housemate2 had reported finding lots of empty little plastic bags all over the kitchen floor.
woof.

half day

casual day is being enjoyed to the fullest.

gone fishin

fishin is tirin

happy thursday

party with rosa & liz

magic delivery

the universe must have known that i was irritable today and sent these

ta-dah

oh still alive

uugh just kill me now i'm having the pissiest worst mood day

maynguene banana

two weeks ago ma and i drove down to san diego for my sister-in-law's baby shower. i was indoctrinated into the society of women and their baby shower rituals. typical games include cutting lengths of string to guess the circumference of the belly and guessing what kind of food the baby food is supposed to be.

it's a cake ... made out of diapers ... of course

lying my head east of la cienega

it rained all of last night and today was beautiful beautiful beautiful. a beautiful day for moving. here's the welcoming crew -

clementine and jenner

Mar7

my mom has just recently started texting me.

water lice

my sea monkeys are so big now that they have faces and little mustaches. still waiting for the crowns.