April and I.

Oh, FINE: I need to get a job. I concede, I concede; I am not happy about it, but I will begin a serious search this week. I was so enjoying having more time for creativity, but it would appear that I am down to my last $200 of tax refunds, and will soon be flat broke. No more bumming around and trading used books and painting at whim for me--the rat race calls, loud and clear: it's time to get out there and perform my mad little tapdance for the Pied Piper once again.

At any rate, the past month of vacation has been, hands-down, the most blissful in my entire life--better than any summer vacation I had as a kid, and the only real break (longer than perhaps a week total) I've had since I started working every summer after school.
An commemorative (and admittedly self-absorbed) inventory of What I Did in April is in order, I think--yes. Ah, April, the times we had together.

In April, I read (at a leisurely pace for the first time in years) these books, which I'd never before read:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel,
The Aguero Sisters by Cristina Garcia,
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer,
Dubliners by James Joyce,
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi,
Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl, and
Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

I traveled through three states (Oregon, California, and Arizona) and saw a healthy chunk of the great American southwest; I camped in the cacti and the petroglyphs and the sequoias; I drove all the way up the California coast, listening to Andrew Bird with my Andrew-bird. And--as I've been planning for years and years--I finally recorded a travelogue and took tons of photos to document our road-tripping, roguish youthfulness and campsite bed-head.

I practiced karate at least three times (and often more) every week, learned three new katas, and am preparing for my next exam (at long last) after 9 months of absence from the dojo. (My friend John--also an English major at UO--practices with me every Monday in a massive, majestic, lofty ballroom that we found in a building on the U of O campus... going there, I feel like I'm in a museum or a castle in a much earlier time period. We train when nobody else is around; we found the one door that remains unlocked after hours.)

I finished a painting, got back into drawing, practiced sketching the undersides of hands, began developing a comic strip, created two stencils for urban artwork, and made a ridiculous scavenger hunt for Andy with a prize at the end (see earlier post).

I slept until ten almost every day, except on Saturdays, when I awoke regularly at the asscrack of dawn to commute to karate. And I dreamed as I haven't in years and years and years.

I started writing an epic novel, which already has an intricate skeleton of a plot---it's the first plot that's ever taken shape fully in my mind before beginning to write. I began the first chapter last night and so far it seems to have quite a lot of potential. We'll see.

I listened strictly to albums and artists that I hadn't given enough attention before. I sorted through my eight gigs of tunes and deleted some of the bands I've outgrown or associate with circumstances I'd rather not remember. And I sang wildly with Joni Mitchell in the car, as usual.

I visited my grandparents and took my Gram around the city, which she loved, as she can't drive or move around very well on her own. We rode on an ancient hand-pulley operated freight elevator in a furniture shop, which was actually rather terrifying; we shopped for flowers and got coffee from the Beanery in celebration of our survival.

I walked along Nye Beach at the Oregon Coast on a sunny day with Andy, and found a lost and confused elderly poodle, its concerned family, a huge China cap shell, and columns of tallies carved into a stone sea-cliff. I poked gently at the sticky sea anemones in the tide-pools; they're some of my favorite creatures ever. Later that day we went to the Devil's Punch Bowl and had some chowder at Moe's in Otter Rock, something we don't do often enough as Oregonians. The best part of having chowder at the Otter Rock Moe's is that it's in a windier, more exposed location than the bayfront Moe's, which makes the tiny restaurant cozier and the soup all the more comforting after you come in from the elements.

I'm sure there are wonderful things I've forgotten, but these are the best of the best. I feel really refreshed after this month--restored, rebuilt, and almost, but not quite, ready to go back to school again.
Now to do some laundry.

Thundereggs and bandoliers of bells...

It may seem laughable considering the sort of shite that I typically write in this blog, but I've concluded that I'm doomed to write an epic.
The epic elements simply won't stop appearing in my dreams... I would tell you about them, but to be honest, I am afraid to abbreviate or share any details for fear of losing them altogether. They have to be written in complete form and somehow (miraculously) interwoven into a cohesive whole. God help me, what an arduous process, but I'm starting to feel it's urgent... it's all building up and gaining momentum, and has been for years. Even weirder: lately I'm encountering all kinds of bizarrity in daily life that also demands to be included in the story, and I'm convinced that I'm running into this stuff for a reason. It all belongs.

I wanted to write one of those wry, witty postmodern novels that takes a character's mundane existence and makes it strangely extraordinary, but that's just not what my mind is inclined to produce at the moment, or possibly ever. My pockets are stuffed to the seams with epic elements--I seem to have spent all my life becoming equipped to write such a thing, but never fully recognized it until now. A childhood on horseback in the Oregon Coast range; reading books about Celtic shamanism; designing maps of imaginary places on rainy afternoons; bookshelves stocked with Le Guin and Tolkien and Lewis and L'Engle and Nix and Rowling and Konigsburg and Campbell and Spencer and Shakespeare; a house full of filial struggles; a strangely mystical aunt; an obsession with magical realism; encounters with ghosts in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse; training in martial arts and their history; education in English literature, folklore and mythology. It all adds up to something I never thought I'd write, but as it's been shouting insistently from the periphery for years, and I think it's time I confronted it.
The dream that I had last night is a good starting point.
Today I begin.

Origami fairy boots.

One of my fellow firefighters made a pair of these last summer, but was very secretive as to how she went about it. Today I set out to learn this frivolously delightful trick, and now I'm divulging it to you--so's you can be all suave-like the next time that cute waiter compliments you on your shoes.

This is the best way to leave a tip that I've ever seen; use a dollar or a five for the boot and slip any extra change inside. (Instructions can be found here and are user-friendly to the origami impaired. My first boot took me about three minutes.)

Platonic adj. 3. purely spiritual; free from sensual desire, esp. in a relationship between two persons of the opposite sex.

Even the brightest men apparently don't understand the definition of platonic relationships or comprehend the significance of my not being available either now nor in the long-term. Which is fucking frustrating, because before I sprouted hips, breasts and self-confidence (just a few short years ago), I always used to hang with boys--I couldn't deal with the baggage of my capricious fellow femmes, and typically sought refuge with the opposite sex instead. I've always easily befriended guys because conversations are generally honest, my hobbies are similar, I like the same sort of writers, and I don't (usually) have to deal with unnecessary drama. But now it appears the male-friend avenue is (at least temporarily) closing, because I find that (short of my friendships with John and Andrew and a few other brotherly or paternal or already-devoted men with heads on their shoulders,) men are invariably disappointed when I wave the white banner of "Friend But Nothing More." They get short and bitter and skulk away, and then things are awkward for months or years thereafter. It's classic.

The key, apparently, is to find those rare female friends who fit the following criterion*:
- don't bitch and backstab and bullshit,
- don't obsess about self-image,
and lastly,
- aren't attracted to me in any sexual manner. (Friends can be lesbian or bisexual or whatever; I couldn't care less, as long as they aren't interested in me that way. Which, for some reason, they often demonstrate themselves to be.
No, I don't get it either.)

*I know that typing this goes against the grain of every pro-feminist principle I generally preach, but the fact is that I do have trouble finding other women with whom I can connect without any superficiality. Suz is one of the only. And my surrogate sister, but I never see her anymore; she camps out in Zigzag.
She would be disgusted at me for writing this.

I'm disgusted that I'm compelled to write it, and that people can't just be chill about things and not expect more of me that I am willing to hand over.
Nobody needs that. It's shite.

Fortunately, I'm tight with most of the karate family (which has a few pretty cool new female members) and Andy's family (a riot) and some of the ladies in my graduate school teaching cohort (fellow geeky teacher girls), and they collectively redeem the rest of humanity in my mind.
But still: grumble.

Yesterday's and Today's Projects

(One) A "Goodbye and Good Luck" mix for Professor Walter:




(Two) Preparing stencils for some well-intended artistic mischief:

Woody Allen's profile (made from an image found on Cinematical.com; to be used by me for non-profit, no-credit, one-time-only property beautification exclusively):



Silhouette of a woman bathing (based upon, but not an exact replica of an image by artist Robin B. Fuller; also to be used by me for non-profit, no-credit, one-time-only property beautification exclusively):



I am searching for good photos to make stencil templates of Chas Tenenbaum and Max Fischer, but have yet to find anything with enough contrast. Keep yer eyes peeled for me, yes?
The world could always use a little more Chas.

The Passions of Neighbors.

Copied/pasted from the fabulous list section at McSweeney's:

Apparent Passions of
My Upstairs Neighbors.
BY GLENN LINGLE

- - - -

Moving furniture

Rolling bowling balls off of tables

Keeping time to music by beating a staff

Picking up anvils, and then dropping them

Riverdance


Applied to my own situation:

Apparent Passions of
My Strange Easterly Upstairs Neighbor
and The Disturbing Couple Downstairs.
BY NILLY

- - - -

Avidly practicing both clarinet and pipe organ in preparation for a career as a live elevator-muzak performer in Disneyland's Enchanted Castle.

Operating an underground daycare business for the care and feeding of semi-domestic rhinoceri. (Possibly trading them on the black market?)

Pursuing a world record title for "Most Days Spent Lurking Indoors With the Mini-Blinds Completely Closed." (And perhaps a second title for "Most Deprived of Vitamin D and Healthy Social Interaction.")

Having alarming domestic disputes** involving shouting and door-slamming competitions.

Participating in the Dance Dance Revolution (between aforementioned disputes).

**We called the cops once, because it sounded as though the woman was in physical danger. The disputes have been less severe ever since, but I still worry about weirdness going on downstairs. Whenever I hear something gnarly erupting from the netherlands, I stomp around the apartment loudly so that they know they're being distantly surveilled; it's the best I can do. Lately the woman has begun shouting back at the man, and I haven't heard any sounds of slamming or pursuit, so I think the situation is perhaps improving--but it's hard to tell. I keep tabs on them the best that I can, but don't want to get too involved, for obvious reasons.
Bit uncomfortable.

Here's the deal.

In case you haven't already noticed (baha!), I don't write for profundity. Not because I'm shallow or incapable of deep thought, but because I have a tendency to dive into years-long depressive slumps if I think too critically too often, and/or if I censor my creativity to produce only the sort of thing that others will find interesting, important, innovative, or any number of other multisyllabic words that begin with 'i.' I write compulsively, not for others' validation or personal catharsis, but to maintain my own little sense of homeostasis: what I produce is shaped by me, and in turn whatever I write reshapes and reifies my sense of internal being--even if it's just a list of mundane ideas that I flicker through while dozing off to sleep. While my blathering bloggery may not impact anyone but myself, and may not make a brazen world more golden at any socially significant level (as Sir Philip Sidney once claimed poesy is capable), writing and recording--even my pinkest and bluest and most simplistic thoughts--has a way of solidifying my life for me. Which is why I'm here, typing this shite on a daily basis.
This shite which I so love to type.
Any bit of writing has the potential to germinate into something much larger and more beautiful than itself; there's no sense in self-censorship for audience approval. Write it all, I say.
Write anything.

A scavenger hunt!

Because he redeems me, makes me laugh, and keeps me sane, warm, and well-fed, (and because he's away from the flat for the first time in about a week,) I am putting together a scavenger hunt for Andy. Observe my nerdy clues, written in obnoxious, loose limerick form, poking fun at formal old English. (Evidence that I have far too much time on my hands.)
(Disclaimer: yes, I know that one shouldn't use terms like "that there" or "this here." Don't much care in this case.)

On the front door:

Some portly young leprechauns
Came by today
To make mystery and mischief
Whilst thou wert away.
We barged into your flat
And made pancakes and tea,
Then we drank all your whiskey--
'Twas a raucous party.
In the wake of our gluttonous, riotous time
We leprechauns left thee a wee likkle rhyme.
Decipher the clues and find photographs too
We hope the reward will make up for our crime.
You'll find clue number one in the Mango Ceylon,
Which after our visit, is mysteriously gone.

Clue #1 (in Mango Ceylon tea cannister; not much of a limerick at all...):
This sonnet quoth famously,
"Summer's lease hath all too short a date."
A white-spined book and the number eighteen
Will lead you to your fate.

Clue #2 (enclosed in sonnet 18 of my book of Shakespeare's sonnets):
This date, not so near
Marked on calendar clear
Is not just for hobgoblins or werewolves that leer...
It's also the start of the Celtic new year
When you run around nude and drink flagons of beer.
(Find it in the loo and you'll be of good cheer.)

Clue #3 (written on bathroom calendar on the date of October 31st):
For this here third clue
All that you need to do
Is Whisk (tm) thee on Down(y) (tm)
All smiley, no frowny
To this veritable shrine of smelly-good goo.
Unlock to reveal what's in stor(ag)e for you.
A pony? A planet? A spiffing fourth clue?
A Lorax? A mail-order bride dressed in blue?

Clue #4 (in locked laundry room cupboard)- a polaroid photo of my hand:
Hands come in pairs
As you're well aware
If Nicole went to bed
To rest her weary head
This hand and its match would lay where?

Clue #5: (under bedcovers where my left hand would be) - another polaroid of my hand pointing out the bedroom window:
If I were you I'd wander
Down that there sidewalk yonder...
I'd find a noble creature, blue
Whose markings told me what to do.

Clue #6: (on a blue chalk-drawn elephant wearing an ornament bearing a Volkswagen symbol, with arrows pointing at its trunk):
Go here, my dear.

Clue #7: (in trunk of my VW Golf)
The prize: a healthy plant of living basil (which Andy loves to cook with) in a large hand-painted terra-cotta pot, hand illustrated in detail by me. And a 6-pack of IPA, because Andy is a hoppy sort of beer aficionado (in a respectable sort of way).

My little prank may be cheesy as all get-out, but I think he'll get a kick of it. Andy is that rare sort of person--unconventional, funny, tolerant of my weirdness, just different and similar enough to fit the bill perfectly for me. He makes me laugh so much that I get hiccups on a daily basis; I am ass over teakettle for him.
As of July of this year, we'll have been together for three years. The future's looking bright.

45 minutes to Z.

Studies indicate that the average, well-rounded individual falls asleep at night after approximately 7.5 minutes of lying awake.
Meanwhile, basketcases like me can take six times (or more) as long to finally doze off. Short of reading an extraordinarily stuffy Victorian-era novel until my eyes finally cross (props to you, Henry James), I generally have trouble finding ways to stupify my brain into submissive somnolence after dark. Night is when the factory of my meager intellect finally kicks into a full creative swing, and once it does, almost nothing can shut it off. Conversations--usually in English, sometimes in broken, Hebrew-strewn German--fabricate or replay in my mind; fantastic screenplay lines pop into my head, demanding to be scribbled into the margins of some notebook before they're reworked too much or forgotten. I wonder about people I've lost contact with, and wonder even more about people I'm close to or wish I was close to. Ideas rattle, ricochet, reverberate, scream to be realized on a canvas or on the page, but damn it, I have to sleep instead. Society simply isn't designed by or for nocturnals... if it had been, architecture would probably look like something from Six By Seuss, vendors would be selling birdseed shirts on every street corner, and sleeping time would be scheduled between 1 and 7 pm. But I digress.

In the past couple of years I've discovered that repetitive thought processes enable me to knock myself out in record time, even on my most restless nights. So here, for your entertainment (or, you know, what-have-you) I'll outline some of the frighteningly simplistic and childish prompts that I use to sedate myself on a weekly basis. Brace yourselves, it might get ugly.

1. If I could invite ten literary characters to a dinner party, which would I choose?
Not too original or difficult, but tough to recount without dozing off: just you try.
2. If it was one of those staged "murder" dinner parties, which character would I force myself to kill off?
Always tough when one must consider the following factors: the character's social/political/historical significance in contrast to other characters; whether s/he would be difficult to do away with (any magical powers? fabulous muscles?); the indirect effects that might be inflicted upon other literary works if chosen character had never existed, etc.
3. If I could have an honest, in-depth discussion with any five women in history, who would I choose to meet?
These seem to change depending on mood, but I find that Virginia Woolf and Margaret Sanger are almost always in my top five. (Usually J.K. Rowling is, as well, because I am actually a ten-year-old in a 22-year-old's body.)
3a. I apply this question to male specimens too, but find that men are considerably more difficult because of the breadth and popularity of their works throughout our patriarchy-informed history. The pickings are less slim, so my list requires more and more revision. I rarely make it to ten without drifting off.
4. What would various Oregon landscapes look like if I were severely color blind?
5. Do colors really appear the same to each individual, and can this really be determined by comparative testing using a color wheel? (I am fairly certain not.) Similarly, is taste interpretation really all that similar between individuals?
In short, is my hex color #CC3399 your #CC3399, and is

my snickerdoodle
your snickerdoodle ? A completely pseudo-philosphical question, perhaps, but I sometimes wonder. Taste and other senses, preferences, and interpretations seem so dependent upon individual experiences and associations that I personally doubt whether any one snickerdoodle (same batch, same recipe, same cookie) tastes exactly the same to two people. (Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart... your spice cake will never conquer the world.)

Alternately, because I've spent far too many years in various art or English departments, to lull myself to sleep I also:
6. Rename friends and family members or myself. Sometimes my renamings have themes: what would this person be named if s/he were a character in an epic tale or a low-budget 80's soap opera? If s/he were a bestselling author with a pseudonym? If s/he were a member of the opposite sex?
7. Decide whether various people I know would have been cast as hobbits, orcs, elves, or men if they were extras in the Lord of the Rings films. Always a good time, although occasionally I wake my boyfriend (definitely a hobbit, in looks and mannerism) by laughing at the verdicts.
8. Come up with an A-Z list of authors or book titles, sometimes by genre (although they tend to get patchy toward the end of the alphabet).
9. Consider the authors, books, themes, multimedia elements, and artistic projects I want to use while teaching my high school class (all truly enthusiastic teachers probably obsess about this sort of thing).

I'm not sure whether this sort of mindless hypnosis works for everyone, but it certainly does for me*. I always wonder what other peoples' responses to the questions would be... sometimes, just pondering that will knock me out. If I'm really tired, anyway.

So concludes this rambling bizarrity; time now for some exercise.





* I used to try reviewing katas (karate forms) in my head before falling asleep, but my heart rate actually increased instead of slowing down. Perhaps I'm more aggressive than I thought.

Andrew Bird in Ghana?

I admit, as far as mixes go it's kind of shite. Actually it breaks a few of my personal mix-making rules: I use multiple songs from the same artist and album; I end with a song that closes its original album; I cheat, in short. And, (AND,) I transplant a lot of tracks from M. Ward's Post War, arguably his most bubblegummy and overly-polished album. (I love it anyway, say what you will; sometimes bubblegum works for me. Might as well be honest.)
So yeah, I know. Not fantastic. Barry from High Fidelity would give me crap for it. But nevertheless, here's a report of what emerged:

1. Andrew Bird - A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left
2. Fruit Bats - Silent Life
3. M. Ward - Requiem
4. Paul Simon - I Know What I Know
5. Talking Heads - Wild Wild Life (yeah, yeah.)
6. The White Stripes - My Doorbell (for shame. It IS catchy though... so very catchy... spasm)
7. Sufjan Stevens - The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders
8. Micah P. Hinson - Letter from Huntsville
9. Cat Stevens - Tuesday's Dead
10. M. Ward - Chinese Translation
11. The Beatles (from the Naked album) - Two of Us
12. Andrew Bird - Masterfade
13. The Shins - The Past and Pending

Conservative and even weak, perhaps, but listenable nevertheless; the songs are at least juxtaposed and blended well--not bad for 40 minutes' fiddling. Next time I'll use more variation. I'm having a real issue finding very many female-fronted bands that I actually like, which becomes increasingly evident every time I mix something and look at the lineup. [Boy, man, boy, man, boy, Bowie, boy...]

Looks like this one may accompany my friend to Ghana.
It's a wild, wild life.

Stephen Malkmus in Africa

My silly little hipster mix--with tracks from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, the Decemberists, the Shins, Neutral Milk Hotel, and others--was the only music that my friend remembered to take on her 2004 Peace Corps journey to war-torn Chad,

the primary destination of Darfur refugees fleeing the Sudanese government's genocide campaign, and the current site of further conflict and attacks (toward both refugee Darfurans and native Chadians) by the Sudanese.
It's astounding to think that the same mix I listened to while driving to the grocer's served as her single musical soundtrack to four months over there. Upon her return, she told me that she still listens to it. I wonder whether her musical memory is as photographic as mine, and what kinds of images those songs might recall for her. (Certainly nothing as neutral and mundane as sitting at the stoplight on Circle Boulevard or driving past the OSU Dairy--my own memories of the mix.)

She'll be at karate sometime this week. I think I'll make a new mix for happier times in happier places. I'll post the final list later.

Word or phrases that I hate, letters A through D.

In alphabetical order, subject to revision.

1. Adult, but only when pronounced "ADD-ult" (usually by some self-important, middle-aged asshat). Yes, I recognize that it might very well be the proper pronunciation of the word--"adverb" and "adjective" are both stressed on the first syllable, after all--but for some reason, "ADD-ult" just sounds pompous, and it has always irritated the hell out of me, inciting rebellious responses that regularly resulted in my being grounded as a teenager.
2. Anal, as in the phrase, "I am an anal sort of person; I'm always analyzing other people." Why? Because in my mind, it instantly superimposes an image of a large, naked derriere over the top of the self-proclaimed "anal" person's face. And because my father used to tell me, all through my childhood, that I was "being too anal," and I always thought he was calling me an asshole in more polite terms. (He probably thought that as well, but that's beside the point.)
3. Asinine, because it needs one more S and people have a tendency to misuse it in the process of insulting others.
4. Blowout. As in "$9.99 or under DVD blowout!" Because it's flatulent, that's why; it is a fart of a word.
5. Blow past. As in "We'll just blow past Albany and head toward Portland." Disliked for the same reason mentioned above.
6. Caboodle. Because if you ever use it (except in a very well-written satirical skit), it instantly lowers your I.Q. at least ten points. Fifteen points, if you go the whole hog and say "kit-and-caboodle."
7. Dank. A number of years ago, some young rapscallion (a fool my age) tried to appropriate this term for "unpleasantly cool and humid" to mean something along the lines of "cool" (in the social sense of the word). The original perpetrator of this heinous mutilation of the English language should, perhaps, be confined to a dungeon somewhere in Western Europe, to come to grips with the real definition of the word s/he so cruelly offended.
Alright, a little extreme perhaps. It's just a term that makes my skin crawl--I feel instant pangs of embarrassment for anyone who ever says it; they sound ridiculous. Fortunately I haven't heard anyone use "dank" for over a year now, so it must be withering on the vine.
Just like this post.

Despised words and phrases, E through Whatever, will have to wait until some other stormy afternoon. I know you wait with bated breath... I mean, few things are more stimulating than posts like this...
Some days I'm not sure why I bother to write at all.

Why not read these fabulous Wikipedia articles instead?
+ Take a nostalgic stroll through Rocko's Modern Life (the best Nickelodeon cartoon to date, topping even Spongebob Squarepants, in my opinion).
+ Find items of interest concerning Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (Scroll down to read a speculative list of real people with whom various characters supposedly correspond.)
+ Become an expert on Scottish Loch monsters. (Nessie is just one of many, apparently: weekend kayaking enthusiasts of Scotland, beware.)
Or maybe you'd like to
+ Indulge your inner pagan by studying about Samhain, the bizarre Celtic holiday lurking behind corporate America's Halloween. (It was the shit, evidently.)
Or more likely, I'm the only person on the face of the planet who reads Wikipedia for fun.

A miracle! It rises again!

Remember the last tragic installment in which my constant companion Ipod met a hideous, hydrous demise? Well ignore all of that, kids, because today I witnessed a true (if minor) Easter miracle, a second resurrection of sorts. Today when I took the Ipod out of the windowsill, not only did I discover that the half-gallon of water trapped beneath the screen had completely dried out, but also, the thing could actually turn on (absolutely amazing) without administering an eyebrow-charring electric shock (even more amazing). I plugged it into a wall charger, and after a few moments of nerve-wracking buzzing and processing, my old friend was clicking contentedly through my music as though nothing had ever happened; it works perfectly, backlight and all, despite the fact that it experienced an internal electrical storm just three or four days ago.
Apple, I am mystified by your technological prowess. I shall never doubt again.
Perhaps in the spirit of Easter, this day of ultimate resurrection, I should hereafter refer to my Ipod as "Little Jesus."
But that would probably be un-PC.

RIP, my drowned Ipod friend(?)

A tragedy has occurred involving a leaky Cyclone water bottle, a plastic shopping bag, and my longstanding old-school Ipod companion. I won't give many of the gory details, just the following:
1) The water bottle sure did look closed to me... but on closer inspection, I realize that it leaks, despite the fact that it is new and supposedly leak-proof. (Way to go, Cyclone water bottle people, way to go.)
2) The Ipod now has water beneath the screen and made some bizarre electrical popping noises when my housemate here accidentally turned it on. (Way to go, housemate, way to go.)
3) The four dollar water bottle has now (most probably) destroyed my $120-equivalent 20 gig Ipod, which has lived with me in six different places and been through at least a dozen different states, babied and beloved until its sudden demise.
4) Unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable.

I've propped my old friend in the window, trying to dry him out, but I think he's done for, kids. Shittity brickity. This summer I'll have to replace him with some money borrowed from the federal government (for school and survival necessities: music is certainly a necessity, if you ask me). But for the present moment, I think I'll curl into a fetal position and be ill all day at my stupidity and the incompetence of water bottle manufacturers. I might as well have just thrown a liter of water into that bag--so much for a tight-seal cap.
So yeah, cool.

But at least it's a beautiful day out, and I'm in love, and karate is the ultimate of ultimately great things.

Postcard from the Califiornia Coast

1. Postcard from the California Coast, 2. Steinbeck's Cannery Row, 3. The Giants, 4. Andy at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Mosaic made with FD's Flickr Toys.

Postcard (and notebook entry) from the California coast:

After driving back through the desert and miraculously surviving (in a completely gutless Volkwagen Golf) the 90-mile-an-hour, smog-smothered interstate that races through LA and surrounding urban sprawl, Andy and I finally made it to California Highway 1, a sleepy, winding road that clings precariously to the edge of the continent and overlooks the Pacific. After mailing some postcards from Hollywood (in the relatively-dead hours of the night), we drove northward, finally stopping in Ventura, a strange, sandy little hub that attracts both uppercrust souvenir-shopping tourists and beach bumming, dog loving, no-shoes-no-shirt surfer culture. After a blissful shower and good night's rest in a classy Hotel 6, Andy and I walked around town, ate lunch in a little hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant with electric pink painted walls ("Yasmin's": I recommend), and admired the assortment of vintage hotel and business signs that the town has apparently made an effort to preserve (they were everywhere, retro-fabulous and photo-worthy). After lunch we unwittingly wandered down the street into the cacophony and chaos known as "The Retarded Childrens' Thrift Shop," a hip--if slightly grungy--Goodwill-like establishment that was completely packed with shoppers and cheap thrills (most stuff was between $1.95 and $3.95). I found a short coral colored dress to wear over jeans, and a couple of tanktops that turn me into a strawberry-blonde Amelie Poulain sort of character. In short, politically incorrect name aside, The Retarded Childrens' Thrift Shop is worth a stop if you're near the Ventura area and have a penchant for thrifting (as I do). Additionally, the store's "Price is Right"-reminiscent public announcements--given in English and then Spanish by two different, but equally enthusiastic and tasteless spokesmen--are priceless. Fly there, children--go!--and see for yourselves.

We didn't stay long in Ventura, opting instead to head farther northward toward San Luis Obispo--a gorgeous (and clearly moneyed) little city nestled alongside Morrow Bay. Since most of the surrounding parklike areas seem to be on fenced, private property, there wasn't a ton to see or do in San Luis Obispo, aside from setting up camp at a BLM area: we pitched our tent at a ridiculously expensive campsite by the bay, barbequed massive hamburgers and fresh corn, ate California oranges, took tacky Polaroid pictures, sipped coffee and Bailey's late into the night, and read books by lantern light (most excellent). I finished Yann Martel's Life of Pi (which has an incredible and heartwrenching conclusion) and began Christina Garcia's The Aguero Sisters, keeping in line with my plan to read at least one book per week during my stint between undergrad and graduate school. Not that you'll care, but I have to write about it nevertheless. I'm compulsive like that.

More on Cannery Row and Monterey Bay later, and then I'll conclude this (likely boring) roadtrip-writing madness.

Postcard from Tucson, Arizona

1. Fuzzy Postcard from Tucson, 2. DOÑA mural in Tucson, AZ, 3. Pima County Courthouse, Tucson, 4. Tucson Rainbow Parking Garage

Mosaic made with FD's Flickr Toys.

Postcard (and notebook entry) from Tucson:
It is colorfulcolorfulcolorful here, in both business districts and residential areas. Purple and orange stucco apartments with lime green tile roofing! A skyscraper with one solid wall of navy blue, turquoise, and aquamarine bricks! (They look like sparkling ceramic tiles; maybe they are.) A rainbow colored parking garage, better by far than the entire Disneyland themepark! Even the city courthouse is bright and cheerful--towering tall and made of light pink stucco, it vaguely resembles a gaudily-decorated, strawberry flavored wedding cake (in the best possible sort of way). I plan to haunt it in my afterlife: it is that cool.

In short, the popping colors and slanty, sparse, or Moorish/Spanish-inspired architecture of this city make it look like the artistic lovechild of Dr. Seuss, Antonio Gaudi, and Frank Lloyd Wright. It's not just the buildings that make the city so amazing, either--artists, writers and musicians have made Tucson their own little Arizonan hub, and something intriguing and photo-worthy awaits around every corner. Alleyways and brick walls are embellished with the most intricate and bold murals I've ever seen--some clearly graffiti-inspired, all with a unique, sophisticated twist on the ordinary. On one wall of the Chicago Music shop, a lifelike portrait of Miles Davis trumpets a stream of colorful tags; on the wall of a nearby shop, an airbrushed 1950's-style woman stitches a patchwork of mural around herself (see the mosaic above). Tile mosaics are also common here: they decorate the walls below overpasses and the frames around doors, and in the primarily Latino district of town, tile is often used to create shimmering shrines for the Virgin Mother.

Food and thriftshopping here are also fabulous in the small, non-big-boxish downtown area. A lot of shopkeepers and restaurant staff apparently take a standard siesta at around 1:00 to 3:00, and re-open later, when the hottest time of the day has passed. This means that many little shops are open fairly late into the evening, which just plain blew my little northwestern mind away, by golly. (Night life? What's that?) At around 8:00, when Andy and I were going to dinner, the streets were literally bustling with shoppers, diners, and early bar-goers. Several excellent, quirky little thriftshops were open, their window displays garish and wonderful, their shelves packed with vintage fedoras, suit jackets, funky skirts, blouses from the 60's and 70's, and outlandish wigs and sunglasses. We browsed through a couple of them before meandering a few blocks down the street to a Guatemalan restaurant (delightful, generously portioned, and affordable, the first Guatemalan food that we'd ever tasted). I wish I could remember the names of these places I so strongly recommend. Damn.

In the morning we went to a little cafe called "A Shot in the Dark," which featured magenta and orange walls, exposed wooden ceiling beams, and rough artwork from "the regulars" posted above its funky little dinette tables. The coffee was strong, the omelettes spicy and gargantuan. A friendly dude behind the counter went into an impassioned and well-informed rant about the pros and cons of the Starbucks Coffee corporation, to which I wanted to applaud; meanwhile, a realistic graphite drawing of Harrison Ford, circa "The Empire Strikes Back," smiled sarcastically from one wall near the cash register. As we had breakfast, two regulars came in, either talking about a gay Ball or an in-progress screen production (hard to tell, but interesting either way). Five gold stars to A Shot in the Dark: go there, if you go to Tucson.

We intended to head for Santa Fe following Tucson, but massive desert windstorms (50+ m.p.h. winds) threatened to overturn our tent; it would have been rough going. As an alternative, we decided to head westward to the California coast, driving up Highways 1 and 101 to see what could be seen.
More details with the next postcard.

Postcard from Saguaro National Park, Arizona

1. Postcard from Saguaros, 2. "Stop, Rest, Worship", 3. Painted Rock Petroglyphs in AZ, 4. Painted Rock Petroglyphs in AZ

Mosaic made with FD's Flickr Toys.

Postcard from Saguaros (in tiny, almost indecipherable handwriting):
We picked up this postcard at a dusty little roadside stand in Quartzsville--it looked like those funky, colorful little souvenir/trinket shops that you see scattered along the Yucatan, and it sold everything from car-parts to tiny animals carved from stone. Feeling sheepishly tourist-ish, I bought some cards and a $2.00 fedora-like sun hat that makes me look like an extra from an Indiana Jones movie. A lot of the venders seemed like they could have used some sun hats as well--most of them were leathery and rough-looking, visibly eroding just like their standstone surroundings. Yipes.
This morning we drove along I-90 through a hundred miles of Saguaro-speckled desert, a sight that was endlessly intriguing in contrast to Oregon's more predictable green landscape (although I don't think I'd want to live here after Oregon and Montana--far too harsh and hot and prickley overall). In the middle of nowhere, along the roadside before Yuma, we drove past a little white handpanted sign with formal, gothic-style text, reading "Stop, Rest, Worship." Just beyond it, in the middle of a rocky, barren field, there nestled a tiny white church (probably car-sized) with a dramatic gable stabbing skyward. It was so out of place in the landscape that I had to stop and take a picture (which is here, top right, but ont very clear). Unfortunately, just as I was snapping the photo (in full Indiana Jones regalia, no less), the church's god-fearing residents drove past (in a large white suburban, of course) to pick up their mail. I smiled and waved apologetically but received only stern looks.
Oh well.


More detail:
The bottom two photos in the mosaic are of Arizona's Painted Rock monument, located approximately 90 miles southwest of Phoenix, Arizona. These petroglyphs, near an area that was formerly a river-bed, were carved several centuries ago by native Americans, and some were further modified as pioneers passed through the area in the mid-1800s. If you view the stones from the northeast, you can read pioneers' graffiti (such as "Ed was here, 1855"). Much more interesting are the natives' depictions of animals, cycles and spirals, and humans; you can see some in these photos.
Andy and I camped in this desert on BLM land. We had barbequed bratwursts and corn for dinner and sat out under the moon and stars... the temperature never dipped below 65 degrees.
Glorious.

More, from Tucson, later.