| I keep taunting you with digitized LPs. Sorry. I am working on a playlist right now, which typically is a glacial process. But you can expect at least the Streisand cover of "Life on Mars." Which I finally heard, because I found a copy of "Butter Fly" for 25 cents at a thrift store, in a box packed solid with Bette and Barbra and Liza and Aretha. (Poor Aretha.)
Which shouldn't be covered by anyone, because unless you wrote it, you won't be able to understand it and you'll sound like you're just singing a bunch of sounds. And that's what she does. She learned it like a parrot, which, since it's a song that defies analysis, everyone does. There are no clues to origin and it makes no sense, except for an emotional sense. Irrational, intangible sense, when it doesn't come directly from you personally, is really hard to nail. It is uncoverable! I don't know why you'd choose that song of all songs. I swear this song is part of an elaborate, surrealist prank. I forgive it because it's a good song. But please, nobody try to cover it unless you somehow manage to out-surreal it. It's the only way, is to be absurd. (And once the kindergarten rhythm band from Holland has done singing the random sounds you've taught them, and put down the maracas, and the orchestra is fading, make sure you mutter some studio chat to the tinkly pianist over the fade. Much more authentic.)
I mean, I get that it's about alienation. However. You can say that about anything David Bowie ever wrote or worked on. It's like you should always answer "hubris" when you're talking about literature. It's the specifics that will get you in a puzzle. | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment   |
| Okay, I was joking. Maybe I am not myself. It's summer, the worst time of the year, what did I expect? Anyway, I am still listening.
All I got today is, Victor, welcome to the city.
Also, I was at the Musee Mecanique today (avoiding my landlord-- first I drank coffee in the Starbucks at Church/Duboce, where I go because it has very intense A/C, and I did math problems, because I am slowly prepping for the GRE, and then I went to the library, and then I went to the mechanical museum. Obviously. This is what I do on my days off. Also, groceries) and played easy bowling (the auto ball return is a serious pinch-point hazard and it's exactly at little kid hand height) and skeeball (I suck at skeeball, anyone got tips? It's one of the cheaper games) and the music boxes, and also the sharpshooter game. I love the sharpshooter game. It's an airgun that shoots marbles at tin moving targets. The compressor is slower than the trigger so there's a time delay, and the sight is high by about an inch and a half, and the score thing doesn't work, and probably all that is why I like it! It's a challenge. Very satisfying thwack as the marbles hit, too. Ten thousand times better than a video equivalent. I love it when tourists watch me practice. Yes, it's gotten to the point where I blow a couple dollars every week or two on this thing. I'm getting good, too, aiming with my far eye and tracking the 40-pt moving fox. Or knocking down every squirrel. It's a sickness.
Doing this, it occurred to me that I would never buy a car if someone gave me $2000. First I would pay what remains of my debt, then I would save some, and then I would either get a metal-typer or a player piano. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| You know, I've figured out why people don't understand frame sizes. It's not just poor spacial sense. It's the clothing industry.
People shop for clothes more than they shop for framing. (That is, if you're not me.) Clothing sizes are not based on reality. So someone may see 16X20 and assume that it either runs small or that you can squeeze in a little extra if you have to, or leave the back off, or something...when in fact this is not the case.
People are merely trained to see numerical sizes as fudgeable. This does not make my life easier. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| WHY HELLO THERE
Some guys filming a nature doc come upon a giant octopus, who immediately gets in the presenter's personal space.
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| Q: How do I press a penny so that the date/Lincoln's profile shows on the reverse?
A: Face Lincoln away from the crank handle on manual crank machines; on electric machines, you pray. I have yet to try facing Lincoln to the side opposite the die press in an electric machine. It's kind of a crapshoot however you do it; many machines have a chute leading to the roller instead of it just sliding in there, so I would assume it's like flipping a coin but with the odds slightly in your favor.
Q: How do you poke a hole in the penny? Say, if I wanted to make a charm bracelet.
A: Damned if I know. Anyone? Is this a good excuse to buy a Dremel? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Pros and Cons of living without readily available TV
1) The News
Pro: Not having the watch the news
Con: Not being able to make fun of newscasters (without prior planning)
Pro: If I want to know about something, the Internet is always the better choice
Con: The Internet can be equally repetitive and fear-mongering as is the news channel, and it's harder to find specific local information
Pro: If I want to watch something in real time, like an election or event, I can go to a bar or restaurant and watch with people. Or I can ask others around me, fostering social contact.
Con: I don't want extended social contact with many of the people around me, so this is best used in small doses.
2) There's nothing good on
Pro: I don't turn to TV for entertainment; there's always StumbleUpon, and failing that, I make my own fun. This is why I have roughly nine thousand hobbies including Esperanto, learning to gild, and making my own pasta.
Con: Sometimes bad TV is kind of good, and it's hard to predict what's bad enough to be good.
Pro: If I actually want to watch something, I borrow, rent, buy, or steal a copy of it from wherever, and watch it on my own time, without commercials, with or without interruptions.
Con: It's hard to find weird stuff like local access TV, international music videos, or wacked-out religious programming any way other than flipping around the channels at 3 in the morning.
Con: What happens when I run out of Twilight Zone dvds at the library? I have no idea what to watch next; chance is not on my side.
3) Watching TV with others is way better than alone
Pro: More and better social time without TV
Con: Missing out on making fun of newscasters as a group, which is a wonderful, wholesome, hilarious pastime
4) No commercials
Pro: No commercials.
Con: No common ground with people who do watch TV. I have no idea what they are talking about.
Pro: I already have no idea what folks are talking about outside of a few narrow topics in pop culture, so I have turned this into an opportunity to do a good deed and encourage someone else to talk about themselves. It boosts the self-esteem of others. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Jiminy. Has it been this long? I just got my head above water. Thanks, sertraline. Enjoying things beyond the relief of the instinct to survival really is keen.
I had the day to myself so I went and availed myself of as many smashed penny souvenir machines as I could find on Fisherman's Wharf, in order to add yet another item to the list of Extremely Stupid Things I Collect (smahed pennies, marbles, knives functioning and not, vinyl that other people don't want like school bands and choruses, Red Rose Tea animals, fortune cards and fortunes from cookies, bus tokens, ride and fair tokens-- to pay for my trip across the river Styx, obviously, why would Charon take normal money?-- art glass paperweights, windup toys, Edward Gorey- illustrated editions of John Bellairs books, Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks with the horrible photos of horrible food circa 1975 and prior, paper dolls, extremely specific promotional cloisonne pins and badges, working and nonworking foutain pens and fountain pen components, reusable tote bags from obscure grocery stores. Etc.) Then I ate bad Chinese food and went home to draw. I found that the landlord had fixed our sink in my absence. Calloo callay.
Somehow I never expected adulthood to rise to such heights of excellence. Thanks for bearing with me while I went on an extended bout of inability to be funny. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| YouTube roundup! I so rarely do this, but it's worth it when I do, if I do say so myself. Lately I've been feeling musical, which will have future repurcussions for you, the reader, when I finally get my record-player-USB-hookup running. (Hope you like harmonicas.)
( Read more... ) | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Hey! Bored? In the city on Monday night? Join me at Moscone Center at 6PM to protest revisions to the DSM-IV that characterize sexually- and gender-variant people as disordered! It'll be such fun!
Objectionable language includes:
Paraphilia could be defined as:
"any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, consenting adult human partners."
Phenotypically normal, eh? In that case, I'd be shit out of luck. Also, what if you enjoy fondling beyond what a jury of your peers would consider preparatory? Welcome to the wonderful world of perversion! Water's fine!
See also, a smarter person than myself: http://www.feministing.com/archives/015254.html | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Dammit, I can't figure out what French for "spork" is. I suspect there is no word other than le spork, similar to les blue-jeans or je suis trop speed. But if there's an equivalent spoon-fork contraption in France (or Canada, or Africa, I'm not particular), and if people talk about it, by god I want to know what they're saying. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| * This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
* Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
* This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
* What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
* The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
* The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
* The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
* The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
* The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
See also: http://downlode.org/Etext/WIPP/ | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Christy: Sorry, I thought your door was open because you were awake.
Me: No, it's okay, I got up early to pee and it must not have shut all the way. I'm up now though. Also, I had a bad dream about coyotes getting in the house and eating a kitten. I know we don't have coyotes in the house but I had to get up and count the kittens.
Christy: Oh, the coyotes. They're terrible! It's like an infestation.
Me: I don't know what we're gonna do!
Christy: It's all due to me leaving the front door open again. Too bad about the kittens.
Me: I know. And I can't leave anything on the counter anymore, they get it in like .4 seconds.
Christy: Mainly, we eat out now. I can't wait to call the landlord about the coyote problem. That was the last thing we were expecting.
Me: I know. "Ray, we tried everything in our legal power to remove the coyotes...."
Christy: "...if you make no good faith effort to quell the infestation, we'll be forced to withhold rent."
Me: I think they're in the walls. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I keep seeing this, and it keeps driving me nuts. I know I'm going to go to someone's house, and they're going to find out I like Beardsley, and ask me what they think of their poster....
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Hamlet-Illustration-Posters_i2850884_.htm
So I decided I might as well write an email.
To Whom It May Concern at Allposters.com:
Item #: 2850884 is listed as a work by Aubrey Beardsley, but to the best of my knowledge, it is not. It is a work by John Austen, whose illustrations are very similar to Beardsley's, but he is not the same artist. The print listed as Item #: 2850884 comes from an illustrated edition of Hamlet published in 1922 by Dutton. This may or may not have ramifications for Allposters.com in terms of copyrights, etc. I am certain that Allposters.com is invested in bringing art and accurate information about art and artists to its customers, and would be interested in correcting this listing to give credit where credit is due.
Aubrey Beardsley never illustrated an edition of Hamlet, though one of his early celebrated drawings, "Hamlet Patris Manem Sequitur" can be seen in several reference books of his work (my current reference is "The Art of Aubrey Beardsley" by Catherine Slessor, 1989 Quintet Publishing Limited, ISBN 1-55521-449-5.) It looks nothing like Item #: 2850884 and in fact is in a similar style to that of Burne-Jones. Beardsley's influence on artists was significant-- significant enough that works created long after his life ended are credited to him (and not just by Allposters.com.)
I regret that I cannot locate an online copy of the image listed as Item #: 2850884 with its proper citation, but here is some information on John Austen,
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Biographies/MainBiographies/A/Austen/Austen.htm
Note, in particular, the "Dramatis Personae" page which uses the same style of drawing and title font.
I appreciate the wide selection of art available for purchase in many forms on Allposters.com, and would welcome both more Aubrey Beardsley and "Beardsleyesque" selections from artists like John Austen, Harry Clarke, Baresford Egan, Alastair, Mahlon Blaine, Austin Spare, Jessie M. King, Dorothy P. Lathrop, and so forth. Thank you for providing your usual high level of service, attention, and accuracy-- a gift to art appreciators everywhere.
sincerely,
Katherine R. Coffey | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Ok. So, in a complete reversal of every year for quite some time, I am NOT cooking on Thanksgiving. Anyone who wants to go in on delivery-takeout and hang out, you're welcome to join me. I'm thinking Indian food, and I have a bottle of dealcoholized Chardonnay to share.
I went to an intake appointment, finally, with the people who treat queer etc. peoples for cheap. I'm on a waiting list, which is slightly more productive than where I was, which was just not having an opportunity to get there and get someone to play "20 Questions: Embarassing Edition!" A nice young man asked me lots of questions and wrote things on a clipboard. (He was surprised. Apparently I was told to show up for the youth-with-substance-abuse-problems timeslot, and I really, really, demonstratively do not have a substance abuse problem. Don't worry, nice young man, I have plenty of other problems.)I don't think I'm a youth, but they seem to think so, and if it's cheaper, then I'm happy to go with it.
I still hate my job. In addition to everything, they fully expect me to work off the clock. So I applied at 7 new places last week. No callbacks.
We've had a couple batches of cats but lost 2 in quick succession(3 if you count the one in kitten hospital who has problems more serious than we could take care of.) I do have pictures, but I can't be bothered to post them at this time. (Or really, to post anything else. It's not you, it's me!) It was a horrible intestinal problem related to coronavirus, strikes fast and is uncurable. The three left are doing fine. The littlest one has a face like a little black bat. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
|
I have a good memory for photographs. Perhaps the comparison is a little apples-to-oranges, but I think the point is still reasonable.
The good news is, I feel very unreasonable, I have nothing better to do than fight this, and very little to lose.
I was going to learn to knit or something, but now I guess I have to go picket some churches or something. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I promised I wouldn't post unless I could be mildly funny. So, I haven't been well lately. Mostly this has meant I've been sleeping a lot. Without going into a lot of detail (there isn't a lot of detail. I'd like to do something other than sleep, hate my job, and occasionally go shopping. For god's sake I like in a place with ice-skating now, to give one small example), I have to say that I really think my game of phone tag with the queer-friendly mental health clinic that will treat me for free should not have gone on this ridiculously long. Of course it's mainly my fault for delaying and trying to psych myself up-- speaking of which, one of the funniest lines on all of Wikipedia is something like, "People suffering from social anxiety often have difficulty seeking out professional help." You think? On the upside--
1) I have been listening to Harry Nilsson's "Nilsson Schmilsson" and "Abbey Road" by the Beatles, and "Keynsham" by the Bonzos on infinite repeat for the past month and a half. Explain that, science.
2) Siete Azahares tea-- which I used to really like-- now gives me honest to god racing thoughts. It also now dyes white mugs orange, which it never used to do. I suspect the company changed the formula. I have a whole box full! Who wants some!
3) They make location-specific Hello Kitty products now! Including a sticker where she's riding a cable car, which I may or may not have bought. Two things I did not buy are the Rennie Mackintosh roses/Kitty hybrid stationery which is pretty cool, and those fucking creepy image sets where there's a semi-realistic cat body with a Hello Kitty head glued on there. Yikes.
4) Of the last batch, I'm sorry to say the tiny grey kitten died, but it was quick and there's not a lot we could have done. Christy feels worse about it, but the Humane Society pointed out that of 24 kittens, one dying is like a 95% not-dying rate, and when do we want a new set? Anyway, we have new kittens who are, shockingly, not developmentally delayed, not feral, and can eat from one dish and poo in the other. Mostly.
5) My Halloween costume was going to be Fairy Princess, but it's now going to be Fuck It, I Have To Work And I Don't Give Think I can Be A Good Sport About It. (Seriously, though, wouldn't fairy princess be awesome?! Wings, tiara, and call it a day. Deadpan: "I'm a fairy princess." "Really. Huh." The only problem I forsee is that you need hair to make the tiara stay on and I don't have much. Casey is always threatening to tape a bow to my head.)
6) Speaking of Casey, she has a place and that place is not the south side of my room any more-- it's an apartment her grad school pays for, isn't it nice when things work out? Anyway, if you want a piece of our failed-retail betting pool, make your claims now. She has Sears for the win (lose) and I have Kohl's as failing by this time next year. So if you'd like the make bets about the current financiapocalypse, please do let me know.
So. See everybody in a couple weeks with a one-liner and some random rhetorical questions and a half-assed apology for not having written more. Presumably, as soon as I get ahold of the clinic people, I'll have managed to shake off whatever it is, just to piss them off. ("I swear! Two weeks ago I was having trouble eating! Ask anybody!" "And you've been fine since the end of October?" "Well, yeah." "Do you want to go back in time so you can start crying in our office for an hour a week back then, or would you like to call us later? Shall we just consider this a trial run?") | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Can anyone tell me why the Skechers store at Powell and O'Farrell had mimes in its upper windows tonight?
Also, does anyone know if kneaded rubber erasers are vegan? Seriously, someone asked so I'm trying to find out. I assume so, since rubber comes from a tree, but I'm not sure of the actual derivation of the polymers they also use...and anyway, who knows what kind of crap they mix in there.(I haven't had any home-tattooing-related questions at work lately. I kind of miss that.) | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| I tell people this all the time, but: this is why we will win. Our side has little old ladies kissing and crying, and their side has people yelling at the old ladies.
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blnkfrnk's journal
