Category: general

Where I put something when I’m too lazy to categorize it.

Posted on

the camera lives in the diaper bag


Happy Sunday folks! Had a nice long-seeming weekend. Mowed the lawn, hung out with friends, had a slight beer overdose, bought and assembled some patio furniture, pulled weeds… yeah it was a good weekend. Need more like that, or a vacation… one or the other. Not much for writing today, but I did manage to upload Keaton’s five months photos to her gallery (it’s not huge, but it bests last weeks small offering), enjoy! I can hardly believe she’s five months old now, it really has gone by fast (just like everyone said it would, imagine that).

Sunday before I Sharaun and I headed out the door for church, I, for some reason, started thinking about an old “cyber” friend of mine I’d met through my old days of Beatles trading. This fellow, Dave, and I became more than just regular tape-traders (yes, this was back before the days of sub-25¢ CR-Rs. We exchanged e-mail on a fairly regular basis, and eventually met in the flesh at a Beatlefest (kinda like a Star Trek convention but for Beatles-nerds). Over time, our correspondence dropped off, but we’d sometimes get or send a nostalgic “catch up” mail. Searching through my old mail for the last valid address I had for Dave, the best I could do was something from 2004. I figured I’d give it a shot, and wrote a three-sentence “hey there” mail to see if the address bounced. Later that day, I logged on to write Monday’s blog entry and saw a new comment from Dave and his wife. My first thought was that they’d got my mail, loaded my site from the link in my signature, and commented on the blog. Nope. Turns out they found me randomly, also spurred by a random “I wonder what that guy I used to like talking to” thought. Being that we both had this thought on the same day, some two years after our last correspondence – I’m totally convinced we had some of mind-meld going on. Crazy.

Got a great idea for the Halloween party this weekend, can’t leak it though – I want it to be a surprise. I love that our Halloween party is going to be four-years running this year. Can’t wait.

Goodnight.

Posted on

wasps in the grass


Slow night, spent most of my time and energy making a new short film. Starring Keaton, this one showcases her relatively newfound vocal talents. Go ahead and give it a good watchin’, you know you want to. (Sharaun liked this one so much she urged me to submit it to YouTube, so I could maybe… win money or something…)

Keeping in somewhat of a theme I’ve got going lately, I stumbled on this middle east related link today: an illustrated/annotated “who hates who” matrix of middle east countries/affiliations and other world powers. Good for quick reference when dealing with stories about the incredibly complex and history-rooted relationships over there.

I mentioned yesterday that I mowed the lawn this past weekend, and that was true. What I left out were the gory details of the event. I mowed the lawn at 1pm in the afternoon, at that time wunderground.com said the temperature in Whereilive, CA was 102°. That’s hot. About halfway through the job I took off my shirt in an attempt to cool down (only in the backyard, I’ve not become comfortable enough with my hairy back to go shirtless out front yet). Any outside laborer or nomadic desert dweller will tell you that, in the obscene heat and burning sun, clothes are your friend – and taking them off only makes things worse. But, I didn’t care. Pushing that mower around, baking and sweating, my core temperature must’ve been up there. By the time I was done, I was red-cheeked and covered in sweat. Coming inside I felt like a hot coal, my insides radiating heat, only time and a cool shower able to help my finally get comfortable. Yeah, the sacrifices I make for that lawn…

By the way, did you know that wasps like to hide in long, cool grass? And, furthermore, mowing over them sends them up in angry clouds by the hundreds? As if the heat wasn’t enough, I was fleeing wasps the whole time.

That’s it for today, until tomorrow my friends. Love ya.

Posted on

you’ve failed as a firefighter


Wednesday night and I’m having a productive week. I should qualify that: I’m having a productive week personally, but professionally it’s been a complete loss. My head hasn’t been in the game at work, but it’s OK because the environment is currently an unhinged one and I’m not alone.

Let’s do one liners, eh? I know, I know, they’re never really “one line.”

Last night I had a dream that I was trapped in a funhouse hall of mirrors. It was just like all the Scooby Doo and USA Up All Night Horror movies: dim lighting and an endless maze of my own reflection with an evil voice calling out to me from somewhere unseen. Sharaun woke me up because I was making one of those breathy dream-screams in real life (I do that sometimes, I’m a chatty sleeper). What the heck does a dream like that mean?

Noticed that Bush used his presidential veto for the first time this week to shoot down additional funding for stem cell research. I’ll state right up front that I think this is stupid, but rather than try and construct paragraph supporting my opinion I’ll just defer to this outstanding reader comment on the Newsvine coverage of the happening:

Here’s how I view whether an embryo should be considered such a valid life or not:

You are a firefighter, called to the scene of a horrific fire. The fire is in a local in vitro clinic – you put on your mask and rush inside. In the smoke and warmth, you hear a girl crying. You find her, standing next to a refrigerator holding hundreds of frozen embryos. You can only carry one. Which do you take?

The girl of course.

So does this mean that you’ve failed as a firefighter? You have forsaken the lives of potentially hundreds of children for the life of one child.

But when it comes to research, which already has proven more than helpful, suddenly the tables turn, and the embryos at stake are more important than the thousands threatened each year by cancer, Alzheimer’s, spine injuries, and the multitude of other things that stem cell research is working for.

I call BS.

Yeah, and I’ll be right there with you calling BS too.

Found this editorial take on the current Israel/Lebanon/Hezbollah thing I’ve been trying to follow pretty interesting. Although it clearly casts Israel as the bigger aggressor, it actually helped me (make sure and read the comments to for some good counter arguments that help round out the thought for those not passionate enough to have picked sides).

Wanna make your brain hurt? Head over to this site and watch the cool Flash animation that explains how to conceptualize a 4th, 5th, 6th, and on up through 10th dimension. Just click on on the zero at the bottom of the twirly numbers on the right of the page. I’m this close to ordering the book, as the Flash teaser is interesting as crap.

Goodnight.

Posted on

yesterday i saw you kissing tiny flowers


Thursday night and I mowed the hadn’t-been-mowed-in-two-weeks lawn after work. Sometimes I swear the shuffle function on the iPod is actually powered by some mood-psychic gremlin living within those pearly white walls. Work today was quite the wringer, and I was a bundle of emotions and thoughts upon coming home (more about that later in the week, I think). The iPod, however, knew just how to talk to my troubled mind. First, it hit me up with some obscure Simon & Garfunkel, “A Most Peculiar Man” – just the right kind of snide “fishbowl” social commentary to get a busy mind thinking. Later on it ranged from Led Zeppelin’s “Rain Song,” a paragon of songmanship in my mind, some excellent Siamese Dream era Pumpkins, Bowie, and Son House singing about the blood of Jesus. It was an outstanding mix, and fit my tumultuous mood to a tee. Way to be, iPod. Way. To. Be. Oh, but mowing the grass blew… it was long and thick and the heat made me sweaty.

We had a momentous night Wednesday night: Keaton slept her first night in her nursery. That’s right, in her own crib in that two-tone pink room – not in the Pack-‘n’-Play parked next to the bed in ours. I must say, it was all my doing… Sharaun was reluctant but I had maintained for some weeks that the post-Florida timeframe should be the cutoff. Part of me is sad she’s not right there with us, where we can satisfy our paranoia by peeking in on her or placing a hand on her chest as it rises and falls. I’d been thinking for some time now how nice it would be to have our bedroom back, uncluttered by her sleeping and changing stuff, and once again safe for nighttime humping. But, when I packed out the last of her baby gear, I paraded first by Sharaun in the living room. We both looked at that neatly bundled Pack-‘n’-Play with a little sadness, like a chapter of our daughter’s life was being stuffed in the back of the nursery closet and a new phase was beginning. It may sound stupid, but I don’t think it’s an entirely foreign thing for new parents to experience. I’m not sure when “most” parents make that move, or even that “most” parents opt to have the baby in their room to begin with – but I’d wager that four and a half months is pretty late as “mosts” go. Good for us then, taking the plunge.

I’ve been trying to follow the piss-poor coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah/Lebanon conflict on CNN.com, but the reporting is disjointed, hard to follow, and lacking enough background to educate me on the situation. Frustrated because I felt ignorant reading and not following, I struck off on my own to my favorite reference site – Wikipedia. Turns out they’ve already got a great educational page about the current conflict, and it’s chock-full of links to other relevant entries offering tons of historical insight and information. I think I’ll just follow the conflict on Wikipedia rather than one of the major news outlets, as it’s easier for me to follow. Check it out here if you’re similarly stumped by the motivation and history behind the escalating violence.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah…

Well, I’d better run. I’ve need to put up our unpacked suitcases and finish off tonight’s dinner dishes – which I’ve been cleaning in spurts for hours now. Love you fuckers, goodnight.

Posted on

lion’s paws are made of rubber


An action-packed weekend, that’s what it was. Yup… action-packed. Saturday we woke up early to get some professional-type photos taken of our burgeoning family. I claimed Keaton post-photos so mom could join friends on a rafting trip down the river. Meanwhile, while her mom lazed her way downstream, Keaton and I headed over to a friend’s place to watch Mexico and Argentina foot it out on the pitch. Later, the family reunited briefly at the follow-up to rafting – a backyard BBQ. Then it was mom’s turn to fly solo with Lil’ Chino, as dad joined some of his friends and headed up the mountain to do some skywatching. Anthony bought a fancy telescope and four of us headed up into the darkness of the mountains, escaping the light-polluted city, to gaze aloft. And, although the watching part was, for the most part, obscured by clouds, it was nice; especially since I’d had the presence of mind to fill my hip flask to the brim with a stout port before leaving. Seven ounces of that stuff will do a body right over the course of a night, y’know. Sunday we spent the day with friends, chowed on grilled salmon and mashed ‘taters… we have a hard, hard life.

And, even in the midst of packing all that action, I was able to upload a small set of pictures to Keaton’s Gallery. Check them out here, and watch as Keaton finally truly “discovers” her feet, and takes her first swim with mom.

Lion: Lion’s paws are made of rubber; primary colors: red, blue, yellow, and green. Lion has beans in his belly and rocks in his head. His purple mane crinkles. Lion is covered in invisible DNA, dried spit. His limbs sag under the weight of his oversized hands and feet, but he can sit up on his own and he never fails to get a smile. Lion goes places; lion is a man on the move; lion’s on the move.

Goodnight.

Posted on

tomorrow’s yesterday


I finally motivated myself enough to get out in the front yard and pull the weeds from the planters after work today. Turns out it wasn’t that bad a job at all, I was finished in well under and hour. Some live Dead shuffled on while I worked, and it sounded so good. Sometimes there’s nothing better than a noodling Garcia guitar solo in the sunshine. I stopped short, however, of busting out the hedge trimmer and trimming me some hedge… not because I ran out of daylight, but because I ran out of caring. Tomorrow, maybe…

The more I analyze my trends in motivation, the more I’m convinced I have an excellent intuition. Historically, it seems I’m almost prophetically unmotivated – slacking most on things that end up being unimportant in the long run. I seem to “know” what to apply my resources to, and what to push down to the bottom of the pile. In the moment, my choices often seem damning – deprioritizing something that, it seems, would put me behind or cause my overall performance to suffer. But usually, later down the road that item I put on the back burner falls off the edge altogether from some directive on-high, and I look awesome for having diverted resources to other things when all the while I wasn’t paying attention to begin with. I’m convinced that this psychic ability to know when and what to work on, coupled with my ability to apply methamphetamine-like speed and productivity to important immediate tasks make me the ideal worker. I’m thinking of bulletizing this and putting it on my resume:

Personal Traits

  • Team player; works well with diverse groups.
  • Experienced in conflict resolution and teambuilding.
  • Possess a psychic “tasking” ability; can prioritize current tasks by future relevancy.
  • Fastidiously groomed; sparkling teeth, very little dandruff.
  • Well-filled shorts.

Yes… well then, let’s move on.

No sooner did I decide to make Wolfmother’s eponymous album my #1 pick of 2006.5 did I catch their single “Love Train” on the new iTunes ad during prime-time. Great, just great. How is one supposed to stay elite when iTunes and M&Ms and Chrysler keep employing good music to appeal to consumers? No longer will people stare blankly when I tell them I’m listening to Wolfmother, they’ll instead go, “Oh, you mean the iTunes band? I heard they fucked Lindsay Lohan with a trout… or something.” Nah, I’m only messing with you guys… the more people at the good-music party the better, welcome to what’s rad world, welcome.

Lately, I’ve been fascinated with the Swapatorium blog – which I ran across via this mysterious and super-interesting (to me) BoingBoing post. I have my own personal obsession with wading through inconsequential history, whether it be mine or someone else’s, and Swapatorium’s posts are right up that alley. While browsing the archives, I ran across the “Diary of a Girl” feature that ran from January through February this year: An entry from a young girl’s late-1960s diary, which covers everything from sewing dressed to the sordid affair between her older brother and her best friend. There’s no easy way to link the entire thread as a cohesive story, but if you’re interested in reading it (and why wouldn’t you be?), the best way is to start here at the January archives (scroll to the bottom of the page and read up), and continue on here to the February archives (again reading from bottom-to-top). What a great feature.

Goodnight.