Views through the glass I picked up

(links to 1600 * 1200)

Panic, stifle; repeat

There is just too much to do.

I feel like something diseased is expanding in my rib cage, or a charging lion is going to break down the door...or I am going to start floating, or enter a permanent surreal dream.

Tornadoey enough for ya?

"The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a Tornado Watch for portions of Southwestern California and coastal waters, effective this Tuesday morning and evening from 1110 am until 600 PM PST.

Tornadoes...hail to 1 inch in diameter...thunderstorm wind gusts to 70 mph...and dangerous lightning are possible in these areas.

The Tornado Watch area is approximately along and 60 statute miles east and west of a line from 35 miles northeast of Oxnard California to 10 miles southeast of San Diego California."

I scrapped my plans to sing wistfully outside the building today; now just doesn't seem like the best time.

Glory

I'm watching Glory right now while I work on invitations.

I think I've watched Glory maybe fifteen times.

I like watching (or just hearing) my favorite movies when I am doing a project, and I am in the middle of a project right now.

Amadeus, Big Lebowski, Fargo, Mighty Wind, O Brother, Best in Show, Henry Fool, Koyannisqatsi, House of Cards, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Sex and Lucia, whatever...and then sometimes I just watch episodes of flying circus.

If I buy the Twin Peaks series on DVD, I am afraid I might not ever do anything again, but watch it.

An hour ago, I named the daddy-long-legs in the bathroom Rusty. He is just hanging out in a corner up in the ceiling, and I do not have a problem with that.

Inverted palm, reverted dandelion

Here is a thing that you may like:


(links to bigger)

Yesterday, I photographed a parasitic dandelion on a palm tree behind our building. Today, I made adjustments to the image, but kept the dandelion bloom real color.

I liked that the darkest shadows became thick, adulterated plaster flowing over and through the palm trunk's pattern of 'shelves.'

Not A Dentist

The other day I flossed with sewing thread. It was great, I plan to do it more often.

It wasn't a deliberate decision at first, just happenstance; I wanted to floss, I was at work, and I didn't have any dental floss. I did, however, have sewing thread.

Slip-Sliding Away
Dental floss — even the unwaxed kind — is composed of very long, smooth, mono-directional fibers. I've always felt that it just slides around, without any removal services to speak of. The sewing thread, however, having a rough and unburnished surface with many microscopic fibers every which way, is more like a scrubby sponge. It gathered up all the nasty crap, and hauled it away for free.

Simply rinse with Diet 7•Up, and you're done.

The Caveat
Use care when you get to your molars, or the thread will lodge and snap in between two of them, forcing you to either:

1) Swallow your pride and phone in some regular dental floss to get the job done right (akin to bringing the car you tried to fix to your mechanic)

2) Redouble your efforts, and the thread.

Only if I'd dipped the sewing thread in cinnamon oil before flossing with it, would the flossing experience have been enhanced.

The thread was a cotton-poly blend.



For more about flossing your teeth with sewing thread, read this post again.

God Rocks!

I'm not sure, but I think I got "witnessed" to on the way to work.

When you leave your camera at Jake's house

It comes back in the mail with a little something extra.


Shit, where did I leave my camera...



Whew. Thought I lost it. But wait a second...who are you again?


This is one reason that Jake is outstanding.

Another reason is because he scanned and posted the Telephone Pictionary chains we drew on football day.
The game goes: you make up a phrase, the next person draws it, the next person sees the drawing and tries to determine the phrase, the next person takes the most recent phrase and draws it, and so on. "Pictionary" because it's illustrating a concept, "Telephone" because of the inevitable distortion.

Here're ours.

WatchingAmerica.com - English translations of foreign-language press about the US

It's not convenient or pleasant to use yet, being about a month old and staffed by a handful of resource-stretched people, but WatchingAmerica.com proposes to be a new news site that collates English translations of foreign press regarding the United States.

I hope to see clearer, more decipherable-at-a-glance date > region > country > topic organization, with articles on the same event linked to each other (to travel an event's reception around the globe.)

I also hope they'll furnish more information about the news sources they are translating from for English-speaking edification: the rough readership numbers, the ideology of the paper, maybe a sketch of that news source's influence, etc.

The two founders of the site — Robin Kerner (?) and Will Sssomeone — intend to refine it in the coming months; for now, at least you can mine human-translated articles from Jordan, Venezuela, Syria, Turkey, Germany, France (&c.) out of their home page.


(Listen to Robin discuss WatchingAmerica.com on KPCC's Air Talk with Larry Mantle, February 9th, last quarter of program)

The Big 7-0

My dad is turning 70 in a number of days, and we're heading up to Sacramento this weekend to attend the big surprise party! Shhh — don't tell him, it's a surprise.

See*?



In 1935, the Hoover Dam was completed. Great Plains farmers fled the Dust Bowl and migrated west, while Hitler began rearming Germany, in violation of the Versailles Treaty.

1935 introduced us to:
- nylon
- tighty-whiteys
- parking meters
- Penguin paperbacks
- Social Security
- the WPA
- Elvis Presley
- Alcoholics Anonymous
- and, perhaps most important, Monopoly.

Happy Birthday!

* That's a fire sprinkler on the invitation (by me); he engineered fire-sprinkler systems for buildings.

Part 1: Room temperature beer...Part 2: Line break bullshit

In the winter months, room temperature beer is where it's at.

Chilled beer is hard to taste; furthermore, it imparts unwanted chilliness to you.

...I'm not saying that if you've been out painting your house all day in July, a couple of cold ones aren't going to go down pretty nice. Because they certainly are.

What I am saying is, of a February eve — the brutal Southern California elements screaming past the windows of your poorly insulated home — a nice room-temperature pint is going to be your do-right all-night beer.

Speaking of beer, Craftsman Brewing Co. here in Pasadena is the most consistently fantastic (not to mention adventurous) brewery I have encountered. They do not currently bottle, which is a terrible state of affairs.