sick?

The past 2 days I have been on the brink of getting a cold.

You know the feeling?

You can feel it coming a mile away.

First.... your throat gets dry...

Then.... it gets itchy/scratchy...

Next up, full on sore throat...

The illness travels up to your sinuses, and then you feel a head congestion...

Then come the sniffles

and the end is full blown sickness.

I've been trying to fight it off, or rather, cut it off at the pass. I drank an entire carton of OJ yesterday, and am half way done with another now.

They say that you need fluids and rest.

Fluids, check.

Sleep.......... ?

And then this is where the tough decisions in life come into play. How far do we push our bodies, and how much should we sacrifice?

Cost/benefit analysis comes into play as well. Sleep now, and live to work another day?

Just another day in the life :)

I think i'm going to rest up. For once.

Thanks,

-Jose

Balancing the overwhelming

I have been a night owl for quite some time now. At least since my first year at college, but probably early on into high school as well.

It seems that I do not REALLY get into my work until the sun goes down. The morning and early afternoon hours are often very lazy, or easy going. The motivation to really 'get cracking' is not there. I often wish that I was a morning person...

But no, I am a child of the night. Maybe it is because the night time eliminates many distractions (i.e. other awake people). Whatever triggered the pattern, I seem to be stuck with it. It is now 12:33 am, and this seems still "early" for me. 4am starts to become a warning sign, but there are many a day when I see the sun rise.

I came across this news video:

It speaks about a genetic mutation that allows some people to require less sleep than others. These people are arguably more 'successful', if only that they have more 'useful' time in their days.

And then conversely, there is this story, about how little sleep you can get away with

Some nights I average about 4-5 hours. Which is ridiculously low. I can only pray that I am one of the genetically fortunate.

WHY???

Why do I get such little sleep?

I've boiled it down to a few possibilities:

- Too many "responsibilities" or things that I have taken upon myself to do. Including work/commissions. Perhaps I stretch myself too thin...

- Poor time management. Can be a possibility... maybe if my daytime hours were spent more effectively. But our egos never want to admit to this possibility

- Bad habit. I've been doing it for years... and i'm still going. I'm sure I will feel sharp negative effects at some point.

The other side of the coin is....

The "NORMAL" sleep time frame is based on an agricultural society. People on farms would wake up when the sun did so that they could get as much done during the day, with the light out. But now that we are a different, very diverse and specialized society, who is to say what the "right" time of day to sleep is?

Vitamin D deficiency?

They have pills and special lamps for that :)

Good night everyone. Your midnight is my noon,

-Jose Ojeda

Alegria!

"Alegria" is Spanish for 'Joy'.

It's also the name of a local restaurant and lounge in Astoria, NY. Alegria Lounge has recently become the home base for a group of 6 young, latino artists (myself included).

THE ALEGRIA ART COLLECTIVE

I have never been part of an artist collective before, so this has been a really exciting past few

months. The group consists of JohnMichael Arcella, Candido Crespo, Andres Gallardo, Melinda Gomez, Jessica M. Luciere, and myself, Jose Antonio Ojeda.

We all came together through knowing one or the other. Our common thread became our first group show at the Lounge, entitled "Salsa: A Fine Arts Experience." The Lounge, since its inception, had intentions of featuring young local artists on it's walls. For the "Salsa" show, we each produced three pieces that was inspired by Salsa (music, culture, history, etc.). A live 10 piece Salsa Band performed at our opening in March.

Last week, our April show entitled " Y Ahora Que?" (which translates to, "...and now what?") opened. The theme centered around the 'American Dream' and what it meant to us. We e

ach produced two pieces, the first dealing with the question "What IS the American dream?" and the second addressing "And once the American Dream is realized (or not), Now what??"

This show was particularly exciting because we all did a live painting on two canvases, that was later raffled off.

We will be having a new show (and new work) every single month. Starting in June, we will be pairing off into two's and having some 2-Person shows, as opposed to the entire collective - though all will help out in organizing.

* Here is a link to our collective's website *

I am very excited, because I feel that the group is keeping me on my toes, helping me to produce on a regular basis, all the while giving me the motivation and inspiration to do so. Let's see where it leads us :)

Here are my two pieces from the April show:

"Cross Your Fingers"

"This is Your Land"

See you in May!

Thanks again,

-Jose Ojeda

YIKES

I am beyond terribly behind on my blog posts. It has been slowly eating away at my brain and conscious for weeks now. I have a bunch that just need to be transcribed, and others that still need to manifest.

Here we go again...

ALBUQUERQUE!!

On Thursday I am boarding a plane and headed to the ABQ, New Mexico. I'm traveling with 3other friends to attend the Gathering of Nations, North America's largest Native American Pow-Wow. I am beyond excited as I have been looking forward to this for months now. The south west has been an area of the US that has always been a mystery to me, and I finally get to satiate my curiosity. Expect many a post from there this coming week.

LENSES!!

Turns out that my father's co-worker is an avid amateur photographer. And we also happen to frequent the same gym. One day, while hanging around the lateral pull down, I strike up a conversation about my upcoming trip. I mentioned how I wanted to buy a telephoto lens, because I would be so far from the "action" to get any good pictures. The end result is himlending me 3 of his badass canon camera lenses for the weekend. We're talking L-Series, really pro stuff! Saving me in the thousands....

It's heavy... And intense.

So Bless him, and hopefully I put it to some good use.

SHAWL !!!

In addition to the million things that I have to do before I leave, I am working on a ''Fancy Shawl" for my girlfriend (who is coming along too, and will be dancing at the Pow Wow)

The patterning is fairly intricate and I hope that it turns out spectacular for her sake. The design is based on the pottery of New Mexican Pueblos.

Pictures to come soon - Let's see how far I can get on it tonight.

Thanks!

-Jose

NMAI

http://waylonlenk.blogspot.com/2011/04/reactions-to-nmai.html

True to PB's cannibalistic form, I'm posting the URL to my latest blog post on Kachakaach on Grant Group!

More to come later on Phinneas Buckshot, Cyborg Cowboy from the Future!

Related to that, here's the latest trailer for "Cowboys and Aliens," which I'm going to wait in line until midnight to see come July.

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2016976153/

Knotty Bits

I am a member of the Puget Sound Lacemakers Guild, even though I haven’t shown up at one of their monthly meetings in well over two years, mostly because they hold meetings about 40 miles from my neck of the woods while I’m in the Seattle area and those meetings conflict with other stuff I have to do on Saturdays.
Recently I picked up the book “The Lace Reader” by Brunonia Barry and am so thoroughly engrossed by it I think I’ll just sit down and knit me some lace edging. Nothing as fancy as the bobbin lace created by ladies at the Lacemakers Guild, or characters in "The Lace Reader," just a simple edging for pillowcases or frilly hankies or lingerie.
The reason I’m a member of the Lacemakers Guild is I’ve published a book on macramé lace, which is what macramé was called in Victorian times. It’s just macramé done on a small scale, with a lot of bling thrown in, like Swarovski crystals for added sparkle power. Funnily enough, macramé has always been knotted on a small scale in places like Italy and South America, and it doesn’t hold the same hippy-dippy connotation for the rest of the world that it has here in the US with rustic hemp knottery (read rustic to mean scratchy).

Let Them Eat Lead

A few years ago I was visited by Milit-arie Antoinette who showed up only to help celebrate one of my two annual birthdays – I was born on Easter, and as Easter is a holiday based on the lunisolar calendar and rarely falls on the same date, I get to celebrate two birthdays a year, one on the actual date of my birthday and the other on Easter Sunday. Frankly I find Milit-arie a bit of an odd bird contradiction; but hey, with militant right-wing rifle power looming right there under my nose, who am I to ruffle feathers?
As you can plainly see, Milit-arie Antoinette brooks no quarter for slaggers, vagabonds and ne’er-do-wells, which is really unfortunate seeing how most of my friends are ne’er-do-wells. I had half hopes that day that she’s take a couple of pot shots at that dastardly bobcat Super Bob who was in the habit of treeing my puddy cats every time he blew through the neighborhood, but no luck for me or the puddy cats. As far as I know, Super Bob remains at large. As does Milit-arie Antoinette.

This is SuperBob, archenemy of puddy cats

How to Save the World

Phinneas B: How I Came Back from the Future to Save the World from Japanese Porn is the title of a new book by best-selling author Waylon Lenk. This opus in ink defies description – you just have to read it for yourself. It is HILARIOUS. If you don’t think it is the funniest, most spot-on interpretation of the current world-crisis as told by a future world-saver, you are sticking your head in the sand and pretending you were born with an intellectual handicap that won’t allow you to absorb facts. Lenk’s mastery of the socio-semiotic sci-fi genre befits this post-modern American classic; it reads as if Salmon Rushdie, Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Dave Barry collectively donated snippets of their creative DNA to formulate a hybrid monster-child. It's both funny and funny-looking.
I heard on the Grapevine while driving down to LA last week, that Paul Wendkos is tentatively scheduled to direct the film version due out next year in time for the Christmas season. I can’t wait.

Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop In

What is this world coming to?
Double-nosed dogs, crocheted canoes…the universe is NOT unfolding as it should.

Or is it? Has reality shifted 120 degrees out of phase? Is everything you know wrong nowadays? Contrails, chemtrails, ELFs abound. Has a preponderance of bad geomantic decisions re: skyscrapers, mining techniques and butt-ugly architecture finally done its true damage to this world? Are jackdaws strutting in peacock feathers?
Food just doesn’t taste the same. The nightly news on TV is pablum for the masses. Cellphones and microwaves disturb our sleeping patterns, and set us up for brain tumors. And, of all ungodly things, keyboards on laptops have so many bugs in them the words jump around on the screen ending up in sentences two lines above where they should be, making people think they don’t know how to type any more.
Here’s the solution: Turn off, Tune out, Drop in. Turn off your electronic devices, tune out the hyper-hype on television and go drop in on your friends to see what they’re up to. Strike up some real live human conversations. Go on, you can do it!

Keepin' Tabs on Tabi Socks

I don't know what my fascination with tabi socks is all about, but I do like 'em and have bought another three pair on eBay. Invariably I give one pair away in some sort of sock swap within days of actually getting them in the mail. Now who could resist Sumo wrestlers on their tootsies? I ask you.
I love these stretch jersey ones more than the knit ones. I actually had an identical pair to these but lost the right sock. I kept meaning to take the left sock apart and make a new pair out of some lovely jersey scraps, but haven't done it yet, so I bought another pair. I'll keep the original as a pattern.
The third pair celebrate the cherry blossoms blooming right now in Washington State. Sigh. I wish I was there...

Dr. Sybil deGroot

June 24th is St. John's Day and often you can find St. John's Wort blooming around here at this time of year. 7 years ago, it was on this day that my mother, Dr. Sybil G. deGroot passed away. She was 78 years old.

My mom was one of the most remarkable people you could ever meet; in her youth she had been a Rockette at the Radio City Music Hall, later she became the first woman in the U.S. to hold a Doctorate in Engineering Psychology (which is also known as Human Factors and Ergonomics).
To try to sum up her brilliant life and career in just a few sentences seems so inadequate and trite. After so many years I still can't find the words. Even what I wrote in my book isn't enough:

"Those who knew her will agree, my mother led a most remarkable life. Highly intellectual and only sometimes circumspect about it, she was a curious blend of scientist and social butterfly. Her eyes flashed sage green whether engaged in scholarly pursuit or dancing a fandango on the neighbor's coffee table. I will always miss her."

My Hero

I was perusing DudeCraft's blog just now and came across a photo of my beloved Hero robot...oh how I miss him! I received a Heathkit Hero Robot kit as a Christmas gift sometime in the mid-80's (Thanks, John, wherever you are! You always gave me the coolest stuff!) and set about putting him together immediately. I think it took me 3 or 4 days to get him finished to the point where he could roll down the hallway and sing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..." My cats hated him with feline fury and swatted angrily every time he came within range.

I finally let him go one day in early 1999 when I took him to Goodwill's to drop him off with a couple of bags of old clothes. One of the attendants was so thrilled by the prospect of owning his very own robot I said to him "Oh hey, this guy is for you -I'm giving him to you, not Goodwill."
My final memory of Hero is looking back in the car mirror and seeing that excited kid clutching him as I drove away...Miss you, little guy...

Fiction Film for Class

Here is my fiction film for class, it's titled "Invisible."



I know you'll think it's just a tad morbid...

Weird Stuff People Used to Smoke

I remember the smell of clove cigarettes from highschool and college the first time around. But what about those Cocarettes?
The Cocarette cigarette, a tobacco and cocaine mixture was popular way back when. The package in the photo displays much testimony of the benefits of this concoction, suggesting that Coca neutralizes the depressing effects of nicotine in tobacco. Alrighty, then.

And what about Cubeb cigarettes? Sounds spicy, no?
Marshall's Prepared Cubeb Cigarettes (1881-1940s) was a brand so popular its sales continued until World War Two. Blosser's Cigarettes, Dr. R. Schiffmann's Asthmador Cigarettes, and Requa Cigarettes were also non-tobacco medicinal brands smoked as a treatment for asthma and other bronchial problems.
Huh.

Heavenly Herbal Combinations

I am a great believer in the healing power of herbal blends (not that bogus new age pseudo-aromatherapy crap shoved up our noses daily by perky actress/models on infomercials). We respond to smells on an emotional level; an aroma can trigger a whole string of forgotten memories thanks to our olfactory nerves which are located within the nasal cavity. The area of the brain associated with smell is the same area as that associated with memory. Aromas can trigger all sorts of chemical actions and reactions within the body and because the olfactory nerves are a direct extension of the brain's limbic system, reactions to aromas are relayed immediately.

Anyway, enough ranting. here are some of my favorite mixes of essential oils:

Rosewater and Saffron
Anise and Vetiver
Rosemary and Mint
Lavender and Mint
Lavender and Orange
OakMoss and Cubeb



Tobacco Flower all by itself. Ahhh...

The Ministry of Magic Strikes Again!

I am sooo excited! When I return to the Seattle area after this term ends I am going to go on a Mini Cooper-oriented event the first weekend of June! Return to This is Stonehenge is fast becoming a legendary annual trip for Mini owners in the Northwest. I couldn't go last year because the week before the trip a tray fell on my foot and broke a toe that hurt so much I knew I wouldn't be able to manage a 3 hour road trip. I was very sad. Here is a photo from the trip that I so wished I had been a part of.

I really enjoy going on Mini rallies; it is always so fun to see the astonished looks on drivers' faces as 40 or 50 Mini Coopers pass by them on the highway! Silly silly stuff, but whot the hell.

I also indulge in Mini sightings in Seattle and on the eastside. Whenever I see a Mini parked in a parking lot, I put one of my You've Been Spotted by the Ministry of Magic! cards on their front window. Hee hee hee!

Glitch Mob

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jztRZ34AEcY Hey you cool cats and sexy dolls, here's an interesting fusion of the electronic media that Phillip seems to be so into with street performance and actually disrupting the flow of social traffic (they even got ticketed). It's an interesting idea, and I think that Phillip's interest in disrupting "zombie" ecosystems might be well served by spilling American Decameron out into the street in Soho and blocking traffic.

Up That Sketch!

Faustus Vlog 1

Camino de Santiago and Other Pilgrimages

I've been thinking alot about doing a pilgrimage walking along the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain maybe in a year or so. I'll only be walking the last 70 miles so I can qualify for the pilgrim's passport. I guess you could say that since the concept of doing pilgrimage is common human experience shared amongst all the major religions, it can be thought of as a Jungian archetype. It's been haunting me for a few years as something I need to do. Loreena McKennitt's Santiago

I first became aware of pilgrimages through Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; he got the idea from Boccaccio, even though the people in Boccaccio's Decameron weren't on pilgrimage, but escaping the plague in the city of Florence by hanging out at a country villa for ten days (Decameron refers to ten days).

Dream Exercises

I've been doing guided meditations for donkeys' years so I wasn't particularly tempted by the lucid dreaming exercise proposed in class, partly because I don't have a need to dictate to my mind what to dream about, and partly because I like to let my unconscious mind come up with unexpected combinations of things. So I thought I would share a healing meditation that came to me a few weeks ago.

I was relaxing with my eyes closed, letting my mind drift along gently when I decided to focus on parts of my body that were in pain or causing me concern. As my energy shifted from one pained area to another I began to identify and call out each area: Right elbow. Back of neck. Left big toe, etc. so that I could direct healing energy towards them. Soon a vision of three rather scary men appeared in my mind's eye; they drove up to me and opened the door of a large black sedan, indicating that I was to come with them. Immediately I was afraid. As I focused my concentration on them, each man began to shrink in size until he was as only as big as an apple pip. I gathered up the three seeds and planted them in the garden at the side of the house. They immediately started growing into rose bushes and bloomed into vibrantly colored roses, unfolding again and again. It became evident to me that there was a correlation between my heart chakra and these lovely flowers, as if I was being told that while fear can settle in the heart so easily and cause us to make rash decisions based on it, it wasn't necessary to interpret my reaction to those men in that car as fear.

Somehow or another it reminded me of Joseph Campbell's take on the Bardo Thodol where one has to let go of earthly concerns, such as fear, in order to get beyond reincarnation and achieve nirvana.

Performative Space SketchUp Animation

Here 'tis...a veritable inundation of performative goodness:

New and Improved pre-SketchUp Version!!!

Here's the non-SketchUp version of my building animation! it looks exactly like what I had in my mind's eye! And I didn't even need to use SketchUp for it! Ha! Now, don't be jealous...

Funkadelic Building/City Animation from SketchUp

Here's one of my building/city SketchUp animations:

A Canon!

http://waylonlenk.blogspot.com/2011/04/coloumbes-reading-native-american.html This is a review that I wrote for Joseph L. Coulombe's new book, Reading Native American Literature. In it, he defines a potential canon of literature by Native authors. His list is: N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony Gerald Vizenor, Bearheart James Welch, Fool's Crow James Welch, Heartsong of Charging Elk Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven Linda Hogan, Power This list is, to my thinking, incomplete. All of the selections are novels, with the exception of Alexie's collection of short stories. This list overlooks the outpour of poetry by Native artists, and it also overlooks my pet genre, drama. I would like to see a canon that gives a fuller picture of what Native literary artists are up to.

A Few Misconceptions

Laplander Ice Torture is really a misnomer. It sounds like a horrible ordeal to endure, but it isn't. It's a kind of snowcone filled with cherry red syrup, coconut and pineapple bits, rum, and chocolate. The torturous part is you can't eat just one. They're addictive. It's not the same thing as Sammi Ice Torture.The Sammis like to add stuff like birch twigs to their snowcones. Don't ask me why. Don't ask them why. No one knows. It's just one of those funky traditions from way back when.

And to clear up Waylon's assertion that I took out a third of Norway in that botched moose mission: that is an erroneous statement. It was Jose, not me who ordered it. Or Dr. Z; he orders all sorts of crazy things. All for the sake of Art, whoever that is. Scandinavia is a pretty big place, so maybe they won't notice. I'd hate to see the bill for that boo-boo, if you know what I mean.

I do take responsibility for the Badger March and the Great Hedgehog Cure. Too bad Spud still hasn't grown all his spines back yet.

Sacred Geometry and the Likes

Just found this nifty little tome on The Golden Section at a second-hand store yesterday (along with a couple of books like the Penguin edition of Ibsen's Ghosts and so forth)and and I do agree with the book's cover, it is nature's greatest secret. That and sacred geometry and Harmonograph: A Visual Guide to the Mathematics of Music.

Hell, even Pythagoras knew that an oscillating string stopped halfway along its length produces an octave relative to the string's fundamental, while a ratio of 2:3 produces a perfect fifth and 3:4 produces a perfect fourth. Pythagoreans believe that all these harmonic ratios give music healing powers which can "harmonize" an out-of-balance body. No shit, Sherlock.

If you are looking for a good book covering hands-on healing may I suggest Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan? I love this book but always get the ketheric confused with the etheric. Silly me.

Oh hey, if your Bardlibido is up for it, take a look at a scene from Taming of the Shrew starring that rascal Waylon Lenk and his friend whose name was McGill, she called herself "Lil" but everyone knew her as Nancee.

Textures Video Piece

Okay, here's a little video I slammed together this afternoon while watching epic documentaries like "Finding Jack the Ripper" and "The Botany of Desire," not to mention "DaVinci's Lost Code" and an Ancient Almanac on the Borgias. Dude, I am becoming over-educated. I was particularly inspired by daVinci, but I doubt that it's obvious or relevant to this digital opus.

Enjoy, if you can.
BTW, I figured out who Waylon Lenk is: he's that guy who was on the news recently for saving a kennel full of Rottweiler puppies from burning to death in that tragic petshop fire in El Paso. I say tragic, but really, it wasn't. No animals were hurt, but the petshop/puppymill owner was overcome with fumes, but not from that particular fire, if you know what I mean. Rat bastard! The petshop owner, not Lenk, I mean.

Fictional Film without Words

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muO-d4Xw7SY

Who Stole My Book?

Shit. Somebody stole my book. It was my favorite book in the world. It was assigned to me for a class, and am I ever glad I took that class. I define my life by that book. You see, this isn't just any book. It's a fourth hand copy of The Meridian Anthology of Restoriation and 18th-Century Plays by Women. That's right, the only collection devoted entirely to female writers from that golden age of English drama. Because you can't really understand Restoration or 18th-century plays without reading those by women. Their plays are something that none of the other plays of those periods can ever aspire to be. Sure, those other plays that were written by men had the same insipid plots, caricatures in place of characters, and general boringness. But there's one thing that those plays are not - they're not plays by women. So if anybody knows who stole my Meridian Anthology, tell me so I can kick their ass in gender-non-specific way and get my favorite book back.

Paul Wendkos Does It Moondoggy Style

Hey. My name's Paul. Paul Wendkos. And you're - could you spell that for me? A-N-N-I-K-A. Annika. My what a lovely name. So what do you do? You're a grad student? Why, the moment I layed eyes on you, I knew you had a stunning...intellect. What do I do? Are you serious? I'm Paul Wendkos! I directed the Gidget series! You know, Gidget, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Gidget Goes to Rome, Gidget Goes to Hell, Gidget Goes All the Way, Gidget Does It Moondoggy Style 1-19. You're sure you don't know who I am? Maybe you know some of my other movies: Cordoba's Cannon? I Love Women? No? What are you implying? I do love women! Although I never say so right away. I usually wait a few dates, until I propose. Hey, where are you going? Call me! Fuck.

Coming to a Bookshelf Near You!

Cornelius Flibbertiggibit, renowned author of Florentine Art Smugglers Who Got Implicated in a VAT Scam with What's-His-Name, is set to release his new expose on high culture's sordid underbelly, A New Expose on High Culture's Sordid Underbelly! If you liked Florentine Art Smugglers Who Got Implicated in a VAT Scam with What's-His-Name, then you'll love A New Expose on High Culture's Sordid Underbelly! It's a dynamic second installment in Flibbertiggibit's four-part trilogy Pooping With My Socks On that leaves the reader in bowel-watering anticipation for books! So come on down to your local Barnes & Noble on Monday, or maybe Tuesday, so you can be the first in line to read all about high culture's sordid underbelly! Annika de Groot will be there.

Dear Annika

Dear Annika, Why would you go and blow my cover? I thought we were friends, but apparently we're not. You know why? Because a real friend wouldn't reveal my true location after I had to defect to cover her ass after she "inadvertantly" directed a drone bomber to take out a whole herd of moose. I even told you that if you did that you'd be taking out a third of Norway's population, but would you listen? No, you had to go into the Scandinavian wilderness with your guns blazing, just to prove how tough you were. And I took the heat for you. You know why? Because that's what friends do. Now I was just starting to get settled down in the Yukon, but I guess I'm going to have to move somewhere else. I'll just have to tell my friends where to write me. But I'm not going to tell you. You know why? Because you betrayed my trust, and that hurts more than Laplander ice torture. Sincerely, XXXXX

justmethr403 textures from ssk street fair

This was supposed to go in the american decameron file...sorry

A True Mystery!

I was perusing the woo-woo section of the used book shelf at a local second hand store this afternoon and came across a most interesting book: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Plays by Women edited by Katherine M. Rogers. Now this is a truly fascinating collection, but what really struck my curiosity is the previous owner of this book had crossed out the book's previous owner's name and scribed his own on an inside page. Jeez, that name sounds really familiar but I cannot place this mystery man. Where have I seen that name before? I really am cudgeling my brains about this one folks, because I know that name from somewhere. But where? Is he that Cambridge spy who defected to the Yukon over the Norwegian moose scandal a few years back? Didn't he co-author that novel about Florentine artifact smugglers who got embroiled in a VAT scam with what's his name? Or was he the director of the vintage classic motion picture movie Gidget Goes to Hell and its sequel Gidget Goes All the Way?

I am at a loss. If you know who this guy is, give me a shout. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to donate this ultra-fantastic book of restoration plays, and if you find him, tell him he can have the book back for a nominal fee. Now, I'm not talking blackmail or anything, so don't get your knickers in a twist over this matter. It's just that used book stores don't give books out for free, especially ones that have been autographed by famous people.

Theocentricity and/or Where the Hell Am I?

Some where back in time, mapmakers shifted from creating mappaemundi - visual representations of the world with Jerusalem at the center, to portolans, which showed sailing routes between ports of call. "The medieval mappaemundi (world maps in the Christian tradition) are the cosmographies of thinking landsmen. By contrast, the portolan charts preserve the Mediterranean sailors firsthand experience of their own sea, as well as their expanding knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean," says Tony Campbell, Map Librarian for the British Map Library.

To see the differences, take a look at this cool example of a mappamunde DIE EBSTORFER WELTKARTE . Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.

I think there comes a time when you've got to stop thinking so much about where God lived on earth and start focusing on where you're going next. Take a look at this
portolan from 1489 to get your bearings. Portolans were used onboard to plan voyages. Captains, owners, investors and the like used them to determine sailing routes, figure out the best times to voyage hither and yon, locate ports of interest for trading and find places to stop in at if the ship needed repair. To quote Ralph Helverson, "A ship is safe in a harbor; but that is not what a ship is for."
Same goes for portolani.

Oak

Birch

Cedar

Softball

Grass

Chives

Pine

Daffodil

Rose

Fire Marshal

Round 5 with the Fire Marshall

No one likes being in trouble...

That's how i've grown up. As a child, you never want to get in trouble. You are terrified at the prospect of trouble. Trouble means having thing taken away. Trouble means yelling. Trouble means changes in tone and inflection. Trouble means scolding and becoming even more "inferior". My whole life has been spent trying to avoid or stay out of it.

The other day I got wind that the Fire Marshal was once again snooping around in my studio. Not only that, but he made a lengthy write up that got distributed to a handful of "higher ups"

This is the 5th time that I've had a fire safety related "issue" in the past 2 years. One would immediately think that I was "asking for it," or that I just didn't learn. That's one possibility. But I would like to think that I consistently try to be compliant, but just end up failing in a different area.

"You can't do this..."

Ok, so I guess i'll just do "that" instead.

"Nope. Can't do that."

Ok, then maybe if I make these...

"Those are no good either. And now you're on our radar"

Well there can't be anything wrong now?...

"Except for 4 more things..."


So I had a meeting with the Fire Marshal posse. Large dudes. I suppose they meant "business," I guess you have to be somewhat burly to be in the fire business. But like most people in authority - whether they are teachers, police or firemen, I knew that they were only trying to do their job.

Their job is to save lives and properties at all cost.

My job is to make art, at as much of a cost as I can afford.

The meeting went well and we came to a common reasoning on all of the issues. I had to make many concessions, but hey.... it's their property, and domain.

What had me more upset is the scare tactics that I was hit with right after the initial inspection. A letter from my department - threatening all of the worse. Removal of my studio privileges, fines, and the possible termination of the program. What a way to start of the weekend....

Again... I hate being in trouble.

I hope that this is my last Fire Marshaley encounter. But I say that every time.

I'm going to go try some new "this" now.... and see how it goes.

Bring on the dream control...

Here's a video I made to try and hone in on the powers of controlling your dreams.

The Mowing Devil and the Pig-faced Lady

I am a big fan of urban mythology and conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, I am not paranoid enough to believe in them whole heartedly; for me such paranoia borders on
extreme egotism.
Long before the 20th century crop circle fad, an English woodcut pamphlet published in 1678, told of a Hartfordshire farmer who refused to pay to have a field mowed by
a local laborer. The farmer said he'd rather have the Devil mow his field than pay the high price demanded by the field laborer. Well, lo and behold, that night his field appeared to be all aflame. In the morning the famer found his field was mowed alright, but in circles. The pamphlet written about the Mowing Devil is one of the first recorded instances of British crop circles.

Fast forward to 2009:
In Tasmania,a government official puts crops circles down to the antics of stoned wallabees. Lara Giddings, the attorney general of Tasmania, said "We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles. Then they crash..." Australia is responsible for over 50 percent of the world's legal opium grown for medical usage.

The Pig-faced Lady was a urban myth circulated in Georgian times, but it actually originated in the 1630's. In the early 1800's, it was rumored in Dublin that Griselda Steevens, an 18th century woman known for her philanthropy, had become a recluse to hide her pig-like face. In 1814 London another rumor swept through high society claiming a pig-faced lady was alive and well in Marylebone. Several portaits of her were published and the myth perpetuated so far as to have impresarios exhibiting pig-faced ladies at local fairs.
However, these pig-faced ladies weren't real women but shaven bears dressed up in frocks.

Can These Dots Find Connection?

I don't know if you are familiar with Italo Calvino's 1973 novel "The Castle of Crossed Destinies" (Il castello dei destini incrociati). It's the story of several travelers who meet at a castle for a night. They cannot use their voices to communicate, so they tell their stories to eachother through decks of Tarot cards. Somewhat like the Richard Wilhelm translation of the "I Ching," which has a couple of different versions of the Book of Changes within it, Calvino's story is told with two different decks, the Visconti pack and the Tarot of Marseilles.(On a slightly non-sequitur note, in Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell," Childermass creates his own version of the Marseilles deck on the backs of receipts, business cards and the like, and teaches himself to read Tarot.) Calvino's book explores how meaning is created and how events can be interpreted through words and symbolic imagery like tarot cards. And like Tarot cards, Calvino's work can be read on many levels, achieving different intepretations to suit the mindset of the reader.


Calvino's "Castle of Crossed Destinies was influenced by Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" which was in turn inspired Boccaccio's "Decameron." Boccaccio was familiar with numerology systems like isopsephy and featured it in his "Decameron." Isopsephy is the ancient practice of assigning numerical values to words and adding the numbers up to discover the number the word represents. In Hebrew, its correlation is Gematria, which uses the Hebrew alphabet. Scientific theories are sometimes labeled numerology if their inspiration appears to be a set of patterns, like atomic triads (which denote elements mostly in the same group or column of the periodic table).
Many alchemical theories also closely related to numerology...I wonder if any of this can be used in American Decameron...

Miscellaneous Ramblings and Catching Up

I'm in more of a reading mood than a writing mood today. I've just started Salman Rushdie's "The Enchantress of Florence" and just finished Kelly Link's "Magic for Beginners." On my MP3 player is Ken Robinson's "The Element." I listen to it when I'm waiting for a theater performance to begin or sitting in a $tarbuck$ knitting my funkadelic stripey tabi socks. I've just dropped the Ministry of Magic's Mini Cooper off at the dealership and am awaiting a call from them concerning the yellow engine light that came on the other day.
I live in a portion of the world where I'd be lost without my car. In less than two months I will be driving back across the fly-over states to Washington State where I normally live when I'm not gallavanting off to Europe or the East Coast. I like road trips. The one to get back home is a little over 3,000 miles.
I have other reasons for leaving, but one is I cannot afford to continue my degree at Stony Brook. Even with a stipend and scholarship, living in this area is simply too expensive for me. I just don't want to go any further into de.bt right now. So I will continue my education piecemeal, a year here a year there, paying off debt and saving money in between bouts at university.
One thing I notice about SBU is that the cafeterias and snack shops seem to be run by outside interests who gouge students with their high prices. The sad thing is, the students just keep racking up more and more debt over staples like food and supplies and books. Kids who live on campus and have little access to shops in the area are cash cows for those outside interests. Perhaps that has always been the case and I am completely out of the loop. Is it all worth it, I wonder? Since the 60's we've treated college as 13th grade, complete with remedial writing, maths and sciences courses many newcomers expect they'll have to take because they didn't learn those subjects in high school with any sort of proficiency. If they are still playing catch up, how can we prepare them for the real world?

Architectural Fish & Chips from Posh Nosh

This series of snippets of a snobby foodie couple always makes me laugh. They deconstruct fish & chips to resurrect them as Architect's Fish & Chips, complete with architect's model.

I love the nonsense cooking terms they've come up with: "Embarass the vegetables, pop them into hot boiling water for 4 minutes, no more or they'll get scared!" and
"What Mummy would have called a vile little hussy!"

You Are Not A Gadget - But You're Really Such A Tool!

Before Facebook came along, we used Yahoo Groups, Ning, email and database-driven websites that catered to specific interest groups. Before that, we had bulletin boards and CompuServe, Adelphi and AOL. Before that, we used telephones, wrote letters and hung out at bars and pubs to encourage and commiserate.

Since Facebook and the onset of teeny tiny handheld devices, we've boxed ourselves in to viewing life through miniscule windows that peer out onto the world. Facebook and texting are the new & improved opiate of the masses. With the inky winky windows comes the necessity for acronyms, since real words are too big for this tiny world. BRB. LOL. OMG. ADHD. ADHD is key; it names an inability to focus on one thing at a time. Kind of like not being able to turn off your ability to multitask; becoming unable to resist the magnetic attraction to the world in a box. BTW, there's an old word for this new syndrome: addiction.

We forego real conversations for truncated messages on our tiny screens. For all the influx of information, our world gets smaller and smaller. We develop a co-dependency on Facebook as if it is the only conduit to our network of friends. We spew out cryptic messages in hopes of sympathy or instant popularity. We have to invent personas, facades that show us at our wittiest, cleverest, archetypic best.

For me, Facebook has become a tool of absolution. I get contacted by people from my past who want to apologize for insulting me 30 years ago. It's been on their minds for a long long time and now they want absolution, forgivenness for past transgressions. I'm okay with that. Even though I have no clue what they're talking about I forgive them for whatever it was they did that's been bothering them. So Facebook does have a purpose in my life. How about you?