down for the count

this blog may go on a bit of a hiatus for a while. There's lots to talk about, all of it bad, so I'll spare my 4.5 readers the boredom and agony. I'll post when I get inspired or when there's news too cool to lose.

in the meantime, here's to finding a secret joy, even if it takes you to the limits of known space...*


*"betty on titan, or: what really happened to the mars rover" courtesy of phlonx.com

wild red tulips

I don't know anything about gardening, but I thought you had to plant tulips. I mean, they are bulbs, right? Big, like onions. Not little seeds that get airborne and spread. I could be wrong. Like I say, I don't know.

Nonetheless, our story today depends on tulips being bulbs. It begins on bloggrrilla's morning commute, which entails about a mile walk to the train station over some heartbreakingly lovely roads. I'm not even being sarcastic, it's beautiful up here. I also walk past the world's largest set of dumpsters, which aren't so lovely. I scan them daily for glue traps, which i promptly destroy. I cannot stand glue traps. Abominations. If you set them, I will destroy them. Even roach motels. But I digress. Across from the dumpsters is a narrow strip of weedy grass, which rises to about head level, because as you walk past the dumpsters you walk into the valley of the shadow of death. Sorry I cannot keep the stream o consciousness outta here today. NO discipline. Back to the story. The weedy strip borders one of the pretty roads.

I take my camera with me some mornings, because I like the change of seasons and sometimes get the urge to chronicle it visually. So one morning, as i walked past the dumpsters on my left, to my right, I caught a glimpse of red. Bright, bloody red. Naturally I turned. There, in the weedy strip, were 2 perfect, full, red, tulips. As perfect as if waving gently in the overcultivated gardens of the versailles.
As brave as two orphans in a storm. As happy as...well whatever, you get the picture. Unexpected at any rate, and certainly not weeds.
So I took pix of them, and went on.

And came home that night, saw them there, and felt as though I had a secret joy.

Went to work the next day.

And came home.

And lo and behold, some moron had mowed the weedy strip, and mowed the tulips to the ground. Chopped red petals lay there, nothing else.

Pretty stupid. I mean, one doesn't mow tulips, does one?

It's hard to have a secret joy these days. Someone always fucks it up.

king to pawns

King Gyanendra has made a concession. He will allow the royal dog one extra milk bone per week. He hopes this will stop the protests, and restore order.

Ok ok, you got me. thas a joke, son. Here's the real story, hot off the BBC (those brit hotties, who keep the best track of their ex-empire. wait, was nepal part of their empire? the bbc is notoriously silent on this....)
At any rate, Gyanendra says he will now allow an election for prime minister. some say this is a major step, some say it just ain't enuff. In my eyes, there's not much he can do at this point to stop the inevitable...the inevitable being the end of the monarchy. I have to say I don't hate Gyanendra, after all, he supports the WWF (not world wrestling foundation. SMACKDOWN!). But isn't he a bit anachronistic? I mean, look at the crown...


I don't know how this will all turn out. Anything I would want to say that isn't a joke would be hopelessly stupid, bland and platitudinous, so I'll spare you. pass the milk bones.

nice weather to be under

I've been sick this week. I stayed home from work on weds, dragged myself to work the other days of the week and only ran once, yesterday, when the junkie twitch just got too much for me. (i'm paying for it today, with a renewed sore throat and that oh so unpleasant feeling of a distinct lack of lung space).

I have no really thrilling news to report, except that, by sheer accident, scientists have discovered a that a certain type of mouse, called a "Murphy Roth's Large" has incredible regenerative abilities. These capabilities were discovered when they marked one of these guys by punching a hole in his ear. S.O.P. right? Well, when they checked again, lo and behold, as if jesus himself had laid on hands, the ears were made whole. (see comparison with different type of mouse, at left)



I think this calls for great celebration. Perhaps even a new cult. Perhaps some sci-fi writer (like my current fave, Ted Chiang) could invent a new religion, based on the Murphy Roth's Large. Or, if we wanted to go less techno, and more nature-primitivo, we could just worship it.

IN ANY EVENT, I am gratified to learn that my "theme song" is "Born to Be Wild." I'd really have thought something more along the lines of "The Funeral March of the Marionettes." but hey, these quizzes do not lie.

Your Theme Song is Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf

"I like smoke and lightning Heavy metal thunder Racin' with the wind And the feelin' that I'm under" A total independent spirit, you can't be held down or fenced in. You crave the feeling of wind on your face... and total freedom.

What's Your Theme Song?

Triangulation (3 = FCB)

cattus cattus triangulattus
oxnum fanxnorium triaxium
plesticillia latvore istphax tri tri mutvex.

Nepal

The ex and I lived in Nepal (well, I guess I really mean we "visited" Nepal) for a few months in late 1997, early 1998. We stayed in Pullahari, which is just up in the foothills from Kathmandu, and a 40 minutes walk from Boudhanath, which has the famous stupa with the eyes. I didn't much care for Kathmandu, but Boudha and the hills were another story. Oddly, the area seemed like home to me. I always planned to go back.

Thus when the Maoists started rumbling, i reacted a bit like a typical colonial. I mean, a lot of what I liked about Nepal was the fact that for about $3 a day you really could live quite well. Plus, there was the fact that everyone seemed so un-selfconscious there. And that the night is actually dark. Of course I knew that Nepalis have one of the lowest per capita incomes of any country in the world, and their royal family is one of the 8 richest families in the world. I knew that Nepalis tend to die at 40. I saw lepers (yeah, I handed one a coin or two). But, hell. Why let any miserable reality cloud my pretty vision of sub-himalayan paradise? To be sure, I did experience some misery of my own. I mean, no central heating, very little protein to eat, and I did catch pneumonia, rather spectacularly wasting away to the point where people were waiting for me to die. But, let's face it, I chose my misery. it was romantic. it was religious. It was adventurous.

So I, of course, thought of Nepal as my private ace in the hole, my private get away, a place where I could truly experience life (whatever that ridiculous statement means). Now the Maoists have ruined all that. Sheesh. any way you slice this conflict, I lose. If the maoists actually manage to do some good for the people, then, bye-bye friendly, impoverished, unselfconscious Nepalis, hello equals. Hello adequate hospitalization and jobs. Who wants that? If the maoists turn out to be assholes, then Amurkans like me won't be welcome there anyway, and hello cashmere curtain (pun on kashmir intended. sometimes i am just so clever). If King Gyanendra wins, he's going to have to make some changes anyway, which means that Nepalis may be better off, but I have to pay more to go there. again. who wants that??

So, I guess I have to look further for some private heaven realm. Maybe somewhere in outerspace exists an unspoiled, beautiful planet with charming, happy natives whose religious beliefs lend themselves to oh so friendly exploitation by disenfranchised, heart-heavy humanity.

*disclaimer: Mostly, i'm pretty sarcastic and glib about things. However, to be serious for a second, I am not in favor of the Maoists. Their violent revolution is violence, unadorned. 13,000 people have died in this revolution. Also, calling yourself a maoist at this point in history is kinda like calling yourself a nazi. lotsa cachet there. However, I can understand how Nepalis, of all people, would be attracted to the supposed equalization of power that "maoist" communism is supposed to represent. And, there's some indication Gyanendra is not a bad guy, for an ivory tower royal. Anyway, take what I say with a grain of salt. And, read about it for real, if you're interested.

A day at the office (or, another unnecessary series of cat pix)

Abby checks the printer while Pink readies the scanner.


































Pink checks the wall for bugs (many legged or electronic, he does not discriminate).

the Time Being

I've been reading an old book of the best Sci-Fi stories of the year (from 2000 i believe). I just finished one by Ted Chiang, called "The Story of Your Life" which was really good, and got me wondering about our perception of time passing. The story concerns a linguist who is called upon to learn and translate the language of the first aliens landing on earth. The aliens' written language is completely different from their spoken language, and, is written in such a way as to be read in a temporally non-linear fashion. in other words, you don't read the language from left to right or right to left as most human written languages are read, rather the language contains no preferred order.

Of course the spoken language cannot be that way, and, thus, is less interesting to our linguist. The linguist finds herself so possessed by the aliens' written language, that she becomes "unstuck in time" (to borrow from slaughterhouse 5), and starts seeing her own life as moments appearing randomly. thus she experiences her daughters' death and birth, her marriage, etc., "out of order," so to speak.

In Slaughterhouse 5, a much less thoughtful work, but one which i read when I was 10 and was pretty enthralled with, the main character "Billy Pilgrim" gets unstuck in time, and views the moments of his life randomly but, if i remember correctly, he sees the moments more than once. I think this is different than the Ted Chiang story.

In "real" life, we experience a moment, and it is gone forever...like "tears in rain." So if we were to experience moments out of order, we'd still probably only visit them once, correct? Perhaps then we wouldn't build memories, because we wouldn't be alerted that we had to pay attention to this particular moment by the moments that came before. Does this make sense? I mean, you say goodbye to your dying cat, or dying parent, and it means something because of the moments that came before, which tied you to this entity. AND because of the moments which come after, where you know you won't see them ever again. But, if the moment of their dying came randomly, would you pay attention to it? I mean I guess you would, because that moment would probably have all the other moments somehow attached. I don't know.

My ex-husband used to refer to an entity called "the Time Being." So every time you did something "for the time being", it was for this entity. Like, I think I'll stay in this apartment "for the time being"... I tended to think of this entity as a sort of large pacman, eating up moments in a linear progression. But, even pacman can change direction. And what would he (or ms pacman) do if the moments came from every which direction? The time being would become more like the cartoon tasmanian devil...a mini tornado of an entity.

At any rate, the freakin clocks go forward today, which means I have to get up at an even more ungodly hour tomorrow. It would be comforting if I could somehow just skip the moment of the alarm clock...

and behold

it was very very good.

and now, for 13 things that don't make sense. Because law is a human institution. And I'd rather be stargazing...