my cellular phone

sucks. in a bad way.

worst feature: it resets the ring tone in my pocket. didn't always do this. resets to "silent" like this is it's evolutionary destiny. water down a stream. maybe it's possessed.

next worst feature: it is the "clamshell" variety so i open it to answer the phone. many times, when i open to answer, it does not answer the phone.

also broken: led display when closed works sometimes, not others. when it is not working, then i cannot see the phone number calling before opening the phone and i have to open the phone to see the time.

and, it is leaving me. when i get downsized. someday soon. traitor.

the curious incident involving the blue planet

i spent a day and night chilling with friends on sat. sept. 30th. near the end of the day, we watched two 50 minute documentaries from the bbc called blue planet. the first was the deep and the second open oceans. narrated by david attenborough, these are public television documentaries with a clue-y narrator and lots of talk. the message, across the many species in the ocean surveyed here, was food chain. life is comprised of a struggle to find food, find a mate/reproduce, avoid becoming something else's dinner, and providing means for offspring. most seemed to travel in packs.

fascinating to watch. not my favorite kind of documentary. i prefer the microcosmos variety. but surveys can be good as well.

anyway, it caused me to think about how different life is for many humans (all the people i know). food and safety are key components of our lives. but everything is attenuated. extremely. food generally involves the work of others and is acquired with money (farm supplies, farmers, processing, distribution, reprocessing, sometimes preparation). i think of a burrito as a key food for a city kid - inexpensive, filling, delicious, somewhat vegetarian-friendly, well-distributed with so many good taqueries in cities like san francisco. would anyone eat them if we had to hunt and gather.

notwithstanding the recent nyt magazine story on elephants killing humans, predators are rare and mostly controlled. most live their lives without encountering a predator species (aside from a zoo's cages and the like). easy to do. of course, humans kill. intentionally, recklessly, negligently, accidentally. governments generally try to regulate this for their own populations. and, unfortunately, governments often seem to inflict this on other populations.

i have been a vegetarian for 18 years. am gay. not driven to reproduce (further study). watching the film (a human-specific trait, the creation and watching of films). intoxicated (not human specific, but not presented in the blue planet). leisure (they showed dolphins and whales playing). i recognized that - from the perspective of the video - humans are drastically different from the vast majority of life on earth. i knew this already - the computer i am writing this on is good evidence of the human-specific-tools i rely upon; the forming or reforming of the materials of the home i am living in are similarly human specific (steel, concrete, glass, wood, marble, brass, clay, porcelin....). and the film reminded me again.

i walked james, who brought the movie, to his car parked in a nearby parking garage. on the way, we crossed paths with numerous packs of humans that felt very much like the packs in the ocean. at some point in a saturday night out in the city (bars, restaurants, movies, other performances). the first were related by age and ethnicity, could have been friends and former classmates coming from a wedding rehearsal dinner. then we passed some families coming from the family-style restaurant near the movie theater. and groups with other connections. overlapping while waiting in line to pay at the parking garage. in the elevator. but travelling in packs. i saw a few cars on the walk - driving somewhat recklessly - all testosterone and filled with the violent lot (15 to 25 year old men, or thereabouts, some women). it felt like sharks were in the water.

the films reminded me of, and provided some context for, this fish skeleton.


a few days later, while reading "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" (wiki), the narrator (who is the good at maths variety of autistic, wiki above says its asperger's syndrome, which makes sense) watches the same blue planet videos. he describes the deep:

"the video was about the sea creatures who live around sulfur chimneys, which are underwater volcanoes where gases are ejected from the earth's crust into the water. scientist never expected there to be any living organisms there because it was so hot and so poisonous, but there are whole ecosystems there.

"i like this bit because it shows you that there is always something new that science can discover, and all the facts that you take for granted can be completely wrong. and also i like the fact that they are filming in a place which is harder to get to than the top of mount everest but is only a few miles away from sea level. and it is one of the quietest and darkest and most secret places on the surface of the earth. and i like imagining that i am there sometimes, in a spherical metal submersible with windows that are 30 cm thick to stop them from imploding under the pressure. and i imagine that i am the only person inside it, and that it is not connected to a ship at all but can operate under its own power and i can control the motors and move anywhere i want to on the seabed and i can never be found."

kid has issues with people. would not function well on his own. has some beautiful and funny thoughts. looking for a book to read - this one is great.

sins of thought

today i finished jamie o'neill's "at swim two boys" (2001). a beautiful book. it got great reviews. o'neill's website tipped me to the fact that it is also choreographed for dance.

anyway, i learned about three catholic sins of thought.

"time passed, and it was the discriminations and distinctions of sin, with regard to impure thoughts, that held jim's mind. that the church should see so far ahead, so deeply inside the soul, that no contingency was overlooked but she planned for all the twistings and quibblings of conscience: it was a majestic thing to contemplate, a structure built of thought and logic, magnificent and complex as the cathedrals the protestants had stolen from her. in the end, whether his hand moved to that solitary vice was neither here nor there. for already there was the sin of desiderium, which was the desire for what is sinful; of delectatio morosa, the pleasure taken in a sinful thought; of gaudium, the dwelling with the complacency of sins already committed."

wiki groups the three in the entry for internal sin and includes two biblical quotes, including the following: "but i tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

i wonder why so much fuss? but then, i tend to agree with donald urquhart:



(from his show at jackhanley, blogged here)

overheard at the gym (true story)

i arrive at the gym at 9:10 and start changing into my gym clothes. an older man walks up, says "murphy's law." people do not talk to strangers so much at this gym. he is referring to the fact that his locker is located in an area of the locker room that is currently crowded - a few men changing including me. the locker room is otherwise pretty empty. he appears to be the outgoing type. he is dressed in a suit and tie, mid 50s, plain. when i later look up, i am surprised to see that he is naked. i was expecting him to change into gym shorts, like me. and, i chalked this up as evidence that he is likely gay. straight men generally do not stand around locker rooms naked. in fact, some men (straight and gay) even change in and out of their underwear or bathing suits under a towel. i guess everyone has their own issues. anyway, the naked guy has a cell phone and is calling someone. cell phone use is prohibited in this locker room. i hear a woman through his phone. he is close and she is loud. he indicates (a) he is at the gym, (b) "no, i have 30 more minutes here," and (c) he will meet her after that. then he hangs up and heads, towel on shoulder, to the room with the showers, sauna, and steamroom. like most of what i overhear in public, i will never get the story of what is going on. for me, this overhearing felt like a scene from a movie - a comedy - and is ripe for speculation.

stretch mix (originally posted 09.25.06)

i have a short stretch program i do at the gym.


before i ride the bicycle.

there are 15 stretches, some right/left or this way/that way make the total more like 25.

i try to hold each stretch for around 30 seconds.

i figured out that a 20-40 second playlist, with some editing, worked pretty well.



computers can be user friendly for organizing music.

my stretch list tells me how long to hold a particular pose.


when to move to the next one.


it operates as a personal counter.


"i am not wearing any underwear today," from the avenue q soundtrack, does not fail to humor or to cause me to feel devious.


(view the 10 photo stretchslideshow?)

and, i need more. you want to engage in the project and tell me (in comments here) what you found, don't you? cause, see, that way together we can build a better stretch mix.

operating instructions for stretch mix
0. open itunes (or whatever digital music software program you use)
1. create a new playlist named stretch (file - new playlist)
2. sort your library by time;
3. select all songs with length between 18 and 42 seconds (or thereabouts);
4. drag and drop the songs into your stretch playlist
5. open stretch playlist
6. delete books on tape, voice memos, heavy metal or whatever does not work for you in 20-40 seconds of stretching
7. you are left with a stretch mix.

or something like that. you get the idea.

for me, the "requiem for a dream" soundtrack is the best provider - eight songs performed by kronos quartet.

badly drawn boy gave me three in "about a boy".

peterson's field guide provided "larks and pipits," "gulls," "hummingbirds and kingfishers," and "shrikes and waxwings."

i need to rip more soundtracks. i need to add craig's (and other) field recordings. kyle's gotta have something he can hook me up with (there must be 30 second bay area improvisers pieces, right?). lara?. and, they have to have some 30 second outtakes of their own work. i need to make my own field recordings. i could also engage a digital scapel to get some 30 second pieces.

i need more quick glen gould or other classical piano and/or whatnot.

help a boy out with some tips? comment.

"it smells of sulfur still today" (originally posted 09.22.06)

on wednesday (09.20.06), hugo chavez (president of venezuela), speaking from the "lecturn" in front of the united nations' general assembly, stated: "the devil came here yesterday, right here. it smells of sulfur still today, this table that i am now standing in front of." the nyt reported that this remark, referring to president bush (who spoke at the same spot the day before), resulted in "gasps and even giggles."

the comment - coming from outside the us - reminds me of the postcard piece from rigo23's recent show at gallery paule anglim. titled may 31, 2005, the piece is composed of korean characters, painted in three-dimensions, yellow and red on a silver background. ink and acrylic on unstretched canvas. it looks metallic and is huge (42" x 96"). the combination has the feel of propaganda to me. the phrase - attributed to north korean press - translates to "vice president dick cheney is a 'blood-thirsty beast.'"

true enough.

which, in turn, reminds me of travis millard's poignant drawingcomparing dick cheney's soul to the tip of an ant tooth.

true enough.

i do not believe in "the devil" who animates the chavez and bush worlds. i am happy to see that someone who does - a world leader - is willing to publicly assert that our president is evil. the devil reference even seems appropriate given that bush claims moral authority, in part, from his assertion that he directly communicates with "god."

condoleezza rice was reported in the nyt as responding that chávez's comments were "not becoming of a head of state." this "becoming of a head of state" test would fail bush again and again. and, as noam chomsky noted (also in the nyt), in addition to assuring reporters that he was not dead yet: "the bush administration backed a coup to overthrow [chavez's] government. suppose venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the united states?"

michael (originally posted 09.18.06)

i was working with positives (you know, the opposite of negatives, often called slides, from the analog photography days). sleeving them, fitting some into slides, scanning. i looked down and saw a black glove on my left hand, no glove on my right. and then it happened. i had this eerie identification with michael jackson. i think: "maybe michael was crafty." one hand gloved, the other not, can be useful for some craft projects. must be other areas where this is true.

while typing the above, a more plausible explanation hits me. maybe michael is obsessive/compulsive. he confines touching things that come into contact with the general public to the one gloved hand. kinda like when you have washed up at a public restroom and try not to touch the doornob as you leave. only all the time.

and, if so, what to do with the contaminated glove? bad to carry it around with you. can't rest your hand on your body. don't want any common germs (or worse) jumping from the glove. risk self-contamination when taking off the glove. being obsessive/compulsive, maybe he has some high-tech clean-box that he can periodically place his gloved hand into to be disinfected. and/or, perhaps the glove has some patented germ resistant coating (think teflon for germs). i bet he switches to a new glove at least once a day. so wasteful.

(this story would work much better with some illustrations from travis millard)

point lobos perimeter hike (originally posted 9.5.6)

we went hiking on sunday (9.3.6) a few miles south of carmel on hwy 1.

the point lobos perimeter hike was rated one of the top ten in the "beach and costal walks" category of a california hiking guide (circa 2003).


i used the opportunity to try out a new digital camera (nikon d200).
we saw a bunny

an egret

some sort of natural tree blanket, a tree shaped like an arrow, too much poison oak, and some other stuff

the trip produced two slide shows
(tip: reset time on slideshow to 1 second)
bully bird slideshow
sea gull slideshow

initiation

greetings. i decided to divide my blogging. art show coverage will remain at proper's notes. observations, often of life in the city, will be posted here. i am going to start by cross-posting the relevant archive from proper's notes.