The tough part about being a generalist is that you spend a lot of time thinking about how much you would love to get more into EVERYTHING YOU SEE AND LEARN ABOUT but you are too busy getting more into 50 OTHER THINGS and also, you know, working at your job and stuff.
Big! Machines! Dancing! 'Nuff said.
(via i blame the sea)
...but I'm still wearing my down jacket.
This morning? It is SNOWING. Where am I, New Hampshire?!
I made my first trip up to Goldendale yesterday afternoon for a meeting with a 4-H youth livestock showing group.
It's too bad I forgot my camera. Goldendale sits well above the Columbia River on the Washington side, and you have to make a long, slow climb out of the Gorge to get to the top of the plateau. Once on top, I saw not only the usual mountain suspects - Adams, St Helens, Hood - but, way down south, Jefferson! Plus a ton of rickety old barns, homesteads, and old-skool cafes and bars. I miss the big wide open spaces of Eastern Oregon; the Gorge, while beautiful, feels claustrophobic sometimes, especially living on the north-facing side (less sun).
No shortage of sun in Goldendale: it was setting just as I left, and I spent the whole windy way back down gaping at the panorama of gold and green and pink. Everything's green right now - well, almost - and it will only be that way for a few weeks in the desert. I need to get back up there again soon.
Closest approximations I could find on flickr:
Basia Bulat covers Daniel Johnston's True Love Will Find You in the End at Daytrotter.
Yeah, I got rick-roll'd..
But it's ok. Those 80's dance moves by the "twerpy, earnest, high-waistbanded" Rick Astley? AMAZING.
Yup:
The researchers conclude: "People have a limited amount of self-control, and tasks requiring controlled, willful action quickly deplete this central resource. Exerting self-control on one task impairs performance on subsequent tasks requiring the same resource."
So, basically, all that self-control I exert staying on task during my work day (in the face of chatty office neighbors, friendly office dogs, mad tons of junk food, no direct supervision, teh INTERNETZ, etc) impairs my ability to say no to the salty salty potato chips at my desk.
There was an article on this in the NYTimes recently too, no? Where they were all, "you can train your self-control just like training a muscle!"
If that's true, I should have SELF-CONTROL OF STEEL by the end of this year. That or 15 lbs of potato chip-induced weight gain.
(via 43folders)
This list of official U.S. state beverages makes you wonder if maybe the milk lobby has been on some kind of decades-long campaign for the title in as many states as possible.
Or, as Pam said, "Bless you, Wisconsin."
Also - Go Maine! Moxie!
And Nebraska, are you kidding?
Had a rad long weekend with Jill! Got some photos coming soon, too! So good to spend time with an old friend and share food and cooking and adventures and music and real long conversations and humorous stories about navigating badass-single-woman-land (or: Where's All the Good Menz? or: Care and Feeding of Intermittent Flaky Lovers, or: Oh Girl, No, He DIDN'T).
I took a long weekend to have some fun and I've been paying for it today. April is going to be a long month - some major deadlines, some major speaking engagements, some major networking, some major project planning. Time to hit it, unpaid-overtime style. Wish me luck.
I'm really late to this game, but I've really been enjoying In the Aeroplane Over the Sea lately.
Best potluck yet last night. Highlights:
Hoping to catch Saul Williams next week:
The manic anger-energy in it is addictive.
---
It is the summer of 2002. I am cross-legged on the floor of Ben's dark bedroom and there are bruises covering the backs of my thighs from dam-jumping the day before. We have run out of conversation, or maybe we're just waiting for the night to cool down so we can go for a walk and hold hands in the park. A song comes on, Penny for a Thought, sandwiched between David Bowie and Propagandhi, spazzing the equalizer and catching my ear. It's the rhythm, or maybe it's the message, but something sticks, capping days of heady brew for a naive white girl who's just 18: anarchy, socialism, revolution, DIY, sewing clothes with dental floss, biking everywhere even when you have a car, art, love, slam poetry, actively tackling injustice with real tools and real organizing. A whole different reality.
which one is keeping it real, son?
who manufactured your steel, son?
hardcore, ancient elements at the earth's core
fuck it, I'ma keep speaking 'til my throat's sore
an emcee told a crowd of hundreds to put their hands in the air
an armed robber stepped to a bank and told everyone to put their hands in the air
a Christian minister gives his benediction while the congregation hold their hands in the air
love the image of the happy Buddha with his hands in the air
hands up and feel confused, define tomorrow
your belief system ain't louder than my car system
(Also need/want to buy his new album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust.)
From Rumi's Buoyancy:
So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where?
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It's a total waking up!Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping?
It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious.We're groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
From Some Trees, by John Ashbery
And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emergesA chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
(You can read the whole thing, and you should, at Blographia Literaria)
It's a twanged-out take; I like it. It's also another reminder that I need and want to read Love is a Mix Tape.
Dear Skylight Theater,
Since when does a movie show for only one week? Without any website or marquee information to note this? While other movies show for weeks and weeks?
I have now missed I'm Not There AND Persepolis because you only showed them for one week. How was I supposed to know you'd only show them for one short week, with only limited showtimes, when clunkers like Vantage Point just hang around forever?
Skylight, you gotta tell me these things so that I know to drop everything and get my ass to the theater, because y'all, I really wanted to see I'm Not There.
This is a great piece of work on Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and its long, weird journey through 49072350 covers and 589073 TV shows and movies.
On Jeff Buckley's classic cover, which he argues (convincingly) came more from John Cale than from Cohen:
The effect was to flatten the song emotionally, to take out all the different Hallelujahs Cohen depicted and reduce them to one: the cold and broken, which appears here twice. Even the "you don't really care for music" dig sounds more wronged than cutting, and the sex is now the ecstasy of the brooding artiste, an image Cohen always seemed careful to subvert.This simplification resulted in a torrent of covers.
I happen to like the Cohen, Cale, and Buckley versions, albeit for different reasons. But Leonard's is the best. It always is.
(via kottke)
As spotted in one of the various publications Dartmouth mails to me: a veritable who's who of me and the people who I live with. Brilliant.
(It's by the fantastic Roz Chast)
Gah. You saw the eye-poppingly terrible women are stupid WaPo piece, right?
Looks like they're now running some letters in reply. All I have to say is thank you Katha Pollitt:
Fortunately, Charlotte Allen boils it all down for the fickle, Obama-crushing, Manolo-coveting, ignorant, conflict-averse, push-aroundable female voter: "Women Aren't Very Bright." Thanks for clearing that up!I'm looking forward to further installments, like "Female Suffrage: A Big Mistake" and "Why Education is Wasted on Women." Followed by yet another round of, "Why Don't Women Read The Washington Post?"
(via feministing)
I'm a little embarrassed by how much I've been enjoying having Vampire Weekend on my Productivity Mix.
Foodstuffs prepared from scratch over the course of the weekend:
(bold denotes new recipe)
Raspberry-lemon muffins
Panang curry with peppers and tofu
Wilted spinach salad with bacon and green onions
Ambrosia (from Cross Creek Cookery, natch)*
Curried spinach-pea soup
Lemon-orange pie**
In addition to cleaning my ROOM (pictures forthcoming), finishing Eat Pray Love (mixed feelings), editing my boatload of Seattle/Punch Brothers/Wintergrass photos (forthcoming), and spending most of Sunday xc-skiing - and face-planting - on some more advanced trails under a glorious blue sky (pictures DEFINITELY forthcoming).
* The post office has Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings stamps right now! I am stocking UP!
** My tart take on Key lime pie, made with a surplus of lemons and a bit of orange zest. Thinking of upping the orange vibe and adding a bit of orange blossom water next time...