You Don't Own Me PSA - AWESOME!

"You Don't Own Me" PSA -Official from You Don't Own Me on Vimeo.

love this.

what comes to mind

•It's 11:59 PM  and raining and this picture doesn't have anything to do with anything, other than I made a quick stop to flickr before I opened up the blogger page, noticed that this only had 2 views and thought "goddammit, that's a pretty flower" so here it is.

•I just set my itunes on random and it's playing My Mathematical Mind by Spoon. I love this record and  haven't listened to it in a long time. first video is a live version - man, Britt Daniel has such a great rock music voice. Second video is the album version, but with footage from old educational films. Pretty rad.







 • I'm finally feeling better enough to say I feel better. I'm like 92% there, which is good. This infection bullshit is some BULLSHIT. For a while there it felt like I was just putting out one fire after another but now everything feels like it's moving from the core to the surface on its way out. Although I do still have two perfectly round white spots on my left tonsil which anger me. They don't hurt, but they're lurking around like "aw yeah, we gots some more infectionsssss for you." Ha ha! I am going to drink a lot of water and go to bed shortly. Take THAT you little assholes.

• Halloween! I love it, but it stresses me out. Mostly because I think that I should plan a perfect costume and make myself go out and show it off, but I don't because I guess I don't really want to? I don't know.   In my mind Halloween should be one of the fun, slapdash shambley holidays - more costumes made out of tinfoil or cheesecloth and fewer 'sexy cookie monster' costumes. But seriously - why do I care what other people or doing, or that stores have had Halloween stuff up since Labor Day?! Ugh.  Probably because I have invented some dumb reason! (inventing some dumb reason is now my brain's originally part time but now shading into full time job. You need some dumb reason for something, just ask me and I will hook you up.)

•I returned an internet bought raincoat to the store today.  Store clerk asked if there was something wrong with it, I said "the color" (an unfortunate orange.) The clerk agreed, saying "it is rather barfy." Thank you for the radical honesty and the refund!

•I AM SO TIRED OF THIS ELECTION CYCLE. I can't even imagine how insane it is in a swing state.

sunday adorable

Young Otis, being cute.

This is one of the spots he likes to hang out in, right by the front door.

laurelhurst snaps, crime solving in a wig

SICKNESS UPDATE: hee hee. Because of the photos the type starts in the middle of the page so it looks like a news crawl as I write it. The most boring news crawl of all time! Let me try again.

WEATHER UPDATE: barely raining and dark skies as befits the middle of the night in Oregon in October. 

SICKNESS UPDATE: the update above was really more of a typing update, wouldn't you agree? I'm now picturing these words at the bottom of a news program. That's a job a person could get creative with (once, for the number of seconds it would take for someone to catch me and fire me. But then I would go rogue! I would hack into the news crawl technosomething and continue!) (note: in reality I could hack my way into a barn with an axe, but that's about it. No need to worry, Northwest Newschannel 8.)  

VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE UPDATE: I know it's late days to be talking about this, but I was watching the debate while IMing with my pal Martina and we came up with this whole ENDEAVOR that seems like the kind of thing I would like to read as a news scroll at the bottom of a traffic report for example. (btw, I keep typing an 'e' at the end of bottome, like so. ye olde bottome - i don't even know.) Anyway - it started with how everyone keeps referring to Paul Ryan as being so young - since we are near the same age as he is, she suggested we become elected representatives and move to Washington DC so we, too, could be young again. I reminded her that as women, the 'young in your early 40s' thing probably wouldn't work. The Man would find a way to render us hags or harpies or whathaveyou - Paul Ryan has probably already introduced a bill that makes it so. From there it evolved into an elaborate story about how we would be Senators by day but play in a rock band at night - nobody would know who we were - yes, like Hannah Montana, but obviously different since we would also solve crimes, which maybe she did, but did she solve National Treasure-style MASONIC MYSTERIES while wearing a pink wig and carrying a guitar? while being a Senator? DID SHE? If so, I will totally track down her show and watch it. If not, keep your antennae up for news of Senators who are never available for state dinners with foreign dignitaries because they are actually in secret tunnels under the city setting traps with guitar strings and clanging bad guys with cymbals and I'm working on the rest. Anyway. It distracted me from how much I wanted to punch Paul Ryan. (I'm not proud of this violent impulse, but I'm not going to deny it, either.) 

SO, THE PARK UPDATE: My sister had the very good sense to insist on going out somewhere yesterday since it was nice. I'm still feeling sketchy, so it was a pleasant stroll around Laurelhurst park. I forgot my camera despite saying "I should get my camera" before we left. I did have my ipod, so I snapped these and I like them! The top picture is of the cedar tree and water at the northeast end of the duck pond. The bottom picture is looking up at some leaves that were half green, half yellow. I can't remember the name of the tree, but they cast the most beautiful dappled shade. 

don't let the microbes get you down

SICK RIDIC.

It started with a sinus infection. Weeks of clues in my kleenex should have tipped me off, but it wasn't until I felt my EYEBALLS start to get snotty that I finally dragged myself to a health care provider. (ZoomCare, as I do not have health insurance. Get it together, America!) The nurse practitioner gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and a steroid nose spray sent me on my way. Next up: Target pharmacy, where the pharmacist told me that the nose spray was $70. Since breathing didn't hurt, I decided to forgo Flonase and let that $70 stay in my bank account.

Both the nurse practitioner and the pharmacist warned that a yeast infection was possible with the antibiotic. I noted it, but didn't worry too much since the last time I had antibiotics (4 years ago and they were heavy duty) I didn't get one.  Plus, I eat yogurt all the time FOR FUN. Well the joke's on me because I got one and it was horrible. If you're ever feeling masochistic, try reading internet message boards about yeast infections and how to treat them. It's almost gone, she said hopefully.

Remember the snotty eyeball at the beginning of this story?  As soon as everything else was calming down, this decided to flare up.  And by flare up, I mean ooze and crust. So gross! And then a spider bit me. What the hell, spider!  Sigh. Every morning I think it's a little better, and maybe it is.  I'm generally in good health (for which I am enormously grateful), and I know that patience (plus time, rest, and liquids) are what's called for, but WAAH.

Anyway - all this is by way of saying 'this is what I've been doing'  - on the plus side, I've gotten a lot of reading done.

p.s. it finally started raining!

beach feathers

hello, October! I'm uploading a backlog of photos (always a backlog) and liked these feathers from July.


I think they're splendid. They were found right in front of Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach - LOTS OF BIRDS on haystack rock.


This feather almost looks like hair, which sounds freaky when I type it out, but it's not freaky! I find it to be an elegant feather.

basically a monkey in a dress

I loved How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran.   Her writing is funny, brash, raunchy, honest, and kind. One of the things I like best is the sensible assertion that feminism doesn't require one to be to be some super-powered paragon of good traits, but rather "simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy, and smug they might be." 

The chapter titles (below) give you some idea of the shape of this book. I started reading this while in the waiting room of a ZoomCare -  I didn't feel good (sinus infection) and they were running late, but this book was such good company! The early chapters were audacious and bracing yet comforting as I sat in a rigid chair waiting for someone to look up my nose with a flashlight.

Prologue: The Worst Birthday Ever
Chapter 1: I Start Bleeding!
Chapter 2: I Become Furry!
Chapter 3: I Don't Know What to Call My Breasts!
Chapter 4: I Am a Feminist!
Chapter 5: I Need a Bra!
Chapter 6: I Am Fat!
Chapter 7: I Encounter Some Sexism!
Chapter 8: I Am in Love!
Chapter 9: I Go Lap-dancing!
Chapter 10: I Get Married!
Chapter 11: I Get into Fashion!
Chapter 12: Why You Should Have Children
Chapter 13: Why You Shouldn't Have Children
Chapter 14: Role Models and What We Do with Them
Chapter 15: Abortion
Chapter 16: Intervention

Here's a quote from an interview she did with The Hairpin: 

 “The trick is, and there’s a little bit of heartbreak, you have to just give up on the idea of being a princess. You have to give up on the idea of being fabulous. My kind of base position on existence is that you just have to admit you’re a bit of a twat. You’re a bit of a div, you’re a kind of sweaty, stumpy, well-meaning idiot and you’re trying your hardest, but it’s just enough to be a sort of pleasant, polite person who’s working quite hard and tries to be nice to the people they’re nice to. We don’t need to have any more ambitions than that! This whole sassiness thing – everything’s got to be sarcastic, everything’s got to be knowing, everything’s got to be cynical. You’ve got to be on top of your shit twenty-four hours a day. THAT is exhausting. It’s just far better to go, you know what? I’m just basically a monkey in a dress, and the best I can hope for every day is just to be nice, to smile as much as possible, to be gentle, try and be a bit understanding, work really hard, go and smell some flowers, have a cup of tea, ring your mum if you get on with her, just kind of dial it down a bit. There’s a more sustainable idea of being a woman rather than feeling like you’re in a fucking movie twenty-four hours a day.”

summer is leaving but I don't want it to go

For today, some photos from aug/sept. that I haven't posted yet. These are happy roses from my summer-long rose-improvement campaign of FOOD AND WATER. Who knew? Besides everyone, I mean. 

These are hops growing on one of the cables that stabilizes a telephone pole. I read somewhere that Oregon (prob. the whole PNW) is one of the few regions in the world where hops grow easily. They're so cute. 

Otis loves to climb trees, but he REALLY loves for people to stand beneath whatever tree he's on, so he can casually hop onto shoulders. This is not always met with delight, as you can imagine. (it largely depends on how big of a surprise a sudden cat on the shoulder is.) 

transformation defies any attempts to explain

I'm almost done with this book and I'm enjoying it very much - so much that I'm in no hurry to finish because then it will be over. Half of the story takes place in Italy in the early 60s vaguely around the filming of Cleopatra, half takes place in present day Hollywood(ish). Usually when there's this kind of divide I prefer one setting over the other, but in this book it's so well balanced I'm happy to return to any set of characters.

Here's a quote from p. 93, describing Michael Deane ("the Deane of Hollywood"), now an old man struggling for relevance in the current business.

Suffice it to say that, upon meeting Michael for the first time, many people stare open-mouthed, unable to look away from his glistening, vaguely lifelike face. Sometimes they cock their heads to get a better angle, and Michael mistakes their morbid fascination for attraction, or respect, or surprise that someone his age could look this good, and it is this basic misunderstanding that causes him to be ever more aggressive about fighting the aging process. It's not just that he gets younger-looking each year, that's common enough here; it's as if he is somehow transforming himself, evolving into a different being altogether, and this transformation defies any attempts to explain it. Trying to picture what Michael Deane looked like as a young man in Italy fifty years ago, based on his appearance now, is like standing on Wall Street trying to understand the topography of Manhattan Island before the Dutch arrived.

let my people vote

Enraging that it has come to this, hilarious in that Sarah Silverman way,  and NSFW!

Go here for more information. 

caterpillar eyes

NOTE: this post is from a few weeks ago, and I never posted it for whatever reason. (caterpillar insanity?)

There are caterpillars eating my petunias and this simple fact fills me with rage. CATERPILLAR RAGE! I know that caterpillars gotta eat, etc. but it just makes me so mad. Why can't they eat something else?! Weeds, for example?  They eat  right through the middle of buds that have yet to open and keep on eating until everything has holes in it or is dead. I hate them. The only practical way to deal with the problem is to pluck them off one by one (destroying them with fire would only compound my problems).

Even the big ones are tough to spot, but the little ones are nearly impossible. They're tricky and blend in with the plant, but I've discovered the secret: you have to look long enough until you get your caterpillar eyes. It's similar to night vision; you can't just walk into the dark from a brightly lit room and expect to see - so it is with the budworm caterpillar. You have to adapt, and then pluck those bastards off one by one as they come into your field of vision. What you do with them after that is up to you. I put them in the yard debris bin and figure they can eat to their hearts content along with any slugs I find.

UPDATE: shortly after I wrote this, the caterpillars were no longer the main problem. That would be the scourge of powdery mildew. It's really hard to focus fury on a mildew - I can't just pluck it away and consign it to the bin so I'm reduced to heavy sighs, muttering, and the knowledge that soon it will be winter and I'll be longing for a nice warm day and my caterpillar eyes.

observation deck

This photo is from last year's epic cross country road trip; I may have posted it before.  It was taken at the Great Salt Lake, and I thought the viewer looked rather Jawa-like. Maybe that's what they look like under their robes!

This evening's thoughts:

• the saying was that the internet runs on cats, but I think those halcyon days are over. The currency of the internet these days is outrage. I passively contribute by letting myself get worked up about how some people are deliberately misunderstanding what some other people have said or done (someone is wrong on the internet!), and then I think about how dumb it is to waste any mental or emotional energy on it and return my attention to politics or pinterest. (I KNOW!) speaking of the former...

• I'm pretty sure Romney will lose because he is dangerously clueless and even those in his own party can't work up much enthusiasm for him. Even the party bigwigs are unconvincing  - GWB, they could work with - but Romney has no charisma, no juice; he's like a dried up corncob with impressive republican hair. There's little support for Romney that if, when you scratch it, isn't really just wanting Obama out of office. (Can you even believe that Kansas is "mulling over" whether to put President Obama on the ballot because of some birther bullshit? They "suspect he is ineligible!" I cannot believe it - if you made it up it would be too much - and yet here it is!)

•My friend Daniel has a new blog called Democraycray  - he's blogging his thoughts and frustrations  every day until the election. I'm also fond of the 90 Days, 90 Reasons site and the politics blog at Esquire.

• While I'm talking about it - did you watch the conventions? What did you think? I thought the DNC was miles better. They sounded like serious people and running this government is a serious job! And they're serious about helping people! There were only a couple of speakers at the RNC who sounded like grown ups who could put two thoughts together away from the teleprompter talking points (Chris Christie, Condoleeza Rice), but neither one of them seemed to give two shits about Mitt Romney.

and now I must go to bed. I don't plan on blogging very much about politics, but I had to get some of this out of my system.

shelf 4: the avon owl is watching

The bookshelf series! I haven't forgotten — summer has just distracted me with its bees and berries and novel reading.

SHELF 4: this is shelf is a remnant of the old organized by color system. I still like how they all are together; it just seems right.  So they remain, guarded by our thrift store friend the Avon snow owl.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: (READ THIS!!! it makes me laugh forever. JANE!) this edition is one of those Oxford classic tiny books they were doing for a while - the pages are almost but not quite onionskin thinness. I found this at a library sale - such a nice compact little size for a long book.

Malaise by Nancy Lemann - Naaaaaaaannncccyyyyyyy. I wish she was still writing novels because I love the ones I've read. But I haven't read this one - as long as I haven't read it, I can anticipate.

Sportsman's Paradise by Nancy Lemann -  She can be so funny and break your heart at the same time. I haven't read this in a long time but just thinking about how I barely remember anything that happens makes me want to read it again.

The Service of Clouds by Delia Falconer -  Delia Falconer snuck into the Nancy Lemann section! This is an advance copy that I bought at Powell's a long time ago (I think it was a fluke to find one for sale, because they don't normally sell them). As I recall this novel was dreamy, ambiguous, romantic. Clouds, Australia, sanitariums, landscapes, photography. For a long time this is what I thought of whenever I heard the title Cloud Atlas, although they are not alike at all.

The Fiery Pantheon by Nancy Lemann - maybe I loved this one more than Sportsman's Paradise? I can hardly remember now. This one has travel and dervishes in it, though, which endears it to me. I've been trying to think how to describe these books and her style and it just flashed in my mind that they remind me a little bit of Whit Stillman, except instead of being movies about rich young people in New York, they're novels about rich young people from the South. (rich meaning not everyone is rich, but it's an environment where some are very rich.)

Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann - the first one of hers I read and probably my favorite. Some of the characters from this book do appear here and there in the other books, but it's not really a series.

Complete Novels of Jane Austen, vol. 1 & 2: I found this set at Powell's AGES ago. (Probably during the 90s Reign of Jane when every couple weeks brought a new adaptation.) I love the covers so much!



Persuasion by Jane Austen: Ooh - I think I got this one at an estate sale - the cover is so orange and lovely. I'll post a picture below. I intended to give this as a gift but ended up keeping it due to awesomeness and avarice. I've only read this once - I should read it again.


The Ritz of the Bayou by Nancy Lemann : Poetic non-fiction account of the trial of Edwin Edwards, governor of Louisiana. Subtitle: The New Orleans adventures of a young novelist covering the trials of the Governor of Louisiana, with digressions on smoldering nightclubs, jazz-crazed bars, and other aspects of life in the tropic zone. 

The Sensualist: An Illustrated Novel by Barbara Hodgson - I loved her previous book so much (The Tattooed Map) I was desperate to have this one when it came out. I recall being somewhat letdown, but that is not a fair assessment as I'm sure my expectations were sky high. Ooh, opening it up reveals that my copy is autographed! I remember now - I found this at powells - I didn't go to her reading, but she signed a bunch of books and I got one.

Royal Escape by Georgette Heyer - !!!! I've never read it, but it's a lovely UK edition I got for a song. I think I bought it with the idea that SOME DAY my future beach house library might need it.

PREVIOUSLY:
Shelf 3: private library nurse
Shelf 2: state quarters, hamlets
Shelf 1: imaginary islands

zinnia world domination requires action

ORANGE ZINNIA PHOTO is part of my plan for world Zinnia domination. Next year, I will actually plant some.

I realized yesterday that I've been feeling pretty shabby this past month or so. Not terrible, not depressed, just out of sorts and blerg. Maybe it's the summer doldrums, although I love summer so this seems unlikely. I've been working in the garden, which is rewarding but I've not been getting much else done. I'm out of shape, library work has been s-l-o-w, and I generally feel like I'm failing to grasp some obvious thing that everyone else knows. (WHAT IS YOUR SECRET KNOWLEDGE, EVERYONE ELSE???)

Self, I wondered, what can I do to make this shabby just a little shiny? Just asking the question helped. I restarted my drawing a day project - it is so fun and I have no idea why I stopped. I walked to get the CSA share, which I pick up in the park I used to walk in all the time. On the way there, I had a major epiphany about a story I've been working on 4EVAH. Hooray! On the way back, the obsessive lawn-mowing man, who I walked by every day for 2 years when I was walking regularly, actually SPOKE TO ME, which was a first. He said "I used to see you every day! Where have you been?" which reinforced that I should probably resume my park walks. Not because I want to talk to obsessive lawn-mowing man, but because the words out of his mouth were the words in my head. "Where have you been?"

In the spirit of taking charge of myself I also: graphed out my next quilt, which I can't wait to make; got out my soldering stuff because by god I'm going to figure it out. (here's a link to the tutorials I've pinned, including soldering!)

Anyway. I don't have any tidy summation or anything - just a reminder to myself:  I was low, I did some stuff and felt better.

hot weather videos

Love this video and its sense of happy summer chaos.

Why would you live anywhere else?  I feel the same way about Portland and the whole west coast of the United States, really. Don't get me wrong - I love to visit other places, but I love coming home! (and I love reading about /listening to/visiting people who feel the same way about their home.)

Something about the Best Coast video reminded me of this Mika Miko song from a few years ago that I still love—it feels like summer to me.
(hey! I just learned how to make an m-dash on my macbook. It's option shift hyphen—;——————————)