Skip navigation.

exploreopera

| Help

Sign up | Help

Tilting the Void

...still wrecked among heathen dreams...

STICKY POST

Chapter Four.

NEWISHNESS Like Badgers Gone To Ground.NEWISHNESS!!

Finally, a new chapter.

Oh, Irony.

It occurs to me that I enjoy the summertime far more now that I'm an adult than when I was a kid and had heaps of time with nothing to do except laze about and read. I used to get bored, for heaven's sake, and couldn't wait for school to start in the fall. (I got over that, eventually.) Now I live for weekends and soak up what sunshine I can, knowing I'll be spending the better part of my week indoors, in front of the computer. So what am I doing here now?!

It's soft high summer here; farmers are cutting and baling hay, the sky is heartbreaking blue, and everything smells of sweetness and life.

Sigh.

Oh, Irony.

It occurs to me that I enjoy the summertime far more now that I'm an adult than when I was a kid and had heaps of time with nothing to do except laze about and read. I used to get bored, for heaven's sake, and couldn't wait for school to start in the fall. (I got over that, eventually.) Now I live for weekends and soak up what sunshine I can, knowing I'll be spending the better part of my week indoors, in front of the computer. So what am I doing here now?!

It's soft high summer here; farmers are cutting and baling hay, the sky is heartbreaking blue, and everything smells of sweetness and life.

Sigh.

Dark angels follow me...



I shall cut my hair and run off to sea.


More Tom Waits--Who Are You?



OK BACK TO WORK

Whistle Down the Wind.


Keep it light enough to travel!



Hee! Am writing! Have idea! Oh joy!

More later...

Metal Capuchin.



Sursum Corda!

Brought to you by the yootoobs via the nice folks at Fist!

I DEMAND TO HAVE SOME BOOZE!

THIS DAY WILL NEVER END. :cry:


You have to wonder--was Dethklok there?

Teva sandals rock.

Oh god. I am officially a B'ham veggie dork now. I bought a pair of Teva Hurricanes, I rode my bike to work, and I grow organic food.

But ZOMFG these sandals are teh comfort!!1! I shall live in them until first frost, after which I will wear my handknit socks with them (or my Birkenstocks), and I shall bite my thumb at the corporate suits of the world. Who wear wingtips. And make far more money than I ever will :rolleyes:

edited to add: My sandals didn't come with the hairy/cute half naked hippie guy they show on the website. FALSE ADVERTISING! Where's my hippie cute guy??

The light. I has seen it.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, again it occurs to me I've been spending far too much time THINKING about writing and READING other people's thoughts and opinions, and not doing enough of my own WRITING. And possibly using the CAPS KEY FAR TOO MUCH, which, like employing air quotes (also guilty) should result in swift and painful punishment.

But I digress.

I have an idea (which happens about two or three times a day and usually goes nowhere), and I'd like to get writing on it, except for the nasty little thing called real life, and so instead (whimper) I will be arguing freight charges with my boss and UPS, writing up sales tickets and labels, and generally whining my way through the day.

So if this particular idea can survive through that mess (plus raspberry picking later in the day), it might actually be worth pursuing.

Oh, and more installments of Box Full Of Smoke to come. This weekend, maybe.

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Two words. Joss. Whedon.

Oh, and Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. And waaaay cool evil goggles.

WATCH IT.

Interior monologues, part I

...wonder what I ought to make for dinner? There's that dead chicken carcass in the fridge. I could swing by Trader Joe's and get a jar of green curry, slap it all together over rice, and Greg would never know it was leftovers. MMMmm, chicken carcass...

I love driving but I also love biking. How could I possibly combine the two?

I can't believe I'm 36. THIRTY SIX. I'm reading some chick writer's blog and she's talking how she just turned 30 and OMG suddenly superficial stuff doesn't matter anymore, like, because she's all old and stuff and so she doesn't care what other people think and JUST SHUT UP NOW. Bitch. And I still watch cartoons. Do old people watch cartoons? CARTOONS. Animated films, my butt. They're CAR-fing-TOONS, and I love them, and I will watch them until I die or they roll me up in a sweater with no sleeves and take me off to the funny farm. Which may be sooner than later, I'm thinking...

Damn. Don't knit fat yarn on extra small sock needles if you don't want crab hands. CRAB HANDS!

Do. Not. Want. Why do customers call me with unsolveable problems? No, I can't tell you why it's not the same color as the sample on your computer monitor. Maybe you need to clean your monitor. MAYBE YOU NEED A BRAIN TRANSPLANT. No, I did not just say that aloud. The customer is always right and I really care and I have oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you. From my front porch you can see the sea...dang, George Strait is cuter than hell for a cowboy.

Why do we have to work, anyway? I thought in the new millennium, we would have robot slaves. Where's my damn robot slave? I have a highly evolved chimp brain that should be freed from this mundane workaday bullshit to drift in the aether. I should be lolling about on robot-tended green lawns, under lemon trees, inventing new philosophies and music and art forms, not flattening my butt on a swivel chair under fluorescent lighting whilst my body deteriorates at a cellular level. Unless we're not the highly evolved chimps we believe ourselves to be, but instead are actually the bio-organic slaves to our technologically superior cyborg masters, whose survival depends on our daily usage of their keyboard souls. You know what Tom Waits says--anything you can think of is true, so therefore it must be so...


Peurs de Noir (Fear of the Dark)

This looks so cool. Found at Drawn!--where else? Out on DVD later this year. WANT.


Bees bees bees bees...

Greg made a super. I helped. All we need to order are more frames, since those are EXTREMELY fiddly bits, and which I've done.

We are well on our way into full-time obsession. I have grand visions of moving to the country, setting up shop, and becoming a full-time beekeeper/artist/ne'er-do-well.

It has much more allure than desk-slavery or living under a bridge in a cardboard box, which, if you read current financial news, is what we'll all be doing once all the banks fail and we're stuck standing in soup lines while Walker Evans takes our picture.

I SO look forward to the future!


1:30 am. Do you know where your anxiety is living?

Argh. Can't sleep. Woke up freaking out about the art show in September. YAY FUN! Only two more months to worry myself into a state of catatonia.


Debris

The other day we went to an estate sale
Held in a mini-storage.
There in the warm July sun
We contemplated disordered piles of well-used junk
Elbow to elbow with soft-armed, soft-bodied veterans
Of a thousand garage-sale campaigns.

Broken Viewmasters, plastic old lady jewelry
Bakelite, Pyrex, shoe-cream, paint-by-numbers
Cigar boxes, girlie mags, iridescent candy dishes
Cameras in fake leather valises
Antique photos, less valuable than their frames
Vestiges of horsemanship
Boxes of machine parts
Dust.

Greg found a handful of useful items
And one thing he couldn't identify
But loved nonetheless, or despite its obscurity:
Some metal widget that once
Drilled or mixed or spun.

For myself: a FireKing Pyrex bowl
Just like the ones Mom used at home.

Leaving, loot in hand, I turned to my husband
Clutching his sagging cardboard box
"Just think," I said. "Of all the cool stuff
Other people will get
When we die."


Hark! Hear, the pipes are calling...

, , , ...

Every year, my spinners' group does a little demo down at the Skagit Valley Highland Games. The past couple years, I've volunteered to take the loom down to Mt. Vernon and help set up the tents. This year, gas prices being what they are, I thought I'd camp at the park overnight Friday and hang out on Saturday. My friend L accompanied me. We made a little stop at the grocery before turning in for the night so we could purchase a wee nightcap:




I don't camp much and so I didn't sleep very well, but we were up bright and early the next morning. Here's L spinning on a drop-spindle (and an unintentional shout-out to our LYS):




Here's what I was spinning on my folding Lendrum walnut wheel:




It's hand-dyed merino/tussah silk roving. I didn't dye it; Dicentra Fiber Arts did. Here's the loom, sleyed and threaded and ready to go:




Here's my friend D combing wool in preparation to spin:



The Highland Games bring in bagpipe bands from all over the Pacific Northwest and Lower Mainland Canada. I'm not sure if they were there this year, but the Delta Police Pipe Band and Simon Fraser University usually show up, along with some from Seattle and my hometown of Bellingham. At this point in my experience, bagpipes are no novelty, so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them, except for a mild hearing loss in my left ear. This is the official presentation of the colors, which nevertheless brought a tear to my sentimental eye. Glad to see they had the Irish flag in there this year--not that I'm all that Irish, either. Do they have "Mutt of the World" flags out there? Well, I mean, besides the Stars-n'-Stripes, that is.




Exhibiting proper etiquette, the vocalist sang "O Canada" first, and then the "Star Spangled Banner". I was impressed; nearly everyone in attendance stood and removed their hats for both anthems, and almost everybody knew the words to both, too. I imagine there were plenty of Canadians, but still. "We stand on guard for thee" brings a lump to my throat, too. Overheard: "What did they say? We stand on God for thee?" Heh.

In addition to piping and demonstrations, there are the eponymous Games, of course, and chiefly appear to consist of throwing things. Scotsmen appear to love throwing things: stones, steel shot, telephone poles, hammers. I hung around to watch a few and snapped a shot of this fella's erstwhile kilt:



Sadly, I noticed no 'regimental' Scotsmen, anywhere. The modest choice of undergarments appeared to be bike shorts.

The Society for Creative Anachronism is usually present, as well. What's a Highland Games without someone in anachronistic and usually inauthentic armor? Still, I can't bash them too much; they've been making efforts over the past few years to look the part, instead of the usual 'hippie-that-just-rolled-out-of-bed" style usually seen at Ren Faires in the provinces. And they had actual chain mail, which must've been damned uncomfortable in our July heat (it's finally HOT here!).

I thought this fella was rather adorable:




And of course, there was an obligatory fencing display:



You'd think that a Highland Games would bring out the Jacobite shirts and Braveheart blue paint, but no. These guys were all over the board with their costumery. Anything vaguely medieval and/or Elizabethan seemed to do. The chick in the fencing ring had a smashing embroidered doublet, which I couldn't get a good shot of, unfortunately.

I thought the Scots threw the Vikings out of town?



Then, to cap it off, I had a highly traditional Scottish gyro for lunch:



I pretended it was haggis and enjoyed it immensely more than the real thing.

Highland Fling, Skagit style.

This afternoon, I'm taking my husband's ugly truck and carrying a loom down to the Skagit Valley Highland Games --our group is giving the spinning/weaving demo that we always give. Gets us free tickets to the show, beer garden, and all the fine young men in kilts we can handle. I will be taking pictures this time, heh. Fair warning, all involved.



Yeah, I know they aren't Scots, but neither am I. Dropkick Murphys freakin' rule! :headbang:

OH YEAH. I'm getting my Celt on now, baby:


If at first you don't succeed...you shouldn't be a skydiver.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden talks about why it's not cricket to post rejection letters in one's blog, due to the dust-up it causes with copyright & rudeness and the like, even though the rejection letter in question is deplorable and hideous and ought to serve as an example to every writer (and human being) out there on how NOT to be, period, and Mamatas gets mentioned, and additionally, links back to one of the awesomest rejection letters I know of, courtesy Ursula K. LeGuin.

Hang in there, indeed.

Ah me. The drama is sometimes (often?) more fun than the actual pants-seat-to-the-chair, fingers-to-the-keyboard that I ought to be doing.

And I still haven't gotten my *@%! together for Foolscap.

Sigh.




I'm A Marvel...And I'm Hellboy

Sorry to phone it in today folks, but I can only say SQUEE! and :heart: to Big Red. He wuvs cats...and so does Batman, but for different reasons. See if you can figure it out! A prize* to the first commenter I deem is right!





*all prizes are of imaginary origins and therefore should not be of any great expectation, unless your imagination is great, and then--well, go for it, sez me!

Homemade Jamz

I just heard these kids on NPR. The drummer is NINE years old. NINE. I love them!


This is my problem exactly.



Penn and Teller, in awesome form.


"I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some trouble about this..."

Why I refuse to fly ever again.

I will travel only by open sedan chair drawn by nice young men somewhere between the ages of 21 and 30.


July 2008
SMTWTFS
June 2008August 2008
12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031