baby bus

6 things I saw today:

1. 16th street nearly finished, sadly sans bikelane.
2. one-wheeled bike
3. series of motley flags: cornflower blue, turquoise, salmon, plum
4. Mary’s Center’s Mama & Baby Bus
5. knock-out roses
6. bearded iris

“These may be words.”

futuristic dc

From Wired : Washington, DC, of the Future

 

If architects can be inspired by The Matrix, then it should come as no surprise that conceptual artists get off on real-life architecture. Clyne, who designed the futuristic Washington D.C. for Minority Report, talked about the process of turning satellite photos of the real city into the neon-lit world of precogs.

Working from a vague script direction that said simply, “There are familiar buildings of Washington D.C., plus some new ones,” he conceived of a new urban landscape, hulking mirrored buildings looming around the still-recognizable green spaces of the Washington Mall. “A lot of my work is done in Photoshop, where I take photos of real places and turn them into a collage, mixing textures and photos to new effect,” he said.

Courtesy Dreamworks, Courtesy Fox Studios
Illustration: James Clyne

doughty

\DOW-tee\, adjective:
Marked by fearless resolution; valiant; brave. Doughty comes from Old English dohtig, “brave, valiant, fit.”

Not to be confused with dowdy: not stylish; drab; old-fashioned. From Middle English doude, immoral, unattractive, or shabbily dressed woman.”

6 things I saw this weekend:

1. barren appartment–no overflowing bookshelves, no excessive furniture: overwhelming peace
2. discarded necklace, piled in golden mess
3. drunken couple falling over each other (he was giving her a piggy back ride and fell over), my parents walked past, holding hands
4. Chevy Chase Circle, without him
5. 1000s of individual cuts to fit tiles to a pretty pattern in the floor.
6. Happy birthday in chocolate syrup, with cheesecake.

“There was so much that was real that was not real at all.”

Knut!!

well developed vocabulary

I’ve discovered that one of the reasons I can’t stand most music is that the same words repeat over and over again. Shakespeare used over 30,000 different words in his plays and poems, but the average pop song cant seem to get beyond “what I like about you.” But check out this song by the shins:

Foals in winter coats
White girls of the North,
File past one, five and one,
They are the fabled lambs of Sunday ham, the EHS norm
And they could float above the grass in circles if they tried
A latent power I know they hide
To keep some hope alive that a girl like I could ever try,
Could ever try

So we just skirt the hallway sides
A phantom and a fly
Follow the lines and wonder why
There’s no connection

A week of rolling eyes,
and cheap shots from the trite,
And we’re often on marcus porch again,
Another afternoon with the goathead tunes,
And pilfered booze.
We wander through her mamma’s house
The milk from the window lights
Family portrait circa ‘95
This is that foreign land of the sprayed-on tans
And it all feels fine
Be it silk or slime

So, when they tap our Monday heads
To zombie walk in our stead

This town seems hardly worth our time
And we’ll no longer memorize or rhyme,
Too far along in our climb
Stepping over what now towers to the sky,
With no connection

Oooh waooooooo waooooooo…

So when they tap our Sunday heads
Two zombies walk in our stead
This town seems hardly worth our time
And we’ll no longer memorize or rhyme,
Too far along in our crime,
Stepping over what now towers to the sky,
With no connection

Is this what i’ve been looking for? I mean “zombies walk in our stead” is a cool image, and unique! I like their rhyme scheme, if forced, but the words drive the song, and you can tell he just likes the sound of words, their round non-sensical sounds. There may be hope in humanity yet…people understand: it’s all incapable of being scrutinized, just enjoy.

newman-o’s

6 things I saw today

1. a crew of workers cutting down one tree in a forest
2. 2 women on a walk, we talked, one had money sewed to her shirt
3. purple house, purple car, purple clothes–the Takoma Park Purple people were out
4. my newman-o’s were flawed! One face was turned cream-side
5. parking lot opening from underneath the Cathedral like a big maw
6. woman putting coins into the parking meter where my bike was locked

moil

moil, an interesting word; one that makes some English Lit useful. Without understanding that the Norman invasion made middle english a lower class language, it would be hard to imagine why “soft” would turn into “to soil ones hands” and then to “drudgery.” But, since the Normans made french the hoity-toity language, our balls and Beowulf got left behind.

6 things I saw today:

1. a beautiful man riding a bike in a suit
2. a woman with short cropped hair
3. construction on 16th street–it looks like they’re painting a bike lane!
4. gardeners planting loads of wave petunias in front of the FOE office
5. a 50 + man walking around in nothing but boxers in front of the National Geographic Building
6. veins crawling seductively over his metacarpals, long fingers, gasp!

“The scam-baiters seem almost like a spontaneous evolutionary response to a threatening predatory species–think of them as the T cells of the Internet’s immune system. But they also seem an embodiment of the devolution of discourse and increase in abuse and invective that’s come to be known as “cyber-disinhibition”–the tendency of people to engage in hostile interactions when they aren’t inhibited by face-to-face contact.”

“Most articles about foreign policy are op-ed pieces masquerading as political philosophy.”

Black swan (did you know these existed)?

click the image to get a closer look…

reklats

You never let anyone fall out of love with you. These were the words he said to me, and as always, I believed him. I always believe whatever anyone tells me about who I am because I have no cohesive sense of self, other than the fact that I am myself. Can’t escape that.

My sister in law asked me if I believed in the soul and it really annoyed me. I asked her what she meant by “soul” and she didn’t have an answer, predictably. I can’t argue with people like this because I always feel like I’m taking advantage of their stupidity. I’m arrogant, yes, but who didn’t toss out the idea of the soul with the idea of god? What self-respecting intellectual believes in god anymore? It’s become a standard of sanity for me: atheism.

There’s no truth, is what I’m getting at. There’s no “self” just as there is no “soul.” Its all just made up to make us feel like we are obligated to contribute to society in some way–get behind the mule, we all have to work. We all have to work to produce more in this consumption-driven society. We all have to contribute to the economy, the traffic, the emissions that are quickly ruining the planet, and then what will happen then, you assholes? The best way to contribute to american society is to leave it. DON’T give your best to the US; it will be swallowed and spit up like the fake shit it is.

Remember–we are all products of our environment, so we are destined to produce shit. Can’t escape that.