Just got home from watching the elections at Matt's. The electoral map simply fascinates me, how from the southern tip of Texas straight up to North Datoka voters went red, yet New Mexico and Colorado went blue, like some benign weather pattern. I canvassed for Obama in New Mexico in early October. Reported to an Albuquerque field office for four days helping push through about a hundred last minute voter registrations, persuading a few people in door to door canvassing, doing some phone work, and helping put together a professional street sign to put out by the road, to replace the old one made out of wood planks and tape. It's not so important that I helped and he won, but that he recognized the work of grass roots people in his victory speech. There's hard work ahead, interesting turns in the road, finally.

lay the cut rose branches

on the shelf

were you expecting

light work

irrespective of universal causes

there was only a rosebush

with its own drama

growing, blooming, then 

awaiting our cut

as a hand in a glove

can you bear that much

we proceed now to the garden

where carrots tug back

with grudging solicitude

and the feather blue sky

is someone else's crop

netflix, roe v. wade, avoiding a palin

i have watched ALL of The Wire DVDs, seasons 1-5. 

there have actually been moments where i looked at my livingroom ceiling and thanked God for a roof over my head, decent leftovers, and The Wire, delivered on time by netflix. now that i'm searching for new things to plug into my queue, i think the honeymoon is over. this morning it occurred to me that Netflix must be done in moderation; when abused, it becomes an online self-isolation scheduling tool, it massages the back of my inner misanthrope. your queue is empty? what are you waiting for, start putting movies into it. stock up on beer while you're at it.

along with a movie queue i need several other queues to balance me out. a friendship queue, a house chores queue, a queue of creative tasks. how mundane, how like that kinks song, "A Well Respected Man":

'Cause he gets up in the morning,
And he goes to work at nine,
And he comes back home at five-thirty,
Gets the same train every time.
'Cause his world is built 'round punctuality,
It never fails.

And he's oh, so good,
And he's oh, so fine,
And he's oh, so healthy,
In his body and his mind.
He's a well respected man about town,
Doing the best things so conservatively.

So that's where all the queueing gets you. It even has a stuffy British ring to it, "queue."

It never fails.

Anyway, I also learned this morning that in her Katie Couric interview, Sarah Palin could not name a single supreme court judgment she did not like other than Roe v. Wade. Ach!

Wait a minute, what supreme court judgments do I not like, errr, errr, ok I have Wikipedia here...

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857, upheld slavery, hate it.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, upheld racial segregation, bogus

Marshall v. Marshall, 2006, upheld the right of anna nicole smith and the federal government to reverse decisions of state probate courts, saweeet

This weather is a godsend. I ran from Lamar Jr. High track to the corner of Far West Blvd. and Mesa in 25 minutes, and then without resting ran back to my house in under 54 minutes. Just this past Saturday, in the heat, I couldn't run more than half this route without walking.

Helllll Yes

From recent NYT Article:

Hydration. It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.

So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body’s daily water needs.

Pop Art

Contemporary artists I find interesting...

Leo Villareal

Cool lights, fueling my escapist fantasies of doing similar commissioned work. 

Bansky

British guerilla artist who doesn't make his real name or face known. He specializes in witty vandalism (arguably not vandalism) of drab public spaces in London, and produced a series of pastoral landscapes featuring modern accoutrements such as security cameras, helicopters, and burned-out automobile frames.

Vincent Valdez

As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, saw Valdez' stuff at the Alameda in San Antonio. Dramatic, romantic, photorealism. Like Bansky, he drops crude, modern details as garnish around photorealistic visions. For example a small Taco Cabana sign glows in the background of a portrait of young woman on a cell phone. That painting is nowhere to be found on the Internet. Will keep looking for it. 

Famous and Hot

If/when these women appear on television I will drop whatever I am doing.

gillian anderson*

I thought Dana Scully was dowdy and uninteresting, so it surprised me when she appeared in a BBC production of Bleak House, looking a lot more impressive. How exactly does an actress from Chicago, widely associated with space aliens and Fox, suddenly become a preeminent British television star? (answers: intelligence, hotness)

* also did a voice in princess mononoke, subject of my last post, strange cooincidence

anne curry

I rarely watch Today or Dateline, but when I do, she seems so classy in comparison to the other anchors. I love when she wears cashmere. One morning, as Matt Lauer and Meredith Vierra discussed food, she interjected, describing how much she had recently enjoyed eating a fresh tomato. It was a captivating moment, because for a change somebody on Today was describing a life experience and how they actually felt about it, vs. the usual frantic chatter. 

(picture: anne curry, possibly in cashmere, with some random pregnant person)

naomi watts

Mullholland Drive is one of my favorite films, Watts is the star, and she pulls off some of the most difficult scenes Lynch could imagine.

julie simon

Local reporter on KEYE TV. When I was with KOOP radio I went to the house of musician Mo Jamal to tape a public statement he made about moving his family to Canada to avoid being deported to Iran as part of the Patriot Act. Surprisingly, every local news station showed up to cover the event; I wasn't about to get in their way. Julie Simon introduced herself and handed me her card, a professional gesture on her part but it made my afternoon feel like a huge success.

juana molina

she went from starring in sitcoms to producing interesting electronica albums to touring as an opening act for feist. her beauty is uniquely Argentinean. i've been enjoying her new album Son.

What would an electrical engineer's blog BE without a geeky reference to Anime? I was doing shivasana (the corpse pose, the customary yoga cool-down) this evening when I was reminded of the anime film The Princess Mononoke. Near film's end the creatures in the picture emerge from grassy hills, seemingly harmless and directionless, like ameboid Caspers, but they combined into into a huge, coordinated, giant-like thing that came to the rescue (I think). The yoga instructor (the best I've had so far) was encouraging us to think about our body, where sources of support come from. I thought that almost all forms of support in one's life, physical or emotional, come as a result of nearly unconscious cause and effect. We do little things or think little things that redeem us sometime down the road, and these things are seldom noticeable and almost never grandiose. The little guys are our stumbling thoughts and efforts in life, undertaken when we are off guard, and NOT trying to effect spiritual change in our lives. They become our substance. Our greatest moments of rejuvination and insight come from the haphazard lifts we get from them. For this to come to me nearly ten years after seeing the film, and because it's a film with heavy religious overtones (Buddhist no doubt), I found it meaningful. I just thought I'd share it.

Postscript. I googled it and the little guys are called Kodamas, or echoes. I'm no longer so sure if they save the day or just sit around and make peeping noises.

I got in my bike ride tonight. Stopped for an iced coffee at Epoch Coffee House on North Loop. The counter guy called me sweetheart. That was nice. I read a local music paper and saw that the uncle-figure to my old friend Amy, Steve Ullrich, released a new album produced by Brian Beattie. Austin seems to refuse becoming truly disconnected, no matter how hard one tries, or doesn't try. There is always a familiar face, a friend of a friend mentioned in the paper.

After my iced coffee, I hopped back on the bike. A cool breeze blew and rain fell out of a mostly starry sky. I cruised by a friend's house. He was either out or out of town. Rode up to Alamo Drafthouse Village. Nothing playing for an hour except Wall-e which just didn't seem like the right movie to see tonight. Glided back home. By that time the brewing storm had dissipated and the air was completely still. Change seemed to make its attempt, then reconsidered. The conditions on the ground are just too stubborn. My front lawn--except for the green patch around my watered Pear tree--is already scorched straw.

I was thinking about riding my bike downtown to see fireworks, but I'm really groggy and tired, and I don't want to get hit by a car so I won't. I've been watching serious adult dramas from the late 80s the past few days, Ironweed with Jack Nicholas last night, and Dangerous Liasons today. Ironweed took some effort to keep watching. A depressed alcoholic (Nicholson) who accidentally dropped and killed his baby son while drunk 25 years earlier, stumbles around in a fog with drunk friends (Streep, Tom Waits) watching people freeze to death, cough from TB, etc. Yes our collective American past was not a bowl of cherries. Dangerous Liasons used to be my favorite movie, but rewatching tired me out. The things about the story that used to seem so racy and true now seem sad. I'm 20 years older. Instead of wondering what sort of trouble I can get into I'm wondering why people inflict so much suffering upon themselves and upon others.

Tastes change, movies change. I no longer know what my favorite movies are. I liked The Iron Giant quite a bit, was very moved by it. Million Dollar Baby. There Will Be Blood was terrific. 

In terms of music, I'm into Stars of the Lid right now. Where they got the inspiration to create their sound is a sublime mystery. What sort of world do those guys see, and hear? It's where I'd like to go.

say what you will, the dude knows how to dress.

Two hours and 2 million brain cells later...

In my latest thrilling installment, I got around to finishing my bare wood filing cabinet. Briwax creates fumes that are so strong that the place where I bought the first can (used to finish the bookcase behind the cabinet) stopped selling it for fear of their customers' safety. As I worked I listened to a locally produced NPR interview with a man who received a heart transplant. A bout with bronchitis led to a rare virus attacking his heart. The thought did occur to me that sacrificing my health in order to finish a $25o piece of furniture is akin to... I don't know, wiping down a floor with a cashmere sweater or something. Well, I have fewer brain cells now; I guess my analogies won't be as good.




Favorite quote of the week:

May I bring an air of understated sobriety to this discussion?

-- James Warren, Chicago Tribune columnist and guest on McLaughlin Group

Read about the Cobra condos in the newspaper. They have small, medium, large units, each with the same floor plan: a large, open rectangle with a glass-paneled garage door at each end. The doors do not lead to driveways, but to a small concrete sidwalk, and then lawn. I am not sure there is any aesthetic at work here other than what seems cool. I admit, if a sense of ennui creeps in, it would be comforting to know you could hit a switch on the wall and eliminate the barrier between "inside" and "out." But couldn't one just walk outside? I've been thinking about these places a lot. Probably they've already been gobbled up.

Saw a few great exhibits at the Museo Alameda down in San Antonio last past weekend. Two artists, Rubio and Valdez, have asserted themselves as spokespersons for a minimalist, latin-americanized vision of cool. Particularly with Valdez one sees precision mixed with small fanciful touches. As if to say that if one is enough of a chingon, small sillyness is allowable.

"Plato gave so brilliant and impressive a defense of this common human feeling, that the doctrine of the reality of abstract objects has been known as the platonic theory of ideas ever since. Abstract Beauty, for example, is for Plato a perfectly definite individual being, of which the intellect is aware as of something additional to all the perishing beauties of the earth. "The true order of going," he says, in the often quoted passage in his 'Banquet,' "is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which one mounts upwards for the sake of that other Beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute Beauty, and at last knows what the essence of Beauty is."

--William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

I woke up this past Thursday morning feeling unmotivated and lazy, but I read a few lectures in The Varieties and felt a lot more creative and positive afterwards. Hard to say why. I think it's as simple as saying that in James I see somebody with a true gift for articulating ideas that generally defy description. If you think about it, a shitload of experiences are too complicated for an average person to describe. Maybe only a small fraction of the things we experience can be adequately described, with the rest being a sort of "dark matter" of observations, feelings, and ideas. William James seems to just camp out in the dark matter, explaining with unbiased lucidity how the general human condition translates into religion. I just feel elevated reading him.

a cold front blew in around 3 pm and i had a pretty good run around town lake. about 6.6 miles without breathing hard.

a cute blonde who looked to be about 39 asked me a silly question about how far apart the cones were spaced on the austin high running track, not wanting the distance but my opinion as to whether the cones divided the track equally in half. i gave her an encouraging smile and said they looked to be spaced at opposite ends, indeed dividing the track in half. she said something about feeling like she was finishing her sprints too fast, and i said "no i don't think you're cutting it short." which was probably some subconscious way of saying that i wanted to cut the conversation short. and it awkwardly reminded me of castration. voila, i was soon on my way. it's interesting that i think that i like women to be bold like this, but when i meet the rare individual who is i am so afraid of being sleazy that i bolt in the opposite direction. some part of me wanted to smile and stay put, talking to her until i could at least be sure she was done asking her question. but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. i could have said "you know, i'm looking for a training partner," but i was really more interested in my own survival at that moment, staying poised just so. i sense extreme danger at the threshold of getting what i want. or perhaps she really wanted a second opinion on the distance between cones. the only sane option is to have faith that you made the right call, and play again at the earliest opportunity.

the picture is from an interesting modeling agency called uglyny which specializes models who don't quite fit the mold.

If it ever happens that the computer seems to be "too much," the worst thing to do is demonize it.

world enough, and time

for the past few days my job has been to check on Elizabeth's cat. i finished reading Lonesome Dove yesterday. worked on my entry to the austin chronicle short story competition. ate a 78704 cheeseburger from phil's icehouse yesterday afternoon, with a vanilla shake. lay in bed for a "short nap" and ended up going into such a deep sleep that i woke up four hours later, initially not knowing my name or whose house i had woken up in.

i drove to the bank this morning to deposit a check. i found myself easily irritated by other drivers, which would suggest that i have "issues" or deep-seated anger. i think what it is is that a part of me has liked this down time so much that it's shone a spotlight on how much of a pain in the ass most people really are. the thought of becoming a recluse in my middle age doesn't worry me so much as the idea of being unfair to the collective "we". somebody had to raise the cow i ate on a bun yesterday, and i'd have gone hungry had this person shirked their ranching responsibilities to go write short fiction in a one-room log cabin.

Ran the Santa Clara Pueblo 10k (June 30) in 49:45. A dirt road led us through the residential part of the pueblo (small adobe ranches, barking dogs, little gardens) and then out into a plain. Tall mountains on the horizon, cacti, grasses, live oak trees. I studied the depth of car tire tracks, trying to stay on the firmest parts of the road. The women's leader shadowed me for about four miles before passing. It was at around this point that the road led into sparse woods. A small herd of cows rushed towards me within their fenced pasture. I passed a boy who looked to be around 12. He had a fierce looking mohawk with a long mane, but turned to me and said "great job." As I ran back into town he was close behind. Bystanders cheered him on, making me feel conspicuous. At the finish line I heard my name and "Austin, Texas" called out on the PA, but all eyes were on the kid. Todo es bueno.

Saving Lives

At the Town Lake Trail this evening, in the stretching area under mopac, a man tapped me on the shoulder and handed me his cell phone. "Call an ambulance," he said. He almost dropped the phone before I could take it from him. A few people tried asking him what was wrong but he could hardly speak. His hands were purple and twisted and his jaw hung slack. He was covered in sweat. The 911 operator asked me to ask him if he had a heart condition, he answered "nooooooo" with pained frustration. An ambulance came out of a firehouse within sight of where we stood. In less than five minutes he was on his way to the hospital. It was probably heat stroke.

It all felt so routine. I handed his cell phone to a paramedic and jogged off. Under different circumstances we may have stood there helplessly watching him die. It goes to show how when society works it isn't particularly interesting. Or no news is good news.

Ran Round Rock Roadrunner Saturday. I placed high but did not meet goal. I blame 2 miles of woodchips and mud for the 12 second differential.

Gearing up for a trip to New Mexico and San Francisco June 27-July 7.

6/27 - Arrive AM in Albuquerque, pick up car
6/28 - Astronomy Day at Los Alamos Lab ("We're the bomb.")
6/29 - Healthy Heart, Mind and Soul 10k in Santa Clara Pueblo
6/29 - Los Lobos at Taos Solar Music fest
6/30 - Taos Pueblo
7/1 - Santa Fe
7/2 - Santa Fe
7/3 - Albuquerque
7/4 - Fly Oakland
7/5-7 - San Franciso at chez Greg

Still a lot of planning to do....