Cooked kharu gos, lamb with spices, for friends Elizabeth and Kimberly. Afterwards we watched ken burns' the national parks on pbs. These things went together. Kharu gos, available in a NYT recipe, is a small wilderness of spices. Cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and chopped dried chiles are first sauteed in a pan. (Austin Whole Foods offers a serious selection of dried chiles). Then after the onions and lamb are added you pour in coriander, turmeric, cumin, ginger, and garlic. The aroma is similar in some respects to indian curries I've made but sweeter and a little less home-invasive.

In Park City, Utah. Visited Salt Lake City last night to see Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Driving west at dusk one emerges over dark side of mountain into sunbathed urban valley. Stunning to sit in massive conference center auditorium, awash in clean, expansive sounds of great choir. At rehearsals audience is sparse and allowed to come and go. I felt like a pilgrim entering room from where I had been.

Two nights earlier was sitting on desiccated log, eating tuna out of pouch, isolated at far end of Upheaval Dome at Canyonlands NP. I had turned around to see something resembling four-inch scorpion sneaking by in dirt. Assumed deadly but later picked up Audubon Field Guide to Insects and Spiders at bookstore and found out it was Jerusalem Cricket. Next day hiked four hours to get back to car, up and over craggy breaches in canyon walls, getting inkling of what Brigham Young and Co. encountered pushing westward into this territory. To go from dusty, prehistoric-feeling southern Utah into pristine religious complex was exhilarating.

At the Lazy Lizard Hostel in Moab, Utah, binging on free wi-fi after a week of not touching a keyboard. My concerns lately have been along the lines of "do I need a bear canister for back country camping at Canyonlands NP?" Local store clerks say no. One said she slept out in the open with a bag of food next to her and nothing happened. At Rocky Mountain National Park they require you to rent a canister. The ranger there told me leaving so much as a crumb in an untended tent would ensure its destruction by wildlife. (As a crazy coot a Cormac McCarthy book says, "this (that) is a hungry country.") The canyons north of Moab aren't so hungry.

I'm laying on a scratchy bedspread in a small room with walls painted to look like clay. The smell of ramen noodles drifted under the door an hour ago. Somebody's watching a documentary about arlo guthrie downstairs. The TV is pretty loud but somehow not annoying. I feel at home here. I know that the fun of hostels is supposed to be meeting other travelers but I really don't care to go downstairs and sit on the couch. People are generally more perceptive than I have been giving them credit for. When I force myself to be friendly, what an intelligent person sees is a guy forcing himself to be friendly. Where's the joy in that?

The McCarthy book is Blood Meridian, what I consider the dark twin of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. Both books were published at around the same time and both brought mad literary skills to bear upon the Western genre. Blood Meridian is so violent it makes the story line for No Country for Old Men seem like Dr. Seuss. I'm not giving anything away. Hard to say if McCarthy is telling an untold true story or really just exploring dark psychological territory via 19th century Texas history.

Time for bed. There are crickets in Moab, but not in the woods at Rocky Mountain National Park. There are screech owls there, at first I thought it was a shrieking child.

The weather man said on Friday that there would be a 3 (three) percent chance of rain, emphasizing how minimal the chances were. It's raining. I feel like I've won the lottery.

muerte a los baristas

I recently watched Linklater's Slacker on DVD, along with a ten minute trailer for Viva Les Amis, a documentary that mourns the loss of a locally owned cafe that was replaced by Starbucks. Three Starbucks baristas are interviewed. None of them seems to know much about the former cafe, and their tepid mannerisms would seem to symbolize all that is troubling about Generation Y. They are articulate and self-confident, but so dispassionate and uninformed as to seem pitiful. I think the filmmakers make this impression deliberately, and that there is something distasteful about it, about any generation that would sneer at a younger one for not being cool enough.

I recently bought coffee at Starbucks and actually liked the "The Way I See It" quote printed on the cup. Can such a thing remotely compare to experiencing a live hub of counterculture? Of course not. But perhaps a beautiful thing about being young is that nobody gets to do it in exactly the same way. 

The Way I See It #76

"The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating – in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life." 

- Anne Morriss

There's always Spider House.

I'm wondering why the state department's warning about travel abroad in Mexico hasn't caused more public outrage. Israel recently invaded Gaza on the grounds that a developed nation has the right to protect its citizens by invading a neighboring state. We are no longer safe to travel in Mexico, millions of Mexican immigrants within our borders live in terror that their family members on the other side might be kidnapped and held for ransom, and the Mexican government is too weak to control the activities of armed groups within its borders. Either we are noble to endure these terrors in the name of respecting Mexico's territorial integrity, or we are just too numb to care. 

Organized crime in Mexico has grown from drug distribution into widespread kidnapping and extortion. My sense is that Mexico has safe areas and unsafe areas, just like in the U.S., only the unsafe areas are more concentrated in Mexico. The facile state department memo reduces the safe areas to "legitimate business and tourist areas." We have the right to demand something better. For example, since the city of Monterrey is not a premier tourist destination, should I consider myself "warned" by my government not to explore its outskirts? The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in Mexico; why should any U.S. memo compromise my rights there?

Backing up a bit, I recently became interested in traveling to Mexico. Having loved trips to New Mexico in 2007 and 2008, I have a feeling that I'll love Mexico for many of the same reasons: the culture, the land, the shared history. This is my personal taste. A U.S. citizen could feel the same enthusiasm about Iceland. To ground this in principle, I believe that since I live within a culture infused with Mexican people and cultural influences, my "pursuit of happiness" should include the freedom to explore this culture at its source. In this light I view the state department memo and general complacency of the U.S. population at large as threats to my civil liberties. I want to go to Mexico and not have to worry about being kidnapped.

there's nothing worse than having seven minutes to eat a bowl of extremely hot oatmeal, and also drink a cup of good but very hot coffee, and also write a blog entry to mark the new year. it absolutely doesn't get worse than that.

it's extremely cold here in chicago. i'm staying at my mom's new condo which is at the top of a five story building. this morning i saw canadian geese fly overhead in a big hurry. the wind was blasting and they couldn't hold a V formation. i hope they made it to where they were going.

suitably freaked out

i continued digging into my old possessions this evening, resulting in huge stacks of paper going out to the recycling bin, and several hundred pounds of books and other items stacked up, headed for goodwill tomorrow morning. i listened to cassette tapes of my old band, PG-13, and marveled at how good we sounded, then i listened to some other tapes of various bands i tried to jam with and I marveled at how self-absorbed i sounded. i don't know if this experience is universal, but there's an odd sense of discontinuity when you hear an old song, and the lyrics take on new, improved meanings. many 80s songs do this to me. it's as if i had settled on some simplified, wrong idea of what a song meant, but now that i'm older, i hear the irony in the lyrics, or the nuances in an instrumental part, and realize why the song was so popular. tina turner's "what's love got to do with it" did this to me big time, recently. in a way the same thing happened while listening to the old jam tapes. there was so much that i wasn't hearing back then. in comparison to what was possible, i hear myself trying to fit into the musical fads of the day, and failing. i guess i'm my own worst critic, hearing all that old stuff makes me want to be in a band again too.

when i moved into this house three years ago I was much more of a pack rat. a lot of the stuff i wanted to keep just seems worthless now.

then there was the paperwork, binders and folders from a decade ago that feel as if they were excavated from 100 years ago. the japan internships program, my stint at a multimedia startup, austin community college, UT, the "writing on the air" radio show, tutoring at st. ed's. 

fire sale

i put a bunch of stuff up for sale on craigslist. two people just came by and bought 1) my beer making kit and 2) my ceramic candle lantern. now that these things are gone i feel a strange sense of seller's remorse, a pity for the objects, as though they've been members of the family and wanted to stay, to remain useful to me. the truth is the ceramic lantern simply rattled when i walked around. i remember a time when i lived in a condo on a concrete slab, and i had a cute girlfriend, and we laid in bed watching the lights from the lamp flicker up the wall. now i rent a pier and beam house and have no girlfriend and the lamp sat on top of a 5' shelf glaring down on me. when i walked on the wood floors, the vibrations would travel up to the lamp and the little glass panes would rattle against the ceramic, reminding me i had no fire and that things are no longer so warm and solid. i wanted the shelf space.

i made one batch of beer in 1996 and since then have been lugging around the 5 gallon glass carbuoy, plastic bucket, and an arsenal of rubber hoses. i had spent way too much time staring at the equipment and not enough time using it. a man in a camo baseball cap came by and eagerly gave me $5 for the rig. i told him that i needed the space. he said that he also deep fries turkeys in his garage, and that yes, the equipment does indeed take up a lot of space. i looked him dead in his blue eyes. amazingly clear, with enormous, mechanical retinas.

i forgot the old spincasting reel. my late father purchased this for $80 back in 1985. it had all of the advanced features: magnetic anti-tangle control, flipping switch, one-motion spindle ejection lever. my dad never learned how to use it and then i never learned, and over time i became the sort of person who winces at the idea of hooking a living creature by its mouth. a guy named jerry emailed back immediately, saying he'd come by tonight. i held the reel for him, ignoring subsequent replies. he called this evening and told me that tonight was his 35th wedding anniversary, was there another night he could come by. i got pissed, thinking he could have emailed me this information earlier. i said "today's the day, i turned down people in order to hold it for you." then he said "i'm sorry, i really want the reel, i'd be happy to come by first thing tomorrow morning and pick it up." then, quite suddenly i heard the history in his voice and felt ashamed of myself and offered to leave it in my mailbox. "if i leave it in my mailbox" i said, "could you leave the $5 dollar note in there." for some weird reason, because i was talking to a guy who sounded like he was 80, i used the term "five dollar note." he said "i'd be glad to, and I'd leave $10 because of your kindness." "have a wonderful evening" I said, contrite as could be. we hung up and I felt ashamed of myself. there was something precious, rare, and fleeting in the moment, an old old man enlivened by the idea of a sweet deal on some fishing tackle, and me getting uptight and bossy about it. the reel is sitting outside in the mailbox, waiting for jerry to come by and pick it up.

overall, it feels good to be getting rid of things. the aesthetic of the coming decade, i feel, will be minimalist. instead of an enormous CD collection, there will be a tiny ipod, holding all of it. instead of bulky photo albums, a very thin laptop. another restaurant we visited in brooklyn is called ici: breakfast, lunch, dinner. the only art on the walls was a thin 2X4 shelf, with apples sitting on it. as i wrote in a blog entry years ago, the desired aesthetic is not the bulky machine, or the weighty statement, but art that complements the joy of having empty hands and a strong back. art that owns the wall, or doesn't exist at all. goods that are durable, compact, timeless, like stainless steel bowls, or well-worn hikers, or a perfect wool sweater.

The sun came up today and it burned my blues away,
The sun came up today and it burned my blues away,
Go ahead if you have to leave me
You ain't coming back this time, hope that's fine
Got my sunshine, I'll get by.

-- Mojave 3, Got My Sunshine

Things haven't been going all that badly. Visited NYC for a long weekend, getting more acquainted with my little cousin Allison who lives in brooklyn and works as an architect. She has a hamster named Fat Butt Jesus, who desperately tries to push his way out of the cage at night. He longs to be a rat.

Ate at Public, a minimalist Australian Pan-Asian place in soho where all of the menus are designed to look like library cards, Cafe Lafeyette, a completely authentic French cafe in brooklyn, down to the dingy mirrors, ripped upholstery, and dented tin ceiling, walked the brooklyn bridge, went to moma, went to kif, a moroccan bar and cafe with a cozy vibe, where a tall blonde woman with glasses played barstool dj with her laptop in front of her. 99 luftbalons. 

Pictures of Allison and Claire, and me.

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.