casi jubilado

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2011-05-02T06:41:00.001-07:00

dead turtles and a half shell

2011-04-15T18:04:00.001-07:00

About two weeks ago I found some pieces of broken turtle shell. I decided to bring them home and wash those guys off. Adopting a Native American attitude, (as opposed to my Naive American attitude), I decided that I should not let these jewels of nature go to waste. I already occasionally sit Indian-style, so what the heck- Why not integrate some of their other cultural practices into my repertoire? I went to college. I should be well-rounded, right?

At this point, I feel I must take a side path right now and detail my brief history with turtles: My interest in turtles and turtle shells goes way back. As a little tyke, I would string bacon onto a hook and catch red-eared sliders and then bring them home and set them "free" in my backyard. Just thinking of that now makes me shudder. Probably a decade later, I found a complete box turtle shell that was entirely empty. How did the lil' guy escape from his physical and possibly mental and/or emotional shell? I'm guessing we'll never know. But just in case it was an accident, I took the shell home and left a note in its place with directions to my house where he could come retrieve it at a later date should he wish. He never came. And it is a good thing, because one day when my roommate Dad was cleaning out the garage, he decided to double KO me by not only throwing out the shell, but also the statue of a frog with flowers painted over it which was where said shell had reposed for a couple of years. Fast forward to yesterday. I stumble upon a baby red-eared slider the size of those miniature pancakes that are sometimes called "silver dollars." Because of his precarious position in an open field, I picked him up and carried him back to the water, only to accidentally entangle him in some seaweed. I grabbed a stick and liberated him so he wouldn't get swallowed by a whale or anything. This concludes my brief history with turtles.

Veering back on track, how exactly does this relate to the present? Today while searching for dragonflies, (and successfully catching two, with right AND left hands), (this deserves its own note entirely), I saw a white, bone-like remnant floating in the water. Could this be a shell? After prodding it with a nearby stick, I quickly drew the conclusion that it was not. It was styrofoam. Inconsiderate prick whoever you are that litters. I hate the prick but can I truly hate that prick? I ask this because it is through that piece of floating trash that I saw a gleam of red in the shallow water. What was it? You may remember, reader, that the word red appears earlier in this entry. Twice. "Red-eared slider." And holy smokes, folks, that is exactly what it was. It was the red ear of a dead, moss-covered turtle that had sunk to the low depths of the periphery of the little pond, or as they say in Spanish, pondita.

For a second time in my life, I have been blessed with the opportunity to own a complete turtle shell. I extracted the turtle corpse with a Y-shaped stick that I had the good fortune of finding directly next to me. When a turtle dies, his soul remains, and that soul, while not visible, takes the form of an odor. Due to its presence, I opted to leave the specimen in some bushes in hopes that an avian fellow might feast on his flesh and leave me with the treasure that is his armor. Is this how history will run its course? I can only hope so.

What can we learn from this? All I know is that after being beguiled by what I thought was a turtle shell, I actually stumbled upon a verifiable turtle shell. The imposter led me to the poster. It led me to the genuine.

Have an awesome day!

breakfast at Chic-fil-A

2011-02-07T22:25:00.000-08:00

Today I almost blew up the lower portion of my parent's house. Luckily they are 1,719 miles away and will NEVER find out. Unfortunately this story has nothing to do with experiments from US Army's magnum opus: the TM 31-210 Improvised Munition Handbook. The scare was caused by something a little less exciting and normally reserved for the AARP crowd.

I was trying to make a pot of tea.

Here's a breakdown of how this shit didn't-quite-but-almost-did go down:

I lit the surface burner and walked off to take care of some project immediately more important than tea production. Russ Martin was on on my iPod and my eyes were occupied with the computer screen so I am guessing that with these two senses tied up, I failed to notice anything odd. Approximately 15 minutes after IKC (initial kettle contact), I heard a noise that exceeded the decibels produced by Mr. Martin and I withdrew my left headphone from my left ear. It was Brian asking what that smell was. Immediately, I too, noticed an overbearing natural gas odor. At about this time, my dizziness was also becoming apparent to me. I pushed the chair out from under me and ran to the stove to see a beautiful baby blue tea kettle that WAS NOT HOT. It contained NO BOILING WATER. The gas, however, was still spewing out. It was promptly turned off and I ran upstairs to find my brother and his life partner brushing their teeth. I advised them to not light any candles. The upstairs was filled with gas as well, so I turned on the fans and we evacuated to Chic-fil-A.

Apparently, our stove does not have the "auto reignition" feature.

Thank you.

2011-02-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

In the 9th grade my former self lived in a town of 35,000 dummies and attended an institution known as Galesburg High School. Allah bestowed upon me the greatest of fortunes by assigning me an English teacher by the name of Andrew Chernin. He had a very nonchalant, clumsy style, to a level that I almost interpreted as indifference. Anyway, in one writing exercise that we would do in his class, which probably goes on in the majority of English classes, we were asked to concoct a story using all of our vocabulary words.

When I was an even littler tyke in Hurst, possibly what some waitstaff at Lupe's Tex-Mex in Bedford would call a "Litle Adrian", our omnipotent Budda blessed me with Miss Cochran. She was my fifth grade teacher and first MILF crush, who would make up little stories which explained the definition of the word we were learning. I remember ubiquitous and pariah being a couple of the words she added to our fifth grade lexicons.

As of late, I am trying to write more and I am going to attempt to bust these exercises out of the closet and take them down to S4 or Havana and get my literary freak on. I will most-likely throw them on here, furthering this blog from its original purpose, but, well, in the words of our dearest semi-Hawaiian-probably-Kenyan-minimally-African American-mostly-Caucasian leader, "Whatevs." Big points to all of the teachers who make themselves available to their students, even and especially when it is for something non-school related. Ninjas don't forget that shit!

In other exercise news, we are trying to resuscitate the Flow of the Month program. That should be a good motivator provided that plenty of y'all Applebee's customers participate.

Artist Profile: Justin Aerni

2011-01-31T09:41:00.000-08:00

I have known Justin Aerni since high school. I met him through my brother in our junior year and hit it off right away due to our mutual hate for everyone. The first time I met him I invited him into the hot tub and tried to convince him I was gay. I am pretty sure we both thought we would be dead by now, but as that naughty lil' Mother Gaia would have it, we are not. And he is doing something productive with his life and creating a lot of art.

He was making art back then but not at the apocalypse-is-coming pace that he does now. Just because he produces Andy-Warhol-style-quick doesn't mean that there is not an audience. Last time I spoke with him he mentioned that he has collectors from as far away as Israel to as close as here in the US of A. Not really sure where the hell Israel is, but I think Texas is still part of the US so I know some of my fellow countrymen are helping Justin's cause.

Regarding his art, Justin doesn't really shy away from any medium nor does he deny any objects their right to be painted upon. Going through his body of work, we will notice that he has painted on toy dolls, lunchboxes, pages of books, envelopes, dollar bills (which I think is illegal), really pretty much anything. I recently got a letter/painting from him with some amazing colors painted on it. Only when I took a closer look did I realize that he had created this beauty over a Portland bus map. And that it was a giant penis.

And speaking of giant colored penises, that would be one thing that shows up in most of his catalog. Well no, not really. Not the penises but the vivid hues. He's got some really impressive watercolors where the color almost evokes a memory. This dude is planting memories in all of our heads! But who cares because a lot of them are gorgeous and many of them include robots.

He had a robot period probably back in 06. He definitely has periods. Not like a woman but like a true artist. If we look at Justin's work chronologically, we can definitely identify certain themes, ideas, concepts, colors, preoccupations, whatever. And this work is not limited to paintings. I only featured his paintings/mixed media work here, but Justin also makes sculptures, drawings, books, and a wide variety of other things that are hard to even imagine.

His work can be found all over the web, but here are a few links to make it that much easier. Check it out and support the cause! He is also listed in the goddamned new-age blue pages that Mark "Screw Luke 12:7! I'm God and know how many hairs you and your friends have on their heads" Fuckerberg conveniently used to replace the old-school yellow pages which Justin now uses as canvasses (below). Add him as a friend on there to check out new works.

Justin Aerni.com
Justin Aerni Ebay

goals

2011-01-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

NOTE: I have turned this post into a page that can be found here. Due to the morphing nature of goals, a separate page will be more conducive to organization than an oft-updated post.

It has come to my attention that goals are what aid people in making progress. Last year I didn't have any and I did not make it very far. The shining accomplishment of the year of two thousand and ten of Our Good Lord would be my acquisition of the power of chopsticks with my human survival coming a short second. So my first goal on the one-way road to progress would be to make at least one goal. Well wowzerz and holy moly stromboli because guess what and/or wtf is up?! I just simultaneously created and met my first goal. STFU and GTFO! Nopes Snopes, I really did.

I'm going to start my list of goals on here in hopes that seeing them will snowball into further motivation for my trip research and inevitable trip. Hopefully global warming doesn't melt that snowball on its arduous journey from my internet self to my real self. They will be organized in the categories below and I would appreciate any input regarding anything really (organization, actual goals, dares, etc). Any goals that use the term "as possible" will be given a minimum to ensure that some effort is put forth.

One-time
.catch a fish from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and eat them
.ride a horse on the beach
.see a concert in every country we end up in
.sell something on the street
Ongoing
.eat as many insects as possible
.eat as many animals not accustomed to eating as possible
.eat 10 fruits and/or vegetables directly from their life source
.maintain some sort of exercise program
.maintain some sort of writing routine/blog
.give away or trade a certain number of things I bring with me
.learn new dishes to cook
.sleep outside*
.invite a stranger to lunch*
Long-term
.climb at least 5 Mayan pyramids or ruins
.visit at least 3 new countries
.work on various farms
.stay in at least 3 cities for 3 weeks or more

I would like to realize any goals with an asterisk (*) as many times as possible and that is why they have been placed under Ongoing instead of One-time.

These goals are going to morph and become more exact and focused in time but I am 25 and just now realizing that you have to start somewhere and this shit does not have to be perfect from the get-go. Not everyone has the mind of Marc Jacobs and is able to design yellow nylon womens slip-on shoes with cat faces and whiskers on the toe and sell them for like 600 US boners per pair on the first try.

first postie, Posta

2011-01-23T20:19:00.000-08:00

When I was working for a local school district there was a student named Posta. This post is dedicated to her. She was a young girl from the Congo who was really the only non Spanish speaker and the only black in the class and therefore was a natural outsider among the already outsiders. At first there were a handful of problems because she thought everyone teamed up against her and this was only exacerbated by the fact that she had a very AD/HD-type personality. After a couple of months the Spanish speakers all kind of settled in and just accepted the fact that she was a little crazy and she just accepted the fact that they were going to speak the only language they knew.

So really...enough with that. This blog is called casi jubilado. That means "almost retired" in Spanish. I'm hoping with the money generated from AdSense on this mofo that I can be completely retired pretty soon. Because, damn, Jeeves, my savings is running outs and I don't want to screw somebody by working for them for a very short period of time.

Right now I'm listening to Sebastian Clark's songs from a van. I am not feeling it too much but after reading the story of how he made the CD, I like the ninja. He lived in his van and got a gym membership so he would have a place to shower and clean up. He also pretended he was his own British booking agent by calling from a second phone line and lined up a whole national tour. Two very bad syllables for you: mox & ie.

Getting a gym membership seems like a good idea. Possibly for the exercise, but more for the bathroom and shower. Then living in a vehicle or outside wouldn't seem like it would be too daunting except for the lack of a kitchen. Most meals would be relegated to restaurants or easily-made foods like PB&BJs. I could live all my life on PB&BJs or just PB or possibly just BJs but I do like some variety every once in a crescent moon. Maybe an ATM at an ATM. But damn...those stealth ninjas got cameras there so maybe not.

I slept in my car for at least 7 days last year which is nowhere near 365 days but it is a little taste. Well, maybe it is near 365 days; It is kind of hard to tell these days. Sometimes 1/52nd of something can be counted as 1/1. It was not too bad even though it was cold. I would just go out and piss in a semi-constructed McDonald's nearby when I had to. Only one time did some weirdo come near me with his dog and luckily I just gave him the cold stare through a fogged up window and he slunked away. Gotta out-crazy the crazy. Turns out he himself was living in a van on the other side of the nascent McDonald's with a canine roommate. Nobody knows their neighbor anymore these days. Gosht-arn impersonal world.

I am on my 4th listen of this guy's CD now and I am getting all nostalgic about living in a car and really almost wishing I didn't have internet access so I wouldn't have to submit myself to Clark's White Album over Latin Percussion dumbstuffs anymore.

Ok back to the point of this blog or what I would like the focus to be. I need to find some way to make money from any geographic point, or as they say in the biz, bills mobilly. Finding somewhere to exist would help first but that will come in time I think. If y'all got any of those insight things, just comment me.