• Was hit by a car while walking to work. (I’m doing ok! Bruises/torn ligament? Not too big a deal.)
• Saw Peter Murphy.
• Got a promotion / suddenly feel good about waking up and going into the office.
• Spent Thanksgiving alone, which was kind of awesome. Grilled cheese and tomato soup! No travel/traffic!
• Ran into an old friend from high school on a night I planned to wild out alone among strangers. Life is funny.
• Started seeing that friend. Life is really funny.
• One of my friends gave me a tv he was getting rid of and I ordered a Roku player — changing my life. (read: addicted to Miss Marple & Columbo)
• Spent a weird week and a half, feverish and mostly sleeping. Woke up and decided it was time to look for my own place.
• Promptly got sick again? Currently have the sorest throat because my room warps into a dry riverbed at night that I flop around in gasping for breath. Yes, like a fish. Picture one of those fancy egg shaped goldfish with the black ruffly fins. Spooky and sad.
• Oh and check this out, I managed to reach Reader Zero in the same week I hit Inbox Zero at the office:

And now a mix:

out damned spot from surpluscats on 8tracks.

1. Performance, Tones On Tail, Everything, 1998
2. But I’m Not, Cocteau Twins , Garlands
3. Dancing, Bauhaus, 1979-1983 Vol 1, 1986
4. Dive In Deep, Red Temple Spirits, If Tomorrow I Were Leaving For Lhasa, I Wouldn’t Stay A Minute More…, 1989
5. The Dog-End of a Day Gone By, Love and Rockets, Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, 1985
6. I’ll Fall With Your Knife, Peter Murphy, Cascade, 1995
7. Witness ( to a Scream), In The Nursery, Prelude 1983 – 1985, 1989
8. Broken, The Creatures, U.S. Retrace, 2000
9. Dead City, Patti Smith, Peace And Noise, 1997

1. Hold On Don’t Go, The Passions, Sanctuary, 1982
2. Terror Couple Kill Colonel, Bauhaus, 1979-1983: Volume One, 1986
3. This town ain’t enough for the, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Through The Looking Glass, 1987
4. Collapsing New People, Fad Gadget, Gag, 1984
5. Get The Balance Right, Depeche Mode, The Singles 81-85, 1999
6. A Days Wait, Altered Images, Collected Images: Best Of Altered Images
7. War Child, Blondie, Atomic
8. Chercher le garçon (version gb), Taxi Girl, Quelqu’Un Comme Toi, 1989
9. Lay All Your Love On Me, Information Society, Information Society, 1988
10. Accept Yourself, The Smiths, Hatful Of Hollow, 1983
11. All Through The Night, Cyndi Lauper, Time After Time – The Best Of Cyndi Lauper
12. Secrets, The Cure, Seventeen Seconds, 1980

(a love song)

I’ve never been one to express much more than doubt
But I got this new feeling and I need to work it out
It burns and aches and confuses
So I’m gonna call upon a different set of muses

Like Kovalevskaya I’ve got some conditions
for the existence of solutions to partial differential equations
With respect to all variables, and the seeming distinctness of your
physical phenomena
colorfully illustrated like Merian’s rejection of spontaneous
generation in Lepidoptera
it’d be easy to get all swept into poetical exuberance,
ascribing your finer attributes to divine beneficence
and pass like Diotima from appreciation of Beauty
to rapt spirituality

Would that like Aglaonike, I could calculate the time when we align
and make the moon disappear to blow your mind, an omen, a sign!
And like Tapputi, distill the essence of your select elements
to analyze the origin of my intents with ancient fantastic instruments,
then back to Earth like Tereshkova with stunning observations like Jump-Cannon
proving there’s more to chart than the many moons between now and then
when things were unknown but not unknowable, and I, too, just wanted
to be friends
What price a connection that through time and space transcends?

Would that like Lovelace I could write an algorithm, a system of instructions
to solving this mind-body dichotomy proposed by Elisabeth of Bohemia’s
deductions
that stumped Descartes, and goes on to list the order of operations needed
for two separate entities to interact unimpeded
Reason and feeling, my fear and your … ambivalence?
Apply some logic, check for false inference
Determine our positions in orbit, like Cunitz’s solution to Kepler’s problem
Diagram the intersection between best-of and more-than.

Here’s my hypothesis,
my educated guess
provisionally accepted,
based on the data collected
There’s a case to be made
shown in my visual aid
See Figure 1: Constructive Interferences
Mutual reinforcement produces
a single amplitude equaling the sum
of two individual waves becoming one
We’re better as a pair
I know what we’ve got is rare
But here’s my sentiment
Let’s do this experiment

1. Branquias Bajo El Agua, Derribos Arias, Branquias Bajo El Agua 7″, 1982
2. Newsreel, Fad Gadget, Fireside Favorites, 1980
3. Countdown, Kas Product, Try Out, 1981
4. Zu Jung, Zu Alt, X-Mal Deutschland, Incubus Sucubus 12″, 1982
5. Swampland, The Birthday Party, Mutiny/The Bad Seed, 1989
6. Situations, Middle Class, VA – Earcom #3 2×7″, 1979
7. Inventory, Colin Newman, A-Z, 1980
8. Simple Machines, Dancing Cigarettes, 1980-81: The Gulcher Recordings, 1980
9. The Sky Is Blue Again, The Ex, Disturbing Domestic Peace, 1980
10. Isn’t It Interesting How Neutron Bombs Work?, Diagram Brothers, Some Marvels of Modern Science, 1981

Have you heard the earlier stuff?
Everything was better before
And nothing new will be good enough
Have you heard? The earlier stuff
harsh and deep and rough
By virtue of age just… more.
Have you heard the earlier stuff?
Everything was better before.

Painting: Émile Friant, Les Amoureux, 1888.

I’ve been compiling a ton of images for my Great Rabbits of Literature sleeve for several months now and working out this concept in my head for much, much longer. If your first thought is Watership Down, allow me to emphasize the Great Rabbits part. (Those rabbits were assholes, and not my kind of assholes.) I’m not even that stuck on the “Rabbits” part; hares are cool too. And “Literature” is perhaps too limiting, as I’ve included ancient representations of mythological and folktale rabbits throughout history. The symbolism of the rabbit is linked to the moon almost universally, even in cultures separated by time and distance, with little chance of contact. Death, sex, luck, danger, drunkenness, love, rationality, brave and steadfast kindness, trickery, and cunning wit… the rabbit has been used by storytellers forever to give their audiences lessons in all of them. I’ll post in detail on each rabbit , little by little, as its portion of my arm is completed.

Below (here, for rss readers) is a jpeg dump of the source material I’ve given the artist. We start next week … and go on once a month for the rest of the year, probably. I’m really excited to be working with Cindy. (More next week, when I’ve got some bloody gross progress photos to share.) Her eyes lit up when I explained what I want to do, and that enthusiasm from the artist with the portfolio I’ve been dreamily clicking through since I started getting serious about this made it all come together for me. The time is now!

Great Rabbits of Literature

Fictional rabbits from ancient through modern times.

35 Photos

Painting: Thomas Gainsborough, Conversation In A Park. 1745.

First things first, I am on a quest to find the best pizza joint that delivers to my neighborhood. So far I’ve done ok, with only one atrocious misadventure. (Q: How do you royally screw up a cheese pie and lose a customer in less than 2 minutes? A: Deliver it vertically, with confidence!) I’m still not convinced I’ve found the best place, but it could just be because I’m just outside South Philly and have a decent grasp on statistics. (If you live near me and have a joint you like, tell me about it.)

A couple of weeks ago, while digging through one of the many bins that are the sum of my belongings here with me (everything else is still in Vermont) to find something to wear I finally snapped and decided to go buy some actual furniture. I’m a long-term temp and not feeling entirely secure in my employment, however, I can’t stand living like a squatter anymore in my big beautiful freshly painted room with the fancy remote-controlled fireplace. I mean, really! Settle down!

So I went a used furniture shop that is either a cool charity or a front for something shady, and bought a great old all-wood dresser and desk. No assembly required — they are solid. They hooked me up with a delivery service that had them in my room in three hours. Ever since, the first thing I do each morning is check to make sure they’re actually there and weren’t just a beautiful dream. (So far they’ve stuck around.)

Here’s a list of things that’ve happened since I last updated:

• Finally saw Black Swan with my girl gang and it was … perfect.
• My crappy phone died freeing me to enslave myself to a BlackBerry. The phone is dead, long live the phone!
• Made a bunch of new friends all because I went out by myself one night. This is not to be confused with a tale of self-confidence and putting-yourself-out-there winning out. More like, when you want a beer, you should go get a beer because good things happen to those who don’t deny themselves the simple things in life… mostly beer. (A theory that requires more testing.)
• I was the most violently ill I’ve ever been for two and a half days straight, and not entirely right for at least a week and a half — probably due to pizza related food poisoning? Still #1 in love with pizza though.
• Caught the World Cafe Live show/taping with Kurt Vile, and was really into it. I like that I’m walking distance to WC and can sneak over during lunch for cool free shows.
• Found some key elements for my personal style goal for 2011, which J so aptly described as “summertime urban goth.”
• My pretend big brother and his girlfriend had a baby girl in February. I’m a fake auntie!
• Finally saw Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure on a big screen. What’s left to do in life, really?
• Changed the layout here while I was upgrading WordPress.
• Saw The Ex at the First Unitarian with J, and we decided it was the greatest show we’ve ever seen and nothing will ever compare to it …so that’s kind of a drag. But no regrets!

This weekend was one of the best despite being cold and ending in a hangover that went next-level three bites into the most delicious brunch. Between all of the good people I got to see this weekend… a birthday beauty and revelers and out of towners and proud-new-cd-releasers (rightfully so, too!) I spent most of it in a super excited daze wondering how life got to be so fucking fantastic. I just want to squeeze all of my friends until they run away like all of the cats I’ve seen lately tend to. (Elmyra forever.)

Do you like my new pic?:  <3_<3

you got the wrong bird, tracklist:

1. A Room Lives in Lucy, And Also The Trees, A Retrospective 1983 – 1986, 1986
2. Shadow Of A Doubt, Sonic Youth, Evol, 1991
3. The Void, The Raincoats, The Raincoats, 1979
4. Absentee, The Passions, Michael & Miranda, 1980
5. I’ve Waited Ages, Colin Newman, A-Z, 1980
6. The Order Form (I Want to Order A Pelican), Essential Logic, Beat Rhythm News, 1979
7. Return the Gift, Gang of Four, Peel Sessions, 1981
8. Another Song, Swell Maps, A Trip To Marineville, 1979
9. Ethics, 23 Skidoo, Ethics EP, 1981