rocket to nowhere

• I don’t much care for this gray zone of owning and not possessing. #
• Bicycle prices in the last two years have gone up nearly 100%! WTF?! #
• Had the teaching in my underwear dream. #
• My workshop has been scheduled into a room with immobile furniture. #
• teaching 1st class at DU + entering new house for 1st time + 2 hrs. of dense workshop = . . . ? #
• Tried to spend the night in the new house, but didn’t because there’s a hole in the air mattress, #
• “and Turkish police dispersed protesters at a global water-shortage summit in Istanbul by spraying them with water canons.” #
• I really like to hear myself talk. I need to cut that out. #
• Have we both come down with something? At the same time? Damn. #
• “the torrent of words in which he drowned his thoughts.” Just read this in Balzac. cf. my previous tweet. #
• School called a snow day hours before the snow began falling. #
• I did not drive through the blizzard to shovel the walk at my new house where I don’t yet live. #
• Some nice person shoveled part of our walk for us. I did the rest am now exhausted. #
• I require a great deal of time for nothing. #
• Painting. #

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10% of the 100% of the things I underlined in Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet (as summarized by Mac OSX’s SummaryService):

This language of secret signs which they alone can interpret forms, as it were, a freemasonry among people of like passions. the torrent of words in which he drowned his thought, trying to economize his expenditure even of muscular energy. with legs measuring twelve inches round the calf, So much, and no more, was known in Saumur about Monsieur Grandet. … For it is true that hard work, which was our salvation, can give him back the fortune I have lost; Excuse me a moment while I blow my nose— applying the genius country people have for a minute analysis It was a rather gloomy view, shut in by the old walls, but one not without the strange beauty of solitary spots and places left to grow wild. … in which the finest ideas are destroyed by an epigram, Nearly all girls are ready to believe unquestioningly the fair promise of a pleasant outward appearance; The vinegrower’s ecstasies of delight always filled them with dismay. just as in Poland in the days of Augustus, when the king drank the whole of Poland got drunk. … In sober truth crowns live and breed like men: they come and go and sweat and bring in wages.’ that happens among the great folk and even sometimes to decent people; with the blank, fascinated gaze of a child who is just beginning to notice objects, and like a child he would painfully smile. … The great never stoop to flattery: it is the resource of mean and petty natures, who diminish themselves still further in order to creep more easily into the heart of the person round whom they wish to revolve. a kind of botanical phenomenon peculiarly disagreeable when appearing in the middle of a pale, bored face.

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I found this

on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Where I also found this:

along with the following sentence:

As Deke and others have pointed out, there seems to be a strong connection between the otherworldly sounds made by hillbilly eefers and the practitioners of the art of human beatboxing. Perhaps Wayno put it best when he wrote that this connection might just represent “a neat switch on the typical appropriation of black styles by white artists.”

Please follow the link to the original article. It is absolutely worth your time.

[text from Watchmen; images borrowed from the internet]

“Is it possible, I wonder, to study a bird so closely, to observe and catalogue its peculiarities in such minute detail that it becomes invisible?”

“I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spell-binding planet of imagination whose gravity drew us to our studies in the first place.”

“Until we transform our mere sightings into genuine visions; until our ear is mature enough to order a symphony from the shrill pandemonium of the aviary; until then we may have a hobby, but we shall not have a passion.”

“unwittingly refined from the original gleaming ore down to a banal and lusterless filing system.”

“We were not twitching nervelessly in stifling, stinking darkness, head first down the gullet of the swooping horror, our tails dangling pathetically from that vicious scimitar beak for hours before finally our hind legs and pelvic girdle are disgorged, our empty, matted skin curiously inverted by the process.”

“. . . antique and functional stretches of descriptive prose which nonetheless conveyed the violent and terrible essence of their subject matter effortlessly.”

• I like @tierack’s idea that tweets are almost meaningless except as later conversation pieces. #
• @cornelln In a way, yes. But in a way, no, because, for instance, you and I know each other and don’t need to break the ice. in reply to cornelln #
• A late morning stroll through the botanic gardens, Chipotle for lunch, and now reading at the public library. #
• More beers with @tierack, but not too many this time. #
• “while the family makes comfort . . . and endless cellophane bags.” #
• Awake since 3:45. Am just now deciding to give up and get up. #
• Not exactly up: lying in the dark, wearing the big headphones, listening to In Rainbows. #
• @hudspkl In English or Italian? in reply to hudspkl #
• Don’t pull into the carwash lane, then leave your car to go into the c-store to buy a car wash. If the machine doesn’t work, pull through! #
• @LairdHunt Not from my view of things it hasn’t. And certainly not from my brain it hasn’t. Refresh refresh refresh. in reply to LairdHunt #
• Just misread “I want to bite your neck” as “I want to be your neck.” I *do* want to be your neck. I do. #
• What am I doing? I’m “randomly bragging about my uneventful life”! #
• The dog, Killer, just replaced his teeth with a larger, more dangerous set. And Tom is talking? With a French accent? #
• Mac-n-Cheese with peas and tuna! #
• “This was the part of the day I could not rationalize. Everything else grew on me.” #
• Or puked on me: Omar in my left slipper, Patton in my hand (to save having to wash the sheets!). #
• Apples, brown sugar, seared pork chops, pepper, a little ground mustard, and sauerkraut all into the crock pot in that order for five hours. #
• The pork chops were yummy, especially since they were followed by chocolate from Bozeman. #
• Too much to do. Not enough motivation. #
• Walk-through successful. Closing tomorrow. *Not nervous at all.* #
• “Slow erosion wipes out information.” -Carl Sagan #
• We own a house!!! #
• I wish I could make way for the new quarter in a Warholian way: Just sweep everything off the desk and into a box then seal the box. #
• @cbs4denver: Now that you are following me, I will start posting fake news leads. Thanks! #
• Yebeg Alicha at Abyssinia Ethiopian restaurant! House! Four years with Jen! Now for cupcakes! ! #
• Braindead after an evening with four interesting adults and four children under seven. #

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We just got home from what everyone else involved in the process described as one of the smoothest, fastest closings ever. We now own a house! We don’t take possession until Monday, but I have the key in my pocket right now. I can’t wait to move in. !!!

!!!

It looks like this:

• Despite reminders, I forgot. Thank goodness our computers don’t. #
• I love vacuuming. I hate brushing the cats. #
• Just one more thing. Only 500 words. If that. #
• A book by Roni Horn without photographs? #
• “Utter it all, and the blank page returns.” #
• WTF?!?! #
• Just read a fabulous blog post on the death of someone’s bully. I wonder where mine is. #
• It never occurred to me to use a box to jump over the side of the bridge. #
• As a wolf, I can see the fish-people frozen in the ice. I have no idea how to melt that ice, despite what the thing on my back says. #
• Bear thy thousand griefs/what mine refusest/bear mine still (null) #
• I think there is almost nothing good about being a teenager–being forced to exist in a gray zone of responsibility without autonomy. #
• Alchemy Ale with CMS at the end of the quarter. Hooray beer! #
• @LairdHunt And all 10 are wonderful. Thank you, I can hardly wait to read it. in reply to LairdHunt #
• I deserve to be hung over. Do I deserve to be this hung over? Yay spring break? #
• I really didn’t deserve to be hung over all damn day. I grow old . . . I grow old . . . I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. #
• @merzington Well, the wine @2 and the 6 beers over the next 6 hours . . . in reply to merzington #
• It’s the scheduling part of a syllabus that’s difficult. #
• Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie and a glass of milk. #
• It’s seriousness is the very seriousness of super-hero comics. #
• Its seriousness is the very seriousness of super-hero comics. #
• Edgy and easily annoyed. I want quiet of my own manufacture. #
• Watching our niece’s 1st birthday party via Skype. #

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***

***
I’m not sure, but the best thing about these drawings might be the fact that the products are drawn in more detail than the men and their surroundings. Now, let’s talk about Warhol.
***
More about Kliban here.

• @andrewwickliffe You have a pet named Omar?! Is it a fat orange cat like our pet named Omar? in reply to andrewwickliffe #
• “The espider monkey, one of the faster monkies in the jungle.” #
• At urgent care with J who may have a pinched nerve in her neck. Mexico was fabulous except for this late development. #
• Mild whiplash. She should be fine in a few days. In the meantime, drugs that start with V! #
• It’s my niece’s 1st birthday! When we “spoke” on the phone just now, she made noise and signed for milk. #
• Back to school after successfully forgetting it for five days. What am I still forgetting? #
• Countertops made of birthday cake is a fun thing to have dreamt about. #
• I love it. It’s beautiful. But when will I ever need to write under water or over grease. Maybe it’s a challenge. #
• The right back cushion on a couch is hugely important. #
• Hmmm, I meant the correct cushion, but the one on the right is awfully important as well I suppose. #
• “The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed.”

  And I may be finished with a paper. #

• Dear Duke Ellington, Thank you. #
• Barley wine, Dan Deacon, Thin Mints, and good conversation. The loveseat is so very ugly. #
• @msjuliejulie No need to be sorry. Ugly in a fairly good way (and yes, floral–monochromatically). in reply to msjuliejulie #
• Dani makes some awfully yummy food. #

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I don’t remember where I found this, but it’s been sitting on my desktop for far too long. It’s time to do something with it. Here, enjoy: