THE RULES ed. Of some meme I have seen everywhere, which seemed easy and I wanted to post, so I did it.:

• Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.
• NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.
• They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.
• You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.



( and so on beneath the cut )

Wanna look amazing this summer? Get the ultimate hottness-boosting accesory now: an ugly girlfriend!

This summer advertising campaign - aimed at women - by McCann Digital for Bacardi Breezers, sounds like, looks like, and should be a joke, a parody. But it isn't.

Find the unamusing reality of the Breezers site, here. It utilizes Flash.

For a coherent write-up, read the article at Jezebel, here.

I enjoy many products I was not even aware were made by Bacardi Limited, but I am now.
Although my personal boycott won't exactly hit them where they live, it will make me feel less ill.

"Bacardi has made several acquisitions to diversify away from the eponymous Bacardi rum brand. In 1992 Bacardi acquired Martini & Rossi, the famous Italian producer of Martini vermouth and sparkling wines. In 1998, the company acquired Dewar's scotch and Bombay Sapphire gin for $2 billion. Bacardi acquired the Cazadores tequila brand in 2001, and in 2004 purchased Grey Goose, a French made vodka, from Sidney Frank for $2 billion. In 2006, Bacardi purchased New Zealand vodka brand 42 Below. Other associated brands include the U.S. version of Havana Club, Drambuie Scotch whisky liqueur, Disaronno Amaretto, Eristoff vodka and B&B and Bénédictine liqueurs." - source, Wikipedia

Contact Bacardi Limited here.

Luncheon! A fine time for a meme - one found far and wide today.

Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- The first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes.

At this very particular point in time, and in no particular order:

Watership Down, Richard Adams
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Absolom, Absolom!, William Faulkner
Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood
Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
The Tournament of Thorns, Thomas Burnett Swan
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell
Crime & Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
On Photography, Susan Sontag
The Grey King, Susan Cooper
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

Yes, whether reading them or writing them, I enjoy a good list.

Oh, it is a Meme!
Got from that infamous foxysquid!

01. Post your current desktop wallpaper.

"The Six-Winged Seraph" (after Pushkin's "Prophet"), Alexander Vrubel 1904

02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.

I was lucky enough to stumble over this image while researching a piece I've since finished- I suppose it resonated with me so strongly that I'm not yet ready to let it go!
The image is of the titular Six-Winged Seraph in the process of enlightening a poet who has been wandering in the desert in search of inspiration - which sounds nice, except for the part about the poet having his heart replaced by a burning coal.
Mainly, I love the androgynous, alien aspect of the seraph - the censer in its hand, the waves and folds in its hair and garments that seem to crackle in and out of the air, the unfathomable expression on its face.
Haha, and anyway, the manly beauty of the ecstatic poet isn't hard on the eyes, either.

03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this. The point is to see what you had on.

I didn't! I swear! I did clean up my desktop a bit, though. By which I mean "file away my Star Trek macros and Yu Gi Oh icons". Oh, dear.

Yes, foxysquid, may your special day be full of the kind of happiness that only tiny dragons can bring! Tiny dragons and the promise of a dessert you can actually eat later on in the week. ♥

Many thanks to doujinka HobbyHobby. Without her, my birthday wishes would surely have failed to be as cute.

Once upon a time, a little less than two weeks or so ago, the time had come for there to be another cat in the house. A session of experimental cat-handling, an interview, a screening, and an adoption approval later, there was Oliver.


Oliver, 7 months

Oliver likes sleeping in odd positions and eating as though every meal is is his last. His hobbies include repeatedly jumping into and then out of empty bathtubs, watching me type, and biting things to see what happens. He has a voice, it's just not often heard.
Although Oliver is a friendly little boy, he does have a few pet peeves - these include tall people, surround sound, and bossy, fluffy cats. Namely Sasha, not pictured here. Who is mostly vaguely pink and who is mostly known as "Sausage".

I can't begin to say enough good things about the Washington Animal Rescue League. For Oliver, and for countless other animals like him, they have been wonderfully true to their name.

All right, so I'm far from the cutting edge of the internet, and I've other things I ought to be posting about, correspondence I ought to be completing, and work I ought to be doing - but where heavy science and old school platforming meet, thus I am bound.




Haha, seems it doesn't take much to make my day, these days. Great, now I don't want to do anything but play Super Mario Brothers for the rest of the day. What of my poor Pokemon?
Oh, what I said.

opening credits, The Warriors, 1979

The ridiculous, the sublime, and the odd. The older, the newer, and the in-between. A few covers, a few b-sides, and a few unlikely favorites.
One poem and one hymn. A track for each day of my month just past - hours of work and hours of play. Anyhow, I like to share. Enjoy.

Dance With Me Nouvelle Vague
Parting of the Sensory Modest Mouse
Mad World Gary Jules
Parle-moi Gilles David Orchestra
Spiralling Keane
I Am Under No Disguise School of Seven Bells
Shape of My Heart Noah and the Whale
Lump Sum Bon Iver
Fire In Cairo Gangi
Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground Antony & The Johnsons
I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris Morrissey
Anne Santogold
Brother Sport Animal Collective
Viva la Vida Coldplay
Ring Road Underworld
Cosmos TaTu
Simple Gifts Yo-Yo Ma & Alison Krauss
The Hazelwood Patrick Wolf
I Think I'll Start a Fire Faunts
Pink Bullets The Shins
If I Know You The Presets
Great Fire XTC
Black River Killer Blitzen Trapper
Secret The Pierces
Fickle Ghost PSAPP
Eagle ABBA
Lovesick Wrongkong
Little of Your Time Maroon 5

Download here from Sendspace. Help yourself.
Also, if one hasn't seen The Warriors, one really should. It's no The Octagon, but then, what is?

The Octagon is a movie starring Chuck Norris and Lee VanCleef. This film somehow manages to combine the diverse elements of step-sibling rivalry, the Hard Life of a Mercenary, ninja training camp, flashbacks, stage-whispering, magnificently awful dialogue, and the death of an inappropriately obstinate Frenchman into one delightful whole. However, this post is not really about The Octagon at all, but instead revolves around the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States - of which country Chuck Norris is a proud citizen. Or so I hear.

Honestly, seeing as I live a twenty-minute walk away from Capitol Hill, I would have felt foolish had I not gone down to see the sights and revel all Whitman-esque among the glad and bustling throng. So out in the cold and down the blocked-off streets and among the people I went.
I saw many thousands of t-shirts and buttons and posters and mugs, onesies and lanyards and pot holders and, according to one vendor, "hand-made bling" - and many, many thousands more people. The crowds were expectant, laughing, jostling, waving tickets and flags and losing single gloves on the ground with great abandon. The mood was high.

Passing cops on their horses, I crossed a side street only to have my way blocked by an anti-abortion protester. His sign, complete with the customary gore, asked if there was any "Hope" for an end to the abortion holocaust.
"These women!", he said. "It's these women who kill their babies so that they can complete their college educations!"
Laughing, caught up in the day and the moment, I called back over my shoulder, "Oh, it's a shame you didn't complete yours!"
A small group of college-aged young men standing close by turned and laughed. "Burn!", one shouted. "She burned you!"
Yes, the mood was high.

The North Lawn was surprisingly clear and through the grate of the security fence I could see the lines of ticket-holders moving through the nearby checkpoint, the motorcades moving by, hear the music drifting over from the mall. But that was all.
Union Station was a better choice. Packed into the great hall with hundreds of other locals and tourists, straining to get a peek at one of two small flat-screen televisions provided by a restaurant for the pleasure of their brunching customers. The hush was incredible.

"What happened to Cheney?", whispered a tall neighbor of mine. "Why is he in a wheelchair?"
"They said it's his back." said the woman to my left.
"Never help your friends move", I said to my tall neighbor. He burst into laughter that got him shushed.

It seems long awaited relief makes me a smart ass.

Just after the oath, the roar was deafening.

On the walk home, we stopped twice on the street, gathering with mostly local folks to listen to the address as it boomed out onto the sidewalk from parked cars. I got hugged by a drunk. I shouted "represent!" when the bit about "non-believers" came up. I bought a crappy hot chocolate. I smiled at everyone. It was brilliant.

I have nothing else to day about The Octagon, but as I used it as a ladder to make this post, I suppose I should tell anyone who might read this to watch it.

Snow crystal image produced using electron microscopy.

Is it a world to hide virtues in?
Twelfth Night, 1.4

In honor of the day, a traditional song of the season.
Though any day is dandy for experimental interpretation, I think.



Siouxsie & the Banshees, "Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant" 1982.
Released as a b-side to the single "Melt!", from the album, "A Kiss In the Dreamhouse".

Il est né le divin enfant!
Jouez hautbois, résonnez musette.
Il est né le divin enfant;
Chansons tous son avènement.

Depuis plus de quatre mille ans
Nous le promettaient les prophètes:
Depuis plus de quatre mille ans
Chansons tous en cet heureux temps.

...

He is born the divine child!
Play oboe, resonate musette.
He is born the divine child;
Let's all sing his accession.

For more than four thousand years,
We've promised by the prophets:
For more than four thousand years,
We've been waiting for this happy time.

I prefer this evening's fit of spontaneous, low key holiday decorating* to one of my usual, more structured campaigns.

In honor of my freshly decked halls, a carol.



I am helplessly charmed. Even moreso by the daikon slide-whistle featured in another of his videos, but I really don't care for "Silent Night", musically speaking, so there we are.

*candle, candle, pine cone, shiny thing, yule log - which incredibly, I have not got any candles for, etc.

"I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize."

Siegfried L. Sassoon July, 1917

An inactive fault line runs there, and the Uwharries, a range of mountains so old they are now only sloping hills.
A one-time tributary of the Mississippi runs there, long before it was called the Mississippi and longer yet before it went out west, leaving behind the broad Pee Dee to mark it's place.

That lovely, problematic, brutal and endearing place I come from. The piedmont of North Carolina at its southernmost edge.
As a native, I know better than anyone not to underestimate her people, to consider them as a whole to be easily baffled rubes, viciously ignorant throwbacks, or wary, voiceless minorities. It's a simple, predictable thing to do, and a foolish one. I'm sure the Republicans, in state and out, took them for granted, those counties - they shouldn't have.

Anson, Scotland, Richmond, Hoke, Cumberland, Robeson, and Bladen.
Some did it by the smallest of margins, some by remarkable gaps. But whatever the numbers, they went Blue.

This is not college town North Carolina, hippie boutique North Carolina, research triangle or even mid-state golden triad North Carolina. This is Nascar North Carolina, swept-yard and chicken-prosessing plant and hog farming North Carolina. This is tobacco barn and cotton field and corn stand and recreational boating North Carolina. South Carolina's front porch North Carolina. This is it don't matter so much where you go to church so long as you go, but God would listen a whole lot better if you were Baptist North Carolina.

This is my backwards-looking, forwards-living, beautiful state. She can be incredibly open-hearted and maddeningly close-minded, but she is always hopeful and hard working - wanting keep the best of herself, yet to be more than she is.
This is Anson County, where I was born in the same long ago year that Jesse Helms first won his senate seat - a seat taken last night by a woman and democrat.
This is Anson County, where they voted last night in record numbers, and by a wide, unquestionable margin, to put a black man and a democrat in the office of president.
This is my North Carolina, where they haven't backed a democrat for that office since Carter. This is my North Carolina, with it's first woman governor, also a democrat.

It was a narrow thing for Obama, statewide - a single percentage point (or a fraction thereof, depending) of a narrow thing. But you have to know my North Carolina to know just how much of an earthquake, an event it is - and would have been even if it had gone the other way but been as close a call.
There is so much to work towards, so far to go, but look how far my North Carolina has come. Maybe, finally, she can begin to fulfill the promise, the hope, of the motto on her seal.

Esse quam videri. "To be, rather than to seem."

I live now in the District of Columbia, where my political desires are an everlasting lock, but my vote doesn't count for much. I'm proud to live here, proud of the fireworks and the street parties and the smiling faces on my block. But the contest that brought tears on hard enough to make percentage analysis difficult was the one that, for me, remains closest to home. Today, I am so proud of the Old North State.

Though she envies not others, their merited glory,
Say whose name stands the foremost, in liberty's story.
Though too true to herself ever to crouch to oppression,
Who can yield to just rule a more loyal submission.

Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever,
Hurrah! Hurrah! the good Old North State.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi's stream:
This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the still small voice vibrating -America's choosing day...
- "Election Day", Walt Whitman



*The image above is an area cartogram of the United States, depicting each county rescaled in proportion to it's population. Colors reflect the results of the 2004 presidential election.

I'd finished fine-tuning my jack-o-lantern's teeth (a grimacing oni this year) and applying the kind of eye make-up I used to sport on a daily basis - though now I have no idea how I used to get it done and also get to class or have any life outside of the process - when the doorbell rang. Who should it be but two delivery men with a huge crate packed with a boring yet long-awaited household item for me!

As I was thanking the one who had done all of the lifting, the one who had done all of the door-holding and supervising was heard to sigh. He had spotted my dish of candy, already handily by the door.

"Oh, you're ready for Trick or Treat, I guess!"

Yes, I was - and I wasn't afraid to say so.

"Would you like some candy?", I said.

Never have I seen two grown men display such barely suppressed, guilty excitement at the thought of a handful of Dum-Dums and bubblegum.

There were plenty of kids in costumes later in the evening, but nothing could top the joy of door-holding guy.

"Man, I haven't been Trick-or-Treating in years! That was great!"

"Yeah!", said lifting-guy, unwrapping his gum.

Oh, Halloween!
Speaking of which, the time seems ripe for a little relevant entertainment.
Well, it did when I began this post. Now it is past midnight and into All-Hallows, but what the hell. Any time is the right time to kick it Old School. So I hear.


"Halloween", Siouxsie & the Banshees
Cologne, 1981

Boo.

July 18, 64 A.D. The Great Fire of Rome:
A fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control while Emperor Nero reportedly plays his lyre and sings while watching the blaze from a safe distance.*

By way of committing a selfless act on the day of my birth, I feel I should set the record straight regarding Nero - who, while he certainly had his faults, was very likely at his villa in Antium when the Great Fire began. Probably he was sitting around eating delicately-flavored, cave-chilled ices fetched for him by fleet-footed, supple-limbed youths.
I suppose one could extrapolate "safe distance" from that scenario, but I'm sure that at least the youths would have begged to differ.
And really, what could the Emperor have done, led the fire brigade? I'd like to have seen that!
Seriously, I would.

Anyhow, since both I and Tacitus think so, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus is clearly innocent of the silly slander that he strummed his lyre and sang about the Sack of Ilium while Rome burned. Sure, he pinned the fire on the early Christians, leading to their bloody persecution at the hands of an angry Roman populace - but hey, nobody's perfect.

Which is indeed an important lesson. Unless one is a God and so can commit no imperfect act.
That has got to be convenient.

*Wikipedia

Some are a bit older, some are a bit newer, but all 22 of these tracks have been in my heavy rotation for the last little while - mostly during work hours, but during some play hours as well.

Twenty-two is my father's very favorite number - and also the date of his birthday this month.

Facing the Android's Conundrum aka, *A Bunch of Random Crap
work & play, early summer '08

Thirteen Elliott Smith
Australia The Shins
L.E.S. Artistes Santogold
Magic Doors Portishead
I Can't Decide Scissor Sisters
Untrust Us Crystal Castles
Destroyer The Stills
Foundations Kate Nash
Bixby Canyon Bridge Death Cab For Cutie
Paris Is Burning St. Vincent
Buildings & Mountains The Republic Tigers
Black Cat Ladytron
M79 Vampire Weekend
Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenoceros Flight of the Conchords
Prescilla Bat for Lashes
Let's Dance to Joy Division The Wombats
Cha Cha Cha The Little Ones
John, Let Me Go Sondre Lerche & The Faces Down
Apple Block Psapp
Furious Joan As Police Woman
The Eye of the Tiger (Version éditée) Persepolis, Original Soundtrack
When Water Comes to Life Cloud Cult

Available for download here.
Sharing is fun!

*Alternate title by special request of she-knows-who.

Challenged by a certain party to participate in an innocent meme made up of seven interesting things about myself, I have instead perverted it to my own ends.

There are seven things, sure. But only three are on the up and up.
Why three? Well, three is my favorite number.
Just so you know, that fascinating tidbit doesn't count towards the three.

Spot the true facts, win fabulous prizes*!
Or, just revel in my increased respect and the joy of simply being right.

On with the show. And tell, as it were.

a. I once was arrested for shoplifting condoms from a PharMor. A psychiatrist made a guilty plea on my behalf.
I did 80 hours community service under the Clerk of Court and spent mostly the whole time in the document stacks, fishing through old case files for crime scene photos.

b. Once, this kid I was baby sitting nearly choked to death on a marble from a Hungry Hungry Hippos game. I performed the Heimlich maneuver, saving her life.

c. I got my tits out at the top of the Eiffel tower.

d. In high school, I worked part-time as a waitress at Whispering Pines BBQ. The owner paid me under the table.
I was supposed to tip-out, but I didn't - which was great until I got fired. Then I went to work at a gas station near my house, adjacent to the one stoplight in my town. The gas station had movies for rent. The most popular movie was "National Lampoon's Vacation".

e. I once threw everything an ex had given me off a cliff and into the lake below, then wrote him a letter saying what I'd done.
What he had done was throw me over for his childhood sweetheart.

f. Sometime just around the start of fourth grade, I was somewhere I should not have been and got in between a machete and it's intended undergrowth. I was struck in the head (on the backswing) and required five stitches - and a bandage I appear to be very proud of in my school picture from that year.

g. I am a preacher's daughter. I once had sex in a church kitchen with a boy who had biked 5 country miles to see me and could not manage my bra to save his life. His name was Ryan.

*promises of fabulous prizes will not be honored.