recession means less...

Economic Recession Means Fewer Shark Attacks

What other things will be fewer of because of a recession:

-deaths on Mt. Everest (and probably MORE deaths on the Golden Gate Bridge) (See post below)
-grand openings of lame shops that sell knick-knacks and ugly stationery (this Onion article makes me uncomfortable)
-cars purchased for spoiled 16 yr olds on their birthday
-overpriced sandwiches (a la Cosi's "Meatball Aurora") consumed during Chicago Loop lunch hour
-trash in landfills
-traffic and traffic related deaths
-MEN
-beer?

mount everest versus the bridge

So on my way home from work today, I wondered: do more people die on average each year trying to summit Mt. Everest, or jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge? According to 2 random websites: the Golden Gate Bridge generally averages 19 suicides per year, though the number has spiked recently. In 2006, 104 people tried to kill themselves by jumping off the bridge, but 70 of those attempts were "thwarted" and only 34 people actually succeeded. That's a lot more than usual though.
I wonder what it is now that the economy is so shitty?!

Anyway, it looks like the deaths on Everest average about 7 or 8 per year in the "Modern Times" (1973-present), out of an average of around 60 summits per year (way over 100 per year these days!). I suspect that as far as the Everest community is concerned, the use of bottled oxygen on the mountain is what separates "Modern Times" from erstwhile times.

So it's not really a contest. Probably because its REALLY EXPENSIVE to even set foot on Mt. Everest. Last week, I found out that (regrettably) it costs at least $7,300 to buy even an airplane ticket to Kathmandu. At least we can see what it looks like at the summit.

several square miles

I took this picture (with the "widescreen" pheature of my regular ass digital camera), because I phigured that it would probably be the widest area of land that I would ever be able to phit in a photograph.
I don't think I'll ever phly in space, so I don't know how else I'd ever get above 38,000 pheet. (Not even iph I climbed Mt. Everest!)

Plano Bologna Sandwich

Until recently, I believed that somewhere between the villages of Plano, Il and Sandwich, Il was a town called "Bologna" (aka Baloney). This is because John told Eric and I that when we were little because it was a good pun on his part, but we were too young to get it. (Right? Plano Bologna Sandwich.)

Anyway, I've never ever gone out of my way to make myself a plain old baloney sandwich, because apparently it's a feature of American culture that I consider myself to be above. I am in the middle class after all har har har. When I opened my lunch bag in grade school, I found packed for me: whole wheat bread PB&J, applesauce or cottage cheese and carrots (to clean your teeth afterwards!). Brenda tried making me eat these nasty healthy fruit leathers for a while, but E-Train and I both refused so I think she gave up.

BUT, elitist as I might be, American I still am. When the Seattle Kindergarten went on field trips, the lunch ladies would pack plain old baloney sandwiches, a cookie an apple and a juice box. I would always manage to eat at least 2 or 3 baloney sandwiches, between the extra lunches and the sandwiches not eaten by their child. Guiltily, I ate them, paranoid about getting fat arms.

AND, recently we were at Robert Hines' house when the Jones Big Ass Truck Movie got a million hits, and his wonderful thoughtful wife brought down some snacks for the 8 or so boys who were in her basement drinking beer and talking fanatically about how they were going to get famous or something. She brought down some goldfish crackers, some chex mix and she brought down a tray full of bit size bologna sandwiches on white bread with plenty of mayonnaise and American cheese.

I must have eaten a whole sandwich worth.

I salute you, plain old bologna sandwich. You remind us all how hopelessly boring it is to be American, but damn are you tasty.

Tuna Steak

Last night I had a dream where there was a woman who was pregnant and also dying. So I and some other, more qualified people were trying to rescue the babies inside her (there were 2).

It wasn't going so well, and when we finally pulled them out of her blood-and-gutsy abdomen, the babies were really just raw tuna steaks. I image googled "raw tuna steak" and this is pretty much exactly what it looked like.

Underwater Trees

A few weeks ago, I had an incredible dream.

In this dream, I was reading a friend's blog where he described a place where trees grew underwater. Several people had commented on this posting, saying things like "Oh that's so stupid, everyone knows trees don't grow underwater." I decided to go to this place, and see these trees.

And since it was a dream, I was able to sit on the floor of this shallow ocean, breathing easily and looking around at these gigantic underwater trees. My dreaming brain infused me with a (somewhat exaggerated) profound sensation of awe as I watched them. The ocean, where we were, was only about 200 yards deep, and the trees were very big. Light from the surface came through and created a silhouette similar to trees on land, though subdued by the water.

The trees all looked like the one in this picture (in the field). Big, solitary, impressive and green on a flat ocean floor. I observed one in particular, but there were 4 or 5 other ones scattered around.

Probably the most spectacular thing was that the trees must have been producing huge quantities of oxygen, because every 10 minutes or so, a giant bubble of air would accumulate near the upper branches and once it got big enough to, I guess, break away, it would float up to the surface and create a disturbance there (you know like when you fart in a hot tub).

Anyway, that was the dream. In an lame effort to find images that match my dream-vision, I googled "underwater tree" and got this one. It doesn't look anything like the actual trees that I saw, but if you imagine that instead of looking down onto this scene, you are sitting on the bed of this lake looking up at it, then you can begin to imagine my dream trees.

I don't want to pretend to "analyze" this dream...I'd watched a nature show about mangrove trees that evening so I'm pretty sure thats what inspired me. BUT, I have also been reading fantasy novels again and thinking a lot about common archetypes and the tree definitely appears a lot, usually as a metaphor for the immensity of time, as well as a symbol of interconnectedness. There's a Wikipedia page which sort of summarizes Tree of Life archetypes from several different cultures and civilizations. Enjoy.

Brenda

Here is this dorky picture I took of my dorky mom wearing her dorky capote. This is at like 10am at Bloody Lake (Rendezvous) so we are probably not too boozed up yet.

But the Women's Knife and Tomahawk throws are in 2 hours or so, so we're probably warming up our fingers, and filling up a mug with whiskey.

Boomer Yum

Ok I can't find it online right now, but I once read an essay which compared Tom Robbins' novels Skinny Legs and All, Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life with Woodpecker, and the relationships between their characters. For one, Ellen Cherry Charles actually appears in Jitterbug, mentioned by name once as a recipient of the Daughters of the Daily Special grant, which is referred to in the Seattle world of Still Life. I read Still Life immediately after Skinny Legs, and noticed right away that even the name Leigh-Cheri is similar to Ellen Cherry, and their characters fit into the proud, sexy Robbins lady mold...occupied also by Amanda. (I tried to read Another Roadside Attraction...but it was too late. I was sick of all the wit. Same thing with Half Asleep, though I DID make it through Villa Incognito)
But, the reason I'm mentioning this is because of the men. This particular article I read connected (listed in chronological order of their publish dates) Plucky Purcell with Bernard Mickey Wrangle and Boomer Petway. One stupid, but notable detail being that Bernard was an outlaw who blew things up and Boomer's nickname is an onomatopeia for...explosions. Personally, I'd go ahead and connect the rest the major male charaters from ALL Robbins novels: Alobar, Switters and even Tanuki all seem to be cut from the same macho mold. This isn't really a criticism...but it might explain why not many people make it through more than 4 or 5 of the 9 books .(10 in April!!). That or all the fact that the books are dripping with paragraphs about semen.

The reason I'm mentioning all this is because I've created an homage to Boomer Petway in my bathroom (and, by association, the Woodpecker, Plucky, Alobar and the rest). In contrast to Ellen Cherry and Priscilla, Boomer's oversimplified (?) idea of art is when you think up something that you've always wanted to see in real life that doesn't exist yet, and so you make it. Like a coat with hundreds of little pockets which have written in hundreds of different secret codes "Boomer Petway loves Ellen Cherry Charles." Or, more commonly, an airstream that looks like a big turkey.

I wanted to see what my (boring, white) bathroom would look like if I taped Onion headlines all over it. It is slow going, because I'm restricted to only Onion headlines that I think are funny, such as "Man Gets Into Mess Usually Reserved for Stars of Silent Film Era" or "Shitload of Math Due Monday" or "Dip Good."

But every time I put up a new headline, I think about Boomer. And all the rest of them (by association). Even little Spoon.

Fugly Horse, Smooth Character

Maybe you haven't seen or read Revolutionary Road. Maybe it looks like your job will make it all the way through this recession. Maybe, you're not depressed enough.

Then look here!

The purpose of this blog is to expose people who mistreat horses. She is most effective when she attacks horse breeders, the ones who keep making more and more horses, chasing after a pedigree or a perfect confirmation, and in so doing, leave more and more living creatures chained up in dark stalls. If being cared for means...being fed twice a day and not beaten, then sure, they're being cared for.

If you're not depressed enough, try to think about all the idle, lonely animals, chained in dark stables. Think about how some of them haven't seen the light of day in over 10 years.

(The horse in the picture is our Fugly Horse, Smooth Character, who, after having not left his 16x16 stall in 10 years, summoned the courage to ride in a trailer with me and my brother. He's dead now, though arguably much better off than he was. And he frolicked retardedly around our pasture for a month or so before he died of a hideously broken leg...which he did himself, accidentally, because he was so pitifully retarded.)

Oh Yeah Well...

This is a sidewalk near my house.

It's about secrets. My secrets, and everyone's secrets. That guy across the sidewalk, he has many secrets, too.

It reminds me of all of my secrets that I haven't recently catalogued.

And if it's not about secrets, then its about validation. Even if no one else knows, you know. And that makes it real.

I know. And I know that I know. You know, too. Ya know?

Clinton Street

Last year I worked in the very near West Loop, and walked every morning from the Clark/Lake Blue line to Washinton & Canal. Clinton Street runs north-south one block east of Canal, so I crossed it every day.

All of this was while my mental map of Chicago was growing and piecing itself together. I learned the names of the big north-south streets that run every 1/2 mile (in order from east to west: Halsted, Racine, Ashland, Damen, Western, California, Kedzie...) and which of those have the most reliable buses. (Never trust the Damen bus.) I learned also that the east-west streets at 0 and south are named after presidents ((Washington), Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren...).

About halfway through the year I began to wonder if Clinton Street was also named after a president, and if so, what had it been named before? Very brief internet research reveals that Clinton was not named after Bill Clinton, but...before him. It is named for DeWitt Clinton (who has a LOT of other things named after him), who was a US Senator and the Governor of New York in the early 1800's. He did run for president, in 1812, but was defeated by Madison (for whom the Chicago grid X-axis is named after...) .

He seems to have been and "authentic but largely forgotten hero of American democracy." So, on my lunch break today, I salute DeWitt Clinton and all the other forgotten heros. And maybe in a few hundred years, our space stations, space borders, boundaries, cities and counties (with "roads" for orderly space travel) will be named after BILL Clinton.

Dreams from my Father

"Billie [Holiday] had stopped singing. The silence felt oppressive, and I suddenly felt very sober. I rose from the couch, flipped the record, drank what was left in my glass and poured myself another. Upstairs, I could hear someone flushing a toilet, walking across a room. Another insomniac, probably, listening to his life tick away. That was the problem wiyh booze and drugs, wasn't it? At some point they couldn't stop that ticking sound, the sound of certain emptiness. And that, I suppose, is what I'd been trying to tell my mother that day: that her faith in justice and rationality was misplaced, that we couldn't overcome after all, that all the education and good intentions in the world couldn't help plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course." (Obama, Dreams from My Father, 1995)

It's passages like these that make me actually want to say that I feel safe, and close to our new President. Even when I say that I feel "close" to a President, I know that it's all in my mind, and I'm really not close to anything at all. I feel big, and very very small at the same time. But at least I know that he has felt (struggled with, come to accept) the same smallness, and is now touching the very very big.

It's passages like these that make me excited. To hear a guy who had to go through the motions of catering to all kinds of American subgroups in order to win votes (emphasizing (while gesturing with his thumbs) that he supports _______ while trying not to alienate ______, bla bla bla, trying to impress everyone) talk about smoking pot and wandering around his apartment at 3am, looking at the moon.

And, oh, yes. There's this, too:

"In our weekly meetings [my boss] would remind me of the choice I'd made, that there was no risk in my modest accomplishments, that the men in fancy suits downtown were still calling all the shots. 'Life is short, Barack,' he would say. 'If you're not trying to really change things out here, you might as well forget it.' Ah, yes, Real change. It had seemed like such an attainable goal back in college...only now, nothing seemed simple. "

This excerpt sounds a little more like the memoir of a president. This is more the standard story of a man who dreams big and works hard, andbeats the odds, succeeds, turns out to be a real role model for kids everywhere.

Kids my age, though, I think we appreciate hearing about how "[He] blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it...Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection."From these words, we can know that we have a few things in common with this guy. Insecurities, sadness, mistakes, half-assed self-destruction, these are all things that make a person real. Let's not (feebly) try to hide our faults from the rest of the world behind an old white guy who won the election by convincing everyone that he is perfect.

Let's be real.

Ok.

Bananaphone

I had a fling once, with a guy who liked all different kinds of music. One morning, we chose to make out while listening to Raffi (not just for Kindergarten anymore!).

Featured on this playlist:
Baby Beluga
Brush Your Teeth

and of course,
Bananaphone

the other day, when i was meeting with my Jumpstart Team Leaders, i thought about this fling and realized that the fact that i had it sort of justifies several things that i claim to value.

firstly, and least importantly:
the importance of play

in Jumpstart, i spend a lot of time trying to communicate to undergrads the importance of play in the lives of the preschool children they mentor. like, rather than sitting and doing a worksheet about the letter A, it's much more meaningful to a 4 year old to learn about the letter A withing a relevant context, while pursuing their own interests (like, noticing that the letter A is in the name of the friend who is sitting next to them as they do a fingerpainting activity together).

i don't remember the context, really, though i frequently refer to a recent Obama comment about education needs to be rethought if we don't want to "raise kids who only know how to fill in a bubble [on a test]".

when you play (fingerpainting, or humorous making out, etc), you grow into a unique, sentient human different from other unique, sentient humans.

secondly,
Not Taking Onesself Seriously

i find this so important that i don't have much to say about it, it should be intuitive and if it's not...then it might be too late already. suffice it to say that if you fail at not taking yourself too seriously, you are really setting yourself up for a shitty (or at least really boring) life.

thirdly,
have you heard Bananaphone? it's hilarious.

the only emperor

Back in November, I found this poem in a book which represented the (somewhat OCD) owner's attempt at validating a shelf full of crappy paperbacks and Complete Idiot's Guides Tos.
I opened it with no small amount of English Major hubris, but was quickly put back in my place by Wallace Stevens within:

"The Emperor of Ice Cream"

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

2 months later, I've worked it out as best I can independently work through anything W. Stevens. Don't Be Discouraged By Reality, for it is Reality that bites your face while you walk to the bus in the morning! and it is Reality that snuggles you into a sleeping bag beneath a starry, summer night. Carpe Diem! even if it seems to be little more than a lightly used paper towel and the finding of 2 dollars in your coat pocket.

2 months later, the result of my dwelling on this poem (and wanting to be the emperor of ice cream) is that I joined Blogger.