It’s Still Alive

Another shot from my bedroom.  I love images that evoke the weather and what it feels like on your skin.  Tonight is alive with possibilities precisely because of the temperature and shifting wind speed.

I am a meteorologically determined individual.

Played with Live again tonight…  I crave a full version and an absolute beast of a computer to run it on.

34th Street

So I really like Helvetica font in public spaces. Its a reassuring presence, somehow symbolic of order with hints of style and sanitation. Even somewhere as gross and dysfunctional as the New York subway.

The lines of florescent light tubes are also pretty stylish in that bomb shelter vision of the future sort of way.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

I’ve been meaning to see this.  Seems to be one of those movies that everyone brings up in conversation but  no one has actually seen.  Well, nows our chance.

Save Me and Teach Me Blues

This got put up on the wall I face a good chunk of the day while I write this and other things.  I have a thing for swiping airline safety cards.
While it occurs to me that I post mostly photos from the inside of my room, it seems apt as that I spend most of my time here.  Sleeping, writing, reading, etc.  I bet folks on the space station take a lot of photos of their capsule too.

I am also stark naked right now.

Cry Bloxome

10. HANG OUT WITH SLUTS.
After my brother and I had trashed the house, because the olds had been away, we thought we had concealed the debauchery. But my mum found a tampon wrapper on the floor in her private bathroom and yelled, ‘What kind of SLUTS do you hang out with!’
I answered, ‘I don’t know, the usual kind?’

That’s some Cry Bloxome.  Australian writer, ne’er do well <- what the fuck, I hate that term, its late

OK, just go and read all the cusses.   Some other other poor bastard/love hotel expert witness who worked with me in Nara recommended him to me.

A Human Being

I owe my Dad a custom shirt with this quote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

I’m slowly working my way through that list.  I still need to / need to learn how to:

• Program in C#, Java or some other multi functional code.
• Learn and consistently practice a fighting technique.  I’ve been looking into Krav Maga lately.
• Catch and dress wild game.
• Get recertified in CPR and possibly lifesaving.
• Build a human habitable structure and a sea worthy vessel.

If it were my list I’d put something in there about basic bed skills and art/booze appreciation but that’s just me.

Rock Garden

Another picture of what’s on the sill in my bedroom.  This would be the ultra-portable rock garden I’ve put together out of rocks and other items that I’ve accumulated.  I arranged them in a compact imitation of a zen garden, minus the sand, where the rocks are islands.  The tiles make a nice cool bay, recalling squares of ocean on a video game world map.

The central rock I picked up this summer on the beach where I woke up after a Third of July party.  The chunk of coal was dropped in my mailbox sometime last winter, no idea where it came from.  The reclining plastic crystal bear comes off the top of a rubber stamp that imparts the likeness of Rillakuma (a bear who brings the serene message of chilling the fuck out.  With pancakes.  And baths.)  A friend brought the offwhite rock  back from Masada  when he visited Israel.   We have a long standing international rock exchange.  The tiles I found when I was hiking on Mt. Rouko, overlooking Kobe.  They were scattered across a part of the trail and it reminded me of how Kobe was in scattered ruins barely over a decade ago.

I like looking at this garden.

Test Flight #1

Here’s the output of  the first weekly Make Shit Night.  And we made… some kinda shit, that’s for sure.  Here’s what happens when you show up with no ideas, source material or concept of what you want to do.

Keep Your Laws Off My Bike Frame

Wired: Best Cities For Bikes

What struck me about this list was the lack of Asian representation on this list.  Straight up cracker towns, US and Euro across the board, no mention of how overwhelmingly 2-wheeled transportation is in large swaths of Japan, China, Viet, etc.

Then I looked at the criteria and it sorta made sense.  They were looking for some kind of official nob towards the phenomenon: committees, bike lanes,  traffic laws… all the things that Osaka thinks are for pansies.  Pssht, bike lanes.  Just aim that mama-cheri down the hill, jump the curb out into the road when there’s a hobo cart blocking the sidewalk and cut across six lanes of traffic wherever and whenever the mood strikes you.  With your shopping in the front basket.  And your girlfriend on the pegs.  And it all works, somehow.

I don’t think I saw a single serious bike accident my entire time in Osaka.  And not one helmet on anyone older than six or on a fucking Segway.  Somehow it just all makes sense without lanes, regulations or advocacy groups.