Everyone has seen this already, I think. But I thought I'd do my small part to spread the word. 20 minutes is rather long for my MTV generation attention span (unless I'm watching Angel, in which case 17 hours is not enough, but that's another story). So, I suggest watching in multiple sittings. The Consumption section was the most interesting to me (for whatever reason).
The Story of Stuff
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Dosa
...used to be great. Our "Sex and the City" club went there tonight. The waitress was too pushy. The bus boy too. Even the food was too spicy. Everyone's food was too spicy. I even like spicy food. We wondered if it was a mechanism to get us to order more food and drinks to cool off our tongues. I don't need to go again.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Tuning
No one is going to be quite as excited about this as I am now, but I think I just tuned my own guitar, all alone, here in my drafty little apartment, for the first time. Steve gave me this awesome little Guitar Basics 'zine, no-big-deal enough to get me to actually play with the instrument. This while I have had 4 books from the library on the same subject for the past 2 months that I haven't cracked.
I slept for like a million years last night, finally home again in my own little bed. I like going away. Even more, I like coming home.
I've been thinking a lot about the things I want to get done as the master of my own schedule. Learn to play guitar, for example, bc not enough people know how to do that. This isn't the right season to improve my swimming, altho I did buy a wetsuit the other day. The third goal of my big 3 life goals is a foreign language. I was thinking, as one small step for this mankind, I will try to watch at least half my entertainment in French.
The photo-a-day project continues to be time consuming, but it helps me with another of my daily goals which is to leave the house. Move around. Do something. Today my soymilk turned out to be frozen, and I was craving chocolate; so, I went over to Ritual and got a mocha and a piece of vegan chocolate cake and read the SF Weekly. Then, I walked up to the ATM in the Castro. Life sure is challenging.
One of my favorite paradoxes of modern urban life is that of waiting for the bus. You wait for the bus. I might come in one minute or in one hour. So, you have a choice: do you continue to wait for the bus, or do you begin to walk? If the bus comes, it is faster to ride the bus. If the bus doesn't come for a very long time or at all, it is faster to walk. The longer you wait for the bus without walking, the more committed you are to the bus to make your travel time as short as possible. That is, the more invested you are in the bus coming rather than you using your other transportation option, walking. Many things are like waiting for the bus.
Amazingly, some mathematicians at Harvard finally derived a formula to determine how long you should wait for the bus. They found that you should nearly always continue to wait. Exceptions include when you will have to wait more than an hour (how do you know?) to travel a relatively short distance. If you are going to walk, it is best to make that selection BEFORE you begin to wait for the bus. To me, these findings only deepen the paradox.
At the risk (too late!) of this post having no linearity at all, my mother send me this beautiful poem today: The Lily by Mary Oliver. In it "...the whole earth has turned around/ and the silver moon/ becomes the golden sun –/ as the lily absolutely knew it would", I think my mother is commenting on how I am always telling her (and rightfully) "I told you so."
Yes, I know it's annoying, but she so often forces me to be right in advance.
But more powerful to me is the closing and opening of the Lily, like in the e.e. cummings poem somewhere i have never traveled, we all open and close. We meet and love people who open and close us. It's rare.
Last night, Tyler and I were having one of our marathon phone conversations after he had had a successful date (I am a committee member). I don't know how it came up, but I asked him why he liked one of his other friends so much. I'm not jealous of the other committee members, I just thought it was an interesting thing to pick apart. He explained for a while until it became clear to me that all he was really saying was that he likes him. Or, rather, that he just loves him.
I don't know how these things happen or are found, the connections that open and close us. Tyler is an easy example bc the first thing he asked me was what I would do if I had to travel back in time. My heart raced. (He would worry about sanitation and maybe invent electricity. I would worry about having transferable skills and probably end up a prostitute.) I felt a similar zing the first time I met KT, but I don't remember the words that made that happen. (Of course, I am flattering my known regular readers, but they are also easy and safe examples.)
Back to Mary Oliver and her vegetables and saints, the poem also resonated with me bc of a conversation we had at the gallery meeting last night. Every month, we must answer a question to help "break the ice" with the new people. It's usually "what's your favorite food?" Since February is the erotic show, it was "what's your favorite vegetable for erotic purposes" or something like that. People said zucchinis, oysters, and strawberries. We're artists; we don't like to be restricted by the medium. I said "I like to bite... people... preferably not ones who are vegetables."
I slept for like a million years last night, finally home again in my own little bed. I like going away. Even more, I like coming home.
I've been thinking a lot about the things I want to get done as the master of my own schedule. Learn to play guitar, for example, bc not enough people know how to do that. This isn't the right season to improve my swimming, altho I did buy a wetsuit the other day. The third goal of my big 3 life goals is a foreign language. I was thinking, as one small step for this mankind, I will try to watch at least half my entertainment in French.
The photo-a-day project continues to be time consuming, but it helps me with another of my daily goals which is to leave the house. Move around. Do something. Today my soymilk turned out to be frozen, and I was craving chocolate; so, I went over to Ritual and got a mocha and a piece of vegan chocolate cake and read the SF Weekly. Then, I walked up to the ATM in the Castro. Life sure is challenging.
One of my favorite paradoxes of modern urban life is that of waiting for the bus. You wait for the bus. I might come in one minute or in one hour. So, you have a choice: do you continue to wait for the bus, or do you begin to walk? If the bus comes, it is faster to ride the bus. If the bus doesn't come for a very long time or at all, it is faster to walk. The longer you wait for the bus without walking, the more committed you are to the bus to make your travel time as short as possible. That is, the more invested you are in the bus coming rather than you using your other transportation option, walking. Many things are like waiting for the bus.
Amazingly, some mathematicians at Harvard finally derived a formula to determine how long you should wait for the bus. They found that you should nearly always continue to wait. Exceptions include when you will have to wait more than an hour (how do you know?) to travel a relatively short distance. If you are going to walk, it is best to make that selection BEFORE you begin to wait for the bus. To me, these findings only deepen the paradox.
At the risk (too late!) of this post having no linearity at all, my mother send me this beautiful poem today: The Lily by Mary Oliver. In it "...the whole earth has turned around/ and the silver moon/ becomes the golden sun –/ as the lily absolutely knew it would", I think my mother is commenting on how I am always telling her (and rightfully) "I told you so."
Yes, I know it's annoying, but she so often forces me to be right in advance.
But more powerful to me is the closing and opening of the Lily, like in the e.e. cummings poem somewhere i have never traveled, we all open and close. We meet and love people who open and close us. It's rare.
Last night, Tyler and I were having one of our marathon phone conversations after he had had a successful date (I am a committee member). I don't know how it came up, but I asked him why he liked one of his other friends so much. I'm not jealous of the other committee members, I just thought it was an interesting thing to pick apart. He explained for a while until it became clear to me that all he was really saying was that he likes him. Or, rather, that he just loves him.
I don't know how these things happen or are found, the connections that open and close us. Tyler is an easy example bc the first thing he asked me was what I would do if I had to travel back in time. My heart raced. (He would worry about sanitation and maybe invent electricity. I would worry about having transferable skills and probably end up a prostitute.) I felt a similar zing the first time I met KT, but I don't remember the words that made that happen. (Of course, I am flattering my known regular readers, but they are also easy and safe examples.)
Back to Mary Oliver and her vegetables and saints, the poem also resonated with me bc of a conversation we had at the gallery meeting last night. Every month, we must answer a question to help "break the ice" with the new people. It's usually "what's your favorite food?" Since February is the erotic show, it was "what's your favorite vegetable for erotic purposes" or something like that. People said zucchinis, oysters, and strawberries. We're artists; we don't like to be restricted by the medium. I said "I like to bite... people... preferably not ones who are vegetables."
Friday, January 18, 2008
On Categories and Categorizing
From my friend Marty's newsletter... No, I don't read the New Yorker unless referred directly to an article. It's like a boat -- better to have friends with one. If you get your own, you have to read the whole thing.
None of the Above, What I.Q. doesn’t tell you about race. by Malcolm Gladwell
THE NEW YORKER The psychologist Michael Cole and some colleagues once gave members of the Kpelle tribe, in Liberia, a version of the WISC similarities test: they took a basket of food, tools, containers, and clothing and asked the tribesmen to sort them into appropriate categories. To the frustration of the researchers, the Kpelle chose functional pairings. They put a potato and a knife together because a knife is used to cut a potato. “A wise man could only do such-and-such,” they explained. Finally, the researchers asked, “How would a fool do it?” The tribesmen immediately re-sorted the items into the “right” categories. It can be argued that taxonomical categories are a developmental improvement—that is, that the Kpelle would be more likely to advance, technologically and scientifically, if they started to see the world that way. But to label them less intelligent than Westerners, on the basis of their performance on that test, is merely to state that they have different cognitive preferences and habits. And if I.Q. varies with habits of mind, which can be adopted or discarded in a generation, what, exactly, is all the fuss about?
None of the Above, What I.Q. doesn’t tell you about race. by Malcolm Gladwell
THE NEW YORKER The psychologist Michael Cole and some colleagues once gave members of the Kpelle tribe, in Liberia, a version of the WISC similarities test: they took a basket of food, tools, containers, and clothing and asked the tribesmen to sort them into appropriate categories. To the frustration of the researchers, the Kpelle chose functional pairings. They put a potato and a knife together because a knife is used to cut a potato. “A wise man could only do such-and-such,” they explained. Finally, the researchers asked, “How would a fool do it?” The tribesmen immediately re-sorted the items into the “right” categories. It can be argued that taxonomical categories are a developmental improvement—that is, that the Kpelle would be more likely to advance, technologically and scientifically, if they started to see the world that way. But to label them less intelligent than Westerners, on the basis of their performance on that test, is merely to state that they have different cognitive preferences and habits. And if I.Q. varies with habits of mind, which can be adopted or discarded in a generation, what, exactly, is all the fuss about?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
What Remains (Photosgraphy and Heartbreak, part 2)
I often struggle with trying to say what I mean and not get distracted by all my thoughts....
In 1998, a guy I was dating played for me a song a friend (former gf?) had recorded about a breakup (theirs?). Neither of us liked it. But the lyrics still sometimes run through my head: "I still have my friends, my family. I still have myself. I still have me." So, when I talk about heartbreak making life feel like photos with the other person cut out of them, what remains is still a good image of me.
I made mistakes in that relationship... the worst of which was not reacting to the warning signs. But if I'd broken up with him earlier, I might not have gone to Alaska, and I would never give that experience. Like everything, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis.
Still, look at my face in those photos. I still have that face. Taking it away from me would be, well, a serious and violent crime. Maybe it's a bit strange to remove someone from photos, but maybe it's also empowering. Especially when that's what you need. It can reclaim a time that became very unhappy. It can honor the experiences we had without the element that became icky. In a perverse, indirect and somewhat ineffective way, it gives us back time and energy that may otherwise feel "wasted" trying to make something work that didn't.
In 1998, a guy I was dating played for me a song a friend (former gf?) had recorded about a breakup (theirs?). Neither of us liked it. But the lyrics still sometimes run through my head: "I still have my friends, my family. I still have myself. I still have me." So, when I talk about heartbreak making life feel like photos with the other person cut out of them, what remains is still a good image of me.
I made mistakes in that relationship... the worst of which was not reacting to the warning signs. But if I'd broken up with him earlier, I might not have gone to Alaska, and I would never give that experience. Like everything, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis.
Still, look at my face in those photos. I still have that face. Taking it away from me would be, well, a serious and violent crime. Maybe it's a bit strange to remove someone from photos, but maybe it's also empowering. Especially when that's what you need. It can reclaim a time that became very unhappy. It can honor the experiences we had without the element that became icky. In a perverse, indirect and somewhat ineffective way, it gives us back time and energy that may otherwise feel "wasted" trying to make something work that didn't.
Photography and Heartbreak
The majority of all art is about love and heartbreak. My friends and I have been playing with this little online game that compares movie tastes, and I am generally in agreement with them on most subjects except love where I am either too sappy or too cynical. It's unclear. I did notice that I dislike most of the romantic movies they asked me about (The Notebook, 50 First Dates, Love Actually; ones I did like: Hitch and Mean Girls). I get a lot of flack for this blog being all about relationships, but I don't think that's the same thing. I'm interested in how people get along and not so much their feelings about each other (too mysterious to bother with!).
So, I was getting ready to leave my apartment, and I realized that the memory card on my camera was full. The solution is easy: change cards. But first I have to check if the "extra" card isn't full too due to some past, similar cleverness. And Yikes! It contained a bunch of photos from a 2006 camping trip with my boyfriend at the time. It also contained some originals of photos that have sold successfully at the gallery -- originals I should have!
As fate would have it, this is all happening the company of someone I'm seeing now. While he was very understanding, it was consistent with his agenda to encourage me to delete the whole lot (further wiping out that ex). That's what he suggested. But, as I mentioned, I need some of those originals. Others contained images of me that I particularly like (along with other undesirables).
I sat at the gallery last night. It was pretty awesome as I had 3 sales including one of my own pieces. (I only have 2 pieces up right now!) Gallery sitting is otherwise boring. I usually bring stuff to do. Last night, I edited those photos.
In Friends, Janice tells Chandler that she cut him out of all her photos. She offers him the remaining bag many many of his little heads. Digital photography has the advantage of nothing being left over -- they never exist materially -- so I don't have a bag of heads, arms, hands.... But the remaining images do reflect the feeling if missing that I had most of last year. If I was still in art school, I might print these up on large panels for some kind of semi-conceptual self-portrait.
So, I was getting ready to leave my apartment, and I realized that the memory card on my camera was full. The solution is easy: change cards. But first I have to check if the "extra" card isn't full too due to some past, similar cleverness. And Yikes! It contained a bunch of photos from a 2006 camping trip with my boyfriend at the time. It also contained some originals of photos that have sold successfully at the gallery -- originals I should have!
As fate would have it, this is all happening the company of someone I'm seeing now. While he was very understanding, it was consistent with his agenda to encourage me to delete the whole lot (further wiping out that ex). That's what he suggested. But, as I mentioned, I need some of those originals. Others contained images of me that I particularly like (along with other undesirables).
I sat at the gallery last night. It was pretty awesome as I had 3 sales including one of my own pieces. (I only have 2 pieces up right now!) Gallery sitting is otherwise boring. I usually bring stuff to do. Last night, I edited those photos.
In Friends, Janice tells Chandler that she cut him out of all her photos. She offers him the remaining bag many many of his little heads. Digital photography has the advantage of nothing being left over -- they never exist materially -- so I don't have a bag of heads, arms, hands.... But the remaining images do reflect the feeling if missing that I had most of last year. If I was still in art school, I might print these up on large panels for some kind of semi-conceptual self-portrait.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Emmy and Spork
I am not a foodie. I don't wanna be a foodie. But I do have certain food projects. I've spent some time learning to cook and eat well. I track where the fish and chips are good. Every once in a while I have a surprising food experience. If I don't blog about them, what's the point of blogging?
I went to Spork on Valencia a while back. I had something with pork, and my date something with beef and gnocchi. Both were extraordinarily yummy. I had no expectations, and my mind was blown. I was reminded to mention this as their bread roles were raved about in the SF Weekly last week.
A few weeks earlier, I had dinner at Emmy's Spaghetti Shack (Mission Street). It had never occurred to me to put chevre in pasta. I've been doing it ever since. My mouth is watering at the memory.
I think I'll head over the Lucca Deli while I'm thinking of it....
I went to Spork on Valencia a while back. I had something with pork, and my date something with beef and gnocchi. Both were extraordinarily yummy. I had no expectations, and my mind was blown. I was reminded to mention this as their bread roles were raved about in the SF Weekly last week.
A few weeks earlier, I had dinner at Emmy's Spaghetti Shack (Mission Street). It had never occurred to me to put chevre in pasta. I've been doing it ever since. My mouth is watering at the memory.
I think I'll head over the Lucca Deli while I'm thinking of it....
Monday, January 07, 2008
Aphrodesia
Aphrodesia returns to Afrobeat roots, Eric K. Arnold, Monday, January 7, 2008
Danielle's partner Henry plays with Aphrodesia. Kristin and I were at this show and may or may not be shown in the photo. We danced 'til we dropped!
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Happy New Year!
I only have a few traditions, and they aren't really traditions. They're more like how I like my tea -- personal preferences. On New Year's Day, I like to go for a walk and climb up to the top of a hill, look out, and think about my life. Geoff wanted to know what I wanted to do today, and that's what I said. But then we didn't do it. Tonight, I gave Grayson a call, and he asked if I did my New Year's Day walk. I had no idea I am such a predictable creature. (He, on the other hand, did his, but said it wasn't as beautiful as the ones we used to do.)
I asked Grayson if he made any resolutions, and he said no. Then, he noted that we've been having this same conversation every New Year's for 14 years. Boy Howdy. Time flies when you're having fun.
Referencing last year's resolutions, I note that I never ran the Bay to Breakers, built myself a website, or perfected my apartment, but I did save some money, learn how to sail a little, and put more energy into the gallery. My life perspective is much the same. So, I feel a little silly making the same resolutions again (and/or the same ones everyone else is making: exercise daily, eat healthy, lose 10 lbs...). But I will tell you something I'm starting today: a photo a day. Otherwise, I'll be barreling forward in my usual haphazardly intentional way.
I asked Grayson if he made any resolutions, and he said no. Then, he noted that we've been having this same conversation every New Year's for 14 years. Boy Howdy. Time flies when you're having fun.
Referencing last year's resolutions, I note that I never ran the Bay to Breakers, built myself a website, or perfected my apartment, but I did save some money, learn how to sail a little, and put more energy into the gallery. My life perspective is much the same. So, I feel a little silly making the same resolutions again (and/or the same ones everyone else is making: exercise daily, eat healthy, lose 10 lbs...). But I will tell you something I'm starting today: a photo a day. Otherwise, I'll be barreling forward in my usual haphazardly intentional way.
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