January 2012
3 posts
2 tags
2 tags
Update from the trenches of the workweek
Tuesday:
My patient, LB, is 103 years old. She has Einsteinian hair and Beethovian hearing. She is not merely frail: she is a wisp, she is a quiet exhalation of a body. Her eyes are huge in her thin face. She’s shockingly lucid and cogent- until she isn’t. She becomes incensed and wants to know where her dinner guests are. She cannot believe how rude it is of them: you invite people...
2 tags
“What can be explained is not poetry.”
– W.B. Yeats (via bodasdesangre)
THEREFORE
What cannot be explained is poetry.
Poetry can be explained as that which cannot be explained.
Poetry can be explained, so poetry is not poetry.
WORDPLAY
(via tristn)
Now hold the goddamn phone just a minute. I’ve been mulling over this very...
December 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Top 12 things I'd like to see in 2012
Here are some things I’d like to see this year. And if not this year, then sometime soon, I hope.
Compostable produce stickers and/or paper-recyclable staples;
Abolition of marriage as a state institution. Why does anyone care who’s marrying whom? And why does the government have any say in what a marriage is or isn’t?
Eradication of bedbugs. Don’t you miss sleeping on...
4 tags
Santa Magic →
I worked for a few years at a fancy schmancy private school on Long Island. Part of my job was to watch the kids who got dropped off by bus before the start of the school day. The kids gathered in the library, all groggy and backpack-laden. They segregated themselves along class boundaries: preschoolers by the front desk; 2nd graders in the right hand corner, studiously drawing; 5th graders in...
3 tags
psssssssssst
… the days are already getting longer.
4 tags
This came to me in a migraine
In one headached night
Three dozen and a half
halfling, half-breed poems press through me-
Punctuated by whistles of runaway trains,
I’d like to tie this muse to the tracks.
By me, last night, as I was trying to fall asleep.
November 2011
3 posts
2 tags
8 tags
Words wholly related: vanilla, vagina
Phallic symbolism is everywhere. Whatever the reason, people see dicks in all kinds of unlikely places: buildings, vegetables, Disney movies. There’s even Accidental Dong, a website dedicated to in situ phallus spotting. Logically, statistically, post-sexually, shouldn’t just as many things be vagina-shaped? And yet, vaginal imagery gets way less press. There is no Accidental Vag...
3 tags
Thoughts deep and seedy
So you’re telling me that the phrase is “deep-seated” and not ” deep-seeded”? How could that be? “Deep-seeded” makes so much more metaphorical sense. You plant seeds deep in the ground where they are covered by dirt and time and history. In a continuing seed metaphor, deep-seeded traits can sprout up, or come to light later on. Recessive genes are...
October 2011
7 posts
1 tag
The Livestream Ended: How I Got Off My Computer... →
“Never in my life did I imagine I’d be sitting with a group of adults seriously debating policy as if our decision made a difference.”
5 tags
4 tags
Oakland, Occupied
I’m not sure that Occupy Oakland will have any lasting political ramifications. Unlike Occupy Wall Street, the Oakland movement doesn’t have a list of demands. Truthfully, I think this is for the better: leaving the Occupation open-ended has attracted a broad swath of people from the community, each bringing their own concerns, experiences and resources.
I know I haven’t spent...
3 tags
2 tags
3 tags
STARTING TODAY at 4pm! Occupy Oakland! →
hellabay:
The people of Oakland will occupy Frank Ogawa Plaza at the corner of 14th & Broadway on Monday, October 10 starting at 4:00pm in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, the many occupations underway across the country and Indigenous Resistance Day.
be there or be nowhere!
8 tags
Demands
I try to keep politics off my blog most of the time; there are other people who write more intelligently and eloquently on the subject. But it’s impossible to ignore the growing #OccupyWallStreet movement- especially if you are as unemployed, uninsured and over-indebted as I am. I had two friends at #OccupySanDiego. Hell, I sent my dad down to Liberty Square. He said it was the most...
September 2011
19 posts
7 tags
Underground Service Alert! →
And with that, the internet hands my imagination its ass. Or maybe, I just stepped through the mirror to the other side.
yoshang:
This short article in Wired about Urban Markup Language is still the most interesting thing I’ve ever read in that magazine.
8 tags
4 tags
cedar, rose, vine
These particular spiders were arm and arm locked,
and arms and legs, too.
Their shadows thrown pornographic tangled against the wall.
I watched voyeuristic and looked for you, poem,
on dark streets, in shadows overcornered,
cobwebbed from live oak to agapanthus.
Silent deer past the garden gates,
muses bareknuckle boxing in the schoolyard.
Teeth and arms and fists; fennel, moon and...
8 tags
4 tags
Angstious (adj) /ˈaNG(k)STəs/
Why isn’t this a word yet? We all know what it would mean.
1 tag
7:45 am
Today, for the first time ever, I opened the bag of cereal the right way, the adult way: gently from the side, to make a narrow spout, instead of ripping the bag wide open from the middle ensuring a mess with every pour. The first time ever, yall. Things are gonna change, I can feel it.
5 tags
Commissioned dress for Reed's #1 girl
My friend Maxicat designs and produces exquisite clothes. She dyed and painted the fabric and appliquéd the frolicking goats. I know because I stared over her shoulder while she did it. Maybe, if you want something handmade and beautiful you could get in touch with Ms. Maxi yourself. (I’m looking at you, Papa Tragos).
maxicat:
This is the very first and only piece of work I’ve ever been...
8 tags
2 tags
4 tags
A Typeface for Dyslexics →
thekeri:
Christian Boer, a typographer at the firm Studiostudio, based in the Netherlands, has designed a special font for people with dyslexia. The font, called “Dyslexie,” uses specially shaped letters to exaggerate some of the differences between letters that dyslexics find hard to see.
How well does it work? A master’s thesis by Renske de Leeuw at the University of Twente shows that the font...
5 tags
Small town, America
Two little girls on the corner have set up a table with a mason jar full of pink juice. They’re probably 7 or 8 years old, they have on bright-colored sun dresses, they’re yelling after dog-walkers and passing cars. They’re selling watermelon agua fresca, homemade. They are not even remotely Hispanic. For 50 cents they sell me a full cup and I tell them to keep the change. They...
6 tags
4 tags
2 tags
Words wholly unrelated: skull and skullduggery
“Skullduggery” has no clear etymology; neither does “skull”. And according to the OED, the two aren’t even remotely related. Biggest disappointment of the 7am hour.
2 tags
4 tags
If you don't know, now you know
There’s this line of research about whether the internet is making us stupid, or more stupid than we already were. The idea is, if you consciously know that information is easily accessible (and re-accessible) then you don’t bother to deeply encode or learn it; your lazy ass presumes the data source will continue to exist, available as a cheat-sheet in case you need to re-up sometime...
5 tags
5 tags
smogger
wordjournal:
noun • the road-sign language of hobos
the pictographic language has a rich history which is said to have been introduced into england in the time of henry viii. here is a great resource for many of these long-lost signs.
An ancient hobo street-art code! What could be more relevant to my life and loves? Here is my first short-form hobo story.
4 tags
SFH3: On On, I have found my people →
I’ve found the people I want to run with: the San Francisco Hash House Harriers. It’s a pell-mell group of randos that gets together weekly to run around the city like lunatics. A hare goes ahead of the group and sets a meandering trail, marked with chalk arrows through the city. The trail has lots of misleading false-starts, steep climbs up infamous San Francisco hills, down secret...
August 2011
8 posts
4 tags
4 tags
Passport Renewal
The passport renewal form has blank spaces for hair and eye color, height, the usual stuff. There’s also a space for occupation. I’m heavily unemployed- I can’t even pretend I’m a grad student anymore- and I have no qualms about blatantly lying on an official government document, which means that my options for this particular blank space are only limited by the bounds of...
4 tags
10 Least Stressful Jobs... Really? →
1260hours:
Speech Language Pathology is #6. I’m preeeeetty sure they did not interview first-year school SLP’s while conducting this survey.
Lolwut?
I’ve been looking for a job as a speech-language pathologist (SLP) for a few weeks. Before graduating I was told there would be hundreds of jobs and that getting one would be like plucking the juiciest plum off a tree. I was not told that...
6 tags
All quiet on the Hayward Fault
Earthquakes in New York and Colorado this week, the two places I’ve called home for most of the last decade. I’ve lived in California for about six months now, but I still haven’t felt an earthquake here. All quiet on the Hayward Fault.
From back east on Long Island, my dad called me, giddy. He described the shaking and the dizziness. I asked him if he knew the signs of a...
5 tags
Start slowly and taper off
There are at least two reasons why I’ve never gone in for organized sports: first, I’m no damn good at most of them; second, pretty much any amount of group organization in any context seems overblown to me (I mean, can’t we all just do whatever we want, like, whenever?). Yesterday I made an exception and raced with a legitimate San Francisco club, the Dolphin South End Runners....
2 tags
snail slime gold mine
It’s midnight thirty and this is the phrase I have stuck in my head, keeping me awake. Snail slime gold mine. Snail slime gold mine. It’s not uncommon for me to hear whole phrases in my head, usually out of the crystal blue. Like, I’ll be sitting down to pee and suddenly it’ll be, “Sally never did learn how to tango”, which is weird, but passing. Other times...
4 tags
July 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to the...
Today I uploaded my thesis to the grad school. Most of the process revolved around publishing: whether I should openly publish, whether the work should be discoverable by search engines, whether to get my work copyrighted, how I would want royalties delivered to me, etc. What a morass. I don’t want to make money off my thesis. I want anyone who is interested to be able to read it, for free,...
Last conscious thought before falling asleep last...
Don’t Mario and Luigi share a last name? It’s really not fair that the game is called “Super Mario Bros” like there’s only one of them.
Now that school is over my mind is free to mull over these deep, important issues.
6 tags
I have officially mastered speech and language
Take that, grad school.
June 2011
7 posts
3 tags
9 tags
Results are in
And they are, according to my advisor, “compelling and highly publishable”.
My experiment was a raging success! After I defend, I’m taking my results on the road, ASHA in November, Motor Speech in February, and maybe Nijmegen the year after. Not to mention some publications, probably. If you’re curious what I was studying this whole time, feel free to ask, as I’m...