what have I been up to?

A lot. Many things have changed, mostly for the good. The reasons I'm not blogging here are both complex and uninteresting, but if it's any comfort, I'm building a Website, and eventually will be doing something like blogging over there. In the meantime, I wanted to share this--proof to myself that I could conceive a project and follow through all in one sitting--as I know I've said here, a perpetual challenge. The drawing is from life, not a photo, and I managed to sew the striped fabric onto the tank top without also attaching it to anything else (itself, my jeans, my skin), which is also very exciting.

richard the third as it was meant to be done

God, do I miss Peter Sellers.

ooh, spooky

Foolosh Owl tagged me, so now I have to reveal what's closest to my bed. How embarrassing. But eerie too, in light of the fact that I had several artist model colleagues in my house last night, and we were talking about nudity. And in my own defense, I own the item in question for research purposes.

Here's the meme, which you may have seen before:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence
3. Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog
4. Name of the book and the author
5. Tag three people

Observer: Does this mean that all pornography should be freely available to adults?

Camille Paglia: I am on record as saying that one can reasonably restrict public displays of pornography. The public spaces, the free spaces, and so on belong to both traditions--the Judeo-Christian and the pagan--and therefore a person should not have to have naked ladies overwhelming the eye from a newsstand.

Vamps and Tramps, Camille Paglia

Okay, who's next... hmm. How about Larissa, Bwana, and Kate. Because of course, what with the holidays and everything, y'all have plenty of free time on your hands. Heh heh.

does this guy look like doctor spock to anyone else?

Another reason I'm sometimes proud to be human.

Things are still very busy, and I'm ambivalent about blogging if I can't do it well. Well-ish. But the nutshell is that I'm growing fond of my weird little living situation in Oakland. It feels very good in this space, and I love being able to walk down the street at night without getting panhandled or otherwise solicited.

Doing a lot of catering bar shifts. Just turned 37 on Monday. Thinking about going to Spain in March. Still eating too much raw cookie dough and not enough salad. Got fancy new tires on my bike--"Armadilloes"--lined with Kevlar. So if anyone tries to shoot my bike, I should be able to keep riding.

Too tired to think of anything else to relate... hopefully I'll be more intelligent in January.

only a lad

I remain unconvinced that this is a good idea.

Back to my silence. I'm up to my neck in alley-gators; been moving back to Oakland, took on some new responsibilities, working my tail off, blah blah. Hope everyone's having a sane holiday weekend.

some days start out so well!

"Doogie Howser" (Neil Patrick Harris) is gay, and wants to dispel any nasty rumors that he might be straight.

American Episcopelians have their first female leader.

A military paper is calling for Rumsfeld to go.

Some mornings, it's actually a pleasure to read the news, you know?

dendrobium spectabile



this gorgeous photo is copyrighted by Eric Hunt; go check out his nicely-organized site for lots more like it

Y'all know how excited I get when people discover new species of anything. Not just beetles and monkeys and weird fish, though--how about thirty new-to-science orchids in Papua New Guinea?

This is the weekend where the world appeared to go mad. I think the apex of the surreality came for me this afternoon in Berkeley, when just as AX was pointing out a man dressed in a penis costume (complete with inflated testicles at ankle height) who was accosting passers-by and asking them if they were new to Berkeley, a woman in a diamond-patterned sweater vest accosted us to ask if we were members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, presumably because we both have long hair and were nattily dressed (he in his black suit with tie, I in a charcoal turtleneck and straight black skirt).

There'd been other stuff, of course, like my nearly falling off my banquette at brunch because it wasn't fastened down, and more than the usual complement of mumblng, raving strangers, and a person I'd thought was my friend totally going off the deep end Friday and leaving me to hike around in the dark late at night in lovely suburban Lafayette, wondering where the hell the BART station was. A friend we saw at the theater confirmed that everyone she knows seems to be a little stranger than usual. She chalked it up to the seasonal change.

I don't know. I have no answers. Has anyone else felt particularly edgy or unsettled? Or seen it in the people around them?