Twitter Twatter Cutting Blog Roll Fat

Per someone's gentle nudging (Reya), I finally sat down tonight and updated my blog roll. These are the main people I follow, or who hang around here. I think I got you all. If I didn't, forgive me, but writing out code on Amoxicillin sucks. I tested all of the links and they seem to be working.

I read a lot of decorating blogs, but they come and go so quickly, I don't even want to begin listing them all. Two that I have listed are (or were) local: Pigtown Design out of Baltimore (Pigtown being a section of Baltimore over by Hamburg and Ostend Streets where Carl's Little House is.) The other is Hue. Rachael is a color consultant-specialist. She moved to San Francisco not too long ago. Since I like thinking about color and space, I went out West with her so Rach is listed too.

It was rather sad who I removed, since so many good bloggers of the past bit the dust. I read tonight within D.C. Blogs where someone described ongoing bloggers efforts as "quaint," versus the latest thumb craze, Twitter. Say it all in 140 characters, kids.

I am joining Twitter as Cube, due to another nudging by KOB-Patrick of D.C. Blogs who wants to throw me out to a larger readership. Do ya think, Pat? We'll see.

I've been dumping blog sized comments over here: http://www.wowowow.com/ Some of their readers respond back to my comments, which is nice, and I like reading what some of them have to say, as well. I am always looking for good sources of things to read.

I still need to do more with this blog. Add a nice fat photo masthead. Perhaps play with the template colors. It just seems there is never enough time, and I have other blogs, I have completely let drift, and wish I hadn't.

I try to keep my avatar changed every few weeks. This will always be the one I consider most representative of me. When I go back to the Cape, I'm taking a picture of my laptop out on the sand. Already this desk by the sea is dated, but you get the drift(wood.)

....and Reya? Thank you. I discovered I was set on Abidjan time. I mean...what the...

Haiku Achoo

I'm into Day Four of (for want of a better wording,) what they used to call "La Grippe." Some respiratory, flu, "I don't feel so good thing." I thought I was better this morning, and Lord God Jesus, "no."

I was bopping around your blogs in between bouts of "retreat to the bed," and I noticed my friend "M.A." over on her blog The Culture Wars was also not feeling well, but not "off" enough not to return to her past habit of "Haiku Tuesday":

An Old Standby: Haiku Tuesday!

Forgive me, for I am out of practice.

1.
So, I cannot hear
sound is clogged in my right ear
time to see someone.
2.
Before I was silenced
by acute laryngitis
I did not sound good.
3.
What is going on?
A sign for me to slow down?
Yes! Of course it is.
4.
Me. This is all me.
Argh. How much more can you take?
Vacation time, please!
5.
Blah. blah, blah, blah blah.
This is what I sound like now.
Yes, this will change soon.

In empathy, I wrote her back:

I sit here with flu
Achoo instead of haiku
Yes, this will change soon

Cherry blossoms bloom
Construction next door goes boom
The world is all change

Nurture yourself now
Return stronger to the fray
Of life's constant needs

We will heal and write
We will return to the flow
Read my words and rest

I need to go make some tea, I think....

Happy Birthday, Danger Man

Today is my friend Steven's birthday, a man I've known since college years. We met in a record shop in Georgetown, standing in the same aisle. He started asking me about an album that was in the cutout bin. Did I know anything about it? I did. He was just getting ready that weekend to become a dj on a local college radio station, and we sat that afternoon in his basement apartment, making up a songlist for the three hours he would be on the air. He still has that notebook of that show and other shows.

Steven told me everything back then. Everything. More than I wanted to know. He used to call me his "priest" with a vow of silence on his love life, much like Seinfeld's "vault." With my elephant memory, I do dredge up a story or two now to needle him with on the telephone. He laughs and says, "Now, now. That wild youth is staid responsibility. Back in our college days, he always wore this old beat-up brown leather coat with a leather belt. He made women laugh, and trust me, laughter goes far with women.

He had spent part of his youth living in Lahore, Pakistan and he wore a Sikh bracelet (still does, never takes it off.) and he had this whole childhood thing about "Danger Man." It had been a British drama show in the sixties, Steve grew up in Pakistan with an international group of children that brought odd ideas and expressions into their play. I know one inside joke he played out with his Sarajevo born friend, Sven, was "dangermen" (said heavily accented.) They used the expression a lot acting out all these childish dramas and over time it became an insider joke.

It seemed like Steve always needed to be outside the norm. He idolized Henry Miller's tramp existence in Paris: the poverty, the womanizing, the liberation from being pigeonholed. He ran wild. There was a tuck shop across the street from the campus, run by an older couple, and I remember Steve going in there once and stealing a snack bag of peanuts. The old lady approached him and said, "I saw what you did," and he punched his finger in the pocket of his jacket, like he had a gun, and he said, "You see this? You report this, and I will come back and get you." It sounds crazy repeating this now, but there was this whole persona of being politicially uncorrect and "not hip" about Steve because he was somehow beyond hip: an outlaw. He snuck into the women's dorm and created a lock down with security guards chasing him on every floor. He got away. Let others listen to the Grateful Dead. He could discourse for hours on the Ultimate Spinach's "Hip Death Goddess" or a rare "B" side of a Joe Meek production only released in the U.K.

For years he would do a "Pak" accent and carry on these dialogues about "berry good" and pretending to be an immigrant doofus in D.C. I decided to go back to this youth when I made his birthday card. I chose a colored paper quite literally the color of rich golden brown curry powder. On the front I printing out in Algerian font "¿Who Is...?" and then a cut out of the opening screen of Danger Man (a great black and white shot with the Capitol in it.) Inside was a picture of an old protesting Pak man being carried through the streets of Lahore with his glasses opaquely glaring in the sun and his raised fist, and opposite I wrote, "Carry on Danger Man....or Be Carried." The envelope was the same paper, and on the back I had a spy silouette as a seal.

.

Giving Is Love

Pickup line at the market: "Squeeze this, not the Charmin'"

As I've been out and about these past few weeks, I've been using my camera to catch the seasonal, in part to use for some photographs I need for my Valentine's Day cards. I started seeing Valentine's displays before Christmas was over, just as I saw things on store shelves for Christmas in July. Once, I met an employee at Giant groceries, and she told me that Valentine's Day candy comes to the store in August and sits in storage until then, but that's in keeping with most retail practices, I think. I was told by an employee of an upscale garden nursery in this area that they order their Christmas decorations a year in advance from China, and that they have them arrive, boxed, during the summer, so it's hardly surprising, is it, that these things find their way to the shelves at such advanced dates.

Usually with my "picture of the day" I don't like to add text, or if I do, it's in the tags lines at the bottom of the piece where I can be whimsical or file under "gaudy commercialism," as well as the sentiment of "valentine." In this case, I had to tell you what occurred during this photo session, because it was one of those little moments we each have in our days that can be transforming.

I had already been out in the evening. I had to cancel my regular exercise classes this week when I took a nasty fall on some stairs and ribs and steps collided, (and "no" Tony, I was not wearing stilettos at the time. I have never fallen off my heels.) Last night I did more work on my "cocktail of the week piece," picked up a Baltimore Sun at the bookstore, and ran a few errands before heading home.

I went into a local market to buy perhaps two things, but also keeping my eyes peeled for "Valentine" opportunities for this project I am working on. In the middle of the store, in the middle of an aisle, I saw this bin of stuffed toys, and this woman standing next to them, picking them up and laughing to herself. Now. This could have been a "did an extension of happy hour just find it's way in here" moment, or "is her handbag lined in Reynolds wrap foil," but it was a woman thoroughly enchanted with these furry toys, where you would squeeze their paw and they would sing various songs. I took a few pictures, then I dug down deep into the bin and started handing her ones she hadn't seen on the surface.

We stood and played each's animal's song. When I found this one, I told her "Diana Ross," and we squeezed and sure enough it sang a Supreme's song. I told her I thought of Diva Ross, because she had just been performing down in Jamaica where she was soundly booed off stage for refusing to let the concert promoters use the video screen in the stadium. If cameras add ten pounds, God knows what the mega flat screen would shoot out to her fans. My new acquaintance hadn't heard this story, and her face fell in thinking of how someone who had been so popular in the past would now be booed.

" Do NOT take my picture, biotch!"

Diana....where did the love go?

I told my new friend a story about this song.
I am not repeating it here,
but if you know me, pretty funny, huh?

I rarely read what would be called "self-help" books. Sometimes I will, to stay abreast of what the country is pursuing to find enlightenment. I have not read The Secret, but I did get a book at the library, written by a professor of bioethics, called Why Good Things Happen To Good People, where he proposes that if you have one word to take you into eternity, it is the word "give." I agree with much of what he says. Where he and I would part company if that I do think life can slam you down to a point where there is no more get up to give, but...I digress.

I was talking to a friend the other night about my sending out valentine's, and I told her that I certainly didn't send them out expecting any feedback from the recipients, any more than I expected cards from them in return. I performed the act to express gratitude for their friendship, to give something back to them, even if it was nothing more than a scissors, paste and paper effort on my part to show they meant something to me. I also told her that no one seemed to take the time to write letters anymore and post them through the mail, or bother with holiday cards--few anyway, and wasn't it nice to get something through the post that wasn't a bill or junk advertising?

"Hot, hot, hot, when you put me in the pot, pot pot"

This was a Valentine's Lobster. I know. Bizarre. He sang "Hot, hot, hot," and I thought "Oh so not, not, not." I love the look of defeat on his face, sitting next to a big white bear with a big pink heart. The bear all of the children were grabbing out of the bin and racing off to show their mothers. "THIS ONE!" Poor guy. He needs to read When Bad Things Happen To Good Nephropidae."

After talking to this upbeat woman for 20 minutes, I introduced myself, and she told me her name was Harriett (with two "t's). I asked her permission to take her picture, and she was delighted. She laughed when she saw the picture below. That woman, if you see her on the streets? Stop and talk to her. She is a joy. She told me a story about her name, and her life. One day when her car was in the shop, she had to take a Metrobus to her destination, and she started talking to a woman in the seat next to her, and they talked until their mutual arrival point. When they were saying goodbye, they swapped names, and it turns out they were both Harriet with "two t's." Harriett was telling me odd things happened like that to her all of the time. I thought, "Not odd at all." She was so out there in expressing her happiness to the world, she was sure to draw a lot of people to her and give right back out to them. Happy Valentine's Day, Miss Harriett. I'm glad I met you.

Happy Valentine's Day From Harriett & Friends

One Out Of Four People Are Jerks. If You Have Three Nice Friends...It's You!

My friend Drew instant messaged me this afternoon to ask if I had ever gotten "up to snuff" on Adobe Photoshop. My brother had given me the software as a gift and had been teaching me, but that ground to a halt after a point. I told Drew that while I had learned a few more things since we last spoke about it, I had never fully mastered Photoshop at the level I wished to be at. He told me about a seminar coming up on September 12th, put on by Careertrack.com. I told Drew that I liked him for thinking of me that way and remembering my interests, and he said, "Oh...yeah...there's a seminar on "Dealing With Difficult People." He added, "I only know one asshole, and I'm him...so I'm letting all of my friends know about that one, too.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to invite all of your friends to a seminar on dealing with difficult people to help them learn how to deal with you? It would twice as fantabulous to show up yourself, just to see who basically agrees with you, that you're an asshole." Drew? A few years back, Jonathan Richman wrote a song called Pablo Picasso Was Not An Asshole, and the lyrics went:

Well some people try to pick up girls and get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole

Well the girls would turn the color
Of the avocado when he would drive
Down their street in his Eldorado
And girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not like you
All right?

Well he was only 5'3"
But girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not in New York.

Oh well, be not schmuck, be not obnoxious
Be not bellbottom bummer, or asshole
Remember the story of Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.¹

...so what time is that seminar, Drew?

I'm a WHAT???

¹ Actually, quite a few people thought Picasso was an asshole, or worse.