Community Chest

Vampires at the Lake

I wore a cape. The sun was still up, and I wanted to wear a hat, but Maddy was certain that Vampires have uncovered, long flowing hair. Image google "vampire" - none were wearing hats. image google "vampire hat" they were in top hats or fedoras. Fully equipped, I sallied forth.

Aurora Avenue, there was something metal that could have been a shell casing in the gutter. A rehab computer store looked interesting, but the curtain was about to go up. Live performance at Green Lake with teenage actors playing whiny high schoolers, the undead, and reveling in playing pompous teachers and parents.

Vampire Story begins with two young women planning what they will say about their histories when they arrive in a new town. One will go to school, the other one, as her older sister will get a job as a cocktail waitress. The student tells her Drama class that she has been alive for 200 years, beginning life in a French orphanage. She later writes more about it in the form of a play, adding period costumes, a mother who ran a brothel, and hinting at how becoming vampires was the only way that they could have survived. Her classmates vacillate between believing her stories and wondering if she is crazy. Some begin to fear her, as other characters are found to be missing, or die unexpectedly. There was never a concrete resolution which which side the playwright wanted the audience to come down on. The story seemed to change with the retelling, was it an orphanage or boarding school, in France or in England? But that difference could have been due to tailoring the story to her audience. And what of the opening scene where names and ages are recited and memorized? That could have been the formation of a cover story, or it could have been the more responsible character preparing the confused younger one to appear sane, even if she had to fake it.

Hilarious ask the cast session afterwards with a little kid asking one of the actors if he felt uncomfortable with some of the physical closeness in one of the scenes. It mirrored a spot in the play, where the kids were asking the new students about their lives, and the teacher was ruling most of the questions inappropriate.

I stepped outside at intermission to see a huge crowd of bicyclists. They were Critical Mass, escorted by two police officers on bikes, and tailed by police cars, even though this was a trail and not a road. The director spoke to a few cyclers because if they stayed there when the play resumed, they would be heard inside the theater. Someone announced a street corner a block away where they would reconvene, and they mounted up.

Pepe's cousin


Close encounter with a skunk this morning. I was exploring a cul de sac and Sophie-Pup took an insistent run at a small cedar. Under it was a small, wide-tailed black and white creature. I'm positive that it wasn't a cat, because the Sophster regards cats neither as rivals as she does other dogs, nor as food as she does thrushes, ravens, and squirrels. We got surprisingly close, but fortunately the leash ran out before she could touch it. 

All parties left the scene in as sweet-smelling a state as they entered it.

Whew.

Yo-yo, walking the dog

A pug beagle mix is the newest adventure in my life. After a few May and June mini-hikes on weekends, I wanted to add more exercise the rest of the week. Tuesday night, Maddy's boyfriend Jiff came over. I fed the two teens hot dogs, and we watched "Notting Hill", a bland romantic comedy. Jiff's mom has a dog that doesn't get to go for walks very often, and suddenly, despite my complete inexperience with canines, I felt an inspiration: I could walk Hilda's dog!

Hilda was surprised that i wanted to, and was happy to have it done, yet irritated that it would involve answering the door early in the morning. I took Jiff along in case I needed a technical consult, and my daughter Maddy accompanied us to make sure that we didn't talk about her. (As if the two people who know her best could have anything more to discover.)

When we arrived, Hilda didn't clip the leash on all of the way, and Sophie-Pup escaped between our legs and out of the front door. Jiff raced after her, but he slipped and skinned his arm on the driveway, allowing her a head start that took three blocks to overcome. Maddy and I met him halfway as he was carrying her back, and he clipped the leash on, then handed her over to me. We walked a scant mile, and it all went well, despite her almost constant muscular pulling and testing. A very short length seemed to work best, with occasional pauses to calm down before continuing. -- Maddy was horrified by the pooper scooping obligation.

Thursday and Friday I tackled it on my own. Walked farther, and faster, and talked to other ladies with pooches in the park. Today I got to see duckings, and a graceful blue heron. Sohie-Pup wanted to swim out to them, but I didn't allow it.

Orgone Energy

Last weekend I went on a jaunt to Central Point Oregon. My daughter would insist on calling it a "road trip". She perceives neither the redundancy nor the hippie, sixties --as opposed to a drug "trip"-- implications of that bit of folksiness.

For the last month the buzz from my fellow Healthfoodians had been

Or-e-gon, oregon

and

Ya goin'?

My response had been: Ashland is far away, and camping implies mosquitos. I hadn't even considered the olfactory implications of porta-potty perdition. As the date grew closer, my buddy Dianne offered me a ride, and said that she already had a room reserved; a room, not camping. It all started to sound a little better. D's husband had been planning to go, but he's not manically obsessed with all that is raw and vegan and counting coconuts one by one, so he was thrilled to stay at home and not need to hire babysitters for their pets as long as D had company on the drive.

I swam in the mornings and then went to lectures about coconuts and raw pastry-making. There was a film about conscious birth and conception, and a workshop on growing your own oyster mushrooms. There were a couple of two-hour talks by David Wolf. Both times the schedule keeper eventually cut him off. He still had more to say. I met a few people from my online world, and, as most of you will probably know from your own experiences: they walk and talk EXACTLY the way that they type. It was a meeting of big personalities, where everyone had a chance to strut their stuff as celebrities of varying degree.

Mushroom cultivation overlapped with RawFu in the schedule, so I walked in after Fu started. "Oh My God, it's Bunny Berry!" "OMG, it's Priss!" Trooper Bunny handled my interruption with grace, and got back to her focus on self-acceptance and smoothies, even if you live in the deep-fried South.

Of course I took pictures.



Rock formation near Medford OR.




Local flora


With my roommate Dianne


David Wolf and I are like this.


OMG, Bunny Berry irl.

Sexy Exhibitionist Guys at the Reggae Concert

Bob Marley on his shoulder?


Perma-Stickers!


Nice smile, wanna dance?

Contents Unknown

What WAS the true nature of the schmutz ornamenting my bedroom window?

Bird excrement? Unlikely. It originated on a cold night in a vicious thunderstorm. What kind of a birdbrain would go out in that kind of weather? If someone tells you: "The dyspepsic bird flies at night." They are probably testing to see if you give the countersign. You know, because you are their spy versus spy contact. I suggest turning tail and skipping away unless you are willing to accept the plans to the doomsday device and ferry them to the next cell in the chain.

In addition to the rain and the lightning, I could hear the upstairs neighbors shuffling around, while they are usually comatose.

Now, turning to the actual substance which was yellow-brown, waxy, hard to scrape off, and smelled disgusting-

A day sunny enough to take the screen off and clean the outside of the window is what brought on my encounter with unpleasant organic matter-

Vinegar and detergent and a nylon sponge, and a plastic straight-edge were employed to ultimately successfully remove-

What looks to be upstairs condo vomit.

Space, the year 2009

"I have extensive aural sensitivities."

That's what Uhura said as a bid to move to flagship crew from entry-level raw cadet. "Raw" in the sense of being new and untested. It is rare for a Starfleet officers to experience trial by fire. The Trek movie opened yesterday. It was all over the region, but I had to see it in Gig Harbor. Smiley drove, (Oh yes, there is a guy friend in my life now, who shall be known here in the Prissiverse as "Smiley")

Trek was better than I could have imagined. As a science fiction fan, I look for things that don't seem important to most movie-makers. Things like:

An actual plotline!

Characters that you can tell apart from each other!

Ridiculous accents!

This had it all. Plus the above-quoted double-entendre. There were also: a bar fight - for you guy on guy action fans, absolutely insane space images, incredible opening credits, and the now-obligatory trudging through the snow on an Alaskan planet, that SF dramatizations generally succumb to. By the end of the 2 hours and 7 minutes, I felt accepting of the new cast. It was great to see Nimoy back too. I missed Shatner. He would have been ideal for the ending voice-over.

New Pic with Zbig

Crocusoidal Maniac

Rahm bahm thank you mahm

I found this current editorial by the aged Fidel Castro courtesy of the Huffington Post. It fascinates me that he mentions Immanuel Kant, because I am currently reading "Writings on an Ethical Life" by Peter Singer. Singer adores Kant, but notes with stunned amazement that Kant was a believing Christian. The implication I derive, is that in Singer-world, heavy-hitters of philosophy should really be Atheist or Jewish. I tend to concur.

Getting back to the Castro article, it is literate, it is surreal, it is nonsensical. Yet it has a certain coherence. If Fidel hadn't been a Communist dictator, he could have been a Talmudist, or maybe a Depak Chopra style guru of everything. I am finding myself firmly in the Barbara Walters camp: Castro is a lot of fun.

Fidel calls his titular topic, Rahm Emanuel, "brilliant", and wants to stir up excitement because Emanuel was a warrior in a real war. Also, his mother has been a political activist. Why this is just like someone with a similar name, someone who has a revolutionary, vice president mother, a character in a book by a Cuban ambassador! Castro longs for charismatic, energetic leaders to emerge. Maybe an American, maybe someone with a vaguely hispanic surname. . . .

Dategirl and her readers of assorted gender just want to make out with Rahmmy-baby. Apparently they aren't the only ones.

Skirmish in the war to preserve roof integrity

Today I saw a squirrel skip merrily up the trunk of a Western Cedar. The tree had been outfitted with an aluminum collar. A two-foot wide swath of metal, lined with plastic, it had been placed there to prevent the fluffy-tailed rodents from climbing the trees, and then gaining access to the roof. The next counter-offensive may have to be the removal of all trees within squirrel-jumping distance of the building.

As it bounded over the useless defense mechanism, I could almost hear a victorious cry in the squirrel tongue:

I laugh at your anti squirrel technology!
All of your hazelnuts shall be mine.
Ta-ta, until we meet again.

Beware the non-dairy art of self defense

Some virus-infected rawfoodian must have breathed on me last weekend. The sneezing masqueraded as an allergic reaction to the plague of pet cats and dogs, but it was soon followed by a sore throat, and an all-over achiness swiftly ensued. I'm on the mend now. I'm still sniffling like crazy, but the every bone in my body hurts like crazy is diminishing by the hour. If anyone were to give me any trouble, my Kraft-Margerina skills would kick in unbidden, and the assailant would suffer instant flattenization.

Hallelujah

Last night I went to a performance by a gospel music group. The most cynical definition of music is to regard it as a form of hypnosis. Religious belief and practice too, could be looked at as means of regulating crowd behavior, using the powerful tools of creeds, repetition, rhythm, behavior modeling, using up all of your waking moments . . .

These guys rocked!

I'm feeling some fusion inspiration. This can only lead to more lyrics.

LOL Luminati

I was asked if I could get here at 5 PM, so I got here at 4. Using public transportation got me to the street entrance a mile away from the banquet hall. One of the Looms kindly gave me a ride up the hill, but he was shocked when I told him the event I was here to attend is a party for President Obama.

"They're having THAT here?"
"Yes, they rented the clubhouse."

The thought that Democratic money spends just like any other kind, calmed the club-weilder, and he pointed out the entrance to the building.

Woo, the souvenir table isn't even set up yet, and someone already bought two custom-etched commemorative wineglasses.

Four-armed is an Indian Temple Sculpture

Two white grapefruits whirled in the blender, plus a quart of water went into a half-gallon jug that used to hold honey. Along with pears, an orange, celery sticks, and green tea bags, it is being packed along to protect me from any coffee and doughnut temptations during today's inaugural festivities. Sweater and jeans and Doc Martens for the AM, tank top and velvet skirt and Mary Janes for the PM. Look for me behind the laptop bearing the sticker " My other computer is a Cray."