"the world's first metaphysical poll on the democratic contenders"

personally, i've nevver had a dream starring either hillary or barack, but apparently a lot of other people have. sheila heti has put them all in one place, or to be exact, two places. going here will get you to both.

here's a sample:

"I was at a campground. There was a large building, but when I went inside, it was remarkably small. There were bleachers like you would see at a child’s outdoor baseball game. I sat among the small crowd of people there. Then I noticed that Barack Obama and Hillary were near -- close enough that I could talk to them. In the dream, there had been a couple of state primaries and Barack had taken the lead. I began telling Hillary that it would all be okay, it would work out. It felt very normal and matter-of-fact to be speaking with her. Next thing I knew, I was wandering around outside, carrying the biggest Obama for President sign ever."

thanks to moonlight ambulette for the link. go there for a visit.

instructions in mustard

sophie brought home this bookmark from school. it makes both reading and eating corn dogs strike one as tasty.

my first ceramics class

first of all i was up to my wrists in clay, and wrestling with the wet ball in the middle of the wheel to try to make it do my bidding. mistake number one. wrestling with the clay will not make it do your bidding. rather a firm, steady encircling of hands and the clay just follows the shape without fighting. there is a lesson here, the first of many to be sure. i did manage to make two proud little pots, not at all perfect, i must confess i wanted them to be perfect even though i knew they wouldn't be. the insight i gained while i was struggling through the process had a depth and a width i wish i could show you. hence the image quilt.
1. 365 Day 12, 2. Untitled, 3. The practice dress, 4. Six Edges and Six Vertices, 5. nesting, 6. _DSC0886

it's the little things

1. wooden bird trio, 2. a persimmon, 3. *ice cream*, 4. Italian tea cups from the 50s, 5. in the kitchen, 6. swan B1

cardio workout for wordlovers

delightful ads and articles from old popular science magazines at the modern mechanix blog.
thanks bb.

lullabye

david ray washes the car

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

"the united states does not start fights" (war made easy clip)

includes, among other contradictory utterances made by u.s. presidents, this excerpt from a conversation between richard nixon and henry kissinger in 1972:
president nixon: i still think we ought to take the dikes out now--will that drown people?
henry kissinger: that would drown about 200,000 people.
president nixon: well, no, no, no. i'd rather use the nuclear bomb.
henry kissinger: that, i think, would just be too much.
president nixon: the nuclear bomb? does that bother you?
henry kissinger: [inaudible]
president nixon: i just want you to think big, henry, for christ's sakes.
war made easy- the movie

see the horizon over there?

"Charlie Brown: What can you do when you don't fit in? What can you do when life seems to be passing you by?
Lucy: Follow me. I want to show you something. See the horizon over there? See how big this world is? See how much room there is for everybody? Have you ever seen any other worlds?
Charlie Brown: No.
Lucy: As far as you know, this is the only world there is, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: There are no other worlds for you to live in, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: You were born to live in this world, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: WELL LIVE IN IT THEN! Five cents please."
— Charles Schultz

discouraging

as of late my posts are inspiring mostly just comments from spammers sending me links to porn sites. i think the spam robots can smell words like "sucker" and "without underwear" from very far off. looks like i will have to clean up my act or else it'll keep encouraging this inappropriate robot behavior.

this evening i walked across the street to the library, where they were holding a book sale. i arrived about five minutes before they opened the door and there was a line of about thirty people. it gave me a warm feeling of excitement that so many people would arrive early for a book sale. sometimes you feel very alone, and then something happens to contradict it. until the doors opened and the people in line streamed into the room snatching books from the tables and dropping them into their shopping bags, eagle-eyed only for first editions or anything of monetary worth. before i realized what they were doing, their greedy certainty unsettled me, made me insecure that they could somehow smell the best books and would buy them all up before i'd even gotten my bearings. but their idea of the best books were very different than mine. one man went around scanning the isbn numbers of books with an electronic contraption that no doubt calculated their true worth. i didn't like the frenetic energy with which these people jerked around the room and peered over my shoulders as i searched for and chose the books i would adopt as my own. they indifferently tossed the books they didn't want back onto the tables like fish they didn't want. back into the sea. i tried not to notice them, and slowly accumulated a small pile of books which i took to the counter where three white haired ladies with rulers and a cash box were waiting. they measured the spines of my books stacked atop eachother and charged me a dollar an inch. eight dollars. i got a beautiful hardcover copy of umberto eco's 'the name of the rose', a new thesaurus, a book of poems by peter gizzi, a jerzy kosinski novel i haven't read, a book of wild bird food recipes, a book by e.b. white titled "the points of my compass," two books for sophie, and a little italian cookbook with striking linoleum cut illustrations which i will scan maybe tomorrow or the next day and put some of them up here with a recipe or two. i walked home with my books in one arm. it had gotten almost dark. later, sophie and i sat on the back porch and watched the moon's eclipse while our hot wings cooked.

the kind of thing i am such a sucker for

cb perfumes

conceptual dress

image quilt

colors that depict the past in photographs have always had time to soften, and in turn give the impression that the past was much softer and more beautiful than the present. i would like to climb into each of these separately and inhale its fragrance. i would like a city which had a mural of the 'brown bird singing' sheet music painted on an entire side of a building. i would have liked for max ernst to play chess with me, to photograph and paint me in a striped bathing suit reclined, twirling a compass from the time of copernicus.

1. traveling troupe, 2. Sign: Fermé, 3. Public Domain - Vintage Postcard Images, 4. max_ernst_schach.jpg, 5. emmy hennings, 6. Music Sheet, Copyright 1922, A Brown Bird Singing

instructions

in honor of sophie's pending initiation into the world of babysitting employment, a few do's and don'ts.
visit nonblog to get the full effect. i was laughing pretty hard.

sewing without underwear

i feel a real affinity with this photo today.

below

beautiful and sweet music video of alessandra celletti's "hundred points." thanks to chris who's always expanding my musical horizons.

"birds and people are not all that different"

"says Kevin McGraw, a biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. In crowded, expensive cities (New York, San Francisco, Boston), women want men who can provide financial stability, he found. In smaller cities (Kansas City, Pittsburgh), women look for men with positive emotional traits such as honesty, compassion and good listening skills rather than money. In crowded places with scarce resources, female birds prefer males that build nests and find food, while in less crowded settings, females are content with singing a duet or foraging for food with a mate."



1. HEAD WITH OVER HEELS, 2. Scots Fancy Canary - #11
1. free to use in your artwork, 2. White Yorkshire Canary - #5

sustainable humor

"i only have diamonds, clubs, and spades," said tom heartlessly.

400 more tom swifties here.

pipe dream

leather valentine's day postcard circa 1905 courtesy of nyctreeman.

happy valentine's day

courtesy of kay and sean, who are curently valentining in nice. smooch, smooch. and poulet.

i heart engrish

grammatically incorrect english, deliberate and/or accidental, it pleases me so. here's a whole lot more. my exploration of this subject this morning has led me to an even stranger discovery that apparently is very big in japan. crush fetishism, a form of paraphilia, the desire to see small creatures crushed beneath the shoes, boots, or feet of large ones. i'd never thought of godzilla as possibly an erotic film until now.

please associate with me. i love you stuart.

more japanese-english translations here.

purely delightful (touch of sad)

thanks, tummy-ache, also purely delightful.

really appeals to me today

fantastic diptych from here

just let me off right here

the spider's sideyard

YOU ARE BIDDING ON a vintage photo of CAtalina Island and people are looking a little unusual.

from my new favorite: disturbing ebay auctions.

it's not every morning that a flock of turkeys just lands in the dog park.

perhaps it's their size that makes them unseemly for the air,
or else the fact that the only time we ever hold them in our arms
is when they're frozen solid.

down they came from somewhere out of the left, (capsizing moment)
and alighted into the field of my vision
like a family claiming a spot of shady green for their picnic.

until the dogs noticed.
and took berzerk after those hapless parachutists, surprised out of their minds
up into the bare oaks just in time. while catching their breath they took count of eachother by
overwrought yelps that we interpreted as
"are you alright?"
"yeah, i'm alright. what the hell just happened?"
"i don't know. goddamned mapquest."

amy earles' paper dolls

today, some amy earles. i have ordered the one with the bear.
go here to see the entire set on flickr.

"it is better to fall from your dream clouds than from a third story window."

this book was great for this week's lassitude; it's wicked and wily and very hard to put down.

love and sleep

"We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment." ~George Eliot

thrift store window

"i vacillate between two styles, two worlds, two attitudes toward life..."

"... if i could succeed in analyzing them, i think i would be able to shake off all these doubts.
characteristics of the first type are: discipline, ruggedness, reserve, restraint, exclusivity, profundity. the effect does not lie on the surface; a first look leaves one cold, but gradually something is revealed to the beholder, by delayed action, as it were. these are probably the essential characteristics of ancient greek and roman art.
the characteristics of the other type, then, are diametrically opposed... anything supernatural, gigantic, dionysian, intoxicated, enraptured, dynamic. the effect is direct, abrupt, casting an immediate spell, imprisoning one, "bedazzling the senses," overwhelming...
given my strong propensity in painting as in life for the rococo, wouldn't the best antidote be to impose the most rigid discipline on myself? but the result would be stylized, sacral art, that other pitfall...
everything should merge into one great current. mysticism, the primitive, the most recent, greece, gothic-all the elements must be drawn upon." ~from oskar schlemmer's diary, september 1915

oh my cavalier

more beauties here.