A shot from the Blogosphere -- Dooce and Adorability

There was a period, somewhat brief and before I had blogged much, when I thought Dooce was a lucky stiff. She was a lady who wrote a few witty posts at a time when folks were just getting turned on to blogging and then she was a celebrity. Poof. Like that. She captured the mommy audience -- bored moms at home with infants and an internet connection, just looking for people to make enormously powerful, like Oprah.

But, as I've mentioned before on this blog, this is no accident. She's talented, funny as hell, AND well positioned as a writer.

Today's post, called The House of Adorable, is a great example of her writing. She can take the most mundane events and make them the jumping off point for a scads of interesting tangents and side shows. As well as simply having a great sense of comedic timing.

And the subject matter today is the kind of thing that fills my life lately. So it's extra poignant.

My hat is off to you Mrs. Armstrong, you go.

Bp

Free books online, no joke

The Burgomeister's Books is a site where you can find scads of books for free.

The terms are completely reasonable. You can only download 5 books in a two week period. And when done, you nuke them from your hard-drive.

It's a free service, but the kind host does appreciate donations to keep it going.

Enjoy public access to goodies,

Bp

[via Canukistani Kate, illustration is The Librarian, by Guiseppe Arcimbolo, via Wiki Commons]

Fantastic talk on Creativity, Art and Artists

Ok all the Ted Talks are pretty damned good. Many are brilliant, actually.

This one is most excellent. It's inspired, fresh, and worth your time, I assure you.



Enjoy being released from some sneaky, negative shit in an interesting, charming way,

Bp

[via Dani of Dani Boyton Photography]

The strange and unexpected connections made on the intarweb

I recently received one of those "out of the blue" emails that I occasionally get related to this blog. A nice lady from the American Association of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine contacted me regarding my statement of "recovering electrician" in my Bio. She has electrician types in her family and wondered if there were interesting or hair raising stories associated with this phrase that I would be willing to relate.

It turns out that part of this lady's job is searching out any reference to oriental medicine or acupuncture on the web and checking out the content. My blog popped up in her search, and one thing led to another.

It is a trip to think that my few mentions of acupuncture in this blog tagged it in a way that it could possibly now be part of the national (or international) conversation about this subject. I'm sure you'd have to dig to find the blog, but this lady did, and did find me. The mind spins at how the intartubes are changing our societal discourse. I couldn't possibly imagine trying to catalog or quantify the amount of change and novelty that is being produced this way.

Here is part of my long-winded response to her query, for those of you who are interested:

So, the "recovering electrician" comment is a tongue-in-cheek statement, because I'm changing careers due to really not liking that job much.

However, there is more to the story, and since it seems you (look to be) a health care practitioner, I'll relate it.

When I still had awesome Union insurance, I went to a naturopath/acupuncturist here in Portland named Bernie Bayard. He's phenomenal. He used to joke that he was using me as a guinea pig for checking out the effects of multiple electrical shocks on the human system. Since I was primarily a service electrician, I almost always worked in inhabited houses -- doing repair and trouble shooting. That kind of work is almost always done hot, because it's less disruptive to the client and for troubleshooting, it's just way more informative. I got shocked as often as once a month. [for those of you concerned about this statement, know that it was almost always "small" and in my hand only, not big electrocutions going through my torso or anything]

Back in the day, in the 30's, electricians used to test circuits with their fingers. Even the national electrical code had instructions for how to do this. Many of these men ended their life with a severe palsey, because their nerves were literally fried. Since nerves are our electrical conductors in the body, I believe that's where the resistance is least and so when we get shocked they take the brunt of the force. That's my non-scientific opinion of course.

As for funny stories, I have so many that my wife wants me to write a book of short stories (named "Electrical Shorts" of course) about the bizarre, scary, and humorous events that happened during my career as a service electrician.

Enjoy the novel connections that seemingly harmless online activity can produce,

Bp


[image courtesy of wiki commons]

Excellent prop 8/anti gay marriage post on Faith in Honest Doubt

Dale bats this one out of the park.

A teaser quote:

At some point in the future -- maybe a year, maybe three years, maybe ten years -- you will regret having voted this way. You will find yourself less and less willing to openly admit that you took this stand. You will look over your stated reasons and find them embarrassing. You will come around to the realization that being gay is simply a way of being human, and you will see the injustice in canceling and preventing the marriages of consenting adults, every bit as much as you presently see the injustice of banning interracial marriage or voting against someone on the basis of sex or race.

Dale, you rock.

Bp

13 cool words not found in the English language

Yuri sent me this link from The Urban Recluse about words from other languages that have no direct English analogy. There is a name for them, and I can't remember it for the life of me. Although some of the definitions below are thin (Duende, for example, which I've studied quite a bit), they are still workable. To find more examples like these opens my mind in a pleasant and invigorating way. I have copy/pasted the list below.

I've studied many of these kinds of words in the course of my writing (career? -- avocation?) life, and it has always been enormously and surprisingly eye-opening for me. The cliche example of how different language and thought can be culture-to-culture (and, apparently erroneous one) is all the words the Eskimo use to describe snow.

Even though I normally lose the word after a time, the concepts tend to stay with me. I remember a concept from a Hindi word that means roughly, "the importance of small talk in a community." Small talk is sometimes scoffed at in our culture as a waste of time, but in a different culture it is seen as necessary and healthy -- it is understood in an entirely different way.

Words like this can be a direct illustration of how radically different a world view cultures and language create -- deep, fundamental beliefs and perspectives. I have had the experience, while studying some of these types of words, of bumping into a belief that I never realized was [simply] cultural, and took as fundamentally true. I could then question that belief. It can be mind blowing to digest if you are in the right head space.

Enjoy.

These words do not have direct equivalents in English. Some of them would definitely be useful for us English-speakers, what do you think?

1. Waldeinsamkeit (German): the feeling of being alone in the woods

2. Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time

3. Taarradhin (Arabic): a way of resolving a problem without anyone losing face (not the same as our concept of a compromise - everyone wins)

4. Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery

5. Esprit de l’escalier (French): a witty remark that occurs to you too late, literally on the way down the stairs…

6. Meraki (Greek): doing something with soul, creativity, or love

7. Yoko meshi (Japanese): literally ‘a meal eaten sideways’, referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language:

8. Duende (Spanish): a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art, which might be fulfilled in flamenco dancing, or bull-fighting, etc.

9. Guanxi (Mandarin): in traditional Chinese society, you would build up good guanxi by giving gifts to people, taking them to dinner, or doing them a favour, but you can also use up your gianxi by asking for a favour to be repaid.

10. Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions

11. Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): to borrow objects one by one from a neighbour's house until there is nothing left

12. Radioukacz (Polish): a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain

13. Selathirupavar (Tamil): a word used to define a certain type of absence without official leave in face of duty

–

Of course, I’m just relying on the accuracy of online resources for this information, if you speak any of these languages please let me know if there are any errors or inaccuracies above.

Update: Sources were Times Online and NPR

---

Bp

Songs Stuck in my Head Series: Cake -- Short Skirt Long Jacket

I love this song for a few reasons, not the least of which is it has a nice beat and you can dance to it.

But, what always brings me back is the lyrics. They're so on-point, and the metaphor in them is absolutely consistent. Mike McCrea does a great job of keeping all the imagery very focused and by the end you have a total sense of the irony, and humor, and accuracy of the language.

The original video is a cool concept, but there are people talking over the song so it's no good to listen to for lyrics. So, I chose a fan video/sideshow to post for ya'll so you can concentrate easier on the song. Ignore the visuals, they really aren't the point.



Enjoy witty lyrics, rare as they can be in contemporary pop,

Bp

It's no accident that Dooce makes a living blogging

The Wife and I are both Dooce fans. She is a more thorough and consistent reader of the blog however. Recently, she mentioned that I really must read this post about Dooce taking her puppy to the herding class.

Now listen to that sentence... this isn't soccer mom's talking, this is us. We don't watch soap operas or speak about Oprah more than once or twice a year.

And yet, Heather B. Armstrong's writing is so good we can't resist reading about her kid, her husband, her dogs... whatever. She's just so damned funny, and heart felt, and irreverent, and psycho, and eloquent. She's not a slouch of a photographer either.

Anyway, read the post I mentioned above and see what I mean. She takes the mundane and shows so much through it. That's a hell of a skill, and I tip my hat.

Enjoy talent, especially if it gets you to do things you'd otherwise disavow [like reading a Mommy Blog],

Bp

A deeper look into Lotus Land

There are many factors that lead me into a nearly constant state of psychic disbelief about my current circumstances. Many reasons why I spend a generous amount of my time sitting a bit aside from the group, staring out over the landscape, dazed, wondering what the hell planet I'm currently living on.

For one, I really don't know anyone here. I had only met two of the folks working this retreat before I came here. I drove out with a professional clown, in a car that is covered with chalkboard paint and chalk graffiti. I'm surrounded by strangers -- smart, talented strangers.
And yet everyone greets me with a smile, and offers me assistance and advice like we're old friends.

In the mornings, people are roused awake from their various tents and sleeping platforms by a woman playing Reveille on a trombone. After breakfast we caravan to the Camp to work with the kids. I find myself sitting in a circle with experienced theater people, doing warm-up games, and then sitting down to work as coach and scribe for some amazing kid. One on one we work out a series of surrealistic characters, none human, that will give this young person a place to clear out their soul just a little bit. Give them a place to tell their story in metaphor, in code -- through art.

I feel like I snuck into some dream job, having faked my qualifications. Like the people around me are so comfortable in this position that they don't see how out of place I am. Wasn't it about a month ago that I was graduating with a degree in Biology? That's science, right? That was me, right?

When we get back from camp, and after we debrief our work with the kids, immediately someone hands me a gin and tonic and says that I'm expected out at the horse shoe pits. Somewhere, there is meat slow roasting on a mesquite bbq, and our host is setting up for some incredible dinner. I rarely have a second drink, but since they're served in pint glasses, and are strong, I rarely need a second drink.

And I wander around to look at the geese on the pond, or to watch the stars come out as the last of the sun goes away, and I wonder how the hell I got here. Who the hell are all these people, and why are they all being so nice to me. How in god's name am I pulling off being a writing coach for these complex and vibrant kids.

Bp


[Painting: Robert Duncanson, Land of the Lotos Eaters, 1852]

Saul Williams -- poet stuck in my head

My Canukistani operative Yuri sent me the video below of Saul Williams performing a song in a style I'd never heard come out of him -- raucous, loud, poppy, industrial. At first I thought, "catchy" -- and then I kept re-listening to it. The beat is so simplistic, and yet that's part of why it works. This song was picked up for use in, of all things, a Nike commercial, which is giving it a second life. So, this post qualifies as a "songs stuck in my head" post.

Before more, here's the video:



Saul Williams has sick talent, he just keeps creating in whatever venue or medium he can get his hands on. He was known first as a slam poet, winning a grand slam championship at the Nuyorcian poets cafe. He starred in the indie film "Slam," getting many kudos for his performance, especially at Sundance. He, as evidenced above, does music and music/poetry projects as well. For his album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust he even worked with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.

I've seen him live once, and would do so again in the drop of a hat. It was impressive. The stacatto, machine-gun style of his verse can wear me out, but there's no arguing his stage presence, far-reaching intellect and capacity with words.

Enjoy long introductions,

Bp

In response to cynicism -- a bit of poesy

My good friend wrote about cynicism recently on his blog. His post got me thinking, and commenting -- but I feel pretty inarticulate at the moment and so far haven't been able to explain myself well at his site.

Although this is many years old, I dug out a journal entry I wrote while up in a Fire Lookout in the Mt. Hood National Forest. I worked it over into a kind-of prose poem. In the comments on Stu's blog post, there is a bit of talk about the personal and the transpersonal, and I thought of this piece. I was young, but it still has some resonance.



---------

Journal Entry 10/04/93


I'm sitting on a large, rectangular rock, on a humpy beargrass slope, facing West. A small bird, wingbeats quick & powerful, just landed on a tree behind me. It spots me sitting here & begins chittering.

The Huckleberry & Fireweed are both a deep maroon red, where they haven't gone brown already. The butt of a hand-rolled cigarette looks like a dry, curled leaf next to my bootsole. I'll tip its ashes in honor of the star nation; pour the tobacco to the ground for mother earth; and shove the paper in my pocket.

Earlier today when the sun was low, but not yet down, the sky was all creams, grays, and salmon pinks. Smoke from a nearby wildfire provided the effect. The sunset's colors are still soft -- soft, rosy oranges. Looking up and east, the light loses itself amidst all the haze, going indigo & gray.

As if it knew the sun just went down, a cold wind pushes gently against my back. Small birds shift positions in the trees and bushes along the slope -- a little, imperative "whumph!" as they flare & settle on the branches.

Somewhere in this maze of colors & quiet sounds, I hope to enter.

Maybe in the drooping tip of a young Hemlock tree, or the curious, mouselike scratchings of a songbird in the bushes. Somewhere, in all this beauty & wildness, there is a door. That perfect synchronicity of memory & a glance; of a sound & a desire.

"Just once," I ask in earnest, "just once."

So I come and sit at these sunsets -- waiting.

When found, I realize the door was in my bootsole the whole time; in the cigarette butt, or in the blue stripes of my plaid shirt. But the realization fades quickly.

Until that moment stays, my greatest hopes lie with the wild beauties. With the crimson sunset rebounding off the gray boulder and sparrow song -- rebounding off the missing of loved ones, and the other small, acute desires.


-------------



Enjoy employing whatever means you have at your disposal to survive, or even flourish,

Bp

Poem -- Lust

This is another poem from a class I took in '05 or so. I believe the prompt on this was a "list" poem. I post it by request.

[if someone knows how to do tab stops in HTML would you please email me instructions? I'm dyin' ova here]

Enjoy

____________________



Lust



Saltine crackers for lunch.

A stickfire in a blizzard.

Raising peacocks when what you need is eggs.

Lottery tickets.

Most first dates.

Owning a house, but no furniture.

All of junior high.

The exact moment when,
brandishing your knife,
you realize that you are in a gunfight.

Excellent post on correct action

I often talk with my friends about correct action, about a healthy balance between ignorance of politics and immersion/activism, about how to stay sane and feel connected when it can seem like the world is going to hell in a handbasket around us.

Stu over at Palouse Diary has written a sterling post regarding some of these things that I encourage you to check out.

Enjoy the work of talented friends,

Bp

Worksite Poem

A few folks have requested more poems from my prehistory -- I came across this one looking for some scrap paper, figured it was a sign.

For a while, I was working on a series of poems all written during breaks at work. Most were written sitting in the work van. This is one.

Enjoy.

Worksite -- Boring, Oregon


If finned animals were swimming
down this hot asphalt street,

and if the parrot squawking inside the house there
was a tiny woman in a napolean coat
vexing an absent husband,

then I'd know this was a dream.

As it is --
wind curling around my ankles,
tarpaper softening in the sun,

I'm temporarily convinced otherwise.




Bp

Poem -- First Rain

Was out in The Shire again this weekend, helping The Luddites get their new shop set up. We worked in the rain, and in the snow. I was reminded of this poem I wrote almost 10 years ago when I was wiring new houses. [The formatting is more elaborate on my copy of this poem -- some day I'll have to learn how to introduce tab stops in HTML, but not tonight]

For The Luddites,





First Rain



Here it is --

Bright grey morning, almost warm.
Then sheets & sheets of rain pouring over this new roof.
First rain, introducing the long season.

Now, forests begin to smell like mushrooms,
elk stamp and steam in the cold trees.

This worksite smells of wet concrete,
wet flannel,
and cold feet.

These new houses are surrounded by moats of sticky mud,
extension cords smear it into hands & shirtsleeves
at the end of the day.

Apprentices complain,
and trout go off the bite.

Suddenly
candles at home,
hot meals,
and friendship

become startlingly more important
than long weekends and solitude.



('99 - '04)



Enjoy your artistic reminiscences,

Bp

Top 9 posts ever [for now]

A friend asked me if I had looked into which were the all time favorite posts so far on the blog. The thing is, it changes all the time. I use Google Analytics to snoop in on my own site for stuff like this. Below are the top 9 posts right now [the first in the list is always some weird thing that doesn't make sense to me, so y'all get 9]. This list changes radically all the time, and there are some weird surprises in here. Strange the responses that worldwide search engines will give ya.

Every time I check the list I can make up little theories in my head about why this and that show up, but really I don't trust them. It's a real crap shoot. For months on end the biggest content on my site was my first post that mentioned Aikido. Whyso? Hell if I know.

1. The artist introduction on Walton Ford.
2. Building top-bar bee hives.
3. Report from the computer lab: Cher just walked by.
4. Little dudes post on Jerboa.
5. Ron Paul on the Demented Philosophy of Conquest.
6. Condom fashion show in Beijing.
7. Beloved Sitka Spruce succumbs to storm.
8. How to start picking wild edible mushrooms.
9. Burts Bees ad regarding Colony Collapse Disorder.

Enjoy your own, personal forms of civilian espionage,

Bp

Quote from my current reading: Annie Dillard

Here is a paragraph out of the book I'm reading, Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk. She has just spotted a weasel for the first time, and is describing it.

Weasel! I had never seen one wild before. he was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I did not see, any more than you see a window.

There are more outrageous or esoteric quotes to pick, but that one caught me by the directness of her language, her varied use of sentence structure, and the unusual analogies she makes.

Enjoy your literary heroes,

Bp

California "winter" on Geese Aplenty

Geese Aplenty is a blog I somehow stumbled up on a few months ago. The guy occasionally posts real gems of writing, and today's was particularly good. For anyone who has lived in California or has visited there during the winter, you will be able to relate.

The post is about California and its "winter."

Here's some of the post:

California has no idea what real seasons are, and it will never know because it’s separated from them by thousands of miles. It has no idea that elsewhere in the country, the leaves turn so bright and vivid that they look as though they’re on fire. It doesn’t know that if you stand in a certain place at just the right time, the air smells of apple cinnamon. It doesn’t know that when the storms start to hit, the days become as hard and cold as a runway model’s face.

Enjoy those random strangers with whom you share untoward hobbies,

Bp

Tommy and The Coens answering questions about No Country

Quick video, I picked it because it was the first one I could find that had Tommy in it.

Oh the hate mail I'm getting backstage for having beaten many of my friends to this movie.

I'm going mushroom picking this morning so I can make quiche for our foodie, orphan turkey day celebration this afternoon. Talk to ya'll soon.



Continue enjoying your media heroes,

Bp

No Country for Old Men -- review of sorts

This movie was a shoe-in for me on many levels. For one, Cormac McCarthy was a revelation to me as a writer. Blood Meridian blew my mind -- it was violent, gorgeous, biblical in sweep. Like nothing I had ever read, except maybe Faulkner.

So, I'm supposed to be talking about the movie. What can I say, it's awesome. The Coen Brothers do a fantastic job in their sincere, dry, in your face way. Their adaptation from the book is excellent, the dialog is just pitch perfect (sorry for the cliche, but it is).

Every actor on the screen just pops, especially Tommy Lee Jones. He's one of my favorites anyway, but he really nails this performance. It's like it was written for him. When he finished the movie with the last few lines of dialog, it was like watching a gold-winning gymnast peg a landing. Ok that's a horrible analogy. It was a dam near perfect confluence of writing and acting.

The movie has multiple oscars written all over it.

It's a violent movie, don't be mistaken. It's about a psychopath -- no bones about it. It is a rough film.

I'm just going to leave it at, if you like the Cohen brothers, or Cormac McCarthy, or modern noir thrillers, or Tommy Lee Jones just go see it. Trust me. If you are squeamish, you probably want to stay home for this one, or be prepared to cover your eyes a few times.



Enjoy your artistic heroes,

Bp