For Christmas, this is what I made for my family and lovely boyfriend:
Tommy: a panda bear working at NPR
Tommy works at NPR
Jason: a dinosaur chicken
it's after christmas now i can tell the WORLD love
Posted December 29th, 2010
Chris: favorite film directors qua Beatles
l to r: Michael Hanneke as George; Stanley Kubrick as Ringo (obv);
Terrence Malick as Paul; and David Lynch as John (the quiet genius)
Mom & Dad: photo from 1982, revisited
Dear Readers,
I've watched a lot of TV over the last three months and read maybe 30 pilots. Thus I have cultivated a simultaneous grand revulsion and deep love for television. But is it not always thus with love?
TV does this new kind of joke all the time and it bugs the hayle out of me:
CHARACTER
It's a [this crazy thing]! ... Actually, that's completely wrong. Why did I say that.
LAUGH track.
This joke is a refried "Not!" joke. It thinks it's smarter than a "Not!" joke because it uses more words and it's more neurotic, and many smart people use lots of words and are neurotic.
But hey guess what, joke? You're not smarter! Tell me again about the time you bought absinthe ... Not!
i promise this post is not directed at anyone we know pinky swear really if i'm so smart where's my emmy?
Posted December 7th, 2010
A typical show that you might watch on today's modern television.
Dear Readers,
Do you ever look at old photos of luminaries1 or of your parents2 and feel a deep ache inside at how young they look. So young!
The ache emerges without even consciously addressing "lost hopes" or "dreams achieved" or "mortality" (read: "your own mortality") (read: "my own mortality").
You feel the ache just on sight of these photos, immediately and in your literal heart.
Sometimes when I am with my contemporaries I feel that I am watching them as they looked thirty years ago, and that ache constricts my pleasure. Not every time. Just in the last year.
I step away from the party into the other room and tell your children, "your parents back then. They looked so young."
the tag for superscript is "sup" 'sup, reference?
Posted November 17th, 2010
Steve Martin Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro
Brenda & Carlos
Dear Readers,
Last month I moved to Chicago. It is the fourth city I've lived in during my adult life.
Notable features from each of those cities:
- Union Square, Somerville, MA used as a recruitment and mustering site for the Union Army
- Union Square, San Francisco once used for rallies and support for the Union Army
- Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn with commemorative statues to Lincoln, Grant, and Union Civil War generals.
- Lincoln Park, Chicago and I would have put Union Station too, but it's named for its function (a union of several railways) and not for political or commemorative reasons
My life is still marked by the Civil War, 150 years after it. I've stayed on one side of the line.
I used to run around Prospect Park in Brooklyn and walk through Soldiers' Arch
to cool down. On the southwest side of the arch is a statue of Lincoln, the gaunt and good, with his
hat down, and a look that shows he's thinking more than he'll say.
On the northeast side of the arch is General U.S. Grant. Not Fat Grant as we would know him later as President. This is Warrior Grant with a rifle under his right arm and maybe two more hidden under his
long coat, stalking tall on his horse like Vampire Hunter D.
The culture wars are sometimes taxing and frightening, but I am actively grateful to not live in a
country imperiled by civil war.
i'm also grateful not to have a symbiote lodged in my left hand
what, did nobody else watch vampire hunter d?
what, did nobody else watch vampire hunter d?
Posted October 8th, 2010
Grant & D.
Fat Grant.
Dear Readers,
Here are some superpowers that you can have in real life:
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yes i think about this a lot
Posted August 25th, 2010
There's a portrait on the fourth floor of the Harvard Law Library of George Lewis Ruffin.
At the bottom of the portrait are two nameplates. The newer nameplate says, "George Lewis Ruffin - First African-American Graduate of Harvard Law School."
The older nameplate, attached directly to the picture frame, says something a little different: "George Lewis Ruffin - First Known Black Graduate of Harvard Law School."
"First known?" The older nameplate introduces doubt that gives me that Hitchcock dolly zoom feeling. Is Barack Obama the first black U.S. President or the first known black U.S. President? Is this your only life or your only known life? Are those your parents or your only known parents?
The older acknowledges that identity is constructed; you are whatever you want to be, provided you can pass. So is everyone else.
And, when the older nameplate was engraved, the public was probably much more aware of how often black people might pass as white to ensure they had access to, oh, say, Civil Rights, voting, well-paying jobs, law school, marriage, property &c.
In the U.S. now there is less urgency to pass; identities are now protected by Federal law; hence, identity is taken at face value more often; hence the unequivocal statement on the newer nameplate. The stakes are lower. Just this week, the court set a new Federal precedent to ensure identity does not disadvantage certain citizens who wish to marry.
I dig Judge Walker's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, but my mom is still the author of the most elegant logical take-down in favor of gay marriage of all time:
internetPhone users of those without Flash click mp3:
ericaricardo.com/musics/mom_080822.mp3
ericaricardo.com/musics/mom_080822.mp3
“Hi Bubs, it's um, I think it's around 7:15. I'm calling cuz, I love you. I tried calling you from the fair but, no reception. So I have one story. Only one person did any kind of confrontation.
“This middle-aged man from Texas came up to us and said, 'so this is the Freedom to Marry. So men can marry women, and men can marry men, and women can marry women,' and I said, 'yes!' and he said, 'so, but what if people want to marry animals. What if a man wanted to marry a cow?'
“And I started laughing and I said, 'why would a cow want to marry a man?' and he started laughing too. And I said, you know it's a miracle anybody stays married, you know that don't you,' and he laughed.
“Anyway, that's your story from your mom. I have all kinds of memoribilia that I'm sending you. I love you, bye bye.”
moms harvard law school
Posted August 7th, 2010
George Lewis Ruffin.
Dear Readers,
At work I used to watch a lot of Bobby McFerrin videos on YouTube. A lot of Bobby McFerrin videos.
- World Science Festival 2009 demonstrating the power of the pentatonic scale
- I Got the Feeling which ends with Bobby mouthing and feeling up a lady in the audience in a way that I promise you is awesome and not-creepy (promise)
- Bach Prelude & Ave Maria in which Bobby sings a Bach prelude and the audience accompanies him with Gounod's Ave Maria, without any rehearsal or training
The best video is from the World Science Festival though, and my friend Chris edited it. Bobby and the science guys are talking about the human brain and expectations, and Bobby gets up to demonstrate that the mind anticipates sequential tones in the pentatonic scale so well that all he has to do is sing a few notes with the audience and then jump left or right to play their voices just as easily as the black keys on a piano.
This video is so good that TED kinda sorta pretends that it's a TED talk. It gives me crazy chills, even when I watched it for the first time sitting in a windowless room under flourescent light in a plot of cubicles insulated with industrial carpet—an environment not meant for emotional experiences, or magic.
We are all machines with beautiful music hard-coded into our personal BIOS, and a mancer like Bobby can just jack right into it. In the video, those scientist guys sitting down study the brain, but Bobby knows how to play the brain.
i also watched john tesh and nina simone videos for reals
Posted July 28th, 2010
World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin rocks your neurons, world.
I Got the Feeling
Ave Maria:
Lovely.
Dear Readers,
I've been fairly absent these last seven months. A lot's happened!
I left office life in San Francisco last December, planted boots on the ground in Brooklyn, fell in love, hustled to make ends meet, made a lot of art, wrote a lot of writing, played some shows, and sang new music. But income never came with enough regularly to exceed expenses, and so I am back at a dayjob at an office, writing blogs for computers to read; yes, my tech-savvy and San Francisc-friends, you've guessed it! I am writing search engine optimization text: blogs with plenty of links to push traffic to the client sites.
I'll tell you what: it sure does have me thinking more carefully about my strong tags and title tags! It sure does tune my sensitivity to recycled, specious, and reconstituted information on the Internet! You know where content like that comes from? I do!
Yea though I have returned to the orifice, concurrently a crazy plan hatched last December with Jason "The" Doty has slowly unfolded. "I have a silly idea ... " he said. His skills in programming + my skills in art + our shared love for video games = a killer iPhone app.
Some intense months of production later, and we now have a company (Grumpy Dodo) and an awesome game: Crazy Shapes. It should be in the App store in mid-July. You can buy it once and play it on any of your Apple devices: iPad, iPod Touch, old iPhone, and new iPhone.
It is my best art ever. I am looking you in the eye, I am telling you to your face: this game. This is the realness. And for those of you who know Jason, this is his incredible programming talent and zany brilliance at its best.
We've been working on it non-stop for months, and still, when we were shooting the trailer we were each eager to be the one who got a turn. "I want to play!"
It still makes me laugh out loud. I hope you like it too :)
Our idea is to achieve a certain financial escape velocity, enough to continue to live simply (as we do now on low and no income) and make beautiful and delightful things.
tight as can be
Posted July 13th, 2010
Crazy Shapes!
Dear Readers,
People ask me all the time, "Erica, what's the difference between San Francisco and New York?"
It's like this: there are plenty of freaks in both cities, but in San Francisco you'll get lots of thumbs up and social support for, say, wearing a winter hat with kitty cat ears sewn on top; in New York, nobody's going to do that for you.
Or, it's like this:
In San Francisco, if the businessman in the train station told me, "you know there's a giant run in the back of your stockings," I would have smiled and said thank you.
In New York I just stared at him blankly until he looked away.
But here, I had full social license to do what I wanted to do, which was tell him to go do something lewd to himself.
ok for real i'm going to get wordpress no really for real this time
Posted June 23rd, 2010
... and your little dog, too.
Dear Readers,
In the late 15th century, before Italy was Italy, it was a loose network of city states without a unified government, currency, or language. But they did have one thing in common: the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1494 a Dominican monk named Girolamo Savonarola took power in Florence with a series of bitter, angry speeches against the Church and the Pope (all unpopular) as well as loose morals, loose clothing, gambling, and pornography (all very popular).
In 1497 he organized a massive bonfire for all the "vanities": not just the pornography, but everything that suggested beauty and art. They burned sculptures, mirrors, chess sets, lutes, wigs, and pretty clothes. They burned philosophy texts, ancient poetry, and some of the great works of Renaissance Florentine art.
Can we be surprised that in school, the young Savonarola was a devoted student of music and design? Truly, it is our fate to wrestle with the things that we love.
The next year Florence revolted and they burned him at the stake. The lesson: you burn the vanities, and they're going to come back and burn you.
some things are more fun to wrestle with than others
Posted April 8th, 2010
Everyone is looking for something / looking for something they can't find
Dear Readers,
I went to a select board meeting last night.
some explanation
Here's how it works in my little Vermont town:
Here's how it works in my little Vermont town:
- The Select Board (a council of five people) (usually old people) (usually old white dudes people) makes the budget.
- The budget includes some appropriations that get a "yea or nay" from the town citizens. Like: "here's the budget. But also, do you want to give $1,000 to the local municipal basketball fund? It will add $.001 to your tax bill" etc.
- Every voter in the town gets a chance to argue over a public address system about the budget. That's called Town Meeting.
- Then on Voting Day the town votes on the budget. If they vote in favor of it, then that's the budget. If they vote against it, the Select Board has to write a new budget. Repeat, until you have a budget.
- What money gets spent in the interim? Unbudgeted money.
The current Select Board is mostly newly elected (= still oldly lived). In the recent budget vote, the town voted not to give some appropriations of needed money to arts and community programs, including: a domestic violence program, Meals on Wheels, and the arts center where I am playing music this Saturday.
Major drag. But the town still didn't pass the budget, by a margin of five votes.
The Select Board felt a clear mandate: make deeper cuts. So they held a surprise meeting at 7am (surprise!) where they drafted a budget that cut the entire office of Economic Development (= 1 dude) and gave a 6% pay-cut to everyone making over $50,000 per year. At the same time, the School District threatened to cut the junior band teacher, also known as the most popular teacher in the school system.
Jason said, "right, they'll do this kind of thing to get everyone riled up. Like: 'until this budget is resolved, NO COOKIES! No cookies for anyone!'"
at the select board meeting last night
Everyone there was duly riled up. Some people felt that Economic Development is a goof-off position anyway, and good riddance. More people were quite certain that their businesses had stayed in town because of Economic Development and wanted him to stay. Or they found the secret meetings held by the light of dawn, and the lack of any alternative plans for economic development, quite distressing.
Everyone there was duly riled up. Some people felt that Economic Development is a goof-off position anyway, and good riddance. More people were quite certain that their businesses had stayed in town because of Economic Development and wanted him to stay. Or they found the secret meetings held by the light of dawn, and the lack of any alternative plans for economic development, quite distressing.
the vote
After hearing the points made by the citizenry—up to two turns at the mic! It took three hours—the Select Board voted again on their budget draft. Each member voted exactly the same way as voted before, including the board member attending by speakerphone (who was also the only vocally dissenting member).
After hearing the points made by the citizenry—up to two turns at the mic! It took three hours—the Select Board voted again on their budget draft. Each member voted exactly the same way as voted before, including the board member attending by speakerphone (who was also the only vocally dissenting member).
which means
The voters will vote again on the budget, and they will vote this budget down. We are dealing with Yankees, who are very stubborn people, and this could continue for a very long time.
The voters will vote again on the budget, and they will vote this budget down. We are dealing with Yankees, who are very stubborn people, and this could continue for a very long time.
my take
It seems like the basic problem is that there's no money, and I don't have any solutions for that. If I did, I wouldn't be writing articles on the internet at $15/pop and skulking around the fancy grocery store for free samples of fancy cheese.
It seems like the basic problem is that there's no money, and I don't have any solutions for that. If I did, I wouldn't be writing articles on the internet at $15/pop and skulking around the fancy grocery store for free samples of fancy cheese.
I do know that the town spent millions and millions of dollars renovating the middle school a little while back. During renovations they shuffled all the students to alternate locations, including my little brother, who said, "I had to learn in an abandoned dog food factory,* and you better believe I learned the s--- out of that material."
*This is true. —ed
you know my feelings on democracy boldness over speakerphone
Posted March 23rd, 2010
"You better believe I learned the s--- out of that material!"
Dear Readers,
The thoughts below were written last November, when I worked in corporate marketing. —ed
unprompted thoughts for today
That at work we get free coffee, tea, milk, hot water, and hot chocolate. That in the kitchens there are boxes of Rich Hot Chocolate stacked high in the cabinet.
That I could go on a hot chocolate binge, hanging out in the small kitchen all afternoon, tearing open pack after pack of hot chocolate, two and three packs to a cup sometimes, dark rings accumulating and calcifying around the inside of my Monet coffee mug. That I could double-fist hot chocolate using one of the disposable compostable coffee cups, and leave a terrible mess of brown powder and silver-white packets all over the counter and floors.
That I could do this without speaking or making eye contact with anyone who came into the kitchen. That I rarely speak or make eye contact with anyone in the kitchen anyway. That if I were to use up all the packets in all the boxes in the small kitchen, that I could walk forty feet to the big kitchen and do the same thing with those cabinets of Rich Hot Chocolate. That there's also Sugar-free Lactose-free Hot Chocolate, containing some mysterious chemical simulacrum of sugar and milk and only 20 fewer calories per serving anyway.
That if I exhausted the supply in the big kitchen that then there's the other small kitchen by Quality Assurance. That there are kitchens on every floor, all endowed with the exact same kitchen resources. That I could have as much hot chocolate as I wanted to take, and more. That, effectively, I have access to unlimited hot chocolate. That I could tell this to the classroom of 10-year-olds that live in my head, and they would flip their shit.
"Unlimited hot chocolate? Unlimited hot chocolate? Wait, wait wait. Wait," and the lead 10-year-old would stop me with one of those deadly-sober kid faces, make certain I was really listening. That it would be important to get through to me because the world is at stake. That I would be throwing every known observation of reality and experience into question, and the world might be bananas now, utterly bananas.
"They give you unlimited hot chocolate? As much as you want and no one will stop you? And you're not drinking it? None at all? When you could have unlimited hot chocolate?"
That the children would get be at once selfishly envious and also stunningly empathetic. That they would feel pity for me, since by some perversity I am anhedonic and insensate, and neither drink hot chocolate nor care.
That children anticipate many possible pleasures of being a grown-up. That anticipation is actually more pleasurable than fulfillment. That anticipation of being a grown-up who might anticipate drinking from an ever-flowing cup of hot chocolate must be an exquisite pleasure indeed.
That their pleasure in anticipation of anticipation would be tempered by frustration that I do not appreciate the glory of my chocolatey riches. That adulthood is wasted on adults.
i don't work there anymore
Posted March 16th, 2010
Give yourself a present New York, and visit City Bakery today!
:: chi rho mass ::
Dear Readers,
In June I lost my mailbox key, and my landlord at The Cottage was unresponsive to six months of occasional phone, mail, and email attempts to contact her and recover it.
Thankfully, I am an ingenious sort, and fashioned a device for retrieving my mail. The device was a spatula with tape at the end that I would use to fish my mail out through the mail slot.
Once or twice, my fingers lost their grip and the spatula got lost in there, and so I had to similarly fix up a wooden spoon to rescue it. Then I made a little bracelet out of rubber bands that looped through a hole in the spatula handle, and that solved the problem.
the hard way things you get used to and forget are weird what's that jewish holiday where you eat a lot of chinese food? merry christmas dear readers
Posted December 25th, 2009
What? What?
Dear Readers,
Here is what I will remember:
- going to a Clowns vs. Mimes smackdown at 17th and Valencia
-
being interrogated by a tall man in a trenchcoat, who is introduced as being "from the internet":
- "are you a cyberpunk?"
- "where do you get your memes from?"
- and "do you want to come to a party at our hackerspace?"
- ... and these things are happening at the same time, the trenchcoat interrogation takes place in between smacks of clown against mime. The mimes are actually building an invisible wall and pushing it forward, and the clowns are backing away from it.
- on MUNI, the rookies yell "back door! back door!" and the fellow patrons, like a Greek chorus, determine whether the claim is valid or not. If valid, they yell, "back door!" in unison with the rookie. If invalid, they turn their rancor on the rookie, and yell, "step up, step down! step up, step down!"
- tell someone about a cool event, oh yeah, I'd love to go, where is it? It's in Berkeley. Oh, East Baaaaay ... so faaaaaar...
- get people real uptight when you refer to San Francisco as the "West Bay"
- go to a party, your friend of your friend tagging along turns out to be old friends with the host's roommate, everyone knows everyone, this city is very small
- regularly-scheduled opportunities to be naked in public: Bay to Breakers, Gay Pride, Folsom Street Fair, Love Parade, Critical Mass
- San Francisco apartments: telephone nooks, those cranks at the top of the stairs to open the door and they never work, bathroom split up into two rooms. Look for the gas range, it means you're in a place that has withstood earthquakes.
i laughed when i told you i was leaving it was laughter masking other feelings you know this
Posted December 19th, 2009
I know.
Dear Readers,
Today is December 3rd. Last month was National Novel Writing Month. Do you know what happens during that month? People write novels.
The only metric for success is whether you get to 50,000 words. It's like breaking the world record for pancake with largest diameter: it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be massive.
It's like knitting a sweater that's big enough for the whole house to wear. And if you're doing it well, all the rows look good together, but the colors are diverse enough to keep it interesting, and there are no holes, and if you vary the stitches that you structure it with, then there's a pleasing design behind it.
It's long and painful and frustrating to get to the beautiful house-sweater level of coherence and endurance, unless you're a genius knitter or a very experienced knitter (probably both). But regardless, the only way to become an experienced genius is to buy a truckload of yarn and get to it, and make some bad first sweaters (cf "work") (cf "enjoy yourself").
So last month I wrote a novel. It's about Orpheus and Eurydice. Perseus is a mute child, and drives a municipal bus named Pegasus. Persephone is punk rock star, and has a healthy marriage to Hades, the kind of marriage that you witness between the surprise guests at Thanksgiving and decide to model your own after. The Gates of Hell is a strip club. Charon is Sharon, a dancer with gorgeous legs and a giant skull for a head. Adonis plays the conch and has a perfect body to weep over, but a muskrat-like face and one of those thin mustaches that suggest both weakness and cruelty. The stairs are a combination MC Escher sketch and mangled Gordion knot, and it's actually very difficult to avoid inadvertantly seeing the person walking silently behind you (if, indeed, there is someone walking behind you). There's a long digression about contract law and consideration led by a demon with hairy hands. The two gurus are a professor who is a figurative oak tree, and a skeletal triceratops who is a literal skeletal triceratops.
Is it good? It fits around the house, I'll say that.
The exultant final chorus of The Who's A Quick One While He's Away (You Are Forgiven) is playing at da coffeeshop, and I accept its absolution lovingly and with respect.
thneeds everyone needs one ell
comments don't work cuz i want you to wantme them
it's possible that thanksgiving has caused me to swear off ever marrying
comments don't work cuz i want you to want
it's possible that thanksgiving has caused me to swear off ever marrying
Posted December 3rd, 2009
I called it "Nano Rhino".
Dear Readers,
I saw a popular movie this weekend.
In the world imagined by this popular movie, and also in the rest of the world (the real world), vampires are a metaphor for sexual threat. The two beautiful young stars are powerfully attracted to each other, but must never consummate their attraction, like celestial bodies that risk colliding and destroying each other on impact. "We can't get too close, because I might damage you permanently. Safe sex is no sex. Enjoy chastity, kids."
I get that, even if I don't get behind it. But then the movie presents a second love interest, a werewolf. And it's the same deal! "We can't get too close, because I might one day lose control and scar you forever."
The same moral! The same dilemma! From a narrative perspective, I cannot abide.
It should be: the vampire represents sexual repression, but the werewolf represents sexual expression. Now there's an interesting choice! One is the fantasy of everything pure and romantic, a breathless ideal behind immaculate moral glass. And the other is an exploration of that which is base and animal, alluring for opposite reasons but no less dangerous. And which to choose!
Instead, the choice the movie presents is, "cowl neck, or turtle neck? Eggshell, or off-white? Oh, the exquisite torment!"
comments are 'broken', mm? try clicking again
Posted November 23rd, 2009
Breaking Dawn. I'll see that too. What? What?
Dear Readers,
From the Department of Laments: "What's the point of a blog if no one reads it?" The internet, massive, virus-ridden and viral, teeming with friendly users, cursed with lurking trolls, should readily populate any blog with comments, trackbacks, pings, readers, stumble upons, blogrollers. Mm, and also diggs, boingboings, reddits. Dark green choropletic colors on every state and country of your Google Analytics visitors map.
"I don't want to be a blogger, I want to be a popular blogger!" It's kinda like when someone says they really like debating. "I don't really like debating, I like winning debates." Yes, of course!
What's the point of a blog no one reads? What's the point of Emily Dickinson's poems in a drawer, unread by outside eyes in her lifetime? Who cares if the tree plays the Goldberg Variations on harmonium on its way down, if no one ever hears it? I'm not sure. Popularity is a tricky one. It requires marshalling many other people in concert, and people are difficult to marshall.
As with all things, the best way is to do things that you like doing, enjoyment of the thing being the point unto itself, and avoid things that you like only conditionally. So maybe the point of a blog no one reads is that you like writing, and you like the form (the shortness) (the tagging) (tags! I love tags), and you like putting your words and ideas out into the æthernet, and if people read you then it's gravy, and if they don't then you still had a good time.
The other way to do it is to put a lot of work into becoming popular. Work. Yes yes. That's the other best way.
To sum up, my solutions to this and all problems are
- enjoy yourself
- work
- sleep more
- don't think too much
- laughter
- perspective
- friendship
- dreams
- inspiration
I don't have any other solutions. No wait, I do.
And also
ancient greek
blog posts transparently about something else
cags maps
blog posts transparently about something else
cags maps
Posted November 9th, 2009
Delhi was here for two mins! I hope you had a good time! That Indonesian Dear Reader bounced out in less than one second, though.
Dear Readers,
MOM'S CELL
We r at busboys n poets luv u
ME
So awesome! Love you too!
MOM'S CELL
Luv u mor mz
ME
Our mother has leapt past all intermediary stages and arrived at complete fluency in texting slang. Astonishing.
TOMAHAWK
I got a text from her today: wher r u. Beyond incredible.
if you think people don't change then you don't know enough people
monotype visit www.busboysandpoets.com
monotype visit www.busboysandpoets.com
Posted November 2nd, 2009
Dear Readers,
"Welcome to Pinkie's," she says. Her nametag reads "OGE".
"Is your name 'OH-gay'?" I ask.
Her eyes go wide, delight fills this lobby. "Yes!" she says. "That's never happened, for someone to get it right away like that." But she has the beauty and phonemes of West Africa, where the /g/s run hard and the syllable stresses come first, and an e, hanging out there like that, plays like a long a.
This moment neutralizes how bashful I felt at work last week when Roger quizzed me on the pronunciation of Kashyyyk, Twi'lek, Coruscant—all words I've read hundreds of time in the Star Wars novels growing up, but, more literate than my audio environment, never heard aloud, and so my brothers and I developed our own ways to say them.
The rules for speaking Star Wars are much less uniform than for African names. I will tell you that right now.
At Pinkie's, Oge leads me to the back room where Miss Annie will wax stray hair from my face, reshape my eyebrows. "This is your first time," Miss Annie asks, and oh, she already knows. Yes, this is my first time.
"You want fuller or thinner?" she asks.
"Fuller," I say. "I still want to look German."
"You want straight or arch?" she asks.
"I dunno, what do you think?"
"A little bit arch," she says, frowning and examining me, then smiling.
She dips a wand into the wax, then blows gently. When she applies it, I can feel how expert she is, it's unmistakable. "You are an artist!" I say, and she laughs. She waxes (which hurts) then tweezes (which hurts more). Tears stream, she makes no note or notice of them. I'm reminded of how much I like working with professionals of the body, that no matter what kind of freakishness you believe your body to have, what freaky things it does, you can be assured that to the seasoned professional of the body, you are not the freaky outlier.
"Ok!" she says, holds up the mirror. It is good.
On my way out, Oge offers me tea, water, chocolate, anything?
"I'm fine," I smile, walk happily back downhill, very conscious of how the air feels just above my eyes.
try anything twice
once to try, twice to know
once to try, twice to know
Posted October 28th, 2009
"Yeah, but aren't you a little short for a princess? Ooh!"
Dear Readers,
It's been confirmed. I have every single drum hit in Dreams by the Cranberries memorized. Not the crash and the high hat. Yes the tambourine.
When I lived in the Castro, a long section of my commute included the walk up the 17th Street hill. I would listen to certain songs over and over, isolating the drums this time, the bass the next time, until the song would be completely unwoven. Then I'd reknit it to my ear, but hear it new. Like starting a scarf and realizing there's a hole in an early row, and so you pull it out and do it up again. But when you do, it's a new scarf, it's not old-one-minus-hole. You can feel the difference.
The reason I don't listen to music like this on my current commute is that it usually involves specific dances for each part, which have evolved on their own with minimal conscious input from me, and my current commute is bus-only, and the social contract is under enough strain on the bus as it is, and I don't care to strain it further with the particular hand-wags and gestures required for Wake Up, or the shoulder shakes for If You Want Me to Stay.
rocktober how do you recognize a wizard
a: the wizard recognizes you
a: the wizard recognizes you
Posted October 10th, 2009
\\Y|M|
~~..'~
( \ )
\ =/
_\/_
/ -_
< \
\^-_-^\ \ iii
<\v =======uu==>
/ |
/ ^ |
/ / | )
_/_ /_ )_|__
/ /\
/___________/ |
\___________\_-
~~..'~
( \ )
\ =/
_\/_
/ -_
< \
\^-_-^\ \ iii
<\v =======uu==>
/ |
/ ^ |
/ / | )
_/_ /_ )_|__
/ /\
/___________/ |
\___________\_-
:: notes and dark arts ::
Dear Readers,
Things I nearly do at work, all the time:
- sign emails "Beast" instead of "Best"
- sign emails "erotica" instead of "erica"
- furrow and frown at my co-workers, say, "you realize that we work at a tech company, yes?"
i mean i nearly do them accidentally hello filemaker
fancy running into you here happy 999 everyone
fancy running into you here happy 999 everyone
Posted September 9th, 2009
Petroglyphs. I'll explain later.
:: unsolicited advice ::
Dear Readers,
Here is my heuristic for whether or not to get married: you take your closest friend, and assign a metric to how much your friend esteems you. Ok, and so the person you might marry should have esteem for you that blows your friend's esteem for you out of the water.
And vice versa, of course. Big esteem all around, that's my heuristic.
If you are already dating your closest friend, you're probably in pretty good shape then, and mazel, and let me know if you need a ukulele player at your wedding. I work for cake.
this is not directed at anyone in particular
Posted August 24th, 2009
Love in bloom.
:: qua fait ::
Dear Readers,
I have been using MS Paint to edit images sometimes. It's quick, it's effective.... I wish that it made me feel the way using Notepad or TextEdit makes me feel for HTML, that it was like a command line from which you could manipulate the pixels, this extremely lean, fast, hot-rod-body of a program. Instead it makes me feel guilty, but in a cookie jar way, in a "you'll never catch me, coppers!" way.
Early morning at da coffeeshop, people line up at the counter for coffee to-go. My old roommate said that the French don't understand coffee to-go. "If you don't have ten minutes to sit and enjoy your coffee, what are you living for?"
This is perhaps generalizable. "If you don't have [x] minutes to enjoy life [...]?" Or, more plainly, "if you don't enjoy life [...]?"
Enjoyable acitivies planned for today include:
- editing images in MS Paint
- coffee
- music
- cookies
- friendship
she declined to imitate a french accent when she quoted the french
class acts
class acts
Posted August 14th, 2009
I mostly like spraypaint and the pseudo-Bezier tool.
:: notes from the third eye ::
Dear Readers,
Every time I see one of those messenger bags with the red and black buckle, my eye interprets it first as the ThunderCats® logo. But it never is!
Some cartoons hold up on adult viewing. Some do not, and break your heart. Looking at you, Exo Squad. You too, Pirates of Dark Water. Though your opening credits still thrill!
had i the language at the time, i would have articulated the tension between snake eyes and storm shadow as unmistakably homoerotic
Posted August 6th, 2009
ThunderCats are loose!
:: please maintain yr focus ::
Dear Readers,
11:30pm, waiting at the bus stop for the 22, my ukulele is providing the background music for the couple breaking up to the left. At first, I thought they were in close romantic conference, but now it's clear that this is part ax of an an breakup series, where n is certainly greater than 1, but probably less than, say, 50. Probably.
"I don't want you spending money on me, your hard-earned money," he says.
"You're the love of my life," she says.
"I don't think you've met the love of your life," he says. They are drunk and emphatic.
"You should believe him," I do not say, and switch over to my sweetest strum.
"Let's just go to the place," she says. This line of code redirects him to a different part of the program, "ok," he says, suddenly accommodating, no more resistance. They get up, two same-shaped people in sweatshirts, and shuffle off to the place, to love and fight another day.
public transportation again savage beasts
Posted July 27th, 2009
:: rabbit in a hat ::
Dear Readers,
I was missing a word, couldn't think of it for days, and then looking through old journals the word came back to me via writing from September 2007: "phatic", that quality of conversation which is all form and no content. "How are you, Good and you, I'm good, That's good." The habits of small talk! These are vital incantations! The binding mesentaries of the social organ!
Do you suspect that the wizard's "hocus pocus" has power not because of the specific words, but because these sounds focus intent, such intent pre-lingual? The Jedi is silent in mancery—pure intent.
I indulge magical thinking (to the frustration of some of my materialist friends) that intent can bring opportunities to one's door, that wishing can in fact make it so, that (for example) my desire brought "phatic" back to me. But I suppose one must balance the wishing with some entrepreneurial vigor. Don't just sit there waiting for the word, start sifting through old collections of words! Don't just dream of that '64 Impala, Skee-lo! Go out and get it!
Also, Harry Potter fans: have you considered the similarities between "avada kedavra" and "abracadabra"? Or the Deathly Hollows and Rock, Paper, Scissors? Our world is knit-through with magic.
in the gutter looking at the stars
Posted July 16th, 2009
And here I thought he says "6'4" father".
:: remember that guy? ::
Dear Readers,
This photo appeared on the New York Times website five years ago. It shows the Clinton family, brilliant, gorgeous, smiling, at the Clinton Presidential Library opening. And then hey, hey look, there's Former President George leaning back, with a "huh?" expression, that facial expression which is the Least Library of all expressions.
I love this photo, but it disappeared from the front page of the Times within a few hours, and my best keyword searches could not retrieve it. Until last night, when a "clinton library opening" search pulled it up right there on the first page. Is there a word for this phenomenon, the turn-churning of information? Like tilling soil, interesting things come up on different passes of the plow, the tectonic movements of bits lending new insights into the [geologic] record?
In other news, it's Bastille Day. It's a drag that France is not into Muslim ladies wearing headscarves. I think about it, and all I feel is severe drag. Outlawing free practice of religion doesn't seem very freedom-fighty. Although demanding that people take off their clothes is perhaps very French?
In other other news, more spiders than usual have been spotted at The Cottage. You and I were both surprised by my most recent reaction to a spider in the bathroom. The reaction was respect, and shrug, and I let it go about the spiderly business of crawling around prescription medications and hair elastics unharmed, unimpeded. Do your thing, guy!
in the wake of unemployment email takes on new importance
please email me
please email me
Posted July 14th, 2009
One of these things is not like the others.
Answer: Bill (who is a bottom) (obv).
Answer: Bill (who is a bottom) (obv).
:: humans ::
Dear Readers,
At da coffeeshop, I examine my folder, which holds various lists and looseleaf papers. It's a my-old-workplace folder, lately
a my-house folder.
Generations of sticky labels on the tab show that it has been purposed and repurposed at least three times. The child sticker says "Board Pledges/Payments". Peel it off, the parent sticker says "Production". Peel it off, the grandfather sticker says "WHO CARES" in thick black Sharpie.
I let grandfather sticker ride.
you put your problems in the folder
Posted July 10th, 2009
Yes.
:: a view or prospect ::
Dear Readers,
Goat has standard issue Windows Vista installed. Vista likes to do things like freak out when a new program starts running. It dims the lights, stops you in the middle of whatever you're doing, throws up a big fraidy notice, "hey! Ah! Do you know about what's going on here? A program you want to install is going on here! It might be a virus? Is it a virus? I don't know!"
It's like being at a play, and alla sudden the house lights blare, a nheurvous stage manager comes out wringing his hands, bathed in hideous klieg, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, this never happens" [it happens all the time] "something could be very wrong, please, everyone stay calm, stay calm, I'm sorry," and then turns around, the actors are all on stage, patiently waiting for him to go away so that they can get the heck on with the show.
"Oh," he says. "Carry on."
Today is my first Monday of unemployment. Mon-employment. I have a meeting today about contract work, and a meeting on Wednesday about unpaid internship. Would you like to hear my joke about unpaid internship? "They don't want to pay me, but I don't want to pay them either, so it's fair." Other days this week, I have musical appointments, jamming and recording and concerting.
In the mornings I make vast lists—lists of people to contact about their contacts for work, lists of ways to cobble together income, lists of people to email, lists of songs to work on, lists of items for my portfolio. The lists are methodical, soothing; they are excellent defense. In the afternoons I do things on a list. When I complete a list, I write "AWESOME JOB!" on it.
I write the letter I will send to everyone when I land work in art and techmancery at Pixar, thanking them for believing in me, asking if there's any way that I can help them, that I am brimming over with love and sunshine. I can't tell if writing this letter is affirmational, helping the universe to knit this future, or delusional.
My mom sent me a card last week telling me how proud she is of me for going after my dream. In my last life I saved children from burning buildings while fighting crime, curing ailments, accumulating vast sums that I would then give away, volunteering in the most destitute sections of town, and making everyone around me feel very excellent. This is the only explanation for how I was born into the extravagant wealth of a loving and supportive family, and I am too grateful not to try to explain it.
stay cool honeybunny all under the umbrella of job creation
Posted July 7th, 2009
Big freaked out dialogue boxes.
:: notes from bosstown ::
Dear Readers,
I am in Terminal C of Boston Logan Airport, at the gate where the plane was originally scheduled to arrive. Soon, the lady will invite us to go to the other gate, where the plane will actually arrive. The plane is late.
This lateness is frustrating to many of us Oakland-bound travelers. But it's also a miracle that air travel works at all, and is so readily available. Delay is frustrating because the system is operating sub-optimally, but look upon this beautiful truth: the system even exists! Miraculous!
We Oakland-bound travelers seem unimpressed by this miracle, as a whole. Yes, a cursory survey of facial expressions confirms that the median level of "impressed" seems to be "not", as in "not impressed".
Two gentle men to my left are discussing problems of translating Shakespeare into German. It's hard to hear everything that they're saying, but one of them just used the word "matrix". The other has his MacBook open, displaying multiple black windows of TextMate. Matrix-man just used the word "meta-mathematics".
"You are perhaps playing fast and loose with language, sir," I do not loudly observe. "Actually, I'm desperate to be part of this conversation," I do not add.
pronounce it 'text maté' brains keeping my mouth shut
Posted June 23rd, 2009
How I feel on the inside right about now.
:: ten forward, good buddy ::
ME
At da coffeeshop yesterday, the staff was trying to figure out which character from "Star Trek: TNG" they each were.
GARY
Cool.
ME
Well and so, not cool, because they kept butchering canon, and my fingers kept involuntarily clenching. Talking about how Tasha Yar dies but then comes back (no she doesn't!), and then they made fun of Guinan (what kind of maniac makes fun of Guinan!).
GARY
I don't really know Star Trek, or what any of those people are.
ME
Yeah, but you understand "nerd", right? That uptight precise way of talking about something?
GARY
You mean like, "for God's sake it's Guinan! Guinan, ok? How can you call yourself a fan of a show if you can't even pronounce a character's name? Talk about a show you actually know, one that's superficial and obvious. Like 'Seinfeld', or 'Friends'. Not one cherished by millions of people."
Was it like that? Stop laughing, was it like that?
Was it like that? Stop laughing, was it like that?
international languages bloomsday
posted June 16th, 2009
"And how many Oscars have you won yes that's what I thought."
:: express yourself ::
Dear Readers,
I am leaving my job at the end of the month, sine-waving in this decision from complete confidence to "oh
dear lord what am I doing?" confusion. The belief that I will work at Pixar remains, that hope maintains, but
I am also prudent, and believe in giving myself other options, and so today I am going to an open house at
animation school.
Included in my list of questions is "what percentage of the student body is hot?" which is not at
all a joke question, but certainly made me laugh seeing it written there, next to other earnest questions
about the profile of the average student, and specifics about program areas, and what opportunities are
offered to interact with industry professionals, &c.
And, naturally, given that this is art school, the campus is rife with hot people. It starts
with the hot woman, hair bleach-blond and black, who smiles and gives me an orange sticker with my orientation
packet. It continues with the hot professors and tour leaders, all clad mostly in black, flirting with each
other in a natural, ambient-sexual-charge sort of way, hotness being just the template, the lingua franca, the
background processes of their operating system, the system in which they operate.
In the Games Animation section of orientation, I ask the lady professor (hot) (hair is pink, skirt is short) a
question: "I notice a lot of dudes' names on the demo reel, and can you speak to the gender imbalance, both
here at the school or—" I trail off. The professor is already nodding, she gets it.
"It's a lot of guys. And that's changing, but I'm used to being the only woman in the room, in the building,
in the town." ("Has she worked in San Jose, then...?" I wonder)
In the next room, a hot fellow-orientee comes over to close-aside me that it's not sexism, it's evolution that
explains gender discrepancy in the field, since animation and visual effects require an obsessive personality
type, and obsession is a liability to good mothering.
"Ah," I say. "You are unfamiliar with the Jewish people," I do not say.
This fellow-orientee is, as I say, hot. Bright eyes, jaunty cap, heterosexual presentation of self, and, unlike many of
the other orientees here (walking closely next to their parents, or high-school-age and holding hands with
their high-school-sweethearts), is closer to age 30 than to age 18. But the tiresomeness of the evolution
comment immediately rankles, is solvent to most of this hotness, even packaged as it is with creativity and
tight pants.
Should one propose that the major racial phenotypes are equal in aptitude, one is baseline, one is merely a modern and thinking person.
Should one propose that the major gender types are equal in aptitude, and ever'body gets real uptight. It's then that the
word "evolution" gets trotted out, and hunting and gathering, and uteruses, and maternity leave, and the human
male sex drive, notoriously all-powerful, insatiable, kai ta loipa.
It's not that I'm against making generalizations about women and men. I do it all the time! I love doing it!
No, it's the way "evolution" gets bandied about, imposing that scientific causality on the differences we
experience every day between genders.
It's no longer in fashion to cite racial phenotype as being associated with any kind of
evolutionarily-determined predisposition. And I look forward to the day
when it's just as uncool to use "evolution" as the theory behind gender imbalance, anywhere.
In the meantime, I will soon be unmarried, unemployed, and wearing a short skirt. In this way, I will be
undistinguished from many women and men in the city of San Francisco.
playing fast and loose with science
applying 10 billion years of ancient history to a paradigm that only makes sense in the modern
though perhaps modernity itself is an illusion?
linear time
remind me, who is it that gets uptight?
applying 10 billion years of ancient history to a paradigm that only makes sense in the modern
though perhaps modernity itself is an illusion?
linear time
remind me, who is it that gets uptight?
posted June 6th, 2009
A typically hot art student.
:: notes from third street ::
Dear Readers,
Jeanette is in her 60s, from Hong Kong, wearing a nice purple coat. We make eye contact on the Mission Rock train platform and she talks to me for the next hour: about the lecture series she was signed up for that day, about positive psychology, about the six PhDs she's dated, about her niece, about important "F's" of life ("Faith! Friends! Fucking!") about how much she enjoys music. Her need to feel heard is great, it surpasses my own, and I listen.
Jeanette repeats herself a lot—this is part of how I know she is crazy. She gives me a $2 bill (because it is beautiful, because it is special, like me), a piece of Werther's candy, and a few well-worn pieces of paper, photocopied information about how to be happy. She carries these papers, folders of them, in a briefcase. I put them in a folder of papers in my own briefcase.
Top happiness tricks and tips include: exercise, gratitude, meditation, and sleep.
Sometimes her touch makes me uncomfortable, sometimes I bask in her affection. Jeanette does a lot of touching—my upper arm, my elbow. She is single, has never been married, lives in the Tenderloin, has no children. She has me write the Chinese characters for "gold" and "needle", explains that these represent a phrase meaning roughly: teach your children well, or they will grow up with bad ideas and steal gold.
I draw a bird for her, and a smiling planet Saturn. She exclaims over them, tells me she'll give them to her niece, her niece will love them. The whole interaction is very strange and somehow very natural. She comes with me all the way to Ashby, we hug goodbye.
From Ashby I walk to Tina and Jackie's house, eat brunch with them and 20 or so of their friends. Tina listens to me, and does not always understand, and is comfortable with that. This is rare, and I treasure her.
people i meet on public transportation listening brunch
posted June 3rd, 2009
) "evidence")
Candy and information on happiness, small treasures.
"Teach your children well, or they will grow up with bad ideas and steal gold."
:: goat ::
Dear Readers,
On April 29th, my agèd Dell laptop (code name: Grandfather) passed away, finally and definitively. He lived to be seven years old, which I think is maybe 80 in laptop years (laptops, like bodies, are not meant to last forever). In an analogy that pleased some and perplexed others, it seemed that it was like the end of life for a human grandfather. The battery had long since run down, I had to hook him up to A/C current or he'd go into a diabetic coma. There were strokes, viruses, worms. I backed up frequently, taking down his oral history as often and thoroughly as possible, anticipating the end.
The first time he wouldn't turn on properly, we thought it might be in his brains and ran a series of thorough diagnostic tests, but further inspection led to the conclusion that it was mechanical. The wires at the hinge were worn out, and not-to-be-repaired.
Michael spent several hours hunched on the floor and Phillips screwdriving, crouched simian and sapient, getting to the heart of the problem.
ME
This is like watching Miracle Max trying to bring the Almost Dead back to life.
MICHAEL
I think a better analogy is: we made the computer, so this is more like God bringing something back to life.
But surgery morphed into a late-night autopsy, in the morning the husk of my computer (the soul long-departed) was left with a note, "Sorry, still broken".
Computer-less, I started thinking of computers as being like magical familiars, that you are still a wizard if your cat or your goat dies, it's ok. But you need a new one. Like, right away. A shipping/billing address discrepancy delayed the arrival of my new laptop (code name: Goat) until just yesterday.
A month without a computer has been good for me, severely limiting time spent in the metaverse, zombie-eyed, devouring link upon link; now I go home after work and read books and also cook and write (on paper). But animation! I've missed animation! And the Stillwalker tripods through my thoughts...
In other news, Nikkita reports that that she is building me a beautiful machine, real blogging code. Web 2.0 comes to ericaricardo.com! It's a new era of technology here at headquarters.
analogies that make people uncomfortable billy crystal i've been lifting weights
posted May 30th, 2009
Diagnosis from Miracle Michael.
The New One, still in boxed form.
:: two thousand miles away ::
Dear Readers,
I'm going to Chicago for a couple weeks. And during that time, I will be relying on the automated processes of webcomicsnation.com to power
Up at Dawn Crook Society.
Up at Dawn Crook Society.
If you are in Chicago, email me with instructions as to how I can be close to you.
CHI in my EYE everyone likes short blog posts i just want to animate all day long
posted April 20th, 2009
:: so long, and thanks ::
Dear Readers,
On May 11th, postage stamps get upped to $.44. You know what that means. It means that a first class letter is no longer the number of cents that is the number that is the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything. But it works out, for those of us with a back-stash of 1¢'ers to use. Mine have birds Tiffany lamps on them. They'll go nicely with my Frank Sinatra or Black History Month stamps.
Hey and for those knowing, and caring, mentioned before that I have no idea what I am doing vis à vis using databases and "real" website skills but one thing I do know is the pointing and grunting of computing and there has certainly been some pointing and grunting while navigating the blinky clicky Martian territory that is the GoDaddy.com interface, and the sterile, baffling "I know what those words mean but together they don't make any sense" landscape of phpMyAdmin. Let's not talk about that now. Yes hush now.
i like birds mail for snails
posted April 14th, 2009
:: but i call it 'mmm sequel' ::
Dear Readers,
Mm so just kiddin'. Just kiddin'. I'ma power this in Wordpress. Soons I figure out how. Nikkita was showing me some of where the system sits, codes laid deep in Courier New and strange syntax and unfamiliar punctuation. Remembered when basic-level HTML felt that way, when I was illiterate and couldn't see the matrix, how it appeared as magic. Feeling that same way now about MySQL, except that I can approach it with confidence, that this is just a language, that I know how to learn languages, I've done it before, in fact. The way that if you know English, French, and Spanish, taking on German doesn't seem so frightening.
Not that I know the English, French, and Spanish of computing. More like I know the grunting and pointing of computing. But, as we all know well, grunting and pointing can get you far in the world. "[grunt] [point at water glass]" "[grunt] [change this font color]"
Right now, am waiting for something having to do with how my site is hosted to upgrade from II6 to II7. Don't know what these letters mean. Know what the word "upgrade" means. Also the word "waiting". The ultimate quest is to power this page that you are on right now (and later, most of this site) with the beautiful and elegant and comment-rific and best-practical Wordpress interface. This upgrade is mini-quest five out of like fifty before that happens. Or five out of ten, maybe. There is a journey ahead, but as with all journeys, it's less important to know the entire path, and much more important to know the next step.
It occurred to me the other day that Han and Luke save the galaxy without particularly meaning to at the start. Just: at every step along the way, every branch of the decision tree, they said "yes".
I'm done resisting you, modern Web. I'm done with my arcane, Byzantine adherence to updating this site lovingly hand-codingly. There are all manner of other incantations to run from a plaintext editor, all manner of problems to solve by virtue of working on a Windows machine, as opposed to Mac or Linux. I have a WAMP stack. You know what they do to wamps on Tatooine? They shoot them, that's what.
episode iv my sequel king graham face your fear
posted April 12th, 2009
:: what, me wordpress? ::
Dear Readers,
I should really power this with Wordpress or something. Lovingly hand-coding is swell, but the swelling goes down. Except when it doesn't. Sometimes it just stays. Like a growth. Yes, this continued practice of doing my site by hand is growth, people.
But a for-real blog engine. That would be great. Instead I'm going to do it my own janky way. Like: there'll be tags at the bottom, but they won't link to anything. We'll all try to click them, maddeningly.
Ok deal: I'll never use a tag more than once. SOLVED.
solutions janky hello world i never liked 'mad' ok that's not true i liked spy vs. spy
posted April 10th, 2009
