Soul for Sale

Set to the song "Soul for Sale," from the San Diego band Audition Laboratory, I practiced my voice-over voice.

It's the Christmas shoppping season. Is YOUR soul for sale?

and if you buy a soul on the Internet, do you have to provide any identification?

and if you sell a soul on the Internet, you have to provide a receipt?

and is there a big paperwork mess if there is no soul in your socket when you die?

If you sell your soul, and then the person who bought it wins the lottery, are you entitled to 10%?

but what if the numbers the person sent were heaven sent?

heaven sent to you! Not to the person who bought your soul and an REI tent.

Just by coincidence, I shot the video that comes up next in the YouTube window...the one that says Audition Lab at JSOR

Man Crush

I just got an email from a cousin in Kansas City that included the phrase “man crush.” She used the phrase to describe a situation in which a straight man meets another straight man and totally falls for some aspect of his “manliness.”

“I think [they] had man crushes on each other. Dr. xxx is a military physician and his truck looked like a Cabela's super store. He had guns as toys and all the good stuff. He brought in a sniper rifle that they had to shoot.”

And speaking of strange phrases, I got an email today with the phrase "phoner" with the meaning of a phone interview. I think this is funny because the most directly related word I can think of is "nooner" and as far as I can tell, "nooners" typically involve more than an interview.

On second thought, I wonder if I am being too restricted with my "man crush" definition. I don't think the "man crush" phenomenon must be restricted to hetero-hetero meetings. But I do think the origin of the attraction between the two men must be something other than the desire for a "nooner."

San Diego Sunset

Ivano just called and was like "look out the window! can you see the clouds?" I could. I did. I photographed. I posted. I'm here.

and I'm bummed that I haven't been posting very much lately, but I'm working on the paper version of the xmas letter and that's taking my time. And today after work, I need to mail some Meyer Lemons to Kansas City, clean the bathroom and go to the grocery store. And hopefully we can do a little yoga before bed.

Post-Thanksgiving Era

Linens and Things opened at 5 AM on the day after Thanksgiving. I was sleeping, but I bet those door busters were worth busting doors for.

I wonder if Linens and Things stocks the Miracle Tree that I saw being driven to a home in Twenty Nine Palms.

thanksgiving music

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. However, if you look around (even the grocery store) you might think it's December 21 rather than November 21. My friend Sarah complained that she couldn't find a Thanksgiving coloring book for her daughter. And where are the Thanksgiving decorations? Sure, Whole Foods had chocolate turkeys for sale...but what does a chocolate mold in the shape of a bloated turkey have to do with being thankful?

Today, I accidentally stumbled on what turns out to be an amazing Thanksgiving soundtrack. It's Pete Seeger's "American Industrial Ballads," put out by Smithsonian Folkways.

As Irwin Silber's liner notes say, "The songs themselves are an American treasure. Many are priceless historical documents, recalling events and personalities that might otherwise have been lost or, at best, kept alive in the footnotes of academic theses They are also works of art whose capacity to evoke the passions which first produced them has not diminished over the years."

Track 10 is fascinating on at least one additional level. Listening to this song, I kept saying, "My god, this is totally Will Oldham's Palace Music"

The fact that so many of the songs reference food -- really, the lack thereof -- makes these even better Thanksgiving songs.

"10 cent cotton and 40 cent meat, how in the world can a poor man eat?"

another song references "fatback pork and pinto beans, cook me up a mess of collard greens" (but not in a good way)

"corn bins empty and the cows gone dry"

"I'm tired of living on dried beef and tomatoes. I'm going away."

Happy Thanksgiving.

By the way, I made this sweet potato callerole this evening...for eating tomorrow. I also made corn bread, apple/cranberry crisp and the pink stuff (fresh cranberries, marshmallow, cool whip, sugar and crushed pineapple)

Reindeer Hummingbird

Here is the first known documentation of a rare and elusive creature, the Reindeer Hummingbird. It feeds on the carrot-studded fenced-off overpasses so prevalent in Southern California.

fruit leatHER

Hot Dog! For World AIDS day at UCSD, you can get yourself a condom rose or a dental dam lilly (dental dam lilly, first photo). I made a few of each today after work. Aside from being generally fascinated by the whole dental dam deal, I'm struck by how much they look like packaged fruit leather (see lower photo for a side by side comparison). This whole dental dam thing confirmed my unconscious suspicion that fruit leathers are much too small. Who just eats one fruit leather? Walking home from Trader Joe's in Alexandria, VA I used to eat two or three, at least. I challenge the sex-positive MBAs of the world to develop the Subaru of fruit leathers. A big wide fruit leather with the dimensions of a dental dam called something cute like "fruit leatHER: dried fruit so wet you can taste it." From what I gather, "dental barrier" is the more PC or accurate term (not sure if this is right or not. any ideas?) One of the dental dam making undergrads who seemed to have some experience with them used the term Dental Dam in a cool way. to express just how fine a certain female might look to her, she exclaimed "dental DAMN!" with the stress on "damn." And that reminded me of a party that my friend Brian M. from Lincoln wanted to have to celebrate the opening of an absurd bridge across interstate 70 in the middle of Nebraska. He wanted to call it "pow WOW" and have it be an over the top campy Native American party, attended by red-neck Nebraskans who are more likely to use derogatory terms like"injuns" than anything close to the term "Native American." And by the way, that female undergrad I mentioned was totally right on on a totally different subject. She complained that the meat eaters at the condom-rose/dental-dam-lilly making party were eating all the vegetarian pizza and leaving the meaty pizza to congeal in its muscular juices. I've been bitching about this for years. Put any group of vegetarians and omnivores together and the veggi pizza will always dissappear first (unless of course you are attending a party such as "pow WOW!" in which case, the veggi pizza might be burned at the stake.)

red eye sunrise

The great thing about a red eye with a layover at OHare is that you get to watch the sun rise over the Great Plains.

Insert a bit of Star Wars "The Empire Strikes Back" nostalgia to the quiet sun rise over Chicago. Planes were being de-iced. All I could think about was the icy fortress that gets destroyed by the bad guys at the beginning of the second Star Wars flick. The cherry picker looking machines in the lower photo are the de-icers, as far as I can tell.

The silent sunrise over America's Heartland was also partially marred by the incessant CNN news casters who talked about the Chinese toy to date rape drug conversion that was occurring in playrooms across the country.

And then there was the high school girl who was hit by a deer during a cross country race.

The silent sun rose as a well dressed man in his 40s shamelessly checked out a beautiful young woman all curled up on an airport bench drinking coffee. He stared and stared. Strutted and stared. Walked and stared. Talked and stared. And it was 4:40 in the morning.

At the McDonalds in OHare at 3:30, pancakes are popular. As are sausage biscuits with egg. But as the pair of well-to-do baby booming African American couples next to me found out the hard way, you can not find a tooth pick in O Hare airport at that hour.

Laughing Laughing Almost Crapping

The blueberry muffin said to the corn muffin, "It's getting hot in here!"

The corn muffin said, "Oh my god!!! A talking muffin!!!"

Daniel Kelly and Plato

Kelly and I managed to meet up for lunch in College Park on Tuesday. It was so nice to see her in person. This is the Kelly whose blog I've mentioned here and here.

Prior to this week, I had not been back to DC since Memorial Day weekend. During that trip, i stopped by Kelly and Todd's cool farm house in College Park to catch up. (btw, this picture at the other side of the previous link is from way more than 6 months ago!) That was before I started this blog. And during that visit, Kelly convinced me to try out the whole blogging thing. And here I am. What's nice is that when I saw Kelly this week, there were a bunch of things that we didn't need to catch up on because we'd been following the other person's blog.

I'm not saying the blogs are all-encompassing, or that there are not many things that we talked about that are SO not going on this blog right now, but I am saying that I wish I knew as much about the daily goings on of my other family members (chosen and inherited) as I do about Kelly and her crew. If blogs help keep people connected, then long live the blog (until the next technology comes out. There will be a time when people say, "remember when people used to blog as a way to stay in touch. That's so weird! Now that we teleport, the idea of writing and photographing your life sounds so strange. You can just invite others to just show up!)

After lunch we went back to her office and I got a quick visit with some plants that I had given Kelly back when we shared an office wall on the 12th floor of 1200 New York Ave NW Washington DC 20005 at AAAS.

Me my mom and my brother's son.

Me my mom and my brother's son.

He is at the stage where he seems to say everything that pops into his mind. He is a running commentary of wherever he is.

We took him to the Edward Hopper show at the National Gallery of Art on Monday. He narrated the show. In a room with many paintings of women he said, "There is a lady. and another one. and another one. and another one."

Other people at the show just started laughing and smiling. I rather enjoyed his commentary. It's so easy to get caught up in the imagined complexities of life. It was refreshing to have someone remind me that the Edward Hopper show is just a bunch of painted people.

He also thought the lighthouses in the paintings were all renderings of the DC Capitol building, which is funny in an inside-the-beltway kind of way.

Dreaming of the Dreamery

Douglas and I drove to Del Ray last Sunday night for our custard fix. In the end, we got a lot more than custard. As we sat there and enjoyed the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the Del Ray Dreamery (now called The Dairy Godmother due to the threat of a lawsuit from some big ice cream company that owned the name "Dreamery.") But what was better than the two servings of custard I devoured was the warm and fuzzy feeling of connection I felt by just sitting across the talble from Douglas as one of our very favorite DC haunts. And if you're wondering what I had. Serving #1: a scoop of vanilla custard, a scoop of cranberry sorbet and a scoop of mango lassi sorbet. Serving #2: two scoops of chocolate custard and a home made almond flavored cookie topped with pine nuts.

DK in DC

I was back in DC last week, seeing family and friends. It was a marathon. An enjoyable marathon with fantastic trees in the background, foreground and in between -- but a marathon nonetheless. I apologize in advance for the fact that I didn't get to see everyone that I had hoped to.

Want to know how my last morning in DC went?

7:45 AM My cell phone alarm starts buzzing. I finally get up at 8 and immediately start packing.But this is not normal packing. This packing involves rummaging through boxes in a walk-in closet lookingfor things I want to take back to San Diego. I found a baby-blue retro suit, and my thre short-sleevedpark ranger shirts. I also found a wool turtleneck. Too bad it was full of moth-eaten holes. And doubletoo bad that I didn't notice the holes till yesterday when I put it on in my attempt to find some clothes for work that did not need to be ironed.

9:15 My dad drives me to my aunt Peggy's house.

12:30 My aunt peggy drives me to my aunt Pattie's house.

1:30 My aunt Pattie drives me to the Forest Glen metro station.

2:22 I pop out of the Metro at Farragut North (red line) and meet douglas for a hug and a quite momentin a garden outside the the National Geographic building.

2:40 Douglas walks me to the Farragut West station on the blue line. I train it to National Airport. NO, it's not called Ronald Reagan NationalAirport, or Reagan National or Reagan. It's just called National. And if you must add some Reagan to the name,call it RFN or Reagan Fucking National. I'm still pissed they gave the airport to Reagan's memory.

3:00 Find out that my flight is delayed and that I will miss my connection in Dallas and that I'll be arriving at home 3 hourslater than planned. but it's all good. there are lots of straight business travelling men to watch. Their fingers are so quickon their Blackberries. I wonder how they do with the original "hand held device."

Golden Snow Globe?

From a distance, I thought this was a golden blow-up snow globe. The kind that should be placed in the front yard of this house at any moment...if the gods of gaudy commercialism listen to me at all. Problemo. I recently heard that the gods of gaudy commercialism [ggc] outsourced all their listening-to-mortals duties to a company that uses machine learning algorithms to listen for potential business ideas. The CEO of the company hands over these ideas to a get-rich-quick beer-drinking buddy who provides -- in return for each potentialy lucrative idea -- 5 complementary minutes with his shady in-house accountant. This creative number cruncher runs the beer-drinking buddy's back-yard fish farming company. (He'll pay you 1,000 bucks a month to raise catfish in your backyard pond and launder money through your kid's college fund.) All this to say that the gods of gaudy commercialism are M.I.A. in a big way. And that means you get no say in just how gaudy and tactless Christmas commercialism and marketing will get this year. It's wide open. Even though the gods of gaudy commercialism are not massaging commercial Christmas activity in any way these days, Jingle Bells is not yet playing in every store in the Western hemisphere. I haven't seen mamma kissin' Santa Claus...yet. Why is that? I don't know. Maybe there really is a point at which it's too early to go whole hog into Christmas. Maybe we need some marketing lubrication before our collective psyche can really handle three straight weeks of rudolph and santa. Maybe we NEED to go to jamba juice on November 8 and be greeted with "Merry citrus!" signs and "Its beginning to sip a lot like Christmas!" banners.

Maybe it's like vaccine coverage. Not everyone needs the Merry citrus messaging...just a critial mass.

And if the critical mass is adequately lubricated early enough, we can start thinking about the next major step in the downfall of western civiliaztion as we know it: Moving Thanksgiving from the fourth Thursday of November to the second.

Today happens to be the second Thursday of November. Happy New Thanksgiving. Tomorrow is the official start of the New Official Christmas Shopping Season. You only have a few hours to gather up your yoga mats, faux Mexican blankets and outdoor-strength fondue kits and head to WalMart to wait in line for a $19 DVD player.

Meditation Counterpose

The people who talk about sex all the time are very often the people who are not having much sex. Similarly, the people who talk about yoga and meditation are often times the people who most need it (for a variety of reasons). I say this because I went to a meditaion class last night and I want to tell you about it. Get it? It's a free meditation class at a studio near the home made ice cream place that I haven't blogged about yet. Stay tuned for that. Anyway, the studio is called Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga. The guy who runs it is a student of Sri Chinmoy. He starts out with a little introduction to what meditation can be. Then he leads the class with guided imagry that starts with physical relaxation, then moves to sensory awarenesss (vision, hearing, touch). Next, you choose some aspect of the human heart (metaphorical sense) that you want to focus on for the next few minutes. You visualize that idea as you inhale, and then feel it as you exhale. And during that time, you realize just how many pins and needles can fit into your right big toe. But before you know it, you're done. Oh, and flute music is playing all the while. Last night, at the end, each person in the class said their first name and what aspect of the heart he or she was focused on. As I walked to work this morning, it occured to me that this list would make a nice holiday greeting. Something like: "Wishing you and yours peace, serenity, gratitute, love, wisdom, focus, balance, acceptance, forgiveness and color."

Blingle Bells Blingle Bells Blingle all the way!

Give the gift of bling...to your coworkers?!

A San Diego jewlery dot com that focuses on celebrity knock off jewlery suggests that we use our office Secret Santa opportunities to give cube buds the gift of bling. Cubic zirconia (CZ) for everyone in my cube. I'm down with that.

The Mariah Carey Inspired Pave CZ Butterfly Ring is always a crowd pleaser.

I'm laughing at the absurding of "Secret Santa marketing."

I love how honest they are about things on this site, http://www.emitation.com/ .

For example, they tell you to "steal the style!" Literally.

Steal the Style - Angelina Jolie at the 2007 Venice Film Festival

Steal the Style - Paris Hilton's Nautical Bling

I don't know the exact environmental/political/human toll that cubic zirconium takes on the world, but it can't be nearly as bad as most diamonds are. So go on with your CZ nautical bling!

Long Beach. Where is your Xmas Spirit?

Long beach has not started decorating for Christmas yet.

I'm thinking about filing a complaint with the proper city officials.

I feel discriminated against.

It's freaking November 4.

Where is the tinsel?

Los Angeles to the north doesn't have any problems.

There are billboards all over the place with pictures of elephants dressed in Christmas garb with captions saying "Who Needs Reindeer?!"

It's a bit ironic for my taste. But at least it's holiday related.

Come on, Long Beach!

There are plenty of ways to do it.

For example, the blue pickup truck above is the PERFECT candidate for an evergreen wreath on the front grill. Maybe one of those with the lights that pull electricity from the battery so they light up at night.

The dude in the cowboy hat could easly attacth a sprig of holly or mistletoe to the brim.

Would that be so hard for him?

What's a holiday without the trim?

Buck Wild Dollar Store. Come on!!!!! Even a dead copyriter could help you out on this one:

"Have a Buck Wild Christmas!"

"Buck Wild Holiday Decor!"

"Go Buck Wild for the Baby Christ Child!"

"A Male Reindeer is a Buck. We've got inflatable bucks for a buck. Come load your Truck!"

Laffy Taffy Update:

What kind of reindeer dental work can you get for a dollar?

Answer: buck teeth

Cowbwebs Gotta Go!!!!!

If these spider webs are not down by next week. I'm going to take them down myself. This is OUTRAGEOUS. There are ONLY 52 days before Christmas and someone has the gaul to have Halloween-related decor on their house. I'm livid. How dare they!!!! Think of the children! And that yellow caution tape mocks me with its exclamatory yellow. There is no twinkle. No red and white spiraling cane. No blow up snowman. No life. No love. No hope. All I can do is keep pushing to create New Halloween on Oct 3.

Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive.

Drive. Drive.

Mulholland Drive.

Where is the 405?

It's down the hill.

Off Mulholland Drive.

Am I dead or am I alive?

Not sure. It's foggy on Mulholland Drive.

An Irish woman living south of London found it strange that someone would commit suicide during their lunch hour.

"During lunch? Really! I didn't know people killed themselves during lunch," she said.

Mulholland Drive.

Mulholland Drive.

What does it mean to survive?

To make it back to Mulholland Drive.

christmas IS coming

Finally, Halloween is over. Now there is nothing to get in the way of full-on pre-Thanksgiving Christmas preparation. Halloween is such a drag. If we got rid of Halloween, there would be no reason to NOT start making christmas cookies on like Oct 29. Right now, you just can't make Christmas cookies in October. You just can't. Therefore, I suggest we move Halloween back to Oct 3. Exactly one month after Labor Day. Hello. Halloween is mostly about adults dressing slutty and kids knocking on doors and getting candy. Is there any reason that can't be done in early October? I didn't think so. Okay. Okay. Okay. For the Catholics out there, we need to move All Souls Day to Oct 4, so that it comes the day after New Halloween. Why? Cuz all the kids that go to Catholic elementary school get the day after Halloween off b/c it's a "holy day of obligation." I think its really a hole-y day of obligation in that we are obligated to eat so much candy that we put holes in our teeth. My point, however, is that the day after Halloween is traditionally not a school day for the catholic school set. And I'd hate to deprive those already tortured kids of that holiday just so people like me can start shopping for Santa sweaters in October without feeling embarrassed. Then there is the whole Day of the Dead thing. I'm not sure exactly how to handle that one. I'll leave it up to Kelly to decide if day of the dead moves up to follow New Halloween or if it should stay put. Personally, I don't think it's a deal breaker. I can contemplate those who have gone to the great beyond while I'm busy deciding which 8 slice bagle toaster to add to my alternate Christmas list. What is an alternate Christmas list, you ask? It's the list you draw from about Nov 20, when you have that feeling that everything you put on lists A1-A18 will be delivered to you from Santa via UPS by Dec 22. I call it a holiday back up plan. You can never get too much stuff. Never can you get enough industrial toasters, blenders that create hurricane winds within your kitchen, platters for cinnamon rolls that you'll never EVER make and ill-fitting fleece. Did I mention that New Halloween would also boost holiday weight gain by extending the window in which holiday parties can be thrown? And this would prompt the purchase of more sweat shop produced elastic fat pants from China. And we all know how great it is to keep the sweat shops as busy as possible. Working at a sweat shop is like Bikram yoga for the workers, right? They want to work in those conditions, right? You have to like major in sweat shop studies, right? They like it, right? We only buy so much stuff because we don't want to disappoint the sweat-shop workers, right? And we allow toxic plastic-softeners in our toys because we're afraid that if we don't use all the potentially testosterone-blocking plastic additives, then the price for such "commodity chemicals" will be so low (due to high supply levels) that poor Chinese babies might find said plastic softeners in their rubber duckies, right? That's what I thought. We're like totally altruistic.

Happy Birthday Masha

This avacado cupcake was made with the super jumbo Reed avacado grown in a small farm in San Diego county.

Halloween without a bra

Sometimes you gotta just face the fact that some people are better at impersonating Janet Reno that you are.

I wore that Janet Reno dress last year and thought I was a damn good Janet. And then my friend Jonathan put on the dress and it was pretty clear who the real Janet Reno was in the house.

At the same time, his wife, Te, put on Ivano's dad's blacksmiths overalls and hat. Pretty cute, huh? I'm sure Ivano's dad looked pretty slick in them too, back in the day. A man in those overalls giving centuries-old buildings in Milan new copper roofing and wrought iron detailing.