from "Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass"

We all know that time, this undisciplined element, holds itself within bounds but precariously, thanks to unceasing cultivation, meticulous care, and a continuous regulation and correction of tis excesses. Free of this vigilance, it immediately begins to do tricks, run wild, play irresponsible practical jokes, and indulge in crazy clowning. The incongruity of our private times becomes evident.

--Bruno Schulz

Try it, you' ll like it.

THE BPA 'TOE JAM' FEAT. DAVID BYRNE & DIZZEE RASCAL

pictures out?

hmm... doesn't like my pictures today.  (Perhaps, it is a clue to get outside and enjoy the evening.)

beautiful day & new bike

Do I really need to say more?  The day was gorgeous, and I spent part of it biking around here.  The pic is from Discovery Park, and the beach in the distance I had visited earlier in the day.

going with the crowd

In what seems like an endeavor to merge with the fitness thing surrounding my friends, I went to the gym and ran a couple of miles on the treadmill--not real fast, but it is a start.  (I am thinking about buying a bike, too.)

Briz Brews

After much talking about it, Kip and I finally got together and brewed some beer.  It is supposed to be an Amber, so we will see how it goes.  Overall, we think it went well, despite the boil over that made a mess of my stove.  The beer is now in the fermenter fermenting and becoming something other than some sort of grain tea.  The initial part didn't really take that long, though having a carboy in my kitchen right now, as I thought during the first few days of intense fermentation, I might as well leave it there, moving it Sunday or Monday to someplace a little less inconvenient.
The day here is supposed to be gorgeous, and the morning certainly is, but I am doing a bit of laundry now, so I don't scramble tomorrow to accomplish that same bit that will still need to be done.  (The apartment has that peculiar fermented odor, though I hope to have that gone when I finally remove the overflow jar.)

I don't have anything specific planned for the weekend, which should hopefully allow me to get out and do something, as long as it doesn't have the negative effect of allowing me to do nothing.  I guess I could take a few more pictures of the beer fermenting, though I am thinking my reader might liken that to watching paint dry, though the chemical process here is absolutely remarkable, remember, this is beer.

For the record, I didn't do much reading last night except the recipe, over and over again, wondering if I was going to mess it up.  Messing up the first batch is a concern of mine, partly because if it isn't very good, I wonder if there will still be enthusiasm to make more.  Kip has had this equipment since sometime last year, and brought it over in March or April, so it has been a while it getting all the pieces to fit.  Hopefully, it won't take us as long to find time for the bottling.

**Update** I just got off the phone with Kip.  It seems the biggest concern is the age of the ingredients we used.  It seems this was a concern of Kip's though it had never crossed my mind.

Merge with previous?

I am very glad that no one recommended Windows Vista to me.  As I said earlier, it isn't very cooperative for me.  I tried restoring it to several points prior to when I began experiencing problems, but none of those points worked, so I threw my hands up and sent it back to the beginning and restored factory settings.  How many hardware & peripheral device companies does Microsoft own stock in?  I have a great big hard drive on the pc, but having wiped it twice in two months, I am not anxious to put anything on it because I don't really want to continually replace it.  With truth I can say I do not ever recall having this many problems with a computer that was less than six months old.  If Dave hadn't been having similar nightmares with his Vista laptop, perhaps I would say the combination of things on my computer was to blame, but there are way too many reported problems for me to lob the blame on a lemon of a computer.  All of the time tonight post dinner has really been spent trying to fix the stupid computer, prior to giving up at 8, and deciding it just needed to be restored to factory settings.  I can't honestly believe that Microsoft thinks Vista is an improvement over any aspect of XP (aside from financially, due to sales).  Microsoft's already spotty OS reputation has to be in tatters now, as I haven't found one good review of Vista, and even Steve Ballmer admitted it was a work in progress.  Between them and Vista and Boeing and the 787, the Seattle economy is doomed.

Vista Idiocy

I am honestly beginning to believe that Windows 3.1 or 95, perhaps even Me is better than Vista.  As an operating system, one would hope it would work, at minimum, more reliably than that which it replaced.  Is there anyway to get a class action suit against Microsoft for releasing garbage to the public?  Really, is there much more idiocy than a program that repeatedly tells you that it had made a critical error and shuts down.  None of the repair modules have worked, and I am wondering why I even have a hard drive that is larger than the absolute minimum Vista requires, because I will likely have to wipe the thing and return it to its original factory condition, meaning any pictures, music, and whatnot will be lost.  I have had the machine since April, and this is the second time I have had this problem.  The last time was immediately after an update, and I have a little updates available icon showing, but my computer shuts off to fast for me to make any use of it.  Microsoft really makes crap product and I am very happy that I bought a MacBook, if for no other reason than I can use it to figure out how to fix my even newer desktop.

More parade and other observations

Flying Spaghetti Monster anyone?  It is nice that he is flanked and escorted by pirates in a parade that also had unicorns. 

One other observation is that I have only had one month with more posts than this one, back in January.  This is not a new leaf, since I am finally posting material previously written, but it is something.  Readable, dull, boring, unremarkable... haven't a clue, as I am not going for any of those, just putting stuff down.  Again, with a single reader, I don't much worry about those things.  All I hope is that with lots of visual stimulus, the reader keeps coming back.  All that said, as I close so many of these things, it is time to find something to eat, though dinner is in the oven with a few minutes left to cook.

Parade Picture and another old post never posted

My computer is saying there is a network called freeWiFi, but no signal, so here I go with writing first and uploading second. In one of those sparks of brilliance as my stomach growled on the bus, it occurred that perhaps I wouldn't be so poorly disposed to the TSA if I actually had a full stomach. Of course after I unpack (explode) my bag into three containers, because of shoes, laptop, quart bag of toiletries, jacket, and lastly my ball cap, my opinion of their job doesn't change, but the people in the uniform were nice, so it wasn't bad, at least here.

I am having one last Black Butte Porter before heading to the land of boring beer, as it boggles my mind to think there might be a good place for beer in Gatlinburg, TN. Really, I am not a beer snob, but not much can be said for Miller or Budweiser when it comes to flavor, though there are rumors of efforts at improvement, of which, Michelob Amber is the most concrete proof. With my 10:45 a.m. beer, I am having a burger and fries, and paying dearly for the privilege, but the atmosphere is better here than in the place down the way where I could get a 7" personal pizza for $8.

(A porter at this hour is nothing as I just heard someone order a Mai Tai.)

Perhaps because I seldom do "sit down" meals in the airport, I never noticed the switch to plastic. My burger came with a plastic knife, which I guess is to prevent someone from buying lunch and taking the silverware with on the flight to terrorize the other passengers, though in truth, if it is on a flight with food, the others would be jealous that this guy didn't have to use the ingeniously designed plastic airline utensils.

Gawain and the Green Knight

I am finally getting around to reading this poem.  I bought the Armitage translation back in December after reading good reviews.  It does seem that around the solstice is a good time to read it, though when Dave read it back in December would have been better, for that is the beginning of the tale.  Fitt the first has been incredible, and I am looking forward to the rest of them.

Written June 9th, posted today

Life has a way of letting things get lost in the shuffle. There have been a few things I wanted to be when I grew up, and none of them have come to fruition. The artist, whether writer or painter, well, the artist got lost in technique and practice. Unlike Van Gogh, I have not been driven to do either of them. I enjoy working at them, but if something distracts me, then I am likely to off and do that. Perhaps the worst thing about working that way is that nothing gets done--nothing more than a hobbiest painter or writer, and while some hobbiests can be quite good, the practice is still just a hobby.

Prompting this mess of self-reflection is a sick day and me trying to figure out what is going on. Too often I think I missed a boat somewhere or made the proverbial left when it should have been a right, though by no means has hilarity ensued.

My reading has been overtaken by the shadow of J.L. Borges. As I read Claudio Magris' Danube, I wonder if the books and authors he mentions are real. I feel a certainty the river itself and the cities on its banks exist, but books he mentions, are they real, and are they any less real because I know nothing of them. I am sure it is something that matters not, because if the books he mentions aren't real, there certainly must exist some book on a very similar topic, if not the exact same one.

I guess if I considered myself a painter or a writer, then I would do the respective activity, and that by not considering myself one, I curse myself to not doing the respective activity with any degree of regularity that would allow me to improve. Back and forth, at the mercy of a label, and of what you choose to call yourself, which makes me wonder how much self-determination is really involved in one's success. Does one make a labeling decision on one's own, or does one wait for the label to be bestowed? My guess is ones decides what one's label will be, then knows success has been had when others agree. Such profundities are the result of too little food & coffee.

Unicorn Sighting

Another collection of images from the Solstice Parade. I should probably put these in something online, but haven't signed up for any of the services.

Still need breakfast

I am adding a few more pictures from yesterday's parade, which was not totally free of politics, though it did seem very free of politicians running for election.  I don't know all the ground rules for it, but one is that combustion engines aren't allowed to propel the floats, which no doubt limits the number of entries, and I can't imagine a politician who would feel comfortable in a parade whose normal lead-off contingent is nude bicyclists and features some rather overt criticisms of the current government.  Regardless of the politics, the parade is a good time, and if you are going to be offended by them, you know in advance perhaps you shouldn't go.

The festival is still going on today, though I don't know if I will make it down there again, as nothing really caught my attention in the vendor area.  The sky is also gray, which doesn't really entice me to head outdoors for much of anything.

I should come up with something constructive to do today, but the only real pressing thing is laundry (no pun intended, especially as I don't iron).  I could do a bit of reading, but I am gradually working through "Gielgud's Letters" and finding it makes great meal-time reading because the brief nature of the letters makes finding a stopping point very easy.  While it shouldn't surprise me, hearing Olivier referred to as Larry gives me a giggle.

As I mentioned in the title, I still haven't eaten, so I will leave this here and find something to stop my stomach's growling.

Solstice Parade

While it refrained from raining, it was gray all day for the Solstice Parade, which made it tolerable outside because for some reason it was also fairly muggy, which is not that normal here.  The parade was fun, starting with the naked cyclist and continuing on through a variety of people.  I refrained from taking a picture of the guy with his crotch framed and "Cheney" as the title, but then it shouldn't really surprise me at this parade that someone would walk down the street with nothing but a picture frame on.  With the implosion of the gay pride festival, or perhaps just the duplication of the gay pride festival, with dueling parades & dueling post-parade activities (and no one really sure of the "correct" one to support), perhaps June here will just become the Solstice Parade, which would be nice because I can walk there.

One of today's participants was especially cool, though I didn't get a picture of her.  She went around with a basket of books & markers, stopping with the kids on the route and distributing pages to color on and markers to do the coloring with, giving them to the kids who were totally unsure of what was going on.  Later on, she came back, stopping at the locations where she had distributed paper earlier and picking it up.  On this second trip, one of the parade-goers asked if she was picking up trash and gave her some of his own.  To say this for the young lady, she did offer to take it with no visible qualms.

Sunday, Sunny Sunday

No, it wasn't hot enough to melt the barber shop sign, which no longer houses a barber shop, though there is one down the street, and contrary to frequent habit, I did manage not to visit the Ale House this weekend, though went to Zayda Buddy's Friday.  

Too bad there isn't much horribly exciting to report, though perhaps the fact little is wrong is something that might be exciting, if not exactly horribly exciting.  It is good to keep the excitement level to a reasonable, not quite fever, pitch, because excessive excitement may very well incite the neighbors, and they already get excited enough, or else they just wrestle frequently for the fun of it, the ones upstairs, at least.

Nice saturday... now if I could do something

This is not my picture, but it probably vanished off the owner's camera without a second thought.  The world is a ripe place for second thoughts, some good, some bad, but always present.  For example, I am writing here instead of painting or doing something outside on a gorgeous day, but then, I was thinking about this and ran with it; otherwise, there was a chance I would ruin my minimum once a month blog posting.  

(Ooh boy, Fiesta de la noche, by O-Zone, in some remix or other, giving me a repeat of the chorus, also the title, for the rest of the evening.)

It has been one of those odd weeks, one of those weeks when it was all I could do not to just up and give notice because the absurdity was almost beyond me.  Going to work and doing little but stare at a computer screen, alternating between spreadsheets to give the appearance of being busy, is really pretty much a waste of eight hours.  Good sense sort of eventually broke over me and I recalled that giving notice without plans for the future did not constitute a wise decision, especially with my passport in need of renewal.  (I really should get motivated and take care of that.)  The reason I don't enjoy giving my family lots of details about what I plan on doing is because that plan changes.  I still can't think of a reason to move east other than to be closer to them.  If I move, why shouldn't I go abroad again?

Oh well, whatever it is I decide to do, it will happen when it does because there is always a teaching position in Korea if I want it, though I saw an opportunity in Ukraine today, too.