Birdwatching in greater San Diego County...

 We were sitting in the hot tub of the pool area at our (?) resort (?) [not pictured - you're welcome] with another couple from Des Moines when four green parrots flew overhead seemingly on a mission in a perfect straight line formation.

At first we all speculated as to whether the animals were recent escapees from the San Diego Zoo or Safari Park (which we had each dutifully visited one of earlier in the week).  After all, a dog had just a few days prior broken in to the San Diego zoo to meet some gorillas, so it didn't seem outside the realm of the probable that an escape had occurred.

After a little googling, though, it became clear that wild parrots have lived in and around Ramona, California, possible since as far back as the 1950s.  Non-native, for sure, but hell, it's California - everyone is from somewhere else!

After spying the same pack of the parrots the following evening at about the same time heading along the exact same path, we decided that they had a daily pattern, and we could capture some photographic evidence of them the following evening... Best laid plans, and all that:

These are they, truly, even though they're hard to see and don't appear at all green in this picture it's a pair of the set of four (or similar compatriots), but I barely caught them.  They tricked me, you see - by flying overhead in the opposite direction about 30 minutes earlier than when we had decided was their appointed time.  We were in the pool, and although I did make sure we got out of the pool to be closer to our phones at their appointed time, I didn't really fully expect them to come back the other way as they had the previous two nights - but indeed they did, and I scrambled for my phone and snapped this pic (and another one of entirely empty blue sky).

So, it seems obvious to me now that each day at about 4:45pm PT the parrots fly east into the desolate nowhere land beyond San Diego Country Estates, and hang out there doing something for about 30 to 45 minutes - whereafter they immediately bee-line it back westward to wherever they are most of the rest of the time.  Nuts, right!!??

Unfortunately, we won't ever get to find out what it is they do, because a mile or so east of here seems to be where the world ends... Even though google maps seems to think that there's a road there (and there is something that looks a bit like a mediocre driveway that's marked with an ominous {and very non-official looking} sign that reads NO EXIT), I didn't attempt it.  

It was reminiscent of a "Private Road" I encountered in Platte County, Wyoming when I was heading home from the Great American Eclipse.  I, and approximately 400,000 people from Colorado and California, had just witnessed the astounding event, stood around for a few minutes looking at each other appreciating the grandeur of nature, then got into our cars and started heading home on one of the approximately 4 roads in the entire county.  I'd been planning to head south get on the interstate and run in to I-80 to cut across Nebraska on the way home, but it soon became clear everyone was heading south, and there would be very little progress that way today.  So I asked google for a detour to take me back north to I-90, and it kindly obliged with a route that seemed a lot less trafficky than the one I was on.  After a turn off (where I was following a dozen or so industrious detourers and followed by a dozen or so more) and a half mile on a very minor road, we passed a sign that read "Private Road", but I didn't think much of it.  I'd been on lots of "Private Roads" which in the East and Midwest generally meant a bunch of rich neighbors paid a community to get their actual road listed as "private" and also to pay cops to harass anybody in a non-luxury vehicle.  In the West, though, it turns out that Private Road can mean "my road" as in "my driveway" that passes directly between my house and my garage and as our impromptu caravan approached the homestead we saw that the whole family (at least 3 generations, it seemed) had come out to watch us drive through their yard as they angrily shook their heads or at times yelled at each of us drivers in turn.  This was Wyoming, after all, the sort of place someone is as likely to shoot you as anywhere for approaching their property.  But there was safety in numbers and collective stupidity and American tourism.

And so we play tourist once more, this time particularly enjoying the birds (our favorite, Big Black Bird, is not pictured here, but are a couple more that we've gotten to know this week {I think an Acorn Woodpecker and a female Western Bluebird, but I could be wrong}).  These we've enjoyed as much as anything here - the puzzle and the pool and a Harry Potter marathon and a couple games of Scrabble (I won both) and Shuffleboard (Brooke won both) and all of the other things that we are supposed to do when traveling.

the eating the drinking the shopping the viewing oh my indeed

"do you like puzzles?"

As the Great Quarantine of 2020 was about to get underway, my brilliant wife bought a jigsaw puzzle on a whim during a Target run (back when Target runs felt normal and less like "missions").

Her choice of images on that (first, as it turned out) puzzle was absurd - and also perfect, as it turned out.  Killer whales, a diverse underwater scene along with a sky full of skies and fireworks and two sailing (pirate, right, they've got to be pirates) ships passing by a coastline lit by a rising full moon.

Some years ago, JP asked me the simple question: "Do you like puzzles?"

My mind went straight to jigsaw puzzles, and, never having been too fond of them (or probably never completing one beyond the toy versions of 10 or 50 or 100 pieces of my youth), I told JP, "not really."

He was disappointed, I could see it - and shortly thereafter, I discovered why.  JP had created an elaborate and immersive experience for us in our home and neighborhood.  It started with a message - I think it was a long letter, and contained the name (an old-timey name, which i do not recall) of an early code (16th or 17th Century?) written in letters from a prisoner.

Using this code, we discovered a message: Tippecanoe ISBN 9780452275003 with each number spelled out fully (or some number, which led me to the book Zombie, by Joyce Carol Oates).  This brought the search to a temporary stand-still, because Tippecanoe is the name of my neighborhood, and I happened to own the book in question (i suspect JP may not have realized this, or was increasing the challenge).  At the same time, we had begun to discover a number of odd items around our house - a plastic pencil sharpener & a Bierdeckel that we weren't familiar with.

Once I had solved it (perhaps with a hint!), i went to our local library (the Tippecanoe branch!), and pulled their copy of Oates' novel from the shelves.  Slipped under the cover, was a receipt - a Walgreen's Photo receipt, which was pre-paid.  I took it to our local Walgreen's, and turned it over for a roll of photos - 24 (remember when pics came in sets of 24!?) pictures of items that had been hidden around our house.

And so it goes... I do love puzzles.  I love to play the game, and the total immersion game - where you literally walk around the earth and un-earth it is the ultimate iteration.  Jason Segel has created for us - i think in part from his own struggle - Dispatches from Elsewhere, which at its core is an immersive game experience.  Dispatches is a team game, and a game played outside in the world.  It unlocks a narrative, and you get to choose how deeply you want to play (just dancing with Bigfoot & along for the ride or taking the deeper game behind the game approach that our heroes take).

I was a late adopter of Myst but loved puzzling through it once i had discovered it after starting college.  But i wasn't able to defeat it (not in the Arfives*!), because many of the puzzles in the game are ones that require patience.  My preference for a long time had been the "riddle of the sphinx" type game where a lot of folks had perished at it, but once you came to the answer it was immediate.

As i become old (or perhaps as we are becoming more familiar with the art of passing time, because we're in quarantine!), I have come to appreciate the slow boil puzzles.  Nick Bantock was an author who I adore(d^), and read most of his work in the early Aughts.  Among the collection of books I owned was The Egyptian Jukebox, which was one i had never finished.  It's described as "A Conundrum" on the cover, and it's as beautiful as all of Bantock's works, but one meant to be worked at.

As we have now started here at home on our 4th puzzle, I have become comfortable with the idea that yes, indeed, i do like puzzles and the satisfaction of completion that goes with them.  Jigsaw puzzles are fine, but I enjoy even more immersive the better... 

On another visit to Milwaukee, JP left at our house a deck of cards, and some mode of giving us a specific sequence of cards.  Each of the cards had a small hole poked in it, and there was one outlier card, which had (i think random) letters over all of it.  With the sequence, we were able to decode the following message:

"At the centroid of _________, _____________, ____________ in the sculpture in park."  The blanks were three locations in Milwaukee, and at their centroid was a park in the 5th Ward.  I Bublr biked there one day on a lunch break, and tucked in to the sculpture in a park was an envelope with a gift card to Milwaukee's Public Market that JP had hidden there a week earlier.

Magical.

I don't think Dispatches from Elsewhere could have come out at a better time in history.  While the scenes of sitting in diners, or large gatherings in public parks or old timey theaters feels a bit like porn just now, it's more fringy questioning at the corners of reality that I think is so vital.  Was that all just a game, as the end party contends, or is there something real that the game is a cover for.  The concept / device isn't new (see 1997's The Game or 2018's Game Night), but the idea feels important now, whereas it might earlier have seemed merely fun - a welcome distraction - a bit of whimsy.

As we all going to be re-evaluating (sooner or later) the structures of the systems in place that surround our lives, I would like to recommend that we create some space and some infrastructure for these kinds of immersive experiences, either irl or virtually, a la Ready Player One or "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale".  I'm talking about a major company or companies that begin to work on this.  It will be the next Facebook - i am quite sure of it...

is this what you were picturing? (Source: Amazon.com)

* this is also a time to consider the place of video games (as opposed to other games) in the Arfives, which I have never really included in my listings, because to complete a video game I have always felt that i had to "beat it".  Unfortunately, I've never been all that good at video games and also not very diligent, so it's possible that i've never in all my life actually completed a game (actually, I do distinctly remember defeating Contra - after using the upUpDownDown... trick).  I may revise this going forward.

^ I would like to contend, that we no longer should be held to a standard of loving everything today that we once loved in our past, and yet at the same time need to couch that love in a past-time-i-ness...  I loved Nick Bantock's works for a time in my life, and while i don't find them as compelling today, we should embrace the moments that we loved things... unconditionally. 

So It Goes

It's with a heavy heart that we said goodbye to our dear friend, Rex Grossman, this week.

Eleven and a half years ago, Rex entered our newly married lives in Omaha, Nebraska.  I feel sure that i remember that Rex was born on a farm in Council Bluffs, Iowa (Brooke thinks it was in Nebraska) on the 27th of November 2006.

He survived orthopedic surgery on his right foreleg in his first year of life and moved to Milwaukee, coincidentally, when we did in the summer of 2007.

Rex was a ridiculously good looking dog.  In his early years, he would literally stop traffic, with drivers pulling over and getting out of their cars to meet him and ask what kind of dog he was (Beagle / Boston Terrier aka a Boglin Terrier).  Rex enjoyed riding in cars - when those people stopped he often seemed to think they were there to get him and he would try to jump into their cars.  (This was also often our method for catching Rex when he was still a runner and we'd have to flag down strangers and ask them to open their car door to coax him in and allow us to recapture him).  In so many ways Rex's stay with us seemed like a temporary, fleeting thing and he seemed to think that he was soon to be on to something else - to his next big thing.

In subsequent years, Rex became acquainted with Doctor Singh, whose summer cabin i expect we largely funded.  Rex survived a toy-induced blockage surgery, mysterious intestinal strangulation (possibly caused by an allergic reaction to avocados), death by chocolate when he ate Grandpa's Christmas gift from under the tree, an eventually explicable summer of malaise in 2013 (caused by a toothpick that had lodged itself under his skin for several months), and finally a prostate cancer diagnosis in September of 2017.

Reading this list of historical woes that Rex went through, it probably seems we were bad human caretakers for a pet.  We weren't, but things often seem other than they are.  Rex often seemed like a bad dog... screaming and crying loudly anytime we were in public (or in a car).  Pulling incessantly on walks.  Reliably emptying out the bathroom garbage can if ever we left the house and forgot to put it on the toilet seat.  Rex often seemed to sullenly slink away upstairs to lie under the bed when we were home.  He generally shied away from hugs and kisses.  But all of this, i think, was a complex psychological game that Rex was playing, because, vorallerdings, Rex was a genius dog.  A jock who loved playing ball more than life itself and a prototypical 'bad boy', but very self aware (a high IQ and high EQ, as it were).

Rex had a deep and abiding love of Harley Davidson motorcycles - he would sit and watch as one rode by if we were on a walk, or look out the window as one passed us on the highway.  We're pretty sure that Rex was a tough biker dude who had been reincarnated as a cute little puppy dog as karmic payback for a tough life knocking peoples skulls together.  For certain, this life wasn't Rex's first go round.  He was an old soul, and wise beyond his years.

Rex Grossman was a good dog... the best of dogs.  He was our dear friend.  We often called him "our lodger", because he seemed more like a stranger who had come to stay with us than a family member (that's why he had his own last name!).  He became a part of our pack and we a part of his. 

We will miss him, and will howl at the moon for a good long while in his honor.  Aooooo!

Rex is Rex

Rex Grossman has been feeling a bit under the weather lately (see pic - note: er ist noch am leben - I know it looks a bit  like a chalk outline or some sort of ritual flooring).

He's doing well and we are once again indebted to Dr. Singh (side note to anyone in the Milwaukee Metro with a pet on the brink, Bayshore Vet in Shorewood is the best).  

** Update as of 7/10/13: Rex is back to 100% and acting normally.  We went to see Dr. Singh again today for a final check and his infection seems to have abated.  After a couple of routine vaccines, Rex was good to go, though, the promised 'sleepiness and lethargy' as a result of his shots did not come to pass...

Who's a good dog?

The Bird Contract

Odd Side-Note: This post was actually written (but evidently not published) in April 2010, but when I went to post it it changed to yesterday's date.  Not sure why this is as typically when I've done this, it posts on the date the post was originally written.  Just an FYI if blogger has changed something and there start appearing oddly timed posts... [Solution Solved!]

Yesterday as i was walking from my parking spot to campus, i watched two male cardinals having a mid-air fight. They were frolicking, swooping, diving - seemed to be having an all-round good spring time together (or at least as much fun as I assume any wild animals have on a given day in an urban environment).

Then, as I watched, the one cardinal (who I've come to think of as 'evil cardinal') chased the other (innocent cardinal) toward the road and he was summarily hit by the windshield of a Toyota Camry.  The erstwhile bird came to rest not 10 feet in front of me.  A few of you may recall that this is not even my first run in with a bird dying at my feet.  Needless to say i was taken aback and the rest of the day had a heavy quality to it, but nothing else really took place, but I am on notice.  One bird tragedy is nothing to get worked up about and a second may just be a coincidence, but were i to find myself present at a third bird massacre I would feel compelled to take action.

unBecoming Animals

I'm interested in a distinction that i don't actually see Steve Baker making very often in his book, The Postmodern Animal, namely between representations of animals and actual animals used in representations of animals (what i might call representative animals). My initial interest in this question stems from looking at Gunther von Hagens' Bodyworlds exhibition and wondering to what extent the bodies (animal and human) presented there in fact are 'real', that is, are we seeing dead bodies when we look at the pieces or representations of bodies (the assumption of the question being, of course, that the answer matters).

It seems to me that the lack of this distinction in Baker's book might be the very definition of 'the postmodern animal'. Baker lays out the progression of animality from the 19th Century 'symbolic animal' to the 'modern animal' (which for him doesn't exist, but i would like to think of as the industrialized animal), through to the postmodern animal (p. 20), where the distinction between representative animals and representations of animals breaks down to some extent. For Baker, this eroded distinction gets most interestingly questioned in works like Olly and Susi's in which representations of animals are placed 'on the border' where they will (hopefully) be interacted with by the animals depicted. Sharks bite pictures of sharks and deer urinate on their own image… which reminds me of this one time… in Copenhagen…

But in a case like Olly and Susi's (or Mark Dion's Library for the Birds of Antwerp as another example) the answer to the distinction seems obvious, at least until you start thinking about zoo theory in which even the living animals become representative (and perhaps representations). Far more challenging, I think, are works like Damien Hirst's This Little Piggy and The Physical Impossibility of Death in which actual dead animals are preserved in formaldehyde and presented in glass casing. And this is where the connection to von Hagens' work comes into play. The most common question asked by critics of the Bodyworlds exhibit is 'why not just use platic molding to recreate the human interior'. In other words, if we, as good little postmodernists, are going to dissolve the barrier between actual animals and representations of animals (see zoo theory as a starting place for this), why then does Damien Hirst need to cut an actual pig in half for his artwork, when a realistic molding would accomplish the same thing (and essentially, be the same thing). (Plus, such a rendering by Hirst would demonstrate much more 'artistic expertise' than cutting an animal in half and dunking it in preservatives - and therein lies the answer to my own question, methinks).

a brilliant idea...

...that's what we need, a brilliant idea.

working a part-time job as a corporate sellout, part-time teaching English 101, being a full-time grad student, keeping/setting up a new house, and working on side projects, i don't have a lot of time.

(isn't it cute, when i think i'm busy)

So, in the interest of the betterment of humankind, will offer up some great ideas, nearly* free of charge here, for anyone who wants to take them and adapt them (p.s., if anyone knows where these ideas already exist and are in action, please point me to them):

1. ok... so the first idea is one my former roommate, nathan & i came up with during the death throes of the dot-com burst. He was working for wwwrrr, i for Padco and we came up with a pair of 'sister websites' called http://www.wheretogo.com/ & http://www.whoyouknow.com/. Both of these sites have since been co-opted, but back in the Gau Haus days these two sites were going to revolutionize the internet. Aside from the annoying classmates.com and the kevinBacon-y sixdegrees.com social network wasn't anything, yet and dexonline couldn't really find you what you wanted. The site was going to conjoin these services, in a way that frappr really didn't. The idea would be that people would submit there 'cool places' so you could find cool places anywhere, and write 'Let's Go' style reviews of them, but the sites included, first, an access level (so only those who you want to know can know the info you post about places, but also about your itinerary {see what follows}). There was also a calendar feature that would allow you to, say, submit that you were going to be in Orlando from, say, hypothetically, March 19-23, so that people you know, but don't really keep contact with will also know you're in town... I think google probably does (or can) already do this, but i can't figure out how to make it work...

2. My whole idea for this post came shortly after the primary election in Wisconsin last week. I was terribly disappointed in Nebraska's level of online election info, but somehow Wisconsin is almost worse. It doesn't seem too difficult to construct a website where we have every election and every race listed with at least the names (infinitely google-able) and maybe cursory descriptions. This is the bare bones of what should be a much more useful site. They may or may not be ideologically motivated, but at least one that has all of the candidates.

C. (2.5). The Utne Reader had an article several years back about putting the 'party' back into politics. Here's a study that suggests something similar, but the general idea was that we try and increase voter turnout by throwing parties on election day (hell, having a holiday), giving free drinks to folks with "I Voted" stickers, and having a million dollar lottery for everyone who voted...

3. somebody ought to buy the empty building that was Geneva Lakes Kennel Club (which may be some sort of simulcasting place now, but it ought to be empty). Anyway, i hate greyhound racing as much as all of you should, but since they have a big track there, here's what i think we should develop... Amateur Dog Racing. The place becomes a doggie day care/vacation getaway for dogs (and perhaps other animals, i'm just into dogs lately), and then they have the dogs race... if they want to. No training, no mistreatment, just good dog fun. You let the 8 dogs who are going to race against each other hang out for a while in a room (supervised) and let them get to know each other... then you bring them out to the track and send "Bucky" coasting around the track and have amateur dogs race... Maybe people come and bet, maybe they just come watch (sounds cool to me)... Mostly, i want to see this, because i totally think Rex Grossman will beat any of your dogs asses in a footrace...

4. Teleportation (please see footnote)

5. ...i think we should keep adding to this list. Whenever you have an idea that you want to "give" away (you can make .001% of any profits made off of your ideas added in the 'comments' section {idea submitters, please don't bother to read the footnote, it's not important}).

6. More people should stay up and watch Craig Ferguson. I think the world would be a better place if everyone watched Craig Ferguson. Seriously. How 'bout he host the Oscars next year?

7. Rent-a-lemon: I currently own a shitty car that I don't want to own much longer.  This is my second such car that I've just come to the point where I no longer want to own it, but my thought is, we could (as the commune) all hold on to our old shitty cars and rent them, discount, to people coming to our town.


* any future profits made off of these ideas will hereby (that means it's legally binding) entitle me, joel seeger, to .003% of said profits. If individuals, corporations, or organizations adopt any of these ideas in the future and create a business or organization that gets in the habit of employing people in the implementation of these ideas, i, still joel seeger, am entitled to request a cushy, cool job from said individual, corporation, or organization.

Gains & Losses

I buried my guinea pig today. Bitey Gilbertson, possibly the greatest guinea pig of all time has passed away.

2007 has been something of the proverbial roller coaster thus far and i've been in something of a funk, but i feel like the digging and filling of a hole in the ground has worked some therapeutic magic on me. So, as Jonas Mekas' project enters its 54th day i share the sparrow's feeling of freedom and release, with it comes the need to tell my story.

As i said, 2007 has already had its highs and lows. Gilbertson's passing was really hard to take. When we came back to Omaha after Christmas we noticed a sudden weight gain in him. After a couple of vet visits he had some treatment that was working on and off, but he wasn't himself. He died in his sleep, likely of a sudden heart failure.
That same weekend, Brooke's birthday, DaveT, Carolyn & Brigette were visiting and we accrued a new family member. Rex Grossman, a 2-month-old 'Bogle' (or perhaps a Boglin Terrier), came home Sunday afternoon. Part Beagle, part Boston Terrier, Rex seems to have gotten the best of both doggie worlds and is a fine looking, kinda gross, puppy. Aside from a nasty poop-eating habit the little guy is pretty cool.

On a related 2007 hi-low, January was spent watching my precious Bears win their way through to the Super Bowl and after Devin Hester's opening return i thought it was our year. But despite my obvious disappointment at the outcome they had an amazing run and i am actually excited for next year.

My first quarter of teaching at Metro Community College wraps up next week. The quarter went fairly well, though, i think what it was really good for was giving me an idea of how to do this next quarter. I've seen growth in several of my students and will likely only have to end up failing/giving incompletes to a couple of them.

It's also the season of graduate school news. Stanford wrote me to request that i kindly not go to school there, please, but i did get an acceptance letter of sorts from UW-Milwaukee. The last few days have been quite spring-y indeed and though i hear a wintering is coming this weekend, overall, things are looking up.

Back to Basicks

It occurs to me that both of you loyal Roman Numeral J readers may have, in recent days & posts, been disturbed by the blogs tendency toward the overly political -- Whether it be solving social secuity, finding deep political arguments in juvenile comedies, or pointing out the persecution of atheists going on all across the world (by which i mean america).

But, i am now announcing a turn toward the undead... again. As i put my PhD applications together, making statements of purpose justifying my year spent thinking with zombies & editing and rewriting my Romero paper. Also, i will try to turn the blog back toward the momentary and incidental (everything is momentary and incidental, i suppose, but i'll shoot for what most would consider trivial)...

On that note, i had some tawny port tonight... after work. Watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the first third with subtitles (which i initially thought were part of the movie... thinking it 'really arty'). Now i'm hanging out with my guinea pig for a while. Yeah. that's exciting...

but, in an exclusive announcement, i'd like to toss out some feelers for a Christmas Party... December 16th? who might make it? An exclusive (and by exclusive i mean hardly anyone will show up unless you readers make it sweet) party at the Martha house... anyone... anyone...

Life Lessons in the Office

According to Ricky Gervais, a great philosopher once said:

"There are three things you need in this life. The first is an important relationship with someone else, the second is an occupation that matters, and then you need to know you make a difference."

Who the fuck is Ricky Gervais... and who the fuck is said great philosopher. Tonight, two lovely... consumptions ... i moments ago, finished watching The Office dvd on generous loan from Nate & Lissa, and earlier in the evening went to Omaha's Jazz on the Green, tonight, featuring Heidi Joy (doesn't she look a bit like the Adventures In Babysitting girl?)

I think, perhaps i fear, that something about me has fundamentally changed. And i don't know quite when it started or if i want it to continue. As Gilbertson and i sit here and write this entry, my mind is a-flutter with thoughts of what can be gleened from The Office, and my viewing on Wednesday of Superman Returns (the Superman thoughts definitely have a strong connection to Zizek.)

Two books arrived on my doorstep today about Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds, and i'm so excited to dig into them, i can't even describe it. So i'll try. All i want to do, is (have some fun) write some papers. As i mentioned previously, i'm actually currently garnering absolutely no pay for my days labors, but i find, more and more, that i can't stop fucking considering everything.

Why is it that Superman so often flies around saving one person at a time (how many other people are simultaneously dying that he's not saving)? Why is it exactly that von Hagens wants to industrialize the plastination (and preservation) of dead bodies? Do you really need all three of those things or is that just a 'best case scenario' and one or two will do you fine?

I don't know really, quite, what i'm getting at (my head's full enough of Shakers that i wouldn't pay attention to me if i could help it), but Brooke said something tonight to me that worried me. She said she saw me (future-gazing here) as an old academic, sitting in a leather-clad room, puffing a pipe (she said cigar, but i think her angle must have been bad) just talking about shit. And that can't be what i want to do, can it? Can i really live a life where i just talk about things? (This is where Zizek comes in)... Or is it that in thinking about these small things, academia is really pointing at larger things, and so my function becomes something of a go-between, a being who walks in both realms & tries to take the "real world" (so obviously absent from so many who go to UChicago) to the academy & the thoughts of the academy to the real world... Maybe i could be like some kind of academic Messiah, except i'd prefer to turn my water into vodka... wheat-based, 6-time distilled, vodka.

It's a bird, it's a plane..."that's an omen."

Today, i was biking to my soccer game - sadly my last soccer game of the season, Sparkle Motion's over-achieving reign of mediocrity came to a crashing end today with a 2-0 playoff loss. As i approached the fields, through a parking lot, i was going over a speed bump when a bird dropped from the sky, dead not 10 feet in front of me. I looked around for a confused hunter, stalking the alleys of Chicago for pigeons, but saw no one. Then there arose what seemed to be a bird scuffle, in mid-air. A pigeon (looked related to the recently fallen dirty dove) was chasing a larger black bird around, squawking at him. So, i assume the black bird was the guilty party (unless the pigeons are equivalent to the Hyde Park police in bird world & every time a crime is committed they go around harrassing any nearby black birds).

Anyway, i took the fallen bird at my tires as a bad sign, but i'm hoping it was an omen pointing to our playoff loss, rather than my final 36 hours until the thesis is due. I think if it was supposed to be an omen for my thesis, the bird would have gotten back up after a couple moments & begun awkwardly, but persistently trying to eat up all the other birds in the world. Though, now that i think of it, i haven't seen a bird for a couple hours.

Afternoons & Coffeespoons

So, i just got my picture taken by some guy who said he was from the 'publicity department'. (Don't worry, they were very tasteful.)

I was seated in an on-campus coffee shop, reading Shelley's "Defense of Poetry" for class today (off a computer screen) & he asked to snap a few photos... My worry is that i'm going to be like one of those tools that pop up on the luther site now... Or i'll be on, like, the front of the catalog or something ridiculous - but, as an aspiring photographer myself, i understand how awkward it is to ask someone to snap their picture in the first place... then even moreso when they say "no, get the hell out of here, pervert."

I did feel kind of bad that i wasn't really doing anything... except staring, gape-mouthed at a computer screen... At one point, i even pretended to 'have a thought' and frantically typed some fake reading notes (seriously, i did this)... (he said not to pose, just do 'whatever i was doing') I sipped coffee a couple times, but every time i did i couldn't help grinning because i had an image of some 80s Maxwell House commercial running through my head...

Sadly, as i've previously mentioned, I am unable to produce images & post them on this blog, and i've found, in going through my pictures on my hard drive, i never seem to take pictures of anybody drinking coffee... It seems coffee-drinking is not as conducive to photography as, say, alcohol is... So, just check out this horse...

I find myself spending a lot of time in coffee shops thse days... And i wonder if i will be able to readjust to real, non-coffee based life after i finish here. On any given day, i might wander from 2-3 different coffee shops, buy a cup of coffee or tea & sit & read & write, or just eavesdrop... It is a good life, but i fear it may not be a real life...
Hm. Well, i guess i'll enjoy it however long it lasts...