| mom and dad are selling the farm out in bastrop, which means yesterday was the first run through old memories as I picked up the new dining room table for our house.
Dad found my box of bootleg tapes and out of print CDs, which I put in their closet before leaving for Canada. I was sure I'd forgotten it in Ottawa. 2 skinny puppy video CDs, 1 bootleg VHS of Tool in '92, a dozen or so Skinny Puppy concerts from 85-92. the 2-disc Epitaph of extreme SP rarities collected and produced by the fanlist with permission from cEvin and Oghr. even the Intolerance bootleg which re-created a good bit of the Epitaph collection on a semi-official release. All 3 of the tapes made with The Cozmyk Vampz are there, along with the Doubting Thomas and Cyberaktif discs.
what's also in there is piles and piles of crap. for a while I wanted to be an audio cut-up artist on par with Jesus H Christ (H Figurine) or John Oswald, so I had a collection of the worst tapes I could steal from the bargain bin back when the CD shop Soundways was my home away from the Office.
what kind of crap? did you know that not only did Miami Vice have a mixtape, but that the guy who played Tubbs made a solo album? both of those are in there. you'll also find the original motion picture soundtrack to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles II, Secret of the Ooze. There's an Enigma tape that was misrecorded at the factory and really contains ragtime piano. There's a tape of jazz christmas music that was recorded entirely backward and at the wrong speed. (and yes, Kwitsach, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch is still there, with Bell Biv Devoe, Salt N Pepa, Pearl Jam, Bryan Adams, Weird Al, and everything else we were listening to in the days of the cassette)
not sure what to do with all this now. i'll likely archive the bootlegs digitally, giving me a project to work on studio-wise. in this day of digital audio workstations though, i'm not sure if I want to spend weeks and months hunched over a deck to save audio that can just as easily be sourced online, and having a sample/loop directory that already floweth over. internet killed the tape cut-up star. it's a box of dead media.
not only do i have a box of tape to deal with, but i'm inheriting the parents' record collection which spans from the 50s to the 70s and contains everything from classic rock to fusion jazz, on the promise dad has visitation rights and contingent on archiving the albums they don't want to lose. hell, maybe i could get a sideline going of archiving dead media, certainly not the worst tedious gruntwork i've done. just gotta clean my plate before I can go back for more. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| yesterday was Greenling's annual company retreat and brainstorming session. We go over what we did in the previous year, think of ways to make things better, and get to know the people we work with a little better. All capped by company pictures/awards.
The year before we were broke, personal loans taken out to make payroll broke. Hit hard by the collapse of financing, and needing to bust some ass to survive 2009. Mason gave a rousing and emotional speech to bring everyone on board. Bust ass we did, and we're still here.
What kind of ass did we bust? $2.1 million dollars worth of revenue generated by the activity of 19 people, half of them part-timers. Our grand tally is $6 Million in local organic produce brought to peoples' homes and offices. While this number is small potatoes in the produce world, HEB requires hundreds more people to do just 7 times the sales. we actually grew revenue 10% last year, unheard of in produce, despite getting squeezed by the big guys slashing their margins. we donated thousands of pounds of unsellable food to Food Not Bombs, a refugee shelter, animal shelters, and organic farms. Also while still small, more than half of our stock is local AND organic, which means we are the #1 supplier in the city for sustainability minded locavores (HEB sells more tons of organic, but does so with fewer products which are a smaller percentage of their total). HEB also owns most of their farms, where our primary sources are small, single-family operations within half a day's drive of Austin (more than 50 of them, which rotate by product/season). We won Best Local Food Company for the third year in a row in the Chronicle Reader's Poll.
This year we're still broke, but where 2009 was scary and dark, 2010 is looking considerably brighter. If we bust ass at improving what we did right in 2009, we should go from a break-even company to a profitable one.
If family could look past my failure to live up to my potential, being satisfied as "just a delivery boy", they might just see why I take more pride in this job than in any I've ever worked, including the ones which paid 300% more and came with titles.
My sweat equity in the company has earned me thousands of options, which means i'm not just the part-time delivery boy, i'm a fanatical stakeholder who pulls his water. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| LA PRINTEMPA FEBRO
Freŝlavita paŝas marto laŭ senneĝaj stratoj.
Sur tegmentoj tutan nokton serenadas katoj.
Elokvente ĉirpas birdoj en ĉiela halo.
Ĉiu bubo en lernejo revas pri futbalo.
Eĉ pedanta instruisto, magra kiel kulo,
Zumas gaje sub la nazon ĉe la klastabulo.
Estas klare, ke ne eblas dum printempa febro
Sin okupi pri fiziko, lingvo kaj algebro.
KAKTOJ
Se tio interesas vin -
Mi havas kaktojn tridek kvin,
Sur la fenestrobreto,
En ĉiu anguleto.
Per ili min premiis frat'
Je mia deka naskiĝdat',
Veninte al festeno
El botanikĝardeno.
De tiu tag' - honora vort' -
De ĉie min insidas mort',
De sur fenestrobreto,
En ĉiu anguleto.
Konstante sonas: Stop! kaj Halt!
Ne savas eĉ la suprensalt'.
Koleraj kaktoj pikas
Per pingloj cent. Mi psikas.
Se tio interesus vin -
Mi vendus kaktojn tridek kvin,
Al vi, kiel komplezo,
Laŭ tre malalta prezo.
LA PETOLA VENTO
Ŝovis vent' tra fenestreto
Nazon, pro scivol-impeto,
Foliumis libron haste,
Sed ne legis ĝin, nur draste
Forbalais de sur tablo
Notlibreton al diablo.
Ekataki katon provis
Kaj ĝis ostoj min trablovis.
Ĉu ne volas ĝi, entute,
Ene agi bonkondute?
U-u-u! ekhurlis vento
Por finala suplemento. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| we're back, no thanks to the intolerable new level of inept security theater permeating the airports, or the DVT-inducing shrinkage of airplane seats. we have a potential wedding to go to in hawaii next year, and i'm thinking stowing on a garbage barge might be preferable.
but again, the quranic heaven was awestrikingly amazing, the getting to know distant family and roots was deeply enriching, and having a wonderful partner in adventure to share it all with really made it one of the best experiences recorded in this electric waterballoon's grey matter. treasure without measure.
next time, the van will be ready for the trip. maybe we'll get the time to see this chain of lands from tip to tip without having to fly again. that's the dream, anyway.
onward, to adventure. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 2009 seems to have had even fewer changes than previous years. But it still had lots going on!
- Circumnavigated the globe for the first time. Amy had already done this once, and it's good to catch up.
- As a result of the above trip, I visited Germany, Ireland, Iceland (with the furthest from the equator I've ever been, past 66°N), London, and Tokyo for the first time.
- Amy and I had a big wedding reception (two years later!) with my extended family in Vancouver. Saw lots of people I hadn't seen for years.
- Attended SXSW as a participant for the first time. Plus, the seventh annual Nuclear Tacos at SXSW!
- Met Andy Hopper (the head of the Computer Technology Department at Cambridge University) through a string of coincidences, plus some work I did on VNC back in 1998.
- Presented a lightning talk on Psil at Kiwi PyCon.
- New open source software: pyqver (identify required version for Python code), emulino (Arduino emulator), mandelbrot set viewer, relight.
- Works in progress: psil, xearth.
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| the tropical full moon has the entire caribbean lit yellow-orange, in its bid to out-do the light and balloon show being put together on the beach by our resort. i think nature is winning, and pray it continues to (i know, like it needs my support).
may this eclipsed blue moon bring you and yours the personal transformations (or transmigrations) needed to get through the times to come. if any of you find your way through Texas (specifically South ATX), drop a line. we'll lift a glass or a bowl while sharing stories and company.
here's to a fresh start to a fresh now, and using our pasts to make our futures brighter.
in Love and Friendship,
The Parrnolds | | comments: Leave a comment |
| yesterday was the longest day of the trip. first stop: Coba, which is as beautiful as ever despite the buildup around it (in 2002 it had nothing but rocks and guides, now it has a full market)
from there we nearly got lost in the predominantly mayan valladolid, where the signs led us right into the heart of the barrio, a few lucky intuited turns put us back on the main road thankfully, but it was a little tense there for a bit while my brain freaked out about not only getting lost in a foreign country, but doing so in a city where even spanish isn't common.
then it was on to Chicken Pizza, as the ticket-taker called it. and as it turns out, the week after christmas is the busiest. 10,000 people there that day, about half of them the vendors that are now allowed to hawk their wares all over the site. cured my desire to ever see the place again. i will say that a UNESCO World Heritage site deserves a hell of a lot more respect than Chichen receives, and that makes me sad. future trips will probably focus on the out of the way sites that litter the west coast of the peninsula, now that we got the tourist traps done. bright point: we got to sample another native yucatan dish: cochinita pibil (amazing stewed pork)
we took the tollroad back, accompanied by the ambient sounds of a prehispanic music CD we got in Chichen. we left the hotel around 10, and didn't get back in until 9. exhausted, but happy to achieve the main objectives of the trip. (beach, ruins, shopping, visiting, eating, beer).
today we're taking it easy since yesterday was almost as many hours of walking as it was hours of driving. then tomorrow we return to the republic and try to get back into the grind of watching clocks. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| today we had the best pollo asado and carne arrachera in quintana roo. man oh man, i could eat those every day. both from little holes in the wall we wouldn't have thought to stop at, and wouldn't know enough spanish to be able to order from, since both places lacked menus.
the resort schedule advertised a capoeira and fire show, which we got back just in time to take in, but the group couldn't make it. i was all ready to jump in if there was a volunteer portion too.
tomorrow, another attempt at Chichen Itza | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| we tried to go to Chichen Itza today, i even made sure to take some ibuprofen and have coffee with breakfast to open up the congestion in my lungs. we get in the car and by the time we get to the turnoff at Tulum, my breathing is as tight as last night and i start getting lightheaded from forcing myself to breathe deeply. so i apologize and we turn back.
despite seeing doors with the red cross sign, there's no doctor in the resort. he's in cancun, and will take an hour to get here on top of the $90USD charge to call him plus whatever he costs and whatever he prescribes.
of course by the time we get back to the resort i'm breathing well enough to not want to spend that kind of money/time dealing with this. found a nearby pharmacia with oral ventolin and sinutabs. sinutab is helping the head, saving the ventolin in case things get tight again. most of the inflammation seems centered in the throat now, nothing i can really do about that but wait it out with clear liquids and more ibuprofen.
should have looked for some vitamin C.
even ascorbic acid tablets would do at this point.
we're going to make another try for Chichen on wednesday.
tomorrow is another day with my uncle, eating and shopping in Playa Del Carmen | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Help! | | Time: | 10:11 pm |
|
| Hello dear guys!
I need some urgent help. Would you be so kind to translate the following phrase into Swedish?
"I know that you've loved me since you were a child and I'm really grateful for that. I wish all your dreams come true. You are a very gifted person, an outstanding girl. Hope you get everything you want. Love, N."
Thank's in advance! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| finally cracked open Nestor Capoeira's 'A Street-Smart Song' which is about the inner philosophy of capoeira, known as Malicia, or cunning/trickery (portuguese speakers forgive my lack of proper accent use) and how its application in capoeira practice can be a route to overcoming the "meanness and mediocrity" dominating the modern world.
so far this book is reinforcing everything we've been doing in Capoeira Da Rua, Nestor Capoeira seems to have an understanding of the game which modern Mestres show reluctance to teach - that capoeira is a living, changing practice, where the right and wrong ways to do things vary greatly from school to school, even between schools claiming to teach the same style within the same lineage. he goes into the pre-Academy history of the art, the sociological backdrop which produced the Academies, and how the art has been changed by successive generations.
and yet while reinforcing a lot of my opinions and observations, he doesn't go without disabusing me of some of my own misunderstandings regarding the art. he talks a lot about people playing the game wrong, not because their style is wrong, but because of what has been lost in the successive generations of turning these rituals into a particular system. creativity and improvisation get lost in the mechanical training of the body, ego and competitiveness are too often given the reigns in the roda (a fault i see too often in my own game)
the happiest surprise is seeing how modern and yet spiritual Nestor's perspective is. he reaches an almost Bucky Fuller level trying to inform people and inspire them to improve the naked ape's situation as a whole through the spread of capoeira and increased understanding of the problems we face (and he does it in much more accessible language than Fuller ever acheives). he also shows how the practice of capoeira is similar to the 'mimicking the motions of the universe' taught by Gurdjieff and the dervishes of the Sufi tradition.
only a quarter of the way through, but every time i flip a new page, i want to get up and ginga, which is probably the last thing i need to do with inflamed bronchioles. so i keep reading, and let my hunger for the practice grow.
the opening poem of the book says it best:
My friend, the capoeirista is much more than a fighter delivering kicks. (S)he is an artist, hir strength is the joy of living. (S)he knows the key word "Love", nonetheless the player knows: evil exists. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| apparently exerted too much in Tulum (the sun was brutal with no real shade despite the cool temp), because i woke up yesterday with a head and chest cold. wish i'd been able to bring some Emergen-C, but good luck getting a powder through an airport now (unless you've got a friend at the ICTS security company which regularly lets such people through the TSA checkpoints that are increasingly intrusive when searching everyone else).
the head/chest cold developed into a mild asthma attack by evening (only my second ever), luckily advil and coffee opened things up enough to sleep. got a drainage throat and congestion this morning but feel marginally better.
this is my second trip to the yucatan, and my second time to fall ill in the middle of the trip, despite being in much better shape this time around. why does the quranic heaven not want me to breathe freely? | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| A Stoic Approach to Panentheism
while i really liked Shane in school (the book used to cover stoicism), somehow i ended up on a rather stoic path without grokking what i was doing, because the descriptions here come very close to my own humble opinions on Universe. (especially the things like man being as much part of nature as the wind, and the mind being part/partner of/to g*d/Universe)
i love the metaphor of sunlight too, a prism will turn white light into eight separate bands of color, but each of those colors is still a piece of the pure (unfiltered) light. that's how i like to imagine our individual consciousnesses and their relation to Universe. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| yesterday Santa Claus came to Puerto Aventuras. all the kids were on the beach dancing, with a grinch running through the crowd tussling hair, wrestling with kids, throwing hats and towels around, smacking people in the back of the head. (the grinch is all over tv, even showing up in mexican talk shows to be dogpiled by the cast)
Santa himself arrived by parasailing to a boat in the bay, then taking a sea-doo to the shore. he took his throne by the sea, and gave out gifts to all the children of the resort. while his entry was apropos to the locale, his suit not so much: it was the same wool outfit he'd wear in the north pole.
today my uncle is taking us to the best place to get chicken on the coast, then we'll see the sights at Tulum. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Time for a funny cat picture! It's not even my cat, but this amuses me greatly: http://twitpic.com/v6k12
Over the last few years, I have been trying to come to an understanding with Christmas. I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this holiday which I will explicate in great detail below.
On the one hand, I am not Christian: Christmas is not my religious holiday. I like the Christ myth, and yet I don't really feel like we've been saved from anything - for a good dose of this, check out the news of genocides and misery across the globe. I also don't personify God. I have a pretty well defined concept of the divine, and it is not anthropomorphic at all.
I also hate most popular Christmas music. My first job ever was working in a card and wrapping paper store over Christmas. This has given me a lifelong snobbery about cards and wrapping paper (I like elegant and colorful, usually do not like "funny" or cheesy), and such an overdose of popular Christmas music that it used to make me flee stores.
I've been listening to classical music radio in the car lately, and they've been playing some classical Christmas music (which is nice - this is the Christmas music I actually like since it's not an overdose of schlock). The lyrics are often very peculiar to me - a baby is born and now we are all saved from Satan, o let us adore him! What? Really?? Because I still see a whole lot of "Satan" (or at least, what I would define as evil and against divine love of creation).... Similarly, it's hard for me to think of this as "the most wonderful time of the year." I like parts of the Christmas season (see later in this post), and yet I still see Spring as more wonderful.
The other thing I genuinely find unpleasant about Christmas is that it makes January seem deeply depressing. I have called January "the long, dark Monday of the soul." After a festive holiday season, January feels like every awful grey "back to work" stereotype. There's nothing to look forward to until April (with the exception of PantheaCon & annual visit from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) witchchild), and it's hard not to get deeply depressed every year. Part of me wishes I could avoid celebrating entirely, because then January might be less of a lifeless hangover.
On the other hand, I've grown up celebrating a secular Christmas, and I love any excuse for twinkling lights at night, spiced warm drinks, singing songs, cooking extravagant food, and exchanging gifts with people I call family. I love wrapping paper, and wrapping presents with gorgeous layers of colorful paper and ribbon. I love Christmas candles (as a kid, I was utterly fascinated by the giant white pillar candle with embedded fake holly - how did they get that in there?!??). I love ornaments that provide a sense of family history.
When I was little, so many family members gave me ornaments that I had my very own (smaller) Christmas tree in my room as a kid. The first time I stayed up till midnight was by the light of one of those trees, and I remember loving the warm glow of the lights in my room to fall asleep to. My mother labeled all our ornaments with the names of who they were from and to, and what year. Some day, I will go through all of them and cry at my mother's handwriting and miss her, and remember things I had otherwise forgotten.
Favorite ornaments from my parents' tree: precious hand-blown glass icicles (like the ones here), glass-encased miniature scenes from the nativity (a shepherd and sheep, three wise men, Jesus in manger, etc.).
Every year growing up, our Mormon neighbors (as opposed to the other side, where we had Polish neighbors) would bring us a Christmas pastry that was sort of cinnamon bun but vastly vastly better (I don't like regular cinnamon buns). That was always breakfast on Christmas. Other memories: every year, my mother filled the bottom half of my father's stocking with malt balls. I don't know why, but I usually continue the tradition and get Dad malt balls every year.
The only real holiday food tradition we had is that every year, my beloved great Aunt Ruth would make divinity. I miss her. She was my favorite relative for a long time. My dad's father's sister lived a block away from my grandparents in South San Francisco. She had been married, and her husband had died before I was born. She kept house for several cats, cultivated beautiful roses, and did the best kind of volunteer work at her church. She pretty much kept their food pantry running. She was the best role model for attitude and health in old age, kind and spirited and driven. She made our Thanksgiving cranberry sauces (yes, plural!) and the Christmas divinity. I try to do the same to honor her.
I loved the Christmas tree. metaphorge is sadly allergic to real ones, but we have a small red fake one up (will post pictures later). We have a larger fake one in storage that we'll probably put up when we move somewhere with a little more room for it. As a kid, I remember hunting for the perfect real tree every year, and the day we took to light and decorate it.
I love giving people presents. I am fairly good at gift giving, and I love everything about the process. I delight in picking out the right present for someone, knowing their tastes and preferences well enough to come up with something just right. I love wrapping presents. It's a little harder when the pressure is on to get something by a specific date; I usually work better when I can spend as much time as needed to find just the right thing. Still, giving presents makes me really happy.
Much as it makes me sad that people aren't like this the rest of the year, the "holiday spirit" thing that a lot of people do is also really nice. People at the grocery store last night were smiling and joking with strangers. It was warm. This is what being a person is supposed to be about.
As metaphorge and I have combined our lives, we've been trying to find the traditions that work best for us both. As darkmoon has joined the Hivemind, we have been trying to work out the holiday stuff that she loves too. What are our most beloved traditions, and should we create new ones?
So... as an adult, I've been trying to find a place with Christmas that I'm comfortable with. I have too many happy memories to be one of those dour atheists who hates on everything holiday. I spent a couple of years as a teenager being too not-Christian for Christmas, and mostly that just felt too self-righteous and lonely and sad to keep doing. At the same time, I don't have much of a personal relationship to Christianity (either way - we went to church a few times growing up, but mostly Christianity has felt orthogonal to my life) to really feel like I'm celebrating the birth of religious figure who means a lot to me. It feels very strange and a little inauthentic to celebrate a religious holiday for not-my-religion, and yet it's associated with so many good family memories that I don't want to let it go. Calling it a solstice celebration (and a "solstice tree") doesn't feel like a good workaround for me, either.
At any rate, I am probably overthinking this. I do that.
Merry Christmas to all of you, those who celebrate and those who don't. My Christmas wish is that those I love get the best this holiday season has to offer. May your day (and life!) be blessed with wonderful food, delicious people, and a feeling of magic.
What about you, friends? Do you celebrate Christmas? Why or why not? And for those who don't, how do you feel about those who do? Is Christmas a totally weird tradition for those of you who grew up Jewish or otherwise not Christmas-celebrating? How do you reconcile your current religious beliefs with family celebrations and popular culture? | | comments: 35 comments or Leave a comment |
| Not only was Tom Ridge's "color wheel" terror chart a load of bull abused for political purposes, but apparently the "credible sources" and "chatter" he referred to when canceling flights and putting armed soldiers in our airports was coming from the imagination of a conman named Dennis Montgomery, who took a lot of people for a hell of a lot of money, and is still getting government contracts here in 2009.
oh yeah, and all that "Al Jazeera secret code" shit? he made that up too.
The Man Who Conned The Pentagon
why is the FBI powerless to stop men like this, while our lives get disrupted by his lies for more than 5 years? once the government found out they'd been had, they classified his work to keep the fraud secret. but because his fraud is secret, he can still go to agencies who don't know what he's done and continue to take them for millions.
and what did he do with the money? it appears he lost a lot of it at high roller blackjack tables in Las Vegas and Reno. passing bad checks to keep playing.
the US government will move mountains following bogus leads that confirm their own prejudices, but can't get word around that this man belongs in jail as a fraud.
sleep tight, america. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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