Reasonable

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:46:33 GMT

Shortest days are here and the chickens are still laying.

As of this morning they've adopted a young squirrel. No, that's wrong -- chickens are animals with strong opinions regarding the membership of their social groups. As of this morning they've permitted a young squirrel to squat between their coop's wire roof and slant of corrugated plastic, unharassed, unannounced by alarm calls. When I opened the coop door, it ran in while they all ran out in their usual socially-determined order and pacing. Maybe it's beneath their notice.

I chased the squirrel around the coop and petted it a few times, making affectionate noises, as a means of encouraging it to leave terrified. It avoided my attentions with no more panic than some of the chickens use, apparently judging it optimal to dodge me within a yard of the feeder. I had to pick it up by the tail before it'd head out the open door. As soon as I walked out, it poured itself along the wire and back in.

I splashed a little water at it, but didn't take any stronger measures. New pet? It is a holiday.

Terminology clarification for housemates: I'm still calling the wood-enclosed roosting area the "hen house", the hen house plus its attached, covered lock-up area the "coop", and the large, fenced daytime range the "run". I am aware that your usage differs.

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:23:49 GMT

Leechblock I love y

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:25:39 GMT

Should we build a little coop for our two little fall-hatched house-raised chickens and let them huddle together for the winter?

Should we introduce our two little chickens into the big coop with our three adult chickens and risk their getting pecked to death?

This is a topic on which I hope to be able to speak with conviction and at length before the end of the day. Action might also be a good idea.

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:26:45 GMT

Inflatable planetarium in the school commons today. We crawl in through the bent tunnel on hands and knees, making hotboxing jokes, making birth canal jokes, hoping nobody outside will leap on our moving lumps. We lie down on the tile floor and watch a woman my age whirl the universe.

"Earth is a comfortable place for us," she says, contrasting it to Mars and Venus.

"Not for us," I think.

"Not for me," says one of our four middle-schoolers. The dome mikes his weak voice. "Is it okay if I move to Mars and freeze?"

We crawl out, unimaginably tiny, assured of our identity as stardust and empty space.

I get paid for this. Not much.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:50:39 GMT

This place gets me humming with concealed utopian fervor.

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:05:04 GMT

There's a house for rent right now, right around the corner from Salut. Nobody I know has made a bid yet. Who wants it?

Suzy and I have speculative eyes on the house at the weirdly-taped upper window of which you tend to stare when you're sitting on Salut porch drinking, which house is currently under renovation and will be coming up for rent soon. Who wants in?

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:46:26 GMT

Martin Chase is coming back to Portland this weekend after being away for
-- who would believe it --
a year and a day.

Upon his departure the sturdy pink bike I once gave him began courting me with gentle but persistent encouragement, whispering to me that I owned it again. After maybe nine months I noticed it seeming to be mine-enough-to-give-away. I gave it away.

Who's got another bike for Martin? Tall, please. He's tall. Tough, please. He's rattly.

Mon, 18 May 2009 15:38:36 GMT

I walk in on a conversation between Schwern and ... oh, and the Narnians, represented by a selection of the old characters scattered among a lot of soft-skinned young women I don't recognize. The NPCs all look a little like Antonia but none of them are. We stand together facing the center of a chainlink-fenced quad of sun-baked dirt.

Jeff and Kevin laugh over Schwern's conference dinner anecdote: "But of course I was keeping a running total up my nose the whole time!" He crosses his fore and middle fingers, snaps them against his nose. Now the calculator is on in his nose again. He repeats the gesture at his ear. Now it's in his ear.

He demonstrates a simple set of procedures for teaching the system to modify its interpretation of hand movements based on user preference, then pantomimes a set of commands he might expect to give it during a talk. His hands dart, wave, slide back and forth palms-up at chest height, stop for quick instants at meaningful vertices: it's as beautiful as ASL. It's the most graceful thing I've ever seen him do but type. It's patterned so closely after ordinary emphatic gestures that you might not notice anything but effusiveness if you weren't warned, though; I spend a moment in my mind bewailing all this precise physical communication directed away from human attention. What happens to an Italian's ability to speak when you tie his hands to his user interface? Then I shut up and love it. The people who can afford to use this thing, they're going to be able to understand these movements.

I've understood one of these movements, one of the ones he didn't explain. Casually, almost unconsciously, before he started, he tapped at a point in front of his jaw as if he were testing a headset mic -- he's set it to listen to his speech -- and another point just in front of his ear -- he's set it to listen to everything else. We're in a dusty chainlink lot in a mildly post-war landscape, far from a terminal or so I'd thought. Now I think this thing is on.

Schwern doesn't answer when I ask the group whether they'd ever spend the money for the implants. The conversation quickly turns to buying houses, land, tractors, turns quiet.

Dan Orkwis gets everyone's attention directed at him as if he were up at the podium.

"How many of us have had eating disorders?" he asks, and something like 15 hands go up. "No, no, no!" he shouts. "Eating disorders have had YOU!"

We're not going to know.

are they floodplains? just where are we?

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:37:18 GMT

at handstand-time today the parks and playgrounds of inner se portland crackle like clambeds with noises whose real origin I've never known. using ideath's mythology I think of them as the sounds of worms

okay, okay, okay.

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:41:21 GMT

Oh, no, oh no, I cannot commit to a whole day spent at home, not ahead of time I can't, not yet, not if I have to be all cute and seasonal at the same time. There'll be a take-my-stuff party, but it'll probably happen on a day when I wake up in the morning going NOW, NOW, NOW IS WHEN I CAN'T LEAVE ANYMORE UNTIL IT'S DONE. And then I won't leave anymore, not until it's done. Only, maybe, I'll take little trips around to drop stuff on your porch. It'll be a party, believe you me.

Easter/Passover weekend isn't going to have that day in it. But you can still come by late afternoon or evening on Sunday, if you want to beat the rush.

503-734-5202. I manage to get it charged about every other day.

Dear Ariel's partiers,

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:35:20 GMT

Never you mind. I have it all figured out. Thank you, semi-ex-housemate Lacy Lee!

----
I've just offered rides home from Salut to two people and their two violas de gamba, all of whom or which live in Medium Southeast.

I don't have a car, of course, or a plan.

Anyone think they might want to give those rides tonight? Or lend me a car to drive them home and come back?

There's still some firewood at my house, too, and two of us who'd like to cross South-to-NE by 6:15, and the northward journey of viol number 1.

Some people rent cars for days like this! Hmmmmm.

free garage sale FREE FREE FREE

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:44:53 GMT

Dear world, if you love me: come take my stuff. Call first! Write first! Or show up next Sunday, April 12th; I'll stay around the house all day with my worldly goods arrayed around me. You can pick and choose.

7145 N Delaware.

If you want the backyard trampoline, bring a car.

I'll list some other stuff later. It's mostly useless sentiment.

I'm thinking it might just be spring.

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:05:18 GMT

Who has been sleeping enough?

timesucks

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:49:22 GMT

Anyone thing-competent want to help build a two-story puppet stage with geared automata* in exchange for grateful attention from cute gay boys? And also from me? And also we will get you so drunk?

I'm looking at you, sweetbenny.

We have a couple of months yet.

*flapping angel wings, a wheel of days, full stage backdrop convertible into wheel of stars

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:02:39 GMT

who-all's moving soon?

I am losing track.

--edited three replies later to add--
add a little star, please, if you think you-or-they might under any circumstances of money and timing and room arrangement consider moving into my rented north portland house with me, my friend kristi, her friend dave, a drum kit, a lot of stringed and keyed instruments, maybe some tattooed chef who's never here, an empty fishtank, a vegetable garden, cleanliness, prettiness, the skins of ungulates all over the chairs but unless you bring them, no cats.

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 05:15:18 GMT

please don't forget about this

snow snow snow snow

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:59:35 GMT

this is not the world I know

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:51:04 GMT

things are not always this easy for jes5199.

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:29:45 GMT

I do not know whether you are aware of, or suspect, or are entirely ignorant of, a certain fact. Do not suppose for a moment that the letters you write from Rome remain long in the possession of those to whom they are addressed. On the contrary, everyone rushes to make a copy of them with as much earnestness, and circulates them around the pontiff's court with as much zeal, as if they were sent not by a man of our own race but by an inhabitant of another world or of the antipodes. All press round to interpret your epistles; and never was an oracle of the Delphic Apollo turned and twisted into so many different meanings. I therefore praise the caution that you have displayed up to now. Until now you have exerted great care in moderating your tone and have succeeded beyond reproach. I urge you and beg you to exert greater and greater care in the future...

I have witnessed several persons struck with amazement as they read, when they saw your self-assurance struggling with your modesty so as to leave only a doubtful victory; astonished when they saw that neither debasing fear nor swelling pride found admittance to that contest. I have seen others perplexed as to whether they should more deeply admire your deeds or your words...

Persevere, therefore, as you have begun. Always write as if everyone were to read, and not merely read, but as if they were about to set out from every shore and bear your message to every land. You have laid the strongest of foundations: truth, peace, justice and liberty. Build on these. Whatever structure you erect will remain firm; and whoever hurls himself against it will be dashed to pieces. He who wars against truth will declare himself a liar; against peace, a restless spirit; against justice, a dishonest man; and if against liberty, an arrogant and shameless wretch.

new phone is empty

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:36:02 GMT

dear world!

you're all online right now anyway, right?

I don't have your phone number anymore.

please send it to me at jmdolan gmail with your name in the text, so I won't have to do this again.

I'm sure there are more technically advanced fixes, too. please feel free to tell me what they are, and then to implement them for me.

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:26:43 GMT

dear world,

my ugly old cell phone has broken in half.
can I have yours?

love, jenn

p.s. I have a sim card and a t-mobile plan.

homework

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:39:56 GMT

Read up on:

the black death
acrobatic performance practices
women as performers -- history of crossdress?
readings of the Book of Job

in England in 1376. Stop thinking it's 1337.

more wild veering

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:32:55 GMT

View Poll: #1346508

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:22:09 GMT

ashley is so gentle, so mean, so haphazard, so concise. qous is qous.

phonetic experimentation is an appropriate response to silence, as is silence. sincerity reads as wit. statements are made and reversed immediately without apology. I could stay all week deciding whether to say something funny or fall asleep. I could get my idle questions answered at fascinating length.

everyone can tell everyone what to do without the strain of sounding authoritative. everything happens if it should. there are pretty things to see hear eat, with histories to tell.

ashley says I should come up every weekend. not wrong! I will usually stick to imaginary weekends. they will remain perfect.

they have stairs steeper than long. they have fold-out couch that doesn't hurt people: it's possible. they're the only friend I have just now with the designy tinyhouse we all claim to want.

there's more to it than just the lens tricks: their city glows orange and sulfur through the grays.

...

dream there, also, complete with social outcasting, internet humor, and kevin turner:

my tall NPC friend and I are supernatural or undead, though we're not actively dangerous or disgusting; maybe we're werewolves that never change. they chase us through intricate streets. they chase us through intricate supermarkets. we are tired. we'll be killed soon.

we drop down off the highway at the edge of town, crunch our feet over the gravel embankment, and run just ahead of pursuit into the Field that Goes to the End of the World. I lie down in the foot-tall grass and they can't see me: I'm still wearing this camouflage. my friend is in blue against the blue sky; somehow that works. I'm in awe. finally, a superpower.

we run to the End of the World, where the field and sky become tapestries on walls. we go to the corner, lift the flaps of field and sky, crawl behind. we resolve to stay very still forever. we practice our breathing. I can still see out, and anyone right up close could still see me, as my friend went in first and we haven't crawled far enough back -- but we've resolved to stay very very still. we stay still.

the search party reaches us, doesn't see the walls or corner, and turns back chatting and laughing, not noticing it's turned back, following a natural inclination against trespassing on breaches in reality. one of the party falls behind, though, gets very quiet, stares.

it's kevin. kevin looks at my feet, sticking out below the backdrop, and sees feet. he looks up at my eyes and sees eyes. we look at each other for a long time.

kevin starts singing, I'm sorry to say, this.

the backdrop ripples and lifts as hidden monsters pour out all along its length.

I just remembered I've been having more or less this dream for years. I suspect it's pretty common.

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:51:38 GMT

View Poll: #1340663