Robert Plant and Grass Clippings?

Today as I was walking toward my house a maintenance man started a leaf blower to clean grass clippings off of a parking lot. I immediately started singing "In the Light."

I thought I would lose interest after the first verse but I made it all the way to the point when the guitar and drums kick in, and before I knew it, I was at my front door.

On a similar note, the phones in my office sounds just like the background sounds/synth-noise/mind-numbing chaos that is "Technology" (you know, that overplayed song by 50 cent and Justin Timberlake). I find myself saying "Ayo, I'm tired of using technology" without a hint of irony, and that's just sad.

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to the synth that kicks in at around 30 seconds. If you don't know what I'm talking about in the first part, go read a book or something.)

I always thought at this age my imagination would be tamed. It isn't. I'm glad.

PS- That video for "technology" is the worst, in case you don't have eyes to see that for yourself.

PPS- Here you go, lame-os, some high school senior hippie (or so it would seem) worked super hard to set all 8 minutes and 41 seconds of this to stills of the Northern Lights. A+.

PPSS- (6/23/08)My roommate vacuumed last night and son-of-a-gun if I didn't start it again.

The International: A Prelude

I have been a fan of the Carnegie International since 2005, when I first encountered the 40+ exhibits during a writing class. With my student ID in hand, I went back every chance I got, sometimes studying difficult paintings, trying to find meaning that was, to me, furtive, and sometimes sitting in the octagonal room filled with 8 projectors, each showing slightly differing clips of a man and a woman wandering the streets of an abandoned Paris train station while Philip Glass scores seemingly colored the black and white film.

I have eagerly anticipated this newest International. I had the opening marked in my date book and have been salivating at the chance to go. I finally went today, with my father and boyfriend.

It is fantastic. I am startled by how this International is simultaneously so similar and so different from the last one. It is, as was the previous one, ruthlessly fulfilling for any visual aesthete. This new one is both less provoking and more in-your-face. I'm wondering if the provocation will come with a second, third, etc., visit.

The first piece I encountered, an interactive wishing exhibit, set the mood for the visit perfectly. The wall is covered with ribbons of different colors. On each ribbon a wish is printed (some in German, some in Spanish, some in French, some in English). You remove the ribbon with the wish you want, or like, and tie it to your wrist with three knots. As you make each knot, you wish. Then you take a little piece of paper from a table nearby and write a wish of your own, which you slide into a hole in the wall. The artist collects the written wishes and prints them on new ribbons. I am wearing another person's wish, and someone else will wear mine. When this ribbon breaks, or falls off of my wrist, the wishes will come true.

I imagine that the artist prints multiple copies of some of her favorites because a few messages were peppered frequently among the others:

I wish for no more political crimes in Lebanon.

I wish to win the lotto.

I wish a vacation en la playa.

I wish I could have chosen my religion.

Je désire mourir en dormant. ( Translation: I wish to die sleeping.)

When I read the last one aloud, and then translated for my boyfriend and dad, a woman standing near me looked up and said "that's a good one, I should have taken that one."


I took the ribbon that said "I wish to always be overwhelmed by love."

In the spirit of this blog, which is really just the spirit of myself, I left one that said "I wish love for you all."

And I do.

This Heat Has Got to Be Kidding

Heat, are you serious? As if "Thermostatkrieg 2008" wasn't bad enough already in my office, and now we've got weather so hot it's making my dog toss her cookies. It's also making people very grumpy.

I feel like such a failure--I always hold out as long as I can before turning on the AC and it went on June 9* this year. Pathetic.





*It would have gone on sooner but we were out of town draining someone else's** AC.

**Comfort Inn, Presque Isle***.

***Not my favorite hotel.

Question: How Many Liberal Arts Majors Does it Take to Program a Heart Rate Monitor?

Answer: I don't know yet.

(Nike Imara HRM)

It is a very, very cool piece of equipment with too-cool-for-school instructions.


In other news, I got sick at work today. It was not at all awesome like getting sick in grade school school used to be. I was sitting in a meeting and all of a sudden I felt a vaguely familiar sensation. "This feels odd," I said to myself. "What does this feel like? Hmm. This feels kind of like having a fever, if I remember correctly. Hang on, wait, yeah, no--yes, I've actually got a fever." And then the room started swaying a little bit and I had to apologize and leave the meeting.

I promptly came home and went to sleep, which is exactly what I am about to do again right now.