berry lies

2011-02-16T07:57:00.002-06:00

I'm officially closing this blog. For all future updates, go to/follow http://oldstandby.tumblr.com/

Same content, different location.

Thanks, blogger, for being a putz.

the two best things I saw on my bike ride home from work today

2011-02-15T17:28:00.004-06:00

A woman grimacing—there's no other word for it, it was a for real grimace—as her dog squatted and pooped right into a puddle along a curb. It was in the middle of downtown at the start of rush hour.
A man carrying an actual hobo bindle. I mean, it was some real legit stuff. But instead of wrapping his provisions in a hankie, he had a massively-filled bag of empty aluminum cans. And the stick the bag was attached to was hulking too, something he could start an impressive fire with if the weather dipped too low. But I guess it's never wise to burn the implements of your livelihood, is it? That'd be like shitting in your own gutter.

how it is (a marriage)

2011-02-08T12:22:00.002-06:00

Saturday night was a good for walking, so I left my bike at C—'s house where'd I'd locked it a few hours before and just hoofed it back home.

Sunday, I went in the late afternoon to get the bike. Outside was slush and mess, so I took the car, jammed the bike in the best I could. While mentally kickboxing geometry, I realized I'd have to take the front wheel off.

When I did, I noticed a wrapped condom weaved in the spokes, like how a kid would do with a baseball card.

C—, I thought. C— C— C—.

When I took my bike out of the car to ride to work yesterday, I undid the condom from the spoke. Obviously, I wasn't all that into the idea of lugging a love medallion (errr) in my pocket at the office all day, so I put it in the change tray, locked the car door and biked off.

Later at night, A—, dear sweet wife that she is, ran to the store to pick up some things to lighten the cold that's been weighing down on me. She called me as soon as she got into the car. Why's there a condom in here?

I explained about C—. She knows him, how he is. Said ok.

When she got back, she seemed agitated.

Me: Are things were ok?
Her: Yeah.
Me: So what's wrong.
Her: Nothing
Me: Is it the condom? C— left it there, swear. He thought it'd be funny. Do you think I'm messing around on you or something?
Her: Trust me, C— leaving a condom in your spokes is way more believable than you being able to get laid by someone else.

Guess she just didn't feel much like talking afterall.

2011-02-03T06:04:00.003-06:00

Titles of three books I'll never write:

Occidental Beards
The Education of a Flunky
A Wildebeest's Tears

on blizzard

2011-02-01T21:39:00.006-06:00

The airport's about a mile away, close enough that there's a constant sound of spaced flights. They have patterns that switch like sluices. You can hear it always, though mostly you end up ignoring it altogether.

Wind's doing things to the the snow, lashing at it, making it gumshoe the corners of the fence. It's unclear whether more snow is falling or if the stuff that's already fallen is getting agitated.

I haven't checked the news, but it's so bad that all air travel in and out of this city has to have been halted.

But still there's that sound like a jet. Whir—there's no other word I can think of for it. I'm imagining flights suspended over us, making a slow decision about whether to drop or leave. Airborne indecision.

The windows of the house rattle, a very real thing. Everything I know seems like it could collapse into white.

It probably won't.

2011-02-01T20:54:00.002-06:00

"Aboard the gliding craft, a stewardess crawled down the aisle, over bodies and debris, telling people in each row to remove their shoes, remove sharp objects from their pockets, assume a fetal position. At the other end of the plane, someone was wrestling with a flotation device. Certain elements in the crew had decided to pretend that it was not a crash but a crash landing that was seconds away. After all, the difference between the two is only one word. Didn’t this suggest that the two forms of flight termination were more or less interchangeable? How much could one word matter? An encouraging question under the circumstances, if you didn’t think about it too long, and there was no time to think right now. The basic difference between a crash and a crash landing seemed to be that you could sensibly prepare for a crash landing, which is exactly what they were trying to do. The news spread through the plane, the term was repeated in row after row. “Crash landing, crash landing.” They saw how easy it was, by adding one word, to maintain a grip on the future, to extend it in consciousness if not in actual fact. They patted themselves for ballpoint pens, went fetal in their seats." - Don DeLillo, White Noise

old standby

2011-01-11T11:55:00.002-06:00

I've started oldstandby.tumblr.com
for sharing photos.
Been putting stuff up slowly. Surely though.
Follow me there.

aesthetic luddite 12

2011-01-11T06:31:00.004-06:00

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Hamilton's Shoes
Berlin, WI

one thin dime

2011-01-11T06:14:00.001-06:00

Baby, I stole all the money from your wallet and now I’m off. I don’t know why there’s that saying, “one thin dime” because if you think about it, dimes are much thicker even than a hundred dollar bill. Even a stack of those kinds. You were calling me names in your sleep last night. Again, I heard you slur at me. My dreams were the falling kind. Now, the light’s up again—you’re not, I am. I’ve ransacked your wallet, thinned it of everything; various widths. There wasn’t much there, certainly no hundreds. Was almost afraid I wouldn’t have enough to make it. But now I’m on the bus to work. The day’ll go quick. Today I feel it. Tonight I’ll be back, closing my eyes next to you and sleeping so deeply it’ll be like death.

Song of the day: Buck Griffin

2011-01-02T08:20:00.003-06:00

Song of the day (1/2/2011):
Buck Griffin

Heard this song when I downloaded the Swingin' Boogie comp from Uncle Gil the other day. Thought, Damn, I haven't put up a song of the day since October. That's a lot of days. Thought, too, It's a new year, kid, let's get our head on straight and start posting songs again. Then thought, This song's nice and catchy and you should share it.

So here we are with this post. Read more about Buck Griffin, and hey, enjoy the hell out of the tune.

Buck Griffin - Let's Elope Baby (Lin).mp3

32 books for my 32nd year

2010-12-28T23:37:00.000-06:00

I'll be be turning 32 on Sunday.

Reading is something I love but am incredible lazy at. As a way to motivate slash intimidate myself to read more, I drew up a list of 32 books to read before I turn 33.

This list includes stuff I've had on the shelves for years, classics I've never read, things I've heard are good, highlights from Donald Barthleme's syllabus, books that just looked interesting when researching on Amazon.

It's all fiction. That's where I want to focus.

These are in no particular order, but updated with an order as soon as I finish them. The list is likely to change per my whim, and I'm very whimmy. Crossed out things mean I've finished them, blue ones mean I'm currently reading. (List started Nov 7, updated Nov 26)

~~Amelia Gray - Museum of the Weird~~
~~Linsay Hunter - Daddy's~~
~~William Gass - Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife~~
~~Leonard Michaels - Complete Stories~~
Georges Perec - Life A User's Manual
Thomas Pynchon - V
Don DeLillo - White Noise
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom
Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
William Gass - Omensetter's Luck
Mary Robison - Tell Me
Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg Ohio
Donald Barthleme - 60 Stories
John Hawkes - The Lime Twig
Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Nicole Kraus - Great House
Borges - Labyrinths
Franz Kafka - The Castle
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
Isaac Bashevis Singer - Gimpel the Fool
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
Brian Evenson - Fugue State
Christine Schutt - Nightwork
Barry Hannah - High Lonesome
Barry Hannah - Bats Out of Hell
Richard Yates - The Easter Parade
Salvador Plascencia - The People of Paper
Stanley Crawford - Gascoyne
David Ohle - Motorman

scout ranch

2010-12-28T08:43:00.004-06:00

Cool, informed update from one of my readers on the Boy Scouts jacket I posted about last week.

Hey, saw your post as a result of a google alert I have setup and wanted to clarify.

That jacket is a leaders coat, and people usually fill them up with patches and the like from trips and outings.

The bull is one of the older logos of Philmont Scout Ranch, a huge high adventure base in New Mexico. The other patch likely means the person whose coat that was hiked some (unlikely all) of the Appalachian trail.

Thanks, Lou!

Vegan Quinoa Pancakes

2010-12-24T08:06:00.004-06:00

Looking for something to eat other than oatmeal for breakfast this morning, I decided pancakes would be good. There was some cooked quinoa lingering in the fridge, so I thought hmmm, fired up google, found a recipe for quinoa pancakes and veganized it.

This is the result. Nice fluffy yet crunchy (in a good way!) pancakes.

By the way, I don't pretend to be a food photographer or chef, so the dude up there looks wonky. It's the taste I'm going for.

Vegan Quinoa Pancakes

1 cup cooked quinoa
3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon course salt
2 flax egg substitutes
1 tablespoon melted Earth Balance
1/2 - 3/4 cup homemade hemp milk
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup, plus more for serving
fresh fruit or fruit preserves (optional) for serving

Directions

In one bowl, whisk together quinoa, flour, baking powder, and salt.
In another bowl, whisk together egg, egg white, butter, milk, and syrup until smooth.
Combine the mixtures in the two bowls and whisk until combined.
Lightly coat a large nonstick skillet or griddle with butter and heat over medium-high. Drop batter by heaping tablespoonfuls into skillet. Cook until bubbles appear on top, 2 minutes. Flip cakes and cook until golden brown on underside, 2 minutes. Wipe skillet clean and repeat with more melted butter and remaining batter (reduce heat to medium if overbrowning). Serve with maple syrup and fresh fruit or preserves if desired.

aesthetic luddite 11

2010-12-24T07:39:00.000-06:00

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Waffle House
Bloomington, IN

official jacket of the boys scouts of america

2010-12-23T15:20:00.004-06:00

One of the best things I've found at a thrift store in a long time. Doubt I'll actually wear the thing, but couldn't pass it up.

Jacket branded as the official jacket for the Boy Scouts of America.

Can't really make sense of the patches:
- The bull would be for rodeos?
- Maine to Georgia/AT patch represents the Appalachian Trail.

Whatever the case, the events that lead up to it winding up in Racine, WI thrift store in 2010 would probably make for an interesting story.

If anyone can piece together the history of this, let me know.

chickenshit

2010-12-23T08:15:00.002-06:00

aesthetic luddite 10

2010-12-23T07:38:00.002-06:00

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Victoria Hotel
Racine, WI

2010-12-20T06:33:00.002-06:00

Santa told the family about what the baby accomplished this year (well, the two months of it that's comprised her life–for ten months she was in the womb). Her report card read like this:

Did over 100 one armed push-ups
Won a potato sack race while reading War & Peace
Mastered Aramaic–the language of Jesus & his people
Ate 107 hotdogs in under a minute, beating out that scrawny Japanese kid
Swam the English Chanel. In her birthday suit!

Give the kid a damn present already, man.

2010-12-20T06:18:00.001-06:00

100 Good Reasons to Kill Myself Right Now

2010-12-19T07:13:00.002-06:00

On A Journey Round My Skull blog, they're serializing French illustrator Roland Topor's incredibly funny 100 Good Reasons to Kill Myself Right Now. If your sense of humor is the color of coal (I think mine is, but I may be colorblind), you'll go read it with zilch haste.

My 5 favorite reasons to end it all right now, so far:
2) It'll throw off the last census.
8) I'd make a fool of my cancer.
40) To kill a Jew, like everyone else.
42) To leave behind a widow simply bursting with youth.
49) I'm trying to spare someone else the unfortunate consequences of an assassination.

some lie to tell

2010-12-19T07:02:00.007-06:00

We'd come up with some lie. My dad was supposed to tell it to the person who answered.

He picked up the phoned, dialed.

Stammered.

Hung up.

Said, "I couldn't do it. I'm terrible at lying. I couldn't."

I said, "What are you talking about? You're a great bullshitter. You did it for a living."

His whole career, he'd been a marketer.

An expression broke across his face like cracks in dried mud. "I only pressed six numbers," he said, "It was all dial tone."

my clan

2010-12-18T17:40:00.001-06:00

beer is good, beer is great

2010-12-18T17:33:00.005-06:00

My brother and I are doing a project where we drink a combined 730 unique beers in 2011. That's 365 each. 1 per day. All different.

We're starting Jan 1st. We have a blog where you can follow our exploits. It's called There's a Year in My Beer.

We were also interviewed by an online magazine here in Milwaukee earlier this week. Check that out, too!

If you're traveling anywhere this year and want to bring us back some good regional stuff, get in touch! No, I'm not afraid to beg.

(Image by Ordinary Company)

2010-12-18T07:00:00.001-06:00

God's people creep the shit out of me.

2010-12-15T17:36:00.003-06:00

I hated Cursive back in the 90s when all my friends were into them. It wasn't until I heard the first Good Life record that I could even stomach Tim Kasher's voice.

And then I kind of fell in love with The Good Life. And since then I've really liked everything Kasher has done.

For the past few days, I've been way into Kasher's new(ish, since it came out in Oct.) solo record, The Game of Monogamy. He'll be in Milwaukee this week, but I won't go see him, since he kinda weirded me out when Cursive played here last year.

Definitely glad I have this record though, and its songs that parade around the theme of creeping age, like this from the song "There Must Be Something I've Lost":

Those drunken nights passed out on the laptop
Looking up old acquaintances there must be something I lost
Something I forgot that keeps me digging up these corpses,
Some midlife death wish
Won't you leave those poor girls alone?
They don't need you anymore

2010-12-09T16:10:00.000-06:00

Grove Press: Barry Hannah's Long, Last, Happy from Lost Pilot on Vimeo.

I need this book.

a foible

2010-12-08T19:00:00.002-06:00

The land’s suburban, a ¼ acre plot that used to grow a swapping of soybean & corn. The man’s German by decent and by temperament. He has a pet. It’s an imported, domesticated marsupial, small, and it scuttles through the piles of leaves the man forms with his rake. For hours and hours, he works straight with no rest. The two trees, maples both, hang over him like a tarp packed with God’s lice. He looks up, then goes back to his work. There is no wind today. It’s late October still and still as a glassy lake. The pet is not leashed. It’s trained well and knows its name, which the man cracks out like a horsewhip when the thing goes too far. It comes back to him. The many hours this work takes gives rise to calluses, muscles that will soon cry Epsom, Epsom! Color is falling out of the daytime, sheds of skin. The man switches on an electric leaf blower to get remnants the rake left behind. His pet startles. Goes right up one of the two maples. The man shouts the thing’s name, screams come here, a few words in German, any potential of expletive his tongue had waiting in it. The pet’s up the tree though, climbing the system of branches. There are a few still full of leaves colored the earthly expression of a very deep psychosis.

Because of some weird application of footing, it all comes down: the leaves, the pet, all the junk that hides up high in a maple. Things you could never even guess at.

The blower stays loud.

21 sounds my heart makes that it shouldn’t

2010-12-01T08:37:00.001-06:00

A car going down the Pacific Coast Highway with its muffler dragging.
The theme song to The Munsters.
A shovel digging into frozen dirt, hitting a rock.
A major league baseball game broadcast over AM radio.
Harry Caray wheezing after a homer.
Two cast iron frying pans, filled with Palm oil, clanged together, still hot.
Stray electricity leaking out of the telephone wires overhead.
A gate with dry hinges left open, slamming in a bad wind.
Bubbles.
The city of Mumbai, capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, flaking to the ground when picked up.
An office building first thing in the morning, before anyone shows up.
A tree falling in a very crowded National Forest.
Something akin to News Chopper 12.
Corduroy on a fat kid’s thighs as he or she runs from a pack of pink-cheeked bullies on a school playground in Anytown USA, USA.
The giggles of a child who cannot yet speak..
A curtain thrown open on its metal rod so you can glare at a neighbor mowing his lawn at 7 a.m. He will not notice this.
My grandmother cursing.
Up 4 or 5 carrots being julienned.
A briar pipe filled with Burley tobacco being doused with a lighter’s flame until the cherry buries itself in and stays going on its own.
Clumsy ghosts scaring you accidentally.

Willie Master's Lonesome Wife

2010-11-26T22:11:00.004-06:00

Most people are distressed, honestly enough, by their own dirt. Imagine the shit of a lifetime packed into tubs. It would be of comfort knowing it was yours. Still, the dirt of others is even more distressing. Pick another's nose, for instance. Proof enough? Well, that's my theory. We get used to it—our own—we get used to it. Soldiers get used to it. They get used to death, distress, and the dirt of others. Mothers, of course, get used to it. We whores get used to it. But all of us are harlots in ourselves, and soldiers: we get used to it—our dead breath and dying eyelight, bare basins and odd bodies—used to living in a trench. - William Gass, Willie Master's Lonesome Wife (part of my 32 Books For My 32nd Year "challenge.")

pictures as stories

2010-11-21T17:46:00.005-06:00

This weekend, I started using the magic trio of my iPhone, Diptic, and Instagram to tell stories.

These are the stories so far. Watch out, they'll make you cry.

Story #1: The Complete History of Love As Told by the Titles of 3 Thrift Store Books

Story #2: The War Effort

2010-11-21T13:56:00.003-06:00

When she finally relaxes into sleep, the baby's arm falls back like she's got a muscle to show off. Her fist's in a fist, like she wants to kiss it, like gloating.

the leaves

2010-11-16T22:49:00.008-06:00

On Pine Street, a mouse runs into a pile of leaves. A raccoon, hunched over like it's begging to be shot and formed into a hat, notices. It runs across and follows the mouse in for food or friendship. My Yorkie, Pinocchio, walking with me unleashed, sees the raccoon and chases it. What else can you expect from me?—I follow Pinocchio and the raccoon and the mouse into the leaves.

When I'm in there, there's no rustle or movement. We're each waiting, not wanting the other to get away and not wanting to be noticed.

A car, wood paneled and huge, driven by my neighbor Rick makes a gummy turn around the corner, onto Pine, into the pile of leaves.

It's difficult for me to tell you this, but the weight kills me immediately. I don't even feel the roll of the back tire.

Rick keeps going, used to the thing's sloppy shocks.

Pinocchio's rotten sense of smell kicks; he nips the raccoon's tail, its squeal startles the mouse, who runs out, causing the raccoon to run out, and Pinocchio to run out.

There's a long chase, through yards and alleys and streets and a few parking lots and fields. A fox becomes involved at some point. Someone drops out and someone is eaten.

Eventually Pinocchio realizes how far he is from me. He takes a while to pieces things back together, linking his way back to me like PVC pipes, until the final elbow onto Pine.

He sits there by the leaf pile. Then lays down. When the guys from the city come in the morning to mulch the leaves, he goes at their ankles. They have Animal Control on speed dial.

unpreparing

2010-11-16T22:07:00.007-06:00

I tell my boyfriend the news and his eyes light up. What if, he says, what if someone kidnapped the baby? For ransom, or to sell it on the black market? What if you tripped and fell and landed on your stomach?

I don't know, I tell him. He turns on the news, says, Come on, get to the terrorist stuff.

When he leaves to get coffee I imagine him spilling the coffee on himself, getting third-degree burns that fuse his fingers together. I imagine him getting stuck in the elevator, the cables breaking and the elevator plummeting him to his death, though the hospital is only three floors high. I wonder if it's possible that an air bubble got injected into his bloodstream in the crash somehow, that it will reach his heart and he'll go down, his heart exploding like a firecracker in an apple. - Linsay Hunter, "Unpreparing" (which you can read here) from her book Daddy's (part of my 32 Books For My 32nd Year "challenge.")

going places

2010-11-16T21:59:00.003-06:00

Laughing, telling stories, even a bit cocky, Beckman would finger the badge with his taxi number on it while his mother's eyes, with unblinking persistence, told him he was miserable, and his father, puffing a cigar against doctor's orders, sat quietly, politely killing himself, nodding, chuckling at the stories until Beckment left and he could stagger out of the room and grope down the wall to his bed. Behind the wheel, Beckman flicked the ignition key, squinted his mind's eye, and saw his father prostrate with a headache, and Beckman gunned the motor, gunned house and street, his mother's eyes and fathers rotten heart and headache. - Leonard Michaels, from the "Going Places" in his Collected Stories (part of my 32 Books For My 32nd Year "challenge.")

No words needed.

2010-11-16T18:30:00.000-06:00

(via Old Chum)

the ferret and the man

2010-11-11T14:51:00.005-06:00

The guy had a ferret at his ankles. Morning rush hour was just starting and they were walking near the Bay Viewda Triangle.

They kept close to the buildings. Using his foot, the guy would guide the ferret back against the brick facades when it started to veer off toward the curb and the road. It kept trying to do this, so the guy was using his foot a lot.

It was like he was kicking at the wormy mammal, and his foot was filled with pure love.

It must have been too much, because soon he swooped down and picked the ferret up. He draped it down beside his head like a shoulder pad that'd protect him in battle.

What he did next was turn his face and kiss the ferret. This lasted for some time. Then they crossed the street. Together, looking both ways.

the girl, this lass

2010-11-09T23:33:00.008-06:00

The girl, this lass, she was born with the pelts of two squirrels for eyebrows. Over the turbulent, pitted seas of her eyes, the things often seemed alive.

They were head to tail on most days, except during the nights she slept badly. On those nights, she'd find herself dropping freely from nimbostratus cotton candy. Or sometimes with the fangs of canis electrified by rabid joy plunging into unformed plots on her body.

When the light was back up, she'd take the mirror she kept beside her bed for such purposes and see that the squirrels were snout to snout and tails away, looking at the gap of flesh between her brows like it was the sweetest acorn ever grown.

Mueseum of the Weird

2010-11-09T19:02:00.005-06:00

She often made a joke about the last gift her grandmother sent, a single pair of red socks with a row of embroidered polar bears. She wore the socks, and when anyone remarked on them, she would say, those were the last present my grandmother gave before her passing.

She never would seriously say "passing." Her grandmother hadn't driven in years and likely wouldn't utilize the HOV lane, but June imagined the woman in a dirty red sedan, flipping the bird as she tore around a school bus and howling at the idea that a pair of socks could make so many people feel like shit. - Amelia Gray "Death of a Beast" from Museum of the Weird (book #1 of my 32 Books For My 32nd Year challenge)

how to clean a pipe

2010-11-07T09:29:00.000-06:00

How do I make this woman my (2nd) wife?

nothing lasts forever

2010-11-03T19:04:00.003-05:00

And when you're older and full of cancer, it doesn't matter now. Come on get happy. Because nothing lasts forever. But I will always love you. - Harry Nilsson, from the song "Don't Forget Me"

Go stream the documentary Who is Harry Nilsson & Why Is Everyone Talkin' About Him? on Netflix. It's long (2hrs), but insanely worth it.

2010-10-26T15:41:00.004-05:00

I've been put on notification, but they're keeping it quiet.

Here's how it happened: There were lights in stirred up colors. I slowed to nothing and then just sat there. Up to that point, I'd never done anything wrong in my life I'd been caught for.

Tonight though the few excess miles my tires were carrying came up as salt welts in my eyes. They were irrepressible. I felt stupid. The woman who had the plastic-brimmed hat and heavy belt must have thought me a pud.

She took my card, read my name into a black thing she had perched on her shoulder.

She handed the card back, saying next time and thinking or think and if it was up to me. Her face, I noticed, was a crude dolor. Her voice was shockingly flat, like she'd already said everything surprising that'd ever come to her.

Maybe it was all tiredness, the time of day, the extreme nightness of the hour.

Her lights went off. Or the opposite of went off: turned off. It became dark. She curled her squad car and went back to where my speed triggered her radar gun in the first place.

The lines for phones had a buzz to them and the grass was alive with insects and wind.

I started the motor, feeling like I could kill but not knowing what.

2010-10-24T19:15:00.000-05:00

2010-10-24T13:28:00.001-05:00

Beets have the same tail as mice in the field. Same color blood, too. The only thing I can't speak to is the difference in taste.

blues run the game

2010-10-24T13:25:00.003-05:00

What I've been listening to

2010-10-19T18:35:00.004-05:00

These are pretty crappy as far as videos are concerned (not real videos, just the songs with an image), but represent the music that I've been listening to lately. Newish stuff, finally.

Wild Nothing - Golden Haze
Violens - Amoral
The Walkmen - Lisbon

I don't have mp3s because rdio has entered my life and made it way better. Cleaner. It's how I'm listening to stuff now. You should sign up for it and we can trade musical secrets.

adream & sleeping

2010-10-18T23:18:00.001-05:00

2010-10-17T16:02:00.001-05:00

aesthetic luddite 9

2010-10-17T15:57:00.002-05:00

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Brentwood Animal Hospital
Oak Creek, WI

dakota

2010-10-17T12:24:00.003-05:00

From the outside it looked like the kind of building home to dental offices or some other kind of office wherein exacting measures were taken against decay. Or so I liked to think—that time spent at home would be spent cleansing, filling, improving something. It was a ten-story stucco thing with a short walk up to a glass door that opened automatically, as if the building could see you, or sense you, and didn't want you to touch it. - Ottessa Moshfegh "Dakota" from Sleepingfish 8

cider-making

2010-10-17T08:41:00.006-05:00

Back in 1999, I became dubious of hard cider.

I was studying abroad in England and had just started drinking beer, It was right after my 21st birthday (a sheer coincidence). Newcastle was the one that got me into it. Can't stomach that stuff anymore.

But anyway, the school I was at had a pub. Each day between certain hours, they'd give students 2-for-1 drinks. One of my chums said he'd get the first round. He came back with the glasses and I took a big slam.

NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING.

At all.

It was cider. Strongbow, I think.

Ever since then, I didn't like cider. Maybe it was the surprise. Maybe it was just that Strongbow is such crappy cider.

Last year though I watched The Botany of Desire and there's a whole chapter that talks about apples and how hard cider was such a key element in the lives of early Americans. The way they talk about it, cider seemed like this wild, untamed, exciting thing. (I also tried Crispen Cider around then, which also gave me some hope)

Since then, I've been crazily into the idea of making my own batch of Farmhouse Style cider. I wanted it as stripped back as possible. Dry, not too fruity.

This is the recipe I found. I modified it slightly:

5 gallons of cider (from Patterson Orchard in New Berlin, WI)
5 cups of sugar (used 4 cups organic sugar & 1 cup brown sugar)
1 package of Lalvin D-47 yeast

While brewing, we drank a bottle of 2009 Etienne Dupont Organic Cidre Bouché Brut de Normandie. Fucking amazing. Bone dry. Perfect. If my cider is anything like it, I'll be more than pleased.

Give it several weeks and I'll report back.

the onlooker

2010-10-16T10:29:00.000-05:00

the basement

2010-10-12T11:15:00.007-05:00

New kinds of animals appear in the basement every day. Each night after the table is straightened back, I go write down what's there with a stubby pen in a notebook with a small spiral, putting a flashlight between my teeth to see.

The wall gave way a few months ago when there was rain so heavy it moved things. We covered up the collapse with a tarp, bright blue, and weighed on the corners with bricks left from some project that never got life.

Here's what I've seen:

Frogs, two kinds
Spiders, so many that that the webs are like a sheets
Mice
A kitten, its eyes sealed shut with sick
Crickets or cicada (I never learned how to tell)
Rats and their nests made of tax records and insulation
Opossums, one living & four dead

There are pockets of wetness forming on the ground. The support beams are seeming almost maritime. Tortoises will soon find their way in, then winged things with echoes in their throats.

A rolling fog will roll in.

One day I'll leave the notebook, pencil, and flashlight upstairs, take off my shoes. I'll take down a rod with me and cast it out. I'll bring something in.

the yard

2010-10-07T19:44:00.006-05:00

I'm hiding myself in the vines of ivy, tight against the wall, with the spiders that live in it all going over me. My breath keeps catching and releasing, like a latch when the wind goes awry.

The instructions had been either wrongly sent or received; there was some snarl in understanding that sent men from a rental watch unit in shined shoes and matching hats after me, slipping a little in the slick misted grass. They had me in heavy hand-held light that was supposed to help them see me, but really just let me see where I could turn off suddenly and lose them.

It's in the yard of someone official that I'm weaved into this ivy.

By the morning, the search will be called off. A bust. The men will switch shifts, go home and soothe their muscles in Epsom.

I'll have bites all over me, countless unnamed kinds and sizes.

This official person—you'd not recognize his name, but his acts you would, brutal or heroic depending on your bent—will come out of the door of his house without a shirt on. He'll look out on his yard and the pool not far off. He'll see it floating in there and turn to go inside.

They'll know it was me.

Song of the day: Freakwater

2010-10-05T22:44:00.002-05:00

Song of the day (10/5/2010):
Freakwater - My Old Drunk Friend

No mp3, but you get a video and these lyrics. You're faring well today, friend.

I should have moved to New York City, but I never was that cool
I just languished in the Midwest like some old romantic fool
And the streetlights shine down on the bottles we have broken
'Till the road is paved with diamonds from a thousand lost love tokens
And my logic just seems more clear with every bottle of beer

five days young

2010-10-05T16:58:00.001-05:00

Radio: Russian thugs and believers

2010-10-05T12:44:00.007-05:00

Too Much Information continues to be my favorite podcast.

There's a huge backlog of podcasts on my iPhone that I'm slowly getting through as I do my nightly walk. Listened to the August 23rd edition of TMI last night and it may have been my favorite yet.

In it, Benjamin Walker talks to photographers who have spent time in Russia photographing Siberian gangsters and Old Believers.

He also talks to a woman who runs the largest collection of Soviet-era Non-Conformist Art (read: politically and socially subversive, as well as just silly) art in the world.

And that's the the half hour. The second half is about Hilter and Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, & Chinese midgets talking about how his country runs MGM Studios.

I mean, come on. Listen already!

Oh, and here are more Old Believers photos. By a different photographer.

aesthetic luddite 8

2010-10-04T10:50:00.002-05:00

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.
St. Francis Industrial Park
St. Francis, WI

Best part = that there's a place called Olive Branch.

Song of the day: Hank Snow

2010-10-04T10:32:00.006-05:00

Song of the day (10/4/2010):
Hank Snow - Maple Leaves

There's lots of sleeplessness and general restlessness around this place, what with the new baby and all that comes with it and all.

People say that animals get shoved to the side after babies arrive, but I'm actively fighting against that. I've committed an hour out of each of the last two days to taking the dogs for an hour long walk.

The best thing about our hospital stay (other, you know, than leaving with an awesome baby) is that fall finally really settled in.

So these walks have been great. I have the headphones on and just go. The dogs are beat when we get home.

This Hank Snow is a perfect fall song. Mainly because it's about fall, but also because it sounds like fall. Seasons have a sound, you know.

Even in Canada.

Hank Snow - Maple Leaves.mp3

50 thoughts on living for my baby, 9 hours old

2010-10-01T10:04:00.008-05:00

I had a baby today. Esther Eloise Seidel. Essie. 7lbs, 9oz, 19" of incredibleness.

I put together this list a few weeks ago, things I think it'd be good for her to know as she starts life. Not advice, just ideas*. She can be who or whatever she wants to be.

Call bluffs, no matter who's bluffing.
Respect your elders only if they respect you.
Never call people "Mr" or "Miss" or "Sir" or "Ma'am", even if they insist. It's kinda creepy.
Family history is important. Demand to hear the stories that lead up to your life.
Your friends are part of your family. You'll be much closer to the friends than lots of people you share blood with. That's ok. Hug them tightly.
Trust your instincts, but not to a fault. Some things just take time. It's good to be fallible.
Remember the jokes that people tell you. They’ll come in handy in the right situation.
There's almost nothing more important than music.
Learn to play an instrument. You don't need to do it well, but it helps.
Care about how you look, but don’t care about if others care for how you look
Live in New York, Berlin, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, a dusty road long in the middle of Montana. Go lots of elsewheres. But always remember where you’re from, feel something like pride for it. Home matters just as much as any adventure.
Go for long walks alone at night.
Have a large vocabulary, but don’t use it for pretentiousness or wow. Always keep a dictionary close at hand.
Being good at public speaking is important. Being good at private speaking is even more important.
The best teachers are as strict with you as you should be with yourself. They also believe in your talents as much as you should believe in them yourself. Anyone else is just a phony and shouldn't be taken all that seriously.
Revise mercilessly.
Learn by doing, even if all you learn is why you shouldn't do something.
Burning bridges can be ok. You won't need to cross every river more than once. Just never set fires on impulse or out of spite.
Exercise (somehow) daily.
Fool around with lots of men. And/or women. (Once you’re old enough, otherwise your dad will be forced to break some legs.) But keep a sense of wonder and mystery. Once that’s gone, realize you’re doing things wrong and stop. It’s unfair to yourself and others.
Learn the names of and how to identify flora and fauna.
Look up at the sky, but also watch your feet as they move below you so you don’t trip up.
Collect things. But don’t worry about their worldly value—what matters is what they mean to only you.
Stare in windows as you pass houses and wonder what life inside must be like. But don't wish to trade your life for whatever you come up with.
For the most part, germs won't hurt you.
Create things. Put every ounce of yourself into it, without worry. Money finds its way to find you in time. Somehow. It’s more important to focus on digging into the itch than to look for the source of it.
Make puns.
Don't be afraid of getting old, be afraid of dying young.
Embrace technology, but know how to live without it, too.
From time to time, sleep places where you feel uncomfortable. Don't psyche yourself out. Comfort can cripple.
Document things somehow.
Never support things you don't believe in. Especially for the sake of convenience, fashion, or taste.
Worry about what people think, but don’t let it trouble you.
Brood often. But not openly or for long. Most things really aren’t such a big deal.
You don’t need religion to be an righteous person.
Old stuff is better than new stuff, but the present is always better than the past.
Cars are evil—ride your bike or walk or take a train. You'll see more, feel better, and better appreciate the place you are.
Play sports.
Go through a punk rock phase. And a hippie phase. The right way to be is somewhere in the middle.
Ask questions, then question the answers. Always.
Live with dogs.
Learn how to bake bread from scratch.
Never complain about winter, just enjoy its stillness.
Look people in the eyes when you talk to them. And really, really listen, no matter how important or inane it seems.
Drink the good stuff.
Always respond to text messages, emails, phone calls, or whatever they have next. Nothing's ruder than letting people hang.
Read a book a week. Read deep and wide and shallow and narrow.
Never grow up too much.
Ignore everything I've written here and listen to your mother instead. She's a way better & smarter person than I could ever hope to be.
Be good.

* I can't claim to do all these things either. They just seem the ideal way of living.

barry hannah

2010-09-29T20:39:00.001-05:00

The very deep things that happen to actual ordinary people are closer to farce than they are to deep tragedy or high comedy. - Barry Hannah

All our days will be better than his

2010-09-28T07:47:00.005-05:00

A few blocks after the raw anger of a skunk was done in the air, I rode my bike up over the only real hill there is. At the top, there was a couple hunched over a small pile of something the color of a fox.

Their look was true bewilderment, an uncommon look.

When I asked what was wrong, the guy (who had his bare feet against the ground, even though it's just over 50°) looked up and said, "Hit by car."

It wasn't their car—that car was gone. They lived across the street and crossed it when they saw what happened, to be near the body.

It wasn't their dog—it turned out to be a dog, some strain of Pomeranian—either.

Like I said, they just saw it happen and crossed the street.

"He's just about..." the guy said as he bent down to touch the dog's face below the ear. "No, he just died."

We looked at it and each other, not really sure of what to say or do.

"Can you guys call Animal Control?" I asked after a bit. "They'll take care of the body."

They said they would. "There's no collar, but maybe he's chipped."

I got back on the seat, ready to go where I work, and the guy said, just in this way: All our days will be better than his.

Amelia Gray

2010-09-28T06:41:00.004-05:00

Sheesh, some blog posts, like Amelia Gray's most recent, are so to-the-point and dead-on word-wise, you wonder why you ever even try. Go read it.

I'm dying to order her new book, Museum of the Weird, and I guess that pulling the trigger is a good way to die. So that loud shot you might hear later? That's Amazon getting some of my money.

2010-09-27T20:32:00.005-05:00

Oh my god, I'm having contractions!: can't, won't, shouldn't, don't.

And I'm going in to labor!: in fields, factories, laboratories, in suburban corporate parks, grocery store meat counters, in a long haul truck across this enormous country of ours without a second of sleep.

Now, really, I'm giving birth—to a total waste of cyberspace's particles.

2010-09-27T19:58:00.005-05:00

William Gass's In the Heart of the Heart of the Country is something I could quote from for the rest of my life, I think.

I've it before, remember?

Nobody else writes or can write sentences/paragraphs like this.

Mrs. Desmond is my right-hand friend; she's eighty-five. A thin white mist of hair, fine and tangled, manifests the climate of her mind. She is habitually suspicious, fretful, nervous. Burglars break in at noon. Children trespass. Even now they are shaking the pear tree, stealing rhubarb, denting lawn. Flies caught in the screens and numbed by frost awake in the heat to buzz and scrape the metal cloth and frighten her, though she is deaf to me, and consequently cannot hear them. Boards creak, the wind whistles across the chimney mouths, drafts cruise like fish through the hallow rooms. It is herself she hears, her own flesh failing, for only death will preserve her from those daily chores she climbs like stairs, and all that anxious waiting. It is now, she wonders. No? Then: is it now?

We do not converse. She visits me to talk. My task to murmur. She talks about her grandsons, her daughter who lives in Delphi, her sister or her husband—both gone—obscure friends—dead—obscurer aunts and uncles—lost—ancient neighbors, members of her church or of her clubs—passed or passing on; and in this way she brings the ends of her life together with a terrifying rush: she is a girl, a wife, a mother, widow, all at once. All at once—appalling—but I believe it; I wince in expectation of the clap. Her talk's a fence—a shade drawn, a window fastened, door that's locked—for no one dies taking tea in a kitchen; and as her years compress and begin to jumble, I really believe in the brevity of life; I sweat in my wonder; death is the dog down the street, the angry gander, bedroom spider, goblin who's come to get her; and it occurs to me that in my listening posture I'm the boy who suffered the winds of my grandfather with an exactly similar politeness, that I am, right now, all my ages, out in elbows, as angular as badly stacked cards. Thus was I, when I love you, every man I could be, youth and child—from from enough—and you, strangely ambiguous a being, met me, heart for spade, play after play, the whole run of your suits.

2010-09-26T12:45:00.002-05:00

First foray into the world of staple guns and fabric. This is a chair we've had for years and have always meant to fix up. Just never got around to it.

At the thrift store last night, we found a good bunch of fabric that seemed like it'd do the job, so I paid the $2 they were asking.

The under part of the cushion would make a pro upholsterer shake their head in shame, but it's overall ok. Looks better (cleaner, at least), and I guess that's what really matters. Right?

Also just feels awesome to be able to check this off the shit to do list.

overcooked

2010-09-26T11:44:00.001-05:00

Overcooked.
40 weeks + 1 day.
Come on, lil girl.

Song of the day: Lenzie Moss

2010-09-26T08:44:00.006-05:00

Song of the day (9/25/2010):
Lenzie Moss - Kelvin British Summertime

Brian told me about Lenzie Moss, pointed me to their bandcamp page, and told me to downloaded their ep. Which I did. All of those things.

Kelvin British Summertime is the better of the two songs. It about the golden age of indie pop (the 80s) in one of the golden cities of indiepop (Glasgow, Scotland).

All adds up to a pretty terrific song!

(Photo by flickr.com/mgallacher)

Lenzie Moss - Kelvin British Summertime.mp3

jake thackray

2010-09-25T12:17:00.002-05:00

The English chansonnier.

Sierra Leone 1968-70

2010-09-25T08:00:00.003-05:00

Speaking of Sierra Leone, there are TONS of awesome photos from that country on the Sierra Leone 1968-70 blog. All taken from one Peace Corps volunteer's time there.

Song of the day: S.E. Rogie

2010-09-25T07:52:00.004-05:00

Song of the day (9/25/2010):
S.E. Rogie - Toomus Meremereh Nor Good

A sleepy love song today by Sierra Leone's King of Palm Wine Guitar Music, S.E. Rogie.

Palm Wine Guitar Music. How can you not love that there's something called that?

Taken from the Africa Dances compilation. Download it at Tonal Bride.

S.E. Rogie - Toomus Meremereh Nor Good.mp3

it gets better

2010-09-24T20:18:00.003-05:00

A lot of my friends gotten sick of the Savage Love podcast, but it's still one of the highlights of my weekly audio life. Dunno, maybe it's the Scorpio in me.

Whatever the case, Dan Savage recently launched an important new video project called It Gets Better.

Here's info about it:

I just read about a gay teenager in Indiana—Billy Lucas—who killed himself after being taunted by his classmates. I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.
....
But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

So here's what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.

I've launched a channel on YouTube—www .youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject—to host these videos. My normally camera-shy husband and I already posted one. We both went to Christian schools and we were both bullied—he had it a lot worse than I did—and we are living proof that it gets better. We don't dwell too much on the past. Instead, we talk mostly about all the meaningful things in our lives now—our families, our friends (gay and straight), the places we've gone and things we've experienced—that we would've missed out on if we'd killed ourselves then.

"You gotta give 'em hope," Harvey Milk said.

Song of the day: Swimsuit

2010-09-24T17:19:00.007-05:00

Song of the day (9/24/2010):
Swimsuit - Evaporation

I've liked this song since I first heard it a few months, but it really struck me silly (good silly) this afternoon when it came on during the last minutes of my workweek. Immediately, the ticks melted off the clock. It has just the right dose of crash-pop oh yeahness to make the back end of a Friday sufferable.

Swimsuit are fellow Midwesterners, from the funnily-spelled Ypsilanti, Michigan. Fred Thompson from Saturday Looks Good to Me is in the band, though from how I've always felt about that band, that fact would seem more like a bad thing than a good.

But this, I dunno. I really love Swimsuit. So-so band lineage and all.

Skatterbrain! has raved about these guys, and that's who I got this track from. Go to there to learn more about the band. Or just run over to Swimsuit's myspace.

Oh, and this song is from their demo cassette (yeah, I don't get that one either), which you can also download.

Swimsuit - Evaporation.mp3

CITIZEN ARCHITECT: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio

2010-09-23T21:48:00.006-05:00

Watched this tonight. Not the best thing I've ever seen, but worth some time for sure.

The Rural Studio is an undergraduate program of the School of
Architecture at Auburn University. We have been in Hale County
for 17 years. We are committed to the people and the place and
we take long–term responsibility for the work we do, both good
and bad.

The docu mentary's site.
The Studio's site.

Audio: Donald Barthelme

2010-09-23T19:02:00.004-05:00

Donald Barthelme is one of those writers whose texts are dense to a degree that they're almost impenetrable for me (maybe I'm what's really dense). But because the language is so rich, the need to understand all of what's going on just kind of spits from the equation.

I'd never heard Barthelme's stories read aloud until I started subscribing to the New Yorker podcast. Hearing them rather than reading them may be the key to gaining a more severe appreciation for Barthelme. Even if you still don't really get it, the language opens up even wider when someone else takes over latching the words together.

This is taken from one of those New Yorker podcasts. It's read by Chris Adrian.

Donald Barthleme - Indian Uprising.mp3

Radio: Buffalo Soldiers in the National Parks

2010-09-23T17:56:00.003-05:00

Interesting piece by Madison-based producer James Mills about the critical role that black American soldiers played in the establishment of the National Parks. It also goes into how segregation and racism has made blacks averse to visiting the Parks and wilderness in general in this country.

Listen to the whole episode.

Mills' piece is a few minutes in, but the entire hour is worth a listen.

mosquito rain

2010-09-22T21:45:00.004-05:00

A pond formed at our yard's tail when the rain got zealous for what seemed to be weeks. It was like an internal organ had liquefied; the smell, the color, and the way everything softened and became unsure.

The kids took a kayak to it, oaring the distance between the fence walls. They took BB guns to it too, raising small splashes as they pierced the surface and the frogs no bigger than their own thumbs. The frogs stopped where they were and released a small dye of red into the pond.

One day the kids even set up tarps and slid in, rashes mounting their skin that night, making it hard to sleep.

As adults, we hadn't risked the ceaseless discomfort of the storm. We ran from the car to the house like it was the heat of battle. We stayed inside. Checked the sump pump and checked the forecast. Made a game out of compiling a list of things we'd do when it all let up. Arcane places to dust, an aerated and fertilized front and back lawn and the machines we'd need to rent for that, feasts with lines charred to their surface, a cold can pressed to our heads after it was all done.

Meanwhile the mosquitoes were laying unseen eggs on every welt of water around us. There was ferocious begetting, with generations generating generations as if it were shift work.

There was no way we could guess at how deep the bond of blood could really be.

In a temporary letup of the rain on day 24, I ran out in my sandals and placed a pile of coal briquettes on the shore, which was now making an attempt at the composite deck we'd built the year before under a singe.

The mosquitoes? I imagined them falling to the yard like a TV station switched off for a night.

And that's it.

I still have no picture in my mind for what happens to their corpses once they've dropped.

the old new

2010-09-22T06:52:00.007-05:00

Here's a question:

Do we, in the 2000, obsess over idealized notions of the past...

As much in as people obsessed over the future in the 1900s?

Heard an interview with old time banjo player/fiddler Frank Fairfield where he was asked, basically, if he was idealizing a bygone time. He said that he wasn't really, that all the old songs he plays were written as a way of pining for places and times that no longer exist. Almost like a cycle of longing.

So maybe everyone's always been looking backwards as well as forwards. And it's probably because of the stuff I surround myself with (being an admitted & fearless nostalgic), but, visually at least, everyone seems to be wanting to dig into the past. The irony is that much of the digging is happening/being aired online. A place the people in the not so good old days could never imagine and we in the not perfect nowadays are still trying to determine the boundaries of.

Maybe it's just the circle closing.

(Top photo from the A Clock Without Hands blog)

lightening strikes

2010-09-21T20:54:00.002-05:00

JJJ hitting all the right rainy fall night notes.

hovercraft

2010-09-21T20:48:00.001-05:00

Milwaukee people: DO THIS.

Apply http://hovercraftmke.blogspot.com/

the soul huckster

2010-09-21T13:41:00.001-05:00

A soul huckster in a loosened print tie handed me a pamphlet. Feeling lost to an almost irrevocable degree, I found myself soon in a pew under a ceiling that was knotty and arched and going yellow. Switching between ass and knee, I listened to what they were saying, following along with my finger and my voice.

I shook hands with strangers and they said, "Peace." Some meant it more than others, I think. Some were violent with their sincerity. Some had hands that were limp and cold as frozen peas.

There was wine to be had, but not for me, not having the right credentials. I couldn't even have the disc of snack.

No matter.

I listened to the church announcements, putting my pen to my tongue to re-awaken the ink. But I didn't write anything down in the book I have for keeping track of dates where there are things I want to do.

I did though, on the soft bottom of my palm, write the one thing that kept coming to me and disrupting my obedience the whole service over.

It was: "Dear Lord Above, Please Help Me, Rodriguez Z. Cobalus, To Lose His Stomach."

muscle shoals

2010-09-19T20:05:00.003-05:00

Interesting short documentary about the past & present of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Both the city & the sound.

Best quote: "It's not where you're at, it's the determination you have."

Ela Orchard

2010-09-19T16:07:00.003-05:00

Just looking to get out of the house on this rain-prone Sunday (and, admittedly, trying to tether ourselves to as much of fall as you can in early-late-September), we drove to Rochester, WI (which I wrote about back in August) to get apples & cider at Ela Orchard.

Ela is owned by author Jane Hamilton's husband's family, going back three generations.

The area where they sell the apples is far back from the road down a long, sloppy mud road. On the way in, there's a towering house that's falling apart in all the right ways. The "stand" itself is an old barn with a covered area where wooden crates filled with various kinds of apples. Lots of varieties I'd never heard of.

We walked away with a total of 5lbs; two kinds of hard, bitterish apples: Liberty & Wealthy.

We also got four Parker Pears. An even number, the woman working the stand said, so we didn't have to fight over who got more.

They have goats there who come when you clap, like dogs. Except today, I guess, because they refused to come out into the rain from under shelter.

You can sample apples straight from the crates before committing to a few pounds. The cores you toss into the fenced areas where the goats live. They eat your leftovers as snacks.

aesthetic luddite 7

2010-09-19T15:59:00.003-05:00

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.
Maas & Sons, Inc.
Waterford, WI

2010-09-19T12:42:00.000-05:00

noon

2010-09-19T12:11:00.004-05:00

She liked the idea of the houses we live in becoming our tombs. She said to the others, out at the bar:

"When we died they could just seal it off."

Julie and May liked the idea.

"Like the pharaohs."

"Except I wouldn't want to build a special house for it," Beth said. "Just seal off the old one, it'll be paid for."

- Brad Watson, from the story Noon (from New Stories from the South 2010)

Song(s) of the day: Piano Bill, Roy Harvey, Charlie Poole

2010-09-18T10:37:00.007-05:00

Song(s) of the day (9/18/2010):
Piano Bill, Roy Harvey, Charlie Poole - Milwaukee Blues

For some people, Milwaukee is just one thing: home. For others, especially people from other places, it can be many things:

A trap
Utopia
The worst decision they ever made
The best decision they ever made
A giant question mark on the US map
A place they're just passing through
Somewhere they've moved on from
A town they miss crazily

These two songs kind of show the gamut.

The Piano Bill version (Piano was from Detroit) is about emigrating to this great place on a great lake for the love of a lady. It's more her he's lusting after than the city, but his heart may melt all over the city itself come stage two.

The other song (performed by both Roy Harvey & Charlie Poole—both are great and I couldn't decide which to post, so I posted both. Poole wrote the song) is about a hobo getting stuck in Milwaukee. And having a miserable time here. He just wants to jump back on the train and make it back out west. But it never happens. Then he dies.

So, Milwaukee: A place where love blooms and hobos die.

Piano Bill - Milwaukee Blues.mp3

Roy Harvey -Milwaukee Blues.mp3

Charlie Poole - Milwaukee Blues.mp3

Riverside Ramblers - Dissatisfied

2010-09-17T18:27:00.004-05:00

Song of the day (9/17/2010):
The Riverside Ramblers - Dissatisfied

Nice high energy song with a soaring harmonica and fiddle by this Louisiana group from the 1930s. Nothing like a little bouncy, feel good negativity to kick off the weekend.

Taken from the Black & White Hillbilly Music compilation.

You can also learn more about The Riverside Ramblers (who later became Hackberry Ramblers) & download more over at Western Swing 78.

Riverside Ramblers - Dissatisfied.mp3

a very loud mind

2010-09-15T10:10:00.002-05:00

Here's the thing: I'm not exactly excited about having a baby.

That's what people keep asking me—“Baby is coming soon! Are you excited?”

I’m not. Not exactly.

It’s something like being at base camp, looking up to a cloud-lost summit, thinking, “Woah, I can’t wait to get up there, but have no clue what it’ll be like once I actually start kicking in my crampons.”

10 days. A little over a week. That’s how long we have to go. Assuming it’s not sooner. Or later. And at this point, it still feels mostly theoretical to me. Sure, I can see A—‘s hugeness and feel the fetus twitch and fuss in there.

Crazy stuff.

But it’s like connecting to someone’s sore shoulder. Pain as an idea makes sense to you, but you’re not feeling their pain, so it’s not a reality. Until you throw out a shoulder of your own.

These are terrible metaphors.

Really, what it goes back to is that I’m not excited. I can’t wait, for sure. But the nerves I have are more focused on:

Will everything go alright?
Will she be healthy?
Will she even be a she?
Will nature kick in and help us do what we need to care for her properly?
How loud will her cries be and how long will they last?
What will she look like?
Will she be happy?
What if she hates us?
How will she turn out?

I'm sick with questions.

What I’m waiting for is to have her in my arms. That’s when the questions won’t matter, when they’ll start answering themselves organically.

It’s the only thing that’ll quiet my mind. The way I’ll finally become excited.

Song of the day: Ginny Arnell

2010-09-14T15:33:00.003-05:00

Song of the day (9/14/2010):
Ginny Arnell - Look Who's Talkin'

Ginny did a version of Dumb Head back in the early 60s. It's a far inferior to the Sharades version, which I've posted in the past.

Look Who's Talkin' is a far superior effort on Ginny's part. Or anyone's part, really. Mighty fine all around.

Ginny Arnell - Look Whos Talkin.mp3

a bag of pulp

2010-09-13T16:16:00.007-05:00

The ribs in me were like the needles of pines that day, taking in the air that happens once February starts dying.

I was riding my motorcycle along the inner arm of a bend in The Big River, a few dashes from the towering trestle bridge that attaches our town to another state. There are shacks on water down in that bend, and I was going to see someone I didn't know not well but well enough to go to see. His name, back then, was Robbie.

Now it's Rob.

We all tend to shed some things as we get older.

Robbie was the same age as me, 24, but you'd never tell that from the sick color of his skin, the way he walked leaned really far back with his stomach leading.

He looked off balance. Or out of. Unsteady, I mean. You almost wanted to grab him by the elbow like you would someone who was triple or more your age and frail.

His dog (of indistinct breeding - fat as a retired defensive lineman, with tight-knit fur and a bald tail) ran shrunk blind circles around the shack, stopping to take occasional pulls from the river water, thrashing and spitting up chunks of ice.

Hearing the noise of his dog taking me in sight, Robbie came out the door but left it open. He raised his right hand to set the sky right.

Above the platform of his hand, I Robbie had on the crown he often wore. It was made from chain link fence that had offset his childhood home from many acres of state land. He'd filed the sharp ends down so they didn't jab into his temples, forehead, scalp.

In his left hand was holding onto what they'd handed to him and asked to give to me.

It was in a paper bag that looked soft, like it was wanting to turn back into pulp. He urgently motioned me on-board with that bag and I thought everything'd scatter.

I take what happens next with the lightness of, say, a tank.

Out of the narrow edge of my left eye, I saw this huge bird with exotic, important colors curl its beak around the latch of the cramped metal cage it was in. It made a sound like the snapping together of wet fingers. The cage made a rattle sound, a metallic shiver.

Then again. That's it. Twice, and the door was open, the bird out, unsteady at first, but its wings remembering their role quickly, and the thing balanced in the air, flew over to where the dog was standing, totally weirded out—we were all frozen by the onslaught of what was going down—and did a several foot free-fall right into the huge dog's mid-back, dug in its claws.

Its wings had to work hard to make it happen, but eventually the bird found its stride and was far off down the river, holding the stiff, stunned dog.

"Robbie!" I said.

Robbie said my name, dropped my bag, then went back inside, closing the door behind him.

On my Yamaha, headed home with the bag bungeed to the seat behind me, a scarf tied around all my head but the eyes, I realized this: There are certain things in life you can understand perfectly, certain things you can't at all.

It doesn't matter.

What it comes down to, when someone asks, What was the craziest thing you ever witness first hand? or What’s the saddest thing you’ve seen? or Do you believe in chance? or What makes you laugh? or How do you define pure true real love?—when you’re asked these things, or anything really, you just need to have some words you can use.

Song(s) of the day: Ruby Vass, Carter Family, Roscoe Holcomb

2010-09-12T20:25:00.009-05:00

Song(s) of the day (9/12/2010):
Ruby Vass, Carter Family, Roscoe Holcomb

Two weeks till baby, baby.

Lots of songs and chore have been happening around here. It's the home stretch, with so many little things to do. It'll be fine. Just fine.

These songs in no way reflect anything that's happening here on the home front. I just wanted to put up Ruby Vass' song and then saw there was a trend about single girls in old time music and decided to put up some others so that one wasn't so lonely.

Ruby Vass - Single Girl.mp3

Carter Family - Single Girl, Married Girl.mp3

Roscoe Holcomb - I Wish I Were A Single Girl Again.mp3

um wisconsin

2010-09-09T06:44:00.001-05:00

So great. Each state's shape re-imagined as food. By John Holcomb, via pica + pixel.

Song of the day: Roy Campbell

2010-09-07T21:23:00.005-05:00

Song of the day (9/7/2010):
Roy Campbell - Reel It & Roll It

Warning: This post has absolutely nothing to do with today's song of the day. If you just want the cut, jump down low, download that shit, and move on.

For the rest of you...

The snake of summer has finally loosened it's grip on the neck of us. You can finally hang out and cook something in the kitchen without feeling like you're getting beat to a pulp in a swamp by a swamp monster.

Uh, enough with the metaphors. I'm just thrilled to not sweat when concocting some wonky tangle of cultures for the taste buds.

This sort of thing, like. Which I came up with for dinner tonight.

The Deep South of the Middle East-wich
Get the following:

1/4 yellow onion
1 clove garlic (from your great uncle's garden, if possible)
8oz chicken flavored seitan
BBQ sauce (I used Saz's because it's local and delish)

Saute the onion/garlic until it's good & sauteed. Add the seitan and a healthy amount of BBQ. Cook on medium heat until it all gets gooey and caramelized.

While that's going on, steam a few kale leaves.

Once all the hot stuff is ready, assemble:

1/4 - 1/2 avacado
Small handful of cilantro, chopped
A really massive handful of Diaya cheese
Two pieces of Lavash bread

Then basically make a sandwich of all the ingredients and put it on the George Foreman grill until the Diaya is good and melty.

Messy but yum.

Don't tell the culinary police I told you to do any of this though. Not that I'm embarrassed by it. I just don't need to talk to any more people today.

(Photo taken from the gmtPlus9 (-15) blog, out of Appleton, WI. I accidentally found it while looking for images on Google, but it seems pretty great.)

Roy Campbell - Reel It And Roll It.mp3

aesthetic luddite 6

2010-09-06T12:51:00.001-05:00

Aesthetic Luddite is a "series" where I take then post photos of signs/typography I like. Mostly old stuff.

Song of the day: Gospel Gossip

2010-09-05T09:27:00.005-05:00

Song of the day (9/5/2010):
Gospel Gossip - Sippy Cup

These days, I don't like seeing concerts much. Months go by between seeing a single band on a single stage. In my teens/20s, most of my nights and weekends went into seeing live music.

Guess I just got burned out. Badly burned.

A lot of people love discovering new bands during a live show. I've always hated it. Not knowing a song while someone "interprets" it in front of you has always seemed awkward. Going home and plopping a record and yourself down and getting to know each other slowly over multiple listens...well, that's always made more sense.

Brian has raved about Northfield, MN's (huh?) Gospel Gossip for months. And so has Kevin, whose band has played with GG a bunch of times, including last night.

And last night's the one in question.

GG was in Milwaukee and I decided to finally leave the house to see a concert. Them in concert.

Oh my fuck. So, so good. Even though I didn't know the songs.

The singer looked like she was about to lose it any second. She was unhinged, her pigtails spinning, falling to her knees. Belting out the words, like her whole body was inhabiting them.

I've seen enough bands (thousands) to get the sense of that most of them more or less rehearse and choreograph their emotion. But Gospel Gossip is the realest deal.

(Hear more Gospel Gossip songs.)
(photo above by dotslinesandpolygons)

Gospel Gossip - Sippy Cup.mp3

2010-09-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

wifely things

2010-09-05T01:59:00.000-05:00

aged pita (the saddest story ever told)

2010-09-04T11:20:00.000-05:00

sprinkle coal dust on my grave

2010-09-04T08:08:00.003-05:00

Ghosts in the Hollow from Jim Lo Scalzo on Vimeo.

(Via A Continuous Lean.)

Song of the day: Clarence Williams

2010-09-04T07:45:00.005-05:00

Song of the day (9/4/2010):
Clarence Williams - Organ Grinder

This is a pervy song. I love it.

Clarence Williams is the piano tickler here. Wonder if he wrote the lyrics, too? Or if if they were written for him—if you know what I mean.

It sounds like the woman singer has it set up in her mind fall asleep as soon the last note's gone. After all, she's been workin' it man. Momma deserve a good bout of rest.

Clarence Williams -Organ Grinder Blues.mp3