earlier, it was raining while the sun shone bright and hot. witchy weather! now it's gray and the rain is coming down in fat, cold drops. i am listening to the mediaeval baebes because i have gone back to the 90s, never to return.

so i am taking this genealogy class which has caused me to go through some scans i made of various old and super-old family photos.

this guy looks so much like my dad that, as a child, i was convinced that he WAS my dad dressed up for one of those old west photo sets. it's actually my great-grandfather tom monaghan at work in the dakotas.

a curious stereoscopic. i can't tell who they are.

edwardian babe katherine monaghan with a younger sibling.

my grandma alyce, the most important person in my life now and ever.

will rogers, skeletor, and baby mary claire.

my grandmother's prized pink cadillac.

the 80s spared no one. look at those assholes smoking in my grandma's house. my aunt julie and my mom.

epic.

100% illumination

i am trying to be more measured with my reactions, and this is a good reminder. in fact i'm just going to hide out in my den and continue to be happy with small and simple, authentic experiences.

definitely need some more piscean advice. why evaluate everything? just make some art, fucking relax, hang out, write, watch let's scare jessica to death for the 4th time in a month and rewind/replay the raptly uncomfortable scene when emily's bony white hand caresses the trembling face of jessica, you know, do whatever.

close your eyes and watch

-

here is the oldest known surviving photo of the moon. there were earlier daguerreotypes, but they were sadly lost in separate house fires the century before last. so there's just this. samuel humphrey took nine exposures one night in september, 1849. so this is a 161 year old harvest moon. i hope it was a good month, because e.a.poe died that october.



of course things have never been the same.

fuckin a.


Ship's deadeye from 1780s wreck off Wattsness, Shetland

"Ship's deadeye (an object used in static rigging of a ship, dubbed 'deadeyes' because of their resemblance to skulls) washed up from a 1780s wreck off of Wattsness in Shetland, North Scotland. Made from wood and incredibly heavy, weighing around 5-7 kilos. The fact it has lasted so long into the 21st century, with only one small part of the object lost to time, is a real homage to the craftsmanship behind it; amazing to think that at somepoint in history someone meticulously designed this object with skills that are a rarity to witness in this day and age. A truly fascinating relic."

selling for £6.44 with 14 hours to go?

originally found by ms. graveyard dirt.

away

every time i come back into the hive, i forget how much i love the desert. outside of the city, everything feels more meaningful, momentous, and authentic. and it is! i'm changing my plans...again.

martanne's. oh my god. chilaquiles. the best green chili sauce on the planet. you line up outside the door which is propped open with a broken water pistol and simply have to stand there and wait as it is apparently always at capacity. i'm very disappointed that i'm not there right now, actually.

i hadn't been in the woods in a long time. it was cold and clean and the moonlight was very bright, and very white.

hey, baby.

this is one of my favorite songs ever.

i think i read somewhere that bruce channel's harmonica inspired lennon's harmonica in love me do.

after my parents divorced, my dad moved in with a friend, jonny. jonny was a tall, thin redhead with big hair and a boyish midwestern charm. as far as i knew then and know now, they were just friends, but i doubt that. jonny worked at a series of good old country bars, including the brass rail i think, or the hitching post. she lived in a large midcentury ranch style which she kept very cold, and very dark. she had a phone booth, a pool table, a pinball machine, and a jukebox, all of which were old. i was seven; to me it was a strange and sophisticated theme park for adults.


despairing at the jukebox selection (all old country! no new kids or paula abdul anywhere!*) i played the same songs by the only artists i knew - the beatles and elvis - until jonny tired of this and decided to school me in classic country and obscure 50s and 60s pop. thank god. "hey baby" was her favorite song and it soon became mine for the frequency of it all. after i got tired of inventing one-person pool table games and tilting the pinball machine, we'd dance around the living room to it.

it's still the best, every time.


*listen, it was 1989. i don't have to explain myself.

what's that you say? you don't like twitter?

what about twitter for...18th century internet!

historical humor translated to the internet vernacular of now never fails to amuse me, and, like most tiny bits of internet hilarity, it is 100% untransferable to regular conversation. does that mean i don't try? of course not. everyone must know.

photos of photos leave something to be desired, but.

my dad with our poodle, ty.

my parents. 1982.

my dad and i.

my mom and my cousin jesse. 78.

robert, my mom's best friend.

beauty school graduation!

hard to pick the best rendition here. patti sure is sweet, but elvis' drunken drawling ad-libbing with the jordanaires or whoever they are might be the winner. anyway, pc's tennessee waltz is the best.


can you ever get over priscilla? jesus christ. i seem to recall watching lots of made-for-tv movies about elvis' life as a child with my mother. i thought priscilla was IT. i still do!

from square america, like half the shit cluttering my desktop. i am positive i have made this exact post before, but feel unwilling to investigate this.

oh dear

born too late, i guess. o to imagine a day when one could peruse the (scandalous) comings and goings of glen campbell, the cashs, jackie, dino and the farrows in the supermarket line.

from chateau thombeau, one of the best.

sigh

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

I love this movie. It's a little dreamy, and the setting is right, and Jessica's frayed and insecure behavior is both endearing and pathetic. It's probably just something the actress suffered from herself, but Jessica sometimes begins to trail or break off in the middle of a sentence, in a place that isn't appropriate to just stop speaking. Like she thinks better of finishing the thought, or loses the desire and can't keep it up enough to at least sound normal.

Also, the soundtrack is amazing.

Emily's joke. "There was this enormous cake that was terrorizing England - Devil's Food cake. And it would ooze into the windows and into the doors and engulf the people. It'd eat everything in its way. It was traveling down the coast from Scotland, and whenever it would come to a town or a village, it would call out, 'Here comes the cake! Here comes the cake!' BBC sent out an emergency [broadcast warning everyone not to open] their doors [to the cake or else it would engulf them.] This old lady hears [something outside] and she's got her ear to the door, and she says, "Who's there? Who's there?" And a voice comes back, 'It's not the cake!'"

a series of captioned photos from around.

dad. two weeks ago.

i think my friend's kid is a super genius, mostly because i've noticed that most other kids her age should probably be in a state facility. she's 4. she looks you in the eye and says things like, "i'm a big fan of r2d2" and "you should come to the house some time."

i talk a lot of shit at work. the sign was put up to ward me off, not the other way around.

the iphone camera really fails with the close-up. IT'S A SPROUT. ALREADY. i had low expectations for these seeds because they are old. these are some bachelor buttons that i picked up while buying lots of blue things. i haven't done the seeds thing in years due to upheaval, so now i am OVERJOYEDDDDD.

new moon

no illumination

I was so excited to be out of school for ten days, allowing me to read books of my choosing rather than something from a list, that I instantly picked up Life's Greatest Trip, by Arthur Blessit. Like,

Well no, instead I read several bitchfests by gay blade Gore Vidal, who talked about things like how fat and nasty Anthony Burgess' wife was, and how Burgess' eyes looked like "infected buttonholes." I flipped the mental rolodex until I found the Cavett/Burgess interview from the early 70s. He is definitely right. Vidal is a genius at snarkery so subtle that most people wouldn't notice to take offense. This must have been an evolved survival tactic, because he routinely says such horrible things to and about people that anything less than ultra-subtlety would have resulted in many an altercation, I am sure.

Worth watching is the Mailer/Vidal battle on Dick's show. Mailer loses, but I think I read somewhere that he was drunk at the time and therefore not as prepared for the quiet savagery of being attacked by GV.

Dick's memory of this night is recounted here: In This Corner, Norman Mailer

OH finally something good has happened in this dreadful-ass week:

chad ziemendorf / the chronicle

chad ziemendorf / the chronicle

michael macor / the chronicle

Fuck you, Prop 8.

Funny days when I read blurbs by the Terminator as well as Laura Bush and nod in agreement, but I suppose that goes to show how black and white the rights and the wrongs in this situation actually are.

Remember No Gays for a Day? Greatest op-ed of '08. So glad to see a close for such sentiments (in California), though, at least for now.

"No Gays for a Day will demonstrate what it would be like if -- as so much of the non-coastal U.S. seems to desire -- gays just disappeared. You may not even know who all your daily gays are, so there's no predicting the impact. "