Ad Hoc Blog Post

As I've previously mentioned, I'm busy going insane and creating things for my trip to the desert and I really don't have the time to even be writing this, but I know some of you simply live to read my amazing blog (which is always perfectly written and crystal clear). The point is, I will probably be practicing radio silence for the next several weeks, and figured I'd share a taste of what I'm up to.
1) Making my Dalek hat, which involved learning how to solder EL wire. The ears were supposed to be aqua, but I had issues with soldering that damn stuff and so settled for purple at least for the desert. If this gets made into a Halloween costume, I'll switch the colors out.
2) Constructing my Utili-Bodice. I still need to sew EL wire onto it to make it nighttime safe.
3) Repairing my old hat by decoupaging on top of it.
4) Making a collage for my camp. This has evolved into Auto-Bot, Playa Scout. Basically it's going to be a picture of this little robot with a merit-badge type sash. I'll post photos someday. It's not done yet.
5) Constructing a Sculpy statue of Carl from Llamas with Hats to secret in my friend's tent without his knowledge. Ronny originally sent me the link with the note: "I'm not sure which one's me and which one's you". I don't get many chances to be directly creepy, so I have to maximize creepiness efforts during the time we're in the same vicinity. I am also counting on the fact that he is not reading this blog. A fairly safe assumption.
6) Did I mention packing? I'm going to a week-long party in the desert.
7) Also I need to make sure all is good with my hexa-yurt (living structure)
8) Not to mention pre-desert personal grooming: my friend is braiding my hair tomorrow and I'm getting a mani-pedi on Friday morning.
9) There are probably about 7 billion other things too, but for now I'm just going to go shopping for the six gazillion items I need.

Be Seeing You.

Boil Update:
This was either a super-bizarre spider bite or the wimpiest boil known to humankind. All that remains is a small hard node (that doesn't hurt) and a patch of shiny skin. I had such high hopes for disgustingness. On the upside, I don't need to worry about blood poisoning from it!!!

Early Indria Irish

I try to be a good person. I really do. It doesn't always succeed. I'm kind of fascinated by the concept of someone out there hating me. Or just disliking me. By this point, I'm pretty resigned to rejection. I can't think of a way to phrase that in a manner that sounds less like a Strong Sad diary entry, but I don't mean it in the horrifically depressing way it sounds. I'd elaborate on this, but sleep just hit me like a forty ton sack of badgers.

Old at an Early Age

How is it that AIM has become an antiquated form of communication? I've often wondered about the fact that I grew up in Silicon Valley and yet am a Neo-Luddite. ....Maybe I should rephrase that. Let's go with "a non-bomby Neoluddite". Beware the power of the Great Interwebs!! You too could have buried deep within thee a shared belief with a serial killer!
It will get progressively creepier if you subsequently recall that one of the two or three best talks you've attended while at The Great School of Existence was given by his brother.
Do you recall Theodore Kaczynski ?
I suppose where he felt anger and superiority, I feel sorrow. Lots and lots of sorrow. I think Yeats had it wrong. It's not Love and Death- it's Love and Sorrow.
I think people tend to misjudge me by the amount of shit I know. I may sound all classy referring to Yates and shit, but the truth is I only know that poem because it was made into a song by The Waterboys. Basically Mike Scott is a latter-day incarnation of Yeats. Except perhaps maybe even MORE barking mad. Also, I only know about The Waterboys because of the random tape we found in Old Champ (no, there is no link for that one. yet.) and I only know that song is a Yeats poem because my sister was awesome and took me to a concert in Ireland. So really, there's no class in any of that! Another fine example is the somewhat prodigious knowledge I have of Regency-period England. I might vaguely know the precedence of nobility titles and a fair amount about mourning costume and yes, some proper forms of address and dress, but the ONLY reason I know this stuff is because I adore Regency romance novels.
The knowledge gleaned from romance novels comes in handy sometimes (the historical details, you smutty-minded fools!), but I never expected to ever have any super productive use for the massive amount of information stored up from my years of reading countless sci-fi and fantasy novels. More the fool, me!

Look, interwebs: I'm already testing you. It would spoil the experiment if I were to expose you to any more insanity for this evening. It's time for a fateful appointment with a Dalek hat.

Be Seeing You.

Boil Update: Initial diagnosis very much in doubt now. The node has gotten harder and less painful. Showed it to my friend who's practically a doctor by now (literally) and she was just about as mystified as me. My guess is maybe the staph got in but my immune system killed it fairly quickly and so it just never developed to full boil stage. I will keep you updated because if you didn't actually want to know, you so could have skipped reading this part.

Space Madness is Transmitted via Scaly Sloths

I don't know if it's common to the Burner community at large or if it's just an AutoSub thing, but there's a certain state one gets into immediately pre-Burn that is referred to as Space Madness. It sets in when one realizes s/he hasn't done any of the 30 gazillion things s/he meant to do in the intervening year. Suddenly one must rush to complete art projects, modify living structures, fortify clothing (b/c the playa dust will eat a straw hat in approximately 1.2 seconds), and develop the perfect utility belt. My insane East Coast compatriots tend to contract said madness about two weeks earlier than me since they have to get everything ready in time to ship it across the country via container trucks (like I said: insane). This fact (namely: I live on the correct coast with idyllic weather) has led to several instances of hilariously bitter anger at my existence. Those poor, poor fools.

See, some of us only contracted the crazy about a week ago and most of that time it was in an incubation period. But now the phage/prion/whateverthehell has ENTERED MY BRAIN and PROLIFERATED.

Be Seeing You.

Boil Update:
Beginning to doubt initial diagnosis as there seems to be little suppuration going on. Certainly not enough to grow to "golf-ball size". As far as boils go, I don't think this is really of the super-hardcore Biblical variety.

Stupid Buddhist Humor

Stupid Buddhist (or in my case, specifically Zen) humor is a unique subgenre of hilarity that amuses me to no end but I find impossible to explain.  Inability to explain anything hasn't ever stopped me from trying though! Ha ha, suckers! This particular topic (like pretty much everything else I'll ever be talking about on this blog) has been in my consciousness for quite some time, and I made reference to it on Twitter, but decided it needed a longer explanation.
The Dalai Lama has a Twitter account which is just about the best thing EVER. Given that he frikin' loves technology I have no doubt that most of the time it's actually him tweeting his random thoughts of awesomeness like, "Compassion and love are not a luxury. As the source both of inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the survival of our species." However, he occasionally posts links to videos of his talks or visits & the summaries thereof have obviously been prepped by a PR team (because he doesn't seem the sort to refer to himself in the third person). The point is, these posts always refer to him as HHDL. I can't explain why the fuck I find this so friggin' hilarious, but I do. I really really do. In case you're not familiar with the forms, his official title is 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama', which I recognize is entirely too long for Twitter. Even 'His Holiness' is too long. There's just something funny about his title being turned into an acronym in order to accommodate a society (and consequently a technology) obsessed with briefness. My mom also found this fact hilarious, but I strongly suspect it's one more instance of shit that Buddhists find funny that quite possibly no one else will.
Other examples include the ever classic book The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi by Susan Moon. There is a section extremely reminiscent of "Letters from the Pet Department" in A Thurber Carnival by James Thurber (a book that is sure to have its own blog entry someday) with quality letters to Tofu Roshi asking questions like, "Every time I sit down to meditate, the song Found a Peanut pops into my head. Is there any hope for me?" and another concerning a dog who won't meditate and whether it's acceptable to just tie him to the Zafu for 40 minutes a day. The former is funny because it's true. The epically annoying shit your brain will dredge up during zazen is incredible, not least because the entire time you're trying to clear your mind of everything and that one damn song just WON'T GO AWAY. The question about the dog...well...this is one of those points where I can't even begin to tell you why I find it so funny. 
I'm sure I'll come back to this topic again someday, but for now I'll stop while I'm ahead (read: haven't deleted my entire blog post accidentally) and go do some productive shit like clean the kitchen and go pick up my car from the garage. 


The real irony of this post is that I'm so paranoid about this entire blogging thing that in all likelihood, no one will actually read any of this so once again I'm attempting to explain shit to a non-existence audience! I'm kind of digging this. Maybe I'll just let knowledge of this thing seep out in a natural ooztastic interwebs fashion. I just realized this also gives me a platform to debut my Interwebs-exploding art piece that I will someday unveil. 


Be Seeing You.

Gasping for Breath: A Juan Gris Retrospective (curated by Dan Hoffsteader)

I have a boil on my leg. It's nowhere near as nasty as it sounds, but I find the entire concept somewhat unsettling. See, any mention of boils immediately makes me think of buboes (which are, incidentally, not related to and only slightly less viscerally disturbing than Boobahs). In turn, buboes make me think of the Black Plague, which brings me to today's topic. That's right! It's time for your very first edition of "Craazyy, Crazy Theories and Cosmic Questions"!!!!!

Today's topic: The Black Plague

 Whenever I think about Bubonic Plague, I marvel at the fact that it's still alive and well in today's ground squirrel communities.  Just think about that. This disease ravaged Europe during the Middle Ages, killing an estimated 30-60% of the population, but until maybe a decade ago, I hadn't a clue it was still around because we NEVER HEAR ABOUT IT. Why? One word, my friends: antibiotics. Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine any individual who contracts this once-upon-a-time-death-sentence can now be rid of it with a one or two week course of pills!
This is the point where my mental crazytrain always takes a specific side spur. I've never actually done any research on this, so it's entirely possible an answer lies out there waiting for me and I'm just too damn lazy to find it, but consider this: penicillin (the first recognized antibiotic) is produced by certain types of mould, often found on bread. Knowing what I do of food sanitation in the Middle Ages (for example: "let's spice this meat so you can't taste the fact that it happens to be ROTTING"), it's pretty reasonable to assume that people wouldn't be bothered by eating some bread with a little mould on it.  According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia,
"The use of bread with a blue mould (presumably penicillium) as a means of treating suppurating wounds was a staple of folk medicine in Europe since the Middle Ages."

So my question is: did anyone contract the Plague and inadvertently cure themselves by eating moldy bread? The chances seem too good for it not to have happened, and I can't help but feel like there's a short story or a plot device or SOMETHING in this concept, but I'm not really inclined to take it anywhere else, so this entire mental sidespur just gets filed away to miche about in the library of Reoccurring Crazy Thoughts and Ideas.

Adding My Voice to the Collective Din

Do I really need a blog? No, of course I don't. However, do I occasionally fly off into bizarre flights of fancy and feel the need to share said insanity with the world sometimes? Why yes, omniscient interlocutor, I do indeed!
Despite growing up a child of Silicon Valley I'm really not very tech savvy, and my stubborn adherence to Neoludditism has rather prevented me from learning the skills required to craft a proper website. Really I need to make a site that showcases my artwork, but 1)Omg pain-in-the-ass (The issue with being an artist is that I can't stand having a non-esthetically pleasing site and every "handy do-it-yourself" site I've encountered thus far just drives me mad), and 2)In classic fashion, the computron with 99.5% of my art pictures on it is having kernel issues and freaks out if I so much as turn it on, let alone try to retrieve data.
The point of all this rambling is mostly to say don't expect much from this blog. Don't expect much from me. As you may have already noticed, I'm not exactly eloquently terse, and I have serious issues actually saying whatever it is I'm trying to communicate.
Oh, also: I can be pretty super creepy. If you don't want to hear about death and decay, take three steps back, take a deep breath (it's important you move away before taking the breath because the decay microbes produce some stinky byproducts), and flee off into the relative safety of the World Wide Web I won't be offended. I swear. I'm too busy stalking about a gazillion other people to bother.