Em Dashes & Crazy Love: July 2011

29 July 2011

48 Laws of Sociopathy: Law 27

Play On People's Need To Believe To Create A Cultlike Following.
- excerpted from The 48 Laws of Power, by R. Greene

28 July 2011

48 Laws of Sociopathy: Law 17

Keep Others In Suspended Terror: Cultivate An Air Of Unpredictability.
- excerpted from The 48 Laws of Power, by R. Greene

27 July 2011

the deployed & posed

"Far from being fully accounted for and catalogued, (art) deploys and poses problems in several dimensions. In short, it is an 'open' situation, in movement. A work in progress."
-Umberto Eco

25 July 2011

Back when I taught creative writing to business-track undergrads on Monday nights, I would stay after class and draw a random weird creature on the chalk board for the Tuesday morning teacher - whoever that was. This was my ritual. Afterward, I'd pack up my shit and go to my guitar lesson. All this after a day of seeing clients, too. That was pure squawkin' craziness.

24 July 2011

E.K. Blues

I'm playing a ballad for Emily Klinefelter, who recently announced her retirement from the world of female boxing. This is big news around these parts, because she has been ranked no. 1 in the world in her weight class and both she and her sister are forces of nature in the boxing ring. But back in February, after a vicious bout during which she received multiple blows to the head, she was kayoed in the third round at the Johnson County 4-H Fairgrounds by super bantamweight Christina Ruiz. Klinefelter was rushed to Iowa City, where doctors found that a blood vessel had burst in her brain. They had to cut her skull open to stop the bleeding. After surgery and recovery, she was released with a titanium plate in her head. Klinefelter fought a grand total of 96 matches. The February defeat that nearly sent her to the ethereal realm had been the first of her career. RESPECT.

21 July 2011

Mama Spider

Ella & me drawing a picture while the great midwestern heat wave cooks creation. I asked wha' she was drawing. She said "A mama spider and a cave for her to live in." The idea of a spider-cave horrifies me, probably due to my traumatic, childhood exposure to episode #96 of Gilligan's Island on Ted Turner's Superstation. (In this episode, a giant, ridiculous, cave-dwelling spider tries - unsuccessfully, sadly - to off Gilligan.)

19 July 2011

Milk & Cat Are Friends

Behold! A neighborhood grimalkin drinking Eleanor's chocolate milk on our back porch.

Spherical, Black, & Endothermic

This is our new compost bin. I told Eleanor, "Look - it looks like the Death Star!" And she was all "Why?" And I was like "Because it is a Death Star and Death Stars all contain rotting food, which is how they generate enough heat to blow up Alderaan in the first place."

13 July 2011

Frank Lincoln Wright/Grey Day

In the new crib, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired log cabins sometimes get made. It is a common misconception that the Lincoln Log toy blocks pictured here were named after Abraham Lincoln. (That's what I always thought, anyway.) Actually, Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, John, in 1916. He based their design on one of his father's buildings and named them after his dad's original middle name before it was changed to Lloyd (his mother's maiden name). "Lloyd," it turns out, is a Welsh surname. It means "grey." And that's exactly the kind of day it is outside today, too.

12 July 2011

Goosetown

We got a new place because the old place was getting too little. Now I take early morning walks down strange blocks, often with a child tied to my back.