Waiting for the gift of sound and vision.

I’m not so secretly obsessed with David Bowie.

it’s weird, i don’t talk about it as much as i used to. i mean like, i don’t just listen to Ziggy Stardust and wonder what it would have been like when glam was new, or listen to the Eno trilogy and think of how awesome i am that i know who Brian Eno is and give a shit that he worked with him.

I mean like, I own the deluxe edition of Black & White, arguably bowie’s absolute worst album, and I have every word memorized. It came with a DVD, and I have a chunk of that memorized too. Hell, I know the differences between all the remixes on the bonus disc.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to get a hold of a copy of his concert from A&E’s “Live By Request”. At barely eighteen years old, I came upon this show by chance. it was already in progress even. But i recognized who I saw on the screen and i was intrigued to see what his music was like live.

I fell in love with him that night. It was a Saturday night, and his latest album “Heathen” had been released the previous tuesday. My family was on a road trip at that point and we were planning to spend the day in Walnut Creek, California. We were shopping and i found a borders (having grown up in rural Illinois, i knew what a borders was, but at that point had never been - so this was all very exciting).

There it was.

In the middle of the music section, a large display of new releases. In the middle, Heathen.

I snatched it up immediately. I couldn’t even been bothered with the fact that i was paying full retail (17$ i believe) for this new CD. Then i went through the stacks and found another album of his that was relatively recent, 1.Outside. I bought them both. i blew half of the money i had brought with me on the trip for these CDs.

Throughout the second half of my trip no other albums touched my discman. I gave 1.Outside a brief listen and set it aside, determining i’d need more time to think about it. Then, Heathen and i had our moment. I listened to every track on the album intently. I read the liner notes and lyrics over and over. i looked at all the artwork inside the booklet. I even read the copyright information and the thank yous at least a half dozen times.

To do this day, i can say with all certainty, this album had a profound effect on me. I recognized so many elements of myself within the lyrics. I was introduced to the pixies by his cover of Cactus (which i had heard on Live by Request the night before, as he explained that his favorite American band was the Pixies - a detail that did not escape my attention and lead to my purchase of Surfer Rosa a few weeks later).

I learned during this roadtrip, while listening to david bowie, that i didn’t want to live in the closet anymore. that i needed to make friends who loved me and accepted me for who i actually was and not who i had been carefully pretending to be for all these years. I learned that i loved my family, but we had a long way to go before i was really part of them. More importantly, i learned that no matter how much i thought i knew, i always had more to learn and experience.

So, when I say I’m a big David Bowie fan, you now know why.

Homo for the Holidays

I'm 'home' for the first time in 3 years. By home, I more realistically mean at my parent's house. I don't really understand the compulsion to refer to this as 'home'.

If we're being honest, then this has never been my home. not for any big, dramatic reason, but because my parents now live in a house that i've never lived in. So, quite honestly, this isn't my home.

In terms of "house as home", i've never really understood that connection. As a small child my parents moved a lot, and even as i've gotten older that's kind of maintained. we've never lived in a place longer than 4-5 years, even when they've owned the house.

I kind of wonder if this is a bit of deep-seated dissatisfaction of some sort. I feel it too. I've been in my current residence a little over 6 months, and that's a long time for me. I start to think about moving again. Finding something better, or more convenient. Or nicer? It's probably some internalized american-dream bullshit.

Either way, family togetherness and holidays often bring out the "Where am i going, what am i doing, is this what my life is really all about?"-ness in me, and this visit is no exception. Whenever i talk to people about what i'm doing with my life, they have nothing but silent judgement. I get questions like "oh, is there a lot of money in that?" or "Well, you're still looking for a real job, right?" It gets very old very quickly. My parents are pretty supportive - they long ago learned i'm gonna do what i'm gonna do and they can either be on board or i'll just stop talking to them about it. My Aunt Kelly was also super supportive when we talked about my life in general, my desire to go back to school, thoughts of relocation and whatnot. It was really refreshing.

I guess you always stay a kid to some people, and i haven't been a kid for quite a while now. I just want a small measure of respect, or at least for people to consider that i actually THINK about things before i do them.

Oh well, i can't really control the thoughts of others, or this would be a whole different affair.

At any rate, i'm also blogging on tumblr, as well as being a new columnist for Queervoice.net (i'm doing a weekly column there). Take a gander!

Happy Holidays, folks.

Priorities, Man.

I've been unemployed (or as the more optimistic prefer to call it, Fun-employed) for a little over 3 months now. It's gone OK for the most part. I'm making ends meet, mostly.

I've been realizing my intense need to prioritize expenses, as well as projects. I want to maximize my time and minimize my financial worries.

That's way easier said than done, I suppose.

Anyway, enough with the serious, here's the first thing that pops up when you google image search "Bunny".

The Swing. Of Things, that is.

Consistent blogging has never been a strength of mine. In fact, the only place I've managed fairly regular posts has been on my old livejournal. That was 90% an attempt to interact socially with a group of people who all also used livejournal (This may or may not have been back in my hardcore-kid days) and 10% the fact that I was mostly blathering on and on about every little thought in my head.

Somehow, the concept of a more public blog (especially one attached to what will eventually be my portfolio site) seems more daunting. Some level of personal editing is required. It's not unlike remember not to swear around my parents.

Around the beginning of August, I lost my day job. I was working for a small yarn store in Portland, OR who had to close it's brick and mortar location. These are the times we live in. Boutique retail is a a fickle mistress in an economic downturn. I've spent the last couple months slowly but surely searching out some type of work. In the meantime, I've been helping some friends with their graphic design needs.

I'm taking this time to work on some personal projects, and hopefully blogging more. I'd like to share some of my design sketches and knitting projects and such on here, to be a well rounded blog as opposed to just a random post every so often. We'll see how that goes.

Words

I really really really like words. Like, really really really. I know that's either a dumb or obvious thing to say, but stay with me for a second.

As a kid, I was obsessed with learning new words. Big words, small words, just so long as i hadn't heard it before, and could later work it in to a sentence. I remember a childhood friend telling me I sounded "Stuck up" when i used "big words". I looooooved it. 

So, it's no surprise that this obsession continues.

I'm currently in the process of moving (I've been told i have a good head start, but since I'm moving in about 3 weeks i already feel behind, *SIGH*). The reason why i need three weeks or MORE to work on this shit is because I need time to get sidetracked by things!

Like tonight, i packed up a book shelf, a bunch of art supplies, all the yarn and knitting books (It's okay, they're close at hand, it's not like i can't get to them) and in this process found an old "journal" of sorts. It was entitled "Fucktard, Volume 1". Now, most of what was in here was a little on the personal side (even for the Internet) (I know, right?!) But one thing i found was a list of words. No explanation as to why there were there, and absolutely no memory whatsoever of having written this list. It's definitely my handwriting though.

I shall reproduce the list for you below.

Profane

Abysmal

Languid

Prostrate

Frayed

Terminal

Tempestuous

Terse

proclivity

Perspicacity

Tenacious

Yup, I don't get it either. On the bright side, when I spell-checked this post, i had spelled all of these correctly (even in the journal).

Also, this entry was dated 1-21-07, which means it was written less than 1 month after I moved to portland. Ca-ray-zee.

Sometimes, I am just that portland.

Anyone who knows me probably knows that I have pet rats. I've kept rats off and on for the last 4-5 years, but i am currently down to only having 3. 2 Girls, Sadie and Camilla, who are around 3 years old, and one boy, Harry, who's almost 2. They're some of the best pets I've ever had, and it's hard for me to imagine my life in Portland without them.

There was a point where i had upwards of 8. There was some unfortunate sickness and whatnot, and that's what has led to the significantly dwindled amount I have now.

After being unemployed for a personal record of 5 months (i don't think i've been unemployed that much in TOTAL since getting my first McJob at 16), my moneys were tight, and I had been buying a crappy seed-with-a-bit-of-lab-block mix of food from the local petstore for them. Not my favorite thing to do. I can watch them gain weight when i'm feeding them this stuff, and it makes me feel like a bad pet owner.

Now that i'm working again, I had planned to purchase my favorite store-bought rat food, Regal Rat. Unfortuantely, we were TOTALLY out of food, and I didn't make it to the petstore on time. I figured "OK, i'll go to the grocery store, buy some low-sugar cereal and that'll tide them over 'til tomorrow".

Then I remembered reading an article about blending your own ratfoods, and how much better it was for them because you could filter out junk (like peanuts!) that is in the store-bought blends.

I turned to RatsRule.com's article entitled "Suebee's Rat Diet".

I was shopping at a Large chain grocery store that isn't particularly known for it's healthfood section (though, god help them, they try). It was a bit toughing to track down a couple of the ingredients, but i feel like i found suitable substitutions. Here's where i differed:

1) I couldn't find unsalted/unflavored in-the-shell Sunflower seeds, so i got roasted un-salted out-of-the-shell ones from the bulk section.

2) I couldn't find completely unsweetened, dehydrated bananas, so I used banana chips. Their sugar amount was low, so i'm assuming most of that is just fruit-sugars at that point. I also got these from the bulk bins.

3) I couldn't find any bulk mixed fruit or cranberries, so i ended up with Ocean Spray Craisins. They were the lowest in sugar-content of all the dried fruits in general, as well as by brand. Go figure!

4) I didn't have mixed-veggie spirals, but i did have some regular Farfalle at home. They don't seem to mind, and if i buy some of the spirals, i'll add them in later.

The other thing that i didn't think of until it was too late was the SHEER VOLUME of all this food. I tried to do it in two mixing bowls, but before i even GOT to the dried cereals portion, both bowls were full. I opted for a paper bag from your friend, and mine, Trader Joe's.

After dumping everything in, i gave it a good stir with a big spoon, and then shook it a bit for good measure. I was kind of afraid the soy nuts and sunflower seeds were gonna end up in the bottom, so i kept stiring long past where i could have stopped. What can i say, I never know when to stop.

After all that, i had to divide it up into containers. FORTUNATELY i had opted to pick up the 3-piece set from Bi-Mart, isntead of the cute but-oh-so-much-smaller-than-i-would-have-needed Barrel shaped container. *SIGH* It did, however, fill ALL THREE containers.

On the bright side, the Rats seemed to LOVE it (once they noticed it in the bowl, obviously they were delirious from the hungries).

This all cost me about 12$ (not including the 5$ for the containers, and the 2$ for the box of cheerios i bought but didn't need)

I guess this is how i'll be doing things from now on! The kids sure seem to like it :)

Hello, Blogosphere?

Here's the thing. I'm involved in several other blogs, i've been bloggin for the better part of the last 8-9 years in various forms (several before the term "blog" was created, once i did all the html to each post manually and uploaded it via a windows-based FTP program any time i updated... RIGHT? i was like, 16.) So The idea of a "personal blog" In any form is kind of old-hat to me. i don't really care. Yup. that's right, I said it. For shit's sake, i maintain two blogs related to knitting, one of them i get paid to maintain (yeah, it's a 'work' blog, i'll talk more about it later).

This means that when i think about blogging, i try to think of more interesting blog-type ideas. Blogs that aggregate and distribute information. Craftblogs about other people's crafts. craftblogs about my crafts (Granted, there are two of these nowadays, lets not talk about that). I thought about creating a blog about local music scenes, maybe with multiple contirbutors. The fact of the matter is, i go through periods of complete disconnection from all that stuff, and i don't want to feel like a failure for it.

Therefore, this blog is just about me. stuff i do, stuff i want to do, stuff i will do, stuff i have done. Whether it be arts and crafts related, or a reposting of a recent DJ set or something like that. This is where i'm going to talk about it.  The fact of the matter is, i do a lot of stuff. Hopefully, i'll talk about it here. Aside from that, I also intend on talking about live music events and parties i attend or have no desire to attend, my beard and the beards of others, as well as any other thing it damn well pleases me to post. There. take that, internets!