I just need to share because really this sounds about right

Pretty sure it's 100% true that my ideas saved or will destroy the world.

What Famous Leader Are You? personality tests by similarminds.com

That sh!$ cray

So. Remember Sasquatch Guy? Last week I shut down further invitations from him, for obvious reasons. Today, I received an email from him. Here is an excerpt:

After that, I'm strangely tempted to keep this going. This is the most entertaining thing that's happened to me for a long time. 

Any of you have similar stories? Tell me EVERYTHING. 

Road trip!

This is probably going to be happening about a year from now- I'm determined.

Rome to Rome, hitting up Italy (Rome obviously, Florence, Bologna, Padua, Venice, Trieste, maybe Naples on the way back), Slovenia, Hungary (Budapest, Bekescaba, Szeged, Pecs), Croatia (Zagreb, Plitvice National Park, Split, Dubrovnik, allofthebeaches), Montenegro, and Albania along the way. Looking at this, I should probably tweak it to include Serbia and B&H as well.

If you think road trips are fun, just wait until you get pulled over by cops with whom you have no languages in common in a foreign country. THE BEST.

Come with me on an ambitiously huge European road-trip adventure? YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

On another note, have you ever been to any of these places? Have suggestions for other stops to include?


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Adam Cast Forth

¿Hubo un Jardín o fue el Jardín un sueño?

Lento en la vaga luz, me he preguntado,

casi como un consuelo, si el pasado

de que este Adán, hoy mísero, era dueño,

no fue sino una mágica impostura

de aquel Dios que soñé. Ya es impreciso

en la memoria el claro paraíso,

pero yo sé que existe y que perdura,

aunque no para mí. La terca tierra

es mi castigo y la incestuosa guerra

de Caínes y Abeles y su cría.

Y, sin embargo, es mucho haber amado,

haber sido feliz, haber tocado

el viviente Jardín, si

quiera un día.

Jorge Luis Borges

(translation here)

Things to avoid at all costs

I talked a touch about this on the Facebook already, but I thought I'd put together a quick reference list of things-never-to-mention on a first date, just to help you all out. Not that you need it, really. You're a spectacularly well-adjusted group of people.

• Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Yeti/sincere belief in any cryptozoology/even the fact that you know the term cryptozoology: This is only acceptable if you have a truly excellent story to tell about a great prank you played on a friend that somehow involved any of these elements. I'm all about Bigfoot pranks and hilarious hijinx. I'm not at all about dedicating any substantial portion of time to studying or discussing cryptids.

• Aliens: They may exist, they may not, I'm just not in the mood to get into this kind of speculative science at a first meeting. If you tell me that you think you saw a UFO when you were 9, I'll probably zone out and spend the next 20 minutes thinking about the delicious Thai coconut soup I had for dinner yesterday. There's a time and a place. This is not it. In the middle of an X-Files marathon? Great time. Driving through the Nevada desert? Perfect place. Awkward dinner with someone you barely know? Nope. Shut that down.

• Flipping houses: Don't even talk to me about this. It's not a job. It's a hobby AT BEST. Unless you are passionate about historical restoration, all this tells me about you is that you're probably in get-rich-quick mode, rather than find-something-you-really-love-and-do-it-consistently mode. One is better and healthier than the other. I'll leave it to you to discern which that is.

• Shopping screenplays around to directors: Again, not a job. Don't even bring this up. You're living in Sugarhouse and I find it highly unlikely that this is more than just a pie-in-the-sky idea something along the lines of that discussed in point 3.

• Your love for Big Bang Theory: I can't even deal with this. It's a poorly written, predictable mockery of the geek culture it claims to celebrate. If I don't know you very well, this is pretty much a dealbreaker. At least save it until I know you have other redeeming qualities.

As a coda to this brief list, I should add that any one of these things would be a red flag on its own, but all of them together are a flashing neon DANGER sign. In the future, I will do my part to avoid any situations that might combine all five.

Quotes

"The things we truly love are locked in our hearts as long as life remains"

Josephine Baker

This, right now, and for days to come

Quotes

"I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find my banks full of roses under my cypresses."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

(Live Oak engraving by the incomparable Barry Moser)

Ramblings

So I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do with this little blog moving forward. In case you haven't noticed (and if you haven't, are you blind?!), I haven't had much to say here for about the last year. That's happened for a lot of reasons, but most recently, I attribute it directly to my Twitter obsession.

With my Google-addled attention span, I'm not sure I have anything of length worth sharing here anymore, but I'm not willing to abandon this quite yet. Honestly, it's the closest thing to a journal that I've got going, so sorry future children, you're mostly out of luck, but at least you'll know of my unnatural love for European baritones, which I'm sure will be exceedingly helpful when you're trying to make important life decisions, and all that jazz.


Lately, I've been:

• Taking selfies in distorted mirror pillars

•  Spending too much time (as usual) in teh naturez. This is one of my favorite hikes- the Living Room- full of "furniture" made of sandstone slabs. This was taken on a particularly cold and rainy day. I feel pretty lucky to live in a city where I'm only minutes away from sights like this. 

• Chasing quails around the backyard. On this particular day, they took refuge in the apple tree. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, almost nothing delights me more than ridiculous quails.  

Other stuff has been happening, but you don't really want to hear about that- you just want the good/boring stuff like birds and rocks. YOU'RE WELCOME.

Quotes

“I cannot break myself any longer for you... If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. "

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays (emphasis mine)

If anyone's interested, I can't stop listening to Miguel and his excellent modern/throwback/80s-style (I don't even know how to describe it really) brand of R&B. Listen to this loud so you can hear that truly chill-worthy walking bass-line.

As for the lyrics, I feel like he's trying to give his own, slightly classier, twist on YOLO...which is...whatever.

I just need everyone to know that "Oz: the Great And Powerful" is pretty terrible and you probably shouldn't watch it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm chronicling my life in snippets- in comments left on articles and blogs, in snapshots posted on social media, sticky notes strewn around my desk- not in a meaningful way, just a stream of flotsam trailing in my digital/real life wake. And I am, I guess. I lack the motivation to turn it into anything more meaningful, more complete. Part of that is the result of my own curation- the belief that things I choose not to share publicly should not be shared with anyone. Is that dishonest? That I keep most of myself for...well, just myself? Or is that normal?

Eva's

Have you been to Eva's Bakery yet? It's my new weekly lunch treat. On Wednesdays I work a reference shift from 12-2:30 and then take an incredibly late lunch and wander down the street to this sparkling, adorable gem of a bakery/cafe. I mean JUST LOOK at that facade. I DIE. It's so cute. (wait until you go inside, it gets even better). So far I've tried the savory bread pudding (cheesy and vegetable-y and warm and delicious- comfort food to the max, with a tiny side salad of mixed greens so you can feel good about eating a large slab of cream-soaked bread), the turkey and brie croque monsieur (like an open-faced cheesy melty sandwich- nothing to complain about there), but what I really love so far are the pastries. The fruit flavored pastries taste like heaven. Their tangerine bar is like a California summer- with a sharp, fresh bite of tangerine. The only other one I've had was some sort of apricot pinwheel, and I love apricots, but I have no idea where/how they found apricots that taste that wonderful at this time of year (or who they had to kill), but they succeeded. I'm excited for further carbventures. 

(photo from here)

Some days the only real reason I go to the gym is to relieve massive chest pains.

I just bought this fabric:

To make this dress:

So yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. THERE'S SO MUCH GOING ON IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW Y'ALL. Obviously.

I know all my posts have been about guys lately but I can't help it. Other things in my life are pretty stable so it's what I think about. But really all I want to talk about right now is that moment when you meet someone and you start a REALLY good conversation with them by saying "pants are hard" and then you're talking about gentrification in northeast D.C. and a bunch of other things and you want to keep talking and then you ask them a question that brings up the fact that they recently made a major life change because both of their parents are in bad health and then you feel awkward about having brought it up inadvertently but then the conversation continues and it's still great and you start thinking "it's colder than ANTARCTICA out here" and "what do I do with this plate of half-eaten cheese ball I'm holding" and "hey, maybe he'll ask for my number or something and we can continue this conversation another time and some place warmer" but then he doesn't and it's wrapping up and you're standing there in the bitter cold watching him walk away and thinking "well, that was disappointing" because it was. And then you come home and write a run-on sentence about it. Yeah, you know those moments? They're the worst.

Update: and THEN you find out he's 40 and a high councilman and you have a friend sneakily try to set you up anyways.

New umbrella (this is obviously exciting news)

On the way to work this morning, I realized my umbrella is broken. It's just a free umbrella that my dad got from one of the hospitals where he works, so no big deal (but kinda because it's my Chattanooga umbrella). Anyways it doesn't close right, I think the stick is detached from the canopy somehow, etc... So I started looking for a new umbrella, and discovered that overstock.com sells umbrellas THAT LOOK LIKE SAMURAI SWORDS. Yes please duh of course I want one. So I BOUGHT ONE. I'm so excited. Stop judging me.

Can't sleep and I just narrowly avoided falling out of bed in a sleepy delirium.

Now that I've found stable employment and have a passably safe place to live, my only life goal is to avoid cankles, no matter the cost.