quetzal's_question_of_the_moment quetzal have you ever been punked? 140321 ... epitome of incomprehensibility I_got_a_dadaist_haircut once! But the word as a verb, I understand, is more akin to "prank." In sixth grade a girl in my class tied my shoelaces to my chair legs without me noticing somehow, and when I tried to stand up I could not move without the chair trailing after me. Cue bemusement (mine), amusement (others'). I got revenge the next day by filling her desk with leaves from the cedar tree outside. She could not understand the logic to that (indeed there was none except to be mildly obstructive) and so she grabbed me by the hair in the hallway. I was prepared to fight back, but the teacher broke us up. Does that fulfill the assignment requirements, or should I have been pranked more elaborately? 140321 ... quetzal well done! that was a funny tale! i was celebrating my birthday with my oldest daughter since our b-days are only a day apart. we went to the science center to see an imax movie. the woman selling tickets told us it was sold it. our mouths dropped. my daughter asked if there were other things she could do instead. the woman suggested baby-sitting the boy scouts in attendance while the staff took a break. we smiled. the woman laughed and sold us two tickets. we had been punked. thanks for responding. look for a new question tomorrow! 140321 ... quetzal what is the oddest job you ever had? 140322 ... quetzal i bought a ticket for a greyhound bust for southern california right out of high school and ended up staying ten years. my first job was at the county fairgrounds cleaning out horse stalls. on the plus side, it was right next a private section of the ocean. at lunch, i could eat on the beach and smoke weed undetected. on the minus side, digging into the pee section of the sawdust and getting my face blown out by an intense waft of ammonia. i almost passed out a few times. 140323 ... quetzal past/ what is the oddest job you ever had? new/ what do you remember fondly about your grandparents? 140323 ... quetzal rudolf the red-nosed reindeer came on once a year. my three cousins and brother would gather around the black and white console television with our grandpa frank, my mom's dad, who would sit on a chair in the middle of us. i managed to acquire the coveted seat on his lap, sinking into a warmth and comfort that offered me the perfect repose, allowing rudolf's fortitude to inspire. gigi, my dad's father, spoke in a thick russian accent which enlarged the view of my growing world. upon every visit, he would shuffle to the kitchen cupboard and reach for the coffee cup full of coins and hand my brother and me a quarter. past/ what is the oddest job you ever had? what do you remember fondly about your grandparents? new/what is unique about your hometown? 140324 ... quetzal parades for every holiday! it's a small town in south western pennsylvania. only 5,000 people. and so parades bring us together. i dress as a clown. my chihuahua and i stroll about. this is an unexplainable bursting happiness. new question: what's the current state of your relationship with your mother? 140325 ... e_o_i Amused bafflement. 140325 ... e_o_i (Mostly on her side, though I have questioned why any human being would need so many bluish-green shirts.) 140325 ... quetzal my mom turned 80 this year. she lives alone in the house i grew up in. my dad died 12 years ago, so she is grooved into her solitary life, living on a steady diet of culture and sports. i call her several times during the week and check in on her. she keeps me current. i've been interviewing her lately about her side of the family and finding myself fascinated by the streaming loops of dna twisting their way to me. i shop for her once in a while, holding her handwritten shopping list as i push the cart around the store of my faded youth. presently she is consumed by the pittsburgh eagle cam. the eggs are supposed to hatch today! new question/what is your reading process? 140326 ... quetzal i read fiction at night, just as i get into bed. i tell myself a story like my father did to me. then i fall asleep and dream. last night i dreamt that i helped ira glass run for office. he wore a cardboard sandwich sign to promote for votes upside down and backwards. i just finished The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner. i'm about ready to re-read The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams. last night i read William Steig and an adapted Grimm's tale of Rapunzel. 140327 ... quetzal new question/ if you could spend the day with any person living or dead, who would you choose? 140327 ... quetzal easy, my dad. 140328 ... quetzal which number holds significance for you? 140328 ... e_o_i (I don't think I trust you. I don't trust myself either, but that's for different reasons. Anyway, I typically read several books at once. I was reading The Sorrows of Young Werther very slowly, and on Wednesday I suddenly finished it. Yesterday I finished H.D.'s biography of Ezra Pound, End to Torment. I guess I like to read different kinds of books at once.) 140328 ... quetzal (interesting books... you might be fascinated by blackink_whitepages and its subsequent additions spurned on by red blather's continuing involvement. simply investigate rt and also redtree for rclg) the number that holds significance for me is...5 2+3. my family. it was the first little league baseball uniform number i was given and i kept it all through high school. 48 was big for me as well. 1357531 new question/ what was your favorite television show as a child? 140329 ... quetzal paul shannon's adventure time, which featured his alter ego, nosmo king and the magic sword. at christmas he would send letters off to santa claus in a rocket ship. he had a tv block where he'd show three stooges shorts, wb cartoons, and simba the white lion. since it was a local pittsburgh show, he came to my school for an assembly performance. i was so inspired that i swore to myself, right there in my seat that one day i would be a children's entertainer. and so voila! i also loved lost in space and zoom, mostly because they were highlighted by the appearance of brunette girls with brown eyes. captain kangaroo was my all-time favorite... along with guests mr. green jeans, mr. bunny rabbit, and mr. moose. new question/what do you remember the most from visiting a foreign country? 140330 ... quetzal the first time we went to pelee island off lake erie, which is part of canada near ontario, i was fascinated at the winery by the french speaking family we met from montreal. i loved the way their mouths moved to form the words, as if they were doing so much more work with their tongues and lips than i ever did. then there is the time i hung out with my daughter's boyfriend's parents from san diego. they took us to tijuana, mexico. i was the only white man in a bar. couples danced to mariachi music while i tried to disappear into my stool. avoiding eye contact with anyone. new question/ when is the last time you felt love? 140331 ... quetzal just now when my wife handed me the morning smoothie she day after day makes for me. new question/ what are you looking forward to next? 140401 ... quetzal i worked all winter making art for a show i set up yesterday at my daughter's raw vegan restaurant. it was like pushing birds out of a nest! i am so looking forward to selling all of it! 140402 ... quetzal new question/ have you ever been in a fist fight? 140402 ... quetzal when i was in grade seven, i crushed on a girl a year younger than me. her last name was hysong, which easily added to her allure. i had a newspaper route then, delivering bundles of the daily news on my bicycle. her family was one of my customers so it was a unique thrill to catch a glimpse of her lithe frame from time to time. she had long straight blond hair and wore tiny round glasses. there was an aloof coolness about her and a husky voice that just didn't match her. however, i didn't know one of my classmates also liked her. one late afternoon, some buddies and me snuck into the press box of our school's football field and chugged a bottle of boone's farm before going to a birthday party where i knew she would be attending. we drunkenly stumbled in later and i no doubt made a fool out of myself with her, unaware that the dude who also liked her was there watching it go down. he showed up with a cronie at my house the next day while i was in hangover mode and wanted to fight me down by the railroad tracks. i knew they would team up and kick my ass and so i talked him into a showdown at school the next morning. he reluctantly agreed. i remember telling my dad about it in the basement washroom of our house and asking him what i should do. he pumped me up. i'll never forget it. perhaps the best advice i have ever received. next day, i rode the bus to school with the dude and played the scene over and over in my head, how i would throw the first punch right when we got off. and so, that's what i did. but i missed. we punched each other about the head and then ended up wrestling on the ground. a group of reveling gooseneckers encircled us. the principal came out and sent us home. he didn't even call us into the office or our parents. we even walked home together, becoming best friends of sorts, agreeing this miss hysong just wasn't worth it. funny thing is we weren't worth it to her either. next question/ what are some films that made you cry? 140403 ... quetzal awakenings de niro is flawless as a mentally ill patient awakened from a "sleeping" disease. his slow return to the state is heart wrenchingly painful to watch. the english patient the scene in the cave when count laszlo leaves katharine behind in the cave... next question/ what is your favorite flower? 140404 ... e_o_i The ending of Pan's Labyrinth. The ending of Schindler's list, but it was partly because of the string music, and I was thinking, "Go away, string music, I want to feel what's actually happening!" Spielberg, Spielberg, you don't have to be so polished all the time. But the bits of colour, rather than being stereotropes, vivified and symbolified the proceedings. Are my words real? I don't know. I like cyclamens. 140404 ... e_o_i (Capital L for List. And appleologies for mixing the first and last parts of the film rather confusingly. Also may I confess to an inappropriate crush on Nazi Amon Goeth and/or his big-breasted girlfriend? Okay. I am forgiven. After all, I didn't have a crush on Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Only in O Lucky Man. There was a film with the word wildflower in the title that made me cry too, probably, some time ago. Two teenagers, siblings, meet a hearing-impaired girl beaten and imprisoned by her parents, eventually making her life better... a younger Reese Witherspoon? Let me look this up. Hm. It's called Wildflower. Rather predictable story, but well done.) Cyclamens were the first flower that sprung to mind. When they bloom the petals uncurl from the pointed unicorn's-horn bud... Sorry, I've overdosed on poetry recently. I also like how cyclamen sounds like cyclotron. Nuclear power isn't pretty, except when it is. 140404 ... quetzal tulips are my favorite flower. as a landscape gardener i have planed hundreds of thousands for clients over the years and we have many here at robin_hill. i love the fact they were once extremely valuable. it's interesting how you have to plant them in the fall and they must endure a freezing winter in order to emerge in the spring. they are unrivaled in beauty, especially in a large cluster. they make me think of a choir. and what song do they sing? perhaps that is the new question of the moment. 140405 ... e_o_i Agreed that tulips are nice, very visible and bright, in large quantities. Some on Mt. Royal last year (I guess I'm nostalgic/impatient for summer - when it gets here, of course, I'll complain about the heat.) They'll sing "You Are My Sunshine." (At this point I'd imagine my score is down -12 for not being weird enough.) 140405 ... quetzal considering you are the only one playing, i wouldn't give you any negative points. i imagine you would be winning. i could definitely see them singing, "you are my sunshine," and perhaps a new_song from time to time, like "wake up you sleepy head," a sondheim-inspired rendition of the robert louis stevenson poem, of course. i sang in a choir as a child or chorus i guess. we would travel to other schools and perform. i played charlie brown in a musical once and was the sheep with the curly horn in a christmas musical. singing with a group is an unparalleled metaphor for cooperation. those were days of fulfillment. a spot in my chest was totally struck with some kind of cosmic energy that has never left me but grew into numerous other facets. new question/when you get an idea, how does it come to you? what do you do with it? 140406 ... quetzal brain science is fascinating and complex and the process of birthing ideas is as unique as the individual. for me, capturing an idea before it disappears like breath into fog is vital so i carry a tiny journal with me at all times to throw down seeds into the fertile soil of my attentional imagination. i think we all just want to make sense of our world. new question/if you were given the side of a building in a major city to do with as you desired, perhaps paint a mural, how would you full the space? 140407 ... quetzal i would measure out the space into a bunch of squares, rally up a mix of people of all ages, supply ladders, music, paint, brushes, food, drinks, make sure it was a sunny day, and totally go for it. new question/ what is your favorite bird? 140408 ... quetzal duh. new question/ what is your favorite kind of pizza? 140408 ... quetzal gluen free greek at little e's. 140409 ... quetzal sorry, looks like i forget a "t" up there. :/ it's yummy, drippy, oily flatbread, dude. 140409 ... quetzal new question/ what is one thing that no one knows about you? 140409 ... quetzal one thing you don't know about me is that i have an oriental short hair cat that is an expert mouse killer. she chews the heads off and leaves us the open body cavity on the porch near the front door as a gift. the internal organs of mice are fascinating. blood racing through tiny little vessels, holy christ! new question/ is there an ocean on one of jupiter's moons? 140410 ... quetzal scientists say most likely, it's 60 miles deep, but under 2 miles of ice. yet, with the gravitational pull from Io the other moon, and the planet itself, Europa is hot at the interior which means it could have life! 140410 ... quetzal new question/ what is the most interesting thing in your wallet right now? 140411 ... quetzal a business card i found in a client's landscape. it was hers. i didn't know she was all that. new question/ if you were a dog, what kind would you be? 140412 ... quetzal i would be the runt born to a litter in a mill, sucking on nearly spent teats, blinking my congested runny eyes as my brothers and sisters were sold all around me. when i was the only one left, i would be tied to a chain and small ramshackle house in the back corner of a yard with no grass, a rotting fence and rusted junk pile. my shit would not be picked up and the smell of my own piss would compete with the fragrance of the world beckoning beyond my reach. my owners would often forget to feed me and my skeleton would poke through the mange of my flea dung matted fur. i would mostly sleep and my dreams would hint that this is not all there is. one night under a blanket of a full moon and billion stars, my chain would eventually rust to a breaking point as i pulled on it to garner a scent. in the unexpected freedom, i would push through a crumpled portion of pickets and revel in the liberty of an open life spread all around me. i would run as faraway as i could go. 140413 ... quetzal new question/who is your most interesting relative? 140414 ... quetzal when i was five, we had a visit from a cousin on my dad's named paul michael, who was 18 at the time. he was long-haired and had his guitar with him. i remember him singing a song on the couch. he moved away to indiana and ended up running a farm. his daughter was killed in a car crash. a cousin on my mom's side had a son who was born with his umbilical wrapped around his neck that cut off his oxygen supply. poor dude grew up with some difficulties. new question/ so china landed on the moon? 140415 ... quetzal i guess so. not sure why i never knew about it. december 14, 2013 the chang'e 3 soft landed, unmanned. high def pics available. new question/ are we all living in the same place? 140415 ... e_o_i I dropped a plate on the moon. It was a SPE (Silly Pun Event) though with no discernible horizon. You saw me because we were all living on the moon at that point, but it is a point before most humans' conscious existence. It is where the underground trains go, far into the blackness of the sleeping mind. 140415 ... quetzal new question/ where do we begin? 140415 ... quetzal things just are. there doesn't have to be a purpose. you exist. others perceive you completely different than you see yourself. it's what you don't see. new question/if you found $100.00 on the ground, what would you do with it? 140416 ... e_o_i I'd probably stand there and wait for someone to come back for it. That's what I did when I saw a $5 bill on the ground. It was next to a bank, so I figured somebody may have dropped it and would be coming back for it. Sure enough, a man did, and thanked me for giving it back. At the same time I kind of wished I could've kept it. So yes, I would stand there holding the money, looking awkward for a few minutes, and if no one claimed it I'd go and put it in my savings account. If it was in smaller denominations, say tens or twenties, I might keep it on hand to buy something, most likely food or a poetry book. I am that exciting in real life! 140416 ... quetzal not just saying this but i would do the exact same thing. i think i would feel bad for the person who lost it and getting it back to them would be amazing just for the look of relief washing over their face, you know? but, if sufficient time passed and it looked like God was giving me an unexpected gift, i would put it in my savings for a new pair of twin tip skis. i'm so ready. new question/what is your favorite smell? 140417 ... quetzal woodsmoke on a chilly late november day, damp leaves, earth, thanksgiving dinner, pumpkin spice, peony, newborn baby breath, chocolate, horse sweat new question/ what one book most influenced your life when you were coming of age? 140418 ... e_o_i Lilacs, cinnamon, curry. Probably more but I can't think of them. ... Depends on what I count as coming of age. Age 17, there was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, though the character lost some of my sympathies in the last chapter. I wanted to "be a writer like James Joyce" without being a snob like Stephen Dedalus is in the last chapter. I was relieved to read Ulysses the next year and find Joyce poking fun at himself and at the Stephen character a bit. Of course, it was pure presumption on my part to think I could write "like" James Joyce. Besides, at that point I wrote mostly children's stories, sci-fi, and (inept) parody with some redeeming surreal humour. (The letter U redeems it.) A couple of years earlier, there was The Saskiad by Brian Hall, a surprisingly unique depiction of a teenage girl's inner life. She had a vivid inner life and imaginary vocabulary that was attributable to her reading, her heritage, and her own imaginative powers rather than social slang (as in the Georgia Nicolson series) or mental illness (as in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) - both of which are also good books, the latter being understandably more serious - but it was rare for me to read of a female figure, especially a young one, as an independent creator and inventor of language, at least in what I was reading at the time. I was a bit disappointed when, later in the book, her problems moved into the realm of typical teenage books and she seemed to become less creative. But I think I liked the ending. I'd have to read it again to see exactly what I think of it now. 140418 ... quetzal fascinating stuff for sure...especially the vivid inner and life and imaginative vocabulary.. mine was "narcissus and golmund" by herman hesse...flesh vs. spirit new question/what makes the naked mole rat a unique scientific study? 140419 ... e_o_i For smells I forgot to say spruce trees and fresh parsley. For the naked mole rat, I looked it up and my first guess would be that it's unusually cancer-resistant; the second guess would be that it lives in colonies like ants, which is unusual for mammals. (It's also funny-looking, but that's subjective; they probably think humans look funny. Or smell funny, more likely, since they don't have much eyesight.) 140419 ... quetzal well researched! i would add bees to comparisons, since their colonies have a queen that mates with only one male or just a few and have sterile workers. plus, they have an oxygen requiring gene that is turned off, possess small lungs and blood that can carry a very tiny amount of oxygen so they can live a tight-quartered subterranean existence. perhaps best of all, they feel no pain! i also love the smell of cut pine. we have a long row of spruce trees that borders our property on the north end, hiding a sub station. we planted 200, 1' tall trees, 20 years ago and now they are gentle giants. new question/what are some of your favorite sounds? 140420 ... quetzal the distant crow of a rooster, small town church bells ringing out the hour, a dog barking in the far reaching darkness, the laughter and singing of children, the rhythmic clacking of a train, a marching band, cello, birdsong, cicadas new question/ did you have any fireworks stories? 140421 ... e_o_i Sounds. That's an interesting question. I'd say machines that make a low hum, like washing machines, and cats purring. Tenor sax, cello, bassoon. Choirs with both low and high voices. Waterfalls. I do remember feeling almost nationalistic when the national anthem played to fireworks the summer I was eighteen. I sat with my friend J in Millennium_Park and we were both impressed. But they say it doesn't compare to the Independence Day displays in the States, and now that I know they pollute a lot, I'm less taken with them. Or maybe I've just gotten boring in my old age. 140421 ... quetzal my youngest daughter, greta and her boyfriend jon drove cross country recently and stopped in arizona to purchase some major fireworks. they set them off in the kite field two nights ago during a small party we held around the bonfire. they were dramatic and bombastic for our tiny community and surely declared us as the radicals we must inadvertently present ourselves..."welcome spring!" they also brought the coolest sparklers that you could use to write on the surrounding night sky, like that picture of picasso doing the similar act. freezing circles and figure eights. new question/what is your earliest memory? 140422 ... quetzal i was three years-old. my older brother, who was six, had me seated in the middle of the playroom. he spread a throw rug out so it resembled a mountain landscape. there were toy men, houses and vehicles. there were imagined families and community worlds already. new question/ earbuds or headphones? 140423 ... quetzal earbuds because my headphones broke new question/what is the first record album that had an influence upon you? 140424 ... quetzal pink floyd's dark side of the moon i was 14, perhaps, staying the night with a group of my close friends at a doctor's ski chalet in the laurel highlands of southwestern pennsylvania. i heard it as a concept and a soundtrack. it was about the passage of time and for me a taking off into the unknown. when the alarm bells rang, the button of my imagination was turned on and the subsequent ticking and beating was my call to action. not too long ago at a party chisel held at his new spring garden, ogre came, wearing a pink floyd animals t-shirt. we, of course, discussed roger waters vs. david gilmour. such a bloody twist! 140424 ... quetzal and so i played it last night from youtube. it flooded my memory. it is a masterpiece. cinematic and thoughtfully crafted mind space. i remember playing it many times and using it as a soundtrack for entering the rite of passage. new question/ when was the last time you did something to hurt someone's feelings? 140425 ... quetzal last evening i was working on beth's garden and accidently broke her baby lily of the valley and a piece of her bleeding heart. although she gave me a bowl of rabbit stew, she was cold to me. now i know why. she texted me in the morning and said she had to tell me even though it was hard to do. she had been really looking forward to the lily. she has a dog named lily. so i hurt her. in my oblivion. i apologized by text and then found a mature lily of the valley in a client's garden, so i dug it up and potted it for her. she is putting a brick patio in so i gave her some more bricks so she could finish. i hurt her, but then i soothed her. next question/ what was the last drink you had? 140425 ... e_o_i Okay. In reverse order: Water. Yesterday I told my mother, "Don't think that I'm having a crisis every time I'm lazy. If I thought that about you every time you were lazy..." and it came out sounding like I was accusing her of being lazy a lot, when I meant to say that everyone will have lazy moods sometimes. She seemed hurt, not merely annoyed, so I explained what I'd meant, or tried to mean, and things were better. Verdi's Aida, when I was seven. I associated it with guests coming for dinner, especially at thanksgiving. I remember dancing around to it with one of my mom's glittery 70s scarves like a little Salome, minus the stripping part (ref. to some opera or other, not that I've seen any live except Peter and the Wolf at Place des Arts when I was a kid. I got a wolf mask and I thought it was awesome.) 140425 ... e_o_i Headphones because they cancel out more sound, and, although I have an aesthetic appreciation for earwax (it smells quite nice) I don't like to get it on things that I'll reuse. I'm finicky sometimes, though not as a general rule. What was the last one? Memory? I remember being two at the community centre's Halloween party and hiding behind a toy castle, but I'm unsure if this is a real memory or something pieced together from a photograph. Apparently all memories are stored somewhere and can be retrieved with the right triggers, but I imagine it gets dicey once you go farther back in time and your mind becomes newer and less developed. ... I feel like asking questions. You don't have to answer, but you can. 140425 ... e_o_i I mean, e_o_i_asks: that is not because I'm being competitive, although you may say that there are getting to be too many Internet cafes in Nakuru, Kenya (not_quite_truisms?) I just wanted to ask questions too, and the title's also derivative of ask_blatherskite pages. 140425 ... quetzal memories are like the shadows of the flames on the walls of plato's cave. our lives are flip books of imprints. if you could play one film, without the sound, on the bedsheet screen set up at a summer party you were throwing in your backyard, what would it be? 140427 ... quetzal godard's bande a part new question/ what do you think is funny? 140428 ... TK The Biker Chick in my dream had a really dark dry cynical since of humor, I thought she was funny ^.^ Yesterday I Wore an olive green shirt bc I missed her and wanted to feel close to her(she usually wore olive/moss greens, grays and obviously black). Today I feel beyond silly for missing a figment of my own imagination =/ But yea, She was funny. 140428 ... quetzal hey tk, i love olive green, one of my favorite colors that i wear a lot. funny for me right now is the hulu show deadbeat. it's like it features a modern day shaggy from scooby doo. new question/ on what occasion do you wear a hat or a head covering? 140428 ... quetzal today i wore what one of my clients calls my "trotsky hat" only because it was raining. i wear a ski hat on chilly mornings and a helmet on the slopes but that's it. i would rather go hatless whenever i can. new question/ what movies are you looking forward to seeing? 140429 ... Toxic_Kisses MindScape - Looks like a blend of "Being John Malkovich" (Loved) and Robin Williams "The Final Cut" (really enjoyed) so I get the feeling that I'll also find this movie thoroughly enjoyable as well =) The Giver - Movies are rarely ever as good as the book but I'm still really looking forward to seeing it! The Scribbler - What can I say, I find mental illness fascinating. The Maze Runner - Again based on a book I've read and rather enjoyed. Slightly off topic, just ordered "Heathers" yesterday from Amazon. Saw the movie for the first time when I was 8 and fell so deeply head over hills in love with Christian Slaters character J.D. so I'm ~trully~ looking forward to seeing that yet again, and again, and again *sigh* Makes me wonder who your first celebrity crush was, but I don't think I'm allowed to ask questions in this blath, so I guess I'll just have to keep wondering =) Also plan on checking out Deadbeat from Hulu, certainly sounds worth a look. Oh and I'm not much of a hat person, not only don't they ever look right on me (as far as I'm concerned) but standing at my full height of 4'10 and a half I find hat wearing unconducive to my existence in the daily world. 140429 ... quetzal i watched the trailers to the films you suggested and find them all intriguing. mindscape reminded me of "american horror story" somehow. thanks for the suggestions. "the giver" was already on my list. that just might be one of the best y/a books of all time. i also want to see "blue ruin." "heathers" is an awesome movie. definitely on my top 100 list. my first celebrity crush was jennifer connelly. thanks for responding, tk, and feel free to ask any of your questions here. i would love to hear them! i think you will like "deadbeat." my daughter was second camera. first season filmed in nyc. if it gets picked up for a second season, it will move to los angeles. new question/what was the scariest thing you ever did? 140430 ... quetzal jumped out of an airplane new question/ do you have any scars? how did you get them? 140501 ... e_o_i For some reason I still have a little mark on my finger from last year, when I tore a piece of skin off while (carelessly) washing a can. For a small and non-threatening injury it was very painful. Fingers have lots of nerve endings. Also, it's not exactly a scar, but I have a slight bump at the front of my lip from falling face-first when I was ten. I tripped over the last stair and fell so fast that I didn't have time to put a hand out to break the impact. I was lucky that neither me nor my teeth got knocked out, but some of those teeth cut into my upper lip. I was bleeding a lot, which at the time I found somewhat exciting. I remember kneeling over the sink and having to keep splashing my face with water. At choir the next day it looked like I'd gotten into a hockey fight. Singing with a fat lip felt awkward. I remember the finger cut hurting more, but maybe that has to do with my emotional state at the time. When I was in fifth grade life was quite good. 140501 ... e_o_i I wear hats when it's cold, or hot and sunny. I get headaches when I'm out too long in the sun without a hat. For summer, I have a floppy dark brown hat with a thin white line around the edge of the brim. Currently I have no idea where it is, which makes me sad. The hat I did manage to find is a wide-brimmed straw hat with some ribbon and fake flowers my mother attached. It was a gift for me when I was nine or ten, when it was too big. It fits perfectly now, but do I want to go around looking like Pollyanna? Eh, why not. It'd be different. (TK, you're shorter than me! which is neither good nor bad, of course, but for some reason, I have a mental image of the blatherskite race being tall. Thus your comment is a relief. I thought I was an anomaly.) ... What do I find funny? That's a good (read: difficult) question. I don't think I can answer that in a general sense, so I'll give an example. I recently read a poetry book by Susan Holbrook that I found very funny in places - and also thoroughly brilliant. It's both experimental and down-to-earth, which is a hard thing to pull off. The name's Joy is So Exhausting. One of the pieces is a "news sudoku" where Holbrook rearranges the nine words of the headline "Harper proposes vote on same-sex marriage issue" nine times. As a sudoku it's perfect, and you get some pretty funny word combinations, such as "Vote marriage proposes on same issue Harper sex free." I can imagine adding various punctuations. Is Stephen Harper sex-free? Or is having sex with Stephen Harper free? Then there's a long poem called "Good Egg Bad Seed," which takes the template of "There are people who are X and people who are Y" and runs with it. To strange places. For example: "You'd like to be cremated because you believe in ethereal reincarnation rather than bodily resurrection or you'd like to be cremated just to be sure you're really dead when they put you down there." and "You think the only way to respond to a poem is to write another poem or you think the only way to respond to a poem is to run the other way." and "The figurative sway of language being uncommonly effective on you, you can't eat blood oranges while you can eat candy-apple red nail polish. Or you live in Puce." 140501 ... e_o_i (Edit: the word "free" should have been in there somewhere - probably "Harper proposes free vote on same-sex marriage issue." He would, wouldn't he.) 140501 ... e_o_i Movies. I'm rather bored of vampires, but I'd kind of like to see Tilda Swinton as one. 140501 ... quetzal me too. "last lovers left alive" is from director jim jarmusch which is another one of my favorites that e_o_i_asks. tilda swinton inhabits her role and becomes her character. she is an avant garde, performance artist, a true cinematic genius. i love how different we are. your hats sound very cool. i'm sure you look tres chic! 140502 ... quetzal if you were give a one way ticket to somewhere, where would you want it to be? 140503 ... quetzal yikes, what a ghastly spelling error. sorry about that! gulp! that should read; given my one way ticket would be to northern california by train, which just might be the most beautiful place on earth. next question/ bath or shower? 140503 ... quetzal usually a bath because i use a unique soap that my wife sells which neutralizes the body's ph as one soaks. i also use it as a time to read; current book "the goldfinch' by donna tartt. showers i often take after a very hot summer day. nothing like it for cooling down. i love to take showers in nyc hotel rooms. so decadent. new question: do you ride a bicycle? 140504 ... e_o_i Bike: yes. I have my own, luckily. In town there's a bikeshare system called Bixi with which people can sign up for monthly or season passes, as well as one-time rentals, but I haven't used it yet because it doesn't operate near enough to where I live. It's a great idea, though, and I hope it manages to turn itself around financially. Shower on weekdays, bath on weekends, generally. Here's a lazy experiment idea: leave the plug in when you're showering and see how long it takes for the water to fill up to bath level. My result was about twenty minutes. One-way ticket: that's tricky wording. Is the idea that I choose a place to stay for the rest of my life? Or is it just that I have to pay my own way back. If A), I'm not sure - haven't been to enough places - and if B) Antarctica, when I have the savings. It's been a longtime idea of mine to visit the place, but I wouldn't like to get stuck there! Although I might get a seaside retirement cottage there once global warming gets really bad. 140504 ... no reason i ride a bicycle sometimes, but the tires need air. i like baths, but i need a plug that works. so i shower. i hurt someone today, and myself too. so i hurt someones today. i have a scar on my knee from when i fell down the stairs when i was two years old, and another on my forehead from when i was fourteen and tripped on chicken wire in a forest in mexico. 140504 ... quetzal hey no reason! welcome! what were you doing in mexico at fourteen? hey e_o_i, my youngest daughter's boyfriend took a summer trip to argentina and then went on to antarctica. temperatures were hovering above freezing. his photos of the wildlife were stunning. when i was growing up i was part of an elementary school bicycle gang. we gave each other gang names like mark the shark, david from the grave. mine was z dog. there was one girl we called 'chine gun shelly. we rode around our little town terrorizing the parks. wrapping swings around the top bar kind of thing. in high school, i was the only one of 300 students that rode a bike to school. when i lived in southern california, i rode a beach cruiser to surf most mornings and evenings and then to work. that was for ten years. my wife and i used to ride around ventura, me peddling, she sitting on the seat until a policeman said, no no! once i was eating a sandwich and ran a red light, crashed into an oncoming car, rolled over the hood, landed on my feet and finished the sandwich! new question/ what is your favorite kind of sky? 140505 ... nr hi quetzal, and thanks! our mexico trip was a family vacation. i don't remember much about it other than getting that scar. my favourite sky is a summer sky. (is that cheating?) 140505 ... e_o_i Half-rain, half-sun, rainbows. Or just an azure summer evening around 9. (Funny bike story. It reminds me of a Bizarro cartoon, the joke being that a tough guy walks into a "biker" (cyclist) bar and one of them tells him he doesn't belong - the funny part there was that I took so long to find the punchline.) 140505 ... quetzal nr! you're not cheating. i'm so glad you are here! come back! i love summer skies too...blue with puffy white clouds. e_o_i ...as always a pleasure...bizarro is crazy fun! next question/ sun or moon? 140505 ... e_o_i I like seeing the moon when the sun's still up, in the afternoon. But that might relate more to the previous query. 140506 ... quetzal i couldn't live without both of them. the sun is my mother. the moon is my father. they will never leave me. i love to see the eclipse of the earth on the moon. new question/ what things do you love about spring? 140506 ... quetzal the earth is in heat. plant your seeds! new question/ what are your favorite clothes to wear? 140508 ... quetzal green, sun-faded carhartt pants, watership down t-shirt, and a plaid zipper up jacket from the 90's new question: which beck song best sums up your life? 140509 ... e_o_i Technically, I've heard of him. But the name reminds me of David Beckham. I really don't know anything. Research? Well... Lazy research? All right... I like the line "Your eyes get stung by the rays of the sinking sun," but for me the feeling would be different. Sunsets make me weirdly nostalgic, and I want to travel after it. I guess they could convey conformity and repetition too. I like the shirt I'm wearing right now. It's blue and it has patterns in it. (God, why am I writing the way I talk? I don't mean to be annoying. Really, I don't.) 140509 ... quetzal ha! my beck song would be, "it's all in your mind" from "sea change." new question/ what's your favorite kind of cake? 140510 ... quetzal prantl's almond torte would be the cake for me. new question/ if a stray dog showed up at your door, what would you do? 140512 ... quetzal it already happened. someone dropped a brindle puppy off at robin_hill. we welcomed it, named it chocolatey, loved the fuck out of it and then placed an ad figuring it would be better off with less competition since we have too many animals already. a dad with a young daughter came and took it. aw! new question/what was your latest encounter with a stranger? 140513 ... no reason today, i got to the elevator as it was closing. i rushed over to press the button, but right before i could, the guy in the elevator saw me and rushed to push the button to close it. it was odd. he looked anxious. maybe i didn't look like a trustworthy elevator partner. or maybe he has a fear of sharing elevators. 140513 ... red ribbon not sure what his problem was, but one thing for sure it was his loss for not sharing the ride with you. my encounter was at the gas station. two pump kiosks down from me i beheld a rather awkward looking woman. she was oddly obese, almost cartoon-like, with stomach and butt jutting straight out while the rest of her body seemed proportionally correct. she seemed to be in some sort of distress, looking for something she could not find. i went on doing my thing, paying no more attention to her when all of a sudden, wouldn't you know, there she was, right next to me! "sir, can you help me out?" she asked. i could see anxiety in her young face. "i need some gas to get to where i'm going." she was holding a pink blackberry phone in one hand. in the other was her wallet with several credit cards visible. she was dressed nicely and her car seemed to be rather new. i reached for my wallet as she led me over to her car to show me she was on empty. so i gave her a ten and headed to the bathroom. we met once more as i was going back to my truck. she didn't say a word. next question/ what are some memories you have from elementary school? 140514 ... red ribbon my first day of first grade a boy sat behind me named jim, who would later become my best friend. we would form a little rock band together. however, first time i laid eyes on him he had brush burns all over his face. next question/ what is your relationship with bees? 140515 ... quetzal i love bees! everything about them. they are basically the greatest insect. watching them work flowers in the vital pollination process is endlessly inspirational. seeing the intricate tessellation of the hives is blow away amazing. don't fuck with them, though. i once swan-dived off a 20' ladder to the ground when i disturbed a hive and got attacked. and honey! yum! i think it's cool that it will last forever. it is one of the most perfect foods. next question/what fruit best describes you as a person? 140518 ... quetzal pomegranate slice one in half and you have entered the human body. seeds for worlds. each one is surrounded by flesh like secret skin around a hidden existence. next question/ how do you record your ideas? 140519 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Elementary school? A lot to choose from. I remember calling my second-grade teacher "Mom" by mistake. I was very embarrassed. I thought no one had ever done such a thing before. Maybe I'm like a raspberry: sour-sweet, compound if not very complex. 140519 ... e_o_i Relationship can be a funny word - on a personal level, I neither love nor hate bees, though I appreciate their usefulness and good looks. Sometimes they induce fear, sometimes bravery: although it could have been a wasp, not a bee, that stung the bottom of a team member's foot before her swim team race, I remember that incident because swam anyway. She was very determined and much faster swimmer. We were about thirteen. Ideas I like to write down in notebooks, or their margins. If you call these ideas, for example: Oi! I'm a diphthong! [a green glass worm: un ver vert en verre?] address cover letter to Selection Committee Fast-paced because same # of class hours over a shorter time period. Another birth control method is throwing things at people. Flowers for Algernon questions: is the lesson "being loved is better than being smart" trite? Or is finding only that lesson trite? "Hard" or "soft" sci-fi? Both in different ways? aetiology - derivation of word or story Shantaram/Roberts bubbele vs. kukeleh (sp?) grandchild = dearie, doll Yiddish, Greek "Tiny Glowing Streams" - George Watsky 140519 ... quetzal new question/ what is your favorite piece of jewelry? any stories involved with it? 140522 ... e_o_i Currently it's a necklace with a treble clef pendant. I swapped it at a craft show for some "bead people" that I'd made - five bead people at two dollars each for one ten-dollar necklace. Who says the barter economy is dead? ...I guess it's not an exciting story. I like that it's a treble clef, that's all. A few years ago, I tried to make a DNA-patterned necklace for a friend, but when I realized I'd need two different thicknesses of wire (you need a thicker wire for the spiral pattern to hold) and four different colours of small bugle beads that were exactly the same size, I gave up. Perhaps I should revisit that. Many geeky types, myself included, would like such a design. 140523 ... quetzal i bought my replacement wedding ring from a native american woman selling her jewelry at the palace of the governors in santa fe, new mexico. it is disrespectful to take photographs of them, so i refrained with difficulty. outside of gallup, we went to a market place in a dried up river bed. another native american woman beheld the blue eyes of my middle daughter, who was three at the time. and gave her the turquoise necklace she was wearing because she thought it matched nice. this year hilary painted that story. it is a_picture_you_should_see. new question/ in what ways are you like your mother or father? 140524 ... quetzal we contain dna from our father and mother, so we are unable to deny that we share their propensities. however, the child, i believe, possesses the ability to improve the condition. take what you are given and make it better kind of thing. my mom should be able to behold me and say, "i'm like that but you have taken me a step further." oh, just give me one day with my dead father. i would love to show him where his influence has taken me! new question/ what were your favorite games to play as a child? 140527 ... quetzal kick the can red rover kickball army smear the queer tackle football baseball basketball street hockey i was fortunate to grow up in a small town in a large neighborhood with a core group of 25, coming of age with dirt staining the bathtub every night. new question/ what are you looking forward to this summer? 140601 ... quetzal jellystone new question/ are you allergic to poison ivy? 140606 what's it to you? who go blather from