puttin' the "wheeee!" in "ennui"

actually, the past few days have been filled with exhilarating thrills and intrigue, and I'm not being facetious! but tonight I have a couple hours to kill before the next flicker of pathos, so I'm taking photos of my favorite subjects: random mundane unprettified shite.

I like pictures of this ilk because you can probably find something in them or about them to relate to. they are, dare I pompously opine, rather humble.

oxymoroness.

-music. note the Zappa from the Seattle public library system. I owe about $120 on that one. too poor to return it.
-my lair from the toaster.
-the last lonely fry at Charlie's. I fucking hate ketchup. this is not my plate.
-a close-up of the playbill of Eugene Barnes, my great-grandfather.
-gallery of narcissism, the experimenting-without-a-flash-on-the-crappy-ikea-sofa version.
-DRY GOODS. my cupboard is the original icebox, hence the wee compartments and motor-thing. the door is magnetic. i want to abscond with this thing when I move.
someone left the nut butter here. the pickle jar holds bacon bits. want some canned soup? I can totally make you that.
-a small fraction of my many creepy, archaic, mostly un-cooked-from cookbooks. "the male chauvinist cookbook" is particularly fucking epic. i love it! it was published in the 70s, go figure.
-the refrigerator. meds, really old butter, peanuts (they're best cold), punch in a mason jar (with a bendy straw), carrots, tofu mixed with berbere spice, a really old bottle of vermouth. this is a stocked fridge for me.
-terrifying adventures with cyanotype. I am not quite so pocky.
-the playbill in its philodendron-occluded entirety.

"sentimentality is an emotion common to all humanity." frank sinatra

...the word "argonaut"... hee hee.

-Roosevelt.
-Roosevelt, again.
-the Tubs place on 50th. I love the spray caps. a guy was adding more art to another part of the building while I was walking past. I love that this hasn't been demolished yet. it's been what, two years? fuck yes.
-bus stop, 65th & Roosevelt.
-yes, I walked along fucking Roosevelt today. lord! it had been a while. so many abandoned businesses and photogenic detritus! it was lovely. the sun was at my back.
-photographing blind. I can't see fuck-all here.
-it is impossible to say the word "lurk" without sounding like someone who does creepy things like... lurk. you already said it aloud, ha!, but try it again, right now, slightly lower in pitch... you're so weird.
...I blame the schwa. schwas add an air of guttural trolliness to the most otherwise elegant of words. a schwa is the dipthong of the damned.
-NE 45th.

I sampled vanilla salt today. holy shit! if you haven't yet indulged in a similar activity, do so immediately! and if you're in the seattle, may I direct you to the phalanx of delicious salt-samples at Sugar Pill, Broadway & Pine? try their habanero salt also.

"'have you ever heard of Roshomon?'
'yes. it means through our own eyes, we see what we see.'
'well, it's all Roshomon. it's all Roshomon.'"
-camryn manheim's autobiography, believe it or not. it was up for grabs in the laundry room of my building.
Roshomon!

there's so much to do/ in the sunshine

10 song shuffle:
-waterboys "somebody might wave back"
-cypress hill "hand on the glock"
(iPhone wanted that to be "glockenspiel" so badly. wouldn't that be awesome? ja?)
-harmonia & eno "almost"
-monkees "as we go along"
-spirit "morning will come"
-jj Cale "the sensitive kind"
-seam "road to Madrid"
-do make say think "the universe!"
-box tops "sweet cream women, forward march"
-the stranglers "nice & sleazy"

-none of your beeswax!
-a photo my great-grandfather in a vaudevillian skit.
-I-5 from the pine street overpass.

I flipped through the $140 copy of "modernist cuisine" at elliott bay this evening. it was a bit ridiculous. anything that routinely uses "xanthan gum" as an at-home ingredient is immediately rendered suspect and vile. pretty pictures, though.

"can a man of perception respect himself at all?" dostoevsky

I have "take the skinheads bowling" in my head.

-Chinese lanterns from my parents' garden.
-the rainbow chased me all the way south. this is near Algona.
-15th Ave E, Monday.
-just now: getting the cat high.
-I have never had only one pet... Entropy has come into her own. she is saucy enough to be hilarious and smart enough to be infuriating... truly, an alluring combination in any mammal.
-thanksbirthday dinner was GOOD. coffee with Carolans for breakfast. meal: grilled shrimp, baked halibut, croissants, wild rice, white burgundy, pumpkin pie, bacon snickerdoodles. bloody hell, am I actually getting sentimental with my advancing age? because it was fucking AWESOME to spend a holiday doing, like, holiday shit, like most people do; I wasn't working in a loud stinky beeping maelstrom surrounded by death and blood and shit and crying and terrible things. for those who DO work in such places, who haven't let the awfulness sour them yet, who work horrible shifts so people like me don't have to: bless your hearts, and thank you tremendously.
it was really nice to spend time with my family and be a sloth and listen to good music and just fucking relax.
-tonight: hat #4 and the Entropy-pants.

for everyone who offered support and condolences and kindness about the tombs: thank you SO MUCH, so much more than I can articulate. it's still pretty raw. please know that you have helped me exponentially.

"she was shaking her head at herself, but I suspected she was a little proud of her indiscretion. didn't it prove she was spontaneous? brave? unpredictable? capable of surprising herself? maybe the ability to surprise oneself was the most necessary of tools as time marched on."
-antonya nelson

bitch magnet weather

-another hair chair. there is a bizarre surplus of animal-skin decor in my life lately... I like it.
-14th Ave.
-the old rainier brewery.
-hat-finishing elation, hereafter known as HFE.
-Georgetown.

"his wife and baby were guileless redheads, plump and freckled; they seemed afraid of me, unwilling to let my daughter baby-sit, although she offered to do so for free. she loved babies; it was what made me worry for her. who knew what awaited a girl who loved babies?"
-antonya nelson, "female trouble"

failing the time-to-die litmus test

for the record, I am REALLY FUCKING TIRED of obsessing about my silly cat and her faltering health. I honestly wish she'd stop eating, stop purring, stop interacting, shit outside the box, keel over... because then I could justify the inevitable outcome. but apart from a grotesque stridor and snot-ropes that connect her to whatever surface she's on (usually my bed, which is awesome) and being wraithlike and usually having her right eye adhered shut and seeming restless and painful and stinking of necrosis... she's fine. fucking unfazed. this is one of the coolest things about her, but it's making the necessary decisions very difficult for me.
rereading that paragraph, perhaps I have made my decision already.
*
anyway, the tombs: witness to my adulthood and every-other-sordid-thing-else. this is just gonna fucking suck.

-this morning.
-gotta throw another brutal warning sign in there. I am sure there was much giggly "oh that's just TERRIBLE!" banter in the boardroom when this logo was created.
-hecatomb.

the past 26 hours

"god only knows" came up on shuffle as I was walking home from the bus stop tonight. there are still huge piles of leaves along the street. I sang along and kicked through. it would be a proper shame to not do either.

-63 corvair, Ballard. this one's for you, m'lady.
-NW 49th... the Mars Hill Church street.
-a car on Broadway. crappy photo, but it made me laugh. I like poking dead things too! also, the color orange and the smell of grilled onions.
-through the window of the defunct liquor store on Broadway. it's cropped all to hell, obviously. I loved the slanty sunshine through the horrid vertical blinds... this is not meant to be a refined image.
-the generic autumnal loveliness shot, Republican or Mercer or something.
-and this one is for YOU, good sir.
-line D. he got off in Interbay.
-carnivorous plants with sensual borders!
-every time I see this sign it makes me happy. that is all.
-too twee and cliched to pass up. this actually made me rather angry. I wanted to engage in hostile nihilistic behavior for no specific reason.
-the sociological succor of 3rd and Pike.
-it's a Parkay toilet!
-cool drainpipe.
-do make say radiators.
-self-portrait with cat tail.
-anvil cloud, last night. it was the only cloud in the entire sky.

I also heard James Brown's "The Payback" at two separate, unrelated locations today.