out of a gunnysack/ for red rabbits

-I was looking up "prices of 32GB thumb drives" at the Ballard library, I swear! oh, Google.... you reflect our classless, hilarious reality.
-this was the sun on last night's exhausted horizon. and, like a proper sun, it was fortifying, warming, and slightly silly.
-Entropy in ecstasy.
-Playing with reflections last night. woo-hoo! how was YOUR weekend?
-scattered petals at Pike Place Market this afternoon. Seattle, you sexy bitch.
-my lair from the alley. I'm the unit with the lights. apparently I am also seamlessly stalkable, if anyone is so inclined.
-reflections part deux. fuck it!
-mid-rearrangement of the lair. crap tetris. craptris! that's what I'm going to name my moving company. I can already picture the business cards.
-the weird appliance store down the street. I've taken pictures of this before because it's so eerie and outdated. the suspended fluorescent lights! the clunky ovens in various generational hues! the ceilings are probably stained and acoustic-tiled! it's always closed when I stagger by. I like knowing it's there. seriously, just for the lights alone... it's a time capsule by default.
-a new bar is opening tonight, I guess- these spotlights are outside its doors. this is in a location that seems destined for failure; every 6-12 months a new and cringingly Hip place moves in, tries too hard, and vanishes. every town has those places, don't they? hell, until the Moose's Tooth moved in, even that spot in Anchorage had been at least six other shitty restaurants that I can recall.
spotlights don't bode well... they shriek of douchoisie. hopefully I am mistaken and just being a judgmental bitch.
-Draw Something. FUCK. it has stolen my focus for the past 48 hours. this is my drawing of a liger. nerd. step away from the fucking iPhone, asshole.
(by the way, I FUCKING HATE that movie, so much so that I couldn't finish watching it the one time I reluctantly tried. but somehow I know what a liger is, so... yay.)

tonight I made successful sugared cranberries. the first batch exploded and became sauce because I didn't follow the directions and left them on the burner. THESE ones are much better! cook 1c water and 1c sugar over med heat til dissolved. add cranberries. take off heat and let fester for about an hour. drain. toss with sugar. fucking delicious. why did I
not know about this until now?

"a certain amount of anxiety is good for a boy or a girl, in the same way that a certain amount of fleas is good for a dog- keeps him from thinking about being a dog."
-Dr Walter Freeman, midcentury proponent of human lobotomies

holidays part 1

I have been trying to get out of the habit of second- (and third-, fourth-) guessing myself about my interactions with people. some humans are simply not good for me, just as I'm undoubtedly not good for them. I keep pretending that's not the reality; I keep being freshly devastated when it is. I KNOW BETTER. I go into interactions with the best of intentions, I really do. don't we all? possibly not. and when it isn't a happy, healthy, mutually beneficial relationship? fuck. it still hurts. it still hurts, naively, a new patch of skin against the same hot burner. same reaction, same results, insaaanity.

I'm too old for this shit.

meanwhile, regardless: everything else is too good to let this fuck up everything. so: merry Xmas. I love love LOVE you guys.

-car trips, circa 1986.
-the kin compound and a white xmas.
-jello, grape-nuts, walnuts. apparently it was a great-grandmother's specialty. remember "better off dead"? kinda like that. sorry.
-bacon waffles!
-their hostile and obese cat.
-slithery waffle goodness. holy shit, delicious.
-I love the word "slush."
-drainage.
-death.

humans

I have been feeling eerily benevolent lately, which makes flares of irritation even more unnerving and shocking. like today: I got on a crowded bus and sat down next to an older women. she was in the middle of both seats, despite not being a large person. "can you scoot over?" I asked her. "I'm falling into the aisle." I smiled as I asked. and she looked at me and turned away. well, you know what? FUCK YOU, LADY. you're in public, on public transportation, and you can't behave in an accommodating manner? I didn't even stink! I was instantly, ferociously pissed. I put on my headphones and listened to "tusk" at top volume. uh, yeah, that'll show her....
and as the bus continued on, I analyzed my own visceral assholery. why the fuck did I take it so personally? maybe she's some clueless but affable matron whose car just broke down, and she's taking the bus for the first time EVER, and she doesn't realize she ought to move over when someone sits beside her. maybe her kid was just in an accident. maybe she just got a horrible medical diagnosis and the last thing she wants to deal with is some surly frizzy-haired hag's tinny headphone din...

my head is usually somewhere up my ass whether I realize it or not.

today: old dogs with white faces dragging unheld leashes behind them as they followed their people. overhearing conversations about Roald Dahl books. salted almond chocolate. finally-well-made kale chips. heat on, window open, rain falling. singing "climb every mountain" to my cat before I realized What I've Become. eating peanuts and reading about Sumatra. an old woman wearing a hat made out of green tinsel and festooned with ornaments, smiling at everyone she passed. coconut vanilla tea. Frankie Goes to Hollywood. tortilla-scented hands. nutmeg-scented candles. A Wreath of Franklins. the city air is palpable.

-16th and John. this IS a problem.
-GOD DAMN IT. every time I see these fucking "proposed land use action" signs, I want to burst into tears. it's never good news.
-leis in trees, Fremont. the guy who hangs out on the sidewalk near 36th and Phinney, throwing dirt and occasionally snarling if he's in a bad mood, making cairns and playing Paul Simon on his boombox if he's happy? he was in a good mood today. he watched me take this photo. "hi there" I said. "hello" he said back, smiling, looking completely content. I see him nearly every time I'm in Fremont. I like him, I look for him. He's Fremont's equivalent of Anchorage's Floyd, but more outwardly complicated.

"She shows me where they organized an Easter egg hunt last year and walks to a spot where a man was executed, or dumped after being executed elsewhere.
"'He had bullets in his head,' she says. "'His head was all full of holes.'
"'How terrible,' I say.
"She shrugs.
"'It sure ruined our egg hunt,' she says."
-Luis Alberto Urrea

love! LOVE!

I am in LOVE with the world!
no shit!

I have been happier in the past six months than I can ever recall!

for everyone who had a part in that, who helped me out, who supported me and made me laugh and who was serenely awesome yet refreshingly snarky: THANK YOU. I am a most fortunate broad.

apparently, in the Philippines, it is only legal to gamble at funerals. state law loophole. surmise of that what you will.

...I've worked a lot this week. forgive me the insular spinstery subject matter of these photographs. it does not reflect on the accuracy of my incredibleness, I fervently fucking hope.

-tonkatsu broth! good for your winter doledrums, they say.
-ghost cat.
-sloth cat.
-the southeast wing of the formidable lair.
-snow in seattle. yeah, I know. clean the scornful spit off your screens, Alaskans.

12/15-12/17

other stuff:
-Royksopp, the Zombies, Ray Charles, Camper Van Beethoven, and the aforementioned Cat Stevens bolus.
-sautéed spinach and mushrooms. licorice allsorts. tea with cream. white negronis.
-blackalicious opening their set with "alphabet aerobics" and encoring with "smithzonian institute of rhyme."
-downpours, windstorms, sunshine, live greenery, a place on Fremont Ave selling "Charlie Brown Xmas trees."
-Silly Putty.
-"Every time I hear someone like Elton John on the radio, I wonder if they're playing him 'cause he died."
-my apartment smells like: cucumber cleaner. burnt kale. Dove soap. amber incense. cat shit. vanilla tea. cold wet outside air. clean sheets.

in less than a week it will start being lighter.

the photographs:
-the hummingbird is intact, and it fits.
-facing west, 1st and Union.
-unwashed vanity. note the fully extended claws.
-yesterday, I forget where.
-my hood.
-other people's cookies.
-17th and Pike.
-looking up, Ballard Ave.
-Entropy the slut-cat.
-Leny's Bar.

the comfort zone

...I'm finally using the zoom on this thing, but all it really does is make stuff appear closer and blurrier. I rather dig it. happy accidents, I say.

-hot dog stand at 11th & Pike, tonight.
-entropy as swarthy 70s portrait. this image makes me want a waterbed and some orange curtains to let lazy light through.
-vomit near the comet.
-4pm, facing west.
-mindfuckery with the holga filter. if I was bleeding out my eyes, you'd still make me go to school. it's so unfair.

"he was a totally amoral man, that much was clear, but then so was I. he was also a wicked man, and although I cannot in all honesty claim wickedness as one of my own virtues, I find it irresistible in others. a wicked man has a lustre all his own."
-Roald Dahl

all there, all along.

-hedonistic dinosaurs: it's a can't-miss.
-20th and Fir-ish.
-Mo Betta the SOLD Jetta. she choked for the last time here, at the illustrious corner of 20th & Yesler. well, she died 20 feet away, and I summoned a very polite pedestrian to help me push her to this spot. in the CD player, which I totally forgot to remove: the library's copy of Frank Zappa "Sheik Yerbouti" (remember the prior photo with the case in it? THIS is where the actual CD had been for the last 6 months! sorry, SPL.). and in the trunk, which I left on purpose: a coffee can containing two sets of preserved chicken feet from Alabama (thank you! they're going on another adventure!). godspeed, you predictably tempestuous Volkswagen you. I am sorry I fucked up your hood and fried your engine and made you play "Bobby Brown Goes Down" multiple times at top volume. thanks for getting me to Bellingham and to the bowels of Oregon and to work on time when I lived that sort of life. thanks for transporting my crap, and my cats, and for not stinking like piss after Entropy urinated all over her carrier. thank you for your sunroof. I fucking loved your sunroof.
-the ladies' loo at Salmon Bay Cafe, Ballard. we were talking about this at work recently: pareidolia, the phenomenon of seeing things, usually faces, in truly inocuous things (example: Jesus on a cat's butt. google it. or Jesus on a fucking grilled cheese sandwich. google that also, if you must.). this just made me absurdly happy. I love seeing evidence that other people are weird too.
-the rat I encountered at 11th and John tonight.
-another person scared him off. here is his apple.
-Entropy-Pants.

"'You make it hard for a nice girl to say no.'
'well then, if it's so hard, don't say it.'"
-James M Cain, "The Postman Always Rings Twice."