Squeaky Wheel

I know everyone hates loco Yoko Ono.  I dig her. I think she's the only one in her love parade. I admire that. She's like the small doses friend you love oh so much, but after a couple of hours feel the need to suddenly stand up and take off sprinting like a gun went off.  


Everyone needs stimulus overload. It makes you think about what you'd stand up and be equally annoying about.


Currently, MoMa has displayed a Yoko piece that consists of a microphone in a stand next to a sign encouraging people to step up and scream.  


It's really annoying.  In that beautiful kind of way.

Seistatation

My husband gave me a gift recently and I will be spending the rest of my life figuring out how to thank him. 


Everyone has heard about meditation by now.  Everyone knows it's good for you... and I'm certain many folks know there are different kinds. Some meditation practices have religions attached, some have aerobics attached and some have cults, caves, diets, and Hollywood movies hooked in.


If you dig around the internet enough you can be terrified or satisfied about all of them. I admit I've tried on a few. I was a Mary Kay lady. A good one.


Greg gave me the gift of classes for a practice he discovered three months ago.  I've seen the differences in him. It's been three days for me and now I have x-ray vision.  But seriously peeps, I hope I am never in a situation where I feel I won't be able to give myself 20 minutes of this twice a day. It is already making my life, well, more happy.


This is nap time for smart people. For reals. Clint Eastwood, David Lynch, Paul McCartney... just to name a very few of the famous.  


Maybe I'll be able to spell in a few years.


GO HERE, JUST GO HERE: Transcendental Meditation

Drama Rama

My brother and I have always been the kind of kids that felt we needed to be bleeding, vomiting or on the way to the hospital in order to get our mother's mothering attention.  Every headache was a tumor and a trip to the ER.  Our mother was, and always has been, good at listening to our needs and tried her best to fix them.  


Neither of us are sure what causes our flair-for-the-dramatic,  but anyone who knows us, including our mother, would laugh at this understatement. Maybe we became addicted to her. Maybe we liked the attention. Maybe we loved having our blood pressure taken.


I know we aren't the only ones like this.  Fox news and public restrooms don't exactly help folks Keep Calm & Carry On:

Desperately Seeking Madonna

Eve gave Adam an apple.  The witch gave Snow White one too.  Roberta gives Dez the Port Authority locker key that was in the jacket that used to belong to Susan. The locker key leads to all of Susan's worldly possessions.  Susan is a homeless prostitute but everybody loves her because she's so confident and sexy and crazy stylish.  

What happened to the grungy 80's films? The art direction is about color, mimes, NYC and LA dirt. And lots of shoulder pads. Even in the 80's we made fun of the 80's. Now we miss the 80's. 

There was something innocent about the desperation in the aesthetic of 80's art. Today it's revered because technology has caught up with the dream. Only 30 years ago we had to dream it first and then try.  There was a lot of guts behind those explosions of LOOK. AT. ME.  Everything may look and sound more polished now but the guts are missing. 

Biography Killed the Radio Star

I used to work for a Cemetery/Funeral Home in Los Angeles.  I was hired at the cusp of the place going FUTURE.  They were installing a small theatre in the main building and would be placing kiosks throughout the park to display biographies of the interred. 


One of my duties as a 'Biographer' was to go through stacks of paperwork on the plots, find local relatives and interview them about their buried family member.  Typically, I would meet clients in their homes to record them describing the life and times of the deceased.  Then we'd sort through old photographs of their dead wife/dad/niece/grandmother and I would digitally shoot about a dozen images of the pictures.  My favorite part was the intimacy.  I was a complete stranger to these people and often within minutes they were sharing details with me through tears of joy, regret, love, pain... I was a soul collector, without the apocalypse.


I got paid $25 an interview.  I'd come back to the cemetery with the information and the cemetery editors would then create a mini biography. Sometimes it was free, sometimes a sales person had called and sold them a package priced per minute.  


"It's just like on A&E!"


This was before Facebook and YouTube. I had a crappy PC at home and I didn't even have an email address.  Dial up was something I hadn't invested in yet.


I remember thinking what a cool idea these biographies were and at the same time something about them struck me funny. Like spoiled milk funny. Progressive archiving meets narcissism. Something everyone needs. Good for sales, just like death. Documenting not just our heroes who made it through the ranks but equalizing everyone with creative editing and background music... just like death. 


Where I grew up, it was common to hear the phrase, "Live your life like it's on TV."  The notion that God-watches-your-every-move wasn't powerful enough. It hit home if we pretended everyone else was too. A youth minister told me to picture my every move being displayed on a Jumbotron at a Texas Stadium. Scared Straight? You bet. But wasn't Pamela Anderson 'discovered' this way? How would this frighten the Z-Generation?  More like Scared Fabulous.


We should be careful who we are living our life for.  Good footage or good times?  If 'film is forever', where will we fit everyone after they die? We're going to need a bigger boat.  


And by boat, I mean server.

In Dependents

My husband is out of town and I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself.  Work is easy, that is robot mode.  But after robot mode, if I haven't made plans I'll just lay around pining for him to come home.  The dog is doing it too.  


I'm from the wrong century.

Spinning Agnostic Plates

Anyone who has ever looked at a pie chart can appreciate the simple truth that the simple truth can be manipulated to meet any agenda. The omnipotent encyclopedia has been replaced by the online us.  In the middle of an article in the Science section of The New York Times was this: 


"The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has been a hotbed for dinosaur species discoveries in the past decade, with more than a dozen new species discovered. While it is a rocky, arid place now, millions of years ago it was similar to a swamp." - The Associated Press: September 22, 2010 


Do anti environmentalists believe in dinosaurs? How could they? And since the new dinos were found in Utah - Do Mormons believe in evolution? So I looked:

"The second part of Mormon creation theology is the cyclic nature of creation. Whatever was used and discarded would become part of another creation for the use of man and God to His Glory. Nothing goes to waste or simply disappears. The Scriptures explain:

37 And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. 

38 And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words.  Moses 1:37-38"- Straight and Narrow Blog; March 11, 2008

 Anything is possible, right?  We live in a Wiki World.