let's play a game!

booth bought doughnuts from voodoo this morning. i bought coffee from stumptown. watch out world. i ate a super sweet pink doughnut with a piece of bubble gum frosted in its center.



it's so sunny here today. sunny and pretty warm. portland changes when it's sunny like this; it suddenly so beautiful. one could almost believe that's this is the most european city in the united states, like that blogger for the times wrote.

let's play a game! antonio and i used to do this every month or so while we were at asfa together. we'd empty our bags (we usually carried at least two book bags every where we went) and scan everything we were toting around. then we'd post the pictures on our blog. i'm not carrying a lot these days, so as not to weigh myself down as i pedal about the city. let's see what i have:


an "i love trader joe's" sticker the cashier gave me while shopping last weekend.


the birthday card my office gave me thursday.


everyone signed it. wasn't that sweet? it made me tear up a little.


the coffee i bought this morning at stumptown upon the recommendation of the guy working there. it promises pear and dark cacao chocolate topped off with a little peach for a very crisp, clean flavor. what do you know? i walked away from the annex with a cup and thought it fantastic as i sat outside next to the cafe, reading the times in the sun.


my nalgene bottle i take everywhere with me. i bought this one at powell's because matthew barney was listed on the side.


my sister gave me this yoshitomo nara journal last year for christmas. it makes me happy everyday when i write in it.


i'm almost finished with the new sedaris book. i'm working through the longer "smoking section" right now. i thought it thoroughly entertaining. usually i find myself carting around several books, but i'm at a loss as to what i should be reading right now.


this is a treasure i take everywhere. it's a tiny, foldable bike map of portland. while it doesn't list all the streets and does not point out bus or train routes, it's generally one of the most useful and least obtrusive things i take everywhere with me.


even in weather in which i may not need gloves while walking, i take these everywhere while i'm riding my bike else i usually show up to work with hands red and stiff from the cold.

since the weather was nearing something one might call balmy midwinter, i opened the windows and decided to mop the floors. i have to open the windows because the apartment owners only allow us to use a mixture of vinegar and water to mop the floors. they are apparently very proud of the wood floors and everything else causes buildup on the finish? i don't really understand. so now our floors are slightly wet and the entire apartment smells of vinegar. delightful! the mop i bought at the dollar store last weekend lasted about ten seconds then broke. i had to tie the spongy part to the handle with a piece of string. it's not going to last through another cleaning session. at least i purchased it for only a dollar, though now i'm wondering if it's recyclable or it i will just have to toss it in the dumpster.

i love being boring

i think i've been drinking way too much coffee every morning. that, or my eyes have already become adjusted to the low light of portland's usually cloudy skies and these strange, intensely sunny days we've been having here lately have been causing a my head to hurt. i just feel so tired every morning when i get to work; it feels like the cool night temperature has frozen my brain into a sludge and i can't think. so i drink a ton of coffee and by the time i feel awake around noon or so, my head begins really aching. when i ride my bike home in the afternoon, my headache lets up a little and i enjoy the sunlight and the weather. yesterday it was sixty degrees here in portland. i went for a jog. opened all the windows in the house. drank beer in the sunlight and fell asleep on the couch. went i woke up, my headache had returned. i really can't nap; i always wake up feeling mean and groggy and in pain.

but despite my headache after falling asleep yesterday afternoon, i did manage to scrap myself out of bed last night, throw on my coat, and bike down to helen and garrett's to meet booth. helen made us some indian food for dinner, and i stopped by whole foods on my ride down to pick up some wine. the food was delicious. i thought it was prepared perfectly and i really don't understand how helen knows how to cook so well. i generally get too distracted to cook well. and i have no sense of what would taste good with what when i'm cooking. i need to stick to recipes. however, i really wish i could make the meal helen made for us last night; i'd probably eat it every week if i could. indian food is some of my favorite.

and helen and garrett are some of my favorite people. this is the second time the four of us have met up for some dinner. i like sitting around on a weekday night and chilling with others, drinking wine and talking. it's good to see another face other than booth's, whose face i obviously see everyday more or less. and on these week day dates, there's no pressure, no heavy drinking. i can have a few glasses of wine, hang out with helen, garrett, and booth, then go to bed. it's hard enough to wake up so early as it is; i really can't afford to go out and get crazy during the week.

the other people i really love are actually the interpreters i talk to on the phone everyday. as i connect calls to these men and women sitting all over the country ready to talk to spanish and french and punjabi and somali and oromo speakers, i come to have favorite interpreters and get to know their personalities a little. like we have two interpreters named guadalupe, but i know which prefers to be called "lupe" on the phone, although now the other refers to herself lupe too when she calls to tell me something. and today teresa called to tell me her son had to go to the emergency room last night because he was in a carwreck; fortunately the child only has whiplash, but the car is totaled apparently. some interpreters tell me about the weather in the part of the country in which they live. one new interpreter lives in birmingham, alabama and i always want to say, "i just moved from birmingham!" every time i talk to her. and one woman screams at me every time i call her. it's strange how these people i talk so sparingly to have distinct personalities for me and how much it seems sometimes like i really know them.

as necessary as your miranda rights

dropping the exclusionary rule from criminal justice was not a manoeuvre i expected from justice john roberts. perhaps i just can't remember it as a goal warned about in the papers when he was elected years ago. certainly, the exclusionary rule has changed over the centuries, specifically being applied at state level after a warren court ruling in the landmark case mapp v. ohio, but the rule has been applied in other important u. s. legal cases since the 19th century. it is a means of protecting 4th amendment rights, specifically written into the constitution in reaction to the general warrants or writs of assistance that allowed british soldiers to search the houses of colonists before the revolutionary war. let's remember exactly what the 4th amendment says (i think it's always important to go back and look at the constitution once in a while): "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issues, but upon probable cause, supported by oat or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." certainly, the exclusionary rule creates obstacles for law enforcement and prosecution, but the rule seems necessary, natural, and historical. my favorite part of this article: "Justice Scalia cited the work of a criminologist, Samuel Walker, to support his point about increased police professionalism. Professor Walker responded with an opinion article in The Los Angeles Times saying that Justice Scalia had misrepresented his work. Better police work, Professor Walker said, was a consequence of the exclusionary rule rather than a reason to do away with it."

and i think this is a great idea: power bills that compare how much energy your home is using versus those of your neighbors. we need to know. it's one more way to become conscious.

last night i continued to take it easy. i've had a slight head cold, which hasn't been horrible, but has made me tired and sluggish. booth and i ate at esparza's, which was interesting. the food was good. i played it safe and stuck to a burrito. but the buffalo meat enchilada might be interesting? i don't know. after eating, we had a beer at beulahland while waiting to see a movie at the laurelhirst theatre. we saw tell no one, which i've been wanting to see a little. it's a french thriller that sounded interesting and received okay reviewed. i thought it was entertaining. not particularly artful, as cache was. it has a weird 70's look to it, slightly yellowed, many of the characters dressed in outfits that could pass as 70's, except the few arab thugs who help the main character avoid the police.

the walkmen at the wonder ballroom

booth and i walked two miles north to the wonder ballroom last night to see the walkmen play. i was pretty excited. i spent nearly twenty dollars on a ticket, a sum i generally don't dole out for many bands, but to be honest, i was a little disappointed by the performance. the walkmen weren't untalented. they were played well, and of course i love their most recent album, so it was enjoyable to listen to them. but overall, the show was lacking, mostly from the deficiencies of the venue. the crowd acted horrendously. they jostled each other, talked loudly, didn't pay attention to the performance. one girl put an empty pbr can in the hood of a stranger's jacket. when he turned and discovered the can, he turned around and asked if i had put it there; i pointed to the girl already running away from his vicinity.

to overcome the volume of the large crowd, whoever was running the sound just turned the volume louder. this just made the band sound sloppy; the loudness causing too much echo and cancellation in the large space. the wonder ballroom looks like it was originally a church in its first life, and the large room out of which the venue operates was not designed with acoustics in mind, so there was a loss of fidelity in the performance. one of the best aspects of the walkmen's latest album is the crispness and precision of the instrumentals, yet all that was lost at the wonder ballroom.

and really, i was slightly disappointed in the band itself. the band members deviated every now and then from the structure of their recording, but sometimes these deviations seemed to surprise the other band members and this led to several awkward moments when an instrument seem to abruptly end the theme it was playing to carry on with something different. still, the improvisations weren't even daring. when grizzly bear experiments with a song, the rendition ends up sounding radically different, almost as if a completely different band were playing it. during one ill-fated song, the singer seemed to be unable to hit the correct note; his voice sliding into several flat notes before saving himself too late. this occurred during only one song in which the singer was sliding between notes during the entire piece, but apparently this was just straining his voice, or he couldn't hear himself well enough to pull it off.

all in all, i love the walkmen, and enjoyed seeing them last night, but this was far from my favorite performance.

portland hearts its mayor: a rally

i just returned from the rally in support of portland's mayor, sam adams, the first openly gay mayor in the united states. there was a pretty large turn out, nothing ridiculously massive, but it was a circus. in case you don't read the news, sam adams recently confessed to having sex with an 18 intern years ago after lying about during a campaign in 2005 and his recent mayoral campaign. he says that he and the boy, beau breedlove, only had sex after breedlove turned 18, though they first met when breedlove was still 17. adams confession hit national news tuesday during the inauguration, and he admitted the truth only after an article in the willamette week concerning the scandal was going to press. some people think this affair will render the newly elected mayor ineffectual, but from the rally it looks like he still has a lot of support from the city, though to be honest, the rally looked more like a gay rights event than a rally in support for the mayor. it may be that certain people don't understand the difference between supporting someone because he or she is homosexual and because they believe a person who would excel in his or her position. there was exactly one protester against the mayor i saw there.




































just so you know, "just out" is a free gay publication for the portland / vancouver area. in an opinion piece, one of its writers thought the mayor should resign.






this is a sticker someone gave me at the rally.


this is the t-shirt of the friend of the person who gave me the sticker.





this rally was documented for you, antonio urdiales.

noozles

i saw my doppelganger on the train today. in a strange moment of unheimlichkeit, i turned around and literally thought i was looking at my reflection in the window, 'til i realized it was not my mirrored imaged at all but rather another short, skinny boy with short hair standing a car's length from me. i mean, really we didn't look that much alike, but it was such a shock to think i was looking in a mirror then suddenly realize i was looking at another person completely. the boy came and sat next to me, on the other side of the plexiglas fom where i was standing next to my hanging bike. i wanted to introduce myself, but how does one say, "listen, do you think we look like one another?"

often, my sister and i find songs or televisions shows or pieces of art that with which we explain ourselves and how we think, such as the television show "pete and pete" or the song "dance this mess around" by the b-52's. and here's another cultural treasure that seems to explain a lot about me. this one was of my favorite shows when i was little: does anyone remember noozles?



here's the plot synopsis from the last episode as given on wikipedia:

"Sandy's grandfather, who had discovered an entrance to Koalawalla Land while in Australia, purposely becomes trapped in the Crystal Place; and when Sandy finally locates him, only his spirit remains within the orb, trapped in a limbo-like state. She is able to communicate with him empathically by placing her hands towards her grandfather's, palm to palm, with only Pinky's protective bubble preventing direct contact with the orb. He informs Sandy that he entrapped himself there because he knew that he would need to live long enough to someday relay to his progeny, the fate which awaited both Koalawalla Land and Earth: in something akin to a conjoined-twin scenario, the two realms were born as one, but would be destined to naturally separate at a time of "cosmic maturity". Unfortunately, they had begun to separate far ahead of reaching this point; and as such, the unravelling of the forces which bound them together, would cause a cataclysmic reaction such as would obliterate both worlds.

The only way to prevent this catastrophe, once the worlds had begun to separate, would be for a skilled "chosen one" to mechanically override and then engineer the separation, via the use of two crystal levers, known as "Wiseman Crystals". Sandy's grandfather had already found one of the Wiseman Crystals, and her father (by the time of the last episode) had unwittingly found the other. It turns out Blinky, now able to see through his amnesia; is the chosen engineer. In the final seconds before Earth and Koalawalla Land destroy each other; the Noozles ascend the slopes of Ayers Rock and place the Wiseman Crystals in a predisposed altar, where they absorb the forces of the impending separation; and allow Blinky to guide the separation of KoalaWallaLand away from Earth in a joystick-like fashion.

Because Earth and Koalawalla Land now exist as completely separate dimensions, Pinky's magic is no longer able to bridge the ties that formerly bound them; meaning Blinky and Pinky must now forever remain in their home, separate from Earth. They are last seen as an image in the sky, wishing Sandy well, and knowing that she has the maturity to live a happy life without them. During the final episode, Sandy's mother also learns the truth about Blinky and Pinky."

insane right? what were we thinking in the nineties? this has to explain why i'm so insane sometimes.

oh, and i forgot to mention...

i saw lucky dragons talk about their work/music at PSU last monday.

this project is called "make a baby," in which the audience contributes the sound for the live performance. a wire with a very low electrical charge is connected to a speaker in a way so that when a person touches the wire and other people around the wire, the sound the speaker creates changes in pitch depending on the configuration of people touching each other. it's a sort of manipulated circuit.

they had a lot of amazing projects, a few of which i've already posted to facebook including the open book project. they also host "sumi-ink club," in which any one can come to the meeting and draw in sumi-e and anyone after that can draw and alter until the end of the meeting. this really reminded me of all the sumi-e assignments i had at asfa and jim neel talking about, well, not technique exactly, but rather talking about lines and how we should paint with our wrists. i remember having to draw portraits in sumi ink without looking at the paper or using pencil or anything for weeks on end. wow, that was a long time ago.