modern primatives

The average American, when confronted with a proponent for peace (like myself), generally reacts with one of two emotions: violence or inquisitiveness. The violent ones react that way because they are lost and confused about life. But these people are not the ones I want to talk to right now. I want to talk to the ones who, when discovering that I'm anti-war, say "well then, what SHOULD we do?" I applaud anyone who is willing to ask this question. My answer probably isn't what most people want to hear, but it's the truth: I don't know, but I'm sure if we put our heads together we could come up with plenty of good ideas.

Think about it, the human species has been evolving for millions of years, and we've been civilized for several thousand. You mean to tell me that in all of this time we haven't been able to come up with an effective way of dealing with our problems other than resorting to violence? Seriously?

Sure, I know that violence is a holdover from our fight-or-flight days when our species was constantly in danger. And violence served us well when we encountered bigger, faster, or more clever species who wanted to eat us. But hey, we've pretty much taken care of that little inconvenience by wiping out most of these species' habitats, and running them over with our automobiles. Violence simply isn't necessary anymore for the majority of us humans who live in modern society. Its, literally, overkill. With all of the billions of dollars we humans pour into the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology, theology, epistomology (the study of learning), and other human behavior-based sciences, you'd think that we could develop a vast array of potential non-violent solutions to our problems of getting along with eachother.

The fact is that we do actually know of many solutions already. There are multiple tomes out there that offer ideas. And there are scientific studies to back up these solutions with concrete evidence. These non-violent solutions may not all work in all situations, and many may take a long time. But I'm absolutely convinced that there is always a non-violent solution to a given problem that will work as well or better than violence. If only the people in power would listen to the possibilities, instead of reaating the way humans have been reacting for millions of years. And, the only way to get the politicians, and those pulling their strings, to change their kneejerk responses is to change the way society itself responds. And that means opening people's eyes. In other words: education.

Education doesn't have to mean boring lectures in stuffy classrooms (that's not real education, anyway). Education means talking to one another. It means writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper or tv station. It means participating in your community in whatever form you feel comfortable with. School committees, hobby clubs, neighborhood picnics, coffeehouses, even bars, are all great places to talk to people and engage them in meaningful dialogue about the world. As cliche as it sounds, the pen (or spoken word) really is mightier than the sword.

As a place to start when talking about solutions to world problems and the violence caused because of them, think about why people act the way they do. As you already know, acts of violence stem from the basic premise of fight-or-flight. When people feel scared the have the choice of either running away or of lashing out at the perceived danger. (Those who choose to run away are generally less of a problem to the world.) Those who choose to lash out are the ones who we are worried about. Anger and hatred are just extensions of fear (as the wise Yoda reminded us all), and would not exist without the basic fear emotion. So, terrorists, suicide bombers, and other violent, angry, and hateful persons do what they do because they are all deathly afraid of something. Whether that threat is real or just perceived is secondary to the fact that they are quite simply afraid, and are not at all "evil". When we start thinking this way, we're able to understand these dangerous people, and only them are we able to address the root of the problem by helping them alleviate their fears. If the fears are real - like starvation, political oppression, or the threat of violence - then we can easily do something about it. We can offer sanctuary, food, education, healthcare, and other humanitarian aid. If the threat is perceived, then we can educate them or work to un-brainwash them if they've been subjected to a violent cult/religion (obviously a bit more difficult and time consuming, but perfectly doable). I guarantee that such humanitarian actions are infinitely more productive than reinforcing their fears by exploding these people's homes, families, and friends would be.

Its funny, we like to elevate the human species to be better than the rest of the animal family tree. But we really are no better than any other species when it comes to getting along with one another. If we truly want to be "eveolved" then we have to come up with a better way to live together.

bags under my eyes

Man am I busy for the next several days. I've got events up the wazoo. So much so that I've run out of room on my calendar for Friday through Tuesday. (Does this mean I have a life?) Yesterday I went to a Rail-to-Trail conference out in the town I term "the suburb in the middle of nowhere" (Waltham is a very rich suburb which is mostly surrounded by quaint rural towns). The conference was ok, though I didn't really get to participate much as I ended up getting monopolized by one fellow there. He had some unique viewpoints on folk music and it's lack of republican (or libertarian for that matter) songs. After that it was on to Boston for the Fort Point Channel art party. It's funny, last year, under the aegeis of Random Turtle Productions, I held a bike ride on the Solstice (in celebration of the Rolling Blackout energy policy protest event). It was very successful, and I had hoped to keep doing it as a yearly event. But I was just too busy this year,a nd I felt kinda bad about it. The funny thing is that the Fort Point Channel artists ended up having a bike ride on the Solstice. It was even cooler than my ride, because most of the riders had gone all out decorating their bikes. (I'll get some pictures up soon.) Very cool.

Today, I'm going to try to make it to the Solar festival around the corner from me. Then I hope to get to the first ever Boston tatoo fair. Tats were banned for several decades in Massachusetts. But the state supreme court ruled the ban unconstitutional last year. Yay! Then, finally, if I haven't collapsed yet, its yet another funky SCUL ride. Hopefully, I'll be alive enough to get up early and do the Bike to the Sea benefit ride a few hours later on Sunday morning. Ugggh. What's bad is that I've already got bags under my eyes!

So anyway, happy solstice everyone!

one eye is looking through rose colored glasses

The other seems to be looking through cyanish-green golored glasses. I've had this weird color difference in my eyes since I was a kid. I only really notice it on bright sunny days, and it's not really obnoxious. It does occasionally freak me out a bit though, making me think I've got a cateract or something. But then I remember that I've had this since at least age 12, so even if it is something wrong, it ain't getting worse any time soon.

So we've finally got a new roommate. He promises to be a pretty interesting guy to live with, and he definitely fits in as far as personality goes. For one thing, he's married, but his wife is going out west to forage for a house and a job while he hangs around here and toils away at a tech job. I'm sure I'll have some interesting stories about him soon enough. (He's mentioned that he's got a really good one that he only tells when he's really drunk. I'm just waiting for he and the "alchohol connoisseur" to get together for a bit of liquor...)

70 pound paper

If you ever have something printed on paper, like a book, magazine, or brochure, you've encountered the weirdness that is the paper thickness/density measurement system. It starts out fairly understandable, the paper's "weight" is defined by how much a specified number of sheets weighs. I can live with that. But then, for some reason the whole weight system shifts when you have a cover stock of paper. You can have a 70 lb. text paper, and a 70 lb cover paper, and they are a completely different thickness. Maybe it's because they use different kinds of fibers and screens, but it's really confusing. And then I just discovered some sort of cardstock measurement system expressed in points (a 7 pt. cardstock is about the weight of one of those annoying business reply cards that always fall out of magazines). The only sure way to know what you want is to get a sample of the exact paper you think you'd like. Having said that, I just ordered some brochures for MassBike and I have no idea what the actual paper is going to be like. But at least it has an impressively high recycled content, and that cool matte coated surface that became so popular on Generation X fiction books by the likes of Bret Easton Ellis.

SCUL last night. A quiet ride, but enjoyable. I spent the afternoon and evening working in the SCUL fort. I'm really finally putting together my own chopper. Skunk is helping me out, and will be doing the welds on the fork extentions, when I get the chopped up kid's bike forks ready to go. It won't be a fantasticc machine, but it will be mine, and it'll be my size. Before working on the fork yesterday, I had no idea that you could cut the steel so easily with normal tools like a hacksaw. I'm not sure why I didn't know this, since I spent many a day in college happily hacking away at metal in a jewelry class. I just had that picture of steel being neigh invulnerable like the Tick (Spooon!). Now that I have this information readily available in my brain, I'm having all kinds of weird ideas about chopping up trashed bikes and reassembling them into sculpture. If I can figure out a way to stick the various pieces together without involving massive amounts of flame, I'll be all set.

watertowers are hard to find

Mmmmmm, lemonade. I normally don't like lemonade, but on hot days, cold fresh lemonade with a bunch of sugar is nice. Ice tea is better, but the caffeine makes me ill.

The roommate search isn't going so well. We've only had one person actually show up to look at the place, and he called immediately to say he wasn't interested. I'm always amazed at how picky people are, even in this cutthroat housing market. I guess its good, since it screens out the people who wouldn't be very fun as roommates.

The pride parade and rally was on Saturday. It was fun, as usual. Though I didn't stay much after the parade finished. The place was so overrun with people waiting in huge lines to get crappy meat products (real "food", not man meat), that you couldn't move. Funny, because the rally was right in the middle of Boston, where you could find all manner of restaurants and delis just a block away. The parade was also interesting, because it 75% of the people marching were representing churches or politicians. You know an issue has gone mainstream when there are more politicians than activists participating.

Then it was onto SCUL. They were trying a new thing for the evening's event - a scavenger hunt. It was pretty much wildly successful. We worked as a team, against time, not another group. We wandered around a few cities, specifically looking for some of the items with higher points, and generally finding the littler items on the way. We found almost all of the things on the list, too. Some of the things we were unable to track down were roadkill, a Playgirl centerfold, a tube top, orange pants, an acorn, New Hampshire, and a preist. The fact that we were doing this between 11pm and 1:30am didn't help matters. Boston is such a puritan city that even the gay clubs were closed by the time we got there. We were able to locate, and photograph, a drag queen at the last minute, which was worth a healthy 30 points. And PigPen was kind enough to puke on command, which garnered us a respectable 20 points. We also scored in finding a revolving door to rival any revolving door I've ever encountered before. It was in some fancy Cambridge hotel near Technology Square, and it had a whole revolving platform about 15 feet in diameter. The pie-like sections between doors were big enough to let a couple people bring their bikes in with them. (Clearly, the people who stay in that hotel have way more money than they know what to do with. Just think of how many blinky lights you could buy with the money it cost to build that door!) The final outcome of the game/ride was that we all got a fuckton of points and were all promoted to extreme levels. I went from being an Ensign to being a Lieutenant Commander in one night. Weeeeeee.

Looking up the word "lieutenant" (literally, a placeholder) in the dictionary, it occured to me: Have you ever really thought about how many words there are? In the English language alone, there have got to be a million or so. (Maybe not, since on a rough estimate of my dictionary I figure that it's got about 93,000 words in it. But that's still an immensely giganticly enormous amount of words.) Even the most literate smartypants in the world probably knows less than half of 'em. Weird.

"open source vehicle"

I got my bike stickers (which have the above quote on them) about a week ago. Yay. I love stickers. Anyone want some? The other day, I tucked one into the handlebars of the recumbant parked next to my bike. It's owned by a computer geek who works in the offic next to MassBike. The place is some non-profit open source code organization that's supposedly quite famous, but I can never remember the name. I've always felt an affinity for Linux people, even though I don't use it. (Macs are so much better for artists.)

You know that there's something amiss when I can be caught watching televised sports. This is how much I love (in a mostly platonic sense) my roommates. They've been watching the recent big finally basketball games and I've been hanging around them. I now know all sorts of completely useless facts about the game and the players. (Kobe Bryant is cute, for instance, and Shaq sweats about a gallon a quarter.) I've even gone so far as to go out with my roommates to the basketball court and play a pickup game! Gasp. What's next? Beer drinking? :)

home is where your dirty dishes are

I just got into a big spat with the one roommate who doesn't quite fit in here. I have two rules for the house: don't throw any of my stuff away, and no complaining about the dishes (nitpicky arguing about the specific location and duration of dirty dishes always seems to be the downfall of otherwise wellmannered roommates). Within weeks of moving in, this guy breaks both rules! He's generally a nice guy, so I usually just humor him, but I'm suffering from severe sleep deprivation and a sore body from riding 57 miles yesterday (including 21 on a chopper), and I came home to see that he had messed up part of my garden that I'd just planted, and he'd thrown out some of my dishes that were in the sink because he didn't like the looks of them. Grr arrgh. It's not like it's a big deal really, but the thing is he's not the least apologetic. Luckily, I still think that three out of the four roommates are completely awesome.

On to the more interesting stuff. As I previously eluded to, I spent almost all of yesterday (from 10am until the birds woke up chirping there happy little 4:30 am songs) riding around. I started out riding out to Drumlin Farm, a few towns away, to visit Jef at his wildlife care job. Alas, he wasn't working. I would have checked with him earlier, but I figured that I'd never get out on a big ride if I didn't have somewhere specific to go (I loathe "recreational" riding for no really good reason). I had an enjoyable time at the farm (a working farm/museum kind of place, run by the Audobon Society), and then I moved on for a little visit to Walden Pond. Poor Thoreau must have been rolling in his grave yesterday because the local military installation was showing off their jet fighters right next door at the air force base. So, as I lay down on the beach, next to the forest, for a relaxing afternoon, sonic booms could be heard with occasional sightings of zippy airplanes doing loop-de-loops and divebombing the locals. Watching the planes competing with the birds and dragonflies for my attention I had to vote for the biological flyers. When humans can zip around without an engine like sparrows do, I'll be officially impressed. (Though I've gotta admit, I absolutely love flying!)

When I finally got home, I had about an hour to cool off and get ready for the SCUL ride. It was a great ride, and included a pirate disco party, nude men riding around on choppers, a fantastic view of Boston at 3am, and a broken axle on a six foot tall bike (no, I wasn't the one riding it!). Good stuff.

solar

Finally, some sun. Sunny warm weather makes you forget all your troubles! I'm trying to convince myself to get out for a nice long bike ride. Not being employed (much) means that I don't have to go anywhere most of the time, and that means that I'm getting out of shape (I'm even rounder in the middle than I usually am!). Plus, I need to get used to long rides so that I can keep up with my MassBike buddies when we all go to a bike event in Maine. These guys think nothing of riding centuries (100 miles) in a day. Ug! I've done about 70 miles a couple of times, and that was torture. (And that was when I was 70 pounds lighter!)

Is that a cloud up there? Go away!

Here's a little thought I had recently... You know how Ireland is always thought of as being gorgeous, lush, and green? Sure you do. When you think of Ireland, you think of three things: alcohol, celtic music, and vast stretches of beautiful green land. Want to know how Ireland got to have such lovely green hills? They don't mow!

swing

I've been really up and down lately. Partly it's the post Bike Week/birthday quiet, and partly other stuff. Nothing big, just those little frustrations that add up. Like the fact that I finally got my printer that I've been researching and saving (birthday) money up for. I get it and discover almost immediately that it's not a postscript printer. That means that it takes all the precise mathematically generated line art that I make in Illustrator, and turns it into a muddy blob. It also prints tonal images (aka photos) pretty crappy. What's shocking is that I read all of the reviews and did all the comparison shopping before I settled on the Brother 1440 printer that all the critics were raving about. So, its not my fault that I'm so devastatingly disappointed - I did my homework. So I'm pretty bummed. On top of this, I tried to set up a scanner that had been abandoned at my old job, only to discover that it's motor died just like my other scanner did. (Doesn't anything expensive work well these days?) So, I had to order another one. This will be my third in two years.

On the other hand, I've been hanging out with the roommies lately and that's been quite entertaining. I'm going to miss Arlo when he moves out next month. (Anyone know of a suitably cool roommate to fill his space?) Conversations with Arlo almost always end up involving people like Terrence McKenna, William Borroughs, and completely unheard of insane people he knows in Maine. Add Eric, who isn't afraid to say whatever is on his mind and usually has some pretty wacky stuff on his mind, and Seth, who really likes his liquor and his Star Wars, into the mix and it's an all out funfest. I put up some pictures of one of our household's wacky adventures with a pizza insulation box that a delivery person haplessly abandoned on our porch. Me, Eric, a little tug o' war, and Arlo and Seth partying with the pizza bag.

No SCUL tonight for me (or last week either). I'm too mopey and its too cold. Hopefully next week I'll be feeling up for it. I also really want to finish making my own chopper, prematurely named the SBD Freak Pride. I'm sure I'll feel much more comfortable on a bike my own size and speed. I had an inspiration the other day on how to do the fork, but I need a mountain bike fork for it, and don't have a spare around here (at least not one that isn't permanently bonded to the bike frame by rust...) If I don't find something in the trash soon, I'm going to raid the illegally parked/abandoned bikes in Davis Square that are about to be cut off by the T security. And I, of course, need to find a banana seat.

sewage

So, there were two bike events yesterday that I was able to make it to. They were both very mildmannered. The first was a historical archetecture tour of Somerville. It was actually fairly interesting, and I was surprides to discover that Somerville had a lot of involvement in the American Revolutionary War. It's too bad that we didn't get to go into any of the buildings, or spend more than a few minutes talking about each. It's also too bad that several of the really unique public buildings have been turned into condos. (My old elementary school in nearby Arlington was also afflicted with the dreaded condo disease.) I never understood the condo concept - you payed hundreds of thousands to own the place, but you still have to pay a ton of rent (sure, sign me up!).

Then it was on to a Cambridge event celebrating a new sewage treatment plant and adjacent bike facility (yep, pretty odd). While I was there I got to experience a number of unique things: people getting excited about sewage, modern dance set to the musical stylings of a microphone dropped into ocean waves, a really creepy miniature man/robot on a tricycle which the police were parading around in an attempt to teach bike safety to frightened children, the biggest fucking American flag ever, and a few bike friends who were protesting the event because the bike "path" that was being celebrated was incredibly poorly designed and is guaranteed to cause a number of fatalities along with multitudes of other, less lethal, accidents. If you are ever riding in the Fresh Pond area of Cambridge, MA, avoid the off-street bike "path" (i.e., the funny looking sidewalk) between the rotaries! Believe it or not, the road is 100% safer, even though the car drivers in the area don't seem to grasp the concept of a 30 mph speed limit.

When I got home, I discovered that the universe intended to redeem itself for my lackluster birthday, and, in the form of Seth - the aformentioned Star Wars addicted roommate - offered me a fantastic birthday gift: Douglas Adams' posthumously collected "Salmon of Doubt" book. Yay! (Though I still get teary eyed thinking about the universe's loss of this amazing example of a human being.)

Final note of the day... My last boyfriend finally put a picture of his latest conquest up on his website, and she looks almost exactly like me, 18 years ago!

wet

The last two Bike Weeks have been full of rain. Weird, usually it's nice in the middle of May. Oh, well, the lack of events today will give me a chance to relax for a change. And maybe I'll make myself a belated birthday cake, with frosting this time. Speaking of my birthday, it was kinda sad, only two people wished me a happy birthday. But I did get to hang out with SCUL and Jef for Star Wars, so at least I had a fun evening.

So, my review: I'm not really thinking about it. Not because I don't want to have an opinion (heaven knows I always want to have an opinion!), but because there really wasn't much to think about. There was next to no plot aside from moving the characters randomly around the galaxy in order to set them up for the next fight scene - or, in the case of Amidala and Anakin, of getting them all coupley. So, basically, there was no thinking necessary. It was ok, but I actually like Episode 1 better.

Now, on to more important business: isn't there supposed to be a new Star Trek movie this summer?

33

Happy Birthday to me! I'm 1/20th of the mark of the Devil. That must count for something, right? :-) Seeing Star Wars tonight with SCUL is the best present I can think of. Jef is coming, too. Yay!

This morning, I'm off to hand out baggies of goodies to bike commuters in Somerville. I spent the last two days frantically looking for goodies to put in the bags and came up pretty empty, but we already had some fun things, so it's cool. Happy riding everyone...

Happy Bike Week

Bike Week. Busy. I'll check in when I get a chance to catch my breath. Good stuff, but lots of cold and wet. Oh, and I may get a chance to go to an all expenses paid week long retreat for environmental organizers in Maine. I love being an activist!

And my mouth is finally string-free, thank heavens.

I love having a roommate with a Star Wars addiction

I spent a good 13 hours straight playing a surprisingly well-designed Star Wars strategy-based board game with my roommates today. Yay!

string does not belong in your mouth

Ug. I'm so tired of dealing with my mouth that I don't even feel like writing about it! But I will, for posterity's sake. More bad stuff this week. Turns out that the woman who extracted my tooth fucked me up royally. She broke part of my jaw bone (just a small part) and they had to open me up some more and fix the damage. Even worse, was that when they tried to suture me up, I nearly passed out (something I've never experienced). They had to give me oxygen, and smelling salts. (Ammonia, apparently. Absoutely nasty stuff. I can't imagine that it's healthy for you.) Anyway, I'm finally feeling a bit better today. What really sucks is that I lost a week and a half to this thing. I've been almost completely unproductive, and now I have to catch up with all of my projects. Eh.

On the bright side, bike week is coming up, and that should be a lot of fun. It's one of those times when there is just so much going on that you can't possibly do it all. I think the highlights are going to be the Redbones Valet Bike Parking party on Monday, and the S.C.U.L unofficial mission to see Episode II (that's not really a bike week event, but it does involve bikes...). There's also a bike film festival on Saturday that should be really good, except that it conflicts with S.C.U.L., so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. If you are interested in some good bike events, check out all of the bike week listings at MassBike. Lots of free stuff, and cool people.

ow, continued

Dentistry is a dangerous business. The tooth got pulled, but it was a messy job, and there are still problems, including pointy things. Ow. I've now lost a whole week to this crap. Times like these make me wish for the option of downloading my brain into a robot.

On the slightly productive side, I've managed to get two written peices published in my local "Somerville Journal" newspaper in two weeks. I'm such a media whore, aren't I? :)

ow

One of my teeth got a nasty infection, so I went to get it pulled (yes, I live in America land of the free, unless you need medical care, in which case it's unbelievably expensive). The guy shot my mouth up with enough novacane to kill a large marmet, but it was still excruciatingly painful to have the guy even wiggle the damn tooth. So they gave up. I've got some antibiotics to kill off the infection and they're going to try again in a couple of days. Ow. So now I have to go through this all over again. Did I mention ow?

the answer to life the universe and everything

I had an interesting dream this morning, one the had me physically in tears, upon waking up. It was fairly involved, but the gist of it was that I was extremely upset about how the people around me were living their lives. I was frustrated that they were spending their time doing things that were basically just keeping the status quo and not making life better in any way. In the midst of a big rant, I suddenly blurted out "What is the purpose of life!" What I was trying to get across to my family and friends was that the real goal of life is to survive, prosper, and reproduce. And, from my perspective (at least in the dream), people were living their lives in a way that was robbing the Earth of its ability to sustain life. If we don't preserve the environment for future generations of life (including humans) then what, really, is the point? Everyone likes to think that taking care of the Earth is somebody else's problem, and that when crises arise someone important will fix it all. But that, as we all know, is really just denial of the fact that were incredibly greedy and probabaly have done completely irreversible damage to the planet that provides us life. I don't mean to be apocolyptic here, but I don't see that we're going to be able to change our downwardly spiraling direction before its too late.

I think this dream all started with Earth Day this year. I was at a booth for some moderate environmental organization that had suggestions for steps one could take to tread more lightly on the planet. One of their suggestions was to, one day a week, forgo the car and choose another form of transportation. Ooooh. Its this bland, compromised attitude that got us here in the first place.

Anyway, onto a more palatable subject, last night's party was really fun. It was supposed to be a fairly small affair, but we had a great turnout, and we had pizza coming out of our ears (no, not literally). The inner S.C.U.L. circle came, and so did my buddy Tim, so I was very happy. There was also a big Trivial Persuit game that lasted until 3am, and I came pretty close to winning. You always learn some weird stuff playing that game. Apparently, there was a scheme in China to drop cats, via parachutes, into rice fields, in order to get rid of the mice that were destroying the crops. That gave me the funniest visual when I heard it.

pizza, ice cream, and exhaustion

This weekend was, indeed, quite full, and I'm definitely pretty darn pooped. But my roommates are having a little party tonight, so I've got to try to stay awake and alert for the festivities. Pizza making is risky business and I wouldn't want my sleep deprivation to make me make a critical mistake, ya know? Anyway, it was all fun, and we got the bicycling word out to a lot of people at the Earth festival, so it was worth it.

The plan for this week includes a massive attack on the pile that is my bedroom, giving my wesite some actual content beyond a pretty face, and figuring out a place to grow the catnip where my neighbor's cat won't mutilate it. (I came home the other night to find the normally timid kitty rolling around my yard and staring up at the sky, completely oblivious to my presence. It was funny, but a couple more of these tripping sessions and she would have completely destroyed the plants.) Last year, I had a cool birdcage in the shape of a victorian house that worked perfectly to keep the birds (and cats) out. But some loser stole it. I could just use some chicken wire, but that doesn't look very attractive, and we've already got enough junk around the place as it is. Any suggestions?

bikes on the brain

You know how they say that men think of sex once every seven seconds or something? Well, that's me, except that I'm thinking of bicycles instead of sex. My trip to Maine was full of bike education and more work on designing promotional stuff for the various bike organizations and events. And now that I'm back I've got even more stuff to do. An Earth Day fair tomorrow, Critical Mass tonight, and SCUL tomorrow night. In all of this bicycle brewhaha, I decided to abandon my plan for setting up a table at the Somerville Art Beat festival to sell my recycled art. It was just too much. I've still got big plans for my website, and I'll be able to sell stuff on it, and that can be at my own pace, rather than trying to rush into getting a ton of stuff done in a couple of months. Maybe I'll sell some stuff at the bike tables and donate the money to them.

My stepfather is doing extremely well for someone who just had his artery scraped out. He was rototilling the garden within a week. Yay.

I got to hang out with a groundhog up in Maine too. The little lady was wandering around the arboritum where my bike education workshop was being held. She didn't really seem to notice or care that there were a bunch of people riding bikes around in circles just a few feet away. Later on, I followed her and almost got her run over by a car. Oops! But she was fine, and dissappeared into a gulley. Cute little thing.

antidisestablishmentarianism

It just occurred to me why geniouses seem to be such social outcasts - it's because society makes no sense. Most people just go about their lives, adapting their behavior to whatever the latest societal norms happen to be, without any attention to what they are doing. But smart people tend to do that whole thinking before acting thing, and would obviously see the insanity in certain things that are normally socially acceptable. The smart person, if she approaches life in a logical manner, is likely to get herself into trouble with the more traditional contingent of society. If she gets the opportunity to observe and study social behavior, then she's at least got a chance to see how weird "modern" civilized behavior really is, and she can choose to go along with it all, or just to give up and not care what anyone thinks. "Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world." goes the saying. (No that wasn't Freud, it was some other, less libidinous, psychiatrist named R.D. Lang.)

Anyway, and this is in no way related to the last bit (we'll ok just a little...), I went on the SCUL ride last night. It was a particularly good ride, and when we got to our destination, we sat around in a campfire circle (sans fire) and told stories about weird stuff that happend to us while on bikes. It was like group bike therapy! "Hi, my name is Turtle, and I'm a bicyclist..." Heh. We also had a couple of derbies and I actually did quite well, if I say so myself. Both times I was one of the last four in the game (out of about ten pilots), and I made a couple of good defensive moves, along with one almost impressive save. Gimme another season and I'll be pretty decent, maybe. Oh, yeah, and I found out that my buddy Jef showed up for last week's SCUL ride and didn't tell me. Serves me right for not going!

Well, now its off to the great green north. I hope its not too cold. I've gotten used to the toasty weather we've been having here. Plus, I hate having to lug lots of big, bulky clothes all the way up with me. Though, I keep looking for excuses to wear this sweater I got that looks like a pack of lifesavers candy. I love it, because it looks like something Willow (from Buffy) would wear. Except that on me, it just looks like a big colorful blob. I always forget that I'm so much rounder in the middle than most people...

it's the sun!

I need to make an effort to update this a bit more frequently, don't I? Well, let's see, the update on my stepfather is that he's fine. It was a little rough going for a couple of days, but he had his surgery and is actually home, in Maine, already. If nothing else, this little scare made him (and my mom) acutely aware of how important it is to take care of oneself. He'd already cut out eating cow, but now he's got to be even more careful of the stuff he ingests. My mother dilligently made sure to finish off all of the potato chips, so that there weren't any in the house when he got home. :) And they are both really going to try to kick the cigarette demon again.

Stuff is going steadily along with MassBike, and I'm still quite excited to be a part of the organization in such a prominant position (one of two staffpeople). This weekend I go up to Maine to snoop on the Maine bike education program, and see what ideas I can steal from them. (Well, ok, they do know who I am and what I'm doing, so I guess I'm not such a great spy!) While I'm up there I get the bonus of hanging out with my mom (convenient, huh?).

The art thing is kind of on hold, with the weirdness of the week. I also have to wait a bit to find out if I can get a table for the big art fair. If I get it, I'll have to work my ass off to get ready for it. But I work pretty well under pressure. And making art is always fun, especially when I don't have to please upper management.

My computer game geek roommate Eric, who's also been unemployed, has finally gotten a job, so I'm losing my daytime partner in crime. We're not overly close, but he's a sweet guy, and has many talents that are particularly entertaining. If you ever meet him ask him to show you what he can do with his toungue...

what is that bright thing up in the sky?

My stepfather is in the hospital, and I can't decide what to worry about. He's never been in very good shape (drinking alcohol like a fish, eating meat, and smoking since age 14 will do that to a guy) so it's not surprising, but this is apparently very serious. I think that everyone is more worried about my mom, though. She's legally blind, lives in the middle of nowhere, Maine, and is completely broke right now. So she's a bit on the helpless side without my stepfather around. What's ironic is that he's actually down in my part of the world. For some reason no one ever seems to get operations done in the state of Maine. They are always shipped down here to a Boston area hospital. I'm going to try and go to see him today, but I'm one of those people who has a really hard time dealing with sick people, plus I'm not very close to him. So I'm trying to psych myself up for it. Fortunately, for everyone, my mom is going to come down tomorrow for the day.

As some of you may note, last night was Saturday, and I should have gone on the SCUL bike ride. I didn't, under the auspices of getting to sleep early enough that it didn't screw up my plans to venture off to the hospital today. Except that my upstairs neighbors had a party last night and my roommies and I ended up making an appearance. Until 3 am. I was there so late that someone who had actually gone on the SCUL ride showed up after the ride was over. (Turns out that it was a particularly unhappy ride, as some jerk in a car was trying to assault the gang.) But the party was fun. I learned a valuable party trick, too. Being a particularly shy type, I'm usually quite the wallflower at large gatherings. But last night, I showed up clutching a life sized penguin lawn ornament to my bosom, and it made me the hit of the party. I even got out ont he dancefloor and boogied my own, and the penguin's, booties off for a while. Oh, and I love my roommates. I can't say that enough these days.

I have a life

An epiphany came to me the other day, and I know what I'm going to do with my life, at least for a while. Art, dammit. I was watching a tv show about an elderly gentlemen who paints art on pretty much everything he can get his hands on. Old furniture, clothes, vehicles, essentially anything that has been discarded by someone in our disposable society. And he teaches kids to do it too.

So my idea is to set up a non-profit project to involve the community (primarily kids, but really anyone who wants to) in recycling trash into functional art. There was an organization in Boston a few years back that did this with "troubled youths" as a form of rehabilitation. (I haven't heard of them in a long time. Wonder what happened...) Anyway, my project would be more broad-reaching. As a first step, I'm working on establishing myself in the community as a recycled artist, with a line of "Renewd Art" that I'm going to hawk in a couple of places. Expect a media blitz, including the new and improved Random Turtle Productions website, within a month or two!

All this, of course, will have to fit into my schedule of being a big time bike advocate. Some day, I'm sure I'll fit all of my favorite roles, bicycling, teaching, and art, together in some really weird and random-turtle-like way. But, at the rate I find inspiration, this may be another ten years or so :)

Oh, and I can't forget to mention that we had our first SCUL ride of the season. Yay! I almost didn't make it, but managed to muster up some previously unavailable burst of energy, and had a grand old time. I managed to ride one of the fleet bikes that actually lowered my score, because it was supposedly really easy to handle (a point I would beg to differ on, as the extreme lowness of the pedals made it impossible to pedal through even mild turns, and the hugeness of the handlebars made quick maneuvering a lost cause). I really, really need to make my own turtle-sized chopper to ride... This mission was also the first time I ever got a chance to compete in a derby (a combination of tag and capture the flag, on chopped bikes, of course), and my greatest fears of suckage were, indeed, realized. Speed is pretty much something turtles are not known for. And, with my turning ability compromised, I had next to nothing to work with. With my own bike, I hope to at least have half a chance.

One final random note. About 10 years ago, I came up with a particular noise using a cheap drum machine. It was basically made by maxing out the volume of both the machine and the recording device (a cheap boom box). I thought it was brilliant, and I made a very long quasi musical piece with just this sound. Come to find out that other people have coopted my sound! Not only have I heard it in some of the more creative and experimental stuff on college radio, but I even heard it in one of U2's pop hits. I want royalties, dammit!

greed

I'm not all that familliar with all of the history of Israel and Palistine, but I've been trying to pay attention to stuff lately. What has shocked me is how incredibly primative and childish poeple are behaving in Israel. "It's mine!" "No it's mine!" "But my God said I could have it!" It's like national policy being decided by 6 year olds. (Not that the US government is really any better.) Don't they have preschool in Isreal? Somebody never taught these kids the concept of sharing.

I was watching the Bill Moyers show "Now", which seems to be one of the very few news programs on television that actually is run by poeple who aren't morons. There was a US couple on, who had moved into one of the settlements in the debated area of land. This husband and wife moved into what is essentially a war zone and then had FIVE children! One of their kids even had a bullet go through his head. Yet they still refuse to leave, because "the Bible proves that we are entitled to this land". This woman is so greedy that she is willing to sacrifice the lives of her children. It would be one thing if she was born there, or had lived there before the 1960's. But no, she moved from her own country, the US, into an occupied territory halfway across the world, in an attempt to kick somebody else out!

Thne the show interviewed some of the Isreali soldiers who were refusing to murder their neighbors in an offensive attack. Turns out that the Israeli government is arresting these guys and putting them in jail! In other words the government is saying "Kill people, don't think about it, and just do what you're told or we will punish you." Shades of Nazi Germany right in the epicenter of Judiasm...

It all just boggles the mind.

On a lighter note, it looks like aliens have taken over the White House. Someone who looked just like King George came out into public today and, for all intents and purposes, made sense! This former shell of an idiot actually suggested that killing people is wrong, adn that war needs to stop. Good heavens!

brave new turtle world

I just paid my credit card off, applied for unemployment, and had my first day of (part time) work at MassBike. Yay!

The work at MassBike is very likely to lead to some great stuff, and I'm really excited about the possiblities. Finally, I'm back doing what I want to be doing. With big thanks to Tim, who's working extra hard to make a place for me in the organization. I also spent most of Tuesday letting many of the bike organizations in the Boston area know what the other organizations are up to. When you really get immersed in the non-profit and activist world you realize just how many organizations there are out there. I even found out that my computer game geek roommate is on the board of directors for some computer game non-profit. And my dad and stepmother are on a committee for a folk dancing organization. I'd wager that there is an organization promoting just about every hobby or interest you can think of. For example, I know for a fact that there is at least one organization who's goal is to convince people that eating bugs is a great idea. If there isn't a group for your own favorite activity, then you should start one. Just imagine the friends you could make if you were the president of the ardvark appreciation society?

there's nothing phobic about it

Several people have gotten the idea that I'm a bit psychologically unbalanced because I tend to prefer staying home as much as possible. I admit it, I'm a hermit and I am a tad wary of trekking out into the big bad world out there. But this is no unfounded phobia. The world is a dangerous place. Case in point: this evening I was out doing a little trash hunting (my aunt said she'd seen a wine rack down the street and I wanted to check it out) and just a couple of blocks away form my house I was assaulted by some jerk in an SUV. I was whacked on the back of the head with a can of soda, which one of the village idiots whipped at me from the comfort of his truck. I tried to chase the freak down, to get the plate number, but he blew through a red light, turned off his lights, and made a break for it. (Maybe he'd been playing a bit too much Playstation lately?) I wasn't hurt, as I was wearing my helmet, but this just confirms my theory that the world is so filled with purposefully malicious bastards, ignorant bozos, and the just plain accident prone, that the act of going outside is very likely to be fraught with peril. No wonder people are afraid to go out without an armored vehicle, aka a car, just to buy a snack.

And the police are of no help either. When I went into the Somerville (MA) police station to report the crime, the woman behind the plexy glass looked at me like I was a crazy person and actually had the audacity to ask "Why?" Er... I filled out the form, even though it was likely to be tossed. And as I was leaving, she actually said to me, "Be careful out there". When the cops say that, you know it's bad.

history's mysteries

So, around last Solstice, I started getting a subscription to American Heritage magazine. I figured that it was a gift from someone in my family. The thing is, no one fesssed up to getting it for me. I tried reading a few articles in the first issue I received, but they were the same old blather that mainstream media always publishes. The issue I first got was the special "war" issue (ooooh!), and not only were ALL of the articles written by men, but they were ALL pro-war. Obviously, not something I cared to read (don't I get enough of this kind of thing EVERYWHERE?). One writer seemed to have a tad more balance than the rest, but then he completely blew it by saying that trying to understand the motives behind the 9/11 hijackings was pointless, because, get this, Osama Bin Laden is just plain evil. Yeah, ok. I expect to hear such rhetoric from the local jocks or even in a blog, but in a so called respectable historic magazine? That's just bad. Regardless, I still have no clue as to who sent me this subscription. I even called the magazine's customer service, but they had no record of who ordered it. I have my suspicions, but no proof. Anyone want to claim responsibility? Hmmmmmm?

the fools of april

Bush has resigned, Isreal has pulled out if it's occupation, and Enron execs have vowed to compensate all of it's employees for the money they lost.

No wait, it's just a joke. Happy fool's day! (I heard King Goerge is having quite the celebration today.)

I wish I was more of a prankster. I used to really get into April Fool's Day, but I think that I just take myself too seriously when I try to pull a prank. Or something. A few years ago, when I was dating this guy I'd met on a web message board, I sent a mutual friend a joke e-mail using my boyfriend's e-mail account. I pretended to be my boyfriend and confessed to our friend that I had beaten him up and asked for advice. I thought it was hysterically funny, because I'm such a huge proponent of nonviolence. However, I discovered that our friend didn't know me as well as I had thought, and took the e-mail completely seriously. The people in that circle of friends never quite trusted me again (though a really messy breakup didn't help matters, either).

Maybe I should just go back to the classic pranks like short-sheeting the bed, and putting salt in the sugar bowl. I did these kinds of things to my parents as a kid, and they seemed to go over pretty well and didn't make anyone think that I was a husband beater. Putting weird things in people's shoes, like plastic bugs or rocks or even marshmallows, is a good one too.

artificial is the word, alright

Saw AI tonight, and boy is that movie a torturous one. Good lord did I want it to be over for the last 2 hours and 15 minutes (it was just under 2.5 hours). Ouch. If any of you are thinking of seeing it, don't! I'll save you from the horrible fate that would be the couple of hours you'd need to sit through this monstrosity, and tell you what happens. The world is partially submerged, from global warming or something. Some company makes a robot kid with the capability to love and bond with a human. The kid is this robot. He's "imprinted" on a woman who's real child is in a coma. He loves her more than anything, and she's kinda ambivalent about him. Alas, the real son wakes up and sibling rivalry and random accidents make the family decide to get rid of the robot kid. Mom doesn't want him to be turned into a scrapheap, so instead of returning him to the manufacturer, she, inexplicably, leaves him in a forest to fend for himself (along with a random robot teddy bear). The kid goes on an adventure, running from the evil fleshy humans who apparently want to dismantle all robots. The kid decides to find the blue fairy, whom he's heard about in a Pinocchio story, so she can turn him into a real boy and he can go home. After a ton of incredibly dull and pointless weirdness, he tries to kill himself by falling into the ocean, and just happens to fall right in front of, you guessed it, the blue fairy, which is a left over from some amusement park in downtown Manhattan. Having reached his goal, he gets stuck in a logic loop, pleading to the fairy to make him a real boy. The camera pans back, the narrator comes on, and you think that finally, the movie is over. But no. After two thousand fucking years go by, and the planet is in an ice age, the aliens from Close Encounters show up and revive the poor kid. Aiiiiigh! The movie continues for another 20 minutes with some rediculousness inspired by the end of 2001 a Space Oddessy. The aliens clone mom through the hair that the kid cut off of her 2000 years previous (and that teddy bot had been carrying around the whole time). The kid and mom are put into a holodecklike place so they think they are back home. The catch is that mom can only live one day, due to some innane plot device. So, the kid lives happily ever after for one day, then goes to sleep, satisfied of a job well done. Aiiiiiiiiighhhh!

Didn't they make torture illegal in the states? Spielberg must have made it onto the list of countries in the infamous "axis of evil". Is King George on this? The world needs to be rid of this movie more than we need to snuff out a couple of mostly harmless countries.

here's the plan

So, I found out that I can get unemployent, thanks to a great ex-employer, so I'm planning on getting seriously into a few projects that may or may not lead to making money, but will definitely be worthwile. Firstly, I've got to set up a Random Turtle Productions website. Then I may set up a bit of a diy business as an outlet for my many crafty and otherwise projects. And I'll probably try to set up a bit of a freelance graphic design thing, too. With the luxury (a bit of an overstatement) of the unemployment money coming in, I'll have time to get this stuff done without having to worry about paying the rent. Sound good?

Maybe this is all a bit grandiose, but it could happen.

chair

I must be doing something right, because last night at the Bike Committee meeting I was elected Vice Chairperson. I had no clue that I was even a contender. Funny. I feel so important, now.

The pace of life without a job is just right for me. I'm not the most energetic person, so I'm always disappointed with the amount of stuff I can get done in a day. But this way, I know that I've got plenty of time to do the things that are really important to me, and still have time left over to make my own meals from scratch, play a bit of the Star Wars Racing game, and sew too. And my cat just loves having me home all the time. Plus, any day now it will be gardening season!

Hmmmm, I think I have to go out today. I need popcorn and soy milk.

zines a go go

Whew, its finally over. The zine fair was a rousing success. Thanks Rich! The place was absolutely packed on Saturday, and it was in a huge room, compared to the tiny hallways we were stuck in last year. And on Sunday, after the morning grogginess wore off, it filled up quite nicely. Plus, there was a really great range of zine peddlers there. Sometimes the seventeen year olds are a bit overwhelming, but this year there was a good contingent of the mature types, like myself. My "Bike City" zine was a hit, as far as I was concerned. Its a pretty niche market zine, so I was delighted to have sold/traded around 70 of them. That's the biggest run of zines I've ever had. And I only just finished the things on Friday. (Hence the lack of posts last week.) At some point I'd like to set up my Random Turtle Productions website and put the zine online, along with a ton of other stuff, of course. That's probably one of my next projects.

The free seedlings/plants were also quite popular. I ran out of my regular basil and nasturtium offerings the first day, and ended up potting up a bunch of my aloe plant's babies to give out on Sunday. I think next year I'll make a little plant care booklet to hand out with the plants, since a surprising amount of people seemed to have no clue as to what to do with the things.

And, the piece de resistance, on my table at least, was the zine bags. I sold out of them! At five bucks, my funky recycled/reclaimed fabric bags were simply irristable. I even got an offer for distribution. But I'm not a big fan of the middleman concept, even when it's a woman. Although, I am going to drop off a few zines and stickers at Flyrabbit (in Allston, MA), where my buddy Jef works. But that's really just because I want more people to have the opportunity to see my message, not to make money.

All in all I came out of the zine fair with a net profit of about 15 bucks, a huge pile of good looking zines that will take me a month to read, a few new friends, and I even raised some money for the Somerville Friends of the Community Path group that I volunteer with. Yay!

fuzzy purple yarn

I never intended to do it, but I managed to succumb to the whole knitting frenzy that's been going on in the hip urban chic crowd (which I'm not really a part of, but am in the target market for the products for). I paid a bunch of money to buy fuzzy purple yarn and then spent 36 hours straight (except for the sleeping thing) knitting a scarf that I really didn't need. Well, at least I got it out of my system. Now back to the zine. Four days left before the zine fair. But I'm three-quarters done. So I'm good.

I talked to my bud at MassBike about working there, and it looks like its a go. Sometime soon, I guess. Its only part time, so that makes things a bit messy in the whole income aspect of my life, but I know that it'll all work itself out.

News Flash: a 500 million billion ton chunck of ice the size of Rhode Island broke into peices due to elevated temperatures in the antarctic region. New England has officially experienced the warmest winter in recorded history. And just last week your Senators and mine (well not mine actually) voted against a bill that would have raised the rediculously low fuel efficiency standards to a level that has been obtainable for 30 years. The future of this planet is looking dark indeed.

Oh, and yes, a million billion is a real number, if you live in England, where they like their numbers on the funny side.

would you like to see my shrinky dink?

I gotta say S.C.U.L. continues to amaze me. They really are such a great group of people. I went to a party there last night and had a blast. Even the annoying guy (that seems to be a prerequisite for a really happening party) was funny. (He was nicknamed the Cracker Boy after an incident where he played out an orgasm using a package of crackers as a substitute dick.) I brought along a roommate and he seemed to have a lot of fun, too. The key to the party's success was, in my opinion, the crafts. Shrinky Dinks to be specific. Shrinky Dinks are not just for kids! Actually, if you get someone who knows what they are doing these things can look pretty amazing. For a bunch of geeky bikers, there is really a lot of artistic talent in S.C.U.L.

(Punk craft project warning...) One of Skunk's ideas was to make bike badge plates (you know, the plate on the front tube of the bike that has the manufacturer's logo on it?). When the Shrinky Dinks came out of the oven he molded them on a peice of steel tubing to get them the right shape for the bike. Add a little of that doublestick foam tape and voila! You've got a personalized bike instead of some crappy Huffy or Cannondale :)

I met a couple of cool people who I now can hang out with when the missions start up again, which will help me force myself to stay up until the wee hours of Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, when the preference to be fast asleep would normally overcome me. And I got to see Shakes, who got me into the gang, but hasn't been around since I started riding with them. Now I'm all inspired to chop out my pink War on Terrorism kid's bike, so that I can christen it into the S.C.U.L fleet. Welding torch here I come...

Oh yeah, yesterday, I actually started on my zine. Go me.

chainring

The activities of the past few days have included: sewing Random Turtle Production bags (like bookbags, only much cooler), making the best damn chocolate chip cookies ever (and they are vegan, to boot!), taking apart and rearranging various bikes found in the trash (in order to try and make a really weird bike a la S.C.U.L.), and entirely avoiding doing anything for my zine (which needs to be done and printed in just over a week). The bike disassembly was, ostensibly, an attempt to work on the zine, but it didn't really get me any closer to making the acutal zine, just got me more in the bike mood.

Oh, and there was a mountain of sushi. The upstairs neighbors (one of whom seems to be doing the nasty with one of my roommies) invited our household up to help them wage a nutritious and quite delicious war on the sushi mountain. That was fun.

And, just this afternoon, I got my very first video game. One of my roommates has an N64 and I got the Episode I Podracer game for it. I like it. Racing games are definitely my style. This one is pretty good, though there're at least a few bits that are really poorly designed. I've hit a jump that I simply can't seem to make, no matter how many buttons I push or when I push them. I'll have to let one of the guys play the game and figure it out for me (they have that video game kinda logic ingrained into their brains from playing so much).

Finally, I managed to miss Rich Mackin's birthday party and performance last weekend. I suck. Sorry Rich!

Sometimes I just can't psych myself up for the party atmosphere. So much pressure to act like I'm enjoying myself! Occasionally, I do have fun, but most of the time I'm just trying to act like I belong and hoping that no one notices that I'm a 32 year old hobbitlike freak. Not that there is anything wrong with that. :)

cultural icon

If PEZ are a good indication of pop culture, then Batman is the most popular, multiple personality icon. There are more different Batman PEZ versions than there are of any other character (at least in my collection of 60 or so). I can understand his popularity. The guy is a superhero, yet he's just a regular (besides being extremely rich) guy with no actual superpowers. And he's a basket case when it comes to relationships, just like the rest of us are.

7

My mom was running for treasurer of her little town in Maine, for some weird reason, and last night she heard the results of the vote. She lost: 127 to 120. She's pretty sad, even though I think she would have hated the job. Small town politics are pretty funny, though. Her opponent made a speech in which she basically just let everyone know how well her kid was doing in school and how much her husband enjoyed his job. Sure, I know that around half of the voting public votes without even the slightest consideration for the issues or the qualifications for the position, but jeez, that's just scary. (Though after the King George fiasco, I'm never going to truly be shocked again by how insane an election turns out.)

I got taken out for dinner and drinks last night be my former coworkers. It was fun, and I got a really, really heavy book from my best coworker-bud Lepera. It has lots of pictures in it, so I'm all set! And, while I was at the restaraunt, I had one of those weird convergency experiences where several random people I know showed up in the same place. A few SCUL people sat down right behind me, and then when I was leaving, the infamous Rich Mackin was riding by with his gigantic pirate flag flying behind his bike. He reminded me that his big birthday bash and performance event was today. Yay!

Speaking of Rich, and the zine festival, I think I figured out why I've been procrastinating from working on my latest zine (something which I normally would be overjoyed to do). Now that I'm not at work anymore, I don't have a printer, and I'm subconsciously weirded out by that. I haven't been without access to a professional quality printer in a very long time, and I'm kinda panicking. A Random Turtle without a printer is like a fish without fins (she can live, but she can only flop around in an ungraceful manner, completely unfishlike). So, I'm thinking of trying to make myself do it the old school way, cut and paste. This could be interesting...

inertia

Wow, I have managed to do nearly nothing this week. Well, ok, I did spend almost all of yesterday cleaning and reorganizing the living room. It's pretty impressive now. I really would make a great interior decorator (as long as my clients didn't mind weird, colorful rooms filled with wacky items found in the trash). I've also applied to a few jobs, but in this age of electronic mail, it takes all of 10 minutes to send a resume and cover letter out to a bunch of potential employers. (Though I learned to always triple check my e-mails after I accidentally forgot to change the job title from one e-mail to the next. Woops.)

My catnip seedlings are woefully lacking in the growth department. The basil is fine, though. My biggest problem, in preparing the free seedlings that I give out each year at the zine fest, is that I can't find the plastic cups that I use to package the plants. This is bad. If I can't find them, I'll have to redesign the whole package. Why do companies have to change their products so damn often? If I do end up finding the cups I need, I should buy a few years worth...

the trial

My roommates all got stoned and are now watching an old black and white version of Kafka's "The Trial". I love my roommates.

bulk goods

I spent my first full day of unemployment shopping. Well, ok, I also did some bike committee stuff, and went to the science museum, too, but the shopping was the most interesting bit of the day. I found the biggest treasure I've ever encountered in my decade of thrift shopping. This even tops the unopened Space 1999 spaceship model that I got for a buck and sold for $75. Today, I found a handwoven sweater, from a great company in Maine, that I know costs around $90, and I only paid a little over a dollar for it. It's exactly my size and favorite color (it matches my maroon hair quite well), and it had never been worn, either (the tag was still on it). I know sweaters don't get most people all excited, but you don't know how much I just adore these things. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (in more ways than one!).

After the sweater jackpot, I visited the science museum (which was free, since I'm a member). They had an exibit that included an actual spaceship - the Liberty Bell 7 - which had been lost on the ocean floor for nearly 30 years. Damn, that thing was tiny. I can't imagine anyone having to squeeze themselves into that little space and stay there for more than a few minutes. And the technology seemed so rudimentary (this was 1961 after all). The controls looked like something I had as a play spaceship as a kid. (My dad had salvaged some electronics boards from an old high school science lab and mounted them in a 6 ft. by 6 ft. climbing structure. Way cool for a little sci-fi geek like me.) In the exhibit, along with the ship itself, there were many of the items that the astronaut had taken with him. Some of the stuff was very obvious and basic: a knife, medicine, and bandages. But some of the stuff was just plain weird, if you know anything about living off of the planet: a bar of Dial soap, for instance. (How dirty are you gonna get in a tiny and sealed environment, do you really want to use free-flowing water in a place like that, and what the heck are you going to do with all of the soapy/dirty liquid when you're done washing, anyway?)

On my way home from the museum, I stopped into the food coop and got 20 lbs. of bulk food, with the intent of making all of my own meals for the duration of my unemployment. Fried tofu and rice (with a little soy sauce and nutritional yeast) is surprisingly satisfying. As is homemade Indian food. I'm going to be so damn healthy by the time I find another job.

I found out that my friend Rich Mackin was also laid off on Wednesday, and my old boss quit her job on Thursday. I think it's a fortuitous conspiracy (planned by some unseen force). All of these MassArt people suddenly left with a ton of free time on their hands. Who knows what we're likely to do...

the man on the moon

The time has come. The offer has been made. And turtle is taking the opportunity. After four years of being the person who just doesn't quite fit in at the automotive book publisher, I'm finally being showed the door. It's really a relief. I should have left long ago, but didn't for so many reasons (one being a very, very cool coworker). But I've been offered a small severence package if I want to go, so I'm gonna take it and move on to something more appropriate for an environmentally aware, progressive, passionate, and artistic soul.

The man on the moon is smiling at me, so I'm taking that as a sign. Onward and upward!

mopey

Buffy sure has been depressing (and dramatic) lately. I was in a great mood after having just come home from the bike committee meeting, and getting inspired to actually get some projects done. And then I watched Buffy. Her ex, who deserted her, showed up after a year with a bubbly wife in tow. And then Buffy dumps Spike because she finally realizes that she was just using him. So, she's a bit of an emotional mess right now. The thing is, stuff like this really gets to me since I pretty much never have a love life of my own and I tend to live it vicariously through imaginary characters like Buffy. So I'm all mopey now, too. Grrrr Arrrgh.

Anyway, my own recent ex, Jason, is apparently giving up on Boston and moving back to his hometown. Doesn't really matter much to me as I had finally written him off as a friend after being stood up about five times in a row. (And a lot of bullshitting on his part about not being ready for a relationship.) But, his leaving town does have a small bonus for me. I can now feel free to hang out with one of his roommates, who I had started to be friends with back when Jason and I were together. This guy was really entertaining, and, despite a little problem with the alkeehall and a serious addiction to meat products, was quite sweet. He's not really long term kinda guy, but he'd be fun to pal around with, I think.

On the job search front, I checked back in with a place that has teaching fellowships available. This organization is perfect for me, because it's a very open ended teaching program that functions outside of the school system and uses professionals, from various fields, to expose kids to all kinds of jobs and experiences that they would never see in the typical classroom. My getting this job is a bit of a long shot, but I think I'm absolutely perfect for it.

recouperation

So, I'm home safe and sound, as my mother says. The whole NY trip wasn't as bad as I made it sound in my last post. I got used to the godawful pink Betty Boop room (or at least learned to tune it out). I did, in fact, end up getting a ticket to the Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged show, and a great seat at that. The show was funny, and I'd definitely reccommend it.

I eventually made it down to "Ground Zero" and took a bunch of pictures of the memorial walls and the construction. (By the way, it's not worth buying the ticket and waiting in the line to see the hole in the ground, you can just walk up to it without any waiting or monetary involvement.) The odd thing about the memorial wall, in front of the church, is that right behind the wall is a cemetary. At first, I thought that they had buried the people killed in the WTC right there, but then realized that it was just a cemetary which happened to be there at the church. There is also still a huge black glass building that is covered in a black veil (appropriate isn't it?) because most of the glass windows were blown out on the side facing the towers. This building (and the memorial wall stuff) is really the only thing left that indicates that the area isn't just under regular old construction.

I hate to say it, but, other than the obvious lives lost, the destruction of these monsterous corporate monoliths doesn't bother me in the least. In fact, the loss of the twin towers and their neighboring buildings opens up the dark and cramped area that was lower Manhattan. (It's now sunfilled and would be a beautiful place to put a garden and park.) Plus, I can't imagine that any of the business that was going on inside the demolished buildings was beneficial for humanity or the planet. If someone had held a gun to my (or my mother's) head an I HAD to pick a place in the US to be attacked, the WTC would have been near the top of my list. (I would, of course, insist that people and other living things be evacuated first...)

What's funny is that I didn't have the guts to put up my "peace is patriotic" sticker at the memorial wall. Usually I'm not at all afraid to speak my mind, but in this case, I just couldn't bring myself to make a statement, no matter how compassionate the intent was.

On my last day in NY, I took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The weather was extrordinarily warm for February, and it was a lovely ride. The statue herself is closed, but the island is open. So I walked around (I'd never been there) and checked stuff out. The original symbolism behind Lady Liberty is something I wholeheartedly believe in, though it is probably not the symbolism that the typical American attaches to her. It was a gift from France signifying the two countries' friendship, and the seven rays of her crown represent the seven continents, so it was an international symbol, not an imperial one. The statue came to stand for freedom and democracy (something that our country could use right about now), and under her robes, she is actually pulling her feet out of the "shackles of tyranny". (I'm not sure, but I think that the manufacturer's mark on the shackles reads "GWB".) After taking a ton of pictures of the Big Lady, I went off to Ellis Island. I checked to see if my surname, Cronburg, was anywhere in their databases, and found a bunch of similar names, but not the exact name. Clearly, my family must have changed the spelling at some point quite recently. I, personally, would love to revert back to the more likely correct Kronborg, or something.

I also managed to find my way to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (did I mention that the NYC subway system is astoundingly confusing?). The Garden was somewhat disappointing, but at least it was free, for some reason. The water garden room in the main greenhouse was pretty nice, though. Its too bad that they don't do more activities and programs in the wintertime. Right now is the perfect time to start planting seeds and they could so easily let visitors plant seeds and take them home to grow themselves. So many museum program planners are really uncreative, it's sad.

I got home just in time for the Critical Mass bike ride, and the rescheduled Janeane Garofalo show. Jason pulled his usual ditching act and I ended up getting the Jef to go with me, which worked out great. (Though Jason is still a jerk for ditching me yet again.) I love this woman. She has almost exactly my same brain chemistry and she's pro-Nader. Her show isn't so much stand-up comedy as it's spoken word storytelling. She had this fantastic bit about the boils our favorite King George keeps getting. She said that it was a manefestation of his unspoken fears of being responsible for a whole country, and that it really was a porthole through which the man was trying to escape out of his body. This left a great, yet disgusting image in my head, similar to something that Bill Plympton might draw. As we were leaving the theater, a woman in front of us said to her companion "I'm glad that you didn't like it either. I didn't understand anything she was talking about at all." Ummmmm...what? Maybe this woman found the tickets on the street or won them or something. Sure, Janeane is an acquired taste, and incredibly opinionated, but why would someone pay $45 to see a one-woman show, if she didn't already have some clue as to what to expect? Weirdo.

So, now that my NY adventure is behind me, I have to buckle down and do some Random Turtley stuff. Seed planting, zines, stickers, and bike volunteer work are all at the top of my list of things to do. And maybe find the floor of my bedroom, too. That would be nice.

PS. The St. Marks area, and the East Villiage, of NYC is very cool. The Angelica restaraunt, in particular, made the whole trip worth it. All vegan, all healthy, almost all organic and locally produced, and great food. Not the kind of stuff you usually find at health food places, but the kind of stuff you find in hoity toity expensive restaraunts in the city. Go there if you are ever hungry in NYC.

live from New York

It's me. Well, by the time anyone reads this I'll be back home, but right now I'm in the middle of Time Square. I just tried to get half price day of show tickets to, well, anything really, but the line was enormous, and there was only one show that they even had some tickets for (The Complete Abridged Shakespear). So I decided to forgo it, and wander around.

Speaking of wandering around, and NYC in general, I abhor it. I love Boston, but NYC is just plain cruddy and full of big, monolithic buildings. Blah. My "hotel" sucks too. The website made it look really cool, but they gave me the Betty Boop room and it's all pink and the whole room is about the size of a walk in closet.

Well, I'm going to check out St. Marks now. I'll see what that place is all about and let you know.

ow

It's taken three days to even begin to recover from my previously mentioned dancing/bowling/biking extravaganza. My thighs are still a bit stiff, particularly walking downstairs. And I tried to scratch my back this morning but couldn't quite get my "bowling" arm to extend far enough to reach. My body is such a wuss.

Well, it's less than 36 hours before I board that bus to NYC. And, yep, I'm starting to panic. As a kid, I used to be so outgoing. Then something happened (maybe moving to five different schools by age 13?) and I became almost panic attacky shy. After college I kind of outgrew it all. But I still feel really weird doing stuff that I've never done before by myself. Though I've been to New York a few times before, I've never been entirely responsible for entertaining myself there, or finding my way around. (Plus, I cut up my NYC subway map for an art project, so I have nothing to go on right now. Damn creativity!) But at least I have a plan. And a couple of backup ideas, too. Unfortunately, my grand idea of getting tickets to the Daily Show was thwarted when I called and found out that you need to get tickets two months in advance. My mom wants me to see the Rosie O'Donnel show. No thanks.

So, after about five months of writing this journal, not one person is reading it, as far as I can tell. My dad occasionally checks it, and a couple of my exes even more rarely come for a visit, but that's it. I do, however get a bunch of hits from people looking for some version of punk/diy crafts. Maybe at some point, when I finally get around to redoing my real Random Turtle Productions website, I'll put up some projects and definitely a link section. For now, you folks should check out GetCrafty.com, Not Martha, and of course, Gawth Craft, which has no pictures, but it is nifty nonetheless.

As for my zine idea that I had a month ago which I was plannig on doing for Beantown Zinetown, Boston's zine fest, I think I'm going to go with something else. I think I'm gonna do a city bicyclist's survival guide, since I think that it might be really useful, and easier for me to pull off in a month. Ooooh, and I want to make some more stickers. I'm think of getting "slower is sexier", "bike: the real SUV", and maybe one more. The only problem is that the place that I got my stickers at last time changed url's and I can't find them now...

little blue tyvek wristband

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I was dancing tonight, with a guy, at a bowling alley, to something that I can only imagine was jungle house music. How's that for unexpected? The bowling was pretty predictible as a concept, but the dancing (and the fact that there was a male of the species involved) came from completely out of left field. Actually, the fact that I didn't suck at bowling was also a nice surprise. So yeah, I was dancing, and it was fun. I haven't danced with a guy in a good four years. Tonight's dance partner wasn't the coolest dancer on the dancefloor (no offense, Tim), but I'm rarely one to take that sort of thing seriously anyway, so it was cool.

It took me nearly an hour and a half to ride home, and I don't think that my toes will ever recover from the cold. (Winter seems to have finally arrived in New England.) But the roads were nice and quiet and the stars were out in full force (inasmuch as they can be in the streetlight-filled city). Now I'm home, toasty, uncharacteristically happy, and very, very tired. Sleepies.

video games for mindless tools

In theory, I am a huge fan of computer/video games. The problem is that the vast majority are of the "wander around, pick things up, and shoot at stuff" ilk. I can't imagine why anyone would find this even remotely enjoyable for more than fifteen minutes. My roommate spent EIGHT HOURS yesterday doing just this. Every time I peeked into the living room it was like deja vu.

This is not to say that computer games can't be interesting, but good heavens, at least make them challenging. And for goddess's sake, make some real controllers. Steering a vehicle with your thumb is just plain dumb. (Heh, that rhymes.) With all of the emphasis on realism in gaming, you'd think that controllers would have gotten better, but they have just gotten sillier. A joystick, like the Atari had, bears at least a vague resemblance to something you might use if you really steering a spaceship or somesuch. And what's up with all of those damn buttons? It all started with Dragon's Lair and a couple of other arcade games from the mid-eighties. It's like having to learn to touch type. I want to challenge my brain, not my finger coordination.

The Civilization-type games are a little better, since they are more about strategy than anything else. But the graphics are too dull for my tastes.

Ah, well. Maybe someday I'll install my Starship Titanic game and actually play it. If anyone could do a game right it was Douglas Adams.

this one is for my ex

Nerd Porn.

(That would be the ex named Jason)

hope is in an open window

Had my usual encounter with an ignorant automobile driver on my way home from work. She was gunning her engine because she didn't have enough room to pass me on one of Cambridge's tiny side streets (which would be HUGE if it weren't for the two lanes of parked cars...). We both stopped at an intersection, with me in the middle of the lane and signalling a left turn. When the light turned green she bizarrely tried to make a left turn while PASSING me on the RIGHT!? When I caught up to her ten seconds later at the next intersection, she opened her window and shouted at me that I should be on the right when making a left turn. I told her, rather curtly, that she should learn how to drive. But, instead of the usual swearing and squealing of tires, she actually stopped, giving me the opportunity to tell her what the laws of the road really say about making left turns. I told her that I was on the bicycle committee and that, in the eyes of traffic law, a bicycle is essentially the same as a car. I even offered her a brocure on safe driving/riding. She declined, but to my surprise, she STILL didn't swear or threaten to kill me! Folks, there is indeed hope left.

And now for a random act of typical upper-management insanity: I work for a book publisher, and today the president of the company declared that, instead of getting more bookshelves, we should have fewer books. Is this his way of saying that we're all going to be out of a job soon?

homebody

I've been vegging again. All week. Doing a lot of cooking and baking to try and save some money. My plan for the rest of the weekend is to avoid footbal as much as possible. My roommate Seth is going to a pagan potluck tonight, and I'm thinking of going, or maybe I'll finally get out to see the Harry Potter movie which is playing at the cheap theater in Davis Square.

The trip to NYC seems like it's a go. I found the coolest hotel/hostel called the Chelsea Star which has very hip themed rooms for less than half the price of a normal Manhattan hotel. I've requested the Star Trek room, with the Orbit room (painted blue and completely covered in glow-in-the-dark starsfor) as a backup. And, Greyhound has conveniently chosen to drastically drop their fares for some of their Boston to NYC busses. So, the whole four day trip is going to cost me about $160, plus food. Now, I just need to find cheap and fun places to go that aren't clubs...

the future of comics is only 4 years old

I went to a talk by Scott McCloud today. He is the man who revolutionized the way artists think about comics. He pointed out that sequential art has been with humanity for thousands of years, and that the idea of comics shouldn't be as limiting as society tends to think. Many people, when they think of comics think of superheros, or fat orange cats. But comics can be about any subject and just about any style. Scott McCloud was one of the first people to make such a statement, in his book Understanding Comics. Plus, he had a really great concept of what art, itself, is. I learned more about the idea of art from his comic book, than I did in four years at art school.

Anyway, this comics' god starts his lecture, and he's going on about what makes a comic a comic, using a Powerbook (the same one I'm typing on right now, the guy's obviously got taste!) to illustrate his points. So he's talking, and drawing little eye pattern shapes along the comics on the Mac's screen, and then this adorable little girl in the front row slowly raises her hand. The girl can't be much older than 5, probably just 4. She props her hand up there for several minutes until "Daddy", at the podium, finally sees her. He lets her ask a question, which is about some computer game that she thinks he has on his computer. He tells her that he doesn't have it. He goes on with his lecture. A few minutes pass, and the little girl raises her hand agian. She askes about another computer game. No dice. When she raises her hand a third time, her mom comes over and quietly tells her to let Daddy do his lecture, and then Mom takes the kid off to the back of the room. Dad gets to go on, and he talks about alll the kinds of shapes and dimensions that comics can take (check out his website for more on that). After about a half an hour the little girl rematerializes with a handwritten list of questions, which she presents to her dad. (Might I remind you that the kid is no more than 5 years old. Most kids can't even scribble their names at that point, let alone write entire sentences!) Eventually, dad reads off her questions, mostly about comic stips that he's done. He dillegently shows the audience his daughters requests, which are, indeed, very funny. At this point the kid is basically running the show, and she's won over all of the audience. Dad finally comes to the last request on her list. He has a hard time reading her 4-year-old's handwriting, so asks her to read it to him. She says she wants him to show the audience the one about the girl and all of the things breaking. Dad pauses, realizes what images she's talking about, laughs to himself, and then says, "No honey, that's not one of mine, that's Run Lola Run."

Damn. That kid is gonna be amazing when she grows up.

Tonight: more parties. An earthy crunchy one at my friends' Joel and Lynn, and then, if I have the energy, it's off to the Masquerade at the sci-fi convention. I'm in full pagan/gypsy mode with my purple velvet dress and lots of jingly things (to ward the bad spirits off, I suppose) so I should fit in extremely well at both.

it's official now

Last night, for the first time in 20 years, I played a role playing game. A whole game, too. And I didn't die. Actually, I didn't really get to do anything dangerous at all, so dying really wasn't all that likely. Ironically, my character had the fast car and submachine gun. So I was elected to be the getaway driver. By the time our mission got to setting off the tear gas (creating a diversional panic in the mall), killing off the security guards, and kidnapping the nuclear (notice there is no U anywhere in that word?) scientist, all I had to do was drive away in my superfast eurocar. The only time I even got to roll any dice was to try and get a fake ID (I didn't get it). But it's all good, I had no idea how the point system worked, and we spent most of the time doing strategizing anyway. It was my brilliant idea to use something other than an explosion for the diversion, and the gas worked out quite well, if I say so myself.

So it was a lot of fun. Now, all I need to do is find a game where I can have a bike, and the goal ISN'T to blow things up and kill people...

winter doldrums

You know I'm bored when I both cut my hair and color it at the same time. My big excitement for the week was that I finally went down to city hall to get sworn in onto the bicycle committee. As expected, I had to pretend that I was some sort of christian, and swear to god. I almost said something, but decided that it would be better not to start off my political careed being argumentative. So I figure I'll send off a quick note to the mayor and alderpeople to let them know that making people declare their devotion to some random mythical character is not particularly appropriate in a country which was supposedly founded on religious freedom. (No, I won't word it quite that obnoxiously.)

The other vaguely interesting thing that happened to me recently was that my buddy over at Mass Bike is working on getting me a part time job there. I'd still have to work at my corporate job too, at least for now, but I'd be spending a day or two a week in a job that I really care about. I'm psyched.

This weekend, my roommates and I are going to some sci-fi convention, hopefully I won't be bored to death. I used to really love those things, but the last few I've been to were kinda disappointing. We'll see.

So, yeah, it's pretty dullsville in Random Turtle central these days. But February and March pomise to be much more interesting. I'm thinking about going to NYC, officially for a publishers' convention, but unofficially, just to hang out. I found a cool hostel/hotel thing that has theme rooms. And when I get back from NY, Jeneanne Garafalo is doing her rescheduled show from last October. And then in March, the zine fair will get me all geared up and doing creative stuff (I've already planted some basil seeds for my free seedling project). And somewhere in the middle of all this, I really need to get cracking on my kids bike art contest for the bike committee. So, I guess it's good that I'm taking some time to realax now that I can...

bored of the rings

So I finally went to see the Fellowship of the Ring, and I was not terribly suprised that I found it very, very boring. I'd read the book as a kid and didn't like it, so I wasn't expecting much. I loved the Hobbit, but for some reason this one just didn't hold my attention. I don't know why everyone thinks that this movie was so great. If it wasn't for the Tolkein name, I'd bet it would have gotten much more middling reviews. Sure, the visuals were great, but the plot was simpler than your typical Saturday morning cartoon, and the character development was nearly nonexistant. Maybe this is one of those trippy movies that you should be stoned to be able to really appreciate it. I must admit that I was fascinated by the set design, particularly in Bilbo's house and garden. I also spent much of the movie analysing the various camera tricks that they used to make the Hobbits look smaller then the actors actually were. It worked pretty well, except when they were using kids as doubles for the long shots.

6 philosophers walk into a bar...

Actually, on the way to the bar, the philosophers are riding their bikes and come up to an intersection where there is a red light. What do they do? Well, after reading a post by one of the cool people from the Mass Bike listserve, I came up with the following:

Plato would stop and wait for the green light. He believes that people should be respectful. He's like me, a believer that you should be good because it is the right thing to do.

Machiavelli would scream though the light, swerving only if traffic endangered his life. He basically takes the view of a pissed off anarchist--Do whatever you want because people suck, and don't deserve respect.

Kant would probably stop at the light. He seems to be a solopsistic anarchist--Act the way you want everyone else to act, and hope that they follow you. Actually, it's not clear what he would do at a red light. If he thought that everyone should run red lights, then he would run the red light to set an example. If he thought that people should respect traffic laws, then he would wait for the green.

Lock and Hobbes would, themselves, wait for the green, but they wouldn't expect anyone else to do so. They are the pragmatists--People aren't likely to respect the red light unless they fear punishment.

Furthermore, Buddha would treat the red light as a gift, allowing him to take time to be at peace with his thoughts, and to contemplate the universe.

Heh.

er...

There, apparenently, was once a car titled the Mormon Meteor. I just can't fathom what the manufacturer was thinking...

barbie nightmares

I had a funny dream this morning. Batman and Robin were my roommates. (Yes, I have pretty cool dreams.) There was some sort of crime occurring, so the crimefighters were getting ready to do their thing. I was supposed to go with them, but I couldn't find anything practical to wear! I kept looking though my closet and coming up with all sorts of girly things like lacy bustiers and delicate little shoes. I eventually gave up and put on some sort of completely sexy see-through number. Then my (long lost) best friend from San Francisco showed up and we fooled around. Finally, Batman came home and was annoyed with me for blowing him off. I tried to explain my clothing dilemma, but it wasn't a very convincing excuse, and I felt pretty guilty.

The (subconscious) result was that I got up this morning and decided to forgo the dressy stuff usually wear, and put on some very practical jeans and a black top. I am now well prepared to fight crime!

A postcsript to this whole thing is that, on my way to work, I was involved in a traffic accident. Some woman, also on a bike, apparently had an utter lack of any sort of common sense (or knowledge of traffic laws) and decided that it would be ok for her to keep going through a red light with a whole stream of traffic already coming through the intersection on a green light. She rode right in front of me and we collided when I slammed on my brakes. She then had the audacity to say "I thought you saw me"! Um, yeah, lady, I saw you. I just couldn't imagine that you were boneheaded enough to ride right into me! I told her that running red lights was stupid and that this was one of the reasons that people despise bicyclists so much. She did apologise profusely, and I think she learned her lesson. So, hopefully, my crimefighting is done for the day, but now I have a sore wrist and a big ole bruise on my butt. No wonder Batman wears all that padding...

real men knit

I'm sitting here listening to weird independent music on local college radio and reading punk craft websites and I came upon this great photograph of Russel Crowe knitting that I just had to share.

2002: the war year

George Dubya has big plans for the world this year. Not only is he going to continue to declare war on random third world countries, but he's also going to be working hard to eliminate corporate taxes, pillage any area of untouched wilderness he can locate, and, of course, suckering America's children into sending him their allowances. All in your name. The man is an island!

Well, that's the way I wanted to start the new year. Fully prepared to give up. Someone recently reminded me of that eternal classic bumpersticker "Where are we? And why are we in this handbasket?" What's even more ironic is that it was one of the aforementioned people who hang out with the hippy christian gang.

But, in true Random Turtle spirit, I refuse to get out the white flag. I may not be able to stop America's favorite pet dictator from bombing the crap out of anyone, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of my own personal war on greed. And I'm planning on doing another zine with the working title of "Random Turtle's Guide to Not Giving Up". Along with my ususal free herb seedlings, I'll be bringing the zine to Rich Mackin's annual Beantown Zinetown zinefest. If you are in the Boston area, you should clear your calendar's for the last weekend of March.

As for the personal stuff, I've been busy in a very quiet kind of way these past couple of weeks. The holidays were spent with my families, and my dad and stepmother ended up cancelling their plans to be in Texas for Christmas. The reason for the cancellation was bad: Their cat for 19 years died. (2001 was just a horrible year for the kitties, as my own best friend Pooh died :( last spring, as well.) But, at least, I was not deprived of parents on the holiday. I gave everyone gift donations to environmental and social organizations, and I think that most of the recipients were quite happy with what I chose to give them. I, myself, got mostly utterly useless stuff, though I did get a lot of tea, which I can always use. And, in a grand gesture of really bad timing, I managed to use a gift certificate that my dad and stepmother had given me for my birthday (last May) to buy the exact same dynamo-powered radio that they had already planned to give me for Solstice. Funny thing was that my dad still wrapped it up and gave it to me, even knowing that I had just gotten one. I think that he was just so proud of himself for finding something that I really wanted. (And it was a really great gift idea.) I ended up giving the radio to my mom and stepfather. Even if they don't enjoy it as much as I do, it will come in handy, since their power goes out on a fairly regular basis out there in rural Maine.

Speaking of Maine, after getting back from my visit with my dad, I ventured up to my mom's, and had a nice long visit with her. The New Year's party was disappointing. Most of the same people who were there last year were there, but it was hoseted by someone else, and just didn't have the same quality. For one thing, there was no live music! And, for another, someone decided that it would be great fun to take the Xmas tree outside and set it on fire! But I did get to hang out with some of my mom's cool friends, and that was nice.

Now I'm back to the regular day-to-day life, where the biggest plans I have are to try and get to see "Lord of the Rings" before it's out of the theaters, to remember to water the plants, and to rummage through people's trash in search of treasures.

My favorite Jef was apparently interviewed in the Boston Globe last Sunday. He, for some reason didn't tell anyone about it though, and I have been unable to find a copy of the newspaper (the local City Weekly section that is only distributed right around Boston), so I have no idea what the article says, other than the fact that it's about his zine "Urban Pantheist". I guess I'll be checking in the recycling bins, too, next trash day...

So, yeah, happy new year. It certainly should be interesting, if nothing else.