Sugarbush Revisited

I'm having a show at The Mitchell Building 3800 Commerce, Deep Ellum, TX on 03-May in the evening... more details to come. Everyone's invited!

Eduardo Valdivieso

http://www.introzo.com/

While doing cool website research, I found an artist that I can't get enough of. When I get a new place with an open floor plan, I see this piece in my space. Go enjoy and buy his stuff.

Gotta Love a Fart Joke

Farting Preacher 5

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Don't that Bobby Tilton just talk like an angel? I remember seeing this guy as a kid. Makes me wonder whatever happen to Bob Larson. My dad used to listen to him for musical suggestions - whatever Bob was denouncing, usually sounded pretty good. Ah, bonding with Daddy in the car after school. What sweet memories.

France pics Uploaded

Bonjour les amis! I want to tell you every story that goes with these pics. So, if anything peaks your interest, just ask me for the full story.

A link to see the photos full size:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dogs4paws/

Paris slideshow:



Down south slideshow:

Grody to the Max

I'm not a vegetarian, but I find the USDA, the FDA, the industrial processing of food-destined animals, and the quality of life of those animals to be questionable and embarrassing unethical at the very least. A simple suggestion for beef growers: don't feed cows to cows - its an abomination. If you want to calfs to grow up big and strong, invest in good nutrition, which obviously doesn't include force feeding cow blood to said calfs... then no more mad cow disease. A simple suggestion for beef processors: when dressing out a cow, don't put meat that you want to sell in the cows poo - then no more E-coli. Strange how something so common sensical is such a novel idea.

I ate a Jack in the Box not long ago and within hours was uncontrollable projectile vomiting... could it have been linked to this recall? Don't know, but if the tainted bulk product is part of a sale dating back to Feb 2006, how many people have been affected? It must unfathomable. So, when all of our food stuffs are genetically modified, inorganically grown, processed or otherwise controlled by agencies that have seemingly bent over and grabbed their ankles for the lobbists of corporate entities that only focus on their bottom line, what happens? Thank you republicans... this kind of crap was never a problem before Reagan deconstructed and deregulated.

Capitalism is bad.

I gott go.

Going to France

I'm off to France for two weeks with Michelle of Flower Road. We fly into Paris and then straight down to Toulouse. Hopefully a Sunday trip down to Corrcisone if its sunny and we're not to jet-lagged. Many days of study and then back to Paris for 4 days of exploring and sighseeing. Maybe even a day in London if I can catch the Chunnel. :) Come back soon - photos, stories, etc coming soon.

http://www.flowerroad.net

Top 10 Songs of 2007

Faves this year... and just plain listened to a lot this year:

1. Leo and Leona - Butch Hancock
2. Badder Badder Schwing (featuring Fatboy Slim) Freddy Fresh
3. Think - Aretha Franklin
4. Spanish Grease - Willie Bobo
5. The World is on Fire - Billy Harvey
6. 23 Minutes in Brussels - Luna
7. Namaste - Beastie Boys
8. Kapt'n Kirk - Bob Schneider
9. Gymnopedie No. 1 - Erik Satie
10. Higher Ground - Red Hot Chili Peppers (Stevie Wonder cover)

Happy New Year!


This one is funny with the bad counting and after the drop chatter.

Writer's Strike Link

Help a writer. Help someone escape the crush of big business. Help a union.

http://firedoglake.com/wga/index.php/write/compose/

Got run...

Babies gravitate toward Good Samaritans

Today I studied two topics... 'why humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others' and 'baby social behaviors.' When I stumbled on to this new baby study it made me happy, so that's what we're going with today. (I also studied the theory that all emotions boil down to happy/sad/scared/mad and I'm trying to apply it to daily life to help get to the heart of things and cut through the noise.)

So, babies are like totally smart… it’s a survival thing. (Also, I read an article on cooperation that states that humans and apes have 'happy' hormone releases from cooperating and helping others, but I can't find it again. If anyone has read it, link it to me please.)

Six- and 10-month-old babies are much more capable judges of character than previously thought. Not only can infants pick out a Good Samaritan, they tend to identify with them, according to a Yale University study published in the journal Nature.

The study released last month presented babies with a diorama-like display of an anthropomorphic circle struggling to make it up a hill. Just when it appeared that all hope was lost, a heroic triangle appeared, and pushed the circle to the top. The round climber bounces, clearly elated to have reached the summit. The same scenario is played out again, only this time a square appears at the top of the hill and pushes the circle to the bottom.

The babies were then asked to pick a toy – the helper or the hinderer, as scientists called them. One hundred percent of 6-month-olds and 87.5 percent of 10-month-olds chose the helper. The results were consistent even when the triangle and the square swapped places as good guy and bad guy. In several other iterations of the experiment, the helper, regardless of shape or color, won out.

"Babies are very competent socially," says Kiley Hamlin, lead author of the study. "They can figure this kind of stuff out without people explicitly teaching what's nice and not nice and who's nice and who's not nice."

In another component of the study, researchers showed the circle choosing to sit with the helper or the hinderer. In this instance they found that 10-month-old babies were far more adept at noticing something seemed strange when the circle decided to sit with the hinderer. (They figured this out by how long the baby watched the helper or hinderer pair up with the circle, working under the assumption that babies, like adults, study something that appears out of the ordinary.)

While other research has shown that babies make assessments about people based on their physical appearance – they gravitate toward attractive people – these new findings show more complex levels of judgment.

"In any species that needs to cooperate as much as humans do … we always need to know who might be a good cooperator and who might not," says Ms. Hamlin.

Thank you Tom A. Peter.

Why Do You Keep This Hideous Photograph?

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Childhood fancies

When I was a child one of my fantasies was to move to nyc, marry Mikhail Baryshnikov and be tutored by Twyla Tharp and Diane Von Furstenberg on moving gracefully from girlhood to ladyhood to womanhood all the while being incredibly sexy and smart.

I still desire to transition from one frame of my life to the next with grace and elegance. I still look to strong older women for guidance and inspiration.

Mikhail Baryshnikov


Twyla Tharp


Diane Von Furstenberg

Very Short Novels

A blog has caught my interest. I've read it with fervor... I'm a bit addicted even and try to only read one story per day. It is hard. The stories are compelling and only 299 words long. I submit to you, Very Short Novels. It is not unlike organizing a small space; only the essentials, but with style and aesthetic.

http://davidbdale.wordpress.com

Micheal Moschen

Listen to this in a quiet space... just zone on the rhythm and the movement.

Happy Thanksgiving. Today I'm thankful for ritual and tradition.

Sweeping the Clouds Away

An astonishing revelation of the child-proofing of our nation. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

---------
Sweeping the Clouds Away
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
NY Times
Published: November 18, 2007
Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.

For the complete article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin

I am me always

You'll see here in Top Dog's frontal lobe... this shadow, its the silly indicator and she's got a big one.


I adore the silly. I respect the absurd. The off the wall and easy to make fun of. Everything has merit if you have the right perspective. So don't freak out if I say Constantine played a good show or I want to see Hitman. I'm still my normal pondering, observant self. The me that I am can appreciate... period. Why does everything have to be taken so seriously? Love the sudden attention for what was described by someone as a possible aneurysm, but its just me. Love y'all and keep reading! Thanks.

Flocking Starlings

The way Starlings flock is amazing. I thought for sure there would be a treasure trove of myths about them, but I haven't found one.

While unrelated to the starling, this is an interesting tidbit I found in my searches: - The kingfisher, called halcyon, was believed to be able to make the oceans calm while incubating. This legend is thought to be the origin of the saying "Halcyon Days."

Constantine Maroulis and Jim Boggia Rock Bend Studio

Constantine can sing, is a showman and has incredibly devoted fans. Jim Boggia fab guitarist, fab vocalist, compliments Constantine well and is hilariously uncensored. Constantine does do a lot of covers and he does them well. With that, there may not be a cd made of the evening b/c of licensing and such. Keep an ear out.

She's So Hot She's Making Me Sexist

God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse Mediated by H.L. Hix

Review: "H. L. Hix is one of the most distinctive writers of our time."

Review: "...untroubled authority..., and the talent to make us weep."

In poems at once playful and grave, National Book Award finalist H. L. Hix pits excerpts from the speeches of George W. Bush against arguments from Osama bin Laden in a poetic dialogue embracing politics, literature, language, and culture. Reframing Beltway sound-bites and Islamic fundamentalist rhetoric, God Bless delves into the minds of two men whose intransigence has had global consequences. To break the stalemate, this original sequence of poems plucks the antagonists from their bunkers in Oval Office and Afghani cave and presents them for the first time face to face. Hix then opens the conversation to a diverse panel of experts, including the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, CNN s terrorism analyst, distinguished professors of Arabic and Islamic studies, and other prominent writers and authorities, who shed light on the issues raised by the poems.

H. L. Hix teaches in and directs the creative writing MFA at the University of Wyoming. In addition to his books from Etruscan Press - two poetry collections, Chromatic and Shadows of Houses a collection of essays on poetry entitled As Easy As Lying, and an anthology, Wild and Whirling Words - he has published a number of other books of poetry, poetry in translation, and criticism. His poetry has been recognized with the Grolier Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Peregrine Smith Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Chromatic was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry.

A link to a couple of podcasts from a recent radio interview: http://www.soundauthors.com/

bend studio + constantine = controversy

Tonight, I got my Lakewood Newsletter from The Advocate there is a link to their blog covering the controversy of Constantine coming to Bend Studio. wow - that's controversy worthy, really with everything going on in Dallas music these days? Cool, let's sell out the venue. Go see how Constantine will make an intimate acoustic venue work. (7:30 doors open/ 8:00pm start. $15 adv.-$20 at the door. Tickets = www.bendstudio.com under music.)

Here's a direct link to the blog:
http://backtalkeastdallas.typepad.com/back_talk/2007/11/a-bit-of-dubya-.html

Enjoy the drama, I did. *gasp*