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part spooky stories, part japanese culture that just seems weird to me.

the biblical space yurt

i like checking email first thing after waking up because it's the affectation of productivity without getting out from under the blankets.

caroline sent me to see this "nestrest". we can put this in the backyard and i'll live in it while the weather's nice.


but the best part by far were the cracks about this particular photo...




see: biblical space yurt


lol

aw here we go again

i'm moving.
mailing addresses, not urls. although i've considered the latter. but curio is properly three years old right about now which is too young to abandon and too old to abort. looking back, i see that going weeks without new posts is common practice. frankly, don't know why i bother with excuses since everyone must be accustomed by now.

so - here we have photos from the home currently being boxed. there's an endless supply of cardboard at the store. good fortune for not only my own apt packing, but my mom's as well. she's leaving her home of a decade in another week or so. and now all those things i've been dropping off in my old bedroom have to be sorted. for instance, the box of dozens of movie ticket stubs i saw with my highschool boyfriend. tossed. or the broken desk chair from my childhood. tossed.... my parent's creepy cool collection of bleached animal bones and feathers. kept!

c'est la vie, darlings. life is movement. still, i look forward to settling into a home for more than 12 months at a time. true i like it fresh, but the annual uprooting has its pitfalls.

i thought i'd be selling the sofa when i was contemplating a cross seas move.


been thinking about home home. the homelands. i won't have a house there anymore. which will be fine since i spend so much time there at other folks houses anyway. still pretty certain a few things won't change for a while.


that's kate on their back porch. i think of their house as my home as much or more than i ever did my own.


bug's eye view of a fig tree my dad mistakenly thinks is his. i remember the first time i ate a fig. i was bouncing on the trampoline when dad grabbed one off this tree. he said "fig," but i heard "pig." then he pulled it apart and the fruit's pink fleshy innards grossed me out cause i was seeing tiny pig guts.

w-w-w-why

seeding

it seems we've just cleared the thick of summer heat and i'm thinking about next.
those are moon and stars watermelons.
obviously, they look bangin,' but are they as sweet as they look?

seed source
slideshow of the watermelon variety

also, i know where i'm moving next. thank the lord that was easy.

and tacking onto the endless thread of heavenly themes, i got a friend who's read the twilight series to just tell me what happens.

it only gets dumber. still, i can't swear that i won't see it. i'm maladjusted.

weird with a captial weird

read this article today about why westerners are weirdos. (everyone is weird)
but references to the Machiguenga tribe fascinate me. i learned about them first in an essay on language and cognition in the best of science and nature writings 2008 which caroline and i sat reading aloud on the bookstore floor. that's when she told me about how they count 'one, two, many' and something else about how they don't reference objects not present within the immeadiate environment. mmmm. i wish i had that book to jog my memory. but yeah, machiguengans seem to exude the charmingly pragmatic hunter-gatherer lifestyles i've always fetishized, but shouldn't really speak to as i sit on sipping a glass of uv filtered water. in any case, today's article notes that the Machiguengans think it's absurd to turn down any amount of money offered to you. of course. i'm proud to share this sensibility. today i was offered a honey straw by a stranger. i accepted because it would be absurd not to.

further reading:
link to the Brain and Behavioral Sciences journal article online

(willed myself not to make an ikat/cat pun. you're welcome.) image from Brea Souders

hit me

requested black lightning bolt earrings. check it out!
sweet, no?
Hj Designs

twilight

sunset from mars. captured in 2005 by Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.
the visible sun is two-thirds the size as what we see and twilight is roughly twice as long as ours due to heavy atmospheric dust scattering the light.

there's a reason

i think there's a reason that this is shark week and not starfish week

b positive.

i found out my blood type yesterday. i suppose that's good to know.

on a related note, a neighbor told me he's been meeting vampires and aliens lately. he said his friends think that he is delusional. perhaps he is. but i reckon most people are a little delusional about something.

Trouble - Jackie DeShannon

if that mp3 link doesn't work, hit refresh or visit aquarium drunkard proper.

manners, morals, emotions

try this at home

Infinity Guitars - Sleigh Bells
Run the Heart - Sleigh Bells

neon image via Freudenthal/Verhagen

the homeland vacation is nearing an end.

jungle love

My first (and favorite) art history professor, Camille Cottrell (sooo boss), just returned from Las Pozas (meaning the pools) where she was researching this magical surrealist garden. You can read a previous article about her study right here.



Designed by the eccentric Englishman* and poet Edward James, this fantastical 80-acre garden is surrealist sculpture, meandering paths, cascading waterfalls, and, of course, pools. There are gates that seemingly lead no where in particular. James must have known (as many architects must) that in walking through a gate there is either a conscious or subconscious sense of change or renewal, of passing from something into something else, somewhere else, an unmistakable sense of place.


I'd like to see this for myself one day, but since today is not the day, I think I can satisfy my wanderlust by visiting Iron Works studio, then Garden (a garden shop with a t-ton of terrariums) where I may continue such musings.

*I think being an eccentric Englishman is actually a profession unto itself.

that's a good looking _______ ____

chicken coup. that's a good looking chicken coup.


forget that this would be covered in bird crap almost immediately.



the breed retreat by frederik roijé

thesis: disco will never die

The Last Days of Disco a favorite film o'moi. I believe this. Disco will always live in our hearts. Right, Thunderheist? Space Cowboy - Thunderheist (click)


Yeah, that's a good song. And not just because it reminds us of Clint Eastwood.


Who is sooo not disco...


But maybe because of some intrinsic link to space indians.
(photo from a starry eyed weekend project taken earlier in the spring)

In any case, here's my context:

Dendritic Arbor Day

Did you know that in 1979 the Woodland Zoo in Seattle developed the first naturalistic gorilla exhibit? 1979! So, that thing we did as kids when we put a stick and a leaf in the jar with the bug...that idea really hadn't developed so much in zoological practices until about 30 years ago.

That's Pete, a resident of the Woodland Zoo.

Learn more...listen to this Radio Lab podcast about Zoos.
(the bit about China was recently confirmed for me from a friend whose spent a year teaching there. how bum is that?)

And check out the really cool landscape architects who created Pete's home.

That's the "Artic Ring of Life" at the Detroit Zoological Park.

That's a dendritic arbor. One thing I learned about Pete is that, like all primate brains, his dendridic arbors will grow when he is in an natural environment with choices, interactions, and challenges. Now, if something with a primate brain is stressed, malnourished, or isolated from contact the dendridic arbors will shrink, actually retract. Managing stress in your environment is important. Having healthy, growing neurons is like having a really good processor in your brain which makes you smarter and happier.


BONUS!!! Something else entirely...The Giraffe Manor (danke, Kelsey!)

snow & the fauna

a photo i took

a song i like
Animal - Miike Snow
Animal (Fake Blood Remix) - Mike Snow
i like to make that "tooka tooka tooka" sound.


a new vid from miike snow.

last week, i ordered this (the vinyl text, not the door):


and received a jackalope silhouette with it (bunny bonus!).
it did not look like this.

one you go tech, you ain't never goin' back

alternately titled: the swedes
from emmas designblogg

See also: Lev Livet Leende o Hus & Hem




See Also:
I'm Good, I'm Gone - Lykke Li...Live Accoustic with Robyn, among other way rad swedish musicians.




See Also: Fembot - Robyn .... From her new album Body Talk

nostalgie de la boue

Nostalgie de la boue is a phrase I heard very recently, literally meaning 'a desire to return to the mud', but describing that faux povre aesthetic I know so well.

The context was a story about donations to a 12-step program of fancy soaps and things that recovered men could take home to their respective wives and girlfriends as gifts. However, items that followed the school de la boue were, unfortunately, eliminated as their appeal may be lost on many.



It's true though. This is a fancy box of soap. People will pay 20 Euros for this box of soap. I know it's not the box they want. Clemetines at your local Kroger will come in a nearly identical box to this one. Add some twine and a bit of recycled brown paper and your total packaging cost comes to about 7 cents. Your own box of fancy mud soaps can be purchased at Toast U.K., one of my favorite purveyors of primitive romanticism, or romantic primitivism, or what have you.

Speaking of things primitive, through this week has flown a stream of coincidences. And, in fact, just this morning I was introduced to an alternate universe. Truly, an actual landmark of this realm can be explored at a place no more than 40 yards from where I now sit. I saw a man have a heart attack in traffic ysterday. That's not a coincidence, it's only a tragedy. This has been a strange week though. Now getting back to my original tangent...I was watching the film Good Dick yesterday and The Musuem of Jurrasic Technology is mentioned and that's the second time in recent weeks this organization has come into my periphery. (Jason Ritter has a bad case of Beiber-face, btw. No value judgement, just an observance.)

I very much want to tell you about Kymaerica, but I need to do some more research. You see, not all the Kymaerica travel volumes have been published in the linear world. Only numbers 4 & 6 are currently available. This is not a joke.

marina and the diamonds

an orchestral treatment of Hollywood

Her blog.


Marina covers 3oh!3 on Radio1. Like Oooo Oooo.