Found This Weekend

In a box containing important tax documents:

One Daughter Gift Kit sent to me when I first moved to LA. It contains a "Balloon to lift your spirits" and a lucky penny and two pieces of candy that are now sopping with plastic age.

International animal-themed stickers. Look for these on postal correspondence soon.

Idaho patch picked up somewhere in North Idaho circa roadtrip 2003 and a LIVESTRONG bracelet - still in original packaging. Probably given to me by same person that gave me the Daughter Gift Kit. I wonder how all the rubber cause bracelets will fare in landfills.

Tying My Nerves in Knots

It’s Thursday and I’m watching a gold-toned Suburban head directly toward me at about forty-five miles an hour in my lane, I’m waiting to turn into the college parking lot, I try the lights, it’s daylight, it’s nothing, it’s bright, I slam my hand into the center of the steering wheel right over the horn symbol, no sound, my wrist kills, Suburban on course in my lane, Escort wagon behind me, I can see the drivers concerned look, his HFCC parking tag, the SUV driver paying attention to two not-nearly-head-on-collision-worthy (not even within six sizes of collision worthy) women walking on a sidewalk, my wrist hurts, the horn really doesn’t work, like a noiseless scream dream, I try it again, I say what the fuck?!, and then, finally, the driver looks up, swerves, misses me by about three horn symbols and doesn’t look at me, I glance behind me, the escort driver adjusts his mirror, I pull into the parking lot, pull through a spot so I won’t have to back out later, and I try the horn again, and again, and again. No sound. I rub my wrists and head out to meet a student. There is a glitch in the Matrix and I’m pretty sure the alarm system is broken.

It’s Friday and my phone rings with the college number, several times, I think about the missed collision, the students I met with, the one with the serious ‘tude and obnoxious daytime cleavage, the one with the wizard pendant, and the phone rings again, I answer it and a robot tells me to press one if I am able to listen to an emergency message, I press one and the robot tells me that there are armed officers on campus investigating a shooting, a shooter is still on campus and I need to lock down my classroom. I am glad because I am not on campus, I would not be able to lock down my classroom unless chewing gum and pressed powder could hold a door close. The robot calls me back and I don’t answer, his messages are making me nervous. I’m still sixty miles away from campus when I hear about the girl and the shotgun and the guy. They are dead in the Fine Arts Building and it creeps me out, makes me sad, makes me angry. I want someone to tell the robot I don’t need anymore messages.

It’s Saturday and I’m thinking about how it’s been exactly seven years since I was diagnosed with the big C. I spend the first part of the day thinking about that lunch with J on Thursday and the story she told me about the new girl at the YA group, another Hodgkin’s case, how her chemo didn’t work, how her tumors actually got bigger, J kinda has survivors guilt, I never had it until now, after this story, and it makes me think back to my oncologist saying “well looks like you are responding to the chemotherapy!” and I would say “Well I fucking hope so, that is the fucking point, right?” I’d never considered that it doesn’t always work so I make time for survivors guilt, I look up information online how about how the human body supposedly regenerates entirely after seven years, and I find out it’s not true. Not entirely anyway, but only one part of something needs to be wrong for it to be not right. Just like this quite obvious glitch in the Matrix.

And now it’s Sunday. Easter dinner includes a hand-sculpted lamb-shaped loaf of bread. Lambs, unlike goats, make me nervous.

Favorite Student Essay Topics

Some common threads in the minds of college freshman:

• Secret family chicken recipes (more common than you think)
• Poorly structured, guilt-ridden, neurotic, nonsensical, moralistic, and morally skewed anti-abortion arguments
• Teen thievery (mostly clothes, sometimes cars, always ends in mom getting call from cops)

Happy (one day late) Bday WPA

From Writers Almanac:

On this day in 1935, Congress approved the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal program that created jobs for more than 8.5 million people struggling during the Great Depression. One branch of the WPA was the Federal Writers' Project, which employed about 6,000 people, including Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Loren Eiseley, and Richard Wright.

Just in case you are interested in that Federal Writers Program part of the above paragraph, check here.

Welcome Friends

Grey Orbison

My photoblog is suffering because my digital camera has once again, been possessed by the gray orb (check post on 02/07/08). I used to be able to get it out of my camera by gently dropping it on the ground (concrete at a high angle). Now I think I just have to wait it out and hope that the next time I turn my camera on it will be hibernating or maybe I should just stick in the freezer or bowl of rice.

Is anyone else suspicious of that “girls rock” camp where parents pay dirty indie rockers to dress their little girls up like Joan Jett and make them perform rock songs? Isn’t it just a GenXification of the old Jean-Bonet beauty pageant system? Dress girls up to mimic male rockers and perform in the band that mommy never could – grody. Show them how to play instruments and write their own songs and play in their own Geranimal clothing – groovy. Additionally, all instances of toddler faux-hawks and toddler Sex Pistols T-shirts should also cease to exist. Dressing children up in sportsfan gear is ok because they are your ticket to get on the jumbotron. If you have any other questions about raising children consult the Bible or shoot me an email.

What are you doing reading this? Go watch the State game.

Don’t

Yesterday I asked a CVS clerk how she was doing and she said, “ oh.. not that good. I just started to feel sick a little while ago.” And I said something like, “Oh no, I’m sorry that stinks, I think its allergy season.” Or something – I mean who cares – work makes everyone sick. And she says “No its like my stomach. I started feeling bad after I got here. I didn’t eat breakfast so maybe that is why. I came here and my stomach started hurting.” This is where she grabs her giant mushy paunch. “So I bought a dollar twenty-nine bag of pretzels and I ate 8 of them. But I feel worse. Like REALLY sick. To my stomach.”

I like the part of Conde Naste Travler magazine where it goes over customs for different countries. All travel guides for the US tell foreign tourists that, “it is common for Americans to ask how you are doing. They do not want a reply longer than okay or fine. This is strange to many visitors but you will get an odd response if you go into detail on how you are doing.”

They should also include this information in the CVS new employee guide.

Listless

Things that will work around the house in place of sleeping pills:

• Drain cleaner (2tbsp)
• Milk (warm in microwave, do not drink more than ¾ gallon in hour)
• Asprin, Ibruprophin (take more than 20)
• Oven (have canary nearby or set timer)
• Sharp corner of coffee table
• Lincoln Biographies
• Waiting for boyfriend to call

Any Occasion, Really

No update on the home-dug grave but, I bought a cool gift bag (it’s big, like 40inches by 30 inches) from the Hazel Park dollar store today and the clerk asked, “what occasion do you use this for?”

“A male birthday or winter solstice.” I replied.

Also, my sister called with this horrific, heart wrenching tale of modern loneliness that ended in her telling me about an unwelcome advance from a older, gumpy male coworker. She said, “all I ever did was smile at him.” And I scolded her, “you know the power of the L*@#%N smile! Don’t be tossing it around like it is some piece of copper in a have a penny, give a penny cup!”

These are things I said today. If you would have seen me on my walk, maybe you would have gotten something to blog about too.

I love lavender everything:

 

Ethics

What is worse? Publishing a photo I took from the upstairs window at my friends house of their neighbor's mysterious freshly dug grave OR actually digging a grave in your back yard?

Now people, that hole is people size. Something is about to happen, right? ST told me that there are laws about burying bodies. But we couldn’t really think of any. What part of your civic education covered human burial? What is going in that hole?!

I am house-sitting at my friends place. She is an anesthesiologist. She has a bunch of unsexy medical magazines. The theme for April is ETERNAL SLEEP.

Out Like A Lamb.

See you later March. March on out of here like the death troupe you know you are. If you really are spring, then I am Greta Garbo. (Not actually a fair snarky comparison because I am a handsome woman just like GG)

You know what I have enjoyed the most this month? Reading articles about who should fix the auto industry. I totally agree that if GM workers just went vegan and switched to auto-renewing clean coal and used more recycled post-consumer waste on their presentation documents, things would be different. They should all build mini-cars. Actually they should all build mini-razor scooters and we should narrow all of the roads so that there is just one skinny, razor-scooters-only line to Best Buy. We would take the extra concrete from the old wide, greedy roads and build a stronger border, not on the Mexican border but on the Canadian border, to stop any further hippy competition coming in from the Canadian tundra.

I just think it is so cool that someone who specializes in Social Media or Green Fuel and other five-minute old specializations has come up with a solution to fix this crazy complicated mess of the century-old industrial word. Never mind that the auto industry (and assembly line) has more to do with the air we breathe than our own mothers.

We can just design our way out of this using the same principals of Dyson Vacuums! We can teach the displaced line workers Arabic and put them to work for the war on terror! We can build more Priuses using windmill technology and toxic batteries and hide all the SUVs in Wyoming!

Catsup

There is a web service called Plinky where you can get a question of the day to help you with your blog content. Today’s question is “What book have you read that has affected you and how?” 

I think that kind of thing is a bunch of bullroar and should be left for Facebook updates and remedial Journaling for Healing type classes. Top five favorite Kayekilla Blogposts Widget coming soon to your homepage.

I want to talk about my favorite topic of conversation: ADVICE. Partially in honor of my friend Derek’s new advice service and mostly because I love to give advice and even more mostly because I love to think about the shitty small-town-hay-bailing-KKK-worshiping advice I got as I grew up in a little agricultural village in southeastern Michigan.

Aside from the, “boys only want…” and “owning your own home is the greatest accomplishment a mediocre person can ever achieve” type of advice, I would say that by far the most repeated advice I got in my youth was, “enjoy it now, this is the best time of your life.” I got this radical advice from:

1. A 300 pound 35 year old lady and small town high school graduate (same one I attended) at local bank (I was 6 and waiting for some free Brach’s candy while my mom was depositing a check from work).
2. Basketball coach(es) in 8^th, 9^th, 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade
3. Art/HomeEc teacher (in most small towns the cooking/sewing/oil change teacher is also the fine arts instructor)
4. Priest at St. Agnes
5. Dairy Farmers (two)
6. Countless middle age divorced mothers of school friends (advice given while gazing at the legs, chests, and underdeveloped deltoids of the FHS boys JV basketball team through crêpey crows feet)
7. Four auto plant workers
8. Boss at Fowlerville Farms restaurant
9. Manager at Franks IGA
10. Butcher/Bottle return supervisor at Franks IGA

The reason that I like that piece of advice in particular is because everyday I discover even more ways that it is worthless.

I like to imagine how each one of these people would go back and enjoy their young life in a more enjoyable way. More cake? More fun? More… banking? What?

Out Collecting Data

Check tumblr if you need a fix.

In Progress

Garage at Lane Motor Museum, Nashville, TN

Boycotting (non-Irish)

It’s closing in on midnight. I just downed some Alka-Seltzer – the traditional antacid/fever reducer kind. The kind that – yes – Don Draper has with his morning mail. So let’s just say that what Don Draper feels in the morning, I have already reconciled by midnight.

I stayed indoors; either inside of a house or car for the whole day – spent the first part reading, the middle part with Billy Blanks, and the other part with E and because E is boycotting everything that has to do with the weather because Michigan people think the spring equinox should guarantee the end of snow even though every single March throughout the history of time AD has provided snow,sleet, and bluster, we had to stay enclosed. I figured I’d go along with the boycott of everything since I am, as I mentioned in a previous post, just an ethnographer here.

We drove past the Rouge Factory and broke our boycott for a short moment to get out and check out this magnificent vehicle for sale:

1,200 bucks and you can have a low-mileage 1990 Mercury Gran Marquis V8 – perfect for a demolition derby or for the frequent craft show vendor.

The added bonus of stepping outside was that I let a little bit of the Rouge in my car for good. By opening your doors in that area you let a little bit of Henry Ford in. Those pink downriver sunsets? They look great but they stink like sun-heated-three-day-old-broccoli-in-plastic.

Other highlights: lavender colored Hostess Snow-Balls (if only they were lavender flavored) , pictures from Bobby M and texts from Bethany in Texas, my new car stereo, tinted windows, Emma’s FLWright House tales, peepin, creepin, and emails from my sister.

Pennisulation

These days, these sunshiny days are my marker. The ethnographical reason why I moved back to Michigan for the season. I don't want to ever forget how after a long, gray and snowy winter, any day pushing the fifty-degree-Fahrenheit mark calls for jhorts. It is cause for not only celebration but for condemnation; What? inside? I can't see a movie on a day like this! There is sun out there. It is a beautiful day. We have to put on performance wear and breath fresh air.

Y'all cackling about a beautiful day this is like its the first thing that has ever happened to anyone. Like god ordered us to work indoors, like the Tigers are in the World Series and Meijers is handing out orange hand towels, like it's opening day for rifle hunting season, like they are filling the potholes on I-96...

Move to Florida already. I'll watch a movie or read a book or learn how to play world-of-warcraft - all indoors on the only sun-filled day in a year. I'm not a dirt-worshipping pagan. That bright orange ball would kill you if it had the chance and in fact it's coming this way - inch by inch, light year by light year just waiting for the opportunity to turn your skin into molten snot.

Designers on the Fringe

From the kids section at the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Vice Presidentially Fashioned

 

Helping myself to seconds at the Dan Quayle Center, & The United States Vice Presidential Museum in Huntington, IN

Project Next

I think I took some promising notes last night:

SKL's Handmade Hotel Room Weapons

• Ironing board in closet – use as shield/body armor.
• Lamp – heavy handled – most are bolted down.
• Iron – probably the best – a kind of Cat-and-nine-tails
• Ice bucket? Not very useful but you can use the top as door jammer.
• Glassware – check for lightbulbs (might be too messy – would you just smash over head? In eyes?)
• Coffee pot is best – class with handle – what more could you want? Fill with pebbles from...?
• Think about filling bathtub with water and having a blow dyer plugged in nearby - electrocute perp. Be sure to leave sign to remind self...

The State of Affairs. In Kentucky.

My broken toe was irreparably damaged by the 7 hour drive to L'Ville, the bruise no longer cute or shapely, just bogus. The main thing I notice about being, maybe-a-lil-bit, older now is that any drive longer than six and a half hours makes me feel like I slept on a futon.

Ain't nobody sleeping in Derby City tonight though. After complaining about the toddler sacrifice and loud teenagers on floor 16, the front desk people put me on a high, higher floor where, as the women tells me there is NO ONE else occupying ANY rooms. So, the facts are that I am on an odd floor containing the number 9 and I can't shake the distant echo of hotel doors opening and closing and horses galloping and ladies fainting and bookies booking - all just far enough down the hall to not investigate. It all has me convinced that I am on a haunted floor or in a bad John Cusack movie or both.  The view from my foggy top floor window at this rancid has-been hotel on the banks of the OH-Hi-O River may be my last.  They say there are only two kinds of people that die in Ohio; one's going to hell and one's already there. (I totally made that up)

When I let him in, I told the room service guy that, I've got a hooker in the shower, lets not make a thing about it. I'd tried to  prevent opening the door at all by screaming, JUST LEAVE IT OUTSIDE but he couldn't hear me or didn't think he'd get a tip that way. So I turned on the shower and shut the bathroom door to give the appearance of another person in the room just so he wouldn't notice that the glasses-of-wine-to-people-in-the-room ratio was way off base. Street smart solo travelers know how to 1) Travel Defensively 2) Confuse  3) Divert.  But do they know how to stay alive?

Travelers Justice

Dear Priceline,
I just checked into the Galt House Hotel - a facility that you list as 3PLUS stars. I feel it is my duty to tell you that this place is like a middle age woman still ordering jack and cokes at the bar through her pack-a-day prune lips.  It is old, damp, dirty, loud, and the amenities are half-open - the ones that really count (that Liquor store you mention? Completely CLOSED). The place is much too large to navigate making it more of a refuge hostel, not a respectable hotel. Not only did I have to wait seven times as long for an elevator because of the scads of unsupervised doughy teen boys (there for the KAAC Governors Cup) farting around on the elevators, I had to move my room because there was a family of five having a ritualistic child beating right next door! (If it helps with your records - it sounds, from the wailing, that they were first pumped full of some kind of Kentucky sugar and then beaten with a hand-tooled belt).  And on the other side of room 16XX? An Ice machine! And you know how much ice teen boys need. What a racket. I'd have better luck getting a good night's rest by setting up a rucksack headrest under the fountain pop rig at at any Speedway gas station. Also, the club sandwich is made with a croissant. Please, take this hotel down a couple stars.
Sincerely,
SK

Wet, Dim, and Early: A Spring in Memphis

I froze my ears off on a late afternoon walk.

 

Famous Irish Grudgeholders

boycott [boi'kŏt'] - “refuse to do business with with someone.” From Charles C. Boycott (1832-1897), the Irish land agent for an absentee landlord. Boycott refused to conform to land reforms supported by the Irish Land League. The League acted against Boycott by preventing his access to stores, postal service and other economic necessities. Boycotting is an important tool in campaigns of passive resistance to unjust social conditions.

Top Guided Tour Experiences

A list so far.

1. National Park Ranger at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.
2. Shady Personal Driver Ocho Rios (and inland), Jamaica
3. Ron at RCA Studio B in Nashville, TN
4. Tie with Rail Engine Repair Shop and Newsprint shop at Greenfield Village Detroit, MI
5. Old Bus Driver Catalina Island, CA
6. Chubby young fella at the Motown Museum in Detroit, MI

Reminder - I'm on the road so check the Tumblr Site for pics.

Memphishead: The Only Downside So Far

I have sent word out that old fashioned medications are better than new fashioned ones. No, this is not part of my "Revive the Quaalude" campaign. It is entirely separate.  But I hope that this explanation helps.

I got a migraine with aura this morning and it pissed me off. Migraine with aura sounds like something you order up, "I'll have one falafel tart with aura and thank you." All it really means is that you can't see past the lightening bugs in your own eyes. A visual freak out.

I'm telling you the best thing to do is take four Motrin and one Midrin with a short glass of whiskey (aged less than 12 years) and then follow in hour with a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You will feel better in three hours as opposed to Imitrix which just makes you feel like you are suffocating for five hours.

Road.

I'm out and about on the Tennessee Highways. Check my Tumblr if you want to see pics or send me your snail mail and you can get a postcard. Will update soon.

Colors. Colors.

I like green. This book BB bought me at a record shop (in Chicago) says that it means I am normal and balanced. Obviously the book is out of date. MY new book on colors will state that if you like green... you are a money machine!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(And on the visual aesthetics of drug culture: acid culture was so much more visually pleasing than today's pot culture... or yesterday's E culture..or tomorrows Adderall culture...)

 

Inside that book I found this:

Sister Ponchita! Tell me: What does the future hold? I like green, yellow, audiobooks, mechanical pencils, RainX, and museums. What does it all mean?

I'm Trying To Eat

I overheard a couple well, one part of a couple, talking in the booth next to me at Potbelly today. They had just come from the baby doctor.

“Kaitlyn…call me back I have good news…”

“Jess… call me back, I have good news….”

The guy sits cross from her, eating his toasted sub.

The phone rings, once….

“Hi? Yes… It’s a boy. Hheehee… I know.. yyyeeah. Yyeahh.”

That’s her good news? I imagine her voice mail if it was a girl, Kaitlyn, call me back…I have something to tell you…  Jess, call me back…we have to talk…

The new mom is foil-highlight-blonde, wearing white Kswiss sneakers, and a smart knobby knit pink sweater, probably from The Buckle. She dreams of Kate Spade bags. Her husband eats sub sandwiches, wears plaid, and has XY-dominant sperm.

“I know… uh-huh.. yeah… well his mom has all brothers.. five of them.. so that’s probably where it comes from….hehehe… yeah…”

“Beck, call me back.. I have good news…”

Can’t you just say, we got our ultrasound and it’s a boy? Isn’t this a good topic for Twitter? Who is this good news for, you freaky obnoxious goodnews gatekeeper? I would be pissed if I went through all the trouble of checking voicemail and called someone back and this was all they had to say:

“Hello, yea-awh… it’s a boy…we got a CD of the ultrasound pics. You have to come over and see them.”

I hope she is talking to the adoptive parents.

The guy gets up to refill his pop. He has not let out a peep.

He is not on his phone.

“We are thinking, Michael… no middle name yet.”

“Jen… call me back..I have good news…”

“Rach…call me back..I have good news…”

"My toy poodle was in a sci-fi movie," and other things from the dog show.

Our Dogumentary motto at the Dog Show this weekend was, Every dog has a story, what's yours? We heard countless divorce and ex-lover tales. One woman told me "oh we have stories," and pointed to her friend and said "this one here had to breast feed a puppy..."

I can imagine only three circumstances where you would need to breast feed a puppy. One of them involves being rescued on a huge, snowy mountain by a pregnant Saint Bernard who, after giving you whiskey from the wooden barrel around her neck, goes into a violent labor and gives birth and your only chance at getting down the mountain is to nurse her three puppies to a size where you can hook them up to their dead mother (with scraps from your mountain climbing performance wear) to ride the furry corpse of their dead mother back down the mountain.

Those women didn't look much like mountain climbers.

Take a look at my terrier racing montage:

Money Well Spent

I've spent money on many questionable things in my little life; A book on angel guides, Greyhound Bus tickets, chemo, cheeseburgers, pale nail polish, cheap tires, movie tickets to "W." and countless dresses that "remind me of flappers." 

But I found that putting up the paper for an exhibitors booth at the Detroit Kennel Club Show (this weekend! come visit! Booth 9!) made me feel weirder than all of the above. 

I'm rolling the dice on dog bones.  I need Claritin.

Cobo Hall Before:

Stay tuned for the after.

A Fave Postcard From Trip Back To Mich 08

Bought at Jesses James Museum in Stanton, MO. My sister and I got there a fully full two and a half hours before closing time but the four hundred pound store clerk and tour guide refused to let us in the Wax Museum part because she was closing up early to see the new episode of Big Brother.

The Best One Out Of My 90s Collection

 

Postcard from 1997 CC (that's cross-country) Trip with Kris-O. We took her Jetta on the Salt Flats during the day, in the summer, under the sun, unsupervised, unregistered, and unclocked.  And well, we got lost because mirages are real, very real. There was water up ahead at every turn.  Only flat white land to tell us where we'd been and where to go. Speed - the only way out. A fast gamble in a whatever direction, our fifth attempt worked. Mirages are real, speed is real, salt is flat, life is a pink postcard with cars. 

My Fella & Kelly's Grandma, Special People

I got an old fashioned box of chocolates for Valentine's Day. When I told E this she said, "well I hope the chocolates aren't old!"

Nope, just old fashioned meaning handmade chocolates in a heart-shaped red-foil box:

Kelly told me that her grandmother got a box of chocolates from her grandfather and she saved the box FOREVER and kept the little paper cups in place inside the heart box and stored her earrings in them.  I don't have pierced ears anymore but I love that idea.

Candy boxes forevs.

Wine of Infidels

There is this precious publication you can pick up at restaurants around Dearborn, its called Coffee News and their logo is "Free Smiles Every Week." It's so likeable - the design is reminiscent of the zine age - just a folded 17X11 sheet printed on both sides.

It has seven categories: Everybody's Talking, Quotable Quotes, What's Happening, Trivia, Weekly Word Search, Did You Know, and On The Lighter Side.

You'd think Everybody's Talking would steal the show but let me share with you this, Did You Know:

In 1592, Pope Clement VIII declared coffee to be a Christian drink and he officially recognized it as such in an edict. Until then, the drink had been considered by many Catholics to be the "wine of infidels."

Mercury Retrograde. Cannot Communicate.

I miss my spin class instructor, Connie from Glendale, California. Every class she'd come in late and say, "What a crazy day? Is Mercury in retrograde?" and I would shout from my fake bike, "I think it is, I really do." Never mind the facts. Feel the burn.

Yesterday I got a letter from the Michigan Department of Corrections that my perp (incident New Years Day, Detroit, 2002) has been transferred to a minimum security facility. He's due for parole in 2013. I wonder if he has made friends or found god. I wonder about other stuff too. Muskegon.

Thank you Jen Granholm. Please release all the nonviolent drug offenders first. Some people should be in jail. I like how you can look these guys up online. OTIS.

And then I get an all-business voice mail from someone to some officer - wasn't meant for me one bit: 

Officer Anderson

And then in my email I get a Gchat voicemail from the mysterious Nirmal Binny. Sounds like she didn't even know it was on and it is not that interesting but her name is:

Nirmal Binny Says

My lines of communication: Minimum security. Maximum confusion.

And now I am off to visit a little baby.

I got up early this morning. Something inside of my head said, “get up girl! You have to email Malcolm Gladwell!” I spent fifteen minutes thinking about my Fall Drive Project video that I HAVE To finish by mail cut off time tomorrow. Thinking about video naturally led me to thinking about my Dogumentary work and how much there is to do before the Detroit Dog Show next weekend. Then I thought about the m*th*r fuc**in students that were talking in class last night when I was trying to lecture.

Then I wrote a short email to Malcolm Gladwell about his book – Outliers which is quite interesting and confirms all kinds of things like yeah, Bill Gates is a genius but it kind of helped that his parents were well-to-do, concerned parents that bought his school a computer in 1968 when most college professors didn’t have access to computers. It confirms stuff like "you have to practice if you want to be great at something" which is as inspiring to hear as "you have to eat less if you want to be thin." I like paraphrasing things like that because I get 50% of it wrong. But I was compelled to write him because in the audio book version - I listened to the audio version on the way to and from Chicago (tells you what a zippy drive Fowlerville to Chicago is) – he gives an interview on the last track and the line of questioning leads to his Canadian citizenship which leads to him talking about why Canadians make great comedians. His theory is that most successful comics are minorities (black or jewish) -- from “the outside” – so it is safe for them to make fun of the dominant culture. I think this is an interesting theory but I wonder – why about female comedians? They are a minority and people hate on them for being, or trying to be as the haters say, funny. Deep thoughts. Dear Mr. Gladwell, How are you? I am fine. My boyfriend thinks you look funny.

I then spent five minutes adding on a Gmail feature that lets people know where I’m sending email from. Then I thought about the implications of that for ten minutes and then I remembered I am not working for corporate USA anymore and nobody is watching me (that hasn’t already been watching – Hello KGB!). And now I am off to visit a little baby.

Second Floor

Confused in a Chicago parking garage, we pushed all the buttons on the elevator and found an empty shop on L2 just waiting for us to stock the shelves with colored pencils and gilded frames and gummi bears and autographed Grishams or whatever.

Valentines, Ideas, & Cheeseburgers

I'm off to Chicago to visit my main squeeze.  I leave you with some photos from Miller's Bar in Dearborn. Ryan and I met to eat some cheeseburgers and talk about big ideas. The place was decked out VDay ExtremeO. We ordered our burgers "medium" but they came to us "Valentine Style" - very very medium rare. We ate them anyway.

Happy Friday the 13th and Happy Valentines Day friends and everyone.

Inspiration From Armpit Thermometers

I've been extremely busy the past couple days - I know - who isn't? But, I am talking about blog-neglect-busy. I'm gearing up to set sail to Chicago after class tomorrow and sail I will judging from the blasting wind haunting my country windows... I need a windsock for my car.

The main update of the day is I had a chance to visit my BF and her new babe, Max, who is three months old as of yesterday. I couldn't help but notice that his cute level was sky high this morning. I was compelled to mention it to my friend, "he looks extra Xtra cute today."

"Oh, he's really rosy because he has a fever."

And that afternoon, instead of making it to the oil change place on time, I purchased some creme bush. It's called Hint of Rose but I call it Fever Face. Which is what I will have if I am stranded with a dirty oil engine on the side of the road in Gary, Indiana, wind whipping my scandinavianirish cheeks to a rare pulp, attracting tweaked out truckers and adventure-seeking businessmen. I now call the blush, Roadside Flare Up.

PS My cheek heritage changes in the summer.

Questions You Can Ask

I have a few (grown adult) friends that are in constant contact with their PARENTS. They call them on the phone every hour and have conversations like "What did you eat for lunch? I am going to take a bath. I'm not wearing socks." Things like that.

These are grody time fillers. Banal statements to prove our existence to each other.

I don't want to talk to my parents or be reminded that I exist in this boring world of lunch menus and home to work route discussions. I want to be asked things like "Do you think I should take my company down with insider information or snipers?" "Do you want to come with me on a Scandinavian cruise?" "What do you think about the show 24?" "Would you rather be eaten by a whale, shark, or a school of piranhas?" "Can I tell you a deep dark terrible secret that will change our lives forever?" or simply, "Will you hold this?"

That is what ... is talking about

Benefit show last night was good. Hope it did some good.

In the Valley of the Shadow of...

Further celebration of the new Flickr Photo Group for real cultural tourists.  Framing the Marvelous Museum Model.

From my spring '08 travel archives, I bring you pictures from a little place near Death Valley called Shoshone. The Shoshone Museum is a lil place chock full of taxidermy desert animals and a special exhibit and an opportunity to buy self-published stories about the outlaw women of Death Valley.

 

Join the Flickr group now and check out my Death Valley video for extra fun.

More Museum

A few days ago I wrote about my love for the retro diorama in the Hoover Dam Old Exhibit Building in honor of the launch of my Flickr Photo Group (plug). I promised to all of you dear readers that I would not stop there. I dedicate this week to museum raves. This evening I share with you my favorite animated animal in a museum experience:

Old Billy the Fire Horse at The Fire Museum of Memphis.  The real life/horse size animatronical introduction to the history of the Fire Horse goes on for about five minutes and has video accompaniment.

Ol Billy The Fire Horse from kayekilla on Vimeo.

Winter Villa

It's cold here, snowing that kind of dusty styrofoam-floam snow that just blows around hunting for things to dust with freeze like my car door locks and my ears.

This is what The Donut Villa looks like tonight: