Early childhood
Snug
Flickr set: Tauntaun Sleeping Bag Unboxing.
Back in April, I had showed Viv the ThinkGeek April Fools Tauntaun Sleeping bag and she was like to bust a gut.
So when I saw they were now available (as of Friday last week) I knew I had found the perfect thing to break my no-Christmas gift pledge on.
Much to my profane annoyance, the goddamn thing showed up on my doorstep well after 6pm tonight, on a night when I happened to be out and Viv happened to be home.
So when I got in, Viv is all, “What’s in the box?”
Presuming she’s referring to the smaller unopened Amazon box that came addressed to her, I said something like “How should I know, it came addressed to you.”
So then she’s all, “No, the BIG box.”
Whereupon I’m all what fuckery is this and such because, yeah, now I know what has happened, and I’m pissed, because normally I taunt Viv for a couple weeks with unopened and unlabeled boxes, and this one is BLOWN.
Especially when she reads the ONE INCH LETTERING ON THE BOX: “Tauntaun Sleeping Bag,” she reads. “What’s that?”
Argh, game over. So I tell her to open it. I had the presence of mind to take pictures.
The bag has many stuffed animal parts (arms, legs, head, tail) and all our REAL animals figured, logically enough, that meat it was really a present for them. As you can see in the final shots, Rocket in particular would appear to have a keen appreciation of the scent of Tauntaun guts.
The leap
Pawsum took on the stuffed squirrel toy today.
Flickr set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwhybark/sets/72157623010542188/
The Eve of the Feast of Osiris
Recently, while conducting my annual researches into the origins of the beloved holiday legend of Osiris Claus, I had occasion to venture deep into the vaulted reaches of a dusky book-crypt. Far and far I had crept, flickering cell-phone my only source of illumination as I scanned the cobwebbed stacks in search of the rumored grimoire. Out amidst the dusty plains of the online social mediasphere, I had heard rumours – hints, really. Messages encoded in the subject lines of what appeared to be spam. Clues found in acrostics formed by the first letters of each line of official governmental press releases. Numerological indications conveyed in YouTube hitcounts. After carefully collating all available evidence with myself and my avatars in a marathon session of Google Wave, I had been directed to this particular section of a failing independent bookstore.
There! Surely THIS. THIS black-bound volume – It must be that which I had so long sought. I had come across a musty volume of forgotten Moore – Clement Clarke Moore, or so I took it to be at the time. I had long speculated that Moore was among the occult initiates of the Osiran League – a secret brotherhood devoted to reintegrating the ancient secrets of Old Kingdom Egypt into the day-to-day life of his world and time. At long last, I held in my hands the very manuscript that would prove or disprove my cherished notions of the initiate’s knowledge – the Secret of Santa Claus himself!
Opening the crumbling volume, I flipped past a number a pages which did not seem to fit my hypothesis, pulling them easily from the cracking spine of the volume and setting them alight in order to better illuminate what I sought – for there it was! What to my wondering eyes should appear, but an early draft of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” or so it seemed. The lines were crabbed and etched with strikeouts and annotations; up and down the margins were curious figures of stylized birds and feathers and such.
I was able to copy the entirety of the poem before my cell battery died but was startled by a deep coughing noise from the depths of the stacks. Dropping the book in stark terror, I ran deep into the maze. I know not how long and long I wandered, my only source of nourishment the binding glue from well-thumbed romance novels, remaindered Twilight books, and the like. I only know that when I emerged blinking into the light of day, a black man was the president, yet neither socialism nor universal health care had come to pass in the land.
I reprint the lines here, but I must caution you: some say to read this work leads ineluctably to madness! You have been warned.
Black was the night before the Feast of Osiris
not a hippo did stir, not even an ibis.
The stockings were hung in the temple with care
in certainty Osiris‘ star soon would shine there.
The children and slaves were all locked up for the night
while night-fleets of bats and scarabs took flight
The pharoah and queen in headdress and cap
had just settled down for a long winter’s nap.
When out in the courtyard arose such a clatter
Pharoah and guards sprang to see what was the matter.
Away to the gates and the walls they all dashed
as braziers were kindled and bronze weapons flashed.
The moon on the sand at the banks of the Nile
Gave the white sheen of snowfall to to palm trees and tile –
When what to those wondering eyes did appear
but a floating sarcophagus and green mummy so queer.
That wizened corpse stood, neither living nor virus
All knew in a moment it must be Osiris
Returned as each year to bridge the dead and the quick
Then he whistled, and shouted, and called them all Nick.
“Now, Nick! Now Nicholas! Now Nicky, and Nick!
On, Nik! On Nik-nok! On, Nicolas and Nick!
To the top of the pyramid, to the top of the tomb!
Now dash away, dash away, dash up past the moon! ”
As sand, dust, and leaves before the desert wind fly
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up past the mastaba the courtiers they flew,
With the sarcophagus, and Osiris too.
And then in a twinkling the pharoah he heard
the great rush of wind from the wings of that bird
Horus’ hawk eye took in all with no pause
And then lent Osiris the strength of his claws
Each year the sown mummy springs up from his box
garments and flesh stitched bloody with ashes and rocks;
his emerald skin wound in scarlets and creams
sprouts split the silt by the river’s blue stream.
His eyes – how they burned! His brow darkly beetling!
His cheeks were like mosses, his nose like a seedling!
His lips were drawn back in a rictus of death
But such vigor and motion – he surely drew breath!
A bundle of wheat formed the staff of his flail
his red and white spiral crook kept the herd in the vale
while his limbs were quite thin he shone bright as day
flashing and sparking like a spring storm on the way
Dessicated and thin, a cadaverous mummy
His green skin and scars looked rotten and plummy
His unblinking eye and twisted gnarled hand
raised high and showed all who was lord in this land;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work.
He filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
Bony hand at arm’s length to the Pharoah he strode
then clutching the king to his bosom he rose
He sprang to his coffin, stilling the screams of the king
And away they all flew like the bird on the wing.
he was heard to exclaim, ere he hove out of sight,
“A fecund Nile flood to all, and to all a good night!”
Sirius
Sirius shouts bright in the night, dogging the heels of Orion.
Osiris.
I jest not! Osiris Claus is REAL.
mochi shock melt
Things noted or lernt
1. My fret hand’s calluses are less than shipshape. Work is called for.
2. Longjohns are a thing of transcendant beauty
3. Small calico cats with street time in their lives are fast, fast, fast and sneaky, sneaky sweet. They come home for dinner though.
4. Swiss chard does not take to the freezins, instead going all pear shaped.
5. International economies make record keeping difficult, and this fact alone calls the very idea of citizenship into question.
6. Toshiro Mifune was born into a Methodist family in China.
7. A week or more of amazing clear night skies does not mean that I will remember to set up the ginormous telescope.
December Tomoatoes
More WTO
I looked through my blog archives to see what all I’ve written about WTO and was surprised when I only turned up this relatively short piece.
I did a hard drive search and found the letter I sent to the city council which appears to have been based on the shorter version previously posted, but which also includes the original URL of a video I found showing some of the events I saw that December 2.
Here it is. This was originally composed and sent it on December 5, 1999:
I live and work in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
I left my house after dinner and followed the circling helicopter to see what was going on. Arriving at the south end of the Broadway playfield, there was lots of tear gas and smoke in the air. Moving into the gas, my eyes welled with tears and my mouth and nose nose strung sharply. However, was as able to continue forward through the gas, although visibility was very low due to the density of the gas and its’ effects on my eyes. I crossed Pine at eleventh, using the crosswalk, directly in front of a line of the black-suited regular riot squad police who were using the edge of the crosswalk itself as a kind of demarcation line. A police gas gunner was standing in the crosswalk in front of the line and as I approached, he began to set a firing stance.
Glancing to the left and to the right, he saw me approaching and paused. I motioned that I was going to pass behind him, he stepped forward, lowering his weapon, and I passed between him and the line of riot police. The interchange was curiously polite; only later did I realize how strange and dangerous it had been.
Bars and restaurants less than a half-block from the confrontation remained open and were jam packed with happy and excited people, all glued to live tv coverage of the event occurring literally outside the windows.
I had a beer at the Comet after checking my band’s musical equipment at a nearby rehearsal space, which was of course fine. Returning to the standoff, I spoke with some Teamsters representatives briefly, and then began to seek out media people to convey to them my impression that the crowd was very largely local-to-the-neighborhood, drawn in curiosity and anger at the police presence. There were two chants that went up repeatedly – “get off our hill, get off our hill”, and “you go home, we go home; you go home, we go home”. Other chants included “shame”, and “whose streets? our streets”
Moments before the last round of gas, the crowd began to sing songs. Such hits as “Theme from Gilligan’s Island”. “Theme from The Brady Bunch”, for an incredible finale with most successful participation, “Silent Night”, in a scene reminsicent of the film “All Quiet on the Western Front”. However, there was no reciprocal singing from the police line.
I was in a group of people talking to King County Councilman Brian Derdowski when the gas was released and grenades were fired at about 2 am. A grenade exploded directly between Mr. Derdowski and myself, blinding and deafening us momentarily (about like an m-80). Then everybody ran. I was hit several times on my left leg and have big bloody welts up and down it. Running away along 11th in the playfield area, I caught up with and asked Mr. Derdowski if he had been hit and was he alright, he said he was OK, but was going home to his wife so she would know he was OK. I concurred and did the same.
This knot of folks was one of the closest to the police line, and was clearly not within the main body of the crowd itself. This contributed to the number of times I was struck in the leg by the police fire.
I heard no warning of any kind immediately preceding the gas and bullets. However, the word within the crowd was that they police wanted people on the sidewalk not on the street. Upon reflection, I realize that I was probably standing on the sidewalk when the gas was launched.
I did not see any of the extremely aggressive police behaviors being reported as having happened on Broadway in the earlier confrontation at around 8:30 or 9. I also can clearly state my opinion that the the crowd that faced off with the police and guard troops on Capitol Hill was not violent or threatening.
—
A young man with a video camera was in the group of onlookers near Mr. Derdowski – he has allowed his footage to be digitized and posted to the web. He was hit in the head with a police grenade, and discusses this in the footage. I believe that the grenade that struck him is probably the grenade that exploded directly between Mr. Derdowski and myself.
I personally have concerns that the grenade might have been actually intended to strike Councilman Derdowski, as he was clearly recognizable to the officers in the area, do to his brave and frantic efforts to defuse the situation. His back and head may have been in clear view of the police line.
http://www.aedigital.com/dec2sea.ram
at the very end when the police fire the grenades and gas, I am standing two people away from the camera.
at 8.01.2 exactly on the video I may be visible in profile in the distance on the tape. I look much farther away then I recall being. There may be edits on the tape – I remember Mr. Derdowski offering to meet with the young woman he is talking to at an office downtown. Additionally, I was on the other side of Mr. Derdowski from the gentleman with the camera, and may not appear visually on the tape at all.
Precisely preceding the sound of the gas grenades being fired, you can hear my voice saying “Can I have your name, sir?” I was hit on the leg by what I take to be several rubber bullets and have big honkin’ bruises to show for it. The bruises bled the night that they were made.
In between us was King County Councilman Brian Derdowski. He’s the guy in the suit who reappears from time to time.
There was no warning before the gas that I heard. As far as I knew, the police had been asking people to stay on the sidewalk, which is where I happened to be standing when the gas happened.
interesting perceptually for me is that the warning of “immediate arrest” heard on the video early on the tape was not heard me me at all. I believe that it was before I was there – I left and returned a couple of times. For example, i did not see the earth spiral that was made that we see in the video.
I have been told that the immediate arrest warning heard on the tape was issued at around 2:30.