Small Fortunes (and an even smaller misfortune)

Dan and I have been working for the last few years, lackadaisically, on a project we called "101 fortunettes."

We started collaborating on art when we were dating, and after we broke up, we had our first show, at the Hopvine in Capitol Hill.

I hope you'll join us - we'll be celebrating Dan's birthday and our cute little art at Hooverville, 1721 1st Ave S, Seattle, on NOVEMBER 25th at 6pm.
There will be snacks. And lots of love to go 'round.

So - when we were counting up what we had done, what we had left, how many frames we had, etc, we came up 6 frames short. Not too shabby for a three-year unorganized project, neh? So I went to Ikea to pick up 6 more Raket frames. Guess what? Raket frames were taken off the market. Why? Because Raket frames are dangerous. (I cut my hands countless times framing the first 65 fortunettes, then I learned how to wear preventative bandaids.)

So we are scrounging around our houses - it's just sort of unthinkable that those last six frames could run us $30 - they are on eBay- as they were originally $1.99 for three.

If any one reading this has any 4"x6" Ikea Raket frames, i'll totally give you a free fortunette.

It only took four years...

I have finally become the gentry. All of my neighbors are moving out, apparently convinced that the housing market is at its peak, and now is the time to realize dreams of quarter-millionaire-itude.

Like, all the neighbors.

I doubt I've scared them off - except for the duplex, I've got seniority in this end of my block.

I have lived, in my home, here, in south park Seattle, for longer than I've ever lived anywhere. Which is neither a great feat nor a particularly shabby one. Pretty mediocre feat, actually. I've lived other places for 3andahalf years, I've lived here for 4andamonth years.

But I feel like it's time to move, because I've now *and will continue to* live(d) here for longer than I've lived anywhere else.

I'm interested to see how that time-schedule manifests itself. I don't think that I've gotten off track, but I have been really having the wander-jizz in my dreams. I've been having a recurring dream that i am roadtripping in italy with either my mom or scott or dad (they being the three most important people in my life) and I come to a town, which is renown for its exquisite and completely unique cooking style/ I enter the town and it is like driving through stucco hallways and white wrought-iron gates.

I eat, with my companion, and it is always super succulent tentacle-d things, blue grains, churning fruitcocktails - really worth whatever it is i KNOW i gotta go through, and then the exits start closing while my companion and I are discussing the tip, or something equally nonessential. The exits close, sometimes we have the opportunity to escape some other way, but I always end up in the servant-class, thinking, "Why - why didn't I just look for excitement someother way??!!!?"

And that's the moral of the story. I am scared of finding excitement in the routine. After years and years and years (26 or so) of looking for the next novelty - I have to seek the bliss that comes from constancy. and it's harder than I would have imagined.

why not every day?

I can only imagine that Halloween was a slightly different cultural phenomenon when Jello Biafra sang about it on the 1982 Dead Kennedy's record (Plastic Surgery Disasters, which is scarily NOT first on the google results). If Halloween were every day, the number of sluts in the nation would octuple. Coverage in the news media has focused on how slutty Halloween costumes are. Some recent articles I've read have made a point that Halloween is time to let your "inner bad girl" out.

I have often been a fan of the slutty costume. Not every year (I've gone as a mechanic - NOT a sexy mechanic - and an acid casualty) but often. This year, I definitely rocked the slut.


I went as Raggedy Annie Sprinkle. I brought titprints to hand out, though mine didn't turn our nearly as well as hers. Perhaps I can chalk that up to experience (being a first-time-tit-printer and all). Scott went as Raggedy Anton LaVey. (shown here with Chris Farley)

Saturday was the annual Compound Halloween party - So Much Fun!
I hope that some of the eighty-million people who took my picture will email them to me.

By Tuesday, I was not up to rockin' that dress again. I felt grateful to whatever laws of physics I bent and didn't want to press my luck. (I somehow managed not to have a nip-slip for the 10 hours i was out wearing that dress, thank you physics) So Scott & I dressed up as goths and went to Capitol Hill. Not a tremendous stretch. but a costume, none the less. Then I put on Dan's groucho glasses.

The weather was cooperative this year - no rain to speak of until after all good children should be home anyway.

I'm totally sick of people now, though. I am planning on hermiting-up until November 25th, when I will see all you at Hooverville.

to all my libra loves

You are the women who keep me balanced. thank you for being so awesome and everything.

Best Vacation EVAH!

My summer has been taken up with work. Lots of it. Work coming out of my ears. Work up to my eyeballs and past my jugular.
Summer ended, luckily for me, and it was finally time for vacation. Jones & I packed up the civic and hit the road...
Blissful stoneydriving with my bestest friend, we hit Gorst and feel lost. without panicking, we turn around, only to remember we were going the right way to begin with. Lots of goofy talking, somehow there is always so much to catch up on; even though we spend our whole lives together, we always are talking.
Through Gorst to Sequim. Washington has the best place names. Sequim, for those of you readers who've never been there, if there are any of you, is pronounced "SkWim" rather than "see-kwim" as it might seem. We passed the sequim gym, where we giggled and listened to spank rock; we passed the sequim lanes, smaller than the garage; we couldn't pass the sequim nature trail, which lead us past Kitchen-Dick Road.

Crossing Kitchen-Dick Road, we searched for the ocean. We arrived at a de-scalable bluff, and finished our americanos. We decided we could live in Sequim, if it came down to it.

From Sequim to Port Angeles is a short geographical distance, but miles and miles mentally from Seattle. By the time we hit the hilarity of Sequim, WA, we had lost our urban tensions. Years and their ascended trouble-lines were floating outside of the care-able planes, and things were all superlative. {Aside: I had driven from seattle to port angeles a week before, and the same effect was felt. also, i knew what was coming up on the roads.)

There was a small winery on the left, and we decided to stop, it being 3pm monday and all, it was totally wine-time.

The bartendress was 2.3 sheets to the wind and was Very Generous in her pours. One wine (a Syrah) was so so so so better than the rest, it was way a steal for $25 - we bought 2. And i loved a particular sweet-ish chardonnay that we could chill and take up to our campsite. So we got that too. And then Jones got another glass of the awesome Syrah and we sat and watched the road go by and daydreamed about having a winery and an onsen and then set off, dreamy and sated, to find a campsite.

Camp found and staked, Hurricane Ridge visited and scared, we were well on our ways to relaxation. Delicious motherfuckign food, dark darkness, Night fell, we forgot to get enough firewood, we were soggy and sleepy and slept poorly; there were owls too many and too loud for that.

The next morning, we debated how early nor late it might or might not be. No decisions were made. Breakfast was delectable.

We chose to hike a mountain. It was hard. We smoked and fucked in the national forest.

Back to camp, enough firewood for the night. The mountains echoed "jones" and we ate a delicious crab bisque from cups. The next morning, we were almost ready to leave; almost forgotten about our regular selves, not ever forgetting about our lovely kittens nor our hot shower; dreams of bears turned out to be just dreams. We drove to Sol Duc hotsprings. Past the unbelievably magic Lake Crescent, over the hills and on the other side, we arrived at the lodge. Sulfur and delicious. A deer fed on the lawn of our cottage.
We soaked, and talked, and ate and did adult recreational things. The next day, after pretty much doing all those things again, we took what would be my first legal trip to a casino. We chose Seven Cedars Casino, in beautiful, Lucky Sequim, and I proceeded to lose money. Not Jones, though. He lost a little, won a little, then found his lovely lady slot machine, which was a penny slot called USA FOREVER or something stupid like that, and proceeded to win close to $600US.

We called it a good vacation and came home richer, not only in experience but in dollar value too.

All photos can be viewed HERE.

art show

Hey all in seattle -
i'm having a quick little art show at Jalisco Mexican restaurant in South Park tonight as part of the South Park Arts Walk.
More about the organization can be found here.
Most of the art I'm showing can be found here.
XoXoX

Nasty Pussy

Friday night, 15th of September 2006. End of Summer, Seattle-style. The Freaks are out, in full force. A house party first, which turns out to be lame. Skeet-daddle to the Decibel festival, where I am psyched to go to Neumo's / Bad Juju to see the only friend-from-grade-school-who-I've-ever-caught-up-with-in-my-later-life's band, Telefon Tel Aviv. The show was awesome. The sound got kinda muddy towards the end, but it was really good bassy noise and flashing lights and pretty people. Who knew there were all those glitchcore fans in Seattle!
Loose some pals to drunken horniness. DT & I walk back to the lame house party, where Jones has ended up. Jones is definitively 1.85 sheets to the wind, and DT and I are both hungry. It's 12.55 and in seattle, that means that there is no Good Merkin Food to be got. (1am is the late-night cut off for Merkin restaurants with ranges in addition to deep fryers.) So we decide to go to Sea Garden.

The last time Jones & I were at Sea Garden, we eavesdropped like hungry-ear-compys on a conversation being had at the table next to us. It was some sort of off-hour first date, we were there around 12.30, and the couple was a Wedgewood-type naturalist / ecofreak man with a very FOB Asian lady. The man was trying to explain psychedelic mushrooms to his companion. Unfortunately, the details elude me, now that it's 8 months or so later, but it went something like this:

She: "OOh, this has mushrooms in it! I love mushrooms!"
He: "I like mushrooms too. I especially like the mushrooms that allow you to talk to spirits!"
She: "Spirits? What do you mean? Like television?"
He: "There are some mushrooms that let you see *inside* things. Like the spirits in the plants and animals."
She: "I want some! Let's see if they have any here!"
He: "You can't really buy them."
She: "So you have to find them? Do they grow here?"
He: "No, you buy them, but it's sort of underground."
She: "No, no no, you can't have a black market for mushrooms! I am sure they have them at Uwajimaya."

This time, we were seated next to a table of very obnoxious asian kids. They were all about taking calls and meeting people and doing deals of some sort, loudly, but un-funnily.

We started our stoner feast with an order of fried scallops with pepper. They were fucking awesome, and we ate them so fast that no photos were taken. Slightly sated, we had the presence of mind to order some additional dishes.

me: OOh, i want tofu with crab!
jones: OK but-
me: OOh, and I want shrimp vermicelli hot pot! And pea vine with garlic! And ...
DT: And I want Wonton.
Jones: Let's get some pork. You [DT] & I can split it, there will be enough food. What do you think?
me: OK with me.
jones: OOh, let's get steamed pork with salted fish! that has everything delicious! Fish, salt, pork! I will love it! Yah Yah Yah!
DT: sounds good to me too! Let's get that!

We ordered the tofu with crab, the vermicelli hot pot, the wonton soup without incident. However, we should have known something was amiss when the waiter was extremely reluctant to believe that Jones really did want to order the steamed pork with salted fish.

Our dishes arrived in the haphazard and inscrutable way that only Chinese restaurants can manage to work out. We were delighted by the crab & tofu, though it might have appeared to the uninitiated to be a gelatinous mess superheated to a near-liquid viscosity. The tofu itself was a perfect silky squishy firm, the crab pieces succulent claws. The wontons were "fluffy and plump," the broth slightly spicy and buttery. The vermicelli hot pot was fucking NUCLEAR hot (heat-hot) - it arrived at the table boiling and steaming; hissing a little bit, too.

We all were really enjoying the feast we had, and I believe both Jones & DT were psyched to try some other odd-ass delicacy from the Sea Garden.
...

A smell approaches our table. I feel a sort of proustian nostalgia come over me, but when the dish lands on the table, all i can say is "that smells like pussy you don't want to eat." And it did. It smelled just like a pussy that was frequently available to eat, and only 1 time did i act on that availability. The memories that smell brought were strong, but not as strong as the smell itself. Pungent, meaty, and very sour fishiness.

DT took a bite, and said "EWW. Pbttbttbtt." and shuddered, before launching into a short monologue about the very short list of Foods he Doesn't Like, which had just gained a new entry. Jones, who does, in fact, like Century Eggs, and loves pork products like many people like, say, oxygen, won't let the smell nor DT's review stop him from trying it. Though later, he says that his stomach was doing flip flops and he brought the chopsticks to his mouth Against His Better Judgement, at the time, he made a wonderful impression of someone enjoying what he was doing to himself. He took the first bite, not without a grimace, but without trepidation. And the second. And the third. And then the facade fell.


The photo shown above does no justice to the actual dish it's presenting. But as is evident, there is pork floating in some sort of pussy juice. and Jones ate pretty much all of what's missing from the dish.

So please, go to Sea Garden. It's a great late-night restaurant on 7th & Weller. But for the love of all that is good & holy in the world, avoid the steamed pork with salted fish. You may be lucky enough to have never had a girlfriend with that sort of snatch-stench, but save yourself from finding out what you've missed all this time.