Wow.

Go watch this. Or check it out here at Limbovision. It's the one called "Russian Parkour" with a shirtless man flying or falling or leaping through the air over a partially demolished or incompletely built structure. Aerial Escape Acrobatics. Way cool. And the soundtrack is also highly excellent.

What is this Limbovision? you may be asking. If you scroll down to the post at the bottom of the main page, it says that it's "the answer to questionable mainstream media." Why the hell not? Gotta start somewhere. There isn't a lot posted there yet, and it says 'under construction' at the top of the window. Who knows what'll happen next?

Via vergelimbo.

Note: This post is totally updated from what I wrote here earlier. I got interrupted and didn't know when I'd get back to it, but that video was just so fun to watch that I wanted to post it right away. I'll be down in the gym if anybody's looking for me. Or chasing shirtless men through playgrounds and abandoned buildings with throbbing music on the soundtrack. Oh hell, that's a lie. I'll be here at my desk working late. I just stopped to have some dinner.

Shoeblogging on acid

I love espadrilles, and whenever they are available I buy as many pairs as I can just before they go out of fashion. But I like to wait until they are just about to become unfashionable because they are cheaper.

I don't care whether they are fashionable or not; I just like how they look, and I'll keep buying them & wearing them until they fall apart. [And as Sara points out in the comments, it's not like they're ever particularly fashionable anyway. But you can get them in lots of colors and they are cool and comfortable.]

Anyway, I'm not sure you can see it* on this photo, but the manhole cover I'm standing on says "ACID PIT" on it. I'm not sure why such a thing is outside the building where I work, but I walk past it every day.

I happened to be walking by it the other day with the camera. Unfortunately I was alone and carrying all these bags of gym clothes and books and the camera bag and some other stuff and it was very difficult to photograph my own feet. It's kind of blurry, I know. Plus I was in too big a hurry to set everything down. But I was able to hold the camera still enough with both hands to get a clear shot of just the ACID PIT cover; click here or on the picture to see it.

[Updated to fix typos and add a slightly *more legible picture. Here's the other one if you really want to see both feet.]

Mostly it's the humidity

But it was pretty damn hot today, and quite humid in my little house. I turned on the air conditioning. It feels much better.

"...and not without its peril."

I wondered myself, after reading certain of Chris Clarke's descriptions of arduous hikes -- uphill climbs! in hot weather! in the desert! -- what the hell might compel a person to, well, do that. But it was sort of an idle wondering, because it's clear from all of his writing about hiking that there's a lot going on for him -- it's not just about liking or not liking the weather or the terrain.

Another reader did ask him about it the other day though & I really liked his response:

"But there is more. Some of it is sheer joy at the subjective effects of my surface-area-to-volume ratio increasing: I sweat much less than I did forty pounds ago, and there is a kind of pleasure in feeling my body become more able to meet physical challenges with less strain. Some of it is knowing that I'll pass fewer people on the trail if it's 100 degrees than if it's 75. And there is the boasting, of course. One cannot overstate the importance of the boasting.

[...]

"But there is more. The heat is the way the desert is. I want to know the desert, so I must know the heat. The Joshua trees can't huddle in the air-conditioning, and the kangaroo rats still distill water from dry seeds when the temperature peaks. And there is this: as the desert goes, so goes the world.

[...]

"But there is more. How tempting to simply walk out into the extreme, to reduce all of life down to its elements. There is water, and there is heat, and there is rock, and there are those who are out in it, on two legs or six or none, flying or rooted. What more do I need from life?"

By the time I got to the end, I understood perfectly why a person would want to hike uphill for hours in dry blasting heat. Not so perfectly that I need to go do it, you understand, but his explanation illuminates my world too.

That's what I love about Chris Clarke's writing generally. Yeah, he's a skillful writer, but it's more than that. He's a skillful thinker and an acute observer too, and he has a rare gift for soaking his words in what he's thinking and whatever he's looking at, and hanging them up where we can see them.

But my favorite part of his response might be when he digresses into an essay idea he's been playing with, "Craig Childs gets a cup of coffee," written in the ['florid' and 'breathless'] style of nature writer & NPR commentator Craig Childs:

"... An ancient sacrament, this drinking of the juice of Arabic seeds scathed in the cleansing fire of the roaster, and not without its peril."

Friday, waiting to leave work

Some silliness courtesy of Hedonistic Pleasureseeker:

Four jobs I've had:

1. Sign painter
2. Pharmacy technician
3. General assignment reporter
4. Restaurant cook

Four movies I watch over & over:

1. Diva
2. Life of Brian
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Blade Runner

Four Places I've lived:

1. Greensboro, NC
2. Nisswa, MN
3. Minneapolis, MN
4. St. Paul, MN

Four TV Shows I love to watch:

n/a - I don't have a TV set, though I've been known (in the past) to plan my visits to the laundromat so I could watch Xena Warrior Princess, and I've watched DVDs of Futurama and Monty Python's Flying Circus and I used to go over to friends' houses to watch Star Trek: Next Generation.

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Spicy curried things
2. Really good bread
3. Soup
4. Beets

Four places I'd rather be right now:

1. Outside
2. Venice (the one in Italy)
3. Iceland
4. Duluth, MN

This just in: Pessimism has US in 'python-like' grip

Looks like somebody finally woke up and smelled the toast. And noticed that it's burnt.

According to this NBC/WSJ poll conducted last week of 1,010 US adults, over half think that a major war in the Middle East is likely. Almost two-thirds do not feel confident that life for our children's generation will be better than it has been for us. Well over half (60%) think the nation is headed "off on the wrong track," whatever that means. And most of those folks apparently think it's a longer-term decline, rather than a short-term blip. Still, 39% do say that they approve of the job that whatsisname is doing as preznit. The pollsters who conducted the survey say that these numbers represent bad news for the adminstration and the Republican Party as we move into the November election cycle.

"I feel like Republicans are in a barrel and headed toward Niagara Falls," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart.

They've got that going for 'em anyway.

What I'm listening to right now

Yesterday I downloaded the soundtrack to that new documentary about Leonard Cohen.

I'm a total freak for Leonard Cohen songs, so I'm maybe not the most critical audience for this kind of thing. Let's just say it's been in pretty heavy rotation for a couple of days here at my desk. Just a quick cruise through my iTunes file finds 80-some recordings of songs by LC that are performed by folks other than him. And about the same number of him singing his own songs. A little more than that, I guess, if you count multiple versions of the same song.

If I had to pick a favorite from this new release, I think it would be Teddy Thompson's performance of "The Future." Or maybe Rufus Wainwright's "Chelsea Hotel No. 2." Martha Wainwright kicks out pretty righteous versions of "Tower of Song*" and "The Traitor." Onetime Cohen backup singer Perla Batalla sings a couple, and Kate & Anna McGarrigle, and Nick Cave, and Mr. Cohen himself does "Tower of Song" with U2. Plus a bunch more.

Oh, and Laurie Anderson closes out the set with "The Guests." Highly highly excellent.

*link to "video of MW doing ToS on David Letterman. Bonus LC video of "First We Take Manhattan."

Stella + the Holga

Here's another Holga picture: Stella out on the lawn across the street earlier this summer, taken just before sunset.

If you click on the picture, you'll see another picture of her out on the porch at the neighborhood pub.

The monitor (and/or maybe the scanner) adds an extra layer of unpredictability to the Holgafication process.

Excellent!

Holga pics

As long as I'm on the subject of bad habits learned from other bloggers, I guess it would be a good time to post a couple of photos from the Holga. I got them back from the processor a couple of weeks ago already, but I was having some problems getting my new scanner to work.

Anyway, this one is a 1960s Mercury Marauder in front of a 1930s-era Shell station. You can't see it very well in this picture, but click on the link to get a better look. It's awfully cool looking. The online guide to offbeat tourist attractions, roadsideamerica.com, describes the station as a "radiant symbol of a bygone era, when fossil fuel seemed happily inexhaustible." Those were the days, eh? I think this car evokes those days pretty effectively as well. Beautiful in its way, and very shiny, but definitely a relic.

I took this one of some laundry on the clothesline behind my house. The plastic Holga lens distorts the perspective in an odd way, and I find this picture fairly ominous. Plus it looks so bleak, and it was a pretty bright sunny day. Maybe it's just freaking me out on account of all the looming bras -- I first heard about the Holga cameras from Twisty Faster, who is, incidentally, now back at home, symmetrical in her boobularity once again.

Goddamn fucking cancer. Goddamn fucking BRCA2 gene.

SPAM comments

I had to activate the extra level of blogular comment security on account of dumbass SPAMbots leaving their crazy links in the comments of some very old posts. I guess they finally noticed me. If you feel very strongly that using blogger comments and/or having to read and try to type accurately that oozy wavy string of letters to log in to comment here, please feel free to bypass the whole thing and email me directly. The address (comments -AT- alphabitch -DOT- org) is way at the bottom of every page in case you forget. But if you say anything really stupid and whacked out, I'll probably print it on the blog, so don't email me if you're just trying to avoid looking like a nutcase in public.

That's never actually happened, but I want to be clear up front.

Oops, I did it again

I guess you could put it down to the law of unintended consequences. It's really hot here in North Carolina and I had to see if I could live without the air conditioning and, well, I cut my own hair again. I did not photograph the results this time because it was not charmingly rumpled or cute. It was hacked. A mess. Not funny in the least. And I was all sweaty and cursing and -- once I looked in the mirror -- trying not to cry.

Or laugh too hard.

See, I read these stories about air conditioning on alternet.org last month [part one and part two]*, and I got to wondering whether I could live without air conditioning in my house. I absolutely hate hot weather, but my little house is so well insulated that I thought I might be able to make it work. And, actually, it turns out that I can. Most of the time. If I don't move too quickly. I mean, I really dislike having the house all shut up all the damn time. And I'm not crazy about stepping out into a blast furnace from a comfortable cool place (although, yeah, the reverse is usually pretty nice).

But what I forgot is how cranky I get (and how quickly it happens) when I'm hot. And in a hurry. 'Cranky' maybe isn't the right word. I totally lost it this morning, yall. I got up early and it was comfortable. I had ceiling fans moving gently and all the windows open, and I've got some big trees shading the house in the morning (see photo). I made some breakfast and washed the dishes and made a cocktail shaker full of ice cubes, sweetened condensed milk (not too much) and four shots of espresso -- shake it the hell up and pour it into a glass before too much of the ice melts: yum.

And then -- oh gosh look at the time and I had to throw my clothes on too soon after I got out of the tub (and don't you hate trying to get dressed when you're all damp and sticky? I sure do) and then go across the street and feed JD's cats and then let Elvis out and Mrs. Mitty in (or vice versa, they try to stay on opposite sides of the door if possible) and then oh my god here come the recycling dudes and I have this huge pile of stuff on the porch.

So yeah, I rushed around and got all hot and crabby and I stopped to wash my face and that was the big big mistake. Because there was a pair of sewing shears next to the hairbrush. Big sharp pink-handled ones. And I just started cutting and cutting and cutting.

The next thing I remember I was brushing my teeth and looking at myself in the mirror wondering whether I had anything scheduled right away. I did not. I called my hair guy and they tell me I have to wait two weeks.

Not an option.

I went to the walk-in haircuts-R-us place next to work and begged them to help me. I think the woman did a pretty OK job, considering what she had to work with. I tried not to boss her around too much. I could see there was only so much she could do. And I guess it is a great deal cooler. I had to go down to the gym at lunch time mostly to wash out the cruddy hair products they used, and I hate it just as much when I styled it myself as I did when I left haircuts-R-us. So it's easy to style, anyway. I like that in a haircut. Plus, you know what? It's just hair. It'll grow. I'm practically a genius at growing hair.

Too bad I'm such an idiot about cutting it.

*[Update: And this post at Pandagon also inspired me to try living without the AC. Frankly, I didn't think I'd make it for more than a day. It's still off.]

'One big fiesta' for aliens & queers

Why are people giving this guy money?

Oh, never mind. I gotta hand it to the guy, though. He does know how to get attention.

But I get tired of people, whether they're black or white (and mostly they're white, as far as I can see from here), getting all bent out of shape about folks like Mr. R., "selling out" their race. I'm sorry, but this is what it's all about: I've said it before that I'm happy to be in a country where a black person is every bit as free to be a bigoted, reactionary nutjob as any white person.

I wish they'd cut it out, though. Especially the part about exploiting people's fears in service of fundraising for an election they're not all that likely to win.

Rapture Index = 157: Buckle up, yall

I've been hearing a lot of buzz for the last couple of days about how the situation in the Middle East, along with everything else that's going on with regard to [insert your favorite end-times bogeyman here], must surely be pushing us closer to, you know, armageddon & all that shit. So I thought I'd check out what the good folks over at The Rapture Index had to say about it.

We're at 157, apparently. It seems that a reading of 145 & over means that there is indeed some very heavy prophetic weather, though the site's author(s) are careful to note that the index is "designed to measure the type of activity that could act as a precursor to the rapture." So yeah, the peace process is back to zero, and whaddya know: global turmoil, liberalism, and Russia (!) are all on the rise.

The record high index reading, 182, occurred 9/24/01, while the all-time low (57) was 12/12/93. This year it's been running pretty steadily in the 150s. We're moving pretty briskly in the direction of the "pre-tribulation rapture."

The purpose of this index, you may wish to know, is "to factor together a number of related end time components into a cohesive indicator," and also "to standardize those components to eliminate the wide variance that currently exists with prophecy reporting."

Yeah, well, they got that last part right. Prophecy reporting in general is plagued [sorry, couldn't help that] by wide variance and a general lack of cohesive indicators.

I'm so syndicated

I added some kind of rss feed just now, if you're into that kind of thing.

New product alert: Occam's Bikini Wax!

Man, I wish I'd thought of that. Miss Prism recommends it to those who are reluctant to take Occam's Razor to their deep-rooted superfluous assumptions.

Hope it helps.

Juice boxes for grown-ups

OK, it's no secret that every now and again I like to get those single-serving aseptic boxes of organic chocolate milk. Or even vanilla.

And my friend recently got some juice boxes in anticipation of a visit from a toddler, who happened to prefer fizzy water.

In the end, I drank all the juice boxes myself. It was apple juice and it was really pretty delicious. Why is that so funny? So when my lovely ex-wife found these single-serving boxes of pinot grigio at the store the other day, she brought them home for me. Of course I had to try them, and you know what? They're not that bad. Refreshing and quite pleasant.

My only real complaint is that the folks behind this marketing idea apparently expect the end-user to pour the product into a wineglass or some such. I had to provide my own bendy straw to drink it right out of the carton. Fortunately I had a lovely pink one handy and was able to enjoy the mini-box of wine quite effectively. You can click on the picture above to verify that I actually did make an effort to drink it.

So far I've only seen the pinot grigio in four-packs in the store. I secretly hope they come out with a couple more flavors -- only the kinds that are good cold though. I don't think that they'd be all that great at room temperature.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my hunch. They make a big deal on the label about how cheap this packaging is -- they say they take money away from the packaging and put it into the wine. I'm just not sure I buy that claim. Comments on that, anybody?

Also, I want to thank my neighbor JD for taking the pics of me. She's in the hospital today having a hideous operation to remove some cancerous parts of her body. I'm really tired of people getting cancer.

Blueberries for Stella

Stella loves to eat berries. Here she is in my lovely ex-wife's front yard in the blueberry patch. You can't quite tell in this blurry photo, but she's eating them right off the bush.

That's a blueberry branch, visible just to the left of the black-eyed Susans, in case you can't tell. Stella is the pointy-eared black dog on the right. She only picks the ripe ones, but she can be quite greedy about them. It's so adorable I can hardly stand it.

She does the same thing with blackberries. She's been doing this since we first took her out on a hike and found some blackberries when she was just a pup.

And of course she likes it when you feed her just about anything; in the photo at left, that's my lovely ex-wife's hand dropping blueberries into Stella's mouth. I tried to get the perfect photo of the berry falling, but I just can't get the hang of the delay on the digital camera. And it was just a little too light out for the flash & a little too dark out for really sharp photos.

Despite Stella's enthusiasm for blueberries -- and her ability to be way too adorable for me to make her stop eating them, I picked about two pints on Saturday, and it really seemed as if more were ripening even as I picked them. I'm sure there will be several more pints waiting to be picked when I get home tonight.

Yum. And of course they freeze well, and frozen blueberries are an excellent snack in hot weather, for dogs and their humans. Lots of antioxidants.

Leaves of three, let it be -- right?

I like to sit out on my porch. I can talk to my neighbors, enjoy the (relatively) cool evening air, get much better cellphone reception, and every night this time of year there are all these fireflies that rise slowly up out of the grass and up up up into the treetops starting at dusk.

That's the good part.

The bad part is the poison ivy. And the brown recluse spiders (sorry, no photo yet). Apparently there are poisonous snakes as well, but only the first two come up on to my damn porch.

My last shoe purchase

Yes, this is my most recent shoe purchase, and it's going to be my last for a while. It's getting out of hand. I do not need high-heeled Prada mary janes. Not at all.

For one thing, I have this other pair of black shoes that I could wear anywhere that I'd ever be likely to wear the Pradas, and they are so much more comfortable. They were designed by this dude who I guess used to work for Dr. Martens. So they're nice and clunky, plus they're all cushy inside. Not like the ones pictured at left. Those hurt, in case you're wondering. The soles are kind of thin, and I'm not used to hurty shoes anymore. I'm out of practice walking in them, which is why I'm sitting on the rock wall in front of my house in this picture. I didn't want to walk anywhere at all if I didn't have to.

So why did I buy a pair of insanely expensive shoes that I have no real need for? People are starving and barefoot somewhere.

Well, a couple of reasons. Primarily because I'm powerless over shoes. Addicted. And I have this particular thing for mary janes. It's something about that buckle and the strap across the arch -- I just really like the look of them. And I like the way they feel, even when they kind of hurt. And it's entirely possible that, sometime before I die, I will have a date. The kind of date where I'll want the perfect pair of shoes. The kind of date where these shoes will be perfect.

Or not.

I know, I know -- it's crazy and pointless and I should just stop. And I will. I can quit any time. I'll get to that in a minute.

Plus, for those of you who care about this kind of thing, I almost never pay full price for anything. I bought them for way way way cheap on eBay - paid less for them, in fact, for the Birkenstocks pictured here. Pocket change, almost. We're not talking about $700 Jimmy Choos or any of that.

These Birkenstocks are very comfortable also, as you might expect. And sparkly!

But the title of this post is My last shoe purchase. Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that it's not my last shoe purchase ever. I was just trying to get your attention. Here's the deal I'm making with myself. I swear it on a stack of reference books: I will not buy any more shoes until I buy a house.

I've been goofing off for too long.

Trying to herd a cat

Mrs. Mitty did not want her picture taken last night. This is the best one of several I took. I don't know whether she adopted this little perch before or after the miniature rose died. Doesn't matter. I was hoping to show you how adorable she looked curled up in the dirt. She had other ideas, however, and left to pursue them.

Not entirely sure how this works

But this YouTube thing is kind of cool. Here is some video of Sandy Denny singing and playing the piano on two songs and the guitar on another. Not the most high-quality recordings or copies, but it's not like there's a lot of video of her out there floating around. Here she is with her band Fotheringay. Sandy is singing harmony vocals with her husband Trevor Lucas singing lead. There are weirdly invasive titles on the screen, but it's cool to see anyway.

And for you real geeks out there (and I know you're out there), here is some very rare, early Fairport Convention, pre-Sandy Denny, with vocalist Judy Dyble.

Uh-oh

This is way too much fun. At least, way too much fun to have at work. Open the link at your own risk, is all I have to say about it. Via Twisty Faster over at I Blame the Patriarchy.

As most of you probably already know, Dear Aunt Twisty is about to go in and have her remaining boob cut off, and a few other parts snipped out as well. As in, "all estrogen must go." I'm pretty cranky about this whole development, although I'm in total agreement when she notes that "asymmetry, while desirable in Japanese flower arrangements, is conclusively unnerving when it comes to gazongas." And how. Especially one's own boobular units.

If I may paraphrase several of the commenters to Twisty's post: bloody fucking goddamn hell. There is no justice at all.

My own personal carbon impact

Found this link over at Pandagon and so of course I had to try out the carbon impact calculator.

I was not surprised to find that my personal carbon dioxide impact is smaller than average, but was very surprised to find that it's so much smaller than average: well under a third of the national average carbon emissions of 15,000 pounds per year. Am I some kind of fanatic? Probably, by most people's standards. I don't drive a car, I don't travel very much by plane, and my little house is very well insulated so it doesn't cost very much to heat or keep reasonably cool.

The carbon calculator didn't include a way to include use of public transportation for daily commuting, though I don't think that mine is egregious; I take the bus maybe three round trips a week at a total for a total of about fifteen miles. And a couple of 2.5- or 3-mile cab rides a month. I live close to my workplace on purpose.

The calculator also didn't include stuff like lawn mowers & leaf blowers, etc. I don't have anything like that, but I do have a lawn & I pay a guy to mow it.

If I wanted to be really smug reduce my carbon impact (and my contribution to the neighborhood noise problem) any further -- and if I had a shed in the backyard where I could store such things -- I'd get one of these nifty reel mower units. I like them because I love the smell of freshly mown grass. I don't like the smell or noise of lawn mowers quite so much. Maybe I could keep it on the back porch. They're not even very expensive, and I feel sure that it's pretty good exercise to walk back & forth across the lawn a bazillion times. I'm all about free fitness opportunities.

OK, OK, I'll get one when I buy a house.

I'm not buying anything at all until I buy a house. Except maybe food.

I've said this before, but

I'll say it again. Fred Clark is really smart. Who else says things like 'exegetical kung-fu masters?'

And his commentary on the "Prairie Muffin" phenomenon is right on target. I'm not going to link to these gals, because I'm a little afraid of them, but in a quick nutshell, they're from among the ranks of those homeschooling, modestly-dressed, submit-to-husband's-authority type gals, one of whom has issued something called the "Prairie Muffin Manifesto." About which Fred says:

Yes, yes, I know they're naive innocents from the heartland. They're not familiar with the sophisticated, urbane euphemisms of our over-sexualized Blue-State Babylon. It's purely unintentional and coincidental that they've chosen a term for their reductionist, stunted notion of the role of women that is also a term used as vulgar slang for female genitalia and thus, also, as a reductionist and misogynist metonymy employed by others expressing a different, but parallel, stunted view of the role of women.

Pure coincidence. Just as it's a coincidence that this whole creepy "biblical manhood and womanhood" cult just coincidentally uses terms like "dominance," "submission" and "granting headship" that all sound like the names of some of the kinkier subgroups of an adult usenet forum.

And it's pure coincidence that this particular subgroup, which just happens to have statistically higher rates of all manner of abuses domestic, also just happens to choose a creepily pedophilic-sounding nickname for their youngest children."

Update: There's more here on this topic from Dr. Violet Socks at Reclusive Leftist, and Echidne of the Snakes has more here and here. Truly weird shit, in my opinion.

Celebrity look-alike

So I went to that celebrity face recognition site that all the cool kids are talking about. I thought it sounded kind of fun, and it was. I submitted four pictures.

The one shown at left was unrecognizable as a face. The one with the tin foil hat (here) was matched to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Keanu Reeves, Al Gore, Yoko Ono, and Rosa Luxembourg. This fairly recent ID photo was matched to Bruce Lee, Steven Spielberg, and Malcolm X. The fluffy haircut photo I took the other day? Noam Chomsky, Harvey Keitel, and Elvis Costello. Must be the glasses. And I forget which two of the three were matched to Wim Wenders. I guess that this particular face recognition match algorithm is set up to find people to whom you look like you could be related. And I am related to some male humans, so it hasn't gone all that far afield.