agent of entropy

i picked up an old folder of writing and found a bit from somewhere in the summer of 1999, written apparently during the security stand-down at Los Alamos. there's a brief reference to "the mythological history of espionage and why the rose is symbol for it," but no further details.

i could go hunting around the internet, but i should really get out of the house and moving. so instead -- any ideas? theories? stories?

tell me a story. it can be true, it can be flimsy, it can be made up out of thin air on the spot. but tell me a good story about roses and spycraft.

*grin*

a pair of links, from the Haus list & tamnonlinear, respectively:

geeky music visual fun
and
ridiculous equine cuteness (aka OMG PONIES!!)

and lyrics to the song i was just listening to.
"Galuppi Baldasare" (Kris Delmhorst)

..."And the minor third so bitter, the six chord like a sigh,
suspension, solution, asking must we die, must we die must we die?
And the seventh says Well fellas, life might not last, but we can try...

So were you happy? I was happy. You still happy? Yes, and you?
Then more kisses! Why’d we stop them, when a million seemed so few?
There’s something in that music, lord it must be answered to."...

still not taking the time to write a content-ful post. it's been quite a good weekend so far, though very busy. i have more fabric, hair-bleach, 6 new cds (+2 little brightly-colored records), 3 new books, a boxfull of overripe peaches for jam, (some) clean laundry, another batch of data, and with luck this afternoon i'll have mangos, stickyrice, and those little coconut-milk & taro things from Thai brunch. and more clean laundry. and i got a phone call from (a recorded) Samuel L Jackson that startled and boggled and entertained me, fussin' at me to stop dying my hair all those colors and get in my 'old tin can of a car' (*ahem*) and go see that movie. oh! and also there was much laughter and good music and dancing. dancing like frenzied, blind crayfish, dancing like very silly, rapidly and economically drunken people, and dancing stompy waltzing polkas. also found a new drinking song that makes me grin:

sung in a deep and dramatic voice while swaying back & forth and preferably waving a whiskey bottle around, with appropriate facial expressions at the end of each line:
Women make us love!
...and love makes us sad.
...and sadness makes us drink!
...and drinking makes us mad!
...and madness makes us women.
(and then drink.)

but now is not time for drinking; now is time for me to get off my ass and shower & do laundry again. so, then, here you go.

from tyratae:
List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions in your livejournal along with 7 songs. Then tag 7 people to see what they're listening to:

1. "I Must Away Love", Halali
2. "Black Soul Choir", 16 Horsepower
3. "Old Cold Coffee on the Dashboard", Nickel Creek
4. "Singapore", Tom Waits
5. "Weatherman", Kris Delmhorst (and also, really, all of her Strange Conversations album. all of it. wow.)
6. "Day Is Done", Norah Jones & Charlie Hunter
7. "You Are My Sunshine", unknown, off a mix from sholladay

and in a more general sense, i've been intrigued by the song "St. James Infirmary" for awhile now. as it happened, this led to me picking up three albums of Alan Lomax recordings at Amoeba the other day, and that in turn meant that i enjoyed hearing Andru Bemis play last night more than i might have otherwise.

not tagging, but go for it if you want to.

i went by the Depot for Creative Reuse this afternoon with pumapreysize. meant to stop by and rifle through their fabric-pile quickly before going on to other fabric-shops...but:

the Depot has many boxes of tie silk swatches (maybe 6" x 12", or a little larger) for sale, cheap. (i got a 12"x12"x18" box mostly-full for $20.) they're being picked through pretty rapidly, but there's some neat stuff there.

...simplykimberly, snowninja7 -- could i maybe come hang out & use your sewing machine/serger sometime soon? ya see, i've got all this tie silk...

you should go look at this:
a picture, posted originally to urban_decay, of a building on West Franklin St, in Baltimore.

50. Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi. not a light read, and one that i want to go back soon and page through, soak in more thoroughly, go look up references and history. i'm more than a little ashamed that i've never read most of the books that the narrative revolves around...clearly those should go on the list, especially with Nafisi's descriptions and teaching-notes close by them in my mind. in any case, an excellent book in many dimensions.

51. Numbers in the Dark, italo calvino. his writing makes me smile, makes me laugh sometimes at the way he picks random or little things -- black holes, water-transportation systems, pumping gas -- and weaves such delicate filigreed stories around them. and then there are the mock-interviews, with Montezuma, the Neanderthal Man, and Henry Ford, illuminating always in at least two directions, contrast and juxtaposition of imperfections. and "The Memoirs of Casanova" reminds me of Invisible Cities; in Cities, the names of the cities all sounded like women's name, each passage felt like a description of particular details of particular relationships. "Casanova" is a similar series of passages, this time obstensibly about different women, Cate and Ilda, Irma, Dirce, and Tullia...but much more about the narrator himself, and about the limitations of perception and connection.

i've run into Calvino a few times over the years, and each time i loved becoming enmeshed in his writing, but didn't follow up and read more. now i finally have three of his books for myself, and i suspect he's well up into my list of favorite authors by now.

and a small side-note:
an envelope arrived today, set on M's new batiked tablecloth on our dining-room table while i was out seeing the doctor -- a card and a mix-cd from tyratae! my day is made better. *grin* i owe you a good letter soon, and i should have time this weekend to sit down and give it proper thought...and in the meantime i'm delaying going to simplykimberly's craft-night long enough to pull the new music down through the laptop to electric-mayhem (the ipod) so as to listen to it on the drive up to El Sobrante. thank you!

from asarwate, via ergodicity: from Sepia Mutiny, a video clip of a song in the 1981 Tamil film Ellaam Inbamayam, in which there is, indeed, some of the funk. complete with gold-fringed vest and shiny shiny boots.

from hammercock, perhaps an even more odd-expression-producing video: Yatta!

from tparnell: OMG PONIES!!! on Slashdot.

from officialgaiman: the trailer for Terry Gilliam's next movie, Tideland, which looks to be as strange as you'd expect, and with heavy southern accents.
and a very neat zoomable photo of Sydney Harbor.

from lastreetart: an interview with Shepard Fairey on the origin of the Andre the Giant/Obey art
...and then i go look at the wikipedia article on Fairey and discover that he's from Charleston. but...i kinda think i knew that, but i don't know why. anyhow. small, small world.

Tech Review did a note and a photo on the Big Jimmy mural that Tats Cru did this spring.

it was up in the courtyard at Roast, and will be displayed both at EC & Senior Haus.

from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, about halfway through, under the heading "Trading Cities":
( In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses... )

40. The Cost of Living, Arundhati Roy. two political essays. "The Greater Common Good" attacks the propaganda of Big Dams in India, and particularly the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada River, a detailing of the ignored or unexamined costs of the dams, and also of the promises the dams fail to live up to. "The End of Imagination" is on India's nuclear tests, and again on the ways in which nationalism and patriotism are tied to such destruction. not an easy read, but she's a powerful writer, and these are things worth knowing and thinking about.

41. Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It, Geoff Dyer. "a collection of 11 personal essays covering his travels around the globe." he's a good storyteller, and occasionally his style caught me, but too often he just seemed callous, caught up in his own navel-gazing. but, at the least, it's another reminder that i want to get out and be travelling again before long, one way or another.

42. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde. hee! very tasty. i'm impressed -- a book that's full of lit references that i don't get, but which i still entirely enjoy.

43. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull. yet another re-read, but it's still a good book. and besides, i bought this copy in Minneapolis, at DreamHaven Books, to read after seeing a little of that city. it seemed appropriate.

44. Stardust, Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess. also a re-read. i'm sick and running out of books! might have to venture out and use some of the Borders/B&N giftcards i found in my piles of papers.