sugarboss

2010-08-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

"Scissors are good, music is better, and mixed drinks with friends are best. Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical. Edit yourself, but let someone else censor you."

"Success is generating an emotion. Failure is a million different things."

Frank Chimero

via Ellen Hanson Designs

"Gold, myrrh, and frank sent this" - Bobulate

2010-08-16T22:24:00.001-07:00

A short list of nursery school thoughts from a recent favorite, Preschool Gems:

“Plants are more important than games.”
“I love all cakes, except some cakes I don’t like.”
“But I’m going somewhere even excitinger.”
“I don’t think anything.”
“Wizards are true.”
“The good force is like the main force, the evil force is like the second force. Don’t use the evil force, just the good force.”

When they arrive throughout the day, I can’t help but think of Sir Ken Robinson’s insight earlier this year on creativity and education:

Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’re not frightened of being wrong. I’m not saying that wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is that if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. … And we run our companies that way — we stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. We’re educating people out of their creative capacities.

Throughout the day, it’s good to have reminders:

“Once, a long time ago, I had the whole world, and then I lost it.”

And that it’s absolutely OK.

via bobulate.com

This made me shiver.

Posted via email from doomsday jigging

Please Bring Strange Things

2010-03-22T10:37:00.001-07:00

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.

---Ursula K. Leguin

Also... I love designers.

2010-01-27T22:02:00.001-08:00

via passfail.squarespace.com

For some reason this resonates with the Supreme Court's decision re:corporate campaign funding. There is nothing human about 97% of corporations out there. They will not laugh at your jokes and they don't care if you can find your gate number on your boarding pass as long as you have already paid them for the ticket. They will also fire you if you get them bad press.

Posted via web from doomsday jigging

senseless acts of beauty

2010-01-27T19:54:00.001-08:00

via liquidskyarts.com

This reminds me a little of that scene in Virgin Suicides that still totally fucking creeps me out even though I haven't seen it since it came out in theaters.

Also: *Stealing this*.

Posted via web from doomsday jigging

The act is its own reward.

2010-01-27T08:22:00.001-08:00

I keep thinking about Jessica’s one thing:

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.

And this from Lorrie Moore on how to become a writer:

First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age — say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom. She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She’ll look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a donut. She’ll say: “How about emptying the dishwasher?” Look away. Shove the forks in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. This is the required pain and suffering. This is only for starters.

Maud Newton points out:

Many writers do focus on another path initially. …. Roberto Bolaño, for instance, wanted to be a spy, Kate Christensen a rock star, Joan Didion an actress. Chris Adrian went to medical school, and the seminary. Herman Melville was a sailor.

But then, importantly, they were not these things.

Seth Godin, yesterday, published a new book, which has a tagline of: “Are You Indispensable?” Keep all of this in mind — Jessica’s advice, Lorrie Moore’s wisdom, Maud’s synthesis — and consider what Dan Pink had to say to Seth:

Too many people harbor the misguided belief that humans are motivated solely by biological urges and by carrots-and-sticks. Those two drives matter, of course. But we’ve neglected that humans also have a *third* drive — to direct our own lives, to get better at stuff, to make a contribution. Here’s an example. This weekend somebody’s going to be practicing the clarinet — even though it won’t get him a mate (the first drive) or make him any money (the second drive.) Why is he doing that? Because it’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s meaningful. Because the act is its own reward.

It’s a lot. But, in fact, it’s fairly simple. Try to be anything else. That’s where it gets all tangle-y and difficult. Then go back to the thing that drives you; that act is its own reward.

via bobulate.com

Posted via web from doomsday jigging

A Poor Wayfaring Stranger: Methodology

2010-01-24T17:39:00.001-08:00

via a-poor-wayfaring-stranger.blogspot.com

1, 2, 3, 5, 10... YES.

Posted via web from doomsday jigging

how to not crush easily crushed things

2010-01-11T20:17:00.001-08:00

“'Carpe diem' doesn’t mean seize the day—it means something gentler and more sensible. “Carpe diem” means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be “cape diem,” if my school Latin serves. No R. Very different piece of advice."

http://bit.ly/8v6aOM

Posted via email from doomsday jigging

Nu-mee.

2010-01-10T14:15:00.001-08:00

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_1074.MOV (3565 KB)

bye bye,
sjb.

Posted via email from doomsday jigging

Plastic shorty short.

2010-01-05T20:24:00.001-08:00

Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.

via theatlantic.com

Whoa. Just, whoa.

Posted via web from doomsday jigging

Plastic shorty short.

2010-01-05T19:39:00.001-08:00

Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.

via theatlantic.com

Whoa. Just, whoa.

Posted via web from doomsday jigging

Disuhmuhaiyyyye.

2010-01-03T14:44:00.001-08:00

bye bye,
sjb.

Posted via email from doomsday jigging

How to Capture an Idea | Tomorrow Museum

2010-01-02T07:24:00.001-08:00

via tomorrowmuseum.com

Fo Latuh.

Posted via web from doomsday jigging

Fog Sculptor

2009-12-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

What we're all really waiting for, though, is the inspired 5% or so of improvisations that can make a project start to sing. The first week of rehearsals in late October was full of such moments. A drought followed, then there was another splutter of inspiration. Last Wednesday was a good example. Looking back at the video – we film all our rehearsals in the studio – I see we're working very hard and yet, strangely, hardly working at all, as if the world we've sketched on stage were somehow doing its own thing. It's not, of course. When the action starts, what you see is 50 minutes of the performers gliding and stuttering through great decisions, inspired reactions and odd lunges, jumping from one fragment of material to another in ways that any amount of our talking could never have predicted. And if you watch closely, you'll see that I'm running in and out of the stage, too, whispering suggestions, waving yes or no to people who only sometimes notice, trying to sculpt the fog as it warps and weaves in front of me.

Michael Chabon: We’re All Amateurs Here

2009-10-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Perhaps there is no perfect word for the kind of people I have raised my children to be: a word that encompasses obsessive scholarship, passionate curiosity, curatorial tenderness, and an irrepressible desire to join in the game, to inhabit in some manner—through writing, drawing, dressing up, or endless conversational riffing and Talmudic debate—the world of the endlessly inviting, endlessly inhabitable work of popular art. The closest I have ever come for myself is amateur, in all the best senses of the word: a lover; a devotee; a person driven by passion and obsession to do it—to explore the imaginary world—oneself. And if we must accept the inevitable connotation of hopeless ineptitude that amateur carries, then at least let us stipulate that we shall be hopeless and inept like Max Fischer, the hero of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore: in the most passionate, heedless, and whole-hearted way.

via litwit
via tor.com

Kid help.

2009-10-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Here.

Quote-y, Quote, Quote, Quote.

2009-09-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

“This is the true joy in life, to be used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, to be thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap. To be a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am a member of a community and as a member it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can before I die. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch that I want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

George Bernard Shaw

Wild.

2009-09-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

Ahem.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver

Um.

2009-08-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

Holy shit monkeys.

A theater troupe

2009-08-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

This sounds familiar.

I was similarly miserable throughout the happiest summer I ever spent in New York City. I was recovering from an affair that had ended badly, and during my convalescence I was subletting a cool, airy apartment a block from Tompkins Square Park, with a kitchen window that looked out on a community garden. A theater troupe was rehearsing a production of “The Tempest” out there, and I got used to the warped rattling crash of sheet-metal thunder in the evenings.

BUT YES THE HIPPOPOTAMUS!

2009-04-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

Fat kid photos.

2009-04-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

Blooooooobonnets.

Amy Stein's Halloween in Harlem

2009-04-02T23:34:00.000-07:00

Book Nerds Unite.

2009-03-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

For some bizarre reason this made me so happy.

OMG!

2009-03-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

via Goldenfiddle

Better Than Sausages?

2009-03-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

"A report filed by a Barrington-Inverness police officer says Eni Skoien found her husband in the children's playroom with two prostitutes. But Skoien disputes the report and says he's working to correct it.

The report says Eni Skoien allegedly swung a toy guitar at her husband and punched him. Police say she's charged with misdemeanor domestic battery and a 21-day restraining order was issued."

More here.

2009-03-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

“I must learn to love the fool in me–the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.” — Theodore I. Rubin, MD

Mike Leigh = Me.

2009-03-10T10:19:00.001-07:00

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200903/?read=interview_leigh

TRUMPETS!

2009-01-29T22:28:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXU9Ur9QznE

Laziness has its own rewards.

2009-01-27T22:12:00.000-08:00

Ha, HAH!

2009-01-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Praise to the Spaghetti Monster

2009-01-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

For my husband:

"[I]t is one thing to disbelieve in God; it is quite another to never feel a twinge of doubt about one's own disbelief. And just as the Christian who has never entertained doubts about his faith probably hasn't thought hard enough about the matter, the atheist who perceives the Christian God and the flying spaghetti monster as equally ridiculous hypotheses really needs to get out more often," - Ross Douthat

Bush's Last Presser

2009-01-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

This strikes me as the thing that has sickened me about this douchebag all along. I went to school with guys like this my whole life. The entitled, the shallow, the self-serving. The guys who sweet talks the nerdy girl to get her Chem notes only to talk shit about her as soon as she's out of ear shot. The guy who makes the most inane, ill-informed comment in class and then thinks it's so funny. He's the kid who tried to kick birds during recess. And the guy who never worked hard at anything - except making sure he got away. I fucking hate that guy.

A reader's comments from my new favorite gay republican:

"I watched it through twice. It was extremely revealing. When discussing his "mistakes," Bush focused on whether to land his plane in Baton Rouge and the press coverage of Abu Ghraib. So he understood his role not as a decision maker and allocator of resources, but as a television personality--a media interface. That really has been his role, I think. It suggests at minimum a superficiality about his job, a failure to connect to the deeper importance of policy. Everything is understood in the Rovian terms of advancing an electoral agenda. But then also the lack of compassion for victims--the mocking looks--it all suggested a frat boy arrogance to me. This needs to be preserved for posterity. Bush showed his true self. And it was extremely ugly."

More here.

Suck it, McCain.

2008-09-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

A-mother-fucking-men, sister.

You wanna a talk about pigs in lipstick, we can talk about some fukcing pigs in some fucking lipstick.

2008-09-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

From his own campaign.

I seethe with hatred, therefore I am.

2008-09-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

Grrrr.