i am following my fish

onward fish for today is a new day

2008-09-02T21:55:00.016-04:00

it's finally complete! today marks the birth of the jan-ai scholarship website. thank you to all those who put such hard work into the site - it's lovely. from this day forth please go to http://www.jan-aischolar.org/ for further information. if you feel you can, please donate to help jennsee's legacy continue to aid and inspire young artists of all ages.

this fish is also archive fish. i will aspire to make backup versions of all fishy content in case the site ever goes underwater, but i will not post anything more to this site. i am sorry for those of you who, like me, wishes it would go on forever, but marching uphill is hard when you only have gills to breathe through. believe me, i will always cherish the fish and all our dear fishies who made it a wonderful ocean to swim in.

the following links are brought to you by the letter "J" and the nubmer 23:
jan-ai scholarship
memorial fish
jennsee's last fish

see the world through jennsee's lens: tourist of everything

some specific archives:
writings of the fish
fishlists
fish-eyed views

alas it is time we part. "To absent friends, old gods and the season of mists; and may each and everyone of us always give the devil his due."

farewell,
mysfit

2008-03-21T02:05:00.004-04:00

happy birthday fish.

happy vernal equinox. happy spring.

like a story. you. from night into morning. from equinox to solstice.
balance to daylight. you.

happy birthday fish.

2007-09-05T10:09:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the late notice folks.

The Jan-Ai Scholarship Fund
Requests the pleasure of your company at our
First Annual Fundraiser to
Provide scholarships to young, aspiring artists

Photo Exhibit and Sale
Saturday, September 29, 2007
6:00 – 9:00 o’clock
The Atlantic City Art Center, Garden Pier
New Jersey Avenue & The Boardwalk
Atlantic City, NJ

A celebration with music, wine and light fare
Silent Auction Included
Admission - $60 per person*
RSVP required (by Sept. 15)

If you are interested please send me an email ASAP at mysfit17@yahoo.com and I will forward you a formal invitation.

converstaional farewell fish

2007-09-04T18:45:00.000-04:00

The fish: I miss you.
mysfit: i know, i miss you too. but i miss—
The fish: I know.
mysfit: you’re not mine, you know that, right? you never were. not jenn see’s, nor oldben’s; but a life that rose up through the interactions between the three of us and those who followed their own fishes here. i can’t do that alone, i’m sorry, i can’t shoulder that responsibility. i do still love you, though.
The fish: But you’re leaving me, you’re—
mysfit: i’m not! or i already have. or – well – there’s the chaos journals for me and i thought i would try to keep this site up-to-date with scholarship fund info and maybe that wouldn’t be so emotionally draining, so, well so painful, you know. maybe it won’t be so tough.
The fish: So that’s it, huh? That’s great. When it gets hard, when it gets tough, you—
mysfit: hey, i know this sucks, but i’ve got to try to start, if not over, then again. hell, I can’t even delete or update your dead links, like each change to the template takes her further away. it’s kinda like not giving you a bath, ever. i keep trying, but—honestly fish, i’m sick of feeling like my blogging life is trapped in the twilight world. there’s been some talk of—
The fish: I hate when people talk behind my source code.
mysfit: let me finish! there’s been talk, a lot of talk, recently about the potential strength of techno-friendships and looking through the archives, it just reminds me of what a vibrant and living site you were.
The fish: I was magnificent wasn’t I?
mysfit: the best.
The fish: You’ve been mostly absent for more than a year – what makes you think that the chaos journals will hold you here any more than I can?
mysfit: maybe they won’t. won’t know till i try will i?
The fish: And you’ll visit?
mysfit: and post about the Jan-ai Scholarship fund and maybe other things, as often as I can – we’ll see. until then – good night sweet fish.

love,
mysfit

article linkfish

2007-08-28T23:40:00.000-04:00

for those of you who are interested, here is the link to the article from the philly inquirer i mention in the below rant: Proof of an afterlife

i agree with the comment that the reporter did a decent job capturing the friendship and love shown on the blogoshere. i have long held the view that humans are machines of communication, as we are constantly creating new methods to do just this. at the risk of sounding cheesy, i never really thought about the fact that these new methods also open up new ways of experiencing love.

thank you all.

love,
mysfit

connectiveness and the fish (a rant)

2007-08-24T18:01:00.000-04:00

so this has been on my mind recently and i thought i would put it out there for those who still occasionally wander through the fish. the jan-ai scholarship fund has been going strong now for more than a year and we are constantly regaled with tales of how much the web-community (blog-community, photo-community, myspace-community, etc) has shown an outpouring of love for the jenn see. so much so that there is a reporter in philly who is doing an article on jenn and how her death affected her "web friends".

it got me thinking.

she kept saying that jenn's passing affected people who had "never met her" or "didn't know her". this is a misconception. those of you who interacted with jenn through the fish or through comments on your blog or through any of the myriad of places that she left large footprints of insight, wit and veracity, you met her in cyberspace and knew her well, somewhat or just in passing. just like anywhere else. jenn was jenn. she put everything she was in her posts and rarely held anything back when carrying on conversations, even if there were the delayed conversations of commentary or email. where i have cultivated mystery by refusing pictures or through my handle "mysfit", and others create whole new personalities for themselves, jenn see ('see' being the verbal pronunciation of her last initial) never went in for that kind of thing. she was her writings, her photography, her posts and they were her. your interactions were as real as you made them because hers were as real as she could make them.

we live in a world that is suffering from separation anxiety and doesn't even know it. where i don't know my neighbors, can stay in my house connecting to you in your house and never see your face, never know your name and never know you. yet you are the christophers of cyberspace. you can change your name, your avatar-face, your personality from site to site, from post to post and it is only what you send out that i can read. but how much you can really hide in this virtual world is intertwined with how much i refuse to see. how different is this than in the mundane, non-digital world?

things have certainly changed over the last 15 years but the internet got a bad wrap in its infant stage with all those sexual predators and became a perceived tool of deception. in a lot of ways this perception hasn't changed. as william gibson said in a recent interview, current technology makes it both harder and easier to keep secrets. (see article: here) identity theft, credit card fraud, email monitoring, ip tracking. the perceived stability of the internet is only a imagined security blanket and we all know it. data can be lost, corrupted, erased.

in this world, is it any more surprising that people are astounded by the love and grief you, my fair fishies, have shown for the passing of a friend. perhaps our rioting call should be "a virtual friend but not a virtual friendship! not a virtual love!" jenn see was ever a being so full of creative and connective energy that her close friends (some she met on the web) couldn't help but feed on it and energy like that cannot be diminished except through nonuse. so when she felt trapped in a location where she wasn't comfortable, she spread her energy out into the blog community, into the internet, reminding us that this medium is not about information or about stealing from each other but about communication. she put her writing on the wall and though it is not forever, it is a really big fucking wall. over the miles and the years, you who connected to jenn see were reminded that there are other people sitting behind their computers and many of them, regardless of age, space or experience, are just like you.

“No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise” -- Lewis Carroll

2007-06-22T10:49:00.000-04:00

Dear fish,

it’s amazing how a year can go by just like that. it’s just like Relativity to force each day to crawl by in agonizing slowness, but for a year to splash by like a raindrop. i blame Einstein - it was his idea after all.

for those of you who have followed your fish to this site for the first time, know that today we are looking to the stars hoping for any sign of our missing fish:

for those of you looking for some connection, some words of comfort, some well, some kind of fish anyway, i have only a poor shadow of a dream to share, but hopefully it will suffice.

through many trials and tribulations, i descended through the house and out the backdoor. at the entrance to Styx Ave, a woman stopped me because i could not take a bottle of living water onto the street. i quickly drained the water, backing up only slightly because i knew the guardian was trying to turn me away. once through, i strolled down the sidewalk and there i saw her, huddled with some lost souls on the other side of the road.

she was wrapped head to toe in a fusion of fashions that nonetheless looked fabulous on her (but you knew it would). she was wearing two pairs of dark sunglasses so that i could not see her eyes. she stood up when she saw me and the movement cause her glasses to fall off - but she scurried to get them back on and grinned. we bantered a bit about this fully knowing that had i seen her eyes, the dream would have ended, such was the rule of the dream.

at this point we began walking, me on this side of the street and her on the other. we talked of many things that, like dreamthings often do, faded instantly upon waking, but were comforting in their time.
there was one point that was important - one thing I have to share. while we were bantering, i thought of saying a thing but before i could, she spoke it to me instead. and as we walked in conversation, she passed through buildings so that i could only see her through windows and could not speak to her, yet still she answered my unasked questions.

you must understand what this means: that she is able to glimpse our minds from time to time and knows when we are thinking of her - and perhaps in those times, since distance as we know it in our living bodies no longer applies to jennifer, take comfort in the belief that such a connection brings you "closer" to her than when she was alive.

for a wonderful tribute to jenn please visit stainless steel droppings - (thank you carl v. for saying many of the things that i cannot)

i love you all. i miss her dearly.

mysfit

shakespeare rolls up to the fish one day -

2007-04-26T16:53:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

not sure, why but this seems to be playing through my mind of late. ah romeo and juliet - irritating huh? i suppose it was either this or puck's closing speach in midsummer night's but we can wait for that. (should have been King Lear, but you know, i'd never pick the right speach...)

MERCUTIO
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she--

not to worry, queen mab ain't got nothin' on our girl jenn!

love,
mysfit

more to come:

how cool is the jan-ai scholarship fund! or i bet you want to be a coolfish too

carl v.'s Once Upon a Time Challenge

this fish is drunk fish

2006-12-22T21:20:00.000-05:00

so this is it, huh? life without jenn? there are days when i'm not sure if i am up to it. it's like missing an essential part of you. one that infuriated you, made you elated, destroyed you to help you rebuild again... in other words was all the things i need and she's just not...

tonight, after six months i am angry, i am reaching out to touch..., i am still.

i plan to drink... well i am drinking lots of wine. you'd be proud of me lov, you found "cheep red wine" with it's brown paper label - i found "house wine" with cheep white and black label. i drink in honor of my dearest friend, my sparing partner, my co-collaborator and well, just you, jenn.

i miss you darlink.

love,
mysfit

p.s. i'm your huckleberry

sadfish, queryfish, ftw fish

2006-11-17T12:48:00.000-05:00

why isn't the world a story?

why don't tears fix everything that's wrong?

why can't i touch her wings?

so we meet again fish

2006-10-17T19:55:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

i keep starting posts and not finishing them. um.

there's a lot of things going on that i want to tell you about but it's hard to swim up here and take the time. not because no one will read it (they might not) but because you won't. um.

first: it's snowing! it's been snowing all day. it's beautiful outside but cold. the snow'll be gone in a day or two, but i plan to make at least one snow angel. um.

i got a new camera. yep, finally broke down and bought an 8-megapixel bundle of point-n-click joy. it's a cute little olympus sp-350 with 25mb of memory. it holds 4 pictures at the max setting... probably. i'm waiting for my memory card. um. it has many cool "scene" settings, like "behind glass" and "candlelight" and it tells you why each one is special. um.

this is neat: Damen by bert monroy, a digital photo-realist artist. um. so is this: Friday-the-thirteen history (which was part of a post i didn't finish on friday, when i went to a ski movie/hip-hip show. the show was ok.) um.

this sucks though: CBGB's is closing. um. it' a bar, well more like a punk landmark in NY. "I always said Hilly should go to Vegas," said McNeil. "Girls with augmented breasts playing Joey Ramone slot machines. It would become an institution." Hilly's the owner. i don't remember who McNeil is. um.

carl v. um. there really are RIP reviews on the way. i've finished three of the books on my list and one that wasn't. um.

i think it's really weird that i called your cell phone from the hip-hop show. um. i think i understand why it is still on and not disconnected even though it's been three months. um. it was good to hear your voice. i left a message. um.

it must be the age. i'm moving from posters pinned/ducktaped to walls to framed art. we bought a monet print on canvas. um. i got the puck poster you gave me framed: um.

they are trying to come up with a new list of seven wonders because, of the original seven, only the pyramids remain. they've narrowed it down to 21 wonders. which seven would you choose?

um.

i think that's it for now. i'll try not to be such a bad little fish, what with halloween coming and all.

i miss you.

love,
mysfit

p.s. here's a picture for my little fishies that are looking for you: (i'm sorry oldben if this is too hard)

YAAARRRRRR!

2006-09-19T10:13:00.000-04:00

it be International Talk Like a Pirate DAY! so string up your jolly rogers and go on account! this be the day when all the secret salty dogs of the sea, hiding them thar eyepatches behind accountant glasses, feel safe to show their true colors: red the color of blood on me saber - black the color of me mutinous heart - and white, because it goes well with black and red. i've got it in me booties to give ye swarthy wraiths a few lessons in Manners.

avast ye villains! i can hear your whimperin brine-filled bellies from here - (in falsetto, hand to forehead - like a wench): "i don't have a proper name, oh wo is me - whatever am i going to do?" have no fear, me hearties, Mad Bess Bonney is here to help: X marks the spot for the first step to ye becoming a right filthy bilgerat. once we know what to write on your tombstone... ah who'my kiddin - ye'll be ankle deep in davy jones' grip 'fore too long. ya see? nowheres to put a tombstone on the vast and lovely sea - but it jus' ain't proper to go on account without a name to strike fear, desperation and mild amusement into the hearts of your closest mates.

next! ye canna be swaggering around town and swash-bucklin and drinkin and wenchin with that pansy li'l voice of yours - firstly no one'll take you seriously, no matter how dark and menacing your name and gate is... but, ach! me parrot be correct - it ain't look like a pirate day (though ye can if ye be two sheets to the wind), it be talk like a pirate day!!! so here be a link or two to help you on your way:
talklikeapirateday.com/wordpress/ even has a translator for you sons of biscuit-eaters who canna be taking the time out of your busy schedule for a proper education. careful or ye'll be keelhauled 'sure, or my name ain't Mad Bess!

thepiratesrealm.com for all your pirating needs! (including where the best miniature golf courses are for us serious pirates)

it be a long trip from landlubber to scourge of the seven seas and ye might need a little more help than even ol Mad Bess here can do ye. this pirate booklist has a genteel progression much like walkin the plank - ye start with dreams of pirates and end up swimmin with the sharks.

well, this be one pirate that has had enough of your ugly mugs! good luck to ye and keep your filthy mitts off me booty or else ye'll find yeself enjoin' a hemp swing!!

fish - you knew this...

2006-09-11T03:40:00.000-04:00

...but sometimes you have to hear it again - hear it like breeze through forgotten flowers; like memory. i stumbled upon this poem while looking into quotes to help me write something for my brother's wedding. i thought it poignantly apt.

"You can shed tears that she is gone,
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.
Your heart can be empty because you can't see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her only that she is gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back.
Or you can do what she'd want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on."
-David Harkins

sleep well my fishies and in the morning you will feel better - i promise.

love,
mysfit

read! little fishies and be afraid of the dark

2006-09-06T10:45:00.000-04:00

jennsee, jennsee!

just because i wait to the last minute does not mean i cannot play. carl v. has started something wonderful! i hereby inform you that i am taking on the Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) Autumn Challenge. click on the image below for full details and see the outpouring of response (oh and check out how cool carl v.'s prizes are - i reeeeelly want one) - it may even inspire you, but beware, there are many things that go bump in the night and few are pleasant:

mysfit's list of misty horrors:
1. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (current reading - creepy: i woke the other night thinking someone i couldn't see was in my room)
2. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut by Jhonen Vasquez (not sure if graphic novels count but i always read this around this time of year - gory goodness of doom!)
3. Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, by H.P. Lovecraft - (this is a tough choice. i have many H.P. Lovecraft books, but the guy, S.T. Joshi, that does the annotation is so enthralled by Lovecraft and so despises all those who tried to imitate him or who took up the Cthulhu Mythos as untalented hacks that this book is not only creepy but totally amusing).
4. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas - (current reading; for some reason this is a hole in my literary experience and it must be remedied - horrifying? doubtful - dark, thrilling tale of revenge? certainly - dripping with je ne sais quoi? absolutely!)
5. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allen Poe (another hole that must be filled)
6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (one of my all-time favorites, i have a beautiful and austere hardcover of this)

i added the sixth just in case the graphic novel doesn't count as literature and besides, i haven't curled up with the infamous Mr. Hyde in a while. thanks carl v., i will certainly enjoy my autumn much better with this list in mind. (oh and i left A Scanner Darkly off because i'm not sure it falls in the category as i've never read it - but it is on my current list of reading as is Man in the High Castle - and after looking at some of the other lists here, i may have to add The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury and illustrated by Dave McKean - yay!) ok enough!!

love,
mysfit

neglected fish

2006-09-04T14:06:00.000-04:00

i'm sorry fishie. it's very difficult still for me to be here. i haven't left you for good, just for now. i'll be back soon.

in the meantime, this flashed across my screensaver slideshow (good band name?) and i wanted to find the image and post it, but there are thousands and my cursory search did not turn it up. jenn wrote this on the back of a coaster (or beer mat, if you prefer). i have no idea when, but it's somewhat chilling. i hope that when i find the image file it will be dated. but now i share...

and maybe i
can't love you
anymore
but every second i spend
with you is gorgeous, and
every moment we've had is
infinite - whatever you
have seen, learned, whatever
you have discovered, this
is still true

-me

-t-

not a fish, a stingray and something about treadmills

2006-09-04T11:17:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

so i have some bad news for you. it's not horrendous bad news but it sucks really. that dude who like to wrestle with crocs an piss off poisonous snakes is dead. though he was a bit of a ridiculous specter and probably more dangerous than any of the creatures he encountered, he was passionate and one of the few who really, really liked his job. the world is slightly less interesting without him in it.

Steve Irwin passed away doing what he loved today. the Crocodile Hunter was "was killed when he was lashed in the chest by a stingray's poison barb while filming underwater on the Great Barrier Reef". please, a moment of silence for one of the world's characters.

enough! lets fill the air with music and dance on treadmills! OKGO is quickly becoming a phenomenon. i would really like to meet this band's choreographer: "so, i have four middle-aged white guys - I know! lets make them dance!" check out their videos - especially Here It Goes Again and A Million Ways. Enjoy!

love,
mysfit

a different kind of fish-market

2006-08-08T23:29:00.000-04:00

dear jenn,

i thought you'd get a kick out of this. below is an image that i did recently for my graphic design class. the assignment was to take current magazine and market it to a different audience. we had to keep the name of the magazine and the number of bullets on the cover. i took Powder - a skiing magazine - and marketed it to 18th century powder wig wearers and here's the result:

i know you'd ask about the girl - that's film actress Fay Wray best known for her parts in the original King Kong(1933) and The Mystery of the Wax Museum(1933) - in both of which she played the leading lady. i believe this picture is from the wax museum where she is dressed as Marie Antoinette.

thanks for the help in developing my image-sense.

love,
mysfit

sometimes even a fish must face reality and grin

2006-08-08T00:42:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

i guess there comes a time to remove your mask and smile at the world. you never let anyone forget that they were dealing with jenn, only jenn and they should learn to love it or just keep on going.

on the other hand, i have always aspired to separate myself from my creative life. there were soapbox ideals behind this initial intention but there are times to step down from the soapbox and face yourself one on one. but you knew this. you taught me this and tried to drag me out from behind my games of smoke and mirrors. i know you are pleased as punch that i decided to post the image of us and that is why i can handle it. i am here to make you happy afterall, or at least, partially sane.

you were anything but anonymous so why should i hide? i think i owe our friends in the blogosphere at least a little of the frankness that they have always given us.

while i was packing i unearthed some things that i wish to share and in order to do so i must put aside the cracked mask and face my own anonymity, name or no name. so here's the cover of a birthday card you made for me. do you remember it?

(the inside of the card can be our little secret)

a good friend can take you out of your comfort zone and make you like it. a great friend can take the comfort zone out of you and make you not miss it. so here i am swimming in the deep end and why am i not surprised that it's all your fault, jenn darling?

love
mysfit

272 fish in the bathroom

2006-07-31T01:43:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

i finally found a picture of you looking at the camera that doesn't bug me out... well much anyway:

jennsee and mysfit (um... I have no concept of time - 2001 maybe...)

yep, that's my girl... the funny thing is you'd probably be able to tell me what year this is just by my hair. :)

love,
mysfit

p.s. i shaved my head last night. what has it been? three years? more? sometimes when things change you have to keep changing things just to keep up or to prove that you have at least that much control - well that and it's so damn hot here...

saturday rain fish

2006-07-22T11:23:00.000-04:00

i've got two essays here that jenn wrote for governor's school when she was 17/18 and i'm going to share them. maybe they'll help you get to know jenn better or just to remember how much you do know her already. I think this first one is missing a third page, but incomplete tho it may be, the point comes across (the closing lines have been given to me and they have been added. also have been told to note that this essay was written the day before it had to be postmarked for acceptance, which is typical of jenn - ed). it also helps my heart, knowing that i'll be making the same keystrokes that she did at one time. so here's the first one....typos and all.

          Foreign culture has played as large a role in shaping my identity as any aspect of American culture. While there is an undeniable beatuy of a sort in this country, I think that, as in any situation, it can't be understood or appreciated without a glimpse from another persepective. I've been granted this opportunity on more than one occasion, and I will never forget those experiences that have changed the way that I view life.
          There was my first trip to Europe, to France; I lived countryside lifestyle and walked the streets of Paris when I was only eight. I saw the steps of the Madeleine where my grandfather and grandmother were married when he swept her away in 1945 as a war bride. I saw the lights of Paris at night from the top of the Eiffel Tower, saw the river Seine in all its slow beauty, walked the streets of Montmartre and the steps of the majestic white Sacre Coeur. I spent long October evenings in old parks and sprawled alongside a creek bridge crumbling from the eighteenth century.
          I returned when I was twelve, tagging along with my older cousins and tasting French adolescent life, which fortunately altered my perspectives on American adolescence enough to keep me relatively sane. After that I flew back again, fifteen years old and able to glory in the beauty of the city in a new light. On that trip I hit France with eleven students my age and a marvelously open-minded teacher who gave us free rein. The squares of Paris, with their street artists, cafes, dark antique shops and wrought iron balconies, the cemetery at Pere-Lachaise with all its twisted paths and ancient trees, even the pastry shop across the cobblestone road from our hotel, are images I'll carry with me always. On this trip, as well, we hit Italy and Monaco. The sea off Monte Carlo at the foot of plunging rockfaced cliffs, the flowered grave of Princess Grace, the yachts in the harbor--strikingly clear and poetic. Italy too, was gorgeous, though perhaps dirty and crowded at times with its people and massive history, its multitudes of cathedrals and sudden charming alleys, its restaurant districts and its murderous crossroads. Yet nothing compares to the view over valleys from the highways outside Assissi, the power of Coliseum ruins, the truly tilted tower of Pisa. Rome had its metropolitan grime and old streets. Florence had its red roofs and domed cathedrals, its statue of David. Then there was the night train ride over the Italy-France border. The whole trip was like a novel, a movie, a lovely dream, and I remember thinking, although that was a particularly rough time in my life, that there would always be something out there to see, somewhere else to go.
          Last summer I cavorted through Greece, touring the whitewashed Mediterranean island at my leisure on a cruise ship and spending three nights on the roof of our Athens hotel watching the moon rise over the electric-lit Acropolis. I remember thinking that even with Athens' stench of city and open markets, the Golden Age was never too far away. In Athens you can be picking up food or the like at a tiny convenience stand, turn a corner you've never noticed, and be confronted with a marble ruin or elegant imposing statue. It's incredible.
          In an entirely different atmosphere, I've been able to cruise the Bahamas on two occasions, basking in the aquamarine Caribbean and playing like a child in the white sand. There's a certain pungent air over the port at Nassau that makes one understand the allure the islands have for so many people. I'd hardly call it paradise, but it was definitely a hot vivid feast for all senses.
          Being exposed to foreign cultures has molded me as much as life within my own culture. American culture is easy to absorb; it's everywhere, and though it takes intense pride in itself, it's not complicated. The rest of the world, I've learned, is different. Here in an area where people tend to spend their whole lives, I've been able to look past the suburbia and make plans on a much broader scale. I'd love to live in Paris for awhile; only the streets fo the city itself brought me to this daydream. I have a clearer idea of where I'd like to go in my life because I've tasted so many different lifestyles. I know more of what I like, and naturally more of what I don't. These are lessons that I doubt I would have learned without the chances for experience that I've had. As I said, these are images I will carry with me always, and I am perpetually seeking new insights into the world. I am grateful for any opportunity to enrich my ideas and perception with the new perspectives that only a multi-cultural environment can bring.

a novel, a movie, a lovely dream. that's jenn. she knew and experienced more at 17 than i do and have at 27. she's brought me much further down the road of self-discovery and experience than i would have gotten by now without her help. because of her i will continue to travel.

my beautiful, perfect, wonderful love.

timeless space love

undead monkey fish

2006-07-17T18:03:00.000-04:00

10 points to mysfit for mentioning her ellipses. i enjoy them as well.

your words are true. grief is selfish at times. the depression i feel right now is shaped like jenn and has flavors of self-pity and loneliness, and them two are most certainly selfish things to feel, but they are springing from a common loss and i think that takes away a little bit from the selfishness. we're all shouldering a different part of the same grief as well as the emotions that come along with.

shared selfishness maybe?

all i know is that this would be too intense to go thru alone. i'm truly thankful for everyone right now. i've been avoiding the little breakdowns by trying to smile my way through them, but it builds up. i cracked hard and it took three days to pick the pieces back up. it's a constant ache and i have to fight tears so often. it sneaks up on me at work. it hits me like waves. coming home is hardest. i still say hello and goodbye. i'll keep looking at the empty seat beside me for a long time.

how do you continue when your reason is gone?

ok melodrama.

the new cd is coming along well. proxy is doing well. i found a new house to live in and she has two flights of stairs she can play on. i hope joe and yuhei can learn to live with her and that their injuries are few. i saw pirates with my sister and penny yesterday (they both say hi) and we three agree that it really kicked ass. i don't know what anyone who was disappointed is talking about. the next one can't come out soon enough.

i've brought you an undead monkey.

best line ever. go see it. let me know, i'll come with. proxy has decided i can't blog anymore, so good evening.

read the warning first, dear fishies

2006-07-13T02:02:00.000-04:00

dear jenn see,

i'm warning you now so that if you want to duck out the back door or exit stage left, you have the chance. i have had a shitty week. this is not a happy fish.

sometimes i think we, in America, are so paralyzed by loss that the subject is almost taboo. death is so distanced from us, either by over saturation on TV, movies, video games or we suffer from the "over-there syndrome"... i'm sure you've felt it too in all of this; the "this kinda stuff happens to other people" feeling. but it doesn't always. this time we are the other people and you know what - it fucking hurts.

but i don't feel the loss of jenn less today than yesterday, than two weeks ago. sure i'm not bursting into tears every few minutes and i can talk to people without losing it - sometimes... but that doesn't mean i've gone numb to the sense of her not being here any more, i just lose in private ways or at least more private places.

perhaps the shock has worn off, leaving behind the dreaded realization that no matter how much i want to dwell within the fact that she is gone, i have to live, if only because she's not. life moves and so must i.

i feel the loss more today and expect to feel it more tomorrow. each little thing that i can't tell her -- not just the things that i forgot to mention or never got the chance when... but the new things, the now things. some times the stupidest things are the worst - like she'll never look at me and ask where i got my watch or if that 's the ring i stole from her... she never...

she'll never, what? what will she never? she did. she was... amazing. she was and that is enough for me, until i reach for my phone to call... until i want to take a picture and can't figure out who to show it to. it's not just she that will never, you know? i'll never get to ask her opinion again. i'll never get to hear her voice again, hear her laugh. i'll never.

mourning is always selfish, no matter how it feels at first.

this is not a bad thing.

so thanks, jenn for making my thoughts come to a point. thank you for building conversations with me, like skyscrapers that only tumbled when we woke up the next day and couldn't remember what we were talking about. thank you for getting mad at me when i was being stupid, narrow-minded or just too much. thank you for pointing out when i was being super-cool or melodramatic or just plain weird. thank you for caring. thank you. i could probably go on and so i will... at some point, but not now. now just... thank you. i love you. good night.

love,
mysfit

p.s. yes, i used 8 ellipses just because i know it irritates you, my dear jenn... (oops nine)

soul feathers and the fish

2006-07-09T18:18:00.000-04:00

dear jenn see,

since you, my dearest muse, will only give me three or four lines of the poem you are inspiring me to write backwards, i guess it must wait. however i was going through old notebooks and stumbling over the fact that you wrote something in every one of them - (much of which i still cannot decipher because of your hieroglyphic "a's"). i found an old theory of mine - i'm sure you'll remember... and this is all true:

Legend has it that we were all angels once; with two heads, two wings, and one soul. To walk the mortal realm we had to split into two beings; each with a single wing and half a soul. As we travel through this world, we are forever searching for the other half of our souls, our other wing; so that, holding tightly to our other half, we can fly all the way back up into heaven. Thus is the creation of soulmates.

i don't believe this. oh, i believe in soulmates sure enough, i'm just not so sure about the half thing. perhaps we do have half a soul and only one wing, but as for the other half i think it was shattered - ripped apart at birth - each feather left for us to find in the hearts of many people. how many? that probably depends upon the soul. as we travel through life, we touch and are touched by people and each time a feather is exchanged, sometimes more than one. and each time, we grow a little as souls, rebuilding our wings.

draw your own conclusions.

love,
mysfit

a scattered fishbrain

2006-07-06T01:40:00.000-04:00

the fish has been a painful place for me lately, that's why i've been absent. not that i've been here that much at all. either way...

cynthia says hi and that she loves you.

i dreamt that i went to heaven and hell. they were the same place. kinda like a nightclub called heaven and hell, which is more or less what sonic told me tenjou tenge means.

bomb-a-head

odd thing was, everyone there was still alive. penny said that jenn wasn't there because she had gone off to be universal.

my timeless love.

it hurts like nothing else, but i've got an assortment of masks and can wear them well. it takes a lot of effort to even get up, but i managed to make it back to work today.

obvious questions, says charlie chan, but we gotta go!

i want to post the scholarship fund information. there will be a website to follow, but for now donations may be sent to

"Jan-Ai Scholarship Fund"
c/o Bob Walker
P.O Box 8068
Atlantic City, N.J. 08404

jan-ai was a nickname given to jenn by her father when she was a little girl and means lover of people. since cynthia and family will do a much better job at explaining jan-ai in depth on the website than i will here, i'll let it be at that.

i'm jerry.
this is the space i occupy and this is my immediate vicinity. i'm staring down infinity and looking upon...
rocketboy is lying on his back at that point where the water barely touches the sand before receding, howling at an empty sky, for there is no moon.
'tell me about pain, jerry.'
'look at the sea.'
'tell me about loss, jerry.'
'just look at the sea.'

mists of july fish

2006-07-04T21:24:00.000-04:00

dear jenn see,

happy fourth! so no fireworks for me this fourth of july - i guess it's just that type of year. i said my fish was stuck in the clouds, but i guess it fell down with the rain and is flopping around in the grass.

we're on to plan d (all of the above). first we were going to go up to nederland, that little town where we watched them over reservoir last year - i was going to pretend it was the ocean this time. but because of the drought out here, they were cancelled. plan B was a place called lookout mountain for a tailgate where we could see all the explosions on the plains of CO, but they closed the mountain. as we left boulder, the sky behind us darkened and over the mountains rolled a torrential storm. so we're barbecuing on our back porch and toasting to being free from those imperialist bastard... um oh, well to being free - again, eventually. :P

remember when we went to the top of that parking deck to watch the fireworks over the raritan river in NB? but the new ugly yellow buildings blocked our view just enough that they looked like they were under siege. we had such good times.

and i wanted to tell you that you've set some amazing things in motion. they will be posted on the fish just as soon as i've got all the details. this week, i will figure out how i fit into it all and then let the fish swim its course.

oh and tell oldben that the fish misses him, i can't do this myself you know. also, let him know that whenever he's ready is fine by me. no worries, you know. i wish i knew what to say. he's amazing, but then you know that better than i do.

i miss you. gonna go watch tombstone now. later.

love,
mysfit

p.s. this would have been sent last night, but i got really sick and both hamlet and i spend the whole night and the next day in utter agony - we think it might have been food poisoning.

sing with me fish

2006-07-04T17:16:00.000-04:00

the fish is currently in the clouds and who knows when it will come back down so here's something ... pretty to watch - for jenn of course

love,
mysfit

distracted abstract fish

2006-06-29T13:47:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

looking over my last letter, i realized that like always, when you tell me to get to the point, i've already forgotten what i was talking about. as you said, there are boulders in my conversations.

what i meant to talk about before my fish wandered off, was that it is so neat to hear and see all those little lights: like someone telling me that you warned them about melodrama too. like how at one point in your celebration, pastor mike told us to turn to our neighbor and share a memory of you. that was cool because that was all we spent the weekend doing, between gasps and tears, we reminisced not just about you, but about everything and i learned more about my friends and you and above all about myself.

WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

-from Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode

love,
mysfit

p.s. hey what do you want? i told you i was made by hallmark

this little fish of mine, i'm gonna let it shine....

2006-06-28T22:27:00.000-04:00

dear jenn see,

i think talking at your celebration yesterday was one of the hardest things i have ever done. you know how much i love talking in front of people anyway, but there were so many people there... and it was beautiful.

i keep thinking of things i meant to say. like how i am so grateful to your family for sharing their jenn with me and for allowing me to share a little of the light from the jenn i know. and how every one has their little light - the jenn they know - and each little light, like a brightly colored fish... but then, you would say i was being abstract and melodramatic and to get to the point.

oh and i really meant to call you a fashion-diva, if only for laughs.

but there's time enough to say everything that needs to be said. there's time enough to make you understand, no matter how stubborn you are. i think i have enough spirals for that. each little fish - a spiral on spirals.

love,
mysfit

's a fish

2006-06-25T02:36:00.000-04:00

right now it's the stupid things that are hurting. like the fact that i drove to my parent's house instead of mine.

saturday fish

2006-06-25T01:30:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

i flew to philly today. it's difficult coming back to the east coast this way. after two years gone, there are things that were never resolved i have to face along with, well, this. but it's good to be with friends. i miss you.

love
mysfit

crystalizing fish

2006-06-24T20:16:00.000-04:00

thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. i know we all need them.

my love and light is gone. i will not hold her again. i will not smell her again. i will not feel her again. i will not see her smile nor hear he laugh again. she will never again say "is that my love?" from our control room here when i come home from work. i have felt so much pain and grief and anger in the past two days to fill up several lifetimes, but these emotions will not get the best of me. jenn would not have wanted it.

when life gives you shit you have to kick it in the fucking teeth.

instead of posting one long rambling entry about jenn i am going to be posting individual and focused ones. they will come when they do and they will not stop, even when my tears do. there are also several draft entries that jenn never got the chance to finish. i will be posting these as best i can, for i cannot know what she had intended for them or what it was they were waiting for the be finished.

situations like this were made for cliches, so here's one.

it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.

most recent and final photo of jenn and i, home from bonnaroo and happy, 6/19/06

jenn was, is, and always will be a part of my life, and i'd have it no other way. if you have love, or if you're still finding it, hold it and cherish it when you do. never go to bed angry and never underestimate the importance of saying i love you. jenn has taught me how to love. really, wholly, and unabashedly love.

at present i am in our home, alone, acclimating myself to being here without her yet surrounded by her. i am here for proxy, but how do you console a cat? she's one of the many pieces i still have left of jenn and i will hold and cherish her for as long as she remains with me. i hope you don't mind, mysfit. ;-) she's clawed me once already and i gave her a kiss for it.

you always hear about people dreaming of lost loved ones. how they came to them in a dream and spoke with them one last time. until now i have chalked that up to subconscious trickery. something the psyche does to help us deal with loss. i dreamt of jenn the night we lost her. she said goodbye and that she loves and misses everyone. she wishes she could come back, but she knows she can't. when i tell you that i felt her....that i actually reached out and touched her, you may or may not believe me, but it's given me a little bit more of the resolution that i so badly need right now. there will never be such a thing as closure.

einstein: time?
crichton: wounds all heals.

if you are in the area and so inclined, jenn's celebration, we're not calling it a funeral, will be held on tuesday morning, 6/27 at 11am at

wimberg funeral home
1707 new road
linwood, nj 08221

please do not send flowers. we are setting up a scholarship fund for artists and musicians in jenn's name. we feel that this will be a good way to further jenn's legacy. anything you'd like to donate, no matter what or how much, would be graciously received. when i have more information, i will publish it here on the fish.

in parting, some of jenn's favorite bands and artists

the smiths
arcade fire
bright eyes
regina spektor
pink floyd
the moody blues
clap your hands say yeah
radiohead
nick cave
the flaming lips

again, thank you all, from the bottom of what's left of my heart.

-oldben

friday fish

2006-06-23T13:07:00.000-04:00

dear jennsee,

i keep forgetting what i'm doing today. i am useless at work but it is better than sitting at home drinking myself into a stupor - or is it? i jump every time the phone rings and i don't know what to say. i've talked with a lot of people today and none of them were actual conversations. something in my head tells me that people often look for meaning in things like this, i'm just looking for some way to get through the day. for now though, i've found the only thing that works: i love you.

i've decided not to apologize for anything any more. you never did.

love
mysfit

good night sweet fish

2006-06-23T02:23:00.004-04:00

dear jennsee,

thank you. i love you. i wish you peace.

love,
mysfit

it is with deep sadness that i come to the fish tonight. i keep trying to come up with the right words to describe what happened today but there are none. jennifer passed earlier today from what they think is a heart aneurysm. i don't have any comfort to give and i don't want any - not yet. she was a beautiful girl full of life and love and i just want to miss her for now. i miss her dearly.

bonnaroo fish: episode 0.5

2006-06-21T12:18:00.000-04:00

there's so much to say about the Bonnaroo expedition/quest/journey/etcetera that i'm not really sure where to start...

i have posted Volume One of the epic series of photos taken through the weekend on the tourist, & though these are only of the road trip down i'm sure it's already evident that it was not just a festival but a great big Thing that extended far beyond the physical borders of the festival...

by the time we hit southern PA we were already seeing wandering tribes of Bonnaroo-ers (the official term i think is "Bonnaroonies" but that just makes me think of macaroni when i'd rather not...) collecting in groups & scattering again at every rest stop & gas station & Waffle House & Wendy's we hit, although my favorite was the trio of boys at the last rest stop before Manchester pushing their crappy boat of a car uphill (& the rest of the way, i guess?) & laughing hysterically about the whole thing...

even yesterday, back at work in the real world, a group of Bonnaroo voyagers stopped at oldben's work to have something taken care of on their car, & hung around outside his office window, playing in the fountain, smoking joints, & kicking a hackeysack around...as though the festival were a thing that still hasn't ended yet...which for me is true, anyway, with my hundreds of photos to deal with...
(a note on photos: Mike Doughty has posted a couple of my shots of his Sonic Stage performance on his blog, which gave me a little thrill & cheered me immensely.)

as for being home, well, no matter how far we voyage into strange loops of space/time, we have to come back eventually, & the real world was waiting for us, a little sullen at our brief escape, it seems...those of us that weren't immediately smacked upside the head with a forever-long day at work had other disappointments to face...

we mourn the passing of a fellow Bonnaroo-er's dear old friend Maggie, a sweet if temperamentally-behaved big old shaggy loveable dog of i don't know what breed, who with that supernatural ability of animals to Know About These Things waited for her master to return before saying farewell. i understand the loss of a pet & friend that was also a connection to a past part of life that will never return, & i feel for my friend, so let us all give fishy-well-wishing winged thoughts to the spirit of Maggie as she lopes her way toward a paradise of toilet paper to eat, knocked-over trashcans, & backyards with no boundaries.

Maggie.

as for myself, having spent the last few months collecting records, letters of recommendation, & medical information, as well as writing a small mountain of correspondence, i came home to find that my appeal to return to Rutgers University to finish the last 12 credits of my degree was rejected via a form letter that implies that no one even looked at my appeal in the slightest, the bureaucratic bastards.
wonderful.

so i will spend the next few days reveling in the past & in memories, collecting myself in the present, & looking to the future...which promises many new things & much Change, along with all that comes with these things.

these fish return...

2006-06-19T18:45:00.000-04:00

Bonaroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

more on that later, when this fish is not delirious & double-vision-y & where are my legs-y & headachey & please let me eat something other than burgers-y.

yeah.

YEAH.

pop of the moment: regina spektor

2006-06-14T11:26:00.000-04:00

i've said a few things here before about Regina Spektor, but since her new album, Begin to Hope, is released today, & her promo co. was kind enough to send me a "Side 1" prerelease cd, i thought i'd offer some thoughts on these tracks in particular...

my favorite video i've seen for the new stuff thus far is the origami-animation-piano-reflection stylings of "Samson"...the version on this album is different from the one i've heard before (where the earlier version came from, i have no idea), a little faster, but still exquisitely beautiful. admittedly the video is a little too classic-artsy for my taste but i love the animation style. the song itself reminds me vaguely of Leonard Cohen, somehow, although comparisons to Tori Amos are more immediate & inevitable, but if Regina Spektor is reminiscent of Tori, it's a stripped-down, Under the Pink era comparison.

there's also a video for "Better", which was the first single of sorts from this album, & which, i have to admit, i don't enjoy very much. it's not the song itself--when i saw her live she performed a (piano-only) version that i thoroughly enjoyed & thought was beautiful--but the production on the album buries the song under layers of guitar & harmonies & all things signature for too many chick-pop anthems. twitch.
this is a phenomenon, though, that i've noticed all across the board: artists with bare-bones performance styles & unplugged-esque tunes on the whole, when faced with a studio & whatever goes on in there, emerge with uber-layered multi-instrumental barrages of sound that bear little resemblance to the song as performed live. i don't get it. if you play an acoustic guitar, why go electric & add drum treks on the record? admittedly having access to layers & other instrumentation is probably a windfall for a lot of musicians..."ooh look what we can do here"...but it has to be done skillfully & tastefully or the whole original sense of the music is lost.

one song though that i think the production really works on, though, is "Apres Moi", which not only raids the artist's classical training along with her Russian heritage, but also builds up into a passionate kind of crescendo where the various instruments...& there are a number of them...kind of coalesce into something that's quirky, a little sarcastic, & very much in keeping with her style as a whole...it's a progression, rather than a piling-up, & it's definitely memorable.

also very worthwhile & irresistibly catchy are "Fidelity", which is a lovely song that i think i've recommended before, & "On the Radio", my current favorite. you have to love a song with such a serene approach to life that still manages to communicate a very adorable, biting-your-lip kind of anxiety, & has a refrain devoted to listening to "November Rain." yeah.

"Field Below" is a very melancholy, sonata-feeling track, & one of those songs that highlight her similarities to Tori Amos &/or Fiona Apple. thankfully the solo-piano style is preserved in this track, but it's overshadowed, i think, by most of the other songs on the album, although i really dig the jazzy-music-box feel to it.
i really want to like "Hotel Song"...& i suspect it's going to be the next thing from this album that i listen to all the time...but something about it is relentless poppy-80s that contains the kernels of dozens & dozens of other songs. & i do mean dozens. which is not necessarily a bad thing, in the end, but i think it's going to take a little effort or time to get past.
"20 Feet of Snow" has that music-box feel to it again, which i'm very fond of, but the song is all over the place, very chaotic, & that's before the drum tracks cut it. i'm going to have to think about this one.
"That Time" reminds me (stylistically) of nothing so much as Regina's previous collaboration with the Strokes, "Modern Girls & Old-Fashioned Men".
i really like "Summer in the City", though, it's got a movie-soundtrack vibe to it, & after all, it's summer in this city, which is more or less her city too.
which is nice.

i hope all the links work, i don't have the time really to double-check them...

happy listening, fishies.

(not really) skeptical fish

2006-06-13T15:02:00.000-04:00

talking about the skeptical view of the universe, i was looking to post something along the lines of Terry Pratchett's "In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded..." or the similar quote from Good Omens, or perhaps the animated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy clip about the creation of the universe (which you can find here but i can't link to directly)...but instead i give you this clip from the same film.

who are we?

why do we exist?

you fishies ponder that whilst i run off to make even more lists of things to bring to Bonnaroo.

the mark of the... um... beast?

2006-06-09T20:47:00.000-04:00

only days after the day of the devil - 6/6/6 - a mysterious and smelly creature appeared on the fish. the slightly disgusted fishies huddled in fear bemoaning the end of well, everything. but as the creature eerily jumped up and down and up and down and... the fishies need not have worried - not much anyway. It's only:
!!
and the end of the worl... the univer... the, well, everything really, is not until next week's episode - or the one after that... maybe...

(mysfit's note: all the religions that have prophesied doom doom doom and the end of, well, everything have been so apparently wrong, it's frankly embarrassing - unless, of course, we don't actually exist in the first place, then everything could have ended many times in the time it took you to read this post, and no one would have noticed anyway.)

because time is like a fish...

2006-06-09T11:20:00.000-04:00

it's been a year since i did this flashback-meme, & i thought it'd be fun to do again this year, shifting all the stories one year ahead.

10 years ago:

late spring, 1996.

the beginning of the summer of '96, & i was entering my full-on neo-flower-child phase. guitars, VW van circles in the woods, a fascination with fungi, vagrancies in Ocean City, working the graveyard shift at the Chatterbox & sleeping under the boardwalk. Jahn, who i was totally enamored with, wiping down tables at the Promenade while Monique worked the lemonade stand. midway through the summer i went to Greece with a bunch of smart kids from school & discovered the most beautiful place i've ever seen.

sigh. that was a good summer.

5 years ago:

me in paris, May 2001.

the beginning of the summer of 2001...the spring just closing like a flower, & what a spring it was, leading into...a horribly stagnant summer, actually...
in May i went to Paris with my mother & had a most beautiful time, drinking wine in sidewalk cafes, writing poetry late into the night in the little atrium-courtyard outside our room, visiting Monet's gardens at Giverny, & looking for Baudelaire's grave.
that summer, unfortunately, devolved into a boyfriend i wasn't sure i wanted moving into my apartment for lack of anywhere else to go (& oh how everyone loved him, that lunatic...) & summer classes that went on forever...culminating in one of the worst autumns ever.
but at the beginning of June everything seemed bright & promising...so i'll hold on to that bit & let go the rest.

1 year ago:

me with a wild rose, June 2005.

ah, june 2005...tagged along with Happy Anarchy on a short tour that hit DC, Long Island, & Philadelphia...attended an anime convention & lost all my photographs therof...had a cocktail party on this very weekend a year ago...saw dancers in a reflecting pool & vaudeville in an art space...caught up with some old friends on some old ground...

street sign in my old hometown.

yesterday:

choya umeshu.

oldben & i eat sushi (i love edamame!) & watch the Star Wars: Clone Wars dvds, taking a short break so he can go down to the Red Room & record guitar tracks. he returns bearing a gift of a dinosaur egg. it rains, again. i discover new & interesting ways in which my spine can explode into painful vertebrae flowers. i discover the joy that is umeshu, which i've never had before, not the least of which is the awesome company site. i chat briefly with the mysfit & wonder whether or not i've actually seen The Last Exile. (i haven't.)

today:

the sun is shining! sing with me: "the sun'll come out...tomorrow..." because it's stuck in my head. i write this while drinking coffee. i decide which photographs to scan in from past expeditions to complement this flashback. i plan to walk to the Pathmark & buy supplies, because our cupboards have somehow become rather bare. i think i'll stop by the used bookstore & see what kind of credit i can get for some of my unwanted books. hopefully i'll find a copy of Chapterhouse: Dune but i doubt it, i've been checking there for months. tonight we're hosting a beginning-of-the-summer / let's-plan-our-caravan-to-Bonnaroo gathering. i'm going to eat, drink, & make merry, offer an apology to someone i was rude to, & hope all the social circles can coalesce without any strange chemical reactions.
but before this evening rolls around i'm going to sit in the goddamn sunshine on my pathetic scrap of lawn. & probably have a glass of umeshu.

(note: i'll add a photo here when i have one from today...)

tomorrow:

i will be driving down home to ol' Atlantic City to celebrate father's day a week early, because (heehee) i'll be in Tennessee next weekend. i'm going to use my parent's laundry facilities to wash some blankets. hopefully the sun will keep shining so i can lay out on the beach for a bit, because if i head south into the stronger sun without getting a bit of color on my pale pale self i'm going to fry like an egg. or boil like a lobster. turn fiery red, is what i'm saying. i look forward to a tasty dinner & even tastier wines, because my parents have impeccable gourmet taste. yummy.

happy weekend fishies!

***

note from the fish: how we forget!
i forgot to mention a few things.

from yesterday:
i love it when people play with my photos.

henri banks from web-pix did this:

to my photo of my scary eye.

carl v. did this:

for my self-portrait "hair down" series.
i feel now i must consider what such a text would contain: poems? excerpts from the fish? a prosy autobiographical collections of rants? an explanation of the theory of jennodynamics? hmmmm...

& for today:
i will probably end up wasting some time playing old NES roms on this machine with our kick-ass usb-converted controllers. yeah. jaws, it's you or me this time.
although i think i'll leave beating Final Fantasy for another day, because the last time i tried the Temple of Fiends killed me instantly. apparently this serves me right for using a red mage instead of a black mage.

...THE NEXT DAY...

yesterday i was wearing all white,
but didn't end up taking the photo i meant to
until i was wrapped in this happy blue blanket.
ah well.

oh internet gods, throw bloggie a bone

2006-06-08T12:34:00.000-04:00

because it's acting like a deaf & blind three legged dog, wandering in circles, banging into the furniture, & crapping on the carpet.

ewww.

happy tuesday!

2006-06-06T12:35:00.000-04:00

of course the day of the devil falls on a tuesday...

mysfit suggests that i may have evil origins...

but i promise i'm a good girl...

at any rate, beware of creepy children on this day...

an old fish

2006-06-01T19:02:00.000-04:00

this one dates back from ye olden dayes during high school...bordering on ten years now...but i had a few reasons for digging it up, so here it be:

A dry place

You could spot him on corners, whenever you were wandering vaguely down streets, going nowhere in particular; he would be contemplating a sidewalk somewhere, always lounging against a curb or perched the wrong way on a bench. He stood out, no matter what manic crowd he was wearing away, gleaming with the reflections of the air on his icy skin, his blue eyes changing tones with the sky, mirroring low gray clouds or collected storm drops or blazing sun, or the dark and deep flecked with pinpoints after midnight. He wore dull, heavy colors, absorbing the light or whatever ambient personae were his environment, cloth both dark and faded like a strange dream. Maybe he believed he’d blend in with the asphalt, but they set off his long pale bones like a shroud, dusty and smelling like a closet in a room stacked with spilling ashtrays. His movements were dreamlike, his sentences spoken out of sleep, but it was never quite definite if you were half-awake or he.

He traveled in convoys, or alone, but always to somewhere or from somewhere you wouldn’t want to touch for fear of permanent scars on your feet or your reflection. His companions rolled behind him, around him, like the tide, in all shapes and colors, ash-blackened and greasy or bleached, mischievous, characters your mother would watch in creeping suspicion from the window should they grace your front steps. These were bitter children, hardened and verging on sadistic at the sight of you when they knew you weren’t trapped in the core like they were; you were a satellite touching down on this boy, a probe, and they saw that you believed pathetically somewhere that one morning you’d carry him back with you.

The air of sadness around him was penetrating, pervasive, an atmosphere caught by an ethereal gravity. He’d fade, into the backdrop, unless you began to scratch out his rich secrets like a scrim forest in a grim fairy tale: his efforts at almost-lovely lyrics racked with hints of what he thought, the narrow white bones of his face untouched by raw boiling-water scars staining the nape of his neck, his lust for romance that could be discovered if you knew the things to say and the right way to gaze up at him through your eyelashes, the self-effacing humor he’d spit like bullets when he’d refer to his mother and the unreal things she had prayed for before she flew away.

To you, for whom evenings still provided excuses and cheap thrills, he was a smoking angel on the shoulder, faintly grinning and kissing your hand, a gift of affection to you, and somehow a quiet plea for balance. He was a closet romantic, pressing tiny cheap mementos into your palm with a sweet glance in his eyes and a startling flash of something else, something that was never awake enough for you to pin down precisely.

He’d throw pebbles at your window in the dark hours of the morning and wait for you to slip down and off with him, lighting your cigarettes if your hands trembled too hard with that anxious part of you. He’d come around down under your bedroom, after the rest of his world was slumped out wherever they’d landed, and only then, when he wouldn’t have to face the whiplash glares of the ones who hated you, for being or for finding him, who believed this boy was above you or you were above him or you were perfect together and that somehow terrified them. But he’d come around still, and you could always find him when you suddenly knew yourself in need of that soft hunted embrace, and you’d question your motives: were you falling for him? And in the end it never mattered, because what was there between you somehow blunted the edge of the hunger, for both of you. Or so you’d believe.

----------

You find him one night, earlier than you expect him to be roaming, and he’s drenched to the skin, his dark clothes sucking at his body to leave him a silhouette trudging in the cool rain washing lines of static over the hazy orange glow of the streetlights. You’re pounding towards home, from some room that has no importance to any story, but you’ve just now emerged from shelter and are not dripping with the storm until he clasps you between his arms in greeting, spreading his long evening in the rain in rivulets over your shoulders and back.

Where are you going?      you ask up at his eyes staring past you.

I don’t know,      and he squints against a raindrop wedged in his eyelids.      I need to go somewhere.

If I had anywhere to go I’d take you with me,     in a slow voice that stumbles under sudden resonance and the silence that follows in the damp night. For hours there’s only the sound and scent of water tumbling over the mouths of the gutters. The block is deserted; no one dares venture out into the wet air. You think, Why am I here? and murmur,     Why are you here?

There’s nowhere I’d rather be,     and the loving tone acquainted with those words is lost under the knowledge that you are only standing in the rain.

Where are you coming from?

I don’t know,     he trails off. The pause is heavy. I found a letter tonight.

Who wrote you a letter?

My girl,     and you remember that he is in love, a round green-eyed olive-skinned beauty, and suddenly for a second you’re sick with Maybe you’ve fallen hard too. You deny it, scolding your head for such notions brought on by the hour and learning of a companion drowning in an evening downpour.

He looks into your eyes at last and his face is so close in the dim ocean air that you can’t watch both pupils at once, and you flick from one to the other praying he can’t see your stubborn brain’s insistence that there is poetry here.

She can’t handle me anymore, she’s dropped away,     and his voice and your fingers ache.

Do you need to talk? I’ll listen.     And you can’t chain yourself back from wanting him to release cascades out of his head over you. You want to promise that the rain would wash the traces of him from the puddles on the sidewalk into the storm drains and away, and by morning no stranger could read by his fallen words what he’d whispered to you, and you’d take his heart in secrecy to the grave. But you say none of this, you’d give him nightmares.

No, I don’t have anything to say. I’ll just make it home and be mad in love in my room, eventually, I don’t want to weigh on you.     Portraits rise in your mind of this boy hunched in his bed, dry-eyed and going mad, hair twisted up like wet ribbons; and you know you want to sketch yourself into this picture, vaguely, afraid to be definite in oil paints and color, leaning beside him with hands crossed over his chest and your chin on the crown of his head, whispering that some girls are not meant for love—but neither are you meant for a charcoal sketch.

I can be here for you,     you begin, and have nowhere to go after this.

He breathes, small waterfalls lilting over his knotted expression and the strong bridge of his nose.

No, I don’t want to burden you. You should walk home, you don’t need to be here.
He hugs you close, a grasp full of arms and ribcages, and you can feel the shaking deep in his stomach like the rolling of thunder over the far end of the street. And he lets you go, and weaves past.

Goodbye, love,     you say, and because you call everybody love he can’t catch the hesitations in your voice.

Sweets,     he calls you, and the shape of his back retreats into the rain. You stand there, alone with the soaked streetlights, and you can’t move. You question your sudden collapse of distance, a traveling body confronted with a black hole, and could you really truly promise you were falling? And in the end it doesn’t matter. Once, in a poem traded like a postcard, you named him a starving heart, and you know you can’t slice enough chunks out of your mass to feed him; what you can spare is far from enough. And in the end you know you’ll settle to still his thirst with the raindrops that race in streams over your neck and cheekbones and lips, or at least the words that describe these, and you’ll take the edge off his lack of love. Or so you’ll believe.

this fish anticipates summer...

2006-06-01T14:45:00.000-04:00

images of may...

update fish of the future

2006-06-01T12:35:00.000-04:00

remember this?
well, this is me lying in the street, my dear little clock-maker bleeding from the ears.

ok so that's a little gruesome, but according to my fish i owe you an update on a little thing i like to call 'my life' or alternately: 'mysfit's life of doom'.

the lurking mandate of change has indeed taken the big metal fish of the future: and bashed me over the head with it - repeatedly. and as i was forewarned about this almost two months ago, i am totally and utterly...

...disarmed by this attack. but you already knew that, right?

it's finally happened! i've been offered a full-time job. after languishing for a year-and-a-half in the purgatorial hell of temp-hood ("job-shoppering"), one of my jobs has took pity on me and decided i'm worth giving benefits to. yay! it's not as much money as i like, nor exactly what i want to be doing, but it's a job! they offered it to me last wednesday, had to decide by friday and started yesterday - damn but life moves quickly once it gets off it's couch-potato ass. i asked my other boss about it on friday and he said it's a no-brainer... take it. ah well... i should have learned to play hardball, but

oh and i told you about that super-cool dude who wanted to move in - but no. not going to happen. there's just not enough space in my garage for him to do all his weldy-metally stuff and now that he quit his other job, he's a) unemployed; b) a contractor between assignments; c) a metalsmithing guy who needs a three-car garage; d) still a super-cool dude - so who am i to argue. it's ok though, we're going to move in with him. so my 'happy dance of not packing' has now (or soon will) turn into the frantic dance of oh-my-god-i-have-so-much-crap.

the bullshit part of this is that we told out landlord (read: property management company) that we weren't going to renew and in less than a week they put a "for rent sign" on our front lawn and a key box on my front door (which is just plain creepy)! and without telling us! we still have two months and i don't want some strange-ass woman with fifties poof and pink powersuit wandering into our house whenever she damn well pleases. (please don't be offended - i have a strange image of real estate agents). as far as i know, this may violate my tenant rights and i will not stand for it.

anyway, the end point of all this is that everything being insane right now, i'm going to be taking a short break from the fish.

i miss you already,
mysfit

2006-05-29T23:11:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day wishes from the fish...

memorial fish

2006-05-29T12:33:00.000-04:00

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
1917

i am addicted to the fish

2006-05-27T00:45:00.000-04:00

an update on, well, everything is even now in the works, but i've gone through most of a bottle of really good wine in celebration and i have never realized how much i yearn for certain data input. currently my brain craves serial experiments lain and the only versions i have are subtitled in swedish or englishized (dubbed). despite my desire to see lain, there is no way i will let those foolish people who think that dubbing anime is a good thing ruin the best mind-fuck i have ever seen. i saw like water for chocolate dubbed and never recovered.

(mysfit's note of sober import: if you like cyberpunk fiction like Gibson's Neuromancer or Stephenson's SnowCrash, you'll love serial experiments lain - just beware of the dvd subtitles, they suck.)

charitable fish

2006-05-25T14:49:00.000-04:00

i know there's a lot of charities & very important causes out there...& i have no idea what portion of the blogosphere is able to donate at all...but since i love 'im, i'm plugging a dear friend's personal exercise in Do-Gooding.

james is in Vancouver now, & i can't remember when he got into bikes really, but it was probably around this time in philadelphia:

james in philadelphia, summer of 2003.

point being, he's participating in something called The Big Fix ("fix" referring to fixed gear bicycles) to raise money for Histiocytosis.
the plan is:
a cross-country bicycle ride, using single-speed, fixed-gear bicycles, averaging 120 miles per day. The ride is from Davis, California to Boston, MA. Thye ride will take place from June 17 – July 14, 2006 (28 days).

point being, he needs sponsors, & if he raises enough cash hopefully the organization will provide food & shelter along the way.
i'm kidding, i have no idea how that aspect's being handled.

in short:
Hey fishies! give money to james so he can do good deeds!

life, the universe, & the fish

2006-05-25T12:17:00.000-04:00

if it weren't for anne i would have totally missed that today is Towel Day, on which we celebrate Douglas Adams & the Boy Scout motto ("Be Prepared").

if i can get someone to shoot a photo of me with a towel today, i will share.

some words of wisdom from the Hitchhiker's Guide:

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

incidentally, it's also the 29th anniversary of the original Star Wars release, so if i know oldben, we'll be in a galaxy far, far away for much of the evening.

& i...i will have my towel with me.

ps: it's also the day Oscar Wilde was convicted of indecency, the day that John Scopes was indicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution, & the day Kennedy announced the plan to put a man on the moon.

oh yes, & the day they convicted Skilling & Lay...

strange day in history...

i love wikipedia.

A Special HAPPY TUESDAY Tribute!

2006-05-23T01:07:00.001-04:00

due to the fact that yesterday was Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday, today we celebrate one of the greatest sleuths of all time (or at least the men who played him and his faithful sidekick). Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes on both screen and radio during the 30's and 40's, along with Nigel Bruce who played Dr. Watson and to my mind there are no others.

(mysfit's edit: i have been reminded that though Basil Rathbone played an excellent and convincing Holmes, another excellent actor excelled at this role as well - so let's just say that there are no others except Jeremy Brett - thanks jp)

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes." -Holmes; Hound of the Baskervilles

"But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop." - The Adventure of the Norwood Builder

"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence," returned my companion, bitterly. "The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done." - A Study in Scarlet

"Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal." - The Adventures of the Blue Carbuncle

"Come, Watson, come!" he cried. "The game is afoot." - The Adventure of Abbey Grange

what fish is your car? err... car-fish? um... i'm:

2006-05-22T10:27:00.000-04:00

I'm a Honda S2000!

You live on the edge, and you live for the adrenaline rush. You don't need luxuries, snob appeal, or superfluous gadgets. You put your top down, get your motor revving, and take all the curves that life throws at you at full speed. So what if you spin out occasionally?

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

the MTA & the 18th dynasty

2006-05-21T12:47:00.000-04:00

rode the ferry into the city yesterday for a family field trip of sorts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where i was most interested in the "Hatshepsut: from Queen to Pharoah" exhibit...
mostly because i have a thing about the monumental remains of ancient civilizations (& sometimes the little details too, like thin gold funerary sandals), & also because of the whole women-in-a-position-of-unusual-power thing. this woman declared herself king (& therefore god) near the beginning of the New Kingdom...all her public statues were masculine while private ones were feminine. she was regent for her nephew Thutmose III, then his co-ruler. strangely enough, about two decades after her death, he declared a proscription against her: all her monuments were smashed to pieces or altered so that her name was replaced, usually with her father's name. apparently no one really knows why he did this; since it was so long after it was probably political rather than personal.
at any rate, because the statuary fragments were buried right away, the pieces have been well-preserved & able to be reconstructed.

you're not allowed to take photos of the special exhibits, but i snuck a few in:

Queen Hatshepsut.

as far as the field-trip aspect of the experience, because of some weird quirk of the Traveling Gods, two ferry boats (that i know of, there may have been more) failed to exist completely for "security reasons", & there was not a single train running downtown that went where it was supposed to. never in one day have i been in the Union Square, Canal Street, 77th Street, 86th street, & Grand Central stations. in one day. we only went up to the Met & back, & we rode like 6 different lines. ridiculous.

in conclusion, we had a fabulous dinner & quite the adventure, & i have just about lost all my patience for Manhattan.

more photos will be going up on the tourist...

edit: i forgot to mention some of the other interesting things that were seen, albeit not by me.
my stepfather saw the Warriors of the Himalayas, which he described, aptly i'm sure, as "not something you see every day."
t's mom wandered off into the Impressionist wing, which i avoided, because i've had enough 19th century French painting to last me through quite a few museum trips.
& my mother saw the Samuel Palmer exhibit, which she loved.
i wandered off towards the end to look for the Hellenistic Greek works, which are in a gallery that apparently won't exist until 2007, so so much for that.

dragon-fish?

2006-05-19T13:02:00.000-04:00

this is a mysfit original.
now that i changed my profile picture, i wanted to show you this and say, "hey you! yeah you, with the eyes and stuff look - at this cool thing i drew!" but then i thought that would be tooting my own horn (for those of you who tend to dwell always in the gutter - yes tooting my own horn, if actually possible, would be really strange - if i even had a horn of my own to toot) - i think i'll just let the dragons speak for themselves.

happy wednesday!

2006-05-17T16:25:00.000-04:00

(because it didn't feel right, the fish without a happy day-of-the-week...)

this one is for carl v:

a toast to a dedicated fish-follower!
also i happen to have a pint glass with his name on it.

also i just want to state for the record that i have been wearing ridiculously oversized sunglasses for a long, long time.

this is me in 2001...i dunno, i like to feel i'm channelling Audrey Hepburn.

the importance of the fish

2006-05-17T14:32:00.000-04:00

lately it's been really embarrassing me how not-together my shit is.
an appalling sentence, i know, but accurate.

so i was thinking about the nature of the fish, & where it's taken me thus far, & i look forward to a future full of papers, when i finally get back into school so i can get back out of school & on with my life...
you see, the fish began as a means for mysfit & i to continue the creative conversational collaboration we'd been enjoying since we met--& since we met in within the first six weeks of our respective higher educations--i'm not even going to clarify how long ago that was exactly--a fair part of these conversations revolved around our personal blend of Academia.
that's one way to say it, anyway.
another way might be that a lot of last-minute term paper writing involved wine-fueled brainstorming & me wandering up & down the hallway yelling about how the storm was the real link between Oedipus & Lear & that beauty is the only purpose in life, & that, ontologically speaking, i was kinda like god, while mysfit hung around in the bathroom trying to prove to us that she didn't exist, or prove to herself that she did exist, or whatever.

mind you, academia's one of those things that's really only important to the people doing it.
just have to hope, i guess, that some sorta revolution of thought will eventually occur again. like, a second Age of Reason or some such. we could certainly use one.

on the one hand, i completely understand my stepfather's indignation that my mother kicks him off the computer to follow the fish when he's busy doing whatever it is that people do with stocks & finances & the like. that's important, i agree.
but so's global warming, & i like the thing the fish has value for things like that. sharing information, continuously exploring an infinity of points of view...
& i try not to be too cynical.

on the other hand, the fish recently received its first piece of federal mail, e.g. an envelope containing a Regina Spektor promo sampler for the consideration of the fish.

so that's something.

at any rate, i'm considering changing my Official Status from Unemployed (with occasional odd jobs) to Freelance Photographer, since really i spend most of my time involved with my own photographs (i'm terribly self-centered).
i can't quite bring myself to do it yet, though, because it seems undeniably clear to me that the new title would require at least One Photograph Sold.

so i'm opening it up: i'll "sell" anyone a print of any one of my photos--for the perfectly reasonable price of mailing it. pick a photo, any photo--although i'd have to get really creative if anyone wanted a print larger than 8x10.

um, i really mean it. although i think this means that if you live in another country it'll have to cost more. i have no capital, you see (but i suspect i have an inner Town Hall...)

in the end, i can only say: this Egyptian licorice tea makes my tongue tingle.

mysfit's slacking

2006-05-17T10:13:00.000-04:00

i'm sure all you fishies were just devastated that mysfit's dead celebrity tuesday failed to appear yesterday. due to temporal concerns, it shall be postponed till at least next week - i've got some worky issues to work out.

in the meantime, go ask a ninja

(mysfit's note: this podcast (a podcast, as the ninja explains, is like apple pie for whales) is so funny that i can barely feel my lips - WATCH IT!! especially the one on net neutrality - it's funny with a message)

jennsee and her magnificent fish!

2006-05-15T13:40:00.000-04:00

i'm sure jennsee is just too tired from all her work or is waiting for your fish to discover it all by it's onesy - i however am not so patient (note: if you are working on a notification, jennsee dear, i will remove this post as soon as you are ready to reveal the secrets of your magic yourself - until then i humbly take the task upon myself)

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Step right up and see jennsee and her amazing fish! She'll astound you with juggling!! Wow you with curiosities!! And boggle your senses with images from your wildest fantasies!!**

First, swim down the river of sidebar links and see jennsee's brilliant archiving abilities! Wonderful prizes await the unwary who browses through our past! Go now - the mirror-maze of ideas awaits!

Then wiggle your tail over to the tourist for a sentimental dose of mother's day magic! Over there you will find exotic women eager to serve your every whim!!**

Finally, notice how silent the site is right now? the autostart video (wonderful in its time) has been replaced with a lovely picture of Captain Jack for your viewing pleasure - though a link to the trailer is still there!

Thanks to jennsee for all her fishy work!

**Not necessarily true**

everyone can see my fish

2006-05-12T11:30:00.000-04:00

in the future, we will all be watch... we um... in the now we are all being watc-- um... what the hell, i've always known the faeries were keeping close tabs on me. if the government wants in on that action, they're going to have toe-the-line, put up their elbows and make a deal with the sprites:
VS
© Brian Froud ("Bush" is property of the US Government)

in an epic battle royal!! the winner gets to peek in on me taking a... what? oh - get your mind out of the gutter... i'm taking a stand: here check this out and do something:

ordering a pizza in 2040

(i was about to ask a silly question about who would win or something, but then i realized everyone can see my fish). by the way, that first picture is my favorite image by brian froud - for more on the artist go to World of Froud - and please don't steal it for devious purposes or my fish will get mad and eat you.

carl v. over at SSD has posted a list of trailers for summer movies and yet somehow, despite his turn toward science-fiction, he has missed A Scanner Darkly (let's just hope he doesn't miss this):

(cue announcer)
FROM THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, the director of Waking Life and Warner Independent Pictures comes a new vision of the not so distant future.

so i'm a geek, ok?

you may recognize Philip K. Dick's book linked above by the more common and sci-fi-ishly cool title: BladeRunner. this kinda pisses me off and is one of my soapbox-topics. (probably because i love the original title of the book). see, after the movie came out, they re-released the book, as they often do, with a movie cover - however instead of saying it was the inspiration for BladeRunner, they changed the title of the book. which makes no sense! "blade runner" is nowhere in the book (they're called bountyhunters). there, i've said it and am done. it's an awesome book - READ IT!

Geek Part 2: the director, Richard Linklater also directed Dazed and Confused and Fast Food Nation. and as far as Warner Independent Films, well, that's probably not what it seems either, but my fish knows not.

it's not really a "new vision" of the future, is it? A Scanner Darkly was published in 1977 and many other books have portended a bleak and fearful future. i am sad to say i've not read this one, yet - but i'm about to!! i'm ashamed that i missed this sci-fi masterpiece, which apparently pulls up along side A Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and 1984.

you see, there are times that i slip very swiftly into the, "oh my god, this is cool but where, oh where will it lead humanity?!?" mood and about all i can do to avoid running around like paul revere in a schitzophrantic fit ("the government is coming! the government is coming!") is buckle down, listen to they're coming to take me away and read about how bad it really could be.

people, like the heroes and heroines of our most beloved stories, we're the only ones who can stop this.

peace,
mysfit

mysfit's mad world

2006-05-11T12:16:00.000-04:00

i don't know about the rest of you, but whenever i try to play something from MTV it asks me to download some sorta security update...screw that, says i, & screw MTV also.

but i wanted to hear the song, which always makes me cry a little, because i haven't heard it in ages...so i checked out google video & found this:

which is just a homemade life-in-highschool vid, but i dug the fisheye lens (naturally) &, i dunno, this is such a depressed-teenager song (that's, er, not a bad thing, just to clarify) that it made such perfect sense to me i had to share.

more on nostalgia later...

hard to sleep with that fish knocking at my door

2006-05-11T07:23:00.000-04:00

Gary Jules - MadWorld
(from the Donnie Darko SoundTrack)

(clicking on the song title will take you to MTV where you can watch the video.; clicking on the movie title will take you to the super-cool movie site - requires flash)

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places
Worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going no where
Going no where
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression
No expression
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow
No tomorrow
No tomorrow
And I find I kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles its a very very
Mad world
Mad world
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday
Happy birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen
Sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me
No one new me
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson
Look right through me
Look right through me
And I find I kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles its a very very
Mad world
Mad world
Enlarging your world
Mad world

HAPPY TUESDAY!

2006-05-09T12:03:00.000-04:00

“I'm not trying to stump anybody, ... It's the beauty of the language that I'm interested in.” - Buddy Holly

“Death is very often referred to as a good career move.”
- Buddy Holly (1936-1959)

sunday afternoon fish

2006-05-07T18:38:00.000-04:00

i love the fish!

another (quicker) movie fish

2006-05-04T16:30:00.000-04:00

saw an ad for Art School Confidential last night whilst viewing the Daily Show, & almost choked on my wine.
it's the first i've heard of it...but it looks promising.

but more importantly:

pirates...

(edit: ok, i couldn't find a trailer to embed that didn't start automatically, so in the interests of our sanity i'll just link to the official site...)

i probably won't leave this up for very long, since i think it'll play anytime the page is opened, but still...it does have fish people in it.
&, um, if it starts to drive the rest of you mad before it gets to me...which is highly possible...just, uh, scream in my general direction & i'll silence it. the madness, that is. not my piratical glee.
never.

ye gods i loved the first one.
the only film i have ever seen eight times in the theater.
yep.
this is me twitching with glee & anticipation.

& finally:

this is the sky as seen by oldben.
had to share.

that gobshite couldn't find his way out of a pillowcase

2006-05-04T12:47:00.000-04:00

so i was looking through drafts and came upon a list of links i had added to and neglected to post - so here's a whirlwind account:

once upon a time, my fish had wandered over to fence's entertaining site, stumbling upon a fantastic title for a post - not from the site itself but from here. this title was so wonderful that my fish immediately copied it down and stared at it for hours, unable to decide how best to follow it. frustrated but not put off, my fish went to bed, (exciting, huh?) , and that night dreamed of the future. it dreamed of cloaking devices and though my fish could not taste the dream, it dreamed it could through the "Brain Port" a military scientist had installed on my fish's tongue.

(for those of you who wish to object to the non-temporal nature of this narrative and thereby, disprove its truthfulness, remember it is my fish we're talking about)

over the course, of the next few weeks, the post became a depository for links that my fish instantly fell in love with, copied and then just as quickly forgot (this is the sad part). it had become a graveyard of my fish's interests. soon, my fish even forgot about this post. left behind was the super-cool new keyboard, with its ultra-customizable LED display. if my fish could remember, i'm sure it would tell me why a link to Umbero Eco's writings was found in a dusty corner of this post or where to find Ben & Jerry's new flavors of ice cream: Black&Tan and Vermonty Python.

for now though, i think we will just have to move on as my fish has already packed its bags and left for an extended trip to Lithuania's new amusement park: Stalin's World. however, my fish left a farewell note:

"peel back the metal walls to see how it all works"

peace,
mysfit

HAPPY TUESDAY!

2006-05-02T12:08:00.000-04:00

"Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood."
- Josephine Baker

"The secret to the fountain of youth is to think youthful thoughts."
- Josephine Baker

this fish is late for april

2006-05-01T23:21:00.000-04:00

Happy May Day!

a maypole in Merrie England...

so i meant to post a few things afore April (aka poetry month) ended, specifically a new poem of mine & a piece on Anselm Berrigan & his possible goatee, but i'm, well, late for everything.
but i'm working really hard on my time machine, so hopefully i'll succeed in going back about a week & writing all the necessaries, at which point i'll be back waving flags of typeface.
if you don't hear from me again i've probably ended up in the 14th century.
physics was never my strong suit.

until then, i did manage to visit Rutgers' annual Agricultural Field Day, photos of which are going up on the tourist, all full of sunshine & so forth.

so entertain yourselves whilst i scamper off to stitch a poem out of loose change & flower petals & other bits of things that end up stuck like dead flies to the pages of my journal...

file under i-can't-believe-they-did-that fish

2006-05-01T22:03:00.000-04:00

but this time, that's a good thing.

i still can't believe they let Stephen Colbert speak at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

but they did.
(scroll down to see parts 1-3 of his speech.)

halleluia.
(did i spell that right?)

('m actually in the midst of cooking dinner & drinking wine, but i felt i had to share this right away.)

politics, cinema, comics, & the end of the world

2006-04-29T12:02:00.000-04:00

i recently went to see Thank You For Smoking, which i thoroughly enjoyed & highly recommend. originally this post was going to go into more detail, about child actors & how unusual it is for them to look like actual children, & about rhetoric, the power & tradition thereof, the debate about health & smoking & advertising, specifically relating to the recent wave of smoking bans in public places, including NY & NJ bars etc. (soon smoking over coffee or drinks will be a rural midwest relic of a bygone era while those more cosmopolitan places alter the whole atmosphere of going out--odd because smoking used to be the cosmopolitan thing...) & of course (briefly) about how Katie Holmes spends most of her time onscreen in compromising positions & why this suits her.

but then i became distracted by all these other movies coming out.
besides, you should just see it.

otherwise:

the upcoming documentary Wordplay about crossword puzzles & the puzzlers who play them looks, & i steal a line from a reviewer here, "exhilaratingly brainy". besides, it's got Jon Stewart, & some politicians, & a guy in a crossword puzzle hat.

then there's Neil Gaiman's upcoming projects: a film version of Stardust, this sort of fairy tale that i loved at first read, with Claire Danes, Robert DeNiro, Alfred Molina, & Michelle Pfeiffer, & a film version of Beowulf, which is using that 3-D motion capture tech a la Polar Express & is also directed by Robert Zemeckis, & has so many interesting cast members that i'm not even going in to detail, except to say that Crispin Glover, of all people, is playing Grendel. apparently though, the motion-capture technology is already way ahead of what it was at last glimpse, so this should be promising.

moving on to cartoons, comics, animation, blah blah blah:
i'm sure everyone knows by now that there's a Simpsons movie coming out.
but, you know, in case you didn't.
& of course, X-Men3, which doesn't really require me to say anything either.

& now, of course, the end of the world:
this June we have a rare occurence: the day of the devil. you know, 06/06/06.
(when you can spend the day listening to Slayer in solidarity, or, conversely, if you want to, spend the day praying that the world doesn't end.)
anyway, i suppose, if they had to remake the Omen, that is the day to release it.
the original is one of my favorite movies ever, & since anyone who knows me will tell you i can't stand to watch (most) horror flicks, that's quite the thing. but i can't help it, it's campy & classic & i just love it when Gregory Peck gets all suspicious.

also relating to the end of the world, in a possibly-Biblical-but-very-real sense, we have An Inconvenient Truth. (here's the official site.)
Global warming is my pet cause (because most of the world i've known will soon be under water) & apparently i have at least that much in common with Al Gore, who seems to have developed a certain degree of coolness since he was voted not-president, e.g. the creation of Current TV.
more on global warming:
--10 States Sue EPA (from today's news.)
--participate in the BBC climate change study.
--so can we please save our environment now?

& yet one more apocalypse, this time from (choke) Mel Gibson:
Apocalypto.
by the by, the Mayans, at least i think it was the Mayans, had an exact date for the end of the world, sometime in December of 2012, not sure of the details or whether it's the end of the world or the end of the calendar.
is there a difference?
& we all know how good they were with calendars.

on a lighter note, the latest cinematic innovation may very well be smelly movies.

hey kids! it's the bimbo truck!

2006-04-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

an image i had to share.
photo by oldben, yesterday in New Brunswick.

the fish waits for jim murphy

2006-04-27T21:29:00.000-04:00

no downstairs doorbell

it might've been a nice house
where is jim murphy?
maybe jim murphy drives an accord.
here he comes
there he goes
maybe jim murphy drives a chevy suburban?
nope
not jim murphy
there's a light on in the front window
here's jim murphy
that's not jim murphy
ford windstar?
not jim murphy
nondescript pickup truck?
not jim murfee
acura, lowered, bass thumpn?
it's a bandito, but it's
not jim merfeee
it looks like it has a nice yard
but jim murphy's not in it
the porch is kinda shitty
and jim murppee is certainly not on it
(we are)
did you ring the doorbell?
yes
did you try downstairs too
there's no downstairs jim myrf....
no downstairs doorbell
there's a cat
::snap::::snap::
maybe the cat's jim mrfiy
didn't you talk to jim murphy?
i talked to someone who said
he was jim murphy
but he may not have been
maybe that's jim murray
murphy
no
he doesn't look like he sounded
maybe jim murphy's a drunk
let's go
okay

fashion fish

2006-04-27T14:01:00.000-04:00

for those of you who don't live near manhattan or any one of the fashion capitals of the world, i thought i'd share this latest downtown trend:

live giant Madagascar hissing cockroach jewelry.

hissing cockroach ring, photo from the NY Post.

i'm absolutely serious.
apprently this guy designs for one of those America's top model people & this is his thing.
my thing is that bedazzled bugs are a bad joke in poor taste. although i guess the roaches must be thrilled at being that much closer to taking over mankind.

this, on the other hand, i think is hysterical:

it's a new fashion trend in Japan, apparently, to wear bottoms that have been treated--however they do it, airbrushing?--to look like you can see the ladies' panties through them.

is it true?

who cares?

it's brilliant.

my fish plays a dulcimer

2006-04-27T12:09:00.000-04:00

i was reminded of one of my favorite poets buy jp over at criminal english.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) has long been my favorite Romantic poet. i've heard stories that before i could read, i would point to the big red The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with woodcuts by Gustav Doré and spend hours quietly flipping the pages. Doré also did woodcuts for Dante's Inferno as well as Edgar Allen Poe's Raven. perhaps i will bring you pictures of the book and you will understand.

                Her lips were red, her looks were free,
                Her locks were yellow as gold :
                Her skin was as white as leprosy,
                The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
                Who thicks man's blood with cold.

i still love the Mariner but today i feel like bringing you another of Coleridge's poems - mostly because i'm still searching for that pleasure-dome and those caves of ice. (and the Mariner is just way too long, but what part to post? - you see my dilema...) so enjoy!

Kubla Khan

OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

A FRAGMENT.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
          Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

          But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
          Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
          A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
          As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
          By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
          And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
          As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
          A mighty fountain momently was forced :
          Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
          Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
          Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
          And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
          It flung up momently the sacred river.
          Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
          Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
          Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
          And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
          And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
          Ancestral voices prophesying war !

          The shadow of the dome of pleasure
          Floated midway on the waves ;
          Where was heard the mingled measure
          From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
          A damsel with a dulcimer
          In a vision once I saw :
          It was an Abyssinian maid,
          And on her dulcimer she played,
          Singing of Mount Abora.
          Could I revive within me
          Her symphony and song,
          To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

my fish is a book, is yours?

2006-04-27T10:52:00.000-04:00

stolen from banzai cat, who stole if from someone else and to the cycle of internet memes continues:

take the WHAT BAD BOOK ARE YOU test.

i'm not sure i ever read this book or perhaps, i've just repressed any memory of it. by playing around with the silly questions/answers, it looks like i narrowly missed being Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" - that was a lucky strike indeed, as that book was so bad my powers of forgetfulness have been totally overcome.

(come on, you know you wanna do it too - besides, the poor sod who created this test was forced to read Paradise Lost 6 times) *uncontrollably shivers*

April - the month of many faces

2006-04-26T14:22:00.000-04:00

so while i've already mentioned that April is National Poetry Month and some of you may know that April is also Jazz Appreciation Month - it also seems that April is Make Your Employees Uncomfortable Month.

First, the poetry. Here's another quick one:

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

and a link to the Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

Ok now for Jazz:
April 25th was the birthday of Ella Fitzgerald. Born 1918.

Here's a few music clips: (these are real player links)

Mack the Knife
Someone to Watch Over Me
Blue Skies

for more Jazz Birthdays click here

now we come to where i dig into my personal experience and dub this month "Make You Employees Uncomfortable Month" why? you ask. good question, mister, um, i'm sorry i didn't catch your name... well no matter.

Part 1
#1 way to make your employees not trust you: bring in a consultant to monitor them and don't tell them why or warn them at all.

here's the scoop: one of my jobs brought in a consultant to monitor the helpdesk. that magical place where a small army of two to three people, including me, buffer the rest of the IT department from the thousands of employees who often break their slightly intelligent rocks (also called computers) and then blame us. not "us" in a general sort, but very often "us" as in whoever is on the phone at the time.

Part 2
#1 way to scare the bejesus out of your employees: decide that the company is going to change over to a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.

for those of you who are still learning, ERP software manages everything from purchasing to production to inventory to invoicing. YAY!

so, my other job has set up a week's worth of meetings with a consultant to determine how the new software has to work to fulfill our needs. this consultant then goes back to the software company (which he was hired by) and tells them how the software needs to work, then they configure it. seems to me like a ridiculous game of telephone - oh well, nothing can be as bad as using telnet for the software base.

well, that's enough ranting and informing, informing and ranting for today. i should probably get to work.

oh and happy hump day!
love,
mysfit

another happy tuesday

2006-04-25T16:31:00.000-04:00

because this makes me happy.

HAPPY TUESDAY!

2006-04-25T12:43:00.000-04:00

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
- Katharine Hepburn

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get--only
with what you are expecting to give--which is everything.

- Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)

(Photo: The Kobal Collection c 1935)

fish with piano

2006-04-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

went to see Regina Spektor on Tuesday the 11th.

i think i found her through a video, the quirky clockworky animation-esque clip for "Us", all crescending piano & scenic lyrics & panoramic photographic imagery.
does that make sense?
ok then, you watch, you describe it.

she's got this kind of self-conscious cutie/lispy/quirky thing going, kinda like Bjork only not as fey. could be the influence of the accent--i think she was born in Moscow & raised in the Bronx...

naturally there's a sense of an artist in a tradition--in this case, the classic musical tradition of pretty ladies at pianos. & she is classy, in this vaguely pre-war elegant always-has-an-umbrella-&-a-handkerchief sorta way.

like tori amos before all the theatrics. actually i'm guessing she grew up with tori in her soundtrack as well...comparisons are inevitable, what with the red hair & the whole piano thing. & the warbling, can't forget that. the songs veer from bluesy-jazzy-almost-nursery-rhymey to sounding like Tchaikovsky's redheaded stepchild.

the show was fabulous; i suspect it was the "hometown" show of her tour: lots of inside jokes & people yelling things & laughing...that's always fun to watch even if you don't quite "get" everything. & the material from the new album is tres promising, particularly "Fidelity", which i could get a copy of if i finally bought into itunes. otherwise, it's june for me...

the venue was weird, in that i-love-this-place-one-day-i'll-bring-everyone-together-here sorta way. the Warsaw in Brooklyn is this polish pub/ballroom venue, & there's a back room that serves pierogies all night. my only complaint was that it was sorta overly warm & the smell of frying onions eventually made me feel a little faint.

oldben was a magnificent good sport for indulging me in a chick-music event & absorbing it all with good-natured grins. besides, we both got a kick out of the little girl with a feather in her hair.

nothing like a lady at a piano while some weird drunk modern version of Tiger Lily goes cavorting through the gaps in the crowd.

(edit: photos from the show are up at the tourist.)

earth day fish

2006-04-22T12:11:00.000-04:00

love our mother earth!

a quick friday fish

2006-04-21T13:55:00.000-04:00

continuing with National Poetry Month, here's a quick poem that i have lived by for a number of years. Enjoy!

Do not go gentle into that good night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

photo fish

2006-04-21T11:25:00.000-04:00

the last time i attempted a portrait site it was a bust...technical issues out the aperture.
anway, found a snazzy photoblog host, & so i've started one up again.
drop by the experiment & tell me what you think...

& in the spirit of change, the tourist has been revamped to match.

self-portrait with camera.

the fish almost swam right by

2006-04-20T13:14:00.000-04:00

carl v. just pointed out that April is National Poetry Month and we at the fish are ashamed to say we almost missed it. i think jennsee and i are going to have to double-time it to make up for this lack of poetica notica - especially since carl v. in the same post told fishies to swim by our pond for a little dose of verse (thanks carl!!)

so here's one to start:

Spring is like a perhaps hand
by E. E. Cummings

III
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

this fish is scared...

2006-04-19T10:38:00.000-04:00

...and wants to move to a far away and quite possibly imaginary land where nuclear means the opposite of unclear... (though i suppose in some very twisted way, you could argue that it does - everything gets very clear when you're dead or dying of radiation sickness)

The New Yorker: THE IRAN PLANS

- this is a very long article. i haven't finished it yet but i may have more to say on it when i do. for now:

"One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”"

and

"Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ” "

HAPPY TUESDAY!

2006-04-18T13:08:00.000-04:00

"What is time? Swiss manufacture it... French horde it... Italians want it... Americans say it is money... Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook."
--Peter Lorre in "Beat the Devil"

superstar fish

2006-04-17T13:46:00.000-04:00

continuing the Jesus theme, i went to see Jesus Christ Superstar on Saturday, at the Keswick Theatre some ways north of Philadelphia. my uncle has been playing Jesus for oh, 15 years or so now...i've never seen any other version of the musical than this Midnight Productions show (although i have seen pieces of the movie, which is pretty ridiculous...i mean, all musicals are inherently ridiculous to one degree or another, but JCS by its very nature is way at the top of the list...) but it's a good one, especially since it's basically community theater...anyway, i really dig their light effects, & the leads have some serious vocal skills.

& my uncle plays a mean Jesus.

photos from the theater will be going up on the tourist later today...

***

in other news, Mr. Nose has a new installment of the Lt. Drinkwater saga up at the lounge, Elaine plays with alligators, lizards, & a banyan tree, Kate plays under the cherry blossoms in Shimokitazawa, & monkey0 visits the house on the rock.

easter fish

2006-04-16T18:47:00.000-04:00

Happy Jesus! wooooooo Jesus!

bunny fish

2006-04-13T13:44:00.000-04:00

does this disturb anyone else?
or is it just me?

HAPPY TUESDAY!

2006-04-11T13:24:00.000-04:00

Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
-Cary Grant

My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can. -Cary Grant

a poem for fish

2006-04-11T10:15:00.000-04:00

Spring
Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

a dream of fish

2006-04-10T13:49:00.000-04:00

things i learned from my dream this morning...
you cannot throw slippers full of sand, or at least not far.
be careful who you hide under the deck with.
the game is not always what it seems.
your past will come back to haunt you.
i can't surf, but if i close my eyes sometimes i walk on water.

"life is what happens when you're making other plans"

2006-04-07T13:26:00.000-04:00

it's absolutely astounding how quickly things change sometimes - even when you are forewarned of a thing coming to pass, it's like you never really knew until it sneaks up on you, throws a bag over your head and proceeds to beat you senseless.

picture me, just plodding along, making a few choices here, a few decisions there, and then - BAM! there i am writhing in the middle of the street as blow after blow lands on the head of the little clock-maker who sits in my soul staring out at the world. insignificant decisions can really get you if your not careful. know what i mean?

no?

well, i go through this about every year or two. one of these episodes is why i have a spiral tattoo:

- from summer 04

this was a few years ago. in the course of a few months, a series of small impulses had changed who i thought i was. i started eating fish for the first time in 13 years: i started wearing a watch (only to spite the time i still do not believe in) for the first time in 12, i bought a wallet - 12 years as well; wore tank tops - 10 years and threw myself into a very strange living situation with nearly total strangers - never.

(it's funny how our habits are such integral parts of ourselves and yet, they are not ourselves - change almost everything about yourself and you are still, well, you). after all these little changes, i felt that i knew myself much better and was therefore at the point in my life that i could get my spiral.

the path is understanding
the method is the spiral

i recently explained this concept to livewire - the spiral is understanding. i believe that the only way you ever understand something is by coming back around to it again and again - and even if the thing itself never changes, you do and so your worldview expands in spirals. but its more than that as well. for there are times that the thing does change - this happens a lot with people and places - they change and yet are more the same - like you - and it forces you to understand yourself better. get it?

now? now i think "it never rains but it pours" is a good description of my life. it's like the universe sensed that i was making a change and decided this seemed like a good idea.

ok ok - over the past few months i made one big, but seemingly innocent decision: i decided to go to school for graphic design and BAM! i now have a car - which, cause it's been a few years since i've needed one, has changed nearly everything superficial about my life. spring is here, with it's aura of change, and so my housing situation is different: the woman that i've spent far too much time and energy bitching about is out of my life! and this super cool dude is gonna take her place. he's even decided that he wants to stay on for another year if we do. so this means I DON'T HAVE TO MOVE!! woohoo! (mysfit's note: if you could see me now, i be doing the happy dance of not packing)

and here's the kicker - i haven't told you much about my work situation. mostly it just is. but for more than a year i have been working two part-time temp jobs (the same two) and apparently they like me. both of them in the course of a week have talked to me about the possibility of full-time employment! neither has made an offer yet but this promises that sometime in the near future, the lurking mandate of change is going to once again pound my head into the pavement of the future. and this time... forewarned as i am... i will definitely... be totally... and utterly... surprised.

for all our presumed magnificence, man always stands naked before the thunderstorm

fossil fish

2006-04-06T16:36:00.000-04:00

this fish has arms!

indeed...

2006-04-05T00:18:00.000-04:00

happy birthday to the tourist!

HAPPY TUESDAY!

2006-04-04T13:55:00.000-04:00

"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today" - James Dean

i almost forgot...

2006-04-04T13:36:00.000-04:00

the tourist recently achieved the one-year mark.

i'd forgotten in the haze of all my illnesses, but this means i've had my digicam for one year, in which i have snapped (...hold on...let's see, it resets its counter at 10,000, & it did that in september...plus, er, about 5000 it's up to now...ok) about fifteen thousand photographs in 12 months. give or take.

so many many happy thankses to anyone who's taken the time to visit...to wade through all those band shots & trips to the beach & DC & Colorado & so on, the festivals, the parties, & the arbitrary still-lifes...hopefully i've gotten better over the year, neh?
cheers.

let the tourists eat cake.

mysfit's random fish #42A

2006-04-03T14:43:00.000-04:00

What do you want?!?

excerpt for fishes

2006-04-03T14:30:00.000-04:00

a bit of something i thought i'd quote for the day--
ahem:

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.

The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.

And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.

And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap . . .

And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle.

And then the eagle lets go.

And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There's good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there's much better eating on practically anything else. It's simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.

But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.

One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

--Terry Pratchett, the opening of Small Gods.

another photo of this fish

2006-03-31T11:12:00.000-05:00

it figures with my life that, rare as it is in adults, every four years or so i get caught by a bout of ear infections. yummy!

my left ear hates me.

this one i've had for almost a whole week, & it's maddening. really, i feel sort of unhinged, between the headaches, the vertigo, & the fact that it feels like somebody (who would do this, i don't know) is piercing my eardrum with a hot needle. midweek the Invisible Hurting Things made a diplomatic visit to my right ear too, but thankfully they dealt with whatever business they had there & retreated.
really i thought i was almost all better yesterday. but this morning...ayyyyyyyy!
this is me rolling around on the floor. utterly futile of course, nothing really to be done, except swallow my amoxicillin when the prescription is finally filled, sleep on hot compresses, & er...pierce a garlic clove & let the juice drip in my ear?
this seems to be one of those things where no one's sure what can be done, so everything from scripts to home remedies comes out of the medicine cabinet.

i haven't even gone swimming or anything to justify this.

last time this happened, in the summer of 2002, it got so bad i resorted to those papery ear candle things--i.e. you stick one end in your ear, & set the other end on fire, cross your fingers & hope it...does something, anyway.
i think it worked at the time...in an idiotic, vaguely amused, little-bit terrified sorta way. there's a photo somewhere...if i can find it i'll share, it's pretty hysterical. look, ma, i'm on fire!

story of my life, really.
sigh.

hopefully i'll still be able to go to DC this weekend, since i was really looking forward to it--albeit without paychecks since i am utterly incapable of commuting to work to pick them up. i have troubles enough as it is on the highway without adding vertigo to the mix.

okay, enough moaning...thank you for listening, Dr. Fish.

now bring me wild sweet orange tea & a hot shower!

half-nekkid fish

2006-03-30T15:17:00.000-05:00

happy half-nekkid thursday!
from the same series as last week's.
posted it here because the tourist is full of band shots & it didn't, you know, fit.

flowery fish

2006-03-30T13:32:00.000-05:00

Irises, Vincent Van Gogh.

aha! spring has finally sprung! i must go picnic now!
& it's Van Gogh's birthday again, so yay for that too.

creepy tourist fish

2006-03-27T20:24:00.000-05:00

see i told you she was creepy

mysfit's edit: please let me know if you have any suggestions for the pic - thx