Welcome back, here I am

After what felt like the world's shortest winter break, spent mostly at my parents' house with my family, in semi-retirement,* here we are. And, in the blink of an eye, we're already finishing up week two of the new academic term. First Marx, now Nietzsche, next week Freud. Oh my god I'm in heaven.

Marx, Engels, Angela Lansbury, and me. Saturday nights don't get much better.

I have a new Sack Man post in the works (Sack Man and werewolf!), as well as a Serbian vampire and Venezuelan cannibal to investigate. With the way things have been going with my teaching load this academic year, we'll see how quickly I can churn them out. In the mean time, check out the Instagram, I'm posting images of the quotidien to it frequently.**

It's just about my bedtime. I've been getting up before dawn on teaching days to work and it is DELIGHTFUL. The world is quiet, and dark, and it's just me and the dog and maybe Murder She Wrote, too.

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* Semi-retirement really isn't much of an exaggeration: up at 6am, working together, eating together, walking the dogs together, falling asleep at 9pm in front of the t.v., watching Rachel Maddow together. It's either semi-retirement or some kind of socialistic suburban co-op utopia.
** Jason tells me that, based on the sheer volume of photos of Roscoe on there, Instagram people must think that I'm an insane dog lady, which is fine, mainly because the only people following me are my friends who know that to be true already. 

Señor Babándose Mogollón...

Source: El Hematocrítico de Arte

When all else fails, laughing at the fake titles for works of art on the El Hematocrítico de Arte tumblr page really takes the edge off of an evening (or very early morning) of grading essays. 

Did you notice the new blog design? I lost my mind a couple of weeks ago, and redesigning the blog was one of the weird things I did to NOT DEAL WITH IT. A bit much? I don't know, I kind of like it's ultra femininity; it's certainly a far cry from the previous serial killer green. 

I'm still working out some of the new blog design stuff (new pages under construction, for example), but I'm getting anxious to get back into blogging about the ridiculous. Thanksgiving break is quickly approaching, and I look forward to a break from the grading insanity. Is a new Procrastination Investigation in the cards? I do hope so!

Getting Weird with David Bowie

And nostalgic, and maybe even a little bit weepy, too. Remember sitting on the floor of your bedroom and listening to "Life on Mars?" while cutting and pasting bits and pieces of things together for your 'zine? And it was a track on the b side of a mix tape? Cassette tape? And you knew you'd only damage the tape if you were to rewind and listen again and rewind and listen again, so you would flip the tape, listen to a Smiths song, and then flip it back again? And you were fifteen years old? Of course you do!

I woke up listening to David Bowie's "Life on Mars?" for the first time in a very long time Sunday morning. My dad had put it on in the living room while preparing breakfast. He's a Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech employee and member of the Mars Science Lab team; Sunday was, of course, the day of the rover's landing on Mars, and Jason, Roscoe, and I had driven down to LA the day before to be there with the rest of the family for the big event. Gushing about my dad's super important and awesome role in the team would compromise the certain level of anonymity I like to maintain on this here blog, so suffice it to say I'm incredibly proud of my dad and his team's accomplishments. Here's a little Bowie for them; their rover, Curiosity (aka Johnny 5); and the decades of technological and scientific advancements their mission will (continue to) give us. Bowie salutes you as you take us five million steps closer to answering his question!

Fourth Postcard of the Summer

So this completely terrifying mondo-postcard came in the mail today. 

Why doesn't the Virgin have eyebrows? WHY?? (Isn't it terrible that
the Virgin and Roscoe are looking at you at the same time? )

It was sent by my friend Shulie, you see. She drove up from LA with a friend for a super quick visit a couple of weeks ago, which was wonderful. We ate tacos and drank kosher Spanish wine, and then had brunch the next morning and napped and took a quick drive down Love Creek Road, the most famous road in Ben Lomond.*

Wasn't Jean Paul Gaultier the one who had the super embarrassing drunken, anti-Semitic meltdown at a Paris café?
And was fired from his fashion house and had to go to French court? And looks like a pirate? EXCELLENT. 
UPDATE 8/01/12: NO! It was John Galliano -- thanks for spoiling my fantasy, Shulie! 

Shulie took some photos** at the toy box memorial I alluded to in a previous post, and a couple more further down the creek. She's promised to share them with me (HINT HINT SHULIE), and I'm just dying of curiosity and anticipation.

Thanks for the monstrous Virgin, Shulie! It's already up on the fridge, right next to Eva Perón and Ché!

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* I'm seriously starting to think that Love Creek Road needs its own tag. Okay, done.
** Did you know that Shulie is a very talented photographer? And that she has a photo blog? Go and see!

Prolonging the Spooky with Andy Warhol

I woke up to a wonderfully dark, spooky, and overcast morning up here in the Santa Cruz mountains, and now that we're approaching noon, it's all burning off and giving way to a sunny day. In order to prolong the spooky, I leave here for you an incredibly unnerving 4 minute and 28 second video of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger. 

If you read the video description on YouTube, you'll learn that this scene was filmed for a Danish art movie, that Warhol preferred McDonalds, and that this video comprises "a classic ASMR trigger scene", which I did look up* but can't say that I experienced. The only thing triggered for me was major Andy Warhol discomfort. You're welcome!


Note: Warhol never actually finishes the burger, he leaves the last bite in the wrapper (!!!).

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* Man, oh man, oh man, oh man, have I stumbled down the internet rabbit hole into a whole new world of strange.

Second Postcard of the Summer

This postcard from my sister came in the mail for me and Jason earlier in the week. 

mmmm Icelandic fleece.

She's in Iceland right now, taking part in a graduate field institute program and scaling glaciers, crawling through lava tubes and ice tunnels, inspecting mineral hot springs, visiting the mid-Atlantic ridge, being interviewed on Iceland's national television news broadcast... you know, totally awesome stuff.

She's been updating us almost daily with photos and emails about her trip, her international cohort of earth science grad students, the group's geothermal research and excursions, etc. and and it sounds amazing. Elena's also been indulging me, personally, with wacky and wonderful anecdotes about "Troll Tours" and the night her group ate a "traditional Viking Dinner" at a place that I imagine to be the Icelandic version of Medieval Times. She said they ate rotten shark, that it's an Icelandic delicacy, and that it was awful. I just laughed and laughed... 

photo taken by my sister, Elena

Elena took this photo for me a couple of days into her trip, in the capital, Reykjavik. We're pretty sure that's a yarn store. I am so pleased by the succession of "wares and attractions" advertised: elves, excursions, trolls, wool, northern lights, ghosts. YOU KNOW, JUST A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS. I really, really love that so much of Iceland's tourism is wrapped up in monsters, ghosts, and folklore. I want to travel to Iceland, just to visit this yarn store and go on a Troll Tour. 

Ever since she started planning for the trip, Elena and I would occasionally sing to each other "Welcome to Icelaaaaaand...", the opening line from the mock-Björk song from that one Kristen Wiig SNL sketch. The more I learn about that country, the more sense Björk makes. Both are equally delightful!

Typical Espanish: Gazpachooo

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Claudia, for sending me this fabulous video Sunday. I've listened to it over and over and over. You've ensured that this innocent gazpacho kick explode into a full-blown gazpacho obsession. It's all I can think about, and now, it's all I hear. I sing the song's refrain in my dreams. Jason is living a nightmare.

La Ogra presents her summer hit: "Gazpacho".* It's a year old, but it's new to me, and it's become my summer anthem. Here's to the summer of gazpacho!

As soon as I've finished this first batch (I'm so close), I'm going to make a new, decidedly smaller, batch using some of that fancy Cuban Basil I got on St. John's Eve. Magical, basil gazpacho? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!!!

* Did I buy the single on iTunes? You bet I did.