[busy]
So as a result of various work and non-work projects I've been spending a lot of time thinking about complex and not-so-complex data models. And though it makes my head spin at times, I really like thinking about information in this way. And I'm thinking it might be an interesting project, once I understand more of what I'm doing, to apply this sort of modelling to things wholly unsuited for it, to map relationships between people, between pieces of art, to make fiction by mapping imaginary relationships. To look at every innocuous line between things and ask why.

the tattoo babydoll project, on view at mocfa

[and my neck feels better]
If good news in fact comes in threes then I have met my quota for the day. And not just with good news, but with great fabulous earth-shaking life-changing news in all three instances. Three friends - or, three pairs of friends, since that's how so many seem to be right now - six friends with amazing news! Six! I feel lucky just by osmosis.

speaking of pairs of friends I like this poem very very much much

[creak]
I did something to my neck yesterday, something that probably involved bad typing posture at the laptop, and oh oh oh it hurt a lot and when I woke up this morning it still hurt a lot and when I got to work it still did and so I called Martin the fabulous acupuncturist and he found some time and I went over to his office and he put lots and lots of needles in my back and while it's not entirely perfect, it's just so much better. Also, Martin doesn't think it's the laptop. He thinks I'm getting a cold. Let's hope not.

mail art! mail art! mail art! (or, as they call them over at nervousness, Land Mail Art Objects) great project(s) from the man behind mockerybird. (via the ever-fabulous 1000 journals project) oh, also, have you signed up for the 20 things notification list?

media recommendations for you: Composer David Lang's glorious new work, The Passing Measures, which you can hear in its entirety (along with an interview) at WNYC before you rush out and buy it.
Heidi Julavits' The Mineral Palace (kindly lent to me from the library of Mark Anderson
Haruki Marukami's Sputnik Sweetheart
A.L. Kennedy's On Bullfighting

[up]
There are a lot of good stairways hiding in my neighborhood. So far I've walked the Vulcan steps (which are the sister steps to the Saturn Steps) and the Pemberton Steps, and Iron Alley (which I call the Vertigo Steps). There are apparently more than 350 stairways hidden throughout the city, and I'm hoping to find all of the ones in my neighborhood by chance - don't tell me.

an opportunity for you (where "you" is defined as an adept stick-shift driver living in the Bay Area): want to wander around the city with a neophyte stick-shift driver? lots of thrills-per-minute ("oh no, I'm going to roll backwards!"), fun cassette tape options from our not-so-recent musical past, and amusing conversation to be had. it's not that I need lessons, exactly, just someone to sit in the passenger seat and say, repeatedly, "you're doing great". let me know if you're interested.

namedropping: had a lovely time at the mysterious Lemony Snicket's house the other night. you should read his books.

[aroma]
There was a man on the bus this morning who smelled like limes, like he'd been peeling them fresh, moments earlier, like he'd eaten four of them for breakfast, like he'd been rubbing the oil from their skin through his hair. It required great effort to restrain myself from leaning over and licking his neck.

Thank you, oh anonymous person who sent me the great Howie B. cd from my amazon wishlist. I suppose you know who you are, even if I don't...

also the David Byrne Eyeball album is fun fun fun. And boppy. Did I mention boppy?

The only thing I can really agree with in this review: "When she dies, I would like to have the chance of liquefying Caterina Fake's brain and then drinking it, in hopes of gaining her powers"

oh, also, a great video for Radiohead's Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box (a title I can't hear without hearing the Police lyric)

[back and forth]
I've been reading so many volumes of letters lately. The Nabokov-Wilson, again. Dawn Powell's. Dashiell Hammett's. Dipping into the McCarthy-Arendt letters just for additional perspective on the Nabokov-Wilson letters (Wilson was the 2nd of McCarthy's 4 husbands; she was the 3rd of his 4 wives). My own letters are so anemic of late.

Also, I've been having this problem with 'pretty' - everything I've made lately (including the as-yet-incomplete design for the 20 things site) is a bit too pretty in a not very interesting sort of way. So I made this painting last night that was darker and pricklier. It's an interesting direction. I was thinking about that line from the Stephen Crane poem that Joyce Carol Oates used as a title for a novel: because it is bitter and because it is my heart. And the line itself is more melodramatic than I wanted the piece to be, but it sort of got me to the sharp redness of what I wanted to make.

the postcard show (opening friday) is definitely one of the 20 things inspirations. buy small art!

happy birthday, ms. jezebel!

and I've been neglecting to mention:
the fabulous new digs of the mirror project (me)
poet Nina Kang at eyeshot

[so]
I drew this great little astronaut during the third conference call of the day. He had an enormous helmet, like an old-fashioned diver with a large bronze bathysphere.

I'm getting packages of such great art for the 20 things project. Sneak previews at 20things.org

The New York Times has a nice small Edmund Wilson archive, with his obituary, reviews of his books, etc.

[headache]
Last night I had a dream within a dream, a dream of a specific and unusual event. And when I woke from the dream within the dream, I wondered if that specific and unusual event was something that had actually happened or something I had merely dreamt. So I went and looked at a journal I had kept, and found two lengthy descriptions of the event, although one was oddly illegible, as if the pen had run out of ink halfway through and I'd kept writing. And there were also two drawings of the event and the people involved, all of which led me to understand that the event had actually happened, that I hadn't just dreamt it. That the dream was in fact a memory of something that had actually occurred. Which was fine, until I woke up for real this morning with that same question I'd had in the dream - was that actual event a memory or a dream? And my brain kept doing somersaults around it - of course it was real, I'd seen the journal with the records of the event - but the journal itself was just part of the larger dream context and doesn't actually exist - but it was all so real that it must have happened - but it was the sort of thing I wouldn't have forgotten about had it actually happened. It took me a while to sort through it and it still feels a bit like my brain inadvertantly set the playback mode on 'really happened' instead of 'elaborate conjecture'.

watch this space

very cool: Stretcher, a new publication on Bay Area art

[lint]
It's always amazing what arcane tidbits are hidden in the crevices of your magical filing cabinet head. In the middle of writing back to Patrick I remembered the names of the dolphins that lived at Sea World when I was very young: Cindy, Sandy and Aphrodite.

Colin's got a piece at Amazon UK: Beauty.refresh(): A Glimpse Inside the Flash Art Scene

also, Steve sends great SF summer concert listings:
Stern Grove (good stuff)
SFBG summer listings

[lost]
Proximity to Amoeba Records is dangerous. I succumbed last night and picked up lots of wonderful things, the best of which is Lost Objects, a new song cycle by Bang on a Can composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, with a libretto by Deborah Artman. It's a wonderful premise, the exploration of lost things, the different social perspectives of being the person who lost something, the person who found something, the person who is lost, the person who has lost someone, and explorers - people who look for things and sometimes get lost themselves. So the songs take their texts from other texts of lost things: the Talmudic tractate Bava Metzia, which deals with lost things, the letters of explorer George Mallory, texts of aphasia, references to milk cartons and web sites of lost children. And more formally, the songs locate their structure and composition within the postmodern world of lost and found: the tunings of baroque instruments, the sampling and layering piecemeal of found sound composition. For me, the work succeeds most in these juxtapositions, the ways in which loss hits up against loss, profound and mundane, inconvenient and awful, moments of release and moments of resignation.

The first song does this remarkably:
I lost a sock/ I lost an umbrella/ I lost a sock/ I lost a tooth/ I lost my teeth/ I lost a leg/ I lost my dog/ I lost an earring/ I lost my father/ I lost my voice/ I lost my ticket/ I lost the keys/ I lost map/ I lost my wits/ I lost my way/ I lost my tongue.

I lost my heart/ I lost faith/ I lost weight/ I lost my hair/ I lost my hand/ I lost my eye/ I lost my house/ I lost my tongue/ I lost my name/ I lost my book/ I lost my glasses/ I lost my ring/ I lost the store/ I lost the farm/ I lost a sock/ I lost the eggs.

I lost my cow/ I lost my memory/ I lost my teeth/ I lost my color/ I lost my hair/ I lost my sight/ I lost my way/ I lost my balance/ I lost my mother/ I lost my shoe/ I lost my business/ I lost my carpet/ I lost my language/ I lost my god/ I lost my pants/ I lost my tan.

I lost his number/ I lost my desire/ I lost weight/ I lost my body/ I lost water/ I lost the water/ I lost the tree/ I lost the directions/ I lost the car/ I lost the combination/ I lost the wood and the matches/ I lost the candles/ I lost my knife/ I lost my gun.

I lost my boots/ I lost my daughter/ I lost my nerve/ I lost my son/ I lost my edge/ I lost my wife/ I lost my blanket/ I lost my man/ I lost my toy/ I lost my anger/ I lost my joy/ I lost my cynicism/ I lost my fear/ I lost my land/ I lost my resistance.

more information on Lost Objects

more on Wolfe/Gordon/Lang

A great letter from Open Letters, from the Department of Lost Objects.

I like the idea of using a search engine to search for lost objects.