girl eat machine.

On a personal note, 2009 — forgive me, 2010 — has been an Interesting Year, thus far. First and foremost because it marks my return to keeping time like the rest of the Gregorian calendar-wielding world. In college, a year is split into quarters: the first is four months long, the second is one month, then four again, then three. Half the time is spent in what the rest of the world considers one year, and half in the other. So, the College Year is, for example, “09 – 10″ … not “2009″ or “2010.”

But now it’s 2010, and I recognize that. I’m with it, and I’m going to keep going with it. 2010. All right. This shift in time corresponds with a shift in my lifestyle: from the Fulltime Work World to Freelancing Contract Gigs to Who Knows What’s Next. Oh, and somewhere in this adventure, the personal side of life lit up: stars in my eyes, head over heels, all that…

The shifts may be wild, but they feel soft, which is a good thing, I think.

Anyway, this leads me to the image that follows this text. While doing research on one of a few projects I’ve currently got my elbows in, I came across the work of James Frank Tribble and Tracey Frances Mancenido.  They did an incredible series on intimacy for the New York Times called Pillow Talk. In celebration of all the things I didn’t know before time changed and I changed, and for the simple acceptance of newness, I share this:

(c) Tripple & Macenido

My most recent fit of geekdom has involved lapping up every wikipedia page within reach on the subject of underground and alternative comics. Sorry: “comix.” Believe it or not, there’s a difference.

The underground comix scene is the hot bed of subversion you, honestly, probably never heard of. Think: knowing that there are those who can illustrate anything they imagine — and that we alllll can imagine some pretty….well, unpretty things — the possibilities are raunchy and endless.

The comix scene wasn’t just sex, drugs, and stickin it to the man, though. It was about the creation of independent art and social commentary without restriction. “Comix” refers to the small scale of publication and production, often done by the artist him or herself…or by teams of these artists, working together to publish in magazines and anthologies like Mad, EC Comics, Help!, and Bizarre Sex.

This is the world where many of today’s well-know comic artists who aren’t Stan Lee and aren’t sponsored by Marvel or DC got their start. Tell me you know Art Spiegelman, author of the Holocaust memoir-of-sorts Maus? Art left the scene, so to speak, in the late 1970s when

What had seemed like a revolution simply deflated into a lifestyle. Underground comics were stereotyped as dealing only with Sex, Dope and Cheap Thrills. They got stuffed back into the closet, along with bong pipes and love beads, as Things Started To Get Uglier.

Art helped to pioneer the alternative comics movement, what Stephen Holland termed “the real mainstream” of comic production. The idea is this: “mainstream” comics are obsessed with producing superheroes and fantasy with the same intensity of the little boys (and girls) in Superman pajamas with sugar highs and fruit juice stained faces that read them between bounces on the bed. (GROSS GENERALIZATION.) But the real mainstream, as in the mainstream outside of the comic world, deals with genres of drama, romance, thrills, (real) life, and memory and so on. “Real mainstream” comics, then, are freed from radioactive-spider-infused plots and future toy lines. I’m sorry, Spiderman, but it’s true.

And this Best Of History is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, friends.

After the jump: some lessons from the wild world of upside down comic reading. (In which the author accidentally reviews a “comic” memoir of 9/11.) This way » » » »

words.

One apple.

First man.

The Stallion

Let’s take a moment for some self-reflection (coughpromotioncough). I’d like to call your attention (yes, you) to the silly little sidebar to our right. It’s pretty useless, right? Especially when I’m lax on the juice.

Well, fear not, imaginary-person-I’m-using-as-a-guise-for-talking-to-myself! This site is benefiting from the current, ahem, “liberated” status of my time and is in the throws of a redevelopment.

“A redevelopment?,” I ask, because I’m talking to myself.

“Yes,” I answer. “A redevelopment.”

“And what sorts of things can we look forward to?”

That stumps me. “Ohhh, you know, what the other kids are doing…we’ll slap on a Twitter feed, an improved archive, and add some other surprises (Flikr??) to this site. But the other sites-to-come will be better: Photographs. Noises. Lasers.”

“Lasers are great.”

“Lasers are great.”

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Though I guess “Hey, sorry for the delay! This site will be more useful soon, but in the mean time, check out this photograph of my friend Matt taming a horse” would have been good too.

(via NYT)

Aphrodisiac Equations:
If lover = male, then serve licorice + doughnuts for maximum (ahem) results.


If lover = female, well, things get a bit more complicated:
For best results, perfume your love nest with EITHER baby powder OR Good & Plenty candy + cucumber.

For second best results, spray eau de banana nut bread + … Good & Plenty.


… Good & Plenty? Really? I don’t even know what that smells like. (What am I missing!?)

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to revisit an old habit that I’ve sadly abandoned since moving to DC: the urban wander. In other cityscapes, I’ve spent entire days journeying through concrete forms and twisty streets, hiking up promising hills, chasing treelines, nestling on park benches — the perfect voyeur. The jolly watcher.

It occurred to me — big camera hanging from my side — that wandering aimlessly through downtown DC made me a tourist. Of course, unlike a tourist, I was totally unphased when the trees parted on Pennsylvania Avenue and a huge, white building sprung out.

Oh, yeah, the Capitol.

Hallowed halls. The outward-in essence of DC. Government. Liberty. History. A hunk of a dome tossed with some pillars. Funny (?) how (easily) it fades into the background…

In a recent post, I almost went on a tangent about why The Older Generation should have appreciated Mr. Berry, rejecting that jazz about the Devil and hips and the like.

…But upon further listening, Chuck himself makes a case against friendship with the 1950s model of Ma and Pa. Thought I’d share. Viva la rock.

Soon as three o’clock rolls around/You finally lay your burden down
Close up your books, get out of your seat/Down the halls and into the street
Up to the corner and ’round the bend/Right to the juke joint, you go in

Drop the coin right into the slot/You’re gotta hear somethin’ that’s really hot
With the one you love, you’re makin’ romance /All day long you been wantin’ to dance,
Feeling the music from head to toe/Round and round and round we go

Hail, hail rock and roll /Deliver me from the days of old
Long live rock and roll/The beat of the drums, loud and bold
Rock, rock, rock and roll/The feelin’ is there, body and soul.

It’s a pun. Get it?

George , the feline sitting pretty above(^), is probably the only cat (or one of the only cats) I’ve ever really enjoyed spending time with. I never really “got” cats. You could probably attribute this to the fact that I haven’t spent very much time with cats, and you’d be right. I haven’t…But my thoughts on the difficulties of cat-ownership have recently extended to pet ownership in general.

Now, I grew up a dog person (almost literally if you count my time spent as “Puppy Lauren”) and I was raised to believe in the love and companionship and wonder that pets provide. A pet is another bundle of life in your family, something(someone?) to cuddle with and care for, someone to be responsible to…The relationship is great. I won’t deny it. Heck, I won’t even deny craving it.

But…unlike, say, a (human) sister or parent or friend, what your pet does when you’re not there is…sit around your house. Climb on the furniture. Eat. Sleep. Chew on a toy. Basically, they just pace and circle and inhabit a small space.

Sure, you say, they’re animals and they need space, but they’re domesticated animals.

So what does that mean? That taking a pet outside once in a blue moon is enough? That the space to roam is only important (or relevant) because they’re animal…and because they’re “domesticated” that they get enough? I know that I feel trapped staying in the same space (house, room, etc) for long periods of time. And I know that I’m an animal. Of sorts. But just the idea that I can change my situation as I see fit where your dog or cat (let alone bunny, fish…) can’t is something that’s made me (re)consider pet-ownership.

Then again, look at George. George has a cat door and she can come and go as she pleases. Often, she’s pleased to cuddle up beside me on the couch. Sometimes she decides to leave and play outside with her stray cat friends down the street. “Consent” is probably a loaded word to bring into this stream-of-consciousness/fluff blog post, butttt…having that semblance of choice seems more satisfying to me as a potential, future “owner.” Maybe I’m more of a cat person than I thought.

Housewives take note:

Chuck Berry is the ultimate soundtrack for house-cleaning.

In other news, machines write poetry! …Sort of.

Rather, futurist Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet //interprets// poetry…by writing its own. Reading the first sample of its work (“Pages”) left me skeptical, but there was something rather poignant (and adorably sad) about the haiku The Poet composed after reading poems by Patricia Camarena Rose and Wendy Dennis*:

The Stifling Stuffy

The stifling stuffy
Catholic schoolroom,
where I cannot be real

Oh, and what //is// a Cybernetic Poet?

• Short answer: a flexible, intelligent, language-based computer program.
• Long(er) Answer: a linguistic-modeling program with the ability to analyze/generate poetic personality and structure through a series of mathematical and poetic criteria.
• Exhaustive answer: here.

*Can someone link me to original poetry by these ladies? A preliminary search failed to turn up anything.

No, no, no. Read that headline again. Really read it:

Robots that Learn to Work Together in a study of Evolutionary Principles.

Yep, conceptually that’s pretty much an automatic Cardiac Arrest of Glee for my geeky-little heart.

Seriously, though: a recent group of researchers in Switzerland have just programmed a computer to behave as “Nature”, randomly assigning genetic traits to a series of robots. Based on the evolved patterns of kinship, something amazing (though, as blogger Eyder Peralta notes, not surprising) happens:

Over generations, the robots developed altruistic principles to help their kingroups survive. And mind that these were robots of very little brain.

Peralta spoke with researcher Lauren Keller who confirmed that none of this behavior was pre-programmed. “The natural selector computer was responsible for randomly selecting the fittest traits.” You can see it in this sweet video of astounding (read: terrifying?) robotic power.

Effing awesome.

Bonus: the study was published with PLoS Biology.

Most exciting thing I’ve read all day (and I’ve been reading about cryogenics!). Check out the full post here, and be sure to scope out more of NPR’s awesome tech blog, All Tech Considered.