#uncoffeed...

Milensia Virginiensis I saw this tank with wings patrolling my tiny cottage a couple days ago, and then it was gone. And then it was back last night. I enjoy all the beasties that find their way into my home, and I enjoy putting them the fuck back outside. I've liberated many spiders, including an adorable teenage Orb Weaver, moths, a butterfly, a skink, two baby snakes and a mole. Not the ants . I thought at first it was a variety of bumblebee who'd bumbled in from the mint out front. I couldn't find a picture online of a bee like this -- but wait...shoot. I'd forgotten all about yellowjackets . One of the first things we learned as wild kids in Michigan is that bees don't want to hurt you, because they will lose their stinger and die; wasps and hornets can sting you over and over, unrepentantly. While I flipped through pictures of things that will stab me, the hovertank disappeared again. I thought maybe it had gone to bed, so I would do same. And t...

Skyfish - fancy goldfish I took the day off work so I could score tickets to a museum for my book club.  I succeeded. This may sound silly (and if you've met me you're unsurprised) but I assure you it was very serious.  Glenstone allots free tickets monthly, two months in advance, at 10 AM precisely on the first of the month.  By 10:03 they're gone. We do something like this at my day job.  There's a set opening date and time for convention exhibitors to book blocks of 5-50 hotel rooms.  Madness ensues as people all over the world vie to get into the preferred  hotels.  We usually have juice and bagels on opening days; we discuss strategies for moving phone conversations along because every second counts.  So when I tried on April 1 to get Glenstone tickets, and failed, I knew what had to be done. At home and unencumbered by other duties, I set my alarm for 9:55 and loaded the website. Hit snooze when the alarm went off, refreshed the ...

pocket-magic I never believe people should ask what the artist was thinking. For one, I want the receiver to preserve the personal experience. I don't want to give the impression anyone was wrong, or actually didn't find a connection with the artist. Also, I'm afraid the truth is going to be disappointing. I'm good at  extrapolating scenarios from very little fact.  I can start with one thing someone says or does and, if my mood is right, build a world around that.  This is where art comes from.  If I am writing or drawing in the first person, so to speak, it would be folly to assume the message is autobiographical. Even if it is about me, it  might not be about just me but my assessment of humanity; prove me wrong.  It might be AlternateTimelineMe, a story about something that never happened but could have had I taken one more or one less step down a given road.  It could be what I think is going on in someone else's mind.  I wrote a s...

The Oracle is something of an inside joke: sometimes I pop off with a message for someone without being able to say exactly how I came to it. My several brains are always working, never at the same speed. This morning I oracled myself in my waking-dream:  I told *me I need to stop interjecting myself into other people's lives. Interesting, because I thought I'd already stoppited. I'm still not sure what the dream was trying to show me. These things don't come with instruction manuals. The message gave me reason to consider the differences between interjection and establishing connections. Connection is a normal and healthy concept, both in business and interpersonal relationships. Interjection sounds pushy, invasive. Where's that boundary? Interjection is possibly not the right word. The thing I mean finds its roots when a person is accustomed to being accepted for what they can offer rather than for their authentic self; in other words they're used...

I had an epiphany on my way to work, in the form of a false memory. Bear with me here - this may get a bit convoluted. A chain of tangentially-related but mostly insignificant memories marched through the front of my brain: saw a car that reminded me of a former coworker who drove one; couldn't remember her name but remembered a different coworker's name. Remembered the bellman who gave that coworker a nickname. Nothing important. But then I realised I was remembering the wrong bellman. If you have worked in hotels, or stayed in them often, you know there's That Guy Bellman - the one who's been there forever and knows everyone and everything. He's a pleasant fellow and you are glad of his welcome when you arrive, whether you are a guest or employee.  The incidence of there being That Guy at every hotel is an isomorphism . The pattern is so similar that you can mentally map it from one set to the other. In my false memory, I clearly remembered That Guy from ...

Photo by Martin Jones Quantum entanglement is a thing - a physical phenomenon - occurring when a pair of particles (or a group of them) have a correlation such that the state of one cannot be described independently of the other, even when separated by a large distance. Their relationship must be addressed in terms of the collection as a whole. If you take a measure of one, you will find same in the other (and possibly annihilate both , but that's a different tangent.) What affects one affects the whole system.  This is the baby-food version - I'm still learning. Einstein called it " Spooky Action at a Distance. " He had doubts , and those doubts spawned debate which continues today. Recently, though, scientists at the University of Glasgow have captured evidence of Bell Entanglement on camera . I'm gonna stretch this skeleton a bit and apply it to human connection. We've all heard twin stories - people formed from a split egg who claim special c...