Spine and Open

Deathcake.  I remember the first time I heard about Deathcake…” with layers of chocolate decadence, espresso ganache, and chocolate cake, all drizzled with dark chocolate ganache.”  It is like death by chocolate on steroids.  It is so much chocolatey yumminess that it is actually hard for a complete chocoholic like me (I probably put away at least 1 ounce of 70% or higher chocolate per day) to finish in one sitting.

OMG - stop drooling

I called cupcake royale about a week ago, because I  hadn’t heard anything about deathcake yet.  They assured me it would be available starting Feb.1.  Right now, you can preorder yours.  They are usually only available until Valentines Day.  The existence of Deathcake Royale probably makes up for the existence of valentines day entirely.

On New Year’s Eve this year I really wanted to listen to Phish and hippy dance with my bare feet on the large faux fur rug.  I counted on my friend Charlie to help and join me on the adventure.  I think this is how it went:

10 of us were staying at a house near Mount Baker.  9 of us had gone out for a snowy walk in the neighborhood.  I realized I was really cold and that I wanted to dance.  I knew Cmonster was at the house, I broke from the group ran in and asked Cmonster if we could listen to “David Bowie” (one of my favorite phish songs).  Cmonster got out the ipod and set it up, I ran upstairs and got the fake rug, brought it downstairs in front of the fire, and the hippy dance party begun.  Sometime during one of the tunes, Cmonster asked me if I remembered where I was on new year’s 10 years ago.  I did not.  He reminded me that we had gone to New York to see Phish’s new years run.  WOW.  10 years ago.  We were dating at the time.  We went to his niece’s sweet 16 party.

Since then, I purchased 2 CDs from the New Years run we were at.   I did actually not remember at all, being in New York in 1998, we did some research and discovered it was the New Years run for 1997.  Contrary to what I said in my post about online journaling, I need to show a picture from a journal:

written @ Penn Station 1997

The shows on the left are the phish shows that Charlie had been to, and the ones on the right the ones I had been to.  Charlie remembered that we wrote this, sitting on the floor in Penn Station.  Since then, I had found the rest of the shows I went to, and all of the setlists (here’s an excerpt):

All shows and some of the setlists

Yes, I flew specifically to the East Coast to see Phish at Camden, for one of their last shows.  I can not really express how great it was to see Lawn Boy and Frankenstein as my last 2 live phish songs.  I made this list yesterday, and I was really unsure about the George shows in 1998.  The setlists seemed familiar, but I really didn’t recall going there, but I did remember tons about the 99 run with the Portland show.  I asked Charlie, did I really go to these shows in 1998?  He had a really great answer, “Yes. You did go. I remember because we had recently broken up and when we were camping, you had on pajama pants I’d never seen before and I realized they were from the guy you were dating by then. And man did I not like that.”

This statement reminded me of the great power a bruised heart has to remember.  Last weekend, their was an after party at my house and someone had put on Love and Rockets “Seventh Dream of Teenage heaven,” one of my favorite records.  The song “Saudade” came on and I was inundated with memories, 17 year old memories, memories I could smell and taste!  I knew so many times and places, at first magically, then painful that I had listened to that song.  Thank you broken heart.

Tonite was yet another sample of,  “I usually don’t want to go out, but I’m always glad I did.”  Tonite’s agenda was pizza at Stellar pizza,  followed by music at the Squid and Ink.  I would have been great with just the pizza, then home by 9 and in bed early, but I wanted to see some friends play.  The music was really great and inspiring.  Jim and Barb were super killer on acoustic guitar and cello and vocal harmonies.  I loved all of the songs they played.  I also got to hear tunes from Herman Jolly and Black Night Crash’s Jim, who also turned in great sets.

Lucky for me, I had a similar experience about a week ago.  I had been to shows on thursday, friday, and saturday night, but some friends were playing on sunday night, and as much as the couch was calling to me, I had to go to the show.  I got to see Nathan Wade and the Dark Pioneers rock an amazing set.  I bought their EP have not been able to stop listening to it.  Nathan’s voice is somewhere between Jeff Buckley and Robert Plant, and that is not something that should be said lightly.  As an added bonus, Nathan is a killer guitar player - and the band is amazing too.  Next I got to see Bill Patton fill in with Whiting Tennis.  Bill sat back and played tasty pedal steel until about 1/2 way through a tune, when he all of a sudden set out on an amazing pedal steel solo, including breaking a string. I’m not used to seeing pedal players break strings.  It was great.  The night ended with C-monster and I sharing a plate of fries at the People’s Pub.

Yeah, relaxing and sleep are nice, but rock n roll always wins.

Just south of the south end of the Ballard Bridge is a good-sized, mature clump of witch hazels.  Yesterday, I noticed that their other-worldly and carnival inspired flowers had all opened en masse.  Witch hazel is actaully fairly new to me; they are much more common back east, but out west they are a little rare.  And most of the year they look like a small alder or some other decidous shrub.  I remember the first time I saw one, it was winter, most of the plant life were still in their slumber, except a few bulbs that were starting to send up their promising shoots.  There was this large shrub with no leaves and an enormous amount of small, yellow, octopus-like flowers, emitting this simple, complex aroma.  How can I say simple complex aroma?  The aroma of witch hazel is very pure, it doesn’t really change over time or distance, that is why I would call it simple.  The reason I call it complex is becaue it is a hard to describe scent.  Many folks know it from their grandmother’s medicine cabinet, as “Hammamelis water.”  I was unable to smell this clump of witch hazel’s becuase of the prevailing winds, and I think the shear cold of the morning had numbed my face completely.  Even though I could not capture the fragrance, I felt a surge of joy.  The appearance of the flowers means that spring is comming.  Thank you Witch Hazels!

A friend of mine is being seriously beaten down by the Man right now.  At this point in our career paths most of us have gotten used to the tyranny of the Man.  

There are  some ways to subdue the pressure the Man can exert on any one human.  While I enjoy this topic, I have yet another question.  Do most of us really want to break free of the Man?  The (majority of the) collective actions of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, (I will further demarcate another subspecies) western world, point to the fact that we now base our evolutionary fitness on our ability to please the Man. 

If you moved to your own 5 acres and became self-sufficient, there would be no one to blame for your misery, wasting away, addiction to reality TV or other drugs.  There would be much less of a sense of order.  In essence, you would have to be the Man to yourself.  I’m just about ready to give it a try, but it would certainly not be for everyone.  I think having someone else to pin alot of one’s personal, and the world’s problems on, is much easier than taking the reins onesself. 

Or is it that we get stuck in a tunnel and we don’t know exactly how we got in there, or exactly when the walls started shrinking in, but we certianly are not able to see the light; and there is no way to go back, so we just plow forward like everyone else?

I’ve seen it in people (and I am certain that I am a culprit) that we really do fear change and the unknown.  We are afraid to go against the grain of our peers.  Being a radical is scary - even if that means you are a vegan bike-commuter with a salaried respectable job and a mortgage.   The United States is not set-up to deal with vegan bike commuters.  Most people chose not to change one simple thing about their life - like how they get to work - because it is supposedly hard, and it is scary and it might not work.  And who convinced the masses of that?  We are just happy to let the Man work behind the scenes on so many facets of our life, that when we look at something in the forefront - like quitting our day job - we only see reasons that it wouldn’t be possible.  And so the Man continues to own us.

humanity

The week of Thanksgiving to the day after MLK day marks the period of time that I do not bike commute home from work.  This is because it is very dark out.  The darkness itself is not so bad, I have 3 lights on front and 3 on the back and a reflective vest, and an obnoxious yellow coat.  I’m pretty sure that people can see me.  The thing is, people tend to chose not to see during this time.  Drivers are very absent minded during the holidays and the recovery time (Jan. 2 to the day after MLK).  Now that day lengths are getting longer, I can make it home just in time. This makes me really happy, because riding the bus takes a while, and I’d rather be riding in the rain than standing out in it.  As a bonus I will now earn an extra $1.75 per day too.

Thank you increased day length!

This past weekend I was looking for some concert tickets, from 1997, that I am pretty sure I glues into my journal from that time.  There were 2 interesting results from this adventure.  1. That journal is missing.  I have many before and after, but the year or so that includes 1997 seems to be missing.  2.  I like my paper journals.

I like the way that a couple of things I wrote in pencil are all smeared and light and barely legible at this point.  I had a purple pen that has bled over time and now the characters are bled together and the purple is redish around the edges.  That font doesn’t exist right now.  I like that I have stuff taped or glued in there.  I like that I have drawings in there.  I am not about to draw something, then scan it, then upload it to Spine and Open.

I really like that I have poem type entries (these generally go into the lyric book).  I am pretty much NEVER going to be posting my little poems up here.  Too personal.  Some may make it into a song, but then my diction is apparently not that great, so no one will really know anyway.

I liked getting sucked into the entries, and remembering, and thinking ” I’m glad I don’t work like that anymore,” or “wow I still have trouble with that. ” (is one supposed to put quotes around their thoughts??? Cmonster?).   I liked the way my handwriting changed if I came home late at night, perhaps after drinking.  I liked the smears from teardrops, or coffee stains.

This online journal is fun to keep track of thoughts or random insights or post pictures, but it will not be a replacement for the pen and paper version - which I had largely abandoned, but I’m going back. 

I still have and enjoy looking at my drawings of mushroom spores.  They are very beautiful.  The shapes are amazing.  Here’s some pics (stolen from mushroomexpert.com):

I just read this article about how the shapes of mushroom spores aid their trajectory.  It is a very cool and short summary of the published article.

I have never been much for breakfast.  I am generally not hungry until a couple of hours after I wake up.  A couple years ago I started making myself eat breakfast, when I got to work, because of the metabolism benefits.  (The phrase “metabolism benefits” reminds me of the phrase “athletic calves” - I am laughing to myself right now.)  This week I am trying a bit of a detox, which really means eating more healthy than normal.  As part of this eating effort (I hate the word diet), I am making a smoothie and drinking it before I ride my bike to work.  Today is only my second day of this plan.  Both days I have noticed that I can easily ride faster, be more alert, and am really ready to go when I get to work.  I am curious how the rest of the week will go.  The smoothie is also yumsters (and vegan, and gluten free, and full of nutrients, including omega-3 - it is heavily borrowed from the food and wine article linked above as detox):

1 cup frozen Remlinger Farms strawberries (or your local organic version)

1 cup almond milk

bunch of flax seeds

some cinnamon

some sweetener if you want (I used brwon rice syrup)

put it into a blender and puree.

I went to a show on Thursday night and Levi Fuller opened the night.  He plays accoustic guitar through an amp and has a drummer.  The tunes were engaging.  Before one of them he said, “Everyone has a song about Cephalopods these days” and he went into his tune about Colossal Squid.  Octopus is one of my favorite animals.  I have spent hours trouncing around in Puget Sound low tides looking for them.  I did get to see one in Maui while snorkeling and it is one fo the great moments of my life.  Octopus are intelligent, mischevious, and they show their emotions by changing color.  Anyway,I got to thinking how many songs about Cephalopods are really out there?  Not too many, but I did come across the Cephalopod Appreciation Society, which has a link to Levi’s tune.  There is even an online Octopus magazine.