Friday, September 28, 2007

do you know the mantis man?

last tuesday someone reminded me how fun it is to draw, and i've been doodling constantly since then. i used to take tons of art classes in high school but i pretty much lost interest with the removal of due dates, just like i tend to do with poetry, or fiction writing, or any other exciting creative activity that i have to actually think about to do.

i'll probably be done with this phase before next week, but for now i am draining my uni-ball like a madwoman.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

why beavers remind me of beatniks

…i couldn’t tell you, but i swear it has nothing to do with the first three letters of their name.

the following explains nothing in regards to the beaver/beatnik connection, but it is a fabulous quote nonetheless:

“…beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction - We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer - It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation…”
- Jack Kerouac, "About the Beat Generation," (1957), published as "Aftermath: The Philosophy of the Beat Generation," in Esquire magazine in March, 1958 (http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/kerkhoff/beatgeneration/BG-Definitions.htm)

“solitary bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization.” god damn.

Friday, September 7, 2007

compound eyes (in the back of my skull)

today i learned that when bees mate their penises explode. the queen goes out and mates once in her whole life, and there’s this big group of drones just waiting around for her…and every time one of them gets a shot at her, his penis blows up, and then he dies. when a new drone begins this kamikaze mating process he has to pull the old drone’s penis out of the queen, and so on until her sperm sack is full. my linguistics prof spent fifteen minutes explaining bee mating habits, apropos of damn near nothing. it pretty much made my day.