A Business of Ferrets

My mom and stepdad stopped by for a few hours this afternoon. We hit West Cliff again to see if we could spot any otters closer to shore than the otters we saw on Monday. Happily, a couple fuzzy critters were there, swimming around, being adorable.

On Monday my mom had informed me that a group of otters is called a "raft." I've always loved the nomeclature associated with groups of fauna, from "a parliament of owls" to "a murder of crows," so I decided to turn to the world wide interweb to find a few more. Here are my top five new ones:

1. A business of ferrets.
2. A crash of rhinos.
3. A tower of giraffes.
4. An unkindness of ravens.
5. A shrewdness of apes.

(All from this page.)

On an unrelated note, here's a conversation between Becky and me earlier:

C: Have I been especially infuriating lately?
B: No, you've just been completely spacey.

And she's right! This whole Spring Break (Steve Holt!) has been one big mental nap for me. Here's hoping I wake up in time to resume trying to be a grad student.

Squirrels Gone Wild

It's Spring Break - take off your top. Hat. Do it, Abe Lincoln.

The "storm" that swept through Santa Cruz was as unimpressive as I knew it would be, although it was pretty windy yesterday. The sun was conducive to being on tour-guide duty, though, so whatever. Becky and I had a good time showing my mom, stepdad, and brother around SC. We ate burgers and pizza, drank a lot of Fat Tire, and played some rousing games of Ticket to Ride. We stopped by the bunker on the early part of my UCSC tour and discovered that A. There was a whole bunch of fancy new furniture and B. There was a whole bunch of fancy grad students working over the break.

So, perceptions. You know how every tinhorn atheist is a would-be Buddhist? It's because, first of all, we atheists of a cranky sort already think that Life Is Suffering and it's nice to hear someone famous say so, and (second of all), it seems to make sense that if we could just change our perceptions we'd be better off. I know I can't stop myself from hearing at night, but if I could stop caring about the sounds, I could sleep. I can't stop myself from needing to fly sometimes, but if I could stop worrying about plummeting to my fiery death, I'd be happier doing it. Etc. Here's me wishing it was a lot easier. I'm totally too busy to go to Nepal.

I miss everyone at school. That's the kind of dork/social whore I am. On the up side, Becky has a long weekend starting on Friday, so we get to have a little mini-spring break for the two of us. Off come the tops (hats).

Sleeping In, Wearing a Cool Shirt

Why didn't the "what I did over my vacation" essays make it past elementary school? I think all people in all walks of life should be required to submit descriptive essays about their holiday outings, travel adventures, or weeks they spend totally baked in their apartments watching Gandhi ("Gandhi is good baked. Except that I always feel bad because I get really hungry and poor Gandhi is there starving...")

So far, I've spent this break doing a whole lot of sleeping in. I'd be a more efficient person if my circadian rhythms adjusted such that I found it easier to wake up earlier as I get older, but there's no indication that I'm experiencing that. Instead, I'm never happier sleeping than at 9:30am.

ANYWAY, the important thing is that Becky and I went hog-wild yesterday, went downtown, and I bought a COOL SHIRT:


It's a sweet vintage Levis pearl-button snap cowboy shirt. I'll be the toast of the debutante ball this Spring. I also got a bitchin' pair of mirrorshade cop sunglasses. I'll be the toast of the gay leather parade this Spring.

In other news, we had a fine time hanging out with the Shirtless Canadian and his lovely wife last night. We had curry and several bottles of wine and talked a lot. Today Becky and I are going to get library cards for purposes of book-getting, then go out for pastries at The Buttery. This is part of a sacred marital vow Becky and I took almost four years ago: I will take her out on a cake-date at least once a year and in return she'll never stop wearing glasses.

Then, tomorrow, my mom, brother, and step-dad show up to hang out for a few days. The weather promises to make a liar out of me since a big storm is supposed to be here precisely when they are (I assured them that it would 75 and sunny the whole time.) Either way, we're heading down to West Cliff to look for otters and I'm taking them on a walking tour of the Ewok village that is UCSC's campus.

For those of you in school, here's hoping that you're having a lovely time not wrangling undergrads or stressing over research papers. For those of you in the world of gainful employment, here's hoping that you're making so much money that you're able to buy a solid gold house and a rocket car.

It's Been Summer Since February

...but that's ok. I had a notion of what I was getting into when I moved to California.

On occasion in the past, people have asked the question that only people who don't have any tattoos ask people who have tattoos: but what if you don't like them twenty years down the road? It's a silly question, because the whole point of getting a tattoo is its permanence. It ties you to a time-period in your life and it's always with you, no matter what else you lose or what else changes. I suspect that a lot of people who collect tattoos are people who have already lost things that mattered to them and/or who are given to anxiety about the future.

I bring this up because days like today remind me of the one thing I do dislike and regret about having a lot of tats: the sun. It's a complete fucking pain in the ass to avoid the sun for six months out of the year. Actually, that's how it went down in Oregon. Here, it'll probably be more like 8 months. I slather on the SPF 45 sunblock and then spend my days inside and/or running from shadow to shadow when I'm outside. I wear uncomfortable amounts of long sleeves when it's 90 out just to protect the colorful investment on my arms. I get really excited when it's cloudy and I can just walk somewhere.

Also, as some of you may have noticed, I am bald. So that's why I'm always wearing one of those Samuel L. Jackson hats. Sunburned scalps are painful and stupid-looking.

In other news, I've got about 200 more pages of Second Sex to go and then I can move on to History of Sexuality. Sex sex sex sex...gender. It's like duck duck goose.

Go Watch the Bunnies

You owe it to yourself to go and watch every single one of the 30-second movie parodies by bunnies. They're hi-larious. Fight Club is especially well done.

The bunker is having its new furniture installed today, tomorrow, and Friday. This means that were I to go to campus, I'd be homeless and alone, like a stabbin' hobo ("I'm not a stabbin' hobo, I'm a singin' hobo! (sings) Nothin' beats the hobo life / Stabbin' folks with my hobo knife!") This is a bummer, because my inner social whore thrives on seeing my impoverished homies in the bunker every day, and this further means that if I want to be social, I'll have to actually call people. What a pain in the ass.

In other news, I had a great time last night carrying on my life-long love affair with insomnia. For me, insomnia has absolutely nothing to do with worrying. It's just a built-in feature of my make and model. As free and easy as I am with better living through chemistry, it kind of sucks to need a chemical nudge to get to sleep, or else to oscillate between insomnia and exhaustion on alternate nights. I've never been able to identify a pattern with the whole deal, either: booze, no booze, excercise, no excercise, work, no work, it doesn't make a difference. I'll probably figure it out when I'm, like, 70: it turns out that days on which I wear brown and grey together cause insomnia, but I'm all set if I wear white socks with black shoes. Or a specific hat/pants combination. Something like that.

I Am the Kidney Stone Fairy

I send electronic hi-fives to my homie Chrissy, who shares my boiling, red-eyed hatred for people who scream "Wooooo!" Her man hit the street the morning after Paddy's day to scream Wooooo! in retaliation for nighttime woo-screams at the nighttime woo-screamers in their apartment building. I salute that decision, because it isn't sour grapes if it involves woo-screaming.

My standing policy, as you all know, is this: Scream woo, get a kidney stone. I don't make the rules, I just hand out kidney stones. You've been warned.

In other news, I talked to a prof today about possible research assistant stuff, reading up on anti-colonial discourse in France in the 50s and 60s from, of all places, the Catholic left. This would be right up my research-alley and would also be an interesting break from my usual existential pigeonhole. It would, of course, require me to read French faster, but I need to do that anyway.

Oh, also, I continued my 10+ year winning streak of hanging around with brilliant women by having coffee with aikido and tai chi this morning, which was great. I was reminded again that you always feel in over your head, no matter what level of the graduate gig you're at. I may as well proceed with everything without worrying about feeling like I ought to know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Political economy: it's what's for breakfast.

I Obviously Need a Flickr Account

...but in the meantime, here are fun pics of our birthday bash in SF. We totally rocked it in the Mish (-ssion).

I'm too sexy for my 8-track.

This is our homie Tim. He owns the house with all the rad stuff pictured here. Above, he demonstrates how one goes about whipping up an omellette, if one only had some eggs.

This is the totally savory oven. I'm pretty sure Sammy Davis Jr. once made a pumpkin pie in it.

The stereo setup. We rocked out a little Herb Albert + Los Tijauana Brass.

The mantlepiece, installed in person by Hugh Hefner in 1961.

The "Mobile Maid," which may or may not function.

And, finally, our homie Sandra blowing out her sparkler candles at Cha Cha Cha, where we had dinner. They were cool with us bringing in our own cake (courtesy of my lovely wife), which was nice.

So the crazy thing is that we witnessed a very intense, very right-in-front-of-us high-speed car chase just as we were arriving at Tim's yesterday afternoon. Becky and I had just crossed the street when this maniac in a white SUV that no longer had a front right tire caming blasting past at about 60. He was driving on the wheel rim, so it smelled like burning and destruction. Then no less than 20 cop cars came flying after him while Sandra, Tim, Becky and I sat there slack-jawed, watching. It reminded me of that part in Usual Suspects where the bearded guy is working on his car when the cops come to get him and he says "you think you brought enough guys?"

Now we're back in Santa Cruz and looking forward to a St. Paddy's day of hiding out in our apartment, because we've spent far more money than we had to spend in the last two weeks. Note to friends: we'd love to see you guys over final's week and spring break, but we ain't going out to the bar.

San Franciscian

We depart shortly for SF. We've got a 28th birthday to celebrate with our homie Sandra. We've got Sandra's boyfriend's sweet pad to stay at. This is the place that he inherited from his grandparents that hasn't been updated since the 50s or early 60s; the decor and the appliances are all rat-pack era old-school and they look amazing. I'm definitely going to get pictures. "Pardon me, Tim, but I must snap a photo of your refridgerator." That kind of thing. Last time we were there, he also had a pile of amusing mainstream music publications on the coffee table (Spin, Rolling Stone, etc.), from which I learned that Andre "Ice Cold" 3000 is a big fan of The Hives, which means that I have something in common with him. Now if I could just become an uber-sexy millionaire with washboard abs, I'd be all set.

In other news, I cannot express how impressed I was with the preparation that went into last night's birthday party for homie Lauren. There were balloons! The kind that float! And streamers! And a rollicking game of pin-the-tiara-on-the-princess (which The Shirtless Canadian won, because of his ability to employ echolocation.) I drank too much wine and not enough water, but a couple of ibuprofen, dayquil, cups of coffee, and the sweet sounds of heavy metal fixed me right up this morning.

Anyway, back soon with pics.