February | 2015

Reward: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

February 28, 2015 at 3:11 pm (Links, Places, postaday)
Tags: artists residency, complaints, discoveries, happiness, inspirations, Mendocino, postaday, postaweek, Saturdays, Wordpress

This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is REWARD.

When one has spent a hard couple of days writing, applying to grants, and commenting on student writing, one needs to reward oneself with . . .

Gelato!

Since self’s favorite gelato place is all the way in Palo Alto, however, self has to be content with walking around the Mendocino business district, which has all kinds of quaint businesses, like this one:

Lansing Street, Mendocino

Her first week here, self heard a woman calling out: “Wif-Fi! No! Wi-Fi!” Turned out Wi-Fi was the name of her pooch. But at first self thought she was bewailing the state of the wi-fi connections here. Then, self had no complaints.

Now, it’s self’s turn to cry, “Wi-Fi! No Wi-Fi! No!” It took her 10 minutes just to upload one picture.

Stay tuned.

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Hunger Games Fan Fiction Reading of the Day

February 25, 2015 at 5:42 pm (Fan Fiction)
Tags: complaints, fan fiction, indulgences, Katniss, Mendocino, Peeta, teaching, The Hunger Games, UCLA Extension

The internet is crap today.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

Do you know how hard it is to teach an on-line class when each page takes about 5 minutes to refresh, and it takes at least 10 seconds for auto-fill ? At this rate, she’ll still be in front of her computer, still in her pajamas, until midnight. Tomorrow, too.

Time for a break. So wonderful that all she needs to do is switch windows and she lands on her fan fiction reading of the day.

Katniss is a lone Victor of her games. One day, while out foraging in the woods, she encounters a starving and beaten Peeta, and invites him to come home with her to be “her baker.”

There is no Prim. No Mrs. Everdeen. Only a Mellark family so cruel they could be lifted directly from the Brothers Grimm.

In the meantime, Katniss wanders to Town to get Peeta some new clothes. The ones he’s wearing are completely ripped and torn, as if he’s been set upon by wild animals. While Katniss is in town, she bumps into Madge Undersee. At which point:

“It’s good to see you,” Madge continues.

Is it? Katniss doesn’t answer, just adjusts the strap of her bag and gives her a fake smile. The kind she’s perfected for her Capitol audience, who want her to be happy but don’t care, really, if she is or not.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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Eunoia Review: Last Wednesday of February 2015

February 25, 2015 at 2:50 pm (Artists and Writers, Food and Drink, Links, Recommended)
Tags: Literary Magazines, poetry

By the time we fled our house
and the jackals
we’d become expert thieves,
really wonderful liars.
We smiled and told people how happy we were
while picking their pockets.

— excerpt from “Muscle Memory,” by Len Kuntz

* * * * *

For special occasions we ate
Glorified Rice,
white rice slathered with whipped cream and pineapple chunks.
Before that was German food,
hamburger baked inside dough,
fried dough and potatoes

— excerpt from “Glorified Rice,” by Len Kuntz

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of the story collection Dark Sunshine (Connotation Press).

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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Watching “Kingsman” in Fort Bragg

February 25, 2015 at 4:22 am (Conversations, Lists, Movies)
Tags: action movies, humor, lists

The movie is a tad long, but otherwise great fun.

SPOILER ALERT!

The guy who plays the lead looks like a cross between Matt Damon and Ryan Philippe. He also doesn’t seem very tall (Self, that’s rich! If J-Hutch hasn’t taught you yet: “Short” does not preclude being attractive!) He has a great affect, especially after he exchanges his gangsta uniform for a dapper suit and glasses.

Self loved the whole London Punk meets Savile Row vibe.

There are some angles where Colin Firth looks impossibly hot.

Self liked the blonde who plays the Read the rest of this entry »

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Am Reading Today, Last Tuesday of February 2015

February 24, 2015 at 8:41 pm (anthologies, Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: China, Chinese writers, lists, novel, poetry, Roberto Bolaño

blogs

a friend’s novel

Roberto Bolaño’s 2666

tweets about the Oscars

Sunflower Splendor: Two Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, Co-edited by Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo

Here’s a poem called “Southern Mountains,” by Han Yu:

So therefore I watched a pool
Whose clear depths concealed water dragons.

Bending I could gather fish and prawns,
But who dares plunder divine beings?

About Han Yu: He was a late T’ang Dynasty poet, and a contemporary of Li Po and Tu Fu. He was born into a literary family of landed gentry in the province of Hunan. He served in several high posts in the government: Vice President of the Ministry of War, Vice-President of the Ministry of Personnel, and Metropolitan Governor. He died in Ch’ang-an in 824, at the age of 56.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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The Metamorphosis Generator

February 24, 2015 at 3:17 am (Lists, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Mondays, short story, speculative fiction, work-in-progress

From A Work-in-Progress:

The Jaguar I know is a bit much. Especially for the country. But Wolfgang must have his toys. The Jaguar, the helicopter, the espresso/ice cream machine, the Jacuzzi with 20 different spurt settings, the 80-inch flat-screen HDTV, the four-foot Bose speakers, the laser wrinkle removers, the Do-It-Yourself Botox injectors and hair implantation devices, the state-of-the-art dollar-printing mechanism, the 3D Alternate Universe Hologram, the foot-high platform shoes with the massage feature, the metamorphosis generator . . .

Once, he trapped a fly in the metamorphosis pod, and what emerged was a woman with wondrous, bulbous dark eyes and gossamer hair.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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Still More Rule of Thirds

February 23, 2015 at 4:38 pm (postaday)
Tags: Mendocino, Mondays, photography, postaday, postaweek, Venice Beach, Wordpress

“This week, compose your subject off-center.”

(WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, Week beginning Friday, 20 February 2015)

Masonic Temple (c. 1866), Lansing Street, Mendocino: January, 2015

Stairs at Night, Mendocino Art Center: January, 2015

Venice Beach, November 2014

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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More Rule of Thirds: Elk, California

February 22, 2015 at 4:20 pm (Places, postaday, Sundays)
Tags: California, Elk, postaday, postaweek, Sundays, Wordpress

The prompt: “Focus closely on your subject and use a wide aperture.”

The View From Elk, CA

More of Elk, California

And still more of Elk, California

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Rule of Thirds: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge

February 21, 2015 at 1:40 am (Links, Places, postaday)
Tags: discoveries, Fridays, Mendocino, photography, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress

This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is Rule of Thirds.

“The Rule of Thirds is a photography concept that puts the subject of the photograph off-center, which usually results in blank space in the rest of the image.”

Wow! Self loves off-center photographs!

She hasn’t been taking too many pictures lately, so these pictures are from a few weeks ago.

Hopefully, they successfully illustrate the Rule of Thirds.

Port of Richmond: Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015

The laundry room at the Mendocino Art Center has proven to be a great source of inspiration for self!

Another shot of the laundry room at the Mendocino Art Center: Who knew that a room with such a utilitarian purpose would prove to be such a great source of inspiration!

There’s a path that follows the bluffs of the Mendocino Headlands. One morning, self walked there with a steaming cup of hot chocolate, and it was just heaven to find this bench.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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