Year: 2009
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Things La Casa Likes, 4
Writing on the 2nd Floor Bathroom Chalkboard
This week the board features St. Taärgus, the Patron Saint of Fail.
Also take note that I cleaned the sink like 3 weeks ago. House Win! Cleaning Fail! -
Bloomsday Greetings, 2009.
If you haven’t heard, certain jolly folks all over the world celebrate Bloomsday today, named after Leopold Bloom from James Joyce’s epic experimental novel Ulysses. The events of Ulysses take place on June 16th, 1904, in Dublin, Ireland, so every June 16th, Joyce fans dress up, recite from the good book, have a drink in a pub, & do things Joycean. At the very least, I recommend getting your hands on a copy of Ulysses & checking it out. I read it a few summers ago, & very much enjoyed it.If you’d like something to do in Champaign county to celebrate Bloomsday, consider this event at the U of I, taking place in the daytime, & this Facebook event, taking place later in the evening. I don’t know the organizers of either, but hope to appear at one, two, or zero of them (leaning toward two). La Casa doesn’t have anything Bloomsy going on this year, but maybe I can turn some fellows into Joyce fans & see about next year.
–We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirtuality? Lord Jesus! Lord Salisbury. A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!
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ODDMUSIC Urbana-Champaign: an invitation
Some of you have already heard about the weirdwonderfulness going on at the Independent Media Center these days. Jacob & Andrew have started renting a space & lovingly devoting it to ODDMUSIC. We are presently collecting musical oddities (such as microtonal midi controllers with hundreds of buttons, defretted guitars, and musical saws) to make available for public use. We envision, among many things, an instrument library, developing right here in Urbana.
Oddmusic experimenters playing on prototypes of the Tonal Plexus. I mention this now because a.) we just started a fancy new blog, & b.) we are hosting office hours every Sunday night this week from 7pm to whenever. Folks have come by to play on our strange instruments, talk oddmusic, & scheme for future musical provocations.
Do consider yourself invited! We plan to be there next Sunday (& times in between, of course, at odd hours), so please stop by & see what the heck. Oddmusic is located on the second floor of the IMC. We’ll leave the back door open for you – not the Bike Co-op door, but the next one over on the left. Walk up the stairs & follow the wafting tunes.
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Sophie’s photo shoot
Sophie came to my room today looking for adoration and I gave it to her. I begged her to let me record her beauty via my camera. She played hard to get at first, showing me for just a moment the many pointy teeth in her mouth, but then relented and gave me everything I could ask for:
Sophie, may I? 
I can't be bothered. 
Proceed. 
You're beautiful! 
No, don't look at me. 
Belly. 
Jaded. 
Tail and left rear foot. 
Gorgeous! 
Let us finish.
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The Unknown, a local hypertext novel
Heather took Jacob & I on a date last night. First, we hit up a reading of a classic hypertext novel written by Urbana folks; then we nommed on some coconut ice cream from the food co-op & caught a show by Trutheater Theater at the IMC. Yay.
The Unknown, written collaboratively in the 1990’s, tells the story of a book tour that takes on the excesses of a rock tour. I happened to find it a few years back, in connection with 20-consonant poetry, a quirky poetic form that has its writers use every consonant in order before repeating any & produces texts such as “I quit my job: a crazy wage slave, dead hunk of pox.” When I moved to Urbana, I composed this 20-consonant poem in an email to Rob Scott:
for urbana, you doozy:
how you pique my vox kit.
joy:
i juggle la casa
I had no idea, when I got interested in constrained poetry & the work of William Gillespie, that I would eventually move to his town & hang out with his friends. A nice little surprise, that.
So William & Scott hosted this reading (the third author, Dirk, not present), with the book projected on a screen. The Unknown consists of several short chapters connected by hyperlinks, telling interweaved fictional stories of the three authors in no particular order. Scott did the clicking; William dinged on a glass to accent the hyperlinks. They both read aloud. We, the audience, shouted out hyperlinks when we felt so inclined, & we navigated the book together. Sometimes, we’d happen to come back to a page we’d been to before, & the authors would pick up in their reading where we left off.
Afterward, the authors fielded some questions, about “electronic fiction” in general & this book in particular. I enjoyed a little reminder that this work exists, & surely enjoyed hearing it come to life in a group setting. Check it out & see what you think; the whole novel is available on the web, & has been since it was first composed.
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Live Blogging Jacob’s Haircut with Hairdresser Maria
listening to cliqhop.
oh here comes heather.
oh noes! maria cut herself. “oh it’s fine. i just don’t wanna get blood on you.” the assistant has gone missing. she wipes the blood on her leg.
a bluish purple car pulls in across the street.
maria thinks the music is too creepy.
i would like my hair to not look like a clown. maria finds this funny & we snap a picture in the photo booth.
note the clown like hair on the sides of my head “i don’t know what this is turning into.”
the music takes a turn for the worse.
hair falls on my right arm.
“i need a third hand.” “i know the feeling.”
a moment of clarity as the music recedes & maria blows hair off my neck.
“oh sweet, another cut.” wipes it on her leg again. ew!
we discuss the differences between awkward and quirky. quirky can be cute. there is hair on the keyboard.
“it sounds like you’re just snipping into the air.” “i’m shaping it, i’m giving you volume you’re gonna love it you’re gonna love it!”
maria just cut herself a third time. i’m getting worried.
here comes heather! the most prominent feature at this point is a puffy tuft on the top of my head. heather recommends trimming the tuft.
“it’s not really that hard to cut hair if you just…take your time.” today i thought the same thing about html coding.
time to go make food.
*Look for before & after shots soon!
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Red Currants
From the garden! I have too many great memories of eating red currants off bushes in Poland as a little girl. The polish are obsessed with red and black currants. It’s definately a flavor (of jam or juices), much like Americans have grape and cherry. I haven’t come across any red currants while in the states and I was overjoyed when I found these growing in the garden.
