Action

Star Wars action figures in the snow. This is all part of an ongoing movie that BB is imagining. There are no set ups anymore, only movie scenes. Luke Skywalker Hans Solo looks cold. It was warm enough to go outside the day the photo was taken over the weekend, but there was still ice in our little backyard sand box. It's a little hard to play with frozen sand.

Married with children

I don't write directly about AO much in this blog. Usually, it's incidental stuff involving the kids. I'll admit, I'm fatally focused on the superficialities of music or robots most of the time. But I have to say. We've been on a particularly good groove lately. There are always ups and downs. And we play the usual grab ass with each other. But there's something about this person, 12 years or so on, that still makes my roots shiver.

The kids might be having a moment of melt down, both screaming in their own key, developing the narcissism that will sustain their lives, and AO and I look at each other, give a small crude bent of the hip or blink of the eye to each other, and we know that something is still intact. I have to say that it's a physical thing that nurtures our relationship. If I had to depend on an intellectual relationship of shared affinities and thoughts, challenges of mind and logic, I'd really be nowhere - with anyone. It's our shared pleasure, our joy in simply confirming the life that we're able to affirm in each other, that really keeps us together. If it has anything to do with an intellectual process, our love is based on a shared aesthetic, which moves from books and movies to sexuality and emotions. Plus, she smells good. Life with kids is particularly hard, but maybe it forces us to find those moments in between our attention to the kids to sharpen our awareness of each other.

In any case, pre-Valentine sentiments notwithstanding, AO is my punk girl, my messy artist, my guide to movement in space and time.

Electroma

Daft Punk post redux. Apparently, Daft Punk has a new feature-length movie, Electroma. Two robots, living in a world of robots, try to become human. I imagine that it's mostly about the music, but the possible metaphors are intriguing. I wonder why they didn't reverse the narrative: two humans trying to become robots. In any case, this is supposed to be the last scene. They fail in their quest. I guess you'd call this neo-sentimental scene "burning robot."

Gimme Shelter

Another very different version of the song. A quiet version. This time from acoustic guitarist Michael Hedges. In another clip, he talks about spending time at a hippie hot spring in Northern California. The very hot spring I spent a strange weekend with my deadhead girlfriend when I was, oh, about nineteen. I remember trying to be groovy, and feeling like I was falling short.

States of the Union

Mixing genres

AO has taken numerous photos of this set up and another involving a temple looking thing. The best part, for me, is the confluence of creatures from many imaginary worlds (or franchises). We've got a winged transformer type creature standing guard, a pokemon up above, and star wars trooper next to that. Other photos show an eagle creeping around the ramparts in full outspread American aggressiveness.

BB took his own lunch today. Because its been so cheap, we've had him getting school lunches. But he's been having trouble with a bully type in the cafeteria, so he brought his lunch to give him a few more options. He won't have to stand in line, for one thing. It seems that he regularly sits with a crew of boys, but this bully (a big but smart boy in his class) decided that BB sits there too much, so late last week he kept getting kicked off the table and had to go sit alone. "Life is cruel," I want to say, "but feel the force young voyager."

Last Friday also turned out to be a stressful ride home. He had a sub driving the bus. In the morning, this substitute driver came and picked them up going the wrong way on the route. You figure, though, what can go wrong? Well . . . after school BB showed up in front of the house on the verge of tears, just about when I mosey on down to the corner. It seems that the older kids from his stop decided to get off about five or six blocks away. In a panic, I'm guessing, he got off too and started hoofing it after them. He knows the way, but its the farthest he's ever been from home without an adult, so even though one of the older kids kept track of him it induced some anxiety. He had a good cry about all these things and then a weekend of set ups began. I hope he's doing OK at school today.

Flickrvision

More web fun. This is flickrvision. It cycles through new uploads to flickr, showing where they've come from on a map of the world. It's a beautiful app, as you can see in the screenshot.

Sleeveface II

Here are our own sleeveface efforts. AO and I had some fun with each other. BB refused to do it (too busy setting up his movie), but our concept was great for him - the famous Jim Morrison without a shirt album cover.

Gil Scott-Heron

King Crimson

Eurythmics

Why Can't We Be Friends (War)

Sleeveface

This is very cool. A flickr pool of people photographing album sleeves as though they were their real faces (or their dogs, cats, etc.). See some examples at boing boing and flickr.

Friday posthuman blogging