freshman year

my roommate and i had a couple of pet aquatic frogs (named for offensive song lyrics i won't repeat here). they were very cute and we managed to keep them alive for the first month, despite several cases of what i realize in retrospect was clear-cut frog abuse. winter break, however, was a problem. both my roommate and i were going 1000's of miles away for several weeks, with no one to look after our frogs. this led to one of our most legendary screaming fights. my roommate, you see, wanted to freeze the frogs. and defrost them when we got back. i, naturally, thought she was insane.

it turns out, 8 years later, i was wrong. (via a welsh view)

sorry, bethany.

tai shan

he was the size of a stick of butter when he was born.

bad reputation

i loved the freedy johnston version of this song in college.

no shame.

so people always ask me to define urban planning

and of course i can't - because, well, it's everything.

definitions are hard - it's easier to give an example. so here's an example of an issue in urban design:

Revolting High Rises

do i think le corbusier's towers are single-handedly responsible for the french riots? of course not. but i do think the built environment has implications far beyond the aesthetic.

and that, my friends, is why i do what i do.

or, um, why i study what i study.

sometimes

when i just want to disappear for a while, i go walking on the boardwalk.

and i pretend the that the air is crisp and cold and the palm trees are tall buildings and the people are wrapped in long coats and the sunshine is snowflakes and the light is dark and the smiles are cynical and all the empty 'how are you's' are silent.

oh look

i get a gold star. i am pathetically pleased.

i am a hypocrite

a hypocrite with cute new shoes.

black friday

scene from wal-mart:


quote from a shopper:

“We shop and then we eat, then we shop and we eat, then we shop and we eat...it’s our food and fun day,” Hull said as she, her daughter and a friend stuffed TVs into an SUV before dawn Friday. “We do it every year."

hm. i may have to rethink my plans to go to the bookstore today.

red herrings!

despite careful planning and two trips to the grocery store earlier this week, i still had to go back there today. twice. on thanksgiving.

why, you might ask? because i was fooled. fooled by the red herrings strewn about the store by the subtly devious ralph's employees.

Case #1: the noodles
so i was charged with bringing the vegan entree to tonight's dinner. no problem, i thought - i like vegan cooking and it gave me an excuse to prepare my family's famous "roasted butternut squash and mushroom tofu pesto lasagna," which first debuted to rave reviews at christmas a few years ago. sure, we added some cheese, but the original recipe is vegan, and apparently there's going to be a vegan in the house tonight, so i figured i'd keep it strict.

all was smooth sailing, until i prepared to assemble the lasagna. a closer examination of the no-bake noodles i'd bought revealed that they contained eggs! you heard me - EGGS! who puts eggs in dried pasta? it's unheard of! i mean, in fresh pasta, sure, but dried? i never. trip to the grocery store #1 revealed that every other lasagna noodle was vegan. thanks a lot, barilla.

Case #2: the pumpkin
as my mother and i were scanning the aisles on sunday, i remembered that i needed to get pumpkin. for the pie. and there, conventiently stacked in three seperate aisles, were large towers of Libby's pumpkin. or so i thought. it was not until today, when i opened the can, that i realized: no, i hadn't bought pumpkin. i'd bought pumpkin pie MIX! gag. that's simply not the way things are done around here. yes, i admit that a closer examination of the can in the store would have prevented this little crisis, but really? who uses pumpkin pie mix? why put it on such heightened display while hiding the pure pumpkin on the back of some dusty old shelf? so back to the store i went. ralph's is clearly to blame here. jerks.

although they did save my ass by being open 24 hours on thanksgiving.

so yes, ralphs, despite all you put me through: i suppose i'm thankful for you.

and the true spirit of thanksgiving shines through, yet again.

the end.

let the cooking begin...

now!

god, i love thanksgiving.

ebay anyone?

i don't mean to be a bad influence here (full disclosure: i have occasional lapses into ebay obsessiveness, and am currently off the wagon), but this little site is a wonderful way to find bargains on ebay. it helps you locate mispellings of your search terms - the items other bidders won't find because they've been mispelled.

three cheers for exploiting the carelessness of others! inequality of information! the imperfection of the market system!

wouldn't it be nice

if you could travel from LA to San Francisco (or Sacremento) by bullet train?

it's a long way off, but it is in the works.

let's all keep our fingers crossed.

abbot kinney makes the times

an embarrassingly large portion of my furniture may be from french 50s and 60s, but anyone who thinks that abbot kinney is the "nucleus of venice" is on crack.

the center of venice is, was, and always will be the boardwalk.

aw

isn't my brother adorable? i'm still looking kind of larval,
but he's like the poster child for life or something.

art brut

no, not the band, silly. the genre - outsider art. i didn't really know what it was until i somewhat accidently visited the collection de l’art brut in lausanne. i was blown away. the museum was filled with the art - both awesome and horrifying - of the feeble-minded, the psychotic, and the criminally insane. actually, those categories are rather narrow. the art of people who are not "artists" - they don't create for an audience, but simply because it's the only way they can handle the chaos inside of them. the museum was haunting, but i what struck me most was the attic room - assembled to recreate the reclusive apartment of henry darger.


anyway, the point of this post is to recommend in the realms of the unreal, a documentary about the man himself. i would try to explain, but, like my visit in lausanne, it's an experience best left unexpected.

just trust me on this one.

does this look like the cover of an easy listening album, or what?

what can say? i'm a cheeseball.

next up: kittens and babies dressed as pumpkins.

oh my god oh my god oh my god

my inner urban planner just wet herself.

the santa ana winds

blow through los angeles, bringing hot, dry air to the masses.

and allergies to me.

achoo.

and this

is why i don't go swimming by my house.

Intersex fish discovered off Southern California coast

i've never been a big ben lee fan

but this nigo remix of 'freediving' is pretty great.

according to vicky (from whom i got this album), nigo - with his bathing ape clothing line - is like, the hippest man in all of japan.

can you imagine that? the hippest guy in japan? that's like being the best cook in italy or the hottest woman in brasil or something.

somewhat incomprehensible.

well-intentioned relatives

send the best gifts. my brother returned from santa cruz today, and brought me an early christmas present from my aunt: 2 ashtrays, 2 glowsticks, and this:


a pipe with little bunny rabbit on the end.

oh aunt joyce, how well you know me.

last night at the bar

kelly, mary ann and i were playing darts, when a man came up to kelly, snatched the darts out of her hand, and announced (slightly flirtatiously) that it was his turn to play. they went back and forth a bit about who had called 'next game' first (it was us), but he wasn't giving up any ground, or returning the darts. my slightly inebriated and rather surly self decided to step in and reclaim our darts game. after a little hostile squabbling i just got fed up, so i took the darts from him and in my most condescending voice said "honey, we're not the girls to fuck with tonight"

at which point kelly busts out laughing, grabs my arm and says "amanda, you know we know him, right?"

i look over at him and realize that, yes, i do know him - he's one of kelly's cousin's friends and was actually at the bar to meet us. apparently everyone was in on the joke but me.

did i mention that i occasionally have a bit of an aggressive side?
it's my inner new yorker.

regardless, i'm going to have a hard time living this one down.

we made the playoffs!

#16 of the 16 teams that made the cut.


i have the lowest average score in the league. but i love it.

the littlest genius

congratulations, sam.

update

wallet found. credit card recovered.

and to celebrate - a good old fashioned rock song:

finding out true love is blind - louis XIV

i'm a idiot

last night i managed to:

1) get on the freeway going the wrong direction

2) leave my credit card at the yoga studio

3) lose my wallet

i accomplished all of this in under an hour. hell, at least i'm an efficient idiot.

oh well. at least i know where my credit card is.

cognitive dissonance

from BBC news:

'US does not torture,' Bush says

US President George W Bush has defended his government's treatment of detainees after a media allegation that the CIA ran secret jails in eastern Europe.

"We do not torture," Mr Bush told reporters during a visit to Panama.

from ABC news:

Senate, Cheney Split on Torture Ban

WASHINGTON Nov 7, 2005 — A leading Republican senator said Sunday that the Bush administration is making "a terrible mistake" in opposing a congressional ban on torture and other inhuman treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody....

Mistreatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and allegations of mistreatment at the U.S.-run camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have drawn withering criticism from around the world. Human rights organizations also contend that the United States sends detainees to countries that it knows will use torture to try to extract intelligence information.

i really do live in los angeles

red light at pico and main st.
driving the white station wagon stopped on my right.















vincent gallo.

the line of beauty

i had a conversation with someone (p?) recently about book titles - and how much we hate it when the title turns out to be completely unrelated to the text. it's just some clever turn-of-the-phrase meant to grab your attention and get you to buy the book.

i'd been having a little doubt about the book i'm reading right now -
the line of beauty by alan hollinghurst. but finally, 176 pages in, i came to it.

the line of beauty, it turns out, is this:


the ogee curve.

the ogee curve was pure expression, decorative not structural; a structure could be made from it, but it supported nothing more than a boss or a cross that topped an onion dome. the double curve was hogarth's "line of beauty," the snakelike flicker of an instinct, of two compulsions held in one unfolding movement.

ok, that was worth it.

101.6

i feel like i never woke up this morning. my body is moving, but my mind still has one tiny little foot in sleep. i have a fever.

don't feel bad for me. i like fevers. i purposefully don't take medicine so i can lie in bed and drift, waiting for the sweat to come and the fever to break. i eat grilled cheese and tomato soup. i listen to azure ray. i dream crazy, colorful dreams, and am never quite sure if they're real or not.

at this point, i'm more concerned about who else i might have exposed. i'm sorry.

i'm off now.

smack, smack!

get back to work!

going to have to look out for this on the 405

'A California family is the first in the world to drive a car powered by hydrogen fuel cells...'

champagne supernova

i randomly heard this song today, and it brought me back so fast i nearly got whiplash.