Gone West-siyyde - FRIDAY

One thing we wanted to do during our stay was a wine tour, so we rented a car and drove north across the Golden Gate.



Funny (not really), but because the Golden Gate is known for its suicides, Emily snapped a quick pic of one of the "Don't Do It!" phones.



We had no intentions of becoming statistics though, so we drove on toward California's wine Mecca. This is the only winery we stopped at in Sonoma...



Later, we wished we'd hung out more in Sonoma. True, there are more Napa wineries and they are closer together than the Sonoma sites, but some of the tasting rooms in Napa are by appointment only (snobby), and seemed less personal somehow.



Also, the road was a fucking mess most of the day. At one point, it took us 30 or so minutes to go a mile.



Because of the traffic, we never made it to the one winery Emily really wanted to see. We still tried some nice wines though. My favorites, for taste and feel, were Milat and Arger-Martucci.

When the tasting rooms started closing for the day, we drove back to San Francisco. Tthe Golden Gate...



...and Alcatraz...



...let us know we had arrived. Before we returned the car though, we had one more thing to do:





After a drive down Lombard Street, we met Leif and his fiancee Sharilyn (our gracious San Fran hosts) for drinks at a bar called Zeitgeist. I highly recommend this place for drinkers visiting San Francisco. If you can't find directions online, e-mail me and I can get you its street intersection.

Gone West-siyyde - THURSDAY

The first day of sight-seeing: Emily and I went to the Palace for the Arts.









At the Palace, there was somethang called the Exploratorium, which is one of those hands-on science education centers. We didn't take many pictures inside, because we were mesmerized by all the fun gadgets and stuff for learning about magnets, electricity, light, sound, etc. Cool shit everywhere. Far too much to explain here. One of my favorites though, for example, were these ear muff things shaped like deer ears so you could hear like a deer. They also had a pair with tubes that redirected sounds from your left side into your right ear and vice versa. Hearing in reverse messes with the brain.

Emily took this picture after a science dude put some of my cheek cells under the microscope at 1000x magnification.



After a pause at the snack bar (which Emily referred to as "the taste exhibit"), I took this picture of a piece of the interior. Everything there was cool.



Really, the only downside was the excess of impatient school kids interrupting while I was trying to use the darned gadgetry. Gosh! Frickin' idiots.

When the Exploratorium closed, we walked across the street to a beach overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Here's the bridge in my sunglass lens (not the broken one), and that's the Exploratorium behind me.



Here's the zimdog with bridge behind, an omen of the day to follow:

Gone West-siyyde - preSanFran

The day after the last day of summer class, I was on a plane for San Diego to do some work with a writer friend of mine. I don't have many pictures of San Diego--just this one, an answer to the iconic question, "Is there a Ralph's around here?"



There was. (And if I'm not mistaken, that red car looks like little Larry's new Corvette. He's probably still got "$960-970,000... depending on the options.")

Also in San Diego, I saw Sicko and got thoroughly pissed, sitting there in the theater with what felt like strep throat, pondering a trip to Tijuana for some antibiotics because my country's health care system is all about assholes at the top gettin' rich.

From San Diego, I flew to San Francisco to meet Emily for the annual APA (American Psychological Association) convention, which was crazy, because there were protesters out front all week, claiming APA has sent psychologists to Guantanamo Bay to aid in terrorist interrogations. Apparently, some folks associated with APA exacted methods of mental torture or something.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15

Emily and I didn't spend a whole lot of time at APA... not for moral reasons or anything. We just found San Francisco, the city, more interesting that San Francisco, the location of a convention. This little meditation spot was near the convention center.



It was the kind of place you only find in cities that truly care about their citizens. People sat scattered about, playing guitars or chatting with lovers, just enjoying the day.

World meditation

I came across this video on http://www.cosmopoetica.com/blog/ and I almost didn't watch it because I saw it was 4 minutes long. But then I had one of those moments where I told myself, Hey, Speedy McA-hole, why don't you take a few breaths there, buddy.

Care to do the same?

The New Mexico Place

Went to NM recently. I think its nickname is the Land of Enchantment. I don't see why though. I had a really good time. It wasn't at all like being stuck in a chant.

I drove around a lot and saw lots of stuff and things. Here's a pretty typical shot of the driving scenery:

Funny, but clouds love eating the mountains there. It has something to do with the cinnamon and paprika in the rocks.

This road sign picture is for those of you who know me, and think I'm obsessed with poop. Well, you're wrong. I just think poop is funny, and I see it everywhere:


Here's me driving:


I call it "Self-Portrait While Driving in New Mexico."

My first real stop was Cuba. Who knew? Who knew it was legal to drive to Cuba?


And why does Cuba support our troops? I thought we hated them, so that would make them hate us too, troops included. Right? Unless they're talking about THEIR troops, which would make sense, since they have their own communist troops, while our troops run on capitalism.

While I was in Cuba, I supported both their cigars and their superior health care... but not at the same time, of course.

Here's what it looks like from one of the highest points just outside Cuba:


To cleanse myself of communism after returning to New Mexico, I went to this place called the Soda Dam:


At first, I thought the water smelled funny, but then I realized it was the communism being washed from my skin. For safe measure, I hiked from Battleship Rock to these nearby warm springs for another swim, and sure enough, there was still some of that funky communist odor left on my white American skin.


Maybe you think I'm going too far, but really it was only like two miles, (a 45-min. hike). And the springs were really cool--I mean, warm. They could definitely make a ton of money though if they just built a cable car that went to them.

(Serious note: Soda Dam and Battleship Rock were both on NM 4, a scenic route running from San Ysidro to ~Santa Fe. I recommend driving it in your rental car--unless you drive your own car, in which case there will BE no need to rent a car.)

Probably the highlight of the trip was the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. I took the Canyon Trail up to the top:




All pictures are mine, but you can use them on your desktop. I know they're all excellent. I'm the one who took them with a disposable camera.

Art & humor are soluble

Mid-May, I was West-Coastin' in San Diego and took an afternoon visit at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (the Kettner St. location; they have others). Well, as luck would have it (and as part of what I can only assume is an ongoing thang called the CERCA SERIES), the MCASD was presenting the art of "Encinitas-based sculptor William Feeney [who] turns assembly techniques and themes associated with the building trades towards self-reflective and conceptual ends." I had never heard of William Feeney before, and I'm willing to bet my car that you haven't either, but now I'll remember his name.


Model for Cabin with machine gun nest - 2005; cardboard, graphite, wood.
(Image stolen from http://www.mcasd.org/exhibitions/index.asp)

Son of a motherf#@^er, when I saw this next one, I think I almost peed myself:


Big Snooz - I couldn't find the work's details online, but it's made out of Igloo cooler material, and it even says 'big snooz' on the lid
(Image stolen from http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/profiles/events/feeney)

The first room was all Feeney's work, and each piece in that room elicited some reaction. If it wasn't at least a chuckle, then it was some form of nostalgia or deep thought. One of my favorites (not pictured here) was a plastic baby doll wrapped entirely in Band-Aids. It was called Baby Owwee.

And then, as if the Feeney exhibit wasn't enough, I found this monstrosity in the back room next to the bathroom:


The Big Sneeze - 1995; chicken wire, wood, expanding foam sealant, polyurathane, acrylic, metal tank, pump, tubbing, colored liquid, computer with sound chip, speakers, amp.
(Image stolen from http://www.mcasd.org/exhibitions/index.asp)

To blame for this masterpiece are The Art Guys based in Houston, Texas. I wish I could recreate the mini-essay/explanation for The Big Sneeze, because it was pure satirical genius. Basically, these two dudes from Texas have used artistic snobbery as a reason to create things like this. Every 20-or-so minutes, speakers would play the sound of a person inhaling panicked drags of air, followed soon after by gushing green water. Folks, this is art in its purest form: art that appeals to the common man. I stayed to watch it a second time.

For more on The Art Guys, visit http://www.theartguys.com/homebody.html
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any sites dedicated to William Feeney.

The MCASD's permanent upstairs exhibit was lots of fun too. If you're in San Diego, I recommend spending the $5-10 and ~60 minutes it will take you to enjoy this museum.

End of the semester

It's now that time where I re-emerge from the academic leaf litter to pretend I'm a faithful blogger.

A few hours ago, I turned in the last of my final projects for the semester. It was an out-of-the-ordinary project too, which made it a difficult last one. It was for a class called Women, the Environment, Ecofeminism, & Environmental Justice (or Green Consciousness for short). The class dealt with ecofeminist theory. I've never been a skilled theory head, so I did my share of struggling with the dense abstractions and philosophizationizing.

Knowing as much early on in the semester, I asked the professor if I could write an ecofeminist story as a final project. My secret agenda was that it would allow me to craft one more story for my thesis. I was pretty psyched when she agreed. Her only additional request was that I also write a critical analysis of my own story, using ecofeminist theory to back up the choices I made in the story.

Well, the story came out a little less satisfactorily than I had hoped. The hard work will come in revising it. However, the substance of the story paralleled green theory very well. I'm glad I undertook this project, since it gave me a better sense of applying theory to my fictional worlds. It's certaintly not something I want to make a habit of though. That's hard work doing all that flipping back and forth through books, double-checking details to make sure you've dealt them into the story properly.

Anyway, now I get a break from school for two months. Summer B class starts early July, so I have three books to read before then. Maybe I can squeeze in a bit of pleasure reading beforehand. Oh yeah, and some blog posts.