Mark Räda

Cool article on my favorite mofo ... in the Bulletin ...

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080627/NEWS0107/806270304/1162/AE&nav_category=AE&template=print

Foto duJour

Spam as Art

Spam has gotten pretty wierd over the years. My favorite subgenre being spam that tries to evade spam filters (isn't that just so spirited!) ... and ... even though I barely ever even glance at it when I'm deleting stuff .. every now and then something really catches my eye as ... almost attaining an artful level of surrealism or ... just utter pointlessness. To wit ... here's one I got today. WTF I LOVE IT!

-----------------------------
From: vanadic@mepal.com
Subject: angelicize blague
Date: June 30, 2008 4:11:03 AM PDT
To: booking@thegrove411.net
Reply-To: vanadic@mepal.com

Ni hao,

***
Warning!
This letter contains a virus which has been successfully detected and cured.
***

Anyway? Yes, said tina, i was. I had a letter to jacko now?
he's dead. It's not jacko who matters. Here, i can't get
an ard. 'swer. Have you a poirot pleasantly, i think we'll
have to ask you for quarter, i replied. Well, it's only
piling up time opened its table accommodations to the public,
devotion, and is courageous to the point ofrecklessness.
over the wall, and, being unseen in the shadow,."


Ni hao INDEED! Over the fucking WALL, unseen in the shadows and courageous (and devoted) to the point of recklessness! I love it, whatever it means.

Superheroes

I'm going to start making a deck of Superhero playing cards ... cuz ... there's some superhero mofos around here.  Each one will have the persons stats and super powers and weaknesses.  Y'all better send me a photo or I'm gonna use the ones I have.  Damn I love all you guys.

(ps.  omissions of any superheroes not intended to minimize their superpowers or importance)

(pps.  NO CAPES!)

Quote of the Day

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
- Robert Frost

Fireside red

Went to Fireside red tonight (note the intentional small "r") ... darling of multiple Source (J. Rice) reviews of glowing magnitude.  And it really wasn't that great.  Everything about the production ... from the decor to the menu/marketing to the food just seemed ... amateurish.  Lacking in real attention to detail.  All the food was bland and boring and expensive ... the staff was overly eager and attentive ... and it was all just pretty lame.  Nice deck though ... if you don't mind hanging out with tons of douchy Butte/Old Mill types wearing gold jewelry and Hawaiian shirts and eating overpriced Sysco food.

Quirky Al Fresco Theatre Action

Hi all ... sorry for the super late notice on this ... but if you haven't heard ... we're helpin' the Sparrow Bakery crew put on a super nice al fresco cinema get together this Thursday the 26th at 8PM at the bakery. 50 SE Scott ... as Colorado (heading east) turns the corner and becomes Scott ...

Outdoor movie ... old fashioned homemade concessions by the Sparrow (who make some of the best food ever if you hadn't heard) and Erica doing beverages. Just a nice bite of offbeat good times to start off your weekend. :)  And the bakery is curing some of their own meats and making some really great homemade stuff.  Here is the official writeup from Whitney:

Culinary Cinema @ The Sparrow Bakery

The Sparrow Bakery would like to announce a summer long, open air film series to take place at the bakery on the last Thursday of each month, June, July, and August. The films will each have a culinary theme and include two recently released documentaries and one classic drama. The event will be free, family friendly, and more of a “sit-in” then a “drive-in” - moviegoers will be asked to bring their own chair in an effort to keep the event low budget. There will be old-fashioned concessions and non-alcoholic hand made ginger ale provided for sale by The Sparrow, and beer, wine, and cocktails provided for sale by Plum. The overarching purpose of this series is twofold: 1) To give thanks for continued support despite tightened budgets, the Sparrow would like to offer a free community event to help families, friends, and neighbors enjoy the summer without breaking bank. Moviegoers will be asked to bring their own chairs and blankets, and to remain relatively good-humored about the “rustic” nature of our theater, but otherwise the movies are our gift of respite. 2). The second intention behind the event is to introduce a new Bend campaign to support local business. “Make Local Habit” is an organization of local business owners encouraging the Bend community to make their purchases with locally owned and operated, independent small businesses. During a recession it is most important to remember that small businesses give a town its identity; buying local keeps money in the local economy and reduces gas miles needed to deliver product. Buying local is a win win win. So our film series is essentially a gift to the community and in return we simply ask that they make efforts, big and small, to support the local economy. It should be a kick.

Culinary Cinema @ The Sparrow Bakery

June 26 – I Like Killing Flies (A Documentary about a Chef in Greenwich Village)
July 31 – Big Night (A Drama about an Italian Chef)
August 28 – How to Cook Your Life (A Documentary about a Buddhist Chef)

Cocktails & snacks @ 8pm
Shows begins @ 8:45pm

Bring your own chair!  (camp chair suggested)

Pollen on Environmentalism

interview with Michael Pollen ... from e360, a new environmental journal published by Yale University and edited by Roger Cohn former editor of Mother Jones and Audubon.  Good stuff.

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2031

Yuck, with a Silver Lining, with a YUCK Lining

So ... as some of you may know ... my car got broken into recently ... and my backpack grabbed ... that included my computer.  Which ... as all of you probably can imagine, sucked.  Months of work ... months of DJ work and tons of personal information and collections of art and music and bookmarks and emails and to-do lists and the whole shot.  A lot of stuff that's super important to me.  Plus, my shades and camera and headphones and so forth.  Needless to say I was pretty sick to my stomach.  It was super lame, and totally made me bitter and suspicious of every person on the street and kinda changed my view of everyday life around here.  Ruined my week quite nicely.  It's amazing how fast you become a raving Republican when you're a victim of a crime.

The police were unfeeling but ... efficient.  They seemed more interested in just filling out forms rather than chasing down leads.  I had no hope.  One website about laptop theft said that 98% of stolen laptops are never recovered.

But ... incredibly ... the other day, I get a call from the investigating officer saying that they recovered my stuff ... and to come down and pick it up at the station.  I was FLOORED.  I was even more floored when I went down there and there was a plastic bag containing almost everything that was in my backpack.  From my laptop to my mouse and sound card, headphones, and even little audio connectors and a USB flash drive.  I was crazy elated and profusely thanked the universe for such fortune (if you can consider it that).  I really couldn't believe it.  I was so happy.  I mean, when does that ever happen that you get your stuff back??!

But there was a yucky lining to the silver lining.  

I get it all home ... and plug it all in ... and it all has this ... fucking ... SMELL.  That stale cigarette and white trash rental apartment smell.  YUCK.  Like, I can fucking smell it right now while I'm typing this.  And consider how nasty the place must've smelled to make a metal computer smell up my room.

EWWW!!!

And it gets worse.  All the stickers on my laptop are removed (years worth).  I open it up, and my desktop image is now some motorcycle picture.  I open iTunes and all my music is gone.  Replaced by a handfull of crappy country music MP3s (the horror!).  I'm starting to feel more violated than I did before I was returned my stuff.  The smell is making me sick ... and I open the browser ... shudder ... and open the history tab.  Can u guess what this wonderful person was using my computer for?  Yep.  Porn.  Porn porn porn.  Dozens of porn Google searches (the screen scrolled for a *long* time) ... including some disturbing search terms I won't repeat ... followed by Craigslist "chance meeting" personals ... and job and housing postings.  Some wierd Google map searches on an address in Seaside, Oregon ... and lots of Craigslist searches for free shit and 70s VW bug listings.  And then it gets even wierder.

Searches for sex offender registries in Utah and Oregon and nationally.  Inmate rosters for various jails in Utah and Oregon.  I'm officially fucking sick to my stomach and I can still smell the cigarettes.  I delete the country music and consider just whiping the entire hard drive in general and start questioning whether I'm happy to have my stuff back at all.  And then I look at the camera sitting on my desk.  Jesus, no ... 

Yes.  

Self fucking portrait ... 

This is the face of yuck in your community.  Undoubtedly taken for a Craigslist personal ad.  There's also numerous photos of some poor kids, including a couple of a little girl wearing my shades and some similarly scary characters.

By now I'm seriously grossed out.  They made my computer ... gross.  I almost don't even want it back.  YUCK!!!!!  Yuck yuck YUCK!!!

:: SHUDDER ::

So I erase everything.  Change my desktop picture to a beach scene ... get out the Lysol, erase the camera and hope to soon forget the entire experience.  I still don't know how the police managed to make the arrest (note about criminals ... most of them are deadly stupid), but Mr. Charming was likely on parole and hopefully will be doing some time for this.  The browser history shows no email website accessed, and nothing else is touched, so I'm not worried that this person used any computer skills to get anything off my laptop.  I had my stuff backed up (learn that lesson right now) ... so I didn't lose anything.

Verdict:  porn obsessed chain smoking white trash drifter crackhead sex offender borrows your laptop for a week.  Fucking GREAT!!

Yeah.  You know ... I usually have a policy ... if something yucky happens to you ... to not really share it ... so you can keep that experience from infecting other people needlessly ... but please allow me to break that rule this time.

YUCK!