Year: 2005

The Fillipi’s Old Books and Records sign has been removed, revealing a non sequitur.

And the remodeling has created this sort-of visual non sequitur.

Seattle Waterfront, Sunday

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Went to League night on Friday. Talked about shaving, Flickr, bigfoot. You know, guy things.

Last night on Letterman, the musical guest was a loung-y big band act who played a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Today I overheard a guy answer his phone and identify himself as Oedipus. I’ll ask the obvious question: What mother names her son Oedipus?

I have two 8’x10′ prints, one each of the two photos posted here. One is for the first friend or acquaintance who claims it with a comment that doesn’t use the letter “E”. The other goes to the first stranger or internet-only acquaintance who does the same, but with a comment that includes no vowels except for “E”. I can mail the print or hand deliver it, whichever makes sense.

The Beans for Breakfast June Print Calendar. A PDF for all your printing needs and for many of your calendaring needs. Letter Size. A4 Format. Thanks.

I don’t make many mix tapes or burned CDs or playlists or whatever we’re making these days — if we’re making things like mix tapes at all and not just letting iTunes sort things out for us. When I have made them, they’ve tended to resemble each other. They’re drifting or evolving. If I made one today, it would need to include Andrew Bird‘s song Tables and Chairs from The Mysterious Production of Eggs. I’ll tell you why. It’s partly because Andrew Bird’s lead with Nora O’Connor‘s harmony vocals stings really good, but mostly because the lyrics promise that there will be snacks after the apocalypse. Tables and Chairs goes in right after the Talking Heads’ Heaven, either that or Heaven is the first song and Tables and Chairs is the last.

A flurry of birds pasted onto the old Chang’s Mongolian Grill sign. I may have posted a picture of this before, but when I saw it today — midday, sunny, warm — it just seemed really compelling.

A hot hot girl in a short short skirt walks out of a Starbucks carrying two paper cups in a cardboard tray. She’s smiling and swaying her hips, basking in attention. She heads down the hill toward me, passing two girls who are crouched on the steps waiting for the bus. Their eyebrows raise and their heads turn and follow those hips until the girl and I pass each other. That’s when they look up at me and watch my face burn red. I gather from their reactions as I close the distance between us that I’m entertaining. When I pass them, one of the seated girls makes an encouraging “woohoo” sound and looks back down the hill at the girl with the swaying hips.

Oddly, I’m cited alongside Mike Whybark in an academic paper: “Memes, literacy and affinity spaces: Implications for policy and digital divides in education” (PDF) (Here’s Google’s html-ized version), “Conference paper presented to the ‘Policy Options and Models for Bridging Digital Divides’ Conference Global Challenges of eDevelopment Project, March 14-15, 2005.”

The reference is to the Hopkin Green Frog story. The section on Hopkin Green Frog begins on page 11, Mike and the t-shirt come up on page 12, and this Beans for Breakfast entry is excerpted on pages 13-14.