Damien Hirst has created a pickled unicorn

First off, I kind of wish I could afford to buy something at this auction, specifically the unicorn.
Secondly, I definitely recommend seeing Hirst's preserved tiger shark (titled "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living")the next time you're in the MET.

Blondie has kickin' beats

Truth.

If Blondie is a New Wave band then Blondie has the kickinest New Wave beats.

If Clem Burke is Blondie's drummer then Clem Burke is the kickinest New Wave drummer.


If Blondie isn't a New Wave band then Clem Burke is still the kickinest drummer in whatever kind of band Blondie is.

See "Dreaming" for support:



Clem Burke swings from the shoulder.

Cat Fight

Two fat 'n spoiled cats locked in an epic battle for the LazyBoy.

Back 2 School Blues

I don't remember my dreams very often, and when I do, I have either a hard time piecing together a narrative because my dreams are often so chaotic I can't put them into words, or I don't have the attention span to focus long enough to fictionalize the raw data. However, when I do have a lucid dream or a lucid episode, I take note.
This is why I know now that despite struggling with the notion of returning to academia for the entirety of my short leave of it, I am clear on one thing: I never want to take a foreign language class again.
Last night I dreamt that I had returned to school and my first class of the semester was German Idealism in Ham-Smith 19. Equally excited and suspicious (characteristic of my love/hate relationship with the field), I am waiting patiently for the Professor to show up. After a few minutes, in walks a man who looks a lot like Professor DeVries but much less substantial (clearly reared on corn flakes as opposed to schnitzel). Not three steps behind him is an even shorter man with black, thick-rimmed glasses and a mane of white hair.
To my surprise, pseudo-DeVries proceeds to just stand in front of the class, slightly to one side, jovially saying and doing absolutely nothing as the other man, nameless, begins writing on the blackboard. I quickly become anxious and confused and realize that the man is writing an elaborate schedule on the board that is beginning to indicate that a.) I would be spending more time in this class than I had intended or wanted to, and b.) this probably isn't a German Idealism course. I raise my hand and not-pseudo-DeVries calls on me.
"Isn't this German Idealism?" I ask.
"This is Spanish class," he viciously responds.
Taken aback by the misunderstanding, I promptly blank out and the next thing I know I am watching porn in my dorm room.

Scenes from a Prison Dream

*Recent dream recreated from notes and memory and punctuated for narrative effect. Any resemblance to real people or actual events is purely coincidental*

I was sent to prison on a technicality. Apparently the now defunct college I was working for last winter was involved in some dubious financial practices and when it folded, all of us former employees were convicted of insider trading. Ouch.

I bore my incarceration as stoically as possible. Taking a page out of the Avon Barksdale book, I resolved only to count the first day and the last day; no use worrying about what you can't change. Prison wasn't so bad. I seemed to spend most of my time wandering around the common areas (cafeteria, exercise yard, etc...) and trying to avoid any confrontations with my fellow inmates.

The food was terrible. At one point an inmate who bore a striking resemblance to this kid Matt I had 10th grade gym with offered to make me a sandwich out of some substance he called "yurt." I was grateful and offered to supply my own bread. He looked annoyed and made me a sandwich using his own bread.

Dream yurt tasted just like tuna fish. I don't eat tuna fish and ended up throwing the sandwich out. I rummaged through a refrigerator looking for something else. I couldn't find anything, so I picked the yurtwich out the trash and ate the soggy bread. Being a vegetarian in prison is hard.

At some point I was raped by a short, unshaven man with long, greasy hair. It wasn't so bad, just another unpleasant but inevitable part of life inside - the prison equivalent of paying taxes or getting a cavity filled.

I think the rape even broke the ice with the other prisoners. I heard a rumor that the greasy guy was planning to rape me again. I went to his cell to get it over with and he was face down on his bunk with a shiv in his back. I had friends, apparently.

I stood watching some inmates steal a basketball from the juvenile inmates we shared recreation space with.

"That's terrible," I said to my friend, who looked like Portland Trailblazers center Greg Oden, only with beaded cornrows.

"Hey, man, you know you'd do the same damn thing if you was out there," dream-Oden replied.

"Half those kids are bigger than me," I gestured at my skinny, suddenly shirtless chest for emphasis, "If I was out there, I'd be the one getting robbed."

"Hehe, you right, boy, you right," dream-Oden chuckled, "Fuckers'd be ON you."

Inside, I smiled. His approval meant a lot to me.

Play to Win

Most of the time I find Jon Stewart and the Daily Show unamusing and obnoxious. This is not most of the time:

Holy Alaska!

Does humor belong in music?

The straight-out-of-the-still essence of probably the most important art form of the last century:

fare thee well, Inez

I only spend about three minutes of my lunch break actually eating (peanut butter sandwich and a baggie of cheeze-its) and the remaining twenty seven I dedicate to day dreaming and staring absentmindedly into the trees beside the parking lot. Every now and then I have a good idea and I jot down notes on little scraps of paper, the idea being that later I'll find the note and remember to do something I thought was important.

The system rarely works, at least not in a timely fashion. Today I found a note from last week on a yellow post-it neatly folded in half: ISABELLA/HELENA(?) disappears into the woods ... Aguirre WATCH.

I followed the note's instructions and tracked down the clip in question:



I don't remember what made me think of this during that particular lunch break. Maybe I imagined myself silently slipping into the woods (taking a permanent half-day) whilst my malnourished, half mad coworkers licked the ground for salt ... but there were no native arrows raining down and no one else eats lunch outside, much less licks the parking lot for essential minerals.

Inez (Helena Rojo) disappears from the film's narrative after this and I can only assume she perishes somewhere in the jungle, perhaps on her own terms, perhaps on the jungle's.

fare thee well, Inez

love joshua

Zoo Babies

Occasionally, boston.com updates their photo gallery of zoo babies; it always makes me smile.