perfect penny circle trick

rainy leaf heart

rainy green heart, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

alleluia! more rain last night!

red flag

red flag, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

wouldn't it be nice if all piles of shit came with red flags this visible?

(this is especially for john edwards, the lying slime besmirching the reputation of unc law school and north carolina in general.)

keep dancing

a t-shirt from a 1984 zeta beta tau dance marathon in philly led me to this juicy account of the 19 day dance marathon at the seattle armory that led to the ban on dance marathons in seattle:

"The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that two nurses would be on duty night and day "in constant watch over the dancers" and that doctors would examine the dancers "frequently." Besides this William Raths, director of a Bellingham physical culture school, would "direct a corps of trainers and rubbers” (Seattle P-I, July 21, 1928)."
...

"By August 11, it was over. The couple that finished first won $1000 prize money. On August 22, 1928, however, the Armory marathon was on page one again. Gladys Lenz, the dancer whose partner had punched her when he went "squirrelly," had attempted suicide."

all this and so much more, including contestants demanding new phonograph records, hysterical giggling, and an Oriental Garden in a crenelated fortress can be found here:

HistoryLink.org - The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History - Essay - "Dance Marathon closes in Seattle after 19 days on August 11, 1928."

pumpkin patch

pumpkin patch, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

pretty sure this came from spitting seeds and was not a planned planting behind a dorm at unc-asheville

would you buy

dollar store rubbers?

i would not.
(but it's a good band name)

how dry i am

extremely fucking dry. the Salisbury Post has the stats:

U.S. Geological Survey

Streamflow in the French Broad River at Asheville has reached the lowest level since 1895, when the U.S. Geological Survey first began making measurements at the site. On Sunday, the streamflow was about 121 million gallons per day (Mgd), or 188 cubic feet per second.

Previously, the lowest flow at the site occurred in 2002 when the flow was 139 Mgd.

Before 2002, streamflow in the French Broad River at Asheville had not been below 155 Mgd since 1925.

Last year, when much of North Carolina was in exceptional drought, the lowest flow in the French Broad was 199 Mgd.

Most of southwest North Carolina (18 counties) remains in an exceptional drought and virtually all of western North Carolina is in extreme (15 counties) or severe (8 counties) drought as the state moves into the driest time of the year. (See http://www.ncdrought.org for the latest North Carolina drought conditions.)

Monthly average streamflows were at all-time record lows for the months of June and July at more than half of the USGS long-term streamflow gages in western North Carolina. For example, in the French Broad River at Asheville, the July 2008 flow was 20 percent lower than the previous lowest July average flow in 1986.

Minimum record streamflows also are being recorded in the Yadkin, Catawba and Broad River basins of North Carolina. With a few exceptions, streamflows throughout much of the rest of the state remain at about half, or less, of normal conditions for this time of year

Ground-water levels in western North Carolina are about 2 to 5 feet below normal for this time of year, although no record minimum levels have been recorded. The number of ground-water monitoring wells across the state is relatively small, and records only extend back about 30 years at a few sites.

A monthly summary of conditions at unregulated streamflow sites and ground-water monitoring sites is available at http://nc.water.usgs.gov/monthly/index.html and all North Carolina USGS streamflow and ground-water data are available at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nc/nwis/nwis.

i may be overreacting, but things are dry as hell around here. i took nacho for a hike yesterday on some trails about 20 minutes away and the water he jumped in that used to be a creek and swimming holes was basically standing water and he smelled like ass.

thanks ashevegas for calling my attention to this article.

open up & say ah

say ah, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

today is the day i go for my first dental fillings. their fancy new machine found some cavities back in june and then holden needed major surgery so i put off having them filled til today. i've been flossing twice a day for the past two months and i'm hoping the cavities are gone and they will tell me to go home. not very likely.

mmm...

mmm..., originally uploaded by skippy haha.

donuts

it rained!

it just rained! for at least 2 whole minutes. for the first time in at least a couple weeks. but rain fell. ahhhh.

tps report

megavan!, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

the transportation director of phoreal records has just left this jedi council meeting and is driving a megavan on the road back west. mega fun & safe travels!

eat smart move more

eat smart move more, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

some good advice from the county

new mexico

new mexico, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

modelfest last night was SUPER! en fuego! special guest models from santa cruz! yeah doggy!

the answer my friend

DSC_0004, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

it is HOT as hell! fans in every room don't quite cut it

Goethe, Faust

A longing pure and not to be described drove me to wander over woods and fields, and in a mist of hot abundant tears I felt a world arise and live for me.

michael jackson was here

mj was here, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i was 8 years old and full of lies!

Michael Jackson was here when you weren't!
P.S. I could bring you an autographed poster!

itch

i highly recommend tea tree oil - a drop straight on a mosquito bite as soon as you feel the itch - it will stop itching immediately and be gone the next day - no more red mountains of mosquito on your limbs

the difference

field, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

here's what happens to grass in a drought, exactly one year later

not too drastic but there's less green

parched

the southeast is in a drought.

where i am it is higher than extreme - it is exceptional.

i moved here from southern california because i missed rain. i felt guilty every time i turned on the faucet knowing that they dammed the colorado river to get water to san diego, a desert, and that's not right.

the past couple weeks ive really started to notice all the lawns in asheville are brown like hay.

it's depressing.

there's nothing i can do about it but move.

i don't have to live here - my job is on the internet and i can live anywhere with electricity.

i love it here and i love all the people i've met.

i feel guilty about sucking water out of an overtaxed system.

i absolutely would not have moved here had i known about this drought.

i'm thinking of vermont. i'm thinking of colorado. i'm thinking of oregon.

is that crazy?

i hate feeling guilty, and every time i use water that's just how i feel.

the rivers are way down, the lakes are way down, trees and bushes are dying of thirst, this is no good.

happy birthday queen bee MOM

smile, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

hope you have a wunnaful day! thanks for making everybody smile! i hope that rascal henry is bringing you breakfast in bed right this second.

vintage vantage hunk

vintage vantage hunk, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

tijuana - city of tomorrow in the window of hunk in downtown asheville today

vintage vantage dot com

54 years experience

54 years experience, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

that's a lot of years at one job

where's zach's cd?

can you find zach gill's new cd? can you find the mappy camper? can you hear guadalajara joe?




good stuff!

zachgill.com
brushfirerecords.com

Foods from Fresh Water

Bait

As a general rule, fish bite bait taken from their native water. Look in the water near the shores for crabs, fish eggs, and minnows and on the bank for worms and insects. If you catch a fish, inspect its stomach to see what it has been eating; then try to duplicate this food. Use its intestines and eyes for bait if other sources are unproductive.

- from the 1969 Dept. of the Army Field Manual Survival Evasion and Escape

she's ba-aaaack!

she's ba-aaaack!, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

for the next week and two days nacho will be chased around by this whiskerfaced bitch! he likes it.

damn chocolate

my neighbor brought over a giant chocolate chip cookie that she baked this morning. it was probably the size of 6 cookies. and i ate half of it before going to see my friends' band play a party tonight. it was a potluck dinner & i didn't have too much there & when i got home at midnight i had the other half of the cookie. i'm still wide awake and it's 5:41.

i need to remember this next time i want to eat a bunch of chocolate on an empty stomach at bedtime.

the party was great fun, i love live music, but i love it even more when it's my friends playing it, and they sound good!

here's video of a post-show unplugged acoustic jam, complete with playing of the spoons.

deeply missed

deeply missed, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

"Whoa whoa whoa, Miss Lippy. The part of the story I don't like is that the little boy gave up looking for Happy after an hour. He didn't put posters up or anything, he just sat on the porch like a goon and waited. That little boy's gotta think 'You got a pet. You got a responsibility.' If your dog is lost you don't look for an hour then call it quits. You get your ass out there and you find that fucking dog."

knock on a tree, my dogs haven't escaped in over a year. when they have gotten out, they stick together and someone has always seen a black & white dog roaming the street and herded them inside & called me. when holden was a puppy he ran away for an overnight at some strangers' house down the street where they had a chocolate lab. they called the vet & said they found him, and i called the vet & said i lost him, and i got him back. that's the longest he's been missing.

ratrace

ratrace
Originally uploaded by skippy haha

a little song on one string of a ukulele

laura reed & deep pocket

laura reed & deep pocket, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

this band is funky and groovy and laura reed does what she wants! there's an electric clarinet, there's a dready dynamo on harmonica, there's positive conscious intelligent energy flowing all over the stage. two thumbs UP.

http://www.myspace.com/laurareedmusic

greenlife soup update

time again to compare today's soup at greenlife in asheville to the soup at greenlife in chattanooga.

asheville:

• Chicken Noodle
• Lentil Soup
  
• Beef Chili
• Spicy Dal
• Vegan Asian Peanut
• Vegan Split Pea

chattanooga:

• Creamy Pesto Tomato
• Roasted Carrot
• Fennel & Potatoes
• Creole Chicken
• Roasted Red Pepper Chickpea & Sausage
• Black Bean Chili
• Szechuan Plum Chicken

i sent the asheville store an email in may about doing a recipe swap, but nothing has happened. i hope they google themselves and see this and get shamed into some new soup recipes.

firecrackers

firecrackers, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

make the most of the weekend even if it's sitting on the porch watching explosives miles away

great news

friday september 19
tea leaf green
the orange peel

calling to the south

calling to the south, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

my friend katie is moving next week to honduras to teach at a school there for two years. she is an amazing person with boundless energy, creativity, warmth and SPUNK. if homemade peach cobbler could be a person, it would be katie. some ladies went for a hike and a picnic to say goodbye to her last night. here anne was calling to the four directions. katie has the flower crown. i know katie and ethan are going to have irreplaceable adventures in central america, but i really wish they were staying here.

riddle

i will never take a picture of my camera's battery. why not?

morning moon

morning moon, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

why only sometimes

no outlet

no outlet, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

the red eyes are looking at me and they're saying

joan crawford - my way of life (1971)

i got this book at goodwill last week and it's pretty damn fascinating. mommie dearest wrote 200 pages about why she does what she does. here's a snippet:

Some working women do pay someone to help with the housework, and why shouldn't they if they dread the thought of scrubbing the kitchen floor after a day in the office? I feel a great sense of accomplishment though, when I get down on my knees and scrub my own floor. When I spend months without doing a movie or a TV show and spend all my time at my desk or on a dais every night I have a lot of surplus energy to use up. Scrubbing, for me, is the greatest exercise in the world. It gives me rosy cheeks, and I just have a ball.

and one more:

I always pack in daylight. In artificial light when I'm in a hurry it's too easy to grab the wrong accessories and find myself in Kansas City or San Juan with a hot pink dress and a shocking pink hat -- and that's a catastrophe.

she seems like a total control freak, but very intelligent and funny too.

"a cholesterol free food"

laura lynn brand Bac'n Buds

ingredients:

soy flour
partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil
salt
natural smoke flavor
caramel color
monosodium glutamate (MSG)
natural and artificial flavor
hydrolyzed corn gluten
soy protein and wheat gluten
red 3
disodium inosinate
disodium guanylate

that is it.

how can this be approved to be sold as edible to humans? it blows my mind.

tea leaf green raise up the tent

a message from the DGold:

Tea Leaf Green's new album Raise Up The Tent will be released on Tuesday July 22.

Members of the TLG forum plan to host 2 online listening parties. Please join us in the chat room, on the forum, and following the links below (at the times listed), for music and conversation. BYOB. Virtual party favors will be provided. All times listed are Pacific, 7-22-2008. Spread the word.

6 PM. [1] Tune in Honest FM "Raise Up The Tent" radio show (hosted by me) for an audio pre-cast including the radio debut of songs from Raise Up The Tent.

8 PM. [2] Tune in "Live From The Garden Shed" on Ustream (hosted by AG and JamBase TV) for a special album release party webcast, live from San Francisco. Video potentially featuring members of the band, music and chat.

To join the Chat Rooms, go to the Tea Leaf Green Forum Index and click "Join Chat" at the bottom. Also note that Ustream has a chat window, and you can customize your forum name on there by getting a ustream login. We will chat there too. Hope to see you all there.

[1] http://dgold.info/radio/webcast2008/music334

[2] http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-from-the-garden-shed

my tent is raised up & i will be chatting online with babes all night
usually #6 is my favorite track on the cd
'not fit' starts and ends with some of the best lyrics i've heard-

"i'm not fit to be in the company of women
i drink a bit & smell like the jungles of india....

i'm no good at asking please or saying thank you
i'll lick your knife, butter your toast with a rusty spoon
i'll talk all night and i won't even tell you how pretty you are
i'm impolite, i'll drink you up in a dirty jar......
but don't be down on me..."

dragging ass

dragging ass, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

that bike wheel is scraping the highway

anybody tired?

survival and evasion tips

i'm reading a field guide put out by the US Army in 1969 called "Survival, Evasion & Escape" full of tips for soldiers who found themselves trying to survive behind enemy lines. here's a couple things i picked up:

• when dealing with natives, leave a good impression. other men may need this help
• if caught in an avalanche, use swimming motions to stay on top
• take care when crossing thin ice. distribute your weight by lying flat and crawling

festive

festive, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

nothing like a good old jewish wedding to spice up the weekend!
bunches of nice long islanders, marble halva from brooklyn, hava nagila chair dancing, a FUNky dr. seuss wedding cake, appearance by batman, blessed challah bread, lots of friends and lots of love.

white brown black

white brown black, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

here's a cute picture of behaving pups to balance out the pissiness of the last post.

devil dogs

holden kowe nacho, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i'm dogsitting this weekend for friends who are getting married, kowe is 1 and a half and full of energy. she and nacho are on the same wavelength. they're all sweet, they look like demons here. her face whiskers are amazing. she's always had a dog door, which i don't have, we'll see how this works out.

fall

it feels like fall already here. is it just me? it might be the angle of the sun or the strength of the sun or the humidity or breeze or how blue the sky is but something here feels like fall already.

i woke up full of vinegar ready to snap
i've seen only the worst greediest bastardliness in everything since then
dont try this at home

last week my neighbor brought over peaches from her mom's tree in tennessee that were so juicy i had to eat them over the sink

that was good

i love to dance

langhorne slim + trombone - guitar strap in brooklyn, 'i love to dance'



talk about crowd pleaser

99notebooks.com

99notebooks.com, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i got a blank notebook in the mail and i just wrote in it.

it's part of a project my friend spencer is doing called 99 notebooks.

if somebody gives you one of these notebooks you have to do 3 things - read everything in it, write something in it, and pass it on.

check out www.99notebooks.com for more details, and watch as 99 marble notebooks make their way around the world!

quissy's engaged!

2.6, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

my little brother proposed to his wonderful girlfriend angela in front of the eiffel tower and she said yes. they are spending the next 5 weeks walking 500 miles along the camino de santiago de compostela pilgrimage route through northern spain.

(this photo is not angela, it's tina from the cherokee trading post in clinton, oklahoma)

update - thanks MOM for the photo of the real chris & angela - and an email update from chris on the santiago trail =
"she going to be Mrs. Bugs Bunny...

walked 18 more miles today and tomorrow to Pamplona...little tired but trekking like champs so far."

struts and frets

i've come to think that drama is a choice. as in - you can choose to create it, maintain it, encourage it, or you can dispel it, be transparent and real and honest, and rise above & not allow it to continue. yell cut.

i think a lot of misunderstandings turn into major grudges because they are not either aired out completely at the start or risen above. you can't let them fester. it gives a negative issue too much power in your life. life is too short to worry about what someone might have meant when they wrote or said or did whatever it is. either tell them they hurt you and ask why, or take a step back, understand where they may be coming from, forgive them whatever their intent, and get past it asap.

i think a lot of us go through life like it's a 'three's company' episode full of misunderstandings and miscommunications, secrets and deceptions, pretending to be gay so the landlord lets you stay. and it's not really necessary.

in my experience some misunderstandings turn out to be funny when both sides realize where the communication broke down.

and tragic when they don't.

so do your best. and follow the golden rule, and if everyone does good will be done to you.

secret fluff safe

secret fluff safe, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

it was just a matter of time. i made a couple marshmallow fluff safes to go with the peanut butter safes i've done. now it's possible to make fake fluffernutters while stashing stuff.

in related news, a human being can eat nothing but 3 nectarines and a half a jar of marshmallow fluff in a day and still wake up the next morning.