Just Kristin

photo credit: ecsta­ti­cist

Why? Because I love moss, and because I wanted to test the Pho­to­Drop­per plugin.

WTS?!

Orig­i­nally uploaded by justkristin

I will not be able to go to K’zoo this year, but I will some­day. I will, how­ever, thanks to my friend, Jincy, be cel­e­brat­ing Mr. Chaucer’s newest book from my cubi­cle. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Chaucer blog­ger, who­ever you are!

My guess is yes, but I can hope. Apple, if you are out there and listening:

Today iPhone OS4 was announced. It looks fan­tas­tic, except for the bit about 3G phones only get­ting some of the fea­tures, mul­ti­task­ing not being one of them.

iPhone OS 4 will work with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the sec­ond– and third-generation iPod touch this sum­mer, and with iPad in the fall. Not all fea­tures are com­pat­i­ble with all devices. For exam­ple, mul­ti­task­ing is avail­able only with iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod touch (32GB and 64GB mod­els from late 2009).

Is there, then, dear Unka Steve, an early renewal/upgrade deal set up for those of us whose con­tracts with AT&T would only have an upgrade avail­able in, say, Octo­ber? I will get another iPhone. I will. But, jee­bus, do I have to be hob­bled until my reg­u­lar renewal date? (Of course, my inner demon reminds me, an early renewal would mean pos­si­bly miss­ing the new iPhone hard­ware — if there is some — for 2 years…)

Good lord, things get ugly when geeks get denied. :)

Hanna is just — I mean just — squishy enough to do imper­son­ations. Smokey does it a bit bet­ter, so I will have to get pics next time I am vis­it­ing his house. In the mean time, here she is:

I’m a greyhound!

I’m a sharpei!

Over the week­end, Smokey, Dar­win and Ella tried their hands at another kind of imper­son­ation: (Click Smokey’s chest for more pics. Click Smokey’s mom’s chest… oh, oops. *duck*)

We are Easter doggies!

Of course, Elvis is too much a baby to do much more than cuddle:

I am a babydog!

It occurred to me, as D and I drove home with bel­lies full of Kosher and a frozen love­bird in the back seat, that there are two kinds, or two lev­els of sur­re­al­ity. One is home to the sur­real con­tent born of your own mind, on pur­pose. Access to this level of cre­ative non­sense is had when you take hikes along the perime­ter of your san­ity, skip­ping into the unmapped areas to make dew-angels in the moss, yelling secrets into the shad­ows past the safety of its bor­ders and record­ing for pos­ter­ity the gar­bled replies that echo back thru the trees in voices that belong to other ver­sions of you. This sur­re­al­ity is the kind under­stood, to some degree, by the per­son who chan­nels it, because it is born of them. It is their inter­pre­ta­tion, in a way, of the fringe of their own exis­tence. It can be humor­ous, and often is, much in the same way that mis­heard state­ments are often laugh-inducing, and its humor — or any other emo­tion it con­jures — can eas­ily be shared between artist and audi­ence, as we all wan­der those same stretches some­times, and hear those same echoes.

The other kind of sur­re­al­ity gen­er­ates art which is more engi­neered than inter­preted. It is a struc­ture made by the artist out of bits and pieces found on ram­bles — a wolf’s ear, a stalk of wheat, a small child’s skele­ton encased in the cor­ner­stone of a build­ing, a bile bean, a rain­bow, a pubic hair in a bar of soap — and held together by the glue that is the artist’s sense. The artist may not know what she is piec­ing together, but judges each piece aes­thet­i­cally: the essence of the thing is not in the fab­rics of the patches, but in how they get stitched together. This sur­re­al­ity is less often humor­ous, as it speaks to dri­ves more pri­mal than humor (that is, when it is under­stood by its audi­ence). If the bridge between artist and audi­ence is made, this art can daz­zle, or even bring on epiphany or eupho­ria. If the bridge is not made, how­ever, the art is, to the per­son left search­ing for its entrance, at best a beau­ti­ful enigma.

“The tax card has been played to death. We’re forced to pay taxes to incar­cer­ate indi­vid­u­als who threaten the well-being of the body politic. Should we revert to Wild West vig­i­lan­tism in order not to have to pay taxes for this pur­pose? Now we’re going to be forced to pay taxes in order to (at least try to) cure dis­eases that threaten the well-being of the indi­vid­u­als who com­prise said body politic. Why do we take for granted the legit­i­macy of the for­mer but not of the lat­ter?” — Brett Robbins

As a crazy per­son, do you divulge the mis­giv­ings that haunt you at the risk of admit­ting that you believe in lit­tle green men, or do you keep your lit­tle green men to your­self, risk­ing, of course, some­one see­ing you talk­ing to them?