shippin' out

So it's finally official, and I will be shippin' out Feb 10 for six months of language training in Yogyakarta (and climbing Borobudur too, at some point), following which I'll then take up post in Jakarta sometime in late August. It's been a weird, twisty road to this point -- I sure as hell didn't think I'd get here when all this first started out. Anyway, we'll see what the road ahead holds. Watch this space. A map, for the geographically-challenged:

happy new year from me to me

i'm an aunt!

Say hi to Isabelle everyone! Isn't she beautiful?

a word on mayer

I've always had a thing about John Mayer's music, but lately, my Mayer obsession's been starting up again and the man doesn't even have an album out. I think it's the whole turning-30-and-dropping-weight thing. Plus, he seems to have gotten a much better wardrobe this year. See below.

I also have a thing about tatts on a man ...



Addendum: I think it was around the spring of 2002 that I first heard Your Body Is A Wonderland - the acoustic version, that is (oddly enough, I don't really like the actual album/ single version which is the one people usually hear), which kinda came in through ... er, electronic means. That was in the pre-lawsuits era. As with most of my other music, it was the guitar that got me first. I was such a fan that Noah actually wanted to take me to a Mayer performance for Valentine's that year - think Mayer was playing at a small club in DC - except I didn't get back from spring break in Hong Kong in time. Ah well, gotta give props to the man for being willing to fuel his girlfriend's thing for another man though!

Seriously, if you haven't heard Mayer's music yet, he's amazing. If you listen to Inside Wants Out, Room for Squares, Heavier Things, Try! and Continuum (in that order), there's a clear progression in his sound. And nowadays, when a lot of artists just kinda do one or two songs and the rest of the CD's a coaster, his albums are coherent - every song's worth something, and the whole album is usually consistent in thematic progression: it's got a start, a middle and a finish. Click here for a listen, or click below to see him performing Crossroads with the great Clapton.

the memory of blue

I watched a movie about a blind man today and although they didn't say it in the film, I realized why in almost every movie ever made about blindness, people talk about the color blue.

It's because blue is the color of the sky, and blue is what we see when we look up, or out towards the horizon. It is the color of what lies beyond, of what can be and what is possible, further than the here and now. It is the color of the unknown future that we sense but are unable to understand except as the most inexplicable of sparks somewhere within ourselves. And because blue is so large, so vast and so wide, it encompasses what we know, what we do not know and what we do not yet know.

In 1993, Derek Jarman made a film entitled "Blue", in which he talked - among other things - about his life and approaching death. At the time he made the film, he was blind and dying of AIDS-related complications. Blue was the last color he saw. He talked about images and how the visual and the concept of meaning relate to each other.

Perhaps it is like a Rothko painting, how it washes over you, with that peculiar sense of suspension and falling forwards and backwards at the same time.

Blue is infinite. It goes on forever.

can't tase this

Remember Andrew Meyer, the UF student who was evicted and tasered from a John Kerry speech earlier this year? For the unfamiliar, Meyer was asking a very long question during the end of Kerry's session, when his mike was cut off and he was evicted from the room, to the cheers of his fellow students. Unfortunately, he struggled with the UF security folks who were evicting him, and got tasered for his efforts. The whole thing was caught on camera by his friend (video here) and became a Youtube hit. His cry of "Don't tase me, bro!" not only made TIME magazine's list of Top 10 T-Shirt Worthy Phrases this year, but has now been remixed with MC Hammer's 80's classic, which you can view here:

the red shoes

It isn't clear if Hans Christian Andersen's original story of The Red Shoes was the primary source, but it's fairly clear that red shoes continue to be associated with the forbidden, the strangely erotic, and all manner of other Naughty Things. Consider, for example, the movie poster for The Devil Wears Prada (a film saved only by its clothes and the Donna Karen-clad Streep, but my distaste for Anne Hathaway is another story):

Nonetheless, Christmas shopping the other day gave forth two - perhaps not unrelated - epiphanies. One, I haven't been shopping in a really long time. We're not talking grocery shopping or necessity shopping, mind you, we're talking Real Shopping. Two, I really, really, desperately want a pair of red shoes. A pair of red, patent-finish peep-toe high-heeled pumps.

Like Domenico Vacca's red peep-toe pumps (granted, they are not patent but they're so adorable they pass):


Or Jimmy Choo's red snake and suede heel (I wrote about the black version sometime back):


And perhaps for the ultimate expression of Haute Couture Porn Star, Miu Miu's red patent peep-toes:


Santa baby, take note.