on top of putting on a 2-day training seminar for work for the past 2 days and all the other events and things going on in my life, early yesterday AM i got a text message that jason & jiwon, some of our very BFFs, had gone into labor shortly before midnight (e.g. labor started on 5/7) with their first child. i got periodic updates throughout the day yesterday via txt, and it just kept going...all day long i kept trying not to think about it and focus on the work conference, but every time my phone beeped i jumped. as of 9:30 pm last night - 22 hours later - still no baby. i was worried. i've never been worried about a birth before.

while numerous friends have had babies, i generally wasn't involved in their lives at the time or very close friends, so it was never really something i was invested in, and to be bluntly honest i've never really been that excited - it's always been a little hard to have the expected amount of mothering-instinct excitement/empathy when i myself am childfree by choice and plan to remain that way. but we've been part of this pregnancy all along, and jason and jiwon are some of our closest friends. this is the closest i've ever come to being an aunt, and might possibly always be, as my younger sister doesn't have any children either. or as close as i may ever get to being a mother, for that matter.

finally! after 27.5 hours of labor, this morning, baby shin-strauss was born, mom and baby both healthy.

jason and jiwon are going to be some of the most wonderful parents ever. they are both so smart and curious and compassionate and full of wonderment and love - they gave so much to the world even before they were parents, i can only imagine how amazing this is for them, and how fun it's going to be watching them be parents and be a part of it. it's an incredibly lucky little girl, and i wish all the blessings in the world for them.

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thurs may 1: dinner with dr. kiki and mr. marshall who are back in town - yay!

friday may 2: helped ms. orangethang move (again) and then had a suprisingly yummy dinner at Parea wine bar (valencia @ 19th) - some seriously delicious food going on there. highly recommended

saturday may 3: 2.5 hour haircut with my friend brian jensen @ suite 5 salon (and it's still not really done; he cuts hair like a sculptor chips marble....slowly. precisely. with great amount of forehead crinkling.), then off to alxndr's birthday party, then to zante's indian pizza for dinner.

sunday may 4: how weird street faire, which was not nearly as weird as some previous years. the new financial district location seemed to have dampered the weirdness. or maybe it was the freezing wind chill. or maybe i'm just not as weird as in previous years. anyway, just not that into it.

(noted things missed/not done last weekend: meeting up with lisa b saturday night, maker faire, public displays of hooping (video))

monday may 5 after work: vera's birthday party!

today after work: evolution: the musical!

tomorrow/thursday 7-9: work!

friday 9: Never.Enough.Hope@the.Uptown

saturday 10: Whole.Earth.Festival + afterparty in davis!

sunday 11: afternoon birthday party + colin.stetson/ transmission@ amnesia!

monday 12: maybe i can get some sleep!

this post will have to suffice for real blogging for the next ..... while. see above.

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i've posted a few of faern's photos from the BadUnklSista performance @ 2nd skin @ the Exploratorium that feature my eyeballs on my flickr account

- thx so much faern for YOUR wonderful eyes

+

warren@after5media has wonderful sets of both 2nd skin and of the alchemy fashion show.



more about this past weekend blahblahblah etcetera later. have super busy week on all fronts this week. the biggest news is that i got about 8 inches cut off my hair. no suitable photos yet, but soon.

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my friends and their crazy gas/fire/circuitry shenanigans aka False Profit labs are featured in this Wired article on Maker Faire:

"What I'm looking forward to most is the camaraderie of being in the company of a bunch of DIYers who've been working in their garages until 1 or 2 in the morning getting stuff ready," said Brett Levine, co-founder of video software company Dovetail and a contributor to False Profit Labs, which has two exhibits at the Faire. "I have this feeling that there are all these garages right now with the lights on, drills humming, lathes turning, far and wide across the Bay Area."

Both of False Profit Labs' pieces -- Pyrocardium, which uses a stethoscope to send flames dancing in time with a person's heartbeat, and the Hydrogen Economy, which features exploding bubbles of hydrogen inside a clear plastic enclosure -- are being funded by Burning Man, highlighting the connection between the two events.

"Both have that breakaway spirit of, 'I can do this better if I do it myself,'" Levine said.

go brett!

Brett Levine and Stephen Trichter of False Profit engage in some innocent, bubble-bursting fun in Levine's garage with a piece of their Hydrogen Economy project. Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

see also: SF Chronicle article which features a video of Brett's Hydrogen Chamber:
Brett Levine demonstrates his "Hydrogen Chamber" at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. The chamber first makes highly explosive hydrogen bubbles contained in a clear chamber as spectators stab at the bubbles with electronic tipped rods, exploding the bubbles, followed by a bright fireball in front of their faces.

want to get creative? maker faire is this weekend in san mateo and features all kinds of amazing projects, from DIY robots to virtual games to fashion.

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~e.e.cummings

happy beltane!

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slow down, don't fuck with my high
i want to be left alone here with my monster zen

is what i thought he said, and it was one of my favorite 2 lines of song ever

but then i heard him sing it live last night i was like...wait....

no, it's

slow down, don't fuck with my high
i want to be left alone here with my monsters and

and now i don't like it quite so much.

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a year or so ago Dove got a lot of good press for their "real beauty" campaign, in which "average" sized women were used to promote their products, and their self-esteem "exposé" on how much work goes into making media images look unnaturally perfect. kudos to that, but at the same time, on the other side of the planet, Unilever, the parent company, was running ads that encouraged dark skinned women to lighten up with skin lightening products. so in the US, it's love your body, but in India, you should change? and not just change from "fat" to "thin", like so many commercials here in the US, but change from DARK TO LIGHT? WTF. how is that a campaign for "real beauty"?

there's also another dark side to the Dove story: their role in forest destruction.
The transnational corporation, Unilever, one of the world’s biggest food, beverage and personal care product manufacturers, has the ignoble status of using one in every twenty litres of palm oil from Indonesia’s palm plantations for its products. This potentially makes it the largest corporate consumer of Indonesian palm oil.

demand for palm oil is causing indonesia's forests to be slashed-and-burned to make way for palm plantations, and thousands of acres of indonesia rainforest are destroyed every year to supply companies like Unilever with palm oil - at this rate, in 20 years, 98% of the forests will be gone (youtube link to greenpeace video). as the celsias link points out, what can you do? 1 - switch to a environmentally friendly soap, or at least one that doesn't use palm oil. personally, i like dr. bronner's. 2 - tell Dove to stop using palm oil ingredients. there are plenty of alternatives.

it just really drives me insane how totally hypocritical these large food and beauty/health companies are - selling you one product to make you fat and then another to make you thin, telling one target market to embrace their natural selves while telling another if they changed, their lives would be better. i think there's a special place in hell for the people who work in sales & marketing for these companies.

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by Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

~thx, eric


this poem is so beautiful.

one of the things that always strikes me whenever i'm watching nature films is the way that other plants and animals accept what comes to them, and give into it, use it, become part of it. the penguins in March of the Penguins nearly broke my heart with their steadfastness as they stood protecting their young in the subzero winds, while we fight everything that comes our way - we put up walls and build elaborate infrastructures. historically we have always thought that this makes us stronger, more intelligent, but all it takes is one hurricane, one earthquake, one famine to show us otherwise. yet, then, so quickly we forget and keep fighting. who really is the smarter one - the ape that lives free in the forest with no home to lose, or the urban human who sits in his house wondering when his world might collapse? nature is smarter than science.

relatedly, if you haven't seen Into the Wild yet, i highly recommend it.

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tonight jay, reagan and i are going to see mike doughty @ the fillmore. i'm excited to see some live music. m.doughty was the frontman for soul coughing, one of my favorite bands ever, and his solo work, although a bit less funky and experimental and more melodic, is also quite excellent and i highly recommend checking it out. jay and i went to see him @ cafe du nord in 2003 (holy crap - 5 years ago?!) and it was a really great acoustic set. the fillmore is like....100x bigger than cafe du nord, so we'll see what kind of show this is.

speaking of live music, i hear our old friends colin.stetson/transmission will be back in town May 8-11 with one of their new formations, Never Enough Hope - listen! - out of Chicago, and will be reuniting on may 11th @ amnesia in SF. now *that's* exciting!

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