pilderwasser

Tuesday I got this matted & framed photo at UW Surplus. Not for the photo, for the frame. However,  the photo has since haunted me and I’m not sure I want to mess with its mojo. I may just keep it intact as a true 1987 artifact. I can always find another thriftstore frame for the project I’m envisioning. 

The more I read about this quintet, the more respect I have for the frame.

Philip A. Trautman was a distinguished professor in the UW Law school for 50 years. He passed away in 2019. 

Mark E. Abhold fell off the internet, perhaps in an Applied Physics military secret nuclear engineering way. Let me know what you know about him. 

Ann L. Darling is in the UW Communications Hall of Fame. She went on to teach at the University of Utah for years.

Paul Pascal was a distinguished Classics professor at UW for 38 years. He passed away in 2015. 

Loveday Conquest is currently Professor Emeritus in School of Aquatic and Fishery Science. She taught at UW from 1978 - 2014. Even though she retired before my time, her name vaults her into the top...

A few days ago one of my coworkers discovered a dusty old large box of paperclips in a storage cabinet at the mother ship. It was placed there years ago by a former government worker. 

Yesterday I dug my hand into the box for no real reason. Just to hold a heaping helping of old paper clips. Just because I could. This of course, inspired me to make a chain of clips. Which in turn brought to mind a little ditty I wrote 17 years ago when I was a shit-talking legal messenger, making shit-talk observations of various government workers, specifically King County Superior Court clerks. 

Here and now, seventeen years later, I’m a shit-talking government worker observing other government workers. As I taped a chain of paperclips to a pen I smiled the smile of a completed round trip. Out & back. Full circle. Always on time. Never working late. Getting the job done.  See my pen-paperclip display below.

proceed to the point of the turn

half past a monkey’s ass

alarm in 23 hours 59 minutes

I know why she swallowed the fly

to maintain the lifestyle she’d grown accustomed to

phantom sehnsucht syndrome

under the radar Irish goodbye

with a pocket full of erudite and a

ground-score ace of spades

This guy Alex, actually was your Bucky back in the days when he was a teenager, before he had status but he probably had a pager. He did the Bucky’s Blood run all over First Hill to various hospitals, here & there, out & back. Towing the biohazard insulated trailer, until he ditched it when no one was looking and just chucked the shit in his bag.

A while back when we were talking about the good old days and he told me about Bucky’s I knew I had to make him a Bucky Blue t-shirt. 

He was wearing it today when I spotted him in situ and got a photo. Alex rides an electric ass bathtub to work sometimes with his dog up front. Because it’s a quality of life issue and when you’re the building coordinator, every day is bring-your-dog-to-work day. 

All I wanted was a pepsi. When I say pepsi, I mean IPA. But really all I needed was a birthday balloon or two or three. As those in the know know the dollar store is the place to go for helium birthday balloons. 

While finding the balloons some hummingbird stickers found me. 

I wasn’t planning on a limited run series of hummingbird postcards, it just came to be. 

Layers, iterations, add-ons, stickers. Cut & paste. Scratch & sniff. Lick & stick. Turn & burn.  Address & mail. 

gold star for humming bird

orange you glad I didn't say coaster brake cog

This book of short stories jumped into my hands out of the little free library. Then I looked it over and learned Charles Johnson is a professor emeritus of English at UW where he taught creative writing from 1976 until 2009. 

I’m not a dust jacket fan so I ditched it. Then I added some crows feet because I’m a crow fan and that plain white cover sans jacket was sad. 

These stories would hold my attention regardless of the author. But the fact that Johnson is a UW badass makes it even more interesting to me as I schlepp it around campus in an electric ass bathtub and read a short story now and then, here and there, here and now.

As work progresses on this work in progress, I recently added a zero. Because, as you know, it all added up to zero. Then I created an equation bottom-line-underline from a vacuum cleaner belt and a plus sign from some heat-shrink tubing. A short while later Junior-Junior said “those don’t add up to zero unless you make the 5 and the 8 negative” 

My brain was running Public Enemy and his brain was running the numbers, doing the math. He also quickly mentally calculated the total MSRP for all seven sevens that Steve Young recently gifted me. 

Spot on. 

The ceramic heads above the Channel Zero addition equation don’t have much to do with it. They were just there first and proximity leads to assumptions. Your brain invents connections where there are none. 

Everything is a work in progress. Somewhere along the lines of expansion or contraction. Red shift. Blue shift. Renewal. Decay. Layers. Iterations. Additions. Subtractions. Positive. Negative.  It all adds up to zero.

Take a picture, it’ll last longer. 

RFID blocking

tin foil hats

conspiracy theories

wishful thinking

science technology

engineering math

tiger mom Tesla 

t r a f f i c   jam

drop-off pick-up

know who I am

does this bike make

my  butt  look  big?

wordle, spelling bee

connections, crossword

a living wage

when I was your age

now it's called

minimum wage

day in

day out

ONEWAY

or another

same bike

same day

different train

different way