times, they are a changin'

we have a secret attic room in our house, tactfully dubbed the "anne frank room". it's strictly storage space, not party space, and so we put all sorts of crap up there and forget about it. today i found a handle of vodka hidden behind some stuff from one of our parties a long time ago. the reason i'm rooting around up there is because i'm moving rooms! finally! after 2 1/2 years, i'm finally moving to a room with windows... you don't know how sweet that is. and i'm bringing down all my clothes i packed up when i left for my trip, and i discover bags upon bags of clothes and shoes that i forgot about. shit. and i know it's now or never, i gotta sort it all out. so bags upon bags of clothes and shoes come sailing down, and i make molly help me make the hard decisions. you know, you get all attached to some shirt you've never worn that your mom gave you because she said it made you look pretty, and every time you go through your clothes, you see it and go, "it's practically new, and mom gave it to me that one summer." and you keep it. well this time, baby, no mercy! i put all the clothes in a big bag and am going to take it to the goodwill. check out the bag.

now, you'd think that there would HAVE to be something worthwhile in that big pile of clothes, but it's all things like these sunglasses, that i bought when i was exiting my punk stage, and entering into my short-but-sweet-j-lo stage, and was blundering through the fashion world trying to figure out what to wear that don't involve a butt flap. i ordered the sunglasses from a magazine.

or, you could find this little gem, something you buy when you imagine your life as a busy little student, drinking tea and diligently doing homework on the couch in the chilly san francisco winters.

i know i know, you're asking yourself, "how could anyone want to give that piece of snuggly to the goodwill? that thing's AWESOME!" well, i was stumped by the same question when i found it at the goodwill, and now i know it's because it smells like b.o.
go back and look again at the last photo and check out my sweet new adidas to the left of the clothes bag. dear lord, what am i doing? go to bed.

erase errata!

more bottom of the hill fun! more hot babes!
ellie had some fans, with special shirts just for her.



ellie got to sign nora's shirt, lucky lady.


so did bianca!


and jenny!


now that shirt is a collector's item i bet.

molly!

my little sister molly is staying the summer here in sf with me, taka and i took her out to point lobos on monday. here's her and taka in the tunnel.

yes, i have 2 little sisters who look nothing like myself.

one-self!

at bottom of the hill last saturday, they stayed at our house and so we made them put everyone on their guest list. after the show, i found the list, and it had like 18 people on it. oops.
but they were awesome!!! the lady, her name is like mine but with a "y". word. we danced all night and are now fans. you should be too.
www.one-self.net

carnival!

i thought it was over, at least it was in panama 3 months ago... but it happened again last weekend in the mission!

celebrate! with pinto beans!


and sausages! when i took the first bite of the delicious sausage, this hipster boy (who forgot he knew me) who was passing us turned to his friend and announced, "phallic!" like he was going to win the prize for spotting the girl eating the giant wiener and making the connection to a real wiener. this is what art school is for, teaching you stuff so you don't feel so special all the time when you realize something.


this rooster had silky feathers like hair. it was soooo cute, and just hung out with this guy who was digging through the recycling. when this little kid asked the guy where the chicken came from, the guy said, "from a TINY EGG". we followed the guy and his rooster around for a bit because i was so in love with it, and all the time people would ask him what's up with the chicken. the guy would say, "he's helping me recycle! everyone should recycle!"


angie and betty as we walked home, full of sausage.

peonies

before i left ne.

sfff!

rabbit apple slices from taka!


passport to the future pictures?


what you find in the basement of a market street mall

welcome to hell

guatemala

tasha with the kids at our house in guatemala, i could never remember their names. lala and rosa?

i've started to work with my 35mm film from central america, developing and scanning and processing. i noticed that i have all these tragic photos of animals. photos that i don't really know what to do with, as they are kind of shocking and heart wrenching (for me at least). what do you do with photos of starving puppies who die the next day? what do i do with all the photos that i was forced to take because it was the only thing i could do? i don't like the spectacle of suffering, but i did take them. the photos don't even leave me with hope, only sadness.


fortunately, there were a few animals we could help out a little. my favorite was gusanita, a little kitten who would tear holes in the bread bag and ruin loaves of bread. she didn't even eat that much of it, cuz she doesn't even like bread! here's gusanita with some chicken scraps we brought her.

nebraska cola

still in nebraska. a place that most people don't get. when we were in guatemala city, we shared a taxi with a bunch of american boys and their surf boards. here's how the conversation was started, after they'd tied their boards to the roof of the car.
them- "where are you two from?"
us- "nebraska"
them- "ha! oh... is that susposed to be a joke?"
us- "no. but is it funny to you?"
them- "well..."
us- "because it's not."
them- "sorry"
us- "so where are you from?"
them- "virginia"
us- "sorry."
them- "ha! oh... you're not joking again, are you."
us- "no."

and they're feeling all uncomfortable because we made them look stupid (they may not look stupid here, but trust me, in real life it was great). so this is about how all interactions go when it comes down to people finding out i grew up in nebraska, and i don't care, i will always represent. not our football team, or the assholes who killed brandon teena, but i love nebraska. it's kind of like doing coke, when you do it you love it so much and think that this is the way the rest of your life should be because you're suddenly so awesome and everything rules. but after a two week visit you're ready to go home and figure out your life again. and where else can you find such awesome things like this stuff!!


fossils! just lying around for the taking! turn your room into a museum!


a frosting covered barbie doll!


my dad woke me up to show me these boots he found for me at a garage sale of some old girlfriend. (who he didn't recognise-oops) we went back later to look at a film projector he wanted, and i found this beautiful box set of art:


i was wearing my new boots and carrying around the kitty block puzzle when the old girlfriends' sister said, "now, what grade are you in?" this kind of shit drives tasha crazy, but i always get a kick out of it, especially since i just turned 29! (tuesday)
san francisco is the best place for one to be 29 and nearly unemployeed, because it's still acceptable to be old and living hand to mouth and not be starting on your "responsible" life yet, like all the people you know back home are doing.
but i still love nebraska, and that's what this will end on.

nicaragua

secret home activities

since i've been back home in nebraska, i've been doing all the secret activities you only do at your parents house.

THINGS TO DO AT HOME:
1)go to the mall with your mom and let her get you stuff because you're so raggedy
2)watch tv shows you've never seen before
3)wear flip flops outside
4)eat lots of bacon
5)read a 1998 copy of cigar afficionado magazine in the bathroom for 40 minutes
6)give yourself a pedicure
7)mow grandma's lawn
8)look in your sister tasha's room and see all the shit she has of yours
9)use a humidifier
10)take walks with the dog
11)tye-dye your black sabbath shirt that your mom got you at the mall
12)listen to your dad this time

home home

i miss my sister sooo much. i had to come back home, like in home home, like i'm sitting in my mom's bed watching the dog whisperer, eating snacks and getting fat, while tasha's in granada learning to salsa and avoiding chicharrones. so why does she have to call and say how i stole her guide book and how expensive everything is and how hot it is? hey, yeah i got walgreens, but you have an adventure.

so i made this collage of her, click it and see how cute she is:

what do you want to be when you grow up?

how about a beautiful french family that travels around the world together?



tasha is in the trenches, as in tutoring in the schools now. every day there are more stories about the kids than i can remember, but here´s a summary of a story that she read to a class the other day.

so there´s a french guy who comes to nicaragua and falls in love with this beautiful woman. they get married, and have a baby girl. he gets sick and goes to managua to go to the doctor, and then dies. the nica woman doesn´t know what happened to him, and ends up dying of a broken heart, leaving the baby in care of some guy. since the french guy was really rich, the baby girl got all the money. the guy who was taking care of her was in charge of the money, but guess what, he was a bad man. he wanted the money so bad that when she was 5 or so, he started telling her all these terrible stories about the house they lived in, ghost stories, to try to scare her to death. and it worked, she ended up dying of fright. she was buried on top of a hill by the villagers. the guy gets all the money and goes around spending it, and then the town starts getting suspicious about her death, and when they realize that he killed her, they lynch him and kill him. everyone loved the little girl and her grave turned into a shrine and becomes famous. not long later, a crocodile gets in the lake near the village, and everyone´s really scared of it. so this guy from the village goes to the girl´s grave and makes a pledge to kill the crocodile if she´ll help him, and he´ll give her the tail. he ends up getting the crocodile and is holding it´s head on a stake, and then the head looks at him and says, ¨i love the virgen mary¨nd the guy drops the head because he knows it was the dead girls spirit and the head swims away. so after that, everyone loved the girl´s grave even more.
the end.

tasha said the kids loved the story.

granada, nicaragua

hello everyone, as you may all know, i´m in granada, sweating my balls off. it´s great. you take a shower twice a day, you´re sticky, you´re tired all day, your clothes are contantly damp from sweat, and it´s barely bareable at night. there´s no ac anywhere, you don´t speak spanish well enough to do much, and 75% of the guys are sleazy. battle loosing your voice, having a cough, cracked heels, food poisening manifesting itself as the ´rhea or vomiting, and i´m sure there´s other stuff i just can´t remember. i´m a little cranky because of the heat, and now i find out that the cost to change my ticket home is the cost of a new ticket. just a little cranky. i want to go back to san pedro! oh well. bla bla bla. gonna go sweat somewhere else.

pepito, from panama

san pedro, i miss you sooooooooo much

hanging out on the ´buena vista´rock at lago de atitlan, our dayly ritual of swimming and sunning.


santa semana


night-time at FREEDOM! the bar to be at.


victims of freedom, with the ever present cuba libre


'tu hablas catitlan, no?'
'cathithlan?'


tasha thinking about whether or not she wants another drink of the calemocho--cheap wine and coca cola (a barcelonian 'specialty')


ALL NIGHT RAVE PARTY!!


after the all night rave party!

thumb up yo

semana santa weekend!

word, things are heating up for the semana santa weekend here in san pedro, the nightly drum circles are getting more frenzied, and hotels are filling up like mad and leaving sad tourists wandering about with nowhere to stay. we´re making new people here, and seeing old friends from a few countries back and generally having a good time. even hanging out with hippies!!! this is what i get for owning tie-dye shirts i guess. my spanish is slowly improving, though it only had one way to go. i have a new word, gracioso. yo creo el pelo de los hippies esta similar a que un buho vomitan.

more livingston.

lago atitlan, guatemala

tasha and i are in san pedro la laguna, on the shores of lago atitlan in guatemala. it's a beautiful little town with a nice climate and views of cloud forests and a volcano, and filled with mayans and hippies, though the hippies are slowly accumulating their own collection of authentic mayan gear. TRIBAL. there are so many hippies in this town, that one can be charmed on every corner by a talented band of street musicians. bongos, didgeridoos, clarninets and flutes can be heard when the sun starts to set. we saw one group of musicians sitting respectfully out of range of a store with a giant bongo painted on the wall, a giant red X through it. they must hate fine music there. we're staying with a family who rents out a room in their house by the lake and some stinky bony sorry looking ponies. yesterday the wife, nacha, dressed us up in traditional mayan clothes in hopes that we'd buy the skirts and stuff, or maybe it is a conspirancy to turn us into hippies like the rest of the town. on that note, i lost my favorite tie-dye t-shirt a few towns ago! wah! i only had two. i'll probably spot one of these folks here walking around with it on, with a thick coat of hippy juice on it, rendering it uninhabitable for all but hippies and gutter punks.
ciao!

who wants a broke camera today? 1,2,3...go!