I met someone who actually owns a Theremin! Eeeeee!!

Imagine if I could get him to collaborate on my movie soundtrack...

Seems like I've been "go, go, go!" all week. Good things come of it, though.

Yesterday I put in five and a half hours at No on 36 doing data entry. Picked up new lawn signs (sans lawn accoutrements) to put in the windows of the studio. I'm seriously bracing myself emotionally for the windows being broken. Crystalnacht on the butte is seeming all too plausible...

I've become convinced that the local vandalism is all being perpetrated by one person. A bevy of Yes bumperstickers have gone up on street signs, defacing them. I took two down last night, and intend to make a sweep of the neighborhood ASAP. They've written "Yes on 36" in pen on the block mailbox -- which seems like an escalation to me. And of course, they took our lawn sign. I took a photo of the mailbox, and will take pictures of the remaining bumpersticker vandalisms. This stuff needs to be documented, and it needs to be reported to the police. Sure, they probably can't do a thing -- but you want the documentation in place if/when things get worse.

Yesterday night was a PWCL dev cmte mtg. We're working on a 3 year strategic plan. My sense is that there's no real conflict about goals; perhaps a just little shear re how we visualize an adequate description of outcomes ("indicators of success"). Having written several work-in-progress strategic plans already during the past few months, I volunteered to have another go at writing something, using the new agency-wide format.

Two issues are being contentious. First, there's a question of whether the new Development Director should come to us with requests for help, or whether board members should be more in touch with the DD's work on a regular basis. After some heated discussion, I think our differences boiled down to the second point: some folks on the dev cmte have more flexible time, while others are already stessed to the max with their day jobs. I'm contemplating drafting a preliminary vision statement about how we want to share responsibilities with the DD, just so we don't have to go through this discussion again.

Tuesday morning I got up early and put in 3 hours writing a YL essay, which I then excerpted for Scoop. Wednesday, Carl came over for our first successful writing date in more than a year. We walked 5 miles on the Springwater, then got to work. I put in four and a quarter hours on another YL essay. It didn't wind up going anywhere, but it clarified how to approach the topic the next time I take a stab. Yesterday morning I squeezed in an hour and a quarter before No on 36; third essay in a week. Unfortunately I ran out of time on that one -- but I got a nice start on something that might actually see the light of day: "Why 'Youth Liberation' instead of 'Youth Rights'?" This one is in response to a question that's been posed to me a couple of times now by the YouthRightsLeaders list.

Wednesday night G & Carl & I went to "Write Now" at Palio. Having been writing in an academic tone all day, I was primed to get poetic. A very good night for me, writing-wise; G said she dug all three of my pieces, and couldn't scribble fast enough to take notes. Ee! Better yet, JoAnne used a line straight out of my first writing as the prompt for our second! Go me.

Afterwards, JoAnne came over to scout out the studio. We've invited her to run her first-ever writing workshop at our place. It's nice to support someone like this -- and it'll be a good play test of the space for when G runs her Artist's Way class come Spring. The date's set: JoAnne's class will be on Saturday, Nov 13, here!

Today is Studio Day. I'm hoping to finally get around to doing some decoration of the studio: putting up paper stars, hanging an old typewriter as an art piece, putting No on 36 signs in the windows. Also, I hope to get back to the HPL film. My next task: practice actually animating the critters -- but using just 1/5 of each (since they're 5-sided), to simplify things. ...After the HPL FilmFest, I was stoked to get to work. The coals are a little grayer at the end of the week, but still toasty.

Tonight we go to David Z's art show. Don't know exactly when it starts, which is a bit frustrating. This'll be two shows in a week -- having gone to Gabe's show Tuesday night. ...Oh, but this is just the beginning! This weekend is the "Portland Open Studios" tour. G & I are going to be trucking all over town to see the insides of artists' studios. Went last year and had a blast. This year, because the HPL fest was earlier, we get to go both weekends. Very exciting. Need to look through the calendar of events, prioritize which studios we're most interested in visiting.

J's final birth!! Nine years after she started down this path... The cell phone cut out, so I drove over with a bottle of Reisling and two glasses. Turned out that everyone was there -- new housemate, old ones packing -- so everyone shared a toast.

Saw Gabe's art show tonight! Long time since I've seen my former housemate. He's one of the few truly sweet men I've ever met; I'm very glad to have reconnected after all this time.

Tomorrow morning Carl comes over for a writing date. After two weeks of sicking out, hopefully the third time is a charm.

Looks like G's health coverage will end. Another issue to add to the ongoing "serious matters" workload, but a sadness too.

Got three hours of writing in this morning. An "exploration" of public education, which I intend to excerpt for Scoop ASAP.

I kissed three people who I care about today: hello, goodbye, congratulations. That's a happy thing, but emotionally overtaxing. Need key lime pie.

I just wrote this in response to a post by mph. Trying to sum up my religious inclinations was amusing...

"Being your typical Martin Buber & Starhawk toting, Stranger In A Strange Landish "god is other people" spouting, Atheists-For-Moses kind of Radical Faery... I'd be kinda interested in attending a Unitarian service along with y'all some time -- if you recommend it."

Just finished attending the 11th annual H.P. Lovecraft Filmfest with G. It's a highlight of my year... It was pretty good this year; not as shiny as last year though, I'd say.

I go mostly for the shorts blocks. I was a little disappointed. There weren't very many with creatures this time. They tended to be more the human-human stories. Also, it seemed like there were fewer that were directly related to Lovecraft; more that were simply supernatural tales. Realized this time around how important the funny clips are, to keep things from getting too depressing. A surprising dearth of animated clips probably had something to do with the lack of funny.

Here are some notes I took while suffering through a few of the shorts...

How to make a typically bad H.P. Lovecraft adaptation:

• film in black and white... or better yet: sepia tone
  
• apply the "old film" filter in QuickTime Pro to make your footage look scratchy
  
• use silent film titles... for long monologues
  
• make everything scary happen at night
  
• make the audience watch lots of unnecessary footage [put on coat, put hand on doorknob, open door...]
  
• use actors in their 20's because you don't have age-appropriate friends for the story
  
• actors: speak ye as if thy native tongue t'were Old English
  
• do the entire film as a voice-over -- it's hard to record sound outside the studio
  
• have very *SKREE* distorted *SHHHHHHK* sound
  
• copy the "Bambi vs. Godzilla" joke -- listing your name over and over in the credits

I suppose I could also start assembling a drinking game...

Evil book -- drink!
Cultist in black robes -- drink!
Fake blood gets splattered -- drink!
Main character gets frustrated and shouts "what's going on?!" -- drink!

...and so on. Maybe that'll be my little covert project next year. ;-)

Some of the feature films were pretty good. "Resurrected" and "Dead and Burried" were of similar quality: B, but competently made, and reasonably fun.

"The Last Wave", a Peter Weir film, was very good. Excellent use of water as a symbol; betcha I could spin a Jungian interpretation, if I tried, too.

Quatermass 2 was also very good, but in a different vein. Not really "weird" or "horror" -- just a good old-fashioned invasion from space story. As I understand it, the Quatermass films were pretty influential on Brit sci fi. I was strongly reminded of the Tom Baker Dr. Who episode, "Android Invasion"... However, there are a lot of Dr. Who eps that were probably inspired by this flick -- Particularly Pertwee eps, where the Doctor is stranded on Earth, and almost every episode is an invasion from space story.

Two things I really appreciated about Quatermass: (1) It didn't try to be funny -- it just told the story, straight. (2) Lots of innocent people died -- not just people who had sex, or who were somehow morally flawed. [Actually, take this as a sad commentary on how crappy a lot of contemporary sci fi is.]

I could also praise this flick for putting the power in the hands of the people... It's an angry mob and a few authorities who no one's listening to that save the world -- not the organized military. Nice change, to not have the implicitly pro-military message there. Go proletariat!

Spent way too much on Lovecraftian swag... But at least some of my Xmas shopping is now done.

Nice to see the usual suspects in the lobby between films. Both Edward Martin III and Andrew Migliori wanted to know when I'd be submitting something. Does my heart good to know that I'm remembered, and there are open arms waiting.

Damn my ass is sore. The Hollywood Theater is a nice venue -- but it has terrible seats. Oy. I'll be walking this off for days.

I can't believe that just worked!

...OK, so I've been hearing for some time about how vegetables off-gas something that will make other vegetables go bad faster. So I decided that after removing all the veggies from the drawer in the fridge, I'd try dumping out these invisible gasses.

Then I recalled all those episodes from Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye the Science Guy where they put out a candle by pouring carbon dioxide on it. Probably not the same gas, I think to myself, but what they hey -- let's have some fun.

So I light a candle. And then I pour this empty crisper drawer over it. And... Oh my gawd! The candle goes out!

Now, I suppose it could be that cold air is heavier than your usual air, or that I somehow botched the experiment by creating a draft (though it didn't look like a draft)... Still, that was pretty durned kewl. :-D

We got our No on 36 lawn sign on Thursday. Tonight when we came home it was torn down. Barely two days.

Evil neighbors! No cookie!