September 2006 Archives

Matthew asked me to give a talk at the Public Speakers room at the Affair at the Jupiter Hotel and so I'm going to talk about my dear old Superfund site -- I never get tired of that place!

I described my talk as:

"A brief historic overview of the north Portland McCormick/Baxter superfund site and adjacent properties, together with some photos, some music, some digressions on how to conduct historic research on Portland industrial properties, and a series of sincere questions about the aesthetic appeal of abandoned industrial sites in a post-industrial economy (with some mostly uninformed parallels suggested between punk/goth/emo, and the 18th century Cult of Ruins)."

And I think that's pretty much what I'll do -- with any luck!

No They Do (aka Pete) will be joining me with some soulful strumming. He's promised me a cover of Nothing but Flowers, from which I took my talk title.

We'll be going at 3 PM on Saturday.

And boy oh boy -- the other speakers sound really interesting. There will be talks on dancing, drinks, furniture, geography, karaoke, reading, democracy, and of course art, among other things. My kind of stuff. I'm kind of intimidated, actually, but I think my pictures will be good, anyway and I'm pretty good at projecting my voice so at the very least, it will be easy to hear.

Here's a description of "Public Speakers" from Matthew:

12 x 14
(Public Speakers September 29 - October 1, Jupiter Hotel, Portland, Oregon)

Public Speakers is a group of autonomous cells in four cities commissioning and presenting new public lectures for a popular audience. Past lecture events include "Psychedelic Logging," "Mansex Agitprop," and "Monkey Wreaks Havoc in Suburbia" (all in Portland, Oregon). For more information write to publicspeakers@gmail.com.

(Mary again): I hope to see you there!

Update:

You can download the complete program as a PDF here

Remember Bread Delivery by Bike? I emailed New Seasons about the idea and they sent me back a really nice email saying they liked the idea, but pointing out some obstacles they saw (they thought someone would need to be home to accept delivery, the bread might get wet in the rain, and they wanted employees with benefits, not hobos, to do the delivery). When I responded with solutions to some of the obstacles (locked breadboxes, tarps, universal health care), they told me that this was in the works -- home delivery by biodiesel van! And lo and behold, they have made it so!

This is great news for people going without a car, people who don't want to make an extra trip to the grocery store, the agoraphobic, and the just-plain-lazy. For my part, I will save the $9.95 delivery fee simply by not going into the store and impulse-buying a teapot shaped like an elephant or something. And it's nice that you can't tip, I think, because tipping always stresses me out. You can also do pick up for $4.95, where you place your order and then drive and pick it up on the parking lot.

This will probably increase the overall number of times a month I go shopping. I used WebVan a couple of times before it went under, and I loved it. I hope they have a thing where the website remembers you and what you like to buy frequently. And I think it would be great if you could have "friends" set up like in Netflix, so your friends could recommend foods! Maybe they could link up a dating service, too -- you know, like, "you're obviously shopping single, and you like whole seed mustard, maybe you'd like this person"? or something like that?!

The service isn't cheap enough to use it to keep you in fresh bread (unless you're some kind of a millionaire or something) so bread-by-bike delivery would still be useful! Someone should hop to it!

But I'm very happy to see this great idea put into practice and come mid-October, I'll be buying mine online!

Knitting is hot. Porn is popular. (You don't need my links to prove it, do you?)

Why not combine the two, asks Shawn? And offers the pornographic ski sweater as a great idea for doing it. So, you know, instead of deer or stars or whatever, you'd have little pictures of people getting it on. It'd be subtle -- keeping it classy, you know?

If I had any talent for drawing porn, knitting, or making patterns, I'd run right out and make some patterns and pitch them as a new form of hipster erotica.

Maybe we can get Su Job to branch out from needlepoint.

And this would be a great way to update last year's tree sweater.

Pete had a great idea.

It's a musical oral history of the future -- with robots.

It's an account of the jealous competition between myth and machine -- with robots.

It's a bitter-sweet documentary of the plight of the post-human workforce -- with robots.

It's an emotional, technological participant observation research project -- with robots.

And it's a CD. You should get one. And then "Robot" XJ3 (aka No They Do) can be your friend.

Someone visited here looking for "creative ideas for telling someone your pregnant", so I thought of a good use for the World's Ugliest Public Sculpture. Feel free to cut & paste this into your emails for a DIY e-card!

This idea from Daniel --

"seeing as how our country seems infatuated with the fake extreme of "american cheese" and how prominently it is used at fast food restaurants and barbecue-y things, i thought that we should take shit to the next level and introduce to the public, in cylindrical form: AMERICAN KETCHUP and AMERICAN MUSTARD!!!!! think about it! we could pack all three of these things in the same little doo-hickey and then sandwiches could be made simple and easy. not sure of the logistics yet, but everyone who hears about this idea has something to throw in there. do you think it has merit? do you at least think that it is funny to think about? thats all i really want anyway, that and to market this in japan where they will go BONKERS over it. heck yea!"

The idea of sandwich fillings that come pre-formed into sandwich (or bagel) shape already exists, and the MoHDI guys have a butter pusher in development. But I don't see much in the strict condiment field, so I think Daniel's got something.

This patent might help -- using it, you could put the ketchup and mustard in a sealed envelop of American cheese, sort of like a savory Uncrustable.

The other thing I love about this idea is its name: AMERICAN condiments. We've sort of missed the crest of the "Freedom Fries" wave, but I still think there's plenty of space for a line of condiments specifically marketed as American. I'm sure I'm not the first to notice the irony that the most American of mustards is called "French's". And although it's apparently untrue that they issued a statement denying they were French, they do go out of their way to say that "there's nothing more American than French's mustard."

But why have a name that begs the question? Why is the flag waving on the French's bottle red?, not red, white and blue? What, are they communists or something?

Our line of American condiments might include:

American Ketchup: May seem redundant, but with American patriotism, there's no such thing as overkill.

American Mayonnaise: I don't know that the product itself needs to be redesigned, or that there are big differences in mayonnaises (although Melissa, with her preference for mayonnaise that comes in a tube -- a toothpaste style tube, not a Kewpie tube might disagree), but clearly, this product renaming at the very least -- I can hardly spell it, it's so foreign! I say we rebrand it as "American White Sauce." (Although "American Sandwich Lube" has a catchy a ring to it, too).

American Mustard: Package the yellow sauce in a bottle of red, white and blue at the very least. Or maybe we find a way to dye the mustard blue, then we package all three in a tube as Daniel suggests, so you'd have a layered stack of red, white and blue condiments. You might sell them in strips, too, for hot dogs.

Before he took off for a colder climate down under, the talented Mr. Records shared with this great idea for a TV show. He said I could blog it, so here it is, with some suggestions and elaborations from me.

Title: Tao Jones

Pitch: Kung Fu meets Wall Street

or,

"A 21st Century Charlie Chan with a young white guy playing the lead."

Summary: A handsome, cynical, abrasive, hyperactive high-powered Wall Street businessman experiences a personal crisis of some kind which inspires him to turn to Eastern Philosophies and become a hero.

Maybe he takes a business trip to China to visit some of his sweatshops. While he's there, his wife and son die in a car crash back in the states which leads him to look on life -- and the children laboring in his factories -- differently. He studies long and hard with a bunch of monks or whatever people who study the Tao are called. I definitely see this part as a montage, ideally heavy on the martial arts -- are swords and stuff part of the Tao?

He comes back to the states a changed man, and a problem solver. Still fabulously wealthy, he now uses his money to help underprivileged children, his strength to defeat evil, and his wisdom to solve crimes. The while time he randomly quotes Lao Tzu, saying things like: "Ruling a nation is like frying a small fish" or "Once mature, a person prefers substance to appearance, fruit to flowers."

The rest of it would just write itself.

Brilliant, right??

Thanks, Shawn!