eavesdropping does a body good.

funny ass conversation i eavesdropped on, while waiting at the new orleans airport:

chinese mom calls someone on the phone, and then hands the phone to her kid.

mom: guess who it is?
kid: (to person on phone) you sound familiar…
mom: guess! if you guess, she’ll love you!
mom: you can’t tell by her voice?
mom: you can’t tell? you’re dead for sure!
kid: (cries)

“you’re dead for sure” is bad in english, but it’s pretty colloquial in chinese and not that out of the ordinary… or that harsh. so it’s really hilarious that the kid starting crying. haha!

frustrating frustrations.

I’m so frustrated with myself!!! The airport security workers at Washington-Dulles were totally being a dick to this Spanish-speaking lady and I wanted to stand in and translate, but I kept asking the security worker what she needed to do and he kept ignoring me, so I just went through security while feeling bad the whole time. I heard him say she needed to go back and had her baggage in his hands, so I really shoulda just told her, “El dice que necesita usted a regresar,” and then forced them to tell me more things I could tell her, but I didn’t, and now I’m REALLY probably overly unreasonable with myself for not being assertive enough.

But it was so sad! It was like this grandma, who was just like, “No comprendo!” all cute and sad-like, and they just wheeled her off in her wheelchair :/ I’ve been to countries where I felt completely out of place at the airport — Denmark, mainly — and it is just a weird feeling, and to not even be able to communicate… it must feel so foreign and so sad. I feel so bad. :{

haven’t really written shit in ages. it starts, here, with portland, oregon.

recap central. this is going to take a muthafuckin while. son.

thursday, september 17th, 2009
was bumming around seattle and headed down to portland with peter for musicfest nw! son! had some fucking wristband problems because the willamette weekly office closed by the time we got to portland, and so i had to call a publicist chick and arrange some shit. i got a vip wristband, holla! which ruled! and peter got some really random wristband, and we couldn’t figure out what the fuck it was, but it worked! just in time for explosions in the sky! woulda been a bummer if it hadn’t worked out, cause that was the ONE band peter REALLY wanted to see. for me, it was okay, but i was tired of standing and couldn’t see anything, so i sat half the time. and kinda coulda fell asleep, don’t remember if i actually did or not. stayed that night at micah‘s house! they had a fucking rad ass set up! we each had a bed to sleep on! not really sure what that was the case, but MOTHAFUCKIN RULE!!!

friday, september 18th, 2009
journal notes based on recap i wrote on my ipod touch:
- woke up
- cuddled furiously with cat: micah’s cat, harvey (named after two-face), is hellzaz cuuuute.
- drove to lloyd center: to hop on the max / leave peter’s car there.
- taco trucks downtown: actually, i had a veggie sammich.
- park to eat (metal detector guy): there was a guy scavenging the waterfront park for who knows what.
- walk to rei: picked up my backpack, yay!
- willamette (not williamette!) weekly office: yeah, i didn’t know it was actually willamette weekly, so i felt like an idiot mispronouncing it about a zillion times. went to the office and got an extra set of wristbands! kinda (details forthcoming).
- streetcar: took streetcar for free, wee!
- powell’s: stopped by and read sedaris for a while.
- post office: had to mail some shite. actually, thought i did but didn’t have the address, so i just bought envelopes instead for future mailings.
- furious quest for pencil sharpener: so i could put up these art printouts. no dice.
- get back to car! no keys!: a fucking nightmare! peter dropped his keys “in portland somewhere”! holy shit!

[[ for some reason the notes skip some shit here, which is just crazy!! here's what happened in between... ]]
had to give alex and jimena coffee, so they were near lloyd center and were going to meet up with us, but oh no, the car’s locked. luckily, they had triple a, so they got a tow paid for. unfortunately, fucking volkswagen has crazy security precautions and they couldn’t unlock the car because it would set off the alarm for life or something. mofos. waited around for peter’s friend to pick us up. crap, i forgot his name; that’s some bad form! wtf is his name… time to dig through emails… oh yes, sam. anyhoot, we planned to stay at sam’s for that night, but first we saw some shows. 9:00pm: say hi (eh); 10:00pm: monotonix (eh, same ol’ same ol’); 11:00pm: bad brains (they looked very sleepy); 11:00pm: mount eerie (good… well, their darker stuff was good, anyway); 12:00am: japanther (i thought they were okay before but today it was kinda meh); 12:00am: the long winters (we only caught the encore of their set but holy shit, it left me fucking speechless for a bit. i wish i had fucking recorded it. why didn’t i record it? i can’t even remember. something about conserving battery for portugal. the man the next day because i’d forgotten to bring my camera charger. but i REALLY should have recorded it.); 1:00am: two cow garage (the band was ridiculous, their fans were ridiculous, but it was all quite entertainingly ridiculous. just look at their name for the love of god!)… anyways, after the show, went home and crashed. back to notes.

- guy askin bout y asian girls don’t like brothas: as i was walking around downtown during show times, some black guy stopped me and asked if he could ask me a question about asian girls, and i said, “sure,” and he said, “why don’t asian girls ever talk to brothas?” and i said, “i’m talking to you,” and he said, “yeah, you are, but you’re probably on your way to meet your white or asian boyfriend,” and i’m like, “nope, i’m not on my way to meet anyone,” and he’s like, “you drink?” and i’m like, “not really,” and he’s like, “you smoke bud?” and i’m like, “sometimes,” and he’s like, “you want some?” and i’m like, “nahh,” and he just left without really saying anything. lol.

saturday, september 19th, 2009
- woke up
- read sedaris: his new book is one i’ve been whittling away at every time i go to powell’s bookstore. i’m more than halfway through it and will finish it within a couple more trips to powell’s, i guarantee it!!!! sam and girlfriend had it at their house, so i read it first thing in the morning.

[[ notes end again ]]
sleep setup was not a bed, but it was couch cushions laid on the floor with sheets and sleeping bag on top of it. it was actually pretty godamn comfy. could not complain. what’d we do today………….. bummed around for a long time. interviewed john gourley from portugal. the man around 4:00pm and there was some crazy guy who kinda interrupted our interview. but it was all in good fun and mr. gourley is a little too ridiculously talented and kind and good-looking. kind of. ridiculous. like, really. how can one human have so much! anyhoot. it was a swell interview. ate some thai food with peter after. mmmm. nom. dude, i think. i’m so confused about what happened when, haha. saw some music at nighttime. 8:00pm: dr. loomis (whatevers metal girl-fronted shit); 8:00pm: drug rug (it was okay); 9:00pm: crom (uh… can we say amazing? fucking hilariously filthy lead singer! — see peter’s review here); 9:40pm: portugal. the man (definitely a fucking good live act, although i think their old stuff is more adequate for uber showmanship than their new stuff — see video here and here); 10:45pm: the get up kids (i’d wanted to see a couple songs for nostalgia’s sake, but i saw part of one and it was MEHHH); 11:00pm: church (second time seeing them… pretty damn entertaining); 11:00pm: grouper (ambient music is okay to listen to but kinda boring to watch); 12:00am: om (fucking amazing — show review here). went home, instantly crashed. oh yeah, turns out peter’s car won’t be fixed until monday or something. so we have to figure out a way back home or something.

having some fun inside of the doug fir.

some fun outside of the doug fir.

sunday, september 20th, 2009
time to gigga-go!!!! had to get some car shit taken care of cause turns out like, third-party companies can make copies of peter’s key but volkswagen can’t. what kinda shit!! ridonkulous. so we go to eat thai food — which rules — and then do that shit. meet up with aaron, john, and gina briefly while they’re eating brunch at some totally hoppin spot cause i didn’t think there’d be a chance to meet up with them, but turns out they’re going to see the chapman swifts — as we are — that night. so i’ll see them later, but lunch was fun. hung out at sam’s for a while doing some work, and then just went to the chapman swallows at nighttime before leaving town. aaron, john, and gina met us up and we all had a fun old time watching crazy birds diving into a chimney. every year, during september, these birds live in a chimney for a while, and they just fly out of the chimney in the morning and into it at sundown. aweeeesooooommmmmmme!!!! SEE PIC! (did not capture the complete awesomeness.)

life is (mostly) good.

life is good, it’s mostly good, but it’s tiring, this tour of life, this poop of scoop. massive updates to come. shit. dawg.

in the meantime.
la dispute.
sound was a little off this night. nonetheless.

los angeles, wtf, houston, wtf, austin, ok, san antonio, ok.

i’m listening to… tegan and sara’s “the con” album.

$15 cover? wtf. luckily i didn’t have to pay for it cause henry got it. but what the shit?!! i totally had left my wallet in the car initially, too, cause i figured! wtf! who pays cover on a tuesday night! but clearly i know nothing. not to mention the club was in the middle of nowhere (maybe?) in santa monica. took two shots of tequila and got kinda pretty drunk offa that, which is hilarity. friends, friends. henry also got grounded when he was 16 and his parents’ method of grounding was by putting “the club” onto his car. too funny. he also put an art installation / social experimentation project i guess on the campus of his college — and you put in a quarter, and the machine gave you back twenty-six cents. ummm, awesome? other than that, hung out with michael today and yesterday and watched movies and ate sushi, and went to the mall with jeanette and her friend jenn today! oh, and i saw jeanette get a manicure (and pedicure, but i wasn’t really watching that so much) which was weird, and scraping off cuticles kinda grosses me out, not gonna lie. now i’m at jeanette’s house, listening to music, at 2:21am, eating mixed nuts from costco. woo!

oh yeah, yesterday aaron texted me while i was still in austin and was like! there’s this weird shoperotic channel on tv that is marketing an extreme _______ (insert name of extreme dildo), and i was like, dude! i worked for them! funny.

austin was decent, stayed with one of my writers, matt, and did random shit……………. walked around a bunch, drew on the university of texas campus, ate yogurt, chatted with alex for hours from my itouch from a yogurt shop, etc. lot of public transportation and solo lameness. lots of frustration. saw a-ron and co. at the mohawk where they were performing. it was fun. the show had some techy probs and a-ron was losing his voice, but yeah. played the drawing game. got a bong drawn on my leg. it was all good. hung out with the brunettes for dinner which was interesting cause half of them were mega goofy and half were pretty serious. yeahhhhh. and stubb’s bbq doesn’t have vegetarian options really, as usual, but i had some wicked fried okra!! woo!!! from austin, i rented a car and drove to houston because some guy at the nurses show had told me that houston was better than san antonio. he was wrong and sucked.

houston was a fucking weird place which i hated kinda but it was interesting to go to because there was like jack shit there! really nice, new buildings on one street, really super ghetto boarded up buildings on the next street over. weirdness. also passed by one stretch of freeway where it was like every-chain-store-in-america-in-these-five-miles — i shit you not. i was beginning to think there were no more chains possible but new ones kept popping up. it truly blew my mind. i slept in my car in front of an apartment complex really close to the downtown stadiums. no problems with that really other than the fact that i really shoulda taken a shower, and what’s more — the pattern on the seat kinda left marks on skin!!!! also left the windows cracked a smidgen and it started pouring like a MOTHERFUCKER sometime in the night and started raining on my legs, woo! this is total rambling stream-of-consciousness bullshiz. there was this awesome outdoor car wash place in houston, though, called the “humble car wash”, and it was like pretty unfancy and the workers were all these black youths, like teenagers. so funny. i enjoyed it very much, and the sign was all rickity and funny and simple and there were like 15 teens hanging out there washing cars, only there were no freaking cars to wash!!!!!!!!!! took lotsa cool pics (well, some cool pics) and got lost a lot but it was pretty fun in that regard. there was a george washington monument which i tried to check out but parking downtown was absolutely fucking impossible, so i gave up and didn’t actually get to check out the downtown all that much. i also attempted to find a coffee shop to charge my electronics and i could NOT locate one even though i looked around and circled down every street ever. also attended church and found a church recommendation through couchsurfing — a catholic charismatic church — but unfortunately there was not any speaking in tongues. it was a little interesting because they adhered pretty strictly to catholic ideals and customs, but the father himself was so super lax and really kinda funny and kinda was dressed in green and purple, like a football player, kinda, as opposed to a father. interesting. but ultimately because of the lack of speaking in tongues, it pretty much did nothing for me. kinda interesting though cause the praise song they were playing when we got in was one i knew. i forget the name now. moo. oh yeah also ate dinner by myself — a highly-recommended texmex place according to chowhound — and it was kinda weird because it was a sorta party-like atmosphere (think chile’s) but i was alone. i got over that real quick, though, but texmex is not all that good. not particularly down with it, to be honest.

then it was onto san antonio, and i slept in the car again, but drove middle of the night to a rest stop and slept there. it was fine, but a little cold. kinda found san antonio a wee bit charming in a more interesting historical sense. the architecture was cool and the whole feel was less big city and hence more appealing. there was also a lot more mexican, including this outdoor mexican square thing with music and dancing and food, and was even a lot more mexican down to the… i got honked at… at one point, i got honked at by one car that slowed down and honked five times in a row! like hell yeah! i haven’t gotten honked at five times in a row even in mexico or peru! so you win! congrats!!!!! woooooo!!! oh yeah. the alamo fucking sucks. it’s no godamn lie. the shit is soooo pointless. why do people go to san antonio to see the alamo? i’ve no godamn clue!!!!

by the end of texas i was really fucking dirty and desperately needed a shower. luckily i got one really early on in los angeles. woo!

sleeping and brushing of teeth should happen.

or at least taking a nap on the couch before that happens. yeah. that sounds good. yeah.

emo. schmemo.

12:02am – 12:27am
[this is unedited stream-of-consciousness action, written while hanging out on tables outside a library at the university of texas.]

i’ve finished the little pink notebook i carry with me. the adventure with it began on november 25th, 2008, on a walk around my neighborhood in livermore, california. tonight, i’ve finished it on a walk around the fine city of austin, texas. i am absolutely in a confused state of mind. i have absolutely finished off this notebook with scribbles and scrabbles and doodles. wish the last piece would have been one that was satisfactory, but alas, the notebook was finished without a bang — it finished with mediocrity.

at least the rain has stopped. as of this afternoon, the first day of my jetblue travels, i began to crave a kind of domestic living. it’s a post-burning-man thing, and not the best of things when one considers i’m about to embark on a two-month journey traveling around the country. for the first time in quite a while, i feel pretty fucking alone — as if i’m confusd about my focus in life — as if my best friends, or the ones i speak to most, are or were practically all lovers… as though the most intimate parts of me are seen and shed and left out here somewhere… pointlessly, even, in the long run, maybe. and i feel guilty for my pleasures and alone in my struggles, with whom to share it with but those who don’t quite understand? or those who are themselves too invested to hold an unbiased opinion on the matter? i feel blinded by hope — simultaneously confused by reality — to create a concoction of being strung around like a rag doll that’s at once using and being used. mutual needs might be fulfilled in a temporary arena, but one can’t help wonder what the long run, the ultimate picture of it all, is. more often than not, these are of no concerns to me — they rarely pop up in life as problematic. or thought of seriously. cuz ultimately i’m not the type of person that really cares about the future very much at all. i’m generally pretty confident that things will work out in my favor, but on days like today, i’m just thinking what the point of it all is, and it feels like just about everyone’s serving himself or herself in the end.

on days like today, i think that perhaps life is not all peachy and we need only to fulfill our own desires above all else. how we live is selfish and the point of everything we do is riddled with self-serving motivations, and if that’s the case, how can anyone ever really love? what the hell is love, and how can it exist? i hate usually the cynical arguments that even the most basic humanitarian actions of being good and serving others are rooted in a selfish desire to feel good about oneself, but on days like today, i see that… i see it in others, and i see it in myself.

it’s all perspective, really. the same actions viewed one day are rooted in love, the next day rooted in selfishness. i’m ranting like a motherfucker. i feel alone is all, and i’m wondering what i want out of life and where i want to be. where i want to live, what i want to do, who i want to see. i’m feeling domestic. for this very fleeting (i’m sure) moment, i want to be rooted, to be comfortable, to have that pointless fucking disgusting soul-death comfort lifestyle i loathe so much. it’s just for today. it’s just for right now. but for today and right now, being pampered and taken care of and not being alone sounds perfect. the moment and feeling will pass. the eggs are just wanting babies, probably. but i’ve felt off all day without being able to explain or verbalize it correctly. writing is my catharsis. it’s helped me through all things. i’ve written it. i’ve done it. so it’ll be fine. beyond this…

burning man, day six.

sunday, september 6th.

a morning of getting breakfast made!!! fresh fruits and awesomeness thanks to michael and man fruits with agave honey equals rules!!

we were supposed to leave on monday, but we decided to bike to our craigslist rideshare people’s place because michael’s friend roger had offered us a ride back to los angeles on sunday before the temple burn. might as well leave earlier rather than later. were a little burnt out and word on the street was that the temple burn was really kinda depressing.

our tent was amazingly dirty! like i mentioned!

waited around the afternoon while jeanette left with carlos for michael and roger to come back and pick me up. totally left jeanette’s fucking bike at burning man because i had so much shit to do like breaking down the tent and cleaning and stuff and the bike — i don’t even know where it was — was nowhere near camp… so blahhhhh i forgot it, which sucks, but hopefully someone brings it back………..

we left at like 6:00pm or 6:30pm but already there was traffic, and it took a couple hours to get outta there! at least it was a beautiful time of day to leave!!!

the turnstiles we came in through!

random nighttime photog from the rv. it was this cool rv from 1985, rule!! it had these cool pilot chairs which spun! amazing! but it also had this funky smell coming from the sink! not so amazing! there was much trial and error to try and figure out where the smell was coming from, but no real luck.

stopped by denny’s on the way home and ate some hash browns with onions and gravy! yum! yum for denny’s, anyway! and then i slept like a motherfucker while roger and michael drove, but everyone pulled over at some point because both drivers were tired and everyone slept, and so our 12-hour journey took like at least 15-hours or something but whatever, it was all the same to me.

and thus concludes the adventure. more thoughts as they come but man am i tired of typing! i still have a zillion older journals to do which will probably never be done. for starters. finishing spain journal, finishing peru journal, finishing last “talk to us” session journal. when the hell am i gonna do this shit!

burning man 2009, day five.

saturday, september 5th.

mad libs!! yo!1!

cashew snacks? hails yeah!!!

our camp! left to right: hans’ tent, henry’s camp, shower… tent non-tent.

wet ones and rotting bananas, fuck jea!

acid!

bumbling around and stuff. with jackie, michael, jeanette, matt. woo!!!

jackie.

michael.

tom (we lost tom while heading out).

crazy dust storm style!!!!!!! awesome!!! could barely see like two feet in front of you at some points.

michael and jeanette!

dirty dirty mcdustmask!

i rather like my costume.

the. best. art. car. ever.

jackie climbing on this random giant structure thing.

reflections in matt’s glasses.

after all that, we tied up our bike on a pole and went to the car wash. BORING!!!!

BEST. BURNING. MAN. PHOTO. EVER.

jackie and greg (?) were walking in front of jeanette and i. jeanette mentions that she just wants to run and jump on them… to which i say, “I’VE BEEN DYING FOR A PIGGY BACK RIDE ALL MORNING!” and greg gave me one. is his name greg? something like that.

random shit going on.

random hare krishna shite.

we tied up our bikes. when we returned, the pole we’d tied it onto was HALF as tall and our bikes were all fallen over. wtf?

acid.

i really just wanted to go home but we kept adventuring all over the place. stopped by ashrum, but they were closing shite down.

stopped by random clubbo.

trippin’. first time of the day where i was just allowed to sit and cheeeeel, and man, motherfucker, it felt good, and it was what i was waiting for all day. all day i’d been like, “i don’t know what i want to do with myself,” and essentially, this was what i’d wanted to do ALL DAY.

cool haunted house art car jeanette took a photo of. i didn’t manage to see it, unfortunately.

the rocket. jeanette’s pic. i was busy hanging out in michael’s tent and hating life and embracing the weirdest day of my life (today was the weirdest day of my life).

a better look @ the car wash. jeanette’s pic! btw, when we’d gotten back from our daytime adventure, fuck, we were all DIRTY AS SHIT. and when i first got back and looked in our tent, everything in our godamn tent was covered with a huge layer of dust because we’d left our windows open. it was so fucking tragic it was hilarious and i came back out to jeanette, who was napping on a hammock or something, and was just laughing my ass off, asking her if she’d seen our tent. she told me she hadn’t gotten a chance to see it yet but i couldn’t stop laughing… it was so tragically funny. i find that lately i find tragically humorous things really fucking funny. haha.

awesome mothafuckin cloud!!!

spent the afternoon pretty much with michael and gabi, drawing and chatting and listening to music. so nice to do nothing. so tired of walking around that entire day. longest, weirdest day of my life! that night, all the kids got together and we got pretty much everyone in the camp. prior to burning, there was talk about whether the burn would actually go on or not because it was sooooo godamn dusty and the wind storms were seriously intense. but luckily, by like 10pm, the wind storms died down — perfect timing, really — and everyone made their way out onto the playa to watch the man burnnnn, bitch.

burning of the man! plus fireworks! oh yes!1!!!

jeanette and elliott.

blahblah, an evening of hanging out. lotta people went out and partied, some didn’t come home til 8:00am. i just chilled. again. longest day of my life.

burning man 2009, day four.

friday, september 4th.
the days all blur into one during burning man. thank god for photo documentation or it’d definitely all be a fucking mess!

had bought ingredients to make fresh food, so we made this kick ass avocado, tomato, spinach, and garlic salt sandwich! it ruled! and was cheap!! cause the avocados were only fifty cents! hail yes! unfortunately, i’d bought some veggies but didn’t continue to buy ice (and there was lotsa free food for us to eat), so didn’t get to eat all of the veggies. le weep.

redefining sexiness, part one thousand. gah! my sports bra had to be thrown out because the straps turned all brown and grody, haha!

jeanette made friendship bracelets! she intended to give people we knew a new one everyday, but i only got twoskis.

dani!

me!

loren!

day trip to pink mammoth… actually, we originally intended to go to this other place called solicious, which was listed on a map in the guidebook, but didn’t actually exist!!!

some dude was giving out pints of ice cream made from wine!! FUCKING AWESOME!

male go-go dancerrrr!

registration wall.

center campola!

inside center camp. we stopped briefly to explore but there was just some bad music going on and also stopped and listened to some lady who was talking about giving birth at home. a little strange. but kinda interesting. jeanette was bored which was funny because i thought she would be interested since she’s all about babies and birthing and blechy stuff.

canned baked beans for dinner! for which henry was making fun of us for eating since they had these nice flavored trader joe’s beans. ghetto gourmet!! but even better: canned baked beans before eating shrooms? done!

random picture of the sky jeanette took. purdy trippeh.

michael!

ren!

this flagpole grew with flags.

that night, a bunch of us went back to pink mammoth while blitzed. it was purdy fun and there was dancing to haus music and such.

blitzed!!!! fractals and patterns oh my oh me oh my.

ren plus random 4 sale sign. at one point, jeanette was like, “it’s obvious everyone here is fucked up because there is absolutely NO ONE here and NO ONE cares.” haha. so true. btw, let me say that biking while shrOomed RULES!!!!!

michael and i.

after going to pink mammoth, we went out to the main center area to go to the rocket, because we’d heard all day that the rocket was gonna launch!!! here are some pics from just hanging around near the center area. we went on top of an art car and just basically danced around and stuff. the rocket itself didn’t actually fly off or anything like that, but it had really amazing fireworks and these multi-colored like… explosions that looked like mini mushroom clouds… but they were like green and blue and orange… didn’t even know that shit was possible! it ruled!

crazy people who made the eyeball motorcycles had these CRAZY ASS really nice pods made out of recycled materials. i didn’t take pics unfortunately, but they ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLED.

after that, we went back to camp and everyone was going to go out to ashrum to go dancing, only… michael, jeanette, and i got lost because everyone was riding all fast and shite. so we ended up just hanging around and biking around and going to the man… (above).

then we went to the cubatron and lied underneath… only… dust kept flying into our eyeballs. luckily there was the glasses we could wear which helped a little and made shit trip out.

without glasses.

with glasses.

trippy shit! with glasses!

burning man 2009, day three.

thursday, september 3rd.
- woke up.

- redefined sexiness.
- a c i d .
- walked out to the main plaza.
- got some coconut vegan ice cream which wasn’t so much ice cream as it was like, cold marshmallow, but it was tasty, or whatever.
- hopped on this art car… don’t even remember what it looked like, ahha.
- couldn’t stop cracking up for the first ten, fifteen minutes of being on the art car because the shit is just ridonkulous… basically people get on and dance around and then everyone who the car passes by dances around to the car… just kind of ridiculous in concept all around.
- saw awesome things on the art car but most awesome of all was this guy who looked like the most hippie hippie on the face of the earth and he was like missing teeth, had really long dirty hair, and was wearing no clothes. he was jumping up and down on a car with a HUGE smile on his face. it was … so… amazing. i so wish i had gotten a pic. one of my favorite moments of the trip.
- got dropped off by the art car on this one street because there were sock puppets being made. it seemed fun, but i vetoed the idea because we would have been there forever and the vibe was like soooo super quiet and housewifey. the particular street we got dropped off on was funny, too, because there was a sign saying one of the places was called “hushville,” and it really was soooo quiet. it was hilarious.

- wandered around aimlessly and found some stuff to paint on! i only did the pink sections.

- spoke with lady from funny face lemonade!!! they gave out lemonade and took pictures of people!

- tried to trip myself out.

- took a picture of this baby because jeanette was OBSESSED with it. still is, actually.

- got tripped out on this art wall where everything was moving around. awesome!

- initially saw this piece, which was one of the most trippy. all the colors bled into one another… breathed… moved… swirled.

- saw some fun patterns in the eyes of this boy.

- took a long way home.



- watched jeanette play basketball with a buncha miami boys and talked to this seventy year-old lady whose daughter had bought her burning man tickets for her birthday.

- stopped by the couchsurfing camp where no one was really that friendly except for this one girl and had really kinda weird awkward but interesting conversation with her.

- proceeded to head back.

- helped guy build tent.

- got stopped by chick who needed feminine products.

- waited as jeanette got obsessed with more kids.

- we were far from home, which was at 9:30 and chaos.

- jeanette was waking around to take some photos of the skyline when i saw these two people walk by me. when jeanette came back, those two people walked by also… to them, i said, “it’s you two again!” and because i talked to them, they offered us these two food tickets for a pre-paid vegan dinner! amazing! above: one of the food offerers, annie lalla, and i!

- crazy awesome posing!

- at dinner!! guy from montreal who used to live in seattle until eight months ago! i forgot his name! but i got his info!

- ate really awesome food! other than the fake meat, which was not so good here!
- post dinner, there was some interesting weird babbling that was kinda nonsense rhetoric about enacting change and “doing this everyday” whatever “this” was… “this” seemed to just be eating a nice dinner with a bunch of people who had paid three hundred bucks to be in a burning man camp that gave you food and all that.
- there was also post-dinner group “om” chanting, which was pretty rad.

- met random guy, jacob, on the way back, and he wasn’t headed in any particular direction, so he walked with us back to our camp. he had a cooler full of beer and red bull. he was an interesting chap who said he only came because it was his twin brother’s scene and his twin brother couldn’t make it, so he went in his place… but that he was a really conservative guy who was all for social liberties but not monetary liberties.

frolicked in awesome tinsel forest!

- watched jeanette get spun around in this boot that spins!

jacob got some random bunny ears and pawned them off on me!
- stopped by a cool place that offered crepes! sweet AND savory!

- jacob came back with us and chatted for a while with everyone and then jeanette started to shave off half his beard, hahaa, not particularly successfully, really.

- went dancing that evening and wanted to just sit and vegetate. did a little bit and saw some swirling fractals looming in the distance when i closed my eyes.

- got all excited about the awesome sand colors near this robot. there was some good music going on here, for sure!

- saw some of my favorite art cars — the above eyeball cars!

- also really enjoyed this time one.

- went elsewhere and met up with this mexican-norwegian drug dealer guy who gave us ebombs because jeanette had lost some.
- tried to catch some music set but were late for it!! blah!
- hung out at the place with mexican-norwegian guy and it was kinda funny but also kinda strange…………………. brain. cooooooool. trippy as hell really cause he looks like this super like chubby kinda thuggish dude but he’s like smart and funny and a good graffiti artist and fucking — most shocking one here — can JUGGLE pretty decently — like… can kick shit off his feet and behind his back and shit, and it’s just like WTF!!! anyway, he kept agreeing with shit jeanette was saying and she commented, “you’d be the perfect boyfriend,” and he escalated this soon to her being his wifee — which she was not particularly plussed with, but i found it amusing and was egging him on. haha!

- biked around and saw this photogartho thing which was hardcore WTF cause upon first glance, one thinks it says “photograph” or “photography,” but it says “photogartho” and wtf is photogartho?!!!!!

- came upon this awesome place that was ACTUALLY PLAYING DRUM N’ BASS!!!!! AMAZING!!!! and this guy from seattle — along with some friends — made this awesome like thermal touchscreen thing. played around with that fer a while. AWESOME.