Monday, October 12, 2009 | by nathan

Weekly Reader – 12 October 2009

The Retrovore’s Dilemma
A wonderful story from Mother Jones about the minefield that can be seed-swapping among city gardeners, who apparently now like to call themselves "urban farmers." I mostly love how he refers to his lettuce like it’s a pet. Still, a wonderful read for anyone contemplating growing their own food.

Life Magazine
"LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine which chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use."

Why Didn’t I Think Of This?
This dude in the UK is now laughing all the way to the bank with his potentially millions of tax-free dollars made off his easy-ass job that he invented.

GIANT GUMMI
Dude, somebody get me one of these to decorate for Halloween with! I’d shove a light up its ass and make it REALLY creepy!

Friday, October 9, 2009 | by nathan

Moderation – Who Knew?

I mentioned earlier today in my Daily Photo post that Brian and I really enjoy taking walks together. We’ve always enjoyed doing this, and with two great and locally-owned grocery stores within walking distance of us, not to mention an absolutely gorgeous neighborhood and a hyperactive (if somewhat arthritic) dog, we are almost never at a loss for reasons to walk.

A part of our new determination comes from our ever-continuing and never-abating struggle to remain healthy. Brian and I are not, by nature, athletic people. Given the opportunity, we will – and occasionally do – stay on the couch ALL DAY on a Saturday playing video games. Seriously, on one particularly cold weekend last winter we finished the second two Zelda games in one day. Also, we love red meat on our grill, and we love beer.

Please, by all means take this moment to note what horrible gays we are.

All this is to say that over the last several weeks Brian and I have found some heretofore untapped impetus within ourselves to keep active and to eat well, and this has given us the chance to take a lot of walks, to prepare a lot of meals, and spend a fair amount of time at the gym together. It’s been nice.

But here’s the thing I’ve noticed about the tenor of our weight-loss efforts: they’re not frantic, angsty, "NOTHING TASTES BETTER THAN BEING THIN FEELS" bullshit flailing about in the land of small salads and three-hour gym visits. When I was 23 I got into the best shape of my life; I looked great, rocked a 30-inch waist and thought I looked fantastic. But do you know how I did it? BY BEING TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD, mainly, but also by working out a ridiculous amount six days a week and eating just enough to avoid kidney failure. It’s also possible that ephedra was involved, before they banned it, but only just for awhile. Then, when I got sick of working out so much, I took up smoking a pack a day.

God, I looked so great. I still have most of those clothes, too. They’re in the bottom of my closet; Sam sleeps on them.

Then a whole bunch of stuff happened. I got older – dammit. WHO KNEW? Also, I quit smoking a pack a day, because I had traded up to Newports, which I only did because they were the only cigarettes I could buy with the absolute certainty that at the end of the night, people wouldn’t have bummed my entire pack away from me. I went to live with my dad and grew up a whole bunch.

I quit smoking, really, truly quit, when I started grad school. The same day, actually. Four months into that project I fell in love with Brian, and a few months after that I became a teaching assistant for the broadcasting department at my journalism school, which was an experience so stressful I occasionally have surreal flashbacks; it was my Vietnam.

Some people lose weight when they’re stressed. I gain. I GAIN. In 2 years my waist went from a 30 to like a 34, 35 at least. And it’s gone up and down since then, because every once in awhile – twice a year, say – I’d get so disgusted with my disgusting self that I’d throw all my determination behind going to the gym and eating like a bird with diarrhea. Until I got sick of that, because that kind of determination gets old, eventually.

But being in love does a funny thing to your vanity, or at least, it did to mine; it started to suffocate it. It’s wonderful being able to see yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you and finds you attractive. It took awhile – we’re almost five years into this relationship and I still stare awkwardly at myself in the mirror almost every morning. But I do it less.

For the first time in my life I am keenly aware that I have much better things to do than sit around looking sexy, that I have more to give this world than what it can see. So two weekends ago when my dad came up and wanted to take us all out to Eischen’s for more fried chicken than the human body was meant to hold, I did. And I ate until I stopped being hungry; it was delicious and revelatory. When I’m at the gym and I am sick to death of working out, I stop. When I pass by the overfull candy dish at work and my taste buds are SCREAMING for something sweet, I ask us if we’d like to have a Starburst. And I have one. And I don’t go around for the rest of the day feeling like I’ve done something naughty.

I’ll never look like I did at 23. Never again. I’m turning 30 next year, and the thing I love the most about getting older is how I’ve grown out of my youthful attitude that everything in my life has to be all or nothing. Just because I had a cookie with lunch doesn’t mean I can’t go to the gym. Just because I only had 250 words in me to write for the day doesn’t mean the whole project is crap. I’m probably never going to do a triathlon; that doesn’t mean I can’t spend half an hour on the elliptical every day. Not every thought has to be followed to its ultimate conclusion, and doing the best I can does not require that I destroy myself in the process.

I’m learning how to hold paradoxes and contradictions within myself and just be, better. And to be honest, I wouldn’t trade that for a 31-inch waist, because it’s made my life so easy and free and fun. I like me, now, however I look. I just LIKE ME. Amazing, right? Who knew?

Friday, October 9, 2009 | by nathan

Looking Up And To The West

Brian and I love taking walks together. We’ve been taking a lot more walks together lately as autumn has descended, because the evenings are beautiful, and we’re trying to spend them moving around more rather than just plopping in front of screens all night. We walk the dog sometimes, but most often we walk to one of the two non-Wal-Mart grocery stores near us to get stuff to make for dinner. It always strikes me how much we miss from the driver’s seat of our cars. Nightly I notice stores or houses I’ve never really seen before, or little pieces of light or vignettes of life. Sometimes there are homeless people; once, one of them demanded my iPhone from me, but as she was in her 70s and feeble (or possibly in her 40s and addicted to crystal meth), I just kind of walked away.

Also, there are sights like this one, the sun setting through a gorgeous bank of autumn clouds over Shepherd Mall. There’s nothing like enjoying something like this with the person you love. Nothing at all.

Thursday, October 8, 2009 | by nathan

DO I FRIGHTEN YOU?

We were out looking for Halloween decorations a couple weekends ago when I came across this beauty of a Halloween mask. That terrible movie Eyes Wide Shut aside, I’m in love with all things Venetian and Carnivale-related, largely because I spent four months living in Venice, wandering those narrow, maze-like and car-free streets, occasionally drunk and very often late at night. I wasn’t there during Carnivale, but it didn’t matter because the festive accoutrements are basically displayed in store windows all year round. And there is nothing quite so creepy as coming across one of these things staring out at you from a shop window at three in the morning.

The woman at the store where I found this – and I don’t think I’m going to buy it because it was fifty bucks and uncomfortable – wouldn’t go ANYWHERE NEAR it; it fully terrified her.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | by nathan

Graffiti, Old-School

I love to read the graffiti carved into the rocks at state parks, such as this admonition to – I don’t know, visit the residence or business of a place belonging to someone named Hood. Or perhaps it’s just a bit of bad grammar. Either way, I love that most of the relationships and associations, teenage gangs and so forth memorialized in rock graffiti probably don’t last more than a few months, to say nothing of the eons they will be in there, awaiting discovery by some future version of human civilization, who will wonder what ever became of Hood’s or if TOMMY LUVS TONYA was some kind of marriage proposal, or perhaps an admonition to one of the minor tribal deities of the day, say Britney Spears or Chevy Tahoe. How disappointed those archaeologists will be to find out that Tommy was not a vaunted tribal leader so much as a thrice-divorced grocery bagger, and that Tonya went on to sell their illegitimate offspring for oxycontin.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 | by nathan

Cork

I took this photo in July at a little out-of-the-way church in Cork. It wasn’t the kind of church with tourists flocking in and out; little to nothing historical happened there, as far as I can tell. There were a few people going in and out to light candles or say a prayer, but these are the spots I like on a trip – the spots where real life is happening all around you, rather than Tourist Life, where history and legacy become a spectacle and a circus. There’s nothing more I love to do in unfamiliar cities and towns than just walk around, watch the people, experience the weather, and get a feel for a place. I’m hoping we get to go back next year, though so far my attempts to crunch those numbers have been less than successful. It’ll happen if it’s meant to.

Monday, October 5, 2009 | by nathan

Summer’s Last Gasp

Sometime in the next two weeks we are likely to get our first freeze; this means that, officially, the garden is over for this year. Which, to be honest, is totally fine with me. It’s been a great garden in a lot of ways, but a disappointment compared to last year. A lot of this is due to me; I didn’t take the same steps I did in 2008 to keep grass out of the plot, and a bunch of the new stuff I tried this year was a resounding failure. The squash especially, because it got infested with squash bugs that I never figured out how to get rid of, and the brandywine tomatoes were all split and rotted before they even ripened. The aurora peppers, though! They were GREAT! And the little yellow Beam’s Pear tomatoes! Put those things together and you’ve got a hell of a salsa.

This week I MUST get out and pull in as many of these peppers as I can, because my dad tells me they will freeze quite nicely. But as for the rest of it, I can’t say I’m going to be entirely sorry to take the tiller to it and return it all to the earth.

Friday, October 2, 2009 | by nathan

Dog Distress

Y’all haven’t had enough Sam lately. And this one, taken of Sam when we ALMOST KILLED HIM by taking him to Red Rock Canyon for the hardest hike he’s ever been on, comes with a story.

Brian was out of town this week, and I was home Tuesday and Wednesday nights by myself.

Sam’s had to deal with some changes lately, the most irritating (to him) being that I no longer allow him to come in my office. The place REEKED of dog and his presence in there was a major stress factor in my life. He’s chewed up books and papers and he infested the room back when he came down with fleas. I need a space to write, to read, and to be completely alone, and what had happened instead was that that room had become Sam’s and I was an intruder in it. Changes had to be made. So I started closing the door and keeping Sam out of there.

So, being the resilient and creative dog he is, Sam started hanging out in my little closet upstairs. I wish I could snap a picture of it – he looks adorable hanging out in there with my old jeans and sweaters.

So the other night I’m home by myself, watching television and goofing on the internet, when all of a sudden, I hear Sam start SCREAMING, this blood-curdling dog yelping I remember hearing when the coyotes that lived near us when I was a kid would get into fights. And I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but it’s clear he’s in distress. I get up and look around the entire ground floor of the house, calling his name. After a minute he went silent, and I had no idea where he was. I ran upstairs. He wasn’t on his blanket and I didn’t see him in the closet. The house was silent as the grave.

You guys, I thought he’d died. I really did, and I thought I was going to find him somewhere. Dead. I called his name, each time more frantically, and tears started clouding up my eyes.

"SAM!" I screamed as loud as I could, and I heard a tiny, little breath. I looked in the closet again, and there he was.

He’d been scratching at his ear, the way dogs do, and he’d gotten the claw on his back foot tangled up in his ear hair. That’s what was hurting him. I pulled him forward out of the closet, making very careful not to aggravate the situation, and helped him remove his claw. He was fine, my heart attack stopped, the dog wasn’t dead. I went back downstairs and he lay there next to me the entire night until Brian got home just before midnight. All night he lay there, and I couldn’t stop petting him and telling him how much I loved him. When I told Brian he thought it was the funniest thing in the world, which he WOULD NOT THINK if he’d heard the screaming, the awful awful screaming of our sweet, stupid little dog, who, despite his propensity for peeing the floor if you LOOK at him like he’s in trouble, managed to hold himself together intestinally and did not shit all over the floor of my closet, which was a major plus.

I may give him a steak tonight.

Thursday, October 1, 2009 | by nathan

The City

This is actually a composite photo made up of four pictures I took from the Beacon Club not too long ago; it’s grainy and weird and I really kinda like it. The weird reflection off to the right of the image really seals the sort of post-apocalyptic urban paradise bit for me; the whole thing makes the city look dead and silent, when it’s really anything but. This is looking northeast from downtown Oklahoma City, and if you look real close, about 1/3 of the way over from the left of the picture, you can see the State Capitol dome peeking over one of the buildings. It might help to look at the original size photo.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | by nathan

We’re That House

It’s important that you know that sitting in the crisper drawer in my refigerator right now is a small, fist-sized black lump that is either a moon rock, or a lime. I figure the chances of it being either one of those things are about fifty-fifty, you see, because I remember neither the last time I went to the moon, nor the last time I bought limes. But there it is, and I’m afraid to touch it. Trash day was yesterday; it’ll have to wait another week, because I can’t have my neighbors smelling rotting moon rock or diseased lime coming from my trash bins. Not when we managed to be the VERY FIRST HOUSE on the block to get our Halloween lights up. No! We are THAT HOUSE, that fucking house on your street that starts celebrating the second it stops being in poor taste, and maybe even a few days before. We’ve spent the last two weekends at Target and Pier 1 looking at holiday decorations, and hauling all our seasonal stuff out of the attic and garage. WE ARE THAT HOUSE, and that house doesn’t keep rotting limes around long after they’ve gone black, and they certainly don’t keep small pieces of astronomical bodies in their refrigerator, no sir.

Wait – it’s possible it’s a tomato.