26.8.12

text messages in new york


one time i had a dream that i met emma, the cousin of mathilde, who is the fiancée of my cousin harold. emma was going to be the maid of honneur at their wedding. she speaks english with a slight accent.

she was in new york for the summer working for french television. emma was on the production crew of a documentary team that was making a film about how new yorkers used telephones. the documentary had 5 episodes and was going to be aired over the course of one week back in france. most new yorkers would never see it.

the episode that was her specialty was the one on text messages. it was going to air on a thursday evening. she was conducting interviews to discover in what cultural practices new yorkers used text, and what their attitudes towards texts were. emma said that she wanted to explore and explain how french people and new yorkers used texts in different ways. 

some of what she was filming was candid shots of people texting on the streets of new york city, but a great deal of it was people just talking about text messaging. she had several questions that she used as prompts, but mostly, she wanted people to speak at length and tell stories. most of them were just people on the street who were willing to talk about it, from all age groups, all national backgrounds, all classes. she wanted the documentary to be very multicultural and democratic - as this is how she perceived new york.

we met several times over the course of the summer - when i was in new york city (mostly in manhattan) - for lunch. we went to the big museum for an afternoon.

all summer, emma said she wanted to visit albany to see the museum of science fiction, and visit the hippies of woodstock, but wasn't sure if she had time. one wednesday she sent me a text saying that she, the camera-man, martin, and his girlfriend were on their way to woodstock. i called her back to tell her that i was on a mustard mix for a party for government officials in watertown, but that bubbles would show them around.

bubbles said he could show them a few things but he was in a high stakes online chess tournament and had to get back to that. they said it was nice to meet him. he took them to the village green and tinker street. they decided to have lunch at one of the restaurants, and bubbles said he had to get back to work. so they wandered around town on their own. i'm not really sure what they did. when i asked they joked around in french and i didn't understand all of the words in part because of the personalized slang they invented for the woodstock stuff and secondly because they spoke quickly and interrupted each other to be funny.

the next day i arrived back, and we went to albany. we went to the museum of science fiction and the concert down by the river. martin thought that was the best part of his trip to america. i suggested that they spend friday at the dutchess county fair, but they said they wanted to make a boat ride on the hudson. so they went down to docks in kingston and tried to get people to take them aboard. i told them this probably wasn't a good idea, but they found two families from quebec on a yacht who were delighted to have them for the afternoon. martin's girlfriend, justine, said they had excellent bbq in the american style. they spent the weekend going to the mansions of rich people in dutchess county. on monday morning they packed up their gear, and headed back to the city. emma kissed me on the cheek and said they were going back to france that week, but she would see me at the wedding.

she was super-cool, cute, and very funny.





24.8.12

wedding music


one time i had a dream that i had to audition bands for my cousin harold's wedding. one of my favorites was "mad arlecchino and his olde tyme azteck band."

they wore outrageous costumes. harold didn't think they would be suitable for the wedding, but his fiancée, mathilde, loved them. so did her cousin emma.

my pet-fish, bubbles, was annoyed that i didn't pick him to be the dj at their wedding. i told bubbles that he was invited as a guest, not as a servant. this cheered him up a great deal.



19.8.12

new money


one time, i had a dream the treasury department re-designed the fifty dollar bill to decrease the amount of snide dough being passed around.

my pet-fish, bubbles, asked me if i'd loan him one of the new bills - so he could buy some pineapples for a cake he was baking.

the interior design


one time i had a dream that bubbles, my pet-fish, decided to re-decorate the place while i was away at vacation.

when i got home, i was very unhappy with the color scheme, furniture, and carpet that he had chosen. bubbles told me that he personally didn't select this combination. he said that he hired two interior designers to fix up the place. i totally hated their design. bubbles, however, said it was very retro.

at least they didn't ruin my mustard facility.

14.8.12

the monk


one time i had a dream that, as part of the wedding preparations, i had to meet with arnoulf, one of the brothers of mathilde (my cousin harold's fiancée), to discuss various concerns --both spiritual and temporal -- because he's a monk.

my pet-fish, bubbles, said he isn't just a monk - he's the abbot.

9.8.12

the big museum


one time i had a dream that, by the recommendation of a noted authority, my work got added to the big museum as an instillation.

it was a performance piece. i caned chairs and took breaks to eat macaroni and cheese.

don't worry, it was organic macaroni and vegan cheese.

8.8.12

the kind ones


one time i had a dream that the summer fairies who can fight infections made a visit to my county.

they were most welcome, and were greeted with great festivity and hospitality.


7.8.12

go fly a kite



one time i had a dream that there was a festival to celebrate electricity. there were all kinds of hand cranks at the festival.

i was going to tell people about my uncle cuthred's theory, about the bagdad battery, but i was enjoying the kite flying too much. they're good for creating wind energy.

6.8.12

the rock star


one time i had a dream that i got to meet my favorite rock star from the 1980s.

he still had that hair-do.


5.8.12

the sophistocates


one time i had a dream that i wrote and published books under a pseudonym. i got to hang out with some artists and writers who were very profound. we talked at sophisticated parties.

my novels explored, through a vigorous and experimental use of language, the role of intellectual experiences in the wake of the collapse of modernified urban involutions, and a commencement of  the rejuvenation of the self in the metropolitan dissolution. in this way, i commented on the resilience of the perennial -- without denying the consequences of altered expectations and new technology -- in these books. further, they explored why the role of women is necessary, and how inherited power-structures are influential in generational perceptions. the books were mainly about people getting married.

not all of them were about weddings and courtships, naturally. a few were about people traveling to locales involving poor people, beaches, and insular politics.

my pet-fish bubbles said that these were the among the worst books ever written. he said he didn't understand why people read this kind of trash. he said i should be writing about autarky, metabolic rift, and the nature-culture divide. also, he said my novels should be more meta-fictional and de-modernised. 

i told bubbles he knew nothing about art or fiction, and that's why he wasn't invited to our exclusive and highly stimulating parties.

4.8.12

the chemical heiroglyphics


one time i had a dream that scientists were able to locate extra-terrestrial communications devices in the bacterial hyper-structures of human gut flora. they had to use a steam powered microscope to discover this.

my pet-fish, bubbles, said that they are really called indigenous microbiota. he's a stickler for accuracy.  i'm not sure what the extra-terrestrials called them. maybe organic space-texts.

anyway, they used the communications between the bacteria, through a quorum sensing mechanism that detected homoserine lactones and indicated their presence by producing visible light (sort of like smoke detectors sound an audible alarm, i guess), to send chemical messages to the planet earth. they figured that eventually some sort of intelligent beings would be able to decode them as chemical hieroglyphics. the scientists needed the steam powered microscope to detect the lights.

the problem was, after the scientists discovered them, they didn't know how to write back to the aliens.



3.8.12

cricket


one time i had a dream that my friend from australia taught me how to play cricket.

we didn't have a proper cricket set, so we used brooms for bats and a few poles as a wicket. my friend said that at home he'd drink a big mug of victoria milk when he'd play cricket. i told him we could have a soy latte if he liked. he said it's not exactly the same thing.

1.8.12

the berry pickers


one time, i had a dream that it was considered high fashion to go berry picking. everyone went out in the country in droves not just to pick, but -- more importantly -- to be seen picking, berries.

the important people in society all put on a show of returning back to the land and being in touch with nature because they picked berries. it was considered a manifestation of people's sensitive nature and awareness of social conscience to pick berries. people started to wear berry picking aprons and carry wicker baskets all the time. they brought them to situations where it used to be considered unnecessary, or actually unacceptable, like corporate board-rooms, the movies, and the library. everyone was bragging about the specialty jams they were contemplating, and i even got caught up in the fad by making my own berry flavored mustard.

unexpectedly, the leader of the local grump brigade, barton nichols, was spotted picking blueberries along the side of sawkill road. he never went in for fads. when my pet fish, bubbles, mentioned this to him, nichols denied it. he said that bubbles must have been mistaken, because he paid five cents per berry when he bought them at the grocery. bubbles said that was pretty expensive, but nichols said that he got a mail in rebate on them.

about 3 weeks after the trend began, it was over. mainly, this was because they had run out of berries to pick. this was weird because everyone had told me that it was sustainable agriculture or something. however, a new fad for being socially aware (called listening to rock and roll music) came into prominence, and berry picking went out of style. it was considered old fashioned and gauche.

bubbles said he was going to sculpt a verse electronica mix to lament the passing of the berry season.