Graffiti update: now a cow moos in my room

Little children had it right all along: crayon BELONGS ON THE WALL.  I did most of this one on Friday under the influence of three rounds of Show Dem Camp's Clone Wars 2 album.

It's like a cow (Taurus chic) in paradise,
there's gold and food and sand and sea,
butterflies and flowers and bamboo/palm
and spiralling curvy things everywhere

Remember the humble beginning?  I told you I was going to frame my mirror, and now I over-framed it.  Don't do drugs, kids.  Do love, do art, do that good music that you love. 

:)

As I jammed that day I remembered what Bez had just written about music you could work to:

Music to sip wine to...make love to... mop the house to, singing along looooouuuuddd!
— BEZ (@BEZidakula) August 20, 2014

How it makes you feel....what it says to you...how you hit repeat on one song and play for an hour... not to dance to ..but to work to..
— BEZ (@BEZidakula) August 20, 2014

Getting the photo, with Kunle O's friend Madu C.

One day I'll do a Rufus Wainwright marathon - then what will happen to the walls!

Some secrets about music, because I love you:

good speakers.  i wrote that before.  i don't always follow my own advice.

close your eyes.  throw a cloth over your head if you have to.

stand up , grab some crayons, ... it is madd.

poor speakers.  hear the same thing differently.

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slave, a slave to a dream.

Deep down what I want is:

for everybody (well, more people) to read and/or watch the Richard Wilbur translation of The Misanthrope (how many times - in 10 years - will I read this and laugh like a fool?) Buy.

for like a million people to read Three Sisters or whatever I'm calling this novel (watch this space)

for my city to be in compact, efficient, rational, gorgeous form (I imagine 'vertical cities' (sort of), public transportation, open-shared, low walls, art heart, green and sky, ...)

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I may have forgotten a few things, and my priorities may change next week or next year, but trust me, I want.  Will get what I want.

The song that doesn't end

:) It's Lamb Chops Play Along :)  
How I loved this song, still do.  

The sun shines in my room

Look what I did with wax crayons on a newly re-plastered (long story, water-damage) wall.

I'd been itching to paint surfaces larger than my A4 sketch paper.
Then came the rough wall-finish in my room and the need to disguise it.
So I grabbed my long-idle pack of kiddie crayons and started to scribble
First some purple, then some blue, and - why not? - some sun rays.

Detail: sun

Hey, why not paint all over the apartment?
I can frame the mirror on the wall in yellow and brown; finally it can stop being a boring rectangle.
I can even create more crayon frames just to "paint" scenes inside.
Never be bored again :)      

A sunny 'bonjour' to me

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Now I have to live without 43Things

I am sad to announce that this site, which has been my friend for a decade, is now to close down.    On 43things.com , you could list and track up to 43 open goals of yours - sleep more, learn French, kiss in the rain, or whatever.

It allowed journal-style entries, with replies, pictures, comments, and a host of meta features - you could mark the goal as done, or postpone it, or even give up. Just for fun, you could give and get cheers on your goals and updates, browse for funny or popular goals, or create New Year resolutions.

I first discovered it while blog-surfing (cyberstalking really) a software-head friend's girlfriend, seated at my desk at my room in the Cats (Catalina apartments) in grad school.  I really liked 43things.  It was a fabulous Web2.0 social application. 

The founders/creators of 43Things also created a lively site called 43places, and there was also 43people, allconsuming, then I stopped noticing their new sites.

I used 43places to organize my dreams of travel.  You could write entries on places you'd been, but front-and-center was a list of where you'd like to visit.  It featured flexible, intelligent programming using RubyonRails tech, such that you could list a country or continent, or a site or town; it didn't restrict you to one level, while it unobtrusively tracked the relationships between those places e.g. it was cool that I could indicate India, and separately the Taj Mahal, and do photos and 'social' relating to each in a way that felt natural.

43people was rather short-lived, and I mourned when they axed it.  "Who do you want to meet?" it said, and I did indeed meet some of my 43people :)

I liked to keep my front-page list very short; my last 43things profile had only five items on it.  Meanwhile, over the years, I learned from others how to simplify, unclutter, have fun, crush on my crushes, like my likes and choose my choices :)  For most of my years with 43, I really meant to get the PhD, but that's not yet done, and who knows if ever.  When I finally publish my first novel, I won't be able to share that milestone with my cyberfriend the robot and my anonymous 43things friends.  Still, it's amazing how much one little site helped me along the way.  Thanks, kids of the robot co-op.  Thanks, 43 community.  One love.

The good news is that Coursera is still alive.  Plus, maybe there is a Web 3.0 around the corner.  California (and Seattle, well, West-Coast) idealism rocks.