Which Concerns Dead Things, and Is Not for the Squeamish.

Generally, when I am going to visit my parents, who live a couple hours' drive away, I underestimate the amount of time it will take to get ready to leave my house. There is always at least one thing I have to do before I leave that takes longer than expected, so when I say "I'll be there about 3" it usually means I'll be there about 4:30. Give or take, you know, an hour.

But this time, I was determined, would be the exception. It was the time I had said I would leave the house, and I was going to leave the house right then, by golly. Only the dishes weren't washed, and I hate to leave dirty dishes when I go on a trip. But see, I knew that if I washed them, I would somehow lose another hour.

So I left the dishes. And when I got back, a few days later, the house smelled terrible. Well, you see, I told myself, that's what happens. Now you know. And I was so tired that I walked right past the kitchen sink and went to bed, and as I fell asleep, I thought, man, this house reeks.

Of course, the next day I washed the dishes, and they were definitely icky. But the day was nice enough to open some doors and windows, so I aired out the house, which made everything much better.

But the next day, when I got home, there was still that smell. And it had evolved into something I actually recognized: it smelled like dead things. Also, it was now discernably coming up from the basement.

I don't have a real basement. I have a crawlspace under about 2/3 of my house, and the other 1/3 is a sort of cellar, with a hot water heater and furnace in it. It's not exactly a place you'd want to hang out in. Many guests, when I point it out to them, refuse to even enter. I think it's cool, in a creepy way, but I still don't go down there unless I have to.

But now I had to. I had to go under the house and find out what was rotting down there. I hoped it was just a mouse, but a rat would be okay. Squirrel, I could handle. What I really didn't want it to be was a cat or a possum or even a raccoon. And I didn't want it to be way back in the crawlspace, because even though it has "crawl" in the name, I am not convinced it is a good place for crawling. At all.

I had time to think about all this as I gathered rubber gloves and plastic bags, put on my boots and grabbed a flashlight. I lifted the hatch in the back porch, edged down the ladder, swung open the basement door slowly... and grimaced.

There were five mice on the floor, sprawled in full view, as though passed out after a particularly wild mouse party.

Five! Why so many? What were they all doing there? None showed signs of injury, and I've never put out poison bait. A further search of the basement revealed another one higher up, at the edge of the crawlspace near the furnace. Six dead mice. I bagged them, counting them off aloud as I did so: "That's three, and three left to go. Only two left..." trying to distract myself from noticing what they felt like in my gloved and plastic-bag-covered hand.

I still don't know what killed them. I suppose it must have been poison. Maybe the neighbors put some out; I don't know. I'm just hoping this takes care of most of the odor. I'm pretty sure I didn't get them all; the last couple days when I got home from work, my house smelled like someone had been cooking meat. This probably means that there is one on (or in) a heating duct somewhere, slowly turning to mouse jerky.

But I don't intend to go hunting for it.

* * *

My cousin has an art show here in Portland this Thursday that you should know about. The show features three artists, and "will include encaustic paintings of abstract landscapes, and mandalas, sensual photographic works, botanically inspired, functional steel sculptures, art books that unfold like flowers, glass jewelry, wearable textile designs, and much more." I know she's responsible for at least the encaustic paintings, mandalas, and flower-like books, and that they are wondrous and well worth seeing, but the rest of it sounds pretty interesting too. The show is from 5-9pm at Rust, 1600 NE Alberta St.

I think my cousin may also be playing the violin at this show, as it is supposed to involve "flamenco guitar and gypsy violin." So here is some gypsy violin she recorded with a band she plays with:

Ginggang - Mercury Vapors
Ginggang - The Numbers
Ginggang - Zodiac City

Which Has an Awful Lot of F Words.

F, man. F is a really great letter. Fact and fiction, formulas and freestyle, feebleness and fortitude, flying and falling: F has them all covered.

I've decided that the two weeks of F are a time for finishing things, which is something I'm generally not very good at. I get a charge out of starting a new endeavor, but if it outlasts that inital momentum, I all too often abandon it. That means there are plenty of finishable things to choose from! Other F adventures include...

Fatigue: Most nights this past week I came home feeling like my brain had turned to stone, and it was all my neck could do to keep my skull up. For this I blame the (unblogged) events of the previous week. Frequently when I get this drained, I keep pushing myself and get sick. But not this time. I totally vegged out! Take that, germs!

Fruit: ORGANIC BANANAS. I've had some good bananas in my day, fat little apple bananas freshly cut from a sun-drenched, mosquito-ridden patch on Maui. Nothing else is that good. But these are close -- way closer than I thought a store-bought banana in this part of the world could get. Why didn't anybody tell me? I will never purchase those chalky, flavorless Dole things again.

Flash games: In Flow, you control a simple aquatic organism. You get to swim around and eat stuff, and avoid predators. And as you grow and mutate, you can hunt down and devour those same predators. Mesmerizing, and very pretty. Check it out.

Feist: is playing at the Wonder Ballroom on March 31st. The 31st is actually well into G territory, but that doesn't mean I can't fork over my fourteen dollars (post-service charge) for a ticket this week. Drop me a line if you want to join the fun.

Feist - Inside & Out

In Which Even E Must End.

I really wanted to do right by the letter E. But it's a tricky letter; you can't just accidentally do a bunch of E things, like you can with B or C. You have to put some effort into it. So most of the past two weeks has not been particularly E-ful.

I think I made up for it last night, though. I was trying to fit as many Es into one evening as I could, so I invited Evannichols and, um, Sanguiniteee over to watch an Eddie Izzard video. And then I thought there should be some kind of snacky food involved, so I found a recipe involving eggplant and eggs, and pretty much didn't follow the directions at all, and to my surprise it still came out more or less edible. The whole evening was extremely entertaining. Eddie is hilarious, that's a given; but the interaction between Evan and Sanguinity was a whole different kind of live comedy. They are both funny people, but when you put them in the same room, you get funny squared.

I already said some things about Eddie Izzard a while back, so instead, I will post some audio files from another pretty funny guy who also cusses sometimes:

Eugene Mirman - Being Jewish, Poetry, the Sci-Fi Channel
Eugene Mirman - Russia, the Atari, Obey Your Mom

If you like it, you can get more clips and video and stuff from his website. I can't vouch for all of it, but this one in particular makes me cry.

In Which The World Loses One of Its Oddest Inhabitants.

Dear blog, I am neglecting you this week, as my attention has been taken up with matters unbloggable. But at this moment I want to pour one out for my homie Ivor Cutler.

Two spoken:
Five or Seven
Picking Your Nose

And two sung:
Get Away from the Wall
Little Black Buzzer

(All of these tracks came from here.)

In Which My Neighbor Deserves A Batch of Cookies, At Least.

I've been reading this blog called And They Will Know Us By Our T-Shirts for a while now. Some guy in the midwest began it with the intent of recording the ironies and absurdities of working in a Christian bookstore. I appreciate his wit and writing ability, but I appreciate even more the tension he expresses between his commitment to the Christian faith, and his exasperation with the stupidity and ugliness involved in the culture that has grown on Christianity like barnacles on a boat's hull. I share that tension, and I know we're not alone, but it's not something I hear acknowledged by others very often. His posts have ranged from the deliciously sarcastic to the insightful to the moving. And then came the other kind of moving: his wife got a job in Portland, and almost two weeks ago the two of them packed up and came out here, starting a new blog to record their adventures.

So this afternoon, that t-shirt blogger and his wife, Ben and Nikki, stepped out of the internet and into my 3-D real-time world. We went to Stumptown for beverages and conversation, and strolled the more densely interesting part of Hawthorne, and cruised Mt. Tabor, and I got to tell them about my favorite places and how they have just moved to the coolest city in the world. I have to admit, though, it is even cooler now that they live here.

I like to show people a good time when they come to visit, but I saved the best for last. After all that sightseeing, we went back to my house to hang out for the half-hour or so until Nikki and Ben went to meet someone for dinner. But there we were stymied, because I discovered I had locked myself out when I left the house. Now when I've been locked out in the past, I have generally just gone to get the spare key from friends who live about 10 blocks away. So that's what I did, with Ben and Nikki in tow. (At least I wasn't locked out of my car, too.) Only when we got back to my house did I fully comprehend that I had locked myself out in an especially complicated way, by turning a bolt that I don't usually turn and don't carry a key for. So I had gone to get a copy of a key I already had in hand, and was still just as locked out as I was before.

Ben and Nikki took all this with good humor, yet somehow managed to refrain from laughing at me. I'm telling you, these are good people. Also good people: my next door neighbor, who, when I asked to use his phone to call a locksmith, offered to use his ladder to get in through an open upstairs window. Miraculously, he was able to remove the screen without damaging it, and then replaced it when he was done.

Of course, that about ate up my last half hour with Nikki and Ben. But it also pretty much guaranteed that they won't forget the day they met me. For the record, I would like to assure them and anyone else reading this that I'm not usually so airheaded. Just on special occasions.

In Which A Car Is Grit.

The New Orleans Public Library wants any books you can spare. New ones, they can put on their shelves; used ones can be sold or given to families without any. Ship them library rate (cheaper than media rate!) to:

Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112

Because this information wasn't given up front on the NOPL website, but came from another source entirely, I wondered if it could possibly be a scam of some sort. I mean, what kind of name is Rica A. Trigs, anyway? But I googled her (him?), and turns out it really is legit. Which made me feel kind of mean for figuring out that the name is also an anagram of "tragic airs."

* * *

Last October I wrote here about recording some sounds with Piri and her "Arrowwood" project. Piri is now completing the album, assisted by several people with actual recording experience, and it's being produced by Pythagumus Toadstool and indie label Circumstantial. She has a myspace site up with some song samples. (Yes, they start playing automatically.) I'm not on those tracks, but I am credited as a "contributing member," which is pretty cool, considering my total contribution to the effort took less than two hours. Piri has also joined another band called Leoðsong Guild (another myspace link) which is going to perform live starting in a month or two. I can't tell you how to pronounce that, but I can tell you that I'm a little jealous and a lot in awe of all this.

* * *

Two movies that start with E: The Emperor and the Assassin was a two-and-a-half hour Chinese epic, the kind with lots of bloodshed, beautifully composed shots, and a tragic ending. I really like this sort of thing. China does epics a lot better than America does. My one complaint: too much emperor, not enough assassin.

Egg was a strange little Dutch film, less than an hour long. It was about an illiterate baker, a tad on the slow-witted side, who strikes up a correspondence (via his friends) with a woman from a personal ad. He is a simple man, and she is not; when she finally meets him, she looks for romantic cues, and he doesn't have any to give her. Just a wide, innocent smile -- which makes her acutely uncomfortable.

* * *

Your E track for the day:
Bishop Allen - Eve of Destruction