...birdflew...

Into the Wild

birdflew — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:47:56 +0000

Kindly note that Birdflew will be on hiatus starting June 5, lasting until an as-yet undisclosed time in July.

Fear not, gentle readers, for during this time, I will be exploring new careers (sea otter, farmer), enjoying new foods (hot and sour soup, horchata) and generally gathering new experiences to draw upon when I return. This is a mental systems upgrade, needed in order to continue to offer you the high-quality questions to which you’ve grown accustomed. Please pardon our appearance during construction.

Love and freshly picked tomatoes,

The Editor

Current Obsession

birdflew — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:34:24 +0000

Current obsessions: horchata, reading in the grass, silver martin rabbits, giant sea kelp and my new career as a sea otter.

Question: What would your subliminal dress say?

birdflew — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:56:52 +0000

Have you ever written or said a word over and over until it lost all meaning? Then, rather than letting it rest in peace, continued to write or say the word over and over until it became possible that it could have entirely another meaning, and another use in your life?

When I was 19, I came up with the idea of a subliminal musical dress. If you take a part of a song, and fixate over it, as I do, it can take on another meaning. Or the meaning of the words can be so much clearer because it is being sung, and in particular, how they are being sung in that particular song, in that particular sentence. At that point, the stanza, uncoupled from the rest of the song, takes on its own meaning.

I wanted to harness the snip of sound and make it visual and attach it to clothing to make sort of a mood-dress. Each dress would have a particular snippet of sound (I had lists of my personal choices) which would be triggered submliminally by the design elements of the dress. (Any psychologists, researchers or evil military mind-control specialists out there, email me so we can get going on this.) When you, the wearer, walked by and people saw you, a faint perfume-waft of song entered their heads leaving them to wonder why and where it came from.

So, with that lengthy explanation, we get to the question: What would your subliminal dress say?

(edited) Please submit the piece of song lyric that you would use, and make sure to include the artist and song title. It should be no longer than a sentence, requiring some very difficult editing if there is a whole stanza that you like. Difficult work, but worth getting down to the very essence of what you truly love about the song.

If there is a link to the song you’d like to include, by all means send that as well. And for the gentlemen in the audience, please remember “dress” can also mean “mode of covering your being,” not just “pretty frilly thing preferably with lace, a nice sash and black sparkly decoration.”

Answers: In 7 words, can you write your memoirs?

birdflew — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:54:46 +0000

Well! The welcoming party for this week’s guest questioner, The Seductress, got a bit out of hand, as as I suppose all great parties are wont to do. Wine flies when you’re drinking time, doesn’t it dear friends. Alas I’m quite sodden from my dip(s) in the fountain and have some ’splaining to do as to why there are sequinned frocks festooning the hedge maze. But in all, it really was a lovely fete, even if the chandeliers will never quite be the same.

After many strong cups of coffee, some tea sandwiches and the application of some fresh eyelash glue, I think we are now able to share the answers with you:

-Just like Max: big show, no results.

-I was nobody until writing my memoirs.

-UK, visualization, atmosphere, specific, unique, music, listener. (In no particular order.)

-Oh shit. Not again; I’ll never learn.

- Experimentation with alternate realities has created stability.

-Projection, preparation, planning; International woman of mystery.

-So many times, tried not to wonder.

-Seven Year Travel Itch, Every Four Years.

-My best just wasn’t ever good enough.

-Do it like you mean it, bitch.

-I am not David Bowie. that sucks.

-Imperfect; yet tried, true and nihilistically benevolent.

-Deciding to be indecisive never works out.

Question: In 7 words, can you write your memoirs?

birdflew — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:10:44 +0000

I’ve set the table with the finest of my mismatched wine glasses, chilled the 3 Buck Chuck and rouged my knees in anticipation of a very special guest this week. In the interest of expanding the dialogue of the Questions Project, this week’s question will be posed by a guest. So starch your collars, mend your stockings and join our soiree.

This week, The Seductress asks: Please write your memoirs in 7 words. Since Ginsu knives envy her sharpness and she is known for her questioning mind and whip-smart analysis, please make sure your answers at least give us a mental papercut with a sharp insight into what you should know best so far, your life.

Current obsession

birdflew — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:54:14 +0000

Current obsession: Lewis Hine, an early American photojournalist best known for documenting American labor, in particular, for exposing child labor and helping to end it.

When the “breaker boys” in the photo worked fourteen or sixteen hour days, any daydreams of the childhood they were missing were snuffed out by sheer exhaustion. What exhaustion didn’t kill, physical ailment mangled; one stray thought meant pieces of slate and coal went crashing into fingers and hands, breaking small bones. Thoughts of school or lazy Saturdays went up into the air along with the dust that went into their lungs and aged them from within. “Black lung” it was called, but the small miners knew it was just another side effect of the American Dream. Youthful energy didn’t go away; it clung to the coal, burned and ascended heaven like unheard prayers, blackening and condensing into smog. The hopes of a generation went into the incinerator along with the anthracite that fueled the Industrial Revolution, leaving instead massive amounts of CO2, soot particles which still gnaw away at the ozone layer.

So today, as you consider global warming and climate change and ways to “green” your life, it is the dead dreams of children that float over our heads. As the mercury inches up, crossing every line the scientists draw in the sand, the sins of our laisse faire fathers literally decide the fate of our children and us. Ultimately the ghost of child labor gets its revenge as the byproducts of burning coal still create the acid rain that chips away at the Carnegie and JP Morgan marble shrines to Industry and Wealth and Progress, built by youth mortgaged away ton by ton. Ironic that the small miners’ most lasting contribution is as visible and as invisible as they were.

Happy Earth Day.

Answers: Where do you kick heaven?

birdflew — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:50:07 +0000

-I sucker-punched heaven once. Now heaven sends an unending string of bastards to kick me in the heart, and we call it even.

-In rehab.

-Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me?

-In the nuts!

-In the teeth.

-I would prefer to finger, rather than kick, heaven.

-Kick heaven in the shin. There’s something that amuses me about the thought of heaven scowling, hopping up and down on one figurative leg, sucking air between its pearly white teeth.

-Barefoot and outside in the backyard, at night. Down and dirty and in the eye.

-In the ass.

-At the Methodist clinic.

-I would kick heaven outside of the grocery store while it is carrying a few shopping bags. I’d kick it in the ass and then hopefully have time to run away before it put down the shopping bags to chase me.

-I’ve already kicked heaven. Heaven, as it is classically defined, sounds dreadfully boring.
Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.

-1998: Heaven refutes my existence and I, it.
1999: I play the “I’m-not-touching-you” game until the universe smacks me and then we eat brownies and watch the Simpsons.
2000: I used to kick heaven. Now, I just beat it with a stick until candy comes out.
2001:I’m a masochist. Heaven kicks me and I like it. Please sir, may I have another?
2002: Heaven has a restraining order against me. I have a restraining order against heaven.
2003:June found me at 23rd and Broadway, Madison Square Park. I stood in the park, took off my stockings, took off my shoes and looked around. I took a deep breath. This is therapy for the uninsured. When rich people need therapy, they lay on upholstered couches in Upper East Side psychiatrists’ offices but when you’re down and out, any place will do. I yelled and yelled and waved my arms aordnu, which is to say, around, but far closer to the actual movement. Then, I put on my stockings and shoes, picked up my portfolio and got on the N train like the fitter, happier and more productive person I am.

So to answer the question,I kicked heaven in Madison Square Park, barefoot, in the afternoon, surrounded by sleeping homeless, and while shouting obscenities. I planted a big one in its dimpled cellulite ass. Heaven applauded at my vaudeville act and made me lactose-intolerant.

-In the teeth. Because teeth are easily accessible and there are a lot of them, you can do maximum damage.

Question: Where do you kick heaven?

birdflew — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:33:08 +0000

This question presupposes that if you were texting the universe right now, your text would read “WTF, Universe. WTF.”

Of course you get no reply.

When that happens, like most humans, your fifth reaction is to take matters into your own feet, as it were. Oh sure, you tried faith, summoning inner-confidence, bravery in the face of these newest unfortunate adventures, honesty, drinking (lots). But really, your inner toddler is unsatisfied with all these bullshit attempts at constructively dealing and at some point, that yowl you’ve kept down is going to come tearing out, as your limbs go flying with angry abandon. You’re going to kick heaven. Even though the act itself is akin to dropping a pea onto a waterbed, you’re going to do it anyway.

So, puny worm, where do you kick heaven?

Answers: Chemistry Pop Quiz: 1.) What is the halflife of love?

birdflew — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:24:57 +0000

-The halflife is 42 days for every day spent enamoured, making love a generally slowly decaying compound. It is important to note that even at halflife, love is still a known Class V carcinogen and the necessary safety equipment must be employed to avoid lovesickness.

-Relative to your carbon footprint: the larger it is, the less you really care.

-Through completely spurious logic, I postulate that the half-life of love can be determined by the sum of the half-lives of the medications which can be used to counteract the symptoms of said “love.”
Note that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. And my encyclopedic knowledge of the below topics and figures therein in no way infers that I looked any of the information up.

Amioderone: Used for heart arrhythmia. Lambda = 25 Days
Albuterol: Commonly used by asthmatics, this helps when you have your breath taken away. Lambda = 7 Hours
Digoxin:Counteracts your Heart Flutter and fibrillation. Lambda = 36 Hours.
Fluoxetine: Active ingredient in Prozac. Not only smoothes out your depression and panic, but limits the euphoria endemic to new love. Lambda = 6 Days.
Kytril: Antinauseal/Antiemetic; Used to counteract butterflies in the stomach. Lambda = 9 Hours.

So, assuming one goes through each phase consecutively, a best case scenario is 33 days, four hours.

-There is no definitive half-life in love, just lust. Love has the ability to renew, it is inertia that can cause it to decay, but it is not beyond repair. I refuse to reduce love to a mathmatic equation. If it were that simple we wouldn’t have been left broken so many times.

-The half-life of love can not be given just one answer. I think it is relative to the the scientist, the subject and the timing of the experiment. The intent of the scientist is important because it sets up the manner with which the experiment will be conducted. The subject is also important because they have to be a willing and enthusiastic participant. If they are neither, the experiment will ultimately…fail. Finally, the timing of the experiment is, perhaps, the most important element in the entire equation. If the timing is not condusive to the hypothesis of the scientist (and subject) then the experiment will not be conclusive. All 3 elements must be in accord for the experiment to reach a conclusion.

-The half life of love is ideally greater than or equal to the square root of desire, though if that love is pure and does not mix with sulfer or cobalt, then love should last for 60 years, on average. That would make the half-life 30, wouldn’t it? You’re asking the wrong guy.

-It is not a constant, but a variable. The “type” of love can affect this - i.e, infatuation / crushes have a smaller half-life than long standing relationships. If the state of love is strong enough, the half-life point will never be discovered. Most people don’t seem to get that lucky.

Answers: Chemistry Pop Quiz: 2.) When does attraction become inert?

birdflew — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:24:32 +0000

-After dinner but before breakfast. Usually at approximately 3:27:02.46.

-Sometime afterwards.

-Attraction becomes inert, in most cases, seconds before I figure it out.

-When all your unheard emotions that were ignored or pushed deep inside, rise up and consume you. There is no room to feel anything else.

-The presence of the correct catalyst is needed for a chemical reaction. Given the complicated nature of the inert subject (not being able to easily lose or gain electrons), the catalyst must be the perfect…companion. If not, the inert subject will remain chemically inactive and alone. It also helps if the inert subject associates high temperature and pressure with the catalyst.

-Around the same time you start to notice the strands of hair clogging the drain.

-Referencing q. #1 - When the half-life has started to break down.