The wendigo is a demonic creature appearing in the legends of the Algonquian peoples along the Atlantic Coast of the United States and Canada. It is a malevolent, cannibalistic creature strongly associated with winter, the North, and coldness, as well as with famine and starvation. The wendigo is described as gaunt and emaciated, with the ash grey complexion of a corpse. Wendigos were also symbols of gluttony, greed, and excess. Never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they were constantly searching for new victims. Humans could turn into wendigos if they ever resorted to cannibalism or became possessed by the demonic spirit of a wendigo. Once transformed, the individual would turn violent and obsess over eating human flesh. The most frequent cause of transformation into a wendigo was if a person had resorted to cannibalism, consuming the body of another human in order to keep from starving to death during a time of extreme hardship.
declan says:
wait, we cant say 'dumb', we can only send nice words. ooh! is that a candy? can i has one of those? ok ga'night!!
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
fuckin road warriors
in the last four days we drove from chicago to LA. I'm still pretty road-stoned, but ill try to fill you in on our adventures.
After we played the Elbo room in chicago, which, btw, thank you everyone in chicago, that was so much fun, Johnny decided to take a job doing some video work in LA. It's an interesting project and will fund the tour for a few more months, so taking it was the obvious choice, but we had to go cross-country in very little time, which is tough because we fucking hate interstates. But I routed us on some backroads so we could see some cool shit on our drive. We plowed through Iowa, where I answered many questions about corn farming, a subject about which i know nothing, but apparently more than johnny does. he played an open mic in des moines and then we tried to camp at this little campsite outside town but were rudely awakened by a terror-bug that stung him in the eye and i insisted on going to the emergency room bc i didn't want him showing up here with a swollen-shut eye. ironically, by the time we did show up MY eye was swollen, but more on that later.
The next day we drove through nebraska, and i was bummed that we didnt have time to stop for the nebraska high school rodeo finals when we drove through the town where they were being held, but we pressed on. There's a shit-load of corn in nebraska, too. We camped on the edge of a crazy reservoir and i spent the entire night trying to say reservoir correctly. johnny slept directly under the stars for the first time. it was awesome until a sandstorm kicked up in the middle of the night and we had to run to our tent under a blood-red moon.
oh also while in nebraska we stopped in lincoln and i bought some obnoxiously adorable sundresses, so i set up the tent at the reservoir while dressed like marilyn monroe.
the next day we got Enny (our noble steed, The Entropic Engine) serviced in Denver then tackled the Rockies. We kept looking around and saying to each other "could you imagine doing this shit as a settler, like on foot with oxen?" We camped outside eagle colorado, high up in the rockies, next to a little stream that would go on to become the colorado river. the air was so clean it smelled like laundry detergent. i almost froze to death bc my sleeping bag was not made for mountain nights. That was the night the moon was unusually bright.
Then we followed the colorado through utah and stopped in moab, which long-time readers of this blog will know holds a special place in my heart. I bought a new sleeping bag and an enchilada. Thank you, Moab.
Yesterday we pushed through all the way from Moab to LA. Took a brief stop in Vegas bc I'd never seen it and tangled ourselves in hours and hours of mindboggling traffic on route 15. By the time we got to LA i couldn't form words. But now we're here and it's actually pretty cloudy, so i'm happy. here's to sleeping in a proper bed for a little while.
After we played the Elbo room in chicago, which, btw, thank you everyone in chicago, that was so much fun, Johnny decided to take a job doing some video work in LA. It's an interesting project and will fund the tour for a few more months, so taking it was the obvious choice, but we had to go cross-country in very little time, which is tough because we fucking hate interstates. But I routed us on some backroads so we could see some cool shit on our drive. We plowed through Iowa, where I answered many questions about corn farming, a subject about which i know nothing, but apparently more than johnny does. he played an open mic in des moines and then we tried to camp at this little campsite outside town but were rudely awakened by a terror-bug that stung him in the eye and i insisted on going to the emergency room bc i didn't want him showing up here with a swollen-shut eye. ironically, by the time we did show up MY eye was swollen, but more on that later.
The next day we drove through nebraska, and i was bummed that we didnt have time to stop for the nebraska high school rodeo finals when we drove through the town where they were being held, but we pressed on. There's a shit-load of corn in nebraska, too. We camped on the edge of a crazy reservoir and i spent the entire night trying to say reservoir correctly. johnny slept directly under the stars for the first time. it was awesome until a sandstorm kicked up in the middle of the night and we had to run to our tent under a blood-red moon.
oh also while in nebraska we stopped in lincoln and i bought some obnoxiously adorable sundresses, so i set up the tent at the reservoir while dressed like marilyn monroe.
the next day we got Enny (our noble steed, The Entropic Engine) serviced in Denver then tackled the Rockies. We kept looking around and saying to each other "could you imagine doing this shit as a settler, like on foot with oxen?" We camped outside eagle colorado, high up in the rockies, next to a little stream that would go on to become the colorado river. the air was so clean it smelled like laundry detergent. i almost froze to death bc my sleeping bag was not made for mountain nights. That was the night the moon was unusually bright.
Then we followed the colorado through utah and stopped in moab, which long-time readers of this blog will know holds a special place in my heart. I bought a new sleeping bag and an enchilada. Thank you, Moab.
Yesterday we pushed through all the way from Moab to LA. Took a brief stop in Vegas bc I'd never seen it and tangled ourselves in hours and hours of mindboggling traffic on route 15. By the time we got to LA i couldn't form words. But now we're here and it's actually pretty cloudy, so i'm happy. here's to sleeping in a proper bed for a little while.
Friday, June 14, 2013
friday morning angst / tour update
ohmygoddddddddddddd you guys. yesterday just flipped us over and fucked us.
(this entire post will be directly influenced by how little sleep i got last night)
so yesterday, after the fucking tornado drove by about a mile from the house, johnny's 5D called it quits. he described it thusly:
shortly after that we realized we'd have to spend another day here and not leave for south bend until today. fine, i unpacked the cooler and hauled my suitcase out of the van, no big deal. then i volunteered to go pick up some cigarettes for him while he tried to fix his camera, and the fucking dude at the gas station flatly refused to sell me cigarettes, even after i told him i voted in the last TWO presidential elections and remember where I was when KURT COBAIN DIED, all because i maybe threw my wallet at somebody in chicago and don't have my ID any more. WHATEVER.
over the next six hours, johnny lost both of his external harddrives, and both of his laptops. they just looked at him and said "nope!" and fizzled out and died. and then he didn't have any of his work any more.
so that was fucking awesome.
THEN my shit started, when i tried to go sleep, and then couldn't til 4 and then had to wake up today at 930. which, fine, five and a half hours should really be enough for a grown ass adult, but IT ISN'T FOR ME.
whew. thanks for letting me get that shit off my chest. i feel a lot better.
we are going to south bend ASAP for a show tonight at Quincy's, which we were gonna film for all of you but i doubt we'll do that now. but if you live in indiana, scoot on over to quincy's tonight! ill be nice to you and johnny will be extra bluesy. promises.
(this entire post will be directly influenced by how little sleep i got last night)
so yesterday, after the fucking tornado drove by about a mile from the house, johnny's 5D called it quits. he described it thusly:
shortly after that we realized we'd have to spend another day here and not leave for south bend until today. fine, i unpacked the cooler and hauled my suitcase out of the van, no big deal. then i volunteered to go pick up some cigarettes for him while he tried to fix his camera, and the fucking dude at the gas station flatly refused to sell me cigarettes, even after i told him i voted in the last TWO presidential elections and remember where I was when KURT COBAIN DIED, all because i maybe threw my wallet at somebody in chicago and don't have my ID any more. WHATEVER.
over the next six hours, johnny lost both of his external harddrives, and both of his laptops. they just looked at him and said "nope!" and fizzled out and died. and then he didn't have any of his work any more.
so that was fucking awesome.
THEN my shit started, when i tried to go sleep, and then couldn't til 4 and then had to wake up today at 930. which, fine, five and a half hours should really be enough for a grown ass adult, but IT ISN'T FOR ME.
whew. thanks for letting me get that shit off my chest. i feel a lot better.
we are going to south bend ASAP for a show tonight at Quincy's, which we were gonna film for all of you but i doubt we'll do that now. but if you live in indiana, scoot on over to quincy's tonight! ill be nice to you and johnny will be extra bluesy. promises.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
GoT has ended, so i can focus on my real life/love/work/career/reality again
If i was stronger, I would be better.
I have demonstrably little self control. To elaborate, a thorough reading of this very blog will reveal that I have maybe, if you're generous, one half fraction of a degree more self control than absolute zero.
But, we are all born with deficiencies, and this being mine, I try to work on it by exercising control over the myriad distractions that seem whole-heartedly devoted to keeping me from reality and work.
Unfortunately, I must admit one galling failure in this effort, and it regards the entire A Song of Ice and Fire book series and the Game of Thrones tv series it spawned. where the world they share exists I am helpless.
Luckily, however, the season finale has just ended so there will be no more game of thrones on television until next march 30th, so, barring heated debates with fellow book-readers, and teasing conversations with show-watches before spring 2014, there will be absolutely minimal fantastical nonsense on this blog.
I am ready to emerge from the cocoon of distraction and procrastination that GRRM built for me, a new woman, ready to engage in the truth of the world I live in.
and, oh!! do I have updates. Mr. Azari and I left Toledo thursday may 30th for chicago, determined to take all the rural, barely-drawn-onto-the-maps, roads. so as he drove i had a roving map going that popped up live music venues and showed how far they are from our route. the first one we found that looked cool was called the barn, so we drove by it and didn't want to knock bc it looked like somebody's house, so we emailed and facebooked, and as we progressed on our journey across indiana they called us back and booked johnny for friday the 7th of june. amazing!
encouraged, we pushed on to chicago, where my best friend in the entire whole great wide expanse of the universe, my ALI was waiting for me!! my excitement at our reunion cannot be held down by words. I love her manly man, chef andrew, her goofy dog addy, her very polite step-dog cooper, and her unaccountable ferret jack, with all my heart. i can't say enough good things about these people and their hospitality. LOVE them.
So they took such good care of us and came with us to an open mic at the abbey, where johnny killed, mostly he had none of the nerves he was nervous about, either because of my friends' warmth or which inspired my friends' warmth. i withhold my opinion on that particular cycle. They were incredibly welcoming and he played incredibly well. He continued his habit of raising eyebrows and the bar at open mics the following night at the elbo room, where he also killed!
In unrelated news, he will be playing a full TWO HOUR set at the elbo room, in chicago, from 9-11 on tuesday june 18th. so definitely tell everyone you've ever met about that show.
After we left chicago, ridin high on those open mic successes, we broke up a little bit, but immediately got back together bc of love. i'm told in grown-up relationships fighting does not equal breaking up, but im still learning that lesson. I think i'll get it soon. So onward, then, toward The Barn in indiana! we had some time, so we took a night off camping in indiana, roasted some marshmallows, i told ghost stories, he played his guitar, we fought together to destroy a great tent-intruder wolf spider, it was a wonderful night. the next day we drove through south bend to see whats there, and found an incredible man named ishmael who, for reasons unfathomable, is running a venue called 'quincy's.' but i'm sure he was a good reason for that. He welcomed Johnny's playing with open arms, so we'll be playing there in btwn detroit and chicago this week.
then on our way to the barn we stopped at this great place that gave me pulled pork and let johnny smoke indoors.
the barn was unbelievably cool. i made friends with girls!! and we danced!!!!! you have no idea how huge that is for me. it had been too long. johnny learned a lot about playing to an audience - these kids were not his usual crowd - happier, smiley-er, etc. they loved him, but he learned what they had to teach him about smiling.
and then - and then! they made us vegan food for dinner AND put us up!! one of the best gigs i've ever been a part of. I love you, the barn in st joe indiana.
SUMMARY:
Johnny Azari plays
Detroit MI at PJ's Lager House Tuesday June 11 at 10:00
South Bend IN at Quincy's June 14 from 7p until he falls off the stage
Chicago IL at The Elbo Room Lounge from 9p until 11p
and then we move west, and provide you with more western updates. look for cowboy hats.
I have demonstrably little self control. To elaborate, a thorough reading of this very blog will reveal that I have maybe, if you're generous, one half fraction of a degree more self control than absolute zero.
But, we are all born with deficiencies, and this being mine, I try to work on it by exercising control over the myriad distractions that seem whole-heartedly devoted to keeping me from reality and work.
Unfortunately, I must admit one galling failure in this effort, and it regards the entire A Song of Ice and Fire book series and the Game of Thrones tv series it spawned. where the world they share exists I am helpless.
Luckily, however, the season finale has just ended so there will be no more game of thrones on television until next march 30th, so, barring heated debates with fellow book-readers, and teasing conversations with show-watches before spring 2014, there will be absolutely minimal fantastical nonsense on this blog.
I am ready to emerge from the cocoon of distraction and procrastination that GRRM built for me, a new woman, ready to engage in the truth of the world I live in.
and, oh!! do I have updates. Mr. Azari and I left Toledo thursday may 30th for chicago, determined to take all the rural, barely-drawn-onto-the-maps, roads. so as he drove i had a roving map going that popped up live music venues and showed how far they are from our route. the first one we found that looked cool was called the barn, so we drove by it and didn't want to knock bc it looked like somebody's house, so we emailed and facebooked, and as we progressed on our journey across indiana they called us back and booked johnny for friday the 7th of june. amazing!
encouraged, we pushed on to chicago, where my best friend in the entire whole great wide expanse of the universe, my ALI was waiting for me!! my excitement at our reunion cannot be held down by words. I love her manly man, chef andrew, her goofy dog addy, her very polite step-dog cooper, and her unaccountable ferret jack, with all my heart. i can't say enough good things about these people and their hospitality. LOVE them.
So they took such good care of us and came with us to an open mic at the abbey, where johnny killed, mostly he had none of the nerves he was nervous about, either because of my friends' warmth or which inspired my friends' warmth. i withhold my opinion on that particular cycle. They were incredibly welcoming and he played incredibly well. He continued his habit of raising eyebrows and the bar at open mics the following night at the elbo room, where he also killed!
In unrelated news, he will be playing a full TWO HOUR set at the elbo room, in chicago, from 9-11 on tuesday june 18th. so definitely tell everyone you've ever met about that show.
After we left chicago, ridin high on those open mic successes, we broke up a little bit, but immediately got back together bc of love. i'm told in grown-up relationships fighting does not equal breaking up, but im still learning that lesson. I think i'll get it soon. So onward, then, toward The Barn in indiana! we had some time, so we took a night off camping in indiana, roasted some marshmallows, i told ghost stories, he played his guitar, we fought together to destroy a great tent-intruder wolf spider, it was a wonderful night. the next day we drove through south bend to see whats there, and found an incredible man named ishmael who, for reasons unfathomable, is running a venue called 'quincy's.' but i'm sure he was a good reason for that. He welcomed Johnny's playing with open arms, so we'll be playing there in btwn detroit and chicago this week.
then on our way to the barn we stopped at this great place that gave me pulled pork and let johnny smoke indoors.
the barn was unbelievably cool. i made friends with girls!! and we danced!!!!! you have no idea how huge that is for me. it had been too long. johnny learned a lot about playing to an audience - these kids were not his usual crowd - happier, smiley-er, etc. they loved him, but he learned what they had to teach him about smiling.
and then - and then! they made us vegan food for dinner AND put us up!! one of the best gigs i've ever been a part of. I love you, the barn in st joe indiana.
SUMMARY:
Johnny Azari plays
Detroit MI at PJ's Lager House Tuesday June 11 at 10:00
South Bend IN at Quincy's June 14 from 7p until he falls off the stage
Chicago IL at The Elbo Room Lounge from 9p until 11p
and then we move west, and provide you with more western updates. look for cowboy hats.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Sunday, May 5, 2013
sonnet 146
Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth,
Enthrall'd to these rebel pow'rs that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more.
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,
And death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
ruby tuesday, 18:44 (on genre)
i'm going back to titling my posts by the song playing when i write them.
I've always considered myself above memoirs, as a writer.
This is probably worth consideration, as I've only recently come to consider myself a Writer, but have, for as long as I can remember, considered myself above Memoirs.
All the great Writers we talk about when we talk about great Writing - not even just Literature, just Writing Well - are all men who wrote fiction. Make a list in your head of the greats, limit it to American greats for convenience - Hemingway, Melville, Faulkner, Cheever, D.F. Wallace - they're all writers of fiction.
So I have always read, and aspired to Write, fiction. I still do.
But I've been told by Readers I trust to read various memoirs because "you have a similar voice," and all of these memoirs were written by women. Well-written - incredibly-written - written on the level inhabited by all the men I just listed.
Maybe women are destined to shine in this much-belittled genre.
Maybe that's why it's much-belittled, often openly mocked.
In my family, the women weren't always the Story-tellers, but they were the Story-keepers. Sure, Papa was alway quickest to steer a conversation off it's tracks toward his recollections of his own lived history, but as soon as a misremembered name spilled from his lips Nana clicked onto his conversation - abandoning her own conversations or tasks or, later, silent and nearly comatose state - to correct him. He told his versions of their stories only when he could recount them to her standards. She was the real Keeper of our family's history; she just knew he liked to perform them. Without her, when she abandoned him to life without her, after 65 years of tying her life to his, he kept telling his stories. He performed them as dramatically as he ever did, but I noticed the little changes he made to the names in years. Stories about Rodney suddenly featured Robert, and they happen in 19941 instead of 1943. The facts that Nana used to anchor his stories to reality while they pulled him toward fantastic history slipped away.
I listened to it happen in his stories, and I'm looking now at reading lists for college fiction classes and seeing only male names, and I wonder if maybe I aspire to the wrong genre.
We minimize the memoir culturally because we minimize the work of women, and maybe women excel in this genre for a reason. Women invest themselves, their identities, with the truth of their experiences, the truths we've learned and witnessed, and we want to see those truths passed on that someone else may benefit from our education. We want to see the rugrat next generation whose very existence we modern feminists cannot fathom benefit from the trials we've endured.
So, like Nana, we leave the fantastical weaving of Great Fiction and History, those fabricated versions of truth, to men, and we quietly tell the truth in our small way. We adjust their details to Truth when we can adjust their telling of the past, because we carry the Truth in us, and thus excel in that ever-maligned genre, the memoir. The genre of reality as we know it. Memoir: from the fifteenth-century french/anglo-saxon, meaning "a story written, but kept in the mind."
I've always considered myself above memoirs, as a writer.
This is probably worth consideration, as I've only recently come to consider myself a Writer, but have, for as long as I can remember, considered myself above Memoirs.
All the great Writers we talk about when we talk about great Writing - not even just Literature, just Writing Well - are all men who wrote fiction. Make a list in your head of the greats, limit it to American greats for convenience - Hemingway, Melville, Faulkner, Cheever, D.F. Wallace - they're all writers of fiction.
So I have always read, and aspired to Write, fiction. I still do.
But I've been told by Readers I trust to read various memoirs because "you have a similar voice," and all of these memoirs were written by women. Well-written - incredibly-written - written on the level inhabited by all the men I just listed.
Maybe women are destined to shine in this much-belittled genre.
Maybe that's why it's much-belittled, often openly mocked.
In my family, the women weren't always the Story-tellers, but they were the Story-keepers. Sure, Papa was alway quickest to steer a conversation off it's tracks toward his recollections of his own lived history, but as soon as a misremembered name spilled from his lips Nana clicked onto his conversation - abandoning her own conversations or tasks or, later, silent and nearly comatose state - to correct him. He told his versions of their stories only when he could recount them to her standards. She was the real Keeper of our family's history; she just knew he liked to perform them. Without her, when she abandoned him to life without her, after 65 years of tying her life to his, he kept telling his stories. He performed them as dramatically as he ever did, but I noticed the little changes he made to the names in years. Stories about Rodney suddenly featured Robert, and they happen in 19941 instead of 1943. The facts that Nana used to anchor his stories to reality while they pulled him toward fantastic history slipped away.
I listened to it happen in his stories, and I'm looking now at reading lists for college fiction classes and seeing only male names, and I wonder if maybe I aspire to the wrong genre.
We minimize the memoir culturally because we minimize the work of women, and maybe women excel in this genre for a reason. Women invest themselves, their identities, with the truth of their experiences, the truths we've learned and witnessed, and we want to see those truths passed on that someone else may benefit from our education. We want to see the rugrat next generation whose very existence we modern feminists cannot fathom benefit from the trials we've endured.
So, like Nana, we leave the fantastical weaving of Great Fiction and History, those fabricated versions of truth, to men, and we quietly tell the truth in our small way. We adjust their details to Truth when we can adjust their telling of the past, because we carry the Truth in us, and thus excel in that ever-maligned genre, the memoir. The genre of reality as we know it. Memoir: from the fifteenth-century french/anglo-saxon, meaning "a story written, but kept in the mind."
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