a couple weeks ago i volunteered to help with field work studying the protozoan parasites of monarch butterflies at their overwintering sites in michoacan, mexico. pictures up over at flickr.
listening: hope for a golden summer
i finally finished uploading all the photos from my thanksgiving in japan. i had intended to add a bunch of explanatory text and stories, but it's just a shitload of material that (realistically) isn't going to get done. so at least you get the images. some of my favorites are included below (in less-than-satisfying size).
listening: david daniell
listening: shellac
apparently the zombie parade is an annual bloomington thing. i'm the blurry one in the middle. i left smears of blood on quite a few windows and windshields.
listening: band of horses
on friday september 14th, at 6:00 pm, i participated in 21 cities at once performed. it was an around-the-world simultaneous performance organized by my friends nat and hope.
i had big plans for the event, originally. i was going to collect data about my friends -- when i knew them, where they were before and after, stuff like this -- and then synthesize it all into a kind of lecture complete with data slides. i may still do that project eventually, but by the time i starting thinking about getting started, i'd run out of time.
so in the end i just kind of improvised something. i thought about finding a cool place to play bass clarinet in public. kind of boring, yes, but also kind of appropriate. that activity is mainly what ties me to nat, hope, and the other people participating. but i tried playing bass clarinet a little before the event, and it just felt wrong. not only are my lips and diaphragm totally out of shape, but my head just wasn't in it. i haven't really been listening to or thinking about improvised music for some time now, and it just felt forced.
so at the designated time i turned on my microphone, biked down to an abandoned rail yard i know, and took a walk. that's where my head is, these days. now i need to put the recording on a CD and mail it off. luckily there was no visual documentation -- i looked pretty comical walking around with a microphone duct-taped to the top of my hartz crispy chicken cap. i did find some really cool galls with aphid-like things inside. thrips maybe? i'll show you the pictures sometime.
listening: shapes and sizes
the other night i woke to strange sounds, like something plastic falling over and over again. when i looked, there was a bat inside the box fan on my window sill, which was itself behind a window screen. i have no idea how the bat got there. i turned off the fan and took it out to my porch. when i came back with a flashlight, the bat was gone. i guess it wasn't hurt too bad, if it flew off so quickly.
listening: songs ohia didn't it rain
so i got a digital camera and am taking pictures. and i got a flickr account, where you can see bunch from my recent trip to houston.
listening: liars
from a short news item Nature:
"The kumazemi [cicadas] are also cutting households off from their Internet. Apparently mistaking fibre-optic cables for withered branches, they have been punching their one-millimetre-diameter ovipositors into the cables and laying eggs. In at least 1,000 cases over the past two years, the cicadas have either severed the cable or opened up a hole, allowing water to seep in. The Osaka-based Nippon Telephone and Telegraph West Corporation has responded by creating new cables that lack the grooves that the cicadas target with their ovipositors and by adding another protective plastic layer to the cable."
listening: arks
________,
I'm afraid you have the wrong Jeff Smith. But don't feel bad -- a little confusion is understandable. There are 18 of us in the university directory at the moment. It happens all the time. We're used to it.
Cheers,
jeff smith
listening: tv on the radio
one afternoon last spring i was walking by the guest house at the institute, past a large ivy-covered wall. and i had to stop because... it sounded wrong. it sounded like it was melting.
i walked up to the wall, and i noticed the buzzing. at first i thought it was electrical, like an air conditioner, but then i realized it wasn't coming from one place -- it was coming from the whole wall. the ivy was full of small bees and wasps and flies that were trying to pass as bees and wasps. they were all over the wall, visiting small flowers in the ivy. not very showy flowers; they were easy to overlook. they didn't really have petals. just little green pods that popped open and had some sort of yellow plant genitalia inside.
and this was why the wall was melting. the not-really-petals were falling off. no, they were raining off. they were raining down, bouncing off leaves, and joining a long green pile growing along the base of the wall.
listening: the jesus lizard
one thing i've noticed about this town: girls are always whispering to each other or going off to talk in private. interpersonal drama, gossip, stuff like that, i guess. i don't really know, to be honest. i find it all a bit confusing. i don't remember much of this going on in houston or atlanta, but maybe i just didn't notice.
listening: hope for a golden summer
oh my god. i just picked jesus lizard's goat and i am totally in love. my first thought was: this is what shellac is trying to sound like. my second thought was: this is really 17 years old? i listen to other stuff put out around then and it sounds dated, even if i still like it. but if i didn't know better i'd believe this was released in the past few years. maybe it's just because i missed the boat back then. in the early 90's i was so consumed with all things noisy and experimental that this kind of thing just passed under my radar.
in related news: tremendous fucking is awesome.
cold weather phenomena i discovered this winter: glaciers in parking lots, left behind from where they shoveled all the snow; positive casts of footprints made out of ice, left when all the snow around a footprint melts; and the lone, sweet-tasting icicle on the tree in my front yard, hanging from the branch that leaks watery sap. also: snow hurts when it gets in your eyes while biking.
listening: the eternals
ex-houstonians charalambides came through town last night, along with ex-austinites primordial undermind. i went out to show solidarity with my fellow texas expatriates. turns out they needed a place to stay, and i have lots of floor space, so i had six guests over for the night. they seemed amused by my minimalist furnishings. "so, are you thinking about getting a couch one day?"
sitting around chatting on my living room floor, i discovered that eric from primordial undermind is also a biologist and -- get this -- used to work at my old institute in germany. crazy! we talked shop a little bit, getting the usual funny looks from non-scientists when they overhear a conversation consisting mostly of words like "RNA ligase", "plasmid", and "archea".
listening: charalambides
come may of this year, it will be ten years since i graduated from college. ten years! like, a whole decade. that seems like a long time. a third of my life so far!
i don't feel that old. i don't think i look that old (except maybe when i first wake up in the morning). and to be honest, i don't think there's anything wrong with getting older. it happens to everyone, whether you like it or not. what matters is what you do with the time. and by that measure, i think i've done pretty well since graduating. since then i have:
no wonder the time went so fast.
listening: dog faced hermans
ever since my transmogrification into dr. jeff, i've been having trouble deciding where it is i go in the morning. school? work? the lab? twenty five-ish years of "going to school" creates quite a verbal habit.
i only noticed the problem last year when all of a sudden i was no longer a student and no longer worked at an educational institution. not to mention europeans don't even include college in "school". "going to the institute" worked well enough, but it was only a temporary fix. so now what?
i'm don't really want to adopt "going to work". it's got too many grownup, 21st century capitalism connotations hanging all over it. "going to the lab" would be okay, except that a lot of the time i'm really "going to the coffee shop to work on a manuscript". you see my dilemma.
i also need to get back in the habit of saying, in professional or academic contexts, that a female my age is a woman and not a girl. i was much better about this in college, but i think i lost it somewhere in my mid 20's.
listening: pixies
i forgot to say: this year my new year's resolution is to (and i quote) "be social like normal people". okay, maybe the whole normal thing is a bit far-fetched, but it's a good thing to shoot for. i think i'm doing a good job, so far.
listening: daniel johnston
i don't know why, but my music always seems to run in parallel with my science. they always feel like they're at the same stage, somehow. today i realized that i'm at the stage where i just need to work. just put in the time, nose to the grindstone. i can see the big picture. i have the ideas and a perspective of my own. a voice, even. i can see that i'm capable of making a respectibly novel contribution to the field/art. but only if i actually do it.
in atlanta i did a few things i'm proud of. i've presented that work in person a number of times now. but i need to finish the job and get those projects documented/published. seriously. and the things i need to do to move forward, i just need to put in the hours. plain old everyday lab work/practice. serious carry-the-water-buckets-until-you-can-catch-a-fly-with-chopsticks shit.
listening: joanna newsom ys
i fell out of touch with music in 2006. a year abroad, with no local scene to speak of, will do that. so now i'm trying to catch up, reading "best of 2006" lists and such in magazines and newspapers. one notable thing i've found so far is that atlanta's deerhunter made the national spotlight. they were deemed "best new music" by pitchfork and toured with liars and the yeah yeah yeahs.
i'm always glad when people do well for themselves, but it is kind of wierd that deerhunter was the band that got noticed. there are definitely other bands in atlanta i like better. (oh, how i miss electrosleep!). the times i've seen deerhunter they were formless, half-assed, and kind of boring. i guess they sound different now -- the few tracks i've heard off their album are definitely okay. not awesome, but nice. maybe this is one of those musical fashions i just don't get, like the way the beach boys were all the rage a few years ago.
anyways, here's hoping that their mojo rubs off on the rest of the atlanta kids: brickmason, chopper, club awesome, hope for a golden summer, the liverhearts, the orphins, rump posse, zandosis, et al. maybe atlanta will even be the next "cool" city. that would be funny.
listening: william basinski the disintegration loops II & III
i spent several days camping out in the back country on cumberland island. it's very pretty there. most of it's covered in live oak, spanish moss, ball moss, and palm fronds. i saw wild horses, dolphins, turkey, boar, burbling oyster beds, a million and one armadillo, and tons of molts from 2-feet-wide horseshoe crabs.
the island used to be owned by andrew carnegie, who supposedly used his vast wealth and influence to keep it from appearing on any map. i have to say, there is something especially satisfying about seeing the palaces of the super-rich in ruins. there are a couple decaying mansions there. one was built on an old indian ceremonial site because its large shell midden made a good foundation. twice it burned down in what the park pamphlets call "mysterious fires". people aren't allowed to climb around in the ruins because it's home to the island's only rattlesnake population.
i was happy to be able to finally check out the georgia sea islands, since i never got down there when i actually lived in-state. the 10.5-mile hike out to the campsite was a bit rough on me and my thrift-store camping gear, but it was nice to spend a few days without seeing or hearing another human being.
after camping, i spent a week or so in atlanta over new year's visiting friends and seeing friends' bands. i managed to catch a rare san agustin show while in town, and i was super impressed with brickmason's first show ever. wiggins, their guitarist/vocalist, recorded lie and swell before we went on indefinite hiatus, and rocked out with blame game before they did the same. i also caught awesome sets from chopper and club awesome. my atlanta friends are so cool.
atlanta kids can be pretty down on the ATL. this town sucks, they say. nothing's going on. it's too small. it felt pretty sleepy to me, too, when i was leaving. but i tell you what -- compared to small town germany, atlanta is a fucking cultural mecca. i really really missed being around so much creative activity. where you just take for granted that everyone you meet is in a band, or is a practicing artist, or runs a record label, or writes for music publications, or helps run a performance space, or makes movies, or what have you. for that, it's really good to be back.
i also discovered that atlanta without a car, phone, or bicycle can be pretty frustrating. that's something i don't miss.
listening: carla bozulich evangelista
i'm toying around with the idea of not getting internet at home. shocking, i know. especially given the amount of time I spend online. i'm just getting tired of staring at the same computer screen all day, every day. all the freaking time -- for science, for the news, for email, for music stuff... i need more partition in my life. some way to make home feel separate from the lab feel separate from being out and social. the cool coffee shop here has free internet, so there'll be plenty of access. and at the lab, of course.
i'm also planning to finally subscribe to the magazines i always think i should be reading. that way i can keep in touch with the outside world without having to be on a computer. this is all part of the "use computers deliberately, not habitually" thing. a new years resolution maybe? i started early, but i think it's okay. there's still a ways to go.
listening: finally a real stereo again!
