Eduardo Galeano from 'Patas Arriba'

Does history repeat itself? Or might it be that it repeats itself only as a penance of those who are unable to listen to it? History is not mute. As much as they burn it, as much as the break it, as much as they lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. The time that was continues to beat, alive, from within the time which is, even if this time (the present) doesn't want it to, or doesn't know. The right to remember doesn't figure among the human rights consecrated by
the UN, but today more than ever it's necessary to reinvigorate it and put it in practice: not to repeat the past, but to avoid repeating it; not so that we, the living, should be ventriloquists of the dead, but so that we may be able to speak with voices not condemned to the perpetual echo of stupidity and disgrace. When it is indeed alive, memory doesn't contemplate history, it invites us to make it. More than in the museums, where the poor man gets bored, memory is in the air we breath; and she, from the air, breathes us.

he's a keeper

my neighbor and i have a joke about building a dictionary for all the terms that our generation uses to abbreviate slang. clearly, sometimes 3 syllable words are so laborious to sound out that they are butchered into words like, obvi and totes. as an x- reading teacher this pretench way of speaking is so abhorrent to me that it borders on repugnant.

so today, i receive a text message from jeremy- who seemed normal enough when i met him at a party months ago, but i haven't seen or heard from him since. so oddly, he tries to open the door up again with the lamest attempt at spitting game i've ever seen. here's the message:

--
emily its jeremy. i saw ur nmber stl in phone. we dnced at cole st hourse party n i liked that. thght id let u knw i hve salad grns if u njoy that sort, holla.
--

beyond this shoddy attempt at rekindling what never, my distaste was further flared at the vague, possibly sexual innuendo that this text presented. what the hell does salad grns mean anyway? was young jeremy being cheeky and hoping i was down for salad? if he's referring to pot then he obviously doesn't know me. either way, this text representing one gigantic fail and needed to be addressed lest he think this kind of laziness was acceptable on any level. i responded with the following:

--
Fer srius? Salad grns need tossin? WTF? U Shld git ur shizzle togetha be4 u holla at a grl.
--

UPDATE...jeremy responds with the following:

--
... grns for eatin or use as culinary HerbS is what im sharin. keep that quik wit n byte cutie.
--

modern day ragnar...sort of

one of fannie mae's engineers planted malicious code that could have wiped out the servers and destroyed their data, had he not been caught. guess that's a good thing, since our government would probably give them bail-out money to fix their servers anyway.



"According to media reports, a federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted a 35-year-old man for planting a malicious script, designed to destroy data on the US financial giant's servers.

Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, worked for three years as a software engineer contractor at Fannie Mae's offices in Maryland, where he is said to have had access to all of the company's 4000 servers.

...'Had this malicious script executed, engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and reduced if not shutdown operations at Fannie Mae for at least one week," said FBI agent Jessica Nye in a sworn statement. "The total damage would include cleaning out and restoring all 4,000 servers, restoring and securing the automation of mortgages, and restoring all data that was erased.'"

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/01/29/fannie-mae-employee-accused-planting-malware-timebomb/

it's raining

the fog rolls in and it's raining.
the repetitive simplicity of the piano keys, one bright note lingering above a dark chord
like a kite attached to a gnarled tree.

a child stands under an umbrella, weathered brown boots in a puddle murky water and concrete. in her hands she holds a music box and turns the key. the gears churn and prick the tiny pieces of metal, causing the notes to sing from her tiny hands.

an airplane in the distance catches her eye, and she looks up toward it to see where it's going, where it's been. it's not bright, but she narrows her eyes, shields them with her hand as she watches the plane disappear into her imagination.

she pictures them going to france, or to tokyo- somewhere where it's still raining and still chilly, but somewhere where the cobblestones or the glitter make it seem glamorous and purposeful.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/ugly-sneakers-generate-electricity.php

port ordford cedar

when i got out of a meeting today there was a package waiting for me on my desk. convinced that i had forgotten an online order, i brushed it off and returned to a meeting.

when curiosity got the best of me, i began to peel through the paper to the box. the scent seeped through and i began to detect the humble beginnings of a masterpiece. when i peeled the tape away, curled wood chips exploded from the box and euphoria shot through my nostrils.

i was instantly in nagoya, right after a run from my house to the train station. i was out of breath, hands on my hips and head down, walking it out. mrs. price- my middle school running coach- had always lectured, "breathe through your nose" and for once i was grateful for cross country. i had never seen a saw mill before, much less one inside a big city, much less one that slices planks of wood that smelled aromatic. i come from a place of oak trees and spanish moss, so i welcomed this new scent: a light, beautiful smell that makes you think of blonde children running through fresh meadows with kites. it makes factories with rusting saws and broken trucks seem like sanctuaries.

the box i opened that day was a gift from a guy i met, while sitting on a curb smoking a cigarette. he was an eccentric furniture maker, obsessed with his craft and the integrity of his medium. he told me about the sensation of carving a living thing into functional art, ambled through ranges of the texture and scents of various wood. what he sent me in that box was not just a block of port ordford cedar, but proof in the magical ability of scent to conjure up memory.

UNIQLO

oh the js and their robots! today uniqlo introduced wakamaru, your tiny, happy shopping friend that makes the racks at uniqlo even more apealing. yes, the js have coupled their favorite hobbies: shopping and robots in the most symbiotic relationship of all time. what wakamaru actually does to help you shop, i'm not quite sure. he's said to be able to make eye contact and help you shop using simple phrases, but until he starts holding my shit and saying, "nah, girl. that makes your ass look big," i'm gonna stick with fashion diva, roberto sosa as my guru. sumimasen wakamaru-san! gomenasai.