| WUT |
[15 Jul 2009|10:57pm] |
Mi abuelo materno, Joe Rubinstein, nacido en Nueva Jersey. Su familia opera una pequeña tienda. Cuando tenía 17, se alistó en la Armada, y sirvió en la Segundo Guerra del Mundo en un portaaviones. Mi abuela materna, se llama Bette Rubinstein, nacido en Indiana. Su padre era un maestro. Se encantraron en universidad en la década de 1950 y tuvo un hijo llamado Geoffrey, y dos hijas: Shalom, mi madre, y Hanni. Joe era un profesor de psicología en la Universidad de Purdue.
La historia de mis abuelos paternos es muy diferente. Mi otro abuelo, se llama Stanley, es descendiente de muchas generaciones de agricultores. Él y mi abuela, se llama Elizabeth, tiene una granja lechera en el noreste de Indiana. Tuvieron cinco hijos: cuatro niñas, y mi padre, Scott. Scott tiene muchos hermanos fomentar también.
Mis padres se encontraron en la Universidad de Indiana en la década de 1970, y se casaron en 1981. Mi padre es un periodista, y mi madre es un artista gráfico. Tengo un hermano, se llama Jake. Mudamos a Colorado desde Indiana en 1994.
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| I do apologize for the plug |
[28 Jun 2009|10:53pm] |
Be sure to check out "Here You Go," the hott new blog by my dad Scott Gilbert:
http://thewordfromscott.blogspot.com/
Check back frequently! He's updating it like a man possessed. Like a man possessed by the ability to write touching poetry, subtle personal reflection, and humorous and interesting historical narratives.
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| Bitchin' about ever'thing |
[17 Jun 2009|06:41am] |
I dunno, I guess I just feel kinda like a hostage to my jobs right now.
Between the two jobs, I work six days a week. Hannah works six days a week between her three jobs. My day off is Sunday. Hers is Saturday. So, basically, that means no camping, no going to the pool, no canoeing at the lake.
Also, the entire month of June has been pretty damn heavy with rain, which has precluded backyard fires, or outdoor activity of almost any kind except getting rained on.
Not to mention the fact that as a state employee, all my paychecks for the month of June are getting held up until July. It kinda fosters the feeling that I'm working for free.
It's a beautiful Colorado summer. I know that streams are flowing, and that the trees smell good. I know there are interesting people to meet. But unless they come up to my desk at the library, I won't talk to them.
Thank god I'm going to Portland with Hannah to see Shana in July.
Other things that probably won't happen, due to work and lack of money and upcoming classes: road trips, canoeing trips, and parties.
It's really okay though. I've been blessed so far in my life, and having to forgo a few luxuries for a while isn't a big deal. Honestly I've been rather spoiled.
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| a-hyurk hyurk hyurk |
[10 May 2009|02:43pm] |
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee looka this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7b9pHtOZ0k
The rough cut of the slideshow component of a project I'm doing for my Nature Writing class. These are all photos I've taken (with the exception of two or three taken by my brother Jake Gilbert) at abandoned homesteads across the Great Plains.
Music is Gnoissiennes and Manierde Commencement, both by Eric Satie.
The Great Plains, I have read, were once the bottom of a great sea, in a time long before there were any people to sail across it. But the sea did not stay full, and the waters evaporated, ascended to the atmosphere and were deposited ten thousand miles away. And no more rain ever came. The seafloor rose, ascended to be nearer the sun, and grass grew. Crossing the sea of grass were great beasts – camels, horses, lions – and eventually scant bands of hardy people who hunted the beasts. They followed meager trickles of water, and slaughtered the herds that grunted as they chewed the grass. When other hunters arrived, separated from their prairie-dwelling brothers for twenty thousand years, the new arrivals killed both the herds and the old hunters, and soon the sea of grass was again empty of fauna, and ready to be repopulated.
And once more a new group moved onto the plains, and for the first time, they built permanent homes, and with plows they overturned the earth, and sought to make the prairie their garden.
For three generations they tilled and toiled, building hopeful cities. Hotels, schools, banks proclaiming their stern grandiosity. And in the 1920s and 1930s, the hand of God came to scrape clean the plains. The prairie, you see, does not tolerate settlers. It is meant to be forever a near-trackless sea of grass. Dust storms, rolling monsters as high as mountains, scooped up the fragile topsoil, and whirled it aloft, to be deposited as far away as the Gulf of Mexico.
And the people, the attempted settlers, abandoned the prairies, their bodies and their clothes and their souls caked in dust, their heads in their hands.
They never returned.
And in cruising the vast and trackless wastes, I am a sailor on that ancient sea. My car, my safe and tiny vessel, bobs slowly up and over and then back down the swells of low hills, like mighty currents turned to dust. Sometimes I travel via the Interstates, the great shipping lanes, where 18-wheelers roll like enormous cargo ships to distant ports. Like distant islands, I see the jumbles of the survivor towns far ahead of me. Sometimes I pull into dock to restock my supplies and fuel. At night, lonely blue lights dot the horizon like sleepy fishing boats with anchors dropped.
But on the back roads lie the ghosts. The tragic aridity of the dry sea, that drove the settlers away, also preserves their former homes. Without water, the only methods of destruction and dissolution are gravity and wind. And so are left moments in time.
***
They say the astronauts’ footprints on the moon will remain for millions of years.
They say the Pyramids of Egypt will last another ten thousand years.
I say a concrete foundation in the Pawnee Grasslands will last just as long.
***
Abandoned homesteads are easy to spot from a distance – the windows are black. Whereas inhabited dwellings exhibit windows covered by lacey white curtains, vacant ones belie their empty interiors with gaping black holes.
I approach them with reverence. They are the homes of stalwart pioneers, the desiccated remains of those who fought and failed against the prairie. The houses are often ringed with long-dead cottonwoods, doubly to take the inhabitants’ minds off of the placelessness of their existence, and to attempt to cut the insatiable, incessant howl of the wind. Inside it’s not uncommon to find 60-year-old furnishings strewn about as if the little house had been shaken like a toppled doll house. The houses, formerly swaddling hearths, are not dormant. Though mummified and crisped in the oppressive sun, shutters clatter and clunk in the wind; they click with locusts, flutter with swallows.
Unlike the mountain ghost towns, populated only briefly by hordes of rowdy twenty-somethings seeking quick riches in the mines, the homes and towns of the plains were platted by older, wiser men taking the great gamble of moving their entire families onto the desert to eke out a legacy.
In the mountain ghost towns, I might find the ruins of a saloon, evidenced by glittering pockets of broken whiskey bottles; on the plains I’m more likely to find a child’s bedroom, bird-shit spattered toys on the floor. Many homes still contain the cast iron stove on which maybe two generations’ worth of a family’s meals were cooked, the rotted remains of box spring mattresses onto which an exhausted farmer collapsed after a day’s desperate work, or the closets where a wedding dress hung hopefully for decades. As far as I can tell, the family floated away into nothingness.
The families, quite likely, ended up scraping by somewhere else. And yet the houses are haunted, by the emotional leavings that saturate the walls of any building where families dream. And I must realize, they are haunted by me. I am an intruder, sometimes, into once-comfortable and familiar surroundings, where vinyl records played and floorboards squeaked beneath children’s feet.
Further, the homes haunt me. When I leave, I take with me a glimpse into another life, a memory of a time that was not mine and a family who never invited me into their home. No one told me it was okay to enter the room where their children were conceived, born, and raised.
I see in the homes an awful future. I think of my childhood bedroom, and I close my eyes and watch the passage of time crack the walls, shatter the windows, rip up the floorboards. I watch the roof beams cave in over the kitchen where my mother baked pies. I see birds nesting above the bookshelves. I watch the basement fill with tumbleweeds.
Nature is slowly reclaiming the meager plots of land that were briefly stolen from it. Blowing dust nicks away microns of dry wood walls, and grass grows through the floorboards. Eventually, the homes will be overtaken by a heavy blizzard, or a powerful wind. And if not, one day the world will again freeze, and glaciers the size of mountains will roll forward and pulverize the homes to dust.
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| Yeah, so I'm bitter |
[02 Mar 2009|08:07am] |
FANCY NEW EDIT: I'm not angry at anyone in this community. You are all cool people. Consider this an open letter to every asshole who just shrugs and says that newspapers are useless or, worse, that the Rocky got what was coming to it for being so got-dang lib'rul.
______________________________________________________________________
When I got home last night after a weekend in Denver, there were three wrapped, unread newspapers in my front yard. One was the final issue of the Rocky Mountain News, the other two were Denver Posts.
I would have thought nobody had been home all weekend, if it hadn't been for the flicker of the TV in the window.
You all just lost a major source of information about your state, your country, and your world. How many of you care that the Rocky folded? How many does it affect? Do any of you read a physical newspaper in the course of your day?
For just shy of 150 years, the Rocky staff worked hard to put out a daily record of everything happening in the world around you. But in the last ten years, that just didn't matter. It was boring. City hall? School boards? These things don't matter! The world's fucked anyway, why should you bother reading about it, right?
In the last nine years, they won four Pulitzer Prizes. For pictures and stories that probably none of you ever saw.
Financial analysts say that in coming years we will see several major cities without a daily newspaper. That is utterly pathetic. I just don't understand - who do people think will cover local events? Do you think the New York Times will send a reporter to cover city hall? Not to mention, TV news has little time to cover any issue in-depth - unless it's the death of a coked-up celebrity.
For everyone that scoffs and says that they'll just get their news online: WHO DO YOU THINK PRODUCES THAT CONTENT? What incentive does some asshole with a blog have to have his or her entries edited and fact-checked?
How many of you wouldn't know the Apocalypse happened unless you saw it in a Facebook status update?
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| OMG |
[13 Jan 2009|07:08pm] |
OBAMA IS ASECRET MUSLIN
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| PHACES OF METH |
[08 Jan 2009|06:26pm] |
Okay, so meth ain't good for you. I've never done it, and I never will. The latest anti-meth ad campaign is called "Faces of Meth," showing "before and after" photos of heavy meth users, exhibiting how it will destroy your face, apparently. So let's examine some of these poor ravaged souls:
See what meth did to Jennifer! It caused brighter lighting and sharper focus! It also gave her a crappy haircut, and didn't give her time to put on makeup like in the Before photo! Oh, and it gave her kind of a pizza face.
Then there's James, to whom meth was even more unkind. It kept him from combing his hair, and made him grow a unibrow! Also it apparently made him kinda pissed off. A rare bright spot, though, in that meth seems to have cleared up his acne.
Poor Patrick. Meth took him from angry and confused to sad and confused. Could have something to do with the road rash.
Next is Esther. Meth had an interesting effect on Esther - it seems that it made her two inches taller. Also is has caused her brow to become dangerously furrowed, and persuaded her to tease out her hair.
Finally, the worst of the worst. This poor, unnamed, bedraggled addict, who has suffered no outward ill effects... EXCEPT FOR THAT WIIIILD HAIR! Forget the sheriff's department, someone call the fashion police! That look is sooooo 1978!
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| preparing for a road trip |
[28 Dec 2008|03:00pm] |
Scott performed Oil Change!
Talisman slots 1 & 2: Support Ribbons (2) (+4 protection against Republicans)
I've got some other stuff in my inventory already:
(+5 Healing)
(+3 Morale)
(+7 Light)
(+10 Repair)
But I'll need to run around the House today and collect more. Unfortunately most of my good gear is in Fort Collins, but I don't know Rune of Return, so it would take forever to go there and back to get it. I'm running really low on CP, too, so I can't go buy more (I think I have like 43 CP total. AND I don't have my Card of Credit anymore). Oh well, I'll make do.
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| blogging |
[27 Nov 2008|01:47pm] |
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Blog blog blog blog. Blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog. Blog blog blog blog, blog blog blog blog blog blog, blog. Blog blog, blog blog blog blog blog blog blog. Blog blog blog blog, blog blog blog blog, blog blog blog. Blog blog, blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog. Blog blog blog! Blog, blog blog blog. Blog blog blog blog, blog, blog, blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog. Blog blog blog blog blog blog... Blog! Blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog! Blog blog blog? Blog, blog blog blog blog blog. Blog, blog blog blog!
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| home a da reel rock |
[22 Nov 2008|03:07am] |
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"You're listening to 99.9 FM - THE POINT! Fort Collins' home for three Nickelback songs per hour!"
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| fiddy seven channelz n nothin on |
[13 Nov 2008|11:07pm] |
Things I do not care about:
Celebz
Whatever the hell "The Hills" is
Forever 21
Malls
Soulja Boy
My appearance
How many people you've had sex with
WaCkY sex moves
Casinos
Euros
Leaving the heat on while multiple doors and windows are open
Trucks
Bratz dolls
Locking my car doors
Replacing my car's missing window
Homework
Rechargeable batteries
Grassroots charity movements to save drive-in theaters in towns with exploding homeless populations
American Idol
Kosher
Ceiling fans
Any musical artist whose stage name begins with "Li'l"
Food that's fallen on the floor
Whatever is under my bed
Plato's Republic
Girls named Kelli or Brandi or Ashli
Honey sticks
Film noir
Whatever the hell peanut roca is
Chuck Palahniuk
Shoes
Scented candles
Season finales
Playing cards
Being tall
Golf
Nostradamus
Willy Wonka
Paisley
Helmets
Vans
Poorly translated idioms
Freezer burn
Ferris wheels
McGruff the Crime Dog
Things I do care about:
Fuckin' french fries
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| skeleton mans |
[02 Nov 2008|08:55am] |
You know what, for the most part my life is utterly awesome. People/things in my life that are awesome include (in absolutely no order):
The very fact that Hannah loves me
Living with Reed and Erin
My cool car
Jake being a badass
My acquiring of a really nice computer through multiple donations by friends
Road trips with Scott & Jake & Shlom when she comes along
Havin' backyard campfires
The documentary that's being made about me and Joe (details later)
The musical performances at my parties
Feedback I've gotten about Wolf Boy
My parents being mostly laid back and accepting about my life
My multiple relatives in California who have said I can stay with them anytime
My grandparents in Indiana who have done so much to help me pay for college
Living about a block and a half away from one of the largest libraries in the state
Hangin' out with Cory & Reed
Exploring tunnels
The fact that I've been consistently getting As on my speeches in Public Speaking
The number of free meals I've received this weekend
Learning how to sew
Knowing how to cook
Going home to do the Englewood thing over Thanksgiving
Text messaging
The wicked dreams I've been having lately
Getting by without spending any money
Short list at the moment, but I'ma go eat breakfast.
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| PALIN |
[03 Oct 2008|09:04am] |
"...Analysts say Sarah Palin, with a cool and confident performance at Thursday night's debate, helped running mate John McCain regain his footing going into the final month of the presidential race..."
"Appearing assertive and confident in her national debate premiere, Palin battled Sen. Joseph Biden on a broad range of issues... and more than held her own."
WHAT? Was I watching the same debate as everyone else? Palin's a fucking moron! She didn't say one single thing of substance the whole debate! It was so clear to me that she was just poorly reciting a litany of tired talking points.
I don't have time to dissect it all now, but highlights included Palin quoting Jesus and attributing the quote to Reagan: "And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said..."
I can't take it. I can't fucking take it.
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| Big Ol' Bucket O' Glee |
[01 Oct 2008|09:42am] |
Things I Don't Have:
-Milk
-Toilet paper
-Internets
-Money to buy moar of the previous three items
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