DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITY

#itsaprocess

[deptofhumanity]

Returning to my Self (?)

It's been 8 years since I last logged into this account. I feel like a completely different person, but I'm also still the same person.

So I come back to the past, in order to determine who I will be in the future.

[deptofhumanity]

I was never much of a doodler.

Ballpoint pen on notebook page, ca. 1999-2001.

[deptofhumanity]

[deptofhumanity]

My Godmother Sends the Best Care Packages

Contained within one red-painted, weathered wooden box that closes with a swing catch:

one perfect seashell

a heart-shaped box containing my name in small, loose wooden letters

a tiny, delicate china cup containing one miniscule rubber frog, five shark's teeth, and one worn, round bead of blue glass - each bearing every indication of having been found during a stroll on the beach

a green, sage-scented candle

a circular tablet of fair-trade Mexican chile chocolate

a nifty yo-yo that lights up when it spins!

a red and white jump rope

a shiny silver JFK half dollar

a puzzle game

[deptofhumanity]

Leontyne Price, "Ritorna vincitor" (Verdi, Aïda)

As a kid I had the picture-book of Aïda that Leontyne Price wrote. I still say "Return victorious!" to people, and they still think I'm just kind of odd. 

She is still one of the most wildly glamorous people I can think of.

[deptofhumanity]

work buries work, value buries value, only the wind watches over the sand 

[deptofhumanity]

Well first of all, Weezer could never HAVE a baby with an iMac, so that is a totally dumb way to describe how you think you look.

[deptofhumanity]

[deptofhumanity]

Sometimes I think, "my god, I'm so much older than Dave Foley was when Kids in the Hall first aired." Thankfully I'm reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, and its message is that anybody can become famous if they believe in themselves enough.

Ben Estes, friend from college

[deptofhumanity]

Two grand seems like an excellent deal for this. If I owned it I would keep it in a safe deposit box until my hair is white, and then wear it all the time. This is the kind of old lady I aspire to become. Black leotards, weird flowy skirts, this necklace. Witchy. 

[deptofhumanity]

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

R. Buckminster Fuller

[deptofhumanity]

'archy interviews a pharaoh'

i am as sad 

as the song

of a soudanese jackal

who is wailing for the blood red

moon he cannot reach and rip

[deptofhumanity]

[deptofhumanity]

[deptofhumanity]

forget that you never met me 

i bet

that when you do 

you will regret wanting to be next to me 

[deptofhumanity]

making plans for my election night party

slicing out my own uterus & eating it: good idea? anyone had uterus before? how was it prepared? can i eat it raw?

[publicdomainthing]

Roy Standefer Photo Collection

A Grumman Aerospace engineer in Bethpage, New York and White Sands, New Mexico from 1960 to 1972.

San Diego Air and Space Museum

[deptofhumanity]

This strikes me as an ideal proving ground for those of us who are somewhat fascinated by the magical alchemy required to win the New Yorker caption contest. Practice with this! The rules as I understand them: 

It must not be funny. 

As far as I can tell that is the only rule. AND YET WINNING IS SO HARD.