what 3 new things are you into?

3 random things you're pretty interested in right now

-learning songs on the guitar.
i've been playing for 8 years, but there was a long long gap in there (from roughly the age of 18 to now) where i wasn't really interested in learning songs. i learned riffs after i'd heard them on the radio a few times, i learned a lot of jazz charts, and i noodled out some "songs" of my own, but only now has it really struck me how much more i can learn about songwriting by learning how the songs i really like are put together. it's like staring at a car for years and then suddenly realizing i can open the hood.

-appalachian banjo music.
something about how it dances back and forth between joyful and forlorn just kills me.

-the book "stoner" by john williams.
it's a novel about a really kind of medicore man, a professor of english who doesn't ever really do anything extraordinary, but williams writes him with so much empathy that he (all of us) kinda becomes heroic

- whether or not international law is actually law
- "travelling" and if it suits me or not (suspect not but it seems to have its moments)
- getting to know and appreciate my family

i feel like only one of these fits what you´re after, but those are pretty much my answers.

you put "travelling" in quotes, what do you mean other than 'being in transit'? why don't you think it suits you?

i ask that cause deepening your first answer might be more complicated than you want to get and the third might be too RESEARCHIN YR LIFE

i put travelling in quotes, because i am, as yet, unconvinced that it is an actual thing. i´ve taken three weeks out to tour northern argentina (possibly will dip into chile and / or bolivia if i have time) and while accompanying my friend, the ardent "traveller", have met many people (english, scottish, dutch, american) where the primary focus of discussion has been where you´ve been, hostel experiences, where you´re going next but very little engagement with the place itself.

all this is fine - tbh i have the luxury of being on "holiday" - but there´s this sense of there being an ideological and philosophical purity to the process, to the experience, that i´m really not feeling. it´s good, in the sense that it seems easier to meet new people, but whether there´s much actual benefit from it, from the point of view of improving the soul, i´m thus far unconvinced.

anyway, i´m drunk,having enjoyed a little too much of the local tipple, but that´s what going on right. you got me talkin´, hoos.

My "things I'm into" are book-related, not that I couldn't stand to learn a new skill.

- Jika Jika supermax prison. Can't recall the thread that led me there, but found a great book about the history of it & H Division Pentridge on G00gle bks that I've been reading heavily. Remember some of it from when I was little, just interested in piecing what happened with the bits & pieces I recall. Not a lot of stuff out there, oddly enough. I thought that for such a crazy period of time there might have been more written.

- Am also reading "Stasiland" & relearning all that happened around the fall of the Wall. We followed it a lot in high school, every day there was change but I was barely a teenager and didn't have the context to fully grasp what was happening. Ive absorbed a lot over the years but making a point of really focusing in has been a really moving experience. Revisiting it is much more powerful now.

God I'm really all over the place aren't I, lol. Am also into Thomas Jefferson atm but that's more of an ongoing thing

01. Manual Labor
02. Asian Pears
03. Being Single

man stasiland is so great. it's one of the best examples i can think of of viewing a historical period through a personal lens. totally informed my knowledge of what happened w/the wall.

learnin':
-radio engineering
-painting, while renovating gallery spaces
-learning about the city i live in, its corners & open-late cafes. it's that or i just sit around complaining.

What a lovely thread!

1 Sons of Anarchy. A bit late coming but I finally managed to watch season one. Especially Katey Sagal is fantastic.

2 Siraplexa. I finally got around to tackling my anxiety. Sadly therapy not working out as well.

3 Japanese knitting books. Although I already bought a few, now I am totally (ahum) hooked.

concocting veg versions of Korean food

reading lost art of being happy: sprirituality for sceptics- tony wilkinson

reading Mother of Bliss: Anandamnayi Ma (1896-1982)- lisa hallstrom

- Jika Jika supermax prison. Can't recall the thread that led me there, but found a great book about the history of it & H Division Pentridge on G00gle bks that I've been reading heavily. Remember some of it from when I was little, just interested in piecing what happened with the bits & pieces I recall. Not a lot of stuff out there, oddly enough. I thought that for such a crazy period of time there might have been more written.

i'm kinda fascinated by this: are you interested in prisons in general, or just this one?

02. Asian Pears

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3 Japanese knitting books. Although I already bought a few, now I am totally (ahum) hooked.

how is japanese knitting different from "western" (??) knitting?

Nath what is your favorite Japanese knitting book? I know everyone flips their lid for the stitch dictionaries.

Growing unfamiliar plants in the garden, like shiso and molokhiya

Testing myself with new writing project goals

Exploration of utterly hyperobscure music in order to avoid pointless comfort listening

Arguably all extensions of things I do anyway, I realize, but this has taken on new focus lately.

03. Being Single

watching Treme and getting homesick from it

experimenting with different softsynths and trying to figure out the best way to get beefy, dirty sounds without owning an amp

learning Czech

Jika Jika, opened in 1980 at a cost of 7 million Australian dollars, was a 'gaol within a gaol' maximum security section, designed to house Victoria's hardest and longest serving prisoners. It was awarded the 'Excellence in Concrete Award' by the Concrete Institute of Australia before being closed in the middle of controversy after the deaths of five prisoners in 1987.[5]

1 playing Diplomacy online and obsessing over it
2 not cracking my neck
3 making hella bank in a 2-income household, what's up

i thought all of australia was a prison, tho. wasn't that the idea?

xposts Hoos, I'm pretty interested in prisons in general, have visited Folsom Prison & met some guys in a rehabilitation program, and in High School vistited Barwon Prison & talked to some lifers who gave us an eyeopener on H Division, Garry Webb, etc. It's alway been a "thing" for me that I regularly circle back to.

Lol Nakchivan, I saw that "excellence in concrete" thing too, so bizarre.

2 not cracking my neck

i'm convinced this type of thing is ok if you actually feel relief from it

not that i know why you're into not cracking your neck sry

ha its ok, i just used to do it compulsively which i think would probably fuck it up, so now getting out the habit has been good 4 me imo

been going through an ascetic phase lately

1. not going out/partying - i am in a phase of not ever wanting to go to a party or dancing & it's been really nice. so much of partying is just ego pomp stimulation, but so little and so rarely is actually interesting. so far it's been real great, no pressure, no cabs home and no biking back in the cold, save money to spend on records, more time to read. i still go to shows all the time, though

2. buying records/not downloading music or listening to music on ipod or computer - since we hooked up our speakers and got the turntable fixed i am just never really in the mood to listen to music this way. downloading something just seems to flimsy, like a vague promise scrawled on a post-it note. such a little portion of the music i've downloaded is stuff i can actually say that i'm really familiar with. like squeezing yourself out of the whole experience. i have been mail ordering and spending way too much time at the record shop though

3. incredible string band

1. my new iPad
2. ...
3. ...

Not much going on with me.

1. realizing how much i've missed going out dancing. it's been a while. los angeles isn't a "dancing" town unless you wanna listen to the black eyed peas and drink vodka cranberry on the sunset strip.

1. reading less stuff on the internet and more books from the library
2. finally figuring out a process for transferring drawings out of my sketchbook into a larger more finished format
3. getting back into mixing after a hiatus

- Art. I'm taking a drawing class and a 19th century art history class, pondering getting an MFA if I think I can pull it off. I used to paint and draw all the time but got out of it for ages and ages. Hooray for free tuition as university staff.

- Also been watching Sons of Anarchy lately, it's my after dinner drink a beer and play with the dog on the floor show for the last couple weeks.

- Spending money, time, and massive emotional stress on fertility related stuff. This one I'd much rather not be into but alas.

realizing how much i've missed going out dancing. it's been a while. los angeles isn't a "dancing" town unless you wanna listen to the black eyed peas and drink vodka cranberry on the sunset strip.

there's gotta be other stuff, though, right? there's stuff everywhere. what about part time punks?

ptp is good. i'm just lazy cuz i live in the valley now.

cosign re: Sons of Anarchy love. Just started Season 2 this weekend. Cool as hell.

xp we havent had a real dancing fap since you been out here right? karaoke is a good start but this needs to be rectified imo. haven't been out in a while myself. had a few real good times in alhambra of all places, semi-black eyed peas but not (quite) as expensive and stuck up as the strip or whatever. there is fun droidbehavior type nights but they require even bigger investment in time and logistics

There was also kung fu FAP at some point...

maybe we can DANCEFAP at one of spencer's DJ sets.

-- yoga. been going a couple times a week for a month or two. i'd done it just a little bit before, and i'm still in intro classes, but i'm really enjoying it. i always thought i would, just never got around to it. but there are classes i can go to during my lunch hour three times a week, just a few blocks from my office, and it's a great break in the middle of the day. it has already made me much more aware of posture and breathing and core strength (or lack of it).
-- started a tumblr account. have so far only shared address with one person, because i want to get more posts on it to make sure i'm actually going to keep doing it. it has a pretty simple concept that doesn't require a huge amount of work from me, so we'll see if i stick with it. i at least like the idea of it.
-- crustaceans. i converted from vegetarian to sometime-pescatarian about 10 years ago, but i had held off of shellfish. just didn't like the idea of them, all buggy and everything. but i had some shrimp cocktail a few times over the summer, and it was pretty good. and had a totally delicious shrimp-heavy gumbo last week. so now i guess crab and lobster are next...

you have a lunch hour? well well, mr. pimpstrut.

I'll cheat and provide just two:

1. Legal history. I've no interest in going to law school but I discovered I'm real good at reading legal jargon.

2. Uncle-hood.

sometimes i even go to lunch after yoga... depends on the day. but i do a lot of work at home or on weekends. we're kind of a "as long as the work gets done" office. one nice thing about being back on a weekly publication schedule.

1. house music (put on hold until I have time to wade through some of ILX's house threads)

2. shooting and developing black & white film

3. the old kowloon walled city (RIP) (http://www.antipopper.com/images/KWC1.jpg)

Great thread.

1) Spider. Genius iPhone game.

2) Work, not as a stepping stone to making myself feel better in some self-aggrandizing way, but as something that you just DO, almost every day. It's a new way to work. I guess it's what most people do.

3) Houseplants. Getting better at it, too. At least I can say that I haven't killed any of them after a year or so, though I do have one in the back window that has none of its original leaves. But it never died, damnit.

1. disco
2. this really cute barista
3. learning to play guitar for real instead of just fuckin' around

1. decluttering my house, one thing at a time (toss, recycle, donate at least one thing per day)
2. eating Sunsweet dried mango slices
3. putting together the giant bin of mixed Lego sets in my house (spending a lot of time searching in random places for tiny pieces now)

i wish i had all the legos from when i was a kid :( they were in my mom's basement when it flooded and most things were wrecked, earlier this year. i have great memories of putting together a space shuttle set with my grandfather.

That's terrible about your Legos! I'm so sorry. That is cool about building a space shuttle set with your grandfather, though... I'm sure he'd be thrilled to know that you have that memory and still enjoy it.

Pretty sure my husband still has his from when he was little, but they are hidden away in his office, where I can't be stressed out by them. My son's Lego sets are primarily Harry Potter and Star Wars sets. The Lego ones have so much grey and black that I'm pretty sure I'm going to be blind after a few more weeks of this.

1. Trainyard
2. Birdwatching
3. Toumani Diamate

1. reading less stuff on the internet and more books from the library
2. trying extra hard to kip
3. kitty

1. Gamelan music
2. Making more of an effort to see theater, dance, etc.
3. Feeling cozy

1/ life nature library. ive been slowly collecting these for the amazing photographs and also because theyre p informative (if severely out of date in a few instances) but i lucked on a huge find of 8 or so that i needed last month incl 'the insects'. some dude was moving back to france and was having an everything must go sale so all 8 for $5.
2/ stockhausen. particularly his 50s works and his writing
3/ squash. okay not 'new' but im playing competitively again for the first time in a year+

trying extra hard to kip

what is that? "keeping it productive"?

reminds me of the old joke "q: do you like kipling? a: i dunno, i've never kippled before"

"keeping it positive". it just came to me.

Totally with you on Stockhausen, Lamp. I was so excited when I found this yesterday:

http://www.recordsale.org/cdpix/k/karlheinz_stockhausen-ceylon_bird_of_passage.jpg

anyway:

• Being nice to people/staying positive
• Going to new music concerts
• Being in an open relationship

* Sam Neill. I cannot get enough of Daybreakers, Jurassic Park and Event Horizon right now.

* Thrift shopping for books. Give me $10 and by the time I exit Goodwill I'll exit with a stack of decent literature.

* Rerun marathons of House M.D., it always seems to be on television during the week.

(Realizing that I repeated "exit" twice in the thrift shopping segment. Oops!)

- flat-footing, which is this Appalachian dance form that's like clogging for the lazy and way-too-cool -- it has the same rhythms as clogging but you do it by barely raising your feet so it's kind of a syncopated shuffle. Watching vids of it like YOW but haven't gotten the swing of it myself.

Now I'll have to get into two more things to make this post complete! Good incentive imo.

This is my favorite video on the topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHL_Dzf1xo

One more, please! These boys are kind of dopey-looking but they got style imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed2ATu1xP2g&feature=related

- Brian Jonestown Massacre (because of Boardwalk Empire)
- New York City
- Map app for the iPhone (I don't want to imagine how I would deal with the move to a new city without this).

Pilates - has improved my posture chronic pains & general outlook on life
Keen waterproof sandals - first pair of Jesus shoes I've ever owned, v.comfortable
serving on co-op board - yeah I know but it's actually quite educational

also watching THE WIRE on DVD - new to me anyway. maybe in ten years or so I'll catch up to Mad Men.

* Sam Neill. I cannot get enough of Daybreakers, Jurassic Park and Event Horizon right now.

have you seen reilly, ace of spies? ultimate sam neill, imo.

And then I come to realize, a while later, that it says NEW things. Everything I've mentioned has been around a while. O.o

Considering the OP, I think new to YOU is just fine.

BTW, I do have the Reilly box, I just haven't had the time to watch it yet.

1/ life nature library. ive been slowly collecting these for the amazing photographs and also because theyre p informative (if severely out of date in a few instances)

― Lamp, Sunday, October 17, 2010 7:53 AM

i have the 'early man' one

- Planning a trip to Vienna for my girlfriend's 30th.
- Dungeon Crawl - yesterday was hungover and the height of my productivity was repeatedly getting killed by monsters in ASCII dungeons.
- The works of Planxty and learning about the small intersection between my Dad's taste in music and mine.

1. reading more theory/philosophy
2. the idea of staying in LA for a few years at least
3. uhh a bunch of stuff i have grand ideas for but haven't hunkered down to do yet so i'll put "actualizing my potential" as a placeholder for now

Reading Popoff's and Christgau's 70s guides and making lists of albums

Ripping some old cassettes into GarageBand

Teaching new students

running on the beach
living in a hotel
not being the youngest / most inexperienced person in the room

-running, i love it now, i am in a weird place right now where i have no job and my general self esteem isn't v high, but i sort of have decided if i run regularly and can become physically fit pretty much everything else will improve. it's weird because although it was hard to start running i also can't believe how simple it is relative to how beneficial and positive it feels.

-the necks, can't stop listening to this band. it's like the most fascinating music i've heard in ages. good for running to as well!

can't quite think of a third thing just now...

how is japanese knitting different from "western" (??) knitting?

Well, there's no Japanese knitting. They knit Western style (so Continental or English). (There's also Eastern style knitting and combination. Not many knit this way here in the Western world.)

But what is nice about the books: the patterns really. Of course it helps that the photography is mega awesome, but I am fascinated by their patterns. Yes, it's very much a hyped thing. lol

Abbott, I love New Style of Heirloom Knitting. But most is exceptionally complex to knit and quite "rich" in stitches. That said, awesome designs. Another great book is the red technique book. It has the most common stitches (incs, decs,...) explained alongside the symbols. And of course the Vogue stitch dictionaries. You simply can't go wrong with'em even though the Barbara Walker books are equally good.

http://images4.ravelry.com/uploads/jeanie/822008/2411362887_9cb73410ac_small.jpg

reading, every day now compared to perhaps a book per year previously

unfortunately can't think of anything else, i'm pretty dull.