upupandaway

afternoon haikus

2009-06-09T19:15:36Z

Back in Portland for more than forty eight hours.

Travelers, people
who gather on porches
to drink and indulge

I Turned 21 on Saturday

keg keg keg keg keg
drunken camp games and fire pit
and oh the people

Wherein I tell a story of the non-fictional kind

2008-11-23T03:49:21Z

It's rare that I put myself into situations where I could hurt myself. Even more rare that I actually get hurt. I'm not the type of kid who would jump off of shit, I wouldn't ride the swing as high as I could to fly off to a broken leg, or the kind to play chicken or do anything like that. I've been hit by a car once, when I was six. It was the Portland winter, nighttime and pitch black and I was wearing this itchy faux-fur coat that made me look like a baby black bear, I was running across the road, just because it was daring and stupid and I wanted to be a badass like my friend who lived across the street. So I ran. And doubled back the instant the car headlights appeared, to run right into the car. I flew straight up, like a piece of baby bear popcorn. Nothing more than a few scrapes.
The last and only time I went to the emergency room was for a UTI that blasted to full on bleeding within two or three days of my having sex.
Where is this leading, you may ask?
Yesterday afternoon, Usul and Lyra and I were walking over the interstate in Asheville, NC. Nothing too exciting to report up to that, but looking down on the on-ramp we noted a very freshly found piece of roadkill on the onramp. And, Usul being Usul, ultimate survivor, collector of roadkill pelts, persuaded me to walk down and poke at it and see if it was usable. Only we get to the soon-to-be pelt, and it's nowhere close to a pelt, it's a very live...muskrat? We're unsure, but we pick it off of the freeway and sit down with it. It doesn't look like it's going to die anytime soon, but it's in shock and bleeding from the mouth and still trying to very half-heartedly get away. I stare at it and the blood smeared road and cry and cry and wipe the tears away because it's too cold to cry in this weather. It felt like a very overwhelming hate of civilization and industrialization and the even more overwhelming fear that I'm far too dependent on it, for how much I hate it, I can't leave it. And this little broken animal represents all of that, in one single body of fur and blood and helplessness. We can't leave it out in the 20 degree weather to die, we can't kill it (it's really not in either of us) and so into the backpack it goes, wrapped in Usul's sweater. We can't take it back to Radio's, Radio is having something of a...hard time as it is and doesn't want what sounds like a more than half dead animal at her house. She's also lost her cat of thirteen years, and is almost beyond distraught. It has been a tough week for her.
And so we call Gabrielle. Gabrielle is beyond amazing. She lives in a shack behind a house, not so much of a shack as a little cabin. It's ten by twenty feet or so, with a loft and ladder and cast-iron stove and the only light after dark comes from candles and lamps, it embodies the 'living simple' ideal. She plays the guitar, violin, a very well trained voice that sounds like she was raised in the south, and not in the house that I lived with her mother at in NE Portland. And she takes us up on our desperate plea for a place for what we identify as a ground hog, and who I have now named Johnathan Taylor Thomas. And we take him there and start a fire and Usul puts Mullen on his wounds. He is very cute and fluffy and curls up to sleep. Gabrielle comes home and sees him, Lyra comes over and sees him. He is still very cute. Who couldn't love JTT? And then Gabrielle leaves to see her neighbors and Usul and Lyra leave to go get some Yarrow and I sit and contemplate and stare into his face, lit by the firelight until he hides in his box of sweater. It doesn't look like he actually has too many smashed organs, but when he was hit he bit down on his tongue, and cut it in half. It's still stuck on his teeth. He doesn't move it too much. I call my mom, the nurse, who tells me to maybe offer him water. Had common sense kicked in at this point, I would remember that the folklore surrounding groundhogs is focused on their hibernating tendencies, meaning their ability to live for a long period of time (granted, in a kind of stasis) without consuming food or water, but, well, common sense comes and goes in my case. So I begin to try and give him water. He sniffs it, but is unsure, so I try to better position him for it, and he tries to scramble out of the box. I am nervous, as I am still aware that this is a very wild and scared-out-of-it's-mind animal I am holding in my hands, but reason that he probably won't bite me though his own tongue. And here I am, cradling him, when the open heart of the oven sputters and spits out a half burning log and showers the wood floor with sparks and suddenly I have a ground hog hanging off of my middle finger by it's teeth.
Panic ensues. I deposit Johnathan Taylor Thomas on the floor and dump the water I was trying to feed him on the sparks and stare at him and the fire and start trying to clean the water and ash and then remember my hand is bleeding all over the place. So I run outside and call Radio to contact Usul and can only talk to Radio and I keep asking for Usul over and over and, as I can now tell this morning, by the blood drops, start pacing the porch in a kind of frenzy. I can't think straight with the adrenalin now pumping through my heart and brain and turning off my language and reasoning functions and I'm stumbling and stopping and now the blood is freezing on my hand in little crystals and Radio tells me she has to come pick me up because she's with her mom and she'll take me to the hospital and I really, really don't want to go to the hospital because that UTI cost me five hundred dollars at the ER, but Radio insists and all I can think about is the blood all over the floor and I very cautiously drag JTT outside and then under the porch and at first he tries to get back in and then gives up once I close the door and it just lays there in a pile of depressed and frightened groundhog and it breaks my heart a lot. And so Radio comes and picks me up. And the ER people love me, I mean, love me. This is the best story of their night, I'm whisked from nurse to nurse, one of them gives me this whole goodie bag full of bandages and stuff and he wanders around trying to find me small latex gloves as an extra prize and he tells me about his twenty-two year old son who's not in college, and to go get another bite because it was so damn boring on this Friday night. They tell me not to be embarrassed, it was a kind thing to do and that the needle will pinch some, and to wrap the wound ever so carefully.
One tetanus shot later, here I am. My finger is pretty swollen, and I think I'll be opting for the all invasive plantain plant that grows in the front yard instead of antibiotics and JTT has crawled off somewhere, hopefully it is warm and he is happy and Gabrielle didn't make me clean off the front porch, and so I left my mark, with fluorescent colored red splotches commemorating the most dramatic Friday night of this trip so far.

Questionscommentsconcernssuggestions?

Love you all,
Savannah

If you're not in Portland right now, You should read this:

2008-10-17T22:57:12Z

Let me restate that: If you're not in Portland you should read this if you want to, you know, hang out, share stories, have me cook you some delicious food, tell you a couple of killer knock knock jokes (well, actually, the nature of said 'killer' jokes may be debatable) and what not. And, if you are reading this, chances are we haven't talked in quite a while, as I've been pretty tucked away in the small bubble of oddness that defines Portland.

I'm leaving sometime around next Saturday and journeying up to Seattle and then I'm plannning on being in North Carolina around the start of next month, but from there I HAVE NO IDEA. Maybe hitching to a commune? A train ride into New Orleans? Some sleep stolen on the sands of Florida? Most of my plans have gone up in a large cloud of drama-induced smoke, and so I find myself planless and open to pretty much anything. So if you're in the neighborhood of being awesome and looking for some catch-up time, (and maybe in posession a two by six foot peice of floor that could harbor my body in a sleeping bag for a night or two) please, just say the word (via facebook mail). Ooooh, also, if you know of anyone who is kind and humorous and is looking for a travel buddy, let me know. Like I said, things are pretty up in the air.

Much love,
Savannah

x-posted from facebook

crimebystiletto @ 2008-04-05T15:21:00

2008-04-05T22:21:16Z

www.thegreenhorns.net

Fuck Yeah.

crimebystiletto @ 2008-03-30T09:17:00

2008-03-30T16:18:03Z

WHERE IS MY GODDAMMED RUBIX CUBE???

crimebystiletto @ 2008-03-12T10:47:00

2008-03-12T17:41:48Z

It's true...

Climate change threatens existence, Eskimo lawsuit says

2008-02-29T00:00:24Z

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- A tiny Alaska village eroding into the Arctic Ocean sued two dozen oil, power and coal companies Tuesday, claiming that the large amounts of greenhouse gases they emit contribute to global warming that threatens the community's existence.

The city of Kivalina and a federally recognized tribe, the Alaska Native village of Kivalina, sued Exxon Mobil Corporation, eight other oil companies, 14 power companies and one coal company in a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco.

Kivalina is a traditional Inupiat Eskimo village of about 390 people about 625 miles northwest of Anchorage. It's built on an 8-mile barrier reef between the Chukchi Sea and Kivalina River.

Sea ice traditionally protected the community, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou. But sea ice that forms later and melts sooner because of higher temperatures has left the community unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that lash coastal communities.

"We are seeing accelerated erosion because of the loss of sea ice," City Administrator Janet Mitchell said in a statement. "We normally have ice starting in October, but now we have open water even into December so our island is not protected from the storms."

Relocation costs have been estimated at $400 million or more.

A spokesman for Exxon Mobil, Gantt Walton, said the company was reviewing the lawsuit and had no immediate comment on it.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Kivalina by two nonprofit legal organizations -- The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment and the Native American Rights Fund -- plus six law firms.

Reached by phone in Boston, attorney Matt Pawa said other lawsuits have been filed seeking damages from global warming, but this is the first one that has a "discretely identifiable victim."

Damage to Kivalina from global warming has been documented in official government reports by the Army Corps of Engineers and the General Accounting Office, Pawa said.

The lawsuit invokes the federal common law of public nuisance, and every entity that contributes to the pollution problem harming Kivalina is liable, Pawa said. "You can sue them one at a time or some subset of them," he said.

The lawsuit also accuses some of the defendants of a conspiracy to mislead the public regarding the causes and consequences of global warming. The suit was filed in California because that's where many of the defendants are located or do business, Pawa said.

Without commenting on the lawsuit, Exxon Mobil's Walton said the company takes the issue of climate change seriously.

"Exxon Mobil is taking action by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our operations, supporting research into technology breakthroughs and participating in constructive dialogues on policy options with NGOs, industry and policy makers," he said.

The other oil companies named were BP PLC, BP American, BP Products North America, Chevron, Chevron USA, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Shell Oil.

Also named were Peabody Energy, a major coal producer, and power companies AES, American Electric Power, American Electric Power Services, DTE Energy, Duke Energy, Dynegy Holdings, Edison International, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, Mirant Corp., NRG Energy, Pinnacle West Capital, Reliant Energy, The Southern Co. and Xcel Energy.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/26/us.warming.ap/index.html

crimebystiletto @ 2008-02-20T20:00:00

2008-02-21T03:59:56Z

booksbooksbooks

crimebystiletto @ 2008-02-20T18:22:00

2008-02-21T02:21:58Z

Also, my life motto (which is a work in progress)

crimebystiletto @ 2008-02-13T12:42:00

2008-02-13T20:41:55Z

I know this is a totally new concept, but cops can be jerks.

crimebystiletto @ 2008-02-09T01:49:00

2008-02-09T09:49:18Z

wait, cute?

crimebystiletto @ 2008-02-05T15:48:00

2008-02-05T23:48:12Z

Bill Nye interview

crimebystiletto @ 2008-01-28T20:26:00

2008-01-29T04:27:08Z

In the Democratic reply to the president's speech, Governor Sebelius said: "In this time, normally reserved for the partisan response, I hope to offer you something more: an American response.

"There is a chance, Mr President, in the next 357 days, to get real results and give the American people renewed optimism that their challenges are the top priority."

-BBC

Do you know how hard I just laughed? SO HARD. I cackled.

LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN.

As found in the Verizon Wireless customer agreement

2008-01-24T22:15:25Z

Your Rights for Dropped Calls or Interrupted Service

If you get disconnected by our network from a voice call in your Home Rate and Coverage Area, redial. If the same number answers within 5 minutes, call us within 90 days and we'll give you a 1-minute airtime credit. If service is interrupted in your Home Rate and Coverage Area for more than 24 hours in a row due to our fault, call us within 180 days and we'll give you a credit for the period of interruption. These are your only rights for dropped calls or interrupted service.
Payments, Deposit

That number is
Customer Service

Dial *611 from your cell phone
(800) 922-0204
Monday-Sunday 6am-11pm

Just an FYI. A lot of people don't know about this.

crimebystiletto @ 2008-01-21T02:38:00

2008-01-21T10:40:26Z

The Original

2008-01-19T20:06:48Z

1943 Color Slide as unearthed in the Library of Congress

crimebystiletto @ 2008-01-17T14:36:00

2008-01-17T22:38:05Z

A Purpoise from Above

crimebystiletto @ 2008-01-06T14:49:00

2008-01-06T22:48:58Z

crimebystiletto @ 2008-01-05T15:29:00

2008-01-05T23:29:48Z

James Watson, You Nobel racist, you! FTW! (FuckTheWhitie)

For reallllll

2007-12-24T23:12:55Z

toothpastefordinner.com

crimebystiletto @ 2007-12-24T14:38:00

2007-12-24T22:38:08Z

Lakota nation breaks away from the US

2007-12-21T06:00:31Z

Lakota Nation breaks away from US.
9 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.

The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said.

"This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.

Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.

One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

"Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime."

crimebystiletto @ 2007-12-16T18:08:00

2007-12-17T02:15:10Z

"Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God are hat wearing Muslims.

"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rages living in the street, and they think, "business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
"These people fail to realize that is it on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity."

-Life of Pi, Yann Martel

hell

2007-12-14T22:21:58Z

crimebystiletto @ 2007-12-11T14:23:00

2007-12-11T22:21:56Z

as found at http://www.woostercollective.com/

I wish I could say why, but when I saw that downtown, (I think it was on Broadway and Burnside) I too, thought it was pretty fucking stupid. I'm not going to drag my dad, or any other blind person walking by over to make them read some shit for me. Maybe I should have just learned braille when I was seven like my parents attempted to make me do. I guess I don't really care too much, but it just doesn't seem like it's going to be applicable in any sense other than irony. How very Portland.

PS The blind guy going on about how it can just show up in his mailbox is my dad's friend Martin.