D E S I G N /// ck

This is my submission for the Drawer Geeks Jr. bi-weekly art post. This week's theme is "Tiki". Check it out! I like to think that this tiki head is ancient amber that has a prehistoric mosquito trapped within, holding the secrets of dinosaur DNA! ...or a 3D model using Form Z RenderZone.

This is not exaggerating. I've had experiences like this guy's run ins with cars. Because I stay downtown most of the time, the drivers here tend to expect bicyclists because there's a lot of us. But get out into suburbia, and road rage flairs particularly hot at bicycles on the road.

Last weekend Alice and I felt ambitious while buying garden supplies and got a little bird feeder to hang up outside the dining room. And it was great! We were the life of the bird party on our block for a week. Then, the "little thugs" of our neighborhood started muscling in on the action. We saw one squirrel looking at it from above and I thought, "Good luck, buddy! That thing is WAY out on a limb."

I underestimated the squirrel thugs.


Apparently, one of them hung by a claw and chewed his way through the plastic to the seed. The party's over. Nothing but a few seed shells scattered about. Aren't they supposed to be hibernating? Well, as they say, THIS MEANS WAR. I shake my fist at our thieving treetop neighbors. Watch out, or I might build something like this.

I just finished up my reread of Blood Meridian, and wanted to share some thoughts about it. I'm going to try and write something here from time to time when I finish reading a book:

I started reading Cormac McCarthy with The Road, then backtracked and started reading his earlier books. He's quickly become one of my one of my favorite authors (if not the favorite), but I felt that these other books (like the Border Trilogy) were just his "practice" books leading up to his eventual masterpiece.

I was wrong.

McCarthy has another equally masterful book that marks (as I believe The Road does) a transition in his writing career. Blood Meridian is equal to The Road, and now I think perhaps even better. Whereas the latter portrays evil through secondary characters and the landscape itself, Blood Meridian has the edge because it gives shows us evil personified: Judge Holden. In my opinion, he may be the number one literary villain of all time. And Holden isn't just a passing presence. We get to study him throughout the entire book.

Three scenes have burned themselves in my memory like I've watched them in a movie: the massacre of the filibuster army, the Glanton Gang furiously making gunpowder on the hill top as the Indians approach to scalp them, and The Kid hiding from the Judge in a dead animal carcass at the desert waterhole. Stuff like that sticks with you.

This is a must read for anyone who can stomach it. In my opinion, it's the best novel of the best modern American writer.

...doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared for a zombie apocalypse.


Zombies in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Tomorrow I'll be heading up to Snowshoe for a few days of snowboarding. Looking at the cold Knoxville rain right now, snow sounds good. Hopefully there'll be good powder falling in West Virginia. I love the feel of gliding across fresh new snow. It feels almost like gliding through air.

However right now I feel so busy that I don't feel like I should take a few days off just to slide down mountains. I know I'll relax and enjoy it once I get there- but it's gotten hard to enjoy vacations lately 'cause there always seems to be too much to get done at home. The past few years have always presented some kind of huge project that hands over my head. This year needs to be the year I relearn how to slow down and have fun.

Alice and I are putting in a garden this year, now that we actually have a yard to grow something in. Yesterday we got the first step finished- leveling out terraces along the sunny side of the yard. Now we have 192 square feet of growing space! It doesn't look like much, but we should be able to get a good amount of food out of it. Currently we're "incubating" our seeds in trays inside. Coming soon: a pickup truck load of horse poop (thanks free Craigslist!) and topsoil.

This is an old project that I've revamped the past few days. It's a mixed use building that would go on a large blank lot in the "downtown" of Mechanicsville. As part of the urban master planning, the historic commercial core of the neighborhood would be rebuilt. Right now there's just a few old brick buildings with a deli and a barber shop. The new building would be built at a scale that compliments the older buildings across the street and the houses nearby. The first floor would house offices and retail, built right at the edge of the sidewalk like the original buildings. Above, two stories of condos/apartments have large glass windows and balconies connecting them to the street life. Buildings like this contribute to a neighborhood's security just as much as policemen. The building and its occupants fully engage the street, not hiding suburban-style behind a large parking lot. The more "eyes on the street" (e.g. shop owners, tenants) there are, the less likely illegal activity is going to occur.

New clients are looking into reviving this project. Best of all, the major commercial tenant they're looking at is the local Food Co-op we frequent. That means that a good sized organic grocery store would only be three blocks from our house! Alice would like that. And I would be able to help out the rougher end of our adopted neighborhood. Let's hope it goes forward!

Boring Old Classic Novels + Zombies = Awesome Classic Novels

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans.

I'm actually tempted to get this.

via Dinosaurs and Robots

Gnarls Barkley - Going On from now8p on Vimeo.

This video is old to most now ( I saw it last year ) but I got re-obsessed with it today. I love the yellow letters! And when the leader looks up and starts singing at the beginning. Very cool.

This may be my favorite Fleet Foxes song. Now it has a cool abstract animated video to go with it. I like the intentionally dark "twilight" look of it. Are the two little triangles fighting an evil mustached king? You decide! It's art, after all.

( hat tip to "stan" )

Here's what this blog looks like run through Wordle, a creative little web site that reads what you've written and organizes it into different visual representations, also giving one a bit of a look into one's subconscious.

Twenty years. That's how long it's been since Dad died. It feels weird to even write Dad with a capital 'D' since I rarely have had cause to do it for the majority of my life. No letters, no emails where I'd have used 'Dad' because he's been gone since 1989. All that potential communication. The constant use of a simple word that most people take for granted. Man, how I wish I could talk to him now, just when I'm trying to figure out how to be a good architect. How to be a good husband. It's especially hard when people who knew him remark on our similarities. I know we would've liked each other. That we'd have liked the same things.

I wish he was here. I don't regret the life that's happened since 1989. But for twenty years I've wished I could've shared some of it with him.

This song is the annual anthem of February 2:



Nick Drake - River Man [mp3]