it's a life, it's my life i tell ya!

Ars longa, vita brevis

docrobert — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:11:28 GMT

There are few things that give me more personal satisfaction than my art. (glass of cognac on the turntable) Not this picture, but the things that I have made that are in my house... my coffee table, my lamp, my homunculi...

Earth

docrobert — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 18:12:06 GMT

I was in the Wild Oats store in Laguna Beach yesterday. "Paper or plastic?" the middle-aged clerk asks the guy in front of me. "Plastic", he says. Then, guiltily, "I suppose I'm supposed to say paper." "Oh, it doesn't matter," says the clerk, "the Earth's trashed anyway." Say what??? Another time, a couple of months ago, I was at a party and this vapid enterainment industry girl was asking me what I do. In LA, these conversations usually start with: "so, are you in Production?" So I was telling her about seeing a couple of Minke whales that week while I was working out in Santa Monica Bay. "Whales?" she says, "I thought they were all gone now?" It's like as if people have already given up on the Earth. "It's already trashed anyway." And this belief is useful to them, because it assuages their guilt over their greedy consumption patterns. After all, "the Earth's already trashed." In fact, we're on a sort of cusp. If overconsumption and global capitalism continue as they are, we will create *in our own lifetimes* a dystopian Earth of "pollution and parking lots." But the Earth is not "already trashed anyway." It's too soon to give up.

I've got something to say...

docrobert — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 01:58:40 GMT

If you're not going to dance, get out of the %@!#& way! =D

Mark Rothko Hare Krishna

docrobert — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:42:12 GMT

I had a great Saturday of art and music and met two tribe friends for the first time in the flesh! In the afternnoon I met my friend Lisa ( http://people.tribe.net/lislis ) to see an exhibit of 8 paintings by Mark Rothko from the LA MOCA collection. The MOCA Pacific Design Center outpost on Melrose is a one-room gallery that lends itself well to a small exhibition like this. The exhibition was well-arranged, with the more modestly-sized paintings clustered on the small walls, and the two largest being given two grandest walls to themselves. The paintings largely covered his 'classic' period in the 1950s, with only two examples of his earlier abstract works from the late 1940s. It was my first time seeing Rothko's work in real life, and I have only a couple of observations. It was lovely to experience their full spatial extent - to saturate my rods and cones with their colors. It seemed to me that each painting was a feeling. Not anything so blunt as an emotion, but something subtly flavored and complex, like a moment of inner reflection on looking out a window. On the second time around the gallery, I found my mind going quite silent on taking them in. I could quite happily have stood there for some time, like a lizard in the sun. In the evening, I went to hear (and sing along with) Hindu devotional chanting led by my friend Ardas' (http://people.tribe.net/bhaktishakti ) Temple Bhajan Band. The chanting was part of an audience with Swami Vishwananda, a very kind soul from Mauritius, whom I had never heard of before. If you've practiced yoga much, you've probably heard this sort of music and chanting. Having grown up going to church, and loving to sing, I've always found it a great pleasure to sing these devotional songs, even more so because they don't carry the moral and dogmatic baggage that Christian hymns do for me. I must say, though, that the crowd was not very lively. IMO, this should be a little like gospel singing - you've got to feel the spirit! Temple Bhajan Band was great, though. They changed their lineup from time to time, and featured three lead singers. Afterward another band came on that I wasn't so fond of. They looked and sounded more like they were trying out for a movie role. It was performance, not worship. So, can you say 'compensation'? After a week of 12 hour days analyzing my huge database of kelp measurements, meetings to start a new project about molybdenum speciation and nitrogen fixation, and putting together application packages for professorial jobs, what do I want to do? Turn on to color fields, tune in to Krishna, and definately... drop out of molybdenum speciation.

Sunday afternoon

docrobert — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 02:35:41 GMT

Some people eat when they're down or feeling blue, I cook. Today I made fresh salsa verde with tomatillos, a very fine quacamole, an onion salsa, tamales stuffed with roasted peppers, zuchinni, or cauliflower, and a pasta with Bärlauch pesto. I have no idea what Bärlauch is. It's from Germany, and it translates as bear-leeks. It tastes really good. I washed all the dishes three times during the day - now the kitchen is clean except the floor. I'm relaxing with a Grapefruit-Absolut peach screwdriver. Cheers. p.s. Anyone hungry?

Super King!

docrobert — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:18:29 GMT

How's this for $30.81? Butter Ararat Feta Roumi Cheese Italian Parmesan Russian Salami Tomatoes Bananas Parsley Cilantro Red Onions Yellow onions Peaches Pasilla Peppers Serrano Peppers Jalapeño Peppers Oranges Limes Tomatillos Lavash Bread Eggs Stuffed Grape Leaves Corn If you live anywhere nearby in LA (Los Feliz, Silverlake, Glendale...) you've got to check it out. Lots of Greek, Russian, Lebanese food. The cheapest veggies anywhere, and where else can you get four kinds of eggplant (Japanese, Indian, Italian, regular)?? http://www.superkingmarket.com/ 2716 N. San Fernando Road Los Angeles, CA 90065 Near Rt. 2, across the river from Silverlake.

A day at sea

docrobert — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 01:54:58 GMT

The sea had a sickening roll this morning. I gave up reading on the voyage out - it was making me too nauseated. We were facing assward to the swell with the 500 pound CTD/rosette on its way up from the bottom, a half mile down. The CTD is a oceanographic instrument that measures the chemistry of the water, and the rosette, a bank of large bottles that can be programmed to fill with water at any given depth. The swells were lifting our stern up into the air, pulling the CTD with it on its cable, then dropping us. Everytime we dropped, the cable went slack, and one of the crew had to take up the slack with his weight to keep the next swell from jerking the cable and breaking it. "Put us in the fucking trough!", yelled the First Mate to the Captain. Over the loudspeaker, I could hear the Captain's voice from the bridge. "What?" "Put down that crossword puzzle, and put us in the goddamn trough!" yelled the First Mate. Everyone laughed. "I already finished it," said the Captain. The First Mate wanted us in the trough: that is, with the swells hitting us on the side, so that we would roll from side to side, rather than pitch up and down. It would be easier on the cable. The boat started to turn to starboard, but we were moving too fast. The cable started to pull strongly to starboard, twisting the block (the pulley) to a crazy angle. The stern of the boat pitched up into the air and I could see the cable jump slightly off the block. "Whoa, stop!", yelled the First Mate, as he let off a little slack on the cable so that the boat's motion wouldn't pull it so hard. Then the next swell hit us. The cable pulled sharply to starboard, slipped off of the block and wedged against its side. "Fuck!", yelled the First Mate. Everybody groaned. I stepped over to the computer where the Cheif Scientist was monitoring the CTD. "We're at 60 meters," he said. Shit, 60 meters... that's a long way to pull up a 500 lb. instrument by hand. The Captain came down to have a look. After some discussion, we decided to haul someone up with the second winch to see if the cable could be put back on the block. The Captain decided to go up himself, and it was pretty funny to see his 200 lb. bulk swinging wildly on the cable with every swell. No luck, though, and we had to pull the CTD up five yards at a time. A long day with no data, but we'll try again next week.

King Lear

docrobert — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 04:09:09 GMT

On my third time through Shakespeare's "King Lear", I suddenly realize that this is not a tale of the foolishness of old age, as is often said. Lear clearly was a royal asshole and an idiot his whole life. His daughters Goneril and Regan have obviously always hated him. The youngest, Cordelia loves him with filial devotion, yet cannot muster up much enthusiasm when asked to describe her love. "I love your majesty / According to my bond; nor more nor less." (Act 1 Scene 1) Similarly one gets the idea the Earl of Kent is more loyal to the idea of kingship than to the person of Lear. He chides Lear for failing to uphold the dignity of his office. "What wouldst thou do, old man? [...] To plainness honor's bound, / When majesty stoops to folly." [Ibid] But Lear will not be stopped in his fury, and banishes both his daughter and his loyal subject in a fit of pique that cannot have been atypical for him. Lear is not the victim of the infirmity of old age, nor of the machinations of ungrateful daughters. As Edmund, bastard son of Gloucester and another example of filial impiety, says: "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeit of our own behavior - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars: as if we were villains by ncessity, fools by heavenly compulsion..." (Act 1 Scene 2) The message is clear; Lear is responsible for his actions and their consequences. Idiocy, foolishness, nonsense are so interleaved in the play, that a good part of it is completely opaque. Lear, his Fool, Kent, and Edgar all babble on, insane by design or necessity. Lear's madness comes from his inability to accept that what happens to him is a result of his own ill-considered actions. He rails against nature, as if nature's perversity is his enemy. He rains the most horrible curses on his daughters - evidently he has some practice at this. The Fool's pronouncements are pointed barbs thinly veiled. But he is an idiot too, because he is beholden to a mad king. He flatters himself that he is wiser than Lear: "I am better than thou are now; I am a fool, thou art nothing." (Act 1 Scene 4), yet his fate is entirely dependent on his master the fool. Kent, hoping to galvanize Lear into action, desperately provokes a fight with Goneril's servant, calling him: "...a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave..." (Act II Scene 2) But his efforts only merit him a night in the stocks, where the Fool mocks him. "Kent: Where learned you this, fool? Fool: Not i' the stocks, fool." Edgar, Gloucester's natural son, feigns insanity to avoid detection. It evidently is the best way to blend in to the cast of insane characters. "Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness." (Act III Scene 6) Edgar's babble is so bizarre, one wonders how he became so good at pretending insanity. The Fool blames it all on the weather. "This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen." (Act III Scene 4). When the final conflagaration comes, one is hardly surprised.

Balthazar, by Lawrence Durrell

docrobert — Thu, 25 May 2006 04:26:20 GMT

Read these books (The Alexandrian Quartet), if you have not - start with 'Justine.' This, in the voice of Clea, from 'Balthhazar.' Last week a man appeared among the trees, also a painter, and my heart began to beat unwontedly fast. I felt the sudden predisposition to fall in love - reasoning thus, I suppose: 'If one has gone so far from the world and one finds a man in that place, must he not be the one person destine to share one's solitude, brought to this very place by the invisible power of one's selfless longing and destined specially for oneself?' Dangerous self-delusive tricks the heart plays on itself, always tormented by the desire to be loved! [...] At any rate, my own misgivings saved me from the youth who was, I will admit, handsome and indeed quite intelligent, and would have done me good, I think, as a lover - perhaps for a single summer. But when I saw his *paintings* I felt my soul grow hard and strong and separate again; through them I read his whole personality as one can read a handwriting or a face. I saw weakness and poverty of heart and a power to do mischief. So I said good-bye there and then. The poor youth kept repeating: 'Have I done anything to offend you, have I said anything?' What could I reply - for there was nothing he could do about the offence except live it out, paint it out; but that presupposed becoming conscious of its very existence within himself. I returned to my hut and locked myself in with real relief. He came at midnight and tried the door. I shouted 'Go away,' and he obeyed. This morning I saw him leaving on the bus, but I did not even wave good-bye. I found myself whistling happily, nay, almost dancing, as I walked to town across the forest to get my provisions. It is wonderful whenever one can overcome one's treacherous heart. Then I went home and was hardly in the door when I picked up a brush and started on the painting which has been holding me up for nearly a month; all the ways were clear, all the relations in play. the mysterious obstacle had vanished. Who can say it was not due to our painter friend and the love affair I did not have?

Dinner.

docrobert — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 05:58:10 GMT

Ok, please indulge me in a little boasting. So this is what dinner like at dr. robert's on a Friday night by hissself. Desperately need to go shopping - so I'm cooking with what's left in the fridge. T-15 min: Wrap yams with a dab of butter in foil , put on gas grill. T-12 min: Steam a halved beet with some of my own homemade veggie stock. T-10 min: Throw in some of the Lachnagar whiskey I've been drinking... heh heh ;) T-8 min: Set the table, pepper and salt grinders, open bottle of Negra Modelo. T-6 min: Toss tuna steak on hot frypan. T-4 min: Take yams from grill to plate. Pour some beet -whiskey stock onto yams. Hmmm. T-2 min: Put plate with yams on top of frypan to warm it. T-0 min: Medium rare tuna goes on hot plate, beets onto plate. Sit down! Wish myself guten Appetit! Yaaaaah! It was awesome! I looooved it!

Digging the Planet Soul Network!

docrobert — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 03:47:38 GMT

Streaming right to your player!!! It's soulful, it's deep! http://www.planetsoulnetwork.com/

Fiat lux!

docrobert — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 02:37:34 GMT

I finally finished my lamp project! I bought this 1960s-era architectural lamp on ebay when I first moved here. It goes pretty well with my early-80s metal desk (formerly owned by General Dynamics in Pasedena). I unpacked the lamp and plugged it in. It had one of those old fashioned fluorescent lamp switches that you have to hold down until the lamp lights. It worked, but the lamp's cold grey light was flickering, and the most horrible buzz was coming out of the thing, like the attack of the giant killer mosquitos. I tried using it for awhile, but the noise and the unpleasant light were just too much. So I started reading up on what causes fluorescent lamps to buzz. Apparently, it's a design fault of early ballasts (a ballast is a sort of transformer that provides the right current), made worse by age. New ballasts are very quiet, and have different cirtuitry, so that the lamp starts instantly. I also found that you could buy fluorescent tubes that gave a warm light. Cool! I would just put in a new ballast! So a few clicks on the internet and a pile of cash later, and the stuff was on its way to the door. I looked at ciruit diagrams - the new ballasts were wired differently, instead of 3 wires connecting the ballast (which lives in the lamp's base) up through the arm to the tubes, you needed 6. You also need to ground the whole thing. I was going to have to rewire the entire lamp. When the ballast and the tubes arrived, I took the base apart. The old ballast was a pair of rusty transformers. The inside of the base was full of metal flanges I would have to remove somehow to get the new ballast in there. The whole project was looking pretty complicated! I stuck everything in my closet and tried to forget about it. This weekend, I decided to finish it. I made space for the ballast in the base by grinding the metal flanges off. I took apart the entire arm and painstakingly threaded the six wires through each part (I had to use grease), then put the whole thing back together. I soldered all the connections, then installed the lamps. I turned on the switch and - voila! - the light came on instantly. The light was warm and steady, and the lamp made no sound. I carefully touched the outside with the back of my finger to see if I would get an electrical shock. No. I left it on for an hour to see if it was getting dangerously warm. No! Yeah! It's so cool! What a great lamp! Let's see - including shipping costs: Lamp $56 Shipping $30 Ballast and tubes $45 Wires $15 Total: $146 Gah! Plus, I must have spent at least 16 hours on it. Well, what fun!

Consider the lilies

docrobert — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 04:23:11 GMT

Ok, I know this is the umpteenth time I've blogged about flowers, but well.. So I bought 6 lily stems two weeks ago, three Stargazers and three Vermeers. They cost a fortune, but then I became thrilled when they lasted and lasted - more than two weeks now of beautiful blooms and the house lily-scented. I like flowers even when they are past - so I always let them go till the petals curl and darken. Artemisss told me I could make them last longer by removing the stamens, but now she knows how horrified I was by that suggestion! Not because I want them to wilt, but because that would be like castrating them - cruel! Anyway, the other day I noticed that they were looking a little gnarly, so I took them to the sink to cut the dead blossoms off. By the time I was finished, there was golden pollen everywhere. It got all over my clean work clothes (it was morning) and all over the kitchen. I was thrilled! It was so cool. It got all over the floor and stained the tiles yellow. I don't know what it was, maybe it's the fecundity of the whole thing, but I was happy as anything cleaning up the pollen. I started wondering about what makes it that color, and if you could dye clothes with it, and... Yeah, so I'm a member of this science tribe, and this is exactly the kind of thing I always want to discuss, but people would usually rather talk about space travel or immortality or... It occured to me that this what what makes the difference between a scientist and an interested layperson... getting excited about what seems like mundane stuff... just like it says in my profile, right? So the lillies are still going strong. I wonder if my housemate minds dead flowers all over the place. I'm going to keep them until the last grain of golden pollen drops on the coffee table. Oh and by the way, the pollen stains on the kitchen floor only lasted a day - what happend to the color? Did it photo-oxidize or what? What does that mean for my clothes-dying idea? To be continued...

Hope?

docrobert — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 13:08:47 GMT

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Harvard economist and first woman president of Liberia Michelle Bachelet: Daughter of slain opposition hero and first woman president of Chile Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: Union organizer and leftist, Brazil Evo Morales: First indigenous leader of Bolivia Antonio Villaraigosa: First Hispanic Mayor of Los Angeles

House music

docrobert — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 20:09:55 GMT

House music will save your soul.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

docrobert — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 20:05:37 GMT

Hemmingway gets kudos from me for some of the best sex scenes ever by a male writer. Here's one of three in "For Whom the Bell Tolls": ****** Now as they lay all that before had been shielded was unshielded. Where there had been roughness of fabric all was smooth with a smoothness and firm rounded pressing and a long warm coolness, cool outside and warm within, long and light and closely holding, closely held, lonely, hollow-making with contours, happy-making, young and loving and now all warmly smooth with a hollowing, chest-aching, tight-held loneliness that was such that Robert Jordan felt he could not stand it...

Secret Agent

docrobert — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 23:25:31 GMT

My new favorite online radio station: *Secret Agent* >The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. >For Spies and PIs too! Sultry and sinister beats from the last 5 decades, spliced with outtakes from spy movies! I love it! http://www.somafm.com/ or direct link for winamp, etc. http://www.somafm.com/secretagent.pls

Abrupt Climate Change

docrobert — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 18:47:38 GMT

Reading an article in the journal Nature yesterday gave me the kind of chill that a doctor would get looking at an x-ray of his smoking father's lungs. Everyone's heard of global warming, which one imagines as a sort of gradual warming (doesn't sound *that* bad). Others believe the allegations that global warming is seriously disputed in the scientific community and "just a theory" - like evolution, right? But to an oceanographer, these claims are just like the tobacco companies' former claims that smoking doesn't really cause cancer. Scientists can read the temperature record of the past, and we understand the history of the last 15,000 years very well. One of the things we see is instances of abrupt climate change, where the global average temperature changes by up to 10 'F over the course of a couple of decades. If that doesn't sound like a big change, think again. That's the average temperature. That means that parts of the northern hemisphere get really really hot or really cold. We know that these abrupt changes are caused by changes in global ocean currents called the ocean conveyer belt, which transports heat from the tropics to the northern climes. These changes are abrupt. The conveyer belt slows, and then just switches off. No one knows what it might take for it to start back up again. When the conveyer belt stops, it stops transporting heat. The tropics get much hotter, and the north gets much colder. The effects on the modern world could be devestating. Agricultural production could decline precipitously. Storms of unthinkable magnitude could become everyday occurences, roads become impassable in the winter, people unable to afford to heat their homes... no one really knows. The Nature article presents the first evidence that the conveyor belt has slowed by 30% in the last 50 years. That means it may be getting ready to shut off. Meanwhile we're puffing more of those petroleum cigarettes than ever.

The Late Great Pumpkin

docrobert — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 04:34:35 GMT

So as November slips into the past, and chilly weather comes, its time to make pumpkin soup. I think of pumpkins as all-purpose fall decorations. I buy one for Halloween, and because I always paint a Jack o' Lantern face instead of carving it, the pumpkin lasts well into winter. Now that I'm thinking ahead to the smell of pine needles in the living room, time to carve that orange beast up, simmer it with stock and spices and white wine and make enough pumpkins soup to last until next year. ...that is, unless some of you come over and help me eat it!

The Grapefruit Breakfast Margarita!!!

docrobert — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:08:14 GMT

Ok, so I *do* have a job, but I'm home waiting for the telephone company, and I've been dying to try this, so today was the day. I spent the first hour of the morning cleaning the fireplace bricks with muriatic acid. Then I climbed around in my Grapefruit tree looking for ripe grapefruits. After I picked a bucketfull, I set to work on the Margarita. I might need to tweak it a little but this is a good first pass. In a shaker full of ice pour: 2 oz. Tequila A light golden tequila is best. White tequila has not enough flavor, and something like Cuervo gold is too strong. I used Hornitos. 1 oz. Cointreau Ever wonder why restaurant Margaritas taste so insipid? I never wondered either. Its because they use cheap tequila and even cheaper triple sec. The only thing worth making a Margarita with is Cointreau. I like my drinks rather dry, so I usually add a shy oz. The juice of one half lime, fresh-squeezed (Key limes if you can get them) The juice of one grapefruit, fresh-sqeezed (preferably from my tree!) Shake vigourously until ice forms on the outside of the shaker. Pour into ice-filled glass (salt optional). Leave the froo-froo Margarita glasses in the cupboard. Garnish with lime wedge. Sit somewhere warm and comfortable, and sip.

Infinite grapefuit

docrobert — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:07:04 GMT

So, now that I'm settled in a bit in LA, time to say a few things about my life. Grapefruit. I have a heavily laden tree outside my window, and every morning I grab 4 or more and make myself some delicious juice. It's so potent I prefer to just drink 4 oz. but what a treat! Better than a cup of coffee for putting some zing in my morning! And check out my new citrus juicer! With its lovely orange enamel, it was apparently on display at the MOMA for awhile... well, now it's on display in my kitchen. :)

stopping to smell the roses

docrobert — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 04:26:52 GMT

to stop to smell a rose is to say: whatever I was doing wherever I was going is not as important as this soft whorl of color. I bend, turn my eyes away from the open air and sky towards this frail creature of earth. I inhale the vapors that that sulk within its folds. however faint the scent time ceases...

A Bellini

docrobert — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 18:20:41 GMT

A hot Tuesday evening... 1/2 ripe Spanish peach, blended 200 mL Prosecco delle Venezie Dash Angostura bitters *inspired by Cara Principessa*

Berlin

docrobert — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 19:04:51 GMT

Big city with small city feeling. Bars in ruined buildings. Huge hunks of stone still missing from building walls, blasted out by bombs. East Berlin in all its Stalinist splendor. Berliner Freiheit - freedom as not seen in the US. Finally, good restaurants! From chic to punk. The Brandenburg Gate.

"working" at home...

docrobert — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 13:58:22 GMT

So, the electricity's off at my workplace, so I'm "working" at home. Really trying to give some order to this desk! Alternately sipping cold cava rosada and cold coffee (lol) and listening to Tanja Stephens while sorting through the pile. Its nice and hot - I've got all the windows open, and things are pretty chill...