Royds and ANITA

If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion it will go mad, and sting itself to death



I'm here to report that Tom Waits new three volume album is good. My favorite is "Bastards", which has one of his creepy talking voice songs (like "What's he building in there?") except on this one he seems to be reading out of a bug book (hence the above quote). I have always found true song gems on B-side etc. collection albums, legit or no. I started out loving Tori Amos's bootlegs (where the excellent "Love Song" Cure cover can be found, as well as "Sweet dreams" and the one that goes "All the angels and all the wizards black and white/are lighting candles in our hands.....") and then moved on to Morphine's "B-Sides and otherwise" which has an amazing weird/cool talking track about someone driving and constantly having to "pull over the car" because of some paranoia,...then my almost-favorite Nick Cave song is "Opium Tea" is on "Call of the Caveman" which I am pretty sure was totally unauthorized when it came out, and didn't make Nick a penny...but GOD what a song.

" I 'm a prisoner here- I can never go home/
there is nothing here to win or lose/
there are no choices needed to be made at all/
not even the choice of having to choose....."

It' s a waltz too, which makes it better and you can dance with your grandfather to it.

Ok my little writing warmup excercise is over:


MY BIRTHDAY! and other exciting things that happened in Kai's possibly-undeserved weekend of fun and and SCIENCE!

A countdown of epic proportions:

Thursday: We won the costume contest, and we got a day off of work to go to the charmingly-named "Cape Royds", whihc is a penguin rookery. That means penguins mate and nest and bear eggs there, which turn into penguin chicks...
The Cast:
me: in a hat with animal ears which I made
Mykle: wanting to drive there, cause he has Pisten-Bully clearance
Michelle Ott: Was "Sandwich the person" for Halloween, Minnesotan, honey blonde and incredibly crafty, obsession with roosters, very excited.
Sandwich: a SF girl who carries a sandwich-shaped lunchpail, knows everyone, an epicenter of cool and fun, really excited.
Bill Jirsa: a genius with messy hair and incredible game face, sweet, always up for everything, funny, giant brain. Super fit! Climbs mountains and runs 15 miles for fun.
Ruth: Sweet, quietish, yoga teacher, the haircutter here on station, belly dances, Seattlite.
Craige: fresh-faced, smart and techie, has video cameras, cameras, plays music, wears a stingy-brim.
We also went with Lavonne, who won with her sister for a conjoined-twin costume!

Cape Royds is also home to another hut of Shackleton's, one named "Nimrod". (I haven't even written about the first one I went to...which was INCREDIBLE). We got to go in, and eventually "take pictures" in there, even while scientists where catatlopguing rearranging and relabelling the preserved contents of the hut).

I'm such a slow typer...oh my hands!

Anyhow, we went in Pisten-bullies, which are cute snub-nosed track vehicles...and the trip took about 2+ hours. We were banned from going on snowmobiles (called "skidoos" here) because of an accident on one involving German filmmaker Werner Herzog. Hah! BOOOO!
Anyway, we saw penguins...which hopped and wiggled and smelled really bad. They were Adelies...the small cute toddler-kind. Skuas circled (they eat penguin chicks), but had none to eat because it is penguin mating season instead.
We made a human pyramid, and went into Nimrod the hut, and saw crusty penguin scientists that lived in a tent, and had a great time.

We all wore bathing suits (except for me, who shockingly doesn't have one...and wore instead her bra and black hot pants over striped leggings and the aforementioned animal ear hood) and braved fierce arctic winds to take some group pinup photos. "Snow-bunny" if you will. Once you got out there it was pretty cold, but Big Red was your friend and kept you semi-warm. Michelle, Sandwich and Bill also took some in Nimrod the hut, which is definately a first for that historical monument!



So I had that day off.

Friday:
Little did you all know, but I entered a contest and won, and now my artwork will be raised on a GIANT balloon into the upper atmosphere! The project is called the LDB (Long Duration Balloon), which has "payload" (the stuff that it carries; mainly high tech science equipment) and which I won an opportunity to paint part of. Is this confusing yet? I painted a box on the payload for the ANITA project, which is a Nuetrino-detector. It's a thermal control unit that houses a battery, and they needed it painted at least 40% black to control the temperature as it rises to heights where it is 200 degrees in the sun and -200 degrees in the shade!!!
I went out to the LDB on friday (got PAID for this BTW), and sat on this priceless peice of equipment (it's very beautiful,...symmentrical with big antennas that look like white morning-glories...about 25 ft tall) and waited my design. I hade gone for the gusto and designed a joined image that would have coverd the three visible sides of it. I won "grand prize" so i got $100, a invitation to the launch, and the honor of leaving work to do art around REALLY SMART PEOPLE (who are actually awesome and really nice and (!!) in awe (!!) of my talent! Woah.
So that was Friday.

To be continued since my wrists are killing me.

Thank you for all of the Birthday Wishes; Rico, and Jess, and Aimee and Zina and Mom and I will try to write you all separately. Jordan, it's GREAT to hear from you.
Also Aunt Joia and Aunt Peggy- thanks for getting in contact, it really means a lot. really.

Love,
Kai