Apologies

I've been blogging less because my computer is so goddamn'd slow! It's a sad, slow world for me these days.

There's so much to write about these days also! Ice Dancing, teabagging, ski-jumping, aerial dog hunting, ice dancing...

Cosmo Wernicky, for instance, writes to me:

from: Cosmo Wernicky ____@gmail.com to :S. Sandrigon _____@itwaslost.org date :Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:27 PM subject: plane ol' sycamore mailed-by :gmail.com signed-by: gmail.com

Were we talking about this? because I just sent this email to Doug and he claims that his father was not involved:

I just came across some information that may ease your mind a bit. If you recall, we had in the recent past been discussing those knobby trees that abound in our environs. I identified them as London Planetrees, while your father claimed they are sycamores. WELL, as it turns out, London Planetrees are a cross between a sycamore and an Oriental Planetree. Hot.
If you care

Correspondences: Weekly Letter No. 5 from G.F.M. to J.H.W.

If you're wondering what happened to letter No. 4 from G.F.M. to J.H.W., please refer here.

Click on the bottom of the image to read it fullscreen (F11 may help too.)

Jaipurian Lament

Oh! To be able to post pictures, videos, anything! To type on a not-sticky keyboard! To share with you, my loyal readers of one post, tales of my Southward travels!

Upon my return to Jaipur, I discovered that:

The walls of my bedroom, which were bright pink, are now bright purple.

Instead of living with one Rajasthani villager in my teacher's music school, I was now to live with an entire family of Rajasthani villagers. The usual "guard," Sohanlal, had returned to his village for his daughter's wedding, and my teacher's wife had engaged a new fellow to look after the place. So he brought the whole family. I am still not understanding the logic of having someone off the street look after your house so that no one off the street will break in. At some point Chandra, my teacher, realized that it was probably not a good idea to have me stay there with them and asked them to leave (much to my relief); however, it appears they have used all of the bathing buckets to mix cement.

In sum (as I have shared with Essąn):

The Goan Surf Sitar movement is in full swing, Portuguese Christian style;

In Bombay I saw the Mask of Eternity;

Keralan buses are for Small People who don't Brush their Teeth;

Vipers look precious sleeping in Bulbophyllum orchids

Let me see if I can get this picture of Drosera burmannii to post

Success! My first carnivorous plant seen in the wild (in a bog in the mountains outside of Ooty, or Udagamandalam, as it's now known, on one of my many walks with Swami Vyasa Prasad, friend of Steve the Landlord of Santa Fe New Mexico, the Royal City of the Holy Faith of San Francisco de Asis).

Lepiota lutea (Yellow Parasol Houseplant Mushroom) & our Mysterious Houseplant

Here's an expurgated e-mail from Miss Cosmo Wernicky from late February 2009, when she first disappeared towards Bubidad, Hindoostan.

from Cosmo Wernicky ______@gmail.com to "J. Welsch"_@itwaslost.org, "Jenny Ruth" _______@yahoo.com date Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 3:55 AM subject Re: Alaine along the riverrun signed-by gmail.com

My dear J.'s,
Do forgive me for writing to you both at the same time; my cyber time has been rather limited by the habit of the B____ to monitor my every move and by the constraints posed on computer use by intermittent availability of electricity in this land of the Hindoos.
Anyway, I miss you both a lot. Happy Birthday J. Craw.
[...]
J.--how comes the peace corp process?
J.-I'm most glad to hear about the mushrooms. I recall observing many species of mushrooming up in potted plants during my sojourn at Plant It Earth, notably Lepiota lutea, a lovely yellow variety some may refer to as "yellow penis mushroom mushroom."
well, I'm going to drop a quick line to mary now. I do love you all.
ballji

She had given to our Berkeley flat a mysterious houseplant, photographed here decorated for Christmas:

It has since grown about three times as many leaves. (I started watering it daily.) This spring, it began to grow large strange yellow mushrooms. Google searches corroborate it as the Lepiota lutea, or yellow parasol mushroom, which appear more often if organic compost has been used. They grew in several cycles. Each cycle would end with fewer & larger parasol mushrooms, culminating in the masterpiece I am looking at in this photograph:

The era of the Yellow Penis Mushrooms has passed. I expect them early next spring. If anyone can identify the mysterious houseplant she gave us, I think it is in the Erythroxylaceae, altho not Erythroxylum coca of cocaine fame.

_________________________________________________________________

Please "like" our band The Manna Tease on facebooks:



More shameless advertisement:
My illuminated nonsense rhyming poetry book - only $2.15 on scribd.com:

S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009

Schismatic Board Meeting Minutes, 29 April 2009

The Board of Lost of It held an emergency meeting today, to discuss roma-bulgaric travel plans & also a shuffling in the department leadership assignations (as indicated in the "contributors" sidebar, now updated with relevant links: Olaf encourages you to listen to his Mix Tape Was Lost contributions, Quill to read his chronicles & Grainne to visit the artwork on her site.) There was a nasty schism about corvids, & in the interest of partial transparency we publish an excerpt from the board meeting minutes:

Olaf: anyway, Editor - i would be much obliged if you added corvid neuroscientist or researcher

i guess i prefer researcher

11:21 AM if you think it helps our bottom line

me: The board needs to vote on it.

Olaf: okay

Board?

me: Would anyone like to nominate Liam as itwaslost.org's official corvid neuroscientist?

Grâce: I don't want liam to be upset.

so, okay

hahaha

Olaf: hm.

please do not patronize my research

Grâce: no, i mean give him a chance, he says he will back it up with posts

11:22 AM me: Is this a sympathy nomination? That's no way to run a corporation,

Olaf: yes, I will

exactly

Grâce: give him a chance to prove himself

me: Could someone please pass the cheese?

Olaf: i dont like you attitude

havent I?

me: All in favor say "ay"

Grâce: ay

me: We have one "ay".

J___ Quill: ay

11:23 AM me: Any dissents?

FUCKING NAY!!!!!

Ho!

Olaf: oh SHIIIT!

me: Boom!

Grâce: make it like chrysler- we will give time to prove long-terrm corvid viability

Olaf: BAM!

me: The board is divided.

Cheese break.

Olaf: no it isnt

two votes ay

one vote nay

me: It's sad when there's a fifty-fifty tie.

11:24 AM I can't think of any way to resolve it.

J____ Quill: there are other votes though

Brain

Cosmo

me: My nay was really loud tho.

Olaf: oh

11:25 AM Grâce: everything is the same volume in chat

Olaf: we have spent too much time on this - let's move one!

on!

Grâce: cosmo is an obvious ay

me: Brains passed as a the Secretary of the Department of Nonviolent Nondriving in a secret midnight session.

Grâce: an ay one can take for granted

Olaf: closed doors

me: Hookah-smoke-filled room.

11:27 AM J___ Quill: hookah

me: I hereby resolve that we need to hear more from Cosmo Wernicky. She never writes.

11:28 AM J____ Quill: second

me: All in favor.

Grâce: third

J____ Quill: ay

Olaf: AY!

Grâce: ay

Olaf: [...]

me: Corumba

Olaf: I take up all of her internet time

me: A likely story!

Olaf: i apologize

11:29 AM soon she will be more situated and with regular computing access

11:30 AM same goes for Southwerf!

Grâce: quill, how is your cat?

J____ Quill: my Turkish tutor is caring for him at the moment, because I've been out of my apartment a lot lately

soon I will reclaim him

11:31 AM Grâce: I look forward to hanging out with him

J____ Quill: haha. if you tell him you've been studying Turkish, he'll start babbling away to you

me: Are you drinking bulgick beer [...]?

11:32 AM J____ Quill: rakia

and hookah-smokin

me: Damn!

What a board meeting.

12 Bits of News from Hindoostaan

1. A buffalo has been cloned. Yes, read the story here, folks.

Apparently, "India...has the largest population of the best buffaloes in the world. However, the percentage of elite animals is very low and there is a need to enhance the population of these buffaloes. The cloning technique is expected to address this gap."

Yes, so it shall.

In other news, the buffalo has died of pneumonia.

2. मैं हिन्दी में यह कंप्यूटर पर लिखना सकती हूँ

3. "Pak" did it.

4. Hot water heaters are called "geezers"

5. The concepts of yesterday and tomorrow are expressed by the same word (कल)



6. I have been watching these giant Indian fruit bat flying fox creatures from the roof. They are, like, huge.







7. I do not yet have the ability to move images captured on my camera obscura to any sort of electronic numerical integrator type device; hence the pirated images you see above. I will also treat to you to a handsome collage of Gayatri Devi, Maharani of Jaipur:


8. My 26th Birthday was celebrated with a cake, upon which was written "Happy Birthday Allen!"

9. Word is going round my Indian family that "my father is a rich and famous dentist."

10. Went to buy bedsheets for Ravi Shankar with my pal Krishnaji, student of Raviji. Attended dinner hosted by Raviji in Delhi, delivered bedsheets. What was I doing at a dinner with Ravi Shankar?? Good g-d.

11. The plumeria and jasmine are in full bloom.

12. Phone booths are called STDs.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEW TRAVEL CORRESPONDENT COSMO P. WERNICKY BALL

Gee; If you were here I would probably look something like this:

Some Other People We Know might look like this:

Some Day You And Me Gonna Rule The World:


I Hope You Are Celebrating: