is all this election drama wearing you out?

don't worry, you're not alone

If Rives controlled the internet.

WRMC presents...

YAWN and Vacationer! Tonight at 8pm in McCullough. get your tickets at go/grooveyard and come rocking your Halloween best! 

Continuing the musical binge this blog has been on this week...

Namasté

Enjoy a little taste of Namasté and let your soul get happy. 

ça vous plaît? check out bim-bam-boum to see what else the french hipsters are listening too!

Like the rockin' rasta Belgian Selah Sue

phil kaye remember when you came to middlebury?!?

phil kaye and sarah kay (not related or together just cosmically intertwined in the world, and individually and collectively rad) reminding us about what love is. 

take it in breathe it out go to sleep enjoy the world /// 

ahhhh want you back

so very appreciated  

Old growth forest of the mind.

Wade Davis on Endangered Cultures. I guarantee this is worth the 23 minutes.

remembering to be mindful on a monday night

Mindful

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for -

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world -

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant -

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these -

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean's shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

 Mary Oliver 

Come into this.

Anis Mojgani...you are quite the beauty.

Come Closer

For Those Who Can Still Ride in Airplanes

Shake the dust 

lucille and mitt

a match made in heaven. 

http://lucilleandmitt.tumblr.com/

honestly, the internet is wonderful.  

happy studying, friends! 

Finally!

The answers we've been looking for!

*Disclaimer: the views presented on this blog may or may not represent the biased liberal opinions of one of the authors...

tops the list of Greatest Gems on the Internet

arrested development quotes + election 2012 = THIS

but where'd the lighter fluid come from?

IT'S THREAD

hope you are enjoying your fall breaks!! or if you are still in a library somewhere in the world, hope you are enjoying the moment. or something. i dunno. here's a peak into a pretty mesmerizing exhibit in a contemporary art museum in Italy. the artist, Gabriel Dawes, uses thread to play around with light and space. the results are just plain awesome. 

awwwww here it goes!

some favorites for the evening.

this one goes out to all of those whose nights are feeling kind of like this:

watch it all the way through. it's 37 seconds long. oh man oh god.

Road Tripping and Steinbeck

I want to go on a road trip right now (as well as most other times), and this guy (brendan leonard) from semi-rad.com understands why. It also includes a great quote from John Steinbeck.

http://semi-rad.com/2012/03/why-road-trips-are-still-important/

Speaking of John Steinbeck, check out the opening to his book, Cannery Row. If you haven't read Cannery Row (or Travels with Charley/East of Eden/Grapes of Wrath), then you need to take a long road trip, which should give you plenty of time to read Steinbeck's books and wish you were a better writer.

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole me might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.

In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubbers coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in and out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again--quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale though the junk in the grass-grown boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's--the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer.

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise--the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream--be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book--to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves."

-John Steinbeck

Tall Heights

This glorious duo graced Middlebury's campus at Crossroads last spring. Check out the video for their new single "I Don't Know, I Don't Know" and their new EP The Running of the Bulls!

Fingers crossed they come back to give us a little ear (and eye...) candy this year! 

and some color !!!

so it's pretty grey outside, right? duh, it's really grey. and everybody kind of dressed the part of i'd-rather-be-in-bed-watching-a-movie-instead-of-being-out-in-the-world as well, so it's just doubly grey.  BUT DON'T BE TOO BUMMED OUT! BECAUSE....

THIS EXISTS:

what is this?!?! it's the Rainbow Village in Taichung, Taiwan and a magnificent 86-year-old man covered ALL OF IT with colorful paintings. and saved the village from the fate of demolition! OH helllls ya.

thank you world.

via here with more links right hurr

nicaraguan grooves

for those of you out there who are NOT pleased with this rainy dreary bleaktastic wednesday afternoon and would seriously prefer to be taken to any other location out there in the big ole world, take a dive into tracks on a map.

literally, just choose a location and this site will play you the local music!  how very dope.

but in all honesty, the rain isn't all bad. i actually kind of like it. sort of.

Freestyle Goats

Just keep doing you, Buttermilk. 

You Jive Motherfucker!

Not quite the words one would expect from the pen of our beloved Shel Silverstein, the man behind The Giving Tree, Hug-O-War and Where the Sidewalk Ends. 

Well, I'm all for turning preconceived notions on their heads, so here's a taste of Shel's less-PG side for the  little kid all-grown-up in all of us. 

The Perfect High

There once was a boy named Gimme-Some-Roy
He was nothin' like me or you,
'cause laying back and getting high was all he cared to do.

As a kid, he sat in the cellar...sniffing airplane glue. 
And then he smoked banana peels, when that was the thing to do. 
He tried aspirin in Coca-Cola, he breathed helium on the sly, 
and his life became an endless search to find the perfect high.

But grass just made him wanna lay back and eat chocolate-chip pizza all night,
and the great things he wrote when he was stoned looked like shit in the morning light.
Speed made him wanna rap all day, reds laid him too far back, 
Cocaine-Rose was sweet to his nose, but the price nearly broke his back.

He tried PCP, he tried THC, but they never quite did the trick. 
Poppers nearly blew his heart, mushrooms made him sick. 
Acid made him see the light, but he couldn't remember it long. 
Hash was a little too weak, and smack was a lot too strong. 
Quaaludes made him stumble, booze just made him cry, 
Then he heard of a cat named Baba Fats who knew of the perfect high.

Now, Baba Fats was a hermit cat...lived high up in Nepal, 
High on a craggy mountain top, up a sheer and icy wall.
 "Well, hell!" says Roy, "I'm a healthy boy, and I'll crawl or climb or fly,
Till I find that guru who'll give me the clue as to what's the perfect high."

So out and off goes Gimme-Some-Roy, to the land that knows no time, 
Up a trail no man could conquer, to a cliff no man could climb. 
For fourteen years he climbed that cliff...back down again he'd slide . . .
He'd sit and cry, then climb some more, pursuing the perfect high.

Grinding his teeth, coughing blood, aching and shaking and weak, 
Starving and sore, bleeding and tore, he reaches the mountain peak. 
And his eyes blink red like a snow-blind wolf, and he snarls the snarl of a rat,
As there in repose, and wearing no clothes, sits the god-like Baba Fats.

"What's happenin', Fats?" says Roy with joy, "I've come to state my biz . . .
I hear you're hip to the perfect trip... Please tell me what it is.
 "For you can see," says Roy to he, "I'm about to die, 
So for my last ride, tell me, how can I achieve the perfect high?"

"Well, dog my cats!" says Baba Fats. "Another burned out soul, 
Who's lookin' for an alchemist to turn his trip to gold. 
It isn't in a dealer's stash, or on a druggist's shelf...
Son, if you would find the perfect high, find it in yourself."

"Why, you jive mother-fucker!" says Roy, "I climbed through rain and sleet,
I froze three fingers off my hands, and four toes off my feet! 
I braved the lair of the polar bear, I've tasted the maggot's kiss. 
Now, you tell me the high is in myself? What kinda shit is this?

My ears, before they froze off," says Roy, "had heard all kindsa crap; 
But I didn't climb for fourteen years to hear your sophomore rap. 
And I didn't climb up here to hear that the high is on the natch, 
So you tell me where the real stuff is, or I'll kill your guru ass!"

"Okay...okay," says Baba Fats, "You're forcin' it outta me... 
There is a land beyond the sun that's known as Zabolee. 
A wretched land of stone and sand, where snakes and buzzards scream, 
And in this devil's garden blooms the mystic Tzutzu tree.

Now, once every ten years it blooms one flower, as white as the Key West sky,
And he who eats of the Tzutzu flower shall know the perfect high. 
For the rush comes on like a tidal wave...hits like the blazin' sun. 
And the high? It lasts forever, and the down don't never come.

But, Zabolee Land is ruled by a giant, who stands twelve cubits high, 
And with eyes of red in his hundred heads, he awaits the passer-by. 
And you must slay the red-eyed giant, and swim the river of slime, 
Where the mucous beasts await to feast on those who journey by. 
And if you slay the giant and beasts, and swim the slimy sea, 
There's a blood-drinking witch who sharpens her teeth as she guards the Tzutzu tree."

"Well, to hell with your witches and giants," says Roy, 
"To hell with the beasts of the sea--
Why, as long as the Tzutzu flower still blooms, hope still blooms for me."
And with tears of joy in his sun-blind eyes, he slips the guru a five, 
And crawls back down the mountainside, pursuing the perfect high.

"Well, that is that," says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone, 
Facing another thousand years of talking to God, alone.
 "Yes, Lord, it's always the same...old men or bright-eyed youth... 
It's always easier to sell 'em some shit than it is to tell them the truth."

best things to happen to kittens...ever

his holiness

MAJOR props.  no reasons necessary.

hmmmm i wonder if he'll look the same in person.

okay it really is time to go to sleep. (clearly.)

daydreams at 12:51 am

i know it's no longer daytime, but it's not a normal dream where i'm imagining traveling to this faraway pacific island and ziplining over the sea, maybe on my way to a little tropical coconut juice hut. maybe it's a bihall-dream.  that's what we'll call it tonight!

also, these sleeping-bags:

new j-term trend, i'm calling it early. 

Young Tree Carved Inside Old Tree

In a similar vein to Goldsworthy...

read more on the inspiration and process of this awesome piece of art at www.mymodernmet.com

Andy Goldsworthy

Enjoy some of this phenomenal artists work...

"I want to understand that state and that energy that I have in me that I also feel in the plants and in the land, the energy and life that is running through, that is flowing through the landscape. Growth, time, change and the idea of flow in nature" - Andy Goldsworthy

For more, go here or watch the beautiful documentary on his work, River and Tides.

Forever push the limits

Martyn Ashton takes the 2012 Tour de France-winning £10K Pinarello Dogma 2 for a joy ride...and makes us re-think what can be done on a carbon road bike. Let us never be restricted by our own technology. 

Dreaming of a land far far away? Craving a little culture? Need to run away for a while? Spend some time exploring WorkAway...be a bartender in costa rica, farm in iceland, teach english in nepal...an endless supply of ways to justify your travel temptations and get a lil cash at the same time

...a present worth remembering

That's what Mickey Smith, renowned surf photographer, seeks to find and embody in his work. Enjoy his award-winning short film, The Dark Side of the Lens, as well as his phenomenal music video for the equally wonderful Ben Howard song, Old Pine.

"I see life in angles, in lines of perspective – the slow turn of a head, the blink of an eye, subtle glimpses of magic – other folk might pass by. " -Mickey Smith

Live for beauty, and for fires of happiness and waves of gratitude.