5cense The birds + the bees: garbage collection, the death of the travelling circus + other creature features

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772

30 July 2020> Weave bin dreaming the last few nights we can't just rem-ember, or articulate 'em into words. Last night we spent a lot of time waiting for trains in strange places that usually din't reassemble real-world places, w/ lots of weird creatures that din't reassemble animals from this planit, or were recognizable critters morphing into deformed states. 1 train finally came, but it wasn't for picking up passengers, it was only for collecting garbage, so folks would wait w/ their bags + throw the garbage into chutes when the train pulled up momentarily. We dreamt this probly cuz we saw Spirit of the Beehive (1973) recently + there's that scene where she waits for the train onely to deposit a letter into the mail slot on the side of the train car.

We don't talk much about the films we've seen here on The Daily Noose cuz if we did weed never get nothing done. Like most folks in el moondough, weave bin watching a lot of movies during this pandemic... at least 1 a night, if not 2 or 3. We've saturated (+ beecomb disillusioned with) most platforms except Netflix (which we keep only cuz of the DVDs) but resigned up for the Criterion Channel (we had it before when it was just the "collection" hosted wherever). TV/film has really hit an all-time low lately + it's only gonna get worse this coming year + beyond cuz most projects are on hold. Most of what we watch lately is in black + white + mostly non-American + we're digging further + further back into the '40s or '30s or before that even, rewatching films over + over. Even if we think we haven't seen a film, often when we start watching it seams familiar + then we remember weave scene it before. All these films are becoming jumbled together into our one collective unconscious.

Whenever there's animals in a scene, we watch them the entire time, to see how they interact w/ the crew off-camera. A few nights ago we watched Sawdust and Tinsel (1953)(or re-watched... tho we can't be sure... seams weave scene another Bergman film w/ a travelling circus? Unless we're confusing it w/ Fellini's La Strada (1954)) + was watching the horses + cats + the poor bear whenever they were in the frame. Usually when we watch these old films, we think about how all the actors are probly dead + w/ animals even films over 10 years old u have to assume they're dead, which is weird + sad. These films become a record of their existence, these bit parts in a film.

A lof ot these classic "arthouse" films we saw IRL in The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto (in the '80s) or The Loft in Tuson (in the 90s). Since 2000 we rarely go to actual theatres, we just get annoyed by the people around us talking or kicking our seat, the cell phones, the commercials before the film, etc. Back then the building itself was part of the experience, being w/ a crowd of like-minded folks, running into your friends. The Stanford Theatre also hosted some memorable punk shows. Funny how we never called it the "Stanford" theatre maybe cuz us punks didn't like the snobbish Snodfart association, we usually just said "let's go down to University ave to see a movie". The Bay Area punkers (between San Fran and San Jose) used to just hang out on University Ave in front of the theatre even if nothing was going on. Or we'd hang out on California Ave in front of Printer's Inc. bookstore, across the street from Antonio's Nuthouse, but we can only imagine how much that area has been ruined by Facebook. Most everywhere theatres are now AMC, cafe's became Starbuck's + bookstores became Barne's + Noble + pretty soon those will become obsolete + we will just have Amazon + Netflix for all our needs.

The travelling circus seems to have bin a popular motif in films of the '50s + '60s, maybe cuz film was replacing these travelling circuses? We saw a few travelling circuses in Mexico in the '80s, but otherwise it seams to be a lost art form. Sure, there's Barnum + Bailey's + their annual walking of elephants thru Lincoln tunnel (even that they stopped doing), but we're talking about the little independent 1s like in the above-mentioned films. Evidently covid put Cirque du Soleil out of business, wich was probly a good thing... it was intresting at first but then got to be over the top, commercialized + over-produced (not to mention expensive)... like everything else.

Speaking of circuses, we're watching Monty Python's Almost the Truth, the only worthwhile series on "TV" right now, even if they were a bunch of sexist white blokes. We also recently watched Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which was intresting + the The Holy Grail we watch every few years + not long ago we went + rewatched all the old Pythons from the beginning.

Since the olympics were cancelled this year we've bin watching recaps of past years, including Tokyo Olympiad (1965), a well-made movie about the 1964 olympics in Tokyo.

When we're not watching films we stare out our windows at critters in our yard. There's 1 little squirrel in our yard we're quite fond of. We had a staring contest w/ her the other day (we were on the elliptical) for 45 minutes. After 10 minutes she looked away or fell asleep. She shifted her body, but stayed on the same branch for 45 minutes, every so often looking back to see if we were still watching her. Every evening around dinner time she hangs out on our windowsill staring at us, then she runs straight up (often w/ nuts in her mouth) a bare wall 2 stories up onto our neighbors roof where presumably she has a home.

As we write this starlings + LBBs (little brown birds) are eating roadkill in the intersection of 15th + Swann, which is sort of disturbing... you'd expect crows to eat roadkill, but starlings? There's too much foot + car traffic for the crows otherwise they'd probly partake. 2 of the starlings live in the gutter-pipe on the church across the street (which has been dormant since April... a shame cuz we miss the gospel serenade on Sunday mornings). We watched the starlings all spring disappear + reappear from the gutter, until more than 2 started coming out. Another day we saw a grackle catch an LBB on our stoop + take off with it. The crows + grackles are always up to sum sorta mischief, tho that crazy crow that wanted to come into our house last year (even after we kept picking it up + putting it further into the yard) hasn't bin back. Beyond the watching tho, is the listening, the birds have become a soundtrack to our homebound existence, keeping us sane. Another day we were summonsed to our neighbors yard cuz a crow had killed a robin + our neighbors (who work at WWF) were too squeamish to deal w/ it. These neighbors have "shared custody" of 2 dogs so sometimes we watch their dogs in their yard. And did we mention the magnificent spotted cat that wandered into our yard one recent morning?

We opened the door + the cat came into our house but she never really settled down so we let her out + gave her some tuna + water. We hoped she might stick around but presumably she found her way home or some 1 else took her in (especially since we looked up this breed + their expen$ive). Dare we edmit we saw a mouse the other day in our dining room? Cute little fella but our bedder-½ wasn't crazy about keeping her around. We got 1 of those humane traps + baited it w/ peanut butter but never caught her + have seen no signs of her since... presumably she found her way in, saw there was nothing to eat + moved on. Supposedly since the restraunts closed down all the poor vermin are hungry + have expanded their horizons looking for food + since we're a block from 14th street there's probly plenty of rats + mice passing thru looking for greener pastures. Another day we were taking our garbage out (in the alley where the rats probly live, haven't seen them yet on our side of the fence) + we saw a perfectly circular hole w/ shavings below it, as if someone had drilled a hole in our fence.

We showed it to our other neighbor (a beekeeper) + he told it was a carpenter bee + sure enough if u put your ear up to the wood u could hear her chomping away. Now, we're all for providing homes for bees, but not on our brand new fence! 1 hole is fine, but evidently they burrow in there creating elaborate chambers where they lay their eggs + then the larva dig their way out + more bees will come creating a hole colony out of your fence. If u google around it's ez enough to get rid of them (evidently a squirt of WD40 will do the trick) but we din't want to hurt the bee, we just wanted her to dig somewhere else. And since she was still chewing, we could presume she hadn't laid her eggs yet so best to stop her before she got any further. For any 1 who's curious (who has found similar holes), here's what we did—we got sum of that duster air spray u use for computer keyboards + sprayed it in the hole. The 2nd blast of air sent her spiraling to the ground where she buzzed around, stunned. She stumbled around in circles for a few seconds then flew off. Then we got some steel wool + stuffed it into the hole then some woodputty, then applied more stain... evidently carpenter bees like unpainted wood, so her choice of hole pointed out our sloppy staining job. Then (in case she wanted to come back) we got some untreated pine + drilled sum holes of various sizes + nailed it up nearby to the above hole.

our bee hotel

So far we haven't seen traces of lodgers, but apparently not only carpenter bees (who actually prefer to dig their own holes), but other bees, spiders + bugs like to make homes of these holes.

... while most folks are jonesing for humun interaction, we're obviously craving animal connections. And don't tell us to get a dog or cat (wich we're allergic to... big reason why we didn't more forcibly try to keep the above cat) like every 1 else seams to be doing during this pandemic. We wouldn't want any animal to be dependant on us. We'd be constantly worried about their well-being, wether they were bored (which most dogs +cats seam to be sitting around the house or yard). And we'd like walking our dog, but not the associated interaction/drama w/ other dog owners, especially these days w/ the anti-facemask fuckwads.

We're rambling on, writing a longer post than usual cuz we're taking a break from what we're working on, to regroup. Since finishing i.0 (witch maybe the above holes + spots had an influenze on) we got back to our music, but listening to loud tunes w/ headphones seems to trigger our mineareyes d-zzz, not just vertigo but our ears are ringing more than usual, to the extent that our ears are fairly useless for mixing anyway, our right ear in pertickler getting beyond ½ death. We originally thought we'd call this album Double Suicide (a take on Lennon/Ono's Double Fantasy), then we considered Colony Collapse (inspired by the above bees), but now we're thinking of calling it Herd of Birds, which was 1 of the names for our band we considered before settling on Sound ƒuries.

We actually set out to write this post about sum books weave bin reading, inklooting Marshall Mcluhan's Understanding Media, wich weave bin reading for the past few weeks, but wheel save dat for a subsequent post...

771 <(current)> 773> Automation, self-amputation + obsolescence: notes on reading Understanding Media
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