About a month ago, news of a seductive new culinary sensation hit the internet. Chef Keizo Shimamoto debuted the ramen burger: a hamburger between two buns made of cooked, pressed, and fried ramen.
Naturally, the internet went crazy. Myself included. So last week, after some searching for recipes, I decided to make my own. Continue reading
My brother posted this on Facebook last night:
Naturally, I had to respond:
i.
I’ve been meaning to ask:
You see this elephant too, right?
But every time I stick my neck out
and peer around his boulderous bulk,
you’re looking back at me.
It seems a shame to ruin the moment
by talking about elephants.
ii.
In third grade,
Sterling Miller flipped a penny 30 times
and got 30 heads,
I watched it.
I’ve never believed in God, but I know He plays dice,
that every moment is another spin of the slot machine,
and that there are no miracles,
only statistically significant improbabilities.
I’ve spent so long listening to the sermons
of the statisticians, the scientists, and the skeptics
that I never attribute to intention
what has a chance of being chance.
Are you really looking for me?
Do you actually see this elephant too?
Or does the penny just keep coming up heads?
iii.
The butterfly you pin to the board is lifeless.
You kill the cat by opening the box.
Merely by observing,
we change the outcome.
I’ve been meaning to ask:
You see this elephant too, right?
But maybe there’s no elephant at all,
maybe these legs are tree trunks,
this tail, a rope,
the trunk, a snake.
I don’t ask if you see the elephant,
because what does it mean
if you don’t?
Published in quarterlife, vol. 7, iss. 4: the troll issue (Whitman College, May 2013). Cover image by Bo Erickson, used with permission. Thanks, Bo!
(Yeah, I got my poetry published!)
My new camera lens–the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, affectionately dubbed the “Nifty Fifty”–arrived today, and I wanted to share a photo I took with it. Also, I made some really tasty tea yesterday. So the photo’s at the top, and the tea recipe is below.
Continue reading
Five in the morning is in that span of time I typically think of as “oh fuck no it’s early,” yet this morning, against all odds, I started stirring around 5:10. Rachel had a flight to catch, and was going to be waking up and getting out of bed in five minutes, but for those five minutes, I was awake by myself, in the stillness of the morning.
I love summer mornings. Summer nights are hot and muggy, leading you to throw windows open and blankets off, but at five in the morning, the air breezing through your window is refreshingly brisk. The oppressive heat pauses, and the whole world takes a breath. Though the window’s open, there’s hardly any sound of traffic or human activity, just the songs of waking birds far in the distance.
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[Spencer’s note: No, I’m totally not posting in Fall 2014 a post that should have been made in Spring 2013. Of course not! Why would you think that?]
Like I mentioned in the last one of these, I write an opinion column in my school’s newspaper, The Pioneer, called “Sexcetera.” It’s a column on relationships, sex, and sexuality, from a perspective I’m trying to keep sex-positive, feminist, and inclusive. I’ve been doing it all year, but save for the last compendium, I haven’t really mentioned it here on the blog.
Here’s a directory of the things I wrote in my last semester of college (and the last semester of Sexcetera).
Continue reading
I drew this after finishing homework last night. It’s not finished, and in fact, I might never touch it again, but I thought it was a fun thing worth sharing.
I turned in my senior thesis on Wednesday this week. All that’s left is an oral defense, in early May, and then I can actually graduate, hopefully with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with honors, Summa Cum Laude. That’s the plan.
For fun(?), I thought I’d share some of the numbers related to the thesis process:
It feels good to have a life back.
I write an opinion column in my school’s newspaper, The Pioneer, called “Sexcetera.” It’s a column on relationships, sex, and sexuality, from a perspective I’m trying to keep sex-positive, feminist, and inclusive. I’ve been doing it for months, but (perhaps unsurprisingly, given my tendency to get busy and neglect the blog), I haven’t mentioned it at all here.
Since it would be silly to post each individual column now, I figured I’d post a general directory of what I’ve written this semester.
