July 23rd proposition: red and small

It may very well be a series or a one off fluke, but gave myself a simple assignment - a visual proposition for July 23, 2008 - find six objects in the house that fit in the palm of my hand. Rightly so, I filed them under "Various" on the website.

Most of them I spotted quickly were tchokes and/pleasant junk: the small replica of the porsche that a person I briefly knew owned (seems like a bit of a vain gift, but it is very cute all the same - even the same color as the his actual car), a plastic fork from a birthday party I couldn't bring myself to throw away, now sitting in my key & change bowl (maybe a little unsanitary), and a lion-dog my parents probably bought in Taiwan many years ago , but that I have coveted since my early teens. Perhaps the next proposition to set myself will be "blue and makes me cringe" or "orange and feels wet" - so many possibilities.

weather or not

The clouds have been very showy the last few days in Chicago. Rich in loft, puff in mist - and sort of amoeba-like in the way they've been playing around the sky. Yes, I know there is a whole taxonomy of clouds, and even a book that plays off that notion (highly recommended to me, but haven't read it yet). The Cloud Appreciation Society is alwasy a nice place to ogle some vapor if you are feeling lonely and the sky around you at the moment is decidedly too clear.

The recent past found me on a place from Leon, Mexico to Houston, Texas. There was a cute couple of Mexican kids sitting behind Xa and I and the boy of the pair was positively over the top with it all. He kept yelling in spanish at that early hour "we are in the clouds! look! Look, now we are above the clouds!. Look!" His excitement felt almost unreal - like on was on a TV show about a boy flying through the clouds for the first time. Though he shok my seat a little too much, it was charming for sure, and a reminder of how CRAZY AMAZING it actually is to fly through the clouds. In the movie Afterlife by Hirokazu Koreeda there is a scene where they try to recreate a moment from a man's life when we is flying through the clouds while piloting a little Cessna. The clouds are fashioned from cotton and they discuss at length with those (shooting the scene to film) if the the clouds feel right and true to the experience he had had. The memory of flight becomes as wonderful as flying itself as you watch the quiet man talk about them.

Speaking of the "afterlife," I submit that it is mildly creepy to think that stock photo companies actually have this as a classification category in their image banks. The cloud theme is dominant in the afterlife images from the site linked above, and of course devils and flames make their obligatory appearance as well. That seems in line with cultural tropes and our collective psychology maybe. Then again, other things also make an appearance, like a blind kitten with angel wings as well as a woman in a bikini spelunking. Hmm. Perhaps there is a religion out their offering a variation of the 72 virgins promised in a paradise after death?

Anyway - clouds. I think it is best to enjoy them now, even if there are really nice ones in the afterlife too. Even if after looking at them they rain on you, you can at least feel pleasure in having a bunch of liquid cloud poured all over yourself.

the "andrew yang" update

Today I got a surprise email from Andrew Yang - not a common occurrence (about as common as when I receive a letter from Andrew Yang - another story for another time). Luckily for me and my sanity, the email wasn't from myself, but rather from another Andrew Yang out there.

He writes:

I've always been impressed with how many of us there are, but you're the first to embrace that fact. I'm kinda jealous you got the coveted AndrewYang.com domain. So here I am, reaching out for the first time to one of us.

I'm a biomedical engineer, studied in NYC. I work for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviewing medical devices. I'm on my way to getting a professional engineering license, hence the EIT at the end of my name. Oh right, I'm Korean. And... I'm 26.

There's isn't much more to me that I'd be willing to share with a stranger. No picture or website. I just wanted to be cataloged with the rest of your collection of Andrew/Andy Yang profiles.

So I guess just picture this Andrew Yang in your head, looking over the latest medical device to make sure you might ever want to put it in your body, while also curiously searching the web as Andrew Yang's occasionally do - for themselves.

Thanks for being in touch, Andrew - solidarity!

Addendum: Some more Andrew Yang's not included on the original list, but which Google tells me now also have a presence in the webosphere:

the British Columbian dentist

the Hong Kong life insurance agent

the Regional Manager, North China for an international mail outfit

the senior property account for a real estate firm based in LA