THIS DUCK LOVES YOUR LEG THIS WENSDAY @ DUDERANCH @ 9PM

Ground Hogs Day Ground Zero

So thanks to all dude ranchers and non dude ranchers that made my first birthday in Portland rock so very much. I took an awesome bike ride on the esplanade with Theo are coolest of cool couch surfers and then made some sweet vegan lasagna for dinner and vegan oatmeal goop for dessert.

Sarah came back in late last night and Theo and I actually ran into her down at Powell's today which was cool and crazy. I keep getting the vibe that Portland is so small even though it is so big. Anyway, I hope everyone can make it for movie night. Thanks to Shawn again for making the fliers. Howard the Duck should be awesome we are contemplating showing over the top or summer school next week so if anyone has any thoughts feel free.

Annie the artist in residence stopped by today and it was cool to meet her. We look forward to her being around the house from now on and we esp. look forward to her artistic and intellectual contributions. She came and hung out and it seems like she will be a nice cool edition to the scene.

Shawn will only be with us for 8 or so more days, but we all hope his house hunting goes well and hope he stays in the neighborhood. Well I guess that's all for now. Hope everyone had a good ghog day. I didn't see my shadow so spring is coming.

OH and last but not least we are throwing a party this weekend for my said birthday today. I think perhaps a karmic keg/ground hogs day party but I'm not sure details coming soon. Until then.

PEACE, SAM

PS Below is a map of my bike ride today.


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TALES FROM THE DUDE RANCH

Well we had a nice and fun movie night last night. For all of those who missed out Legend was gloriously bad Tom Cruise as some sort of Tarzanesque character and Mia Sara who was Sloane Ferris Bueller's girlfriend in FB Days Off as a Princess. Fun was had by all and after we watched two seasons of the Sing Along Blog featuring Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser Fame. (Thanks to Shawn for that HILARIOUSNESS!!)

We have had quite a few couch surfers come through the house over the past couple of weeks and here is the break down.

1. Anthony - 19 yo just out of the Marines on his way to Washington then California and eventually Europe. He was new to couch surfing and we hope we showed him how much fun it could be.

2 & 3. Drea and Martel - Drea is a Yoga Instructor / Massage Therapist and Martel is a music community organizer of sorts. They stayed for a couple of days and returned last night to stay a couple more. They are moving into a place near Belmont in the SE and we are happy to welcome them to Portland. THANKS FOR THE AWESOME TEA LOVE!!!!!

4. Leslie - a nice lady from NYC who is searching for a new place to relocate to. She changed our perspective on the appropriate age to join the circus. She was only here one night but we really enjoyed having her.

5 & 6. Aaron and Joel: Aaron does work with developmentally disabled adults and is up here from California looking for work and a place for his wife and young baby to stay. He is still at the house now and is lots of fun to talk to. We hope he gets the job and place he wants. Joel just moved out here from Chapel Hill and came over for movie night and stayed instead of heading back to Vancouver where he is living now. He rode his motorbike accross the country and wants to get into metal working here in portland. Thanks for the music tips!!

That's all we've had thus far but I'm sure there will be more to come. I'm glad we can continue the dude ranches streak of couch surfers and I hope everyone who's stayed with us has enjoyed it.

The house is super clean thanks to Shawn and Pete who was over last night said he has never seen the Dude Ranch so spic and span. We've been playing lots of Settlers and a few games of Magic.

Adam has been working on his truck and Ayal has been working on music. They have both been in planning mode for their mexico trip. I've been working at my job and shopping around for a bicycle. I also just passed my level 1 Ski instructor exam last weekend at Mt. Hood. Shawn has been looking for work and a place in the neighborhood to live and he bought a new bike just the other day (I'm super jealous of the awesome brown paint job). Good luck to all the transition team members on their endeavors.

The artist in residence for Feb hasn't shown up yet and we are looking forward to meeting her. Other then that things have been going along quite well. We may be having a party at the Dude Ranch this Saturday or the next but more info on that to come.

We hope the old school ranchers are having safe travels and we look forward to welcoming Sarah back shortly from her trip to the UK. If you haven't checked out her blog you should it's been very interesting to read. I think the link in on a previous post of this blog.

That's all for now from the Dude Ranch transition team. Hope all is well in your world.

I'll leave you with a haiku and thanks for reading.

every single day
building a life on high stilts
tied to balls of twine

Nameste,
Sam

THOM CRUZ RIDES A UNICORN TO FIGHT THE DEVIL ON WENSDAY NIGHT @ DUDERANCH @ 9PM

GET PSYCHED we <3 U

hacktest.com

So Adam and Cedar spent a good portion of last night geeking out hardcore on hacktest.com. They spent several hours playing it's unique brand of treasure hunting. Shawn had coffee after missing his planned attending of a volunteer meeting for the Portland film festival. We made lentil soup after discovering we had a large overstock of lentils at the house. While Adam and Cedar were geeking out I went in my room and lit some incense I got in India. This is the result hope you enjoy.



haunting India

I'm not sure what it is, but my mind is calling me back to India.

There were so many things that were so difficult there and maybe time gilds all memories with false gold, but I miss it. There was something so vital about being there. It makes me understand the thrill that pioneers must have felt.

Even as I sit here, smelling the incense I brought back, the ghosts are here. Rickshaws, mad filled buses, bustling train station, and whiskey on Diwali all dance through my head, like those sugar plums in that Christmas story.

I have so many stories from that place a dozen I've told and so many more that I haven't. It is so much more then all those stories. It is so much more than I can even grasp at remembering. Even the slivers of moments that I have captured in this odd little basket in my head are so sublime.

India is madness incredible beautiful madness. It is the kind of madness that the western world has striven to hide beneath the layers and layers of paints and civic order. It is the madness at the root of all humanity and being there reveals it. It reveals it in you and in everything you know. This is the vitality that has driven humanity so far.

The Persian ruler Xerxes believed that an empire must expand or die. I was thinking about this related to the American empire and I was struck with the realization of why so many things seem really futile here. We are already such a large part of the world any gain by any of us is dwarfed by the massiveness of our social influence. We are like a huge worm and any growth is so tiny compared to the rest of the bulk.

India is growing like a vacant lot left to overgrow in the urban summer sun. It is a vibrant patch of jungle writhing through concrete and steel tearing apart the ancient foundations of the modern order. Everything grows out of everything else. Even the chaotic lives of the slums seem to bear some fruit. There are so many people living a way that most of us have forgotten. The pride and cruelty of working long hard days just to sleep on the street and to send a little money back to your family.

This is what is most difficult and most beautiful to see in India. This life all around so much you can't escape it and you start to understand all the glitz and glam in our society. The neon lights and banner ads and twittering are all these empty little shadows reflected on a cave wall. An allegory of false truths is what takes up so much of our time. After being there even for a month I find myself seeing things here as hollow. Convenient simple non confrontational existence. It seems turned down and tuned out compared to the reality, overwhelming as it was, you felt when you were there.

I truly miss INCREDIBLE INDIA. I'm not planning on going back anytime very soon, but I do want to go back. It's eastern beauty calls to you like a siren. The madness is like an infection it gets under your skin and you need it in your life. It's that old crazy girlfriend you had such a great time with. You know in some ways she's bad for you, but you always sort of want to see her again anyway. The US is my faithful girl, the girl I go steady with, the girl in beach boys songs. She will always be there calm and quiet. She may not always be what I want but she will always feel like home.

Every so often I just feel the need for life in my life. Every time my thoughts bring me back. The sounds, the staring, the struggle and the truth of India are there with me again. Someday, I'll go back and if you can you should go back for me and tell her I miss her.

A New Ranch Order

So hello from the 'Transition Team' ranchers!!!

Our rag tag band of miscreants will no doubt fail to fulfill your every ranch desire, but we will try. The Temp Ranchers include but are not limited to: Shawn just in from teaching in China. Adam (Nates brother ... not that he doesn't have an identity outside of that) and Ayal who are both planning a veggie oil powered trip to Mexico later this year. Lastly is little ol' me.

My name is Sam and I'm currently occupying Cole's room while he is away. Here's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm from Nashville where I was working the last five years in the music biz. The last three I spent on tour as a guitar tech and stage manager for the Gin Blossoms and as a merch guy for Phil Vassar. I hiked 182 miles this summer in a dozen or so national parks and spent a month traveling in India. I'm in Portland working on the weekends at Mt Hood (Tline) as ski instructor and I do online marketing for a record label during the week. I know how to do fire poi and enjoy long walks down the beach with an issue of the Economist or Talk of the Nation Podcast.



Anyway I just wanted to introduce myself and the other members of the 'Transition Team' here at the Dude Ranch. We will be having a winter movie night (Wednesdays) though a consensus on the movies will never be reached in advance.

Thanks all and the faces may be new but we'll do our best to keep the good vibes going.

Nameste, Sam

What I've Done in the Last Week

- Squeezed into the back of a minivan with two former Guantanamo Bay detainees
- Marched in a protest of thousands of people shouting "Allah Al Akbar!"
- Played ukelele on a frozen beach
- Raced around in the car of an Islamic graffiti artist
- Watched 70 Muslim women pray behind thick curtains in a mosque

- Not ridden a bicycle or been to New Seasons ONCE

check out my whole crazy January: www.GuantanamoVoices.org

when we all get back home, we are definitely all putting together the world's most awesome Powerpoint presentation about our winter vacations.

Estranged Ranchers...
those of us remaining miss you, and the new ranchers will learn to do so as well.
life back at the ranch has been humble.
aside from the usual things like drug trafficking and housing terrorists,
life has moved at the pace of January.
in the lull, i (nate) decided to apply for a Norwegeian Reality Television show.
wtf? EXACTLEY!
here is my "no longer than 5 minutes Video Application"
its awkward at times but hell, so am i.
Sarah is in Brittan.... Great Brittan.... England... anyway, she is putting brittish December to good use.
Cole just called from D.C... Washington DC!
Dan has to be in Chile by now (not putting Brittish December to good use, but then again he was never that into it anyway.).
pete moved out yesterday but he is still here.
Looks like the Chatty-Roundy-Rounds haven't stopped anyone from doing what they want to do.
the new roomates are cleaner than we were.
thats important to somebody.
somewhere.
In 4 days jill and i leave for Hawaii (pronouced.... nevermind...
and the house will have completed its chrysalis and emerge as....
we shall all see.
word from the hightest peaks and the widest oceans
holla' from the deepest holes and the tallest sky scrappers
I'm throwing my right-hand up for a sweet international "dude-five" right now
i hope you'll all do the same.
portland is a little more lonely without yall.

DUDE RANCH!

Charlie Beyer-

An ubiquitous NE Portland street, 35^th, not 35^th place which looks exactly the same. Modest strings of Christmas lights adorn each house, installed in accordance with seasonal conformity. A young couple grudgingly enters a house to their mid management boss’s boring slide show while looking wistfully at the Dude Ranch across the street. There, also with a miserable string of lights, but accompanied by the thumping of 20 decibel base, whirling light show effects, and the street penetrating laughter of the joyous inside. The cake walkers.

Cake walkers must dance and leap between squares on the floor, anticipating the halt of music that will determine their culinary destiny. Suddenly, the pulsating rhythm stops, the condensed masses freeze in contorted mid dance, blinking myopically at the descriptive sticker at their feet. Zardot’s Bride; lier; Bush’s bathroom; Derrato; and other unintelligible phrases greet their eye. The illuminated Liz barks to loudly in the microphone… “Who is standing on “The meaning of dialectic materialism is the re-distribution of wealth to the proletariat” ?? . “Hey .. That’s me” Happily rings out Nate. “A winner” she cries “ You are the choosing recipient of the one ton spice cake, the SeeSee Man Mistake cake, or the pedestrian candy bar. Yea!!”

Nate.. scratching as always when in thought, magnanimously chooses the candy bar, allowing the packed assembled the opportunity win the greater masterpieces. With a yell heard across the street in yawning sandstone arch slides, the thump, thump, thump resumes in a frenzied electron cloud of flailing arms legs and leaping torsos. The twisting turning lights mingle in the masses as though all are trapped in a kaleidoscope. Now some wags begin hopping from square to square, the rest joining the vertical dimension, a booming bounce that turns the whole house into a drum. I think, as the resident structural engineer, that the trampoline resonance will soon exceed the breaking strength of the floor and we will all soon be in a pile of 9-11 rubble in Dan’s basement room. I leap my highest to assist this eventuality. The music stops. Falling from the sky, I am on two squares. Does this mean I have two cake chances?

“Who is on “Red and black bullshit”? “It is I. It is I!” cries a gentle voice in the assembled. She chooses the 25 seed all organic zucchini dough-gob Baggett. Enough with the lard-sugar layout. Many are secretly jealous of this choice and sneak off to the kitchen to beg her for a corner of leathery crust. The pummeling music resumes, now to geographically auction off the miscellaneous baking’s, the rutabaga rolls and dropped cupcakes.

The ritual “cake walk” eventually concludes with frosting fingers. Now it’s on to karaoke’. Books of 10 thousand songs has been circulating beneath concentrating brows seeking their tune. A dude all in red, professionally belts out a kick ass hip hop song and the dance floor fills without the carrot of carrot cake. Dan becomes a Bing Crosby. It’s “White Christmas” due to a mix up of disks, but being a sport he says “Fuck it, fuckit, just play it, I’ll sing it”. A noble croon it was, melting our hearts in Christmas commercialism. Kori sings a love song, embarrassing everyone’s mirror neurons. The lovelies Sarah, Jill and Liz, trio twenty chick-songs with two microphones, pulling the unsuspecting into mid-floor dance.

A gust of cold air washes across the floor and a dozen unknown dark people slip along the walls. Like lost shadows they work themselves into the kitchen corners and eddies of activity. Knee length black jackets, hoods and watch caps, Rasputin beards, I fear uninvited bangers have invaded. I steel myself to confrontation intervention. But wrong I am. These are wandering Karaoke junkies, alerted by some iphone pheromone, congeal conspiratorially at this address of the Dude Ranch. Without warning, the microphones are scooped up and the howling of country rock songs are belted into the air, Black jack boots thromping the floor. Long after the cake table has disintegrated into a mass of crumbs and cupcake wrappers, there is a dueling dynamic between the bombastic black robe blasters and the twirling trio of multicolored women. “Like a Virgin” sung in the key of angels, followed by the “Wabash Cannonball” in clod hopper baroque.

Out the back door is a congregation of smokers. The icy winter winds tear at the puffs of smoke and the collars of the trench coats. Cigarette butts pile up in a stair corner, a change from the flicking days of past. Smokers are squeezed into a mere third of the area, the rest an orgy of bicycles all mashed together in a mating melee. I think to see little unicycles and tricycles, the progeny of this proliferation, careening about under the refined Shimano gears, misbehaving as children do.

As the alcohol diminishes, more masses are pressed into the walls in their torpor, bludgeoned by the blasting kamikaze karaoke machine. The young couple emerges from the bosses house across the street, sober, still employed by their obsequiousness’, still wistfully longing to be part of the looser crowd in the whirling lights. They climb into their politically correct Subaru station wagon, heading for another ubiquitous string of lights on a matching street across town. Inside the dude ranch, the trio triumphant, Howling “Girls just Wanna Have Fun” to the collapsed masses.

I sure as hell had fun. Thanks Dude Ranch.

Dreams Up In Smoke

Dan's dad is here. Which is strange because we talk about him all the time and he's become something of a mystical, fictional figure here. Dan's dad, who lives in a tiny house in Idaho that doesn't have a bathroom, just a hole he dug on the side of the hill. Dan's dad, who builds hovercrafts. Dan's dad, whom Dan visited in October and returned with a 3-foot tall, 20-sided isohedron, crafted from a raw aluminum sheet in the high desert.

And suddenly, here he is in the living room, drinking whiskey of course and debating who would win in a bar brawl: smokers or nonsmokers?


Dan's dad is named Charlie and he's more personable than the stories made him out to be. He may know the finer points of building a pipe bomb, but he's affable, too, and talks about wild things in a low voice. Attempting to explain how Dan has a "double cousin" ends, somehow, with, "My sister went fuckin' beserk! She yelled at him, 'We're gettin' married tomorrow and you've got the clap!'" Sometimes the entire premise behind a story doesn't make sense to my rigid, rational world. Like the time a moose ran him off his sapphire mine claim.

Sapphires come up later, too, after Charlie rolls a cigarette and they start debating whether it's better to mine for gold or crystals. Dan shakes his head and argues that either are preferable to sapphires.
"I have this bad association with sapphires and nose bleeds. I got a really bad nose bleed in this swamp one time looking for sapphires and I got covered in flies, flies up my nose, flies in my lungs. The first thing you said was, 'Don't get blood on the company truck!'"
Charlie laughs, this is true. Dan was 11 at the time. "And I was like, eat all this bacon and drink all this beer. He stopped thinking about all the blood, I can tell you that much," says Charlie.

I'll tell you one thing, we are all jealous of Charlie for our own personal reasons. Jill has always dreamed of riding a hovercraft. Nate admires his entire life ethic, his crystal mine, his insane skills. Me, I regret the time I've wasted listening to "No Scrubs" on repeat while eating soup at New Seasons rather than casting my own manta ray belt buckle out of brass.

"That is so hip," says Dan, when I gush about the ray, "You are wearing the zeitgeist." His dad invites him out to Idaho for Christmas, they could build a furnace in the shed out of a 55-gallon tank and some propane, they scheme, and cast all kinds of sea creatures. When he first got here, Dan's dad pulled a box of Jim Beam out of his bag and offered whiskey all around. Then he pulled out his knife and carved little apartment windows into the box and set it in the fireplace. Nate, Jill and I stared in horror as the building went up in flames. Not one month ago, Dan built his own little city of apartment complexes in the fireplace and watched it burn. We don't become our parents. We already are them. The horror, the horror.

Whoa-mygod! Such a Great Opening!

Did you skip Friday's art opening of The Dude Ranch's Tap Dance Strip Touch On Yer Grave at the Pancake Clubhouse? Well then get ready to get jealous.








During the evening's main event, the Makeshift Memorial Sculpt-Off, everyone was assigned to teams and each team was assigned a historic tragedy. They then had 25 minutes to sculpt a memorial to that tragedy using the available resources (which were mostly hot glue, a piano, construction paper, 7 cases of PBR). The results were super impressive!

THIRD PLACE WINNER: Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin.



SECOND PLACE WINNER: Titanic.


FIRST PLACE WINNER: team "demotion of Pluto" staged a performance in full NASA regalia. (no photos available - you shoulda been there!)

Art Show on Friday! (plus a party)

Do you like this felt horse and wagon made by Jill? More of her art (plus art by Nate, Dan and myself!) will be on display all December long at the Pancake Clubhouse in an art show titled "Tap Dance Strip Touch On Yer Grave." Since the opening night of the show is First Friday, we're having a big opening night party! Hilariously, the opening is sponsored by PBR! Here's the stats:

FRIDAY DEC 5TH
7-10 PM
PANCAKE CLUBHOUSE
906 NE 24TH AVE
Featuring:
- eating cupcakes and drinking beer.
- reading the comic books in the "reading room."
and
- the main event!!! Makeshift Memorial Sculpt-Off! Everyone is assigned a team and each team is assigned a tragic event and each team sculpts a memorial for the tragic event using the available resources (hot glue guns, candles, cardboard etc etc). Then the best memorials win prizes and then there's a short, fun dance music show!
- (did we mention the cupcakes and beer drinking)

+ + guitar music by Cole Robinson and a fiddle-player named Kate

Weirdos.

Nate's brother Adam has been sleeping on our sofa again and he's attracting all kinds of weirdos. Tonight a thickly-bearded guy named Will showed up in our kitchen, slammed down a foot-long box of Magic cards and launched into a high-speed conversation about veggie oil-diesel conversion.

They moved into the living room and Jill and I don't know what to do but sit on the sofa and eavesdrop and giggle.

"If they put algae farms all over Mexico it would supply the entire U.S.!" Will shouts, taking a breath and continuing, "You guys know about that guy who thinks funguses are the answer? Like Timothy Leary with LSD but not LSD - all funguses!"

Jill shakes her head. Then she checks the pedometer she recently attached to her waist.
6,742 steps. "Damn it!" she shouts at Nate, whose own waist pedometer reads 7,306 steps, "You're like a thousand steps ahead of me!" Those two are in a competition to see who walks more in a day.

posted by s.mirk

thanks!

We played Pictionary all day on Thanksgiving. Except for that hour when we switched it up and played Scrabble AND Pictionary at the SAME TIME. We also took a break to eat some food.

November

I've only just noticed that November is here and apparently it is already almost over. This is the problem with moving between milestones (Halloween! Election! Thanksgiving!) - I forget which month we're actually in while I'm measuring the days via countdown.

Anyway, November is here and it is cold. Did I tell you we weatherized the house during one of the last hot days of 2008, way back when the sun set at dinner time rather than after lunch? We cut out big sheets of plastic and, all together now, adhered them to our large windows so that now the interior of our kitchen nook resembles a shoddily-made space shuttle.

But it's warmer, sitting here, than it was last year ago this time. The campaign to keep us all from retreating into our rooms during winter - casting aside friendship for a long-term relationship with our respective space heaters - that campaign is going well. We've been talking and cooking. There's lots to talk about and lots to cook because Nate and Jill don't eat sugar anymore and most of us don't have jobs.

Everyone is in transition. Rather than being a month of tradition, November has turned into a month of flux. Here's the status report, as of 11:52PM. I'm sure it will be different by morning.

Cole: During November, Cole quit his job and willfully dropped out of music grad school, searching for something more relevant and proactive.
Dan: During November, Dan quit his job half way, then rethought in the face of the epic financial crisis and quit his job the whole way. He's now working on a new internet-based "consulting" venture but I don't understand what it is because part of his "marketing strategy" is being cryptic.
Me: I'm still not making any money. Hopefully this will soon transition into me making lots of money.
Jill: Jill turned 28 and has been making lots of cool art. She's seriously thinking about going to grad school, maybe to teach visually impaired people braille.
Nate: THIS IS BIG, GUYS! NATE'S HAD SUCH A HUGE TRANSITION! It's probably such a big deal that he'll want to post about it himself. Forget I said anything.

posted by s.mirk