Piano wire.

• 18:46 Waiting to get into the CA Academy of Sciences, and here comes Tree Guy. Clearly nowhere is safe from his Muppet fur-covered ass. #
• 20:45 @conditionbronze and I are having our first fight: I hate the mullet-hawk on the DJ at the Academy of Sciences and he thinks it's "awesome." #
• 21:31 It's April--you still haven't cleaned the playa dust off your boots? Hi, I'm Lauren, and I'm a hater. Admitting it is the first step. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Shaved

Ghosts make themselves at home in my hair,
rest their weightless bodies in the hammocks
of my dreadlocks, and whisper hard-spun tales
a hair’s breadth from the eager funnel of my ear.

When their storytelling gets as loud as it is today,
I consider handing out eviction notices:
the buzz of electric clippers rumbling
along the fault line at the nape of my neck,
the sound of their disembodied bodies bisected
by the simple snip of shears.

Asian Women Carnival:

In order to know myself and to know others, in order to separate out the cultural expectations from the west and the east on who we are and how we should be as Asian women, in order to shrug off the responsibility imposed by being presumed to be representative of all Asian women, in order to see other Asian women as they are and not how I think they should be, I think it is important to hear from other Asian women's voices from all over the world, in various different stages of their lives talk about their identity and how it touches on various aspects of their lives. I think this is essential to truly understand the cultural heritage that is part of me and how to respectfully find and perhaps rebuild a cultural identity that belongs to me instead of accepting the consensus that I am a perpetual foreigner in every land. I believe that listening to and talking with as many Asian women as I can will help me not feel so alone, unknown and isolated, it will help me define who I am as an individual Asian woman, rather than be defined and it will help me to preserve what has been handed down to me in blood and bone and song.

Go read it.

Product management.

First: steal someone else's idea,
ideally a really old one, so familiar
no one will notice the theft.
Its age will lend you an air
of authenticity. And let's be honest:
you just aren't bright enough
to come up with something on your own.

Second: file for copyright, register trademarks
immediately. You must protect
your idea from those who would claim it
as their own, including those
from whom you pilfered it
in the first place. In fact, feel free
to substitute this for the first step.
You can always find an idea to rip off later.

Third: insist on your originality. Bonus points
for sincere-sounding claims
of uniqueness, particular ingenuity,
and many, many hours of hard work.

Fourth: profit. Enjoy the fruits
of your labor, the imitation that pretends
to be a new riff, a new rhyme:
it smells vaguely of someone's blood,
off-beat, out of time.