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The last time we visited wine country, we saw a tiny house; beautiful, but tiny. This time we’re going bigger and ore modern, with a pool and guest house and expansive views. The Lichen House was situated on this plot of land to kind of nestle within the coastal fog and the coastal oaks in the hills above California’s Sonoma Valley. The free‐ranging branches of the land’s mature oak trees support veils of draping Ramalina Lichen—hence the name—that filter sunlight, capture moisture and nutrients for their hosts, and remove pollutants from the air through photosynthesis. It makes for a healthier life in a healthier, gorgeous home, though that makes no difference to me; I just love the house, and the land …and the proximity to wine. The architect began by siting the house with a strategic solar orientation; the maximization of daylight and expansive southern views protected by a deep overhanging shade trellis that, like the lichen in the trees, creates a filtered, dappled light alongside the public section of the home. It filters the high summer sun and allows for solar heat gain in the winter when the sun is low in the sky. Inside the home, a south‐facing unconditioned hallway space with a series of operable windows along the private wing of the home serves as an interstitial buffer between the sleeping quarters and the direct southern exposure. In fact, each room , in both the south-facing and west-facing wings, are carefully tuned to its own spatial “microclimate” considering, privacy, views, solar orientation, quality of light, and air flow. It’s made for the views and made to make the best of the land and the weather and the lichen.                      Click to emBIGGERate ...  |
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Architecture Wednesday: Lichen House
Oh Alabama
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A bill making its way through the GQP-controlled Alabama
Legislature would lift the state’s nearly thirty-year ban on teaching yoga in
public schools. Stop there. Alabama has had a ban on teaching yoga is public
schools for thirty years? Yes, because in 1993 the state’s Board of Education
bent to the will of conservative asshats over yoga’s Hindu roots. But now they
have a new bill, though, because it’s still Alabama, the bill will allow the
teaching of yoga to schoolchildren if, and only if:
So Alabama, the only state in the union to ban yoga—because
it has roots in Hinduism—is now thinking of allowing it, as long as you don’t
say “Namaste.” For the unenlightened—see what I did there—means “the light
in me bows to the light in you.” Seriously. |
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Monday, March 22, 2021
Is It A How-To? A User's Manual?
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| Or, and this is where my mind goes, is it a ride at a gay amusement park with a warning about who can get on it? Luckily, I qualify .... |
The Party of Law & Order? The Party of Blue Lives Matter? Not So Much ....
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In February, the Senate voted to give Officer Eugene Goodman
of the Capitol Police the Congressional Gold Medal for his actions in diverting
a crowd of riotous, white supremacist, Nazi insurrectionists away from the
Senate chamber. The House bill also honored Officer Brian Sicknick, who was
bludgeoned to death by these murderers, as well as two officers who died by
suicide after the insurrection. And last week the House passed a bill to honor police
officers who defended the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. The
bipartisan legislation would authorize the creation of three Congressional
Gold Medals—one for the Capitol Police, one for the Metropolitan Police
Department of Washington, DC, and one meant for display by the Smithsonian to
acknowledge other agencies that helped defend the Capitol from the racist,
white supremacist, Nazi, idiot supporters of Thing 45. The vote passed 413-12. Twelve. Twelve? Twelve people thought it best not to
honor those men and women who stepped up to protect our nation’s capital? Twelve.
All Republicans; all members of the party that calls themselves pro-law
enforcement. These sorry excuses for human beings—and you’ll agree when you see
who they are—took issue with the legislation's language, most notably the part
where it referred to the Capitol attackers as "insurrectionists." The Twelve: Matt Gaetz [Q-FL] Louie Gohmert [Q-TX] Marjorie Taylor Greene [Q-GA] Andy Biggs [Q-AZ] Thomas Massie [Q-KY] Andy Harris [Q-MD] Lance Gooden [Q-TX] Michael Cloud [Q-TX] Andrew Clyde [Q-GA] Bob Good [Q-VA] Greg Steube [Q-FL] John Rose [Q-TN] They don’t like the idea that people, carrying Confederate
flags, wearing shirts that Read ‘Six Million Jews Is Not Enough,’ armed with
pepper spray, zip ties, and weapons, broke into a federal building, raided
Congressional and Senate offices, defecated on walls, stole personal documents
and computers, attacked police officers, and murder a police officer, would be
called “insurrectionists.” The party of Law and Order! The Blue Lives Matter party! But to the Twelve Traitors those people are patriots. These Twelve Traitors need to be voted out of office. |
Sunday, March 21, 2021
Saturday, March 20, 2021
I Ain't One To Gossip But ...
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Why do celebrities think they need to share everything with us?
Seriously, do we need to know Gwynnie steams her cooch? Do we need to know Soleil
Moon Frye’s first “consensual” sexual experience was when she was eighteen and
she was boned by … wait for it … get a HazMat suit ready … it’s the height of
ick … Charlie Sheen. Soleil shared a journal entry dated December 18, 1994: “It’s been the most strange and incredible day ever. He’s somebody I’ve had a crush on for years. He’s a person that intrigues me and excites me.” And then she calls Sheen her “Mr. Big.” Like I said, Ick. Soleil is aware of Corey Feldman’s sexual assault allegations
against Charlie, but says she doesn’t know anything about that, and can only
speak to her own experience. She also talks about experiencing her own sexual
assault by an unnamed man when she was 17—hence the clarification that Sheen
was her first consensual sexual encounter. Look, everyone’s experience is different, but I don’t know that
I’d air out the idea that I let Charlie Sheen’s dick anywhere near me. That’s all. |
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Kim Kardastrophe and Kanye West are now doing to each
other what I have been begging them to do to all of us for years. They have stopped speaking to each other. Lucky them. If we could only get them to divorce America we might
never hear from them again. |
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And then we have Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez who have ALLEGEDLY
broken up in the wake of his scandal with Southern Charm “star”
Madison LeCroy. You see, last January, Twitter was set ablaze with rumors after
the Southern Charm reunion special exposed ALLEGATIONS of infidelity
involving an “ex-MLB star” and Southern Charm cast-member, and manhunter, Madison
LeCroy, who admitted to FaceTiming A-Rod, but maintained the two had never
Facetimed in person. LeCroy demurred: “He’s never physically cheated on his fiancée with me.” Physically? And so, JLo was embarrassed by that rumor—and yet,
oddly, she’s never been embarrassed by her singing or her acting—and split from
A-Rod. Or did she? Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez are now saying reports
of their demise as a couple have been greatly exaggerated—well, maybe not so
greatly—because while there might be trouble in their made-for-social-media relationship,
they are still fighting to stay together. A source claims they haven’t been together because: “She’s working in the Dominican Republic and he’s in Miami so it’s tough seeing each other especially with quarantining and COVID, but they want to try to stay together.” Yeah, I buy that except for the fact that they have
each posted lovey-dovey Instagram stories from various vacation spots, and
daily pap strolls to the gym and out to dinner and such, all during the
pandemic. Look, they’re over. He has a wandering peen and she
can’t seem to keep a man… possibly because she picks men with wandering peens. |
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Drew Barrymore has a talk show so we are learning all sorts
of things about her in a thirsty attempt to score more viewers. She’s done with marriage! Until she does it again. She’s done with drugs! She’s been saying that for years. And she’s done with acting! Or, more likely, acting is done with
her. All of these things, however, are subject to change, but you
aren’t allowed to remember that Drew said them. |
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To prove my point about JLo, rumor has it that she has already
scrubbed A-Rod from her life, and most importantly her social media, and set
her sights on one Lenny Kravitz. See, Kravitz has joined the cast of JLo’s upcoming film Shotgun
Wedding and has ALLEGEDLY made quite an impression on his co-star.
And we know this is true because JLo asked Kravitz to give her daughter guitar
lessons and then posted a seductive video of herself dancing on the balcony of
her hotel suite to the tune of Kravitz’s chart-topping hit “Fly Away.” A not-so-subtle message to A-Rod and the world. Still, I had higher expectations of Lenny Kravitz. UPDATE: After telling us that she’s in the DR and he’s in
Miami and with COVID they aren’t traveling, A-Rod flew to the DR to see JLo and
perhaps put the kibosh on the rumors, or beg her forgiveness for being a
cheating punk while she begs his forgiveness for moving on so quickly. |
