Instrument

measure or create?

jsoishi at gmail dot com
about

hit counter
November 5
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

A Good Day

C.Clark (buy the record)

It’s always pretty after an apocalypse

So we strolled past the flowers

planted by the Bloods and Crips

And they chose white lilies

‘cause they’re such wacky kids

It was a good day

Damn right!

It was a good day

Almost all the hypocrites and demagogues

were gone

Like the sacramental moment

in a last poet’s song


Bayard Rustin came back

just to bitch-slap Farrakhan

It was a good day

Damn right!

It was a good day

Burned to the ground

we knew it would

Burst into bloom

healthy and good

So we struck that match

and went back to sleep

Lee Atwater was on the corner

turnin’ tricks

Clutching the failed box set

of his heartfelt blues licks

He said

“I think I like the ghetto better

when it was sick”


It was a good day

Damn right!

I gotta say it was a good day

Raised to the ground

we knew it would

Burst into bloom

healthy and good

Bayard Rustin smiled and went back to sleep

Good Morning America

Good Morning

Comments (View)
October 7
I had this dream...

that Obama would win Ohio if Matt made a website. He made that website, folks.
Comments (View)
September 25
Comments (View)
August 15
Haight & Fillmore, SF, CA

Haight & Fillmore, SF, CA

Comments (View)
June 11

Banh Mi

Andy introduced me to the wonders of the Vietnamese sandwich (banh mi) on my trip to Chicago last fall. I have sought them out around the Bay Area since coming here, but yesterday, a confluence of ingredients and hunger led me to attempt my own. Here is what I did. Made two sandwiches.

  • 2 baguette rolls. I got and froze a bag of 30 of them from Safeway for $3.68 a while back
  • 0.5 cucumber, seeded, and julienned
  • 1 block of pre-fried tofu (“Hawaiian style” is what I had; this is half the package)
  • 1 scallion, chopped up
  • healthy amount of cilantro (don’t leave this out!!)
  • 0.5 tbsp chili paste
  • soy sauce
  • sesame oil

Toast the rolls. While that’s going, chop the tofu into some kind of bite-sized morsel. Then dump the cucumber, scallion, and tofu into a bowl. Put in the chili paste, pour some soy sauce over it, and add a little drizzle of sesame oil. Of course, real Banh Mi have mayo, but I don’t keep that in the house, hence the oil. Also, it should probably have carrots, but I don’t like carrots. Toss the stuff around. Put it in the roll. Eat. Tastes pretty good.

Comments (View)
June 10

DC will do that to you.

WDCNTWR

As I got off the train on my home tonight I looked down to see a woman’s foot with a tattoo of the DC Flag! harDCore, indeed. Though sadly, she was not. It is a testament to the insane degree to which tattooing has flooded the mainstream that a woman as conservatively dressed as she was would have one at all…but nonetheless, I got that odd rush of nostalgia for home.

Comments (View)
June 1

“Flashlight,” Fuzzy (1994). 

It’s weird to feel nostalgia for bands you didn’t know when they were around. It’s also weird to feel some kind of connection to people when you don’t really have one. Here is a study in both of these oddities: I never knew Fuzzy in the mid ’90s (though I may have seen them; apparently they opened for the Juliana Hatfield 3, which I believe I saw around that time). Nonetheless, there is enough cultural capital amassed in this song/video and my brain for a fairly strong resonance. As for connection, well, my friend Em plays in a band with Hilken & Winston, both late of Fuzzy. I have meet both of them on several occasions. Yet, I’m sure neither of them remember me. Fame—what’s your name?

Comments (View)
May 11

Love → Building on Fire

Sunday, 27 April 2008

Long Island City, NY

photo: E. Arkin 

Sunday, 4 May 2008

San Francisco, CA

Comments (View)
April 21
Seen near Memorial Glade, UC Berkeley. I don’t know either.

Seen near Memorial Glade, UC Berkeley. I don’t know either.

Comments (View)
April 14
the sole decoration in my office at work. no cheezy poster swag from various NASA missions, thanks. For Andy, who I think is the sole reader of this here site. edited to add: I lied. above my officemate’s desk, there is also a Monet poster from an exhibition at…The Art Institute of Chicago

the sole decoration in my office at work. no cheezy poster swag from various NASA missions, thanks. For Andy, who I think is the sole reader of this here site.

edited to add: I lied. above my officemate’s desk, there is also a Monet poster from an exhibition at…The Art Institute of Chicago

Comments (View)