The Tuesday Report

Sacred Geometry, originally uploaded by 0WW0.

The weather has been more to my liking since yesterday.

In about 11 days, Jeanne and I will be married!

Work is relentless and whenever I think I get caught up with everything, more stuff just comes my way.

Drawing takes a lot of time and energy that I don't have anymore.

We all live on a tiny blue speck that floats in space around a star that you wouldn't even notice outside of this galaxy.

My body is just an organic system that wants to reproduce itself, take in food, and dispose of waste. Yet there is something that prevents blind animal instinct from taking over.

There's a reason behind it all, but that is for a consciousness even greater than mine to deduce.

Hoarding?

35mm_scan_11, originally uploaded by Carl W. Heindl.

We watched three episodes in a row of Hoarders last night on Netflix. Couldn't help but be reminded of it when I saw this photo.
I have weird tastes in imagery, I know. This is actually the kind of photo I would take myself if I had happened upon it with a camera.

It's a Boston Friday after all!

Christmas Eve 2009

Christmas Eve 2009, originally uploaded by Reggie Rachuba.

Let life never be deprived of its vibrancy.

May there always be something of great beauty that awaits you as you leave your front door.

May you find your spirit in all things wonderful.

Woman Leaving The Psychoanalyst by Remedios Varo-1960

Woman Leaving The Psychoanalyst by Remedios Varo-1960, originally uploaded by kamikazecactus.

See more of this artist's work here.

Such a surreal day on the calendar, such a day that so many people want to talk about on and on and on, that a little bit of surrealism felt appropriate.
Those who know me well know that I am not easily whipped into a frenzy, be it for a sports team or for a day on the calendar. Where the crowd flocks, I tend to shy away.

Jelly

Jelly, originally uploaded by Cyberesque.

I just love an aimless drifter...

Party On, Dudes!

party on, dudes, originally uploaded by krupp.

A rule to live by. People who can do this sort of art really do impress me. Oh, and might I add: "Wyld Stallyns Rule!"

Metaphysical Foot Rub

Vishnu, originally uploaded by nikhari.

One of my favorite images from Hindu mythology. Again, not my art.

Cultural fusion

Cultural fusion, originally uploaded by tigric.

Not my photo. One of my favorites from Flickr. I don't travel the world. Much more interesting people do. On an Indian kick. Asian Indian, that is.

Another one.

Old Blue Lady

Old Blue Lady, originally uploaded by Reggie Rachuba.

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality." - John Lennon

By medieval standards, I would be a senior citizen at the age of 33. I am very thankful that I have made it this far into the collaborative dream that we call life, and in the company of such wonderful people as Jeanne, no less!
Like everybody else, I often try to cope with both the ceaseless nature of time and the inevitability of death. I look at old people and I am not only grateful for what they have been through, but glad that they are still an active part of the collaboration. Why do we spend so much time fawning over the young when they haven't anything interesting to really talk about?
During the next 40 years or so, I hope to achieve at least one great ambition, namely that Jeanne and I will be able to spend these decades together! I have other ambitions too, but the realization of them is more dubious. For instance, I would still like to create a masterpiece one day; I would still like to capture something of the sublime in an artistic representation.
As a much younger man, I aspired to write and draw the perfect comic book story, and wouldn't this still be a wonderful goal? The only problem is that comics are a lot of hard work to create and I am a very lazy artist. I think that my dream job would be to simply design characters for comic books or cartoons and have somebody else do all of the hard stuff.
I also think that it would be awesome to create an animated TV series of my own and provide voice acting for the characters, but it's not very easy when you have no connections to Hollywood or whatever. A man can dream, though, can't he? Could Pepto-Bear: The Animated Series be just around the corner?



Somehow the conceive-believe-achieve sequence always gets thwarted for me. Perhaps my main issue is indeed laziness. Or maybe it's my lack of focus. Or maybe it's because my foot itches...what were we talking about?

What Are Hot Dogs Made Of?

What Are Hot Dogs Made Of?, originally uploaded by Reggie Rachuba.

Mmmm...
As you sink your teeth into that first Labor Day wiener tomorrow, think about all of the little critters who comprise the hot dog matrix. Be they pigs, chickens, cows, raccoons, octopi, mantises, lemurs, griffins, jabberwockies, esquilaxes, manticores, unicorns, or stink beetles, they have all been ground up into a tiny pink cylinder of meat that has been boiled or grilled to perfection!

Bon apetite!

Fast Food, Envy, and Bewilderment: The Reggie Rachuba Story

Every time I used to pass by the McDonald's on West Judge Perez Drive as a child, I would be filled with an unimaginable jealous rage. The cause of my vehement envy was the mob of kids who were sticking their faces out of Mayor McCheese's hat, squealing with glee. How dare they?! When would I ever get to clamber to the top of Mayor McCheese's hat and stick my own pudgy little mug out at on-coming traffic? I was choked with rage. I wanted them all to die.
Once I was at a Wendy's, and there was this old lady who smeared ketchup all over the table she was eating at. The newspaper decoupage design was turned from an antique white to a horrendous pink. The old woman sat and munched contentedly on her french fries, oblivious to the mess she had created.
Once when my Dad took me to Popeye's, there was this hippie guy sitting in the next booth. The hippie organized all of his pieces of chicken into neat rows before he would start eating them. For some reason I was mesmerized. He was probably a serial killer.
When I was in maybe first or second grade, my Dad had bought me a toy apple that was filled with little green plastic worms. We stopped at McDonald's on the way back. As we stood in line, I was struggling to open the apple so that I could play with all of the little plastic worms. The toy just burst open all at once, and the little green worms went all over the floor in front of the check out counter. My Dad was annoyed and we had to stoop down and collect all of the worms so that the customers waiting behind us could order their Big Macs and fried apple pies. I don't know how he put up with me.
I always considered it an insult to my juvenile intelligence that Chuck E. Cheese could be up on stage performing while carrying a pizza tray for us bratty kids simultaneously. Even a six-year-old knows that you can't be in two places at once! The same goes for Billy-Bob and his band of grotesque hillbilly miscreants. (The gorilla who played the piano used to freak me out.) (Rock-afire Explosion!)

When we lived in Houston and would eat fast food several times a week, Jeanne and I discovered a Magic Burger King! We were fighting our way through medical center traffic, ravenous after a full day of graduate school and blue-collar drudgery. We took a turn down a side street to avoid a cluster-f__k situation on Main Street, and lo and behold, that side street fed directly into the rear of a Burger King drive-through! We were jubilant and uplifted in spirits and from that day forward, the Burger King on Holcombe Street was known as 'The Magic Burger King'!

Why am I telling you all of this? Because every time you pass in front of a McDonald's with a play yard, I want you to think about little Reggie Rachuba and his bitter boyhood envy. Every time you order an eight piece box of chicken from Popeye's, I want you to remember that some hippies like to keep their chicken neatly organized. And every time you are famished after a day of work, and are looking for a short cut back to wherever it is that you dwell, I want you to remember that sometimes a greasy, heavily-salted pot of gold might await you just around the corner. :)

Hit Pause

Nobody hits the pause button anymore.

(That is, unless they have to get up and pee.)

That's today's mini-blog. Tune in this weekend for extended ramblings. :)