weak.meat.strong.eat.

bustedpuppet:

[video: Logan’s Run 101]

I will be celebrating my 30th birthday by hosting a little street game, in which everyone (even people I don’t know) is invited to chase me through the city:  If you can find me and tag me, I will give you a red balloon with the location of my eventual destination / b-day party.  While everyone is invited to chase me down, only people with one of my red balloons will be allowed to party with me (people 30 years and older can petition for a waiver - see below).  So yes, I intend to whittle down my friends to just those people who can outrun me!  Mwahah!

But merely tracking down a gaggle of balloons with a GPS signal is too easy to be fun.  Therefore, if you have taken one of my red balloons and someone else tags you, you must give them the balloon and let them run away!  Ha!  Now it’s a “game.”  No tag-backs - and that goes for everyone that’s in your group/team/squad/posse.  If you lose your red balloon and you want another one, your team will have to find a new one.

Here’s the ONE RESTRICTION:  I don’t care how you travel when you’re chasing me down (bike, car, roller skates, city bus, whatever - the more unfair the better), but while you have one of my red balloons you must then travel on foot.

• One red balloon is good for your entire group to attend the party, so long as they were all involved in the capture of said balloon!
• I will only be carrying 30 red balloons.  That’s a lot of balloons to carry (!) but that’s actually not that many balloons to steal, so first-come-first-serve.  If you don’t get a balloon, tough luck.  If 30 people manage tag me and I don’t have any balloons left (not bloody likely), I’m just going home - you can all party without me.*
• In the spirit of Logan’s Run (1976) I will be wearing a flashing red LED on my left hand, just in case there is any question about who the person with the 30 red balloons is.
• The Top Secret Party will be outdoors.  It’s San Francisco, so check the weather or just bring a jacket.
• If you are over 30 years old and you don’t want to chase me around, you don’t have to.  Instead, your price of admission to the Top Secret Party will be:  one item of unpainted wood that contains no nails.  Send me an SMS after 6pm on Sunday and I will tell you what my destination is.  Feel free to start the party without me.

And finally, HERE’S HOW YOU FIND ME:  At 6pm on Sunday Oct 2nd I will activate the GPS on my phone, which will automatically update my position on Google Latitude**.  Additionally, approximately every 15 minutes I will manually post my street intersection to Twitter (@bustedpuppet) which will immediately push to Facebook (@Dax Tran-Caffee).  When I reach my destination, I will turn my phone off.

* If no one manages to tag me and I am partying alone with a bouquet of 30 balloons, that’s awesome - I win! … except that I won’t know whether it was because a) I am awesome, or b) no one cares enough about me to chase me down, but oh-well.
** To view my location via Latitude, you must send me a Latitude request (bustedpuppet@gmail.com) NOTE: this will consequently also allow me to track you, so if you’re not comfortable with that, just stick to the twitter feed.

FAQ:  Who the hell is Dax Tran-Caffee, and why are we celebrating his birthday?
A:  I am a puppeteer and street game designer.  I was the primary organizer of Journey to the End of the Night in Chicago and Oakland, and the designer of the game The Architect & the Urchin.  I don’t usually celebrate my birthday, but since I’m having an early mid-life crisis this year, I figure I’d better spend my birthday doing something exciting.  If you don’t know or don’t care who’s birthday it is - but this sounds like fun to you - come play anyway.

GAME DESIGNER’S NOTE:  This isn’t a real street game, really:  it hasn’t been play-tested, I don’t know how it’ll work, and it may not even be fun; we’ll just have to find out.  If you want to play a real game, come to this year’s Come Out & Play festival October 28 - November 6 in San Francisco!

Hey Bay Area: Just so you know, this bandmate of mine is asking people to chase him down and steal his balloons on Sunday. You should come! I’m gonna get him with my car!

From Jordan:

The wood stuck thick to his axe as his arms drove down into it and the sound rippled through the fog that hung low over the old place.

A foot placed, a skilled tug and the tool came free. Another wind up and again the wood bore the brunt of his blow, split open, and tumbled to rest in the brush behind him.

His fingers gripped another round and as it came to rest upright on the beaten plinth, he noticed her coming towards him, jacket pulled close and a mug of hot tea in hand. He lay the axe down and stood up to meet her, taking the cup from her and sipping at the steaming liquid. She slid into his arms and buried her face in his chest and his hand came to rest on the back of her head. When she looked up at him with pleading eyes, he laughed at her like he always did.

“It’s going to be cold this weekend. I thought I’d get a head start.”

“Oh, I know.”

She smiled, took the mug and kissed him gently on the cheek. She turned to walk away and he grabbed her by the arm, pulled her back and kissed her hard.

Splashes of hot tea hit the ground, an exchange of whimpers and the embrace finished smoothly.

She headed back to the house and he picked up the axe again.  “I’ll be inside in a little bit.”

“Mmmhmm.”

He watched, smiling, until the door clicked behind her.

I don’t need you to get all hot just to impress me. I love you just the way you are.

Now come on, babe, show me some fog. Give me a little of your sweet rain.

You’re beautiful, honey. Beautiful.

You know you’re really into doing homework when you use flossing your teeth as an excuse to take a break from it.

All of his uploads are of him playing the ukulele.

Most of them are Flaming Lips covers.

I feel like I’ve seen too much.

My mother has flying dreams: dreams of sleek wings on her strong back (slick-furred, like a dog? Like a bat!), dreams where she and Bill drive flying motorcycles and they are young and laughing above the engine roar, dreams that their little wooden sailboat is lifted from the sea by strong but benevolent winds. Of course she can fly. You know her. It makes sense.

I am flightless. It seems I only ever walk in dreams; I wonder now if I have ever dreamed of driving, or swimming, or taking a bus— surely I have, but now I can only feel slow walking. Slow walking, and discovery. My dreams are treasure dreams, good dreams that I try to stay inside or crawl back to when I first begin to wake, but they are simple dreams. I am most often in a home that I know in the dream as my grandmother’s, but there is always a forgotten door, a hidden room, a golden glowing untouched dressing room: her veiled hats are not moth-eaten and dry; her stiff wasp-waisted gowns are perfectly preserved; her tiny lilac glove fits my wide knuckly hand easily—my fingers grow long and slender inside it. In the dream house, the sticky yellowed perfume (in the tiniest promotional-seeming bottles with fragile ornamented stoppers!) neither gives me a murderous headache nor makes me retch; I invert the bottle and touch the sanded glass of the stopper behind my jaw, then trace my collarbone and the tiny pleats on my dress front. I catch my own eye in the little mirror, and drag the heel of my hand through the thinnest layer of dust on the fogged shellac of the dressing table, the same way I brush crumbs from a restaurant tablecloth and hide them in my napkin before the server appears with a crumb-scraper.