Throwback Thursday: Pet Hamsters Were All the Rage (and My Pet Hamster Hails from Another Dimension)

As a child, my little brother (pictured above) and

I believed that our pet hamster Hammie controlled

an interdimensional portal between Earth and wherever

Hammie lived (we never asked). 

Here you go — a throwback post of a memory from childhood of our pet hamster, Hammie.
I swear to God - Hammie the Hamster lived for a good six or seven years. But it felt like she was always around. She lived from like 1989 to God knows when - how many times did we release her into the yard to nibble - and store! - clover?

You see - Hammie was a magical creature.

My younger brother and I created our own made-up mythology - partly based on Noozles - an animated series that ran on the children's cable television network Nickelodeon - the show featured hidden portals and an interdimensional wizard koala that ends up in our world. Instead of koalas, my brother and I made Hammie the star!

Hence the longevity. And the adoration.

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It is Nice to Love a Bug

Bug #1 — Staten Island, 2015

Bug #2 — Staten Island, 2015

Bug #3 — Staten Island, 2015

Love a little. Love a bug. Love a green bug. Isn't love nice?

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Image Source: Greig Roselli

The 2013 Veteran's Day Parade in New York City

Kids dressed up as soldiers prepare to march in the New York City Veteran's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue.

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Cat Set Against a Moving Background

A cat meme is set against a moving background. Best used when under the influence.

Title: Unknown; Artist: Unknown Re-posted from putaindesatan

Original GIF image

Yes, I'm Ignoring You

Just ignore the math! Photo by Peggy Sirota Copyright 1992 AVANTI

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Random Building Façade, New York City

E 16th Street between 5th Avenue and Union Square, 2011 

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Journal & Rants: "I'm Doing A Great Job!"

In this post, I discuss my own problems and the issues I have with success and failure.

Pin found in the back of a chest of drawers during Spring Cleaning, 2011

14th Street Union Square Station

I gave fifty cents to an accordion player. But my thoughts quickly meandered to my own problems. I am having trouble putting together a desk. I have had thoughts lately related to failure. The desk will not be put together. But should I waste that one hundred dollars I spent? I will call the desk manufacturer tomorrow to get replacement slugs.

It is annoying. I also feel that I should have asked my roommate to help me. I was frustrated when I was unable to get the damn desk built like I wanted to. But that is the way it goes.

Spending Time Watching Movies like Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The movie is a prequel reboot of the classic film series from the 1960s. My favorite character is Caesar (played with incredible CGI aplomb by Andy Serkis), whom we see in this film — a certain generosity to humans that is shortlived. But that is my favorite scene: when Caesar helps. The rest of the movie is just pure chaos, monkey-versus-man madness.

Problems With Failure Has to Do With Problems With Success

It is counter-intuitive but I can trace the problems I have with failure to problems I have with being successful. Moments of failure become intensified for me. In one way, I am more comfortable with failure because it is a mode of being that I have allowed myself to feel as the norm; being successful (or feeling successful) is an alien feeling for me.

How do you feel about success? Does success feel real to you or are you like me in that your feelings surrounding success are often conflicted and a cause of anxiety? 

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Notes on an Idea: Cavell On The Star

For the American philosopher Stanley Cavell (The World Viewed, Pursuits of Happiness, Contesting Tears) actors on the silver screen are embodied representations of themselves thrown up on the movie screen, for all us to gaze.

Emerson's Star that Stands the Gaze of Millions
The star, to use Emerson's phrase, "stand the gaze of millions." We gaze on Cary Grant, for example, because we recognize him as Cary Grant who happens to naturally represent the roles he plays in the film. We appreciate Cary Grant (and Irene Dunne, or Elizabeth Taylor, or George Clooney) in the movie because they naturally “are themselves.” It is as if we treat the stars as persons we would encounter in everyday life. If the star does not appear to be himself we call his performance inauthentic. We judge the actor in the movies as authentic portrayals of themselves rather than as a convincing actor performing a role (as in the theater).
Questions of Authenticity and Inauthenticity
For Cavell, this propensity to view the film as authentic or inauthentic is characteristic of modern art. Would we ever call a performance of Chopin inauthentic? If we did we would be addressing our indictment to the performer and not to the piece itself. Art becomes treatable in the same way we treat persons. Are you authentic to the role you play? If not, you are not fit to stand the gaze of millions.
See my post on Cavell's other book about philosophy and movies: Pursuits of Happiness.

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Photograph: "Make A Wish"

The Make-a-Wish Virgin

There are miracles around us. New Orleans is a city of the night. If you live here, it is imperative that you make your way through its streets with an open eye. You never know what you may find.

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Photographs: Multiple Self Portraits On the A Train

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Photographs: Rat Ascending Staircases at Union Square Station

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Photograph: Smoking Grass on the Highline

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Quote of the Day: Anne Carson On the Social Contract

photo credit: notjanedoe

I wanted to find one law to cover all of living. I found fear.

— Anne Carson

Source: Carson, Anne. Plainwater: Essays and Poetry. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 2000. Print.

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Photograph: Maternal Aunt in Her Schooldays Dress

Genealogy Report 

from a Perronne Photo Album: Sandra Mitten Perronne is pictured here as a school student at Ella Dolhonde school in Metairie, Louisiana.

Sandra Perronne Mitten, my maternal aunt as a middle school student
 at Ella Dolhonde school in Louisiana (circa the 1950s).

Writing About the Perronne Family 

Stones of Erasmus
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Sandra Mitten Perronne - my maternal aunt -  who taught me what holy cards are used for (*for putting inside the interior pages of sacred books!*) and showed me how to crochet (a skill I have long since forgotten how to do). However, she is a cool lady. She makes doll fashions for a living; but, now she is retired, and she spends a lot of time with my mother and older brother. In the picture (posted above), she is an elementary school student at Ella Dolhonde school in Metairie, Louisiana.
I've written about family history on my blog - check out related articles here.

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He Reads Harry Potter, too

 photo credit:era145

I  am not sure if he is happy about reading the Harry Potter septology or if he is afraid of Voldemort.

Photograph & Rant: "Sharpen Your Mind!"

In this post, I supply a photograph I took of a battered pencil sharpener along with a short quip on a sharpener's importance in a teacher's classroom.

An orange, beat-up pencil sharpener is affixed to a wall.

Even in the age of computers, it is still nice to know pencil sharpeners have a use. Any classroom teacher will tell you that one of the more valuable objects in their possession is the pencil sharpener — many are affixed to the wall so no one will take it away.

image credit: Greig Roselli © 2010

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Photo: A Portrait by Casey

A family member took this photo of me when I was younger (c. the 1990s). Maybe I was ten years old? I still have the photograph. So here is a copy of it (after it went through the scanner).

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Poem: “Chinese Buffet”

photo credit: wikimedia

at the chinese buffet, during lunch hour
there's a table of brash intimacy
and lunch hour camaraderie -
the sleight parent wearing a holiday
green sweater, christmas lights strung
across her child-nursing breasts;
she gestures, eggrolls pushed to
the side, the travails of I-don't-know-what-
because I am too far away to eavesdrop,
but what I did notice I've turned into miserable verse,
I must admit,
of my own voyeurism
getting the best of me,
this haphazard bunch,
articulating with words and flesh
what I can only stab at
with my fork,
ashamed at my own frog-like
existence,
crouching in the chinese buffet,
while my mongolian stew
gristles in the background.

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Poetry: Gone with the Wind, among others — Leuven, Belgium

In this poem, which I wrote when I was a college student at the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.L.), and living as a seminarian at the American College, I tap into feelings of aesthetic taste, sharing intimacy — and I used the phrase "stones of erasmus" for the first time! 

     Erasmus was a student in Leuven during the counter-reformation. One can still see the dormitory house where he supposedly lived and studied. There is a saying among students that only if the stones of Erasmus could speak! What would they say?  

photo credit: spirit of paris

After a film,
poster and reflections
neatly crisp

Intently, furtive glances, to the right, then gone …
left man passes, consume in a bite, then a girl
with glasses, lashes and a bic light
smokes.
Curly Q’s and then somberness of night.
But, still the poster glows … the Trocadero, a movie
de l’amour and Vertigo, a fright:
An image of a man, a stale lacuna, a ghost of film noir
gazing, not apart, partly connected.  Dreams and visions
speak aloud to wet, litter caked streets.

Rotted lemon luminaries haze a path,
dulling humid low land streets, scarcity curtains pulled upwards,
A Peugeot passes, the stones of erasmus clamor to get out.
The posters gleam yet; characters speak and a stomach,
somewhere thirsty growls — it is filled and then …
in upward windows aching, she dresses for a silent figure fantasy.

A flicker, then bed, holding a teapot, languidly.
Une regard to a postcard, to consume.
Speeches to please, to sugar, then the tongue licks,
alors, madame …
then laugh,
like a box of potpourri; charming
half-dead, withered, enchanting

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Alpha Christ Mural from Saint Joseph Abbey With Accompanying Poem

Artist credit: A mural by Gregory DeWit, St. Joseph Abbey Church, Saint Benedict, Louisiana

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