Due to popular outcry and unrest from, um, a few weeks ago that just cannot be ignored, we feel obligated to post a picture of me with short hair. We would have you know that multiple gay men have approved of this haircut. Therefore, it must be stylin'.
Last night, over some very bad Thai food, Josh and I were wondering what happens to Constitutional amendments once they're offically real amendments. It's been a quite a few years since I've seen the original US Constitution in DC, but I seem to recall some old parchment in a glass case. I don't remember seeing any more recent papers stapled or taped to it, nor any post-its slapped on top. So, where are the more recent amendments, anyway? Is there an official copy somewhere, or do they only exist as very high-profile, hotly debated ideas? If I decided to get on my soapbox and say that there's no such thing as the 16th amendment, that it's just a figment of our imaginations, could anyone prove me wrong?
This is for those of you reading this who live in Southern California. Art Spiegelman, the creator of Maus, is going to be speaking at UCLA next Wednesday. I would go myself, but I've already committed to go to an art exhibition opening at LACMA that night. There's just too much darn culture around these parts. *Fanning self from cultural exhaustion.*
So I've recently been whiling the hours at home away reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. At the same time, I've been listening to Jack Kerouac's On the Road on audiobook (when else but during my long commute?). It's a bit of a shock switching from one to the other. I come home one minute thinking, "Hey, now, zap! Hot dog!" and arouse a sarcastic "Indeed?" from myself the next minute.
So, a few weeks ago, I got my hair cut very, very short. Boy short.
On an unrelated topic, I received some unexpected recognition at work last week.
On an equally unrelated topic, who says it's not a man's world, anyway?
So, since I've been going around recently telling random people to start blogs, and since even Wesley Crusher has one (www.wilwheaton.net), I thought it was about time I have one of my own. I'll be posting some bits of fiction as an interactive project with one of my co-workers (www.equusran.blogspot.com), as well as a food journal of wine worth noting or any interesting food I make or eat. And, of course, for those of you who are interested, there will be all sorts of random postings about other aspects of my life.
Simply put, I took the "gotter" out of "Gotterdammerung" and replaced it with my last name. Gotterdammerung is the fourth and final opera of Wagner's magnum opus, the Ring Cycle. Brunhilde is the heroin, and it is after her that I have modeled the lovely illustration for this blog.
Why Gotterdammerung? Am I a big opera fan? I wouldn't put it that way. I've certainly enjoyed the operas I've attended (most recently Lucia de Lamamoor performed by the LA opera. The soprano was exquisite.) but I haven't seen enough to consider myself a "fan".
I fell in love with French and Russian symbolist poetry, and the poets of the French front of that movement, if you can call it that, were big fans of Wagner, mostly because of his revolutionary sound and the synesthetic quality they admired in his work. Like the Symbolists, I attempt to evoke synesthetic qualities in my own writing.
The Ring Cycle also has some themes that resemble those of the Tolkien trilogy that's so popular right now, which I also happen to like. (Who doesn't, really?)
None of that has anything to do with my blog, so there are really two things that drove me to naming it Waltondammerung: I thought "Waltondammerung" had a nice ring to it (no pun intended), and a picture of me as a Valkyrie would have looked pretty nifty, if I had been able to find a picture of a Valkyrie suitable for photoshopping. I may yet. Who knows?