It’s summer and there’s a big move happening. Lagniappe is VERY excited.
Blogging shall resume
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New Blog post over at Huppy’s website
Go to his blog to read: How a non-believer came to respect Pentecostalism
St. Louis and dry little monkey balls
Honestly, not what you think. (And if you really know me, you’re thinking some pretty wild stuff.)
These are dry, little monkey balls:
According to flickr user mrvitamanp, they are
the leftover woody seed pod of the American Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) tree. The spikey compound fruit is composed of numerous capsules; each filled with a couple seeds. After the fruit opens and the seeds are released you’re left with this dry little “monkey ball”.
The problem is that apparently, my neighborhood has about, oh, I dunno, a bazillion American Sweetgum trees and they all vomit these ping-pong-ball-sized, rock-hard seed pods, en masse, starting in February. The end result being the lawns and sidewalks are just covered with the things until sometime in the Spring when the property owners feel like the trees are nearly done spewing and they can then pay someone to cart them away. (Heaven forbid they should stay on top of the problem like they do with the snow. The minute snow shows up, they toss out enough salt to preserve a large whale carcass.)
Maybe you’re thinking, “Well that’s not such a big deal” and you know what? You’d be wrong.
Every February since we moved here, I have managed to twist my ankle pretty badly on the damn things. Not bad enough to get any sympathy from anybody, but enough that I’m thoroughly annoyed at having to walk the dog. This February is no different. This morning, Lagniappe thought it would be wonderful to chase a squirrel on the front lawn so I thought it would be wonderful to accommodate her. BAD idea: Step, Step, Twist, Ouch. Damn!
And let me tell you, being “old enough to know better” does not mean you’re smart enough to rush home and put ice on your ankle after you twist it. I stupidly sat at my desk for hours, trying to teach myself a few simple tricks using jquery and when I got up, I nearly toppled over. It’s not Quito bad, but it’s bad.
Ugh, yet ANOTHER thing I have to discuss with the über-maker when it comes to this stupid physical body he gave me. “Dude! Seriously? THESE ankles? Not worth crap. Really. Why, for the love of You, WHY?”
Free Chapter Download of Huppy’s New Book
Now available at his website.
It’s real!
It’s an actual physical book!
New Blog post on Conflict Theory
over at Peter’s blog. He has a couple of huge classes this semester. I guess word got out that he’s a “MUCH less than boring” professor.
Huppy’s book is ready for pre-order!
Books should be ready to ship February 1, 2013.
This book carries an ethnographic signature in approach and style, and is an examination of a small Brooklyn, New York, African-American, Pentecostal church congregation and is based on ethnographic notes taken over the course of four years. The Pentecostal Church is known to outsiders almost exclusively for its members’ “bizarre” habit of speaking in tongues. This ethnography, however, puts those outsiders inside the church pews, as it paints a portrait of piety, compassion, caring, love—all embraced through an embodiment perspective, as the church’s members experience these forces in the most personal ways through religious conversion. Central themes include concerns with the notion of “spectacle” because of the grand bodily display that is highlighted by spiritual struggle, social aspiration, punishment and spontaneous explosions of a variety of emotions in the public sphere. The approach to sociology throughout this work incorporates the striking dialectic of history and biography to penetrate and interact with religiously inspired residents of the inner-city in a quest to make sense both empirically and theoretically of this rapidly changing, surprising and highly contradictory late-modern church scene.
To read reviews of the book, visit his website.
Kickin’ it Pink for Kristyn
Some of you may or may not know, but the wife of Huppy’s brother/friend, Bobby, was just diagnosed with stage two breast cancer at the crazy age of 37. Complete madness. So, as a fundraising tool and just as an image for her to focus on, I turned her into a superhero whose super power is BEATING CANCER.
Visit her blog and comment… often. She’s gonna be at it until January. It’s going to be long winter. Also, if you can, donate to her team for next Saturday’s Komen New Orleans Race for the Cure.
I did some drawings.
I felt the need to do some self promotion for my illustration. Well, really, Huppy the Anarchist is on a sort of hiatus while the Dr. is applying for jobs for next year and I was jonesing for some drawing so I did a few political tarot cards. To display them, I tried setting the page up as a flash file, but honestly, what the hell has happened to flash? I mean, I USED to be able to worm my way around the program, lift some script here and there and pull something together. Now? No way. Which is just as well I guess. My hopelessly hip 15-year-old nephew told me, in a sort of know-it-all-tone, that “nobody uses flash anymore.” Apparently, it’s all HTML5 and/or CSS. Who knew? I’m grateful. It’s far easier to figure out HTML than it is flash. So long flash. Sorry to see you go. Not.
Please visit my illustration webpage to see the cards.
Back in St. Louis
and not lovin’ the reality. Lucky for us though, the temperature dropped like 20 degrees the week before we got here. According to everyone we’ve spoken with, this last summer was THE. WORST. SUMMER. EVERRRR. as far as the heat goes. The rent on our apartment in San Cristóbal was probably much less than it would’ve cost us to air condition our apartment for the two months we were gone.
Postings will be slim from now and until our next big trip. We do occasionally get out and do things around here so we’ll post if anything is very interesting. Given that it’s the milquetoast Midwest though, you can assume this blog will be in semi-active hibernation.
Keep us bookmarked and don’t forget to visit our webpage huppytheanarchist.com for updates on the book. Also, we are in the process of building up a facebook page and a twiitter thingy. I’m told those are important. Are they? I don’t know.