The great train ramble-ry

At the opening of The Blues Brothers you hear a song playing "She caught the Katy, left me a mule to ride."

"Oh, my baby caught the Katy left me a mule to ride,
The train pulled out I ran on behind
Still crazy 'bout her, that hard-headed gal of mine."

I was in a cover band that did this song with proper gender adjustments. It's a great tune.

But never I knew what the Katy was. Some kind of train, but from where to where? And when I tried to look it up on Google back some years ago I got porn sites, with no explanation.

Until today. According to this cnn article (which is actually about dudes biking across the States) ganked from AR, the Katy was the Missouri, Kansas, Texas line: The M-KT.

It's further evidence for the march of time, y'know? Back in the day most folks had probably heard of the Katy. Some of them probably had family who rode it. Now, no one leaves their lover by train anymore. At least in the States.

Trains make for the best cinema, though. The flashback scene in "Casablanca," "Love in the Afternoon." Great for love stories, great for spy stories. Trains rock.

In the 70's there was this coca cola commercial in which a travelling american boy is trying to strike up a conversation with an asian girl in a train compartment. He tries to speak to her in any number of languages "Sprechen sie deutch?" ha ha ha and she shakes her head shyly at each attempt. He offers her a coke which offers a first glimmer of recognition; "Co-ca-co-rah?" she says. What an icebreaker! Suddenly things are friendly in the train cab between the boy, the girl, and everyone else in the cab. "Have a coke and a smile." Coca-cola spreading goodwill and friendship across the globe.

I wonder if it had to be a coke, though. What if he had offered her an orange? Who doesn't like oranges?

Yeah, or I could do this instead

In the year 2006 I resolve to: Eat at least 2 pigeons a week. Get your resolution here

subtleties

I do not click on the splashy banner ads, pop ups or pop unders.

But I do click on the google text ads. And I am developing a real fascination for the webclips at the top of the gmail pages.

It is counterintuitive that a small line of text would grab me where animations, games, the promise of a free ipod, and crazy graphics do not.

I think the tiny text ad piques my curiosity and creates a need to know.

Resolved!

The year is coming to a close. And I am meditating on this year and on New Year's resolutions. I make many of the same resolutions every year and break them. Lose weight, save money, get organized, make a greater effort to keep in touch, read the complete works of Shakespeare, go the Kentucky Derby, see Bryce Canyon. One year I resolved to be a bitch. I remember announcing this to CE and her friend who said "Some think this is the year of the snake, but actually, it's the year of the bitch." And the two of them nodded vigorously in agreement on this. There are some who would argue that every year is the year of the bitch. And I raise a hand to salute you, Sister!

One year I decided that it was more important to keep my resolution than what it actually was. So I resolved to take a multivitamin everyday. I did it for 100 days, ran out of capsules and never went back. But you gots to keep trying right? Bouncing back into the game, that's what it's all about.

For 2006

Obviously, get a job. Sha-na-na-na, Sha-na-na-na-na
I would like to place my feet on the path towards a vocation but all things considered, a job would do me just fine.

This year one of my resolutions started after Thanksgiving. I am being more open with my parents about what it going on in my life. Tell you what, it ain't easy.

Lose my thesis weight. I split the seams of the dress I wore to EF's wedding when I bent down to pick up a hair brush.

Digging through the city of boxes I have stored in my parents' basement, I again faced my affluenza. Despite all that I sold, donated, or threw away, I still have a lot of stuff. So this year I am going to continue to fight my sentimental and acquisitive nature and pare down my material world.

Read the news more regularly. I used to get so worked up about the news. It got hard to get out of bed. So I stopped following it. It's mostly about the struggle of folks to get what they want, right? A war here, a lawsuit there. With one side (usually the wealthy, powerful side winning - but not always). The names and the coutries change but the essential conflicts and struggles are so much the same. However, I end up feeling like a sack of hammers when I talk to folks. To allieviate this and in recognition of the fact that I am not an island or a rock it's back to news of the world.

And lastly I am going to write people back faster. I often find myself muddled in my life (happy or sad) and reply to people's mail/email, return their calls months and months after receiving them.

There are many other things I would like to resolve to do and change and stuff but I'll be lucky if I even manage to do one or a subset of these. And there's next year to consider.

Maybe I'll add to this list: Read a Winter's Tale.

LMFAO

Your 2005 Song Is

Since You've Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson "But since you've been gone I can breathe for the first time I'm so moving on" In 2005, you moved on.

What Hit Song of 2005 Are You?

It's funny in itself but also because in May I wrote this. (still laughing)

channeling Rob Brezsny

I am sure that you have heard of Freewill Astrology that strange and contorted weekly metaphorical food for thought which is fun to read but perhaps not so clear with the crystal ball predictions one usually associates with the field. Some weeks I read mine twice and still have no idea what it's trying to tell me. Right. So as we barrel towards 2006, the Year of the Dog, I thought I'd channel some of that Brezsny-ness out into the blog-o-sphere.

I have become the queen of late night (super late night) reruns. One of which is a super late night repeat of Oprah. Ah, the blessed Oprah. Oprah had a piece on a woman who with neurofibromatosis. Neurofibromatosis caused her to get tumor growths on her skin. One of them was malignant and grew rapidly. In a year the tumor grew to be 200 pounds. 200 pounds on a woman who weighed 120 pounds. 200 pounds!

Doctors all over the country told her that surgical removal of this tumor (resistant to radiation therapy) would in all likelihood kill her. At the same time having the tumor was also killing her. It was an immense strain on her body especially on her heart.

After searching and searching, she found a doctor willing to take the chance and perform the surgery. It took 18 hours to remove. She lost 50 pints of blood. She weighed 95 pounds after surgery and it took 2 years to fully recover. When asked why she risked the dangerous surgery she said that the tumor was preventing her from holding and playing with her little girl. She wanted to be a mom. She wanted her life back. And today she is free.

Hopefully you are not carrying a 200 pound tumor around, hopefully you are happy and thriving and striving but perhaps metaphorically, you are carrying something psychic-ly heavy and malignant. Something that you think that you can't live without, the loss of which you think might kill you. Something that has taken over your life and is preventing you from being who you are meant to be.

Let this be the year that you perform the extraction. Look around you for help from others and inside yourself for the strength to take the risk and remove that thing and take your life back. Find the beautiful person that you are without it. It won't be easy but it's your life, and Loreal would tell you, you are worth it.

*the new age self-help section of this blog is now closed, we now resume our reguarly schedule ranting*

very small stories

NPR and a few of the other media types that I have had a passing contact today are speaking to the nature of the TWU/MTA contract dispute in NYC. 'bout time. I wonder about the media blackout of negotiations. Who does that benefit, if anyone?

Okay. Enough Ms. Crankypants.

My Black Thumb and Housekeeping
The mango seeds never rooted or sprouted. The banana seeds also never sprouted or rooted. The snap dragons have pretty much all died from utter neglect. But the garlic that I forgot to throw in the fridge is growing like crazy. So I planted the cloves.

Chicken Soup for the Body
I have been feeling flu-ey for many days now and threw together a pot of from scratch chicken soup which I proceeded to eat for two days. Note to self: must get a bigger stock pot for the large ambitious cookin' projects. With apologies to My beloved vegetarian Guy I got great satisfaction from the comsumption of bird. Up next: curried chicken salad, curried fruit, and ginger snap cookies. Yes, after days of dead taste buds, I have yen for spiciness and hopefully the stomach to handle it.

Two Days to Xmas
Today the weather was gorgeous. The drivers were cranky jerks as always but the folks at my usual grocery haunts were friendly cheerful as can be. Which was a pleasant surprise for the day before Xmas eve.

There were many confused men wandering around Bed Bath and Beyond alone today, holding strange household devices in the hopes that they were doing the right thing.

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall
I am going through a makeup phase. I go through these periodically. It is a combination of boredom, feeling plain, and seeing all the damn beauty products that I have foolishly spent my earnings on. The tubes and pots of hope and nonsense that ultimately represent a promise that with care and application I could look like those 17 year olds who grace the pages of glossy magazines. Promises impossible to fulfill. But I got much amusement from last night's goth queen makeover.

Holida-a-ay, Celebra-a-ate
For those of you who are celebrating this holiday on Pagan terms or on Christian ones or just happy to have a few days off,
Have a great weekend!

feelin' blue

I am sadded by the decision of the TWU 100 to end the strike without a contract.

I am sad for what this might mean.

What you give up, is lost. Getting it back will be a bloody fight.

"Driven at first by economics, but increasingly by ideology, the crusade to dissolve all employer and state responsibility for individual welfare has swept like a grim reaper through pension plans, health insurance, labor rights and minimum wages. New York transit workers are fighting to stop that trend in their particular domain, not for themselves but for the next generation of workers. They are fighting against the lie that abstract, neutral economic necessity, not the ideas and interests of the rich and powerful, are driving the demolition of what remains of social solidarity. Their fight is worth supporting in itself, for the dignity and well-being of a group of hardworking women and men."
-Joshua B. Freeman article for the Nation

I got an anonymous comment full of links to a white power website. I deleted it. I do not approve of anonymous commentors especially the ones who leave racist links. 'Cmon Dude, racism is so, 1800's. We're in a new millenium, dig?

Yet another reason why Canada Rocks (crossposted)

The Canadian Supreme Court has redefined indecency to use harm, rather than community standards, as the key yardstick.
The issue under debate was the question of whether group sex and swingers clubs were criminal because they were indecent.

quote
"Over time, courts increasingly came to recognize that morals and taste were subjective, arbitrary and unworkable in the criminal context and that a diverse society would function only with a generous measure of tolerance for minority mores and practices."
The courts have gradually moved from subjective considerations to objective standards, focused on the harm caused by the acts.
"The threshold is high," McLachlin wrote. "It proclaims that, as members of a diverse society, we must be prepared to tolerate conduct of which we disapprove, short of conduct that can be objectively shown beyond a reasonable doubt to interfere with the proper functioning of society."
Bad taste, violation of religious or moral standards or even public disgust aren't by themselves enough to make something indecent.
Conduct that confronts the public, which predisposes others to anti-social behaviour or actually harms those taking part, would meet the test, McLachlin wrote.
unquote

link

work in america

On skimming through Google News, Yahoo News, and even listening to NPR today, the mainstream media coverage of the NYC Transit Worker's Strike seems to be pretty biased in an anti-union direction. This maybe because most of the media folks now have to walk, bike, blade into work in the cold. It may also be because they are freelance writers who do not have benefits or workers with lousy benefits and cannot feel sympathy for those who actually do.

Those on strike face fines that start at $25,000 on the first day and double for every day thereafter. They might be jailed. Their union is being fined $1 million a day for every day they strike which will bankrupt them in about 4 days.

Don't you want to know why?
And shame on you Michael O'Brien of the Transit Worker's Union International for hanging the local 100 out to dry.

Positive views of this strike:
www.twulocal100.org
nycsupportstwu.blogspot.com
Beyond the Nickel and Dime
tothebarricades.blogspot.com blames the MTA
what the North eastern federation of anrachist communists think
Bill Fletcher Jr. : My Vote goes to the NYC Transit Workers!
Juan Gonzalez : Eventful Time for the Union
Confined Space : lives and deaths of ny transit workers
Confined Space: Blogging the Transit Strike
The Labor Blog : Against Slavery

For something a little less glowing but interesting:
commie curmudgeon : Credit to the T.W.U - As Far as it Goes

Okay, so there has not been a transit strike in NYC in 25 years.

The Transit Worker's Union Local 100 was negotiating a contract with the metropolitan transit authority (MTA which was running billion dollar surplus up until the time of the negotiations when it disappeared) The ins and outs of the negotiations are difficult to tease out. In the end the MTA brought in provisions in which future hires would pay a higher percentage of their salary towards benefits and take a 10 year pay cut. The TWU decided that this was unfair and that the MTA by bringing these changes to the final meeting at which they expected to sign the contract were negotiating in bad faith.

Seems to me that the media finger of blame is pointing in the wrong direction. It's the local 100's job to look after the interests of its members and that is what they are doing. It's Mayor Michael Bloomberg's job to look after the interests of his constituency, the people of NYC. It's Mayor Michael Bloomberg's job to make sure that the trains and buses are up and running in the city. That's why he got elected. It's his job to do everything that he can to ensure that the city does not lose $400 million dollars a day (a figure that incidentally the Goldman Sachs people think is greatly exaggerated.) Calling the transit workers thugs and greedy theives, running to the courts to fine the pants off of them, getting Judge Theodore T. Jones to threaten to jail them is hardly behavior that is conducive to meaningful negotiation. Negotiating a mutually beneficial labor contract, that's his job. Which at this moment he is not doing very well.

Unless he is doing this on purpose in an effort to destroy this union and to chip away the benefits of the city's unionized public employees into nothingness. Thumbs up, dude. And at the expense of the misery of the people of New York. Bonus.

If you live in NYC and you are pissed about the strike. Call the MTA 212-878-7274 and the Mayor 212-NEW-YORK or 311 and the governor 518-474-7516. They are supposed to represent your interests. Tell them what you want.

If you want the TWU to represent your interests elect Roger Toussaint as the next mayor of NYC.

music and its discontents

Sorry folks, I have coffee in the late afternoon. Thus, the bloggerhea.

I am Ms. Crankypants right now. Mostly because I have been meditating on how ickypants the recording industry is. And from reading Domystic's most recent summary of the news this week and most of it very much chaps my hide.

"If you're happy and you know it clap your hands
If you're not, that's okay, give me a call. *clap clap*
If you're happy and you know it then your face will surely show it
but if you're not, that's okay, give me a call. " *clap clap*

The music industry sucks. It is a fact that most will agree on. From the point of view of the consumer and of the artist. Son't get me started on the consumer end. For now let's talk about artist development. There are heartbreaking stories of what happened to the great R&B artists of the past. People who signed over the rights to their songs for a cadillac and ended up in poverty while someone else made a fortune. And there are heartbreaking stories of what is happening to artists right now.

Courtney Love gave a speech at the Digital Hollywood Online entertainment conference in 2000 giving a breakdown of just how the life of a recording artist is like that of a modern day sharecropper. This speech is somewhat articulate and quite compelling. Turns out she can do more than throw things at people and get arrested.

Steve Albini has written a very famous essay about how the music industry will fuck you over. I did not realize that it was first published in a zine called Maximum RockNRoll (issue #133)

The songs that you write and record under a recording contract do not belong to you. They are considered work for hire and belong to the label. However you do not get paid for the work you do. You are given an advance. Out of that money you record and promote, license, and merchandise your music. Everyone is taking a precentage of the sales and you might make forty cents to a dollar per CD. You don't see any of that money until your advance is recouped by everyone else involved the label, the producer, the t-shirt guy, the marketing people, the "get you played on the radio" people.

Your favorite artist sees more of your money if you buy the CD straight from her hands at the merch table or if you mail him a dollar bill.

Everyone blames someone else when they look at what happens to the artists that get screwed over. They blame the radio for not playing their songs. They blame the artist for not being good enough or working hard enough to promote themselves. They blame the label for not supporting them.

The business people in the music business have relied on having a stranglehold on distribution, tap dancing circles around their bands with a shower of legalese, and the rule of radio to make their living. (the rule of radio: if you play a song enough times it will inevitably grow on the listener.) Note they distribute. They do not sell, write, or perform. The standard contract is written to favor the house.

I understand the distribution and exposure problem. Having booked three shows and lost money, I know that it's really difficult to get people to come out to see a band that they have never heard. No matter how much that band truly rocks.

With all of this in a major label's favor apparently of 4-6,000 artists that are promoted and distributed in a year only 225 turn a tidy profit for them. (factoid from a very old la weekly article.)

Why so few? Music is experienced in a very personal and emotional way even in a packed venue. It's hard to predict who will love what song, what band and why. And with each generation their taste is often a reaction against what used to be popular. How's a aging hipster supposed to recognize the net big thing? It is difficult to predict which bands will stay together and which ones will grow creatively in directions that the listener will continue to respond to. Added to that some say that labels are not willing to put the time into artist development. And perhaps label execs actually suck at the job they are paid a lot of money to do.

On the bright side of all of this is the threat that comes from the internet. It could indeed serve to topple the industry as we know it. Which is one way to create change. The structures would be gone but the demand for music would remain waiting to be filled. Perhaps the business will devolve back into the hands of people who really love music. And companies like Seagrams and Sony and Nabisco and Turtle wax will wander off to take a crack at other kinds of businesses. (calm down, the last two are obviously untrue and pure snarkiness)

Perhaps some of these ideas for micropay music distribution will happen. Or someone will find a business model that can run circles around the big labels without getting bought out or sued out of existence. Or someone will figure out new means for distribution or getting the music out to the listener. Or someone will bring an antitrust lawsuit against these media conglomerates that have consolidated so much of the media in our world.

Some folks have put together the Future of Music Coalition. they seem to be a lobbying and education organization. Very change the system from within kind of stuff. Not so glamorous but important.

There is the excellent CDbaby which has been selling CD's for independent artists. They have a excellent, if depressing, list of articles for indie artists. (they have links to the Albini and the Love articles.)

One interesting idea that is floated in one of their articles is that at the point at which artists are being wooed by record labels they should actually negotiate. They should ask for benefits. They should ask for healthcare. They should ask for a retirement plan during the tenure of their recording contracts. The refusal to agree to these things should be deal breakers. And any attempt to strip a band of these while under contract should result in their immediate release from their contract. They should ask for contract renegotation not renewal at the discretion of the label. They should ask for complete control over their merchandising. Or whatever it is that will help them break even/make a buck.

This is unlikely to happen. After all most artists are young and naive and foolish. Only 30 somethings ask about the benefits a job offers. (They had damn well better!) And I mean benefits beyond the potential for hot action and all the blow you can stuff up your nose.

Knowledge is power, kids.

I think the key here is that an artist is also in business. And should take active control of that aspect of his work. If he doesn't, the people that he does business with will screw him over. (that goes for the ladies too. TLC, Toni Braxton ...)

And don't even get me started on the whole live music thing.
Last I checked, in CU most bands rely on promoters and saloon owners to give them the opportunity to play. I don't understand why more of them don't take control. Rent space and promote and book their own shows. It does involve financial risk and hustle but in return they can decide when and where and with whom they play. They also have control over how money gets split up amongst the acts. All of these are very big things. In CU, it is the case that at some saloons local bands do not get paid very well (if at all) compared to touring acts. Which sucks.

Yes, it is a pain in the ass to self-book and self-promote. But it also gives you autonomy and control. Life is full of tradeoffs.

Self Professed Spamadian?

There's this site where they recycle horrible email spam into weird t-shirt slogans. I love this idea, natch. I kick myself for not coming up with it myself. Their links page can direct you to other spam recycling efforts and spam related sites. What they lack, sadly, is links to information about the actual processed meat which is itself a fascinating subject. SPAM used to have its own festival. SPAM has its own museum. People write SPAM haiku. SPAM is cooked in the can. And yummy (the less salt variety) with a medium fried egg and a bowl of rice. The Official Hormel SPAM site is kind of dorky, delightful, and bizarre for a corporate site.

This space is myspace, this space is your myspace

Carson Daly has a myspace account. He annouced this fact on "Last Call" the TV show he hosts. *puke* Some people are really desperate for love. Yes. I have a myspace account too. Which probably means that I am one of them. It is impossible to find. I can't decide on a username. I have, ten friends. I was going to try to pimp my songs there but have had some trouble doing it so far and ended up playing the games instead. I am particularly fond of "Ant Farm" and "Speedy Thief."

Other games I have been playing ( a bad habit that I have dropped and picked up many times much like a pack a day smoker most recently picked up during nanowrimo.) to be found on yahoo! games! are "Betrapped" (parlor room minesweeper) and "Super Bounce Out" (because I really really like the squeaky ball sounds, the boing sound and the hoo hoo sound).

Pieces of My Brain

Yesterday del.icio.us was down and I was utterly lost. When I first heard about this website I thought it was kind of silly. But my del.icio.us site has become an actual compartment of my brain, an online notepad for the links to matters that rattle in my head. To not have access to it was an irritation.

I know, I could use bookmarks. I just really like the look of this site. It's spare and clean looking with those pale pastel colors. So orderly. Makes it easier to think. Yahoo bought them recently and I am concerned by this. I don't want to start seeing logos!, ads, and banners littered all over the space. It would crowd my already overcluttered brain and I would have to find somewhere else to store my links online.

bows, the tying up of loose ends, and the liberation of G

I moved plants from the office to the 705. Some of them were quite tall. I drove over with the rear windows down so that they could hang out the window like dogs that love travel. Stems quivering, leaves flapping like mad. They have suffered greatly in my care, fighting for their very survival. And now under SM's green thumb my hope is that they grow grow grow.

I wrapped gifts today and had a flashback to another gift wrapping occasion. At a gathering at AC's apartment a fellow named Marcello was watching me fumble with tape and wrapping paper. Being a bit of a Felix Unger, with a passion for gift wrap, he asked if he could help me and then proceeded to wrap with precise creases and beautiful curls of ribbon, narrating his process all the while. I had my beer and nodded in appreciation, half listening, learning nothing. He did a lovely job, though. My mother would have been so proud. I know several girls at the party were very impressed.

These gifts today look rumpled but festive. My Guy assures me that the improvised bows are pretty before dropping off to sleep. That'll do.

We close with a shout out to G who has taken her last final exam of her undergraduate career. Yay! Hep, Hep, Hoorah!

cake and socks, just not on the same plate

1. Dear MomVee, Kat E, Fishlamp, and Misswg I am without addresses for mailing at this moment. Please email me (ergodica at yahoo dot com) and I will send ya CD's forthwith.

2. I did cry at the wedding. The bride had such a teary happy look on her face that everytime I looked at her I got weepy. While it is not fashionable these days to put a little bride and groom on top of your cake I thought theirs was very romantic.

It was a small and simple affair. Very intimate with close friends and relatives. And really fantabulous food. At least the vegetarian plate was pretty darn good. There was snow outside and talk of hoildays and the chance to touch base with friends.

3. I went to Osco to buy a toothbrush. And I walked out with socks:
And they are silly warm and fuzzy. Before this I would describe happiness in many ways but now I can describe happiness as a pair of fuzzy socks.

4. I am disturbed to consider that the CEOs who close factories and layoff their employees will get a raise or a bonus for taking such actions. If a company is in enough trouble that they need to close factories and fire people, where do they get the money to give a CEO or upper management bonuses and raises in the millions of dollars? I do not see where a person should be rewarded for such actions even if it does save money for the shareholder.

I've got music and I'll give it to you for a song

So. My recording is done. I am taking a day or two to sort through the tracks and decide what's actually listenable and then you are welcome to a copy if you would like one. Just let me know.

misty watercolor memories

I have been dragging my foots for years now. Leaving thick black streaks across the floor. The ultrathick soles of my shoes are paper thin in places and rubbing blisters into ma tender foots. At long last. I have moved but no one knows to where. With no final destination to report, not knowing my next big move, I have been bashful about getting in touch with folks. And still am.

I went through my University email account and started collecting up email addresses and I reallized that I have met so many wonderful people. And I have done a really lousy job of keeping in touch with them. I have question marks next to so many names. Has it been too long? Can they still be reached at this address? Is it insulting for me to try to get back in touch with them? Will they be offended? What if it has been too long and there is nothing to say? What if time has changed us too much and we have grown apart? Do they even remember who I am?

In part I have been so silent because I have nothing to report. No wedding, no offspring, no raises, no purchase of property, no big moves, or new jobs. I have not cured cancer or solved world hunger. (In either case I suppose they would read about it in the paper and not need to wait for an email from me. =P) For years and years my life was ( and might still be) a line from a Joni Mitchell song: "Everything comes and goes, marked by lovers and styles of clothes."

Sure, I did stuff: tai-chi, cardio boxing, radio show sidekick, makeup user, piano lessons, run a 5k, concert promoter and staffer, sounds girl, radio interviewer and producer, cover band singer, songwriter, social drinker, knitter, cat owner, spider solitaire player. But for whatever reason it did not seem worth mentioning. Much less the hours spent on the confocal microscope and setting up fly crosses and marathon dissections and immunoprocessing. And image after image of negative or ambiguous data.

But perhaps that was my problem. My underestimation of the life that I was living. BW thinks I need to embrace the fuzzy nature of my life and just go with it. He might just have a point there.

I am looking for a Christmas card that reads: "I know that we have not been in touch for years. Too many years. I hope you are well. What's been up? Despite my tendencies towards worry and self-criticism, I am doing really well. I think of you fondly. We had grand times back then, no? Sorry you're getting this in February. Many hugs."

RIP Richard Pryor

I read the news today, oh boy.

bits and noise

1. There are the usual places where air will escape from the body. The back end. As discussed recently by Jay. And the nose and mouth. But this morning I woke to the sensation of having air pass from another body cavity and am a bit puzzled as to how it got there in the first place. (!)

2. I am going to the wedding of SS who is marrying AE, his girlfriend of 9-10 years today. I imagine that I will get teary at this shin-dig as that is what I do of late. It didn't used to be that way but as the years pass I guess I become more of a sap. (If that is possible.) I have been going to weddings since my freshman year of high school and attended most of them alone. Which is not as much fun now as it used to be. Over time weddings have become very Noah's Ark - it 's a good idea to show up as a pair. Showing up alone makes you the odd woman out. Today, I have a date. My Guy is wearing a purple shirt. Which is snazzy. I have broached the possiblity of branching out into other colors for the sake of variety: blue or off white or pink but so far have met with a tepid response. Just another gal trying to redress her man I guess.

3. And I am about at the end of my trailing days in Champing-Urbanana. The weekly 4-6 hours of driving will not be missed but the people and favorite haunts will. I had an order of super nachos yesterday in honor of this impending change and was uncomfortably full for the rest of the day. It is a dish better consumed drunk. As is true of the Stack. But it was delightful nonetheless.

This year in review meme

Ganked from my LJ friends. Take the first few lines of the first post of each month. It is a mini-review of your 2005.

April
"Truth is my friend, just between good guys. It's not what road you take, what life you pick to live in. No matter what you choose, the longing is a given. And that's what makes the ache that only the good guys ache.

Closer than Ever is a fucking brilliant musical. No two ways about it. Although it seems like longing for the road not taken is an ache that people who are not good guys might also feel."

May
"My Guy is professionally concerned with issues of human rights. He showed me this last night:

children's drawings "

June
"I see the Indigo Girls every chance that I get. I have seen them twice in town. Once at the Performing Arts Center. The sound quality surpassed any other venue it was so good my heart was cracking my chest with happiness."

July
"I have a mental block in my head that is making it very hard to grasp statistics.
Yeah yeah sigma, yeah yeah normal distribution, 1.96, p value null hypothesis ... might as well all be written in Estonian."

August
"
"If confusion about your [...] life is ruining your day, I think it's good to go over to your best friend's house and ruin her day too. "
-L.A. Story

my life is spent in a place
where I put on a happy face"

September
"Endnote lovefest - drop in all them references
Make text from fragments
Cover my Netrin-1 bases"

October
"All my life I have wanted to bake bread. I have this day-dream about becoming a baker - up before the sun, covered in flour, elbow deep in bread dough. Providing people with the staff of life."

November
"I have some songs up on purevolume. You can check out my pugly self and hear me bring my genre - meatball folk music to the people."

December
"I have been watching "America's Next Top Model." I am entirely enthralled. In part, it stems from a fascination with the beautiful people. I wish it were otherwise but I will admit that in many ways I have been duped by the beauty myth."

525,600 minutes (crosspostage)

"How do you measure - measure a year?
In daylights - In sunsets
In midnights - In cups of coffee
In inches - In miles
In laughter - In strife"

"How about love?"

I finally saw Rent. The show was much much better. The movie was very uneven. Hot and Cold. It would get static. I would get bored and then the movie would grab me and throw me off the fire escape. For all my grumbling about boring static and cold, I cried and cried throughout. I am a sucker for musicals. Especially the dramatic emotional ones about life and death. The ensemble vocals gave me chills. And Rosario Dawson kicked serious ass. She has come a far way from being the sidekick in "Josie and the Pussycats."

I scoffed, I yawned, I laughed, I cried all at the same movie.

Rent took seven years to be born. Its creator Jonathon Larson saw the final dress rehearsal for this show, did an interview, went home, put on some tea, and died of an aortic aneurysm. This at the age of 35.

Jon Larson wrote the book of a lifetime. A show about celebrating life in the face of death. He did not live to see opening night. But he did live long enough to make it happen.

I am 35. And I hope I have at least seven more years to do that thing. The one thing that is everything. To do the thing of my lifetime. (whatever it is)

Makes me wonder if there is something that I was put on this earth to do. I could ask that question of you too.

"There's only us
There's only this
Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
No other road
No other way
No day but today"

It is a tension of contradictions that life is to be lived in each moment as if every day was your last and also as if you are going to live forever.

"Life is what happens when you are making other plans." -John Lennon Nonetheless we all make them, we can't help it.

soul mind heart and hand

I have been watching "America's Next Top Model." I am entirely enthralled. In part, it stems from a fascination with the beautiful people. I wish it were otherwise but I will admit that in many ways I have been duped by the beauty myth.

Secretly, I have suspected that being pretty was everything. That being pretty or a big flirt would open the kind of doors that I could not even imagine. That life is better and people love you more and in the end you are more successful. That the more like a fairy tale princess you are, the more like a fairy tale your life will be. That my life would be better if I were prettier.

And what industry is more fixated on looks than modeling?

It is strange to watch a show in which I am rooting for young, pretty, vapid girls whose dream in life is to pose for pictures and sell me deodorant and sunglasses. And yet, I feel for them. I want them to realize this silly dream.

In part, it's fun to see pretty girls not get what they want. To see that they are human and imperfect. They have bad hair days and they sometimes fall flat. To watch them face harsh but perplexingly vague criticisms (beauty being to some degree subjective).

In part, it's surprising to see that being pretty doesn't mean that you will take a pretty picture. There is more to it than showing up and batting your eyelids.

I have been disillusioned with the show towards the end. I really liked Lisa, the crazy funny looking girl who knows how to take a good picture. She was eliminated. I also liked Kim, the androgynous tom boy who had to struggle every week to fit some girly feminine mold. She was eliminated as well. In the beginning they tell the girls to be themselves and that personality and presence are essential for a top model. In the end they picked pretty girls with no personality and then keep trying to pressure a distinctive spark out of them.

We live in a time when a woman (some women) can be more than a pretty face, more than a pretty thing. She can be soul, mind, heart, and hand. She is a human being. Human. There is so much more to human than pretty.

Tonight, I watched a movie called "Iron Jawed Angels." An HBO movie about Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and the struggle for a constutional amendent to secure for women the right to vote in the US. The level of hatred and hostility that these women faced was astounding. I am knocked out by the determination and the courage that these women showed in their struggle. They would not wait. They were tired of waiting. They started the National Women's Party in 1917. They criticized the majority party, the Democrats. They criticized the president in a time of war. Because even though the country was at war it did not change the injustice of denying women the vote. And they insisted that the president and the nation had to face and address this injustice.

The scenes in which they are in prison are so painful. To have the courage and conviction to go to prison and resist and protest in there. Guts and determination. Being pretty did not win women the right to vote. It took more than that.

Alice Paul fought for women's rights until she died in 1977.

Taking a pretty picture is nice. Getting paid money to have your picture taken is nice. For most of us that life is a fantasy. The state of women in our world is a reality and that reality is not nice.

All over this world women suffer. They are raped, they are beaten, they are bought and sold, they are denied work, they are denied autonomy, they are denied choices, they are denied their humanity. They. We. In many parts of this world women are not free.

Here, we are lucky. But it is not actually luck that brought us here. It is that we live in debt to women who would not stand for injustice. Who would not be patient. Who would not be quiet.

How can we repay this debt?

another closet scribbler, outed

It was a question of quantity not quality. So I spit out 50k of horrifically, fabulously bad writing. I feel purged. I feel cleansed. Next year, I will attempt it while coping with real life and placing my commas correctly.

(Ah, maybe I should train for a marathon instead.)

silly superstition, fear, and lego people

My Guy has observed that for one who has been trained as a scientist I seem to make a lot of assumptions. They lead me to jump prematurely to a lot of conclusions. (my own observation) I would add to this that it is odd and quite unfortunate that one trained as a scientist is as superstitious as I am.

There, I have outted myself in these aspects. I am aware of this and I do what I can to compensate for these failings as I take in the world.

Sometimes when I am really tired and feeling out of whack I check in on my horoscope or I take in an online tarot card reading. I am just craving some sense that everything will work out okay. It is a sensation that I so envy you who are optimists.

Last night after recovery from the many little agonies of Thanksgiving, after several sleepless nights (I did not sleep between Thursday and Friday, too much caffeine.) I surfed over to try to figure out my life through runes, the i ching, and a little program that gives you answers to yes/no questions. This particular evening I was told nothing that I want to hear and nothing in any way comforting.

It is inevitable that if I only ask questions to which I want to hear "yes" as the response I have to brace myself for a lot of disappointment with a yes/no answer program, flipping a coin, with a magic 8 ball, and more than that in real life I am likely to hear the word "no" countless times.

When you flip a coin sometimes there is a "Two out of three. Four out of five" impulse. You toss a coin because you think you don't really care what choice is made. The two scenarious are even and you accept either one. But if the result leads to that "two out of three" impluse. You have garnered an important piece of information. The beauty of a coin toss is its ability to help clarify for a person what they really want.

So I got some sleep. I watched a little of "Bowling for Columbine" off and on. I have been struggling to watch this movie for a while. Not because it's a bad movie. I think more because sometimes it is difficult for me to sit down and face hard things. I turn it on too late and I fall asleep. I wake up and watch from the last point I remember. I gotta say we're really lucky to have Michael Moore. He is not afraid to confront people. He is not afraid to ask questions. He is not afraid to be angry. He is not afraid to express outrage. He is not above pulling a stunt to make a point. He is also not above expressing compassion.

His discussion of how fearful Americans are as a people is very interesting. Fear is such a powerful tool with which to manipulate people. More compelling than greed, more compelling than lust, more compelling than even hate. If you are going to herd a crowd especially a crowd of people who are haves, the best tool is fear. Because fear of loss is so gripping. Fear of harm is agonizing.

A little fear is good. It is useful. It will keep you from harm. But at some point, too much fear makes the world more dangerous. Because you get fearful people who interact with each other in the most extreme and least humane ways and the results are really ugly.

I don't have a nice ending or conclusion for any of this. It's stuff that is kicking around my head. All I have is a virtual lego self portrait that I did of myself on the mini-mizer at Chris Doyle's reasonablyclever.com. Doing it cheered me up considerably. (this site was ganked from a livejournal post from azurelunatic)

Happy Thanksgiving

As my relatives like to say when presenting someone with a big meal: "Eat slowly, and eat a lot." I would add to this, "and then pass out."

strictly ancedotal

My parents tell me these stories about a small child that they knew years ago. She was a delightful obnoxious little thing. I cannot believe that we are actually the continuum of one person. Just like I look at pictures of myself up to the age of 5 and am amazed that this photogenic little thing and I are an almost exact genetic match (taking into account occasional accumulated uncorrected DNA damage).

Today over super spicy chinese food my mother told me the following.

My paternal grandmother died when I was seven. She had come from Korea to visit us three years before and I had been her translator at the corner store and whenever we watched television. She, in turn, kept me from trying to wear my pants as some kind of bizarre corduroy turtleneck. On more than one occasion.

My father was making travel arrangements to fly to Korea for the funeral. And I could not understand why. I kept asking my mother why Daddy had to fly to Korea. Why couldn't Grandma come and see us? She would explain that Grandma had died. She couldn't come to see us. Daddy had to go see her. We were never going to see her again. I took this in and 20 minutes later I asked the same questions again. I wanted a different answer. I was a stubborn little thing.

My mother bought me "Charlotte's Web" and read it with me. I cried and cried. I got it. When she asked me about the end of the story I told her that the baby spiders were spinning webs but Charlotte was not because she was dead. My mother went on to explain that that's what happened to grandma. She was dead. She was could not come and visit. That's what happens in life. You are born, you grow up, you live and then you die. My father told me to think about all of Charlotte's children, the little spiders that were going to live happy lives and carry the memory of their mother.

I remember reading Charlotte's Web, crying my eyes out, talking about death with my parents, and coming to an understanding of Grandma's death. I did not know that my mother had turned to E.B. White for help in teaching me this life lesson.

trapped under something heavy

It's an excellent explanation for not returning someone's phone calls. The phone is very heavy, covered in super sharp spikes and locked in a box filled with pit vipers (very poisonous) and the box is surrounded by laserbeams which if triggered will slice you into deli cheese.

Nah. That's probably not it at all.

I went to www.meatball.com, there are no meatballs. Just a memorial to cats now passed.

I went to www.muffinfilms.com where there are 12 short films that feature muffins. Adorable.

And if knitting is your thang, www.theanticraft.com has the most charming goth craft antifesto imaginable.

Favorite passage: "We're strange girls, tactless and profane in the face of the sacred, obsessed with mortality and the things you find under flesh and over bone." And they have advice on knitting with wire instead of yarn. (link ganked from squeakyweasels)

I finished my leg warmers they are super long and not all that attractive. But they are super warm. Photo to be added soon. My next project is kitty hats in super thick yarn. I am trying to be a good knitter and checking the gauge and what not for a change. Someday I will gather the courage to tackle a sweater. For now, I will stick to the littler projects.

in the heart of the heartland

I have joked with many people that my blog word count will probably end up being bigger than my nanowrimo count this month. G responded with the suggestion that I weave my acount of the writing process with the thing itself.

In honor of this suggestion I rented and watched "American Movie." It's not the movie that I thought it was. I thought that it was a documentary about the making of a movie filmed by the people making the movie when in fact it is less self-referential.

Wow. It's great. That man has a lot of hustle and incredible bouancy and resilience. He is a force to be reckoned with.

It is reminiscent of "American Splendor." (I find it kind of cool that these movies along with "American Beauty" are so great and have the word American in the title. It surprises me. Does it surprise you?) It is a documentary about an artist struggling with his art in the midwest in relative obscurity. Mark Borchardt perhaps in greater obscurity than Harvey Pekar at the time of filming.

They are not the same by any stretch but both movies tell the very real stories of very real people who refuse to live lives of quiet desperation.

When you watch "Coven," the movie being filmed in this movie it's got creepiness to it (Who would have thought that chocolate syrup would look so blood-like!) and some of those shots of Wisconsin are breath-taking. This man has a eye. He is not all talk and flash. He knows something about what he is doing and will not be discouraged, no matter the obstacle.

I hope he has recovered from the fame and found the funding and a good distributor for his next project.

Things to love

1. New Yorkers

Domystic turned me on to this site.

"Hobo #1: You know what, man?
Hobo #2: What's up?
Hobo #1: Yo, I balls out love opera.
--Houston & 1st"

"Guy #2: I have officially fired you from talking.
--Starbucks, 8th Avenue & 15th Street"

"Lady patient: Yeah, I always hear them calling my name to go back to my room, but I don't ever go.
Guy patient: That's cool. I should do that, too.
--NYU Medical Center, 1st Avenue"

2. the livejournal writing of people who know they should be writing a novel

I went to a few nanowrimo communities and clicked on their friends list. Which offered up what their member are writing in their own journals about their writing. Great stuff.

3. Dibs



Tiny dabs of ice cream that are covered in chocolate and in this case nestle crunches. Each one is a delight, a chocolately bite with a sweet shiver of ice cream at its center. *bliss*

There are other flavors. I impatiently await peanut butter ice cream covered in nestle crunches. And chocolate ice cream covered in chocolate with oreo crumbs in it.

4. www.bookcrossing.com

I have only recently heard about this. The idea is to register a book at the website it is labelled and then set it free. You leave it for someone to pick up or give it to someone you know or donate it. The idea is that whoever has the book can go to the website and report where it is and find out where it has been and after reading the book or after not reading it, set the book free again to continue its travels.

on the road again

I read "Finding the Open Road" it's a Roadtrip Nation project. For those of you who don't know Roadtrip nation started off as a journey taken by three friends to talk to people all over the country to who love what they do. They wanted to understand the journeys that people took to find the thing that they love which often lead to sucess as well. I was intrigued by this project. Roadtrips are such an All-American experience and right of passage much romanticized in book and film. The conclusion these guys seem to have come to is that The Roadtrip is an experience that more people need to have and be exposed to. So this is what they do for a living now. They are some kind of media and education company that plans and coordinates the roadtrips of kids in their 20's trying to find their way. Some of the book is inspiring and very interesting. The interview with Mark Burnett the creator of Survivor, Eco-Challenge, and Survivor was particularly groovy. And the potato phone exercise is pretty amusing. But I have to say that the 20 day road trip they offer at the end of the the book was dull, dull, dull. I hope that their TV version has more content than what they offer in the book. Cause it was lackluster.

I might try to look up some of the original documentary and book to see if they offer more satisfaction.

I think in part because it would help to have some of these people tell you more about what they do and what it is that they love about their work. Get into the bones of their being. Beyond the generalities and cliches.

I wonder for all the success stories how many people on a similar path have ended up in a not as happy place selling appliances as Sear's. Is a myth being created to make people blame themselves for a lack of acheivement and opportunity careerwise or if this is a dream that we can share and all make a reality. I am a bit daunted by the stories (so many of them sounding so much the same) say about the energy and dedication and hardwork and self-confidence and enterprenurial spirit required to find what you love and live your passion.

Whiel I was disappointed in the last section of the book I am still intrigued with the idea. Still the answer seems to be figure out what you love and do it. And if you can't do it, try something else that is related to it. The number of people who said "I didn't know what I was doing but I just did it anyway," was staggering.

anything to not wrestle with the beast

I have some songs up on purevolume. You can check out my pugly self and hear me bring my genre - meatball folk music to the people.

I recorded the rest of what I have written so far with JE but have heard nothing from him since the recording session regarding whether or not they have been mastered. It feels like a tricky delicate situation. When a friend records you (and not a super close friend) for free how obnoxious are you allowed to be about getting a finished product? I feel really weird about being pushy on this matter for some reason. It's a vibe I get more than anything. So I am talking to D at Backhouserecording about setting up to do a few sessions. Fingers crossed that I don't choke and I get some decent tracks out of it.

BBFK sent me some really cool goodies in the mail. I got bacon band-aids. Too cool. My Guy is trying to injure himself in a way that warrants a slice of bacon band-aid. Last night he kept pointing at his cheek trying to convince me that he had a horrible cut that needed bacon.

It rained something horrible last night so there was no trick-or-treatin'. We made rice crispies and watched a very bad Zombie movie about an infected inmate that infects a maximum security prison. Lots of scenes in which people vomit blood.

My folks tell me and AR confirms that the growing season was not so hot this year. There was not enough rain. My folks went to the Okeydokey orchard to get apples. They call it the Okeydokey orchard because the owner says "okeydokey" to everything they say. (maybe their accents are problematic) But there were no apples to buy. The apples grew to only slightly bigger than golf balls this year so they were selling cider instead of apples. So we have got our rain at the wrong time of the year this year.

exercise #1: stop focusing on the hole in the donut

There's a great scene in "Broadcast News" where Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks are talking on the phone and he says,
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If "needy" were a turn-on? "

Sadly, this was not the case in the movie and it is not the case in real life.

Have another piece of candy

1. Vivendi - the Big Bad Wolf?

I played King's Quest back in 1991-1992. The game survived through several versions and then Sierra Online decided that it was no longer interested in the King's Quest series. In light of this a group of fans of King Quest decided to take up the torch and write their own sequel to the game. They formed Phoenix Online Studios and began work on King's Quest IX as a fan game. A game written by fans for fans. The plan was to make the game freeware, available to all as a free download.

The first part of King's Quest IX was ready for release in December 2005 when they received a cease and desist letter from Vivendi Universal Games (owner of Sierra Online) and the project has been shut down. But there's folks itching to play that game. Who have been waiting with great anticipation for it. They have started an email/letter writing campaign to Vivendi.

Seem to me like Vivendi might want to take a peek at the game and see what their target market wants in an adventure game. They might learn at lot about what the King's Quest brand means to the people who play it. No better focus group in the world. It would endear them to the community and could revitalize the series.

2. Walking reenactment of Memento

I have lost my capacity to form short-term memories. Today, I find that I have forgotten yet another password for yet another account. I am locked out of the electronic journal subscriptions of my University. Lately, I get directions and immediately forget them, I write down phone numbers and misplace them, I make plans and forget where we are meeting. As the Dismemberment Plan says: "One too many blows to the head, left me for dead but still I fight on."

3. Hay is for horses

It's horse-day on NBC today. The U.S. Army rodeo and much horse racing. My Guy is mildly distressed. He wants to know why I am watching the "cruelty to animals games." I cannot vouch for the Rodeo. I hear terrible things about bull and bronc riding. And those 250 lb calves seem to hit the ground pretty hard during the Rope and Tie. I know there's riding crops being used in horse racing but for some reason I don't think of racing as cruelty to animals. The horses look beautiful when running and the racing has such a romantic component to it. With racehorses beyond strength and size there is always talk of the heart and character, the ways in which a horses personality effects the way it races. Perhaps this is a blind spot in my moral universe.

4. November is National Novel Writing Month.

It is in its 7th year.

"Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30."

"Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly."

What is not to love here?

5. Misty watercolor memories

The summer after 6th grade. I had a metallic kelly green huffy with a banana seat. I got up everyday and rode it to the Collinsville Public Library. I wandered the stacks and borrowed backpacks full of books. I stayed up way late reading them until I fell asleep. My dog Frisky followed me to the library and I got him a bowl of water for the heat and he waited outside until I was ready to go home. It was a great summer.

6. Firefly

Futuristic spaceship/smuggler/cowboy yarns where the people speak historical dialects of English and cuss in Chinese are the best.

Lifetime Top Five Items of Clothing

This one goes out to MomVee.

1. Sweatshirt given to me my senior year by AG. Heavy cotton Grey Champion sweatshirt with Princeton in black lined orange letters across the chest, size extra large. He was (and is) funny, sweet, sarcastic, and hard working electrical engineer. But at his core he was a ferocious street hockey player. He would come to the dining hall at Campus Club after playing hockey and that sweatshirt would be torn in a new place - the waist, the elbow, the cuff. And I would check him over for new scrapes, cuts, and bruises, scolding him to be more careful next time. The question of who got to wear this sweatshirt was an ongoing thing between us and when we graduated after much bargaining I traded him my fleece dinosaur blanket for it. It was riddled with holes all along the arms and the cuffs were ragged.

It had the magical properties of a boyfriend sweatshirt. It was comfy, well-worn and like wearing armor or getting an extended hug. I wore it off and on until my third year of grad school when I gently placed it in a box and retired it.

2. RK's jean's. RK was a girl I knew in high school who had that rare ability to be wholesome, likeable, and cool at the same time. She had bright red hair and is the only person I have ever met who is ticklish on the top of her head. She gave me a pair of old Calvin Klein jeans. They had one really cool rip and they were so comfortable. They survived up until I started dating MC who had a cat named Jonah who ripped his claws into them pants in an apparently harmless way that would ultimately lead to their demise in a drunken fall.

3. My first pair of heels. I bought them from Baker's at the Mall in a buy two get one free deal. 1 inch heels, pale salmon colored "snakeskin." These shoes were ridiculous and tacky tacky tacky. They matched nothing I owned. They matched no article of clothing to be found on the planet. And I loved them more than my life. They were my gateway shoe to a lifetime of shoe lust. I wore them with ridiculous classic 80's outfits like the matching striped denim vest/jean combo with a pink and blue scarf tied around my head. Or the green army pants with the boxy double breasted jacket in a red and white houndstooth pattern I stole from my mother and the chicago art institute many painters' signatures t-shirt and a red bandana on my head.

They were that rarest of shoe a comfy heel. I do not know what fate befell them. I think my mother evicted them from my closet while I was away at college.

4. Blue multicolored sweater from the Limited. I circled this sweater waiting for it to get marked down. It was a cotton blend with a hearty country cable knit pattern, boat necked. It was dark blue with flecks of white, pink, green, and red in it. It was huge. Everytime I wore this sweater I got a compliment from a man. And not in a "Hey Baby, hey baby," kind of way. The boys seemed to geniunely like this sweater. As in they might trade me their fleece spiderman blanket for it if I was willing to negotiate for it. It was nice to get a geniune compliment.

5. Black Summer Suit. Skirt hem and jacket lapel, hem and cuffs are bordered with a ruffle. AT bought me this suit. He is a major clothes horse, he has designer shirts bought off of ebay that would cost more retail than my kidney. I have never met a man so well dressed. Ask me about the seven-fold tie. Nor have I met a man with such a nose for a bargain. He moved to Cambridge started to spend a lot of time in Filene's basement and found the most amazing suits and dress shirts. When I went to visit him we started an outing with the intent to walk the Freedom Trail and somehow he steered me into Filene's Basement where I was instructed to try on every designer thing in the haute coutuer room. Nothing fit right it was all made for pixies and giraffes. We argued about every item in the room. It's not my fault that those ridiculous things made me "look like a villager." The only thing that looked halfway decent was this enormous poofy fawn colored ballgown. It was about closing time and we were exhausted, when on the way out I spied this black ruffled suit by some regular clothier. He complained about the price of the suit (too cheap) and was skeptical about the workmanship but when I put it on we agreed that the jacket and skirt fit nicely and I looked presentable and I made my escape from the bowels of Filene's and got to see the rest of fair Boston.

Two years later I wore this suit at my defense.

I tag BeckyBumbleFuck and Juvenilia.

each one, a story

Sometimes you break things. It is inevitable. It happens all the time. Sometimes they break beyond repair. When they are fixable it takes time, effort, willingness and patience. Even so, they are never what they were before. Fact.

How well you accept this and what you make of it, is up to you.

Look closely at anyone and you will find that each of us has a scar or a crack where pieces have been glued back together, at least one. It is a wonder and a reminder. Creatures so fragile repair and come out stronger.

I don't usually notice this kind of thing

I got a burger at Culver's. I sat down to my burger basket and noticed that I was the one non white person in the building. I looked out the window to find that my car was the only import in the lot. And most of the cars were trucks or SUV's. They didn't all move away from me on the group W bench there. But the cashier was suspiciously friendly. And the older gent tried to take my tray from me a few times before I was really ready to throw in the towel on my fries.

Reminded me of my childhood when people were always asking me if I was Chinese or Japanese. I would reply that I was Korean and meet with a look of great confusion. I would try to explain where it was and introduce people to the word peninsula. Blankness. I am ashamed to confess that sometimes I gave up mid-explanation and said that being Korean was like being half Chinese and half Japanese and that my father did indeed know kung-fu and karate.

So the whole experience was like a slice of home, really. That aside, the burger was pretty decent and I have vowed to go back for the custard.

fixations

Once I was having a conversation with SFMD and her comment to me was that I was obsessing. A statement which stopped me in my tracks. Me? Obsessive? Huh... I was extremely pleased to hear this. Relieved, even. Me with the capacity to pick up and drop hobbies. Me with the history of serial monogamy. Me with the attention span of a gnat. I still have some capacity to fixate. Albeit for short periods of time.

So here being with a little time on my hands I watch where my head wanders.

A lot of the things that I did to kill time and avoid work while a grad student I have been blocking on, as if I am trying to get distance from the associations of that stretch. (But hopefully not forever.)

For now I fixate on

Fud

Mostly I am spending too much time loitering in grocery stores. There are five different chains in town. And actually the same chain will offer drastically different fare in different neighborhoods. (I am back to my old tricks on this one.) I am getting ready to branch out to ethnic grocers, the chinese bakery, seafood marts, and hopefully some farmer's markets before winter hits.

I am madly in love with America's Test Kitchen. I obsess over the question of who makes the yummiest peanut butter and which brand of bottled water tastes the best. Cook's Illustrated has a great food science angle to it that I love. And I have a crush on Chris Kimball, I think he's dreamy.

I consider people who cook to be divided into two sorts: those who read (recipe followers) and those who improvise. I am a reader. I am envious of improvisers. My currently packed up kitchen is a boulevard of broken culinary dreams. All those special cooking utensils: the springform cake pan (used twice) the asparagus peeler, several really lousy garlic presses, the ceramic ginger grater. All those spices bought and used in a once prepared dish.

For a time I kept a recipe lab book in which I wrote out recipes that I tried and took notes of the outcome and the things that I would change next time. Sometimes I searched down 3-10 different recipes for the same dish and wrote out some hybrid of them and then tried to gauge the result. And I kinda wish I had it right now. Along with my big mixing bowl, pie plates, rubber spatulas, and kosher salt.

The sad caveat to this is that I am a mediocre cook. Most of the time I feel there is something missing from the food that I cook. Probably salt, corn syrup, shallots, and beef tallow.

Games

Computer games are an on again off again struggle. I went through boughts with tetris, hextris, welltris, xtank, nethack, king's quest. I went through boughts with the first version of Civilization, klondike solitaire, spider solitaire, other versions of solitaire, Myst. I even went through a third of The Legend of Zelda The Ocarina of Time. Love House of the Dead. I bought Riven and swore I would not play it until after I passed my Prelim. I still have the game, unplayed.

Well, it's on again, Baby. I goofed around a little with Flatout. In gameland, I am a terrible driver. But I can crash for money with the best of them. And I am wittling away time playing those terrible time wasting games on Myspace. I like the one with the monkey and the barrels of fruit.

So I haven't gotten around to reading that list of the 100 most important books of our century or reading the great thinkers of history. Yet.

a little of life's minutiae

Sometimes it takes forever to get a thing done. I had three tasks to contend with:
1. return overdue books and CD to the library and pay fines. *done*
2. take pet registration form to the vet to get it filled out and signed. *done*
3. Close bank account with BI.

I went to the bank and the sign said that the tellers were not open until 9am but the drive up window opened at 8am.

Okay. It's 8:30am, I'll go thru the drive up. The young lady tells me that account closings cannot be done by drive up. And can't be done for the next 20 minutes.

Okay. Y'know I'm kind of hungry. Ah, yes. I'll get biscuits and gravy at the Schnucks Deli. I remember seeing the signs about it. I am just never awake at the right time. Until now. So I go over and can't find the sign. And it seems that there are no biscuits and gravy. I guess it didn't catch on as big as the manager had hoped.

Okay. Maybe what I need is some bread or an apple danish. I'll go over to Mirabel's and get something. On arrival I find that they have no baguette. They have no apple danish.

Okay. Cheese Danish it is.
Now it's 9am. So I go back to the bank and they tell me that they need to see my ID. I open my wallet and it is not there!

Okay. After a moment's panic and recollection ... ah yes. I must have left it at the saloon after dinner and a few very sad rounds of pool. (My Guy did okay. I was pretty unfortunately.)

Okay. The saloon, of course is not open right now. And there is no sign to indicate when they open. I will assume around 11am or 11:30am.

And driving back to our friends home I feel a little frustrated. That last task is sitting there mocking me. A thing that I have put off for so long but I was finally going to take care of is delayed until the saloon opens. I walk into the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water and can't find my cheese danish.

I walk around and around the house. I walk out to the car. I have six okays, a task undone, and no cheese danish.

And if I am going to get my undies in a twist over this, it is clearly time for an attitude adjustment. To every moment in life there is a Bright Side, right? So let me enumerate them here.

*Ahem*

I am not living in Darfur.

Standing six okays from resolution is pretty good.

Hoagie let me rub his belly today.

I don't really need to be eating cheese danish. Let the universe have its fair share of the sweets.

Urbanana is a small town. So all that running around happened in a five block radius and didn't really take that long at all.

This is not a time sensitive task. It can wait until later. Until after the saloon opens.

It is good for me to realize that I do not have ID in my possession right now, right here. So that I can fetch it before I get denied access to a show, a club, or a bar, before I get stuck at the market unable to by bottles of hooch, before I order drinks with friends and then have to face the big deny, before I get on a plane, before I get pulled over and have to explain to Msr. Gendarme that mon ID n'est pas avec moi and is infact at the Saloon miles away in Urbanana, IL.

On turning this situation inside out I can see that this has actually worked out pretty well. I will get my ID back without putting in another six hour (roundtrip) drive.

(I've been reading some pretty heavy posts about the tough times that some of y'all have been through and some of you are going through. I am in awe of your courage and applaud your strength and the way you get through it while remaining the delightful and marvelous people you are.)

My life in contrast is just ridiculous.

Oh and look, here's my cheese danish nestled in my backpack where I placed it after purchase.
Do excuse me.

grumbledy grump

Yes. I love Pride and Prejudice.
Yes. I will go see this new version.

But for the love of Pete, there are two really good adaptations of this novel and a couple of really good movies based on or inspired by it.

How about a film version of the last story in "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing?"
Or a film version of "Shampoo Planet?"
Or "Written on the Body?"
How about a film version of "The DragonSinger?"

the Luddite in me

I spend a lot of time with mapquest., maps.yahoo, google.maps, and once with msn's maps. I know that I am not the only one. Sometimes when I am feeling nosey while driving I look at my fellow drivers and inevitably I see someone with a piece of folded paper spread across their steering wheel trying to read the directions, the signs, and watch the road all at once.
Its pretty remarkable that I can ask the great wizard how to get where I want to go and actually get an answer.

But I gotta say, I do prefer having a proper map. For my one day tour of NYC BBFK gave me "The Map," a simplified cartographic representation of "The City." While the act of carrying it and reading it slapped a sign on me that said, "Mug me!" which the locals were kind enough to disregard. It was great to have the lay of the island, some concept of alternate routes, landmarks for the lost, and get my bearings. It was nice to know where North is.

With .map directions, I don't really know where I am going or where I am and I do not have help in the event that I miss a turn or it turns out that Hartford has two airports: Brainerd and Bradley - only one of which is used by national air carriers. (@#*!) .map directions do not always realize or bother to warn you that Dinky Lane is a two way road that becomes one way that ends only to being again three blocks later.

When traveling too much information is better than just enough.

So this is a shout out to what is tried and true, the gentle art of navigation, and mapmakers everywhere. On my list of things to do is to purchase a proper map of the Greater Lou area. I am not Zen. I like to know where I am and what's around me.

"I've got sunshine on a cloudy day.

When it's cold outside, I've got the month of May."

I have heard this song maybe a million times. And everytime I do, no matter the state I'm in. When the bass and the strings, and the Temptations sing, I feel like I, too, have got all the riches one man can claim.

Hey Hey Hey!

overcompensation for an absence

a. If you do something for many years, it becomes a part of who you are. 12 years of biology for me, 10+ years of architecture for NJF, 7+ years of flirting for CKE. The daily action, the mindset, the instinct, the company you keep will inform who you are. You will take on ways of being and ways of seeing. Do what you want to be, because the culture will infuse itself into you.

b. There is a brand of cola drink in Peru called Inca Kola that is made with sugar cane that G's roomates say is really really good. According to Wikipedia, Inca Kola has manage to out compete Pepsi and Coca-cola through smart marketing, low prices, and national pride. "Inca Kola - the taste of a nation"

c. The sight of G squealing up and over the airport curb was most welcome after a long day of travel.

d. Do not wear suspenders on days that you travel on airplanes. The metal detectors will not be kind to you. Nor will the axnious passengers waiting behind you.

e. There was hella rain in Connecticut. Like a great lake dropping from the sky. LaGuardia airport had many drips from its ceilings and CSHL's auditorium had one nice big loud one as well. (most distracting during a piano recital) Perhaps East Coasters should start building boats and prepare to pack up two of everything to take with, just in case. I would be sure to pack two drummers, two bass players, two crystallographers, two histologists, and two poets, two potters and two ... (Hmmm, I'd better make plans to build a bigger boat. I'd also like to take a full brass band in duplicate.)

f. At CSHL they have a recital during the conference. They feature a talented young artist of international reputation who come and plays for the attendees and for members of the community. Afterwards there are cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. For us it was Jean-Efflam Bavouzet of France. He played an evening of pieces by Ravel. Most of what I know about Ravel is "Bolero" in that ice-dancing routine where the pair slide to their death at the end. (I am not a big fan.) But my mind has been changed. Jeux D'eau, Miroirs, and Gaspard de la Nuit were just dynamite. I kinda wish that recitals were more arena rock so we could shower Mssr. Bavouzet with thunderous applause for hitting a particularly challenging passage, as we would at a rock show. Because he was the shit.

He got standing ovations and came out to twice to grace us with an encore.

g. I have been thinking about firsts. This trip had a few firsts:

I took the NYC subway by myself for the first time.
I ate a whole lobster. (I was complimented on my fine dissection skills.)
I caught the bouquet at a wedding.
I won money at the casino. ($8 on the slots. Yeah Baby!)
I bought honey roasted almonds from a street vendor. (They are better if you let them sit in your coat pocket for a few minutes. Crispier.)
At the meeting, a second year graduate student from Canada offered to be my first post-doc should I decide to open my own lab. (Mind you I have not landed a post-doc offer for myself.)

h. I ate at a buffet almost every day (sometimes twice in a day.) I have the waistline to prove it. I fearlessly stacked my plates into mountains of food. SD and PN actually complimented me on my ability to pile food on a plate at the Casino Buffet (last buffet of the trip). I graduated up to a new eating weight class.

i. Casinos are strange places. No daylight, white noise and the sound of falling coins, cotton candy perfumes infusing the air. Elderly ladies complaing about losing canes or having them stolen while gambling. People circling your winning slot machine in an interested and slightly predatory way. Do not go to the casino when you are tired. Leave while you are still feeling good while you can enjoy the noise and the novelty and the kitch. If you are tired at the casino you start to notice desperate expressions of the people around you who take chances but who cannot handle loss, the people who cannot afford to lose.

The casino is a calculated seduction. Everything is there to distract you from the fact that these games of chance favor the house.

j. Yes, Lever and BBFK are even more excessively cute together in person than they are online, if that is possible. Interspersed with lengthy dialogues about farting. They even bicker cute.

k. I have been twice told that Haggis is really great. (especially deep fried.) So now I have to find an opportunity to have innards in sheep intestine in the AM with my hangover.

l. I had a wacky conversation with NS who is smarter, weirder, and wackier than me. Later in the evening we were standing listening to a dangerous cover band called "The Free Radicals" who were playing the greatest hits of every generation after the banquet. He said to me,"Wouldn't it be great to be in a band like that?" And I turned to him and said, "I was in a band like that. I was the singer."

m. BBFK and I got a mani-pedi done at a fabulous nail place in CT. It's in a little strip mall and it has the most haphazard decor. But it has this really homey Korean "Steel Magnolias" feel to it. The owner is a pretty little Korean woman who makes you feel young smart and pretty. I could totally imagine coming in with BBFK and other girlfriends and having a good gossip session and getting advice about my love life and beauty tips on a regular basis. As if I was a real girl who carefully practiced beauty as a discipline.

n. I got advice on how to regulate your heat if you have electric heat. Close the windows and doors, do the caulking and plasticing and what have you. Set the thermostat and leave it for a good while. If you need to raise the temperature do it slowly and gradually. Turn the stat up one degree and wait at least one hour. And if you need to do that again. The biggest energy cost with your electic heat is raising the temperature of a room abruptly. According to SD who is newly a home owner.

o. Thanks to Noel I have the most terrific craving for corn soup. Right now!

home again

My little cousin is 30.
My friends have grown up.
My feet and knees hurt from walking from Central Park South to 14th street.
The world is turning faster than I thought.

I wore everything I packed except a little black dress and a tank top.
The kitchen is a mountain of dirty dishes
and I must accept the fact that I can't survive on five hours of sleep a night for 9 days.

The man on television (from kentucky) is playing a guitar-like instrument with a body made from a fruitcake tin.

There is so much to remember, it is hard to know where to start or what to say. It's always like that.

nose like the mating call of a moose

I am woefully allergic to New York. Whatever it is that they have on the Long Island in this season is killing me. And the meager pharmaceuticals they have to offer do nothing to help me.

The woman in the room next door to me cannot sleep because I blow my nose too loudly. She gave me her nasal decongestant in the hopes that it would help me be more quiet. It has not. I am just stifling snuffles in a big fluffy towel. She felt bad about this and came over to apologize for possibly hurting my feelings. But I have been hearing this complaint from family and boyfriends for many many years. It is what it is.

Just for tonight I am in an austere little room with no radio or television on the campus of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She need not fear. Tomorrow I will be shuttled off to the seminary with all the other unsavory types.

As for CSHL, the main conference hall is the most beautiful little auditorium I have ever seen. There is a painting in the lobby entitled: unpainted cow jumps the fence. It's a square white cow tumbling over a fence. And the cafeteria served among an abundance of amazing food - chocolate cannolis with the slightest hint of cinnamon. *Wow!*

I am not sure why I am here. I just hope to have a few cool conversations about science and not to be observed sleeping through the sessions.

In a great irony - I drove up to CU to catch a plane to Chi and then NY only to have the first plane have mechanical failure. So I was rerouted. I drove up to CU to catch a plane back down to St. Lou and then to NY.

screen-save a memory

Somethings are difficult to articulate, but simple to illustrate.

We were in your car driving through downtown Urbanana to my house. A Postal Service song came on the radio and I turned to you and raved about the Postal Service. About how amazed I was at Ben Gibbard's ability (talented bastard) to write a beautiful, stunning, perfect lyric. "I - am thinking it's a sign, that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images and when we kiss they perfectly align."

You touched a button on your stereo and the song, "Such Great Heights" came on. And I was struck with utter happiness and uncontainable delight. I kissed you and proceded to dance madly in my seat and we sang along.

It was the smallest thing. It was the smallest thing yet, it filled the biggest space, and right there, right then, it was everything.

'They will see us waving from such great heights, "come down now," they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away, "come down now," but we'll stay. '

Loafing around

All my life I have wanted to bake bread. I have this day-dream about becoming a baker - up before the sun, covered in flour, elbow deep in bread dough. Providing people with the staff of life. Kerchief on my head and the sounds of the balalaika in the background. (My own rustic idle) And after years and years of this ilk, yesterday I baked my first yeast breads, ever. And while they were not very baguette-like, they were a nice skinny loaves of dense white bread.

It was fun like playing with really sticky and stretchy playdoh. A nice mellow activity to while away an afternoon.
This is ganked from "French Women Don't Get Fat" by Mirielle Guiliano. Which pretends to be a diet book but it reads like a cross between a meditation of living French and a love letter to food and champagne.

4-5 cps of all purpose white flour
1 tsp live active yeast
2 tsp kosher salt
1 egg
water

1. Dissolve yeast in a 1/2 cp of warm water. Stir with a fork and set aside for 10 min.
2. Mix Flour and Salt in a big mixing bowl. Add the yeast mixture and 1.5 cps of water. Mix the dough until it's sticky enough to knead. *best part* knead for 6-10 min. Until sticky and smooth. Place dough in bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Rise at RT until double in volume for 1 hour.
3. Punch down the dough and divide into 4 pieces. Roll each section into a ball and then shape into a baguette *second best part, can be done on a lightly floured surface* Put baguettes on a lightly greased baking sheet and let it rise to double.
4. Preheat oven to 450F. Brush the bread with a mixture of 1 egg beaten with 1 tb of cold water. Score the loaves diagnoally with a knife.
5. Pour 2 cps of hot water into a pan and place in the preheated oven next to the bread. Bake 15 min.
6. Lower heat to 400F. Bake 5-10 min. Remove and cool.

I didn't make sure to put my dough in a warmish place. I was impatient about waiting for my dough to rise in both cases. So impatient. Which might explain why it turned out dense rather than light and fluffy. But it's reasonably bread-like and delicious with butter.

what is edible

Hey little Girl, would you like a worm and tequila lollipop?

'Cause if you surf over to edible.com the folks there would be happy to hook you up ... Unless Thai Green Curry crickets or tea made from leaves picked by monkeys is more your style.

Can't predict the weather ...

We paid SBC a pretty penny and they lost it. The money has been deducted from My Guy's account but according to SBC, they don't recall getting the cash and we still owe them.

I have called and called. They asked me to Fax them. So I did. And then I called again. They said that it would take 7 days. I called again. They said that it would take 14 days. They said to call back at the end of the week. And now they say that the accounting office (in Texas) was flooded during Hurricane Rita. The office is closed and I need to fax all that stuff to another call center.

I believe them but I tell you, it feels like the ultimate "Dog Ate My Homework" excuse. To hear the customer service person say "It's not our fault that there was a Hurricane." Was quite frustrating. You do not control the weather but supposedly you do know how to process bills and keep track of accounts.

Can I use that excuse to not pay my bill? "Well, I hear that y'all are suffering from the effects of a Hurricane and I know what a hard time you have keeping track of money. And I would hate to have you lose my payment again, so I'm gonna hold on to this check until you call me and let me know that things are back to normal." I think they would slap the leg irons on me and put me on the chain gang.

In happier news, G got her very first job offer. *yay* The sign of more and better to come. *cheers*

babblement

a) The governor of Georgia called for two "pre-snow days" closing the schools on Monday and Tuesday to save fuel 450,000 gallons of diesel. link This was announced on the Friday before the closings and parents had to scramble to find day care or stay home from work. Savings for the state of Georgia is offset by additional cost and trouble to its citizens. G-dub praised the governor for his resourcefulness. But mothers at the mall with their children felt that in light of their state's low SAT scores, keeping schools open might have been the better option.

b) I looked in the rearview mirror and spied a young man drinking something out of a can wrapped in a brown paper bag. Allow me to jumping to conclusions here and say: "Sippin' on a 40 while driving home from work is foolish. Dude, if you're that hard up, pour rum in a 20oz. of coke. Did you forget everything you learned in high school? Geez."

c) I have gained some weight. There is the six pack, the washboard (never had either), the belly, the buddah belly, then comes the ledge. It's a band of fat that appears above the buddah belly and creates an excellent shelf on which to balance drinks and books. That's me. I was at a value store pretending to shop for wedding guest clothes and instead found some flashy fabulous shirts that totally distract from said belly and shelf. They are brilliant. Nothing like a giant sequined pink butterfly on the chest (lung-sized) and ornate floral flame under it to drawn attention away from certain facts about your figure. It's beyond figure forgiving. It's all out camo. I did not buy that particular item but I did shed little shiny pink sparklies with me for the rest of the day. This is all driving my mother crazy. I am calling it my Anna Nicole Show phase.

d) Trader Joe's is trying to steal my money. They just mailed me a 16 page flyer with elaborate desciriptions of what is delicious and on sale at their store this week. I love to read about food. But for now, my heart belongs to Aldi's not just because of the austerity, discounts, and diversity of clientel, but I love that the cashiers sit on chairs while they scan items and make change.

e) Before I got serious about my thesis I took up knitting and crochet at the same time as I got hooked on Public Affairs programming on PBS. I watched or taped hours of documentaries along with news programs and listened to them while I sat at home knitting or crocheting. That was a way to pass a Friday night. I made an ugly hat, mittens and two scarves before I decided that I had to stop! And redirect my energies.

Knitting is kind of a drag. 'cause I'm not good enough that I can talk or look away to watch TV or a movie or be at a meeting while I do it. And it takes me forever. But I want to get better such that I can do it on the train or the airplane or at meetings. I am making double knit leg warmers. And after that I am finally going to face down my fears and take a crack at my first sweater.

I am in a crafty mood. I want to sew all my t-shirts into handkerchiefs and make rags into quilts. I have romanticized the quilter's circle. *I don't even know anyone who sews*

budget cuts

According to MoveOn the Republicans are proposing some pretty drastic budget cuts to offset the costs of Hurricane Katrina.
While there is no proposal to put an end to Bush's beloved tax cuts (which would more than cover the cost of rebuilding) among the things that are on the block are:

$225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
$200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
$25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
$6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
$7.5 cut from programs to fight global AIDS
$5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
$8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
$417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency

more here
I don't know about you but my tax cut was about $300. I think I bought booze or paid the electric bill. I would be more than willing to put it towards balancing the budget.

MoveOn has an online petition if you're interested.

Look, government has a purpose besides spying on us, throwing us in jail, obstructing our access to contraception, forcing us to pray in school, and sending kids to die in foreign lands. They should know that in some areas their services are desired and requested.