Blizzard Gifts from the Sunset Strip

Thanks to the blizzard in the Northeast, my flight back to New York was canceled. My visit with the folksters was extended by four days.

Thanks to the many bugs flying around and the chill of the season, I got sick. The kind of sick where your teeth hurt and all of you aches and the GD pills aren't ever going to kick in.

My mother teased me as I lay in bed encouraging me to call my friends and complain about being sick and stuck at home.

I couldn't even do that.

What I was able to do was watch TV on the internet. Sometimes the same episode over and over again. I would drop off the sleep, wake up having lost my place, unable to remember the ending and try again.

Thanks to Netflix for enabling this.

Thanks to KL, who told me that she has been watching, I watched the whole season of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."

I watched the show when it came out. I remember being totally entranced and heartbroken when it was canceled.

On viewing, years later, it's breath-taking.

The first time around I was struck by Amanda Peet's turn as Jordan McDeere. She's smart, brave, impossible and so so winning.

This time around, I am besotted with Matt Albie. It's love. Matthew Perry was so good. Wow. So So Good. How could I possibly have not noticed just how dreamy he was?

I might buy the DVD boxed set and keep my TV on the Studio 60 channel for a while.

Kinda rhymes with the word oven

Rhyming is like matching your clothes.

It creates order, structure and cohesion. Kinda brings everything together.

One must take care when rhyming to show restraint. An inflexible insistence on rhyming everything will turn something charming into something stilted or ridiculous.

I am not a big fan of matching but I am a sucker for rhyme in lyrics, even (and sometimes especially) when excessive or ridiculous. I am not a stickler for a formal and proper rhyme, a near rhyme will suit. Assonance may be "getting the rhyme wrong" but I like it all the same.

While not a matter of life and death, sometimes finding the right one can cause a headache of Guy Music proportions.

When you are ready to bang your head against a piano, spare your cranium and get thee to a rhyming dictionary. A simple Google search will no doubt lead you to one or many very nice ones.

The rhyming site that I was first introduced to by DF is RhymeZone.

There is also rhymer.com

The following kinda rhymes are brought to you by RhymeZone, Rhymer, and the filter of my brain.

Oven kinda rhymes with: lovin', coven, shovin', shruggin', huggin', tuggin', muggin', wom-un, pluggin', sullen, sudden, sloven, roughen, dudgeon, clubbin', runnin', stunnin', run in.

I am trying to convince myself that apron, arson, tungsten, and blowgun are also kinda rhymes for oven. There is such potential in each of these words. Alas, wanting a thing to be true, does not automatically make it so.

He toils before the oven
and polishes his blowgun
feeling sad and sullen
contemplating arson

?
Hmmmm. It doesn't quite gel.

Excuse me, while I find a piano to bang my head on.

Links for funny

I understand that posting these links is a waste of time when you are spending entire work days at the office on CollegeHumor.com and Hyperbole and a Half.

But it's Christmas Eve. My family and I have just had snack time which means that we don't have to interact again for a few hours until dinnertime.

So I will share with you:

If Old People Ran the Internet

And two from Hyperbole and a Half

The one about Kenny Loggins and Xmas.

And the one about Moving with Dogs.

Via someecards.com: this bit on santa which is probably only funny to mean people like me.

And this one from Savage Chickens for the New Year.

Be Who You Are

Tonight's drinks will be had in the honor of Republican Senators: Scott Brown [MA], Richard Burr [NC], Susan Collins [ME], John Ensign [NV], Mark Kirk [IL], Lisa Murkowski [AK], Olympia Snowe [ME] and George Voinovich [OH] for voting to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell.

One Fish, Two Fish, Eat Fish, Go Fish

I have been reading Paul Greenberg's book "Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food."

It's an easy and interesting read even if you have read Mark Kurlansky's very excellent book "Cod," which is also an easy and interesting read.

Mark Kurlansky focuses on the impact of one fish, the Cod, on human history and then on our impact on its viability as a species. The publishing industry apparently refers to this kind of book as a microhistory.

"Four Fish" takes a look at Salmon, Sea Bass, Cod, and Tuna. These fish that we know and love are presented as case studies to suggest that there is something wrong with the health of our oceans, something wrong with how we relate to the ocean.

These fish that we love to eat are not doing so well. The news is not good for delicious fish.

I fear that we as a species do not scale well. The more of us there are - doing the things that we humans like to do - the tougher it gets for everything else that lives to do the things that they like to do. It's hard to say whether any species actually scales well. In any given situation perhaps a living thing takes advantage of its opportunities up to the point where there is push back to keep it in check. And for now, fish are not pushing back, they are disappearing. We are eating them out of the ocean.

How do we know that we are the cause? Because when we stop catching and eating them for long periods of time, at least some types of fish increase their numbers again.

What can we do. We are hungry. Even when we are stomachs are full and we are not physically hungry, our appetites are insatiable. We crave in our heads, our hearts, our souls. We not only demonstrate this in our personal actions and decisions but also collectively in our social groups, social structures, jobs, markets, companies, kingdoms, social, political and legal entities, the technologies that we invent to help us feed that appetite faster and more efficiently for more of us.

We are so hungry.

When I finished reading "Cod," I wanted nothing so desperately as a Filet 'o Fish sandwich from McDonalds. I waited two whole week after finishing the book before I broke down and got one. I am craving one now as I type this.

Reading "Four Fish" I want nothing more than to try bluefin tuna carapaccio. Maybe get sushi.

Just this once. I am one person. How bad could it be? Just this once.

I went to dinner with AM and some friends to this delightful sushi place, one of whom was a gorgeous, tall, very dour girl who asked the waitress if they served sustainable fish. The waitress was doubtful. GTVD Girl had a card with her that she handed to the waitress listing endangered fish. Unsure of the eco-quotient of the fish at the establishment, she ordered a piece of land animal while the rest of us heartily tucked into platters of sushi delights.

I mock her but I also admire her fortitude.

We were just three people, that one time. How bad could it be? Just this once.

And I love a fish taco. I had a delicious one today at Cabrito. Amazing.

Dan Barber (who is amazing) has given this questions some thought as well. His conclusion has been that is it bad, that the answer is to accept no less than sustainable sources for fish as food. Unlike the GTVD girl, he does so with passion and love for flavor and food and joy. He is the Epicurean to her Puritan but the end point is shared.

I wish he had named the fish he fell in love with.

Near as I can tell, Paul Greenberg seems to think that Tilapia, Barramundi, and the Pangasius fishes are the way to go - from a farmed fish point of view.

I suspect that Dan Barber is talking about another fish altogether. Perhaps I will have to save my pennies and visit his restaurant and find out for myself.

In the meantime, back to the book about four fish.

Perhaps I will get lessons on being very dour about the fate of our oceans. Practice my culinary Puritanism. Or find a sustainable fish and fall in love.

Sound off, one, two

I was discussing the question of gays in the military with my father. I thought that it was odd that there were people who had been discharged from the military who would re-enlist if they eliminated the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. The whole, how could you forgive a club that wouldn't have you as a member.

My father didn't think it was so strange.

As the discussion went on, my father said, "Well, the most famous gay in the military was Julius Caesar."

!!!


I do not know if this is true but if it is certainly worthy of a t-shirt:



Can I be sued by someone who died in 44 BC?

Complaints

I meet so many people in New York who are passionately pursuing their dreams and love what they do. They kind of have to. They are here living with five roommates in the outskirts of the boroughs and making peanuts or working for free while holding down crazy odd jobs or painful day jobs.

I always feel strange in comparison. Because I am here but I am merely making a living. It is a gaping chasm between these people and me. We are different species.

There is nothing wrong with making a living. Pretty much everything that is alive is in the business of making a living. When you talk to microbiologists that takes up and lot of their attention, how these tiny critters are making a living. Ecologically, metabolically, microenvironmentally, in combination with a host.

That being said, when you spend enough time doing what you do not like and do not want, it can loom very large in your field of vision and make it difficult to remember what it is that you do like and want. If you have a very short term memory, as I do.

Which is merely to say that the first day back at the office after a week off is unfun.

But sometimes someone will provide you with a nice distraction and introduce you to a new song or two.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/New+In+Town/2rKNBN

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Logos/1IYQ0F

notes from home

1.
After a visit to the Mall it would appear that sequins and animal print are big for this season. I am beside myself.

2.
We made a sweet potato casserole with pineapple this year. It was yum. It's a variant of recipe called Yankee Sweet Potato Casserole found on www.cooks.com


Cook a mess of sweet potatoes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degs.
Peel and mash them.
Add honey, pineapple juice, brown sugar, butter, salt, amaretto, pecans.
Grease a baking dish.
Layer canned pineapple rings on the bottom 5 rings for an 8x8 dish.
Pour in the sweet potato mixture.
Layer canned pineapple rings on the top (5 rings on top as well).
Bake for 20-30 minutes.

The tart of the pineapple and the sweet of the sweet potato make surprising and lovely pair.

3.
Last week I finally came to the conclusion that my pants are too baggy. Probably because I've been listening to Katy Perry sing about her skin tight jeans in the track "Teenage Dream." That lyric has seeped into my subconscious as: girls in skin tight jeans find true love. Rationally, I understand that this is bull. But I have always irrationally believed that clothes hold the answers to many of life's problems.

At the Limited, I tried on a size 8, 6 and 4. The size 6 and 4 felt exactly the same except that I think the size 4 makes my muffin top look more pronounced. Naturally, I bought a size 4. I have not worn a size 4 in years. The prospect was irresistible, even if caused by size exaggeration and stretchy fabric.

They are not skin tight. But they are much narrower than all of my other pants. Bring on the love!

4.
I only read the New Yorker when I come home to visit my parents in C-ville. Excellent quote:

When Mary Jo talks about the experience[of rebuilding her restaurant], she says she tried to keep in mind something Provino Mosca used to say:"Without trouble, there is no life."

-Calvin Trillin

The article made me want to eat my way through New Orleans, or at least make a pilgrimage to Mosca's for Oysters Mosca, Chicken a la Grande, Mosca's Sausage, Shrimp Mosca, Spaghetti Bordelaise, Crab Salad and the Chicken Cacciatore. Because that's what Calvin gets when he goes there. Despite or perhaps because of the Thanksgiving holiday, I have a new dream vacation to plan.

5.
My mother put an electric blanket on my bed. We turned it on and noticed that there are two controllers - one for each half of the blanket. Couples can share an electric blanket and a bed while independently regulating the heat. Ingenious.

life littlest victories

I have been obsessively playing Minesweeper for almost a week now. It is a fixation that I fall in and out of. I played at the beginner and intermediate levels and recently been banging my head against the expert level. It's a 16x30 grid with 99 bombs.

This is not a pastime I would necessarily recommend. I have been spending a lot of time getting blown up which is discouraging.

When I play, sometimes I tell myself that it is an analogy for life or at the very least, my job. I hope that none of you has a situation in your life, the experience of which could be modeled or mirrored by Minesweeper.

The pace of the game allows a mind too much time to fret about things that are not game related which is distracting and makes one more likely to make a mistake.

Mistakes often made:

I click without thinking.

I don't pay attention to the whole board and I overlook available information.

I don't think out possible scenarios or become enamored of one possible solution and neglect to sketch out all the others.

I make false assumptions.

I make decisions based on previous games instead of focusing on the game in play.

I accidentally click on a spot that I intend to flag.

Sometimes I lack motor control. My fingers revolt and disregard the instructions sent by my brain.

Sometimes there are two configurations that will work, based on the information available and I pick wrong.

I generally tell myself that if I get down to 30 or fewer bombs on the grid, I am doing well. A few times I have gotten down to 4-10 of them.

But today, I won.



Yup. It was a pretty straightforward board. Not so ambiguous. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe I have finally learned something.

I am tempted to quit playing forever. But if I do where is the reinforcement for possible lessons learned? I might just take a break and play again later.

declining marginal utility, more is not necessarily better

Just finished reading, "Stumbling on Happiness," by Daniel Gilbert. This is not a book that will help you be happier. But it is a book that will explain how the brain deludes us thinking that we are both happier and unhappier than we really are.

The section that hit me between the eyes was towards the end, on money.

"False beliefs that happen to promote stable societies tend to propagate because people who hold these beliefs tend to live in stable societies, which provide the means by which false beliefs propagate."
-Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness"

"Economists and psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter. Americans who earn 50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year. People who live in poor nations are much less happy than people who live in moderately wealthy nations. Economists explain that wealth has "declining marginal utility," which is a fancy way of saying that it hurts to be hungry, cold, sick, tired and scared, but once you've bought your way out of these burdens, the rest of your money is an increasingly useless pile of paper."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"People in wealthy countries generally work long and hard to earn more money than they can ever derive pleasure from."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, wrote in 1776:

"The desire for food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary."

"
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"If no one wants to be rich, then we haver a significant economic problem, because flourishing economies require that people continually procure and consume one another's goods and services. Market economies require that we all have an insatiable hunger for stuff and if everyone were content with the stuff they had, then the economy would grind to a halt. But if this is a significant economic problem, it is not a significant personal problem."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"...the fundamental needs of a vibrant economy and the fundamental needs of a happy individual are not necessarily the same. So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy's needs but not their own? Like so many thinkers, Smith believed that people want just one thing - happiness - hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy. If and only if people hold this false belief will they do enough producing, procuring, and consuming to sustain their economies."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"In short, the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth. Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being ... this particular false belief is a super-replicator because holding it causes us to engage in the very activities that perpetuate it."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

Can you imagine if everyone just stopped? What would happen if governments decided that the happiness of people before the state of the economy? What would happen if corporations, institutions and organizations did as well?

I am so tied up in the idea that a little more money would = a little more happiness I can't imagine it myself. If the relationship between money and happiness is not linear, or infinitely exponential upwards, it is silly of me to pursue more of the same for less of my aim.

Perhaps my Dad's right, I have been looking at this all wrong. I should check if I am "hungry, cold, sick, tired and scared." When I am none of these things, I need to remind myself to stop chasing the cash and just bask in the sunshine munching on grapes. I really should. It's just so hard to imagine.

To the question of happiness, I should first ask: "Am I bleeding? no. Am I dying? no. Am I starving? no. Am I terrified? usually, but mostly it's all in my head. Am I tired? often, but it's because I love on the internet until late at night."

Okay, then it's not about the money and what I don't have that can be bought. It must be about something else. Like the internet.

telephone game

I left my phone at home today.

It felt like leaving home with no pants on, breezy and exposed.

As I walked, I thought to myself, "It's fine. I can go one day without it. I lived for years and years without knowing that I needed it. I have a watch on. I will know the time."

Except of course, that today I would go up to my US Senator's office only to discover that I needed to call the office, only to discover that I needed a phone and the guy at the security desk was not going to let me use any of the five on his desk, the payphone "around the corner" was non-existent, and I didn't have any change for the call anyway.

There was an answer to this problem. I borrowed the landline of a restaurant using the old,"Hi, I need to call my US senator's office and I forgot my cell, can I borrow your phone for one local call, I swear it won't last more than 5 minutes."

If you are ever in a pinch this might work for you too. And then you got back to standing in the lobby of the building haranging the security guy to call the office for you a few more times until someone friendly and well dressed comes down to shake your hand, give you a card, take your documents and smiles politely, listening to your rant.

And then I would make spontaneous plans with CK and have to try to figure out how to coordinate the old fashioned way but setting a specific time and a specific place and sticking to it no matter what.

It wasn't soooo bad. I kept reaching for the pocket of my purse where the cell phone lives.

But it was all fine, I got to tell Sen Gillibrand's aide that I and 11 of my neighbors are NOT in favor or extending the Bush tax cuts.

I met up with CK and we had burgers and wine.

And when I got home, I didn't have any calls or texts anyway. I saved myself at least 40 minutes of the day that I would have wasted checking my phone for calls or messages. The only thing I didn't get to do was further torment my parents with a call.

Maybe I don't need a smartphone. Maybe I don't need any phone at all.

I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough

Top 40, Sweet Cheeks.

Yes, I love the show Glee. It is rare that I am so transparently emotionally manipulated by a TV show. And what's worse, I love it and cry out for more.

But it does lead me to the uncomfortable decision to no longer diss on Pat Boone. I do love Glee and I love this cover by Gwyneth Paltrow, but I can't help but feel that it's the contemporary equivalent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_B9FCZJMA

vs:

Cee Lo Green (cussing intact - not work/radio friendly)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU

In place of what I started to want to say

I want to complain.

I am not supposed. Apparently I am supposed to either suffer in silence, retrain my thoughts and perspectives to turn that frown upside down, or I am supposed to take action to improve my situation. Complaining is not allowed by friends, colleagues, family. I am allowed to complain silently to myself in my head but not on my blog. I am not even supposed to sigh. Sighing is apparently complaining. And there is no complaining.

Other people complain. But either they have good legitimate reasons to or no one likes them because of it. And because I want to be liked. I am not supposed to complain.

But I really want to.

So instead I have decided to do that thought redirection thing. I have decided to give myself a medal 4 breathing.



You can have it too. Let's share it.

I am awarding us this medal 4 breathing. According to today's wikipedia, the average human breathes 12-20 times a minute. 720-1200 times an hour. 17,280-28,800 and hour. That is a lot of air. Good job. High five to meritorious breathing. Keep up the good work.

Reality or Perception?

"Experiments ... suggest that we do not outgrow realism so much as we learn to outfox it, and that even as adults our perceptions are characterized by an initial moment of realism."
- Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness"

no good deed

A man in a wheelchair dropped his bag of groceries. He was right by the curb in the street kind of stretching back and forth reaching to pick up the bag. The woman standing next to me asked him if he needed some help.

He told her to go F herself and started cursing at her.

She said, "Oh," broke eye contact and started walking away.

I laughed and crossed the street.

note to self

I can see the floor in one of my rooms. I am charging my cell phone and the dirt devil. I am going to have pasta with ratatouille and a chicken leg. And the sun is shining.

BBFK and Lever got married this weekend and I got to hang out with RL and meet the Wee Hoosier. And spent time with NL, the Family B and many many little girls.

Today I feel like shouting to the world, "Yay! My life is cool!"
I cannot recall feeling this way ever. Or at least for a very long time.
It will pass, no doubt.

But there it is, at this moment on this day at this point in my life.

I might get up the guts to go out on my bike today. (at which point I will start to hate pedestrians, cars and riders and this little moment of euphoria will pass)

But for now, Hooray.

Hug yourselves people. It is a great day to be alive.

'tis the Season

Since the air has started to chill, I have wanted nothing more than to eat and eat and sleep. Over the course of this season, it is very likely that I will gain a megaton.

I shared this information with some co-workers in the elevator and the comment was that I sound like a bear preparing to hibernate.

Imagine how my out of office notification would read:

"Thank you for your email. I am hibernating in a cave, burning brown fat until Spring. I estimate that by late March or early April I will return and be ready to address your concern. Enjoy the Snow, Suckers. Respectfully, Ergo"

Water

Today is Blog Action Day.

The topic is Water. I am ashamed to say that I do not know much about the water issue. Only that it is an issue and that people are dying from a lack of it or rather a lack of clean, safe water. I'll spend sometime this evening reading what other people are saying to see what I can learn.

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Raise a glass to the Poet cuz there better be a goddamn door

"At the end of my suffering there was a door" - Louise Gluck

There are no words
There is no sound
No blood, no beat
no heat

only release
and passage

to where we do not follow

yet


The imprint of a life, felt in waves that echo endlessly
in ways that not one of us can grasp in whole.

A hole where once there was a soul.

Love and memory flows like a fountain
from the hearts of those who remain and those who came before.
And yes, also from the mind.

It is an end
It is a beginning



I don't know shit about life or love or death or loss. Only that sometimes it is unbearable in bad ways and sometimes in good. I'm breaking a rule today for the Poet.

Oh, and by the way ...

One of the challenges of life is that you go through it with incomplete information. That's just how it goes.

In some cases, I can't figure out why that is tho. Like, there are ads on TV about Gardasil, how it lowers your risks of getting HPV which can cause cervical cancer. Yay! What they don't tell you is that HPV is an std.

Incomplete information.

I encountered some incomplete information today on the flight from London to NYC. I watched the movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo." A title I have seen everywhere. I've heard some people rave about it and have friends who've read it. But I guess I just haven't been paying enough attention. This is a spoiler. I didn't know until I watched it that there would be violence against women. Had I known this, I might not have watched it.

*shudder*

35 miles of a Century Ride

This is my bike:



I got her in July. BE called her my sweet ride. So I started out calling her MSR. But more recently in the tradition of PJS I call her "Baby Bike."

I started looking in May. It took a while. Finding a frame in my size in this area, was a challenge. She is a Terry Despatch. Georgiana Terry decided that she wanted to start a company that made bikes built for women. I got a chick bike - note the pink seat and handwraps.

She's old. She was made in the 80's. She's odd. Note that the front wheel is smaller than the rear. And there is no consistency to the sizing of her constituent parts. I guess it's fitting that we are together now.

As a kid my bike was my magical means of transport until it was supplanted by the car. Nothing was better than riding down a hill fast as possible, hair flying every which way in the wind.

This changed when I got older and was supposed to wear a helmet and the bikes suddenly had speeds and no pedal brake. Too confusing. No wind in the hair. Not as much fun.

But in recent times, the idea of bikes has come back to me. The whole commuter biker fantasy sounds thrilling, especially in the New York area. Weaving in and out of traffic. Dodging cab drivers and Jersey drivers. I got this notion in my second year here that the most terrifying things that I could consider doing are: ride a bike in New York or do stand up comedy. There are more terrifying things to do, but those are two that were almost within reach.

I figured if I am ever to be so numbed or jaded as to consider doing hard drugs, first, I should try bikes and stand up.

I am not considering doing hard drugs right now but was looking to do something ... else. Being more afraid of stand up, even though it will only kill you figuratively, I got a bike.

Plus bike people seem to be badasses. I would so love to be a badass too.

Plus I met someone I like and he rides a bike. In fact, in recent times I seem to have a particular type of person that I am drawn to and part of that type is a guy who rides a bike. To the point where when people say, "I met the perfect guy for you," I ask,"Oh. Does he ride a bike?"

After I got it, there was the buying of all the stuff that you get to go with your hobby. Helmet, lock (this is a whole story on its own), lights, bell, new yellow backpack, sunblock, new leggings, new shirts. Hobbies are a great form of economic stimulus. I think the next one should be targeted towards hobbies.

Now I've got it. I don't ride as much as I should, or I want to.

Baby Bike and I -
We've gone up to the park.
I rode with someone I like through Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. I had no idea how close or how small these neighborhoods are.
I rode down the street to the cemetery.
I rode down some bike paths to the Manhattan Bridge, across to Chinatown and then back.

I still have not ridden to work. Traffic. Terrifying.

Baby Bike talks to me. She rattles and rickets like a woman with creaky joints. But she's a sassy bitch.

She says, "This is fun, let's go faster."

She says, "Why are we stopping?"

She says, "Look at that bitch, we could totally take her."

She says, "THAT was a big pothole."

She says, "If we can't blow this light, can we stop with a skid?"

She gives a big wobble and says, "HEY! Are you listening to a word that I am saying?"

Yesterday, I did 35 miles of the NYC Century ride. Friends had advised me to train for it. I did not. By some miracle, I got up this morning and rode to the start site. And away I went. 8am - 12:35pm.

It seems that in New York, many many many bike riders take stoplights in what we used to call, the St. Louis rolling stop. You roll up to a stoplight and if the way is clear, you go. Everyone was doing it. They tell me, you'll never get anywhere if you don't. I am so not comfortable with this. But that is the culture. So Baby Bike and I would zoom up, than hang behind at busy intersections. Over and over.

The first part of the ride, from Prospect Park through to Williamsburg was beautiful and at times idyllic. The buildings, the people, the warehouses, the all of it. And then we got to Queens. That's when it got kind of industrial. We were riding by the water which was nice. My arms got chilly and I started to hear a squeak from my bike, like a squirrely thing as I pedaled and I started to feel my legs and my back. For some silly reason I had decided to pack my lock.

At the first stop, I felt pretty good. Until I found out that we had only gone 8 miles out of the 35. We continued over the RFK bridge, which was amazing. You have to carry you bike up and down stairs. And there are parts so narrow that some can ride it, and others will walk their bikes through. But at the stretch where you ride, you are elevated above the rest of the traffic with its sounds and smells and rush. You can see, everything. It feels as if you are riding in the clouds, as if slightest turn will launch you off the bridge into the air.

We landed on Randall's Island, rode around and into Manhattan to the Northern end of Central Park. This was the midpoint of the ride. I lost my bearings here and most of the people who I had been following along the route. The cue sheet for the ride had a million little directions typed out. If you didn't know the roads or have your bearings it was really helpful to follow a packleader or a marshall. At the very least it was really helpful to be wearing clothing with pockets so that you could keep the cue sheet on your person.

Some people rode through Central Park. Others were following the cue sheet. So I and EL (who I met at the start who became my ride buddy) went out with two other people and worked our thing out.

This part of the ride was terrifying. It started to rain. There was traffic. There were leisurely and clueless pedestrians. There were anxious owner with eager dogs. There were cabs, SUV's, luxury cars, New Jersey drivers, delivery guys riding in the opposite direction on your bike lane.

EL almost got hit by an SUV from NJ. They apparently didn't see her when making a right turn.

I started feeling my hip.

I almost caused an accident on Broadway. All sorts of honking. I can't tell what honking was angry and what honking was merely informative. It was pretty harrowing. And it all happened so fast. No matter how scary a moment was, you have to leave it behind and keep riding. There was no time for panic.

We got on the Brooklyn Bridge and were back. I started to feel my knees. I was still feeling my hip, my back, my ass, my hands, and then - my toes. My feet were getting wet and the right big toe crammed in a shoe crammed against a toe clip, started to feel raw.

At this point happy to be in more open traffic, I kept missing turns on the route and at one point a mother/daughter team saved me from ending up in Brownesville shouting to me that I had gone the wrong way.

I got a burger with EL and went home.

So tired I fell dead asleep and woke up feeling like I was still sitting on a bike. I am sore and my skin feels hot, like I have a fever. And I discover new and unusual discomforts by the minute.

I briefly thought to myself at the end, "Wow. I did it. I can do anything." Before collapsing intp a whimper.

After all, it was only 35 miles. Someone I like does 35 miles routinely for fun. EL and I discussed whether we wanted to try to do another ride before winter. The Tour de Bronx is coming up. Someone I like says it's not as fun and more than a little scary. Bronx has much more of a car culture as a borough, apparently.

Alternatively, there is an MS ride.

My accomplishments in this arena are not significant to anyone besides me. So I sit in sollopsistic triumph.

I say this from observation not personal experience

Sometimes your success overtakes your capacity to perform. And you are overwhelmed, unable to meet the demand. I am not sure that this is what is meant by the expression, "A victim of your own success."

It sounds like a good problem to have. But having never been there, I do sometimes wonder.

Ink or Blood?

"Over the life of your printer, you'll probably pay more than 500% of the total price of the printer itself on ink refill cartridges. At $30, a 42ml cartridge of black printer ink comes out to 71 cents per ml. On the other hand, the Red Cross charges $200 for 500 ml of blood, which comes out to about 40 cents per ml." - Amy Bell, "6 Outrageously Overpriced Products", Investopedia

When you get that mood indigo

And you feel so lonesome you could die.
And you're just a soul who's bluer than blue can be.

The Universe via the internet can offer ample evidence that you are not alone.

Big Poppa E expresses for you the loneliness, longing for love and companionship. Squishing your heart while he does.

"I have fallen in love with 106 girls who are absolutely perfect for me except for one fatal flaw, they didn't love me back." - Big Poppa E

Tanya Davis offers insight and wisdom on How to Be Alone. Ways to relish and savor it as a pleasure, not a punishment. (Hat tip to Ze Frank)

Nina Simone points out what she ain't go and what she do. And you can follow along and tick off in your mind what you ain't got and what you do. In the case of she and I, we both have boobies.

There is comfort in knowing that this is shared, to know that you are, as the Police might say, "not alone in being alone". It is not the same as the comfort that comes from holding the one you love or being held. Or the comfort of breathing the same air in the same room.

Still, it is a comfort to know that it won't kill you. On some days, that is more than just enough. It's everything.

Looking it up

I am reading DFW's collection, "Another Supposedly Fun Thing That I Will Never Do Again." It's been tough going. I phase in and out of love with it. Some days I pick it up and swear that is it written in the hieroglyphics of alien species with vastly higher intelligence. And then after a long break, I pick it up and am knocked flat by how funny and brilliant and deep it is. (and he is)

As a kid I never used the dictionary. If I couldn't figure out what a word meant through context, I figured it was not important to the task at hand and glossed over it. They usually weren't nouns or verbs. I was a very basic and plot driven reader as a child. All those window dressing words were just that. I just wanted to follow the action and inhabit that space.

To this day, sometimes I will mirror the facial expressions or make the gestures of characters in a book that I am reading, while I am reading it, reacting to the action on the page.

As a result, the following words have always tripped me up: Balmy, Nonplussed, and Intrepid. I tend to think that they mean the opposite of what they actually do. Trying to remember what they mean in this way tends to make me double back one time too many and come up with the wrong definition.

DFW's writing is chock full of words that I don't know. But I can't figure them out from context. Not even to the degree where I am at an either/or juncture. In the context, they could mean anything. But knowing their meaning directs a sentence in a very particular direction.

Among the words I have been stumbling over of late are: lapidary, assuasive, apposite, zygomatic, sybaritic, sedulous, preterite, piacular, recompense, diaphanous, epicanthically, accretive, anoretic, appurtenance, vestibule.

Looking them up, I see that a couple of them, I should have been able to reason out (recompense, anoretic, epicanthically), the rest - totally not. The best is sedulous which is in many instances defined as being the same as assiduous. Which I also had to look up the definition of, hoping that the entry does not say - "Sedulous." Or my other favorite kind of definition: "Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a sybarite." Uh ... not remotely helpful, here.

If you search under Google images for Vestibule, most of the pictures are of buildings interiors but additionally you will see pictures of lady plumbing. (Gracious!) It is apparently a building and anatomical term. Interestingly, vestibules are also found in the mouth, the heart and the ear, those pictures must show up a few pages further into the search.

Reading through this vamped up vocab is like spending time with people who are much smarter, more virtuous and or more talented than you are. You could learn so much, you want to learn more just to keep up, in their company you know that you are improving. But you also end up feeling like a doofus and wondering if there's a more relaxing and enjoyable way that you could pass the hours.

To riff off a phrase from the Jack Nicholson movie, "As Good As It Gets," DFW makes me want to be a better reader. He makes me want to catch all the passing remarks and small asides, to get a firm grasp in the main stuff of exactly what's going on. And not just the gist of the big picture. I want more. And so to the dictionary I must go. Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho *whistles*

It's not always about fresh

Some dishes are not good right after they are cooked. They are not bad, just merely okay. They need time to settle into themselves. The spices come to consensus. A sauce needs to absorb. The ingredients intermingle in a slow growing crescendo, coming into harmony and balance until they sing out in a glorious chorus.

The pulled pork sandwich from South Houston was nothing to remark on when served but a day later transformed into sweet, succulent, flavorful, gorgeous porkness. You feel a loneliness having cleared your plate and a longing for more. More pork. (The shoestring onion rings on the other hand, do not hold up well overnight. They are light, delicious and charming skating on the tempura side of battered vegetable, a flirt of fried onions.)

So, too, was a recent meal at Szechuan Delight. The Twice Cooked Pork and the Eggplant in Peking Sauce were fine. But the next day and the day after that, each dish really came into its own. The Twice Cooked Pork having arranged the hierarchy of its flavors and the Eggplant surrendering itself to everything that Peking sauce could offer. So good. So good.

It's not always about fresh. Sometimes it's about the magic of time and the process of becoming.

Displacement

What I want is love. What I bought is underwear.

City Exchanges

The guy behind the counter handed him the bagel sandwich and said, "Don't go hungry, My Friend."

"fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way"

Despite being on the verge of 40, having two degrees of higher learning, and a job with dental insurance (I am finally a bonafide taxpayer) - I continue to try to figure out what to do with my life.

I am wondering what I should do with the next 40 years of my life.

It's a question I devoted a lot of cycles to in my first 40 years and probably my longest running hobby. It's not the pressing and central pastime that it once was. These days I devote more cycles to my love life, beauty tips (that I don't follow), observing the aging process first hand, and lunch. It's become more of a background process.

The current methods by which I wonder are primarily daydreaming and seeing what the front page of Yahoo has to say.

Among the options recently under consideration are:

Rockstar
Folk musician
Captain of industry
Yoga instructor
MBA
Journalist
Accountant
Public intellectual
Opinionater
Account manager
Recycling and waste management specialist
Project manager
Rollerderby queen
Marketing manager
Bag lady
Art student
Cartoonist
Comedian
Bike mechanic
FBI agent
Middle management
Butcher
Behavioral economist
Computational ecologist
Malcolm Gladwell
Urban farmer
Charlie Rose
Avon lady
Sound engineer
Multimedia sensation
Founder of an empire
Genetic counselor
Politician
Grassroots organizer
Activist
Business development executive
Fact checker
Lab rat
Grant writer
Statistician
Leech on the ass of society
Essayist
Ghost writer
Venture capitalist
Small business owner
Academic administrator
Outdoors woman
Curriculum writer
Medicinal Chemist
Playwright
Bureaucrat
Internet start up founder
Jingle writer
Bassist for a punk band
Pet rescuer
Go-Go Dancer
Socialite
Luddite
Pamphleteer


I am qualified to do none (well maybe one) of the above. The rest would require a good amount of effort on my part and perhaps further education. Is it too late? It might be too late. It's probably too late. Dang it.

I have been hiding this list from my parents because every time I bring up the possibility of making a career change, their extreme enthusiasm at the thought that I might find a job that makes me really happy freaks me out.

They get concerned every time they hear me breathe a negative word about the job. Periodically they ask me what I am going to do with the rest of my life. On this visit, I mentioned the genetic counselor option, roughly describing what I thought it would be like. After my Dad had a day to ponder it he came back and said, "I think you should get started on that immediately." He spent the rest of my visit home asking me logistical questions that one would need to work out if one was going to get started immediately. How big of a student loan I would need to take, what program I should apply to, how long the degree program would take, what the average income for that job was, how many years of education and experience would it take to reach that income level, and on and on and on.

I should have gone with Avon lady.

Hijacked by Hyperbole

I am completely obsessed with the illustrated blog: Hyperbole and a Half.

It started with this post JY sent me. "Internet Forever!"

I read a few posts, almost died laughing. I, then, sent this post about a brick to a few co-workers.

After this I kinda wandered off to chew on my hands.

But recently KvS posted a link about cats on the facebook. It broke my brain.

I emailed it to a bunch of people and just sat by my computer refreshing my inbox waiting for laughter and praise to be sent back to me in reply. I am still sitting by my computer and waiting like a jittery, excitable dog. It's been two days and I've only received two very curt email replies. This can only mean one thing. Everyone else died of laughter.

The other two must have recently had extensive and very painful dental work.

If I was forced to write an essay called "What I did on my summer vacation," four days into mine, the key elements would be:

1. visited the parents
2. set up Dad's new e-reader
3. went to Walmart
4. had dinner
5. played pinball with L
6. ate a lot of cheese
7. obsessively read Hyperbole and a Half until my eyeballs fell out and got the worst internet hangover of my life.

I am still reading. I have four months of 2009 left to devour in the archive. I am beyond the point of laughing. It's starting to irreparably damage my brain. I will never try to be funny again. My efforts are futile. This blog is dead serious. It always has been. I am not kidding.

Hyperbole is my favorite thing in the world (to the consternation and disapproval of most of the men I have dated and the boss of my current boss). It is a primary mode of interaction in my family. Allie Brosh may not have won the internet yet, but she is definitely the boss of Hyperbole.

My parents are prying my fingers off the laptop right now to come interact with them. I forgive them only because they gave me life.

Should we stay on Target?

There is some broohaha going down with regard to Target Corp.

According the link above, Target has donated $150,000 to a group that supports a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota. This candidate is against gay marriage. He has it listed at a part of his campaign platform.

It's been commonly said that Walmart is evil. I know people who shop at Target because they have the notion that Target is not as evil as Walmart is.

Hmmmm.....

Target is not the only company that was caught here, apparently Best Buy has also donated a large sum of money in support of the same candidate.

At last, corporations are free to make large campaign donations that let us all know what their political positions are. Apparently, Target and Best Buy are against Gay Marriage. They don't want Gay couples to register for wedding gifts at their stores. They don't want to carry congratulatory cards that depict happy same sex couples declaring their love and commitment to the world.

Good to know.

Now we can find out the political positions of all the corporations that we do business with. We can see whether their political contributions match up with their advertising and PR campaigns.

I can't help but wonder who at Target is specifically against Gay Marriage. Was there a vote at a board meeting? Was this decision made by the CEO? Was there a poll taken amongst all employees and or stakeholders/stockholders at Target to see what candidates they want to support, to see what political positions they wish to espouse publicly and substantively?

Is there a budget line item marked "Political Campaign Contributions" in the ledger? What category does that fall under? How much money will be allocated each year towards furthering Target's political interests and social values?

It is NOT enough for them to apologize and promise not to do it again. The anti-gay marriage candidate now has that money to spend on his anti-gay marriage campaign and to buy anti-gay marriage television and radio ads to promote his anti-gay marriage platform and mobilize anti-gay marriage voters to elect him. I can only hope that television air time in Minnesota is expensive.

An apology is insufficient. I want them do more and do it in the most public way possible.

Personally, if I owned stock in Target Corp. - given the choice between seeing that money go towards any political candidate and getting a discount on underwear or seeing that money go into ethical, sustainable and greener business practices - I'd like to see a discount in the price of underwear or that other hippy stuff.

As a liberal, myself, I am wondering whether in response to their $150,000 donation, I need to stop using my Target credit card and pledge to spend $150,000 at other stores before going back to Target. If that is the case, I might be 55 before I next step into a Target or use their credit card.

Does anyone know if Amazon.com is against Gay Marriage?

The stink in some ways adds to the publicity received by the Emmer campaign. Less press has been directed towards the other candidates in the race: Mark Dayton and Tom Horner.

If you know of any others, let me know.

I love mashed taters

It's clear the fridge day.

I made mashed potatoes with yukon gold taters, heavy cream, butter, a dash of salt and a dollop of creme fraiche.

It's one of those days where I feel like I could eat mashed potatoes nonstop for the rest of my life.

Like I want to settle down with a big, big bowl of them so that we can start our beautiful life together.

Things that make me sigh

1. The tiny new stove that was put in my apt has a tiny oven that is too small for most of my bakeware.

2. If you are going to try to compensate for a tiny oven, reusing foil takeout containers does not work so well.

3. Pizza pans are worse. If you are going to use one, bake for less time and pay close attention to what oven rack position you use.

4. That trick where you put your hardened brown sugar and a separate bowl of water into a microwave together. Only kinda works. But well enough.

5. Creaming butter and hardened brown sugar together by hand in a bowl with a fork will take time.

6. If UPS is delivering the bike that you won on Ebay, for which you paid a pretty penny, despite the fact that you are home and have a working doorbell, UPS is likely to leave your new bike next to the garbage cans outside your apartment building without ever ringing your functioning doorbell. The same functioning doorbell that the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Census taker and the Postal worker have all managed to find and use.

7. When you remove the ball bearings from the hub of your wheel, you should count the number and make sure to put them where they will not roll away from you. A paper towel on the floor is not a good option.

8. Best to throw away condiments when they pass their sell by/best by/use by date. They will scare your guests.

9. Old bikes are not standard. They need, love, patience, degreaser, a regreasing, and the right tools.

These will elicit "good grief" sighs.

10. Sitting by the lake at night holding hands with someone you like, looking out at the water, the ducks, the trees, the skyline lit up by the light pollution while not talking, with your bikes beside you.

This will elicit a happy sigh.

Oh, this old thing?

Twice in recent weeks, I've given someone a compliment about one thing and had them assume that the compliment made was for something else.

They go on at length about the thing that they wanted to be complimented on. The thing that they are especially proud of that surely must be noticed by all the world.

In these cases, far be it from me to correct them and go on at length about what to them is merely an element of the backdrop.

The internet was invented to transmit pictures of cats

see more Lolcats and funny pictures


In my role as Last Adopter - a couple of months ago I was at a BBQ at which a cat came up from the basement of the apt building through a tiny tiny hole. Everyone at the party referred to the kitty as "Basement Cat." I, naively, thought it was just generic name given to this particular cat. I did not realize that it was an entire lolcats tag and subgenre. There was no one to correct me until I watched a video from Next HOPE. What can I say, Last Adopter. I like this particular one very much.

Bike Envy

The bike manufacturing world hates short people.

For that I curse them like a loud drunk sailor.

The Gel for Everything

I bought a tube of aloe vera gel today. I figured it might be good for those situations in which the skin needs something cooling, soothing and calming.

On reading the tube, it advises use for Sunburn, dryness, irritated skin, minor burns, itching, chafing, insect bites, on blemishes, as a shaving gel (shaving?) and a hair styling gel.

Hair styling.

Hair styling.

Hmmm, maybe I can use it to fix the squeak in my door hinge, to polish my boots, as an air freshener and as a nutritional supplement to cakes and puddings.

It's a universe of possibility.

Ewwwww

Watching "Machine Girl." Oh man, soooooo gross.

As high as an elephant's eye

Today I decided to finally put together the sweater that I started knitting two years ago. And while knitting it, I listened to the audio from the documentary "King Corn."

"We subsidize Happy Meals. We don't subsidize healthy meals."
- King of Corn

"If you take that meal, if you take that McDonald's meal. You don't realize it when you eat it, but you're eating corn. Beef has been corn-fed. Soda is corn. It's all high fructose corn syrup. It's the main ingredient even the french fries, which are, you know, half the calories in french fries come from the fat that they're fried in and that fat is liable to be corn or soy oil.

And so when you're at that McDonald's, you're eating Iowa food. Everything on your plate is corn." - King of Corn

It's a pretty powerful demonstration of how the enactment of a government policy shapes our lives. Government incentives and disincentives set the rules of the game. After that we all do our best to win by those rules. Guidelines point us in irresistible directions, and lead to intended and unintended outcomes.

But theoretically in our case, the government is us, so we have a say in what those guidelines are and our government is accountable to us, when assessing the outcomes. That is, if we care enough to pay attention and hold them accountable. Which is more than can be said, in general, for a corporation or a non-profit.

Bureaucratic Fiction

I am reading this book called "Devices and Desires" by K.J. Parker. It's kinda hard to describe. I found it in the SF/Fantasy part of the library but it's not really SF and while it has a Fantasy type setting there are no unicorns or wizards or magical spells.

It's full of tales of bureaucracy, war, engineering, politics, administration, and diplomacy. And while lengthy descriptions of the dynamics of bureaucratic systems would have put me straight to sleep as a teenager, at this age, in my current job, I find it strangely compelling. Much in the same way that I find time management games like "Diner Dash" and "Cake Mania" compelling.

They are not exactly fun. But resemble my daily closely enough while still being simpler and perhaps more manageable. I don't know if I identify with the book, or I just recognize so many aspects of real life in it with and feel a sympathy on some level.

She only wants to see perfection. She lives a tortured life.

Really Big Words

I liberated three shirts and three books today. I put them out on the stoop and was gratified to find that they were all snapped up in about an hour. If you knew what a packrat I am, you'd know what a big deal this is. One of the books I had picked up off the stoop of another person. Yay, it goes around and goes around again.

On the way back from an very excellent hat-based Brunch, I stopped at a box on a stoop and found a box labeled: "magnetic poetry REALLY BIG WORDS."

I could not resist picking it up. I could always use a vocabulary builder.

I pick up the case and open it. To see that the words are short but the magnets with the words on them are VERY LARGE. The longest word in the box is "different."

Naturally, I could not just leave them on the street there. I had to take them home, box and all.

a world of stupider out there

Mock duck curry, 5 shots of Jameson shared and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in the company of BE. Not bad for a Tuesday night. Inexplicably, when I consider myself to have no money to spend, I spend more of it on ridiculous things. I bought a concert t-shirt. I bought several food items that each cost a dollar and a ring in the shape of an owl that will probably turn my finger green.

As we walked from the Continental to the Mercury Lounge for the show, I started to say that taking those shots was the last stupid thing that I was going to do. But I had to stop myself in mid-sentence. BE and I were pretty sure that there was a world of stupider out there that I am likely to embrace.

Casiotone was pretty darn delightful and I am, again, a fan of the rock show. I might just consider going to another one.

Is it all inside my head?

Songs sound different in my memory from the recording. Sometimes when I think of a song and I go to Youtube to listen to it ... the effect is not the same as I remember it.

I was trying to write a post and it started to be about too many different things at once. It became this tangle of so many things in a big ramble-y snarl. It's inspired by a recent episode from the TV show Glee about the power of Madonna. I fish out of that mess, this part:

If I had to pick a favorite passage in a pop song. It might be in the song "True Blue." The song is trite, conventional and predictable. But then, in the midst of it, there is an interlude:

"No more sadness, I kiss it good-bye
The sun is bursting right out of the sky
I searched the whole world for someone like you"

At this part, the song soars up and out past the stratosphere for mere seconds and then falls back into predictability and familiarity. But for that moment alone, the whole song is redeemed. It is a transcendent pop music moment, one that can't be taken out of its damn context. Perhaps it soars, in part, because of its surroundings.

That is how it plays in my memory.

I just watched the video for "True Blue" on Youtube. I can feel where the interlude goes but it's muddled. It does not take flight in the way that it does in my mind's ear.

Perhaps my memory has built it up too much. Overhyped and analyzed it. That or, my brain's sound system is the MF bomb.

My hipster Mom

I look over at my mother and notice that she is wearing my Pearl Jam concert t-shirt from 2003. She has discovered the baby doll t-shirt. "I look skinny when I wear this," she says.


Since I was going to be here and their two shows at Mercury Lounge are sold out. I got a ticket to see Ok Go while home. (I have a whole crush post devoted to Ok Go which I have not yet finished and will post very soon.)

My parents response to this was typical. My father asked several times if I knew how to get there, made sure that I had ear plugs, washed the pollen and dirt off the car saying, "You have to drive up in a nice looking car when you go to the rock show," and pressed more food on me than usual - solemnly saying, "you will need energy for the rock show." My mother instructed me to drive carefully, asked several times when the show started, out of concern that I was running late and that I would miss it, and most importantly, asked me repeatedly not to drink.

They stayed up until I got home and we gathered around the kitchen table and had a snack. All of this was expected.

What was not was this question from my mother, "Who did you see at the show? Was it the Dead Milkmen?"

The Dead Milkmen.

THE DEAD MILKMEN!

When I was a sophomore in high school, "Bitchin' Camero" was my favorite song on the entire planet. I somehow sweet talked my mother into buying me the "Big Lizard in My Backyard" album and even more miraculously, I talked her into letting me see The Dead Milkmen in concert at Mississippi Nights. I went with StK, who was probably the most musically advanced and alternative person in our entire high school. I think I wore an enormous kelly green checked flannel shirt, purple socks and lace-up black ankle boots. I was too chicken to go down into the pit. In those days, one did not mosh. It was slam dancing in the slam pit. And if you fell in the pit there was a very real danger that someone would stomp on your head with a steel-toed boot and give you a concussion. I just kinda sat at a table in the under 21 section and marveled that the coolest of bands consisted of three regular looking dudes who seemed so down to earth. They were punk without having to wear dog collars or eyeliner or mohawks. The punk ethos was more than a hairstyle and some song lyrics. I was to learn this way later in life but it was all there staring me in the face. StK, bless his anarchist heart, got down there and grabbed some kid by the shoulders, boosted himself with a combat boot on the kid's rear, and flung himself into the pit.

The part of this story that I forgot was - the show ran later than I had told my mother that it would. (These were the days before cell phones.) She talked her way into the venue. She walked up to the door guy and said, "My daughter is in there, let me in to find her." The door guy resisted saying that the show was almost over and I would be out soon. But my mother insisted. And the door guy relented. She describes walked into an ungodly and horrible loudness, almost like hell looking for me.

Despite walking into deafening Punk Rock Hell, to fetch her silly nerdy, teenage daughter, my mother drove me to other rock shows. And on occasion let me buy a record or two. I never thought that she paid much attention to what I was doing or thinking or listening to back then.

She remembers the Dead Milkmen. She thought they were horrible. But she does remember them.

Living ungraciously

Of late, Facebook is like my mom. It keeps pointing out friends that I have not been in touch with in a long time. "Maybe you should send so and so a message. I'll bet he/she would be happy to hear from you," said in the same tone of voice that she used when she would press me to write thank you notes. (I may or may not have mentioned to you that BBFK is a beautiful thank you note writer. A card from her will make you feel like a Million Bucks.)

As an awkward person of no social graces, I ignore Facebook's suggestions and my mother's and almost never send thank you note. Bad dog! No cookie! I count myself as lucky to have friends all things considered. And such fine friends at that.

When we tell the story of our lives

CK and I have been talking a lot about how wildly different two people's accounts of a situation can be. And how hard it is to reconcile yourself to the fact that the other person might never see things your way. Might never come to understand where you were coming from. Which reminded me of this Sacred Advertisement from Rob Brezny.

"SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
There was an indignant uproar after revelations in 2006 that James Frey's best-selling "memoir" A Million Little Pieces contains fabrications. He hadn't actually lived all of the experiences he depicted therein.

Hearing about it prompted me to ruminate on whether there's any such thing as a completely accurate account of any person's life. My conclusion: no.

In every autobiography and biography ever written, the author imaginatively strings together selectively chosen details to conjure up artificially coherent narratives rather than depicting the crazy-quilt ambiguity that actually characterizes everyone's journey.

If you and nine writers set out to tell your life story, you'd produce 10 wildly different tales, each rife with subjective interpretation, misplaced emphasis, unintentional distortions, and exorbitant extrapolations from insufficient data.

Celebrate the malleability of reality. Regale listeners with stories about the time you worked as a pirate in the Indian Ocean, or rode the rails through Kansas as a hobo, or gave a down-on-his-luck CIA agent sage advice in an elevator. When you call to get pizza delivered and the clerk who takes your order asks your name, say you're Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton. When someone you're meeting is annoyed because you're late, say you couldn't help it because you were smoking crack in the bus station bathroom with your mom's guru and lost track of time. If asked how much education you have, say you have three PhDs, one each in astrobiology, Russian literature, and whale songs. "
Rob Brezny

Give the cat a name

While chatting with L this evening, it came out that in my apt there are three places to sleep: the love seat, the twin bed, and a rolled up futon in the living room. He was mildly appalled by this and suggested that perhaps to sustain an adult relationship I might need to have a bed that could comfortably fit two people. And as a "grown ass woman" there were no acceptable excuses.

He does have a point. It's hard to feel comfortable in a room where there doesn't appear to be space for you. From my viewpoint, I always had the sense that this was a transient stop in my life. A visit. And a sense that, if I met someone who inspired in me the desire to buy a bed, I would buy a bed. That would be the sign.

Sort of the Holly Golightly thing: "If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!"

But perhaps L has a point. Maybe Holly and I have it all backwards. Maybe you have to buy the furniture, name the cat, and put down roots. Maybe that process creates a place where you feel safe and calm and protected. Maybe I have to create "a place where me and things go together." through my own efforts. I make a place my home.

You bring in a bed and then there is space for another person to sleep in it beside you. And then you meet them.

I wonder which way it works - do you build a bed and they will come or do you wait to find the right place and then give the cat a name?

I am not sure that I have done enough traveling to say whether I've found the place. And I haven't built the bed.

It probably doesn't matter. There must be as many paths home as there are people who have homes. But I suppose it can't hurt to try.

Perhaps after three years of being here, it's time to buy a bed and give the cat a name.

Time to call it a life whether there's someone to share it with or not.

because it chose me

"If I had to choose a favourite [sentence], it would be because it chose me: for reasons I can't be sure of, although I am sure they go deep ..."

- Clive James, Cultural Amnesia

even the flowers

"[Benedetto] Croce was saying that all living things have a history: having a history and living are the same process. Even the flowers, he said, have a history, although only they know it."

- Clive James, Cultural Amnesia

The robe abides

I bought this very, very, cheap fleece bathrobe to wear to a "Big Lebowski" party. It's a horrible, fuzzy white thing with pale blue hearts all over it.

That party was in January, I am still wearing the dang thing while I putter around the house - usually with a ratty t-shirt and flip-flops. I have not worn it to the grocery store yet. But I fear that this and a lot of bowling might be in my near future.

Price and worth

On a few occasions in conversation recently I've had one friend or another tell me that they don't want drama in their lives and so are avoiding a person or a situation or falling into a pattern or dynamic.

I have frequently been of this mindset. I bailed on an outing for this very reason, very recently.

But depending on the circumstances, it's worth it. Where you are, what it is, what you need, what it offers.

Some things are worth the drama associated with them. Some people are worth the drama that they cause, the drama that they bring. As JY's friend Ax once said in another context, "It's the price of admission." In some case, a part of the value of the thing itself.

In these cases, it is for you to decide what a thing is worth to you. And how long you inhabit, how long you hold. It is not for others to assess from the outside.

Global Darkening!!!

If I could clip videos, I would show you - 5:16-9:22 of this Daily Show episode from last week.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/127456/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-wed-feb-10-2010

"The sun just - went away. And this - not as bright sun came up in its place."
- Jason Jones

Freakin' hilarous.

Manners in context

It's a chivalrous gesture for a gentleman to hold the door open for a lady. But somehow, when the door being held open is that of the Ladies' Room. It's a little strange.

B-Sprout conversions

I have very recently been converted from hating to loving brussel sprouts. By BE. I was super skeptical but then I had one and it was a revelation.

What he does is:
"Cut brussel sprouts in half. drizzle on olive oil and get all liberal with some salt and pepper and garlic powder. bake @ 375 for 35 minutes. amaaaazzzzing."

They pop and sizzle in the oven. And when they get brownish/blackish, when they are super tender, they lose that horrible brussel sprout aftertaste that everyone is always trying to drown out with lemon or vinegar. With enough cooking they mellow out and are tender and a little bit sweet.

And now I am obsessed with them. They have replaced broccoli as my go-to vegetable.

This also works in a stir fry context. You slice them each into 3 or 4 rounds, throw them in a pan with a good amount of olive oil, throw plenty of salt, pepper and garlic powder on them and then cook them until there's a browning / slight blackening.

Today I baked some until they were mushy soft, put them on a nice piece of wheat bread and chowed down. Delightful.

Who you are / What you do

The things that you do every day shape the person that you are. And I find of late that I am on my way to becoming "nervous double/triple check that" girl. Lovable, no?

An echo in the chambers of the heart

I knocked over an empty wine bottle at the trailing tail end of brunch. Crashed to the ground, pieces everywhere. Three of us in the kitchen. None of us in shoes. All of us trying to pick up the pieces.

And I had a memory of knocking over a glass in the kitchen. Crashed to the ground, pieces everywhere. Me in the kitchen. Not in my shoes. Trying to pick up the pieces.

You wouldn't let me. You reached your arms around my waist and lifted me out of the kitchen. Went back in a cleaned it up.

Our relationship had pretty much gone south by this time. I was not happy. It didn't seem like you were either. I wondered why you stayed. Whether you cared at all. In the midst of this, you lifted me out of harms way.

It said something. More than I heard. But it didn't say everything. Or perhaps not enough. We went back to our mutual misery shortly thereafter.

I am not sure why it came to mind. Or why today, years later, I hear it so much more clearly.

The latest love of my life

" ... art proves its value by still mattering to people who have been deprived of every other freedom: indeed instead of mattering less, it matters more." - Clive James

On the recommendation of my journalism professor I picked up "Cultural Amnesia" by Clive James. The damn thing is, like 800+ pages. And I am looking forward to reading them.

I hope that he and his publisher will forgive the liberal quoting that I am likely to be doing while he and I keep company. I was bowled over by this line in the introduction:

"Several times, in my early days, I had to sell my best books to buy food, so I never underlined anything."

and I have no doubt that I will continue to be knocked out by what I find between these covers.

*happy dance*