How have I gone so long without visiting the Ballard Market? I made my first visit last night. Screw you AND your club card, Safeway! It was so nice--both organic and regular, cheap, possibly toxin-coated produce; chipotle peppers and good ol' Western Family canned tomatoes; Kraft dinner and raw bulghur in bulk. Much less intimidating than Whole Foods, where I fear that all the Hostess cakes and pigs-in-a-blanket meals of my past are visible on my person. Plus, according to this article, the Ballard Market has a motto: "Experience Fresh the Ballard Way." This is much funnier if you know Ballard--sort of the elderly-Scandinavian ghetto.
Anyway, I rambled through the store in happy shopping awe. It smelled good, a positive sign. Actually it smelled kind of zippy. Vinegary, even. Actually, people were starting to sniff and peer around the displays curiously. Actually, it smelled like pickles. Like picklespicklesPICKLES!! right over there, where a weary teenager in an apron was swabbing broken glass and kosher dill slices into a heavy-duty dustpan. Whoopsie.
I was nowhere near the pickles when whatever happened happened, I must insist.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Friday, June 25, 2004
Dos gatos
Yeah, I know, it's been awhile. Life, she intrudes.
One of the things keeping me busy lately is the fact that I've acquired a second cat. This is the part where I should probably point out the big "Sucker!" decal on the back of my t-shirt. I am afraid of being That Lady, a little; I've asked friends to stop me before I get to six.
I already had Tulip, a portly gray tabby a friend had gently foisted on me New Year's Day. She is timid and talkative and so mild-mannered that even interactive kitty toys intimidate her: if you poink her lightly on the flank with one of those feather-wand toys, she scurries away in fear. She prefers the passivity of her catnip-stuffed banana, which she can drool and nap on in peace. So I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to introduce another cat...
...especially the one I'd picked out. I'd first seen his picture online, where the accompanying kitty personal ad listed his favorite activity as "hiding" and his name as the peculiar "Baked Bean." I have a soft spot for orange tabbies, and the PAWS satellite adoption center is walking distance from my house. I dropped by to meet this Bean, who crouched trembling at the back of his cage but, even in his terror, was a Slave to the Kitty Brush in my hand. One of us is a sucker.
I brought him home a week ago Tuesday. I was surprised when he hopped out of his carrier and de-huddled: he's twice the length he appeared in kitty jail. In 24 hours, he was squeezing his lanky frame out from under the futon to greet me when I called; in 48 hours he discovered the cache of heretofore ignored kitty toys and threw them all over the living room in drug-induced bliss. Tulip looked on agahst: "What is wrong with that guy?" He chewed on my plants, splashed water out of his dish for fun, and is sitting on the document shredder beside me as I type this. He is not the shrinking violet indicated in his Web profile. (And THAT has never happened to me before, oh, no.)
After a few days of going through every orange soda, snack food, and baked-bean pun I could think of (Frank?), I settled on the moniker Julius. Hee. There's been a lot of trash talking between the cats, but no real fisticuffs that I've noticed. Tulip has voiced her displeasure to me readily ("That guy is STILL HERE!") but seems to have resigned herself to having a big little brother, as long as he observes a few simple guidelines: he may not sit on The Couch, The Bed, or The Mommy. These are her rules, not mine. So far, peace reigns...aside from the 4 a.m. intervals in which Julius has dragged his favorite mousie into the tub and sent it pattering around and around the porcelain ellipse like it's the Seattle International Raceway.
Yes, do stop me well before I ever get to six.
One of the things keeping me busy lately is the fact that I've acquired a second cat. This is the part where I should probably point out the big "Sucker!" decal on the back of my t-shirt. I am afraid of being That Lady, a little; I've asked friends to stop me before I get to six.
I already had Tulip, a portly gray tabby a friend had gently foisted on me New Year's Day. She is timid and talkative and so mild-mannered that even interactive kitty toys intimidate her: if you poink her lightly on the flank with one of those feather-wand toys, she scurries away in fear. She prefers the passivity of her catnip-stuffed banana, which she can drool and nap on in peace. So I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to introduce another cat...
...especially the one I'd picked out. I'd first seen his picture online, where the accompanying kitty personal ad listed his favorite activity as "hiding" and his name as the peculiar "Baked Bean." I have a soft spot for orange tabbies, and the PAWS satellite adoption center is walking distance from my house. I dropped by to meet this Bean, who crouched trembling at the back of his cage but, even in his terror, was a Slave to the Kitty Brush in my hand. One of us is a sucker.
I brought him home a week ago Tuesday. I was surprised when he hopped out of his carrier and de-huddled: he's twice the length he appeared in kitty jail. In 24 hours, he was squeezing his lanky frame out from under the futon to greet me when I called; in 48 hours he discovered the cache of heretofore ignored kitty toys and threw them all over the living room in drug-induced bliss. Tulip looked on agahst: "What is wrong with that guy?" He chewed on my plants, splashed water out of his dish for fun, and is sitting on the document shredder beside me as I type this. He is not the shrinking violet indicated in his Web profile. (And THAT has never happened to me before, oh, no.)
After a few days of going through every orange soda, snack food, and baked-bean pun I could think of (Frank?), I settled on the moniker Julius. Hee. There's been a lot of trash talking between the cats, but no real fisticuffs that I've noticed. Tulip has voiced her displeasure to me readily ("That guy is STILL HERE!") but seems to have resigned herself to having a big little brother, as long as he observes a few simple guidelines: he may not sit on The Couch, The Bed, or The Mommy. These are her rules, not mine. So far, peace reigns...aside from the 4 a.m. intervals in which Julius has dragged his favorite mousie into the tub and sent it pattering around and around the porcelain ellipse like it's the Seattle International Raceway.
Yes, do stop me well before I ever get to six.
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Unsettling dream
So last night I had one of those extremely detailed, geographically precise dreams in which I apparently was engaged in some classy White Trash Shopping with my mother. We were on Aurora Avenue*, where we intended to do some browsing at Ross Dress for Less...but not before stopping for a meal at the adjacent Burger King, where I was adamant about having "a BK Broiler with bacon." Is that even a thing? I'm scared to find out. Why would I desire this? I haven't been in a Burger King in a decade.
(*For any non-Seattle readers...every decent-sized city has this road: four to six lanes, lined with car lots and motels and check-cashing establishments, coyly named sex-toy stores like "The Love Pantry," and pancake restaurants that started out as a Sambo's or a Denny's but have changed hands at least three times and now have scarily handpainted signage and a big Bud Light neon sign in the window. Yeah, that road. In Yonkers, NY, it was Central Avenue, I remember.)
(*For any non-Seattle readers...every decent-sized city has this road: four to six lanes, lined with car lots and motels and check-cashing establishments, coyly named sex-toy stores like "The Love Pantry," and pancake restaurants that started out as a Sambo's or a Denny's but have changed hands at least three times and now have scarily handpainted signage and a big Bud Light neon sign in the window. Yeah, that road. In Yonkers, NY, it was Central Avenue, I remember.)
Monday, June 07, 2004
They've gone and grabbed old Ronnie
(Bonus points if you can identify that line.)
I suppose I should talk about the death of Ronald Reagan. I don't know that I have much to add to the discourse, though...I mean, I have no love for Reagan, the President; I'm a little flabbergasted at the media hysteria, in fact. The Great Communicator! The most beloved and popular and cherished and adored President of all time, forever and ever, don't even try to argue, amen. Really? I don't get it.
I mean, I was a free-lunch kid. So I had Reagan to thank for the threat of a lot of ketchup. He invented and demonized the Welfare Queen; we weren't on the throne, but we were definitely part of the court. I spent no small amount of time in my adolescence fearing a nuclear holocaust, fearing The Russians, fearing it would be "Red Dawn" in the school-bus zone outside Washington Middle School at any moment. (I also feared algebra, the aliens in the movie version of War of the Worlds, and that my mother would die and we'd be sent to live on the farm with our dad, so take that as you will.) I don't remember gleaning anything in particular from the Iran-Contra scandal except, Politicians lie. All the time, like rugs, lie lie lie.
Reagan was the first President I can remember paying any attention to. The pompadour! The apple cheeks! The scary wrinkles! The "Well..." I mean, I knew who Carter was, but I couldn't tell you a single word he ever said. A kid on my bus in second grade went to Washington D.C. on vacation and returned with a wind-up toy, "Jimmy the Walking Peanut," the buzzing clockwork hilarity of which was the sum total of my political consciousness at the time.
Reagan was the first President I could quote. "Honey, I forgot to duck." The Challenger speech, its ending swiped from a poet I could Google in ten seconds but can't remember now. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I've heard that 20 times in the past 48 hours...thing is, it gives me a little shiver still, because...they did. Eventually, they did. A big hunk of it stands in my company's conference center, as art. Holly roves freely about in a unified Germany. I don't lie in bed worrying about The Bomb any more...though as an adult I've discovered that there are things so much scarier that it's better to not think of them at all if you ever want to sleep again. Dubya, I'm looking at you. Whatever Reagan's legacy, he was better than the current guy holding the contract for the big red phone.
But. Forget the President. I can spare a little grief for Reagan, the man. There are more violent, more painful ways, perhaps...but I can't think of a crueler way to die than Alzheimer's, for victim and family alike. Nancy, scary Nancy, tiny and brittle and fierce--she looks like my grandmother, who always loathed the comparison--it was obvious that they adored each other, and that she loved him to the end. I cannot imagine the horror of watching your husband, partner, father, friend, recede into silence, an enormous speechless toddler, mobile but without thought. A windup toy. The Walking Peanut.
I've read a lot of bitter forums today, people complaining that however much the Reagans suffered, they had help: Nancy could get the best medical treatment for her husband available, could have respite care whenever she needed a break, had coverage and concern her husband denied scores of poor Americans. It's true.
But. I saw that clip half a dozen times today, while I chugged away on the eliptical trainer at the gym: Nancy, putting her ferociously coiffed head down on her husband's coffin, bereft. Goodbye. I have said those goodbyes, myself, recently enough. Say what you will of the President, but...I can grieve a moment for the man.
I suppose I should talk about the death of Ronald Reagan. I don't know that I have much to add to the discourse, though...I mean, I have no love for Reagan, the President; I'm a little flabbergasted at the media hysteria, in fact. The Great Communicator! The most beloved and popular and cherished and adored President of all time, forever and ever, don't even try to argue, amen. Really? I don't get it.
I mean, I was a free-lunch kid. So I had Reagan to thank for the threat of a lot of ketchup. He invented and demonized the Welfare Queen; we weren't on the throne, but we were definitely part of the court. I spent no small amount of time in my adolescence fearing a nuclear holocaust, fearing The Russians, fearing it would be "Red Dawn" in the school-bus zone outside Washington Middle School at any moment. (I also feared algebra, the aliens in the movie version of War of the Worlds, and that my mother would die and we'd be sent to live on the farm with our dad, so take that as you will.) I don't remember gleaning anything in particular from the Iran-Contra scandal except, Politicians lie. All the time, like rugs, lie lie lie.
Reagan was the first President I can remember paying any attention to. The pompadour! The apple cheeks! The scary wrinkles! The "Well..." I mean, I knew who Carter was, but I couldn't tell you a single word he ever said. A kid on my bus in second grade went to Washington D.C. on vacation and returned with a wind-up toy, "Jimmy the Walking Peanut," the buzzing clockwork hilarity of which was the sum total of my political consciousness at the time.
Reagan was the first President I could quote. "Honey, I forgot to duck." The Challenger speech, its ending swiped from a poet I could Google in ten seconds but can't remember now. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I've heard that 20 times in the past 48 hours...thing is, it gives me a little shiver still, because...they did. Eventually, they did. A big hunk of it stands in my company's conference center, as art. Holly roves freely about in a unified Germany. I don't lie in bed worrying about The Bomb any more...though as an adult I've discovered that there are things so much scarier that it's better to not think of them at all if you ever want to sleep again. Dubya, I'm looking at you. Whatever Reagan's legacy, he was better than the current guy holding the contract for the big red phone.
But. Forget the President. I can spare a little grief for Reagan, the man. There are more violent, more painful ways, perhaps...but I can't think of a crueler way to die than Alzheimer's, for victim and family alike. Nancy, scary Nancy, tiny and brittle and fierce--she looks like my grandmother, who always loathed the comparison--it was obvious that they adored each other, and that she loved him to the end. I cannot imagine the horror of watching your husband, partner, father, friend, recede into silence, an enormous speechless toddler, mobile but without thought. A windup toy. The Walking Peanut.
I've read a lot of bitter forums today, people complaining that however much the Reagans suffered, they had help: Nancy could get the best medical treatment for her husband available, could have respite care whenever she needed a break, had coverage and concern her husband denied scores of poor Americans. It's true.
But. I saw that clip half a dozen times today, while I chugged away on the eliptical trainer at the gym: Nancy, putting her ferociously coiffed head down on her husband's coffin, bereft. Goodbye. I have said those goodbyes, myself, recently enough. Say what you will of the President, but...I can grieve a moment for the man.
Friday, June 04, 2004
Bowled over
My team at AllYourBaseAreBelongToUsCo is having a Morale Event this afternoon. As the fiscal budget comes to a close in June, we're always subject to a sudden flurry of presumably attitude-enhancing activities, ballgames and picnics and harbor cruises. Today's excursion is bowling. I'm a little nervous.
I'm a terrible bowler, for starters. In one of my few prior games, I believe my score was 11. So there is that fundamental humiliation forthcoming. Then, too, it's with your work colleagues, so you can't really prepare yourself appropriately for bowling by getting completely shitfaced and grabbing the Rock-n-Bowl karaoke mike. You still have to see these people on Monday.
But I have some body issues, too. I'm not a tiny girl, and bowling involves a lot of specialized postures. What if there is pants splittage?
Worrying.
Plus, Darcy told me that the last time her team undertook a Morale Event at the lanes, she got a little overzealous and, in hurling the ball at the ol' tenpins, actually flung herself to the floor. It's slippery there. So now I have that to worry about as well. Actually, I admire her self-possession under the circumstances. If that were me, I think I'd just have had to get a new job, possibly in a different state.
I'm a terrible bowler, for starters. In one of my few prior games, I believe my score was 11. So there is that fundamental humiliation forthcoming. Then, too, it's with your work colleagues, so you can't really prepare yourself appropriately for bowling by getting completely shitfaced and grabbing the Rock-n-Bowl karaoke mike. You still have to see these people on Monday.
But I have some body issues, too. I'm not a tiny girl, and bowling involves a lot of specialized postures. What if there is pants splittage?
Worrying.
Plus, Darcy told me that the last time her team undertook a Morale Event at the lanes, she got a little overzealous and, in hurling the ball at the ol' tenpins, actually flung herself to the floor. It's slippery there. So now I have that to worry about as well. Actually, I admire her self-possession under the circumstances. If that were me, I think I'd just have had to get a new job, possibly in a different state.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Your tone of voice is not very motivating
Whew...that was kind of heavy. Let's move on!
Any 24 fans out there? I hope you've enjoyed Chloe, the social-skill-bereft, slightly Aspberger-y computer genius and new addition to CTU. But have you ever wondered what Chloe dreams, what she'd like to be if she wasn't having to save the world from terrorism and point out everyone else's personal shortcomings all freaking day long? Like, maybe...she'd want to be an indie rock star. (Note: it's Quicktime, takes up some bandwidth, and features some f-bombs, so be careful with the clicky-clicky.)
I actually saw the Girls Guitar Club open for Janeane Garofolo a couple years back, but had no idea that the one on the left would end up my favorite tertiary television character of the year. Mary Lynn Rajskub is totally my pretend television friend now.
Any 24 fans out there? I hope you've enjoyed Chloe, the social-skill-bereft, slightly Aspberger-y computer genius and new addition to CTU. But have you ever wondered what Chloe dreams, what she'd like to be if she wasn't having to save the world from terrorism and point out everyone else's personal shortcomings all freaking day long? Like, maybe...she'd want to be an indie rock star. (Note: it's Quicktime, takes up some bandwidth, and features some f-bombs, so be careful with the clicky-clicky.)
I actually saw the Girls Guitar Club open for Janeane Garofolo a couple years back, but had no idea that the one on the left would end up my favorite tertiary television character of the year. Mary Lynn Rajskub is totally my pretend television friend now.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Thanks for the liberty, and stuff
Yes, I know--I'm coming to Memorial Day a bit late.
Anyway. Over the weekend, I saw this Bon-Macy's commercial on television: people in convertibles, kids frolicking in sprinklers. The voiceover lady declared with warm pomposity, "Memorial Day...a time to remember...a time to relax..."
Me, scoffing: "A time to shop!"
VO Lady: "...A time to SHOP!"
And I've been thinking about it since, trying to parse out how I feel...wondering how I should feel. How should this make me feel?
I think first of WWII, I guess: because it was a just war; because the memorial (which, honestly, I find pretty ham-handed) was dedicated this weekend; because all the news sources and Toms Brokaw and Hanks are quick to remind us that members of that generation, Great and Merely Average, are dying at a rate of 1,100 a day. A day! I had a grandfather in each theatre: Dad's dad went ashore in Normandy, though several days after D-Day; Mom's dad roved the Pacific, performing some sort of clerical duties in the Navy; a family photograph shows him impossibly skinny and jug-eared, hunched over a typewriter with a worried look. Neither one lived to see their memorial; neither one spoke a single word about their war, in my memory. My mother told me later that her dad's only request upon returning home was that his wife never serve him stewed tomatoes again. Grampa was a legendary junk food junkie, true--but it wasn't that he'd grown weary of canned tomatoes, out at sea. It was that it reminded him of the carnage he'd seen.
What to make of it, then, the crass commercialism that's turned a day of reflection into a bargain bonanza? Should I be offended on behalf of all our granddads, the teenagers in sailor suits or olive-drab helmets who saved the world or died trying, who came home and golfed and mowed lawns and kept their nightmares to themselves? Should I be horrified, being urged to grease up the MasterCard as if it would "honor" the current crop of America's sons and daughters have volunteered themselves for George's morally ambiguous train wreck in Iraq?
Or...is that the point? Did (do) these men and women fight to uphold our standards of freedom, right up to and including the big-dumb-goodnatured-Golden-Retriever qualities of the American people? Is democracy's best feature the way it entitles us to surfboards and hot dogs and bad television and good deals on bathmats and crockpots and a Free Gift With Purchase at the Clinique counter?
I really am asking, actually. Because I've been thinking about it, and I really don't know.
* * * * *
Hard to tell--after looking at these for half an hour, they're ALL him--but I think that the Wilson in the front row, far left, is my Mom's dad. Have a Snickers or a packet of corn chips in his memory, won't you?
* * * * *
At the grocery store tonight, in their display of red-white-and-blue picnic-type items for either last weekend or the upcoming Fourth of July, I saw a case of what were basically battery-operated, strobing red taillights, like a cyclist would use...except that these had American flag stickers on 'em and were labeled "Spirit of America Patriotic Flashers."
Yep. Expose yourself to democracy!
Anyway. Over the weekend, I saw this Bon-Macy's commercial on television: people in convertibles, kids frolicking in sprinklers. The voiceover lady declared with warm pomposity, "Memorial Day...a time to remember...a time to relax..."
Me, scoffing: "A time to shop!"
VO Lady: "...A time to SHOP!"
And I've been thinking about it since, trying to parse out how I feel...wondering how I should feel. How should this make me feel?
I think first of WWII, I guess: because it was a just war; because the memorial (which, honestly, I find pretty ham-handed) was dedicated this weekend; because all the news sources and Toms Brokaw and Hanks are quick to remind us that members of that generation, Great and Merely Average, are dying at a rate of 1,100 a day. A day! I had a grandfather in each theatre: Dad's dad went ashore in Normandy, though several days after D-Day; Mom's dad roved the Pacific, performing some sort of clerical duties in the Navy; a family photograph shows him impossibly skinny and jug-eared, hunched over a typewriter with a worried look. Neither one lived to see their memorial; neither one spoke a single word about their war, in my memory. My mother told me later that her dad's only request upon returning home was that his wife never serve him stewed tomatoes again. Grampa was a legendary junk food junkie, true--but it wasn't that he'd grown weary of canned tomatoes, out at sea. It was that it reminded him of the carnage he'd seen.
What to make of it, then, the crass commercialism that's turned a day of reflection into a bargain bonanza? Should I be offended on behalf of all our granddads, the teenagers in sailor suits or olive-drab helmets who saved the world or died trying, who came home and golfed and mowed lawns and kept their nightmares to themselves? Should I be horrified, being urged to grease up the MasterCard as if it would "honor" the current crop of America's sons and daughters have volunteered themselves for George's morally ambiguous train wreck in Iraq?
Or...is that the point? Did (do) these men and women fight to uphold our standards of freedom, right up to and including the big-dumb-goodnatured-Golden-Retriever qualities of the American people? Is democracy's best feature the way it entitles us to surfboards and hot dogs and bad television and good deals on bathmats and crockpots and a Free Gift With Purchase at the Clinique counter?
I really am asking, actually. Because I've been thinking about it, and I really don't know.
* * * * *
Hard to tell--after looking at these for half an hour, they're ALL him--but I think that the Wilson in the front row, far left, is my Mom's dad. Have a Snickers or a packet of corn chips in his memory, won't you?
* * * * *
At the grocery store tonight, in their display of red-white-and-blue picnic-type items for either last weekend or the upcoming Fourth of July, I saw a case of what were basically battery-operated, strobing red taillights, like a cyclist would use...except that these had American flag stickers on 'em and were labeled "Spirit of America Patriotic Flashers."
Yep. Expose yourself to democracy!
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Stupid nature!
Bleh. It's been more March-like, lamb/lion weather the past few days, pouring rain, with the occasional premium features of wind, lightning, and hail. It feels like October, if a bit warmer. I'm completely incapacitated by it; the steady drumming on the roof lulls me back into sleep like a little baby. A narcoleptic baby, with a full tummy. Of Benadryl.
It's also disheartening because it keeps me from messing around in the yard. Now that I've finally got all the inside stuff unpacked, I've been trying to enjoy the other perks of home ownership, namely trying to rehab the pitifully neglected garden. The first couple early-spring months were exciting: what would come up? Well, as it turns out, two sprigs of mint and 100,000 bluebells. Which are pretty, but that is kind of a lot of self-perpetuation going on there.
So I've spent several sunny weekends attempting to completely gut, mulch, and replant the little bricked-in beds that wrap around the house. It's a challenge to completely clear a strip and arrange it to my satisfaction...and then stand up and say, "well, that's five feet done." Also, how could "gardening" make me so damn sore afterwards? It's not an Olympic event; hell, the primary activity involves sitting on the ground. People buy special fun floppy hats for this pursuit. Martha can do it without harming her manicure. (Perhaps she can be put on highway landscaping detail?) So how is it that each Saturday afternoon ends with me blotchily sunburnt, coated with a fine layer of grit and unable to lace my own shoes for a day?
My next project is The Lawn. The day after I moved into the house, I looked up from BoxVille to see my next-door neighbor, Brian, zooming past the windows with a mower. Sweetest welcome-wagon gesture ever! I thanked him profusely...and have been surprised and shocked each time he's continued to mow my lawn for the subseqent three months. I am not a complete freeloader--I do ply him and his girlfriend with baked goods in return. But last week I had to admit that the dandelions appeared to be winning. He's mowing ground cover that is green, but has proportionally less and less to do with grass.
So I bought myself one of those weed-pulling step-and-twist doodads. Darcy's husband recommended it; it appeals to his masculine instincts by not only wresting weeds from the ground, but allowing you to SHOOT them from the tool into a handy yard waste recepticle (or, attempt to hit a neighbor child in the butt). I am eager to give it a test firing...though I'm concerned that, should I manage to pull all the weeds, I'll be able to trim the remaining four tufts of grass with scissors. Though I suppose that would satisfy my sense of obligation to neighbor Brian.
It's also disheartening because it keeps me from messing around in the yard. Now that I've finally got all the inside stuff unpacked, I've been trying to enjoy the other perks of home ownership, namely trying to rehab the pitifully neglected garden. The first couple early-spring months were exciting: what would come up? Well, as it turns out, two sprigs of mint and 100,000 bluebells. Which are pretty, but that is kind of a lot of self-perpetuation going on there.
So I've spent several sunny weekends attempting to completely gut, mulch, and replant the little bricked-in beds that wrap around the house. It's a challenge to completely clear a strip and arrange it to my satisfaction...and then stand up and say, "well, that's five feet done." Also, how could "gardening" make me so damn sore afterwards? It's not an Olympic event; hell, the primary activity involves sitting on the ground. People buy special fun floppy hats for this pursuit. Martha can do it without harming her manicure. (Perhaps she can be put on highway landscaping detail?) So how is it that each Saturday afternoon ends with me blotchily sunburnt, coated with a fine layer of grit and unable to lace my own shoes for a day?
My next project is The Lawn. The day after I moved into the house, I looked up from BoxVille to see my next-door neighbor, Brian, zooming past the windows with a mower. Sweetest welcome-wagon gesture ever! I thanked him profusely...and have been surprised and shocked each time he's continued to mow my lawn for the subseqent three months. I am not a complete freeloader--I do ply him and his girlfriend with baked goods in return. But last week I had to admit that the dandelions appeared to be winning. He's mowing ground cover that is green, but has proportionally less and less to do with grass.
So I bought myself one of those weed-pulling step-and-twist doodads. Darcy's husband recommended it; it appeals to his masculine instincts by not only wresting weeds from the ground, but allowing you to SHOOT them from the tool into a handy yard waste recepticle (or, attempt to hit a neighbor child in the butt). I am eager to give it a test firing...though I'm concerned that, should I manage to pull all the weeds, I'll be able to trim the remaining four tufts of grass with scissors. Though I suppose that would satisfy my sense of obligation to neighbor Brian.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Better dead than...no, wait
(Rejected titles for this post include: Red Dawn; Red Alert; Red Scare; Code Red...)
Over in Pamie's blog, she's had a couple mini-surveys this week: "what movies make you cry?" and "what discontinued lipstick shade do you still mourn?" Of course I've had to put my two cents in for both. The former category is pretty much a steep path strewn with butter-and-tear-stained napkins, so I'll let it alone here. But for the latter: Max Factor's "Midnight Mahogany," which I expected to be brown; instead it turned out to be a magnificent 40s Harlot Red. I still have a half-inch stub I save for special occasions.
But it's made me start thinking of my great aunt, who passed away a little over two years ago, at 84. Nannie had always been a pistol, a spitfire, the family beauty. As a child, she insisted she'd been abandoned by "Gypsies," who'd surely return to claim her; as an adult, she looked like Olivia DeHaviland and was known for forcing other drivers off the road in games of Chicken. She loved Jamaica and, inexplicably, the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyworld. She argued with her closest sister, my grandmother, virtually every single day, over everything from who said what to whom in 1957 to "the sound a piano makes." (Don't ask.) Her wedding portrait shows her in a trim suit and a vast, winged hat the size of a lazy susan. Nannie was badass, no question.
Toward the end, after a series of traumatic falls, she spent several years in an assisted-living facility, an "adult family home." Visiting her there was a torment, to me; the place always smelled like fried fish and old age and befuddlement and fear. She and Grammy would attempt to outdo each other for the honor of Most Horrible Prairie Childhood Memory: remember that time our wicked stepmother killed a litter of puppies and made us watch? Well, remember when mother died and dad threw the Christmas tree out into the snow cursing and crying?
But the point I was getting to: Nannie liked to have Her Face On. When her hands shook too badly, she'd enlist my mother to draw in her quotation-mark eyebrows. Once, she offered her a black felt-tip pen for this purpose: "They'll last longer." She could still manage her own lipstick, if someone else held the little compact mirror steady. "Move--all I can see is ceiling," she'd complain, jerking my wrist around.
She had several remaining lipsticks, little smudged and broken nubs she carried around in a grimy purse. And every one of them was a more shocking, fabulous RED red than anything I've ever owned. What could the names of those colors be? Jezebel? USO Tart? Ruby the Riveter? They were amazing. I admired them, admired and adored her for still wobbling them across her lips, bedridden, cramped by multiple sclerosis, octogenarian.
When she died, my mother handled her affairs. A simple cremation, a scattering from the deck of a Washington State Ferry. (Nannie would have liked it: a dramatic burial at sea that also, even if temporarily, inconvienienced the other passengers and made them look.) At some point, though, I asked my mother who'd been responsible for her makeup.
"Oh, I don't know...we didn't bother," Mom claimed. She plainly didn't see the point--why tart up the earthly remains, just before loading them into the crematorium?
But I was appalled. "You sent her to meet her maker without her face on?!?" I cried. "She's going to haunt your ass!"
We're still waiting, mind you. But I will not be surprised in the least if she starts poking dishes off the shelves in Mom's kitchen.
Over in Pamie's blog, she's had a couple mini-surveys this week: "what movies make you cry?" and "what discontinued lipstick shade do you still mourn?" Of course I've had to put my two cents in for both. The former category is pretty much a steep path strewn with butter-and-tear-stained napkins, so I'll let it alone here. But for the latter: Max Factor's "Midnight Mahogany," which I expected to be brown; instead it turned out to be a magnificent 40s Harlot Red. I still have a half-inch stub I save for special occasions.
But it's made me start thinking of my great aunt, who passed away a little over two years ago, at 84. Nannie had always been a pistol, a spitfire, the family beauty. As a child, she insisted she'd been abandoned by "Gypsies," who'd surely return to claim her; as an adult, she looked like Olivia DeHaviland and was known for forcing other drivers off the road in games of Chicken. She loved Jamaica and, inexplicably, the "It's a Small World" ride at Disneyworld. She argued with her closest sister, my grandmother, virtually every single day, over everything from who said what to whom in 1957 to "the sound a piano makes." (Don't ask.) Her wedding portrait shows her in a trim suit and a vast, winged hat the size of a lazy susan. Nannie was badass, no question.
Toward the end, after a series of traumatic falls, she spent several years in an assisted-living facility, an "adult family home." Visiting her there was a torment, to me; the place always smelled like fried fish and old age and befuddlement and fear. She and Grammy would attempt to outdo each other for the honor of Most Horrible Prairie Childhood Memory: remember that time our wicked stepmother killed a litter of puppies and made us watch? Well, remember when mother died and dad threw the Christmas tree out into the snow cursing and crying?
But the point I was getting to: Nannie liked to have Her Face On. When her hands shook too badly, she'd enlist my mother to draw in her quotation-mark eyebrows. Once, she offered her a black felt-tip pen for this purpose: "They'll last longer." She could still manage her own lipstick, if someone else held the little compact mirror steady. "Move--all I can see is ceiling," she'd complain, jerking my wrist around.
She had several remaining lipsticks, little smudged and broken nubs she carried around in a grimy purse. And every one of them was a more shocking, fabulous RED red than anything I've ever owned. What could the names of those colors be? Jezebel? USO Tart? Ruby the Riveter? They were amazing. I admired them, admired and adored her for still wobbling them across her lips, bedridden, cramped by multiple sclerosis, octogenarian.
When she died, my mother handled her affairs. A simple cremation, a scattering from the deck of a Washington State Ferry. (Nannie would have liked it: a dramatic burial at sea that also, even if temporarily, inconvienienced the other passengers and made them look.) At some point, though, I asked my mother who'd been responsible for her makeup.
"Oh, I don't know...we didn't bother," Mom claimed. She plainly didn't see the point--why tart up the earthly remains, just before loading them into the crematorium?
But I was appalled. "You sent her to meet her maker without her face on?!?" I cried. "She's going to haunt your ass!"
We're still waiting, mind you. But I will not be surprised in the least if she starts poking dishes off the shelves in Mom's kitchen.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Nosy
Nice Google, trying so hard to provide some ads that relate to my blog content. Apparently related to my allergerific posting last week, the top of my page presently features two links to industrial-caliber sneeze guards. You can even get them with etched glass! Art, that.
Jettisoning the Professional Friend
So, last week I dumped my therapist.
That's probably a loaded phrase, isn't it? But how do you end it--an amicable-but-also-covered-by-the-health-plan relationship like that? You break up with him? You fire him, all Trumpin' it with the little jabby hand-gesture and everything? There isn't a word for it, I don't think.
I have--had?--been "with" the Good Doctor, been "seeing" him, for seven years. Almost to the day, I now realize. When the ExLoveOfMyLife dumped me, seven years ago, I called the number on the refrigerator magnet distributed by the Employee Assistance Program; they entered my global positioning coordinates or somesuch and matched me with the Good Doctor. (The building that held his office also housed a bakery, so I knew that therapeutic comfort of one kind or another would be handily available. Some days, I applied both.)
Seven years. That's longer than the relationship with ELOML that put me on the couch in the first place. It's probably not a stretch to say that it's the longest, most positive relationship I've ever had with...a man. Gender isn't a factor, here...but then again, it is. Isn't; is. Transferrence all over the place. And yes, we talked about that too, over time.
How did I figure this out? The last month or so has been strange. I'm still distracted by my House Joy, feeling generally content and happy. I'm working out; I'm writing this blog; I've lost 6 1/2 pounds. I would go to therapy and find myself groping for things to say, or fretting more about, say, my sister's mental health than my own. We were talking about ice cream. Then, three weeks ago, busy working from home, I completely forgot my appointment--didn't think of it at all until I saw his name on the caller ID, 90 minutes later. Which was a whole new can of worms: he admitted he rarely called the no-shows, but wanted to make sure I was okay. Was concerned. Was worried, maybe.
I've searched myself a lot on this, too--with firm proof that he "worried" about me, am I just fleeing? Is this just responsible Me, fleeing the burden of needing to keep another Grown-Up from worrying, from suffering on my behalf? We talked about that a lot, the next week, but ultimately...I still felt ready. I hadn't missed therapy, whether or not the Good Doctor missed me.
So, we talked about it. I did fret...I hate to be forgotten, after all. I told him a story about revisiting a couple favorite old high-school teachers, when I was a graduate student. English teachers! In whose classes I had cranked out pages of prose, had fancied myself a genius, had laughed and cried and been forced to read Ophelia to my secret crush's Hamlet, the worst indignity ever...anyway. They didn't remember me, couldn't put a name to my face, just four years later. Ouch. The Good Doctor declared that horrible, and said he would be unlikely to forget my name. This moved me deeply...though a bit later it did occur to me that my last name is his first. Heh.
But I was ready. I was grateful, I was happy, and I was ready. He said "goodbye," which I don't remember him saying before. He would not see me next week. And I cried...and did my ears deceive me, or did he sound a little choked up, too? But...I still left.
Absurdly, now, I want to thank him profusely...all "To Sir With Love" about it...or recommend him to others, like a restaurant. How do you thank someone? Where's Lulu when you need her? The thesaurus fails me here, also.
For the record, though, I still possess both crayons and perfume. I'll leave it to you to guess which of those gets more frequent use.
Thank you, Doug.
That's probably a loaded phrase, isn't it? But how do you end it--an amicable-but-also-covered-by-the-health-plan relationship like that? You break up with him? You fire him, all Trumpin' it with the little jabby hand-gesture and everything? There isn't a word for it, I don't think.
I have--had?--been "with" the Good Doctor, been "seeing" him, for seven years. Almost to the day, I now realize. When the ExLoveOfMyLife dumped me, seven years ago, I called the number on the refrigerator magnet distributed by the Employee Assistance Program; they entered my global positioning coordinates or somesuch and matched me with the Good Doctor. (The building that held his office also housed a bakery, so I knew that therapeutic comfort of one kind or another would be handily available. Some days, I applied both.)
Seven years. That's longer than the relationship with ELOML that put me on the couch in the first place. It's probably not a stretch to say that it's the longest, most positive relationship I've ever had with...a man. Gender isn't a factor, here...but then again, it is. Isn't; is. Transferrence all over the place. And yes, we talked about that too, over time.
How did I figure this out? The last month or so has been strange. I'm still distracted by my House Joy, feeling generally content and happy. I'm working out; I'm writing this blog; I've lost 6 1/2 pounds. I would go to therapy and find myself groping for things to say, or fretting more about, say, my sister's mental health than my own. We were talking about ice cream. Then, three weeks ago, busy working from home, I completely forgot my appointment--didn't think of it at all until I saw his name on the caller ID, 90 minutes later. Which was a whole new can of worms: he admitted he rarely called the no-shows, but wanted to make sure I was okay. Was concerned. Was worried, maybe.
I've searched myself a lot on this, too--with firm proof that he "worried" about me, am I just fleeing? Is this just responsible Me, fleeing the burden of needing to keep another Grown-Up from worrying, from suffering on my behalf? We talked about that a lot, the next week, but ultimately...I still felt ready. I hadn't missed therapy, whether or not the Good Doctor missed me.
So, we talked about it. I did fret...I hate to be forgotten, after all. I told him a story about revisiting a couple favorite old high-school teachers, when I was a graduate student. English teachers! In whose classes I had cranked out pages of prose, had fancied myself a genius, had laughed and cried and been forced to read Ophelia to my secret crush's Hamlet, the worst indignity ever...anyway. They didn't remember me, couldn't put a name to my face, just four years later. Ouch. The Good Doctor declared that horrible, and said he would be unlikely to forget my name. This moved me deeply...though a bit later it did occur to me that my last name is his first. Heh.
But I was ready. I was grateful, I was happy, and I was ready. He said "goodbye," which I don't remember him saying before. He would not see me next week. And I cried...and did my ears deceive me, or did he sound a little choked up, too? But...I still left.
Absurdly, now, I want to thank him profusely...all "To Sir With Love" about it...or recommend him to others, like a restaurant. How do you thank someone? Where's Lulu when you need her? The thesaurus fails me here, also.
For the record, though, I still possess both crayons and perfume. I'll leave it to you to guess which of those gets more frequent use.
Thank you, Doug.
Friday, April 23, 2004
In your face, gals
Saw a commercial last night for some sorta wrinkle-reducing face cream; the voiceover promised it would help minimize "expression lines." Expression lines! Apparently you're not doomed just for laughing anymore; betraying the least glimmer of all those petty, pesky emotions is a one-way ticket to CrowsFeetVille, you decrepit hag you.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!
Grrrrr. Hard day. I woke myself up by sneezing uncontrollably this morning; at first I thought I'd inhaled a stray cat hair in my sleep, or something, but the snuffliness persisted. I popped a Benadryl, the only thing in the house, and headed off to the gym, where I was given cause to wonder, is it possible to fall asleep on a Nautilus machine? Because frankly I was thisclose.
Then to work, where the day was consumed with one of those busywork, cut-n-paste tasks...tedious, but weirdly satisfying at least, when you can quantify the pile of items you've moved to the "Out" heap from the "In." I continued to sneeze and sneeze and sneeze and sneeze, though, in the grip of what I hope is an allergy attack; after six hours and change of trying to blow my face off the front of my skull, I staggered out and caught the earliest possible bus.
But. On the bus, I was unable to stop listening to the conversation of the two women behind me. And believe me when I said I tried. I struggled to doze; I hummed the love theme from "Dr. Zhivago" to myself. But no...I had to pay attention to them, and their first topic, The War. You know, the one in Iraq? (Thank goodness that's over with, huh?) Woman A was insistent that President Bush had "honorable intentions," whatever the hell that means, and that we should stay there and finish up the plan. (Woman B, to her credit, seemed to be taking the "uh, what plan?" tack that was trumpeting in my own head.) Woman A also was very disgusted with those nations now pulling their soldiers out of the region, backing out on their "promises" to help; they were "cowards and quitters!" in her eyes. I wondered whether under her guidance we'd still be sorting out Vietnam. I sneezed. I bit my tongue. Thankfully, they moved on to a new topic: The Gays. Uh oh.
I wasn't going to get all po-litical in this blog. I wasn't! It was going to be all wry observations and pop-culty fun-ness and would you believe the koo-koo things people order at the espresso cart? So if you're here reading for that, scoot on off to TWoP or something for the afternoon, loveys, and I promise you ruminations on hotdish and bingo tomorrow. But at the moment, I have a soapbox to stomp around on.
I'm pro-gay marriage. I have multiple reasons for this; the first is that I see it, at its core, as a church/state issue. Marriage is a legal, civil contract in this country, first and foremost; you don't have to get married in a church, or make religion a part of the ceremony at all, but you do have to get that license in your hand, just like you do to drive or to fish or to dispense cocktails. It's a civil right, and to deny it to a segment of the consenting adult population is discriminatory, period.
I also support it for general cultural (and pop-cultural, I guess) reasons. I don't get the gnashing and wailing over protecting marriage as An Institution. Are you kidding me? Look how the straight folks have botched it up, for crying out loud. (Exhibit A: my poor, young, clueless, ill-suited, now-divorced parents.) How many straight couples are going to court for a Do-Over, or loathing each other through decades of marital acrimony, or throwing their hands in the air and just shacking up, or fame-whoring their way through the latest round of "The Bachelor" on my goddamn television? I hate to break it to you, folks, but The Institution, she is in a world of hurt already. Why not let the homosexuals take a crack at it? There are gay and lesbian couples clamoring to get married; maybe weddings will become a hot new trend. Look at what the Queer Eye fellows have done for belt-wearing. (Thom! Love ya! Need a hag? Call me!)
And I support it for personal reasons. For the record, I'm straight, and single. I just bought a house on my own, and I'm proud of my independence therein, but I long for a boy to play with, and make weekend plans and pancakes and babies with, and possibly get legal with, not necessarily in any order. But friends of mine, people I love dearly, and who love each other dearly...can't get married. They aren't entitled to seize the exact same joys and miseries and legal protections and property rights and social acceptance and big fat Greek wedding and tax status and public declaration of unity that I'm entitled to, someday, just because I happen to be a girl who likes boys. And that's wrong.
It's time, people. It's just plain time.
Back to the ladies on the bus. Woman B, again taking the middle ground, voiced the belief that some folks are just born gay. (Actually, she said that "God made them" that way. I shan't quibble.) Woman A, though, was more dubious; she was "fine" with the gays, as long as they weren't all "in [her] face" about it. Woman B pointed out that she didn't know anyone who ran right up and shouted "I'm gay!" at first meeting. Woman A was still uneasy, though. "I don't mind...I just don't believe in it," she kept saying. Believe in what? Gayness? Gay people? Like ghosts or alien abductions or the Tooth Fairy? (Okay: hee.) I don't believe in blabbing one's sociopolitical opinions so loudly on the bus (yeah, I prefer the subtleties of the INTERNET!)...but dammit, Woman A, you were still there.
So. Recap: allergies, sneezing, gym, work, cranky, yay gay marriage, vote Ron Sims, over and out.
* * * * * *
Got home to find arborists dismantling the giant, limb-tossing, decrepit evergreen in front of the house...which needed to be done, but the chain-sawing and wood-chipping? NOT SO SOOTHING. Grrr.
Then to work, where the day was consumed with one of those busywork, cut-n-paste tasks...tedious, but weirdly satisfying at least, when you can quantify the pile of items you've moved to the "Out" heap from the "In." I continued to sneeze and sneeze and sneeze and sneeze, though, in the grip of what I hope is an allergy attack; after six hours and change of trying to blow my face off the front of my skull, I staggered out and caught the earliest possible bus.
But. On the bus, I was unable to stop listening to the conversation of the two women behind me. And believe me when I said I tried. I struggled to doze; I hummed the love theme from "Dr. Zhivago" to myself. But no...I had to pay attention to them, and their first topic, The War. You know, the one in Iraq? (Thank goodness that's over with, huh?) Woman A was insistent that President Bush had "honorable intentions," whatever the hell that means, and that we should stay there and finish up the plan. (Woman B, to her credit, seemed to be taking the "uh, what plan?" tack that was trumpeting in my own head.) Woman A also was very disgusted with those nations now pulling their soldiers out of the region, backing out on their "promises" to help; they were "cowards and quitters!" in her eyes. I wondered whether under her guidance we'd still be sorting out Vietnam. I sneezed. I bit my tongue. Thankfully, they moved on to a new topic: The Gays. Uh oh.
I wasn't going to get all po-litical in this blog. I wasn't! It was going to be all wry observations and pop-culty fun-ness and would you believe the koo-koo things people order at the espresso cart? So if you're here reading for that, scoot on off to TWoP or something for the afternoon, loveys, and I promise you ruminations on hotdish and bingo tomorrow. But at the moment, I have a soapbox to stomp around on.
I'm pro-gay marriage. I have multiple reasons for this; the first is that I see it, at its core, as a church/state issue. Marriage is a legal, civil contract in this country, first and foremost; you don't have to get married in a church, or make religion a part of the ceremony at all, but you do have to get that license in your hand, just like you do to drive or to fish or to dispense cocktails. It's a civil right, and to deny it to a segment of the consenting adult population is discriminatory, period.
I also support it for general cultural (and pop-cultural, I guess) reasons. I don't get the gnashing and wailing over protecting marriage as An Institution. Are you kidding me? Look how the straight folks have botched it up, for crying out loud. (Exhibit A: my poor, young, clueless, ill-suited, now-divorced parents.) How many straight couples are going to court for a Do-Over, or loathing each other through decades of marital acrimony, or throwing their hands in the air and just shacking up, or fame-whoring their way through the latest round of "The Bachelor" on my goddamn television? I hate to break it to you, folks, but The Institution, she is in a world of hurt already. Why not let the homosexuals take a crack at it? There are gay and lesbian couples clamoring to get married; maybe weddings will become a hot new trend. Look at what the Queer Eye fellows have done for belt-wearing. (Thom! Love ya! Need a hag? Call me!)
And I support it for personal reasons. For the record, I'm straight, and single. I just bought a house on my own, and I'm proud of my independence therein, but I long for a boy to play with, and make weekend plans and pancakes and babies with, and possibly get legal with, not necessarily in any order. But friends of mine, people I love dearly, and who love each other dearly...can't get married. They aren't entitled to seize the exact same joys and miseries and legal protections and property rights and social acceptance and big fat Greek wedding and tax status and public declaration of unity that I'm entitled to, someday, just because I happen to be a girl who likes boys. And that's wrong.
It's time, people. It's just plain time.
Back to the ladies on the bus. Woman B, again taking the middle ground, voiced the belief that some folks are just born gay. (Actually, she said that "God made them" that way. I shan't quibble.) Woman A, though, was more dubious; she was "fine" with the gays, as long as they weren't all "in [her] face" about it. Woman B pointed out that she didn't know anyone who ran right up and shouted "I'm gay!" at first meeting. Woman A was still uneasy, though. "I don't mind...I just don't believe in it," she kept saying. Believe in what? Gayness? Gay people? Like ghosts or alien abductions or the Tooth Fairy? (Okay: hee.) I don't believe in blabbing one's sociopolitical opinions so loudly on the bus (yeah, I prefer the subtleties of the INTERNET!)...but dammit, Woman A, you were still there.
So. Recap: allergies, sneezing, gym, work, cranky, yay gay marriage, vote Ron Sims, over and out.
* * * * * *
Got home to find arborists dismantling the giant, limb-tossing, decrepit evergreen in front of the house...which needed to be done, but the chain-sawing and wood-chipping? NOT SO SOOTHING. Grrr.
Friday, April 16, 2004
And how!
Readerboard sign on a church in my neighborhood:
THE LORD IS RISEN
INDEED!
Well, right on. You go, Jesus!
THE LORD IS RISEN
INDEED!
Well, right on. You go, Jesus!
Sunday, April 11, 2004
"A *rabbit*?"
Time for a seasonal reading. I've got a few pieces of writing that I turn to over and over at certain times of year (state-fair time has its own entire category), and this is one of them. C. K. Williams, from "Flesh and Blood," copyright 1987 (don't sue me, I replicate out of love). Happy Easter, everybody.
Easter
As though it were the very soul of rational human intercourse which had been violated,
I can't believe you did that, the father chokes out to his little son, kneeling beside him,
tugging at the waistband of the tiny blue jeans, peerng in along the split between the buttocks,
putting down his face at last to sniff, then saying it again, with quiet indignation, outrage,
a power more moral than parental: at issue here are covenants, agreements from the dawn of time.
The child, meanwhile, his eyes a little wider than they might be, is otherwise unblinking;
all the time his father raves, he stares, scholarly, detached, at a package in his hands:
a box of foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, because it's spring, because the god has died, and risen.
Easter
As though it were the very soul of rational human intercourse which had been violated,
I can't believe you did that, the father chokes out to his little son, kneeling beside him,
tugging at the waistband of the tiny blue jeans, peerng in along the split between the buttocks,
putting down his face at last to sniff, then saying it again, with quiet indignation, outrage,
a power more moral than parental: at issue here are covenants, agreements from the dawn of time.
The child, meanwhile, his eyes a little wider than they might be, is otherwise unblinking;
all the time his father raves, he stares, scholarly, detached, at a package in his hands:
a box of foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, because it's spring, because the god has died, and risen.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Story problem
Is it general knowledge that I am not a math fan? I'm not all Barbie about it, but beyond the ability to balance my checkbook, or determine how much carpet will fit in a room, I've never found much application for the numeric arts in my daily life. I chose a college without a math requirement--that was far from the main reason, but it didn't hurt. Over the past few years, my sister's taken some math courses to fill out her Associate degree credits, and for some reason she'd call me up asking for help. A rocket measuring 54.1 cm leaves a platform 120 cm high and traveling at a rate of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...just...static, in my brain. Don't need those cells anymore, and they're gone daddy gone.
But. Today's P-I featured this article about transferring the Seattle Public Library's collection to its ever-more-awesome new Central Branch building. They calculated the book volume, in linear feet, in exacting detail--months and pages and reams of diagrams and analysis. Now that's some math! I'm somehow charmed, that all these numbers blah blah blah math blah have been brought to bear on...words. Moving great quantities of tangible literary arts around. Cooooool.
But. Today's P-I featured this article about transferring the Seattle Public Library's collection to its ever-more-awesome new Central Branch building. They calculated the book volume, in linear feet, in exacting detail--months and pages and reams of diagrams and analysis. Now that's some math! I'm somehow charmed, that all these numbers blah blah blah math blah have been brought to bear on...words. Moving great quantities of tangible literary arts around. Cooooool.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
This mall has everything!
Whoa. In exhaustive detail, word for word:
The Pepsi Syndrome
"Now, the nuclear fuel here is used to generate energy here, which is sent to your homes to make toast."
The French Chef
"Crap! Oh! Oh, now I've done it--I've cut the dickens out of my finger."
Little Chocolate Donuts
"I logged a lot of miles training for that day."
The Pepsi Syndrome
"Now, the nuclear fuel here is used to generate energy here, which is sent to your homes to make toast."
The French Chef
"Crap! Oh! Oh, now I've done it--I've cut the dickens out of my finger."
Little Chocolate Donuts
"I logged a lot of miles training for that day."
Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies...glow
I sat up later than I might have, Monday night, watching an episode of American Experience on PBS (thereby cementing both my nerdy and snobby status--NerdSnob! SnobNerd!): a film on the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.
Odd experience, that. I mean, we know that, generally speaking, Things Turned Out All Right. Twenty-five years after the fact, if we could see the gentle glow of the Keystone State from the top of the Space Needle, we'd have caught on. But I was surprised by how much tension the documentary managed to create, Liev Schrieber narrating the blow-by-blow of a really bad week at the ol' plant with measured calm...against a backdrop of bawling evacuation sirens and officials going all Han Solo as they stammered assurances, "Negative, situation normal, everything's fine here...how are you?" President Carter, grimly wading about in his skinny 70s suit and protective yellow booties.
Is it still haunting because we know now how bad it could be? I'm thinking of a link I snagged from Mike: Elena's haunting photo essay of Chernobyl from the back of a motorcycle. "Ghost Town" is a bit of English vernacular that's clearly crossed over to the Russian states, and her blankly terrifying pictures show it: every single day is April 26, 1986, falling slowly, endlessly into poisonous ruin.
I don't know why that, in particular, gets me: the emptiness, the abandonment. How decay marks the infinitesimal passage of time, though the empty world doesn't care whether you live to tell about it or not. In William Langewiesche's series of hotly debated Atlantic articles on the World Trade Center attacks, later collected into his book American Ground, the sequence that continues to stick with me is his regular visits, over a period of weeks, to a conference room in an adjacent bank building, where people had clearly fled their breakfast meeting. He writes about checking on the progress, such as it is, of dust-filmed danishes and the scum of orange juice shrinking away in the glasses. This is the image that continues to cross my mind, beyond what marks the event on television (the planes, planes, planes, always the planes).
Back to Three Mile Island, though. The other--really, only--memory this documentary stirred in me was of what must have been the first "Saturday Night Live" sketch I ever saw. In it, President Carter is touring a nuclear plant when there's a meltdown; exposed to radiation, he grows to tremendous size, Amazing-Colossal-Man-style. Badly bluescreened "huge" through a window, he tells poor teensy Rosalyn that he's leaving her for the plant's similarly affected cleaning lady (who, my brain suggests, was portrayed by Garrett Morris).
I remember finding this hilarious, at the time. What could it have meant to me? I can't imagine my getting any more out of it than "the President is GIANT! that's funny! and that man is wearing a DRESS!" I was nine years old. What the hell was I doing up at that hour, even?
You can find pretty much anything on this here Internet in ten minutes, so I checked: this guy has all the original airdates and episode synopses. Ep 78p, April 7, 1979. Rickie Lee Jones sang "Chuck E's in Love" and, apparently, Belushi extolled the virtues of little chocolate donuts, a fauxmercial I only grew to love in adulthood.
I guess that's the gift of pop culture, what it does: slaps a funny wig on history's terror and misery and boots it out on stage for a laugh. Every night, surely, all over the world in countless television markets, Homer Simpson fishes that glowing ingot of nuke outta his shirt collar and flings it from the car...ahh, that's better! And thank God for it, frankly.
(Incidentally, I searched a little more and found my other seminal SNL skit memory: Ackroyd, again, as Julia Child, cutting "the dickens" out of his finger and bleeding out in the kitchen. Wah ha ha hah! And I reiterate: why the hell was I out of bed? Raised by wolves, you'd think.)
Odd experience, that. I mean, we know that, generally speaking, Things Turned Out All Right. Twenty-five years after the fact, if we could see the gentle glow of the Keystone State from the top of the Space Needle, we'd have caught on. But I was surprised by how much tension the documentary managed to create, Liev Schrieber narrating the blow-by-blow of a really bad week at the ol' plant with measured calm...against a backdrop of bawling evacuation sirens and officials going all Han Solo as they stammered assurances, "Negative, situation normal, everything's fine here...how are you?" President Carter, grimly wading about in his skinny 70s suit and protective yellow booties.
Is it still haunting because we know now how bad it could be? I'm thinking of a link I snagged from Mike: Elena's haunting photo essay of Chernobyl from the back of a motorcycle. "Ghost Town" is a bit of English vernacular that's clearly crossed over to the Russian states, and her blankly terrifying pictures show it: every single day is April 26, 1986, falling slowly, endlessly into poisonous ruin.
I don't know why that, in particular, gets me: the emptiness, the abandonment. How decay marks the infinitesimal passage of time, though the empty world doesn't care whether you live to tell about it or not. In William Langewiesche's series of hotly debated Atlantic articles on the World Trade Center attacks, later collected into his book American Ground, the sequence that continues to stick with me is his regular visits, over a period of weeks, to a conference room in an adjacent bank building, where people had clearly fled their breakfast meeting. He writes about checking on the progress, such as it is, of dust-filmed danishes and the scum of orange juice shrinking away in the glasses. This is the image that continues to cross my mind, beyond what marks the event on television (the planes, planes, planes, always the planes).
Back to Three Mile Island, though. The other--really, only--memory this documentary stirred in me was of what must have been the first "Saturday Night Live" sketch I ever saw. In it, President Carter is touring a nuclear plant when there's a meltdown; exposed to radiation, he grows to tremendous size, Amazing-Colossal-Man-style. Badly bluescreened "huge" through a window, he tells poor teensy Rosalyn that he's leaving her for the plant's similarly affected cleaning lady (who, my brain suggests, was portrayed by Garrett Morris).
I remember finding this hilarious, at the time. What could it have meant to me? I can't imagine my getting any more out of it than "the President is GIANT! that's funny! and that man is wearing a DRESS!" I was nine years old. What the hell was I doing up at that hour, even?
You can find pretty much anything on this here Internet in ten minutes, so I checked: this guy has all the original airdates and episode synopses. Ep 78p, April 7, 1979. Rickie Lee Jones sang "Chuck E's in Love" and, apparently, Belushi extolled the virtues of little chocolate donuts, a fauxmercial I only grew to love in adulthood.
I guess that's the gift of pop culture, what it does: slaps a funny wig on history's terror and misery and boots it out on stage for a laugh. Every night, surely, all over the world in countless television markets, Homer Simpson fishes that glowing ingot of nuke outta his shirt collar and flings it from the car...ahh, that's better! And thank God for it, frankly.
(Incidentally, I searched a little more and found my other seminal SNL skit memory: Ackroyd, again, as Julia Child, cutting "the dickens" out of his finger and bleeding out in the kitchen. Wah ha ha hah! And I reiterate: why the hell was I out of bed? Raised by wolves, you'd think.)
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
We wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner...BUT WE WOULD!
Another random discovery that completely made my day: Ian Golder's consuming devotion to macaroni and cheese dinner.
For the record: always Kraft Dinner; prepared with a wooden spoon (in fact, THE Wooden Spoon, with which Grandma used to chase us around the house, threatening a beating), but eaten with whatever utensil at hand; for dinner, but leftovers may be consumed at any time; more often than I care to admit; directions are for dopes.
Oh--and in adulthood, with plenty of both black and cayenne pepper, but in childhood...cut-up hot dogs. Ambrosia!
(Yes, we probably had some of that, too, with the mini-marshmallows and the nondairy topping.)
Aw. Grammy. I miss her...would gladly take a few whacks with The Wooden Spoon for the chance to tell her so.
For the record: always Kraft Dinner; prepared with a wooden spoon (in fact, THE Wooden Spoon, with which Grandma used to chase us around the house, threatening a beating), but eaten with whatever utensil at hand; for dinner, but leftovers may be consumed at any time; more often than I care to admit; directions are for dopes.
Oh--and in adulthood, with plenty of both black and cayenne pepper, but in childhood...cut-up hot dogs. Ambrosia!
(Yes, we probably had some of that, too, with the mini-marshmallows and the nondairy topping.)
Aw. Grammy. I miss her...would gladly take a few whacks with The Wooden Spoon for the chance to tell her so.
Red pen validation
If you're reading this, you probably know I'm an editor--primarily of technical documentation for my JOB job, but also dabbling in things like doctoral theses, updating my mother's resume after 21 years, and "you're funny! Make my personal ad funny!"
Anyway. I'm working with a new writer at the J-O-B: new to me, and new to writing in general. Today she submitted her first-ever draft to me, accompanied by the greatest e-mail I'll likely receive in my career:
"I just checked in my first document for Edit1. Please be really critical so that I don’t start out creating bad habits."
I'm telling you, this reaffirmed my entire accidental, thought-free trajectory into professional nit-picking. As long as we're on the same page from the get-go, we should get along just fiiiine.
Anyway. I'm working with a new writer at the J-O-B: new to me, and new to writing in general. Today she submitted her first-ever draft to me, accompanied by the greatest e-mail I'll likely receive in my career:
"I just checked in my first document for Edit1. Please be really critical so that I don’t start out creating bad habits."
I'm telling you, this reaffirmed my entire accidental, thought-free trajectory into professional nit-picking. As long as we're on the same page from the get-go, we should get along just fiiiine.
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