Tuesday, December 30, 2003
fwoppy solved!As the day passed I gathered more information on the elusive Floppy. Besides being yellow, not alive, not a banana, and of indeterminate size... I learned that Minnie really wants the floppy and that we have to find it!
Realized suddenly that it must be in the Hamtaro videotape we just got from the library! Yesss! Anyway, it is a floppy disk that the hamster owner lost. The hamsters get it back. Whew, now I know.
posted by badgerbag 12/30/2003 09:30:00 PM comment
Monday, December 29, 2003
inspirationAfter spending several days doing nothing but reading the ultimate marysue novels and the Potter Sue of the Day archives, I charge, grim, fell, helmeted, and violet-eyed, up the hill of terrible parodies.
I feel inspired to go dig up my Ayla-invents-quantum-mechanics "Lost Chapter from Valley of the Horses" thingamabob.
The "Half-Elf girl with firelizards who goes to Hogwarts" tempts me, but seems too easy. Now, _Ayla_ at Hogwarts, that would be hilarious. Molly from Neuromancer goes to Hogwarts... Joan of Arc goes to Hogwarts... heh... The possibilities are endless. Please suggest more terrifying combinations. I should write one for Jo's daughter with a teenage version of herself in it.
By the way, the Immortals series is not so good. Daine is boring the crap out of me as is the "I accidentally mind melded with Elric" yawn-inducing pages and pages of Chaos vs. Other Gods and swirly flowing lights. Meeting the platypus god was amusing for about a minute. Protector of the Small is still by far the best series.
Actually. Speaking of Moorcock. How about sending Elric to Hogwarts as the D.A.D.A. teacher.
posted by badgerbag 12/29/2003 11:09:00 PM comment
fwoppy?I can't figure out what "you have to face that floppy!" means. Possibly "Fwoppy"? It actually sounds hyphenated, or like Japanese: Fwo-pi, with equal accents on the 2 syllables. Every time Moomin asks me if I want to do it, I crack up. It's been a couple of hours.
It's not big, middle-sized, or small.
It's not good to eat.
It's yellow.
Whatever it is, you face it.
What the hell is it? Help me out here!
posted by badgerbag 12/29/2003 06:31:00 PM comment
2nd time aroundThe second time seeing Return of the King: the good parts got gooder and the bad parts got badder.
Badness:
* The Phial of Galadriel is not an oversized, poncy perfume bottle. Frodo wears it around his neck, for fuck's sake.
* Hobbits with mouths open, especially Merry and Pippin. As if they were about to cross over into the world of the horrible child actors in the Harry Potter movies. How is it through shooting three movies that no one ever told them to close their mouths once in a while?
* Hobbits gazing at each other.
* Hobbits gazing at each other like that and then not kissing. Just get on with it okay?
* Frodo being all wrong. Three modes: 1) about to hurl. 2) psychotic. 3) about to hurl AND psychotic. Where is the ethereal wise elfiness that pervades him as he gets thinner and wraithier? He's a fucking elf-friend. He should be yelping A Elbereth Gilthoniel a bit more.
* Denethor chewing.
* Denethor dying the totally wrong way. I have re-edited the movie in my own mind to put in the proper death scene with hands withering horribly around the Palantir.
* Denethor doing anything. He is supposed to be proud and kingly and austere and wise and noble and despairing from having been looking in the Palantir at Sauron too much. Grrr.
* Gandalf losing hope just to give Aragorn a big speech using the word "Hope" in it to bludgeon us yet again with the whole "Estel=Hope" thing.
* Flaming blobs of lava flying through the air very, very slowly, as if they were high up like jet planes, or meteors with parachutes.
* Merry and Pippin having no dignity. Pippin instead of nobly swearing allegiance just being bad comic relief.
* It not being clear that Faramir has some connection with Mithrandir.
* When Gandalf rides out of Minas Tirith to shine his really strong flashlight on the Nazgul, why did he bring Pippin with him? Why, why, why?
* Merry's arm being fucked up by the Witch King of Angmar, but then suddenly just okay again and he is riding off to battle to the gates of Mordor with everyone else. Unlike in the book no time has elapsed, which is fine, but then how did his arm get better?
* They fucked with Theoden's death speech and there was no reason to.
* Aragorn being all stupidly surprised at seeing Arwen.
* The cheesy, new-agey, "Let go!" or "Hold on!" speeches.
Goodness:
* The Riders of Rohan massing up on the hillside with the dawn behind them, and the fairly accurate exhoration and the spear clashing and most of all the marvelous charge that makes you suddenly realize everything about cavalry battles. I thought of Winston Churchill writing about the charge at the Battle of Omdurman and was rather excited. That the guy actually yelled "Forth Eorlingas!" Oh yeah! Swept away by the fervor of battle, I burst into tears, squared my shoulders, and mentally urged my horse to thunder dramatically over some orcs while I grimly stare out from my helmet, a little cross eyed from the nosepiece of my helm, sweeping around with my sword and screaming "DEAAAAAAATH!"
* Gondor looking just exactly as I had always imagined it.
* Any of the battle scenes or the scenes with a zillion guys and/or horses massed up for battle. Oh yeah.
* The way they painted the Mumakil's sides with cool war designs, and the chains between their tusks.
* The weird Celticness of the entryway to the Path of the Dead.
* Any time that an important speech was put in correctly. If Frodo had not said "Here at the end of all things" to Sam, I was going to have to go and assassinate someone. Thank god they made him say it - I don't want to go to jail.
* Arwen's damn cool green dress and green shiny beaded tiara/veil.
* The flags and banners and Minas Tirith armor being RIGHT.
posted by badgerbag 12/29/2003 05:27:00 PM comment
Saturday, December 27, 2003
uselessI am useless to the world until I finish reading these damn Tamora Pierce novels. Oh man. It's more Menolly-ish than Menolly. It's the perfect junk food for my brain.
***
The Alanna ones are not as good as the Protector of the Small ones.
***
posted by badgerbag 12/27/2003 10:21:00 AM comment
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Arrr, matey!It took T. several hours to put the pirate ship together for Moomin. I had started it but he took over most competently. The thing has RIGGING, for fuck's sake. I put most of the horrible little Bits, like the cannonballs and the... the other thingies... 1/4 inch itty bitty bits... evil bits... away in a box.
The wooden castle with knights and warhorses and flags and a king was a big hit. As was the etch a sketch.
Moomin now knows the word "portcullis."
I love my giant furry mukluks. I am ready to ride out bareback on my horse and invent fire, the travois, and every kind of herb tea. I will also butcher an entire woolly mammoth with a pointy rock.
Just finished a deadly Tamora Pierce novel. Someone told me about these long ago, but I shied from the idea of the self-indulgent marysueness of it all. However, I was wrong. Oh, the vile goodness. Everyone loves the knight chick (it was book 3 from the 2nd series). Her horse was abused by evil men and will allow only her to touch it. She has her own flock of magically intelligent SPARROWS and a one-eyed (or was it 3 legged? or both?) sentient hound dog. She's good at everything, stoic, muscley, is a brilliant jouster... at a party she notices the prince and his bride to be are too shy to get to know each other and she helpfully gets everyone to talk about things so interesting that the prince and princess forget their shyness and fall in love. If she had the opportunity to invent the travois I'm sure she would have done it. Even her sexist harsh conservative unfair teacher knight guy has to admit she is right about 800 times. All other evil sexist men are eventually shown up and die horrible deaths while stark raving mad. Meanwhile she also becomes flushed and tingly every time a cute knight comes by, begins making out all over the place with her new boyfriend, and goes to get magical birth control. Hurrah! Brilliant!
The mary-sue-boyfriend smells strongly of redshirt. Clearly he will die in the 4th book. He had better.
Rook is deep into Autumn Term. "Not the knife with 16 blades! Nooo!" Hah. 5 minutes later: "!!! They're going to be in the Third Remove aren't they! Holy shit!" He's mocking it but clearly likes it. I think he felt a romantic thrill at the packet of mechanical pencils that I gave him. Minnie liked her bowling shirt and I think best loved the purple kangaroo shoes her friend G. sent. She is the biggest shoe whore! People took turns playing some video game on T.'s phone that looks very addictive. I think a classic arcade game of some kind. It was then installed on every laptop.
Dinner came out great. I highly recommend the whole brine thing for turkey-cooking. It came right out of Joy of Cooking and was probably the best turkey I've had, probably because it was really salty, and there was lots of gravy, and the potatoes were fluffy, and this year everyone ate my random chemistry experiment orange-lemon-cranberry-clove sauce. I have no idea what I did differently this time. In fact I forgot it on the stove a bunch of times, and the orange was not a nice sweet orange but a sort of old sour one that had been sitting around for god knows how long.
We lounged. We read. We ate. We played with toys and took turns paying attention to Moomin. He liked the books though I think it was my aunt who sent him totally babyish books. He is way beyond board books. Bill Peet, Syd Hoff, and Helen Lester are the right speed. The etch a sketch has a hard hold on him. Video games loom darkly in his future, though he knows it not.
The house offer is likely to go through! OMG.
posted by badgerbag 12/25/2003 11:04:00 PM comment
xmas!merry christmas everybody!
There are TOO MANY PRESENTS. The wooden castle is set up in the living room with knights parading on horses and giraffes and zebras and unicorns.
My thumb has a blister from pushing pennies into those blue penny-collecting books.
Minnie is going to die when she sees the thing I found for her in the thrift store.
Rook pretends not to know that for the 5th year running I have gotten him a packet of cheap mechanical pencils from the drugstore, and some books that actually I want to read myself. Sucker!
posted by badgerbag 12/25/2003 12:29:00 AM comment
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
futureMcCoot talked about me helping him make a book. I was suggesting that his CS theory stuff, all the 90% finished papers that seem so strange and brilliant, well, that if he had a decent editor who would make him finish then he would have several books. It seems sad to me that he has all these articles and no books. There is a whole textbook - at least one and I think more.
His family seems odd. I notice a lot of collaborations with his wife from years ago, but none lately. I wonder if they lead separate lives? And he seems vaguely depressed about his son who gets up at 2pm every day to play video games and watch anime all day locked in his room - otaku. What is he projecting onto me, I would like to know and can pretty much guess? Smart with a lot of energy and will kick him in the ass to make him write. Well, I could do that but I am wondering if I should. I like my own thoughts and school is making me a little tired of focusing on the thoughts of other people.
Also, while I enjoy the wild brilliant idea-leaping of his futuristic speculations, I don't want to sanction any unsavory neocon weirdness about ugenicseay, or aceray asedbay intelligenceay. I am happy to speculate like arryLay ivenNay about birth lotteries and gladitorial combats necessary to have one's second or third child or tax deductions for the intelligent if they have a child but it gets very uncomfortable very fast. I genuinely like him and do respect anyone who will think and argue with no holds barred. But... tolerating the neocon thing at a high level of intellectual intimacy... for what? 20 bucks an hour? Tenative friendship? Riding on association with fame? Hrmmm.
I do like my idea of hooking him up with someone from enSFApay who would be able to devote more time to editing and would really know how to do it.
posted by badgerbag 12/23/2003 11:15:00 PM comment
house buying feverHouse-buying things proceed apace. We looked and we liked. It is not my dream house... yet... I could grow to love it... I'm wondering if a room could be added or a garage built and eventually converted to a real room. it will depend on the footprint of existing houses and lot size.
The Pilot and the Acrobat liked the back and I liked the front. Rook seemed neutral. "At first I thought cramped, then I thought cosy," he says, envisioning a world in which I do not come home with my truck full of crap and old bookshelves that I've picked up from next to dumpsters and then dump it in the (now possibly non-existant) garage. Certainly, having more space has never made me become more organized.
Splitting 725K between the four of us seems much better than 550K between me and Rook (really just rook since I am earning crap and might get pregnant again). I think we were eyeing each other picturing the "oh, can I drop off little Moomin/Nonamy with you for a hour..." situation. I would have to have clear boundaries laid down for such things as I have no normally occurring boundaries (laundry hours, etc. for the common space, do not wander into my house and drink up the last of my cranberry juice). I think the Acrobat has no boundaries either. The Pilot does. I would fear offending her in some way and not knowing it till 6 months later so I would really have find out her Rules and follow them... We would make up some House Rules... It would be like in Cheaper by the Dozen, where if you break a rule you have to put a quarter in a jar. Except a worse fine to be used for parties, or the hot tub building, or something.
There are no termites. It might be all legal construction. The roof doesn't seem to leak. The carpets are crappy but who cares. There is no dining room. I liked the little deck and the front yard. There are 2 bathrooms and almost no closets. the neighborhood is mostly rental, and about 60% spanish speaking which is okay by me. I wonder if the water heater is shared...
I can't decide whether one would call it the Maze or the Labyrinth. We would be labrynthians or mazians? Davee suggests "Geekibbutz". Geeky Butts?
posted by badgerbag 12/23/2003 04:53:00 PM comment
a funny thought on librariesWhile reading those Henning Mankel swedish mysteries (which were great) I noticed a funny thing. At several points the police really needed to find something out but the computer would be down or they would be unable to contact the necessary expert. I kept wondering, "Why do they not just call the public library? They have reference books specially on that subject..."
And then in the Venice books, which I read because I will read nearly any mystery though they were unspeakably badly written and the characters were grody, and it was smugly and stupidly sexist to the max... anyway in those Venice books suddenly the detective guy thinks "crap, I will never be able to find out this information on the illegal dumping of PCBs unless I find a bookstore that's open or can bribe my way into a university library" and he regrets for a moment that it's not America where they have public libraries.
So what is up with the Swedish mysteries? Do they not have public libraries there either? Is that possible? Surely not. How very strange. Thanks Ben Franklin...
posted by badgerbag 12/23/2003 12:32:00 AM comment
so far beyondThe Antonia Forest books have suddenly (after book 4) gone so far beyond "boarding school books" I am in awe. Oh my... I have never been so on the edge of my seat for plot events so very inconsequential. I also cried several times. Especially when Patrick was reciting poetry in the dark and they were galloping. Also during the entire play at the end. There is a point in reading a long series of books where you realize that the books themselves are only episodes and the story is longer and that the story has to be longer or it wouldn't be told right. That it is so complicated it couldn't be expressed properly otherwise.
There are very tiny, yet clear, glimpses of adults. It's so well done!
Nicola is all very well but of course I like Lawrie best.
posted by badgerbag 12/23/2003 12:08:00 AM comment
Monday, December 22, 2003
singinggot back from the annual Xmas carol singing party. It was good! Last year there were more good singers but I'll take whatever comes. I just like being in K. and M.'s house. Oh the books! And all the fuzzy brocady looking wallpaper and nifty chairs, and the old books. Did I mention that they have interesting books?
I was only able to sing the alto bits when they were the most retarded of alto parts, ie, a third lower than the main thing, or just the same note over and over with minor variations. Like on "Joy to the World". Rook and I, well, mostly that was me I suppose, cracked up like idiots on the song "Up on the Housetop" which I believe is actually about anal sex. "down through the chimney"... "Next comes the stocking of Little Will, Oh dear Santa fill it well". Then there's that whole line about the whip. It sounds like those Victorian porn books I was reading a few weeks ago.
The song "Masters in this Hall" was very cool - I had never heard it before. We did this near the end. What is not to like about a song where you get to say the word "holpen"? Yay!
Whenever K. and B. would bust out into their trippy really high soprano thing, I would think of the words "glorious trilling descant" and then of the words "fire lizards". Then I would burst out laughing. That sort of thing is impossible to explain. Even Rook just looked at me funny when I told him this in the car on the way home.
For the first time in their rather moldy basement amongst the bookshelves I saw some issues of Saint Nicholas magazine - I looked at the 1898-1915 ones. Kids in kids' books are always reading these. Finally I have at least seen what they look like! I was also intrigued by a book called Heroes of Darkest Africa that looked... oh... 1860-ish... with amazing color plates. And the shelves and shelves full of old pulp sf magazines. I mean really old ones! All nicely arranged...
posted by badgerbag 12/22/2003 12:32:00 AM comment
Saturday, December 20, 2003
wallowingTonight's wallowing in bed reading and reading will be different from all other nights (lately). Why is this night different from all other nights, you ask? Instead of being "guilty exhausted denial of the need to read a bunch of derrida and critical essays in spanish from 1943 and write a paper about it all" wallowing, it will be just glorious wallowing. Guilt free! Nothing looming!
There will be port and chocolate as well.
Even washing the dishes seemed relaxing. I could put on my apron and warble tunefully at the sink, if I knew how to warble.
I will make CDs for presents but since they are HOLIDAY presents not Xmas presents, I feel no pressure. Holiday could mean anything, really!
posted by badgerbag 12/20/2003 09:05:00 PM comment
Sei Shonagon's blogI'm really enjoying this blog version of the Pillow Book. How amusing! And how perfect!
Minnie, do you remember how we used to make strange Sei-like lists? There were some really disgusting ones.
posted by badgerbag 12/20/2003 08:53:00 PM comment
Friday, December 19, 2003
So young!Moomin is pregnant. He just came in the room and told me.
"Um... you're pregnant?!"
"Yes, I have a baby in my belly!"
posted by badgerbag 12/19/2003 06:09:00 PM comment
holing upIt is too rainy to do anything. I spent the morning shovelling out McCoot's office-office, which was fun but hard work. He seemed in low spirits. I liked being at Stfnord early in the morning to work. Ah, the cubes, the smell of copy paper, the skeevy coffee room, the hum of the central heat, the lure of possibly mooching some free stuff from what McCoot wants thrown away.
Moomin busily playing. He is into making these tall constructions - precariously balanced sideways block things. This latest one is called "A Model of a Machine".
When I came back inside after putting in some laundry, the smell of the spaghetti sauce was divine, divine... I made it the semi-nice way with canned tomatoes but fresh herbs and frying onions and tiny parmesan-breadcrumb-garlic meatballs. I was going to make zucchini but I don't know if I have the energy.
I keep thinking of Raelyn still. They had to take out a whole bunch of muscle from under her arms and her chest and so she has really limited use of her arms and probably a long long road of physical therapy.
Austerity plans for me are back in force. I am somewhat careless with money - not super awful like some people I know who do things like run up their credit cards with fancy sets of furniture - but bad like buying pointless office supplies or a 20 dollar t-shirt here and there and mostly bad about buying lunch for myself quite often, and too many books (though they are used, quantity makes up for lack of quality). I must stop pissing money away if we are going to be able to afford a house.
I have trouble picturing what life will be like in 30 years. 30 year loan - I would be 65 if we stayed in that house till it was paid off. Moomin would be almost my age. What do we want our life to be like? What is reasonable to expect that it CAN be like? I am unsure. It woudl not be like the fancy professor houses I sometimes visit. I like the idea of genteel and comfortable decay. To have a house, at least at first we would have to have a roommate. There is an extra bit of the house, but again, it is not a legal addition. What if I have another baby? And what about the co-housing dream? Instead of that I get to buy further into capitalism and as owner of the house with a renting roommate, I become an evil landlord. Hmm. Rook terrified of the trap. I can't make as much money as he does, etc. I consider plans like moving into tiny apartment and renting the rambly, ugly, comfortable house, so that we afford for him not to work for a while and he can write. Oh, god, what to do? It seems like continuing to rent is dumb on some level but it is also flexible.
Am perfectly comfortable now in life, but we are not saving money. Everyone talks sagely of building equity. My retirement account is crap, Rook doesn't even have one, and my social security will also be crap, given my years of joblessness or super crappy part time jobs. I would like to be able to help people, help bail Moomin out of jail and give my Uncle Looney a room for him to put his bowling trophies and rock polishers, in 2025 or so, not to be living in 1 room with my cats and all my books in storage as I eat dry toast 3 meals a day and water my lonely old lady geraniums. Clearly I will never get to travel (my dream of living in Peru or somewhere). We are 35, overeducated, and completely clueless.
posted by badgerbag 12/19/2003 05:38:00 PM comment
boarding school girls and hairbrushesI really loved the Antonia Forest book... She is like the Trollope of girls' school authors. The politics of all those relationships! The moral lessons.... usual british ones about fitting in and honesty and being a good sport even when situations are unjust.
I kept thinking of books like "Betty Wales, Freshman" or the Ruth Fielding ones where there is a definite heroine and she by her goodness and sweetness and loveliness naturally gets everyone else to be good. The villains turn out to be unhappy and misunderstood. Everyone joins the same club. (What would be the point of having a club if everyone were in it?)
These Autumn Term girls get along okay but their disasters are not magically fixed and everyone does not become likeable. The grownups do not find everything out -- badness is not always punished or discovered. Very cool!
I read all evening and it was good.
Iris, you should read "The Opoponax" for the stream of consciousness wacky analogue of schoolgirl life.
posted by badgerbag 12/19/2003 03:21:00 PM comment
Thursday, December 18, 2003
friend with breast cancerRaelyn needs help... I am sitting her thinking of her fleshhook thing at PowerSurge one year... and at all the parties and Gatherings... the best piercer and Santeria priestess.... funny and smart and sexy! I never knew her all that well but we used to play sometimes and had a lot of friends in common.
Anyway, she just got diagnosed with a very deadly form of breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. She doesn't have any insurance and is struggling to stay afloat.
A plea to anyone who has ever had a body piercing - send a little money to this dedicated pioneer of piercing. She is going to be in chemo, 5 days a week, for months. paypal to raelynlove@sbcglobal.net and check the updates from babs.
I know I just pimped the "Modest Needs" site and people were skeptical, but here is someone I know who really does need help. Her mom just died in September and her partner's brother also died last month and they're pretty overwhelmed.
posted by badgerbag 12/18/2003 08:02:00 PM comment
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
books, and THE movie, loomingI am lying in bed still surrounded by books.
Tomorrow... after the loan appointment.. after going to kinkos... after turning in the paper... after picking up Moomin...
I will lie in bed with the juicy delicious set of books that my strange soul sister Iris sent me! They are looking at me.. they are enticing me... I have heard the books singing each to each... Drool. I have been thinking of them all week and they came in the mail today just in time to give me an extra boost of anticipation.
New books! Mysterious books I've never heard of! I can't wait.
I am off in half an hour to see Return of the King. Moomin is at squid's house being babysat, probably watching Kiki with Iz and Leelo.
Thanks to Davee for organizing this amazing event renting the fanciest possible theater, the entire theater, and filling it with nice people!
My paper, while not 100% done, is 99% done. Just a print and proofread away.
More than the books I cling to the idea of all my nice friends as I emerge from my cave and think about joining the real world again.
posted by badgerbag 12/17/2003 07:26:00 PM comment
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
tizzyI am in a tizzy of paper writing and house finance talks with both sets of parents. Rook, my prince, seems to be stir-frying something because as I sit here writing I smell the divine odor of sesame oil and hear this sort of slow thumpy chopping. I would guess that broccoli is being chopped one little bit at a time. There is a determined thump about every 45 seconds. He likes everything to be the same size and is not fast about it. I have the warm happy feeling that food will appear at my elbow as if by magic, as an antidote to stress, like a wonderful valentine. Food = love, oh yes, especially after last week's barfing and listless broth sipping. Food... !
It will be nice to eat a dinner that is Rook style. That means there will be rice and everything is sesame oil and garlic and there may also be crunchy seaweed.
Badger style, everything is in olive oil and garlic, and there is fresh oregano and rosemary in it. There would be basil too if there weren't snails in the garden. Pretty much whatever dinner food either one of us cooks has the same personal flavor.
I have a 'southwestern variant' where it is still olive oil, garlic, and oregano, but there is no rosemary, and instead there is a lot of salsa and a can of adobo chipotle peppers.
However, for Moomin's nursery school potluck, I did not achieve either of our three watered-down cultural heritages. we were supposed to bring some food of our people or something....?! In an attempt to be funny I brought mac -n- cheese from a box and canned mandarin oranges.
The paper goes slowly. I am a little smug over a really bad pun about i-Barbie-rou because I am going on about how the author is constructed etc and then I play barbies with her. ahhh... I am silly...
posted by badgerbag 12/16/2003 10:01:00 PM comment
freakingI have not been writing about it but it is possible we will buy a house.
If you all could see me trying to make myself look respectable for the other people's house agent, you would die laughing. Fortunately our own house agent is supercool and a freakophile.
I want this house. no other house comes close.
posted by badgerbag 12/16/2003 09:17:00 AM comment
Monday, December 15, 2003
audacity of authenticityMe to Rook: "I figure I can't go wrong by being audacious in this paper..."
Rook: "I suspect you figure you can't go wrong by being audacious, anytime."
Oop... caught!
posted by badgerbag 12/15/2003 11:25:00 PM comment
hell has frozen overI believe I said that is what would happen if I ever enjoyed looking at a wedding dress magazine.
Search down the page for this dress called Vomitous Mess. I would wear this dress any time! It's not just for weddings! Oh my god! I want to be a tidepool before I die!
posted by badgerbag 12/15/2003 09:31:00 AM comment
The Curse of CrapilionThis is like my 4th attempt to read "The Curse of Chalion". I do not often reject a book, but the writing made me cringe. It is the pukiest and wrongest type of romance novelly, workshoppy, unnatural, scrape your literary fingernails across the blackboard writing, and it never gets better. I can't figure out why people like it. I become fascinated with exactly what is wrong with some random sentence, and I keep reading it... and then the same problem happens AGAIN two sentences later. I keep howling and reading them out loud and going "Rook! You must hear this! How can anyone have written it?" This time I will finish the book, as I am halfway through and have been sucked into the (dumb) plot. Even the "plot twists" or "moments of suspense" are more hamhanded than the worst stinking offenses that the bastard child of david eddings and piers anthony could dream up. AFTER its lobotomy.
I want to slap every single one of the characters. The perky high breasted princess, the perky high breasted other princess, the old guy who keeps telling himself how he is really at 35 too old for those princesses, the saintly high born slave, the evil guy, the other evil guy, the old prince, and the young sleazy prince. And the crow. And the white rat. Slap them! I want to slap all the bad metaphors, and the thesaurus-stinking bad word choices that just don't fit and will never fit, and the sentences that are like "instead of describing what is there, I the author will cleverly describe what isn't there in several incorrectly nested layers of negatives." Slap them! Every paragraph, it's like she had an outline that said, "Cazaril is surprised" or "The crowd watches the ominous omen" and then she obfuscates that concept for about 8 sentences, according to every cliche of a manual on how to get your creative juices flowing and write a novel. Every time our author crams all 5 senses into one paragraph, I slap it. Slap those paragraphs! Box their aural orifices!
Here is an example. Keep in mind that "The Roknari", "Umegat", and "the roya's groom" are all the same guy. The paragraph is meant to give us this nugget of info: "Cazaril notices that the obviously high born slave Roknari guy has a saintly aura. Look! (hammer) Caz is seeing everyone' auras! He must be pressing down too hard on his eyelids to trip out on the phosphenes! Or else, he just gained a level!":The Roknari shone with a white aura like a man standing in front of a clear glass window at a sea dawn. Cazaril shut his eyes, though he knew he didn't see this with his eyes. The white blaze still moved behind his lids. Over there, a darkness that wasn't darkness, and two more, and an unrestful aurora, and off to the side, a faint green spark. His eyes sprang open. Umegat stared straight at him for the fraction of a second, and Cazaril felt flensed. The roya's groom moved on, to present himself with a diffident bow to the archdivine, and step aside for some whispered conference.I predict with confidence that everyone reading this will laugh as they read the word "flensed". Thesaurus! Or at least, really bad synonym choice. Unless Cazaril is actually a magic whale and he feels like the blubber has just been stripped off of him, lose the flensing. Also note "at a sea dawn" (the whaaaale! the white whaaaale?) This hypothetical man might stand in front of a window at dawn, and he might stand there at sea. He would not stand there at a dawn if I had anything to say about it. Moving on... Why the white blaze? What blaze? Can't you use the word "aura" again since that's what you're talking about? Then in a daringly postmodern way, we the readers, with no warning, are thinking Cazarils thoughts since we are behind his closed eyes which, though he does not see with his eyes, are noticing some more auras that are not called auras but are instead sparks, darknesses, and auroras. Without warning we are barfed right back out into 3rd person omniscient. His eyes spring open. Not for a fraction of a second, but for the fraction of a second, the other guy flenses him. Ew, what's that smell? The other guy, really the same guy but with the 3rd name for him in one paragraph, bows to someone else and does something else but we don't know what because even though we are 3rd person omniscient, Cazaril is so stunned by his aura-seeing or not-seeing, that stunned-ness is radiating around and we can't tell what anyone is whispering to anyone else and besides it wasn't really important what he said, we just wanted to establish that he does something, a-la-MY barbie comes over here and she DOES SOMETHING, whisper whisper whisper.
I know that I write like the brain-damaged, drug-addled, gramatically challenged, genetically engineered mutant daughter of Moon Unit Zappa, Kathy Acker, and Louisa May Alcott, but still. I have my limits. I can tolerate this kind of crap writing when it comes at the end of an Andre Norton novel, but that is because ... well... just because...
posted by badgerbag 12/15/2003 12:19:00 AM comment
wild badger on the loose!Day recklessly spent loafing, reading, buying xmas presents for nephews, and stuffing myself with incredible paella, dolmas, chipotle tomato soup, ginger wine, and some sort of persian candy at Brenda's house. After not eating since Tuesday it was HEAVEN. She is a sort of food poet. I must remember to introduce her to D. over some more poetry. My buddy Pastiche was in top form with his impassioned readings which I recorded... I forgot to record myself. There was another guy who seemed pretty nice but he did not read.
I had a brain wave while B. was talkkng aboutt her aunt's tea caddy, and explained to everyone that it must be called a caddy because of the chinese measure of weight (the catty or cattie). It was a glorious moment of deduction and I wished that Minnie had been there to howl in outrage and protest that I was making it up. Yes, I was making it up, but I was absolutely right.
Iris, remind me to record some CDs of us all reading poetry and I will mail them to you later this week.
I am now listening to Chavela Vargas singing "Macorina". On repeat. It makes my heart stop beating. Chavela! You can put your hand here! I don't mind if you are like 80, or even that for all I know, you are dead! Touch me baby yeah!
I feel like a new woman. Food! I sing its praises!
It's nice to be back, and perky, and full of womly vigor.
yes I said womly. Deal with it, all you wim (and menwim).
posted by badgerbag 12/15/2003 12:00:00 AM comment
Saturday, December 13, 2003
ho!Cheese and toast! Soup! Hot chocolate! Doing the laundry! Just realized it is white elephant night at virtual geekhouse. I still feel wobbly and headachy, but I'm going out anyway. Try and stop me.
posted by badgerbag 12/13/2003 06:01:00 PM comment
Friday, December 12, 2003
Army nurseA funny thing about my whole Cherry Ames obsession. Now that I'm ragging on my mom I have to write it down. While I was sick, I had one of those fantasies that often haunt me in a stressful situation. (I was also at times just thinking "I want my mommy!" and imagining the angelic version of my mom, bearing a tray and ginger ale and a cool hand on my brow.)
In this one, I am a bit older and my mom has suddenly become decrepit. She is stuck in bed for some reason and is terrified and fretful and possibly also in pain. But I know just what to do. I know that she wants everything Just So, not because she is a nagging bitch, but because she is uncomfortable if it isn't. So I do it all for her perfectly.
Her bed has nice clean sheets and I make the bed with hospital corners. From reading Cherry Ames so many times, I know how to change the sheets on a bed with the person still in it. I change the sheets every day if she wants it. I bring her nice food on an attractive tray that I have fixed up with a little vase with flowers. I reassure her that my kitchen is sparkling clean and i have ajaxed everything and sanitized the dishes the way she would do it if she could. The food is all just what she likes to eat and I offer her choices. There are prunes. There is Raisin Bran. There are canteloupes. I ask her to find wonderful recipes out of "Lite n Easy" magazine and I cook them. The coffee is lukewarm, as she prefers it. As much as possible she can control the food - there is a sugar bowl and everything. I check like a good waitress to make sure everything is okay and to see if she might need something extra that I've forgotten. I clear all the dishes away and wash them immediately.
I provide music, movies and books that she would like --- not that I like, but crappy romance novels that I know she wants. I offer distraction and service regularly. I leave her to herself but keep checking to make sure she is okay. Possibly I ask her advice, tactfully flatter her, or comb her hair in some attractive new way and adjust the lacy, flowing sleeves of her bedjacket (Cherry Ames and countless other pukey girls from those novels always do this.) I bring happy smiling children to visit her and then whisk them away when she appears careworn. Possibly she gets better, or, in the fantasy, just remains there forever.
Meanwhile, somehow I manage to have a perfectly fulfilling life in addition to all this.
This perfect care pays her back for every nice thing and every shitty thing she has ever done for me.
posted by badgerbag 12/12/2003 10:05:00 PM comment
brain makeover showholy fuck. Minnie is being tortured by our mom. At the mall, and then with some video of a makeover show.
We have this nice mom. Sometimes she is replaced by an evil parallel universe mom who comes here when there is a psychic transporter accident.
I am nearly hyperventilating with rage, shame and concern. My best idea so far is to have a brain makeover show, where you take shallow, insecure assholes and then help them see how they could be nice people who think about things other than nagging, bossing, criticizing, and hating both other people and their own selves. WTF with these makeover shows. I enjoyed watching Queer Eye for its commodification of maleness. (Because I think we can't totally fix or undo the commodification of femaleness so it might as well be equalized a bit.) But people are so fascinated with these shows and they are all about packaging and marketing yourself as a certain kind of product. If they must, how about packaging it a little differently...? How about teaching someone not how to make themselves look nice, or respectable, or hip, but about how to make over what they spend their time THINKING about so that they are not always thinking about how they look! Jesus fuck! What a waste of time! A little goes a long way, then think about something ELSE!
As far as my own clothes and "look"! Fucking hell! Either I dress in what is cheap and comfortable, or I dress to look like a whore! There is no middle ground. Yes, it will be useful to learn that middle ground someday, but the time is not now. For now it is, button down shirt, tuck it in with belt, unscuffed boots, and black jeans. That is as far as it is going! I will now return to bitching with Minnie about our mom, after which I will read Seneca, Foucault, and Cherry Ames until I pass out from the drugs.
***
Later I have other ideas, about the ideal world that is the dream of the cynic. My mom's ideal world (okay, try to forget for a minute that a crucial factor of it is that there are no fat, old, poor, or non-white people in it...) *ahem* My mom's ideal world would be a haven of order, a perfect island of harmony and serenity, a garden under her own cultivation. It would be perfect beauty down to the last exquisite detail. She would be its queen. There would be no snoring. No one would fuck with her shit. She would wear a ball gown every day, and have a tiara.
As a dream of an ideal world, this is not so awful. Ideal beauty. A garden. Orderliness. Harmony. In fact, picturing it helps me out a little in understanding her and feeling a little bit of pity for her apparent misery.
Unfortunately it also helps me understand why she hates herself so much, and she can't stop complaining about how ugly, ignorant, fat, and annoying everyone else is.
On the other hand, it exposes that she is a fascist, and shares the dreams of an emotionally stunted, prissy, self-centered, 6 year old child.
***
Other ideas: possibly she could be helped by basic techniques of any sort of halfway decent therapy, like making lists and charts of goals and things one likes and dislikes and then ways to get more of the likes into your life and eliminate as many bad irritating things as possible.
Or get her to track or agree to be tracked on everything she says so that it is in categories... the categories would be (unfortunately)
a) criticisms of other people's looks
b) criticisms of the ways other people do things
c) self-hatred (intelligence)
d) self-hatred (looks)
e) something about housecleaning
f) something about clothing
Are there any other categories? Well why the hell not? WTF? What percent of what is said in a single day, or a week, are in those categories?! Ponder, and correct.
***
Other idea:
She is perfectly happy how she is and isn't going to change. I should butt out and keep my distance and just tolerate her weirdness. Her weaknesses are her strengths, ie, she understands how awful the world can be (and as you know, I can bitch).
posted by badgerbag 12/12/2003 08:40:00 PM comment
ufo detectorI really want to build this ufo detector! This guy's blog is great all the way too - very funny. His comments on Cory Doctorow, the painting process, all things Japanese, politics, war, and the thuggish U. of Iowa football team thrilled me to the core. Clearly a prince among geeks. I am his bitch! Go, Charles!
As soon as I get better and after I turn in my paper, I am off to radio shack to fulfill my inner 7 year old... Ooooh... and lookit this Science Toys catalog Not toys, but the bits and pieces! Must... build... electromagnet... !
In this description of how to "Make a Permanent Rainbow" from a giant puddle of clear nail polish, the writer forgot to mention that you will also be high as a fucking kite from huffing all that nail polish - a helpful factor in any rainbow viewing.
posted by badgerbag 12/12/2003 02:10:00 PM comment
the rabbleOkay, those croissant crumbs might have been a mistake.
Clear liquids! Maybe a little toast, but no fat! mother of god. where is my common sense?
posted by badgerbag 12/12/2003 12:36:00 PM comment
a visitJo came over. I am up and around, sort of, a little bit. I think one more meclazine might help. After about 1/2 hour up I am flat on my back again. Yet there is part of a (slightly painful) soy latte inside of me. This latte is clamoring - agitating - to be free, to escape the confines of my body, and yet I have an iron will. I refuse to barf. I am the supreme dictator. Mind over matter. My body is not a democracy. There is also a rebellious one-fourth of a croissant. It shall not pass. At least not upwards and not now.
Life is good! Life is improving!
Everything smells bad in here. I wish to bleach everything and then bleach it again. That includes my own body. I will now go and shower and change out of the sweatpants I have been wearing for the last 3 days.
Reading: The Little Drummer Girl. In November on my trip to Boston, I checked out an extremely fancy airport bookstore - and they had EVERYTHING in there - yet no LeCarre. How can this be? I double checked. Still no LeCarre. It was as if he had entered some twilight zone of literature - too good for an airport novel, yet not good enough to be in the "classics" section of the fancy WH whatever bookstore along with Wuthering Heights.
posted by badgerbag 12/12/2003 11:09:00 AM comment
Thursday, December 11, 2003
finn family barfytrollMoomin came up to me solemnly.
"Mama are you sick?"
"Yes, I'm a little bit sick. That's why I'm staying in bed."
"Oh. Well, I'm sorry."
"Thanks honey."
"Well, just use your words, mama, just talking, no crying and whining. I don't like to hear your crying and whining oKAAAAY? "
It's funny how that stuff comes back to bite you on the ass, isn't it?
posted by badgerbag 12/11/2003 08:13:00 PM comment
Jack Chick fhtagn!Who Will Be Eaten First? Brilliant! Hilarious!
posted by badgerbag 12/11/2003 06:12:00 PM comment
Thank you, Thor!One meclazine later, the promise of miso with ginger SOON has cheered me greatly. I can now move my head on the pillow without freaking out. Rook has taken our sprightly young sprog to the store.
I said something to him about barfing up all that soup all night long and now being unwilling to eat chicken soup. "I know," he said, sounding traumatized. "I was cleaning it out of... out of the..." "Um, okay. Stop. I know." I forgive him for not being the perfect Army Nurse... I mean... I would have just thrown those towels into the washer and dumped in a lot of bleach. Apparently he tried to clean the sick out of them first. I feel rather humbled...
Foooooood... I nibbled a saltine... very slowly... chewing and swallowing each tiny nibble... imagining I was on a balsa raft savoring the very last quarter-ration of hardtack... Thor Heyerdahl looking emaciated yet manly was at my side, moaning through cracked and bleeding lips... the effort to move was almost too much for him but he found the strength to give me... the last saltine! Thank you my beloved! Your sacrifice will not be in vain!
posted by badgerbag 12/11/2003 05:19:00 PM comment
stilli just got up thinking i could drive and pick up moomin but no. i can't. halfway to the car my medullary vominting center asserted its existence quite forcefully. at this point just turnign my head on the pillow overwhelms me with nausea time for another meclazine. called squid in tears. i cant believe rook left me here all alone. dude if you get sick i will show you what a good army nurse should do. i feel like i am fuckkng dying here. i dont know how there is any fluid left in my body. where is it coming from? someone help me?
posted by badgerbag 12/11/2003 02:05:00 PM comment
hallucinatoryThoughts vague and hallucinatory this morning. I think here on day 3 of my ordeal my spirit guide is ready to come to me. Drank water. Got up and made tea and drank it slowly. I don't want to keep writing about being sick...
I have tried to read this morning but it is mostly beyond me. Proust? No. Eddison? No. Descending a few rungs on the ladder of literary complexity, Cynthia Voight? No. Stupid looking novel by Avram Davidson? No. (It's so badly written, it's like trying to read in Morse code...) Sleep? No. I just lie here in a fog of images and waking dream-states.
Some people throw up easily. I am not one of them... even when i know it would be better to get it over with... my body is saying NO. I read this dry yet funny monograph on the subject earlier this morning during a lucid interval. "Vomiting is a complex process, the elements of which are coordinated by the medullary vomiting center." heh heh heh. The Medullary Vomiting Center. It doesn't sound like a place you want to visit!
The thing saving me today is listening to beethoven. it gives me something to hallucinate to.
posted by badgerbag 12/11/2003 12:32:00 PM comment
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
in motionmotion sickness pills work great for this if you can keep them down long enough.
i can now drink water, and have stopped moaning incoherently. I'm sure the neighbors thought my cervix was getting up to around 8 cm dilated for a while there.
posted by badgerbag 12/10/2003 02:50:00 PM comment
oh helpbarfing all night... god.. how do people endure this? trembling... sweating... heaving... naked.. freezing cold... every towel in the house is now filthy... Laying on the floor in the bathroom nearly all damn night I felt like allen ginsberg's mom.
posted by badgerbag 12/10/2003 08:35:00 AM comment
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
migraine?Maybe this is a migraine headache. I've never had one. I feel very strange. 1000 whatevers of ibuprofen is doing fuck-all. Plus the tylenol. nothing. not a dent in it.
reading hurts. I keep turning off the light and just lying here bored and groaning with the wet facecloth. But it's too boring so I read a few more pages of "Two Little Women" or read net news until I can't take the pain anymore. Then I turn the light off again. Boredom? Or pain? back and forth is the only way.
Please let it just magically be tomorrow...
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 09:06:00 PM comment
jesus h fucking mother of god christ my head hurtsIf I die, please cremate me and scatter in pacific ocean, and remember to put up my memorial bench with otter reading a book bronze statue, and I want my friend rob to be my literary executor...
holy fuck my head and neck hurt. i am losing it over here.
note to self, get flu shot in october next year, if I'm not dead by tomorrow.
whoever wrote all those hypochondria inducing articles in those 1977 readers digests can go fuck right off. they are NOT helping this situation.
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 06:35:00 PM comment
flue? flew? flu?It must be... unless i have meningitis or something.... that brain tumor acting up again...
Nooooooo!
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 05:57:00 PM comment
LilianaMy sister in law just had her baby and it sounds like everything went fine! Hooray! VBAC works! I think she had planned for a 2nd cesareana nd had it scheduled but then just went into labor and wham, a baby. I can't wait to hear the details. Welcome Liliana!
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 04:45:00 PM comment
pointyWhy do women wear those pointy toed shoes? I was in the elevator yesterday at school and heard an anxious, yuppy-ish "click click click click" and sure enough a pointy toed chick with a hundred dollar haircut and a large latte twittered into the elevator with me. I could not stop staring. I just wanted to grab her by the shoulders and look into her eyes and yell, "What is wrong with you! NO ONE HAS FEET THAT SHAPE!"
Why am I a freak for having a simple piercing and silly hair - as if wearing those fucking shoes weren't a much worse body modification!?
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 04:42:00 PM comment
Oh no!I woke up this morning with what might have been hangover. I had a glass of wine at the playgroup and then some port before bed. could that tiny amount of alcohol have given me this weird headache and queasy feeling?
All day - trying to write this paper - failing to get anything significant done - read a few essays in spanish and took notes - I was feeling crappy and actually like it was this major struggle to concentrate. I got groceries and felt like I was about to faint. (Stopped at Safeway, realized I was not going to cross picket line, got back into car with a flyer from the protesters, went to Albertsons...) Panic! I could not deal with reality. Rook will have to finish the shopping. Driving to get Moomin I realized this was it. I am sick. He is now watching a video and I barely have a grip on reality.
I think the flu shot takes a couple of weeks to kick in. So, I'm screwed. Why did I hang out with my friends when I knew perfectly well they all had it? I could slap myself.
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 04:36:00 PM comment
frocks and smocksI love when the translation mailing list gets pedantic about the meaning of one word. "Is a frock the same as an unfashionable dress?" just got 10 instant replies dissecting "frock". Very entertaining! It varies whether you are in England, the U.S. or Australia. (England: can be used normally. U.S.: oldfashioned word vs. oldfashioned (yet in the sense of vintage, not unfashionable) dress. Oz: jury still out, but leaning towards "unfashionable thing your grandma would wear".
My feeling is that the word is an old-fashioned word, but it does not necessarily mean an old-fashioned dress. So if I said to Minnie, "come and see my new frock," the connotation is not that the dress is old-fashioned - it is that I am being silly for using a somewhat archaic word. It becomes funnier when the dress is something that would make Elizabeth Bennett keel over and die.
My other images of frocks centered around 18th century dresses involving frills, frippery and furbelows. Or possibly some sort of petticoated victorian child's outfit without a fitted waist. It is a word often encountered in bad regency romance novels, where they also must refer to "the ton" and someone's flashing emerald eyes and broughams and the writers just cram in anything that they think of as fitting in that period even if it doesn't. Evelina or E. Bennett didn't have frocks so much as gowns, I am pretty sure.
The other question was: if "frock" is not the right word for an unfashionable dress, what would you call it? (Sack, bag, shapeless bag, ugly dress, rag, house dress... )
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 09:38:00 AM comment
fairylandWent on Sunday to Fairyland in Oakland. Photos of hideous painted cement sculptures from 1972 to follow soon. Moomin was enthralled by the 'show' about kwanzaa, hanukah, xmaas, diwali, ramadan, and the chinese new year. Welcome to the future!
posted by badgerbag 12/09/2003 12:25:00 AM comment
Monday, December 08, 2003
laughed till I criedShades of Close Encounters. Squid's daughter Iz, tonight, sculpting her bowl of pale, non-kraft, organic macaroni and cheese: "Look! I made Gondor!" (It actually kind of did look like Gondor - white city... towers...walls... on a hill... etc. We turn and attempt not to be seen laughing. Our shoulders shake.) "Look! Now I made Barad-dur! And here's Orthanc!"
I was reminded of the first time I ate dinner at my boyfriend's house in high school. We were in the hand holding stage but rapidly progressed to making out in his backyard hot tub. The other main activity I remember doing with him was creating weird fake questionnaires, putting them on clipboards, and accosting people in the mall to answer the questions. It was the best use of the mall! We tried starting with reasonable questions and progressing gradually to insulting, crazy, and offensive.
Anyway, at the table with his family, I suddenly noticed that, with a crazed look in his eyes, he was silently sculpting his mashed potatoes into the Devil's Tower. That was it for me... I couldn't stop laughing... no one else seemed to get it, or care, and there was a horrible stony silence from them all as I laughed uncontrollably for really long time and he continued sculpting, finally quitting to crack up at me.
posted by badgerbag 12/08/2003 08:34:00 PM comment
cookies gonewhump made cookies and brought them over last night and there are only 2 left. Who will get them? How can we eat so many cookies? But we can.
Up to SF this morning for myth class, last minute library visit. I am so happy to be over this cold. I didn't get the horrible flu - just a cold thanks. Whew. O mighty flu shot, please work your magic and shield me from harm.
BTW I am familiar with the argument that taking too many antibiotics breeds antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, but lately I have heard people (readers? was it you?) saying things like "Of course I would never get a flu shot, just my bit in the struggle not to breed mutant super-flu viruses." [virii?] Isn't the flu evolving and mutating, ie genetic drift, all the time anyway? Why would a vaccine force it to mutate faster? I poked around in anti-vaccination pages to figure it out. Could find nothing but fears of mercury (jury still out) and ranting about big pharma.
posted by badgerbag 12/08/2003 09:03:00 AM comment
Saturday, December 06, 2003
the jargon of audaciticity, the jargon of nonsensitosityThis makes my brain hurt: about The Jargon of Authenticity. I never remember what "ontological" means, for fuck's sake. Heidegger. I used to enjoy randomly browsing "poetry language thought" but it's damned unlikely I'm going to buckle down and understand this. But somewhere in there it is a good stretchy-hurt like I am getting some vague new ideas. Forcing myself into logic might just be a waste of a good brain. Logic shmogic (sorry J.)
Maybe I should stick to the shiny, candy-like goodness of "In 1926" for my sources on authenticity.
posted by badgerbag 12/06/2003 10:51:00 PM comment
pressure cooker on highThis is what happens when my mind is under pressure - a form of procrastination from writing what I'm supposed to be writing. Reams and reams more were written this morning while standing in line for a flu shot. Also scribbling in my lap at stoplights. Not the novel I meant to write, at all. (novel? memoir.) A lot of work but not the hard, nasty, brutish, work that, for me, is logical thought.
Meanwhile, back in Reality Land, spent the entire afternoon at Mascha's kid's birthday party. Last year was a fun filled Peaches party where we sat around playing with cars, trucks, and helicopters while listening to "Fuck the Pain Away" and that other peaches song that has the refrain "I was only double A but I was thinkin' triple X."
This year's party lived up to expectation at several points: yummy armenian food. somewhat disturbing and disturbed grandparents agitatedly flitting about exuding nervous disapproval. Sasha (code names as usual) loudly saying things not at all for a 4 year old's party, like "Vibrating Butt Plug" and "crotch licking", in rather attractive thick accent. I chimed in with many sailor-like swears and hookerish flirtation, as anyone being Bad just eggs me on. Kids all happy and cute playing with toys and getting along. Rook playing with them. Jo watching everything like a slightly bemused, wise, human sponge (and will she write of the surreal event? I can't wait to see.)
The whole house was like a huge toy and I had the pleasant feeling that if I wanted to take off all my clothes and roll around in some paint on a giant canvas, this would be the place to do it. (Again, this feeling is not quite what one associates with the words "4 year old's birthday party".) Loud techno music with dirty lyrics. Mascha looking cute and gothy with a million little butterfly clips in her hair. Her paintings up everywhere. I liked them. Her husband, who must have flirted with everyone in the room, constantly making eyes and exuding charisma like a sleazy, punk, human van de graaf generator, wrestling with me and trying to pour vodka straight from the bottle down my throat. (May I remind the gentle reader again that this is in front of his wife, parents, and multiple 3 and 4 year olds, fortunately not in front of my own mimosa, mimosa as in "sensitive plant", of a child. Unfortunately, "totally inappropriate and offensive" is always a big turn on for me. ) Clearly their kid will be golfing, joining the republican party, and dating bulemic ballerinas, along with my kid, in several years.
posted by badgerbag 12/06/2003 07:14:00 PM comment
what is it?Rain flooded the ditches, flooded the streets, sent us out into the streets in old sneakers, me with no shirt dancing drops spat out at us the size of grapes - warm, perfect liquid hail and down my browned body through the shorts and into the oldest sneakers with no socks, squedge, squedge, ankles itching from the grass. The street was free, rioting, the BJs older sister’s cousin’s high bed pickup with a rope tied on. Just lighter than milk chocolate melted and swirling with a yellow tinge, or coffee with powdery creamer, the ditchwater came up to the raindrops and shook hands as they flowed clear and crawfish yellowdirt into each other’s arms. One of the BJs would take off on the surfboard holding on to the rope for dear life and glory. up the block, turnings and slidings and a splashing shearing wake to ride and surf or warily hold tight to the mailbox trying to keep your mouth shut because that was like sewer water down there in the ditches. Where the delicate pond weeds, small rocks, blackness of twigs acidifying in the pineneedle soil under clear water - the pondweed with the small leaves like babys breath or the imagination of watercress and dragon nymphs hawking wild in there on good days among the minnows and frog eggs. It was delicate. Microscope water was good there. Where, when it was all the yellowtan mud like the coat of the infinite whippets bred by the BJs mysterious family? It is right, it is good, come down, rain, come up, ditchwater, swampwater for you have not fooled me and my father has told me about the cypresses. We watched the tadpoles start to change a while back. Down the grey prosaic cement of of our street just beyond there is the swamp and the blackwater, where there was a cypress there is now a champion, a victory, where there was sand, water, bent knee roots stickin out, and the peat laying down waiting for the bodies destined for the bog, now there are new white, white as snow roadbeds with candy yellow bumps down the middle and curbstones with paint. The streets ghost streets to me on my bike in the non-rainy days, smooth to a skateboard, and the forest all between. Light, never a clear light because a humid wavering swampness, the scraggle and rag and tag of the aspens or willows, pines marking the high spots. Grey sand dotted with the black wet wood. Once in the shallow sand ditch behind the fence on the border between the old road, our old pebbly sugar melting granular road through the houses, adn the new frosted smooth knived skateboard road through the woods, there was alley or shallow ditch that had been the ruts of large earth moving equipment, there we go to feel the clay sand mud smooth and perfect in our toes, because the warm rain has set our feet free, our feet hard callused dark brown from walking across black tar parking lots barefoot when the tar’s melting in the hundred degree sun, melting so you breathe it. These brutal feet of ours long for the cooled mud - a texture very like cornstarch and ashtray sand - smooth and siftable but for the little black charcoals of the bad teenagers that would sit out here make a fire which is the source of fear because there could be glass from those drunks. The earth moving machinery has never been seen but its ruts wore deep enough to make this an honorary ditch. Julie is out! We meet. Come on! You have to see! Because, because. I sweep her with me to the temple. As we arrive in the sand alley between forest worldroad and house worldroad we see that the sand is all black and the puddle, the ditch, is alive with tiny, perfect, beautiful frogs. Froglets! I am wearing no shirt and the grape-rain pelts me. One pelts me right at the crown of my head and as I have been reading a book stolen from the 6th grade classroom about zen I think “auuum... shower in light” as the top of my head chakra opens up to the rain and I realize I am a little near-naked froglet. Akela would bend his head to sniff me and accept. We pick them up, we nudge them aside with our toes squinching forward in the mud. Tiny perfect feet, soft damp bumps. Roughness. The frogs pee on our hands in fear. The Murph’s house is flooding again surely and there will be soggy rolls of carpet laid out by the mailbox and adult head-shaking all week. The frogs riot joy fear hunger. How can they all live. Where does the river run? It is just a ditch. It doesn’t go anywhere. It runs into the street. There is a gutter here in the new forest road. The gutter runs into our ditches. Our ditches run down into the big ditch on Victory Forest Road. The BJs come up yelling and we yell and we will not let them ruin our darling frogs the frogs of miracle because the BJs are a pack of savage wild children no one can understand with their blond fluff on all of them, how many, 7, 9, one for every year, running wild all around and the oldest one a girl Melissa my age with freckles and long straight honey blond hair she liked to swing behind her to feel its weight to have maybe 9 little brothers nearly naked all named something like BJ or RJ or Jimbo running around hooked up to the back of cousin Earl’s muscle truck and now in this mud fight where we backed off almost immediately since against a swarm of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 year olds, there is no defense if you are not willing to drown them in the warm muddy street. We went back to dancing, diving, swimming, getting out pool toys. Danica’s mother whose hair was always neatly combed and whose little brother was a thug would not allow it as she thought the water was germy. Salman and Zainab on the corner stayed inside and I wondered why. On a raft on the muddy amazon we battled alligators. Once, another time of rain like this, I had a shirt on, so older, driving home in the blue ford pinto station wagon, water swirled up under my feet, under my mother’s feet. One of us or both, or was this years later with me driving? had kicked a hole right thorugh the rusted shell of the carpet-less front seat floor and against the model airplane metallic flake paint blue of the car interior, now that ochre swirl, warm and shameful like wetting your pants, somehow my fault or her fault or mine from my faulty navigation but we backed up and got out before the car stalled up to our knees or my knees possibly her short knees little and birdlike and helpless never knowing what to do but doing it anyway my mom. Now in the warm grape juice rain which I like to think could be wine, wine, wine, dionysus, frogs, vines, grow on this truck and ford pinto station wagon and lead me to the leaping sea. Now the rain is just sheets and sheets of the waterblobs like waterballoons with no shell-impact to them and only gentle explosion that could be blood. My sister like a little elf in a dirty tshirt to her knees and no pants and her thin hair straggling down the color of the yellow mud and an enormous grin all the way splitting her face up and radiating. We leap and are mustangs. We run the Grand National and fall at Becher’s. We do the nes-tea plunge. Our parents watch us from the windows from the maybe 2 foot rise of hill above the ditch that saves our house from having its carpets rolled up every time like Mr. Murph. We wave and run off through the hip deep water to the forest road again. The frogs have scattered. It is getting dark. Someone has a flashlight. I would have liked to go on the surfboard at the back of the truck in its screaming wake, but knew it would get me in deep trouble. The forest, the ghost of the forest with some slender trees marked by orange plastic tags like crepe paper party streamers, but durable in the rain; a fallen tree of a kind I didn’t know, maybe a cypress, bark smoothly absent, muscle-knotted twisty, fallen across two other trees with the wet rough black pine bark, clearly a good place to build a tent or a lodge shelter if I had an army and not a laughing swirling mob with me, or if the trees were good trees and strong trees that I understood like the fir we left behind in our old yard in the thumb-crook of michigan, trees that could be climbed, understood, loved, fruit picked, flowers picked, sheltered under, not these skinny pillars into hazy nowhere with no branches sticking out till god knows when and no shade either, no bushes, no shelter, no purpose or use but to be chopped down or carved on or charred with drunken initials or spray painted “cougars rule” . It was clear the trees would soon be completely gone, the sand, the trees, the fallen trees, the wheel ruts, the frogs, and so I tried my hardest to love them while I had the chance. And it was true, they were gone soon and the only nature I’d see in that part of the world for a long time would be the blackberry brambles at the broken down fences of El Rancho.
posted by badgerbag 12/06/2003 01:05:00 AM comment
Friday, December 05, 2003
non-thinking reading lately (escape)The Thirty-nine Steps and Greenmantle. By the end of Greenmantle, I am ready to leap out of the trenches in a manly way, pale, biting my lip and refusing the love of an evil yet alluringly passionate woman, joining my manly brothers in a manly death in a hail of bullets while singing of the glories of eternal England.
Also Maudie (more victorian porn). The Wind in the Willows. The Anatomy of Melancholy. King Rat (Mieville one not the one about the POWs). Katie John and Heathcliff. Depend on Katie John. (If only I had the other one... "Honestly Katie John". I miss the part where she bit the prissy girl's pink lipstick to taste it because it smelled so nice... I mean lipstick in the tube not that she bit the other girl's actual lips. Get your minds out of the gutter, Katie John was only 11 or so. The lip-biting came later, in "Hump Me, Katie John", when she was 16 and Priscilla started riding bitch on the back of her motorbike as they high-tailed it into St. Louis for nights of iniquity.)
This, to avoid the hulking monsters of theory, anything about poetry or translation or spanish. Not even Pippa Mediaslargas or Ramona La Chinche. Otherwise I would never, ever sleep.
posted by badgerbag 12/05/2003 10:07:00 PM comment
returningSanity is returning slowly. I am disgustingly ill. Went to work. Went to stafn. to fill out my timesheets. Home to rest for 2 hours. Successfully avoided thinking, reading or writing about paper-related things.
got parking ticket. Perhaps McCoot will pay it? Realized my whole day was pointless as I made 45 bucks, earned $35 parking ticket, paid $20 for extra child care because I was going to work on my paper (but instead laid in bed like a log). Result: -10 dollars, minus gas money, tax withheld, and pointless exhaustion. I am really dumb sometimes.
Moomin demanding, but delightful. He wrote (typed) quite a lot of words! Most of them without help. I was amazed. Then we made domino chains for several hours. I mean, I was still enthralled by domino chains at... oh... 14 or so... but what is going through his head? Sat back at some point and just watched him make chains. It was enough if I just set up a block or 2 per chain -- as long as I did not look at a book or the computer, I was permitted to lie on the couch. He sent them down from block bridges and railroad tracks and the coffee table and made snakes, bifurcating paths, and once, a loop. He was damned pissed that you could not make the dominoes go uphill on the railroad bridge. Then, a castle, princess, horses, invasions, parades, marching bands.
I was so tired and sick feeling but so happy to see him being active and creative. It is really a transition from his former usual state of being passive and dreamy. Okay okay, i overanalyze him... I can't help it... what else is there to think about while sitting on the floor doing this stuff or watching someone type permutations of "red bug no bug hat on cat rat sat on pat" for an hour...
at least I no longer feel like I'm about to start gibbering and writhing on the floor like a cooking piece of bacon or the melting witch of the west.
posted by badgerbag 12/05/2003 07:54:00 PM comment
Puff mamaThere is probably a special circle of hell for people who eat cheese puffs for breakfast. At least they were organic, hippie-style, non-partially-hydrogenated cheese puffs.
I am supposed to do many things today. Staying in bed is probably the most important... *hack, cough, snort*
posted by badgerbag 12/05/2003 10:18:00 AM comment
Thursday, December 04, 2003
bad sexBad Sex Awards. Don't miss it! Afterwards, spray your eyeballs with bleach. And the inside of your brain too.
posted by badgerbag 12/04/2003 11:03:00 PM comment
white supremacistsThe Memory Hole has a long article about these crazies in TX who were caught with a crapload of sodium cyanide bombs, explosives, machine guns, fake United Nations and Dept. of Defense identification, etc. etc. Yet no major media has been covering the story. (Possibly because they were asked not to since there are apparently a lot of conspirators at large). Memory Hole seems to be implying it's because white supremacists with weapons of mass destruction aren't newsworthy - only Muslims are. I am very curious to see how this shakes down and what the hell is going on.
posted by badgerbag 12/04/2003 10:41:00 PM comment
paper donepaper is done... i have brain fever... am dying... paper... imperfect... seek out imperfect paper... i... am... nomad... destroy imperfect....
help!
posted by badgerbag 12/04/2003 02:48:00 PM comment
some nice things about my momThe air of goddess-like strength and competence she gave off as she shook a giant colander full of spaghetti and tossed it up into the air and caught it again, with the steam rising around her face. Her ability to peel an apple in a spiral, with the peel remaining in one long piece. Her shaking the giant bowl of apples, sugar, and cinnamon (just like the pasta).
Her dressing up for Halloween and going trick or treating with us and getting candy because she was short enough to look like a kid. Her admitting that when she was a kid, she and her sisters would all get a roll of fruit flavored lifesavers as a special treat, and they would eat theirs very quickly in the car, and on purpose she would save and hoard hers for days, eating them slowly in front of her sisters as a form of psychological torture.
posted by badgerbag 12/04/2003 09:50:00 AM comment
Ham doesn't go there. and a birthday of Minnie's.A dream where I visited my grandparents. Ugh. It was very tense. Minnie and our parents were there. Our g-ma cooked all the time or was doing laundry and ironing everything. She would lay out my clothes on my bed for me to wear in the morning all ironed and starched. She also did a lot of disapproving tongue-clucking and sighing over me. I was very stressed at having to get dressed in the basement bedroom where the doors never quite shut all the way and the window blinds did not hide one's nakedness.
One morning I realized with a shock that she had draped some sheets of thinly sliced ham on top of my underwear, which was laid out on the bed. In a dream-befuddled way I picked it up and stood there stupidly, thinking "Waaaaaiiit a minute. You put ham in a SANDWICH, not in your underwear. What the hell is going on here... goddamn it, and they all know that I DON'T EAT HAM."
Then I was late for my plane and had to rush through the house stuffing things into a large department store shopping bag. Old stuffed animals of my mother's, some choice books like the green and lilac and red fairy books, that green wooden mailbox with the shapes you stuff into it, which was for some reason the only toy in the house... My clothes and medicine and a hundred different colored jelly bracelets and about 20 lipsticks (why?). I lamely said goodbye in a really cheery way from across the room, pretending I just forgot to hug them all. The tiny 12-seat airplane had waited for me in the center of the labyrinth airport, which was seedy and full of sinister looking customs officials. I got on and felt a huge sense of relief.
[In retrospect, why WAS that the only toy in the house? Could they not have bought us some cheap ass toys since we lived there every summer? We would always desperately pack our suitcases full of our animals and doll furniture. There was also never any place to put our stuff, despite it being a fairly big house. ]
Am now flashing back on Minnie's 11th (?) birthday when there was somehow no party and those horrible racist old people the Heckwaters were over for dinner. There might have been a cake and some lame present but then it was just the horrible Heckwaters loudly talking about the burial plots they had secured for their future corporeal remains, and how it was terrible that people had to die in the hospital where they let all those "blackies" work. (??!)
My horror knew no bounds. Squirrelly little Minnie was in tears. I was 16 (or 15 if she was 10). I made her a disco party in the basement with a sad heart and a false front of cheeriness which she also adopted gratefully - we were rather like Becky and Ermingarde and Sara in the attic with the hamper of goodies. I hairsprayed and blowdried her hair up and dressed her up as much like Madonna as I could manage. Much makeup was involved. We danced around and bounced on the beds. Part of the disco atmosphere involved flicking the lights rapidly on and off... There might have been jelly bracelets hung from the ceiling...
It was pathetic... what was wrong with those people? For the first time in the summers, I actually missed our mom and dad, who knew how to be festive and silly and play games in any situation, such as waiting in line for an hour for a movie, so that the waiting in line was more memorable than the movie. Our mom and dad both had great improvisational powers that way - they could entertain us and each other by throwing the hot finger towels in the county line bbq, or drawing odd cartoons on napkins, or making faces, or whipping out an unexpected pack of cards... They also knew how to make a big deal out of things - like, oh boy, we each get two Oreos for dessert tonight, I can't wait - building up the suspense for the rare event of dessert...
I felt it was a moment where M. and I cemented our sisterliness in solidarity against the idiotic rest of our dumb family. I think our disco party started out as pathetic false joviality, but ended as a hearty "fuck you people, we are going to have fun!" and actually became fun.
Minnie what are your memories of this event? What was the stupid present, if there was one?
posted by badgerbag 12/04/2003 09:08:00 AM comment
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
new paperI dreamed about the 2nd paper I have to write. Coherently. Very odd!
In this dream I realized that in addition to the whole statue/event/signature/ritual aspect of the mysterious thingamabob I want to talk about, and what exactly that is I'm not 100% clear, but in addition to it, there was something to do with geology and the revolutionary history of Texas and some other writer. It all tied together so beautifully. The paper-writing being accomplished was mixed with Moomin and Rook and me in the deserts of West Texas, where we saw sundogs and dinosaur bones and gila monsters and old adobe buildings. Minnie was also there. There in the dusty, sunny desert I was wearing a series of rather attractively tailored pastel polyester housedresses and pantsuits that made me feel svelte and modern, as I imagine my grandma Hemulen must have felt when she realized in like 1946 that she would never have to iron again.
Awake-in-the-night-sick time was spent reading Seneca, which was marvellously soothing as always, and I nearly opened up the blog to proseletyze about the wonders of the Stoics but fell asleep comforted instead. Other waking-up time was spent reading Groovy Decay, which was NOT soothing. It was addictively good and I'm warning you. I may have fallen in love a little bit. ClassicsmyAss, a group effort that I'd love to join, was even better!
posted by badgerbag 12/03/2003 10:23:00 AM comment
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
officiallyThe tylenol and advil i have been taking for the last 3 days trying to eke out more healthiness is now officially Not Effective. Sickness reigns.
posted by badgerbag 12/02/2003 07:32:00 PM comment
best investmentBest toy I have in the house for the last 2 years has been a 99 cent skein of rainbow yarn. It is everything... it makes a lasso for a cowboy or a sea serpent or a crown... Pompoms... cat toys... rainbows... fishing pole lines tied onto sticks. It now makes christmas tree decorations for the fake trees that came with Moomin's train set. I think it will last till he leaves home because we have only used about 1% of the yarn.
String! The best toy ever! Why did I ever buy any other crap? Goddamn it ! My kid will play with nothing but string and cardboard boxes and sticks until he turns 12 and is old enough to get a job and buy his own damn pretty pony light-up castle and giant plastic dinosaur set of talking dinosaurs with 800 million breakable parts that instantly get lost!
Cantankerousness rating: 10
posted by badgerbag 12/02/2003 06:55:00 PM comment
in other newsIn other news I am sick again. Could not sleep last night. Ugh! I hope to god it is not actual flu. Just a cold... please... and no bronchitis afterwards... thank you.
The paper shaped up nicely today. tomorrow I must work on the other paper. Thurs. I will go back to this one which is due thurs. evening - at this point I just have to smooth it a bit and do all the proofreading things. goal: this time, no minus on that A (for mechanics). Oh the shame of it... the screwed up semicolons and inconsistent punctuation in and out of the quotation marks...
posted by badgerbag 12/02/2003 04:56:00 PM comment
Chorus of BenzedrineSince I picked him up from school today, Moomin has not stopped talking cheerfully, laughing and spazzing physically, squirming, running around, flailing and dancing. He also keeps telling jokes, like "Hey! I just saw a walrus in the road!" or "Look, that tree is wearing tree shoes!" and then laughing at me when I act like I believe him.
This has never happened before... usually his talking is way more muted. It is fun but now I have a tiny inkling of what people mean when they say that their kids never shut up.
I just realized that his school is closed for two whole weeks. Don't know why but I assumed that for the giant amount of money we are shelling out, they would continue to provide some kind of day care... but noooooooo. Fuck!
posted by badgerbag 12/02/2003 04:44:00 PM comment
Monday, December 01, 2003
still workingI'm still working... it's still hard... playgroup was a nice break, finally seeing other people... head out of the books, sort of... with all the fancy cheese and dessert wine provided by squid... very nice.
Kids not too heinous. Though I hate when they push or grab or shove and then look at us, the adults, as if daring us to come on over and yell.
"Reverse psychology" lessons in progress with the newly un-passive Moomin who was in there shoving and screaming with the best of them today. I'm sort of glad he's not hanging back and looking depressed and wistful, but on the other hand I'd rather not get off of my barstool, put down my dessert wine, and have to hose him down when he busts into tears and can't stop blubbering "It's not fair, I had it first, I don't want to wait for my turn, I am not nice...It is mine!"
Sudden flashback to being at the dinner table and making Minnie yell with outrage, "Moooooooommyyyyyyyyy! She's LOOKING AT ME!!!" I had the power to offend just by shooting creepy glances - no need for elbows, poking, or grabbing. And the location of the memory means I must have been at least 10 or 11. Is there no hope for non brattiness in one's kids?
Poor Moomin, it's not enough that he be funny and smart and cute and use the toilet all by himself - he must also behave with the noble social goodness of an E. Nesbit character at all times. Even when not being kibbutzified at the Montessori "pod people" miracle school where everyone always behaves and pushes their chairs in and walks calmly and takes turns...
Rook helpfully did the "go back to your desk, settle down, focus, catch up" thing for me. I will now go back to my desk and continue writing the paper.
posted by badgerbag 12/01/2003 10:08:00 PM comment
plug for modest needsI may have blogged this before but here it is again. Take a look at Modest Needs and pledge them a little money - 5 bucks even. You can set up monthly pledges through PayPal. I like their philosophy of helping people with unexpected one-time expenses - like emergency medical bills, car repair, divorce...
The idea is that someone's whole life might be derailed by a measly $150 bucks and the timely intervention of Modest Needs can help them out - and with a minimum of red tape and bureaucratic overhead.
posted by badgerbag 12/01/2003 03:16:00 PM comment
wtf mate?
An Air Force translator, Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, was arrested July 23 on charges of espionage and aiding the enemy by attempting to send information about the prisoners and the facility to Syria.Okay, on Yee, what the hell? WHAT? "He's a spy. Oh, wait, no he's not, but, he committed adultery."
Army chaplain Captain James Yee, a Muslim chaplain who received religious training in Syria, was arrested September 20 on accusations of mishandling classified information.
But these charges were dropped this past week and replaced with accusations of adultery and keeping pornography on his computer, his lawyer said.
And are these cases of "evil spies infiltrating the U.S. Army", or are they cases of "guards feeling sorry for prisoners and agreeing to let their families know they are alive" ?? I bet you know which option I bet on.
posted by badgerbag 12/01/2003 02:03:00 PM comment
Cold and sweaty - minor irritation - writing to deliriumI hate it when I am freezing cold, yet stil have annoyingly sweaty armpits. My antipersperant just laughs bitterly and runs away. Sweaty, sweaty, sweaty. Feet icy. Toes aching. Bare parts of shaved head horripilating in the drafty house.
I chug away on the paper. It is unbeautiful. It too is painfully cold and unpleasantly sweaty. the MLA Handbook nags the heck out of me like a stern frowny schoolmarm. She keeps catching me fidgeting in church and passing notes on my slate... I forget when to put the punctuation in the quotes or outside the quotes...
Perhaps it is hormonal? Maybe a hat, a short sleeved shirt, extra socks, and a hysterectomy would do the trick. Am I pms-ing? Perhaps I should "avoid stress". Hahahaha.
Delirium has set in.
posted by badgerbag 12/01/2003 01:08:00 PM comment
MoominismsWhen he tells a story he usually says at crucial junctures: "And then, something happened!" Admirably succinct.
Now this has morphed into "And then, something MYSTERIOUS happened!"
Yesterday's stories had mostly to do with dragons in caves sleeping on heaps of gold. I made the prince and princess try to steal the treasure but he insisted that they could only play with it and borrow it. Then all the animals wanted to get into the cave to play with the treasure and it was really crowded and the dragon got mad. I now work "getting mad" into our games... The dragon told everyone to get out and learn how to take turns. Then we built her a new house.
posted by badgerbag 12/01/2003 10:56:00 AM comment
the zoneLast night after whump's Buffy game, miraculously, I hit the Zone. The paper writing zone, where everything was lucid, wonderful... where I was articulate... I was in "Flow" for 2 hours and now feel more confident about getting this done.
Come on, double mocha, rev me up to that zone again this morning... I have until 3:30...
posted by badgerbag 12/01/2003 10:29:00 AM comment
I don't know!
Reports that say something hasn't happened are always-- Donald Rumsfeld, winner of the Plain English "Foot in Mouth" award for 2003
interesting to me, because as we know, there are known
knowns; there are things we know we know," Rumsfeld
told a news briefing.
"We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say
we know there are some things we do not know. But
there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't
know we don't know.
posted by badgerbag 12/01/2003 10:08:00 AM comment
Sunday, November 30, 2003
random bits and pieces while writing paper- Just so I don't lose track of this...
venez. song lyrics.
- Listening to Tatu. I still love their bubblegum melodrama pop music, lezploitation or not. I think I just coined that word. Blaxploitation, lezploitation. Ha. No, wait, someone else thought of it but it's spelled lesploitation.
- I love Stanislaw Lem but he can really be a pompous ass. Also so, so, so unspeakably sexist. (Am pulling quotes from Microworlds essay on SF for my paper)
- it is really hard to concentrate. I need a "paper-o-thon". Continuity... writing more than 2 paragraphs before crapping out and checking my email for the Nth time. I could blog or write memoirs and random tangents of thought all day long without breaking a sweat but formality and structure make me itch, itch, itch.
- I feel so, so, so guilty at all the moomin-caring that Rook is doing this week and I'm sure all of next week too until I finish my papers dec. 15th.
No, it's not enought that he support my ass financially for 2 years straight, he also gets no free time to himself. Why am I not superwoman? Why was I thinking of having another baby? Am I completely crazy?
posted by badgerbag 11/30/2003 01:19:00 PM comment
Saturday, November 29, 2003
fabulous artI am reminded to go look at SLJ's page by B.'s boggling of her name last night. And oh what beauty! I love the images and writing on her pages about Libby Pace. Especially the part about the grammar of art and the importance of making sentences.
“There’s my painting, ‘the birds fly up over the blue city,” I said. And, ‘the viola handle reaches achingly toward the bare tree branches.’ That’s a sentence.”Steph, you are so hilarious and right on! And your curating is noble and wonderful!
“I don’t know if my work makes sentences at all,” said Lib.
“Sure it does. ‘The baroque, organic pattern of the stencil slowly disappears to reveal the formal perfection of the spheres within,” I said. “While doing so, it creates infinite refractions of the light and the space around it, suggesting meditations on the nature of inner versus outer beauty, the natural world versus human constructs, and the timeless nature of spirit.’”
B. and V. I still hate you for buying Vietnamese Restaurant I because I can't have it, but on the other hand I love you as long as you keep letting me into your house to see it.
posted by badgerbag 11/29/2003 09:42:00 PM comment
thanksIt's usually hard for me to fall asleep in the daytime. That little nap I just had was like a fabulous gentle ocean smoothing away all troubles.
Dr. B.'s kid turned 3 today and we had a great time at the party. She seemed tense in general and I wonder what to do to be supportive...I realized all of a sudden that her mom/parent friends are somehow not around. Suddenly it really hit me that her whole social network fell apart when she fell off the lesbo wagon after, what, over 25 years of wild uberfeminist impurity, moved in with boyfriend and got knocked up. And I'm talking the extreme lesbo wagon. No, the XXXtreme. Where are they? Some of them lingered on until the baby shower. They don't seem to be around now. Does she have no network, but only the boyfriend? so wrong.
I am the only person here from her checkered past. I thought of books like "Passing" which I read long ago. She passes amongst the preschool moms, if she is careful to show only a very superficial skin.
Meanwhile, Moomin was bouncing off the walls with excitement at a whole indoor playground in a huge gym with only 6 other kids in there. He shared toys. He wore a cute hat. He was bold. He boasted that his race car went faster than mine. He talked to other kids. Huzzah, my gentle flower in blossom!
I played on the floor a lot when I realized no one else was.
And huzzah for Rook who also leaped in there to play and make merry. And drove and then dropped me off (dying of sciatica gritting teeth in car) and took Moomin grocery shopping.
thus the nap. the very, very welcome nap.
Sciatica hit me like a hammer in the middle of the party. My leg still has that horrible tingly feeling like hitting your funny bone in your elbow, but all the way down into my foot, and without going away. It makes my foot cramp. Sometimes it prickles or weirdly feels like needles inside trying to stab their way out. Sometimes it is just tingling and an ache that goes all the way from my butt to my foot. Whine, whine. Post nap, I now feel like I can be a normal person without making a giant effort.
MEMO
To: Badger's brain, Control Center of Body and Empress of the Known Universe
From: Badger's sciatic nerve or whatever the hell it is somewhere deep in the pained ass or tailbone of Badger
Do NOT attempt to pick up million-pound 3 year old child who has fallen in ball pit and is floundering and flailing. Do not lift and twist. Do not do this while also standing in ball pit on round slippery multicolored ping pong balls. Afterwards, do not sit on floor playing trains.
***
One more indiscreet thing about my friend Dr. B. Not for the first time in lo these many years, I found myself staring at her abstractedly and thinking "My friend, for an XX year old woman, you have the Best Ass on the Planet." Musing on this to Rook, who somehow had not noticed.
posted by badgerbag 11/29/2003 05:09:00 PM comment
mind-boggling hustleI love drunken Boggle... I was out-nerded, I think, by V. who was in top Boggling form. Minnie's boyfriend T. seemed to find the rudest words. Minnie brought the notorious pumpkin cake that drove her to despair the other day as she set T.'s kitchen on fire and ripped his oven door off with accidental super-strength. It was really good cake. The hustle was hustled and technical terms such as double trouble shadow turn, jelly roll, "in the slot," and "doin' the pony" were thrown about like confetti over the heads of the kinesthetically challenged (me).
Actually I am here at the table with the ruins of boggle before me and could preserve some choice pieces of wit:
Me: glom. glob. spathe. yoni. cully. lares. y-quorpt. wether. glifty. rothe. torr. fettle.
Rook: moans. septet. miser. dross. shadow. quailed.
T: shat. fart. shag. scat. condom. romeo. condor. mated. spats. rutted. fidgy.
Minnie: zines. second. slit. nifty. scrim. spent. drays. molar.
Val: fleer. arse. orison. romesco. grist. trances. senator. romances. cress. cubit. finis.
B: snitch. mold. feces. ream. fate. lien. elans. stephs. gipter. mote. sincere.
Can you detect the bullshitting people who love to make up words? And the made up words themselves? A challenge.
posted by badgerbag 11/29/2003 11:07:00 AM comment
Friday, November 28, 2003
thanksgiving hijinksBounced on trampoline - cooked overly garlicky and possibly partly unwelcome yet delicious italian delicacy - made hand turkeys with crayons - ate and ate - marched while playing ocarinas and recorders - loafed - wondered vaguely if the bald guy was schizophrenic - thanked lucky stars that this was someone else's family not mine and so I did not have to be aware of any seething undercurrents - listened to football - visited some other guy's house that I don't know and met some artist guy whose name I immediately forgot - ate 2 kinds of pie - drank a little - provoked a 10 year old into eye-rolling sarcasm and experienced a hilarious sudden parental generation lack of coolness "Uh, no, dude, I'll pass, I had a traumatic experience with drawing hand turkeys in 1st grade" - pushed by this charming lunatic in a large jogging stroller into oncoming traffic on a dark suburban hill - received a finnish moominmug meant for Moomin and appropriated it as my own until he is Of Age - fun had by all!
posted by badgerbag 11/28/2003 03:07:00 PM comment
the crazinessHere is what is going on with my paper, FYI:
Parageography of J. de Ibar poem that I am talking about as a thing in between science fiction and the pastoral. The triangles are messengers between worlds.
There is another world map where I locate her names. She had at least 6 different names that signify various allegiances. I guess i should take this to the Ibar blog as I don't want to be googlesniped.
Need a word for that: being accidentally found - not on purpose (webstalking or googlestalking) - and not through the injudicious use of your own name - but by what you are writing about. Something like being caught accidentally in machine gun fire.
posted by badgerbag 11/28/2003 02:11:00 PM comment
Thursday, November 27, 2003
due to the magicDue to the magic of my particular psyche and probably some sort of sanguine chemical balance of my brain and ability to forget and deny, this morning I no longer loathe myself (as I did last night). Whew. I can't even go into the horribleness and depth of the sudden self-loathing that came over me. But now in the sunlight it looks like a far distant hell, rather than my doom and my destiny.
This morning all is jollity, dragons sleeping on heaps of golden pennies, unicorns being ridden by handsome ostriches, rat princes and princesses, benevolence, pound cake, and coffee.
Rook's dad just called and bent my ear about how the family in K---a loved the geneology that I sent them and he somehow made a ton of money while there (consulting? weird investments? what?) and wants to take us all, and when I say us all I mean like 20-30 people, touring Mt. Paek---an next year, and I cheerfully agreed, although I have no idea how the motley troupe of us would get into (china? N. K---a?) It sounds like a total nightmare - a group tour! with completely insane relatives! in the axis of evil! with toddlers and babies! aaaaaah! - and yet in the light of morning, full of fairy tales and coffee, I nodded and smiled and thought it might be an Adventure and an Expotition.
***
have just been reading some other guy's diary of his hiking about the border up there. It seems to involve running into guys with AK-47s. I also recall with a shudder the line "As usual, the store was empty except for some cans of sea cucumbers." Mmm. Canned sea cucumbers. In heavy syrup.
posted by badgerbag 11/27/2003 10:49:00 AM comment
