Well, today marks two years of blogging. Umm, insert your own treacly drivel about self-actualization, soul searching, freeing your inner voice and sticking it to the man here. Me, I'm more about the fun, the folks I've "met" through blogging (or feel like I've met even if we haven't really corresponded all that often and I'll stop now because that's starting to feel just a tad stalkerish and, well, maybe I ought to get out more...), and the lower blood pressure that venting almost daily has given me. So.....go me!
My wedding anniversary is also drawing nigh, and Hublet and I will be celebrating with a child free weekend, thanks to my mom and dad. Have fun dragging Captain Truculent through the fair, folks! Our actual anniversary is October 5th. I think. Actually, I had to look at the cover of our wedding photo album to be sure of that--but I'm better than Hublet, who thought it was the 15th. Although the only reason I got it closer than he did is because we got married immediately after my Maw-Maw's birthday, which was October 4th, so I have an unfair advantage. ANYWAY, it's been eight years of marriage and eleven of "togetherness," and we're going to have a fun-filled weekend encompassing:
So the last one isn't that romantic--sue me. I can't even remember my own anniversary, and I'm not what you would call a soppy sentimentalist. But for those of you out there who are a bit mushily inclined, I offer this strange but true story of Hublet's and my first meeting:
Hublet and I were both selected as Teaching Assistants for the MA program. After our first big orientation meeting the whole TA group was taken upstairs to get "cube assignments," meet the second year TAs, and get our payroll paperwork filled out. As I was walking from my cube to where I was told the Human Resources person was, I ran into a tall, thin, kinda quiet guy who stuck out his hand and introduced himself. I shook his hand, and a quiet, matter-of-fact voice in my head said "You'll marry him." Which was odd, because I'd never laid eyes on him before and I was happily dating someone else at the time. But four years later, marry him I did. Make of that what you will. And please refrain from the obvious "voices in your head" jokes, mmmmmkay?
No, really, I do. Hublet and I regularly TiVo all their little History Channel Home Movies about The Alamo, the War of 1812, and the Revolution, and find them to be a good "fill in the blanks" exercise for us about stuff we either learned and forgot or were never exposed to. They also tend to inspire us to buy lots of history books, which could be part of an eeeville capitalist conspiracy, but whatever. Books Good!
These home movies also contain a preponderance of reenactors and "living history" folks, which adds to the verisimilitude in some ways--having a cheap source of folks in period appropriate clothing to act out the events being described is a good thing--but which also adds to the cheese factor. And adds to it in a big, big way, because a lot of the reenactors--bless them--have some distinctly Modern American features that they cannot shed: namely, Modern American Girth. Which, okay, I know there were portly folk in the 19th century, but not this many. Woah.
It is difficult to retain a willing suspension of disbelief when you hear about the poorly fed and clothed American militia and the camera pans down the lines of militia men standing at attention, the buttons on their coats straining to contain them. Frankly, if Washington's troops had looked like that, they could have stopped the British merely by sitting on them.
Last night Hublet and I were watching the War of 1812, which thus far has been nothing but illuminating. We declared war on England and attacked Canada! Why? Apparently it seemed like a good idea at the time; oh, and by the way, the fact that we didn't have a real army at the time we declared war? No problem! Since I am completely ignorant about this war, I am immensely entertained by the documentary and cannot wait to see how it all turns out. I mean, obviously something happened to make the British go home, but I doubt it had much to do with American military prowess--don't spoil the ending for me, as I am all excitement!
My only quibble is with the guy they got to portray Madison, who is continually described as a tiny, tiny little man: 5' 4", 100 lbs. This actor's JOWLS are 5'4" and 100 lbs., and he has the unenviable job of portraying "brilliant intellect" without speaking, so what you get is a lot of superimposed images of jowl boy with a furrowed brow or a hand to his forehead in a "thoughtful pose." James Madison has never been funnier, although I doubt that was the intent of the documentary, and so I am giggling my way through American humiliation, carnage and war crimes, which is so very, very wrong.
But still, I heart my History Channel Home Movies, $2 production values and everything. And may I just say that the current White House looks much better than the one they burned. Or maybe the old one just had a bad computer rendering...
As Lance said when sending me this article, "what is there to say, really?"
Well, a couple of salty phrases involving the high arts community, PT Barnum, and the old proverb about fools, their money, and parting, but this is a family-oriented article about a 4 year old girl, so I'll refrain.
Money quote #1:
In the beginning, her parents said, people bought her work without knowing her age. Then customers bought it because of her age. Some say she is a prodigy. Some say she is just
playing.
And some people are reminded of the artsy family in Beetlejuice, except that there will be no Harry Belafonte-themed payoff for the audience...
Money quote #2:
Mr. Brunelli is a painter whose photorealistic works are displayed in SoHo. He was drawn to Marla's work. He and his friend stared at it like children staring at clouds, seeing flamenco dancers and their vivid movements on the canvas.
Then the friend told him the artist was a toddler.
Hee. More power to Marla and her folks. And read the whole article--I have a feeling the reporter is in on the joke...
There's been a question niggling at the back of my mind for some time now, but I've been reluctant to face it head on due to its unpleasant association with post-modern literary theory and the attendant scars to my psyche, but after perusing my blogroll this morning, I have to ask:
When did it become acceptable to just make shit up and pass it off as objective fact in the service of some "higher truth?"
I first confronted this issue a couple of years ago, when the Bellesiles scandal hit. He made stuff up about the history of gun ownership in America in order to serve his "higher truth," which was essentially "Guns are evil and I'll prove it by showing that we didn't really need them to tame the frontier, feed ourselves or assert our independence--pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Hey! You kids! Cut that out!" Bellesiles got burned for that, albeit not as burned as he should have been due to the reluctance of others in his profession to expose what I believe (based on my own academic experience) is a fairly widespread practice: "stretching" and "interpreting" reality in order to make it fit a foregone conclusion, to gain brownie points with peers and superiors of a certain political stripe, and to thus assure your success in the profession. Notice the awards and accolades Bellesiles had garnered before the inconvenient truth came out.
In retrospect, Bellesiles was the dead canary in the mine, the warning that our academic surroundings are not perhaps as healthy as we'd like them to be. It's still pretty easy for us to dismiss discredited academics; after all, they're "out of touch" and "stuck in that ivory tower" and don't really affect the rest of us out here in the real world, right? Wrong. You can debate the efficacy of trickle-down economics all you want, but I'm here to tell you that "trickle-down academia" is alive and well and can have a rather pernicious influence on society when the ideas that are trickling down are bankrupt. Bellesiles' increasingly weak defenses of his "research" and conclusions boiled down to "Well, it should be true, anyway," and doesn't that have an interesting resonance with what's going on in some newsrooms nowadays?
I'm not saying that there's some sort of grand conspiracy out there to coerce the benighted masses into proper Groupthink, but I am saying that laziness and partisanship in academia have leaked into society at large, and that it is not a good thing. I learned early on in grad school that it is much, much easier to approach a text with a foregone (politically popular) conclusion and then pull quotes slightly out of context and paper them over with the blatherings of some hip theorist that incidentally is a favorite of the professor I'm writing for than it is to pursue an independent line of thought or to, God forbid, attempt to get to the "truth" of something. The former gets you A's and recommendations. The latter gets you dismissed as hopelessly unsophisticated. Plus, it's hard, and it may force you to revise your worldview, and well, that's just uncomfortable! Eventually, the pattern--create conclusion, remake reality accordingly--gets so ingrained that you don't realize you're doing it, or that it might be morally suspect, and if someone points out that you're playing a bit fast and loose with the facts, you can come back with, "but I'm interested in exploring the meta-narrative" or some such crap which basically boils down to, "Well, it should be true, anyway."
Enter Dan Rather, who has the distinction of being by far the biggest celebrity to use the "Well, it should be true, anyway" defense with the infamous "Fake but True" meme that swept newsrooms across the country. The meta-narrative being explored here seems to be that the document forger had the Amazing Kreskin's ability to divine the innermost thoughts of a man who is conveniently dead, if not an entry-level secretary's knowlege of Word. And now it's not just some grad student peon taking indecent but ultimately meaningless liberties with the text of Absalom, Absalom, it's the figurehead of an organization which purports to give the nation "the facts." Not "the facts that we could gerrymander to point to the larger truth as we see it through a particular political filter," but The Facts.
The amount of damage this does to our ability to believe anything anymore is simply amazing. I can no longer read, watch, or listen to anything without playing the "what's their angle" meta-narrative analyst in my head. There follows the "can I trust this person and their facts" question, and the answer which increasingly is "no." So where do I go from here? I am not optimistic about Big Media's or Academia's abilities to heal themselves, to shake off the "well, it should be true" fog and get back to staring objective reality in the eye, unless it turns out that there's a "trickle-up" process of honesty, objectivity and fact-checking out there somewhere.
NOTE: the posts that prompted this one are not necessarily directly related, but are still good reading:
You may have noticed that I haven't posted any amusing or charming anecdotes about The Boy lately--well, unless you consider his puking all over the car last Monday amusing. And if you do, I am no longer speaking to you, so there. The reason behind the dearth of anecdotes is simple: lately, The Boy has been neither amusing nor charming. Truculent, yes. Whiny, yes. Defiant, screechy and evil, in spades. But not charming, or cute, or even very much fun. That's part of the reason why The Boy will be packed off with the maternal grandparents at the end of this week for an indeterminate time period (when I tell my mother I can pack him enough supplies for a month, she laughs and tells me how I'll be pining for him after 2 days. Umm, no. Don't get me wrong--I'll call every day while he's gone, but pining is a bit much to expect just now. Which probably explains the somewhat nervous quality of my mother's laugh when I reiterate the month's worth of supplies thing...). But--and there's always a but, isn't there--The Boy has managed to discover, somewhere down amongst all those uncontrollable motor impulses and murky unnameable desires for contrariness, his songwriting gene. Granted, it is a small gene, and given the quality of the songs a possibly malformed gene, but it's there.
This past Saturday we trekked into town so that Hublet could tape an episode of the Brain Game at the local CBS affiliate and The Boy and I could spend some quality time at Pullen Park. The main draw for The Boy was getting to meet Hublet's students: nothing amazes a three year old more than high schoolers. After we retrieved the victorious Hublet, we headed off to the Chick-Fil-A for some nuggets due to The Boy's desire that we "Not Go Home!" En route, Hublet and I were puzzled to hear this emanating from the backseat:
Students, students, studentstudentstudents
stuuuuuuuuuudents, student students
students students stuuuuuuuuuuuu
dents
When we inquired, we were informed that this was "The Students Song," and that it was a paean to Hublet's students. We dutifully praised The Boy's creative genius, which unfortunately only served to inspire him to greater heights of songwriting aspiration. And so we've added the following to The Boy's oeuvre:
The Pee-Pee Song
The Puh-Dog Song
The Gertie Song
The Green Thomas Underwear Song
The Cool Shoes Song
The ditties are somewhat postmodern in their atonality and self-referential quality, and no, I haven't been analyzing them too much, so stop looking at me like that. Let's just say that The Boy is as prolific as he is loud, which is very. And let's add that I am counting the days until Thursday, when my folks arrive.
Via fad and reader Sally:
"They" is fighting the power! He's fighting the grammar! And you know what, he's succeeding in driving at least one english major insane, because not only did he force me to write "They is fighting the power," the story about his exploits features this sentence:
"They holds 14 patents including Ground-Effect lighting, used to create a neon glow beneath vehicles and patented in 1987."
Arg. Subject-verb agreement. Pet peeve. Must. Hold. On. Must. Not. Succumb. Arg!
Plus, it's not bad enough that the guy has ruined my day grammatically speaking, he's also the fellow responsible for all those annoyingly distracting puddles of light underneath the souped up pieces of crap the local 2Fast2Furious2Stupid2BReal wannabes drive. Thanks, dude! Not.
Watched Lost last night and enjoyed it. A good premise and setup, although there is a part of me that clenches in dread at the whole "big scary unseen monster thing" aspect of the show, because that is waaaay too easy to screw up. Typically what happens with "unseen evil monster" shows is either the whole thing turns into the Island of Dr. Moreau with the attendant cheese factor, or you run the risk of what I like to call IT syndrome, in which the final monster (a spider with flashlight eyes? The HELL, Stephen King!) is a big letdown. But I will be watching next week, because the suspense was well done, the character dynamics look intriguing, and not at all just because there's a Hobbit on the island...
And here, submitted for your amusement: When Divas Attack! Do not taunt happy fun tracksuit man!
Also, Shaun of the Dead? Must. Go. See. It. I hope it is every bit as goofy and stupid as it looks.
The most interesting thing about Naomi Wolf, according to Naomi Wolf, is Naomi Wolf. The original "It's All About Me" feminist is back with her latest treatise on feminism and the presidential race.
Now I will say this, a lot of her ideas about carefully cultivating the images of the women around the candidate are interesting and probably true. Unfortunately and as usual, she gets a bit out of hand with stuff like this:
The charges are sticking because of Teresa Heinz Kerry. Let’s start with “Heinz.” By retaining her dead husband’s name—there is no genteel way to put this—she is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of another man—a dead Republican man, at that. Add to that the fact that her first husband was (as she is herself now) vastly more wealthy than her second husband. Throw into all of this her penchant for black, a color that no woman wears in the heartland, and you have a recipe for just what Kerry is struggling with now: charges of elitism, unstable family relationships, and an unmanned candidate.
Umm, no. Teresa's penchant for black and a double surname aren't turning middle moms against her--it's more that you get the impression that she REALLY, REALLY doesn't want to be doing all that campaign crap to begin with. And as far as I'm concerned, if she doesn't want to do it, she shouldn't have to. I'm a middle-American mom, albeit a pretty well educated one, and I don't sit around parsing the hidden meaning of faux cuckolding via a retained surname on the part of a presidential candidate's wife. Dear God. And I'd be fine with a candidate's wife who eschewed the process entirely. But then maybe I'm just a weirdo. Or a post-feminist. Pick one.
Anyway, one gets the sense as the article reaches its somewhat hysterical conclusion (Beware the Stepford Republicans! They are wily and only lie! The minute they are elected the world will end in a fiery cataclysm that incidentally follows all of the plot points of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale!) that Ms. Wolf is still somewhat less peeved at the Republican platform than she is that American women haven't listened to her. Because she, Naomi Wolf, is the One True Way.
In Wolf-land, that is reason enough to lament. Well, that and the fact that even after all these years, "modern women maddeningly long for men who are tender in private but authoritative in public." Damn stupid women.
Time was, I wouldn't have batted an eyelash at this chick's dissertation topic, other than to snarkily note that it lacked a certain je ne sais quois in terms of originality. "Bats as phalloi!" I would have sniffed to my equally snarky pals, "Why how EVER did she make THAT connection?!" And we all would have laughed. The larger stupidity at play--that we were treating this crap like a worthy topic at all--was just the forest which we'd carefully covered over with trees. After all, phallic bats are much easier to write about than, say, actual literature, as a statement like "bats are obvious phallic symbols" requires no research or proof beyond, "Well, just look at them! They're, like, all long and round and hard, hard wood!"
Nowadays, far removed from the reaches of the feminist lit crit brigade, my snark-o-meter still goes to eleven when I read stuff like this, but it now encompasses the whole forest, not just a tree or two (and how's that for an extended phallic metaphor? Wood. I said "wood." huh-huh). In 2004, it seems that PhDs in literature are apparently all about taking the easy road.
Seriously, what sort of intellectually lazy, half-assed professor wannabe greenlights something like this as a legitimate topic of inquiry? Is he or she drunk? Is the student drunk? Is EVERYONE DRUNK?!
Unfortunately, they're probably sober but suffering from acute "closed social circle-itis" in which no-one bothers to point out the pointless intellectual onanism they're all engaging in, because no one thinks it's in any way out of the ordinary. It simply is "the way things are done here." Gah.
Academic departments like the one referenced in this post are the intellectual equivalent of a very small community in a hillbilly backwoods holler--in desperate need of an infusion of fresh genetic material. Perhaps one day the lady in question will awaken from her four to six year drunk and realize that the lampshade on her head is her dissertation. Perhaps one day literature departments will have the grace to be embarrassed by the excesses of foolishness they've succumbed to in the last decade. Yes, and perhaps monkeys might fly out of my ass.
But a girl can dream, you know? And not about the monkeys. Ouch.
So, The Boy waits until we've gotten all the way into town and I've ordered the Monday Burger King Hash Brown Breakfast to throw up all over the back seat of the car. Cue crying, stripping, wadding up clothing, a mad dash to the daycare to pick up some spare duds, a pit stop at work to pick up some to-dos with a mismatched and inappropriately dressed for the weather vomit-smelling child who gleefully informs everyone at the office that he "Frowed Up" and thus "Gets to play with my trains!" Follow this up with a 20 mile commute in a vomit-mobile, frantic laundry, car upholstery shampooing, and a check of the work email which reveals someone freaking out about something that will ultimately be my fault, and, well, Welcome to Monday! Dammit.
Here. Read all this. Links via reader Michelle. Just a little light reading for a Monday morning...
3:15 a.m. A thump, followed by a plaintive, "Mommy, I fell outta bed!" Followed by an hour and a half of retucking in, fidgeting, switching beds, talking about the cat, forcing Hublet to simultaneously toss the cat outside and fetch milk for the Boy, and finally, blissful slumber occasionally punctuated by flailing limbs. I am bruised, sore, and in need of a coffee IV. But The Boy is feeling quite chipper in his backward underwear, mismatched clothes and orange socks. So I soldier on.
Sorry for the lack o' post yesterday, but as you may know, today is the Dreaded Annual Picnic, and I have somehow become the de-facto chairperson of the committee. This ALWAYS happens to me here, and it ain't because I am the lone competent person awash in a sea of morons. No, it's because in this case I am the lone "professional" on a committee of administrative assistants and manual laborers. Just in case you thought that intellectual snobbery was relegated to the mainstream disciplines, let me clarify that for you right now: it's not. And it's annoying as hell. All the grand high departmental muckety mucks come to me with questions about the committee's doings, EVEN THOUGH they got the email clearly naming someone else as the chair AND they get weekly update emails from that very chairperson. But since the chairperson just happens to be an administrative assistant--you know, someone without a Master's degree, and therefore someone not to be trusted with matters of dire import like, for instance, the freaking picnic--they come to me, the "kindred spirit," the "person who understands the aforementioned crucial nature of the picnic," the "at least marginally competent chick if you overlook the fact that she terminated her degree at the MA level." Yep, that's me, the appropriately credentialed go-to girl for party planning. My mother must be so proud.
To say that intellectual snobbery is a pet peeve of mine is akin to saying that Godzilla was a somewhat larger-than-normal reptile--an understatement of great and abiding magnitude. It irritated me when I was "in the club," and it irritates me even more now, because it is completely pointless. Yes, I suppose it's human nature to want to build yourself up and feel good about who you are, but I was under the impression that intellectually gifted people possessed enough self-awareness to understand that the ability to bullshit your way to an advanced degree doesn't make you anyone's benevolent overlord. In the humanities, it just means that you're good at reading, synthesizing information, and writing it down. Nice skills to have, but not necessarily superior to everyone else's. Let's put it this way--if I'm stranded, post-apocalypse, with a history professor and a plumber and there's only enough resources to feed one of them, well, I'm feeding the plumber. I prefer avoiding dysentery to a dissertation, thanks.
I sometimes think that intellectual snobbery is replacing old-fashioned class warfare. Actually, that thought process got solidified for me when I read Bobos in Paradise, which dealt quite skillfully with the resentment that the impoverished intelligentsia feel toward the rich and under-degreed, and watching the leading lights of our professoriate foam at the mouth about W has only reinforced that view. Here's the thing, folks: so you're smarter than the average bear. So what? In America, it's not what you know, it's what you do with it that counts. And I hear that lately there's not much of a market for snobbery and bitterness, what with Dan Rather having it cornered right now, you know?
I'm beginning to think that Wednesday is my own personal Vent-Day. I tend to be at my pissiest on Wednesday. Ah well, enough about that. Here are things I am currently beyond sick of:
1. Hurricanes. Seriously, Mother Nature. KNOCK IT OFF.
2. Vietnam. I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of people who cannot seem to get over it. In case you boomers haven't noticed, there are now SEVERAL generations for whom Vietnam boils down to Apocalypse Now, Oliver Stone's Platoon, China Beach reruns, and grainy video of hairy people in fatigues and kaftans alternately dancing around while stoned out of their heads or shrieking at cops in riot gear. That's your legacy, and you want to drag us right the fuck back there in an election year when there's a WAR ON? A NEW war, one which isn't Vietnam? Drop dead. Now would be nice. Because the rest of us are a bit more concerned with, you know, the realities of living in 2004 than we are with your sketchy recollections of 30 years past.
3. My dog.
4. The fact that iTunes does not have Ray of Light available for purchase. I have that on cassette (yes, I was alive during the Stone Age when cars came with cassette players standard, not CD players), and just want two songs off of it for my iPod. Then Madonna and I will part ways forever. But I want those two songs, dammit.
5. Chicken.
6. Phlegm. Mine, Hublet's and the Boy's.
7. These stupid freaking shoes. "Buy the mules with the pointy toes and the tiny heels and the insouciant side bows!" my inner voice said. "They're sassy!" my inner voice said. Hey, inner voice? My blisters and put-upon ankles would like to tell you to shut up.
8. Dan Rather. Your glory days ocurred decades ago. As in, they are over. At least when other 70-something people want to suck me into the vortex of reliving their past they don't use a national media forum to do it.
9. Faux-Eastern influences in hip-hop. Finger cymbals and chanting don't make your music more interesting or exotic. Or, God forbid, good.
10. Paris Hilton. Please make it stop.
There. That's a start. Now to limp off to lunch.
I have long suspected, but never been able to prove, that Barbara Walters was actually a cyborg--a cyborg with super-special mind rays that cause human tear ducts to overflow.
But now, I have proof! And from the horse's mouth, so to speak:
"My claim to fame, the reason for my success, is that I do not perspire and I rarely have to go to the bathroom."
She must be a cyborg! Either that or a reptile/insect hybid...
Well it's my birthday too, yeah! So no posting. Just playing with my spanky new iPod (Hublet came through big time!), cruising some blogs, and letting some posting ideas percolate in the sugar-addled brain pan.
Hope your Monday is a good 'un! And no, I won't be sharing my age. Suffice it to say I'm somewhere between the Olsen Twins and Methuselah.
I'm not usually one of the "Blogging is the wave of the future/Die, old media, Die!/We totally Roxxorz" types, but I've gotta admit that yesterday's "Is it real or is it Memorex" forgery investigation that made the leap from blogs to the mainstream in under 12 hours by utilizing actual verifiable research as opposed to hearsay and innuendo was an amazing thing to behold.
Of course, the internet still being the internet, we will follow-up this fairly amazing bit of lay reportage with the inevitable Duelling Conspiracy Theories: Who was behind the forgery? Rove? The DNC? The Clintons, in an attempt to assure Kerry's loss and secure Hillary's nomination for '08?
And no, not kidding on the last bit--I've read all three theories put forward non-ironically in various comment sections. That's why I love the internet...it can snatch crazy from the jaws of sane every single time.
I must say I was a bit surprised to read this article (via A&L Daily) which seems to suggest that the best way to restore liberals to power in America is to outbreed conservatives.
The hell? Because apparently ideas are not sufficient to persuade, and besides, EVERYONE KNOWS that you grow up to be JUST LIKE YOUR PARENTS in EVERY RESPECT. It's a sinister plot to take over the world through Womb Power!!! OMGWTFBBQELEVEN!!!!1111!!!
I am particularly amused by the lyrical call to reproduction that sums up the mildly hysterical prose, "If 'Metros' don't start having more children, America's future is 'Retro.'" Guess I'm screwed, then, as I am not fruitful enough to benefit either the Metro OR the Retro crowd.
The sinister evocation of the Mormon Threat is quite good, too. Perhaps we should just cordon off Utah entirely, and then nuke it!
And I would be very interested in NOW's response to the exhortations to breed for the good of the fatherland...has anyone forwarded this to Kim Gandy?
Yeah, you. I have just spared you at least a month of interminable heat, because I'm wonderful like that. No idea what I'm talking about? Read on and be edified in the ways of Fall.
Hublet: You know, the days are starting to be a bit less oppressively miserable.
Me: Don't.
Hublet: What? I was just making a comment.
Me: No you weren't. You were preparing a premature declaration of Fall, and I've already warned you about that.
Hublet: I don't just go around declaring Fall willy-nilly, you know. And besides, I only did that once.
Me: You've done it at least twice in consecutive years, and both times with disastrous results, so don't even think about it, is all I'm saying.
Hublet: I have no idea what you're talking about.
Me: Ha! You know good and well what I'm talking about: you sense a hint of reduced humidity, with perhaps something that MIGHT be a breeze, and you jump the gun and "declare Fall," and then we have a month of 90 degree weather in October and it's All. Your. Fault.
Hublet: It wasn't a month. More like a week and a half.
Me: Uh-huh, and you did it before our Maine vacation and it was like, a billion degrees up there and there was only one sad little tree with any fall foliage in OCTOBER, and it was All. Your. Fault.
Hublet: I refuse to shoulder the blame for Maine's lack of seasonability that year. As I recall you froze your butt off on our harbor sailing trip.
Me: Sure, because Fall had sensed that we were leaving, and was taunting us! Taunting, I say!
Hublet: You have lost your mind. And it IS less miserable outside. And look at this catalog, with the lovely autumn leaves all over it.
Me: Don't.
Hublet: It's seasonally appropriate, don't you think? For, you know, FALL?
Me: I am begging you, for the love of all that is holy, just...POSTPONE the declaration for a few weeks, okay? I really want to go suede boot shopping on my birthday, and if it's 900 degrees outside, it will totally ruin the mood. Please? For me? Pretty please?
Hublet: (long-suffering sigh)
Me: Thank you.
Oh, the plans I had for this Labor Day Weekend. Big plans! Exciting plans! Plans involving lavender paint, new screen doors and a spanky new storage shed! Woo! And then Hublet came back from Sampson County, rife with the Cold Spores of Doom, and all was lost. I spent the entire weekend either on the sofa, in a recliner, or outside in a lawn chair blowing my nose, hacking up a lung, and watching The Boy perfect full-speed pratfalls into the Jump-o-lene. And may I just pause to say, "All hail the fabulous Jump-o-Lene!" Because verily, it rocketh. The Boy has already figured out how to maximize his bounce (climb to the top of the Little Tikes contraption and leap into the Jump-o-Lene from On High! Woo-hoo!), and although his request for Mommy to bounce him ended in disaster (he flew backwards over the side and did a half-gainer onto his noggin) he was undaunted in his pursuit of The Perfect Boing.
And so the house is in disarray, the guest room is no more purple now than it was last Friday, and I am hopped up on DayQuil. However, I did manage to add to my List of Interesting Things To Know. Here, for your further edification and knowledge, is Stuff I Learned While on Some Pretty Good Over-the-Counter Drugs:
Response to a response to a blog entry over at Wormtalk and Slugspeak.
Good reading, and pinpoints the cause of much of my frustration with the "Academic Expert" class in the media.
I like Michael's suggestion for disallowing "experts" to slide when they get it wrong. Anyone want to formally establish a "Bonehead Patrol?"
Okay, so I've got a meeting from hell this morning. It could be worse--my finger could have eaten my wedding band.
Warning: Sad story and Really Gross Accompanying Photo.
Via reader Podwall, who refuses to suffer alone. As do I.
Got a rather confused phone call last night from my pals up in NYC. Following is a transcription:
BAW: Hello? Hello?
Static, confused crowd noise, sounds of a struggle
Hyperbole: Like, ewww! Cut it out with the...HEY ASSHOLE! THAT'S MY PHONE!
More scuffling sounds, culminating in a thwocking noise and a high pitched squeal.
Irony: Hey, you there? You should be here. Hyperbole just took out some anarchist's gonads with her Blahnik slides. I've gotta admit I'm impressed.
BAW: Are you guys okay? Where are you? And why are you together?
Hyperbole: I invited Irony up here with me...I think I bit off a little more than I could chew with the whole RNC thing. Irony says I'm just overcompensating for the whole DNC protestor cage deal. And I think she might have a point. I mean, hysterical overstatement is fine when you can contain it inside a building, but we're moving into a whole new world here. I'll be right back--I think I see someone I know over there. Here, talk to Irony.
Irony: It's a moveable feast of crazy up here. And even though I'm here, it's still managing to be mostly Irony-free. Well, except for those Protest Warrior folks.
BAW: I hear you helped design the posters.
Irony: Yeah, well, I was prouder of the 4-person Communists for Kerry contingent. Unfortunately, some folks didn't get the joke. Philistines. Hey, here comes Hyperbole, and she's got some friends with her.
Hyperbole: You won't believe it! I found the twins!
BAW: They're letting Jenna and Barbara walk around outside?!
Hyperbole: No, you goober! Metaphor and Similie! They've been working the street theatre side of things! Here, Metaphor wants to say "Hi."
Metaphor: This trip is turning into a total bust.
BAW: What? But there are costumes! And interpretive dances! And, and, puppets! I would think you'd be in heaven!
Metaphor: I'd like to facilitate some of these idiots' trips TO heaven. The metaphors run the gamut from ham-handed to meaningless, with a brief stopover at "dear God this is stupid." I mean, Missile Dick Chicks? I cut short my Cabo San Lucas vacation for Missile Dick Chicks? I can't even come up with an extended metaphor that fits my own experience here! I'm completely blocked! Shut up, Similie.
BAW: What?
Metaphor: Miss Queen of Comedy over here suggested a high colonic to help with my blockage. Irony is much more practical.
BAW: How?
Metaphor: She's putting on some steel toed boots. Hey Irony? You got a pair in my size? Seriously, we literary terms need to stick together. Plus, I've got a bone to pick with the stilt-walking fake blood covered Uncle Sam over there. HEY, TALL BOY! YOUR METAPHOR IS PEDESTRIAN AND TIRED! OH YEAH? WHY DON"T YOU COME OVER HERE AND MAKE ME, YOU FREAKING HACK!
BAW: Hello? Hello?
Hyperbole: OMIGOD! Rumble in the Bronx time! Or, like, lower Manhattan! WOAH! I had no idea Metaphor took Tae Kwan Do! TIMBERRRRRRR! Hey! Did you just SPIT on my Chanel Suit? Oh, no you didn't!
BAW: Guys? Guys? Hey, are you okay? What's going on?
Hyperbole: Back off, Patchouli Girl! It's ass-kicking time!
BAW: Hello? Hello?
Line goes dead.
Keep watching this space. I have a feeling I'll be having a bail-posting fund raiser soon...
FREE THE LITERARY TERM FOUR!